eChurch Blog

GENEVA, 26 October 2009 (LWI) – On Monday, 26 October 2009, Chilean pastor Martin Junge was elected as the eighth General Secretary of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) for a seven-year term. The election took place in closed session.

The Council is holding its 22-27 October meeting at Chavannes-de-Bogis, near Geneva, Switzerland.

With this election, Junge becomes the first representative from the Latin America and Caribbean region to hold the highest position at the LWF Secretariat.

The LWF Council elected the 48 year-old theologian to succeed Rev. Dr Ishmael Noko who, upon election in June 1994, became the first African to hold the chief executive post in the LWF. An ordained pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Zimbabwe, Noko’s position was affirmed in 1997, and he was re-elected for a second seven-year term in 2004. He announced at the June 2008 Council meeting in Arusha, Tanzania, that he would be leaving office on 31 October 2010.

The  seven-member search committee for a new general secretary was headed by the former president of the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus, Rev. Iteffa Gobena.

Since September 2000, Junge has been the area secretary for Latin America and the Caribbean at the LWF Department for Mission and Development (DMD). His key achievements as DMD area secretary include the strengthening and refocusing of the LWF’s programmatic work in the region, and the implementation and structuring of the advocacy program launched by Latin American LWF member churches to deal with the problem of illegitimate foreign debt in the region.

Since 2008 Junge has been pursuing a diploma in the management of not-for-profit organizations at the “Verbandsmanagement Institut” (VMI) of the University of Freiburg in Switzerland.

From 1996 to 2000, Junge was President of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Chile (Iglesia Evangélica Luterana en Chile – IELC). Following his 1989 ordination as an IELC pastor, Junge served in two congregations in Santiago de Chile from 1989 to 2000. He studied Protestant theology between 1980 and 1986 at the Georg August University in Göttingen, Germany.

General secretary-elect Junge is married, with two children.

The LWF General Secretary conducts the business of the Federation in collaboration with the Cabinet, which is made up of the directors of departments and units appointed by the Council. The position holder is responsible for the implementation of the Council and Assembly decisions.

More information on the 2009 LWF Council meeting is available on the LWF Web site at: www.lutheranworld.org

FURTHER LINK:-

Congratulation letter to LWF general secretary-elect Rev. Martin Junge

Melanie Phillips

So now the cat is well and truly out of the bag. For years, as the number of immigrants to Britain shot up apparently uncontrollably, the question was how exactly this had happened.

Was it through a fit of absent-mindedness or gross incompetence? Or was it not inadvertent at all, but deliberate?

The latter explanation seemed just too outrageous. After all, a deliberate policy of mass immigration would have amounted to nothing less than an attempt to change the very make-up of this country without telling the electorate.

There could not have been a more grave abuse of the entire democratic process. Now, however, we learn that this is exactly what did happen. The Labour government has been engaged upon a deliberate and secret policy of national cultural sabotage.

This astonishing revelation surfaced quite casually last weekend in a newspaper article by one Andrew Neather. He turns out to have been a speech writer for Tony Blair, Jack Straw and David Blunkett.

And it was he who wrote a landmark speech in September 2000 by the then immigration minister, Barbara Roche, that called for a loosening of immigration controls. But the true scope and purpose of this new policy was actively concealed.

In its 1997 election manifesto, Labour promised ‘firm control over immigration’ and in 2005 it promised a ‘crackdown on abuse’. In 2001, its manifesto merely said that the immigration rules needed to reflect changes to the economy to meet skills shortages.

But all this concealed a monumental shift of policy. For Neather wrote that until ‘at least February last year’, when a new points-based system was introduced to limit foreign workers in response to increasing uproar, the purpose of the policy Roche ushered in was to open up the UK to mass immigration.

This has been achieved. Some 2.3million migrants have been added to the population since 2001. Since 1997, the number of work permits has quadrupled to 120,000 a year.

Unless policies change, over the next 25 years some seven million more will be added to Britain’s population, a rate of growth three times as fast as took place in the Eighties.

Such an increase is simply unsustainable. Britain is already one of the most overcrowded countries in Europe. But now look at the real reason why this policy was introduced, and in secret. The Government’s ‘driving political purpose’, wrote Neather, was ‘to make the UK truly multicultural’.

It was therefore a politically motivated attempt by ministers to transform the fundamental make-up and identity of this country. It was done to destroy the right of the British people to live in a society defined by a common history, religion, law, language and traditions.

It was done to destroy for ever what it means to be culturally British and to put another ‘multicultural’ identity in its place. And it was done without telling or asking the British people whether they wanted their country and their culture to be transformed in this way.

Spitefully, one motivation by Labour ministers was ‘to rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date’.

