Bartholomew's Notes

“We are heading into two of the most rearranging, realigning months that we have ever known in the history of this generation”

A bulk email arrives from Stephen Strang, editor of the neo-Pentecostal Charisma magazine:

I am personally inviting you to be a part of our first-ever teleconference onThursday, March 20th at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. My special guest will be Chuck Pierce, President of Glory of Zion International Ministries. He has been used by God to intercede and mobilize prayer throughout the world.

Our focus during the conference call will be “Prayer and Intercession in Our Political Times.” I believe this conference call is pivotal and strategic to the current events happening in our nation. Chuck has recently stated “there will have to be a 21-day ‘push’ in the Spirit culminating on April 20 for … the atmosphere in our nation to shift so voters are not deceived by all the political rhetoric from the candidates and the media.”

Strang explains the importance of prayer:

I believe prayer and spiritual warfare brought about shifts in prior political campaigns—such as the narrow win in Florida for George W. Bush during the recount in 2000. Prayer was also responsible for the installation of certain Supreme Court justices when their appointments appeared to be politically unlikely.

There follows a letter from Pierce (a prominent neo-Pentecostal leader), who explains how God sent him a message during a nighttime trip to the toilet:

We are heading into two of the most rearranging, realigning months that we have ever known in the history of this generation. What occurs during these days will set a course for our lives and this nation. The Lord woke me at 1 o’clock on Tuesday morning. As I walked into the bathroom I noticed a calligraphy verse: Lean not on your own understanding. This verse lit up even though the light was not on in the bathroom. The verse became red and yellow like fire. When I went back in at 5 AM, I noticed that the verse was actually in navy blue!

During this second nocturnal visit, God revealed a 1,500 essay to Pierce, which he was able to write down verbatim afterwards. However, it seems that God was in a rather vague and rambling mood. Here’s a taster:

Abrasive circumstances will increase over these next 40 days. Lean not on your own understanding. I will show you things that you do not know during this time. I will cause you to see the pattern that I am forming. Do not fall into an understanding of the past, even the past 40 years, for in the next 40 days I am producing a new time of understanding in My people. For My wisdom is not your wisdom. I am creating a fear and an awe of Me! I will show you how evil is working. I will let you hear the voice of evil – that voice that has been distracting, confronting, and taunting you. My cause will rise up in you…Don’t miss your window of opportunity or fail to recognize the catalyst I am creating for rearranged momentum. Receive an anointing to leap over the mountain that has been deceiving and intimidating you…

Etc, etc. The full text is available here.

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From the Daily Mail:

The BBC is facing accusations of rewriting the Easter story by claiming Christ was nailed to the cross in a foetal position.

Actually, “the BBC” is claiming no such thing; however, a particular drama – The Passion – co-commissioned by the broadcaster (along with HBO) does apparently feature the crucifixion in such a position, as is historically possible. The drama also seeks intelligently to re-explore the motivations of Judas, Pilate, and Caiaphas. Cue – inevitably – Stephen Green of Christian Voice:

“Yet again a revisionist slant has to be put on a story that is transparent.

“It’s fine to have an alternative look at the motivation of people such as Caiaphas, Pilate and Judas, but the fact remains that these guys were instrumental in an innocent man meeting his death.”

So, it’s “fine to have an alternative look”, but Green has a Pavlovian need to complain anyway! Still, anything to keep the profile up.

For sensible commentary on the programme, the links and analysis on Mark Goodacre’s blog are probably the best starting place.

Meanwhile, Green will perhaps have something meatier to get his teeth into after Friday, when with perhaps unfortunate timing the soap opera Eastenders will feature an especially daft foray into Gothic horror. A character named Max is buried alive by his wife and her lover: does he die, or will his burial place be found empty in the next episode, to be broadcast on Easter Monday?

(For all your Stephen Green needs, check out MediaWatchWatch)

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From – inevitably – Xinhua:

The 11th Panchen Lama Gyaincain Norbu condemned on Sunday the lawless riot in Lhasa, saying the sabotage acts run counter to the Buddhism tenets.

“The rioters’ acts not only harmed the interests of the nation and the people, but also violated the aim of Buddhism,” Panchen said.

