Bartholomew's Notes

The Lagos This Day reports from Akwa Ibom State:

Governor Godswill Akpabio…insisted that henceforth, the state government will not hesitate to destroy or demolish any church engaged in any negative and unproven vision in order to satisfy their clients.

“We will destroy and demolish every church that is engaged in any stupid vision in Akwa Ibom State. We will not stop there, we will have to make examples out of some people. We will chase out some churches in the state which are found wanting.

“The churches are busy deceiving people in many aspects including avoiding deaths. We have to do something to re-strengthen the Child Right Law. We must fight against the abuse of children and ensure proper education for them,” he said.

This Day notes that Akpabio is responding to the outrage following the broadcast of a documentary in the UK a few weeks ago that exposed how children had been labelled as witches by certain churches and had suffered extreme abuse as a result. One Nigerian commentator observes that

…Very few electronic materials in the last decade, have done as much damage to Nigeria’s image as this documentary. It is a factual portrayal of the failure of the Nigerian state, the entrapment of the people in a shell of superstition and hysteria, the absolutely low value of human life in Nigeria, the abuse of Nigeria’s children and the opportunism of religious charlatans who lie, kill and cheat in God’s name. Covering the plight of children who are dubbed “witches” in Akwa Ibom, the documentary tells a familiar Nigerian story.

Meanwhile, the state Commissioner for Information has announced that:

SIR: On the orders of Governor Godswill Akpabio, the Police in Akwa Ibom State on November 29 at about 2 p.m. moved swiftly to Mbo Local Government Area for the search and arrest of one Bishop Sunday Ulup-Aya who stated his involvement in this matter in a documentary broadcast on Channel 4 and placed on several websites.

The said Bishop who claimed he had “killed” several children was successfully apprehended with an accomplice and are at present in detention on a holden charge from where he will face criminal prosecution this week. In view of the above, Government will not hesitate to effect further arrests and prosecutions of organisations, individuals or even parents who are involved in child abuse and labelling children as ‘witches’. Already one Rev. Onuoha operating from Oron and fingered in the child stigmatisation saga has been arrested by the police for questioning.

At the arrest of the self-styled bishop, about three children were discharged from illegal custody and immediately given government support. They appear normal and healthy. Also the state government has ordered full investigation into the child abuse issue. This will help government fashion out ways of tackling the social problem head-on.

The Governor plans to assent to the Child Rights Act in December, a law that will be fully implemented for the protection of Akwa Ibom children irrespective of economic background.

Consequently, Government takes a stand on the matter and is set to deal very decisively and in accordance with the rule of law and due process as follows:

• Place full legislative machinery against labelling of children as witches;

• Advance high-powered investigation into every element of the issues involved and all allegations against persons involved in stigmatisation of children as witches;

• Prosecute all persons found culpable of this crime of child labelling;

• Deploy social resources for the support, comfort and enjoyment of all categories of children all over the state;

• Possibility of closure of every organisation involved in this evil stigmatisation of children. Government will not spare any culprit involved
  Aniekan Umanah,
  Commissioner for Information

I’ve written about children being accused of witchcraft several times on this blog, and since the documentary aired I have received dozens of comments execrating the pastors responsible – a nice contrast to comments I had received before the programme went out from one pastor’s supporters, denouncing me as “wicked, crooked, crafty, poisonous, and dangerous to women.”

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Chris Rodda reports, from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation:

I was sent a PowerPoint presentation by an airman at RAF Lakenheath, the largest U.S. Air Force base in England…In March 2008, this presentation, titled “A New Approach To Suicide Prevention: Developing Purpose-Driven Airmen,” was shown at a commander’s call that was mandatory for an estimated 1,000 of Lakenheath’s Air Force personnel, and sent out by email to the entire base of over 5,000 the following day. As the use of the phrase “Purpose-Driven” in its title implies, also incorporated into this presentation is the wisdom of presidential candidate inquisitor Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, a book that, second only to the Bible itself, is the most heavily promoted religious book in the military.

The presentation was made by a certain Capt. Christian Biscotti, and its purpose appears to have been to inflame hatred against scientists and those lacking in religious faith:

Captain Biscotti must find it particularly annoying using British money.

