Chair: Ladies and gentlemen, the phrase ‘our speaker needs no introduction’ has probably never been so self-evidently true as it is this evening. We have only half-an-hour and I’m going to say only one sentence.
Tony Benn was an MP, is a highly-respected parliamentarian, a wonderful speaker and a brilliant diarist. We are particularly privileged because he is going to speak tonight on a subject which I don’t think that many people have heard him speak on, which is – the Bible. So I’m going to hand over straight away. Thank you.
Tony Benn: Well, thank you. I’ve just set my stopwatch because this is very disciplined, I’m told. (It isn’t working! Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on it.)
Well it’s a tremendous honour to be asked to speak tonight. I make no claim to be a bible scholar. There are no doubt many bible scholars here and any criticism made of what I’ve said, I will accept with gratitude.
I was brought up on the Bible. My mother read the Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek. She was a Congregationalist. She campaigned very, very hard to get the Congregationalists to abandon from their constitution the charge that the Jews killed Jesus, which of course was a very old argument. There is a library in the Hebrew University named after her and I am very, very proud of that.
My father was a Congregationalist too and he quoted once, when I was young, the story of Charles Spurgeon who was a very famous 19th century evangelist. Somebody said to him: “Why do you defend the Bible?” and Spurgeon said, “I do NOT defend the Bible. The Bible is like a lion: I release it and it defends itself!” I thought that was a very nice story.
But it is of course the oral history of the Jews. The Garden of Eden: I find that if you refer to the Garden of Eden now, people don’t know what you’re talking about because not many people are brought up on the Bible. But it always interested me that Adam and Eve got into trouble for having a fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, the knowledge of right and wrong. I wondered whether that was the argument for keeping the Attorney-General’s evidence secret now: that if you knew that you could cause a lot of trouble!
The argument: ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ I mentioned that to Tutu the other day and he said, “Well, we don’t say ‘my brother’s keeper’. We say ‘Am I my brother and sister’s brother?” But that point has always seemed to me to explain an awful lot. If you believe you are your brother’s keeper, then an injury to one is an injury to all: united we stand and divided we fall – and you do not cross a picket line. I always thought that came in the book of Genesis and not from the Kremlin.
Of course the language of the Bible has such an influence. When Khrushchev, who of course was brought up on the Bible, went to Delhi, he wanted to speak about co-existence and so he thought of Noah. He said in Delhi that like Noah at the time of the Flood he’d brought clean beasts and unclean beasts into the boat. Of course nobody in India had ever heard of Noah so the translator said, “Comrades, the General Secretary has been speaking about a man who had a boat and put some dirty animals in it”. It showed how the imagery of the Bible has had such a tremendous influence.
And the story of Abraham when he was asked to sacrifice his child Isaac and in the end God let him off. The story of the slaves in Egypt, of Moses being found in the bulrushes. The Passover. The Exodus. The Red Sea and the division of the Red Sea. The forty years in the wilderness and how important they were. And then Moses repudiating those who worshipped the golden calf. I think that is a very interesting story. I come back to that theme, that if you worship money you can’t really be faithful to God. Then, of course, Moses going to Mount Sinai and getting the Ten Commandments.
Now in the world in which we live today, it is very difficult for anyone to say anything without being interrogated by Jeremy Paxman. I thought to myself that if Moses had been asked on Newsnight to explain, then this interview would have run, ‘Well, where have you been, Moses? Oh, you’ve been on Mount Sinai, have you? Well, that’s a likely story! Thou shall honour thy mother and father. You don’t live in the real world.’ You would never have got to what he had actually said and it does show the importance of being able to say things before you are cross-examined about them.
Then, Joshua and the battle of Jericho. I’ve been to Jericho and you know the rubble from when the walls fell down, apparently because of the sounding of trumpets. It may have been a natural disaster but there is some evidence of that.
The story of David and Goliath, an absolutely classic story, and the story which I learned as a child about David’s adultery with Bathsheba and how he sent Uriah the Hittite (the husband of Bathsheba) into battle so that he could marry her. The prophet Nathan wanted to deal with it and told him an imaginary story about someone who had deprived someone of what they loved. David was very, very shocked and Nathan said, “Thou art the man!” And that is a very powerful story, to me at any rate.
Then, of course, the enslavement in Babylon and Daniel in the lions’ den. Daniel, to show his faith (you all know the story) was in the den of the lions all night and came out unscathed. When I was in Nagasaki some years ago, I went to the YMCA and there in the YMCA was a picture of Daniel standing in the lions’ den. I photographed it and then blew it up and I had it on my wall at home because my father used to quote to me,
“Dare to be a Daniel.
