eChurch Blog

Totally Agree!

By Nathan Black – Christian Post Reporter

The church has fallen into a therapeutic model, says one prominent evangelical.

In an interview with Time magazine, Prison Fellowship founder Chuck Colson denounced the “feel-good kind of Christianity” he sees being promoted in churches.

“It believes its job is to make people happy and take care of their problems,” said Colson, also author of The Faith: What Christians Believe, Why They Believe It, and Why It Matters.

But the church’s job, he noted, is to make people holy.

The well-known evangelical and former aide to President Richard Nixon launched the Chuck Colson Center this month to provide resources that would help train people in biblical worldview. His aim to help Christians live in obedience to and for the honor of Jesus Christ in every area of their lives and to help them transform their communities through biblical truth.

After more than 30 years of working with inmates through Prison Fellowship, Colson told Time that many of the prisoners were “products of a failed worldview – that modernity would make everything better.”

The purpose of the Colson Center, he explained, is to penetrate culture and expose “the Lie.”

“The frontal assault over the last several years has proven inadequate,” Colson said. “What we must do now is be salt and light, rubbed into the culture so to speak, in such a way that the people and institutions around us slowly begin to understand that they have embraced the Lie. Our job is to expose the Lie and replace it with the Truth of a biblical understanding of all of reality.”

His articles addressing cultural questions and tackling current news and trends from a Christian perspective have been made available on his new Colson Center website.

He hopes the center will be the capstone of his career and maybe his greatest legacy.

Colson became a born-again Christian before pleading guilty to Watergate-related charges. After serving seven months in Alabama’s Maxwell Prison in 1974, he founded Prison Fellowship Ministries and wrote 20 books which have collectively sold more than 5 million copies.

By Patrick B. Craine

September 24, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Catholic Organization for Life and Family (COLF), a group co-founded by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Supreme Council of the Knights of Columbus, has released its annual message to families calling on them to engage society proactively in building a culture of life. The title of the message is ‘Families, Let’s Build A Better World Together!’

The twelve-page brochure, says the description, “invites families to reflect on their thoughts and feelings towards the political class, and on their own commitment to building a culture of life.”  It includes several aids such as a list of ways for families to get involved in the political process, a summary of the Church’s Charter of Rights of the Family, and a set of discussion questions.

“All the choices and decisions made by our governments and courts sooner or later directly impact every family – my family,” explains the document.

Reiterating the Church’s call for lay people to work actively in the world to build a just society, they acknowledge that “the challenge is immense,” while stressing that “the need has never been greater.”

“Our skills and convictions founded on a wellformed conscience are needed in many different areas of public life,” they continue, listing a range of careers.  “Parents, children, youth, or grandparents, we can all affect current economic, social, educational, legislative, administrative or cultural developments, in solidarity with our fellow citizens and guided by the spirit of the Gospel.  Even the smallest act can make a difference in advancing the common good.”

“Of course, the obstacles are great and numerous,” they explain, referring to such evils as abortion, embryonic experimentation, the redefinition of marriage, the proposed legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide, the restrictions of free speech, and the imposition of governments on the educational rights of parents.

Thus, “a mobilization is needed,” they proclaim.  “It is up to families to get together and develop a culture and legislation that benefit the family and reflect their true needs.”

The document goes on to refute the claim often made that faith should not be brought to bear on politics.  “This is the point of view that is promoted by those who support an aggressive secularism that threatens the freedoms of religion, conscience, expression and education of those who hold a religious faith,” they say.  “The separation of Church and state does not mean separating faith from debates on political issues. It does not rule out an important Canadian historic reality – the ‘co-operation of Church and State.’”

They emphasize the need to rely on God through His Church for support.  “Yes, we will encounter opposition!” they say.  “But we are not alone. As children of God, we know that every day, we can find strength greater than our own through prayer, the Eucharist, and the Sacrament of Reconciliation, in other words in the life of the Church.”

