Eideard

Christians who want to be exempt from equality legislation are like Muslims trying to impose sharia on Britain, Trevor Phillips, the human rights watchdog, has declared.

Religious rules should end “at the door of the temple” and give way to the “public law” laid down by Parliament, the chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission said. He argued that Roman Catholic adoption agencies and other faith groups providing public services must choose between their religion and obeying the law when their beliefs conflict with the will of the state.

Mr Phillips singled out the adoption agencies that fought a long legal battle to avoid being forced to accept homosexual couples under equality laws. Last year, following a High Court case, the Charity Commission ruled against an exemption for Catholic Care, an adoption agency operating in Leeds.

Speaking at a debate in London on diverse societies, Mr Phillips backed the new laws, which led to the closure of all Catholic adoption agencies in England. “You can’t say because we decide we’re different then we need a different set of laws,” he said, in comments reported by The Tablet, the Catholic newspaper.

“To me there’s nothing different in principle with a Catholic adoption agency, or indeed Methodist adoption agency, saying the rules in our community are different and therefore the law shouldn’t apply to us. Why not then say sharia can be applied to different parts of the country? It doesn’t work.”

He added that religious groups should be free to follow their own rules within their own settings but not outside. “Once you start to provide public services that have to be run under public rules, for example child protection, then it has to go with public law,” he said.
“Institutions have to make a decision whether they want to do that or they don’t want to do that…”

Mr Phillips has been outspoken in his defence of human rights law even when they conflict with religious beliefs.

He has accused some Christian groups of being more militant than Muslims. During the debate, he praised both the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches for their work in inner cities, particularly through faith schools, but accused some religious groups of growing intolerance.

“There is something rather odd that is happening amongst what I call the righteous brigade, that is people of good will and so on,” Mr Phillips said. “And that is that if you don’t agree 100 per cent with them and excoriate people who have a different point of view actually somehow you are joining a bad bunch of people.”

Keith Porteous Wood, director of the National Secular Society, said Mr Phillips was “absolutely right…If society has decided that it wants to ensure by law that every citizen of this country has equal rights, then there cannot be endless exemptions for religious bodies or anyone else,” he said.

“There is no such thing as partial equality, and every time an exemption is made, someone else’s rights are compromised.”

Sound familiar? Except that Trevor Phillips has more backbone than Barack Obama when it comes to confronting civil rights, the validity of civil law over religious belief in a constitutional democracy. Confronting sharia-style precepts, Muslim or Catholic or whichever fundamentalist source requires the courage to maintain constitutional protections via civil law. Maybe he’ll be invited sometime to drop in and give lessons at the White House.

But, don’t hold your breath waiting.

 
Scuffles have broken out between rival groups of Greek Orthodox and Armenian clerics over a turf war in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity.

Bemused tourists looked on as about 100 priests fought with brooms while cleaning the church in preparation for Orthodox Christmas, on 7 January.

Palestinian police armed with batons and shields broke up the clashes.

Groups of priests have clashed before in the church, built on the spot where Christians believe Jesus was born.

“It was a trivial problem that… occurs every year,” Bethlehem police Lt-Col Khaled al-Tamimi told Reuters. “No one was arrested because all those involved were men of God,” he said…

The 1,700-year-old church, one of the holiest sites in Christianity, is in a bad state of repair, largely because the priests cannot agree on who should pay for its upkeep.

Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built on the site where many Christians believe Jesus was crucified, has also seen similar incidents.

Anyone surprised that money is the root of battles between these churches. Another primo reason for skirmishes like this is who gets the juiciest spots to sell souvenirs to tourists.

After a great discussion of the origins of Christianity – he explained why he wore a fedora hat. Though already out of fashion in the 1960′s, he figured it made him look more like Bing Crosby and therefore less likely to be beaten by the defenders of law and order.

A San Fernando Valley doctor and evangelical minister who federal prosecutors said used bogus herbal medications to offer false hope to dozens of people suffering from diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s was found guilty of nearly a dozen federal charges.

