Bartholomew's Notes

Back to ASSIST and the neo-Pentecostal “International Christian Medical Conference” I blogged a couple of days ago. A new report on the ASSIST website notes the presence of US-based Ukrainian evangelical leader Mikhail Morgulis. This site has an overview:

Mikhail Morgulis, founder of [Christian Bridge International], is a well-known writer in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and throughout the CIS countries. While still living in the Soviet Union, he was awarded the First Prize in Literature by the communist government in 1972. He underwent a spiritual transformation to become a prominent Christian leader who in 1987 was the first to broadcast Christian programs on state-owned radio stations inside the USSR. Prior to that his message was heard on many Christian radio programs in the world, and millions of believers and nonbelievers in the CIS are familiar with his voice.

Morgulis moved to the USA, where he established Christian Bridge International and developed what he calls “the Spiritual Diplomacy project”. In 1991 this project brought 18 American evangelical leaders – including Philip Yancey – to visit officials in Russia:

“…Finally, the then President of Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev invited us to the Kremlin. When we were with Mr. Gorbachev, I asked him it was would be possible to pray in the Kremlin. He told me, ‘Mr. Morgulis, the Kremlin is not a church,’ and then, after pause, he said, ‘but why not.’ So I started to pray about his mother, my mother and all people and I prayed ‘In Jesus Name!’.

No doubt this story has helped to fuel the rumour that Gorbachev is a secret Christian (as it happens, he just recently reasserted his atheism).

Morgulis has also met various other political leaders:

“So Spiritual Diplomacy is a new spiritual political concept. After meeting in the Kremlin, we were in Ukraine. We met with the president of Ukraine and also the president of Georgia, and four times with the president of Belarus. We’ve also met with the Prime Minister of Israel before Mr. Sharon. Also, I have even prayed in the Knesset in Israel.

I prayed with Palestinian Muslim leaders and this is all spiritual diplomacy. The idea is to stop any conflict religion, political, social, ethical conflict with use of the Christian message from the Bible.

Morgulis explains further in another article.

“We don’t punish or force people. We try to change the hearts of the leaders of these countries with love and respect. By changing the hearts of the leaders we change the situations in these countries.”

As the former prime minister of Israel Ariel Sharon put it, “Spiritual Diplomacy is the one last realistic chance to find peace on this earth.” Leaders of the Palestine Authority agreed that Spiritual Diplomacy proposes a practical way for reaching peace and understanding. In his presentation in front of the Knesset and the Palestinian leaders, Mikhail said that Spiritual Diplomacy will not make them love each other right away, but will teach tolerance. The flowers of love will have a chance to blossom on the roots of tolerance.

This all sounds rather like Frank Buchman and Moral Re-Armament. And as with Buchman, one wonders whether Morgulis is being used for PR by those he wishes to convert. Here he is on Europe’s “Last Dictator”, Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus:

We also try to improve the relations between the United States and Belarus. I spoke before the U.S. Congress and addressed the Helsinki Commission. I said: “If you do not like President Lukashenko, you don’t have to love him. He is not an angel; he is just like all of us. Not one of us is an angel; otherwise we would be in Paradise. I have not seen any angel-presidents. Neither George Bush, nor Vladimir Putin is an angel. To make matters worse, President Lukashenko, with his charismatic character, expresses himself in much stronger terms than he really means. You need to love the people, even if you do not care too much for the leader”…I also met with President Lukashenko several times and discussed spiritual subjects with him. He is nothing like the media wants us to believe. He has a capacity for making deep judgments. He can understand you. Lukashenko is not at all a blunt farmer, as some want to portray him. He is a historian; he majored in history and has a fine knowledge of world events and the history of religion.

In 2004, Morgulis reportedly opined that “the US president would like to enjoy the popularity rating Lukashenka has”.

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We’ve heard God’s complaint this morning. His complaint is abortion, immorality, adultery, homosexuality. The issues that are leading our nation to hell. We do not want to be part of a church that sits back, afraid to speak, afraid to take action, afraid to be anti-gay. We speak to you Satan, we command you to lift your hands off God’s people right now. And Satan, you fall at the name of Jesus, now, today, Amen.

