Bartholomew's Notes

From the website of Christian Concern for Our Nation:

On Sunday 21st March, 70 delegates gathered in the stunning grounds of Exeter College, Oxford, to embark on a week of intense study, fellowship with one another, and worship… Andrea Minichiello Williams (Director, Christian Legal Centre) and Jeffrey Ventrella (Senior Vice President, Alliance Defense Fund) spoke after the dinner with passion and humility, challenging all the delegates to ‘put Christianity in its place’ and to answer the ‘call of today’s worshipful warrior’.

… Teaching from Jordan Lorence (Senior Vice President, Alliance Defense Fund) at these sessions was always highly relevant; he spoke honestly about the traps that Christians can fall into and provided practical advice for keeping our future careers devoted to God…

Williams’ links with Ventrella and the ADF were noted in a 2008 Channel 4 documentary which I blogged here. Ventrella’s background is discussed on this Americans United page:

Jeffery J. Ventrella, the ADF’s senior vice president of strategic training and coordinator of the Blackstone program, has published several articles in The Chalcedon Report, the leading Reconstructionist journal, which was founded by [Rousas] Rushdoony. Ventrella… describes himself as an “ordained Ruling Elder in the Orthodox Presby­terian Church” in his ADF bio…

Christian Reconstructionism is a form of Calvinist religious supremacism; while using the language of libertarianism, its goal is an authoritarian Christian society that would rule as harshly as any Islamic extremist polity. ADF president Alan Sears argues that separation of church and state is actually a KKK conspiracy:

It took a former Ku Klux Klansman turned Supreme Court Justice, Hugo Black, to move the so-called “separation of church and state” into common jurisprudence, which he accomplished in 1947 in Everson v. Board of Education.  As a committed Klansman, Black surely must have participated in the Klan’s oath of allegiance, to “most zealously… shield and preserve… (the) separation of church and state… ”   Klan doctrine is not a good way to interpret the U.S. Constitution.

The ADF’s “Blackstone program” is a series of events which has included Reconstructionist speakers. Despite these associations (and others), Ventrella says he is not himself a Reconstructionist. However, the Americans United article gives us some idea of what putting “Christianity in its place” might mean:

Ventrella called for moving beyond boycotting gay-friendly companies.

“In reality, a better strategic approach may well be to infiltrate publicly held companies (by stock purchases) and then tactically exercise voting rights and other ownership privileges, et al, in an effort to bring pressure to bear upon corporate policy and practice,” he wrote.

In another piece, Ventrella discussed the possibility of advocating vouchers as a means of tearing down the public school system.

Ventrella has also written for the Southern California Center for Chris­tian Studies, an outfit affiliated with the Bahnsen seminary. One of his articles discusses “theonomic postmillennialism.” (“Theonomy” – which is defined as God’s law – is another term for Reconstructionism.) It highlighted the need to “engage the culture strategically” and use an incremental approach to bring about change.

The ADF was a prominent participant at the recent CPAC in Washington DC; one observer saw Lorence speak and claims that he “finished his remarks with a bizarre Islamophobic rant – warning students that if they aren’t careful the United States will be taken over by Muslims like Western Europe has.”

Islam was also a theme at  the Christian Concern event at Oxford:

Dr Sam Solomon presented powerfully for four hours on Islam, clearly demonstrating his in-depth knowledge…

Solomon’s thesis on Islam is straightforward and crude, and one wonders why it would take four hours to expound; as I’ve noted previously, he warns that Muslims are brainwashed to hate, and that the situation in Nigeria shows that hospitable Muslim neighbours are likely to become killers. He is also the author of The Mosque Exposed, published by an American missionary organisation called Advancing Native Missions. A quote here has few surprises:

Despite the overtly cruel, harsh, and intolerant Quranic views toward others, namely Jews and Christians, there are injunctions in the Quran that enable the Islamic community to disguise, play down, and when necessary, deny both the intensity and the validity of these anti-Semitic and anti-Christian teachings of its religious system.

