eChurch Blog

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A Christian couple morally opposed to homosexuality because of their faith have lost a landmark High Court battle over the right to become foster carers.

Eunice and Owen Johns, aged 62 and 65, from Oakwood, Derby, went to court after a social worker expressed concerns when they said they could not tell a child a “homosexual lifestyle” was acceptable.

The Pentecostal Christian couple had applied to Derby City Council to be respite carers but withdrew their application, believing it “doomed to failure” because of the social worker’s attitude to their religious beliefs.

They asked judges to rule that their faith should not be a bar to them becoming carers, and the law should protect their Christian values.

But Lord Justice Munby and Mr Justice Beatson ruled that laws protecting people from discrimination because of their sexual orientation “should take precedence” over the right not to be discriminated against on religious grounds. The Johns are considering an appeal.

[.....]

The judges had stated that “biblical Christian beliefs may be ‘inimical’ to children, and implicitly upheld an Equalities and Human Rights Commission (ECHC) submission that children risk being ‘infected’ by Christian moral beliefs”.

….read all

Christian Concern have a fairly detailed release on this already.

Full version of judgement text can be found here.

Interesting analysis by Gavin Drake and Religion Law Blog.

A few links I found interesting for one reason or another:

Clayboy – A politician’s PR, or, stitching up the Archbishop

For All and None -The Radical Theological Vision of Thomas JJ Altizer

Phil’s Treehouse -Right diagnosis, wrong prescription

Orthodox Christianity – N.T Wright and the Orthodox View of Hell

Lesley’s Blog -Anxiety, preaching and hypocrisy

Point of no Return – The people won’t let tomb of Esther be destroyed

As I draw to the conclusion of the book I’ve been reading entitled: Mad, Bad or Sad? A Christian approach to antisocial behaviour and mental disorder, this will be the final quote:

Page 200:

To progress in spiritual maturity we must understand our own psychological makeup. As the ancient Greeks used to say, ‘gnowthe se auton’ – ‘know thyself’. It is possible to have a ‘neurotic relationship with God’, to see him as we want to see him, ‘in our own image’ as it were.

I think we have all come across folk who appear to have a distorted relationship – or view – of God, or perhaps even recognised such traits in ourselves. I think this may legitimately be extended to perceptions of the Biblical text.

It comes as no surprise to me personally that those who have had a troubled relationship with a human father, may be prone to project this in some form in their relationship with the heavenly Father.

What has intrigued me most whilst reading this book is the concept of the interplay between damaged personalities – or minds – with their faith.

An interesting example of this would be the Borderline Personality. This disorder is characterised by an ever changing distortion in self-image and identity. If we flawed humans have a tendency to view God in our own image, then imagine how unstable and variant the Borderline Personality’s perception of God would be.

Black and white thinking is also a characteristic of this disorder and it would not be difficult to see this working itself out in Biblical interpretation.

Intense – real or imagined – abandonment fears are also prevalent and the psychiatric world would look to the sufferer’s interpersonal relationships for verification. However, when a sufferer is a Christian, this could equally play out in their relationship with God.

Impulsiveness, coupled with a tendency to self-damaging behaviours, has obvious implications in the realm of Christian self-control.

I could easily go on, but will stop there.

It seems obvious to me now that damaged personalities and minds could potentially permeate a persons faith, leading to a distorted or damaged faith. I’d always recognised the potential impact on faith of an illness such as the Bipolar Disorder, and the propensity for periods of religious mania or apathy.

Those of us with a keen faith plainly understand that our faith is not a ‘bolt on’ or additional aspect of ourselves, but does in fact constitute the very core of our being, permeating all aspects of us. In view of this, the interplay between personality traits and faith seems self-evident to me now.

I have a swathe of books ordered around this subject and may well blog further as I explore this.

The following is an interesting excerpt from the book I’m currently reading entitled: Mad, Bad or Sad? A Christian approach to antisocial behaviour and mental disorder

Pages 153-154 + 156:

Now at this point it is very interesting to step back and view the situation from a specifically Christian perspective. At first, it would seem that the Christian scriptures unambiguously endorse the conclusion that the alcoholic is a ‘sinner’. For example, the apostle Paul is especially clear this in his epistles. Paul specifically lists drunkenness amongst the ‘works of the flesh’ in his letter to the Galatians:

The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Galatians 5:19-21

Paul also states quite clearly that drunkards will not inherit the Kingdom of God. In his first letter to the Corinthians, he classes them along with the other wrongdoers who will suffer the same fate:

Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

1 Corinthians 6:9-10

On this basis, there would not seem to be much doubt that drunkards are wrongdoers!

