Bartholomew's Notes

The Telegraph reports on Polish pop singer named Dorota Rabczewska, who has been charged with blasphemy after opining in an interview that

she believed more in dinosaurs than the Bible because “it is hard to believe in something written by people who drank too much wine and smoked herbal cigarettes.”

Rabczewska, known as “Doda Elektroda”, could be jailed for two years:

“It is clear that Doda thinks that the Bible was written by drunkards and junkies,” said Ryszard Nowak, chairman of the Committee for the Defence Against Sects, an organisation dedicated to protecting Christian values. “I believe that she committed a crime and offended the religious feelings of both Christians and Jews.”

The idea that drugs have played a role in the development of western religion has been raised before – most famously by John Allegro – but the speculation not received much scholarly support. According to a quote posted here, Nowak apparently hopes the singer will be made to work in a hospice or as a street-sweeper rather than jailed. Her manager, Maja Sablewska, tried to argue that non-alcoholic wine was meant.

A 2001 article posted online by CESNUR has some background on Nowak and his organisation:

The Committee for the Defence against Sects in Poland is the only entirely non-church related association that works to stop the introduction of sects into Poland. It was established by Ryszard Nowak, a former member of parliament from the political left who was pushed out of political life for creating this organization. This past year, he organized a press release, claiming to have an alarming report on children in ‘sects,’ which proved to be very controversial. It also proved very difficult to get a copy of.

In Polish, the organisation is known as the “Komitet Obrony przed Sektami“; it does not appear to have a website. Nowak – now with the populist Self-Defence Party and a councillor in Jelenia Gora – is known in particular for his opposition to certain forms of music which he considers to be Satanic. He warns the promotion of Satanism goes beyond just “Black Metal” material; in particular, he accuses Jerzy Owsiak, who runs a regular “Woodstock” pop festival event, of being a “thinly disguised” Satanist (Owsiak, in turn, calls Nowak a “complete idiot”). Nowak also claims that there have been at least 400 Satanic concerts in the country since 1986.

In 2007 he produced a report on the subject, which was apparently embraced by government departments. According to an article here,  Joanna D?bek from the Ministry of Justice said that the report would be helpful for amending the penal code to prevent the spread of sects and Satanism. The Ministry of Interior passed the report on the police. However, the report itself remains private, to stop “young people” copying practices described in it.

Nowak is also currently gunning for a performer named Adam Darski, who uses the stage name “Nergal” and whose band is called Behemoth [UPDATE: And who is also Rabczewska’s fiancée]:

The case concerns a concert in September 2007 in the club “The Ear” in Gdynia, during which Darski tore up the Bible and scattered its fragments among the audience. Then the [fragments] were to be burned by fans of the band. The singer of Behemoth also [said] that the Catholic Church is “a criminal sect.””…

The first proceedings in this case were officially initiated in February 2008 based on reports about the Behemoth concert to the media by Ryszard Nowak, President of the National Committee of Defense Against Sects.

…Investigators from Gdynia again took up events at a Behemoth concert in January of this year, after the prosecution filed an application in this case [from] four Pomeranian PiS (Law and Justice Party) representatives.

..In the ongoing case the prosecutor is also investigating another [matter] connected with the Behemoth leader … on the report of Ryszard Nowak, related to a work of Adam Darski’s named “Praise to the killers of St. Adalbert” [in Polish St. Wojciech]. Nowak accuses the musician of “publicly praising the killing of St. Adalbert”…

Adalbert was speared and beheaded by Prussian pagans in 997; Wojciech (or Voytech) had been his birth name, and he took the name “Adalbert” from his teacher; the pagans may have been annoyed by missionaries damaging sacred groves.

Last year, Darski sued Nowak for calling him a “criminal”, and won. Nowak – who had to make a donation to an animal charity as compensation – complained that this was giving a “green light” to Satanists.

(correction: in a fit of confusion I originally wrote “Morton Smith” when I meant “John Allegro”)

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From a press release:

A respected Buddhist priest in Japan has called for Japanese authorities to prosecute those responsible for kidnapping and imprisoning members of the Unification Church. In an official letter to a Committee for the Inquest of Prosecution assisting the state prosecutor dated March 14, Rev. Dohki Mihara, a Sotoshu Buddhist priest, wrote:  “Getting to know about Mr. Toru Goto’s case of religious kidnapping and confinement that lasted for 12 years and 5 months, a case which was clearly based on a purpose to break his faith in the Unification Church, I felt deep despair and grief to find out that Japan, although calling itself a cultured nation, has not acquired human decency, common sense in respect for human rights, or the basic attitude of democratic nation.”

Mr. Goto’s case was dismissed by Tokyo prosecutors with no indictments but will now be considered by a citizens’panel empowered to re-open the case.

..Rev. Mihara is the former president of the Religionists Forum, an ecumenical association of Buddhist, Christian, and Shinto religious leaders in Miyazaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu. He was speaking to the fact that since 1969 more than 4,300 members of the Unification Church have been kidnapped and confined by misguided relatives and opponents of the church. As has been reported, some of the victims have been beaten, sexually assaulted or tortured while in captivity.

Goto’s story was included in the 2008 US State Department Report on International Religious Freedom:

According to representatives from the Unification Church, a member of their congregation was abducted by his family and held in captivity for more than 12 years in an attempt to “deprogram” him. Four months after his escape, police had not opened an investigation into the case.

…According to representatives of the Unification Church, approximately 10 to 20 practitioners were forcibly “deprogrammed” by concerned family members during the reporting period, and in most cases, the believers “quickly gave up their faith.”