Even Neather found that particular element of gratuitous Left-wing bullying to be ‘a manoeuvre too far’.

Yet apart from this, Neather sees nothing wrong in the policy he has described. Indeed, the reason for his astonishing candour is he thinks it’s something to boast about. Mass immigration, he wrote, had provided the ‘foreign nannies, cleaners and gardeners’ without whom London could hardly function.

What elitist arrogance! As if most people employ nannies, cleaners and gardeners. And what ignorance. The argument that Britain is better off with this level of immigration has been conclusively shown to be economically illiterate.

Neather gave the impression that most immigrants are Eastern Europeans. But these form fewer than a quarter of all immigrants.

And the fact is that, despite his blithe assertions to the contrary, schools in areas of very high immigration find it desperately difficult to cope with so many children who don’t even have basic English. Other services, such as health or housing, are similarly being overwhelmed by the sheer weight of numbers.

But the most shattering revelation was that this policy of mass immigration was not introduced to produce nannies or cleaners for the likes of Neather. It was to destroy Britain’s identity and transform it into a multicultural society where British attributes would have no greater status than any other country’s.

A measure of immigration is indeed good for a country. But this policy was not to enhance British culture and society by broadening the mix. It was to destroy its defining character altogether.

It also conveniently guaranteed an increasingly Labour-voting electorate since, as a recent survey by the Electoral Commission has revealed, some 90 per cent of black people and three-quarters of Asians vote Labour.

In Neather’s hermetically sealed bubble, the benefits of mass immigration were so overwhelming he couldn’t understand why ministers had been so nervous about it.

They were, he wrote, reluctant to discuss what increased immigration would mean, above all to Labour’s core white working class vote. So they deliberately kept it secret.

They knew that if they told the truth about what they were doing, voters would rise up in protest. So they kept it out of their election manifestos.

It was indeed a conspiracy to deceive the electorate into voting for them. And yet it is these very people who have the gall to puff themselves up in self-righteous astonishment at the rise of the BNP.

No wonder Jack Straw was so shifty on last week’s Question Time when he was asked whether it was the Government’s failure to halt immigration which lay behind increasing support for the BNP.

Now we know it was no such failure of policy. It was deliberate. For the government of which Straw is such a long- standing member had secretly plotted to flood the country with immigrants to change its very character and identity.

This more than any other reason is why Nick Griffin has gained so much support. According to a YouGov poll taken after Question Time, no fewer than 22 per cent of British voters would ’seriously consider’ voting for the BNP.

That nearly one quarter of British people might vote for a neo-Nazi party with views inimical to democracy, human rights and common decency is truly appalling.

The core reason is that for years they have watched as their country’s landscape has been transformed out of all recognition — and that politicians from all mainstream parties have told them first that it isn’t happening and second, that they are racist bigots to object even if it is.

Now the political picture has been transformed overnight by the unguarded candour of Andrew Neather’s eye-opening superciliousness. For now we know that Labour politicians actually caused this to happen – and did so out of total contempt for their own core voters.

As Neather sneered, the jobs filled by immigrant workers ‘certainly wouldn’t be taken by unemployed BNP voters from Barking or Burnley –fascist au pair, anyone?’

So that’s how New Labour views the white working class, supposedly the very people it is in politics to champion. Who can wonder that its core vote is now decamping in such large numbers to the BNP when Labour treats them like this?

Condemned out of its own mouth, it is New Labour that is responsible for the rise of the BNP — by an act of unalloyed treachery to the entire nation.

FURTHER INTERNET LINK

By Bill Warner – American Thinker

When America entered the war in Vietnam, Ho Chi Min said that it would be a long war and that the communists would win by using propaganda in the media and the universities. He was correct.

It is time to take stock in the war between Israelis and the Palestinians and deal with some forbidden subjects. Israel is losing the propaganda war, hasbarah, and for a very good reason.

Israel is not in the hasbarah game, unless one counts belated responses to the Palestinians’ propaganda offensives. Pierre Rehov, a Moroccan French Jew, is a documentary filmmaker. He claims that the Palestinians have made over 50 propaganda movies, while Israel has done only 8. Of those eight, Mr. Rehov made six.

Why don’t Jews and Israel want to deal with propaganda? Simple. It would mean talking about Islam. Jews and Israel must face the facts that the Koran and the Sunna (the actions and words of Mohammed) are filled with invectives against the Jews. At first the words were complimentary, but when the Jews of Medina rejected Mohammed as a prophet they were all enslaved, exiled, murdered and robbed — all acts of jihad. These were not historical acts, but perfect examples of Islamic action towards Jews — models prescribed for Muslims to follow up to the present time. To illustrate the severity of this predicament, statistically speaking, in the Koran of Medina 10.6% of the text is devoted to Jew hatred, whereas, only 6.8% of Mein Kampf is devoted to Jew hatred.

