Bartholomew's Notes

Time calls new united Orthodox church Putin’s “main ideological arm and a vital foreign policy instrument”

Eyes on ROCOR property in Palestinian territory

Interfax reports the latest from the Putin-Alexy double-act:

Patriarch Alexy II, the head of the Moscow-based Russian Orthodox Church [ROC], gave Russian President Vladimir Putin a present on Thursday, crediting him with serious contribution to the unification of the Moscow-based Church and the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR)… Alexy and Laurus signed the agreement at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow.

The present was an icon of the “Life-giving Trinity”.

The ROC (also known as the “Moscow Patriarchate”) and the ROCOR had been in schism since the Russian Revolution. Time has more about the reunification:

Nationalism, based on the Orthodox faith, has been emerging as the Putin regime’s major ideological resource. Thursday’s rite sealed the four-year long effort by Putin, beginning in September 2003, to have the Moscow Patriarchate take over its rival American-based cousin and launch a new globalized Church as his state’s main ideological arm and a vital foreign policy instrument…The Church’s assertiveness and presence is growing — with little separation from the State.

Last November, as unification talks were underway in San Francisco, a British ROCOR priest named Andrew Phillips claimed that the CIA had bugged the discussions – although his only evidence was a “mysterious black SUV” parked nearby.

The unification deal will have repercussions in East Jerusalem and the West Bank:

One of the first tests of the new union will be in the Holy Land, where the ROCOR maintains religious properties — and has had run-ins with representatives of the Moscow patriarchate in the past. In 1997, for example, Yasser Arafat forcibly turned over the only Christian church in Hebron, run by the ROCOR, to the ROC.

The New York Times reported on this at the time:

According to witnesses, officers of the Palestinian Preventive Security Service arrived at the church on Saturday morning and ordered the monks and nuns to leave. When they refused, they were evicted by force.

What apparently persuaded Arafat to accede to the request of the Moscow patriarch was an incident during Alexy’s visit last month, when he and a large group of Palestinian, Russian and Greek Orthodox dignitaries were barred by emigre nuns from visiting the Hebron church.

The emigres had earlier refused to receive the patriarch at a Russian Orthodox convent on the Mount of Olives. Then, evidently expecting that the Moscow delegation would try to visit Hebron, they hid the key to the church there.

(The convent is the Church of St Mary Magdalene, a distinctive structure. Prince Philip’s mother is buried there.)

The Patriarch arrived in Hebron from a formal lunch with Arafat, and his Palestinian hosts, chagrined to find the door locked, pried it open. According to Palestinian officials, Arafat was furious.

Evidently adding to Palestinian pique was the fact that the emigre church had refused a request by Mayor Mustafa Natshe of Hebron to lease some church-owned lands.

Arafat’s autocratic and forceful intervention in an internal church dispute was bound to raise objections and apprehensions. But in his decision to recognize Moscow’s claim, he was following a precedent set by Israel.

However, the Times account was challenged in a letter from Sister Anastasia Stephanopoulos (brother of George, and a Jerusalem-based nun). This was followed by the seizure of a ROCOR mission building in Jericho in 2000.

According to a report on Asia News, the unification of ROC and ROCOR does not mean the end of ROCOR:

…the Church in exile [ROCOR] however will maintain a certain autonomy: it will continue to appoint its own priests, it will maintain control of its properties and daily affairs and it will have the right to send representatives to the annual bishops conference in Moscow.

Time tells us that this should mean that other ROCOR properties in the Holy Land should not change administration. However, it also adds that “some observers remain sceptical” – and with Hamas enjoying close links with Moscow, we can guess which way any dispute is likely to go.

Of course, the Palestinian Authority is not the only body known to have interfered with Orthodox Christian affairs in the Holy Land – I’ve blogged several times on a murky land deal by which Israeli settlers gained a lease to Greek Orthodox property in East Jerusalem, leading to a major scandal and the deposition of the Greek patriarch Irenios. Irenios blamed his treasurer, Nicholas Papadimas, who – so far as I am aware – remains missing after two years…

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The Church of Scientology has responded to John Sweeney’s lame “exposé” of the religion with an “exposé” of Sweeney and the BBC. Sweeney’s documentary, for the Panorama news programme, has received considerable media attention due to Sweeney’s ridiculous screaming at Tony Davis. Sweeney says that he lost control in order to resist “brainwashing” – a process that appears to consist of Davis annoying Sweeney with aggressive and irritating comments. Other than that, most of the show features Sweeney roaming around with a camera-crew in an affected “investigative journalist” raincoat. Indeed, it wasn’t really clear what, ultimately, Sweeney was trying to find out, and one was put in mind of Brass Eye. One instance of Sweeney’s failure: when various celebrity Scientologists and Davis claim to know nothing about the science-fiction story which serves as the Scientology mythos, Sweeney fails press Davis on the point. A clip from a previous, 1987, Panorama programme (available here) served only to remind us how much better the programme was in the old days.

