Orthodox Christians in Serbia and Macedonia continue to observe the old, Julian calendar dates for their Christmas celebrations, with Christmas Eve falling on Wednesday, January 6. They are not alone in this: other countries who cling to the old tradition include Georgia, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, Russia and Ukraine.
Merry Christmas.
I have been asked if I would post something about an upcoming debate relating to the issue of the existence of Bishops within the House of Lords, so I thought, why not.
The event is being held at the Houses of Parliament at 7.30pm on 27th January and click this link if you want tickets or further info:-
Tickets are free and open to the public.
Arguing that Bishops should be evicted from the House of Lords is Polly Toynbee, President of the British Humanist Association; and unbelievably (or not) supporting the humanist position is Jonathan Bartley, Co-director, Ekklesia (That’s the cue to boo and hiss).
Arguing that Bishops should remain in the House of Lords is The Rt Revd Tim Stevens, Bishop of Leicester and Convenor of the Lords Spiritual; and Rt Hon Baroness Elizabeth Butler-Sloss.
Now judging by the name of the website (“Evict the Bishops”) and the fact that this is being hosted by Labour Humanists, I think I can tell which way this debate is leaning already, oh and of course the fact that Jonathan Bartley is a debator is quite revealing, as he is very prolific at attacking Christianity from within.
Here is a little snippet from the website to give you a taster:-
The UK is the only Western democracy that has clerics in its parliament as of right. With reform of the House of Lords currently a hot topic, Labour Humanists are hosting an open debate on whether it is time to evict the ”Lords Spiritual.”
Is their presence in the House of Lords unsupportable in a country where less than half of the people belong to Christianity, far less, the Church of England? Those opposed would point out these clerics are all men, they are unrepresentative and – despite their claims – they have no special insight or universally accepted morality to bring to the debate. They also point out that this is unfair on those of other faiths, and those of no faith. If we are to have religious leaders in our legislature, then should we not also have Islamic, Jewish, Sikh and Scientologist leaders in there too, by right?
Yet their supporters would say that as non-aligned members, their activities in the Upper House are not subject to a whip, and can be a force for good. Their presence in the Lords, supporters claim, is an extension of their general vocation as bishops to preach God’s word and to lead people in prayer. Bishops provide an important independent voice, and spiritual insight to the work of the Upper House; and are a voice for all people of faith, not just Christians.
Join us for a vigourous debate!
Should be an interesting one as long as this debate attracts enough attention and support from folks who agree with Bishops remaining in the House of Lords.
Excellent report from OpenDoorsUSA on global persecution of Christians, broken down into country rank. The report is on this link:-
The World Watch List (WWL) is a ranking of 50 countries where persecution of Christians for religious reasons is worst. First of all, the list covers persecution of Christians of all denominations in the entire country. The focus is on persecution for the faith, not persecution for political, economic, social, ethnic or accidental reasons.
The top 10 countries were:
1. North Korea
2. Iran
3. Saudi Arabia
4. Somalia
5. Maldives
6. Afghanistan
7. Yemen
8. Mauritania
9. Laos
10. Uzbekistan
Iran has overtaken Saudi, not because anything improved for Christians in Saudi, but simply because Iran grew worse in 2009.
Palestinian Christian groups are boycotting celebrations of Orthodox Christmas in Bethlehem, accusing their Church of selling land to Israelis.
At least 100 protesters gathered with banners saying: “The Holy Land is not for sale,” ahead of festivities to mark Christmas Eve for the Orthodox Church.
They accuse the Greek Orthodox Church of selling and leasing land in the West Bank to Israeli organisations.
The Church said it would not comment, on such a festive occasion.
The Council of Arab Orthodox Institutions and Organisations in Palestine said the current patriarch, Theophilos III, had continued to allow Israeli investors to lease Church land in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The area was occupied by Israel during the 1967 Israeli-Arab war, and is where the Palestinians want their future state.
Riot gear
The Christian groups mentioned one specific strategic piece of land, in the Bethlehem area, near the Israeli settlement of Har Homa, but said it was part of a wider pattern of deals set up under the previous patriarch.
Patriarch Irineos was ousted in 2005 over his alleged involvement in the leasing of Church land in Jerusalem’s heavily contested Old City to Jewish investors.
There were remarkable scenes as the current patriarch arrived escorted by Palestinian security guards clad in riot gear, reports the BBC’s Jon Donnison in Bethlehem.
The Scout groups’ marching bands who would usually welcome the patriarch with bagpipes were silent as the church leader arrived.
Reprisal attacks
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who would also usually be present, is travelling overseas and it is unclear whether he is officially boycotting the event.
Palestinian owners of land in the West Bank, particularly in East Jerusalem where the Palestinians want their future capital, are often offered large sums of money to sell to organisations seeking to expand the Jewish presence in the area.