The language and actions of Palestinians and all Muslims in general are directly approved by Islamic political theological doctrine. Not only the language, but also policy is set by the Islamic political doctrine. To repeat: political doctrine — a political theological doctrine of jihad against all kafirs.

Yet, it seems until now that both Jews and Israel choose annihilation over talking about Islam. It is simply not an acceptable subject matter. Political correctness prevails over survival. Unfortunately, these are suicidal choices. It is obvious that the ADL and the Jewish Federations for example, are only two Jewish organizations that have corporate polices of not discussing Islamic political ideology.

The ADL will admit that there are a “few” radical Muslims, and would gladly argue in public that except for a few Muslim extremists, Islam is not the problem. ADL is the first to argue that Jews and Christians have their share of crazies and they are no different from the Muslims. This is the ultimate multiculturalist view, which may well lead to a disaster for Israel and aid in the demise of Western civilization.

Since a propaganda war is about the use of intelligence, one would think that the Israelis would be the world’s best and the Muslims would be the worst. Look at Nobel prizes, especially in the sciences. Israelis win them by the handful compared to the Arab world. But in the hasbarah, public relations, the Israelis are lazy fools and the Palestinians are industrious geniuses.

Israeli government officials who will comment off the record say that as a government, Israel cannot launch a propaganda war over Islam.

And, if Israel were to launch an ideological war, who would be the target audience? The ultimate target would be the secular and liberal Jews of America and Israel, who are the near enemy. If you can launch a hasbarah campaign that would open their eyes, enough of the world would tag along.

Otherwise, if the Israelis continue to think that they can keep scoring military victories and by that win this ideological war, they are fools and worse. America won the Tet offensive on the battlefield, but lost the propaganda war in the media and the universities, exactly as Ho Chi Min predicted.

As a brilliant example of ideological war, revisit Netanyahu’s UN speech on September 24, 2009. He laid out the civilizational differences between Holocaust deniers and Israel. The same arguments about civilization should apply to the war between the Palestinians and Jews in Israel. This is because the Israel/Palestinian conflict is no different than the jihad in Kashmir, India, the Philippines, or in dozens of fronts in Africa.

After the Mumbai terror attack, the Jewish community in Nashville, TN had a rally at a synagogue. They prayed for peace in Israel.  The same day, Christian supporters of Israel held a rally, and they prayed for Israel’s victory.

Now, which one of the two maintains a stronger position — peace or victory? Today Israel desires peace and the Palestinians insist on victory. Guess who wins? Peace is for losers. Regrettably, Israelis and American Jews are choosing to be the losers. The consequences however are too dire; ultimately, Israel may get their peace, but it may be the peace after jihad’s victory.

Ironically, Israelis and Jews abroad are not the only ones in a state of denial about Islamic politics; they just happen to be at the frontline. President Bush demonstrated after 9/11 that he too had no clue how to fight this Islamic ideological war. Instead of using military force against our enemies, he and his successor- President Obama should have declared ideological war against our true enemy-political Islam.

They seem to lose their war and so will Israel unless some tough questions are faced and actions are taken.

By ROSS DOUTHAT – New York Times

The Church of England has survived the Spanish Armada, the English Civil War and Elton John performing “Candle in the Wind” at Princess Diana’s Westminster Abbey funeral. So it will probably survive the note the Vatican issued last week, inviting disaffected Anglicans to head Romeward, and offering them an Anglo-Catholic mansion within the walls of the Roman Catholic faith.

But the invitation is a bombshell nonetheless. Pope Benedict XVI’s outreach to Anglicans may produce only a few conversions; it may produce a few million. Either way, it represents an unusual effort at targeted proselytism, remarkable both for its concessions to potential converts — married priests, a self-contained institutional structure, an Anglican rite — and for its indifference to the wishes of the Church of England’s leadership.

This is not the way well-mannered modern churches are supposed to behave. Spurred by the optimism of the early 1960s, the major denominations of Western Christendom have spent half a century being exquisitely polite to one another, setting aside a history of strife in the name of greater Christian unity.

This ecumenical era has borne real theological fruit, especially on issues that divided Catholics and Protestants during the Reformation. But what began as a daring experiment has decayed into bureaucratized complacency — a dull round of interdenominational statements on global warming and Third World debt, only tenuously connected to the Gospel.

At the same time, the more ecumenically minded denominations have lost believers to more assertive faiths — Pentecostalism, Evangelicalism, Mormonism and even Islam — or seen them drift into agnosticism and apathy.

Nobody is more aware of this erosion than Benedict. So the pope is going back to basics — touting the particular witness of Catholicism even when he’s addressing universal subjects, and seeking converts more than common ground.