It is therefore very easy to simply dismiss drunkenness – and all related drinking problems – as being sin. However, I think this is where we fall into various traps.

First, this easily leads us into the trap of condemning the alcoholic, along with the sorcerer, the thief and the prostitute, as being evil people who are quite unlike the rest of us. We conveniently skate over Paul’s reference to quarrels, dissensions, factions, anger, envy and greed, ignoring the fact that they are endemic in our churches. We define idolatry in such a way as to be alien to our secular culture, conveniently overlooking our obsession with material goods. We then feel safe within our own sense of self-righteousness, and we condemn alcoholics, the homosexuals and the prostitutes as being evil people who, unlike those within the church, are still in need of salvation. Instead of identifying with the alcoholic as someone who experiences, at least in some way or to some degree, the same temptations and struggles as we do, we identify their experience as alien.

Second, we assume that somehow people are personally and solely responsible for their drunkenness. Even if they tell us that they struggle with the desire to continue drinking, we assume that they are not sufficiently motivated to stop, or else that they have not sought or accepted help as they should have done. Worse still, there is even a tendency in some quarters to imagine that if only they became Christian all their problems would be solved. If they are not, then it is because of an underlying spiritual problem – which brings us back to the personal responsibility of the individual concerned. The closest they might get to being absolved of personal responsibility is the suggestion that is sometimes made within more extreme charismatic circles that addictions may arise from demonic activity. But the implicit assumption is that we do not have these problems because we have behaved responsibly, others have these problems because they have chosen wrongly or culpably.

Third, we fail to analyse the nature of the problem. If a drunkard is a sinner, then there is apparently no more to be said about the subject. Having already fallen into the trap that I have just described, we find no difficulty in analysing other problems – our own problems – in a much more liberal and self-protective manner. For example, dissensions on matters such as the ethics of human sexuality are seen as being due to other people’s misuse of scripture, heresy or apostasy, and therefore justify our engagement in the very quarrels, factions and anger that St Paul condemned. However, when it comes to drunkenness, there is no such analysis – there is no defence for the alcoholic.

[.....]

At this point, I would like to emphasise that I am not trying to exonerate the alcoholic of all blame. I believe firmly that we are all responsible for our behaviour (unless perhaps in certain cases of true ‘madness’ or ‘psychosis’) – even if it occurs when we have been drinking. However, I am trying to combat the simplistic view that alcoholics are simply ‘bad’ people who should have known better, and who are quite unlike the rest of us. I am trying to suggest that their experience is in some ways universal – that it reflects a complex interplay of spiritual, social, psychological and biological factors, and that it represents a struggle of the divided will with competing desires.

Wow:

We have a hundred billion neurons in the brain; infants create as many as 1.8 million neural connections per second; a mere sixty neurons are capable of making ten to the eighty-first possible connections, which is a number ten times as large as the number of particles in the observable universe;

Source

Hat-tip: Joe Carter – First Things

This is a search term that just brought someone to this blog:

how+do+we+stop+gypsies+getting+on+a+field

Answer:

i+don’t+know

The following update is from The Point of no Return:

Mazin Latif is a journalist who visited the contested shrine of Ezekiel at al-Kifl (Kefel) at Hilla, south of Baghdad, in 2010. He found the site in bad condition: marble panels on the walls had been removed, the Sefer Torah in the synagogue adjoining the tomb was missing, and the Jewish books deposited in the shrine’s library had been stolen. With thanks to Mrs Eileen Khalastchy for kindly summarising Latif’s article for the As-Sabaah newspaper.

Lately, a lot has been said about the shrine of Kefel or what is called by the Jews ‘the shrine of the Prophet Ezekiel.’

The shrine is of great importance to all Jews, but in particular to the Jews of Iraq to whom ownership was given by the Ottoman Sultan Abdel Hamid.

The Jews used to visit the site yearly to pray and hold big celebrations. They used to slaughter and distribute the meat to the poor. The men in charge and the rabbis used to pray daily there until the mass exodus of the Jews from Iraq in 1951.

The village of Kefel is situated about 20 miles south of the town Hilla. In the Kefel is buried the Prophet Ezekiel. The prophet Ezekiel is said to be a Cohen (descendant of the High Priest) from Jerusalem. Another seven Cohanim are buried there.

According to the Jews, the Prophet Ezekiel is mentioned in the Torah. The tomb of Ezekiel used to be covered with an expensive carpet and a hand-embroidered cloth. King Yehoyachin built a fence around the tomb with the help of many Jews.