Palestinians who sell are at risk of reprisal attacks.
About 500,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, in settlements illegal under international law.
Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, who has served as Archbishop of Prague since 1991, has warned in an interview that “if Europe doesn’t change its relation to its own roots, it will be Islamized.”
“Europe has denied its Christian roots from which it has risen and which could give it the strength to fend off the danger that it will be conquered by Muslims– which is actually happening gradually,” he said. Muslims “easily fill the vacant space created as Europeans systematically empty the Christian content of their lives.”
“At the end of the Middle Ages and in the early modern age, Islam failed to conquer Europe with arms. The Christians beat them then,” he added. “Today, when the fighting is done with spiritual weapons which Europe lacks while Muslims are perfectly armed, the fall of Europe is looming.”
Denouncing Europe’s “pagan environment” and “atheistic style of life,” Cardinal Vlk said that “Neither the free market nor freedom without responsibility is strong enough to form the basis of society. Not even democracy alone is a panacea unless it is embedded in God.”
The Czech press is speculating that Pope Benedict will name a successor to the 77-year-old cardinal within days.
Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.
Check out a very helpful translation of part of the interview with the Czech cardinal by Lubos:-
http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/01/czech-catholic-boss-why-europe-is.html
This is the main BBC article on this:-
And this is an article by Damian Thompson over at the Telegraph, who is obviously well pleased with Lord Carey:-
Lord Carey of Clifton has proved himself to be a brave man today. The former Archbishop of Canterbury has signed a statement by the cross-party group on balanced migration which declares that “70 million is too many”. In other words, he is calling for urgent measures to limit immigration so the British population does not reach that figure in 2029, which is what will happen unless we tighten our borders.
The declaration, put together by Labour’s Frank Field and the Tories’ Nicholas Soames, is also signed by that champion of robust common sense Baroness Boothroyd, former Speaker of the House of Commons. But the number of MPs from both sides of the House who have signed it is minuscule – a testament to their cowardice, since scores of them privately endorse every word in the declaration.
Good old George Carey! I never thought I’d write those words, since he talked so much nonsense when he was in office, but in recent years his contacts with the evangelical world have opened his eyes to the shared anti-Christian agenda of multiculturalists and Muslims.
None of his fellow bishops has signed the document, which says:
We are gravely concerned about the rapid increase in the population of England that is now forecast. We note that the official projections show the population of the UK will increase from 61.4 million in 2008 to exceed 70 million by 2029. Over the next 25 years the population will increase by 10 million, nearly all of the increase being in England. 70% – 7 million – will be due to immigration. We believe that immigration on such a scale will have a significant impact on our public services, our quality of life and on the nature of our society.
Carey, like many of the other signatories, has a long track record of fighting racism. And that is precisely why he has signed this document: because he believes that unchecked immigration will hand votes to the Far Right. As it says:
We are convinced that failure to take action would be seriously damaging to the future harmony of our society. Nearly a million votes by our fellow citizens for an extremist party amount to a danger sign which must not be ignored. For too long the major political parties have failed to address these issues and the intense, if largely private, concern that they generate throughout our country. If politicians want to rebuild the public’s trust in the political system, they cannot continue to ignore this issue which matters so much to so many people.
I’ll be fascinated to see how Anglican and Catholic bishops react to the former Primate’s support for this initiative. I suspect that one or two bishops in the Lords agree with Carey; they are just too gutless to say so. But most churchmen, including Dr Rowan Williams, subscribe to the unthinking consensus that “Gospel values” require virtually open borders, whatever the consequences. (One of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor’s silliest mistakes was to associate himself with a Left-wing initiative called Strangers into Citizens that proposed an amnesty for illegal immigrants; I think he was talked into it by over-zealous staff, but it still made him look naive.)
Anyway, the point is that never again will Anglican clerics be able to say that calling for urgent measures to call immigration is racist by definition, because they’ll be calling the Rt Rev and Rt Hon Lord Carey a racist. Which he most certainly is not.
How many church warden’s will be jumping up and down for joy at this news. A legitimate excuse not to have to mow that wretched churchyard this coming year. I have been trying to persuade my wife for years that I shouldn’t mow the garden and have a ‘natural’ space, full of lovely biodiversity. 
How wild is your churchyard?
Manage, don’t mow your churchyard and give space to endangered plant species. That is the message from the CofE’s national environmental campaign Shrinking the Footprint which has signed up to the United Nations’ International Year of Biodiversity (IYB).
The CofE is one of 300 UK partners who have joined the global campaign involving almost 1000 organisations celebrating “the variety of life on Earth ….essential for sustaining the natural living systems or ecosystems that provide us with food, fuel, health, wealth, and other vital services.”
