I just came across a news item on the BBC site, also being repeated on the international Reuters feed, that after protests from Christian Voice, Maggies, a Scottish Cancer Charity have refused the proceeds of a charity gala performance of Jerry Springer: The Opera. The gala performance had been advertised as in support of the charity as part of the campaign to build a Maggies Centre in London, and in addition to proceeds of £10 per ticket, all of the cast of the show had donated their wages.

Whilst any charity is perfectly justified in accepting or refusing any donation, reading the articles, the charity only chose to refuse the proceeds following the intervention of Christian Voice. It seems that Christian Voice effectively blackmailed them into not accepting it by threatening them with a Christian boycot of the charity, and also threatening to protest outside their offices if they accepted the donation. As Stephen Green of Christian Voice says in the Reuters item “Effectively, I think we saved this charity from a public relations disaster.” However to me, it seems like the primary cause of any public relations disaster would have been Christian Voice protesting outside their offices and highlighting their protests in the media, prior to today I didn’t know anything about the gala or donation. However bear this in mind, had the donation gone ahead, there would have been little publicity, if there had been protests, I doubt it would have registered much, particularly not at a national or international level. Having refused the donation the story is now being reported internationally. As a Maggies representative says in The Scotsman:

“This isn’t about us. They [Christian Voice] are seeking to publicise their activities by this initiative. We have no affiliations to any religious group and we have no link to Christian Voice.”

However other Christian groups and organisations have been critical of the decision, and of Christian Voice. Ekklesia have pointed out that Jesus often put compassion ahead of religiousity, and as quoted by The Independent Rev Richard Thomas, the Oxford Diocese Communications director who has complained to OFCOM over the show said that ethically one of the best ways to redeem “dirty” money was to put it to a good cause, and made the following statement:

“You have to look at the use of money, and balance that against the way it is raised and this would seem to be an ideal use of money for a very worthwhile cause regardless of the questions about how it has been raised,”

From my point of view, it seems to me like Christian Voice effectively operated a protection racket against the charity. The massive publicity the BBC showing of the show generated means that most people would be aware of the content, and Maggies were quite happy to accept the donation despite all that publicity. Then along comes Christian Voice and suddenly Maggies changes their mind, I’m sure fearful of the negative publicity that Christian Voice could generate. Having said that, they were effectively put in a no win situation, as the current news reporting, although much of it is critical of Christian Voice (the Independent article is headlined “Revealed: how Christian activists deprived cancer charity of cash”), a lot of the rest of the publicity is negative towards Maggies itself. All of that is a great pity, for a non-Christian charity whose primary aim is to build centres that help people to live with Cancer.