eChurch Blog

Lisbon, Portugal, Aug 27, 2009 / 09:51 pm (CNA).- The president of the Portuguese Bishops’ Conference, Archbishop Jorge Ferreira da Costa Ortiga, said this week, “Civil unions can be legalized it that’s what is wanted, but they cannot be made equivalent to marriage.  This problem must be dealt with more slowly and with the involvement of society,” he said.

L’Osservatore Romano reported that the archbishop told Renascenca Radio about the opinion of the Portuguese bishops on a decree modifying the country’s law on civil unions, a decree that President Anibal Cavaco Silva has decided not to promulgate.

The archbishop said the new law on civil unions, which would include homosexual unions, is “inappropriate and hasty” and needs to be debated more widely by all citizens. “This rush is not the best path to take,” he said.  “I am totally in agreement with president about the fact that it should be taken up later and that the Portuguese society should be involved,” the archbishop said.

Several days ago the president said making marriage and civil unions equivalent “could turn into a limitation of citizens’ freedom of choice.”  He said there had not been enough debate on the measure, which could lead to “huge consequences for the lives of thousands of Portuguese citizens.”

Recently Portugal’s Supreme Court ruled against homosexual unions, reaffirming the constitutionality of marriage as a union between one and one woman.

BBC

Church festival draws criticism

Traditional Anglicans have criticised the UK’s major Christian arts festival for inviting a gay American Bishop to speak.

Among those addressing the Greenbelt festival this year is the Bishop of New Hampshire, Gene Robinson, a gay man whose ordination by the Episcopalian Church was greeted with both outrage and celebration in various parts of the worldwide Anglican Communion.

Many people did not welcome his elevation, and the issue of gay clergy has become so contentious that it threatens to divide global Anglicans – some say it has already begun.

Last month, the Episcopal Church voted to end a three-year moratorium on electing gay Bishops, a move which may ultimately push the US Church out of the Communion.

This begs the question, why did Greenbelt’s organisers invite one of the most controversial figures in the Church to speak, a decision which was bound to draw criticism from some sections?

Festival coordinator Beki Bateson, says the invitation was made solely on the strength of Bishop Robinson’s earlier speaking appearances at other venues, and that his is just one voice amongst many.

“Sometimes those voices are not always programmed at the same festival and some issues including the debate around sexuality have been addressed over a number of years from varying perspectives.”

Conformism charge

Conservative Anglicans have remained unimpressed, reacting with dismay to Bishop Robinson’s appearance.

They have accused the festival – which was once regarded as counter-cultural – of becoming conformist in its apparent wish to acknowledge modern diversity.

Canon Chris Sugden, a member of Anglican Mainstream, a pressure group campaigning for traditional biblical teaching on homosexuality, is unhappy with Bishop Robinson’s invitation.

He acknowledges Greenbelt as a forum for exploring new ideas, but is concerned that no opposing viewpoint on human sexuality will be aired.

“Gene Robinson was invited because he’s a controversial celebrity. So I suggest it’s a sign of prejudice by Greenbelt that they haven’t invited other speakers.

“The festival will be full of families with teenage children, a ready audience who might be persuaded by his [Robinson's] sophisticated presentation technique.”

Speakers Canon Sugden would like to hear include organisations who say they can either change same-sex attraction, or enable gay men and women to remain happily celibate.

Dr Lisa Nollard is a historian who plans to be among the festival-goers over the weekend.

She has also criticised what she sees as the organisers’ reluctance to allow an even-handed presentation of controversial topics.

“What discussions would I like to see? How about a workshop entitled ‘Why a lot of women think abortion is a bad idea!’”

But many people either find those issues too controversial, she says, or they do not think they are deserving of “airtime”.

Dr Nollard is looking forward to hearing Gene Robinson, and may well challenge him on his opinions.

“I’ve read a lot of what Bishop Robinson has written, and I’ve shaken my head.”

Changing Attitude, a leading pro-gay Church movement, will be laying out their ideas at the festival.

Its director, the Rev Colin Coward, says he is happy to have a debate on homosexuality, but that it is not appropriate to invite the “Ex-Gay” movement.

“There’s a lot of evidence that trying to make somebody ex-gay doesn’t work” he says.

“It’s abusive. And those organisations are on the fringe, whereas Gene Robinson is an elected bishop.”

For her part, Beki Bateson is adamant that all sides of the gay debate have been aired at Greenbelt over the years, and she rejects the accusation that teenagers will leave Cheltenham racecourse with only one spiritual view of sexuality.

“Greenbelt believes that young people learn what they want to learn,” she adds.

Read article here and have your say and register your protest at the  invitation to Gene Robinson to speak!

“The voice of the Lord is full of majesty.” Psalm 29:4

AIL God’s works praise him whether they be magnificent or minute, they
all discover the wisdom, the power and the benevolence of their Creator.
“All thy works praise thee, O God.” But there are some of his more
majestic works which sing the song of praise louder than others. There are
some of his doings, upon which there seems to be graven in larger letters
than usual the name of God. Such are the lofty mountains, which worship
God with uncovered heads both night and day, such are the rolling seas,
too mighty to be managed by man, but held in cheek by God, and such,
especially, are the thunders and the lightnings. The lightnings are the
glances of the eyes of God, and the thunders are the utterings of his voice.
The thunder has been usually attributed to God more especially, though
philosophers assure us that it is to be accounted for by natural causes. We
believe them, but we prefer ourselves, to fool to the first great cause, and
we are content with that odd and universal belief, that the thunder is the
voice of God. It is marvellous what effect the thunder has had upon all
kinds of men. In reading an ode of Horace the other day, I found him in the
first two verses, singing like a true Ithurean, that he despised God, and
intended to live merrily; but by-and-bye he hears the thunder, and
acknowledging that there is a Jehovah, who lives on high, he trembles
before him. The most wicked of men have been obliged to acknowledge
that there must be a Creator, when they have heard that marvellous voice
of his sounding through the sky. Men of the stoutest nerve and the boldest
blasphemy have become the weakest of all creatures, when God has in
some degree manifested himself in the mighty whirlwind, or in the storm.
“He breaketh the cedars of Lebanon ,” he bringeth down the stout hearts;
he layeth down the mighty, and he obliges those who never acknowledged
him to reverence him when they hear his voice. The Christian will
acknowledge the thunder to be the voice of God, from the fact, that if he
be in the right frame of mind, it always suggests to him holy thoughts. I do
not know how it may be with you, but I scarce ever hear the rolling
thunder but I begin to forget earth and look upwards to my God. I am
unconscious of any feeling of terror or pain; it is rather a feeling of delight
that I experience, for I like to sing that verse —

“The God that rules on high
And thunders when he please,
That rides upon the stormy sky
And manages the seas.
This awful God is ours
Our Father and our love
He shall send down his heavenly powers
To carry us above.”

