Bartholomew's Notes

Rick Warren has issued a statement speaking out against the proposed Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill:

Of course, there are thousands of evil laws enacted around the world and I cannot speak to pastors about every one of them, but I am taking the extraordinary step of speaking to you — the pastors of Uganda and spiritual leaders of your nation — for five reasons: 

First, the potential law is unjust, extreme and un-Christian toward homosexuals, requiring the death penalty in some cases. If I am reading the proposed bill correctly, this law would also imprison anyone convicted of homosexual practice.

Second, the law would force pastors to report their pastoral conversations with homosexuals to authorities.

Third, it would have a chilling effect on your ministry to the hurting. As you know, in Africa, it is the churches that are bearing the primary burden of providing care for people infected with HIV/AIDS. If this bill passed, homosexuals who are HIV positive will be reluctant to seek or receive care, comfort and compassion from our churches out of fear of being reported. You and I know that the churches of Uganda are the truly caring communities where people receive hope and help, not condemnation.

Fourth, ALL life, no matter how humble or broken, whether unborn or dying, is precious to God. My wife Kay and I have devoted our lives and our ministry to saving the lives of people, including homosexuals, who are HIV positive. It would be inconsistent to save some lives and wish death on others. We’re not just pro-life. We are whole life.

Finally, the freedom to make moral choices, and our right to free expression are gifts endowed by God. Uganda is a democratic country with a remarkable and wise people, and in a democracy everyone has a right to speak up. For these reasons, I urge you, the pastors of Uganda, to speak out against the proposed law…

He goes on to discuss “Key Facts Concerning Recent Media and Blog Reports on Rick Warren’s  Position on Uganda” with responses to nine questions. He affirms that he is opposed to criminalization of homosexuality, and he deals with a quote that was atttributed to him in the Kampala Monitor in March 2008:

Dr [Rick] Warren said that homosexuality is not a natural way of life and thus not a human right. “We shall not tolerate this aspect at all,” Dr Warren said.

Warren claims that this was a misquote:

 What I said in an interview in Uganda was that there is no civil right to gay marriage guaranteed by the United States Constitution.

In fairness, the wording of the Kampala Monitor does have a slightly unusual ring to it – but why wait so long to put the record straight?

Some of Warren’s other “Key Facts” are somewhat dubious. In particular:

Are you a friend of the President of Uganda?
No. I’ve never met him, and never had any kind of communications with him, or with any member of the Ugandan Parliament.

Yes, but Warren has had links with President Yoweri Museveni’s wife, First Lady Janet Museveni, who was delegate to a conference at Warren’s church. Why is this detail elided, when Warren makes a point of mentioning his lack of association with Ugandan MPs?

Related to this, another question asks:

Did the President of Uganda say he wanted his country to be Purpose Driven?
No, he didn’t.  That was said by the President of RWANDA, not Uganda, at a national rally in Rwanda in 2005.  Years later, the Anglican Archbishop of Uganda made a similar comment so people are confusing Uganda with Rwanda, the country next to Uganda.  While we have just begun to train pastors in Uganda, we are very involved in Rwanda, creating a nationwide P.E.A.C.E. plan at the invitation of the churches there. Over 1,000 Saddleback members have served on humanitarian projects in Rwanda.

I noted that back in 2005, when Warren announced that

The President, Paul Kagame, has invited us to help Rwanda become the first ‘purpose-driven nation’

However, Bruce Wilson draws attention to the following official press release from 2008:

Dr. Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Valley Community Church in Lake Forest, CA, this weekend launched a national Purpose Driven Living program in Uganda, a unified and focused effort to equip Ugandan leadership with practical tools to live lives of purpose in their homes, businesses, and communities.

This is the second East African country to invite Dr. Warren to bring the well- known Purpose Driven Life and Church leadership training to churches, businesses and government on a national scale. Rwanda adopted the program nationwide in 2005. Over 30,000 American churches – approximately one-tenth of the congregations across the country have used the 40 Days of Purpose emphasis.

…At a press conference and subsequent meeting with organizers upon arrival in the capital city of Kampala, Dr. Warren expressed appreciation to the coalition of national leaders who invited him to return for his fourth visit for a series of public meetings…

…While in Uganda, Dr. Warren met with First Lady Janet Museveni to discuss the PEACE Plan, an aggressive and progressive vision to promote reconciliation, equip servant leaders, assist the poor, care for the sick and educate the next generation. He also addressed students at Uganda Christian University…

The  press release clearly infers that Warren intends Uganda to follow the Rwanda model, and that he enjoys governmental support for his efforts. Now that Uganda is on a downward spiral with a president suffering from advancing “big man” syndrome (e.g. see here) and an increasingly debased civil society, it looks as though Warren is backpeddling.