Insisting that Christians have a responsibility to “play an active role in the democratic process,” they call on families to advocate for fiscal policies that “make it truly possible for parents to welcome additional children, and to care for their own children in the home.”  In particular, they say, “this would likely involve financial compensation for stay-at-home parents that would be at least equal to what other workers receive.”

They condemn, further, the “double standard” of Catholic politicians who leave their faith outside the voting chambers.  “This double standard reveals a kind of spiritual schizophrenia – a divorce between one’s faith and the many choices and decisions that are encountered in everyday life,” they say.  “We are all called to unity of life – which means living coherent lives, refusing to leave our beliefs and personal values at the door of our workplace, whether it be the Parliament or elsewhere.”

Additionally, they affirm the rights of parents to raise their families without undue interference from the state.  “The important principle of subsidiarity serves as a warning to the state, cautioning it not to supplant the initiatives, freedoms and responsibilities of families,” they say, “but rather, to respect the dignity of the family and to support its central and vital function for society by helping it to overcome the challenges that inevitably arise.”

Finally, they stress the great importance of prayer for families who choose the difficult task of working against abiding cultural norms.  “For families that wish to follow this path, and to persevere in proposing counter-cultural viewpoints while respecting contrary opinions, prayer is essential,” they conclude.  “From prayer bursts forth a power that transforms the family into a community of disciples of Christ, who is always present and ready to help the family in accomplishing its crucial mission.”

To view the document click here.

By Patrick B. Craine

TROIS-RIVIERES, Quebec, September 22, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Quebec Assembly of Bishops released a letter Tuesday indicating that they are “concerned” with the province’s new compulsory course in relativism, ‘Ethics and Religious Culture’ (ERC), and that they will continue to “carefully monitor” the program.

Quebec families, and religious and secular groups, have condemned this mandatory program as impugning the fundamental rights of parents over their children’s education.  The program aims to cover the major world religions and advocates moral relativism, presenting, for example, homosexuality as a normal and acceptable life choice.

The program was mandated by the Quebec Ministry of Education for all children between grades 1 and 11 as of the 2008-2009 school year.  Over 1,700 requests for exemptions have been submitted by parents to the Ministry, and all have been refused.  At the end of August, a judge in Drummondville denied a petition from a Catholic family to have their children exempted.  Further, Loyola High School, a private Catholic boys’ school, awaits judgment on their court case seeking exemption from teaching the program.

In March 2008, the Bishops’ Assembly opted for a position of “openness and prudence” on the course.  While noting the inherent problems with a ‘neutral’ program such as the ERC curriculum, they stated that “it is only through experience that we may judge if the advantages of the ERC program outweigh its limitations or vice versa.”  They decided to evaluate the program through a “meticulous follow-up during the implementation process and a complete evaluation at the end of a three to five year period.”

The letter, sent by Assembly President Bishop Martin Veillette of Trois-Rivieres to Quebec Minister of Education, Recreation and Sports Michelle Courchesne on September 15th, communicates the Assembly’s “initial assessment” of the program.

Bishop Veillette lists the measures that the Assembly has taken to review the curriculum, including consulting parents, teachers, catechists, and diocesan leaders as well as commissioning a group of experts to analyze the program’s textbooks.  Based on these measures, he states: “We must say that we are concerned. A growing number of indicators point to the need for significant corrections, without which the program can neither meet its objectives nor fulfill its potential.”

The Assembly has three main concerns, he says.  First, that parents have not been supplied with sufficient information about the program.  Second, that “the place and the presentation of the Christian tradition in the textbooks approved for elementary schools do not respect the requirements of the program.” And third, that “teacher training and support is inadequate to say the least.”

Noting the movement of parents opposing the program who have requested exemptions, he states: “This opposition movement cannot be ignored.”  This statement is more favorable to concerned families than that in his letter to the Minister in March 2008, where, while warning of the danger the compulsory religion program presents to the freedom of conscience, he also expressed a lack of support for exemptions.