So speaks the prayer leader at small women’s prayer group in a private house in Sussex, in the south-east of England. The invocation appears in In God’s Name, a new British documentary about the Christian Right in Britain, directed by David Modell and broadcast on Monday night as part of the Dispatches strand.

The programme covered a lot of ground in less than an hour, taking in anti-gay protests, Creationist education, anti-Muslim rhetoric, and the anti-abortion lobbying efforts of the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship, which enjoys financial support and other assistance from the USA Alliance Defense Fund. The media- and politically-savvy LCF was profiled alongside some rather more homespun efforts, particularly the constant round of ineffectual public protests that make up Stephen Green’s Christian Voice organisation.

An early part of the documentary dealt with protests in Parliament Square a few months ago against the 2007 Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations, which conservative Christians claimed would force them to act against their consciences. Many of the banners carried the CCTV logo of the now-defunct Christian Congress for Traditional Values; no mention was made of the fact that the CCTV’s leader, the neo-Pentecostal Bishop Michael Reid, just recently fled to Arizona from Essex after admitting an affair with his director of music.

One protestor expressed himself with a typical British coarseness which sounds a bit odd if you’re more used to the American Christian right:

If you look at the human genitalia, they’re not for digging the garden, or painting the wall, are they? They’re for making babies. And the bottom line is, I’ve got twenty grandchildren, and I don’t want the boys being told that it’s OK to get shit on penises, ‘cos that’s what it’s about.

The scene then moved to Bristol, and the Carmel Christian Centre. Carmel is a Word of Faith “Prosperity Gospel” church, although this was not explored in the programme, which instead focused the church’s Carmel Christian School (officially, and weirdly, written as carmel: christian school). Here, children are taught to be grateful not to be living in Old Testament times, when people were punished by God by being turned into pillars of salt, and the American science textbook expounds Young Earth Creationism. A description of the 1969 moon landing includes the detail that:

When scientists eagerly studied the moon soil and moon rocks, they found that the moon appeared to be about 6,000 to 10,000 years old.

The school’s headmaster, David Owens, was happy to accept the “fundamentalist” label, but reluctant to admit on camera that he actually believed this, instead mumbling about not being a scientific expert and there being more than one theory. He was, though, pleased with the political climate:

We’re Ofsted [the UK schools inspectorate] inspected, we’re government registered. We believe it’s the time for us – a time when people like Tony Blair opened the door in this whole debate of faith schools.

Schools such as this have been the focus of some controversy, as I noted here.

The most significant activist, however, was shown to be Andrea Williams, Public Policy Director of the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship. We saw Williams organise an anti-abortion rally next to Parliament, where her efforts to present a dignified protest were slightly thwarted by a man ranting about repentance and heckling against counter-protestors from none other than the eccentric self-styled nun Sister Ruth Augustus, who has an amazing talent for popping up in newspapers and on TV (I blogged her here). Williams also worked hard to shift away some BNP members left over from a previous protest in the same space.

Williams enjoys some political connections, and she was shown meeting Lord Tebbit and liaising with Nadine Dorries MP. Dorries is well-known for her strong anti-abortion views, and her push for the legal limit to be reduced to twenty weeks is currently under political consideration (Dorries’ reliance on emotive images has come under critical scrutiny, particularly her use of a photo which she claims shows a fetus grasping a surgeon’s hand while the mother underwent an operation). Related to this is a campaign to “defend the embryo”, as Parliament debates hybrid embryo research (as of writing Parliament has just a few hours ago rejected a ban). Protestors – again near Parliament – donned animal masks, as if the research were going to be undertaken by Dr Moreau.