According to a Unificationist website:

Toru and several other victims of kidnapping and psychological torture were quoted in a series of articles in Sekai Nippo during the last week of June 2009. Despite many cases in Japan having been reported to the police over the last decade or more, no cases have been prosecuted yet. …Toru was kidnapped and suffered faith-breaking efforts twice, first in 1987 and again in 1995, he told the newly formed Association to abolish Deprogramming in February. Alarmed by hateful accusations and claims against new religions, his parents had hired Mr. Shun Miyamura, a professional kidnapper who called himself a “deprogrammer.” In the first episode of kidnapping Toru pretended to recant his faith. …Soichiro Kobayashi, 37, says he was abducted and assaulted three times since he joined the church in 1992. …Dr. Hirohisa Koide, 46, a physician, told Sekai Nippo how he had been abducted and held in confinement for two years, also by Miyamura, beginning in June 1992. His book, Escaping the Kidnappers, was published in 1999 but was shunned by book distributors influenced by intolerant critics of the church.

Goto’s testimony can be seen here. It includes the following:

…my brother started working for the company that was managed by Shun Miyamura, the professional deprogrammer who de-converted him. Together, with Miyamura, my brother came to work vigorously to “deprogram” members. He eventually married a woman, who like him, was a former-member and had been de-converted through abduction and confinement.

…As I examined the room, all the windows were equipped with a special lock on the inside and were securely locked so they could not be opened… A few days later, Minister Matsunaga Toridechi of the Niitsu Evangelical Christian Church brought several former Unification Church members and they repeatedly criticized and denounced the UC movement.

A report here has the same details, alothough names have changed slightly: the deprogrammer is “Takashi Miyamura”, and the evangelical minister is “Yasutomo Matsunaga” of the Japanese Alliance Christian Council and the “Niizu Good News Christian Church”.

A further report has the testimony of Sayuri Hara:

In early June 1992, two former members of the Unification Church visited my parents and persuasively spoke to them for many hours saying, “Please cooperate in converting Sayuri.” My mother went to see Pastor Shikae Kurotori and was introduced to Pastor Kyoko Kawasaki of the Tanimura Church, in a Japanese Christian denomination. On June 24, 1992, I visited my home in Yamanashi. After eating out, we were about to go home, and I was seated in a back seat of a vehicle. My father drove the car… I was taken to the Yoshida Business Hotel, to room 307, and held hostage there… By overhearing my parents’ conversations, I learned that my parents contacted and received directions from Pastor Kyoko Kawasaki on numerous occasions during the day. In the hotel room, Pastor Kyoko Kawasaki pressed me to withdraw from the Unification Church for four days, for over 10 hours a day.

Members of the church have been holding protests to hightlight their complaint. In February, there was a march in Ogikubo in Tokyo. The location was significant:

The late Pastor Satoshi Moriyama, who came up with the idea of abduction, confinement and forced disavowal towards Unificationist members, was the Pastor of Ogikubo Eiko Church located in Ogikubo, Suginami Ward. Therefore, this area is where it all started, and Mr. Toru Goto was also confined in the Ogikubo area and Niigata for 12 years and 5 months from Sept.11, 1995 to Feb. 10, 2008. Mr. Shun Miyamura, one of the masterminds of Mr. Goto’s confinement case, manages a company in the vicinity of Ogikubo as well.

There was also a protest in April in Okayama; according to a report here:

On April 18, 2010, over 150 members of the Unification Church and supporters of religious freedom marched in Kurashiki City in Okayama Prefecture, near Japan’s west coast, to publicly accuse a local Japanese minister of complicity in the kidnapping and unlawful confinement of members of the Unification Church in often failed attempts to force them to abandon their faith.Unification Church Website in Japan, Pastor Masaharu Takayama, the head of the Kurashiki Grace Christian Church, attempted without success to break the faith of a Unification Church member last year.

…”Christian ministers usually receive a payment from the parents of victims when they are asked to de-convert the victims,” according to Shunsuke Uotani, an official of the Universal Peace Federation in Japan. The faith-breaking victim was a young lady from Tottori Prefecture…

Three days later, some female Japanese members held a press conference in Seoul. The New York Post has some pictures here; according to the commentary:

Japanese members of the Unification Church who are married to South Korean men take part in a news conference in Seoul April 21, 2010. The Unification Church members want the South Korean and Japanese governments to ensure they are safe to return to Japan as they fear their relatives might forcibly detain them and make them renounce their religion. The Korean characters on the yellow sash read,”Please free us from fears of detention and kidnapping”.

Some purported historical background is given here, although this is a partial account which conflates kidnapping with other aspects of Christian opposition to the movement (as well as Communist opposition); one would like to see some actual evidence, or at least an authoritative reference, to support the claim that Moriyama – a fierce critic of Rev Moon – supported kidnapping:

The first period began in 1966, when Rev. Satoshi Moriyama labeled the Unification Church “heretical” from his perspective as an evangelical Christian, and began using abduction and confinement as tactics to force individual Unification Church members to renounce their faith. On July 7, 1967, the evening edition of Asahi Shimbun, a major Japanese daily newspaper, published an article titled, Unification Movement Brings Tears to Parents. The article fanned the anxiety of parents with adult children in the Unification Church, and some sought out Moriyama for advice. This led to an increase in forced renunciation attempts. In March 1976, Rev. Moriyama held a four-day seminar at the Hachioji University Seminar House in Tokyo titled “Seminar on Counter Measures against the Unification Association” to instruct other Christian ministers on his method of confining Unification Church members and convincing them to renounce their faith. 

During the second period, from 1976 to 1987, many Christian ministers, primarily from evangelical churches, joined Moriyama’s efforts, leading to a sharp rise in forced renunciation attempts. These ministers included Rev. Takeo Funada, Rev. Mamoru Takazawa, Rev. Shinya Waga and Rev. Hisoka Murakami. 

…Hiroko Tomizawa, who was abducted during the storming of the Tottori church [in 1997] and confined for a year and three months, and Rie Imari, who was abducted off the street, brought civil suits against the ministers involved in their respective cases. Following this, the number of attempted forced renunciations gradually declined. 