“We acknowledge there must be very serious reasons to justify exemption from a school program,” he had said.  “We feel that the program itself does not seem to be open to such a priori objection.”

This latter statement was cited by the Drummondville judge last month when he denied the Catholic parents’ exemption petition.

Continuing in the new letter, Bishop Veillette points out that the textbooks do not meet the stated requirements for the program, nor do they live up to the way it was billed by former Education Minister Jean-Marc Fournier prior to the program passing in the National Assembly – both indicating that a predominant place would be given to Christianity.  “Our experts have found that the importance given to the Christian tradition is comparable to that given to other religions,” he states.  “These textbooks will expose the students to religious diversity much more than introduce them in a significant way to Quebec’s Christian tradition.”

He is unsatisfied, further, with the way the program presents Christianity.  Noting that the textbooks are “respectful,” he complains that the approach is primarily anecdotal, in many cases simply summarizing “certain of the fundamental narratives of the Christian tradition,” “without helping students to discover the significance of these narratives.”

Additionally, the bishop observes that the program fails to give adequate recognition to the role of Christianity in the development of Quebec.  “Christianity’s contribution to the social and cultural life of Quebec, frequently reiterated during consultations which led to the approval of the program, is barely evident and, in some cases, totally absent in the textbooks that were studied,” he states.

The ERC program, he says, “raises very important challenges, particularly where it concerns the fundamental rights and values of our society. … The serious deficiencies in the textbooks, which we have indicated above, must be corrected by means of an approval process that seeks to rigorously meet the requirements set out in the program itself and in the commitments explicitly made by the Government.”

“On our part, we will continue, as we said we would, to carefully monitor the ERC program and its implementation,” he concludes.

While the Quebec Assembly will continue to ‘monitor’ the program, the Vatican has spoken out strongly against the very founding principles of programs such as that in Quebec.  The Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education released a letter earlier this month, sent May 5th to the presidents of the world’s bishops’ conferences, deploring government-mandated comparative religion programs, or programs in “religious ethics and culture.”

“In a pluralistic society, the right to religious freedom requires both the assurance of the presence of religious education in schools and the guarantee that such education be in accordance with parents’ convictions,” the document states.  “If religious education is limited to a presentation of the different religions, in a comparative and ‘neutral’ way, it creates confusion or generates religious relativism or indifferentism.”

Marc Cardinal Ouellet, Archbishop of Quebec and Primate of Canada, has himself been a firm opponent of the new program, calling it “the dictatorship of relativism applied beginning in elementary school.”

To see the Assembly’s letter in English click here.

Contact Information:

Assembly of Quebec Catholic Bishops
3331, rue Sherbrooke Est
Montreal, Quebec H1W 1C5

Phone: 514-274-4323
Fax: 514-274-4383

See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Vatican: the State Must Respect Parents’ Wishes in Religious Education

Quebec Decision against Exemption from Mandatory Religious Relativism Course under Heavy Fire

Quebec Coalition Demands Respect for Rights of Parents to Decide Education of Their Children

Quebec Judge Denies Families Religious Exemption From Mandatory School Course in Relativism

By Peter J. Smith

WASHINGTON, D.C., September 24, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – He is known to the United States as the “Safe Schools Czar:” a special advisor in the White House responsible for helping formulate policies designed to keep US public schools “safe and drug free.” But US pro-family leaders know Kevin Jennings as something more: a highly influential homosexual activist, who admitted in a book on his childhood that a deep-seated hatred of God and religious believers began when he fully embraced a homosexual lifestyle and bid God farewell with the words, “Screw you, buddy.”

Jennings’s official position within the Obama Administration is the Assistant Deputy Secretary, who directs the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools under US Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan. Duncan is a veteran of Chicago’s public school system, who proposed and approved controversial plans for a special public high school designed for homosexuals.

