IT MAY be one of the least important things about them, but the riots have been a salutary demonstration of the irrelevance of the Church of England in national life. There are, of course, bishops with plenty to say about them, but there is nothing that any of them can do. Neither the rioters nor the police will take any notice of their opinions. Not even the threat of a consistory court will bring order to the streets.
But there has, none the less, been a reconfiguring of the religious landscape. The riots have made clear the way in which “Muslim” now codes “unwanted unwhite immigrant”. When I first looked at X on the morning after the Southport knifings, there were an enormous number of messages claiming that the perpetrator was a Muslim who had arrived illegally on a boat last year, and giving a name for him. The Times, whose coverage of this aspect of the riots has been the best of all the broadsheets’, tracked down the woman who had invented this hugely popular lie and talked to her.
“The woman accused of being first to post a false Muslim name for the suspect is the managing director of a clothing company. The mother of three in her mid-fifties enjoys walking, is married to an artist and counts an actor among her children. The family live in a £1.5 million farmhouse in the rural north.
“She posted on Twitter/X that ‘Ali Al-Shakati’ was the suspect, he was an ‘asylum seeker who came to the UK by boat last year’ and was on an ‘MI6 watch list’. . .
“The false information sped around the internet and played a part in prompting the anti-immigration riot in Southport the following evening. An hour after it was published, at 4.49pm on Monday, she deleted the post.”
The former Times columnist David Aaronovitch, who presumably also knows her name, pointed out that she had been a regular on TalkTV (also owned by Murdoch) during the pandemic as a campaigner against lockdowns.
Still, it is worth asking whether any single newspaper article or statement by a cleric has had a similar reach or effect this century. We have only begun to come to terms with the immense shift of opinion online. Not all of it is to the disadvantage of the authorities.
James Ball (who got his start in journalism by working with Julian Assange) pointed out that many of the rioters left huge amounts of evidence against themselves on social media, and that these posts, coupled with the ability to prove that their phones were in use where the rioters were, would lead to many convictions. Of course, the hard core will move to more discreet methods of communication, but this makes it less easy for them to spread their ideas to normal people.
IT IS an unusual relief to turn to the United States for a burst of optimism and sanity, or, failing that, an FT interview with the Revd Franklin Graham. It could be used to illustrate the meaning of “dumbfounded”:
“‘I think Obama hurt race relations in this country,’ Graham says. ‘I think a lot of white people voted for him to try to clear their guilty conscience, thinking, “Well, you know, we’ve checked a box now with a Black president” and I think that set things back.’ I struggle to think of an adequate follow-up.”
THEN to Rest of World, an invaluable site that chronicles the ways in which the internet is transforming the countries that our media largely ignore. This had a story about Jeffster Wekesa, a Kenyan evangelist with 14,000 followers on TikTok, more than 5000 on Facebook, and about 300 on other platforms. These have transformed his life. Born to a mother in Namibia who did not want him, and brought up by an uncle in the slums, the only places where he excelled were churches in his area, where he sang and played the keyboard. Outside, his life was grim.
“The low point came in June of 2022, while working as a hawker in central Nairobi. During the two-hour walk back to his small apartment, Wekesa was robbed by a group of about 30 men at gunpoint. They took the cheap jewelry that he was selling, his phone, and all of his cash. ‘I was carrying even my rent in my pocket,’ he told Rest of World. ‘It was the only money I had.’”
But he now preaches every evening in front of a 75-inch flat screen television to an average audience of 5000 people: “He prays that they’ll find jobs, spouses, business success. He tells small prophecies: This one will soon buy a car, that one will travel abroad to find greener pastures. He heals the sick by asking them to touch the ailing body part as he prays.”
This is not going to make him rich, but it has moved him out of poverty, into the Kenyan middle class, with a monthly income from donations which varies from about $800 to $2300. Even if he averages only $1000 a month, that is still more than the income of the poorest 20 per cent of English parishes.