Also:

Is Ugandan Pastor Martin Ssempa an associate who represents you?
Not at all.  At each of our Global Summits on AIDS (on World AIDS Day) we’ve invited speakers from a wide spectrum of religions, beliefs, political views, and health care expertise. We’ve had believers and atheists, liberals and conservatives, gays and straights.  Ssempa was just one of over 200 speakers we’ve invited. At each Summit we make it clear that no speaker represents us, and that we don’t control, endorse, or agree with all that is said.  Our desire is to encourage everyone to work together in ending AIDS and caring for those infected and affected.  Ssempa was one of many speakers in 2005 and 2006.  In 2007, when we learned that Ssempa’s beliefs and actions were vastly different than ours, we disassociated ourselves from him.

Warren’s repudiation of Ssempa was publicised last month. But Ssempa was not just one of 200 speakers; as Max Blumenthal reported in January:

When Warren unveiled his global AIDS initiative at a 2005 conference at his Saddleback Church, he cast Ssempa as his indispensable sidekick, assigning him to lead a breakout session on abstinence-only education as well as a seminar on AIDS prevention. Later, Ssempa delivered a keynote address, a speech so stirring it “had the audience on the edge of its seats,” according to Warren’s public relations agency. A year later, Ssempa returned to Saddleback Church to lead another seminar on AIDS. By this time, his bond with the Warrens had grown almost familial. “You are my brother, Martin, and I love you,” Rick Warren’s wife, Kay, said to Ssempa from the stage. Her voice trembled with emotion as she spoke and tears ran down her cheeks.

Plus:

Are you and Peter Wagner attempting to rid the world of homosexuals?
Absolutely not.  Peter Wagner was a seminary professor of mine, but not my doctoral dissertation advisor.  I have not had contact with Peter Wagner for many years and am certainly not conspiring with him for any purpose.

In fact, nobody has suggested that Warren and Wagner are “conspiring” in an eliminationist plot – but Wagner’s views on how Christians should take “dominion” over society do not quite accord with the free society that Warren assures us he supports. However, there’s a puzzling discrepancy here. Various sites have posted the following FirstSearch Dissertations Abstracts listing:

Title: NEW CHURCHES FOR A NEW GENERATION: CHURCH PLANTING TO REACH BABY BOOMERS. A CASE STUDY: THE SADDLEBACK VALLEY COMMUNITY CHURCH (CALIFORNIA)
Author(s): WARREN, RICHARD DUANE
Degree: D.MIN.
Year: 1993
Pages: 00413
Institution: FULLER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY, DOCTOR OF MINISTRY PROGRAM; 0790
Advisor: Mentor: C. PETER WAGNER
Source: DAI, 54, no. 03A, (1993): 0967

One can understand why Warren might want to play down this link: Warren represents the face of urbane mainstream evangelicalism, which is why he was invited to give the invocation at Barack Obama’s inauguration. Wagner, in contrast, is a rather more exotic figure: a neo-Pentecostal “Apostolic” leader, he receives regular messages from God and interprets all kinds of mundane events as the work of demons which need to be battled through acts of spiritual warfare and deliverance.

So, Warren may have had regular contact with Uganda’s First Lady, but that doesn’t mean he has had anything to do with the president. His wife may have called Martin Ssempa her “brother”, but that didn’t mean they were close in any way. And Peter Wagner may be listed as Warren’s thesis “mentor”, but that doesn’t mean he actually was. That’s three denials – time for the cock to crow?

(Hat tip: Bruce Wilson at Talk to Action)

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Why does Max Weber look like he’s sucking on a lemon? Perhaps he’s pondering this:

ln(ui t ) = ?i + ?t + ? ?? · Proti · I? + ? ?? · controli · I? + ? ?? · controli · Proti · I? + ? i t

That, apparently, is the equation devised by a young scholar named Davide Cantoni which supposedly explodes Weber’s famous “Protestant work ethic” thesis. He explains:

Using population ?gures in a dataset comprising 272 cities in the years 1300–1900, I ?nd no effects of Protestantism on economic growth. The ?nding is robust to the inclusion of a variety of controls, and does not appear to depend on data selection or small sample size. In addition, Protestantism has no effect when interacted with other likely determinants of economic development.

Of course, this is far from being the first challenge to Weber’s theory. A cracking 2004 review essay from the New Yorker by Elizabeth Kolbert observed that:

Almost immediately, “The Protestant Ethic” became a target of criticism, which Weber, alternately aggrieved and irascible, spent years trying to answer…In the century since then, there is hardly a claim made in “The Protestant Ethic,” either about the history of religion or about the history of economics, that hasn’t been challenged; one Weber scholar recently dubbed the ongoing debate “the academic Hundred Years’ War.” The reason that Weber’s essay remains so compelling despite all the controversy is that it isn’t really a work about the past; it’s an allegory about the present.

