eChurch Blog

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Telegraph:-

Assisted suicide: law to be decriminalised ‘by back door’ from next week – Assisted suicide will be effectively decriminalised by the back door in landmark guidance to be published next week.

Final rules set out by the Crown Prosecution Service will make it clear that those who help others end their lives are unlikely to face court if they acted out of compassion.

However the factors against prosecution are likely to be altered from existing draft guidance, after it was claimed that they would leave the most vulnerable members of society at greater risk while providing immunity to spouses regardless of their motives.

It marks a legal milestone as the law against assisting suicide is in effect being changed without the involvement of Parliament, on the orders of the Law Lords.

It is also unprecedented for prosecutors to set out in such detail the ways in which people can commit a particular crime yet avoid being charged.

The All Party Parliamentary Group on Dying Well said the guidelines “could have the unintended effect of leading potential law-breakers to believe they will secure immunity from prosecution if they assist suicides in certain prescribed ways or circumstances”.

Aiding or abetting another to end their life is punishable by up to 14 years’ imprisonment under the 1961 Suicide Act.

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And this from Bish Naz today.

Telegraph:-

Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali: Promoting life rather than death – It is absolutely right for us to feel compassion for those who have a terminal or an incurable illness and for their near and dear ones who wish to relieve them of this burden, even if this means the death of the one who is ill.

Hard cases, however, make bad law. We should be very wary of changing the legal tradition of the Western world, based as it is on the Judaeo-Christian view of the human person, because of extreme situations which have been given massive media publicity and because there may be a few people in a coma from which a return to conscious life seems impossible.

It is natural for a person to feel helpless and hopeless when a terminal or incurable condition is first diagnosed but, given the right support by family, friends and the medical community, it is quite possible lto come through this phase and to enjoy some quality of life and even its enrichment. As Dame Cicely Saunders, the founder of the Hospice movement, has said, ” Our last days are not necessarily lost days “. Not only can they be used to recapture the past and to strengthen relationships but also for contemplation and preparation. Again and again, people have told me how much they have learned about themselves and others at this time in their lives.

It is simply a mistake to emphasise the autonomy of the individual, especially at this point. It is relatedness that matters. Rather than seeing themselves as unwanted and alone, people, at this stage of life, should feel themselves drawn into a circle of love and care where they will be made as comfortable as possible and valued for who they are. It is not necessary always to be independent. Human beings depend upon one another at every stage of life and this one is no different. “Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfil the law of Christ”, says St.Paul and this is exactly what the Hospice movement has shown us can be done in the care of the terminally and incurably ill. Thank God for all the wonderful people involved in this work.

Another valuable lesson which this movement has taught us is that it is nearly always possible to manage pain and to make sure that patients do not suffer unnecessarily. Palliative medicine is now highly developed and, whether in hospices or in pain clinics in hospitals, it tries to make sure that science is made to serve the care of people who are seriously ill and relieve them of as much pain as possible. Such relief may, in fact, lengthen the life-span but even if it has the effect of hastening death, this is quite different from an intervention that intends the death of the patient.

One fear that people often have is that they will be ‘officiously kept alive’ rather than allowed to die peacefully. It should be clear that opposition to assisted suicide or voluntary euthanasia is not about keeping people alive at all costs. It is right to respect people’s wishes about not wanting medical treatment the outcomes of which may be uncertain and which may be highly intrusive and uncomfortable. Indeed, in certain cases, competent medical authorities may decide that it is inappropriate to provide medical treatment, though, I believe, that hydration and feeding should continue unless the means of doing this are judged to be disproportioniate to any outcome.

We need to remember that those seeking assisted suicide are very few compared to the hundreds of thousands who die each year cared for by their loved ones, with the help of hospices, pain clinics and others in the caring professions. There is, indeed, a slippery slope. It has been found, for instance, that the withdrawal of treatment in even the most extreme cases of coma, where the prospect of recovery is very remote, has led to such withdrawal when the situation is not so extreme. The Netherlands has not been notable for its success in confining the category of so-called ‘eligible’ cases for voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide.

In other words, there is ‘creep’ from terminal and incurable illness to serious disease and, then, perhaps, to ennui or depression, when a person no longer wants to live.

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My goodness there is plenty of vitriolic criticism against Ed Balls for this move.

The real question is why on earth do we need schools to teach our children about sex, should this not be the preserve of the family?

Should “faith institutions” receive state-funding, as this always leads to state control and interference, not to mention resentment and criticism from non-religious groups.

The British Humanist Association (BHA) – Government u-turn on Sex and Relationships Education against recommendations of Human Rights Committee

Ekklesia – A disagreement has broken out between equalities, education and children’s groups and Government secretary of state Ed Balls over the Children, Schools and Families Bill’s amendments concerning Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education (PSHE).

