Archive for the ‘Religion’ Category
A recent Malaysian court ruled that a Catholic newspaper could continue to use the world ‘Allah’ for God. Bombings of churches naturally ensued.
Allah is simply the Arabic word for God. It was used by Jews and Christians for hundreds of years before Mohammed came along.
But some Malaysians believe that use of the word Allah by non-Muslim religions may encourage people to think that those religions are acceptable alternatives.
In English, this would be like the Catholic church burning down Mormon temples because they have been using the word ‘God’ for God.
Religious freedom is guaranteed to non-Muslims under the Malay constitution, but Malays are Muslim by definition – Malaysia is a Muslim country – and Malays are not permitted to convert.
Strange how the liberal media seems to think it is perfectly OK for Malaysia, Pakistan, Iran, etc, etc, to be Muslim nations, but that it is racist for Israel to be a Jewish nation.
There are some positives, however.
First, in the court’s recognition that under the Malaysian constitution, other religions had the right to use the word Allah for God.
Second, in the clear statements by many Malaysian political leaders and journalists that this kind of violence is not acceptable.
The problem is that many Muslims know very well that Mohammed would have found it acceptable. And Mohammed is the model for every Muslim, not the constitution of any country, even a Muslim one.
We arrived home in SA on Saturday night. Before church the next morning, we went to McDonalds for breakfast (Well why not? - It is cheap and convenient, they make good coffee, and the hot cakes aren’t bad) and picked up a copy of the reliably abysmal Sunday Mail.
There was a short article about the tribunal into the behaviour of Bishop of The Murray Ross Davies.
The Archbishop of Adelaide has had an extraordinarily difficult task in dealing with what is the worst crisis in episcopal leadership in the history of the Anglican church in Australia.
Earlier in 2009 the Archbishop had announced an enquiry into Bishop Davies’ actions as Bishop. That enquiry produced some 100 signed statements from people around the diocese alleging various kinds of verbal, spiritual and emotional abuse. Once those statements had been received, a tribunal could not be avoided.
The legal status of the tribunal is doubtful. Bishop Davies has made it clear he will not be stood down while the tribunal proceeds, and that he does not believe the Archbishop or the Primate have any right or authority to intervene in the Diocese of The Murray. He may well be right.
I suggested a couple of months ago that it was doubtful anyone outside the Diocese of The Murray could act to remove Bishop Davies. Nonetheless, clear findings of ongoing abuse by a carefully conducted and impartial tribunal might give Diocesan Council the stateable reasons and courage it needs to end Bishop Davies’ employment.
I hope and pray that the tribunal will reach its conclusions reasonably quickly, and that actions will then be be taken which will give the best possible outcome for the Diocese and for Bishop Davies and his family.
Whatever that outcome is, it is likely that this will be the end of The Murray as a conservative anglo-catholic diocese.
That statement needs to be clarified a little. The Murray is not an anglo-catholic diocese. It is a polychromatic middle of the road Anglican diocese which has been served by traditionalist anglo-catholic clergy.
As long as their views have been heard, and they have been treated with care and respect by their clergy, the people of the Diocese have been generous in accepting that the Diocese and the wider australian church have been well-served by the special witness of The Murray to a particular and important strand of Anglican faith.
That has changed.
Traditionalist clergy in the Diocese, and organisations like the Society of the Holy Cross (SSC) and Forward in Faith, have supported Bishop Davies to the point of refusing to hear or give any credibility to reports of inappropriate behaviour by Bishop Davies.
Even worse, they have shared with him in efforts to damage the credibility of anyone who complained or did not toe the line. This has left lay people feeling betrayed and deeply hurt.
The crisis in the diocese is not just over Bishop Davies’ leadership. It is a crisis of trust in the clergy.
This sense of having been betrayed, not just by a traditionalist bishop, but by almost all of the traditionalist clergy and the organisations to which they belong, means that it will be near impossible for someone who shares Bishop Davies’ conservative views to be elected.
The Anglican Church will be poorer for this.
The election of Mary Glasspool as assistant Bishop of Los Angeles will be the end of the Anglican Communion.