The Christian minister involved in Mrs. Tomizawa’s case admitted in court that she had been confined involuntarily, and the court ruled in her favor. The minister involved in Mrs. Imari’s case refused to make such an admission, and the court ruled against her.

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Election results are now in for the various figures I’ve taken an interest in over the past few weeks.

In Lincoln, the BNP’s “Rev” Robert West came fourth place with 1,367 votes (3% of the total), while in Croydon Central  his former cheerleader Pastor James Gitau, who switched at short notice to the Christian Party, managed 264 votes (0.5%), taking eighth place. Meanwhile, Christian Party leader George Hargreaves came sixth in Barking, with 482 votes (1.1%). In the Western Isles (Na H-Eileanan An Iar), the affiliated Scottish Christian Party candidate Tom Selfridge stepped down for an independent named Murdo Murray, who came a distant third with 1,412 votes (9.6%). The Christian Party of Wales’ David Griffiths came sixth in Clwyd West with 239 votes (0.6%) – a result that means Wales will keep its dragon flag, despite his warning that it is “a symbol of defeat and Satan”.

Among mainstream candidates, Philippa Stroud came second place in Sutton and Cheam, receiving 1608 votes fewer than the Liberal Democrat winner. Nadine Dorries won comfortably in Mid Bedfordshire, with 28,815 votes (52.5%, and more than twice the number of votes than her nearest rival).

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The PinkNews has a further article on Philippa Stroud, the neo-Pentecostal Conservative Parliamentary candidate who is claimed to have been involved in prayer sessions to expel demons from gay people a few years ago. Stroud has apparently been waving lawyers around:

…John Rubinstein, of law firm Rubinstein Phillips, is representing Mrs Stroud and confirmed that the company has contacted a number of media outlets reminding them of their duty under Section 106 of the Representation of the Peoples’ Act.

This makes it illegal to publish any false statement of fact in relation to the candidate’s personal character or conduct, unless the publication can show that they had reasonable grounds for believing that statement to be true.

A political activist fell foul of this law in 2007 after smearing a gay opponent; the lawyers in this case, though, seem to be cautioning against extrapolating from the Observer article to making excessive claims about Stroud, rather than seeking to suppress the story itself (it is apparently also distinct from “criminal libel”, which was used by the MP Julian Lewis against the late Simon Regan in the 1997 election campaign). Sunny Hundal suggests that this warning resulted in the story receiving less media coverage than it would otherwise have done.

A posting on Pam’s House Blend raised the same issue in rather more dramatic terms on Tuesday:

According to Kacey Jones… one of the people interviewed for the original article, “They [the BBC) will get sued by there [sic] lawyers if they do… [the] bbc would have got sued if they ran the story… They went all the way to Brighton to see AJ, and I did mine over the phone. Then the lawers jumped on it and stopped it.” This was confirmed independently by AJ Patterson, who said on Facebook that she has “been gagged. Did apiece with BBC, but they cant run it. They have lawyers I guess. What happened to justice…….what happened to peoples voices???????” In a later private message AJ said the line she received from the BBC was that “[Stroud] got lawyers and it come from quite high up.” Benjamin Cohen, the gay Channel 4 journalist, said yesterday on Twitter that he and colleague were fighting to get story out but there were “complications” – which implies that Channel 4 News are facing the same threats of legal action as the BBC.

In fact, Cohen wrote that his editor

said it was a good story but is rather hampered by the fact that Mrs Stroud hasn’t given interviews on the subject. We also haven’t been able to interview the people quoted in the Observer’s original investigation. All we have is an rather obscure book and claims by individuals who assert that Mrs Stroud had contact with them more than 10 years ago.

Meanwhile, Andrew Brown has highlighted a couple of messages from members of Stroud’s church, as an important counterbalance to the other reports:

…In my church I see a loving welcome to people from all cultures and backgrounds and determined efforts to serve the local community offering free no-strings attached English classes. If I witnessed a negative reaction to an openly gay attendee from some members I would question my place in the church and I would talk to leaders about it.

… I checked about praying for release from demons in my church and the guess is this has maybe happened four times in ten years, none of these related to homosexuality. Exorcism is practiced across Christian denominations including Church of England and by Muslims and Sikhs but it’s not something I’ve personally ever witnessed.

and

…As one who knows the church that the Strouds established, is a christian, worked on the social action project that supported the rough sleepers of Bedford and is bisexual i can CLARIFY that the church does not / has never cast demons out of gay people – I am loved and accepted in my church. I know 3 of the gay people who are quoted in the article and all 3 are using this 15 min of fame to air their anger and personal issues .

This all seems reasonable enough, although the situation may have changed since the early 1990s, when John Wimber’s “Power Evangelism” was all the rage and “spiritual warfare” was more strongly stressed across middle-class neo-Penteocostalism: the new movement had enjoyed remarkable rapid growth in the 1980s, and phenomena such as the “Toronto Blessing” prompted huge enthusiasm about God’s power to bring revival through miraculous interventions. But the growth spurt turned out to be temporary, as the pool of recruits from other, older, churches dried up; the supernatural interventions became less convincing (the nadir was perhaps the “God turned my fillings gold” craze of 1999); and the “deliverance ministry” was implicated in a series of excesses and scandals (see Roland Howard’s book Charismania and Stephen Parsons’ Ungodly Fear). There’s now more caution about supernatural interventions, and an understanding that  “deliverance” has many pitfalls.

Andrew Brown also offers this assessment:

The New Frontiers church to which Philippa Stroud belongs and where her husband is a major star is the fruit standard of fruit loopiness among English evangelical Christians. It was at a New Frontiers church in Brighton that I once went to hear the New Zealand evangelist Bill Surbritzky [sic], a man who believes that not merely homosexuality but smoking and swearing are caused by demonic infestation.