With the help of Jeffrey Ventrella of the Alliance Defense Fund, Williams has also fought a few legal battles on behalf of Christians: two cases mentioned were that of Andrew McClintock, a magistrate who says he was forced to resign due to his opposition to gay adoption, and Lydia Playford, the schoolgirl who fought for the right to wear a “Silver Ring Thing” “purity” ring at school. Williams is also keen to warn Christians about the dangers of Islam, and one LCF event gave a platform to Sam Solomon, a former Muslim who teaches that Muslims are brainwashed to hate, and that the situation in Nigeria shows that hospitable Muslim neighbours are likely to become killers. However, Williams was reluctant to say much herself about Islam besides her view that it was a “false religion”, and she also only very reluctantly admitted to believing the world to be about 4,000 years old.

Throughout the programme, comic relief was provided by Stephen Green, who first gained media attention protesting against performances of Jerry Springer: The Opera. Green and his small group of followers hand out leaflets at gay pride events, and sing hymns and pray at a site in east London which has been earmarked as the location for the controversial “mega-mosque”. Green believes that Allah is Satan, and that Islam will lead to civil war in the UK. He comes across as rather unbalanced: one minute he is chatting and joking with the documentary-maker, the next moment he becomes aggressive, forcing away the camera and complaining about “persecution”. In one particularly bathetic moment in Brighton, just as he offers up a prayer a seagull leaves a prominent dropping on the front of his shirt; Green is not amused, and he demands that the documentary-maker not make fun of him – perhaps the fact that certain internet scoffers insist on nicknaming him “Stephen ‘Dog Shit’ Green” after he compared Jerry Springer to treading in dog excrement meant that this touched a raw nerve.

The documentary claimed that the fundamentalist movement has two million followers in the UK, which seemed to me rather exaggerated. Most British evangelicals do not wish to be associated with the US “religious right” or with “fundamentalism”, and the movement as a whole is better represented by the likes of moderate leaders such as Steve Chalke or Jeff Lucas. Green in particular looked like a figure from another age, his followers holding placards with Biblical slogans that were designed decades ago and doubtless baffle most people who see them. However, we also saw Williams speaking to a roomful of Elim Pentecostal leaders, urging them to become more involved in politics. The LCF has been around since 1852, and she has clearly steered it into an aggressive direction; might she not convert some other Christian groups?

UPDATE: The programme is on YouTube in five parts, here, here, here, here and here.

UPDATE 2: carmel: christian school is profiled in the Bristol Evening Post.

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ASSIST Ministries reports on the 5th International Christian Medical Conference, in Norway:

…These doctors, from places like Bolivia, Brazil, Burundi, China, Indonesia and Vietnam, were all Christians who believe in the power of prayer and the fact that there are times when medical treatment has to give up – and then God’s Power takes over.

…They met under the auspices of the World Christian Doctors Network (WCDN) and Dr. Yoon-Seok Chae,

…During the two-day gathering, doctors took turns in presenting case studies of miracles they had experiences with the date flashed on a big screen and then allowed questions from the medical audience.

These ranged from a man being raised from the dead, to a detached retina being healed, to other diseases both large and small.

Dr. Armando Pineda, who is now based in Florida and is Director of the World Christian Doctors Network USA, spoke passionately about the need for doctors to pray for their patients, citing the example of many Cubans he had been ministering to being set free from witchcraft.

A local revivalist also got involved:

…Dr. Jenis av Rana, Director of WCDN Scandinavia said, in hosting this year’s conference; “We don’t just want this conference to have an impact on the doctors attending but also on the people of Trondheim, which is why we have invited a healing evangelist Pastor Svein Magne Pedersen to hold an evangelistic healing meeting during the conference.”

Further:

…Veteran journalist and broadcaster, Dan Wooding, is hosting a TV special for the Global Christian Network (GCN) based in Atlanta, Georgia, about an extraordinary conference at which medical doctors from around the globe presented case studies and answered questions from their colleagues on miracles.

…Among others that Wooding interviewed was Dr. Chauncey W. Crandall IV, who serves at the Palm Beach Cardiovascular Clinic in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, who recounted that after he had prayed for a patient who had died and was being prepared for the morgue, was brought back to life after prayer.

