Bartholomew's Notes

UPDATE (9 March 2007): The lawsuit has now been withdrawn. See here.

Nashville-based NewsChannel 5 reports on accusations against a religious club in the local Hillsboro High School and affiliated to Bethel World Outreach Center:

Thursday, two families filed a lawsuit against their daughters’ public high school because of religion. The girls claimed a school club put their lives in danger.

One girl claims that she attempted suicide after being put under severe pressure to speak in tongues, while the second girl

…became so consumed by trying to recruit and save others at the school that she had a total breakdown.

According to a lawsuit just filed against the school and church, the girl has now spent weeks in psychiatric hospitals and has been diagnosed as suffering from something called religious indoctrination.

I’m not sure about that for a diagnosis, but the mothers of the two girls also allege that the group tried to hide its activities from them:

…after the 17-year-old finally did speak in tongues she insists she was repeatedly warned by church members, including her teacher Meghan Therrell, not to tell her parents about it…Bethel’s Youth Minister, Shino Prater, said that’s just not true…But the girl’s mother claims that when she confronted Therrell about it, she didn’t deny it.

The club is known as the Victory Club, and Bethel runs around seventy of them around the USA.

NewsChannel 5 includes words from Bethel Senior Pastor Tim Johnson, who has apparently only been in the position for a short time. Over to the Bethel website:

We are pleased to announce that Tim Johnson has been appointed the Senior Pastor of Bethel’s Brentwood congregation. He has served as the Senior Associate Pastor since his move to Nashville from the Washington, D.C. area in 2000. Rice Broocks will continue with Bethel in the role of Senior Minister, overseeing the various congregations that make up Bethel World Outreach Center.

Rice Broocks yet again! Now, why does this guy keep popping up? As this blog has noted before, Broocks is the leader of the neo-Pentecostal grouping known as Every Nation (formerly Morning Star International); Bethel is the HQ, and the Victory Clubs are just one of the grouping’s many ministries. Only recently, similar accusations of abusive practices were made against another Every Nation outreach, based at the University of North Carolina (see here); and it should be remembered that Broocks was formerly a leader of Maranatha Ministries, a campus organisation that folded in the late 1980s over accusations of “cult-like” and authoritarian behaviour (see here; and various other Maranatha figures are involved with Every Nation).

I’ve posted on this topic several times before, and I’ve received a few critical emails. The problems at Maranatha were due to youthful inexperience; Broocks has learnt from the past; it’s unfair to judge the modern Every Nation grouping by what happened back then. Stephen Mansfield has also recently written a spirited defence of Broocks along much the same lines (which I critiqued here).

(Thanks to Darrell Lucus for the tip-off)

Filed under: Uncategorized | 11 Comments »

From the UPI:

Jordanian authorities reportedly confiscated copies of the controversial bestseller, “The Da Vinci Code,” for slandering Christianity.

Amman’s daily al-Ghad said copies of the book were seized from a publishing house in the Jordanian capital and its owner, Ahmed Abou Tawk, was summoned for interrogation.

The paper quoted the president of the state’s Publication Department, Ahmed Kodat, as saying other titles were confiscated in addition to “The Da Vinci Code” for undermining religions.

“This book is largely harmful for Christianity and was banned from many countries, including Lebanon,” Kodat said, noting Christian clerics in Jordan demanded the ban.

I haven’t been able to find out what the “other titles” worthy of censorship are. But I think we can assume that one title in particular is not included. From an axt.org profile of Jordan (1996):

Until recently, a broad range of Arabic translations of antisemitic texts including The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was widely available. Since the signing of the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty, however, such material has been phased out of mainstream bookshops and is available today primarily in Islamist bookshops.

Plus from the New York Times (2002):

Stay in a five-star hotel anywhere from Jordan to Iran, and you can buy the infamous forgery “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

While according to al-Jazeera:

Lebanese officials have rejected US calls to intervene with Hizb Allah over a mini-series on Zionism airing on its television station.

Government officials said doing so would be a violation of free speech.

…The State Department said on Tuesday that it had complained about the series to the governments of both Lebanon and Syria on the grounds that it incorporated elements of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an infamous 19th-century forgery.

