´óÏó´«Ã½

Beautiful. Yet again, fundie protests backfire spectacularly by achieving an outcome 180 degrees counterproductive to their aim. :-)

I've had a quick dig about the web. I can't find anything that links Stephen Green or Christian Voice to acts of violence.
Neither can I find anything that implies that Green was considering the use of violence.
Granted that he is an irritating nut. For all I know, he may be a dangerous nut. But I haven't seen any evidence that he is violent.
If there is evidence that I'm missing, can someone point me towards it?

GV

John
If Green's policy is publicity for Green, then I'd say he's achieved his aim.

GV

Green's policy is to demonstrate a backlash against a book (and maybe a secondary policy to effect support for his beliefs and ideology). Rather than a backlash against the book, the book will become more popular, and people are even less likely to join groups and churches which believe as he does.

That's the definition of failure!

I'm actually more cynical than you John. I think that means I need some sort of help.
I think Green's type doesn't care about the agenda. They care about feeling important. Only a complete idiot would fail to reconise that notoriety helps an author.
So my bet is that Green will be quite pleased that his name is in the paper again.

GV

"I'm actually more cynical than you John. I think that means I need some sort of help."

Haha!!!!! Maybe.....

Thanks so much for covering this. It was a real shock to turn up at Waterstones having travelled five hours and arranged overnight accomodation and put out lots of advertising to be told the event had been cancelled.
This is a sparkling, energetic poetry collection that engages with serious issues including domestic abuse of men, oppression of women, ecological disaster and much more.
A few of the poems deal with patrick’s strong views on religion, particularly the way in which it is often associated with military conflict, the subjugation of women or movements that exclude the ‘outsider’. These are issues that art should rightly be pushing to the forefront of debate in a liberal society and there are people of faith who are just as concerned with these issues as humanists and secularists.
It's a bad day for free speech when a big chain gives in to threats so easily

As one might expect, Christian Voice have now given Patrick Jones a much larger audience than he might previously have expected for his book.

This is another "Jerry springer the opera" type situation. Springer the opera was dreadful, awful, television and would have gone unoticed but for Green's (and Bishop Michael Reid's) protest at the ´óÏó´«Ã½.

What specific threats did the "big chain" capitulate to? The aggressive proffering of Religious Tracts? What am I missing here? What evidence is there that Christian Voice is a dangerous organisation? Idiots, yes. But any more intimidating than a Free Prebyterian picket?

I spy a publicity stunt.

G Veale

Didn't yeaterdays blog mention something about the threat of violence?

Patrick Jones' website mentions threats of violence:

'It is with great sadness, anger and regret that we have to report that, due to "threats of disruption and violence" from members of christian voice and others. Waterstones took the decision to cancel the book launch and reading this evening- this is a tragic day for freedom of speech, our beloved secular society and for poetry-
Patrick went down to meet with people who had come along for the reading- not a single protestor was visible!

See:

Thanks for the link and the info. Augustine. I think it is revealing that no protestors appeared.

I should make it clear that I don't see any evidence that Patrick Jones instigated all this for publicity. Waterstones cancelled the event. Did they really expect trouble?
Having a look at his poetry, it doesn't even look that shocking. Maybe I've been in a high school too long.

(Although, Green has the very nasty habit of putting the phone numbers of those he disagrees with on his web-site. It is possible that the manager and workers of Waterstone's Cardiff store didn't want this sort of attention).

Green is an extraordinarily nasty idiot. No doubt about that. But I would like clarity about the details of this cancellation.

GV

It is becoming increasingly noticable that as support for mainstream religion is fading, that established church organisations are trying to stamp out any form of non religious comment.
I do not support any form of religion, it is a weakness in the human makeup that we cannot believe in ourselves, there has to be some form of other belief that we seem to have to hold on to. Organised religion is the business of making money from this human weakness.
In the case of this book of poems, the religious fanatics, Christian Voice, have shot themselves in the foot. I would not have heard about it without their intervention. I may even go out and buy it. I certainly would not have posted this without their outrageous move to try and stop freedom of speech.

I read the poem for broadcast. I'm sorry that you, or your producer, decided to fade out rather than include the line "then they shall all be f---ing saved", which is pretty much the point of the poem. You could have bleeped it.

My job as an actor is always to serve the writer. I read it without any editorialising, without any inflection that revealed my own opinions. Now that it's done, though, and having heard the conversation on your programme, I feel free to say that the poem is hopelessly naive. The assertion that the disappearance of religious faith would mean an end to war ("could this be how the shelling stops?") is a stupidity.

So, on the one hand you have a poet who seems to think he has discovered atheism (has he never heard of Shelley?) and, on the other hand, a man who claims the Lord Jesus Christ as a personal friend. Hint: it's OK to have an invisible friend when you're five; not so much when you're a grownup. It wasn't a very edifying conversation.

[Edited to censor the word your blog didn't want to accept.]

Tend to agree Miche - what I heard wouldn't inspire me to go and buy the book. You don't even have to go as far back as Shelley, John Lennon did the whole idea much better in "Imagine". I distrust media-savvy poets - don't know why but I just do...