Jennings brings to the Education Department his experience as the cofounder and executive director of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), where in keeping with that organization’s mission, he concentrated his energies on developing and advocating classroom curricula for public schools that would re-educate school-children to embrace homosexuality. As a key part of their strategy to advance their agenda and change the culture, GLSEN leaders say they specifically target children as young as kindergarten in order to begin a “saturation process,” that forms the imagination with positive impressions of the homosexual lifestyle, and so pre-cognitively influences the way a child perceives the world and makes judgments on right and wrong.

Bill Donohue, a civil rights leader and President of the Catholic League, stated that Kevin Jennings “has a history of bashing Christians” which appears deeply rooted in his decision at 17 years-old that he was a homosexual and God was to blame for his feelings of guilt and shame.

Donohue draws the conclusion from Jennings’s own book called “Mama’s Boy, Preacher’s Son: A Memoir,” published in 2006 by Beacon Press, which deals with his upbringing by his father, the Baptist minister, and his mother, the non-believer and anti-Catholic. Jennings writes that he came to this “new attitude toward God” following a masturbatory experience that was prompted by fantasies of two “hot guys” taking off their shirts in his home.

“Before, I was the one who was failing God; now I decided He was the one who had failed me,” wrote Jennings. “I decided I had done nothing wrong: He had, by promising to ‘set you free’ and never delivering on His promise. What had He done for me, other than make me feel shame and guilt? Squat. Screw you, buddy – I don’t need you around anymore, I decided.”

Jennings concludes by saying that for years afterwards he “reacted violently to anyone who professed any kind of religion” and it would be decades later before he opened a Bible again.

But Jennings still retains contempt for observant believers on what he calls “the religious right.” In fact, Jennings told a gathering of fellow activists in 2000 that conservative-minded Christians were “hard-core bigots” who should “drop dead.” But the GLSEN founder had the group laughing by telling them he really wanted to just say to them: “f*** you!”

Jennings was also on the board of advisers for a 2001 PBS documentary-style film that slammed the Boy Scouts of America for their policy of excluding homosexuals from their membership and was promoted at “gay pride” festivals to mobilize homosexuals against the Scouts.

Further concern has arisen about Jennings concerning his history as a former drug abuser, and as a school counselor back in 1988, who failed to report a sexually active homosexual relationship between an adult and a boy, then a sophomore high school student. Instead Jennings counseled the boy named “Brewster” on maintaining the relationship with the adult, which began in a bus stop bathroom.

During his tenure as GLSEN’s executive director, Jennings also promoted homosexual conferences that featured GLSEN presenters hosting extremely graphic and detailed workshops to teenagers about all the mechanics and variations of homosexual intercourse.

To respectfully express concerns:

Arne Duncan, US Education Secretary
Email: arne.duncan@ed.gov
Phone: (202) 401-3000

Congressmen: (202) 224-3121
Senators: (202) 225-3121
President Obama’s Switchboard: (202) 456-1414

Related LifeSiteNews.com Coverage:

Obama’s “Safe Schools” Czar Dreamed of “Promoting Homosexuality” to Schoolchildren

Foul-Mouthed Homosexual Activist and Anti-Christian Bigot Appointed to Obama Administration

Obama’s Secretary of Education Pick Proposed Homosexual High School

By Samantha Singson

September 24, 2009 (C-FAM)  Last week, lawmakers in the Dominican Republic gave their final approval to a pro-life constitutional change despite fierce criticism and pressure from UN agencies and abortion advocates to defeat the measure.  The Dominican Republic’s National Assembly easily ratified a revision of Article 30 in a vote of 128 in favor with 32 opposed. The article now states that “the right to life is inviolable from conception until death.”

While the measure was widely supported by Dominican parliamentarians, it met with staunch opposition from international abortion proponents and even UN agencies, which are officially neutral on abortion. Last April, when the right-to-life provision was first debated, two UN officials interjected themselves into the debate. Nils Kastberg, UNICEF’s regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean, called on Dominican legislators to consider liberalizing abortion so women would not be forced into “unsafe procedures.” Kastberg also suggested that lawmakers would be “hypocrites” unconcerned with the nation’s higher-than-average teen birth rate.

