DOG DAYS for GOD

God has had an interesting week. Robert Mugabe, unexpectedly re-elected by a grateful nation for a sixth term as leader of the flourishing and happy land that is Zimbabwe, explicitly put himself out of reach of democracy ahead of the presidential run-off in which he was the only candidate: “only god who appointed me will remove me,” he assured us, “not the MDC, not the British”. And, though he didn’t say so, not the votes of his own people either.

I hadn’t realised until his campaigning speech that his eminence the Zimbabwean president was in office by divine decree. But indeed the oath of office he took yesterday goes like this: “I, Robert Gabriel Mugabe, do swear that I will truly serve in the office of president, so help me god”. That neither the word ‘truly’ nor the word ‘serve’ sticks in his craw is an indication of just how deep Mr Gabriel Mugabe’s devout and pious conviction runs.

Of course, religious people across the world and throughout history will understand exactly where the president is, as they say, coming from. No one knows better than the religious what it means to exterminate, murder, rape, pillage, mutilate, oppress, torture and terrorise. By such means has religious superiority been expressed and clerical writ run since long before the lives of any of the prophets. Of course Mugabe is a religious man. The vast majority of dictators, oppressors and tyrants have been guided by a belief in their own divine right. Religion itself is a tyranny, a system of imperatives and obligations designed to keep the masses quiescent while the leisured classes plunder the riches of the planet without guilt or fear. That’s what religion is for.

Meanwhile, the Anglican communion is imploding across the world. A group of reactionary bishops, many of them representing African sees, announced this weekend the formation of the exquisitely named FOCA. This acronym (which clearly requires to be spoken in a Brooklyn accent) stands for The Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans. Though the organisers demur at the suggestion, this is of course a deliberate act of schism. The Archbishop of Canterbury will be forgiven if he mishears the new organisation’s name as FOC-U.

And what is the great issue upon which the Anglican church is foundering? Murderous tyranny, perhaps? Famine? Poverty? Terrorism? Climate change? None of the above. Never mind the matters that affect the safety and survival of human beings and indeed of the planet itself. It is the wicked and irreligious practice of love. The miserable old gits who make it their business to interfere in the lives and arrangements of others in the name of supernatural mumbo-jumbo are prepared to destroy their ancient church over the love that now dares to speak its name.

All religions are homophobic. Many of them declare same-sex love to be a capital offence. They wash their hands of the persecution that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people suffer in all societies to some degree. You might think that a Christian of colour would know something of persecution and feel some human sympathy for those who suffer it. You might well imagine that their scriptures, that are allegedly so suffused with goodness and holiness, would instruct them not to cast a stone until they are themselves without sin or to attend to the beam in their own eye or to turn the other cheek or to forgive the sinner. This guidance evidently only suits when it is convenient. Scripture is a cut-and-come-again cake and you eat what you fancy and leave the rest. Like all rules and regulations, they only apply to other people.

Archbishop Jensen of Sydney, the likely king over the water of FOC-U, can feel very pleased this week that history has twinned him with someone almost as kindly and sensitive and inclusive and sympathetic as himself, Gabriel Mugabe. If we rationalists turn out to be wrong after all, then no doubt these two dear men will enjoy eternity together, burning in hell. Because, god knows, they’re wrong.