The Church’s “rebuttal” programme manages to make the hapless Sweeney look even more out of his depth. Asked to define “brainwashing”, he doesn’t have an answer. We also see a few stunts that Sweeney wisely left out of his finished product: in particular, we see him trying to goad John Travolta at a Leicester Square film premiere, in a manner reminiscent more of Dennis Pennis than of a serious journalist. However, the video also cuts its footage of Sweeney for dramatic – and, quite obviously, propagandistic – value. There’s also a silly attempt to discredit Sweeney more generally by mentioning his 1997 conviction for criminal libel, but without going into the details (the case was brought in France by the Barclay brothers on the grounds that something Sweeney had said on Radio Guernsey could be heard in France).

The “rebuttal” concludes with the claim that Sweeney orchestrated a demonstration against the Church’s centre in Tottenham Court Road, and that this turn inflamed a “terrorist” threat against them. The “evidence” presented for this is a comment left on the blog of Xenu TV. But the text does not support the contention that Sweeney staged the event, let alone that he had anything to do with any threat:

London Critic Says:

December 13th, 2006 at 3:03 pm

I’d just like to point out (as one of the critics featured in [a short film included on the Xenu website]) that we were not told by the individual who filmed that she was intending to release this film on the internet, nor were we shown it before she released it to you.

We had a team of researchers from BBC’s “Panorama” filming us, but that film is not intended for broadcast; “Panorama” have requested permission to film us for a demo planned next year, and wanted some private footage to get some idea of what typically happens during one of our demos. For the “official” filming, we will be required to sign consent forms.

We have no problems with someone filming if they ask consent and clear it with us first. But this was not done with our knowledge and consent.

I should also point out that the person who sent you this film is not one of the regular UK critics, being a visiting critic from Germany.

Several critics of television news reporting are also featured on the “rebuttal” (although none refer to the Sweeney programme directly): the Rt Rev Graham James of the BBC Religious Advisory Committee and Jay Lakhani of the Hindu Council complain about the representation of religion (Lakhami states that “BBC programmes that relate to religion or spirituality are run by people who should not be in a position of power there”), and journalists Robin Aiken and Ted Hynds critique the way news is created for television. There’s also input from Ron Williams, an “International Security Consultant” – but no mention that he actually runs Talon Executive Services, which a number of sources claim has links with the church.

Lesson: if the BBC wants to find out what makes an unusual religious group tick, it would be far better off sending in Louis Theroux than a sensation-seeking and poorly-informed news hack.

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Ted Baehr is the publisher of MovieGuide, which tells Christians what films to avoid (See my blog entry here). Recently, he gave his thoughts on the reasons for the Virginia Tech massacre:

…We live in a culture of violence and sex. It’s a culture that has been made by the media. The media creates the culture, and the culture of course influences susceptible people, such as the gunmen at Colombine Klebold and Harris, and the other gunmen over the past twenty years.

Indeed. Consider, for instance, this picture of Chuck Norris:

Whoops, wrong pic. That’s Baehr and his father giving an award to Norris for his family-friendly work. I meant, of course, this picture:

Sorry, wrong again. Third time lucky:

Meanwhile, at WorldNetDaily (hat tip: Jesus’ General), Norris, in his capacity as sociologist of religion, offers a contribution to the secularisation debate (links in original):

Though the majority of Americans continue to claim to be Christians, a Gallup poll discovered 45 percent of us would support an atheist for president, 55 percent would support a homosexual candidate and 72 percent would support a Mormon candidate.

Such a survey is a clear indication that most Americans are simply confused about what it means to be Christian. It also shows that the secularization of society is alive and well, especially when almost half would endorse an atheist president.

…Atheists also received a proverbial shot in the arm by locating a representative and advocate of sorts in Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., who “is the first member of Congress – and the highest-ranking elected official in the country – to make known that he is a nontheist.”

His election stands in stark contrast to the wishes of our Founding Fathers, who encouraged American citizens to vote Christians into public office.

One wonders if he finds the forty-three Jewish members of Congress just as much of a betrayal of the Founding Fathers’ wishes.

(Third pic via Pandagon)

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Staying with WorldNetDaily, Art Moore reports from the World Congress of Families:

While the rest of Europe largely accommodates a rising tide of secularism, many Polish leaders are prepared to fight back with a bold, traditional social agenda they envision not only for their own country but for the continent and the world.

Poland’s vice premier and minister of education, Roman Giertych told the World Congress of Families here his multi-pronged plan – including a proposal issued last month to ban “homosexual propaganda” in schools – is “something I have to do.”