(Hat tip: Damian Thompson)

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C. Peter Wagner yet again – Bruce Wilson finds an interesting quote from Wagner’s 2008 book Dominion! How Kingdom Action Can Change the World, in which he discusses Rick Warren’s “P.E.A.C.E.” Plan, which seeks to improve conditions in Africa (p. 174):

I think the P.E.A.C.E. plan fits most comfortably into Phase One, the “social action” phase of strategies for obeying God’s cultural mandate. The Phase Two emphases on strategic-level spiritual warfare and associated activities have not been placed front and center. And crucial to Phase Three, as I am defining it, are such things as apostolic/prophetic government of the Church, the Church (including apostles) in the workplace, the great transfer of wealth, dominion theology and the 7-M mandate.

The “7-M mandate” is the idea rthat Christians need to take charge of a country by “capturing” seven “mountains” that represent cultural aspects of society: business, government, media, arts and entertainment, education, the family and religion.

We don’t know whether Warren himself sees his “P.E.A.C.E” (“Promote reconciliation – Equip servant leaders – Assist the poor – Care for the sick – Educate the next generation”) Plan in these terms, but, as Bruce notes, Wagner was Warren’s PhD supervisor at Fuller Theological Seminary. Warren enjoys close links with President Museveni of Uganda – a country which is currently pondering a draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill, and last year Warren gave support to Ugandan Anglicans with a statement that gay rights should not be accepted (although he just recently distanced himself from one of the more obsessive anti-gay religious leaders). Further, one of the powerful Ugandan evangelists promoting the Bill is inspired by the “Seven Mountain” strategy (as I blogged yesterday, drawing on work by Warren Throckmorton), and has other links with Wagner.

Warren’s P.E.A.C.E. plan was unveiled in 2005, as I blogged at the time, and it was initially focused on Rwanda. Warren declared that Rwanda would be the first “Purpose-Driven nation”, implementing Peter Drucker-inspired management ideas from Warren’s bestselling book The Purpose-Driven Life; concerns were raised at the end of 2006 that “Warren and his teams of PEACE missionaries may be unwittingly playing politics” in the country. Warren was in Rwanda just a couple of weeks ago, leading a prayer breakfast with Kagame and “a cross-section of Rwandan leaders”; according to the Kigali New Times, Tony Blair “dropped by the event”.

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Warren Throckmorton has a couple of interesting posts (here and here) about Julius Oyet, one of the Ugandan neo-Pentecostal ministers who has played a significant role in bringing forward the proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill, while keeping a lower profile than Martin Ssempa and some of the other religious figures backing it:

Oyet is a self-designated Apostle and leader of the Lifeline Ministries. He has found favor with President Museveni for praying against areas of Northern Uganda once controlled by the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army. Oyet’s Born Again Federation in Uganda oversees over 10,000 churches and estimates 9 million Christians attend these churches.

Oyet promotes what is known as the “7 mountains strategy”; this is the belief that Christianity should advance in a society by taking control of seven domains:

To establish The Kingdom of God on the earth, we must claim and possess The Seven Mountains of Culture namely: Business, Government, Religion, Family, Media, Education and Entertainment.

This perspective is also shared by American “spiritual warfare” expert C. Peter Wagner, and Oyet has preached at a church in Atlanta whose pastor, Johnny Enlow, is the author of The Seven Mountain Prophecy and the Coming Elijah Revolution. This book has been endorsed by Wagner (whatever that’s worth), and it features Enlow’s views on homosexuality:

A Christian who espouses abortion rights or the validity of gay marriages, for example, is worthless as a “Christian” candidate. If candidates don’t understand righteous politics, they aren’t anointed for this mountain. They may have enough Christianity in them to enter heaven, but they don’t have enough Christianity to bring the rule and reign of God down to earth…

The world will come to learn, for example, that though God passionately loves every homosexual, remaining in that sin will cause someone to fall under the sword of His judgment. Feelings don’t validate a homosexual lifestyle any more than they validate a murderer’s desire to kill…. What comes to us naturally is sin… The sooner we understand that God expects righteousness—regardless of what our innate tendencies tell us—the sooner we will be able to eliminate His judgments from our personal and corporate lives.

One of the primary roles of future government leaders will be to instruct in righteousness. The more God’s judgments are poured out on earth, the more explicitly will they be able to give that instruction.

Throckmorton asked Enlow for a clarification about his views on how the law should relate to homosexuality, and received this response:

As to the question of whether governments should criminalize homosexuality as part of taking the mountain of government- this would only be a second best method of bringing awareness that the behavior of homosexuality is wrong. This becomes a necessity only when the moral fiber of society has become so degraded that society itself is in need of knowing right and wrong. For me, the point of criminalizing homosexuality is not to bring punishment to homosexuals but rather to inform society of right and wrong. I would be against harsh punishments against homosexual activity between consenting adults and would not endorse capital punishment for this scenario…The in-your-face activist homosexual agenda is of course generating it’s own strong repercussions and backlashes and to the degree that they insist on forcing upon society their aberrations to that degree they will see increasing measures to limit their activism of a sin behavior.