I have a copy of Bill Subritzky’s book Demons Defeated, and it is certainly one of the strangest items I have in my possession. Among much else, there’s an anecdote about guy who manifests a seagull demon after reading Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and there’s an incident in which God reveals to Subritzky – through a vision – that a woman has been indulging in oral sex.

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Back in February, I sent an email to Nadine Dorries MP. Here’s the content:

Dear Ms Dorries

I see from a post that you made today on Twitter that you have forwarded certain emails etc. to the Metropolitan Police concerning Tim Ireland and a man named Charlie Flowers. As you may or may not know, Mr Flowers has made threats of violence against Mr Ireland, and when asked why he has claimed that he was acting on your behalf because Mr Ireland supposedly sent you a death threat. By this, Mr Flowers is refering to the incident in which you posted a Tweet about sitting in a churchyard, and Mr Ireland responded with a Tweet to you linking to a YouTube video clip taken from the film “The Omen”, in which a priest is killed in a churchyard by a supernatural entity.

I understand that you considered this joke by Mr Ireland to be offensive, and that you have had on-going disputes with him that have spilled over into personal animosity. However, I am sure that you cannot agree that his Tweet amounted to anything close to a threat of any kind, or that a self-styled vigilante should be harassing him as a consequence.

I have had dealings of my own with Mr Flowers and his associates (a gang calling itself “The Cheerleaders”), and I have seen first-hand how they have harassed Mr Ireland and other people. They have a dispute with Mr Ireland on a different matter, but they are using his disputes with political figures such as yourself and Iain Dale as opportunistic cover for their harassment. Regrettably, Mr Ireland’s complaints about this are now being mischaracterised as some sort of “conspiracy theory” on his part, although he has never claimed that you or his other political opponents are connected with Mr Flowers.

I have extra information about this matter, and I would like to add a statement of my own to the police investigation. I would therefore be grateful if you could give me contact details for whomever you have passed your materials on to.

Yours sincerely
Richard Bartholomew

The background to this letter was that Tim had been suffering a sustained campaign of harassment from Flowers and certain other individuals hiding behind fake IDs – his home address had been published on-line in attempt to force him “to go back to Australia”, and there were direct threats of violence. In February, Sunny Hundal chanced upon Flowers at a public event and challenged him; Flowers reportedly “claimed he was doing it on behalf on Nadine Dorries and had informed her and Paul Staines and Iain Dale about it”. Tim asked Dorries about this, and she posted a Tweet:

I have fwd all emails etc to the Met Police who are reviewing with the harassment unit

This seemed encouraging – she seemed to be confirming that she had received a message from Flowers and had realised it was appropriate to pass it on. But why was she being so vague about it? As Tim observed, with some frustration:

 …she does not specify who those emails were from, who she reported them to, or when she reported them (my money’s on yesterday, if at all).

I think my letter conveyed the importance of the situation succintly enough, and there was no reason why my name should have put her off. However, my email was not acknowledged, and it now appears that Dorries in fact used the incident for her own purposes – not to help Tim shake off a bully, but to have Tim himself investigated by the police for supposedly stalking her. This was revealed last night, when Dorries made a remarkable scene in public at hustings in the village of Flitwick when she discovered that Tim was filming the event (Flitwick is pronounced “flittick”, as someone else helpfully points out in this video):

And sure enough, Flowers is using the incident as a justification for acts that a man of any decency would find shameful:

Tim has a post on the Flitwick debacle here. It’s of particular interest that Dorries mentions Patrick Mercer MP at the end of her harangue – it shows that she has been paying close attention to Tim’s situation, so she can’t simply claim that his dispute with Flowers was a detail beneath her concern. Mercer, it may be recalled, is the MP who for a long time endorsed Glen Jenvey, an “anti-terror expert” who generated a front-page splash for the Sun by posting a fake message to a Muslim website in order to concoct a terrorism scare. Tim discovered the deception, and Mercer disassociated himself from Jenvey once the evidence of manipulation was indisputable – but he wasn’t too keen to make much of a public thing of it.

Flowers and his friends turned against Tim last autumn; the attacks began after Tim discovered that an associate of Flowers named Dominic Wightman – another self-styled “anti-terror expert” with past links to Jenvey – had been feeding Tim and me false information in the hope that we would write blog entries attacking another man, against whom Wightman has a grudge. However, Wightman and the “Cheerleaders” deny any link to each other. Flowers regards himself as some sort of “anti-jihadi” activist, and he has made links with both British Muslims for Secular Democracy and the English Defence League (at the Westminster demo he held a loudspeaker for the Sikh EDL leader Amit Singh, whom I blogged here). One of his “Cheerleader” friends is not above dipping into Redwatch to fish out personal details about someone else whose private life they want to disrupt.

It seems that Tim’s problem is that certain of his political opponents don’t like his persistence in debate and his willingness to dig deeply to get information. Their answer is simply to suggest that pressing a point which they would prefer to shrug off is evidence of mental instability, and to complain of “stalking”. Any appeal for them to show a bit of decency when things get out of hand is simply used as further evidence of mental instability, and perhaps serves as source of amusement. One might expect this from bloggers – but from an MP?

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It’s been a busy few days for Uganda’s “Minister for Ethics and Integrity” James Buturo, as he promotes the proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill. A couple of days ago he was at TheCall Uganda (background here); he spoke following an address by Lou Engle – although Michael Wilkerson at Religion Dispatches reports that Engle had conveniently left by car at this point, thus dodging a controversial association. Warren Throckmorton has the audio and a transcript here.

And last week he was treating the Great Lakes United Religions Initiative to his monomania; the Daily Monitor reports:

He appealed to religious leaders regardless of the difference in faith to spearhead the campaigns to wipeout witchcraft and homosexuality in the country.

