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Derry City Council’s Hallowe’en carnival encourages Satanism and has brought a curse on the city, according to a Methodist minister – Rev Jonathan Campbell, from Newbuildings Independent Methodist Church

Spain’s Roman Catholic bishops have urged parents not to allow their children to dress up at Halloween labelling it an “occult and anti-Christian” custom.

Article from Mercator

What do Edward Cullen, Captain Jack Sparrow, Michael Jackson and Tinkerbell have in common? No, they aren’t all from films produced by the same Hollywood company. They are Halloween costumes being donned this year. If you are anywhere in the United States on October 31 you’re likely to see all four of them walking down the street together

Some 2,000 years ago the Celts, whose new year began on November 1, celebrated the festival of Samhain on the evening before. The ancient peoples believed the line between the living and dead blurred during the night allowing the spirits of the dead to temporarily return to earth.

In the seventh century Pope Boniface IV named November 1 All Saints’ Day, a day in which to honour saints and martyrs. “All Hallows”, many believe, was an attempt to move away from the pagan ritual started by the Celtic people and focus more on those who died after living a virtuous life. From that point the focus shifted to the religious feast of November 1 and the following All Souls Day — commemorations which helped believers consider their inevitable death and focus their lives on the things that truly mattered.

These days, however, Halloween in the US has evolved into a humungous celebration of what doesn’t matter at all: dressing up, collecting candy and pretending to be scared of ghosts. It is an all-but-official holiday in the US. Companies allow their employees to come to work in fancy dress, graveyards pop up overnight in people’s front yards, ghostly creatures lurk in windows and doorway and more than 105 million citizens participate in the activities that surround the holiday. There are haunted houses, scary movie marathons and costume parties.

Other nations might be a bit perplexed by all this hullabaloo over childish things. A government website attempts to explain it — 19th century Irish immigrants can take a lot of the blame, evidently — and make it respectable by noting that many kids collect money for UNICEF rather than treats for themselves. But thinking Americans will tend to find themselves in sympathy with The Onion, which laments the demise of belief in “real ghouls” warded off by animal sacrifice as “the reason for the season”. (Make sure you watch that video.)

The true reason for Halloween in its present incarnation is all too obvious. Retailers, even in this time of recession, see it as a boost to business. Candy hits store shelves in September. Costume retailers crop up suddenly in vacant buildings to disappear again at the start of November. This year alone $4.75 billion will be spent on Halloween-related merchandise, with the average person spending $56.31 on the day, according to National Retail Federation. Due to the tough economic times, this total is down from last year’s personal spending total of $66.54. Still the number has grown steadily over the years. In 2005 US consumers spent $3.29 billion on Halloween, proving the holiday has become more materialistic over the years.

Grade-school children have school parties in which they parade around in their hand-made or store-bought costumes. In the afternoon of October 31 they tick-or-treat, walking door-to-door to beg for candy. By the end of the night they’ve collected many pounds of goodies as well as stomach aches, sugar-highs and tooth cavities. Girls dress as princesses, witches and movie characters. Boys go around as pirates, Star Wars characters and superheros. For most of the 58 million kids who plan to dress up this year the day is all about the candy.

But it isn’t just those under the age of 12 who look forward to the event. Adults aged 18 to 34 account for a large part of the Halloween sales — nearly 50 per cent. According to the NRF more than 47 million US adults plan to don a costume this year.

Why? Because, it’s the ultimate day of escape from reality. Instead of admonishing people to consider their mortality, Halloween now touts the mantra: Go ahead be someone you’re not. So, suddenly, the good-natured grade school teacher heads out for the night dressed as a scantily-clad wench. The hard-working real estate broker and his marketing girlfriend go to a party as Adam and Eve – fig leaves included (thank goodness).

While every adult celebrating Halloween does not subscribe to the less-is-more motto when it comes to costumes, most do love the opportunity to be creative with their appearance. Some US fashion blogs offer do-it-yourself costume ideas, like the Mad Hatter. YouTube subscribers have uploaded a plethora of videos on how to apply makeup for any look including a Corpse Bride and Tinkerbell.

For 2009, the most popular adult costumes are indicative of major trends in US culture. Witches and vampires top the list; due in large part to the wildly popular Twilight series written by Stephenie Meyer, as well as the TV shows Vampire Diaries and True Blood. “Pop culture always influences Halloween costumes and it will be interesting to see how creative Americans can get this year,” says Tracy Mullin, NRF president and CEO. Michael Jackson outfits and Slumdog Millionaire-inspired costumes are also popular this year.

Incidentally, the nurse and politician costumes, which were big sellers in years past, aren’t topping any lists this year. “The departure of both nurses and politicians from the top costumes list could be an indication that Americans would like to shelve the health care reform debate – at least for one night – to have a little bipartisan fun,” Mullin says.