Throckmorton goes on to clarify that:

I want to state clearly that I do not believe anyone in the 7 Mountains movement prompted the Ugandan legislators to write and offer this bill as an expression of the 7 mountains teaching. However, according to Rev. Enlow, the concept of criminalization is consistent with his Apostle Wagner endorsed view of reclaiming the mountain of government. Could leaders and members of the Ugandan Born Again Federation view this bill as a means to a Kingdom end?

He notes this prophecy from Oyet, pronounced earlier this year:

God will judge evil in 2009 as mob justice will kill and destroy witches, thieves and evil people. There will be lots of manifestation of Satanists and exposition of homosexuality and other evils in the Church, human sacrifice and all sorts of evil will manifest in the nations. God’s people will rise in full authority and dominion! The righteous will march against evil and triumph over them all.

In Throckmorton’s view, the context seems to be the religious promotion of “national salvation” over the traditional evangelical emphasis on individual salvation.

Incidentally, it’s worth recalling that the “7 Mountains” idea is also promoted by Thomas Muthee, the Kenyan evangelist known for having anointed Sarah Palin in 2005. Muthee has dispensed some “mob justice” of his own to “destroy witches”, as one of his victims attests. And three women were burned to death as witches by “mob justice” in Uganda in 2007.

UPDATE: Bruce Wilson has more:

The 2001

Transformations II, The Glory Spreads, portrayed the impact of supernatural transformation on governments in several locations including Uganda, and featured footage of a January 1, 2000 stadium event initiated by First Lady Janet Museveni which dedicated Uganda to Jesus Christ through a 1,000 year covenant. Transformations II claimed that reductions in the Ugandan AIDS rate were achieved both through abstinence only campaigns and thousands of cases of miraculous faith-healings of HIV. Oyet also claims miracle cures of HIV, which he showcases on his ministry website.

…The 2005 Transformations video An Unconventional War, portrayed Julius Oyet as a hero who helped to end the suffering of Northern Uganda’s Acholi people. The video shows Oyet, at the request of President Museveni, supernaturally breaking the power of the Lord’s Resistance Army. When Oyet destroys the demonic altars which the video claims gave the rebel army supernatural powers, Acholi children the Lord’s Resistance Army had kidnapped are miraculously returned to their parents.

But Robert Ochola-Lukwiya presents another view of Oyet in his Ph.D. dissertation on the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative – a multi-religious initiative that includes Christians and Muslims. Ochola-Lukwiya reports that Oyet almost provoked a riot, during a 2004 revival crusade Oyet held in the Acholi district of Kitgum, when he called for participants to bring forward their rosary beads and condoms to be burned.

…Julius Oyet is head of the Uganda division of the College of Prayer, an Atlanta-based international leadership training ministry led by Fred Hartley III, for which Wagner and his Apostles have frequently taught courses. Oyet presided over a series of 2009 high-profile prayer breakfasts billed as having the participation of dozens of Ugandan MPs and hundreds of Ugandan leaders. An article on the College of Prayer website, titled “COP Comes To Parliament,” describes an April 16th, 2009 event during which a College of Prayer team personally prayed and “prophesied” over each of 50 attending Ugandan MPs.

…Toward the close of [a bigger event soon afterwards], COP leaders selected eight MPs, including David Bahati, to serve in a College of Prayer “servant leadership team” in Uganda’s parliament.

…Co-sponsoring the Anti Homosexuality Bill with David Bahati was Ugandan MP Benson Obua-Ogwal, who later attended a July 21-25, 2009 conference that the College of Prayer held in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, at which Julius Oyet played a leadership role.

I blogged the “College of Prayer” here.

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A few months ago it was announced on the absurd  Conservapedia wiki website that plans were underway to create a “Conservative Bible”, in which Biblical texts problematic to conservative sensiblities would be expunged. I assumed this was another spoof page added to the site by a non-conservative as a bit of trolling satire; not so:

In August, New Jersey attorney Andy Schlafly, son of renowned conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, launched the Conservative Bible Project at Conservapedia.com.

…So far, the Conservative Bible Project, which is funded out-of-pocket by Schlafly, has completed about a third of the New Testament and Genesis. The most controversial changes are the elimination of the New Testament stories of Jesus forgiving the adulteress and forgiving his persecutors from the cross.

“The basic error (of the passages) is that it teaches people they can do what they want and they will be forgiven, even if they don’t repent,” Schlafly said.

…”Liberals love (the stoning scene) because they can use it to argue against capital punishment,” Schlafly said. “But they didn’t stone women (then). They strangled them.”

This is actually a remarkable development: until now, one of the defining hallmarks of conservative Christianity has been that the whole Bible is to accepted as inerrant and as having been faithfully transmitted. Downgrading particular Biblical passages in the light of reason (such as Thomas Jefferson excising miracles), or due either to ethical re-evaluation (such as a call to remove anti-Jewish passages from the Gospel of John) or textual and historical study (such as the Jesus Seminar) have always been dismissed as undermining the Bible as the Word of God. There may be arguments about points of translation, and over interpretations of difficult texts, but mainstream or liberal Christians whose religious views have been informed by critical approaches are usually excoriated and accused of seeking to marry their faith to the spirit of the age. Yet now we see the son of a major Christian right activist cheerfully consigning parts of the supposed Word of God to the dustbin purely for ideological reasons.