…Giertych, whose father and grandfather were prominent Polish politicians, says Poland is threatened by “various ideologies … that have nothing to do with the well-being of children, that promote attitudes which are not true to life.”

Alas, Moore doesn’t tell us anything more about Roman’s “prominent” forebears. Roman’s father, of course, is Maciej Giertych, who was recently responsible for a notorious pamphlet which explains how Jews seek to settle “among the rich”; back in November he was obliged to fire his assistant when a video emerged which showed her at a neo-Nazi rally (Maciej is also a Creationist). And the “prominent” grandfather was Jedrzej Giertych, a Catholic traditionalist known for suggesting that Jews ought to be removed from Poland. Roman himself is the honorary chairman of the All Polish Youth, a skinhead group that he used to lead – another detail Moore doesn’t trouble his credulous readers with (Roman’s uncle, Fr Wojciech Giertych, is a speechwriter for the Pope, but there is no suggestion that he has inherited his family’s propensities).

ASSIST Ministries also reports from the Congress:

Allan Carlson, co-founder of the Congress on Families said in an interview with ANS, that the delegates were discussing ways to counteract what has been called the “demographics winter.”

Carlson explained that this expression related to “the sharp decline in fertility in most developed western countries particularly so in Europe which is related in turn to a retreat from marriage that’s been going on for several decades now and which we also believe is related in turn to secularization to the declining influence of religion in public life and in people’s lives.”

He continued: “We meet in Warsaw in the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which affirms in Article C that the family is the natural fundamental of society entitled to protection by society and the state and the architects of that declaration had a very clear idea of what they meant by family. They meant a man and a woman coming together in a life long bond of marriage for the purposes of procreation and rearing of children, binding together the generations. These are lessons that have been largely forgotten in parts of the world over the last several decades.

“It is kind of ironic that we are meeting here, the very place where the Communist Party of Poland used to hold their annual meetings. Stalin designed this building, so maybe in a way we’re doing a bit of informal intellectual exorcism here and in fact trying to restore the spirit of the natural family as a guiding force in western life.”

The event has also been documented by a series of press releases (here, here, here, here, and here). Some highlights:

…Ellen Sauerbrey (Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Immigration) echoed Minister Giertych’s remarks: “As you know, the family is the oldest human institution, the first and most enduring community of individuals working together for the common good. The family predates all states, and can be found in every culture, in every era…. The state did not create the family; rather, families created the state.”

…At a press conference preceding the opening of the Congress, Christine deVollmer, president of the Latin American Alliance for the Family, declared, “Europe has espoused not only anti-natalist policies of all kinds, but policies of sexual permissiveness which are proven to create infertility on a wide scale.”

…In a plenary session address, Fagan declared, “Feminists of Europe take note, the safest place for children is in the natural family. The most dangerous is cohabiting couples.”

Speaking on the impact of pornography, Bob Knight of the Media Research Center disclosed: “The leftist wants every aspect of life regulated except sex. Sex advances their reshaping of society.”

…”When I go back to my campus in the fall, I’ll be better prepared to confront abortion advocates and students whose lifestyles aren’t preparing them for a healthy marriage and family life.”  Andrea Summers, student at Arizona State University.

I’m sure the students of Arizona will look forward to that. A celibate Catholic prelate also contributed:

…Cardinal López Trujillo noted, “The vocation of marriage is written in the very nature of man and woman.”

However, an undercover reporter for RH Reality Check has a rather different perspective:

Giertych and his hate-rousing speech was followed today by several other speakers, including Ellen Sauerbery, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration, who opened her speech by saying to the audience “I bring you greetings from President Bush!” She then went on to say that this Administration “values strengthening the family as an important goal for the sake of our common humanity” and congratulated Poland on its own courageous “pro-family” policies. Sauerbery did say a few things, however, that seemed out of place with the views of many of the other speakers—like advocating for the education of women as a way to protect the family.

Educated women were a sour note with several male speakers who blamed the “demographic crisis” in Europe on women attending university and choosing (imagine women with a choice!) not to have children until it was too late. In fact, there was a lot of blame being passed around today for the deterioration of the natural family. Educated women, law professors, liberal academics, LGBT individuals, judges, national governments, and local governments, and of course, the United Nations all share the blame.

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I missed this from a couple of weeks ago (emphasis added for mirth value):

A pro-Israel Christian group has changed its Web site banner image after learning the photo was doctored…The Muslim mosques on the Temple Mount were missing.

…[Christians United for Israel], as the pro-Israel group is known, was unaware that the photo was altered when it was selected for the Web site, the group’s executive director, David Brog, told JTA.

I blogged on Brog (who hasn’t made any declaration of belonging to the Christian faith that I can find) a few months ago. We can see how he and his associates might have overlooked the bit of Islamic architecture.