And with the costume comes the party. Some towns and colleges are known from coast to coast for hosting the most outrageous gatherings. For instance, University of Wisconsin at Madison students traditionally gathered on State Street every Halloween for a party that usually hit 100,000 attendees. As the parties year after year got out of hand, including the death of one man in 1983, broken windows and impromptu bonfires, university officials began fencing off the State Street area and charging admission in order to reduce and control the crowd. The party still packs the city street.

Attendees at the UW-Madison party are no different from the other party-revellers across the country. They are out looking for a good time; taking advantage of a few hours as a different persona to forget the stresses of life, the current economic crisis, the increasing unemployment rate and the dismal health care debate. If it makes them look like overgrown kids, what do they care?

Katie Hinderer is a US-based freelance journalist whose work has been published in the New York Times, RelateMag.com and GlobeSt.com among others. This Halloween she’ll be dressing as a cowgirl, boots and hat included.

Excellent and insightful analysis (as usual) from Professor Barry Rubin (Don’t forget to get over to his blog and sign up for his updates)

In 1945, George Orwell wrote a long article entitled “Antisemitism in Britain.” Like many other English writers, in his younger years Orwell had himself been an antisemite. In his novel on Burma, written in the 1920s, for example, he had written that the only ones who had profited from the British Empire had been Jews and Scotsmen, another group he disliked.

It is interesting to note that in his article for the Contemporary Jewish Record he doesn’t mention his own past antisemitism. Later, though, he regretted this and became a firm opponent of antisemitism, an issue he wrote about regularly in World War Two.

England was a strange mix of tolerance and intolerance in earlier years. Orwell wrote that all the Jews he knew when he was younger “were people who were ashamed of being Jews, or at any rate preferred not to talk about their ancestry.” While “The Jew who grew up in Whitechapel [a working class area] took it for granted that he would be assaulted” or at least insulted if he entered any Christian area. He notes also though, that things considered formerly acceptable in literature and elsewhere were no longer so.

Orwell noted that anti-Semitism had been driven underground by the war and that the authorities and media went out of their way to avoid offending Jews in order to establish their credentials as not being antisemites. He recounts how, for example, a man he knew as an antisemite and former fascist was eager to attend a ceremony in a synagogue on behalf of the Jews being persecuted in Poland.

Two-thirds of a century later, Orwell’s article has some interesting things to tell us in an era when antisemitism is reviving throughout the world. Sometimes, the word “Zionist” or “Israeli” is substituted for the word “Jew.” But the tip-off is that the accusations continue to be basically the same ones: allegedly hating and deliberately oppressing non-Jews, greed, conspiracy, mysterious power, irrational behavior, and the goal of world conquest.

The first point Orwell’s article reminds us of is that no Jew really has a good sense of the extent of antisemitism at any given place or time. This is so simply because anti-Semitic attitudes and remarks will or won’t be expressed mainly behind his back. My personal experience bears this out: overwhelmingly, the main expressions of antisemitism I experienced personally did not come from direct expressions but from words I overheard accidentally in nearby conversations or things non-Jewish friends told me about.

In this context, Orwell begins the article with seven cases of antisemitic thinking he witnessed personally during World War Two, coming from a wide variety of classes and educational levels of English people. They include: a desire to avoid Jews, Jews getting extra goods as merchants under rationing, Jews getting extra goods as customers, Jews as pushy and selfish, Jews as cowardly and greedy or as lazy and intellectual.

A second thread relevant to today in common among these anecdotes is that Jews are mainly responsible for their own sufferings. This ploy neatly ensures not only that mistreatment doesn’t matter but that it actually counts as proof of the Jews’ own misdeeds.

Another theme is the need of antisemitism to camouflage itself. Notes Orwell, “Above a certain intellectual level people are ashamed of being antisemitic and are careful to draw a distinction between `antisemitism’ and `disliking Jews.’” Today the same role is played by the effort to make a distinction between the systematic hatred and slander of Israel and its supporters, and antisemitism. There always has to be some rationale for why it is an acceptable slur or hatred.

Here, too, Orwell pointed out that this hatred is not easily combated. “To attempt to counter them with facts and statistics is useless.” He views antisemitism as an emotional choice not shaped by rationality. Of course, there might be more hope affecting those who are not so determined in their views.

Of special note is the coinciding of antisemitism with an era of history where a wider conflict focuses on an anti-Jewish aspect. He writes that World War Two “has encouraged the growth of antisemitism and even, in the eyes of many ordinary people, given some justification for it” because it can be portrayed as “a Jewish war.”

Today, too, there is a war that frightens many in the West that can be called a “Jewish war,” in that if it were not for Israel’s existence one might believe there wouldn’t be international terrorism or a threat from radical Islamism.

Conspiracy theories are also a mainstay of antisemitism. In 1942, for example, when a near-by bomb frightened people into a stampede near a London shelter and more than 100 people were killed, the rumor quickly spread that “the Jews were responsible.”