The Board Chairman of the United Religions Initiative, Bishop Baker Ocholla [sic- should be “Bishop Baker Ochola”] attributed the vices to religious divisions.

This is somewhat incongruous. The United Religions Initiative is an international interfaith organisation, founded in 2000 by William Swing, at that time Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California; its perspective is mainline, and Swing is known for taking a liberal line on homosexuality; this 2005 report quotes another cleric as saying thay “he has ordained more gay and lesbian clergy during his 27 years of episcopacy than probably any other bishop in history”. Christian fundamentalists are particularly hostile to the URI, warning of “New Age globalists” and such.

I’ve blogged on Buturo previously. His other ministerial efforts include banning The Vagina Monologues (“the idea was to promote lesbianism and glorify the vagina – even elevating it to god-like status”), calling for mini-skirts to be banned on the grounds of “road safety”, a drive against the sex industry based on “shaming” prostitutes.

(Hat tip: Bulldada Newsblog)

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Apri 2010: The National Secular Society warns that free speech in the UK is under attack from those who want to restrict criticism of religion:

An atheist who left leaflets mocking Jesus Christ, Islam and the Pope in Liverpool airport’s prayer room has been sentenced to six months in jail suspended for two years, ordered to perform 100 hours’ of unpaid work, pay £250 costs and given an Asbo.

The sentencing of Harry Taylor has been condemned by the National Secular Society as “creating a new blasphemy law that will open the way for every religious extremist to persecute and prosecute their critics.”

 …”Religiously aggravated offences represent a new kind of blasphemy law, and the professional offence takers in religious communities won’t be slow to exploit this new avenue of restricting criticism and comment about their beliefs. It is time for parliament to reconsider these provisions and remove them from the statute books.”

May 2010: Christian Concern for Our Nation warns that free speech in the UK is under attack from those who want to restrict criticism of secular society:

A Christian street preacher was arrested and put in jail by a homosexual police officer on 20 April 2010 for allegedly saying that homosexuality is a sin in the eyes of God.

Dale McAlpine, 42, who has preached the Christian Gospel in Workington, Cumbria for many years, was charged with causing ‘harassment, alarm or distress’ after a homosexual police community support officer (PCSO) overheard him reciting a number of sins referred to in the Bible, including idolatry, blasphemy, fornication, drunkenness, and same sex sexual activity.

…Melanie Phillips, an Orwell Prize winning journalist and author, wrote:… ‘It would appear that Christianity, the normative faith of this country on which its morality, values and civilisation are based, is effectively being turned into a crime.’ …Cristina Odone, a journalist, novelist and broadcaster, wrote that the case of Mr McAlpine is just the latest in a list of Christian victims of the new inquisition…

The case of McAlpine comes several weeks after an American preacher named Shawn Holes was arrested in Glasgow in similar circumstances; the gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell criticised that decision on free speech grounds.

It seems to me that the operative principle in these various cases is that maintaining peace and order (in the broadest sense) is regarded as more important than free speech (although in McAlpine’s case, it seems that a police officer also took personal offence). That’s always been the situation, although with a changing society the way various laws are applied has changed. In the past, it was seen as important to restrict free speech in order to protect conservative social values – most notably through laws against obscenity, although the archaic “blasphemous libel” was dusted off for a case in 1979. Racist jokes, homophobia (and, in parts of the country, raw anti-Catholicism) were not seen as a big deal.

Now we have different social values – we take for granted things on TV that not too long ago would have generated huge controversies (good grief, Dr Who’s assistant made a pass at him last week!), but there is also a generally-shared view that we should not be disrespectful of people or groups for their ethnic origin or sexual orientation. This also applies to some extent to religious identities, particularly when linked to (and in some cases, conflated with) sensitivity about race. We don’t have a First Amendment in the UK (alas), and so it’s not a surprise that saying things that clash with society’s values continues to create problems with the law.

The fact that the NSS and CCFON both find reason to complain suggests to me that the law is bumbling along, reflecting confusions and contradictions in society rather than engineering social attitudes. A broad reform protecting free speech along American lines would be a good way to cut through all the confusion.

I blogged previously on religion and free speech here.

Meanwhile, Dale McAlpine has a blog here, and YouTube channel with recordings of various street preachers here. As you can see from the left column of my blog, I’ve had dealings of my own with some other street preachers, who regard me as a “beer guzzling, left wing LIBERAL”.

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Conservative Parliamentary candidate Philippa Stroud has responded to the Observer article which claimed she believed in exorcising demons from homosexuals. A statement from her has been read out on the radio; Conservative blogger Iain Dale has posted the text:

I make no apology for being a committed Christian. However, it is categorically untrue that I believe homosexuality to be an illness and I am deeply offended that The Observer has suggested otherwise. I have spent 20 years working with disturbed people who society have turned their back on and are not often supported by state agencies; drug addicts, alcoholics, the mentally ill and the homeless that I and my charitable friends in the public sector have tried to help over the years. The idea that I am prejudiced against gay people is both false and insulting.

Dale (a gay libertarian) adds some supportive words, as does Tim Montgomerie of the Conservative Christian Fellowship and ConservativeHome:

I know Philippa incredibly well. I recruited her to run the Centre for Social Justice. I regard her as one of my closest and dearest friends. She has dedicated her life to helping the homeless, people with drug addictions and other very vulnerable people.

The Observer piece, though, did not quite claim that she considered homosexuality to be an illness – rather, that homosexuality is prompted by a supernatural causality:

In 1989, she founded a church and night shelter in Bedford, the King’s Arms Project, that helped drug addicts and alcoholics. It also counselled gay, lesbian and transsexual people.