According to a 2006 profile,

Christian Biscotti…serves as an Air Force Chaplain in Stavanger, Norway, and he has taught World Religions at Thomas Nelson Community College, Church History and Philosophy at Beacon College, and Philosophy at Chattahoochee Valley Community College. He received a Bachelor of Art degree in English from the University of California, Davis, and a Master of Divinity degree from Regent University. Christian Biscotti is currently working on his dissertation as a Ph.D. student in Organizational Leadership at Regent University.

“Thomas Nelson” refers to the American patriot rather than the Christian publisher; Regent University, of course, was founded by Pat Robertson. Biscotti has also been active in Afghanistan:

More than 70 ISAF soldiers from 14 nations provided aide to a local refugee camp here Aug. 15 as an ongoing effort to make a difference in the quality of life of citizens in the local community.

U.S. Air Force Chaplain (Captain) Christian Biscotti helped establish ISAF’s first Voluntary Community Relations program.

“We have gone on missions to orphanages, schools and children’s hospitals and service men and women that go on these missions get the benefit of seeing first hand the importance of taking care of people’s personal needs for example, food, shelter and clothing before a nation can be rebuilt and stabilized,” Biscotti said. “ISAF missions put Afghanistan and our mission in context, in four dimensions, and helps ISAF not spend four, six, or even 15 months in a make-believe world behind an iron curtain.”

Incidentally, although I have reservations about Rick Warren for a number of reasons, I doubt that this presentation really reflects the strategy of his “Purpose Driven” brand-name. Warren is a slick operator with a moderate evangelical PR image; this kind of vulgar anti-science “red scare” stuff is far too crude.

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Various websites are carrying a bizarre email purporting to be by the Indian writer Amaresh Misra, on the Mumbai terrorist attack:

An entire city has been attacked by Mossad and probably units of mercenaries…The RSS-BJP-VHP-Bajrang Dal should be banned…Muslims and secular Hindus have been proven right…A photograph publushed in Urdu Times, Mumbai, clearly shows that Mossad and ex-Mossad men came to India and met Sadhus and other pro-Hindutva elements recently. A conspiracy was clearly hatched…We will fight a civil war if need be against the pro-Hindutva, communal forces and their Israeli backers.

Misra is the author of a book on the British in India entitled War of Civilisations: India AD 1857, which claimed that the British killed 10 million people between 1857 and 1867. A (negative) review here gives us a clue where he’s coming from:

Its Mumbai based author, Amresh Misra is a freelance journalist, a political commentator, a columnist, a script writer for films and also a historian. More than that he is a political, civil right activist and leader and an anti-communal fighter. His ideological inclination is evident in his “Acknowledgments”, wherein he honours “Akhilendra Pratap Singh, ex-president of the Allahabad University Students Union (AUSU), Politbureau member of the CPI-ML (liberation) as his friend, philosopher and guide” and admits that ‘several ideas hatched in the book were formulated along with him way back in the 1990s in rugged, reflective, dusty rooms and streets of Allahabad, Lucknow, Benares and other UP-Bihar districts.” Misra’s other friend Salim Khan Durrani happens to be the anti-communal, anti-fascist resistance hero of Mumbai.”

For Misra, history writing is not a detached academic exercise, rather it is part of ideological commitment and activism. He, frankly acknowledges that “during numerous street battles with the police and anti-Muslim, anti-Dalit-fascist lumpen hordes in the late 1980s and 1990s,” he learnt that “true data lies in the non-academic, mainstream reading of real action.”

An article from the Guardian adds:

Misra’s casualty claims have been challenged in India and Britain. “It is very difficult to assess the extent of the reprisals simply because we cannot say for sure if some of these populations did not just leave a conflict zone rather than being killed,” said Shabi Ahmad, head of the 1857 project at the Indian Council of Historical Research. “It could have been migration rather than murder that depopulated areas.”

Many view exaggeration rather than deceit in Misra’s calculations. A British historian, Saul David, author of The Indian Mutiny, said it was valid to count the death toll but reckoned that it ran into “hundreds of thousands”.

One wonders whether this benign assumption that Misra was not motivated by “deceit” will survive the apparent revelation (assuming he’s not the victim of an impersonator) that he’s anti-Jewish conspiracy-mongering crank.