This particular injunction is taqiya, which permeates almost all the activities and dealings of Muslims within non-Muslim societies, be they religiously sacred or religiously temporal, secular or civic, since…Islam does not distinguish between sacred and secular.

Migration is legally obligatory on a Muslim as preparatory to other forms of jihad for the victory of Islam and Muslims in other countries . . . . Migration precedes jihad and both are inextricably linked…

It is not possible to consolidate the Islamic religion without migration. There is no way to raise the profile of Islam in the abode of apostasy without the help of Muslims and the increase of their numbers.

(Solomon’s book is also currently being promoted by English Defence League activists opposed to the building of a mosque in Dudley)

Also addressing Christian Concern for Our Nation in Oxford was the former Bishop of Rochester Michael Nazir-Ali, who, we are assured, “spoke with great wisdom”.

CCON also outlines the other participants:

Professor Julian Rivers (Professor of Jurisprudence, University of Bristol) presented a detailed model of law in the United Kingdom and clearly demonstrated how English law is becoming anti-Christian. Pastor Mark Baines (Partner, Deloitte LLP) engaged the delegates with practical advice on networking and defeating passivity. Teaching was also given by barristers: John Pugh-Smith proved  that Christian values can be upheld within the UK land-use planning system; Peter Duckworth spoke convincingly of the importance of marriage; and, the Christian Legal Centre’s Paul Diamond, along with some of his clients, spoke about his work defending religious liberty. Also lecturing were Dr Peter Saunders (General Secretary, Christian Medical Fellowship) and Countess Josephine Quintavelle [sic- should be Josephine Quintavalle] (Founder, Comment on Reproductive Ethics) who spoke cogently and persuasively on the importance of life, both for the elderly and the unborn…

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Back in January, Open Congress had an article on religious exemptions to to the US healthcare bill:

Both the Senate and House bills use the old Social Security language (Sec. 1402(g)(1) of the tax code) to determine who will be eligible for a “religious conscience” objection to the insurance mandate. Specifically, the bills would provide exemptions for adherents of “recognized religious sects” that are “conscientiously opposed” to accepting benefits from any insurance — private or public — “which makes payments in the event of death, disability, old-age, or retirement or makes payments toward the cost of, or provides services for, medical care.” To qualify for the exemption, the sect would have to have been in existence continuously since Dec. 31, 1950… It’s limited essentially to the Amish and Old Order Mennonites.

…But the Senate bill adds a new religious exemption… It would allow members of “Health Care Sharing Ministries” to be exempt from the requirement to have “acceptable” health insurance… According to the bill, they are non-profit organizations that “share a common set of ethical or religious beliefs and share medical expenses among members in accordance with those beliefs and without regard to the State in which a member resides or is employed.”

The Christian Science Monitor notes that Liberty University and the Thomas More Center are planning to challenge this:

“The act’s religious exemption violates the Establishment Clause in that it grants to [the executive branch of the national government] discretion to determine which religion is ‘recognized’ and demonstrates a preference for one denomination over another,” the Liberty University suit says.

“The act’s religious exemption is a per se violation of the Establishment Clause in that it vests in [the national government] the right to determine what is a recognized religious sect entitled to exemption under the act, and thereby discriminates between and among religions by preferring a ‘recognized’ religion over one deemed not recognized,” the suit says.

…”Liberty University has a sincerely held religious belief that it should play no part in abortions, including no part in facilitating, subsidizing, easing, funding, or supporting abortions since to do so is evil and morally repugnant complicity,” the suit says.

However, it has also come to attention that Islam regards conventional insurance as a form of gambling which is therefore generally forbidden; an American Thinker pundit extrapolated from this to “the probability that Muslims will also be expempt”, in a piece headlined “Amish, Muslims to be excused from Obamacare mandate?” Other conservative websites then took up the baton, while dropping the question-mark. The inevitable climax is now an article by the shameless huckster Walid Shoebat, who warns that this is further evidence that Obama is really a Muslim and that healthcare reform is actually an Islamic conspiracy against America:

That is an interesting situation as president Obama is regarded by most Muslims who live inside and outside America as a Black Muslim. Another statistic in a recent poll conducted by the liberal media shows that 57% of Republicans also believe Obama is a Muslim, but hey, those silly extremist bigots, they know less than the actual 99% of all Muslims who also believe the same thing.