(Tipped from Come and See)

Filed under: Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

Things continue to look grim for Jerusalem Orthodox Christian Patriarch Irenios I. As I blogged a couple of days ago, the Patriarch has been dismissed from his position by other clerics, who accuse him of being responsible for the sale of church land in East Jerusalem to a group linked to Israeli settlers. Irenios has rejected the dismissal, but according to Haaretz:

The most important figure in the Orthodox Christian world has recognized the dismissal of Patriarch Irineos I, head of the Greek Orthodox Church in the Holy Land, according to sources in the Jerusalem Patriarchate.

The sources say that Bartholomaus, Patriarch of Constantinople, sent a letter yesterday to Irineos with the salutation “Patriarch Irineos, Jerusalem,” rather than “The Patriarch Irineos of Jerusalem,” something which constitutes a recognition of the dismissal.

…Jordan announced over the weekend that if two-thirds of the Synod were indeed in favor of the dismissal, Jordan would recognize it.

…A meeting yesterday between Irineos’ opponents and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia (Abu Ala) seemed to indicate that the PA also favors recognizing the dismissal. However, a great deal depends of the findings of various committees of inquiry examining Irineos’ alleged sales of Patriarchate property near the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem to Jews.

Haaretz also notes that:

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon advisor Shalom Turdjeman and the cabinet secretary, Yisrael Maimon, would be meeting with the two sides to hear their versions of events. The sources stressed that Israel would not be acting as an arbitrator and was not taking a stand on an internal church matter.

That’s a bit rich, since the Israeli government is most likely behind Irineos’s woes. Danny Rubenstein had this to say in the same paper a couple of weeks ago:

…the buyer was to pay $135 million to the patriarchy to lease the properties for 99 years. This is a vast sum, not economically justified, since the properties are occupied.

…Settlers have always demonstrated an impressive ability to raise funds for their cause from government and other public bodies. It is possible therefore that the buyer is none other than the Israeli government, directly or indirectly, as was the case for another patriarchy property – Saint John’s Hospice, adjacent to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The money for that deal came from the Housing Ministry at the instruction of then-housing minister David Levy, acting under the guise of a foreign company.

The Israeli government has a clear interest in taking over properties in the Jaffa Gate area before negotiations on Jerusalem’s future. Ownership of the Jaffa Gate area and the Armenian Quarter would enable Israel to create a contiguous Jewish presence from the city’s west to the Jewish Quarter and the Western Wall. For Israel, this would be a long term strategic investment.

It is possible that an agent acting for Israel’s government is lying low for fear that exposure would lead to harsh international criticism. Many countries would see the purchase of properties at Jaffa Gate, located outside the pre-1967 borders, as a provocative step in the light of efforts to revive the peace process.

But, weirdly, that’s not the argument being made by Irineos’s detractors today:

Church spokesman Bishop Atalla Hana [or “Atallah Hanna”] said yesterday, “The Israelis may not have understood us. The problem is not the sale of lands to Jews, but rather the lack of proper management and transparency, and fraud.”

That’s an unexpected line from Hana, a man who has an unfortunate habit of being quoted in the Arab press as being in favour of suicide bombings, which he then denies (his “church spokesman” status is self-appointed, and was explicitly denied as being valid by Irenios back in 2002. See my previous posting on this). The fact that the property was bought by a Jewish group in order to strengthen Israel’s control over a Palestinian area is precisely “the problem”, surely? Is Hana saying he would have approved the sale, had it been managed better?

So, we’ve got a Greek patriarch who was originally blocked by Israel back in 2001, which saw him as too pro-Palestinian. Now this same patriarch is under fire for allegedly selling church land to a Jewish group connected to settlers. Meanwhile, we’ve got a Palestinian self-styled church spokesman who has twice been linked to extremist rhetoric which he has gone on to disavow – although the alleged smears have not come from pro-Zionist sources, as one would expect, but from Arab and Muslim news sites. This “spokesman” has been leading the charge against the Greek Irenios in the name of Palestinian Christian nationalism, but now says he doesn’t mind sales of church land in Palestinian areas to Jews in principle!