The connotations of the first image were rather embarrassing – after all, a deranged follower of Herbert Armstrong had tried to burn down the al-Aqsa mosque in 1969, while certain far-right Israeli groups have plotted to blow up the Dome of the Rock:

“If there is any doubt, I didn’t want that picture,” Brog said. “I don’t want people to be able to attribute to us an agenda that does not exist. We were looking for a pretty picture of Jerusalem and nothing more.”

But what is the “agenda” of CUFI? The involvement of pastor John Hagee (responsible for the baroque “New World Order” sermon available here) has already put off one invitee to one of its “Night to Honor Israel” events:

A Minnesota congresswoman declined an invitation to attend “A Night to Honor Israel,” saying the views of the event’s evangelical founder are “repugnant.”

…”Well-publicized statements by Pastor Hagee demonstrate extremism, bigotry and intolerance that is repugnant,” U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum, a Democrat, said in a two-page reply declining a form invitation from Pastor Mac Hammond.

(Mac Hammond is another figure I blogged recently – he’s linked with Christian Zionist/prosperity preacher Kenneth Copeland, and he’s recently come under investigation over “a sweetheart deal on a plane lease, possibly violating federal tax law”)

However, while McCollum missed out on the Minneapolis honour-fest, presidential candidate Duncan Hunter is still up for a similar shindig planned for Northern Virginia (let’s hope he doesn’t send his son instead). World Net Daily has more details:

WND founder and Editor Joseph Farah will deliver the keynote address at “A Night to Honor Israel,” sponsored by the Jerusalem Connection and Christians United for Israel…

“We will be celebrating Israel’s 59th birthday with our Jewish friends and acknowledging the relevance of Shavuot for Christian Zionists,” explained James M. Hutchens, president of the Jerusalem Connection. “Shavuot is the time when the book of Ruth is emphasized. Ruth is the proto-type of the non-Jew who pledges unconditional allegiance to Naomi, her Jewish mother-in-law. Ruth is a symbol of the Christian Zionist support for Israel and the Jewish people today.”

(I recently noted a comment by an African evangelist that African Christians would “would love to kiss the feet of a Jew”; perhaps he meant that he wanted to “lie at the feet of Boaz”?)

Jerusalem Connection is particularly keen to help Jews move to Israel, in accordance with its understanding of Biblical prophecy. One of its projects is the “Cyrus Fund“, which aims to track down Shepardic Jews who headed from Spain to South America post-1492:

After the Spanish Expulsion in 1492, many Sephardic Jews migrated to the “New World,” to the Americas… Now, many Bnai Anusim, the lost Sephardic Jews in Latin and South America, are—five hundred years after their ancestors were forcefully converted to Catholicism—discovering their Jewish identities and Hebraic roots for the first time.

…The Jerusalem Connection will even provide a means whereby Bnai Anusim can check to find out if their DNA actually qualifies them as a Sephardic Jew. If the DNA tests confirm their identity and they want to make Aliyah (immigrate) to Israel, we want to help them do just that through our own Cyrus Fund.

But what about those living in Israel and the West Bank not fortunate enough to have the right DNA? Hutchens (a former military man) is OK with Arab-Israelis, but

…the Palestinians do not qualify for the protections to be given to those under Israel’s God-ordained governance. The so-called “Palestinians” under the leadership of Yasser Arafat, are loath to have Israel as their sovereign authority. The Palestinian, as well as the Arab, goal of peace envisions the total elimination of Israel as a nation and a people. The Palestinian flag portrays the current boundaries of Israel as being the boundaries of a future Palestine.

Also in attendance will be David Rubin, who is a former mayor of the West Bank settlement of Shiloh (a stronghold of the militant Gush Emunim) and the survivor of a terrorist attack that also nearly killed his child. His Shiloh Israel Children’s Fund provides a palatable way for Christians to donate money to the settlers’ cause.

However, McCollum is not the only CUFI-sceptic:

Jewish leaders who have been critical of Jewish participation in local “Nights to Honor Israel” say they have been pressured into silence.

“The pressure has been enormous,” said a prominent Jewish leader who said he was contacted by local community officials after he raised questions about a local CUFI event. “I can’t even talk about it now; I feel a real sense of intimidation because people in our own community are saying I’m opposing something that’s good for Israel, that I’m hurting Israel.”

On the other hand, there have been complaints coming from some conservative Christians about pressures to tone down the evangelising; in 2006 the executive director of Jews for Jesus claimed that there was

…an “ongoing agenda” among certain Jewish leaders who he says want to “undermine Christian evangelism by trying to shape Christian theology.”

In March, Christian Zionist Janet Parnell broke with the Knesset Christian Allies Caucus over the issue.