He is our God, and I like to sing that, and think of it: but there is
something so terrible in the time of that voice when God is speaking,
something so terrific to other men, and humbling to the Christian? that he
is obliged to sink very low in his own estimation; then he looks up to God,
and cries, “infinite Jehovah, spare a worm, crush not an unworthy wretch. I
know it is thy voice; I reverence thee with solemn awe; I prostrate myself
before thy throne; thou art my God, and beside thee there is none else.” It
might well have occurred to a Jewish mind to have called the thunder the
voice of God, when he considered the loudness of it, when all other voices
are hushed: even if they be the loudest voices mortals can utter, or the
most mighty sounds; yet are they but indistinct whispers, compared with
the voice of God in the thunder; and, indeed, they are entirely lost when
God speaks from his throne, and makes even the deaf hear, and those who
are unwilling to acknowledge him hear his voice.

But we need not stop to prove, that the thunder is the voice of God, from
any natural feeling of man, we have Scripture to back us up, and therefore
we shall do our best to appeal to that. In the first place, there is a passage
in the book of Exodus where I would refer you; where, in the margin, we
are told that the thunder is the voice of God. In the 9th chapter and the
28th verse, Pharaoh says “Entreat the Lord (for it is enough) that there be
no more mighty thunderings and hail.” The original Hebrew has it, and my
margin has it, and the margin of all of you who are wise enough to have
marginal Bibles — “Voices of God.” “Let there be no more voices of God
and hail.” So that it is not a mere illusion, but we are really warranted by
Scripture, in saying, that “the thunder is the voice of God lifted up in the
sky.” Now, for another proof; to what shall we refer you unless we send
you to the book of Job? In his 37th chapter, 3rd verse, he says, “he
directeth, it under the whole heaven, and his lightning unto the ends of the
earth. After it a voice roareth he thundereth with the voice of his
excellency: and he will not stay them when his voice is heard. God
thundereth marvellously with his voice; great things doeth he, which we
cannot comprehend.” And so he says in the 40th chapter at the 9th verse,
“Hast thou an arm like God? or canst thou thunder with a voice like him?”
I am glad, in this age, when men are seeking to forget God, and put him
entirely out of the creation, and trying to put laws in the place of God, as if
laws could govern a universe without some one to execute those laws, and
put power and force into them — I am glad, I say, to be able to bear
testimony to something which men cannot deny to be caused immediately
by God the mighty One himself:

There is one striking proof I would offer to you, that the thunder is the
voice of God, and that is the fact, that when God spake on Sinai, and gave
forth his law, his voice is then described, if not in the first passage, yet in
the reference to it, as being great thunders. “There were thunders and
lightnings, exceedingly loud and long.” God spoke then, and he spoke so
terribly in thunder, that the people requested that they might hear that
voice no more. And I must refer you to one passage in the New Testament,
which will bear me out thoroughly in describing the thunder to be indeed,
the voice of God, and that is in the 11th chapter of the Gospel according to
St. John, where Jesus lifted up his voice to heaven at the tomb of Lazarus,
and asked his Father to answer him; and then a voice came from heaven,
and they that stood by said “that it thundered;” it was the voice of God
which was then heard, and they ascribed it to the thunder. Here is a
remarkable proof that the thunder has usually been ascribed to God as
being his voice, and when God’s voice has been heard on any remarkable
occasion, it has always been accompanied by the sound of thunder, or,
rather, has been the sound of thunder itself.

Well, now, leaving these considerations altogether, we come to make some
remarks, not upon the voice of God in the thunder, but upon the voice of
God as elsewhere heard; for it is not only heard there naturally, but there
are spiritual voices and other voices of the Most High. “The voice of the
Lord is full of majesty.” God has spoken in various ways to man, in order
that man might not think him a God so engrossed with himself that he does
not observe his creatures. It has graciously pleased the Divine Being,
sometimes to look upon man, at other times to stretch out his hand to man,
sometimes to reveal himself in mortal appearance to man, and frequently to
speak to man. At sundry times he has spoken absolutely without the use of
means — by his own voice, as for instance when he spoke from Sinai’s
blazing mountain-top, or when he spoke to Samuel in hi; bed, and said
unto him several times, “Samuel, Samuel,” or when he spoke to Elijah, and
Elijah said, “he heard the whirlwind, and he saw the fire;” and after that
there was “a still small voice.” He has spoken immediately from heaven by
his own lips on one or two occasions in the life of Christ. He spoke to him
at the waters of Jordan when he said, “This is my beloved Son in whom I
am well pleased.” He spoke to him on another occasion, to which we have
already referred. He spoke — it was God that spoke, though it was Jesus
Christ — he spoke to Saul, when on his way to Dramascus, “Saul, Saul,
why persecutest thou me?” He has spoken several times immediately by his
own voice, without the intervention of means at all; at other seasons, God
has been pleased to speak to men by angels. He has, as it were written the
message, and sent it down by his messenger from on high: he hath told to
man many wonders and secrets by the lips of those glorious beings, who
are flaming spirits of his, that do his pleasure, As frequently, perhaps, God
has spoken to men in dreams, in visions of the night, when deep sleep
falleth upon them. Then, when the natural ear hath been closed, he hath
opened the ear of the spirit, and he hath taught truths which, otherwise,
men could never have known. More frequently still, God hath spoken to
men by men. From the days of Noah even until now God has raised up his
prophets, by whose lips he hath spoken. It was not Jeremiah who uttered
that lament which we read, but it was Jehovah, the God in Jeremiah
speaking through the natural organs of his voice, It was not Isaiah who
foresaw the future, and foretold the doom of millions, it was God in Isaiah
thus speaking. And so with every prophet of the Lord now living, and
every minister whom God hath raised up to speak: when we speak with
prwer and efficacy, and unction it is not we that speak, but it is the Spirit of
our Father who dwelleth in us. God speaks through men, and now also, we
know that God speaks through his own written Word of Inspiration. When
we turn to the page of Scripture, we must not look upon these words as
being in any degree the words of men, but as being the words of God. And
though they be silent, yet do they speak; and though they cause no noise,
yet, verily, “their God hath gone forth throughout all the world and their
noise unto the ends of the earth.” And yet, again, God even now speaks
himself by the use of means, he does not make man speak, he does not
make the Bible speak merely of itself, but he speaks through the Bible, and
through the man, as really as if he had used no books or employed no man
to speak for him. Ay, and there be times when the Spirit of God speaks in
the heart of man without the use of means. I believe there be many secret
impulses, many solemn thoughts, many mysterious directions given to us
without a single word having been uttered, but by the simple motions of
God’s Spirit in the heart. This thing I know, that when I have neither heard
nor read, I have yet felt the voice of God within me, and the Spirit hash,
himself, revealed some dark mystery, opened some secret, guided me into
some truth, given me some direction, led me in some path, or in some other
way hath immediately spoken to me himself; and I believe it is so with
every man at conversion, with every Christian, as he is carried on through
his daily life, and especially as he nears the shores of the grave — that God,
the Everlasting One, speaks himself to his soul, with a voice that he cannot
resist, although he may have resisted the mere voice of man. The voice of
the Lord is still heard, even as it as heard aforetime. Glory be to his name!
And now, my beloved, I come to the doctrine, “The voice of the Lord is
full of majesty.” First of all, essentially, “The voice of the Lord” must be
“full of majesty;” secondly, constantly, “the voice of the Lord is full of
majesty;” thirdly, efficaciously, in all it does, “The voice of the Lord is full
of majesty.”