Add to this mix Irenios’s missing treasurer; a drug dealer who allegedly helped Irenios’s election; an alleged Palestinian hit-man in the pay of another of Irineos’ rivals; plus alleged death threats by Irineos’ supporters against Hana. It’s not called the Byzantine Orthodox Church for nothing…

UPDATE: More today.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 11 Comments »

A nice bit of rhetoric from Catholic League head William Donohue, writing in the New York Post and quoted in WND. Donohue is complaining about Kingdom of Heaven:

It is a matter of historical record that Muslim violence – in the form of a jihad – was responsible for Christians striking back, hence the Crusades. Yet in the film, it is the Christians who are the bad guys. This is on the order of doing a movie on the Warsaw Ghetto and blaming the Jews for all the violence.

Yes, the Crusades were just like the Warsaw uprising. Especially this bit (via Religious Tolerance.org):

On the way to the Middle East, they..gave the Jews two choices in their slogan: “Christ-killers, embrace the Cross or die!” 12,000 Jews in the Rhine Valley alone were killed as the first Crusade passed through. Some Jewish writers refer to these events as the “first holocaust.” Once the army reached Jerusalem and broke through the city walls, they slaughtered all the inhabitants that they could find (men, women, children, newborns). After locating about 6,000 Jews holed up in the synagogue, they set the building on fire; the Jews were burned alive. The Crusaders found that about 30,000 Muslims had fled to the al Aqsa Mosque. The Muslim were also slaughtered without mercy.

How could the Crusaders possibly be called “the bad guys”? Hey, Donohue – maybe Ridley Scott is secretly one of those “secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular” whom you think control Hollywood.

Meanwhile, John Podhoretz offers a different critique in the Weekly Standard:

Director Ridley Scott and screenwriter William Monahan would have you believe that there was once a utopian moment when the city of Jerusalem was a multicultural and multiethnic paradise, run by wise men deeply suspicious of religious fanaticism…Kingdom of Heaven attributes to its heroic Christian and Muslim characters a cosmopolitan skepticism about faith, and a healthy tolerance for other cultures, that would have been literally unthinkable in the 12th century–an era in which there was absolutely no frame of intellectual, historical, hermeneutical, or philosophical reference for cultural relativism or agnosticism.

I fear Podhoretz has never heard of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, whose story would make a great sequel for the Scott film (which I haven’t seen yet). It’s 1225, almost forty years since Saladin’s victory at Jerusalem. Frederick has just married Yolande, Latin heiress of Jerusalem, and the pope wants him to head up the Sixth Crusade. However, things don’t go quite as planned. First of all, Frederick declines to go, pleading illness. The Pope excommunicates him. Then Frederick finally heads off – before having the excommunication reversed, and so making the pope look rather ridiculous.

Frederick was raised on Sicily, and was a fluent Arabic speaker. This made his Crusade rather different from the previous efforts. Bertrand Russell gives an amusing account in his History of Western Philosophy (pages 444-445):

Arrived in Palestine, Frederick made friends with the Mohammedans, explained to them that the Christians attached importance to Jerusalem although it was of little strategic value, and succeeded in inducing the peaceably to restore the city to him. This made the Pope [Gregory IX] still more furious – one should fight the infidel, not negotiate with him.

Frederick was also a bit of a sceptic – at one point he considered starting a new religion to rid himself of the Pope’s influence (he was also rumoured to have written an anti-religious work called The Three Impostors, although this story is apocryphal). But perhaps Podhoretz is thinking more about how he would like the the USA to be, rather than the medieval world as it actually was.

Weekly Standard tipped from Christianity Today Weblog)

Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

At the Nembutsu-ji Temple (Pure Land Buddhism), Adashino:

Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

After weeks of controversy, Jerusalem Greek Patriarch Irenaios (various spellings) is apparently on the way out. From the BBC:

Greek Orthodox Church leaders in Jerusalem have broken off contact with their local leader, Patriarch Irineos, and say they regard him as dismissed.

The move stems from a dispute over the sale of church land in East Jerusalem, which has angered Palestinians.

…The land at the heart of the dispute was allegedly sold to a group linked to Jewish settlers, sparking outrage among Palestinians.

Given that Palestinian Christians already have to deal with Protestant Christian Zionists regularly roaming the streets of Jerusalem and proclaiming that Christianity teaches that Palestinian dispossession is part of God’s plan, this was pretty embarrassing. And it’s not the first time this sort of thing has happened, either – in 1990 an Armenian businessmen sold his tenancy at a Greek Orthodox-owned hospice in Jerusalem’s Old City to Israeli settlers, leading to long legal dispute. And in 2001 Christianity Today noted that

Under the previous patriarch [Diodoros I], Israel bought and leased significant areas of land from the Greek Orthodox Church, including affluent neighborhoods of the city and the land which the official residences of the Israeli President and Prime Minister stand on.