United Nations Program for Human Development coordinator Miguel Ceara Hatton criticized the article stating the constitutional revision encourages the incidence of clandestine abortions and maternal deaths and disregards a woman’s right to life.  Hatton also took aim at the Catholic Church stating that it had “influence in everything” and that, “for following a dogma [the Church] has become a source and a motor for social exclusion in the Dominican Republic. The dogma is placed ahead of the needs of the population, health, housing and better living conditions. ”

Contrary to the positions these UN officials took, the United Nations website maintains that “the legal status of abortion is the sovereign right of each nation” and that the organization “does not provide support for abortion or abortion related activities anywhere in the world.”

Non-governmental organizations have also condemned the constitutional change. Amnesty International (AI) has been at the center of an ongoing campaign against the Dominican right-to-life provision. In a report released earlier this year, AI claimed that the Dominican Republic’s constitutional and legal reforms “could lead to violations of women’s human rights” and that laws penalizing abortion would lead to increased maternal mortality.  Before the final vote last week, AI called on the Congress of the Dominican Republic to reject the right to life from “conception until death” part of Article 30.

The constitutional reform in the Dominican Republic echoes similar changes enacted at the state level in Mexico, where 12 states have recently adopted constitutional amendments declaring that life begins at conception. These follow the criminalization of abortion under all circumstances by Nicaragua in 2006, and El Salvador in 1998.

As they had in the Nicaragua case, abortion advocates rallied against the abortion ban in Mexico by arguing that prohibiting abortions would lead to a greater increase in maternal mortality since women would arguably have to turn to “unsafe abortions.” Critics, however, have pointed out that there is no substantiated evidence for this claim and preliminary evidence from Nicaraguan government statistics even shows a decline in maternal deaths since restricting abortion in 2006.

When formally adopted, the Dominican Republic will join other Latin American nations whose constitutions explicitly protect unborn life, including Chile, Paraguay, and Guatemala.

We should have a UK version of this:-

Jerusalem Post

A new Web site set up by pro-Israel Canadians seeks to defy anti-Israel boycotts by encouraging subscribers to deliberately buy Israeli products that are being boycotted.

The campaign, titled “Buycott Israel,” was organized by the Canada-Israel Committee together with the Jewish federations of Vancouver and Toronto and the Canadian Jewish Congress, Pacific Region, to counter the increasing number of boycotts in Canada over the last year.

Aiming to turn a disadvantage into a strong advantage, Buycott Israel’s Web site asks readers, “Are you fed up with calls to boycott Israeli goods and services? Want to do something about it?” and then calls on them to sign up for “Buycott alerts.”

The enterprise promises to alert users “when a boycott initiative needs to be countered,” and lets subscribers know the results of every Buycott action.

“These boycotts have been going on for while, but we’ve seen a real uptick in activity lately, and as a result, members of the community decided to push back in a very serious way,” Sara Saber-Freedman, chief operating officer of the Canada-Israel Committee, told The Jerusalem Post by phone on Thursday.

Saber-Freedman explained that the campaign was in the process of “creating a database of people and items. The Web site is an interactive tool that will allow our subscribers to notify others when they find out about an attempt to boycott a particular [Israeli] item, and in turn the Web site will ask the subscribers to go out and buy that item.”

She added, “We are making a statement to the people who seek to isolate Israel that we will see to it that Israel is less isolated, and we will do this because of those actions. And if you seek to limit access to Israeli academics, we will let these voices be heard.”

Saber-Freedman told the Post that the worrying trend had been “cropping up in the commercial sector, in labor movements and even in churches”

“The United Church of Canada entertained a boycott notion recently, but it was defeated,” she noted. “But even though it was generally defeated, it was deferred to next year for consideration, so we know that this problem is one that will keep on coming back.”

