Stantonica 2

Sonia informed me that she had applied for a job in a recording studio.
"I didn't see it advertised," I said.  "It wasn't on the weekly church newsletter."
"I just applied to all the email addresses on the back of the church CDs," she said. She was not actually lying because the emails in Karen's email account had been the same as the addresses on the back of the CDs that people could buy if they were cell group leaders, to use in their Wednesday night cell groups.  Sonia needed to know what was happening, why legitimate church recording studios were giving secular music to pirate radio stations.  "The company's in Manchester." 

 

Sonia sat on the mixing desk at the recording studio in Manchester with David, the manager.  Together they operated the desktop computer that had replaced the huge tape recorders of the late twentieth century.  The screen was full of charts and the bright yellow lines of sound waves.  Sonia pressed the pause button at the end of a song.  "That's not too bad," said David.  "Can you just do the guitar solo again?"  Sonia set the system to begin recording.  The musician played a complicated guitar solo which lasted about 30 seconds.  After a whole day listening to hymns and Christian music Sonia said, "I feel uplifted.  This is great.  You must be so happy, being paid to listen to people worshipping the Lord all day."
"It's a job," said David.  "It gets boring.  It's all right if you like twiddling nobs and stuff.  We've got another band coming in at five o' clock.  I don't have to be back home until seven tonight.  Two hours with The Upstarts."  A group of rockers with long hair and leather jackets entered the building, carrying an electronic keyboard and some electric guitars.  They set up their equipment and began performing a song.  The music had an angry feeling.  "Back when I was younger they were nagging at me, never listened to a word I say,"  the singer began.  "All say yap, yap, yap, they were talking at me."
"What do you do with this music?" asked Sonia.
"It's not the kind of thing you play at your Wednesday night cell group," said David, laughing.  "Just imagine teaching everybody to sing that at the Bible Study on Sunday night.  We'll send it to all the pirate radio stations."
"Do you charge any money for it?"
"No.  If we charge money for it, that makes us accountable.  The band would have to ask for the money.  If we took the money back to our community house, we'd have to say what it was for.  It's all done for free."
"You know David, you keep an awful lot of expensive equipment here, and there's no CCTV.  You could have cameras here, and outside, so the police would be able to see the registration numbers of the vehicles the theives were using to transport the stolen goods."  David was impressed by this.  A CCTV system wouldn't have any sound, so the police wouldn't know if the musicians were singing secular or Christian songs.  He didn't realise that CCTV recordings have the time and date on them, making it easy to see if anyone had visited at times that weren't recorded on the company timesheets.  Over the next few months, the police advised all the recording studios in the country to have CCTV fitted, actually so they could track the musicians and know which ones were visiting the recording studios for free sessions at the end of the day.

 

I'm not sure when I began to lose my faith.  I lost it some months before the incident with the radio and the internet newspaper.  A good church leader (all the men were made leaders, unless they were considered lazy) wouldn't behave that way.  I knew better.  I had begun to rebel.  Perhaps it was one day when we were singing the national anthem.  Work began at 10 AM.  We all got there at 9.30 AM for Brotherhood.  This was when we sang the national anthem and someone told an inspiring story about Noel Stanton.  The following hymn had become the Stantonica national anthem.
"Is this not the fast I have chosen, to give your wages to the church, and live on pocket money of a few pounds a week.  We'll give you bread when you're hungry, clothes when you're cold, blankets for your bed, electric heaters when you're old, and when they fall out you can have some new windows.  And all of this means that no one is poor and that there will be enough to go round, the South Asian Republic is no longer to be pitied, the fatherland Stantonica has grown far and wide.  When the people of the Lord build their great big houses, all the peoples of the world will sing their praise.  When the people of the Lord build their great big houses, all the peoples of the world will sing their praise."  One of the managers had decided that it was his turn to say something nice about Noel.
"I was born 20 years before the war.  I remember giving some money to a family in Africa, which is now called Brezhnev, and saying to my mother, 'Wouldn't it be nice if everyone did this.  Then there would be no poverty.'  Brothers, that is what Noel Stanton created.  A world with no poverty."  One of the brothers gave the manager an extremely gratified look and said, "Bless you Brother."  Another said, "Amen," softly.  I was having none of this.  I just wondered if Noel Stanton had done the exact opposite of what any Christian should do, given people food and clothing but taken away their souls.

 

The next Sunday I met an old friend of mine at church.  I asked him which community house he was living in now. He said that he was not living in a community house.  He was living in an office block that had been converted into flats.  He was trying to discover a new kind of community.  I said I was interested in his new kind of community.  Could I come and visit?  He did not allow people to come and visit unless he knew them very well.  The best way to make contact with the group would be to join his Wednesday night meeting in a rented hotel room.  I should go to the hotel reception and ask for the location of the knitting group.  On Wednesday night, the so called knitting group sat down in the hotel room.  An old lady with a ball of wool and some knitting needles entered the room looking rather confused.  She had thought it was a real knitting group.
"No, love," said one of the men.  "It's not really a knitting group.  It's a secret meeting of the underground church."
"What did you tell her that for?" asked the leader.  "You could have made an excuse.  The person who runs the knitting group is ill.  It's not on tonight.  That's what you should have said."  The old lady looked even more puzzled.
"But why would there be an underground meeting of the church?  Christians aren't persecuted."
"We're church leaders who are looking for a different kind of community," said the leader.  "It's all very hush hush at the moment.  So we tell people it's a knitting group."
"Oh, you're Covenant Breakers."
"We don't like being called Covenant Breakers.  We haven't broken covenant with anyone.  Just because somebody lives in a flat on their own doesn't mean that they've broken covenant." 
"I think it does," the old lady said indignantly.  She left.  The leader looked at me.  "We all have pseudonyms.  We don't use our real names, so that if anyone is arrested they can't betray the others.  Our pseudonyms are based on contradictions.  I'm Mr. Young because I'm so old.  You can be called Mr. Green because you're wearing a blue jumper."
"I'm Mr. White," said a black man.  "I come from Brezhnev."
"I'm Mrs. Blue," said a woman, "because I'm not married and I'm not wearing anything blue."
"The lesson for tonight," said Mr. Young, "the kingdom of God is not a matter of food and drink but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.  Romans 14 verse 17.  We have made the material aspect more important than it really is.  Love of poverty is really the love of money the other way round.  We can be addicted to money either by our accumulation of it or our constant anxiety about it.  The Bible does not say that people lived in great big 15 bedroom houses together.  They could have lived in their own homes and still have shared things together." 