Those lands were in Israel proper, so are perhaps less controversial – but it’s probably more than a bit off to be doing business with your own military occupier.

Back in March Athens News reported on the latest fiasco thus:

The revelation mobilised Palestinian and Jordanian Orthodox faithful against the patriarchate as never before.

Nevertheless, the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) discussed the land sales at a special meeting on March 22 and pledged that it will “work through legal, political and religious means to Arabise the Orthodox Church and all other churches and will insist on their Arab features”. It also insisted that the Greek flag and any other foreign flags be removed from churches and shrines in the Holy Land and “that the Palestinian flag will be the only one raised on all churches”.

Palestinian MP, Hanan Ashrawi, also called for the Arab faithful to take control of the Orthodox patriarchate. That a politician of her stature had taken such an extreme position rang alarm bells in Greek diplomatic circles.

Greek diplomatic sources told the Athens News that such a move is legally and ecclesiologically impossible and that a move to Arabise the patriarchate would “destroy our house and theirs”.

Ashrawi herself is Anglican, and the local clergy in her church are already mostly Palestinian. The same is true of the Roman Catholic (“Latin”) church. But the call for an Arab-led Orthodoxy is actually a very old one. Here’s a quote from a paper that touches on the subject by anthropologist Glenn Bowman (who taught me when I was an undergrad):

One of the consequences of the pre-revolutionary Russian Orthodox church’s attempts to extend its influence in Ottoman Palestine was that it systematically fomented dissatisfaction within Greek Orthodox Palestinian communities…Increased awareness of discrimination led to the lay creation of the Arab Orthodox Movement, an organization dedicated to wresting control of the church and its substantial properties from what it defined as a ‘foreign ‘ priesthood. After the Russian church’s intervention was abruptly ended by the revolution, the Movement was strongly supported by the British mandate government…and, after British withdrawal in 1948, by the Jordanian government which then appropriated the West Bank and Jerusalem. After the Israeli government took control of the West Bank in 1967, the Israeli state came to work closely with the Greek church…in an attempt to subvert the Greek government’s opposition to the Israeli occupation. As a result, the Movement became in large part quiescent since the church-state alliance made it evident to many Arab Orthodox activists that any gains that might be made by the Christian Palestinians would only be made after the Israeli occupation was ended (interview with Arab Orthodox Movement member, Bethlehem, March 1987). Nonetheless, one of the outstanding legacies of the Movement is the awareness among Christian Palestinians that the interests of the hierarchy of the Orthodox church are foreign and antagonistic to their own.

But the weird thing is that Irenaios was originally blocked by Israel, which feared he was too pro-Palestinian. As the same Christianity Today piece noted:

Under a law dating back to the sixth century emperor Justinian, the government of the Holy Land has the right to approve or disqualify candidates for the office of the patriarch.

The list of candidates was submitted to the governments of Israel and Jordan, as well as to the Palestinian Authority. While Jordan and the Palestinian Authority approved all nominees, Israel rejected five. Their objection was overturned by the Supreme Court of Israel.

…Israel was apparently wary of the Church coming under the rule of a pro-Palestinian patriarch; for fear that this could result in land disputes when long-term leases begin to expire.

So what happened? Irenaios blames his treasurer Nicholas Papadimas, who has disappeared; the Patriarch accuses him of making the deals without his knowledge. There’s also the murky role of Apostolos Vavilis, a drug dealer who is alleged to have unfairly influenced Irenaios’ 2001 election in some mysterious way.

We also need to keep in mind Atallah Hanna, a Palestinian Orthodox cleric and long-time enemy of Irenaios. Back in 2002 Reuters reported that

Father Hanna’s name has been put forward by Palestinian lay members of the Church who are lobbying to have the Greek leaders replaced with an Arab patriarch.

As an open supporter of the PLO, he initiated a power struggle with the Church to overthrow Patriarch Irineos, 63, who is of Greek origin and was enthroned last year.