Along the way, he’s courting both ends of the theological spectrum. In his encyclicals, Benedict has addressed a range of issues — social justice, environmental protection, even erotic love — that are close to the hearts of secular liberals and lukewarm, progressive-minded Christians. But instead of stopping at a place of broad agreement, he has pushed further, trying to persuade his more liberal readers that many of their beliefs actually depend on the West’s Catholic heritage, and make sense only when grounded in a serious religious faith.

At the same time, the pope has systematically lowered the barriers for conservative Christians hovering on the threshold of the church, unsure whether to slip inside. This was the purpose behind his controversial outreach to schismatic Latin Mass Catholics, and it explains the current opening to Anglicans.

Many Anglicans will never become Catholic; their theology is too evangelical, their suspicion of papal authority too ingrained, their objections to the veneration of the Virgin Mary too deeply felt. But for those who could, Benedict is trying to make reunion with Rome a flesh-and-blood possibility, rather than a matter for academic conversation.

The news media have portrayed this rightward outreach largely through the lens of culture-war politics — as an attempt to consolidate, inside the Catholic tent, anyone who joins the Vatican in rejecting female priests and gay marriage.

But in making the opening to Anglicanism, Benedict also may have a deeper conflict in mind — not the parochial Western struggle between conservative and liberal believers, but Christianity’s global encounter with a resurgent Islam.

Here Catholicism and Anglicanism share two fronts. In Europe, both are weakened players, caught between a secular majority and an expanding Muslim population. In Africa, increasingly the real heart of the Anglican Communion, both are facing an entrenched Islamic presence across a fault line running from Nigeria to Sudan.

Where the European encounter is concerned, Pope Benedict has opted for public confrontation. In a controversial 2006 address in Regensburg, Germany, he explicitly challenged Islam’s compatibility with the Western way of reason — and sparked, as if in vindication of his point, a wave of Muslim riots around the world.

By contrast, the Church of England’s leadership has opted for conciliation (some would say appeasement), with the Archbishop of Canterbury going so far as to speculate about the inevitability of some kind of sharia law in Britain.

There are an awful lot of Anglicans, in England and Africa alike, who would prefer a leader who takes Benedict’s approach to the Islamic challenge. Now they can have one, if they want him.

This could be the real significance of last week’s invitation. What’s being interpreted, for now, as an intra-Christian skirmish may eventually be remembered as the first step toward a united Anglican-Catholic front — not against liberalism or atheism, but against Christianity’s most enduring and impressive foe.

Times

A senior bishop has attacked the former Archbishop of Canterbury as a “moaner” for complaining about the timing of the Pope’s offer to Anglo-Catholics in the Church of England to join Rome.

The Bishop of Fulham, the Right Rev John Broadhurst, told The Times that the Church of England, including the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, had been aware for years of the Vatican’s plans to admit disaffected Anglicans. “The Archbishop of Canterbury knew that this was happening, but didn’t know when,” Bishop Broadhurst said.

Asked about complaints by Lord Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, about the Pope not consulting widely enough and seeking Dr Williams’s advice before announcing the plan, he said: “Well, he’s just moaning. Rowan is big enough and old enough to speak for himself.”

Bishop Broadhurst, chairman of the Forward in Faith traditionalist group and a campaigner against women priests, said Rome’s offer must be viewed as a positive step in the name of religious unity. “I think that a major chance for realignment is sitting around, and I think that’s what God wants,” he said.

Yesterday Bishop Broadhurst appeared poised to lead a mass exodus of clergy to the Catholic Church.

He told The Times that the Pope’s willingness to reach out to the traditionalists was a lifeline to an institution that had been “struggling for its existence for the last ten years”.

His views are in line with those of several other traditionalist clergymen — the former Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, and the Bishop of Chichester, the Right Rev John Hind — who welcomed Rome’s offer.

Last week the Holy See announced its intention to set up personal ordinariates, or extra-geographical Catholic dioceses, to bring into the fold former Anglicans who accept the Petrine ministry of Rome and oppose women bishops.

Bishop Broadhurst met his group’s Australian and American leaders yesterday to discuss Rome’s offer. “We have to decide what we do,” he told The Times yesterday after Mass at St Augustine’s Church in Kilburn, northwest London.

“I want my organisation to collectively come to a decision. And I will make my decision in consultation with them. I will be encouraging them to very seriously consider the implications of what the Holy Father has offered.”

Anglican bishops who cross over would probably have to relinquish their title.

Asked what his views were on giving up his title as bishop, Bishop Broadhurst said: “Who cares. Soon I’ll be in a wooden box in front of the altar. What matters is the bigger picture. God matters, the truth matters. We as individuals don’t matter. We think we matter but we don’t.”