For some reason, however, Wooding neglects to mention the man behind both the World Christian Doctors Network and the Global Christian Network: a controversial South Korean faith healer named Jaerock Lee, whose teachings and activities have alienated him from other Christian groups in Korea and brought him critical media scrutiny, which he tried to suppress in 1999 by sending his followers to storm a Korean TV studio. Lee’s theology includes a belief in UFOs, and he claims to be able to perform a range of miracles, of which dramatic healings of the sick is just one kind. Wooding previously reported that when the Global Christian Network was launched in New York, God advertised the event with a “glowing cross” which “suddenly appeared in the darkened sky above the towering Empire State Building”. Lee and his Manmin Church have held events in a number of countries, including (as I blogged at the time) the Philippines, India, and the USA (where he faced protests from Christian groups). The event in the Philippines – as with Norway – was a medical conference, and David Prentice of the American Family Research Council was among the attendees.

As for those mentioned in relation to the latest conference, Chauncey Crandall’s account of raising someone from the dead was reported on a US news programme a few months ago (a sceptical analysis is available here). Pastor Svein Magne Pedersen, meanwhile, has a website in English here; however, at least one Norwegian website is unimpressed, claiming he has only a “5% suksessrate”. Dr. Jenis av Rana runs a Christian political party on the Faroe Islands called the Centre Party, or Miðflokkurin; he has been associated with Lee’s WCDN for several years.

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Took Advice from Crown Prosecution Service

UK anarchist newsletter SchNEWS reports on an anti-Scientology protest at the Church’s centre in the City of London:

At 11.20, two [City of London police] officers approached one 15-year-old who was wearing a huge-nosed mask and holding a sign saying “Scientology is not a religion – it is a dangerous cult”. He was handed a pre-printed warning by a WPC stating, “The sign you are displaying commits an offence under Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. you are strongly advised to remove the sign with immediate effect”.

…Police were clearly out to protect CoS’s reputation with one officer telling us, “Our solicitors at the Crown Prosecution Service have advised us that any signs saying ‘Scientology is a cult’ could be deemed offensive.” He added “They are being treated as a religious organisation for the purposes of today”.

Of course, offering the police advice about public criticism of religion is not something in which the Crown Prosecution Service has shown much competence: just days ago it was announced that the CPS and the West Midlands Police had issued an apology and paid damages to the makers of a Channel 4 documentary on Islamic fundamentalism in the UK; the CPS had advised the West Midlands Police to complain about the programme to UK television regulator Ofcom on the (bogus) grounds that the documentary-makers had edited footage of ranting Islamists in a way that created a “distorted” negative impression.

The protestor concerned, who goes by the name of “The Epic Nose Guy”, was issued with a court summons, as he explains here:

SchNEWS adds:

In October, a £24 million Scientology centre opened in the heart of London’s Square Mile…Up to 20 officers in the City of London Police – from constables to superintendents – have accepted hospitality worth thousands from CoS, including invites to a £500-a-head charity dinner where the guest of honour was Tom Cruise. One senior police officer appeared in a Church of Scientology video and another, Chief Superintendent Kevin Hurley, spoke at the opening of the new “mission” saying the cult was “raising the spiritual wealth of society”.

I blogged on this here.

Meanwhile, in Toronto, the Scientology PR machine tries to win over some protestors in its usual slick manner:

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See thisTalk to Action story by Bruce Wilson for the background on John Hagee, and this piece by Jeff Sharlet for Rod Parsley.

UPDATE: McCain has now ditched both pastors. See here.

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Interfax reports:

The Orthodoxy excludes a possibility of existing extraterrestrial intelligence, the famous theologian and professor of the Moscow Theological Academy Alexey Osipov said.

According to him, such position is based on the fact that “the New Testament lacks” allusions to extraterrestrial forms of intelligent life.

“Secondly, there have been very many people in the Church who reached highest degree of God-likeliness and sanctity but no one of them has ever mentioned them (extraterrestrial civilizations – IF), though they pointed out to many other things,” Osipov said.

