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Virtue Online

The announcement was barely out in cyber space that the Episcopal Church had elected a second homosexual, in this case a lesbian bishop, when Changing Attitude (the UK equivalent of Integrity USA) President Colin Coward took up the reins in defense of The Episcopal Church’s election of Mary Glasspool.

In a column at his website, he cleverly linked the Glasspool election with the pedophile crisis in the Roman Catholic Church, secular laws in Nigeria and Uganda regarding sodomy and much more, concluding with the whine that the church must embrace pansexual people, because all have sinned and fallen short of the standards set by Changing Attitude.

First of all, he cites Scripture, “Let us be firm and unswerving in the confession of our hope, for the giver of the promise is to be trusted. We ought to see how each of us may best arouse others to love and active goodness.” Hebrews 10.23,24

VOL: It should be noted that the Book of Hebrews was written to encourage Christians in a time of trial. Andrew Murray in his commentary on these verses says, The three chief words of this injunction we have had before–Hold fast, Confession, Hope. If we hold fast the glorying of our hope firm to the end. Give diligence to the fullness of hope. Christ is the High Priest of our profession. Let us hold fast our confession. Faith and hope ever go together. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for.” Faith accepts the promise in its divine reality, hope goes forward to examine and picture and rejoice in the treasures which faith has accepted. And so here, on the words Let us draw near in fullness of faith, there follows immediately: Let us hold fast the confession of our hope. Life in the Holiest, in the nearness of God, must be characterized by an infinite hopefulness. What’s holy about sodomy?

There is nothing in these texts that remotely endorses pansexual behavior or that suggests we should be “unswerving” in our support and “hope” of such behavior. This is a gross misuse of the text.

COWARD: The Guardian’s headline today reads: ‘Crisis grips Catholic church as sex abuse allegations widen’. Yesterday’s headline in parts of the Anglican Communion was ‘Los Angeles Bishop-elect Glasspool receives church’s consent to ordination’. Sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests and the cover up of abuse by bishops is evil. Dare anyone say that the confirmation of the election of a partnered lesbian as a bishop is in any way ‘evil’? Has Bishop Gene Robinson’s 7-year ministry brought ‘evil’ into the Anglican Communion, as some would claim? The Anglican Communion’s thinking about human sexuality is so utterly distorted now that the majority in our Communion claim that good people are evil and those who think and act in evil ways are good and holy.

VOL: To cite President Barack Obama, “YES WE CAN”. Two wrongs suddenly don’t make a right. The cover-up of sexual abuse by bishops IS evil and so was the consecration of Gene Robinson and so is the election of a lesbian to be a bishop. Since 2003, the Episcopal Church has accelerated its losses, financially and congregationally with whole dioceses leaving TEC. As a result, we now have a whole new Anglican province in North America with over 100,000 members in some 30 dioceses. What about any of that is a win-win for TEC? That did not happen because Robinson is a nice guy or inclusive in his thinking. It came about because TEC bishops allowed it to happen because most of them do not know enough theology to vote otherwise. They would not dare go against the grain or thinking of the Presiding Bishop, General Convention resolutions however unbiblical they might be, or the culture of sexual permissiveness that now pervades TEC.

COWARD: Mary Glasspool becomes, for many in the Communion, another visible sign of God’s welcome to LGBT people and the blessing bestowed on those of who are faithfully and lovingly partnered and called by God to ministry in the church, lay and ordained, priestly and Episcopal.

VOL: God never unwelcomed homosexuals into His church. He welcomes all sinners to come and be saved (changed) and to experience metanoia and newness of life and to walk with the (Holy) Spirit. That is not possible while practicing homogenital sex. As Sydney Archbishop Peter Jensen observed, “Two things need to be made clear. First, that they (TEC) are unambiguously opposed to a development which sanctifies sin and which is an abrogation of the word of the living God. Second, that they will take sufficient action to distance themselves from those who have chosen to walk in the path of disobedience.”

COWARD: Other groups in our Communion have ordained bishops to represent their particular version of truth and orthodoxy, bishops who are symbols of disunity and division. The Episcopal Church will ordain a bishop who is a symbol of hope to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people across the Communion and to all who long for prejudice about human sexuality to be overcome.

VOL: Who and what is Coward talking about? There are only two kinds of bishop. The first kind is those who will “uphold the doctrine and discipline of the church.” The second kind is those who will tolerate innovations such as the LGBTQ crowd want the church to endorse. There are no other kinds of bishops.