Dare to stand alone.
Dare to have a purpose firm.
Dare to make it known.”
That has been a principle I have tried to allow to guide me or to encourage me through my life. “Dare to be a Daniel!” Very, very important. It leads really to the main point of what I want to talk about which is the way the Bible was interpreted to me by my mother, that it was the story of the kings who had power and of the prophets who preached righteousness. She taught me to support the prophets and not the kings and it’s got me into a great deal of trouble all my life.
Indeed the first time that I went to bible class as a five-year-old at school, I remember it very vividly. There was a Bible teacher called Miss Babcock who was a terrifying woman with a bun. At the very beginning of the Bible class she said that God was angry. I got up and said, “You’re quite wrong, Miss Babcock. God is love.” So she sent me out of the Bible class and I had to read the Bible alone throughout the rest of the term and she said to my mother, “The trouble with Anthony is that when I begin, he begins”. That has been a problem ever since.
But the idea of power against righteousness is a tremendously important idea in modern life and throughout the whole of human history. Whether you are looking at Isaiah or Hosea or Jeremiah, you will find that same sort of idea: that you can not have a good life if you do not behave decently to other people.
I have brought two quotations which I’ve often used in political speeches. I hope you’ll allow me to use them here. This is the prophet Amos, Chapter V, verses 21-24:
“I hate, I despise your feast days. I will take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Though you offer me burnt offerings and meal offerings I will not accept them. Neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. Take away from me the noise of thy song for I will not hear the melody of thy harps. But let justice run down as water and righteousness as a mighty stream.”
That is a terribly powerful statement. Or, if you go on to the prophet Micah, this is very much the same point. [Micah, Chapter V, verses 7-8]
“Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams or tens of thousands of rivers of oil? (That has a special relevance.) Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has told me, oh man, what is good and what does the Lord require of thee but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God.”
Now these are tremendously powerful moral challenges which come out of the Bible whether you are a Jew or a gentile or whatever religion you adhere to.
There are, of course, difficulties about the Bible and perhaps I may dare to refer to them.
I have found the story of the creation a difficult one to absorb. I know God rested on the seventh day and I can understand why, but it is very, very difficult with millions of stars in millions of galaxies to believe it was done in the way it is described in the book of Genesis. I must admit that I do not find that miracles help me in my daily life. I know that some people do but having been in Jerusalem in 1945 and again since and seeing some of the Christian miracles revealed, I found they didn’t really help me very much.
I asked before I came, to be sure I wasn’t wrong, whether the doctrine of original sin deriving from the book of Genesis is accepted in Judaism. It isn’t and I’m very relieved by this because I think that the idea that we are all born evil is a thoroughly wicked idea. We have in the Church of England a Confession. I have done those things that I ought not to have done: that is true. I have left undone those things I ought to have done: that’s true. And then he goes on to say: ‘There is no health in us’. I think that that, the use of religion to demoralise people, is a wicked, wicked thing to do.
And the use of heaven and hell. I can’t say that hell has ever frightened me very much. Not that if there were one I would be likely to escape it, but I have found it very difficult to accept. You see the Christian churches have had a very clever way of getting out of your moral responsibility. You went to a bishop and said that it is a very unfair world and the bishop would say, ‘I know, my son. But if only the rich are kind and the poor are patient you will get your reward in the next world’. And people said that it was wonderful news but ‘could we possibly have it while we’re still alive?’ And of course out of that came the political radicalism deriving from Bible studies.
There are lots of similar examples. I remember doing a socialist meeting the other day and a lovely young ‘Trot’ said, “We are all victims of capitalism: we must smash the state”. And I said, “Well that’s no use. If some old lady came to my constituency and said: ‘Tony, I desperately need a bungalow; my husband has just died,’ and I said, ‘Madam, you’re a victim of capitalism: you must smash the state,’ she would have said, ‘That’s very very interesting Tony: what are the prospects of a bungalow?’” And you do actually have to address people.
I mean nowadays leave it to market forces. That’s the same. Or ‘Vote Labour and it will be all right’. I mean, all these ideas that it will all come right automatically are a complete illusion.
I also think that there is an even greater danger, and this may be true of Judaism as well as Christianity and Islam: building power structures on a faith. The idea that the interpretation of the teachings of the prophets somehow gives you power to tell other people what to do and then to burn them for heresy or describe them as ‘the infidel’. I think that is a very very dangerous idea and it is true not just of religion. It is true of course of political organisations as well: inspired by an idea and then the idea is taken over by an organisation.