Guardian Another exemption for faiths – Ed Balls has amended his own bill, giving faith schools an opt-out on sex education. Why the special treatment?

Guardian – Bill ‘will allow schools to teach that homosexuality is wrong’ Campaigners say government has performed U-turn as Catholic group claims a victory

Christian Institute – Humanists and the Lib Dems have both attacked a Government bid to protect the freedom of faith schools to teach sex education in keeping with their beliefs. Supporters of faith schools say some form of protection is needed because the Government’s plans for sex education are so radical.

Times – Ministers were accused of making a U-turn on sex education in faith schools after a Commons amendment effectively allowed them to skew teaching towards their particular religion.

BBC – Ministers are being accused of caving into pressure from faith schools over sex and relationships education.

I liked this little snippet from a Christian Institute article earlier:-

….family groups who already think the Government’s sex education plans are a radical snub to parental authority.

How true. The government wish to become the parent (or should I say “big brother”) of our children in all respects, in order to “mind-mould” them to their own peculiar worldview. Perhaps they deem most parents too dysfunctional to be able to teach their own children on sexuality, morality, ethics and relationships.

My advice…..home educate!

Cross-post by Michael Cook over at Mercator.

This article makes reference to the recent BBC report on the so called “mercy killing” allegedly perpetrated by Ray Gosling on his partner. Click here to view the previous blog post on this incident.

“There will be casualties” – Michael Cook – Mercator

Australian euthanasia activist Dr Philip Nitschke loves publicity. But whenever he opens his mouth, even the most progressive journalists avert their eyes in squeamish embarrassment. This week’s gaffe was to defend his barely legal promotion of a suicide drug for the elderly and terminally ill. It turns out that nearly two-thirds of the Australians who died after quaffing Nembutal – at least 51 over the past 10 years — were under 60, and quite a few were in the 20s and 30s. This suggests that mental illness or depression, not unbearable pain, was the reason for the suicide. So how did Nitschke respond?

”There will be some casualties,” he said with the tenderness of General Haig sending troops over the top at the Somme, “but this has to be balanced with the growing pool of older people who feel immense well-being from having access to this information,” [about suicide drugs].

The notion that young people are just collateral damage in a war to defend their grandparents’ inalienable right to make a quick getaway outraged many Australians. There were calls for Dr Nitschke to hauled into a court for putting lives at risk.

But after tracking the increasingly outrageous suggestions from advocates for assisted suicide and euthanasia, I feel that jail is not the place for people like Nitschke. They belong in a straitjacket. It is becoming increasingly clear that euthanasia advocacy is an illness characterised by an unwillingness to take responsibility for one’s actions, an inability to empathise with normal people, and a morbid desire to help others die. Like mad cow disease, it lies dormant for years. Its victims look normal, but eventually the spongy degeneration of the brain becomes evident.

Nitschke is a classical case. An intelligent man with a PhD in physics and a qualified doctor, he entered the public debate by decrying the cruelty of forcing the terminally ill to die in excruciating pain. Autonomous adults should have the right to die at a time and place of their choosing, surrounded by their loved one, he argued. It sounded vaguely plausible to the media and to his doddering but increasingly numerous groupies, it was a new gospel. But bit by bit, it became clear that his goal was death-on-demand, even for troubled teenagers. He seems incapable of grasping that most of us want teenagers to stick around for a few more years rather than kill themselves over a cruel Facebook post.

In England, the latest case of euthanasia madness is a 70-year-old veteran BBC broadcaster and gay rights campaigner, Ray Gosling. He confessed in the middle of a TV show that he had smothered an unnamed gay lover suffering from AIDS some 20 years ago.

“In a hospital one hot afternoon, the doctor said ‘There’s nothing we can do’, and he was in terrible, terrible pain. I said to the doctor ‘Leave me just for a bit’ and he went away. I picked up the pillow and smothered him until he was dead. The doctor came back and I said ‘He’s gone’. Nothing more was ever said.”

Mr Gosling sobbed a bit, but was adamant that killing someone and concealing the murder was the right thing. “If there’s a heaven and he’s looking down, he’d be proud of me,” he told the BBC. He was oblivious to all the safeguards promised by euthanasia advocates. A right to smother someone, anywhere, anytime, without consulting doctors, without notifying the police, without proving your disinterestedness, and without even consulting the victim raises questions in most sane minds about the possibility of widespread collateral damage. Perhaps only BBC journalists would be allowed to do mercy killings, but some sane people might even object to that.