COWARD: The world has moved on since Gene Robinson was ordained bishop in 2003. A period of restraint was exercised in North America while Instruments of Communion began to work out a process in reaction to his election and ordination. We now have the Windsor Report and the proposed Anglican Covenant.

VOL: The world has moved on, sin has not changed. It is just the same. It just has more sophisticated packaging. There was never any restraint. Resolution B033 was a holding pattern till resolutions D025 and C056 came along and sank it. The discipline called for in the Windsor Report has never been exercised and the Covenant (if TEC ever signs on to it) will lie in tatters about 10 minutes after TEC bishops sign it and the next openly homogenital bishop is consecrated. The next time it could be a bi-sexual or transgendered purple shirt. It is not without its significance that the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams said. “It is regrettable that the appeals from Anglican Communion bodies for continuing gracious restraint have not been heeded.” Indeed.

COWARD: In parts of the Communion hostile to the presence of homosexual Christians and same-sex couples, attempts have been and are still being made to further demonise LGBT people. Bills were introduced in Nigeria and Uganda; outbreaks of violence and persecution have occurred in Kenya and other countries; gay people murdered in the UK.

VOL: I googled “Gays murdered in the UK”. None could be found. I asked a senior Anglican official in London and he said there were none that he could find. There is “no causes celebres of late in the national news. And there is most certainly no link to the Anglican Communion – except in Coward’s imagination.”

Neither Nigeria nor Uganda has the death penalty on its books. Anglican Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi has been outspoken against the death penalty in Uganda. Anticipated legislation is for those who knowingly transmit a life-threatening disease from one person to another. So what’s the difference between killing a person with a gun verses killing a person with a penis. Dead is dead.

COWARD: Same-sex marriage rights have been introduced in a number of countries and several US States and in England, Civil Partnerships. Inroads have been made in England into the Church of England’s reactionary stance against extending a welcome to LGBT people. The Church of England’s prejudice against the full inclusion of LGBT people is being steadily eroded, from within the House of Bishops and without as a result of equality legislation.

VOL: People are waking up to the fact same sex unions are not legitimate marriages and don’t qualify within the definition of marriage. They are also waking up to the fact that children raised in same sex households have twice the problems kids have being raised in normal households. Figures show overwhelmingly higher rates of violence in the gay and lesbian community, far above anything in the straight community. Read the “Five Myths of Same Sex Marriage” here http://tinyurl.com/yetp5ej or the fact that gays are eight times more likely to commit suicide than straight people. http://tinyurl.com/ycjcels

COWARD: Networks of LGBT people, the majority of the Christians, are developing across Africa. They are yet to have a visible impact but they will.

VOL: Yep they will, heavily funded by rich gays and lesbians in North America who don’t have to raise families, and who will use political and ecclesiastical machines whose buttons they can push to get their behavior on the agenda. They will whine to the UN, to Hillary Clinton and anyone else to plead their cause that they should be able to have endless anal sex with whomever, pass on diseases to whomever and to hell with your “homophobia” for not letting it happen.

COWARD: 2010 is not 2003. In seven brief years, the global community has, by continuing a public discourse about the presence of LGBT people in society, inadvertently encouraged a process of education and awareness among peoples hitherto ignorant of the reality of LGBT people.

VOL: Yep. And the figures for transmitting sexually related diseases have only risen. Furthermore, violence among lesbian couples is higher than the general population of heterosexual couples. Gay men have little ability to be faithful and that has been a recognized fact in numerous online articles.

COWARD: The discourse in Uganda has highlighted the prejudice, ignorance and bigotry found in Christian leaders. There is a division between the focus on anti-gay rhetoric by individual Primates, bishops and Christian leaders and other bishops who in private reveal more generous levels of understanding and tolerance. There is a gulf of understanding in the Catholic church between official Vatican teaching and the pronouncements of Ugandan bishops.

VOL: Uganda’s “ABC” prevention formula — standing for Abstinence, Be Faithful, and use Condoms — has been widely credited with lowering that nation’s infection rate from 30 percent in the early 1990s to below 10 percent today. So, Uganda has the lowest AIDS fatality rate in Africa, and this is a bad thing? Uganda only wants to put on its books that people who have sexually transmitted diseases should not be permitted to pass those diseases along to someone else. They should be vilified for saying that. Even Mrs. Jefferts Schori publicly admitted and apologized for the West’s exporting of its Culture Wars to Africa causing many of the problems it now has. Coward is oddly silent about her remarks.