Ms Glasspool is a practising lesbian who has lived for twenty years with her partner.
This election comes six years after the election of active homosexual Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire.
The unequivocal witness of the Judeo-Christian tradition over nearly four thousand years is that homosexual acts are wrong. This was the unchallenged view in the Christian church until about fifty years ago.
Conservatives say the sudden, culturally driven rejection of long-held beliefs about leadership and sexuality is not only intrinsically wrong, but makes it impossible to comunicate the faith with anny confidence. If the church now says it has been wrong about these key things for the last 2,000 years, why should anyone believe anything it says now?
Muriel Porter claims that we conservatives have talked about damage to the Anglican Communion before, and threatened to leave before before, and so can be safely ignored in any current debates.
It is true that there have been no major public splits in the Anglican Church of Australia.
It is also true that there have been dramatic declines in church attendance over the lasty thirty years.
If life expectancies had not increased by twenty years or so over the last century, Anglican churches around the country would be empty.
There are some exceptions – Sydney and its satellites. But Sydney stands outside the mainstream of the Anglican Church of Australia. That is not a criticism!
Many thousands of men and women who have been Anglicans all their lives have left in despair rather than form new semi-Anglican denominations.
If Muriel Porter means this process is likely to continue no matter how far the church strays from its moorings, then she is probably right.
Members of the Australian Defence Forces are currently deployed in the Solomon Islands, East Timor, Afghanistan, Israel and the Sinai, Sudan and Iraq, as well as in border protection around Australia.
Some 3800 Australian service men and women will be spending Christmas away from their families.
Thanks. And may God bless you and keep you safe, along with those you love.
Why do atheists insist on imposing their religious views on the rest of us?
Atheists are a tiny proportion of the population in Australia.
Seventy percent of Australians are Christians, or have some affiliation with a Christian church. Many of the rest are Sikhs, Muslims, Jews, or members of a myriad of smaller groups.
By all means let’s hear what the atheists have to say. But why should there be outrage from them when anyone else has a point of view on a matter of public policy?
On the flight from Adelaide I read bits of the Adelaide Advertiser over the shoulder of the man in the seat next to me.
There was an article by a woman I had never heard of and whose name I cannot remember, bemoaning the influence of Christianity in public life.
As examples of this nefarious influence, she pointed to the defeat of the voluntary euthanasia bill, and exemptions for religious groups from aspects of anti-discrimination legislation.
These exemptions provide, for example, that a muslim social welfare group does not have to employ a man who lives in a sexual relationship with another man, that a Jewish school does not have to employ someone who believes Jews are descended from pigs and monkeys, or that a catholic parish does not have to employ someone who thinks the pope is the anti-christ.
In other words, these exemptions are about protecting the feelings and beliefs of others, even when when we disagree with them. Even atheists. And I agree with the writer to the extent of acknowledging that this is indeed Chrstian influence at work.
Take two minutes to do a simple thought experiment.
Consider countries where there has been a long history of Christian influence in public life.
Now think of countries under Islamic or atheist regimes.
Where are you more likely to find justice and democracy? Where are you going to be safer if you are lesbian or homosexual? Where are women’s voices more likely to be heard? Where is there a higher level of wealth, of quality education and health services?
In which direction do refugees and immigration flow? Where would you rather live?
The writer of the Adelaide Advertiser article decries the fact the Tony Abbott has called for compulsory Bible classes. She says she is happy for the Bible to be taught in schools, with other fiction.
I am not sure Tony Abbott has called for compulsory Bible classes.
What he said was that it was impossible to understand Western culture; law, music art and literature, without a knowledge of the Bible. He is right.
One of the consequences of the influence of the Bible, and of Christianity in general, is that people like the woman who wrote the Advertiser article can parrot their ill-informed and poorly thought-out opinions and expect them to be taken seriously.
And thank God for that.
The Times reports that experts claim a first century shroud discovered in a tomb near Jerusalem proves the Turin Shroud could not have been used to cover Jesus’ body.
The Hebew University in Jerusalem said “Based on the assumption that this is representative of a typical burial shroud widely used at the time of Jesus, the researchers conclude that the Turin Shroud did not originate from Jesus-era Jerusalem … this discovery has laid to rest the myth of the Shroud.”