“We resolutely oppose all activities to split the country and undermine ethnic unity. We strongly condemn the crime of a tiny number of people to hurt the lives and properties of the people,” he said.

The teenage Gyaincain Norbu doubtless knows on which side his bread is buttered; he was infamously installed as a puppet spiritual leader by the Chinese authorities several years ago, and the Tibetan protests have reportedly included calls for the release of his rival for the position, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, who was chosen by the Dalai Lama and who has been under arrest in China since the age of six (last year, China famously declared that the reincarnations of such “Living Buddhas” must be approved by the government). Gyaincain Norbu also resides in China, although he makes visits to Tibet to dispense blessings – in fact, he appeared in a BBC documentary series, A Year in Tibet, just a few days ago. The inhabitants of Gyantse, the town featured in the programme, appeared to respect his status, despite reports that he is unpopular.

Supporting Gyaincain Norbu’s position on the protests is Dazhag Dainzin Geleg, a vice-president of the Tibetan Branch of the Buddhist Association of China:

“A handful of Buddhist monks didn’t study the scriptures, didn’t follow our religious canon, but echoed the Dalai clique in splittist efforts to undermine the stability in Tibet and destroy the order of the Tibetan Buddhism,”

The president of the Tibetan branch of the Buddhist Association of China is Zhukang Tubdain Kaizhub, who enjoys the spiritual status of “Living Buddha” and the worldly title of “vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference of Tibet Autonomous Region”. The Association is a branch of the Chinese government, and he has been keen to stress that there is religious freedom Tibet.

Another vice-president of the Tibetan branch of the Buddhist Association of China (and “Living Buddha”) is Phagpala Geleg Namgyal, a prominent collaborationist and CCP official. Last year a young female refugee made certain allegations against him on the TibetInfoNet website.

Name variations: Erdini Gyantsen Norpo; Dupkang·Tupden Kedup; Pagbalha Geleg Namgyai. There is probably also an alternative transliteration for Dazhag Dainzin Geleg, but I haven’t been able to find it.

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Russian Orthodox church spokesman Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin unveils a new plan to encourage morality, via a subtle advertising campaign. Interfax reports:

we can make such an advert: here is a happy just married couple leaving the church after wedding, and here is night-clubber with a glass of cognac with prostitutes and pederasts. And “Part II”: five years have passed – the couple is among their children, while the marry-maker [sic] is in hospital dying from AIDS.

Just why “pederasts” would be in a night-club is not explained, but given the homophobia of the Orthodox Church it’s very likely Chaplin is using the word to refer to gay men. The following raises our suspicions further:

The representative of the Russian Orthodox Church cited results of Paul Cameron’s research. According to them [sic], life span of homosexuals and lesbian is 20% lower than that of ordinary people in Denmark and Norway.

Paul Cameron needs little introduction; the Southern Poverty Law Center has reviewed his work here.

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A couple of weeks ago on my Universal Peace Federation sub-blog I noted a UPI report from Nepal, which described how

two major business groups from Nepal — Pepsi Co. and the Chaudhary Group — have joined hands with two key nonprofit NGOs — Project Healing Touch of India and the Universal Peace Federation of Nepal — to offer a solution to a people in despair.

The project concerns micro-financing and business training; however, it is now clear (although unsurprising) that UPF theology will also be promoted. The Rising Nepal reports:

The project aims at enabling those in the most vulnerable sections of society to earn a respectable living, be self- supporting, make a contribution to society, and live in dignity inspired by three of the fundamental pillars in the UPF philosophy as-that sustainable peace can only be built on the principle of living for the sake of others, that irrespective of religion, language, cultural or ethnic background we are essentially “One Family Under God,” and UPF’s wholehearted support to fulfill the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals.

No mention is made of the “One Family Under God’s” “True Father” on earth: Rev. Moon. It should be recalled that Moon’s works and ideas were recently praised by Nepalese politicans.