COWARD: Mary Glasspool’s ordination will be controversial, but the controversy for many is now focused on how reaction will reveal prejudice, ignorance and intolerance within the Christian community rather than a principled stand based on tradition, scripture and the unity of the church. Unity in Christ cannot be based on ignorance and prejudice.

VOL: Unless you accept that fact that Scripture is innately prejudicial against sin, then it is. What unity? We have the Lambeth Conference and we have GAFCON. We have TEC and the ACNA. Where’s the unity? And what about all the prejudice and intolerance that Episcopal Church pansexualists have inflicted on orthodox Episcopalians over the last 40 years resulting in their being marginalized, their graduate students unwanted in liberal dioceses precisely because they want Scripture tradition and reason to be upheld with Scripture paramount.

Orthodox Episcopalians are so marginalized that the few left in revisionist dioceses are under constant siege, hated and vilified by liberal Diocesan Standing Committees with lawyers just itching to find a reason to sue them. Look at what is going on in the Diocese of South Carolina. Jefferts Schori and her legal bulldog are already heating up the legal pipeline with no real charges and no official war even being declared. Coward is talking out of the very place known for excreting nitrogenous waste.

Glasspool’s election will force Dr. Williams’ hand and if it does, that won’t be a bad thing. The Communion Partner Bishops, the ACI theologians are strangely silent, but we may yet hear from them. The acts of TEC will only increasingly isolate the North American church from the Anglican mainstream. There can be little doubt in anyone’s mind that GAFCON, FCA and ACNA were necessary. If they had not come into existence the very stones would have cried out.

Astute analysis from Young Mr. Brown over at Marmalade Sandwich, on the recent Catholic Care Adoption Agency victory in the law courts:

But some are more equal than others

You couldn’t make it up. Well, I couldn’t anyway. Catholic Care, a Catholic adoption agency has won a court ruling that means that it will not be forced to place children with homosexual couples.

The amusing thing, however, is that the reason that it has won this unexpected victory is that the government inserted a clause in the 2007 Equality Act, Regulation 18, which states:

Nothing in these Regulations shall make it unlawful for a person to provide benefits only to persons of a particular sexual orientation, if—
(a) he acts in pursuance of a charitable instrument, and
(b) the restriction of benefits to persons of that sexual orientation is imposed by reason of or on the grounds of the provisions of the charitable instrument.

In other words, charities to continue to discriminate if the stated aim of the charity was to provide services to people of a particular sexual orientation. (This loophole was inserted to ensure that gay charities could not be sued for discrimination by heterosexual couples.) Catholic Care simply wrote an explicit reference to serving heterosexuals into its constitution, and won their case.

One can only fall about laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of it all. To quote Ogden Nash:

Any hound a porcupine nudges
Can’t be blamed for harboring grudges.
I know one hound that laughed all winter
At a porcupine that sat on a splinter.

The serious side of this is that the government specifically wished to allow one group to discriminate in a particular way, while not allowing other groups to discriminate in a different way. In other words, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

In October 2008, the Libertarian Party sent copies of Orwell’s 1984 to MPs with an insert which said “This book, contrary to what your leader might think, is NOT an instruction manual, but a warning.” Well, it seems that maybe some politicians think that it is actually Orwell’s Animal Farm that is the instruction manual.

There has been a predictable amount of annoyance at the court’s ruling. The National Secular Society have shown themselves to be a radically unlibertarian organisation – in much the same way that the British Humanist Association did a couple of months ago. Surely there must be some organisation to represent secularist libertarians? Or is secularist libertarianism as much a contradiction in terms as theocratic libertarianism?

Edit: The Telegraph’s article portrayed the reaction in terms of Christians vs. Secularists – e.g. “Secular campaigners condemned the judge’s decision as “alarming” and “a major setback” for gay rights.” I think this is somewhat simplistic. I was glad to see Nikhil Arora, an atheist who disagrees with the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, welcoming the ruling over at the Adam Smith Institute blog.

The Washington Post has published a piece on “Christian” minsters who are non-believers. This article is based on in-depth interviews with five such ministers and has caused quite a stir.