Abi, a teenage girl with transsexual issues, was sent to the church by her parents, who were evangelical Christians. “Convinced I was demonically possessed, my parents made the decision to move to Bedford, because of this woman [Stroud]… had the power to set me free,” Abi told the Observer.

“She wanted me to know all my thinking was wrong, I was wrong and the so-called demons inside me were wrong. The session ended with her and others praying over me, calling out the demons. She really believed things like homosexuality, transsexualism and addiction could be fixed just by prayer, all in the name of Jesus.”

Further,

Stroud wrote a book, God’s Heart for the Poor, in which she explains how to deal with people showing signs of “demonic activity”.

As I blogged yesterday, the church was a member of New Frontiers International (now Newfrontiers), a Charismatic Christian network of churches. Her husband David Stroud is an elder at ChristChurch, in London, under the authority of the network’s “apostle”, Terry Virgo. The network emerged from the British house church movement of the 1970s and 1980s, although there are some links with American neo-Pentecostals such as Paul Cain.

Of course, it is not much of a surprise that a theologically conservative Christian would have a negative view of homosexuality – and in the context of neo-Pentecostal spiritual warfare, that it would be associated with the demonic. It is not clear just how far Stroud takes demonic causality, but in this strand of Christianity promptings from demons can be ascribed to all manner of day-to-day activities which are judged to fall short of Biblical standards – and it would be odd if homosexuality were not included in any such list. Indeed, Graham Dow, the former Bishop of Carlisle (and one-time university chaplain to Tony Blair) believes in such an association; in 2003 Cumbia Online reported:

Bishop Dow has hit the headlines on several occasions this year after joining the row over homosexuality within the Church of England and after it was revealed he believes evil spirits can be introduced into the world through miscarriages, abortions, oral and anal sex.

In 1990 Bishop Dow, a close friend on [sic] the Prime Minister Tony Blair, wrote a booklet, Explaining Deliverance, in which his views on evil spirits were revealed. He said the spirits could also cause untreatable diseases.

He also wrote that people who repeatedly wear black or always purchase a black car may be possessed by evil spirits. He says clear signs of evil spirits at work are “sexual lust and deviant sexual practice”

Once a demon finds an “entry point” (perhaps an initial exposure to some activity), the victim will be spiritually oppressed and in need of “deliverance”.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Bartley at Ekklesia has drawn attention to Newfrontiers’ views on gender:

The New Frontiers Church that she attends, and of which her husband is one of the main leaders, teaches that a husband has ‘authority’ over his wife, and that a wife should submit to a husband’s will in all things. The husband is seen as the ‘servant leader’. I know this from close personal experience of the church, and that it runs incredibly deep in the church. Indeed, it is fundamental to their religious approach. See this excerpt from the church’s 17 values which suggests that there must be “joyful female submission” in a marriage…

…The question must be asked of Philippa Stroud whether, in the event she was elected to Parliament, she would on any occasion ‘submit’ to her husband’s will and vote in a way that he thought was right, even if it contradicted her own position, the promises she had made to voters, or the manifesto on which she was elected?

A Methodist minister named Dave Warnock has a blog which disccusses Newfrontiers and gender further; in December he noted how the church was described on Wikipedia:

Women are also allowed to preach, as long as it does not undermine their husband. This was highlighted when the wife of David Stroud (Phillipa Stroud, Director of the Centre for Social Justice), who oversees the UK stream of Newfrontiers churches, preached at “Together At… North” in 2006 in the main meeting.

Warnock’s acid commentary on this:

Wow! Amazing! A woman was allowed to preach and she is so so valued that she is described at “the wife of David Stroud”. Oh and it was 3 years ago and not at the main conference.

An essay by Kristin Aune in Congregational Studies in the UK: Christianity in a Post-Christian Context (edited by Mathew Guest, Karin Tusting, and Linda Woodhead, 2004) suggests that Newfrontiers’ views on gender are a backlash against evangelical feminism.

Just in case anyone cares what I think, I can’t see why Stroud’s religious background should be much of an issue – and I’m someone who tries to keep tabs on the Christian Right and who will not be voting Conservative. Her association with neo-Pentecostalism has always been in the public domain, and it seems that performing deliverance rituals is something in her past rather than a current activity anyway. As for the church’s views on gender, patriarchalism is hardly an unusual religious perspective, and one can speculate about hidden spousal influence on any public person. There’s insufficient reason to suppose from the above that she would not act professionally if she became an MP.

Perhaps the most high-profile politican in the west to have involved himself with exorcisms is Bobby Jindal, the Governor of Louisiana.

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Today’s Observer has an article on Christian support for the Conservative Party ahead of the UK election. The article is preposterously headlined “Secret Christian donors bankroll Tories”; this is absurd because the donors discussed are hardly “secret”, either as regards the money they have donated or their religious faith:

An analysis of the Tories’ accounts reveals that a string of powerful Christian businessmen are helping bankroll the party, with many making significant donations in the days after the election campaign started.

Former investment banker Ken Costa, who gave £50,000 last month, is the chairman of Alpha International, an organisation that promotes the hugely popular Alpha course that has introduced millions of people to Christianity.

Michael Farmer, who founded a metals brokerage, gave £250,000 last month and has donated similar sums several times in the past. A self-made multi-millionaire, Farmer says he is happy to carry the “God squad” label. In a recent interview, he explained that he was backing the Tories because Labour “has governed incredibly badly”…

That’s “a string” of two, and their donations are a matter of public record. The Financial News reported a few days ago that

According to the Electoral Commission, which yesterday published statistics for political donations for the week commencing April 13, more than £2.2m was donated to the Conservative Party.