The ’shroud’ the investigators investigated was a winding wrapped a round the body of a man who suffered from leprosy.
The leper’s shroud was a simple two way weave, the Turin Shroud is a three over one herringbone weave.
There is a very big assumption in the experts’ opinion, which they are kind enough to point out: ”Based on the assumption that this is a representative of a typical burial shroud widely used at the time of Jesus …”
This is a bit like someone in the year 4,000 digging up a 20th century pauper’s grave, noting the plainess of the coffin, and claiming this proves other claimed coffins and caskets from the same period could not be genuine because they were made of metal or better quality wood, or had nicer trim.
Jesus, though himself poor, had wealthy friends. This is John 19: 38-40:
After these things Joseph of Arimathea, being a disciple of Jesus, but a secret one for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus; and Pilate granted permission. So he came and took away His body. Nicodemus, who had first come to Him by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds weight. So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen wrappings with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews.
100 pounds of spices – this is a huge amount of myrrh and aloes, and extraordinarily expensive.
It is hardly beyond imagining that Jesus’ body might have been wrapped in a better quality cloth than the single poor quality cloth wrapped around a leper that for no apparent reason is assumed by these experts to be the standard burial cloth used at the time.
I am agnostic about the Shroud, as I am about many relics.
But in this case, the experts are letting their agendas show a little too clearly.
St Matthew’s Anglican church in Auckland is the epitome of everything a religious group should not be – self-righteous, inconsiderate of the feelings of others, happy to belittle the beliefs of people it considers inferior.
Like Christians.
Outside the church is a billboard featuring a bedroom scene. An unsatisfied Mary looks up to the heavens while Joseph lies beside her looking deflated.
The caption reads: “Poor Joseph. God is a hard act to follow.”
This kind of arrogant smart-arsery doesn’t do anything to make people think more deeply about their faith (which is claimed to be the intention).
It simply insults people who take their faith seriously.
The vicar, a moral moron named Glynn Cardy, excuses the hurt caused by pointing out that they considered and generously decided against a much more offensive option – a poster of fluorescent sperm floating down from heaven, saying ‘Joy to the World.’
If this guy had half a brain it would be lonely. If he had half a heart, he might have some care for the people he is supposed to be reaching out to.
I’m sure he imagines he is generous, caring, inclusive, and wise.
There are no limits to hypocrisy.
Apparently so.
Like Tony Abbott, I don’t object to Mr Rudd going to Mass.
I don’t even object to his interest in the canonisation of Blessed Mary Mackillop. I am interested in that too, and have blogged about it before.
There is a sense in which Mary Mackillop belongs to all Australians. We can all feel thankful for her example of faithful and courageous service.
Service which was the very opposite of self-seeking, or of seeking the company and attention of the powerful and famous.
I do object to Mr Rudd’s taking Communion.
This was unfair to the priest who celebrated, and unfair to the nuns who assisted.
If he has any respect for the Church to which he formerly belonged, Kevin Rudd should have known that it was not appropriate for him to present himself at the altar.
Understanding this does not depend on whether you are a Roman Catholic or not. I am not. Like Rudd, I am an Anglican.
But respect for the faith and conscience of others means that you do not put them in a position where they will be embarrassed or hurt so your ego can be stroked, or so you can make some sort of public statement, no matter how noble you imagine that statement to be.
Rudd is not a Catholic. He deliberately separated himself from communion with that family. Returning quite properly requires a period of public repentance and of re-learning the faith.
Rudd has no right to swan back in on a whim and expect to be given the most precious gift it is possible to receive in this life.
PS I will be attending Christmas Mass at the beautiful St Francis Xavier Cathedral in Geraldton. I will not be presenting myself for Communion.
Sadly, we Anglicans are separated from our Roman brothers and sisters. It is right that we should feel the pain of that separation, that we may be encouraged to work towards the unity for which our Saviour prayed.
I think the Pope agrees.
The Daily Mail manages to write nearly 1,000 words on the problem of increasing violence caused by a growth in fundamentalism, without once mentioning what kind of fundamentalism this might be.