Twenty-eight victims or family members of victims who died while taking the products testified against Christine Daniel, 57, who was found guilty Tuesday on four counts of mail and wire fraud, six counts of tax evasion related to income tax filings as well as one count of witness tampering…

Federal prosecutors successfully argued that Daniel leveraged her position of trust among evangelical Christians and through a program on the Trinity Broadcasting Network to push the phony treatments, which were marketed under the names C-Extract, “the natural treatment” and “the herbal treatment.”

Some of the medications, prosecutors said, contained nothing more exotic than sunscreen preservatives and beef extract…

“These are some of the most vulnerable victims in society. Most of these victims were dying, most of them were terminal cancer patients. Most of them only had been given a few months to live. Some had small children,” Assistant U.S. Atty. Joseph Johns said.

Daniel “stepped into the breach and took everything they had, including their time. Instead of spending their final days with their families, they spent it some flea-ridden motel drinking her foul treatment,” Johns said.

Preying upon the terminally-ill, taking every last penny from someone desperate to live, desperate enough to reach out beyond the limits of proven treatment – is about as despicable as a criminal can be.

Throw away the key!

The televangelist Pat Robertson’s suggestion that a man whose wife was far “gone” with Alzheimer’s should divorce her if he felt a need for new companionship has provoked a storm of condemnation from other Christian leaders but a more mixed or even understanding response from some doctors and patient advocates.

On his television show, “The 700 Club,” Mr. Robertson, a prominent evangelical who once ran for president, took a call from a man who asking how he should advise a friend whose wife was deep into dementia and no longer recognized him…

“This is a terribly hard thing,” Mr. Robertson said, clearly struggling to think his way through a wrenching situation. “I hate Alzheimer’s. It is one of the most awful things, because here’s the loved one — this is the woman or man that you have loved for 20, 30, 40 years, and suddenly that person is gone “

“I know it sounds cruel,” he continued, “but if he’s going to do something, he should divorce her and start all over again, but to make sure she has custodial care, somebody looking after her.”

When Mr. Robertson’s co-anchor on the show wondered if that was consistent with marriage vows, Mr. Robertson noted the pledge of “’til death do us part,” but added, “This is a kind of death.”

He said the question presented an ethical dilemma beyond his ability to answer. “I certainly wouldn’t put a guilt trip on you if you decided that you had to have companionship, you’re lonely, you have to have companionship,” Mr. Robertson said.

The reaction from many evangelical leaders, who see lifelong, traditional marriage as the cornerstone of morality and society, was harsh and disbelieving…

Dr. James E. Galvin, a neurologist who runs a dementia clinic at New York University’s Langone Medical Center, said it was wrong to say that people with Alzheimer’s were “gone,” or to call its late stages “a kind of death.”

“While it’s true that in terminal phases, patients may not be fully aware of what’s going on, they tend to recognize the people who are closest to them,” Dr. Galvin said.

With good care, people may live 15 to 20 years with the disease, most of that time at home, Dr. Galvin said. If they eventually move to a nursing home and seem unaware of what is going on around them, he said, then spouses face “an individualized decision” about when and how to develop new relationships…

I doubt if ever before have I come close to agreeing with Pat Robertson on anything. I think he probably gets the seasons and sunrise wrong. Still, this is a question that he has answered as a man of conscience, willing to take that question beyond the accepted constraints of his fundamentalist brethren. I give him credit for that.

It will be a terrible quandary – you must include your whole life’s experience together and yet look ahead to a life that can be painfully distant even when together. My snap judgement would be to stay together. But, I can see a context wherein divorce might be the sound decision.

While the Bible Belt is known for its devotion to traditional values, Southerners don’t do so well on one key family value: They are more likely to get divorced than people living in the Northeast.

Southern men and women had higher rates of divorce in 2009 than their counterparts in other parts of the country: 10.2 per 1,000 for men and 11.1 per 1,000 for women, according to a new report from the U.S. Census Bureau released Thursday.