An estimated two thirds of the CofE’s 16,000 churches (around 10,000) have churchyards which collectively cover the area of a small National Park. Around 6,000 of these are already contributing to the biodiversity of the country – both in rural and urban areas –while remaining respectful to its users particularly family and friends of those buried there.
David Shreeve the CofE’s National Environment Adviser said: “Churchyards can be a vital biodiversity resource often containing a variety of wildlife which are unique to the area. But many manage their land in such a way to celebrate the diversity of life. Whilst there are areas needing to be mown, many churchyards can also be managed to provide excellent wildlife areas. Advice is available from many local wildlife trusts and nationally from Caring for God’s Acre.”
In St Albans diocese, St Peter & St Paul with St Andrew Flitwick Bedfordshire has recorded more than 100 species of wildflowers in the churchyard. All Saints, Odell also in Bedfordshire has won an award from the Campaign to Protect Rural England as an example of what churchyards can do with its community-led conservation project, including ‘adopt a grave’.
St Andrew’s Fulham Fields in London diocese has a dedicated section to its churchyard called the Fulham Fields wildlife garden where most of the hardware, including material for the “wildlife tower”, and the herbaceous plants, have been either donated or found locally.
Judith Evans promoter of the Living Churchyard scheme for St Albans said: “Churchyards are a precious resource which can make a huge contribution to the biodiversity of the country and at the same time engage and educate the wider community. They often support species of plants and animals which have disappeared from the surrounding area, or are capable of so doing. Many churches in the diocese and nationally are managing their churchyards in an environmentally-friendly way, often with the help of their local wildlife trusts, but they are still in the minority. In the International Year of Biodiversity we hope to make them the majority to demonstrate that the church really cares about God’s creation.”
A car bomb exploded Tuesday near a northern Iraqi church, injuring a dozen people.
In the mostly Christian town of Bartilla, about 28 miles north of Mosul, a car bomb exploded at about 12 p.m., according to the Assyrian International News Agency. The blast occurred near St. George Church, which is in the same town as the church that was attacked on Christmas morning by a minority ethnic group called Shabak.
A dozen people were reportedly injured in the latest attack, with five having been hospitalized.
The explosion also damaged dozens of homes and shops.
Less than two weeks ago, Shabak Shiites attacked the Assyrian Christian town after the group took over the entry checkpoint. Witnesses said the assailants harassed a Christian procession headed toward St Mary Church in Bartilla on Christmas morning by throwing rocks at participants.
Around 100 armed Shabaks later tried to enter St. Mary Church but church guards reportedly blocked them from entering, leading to a conflict and an exchange of gunfire that left four Christians wounded.
The recent attacks in Bartilla also followed a church bombing at St. Thomas Church in Mosul on Dec. 23 that killed two men and wounded five others.
Since 2003, more than 200 Christians have been killed in Iraq, and since June 2004, some 65 churches have been attacked or bombed, including 40 in Baghdad, 19 in Mosul, five in Kirkuk, and one in Ramadi.
In July 2009, seven churches in Iraq were bombed over the course of just 48 hours. Many of the explosions were caused by car bombs. The July coordinated church bomb blasts was reminiscent of the series of attacks in early 2008, when ten bombs exploded outside of Iraqi churches within two weeks.
Persistent persecution of the tiny Christian community in Iraq has forced hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Christians to flee the country. The U.N. High Commission for Refugees estimates that since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, some 250,000 to 500,000 Christians have left the country. That translates to about half the Christian population leaving within the short time span of six years.
Christians, while making up only three percent of Iraq’s population, account for nearly half of the refugees leaving the country.
Iraq is home to one of the oldest Christian communities in the world. Many religious freedom groups have warned that if nothing is done soon the Christian population in Iraq will likely disappear.
This is simply unbelievable and deeply disturbing. Hat-tip TheNextWeb
UPDATE: I have just been informed that a Google spokesperson has said it is a bug which will be fixed “as quickly as we can”. Hope that’s true.
I just tried this to check that it was true and it is.
Even P Z Myers has covered this absurdity.
Hot on the heals of the recent foiled assassination attempt on Danish Muhammad Cartoonist, Kurt Westergaard, by Isamic extremists, we have this devlopment and no wonder the police are taking the threat seriously:-
Cross-post from MediaWatchWatch
Lars Vilks gets a threat too
Swedish artist Lars Vilks is the latest cartoonist to receive a threat from jihad group al-Shabaab (“The Lads”).
The phlegmatic creator of the Modog series of cartoons got a couple phone calls from someone claiming to represent the Somalian Islamothugs. Vilks told his local newspaper:
The man, who spoke accented Swedish, asked me if I knew about what happened in Denmark and to the artist Kurt Westergaard. I said I certainly did.
The man then explained that they were out after more and that they would soon come for me. I told them they were welcome.