So what method is Schlafly following? It’s true that the earliest manuscripts of the Gospel of John do not feature the story of the woman taken in adultery, but Schlafly’s foray into Biblical scholarship is somewhat selective:

Schlafly’s project is distinctive, though, because non-experts collaborate Wiki-style on the Internet to produce their version. “The best of the public is better than a group of experts,” said Schlafly.

As Jim West observes:

 …if Schlafly thinks experts are evil, why doesn’t he get one of his flunkies to do brain surgery on him if he ever develops a tumor or heart surgery on him if he ever needs bypass surgery.

Schlafly’s not the first conservative to propose re-writing parts of the Bible; last year, I noted the growing acceptance of the idea that “666” in the Book of Revelation was a mistaken transcription of an Arabic phrase revealed to the book’s author by God and warning about the rise of Islam. This absurd proposition has been received despite the fact that it has no historical basis and despite the fact that its originator, Walid Shoebat, lied about having consulted ancient manuscripts. And despite the fact that the final passage of the Book of Revelation encourages a “hands-off” approach to the text, with a warning which has been regarded by Christians as generally applicable to the Bible as a whole:

I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes words away from this book of prophecy, God will take away from him his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.

Or, to use the translation found at the LOLCats Bible, a wiki project which is of comparable scholarly value to Schlafly’s effort (although more fun):

Birdcat say: if pplz adz stuff to teh profetzi of book, Ceiling Cat make them sicz, leik sayed in book.

And if pplz photoshpz the Heliez Bibul, Ceiling Cat sez no can has cheezburger!

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As disgraced former mega-church pastor Ted Haggard makes a modest comeback, a word of caution from neo-Pentecostal ” spiritual warfare” expert C Peter Wagner:

C. Peter Wagner, who came to Colorado Springs at Haggard’s behest and cofounded New Life;s World Prayer Center with him in the late 1990s, said he thinks Haggard’s spiritual restoration is incomplete.

“He said in his letter to his congregation after he was fired that he is a liar and deceiver,” Wagner said, adding that because Haggard didn’t finish the restoration program, he’s not fit to preach. “He must have someone confirm him in the body of Christ” before he can preach again, Wagner said.

Presumably Wagner thinks that someone such as himself should be the one to make the judgement-call; in which case, hopefully no-one will remember his words about Todd Bentley, the revivalist on whom he lavished the following supernaturally-laden and gushing words in June 2008:

“This commissioning represents a powerful spiritual transaction taking place in the invisible world. With this in mind, I take the apostolic authority that God has given me and I decree to Todd Bentley, your power will increase, your authority will increase, your favor will increase, your influence will increase, your revelation will increase.

“I also decree that a new supernatural strength will flow through this ministry. A new life force will penetrate this move of God. Government will be established to set things in their proper order. God will pour out a higher level of discernment to distinguish truth from error. New relationships will surface to open the gates to the future.”

Alas, less than two months later, Bentley was found to have been having an affair with a female staffer, and he has since slipped back into obscurity; for some unaccountable reason, God failed to tip Wagner off about this when conveying his prophetic endorsement.

After the Haggard scandal broke in 2006, he was passed over to a “restoration team”; one of the team’s members, Rev. Mark Cowart, warned that “Ted is not in touch with reality”. Cowart, by contrast, had previously battled Satan by ordering the graphic mutilation and destruction of Pokemon toys in a church service for children. Haggard severed his connection to the team early in 2008.

(Hat tip: Religion Dispatches)

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An advert on WorldNetDaily promises a “Frightening 150 Page Report on Obama’s New World Order”. Clicking on the link (warning, various pop-ups make it difficult to get out once you’re in) takes one into the fevered universe of one Mel Sanger (MSc); apparently, he’s been hawking his awful disclosures since February, but I’ve only just noticed them:

My name is Mel Sanger, an international political researcher. I and my group of political research analysts were asked by members of a Major American Christian Church (can’t name it for obvious reasons) to investigate whether Barack Obama had any involvement with the implementation of the new world order.

And never mind the quality, feel the length:

During 2008 and 2009 our research group examined over 4000 pieces of documentation…We studied more than 5000 hours worth of footage on all his speeches, looking out for views, comments or words which may carry coded or cryptic messages missed by the general public but discerned by others….After assessing over 3000 pieces of documentation our research team uncovered some damning and frightening evidence that completely changed our view of him Totally.

In September 2009 we released a new version of our report entitled “The Antichrist Identity”. The title is slightly misleading as we do not believe that he is the biblical Antichrist. However there is iron clad research and evidence that confirms that he is a major pawn in the new world order and one of the most dangerous US presidents ever to hold office.

