eChurch Blog

I cheered from the sidelines when the hacktivist group Anonymous attacked, took down, and defaced the website of the hate group: The Westboro Baptist Church; the nasty “God hates fags” folk who like to picket funerals for some unknown reason.

When I learned of two pernicious US bills, designed to censor the Internet, I secretly harboured support for Anonymous in their fight against this.

I even asked if Christians should support the activities of Anonymous, especially given that Christianity appears to be the religion of choice for hackers.

Suffice it to say, I now rather regret my sympathies with this group.

Anonymous have declared war on religion; well I say religion, they’ve only attacked Christian Church websites so far. Apparently the reason for these attacks is, and I quote:

“HACKED Reason: religious idiocy and foh dah lulz.”

Right, so that clarifies and justifies everything then!

The three Websites that have been attacked so far are: Bethel Outreach International Church, the Charlotte International Church, and Crossfire Ministries. All three religious organizations are based in and around Charlotte, North Carolina.

None of these groups appear exceptional in any way.

Anonymous attacked these websites and defaced them with a YouTube video featuring Richard Dawkins, entitled: An Atheist’s Call to Arms.

Anonymous have made this declaration:

Greetings fellow pirates,

Let us be clear from the start: any kind of religion is a sickness to this world. A sickness that creates hate and intolerance, a sickness that brings people to wage war on their fellow people, a sickness that has come to this world long time ago, when mankind wasn’t educated, a sickness that brought false hope and suppression to those who believed and often even more terror and suppression to those who dared not to believe.

Religions are authoritarian hierarchies, designed to dominate your free will. Religions are mind control. They’re power structures that aim to convince you to give away your power for the benefit of those who enjoy dominating people. When you subscribe to a religion, you enroll in a mindless minion training program. Religions don’t market themselves as such, but this is essentially how they operate. In case you ever wondered why religious teachings are invariably mysterious, confusing, and incongruent? This is no accident — it’s intentional.

We see religion pretty much the same way as we see many governments. Fear mongering and making lots of money, so a small group of ppl will become insanely rich, while the believing masses can eat dirt…

So people of the world, don’t let religion control your life. Don’t fight against each other for contrary beliefs. This world and our life can be a wonderful adventure, where you have the unique chance to help mankind and your fellow citizens. Where we can all work together to make this earth a better place for ourselves,our children and all those generations who will come after us. ^(;,;)^

Uh-huh.

Anyway, Anonymous were not quite so successful in their endeavours to attack the Vatican:

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

Conservative Home – Andrew Lilico: Are all humans people?

A Grain of Sand – Relentless Progressivism

Cranmer’s Curate – Spiritual Dangers for Christian Campaigners

Conservative Home – Peter Bone MP: Redefining marriage threatens the liberties of Christians, teachers and parents

Halsbury’s Law Exchange – Conflicts of rights within “superdiverse” societies: a response to Trevor Philips

Religion News Blog – UK: Cults watchdog faces danger of being shut down

What’s Wrong with the World – How the Blogosphere Separates Natural Allies

You know that feeling when you read an article and wish you could have written something like it yourself? Well, perhaps you don’t, but I’m sure other bloggers will know exactly what I’m talking about.

Anyway, this feeling doesn’t assail me all that often, but today, it happened twice.

And so I heartily commend to your attention the following links:

The first on writing:

Jeff Goins – How to Fall Back in Love with Writing

The second on blogging:

Timothy Dalrymple – The Indignation Industry, or the Art of Blogging Controversies

There is apoplectic outrage across the Interweb as the Occupy St Paul’s Cathedral Occupy the London Stock Exchange protest was finally forcibly evicted late last night.

The real bone of contention seems to be the fact that police removed folk that were forming the “Ring of Prayer” from the steps of the Cathedral. From what I can glean, the High Court eviction order (obtained by the Corporation of London, with the support of the Cathedral) was against the encampment in the square, and so the folk gathered on the Cathedral steps believed they had a legal right to be there.

As it turned out, a Trespass Order had been granted in collusion with the Cathedral, granting police authority to remove those folk from the steps.

It’s also purported that four policemen could be clearly seen on the Cathedral balcony, “in silhouette”.

Enter on stage Jonathan Bartley of Ekklesia and his viral Video:

As you can hear, the police cite Cathedral permission, Section 14 of the Public Order Act, and breach of the peace. They also state the assembly was antagonising other people.

This has led to a stream of “dismayed and shocked” comments aimed at the “un-Christian” stance of the Cathedral.

Just a couple of quick comments.

From the very beginning this protest morphed into a battle with the Cathedral in particular, and Christianity in general. And as it began, so it has ended. In the process, many of us (Christians) who may have been sympathetic to the grievances of this movement, were alienated and sent on the defensive.

I witnessed a continued outpouring of vitriol against the Cathedral, with many that have not darkened the door of a church in years, pontificating on Christian morality. So much so, at times, you could be forgiven for thinking that the very Raison d’être for the protest was the ‘evil’ cathedral itself.

The irony is, with all the focus on the Cathedral; all talk of greedy bankers and corrupt Capitalism, was notably absent.

I think this all highlights a serious weakness in the Occupy movement. They are so easily subverted simply because they don’t really know what they stand for. What I mean by this, is that although we know what they stand against – corporate greed, banking systems, markets, capitalism – we never really found out what they proposed as alternatives.

I think the reason for this, is that they don’t really have any answers. And I’ve been observing this movement for months.

I note that Ekklesia have used coverage of this eviction as a nice little opportunity to have a dig a conservative Christians:

….I wonder whether those groups who sound off about supposed ‘Christian persecution’ in the UK will take up the issue of political and religious authorities working together to have people who are praying kicked off Cathedral steps? Or are they only concerned to support sectional privileges for those with conservative views?

