eChurch Blog

Here’s some links I found interesting for one reason or another:

A Grain of Sand – Now Will They Believe Us?

Seismic Shock – “With God on our Side” Screens in Manchester

Guardian – At least four people have been killed and dozens injured in a co-ordinated series of attacks on Christian neighbourhoods in Baghdad.

Ekklesia – Westminster vigil calls for UK action to assist Iraqi Christians

Catholic Herald – US bishops seek to boost number of exorcists

Associated Baptist Press – Mohler’s rejection of evolution criticized for harming witness

Some fascinating research which seems to indicate that perceptions of power can potentially exert a consistent and observable effect on how we spend money, with the self-important and powerful becoming stingy princes and the powerless being generous paupers.

This from the press release:

Generous Paupers and Stingy Princes? Power and Consumer Spending

How do people decide how much to spend on purchases for themselves versus others?

A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research says it all depends on how powerful we feel at the moment of choice.

“We ask whether the powerful and powerless differentially value the self versus others, and whether this, in turn, translates into observable differences in their spending behavior,” write authors Derek D. Rucker, David Dubois, and Adam D. Galinsky (Kellogg School at Northwestern University).

The authors conducted five experiments where they manipulated participants’ states of power and then examined how much they spent on purchases for themselves or others. Power was manipulated by assigning people to the role of a boss or employee in a task, having participants recall a past time when they possessed or lacked power, or exposing them to advertisements designed to make them feel powerful or powerless.

After completing these power-related tasks, participants took place in an auction where they bid for a t-shirt and a mug. One group of participants was told to bid on the product for themselves, whereas the members of the other group were told to bid on the product to get it for a person of their choosing.

“When participants were bidding to obtain the product for themselves, those who completed the high-power recall task bid $12.08 on average, whereas those who completed the low-power recall task only bid $6.49, an astonishing difference of more than 46 percent,” the authors write. In fact, the opposite occurred when the participants were asked to bid on the product for someone else. The low-power people bid $10.81 on average, while the high-power participants bid $7.10.

This same pattern of results emerged across five experiments. “When participants were asked to make a purchase for themselves, the amount of money spent was consistently greater for participants assigned to the high-power condition relative to participants assigned to the low-power condition,” the authors write.

Although the high-power participants spent more money on themselves, they were happier when they spent money on others, the authors found.

You can find the original research results and methodology on the following PDF link:

Generous Paupers and Stingy Princes: Power Drives Consumer Spending on Self versus Others PDF

The Islamic Ummah satellite TV Channel has fallen foul of Ofcom for:

1) Breach – Islam Channel presenter in breach for having allowed views condoning marital rape:

2) Breach – Islam Channel presenter found in breach for encouraging violence against women and describing women who wear perfume as ‘prostitutes’:

3) Breach: Islam channel found to have an anti-Israel and anti-Palestinian Authority bias, implying favouritism for Hamas:

The Spitoon has the story and Lucy Lips has posted on Harry’s Place asking why the channel has not been prosecuted.

Say what you will about France, but did you know that 1,300 persecuted and vulnerable Iraqi Christians have been granted asylum in France since autumn 2007?

And now they’ve taken in another 34 Christians injured in last week’s Al-Qaeda attack on a Baghdad church.

The Iraqis who arrived Monday would within 24 hours have a temporary asylum-seekers’ card, renewable every six months, with authorization to work in France, Besson said.

Full asylum would be “handed out generously,” the minister added.

….continue reading

Oh, and France plan a second evacuation flight in the coming weeks to bring out a further 93 Iraqi Christians who were caught up in the horrific church attack.

And to which type of person do we rush to hand British citizenship and passports? Yep, folks like Abu Hamza.

I wish I could report an equivalent UK policy to President Sarkozy’s initiative – to admit to France Iraqis belonging to the vulnerable Christian minority – especially given the UK bears much responsibility for the current plight of Assyrian Christians.

British based Archbishop Athanasios Dawood – A Syriac Orthodox archbishop – is urging Christians to flee Iraq. This advise comes in light of Al-Qaeda in Iraq threatening more attacks specifically targeting Christians. He has said that Iraqi Christians should leave the country or face being killed at the hands of Al-Qaeda.

In light of all of this, if we can’t [or won't] protect Christians in Iraq, then bring them here to the UK.

Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next.

William Ralph Inge

Against the backdrop of blood and flesh splattered, bullet riddled walls, Mass was celebrated on Sunday at the Syrian Catholic Church of Our Lady of Deliverance in Baghdad, one week after the horrific bloodbath in which dozens of Christians were massacred.