This appears to have influenced the actions of the Patriarch, who was seen by Israel until recently as a supporter of the PLO and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Irineos has taken to making what many see as anti-Palestinian statements in order to appease the Israeli Government, which has yet to officially give its blessing to his appointment.

Around this time Hanna was already controversial, due in part to this quote made in Abu Dhabi and reported in the Gulf News:

Some freedom fighters adopt martyrdom or suicide bombing, while others opt for other measures. But all these struggles serve the continued intifada for freedom. Therefore, we support all these causes”.

In the ensuing media storm, the Patriarch condemned this sentiment and announced that Hanna was not an official spokesman for the church (a position that Hanna claims was his; some reports describe him as having been “fired”). However, in an interview in Haaretz (preserved for public access by Miftah) Hanna denied the accusations of pro-terrorist rhetoric:

What I said there is what I am saying now – I support the struggle of the Palestinian people against the occupation, until its independent state is established. A national struggle against occupation is a legitimate and permissible thing, and it is even the duty of a people under occupation. I spoke in Qatar about resistance, muqawama in Arabic, and not as my statements were represented in the media in Israel…I am against suicide bombings that harm civilians, and I am against the killing of any person, without differentiation for ethnic group or religion. In Christianity, human life is holy and of supreme value. But the main problem starts with the Israeli occupation, from which the Palestinian people are suffering. You have to understand that it – the occupation – is the main cause of violence.

Hanna claimed that the accusations were part of a “crusade” against him by people close to Irenaios. Hanna maintains a website where he still presents himself as the church’s spokesman (complete with a neutral-looking biog of the Patriarch). But in 2003 Islam Online reported (approvingly) some more quotes at odds with the moderate Haaretz interview:

“They [the “martyrs”] are not suicide bombers as some claim and they are not terrorists, rather, they resist occupation and we support martyrdom operations without any kind of reservations no matter what objectors and doubt-casters say about such a heroic kinds of resistance,” he said.

…In an exclusive interview with IslamOnline, Attallah asserted his support for the operations, averring that “if the struggle for freedom of peoples is regarded as terrorism, then I am a terrorist.”

Hanna called these statements “fabricated and untrue”, and even the virulently Christian Zionist International Christian Embassy withdrew the accusation, citing the unreliability of “Palestinian and Islamic media outlets”. But just why would such outlets want to portray Hanna as a terrorist supporter if he’s not? That’s murky in itself.

So, has Irenaios been set up? Or did he turn excessively pro-Israeli (an accusation carried in the Greek newspaper Kathimerini, following Haaretz) because of Hanna or some other reason? Nobody knows for sure; but whatever the truth of it, it does look just possible that current events are leading towards the establishment, at long last, of a Palestinian Orthodox Church. One hopes that such a church would offer a robust alternative to Islamist terror within the context of Palestinian resistance; it would be depressing to see it instead competing with the basest delusions of Islamic fundamentalism.

(Some links via Christianity Today weblog)

UPDATE: More today.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 11 Comments »

The Morning News (Arkansas) reports on a new creation science museum (links added):

EUREKA SPRINGS — Visitors quickly forgot the sharp smell of fresh paint as they turned a corner in the new Museum of Earth History and got their first glimpse of dinosaurs.

…G. Thomas Sharp, president and founder of the Creation Truth Foundation, welcomed a large crowd seated under and standing around a large awning on the sunny, cool morning. The joint venture between his Oklahoma-based foundation and the Elna M. Smith Foundation — which operates the [Great] Passion Play — moved from concept to application in about six months with the help of donors, friends and “prayer warriors,” he said.

The museum is the first of its kind in the United States, Sharp said, telling the biblical story with the inclusion of dinosaurs represented by skeletal replicas — highly detailed casts of the original fossils.

This is part of a trend: Answers in Genesis plans to open The Creation Museum in Cincinnati (featuring a dinosaur reportedly wearing a saddle) in 2007, and Kent Hovind has already cobbled together a Creationist theme park (called Dinosaur Adventure Land) in his back yard. Back to the Morning News:

…Scientists have dumbed down biblical reality, [Sharp] said, arguing that Genesis isn’t an accurate, historical account. Now, people can leave the museum and walk over to the Passion Play to experience the passion of Christ in a new way, Sharp said.

