Bartholomew's Notes

Novosti reports:

Russia has received three plots of land in Jericho in the West Bank, a RIA Novosti correspondent said on Monday from a ceremony in Moscow to hand over land ownership deeds.

Russian Audit Chamber chief Sergei Stepashin, who heads the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society, said prior to the ceremony that, “The decision to return to Russia plots of land in the Holy Land was made during a recent meeting with Palestinian National Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas… the first decision will be implemented today.”

The plots of land had once belonged to the pre-revolution Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society, and they include an area known as “Moscovia” and a tree supposedly climbed by Zacchaeus when he wanted to see Jesus. The JTA notes that this is “one of several efforts by Russia to gain a religiously symbolic foothold in Israel and the West Bank”. I’ve blogged on this trend more than once: last year I noted an attempt by the Russian Orthodox Church to retake control of property in Palestinian areas lost in 1917, and more recently I blogged on the restoration of a compound in Israeli Jerusalem; in this last case, Novosti adds the detail that funding was provided by the billionaires Roman Abramovich and Arkady Gaidamak (This was doubtless a nice puff for Gaidamak, who owns the paper. I blogged on his Jerusalem mayoral ambitions here).

Eyeing these developments warily will be the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Theophilos, who recently complained about Russian Orthodox “aggressive policy”, both now and historically. The Russian Orthodox Church’s all-purpose pundit Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin responded to this in a recent newspaper interview:

I am certain that the scandal arose accidentally. Many people called me and said it’s a conspiracy against the Church or a CIA plan…

Let the comments made by the Blessed Patriarch Theophilos about the Russian presence weigh on his conscience.

Today, many people acknowledge the positive contribution that Russia and the Church made in the Holy Land. We have built schools and hospitals, and preserved ancient Christian sanctuaries from desecration. We have given up our people’s lives so that holy places would stay in the hands of the Jerusalem Greek Patriarchy. This was during the Crimean War, waged by Russia to ensure the Jerusalem Patriarchy would continue to exist. If it wasn’t for Russia, it is possible there would not be any Orthodox presence in the Holy Land. So I cannot agree with such a negative estimation of Russia’s and the Church’s role in the Holy Land.

Time calls the Russian Orthodox Church Russia’s “main ideological arm and a vital foreign policy instrument”.

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One thing that John McCain learnt from his star-crossed love affair with John Hagee is that courting the Christian right can have serious costs, as well as potential benefits. However, that’s not a message congenial to former Bush assistant Doug Wead, who is alarmed at the idea of Christian right leaders losing their kingmaker status. In the battle for McCain’s soul, Wead recently tried to enlist the biggest hitter of them all: Billy Graham. Wead managed to cause some discomfort to the McCain campaign, but only at cost to his own credibility

On Sunday, Wead spilled some beans in Newsmax:

In another disturbing sign that Sen. John McCain has little interest in reaching out to his conservative base, including evangelical Christian voters, his campaign has declined an offer to meet with the Rev. Billy Graham.

…In recent weeks I have been involved with Brian Jacobs, a Fort Worth, Texas, minister and consultant to the Billy Graham Association, to broker a meeting between McCain and Graham. In May, we contacted the McCain campaign with an offer to arrange such a meeting, as we had done between candidate George W. Bush and Graham during the 2000 election.

Wead goes on to reprint a letter sent to him from the McCain campaign which thanks him for the offer but adds that “I must pass along our regrets and do not foresee an opportunity to add this event to the calendar”. Wead – who boasts about how he liaised with evangelicals for George H.W. Bush and arranged a meeting between George W. Bush and Graham in 2000 – clearly had his nose put out of joint by this.

Noting that McCain had also avoided James Dobson, Wead adds:

McCain’s decision not to meet with Graham will likely provoke outrage. And the campaign will likely back down. Graham is no Hagee or Dobson. They will say it was all a mistake and blame it on staff or a “misunderstanding.” But in the process they have revealed their mind-set.

Wead’s carefully-timed controversy appears to have hit the target; the McCain campaign quickly announced that in fact it has been attempting to arrange a meeting with Graham, through his son Franklin Graham. Alas for McCain, though, the Charlotte Observer reports that:

That assertion surprised the Graham organization. Spokesmen for Franklin Graham said he has never negotiated or even discussed with the McCain campaign such a meeting with his dad.

Mark DeMoss, another spokesman for Franklin Graham, did acknowledge that Brett O’Donnell, a senior McCain staffer, had called Franklin Graham’s office months ago, and left a message. But that message, Blume said, asked Franklin Graham to call McCain’s office if he wanted to sit down with the candidate.