BBC

More than half of adults in a survey of 10 countries thought school science lessons should teach evolutionary theories alongside creationism.

Among those who knew of Darwinism, on average 53% felt other possible perspectives should also be taught.

The figure was 68% in Argentina, in the poll for the British Council, which promotes educational opportunities.

In Great Britain 60% felt this way. In Egypt, 27% said such theories should not be in science lessons at all.

The British Council, the UK’s international organisation for educational opportunities and cultural relations, is running a programme of activities under the banner Darwin Now.

This marks the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his work, On the Origin of Species.

There are exhibitions and learning resources in about 50 countries and in a variety of languages.

The learning materials vary but can be used without technical equipment, to make them as widely available as possible.

Opinions

The survey to underpin the work was conducted through Ipsos Mori and involved interviews with some 11,000 people aged over 18, mostly face-to-face, last April.

Of those, more than 7,000 knew of Darwin’s work already.

People were asked which statements were closest to their own opinion about how evolutionary theory should be taught in science lessons in schools.

The highest proportion agreeing that evolutionary theories alone should be taught was in India, at 49%, followed by Spain (42%).

One in five in China and in South Africa thought other perspectives – and not evolutionary theories – should be taught.

Those opting for evolutionary theory “together with other possible perspectives, such as intelligent design and creationism” ranged from 38% in Spain to the 68% in Argentina.

‘Polarised debate’

“It is quite an interesting response and we need to think about why that is,” said the head of the Darwin Now programme, Dr Fern Elsdon-Baker.

Her feeling is that the debate about Darwinism has been portrayed as very polarised: science versus religion.

A previous survey suggested a lot of people were open-minded about having a faith and understanding that evolutionary processes occurred, and she thinks the polarisation of the arguments has confused them about how science works as a process.

“The majority of people in each country polled felt it was acceptable to have faith and think evolution happens by means of natural selection,” she said.

So it was necessary to communicate science in a less dogmatic, more sophisticated way, she said.

Darwinism remains controversial.

In March Turkey’s scientific and technological research council pulled a cover article about Darwin from its popular magazine, provoking outrage among scientists.

Dr Elsdon-Baker said: “It would be ridiculous to suggest that there haven’t been problems with the Darwin anniversary – but the British Council project, which is working in 45 countries, has had a very positive response.

“There’s clearly a demand for these kind of science communication activities around Darwin’s theory of evolution by means of natural selection.”

FURTHER INTERNET LINK:-

More than half of all Britons believe that creationism and other theories about the origins of life should be taught alongside evolution in school science lessons, according to a survey published today.

(CNA).- The Catholic and Orthodox Churches of Sweden have responded with “sadness” to the Swedish Lutheran Church General Synod’s decision to hold homosexual “weddings” in churches, saying the move departs from the Christian tradition and will widen the gap between the churches.

Fr. Fredrik Emanuelson, head of ecumenical efforts in the Swedish Catholic Church, joined Orthodox representative Fr. Misha Jaksic in a statement that said the churches learned of the Lutherans’ decision “with sadness.”

“It is a swing away not only from Christian tradition but also from the point of view on the nature of marriage which is typical of all religions,” they said, according to SIR News.

The Lutherans’ General Synod expresses a “radically different vision” from the way in which the Church and Christians understand marriage, they added.

The spokesmen said they were not surprised by the decision because it had been preceded by a long debate.

According to SIR, the church debate started at the beginning of 2009 after a Swedish law that granted civil marriage to homosexuals took effect.

“None of us want to annul ecumenical dialogue with the Swedish church,” the joint Catholic-Orthodox statement continued. “However, this decision of the Church of Sweden widens the gap.”

The statement concluded by saying that talks are “more important than ever” to fulfill Christ’s desire for Christian unity.

The Church of Sweden is the largest Christian denomination in the Nordic country.

Editors note: As anitsemitism has become so endemic, there has recently been set up a blog dedicated to monitoring & exposing antisemitism on the Guardian newspaper’s ‘Comment is Free’ Blog

CiF Watch

by Carol Gould – Pajamas Media

In the past year I have noticed that my very occasional sojourns into the Guardian’s “Comment Is Free” discussion have been deleted by the moderator when saying something as innocuous as: “The Palestinians, perennially complaining about lack of opportunity, have had next door to them for sixty-one years an example of a people who rose from oppression and created a high-tech democracy where gays can march and women do as they please without fear of being stoned to death.” Unless you live on Mars you will be aware that it is obviously not in the Guardian’s house style to laud the achievements of tiny, oil-impoverished Israel.

So, presto! In October 2009 Simon Rogers of the Guardian finally eradicated Israel. How did he do this?