Those pesky Baptists just won’t stop mutilating their daughters’ genitals. And they seem to have a predilection for killing them if they fall if love with the wrong bloke.
Detectives are still investigating the death of mother-of-two Geeta Aulakh, 28, who was hacked to death with a sword in Greenford, north west London last month. An 18-year-old student has been charged with her murder.
Oh, a student. Could have been Salvation Army. Or maybe some Anglicans were visiting from Sydney.
The closest the Daily Mail gets to giving the game away, you know, informing people about what’s going on, is this:
In July, a 24-year-old Asian man from Denmark lost part of his tongue and was left blind in one eye when he had acid thrown in his face in Leytonstone. Police believe he was attacked over his relationship with a married Muslim woman. Two men are awaiting trial over the assault.
Campaigners believe honour attacks are on the up due to rising fundamentalism in communities around Britain. …
Detective Chief Inspector Gerry Campbell, of the Metropolitan Police, said: ‘The description of this type of crime is misplaced. There is no honour in these crimes.’
He certainly got that right. But what about some honour in reporting?
via Jihad Watch.
A common view about the date of Christmas goes something like this:
“Well, it was a pagan festival, something to do with the sun, and the Christians pinched it to try to make their religion more popular.”
This is one of those things people just ‘know’. But like many things everyone ‘just knew’ at one time (eg, the Sun goes round the earth, older women with moles are witches), we now know this to be false.
The belief that Christians appropriated a pagan festival and made it into Christmas started with Paul Jablonski, a German historian writing in the 17th century.
A radical protestant, Jablonski wanted to show that the Catholic faith was unreliable because it had almost immediately started absorbing pagan beliefs and customs. Jablonski believed, and wanted to prove, that ‘Sola Scriptura’ (Scripture alone) was the only safe foundation for faith.
In the Julian calendar, created in 45 B.C. the winter solstice fell on December 25th. It seemed obvious to Jablonski that the day must have had a pagan significance before it had a Christian one.
He was wrong.
In fact the feast of Sol Invictus, or the invincible sun, was instituted by the emperor Aurelian in 274AD. By this time Christians had been celebrating the birth of Jesus on that date for many years.
Hippolytus, a priest in Rome, wrote thirty years before this that Jesus’ birth “took place eight days before the kalends of January,” that is, on December 25th. St John Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople, also confirms that Christians had celebrated the birth of Christ on this date from the early days of the Church.
It was the pagans who attempted to bolster their falling numbers by appropriating a Christian festival, not the other way around.
How could the Church have known when Jesus was born? The simplest explanation is that Mary, Jesus’ mother, told His disciples what had happened, and they remembered and told those who came after, just as they related the other facts of Jesus’ life and teaching.
A little additional confirmation comes from John Chrysostom. He explains that the date is confirmed by Luke 1 which says Zechariah was performing priestly duty in the Temple when an angel told him his wife Elizabeth she would bear John the Baptist.
During the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, Mary was also visited by an angel and Jesus was conceived. She then went immediately to visit Elizabeth, who was her cousin.
The 24 classes of Jewish priests served by roster in the Temple. Zechariah was in the eighth class. Jewish tradition tells us the class on duty when the Temple was destroyed in A.D. 70.
Calculating back from that, Zechariah’s class would have been serving in October in the year before Jesus’ birth. That is when Elizabeth became pregnant.
Mary visited Elizabeth six months later, just after her visit from the angel Gabriel. That is, in March. Jesus was born nine months later – in December.
So Happy Christmas!
Iran has warned Switzerland of “consequences” over a referendum banning the building of new mosque minarets, and urged the Swiss government not to enforce the ban.
As I noted a couple of days ago, the Swiss decision is not about freedom of religion.
Muslims in Switzerland are free to worship, to proselytise, and to build more mosques. They just can’t build any more of those big towers with massive PA systems where people screech at the entire populace three times a day.
Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told Swiss counterpart Micheline Calmy-Rey that: Values such as tolerance, dialogue and respecting others’ religions should never be put to referendum.
Excuse me?