But alas for Wead and his associate Brian Jacobs, too:

Wead and Jacobs have no connection with the Graham organization and were never authorized to speak for Billy Graham, according to spokesmen for Billy and Franklin Graham.

“We don’t know who this Brian Jacobs is – we had to Google him to find out,” said Jeremy Blume, a spokesman for Franklin Graham.

(the obscure Jacobs was in fact an area crusade team coordinator for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association for a year, and after that Crusade Director for Jerry Savelle, a Prosperity Gospel preacher and protégé of Kenneth Copeland.)

Mother Jones has further details, and carries a statement from the Graham organization:

Upon further inquiry I understand that two people unaffiliated with either Billy or Franklin Graham apparently independently, without any knowledge by the [Billy Graham Evangelistic Association], tried to broker a meeting between Mr. McCain and the evangelist. Apparently it was their indirect and unofficial involvement that was declined.

Of course, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise for McCain, or even for Obama, to seek out a meeting with Billy Graham, although it would be more of a photo-op than anything else; as Jeff Sharlet noted in 2005, Graham has managed to position himself as someone who has transcended politics, so an endorsement is extremely unlikely (although Graham did once jokingly semi-endorse Hillary Clinton, to the gnashing of conservative teeth).

However, Graham’s son Franklin is a rather less impressive figure, known mainly for his 2001 comments on Islam as “a very evil and wicked religion”. Given Billy Graham’s age and frailty, Franklin Graham would in all likelihood be part of the package of any meeting. Judging by the Hagee and Parsley fiascoes, is it really worth the hassle?

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Daniel Pipes puts John Hagee in context:

[Hagee] is someone who is not at the extremes of American life, who is dealing with and close to or endorsed by those who hate the United States. This is someone who’s a patriot…[Hagee] is working within the mainstream of American political life. He is a serious and important actor in the pro-Israel movement. And I might add that I’ll be speaking for him next month at his conference.

In fact, Pipes is to some extent quite correct, and if you’ve ever read Richard Hofstadter’s famous essay on “The Paranoid Style in American Politics” you’ll know that what Hagee stands for has a pedigree (Chip Berlet has more background here). Here’s (once again) the “serious and important” Hagee in full-throttle on the New World Order and the Illuminati and such (Hagee’s voice is in the audio; the video and musical backing has come from another source):

Participants at the recent AIPAC conference have also reaffirmed their support for Hagee; although he wasn’t at the recent conference, The Forward reports that his name elicited applause and an ovation:

…Speakers at the session, titled “Friends in Faith: Evangelical Christians and the Pro-Israel Movement,” included Gary Bauer, president of American Values; John Buhler, founder of Christian Advocates for Israel, and David Brog, executive director of Christians United for Israel, the group led by Hagee.

“I want to take a moment to discuss with you a good man, evangelical pastor John Hagee,” Brog said to the audience. Before Brog could finish the sentence, the crowd broke into a lengthy round of applause, ending in a standing ovation. Among the few attendees who did not cheer at the mention of Hagee’s name was the Anti-Defamation League’s national director, Abraham Foxman, who has occasionally been critical of the ties between the Jewish community and Christian Zionists.

Brog, who runs Christians United for Israel on behalf of Hagee, has been busy defending the pastor over the past week or so, putting forward the argument that Hagee’s detractors are guilty of religious prejudice. As I blogged back in 2006, Brog is the author of Standing with Israel: Why Christians Support the Jewish State, which has a foreword by Hagee. The book is a call for his fellow American Jews to stop worrying and to learn to love evangelical Christians, much as Merrill Simon’s Jerry Falwell and the Jews did back in 1984.

Meanwhile, Bauer’s response to the McCain repudiation of Hagee featured recently on OneNewsNow:

“The only winner in all this has been the radical left and big media, who despise Senator McCain and also despise Pastor Hagee — and not incidentally, [also] despise Israel,” he contends.

When all is said and done, Bauer continues, the other side has scored a victory. He says the left-wing blogs, including the Huffington Post, distorted Hagee’s comments in order to “drive a wedge” between evangelical voters and McCain.