Over the last year, there have been three public attempts to boycott Israeli wine in Canada: two protests in Vancouver, and one in Toronto. In the Toronto boycott, protesters led by the anti-war group Not In Our Name picketed liquor store LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario) to protest the sale of Israeli wine there.

Dismayed and disgusted by the protest, Toronto’s Jewish community rallied, and hundreds of Jews arrived at the scene to buy all the Israeli wine in the store. Activists claimed to have led LCBO to sell out of Israeli wine – over 500 cases in a just over half an hour – and to have caused the boycotters to leave in defeat not long afterward.

Although there have been a number of anti-Israel boycott campaigns in Canada recently, “in each of them, it comes out of our experience that [buying the product that is being boycotted] has been effective, successful and sends out an absolutely unequivocal message,” explained Saber-Freedman.

“We even caused the store owners to stock up in anticipation for one of the boycotts,” she recalled triumphantly. “We used our internal mail list to ask our members to specifically go and purchase Israeli wine, and as a result the wine sold out.

“What’s more, in Vancouver, the second time the anti-Israeli protest happened, the store went out and stocked up on Israeli wine, because they knew that, ironically, if there was a picket, they’d do more business.”

But turning serious, Saber-Freedman added that “in our experience, consistently, whether it’s store-owners or organizers of cultural festivals, people are annoyed and irritated by people attempting to assert their political agenda on them and on the public… they are tired of being taken hostage by people whose agenda is so narrow and so unthinking.”

The reversal of the boycotts appears to have galvanized the Jewish community, and with the advent of the Buycott Israel campaign, Saber-Freedman’s hopes for the future are now brighter.

“We’re very keen to see where this takes us. It’s an exciting step in citizen-based advocacy for Israel,” she said.

“As much as anything, we’re thrilled that people are as interested in it as they seem to be. The news of the campaign is spreading across the blogosphere,” she went on.

“People are just fed up. What we’ve been seeing in Canada over the last 12 months is an increase in the number of cases and instances where Israel is being boycotted, and we needed to do something against that.”

Saber-Freedman stressed that “there’s nothing ‘stealth’ in our approach. It’s open and in-your-face. We’re doing this in a very conscious way – we’re not hiding anything.

“Ultimately, this campaign is part of what we all want – for Israel’s right to exist in peace behind internationally recognized borders and not to be challenged at every turn.”

Jerusalem Post

The organizers of a Muslim day of prayer scheduled to take place Friday in front of the US Capitol have come under attack from some conservative Christians.

The event, called “Islam on Capitol Hill,” is designed to highlight how US Muslims can coexist with their fellow Americans. Hassen Abdellah, the lead organizer of the event, called on people to come to the Capitol to “pray for peace and understanding between America and its Muslim community.”

But this week, some conservative Christians have called the event a threat to Christian values. In a statement, Rev. Canon Julian Dobbs, leader of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America’s “Church and Islam Project,” warned that the service is “part of a well-defined strategy to Islamize American society and replace the Bible with the Koran, the cross with the Islamic crescent and the church bells with the Athan (the Muslim call to prayer).”

Christian evangelist Lou Engle said the Friday event “is much more than a nice little Muslim gathering. It’s an invocation of spiritual powers of an ideology” that “doesn’t have the same set of values that our nation has had.”

From Global Politician

Ted Belman

Yesterday Pres Obama addressed the UNGA on the subject of the conflict between Arabs and Jews conflict and had this to say;

…I will also continue to seek a just and lasting peace between Israel, Palestine, and the Arab world.

What is noteworthy here, is that he referred to “Palestine” like it was a state already. Is that not pre-judging the outcome? He also wants there to be peace with the “Arab world” which means more pressure on Israel to cave to the demands of Syria.