P Z Myers has of course picked up on this one:

Dan Dennett has been studying the phenomenon of preachers who don’t believe what they preach, and the paper and commentary are available at the Washington post. Strangely, the newspaper has headlined it as “Skeptical clergy a silent majority?”, which is odd — the work doesn’t attempt to quantify how many unbelievers there are in the ministry, but is more of a case study of those they’ve found…and since they are only describing the in-depth interviews of five people, it’s absurd to try and draw conclusions about proportions.

It’s interesting stuff, but utterly unsurprising to atheists. These are people who entered the ministry out of a sincere desire to do good in the world, and as they delved into religious scholarship, they discovered they couldn’t believe anymore…but hey, they were still humane and concerned about their fellow human beings. They’re also concerned about what will happen to their income if they leave the church, and what will happen to the opinion others have of them. And they engage in some difficult and twisty rationalizations for their situations.

One other interesting point is that several of them came to their atheism by way of reading books by Ehrman and Spong, and also Harris and Hitchens. These works do make a difference. Unfortunately, we also learn that while they have received enlightenment, they’re very, very reluctant to share that shameful knowledge with their congregations, and continue to reassure them about belief in god.

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And so has Albert Mohler

Are there clergy who don’t believe in God? That is the question posed by a new report that is certain to receive considerable attention — and rightly so. Few church members are likely to be disinterested in whether their pastor believes in God.

The study was conducted by the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, under the direction of Daniel C. Dennett and Linda LaScola. Dennett, of course, is one of the primary figures in the “New Atheism” — the newly aggressive and influential atheist movement that has gained a considerable hearing among the intellectual elites and the media.

Dennett is a cognitive scientist whose book, Breaking the Spell, suggests that belief in God must have at one point served an important evolutionary purpose, granting an evolutionary advantage to those who had some belief in an afterlife as compared to humans without such a belief. The reality of death, Dennett surmises, might well have been the precipitating factor. In order to make life meaningful in the face of death (and thus encourage reproduction), Dennett suggests that primitive humans invented the idea of God and the afterlife. Now, he argues, we have no more need of such primitive beliefs.

Interestingly, Dennett also proposes a new interpretation of theological liberalism. Noting that many modern people claim to be Christians while holding to virtually no specific theological content, Dennett suggests that their mode of faith should not be described as “belief,” but rather as “believing in belief.”

Given Dennett’s own atheistic agenda, we can rightly assume that he would be thrilled to see Christian ministers and believers abandon the faith. Indeed, the New Atheists have made this a stated aim. Thus, this new research report, “Preachers Who Are Not Believers,” should be read within that framework. Nevertheless, it must be read. This report demands the attention of anyone concerned with the integrity of the Christian church and the Christian faith.

Dennett and LaScola undertook their project with the goal of looking for unbelieving pastors and ministers who continue to serve their churches in “secret disbelief.” Their “small and self-selected” sample of ministers represents a microcosm of the theological collapse at the heart of many churches and denominations.

In their report, Dennett and LaScola present case studies of five unbelieving ministers, three from liberal denominations (“the liberals”) and two from conservative denominations (“the literals”).

Wes, a Methodist, lost his confidence in the Bible while attending a liberal Christian college and seminary. “I went to college thinking Adam and Eve were real people,” he explained. Now, he no longer believes that God exists. In his rendering, God is a word that “can be used very expressively in some of my more meditative modes” and “a kind of poetry that is written by human beings.”

His church members do not know that he is an atheist, but he explains that they are somewhat liberal themselves. His ministerial colleagues are even more liberal: “They’ve been de-mythologized, I’ll say that. They don’t believe Jesus rose from the dead literally. They don’t believe Jesus was born of a virgin. They don’t believe all those things that would cause a big stir in their churches.”

Rick, a campus minister for the United Church of Christ, perhaps the most liberal Protestant denomination, was an agnostic in college and seems to have lost all belief by the time he graduated from seminary. He chose ordination in the UCC because it required “no forced doctrine.” Even as he graduated from seminary, he knew, “I’m not going to make it in a conventional church.” He knew he could not go into a church and teach his own theological views, based on Paul Tillich and Rudolf Bultmann. He did not believe in the doctrinal content of the Christian faith from the beginning of his ministry. “I did not believe the traditional things even then.”

