eChurch Blog

Just a brief blogpost on a few things that caught my attention today.

Certain quarters of the Christian online world have been at war over the issue of Complementarianism. You can find the background info and latest salvo details here if you’re interested. Adrian Warnock recently took part in a Premier debate on this topic and says this is “one of the most controversial subjects facing the Church today”.

Personally I think this is more an issue facing the Western Protestant Church and amounts to narcissism of small differences.

News today that Pussy Riot have been nominated for the European Parliament’s annual Sakharov Peace Prize.

I don’t agree with their custodial sentences, but a peace prize…..

The New Statesman got itself into hot water by running a full-page advert for Core Issues. PME200 blogged on this from a gay vantage and details the outcome. Core Issues have provided a response to the New Statesman which can be read here.

The English Defence League are marching in Norwich this Saturday in support of Reverend Alan Clifford who was banned by the council from distributing anti-Islamic literature from a market stall. Revd Clifford has made it clear that he is in no way affiliated with the EDL, but goes on to say the EDL rightly endorse his view on Islam.

Not the wisest of comments.

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

Epiphenom – The rising tide of religious protectionism in the West

Dear Atos: Undercover Nun is praying for your immortal soul

Archdruid Eileen – Nothing to do with Us

Cranmer – EU joins with Islamic states to declare ‘the importance of respecting all prophets’

MentalHealthCop – One Vision

God and Politics – And the winner is?

The Wall Street Journal – Are We Really Getting Smarter?

Vatican Outsider – Africa: Christians outnumber Muslims

Harry’s Place – The EDL and interfaith dialogue

ConservativeHome – Andrew Lilico: Islam and Mohammed should not be protected from mockery

A few links I found interesting for one reason or another, with bonus image.

Parchment and Pen – Preaching morality vs preaching Christ

The blog of Kevin – Re-discovering the human

NHS Choices – Half of medical reporting ‘is subject to spin’

ThreadsUK – Is the religious right wrong

Self-harm is associated with poor physical health, according to new Lancet cohort study

Ekklesia – Shocking number dying on probation says new report

Cross reflected in a mirror

From BRIN

The majority of Britons are keen to keep religion apart from politics, according to a study published on 13 September 2012. 81% affirmed that religious practice is a private matter, which should be separated from British politico-economic life; 76% agreed that religious leaders should not influence how people vote in elections; 71% disagreed that religious leaders should have influence over the decisions of Government; 66% disagreed that politicians who did not share respondents’ own religious beliefs should not run for public office; and 65% disagreed that Britain would be a better place if more religious leaders held public office. Fewer than one in ten took the opposite stance on all these measures, with the remainder neutral or undecided, albeit as many as 16% wanted Christianity to play a greater role in British politics.

….continue

Interesting:

In what could prove a landmark ruling for oppressed Christians, the European Court of Justice has ruled that people who are persecuted in their native countries due to their religion have the right to apply for asylum in Europe.

Confirming the ruling of a German court, the European Court of Justice – the highest court within the EU – decided that if a person’s right to public worship was ‘gravely infringed’ – they should be granted asylum.

Furthermore, the Court ruled that being limited to private prayer was not a legitimate alternative to the inherent right of public worship – rejecting the notion that religious minorities should limit their profile in the public sphere.

[.....]

Following the court ruling, Lord Alton told the Institute of the potential consequences: For too long European nations have continued with a policy of apathy towards the persecution of Christian minorities in distant lands.  However, with the possibility of religious communities now fleeing to Europe for asylum, Western governments may finally be spurred into tackling the root cause.

…read all

UPDATE: God and Politics has blogged on this and has further details.

Long time readers will remember on the run-up to the general election the BNP made a concerted effort to co-opt British Christianity to further their political agenda.

The result of this was an online campaign to wrest the Christian card from their grasp and inform as many Christians as possible of the incompatibility of the BNP with Christianity. This was successful; albeit; there was some sympathy within the Christianity community relating to the BNP’s stance on the growth of Islam within this country.

The BNP failed miserably in those elections.

It’s with this in mind that I note with interest Richard Bartholomew’s recent blog post highlighting Kevin Carroll’s – vice-chair of the English Defence League and British Freedom – use of Christian issues (persecution narrative) at a recent anti-Islam conference in the US.

I encourage you to hop over and read that blog post as well as an additional post today looking at Christian Concern’s attitude towards the EDL.

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

Independent (Patrick Cockburn) Neglect of the mentally ill is the great scandal of our times. Are we prepared to pay for the solution?

iBenedictines – Does Blogging Help or Hinder Online Debate?

MentalHealthCop- Suicide Prevention

Vic the Vicar – Creepy Christians and the Media

Leaving Fundamentalism – Former ACE employee turns whistleblower

Cranmer – Fascist Green Party expels Christian councillor over gay marriage

Guardian (Nick Cohen) – Our children go hungry for want of Tory compassion

Fr Z – “From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge—a Church that has lost much.”

Elder of Ziyon – Muslims freak over “Judaizing” Christian concert south of Temple Mount

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

Connexions – A Tory Jesus

Mind and Soul – Faith and Recovery from Pychosis and Clinical Depression

Heresy Corner – Warsi’s new job

Copybot – Ad agency laughs at people on benefits

Mind Hacks – Stopped clocks and dead phones

Christian.co.uk – Brethren Church denied Charitable status

Edward Feser – Brain hacking and mind reading

The main features of China’s economic development are GDP growth, resource exploitation, environmental pollution, conflicts of interest, and some people making incredible fortunes. Those who are wealthy suddenly find themselves facing a huge deficit in spirit and belief as they come to the realization that “money is not omnipotent”and happiness is not entirely endowed by wealth. Material abundance cannot solve the problem of spiritual poverty. Many wealthy people even make the complaint that “I am so poor that I have nothing but money.”People are beginning to realize that money is not the only purpose for living.”Getting rich may be necessary, but what they really desire is a meaningful life on the basis of wealth.

SOURCE

Twitter is all of a flutter as news breaks that Chris Grayling has been appointed as Justice Secretary.

Apparently he is the first non-lawyer as Lord Chancellor since Archbishop of York under Queen Mary in 1558.

Aside from this, folks such as Symon Hill of Ekklesia have Tweeted in response:

The appointment of Chris Grayling as Justice Secretary is an insult to gay and bisexual people. He defended homophobes in secret recording.

This secret recording relates to comments he made suggesting that B&B owners should have the right to turn away gay couples. Here’s the offending remarks:

“I personally always took the view that, if you look at the case of should a Christian hotel owner have the right to exclude a gay couple from a hotel, I took the view that if it’s a question of somebody who’s doing a B&B in their own home, that individual should have the right to decide who does and who doesn’t come into their own home. If they are running a hotel on the High Street, I really don’t think that it is right in this day and age that a gay couple should walk into a hotel and be turned away because they are a gay couple, and I think that is where the dividing line comes.”

As you can imagine these comments caused outrage at the time and that outrage is being resurrected as a result of Grayling’s appointment.