In the Netherlands euthanasia loopiness has become epidemic. It is legal there and every year about 2,500 acknowledged cases of doctor-administered death take place.

But amongst the numerous Dutch victims of spongy-brained euthanasia syndrome some are more affected than others. Recently a distinguished group called “Out of Free Will” has complained that there are too many restrictions on euthanasia in the Netherlands. Even in the mercy-killing heartland, people are required to have some sort of terminal illness. But the new lobby group wants the right for to anyone sane over the age of 70 to die with a professionally-trained expert’s assistance. They have already begun collecting signatures to lobby for improvements to the legislation.

Part of their scheme is a completely new profession: specialist suicide assistants. These people will need to pass a “Completed Life” training program and to join a professional association which will maintain standards of professional, transparent and safe conduct.

The age limit of 70 is arbitrary. “Whether it should be 65 or 90 is a good question,” says legal scholar Eugene Sutorius. “We think that once someone has reached old age, he has proved abilities at living. He can then choose to leave this life in a procedural, medicalised manner.”

Three spokesmen told the NRC Handelsblad that collateral damage by “angels of death” in nursing homes – rogue doctors and nurses who enjoy killing people — was unlikely to be a problem, especially in view of the country’s positive experience with euthanasia. “It was thought to be the first step on a slippery slope that would lead the medical profession to lose its integrity,” says Mr Sutorius. “But I have seen nothing of the kind happen.”

That last sentence is a tell-tale symptom of spongy-brain euthanasia disease. Before euthanasia was legalised, Dutch doctors were already doing it enthusiastically. It was legalised for consenting adults in pain from a terminal condition, and now it is permitted for non-consenting infants. Dutch doctors routinely lie on their official reports. If they are squeamish about lethal injections, they kill patients through the lingering death of terminal sedation – which is not counted as euthanasia. All these facts are well known. Yet Mr Sutorius sees no slippery slope, no loss of medical integrity. Mr Sutorius belongs in a straitjacket, not in a comfy chair giving interviews. (If you speak Dutch, he explains his position here in a YouTube video.)

What is happening here? How can intelligent, well-educated people be so obtuse about the dangers of legalising the killing of innocent, infirm human beings? Perhaps the conviction that some killing is permissible is so morally corrupting that it infects the intellect and distorts reality. And arguing with them is futile. As Chesterton wrote:

If you argue with a madman, it is extremely probable that you will get the worst of it; for in many ways his mind moves all the quicker for not being delayed by the things that go with good judgement. He is not hampered by a sense of humour or by charity, or by the dumb certainties of experience. He is the more logical for losing certain sane affections. Indeed, the common phrase for insanity is in this respect a misleading one. The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.

This is an excellent article by Elizabeth Drescher over at Religion Dispatches. Previous related post:-

For God’s sake, blog! Pope Benedict told priests on Saturday, saying they must learn to use new forms of communication to spread the gospel message.

The Pope and Social Media: A Digital Counter-Reformation?

A couple of weeks ago, in anticipation of the 44th World Communications Day (May 16, 2010), Pope Benedict XVI issued a message in which he ardently encouraged priests, very particularly, to proclaim the Gospel by employing the latest generation of audio-visual resources (images, videos, animated features, blogs, Web sites) which, alongside traditional means, can open up broad new vistas for dialogue, evangelization, and catechesis.

Many commentators saw Benedict’s statement as a bold move by the Roman Catholic Church into a new era of open, interactive communication with the faithful. But the Pope’s message, starting with the title, “The Priest and Pastoral Ministry in a Digital World: New Media at the Service of the Word,” made clear that the Vatican did not intend to engage in the sort of wide interactivity, distribution of authority, and mashing of diverse perspectives that is characteristic of the Web 2.0 world. The message makes clear that the task of proclaiming the Word of God belongs primarily to priests, and that they must be trained to be actively present on in the internet “from the time of their formation… shaped by sound theological insights and reflecting a strong priestly spirituality grounded in constant dialogue with the Lord.”

That is, we may presume, navigating new social media should now be entering the seminary curriculum. On this point, at least, il Papa and I are in complete agreement: those called to ministry must develop fluency in what are fast becoming the dominant modes of interpersonal expression and communication as well as central mechanisms in the construction of personal identity, social identity, and community.

One Step Forward, Three or Four Centuries Back

Yet, Web 2.0 and all that his effort attempts to be, I can’t help noticing how much the Pope’s World Communication Day message echoes themes of the 16th and 17th century Counter Reformation.

Largely a response to the provocations of the Continental and English Reformations, the initiating event of the Counter Reformation was the Council of Trent (1545-1563), which affirmed the medieval teachings on the authority of Roman Catholic traditions. As was the case in many previous and subsequent reforms, the Council sought to improve the education of the clergy and laity, striving to bring them into closer relationship without upsetting the balance of spiritual authority that weighed decisively in favor of the priest.