I. First, then, “The voice: OF THE LORD IS FUEL OF MAJESTY.” Ay, and so
it should be. Should not that voice be fall of majesty which comes from
Majesty? Is not God the King of kings, and the Ruler of the whole earth?
Should he, then, speak with a voice below his own dignity? Should not the
king speak with the voice of a king? Should not a mighty monarch speak
with a monarch’s tongue? And surely, if God be God, and if he be the
blaster of all worlds, and the Emperor of the universe, he must, when he
speaks, speak with the monarch’s tongue and with a majestic voice. The
very nature of God requires that all he does should be Godlike. His looks
are looks divine; his thoughts are thoughts divine; and should not his words
be words divine, since they come from him? Verily, from the very essence
of God, we might infer that his voice would be full of majesty.

But what do we mean by a voice having majesty? I take it that no man’s
voice can have majesty in it unless it is true; a lie, if it should he spoken in
the noblest language would never be majestic, a falsehood, if it be uttered
by the most eloquent lips, would be a mean and paltry thing, however it
might be spoken; and an untruth, wherever uttered, and by whomsoever, is
not majestic; it never can be truth, and truth only can ever have majesty
about it; and because God’s words are pure truth, unalloyed with the least
degree of error, therefore does it come to pass that his words are full of
majesty. Whatever I hear my Father say in Scripture, wherever he speaks
to me by the ministry, or by his Spirit, if he speaks it, there is not the
slightest alloy of untruth about it. I may receive it just as it is.

“My faith may on his promise live,
May on his promise die.”

I need not reason about it, it is enough for me to take it and believe it,
because he has said it, I need not try to prove it to the worldling: if I were
to prove it, he would believe it none the better; if the voice of God’s
majesty doth not convince him, sure the voice of my reasoning never can. I
need not stand and cut and divide between this voice of God and the other,
I know it must be true, if he has said it, and therefore I will believe all that I
believe God has said, believing that his voice is full of majesty.
Then, again, when we speak of a majestical voice, we mean by it, that it is
a commundiny voice. A man may speak truth, and yet there may be but
little majesty in what he says, because he speaks it in a tone that never can
command attention and catch the ear of his fellow creatures. In fact, there
are some men, expounders of truth, who had better hold their tongues, for
they do truth an injury. We know full many who affect to preach God’s
truth, who go out to battle, who take the lance in their hands to defend the
honor of Christ, but who wield the lance so ill, and who have so little of
God’s Spirit, that they do but disgrace his holy name and it would have
been better had they remained at home. Oh! beloved, God’s voice when be
speaks, is always a commanding voice. Let the monarch arise in the midst
of his creatures, they may have been conversing with each other before; but
hush! his majesty is about to speak. It is so with the majesty of God; if he
should speak in heaven the angels would hush their hallelujahs, and
suspend the notes of their golden harps, to hear him; and when he speaks
on earth, it is at all times becoming in all his creatures to hush their
rebellious passions, and make the voice of their reason be silent. When God
speaks, either from the pulpit or from his Word, I hold it to be my duty to
keep silence. Even while we sing the glories of our God, our soul stands
trembling; but when he speaks forth his own glories, who is he that dares
to reply? Who is he that shall lift up his voice against the majesty of
heaven? There is something so majestic in the voice of God, that when he
speaks, it commands silence every where, and bids men hear.

But there is something very powerful in the voice of God and that is the
reason why it has majesty in it. When God speaks, he speaks not weakly,
but with a voice full of power. We poor creatures, at times, are clothed by
Go I with that might, and when we speak grace comes pouring from our
lips; but there are oftentimes seasons when we meet with small success; we
talk and talk, and have not our Master’s feet behind us, nor our Master’s
spirit within us, and therefore but little is done. It is not so with God: he
never wasted a word yet; never spoke a solitary word in vain. Whatever he
intended he had but to speak and it was accomplished. Once he said, “Let
there be light,” and instantly light was. So he said in past eternity that
Christ should be his first elect, and Christ was his first elect. He decreed
our salvation; he spake the word, and it was done. He sent his Son to
redeem, and proclaimed to his elect justification in him. And his voice was
a powerful voice, for it did justify us. Any other man’s voice could not
pardon sin, none but the voice of the monarch can speak pardon to the
subject; and God’s is a majestic voice, for he has only to speak, and our
pardon is at once signed, sealed, and ratified. God is not magniloquent in
his words; he does not speak big, sounding words, without meaning. The
simplest word he utters may have little meaning to man, but it has a power
and meaning in it equal to the omnipotence of God. There is a majesty
about the voice of God which might suffice to nerve my soul to fight the
dragon; to say, “Where is thy boasted victory, death? Where is the
monster’s sting?” That one promise hath majesty enough in it to make the
dwarf a giant, and the weakling one of the mighties of the Most High. It
has might enough in it to feed a while host in the wilderness, to guide a
whole company through the mazes of mortal life; majesty enough to divide
the Jordan, to open the gates of heaven, and admit the ransomed in.
Beloved, I cannot tell you how it is that God’s voice is so majestic except
from the fact, that he is so mighty himself, and that his words are like him.
But just one thought more concerning the voice of God being essentially
majestic; and I must trouble you to remember that, if you forget everything
else that I have said. In some sense Jesus Christ may be called the voice of
God, for you know he is called the Word of God frequently in Scripture,
and I am sure this Word of God .. is full of majesty.” The voice and the
word are very much the same thing. God speaks: it is his Son. His Son is
the Word, the Word is his Son, and the voice is his Son. Ah! truly the
voice, the Word of God, “is full of majesty.” Angels! ye can tell what
majesty sublime invested his blest person when he reigned at his Father’s
right hand, ye can tell what were the brightnesses which he laid aside to
become incarnate, ye can tell how sparkling was that crown, how mighty
was that scepter, how glorious were those robes bedecked with stars.
Spirits! ye who saw him when he stripped himself of all his glories, ye can
tell what was his majesty. And oh! ye glorified, ye who saw him ascend up
on high, leading captivity captive — ye beloved songsters who bow before
him, and unceasingly sing his love! ye can tell how full of majesty he is.
High above all principalities and powers ye see him sit, angels are but
servants at his feet, and the mightiest monarchs like creeping worms
beneath his throne. High there, where God alone reigns, beyond the ken of
angels or the gaze of immortal spirits — there he sits, not majestic merely,
but full of majesty. Christian! adore your Savior; adore the Son of God;
reverence him, and remember at all seasons and times, how little so ever
you may be, your Savior, with whom you are allied, the Word of God, is
essentially full of majesty.