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The Johannesburg Business Day reports on a campaign of TV transmitter-building across Africa:

“God TV has a strategic plan for the continent,” [Rory] Alec says. “We cover the whole continent by way of two satellites at present, with the strategy of building transmitters in each country. We have three in Kenya and are planning to launch a fourth in Tanzania.”… God TV aims to have a terrestrial transmitter in every capital city in Africa.

According to its website, God TV was founded by Rory and his wife in the UK in 1990s, when British restrictions on religious broadcasting were relaxed. With a bit of help from the Holy Spirit (and Rupert Murdoch), the channel

now broadcasts on 15 satellites reaching over 400 million people, in more than 200 nations and territories.

God TV entered the USA only last year, where it got an endorsement from Cindy Jacobs:

As Cindy Jacobs has prophesied, “GOD TV is a harvest Channel and literally thousands of people are going to come to the Lord through its programming. And God is going to use GOD TV in a major way on the East Coast of the United States… This is no ordinary time… this is a time of divine visitation, and we are seeing this through GOD TV”.

In 2002 it relocated from Britain to Jerusalem, and Christian Zionism appears to be a significant part of its teaching:

Thousands of GOD TV’s viewers and partners from different nations will be gathering in Jerusalem in May 2008 to celebrate Israel’s 60th Anniversary as a modern nation and we would love you to join with us.

…As the only Christian network to broadcast from Jerusalem, GOD TV recognizes the Lord’s unending faithfulness in the restoration of Israel as a fulfilment of Biblical prophecy and we know that you will be touched beyond measure as you experience the presence of the Lord in the Land of the Bible.

The channel supposedly offers an “international mix of original programming”, but many of the names of those featured are the usual neo-Pentecostal suspects: Joyce Meyer, TD Jakes, Benny Hinn, Mike Bickle, Rodney Howard-Browne, Rick Joyner. Ron Luce is also on board.

Back in February I noted the plans of another Christian broadcaster to reach across Africa, in that case from Rwanda.

****

As a historical aside, Business Day contrasts God TV with Paul Crouch’s TBN:

Los Angeles-based Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), the largest Christian broadcaster in the world, has been going since 1973 and in 2005 had an income of $208m. It began broadcasting in Africa in 1986. In fact, the TBN operation based in Bhisho, then Ciskei capital, was the first overseas operation outside the US. TBN, which runs on DStv, also broadcasts through terrestrial stations in nine African countries.

Ciskei, of course, was notorious as a Bantustan set up by the apartheid regime, and in the 1980s under the control of “President for Life” Lennox Sebe.

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The IPS highlights a human rights report concerning Kurdistan (link added):

A United Nations report on Iraq’s human rights situation has provoked mixed reactions in the northern Kurdistan region. Officials accuse the UN of “exaggeration and inaccuracy” while human rights activists say the “actual extent of violations has been understated by the UN.

The report by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) covering the first three months of this year has a substantial section on human rights in the Kurdish- controlled north…

The situation in Kurdistan also looks worrying in the new Annual Report of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom:

Government complicity in religiously-motivated discrimination is also reported in the pro-Western Kurdish Regional Government (KRG). According to the State Department, Christians and other minorities “living in areas north of Mosul asserted that the KRG confiscated their property … without compensation and …Assyrian Christians also alleged that the Kurdish Democratic Party-dominated judiciary routinely discriminates against non-Muslims.” ChaldoAssyrian Christians have also alleged that KRG officials affiliated with the Kurdistan Democratic Party deny Christians key social benefits, including employment and housing.

Additional reports also alleged that foreign reconstruction assistance for ChaldoAssyrian communities was being controlled by the KRG without input from that community’s legitimate leaders. KRG officials were also reported to have used public works projects to divert water and other vital resources from ChaldoAssyrian to Kurdish communities. These deprivations reportedly threatened the safety of ChaldoAssyrians leading to mass exodus, which was later followed by the seizure and conversion of abandoned ChaldoAssyrian property by the local Kurdish population. Turkmen groups in the region surrounding Tel Afer also report similar abuses by Kurdish officials, suggesting a pattern of pervasive discrimination, harassment, and marginalization. Combined with non-state sources of instability, including violence from foreign jihadis and Sunni insurgents, the KRG’s practices add to the continuing flight of Iraq Christians and other ethnic and religious minorities to sanctuaries outside the country

…Between the Sunni-dominated insurgency and the KRG’s reported diversion of critical services and reconstruction assistance, the current confluence of events has forced tens of thousands of Iraqi Christians to flee during the last three years.34 According to some reports, nearly 50 percent of Iraq’s indigenous Christian population is now living outside the country.