What the rhetoric of “One Family Under God” actually means is made clear in this video:

This video is rather more slick than the following 1997 effort, recently unearthed by John Gorenfeld:

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Several months ago former MI5 whistleblower turned conspiracy-theorist David Shayler decided to follow the David Icke route, announcing the discovery of deep spiritual mysteries and declaring himself to be the reincarnation of Jesus. Given the rather jokey way he made this revelation – “I’m Brian and so is my wife: The Messiah is to hold a press conference this week” – one wonders if this was some kind of send-up; other conspiracy theories have also been suggested, in which he is still working for MI5 to discredit criticism of the Iraq war and the supposed “truth” about 9/11, or has been brainwashed to achieve this purpose. Most likely, I would hazard, Shayler is masterminding a conspiracy to avoid getting a proper job.

His latest ramblings, however (see below), are rather less jokey:

…The New World Order is not just a political force, the New World Order uses the dark side. We know this from the extensive testimonies to things like Satanic abuse. These are not things you’ll read about in the mainstream media, but I assure you, if you go in the internet you’ll find ample, well-researched evidence there.

What’s more chilling: the attempt to resurrect a conspiracy theory which resulted in ruined lives and blighted childhoods in the 1980s and 1990s, or the fact that a man who believes citing “the internet” counts as an authoritative source was once employed in a position of responsibility? But that’s not even the half of it:

…That New World Order, using those dark forces, has tried to convince us that Jesus came 2,000 years ago and changed nothing, or that Jesus didn’t come at all, or that he came but he wasn’t divine.

But who exactly has tried to convince us of this? Does he mean certain Biblical scholars of various kinds? Or does he mean Unitarians or Mormons or Muslims, since these religious traditions reject the idea of the Trinity? Or does he mean the group hinted at here:

…Taking my cue from Jesus in the Bible, the first thing I’m going to say and do is turn the tables on the money-lenders. And I say to every government in the world, print your own money…Until now, every country in the world has been controlled by a central bank. We know from documents like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion that they were going to use the money supply to create recessions and depressions, and that’s exactly what they have done throughout the twentieth century and are doing now, basically.

I suppose it should be remembered that not all conspiracy theories that use the Protocols are aimed against Jews; the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail authors concocted an alternative yarn connecting the document to a Masonic “Priory of Sion” (Of course, this is also nonsense, as well as being irresponsible and in bad taste). However, Shayler makes no attempt to clarify what he means, and coming after his garbled evocation of Jesus overturning the tables of the moneychangers, one is inclined not to give the benefit of the doubt.

Many of us can remember David Icke’s debut as a spiritual guru in 1991, when he became a figure of national mirth for his bizarre prophecies and pronouncements (Shayler, by the way, promises us the universe will “change shape” in 2012). A few years later, Icke was featured in a documentary with Jon Ronson, and he came across as a rather sad figure – wheeling his suitcase around the UK and the USA and speaking to small groups of cranks, when he had once enjoyed a high-profile career as a BBC sports reporter. A more recent documentary, in contrast, showed us queues of people eagerly waiting to fill medium-sized London venues where Icke was due to appear. Perhaps Shayler saw the same programme, and decided to see if he could win at the same game.

(Hat tips: Harry’s Place, The Nation of Duncan)

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Back in 2004 (see here), Ted Baehr of the Christian conservative “Movieguide” and of WorldNetDaily thundered against the film Kinsey, which he alleged whitewashed a monstrous figure responsible for corrupting American society. Beahr urged us to consider the evidence provided by his friend Judith Reisman, who had proven that the historical Kinsey had had a strange sex life and therefore that all his data was worthless. Baehr also claimed that Reisman had been deliberately excluded from previews of Kinsey, and he found this particularly reprehensible.

In 2008, however, Baehr is more than happy to endorse the idea of selective pre-screenings for a film more to his liking. Over to his latest column at WorldNetDaily:

Atheists are enraged. The politically correct academic nomenclature is upset. A reporter in Florida even posed as a minister to sneak into a church screening to stop actor, pundit and financial guru Ben Stein’s new movie about the totalitarian attempts by Darwinian scientists to suppress dissent, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.”