At the same time local sources are reporting that two Christians were assassinated yesterday in Baghdad, details are yet to be confirmed.

Things are so dire that British based Archbishop Athanasios Dawood – A Syriac Orthodox archbishop – is urging Christians to flee Iraq. This advise comes in light of Al-Qaida’s front group in Iraq threatening more attacks specifically targeting Christians.

Meanwhile, worldwide Iraqi Christians in the diaspora are making their voices heard and protesting against the massacre of the faithful in Iraq via Internet. A major campaign was launched on the social networking site Facebook, with a page entitled: “The March Against the Ethnic Cleansing of Iraq’s Indigenous Christians,” which already has 45,000 members.

Click here for the Facebook Group

There are worldwide demonstrations today in response to the church massacre and the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Iraq’s indigenous Christians.

The London demo began at 12pm:

Old Palace Yard
Westminster SW1P 3JY
London, United Kingdom

Get along now if you can.

UPDATE: Here is confirmation and further details on the two assassinated Christians I mention above:

AsiaNews – Two faithful shot dead in Baghdad.

An email from a reader, just received:

How the hell can you believe in a higher power, do u also believe in the easter bunny and santa claus?  Are you stupid.  We evolved from monkeys, weve eveolved over millions of years to what we are now, there is no designer or god and you are daft if you think so.  No matter what happnes, when we die there will be nothing, trust me. and that is true for every single living being, regardless of the way you have led your life, so why are you wasting your time with this bollocks! grow a brian!!!

Normally I’m not very interested in this sort of correspondence, but I am very intrigued to find out how exactly I might grow a Brian?

Can anyone help or offer some suggestions?

The Interweb is buzzing with this news:

Archbishop of Canterbury is expected to announce the resignation of two bishops on Monday, in the first of what is feared will be a wave of departures from the Church of England by traditionalists converting to Roman Catholicism.

The Bishop of Richborough, the Right Rev Keith Newton, 58, is expected to become leader or the Anglican Ordinariate, set up to provide Catholic refuge to Anglicans who leave the Church of England over the issue of women bishops.

The Bishop of Ebbsfleet, the Right Rev Andrew Burnham, 63, is also expected to join the Ordinariate, along with the Bishop of Fulham, the Right Rev John Broadhurst, who announced last month that he will be resigning at the end of the year. A fourth retired bishop, Edwin Barnes, is also expected to join the Ordinariate.

…continue reading

I’m also ‘converting’ to Catholicism and as I’m simply an anonymous  pew-dwelling layman, this revelation won’t rock the world. My wife and I are baptised and confirmed Church of England and I have only been loosely affiliated with my local rural Anglican churches since returning from Spain a couple of years ago.

I have a ten year old son and these little churches are sadly devoid of families and other children.

This coupled with the internal struggles bedevilling the Church of England currently, has prompted my decision. Our local Catholic church is huge and bursting with families of all ages.

I’m not leaving the Church of England for the same reasons as these good Bishops, as I suspect they are unhappy with what they would perceive as the ‘liberalising’ of the church. On some issues I’m more conservative, and on others more liberal, but the direction of the church is not my main concern. My main concern is the ongoing war and bitterness shattering the Anglican communion from within.

I can’t deal with grieving over it anymore.

A couple of other factors have contributed to my decision. Reading Diarmaid MacCulloch’s seminal work, ‘A History of Christianity.’ has given me a deep appreciation for all things prior reformation. The wonderful history and tradition of our ancient faith is something I greatly desire to ‘plug’ into.

On a purely personal level, I was poorly when the Pope visited the UK and was in hospital which afforded ample opportunity to watch this great man in action. It was during his first mass in Glasgow that I personally received a tremendous sense of peace siting in my hospital ward.

My wife and I will go through marriage convalidation and my ten year old son will be re-baptised, as he was baptised in the Mediterranean sea by a house church which is not recognised by the Catholic Church.

Wife and I have embarked on the RCIA and we will be welcomed into the church in Easter. This is a lengthy period of time to elapse without partaking in communion. I think wifey might sneak off for the odd CofE sung Eucharist, especially if the setting is Palestrina!

My wife is delighted with all of this as she has been leaning Catholic for some time now and drip-feeding me. Also she hopes for two anniversary dates following convalidation.

There is much I could say and perhaps I will do so in future posts. I still love the church of our land, but right now I don’t see the internal conflicts resolving or becoming any easier to deal with.

There is much to learn and a few things to get my head around, but I’m sure I will, as I move forward.

What’s your theological world view? Take the test and report back please.

QuizFarm – What’s you theological world view?