Because I am a Congregationalist I must tell you that the Congregationalists believe in the priesthood of all believers. We all have a direct line to the Almighty and we don’t actually need bishops to help us. Well, you can imagine: that is not a very popular idea among the bishops. But if you do believe that you have direct communication with the Almighty, with the Creator, or however you want to put it, then it does give you the right to think for yourself. And thinking for yourself is not popular in any organisation, not even the one of which I am a member.
So it breeds intolerance. Also, the most serious thing of all: that is war. When you have a war where God is on both sides, it is extremely difficult to know how to settle it. Bush made a statement after September 11th and talked about a ‘crusade’ against terrorism. I think that he’d probably never heard of the Crusades. If he had he would know that Richard Coeur de Lion, flying the Cross of St George (that all the football fans have), went to the Middle East and slaughtered Jews and Muslims. He didn’t know it – but they remembered it.
The Muslims talk about a jihad, a ‘holy war’. We don’t call it a holy war but we drag out a tame bishop who says it is a ‘just war’. But whether it is a holy war or a just war, in both cases somebody is telling you that God has authorised you to kill somebody else. I think that if that were to become the basis of international relations, we would be in serious trouble.
If we have an argument about frontiers, we can have a conference and adjust the frontier. But if God is on your side and on their side, I think we are likely to be in very serious difficulties.
(Now perhaps I can come to the end. I am going to be very tight for time because I rather hoped we would have some questions but you were very stern about the time I had so I’ll try and hurry!)
The thing about the Bible when I look back is that it is just lovely stories about the human condition. Everything: well, Sodom and Gomorrah. It must be a great source of interest to Bush, dealing with gay marriages. The story of Lot’s wife must worry him, especially in a presidential year. You can’t avoid the implications of what it all means.
The importance of history: it is so important to know where you came from if you want to know where you are and where you want to go.
I also think that ritual is very important. I think that celebrating the Passover, celebrating Sabbath, celebrating Christmas, celebrating births and deaths and marriages: very, very important to people because it gives you a sense of security. The extent to which it is necessary to have a firm belief to enjoy and appreciate the ritual is something that is open to a lot of discussion.
Now the thing about Judaism, Christianity and Islam of course is that they are all monotheistic religions: they all believe in one God. That is why in the world in which we live, as you have seen, a dangerous world where conflict is now increasingly rotating around religious faith, I think it is immensely important that we should excavate the foundations of our faith in order to discover the common ground that there is.
My mother worked very hard with the Council of Christians and Jews. She was also a member of the World Congress of Faiths. I think that is something that we really do have to do and take very, very seriously indeed. Because, if we are all brothers and sisters, it does raise in my mind a very interesting question. The greatest theological divide you could imagine is between those who believe that God created man, and those who believe that men invented God. I mean, you couldn’t have a wider divide than that.
On the other hand, the ethics of both are very, very similar. Because if you believe that God created everybody, then we are brothers and sisters as I’ve mentioned. But if you come to the conclusion that we are brothers and sisters and that that is best expressed by the concept of a Creator, the ethics are very similar.
I always ask people their religion because it tells you so much. I met somebody the other day and I said, ‘What is your faith?’ He said, ‘I’m a lapsed atheist’. You know, the more I thought about that, the more interesting it became. What he said was that he personally did not believe in a God but that the older he got, the more he realised that there is a spiritual dimension in everybody which one has to respect and encourage and develop. I thought that the position of the ‘lapsed atheist’ was one really worth reflecting on, because you meet lapsed Catholics, lapsed Christians, maybe lapsed Jews. But lapsed atheists are coming from the other side and may be to where we should have been if we hadn’t lapsed ourselves.
Then you have to look at the role of the prophets. Now I was asking whether Jesus was recognised as a Jewish prophet because he was a very interesting Jew and said some interesting things but in the Jewish faith that is not the case. But it is difficult for me not to see Jesus as a prophet.
Funnily enough I often go and talk about Christianity and Socialism and I went to the Bishop of Worcester’s place the other day and all the clergy were there. I was talking about the relationship between moral teaching and political action and a very angry evangelical got up. He said, ‘I want to ask you a question’. I said, ‘Yes’. He said, ‘Do you believe that Jesus is our Lord?’ And I said, ‘Well I am in difficulty because I don’t believe in lords!’ Then he said, ‘Do you believe in the kingdom of heaven?’ And I said, ‘The problem is that I’m a Republican’. All the women there laughed their heads off because of course the language of religion is so hierarchical. I said that really if he had asked me whether I follow Jesus as our teacher in the commonwealth of humanity, then yes of course I do. But that didn’t satisfy him.