Baehr is referring to the case of Roger Moore (no, not that one), film critic for the Orlando Sentinel. Moore received an invitation to a screening, but when the invitation was revoked he decided to attend anyway – and avoided signing a non-disclosure agreement. He did nothing to attempt “stop” the film, and he did not “pose as a minister” (that embellishment appeared after the review was published). He did, though, write a harsh review – details can be seen on his blog. Presumably Baehr, who raged against Fox over its alleged treatment of Reisman, approves of Stein’s strategy of controlling who gets to see the film before its general release, and of holding soft-ball press conferences.

This is far from being Baehr’s first dip into the waters of hypocrisy – last year he denounced violent films for inspiring the Virginia Tech massacre not long after presenting an award to Chuck Norris.

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An important case reported in the San Francisco Chronicle:

A federal judge said Friday she’s inclined to dismiss a lawsuit by conservative radio talk show host Michael Savage against a Muslim rights group that reprinted his attacks against Islam and called for an advertising boycott.

Savage sued the Council on American-Islamic Relations in December after the organization posted excerpts from an Oct. 29 broadcast in which he called the Quran a “hateful little book … a document of slavery” and said, “I don’t want to hear one more word about Islam. Take your religion and shove it.”

His lawsuit accused the group of violating Savage’s copyright by posting more than four minutes of excerpts on its Web site without his permission. He also claimed that the group was engaged in racketeering, saying it poses as a civil rights organization but is actually a “mouthpiece of international terror” that helped to fund the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Savage’s vulgar and tedious anti-Muslim rants have been part of the US scene for several years; Salon profiled him a while ago here. WND has more of the quote highlighted by CAIR:

I’m not gonna put my wife in a hijab. And I’m not gonna put my daughter in a burqa. And I’m not getting’ on my all-fours and braying to Mecca. And you could drop dead if you don’t like it. You can shove it up your pipe.

This is fairly average from the man whom Brigitte Gabriel’s American Congress of Truth describes as “the best in the fight against IslamoNazism” (I blogged on Gabriel, and noted her October visit to London, here. She is particularly popular in Christian Zionist circles).

Savage claims this was taken “out of context”, and he raised money from his listeners to fund the copyright lawsuit. Savage claimed that this was about defending his free speech in the face of CAIR’s call for a boycott, which is a rather strange interpretation of the first amendment. Perhaps realising this (a) looked ridiculous and hypocritical, (b) would be detrimental to “fair use” provisions in American free speech, and (c) very likely to fail anyway, he opportunistically added the racketing charge at a later date. And sure enough, now that the lawsuit has been thrown out, his supporters are whinging about a “victory for terrorism”.

CAIR put forward a useful precedent on the issue:

Thomas Burke, a lawyer for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said at the hearing that the organization was entitled to excerpt Savage’s words for fundraising purposes. He cited a 1986 ruling by the federal appeals court in San Francisco allowing the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s organization to use copyrighted material in a Hustler magazine parody of Falwell to generate contributions.

However, the judge – now on the receiving end of abuse from Savage’s supporters – has allowed the radio host to re-file an amended suit.

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From the Daily Mail:

A branch of the Freemasons secret society is being formed by members of the Royal Household and police who protect the Royal Family.

And their decision to call it The Royal Household Lodge has put them on a collision course with Buckingham Palace – as has their plan to co-opt the royal cipher – EIIR – for their regalia, to underline their connection to the Queen.

…Author and broadcaster Martin Short, whose book Inside The Brotherhood exposed Masonic practices in the UK, said: “It’s a catastrophic time to start such a lodge, given all the problems facing the Royal Family at present.

“The Royal Family is desperately trying to prove it is modernising – in PR terms, this is bad news for them.”

As it happens, I read Inside the Brotherhood (1989) not long back – although it is packaged by the publisher as a sensationalist exposé and some of the chapter titles tend toward the lurid, in fact on the whole the book avoids conspiracy-mongering and where it explores abuses these are seen more as due to the complacency and institutional failings of an unaccountable leadership rather than as the outworking of some sinister grand design (at least, as regards British Freemasonry: the book also covers the Italian P2 business). Given what we now know about how institutions work when they are not under public scrutiny, this is quite believable.