One thing that has changed generally is that in Orwell’s day most antisemitism was from the right–though he cites antisemitic statements from a Communist fellow traveler and a Labour party leader, too–in reaction to the perceived leftism of Jews:

“Antisemitism,” Orwell wrote, “is rationalized by saying that the Jew is a person who spreads disaffection and weakens national morale….There is some superficial justification for this….The disaffected intelligentsia inevitably included a large number of Jews. With some plausibility it can be said that the Jews are the enemies of our native culture and our national morale.”

Today, while this kind of thing still exists, the main thrust (certainly publicly) of antisemitism comes from the left. It is incontrovertible that antisemitism in the United Kingdom today is higher than at any point since World War Two began. Jews are targeted because of being allegedly too conservative, too religious, too nationalistic. If antisemitism isn’t now acceptable in much of British life it certainly is close, albeit with at times the word “Zionist” merely being substituted for “Jew.”

In a lot of English Jewish behavior and in American Jewish intellectual circles there is an obvious undercurrent of fear lest they be thought not sufficiently “progressive” and thus become or be seen as part of the old enemy on the right, either collectively or individually.

To assess this factor, in watching conservatives today I applied a test. How do they deal with the fact that so many Jews were on the left, among their greatest enemies? Would they again resort to antisemitic explanations?

To my relief, with few exceptions, they’ve largely adopted a different explanation: that the leftist Jews were not embodying the Jews true nature but were acting against their own people’s real interests. If they were traitors to anything, it was not to America or Britain but to their own people.

Antisemitism is still seen as a shameful thing and thus it must be disguised by rationalizations, which today focus on Israel and those who support it. At the same time, though, it draws on all the traditional images and themes and is much more common than is thought.

Orwell reminds us that things haven’t changed all that much. But perhaps it would be correct to say that they seemed to have changed for a long period after the fall of the Third Reich but that this era has proven merely temporary.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). To read and subscribe to MERIA, GLORIA articles, or to order books. To see or subscribe to his blog, Rubin Reports.

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Bishop Hind said he would be “happy” to be reordained as a Catholic priest and said that divisions in Anglicanism could make it impossible to stay in the church. He is the most senior Anglican to admit that he is prepared to accept the offer from the Pope.

About 500 members of Forward in Faith, the leading traditionalist grouping, will be in London to debate Pope Benedict XVI’s offer of an Anglican “ordinariate” or diocese to operate under a new Apostolic Constitution.

Two Bishops have called on Anglicans considering moving to Rome to consider their option before making a declaration on February 22.

A well-connected Rome source reports that Forward in Faith, the umbrella group for conservative Anglo-Catholics in the Church of England, is talking to the Vatican about corporate union

Article from Virtue Online

Members of the traditionalist Anglican group Forward in Faith recently concluded their annual gathering, which was dedicated to discussing Pope Benedict’s overture to Anglicans.

The general impression left by the conference was the “Anglican experiment is over,” a mood that was reinforced by Bishop John Hind officially announcing he is ready to become Catholic.

The 2009 National Assembly of Forward in Faith was held in the Emmanuel Centre, Westminster, London, October 23-24.

The Assembly was originally scheduled before the Vatican announced its unprecedented move, but the issue dominated most of the discussion.

Speaking to the press during the event, the Right Reverend John Hind, Anglican Bishop of Chichester, announced he is considering becoming a Roman Catholic.

Hind, the most senior traditionalist in the Church of England, told “The Telegraph” that he is willing to sacrifice his salary and palace residence to join the Catholic Church.

“This is a remarkable new step from the Vatican,” he said. “At long last there are some choices for Catholics in the Church of England. I’d be happy to be re-ordained into the Catholic Church.”

The bishop said that he expects his previous ministry will be recognized in the Catholic Church, but stressed that the divisions in the Anglican Communion could make it impossible to stay. “How can the Church exist if bishops are not in full communion with each other?” he asked.

During the conference, the Right Reverend John Broadhurst, who is the Anglican Bishop of Fulham and the Primate of Forward in Faith, affirmed that “the Anglican experiment is over.”

Bishop Broadhurst said that Pope Benedict has made his offer in response to the pleas of Anglicans who despair at the disintegration of their Church.

“Anglicanism has become a joke because it has singularly failed to deal with any of its contentious issues,” said the bishop.

“There is widespread dissent across the [Anglican] Communion. We are divided in major ways on major issues and the Communion has unraveled. I believed in the Church I joined, but it has been revealed to have no doctrine of its own. I personally think it has gone past the point of no return. The Anglican experiment is over.”

In an emotional closing speech on Saturday, Bishop Broadhurst used the metaphor of the frog and the boiling pot to describe the current Anglican status.

“The temperature at the pot has become intolerable, but the process of boiling started before the ordination of women… The truth is, the tragedy for us is the Church of England has presumed. It’s presumed to know better than the tradition on many matters and it’s presumed to know better than Jesus Christ about some matters,” he explained.

“And It is the presumption of our Church in this present period that has caused such pain and anguish to many of us.