II. Now the second point. IT IS CONSTANTLY FULL OF MAJESTY. God’s
voice, like man’s voice, has its various tones and degrees of loudness; but
it is full of majesty constantly so — whatever tone he uses, it is always full
of majesty. Sometimes God speaks to man with a harsh voice, threatening
him for sin; and then there is majesty in that harshness. When man is angry
with his fellows, and he speaks harshly and severely, there is little majesty
in that, but when the just God is angry with sinful mortals, and he says, “I
will by no means spare the guilty ;” “I, the Lord, am a jealous God;” when
he declares himself to be exceedingly wroth, and asks who can stand before
the fury of his countenance — when the rocks are cast down by him —
there is a majesty in that terrific voice of his. Then he adopts another voice.
Sometimes it is a gentle didactic voice, teaching us what he would have us
learn. And then how full of majesty it is! He explains, he expounds, he
declares: he tells us what we are to believe; and what a majesty there is in
His voice then! Men may explain God’s Word, and have no majesty in
what they say; but when God teaches what his people are to hold to be
truth, what majesty there is in It! So much majesty, that if any man take
away from the words that are written in this Book, God shall take away
His name out of the book of life and out of the holy city — so much
majesty, that to seek to mend the Bible is a proof of a blasphemous heart,
that to seek to alter one word of Scripture is a proof of alienation from the
God of Israel. At another time God uses another voice — a sweet
consoling voice. And oh! ye mourners that have ever heard God’s
comforting voice, is not that full of majesty! There is nothing of the mere
trifling, that sometimes we employ to comfort poor sick SOULS. Mothers
will often talk to those who are sick in some gentle strain; but somehow it
appears to be affected, and is, therefore, not full of majesty; but when God
speaks to comfort, he uses his majestic words. “The mountains shall
depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from
thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed,” saith the Lord
that hath mercy on thee. Oh! is there not majesty in this sweet voice? “Can
a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on
the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I never forget thee.”
How sweet, but yet how majestic! We cannot avoid being comforted by it
if God speaks it to our souls. Sometimes God’s voice is a reproving voice;
and then it is full of majesty. “The ox knoweth his owner,” he says, “and
the ass his master’s crib; but Israel doth not know, my people doth not
consider;” and he speaks reprovingly, as if he had a controversy with them,
and calls the mountains and the hills to hear his reproof of them on account
of sin; “I have nourished and brought up children, but they have rebelled
against me.” But God’s reproving voice is always full of majesty. At other
times it is a voice of command to his children, when he appears to them
and says, “Speak to the children of Israel that they go forward,” And how
majestic are God’s commands, how mighty is his voice, when he tells us
what to do! Some of you have a very poor estimation of what God’s voice
is. God tells you to be baptized in honor of your Lord and Master; he
speaks to you, and he tells you to come round his table, and to remember
his dying sufferings; but you do not think much of it seems to be lost upon
you. But let me tell you, that God’s voice of command is as full of majesty,
and ought to be as much regarded by his people as his word of promise or
his word of doctrine. Whenever he speaks there is a majesty about his
voice, whatever tone he may adopt. Ah! beloved, and there are times
coming when God will speak words which will be evidently full of majesty
— when he will speak and say, “Arise, ye dead, and come to judgment.”
There will be majesty in that voice; for Hades shall then be unlocked, and
the gates of the grave sawn in twain; the spirits of the dead shall again be
clothed with flesh, and the dry bones shall be made alive once more. And
he will speak by-and-bye, and summon all men to stand before his bar; and
there will be majesty in his voice then, when he shall say, “Come, ye
blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you;” and oh! dread
thought, there will be tremendous majesty in his voice, when he shall
exclaim, “Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and
his angels.”

Again. God’s voice is full of majesty in all the different degrees of its
loudness. Even in calling there is a difference in the loudness of God’s
voice; many of you were called gently to Christ, and you did not seem to
hear the thunders of Sinai, like many of God’s people; but whether the
voice be loud or soft, it is always full of majesty.

And in all its mediums it is full of majesty. God has sometimes chosen the
poor to speak his wisdom by. If I go and hear a countryman or an untaught
man preach, who makes many mistakes in grammar, yet if it is God’s word
that he preaches, it “is full of majesty.” And sometimes, when a little child
has repeated a text, we have not noticed the child, by reason of the majesty
of the voice. In fact, the meaner the instrument employed, the greater the
majesty in the voice itself. I have noticed a tendency in many to despise
their poorer brethren, members of smaller churches, where there is a more
humble minister than one they are in the habit of hearing; but this is all
wrong, for God’s voice is full of majesty, and he can as well speak by one
as the other.

III. In the last place, I must briefly refer to the majesty of God’s voice
WHEN IT IS REVEALED IN ITS EFFECT — when it is spoken home to the
heart of man. Just look at the Psalm, and let me briefly refer to the facts
here mentioned. I shall not understand them naturally, though, doubtless,
they were so intended by David, but I shall understand them spiritually. As
Dr. Hawker remarks, “Doubtless they were intended to set out gracious
operations, as well as natural ones.”

First, the voice of the Lord is a breaking voice. “The voice of the Lord
breaketh the cedars.” The proudest and most stubborn sinner is broken
before him when he speaks. I believe that even the spirit of Voltaire,
stubborn as that spirit was, and bard as a millstone, would have been
broken in a single instant, if God had but spoken to him; the hardest heart I
have here needs only one syllable from God to break it in a moment. I
might hammer away to all eternity, but I could not do it; but “the voice of
the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon.”

In the next place it is a moving voice, an overcoming voice. “He maketh
them also to skip like a calf; Lebanon and Sirion like a young unicorn.”
Who would ever think of a mountain moving? It stands so fast and firm.
But God’s voice, like his voice in Zerubbabel, speaks to the mountain, and
says. “Who art thou, great mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt
become a plain.” There is not a mountain standing in this world that God
cannot move away by his voice, whether it be the mountains of Rome, or
the mountains of the false prophet, or the mountains of colossal systems of
heresy, or infidelity, or idolatry. God has only to speak the word, and the
idols shall fall from their thrones, and the firm mountains of prostrated shall
skip like a calf.

