eChurch Blog

It just never ends nowadays, as firstly we have eastern mysticism (with yoga, meditation and levitation) for our toddlers in the form of CBeebies Waybuloo and now this for our older generation of children

Named the 99, as each possesses one of Allah’s 99 attributes, the characters include a burka-clad woman named Batina the Hidden and a Saudi Arabian Hulk-type man named Jabbar the Powerful.

They have proved a hit from Morocco to Indonesia and were recently named as one of the top 20 trends sweeping the world by Forbes magazine.

Now they are being brought to British television by Endemol, the production company behind Big Brother, with a mission to instill Islamic values in children across all faiths.

Until now, the superhero market has been dominated by the likes of Batman, Spiderman and Superman who have typically limited their crime-fighting abilities to America and the Western world.

They were created by Dr Naif al-Mutawa, a clinical psychologist from Kuwait, who felt Muslim children needed a new set of heroes to look up to, to counter jihadist role models.

“It hit me that the stories I was hearing were from men who grew up believing that their leader, Saddam, was a hero, a role model — only to one day be tortured by him,” he told The Times. “I decided the Arab world needed better role models.”

However, despite being called the 99, there will never be a full cast of 99 superheroes since it is forbidden to depict all Allah’s attributes

Dr al-Mutawa hopes the cartoons will have a universal appeal.

He said: “It is based on attributes such as generosity and mercy. These are not things that Islam has a monopoly over.”

By Natalie Bowen, Community Newswire

The Methodist Church has published online guidance for its followers who are housebound with swine flu, suggesting they listen to a radio or internet service.

The guidance, accessible through the Methodist website, offers practical advice for taking Holy Communion and sharing the Peace while infected with the virus.

It also provides a checklist for local church facilities, urging worshippers to consider how many tissues and bins are available.

Virologist Paul Morrison, the Church’s public issues policy advisor said: “Each church is encouraged to think about how they can sensibly reduce the risk of spreading swine flu during services and the other activities that go on as part of Church life.

“A number of areas of concern, such as Holy Communion, have been specifically addressed. Once these risks have been thought out and minimised we hope that churches will carry on serving their communities as before.”

“Swine flu is nothing to panic about but it has increased the level of need within our communities. It is important that our churches are able to continue to reach out to sick and vulnerable people using both new technologies like email and internet as well as more traditional methods such as home visits and phone calls”.

The guidance suggests housebound people should receive phone calls or emails, rather than pastoral visits, to reduce infection risks. They need not miss out on communal services completely, as St Pixels, the Church of the Internet, holds online worship and live sermons.

Alternatively, the Methodist Church suggests tuning in to the Daily Service on Radio 4 at 9.45am on weekdays.

Mr Morrison said: “Meeting together to learn and worship is the spiritual life-blood of the Church and we don’t want people to stop doing this, but for those who can’t attend corporate worship for whatever reason, there are a variety of resources to offer them spiritual support until they can return to church.”

The Methodist Church is one of the largest Christian churches serving Great Britain, with around 265,000 members and regular contact with over 800,000 people. It has about 5,800 churches in Great Britain, and also maintains links with other Methodist churches totalling a worldwide membership of 70 million.

People are being encouraged to pray for the health services and everyone suffering with the virus. They are also asked to email their own stories of good practice in helping to prevent and manage the disease to swineflu@methodistchurch.org.uk.

The Methodist Church guidance on swine flu is available at www.methodist.org.uk/swineflu.

It’s a valid point!

Israel Today

A group of Israelis on Wednesday protested US President Barack Obama’s demand for a Jewish settlement freeze by dressing up as Native Americans outside the US Embassy in Tel Aviv.

The protestors noted that not so long ago, the US seized land it has no prior connection to in order to expand its borders, while Obama is denying Jews the right to live on lands that form the very cradle of their civilization and faith.

