In the last twenty four hours, two friends sent me two different news stories.  The one here refers to events outside the church; the one here within it (WARNING: the church one is not for the easily offended).

These raised a number of questions in my mind.  The first caused me to wonder, at a somewhat trivial level, why so many Christians (including myself) have time for Christopher Hitchens but not for his erstwhile pal, Richard Dawkins?   No doubt there are as many answers as people; but it could be to do with different kinds of hate.  Some years back, a student was telling me how annoying they found a particular British person; I commented that I thought I exhibited much the same traits as the one described but that the student was not expressing the same concerns about me.  `Ahh, but we all love to hate you,' he said `We simply hate the other guy.'   I do not think I can remember any student ever paying me a higher compliment.

My guess is that this distinction in hating is important.  To love to hate someone is, perversely, to have a kind of respect, if not even affection, for them.  We all loved to hate Hitchens because he was fearless, learned, unpredictable and had more than one thing to say.   We simply hate Dawkins because, despite the obvious and not insubstantial redeeming feature of being married to the second Romana, he is really quite boring, as sanctimonious as any vicar in a George Eliot novel, totally predictable and, unlike Hitchens, professes to want to make the government interfere in how you live your life and raise your children.

The second news story, on this dramatic performance in church, raised the more serious question in my mind: who is more dangerous to the church?  Dawkins or the kind of nutters who put on such performances as an act of worship?   How one answers that question speaks eloquently of how one views the church and her struggle.  Are more people killed by muggers or by disease each year?