“Oh yes, the ordination of women was the water being turned up; we knew that we were going to be cooked to death …

“And what the general (Anglican) Synod did, was to say, ‘We will push the pot towards the edge of the gas, as long as you stay on this side of the pot, with a few ice cubes, it’ll be all right,’” Bishop Broadhurst said.

Then he explained: “We’ve never claimed that Anglicanism is the Church of Jesus Christ, and we’ve always claimed and believed that there needs to be catholic unity.”

“This is about Anglicans in communion with Rome and not about Anglicans ceasing to be Roman Catholics,” he also said.

The Right Reverend Martyn Jarrett, Anglican Bishop of Beverley, also insisted on the fact that “there are questions over the church’s survival,” explaining that the Church of England has changed too dramatically for some traditionalists.

“The offer from the Vatican is momentous and I felt a great sense of gratitude that the Roman Catholic Church is thinking about the position of traditionalist Anglicans,” he added.

Another participant at the “Forward in Faith” conference, Fr. Edward Tomlinson, Anglican Vicar of St. Barnabas, said that he would be following the lead of Bishop Hind.

“The ship of Anglicanism seems to be going down… We should be grateful that a lifeboat has been sent. I shall be seeking to move to Rome. To stay in the Church of England would be suicide,” Fr. Tomlinson said.

Forward in Faith is a worldwide association of close to 1,000 clergy and thousands of lay Anglicans founded in 1992 in opposition to the ordination of women as priests or as bishops, and most recently, to the ordination of active homosexuals.

The association says that it finds such practices not only “contrary to the Scriptures as they have been consistently interpreted by the two thousand year tradition of the churches of both East and West,” but also as a “new and serious obstacle in the way of reconciliation and full visible unity between Anglicans and the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches.”

I thought this to be an interesting article. If we as Christians are to ‘go’ to where folks ‘are at’, then it would seem prudent to go online. I saw a recent study (can’t remember the source) that stated that our younger generation is more likely to go online than switch on the TV now.

Christian forums seem to me to be the fasted growing ‘virtual churches’ and the irony is that you can end up knowing the folks on the forum better than the folks in your own ‘brick n mortar’ church, largely because you spend more conversation time with the folks online. There is something to be said for the mystery of Christians being together in spirit, even though not physically together. The written word has always traditionally been a major means of communication between Christians (geographically and through time) and let’s face it, even God Himself works through the written word.

I’m not saying that Christians should ‘forsake the gathering together of themselves’, but I believe that for good or for bad, the virtual church is on the up and up. I personally spent time with lovely Christians that I met on a Christian forum and I pretty much knew them even before I met them physically.

There is of course dangers in the virtual church. Internet trolls being one and of course other ‘Christians’. In the virtual world folks can be emboldened to be nastier than they otherwise would be in the flesh, but on the flip side, the anonymity can also give rise to an opportunity for honesty and dispense with the need for the ‘holier than thou’ mask that seems so necessary at times in the physical church.

I know some Christians that run a website for Christians with mental health issues, which is something usually very misunderstood and badly handled in the physical church. As part of the website they have a forum for Christian folks to gather together with others for whom mental health impacts their lives. This has provided a welcome sanctuary for these folks to meet with and chat to others who understand. The virtual church can indeed provide a welcome relief for those who do have problems attending church, or are generally misunderstood and sidelined by the church.

Like most things in this world, new developments can be a blessing or a curse, depending on who uses them and how they are used.

By Lillian Kwon | Christian Post Reporter

Brick-and-Mortar Pastor Defends Virtual Church as Real

The Christian church is engaging far less than 1 percent of the 70 million people who are active in the virtual world. This means the virtual world is by far the largest unreached people group on planet Earth, says one pastor.

Douglas Estes, a pastor from San Jose, Calif., has no vested interest in virtual or internet churches – a relatively new phenomenon – but given the large “unreached” population on the internet, he says he has a desire to see healthy churches proliferate “regardless of context.”

Although he leads a brick and mortar church (Berryessa Valley Church), Estes defends virtual churches against critics in his newly released book, SimChurch: Being the Church in the Virtual World, maintaining that they are real churches with real people.

He summed up his argument in a recent post on Christianity Today’s Out of Ur blog: “People are led to believe that members of online churches all connect to their video-game church as anonymous zombies in a Tron-like world. Supposedly these virtual (fake) Christians never really know each other, it’s all a facade, and that this is the sum and total of a virtual church.

“The real truth is that every virtual church I’ve ever attended has flesh-and-blood people in virtual (real!) community with other flesh-and-blood people whose primary meeting place is in synthetic space.”

In recent years, Christians have begun to take on the internet by building church communities in virtual worlds like Second Life and The Sims and launching internet campuses where anyone from around the world can join weekend worship services live on the Web. The growth of virtual worshipping communities, however, has sparked debates on whether such churches are effective and biblical.

A major argument against internet churches is that they lack physical contact, Estes pointed out. But that same argument could be made against megachurches and any other church, for that matter, where people never really touch or come to know each other, he argued.