“Scientists have dumbed down biblical reality”? Is this serious? But one has to laugh at this:

Sharp described the replicas [on display] as the greatest collection of dinosaur fossils, skulls and skeletons that exists in Arkansas, referring to them as “God’s gospel lizards.”

I’ve kept an eye on various high-profile Creationists before, but G. Thomas Sharp is a new one to me. According to his bio, he was inspired to find the reasons for church membership decline:

Dedicating most of the 1980’s to this search, he became convinced that evolutionism, with its implications influencing the family, the church and the culture, was the bottom line for this unspeakable waste of our youth.

In the process, Dr. Sharp successfully completed a M.S. from the University of Oklahoma and a Ph. D. from the South Florida Bible College and Seminary, with emphasis in the philosophy of religion and science (he already had earned a B.S. from Purdue University in 1964).

But what’s more interesting is the Elna M. Smith Foundation and its “Great Passion Play“, although this angle is totally ignored by the Morning News hack (maybe it’s common knowledge in their part of the world):

A non-denominational ministry founded in 1967, the Great Passion Play is dedicated to providing opportunities for people to deepen their knowledge of the heritage, teachings and inspirations of Jesus Christ and the Christian faith.

Founded in 1965 by Gerald L. K. and Elna M. Smith, the Elna M. Smith Foundation commissioned the development of the Christ of the Ozark statue, the first of the projects to be constructed.

Whoa! That would be another kind of “gospel lizard”: Gerald L.K. Smith was the founder of the Christian Nationalist Crusade and until his death was the USA’s most notorious anti-Semite. Here’s a site about Passion Plays that discusses Smith and the “Great Passion Play” (its information is a bit old: the Charles Robertson mentioned below has since died):

The Great Passion Play, founded in 1968 by the late Gerald L.K. Smith, is the one major American Passion Play which is deliberately and maliciously anti- Semitic. The production is managed by the Elna Smith [Foundation and is] staged five times per week from May through October. Performances are held in an enormous amphitheatre on an (Ozark) mountain near Eureka Springs.

Gerald L.K. Smith, the founder of the Great Passion Play, was a pillar of the extreme religious right for decades…when asked in 1955 by a Congressional committee for his views on immigration, he cited Albert Einstein as the sort of foreigner federal laws should bar.

Charles Robertson, who succeeded Smith after the latter’s death in 1976, is the current coordinator of the Smith Foundation…”One of the biggest lies of our times,” he claimed, “is that six million Jews were slaughtered.” Later, in the same conversation, he remarked: “Let’s face it. The Negroes are fresh from the jungle, and they have brought with them many of the same characteristics.”

Naturally, the play reflected Smith’s and Robertson’s bigotry:

(a) The narration and the action stress the perfidy, evil, hypocrisy and cunning of the Sanhedrin…

(b) Herod and Pilate come off as innocents and dumps, unwilling accomplices in satisfying the blood lust of the Jews. Again and again Pilate, a good clean American boy, points out to the Jews that Jesus is innocent of any crime…

(c) The theme of the culpability and damnation of “the whole Jewish people” permeated the play but it is made loudly and stereophonically clear in Pilate’s execution order the anti-Christ’s are always the “Jews.”

Apparently Smith organised a number of projects in the neighbourhood: as well as the play, there is a giant statue (the “Christ of the Ozarks”) and a Holy Land theme park (needed because the original Holy Land is in the hands of “the enemies of Christ”). This fascinating article has all the details, but to be fair it also notes that:

Shortly after the death of Charles F. Robertson, the Sacred Projects team undertook to revamp the Great Passion Play. The script has been revised, a new sound track recorded, and it’s been restaged and there’s a new technical design. So there’s no way I can see the old production to judge for myself whether or not it was anti semitic.

So eventually Smith’s successors realised that backing anti-Semitism was a complete loser and that they’d better change their ways. Obviously, promoting pseudo-science is a far better way to make a buck in the modern USA. Progress?

(Tipped from Cult News Network)

Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Hal Lindsey drinks from the well of paleo-wingnuttery, in a tirade against international bankers:

I am not an economist, nor a banking expert.

Since when has the small matter of “expertise” ever been known to keep Hal quiet?

But I believe there are certain things that are driving our world economy today that can be understood by some simple logic. One thing I do know – where Bible prophecy predicts the economy is headed. And it’s right on course.

So what’s the problem?