Actually, most of the work in bringing Hagee’s views to wider attention was undertaken by religious-right watchers alarmed that someone like Hagee should enjoy being courted by serious politicians when he ought to be “out in the street, shouting and hollering with a cardboard sign and selling pencils from a cup” (to borrow a phrase from Christopher Hitchens’ memorable dyslogy after the death of Jerry Falwell). And, as Matthew Avery Sutton has recently noted, McCain (who sought out Hagee against his better instincts) could have avoided the entire fiasco:

In his efforts to court the Religious Right, he has taken the worst approach possible. Rather than build bridges to the new generation of evangelical power players such as Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, and Joel Osteen, each of whom tries to put the emphasis on the compassion in “compassionate conservative,” he has instead been wooing tongues-speaking, fire-breathing, ministers of doom…That McCain didn’t see it coming reveals what terrible advice he is getting and how truly out-of-touch he is with religious conservatives. In picking some of the most extreme agents of intolerance to buddy up to in an effort to mend fences with the Religious Right, and then having to publicly denounce them, McCain has done the unthinkable—he has simultaneously lost face with the moderates who liked his independent streak and the religious conservatives that he so badly needs.

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Claim of support from “150,000 married priests”

The Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation reports:

Archbishop Milingo said the third Vatican Council will be launched in South Korea before the end of this month.

…The Archbishop, 78, leads 150,000 married priests across the world.

Of course, the location will be South Korea because Milingo is now completely Rev Moon’s creature, and Milingo’s breakaway church is Moon’s means to gain influence in Africa. As I noted in December, Milingo’s new church was established at a special ceremony in a “Peace Embassy” owned by the Universal Peace Federation – a choice of venue which suggests that the UPF’s declared aim of bringing people and faiths together may not be quite all that it seems.

Milingo performed his first mass since his excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church just a few days ago. The Times of Zambia reported his justification:

He said there were few priests hence the need for those who had been excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church to come forward and serve the masses.

He said when a priest was ordained; he could never lose the powers just as was the case with a person who had been baptised.

…”We are coming back, Saint Peter was married, all of them were except John the evangelist. We are not a sect but just reminding you of your duties. You can’t just sit down. The priests should not fear excommunication. It does not exist. You are priests forever.”

However, the Catholic News Service claims that Milingo has lost his popularity:

“As archbishop (of Lusaka) he could fill a football stadium, but now he is easily able to use the conference room of the motel he is staying in to hold his healing ceremonies. That tells the story,” Father Joe Komakoma, general secretary of the Zambia Episcopal Conference, said in a June 3 telephone interview with Catholic News Service from the Zambian capital, Lusaka.

While “the media is still fascinated by him,” Archbishop Milingo “is largely ignored by Zambian Catholics now that he is no longer a member of the church,” Father Komakoma said.

…Father Komakoma said there is no evidence to back Archbishop Milingo’s claims that up to 100 former priests in Zambia have joined his movement.

“You would think this visit would bring them out but it hasn’t happened,” the priest said, noting that he “has spoken to at least 10 ex-priests who want nothing to do with” Archbishop Milingo.

So much for that “150,000”, then…

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In the wake of a story about an American soldier in Iraq handing out coins bearing an evangelistic message, The Public Record notes other Christian material being promoted by members of American forces:

In addition to coins and Bibles, there have been reports of the distribution to Iraqi children of Christian comic books published by companies such as Chick Publications. These inflammatory comic books, published in English and Arabic, not only depict Mohammed, but show both Mohammed and Muslims burning in hell because they did not accept Jesus as their savior before they died.

…Sending more of these materials than would be necessary for an individual’s personal use, but not a large enough quantity to risk being flagged by the postal service, is one way that these materials are making their way into Iraq. Chick Publications advises those wanting to send their literature to military personnel to first find out “just what tracts would be most useful and how many they can effectively use,” and “to find out whether the tracts can be drop shipped from Chick Publications or if they should be sent as personal mail from the soldiers’ families.”

A spokesman for Chick refused to comment for this story about the comics handed out to Iraqis.

For the uninitiated, Jack Chick is the world’s most-published author, with hundreds of millions of comic-strip tracts in circulation. Robert Ito profiled him for the Los Angeles Magazine back in May 2003:

The experience of reading a Chick tract can seem disarmingly familiar. In many ways the stories adhere to the standard rules and visual language of comic books: When people are angry or stressed, huge beads of sweat shoot off their foreheads. Bad men say things like “@#$%!”; exclamation points are everywhere. Characters, with their side parts, bell-bottoms, and stilted language, have the stuck-in-time quality of Archie comics. But behind the reader-friendly style is a disturbing, hateful message: There are demons hiding everywhere. There are devil worshipers in the federal government and gay men plotting to taint the nation’s blood supply with AIDS. The pope is an agent of Satan. So is your next-door neighbor.

…Chick’s most popular book, This Was Your Life!, was published in 1964. At 21 pages, it is a masterpiece of shorthand horror. By the second panel, the Scotch-swilling, ‘Vette-driving protagonist has dropped dead of a heart attack. “Review his life!” the Lord commands, and an angel produces a massive CinemaScope screen in the night sky. The man watches scenes from his wasted life, in which he tells filthy stories, leers at blonds (“ummm nice!” he says to himself), and thinks about a ball game in the middle of church.