In the next place, the voice of God is a > voice. “The voice of the Lord
divides the flames of fire;” or, as it should be, “The voice of the Lord
putteth out with flames of fire.” You saw the lightning on Friday, and you
remarked then, when God’s voice was heard, that the flash seemed to part
the cloud and divide the sky. Just so with God’s word. Where God’s word
is faithfully preached, and his voice is spiritually heard, it is always a
dividing voice. You bring all kinds of different characters into a chapel, and
God’s word splits them all in twain. It is in this place God divides you. The
son of God holds his throne, and sits in judgment here. It divides men from
men; it divides sinners from their sins; it divides sinners from their
righteousness; it splits through clouds and darkness; it divides our troubles,
breaks a way for us to heaven. In fact, there is nothing that the voice of
God cannot divide. It is a dividing voice.

And then, again, the voice of the Lord is such a loud voice, that it is said to
shake the wilderness. “The Lord shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh.” Stand
in the middle of a wilderness or a desert, and conceive if you would make
anything hear; but when God speaks, his voice ringeth through the
wilderness, and startleth the desert itself. Minister of God! you have only
to speak God’s voice, and you will be heard; if you have only half-a-dozen
to hear you, you will be heard further than you know of. None of us can
preach a gospel sermon, but it is heard and talked of more than we
imagine. Yea, there is not a pious conversation with a poor woman but
may be carried all over the world, and produce the most wonderful effects.
Nobody can tell how loud is God’s voice, and how far it may be heard.
“Lift up thy voice; lift it up; be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah,
Behold your God.” And your voice may be ever so weak, and your ability
ever so little: only lift it up, and God Almighty, by his grace, may make the
very wilderness to shake, yea, he may make the very wilderness of Kadesh
to tremble.

And then in the 9th verse there is another idea, which I must not pass over,
although I might have preferred to do so, possibly. “The voice of the Lord
maketh the hinds to calve.” By this I understand what the ancients believed
— that so affrighted were the hinds by the noise of the thunder, that the
period of calving was often hastened on, and frequently prematurely. It is
just so with God’s voice. If a man has in him a desire towards Christ, the
voice of God makes him bring forth that desire, to the joy and rejoicing of
his soul. And very frequently, when a man has a bad design towards God,
God has only to speak, and his design becomes abortive. It is brought
forth, as it were, before its time, and falls like an untimely fruit to the
ground. Whatever man has within him, God can make it come out of him in
a single moment: if he has a desire towards God, God can bring forth that
desire, and he can bring forth the soul, and make it live; and if it be a desire
against God, God can frustrate that desire, kill it, overwhelm it, and
overthrow it; for the voice of the Lord maketh the hinds to calve.”
And in the next place, the voice of God is a discovering voice. It
“discovereth the forests.” The trees were your former hiding-place; but in
the forest, however thick it may be, there doth the lightning gleam; and
under the mighty trees, however thick their covering, the voice of the Lord
is heard. God’s voice is a discovering voice. You hypocrites! you get
hiding yourselves under the trees of the forest; but God’s voice thundereth
after you when it speaks. Some of you get hiding under ceremonies, good
lives, resolutions, and hopes; but God’s voice will discover the forests; and
recollect, there will be a day with some of you, when you will hide
yourselves, or seek to do it, under rocks and mountains, or in the deepest
parts of the forests, but when he sits upon his throne, the voice of the Lord
will discover the forests. Ye may stand under the old oak, or creep within
its trunk, and feel that there you are hidden; but his eyes like balls of fire,
shall see you through and through, and his voice, like a voice of thunder,
shall say, “Come forth, culprit; come forth, man; I can see thee;

‘Mine eye can pierce the shades, and find thy soul as soon
In midnight’s darkness as in blazing noon.’

Come forth, come forth!” And vain then will be thy disguises, vain thy
subterfuges. “The voice of the Lord discovereth the forests.” Oh! I would
to God that he would speak to some of you this morning, and discover
your souls! I wish he would discover to you your lost and hopeless
condition, that you are damned without Christ every one of you! Oh that
he would discover to you how horrible is your position considered apart
from the Savior; discover to you the fallacy of all your legal hope, and of
all your experiences, if they are not experiences allied to Christ! I pray that
he would discover to you that all your good works will come tumbling on
your head at last, if you build them for a house, and that you must stand
surrounded by no covering, but unveiled before the God who discovers the
forests.

I would have preached to you this morning, but I cannot. Yet, perhaps,
amidst the multitude of my words there may be some still small voice of
God, which shall reach your heart. And if the rest of you should despise it,
what of that? The voice of God will be as full of majesty in the reprobate as
in the elect; and if ye be cast away into hell, God shall get as much glory
from the voice which ye heard and which ye despised, as he does from his
voice which the elect heard, and at which they trembled and fled to God.
Do not think that your damnation will rob God of any of his honor. Why,
sirs, he can be as much glorified in your destruction as in your salvation.
You are but little creatures in the account of his glory. He can magnify
himself anyhow. Oh! humble yourselves, therefore, before God; bow down
yourselves before his love and his mercy, and hear now what the plan of
salvation is, whereby God brings out his elect. It is this: “He that
believeth,” in that voice, that Word, that Son of his, “He that believeth,” —
not he that heareth; “He that believeth,” — not he that talketh “He that
believeth,” — not merely he that hopeth. “He that believeth and is baptized
shall be saved; he that believeth not shall be dawned.” Ah! hearers, if I
could leap out of my body, and could lay aside the infirmities of my spirit,
methinks that then I might preach to you; but I know right well that even
then it must be God that speaks; and therefore I leave the words. My God!
My God! Save these my people; for Jesus’ precious name’s sake. Amen
and Amen.

Gil Hoffman

’4% of Israelis say Obama pro-Israeli’

The number of Israelis who see US President Barack Obama’s policies as pro-Israel has fallen to 4 percent, according to a Smith Research poll taken this week on behalf of The Jerusalem Post.

Fifty-one percent of Jewish Israelis consider Obama’s administration more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israel, according to the survey, while 35% consider it neutral and 10% declined to express an opinion. The poll of 500 people representing a statistical model of the Jewish Israeli population had a margin of error of 4.5%.

A much-cited Post poll published on June 19 that put the first figure at 6% had been cited by top officials in both the White House and the Prime Minister’s Office as the catalyst for recent American efforts to improve the American-Israeli relationship. But the new poll proves that those efforts have not improved Obama’s reputation among Israelis.

The earlier poll, taken shortly after Obama reached out to the Muslim world in a landmark address in Cairo, found that 50% of those sampled considered the administration’s policies more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israeli, and 36% said the policies were neutral. The remaining 8% did not express an opinion.

Obama’s popularity among Israelis has been plummeting since a May 17 Post poll on the eve of a meeting between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Obama at the White House. In that poll, 31% labeled Obama pro-Israel, 14% considered him pro-Palestinian, 40% said he was neutral, and 15% declined to give an opinion.