These two reports come just a few days after the Washington Post profiled the nascent “Kurdish Lobby” in the US:

With Sunni and Shiite Arabs locked in a bloody sectarian war, Iraq’s Kurds are promoting their interests through an influence-buying campaign in the United States that includes airing nationwide television advertisements, hiring powerful Washington lobbyists and playing parts of the U.S. government against each other. A former car mechanic who happens to be the son of Iraq’s president is at the center of Kurdish efforts to cultivate support for their semi-independent enclave, but the cast of Kurdish proponents also includes evangelical Christians, Israeli operatives and Republican political consultants.

…Kurds want the sort of “strategic and institutional relationship” that Israel and Taiwan have with the United States, [Qubad] Talabani, [Kurdistan Regional Government’s representative in Washington and son of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani,] 29, said. “It doesn’t matter which party is in power in Washington — the U.S. government isn’t going to abandon either of those countries,” he added. “We are seeking the same protection.”

The Post also introduces us to Bill Garaway, an evangelical minister who had produced PR commercials for the Kurds:

…Garaway, a rangy 62-year-old with receding silver hair, became enamored with the Kurds more than a decade ago, after concluding that many key events described in the Bible occurred in Kurdistan, including the stories of Noah’s ark and Queen Esther. He believes not only that the Kurds are descendants of the ancient Medes people, but also that the three wise men who the Bible says visited baby Jesus in Bethlehem came from Kurdistan.

A year ago, I noted a Washington Times interview with Georges Sada, the evangelical Iraqi general who received considerable media interest with his claims about Saddam Hussein’s WMDs. Sada painted a very positive picture of the KRG-controlled area, which I had some cause to question at the time. Last month, I blogged the visit of Christian Zionist leader Mike Evans to the KRG area, after which he called for the US to give the Iraqi Kurds “the tools…to fight the war”, and for the “liberal media” to be restricted in Iraq. Shortly afterwards, Iraqi feminist Houzan Mahmoud warned of a plan to include sharia law in the Kurdish constitution.

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More details about Seung Hui Cho’s interaction with religion, from the Washington Post:

Hyang In Cho was so desperate to find help for her silent, angry son that she sought out some members of One Mind Church in Woodbridge to heal him of what the church’s head pastor called “demonic power.”

But before the church could act late last summer, Seung Hui Cho had to return to Virginia Tech to start his senior year, said the Rev. Dong Cheol Lee, minister of the Presbyterian congregation.

…”His problem needed to be solved by spiritual power,” said Lee, whose church members met with Cho and his mother. “That’s why she came to our church — because we were helping several people like him.” Those churchgoers told Hyang In Cho that her son was afflicted by demonic power and needed deliverance, Lee said.

Rev Lee is not the only figure to have suggested that Cho had been possessed – Richard Roberts (son of Oral) and Franklin Graham ventured the same diagnosis, and a minister named Paul F Davis revealed that

…”The eyes are the window of the soul. Cho Seung-Hui’s eyes revealed there was another resident occupying and possessing him. Cho’s dull eyes displayed an absence of life and abandonment. His body was the host and the demons the parasitical inhabitants, which clearly spoke through him during his video manifesto mentioning ‘my children, my brothers and sisters’ of which there was no factual basis…”

The One Mind Church is part of the Remnant Movement, which is also part of the “DaRakBang” (DRB) evangelization movement (see here for these links), from the Korean word for “Upper Room”. This website explains (well, sort of) what this means:

Darakbang is 3 M Movement. 1.) It is the movement of following the Message. 2.) It is the movement of having one mind. 3.) If these 2 take place, a Movement arises. In a word, if we become one by sharing the same message and mind, it becomes the movement that makes evidences in the field.

Titus was the fellow-worker who had the same spirit of 3 M as Paul.

A Korean-language website called Darakwen.net has a few articles in (rather poor) English, which give a bit more background. It seems that the Darakbang movement was founded in South Korea in the late 1980s by Pastor Ryu Kwang-soo, who was formerly part of the Hapdong Presbyertian Church; the split was acrimonious, with Hapdong accusing Kwang-soo of heresy and expelling sympathisers. Apparently there are now 3,000 churches in the movement.

Kwang-soo believes that demons are a significant force in the world, as he explains in one of his writings:

However, there are many peoples obsessed with demons. Some peoples around us honor the evil spirits. It is said that there are more than eight million demons in Japan where the number of mental patients reaches at the highest in the Asia.

…Therefore demon brings about dirty disease and impure minds, and rotten acts. Haunting the peoples, the demon stimulates them to take the deviated actions so severely as to commit suicide. It is proved that the number of mental patients occupied the top among the suicides.

Elsewhere, he tells us that

4 demon-possessed people came together to start the new age movement in the United States, but we have been given the authority to drive out the forces of darkness.  There is no reason for us to be scared of the evil forces.