Although they express the most virulent Christian fundamentalism and conspiracy-mongering, the tracts enjoy an ironic following among comics fans, and apparently Robert Crumb is an admirer.

The Record notes other proselytism efforts, and quotes Mickey Weinstein:

“The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has been acutely aware of such astonishing unconstitutional and illicit proselytizing in Iraq and Afghanistan for over three years now and knows how massively pervasive it really is. These proselytizing transgressions are all blatant violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and MRFF is now demanding that any and all responsible military personnel be immediately prosecuted under Article 92 of the UCMJ: Failure to Obey an Order or Regulation,” Weinstein added.

I looked at Christian enthusiasm for evangelism in Iraq back in the very early days of this blog, and in March 2004 I noted a quote by National Association of Evangelicals official Kyle Fisk:

Iraq will become the center for spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ to Iran, Libya, throughout the Middle East…President Bush said democracy will spread from Iraq to nearby countries. A free Iraq also allows us to spread Jesus Christ’s teachings even in nations where the laws keep us out.

Apparently there has been some growth in evangelicalism in Kurdish territories, but there’s nothing anywhere near the feverish the predictions from the “Mission Accomplished” era, even with illicit assistance from US troops.

Incidentally, in the UK Chick Tracts are imported by B. Mccall Barbour, a cramped bookshop in Edinburgh with an elderly owner (somewhat unexpectedly, a picture of this bookshop was featured on Lindsey Beyerstein’s blog last year). They are also available elsewhere: the CLC (“Christian Literature Crusade”) bookshop in central London sells them in plastic multi-packs.

(Hat tip: Ed Brayton)

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From the Telegraph:

A police community support officer ordered two Christian preachers to stop handing out gospel leaflets in a predominantly Muslim area of Birmingham.

The evangelists say they were threatened with arrest for committing a “hate crime” and were told they risked being beaten up if they returned. The incident will fuel fears that “no-go areas” for Christians are emerging in British towns and cities, as the Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester, claimed in The Sunday Telegraph this year.

Arthur Cunningham, 48, and Joseph Abraham, 65, both full-time evangelical ministers, have launched legal action against West Midlands Police, claiming the officer infringed their right to profess their religion.

Both men are members of Grace Bible Fellowship Church, which declares itself to be “a free fundamental, evangelical, Bible-believing ministry… not ecumenical, Charismatic, Arminians, Calvinists or denominational”. Further:

In this age of wide-spread religious apostasy, compromise, liberalism, false religions, cults & political correctness we stand without apology on the authority of the Bible as the infallible word of God… For further information on how to be saved from eternal damnation click here.

The church is affiliated with the Grace Church of Mentor in Ohio (see here, click on “England”). According to the church’s website, Abraham was raised as a Muslim in Egypt, and was raised to be a “Muslim priest” (sic), but after flirting with atheism he was converted by an unnamed American evangelist:

Dear Muslim friend, remember, you will stand some day before the throne of God, just by yourself. Would you be able to stand God’s judgment?

Christians — those who believe Christ as their Saviour — are no longer under God’s judgment, because God already judged them in the Person of Christ. He died for them. Well, He died for you too.

There are no details about what kind of “gospel leaflets” were being handed out.

Naturally, various websites are following the Telegraph’s lead that the “hate crime” threat is a sign of Muslim “no-go” areas. That’s a rather alarmist take on what happened, although does appear that the officer acted unprofessionally:

The preachers, both ministers in Birmingham, were handing out leaflets on Alum Rock Road in February when they started talking to four Asian youths.

A police community support officer (PCSO) interrupted the conversation and began questioning the ministers about their beliefs.

They said when the officer realised they were American, although both have lived in Britain for many years, he launched a tirade against President Bush and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A “police community support officer” is not the same thing as a full police officer, but in this case they are under the jurisdiction and direction of the West Midlands Police, which has promised to give the officer concerned extra “training”. This is notable as the WMP has recently been obliged to pay out libel damages to the makers of the TV documentary on Islamic fundamentalism after accusing it of “distorting” various inflammatory statements.

However, the case also comes in the wake of police in London incorrectly warning a teenage protestor that signs describing Scientology a cult were illegal. In an age of increased religious sensitivity, it seems that police are taking the view that public disputes over religion ought to be suppressed. Without robust free speech protections such as we see in the USA, this is always going to be the easiest option.

UPDATE: MediaWatchWatch reports that Birmingham police have threatened anti-Scientology protestors with arrest for using “cult” signs, and leafletters have been issued with on-the-spot fines. Strathclyde police have also ordered that placards be taken down.