He does not believe “all this creedal stuff” about the incarnation of Christ or the need for salvation, but he remained in the ministry because, “These are my people, this is the context in which I work, these are the people that I know.” In the pulpit, his mode is to talk as if he does believe, because “as long as … you are talking about God and Jesus and the Bible, that’s what they want to hear. You’re just phrasing it in a way that makes sense to [them] … but language is ambiguous and can be heard in different ways.”

He doesn’t like to call himself an atheist, but: “If not believing in a supernatural, theistic god is what distinguishes an atheist, then I am one too.”

Darryl is a Presbyterian who sees himself as a “progressive-minded” pastor who wants to see his kind of non-doctrinal Christianity “given validity in some way.” He acknowledges that he is more a pantheist than a theist, and thinks that many of the more educated members of his church hold to the same liberal beliefs as his own. And those beliefs (or unbeliefs) are stated clearly: “I reject the virgin birth. I reject substitutionary atonement. I reject the divinity of Jesus. I reject heaven and hell in the traditional sense, and I am not alone.”

Amazingly, Darryl is candid about the fact that he remains in the ministry largely for financial reasons. It is how he provides for his family. If he openly espoused his beliefs, “I may be burning bridges in terms of my ability to earn a living this way.”

Adam ministers in the Church of Christ, a conservative denomination. After years in the ministry, he began to lose all theological confidence. After reading a series of books, he became convinced that the atheists have better arguments than believers. He has moved fully into an atheist mode, yet he continues to lead his church in worship. How? “Here’s how I’m handling my job on Sunday mornings: I see it as play acting. I see myself as taking on the role of a believer in a worship service, and performing.”

This “atheistic agnostic” stays in the ministry because he likes the people and, “I need the job still.” If he had an alternative source of income, he would take it. He feels hypocritical, but no longer believes that hypocrisy is wrong.

John is identified as a Southern Baptist minister who has primarily served as a worship leader. He was attracted to Christianity as a religion of love, but his pursuit of Christianity “brought me to the point of not believing in God.” As he explains, “I didn’t plan to become an atheist. I didn’t even want to become an atheist. It’s just I had no choice. If I’m being honest with myself.”

He is clearly not being honest with his church members. He rejects all belief in God and all Christian truth claims out of hand. He is a determined atheist. Once again, this unbelieving minister admits that he stays in the ministry because of finances. Amazingly, this minister even names his price: “If someone said, ‘Here’s $200,000,’ I’d be turning my notice in this week, saying, ‘A month from now is my last Sunday.’ Because then I can pay off everything.”

Early in their report, Dennett and LaScola point to a problem of definition. Many churches and denominations have adopted such fluid and doctrineless identities that determining who is a believer and who is an unbeliever has become difficult. Their statement deserves a close reading:

The ambiguity about who is a believer and who is an unbeliever follows inexorably from the pluralism that has been assiduously fostered by many religious leaders for a century and more: God is many different things to different people, and since we can’t know if one of these conceptions is the right one, we should honor them all. This counsel of tolerance creates a gentle fog that shrouds the question of belief in God in so much indeterminacy that if asked whether they believed in God, many people could sincerely say that they don’t know what they are being asked.

In other words, some theologians and denominations have embraced a theology so fluid and indeterminate that even an atheist cannot tell the believers and unbelievers apart.

“Preachers Who Are Not Believers” is a stunning and revealing report that lays bare a level of heresy, apostasy, and hypocrisy that staggers the mind. In 1739, Gilbert Tennett preached his famous sermon, “On the Danger of an Unconverted Ministry.” In that sermon, Tennett described unbelieving pastors as a curse upon the church. They prey upon the faith and the faithful. “These caterpillars labor to devour every green thing.”

If they will not remove themselves from the ministry, they must be removed. If they lack the integrity to resign their pulpits, the churches must muster the integrity to eject them. If they will not “out” themselves, it is the duty of faithful Christians to “out” them. The caterpillars are hard at work. Will it take a report from an atheist to awaken the church to the danger?

The Jerusalem Post

WASHINGTON – The White House received more than 20,000 e-mails calling for it to end the crisis with Israel in the 24 hours after Christian United for Israel urged its activists to send such messages, according to the organization.

“The incredible response to our action alert is a clear indication that Christian Zionists are firmly committed to a strong US-Israel relationship,” said Pastor John Hagee, founder and chairman of CUFI.

