Boycotting The Sun won't help reach the working class.

Boycotting The Sun won't help reach the working class.

By: Carl Beech | Jan 2015

The EA are asking Christians to boycott The Sun, but if the church wants to reach it's average reader, we need to think differently says Carl Beech.

I live in Derbyshire and I sometimes go to my local pub called The Rose and Crown. I was there last week chatting to the parish priest whilst observing the largely male clientèle as they laughed and moaned and played dominoes very loudly. (Yes it can be a loud game). I’ve spent a great deal of the last ten years of my life talking to working class men (which is my background too) about Jesus Christ in pubs, working mens clubs, curry houses and sports clubs.

Its often a little bit “cold” to start with but humour and food normally cuts through. I’ve got many reflections after all these years but one of them is that the Christian world I view in church, on social media and on TV/radio is light years away from the lives that these men live. Sometimes I think even Scotty wouldn't be able to get the warp drive pumping fast enough to make up the distance any time soon.

The Sun claims its has over 7 million readers. 44% of them are apparently women. It also reaches more men under the age of 35 than its next three nearest competitors. Crucially its readership is 68% in the C2DE demographic. That's manual workers (skilled and unskilled), working class, and those not working.

Now, I don't read The Sun and I’ve actually never, ever purchased a copy. I have older teenage daughters. I see men looking at them in a way that objectifies them. I have campaigned to see the eradication of violence against women. I have counselled countless numbers of men with addictions to pornography. I know the score.  I can't help but feel however that not many Christians actually read The Sun anyway? I’m not aware of any. I bet they read The Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Independent, The Times, The Telegraph.

Record numbers use Scottish food banks by By Marc Ellison Data journalist, BBC Scotland

 Trussell Trust food banks were visited by 10,489 people in December 2014

 - a third of them were children

A record number of adults and children relied upon food banks in Scotland in December, according to new figures obtained by the BBC.

Nearly 10,500 people visited the Trussell Trust's 48 food banks for the first time in the charity's history.

The data also reveals a third of users cited low income - and not welfare benefit delays - for their predicament.

The figure is a 13% increase from the 9,263 people who used a Trussell Trust food bank in December 2013.

BBC Scotland wants your help in compiling a definitive list of all the food banks in Scotland. Please take just one minute to fill out this short form with details of your local food bank(s).

In December 2014, 10,489 people visiting Scottish food banks were given a three day supply of nutritionally balanced food by the charity - a third of them children.

The charity underlined that the final figure for December visits is likely to be even higher as food bank staff continue to input data into their system.

'Harrowing accounts'

Ewan Gurr, the charity's network manager for Scotland, said he was concerned that many low income families were forced to face hunger in the run-up to Christmas due to financial difficulties.

Read more here:

Bishops were wrong about poverty last time... this time they're irrelevant, by Damien Thompson, Daily Mail

Justin Welby

The quickest way to ruin a dinner party is to talk about the Christian belief in an after-life. ‘Heaven? It’s just a fantasy cooked up by clergy to keep themselves in a job,’ a typical metropolitan hostess might say, her lip curling as she spoons out the asparagus soufflé.

To which I can only reply: in 20 years of covering religious affairs as a journalist, I have almost never heard vicars or priests talk about heaven – except from the narrow confines of the pulpit, and even then not very often.

But I certainly hear clergy talk incessantly about another fantasy world. It’s a Britain in which they talk about the ‘gulf between rich and poor’.

This always seems to be a nicely flexible concept that they never precisely define. Above all, it is always ‘widening’ and they argue that society’s ills can be miraculously solved if only more taxpayers’ money was spent on them as if it was holy water.

This week, they are it again with a book that deliberately echoes the infamous ‘Faith In The City’ report published by the Church of England in 1985 when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister.

It controversially called for greater government spending in every conceivable area (except on the country’s military defences, of course) and was denounced by one Thatcherite minister as ‘Marxist’.

Such criticism was, I believe, over the top – but make no mistake: the truth is that the Church of England tried to strangle the Thatcherite reforms that turned Britain into the economic capital of Europe.

The Church failed in it efforts – and it seems that Archbishop Sentamu is still very bitter.

In his new book, he says he is sorry that the Church lost its nerve in its response to what he calls the ‘savage attack’ of Thatcherism.

But he is wrong. The Left-wing bishops did not lose their nerve: they actually did everything in their power to elect Labour’s Neil Kinnock as prime minister. And then when that failed, too, they went into a sulk.

Perhaps the most depressing aspect of this offensive by the Church of England is the involvement of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The fact is that some of what he says is patently not true.

Read more here:

Further Reading

Bishops branded 'out of touch' for claiming the poor are being cast aside and cities are in a 'cycle of decline'

Supersize benefits family claims £50,000 in handouts every year and spend cash on designer trainers and mopeds