In a now classic essay on the period, the historian John Bossy argued that the Counter Reformation was fundamentally about shoring up the institutional power of the Church by reeducating both priests and laity on the fidelity the faithful owed the Church (via the parish priest) over loyalty to kinship networks, community bonds, or feudal relationships. According to Bossy, the reforms of Trent were bent on dissuading believers from attending to the theological novelties of Protestantism and humanist secularism that were swirling throughout Christendom, aided greatly by new, printed social media.

As Pope Benedict’s message tacitly acknowledges, today’s communication technologies invite engagement with religious pluralism and spiritual syncretism to a degree which neither Pope Paul III nor Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avilla, John of the Cross, or Francis de Sales (the all-stars of early modern Catholic reform) could not possibly have imagined. So, while it certainly seems a wise move to urge clergy to enter digital communities and conversations as keepers of the Catholic faith, their very use of social media undermines the clerical control that the Pope’s message is intent on securing.

Users, Not Consumers

New social media is defined primarily in contrast to not to print, but to broadcast media: radio, movies, television. Where the latter is characterized by passive reception of a message crafted outside the immediate experience of the audience, social media today is by its nature participatory, interactive, collaborative, distributive, and, importantly, integrated deeply into the day-to-day experience of users. Updating a Facebook status or tweeting a question about the nature of the Trinity (it happens!) is not a break in the action, an interruption of demands of daily life. These activities are intimate parts of contemporary daily life for the more than 350 million Facebook users and more than 80 million Twitter users.

The key here is that these millions of people are users, not consumers. They are active and engaged, and have a level of authority over the messages they encounter the likes of which we have probably never seen before. What’s more, their engagement in social media has the effect of changing the forms and functions of these media themselves. All of this is to say that the masses with whom the Pope rightly believes Roman Catholic priests ought to engage on “the digital continent” have considerably more authority in relation to institutionalized spiritual authority delegated to priests over the construction of Christian spiritualities than believers and seekers may have had at any time in the past. In ways that have surely always been true, but which are much more pronounced in competent engagement with the Web 2.0 environment, Christian evangelization and catechesis ultimately result in the conversion of both the missionary and his [sic] subject.

To wit, though the Pope’s message highlighted the centrality of priests in leveraging new social media in the service of the Church, “P2Y,” a Vatican Web site directed to young people inverts the traditional hierarchy, inviting users to post the Pope’s message on their Facebook pages and to send it directly to their priests via Facebook, email, or, for the hopelessly disconnected priest, snail mail.

“Who better than a priest, as a man of God, can develop and put into practice, by his competence in current digital technology, a pastoral outreach capable of making God concretely present in today’s world and presenting the religious wisdom of the past as a treasure which can inspire our efforts to live in the present with dignity while building a better future?” the Pope’s message asked.

The answer, apparently, is a 15-year-old with a Facebook account and a Wi-Fi connection.

Taking No Prisoners

The Vatican’s brave foray into the social media landscape offers but one illustration of how new social media reshapes religious institutions and practices, pressing intently on traditional roles, centers of authority, understandings of spiritual identity, and the construction of spiritual community in what has been called the “Digital Reformation.” Clearly, this is not an exercise in simple inculturation or contextual translation (if there ever really were such things). Effectively participating in the new social media environment is not a matter of picking up a new vocabulary of glyphs, images, and sounds that will “capture” the attention of those with whom we want to connect. Digital media has no captives. At least so far, no one’s really figured out how to effectively and durably colonize it. And, I’m pretty sure that’s all to the good.

A meaningful interactive pilgrimage through the Web 2.0 world requires traditional Christian leaders to take very different approaches to mission and ministry; ones that demand a particularly respectful attentiveness to what the Roman church would call the “sensus fidelium” (the sense of the faithful) that is not always the strong suit of Christian leaders across the denominational spectrum. Active users of social media have claimed their Facebook profiles, Twitter feeds, and YouTube channels as places where status updates, tweets, video uploads, and cellphone text messages rely only on the authority of those expressing and representing their own experience—and that authority is almost instantaneously shared with those who read, listen, watch, and may re-present their own self-authorized interpretation of what they have gathered.

Inviting young Roman Catholics to pass along messages to their priests from the magisterium, as the Pontifical Council for Social Communications has done through the “P2Y” site, is nothing like asking them to courier, intact, a missive waxed shut with the Papal seal. It is more even than a digitized game of telephone. It is, rather, to enter the message into to the social and intellectual currency of world defined by distributed authority, collaborative interpretation, and communally-regulated improvisation that simultaneously affirms, resists, challenges, and repurposes available resources.