To demonstrate the absurdity of Obama’s position, the protestors carried signs insisting that the US surrender lands it stole from the Native Americans. They read:

“Three countries for three races”
“America, we understand you – understand us, too”
“Freeze building west of the Atlantic Ocean. Red-skinned American within 1492 border”

Organizers told Ynet they were unable to obtain a permit to hold a larger demonstration, but that many tourists and passersby saw what they were doing and joined in the protest

Look at the control the fear of Islam has in our nations now. The Christian faith is openly and publicly mocked everyday, but my oh my, don’t upset Islam! It looks like terrorism works after all.

Yale Uni backs off over Danish Islam cartoons

It is a country gone mad! I’m surprised they didn’t fit CCTV in her house as they have for other “dangerous parents”. We really are in 1984, which by the way was supposed to be a warning, not a guide book:-

The Christian Institute

School nurse dismissed for smacking son, loses appeal

Religious Intelligence

Baghdad church damaged in series of explosions
Thursday, 20th August 2009. 11:29am

By: Jordana-May Gargas.

The windows and doors of St George’s Anglican Church in Iraq were blown out following a series of six explosions outside the Foreign and Finance Ministries in central Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone and eastern Baghdad’s Beirut Square.

Over 500 people were injured in the attacks and doctors form the clinic at St George’s rushed to treat wounded civilians.

The Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, described the co-ordinated attack as “archetypical of al-Qaeda”.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has since stepped up security measures after a meeting with Iraq’s defence and national security ministers. These measures will include new check-points and spot security checks.

Two people linked to al-Qaeda are said to have been arrested in relation to the attack. The insurgents are said to have taken advantage of the removal of concrete blast walls erected in 2003 to separate Sunni and Shi’ite neighbourhoods.

Canon Andrew White, the Anglican Chaplain to Iraq, said: “Despite whatever destruction we face we will not stop worshiping our God and looking after our people. We have the largest church in the country and a doctors and dentists treating over 100 people a day and most of them are Muslims.”

The attack came on the 6th anniversary of the suicide bombing at the UN Compound in Baghdad which killed 22 people.

Fighting in the area is said to have increased since the withdrawal of US security forces in June this year. Renewed terror strikes are said to be part of a wider strategy to undermine Mr Nouri al-Maliki’s Government ahead of the general elections in January 2010.

Catholic Bishops in New Zealand have spoken out against a proposed law change allowing same-sex adoption, saying children are entitled to the love of both a mother and a father.

Family Court acting head judge Paul von Dadelszen has made a call for gay, lesbian and unmarried couples to be allowed to adopt children.

A member’s bill proposing this will go into the ballot at Parliament today.

It may not be drawn for some time. Judge von Dadelszen said New Zealand was lagging behind over its adoption rules, The New Zealand Herald reported.

He gave his personal views during a speech in Wellington earlier in the week.

The Adoption Act was outdated, discriminatory and breached the Bill of Rights Act, the Human Rights Act and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, he said.

Under the Act only married couples and individuals can adopt children.

Chief Families Commissioner Jan Pryor has agreed to meet with Judge von Dadelszen in October to discuss the issue after he suggested the Families Commission should promote the issue.

Gay Green MP Kevin Hague has taken up support for a bill which would allow homosexual and de facto couples to adopt children.

United Future leader Peter Dunne said legalising gay adoption would be contrary to “the view of the mainstream”.

Barnardos Communications manager Peter Gerry said they would not stand in the way of the Bill and would act in the best interests of the chid.

“We don’t have a particular stance on whether same-sex couples make good parents or not. My personal opinion is that they could make every bit as good a family for a child but they could be equally as bad as a standard mixed couple,” he said.

“Each adoption has to be assessed individually, that doesn’t preclude same-sex adoption in our view if that is the best interest of the child.”

He said adoption was a “fairly fraught area” and said they would support any changes that were in the best interests of children.

“The principle as I say would be around what is in the best interests of the child rather than what is in the best interest of the nuclear family or the adults in the process.”

Meanwhile, Labour’s justice spokeswoman Lianne Dalziel has spoken out in support of same-sex adoptions and called for a complete overhaul of the Adoption Act.