(Hat tip: Bulldada Newsblog)

Name variation: Ryu Kwang-su

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A website announces the U.S. Capitol Bible Reading Marathon, which took place between 29 April and 3 May:

You are invited to join the thousands of believers who will come to the West Front of the U. S. Capitol to read the entire Bible aloud and without commentary for 90 continuous hours.

…Many of the Bible Reading Marathons have been held in conjunction with the National Day of Prayer observances around our nation, which take place on the first Thursday of May.

…God’s Word and prayer are the real solutions to our nation’s problems. This can only be accomplished by reading all the Bible because God has magnified His Word above His Name [Psalms 138:2].

…Rev. Michael Hall, Pastor of The Peoples’ Church and Executive Director, International Bible Reading Association: “I believe God is using this vision singularly to call this nation back to the simplicity of God’s Holy Word, the Bible.

Alas, however, a diary piece in the Washington Post suggests that the marathon did not do too well:

Organizers put out 600 folding chairs on the lawn — the spot where presidents are inaugurated — and set up a huge stage with powerful amplifiers. But at 9:30 a.m. yesterday, not one of the 600 seats was occupied. By 11 a.m., as a woman read a passage from Revelations, attendance had grown — to four people. Finally, at 1 p.m., 37 of the 600 seats were occupied, though many of those people were tourists eating lunch.

The article also has a bit of fun with one of the event organisers:

“This isn’t that kind of event,” explained Jeff Gannon, spokesman for the host, the International Bible Reading Association. Gannon, actually a pseudonym for James Guckert, had earned fame in 2005 representing a conservative Web site at White House briefings until it was revealed that he posted nude pictures of himself on the Web to offer his services as a $200-an-hour gay escort.

One of those who exposed Gannon was, of course, World O’Crap’s SZ, whose entries on the subject also chart Gannon’s turn to religion:

His posts at his site “ConservativeGuy.com”…seem to have disappeared, but Susan and her readers found an archived copy of his “Who is Conservative Guy?” bio — and it seems to indicate that “Jeff” can’t hold a job:

I’ve been a preppie, a yuppie, blue-collar, green-collar and white-collar. I’ve served in the military, graduated from college, taught in the public school system, was a union truck driver, a management consultant, a fitness instructor and an entrepreneur. I’m a two-holiday Christian and I usually vote Republican because they most often support conservative positions

However, once his escort sideline came to light, Gannon explained that in fact he was more than just a “two-holiday Christian”, and he suggested that he was therefore the victim of religious persecution:

I’m everything people on the Left seem to despise. I’m a man who is white, politically conservative, a gun-owner, an SUV driver and I’ve voted for Republicans. I’m pro-American, pro-military, pro-democracy, pro-capitalism, pro-free speech, anti-tax and anti-big government. Most importantly, I’m a Christian. Not only by birth, but by rebirth through the blood of Jesus Christ.

And indeed, Gannon’s association with the yearly Bible marathon, and its director Michael Hall, predates the scandal. Ancapistan has some pictures from 2004, and notes that

Upper photo is Michael Hall, pastor of the People’s Church located on Barracks Row in Washington D.C., in Guckert’s neighborhood. JD Guckert is a regular member of the congregation. According to Hall, JD was at his house when the news broke of JD’s porn websites.

JD also read at the 2005 DC Bible Marathon, but this year he elected to read late at night.

Meanwhile, the website of the International Bible Reading Association has further details about the marathon (bold red bits in original):

Dr. John A. Hash, Founder of Bible Pathway Ministries, burdened by growing biblical illiteracy throughout America, was impressed to take action. He was convinced that the godless spirit that envelops the world is deeply rooted in its lack of knowledge of the Bible, our Creator’s Guide on how He expects us to live, in order to accomplish His purpose for our existence. Dr. Hash realized that the giant task of bringing about an awakening to the importance of reading the Bible would require the entire Body of Christ — working together.

The International Bible Reading Association was established under the Co-Chair of Dr. John A. Hash and the late Dr. Bill Bright and the presidency of Richard Dingman of the Free Congress Foundation — and a global movement was under way. The response was overwhelming as world leaders began to network in an unprecedented way. Much has been accomplished in a short time. The goal was to proclaim 1990s~Decade of Bible Reading and enlist ONE BILLION PEOPLE to read all the Bible.

This was in 1989, and the effects were, it is hinted, dramatic:

Dr. Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ and Co-Chairman of the IBRA…presented a challenge to the Russian people on nationwide Soviet television to read all the Bible. He held up before them and read from the Presidential Proclamation signed by George Bush declaring 1990~International Year of Bible Reading. This is the first and only Proclamation in the history of the United States urging people to “read all the Bible.” Dr. Bright then challenged Russian leaders to also issue a similar proclamation for their nation.