By comparison, men and women in the Northeast had the lowest rates of divorce, 7.2 and 7.5 per 1,000, which is also lower than the national divorce rate of 9.2 for men and 9.7 for women…

Youth and lack of education can lead to higher divorce rates, said D’Vera Cohn, a senior writer with the Pew Research Center..”There tend to be higher divorce rates in states where women marry young,” Cohn said. “Education also may play a role. In general, less educated women marry at younger ages than college-educated women, and less educated couples have higher divorce rates.”

Values about premarital sex associated with the Bible Belt and rural America may be encouraging people to marry early, at ages when they are likely to have less education and less income to support a long-lasting marriage, according to Naomi Cahn, law professor at The George Washington University Law School…”There’s a moral crisis in red states that’s produced by higher divorce rates and the disparity between parental values and behavior of young adults,” said Cahn. “There is enormous tension between moral values and actual practices…”

“The very fact that people feel less pressure to get married (in the Northeast) means they can be more selective about who they marry and take their time, ” Coontz said. “They don’t have to rush into it to please parents or avoid stigma of premarital sex…”

Meanwhile, divorce still pushes more women into poverty than men and affects their children, since children are still more likely to live with their mothers than their fathers, according to the same U.S. Census report.

Bible Belt and fundamentalist Christians have a built-in acceptance for hypocrisy. Lying about ethical standards – building rationales acceptable to your peers to justify just about anything is part of the whole equation of being “forgiven”. You can build your life on superstition and guesswork – and watch it fall apart – because you have someone waiting for you, next Sunday, who will tell you, “It’s OK. You gave it a try. God loves you anyway.”

Even if you don’t make your child support payments.

To the men and women burdened with the ultimate responsibility of launching America’s nuclear missiles it was known as the “Jesus loves nukes” lesson.

For 20 years the course on “Christian Just War Theory” was taught by chaplains at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California to those who would turn the key should World War III break out.

The training, which used passages from the Bible and religious imagery to demonstrate the moral justification for atomic warfare, has now been suspended after the launch officers, themselves mostly Christians, complained…

…Officers were also told that in Judges, God is “motivating judges to fight and deliver Israel from foreign oppressors,” and that there was “no pacifistic sentiment in mainstream Jewish history…”

The course was stopped after 31 nuclear missile launch officers complained to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a group that campaigns for the separation of church and state.

Its founder Mikey Weinstein said the officers, who were Protestants and Roman Catholics, were being told that “under fundamentalist Christian doctrine, war is a good thing”.

He said the officers found that “disgusting.” Mr Weinstein said: “The United States Air Force was promoting a particular brand of right wing fundamentalist Christianity.

“The main essence was that war is a natural part of the human experience and it’s something that is favoured by this particular perspective of the New Testament.”

Fundamentalist Christians time and again warp the foundations of their religion to support the most reactionary politics, invoking war and murder.

The disconnect is deadly for millions of innocent people from Auschwitz to My Lai, Kandahar to Baghdad.

Frustrated that their pleas to the Administration and Congress to protect funding for the nation’s most vulnerable are being ignored, nearly a dozen leaders from the faith community were arrested inside the U.S. Capitol Building on Thursday.

Despite repeated warnings from the U.S. Capitol Police, the leaders refused to end their public prayers asking the Administration and Congress not to balance the budget on the backs of the poor.

Among those who were arrested were the Rev. Michael Livingston, former president of the National Council of Churches, now director of the NCC’s poverty initiative; and Jordan Blevins, director of peace witness for the Church of the Brethren and the NCC.

“Congress is paralyzed by toxic partisan politics while people suffer,” said Livingston. “Our elected officials are protecting corporations and wealthy individuals while shredding the safety net for millions of the most vulnerable people in our nation and abroad. Our faith won’t allow us to passively watch this travesty unfold. We’ve written letters, talked with and prayed for our elected officials, and prayed together daily in interreligious community. Today, we ‘offer our bodies as a living sacrifice’ to say to congress ‘Raise revenue, protect the vulnerable and those living in poverty…’”

Others arrested include Jim Winkler, General Secretary, General Board of Church and Society, United Methodist Church; Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Shalom Center in Philadelphia; Rev. Jennifer Butler, Executive Director, Faith and Public Life; Rev. Paul Sherry, Director of the Washington Office, Interfaith Worker Justice; Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, Director of Public Witness, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.); Sandy Sorenson, Director of Washington Office, United Church of Christ; Martin Shupack, Director of Advocacy, Church World Service; and Rev. Dr. Bob Edgar, President of Common Cause. Edgar is a former general secretary of the NCC…

Capitol Hill police asked them to clear the rotunda but the religious leaders continued praying. As they were being arrested, Rep. Chellie Pingree (D.-Maine) announced on the floor of the House of Representatives that religious leaders are being arrested for standing up for persons in poverty…

There was no response from those members of the House of Representatives who campaign for office as Christian conservatives.