The day after Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the Guardian decided to publish a chart showing the nations and people who had won the prize in the past century. To the utter disbelief of those who saw it, the list omitted the Israeli names. There was Yasser Arafat in 1994, clearly listed as a winner from a country that does not actually exist, “Palestine,” but there was no Shimon Peres or Yitzhak Rabin of Israel. There was Anwar Sadat of Egypt, but no Menachem Begin of Israel. The aforesaid Israelis had worked as tirelessly as their Muslim counterparts to forge a new generation of peace and prosperity amongst the warring nations. Who could forget Prime Minister Rabin’s impassioned speech about “no more blood and tears,” as he signed agreement after agreement with his nation’s former enemies? Who could forget the embrace of Egyptian President Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Begin — a sight no one would have believed possible just a few years before they signed the historic Camp David Accords? It was this scenario that was to cost Sadat his life. It was the handshake in the Rose Garden of the White House that would lose Rabin his life.

Readers of this site may think I have become a crazed supporter of Shalom Achshav (Peace Now), but my point is that no matter how one despised the coming together of Begin and Sadat and Arafat and Rabin, the omission of the Israeli Nobel winners is shocking and unforgivable. As far as I am concerned it was deliberate and malevolent. The Guardian used the excuse that there had been a glitch in the entering of data in the Nobel listings. Oh, please.

What I do like about this staggering omission is that it corroborated my belief that Israel hatred in the liberal press is obsessional. The Nobel omissions corroborate Julie Burchill’s courageous journalism protesting what she perceived as the “vile anti-Semitism” around her during her departure from the Guardian-Observer. People who have scoffed that Julie Burchill and I see an anti-Semite and Israel-hater in every corner can now please be silent. In National Review Online Tom Gross reported that the Guardian “has wiped Israel off the Nobel Prize map, much as Iranian despot Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would like to wipe Israel off the real map.”

The Simon Wiesenthal Center has issued a formal complaint to the Guardian’s editor, Alan Rusbridger, telling him they consider the omission of Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin, and Menachem Begin as akin to the Nazis’ delegitimization of Jews.

It is significant that non-Jews were angered by the omissions. The Daily Telegraph’s bemused Tim Collard, a retired diplomat, wrote a short but sweet editorial entitled “The Jewish Names Missing from a Guardian List of Nobel Prize Winners.” (Note he says “Jewish,” not Israeli or Zionist. There is a growing school of thought that folks who spurn Israelis don’t have much love for Jews either.) Tongue in cheek, he suggests that the “vermillion-faced” Rogers quickly rectified the “oversight.” The liberal media are happy to bestow self-determination on every oppressed minority group in the universe, but when Jews make a country, get tough, and outshine everyone else in their neighborhood, they are just brutal Zionist imperialists.

In January 2001 the Guardian ran an editorial entitled “Israel Simply Has No Right to Exist” by Faisal Bodi. The author, one of a long list of anti-Israel journalists employed by the paper, has been ubiquitous over the years in his relentless attacks on the Jewish state and in his complaints about rampant Islamophobia. Among the more memorable nuggets from his missive were: “There is no moral case for the existence of Israel.” Bodi reminds us that a few years before the 2001 article he had incurred the wrath of the Anglo-Jewish community by saying in his student union newsletter that “the sympathy evoked by the Holocaust was a very handy cover for Israeli atrocities.”

The October 2009 Guardian Nobel Peace Prize “glitch” is disturbing. Notwithstanding its dismissal by Tom Gross as a left-wing rag, the episode has left me feeling uncomfortable. It is worrying enough that the huge British TUC (Trade Union Congress), led by, of all groups, the firemen, has voted to support the Israel boycott movement. That a mainstream newspaper would set about removing the names of Israeli Nobel Prize winners indicates to me that Britain is moving in a direction that ought to inspire Anglo-Jewish youth to depart the shores of Eurabia and the streets of what Melanie Phillips so aptly calls Londonistan.

I leave the last word to a Harry’s Place blogger, Augie:

“Does anyone need any more proof that the Guardian is anti-Semitic?”

I don’t.

Carol Gould is the Philadelphia-born author of Don’t Tread on Me: Anti-Americanism Abroad, Spitfire Girls, and A Room at Camp Pickett, a play about her mother’s experiences as a WAC in World War II; she has just completed films about black GIs and GI babies. Carol has been a panelist on BBC’s Any Questions?, hosted by Jonathan Dimbleby, and is a commentator on Sky News, Press TV, the BBC World Service, and Five Live.

Posted by E.E. Evans – Get Religion

As my GetReligion colleagues have the media (particularly the Brits, of course) have again and noted this week, again portrayed Pope Benedict’s move to create a personal ordinariate for conservative Anglicans as a bold move to poach members from the world’s third-largest denomination. Terry had praise for a story in the New York Times which noted that accepting Anglican priests into the Catholic Church was by no means without precedent.