So Obama who is a leader of the USA now enacts laws for the Dhimmis – us, and gives freedom to his Muslim brothers. Healthcare was a lot of things but one thing it was not, and that was not about improving health for Americans. The Democrats have adopted Sharia law literally.

Shoebat is not a marginal figure: he enjoys the endorsement of conservatives such as Daniel Pipes and Robert Spencer, and he regularly addresses church groups with his pseudo-exegesis of the Bible, which he claims predicts the rise of a Muslim anti-Christ.

Of course, the reality is that there is no exemption for Muslims in the bill, there is a diversity of Muslim opinion on the subject, and Muslims tend to participate in existing compulsory insurance schemes in the USA and elsewhere (Muslims in the west are known to drive cars, for instance).

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“After the General Election, all BNP leaflets will carry a Christian Cross”

Edmund Standing notes BNP leader Nick Griffin’s “Special Easter Message”, in which Griffin announces the party’s new emphasis on Christianity. Griffin writes that:

After the General Election, all BNP leaflets will carry a Christian Cross to demonstrate our commitment to maintaining and preserving our Christian heritage as a nation. Politically correct scoundrels like Rowen Williams will cry fowl but we have nothing to be ashamed of as we are the defenders of Britain’s Christian heritage, just like our Crusader ancestors in the Middle Ages.

…The darkest hour is just before the dawn, but be of good cheer for Christ Our Lord is risen!

Griffin explains that he has come to this realisation following a debate with George Hargreaves of the Christian Party:

A special event that happened recently has changed my outlook on our struggle and the situation facing our sacred country. That event was the peaceful, sensible, mature debate with the Christian Party leader George Hargreaves and a large number of Christian Party members. I thoroughly enjoyed the entire debate which was noticeably absent of the usual hysterical fanaticism of the liberal-left.

It made me think long and hard about a new dimension of our struggle: our Christian religion, culture and traditions. In the past too much emphasis has been placed on the ethnic aspect of our present national dilemma, whilst the longest running feature of our identity has been overlooked: the fact that our country has been held together and guided for millennia by our common, ancient religion: Christianity.

And before you misunderstand me, I do not mean the gut-wrenching politically correct quasi-Marxist nonsense spewing forth from the treacherous leaders of the modern Anglican Church. I mean the traditional, upright, decent and honest Christianity that defended Europe from Islamic conquest, the Christianity of the Crusades and the Christianity of our forefathers…

Griffin’s debate with Hargreaves was broadcast on Genesis TV (an extension of Howard and Lesley Conder’s Revelation TV, which was profiled by the Guardian in 2007), and can be found on YouTube. Both Hargreaves and Griffin took questions from Tim Vince and the audience; according to a report on Christian Today:

The two were debating the motion: “That the election of any BNP MP or leader of a Local Authority will be detrimental to Black and ethnic minority Christians in particular and the wider church in general in Britain.”

Mr Griffin revealed that his understanding of Christian heritage was one of “national pride and history”, rather than a personal and corporate dedication to Jesus Christ. When asked about his own relationship with God, he stated his relationship was not so much with Jesus, but rather with an ideal of what the Anglican church as the ‘state church’ should be.

When asked if the BNP would allow black churches to purchase building in certain areas of London, Mr Griffin made it clear that any church composed primarily of ethnic groups would be disallowed in historically white majority areas, and forced to conduct their worship in areas deemed suitable by a white political leadership.

Griffin got some claps for describing Anglican leaders as “wolves in sheeps’ clothing”, but he also praised Archbishop of York John Sentamu, and the former Bishop of Rochester, Michael Nazir-Ali. An endorsment of Nazir-Ali is not much of surprise (although it is sure to be unwelcome): Nazir-Ali has suggested that a return to Christian values should be promoted as a matter of national heritage (I blogged this here), and he is controversial for raising the spectre of “no-go” areas for non-Muslims in British cities, without providing any specific examples. However, Sentamu has been vociferous in his criticism of the BNP, and he has been mocked in turn as a Ugandan “spear-thrower” by Griffin’s deputy Simon Darby. Griffin also attacked “an aggressive leftist secularism”.