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Joseph Lieberman has just reconfirmed his attendance at the Christians United for Israel 2008 “Washington-Israel Summit” following the repudiation of CUFI founder John Hagee by John McCain. He will address the main banquet shortly after a presentation by self-proclaimed “ex-terrorist” Walid Shoebat. Shoebat has been the subject of controversy for several months, and his narrative has been challenged by investigative pro-Palestinian blogger Eileen Fleming, by the Village Voice, and by the conservative Jerusalem Post. As I noted in February, Shoebat has threatened to sue Fleming, which is perhaps the first instance of someone claiming that being accused of not having been a terrorist amounts to defamation.

Shoebat describes his conversion from Islam to Christianity as a conversion “from hate to love”. However, this seems a bit of a stretch when we come to consider a video on his website produced by his son Theodore Shoebat. The video expresses Theodore’s virulent hatred of Islam and science, and his belief that militarized Christian fundamentalism is the answer to both. I usually avoid the word “Orwellian” as an overwrought cliché, but in this instance one is instantly reminded of the “Hour of Hate” from Nineteen Eighty-Four – there’s even an image of Charles Darwin, Emmanuel Goldstein-like, for the viewer to revile. There is no reason to think that Walid dissents from this approach, or that anything here would be out-of-place at CUFI.

The video is advertisement for Theodore’s 2007 book In Satan’s Footsteps: What Every Christian Needs to Know. According to the book’s blurb:

Ted Shoebat is the 16 year old son of former PLO terrorist Walid Shoebat. Ted was was persecuted for his faith and conservative views by his teachers and fellow students. He witnessed anti Semitism, anti Israel propaganda, holocaust denial, anti Christian and anti Americanism in the public schools he attended. He even was sent to Special Ed and “diagnosed” with Asbergers Syndrome [sic] because teachers could not deal with his well thought out retorts to the lies he identified that he was being taught…

As Ted says. “My Father may be hated by Islamists but I will be hated by Islamists, Neo Nazis, Communists Mormans [sic], Evolutionists, and many liberals. Dad you think you are a marked man, that will be nothing compared to me.”

Apparently the book advances the thesis that Islam, Darwinism and Mormonism are part of a grand conspiracy against Christianity.

As with his father’s books, In Satan’s Footsteps is published by Top Executive Media, which – as “Dogemperor” at Talk to Action has shown – is run by Shoebat’s handler Keith Davies from a very plush-looking private property.

The two Shoebats have also visited churches together to give presentations; a typical advert for one such event can be seen here:

River of Life will be hosting a Prophesy Dinner with former terrorist Walid Shoebat THIS Saturday, October 27, 2007 at River of Life’s campus near Springfield, MO.

All are invited to dine with Walid and his son, Theodore Shoebat, to hear more of Walid’s message concerning the Islamic agenda for Christians and the United States of America.

And what actually is a “prophesy dinner”?

… Admission is $35.00 per person including a dinner of carved roast beef plus dessert.

All served up in a corrosive sauce of irrationalism and hate.

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Six months ago Dean Godson of Policy Exchange promised to pursue the BBC for libel “relentlessly, to trial or capitulation” if Newsnight dared to raise concerns about anomalies with receipts which the think-tank had presented as evidence that certain Islamic bookshops were selling extremist literature. I blogged the dispute here, and the Newsnight blog now carries an update:

On 19th December Policy Exchange released a statement standing by their report but advising readers that “as an evidence-based research organisation, we take the allegations made seriously”. It continued: “Our investigations must be allowed time to proceed.”

Well surely six months is enough? I contacted Policy Exchange’s external relations director Dr Steven King for an update. He got back to me this week with a statement saying that the independent inquiry had been “adjourned” because “the Muslim researchers who conducted the original investigation into the mosques have gone into hiding for fear of violent reprisals after Newsnight revealed their whereabouts on air, in breach of an undertaking given to Policy Exchange. Following the Newsnight broadcast, an Islamist website denounced the undercover researchers and called for them to be hunted down. Policy Exchange takes any allegations against its research methodology seriously, and so is keeping the investigation open in case circumstances change making it possible for it to be completed.”

Just to be clear – we didn’t identify the researchers, we reported which country they were in, which was the reason why PE said they could not be contacted for interview.

Policy Exchange’s most recent statement also states that the report “does not mention the receipts or rely on them as evidence, and Policy Exchange stands by the study’s content”.

