The Revered Stephen Sizer
Today, a story has exploded over the blogosphere.
Late last year, a Christian student blogger, Seismic Shock, was 'debating' with a fellow Christian, the Rev. Stephen Sizer. The Reverend Sizer's writings appeared on a Holocaust denier and anti Semitic website, AAAGH.
I suspect the Reverend may believe that his piece on the AAARGH site has vanished, but it's still here via Google cache.
At the end of November, Seismic Shock received a visit from two officers from his local nick. This is what he writes as a guest, over at Harry's Place
At 10am on Sunday 29th November 2009, I received a visit from two policemen regarding my activities in running the Seismic Shock blog. (Does exposing a vicar’s associations with extremists make me a criminal?, I wondered initially). A sergeant from the Horsforth Police related to me that he had received complaints via Surrey Police from Rev Sizer and from Dr Anthony McRoy – a lecturer at the Wales Evangelical School of Theology – who both objected to being associated with terrorists and Holocaust deniers.
He continued.
The sergeant made clear that this was merely an informal chat, in which I agreed to delete my original blog (http://seismicshock.blogspot.com) but maintain my current one (http://seismicshock.wordpress.com). The policeman related to me that his police force had been in contact with the ICT department my previous place of study, and had looked through my files, and that the head of ICT at my university would like to remind me that I should not be using university property in order to associate individuals with terrorists and Holocaust deniers (I am sure other people use university property to make political comments, but nevermind).
I must confess it's hard to think of Seismic Shock's behaviour as harassment, but like the greedy law firm Shillings over the Alisher Usmanov affair and the stupidity of Carter-Ruck with Trafigura the daft Sizer forgot about The Streisand Effect.
By now, the Reverend Sizer's dodgy friends are all over the internet, a fact that I suspect his parishioners at the Christ Curch, the international community church of Virginia Water and beyond [my emphasis] are not too happy about.
I think it's about time we heard from the The Most Reverend Rowan Williams on this subject.