Incidentally, Israel’s Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger did have a cosy meeting with BJP leader L.K. Advani in 2007, as I blogged here. Misra’s conspiracy theory is doubtless spun from links such as this.

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From South African newssite IOL:

“We need to teach our people to fear God,” ANC president Jacob Zuma said on Wednesday, and he suggested the way to do so would be by making children pray before school – “as it was in the past”.

…The ANC leader, who once headed the country’s moral regeneration campaign, put a large part of the blame for the “modern interpretation of values” on the media, saying there was too much sex and violence on radio and television.

Further:

South Africa is a country based on the rules and principles of God, said ANC president Jacob Zuma in Kempton Park on Thursday.

…The preamble of the Constitution “calls upon God to help us”, said Zuma at the National Presidential Religious Leaders conference.

…”The Bible says pray for those who are in government. I believe we must go beyond that. You must advise and criticise if there are things we do that are not in keeping with the principles of God.”

…An Mpumulanga representative told Zuma religious leaders would go to their communities and ensure they “voted correctly because you care and you have compassion and are committed to bettering the lives of God’s people”.

An Eastern Cape religious representative said, “Msholozi (Zuma) is a burning bush which will never be consumed”.

Zuma was anointed as an honorary pastor in 2007 by some charismatic Christians.

Zuma (a polygamist) of course knows a bit about “sex and violence on radio and television” – in 2006 the media was full of reports about his trial for rape. Zuma claimed that the sex had been consensual, and he was acquitted because “the state had not proven the case beyond reasonable doubt”. However, he was widely pilloried when he explained that he had protected himself from HIV by taking a shower after the act. One cartoonist (Zapiro) invariably portrays him thus:

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David Hazony at Commentary stirs up a cartoon controversy with which to beat the Forward:

… It’s a fake ad for a week-long evangelical trip to the Holy Land, and it expresses all the anti-Christian fears that lurk in the heart of many an American Jew. Obese and monstrous Evangelicals are shown going to Israel, praising Hitler as a “Servant of the Lord,” and looking forward to the “mother of all Holocausts for Jews and Muslems who don’t convert.” There are fake ads for T-shirts praising the right-wing mass-murderer Baruch Goldstein… It is so far from the liberal, tolerant views that I think most Forward readers adhere to, that one wonders how it got by the editors.

The cartoon is by Eli Valley, and the whole thing can be seen here. Of course it’s somewhat crude, but as a satire of apocalyptic Christian Zionism (which is not the only variety of Christian Zionism), it generally hits home. Pastor John Hagee famously said that “Hitler was a hunter” sent by God to persuade Jews to move to Israel; Hal Lindsey has enthused over the thought of the Jordan Valley “covered with blood five feet high”, adding the nice detail that the blood will flow rather than coagulate due to radiation. Various Christian Zionists have warned that two-thirds of the world’s Jews will be included in this massacre. Praise for Baruch Goldstein is going too far, but some Christian Zionists have been happy to support far-right groups such as the self-declared “Sanhedrin”.

In reference to other panels of the cartoon, both John Hagee and the late Jerry Falwell have warned that the anti-Christ will be Jewish, and Christian Zionists such as Billye Brim have fantasized about the destruction of the Dome of the Rock (and in 1969 a mentally-ill Armstrongist set fire to the Al-Aqsa mosque). And while many Christian Zionists have been somewhat squemish about stating clearly the shortcomings of Judaism and the need for Jews to “accept Jesus” to avoid damnation – using instead terms like “Judeo-Christian” – very few leaders of the movement have formally accepted the “Dual Covenant” idea, which teaches that Judaism and Christianity are both valid.

The BBC broadcast a documentary about an evangelical coach tour to Israel back in February. I blogged it here.

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As well as religion, this blog has a couple of other on-going areas of interest. One of these is the issue of free speech, in particular the use of libel law in the UK to suppress unwelcome criticism and investigation. British libel law puts the burden of evidence on the defendants, defendants cannot get legal aid (usually), and although damages are not as absurdly high as they were a few years ago, legal costs can be so devastating that often it is not worth the risk of defending a case.