If you want a look at the history, here’s how it came down. What Pope Benedict seems to be doing is institutionalizing the process already in existence in the Roman Catholic Church and given a more explicit papal seal of approval by Pope John Paul II.

More interesting, and less explored, is the effects it will have on relations between the Pope and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams — or on the Church of England itself, currently in turmoil over the issue of women bishops. For an article with some good gossipy quotes from a former AOC, read this one by Ruth Gledhill. My reaction — nice house, Lord Carey of Clifton!

Enter, stage right, in a commentary in today’s New York Times the church historian, and fiction writer A.N. Wilson. Interesting chap, Mr. Wilson. The last time I remember reading about him, many years ago, he’d lost his faith. But, more recently he announced in an editorial in the Daily Mail that he had returned to Christian faith. Although it’s not directly related to the topic, it adds a fascinating note to a rich and complex brew.

Wilson points out that the Papal embrace of dissidents will allow large groups of Anglicans to cross the Tiber, if their priests are “retrained and reordinained.” I’m not clear that the Vatican has been explicit on that point, although Catholic convert Fr. George Rutler is proclaming it as Gospel. The news clip above is as remarkable for what it doesn’t say as for what it does.

UPDATE: Yeah, I know, this post has been up a bit more than a hour or so. But this commentary, sent to us by a reader in the Washington Post was too good to pass up. In pondering potential changes in Catholic doctrine and ecclesiology as a result of the outreach to Anglicans, commentator David Gibson asserted that Benedict, in making concessions to traditionalists, is actually inauguarating a form of liberalism (change) in the Catholic Church:

…with the latest accommodation to Anglicans, Benedict has signaled that the standards for what it means to be Catholic — such as the belief in the real presence of Christ in the Mass as celebrated by a validly ordained priest — are changing or, some might argue, falling. The Vatican is in effect saying that disagreements over gay priests and female bishops are the main issues dividing Catholics and Anglicans, rather than, say, the sacraments and the papacy and infallible dogmas on the Virgin Mary, to name just a few past points of contention.

I don’t get it. What do Rutler, Wilson and Gibson know that the rest of us don’t? Anglicans have been battering down the door for more than a century trying to get Rome to recognize Anglican orders or a view of the eucharist that is much closer to Catholicism than to most Reformation denominations. In case no one has noticed, Rome hasn’t budged. Is it really possible that Roman Catholicism under a pope with years of experience as doctrinal defender will, within a year or two, make de facto changes that make the church look quite different?

Back to England, where some sort of change is already a given. These paragraphs in Wilson’s commentary are sure to set the cat among the pidgeons:

There is talk in England of as many as 1,000 clergy members taking this offer. Even allowing for the numerical exaggeration, which always occurs when enemies of liberalism congregate, this is a huge potential figure. Let us say 500 Anglican priests and perhaps 10 bishops joined the new arrangement. Let us suppose they took with them plausible congregations. This would deliver a body blow not just to the Church of England, but to that whole intricately constructed and only semi-definable phenomenon, the British Establishment.

Ah, there’s the rub. Over at the Reuters blog FaithWorld, editor Tom Heneghan has detailed the reasons why the new model might present challenges for some Anglicans. But it could be most appealing to British Anglo-Catholic conservatives appalled by the fruit of the decision to ordain women, first as priests, and now as bishops.

For Wilson, the perfect storm means the end of the Church of England — and an opportunity for the country to embrace its secular identity. That’s a good thing, he argues.

How will it all work? Will the English Catholics, always hard pressed for cash, be in a position to take over the running of our medieval churches? What will happen to the cathedrals? As fewer and fewer real Christians exist in England, will the church buildings be taken over by some secular conservation group like the National Trust? Probably. And for the 55 million or so Britons who don’t regularly attend services — some 90 percent of the population — it is all rather unimportant.

But it is nevertheless a landmark. The Church of England has been the religious expression of that independent national identity which signaled the rise of Britain as a significant world power. Hatched by Henry VIII and nurtured by his daughter Elizabeth I, the Church of England was an expression of that combination of tolerance and arrogance that marked the English governing class. It sat light to doctrine, and tried to accommodate many. But while that seemed a gentle thing to do, it did so because it actually laid claim to governing and controlling all.

I had to grin when I read “sat light to doctrine” — that’s a good way of summing up more than 500 years of controversy and muddle, or, in a more positive note, “via media.”

Clearly, we can’t tell if Wlison’s dire prediction is correct. It’s a compelling one. And it’s rather too bad that the media hasn’t spent more time examining the actual effect this is going to have on the country where Anglicanism was born. Is the sun truly setting on this last vestige of empire? Brew up some tea, put out some biscuits and think about it. Or perhaps you’d like something stronger. And then please get back to us.