The CUFI campaign asked the Obama administration to return to “a more productive approach” after it harshly criticized Israeli plans to build more Jewish homes in east Jerusalem while US Vice President Joe Biden was on a visit to Israel, sparking some of the most serious tensions between the countries in years.

The initiative came the day after a similar call made by The Israel Project, with more than 18,000 supporters sending letters to American leaders and the media within one day of receiving an action alert.

The TIP letter campaign, which sends the message that “a strong US-Israel relationship is key to America’s security, values and interests,” is being followed with the launch of an ad campaign to raise awareness about the threat of a nuclear Iran. The ads are due to run hundreds of times on CNN, FOX News, MSNBC and other leading networks.

Earlier in the week, J Street also delivered a petition with over 18,000 signatures to White House during a leadership summit in Washington, providing a different take on the current US-Israel row.

The organization described the petition as showing that “large numbers of pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans agree with the vice president when he says ‘sometimes only a friend can deliver the hardest truth,’ and urging the administration to turn this crisis into an opportunity for progress on two states,” for Israelis and Palestinians.

Biden made the comment after the housing controversy erupted.

On Monday, J Street Executive Director Jeremy Ben-Ami released a statement saying, “The Obama administration’s reaction to the treatment of the vice president last week and to the timing and substance of the Israeli government’s announcement was both understandable and appropriate.”

There is also an Op-Ed in the Christian Science Monitor, written by CAMERA which addresses the falsehoods and discrimination of “Israeli Apartheid Week,” and explains the immorality of its anti-Zionist stance:

Christian Science Monitor – Israeli Apartheid Week: a ritual of discrimination and incitement against Israel

I also covered the IAW here:

eChurch – Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) a Christian response?

Solomonia have a good piece from the Tablet:

Solomonia – Lee Smith has been on a roll with good material lately. Here he is with a very positive look at that Lefty Jewish bogey-man, the Evangelical Christian: Evangelical Christians have emerged as Israel’s staunchest allies–even as some American Jews are made uneasy by the show of support

From the Dry Bones blog: (Hat-Tip CIFWatch)

DesiringGod

Read this very brief article in the China Daily (China’s official English language newspaper). It’s the testimony of a university student who converted to Christianity.

Now if you’ve been following China for any length of time you might be picking your jaw up off the floor. Get this:

The official and highly controlled newspaper of the Communist government is featuring a story of a religious conversion of an exceptionally bright university student who found meaninglessness in existence apart from God.

He was given a Bible by a colleague, and the reader is not led to believe this is a bad thing.

He converted to Christ after reading it and now is experiencing fulfillment.

And he’s now happily attending an unregistered church (i.e house church).

Whoa.

We know the church is unregistered because yesterday the China Daily ran an article on house churches that are thriving in Beijing and featured that church. In fact, this particular unregistered church has actually been allowed to purchase property for a church building.

This doesn’t discount the fact that persecution still occurs in China. But we need to let this news soak in. This little article is huge. God is doing something incredible in that great nation.

Keep praying.

Cross post by Joseph by @ Rosh Pina Project:

There are many Messianic Jews and Hebrew-Roots Christians I know who will see Christian mysticism as something “Greek” and therefore Gnostic and spooky, whereas Jewish mysticism as “Hebrew” and therefore pure and spiritual.

I think the distinction between Western Christianity as ‘Greek’ and Orthodox Judaism as ‘Hebrew’ can fail to consider the relationship between both religions and Greek philosophy.

Greek thought and assumptions, particularly those of Plato and Aristotle, have greatly influenced the Western World. Just so you know where they were coming from, Plato believed that God created the universe from pre-existing matter, and Aristotle believed the universe was eternal. Some Christian thinkers have attempted to prove Christianity using Plato’s and Aristotle’s ways of arguing, even Christians who believe God created the world from nothing (ex-nihilio).

Some argue that Greek philosophy rather than Jewish insights have shaped church thinking, and a focus on the words of Greek philosophers rather than the words of the prophets of the Bible has distorted Christianity’s worldview.

This has had me wondering about something: If the Church has lost its way because of philosophy, then what about the Synagogue? If Thomas Aquinas was off-track for arguing for Christianity by using Aristotelian arguments, then what about Maimonides, who did exactly the same thing for Judaism?

Maimonides based his whole “negative theology” off Aristotelian ideas, meaning that he defined God by what he is not, as you can’t explain God in positive terms by human philosophy. As a result you have the thirteen principles of faith, and the idea that God cannot be described in human terms, nor be described as anything that draws away from his individuality and indivisibility. This is the strongest argument you’ll hear today for why Jews can’t believe Yeshua was God.