It is not just the wealthy who take advantage of this: libel action threats can be made quite cheaply if you have a friend or ideological ally who’s a sympathetic lawyer – thus Paul Staines was able to cause trouble for Tim Ireland thanks to help from a Young Tory lawyer named Donal Blaney (just one example among others from the pseudo-libertarian right).

Presiding over many cases is Mr Justice Eady, a man who has been described by Lord Hoffman as “hostile” to responsible journalism in the public interest. Although his judgements are not uniformly bad (he threw out a case brought by the BNP against Searchlight), many of his decisions are worrisome.

The latest Private Eye (1224 p. 7) magazine carries details of a preliminary hearing in a libel case being brought by newspaper owner Richard Desmond against author Tom Bower. Desmond is one of the more unsavoury characters in British public life, and Bower is writing a biography of him. That hasn’t been published yet, but Bower did reference Desmond in his biography of Conrad Black (Conrad and Lady Black: Dancing on the Edge), in which Desmond is accused by using his Daily Express to publicise Black’s financial problems as revenge against his rival. Black sued for libel and the Express was forced to settle, but Desmond takes exception to Bower’s claim that he had interfered with the editorial policy of his paper.

This was in the news last year, and the Guardian reported that

Mr Justice Eady ordered Bower to pay £10,000 towards legal costs…

The Eye reports that in a hearing last week Bower presented evidence that Desmond does indeed interfere with the paper’s editorial policy: persons such as Mohamed Fayed and Sir Philip Green had received favourable coverage at Desmond’s behest, and Ulrika Jonsson had been on the end of negative coverage after she sold her memoirs to a rival newspaper. Other examples were also raised. However:

Mr Justice Eady agreed with [Desmond’s barrister Matthew Nicklin] that there was no broader implication: the story in Bower’s book was “not capable of a general meaning”…[The] luminaries were duly struck out of the defence pleadings, because they weren’t relevant to the allegation about Black.

Fortunately for Bower, he has other evidence that Eady has allowed, and which will be deployed at the trial next year. But it is surely worrying to see so much dismissed before the trial has even got underway.

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The UK’s Channel 4 has just broadcast a documentary about American evangelical dissatisfaction with the Republican Party and increasing support for the Democrats. Entitled (rather uninspiredly) God Bless America, the programme was made by Calvin Skaggs, who was responsible for With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America a few years ago.

Most of the programme dealt with evangelicals who have become attracted to the Democrats: the party now talks about “values”, and in Obama had a candidate happy to talk about faith and God and able to evoke the Civil Rights era. However, there are also other factors: Shaun Casey of Wesley Theological Seminary made the interesting suggestion that the thousands of evangelicals who headed to New Orleans to help out in the wake of Hurricane Katrina returned home “transformed and angry” at the failure of the government to assist. And more generally, as former Bush sppechwriter Michael Gerson concedes, the Religious Right is perceived as “too narrow and too negative” for younger evangelicals who are interested in a greater range of issues than abortion and homosexuality – the young evangelicals interviewed in the programme used terms like “world citizen” to identify themselves, and they are keen to tackle poverty and other ills; in particular, there is concern for the environment.  Mega-church pastor Joel Hunter is worried about climate change, and his careful explanation of what’s at stake is contrasted (without belabouring the point) with a lame sneer from Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council that “you talk about the weather when you have nothing to say”. Members of Hunter’s church admit that they used to see environmentalism as a preserve of hippy “tree-huggers”, and that they should have engaged with the issues before now.

We are also introduced to Obama’s evangelical activists and strategists (filmed in the run-up to the election), such as Mara Vanderslice and Burns Strider, and their “Matthew 25 Network” campaigning work – one advert promoted by the Network earned a bitter rebuttal from James Dobson. Meanwhile, the campaign’s Director of Religious Affairs, Joshua DuBois, held “Faith Forums” to drum up support. Evangelical supporters of Obama say they support him over McCain because they have “done the math”, but at the same time are keen to stress the need to keep civil and to avoid being “worked up” to feel hate or bitterness.