By Bill Muehlenberg

One of the primary rights a child should have is to be raised by his or her own biological mother and father. The social science research on the importance of this is overwhelming. Children raised in same-sex households are obviously deprived of this most important and basic right.

But there are a host of other problems associated with being raised in homosexual or lesbian “families”. Dawn Stefanowicz knows all about this. She was raised by her homosexual father and his many partners, and has written up her experiences in this important book.

It does not make for easy reading. Indeed, given the excesses of the homosexual lifestyle, the book at times almost borders on X-rated reading. But the truth must be told about the homosexual lifestyle, and Stefanowicz does it faithfully, warts and all.

She was born in Canada to what at first seemed to be a normal family. But for much of her life her mother was ill, bed-ridden, and far too passive in the face of her husband’s homosexuality. Thus she had to bear the brunt of his life, and experience the unpleasant realities of the many homosexual men who drifted in and out of the home.

No details are spared as the horrors of being raised in such a household are described. It makes for very sobering and sickening reading, but it is necessary reading, as the push for same-sex marriage and adoption rights continues unabated.

For example, she describes the wretched nature of her dad’s sexual flings, and how she was literally left cleaning up the mess afterwards. It was not a pretty situation by any means. She tells about the nature of sexual addiction and perversion that he was involved in, and the stream of anonymous men who moved in and out for sexual encounters.

She suffered greatly with her own relationships with other children as a result. She could not relate well to boys or girls. Her dad made sure her teens years were a living hell: “If I hung out with girls, he’d call me ‘dyke’ or ‘lesbo.’ If I hung out with boys, he called me a ‘whore.’

In order to cope, she had to live a life she was not at all happy with: “It was easier at times to act as if I were promiscuous, pretending to be at ease sexually among boys even though I wasn’t. Promiscuity seemed to be the normal thing to me.”

Then there was the violence – violence especially between her dad and his many sexual partners. Of course with multiple partners, group sex and the like, there were bound to be rivalries, jealousies, hatred and arguing. This often spilled over into violent confrontations.

Worse yet, her dad would sometimes take her along when he went out cruising for anonymous sexual encounters. She saw how he would strike up lewd conversations with strangers, and then move off to have sex with them.  She would be left sitting by herself in these dens of iniquity.

Mention can also be made of the sexual abuse she had to endure as a young girl, along with that of her brother. This was a life no one should be forced to endure, but she did. But when adults become addicted to sexual promiscuity and perversions, it is often the children who pay the biggest price.

But her dad of course also paid the price for his sexual proclivities. He struggled with depression, was often quite suicidal, and took sleeping pills for many years. “He lived a tortured life. . . . Idle moments were to be avoided, as those were the times when feelings of hopelessness and emptiness would come flooding in. In a life lived as frenetically as his, reflection – leading perhaps to remorse or reform – just wasn’t a possibility.”

Then came all the physical diseases and sicknesses which are so closely attached to the homosexual lifestyle. But such conditions did not cause him to reconsider his unhealthy lifestyle – he simply got into it even further: “Dad threw himself into more and more risky sexual behaviors at an increased and even more frantic rate. As he tore his way through the gay bathhouses and racked up sexual partners beyond counting, he only seemed to become more belligerent and heedless of his impact on others.”

Indeed, such reckless and driven sexual behaviour and addiction seems par for the course. “The desperate strategy he employed to keep the grim reaper at bay had in fact put down the welcome mat, and was inviting the cowled gent into the darkest recesses of his bloodstream.”

In the end her father finally passed away from AIDS.

This nightmare experience which Stefanowicz had to go through for two decades left her reeling. She was bewildered, confused, and tormented by such an upbringing. But she has since known an incredible amount of healing and wholeness. And an amazing part of her story is how she now holds no bitterness or resentment against her father.

That she even made it through such a difficult and ugly upbringing tells us much about the author’s resilience and strength. Her life is now empowered by her Christian faith, and she has moved on, now being married with two children.

She has forgiven her father and now offers help for others who were also raised in such households. She travels extensively, sharing her moving story. It is an emotional and powerful story, and deserves a wide hearing. For those who cannot hear her speak in person, this book is just as helpful.

This is surely one of the most politically incorrect books available. It dares to tell the truth about a very sordid and disordered world, where the rights and wellbeing of children are completely overlooked, simply so that adult lusts can be gratified.

This book should be read by everyone, but especially by those politically correct politicians who are so intent on pushing the homosexual agenda onto the rest of society. If they actually took the time to read this powerful and vital story, they just might have second thoughts about what it is they are promoting.