Response: Christian Concern and the Victoria Wasteney case

Apr 22, 2016 by Jill

by Ian Paul and Tim Dieppe, Psephizo:

On Wednesday I was contacted by Tim Dieppe, a long time reader of this blog and recently appointed as Director of Islamic Affairs at Christian Concern, following the publication of the article about CC and the Wasteney case. I was happy to offer Tim a right of reply, giving Christian Concern’s more detailed perspective.

I would like to thank Ian Paul for allowing me to reply to the article published here on the Victoria Wasteney case. I have long admired the Psephizo blog and often found the articles helpful and insightful. I was, however, disappointed to see an article which is quite disparaging of our ministry posted on such a respected site. The main criticism in the article is that Christian Concern is selective in the material that it provides. There are also points raised about Victoria Wasteney’s case that I would like to respond to.

Christian Concern press releases about cases cannot be expected to comment on all the background issues surrounding each case, nor on every paragraph of a long ruling much of which is disputed in any case. It is entirely unreasonable to expect us to discuss all the details of a case in our releases. If we did produce a longer commentary on each case, we would still be accused of being selective because any release is necessarily selective. The ruling itself is also selective in what it includes and does not include. Had we written a longer briefing on this case, I doubt very much if we would have considered it necessary to comment on all the issues raised in that article.

Read here

See also: On dealing with the armchair critics, by Bill Muehlenberg