At the same time, evangelicals have become less enamoured with the Republican Party. Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals complains that evangelicals had been taken advantage of by the Bush administration and treated like a “cheap date”, while Tony Perkins despairs at John McCain’s insistence that his faith is personal and private, and his tendency to talk about topics such as defence rather than values issues. Marlys Pompa, McCain’s Outreach Co-ordinator for evangelicals, is forced to trawl through McCain’s Faith of My Fathers for morsels of spirituality, and a meeting with officials from Liberty University is polite but unenthused. Only Sarah Palin invigorates the campaign, but on insofar as to bring the base back on board. At the end of the programme, Perkins seems unsure about the ways in which the Religious Right is to develop, although he’s confident that it will “always be there”.

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Moon’s Son at Parliament

Yesterday saw the Unification Church-backed Global Peace Festival in London, following on from a “Plenary Session of the International Leadership Conference” in Parliament at which Hyun Jin Moon, the son of Rev Syung Mun Moon, addressed a collection of international leaders. The Conference was opened by Labour MP David Anderson, and the Peace Festival’s participants included Tom Brake, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman. Further details at my spin-off blog, Ambassadors for Moon, here and here.

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Yesterday I blogged on the three British National Party “Reverends” revealed on the leaked membership list; Edmund Standing of I Kid You Not today has a more detailed post on the BNP members who consider themselves to be Christians. In particular, there is more about the Rev. Robert West, on whom I have blogged several times in the past. I had thought West’s “Christian Council of Britain” became defunct when its original website disappeared, but I noted yesterday that there is now a new one. Standing gives us some juicy background on this new site:

The current Christian Council website is registered in the name of a company called Cinemavision, which turns out to be owned by none other than the BNP’s ‘web guru‘ and Poughill and Standon electoral candidate Simon Bennett. Cinemavision is a website that turns out to feature some interesting content, including an entry linking to a video described as ‘Kim Kardashian Amateur Porn’, featuring the distinctly un-‘Aryan’ beauty Kim and her black boyfriend Ray J. ‘She is sooo hot!’ reads the description on Bennett’s website, who is obviously not adverse to making a few pounds from promoting ‘race mixing’.

Standing also provides information on Colin Farquhar of the “Durham British-Israel Fellowship”. I had alluded to this cautiously in my previous post on the BNP, but Standing notes that Farquhar’s support for the BNP was in the public domain before the list was leaked and so can be discussed freely. Standing gives us a nice potted guide to British Israelite beliefs as promoted by the British Israelite World Fellowship (BIWF), and the appropriation and development of such docrines in America into “Christian Identity” (a process discussed in Michael Barkun’s excellent book Religion and the Racist Right).

Standing further notes a link between Farquhar and Alan Campbell of Open Bible Ministries, Belfast. Campbell promotes the teachings of “‘Dr. B Comparet”, aka Bertrand Comparet. Comparet helped to found Christian Identity, and he was explictly racist. Alan Campbell has featured on the blog before – I noted that his books at one point had been sold via the (now apparently defunct) Northern Ireland Springbok Club, but that they had at some point been withdrawn.

As regards Christian Identity in the UK, Standing reveals that:

In the year 2000, a website appeared at the address christianidentity.org.uk and continued until 2005. The self-styled ‘pastor’ who ran the website promoted the extreme ‘two-seedline’ [anti-Jewish] Identity ‘theology’ and provided a wealth of hardcore Identity teachings and links to numerous neo-Nazi organisations. The main organisation promoted by the ‘pastor’ was the BNP…Investigating Christian Identity for an undergraduate essay, I contacted the ‘pastor’ posing as an Identity believer and duly received a couple of CDs, one featuring an Identity ‘sermon’ and one featuring a National Front era speech given by veteran Nazi and BNP founder John Tyndall.

(Hat tip: Harry’s Place)

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And while we’re on the unhappy subject of Michael Savage, he appears to be the inspiration for this strange banner advert on WorldNetDaily:

Clicking on the banner leads to the website of Swiss America, and an advert for an interview between WND founder Joseph Farah and Swiss America CEO Craig Smith – Farah has puffed Swiss America in the past, and Smith has provided columns for WND.

Swiss America sells gold coins, which it promotes as a safeguard against economic collapse. Michael Savage explains the “light of the world” significance on the Swiss America website:

When I look at a historic gold coin, I see it as the financial light of the world. Sure, I may collect coins for their history and beauty, but I’m also building wealth at the same time.

However, the phrase the “Light of the World” is, of course, more usually associated with Jesus. From the Gospel of John 8:12:

…When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”…

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