At least 24 Filipinos were nailed to crosses to re-enact Jesus Christ’s suffering in a Good Friday rite rejected by Catholic church leaders but witnessed by throngs of believers and thousands of tourists.

Ruben Enaje, a 50-year-old sign painter, screamed in pain as villagers dressed as Roman centurions hammered four-inch stainless steel nails through his palms and set him aloft on a cross under a brutal sun in San Pedro Cutud in Pampanga.

It was Enaje’s 25th crucifixion. He says surviving nearly unscathed when he fell from a three-story building in 1985 prompted him to observe the rite.

“Not a bone in my body was broken when I fell from that building,” Enaje said. “It was a miracle.”

Ahead of the cross nailings, throngs of penitents walked several miles through village streets and beat their bare backs with sharp bamboo sticks and pieces of wood, sometimes splashing spectators with blood. Some participants opened cuts in the penitents’ backs using broken glass to ensure the ritual was sufficiently bloody…

The most number of crucifixions were staged beside a rice field in San Pedro Cutud, where 15 men were nailed to crosses, three at a time on a dusty mound as more than 30,000 people, including touristswatched and took pictures. An ambulance stood by and more than 20 tourists fainted or became dizzy in the heat, officials said.

Foreigners have been banned from taking part after an Australian comic was nailed to a cross under a false name a few years ago near Pampanga. Authorities also believe that a Japanese man sought to be crucified as part of a porn film in 1996…

Har!

Happened to hear this, this morning, on one of our local country[ish] radio stations. Hadn’t heard it in a spell.

Woody’s son, Arlo, still has one of Woody’s guitars that says “This machine kills fascists” – which is about the best thing about the kind of music I sang and played back in the day. Woody was an inspiration to us all.

So, if you have a friend who is a modern-day Christian American Republican, play this song for them and ask whether or not this kind of Christianity is too old-fashioned for them?

You’d think a few more homophobes would be welcome

In shopping around for a Cub Scout program for their two sons, ages 6 and 8, Jeremy and Jodi Stokes decided on the one at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews.

The Stokes, also of Matthews, weren’t members of the evangelical megachurch, but they had many friends who were. And unlike the Cub Scout pack at their own church, which doesn’t have a program for 6-year-old Tiger Scouts, Christ Covenant’s was big enough to accommodate both of their boys.

The couple even signed up to be Scout leaders – he would lead the Bears, she’d help with the Tigers – when they discovered the church needed more adult help. And when the Scouting officials at Christ Covenant found out Jeremy Stokes was an Eagle Scout, they were thrilled.

So why, in the end, did Christ Covenant reject the Stokes’ application to be Scout leaders?

Because they’re Mormons. And, therefore, not real Christians, church officials told the couple last month…

The Stokes were told their sons were welcome to join, and that they could volunteer. But as practicing Mormons, they couldn’t be leaders…

Mark Turner, executive director of the Mecklenburg County Council of the Boy Scouts, said it’s the first local instance he knows of where parents were rejected for Scout leadership on religious grounds…

The crap goes round and round. This is a well-researched article. Of course, everyone accepts the premise that Cub Scouts have to be led or sponsored by someone stuck into Christianity. So, one sect advocating the hatred of someone else – is rejected by another sect whose superstition makes them superior to whoever they fear, this week.

It was a day and age when the division of neighborhoods by ethnicity and race was not only accepted – it was iron-clad. We were tough enough to cross every neighborhood boundary – but, the reverse wasn’t true. So, they kicked us out.