…Donations included £250,000 provided by Michael Farmer, chief executive of commodities hedge fund Red Kite… The Tories also received donations from a few well known bankers, including Ken Costa, chairman of Lazard International, who donated £50,000…

Costa’s website is here; he is the author of God at Work and is a well-known mainline evangelical. Farmer was profiled in the Telegraph last month; the paper described him as “seemingly enigmatic” and as “high on the mystery list” of Tory donors, but that’s just because he’s not generally well-known. The “secret donor” was more than happy to explain himself:

Farmer says he’s not fussed about being labelled ‘God Squad’ or an over-powerful trader: he’s never felt it necessary to speak out publicly before. But the Ashcroft row has finally provoked him. “I was watching the TV on Ashcroft and listening to all the accusations about City fat cats funding the political parties trying to further themselves,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “You can call me a City fat cat if you want but I’m not giving away my hard-earned money for fun. I’m giving it away because I want to fund something I genuine believe: that Cameron and the Tories will be a far better Government for the country than Labour. I’ve always tried to keep a low profile but this is important.”

The revelation of Farmer’s role as a “secret donor” can also be “revealed” from “an analysis” of a 2007 Times article:

Michael Farmer: £500,000

Founder of an Anglo-US metal trading hedge fund, he is a multimillionaire Christian who increased his donation under David Cameron’s leadership, reportedly inspired by his support for the family.

Meanwhile, a 2008 Bloomberg.com report tells us that:

In June 2007, Michael Farmer, co- founder of hedge fund Red Kite Metals, hosted a lunch for fellow members of the London Metal Exchange. The topic wasn’t the latest movements in the metals markets. Instead, he invited a theologian to speak on Christianity and gave a testimonial himself.

Farmer, 63, a “born-again” Christian, has been mixing business and religion for years. It’s done nothing to diminish his success. A metals trader since the age of 19, Farmer helped turn London-based MG Plc into the world’s biggest copper trader during the 10 years he ran it. In 2000, Enron Corp. bought the company for half a billion dollars.

…Farmer has lately become a public figure in London. In 2006, he gave 640,000 pounds ($1.29 million) to Britain’s Conservative Party, according to the U.K. Electoral Commission. He told the Daily Telegraph that he admired Tory leader David Cameron‘s commitment to family values. In 2007, he gave the Conservatives 410,000 pounds more.

The new Observer article tells us that Farmer

has also donated £2,000 to Philippa Stroud’s campaign to become Tory MP for Sutton & Cheam. Like her political ally, Nadine Dorries, the Tory MP for Mid-Bedfordshire, Stroud is one of growing band of Tories happy to wear their faith on their sleeves.

…As head of the influential Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), a Christian-orientated thinktank set up by former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, Stroud has had a profound effect on the party’s approach to social issues.

A second article in the Observer has some background on Stroud, whose husband David Stroud is a minister at a neo-Pentecostal Newfrontiers (written as “New Frontiers” by the paper; this was an older branding) church (formerly in Bedford, but now in London). Stroud appears to subscribe to “spiritual warfare” beliefs:

Stroud wrote a book, God’s Heart for the Poor, in which she explains how to deal with people showing signs of “demonic activity”. Stroud, who declined to talk to the Observer, writes: “I’d say the bottom line is to remember your spiritual authority as a child of God. He is so much more powerful than anything else!”

The paper features quotes from ex-members of the church which suggest that she applied this belief to homosexuality. The article on Stroud also says that Newfrontiers is “allied to the US evangelical movement”, which is so vague as to be meaningless – evangelicals and neo-Pentecostals see themselves as belonging to a broad transnational movement, so of course there are US links, but the Newfrontiers grouping was founded by a British Christian, Terry Virgo, and emerged from trends within British Christianity (particularly house churches). However, the specific US links are interesting: the grouping apparently received an endorsement from Paul Cain, one of the controversial and authoritarian “Kansas City Prophets”. Mark Driscoll (whom I blogged here) has also spoken at Newfrontiers events. Virgo regards the grouping as “apostolic”, although there are no obvious links with the US “New Apostolic” movement.

The main Observer article rounds off with brief overviews of the Christian Conservative Fellowship and Christian Concern for Our Nation – although we learn nothing about how the CCF is “bankrolled”, despite the headline. As for CCFON:

Lowering the abortion limit is one of the key aims of [Nadine] Dorries who, as the New Statesman discovered, has received support and briefings from Christian Concern For Our Nation. The little known but well organised group claims it “exists to serve the Church by providing information to enable Christians to stand up publicly against a tide of unchristian legal and political changes in the United Kingdom”. Accounts reveal it received more than £265,000 in gifts and donations last year.

Its sister organisation, the Christian Legal Centre… runs a number of initiatives with the Alliance Defence Fund, a hugely powerful US Christian group… One of the ADF’s biggest donors is Erik Prinze, founder of the highly controversial US private security firm, Blackwater, now the subject of lawsuits over the actions of its employees in Iraq.

Earlier this year, CLC and ADF supporters met at Exeter College, Oxford, to discuss how British Christians could answer the “call of today’s worshipful warrior”.

Dorries’ links to CCFON, and CCFON’s links to the ADF, were first noted in a 2008 Channel 4 documentary, which I blogged here. I also blogged on recent the meeting at Exeter College here. It is fair to say that the CCFON represents a British “Christian Right”. The New Statesman article, by Sunny Hundal, looked at the influence of the CCF and CCFON on Conservative politics:

You could be forgiven for thinking that the David Cameron project has been striking in its unwillingness to say much about faith. None of the inner circle of Cameron, George Osborne, Andy Coulson and Steve Hilton is regarded as particularly religious, and avoiding the subject is part of the Tory detoxification project. Yet there are signs that a change is afoot.

“Historically, there have been splits in the Conservative Party over religion. But the vast majority of the new MPs will be social Conservatives who have similar opinions to myself,” Nadine Dorries tells the New Statesman. “I can think of half a dozen Conservatives that don’t agree with me, but they’re leaving at the next election – people like Andrew MacKay and David Curry. The new MPs that are coming in are all social Conservatives – people like Fiona Bruce, Philippa Stroud, Louise Bagshawe.”