Truly engaging the digital world from this perspective promises, as has been the case in every reformation, to turn the institutional Church around in ways, we can only hope, that revive the radically countercultural and spiritually transformative heart of Christianity.

Elizabeth Drescher, PhD, is assistant professor of Christian spiritualities and Director of the Center for Anglican Learning & Life (CALL) at Church Divinity School of the Pacific, an Episcopal seminary in Berkeley, CA. Her book Tweet if U ? Jesus: Leadership, Communications, and Community for the Digital Reformation will be released in Fall 2010. Her Web site is elizabethdrescher.net.

Harry’s Place have just posted on the Kairos Palestine Document, which was effectively a Palestinian Christian anti-Israeli statement, that was released just before Christmas.

I was personally shamed by this document and came across an interesting article that reasoned that Palestinian Christians have taken this direction in an act of “self-preservation”.

I think that it is no secret how bad the situation is for Palestinian Christians under Islamic rule now:-

Palestinian Christians Suffer Persecution Under the Palestinian Authority

Palestinian Christians suffer under Muslim rule. False accusations blame Israel. Unrebutted, this could change Israel’s Christian friends’ view of the Arab/Israel conflict. A historian reports on Christians in Judea, Samaria, Gaza. Time to speak up.

The article mentioned that Palestinian Christians knew years in advance that they would eventually be subject to Islamic rule and effectively edged their bets and continue to do so.

Harry’s Place

Palestinian Christians revoke 6th commandment

This is a guest post by Brian Henry

Just before Christmas, a ecumenical gathering of Palestinian Christians met in Bethlehem to launch the Kairos Palestine Document, which urges a boycott of Israel.

As option B, the document also approves “armed resistance” as carried out by “some political parties,” clearly meaning Hamas and other terrorist groups.  However, the document rejects the charge of terrorism, labelling armed attacks on Israelis as “legal resistance.”

Such “resistance” has included a daily rain of rockets on the men, women and children of Sderot.  It includes suicide bombings aboard buses and blowing up teenagers at a discotheque.  It includes the assassination of parents and children in a pizza parlour and the mass murder of elderly Jews at a Passover Seder.

The gathering in Bethlehem took place under the auspices of the World Council of Churches, with representatives of Anglican and liberal Protestant churches attending from around the world.  The United Church of Canada was there too, represented by Bruce Gregerson.

Anti-Israel activists are claiming the Kairos Document is a unified call for a boycott from the leaders of the Palestinian churches.  But this is just the boycotters’ usual misrepresentation.  (See also here, here, here, etc.)

The leaders of the Jerusalem churches wrote a non-committal response to the Kairos Document, stating “We hear the cry of our children.” While their failure to condemn the document shows their moral bankruptcy, the church leaders have not sunk so low as to actively endorse mass murder.

The signatories do include two impressive sounding names: MichelSabbah the former Patriarchate of the Catholic Church in Jerusalem and Archbishop Theodosios Atallah Hanna of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem.  But these loose cannons represent only themselves.

I asked the Reverend Gregerson why the United Church of Canada attended this gathering.  He was quick to point out that the UCC hasn’t actually signed the Kairos Document. He assured me the Church doesn’t support terrorism and said he went to show solidarity with the Palestinians.

When I asked about the document’s endorsement of terrorism as “legal resistance,” it appeared Gregerson hadn’t noticed this before and said he couldn’t comment on it.

He added that he thought the Palestinians were clear about the need for non-violence and said he “felt strongly that the document was built on principles of Christian love.”

To be sure, the Palestinian Christian approach to attacking Israel improves on the Islamist approach. The Christians don’t talk of Jews as the descendents of apes and pigs.  Rather, we’re told the occupation: “distorts the image of God in the Israeli,” while descriptions of Israeli “evil” and “sin” salt the document.

There are also some choice Biblical quotes.  One compares the Palestinians to the early Christians martyred for their faith, claiming: “For Your sake we are being killed all day long,” thus suggesting that, like the Romans, Israel persecutes and murders Christians.

In contrast to Islamists who proclaim their love of death, the churches speak of “a culture of life.” They even speak of “love and mutual respect.”  But in a document that approves mass murder, such words ooze hypocrisy.

Otherwise, the document follows standard Palestinian propaganda.It denounces Israel’s “cruel war against Gaza,” with no mention of the eight years of Palestinian bombardment of Israeli civilians that prompted it.

The document denounces the “separation wall” with no mention of the suicide bombers it’s designed to keep out.  It bemoans the thousands of “prisoners languishing in Israeli prisons” with no mention of the crimes they’re imprisoned for.