The BNP’s turn to Christianity has actually been going on for some time – one of the party’s high-profile activists is the Reverend Robert West (whom I have blogged a number of times), and a couple of other “Revs” have been BNP members. Griffin also gave us an “Easter message” last year – that too was a call for British Christians to revive their Crusader past in order to oppose Muslims (although that time he didn’t feel any need to mention of the Resurrection).

However, Edmund has been quick to point out the humbug of this; Griffin is actually known for being irreligious, and for declaring that

The idea of an anthropomorphic God in the sky who happens to take a particular interest in us has never struck me as remotely realistic.

Meanwhile, the BNP’s Legal Director Lee Barnes is an avowed Odinist, with an explicitly anti-Christian perspective:

Christianity is a semitic religion, it is creature of the deserts of the Middle East not the forests of the Northern Europe and its symbol the cross is an instrument of torture not of living redemption.

…The icons of death are what the West once worshipped – Moses, Christ, saints, popes etc etc

Now all these icons of death must be replaced by a living, organic religion which allows our people to reconnect once more with nature, the earth and the divine unfolding of the spiritual within the material and within Man.

Further, Griffin’s claim that turn to Christianity replaces an emphasis on “the ethnic aspect of our present national dilemma” is not quite the case: Rev West’s Christianity specifically denounces “the mixing of races”.

In last summer’s European elections, Hargreaves tried to persuade voters that he was the only candidate who could defeat the BNP, and – as I blogged here – his Christian Party recently entered the “Alliance for Democracy”, alongside the English Democrats and some other fringe-right parties. Griffin is doubtless aware that these parties offer a less toxic alternative to the BNP for nationalist-minded voters, and and he has adapted his rhetoric accordingly. This site has more on the BNP’s actual views.

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Gay City News recently reported:

High Rise, the Every Nation, which characterizes itself as a student religious group at North Carolina State University, has invited the Reverend Martin Ssempa, a champion of proposed draconian anti-gay legislation before the Uganda Parliament, to its weekly meeting on April 2.

On a Facebook page advertising the meeting, the group referred to Ssempa as a “Passionate Voice in the Global Fight against HIV/AIDS,” citing statistics that “the HIV/AIDS rate has dropped from 22 percent to a staggering 8 percent” in the East African nation.

The article is not quite accurate: the Facebook page where the event is advertised shows that it took place on 2 April 2009, rather than yesterday. At that time, Ssempa was not yet quite so notorious for his anti-gay activism, and he enjoyed links to pastors such as Rick Warren – although his views were on record, as I first blogged in 2007.

However, the report does draw attention to Every Nation, a controversial neo-Pentecostal grouping – “High Rise” is a student outreach of a particular Every Nation Church called King’s Park International Church; I blogged on this particular church in 2005. Ssempa was also a prominent speaker at the Every Nation World Conference in Manila in 2007, and in the same year King’s Park pastor Ron Lewis commended him as

a vigilant worker in combating the plague of HIV/AIDS in Uganda. Pastor Martin has been working closely with Her Highness Janet Museveni, the First Lady of the Republic of Uganda in educating Ugandans on the truth about HIV/AIDS. Their efforts have contributed to a huge drop in the disease rate, which in recent years has fallen from 30% to 6.5% in Uganda.

(HIV/AIDS in Uganda is a subject I blogged on here)

Every Nation (formerly Morningstar International) emerged from the wreckage of the 1980s student movement “Maranatha”, which collapsed amid claims of authoritarian behaviour. I blogged on the controversy around the grouping in 2005.