Virtual churches, critics say, also don’t have real community.

Estes, however, pushed back by pointing out that church isn’t about where it meets. “Isn’t church supposed to be about people in communion with God rather than the building? … Since when does the location of a church determine the quality of its community?”

“Virtual churches may meet for services in the virtual world, but they are not the one-dimensional illusion that critics like to easily prop up so as to knock down for their friends to applaud,” he maintained. “And here’s the irony: Even as virtual churches seek to create community in both virtual and physical space, so too do their critics use virtual space when it is convenient for them in their brick and mortar ministries.”

Bob Hyatt, pastor of the Evergreen Community in Portland, Ore., didn’t buy Estes’ argument.

He stressed, “It’s not where we meet, but that we meet,” according to his post on Out of Ur.

“And whether people are actually meeting together – that is, whether you and me watching the same video stream, silently reading the comments in the chat room as we sip our individual portions of grape juice and eat crackers, rises to the level of ‘ecclesia’ and the picture of Acts 2:42 – has yet to be determined.

“In other words, I have yet to be convinced that simultaneity equals community,” Hyatt stated.

Hyatt has major concerns over the threat virtual churches or video venues represent to the overall “maturity of the Body of Christ.” A virtual church, he contended, fails to engage in discipleship and leadership formation as well as church discipline.

“The worship, equipping, and discipling ministries of the church simply can’t take place through the internet. Pieces of them can, but eventually the jump has to be made,” he said. “A truly biblical Church requires that we heed the biblical call of Hebrews 10 to not give up gathering together and being present to one another in real, actual life.”

For Estes, as long as the people of God are meeting together for the purpose of glorifying Him, it’s a real church. And in the end, he believes a local church could not really reach the whole world. Virtual churches, however, will have that kind of reach, he says in his book.

Notably, Estes doesn’t believe virtual churches will or should replace real-world churches. Both accomplish ministry objectives that the other cannot. But he hopes that in the future, real-world churches will adopt more virtual elements and virtual churches will create real-world ministry teams to reach people in the real world and in the virtual world. Moreover, he hopes people will view virtual churches not as a form of church different from real-world ones, but see both as just churches.

It would appear that the Pope is holding out the hand of unity globally (Anglicans, Orthodox and now Armenians). As I have stated before, I believe this Pope is rightly theologically driven by the prayers of Jesus at the last supper, wherein he prayed that all believers may be one and in unity.

Pope to Armenian Patriarch: May We Grow in Unity

By Mirko Testa

VATICAN CITY, OCT. 27, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Relations between the Catholic Church and the Armenian Apostolic Church are enjoying a fruitful stage, and Benedict XVI is hoping the two churches will continue to grow in unity.

The Pope wrote this in a message sent to Karekin II, Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of his election.

In his message, the Holy Father thanked Karekin II for his “personal commitment to dialogue, cooperation and friendship between the Armenian Apostolic Church and the Catholic Church. I pray that the good relations that have been established between us may continue to grow in the years ahead.”

“The recovery of liberty of the Church in Armenia at the end of the last century brought joy to all Christians worldwide,” wrote the Pope, recalling also that “the immense task of reconstruction of the ecclesial community fell on the shoulders of your Holiness.”

From 1915 to 1922, the Young Turks — an ultra-nationalist secular movement that took power in Turkey — exterminated Armenian Christians for ethnic and religious reasons. Of a population of some 2.6 million Armenians in the then dying Ottoman Empire, almost 1.5 million were killed.

In his message, the Pope expresses his joy over “the flowering of new initiatives for the Christian education of young people, the formation of the clergy, the creation of new parishes, the construction of new churches and community centers, as well as the promotion of Christian values in the social and cultural life of the nation.”

Benedict XVI concluded the message with a prayer: “That we may be ever more closely united in the sacred bond of Christian faith, hope and love.”

The Armenian Apostolic Church is one of six ancient Oriental Orthodox Churches. The other churches include the Orthodox Coptic Patriarchate of Egypt, the Syro-Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch, the Orthodox Church of Ethiopia, the Orthodox Church of Eritrea, and the Syro-Orthodox Church of Malankar.

These Churches separated from Rome after the Fourth Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon in 451, over controversy arising from the council’s adoption of the Christological terminology of two natures in one person.

A decisive step to overcome this division was taken in 1996, when Pope John Paul II and Patriarch Karekin I signed a joint declaration to dissipate “many of the misunderstandings inherited from the controversies and disagreements of the past.”

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A pro-life – The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) – group is challenging Northern Ireland’s Government guidelines on abortion at the High Court in an attempt to quash the Government’s current advice which was published in March 2009.

Pro-life campaigners in Northern Ireland are perplexed at the reappearance and acceptance of abortion guidelines from the UK government that were rejected by the Northern Ireland Assembly in 2007 for being contrary to the province’s unborn child protection laws.Both the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) and the Belfast-based Precious Life have objected.