The entire economy is built on an illusion. I realize that sounds like the rantings of a lunatic – especially when it is written out in words – but it is nonetheless true.

Well, if you want me to be honest…

…Legislation tends to expose how the economy works and, most importantly, whom it benefits – the bankers who run it.

All that being said, it is still the only game in town. Those who would expose the Money Trust don’t really want to break the banker’s [sic] stranglehold – that would launch a global economic depression that would make the 1930s look like an economic boom. The Money Trust has set up a system that is so insidious, that once in place, it cannot be removed without bringing the whole global economy down.

“The Money Trust”? Time for a quick history lesson, courtesy of The Columbia Electronic Encylopedia:

Pujo, Arsène Paulin , 1861–1939, U.S. congressman…He became chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee in 1911, and, dissatisfied with the monetary commission’s report, he obtained congressional authorization in 1912 to investigate the “money trust.” The hearings of the Pujo committee…uncovered evidence that a few financial leaders had achieved an unhealthy control of the nation’s money and credit. The committee’s disclosures helped create a climate of public opinion that led to the passage of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914.

But that wasn’t enough for one man, who saw the 1913 Federal Reserve Act as itself a tool of the mysterious “Money Trust”: Congressman Charles Lindbergh Senior, who wrote a book called Banking and Currency and the Money Trust. This was in 1918; today, Lindbergh’s thoughts on the subject of the “Money Trust” appear pretty well confined to crank conspiracy sites (a fair few of which are anti-Semitic, although, based on a few searches within the text, Lindbergh’s book does not appear to be aimed against Jews).

However, Lindsey himself is probably drawing on Cliff Ford’s 1998 book Blood, Money, & Greed: The Money Trust Conspiracy. According to the blurb:

For more than 200 years an international banking cartel has literally bought the world. Conspiracy Theory? No! Conspiracy Fact! Author Cliff Ford draws upon his extensive background in international finance to document how this group’s plan to control the world’s monetary system has progressed and how near they are to achieving their diabolical objective. Discover why a group of men whose combined assets represented one sixth of the world’s wealth met secretly on Jeckyll Island, South Carolina in 1910 and how that meeting affected the course of history. Discover how the most powerful men in government during World War I were part of the same banking firm controlling both the German Secret Service and British Intelligence while on opposite sides. Discover who financed Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich and how they later became highly placed officials in the US Government. Discover what the Federal Reserve is – and what is not. And last, discover what inflation really is (hint: it’s not what you think it is).

Sounds like Pat Robertson’s infamous New World Order book – lots of rhetoric about international bankers and shadowy 200-year conspiracies, with no acknowledgement of the pedigree of this kind of paranoid conspiracy-mongering (i.e., in anti-Semitism). Once again, so much for Christian Zionism.

As noted above, Ford touts himself as being an expert in international finance; he and Lindsey co-hosted a show called the International Intelligence Briefing. They also once wrote a book together; here’s our pair of experts back in 1999:

FACING MILLENNIAL MIDNIGHT

The Y2K Crisis Confronting America and the World

There is less than one year to prepare for what will be the technological and social equivalent of a worldwide earthquake. The exact date and time of this earthquake are already known-the stroke of midnight December 31, 1999.

World-renowned prophecy author Hal Lindsey and international economics expert Cliff Ford present the whole Y2K scenario in non-computer nerd language. they explain the potential magnitude and scope of the year 2000 crisis and its impact on federal, state and local governments; the banking and finance industries; public utilities; and the personal computer. In addition, they offer practical advice to prepare for the year 2000 crisis as well as specific actions that you can take now to protect youself and your family from crisis.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

The Guardian reports on a new study that apparently shows the benefits of Transcendental Meditation:

A new study shows that transcendental meditation, a relaxation technique developed by the Indian guru and made famous when the fab four dabbled with it in the late 60s, can reduce death rates by nearly a quarter.

Robert Schneider, who led the research, said: “The study found that in older people with mild high blood pressure, those practising transcendental meditation had a 23% lower risk of death from all causes.”

…The transcendental meditation group had 30% fewer deaths from heart disease and 49% fewer from cancer [than the control group].

“Although the sample [size] was relatively modest, these preliminary results suggest that an effective stress reducing intervention may decrease mortality,” researchers said.