You see you then come to this whole question: if, as the prophets said, if you are simply greedy and selfish you lose contact with the Almighty, then what other gods do people worship? I was thinking about it the other day. I mean, there is Judaism and Christianity and Islam and Buddhism and Confucianism. But I have come to the conclusion that most people in the world now worship money. It is very funny: you can’t avoid it. The business news: every hour they tell you what’s happened to the ‘Footsie’, whatever that may be! And they tell you about ‘Mr Dow Jones’. I’ve never met him but he works on his averages 24 hours a day. He must be one of the busiest men alive.
But have you ever met a pensioner who hears the business news and rushes out and sells his euros and buys dollars? Why don’t they give us useful information on the hour? How many people have got jobs. How many people are homeless. How many people have died of asbestosis. How many people are waiting for a hip operation.
But the worship of Mammon sort of implies that the happiness of the human race relates to what happens on Wall Street. That, in my opinion, is a very, very powerful religion. Of course the banks are bigger than the cathedrals and the synagogues and the mosques anyway now.
I was thinking about this the other day and trying to work out the following question in my mind. If the worship of money is religion, who are the priests? Who are the rabbis? I offer you (I hope I don’t give offence: it has happened in my life. I don’t mean to) I thought the management consultants are the priests of money. I’ll tell you why.
Somebody wrote something the other day (I don’t know who it was) that exactly illustrates the role of management consultants. It was about a boat race between the BBC (when John Birt was there: a brilliant manager but not much of a broadcaster) and a Japanese crew. Both sides practised long and hard and the Japanese won by a mile. So Birt did what any manager would do: he set up a working party to find out why. The working party reported that the Japanese had seven people rowing and one steering and that the BBC had seven people steering and one rowing. So, faced with a crisis of that magnitude he appointed management consultants. That’s the only thing you can do.
The management consultants, who cost a million pounds, reported and they confirmed the diagnosis of the working party but they suggested that the BBC crew be completely restructured: three assistant steering managers; three deputy steering managers; a director of steering services and the rower should be given an incentive to row harder.
They had another race and this time the Japanese won by two miles. So they laid off the rower for poor performance and they sold the boat and used it for a higher than average pay award for the director of steering services!
Now, you can laugh, but the trouble is that it is a bit too close to be funny. Somehow, when profit is the main motive of action, you really are making a big, big decision. Keir Hardie, the Scottish miner who was one of the founders of the Labour Party, said in 1900 that the choice for this century is whether we worship God or Mammon. I think there is no doubt whatever what choice we have made.
Now I am saying that and I am not suggesting that Moses was a Labour MP for Galilee North. I am making no such claim. That’s what Malcolm Muggeridge once said. But I do think that the teachings of society are very important and I regard Jesus as a teacher. I regard Karl Marx, who was a Jew, as one of the great prophets. He sat in the British Library and wrote about capitalism. Anybody could have written about capitalism. The important thing about Marx was that he said it was unfair. If he’d just written about capitalism, then it would have been in every business course in the world. But he said that exploitation was unfair.
Or if you take Martin Luther King. Or if you take Desmond Tutu with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I think these are the prophets and they are the people worth listening to.
My father once said to me that the trouble began when they started spelling the word ‘prophets’ with an ‘f’ and somehow that just about sums up what I’m trying to say. Because you asked me to come I’ve been driven back yet again to the Bible and I must say that I’m grateful for that. I was saying to Marion beforehand that I feel as if I’ve been applying for a post-graduate university degree in Bible Studies because I was coming tonight.
But the more I think about it, the more I think that really when we talk about relations between God and man, the real lesson is: How do we live with each other? But I think that what the Bible teaches us to do is to learn to respect each other and to live in peace with each other. That you can’t have peace without justice. And if we look at the world’s great religions in that sense and at what they can tell us about how to live with each other in peace, then we might find that the divisions that now are so sharp between the world’s religions might very well be – not exactly reconciled because the ritual and the worship would be different, but the ideas would be seen to bear upon the human condition. We owe an enormous debt to the Jewish people who lived through it and wrote about it.
If ever I’m asked what book I’d take on a desert island, I say the Bible, because I haven’t read it. I once said that and an angry man said, ‘Why haven’t you read it?’ But there you are: I haven’t read it but it is a story about the human condition from which I think we can all learn so much.
Thank you very much indeed for asking me to come and talk about the Bible.
Chair: Ladies and gentlemen, it was far too short! I’m really sorry. I think we have to invite Tony Benn back another year and he can talk to us for an hour and a half.
What he has said that he will do, which is absolutely great, is to sign copies of his Diaries.
[End]
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