…Besides, the professor said that modern astronomy “advancing into the depth of the Universe still hasn’t found any planet with the life similar to that on Earth.”

This is, of course, a response to the recent claim made by Vatican Observatory head Jose Gabriel Funes that aliens may exist. However, while the Orthodox Church is dismissive, other religious groups in Russia agree with Funes:

“According to the Holy Koran, the Almighty speaks about creation of various worlds. We know the world of people, jinns, plants and animals. Perhaps, we don’t know everything. The Creator can create anything. Other creatures may inhabit the worlds out of our reach,” the chairman of the international department of the Muftis’ Council Rushan Abbyasov was quoted as saying by the Moskovsky Komsomolets daily on Thursday.

…Rabbi Zinovy Kogan said that “the Lord is the first cause for everything existing in micro and macro worlds.”

“It couldn’t be excluded that other creatures similar to man exist in other worlds,” he stressed.

Meanwhile, a recent entry on Billy Graham’s website tells us that

There may be life on other planets, but I believe man is unique in the sense that he was created in the image of God.

Some time ago Graham suggested (in Angels: God’s Secret Agents) that UFOs are actually angelic in origin, noting similarities between the theophany in Ezekiel 10 and accounts of UFO sightings. This was a weird inversion of Erich von Däniken’s idea that such religious accounts are actually records of alien visitations; both interpretations are equally mind-numbingly unscholarly, but Graham faced most opposition from co-religionists who believe that such phenomena are demonic. One such text (inevitably available from WorldNetDaily) explains that demons want us to believe in the existence of aliens as a ruse to make us accept the theory of evolution; this was an idea I blogged here.

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MediaWatchWatch notes that the Turkish newspaper Yeniçag has taken offence to the publication of a photograph of a seventeenth-century Dutch church sculpture of Muhammad being trampled by angels. The photo appeared in the conservative Brussels Journal blog back in 2006, but only now has the Turkish paper taken the obvious anti-Muslim bait. The Brussels Journal crows:

Last Friday the Turkish newspaper Yeniçag reprinted our picture on its front page with the caption “Stop this hideous insult.” Yeniçag demands that Belgium remove the pulpit. The paper writes that “We have had the crusades and now they are still trying to humiliate us. This is as bad as the Danish cartoons and Geert Wilders’s Fitna movie in the Netherlands. Even Pope Benedict does nothing to stop these humiliations.”

Since Friday, we have received threats while the authorities in Belgium, which has a large population of Turkish immigrants, fear that the pulpit and the church may be attacked. The Belgian press reported today that the police is guarding Dendermonde’s Our Lady church to prevent vandalism to church and pulpit.

…According to the Belgian press the pulpit controversy has been deliberately caused by this website, which is being described as “pretending to be neo-conservative” but run by “neo-fascists.” Piet Buyse, the mayor of Dendermonde, told the media that he deplores that the pulpit “figures on websites which aim to provoke negative reactions from Muslims.” The mayor said that the depicted man represents an unbeliever and may also be Luther or Calvin.

Given that the figure does not resemble either Luther or Calvin Buyse’s explanation is not credible; the artist, Mattheus van Beveren, was also at one point the court sculptor to the famously Protestant King William III in London. The sculpture was reportedly made shortly after the Battle of Vienna.

However, if the editors of Yeniçag want the Pope to intervene over offensive church art, there’s a queue; a couple of years ago I noted Magda Teter’s book Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland:

One…controversy centered around a painting, formerly known as Infanticidia or “Ritual Murder by Jews,” in the cathedral church in Sandomierz…Following the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between Poland and Israel in the 1990s and the appointment of a Jewish-Catholic committee on reconciliation, a demand arose that this painting be removed from the church, as other paintings of this sort had been in Poland, as in Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, near Pope John Paul II’s hometown of Wadowice.