…It may be hard to believe that Britain will turn into Jesus-land, but social attitudes are always in flux. And developing a sense of victimhood is an essential part of the religious right’s strategy to fire up its base. After all, it has been used to great effect in the US.

Also:

When Dorries unveiled her “20 Reasons for 20 Weeks” campaign in 2008 to restrict abortion rights, Williams cropped up as an ally through another organisation she runs: Christian Concern for Our Nation (CCFON). The campaign website stated that it was not politically motivated or religious; however, I can reveal that it was registered and created by CCFON members, a fact not mentioned on the site. When asked about the organisation’s involvement with her campaign, Dorries says it “helped out with the research”. She adds that it had “an army of interns” who proved “very useful”. And how was the slick-looking website funded? She pauses before replying: “One of their interns did the website for free.”

Futher details appear in a follow-up piece by Sunny at Liberal Conspiracy.

In February, the Financial Times ran a long article on the same subject, providing background on the CCF and the CSJ (link added):

A Conservative MP was stage-whispering in the leathery, dark Pugin Room of the House of Commons late last year. With a view of the Thames, teacup in hand, he hissed at me: “They’ve campaigned to change the processes so that they can bus in their voters, stuffing the selection meetings with their people. They don’t outnumber us, but they can out-organise us. They’re taking over the party.”

“They” are evangelical Christians, and the MP was prompted to speak by a meeting a week earlier. The party had held an “open primary” (in which members of the public can vote) to choose a candidate to stand for a safe Tory seat – Congleton, Cheshire – in this year’s general election. The two leading names on the ballot were Matthew Hancock and Fiona Bruce. Both are well-known within Tory circles. Hancock is an economic adviser to the party, Bruce a solicitor who fought valiantly, if unsuccessfully, for a seat in the north-west in the 2005 general election. The main difference is religion: Hancock is secular, Bruce an evangelical Christian.

Bruce won comfortably, taking a majority of the 220 votes cast in the first round. But a rumour soon spread that most of her votes had come from members of the New Life church, a local evangelical congregation. Buses were alleged to have ferried 150 Christians from the church.

…Soon after Cameron’s election, Duncan Smith was invited to write a series of reports on poverty as part of the party’s policy review. And while some at the CSJ were concerned about losing their independence, it was worth what they won: relevance. Two years after being exiled by Michael Howard, a small group of Christian Tories was defining the party’s social policy. Today, the CSJ says it has crafted a full 70 Conservative policies…

In 2000, there was a concern over alleged entryism by a neo-Pentecostal church in the Conservative Party in Brentwood and Ongar, prompting Martin Bell to stand as an independent against Eric Pickles. Pickles was able to ride out the controversy, and the church concerned has since been diminished by a sex scandal.

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The controversy over the censorship of South Park has brought renewed attention to RevolutionMuslim.com, the website on which the threat to the programme’s makers was made (more accurately, it was a sinister “warning”, but the intent is clear). As has been widely reported, the site revels in being as distasteful as possible, while just about staying within US law; most egregiously, perhaps, is a page making fun of the death of Daniel Pearl. Like al-Muhajiroun in the UK or Westboro  Baptist Church in relation to Christianity, Revolution Muslim represents a marginal perspective; the ADL calls it a “fringe” group, while CAIR suggests that

…it may be a “setup” to smear Islam.

“They say wild and irresponsible things periodically,” [Ibrahim] Hooper told FoxNews.com. “There’s a strong suspicion that they’re merely a setup to make Muslims and Islam look bad. They say such wild and crazy things that you have to wonder.”

It is also noted that the group behind the site consists of a small number of converts – and that the site’s founder (who has since moved to Morocco) was formerly an Israeli settler in the West Bank; Fox News reports:

…Formerly known as Joseph Cohen, al-Khattab is an American-born Jew who converted to Islam after attending an Orthodox Rabbinical school, which he later described as a “racist cult.”

The 39-year-old New York taxi driver launched RevolutionMuslim.com with the mission of “preserving Islamic culture,” “calling people to the oneness of God” and asking them to “support the beloved Sheik Abdullah Faisal, who’s preaching the religion of Islam and serving as a spiritual guide”..

Some are now claiming a conspiracy; one site speculates that “the CIA” is behind it. But as with other conspiracy theories, the supposed evidence of the conspiracy actually collapses in on itself – if the CIA or Mossad wanted to use an agent provocateur, surely a former Israeli settler would be the last person to use as the front man? Of course, some people have set themselves up as fake extremists: last year we saw Glen Jenvey’s “Omar Jenvey” stunt, but there wasn’t any coherent political strategy behind his antics. And in the case of Zachary Chesser, the man who posted the South Park threat, there’s no reason not to believe that he is a genuine convert to fundamentalism. But in all these cases, whether real or fake, the key to understanding the motivation is more likely to be found in psychological dysfunction than political intrigue.

PS: Last year, the anti-Muslim blogger Paul Ray (“Lionheart”) complained that a threat against him had been published on RevolutionMuslim.com by a certain “Bilal”, who was associated with Islam4UK, the successor outfit of al-Muhajiroun. This occured after someone had posted a fake message supposedly from Ray to the site; Ray wrote on his blog that

There is a fraud out there that is going around forums and blogs posting in the same name as I use as my nom-de-plume ‘Lionheartuk’. This person is obviously not man enough himself to put his own name to his words so is stirring things up with Moslems and using my name so that I take the flack.

(I also received a message from a pseudo-Ray around the same time; whether this was the same person or someone else is unknown). This suggests that at least one outsider has made postings to the site with a view to manipulating the discussion among readers – again, something which has been seen before.

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