The Jews bought the land near the shrine where they built a market and houses to be used by the Jewish guardians of the shrine and by the Rabbis in charge.

In 1860, the Muslims claimed the shrine and all the buildings around it for themselves. With the help of the Daniel family and and after many inquiries to Istanbul, the Ottoman authorities decided that the shrine belonged to the Jews and that the minaret did not belong to a mosque as the Muslims claimed.

The Muslim story claimed that the Prophet is an Arabic prophet descended from the Prophet Isma’el (Yishma’el). They lost their claim.

The Muslims from Hilla visit and pray in Kefel as they believe that the Prophet is a great one and mentioned in the Koran.

The minaret of the shrine is in a very bad condition and is supported by wooden poles to prevent it from falling.

The Jews used to own large libraries in their homes. When an owner died, all his books went to the Kefel library. After the mass exodus in 1951, all the books were kept in wooden boxes and covered with bricks. In the Seventies, someone destroyed all the boxes and the Hebrew books were scattered in the streets. As for the marble tablets that decorated the walls with the Hebrew inscriptions, they were stolen and sold to collectors who are interested in Jewish art.

Lately, after my visit in 2010 to the site, unfortunately what I saw was heartbreaking. Most of the Hebrew writings on the walls were erased. The tomb of Daniel was also in bad condition as well as the tombs of members of his family.

I did not see anything indicating that the site had a mosque or any sign of a Muslim site.

Unfortunately the Jewish shrine is in a very bad shape. Also there was no sign of the Sefer Torah the Jews used to pray with.

I am writing what my conscience dictates. I pray for a free Iraq true to its motto (Religion for God and the Homeland for all).

I ask the President of Iraq, the government, and all the people in charge to look after and preserve Iraq’s true heritage.

Mazin Latif is an active Baghdadi journalist and writer specialising in Iraqi Jewish affairs. The article was summarised by Mrs. Eileen Khalastchy of London from an article in the As-Sabaah Iraqi daily newspaper ( Iraqi Information Net 13 February, 2011) http://www.alsabaah.com

Save Ezekiel’s shrine ! please sign our petition here

As our cultural value system, political correctness seems almost to have replaced religion.

Source: Mad, Bad or Sad? A Christian approach to antisocial behaviour and mental disorder – P.51

Here is an inevitable update to this story:

The Anonymous hacking collective this morning defaced the Web site of the controversial Westboro Baptist Church in the middle of a live radio show that included a church spokeswoman and a member of Anonymous.

The defacement came just days after Anonymous issued a statement saying that it had no plans to attack the Church’s Web site. The statement had noted that an earlier letter said to be from the group that threatened online attacks on the church site was a hoax.

Members of the WBC church are known for their strident anti-gay views and for protests at funerals of slain military personnel and others. Last week it issued a letter challenging Anonymous to “bring it.”

The Anonymous member on the radio show today said it felt compelled to attack because of what it claimed was the church’s belligerent response to the hoax letter. “We had enough. We responded maturely. We said no, we don’t want war,” the Anonymous member said during the discussion on the David Pakman multiplatform politics and news talk show.

Prior to today’s attacks, WBC’s sites were offline for several days. That outage appears to have been caused by a distributed denial of service attack launched by a hacker called The Jester.

A note posted by Anonymous on the newly defaced WBC site this morning said that the church’s “recent antics to gain media attention,” had caused the group to lose patience with the church. “Despite having the capability to hack your sites previously, we chose not to,” the note said.

….continue reading

And here is a copy of the ANONYMOUS notice placed on the website, which is great if you have a magnifying glass handy.

The Pew Research Center have just announced that mainstream media coverage of religion-related issues and events doubled from 2009 to 2010, accounting for 2% of news.

The sixteen page report can be found here in PDF format.

Interestingly, religion appeared as a major topic more often in the blogosphere than it did in traditional media.

The top 5 stories were largely depressing and included:

1) The ‘Ground Zero Mosque’

2) Catholic clergy sexual abuse scandal

3) Pastor Terry Jones’ ‘Burn a Qu’ran‘ foolishness

4) President Barack Obama’s faith

5) Religious dimension of 9/11 commemorations

Others in the top ten included: Westboro Church protests, Eddie Long’s indiscretions, Pope’s visit to the UK, midterm elections, and education.

I note a lack of coverage of persecution of religious minorities. Should I be surprised?

Anyway, you can find the Pew Forum summary here if you’re interested.