The hypocritical irony here, is that Ekklesia often rail against conservative Christians as wishing to be in some way exempt from the laws of the land; especially, in regard to “Equality” laws.

It would now seem that Ekklesia themselves would wish to be exempt from certain laws; notably, trespass, or Section 14 of the Public Order Act.

Granted, the system we live in has many flaws, but it also has many benefits, that need to be recognised and more often readily acknowledged. I know for a fact that I don’t want anarchy.

I don’t know of a better system this side of the Kingdom, do you?

But as a Christian I do know this:

Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.

The Occupy London Movement have made this promise:

to take stock and learn the lessons of the past four and a half months. But be assured that plans are already afoot: plans of some ambition, employing a diversity of tactics and delivered with the aplomb you would expect from us. All will be revealed in time. May is one of our favourite months.

I hope they do learn the lessons; namely, not to allow themselves to be so easily subverted against their natural allies, and to present to us concrete ideas of what they actually stand for; rather than just what they stand against.

1. Twitter
2. Chocolate
3. Swearing
4. Alcohol
5. Soda
6. Facebook
7. Fast food
8. Sex
9. Sweets
10. Meat
11. Lent
12. School
13. Junk food
14. Chips
15. Coffee
16. Candy
17. Bread
18. You
19. Smoking
20. Giving up things
21. Homework
22. Food
23. Social networking
24. Religion
25. Marijuana
26. Beer
27. Work
28. Stuff
29. McDonald’s
30. Virginity
31. Cookies
32. Masturbation
33. Ice cream
34. Shopping
35. Fried food
36. Boys
37. Sobriety
38. Coke
39. Catholicism
40. Cheese
41. Nothing
42. Carbs
43. Red meat
44. Procrastination
45. Desserts
46. Pizza
47. Pancakes
48. Sugar
49. Rice
50. Breathing
51. Me
52. Texting
53. Starbucks
54. Fizzy drinks
55. French fries
56. Diet Coke
57. Porn
58. Tumblr
59. Wine
60. Makeup
61. Liquor
62. Booze
63. College
64. My phone
65. Life
66. Caffeine
67. Laziness
68. Chipotle
69. Tea
70. Chicken
71. Cake
72. Sarcasm
73. New Year’s resolutions
74. Takeout
75. Men
76. Pork
77. Christianity
78. Sleep
79. People
80. Caring
81. Juice
82. Snacking
83. Lying
84. TV
85. Complaining
86. Church
87. Him
88. Sweet tea
89. Lint
90. Vegetables
91. Talking
92. Bacon
93. Being mean
94. Pasta
95. Eating out
96. Negativity
97. Eating
98. Biting my nails
99. Nutella
100. Being nice

SOURCE

This is part of a comment received on another’s blog in relation to me:

The tone of the echurch blog has changed of late, losing its gentle humour and its even temper. Stuart has often blogged about his mental health. I cannot help but wonder whether continued blogging is helpful to his well-being.

I received a similar comment from the same person quite some time ago when I made the decision to censor her comments on this blog. All of this appeared to coincide with my decision to convert to Catholicism.

It’s fair to say that as I began to absorb Catholic teaching, some of my views shifted from a liberal position to an orthodox one. This upset many.

I think the tactic, to undermine a persons credibility as blogger, due to a disability, and to do so on somebody else’s blog, is despicable.

I have blogged in the cause of mental illness and have done so through being open with my own struggles, and will continue to do.

I will not be cowed into silence and remove myself from interweb discourse by smears of this nature.

I am not out of my mind, most excellent Festus, but I utter words of sober truth.

On Sunday I received notice of an intent to pursue me legally for this blog post which would presumably come under the law of defamation and specifically libel.

This was part of the correspondence I received:

I have referred the rest of your grossly inaccurate comments about the situation with [names forum] to my legal advisors, and have sent them a copy of what you have published here.

Confusingly, today there appeared to be something of a backtrack with a denial of intent to pursue legal action. Apparently, passing information relating to an accusation of libel to your legal advisors, should not be conflated with a threat to pursue me legally?

Not exactly sure how else you could view it!

This chap is now awaiting to hear from his legal advisors, to weigh his options, even though of course, he’s never threatened me with legal action!

This was the second comment I received:

Still lying, Stuart, don’t worry, so many people on [names forum]  know what you have done I doubt you will ever be able to show your face there again without people laughing at you. You have made a mockery of a religion that used to be mine but will never be yours, you will never make any sort of Catholic, your behaviour demonstrates that you know nothing of the Christian faith at all, only the words.

Which speaks for itself.

Today a request was made for me to demand the removal of blog posts written by other bloggers on this incident.

I’d like at this point to mention that this particular guy had been previously suspended from the forum, due to his malicious comments towards me.

The unending stream of continuous attacks against me still rumble on….

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

Catholic Boy Richard – “Getting It Straight” on Same-Gender Attraction…And Rick Santorum

A Grain of Sand – Fairness

Liberal Conspiracy – Why was my friend jailed over botched attempt to end his own life?

Dreaming Beneath the Spires – Successful Christians; Hidden Christians

Get Religion – Last temptation of Castro

Psych Central – Are You In Recovery But Not Really Recovering?

It’s been one of those wearying, draining, times online recently, and so I thought I’d give us a quick reminder of what the Internet is really for; to put things back into perspective.

Click here if you want the Internet to help you make everything OK again.

Is this the new Internet sensation?

That’s better…..

This is the most searched for Scripture passage on BibleGateway:

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Followed by, John 3:16, of course……

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

What’s your favourite Scripture?