It calls the occupation a “sin,” ignoring that Israel occupied the West Bank in a defensive war against an Arab alliance determined to push the Jews into the sea.

And of course, the document ignores that Israel has repeatedly offered peace deals giving the West Bank, Gaza, and east Jerusalem to the Palestinians, but that President Abbas and Arafat before him will not take yes for an answer.

I’d like to report that in Bethlehem the Reverend Gregerson reminded his fellow Christians that thou shalt not murder, even if the victims are Jews.  But actually he spoke on the supposed risk that churches might be called antisemitic when they merely attempt “to be critical of Israel’s policies.”

In our interview, though, Gregerson agreed that anti-Israel activism is indeed sometimes antisemitic.  He draws the line at where criticism crosses into attempts to undermine Israel’s right to exist.

Moreover, Gregerson said antisemitism has been a problem within the United Church.  He specifically referred to the “very troublesome” background material to the anti-Israel boycott motions presented (and rejected) at the church’s 2009 national conference.

The material included accusations of bribery and the suggestion that some Members of Parliament are “affiliated with Israel” and shouldn’t be trusted with sensitive government portfolios.

This was not the only time boycott supporters within the Church have made troublesome remarks.  During a trip to An-Najah University in Nablus in 2006, Karin Brothers reportedly suggested that the “Jewish community” controls media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

According to the report published by An-Nujah University, Brothers also claimed that the Jewish community oversees Canadian politicians, stating: “Any politician would be targeted if he turned his back to Israel and would lose his job.”

Miriam Spies, another boycott supporter, wrote an article in the September 2009 United Church Observer which claimed that, at a checkpoint between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, Israeli soldiers arbitrarily shoot and kill Palestinians.  Her Palestinian guide explained that it just “depended on the mood of the soldiers.”

Accusations of Jews controlling politicians and the media have a long and dishonourable history, while the charge that Israelis murder Palestinians on a whim or for sport looks like nothing but a new version of the ancient blood libel.

I asked Gregerson if anti-Israel boycotts are themselves antisemitic.  “I’m not prepared to answer that,” he replied.  “I’m an officer of the church, and the Church hasn’t yet answered that question.”  He added, though, that one “consideration in rejecting the boycott motions” was that the Church “didn’t want to undermine the existence of Israel.”

That’s good to hear.  In the meanwhile, though, on terrorism, the United Church wants to have its cake and eat it too – to reject terrorism while standing in solidarity with Palestinians who endorse it.

Brian Henry is a Toronto writer and editor and a refugee from the NDP – Canada’s social democratic party.  This article previously appeared in the Feb 16 Faculty Forum, an electronic newsletter produced by Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.

Trust Calvin L Smith to never skirt around the “toughies”:-

Unusual one this, cheered me up though:-

Click here to view full size at the Hubble Website.

WorldNetDaily

Is this incredible thing in heavens a sign from God?

Some people are seeing a flying cross, or perhaps a Star of David.

Others say it resembles a ninja-style throwing blade or even a science-fiction spaceship from such Hollywood creations as “Star Wars,” “Star Trek,” “Babylon 5″ or “The Last Starfighter.”

While scientists don’t think it’s a comet, they’re not exactly sure of the precise origin of the incredible object soaring some 90 million miles from Earth, snapped just a few weeks ago by the Hubble Space Telescope.

“I’ve seen thousands of astronomical images over my career, but this is one of the few absolute jaw-droppers: A flying X-pattern with trailing streamers,” said Ray Villard, a contributing writer to Discovery News. “Whatever it is, nothing quite like it has ever before been seen in the heavens.”

Even the experts who study celestial phenomena seem somewhat perplexed.

“We’re still trying to really figure out what it is,” University of Arizona planetary scientist Jim Scotti told National Geographic. Scotti is on a team observing the object from the Kitt Peak National Observatory outside Tucson.

“The truth is, we’re still struggling to understand what this means,” comet expert David Jewitt at UCLA told Britain’s Daily Mail. “It’s most likely the result of a recent collision between two asteroids.”

If it is indeed the result of such a collision, it would be the first time astronomers have gazed upon the immediate result of such a crash.

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Do read this previous post to find out just how complex, odd and disturbing this story really is:-

I don’t know what the world thinks, but this time the families of the 10 Southern Baptist Church do-gooders sitting in a Haitian jail are in the spotlight for making a poor choice.

BBC:-

Eight of the 10 American missionaries accused of abducting children in Haiti after last month’s quake have been released and are now back in the US.

They were flown to Miami in a US military plane after being freed by a Haitian judge, but may have to return later for further questioning.