…The report also implicates not only Barack Obama but also Javier Solana of the European Union, Prince Charles of Wales, Queen Beatrix of Netherlands (daughter of Prince Bernhard, founder of the Bilderberg Group) and Prince Hassan of Jordan (Head of the Club of Rome).

Sanger’s tale is largely unoriginal, re-hashing the Illuminati, Freemasons, Merovingian bloodlines and other familiar fare.

However, it appears that he also wants to assimilate Joel Richardson’s theory (heavily promoted by WND‘s Joseph Farah) that the Bible predicts a Muslim Anti-Christ; another part of his website promotes another project, entitled Holy War:

My name is Mel Sanger, a researcher on hard hitting apocalyptic themes. Between July and September 2009 I and my research team spent over 3 months examining the belief system of an “Islamic New World Order”. The purpose of the project was to see whether there was any merit in the view that the coming New World Order will be “Islamic”. A view totally alien to the vast majority of us, including probably you.

Our project was triggered by a controversial book published in July 2009, called the “Islamic Antichrist”. The premise of this book was a major attack on the traditional and historical belief that the Antichrist is to arise out of the European bloodlines of the Illuminati and that a new and unbiased understanding of Bible prophecy shows that it is Islam through which the New World Order will be established and through whom the Antichrist will arise. The book was a sequel to an original publication called “Antichrist, Islam’s Awaited Messiah” which was published in 2006.

…The study was critical because if it could be proven that for thousands of years we have been led under a false premise that the Antichrist would arise out of the West, then this radically turns everything upside down in regards to bible prophecy and the end times.

This would mean what is going on in Europe with the rapid rise of the European Super State (the prophesied revival of a Revived Roman Empire), the history and objectives of the Illuminati and the future goals of freemasonry, would count for nothing because we have been looking at the wrong groups in the wrong areas.

…we tackle head on the “Islamic New World Order Antichrist” theory and the relationship between Islam and those plotting for a one World Government. Are they compatible or are they mutually exclusive?

Sanger asks these questions rather than giving us a straight answer because he wants us to buy his “report”, but one suspects they are compatible, as just about anything can be thrown in the pot; let us move on to a third site, entitled 2012:

My name is Mel Sanger, a political researcher and publisher of reports focusing on the rise of a coming world government…

For much of 2009  I and my research team of research analysts have spent thousands of hours researching the 2012 end of the world controversy as hundreds of our members wanted to know what our conclusions are regarding the 2012 debate.

This demand had been created by the coming launch of the blockbuster movie “2012”  which has increased public perception to the whole 2012 doomsday debate regarding the Mayan prophecies, Nostradamus, Planet X, Solar Flares and Polar Shifts.

In hours of research and trawling through hundreds of books and reports on the Maya Prophecies, Planet X and Nibiru, across different religions, civilisations and ideologies such as the Sumerians, Egyptians and Nazi Germany, it became clear that all of these areas are important in building the foundation for understanding the 2012 end of the world debate.

…We came across a specific plan which has been defined as Project Enoch. Once we understood Project Enoch it became clear how the 2012 end of the world phenomena ties into the agenda of the Illuminati and Freemasons regarding the movement of the world towards what is known as a New World Order and why 2012 is actually significant but not as is presently being conveyed. Our findings were published in a report, 2012 – The Year of Project Enoch?

That’s a busy couple of years. In all cases, we’re advised to purchase the materials quickly, as they are “under threat of being taken offline”. There’s also a magazine, entitled Vision Report. We’re told it’s “award winning”, although no details are given

On yet another site, an essay attributed to Sanger attacks Jews:

The rise of Masons to political power in Israel dates back to 1948 and to Israel’s founding as a modern day nation. David Ben Gurion, its first Prime Minister, was both a Mason and an avowed Marxist Leninist and Communist. Since that time, every single Prime Minister has been a high level Mason, including Golda Meier, who was a member of the women’s organization, the Co Masons… The Jews have an oral version of the Torah called the Tenach, or which some call the Talmud, but theTalmud a minority of real Jews are familiar with, is not the Talmud being used today. The Babylonian Talmud has taken precedence since 1905 and is a blasphemous version steeped in idolatry… Today the majority of Jews in Israel are practitioners of Pharisaic law— Talmudic law—which is the enemy of truth, Jesus, and God. There seems to be a great divide amongst the Jews.

…On March 20, 1991 President Bush signed into law a Congressional Joint Resolution entitled, “A Joint Resolution To Designate March 26, 1991, As Education Day, USA”… It is typical of the New World Order Planners to devise innocent sounding words, phrases, and titles to mask their true intentions. Public Law 102-14 states emphatically that all civilization from the beginning has been based upon a set of laws entitled “The Seven Noahide Laws”….These laws originated from the mystic (and Satanic) Babylonian Talmud, which no Christian has ever accepted as inspired sacred Scripture…. These seven laws are a counterfeit of the Ten Commandments, and are promoted by the Neo Pharisee occult group, the Lubavitchers…

The first three websites discussed above are copyrighted to a self-proclaimed “international media organization” called Rema Marketing, which has an uninformative website here (with the slogan “Where Ideas Become Reality”). A PR release for Sanger’s “Anti-Christ” report gives a London-based telephone number for Rema and the name Kevin Farringdon; Farringdon, apparently a “computer expert”, is British, and he is interviewed on an American radio show here.