The May poll found that Israelis’ views of Obama’s predecessor in the White House, George W. Bush, were nearly the opposite. Some 88% of Israelis considered Bush’s administration pro-Israel, 7% said he was neutral and just 2% labeled him pro-Palestinian.

The new poll was taken on Monday and Tuesday, before reports that Obama had agreed to exclude Jerusalem from a deal with Netanyahu on a construction freeze and to allow construction of essential public buildings, such as schools, to continue in Judea and Samaria.

The poll asked Jewish Israelis whether they would support freezing settlement construction for a year as part of an American-brokered deal. Fifty percent said no, 41% said yes and 9% did not express an opinion.

The respondents’ views on a settlement freeze followed closely the platforms of the parties they voted for in the March 10 election.

Among those who voted Likud, which opposed a settlement freeze during the campaign, 73% would oppose such a deal.

Two-thirds of Kadima voters said they supported a settlement freeze.

Throughout the 19th century, theories abounded in the English-speaking world about the relativism of human knowledge and, therefore, the difficulty in establishing moral standards. John Stuart Mill, notably, reduced the idea of morality to a form of subjective ideal. In the early 20th century, Einstein’s theory of relativity, for all the wrong reasons, gave a semblance of justification to the idea that there were no such things as absolutes. This led to an increasing acceptance of the notion that all cultures and moral ideas are conditional and that none can pretend to be any “better” than any other.

Today, moral and cultural relativism has become a form of public orthodoxy which pervades virtually all educational and intellectual spheres and disciplines. It is the Zeitgeist, the dominant spirit of our times. Among people with university degrees, it is a kind of civil religion, one which views those not subscribing to the relativist creed pretty well the same way churches of another era viewed non-conformists, that is, as heretics.

The appeal of relativism is easy enough to understand. Those who claim that there are no moral absolutes tend to think of themselves as devoid of any “rigid” opinions and moral values, and as both “tolerant” and “open-minded”. While never very explicit about it, people with this mindset generally view themselves as models of an enlightened attitude issuing from the most sophisticated and advanced form of culture and civility. If pressed, they might even go so far as to acknowledge that their greatest hope in life is to see all those sombre, sorry souls shackled by a religious upbringing free themselves from the nasty influence of earlier generations.

This easily recognizable moral smugness is now widespread in our media as well as in academia. Anyone having doubts on the subject should, as an experiment, apply for a teaching position in any one of our post-secondary institutions and declare himself proud of his Western heritage, or express doubts about multiculturalism or feminist ideas. In addition to being quickly discarded from any short list of candidates, he may well find himself accused of being a bigot.

But this kind of soft intolerance is not the worst part of relativism. What is worse is that individuals are no longer required to hold consistent, coherent beliefs. In a culture that boasts of being scientific and rational, intellectual laxity reigns supreme. We live in a world where one may, without blushing, uphold the right of every woman to unfettered access to abortion at taxpayers’ expense while at the same time frowning upon the “slaughtering of baby seals” or the consumption of tobacco in the presence of children.

Even our judicial system is no longer immune to contradictions of this kind, as testified by the Canadian Supreme Court ruling of December 2005 where Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin declared that the law should never be used to enforce morality — thus ignoring the fact that, by upholding the principle of moral neutralism (the notion that there are no universal objective moral standards by which our behaviour can be judged), she was herself being non-neutral.

Relativism began with the promise of freeing people from moral prejudices inherited from a religious system incompatible with science and reason. It is now becoming a source of oppression for those who do not subscribe to its articles of faith.

The process through which initial claims of “greater freedom” quickly turn into new forms of oppression is not hard to figure out. Moral relativists are prone to use terms like “pluralism”, “diversity” and “tolerance” that belong to the classical liberal tradition fostered by the old Christian culture. However, they give new meanings to such terms by cutting them off from their traditional Christian context. For example, the separation of church and state, a Christian invention designed to prevent the state from imposing any particular belief on citizens, becomes an instrument to strip the public square of any kind of religious reference.

Traditional terms are thus given a new ideological connotation without the change ever being clearly spelled out, a situation analogous to moving the furniture around in the apartment of a blind man without ever making him aware of the change. This technique enables our “progressive” thinkers to legitimize any kind of behaviour and, more importantly, to “privatize” all moral opinions. Their purpose is to turn the exercise of any judgment about human conduct into a taboo, which in turn facilitates the spread of opinions according to which, for example, certain forms of human life are “not worth living” and certain persons, such as “unwanted” children, or the very old, or the infirm should be eliminated outright through procedures like abortion and euthanasia.

Yet, people who believe in absolutes and universals should not despair. As conservative thinker William Gairdner has noted in his recently published Book of Absolutes, there are increasingly numerous scholars and scientists from various fields who are challenging the reigning orthodoxy because they find it logically incoherent and contrary to actual experience. More specifically, they have come to the conclusion that their own professional fields require the existence of a great number of absolutes, constants and universals. This is particularly true in areas such as law, human biology, including sex and brain sex, and human language.

The view expressed by Gairdner may seem surprising to Canadians writers and thinkers, but not to their American counterparts. Whereas the US has a plethora of articulate and sophisticated writers who see themselves as followers of the intellectual tradition represented by Edmund Burke, Alexis de Tocqueville, F.A. Hayek, T.S. Eliot and Russell Kirk, Canada has very few.

This explains why there is no Canadian equivalent to American conservative magazines such as First Things, National Review, Commentary or The New Criterion. One would hope that conservative-minded people in English Canada might soon find the intellectual energy to join their American counterparts in challenging the prevailing relativist orthodoxy.

Richard Bastien is an Ottawa-based contributor to the French-language quarterly ÉGARDS, as well as a regular contributor Mercatornet.

Originally published in the Ottawa Citizen, reprinted here with permission of the author.

Still Don’t Think Social Media Matters?

Many pastors still think technologies haven’t caught on or that investing in social media isn’t worth their church’s time. Next time you hear that from someone, perhaps you could share a few of these statistics with them:

• It took radio 38 years to reach 50 million listeners. Terrestrial TV took 13 years to reach 50 million users. The Internet took four years to reach 50 million people… In less than nine months, Facebook added 100 million users.

• Universal McCann reports that 77% of all active internet users regularly read blogs.

• More than 120 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day and more than 30 million users update their statuses at least once each day. Combined, more than 5 billion minutes are spent on the site on a daily basis.

• Over the past 12 months, Twitter’s year-on-year growth rate has broken the 1000% barrier.

• If Facebook were a country, it would be the fourth most populated place in the world. This means it easily beats the likes of Brazil, Russia and Japan in terms of size.

Rome, Italy, Aug 27, 2009 / 12:03 pm (CNA).- This morning Dr. Miguel Diaz arrived in Rome with his family to begin serving in his new position as the U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See. Ambassador-designate Diaz said that he and his family are looking forward to the coming weeks and that he hopes to “deepen and expand upon the special relationship” between the U.S. and the Vatican.