Newsnight also tells us that the “Al-Manaar Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre and Masjid” and “Madrasa al-Tawhid” are availing themselves of the services of Carter-Ruck. But why aren’t some of the other booksellers mentioned on the Newsnight exposé following suit? A report in from Private Eye from February (1203 p. 8) offers a clue:

Newsnight’s killer claim was that its hacks had organised forensic tests which proved that receipts Policy Exchange said it had collected from the Muslim Education Centre in High Wycombe were dubious. When Policy Exhange said that the centre was selling such titles as Women Who Deserce to go to Hell…it couldn’t be believed. The BBC stuck by the accusation even though the Muslim Education Centre cheerily told reporters that the books were indeed on sale.

Similarly Newsnight said receipts from thr Al-Muntada Al-Islami Trust in west London were suspicious. The implication was that Policy Exchange was lying when it said that the works of Sayyed Qutb, the intellectual father of al-Qaeda and every other supporter of mass murder by suicide bombings, were on sale. Policy Exchange also quoted from a guide for Muslims living in the west which recommended “jihad against the unbelievers and the hypocrites…”. A second guide said that Muslims in the west couldn’t “stand up to honour a national flag, or a national anthem”.

…At the time the Eye was going to press, the al-Muntada online bookshop was offering both guidebooks – while Sayyed Qutb was at number four in its bestseller list!

The Eye’s report is somewhat obtuse: it can be true both that a bookshop is selling extremist literature and that someone decided to forge a receipt for some reason, and no counter-evidence is provided against the anomalies highlighted by Newsnight. And while Sayyed Qutb may be bad news, he was an etremely influential Islamic figure and the presence of his writings in an Islamic bookshop is hardly remarkable. One can also find controversial material in a number of Christian bookshops; a sensible method would be to look at a bookshop’s entire stock, and to take note of which materials appear to be particularly promoted.

However, having said that, the presence of extremist literature ought to be noted and challenged, and it should be recalled that the Policy Exchange report gave a number of mosques and bookshops a clean bill of health – hardly consistent with a crude anti-Muslim agenda. The problem is, though, that the issue of the receipts does undermine the report’s credibility, and it cannot be restored by making libel threats. Especially if such threats turn out to be bluster.

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An new essay by Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali provides the Daily Mail with a sensationalist headline:

Bishop says collapse of Christianity is wrecking British society – and Islam is filling the void

The Mail explains:

It has destroyed family life and left the country defenceless against the rise of radical Islam in a moral and spiritual vacuum.

…In a blow to Gordon Brown, he mocked the ‘scramblings and scratchings’ of politicians who try to cast new British values such as respect and tolerance.

The Pakistani-born bishop dated the downfall of Christianity from the ‘social and sexual revolution’ of the 1960s.

He said Church leaders had capitulated to Marxist revolutionary thinking and quoted an academic who blames the loss of ‘faith and piety among women’ for the steep decline in Christian worship.

I suspect Callum Brown will be wincing somewhat at this polemical use of his 2000 book The Death of Christian Britain, which links secularisation with women’s liberation in the 1960s. Brown’s (interesting) argument is that British Christianity had developed a sentimental idealization of women as “angels in the house”, while men were seen as inherently wayward and in need of feminine guidance. As women found new freedoms in the 1960s (thanks in large part to the contraceptive pill), they ceased to be the domestic carriers of piety, resulting in a collapse of British religiosity. In other words, changes in family life led to the decline of Christianity, rather than the other way round.

Nazir Ali’s essay appears in the first issue of Standpoint, the new magazine published by the right-wing Social Affairs Unit. It’s a strange piece; in some places subtle and academic, in others bombastic. Nazir Ali traces British values and identity to Christianity: “systems of governance, of the rule of law, of the assumption of trust in common life all find their inspiration in Scripture”. As a “descending theme”, Christianity “produced a network of divine, human and natural law which was the basis of a just ordering of society”, while as an ascending theme Christianity (helped by Aristotle) developed ideas of “personhood”, creating a “dual emphasis on conscience and consent”. This then joined Enlightenment ideas:

While the Evangelicals drew inspiration from the Bible for their humanitarian projects, such as the abolition of slavery, universal education and humane conditions of work for men, women and children, the Enlightenment provided them with the intellectual tools and the moral vision of natural rights so that they could argue their case in the public sphere. It was this Evangelical-Enlightenment consensus which brought about the huge social changes of the 19th and early 20th centuries and which came under sustained attack in the second half of the 20th century.