BELFAST, October 28, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Recently issued physicians’ guidelines from the UK’s Department of Health ignore the fact that abortion is illegal in Northern Ireland and presume that abortion is a legitimate form of healthcare for women say pro-life campaigners, who are in court today arguing their side of the issue.

The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) is in the second day of a judicial review, where they are making the case that the “guidance effectively turns the law on its head.”

SPUC’s Liam Gibson spoke to LSN minutes before going into court in Belfast today. He said that SPUC is making the case that the guidelines have ignored the law in Northern Ireland and will put pressure on doctors and health trusts to “put in place procedures which will facilitate abortion.” SPUC and other pro-life campaigners in Ireland say that the guidelines effectively knock down existing legal protections for the unborn and are a threat to the pro-life laws in the Republic of Ireland as well.

These guidelines, issued in March, “mislead people to think that abortion is much more available than it is,” Gibson said.

The wording of the guidelines says that abortions can be committed either to “preserve the life of the woman,” or if continuing a pregnancy will impose “a risk of real and serious adverse effect on her physical or mental health which is either long-term or permanent.”

SPUC argues, however, that the guidelines should have started from the position of the existing law, which protect unborn children in Northern Ireland. Instead, the guidelines assume that abortion can be seen as “life-saving treatment” for women, Gibson said, and will result in “mechanisms being put in place to allow abortions to be done as a matter of course.”

“To include abortion services as lifesaving treatment is to ignore the rights of the unborn child,” he said.

The Department of Health representative has already stated in court that under the UK’s laws, “unborn children have no rights.” But this is not so, says SPUC.

Two statutes still in full effect in Northern Ireland provide legal protections for unborn children: the 1861 Offenses Against the Person Act, and the Criminal Justice Northern Ireland Act of 1945, “the relevant sections of which have no other purpose except to protect the unborn child,” Gibson said. In addition, “abortion has been an offense under the Common Law for centuries.”

SPUC is also concerned about the lack of provision in the guidelines for informed consent, saying that doctors are not being given information as to what they are to tell women who come to them seeking abortions. It provides, they argue, no advice to doctors about the risks and possible consequences of abortion.

SPUC is hopeful of a positive outcome. In yesterday’s hearing, Gibson said, the judge made “one or two points” in addition to those brought forward by SPUC, “which make it clear that he has some concerns” about the guidelines under the existing law.

In the end, he said, “the question of whether the guidance is so faulty as to be unlawful, will be the judge’s decision. But given a reasonable hearing, we believe that most people would believe that the guidance is inadequate and should be replaced.”

Ulm, Germany (ENI). Bishop Margot Kässmann, the first woman to lead the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), has pledged to work to promote relations with other Christian denominations, something that originally inspired her in her church work.

“There is more that unites us than divides us,” Kässmann told a media conference following her 28 October election as chairperson of the EKD’s council, the main governing body of the country’s biggest Protestant grouping.

The 51-year-old bishop of Hanover said also that she would continue a reform process to strengthen the EKD, which is made up of 22 largely independent regional Lutheran, Reformed and United churches in Germany.

“And, lastly, although we are not politicians, I will get involved in political and ethical debates as I have done before,” said the bishop known for forthright and outspoken opinions.

Kässmann was elected during a 25-29 October meeting of the EKD’s highest governing body, its synod, in Ulm in southern Germany. She received 132 of the possible 142 votes.

As a 25-year-old youth delegate to the 1983 assembly of the World Council of Churches, in Vancouver, Canada, Kässmann was elected to the central committee of the Geneva-based church grouping, a position she held for 19 years.

In answer to a question from Ecumenical News International, Kässmann said that under her leadership the EKD would continue to be involved in ecumenical issues worldwide.

“Ecumenical dialogue widens one’s horizon. The Church is a world church,” she stated.

Kässmann, however, defended her decision to resign from the WCC’s main governing body in 2002 after a commission on the participation of Orthodox churches recommended against having “ecumenical worship” at WCC events.

Explaining her decision at the time, Kässmann said that ecumenical worship services are “at the heart of the world council”.

Kässmann, who is divorced, is the youngest-ever chairperson of the EKD council, and is the successor of Bishop Wolfgang Huber, who is retiring at the age of 67.

She praised Huber saying he, “like no chairperson before him, became the face of Protestant Germany”.

The election of Kässmann means that for the first time the two senior posts in the EKD – chairperson of the council and president of the synod – are held by women. The president of the EKD synod is a Green Party politician, Katrin Göring-Eckardt.

Noting the swearing in on the same day as her election of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the daughter of a Lutheran pastor, to a second term in office, Kässmann said, “Today is a good day for Protestant women in Germany.”

The chairperson of the EKD is elected from among the 15 members of the council.

When the candidates for the council introduced themselves on 25 October, Kässmann spoke of the joy of being able to combine motherhood and a profession, and raise four daughters. However, she said she had with sadness realised, “that for me a life-long marriage was not a gift”. Kässmann received a standing ovation lasting five minutes.