Bishop Peter Cullinane of Palmerston North said heterosexual couples provided a more suitable way for a child to be raised.

“A mother’s and a father’s love are different and complement each other. We would always support the right of the child to experience both.”

“The New Zealand Catholic bishops are concerned about the rights of the adult being given priority over the rights of the child in the current debate about whether the law should change to allow homosexual and de-facto couples to adopt children,” he said.

“Every comment I’ve heard so far… has been about adults talking about their rights and I find that pretty disturbing – that nobody seems to be mentioning the right of the child,” he said.

“Who of us has the right to chose to deprive the child of both – that’s the point.”

He did not dispute that same-sex couples could be good parents but said science and common sense showed that their love was different and complementary “and that seems to be completely ignored by those who are arguing the other way”.

“This isn’t about gay people and lesbian people as such, for whom we have to have proper respect, this is simply about the right of a child.”

He said the right of a child and the best interests of a child were different and it was important to understand the difference.

“Gay and lesbian people are going to say that they’re interested in the best interests of the child too and so you end up with an argument that’s got no resolution,” he said.

“All I’m saying is the child has a right too.”

He said that right was to have a mother and father, if possible.

A law change allowing same-sex couples to adopt in the UK in 2007 prompted staunch refusals by the Catholic Church to comply.

The Catholic churches in England and Wales refused to allow same-sex couples to adopt from their children’s homes and in June, it was ruled they were in breach of the new law implemented in 2007.

It was reported that if the churches refused to budge, it could lose its charity status and public funding.

ABC News

Bishop blames ‘weak’ churches for losing their religious

A former Australian Defence Force Anglican bishop says religious belief is waning in Australia because the Christianity most Australians have encountered is weak, insipid, and in some cases unintelligible.

Director of St Mark’s National Theological Centre and head of the School of Theology at Charles Sturt University, Professor Tom Frame, says churches must take some of the blame for the decline.

“The Christianity that most Australians have encountered is weak and insipid and in more than a few instances uninspiring and unintelligible, and the majority have no idea of what the Christian religion is offering,” he writes in his book Losing My Religion: Unbelief In Australia.

Professor Frame points to what he believes are three reasons for this.

“To some degree some churches are caught in a time warp, they’ve got the social and cultural forms of the 1950s and 1960s and have been unable to embrace the 1990s and the new millennium, so they do seem to be locked in time and their message with it,” he told ABC Online.

“The second thing that I would say is that many of the churches are totally overcome by internal bickering about minor points of doctrine about which the world could not care less, because they don’t bear upon everyday life.

“And I think the third thing is that the churches themselves have conducted some of the internal debates in public and given the impression that not even the churches are sure about what they believe.

“Now I don’t think that’s true, but in conducting, if you like, household conversations in the full glare of the media spotlight, [they have] led some people to focus on the division rather than the unity; the separateness rather than the oneness of the message that’s being proclaimed.

“There are some churches who in my view have a totally hybrid religion, one which is nearer to therapy than spirituality. And if you are an external observer seeing all of this it’s not surprising that you think the churches themselves don’t know what they’re on about.

“And if they can’t articulate a clear message then why should anyone bother listening?”

At Federation Australia was considered a Christian nation, but Professor Frame points to census figures showing that today a quarter of the population does not have a declared religion.

“If we take the census figures as any reliable measure of what’s happening in the community then we would have to say that those who have formalised religious beliefs – that express themselves through the major religions that people are offered in the census form – then certainly there’s a big change going on,” he said.

“In 100 years we’ve gone from a country with nearly 97 per cent of the population belonging to one of the four big Christian denominations to 63 per cent; 5 per cent having a religion other than Christianity. It’s a lot of change in a very short space of time and that’s going to have consequences for the whole community.”

And he says even though people may refer to themselves as being of Catholic, Anglican or Uniting Church faith, they do not necessarily have beliefs that correspond with the formal ones of those religions.

“They probably believe all sorts of things and certainly what we’re seeing in terms of surveys and other things is that belief in God still seems to be high – say 75-80 per cent – but formal religious affiliation, that’s where the bottom is dropping out of the market.”