 

The next time we met at the hotel a policeman came in.
"Good evening, Officer," said Mr. Young.
"Hello Peter," said the policeman.
"Welcome to our knitting group."
"Is this a knitting group?" asked the policeman.  "Why is no one doing any knitting?"
"We've run out of wool," said Mr. White.  "Can't order any more without asking the Common Purse Deacon to put some more money on the debit card."
"Is that why you don't like living in community?"
"We have done nothing wrong," said Mr. Young.  "You have heard and seen nothing illegal in this meeting.  It could be any kind of meeting."
"Peter, tell me why this is called a knitting group, when it is quite clearly not.   Nearly all the people in it are men."
"Excuse me," said Mrs Blue.  "Men do knitting as well."
"If men do knitting as well, why can't I see any knitting going on?"  Mrs Blue pulled a small book out of her bag.
"Knitting patterns," she said, flicking through the pages.  "For domesticated men."
"If you are teaching men how to do housework, you might also be committing a criminal offence," said the policeman.  "The 1969 Holy Segregation Act.  Sisters do knitting.  Brothers mend the fence, change the light bulbs and do the annual community house stock take.  Sisters cook the tea.  Men stay up late washing the dishes.  They are segregated."
"It isn't a knitting club, it's a book club," I said, pulling a novel out of my bag.  "How are we getting on with reading this?  How far have we all got?"
"If it's a book club, why don't you just call it that?"
"We might want to discuss books that are very controversial and not want other people to know."
"Like samizdat?  You've been in trouble for that before, Matthew.  I wonder what kind of books you read in your book club."
"We seem to be digging ourselves deeper and deeper into a hole," said Mr. Young.  "What kind of meeting do you think this is, Officer?"
"I think it's Covenant Breakers.  A meeting for people who want to leave community."
"Would it be against the law to have such a meeting?" asked Mr. White.
"Illegal Private Residence is a criminal offence."
"But we're just talking about it and we haven't actually done it."
"So you admit that you have been talking about leaving community.  You could be committing the offence of Unauthorised Housegroup."
"We're not in a house," said Mrs. Blue.
"Talking about leaving community is Samizdat."
"Samizdat is illegal publishing," I said.  "No one's written anything down."
"I'll think of something," said the policeman, "and you'll all get a summons from the magistrate."

 

I will explain how the legal system in our country actually works.  For the policeman to have arrested us all and taken us down to the station would have required enormous resources.  The police caution lots of people about lots of things several times a day.  The police station would be full if the police actually arrested people.  When the policeman decided whether we had broken the law he sent us letters from the magistrate.  If we had missed our appointments, the police would have posted us a brightly coloured postcard with another date.  If we ignored this, the police would have issued a warrant for our arrest.  If we missed two appointments with the magistrate we would have been remanded in custody until the time of the next appointment, which would have been in a few days.  Each appointment at the magistrate's court takes only two minutes.  We have so many trivial laws.  The majoritiy of people will be summoned by the magistrate several times during the course of a lifetime.  We also have a very low crime rate.  People who could be severely punished for possession of a crystal radio would never dare to possess a shotgun.

 

We received a letter from the police a few days later.  We were all charged with attending an unauthorised Christian meeting.  We had admitted we had been talking about God.  Talking about God isn't a criminal offence.  The authorities did not know which household leader had authorised the meeting or which church leader was leading it.  This meant that the authorities could not control what was going on in the meeting and what was being discussed.  We arrived at the court.  A group of women had been given the appointment a few minutes before us.
"Possession of mars bars with intent to supply," said the magistrate.  "The devil's food.  A team of domestic sisters found a way of making mars bars out of icing sugar, golden syrup, butter, cocoa powder and packets of jelly.  They have provided the authorities with all the information requested, explaining how the toffee, fudge and chocolate layers were constructed.  Their household leader says they are people of exemplary character.  As such, I consider it inappropriate to pass sentence in this case.  The offence will be on their record for 3 years."  This was the most lenient punishment that could ever be given and the magistrate would not usually have been so lenient for a cooking offence.  The women had given the magistrate the recipe.  One Saturday afternoon he was going to have a go at making Mars bars himself.  He now looked at the group of people who had arrived with me.  "Attending an unauthorised Christian meeting.  It was a Covenant Bible Class with a difference.  Most Covenant Bible classes teach people how to make covenant.  This one was teaching people how to break covenant.  You are all bound over for a year, except Mr. Ellis, who was already bound over for a previous offence.  Mr. Ellis, your household leader says that you are a person of exemplary character who is having some struggles with his faith.  You need to do your leadership training again.  You will go to Bible college for one year."   A few days later I received a letter from my local Bible college advising me which date to attend and which bus to catch from the city centre.  I would only be arrested if I refused to do this.