Nazir Ali then uses Peter Mullen to give Brown’s thesis a polemical and conspiratorial edge:

Peter Mullen and others, similarly, have traced the situation to the student unrest of the 1960s which they claim was inspired by Marxism of one sort or another. The aim was to overturn what I have called the Evangelical-Enlightenment consensus so that revolution might be possible. One of the ingredients in their tactics was to encourage a social and sexual revolution so that a political one would, in due course, come about. Mullen points out that instead of the Churches resisting this phenomenon, liberal theologians and Church leaders all but capitulated to the intellectual and cultural forces of the time.

This is just crude red-baiting; on the whole, people in the 1960s had freer sex (and talked about it more) because they could, rather than because they wanted Marxist revolution. Brown is surely right to emphasise technological advances in contraception, and Nazir Ali’s approach ignores wider sociological processes at work; we find similar increases in sexual freedom in other modernized countries. To bring in another sociologist, Steve Bruce has observed that:

…the decline of the traditional nuclear family had very little to do with the writings of the enemies of the family. Rather than being a cause, is is far more likely that such propaganda was a symptom of changes already in progress. Changes in the family cannot be separated from changes in the structure of the economy, the expansion of the idea of rights, and increasing affluence…The world turns out as it does not because anyone wants it like that, because actions engaged in for one purpose have unanticipated consequences…Especially if we can find some group of people who did want [a] change, we can readily (but mistakenly) suppose it happened because they wanted it and it can be reversed by us wanting something different. (1)

Nazir Ali/Mullen complain that Christian leaders “all but capitulated” to the cultural changes of the 1960s, but how well have those churches that refused any engagement with those changes fared? And why is not Mullen’s famous enthusiasm for Thatcherism not similarly a “capitulation”, or the American Christian Right’s unquestioning support for George Bush and his national security doctrines? And just because Marxism played a role in 1960s student unrest, that hardly means that Marxism created that unrest, or that the things it critiqued should not have been challenged, even though Nazir Ali takes it for granted that the “Evangelical-Enlightenment consensus” amounted to the best of all possible worlds, and could only be undermined by malignant outside forces. From here, the Bishop gets even sillier:

It is this situation that has created the moral and spiritual vacuum in which we now find ourselves. While the Christian consensus was dissolved, nothing else, except perhaps endless self-indulgence, was put in its place. Happily Marxism, in its various forms, has been shown to be the philosophical, historical and economic nonsense that it always was. But we are now confronted by another equally serious ideology, that of radical Islamism, which also claims to be comprehensive in scope. What resources do we have to face yet another ideological battle?

Now, there’s plenty to criticise in Marxism, but it remains a serious academic tool of analysis and it has provided some useful insights. Often it can be crude and one-note, but to suggest that it is somehow “equal” with Islamic fundamentism is not a statement to be taken seriously.

Unsurprisingly, the “resources” to which Nazir Ali wants us to turn are the “Judaeo-Christian tradition”, since the “the ‘thin’ values of respect, decency and fairness” are inadequate. And it’s not enough simply to acknowledge this historically:

While some acknowledge the debt which Britain owes to the Judaeo-Christian tradition, they claim also that the values derived from it are now free-standing and that they can also be derived from other world-views. As to them being free-standing, the danger, rather, is that we are living on past capital which is showing increasing signs of being exhausted. Values and virtues by which we live require what Bishop Lesslie Newbigin called “plausibility structures” for their continuing credibility. They cannot indefinitely exist in a vacuum.

Therefore Christianity ought to have a continuing role in public life – although how this in itself will shore up the “plausibility structures” of Christianity is not explained.

Nazir Ali goes on to contrast Christian and Islamic values, suggesting that Islamic values might take over:

Instead of the Christian virtues of humility, service and sacrifice, there may be honour, piety and the importance of “saving face”.

But what makes honour, piety and “saving face” particularly Islamic? These traditional values have also loom large in Western history. Any how would they come to dominate in a generally irreligious Britain anyway? Although Nazir Ali dismisses secular values as “thin”, the fact is that a generally secular and irreligious lifestyle appears to be attractive to most people in Britain. Nazir Ali sees a “spiritual vacuum”, but most people don’t, and most of those who do can chose between a range of religious options. And among some immigrants from Muslim countries, Western secular living has attractions. I discussed this point in the very early days of this blog, when Cal Thomas wrote an alarmist piece on Islam taking over the UK, based on conversion figures. As I asked then: how many conversions are purely nominal, for marriage reasons and such? How many converts backslide or move on to something else? And how many Muslim immigrants become secular, or at least nominalist?

However, Nazir Ali improves a bit as he heads towards a rather pedestrian conclusion:

Every temptation to theocracy, on every side, must be renounced. There is no place for coercion where the relationship of religion to the state is concerned.