He warns that as belief continues to decline, it places in jeopardy the estimated $40 billion worth of public money channelled through religious organisations to deliver social services in Australia.

“That being the case it seems to me that if these religious communities were wiped out there wouldn’t be the agencies that actually provide a whole lot of important services to our community,” he said.

“In addition to that, to some degree, our moral and ethical conversation in this country has been informed largely by Christianity as the majority religion. If you take away that big story and the things that it has contributed to our public life, and our public conversation, there will be a void.”

These Satirical essays by David at  Virtue Online are such a treat, they take the GRIM news from around the church regarding the acceptance of homosexuality and just put it all in perspective for me. I hope that you enjoy them as well and that in some small way they cheer you up as they do me.

My dear Wormwood,

So that Spong fellow has finally claimed victory for the pansexualists. http://tinyurl.com/nw9ge5

What a gem he has proven to be. As you know, he has been firmly lodged in our camp for nearly four decades. It is to his credit that Spong has lived long enough to see his success in the triumph of sodomy and the inevitable destruction of The Episcopal Church, along with such lay luminaries as Louie Crew and other sodomite advocators from Integrity and the much married bishops Walter Righter, Gene Robinson and Otis Charles.

Let them exalt in their victory, Wormwood. They are ours. Let them shout it from every inclusive pulpit, every newspaper and every talk show host who will grovel before them in secular obeisance. It is ours to watch and ours to chortle.

It is a triumph for which our father will duly reward you. You have done sterling work. Seal the deal, if you can, by making sure that another sodomite or lesbian is elected bishop of Los Angeles or Minnesota. It doesn’t really matter who; the important thing is to finally force the hand of Jefferts Schori in her dealings with Rowan Williams.

If one is elected, she will be forced to admit that Resolution B033 is dead on arrival. Then she will also be forced to admit that resolutions D025 and C056 were not merely descriptive, as she said in a letter to Williams, but prescriptive. Then she will have to decide whether she will be the chief consecrator at their consecrations or not.

Remind her of what Frank Griswold did. He told the Primates in 2003 he would never consecrate an avowed sodomite to the episcopacy. Three weeks later, he went ahead and did just that saying he had no control over how individual diocesan bishops and the HOB vote. The result was Gene Robinson. Oh what history he has made, and how many tens of thousands of Episcopal simpletons he has pushed into our camp.

Keep the lies and prevarications coming, Wormwood. Keep the orthodox believing (what few are left) that there are still more lines in the sand to be drawn and that they should stay in TEC as the church’s loyal opposition.

The most important thing is making sure that Rowan Williams believes in TEC and its future, and that his two track or two tier solution is the answer to keeping the Anglican Communion together.

Williams’ brilliance at fudge should not go unrecognized. Sooner or later, the fudge will turn into goo and melt into our arms. Make sure some seminary or other gives him an honorary doctorate for keeping everyone at the table. Hell is filled with brilliant academics who know more than G-d.

Keep the Listening Process alive. Find some liberal philanthropist who will drop another million dollars or two into the Listening pot. Let them listen themselves to death, Wormwood. They are ours. Any thought of sexual mutability must be upheld forever and the whine and faux pain pansexualists feel must also be recorded forever and parked in the annals of hell.

Keep the notion alive and well that talk of exclusion is narrow-minded and fundamentalist. Conversely, the word inclusion is a powerful word that we want kept alive. Any talk of some being in or out of their wretched kingdom must be against an all loving, all embracive G-d who wants all to be saved and will ultimately save all. Ditto for diversity.

Make sure liberal seminaries abandon all talk of substitutionary atonement. Make sure the language of inclusion is embedded so deep in their studies that they leave the seminaries complete converts to our side. That new homosexual convert to Episcopalianism (from that vile Catholic Church) Jim McGreevey, the former Governor of NJ, is a real catch. He should be elevated immediately and fast tracked to a bishopric. A handsome sodomite….he and Gene will make an attractive pair appearing on talk show hosts across the nation. If you can possibly elevate a bi-sexual to the Episcopal priesthood make sure his or her first sermon reads, “Going Both Ways” a reflection on Peter, James and John.