Not only did Maimonides use Greek and Arabic philosophy, he also recommended Averroes, an Islamic Aristotelian philosopher, who became hugely popular among the Jews of France, and was more influential on Judaism than Islam!

History also records that Jewish communities in Italy would themselves read Aquinas in order to understand Aristotle, just as the Jews of France read Averroes to understand Aristotle.

Orthodox Jews often say “from Moses to Moses there was no-one like Moses.”

So if Christianity is Greek (and therefore non-Hebrew) because of the influence of Augustine and Aquinas, isn’t Judaism also Greek (and therefore non-Hebrew) because of Maimonides and Gersonides?

And then there’s the influence of Arabic & Greek ideas on Cabala, which is a whole other story….

Oh man is this for real?

Kent News

Police have been banned from asking for a person’s “Christian” name as part of newly-published guidelines on how to avoid offending ethnic groups.

Officers in Kent are instead being told to consider using the terms “personal name” or “family name” so as not to upset people with different religious beliefs.

They are also being asked to avoid calling people “love” or “my dear” over fears that some people may find the words offensive or unprofessional.

The guideline, which was published this week following a request made under the Freedom of Information Act, was compiled by Kent Police’s diversity team and circulated to all members of staff.

In addition to the advice about Christian names, officers are now being asked to use “mixed parentage” or “dual parentage” instead of mixed race, and to be more specific when describing people as Asian, African or African-Caribbean.

They have also been warned against comforting people by putting an arm around them, or shaking the hands of others.

A spokeswoman for the Campaign Against Political Correctness said police officers should not have to constantly worry about what they can and cannot say.

She added: “Obviously the term ‘Christian name’ has a religious origin but today it’s just an everyday word that everybody uses. I’m not religious but would I be offended if somebody asked me what my Christian name was? Of course not.

“There are so many different naming systems out there that it would be impossible to expect the police to use them all, so why not just stick to the most common one?

“Unfortunately they’ll probably have to stick to these guidelines unless they want a ton of bricks coming their way.

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Cross-post by Michael Cook – MercatorNet

The gathering storm

Media coverage of sexual abuse by Catholic priests in Europe is being formatted according to the Watergate template: sensational crimes, decades-long cover-ups, dogged reporters, denials from official hacks, half-apologies from quivering bureaucrats, threads leading to the dark source of lies and obstruction. Only Deep Throat is missing.

“Abuse Scandal in Germany Edges Closer to Pope” was the headline in the New York Times a week ago. The Times has even set up a special blog to track and interpret the unfolding story.

Day by day, the drumbeat grows louder. Earlier this week the media’s favourite atheist, Christopher Hitchens, bundled together a handful of yellowing newspaper clippings and packaged it as a sulphurous attack in the on-line magazine Slate: “The pope’s entire career has the stench of evil about it.”

Tomorrow Benedict XVI is to publish a letter to the Irish Catholic bishops about the horrendous scandal there. No doubt this will prompt more speculation about whether sexual abuse in Germany will be the Pope’s Watergate, about whether he will be forced to resign, about whether the Catholic Church will have to abandon its tradition of clerical celibacy.

The scandal of clergy who sexually abused children is diabolically real. It has to be confronted humbly and courageously by the bishops who run the Catholic Church. Clergy who are found guilty should be punished. Higher-ups who shielded them should resign.

There is no doubt that Pope Benedict is ready to take a tough line on this. After all – contrary to what Hitchens claims – it was he who established clear guidelines and he has enforced them sternly. On several occasions he has spoken of the “deep shame” he feels at revelations that some priests had betrayed their calling and preyed upon innocent children. When he addressed American bishops in 2008 he spoke with a hint of sarcasm, quoting their own words to say that the crisis had been “sometimes very badly handled”.

But it’s important to remember that these scandals relate to priests who offended decades ago. Wannabee Woodwards and Bernsteins are deflecting attention from the crisis that is happening right now, a crisis from which the media is averting its eyes, just as the bishops did 30 years ago, a crisis in which they play an active role.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel got it right this week. She denounced sexual abuse of minors as “a despicable crime” but refused to single out the Catholic Church for special criticism. “Let’s not oversimplify things,” she said. “We need to speak about [changing] the statute of limitations, we can address the idea of compensation, but the main issue is that this is a major challenge for our society.”