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A press release from Leo Igwe, who recently featured on the UK Channel 4 documentary Return to Africa’s Witch Children as a supporter of children who have been stigmatized as witches by evangelists in Nigeria:

Reason, Justice and Human Rights Will Prevail

A Press Statement For Immediate release

I have been informed that Helen Ukpabio of the Liberty Gospel Church in Nigeria has sued me to court. She joined in the suit-the Goverment of Akwa Ibom state, Inspector General of Police, Commissioner of Police of Cross River State, Sam Ituama, Child Rights and Rehabilitation Network, and Gary Foxcroft of Stepping Stones Nigeria. The case came up for hearing on November 4 2009. It was adjourned to November 17, but the court did not sit. Now the case will come up on December 17 for hearing.

Helen applied to the Federal High Court in Calabar for the enforcement of her fundamental rights. She claimed, among other things,that the conference on Witchcraft and Child Rights, held on July 29 in Calabar – which her members disrupted- and the arrest of her church members on the said date constituted an infringement on their rights to practice their christian religious belief relating to witchcraft. She asked the court to issue perpetual injunctions restraining me and others –

From interfering with their practice of christianity and their deliverance of people with witchcraft spirit.

From holding seminars or workshops denouncing the christian religious belief in witchcraft

From arresting her and her church members etc.

Helen asked the court to order that I, the Akwa Ibom state government, Sam Ituama, CRARN and Gary Foxcroft pay her 200,000,000.000.00(two hundred billion) naira(800. 000 dollars) as damages for unlawful and unconstitutional infringement on her rights to belief in God, Satan, witchcraft, Heaven and Hell fire and for unlawful and unconstitutional detention of her two church members.

Helen used a copy of the welcome address in my bag which her members made away with on July 29 and an article by Dr Olusegun Fakoya among others as exhibits.

…She should be ready to pay damages to thousands of children who have been tortured, traumatized, abused and abandoned as a result of her misguided ministry. Helen should be ready to pay for the damage she has done to many homes and households across Nigeria.

…So, whatever the mischief this vicious woman and her rag tag ministry are planning, I am convinced that at the end of the day, reason, justice and human rights will prevail.

Leo Igwe, Ibadan, Nigeria

Apologies for the couple of snips in there; unfortunately, free speech is curtailed in the UK (see here) and so I have been unable to include passages in which Leo gives his free opinion of Ukpabio’s character and motivations. You can use your imagination, though. Here’s the moment when Ukpabio’s supporters invaded his conference, in July:

Leo previously provided a guest post to this blog here.

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Mr Justice Eady has a reputation as one of the worst blights on freedom of speech in the UK, with appalling judgements in libel cases that have led Lord Hoffman to denounce him as “hostile” to responsible journalism in the public interest. Most notoriously, he has ruled that it is libellous to describe chiropractors as “bogus”, and Tom Bower’s attempts to defend a libel action brought by the disgusting Richard Desmond were severely hampered by Eady’s insistence that vital evidence should be excluded from the case.

However, his rulings are not uniformly objectionable; he once threw out a case brought by the BNP against Searchlight, and he has now rejected a case brought by the North London Central Mosque against Policy Exchange. The Spittoon carries a quote:

“The Trustees of Policy Exchange are delighted to report that Mr Justice Eady yesterday struck out the claim brought against us by the North London Central Mosque.

North London Central Mosque commenced an action against Policy Exchange and Dr Denis MacEoin for libel, following publication of our study “The Hijacking of British Islam” in October 2007.

Six trustees who had advanced the claim on behalf of the North London Central Mosque were ordered to pay Policy Exchange’s costs of defending this action.

The High Court made a further Order that £75,000 of those costs be paid by North London Central Mosque within 28 days.”

I’ve blogged on this report, which details extremist literature available at a minority of mosques and Muslim bookshops, in the past; I noted that it was temperate in tone and that its central point was uncontroversial. This point was, as Policy Exchange put it, that

…it is clear that the influence of Saudi Arabia is both powerful and malign. Much of the material featured here is connected in some way with the Saudi Kingdom – whether by virtue of being written by members of the Wahhabite religious establishment; being published and distributed by official, or semi-official Saudi institutions; or being found in Saudi-funded, or linked, mosques and schools in this country. For this reason, the report argues, there needs now to be a proper audit of the costs and benefits of the Saudi-UK relationship.

The report also gave a number of mosques a clean bill of health, which is inconsistent with an anti-Muslim bias. I thought the report could have been more nuanced – just because a bookshop has a dodgy text available it does not mean that the text is therefore being promoted – but clearly there is a problem.

