There’s a song which has been in the charts since August that has been playing in the background of my mind all summer, partly because it has taken me several hearings to actually work out what the words are. Its first line is “Guns don’t kill people, rappers do; ask any politician and they’ll tell you it’s true”. It’s by a Welsh hip hop group called Goldie Lookin’ Chain. For those who need a translation of ‘Guns don’t kill people, rappers do’ one of the band members, known as Eggsy, is quoted as saying “The gun is the tool, the mind is the weapon”. Or put another way, fill people’s heads with violence, add to that a gun culture and you end up with a body count.

This is one reworking of the pen being mightier than the sword, or the computer keyboard being more powerful than the AK-47. We know that words matter because they carry our assumptions and our values. An ideology can inspire and when it captures our minds it will determine the way we act. The ideology we teach matters and it is for this reason that churches have been involved in education from the earliest days and still put tremendous effort into schools today. This is one of the reasons we run a Pre-school and a youth club. It is one of the reasons we are involved with various youth activities around the parish, though it would be good to be able to do much more.

There is no such thing as neutral education. Even a secular agenda carries certain values and assumptions which need to be acknowledged and we have a right to ask critical questions of all public policy, just as much as anyone else does. So removing religious influences would not remove ideology. It would just replace one with another and this is often not recognised, as assumptions rarely are.

In a visual age we have become conscious of the power of the pictures we use. They are often the vehicle that is used to carry a message so we don’t see the words, the conceptual frame behind them, just their pictorial representation. Those who decorated our churches with stained glass windows and medieval wall paintings knew this and today advertisers use the visual to full effect. The images often work in the background while we’re concentrating our effort on something else. So the pictures we see have a powerful affect on us, the iconography we fill our imaginations with carries the ideology which will affect our actions. It’s very subtle and over time infects us or influences us depending on how you view it.

So when our first reading urges us to ‘pray for kings and those in high positions so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity’ (1 Tim 2:1-7) it takes us to the heart of this ideological struggle. It reminds us that the state has a powerful position to set the background for the shaping of imaginations and aspirations. It can set the tone for the kind of values that are promoted and espoused. It reminds us that shaping and tone setting is going on.

Of course, in a democracy the state is not the only one involved in this tone setting and shaping. Indeed with global communications technology, the internet and satellite TV in many homes, there are real limits to the power of the state in this. But they still have power to set the legal frame in which freedoms are allowed their expression, to codify what is considered acceptable and what is not. By and large I think we are pretty fortunate in that our laws still have a Christian ethos to them and carry assumptions that have a Christian basis to them.

The other side of the ideological background is very powerful. We are used to entertainment media which often uses violence as a way of solving disputes in a way that is almost pornographic. Sexual activity is often shown in a way that assumes it is without consequences and the messages are mixed up. There are cultural shifts that even governments have difficulty tackling, even members of them display them. The fabric of our social bonding has been destabilised by a variety of factors and many seem to have become disconnected from a sense of corporate responsibility.

We see this disconnection in the madness that we have entered over taxation which has become a necessity that dare not speak its name. It’s crazy. It is how we pay for common services. If we don’t pay, or can’t pay, we can’t have. We’re going to face that one over pensions in a few years time and some very foreseeable chickens are coming home to roost in the infrastructure of utilities like water and drains. The costs of the works that are going to be required have just not been faced.

So prayers for ‘kings and those in high positions’ are prayers for the culture and shape of our common life, for the ideology that guides the way we behave. There is a need for Christians to ask some pertinent questions about how the fabric of our society is held together and the ways it is progressing. I don’t want to sound like a grumpy old man - even though I am now dangerously close to the ages of some of the people who appear on that programme on BBC2. In fact I want to do quite the opposite. I want to see positive influences that inspire and set the agenda in a way that is hope-filled and life affirming; in a way that proclaims redemption and the possibilities of new life.

We can contrast this with some very destructive ideologies that are capturing imaginations. When religion is distorted to feed hatreds it becomes a very noxious ideology. Suicide bombers, who have been fed a distorted version of Islam, and those whose religious fervour leads them to kill those who belong to a different branch of the same faith, blaspheme the holy name of God. If we allow our religious views to dehumanise another then it is not a large step to find ourselves trying to recruit God for violent ends, and that is an abuse of religion.

So I find myself back with the Welsh rappers Goldie Lookin’ Chain, their song ‘Guns don’t kill people, rappers do’ and the power ideas can have over people. Ideologies are not neutral. Some are liberating and life enhancing. Some are oppressive and breed hatred. There is much we can do by being a space where a different ideology is let loose; one that proclaims hope, redemption and new life. This is what we do when we 'pray for kings and those in high positions'; when we seek to set the tone and shape the frame of our common life.

© Ian Black 2004

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