Chilwell Road Methodist Church

What is the purpose of our annual ticket of membership? Can you use it to get free entry to Wesley’s Chapel in London when other cathedrals charge tourists to see their splendid buildings? Do you have to show it before being admitted to a quarterly Communion Service as happens in some Calvinistic churches? Would it indicate that you would want a Methodist minister called in an emergency?

The answer: none of the above. Rather, its main purpose is to remind us of the specific Methodist “callings” that have brought us membership within the church, the body of Christ. The Catholic Church in England and Wales is now following suit, printing their similar callings on similar credit-card-sized tickets. One duty in particular caught my eye: Catholics are “to use their intellectual, emotional and spiritual gifts wisely”.

We Methodists don’t check up on each other’s performance, but at the end of the day ….

I was amused to read in today’s press the reaction of Pakistan’s Foreign Minister [incidentally their first woman politician to visit Afghanistan] to the NATO report about the alleged support of the Afghani Taleban by Pakistan secret services and armed forces.

Not that the report was untrue, nor that it had been leaked. No, it was described dismissively (in the slightly garbled words of the King James Version) as “old wine in an even older bottle”.

The only Christmas book gift that I have had time to open has been David Crystal’s “Begat”. He has explored the use and misuse of aphorisms derived from the particular phraseology of the KJV (and Tyndale before that): “new wine into old bottles” comes, of course, directly from Matthew 9:17. Crystal points out that the meaning of that phrase is both better appreciated when “wineskin” is substituted for “bottle” and also indifferent to the order of the words “new” and “old”.

Only Christian fundamentalists would disagree with such laxity of interpretation. It is curious that Muslim fundamentalists make use of exactly the same trick.

But what am I doing, writing about wine and bottles after my previous post?

The Methodist Church has always maintained a strong witness against alcohol abuse and was a leader in the temperance movement including the “Band of Hope” in previous centuries. My own family suffered terrible damage from the behaviour of my alcoholic grandfather.  Many Methodists today are tee-total and no alcohol is allowed on Methodist premises.

Today, a coalition of national Churches and charities has written to the Prime Minister asking him to introduce a minimum unit price on all alcohol sold in Britain when the Government’s alcohol strategy is announced later this month. David Cameron has indicated that he may be willing to introduce a minimum price of 40 – 50 pence per unit on alcohol, but the group is worried that these plans may be dropped under pressure from the drinks industry.

The group is also encouraging individuals to write to their MPs, highlighting the problems caused by cheap alcohol in their local area and asking them to support per unit minimum pricing. A range of resources for the ‘Measure for Measure’ campaign are available online here.

A YouGov survey conducted in December last year revealed that 61% of UK adults believe that excessive drinking is a problem (from minor to major) in their neighbourhood. The survey commissioned by the Methodist Church, United Reformed Church and Baptist Union of Great Britain asked people to judge the effects of alcohol on the area within walking distance from their home, or where they use local facilities.

We already have Street Angels on the streets of Beeston.  ”Measure for measure” is a wider political campaign aimed at the prevention of alcohol abuse, and deserves the support of churches like ours.