Meanwhile, Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris has a good example of a once-popular Christian theme:

Scholar Henry Claman explains:

Ecclesia (the Church) on the left is a nice-looking young woman with a halo, a crown, a cup (the Holy Grail) and a staff and banner. On the right is Sinagoga (representing Judaism) stooped (seductive?) and older, without a halo. Her crown (the symbol of her former authority) has fallen to her feet, her staff is broken, and she cannot see. What is wound around her head and in front of her eyes is a snake, the symbol of evil. The blindfolding of Sinagoga reflects the blindness of the Jews who could not see the truth of Christianity.

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The New York Times has a strange piece by Edward Luttwak explaining why voting for Barack Obama would be a bad idea:

As the son of the Muslim father, Senator Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood. His conversion, however, was a crime in Muslim eyes; it is “irtidad” or “ridda,” usually translated from the Arabic as “apostasy,” but with connotations of rebellion and treason.

…At the very least, that would complicate the security planning of state visits by President Obama to Muslim countries, because the very act of protecting him would be sinful for Islamic security guards. More broadly, most citizens of the Islamic world would be horrified by the fact of Senator Obama’s conversion to Christianity once it became widely known — as it would, no doubt, should he win the White House. This would compromise the ability of governments in Muslim nations to cooperate with the United States in the fight against terrorism, as well as American efforts to export democracy and human rights abroad.

In the UK Damian Thompson of the Daily Telegraph enthuses that “Luttwak is on to something”, although various other blogs have managed some critical thinking and pointed out the shortcomings of Luttwak’s argument. The most detailed response has come from Ali Eteraz, who observes that as a child abandoned by his secular Muslim father and Muslim relatives it is unlikely that Obama could be regarded as an apostate. He also notes that

Luttwack’s [sic] affirmation of Islamic law over and above international law should raise concerns, not only about his expertise, but also his allegiances.

This seems to me to be pretty obvious. How does it help “the fight against terrorism” to reject a candidate who is (allegedly) unacceptable to foreign Islamists? Why is this not the “appeasement” that conservatives are constantly denouncing? We might also ask whether Luttwak would have raised such a concern about an ex-Muslim-turned-Republican firebrand running for president, or whether Thompson would be so keen to agree. If not, then we must conclude that this is a case of bad faith.

However, while Luttwak is unable to give us any actual examples of Islamists who want Obama dead (and indeed, much of the anti-Obama rhetoric has been based on the assertion that organisations like Hamas would prefer him as president), it is that case that the adherents of one particular ideology have threatened to kill him, and they are based in the USA rather than the Muslim world. Jesus’ General has a quote from a certain racist radio host named Hal Turner:

…I’m starting to come to the realization that it may be up to a sole person, acting alone, to make certain this guy is never allowed to hold the most powerful office in the world. Sorry it may have to be that way, but it may.

Probably this kind of thing already “complicates the security planning” of Obama’s movements.

(Hat tip: Islamophobia Watch)

PS: Stupidity comes in diverse forms; this blog reported in January that

On my way to church, I was listening to KIRO 710 on the radio and an Obama supporter calls in and said Hillary Clinton shouldn’t be president because having a woman in charge would offend Muslim countries (I don’t believe that this person is representative of the vast majority of Obama supporters).

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A new book debunking Mahatma Gandhi puts Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on its cover; WND is loving it:

Gandhi’s name has come up repeatedly in the Democratic presidential race – with both Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., outspoken admirers of the Indian independence leader – perceived as a virtual 20th century saint thanks to mythologizing books and movies.

Yet, the real Gandhi was not the little man revered by the U.S. cvil rights leadership for his commitment to non-violence, according to the authors of “Gandhi Under Cross-Examination,” which, using the India leader’s own words, portray him as an anti-black racist, an admirer of Adolf Hitler, a critic of George Washington and a man who believed Jews should not have resisted Nazi Germany’s efforts to exterminate them.