Their two leaders remain in detention. The Americans were arrested after trying to leave Haiti with 33 children.

They said the children were orphans but some were found to have living parents.

Earlier on Wednesday, Haitian President Rene Preval greeted French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who had arrived to assess the aid efforts.

The missionaries, from the New Life Children’s Refuge, face charges of child abduction and criminal conspiracy.

The group’s leader, Laura Silsby, and one other member, Charisa Coulter, are being held for more investigation.

Ms Silsby has admitted that the missionaries did not have the proper paperwork for the children, who were later taken into care by the Haitian authorities.

“The judge wants to question two of my clients because they were in Haiti before the earthquake,” the group’s lawyer, Aviol Fleurant, told AFP news agency.

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More Internet links on this today:-

Fox – PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti —  Eight American missionaries were freed from a Haitian jail and left for Miami Wednesday, nearly three weeks after being charged with kidnapping for trying to take 33 children out of the earthquake-stricken country.

Baptist Press – PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (BP)–A judge in Haiti says eight of the 10 American missions volunteers who have been detained in the country will be freed today.

CIFWatch – Israelinurse

Pull The Other One.

In his CiF article of February 5th  Adam Levick wrote “[t]o salvage its reputation as a non-partisan, charitable endeavour offering constructive approaches to the Arab-Israeli conflict, Christian Aid must attempt to develop greater accountability for such negative agendas within its organisation.” Unfortunately, I am not quite as magnanimous as Mr. Levick and frankly, I can’t see that Christian Aid has much of a reputation to salvage. For several years now Christian Aid has pursued a markedly anti-Israeli agenda and the objective evidence casts serious doubts upon the credence of CA Director of Marketing Matthew Reed’s response to the article in which he claimed that “Christian Aid has always been unequivocal in its support for the security of Israel and the rights of all Israeli people to live safely and securely”.

Christian Aid is part of the DEC which will be remembered by many readers here for its virulently anti-Israeli campaign this time last year which even the BBC found too partial to broadcast. CA offers teaching packs for use in primary and secondary schools in the UK which are hardly a model of a balanced view of the Middle East conflict. CA’s partners in Israel include Sabeel, Adalah (an organisation which calls for an end to Jewish immigration to Israel coupled with the right of return), PCHR, ICAHD, Ittijah, and the Alternative Information Centre which in 2006 received some 328,395 shekels from Christian Aid. Readers will remember that I covered the AIC and its links to a terrorist organisation proscribed by the EU and the US in a previous article. In short, whilst Matthew Reed is claiming to have the rights and security of Israel’s citizens in mind, CA’s mouthpieces on the ground promote anything but those aims – a fact of which CA must presumably be aware, and indeed condone, as it continues to pump money into these organisations.

Adam Levick’s article also prompted a response from the author of the Ctl Alt Shift article; self-declared “journalist/revolutionary” Jody McIntyre. Matthew Reed tried to claim that McIntyre was an “outside contributor” to CA’s youth website, but a quick perusal indicates that the latter has been contributing articles to the site at least since April 2009 and indeed McIntyre is described there as “Ctrl.Alt.Shift’s very own freedom fighter Jody McIntyre”, so one would presume that Christian Aid must have bothered to check out their contributor. After all, a multi-million pound organisation funded by so many UK churches, Irish Aid and even the British Government would not to take the risk of embarrassing its funders by way of its choice of partners or contributors, would it?

One can only therefore conclude that Christian Aid must be fully aware of the fact that Jody McIntyre also writes for Electronic Intifada, and that his articles are used by the International Solidarity Movement , ICAHD and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign among others. Christian Aid must also, of course, know that McIntyre was part of Galloway’s ‘Viva Palestina’ convoy and that his ‘Twitter’ friends include the 9/11 ‘troofer’ rapper Lowkey, famous for his lyrics –

“Every coin is a bullet, if you’re Mark’s and Spencer,
And when your sipping Coca-Cola,
That’s another pistol in the holster of a soulless soldier,
You say you know about the Zionist lobby,
But you put money in their pocket when you’re buying their coffee.”

Matthew Reed may have thought that he had averted controversy among the readers of Adam Levick’s article, but the comments of the CiF crowd below the line illustrate very graphically what sort of opinions are held by the type of person who agrees with Christian Aid’s style of political campaigning.

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This is a cross-post by Chris Lazenby over at the King’s Evangelical Divinity School Blog. A simple message, but desperately needed in this day and age in my ‘umble opinion.