Pastor Michael Hall explained the rationale to OneNewsNow:

“We stand on Isaiah 55:11, where we believe God’s Word is going forth across the nation,” says Hall. “It’s a spectacular place to read; we’re reading right at the seat of the nation’s power. And we believe God’s Word transforms anyone who listens to it. We invite people to come and read, to come and listen, to come and pray.”

Faith and Action has further details:

Rev. Rob Schenck opened this year’s event following a two-hour prayer service on the West Lawn of the U. S. Capitol that featured clergy from several Christian traditions including Faith and Action Chairman Rev. Paul Schenck, Rev. Michael Hall, Pastor of The Peoples’ Church and Executive Director of the International Bible Reading Association, former Navy Chaplain Gordon James Klingenschmitt and Father Jay Longacre. The ministers consecrated the area from which the Bible would be read with anointing and prayer.

Rev. Rob Schenck read selections from James H. Hutson’s “The Founders on Religion” that included the writings and prayers of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Rush and others…Chaplain Gordon James Klingenschmitt spoke of the persecution of Christians in America, including his own discharge from the U. S. Navy for offering prayers in the name of Jesus Christ…

(I blogged Klingenschmitt here)

However, despite nearly two decades of such events, the results so far look rather unimpressive. Randall Balmer (following Stephen Prothero) noted last year that

Many high school seniors believe that Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife, while a majority of Americans cannot name one of the four Gospels. Jay Leno asked his Tonight Show audience one night to name one of Jesus’ twelve apostles; they came up empty. One in ten Americans believes that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife, and only one-third knows that Jesus (not Billy Graham) preached the Sermon on the Mount. One of the most frequently quoted passages from the Bible—“God helps those who help themselves”—actually appears nowhere in either the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament.

And let’s not forget this guy:

Those who’ve missed Gannon’s pensées since his Talon News went under might like to know that he has a blog. Funnily, he doesn’t seem to like gay people very much.

(Hat tip: Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

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All is not well at Left Behind Games:

Officials from controversial Christian game developer Left Behind Games (Left Behind: Eternal Forces) have announced that senior management at the company have accepted the resignation of senior vice president Jeffrey S. Frichner, with CEO Troy Lyndon also demanding the resignation of the company’s other three board members.

Left Behind Games, which has a peculiar corporate history, exists primarily to develop video games based on Tim LaHaye’s apocalyptic vision of the Last Days, following the rapture of the faithful. The books centre on a group of late converts to Christianity, who form a militia against the anti-Christ’s UN; critics complain that the Eternal Forces game promotes this rather paranoid worldview, and that the game’s violence is inappropriate for a Christian product. Reviewers have also claimed that the game contains spyware, and that as a game it isn’t much good anyway. Despite massive sales of the novels, the controversy has been seriously bad for business:

In February, the developer reported a $4.1 million loss for its third quarter ended December 31st, 2006, on revenues of $2.2 million for the first six weeks of the game’s sales.

In a bid to recoup ground, the company has been spamming blogs that discuss the game with puff pieces – I got one of these, which includes a rather unconvincing quote from Lyndon:

“Our game does NOT teach the pre-tribulation theology of the book series, except that this worldview is utilized as a FICTIONAL backdrop of the game”.

Lyndon and others connected with the game have argued that the game deals with “spiritual warfare” rather than real violence, and Left Behind Games has hired a consultant named Gordon Chiu to promote the idea that the game favours “non-violence” in a way that “connects very strongly with ancient Asian philosophies”. LaHaye himself, however, complains that the groups attacking Eternal Forces “don’t attack other violent video games”, while his co-author Jerry Jenkins tells us that the game is “not more violent than the Old Testament”.

The new co-chairs of Left Behind Games are Michael A. Knox and Leslie N. Bocskor, who are both successful business insiders:

Michael A. Knox was a former partner with CEO Troy Lyndon for five years while they built Park Place Productions from an initial investment of $3,000 into North America’s largest independent video game development company. Mr. Knox is currently the CEO of V2P Communications, one of the world leaders in the new Internet audio advertising industry.

“I am excited about the company’s future as it extends its presence as a leader in the family values, faith-based and inspirational media and entertainment marketplace,” said Mr. Leslie Bocskor. Leslie N. Bocskor is an entrepreneur and managing partner with Lennox Hill Partners LLC, a New York-based advisory firm and the co-founder of two arts & culture philanthropic organizations as well as numerous computer software, entertainment and technology companies.

Some of Bocskor’s companies and interests are listed here. Interestingly, Bocskor is also involved with the annual “Burning Man” event; he acts as its New York regional coordinator, and he founded the “Society for Experimental Arts and Learning” for New York enthusiasts. Further, a list that he created for Amazon suggests an interest in the New Age and esoteric.

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