Members of the royal family have been involved with Freemasonry for a long time, and today the “Grand Master” is the Duke of Kent, a cousin of the Queen – Prince Philip went through some Masonic initiations to please his father-in-law, but he has shown no interest since (The back of St James’s Palace, by the way, is just over the road from one of the main Masonic centres in London: Mark Masons’ Hall, a grand but much more discreet building than the headquarters of the United Grand Lodge of England near Covent Garden. Mark Masons’ Hall has featured on this blog before, as the venue for the right-wing Right Now! conferences).

I’ve actually met a few Masons over the years, and it’s clear that for them the organisation is a harmless social club with a strong civic conscience. However, one can also appreciate the concerns of Palace staff quoted by the Mail:

Non-members in Royal service are said to be fearful they will be overlooked for prestigious promotions and left unsupported in any below-stairs clashes.

…A Palace insider said: “There’s a lot of consternation and rightly so. People fear a lot of business will now be conducted behind closed doors so that those who don’t sign up to Freemasonry can’t have any effect on it.

“They are concerned that Masons will be preferred and those who aren’t Masons will be written out of the script.

“Backstairs life is already complicated enough – there are all sorts of allegiances and cliques and cabals. People fall in and out of favour and there’s a lot of whispering in ears…”

This is surely the main problem with a group which has been dubbed “the mafia of the mediocre”: not that it’s a grand conspiracy, but that when based around a place of employment a lodge constitutes a clique which undermines the measures that modern workplaces have put in place to counteract the all-too-human tendency to favouritism. The fact that women are excluded from Freemasonry (aside from some obscure affiliates) makes such lodges particularly undesirable, and distasteful.

Of course, the ideal is that a Freemason is interested in the pursuit of virtue rather than rank or status; Freemasonry purports to be a spiritual journey, and the symbols and rituals are supposedly designed to make an initiate aware of human imperfectability in relation to God. However, whether or not Masonry is sometimes abused for worldly advancement, one has to wonder about the attitude that is actually fostered by the organisation; it seems to me that some Masons revel in grand titles before and weird letters after their names, and in membership of exalted Masonic “Orders”, and one wonders how often such titles and hierarchies are actually substitutes for true inner maturity of character (I can think of some examples). One Christian criticism of Freemasonry is that some of the Masonic declarations, which gloat over secret knowledge unknown to outsiders, go against Christian ideals.

Freemasonry is, though, a fascinating subject and the pseudo-arcane rituals and preposterous mythology are fun in a “Dungeons and Dragons” kind of way. And while rejecting conspiracy theory, it is the case that certain lodges act as networks for individuals with particular interests, and so are worth keeping an eye on (just why, for instance, were the Right Now! conferences held in Mark Mason Hall?).

Despite Christian critiques of Freemasonry – which range from fundamentalist conspiracy theories through to more considered theological and ethical objections – Christian Freemasons see no conflict, and Freemasonry enjoys some support within the Church of England: Archbishop of Canterbury Geoffrey Fisher was an enthusiast, and there are services of thanksgiving in Canterbury Cathedral. Short’s book mentions a particularly exclusive lodge, the Kaiser-I-Hind Lodge (pp. 374, 571 in 1989 edition), which had as a member the secretary-general of the General Synod.

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A characteristically elegant piece by Jeff Sharlet puts the questions about religion that journalists ought to be asking the current crop of US presidential candidates:

Let’s take their faith seriously, as seriously as we take their foreign policy platforms and their health care plans. Let’s ask the toughest questions we can. Not, “Is Obama secretly a Muslim?”; that’s a stupid question. Rather, let’s quiz McCain on his new Baptist credentials, ask Hillary why she rejects the social gospel, demand that Obama explain how, exactly, he will be “guided by prayer” in the oval office, as he boasted in a mailer to South Carolina voters. All three present their Christianity as essential to their political identities. Great; let’s find out what they know about their Christianity. I propose this not as a boost to Hillary, who’s by far the most theologically literate, nor as a slam on McCain, who may not actually know that Baptists are supposed to have been, you know, baptized. Rather, I simply want to know what they know. How about a debate in which Hillary and Obama each explain how Revelation will help them make decisions?

Such questioning is unlikely to be edifying or enlightening, but previous use of this strategy has proven to be fun to watch:

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