She had announced in June 2007 that she was divorcing, 10 months after she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. In a recent book, Kässmann has written of how she experienced sympathy and support in her fight against breast cancer, while her announcement that she was getting divorced from her husband of 26 years, also a pastor, set off an avalanche of hate letters, mostly anonymous.

The chairperson of the (Roman Catholic) German Bishops’ Conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, congratulated Kässmann on her election.

“Our path as Christians is the path of ecumenism. It is a path that we have to go along together and as equals. That is what Christians in Germany expect from us,” Zollitsch wrote in a letter to Kässmann.

Of Germany’s 82 million people, about 24.8 million are Protestants and about 25.5 million Catholics.

Kässmann has been bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hanover since 1999, and will continue in this position while also heading the EKD.

The Rev. Ishmael Noko, general secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, to which the Hanover church belongs, praised Kässmann’s election.

“The election sends a signal to the church worldwide that God calls us to leadership without consideration of gender, colour or descent,” Noko, a Zimbabwean theologian, told Ecumenical News International.

In a letter to Kässmann, Archdeacon Colin Williams, general secretary of the Conference of European Churches, said, “In your public ministry over the last decades, you have demonstrated your own commitment to the ecumenical vision, and not least through your consistent support for the … priorities of justice, peace and integrity of creation.”

Kässmann is a former member of CEC’s central committee.

She has frequently spoken on the relationship between the church and media and she is a former moderator of the first governing board of Ecumenical News International.

Kässmann studied in Tübingen, Edinburgh in Scotland, as well as in Göttingen and Marburg, where she received a doctorate.

This article from the Catholic League bemoans the media coverage of Richard Dawkins comments on the Catholic Church. They are not the first to do so. Ed West over at the Telegraph has already commented on this, in his own frank way, which always makes me smile:-

You’ve got to love Ed West, he really says it as it is and calls a spade a spade, I wish we had more of it in the Christian world

Article from the www.catholicleague.org

‘These deranged comments — all voiced in America’s premier newspapers — demonstrate that anti-Catholicism is the most virulent expression of bigotry in the U.S.’

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments as follows:

“Last Friday on the Washington Post blog, “On Faith,” English atheist Richard Dawkins said the Catholic Church was “surely up there among the leaders” as “the greatest force for evil in the world.”

“He labeled the Eucharist a “cannibal feast,” adding that “possession of testicles is an essential qualification to perform the rite.” He also blamed the Church for sending missionaries “out to tell deliberate lies to AIDS-weakened Africans” regarding condoms.

“The Church’s outreach to Anglicans, he said, makes it “a common pimp,” noting that those who convert “will be joining an institution where buggering altar boys pervades the culture.”

“On Saturday, a Los Angeles Times editorial said that “church leaders, including popes, have changed their thinking over the years about everything from usury to the culpability of Jews for the Crucifixion….”

“It concluded, “You don’t have to be Catholic (or Anglican) to realize that society as a whole would be better off if the church’s views of women and gays underwent a similar evolution.”

“On Sunday, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd recalled that when she was in grade school, “Nuns were second-class citizens then and–40 years after feminism utterly changed America—they still are.”

“She called Pope Benedict XVI the “uber-conservative pope,” a.k.a. “God’s Rottweiler,” who was once “a conscripted member of the Hitler Youth.” She also accused the Church of enabling “rampant pedophilia.”

“On Monday, James Carroll in the Boston Globe called the outreach to Anglicans “a cruel assault,” “an insult to loyal Catholic liberals” and “a slap at women and homosexuals.” He characterized the outreach as a “preemptive exploitation of Anglican distress.”

“These deranged comments—all voiced in America’s premier newspapers—demonstrate that anti-Catholicism is the most virulent expression of bigotry in the U.S. It also shows why these newspapers, quite unlike the Catholic Church, are dying. As for the writers, they need to go to church.

“Either that or check into an asylum.”

Do you think that perhaps the Christian world may be getting a little fed up with Richard Dawkins and his disciples?

by Tom Strode

WASHINGTON (BP)–The homosexual movement gained a barrier-breaking victory Oct. 28 when President Obama signed into law a measure extending hate-crimes protections to homosexuals and transgender people.

The president’s signature on the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act put into effect not only an annual bill for the U.S. military but enshrined into federal law the most significant legislative advance to date for homosexual activists. The Human Rights Campaign, America’s largest homosexual organization, had described the measure as the country’s “first major piece of civil rights legislation for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.”

Obama reserved his remarks at the White House signing ceremony primarily for the focus of the bill, the Department of Defense’s reauthorization. He commented only at the end on the hate-crimes provision. The president called that portion of the legislation a “long-awaited change” intended “to help protect our citizens from violence based on what they look like, who they love, how they pray or who they are.”

The president, however, also was to speak at a special White House commemoration of the hate-crimes expansion later in the day.