…At the same time, government will have to be increasingly open to religious concerns and to make room for religious conscience, as far as it is possible to do so. Religious leaders, for their part, will seek to guide their peoples in the light of their faith and to seek to make a contribution to public life on the same basis. The integrity and autonomy of public authority and of the law will also have to be recognised, and it would be best if religious law in its application were left to the communities and to the free obedience of their members. Public law, however, should continue to provide overarching protection for all…At the same time, it should be possible for Muslims to contribute to the development of a common life by bringing the maqasid, or principles of the sharia, to bear on the discussion. These have to do with the protection of the individual and of society and can be argued on their own merits without attempting to align two quite different systems of law.

That last sentence is obviously a jibe at the position which was recently ascribed to Rowan Williams regarding Shariah, but the sentence preceding it will hopefully disappoint the Melanie Phillips crowd.

In fact, though, Britain is quite good at “making room for religious conscience”, having from 1689 onwards slowly removed various impediments against first Dissenters, and then Catholics and later non-Christians. One great British virtue – not found in the Bible – is compromise and a willingness to amend the rules to accommodate special needs. At times accomodation may go too far, and at times modern secular values may clash with religious values, but Britain is not France, and if Christianity’s role in British public life has diminished it is not because it has been generally suppressed in some way.

Nazir Ali doesn’t appear to have many answers, and it seems to me that the spectre of Islamization has been thrown into to the mix of the essay simply because he’s the Bishop of Rochester and this is what he does.

I last blogged on Nazir Ali a few days ago here. The Social Affairs Unit also promotes Creationism.

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(1) Steve Bruce, Sociology: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford 1999), pp. 91-92

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RISU reports:

On 20 May 2008, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko met with a delegation of the Constantinople Patriarchate (CP) of the Orthodox Church. At the beginning of the meeting, Yushchenko expressed his gratitude for the efforts of the CP to consolidate Orthodox Churches.

…”Both the Ukrainian religious community and the state are convinced that we should promote closer relations with the mother Church of the Constantinople Patriarchate,” said Yushchenko. “Ukraine is going [down] this road.”

Yushchenko also invited the Patriarch of Constantiople to come to Ukraine in July. However, the nascent alliance has provoked criticism from the Russian Orthodox Church, which is is bitterly opposed to a Ukrainian Orthodox Church independent of Moscow (I blogged that issue here). A second report adds:

21 May 2008, the secretary of the Department of External Church Relations of Moscow Patriarchate, archpriest Mykola Balashov told “Interfax-Religion” that Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople could only participate in the celebration of the 1020th anniversary of baptism of Rus in Ukraine only upon an appropriate invitation from Patriarch Alexis II of Moscow and All-Rus.

“The head of a particular Church may visit the territory of another Church only upon invitation in accordance with established Church tradition,” said the archpriest.

The ROC is also keen to sideline the the Constantinople Patriarchate more generally; ROC theologian Andrey Kurayev comments on the meeting:

“In those times when Kiev metropolitans were appointed in Constantinople, Constantinople was an Orthodox center of Orthodox Empire and it was natural to depend on Constantinople patriarchs, but today it is a bit strange, to put it mildly…how strange Ukraine’s fate is as it faces the same choice in various centuries: to be under Russia or under Poland and Turkey…this strange dream to be subordinated to the Turkish Patriarch,” Deacon Kurayev said.

In fact, this is only “a bit strange” in a purely worldly sense: spiritually, the Patriarch of Constantinople is regarded as “first among equals” among the Orthodox Patriarchs, despite the fact that his city has been under Turkish rule for centuries, and that the Greek population of Turkey declined markedly during the 20th Century. The sneering dismissal of Patriarch Bartholomew as “the Turkish Patriarch” throws away centuries of tradition, and the idea that the link would amount to Ukraine being “under Turkey” is absurd. Patriarch Bartholomew may need to be politically cautious, but he is hardly an instrument of the Turkish state – in sharp contrast to the ROC, which, as Time has put it, is the Russian government’s “vital foreign policy instrument”.

As I blogged a few months ago, the ROC has also for a long time challenged the authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople, and in 2007 Russian church spokesman Vsevolod Chaplin called for “All-Orthodox meetings” despite reluctance from Constantinople. As I noted then, the subtext seems to be that Moscow ought to be taking the lead here, as it did back in the Tsarist days when the city was known as the “Third Rome”.

The ROC is also keen to establish its Orthodox primacy in the Middle East; earlier this month I noted Kurayev’s description of the Patriarch of Jerusalem as the “local Greek Patriarch”, and his suggestion that the Moscow Patriarchate ought to be targeting Russian Israelis for evangelization. Theofilos, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, in turn has complained of Russian “nationalism” and “aggressive policy”.

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