The huge, unreported story is that we are in denial about a widespread, deliberate, systemic encouragement of people not to control their sexuality. It’s as if a health department allowed witch doctors and Reiki therapists to edge out surgeons. Or as if a defence department allowed its tanks to rust. Fundamental principles of a civilized society like sexual restraint, fidelity in marriage, and nurturing families, are being undermined. The mind-numbing list of politicians caught with their pants down, the tsunami of pornography, sky-rocketing teen sex – all these are warning bells about the consequences of creating a hyper-sexualised culture.

Just take this week’s announcement by an Australian company that it had sold the licensing rights to a testosterone roll-on underarm deodorant to boost men’s flagging sex drive for US$335 million to pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly.

Or the news that the International Planned Parenthood Federation recently gave girl scouts a glossy pamphlet encouraging them to have “lots of different ways to have sex and lots of different types of sex”.

Or the UK government’s new guidelines for sex education for children as young as five.

If a priest had suggested these ideas, they would have been called grooming. And in fact, they are grooming. What kind of society are we creating if we actively encourage children to treat sex as  entertainment and encourage men to remain in a constant state of arousal? Sex is not a toy. Without clear moral standards, it is a natural passion which easily becomes an unnatural addiction. Does anyone seriously believe that in 30 years’ time there will be less sex abuse after giving children classroom lessons in how to masturbate?

Of all our social institutions, it seems that only the Church realizes that a crisis is brewing for which we are going to pay dearly in the years ahead. As Benedict told American bishops:

Children deserve to grow up with a healthy understanding of sexuality and its proper place in human relationships. They should be spared the degrading manifestations and the crude manipulation of sexuality so prevalent today. They have a right to be educated in authentic moral values rooted in the dignity of the human person… What does it mean to speak of child protection when pornography and violence can be viewed in so many homes through media widely available today?

Contrary to the impression conveyed in the media, the Catholic Church has been incredibly successful in teaching its priests how to control and channel their sexuality. There are 400,000 celibate priests in the world. The number who have been accused of sexual misconduct is a minuscule fraction, even though the Pope surely feels that a single failure is too many. True, bishops and priests should rend their garments in shame for the bestial crimes of their associates. But that must not keep them from warning the world about the next abuse crisis.

Would you agree that religious freedoms have been eroded over the past ten years in the UK? Personally I don’t encounter any restriction on my religious freedoms on a day to day basis, do you?

I acknowledge that every so often the media is emblazoned with some new heinous atrocity perpetrated against a Christian employee who has been asked to tuck their necklace cross inside their uniform.

Christians have recently won some major victories, for example, back in January the government lost in the House of Lords in its attempt under the Equality Bill to alter the law on who churches and other faith-based groups can employ.

Only yesterday a Catholic adoption agency won a landmark ruling, which seriously upset the humanists and of course their comrades in arms, namely, Ekkleisa.

There have been a few individual cases, mainly relating to employment, and some have been won, some have been lost.

I would go as far as to say that there has been outrageous legal decisions made in favour of “religious” sensibilities, Harry Taylor being the most recent prime example.

There has also been some eminently sound legal decisions.

I’m going to be forthright, are Christians more persecuted today in the UK, or is it that Christians have developed a persecution complex over the last 10 years as a result of certain Christian organisations who thrive on such legal cases? (Editors note, these Christian organisations have not been named for fear of incurring the wrath of their fearsome litigation departments)

Perhaps it’s time to stop worrying about our “rights” and simply get on with the job.

Telegraph:

Third of people believe religious freedoms are being restricted

High-profile cases of believers being “persecuted” because of their Christian faith – such as the British Airways worker banned from wearing a cross around her neck – have led to many to question Britain’s commitment to religious tolerance, the research indicates.

The results came as an influential think tank warned that keeping religious voices out of public life “undermines democracy”.

In a paper for the public theology think tank Theos, Roger Trigg, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick, called for more respect to be given to the right of religious freedom when it clashed with secular rights and principles.

He wrote: “A free society should never be in the business of muzzling religious voices, let alone in the name of democracy or feigned neutrality.”

The professor added: “We also betray our heritage and make our present position precarious if we value freedom, but think that the Christian principles which have inspired the commitment of many to democratic ideals are somehow dispensable.”