The hate-crimes language in the new law adds “sexual orientation” and “gender identity,” as well as disability, to the current categories — such as race, religion and gender — protected from hate crimes. “Sexual orientation” includes homosexuality and bisexuality, while “gender identity,” or transgendered status, takes in transsexuals and cross-dressers.

Advocates of freedom of religion and of speech, as well as of the biblical view of sexuality, expressed dismay at the development, even though they oppose violence against homosexuals. They fear the measure, combined with existing law, could expose to prosecution Christians and others who proclaim the Bible’s teaching that homosexual behavior is sinful. For example, if a person commits a violent act based on a victim’s “sexual orientation” after hearing biblical teaching on the sinfulness of homosexual behavior, the preacher or teacher could be open to a charge of inducing the person to commit the crime, some foes say.

“I am disappointed that President Obama has signed the hate-crimes bill into law, but I am not surprised,” said Barrett Duke, vice president for public policy of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. “The president has been clear, even before he was elected, that he intends to champion the homosexual agenda. This is merely one of a number of steps he will take in fulfilling that commitment.

“It is my prayer that people of faith will not be deterred from sharing God’s truth about homosexuality because of this law,” Duke told Baptist Press. “Our nation needs that truth now more than ever.”

The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), an alliance of Christian lawyers who seek to protect religious liberty, said the hate-crimes expansion “is another nail in the coffin for the First Amendment.”

“All violent crimes are hate crimes, and all crime victims deserve equal justice,” ADF Senior Legal Counsel Erik Stanley said in a written statement. “This law is a grave threat to the First Amendment because it provides special penalties based on what people think, feel, or believe.

“Bills of this sort are designed to forward a political agenda and silence critics, not combat actual crime,” Stanley said. “The bottom line is that we do not need a law that creates second-class victims in America and that gives the government the opportunity to ignore the First Amendment.”

The final version of the bill approved by the Senate and House included language designed to protect freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion, but at least some religious liberties organizations do not consider the protections adequate.

Obama signed the bill six days after the Senate voted 68-29 for the overall defense measure, which was used as a vehicle for the hate-crimes legislation even though it is not directly related to the controversial provision. The House of Representatives voted 281-146 on Oct. 8 for the same defense bill.

The House voted 249-175 in April for hate-crimes expansion as a stand-alone bill. The Senate approved similar hate-crimes language as part of the defense authorization bill in July. The different versions of the defense legislation went to a conference committee made up of members of both chambers selected to negotiate a compromise. That committee reported the bill out with the hate-crimes language included.

According to the hate-crimes language in the bill, it “applies to violent acts motivated by actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of a victim.”

Under the provision in the defense bill, people convicted of a hate crime would be subject to more prison time and penalties than people who commit a crime that falls outside the class of hate crimes.

The law authorizes the attorney general to provide assistance to state and local officials in the investigation and prosecution of hate crimes.

Tom Strode is Washington bureau chief of Baptist Press. With reporting by Michael Foust, assistant editor of Baptist Press.

Previous posts

Gay hate crimes bill and the assault on evangelical belief

The U.S. Senate sent a landmark bill Tuesday to President Obama that includes hate-crimes protections for homosexuals which critics say will infringe on the religious liberty of pastors and other faith leaders.

Supporters and opponents of legislation that will expand hate-crimes protections to homosexuals continue to wait on a Senate vote on a defense authorization bill that includes the controversial measure.

Despite objections that it would infringe on the religious liberty of pastors and other faith leaders, the U.S. House Thursday passed a defense bill that includes historic hate crimes protections for homosexuals.

FURTHER INTERNET LINKS

The expanded hate crime legislation extends special protection to victims of crime who are targeted by perpetrators based on an actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.

President Obama Signs “Hate Crimes” Bill into Law

Hate crimes case in Britain should signal a warning to Christians in America

Pauline Howe, a 67-year-old grandmother, was questioned by police after council officials decided that her complaint about a gay pride march amounted to a “hate incident”.

Obama Signs Hate Crimes Bill into Law

President Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act into law this afternoon in the East Room of the White House. The law, which secured passage by being attached to a military spending bill, is being flagged by Christians as a possible vehicle for preventing them from teaching against homosexuality.

Hate Crimes Laws Encourage Anti-Christian Bigotry

I love reports like this, the church in action, putting its money where its mouth is. This reminds me of the Peachtree Presbyterian Church who made a public statement that they would care for any newborn baby that a mother brought to them rather than have an abortion…..amazing!

A Dallas, Texas pastor is frustrated with the growing number of couples living together outside of marriage. So he decided to make a difference.

“It’s as if no one wants to get married anymore,” said Pastor Bryan Carter. “They want to enjoy all the benefits of marriage without the commitment.”

Pastor Carter offered to marry for free any unwed couple who was living together. The church took care of every detail, down to the donated dresses and rings.

Eighteen couples participated, but the couple that stole the show was a pair of widowers in their 70s.

“Our relationship became more intimate,” groom James Norris said. “And we decided to do what was right – to get married.”