What is the Gospel? Or, to translate the word ‘gospel’, what is the Good News? You may think it a rather unexpected, or even silly question, to be asking on the website of a college which exists to teach the bible and Christian theology. And yet, I would suggest it is not. I believe there is a great deal of confusion over this word and guess that if you were to put this question to a number of churchgoers, you would get various answers. In the majority of the larger denominations for example, you’d most likely be told something along the lines that the Gospel is simply the love of God. Or that Jesus loves you and has a plan for your life. Some people asked may also talk about Jesus dying for us, but not be clear as to how this works.

The thing is, we can answer this question in many different ways. The Gospel is like a multi-faceted gemstone which has beauty running through it which looks different when viewed from different angles. And of course, part of this beauty is the good news that God loves us. But the message left there could apply to dozens of religions. What really makes Christianity different is Christ. Christians believe that God has sent his Son into the world to show what he, God, is like; to demonstrate his love for us and to reconcile us with himself. In Jesus’ death we see that no matter what we human beings do to him, he will still love; ‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.’

And yet, profound as these these things are, there is still more. And here is where we come to what I see as being the heart of the Gospel. The key word missing above is ’sin’. Such an old fashioned word is it not? And yet, we are all steeped in it; born into it; unable to avoid it, in thought, word and deed. How do we get rid of this sin; the things we say and do which we shouldn’t; or the things we don’t say and do which we should?

If we are honest, we’ll admit that we can’t sort this out ourselves. We can’t go back and put right everything we’ve ever done wrong. And we can’t pay God some kind of compensation, because he doesn’t need anything we can offer. And anyway, everything we do have, he gave us in the first place, including life itself. We know that God is a God of justice and that wrongdoing should be punished. And this is where the angle of so-called ’substitutionary atonement’ comes in. We can’t always do right or put right our wrongs, but Christ could and did. He lived a perfect life and, in his death, took the punishment for sin that we deserve.

Now it is precisely here that we seem to run into problems for so many people in the 21st century. Substitutionary atonement is now seen by many as a liability for the Christian church and even evangelical individuals and organisations are falling out about it. For many today, the doctrine is seen as an embarrassment or even an offence. We should not talk about sin and punishment to people in church; we should not point out the hopeless predicament we’re in and the desperate need of a Saviour. No! all of this is too negative. We might even put people off coming to our services! The idea that God should send his own Son to be punished for our transgressions has been rejected by many today as being a monstrously unjust idea. Steve Chalke, the well-known Baptist pastor, speaker and writer, has described the doctrine as ‘cosmic child abuse.’

And yet, throughout the Old Testament we read of a people who know they are sinners and who are instructed by God to offer substitutionary atonement to him so that they may be forgiven; their best goats, lambs, bulls, turtle-doves, whatever it may be; cosmic animal abuse if you care to use Steve Chalke’s disturbing terminology. And all of these sin atoning sacrifices are, in the New Testament, said to have been shadows of an ultimate sacrificial atonement to come. ‘(Christ) entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption’ (Hebrews 9:12).

God has always reached down to bring his people up out of the mire. We can’t lift ourselves up because in our natural state, we are at enmity with God (James 4:4) ‘There is no one righteous, not even one’ (Romans 3:10). So the coming of Christ is the ultimate demonstration of love; not a warm, fluffy love, but a love as hard as nails which refuses to be deflected. God the Son became a human being as we are (though without sin) and reached down into this murky world to raise up all those who would believe out of the mire, washed clean and ready to be presented to their heavenly Father; ‘Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behaviour. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation’ (Colossians 1:21-22).

God knows that we need to know we are forgiven and that therefore, we need to know that justice has been done. Jesus ‘was delivered over to death for our sins’ (Romans 4:25) through a love for us that is so great that, not only does this love pay the price – take the punishment – for sin, it leaves us in do doubt that the price is paid, so that we can know for sure that we are free and forgiven. But, for us to be in this condition of freedom and forgiveness, we must attach ourselves by faith to this Saviour, this lifebelt which has been thrown down to us, so that we are pulled from the slime into the very kingdom of God, where he has ‘raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.’ In this joyous state, we rejoice in St. Paul’s words in Romans 8:1; ‘Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus’: and in Ephesians 1:7; ‘In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace.’

Let me reiterate again that there is absolutely no way that we could do this by ourselves. We need a Saviour. There are many people calling themselves Christians today who do not know they need a Saviour and indeed, do not know what they need to be saved from. Let’s be absolutely clear on this. If we for one moment believe we do not need a Saviour; that we can somehow earn our own way into God’s favour by our own good deeds, we blaspheme against God. ‘I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless. For if keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die’ (Gal 2:21).

Whatever your own views on this topic, I’d urge you to think on it carefully, to search the scriptures and examine ‘whether these things be so’ (Acts 17:11). And I pray that God will bless you in your efforts.