Palestinians have strengthened their efforts on security. Israelis have facilitated greater freedom of movement for the Palestinians. As a result of these efforts on both sides, the economy in the West Bank has begun to grow. But more progress is needed. We continue to call on Palestinians to end incitement against Israel, and we continue to emphasize that America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.

He appears to be signing on to Netanyahu’s ideas regarding building the economy as a means to peace. But to my mind by rejecting the “legitimacy of the settlements”, he is declaring war on Israel.

The settlements are legitimate and legal. By taking such a position on no or spurious legal reasoning he is no better than Goldstone who took the position that Israel was guilty of war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity. Nether of the positions of Obama or Goldstone have any legitimacy. They are imposing on Israel an interpretation of law which favours the outcome they desire. Once again Obama has prejudged the outcome of negotiations. If the settlements are illegal as he says, then Israel Israel must agree to withdraw from all lands east of the green line. He made no distinction with respect to Jerusalem. But the US has long maintained the position that no one should do anything to prejudge the outcome.

Most presidents have shied away from saying that the settlements were illegal and contented themselves with declaring them “obstacles to peace”. This, also, is a debatable issue.

The time has come — the time has come to re-launch negotiations without preconditions that address the permanent status issues: security for Israelis and Palestinians, borders, refugees, and Jerusalem. And the goal is clear: Two states living side by side in peace and security — a Jewish state of Israel, with true security for all Israelis; and a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967, and realizes the potential of the Palestinian people. (Applause.)

Obama is misleading the world to say that negotiations should start “without preconditions” when he doesn’t mean it. The negotiations will be fraught with preconditions. He names a few such as that Palestine must be “independent”, “viable” and “contiguous”. But there are others such as the need to “end the occupation that began in 1967?. This implies full withdrawal rather than partial withdrawal as provided for in Res 242. Then there is the matter of whether the negotiations are starting fresh, which would be without preconditions, or whether the negotiations must pick up where they left off. Obama has been pressing for the latter.

As we pursue this goal, we will also pursue peace between Israel and Lebanon, Israel and Syria, and a broader peace between Israel and its many neighbors. In pursuit of that goal, we will develop regional initiatives with multilateral participation, alongside bilateral negotiations.

To break the old patterns, to break the cycle of insecurity and despair, all of us must say publicly what we would acknowledge in private.

On the contrary, when is he going to say privately what he says publically. Once again he wants to be “honest” with us.

The United States does Israel no favors when we fail to couple an unwavering commitment to its security with an insistence that Israel respect the legitimate claims and rights of the Palestinians. (Applause.) And — and nations within this body do the Palestinians no favors when they choose vitriolic attacks against Israel over constructive willingness to recognize Israel’s legitimacy and its right to exist in peace and security. (Applause.)
Now here is the bottom line, what are “the legitimate rights of the Palestinians”?

Refugees There is no legitimate right of return, There is only a right to receive compensation for the property owned by them and left behind when they evacuated. The Jewish refugees have a similar right for property they left behind in Arab countries when they were expelled.

Land. The land lying east of the armistice line, which the Arabs refer to as the West Bank and the Jews refer to as Judea and Samaria, can in no way be Palestinian land as claimed. The Palestinians never had sovereignty over it. Having lived there or even owned small parcels of land there, never confers sovereignty. There is absolutely no way they can establish a “legitimate right” to these lands. According to international law,The Jews were given these lands, as their national homeland over which they had political rights. These rights have never been forfeited.

Jerusalem. Jerusalem is a Jewish concept, not an Islamic one. Jerusalem, as a city means nothing to Islam. Jerusalem means everything to Judaism. It is at the core of it. I have no idea why anyone would consider that the Arabs have legitimate rights over Jerusalem but am sure that Obama includes a share of Jerusalem as a legitimate Palestinian right.

“Legitimate rights” are important in a court of law. They have no place in negotiations. Negotiations are essentially a power play whether between Management and Labour in labour disputes or between countries in negotiating treaties. Obama is supporting the Palestinians to strengthen their negotiating position. He is attempting to influence the outcome while at the same time he says that no one should do anything to prejudge the outcome.