The book was written by G.B. Singh, who is a US colonel (apparently he’s a periodontist in the US Army Medical Department), in collaboration with Timothy Watson, author of The Ethics of Timelessness, a philosophical book which argues that “metaphysics is a science of immunology for the human spirit” which “reunites philosophy with its roots” (the PhD thesis version can be seen here). This is Singh’s second anti-Gandhi book, following Gandhi: Behind the Mask of Divinity, which was published by the sceptical publishing house Prometheus Books. Singh explained his motivation in an interview when that book came out:

…in February 1983, I saw the film Gandhi which reinforced the story of Gandhi I had learned in India. In March 1983, I read the article, The Gandhi Nobody Knows by Richard Grenier. This article brought about fundamental changes in me especially dealing with asking probing questions and there I started to pay more critical attention to Gandhi while at the same time I was actively pursuing research into Hinduism.

These two areas of research eventually converged. The tragic events of 1984 in India against the Sikhs, painful that they were, were no surprise to me. Just following the attack on Golden Temple and other gurdwaras, Mrs. Indira Gandhi justified her bloody actions by invoking one of Mahatma Gandhi’s teachings-that event in itself forced me to conduct a thorough research on our mahatma.

Singh’s earliest thoughts on the subject were published by the newsletter of African Americans for Humanism. However, Thomas W. Clark published a critical review of Gandhi: Behind the Mask of Divinity in The Humanist in 2006:

For those who relish the debunking of religious impostors, Singh’s contentious litany of Gandhi’s real and imagined faults may provide some satisfaction, but for most readers his conclusion that Gandhi was a “thug” no better than Stalin or Hitler (pages 308-309) will seem overwrought and unnecessarily inflammatory. B. R. Ambedkar’s 1945 classic, What Gandhi and the Congress Have Done to the Untouchables, offers a far more substantial and balanced account of some of Gandhi’s shortcomings.

Gandhi under Cross-Examination is published by Sovereign Star Publishing, which is based in New York. According to its website:

Sovereign Star is dedicated to providing accessible books written to stimulate intellectual and historical enlightenment. We are quickly developing a reputation for publishing bolder and more though-provoking materials than many others in the field.

However, given that Gandhi under Cross-Examination is the only item listed on the catalogue page, it’s difficult to assess on what exactly this “developing reputation” is based.

The book is available on special offer from WND, with some issues of Whistleblower inevitably thrown in. This is a rare endorsement by WND of this kind of religious debunking, and it should be noted that Singh also recalls that when he read the New Testament he “recognized so many holes in the story of Jesus Christ”. Perhaps we’ll see Christopher Hitchens’ attack on Mother Teresa on offer as an encore?

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Here’s one I missed from a couple of weeks ago:

Between April 29 and May 1, a series of meetings were held in Berlin and Dresden between Israeli and German public figures. The meetings were scheduled around the Holocaust Memorial Day commemorating the catastrophe of European Jewry.

The Israeli delegation included Knesset members Rabbi Benny Elon (leader of the National Union opposition) and Shai Hermesh (member of the Kadima ruling party), Josh Reinstein (Director of Knesset’s Christian Allies Caucus) and Dr. Dmitry Radyshevsky (Director of the Jerusalem Summit). The visit included meetings with members of the Deutsche Bundestag (German Parliament), representing different parties, and with senior officials of the German Foreign Ministry.

The visit included meetings with members of the Deutsche Bundestag (German Parliament), representing different parties, and with senior officials of the German Foreign Ministry.

…The Israeli delegation spoke at the biggest Christian pro-Israel event in Germany called “Saxon Christian Friends of Israel”, timed to commemorate the Holocaust Memorial Day. The event was organized by approximately a dozen pro Israel Christian groups based in Germany.

The report – and a short piece in the Jerusalem Post – tells us that Radyshevsky impressed upon the Germans the need “to check radical Islam, which is a reincarnation of Fascism, and the regime of Iran that openly prepares a nuclear Holocaust”.

One wonders if Radyshevsky also expounded some of the strange ideas he outlines in his bizarre book Universal Zionism, which I blogged here, and which goes far beyond opposition simply to Islamic extremism. Or whether far-right politician Benny Elon repeated his call for Palestinians to be expelled into Jordan.

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