Keep making the point that sexuality issues are about “justice” not morality. Push the line that morality is malleable and not fixed, and keep the pansexualists arguing that the Global South has polygamy (a myth by the way but worth perpetuating) and therefore the West should be entitled to sodomy. It’s a great quid pro quo. Also, make sure that the pansexualists keep trotting out those Old Testament texts prohibiting certain meats even though these ceremonial laws have nothing to do with HIS damnable fixed laws on human biology and behavior.

We do so love nomenclature that begins with… “The church commends sexual relationships that are ‘trustworthy,’ ‘loving,’ ‘fulfilling,’ ‘committed,’ and ‘nurturing.’” These suggest that some homosexual and other non-marital relationships might satisfy these criteria. Of course they do, Wormwood. These are all touchy feely words, that have nothing to do with objective truth and that is the point. Keep any talk of revealed truth from these people. They must believe that their G-d has changed His mind for them and they must believe it with fervor and passion.

That statement of Spong’s the other day that G-d is not personal, but an extension of ourselves should be written over every church portal.

What is so compelling is that the “Christian” churches are doing it all for us. You simply pushed the pain of exclusion button and they started racing our way. We note with levity that the Lutherans seem headed down the same sewer over pansexuality as the Episcopalians. The Quakers rolled over recently. Excellent work.

I must confess to you, Wormwood, we have not had this much success since those great but horrible revivals of the 18th century that pushed millions into the camp of the righteous. With post-modernism, we have undone most of it, but still there remain pockets of resistance to us.

Make sure that liberal and revisionist Episcopal bishops destroy orthodox priests in their dioceses. We do not merely want their properties with them gone, but we want them destroyed and imprisoned, if at all possible. If you can get those wretched righteous priests, Don Armstrong and Matt Kennedy, doing time for allegedly fiddling their books, it will arm the revisionists with more ammunition. But watch out for the backlash, do NOT make martyrs of them. It could backfire on us.

What we ultimately want to do is have the whole mainline Protestant experience to embrace sexual revisionism. In doing so, it would deliberately sideline itself. It would exalt western liberal notions of individual moral autonomy above shared understandings of the Bible. It would also alienate the majority of its own members. We want the whole lot of them heading down the road to theological marginalization, internal division, accelerating membership loss, and cultural irrelevance.

Our goal is their full and total destruction. Hell awaits them.

I remain,

Your affectionate Uncle,

Screwtape

Stand Firm

Lutherans at Cliff’s Edge

Obviously miracles do happen, but after today’s proceedings it’s hard to see how the ELCA doesn’t pass the final resolution on Friday officially opening up their clergy ranks to non-celibate gays, and triggering an acceleration in the denomination’s decline. If we can all agree that on balance the people in the ELCA pews are at least a tad more conservative than their TEC counterparts, then it’s equally safe to say that the Lutherans will see at least as much of a decline in the next five years as we’ve seen in the last five, and perhaps even more.

One vote. That was the margin Wednesday by which the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America churchwide assembly approved a social statement that, among other things, acknowledges the validity of same-sex relationships that are “chaste, monogamous and lifelong.”

The margin was so close that Bishop Mark Hanson, the ELCA leader who presided over the vote, hesitated before announcing the outcome. Rules required the social statement to pass by a two-thirds vote; the final result was 66.67 percent.

“I thought it was going to be close, but I doubted very much that it would come out at exactly two-thirds,” said the Rev. Peter Strommen, chairman of the task force that drew up the social statement and pastor of Shepherd of the Lake Lutheran Church in Prior Lake.

Close as it was, the vote bodes well for a proposal to repeal a ban on gay and lesbian ministers from leading churches unless they promise to be celibate. That motion, which is to come up for a vote Friday afternoon, requires only a simple majority to pass.