The main problem was that the author, Denis MacEoin, was let down by his collaborators. In December 2007, BBC Newsnight showed that receipts used to prove that certain texts could be bought from certain bookshops had been forged. Rather than investigating this discovery, Policy Exchange’s Dean Godson instead gave a blustering performance on the show and promised to sue for libel: in his words, action would be pursued “to trial or capitulation”. However, no trial or capitulation were forthcoming. Dominic Wightman, who collaborated with MacEoin on another report, for Civitas (as “Dominic Whiteman”), suggested to me some months ago that the anonymous researchers sent to the sites to purchase the books had made the forgeries in order to inflate their expenses, which seems a reasonable explanation (despite my problems with Wightman on other matters). Private Eye got to the heart of the matter in February (1203 p. 8) by pointing out that there was no need to rely on the receipts anyway: the presence of certain texts could be verified independently, and in some cases their vendors were quite happy to admit to selling them. Had Godson responded to Newsnight more in this vein than in duff libel threats of his own, the North London Central Mosque might perhaps have been more wary about chancing its arm at the High Court.

UPDATE: Unity adds, at Liberal Conspiracy:

The upshot of all this seems to be that the allegation that extremist literature was being distributed from the North London Central Mosque, or from a bookshop associated with it, does not rest solely on the evidence provided by the forged receipts exposed by Newsnight, but can be readily verified by other means.

This does not, however, appear to have been the case in regards to Al-Manaar Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre, hence the apology and the decision to withdraw the report.

Despite efforts to spin the NLCM case as a clear win for Policy Exchange, it remains the case that:

a) it did have to withdraw the report due to it containing false allegations relating to the Al-Manaar Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre,

b) it did have to issue the Al-Manaar Muslim Cultural Heritage an unequivocal and rather humiliating apology, and

c) the report did make use of fabricated evidence, albeit that it does appear that in the case of the North London Central Mosque, the faked receipts were not needed to sustain the allegations against it.

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In an NPR interview with Terry Gross, Jeff Sharlet reveals a link between David Bahati, the Ugandan MP responsible for the draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill currently under consideration, and the The Family, the discreet “elite” US-based Christian organisation which enjoys considerable political patronage in a number of countries:

David Bahati, is a member of The Family. He appears to be a core member of The Family. He works, he organizes their Uganda National Prayer Breakfast and oversees a African sort of student leadership program designed to create future leaders for Africa, into which The Family has poured millions of dollars working through a very convoluted chain of linkages passing the money over to Uganda… Working with some research colleagues we discovered that David Bahati, the man behind this legislation, is really deeply, deeply involved in The Family’s work in Uganda, that the ethics minister of Uganda, Museveni’s kind of right hand man, a guy named Nsaba Buturo, is also helping to organize The Family’s National Prayer Breakfast. And here’s a guy who has been the main force for this Anti-Homosexuality Act in Uganda’s executive office and has been very vocal about what he’s doing, and in a rather extreme and hateful way. But these guys are not so much under the influence of The Family. They are, in Uganda, The Family.

…Looking at the, The Family’s 990s, where they’re moving their money to – into this African leadership academy called Cornerstone, which runs two programs: Youth Corps, which has described its in the past as an international quote, “invisible family binding together world leaders,” and also, an alumni organization designed to place Cornerstone grads – graduates of this sort of very elite educational program and politics and NGO’s through something called the African Youth Leadership Forum, which is run by -according to Ugandan media – which is run by David Bahati, this same legislator who introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Act.

And as for President Museveni:

… The Family identified [him] back in 1986 as a key man for Africa.

They wanted to steer him away from neutrality or leftist sympathies and bring him into conservative American alliances, and they were able to do so. They’ve since promoted Uganda as this bright spot – as I say, as this bright spot for African democracy, despite the fact that under their tutelage, Museveni has slowly shifted away from any even veneer of democracy: imprisoning journalists, tampering with elections, supporting – strongly supporting this Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2009.

He’s come out just this – just last week and said that this bill is necessary because Europeans are recruiting homosexuals in Uganda, that Europeans are coming in and trying to make Ugandans gay. And he’s been rewarded for this because this is sort of where these sort of social issues and foreign affairs issues and free market fundamentalist issues all come together.

I blogged an anti-gay speech made by Museveni here.

Jeff wrote a book on The Family, entitled The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, which was published last year by HarperCollins. It’s a remarkable work, shining a light on a political back-channel which before now was only semi-visible to those with eyes to see, with passing references in news reports and Christian paperbacks. My full review can be seen here.

A few weeks ago I noted Bahati’s role in a  “servant leadership team” directed by a US-based “College of Prayer International”. Warren Throckmorton has more about this, here. I’ve also blogged previously on Nsaba Buturo, and I noted Museveni’s links to American evangelists here. Links between the US Christian Right and Africa are also the subject of a report which was published by Political Research Associates last week.

(Hat tip: Talk to Action)

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