It amounts to an imposed solution. Obama leaves little to be negotiated. He has predetermined all. In fact, has he not publically embraced the Saudi Plan.

Ted Belman also writes for Israpundit.com

(CNA).- A civil rights organization in Spain is praising two rulings by the Supreme Court of Castilla y Leon exempting three students from taking the Education for the Citizenry course. The group said it hopes that the other 285 cases still pending will be similarly decided.

Salamanca For Freedom in Education praised the court for allowing the three students to opt out of the controversial school course, with no negative effect on their grades.

In the Spanish province of Castilla y Leno, some 3,395 cases of conscientious objection to the course have been filed, making it the province with the highest number of cases.

Francisco Jose Ramos Vega, who represents most of the students and their parents, said the rulings show that Spain’s Supreme Court has not settled the question of conscientious objection to the course Education for the Citizenry.  He also said the rulings could be applied in other autonomous communities where there are cases pending.

A spokesperson for Salamanca for Freedom in Education explained that the rulings constitute “a victory for parents in the defense of their freedom and in their struggle for the education of their children according to their convictions.”

Lutheran Core Website

Previous Recent Post

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Bishop (Mark Hanson) Says withholding financial support to protest a recent gay clergy vote would be “devastating” to the church.

(CNA).- Following the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s controversial recent assembly, a two-day gathering of Lutherans will begin in Indianapolis on Friday. Organizers say the meeting will begin the creation of an alternative fellowship for Lutherans who uphold traditional marriage and are unwilling to support the new changes in the church’s teaching. In August the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s (ELCA) Churchwide Assembly approved a new policy that no longer declares marriage as “the appropriate place” for sexual relations, but rather calls for “social trust” in associations that are “loving” and “committed.”

The assembly, which met in Minneapolis, Minnesota, claimed that consensus does not exist on homosexuality. It recognized four “conscience-bound beliefs” ranging from disapproval of all homosexual relations to honoring them as equally valid marriages.

The gathering also voted to allow pastors to be in homosexual relationships.

In response to the changes, 1,200 Lutherans will attend the convocation of Lutheran Coalition for Reform (CORE). The convocation will have as its theme “What After Minneapolis?”

Organizers were forced to close registration on September 14 because of space limitations and had to move the event to from Christ the Savior Lutheran Church to the Catholic Holy Spirit Parish in the Indianapolis suburb of Fishers.

“It is wonderfully ironic that Lutherans who started 500 years ago as a movement to reform the Roman Catholic Church would now return to a Catholic Church to re-form themselves,” said Lutheran CORE director Rev. Mark Chavez of Landisville, Pennsylvania.

Chavez said the disagreement is not about sex but about the “source of authority” in the ELCA.

“The assembly’s sexuality decisions have opened the eyes of people to the biblical and theological crisis in the ELCA,” he added. “We have no objection to the Confession of Faith in the ELCA constitution. The ELCA says that the Bible is the source and norm of its faith and life, but the actions of the ELCA Churchwide Assembly have shown that the ELCA does not practice what it says it believes.”

The Lutheran CORE meeting says it intends to be a “confessional and confessing movement” that is “rooted in Scripture, creeds, and confessions” and open to all Lutherans in North America. It aims to be an “umbrella group” for other Lutheran movements both within and outside of the ELCA.

The meeting will consider a resolution that organizers say could possibly reconfigure North American Lutheranism.

“This is an exciting and hopeful time for confessional Lutherans in North America,” said Rev. Paull Spring, chair of the Lutheran CORE Steering Committee from State College, Pennsylvania.

Spring, who is retired bishop of the Northwest Pennsylvania Synod, said the organization’s ministries have received an “incredible outpouring of support” and reported that people and churches are joining the coalition for reform at an almost overwhelming pace.

Lutheran Core Website