Of course, one cannot judge how dramatic this difference is based purely on comparative percentages, but those who know a bit more about statistics than I might glean a bit more from the abstract here. The article appears in the American Journal of Cardiology, and is only the latest of many from Schneider, who heads the Centre for Natural Medicine and Prevention (CNMP) at the Maharishi University of Management in Iowa (e.g. see reports here and here). Despite many sites that take issue with the rather more extravagant claims of TM proponents (e.g. the effects of “yogic flying” on crime rates), I haven’t been able to find any articles that criticise his work.

The research was funded by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, which is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. According to a US Medicine report from 2000, the NIH has been providing funds to the CNMP since 1988.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »

Agape Press crows over the advance of Bible classes in American schools:

Much to the chagrin of groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and People for the American Way, Bible curriculum classes are being taught in more than a thousand public high schools across the United States.

Yes, nothing annoys the ACLU more than children knowing the content of the Bible!

…Some school districts are frightened off by the specter of lawsuits; nevertheless, Bible curriculum classes are now being taught in some 1,100 high schools in 300 school districts in 35 states across the nation — and this is going on during school hours, for credit, with the Bible as the textbook.

Quite right, too, what with it being a foundational piece of literature that still guides millions of people and all. But what’s this?:

That is because those 300 school districts are currently offering a course called “The Bible as History and Literature,” a course curriculum from the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools (NCBCPS).

Now alarm bells start to go off:

…the cutting edge curriculum from NCBCPS has been endorsed by a number of illustrious, pro-family celebrities, including actors Chuck Norris and Dean Jones, and sports star Tony Dorsett, and the word has been spreading.

I didn’t know Chuck Norris was a Biblical scholar on the side. I wonder what his views are on Markan priority or the existence of the Q document?

But I’m being a bit unfair. The site for the NCBCPS also contains endorsements from a number of PhDs, although that list is not encouraging: the top place goes to a motivational speaker called Joel A Freeman; under him we find J Randall Price, “P.h.D. in Middle Eastern and Asian Studies”. Price is in fact a Christian Zionist fundamentalist most noted for an absurd book called The Coming Last Days Temple. In fact, all the PhDs listed with Bible-related qualifications actually relate to Biblical studies the way Ken Ham does to science: there’s Robert G Cornuke, a crank who spends his time looking for the lost Ark of the Covenant; Roy E Knuteson is an obscure figure associated with the fundamentalist Dallas Theological Seminary.

The advisory committee is also rather alarming and completely devoid of serious Biblical scholars: instead, we find conservative politicians and the likes of D. James Kennedy (plus Rabbi Daniel Lapin as token Jew). Particularly disturbing, but not surprising, is the presence of pseudo-historian David Barton; the course claims to teach schoolchildren about how the Bible was understood by the US Founding Fathers.

The site boasts that:

The Bible course curriculum has been voted into 292 school districts in 35 states. 92% of school boards that have been approached with this to date, have voted to implement it. It is not just in the Bible belt, but it has been voted into school districts from Alaska and California, straight across the board to Pennsylvania and Florida. 170,000 students have already taken our course.

An overview of the curriculum can be seen here. The “Other Resources” page includes a poster that promotes Young Earth Creationism.

The NCBCPS is run by Elizabeth Ridenour. According her site bio:

…Ridenour attended East Carolina University and later became a commercial real estate broker and a certified paralegal interested in students’ rights…Ridenour is a passionate communicator, who, with her team of lawyers and high-profile endorsers, has appeared on many radio and television broadcasts, including American Family Radio Network, KKLA’s Live In LA with Warren Duffy, Truths That Transform, Focus on the Family, USA Radio Network, Concerned Women Today, The 700 Club, and Dr. D. James Kennedy’s Sunday telecast…Ridenour is a member of the Council For National Policy, and she currently resides in Greensboro, NC.

Someone wanting a bookend for Of Pandas and People in a library memorializing religious fundamentalist attacks on US public education can buy the book and CD-ROM.

UPDATE: A full report on the NCBCPS by Biblical scholar Mark A Chancey can be seen here, and bit more is available from the website of People For the American Way (via GreeneSpace).

And for an alternative Bible curriculum, see the Bible Literacy Project, a far more serious effort which can boast the participation of some real scholars.

Filed under: Uncategorized | 7 Comments »