Dr. Miguel Humberto Diaz, arrived with his family this morning at Rome’s Fiumicino International Airport. Prior to leaving the U.S. he was sworn in as ambassador on August 21 in Washington D.C., the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See said in a statement.

“I look forward to the coming weeks as my family and I put down new roots in Rome. I will be honored to serve President Obama and the American people in my new role, and it will be a unique honor to meet his Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI,” Ambassador-designate Díaz said.

Since President Ronald Reagan established formal diplomatic ties with the Holy See in 1984, the two states have worked together on a host of shared priorities, including religious freedom, inter-faith dialogue, peace and security, trafficking in persons, the environment, human rights and global health.

“I welcome the opportunity to deepen and expand upon the special relationship that has evolved between the United States and the Vatican over the past 25 years of formal diplomatic ties,” Ambassador-designate Díaz added.

According to diplomatic protocol, Diaz will not assume his full responsibilities until he presents his letter of credentials from President Barack Obama to Pope Benedict XVI on a mutually agreed upon date. Díaz will refrain from granting interviews or participating in official events until that point in time, the embassy noted.

GENEVA, 27 August 2009 (LWI) – The general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Rev. Dr Ishmael Noko congratulates Norwegian Lutheran theologian Dr Olav Fykse Tveit on his election as the new general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC) today, 27 August. The 48 year-old will succeed Kenyan Methodist Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia, who has served as the Council’s general secretary since January 2004.

Tveit brings to his new position broad experience that prepares him to lead in all the aspects of WCC’s work, said Noko in his statement today. The LWF general secretary noted that the newly elected WCC leader “has worked at every level of the church, from parish life and chaplaincy to national and international positions.”

Noko cited Tveit’s leadership in diakonia, advocacy, and in both ecumenical and interfaith relations. “He is a theologian and an administrator. And he is a person of deep faith, modest manner and forthright speech. All these experiences and gifts will serve him well as he leads the WCC,” noted the LWF general secretary. “We are especially pleased also that he already knows the WCC very well. As he moves to Geneva to take up his new duties, he will find himself quickly at home,” he said.

In his statement, Noko pointed out that this was a crucial time in the life of this indispensable ecumenical body. “The WCC plays a unique and vital role in the ecumenical movement: if we did not have a WCC, we would need to invent one!” he stated. “We look to the Council as the global body where the churches of the world may communicate and cooperate on the basis of a common faith in the Triune God, in the service of Christian unity and the well-being of humanity,” he added.

Noko said the coming years “can be a time of sowing and of harvest, a time when extraordinary things can be accomplished by ordinary means.” It would be the task of the incoming general secretary to lead the WCC to grasp the great opportunities that present themselves amid great challenges, he noted.

Noko expressed his hope for increased cooperation between the WCC and the LWF, citing the newly created emergency and development work network, ACT Alliance (Action by Churches Together) as one such example for new forms of ecumenical collaboration. Even the challenges posed by the current world-wide financial crisis invite organizations to create new possibilities. “We pledge to work with the new general secretary in seeking imaginative and faithful ways to bear common witness,” he said.

“May God bless him with great energy and the gifts of discernment and generosity in his very important calling in the worldwide ecumenical movement.”

Noko praised the outgoing WCC general secretary for his service to “the ecumenical movement and the WCC with loving devotion. We will miss his gentle presence among us, and we extend our best wishes to him and to his family in all that they do.”

Kobia is scheduled to leave office at the end of this year.

The incoming WCC leader Tveit is an ordained pastor in the Church of Norway. He has been general secretary of the church’s Council on Ecumenical and International Relations since 2002. He previously worked as secretary for the church’s Doctrinal Commission, 1999-2000, and Church-State Relations, 2001-2002. He served as a parish priest in Haram, More Diocese, 1988-91, and was an army chaplain during his 1987-88 compulsory year of national service.

Tveit is a member of the WCC Faith and Order Plenary Commission and co-chairperson of the WCC Palestine Israel Ecumenical Forum core group. He is a member of the Christian Council of Norway board of directors and executive committee, moderator of the Church of Norway  -  Islamic Council of Norway contact group and similarly for the Jewish Congregation contact group. He is a member of both the Inter-Faith Council of Norway and the Norwegian Church Aid board of trustees.

The Church of Norway has nearly 3.9 million members and joined the LWF in 1947.

Formally inaugurated in 1948 at its first Assembly in Amsterdam, Netherlands, the WCC is a Christian organization dedicated to the search for Christian unity. Its 349 member churches represent some 560 million Christians. Today’s member churches come from more than 110 countries on all continents and include Orthodox, Anglican, Protestant, United and other churches. A majority of member churches now come from the South.

Hijacked by climate change?

As the UN climate summit in Copenhagen approaches, exhortations that “we must get a deal” and warnings that climate change is “the greatest challenge we face as a species” are to be heard in virtually every political forum.

But if you look back to the latest definitive check on the planet’s environmental health – the Global Environment Outlook (Geo-4), published by the UN two years ago – what emerges is a picture of decline that goes way, way beyond climate change.

Species are going extinct at perhaps 1,000 times the normal rate, as key habitats such as forests, wetlands and coral reefs are plundered for human infrastructure.

Aquifers are being drained and fisheries exploited at unsustainable speed. Soils are becoming saline, air quality is a huge cause of illness and premature death; the human population is bigger than our one Earth can currently sustain.

So why, you might ask, are the world’s political leaders not lamenting this big picture as loudly and as often as the climate component of it?

Has climate change hijacked the wider environmental agenda? If so, why? And does it matter?

These are questions I’ve been able to put to a number of leading environmental thinkers for a BBC Radio Four documentary, Climate Hijack.

Mike Hulme, who led the influential UK Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research until recently, believes the climate issue is rather enticing for the modern leader.

“The characteristics of climate change are quite convenient for politicians to use and to deploy both at a popular level but also at a political level,” he says.

He argues that climate change is seductive to politicians because it is a long-term issue – so decisive action is always posited for some time in the future, at a time that can always be made yet more distant – and someone else can always be blamed.

So Europeans used to blame the US, the US would blame China and India, and developing countries would blame the entire developed West.

“It’s very easy to pass responsibility for failure somewhere else… and in the process of doing that, one is able to keep one’s own credibility and record, with the appearance of being much more progressive and constructive.”

According to this analysis – and in contradiction to Al Gore’s famous phrase – climate change has acquired its huge profile largely because it is a far more convenient truth than poor air quality or biodiversity loss or fisheries decline, where the actions needed are more likely to be national or local – and certainly more convenient than tackling the issues that underpin everything else, the size of the human population and our unsustainable consumption of the Earth’s resources.

Mindset monoculture?