This from a country which two months ago formalised approval for the death penalty for anyone who converts from Islam, and where it is illegal to publish the Bible or other Christian literature.
More Islamic Religious Persecution from Doug Bandow at National Review Online:
Islamic governments are in no position to complain about Western intolerance and “Islamophobia.” Most Muslim nations are repressive or offer only limited political freedom. More often than not, Islamic states violate basic human rights; and almost all persecute Christians, Jews, and other religious minorities.
The Parliament of the World’s Religions 2009 opened this week in Melbourne. “Major speakers” include Jimmy Carter, Joan Chittister and Michael Kirby.
Miss Jean Brodie said it best: “For those who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing they like.”
A visit to the Parliament’s website makes it clear that environmental issues are a key concern:
The Melbourne Parliament will draw forth the sacred nature of the environment from all religious and spiritual traditions, led by the Indigenous peoples of the earth. It will also showcase the partnership between communities and other guiding institutions in pursuing practical approaches for reversing climate change and its effects.
John Cleary, who presents a religious program on the ABC on Sunday nights, says there are parallels between the Parliament of Religions in Melbourne and the climate summit in Copenhagen.
Cleary does not have in mind any sense of religious fervour, which I suspect will be more in evidence in Copenhagen than Melbourne, but the fact that both are concerned with “healing the planet”.
George Browning, former Anglican Bishop of Canberra/Goulburn, says in the document Common Belief: … if Christians believe in Jesus they must recognise that concern for climate change is not an optional extra but a core matter of faith.
But there is a huge leap in the claim that being a Christian means an obligation to take action to prevent climate change.
Being concerned for the responsible exercise of the Christian duty of stewardship for creation need not involve church leaders rushing to grab a share of the latest climate apocalypse action.
John Cleary said in his conversation with Derek Guille that the knowledge that “God so loved the world” should lead to a sense of global responsibility, and that such a sense of responsibility could add “real grunt” to the climate change debate.
Christians have two key things to offer to any debate about the environment and our role in it. But neither of them is a vague sense of responsibility, or “grunt”.
First is a right understanding of who we are in relation to the rest of creation. Because of the incarnation, we know that the material word is not evil, or something to be used or ignored. It is the product of a loving and rational God. It is good. It will be redeemed. On the other hand, it is not a god. There is no Gaia. Awe inspiring and beautiful as it is, the material world is not to be worshipped for its own sake.
Second, because Christianity is a faith based on reason and evidence, Christians ought to be buffered from, and help to buffer others from, ideology or wishful (or alarmist) thinking. Christians who are true to their calling will think, research, pray, consult and consider before arriving at a conclusion about how to respond to any particular issue.
Pope John Paul II pointed out that “Reverence for nature must be combined with scientific learning”. (Pastoral Statement, Renewing the Earth: An Invitation to Reflection and Action on Environment in Light of Catholic Social Teaching.)
Maybe the church’s climate scare collaborators could try it.
And maybe, as the scarecrow did, they will think of things they never thunk before.
One of the reasons I was not able to post anything on Friday was that I had a number of clients whose computers I needed to attend to urgently.
The other reason was that I was writing a longish article on climate change discussions at the Parliament of Religions in Melbourne.
The lines above are a brief summary. Visit The Australian Conservative to read the whole thing.
The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, an informal interdenominational network of Christian congregations, has released a statement saying:
Global warming alarmism is based on biased science, sloppy economics, and misguided theology …
Global warming policies would produce unethical results that would:
•destroy millions of jobs.
•cost trillions of dollars in lost economic production.
•slow, stop, or reverse economic growth.
•reduce the standard of living for all but the elite few who are well positioned to benefit from laws that unfairly advantage them.
•endanger liberty by putting vast new powers over private, social, and market life in the hands of national and international governments.
•condemn the world’s poor to generations of continued misery characterized by rampant disease and premature death
The result of all these sacrifices will be at most a negligible, undetectable reduction in global average temperature a hundred years from now. …
such policies are wrongheaded, destructive, and detrimental to the poor.
Why is that kind of clear sightedness, attention to evidence, and moral sense so hard for mainstream Australian church leaders?