Incidentally, Lewis’ predecessor as King’s Park pastor was a certain Wayne Mitchell, whose son Jason “Molotov” Mitchell – whom I previously blogged here – is one of Ssempa’s most vocal supporter in the USA, using videos at WorldNetDaily to praise Uganda’s proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill: if gay Ugandans don’t like the bill, they are welcome to leave the country; Western liberals should not criticise the culture of a foreign country. Molotov has also left a message of support on Ssempa’s Facebook page, and in one video he tells us that he has spoken with Ssempa by telephone. Molotov has been actively involved with Lewis’s Campus Harvest organisation, as can be seen here.

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Back in 2004 (as I blogged here) BBC Radio 4’s Face the Facts ran a piece on Archbishop Gilbert Deya and his “miracle babies”. Deya, a Kenyan Pentecostal minister based in the UK, claimed that women in his congregation with fertility problems – and, indeed, post-menopausal women – could be made pregnant with miraculous babies which would come to term in a matter of weeks. Pregnancies would be diagnosed by Deya himslf, and the expectant mother then sent to a special backstreet clinic in Kenya to give birth. By coincidence, this clinic also took in unwanted babies.

The programme elicited some sceptial response, but Deya’s own 57-year-old wife then showed up at a hospital in Nairobi with a new-born baby and a placenta – doctors said they had found no medical evidence that she was was the mother, but Deya explained this was because they had been threatened by the authorities. The “miracle babies” also had DNA which did not match that of the parents.

While this may seem simply preposterous, the consequences have been tragic. The Guardian reported on one case in September 2005:

An infertile couple who claim to have given birth to a “miracle” baby are to go to court in an attempt to win back custody of the child from social services.

The couple, who cannot be named, are going to the high court to oppose the baby being put up for adoption. The authority, Haringey council in north London, will resist the application.

…The legal battle over the fate of Baby C has already cost more than £1m. He has had six care placements in less than two years, and two adoption attempts have fallen through because attempts to clarify his status have taken so long.

…The 38-year-old woman told the high court that Baby C was the second of three “miracle” babies born to her after prayers, and she was pregnant with him for just 27 days. She said the first of her babies died soon after birth in Kenya and the third was taken by Kenyan authorities.

The upshot of the scandal was that Deya’s wife was arrested and jailed for child trafficking, while the Archbishop was the subject of an extradition request from Kenya. In 2008, I noted a report which said that he had lost his appeal to stay in the UK. However, the BBC now tells us that he is still here:

A self-styled archbishop who claimed he could give infertile couples ‘miracle babies’ is still living and working in the UK despite his extradition to Kenya being ordered three years ago.

The Home Office has said it is still considering representations from Gilbert Deya’s solicitors that sending him to Kenya would breach his human rights.

…A call to his offices in London resulted in him telling us the BBC was “evil” for what had been broadcast about him previously. He told us never to call him again.

He’s not always media shy, happy to appear on his own TV channel, Deya Broadcasting Network, which screens his church services and phone-ins via satellite TV across Africa and Europe.

Deya’s website is here, where he puts his side of the story:

Although the ministry has recently faced a lot of opposition especially from the media, some people have slandered our name by calling us child-traffickers but this has not stopped this great move of spreading the Gospel. ” They have taken away my children and put them into care, my wife has been jailed but still the favour of the Lord is upon us,” Archbishop said. He further explained the injustice and cruel action taken against his wife by the Kenyan authorities. “We cannot understand how somebody can steal a child from an unknown parent, it is sheer propaganda and persecution.” So far, the British Scotland Yard and the Charity Commission have done their investigation but they could not find any criminal evidence to convict the Deya family and therefore closed their investigation.

One person who has been keeping an eye on Deya is comedy writer Robert Popper, who has drawn attention to a number of Deya’s videos, such as this:

In 2004 Deya’s videos listed for sale on his website included Jesus Healed a Woman with Three Breasts; Ambassador Carrying a Snake in his Belly Delivered in Jesus’ Name; (Witchcraft) 14 Year Missing Baby Born in the Womb (The Mother is 51 Years Old); and The Walls of Jericho Came Tumbling Down and Killed the Witches.

(Hat tip: Cult News Network)

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