“I don’t think it’s a competition, actually,” says UK Environment Secretary Hilary Benn.

“We’re coming to see that we’ve got a bit of a problem and we’ve got to live within the Earth’s means.”

In an ideal world, he would surely be right – all of these issues would receive the appropriate amount of political time and action.

But as far as the UK is concerned, there is a widespread feeling among environment groups – hard to quantify, and not always something they are willing to say on the record – that the government is only really interested in climate change.

And some say the balance has been tipped further by the creation of the new Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) under Ed Miliband, which removed most climate responsibilities from Defra.

The head of one large UK environment group told me last year: “If we want to talk about climate change, we can get a meeting with the prime minister. If we want to talk about biodiversity, we can’t even get a meeting with the environment secretary.”

This is a picture that Hilary Benn rejects; he says his department’s doors are very much open to people bringing concerns about biodiversity, or about any other issue within his remit.

Nevertheless: “Climate change is at the forefront of most politicians’ minds who are concerned about the environment,” says Graham Wynne, chief executive of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), probably the UK’s most influential conservation group.

“I would obviously wish that our most senior politicians were able to hold two environmental thoughts at the same time – but there is a political reality; climate change is sexy, so we get most traction there.”

… which means this is where groups such as the RSPB are likely to focus most of their lobbying.

Former UK Environment Secretary John Gummer is clear that concern about climate impacts on the natural world is not the only reason why conservation groups are increasingly taking up the climate banner.

“I think we’ve got to be very blunt about it; campaigning groups for the environment or anything else are in the marketplace.

“So if you want to raise money to do something about the marine world (for example), you do it by campaigning on dolphins.

“It’s exactly like a business, and in that sense we have to realise that the choice they make is with mixed motives. This is not a criticism, but they are as likely to be partial in what they choose as any business or any politician.”

To a large extent, environment groups set the concerns of the environmentally aware citizen; so if they prioritise climate change, perhaps that means a loss of awareness of all the other things that people might be – or used to be – concerned about.

Earth’s loss

On the global stage, loss of biodiversity – in plain speech, loss of nature – is one of the issues you will rarely hear leading politicians lamenting – despite the fact that governments pledged to do something about it as far back as the Rio Earth Summit of 1992, at exactly the same time that they were pledging to do something about climate change.

Deutsche Bank economist Pavan Sukhdev leads a UN-sponsored project aiming to quantify the economic costs of losing the “goods and service” that nature provides – something, he says, on which the evidence has been ignored for far too long.

“Work in this field has been going on for so long that it is a shame the idea of pulling this together and presenting it to the public and to governments as an issue wasn’t done earlier.”

Preliminary calculations indicate the cost of forest loss alone dwarfs the cost of the current banking crisis – a conclusion that has been met with resounding silence at the political level.

A much more comprehensive analysis is due for publication next year; but he is not holding out too much hope that it will sway minds.

“Climate change is already occupying mind space and heart space, and for biodiversity to occupy the same space is going to be a challenge.”

Population concerns

Even more difficult than putting something like biodiversity loss on the agenda, says former government adviser Jonathon Porritt, is getting politicians and the wider environmental community to accept that underpinning everything are the unsustainable size of the Earth’s human population and our unsustainable (and rising) hunger for the Earth’s natural resources.

Recently he raised the population issue in his blog – only to be excoriated by columnist Melanie Phillips for having a “sinister and de-humanised mindset” – which is perhaps an indicator of why other contemporary environmental thinkers are so reluctant to raise it publically, despite admitting its importance in private.

“Too controversial,” he says.

“Population raises all these issues about religion, about culture, about male dominance in the world; and (people) get very uncomfortable about that.”

Nevertheless, he argues, the logic is undeniable.

Speaking recently at Mr Porritt’s Forum for the Future, a Chinese government official described the one child per family policy as having led to “400 million births averted” – which she then converted into the greenhouse gases those extra human inhabitants would have produced, and noted that no other country had done as much to curb climate change.

But, he continues: “You don’t have to accept the China route to that logic.

“You can look to all kinds of alternative ways of reducing human numbers which aren’t done as coercively as the one child per family policy was done in the past.

“However, when I was director of Friends of the Earth, could I get our local groups or my colleagues to go along with that? I have to admit complete failure.”

Same tune

In contrast to the 1970s, the decade of the first global attempts to look at environmental decline, population is not now on the political radar.

Neither is the question of whether stopping that decline is possible without deep reform of the world’s economic system.

Biodiversity loss, desertification, unsustainable fishing… where are the spaces at the top table for these?

By singing the climate tune so loudly, have environmental groups unwittingly helped to create a situation where climate change is all that politicians and the public hear?

Has the media contributed? A couple of years ago I added up the number of articles we had written on the BBC News website within the preceding nine months about various issues.

The scores were four for deforestation, four for desertification, 17 for biodiversity – and on climate change I stopped counting when I reached 1,000.

In large part, what journalists report reflects what is going on in the big world; but have we, too, forgotten the larger messages of the UN Geo-4 report, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, and other audits of a society whose environmental problems run much wider and deeper than climate change?

None of the people I interviewed for the programme argue that man-made climate change is not real or not important; there is no suggestion of a swindle here.

Some believe a narrow focus on climate is justified – either because they feel it is so much more serious than every other issue, or because they feel there is real political momentum to solve it now and time enough to deal with everything else once that is done.

But others argue there is no time; that society needs, urgently, to see the wider picture of global decline in all its complexity – and that climate concerns have hijacked the broader agenda, to the detriment of us all.

Climate Hijack is broadcast on BBC Radio Four at 2100 BST in the UK on Thursday 27 August

OLAV FYKSE TVEIT ELECTED WCC GENERAL SECRETARY

Norwegian theologian and pastor Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, 48, was elected 7th general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC) Thursday 27 August during its Central Committee meeting. Tveit will be the youngest general secretary since Willem A. Visser ‘t Hooft who had led the WCC while it was in process of formation and following its founding assembly 61 years ago.

“This task I really feel is the call of God. I feel that we have a lot to do together”, said Tveit in his acceptance speech before the central committee. He stressed the spirit of unity that dominated the whole process and expressed hope that it will continue to reign in the common journey. Tveit encouraged the committee members to continue praying for him: “Please do not stop!”

Since 2002, Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit has been the general secretary of the Church of Norway Council on Ecumenical and International Relations. Tveit is a member of the WCC Faith and Order Plenary Commission and the board of directors and executive committee of the Christian Council of Norway.

Tveit was one of two candidates standing for election to the WCC’s highest administrative post. The other candidate was Rev. Dr Park Seong-won, a Presbyterian theologian from South Korea. Tveit will replace outgoing general secretary Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia who in February 2008 informed the Central Committee, the WCC’s highest governing body, that he would not seek a second term in office. Kobia has served as general secretary since 2004.