Bartholomew's Notes

Simpson Book Deal Recalls Ripper Fiasco

Staying with the subject of the Christian book industry, the (slightly old) news that Rupert Murdoch has shied away from profiting from O.J. Simpson’s bizarre “hypothetical confession” brings to mind an earlier example of the Digger’s interest in sensational murder, and how that affected the running of the respected publishing house of Collins here in the UK.

Collins had been founded in the early nineteenth century as a religious publisher in Scotland, although it also sold secular books, and in the late twentieth century its Fount imprint was particularly known for publishing the works of CS Lewis. Under Murdoch from 1988, Collins joined Harpers to become HarperCollins. Christian Bookseller magazine (December 2000) contains an interesting article by Robin Baird-Smith, who has been a significant figure in British religious publishing for many years, and who worked for Collins in early 1980s:

If you are running a religious book list as part of a large corporation, you are in the last analysis a small part of someone else’s global plan…[Y]ou are also subject to censorship, and outside editorial control. At HarperCollins we were owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owned the Sun newspaper. One day I received a call from the features editor of that newspaper saying that they were going to publish in serial form the memoirs of Sonia Sutcliffe, the wife of Peter Sutcliffe (The Yorkshire Ripper) and he wanted Collins to publish the book. That was the moment when what it meant to be part of a corporation really sunk in and I decided that I had to leave.

The context at the time was distaste over “chequebook journalism” in the wake of the arrest and trial of Peter Sutcliffe, who had murdered thirteen women and attacked seven others between 1975 and 1980; notoriously, the Chief Constable of Yorkshire, Ronald Gregory, reportedly pocketed £40,000 from the (non-Murdoch) Mail on Sunday for his account of the investigation (this was particularly upsetting given that it had taken the police so long to stop the serial killer). However, the planned memoirs of Sonia never materialised, as a report in the Guardian earlier this year explained:

…despite the grim details emerging from court number one [at the Old Bailey in 1981] it was chequebook journalism that had most people talking. And the feeding frenzy was about to climax with the race to sign up Sutcliffe’s wife, Sonia…The popular estimate of its worth at the time was £1m. Unfortunately, she had proved to be not very sporting. The door [to her home] was mostly kept locked while an average of 30 to 40 media personnel were camped outside waiting for something to happen. But it had opened for the Daily Mail and again for the News of the World [the Sun’s Sunday edition], led by its newly-appointed editor, Barry Askew, whose starting bid was a paltry £80,000.

…Askew claims to have been given an unlimited chequebook by Murdoch in his attempt to the answer the Big Question – did Sonia know or suspect her husband was the Yorkshire Ripper? (“The answer is no, so far as I’m aware,” Askew says.) But returning to the old NoW’s offices in Bouverie Street in the second week of May 1981, he learned that “suddenly the coffers clanged shut”. He was left in the lurch, he says. Murdoch had got uncharacteristic cold feet after the Queen revealed her “sense of distaste” over chequebook journalism. “I remember Rupert saying something like, ‘They’ll pass a law against you’.”

NoW assistant editor at the time, Stuart Kuttner, now the paper’s managing editor, wonders if Sonia would ever have signed to tell her story. “The word she used a lot was ‘averse’. She was averse to entering into any deal with the press.”

The Press Council went on to conclude that newspapers should not make payments to those close to criminals or close to their victims. Of course, the Council had no authority beyond the British press, but had Murdoch taken the general spirit of its advice to heart he might have avoided some embarrassment now.

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Decrees Koran must not be sold

Sad news about the chain of bookshops formerly run by the venerable Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge:

BRITAIN’S oldest chain of church bookshops is to remove the Koran from its shelves because it believes it is “inimical” to Christianity.

The decision not to stock any non-Christian holy text has been taken by SPCK Bookshops, formerly part of the 308-year-old Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

…The new policy follows the society’s sale of a majority stake in the chain on November 1 to the St Stephen the Great Charitable Trust, which is tied to the Eastern Orthodox church.

“Stocking books which are inimical to Christianity, which without question the Koran is, could well create the wrong impression among some that we endorse the belief systems of other religions as equal or viable alternatives,” said Mark Brewer, the Texan lawyer who chairs the trust.

The stated aim of the trust is to take the bookshops back to the missionary roots of the SPCK and reverse the advance of Islam and secularism.

The involvement of the SSG Charitable Trust in the SPCK was announced in a press release a few weeks ago:

St Stephen the Great Charitable Trust (SSG) is an Orthodox Christian charity. Its partnership with SPCK will enhance and broaden its mission of distributing Christian literature.

SPCK have agreed that the Bookshops and their staff will transfer to SSG, continuing to operate as SPCK Bookshops (under licence) by SSG, with a maintenance of their breadth.

…Under the new arrangements, SPCK Bookshops will continue to stock a broad and diverse range of Christian books and resources.

The press release contains no indication that the SSG would be dictating that the shops would no longer be allowed to sell certain books.

The SPCK was founded an Anglican vicar, Thomas Bray, in 1698, and as a publisher (among other activities) the organisation was originally a mouthpiece for the Anglican establishment. Bray complained that:

All the Grand and Fundamental Articles, both of Natural and Revealed Religion, are now most furiously storm’d by Atheists, Deists, and Socinians on the one hand, or secretly and dangerously undermined by Enthusiasts [i.e. Evangelicals] and Antinomians [Quakers] on the other. (1)

The SPCK was supposed to remedy the situation – the conversion of Quakers was a particular obsession, and early titles published by the Society included Against Enthusiasm and Against Popery. However, the organisation soon adopted a broader perspective, and members included evangelicals such as John Wesley. Eventually, the Society stopped being a didactic publisher, and came to see itself as providing a forum for discussion; in 1919 William Lowther Clarke expressed his hope that the SPCK would soon

stand in relation towards Anglican theology as the Oxford and Cambridge Press stand towards learning generally. (2)

That is indeed what happened in subsequent years, and today the SPCK is one of most important UK publishers of intellectually serious books on subjects like church history and Biblical scholarship, as well as theology.

This was also the ethos of the bookshops, which first opened in the 1930s – and as an undergradate studying religion in the mid 1990s, I found the local SPCK bookshop to be an incredibly useful and stimulating scholarly resource. As well as books published by the SPCK itself, the shops stocked a range of material from other sources, such as the SCM Press. Some of the books were doubtless controversial: you could find material by, for example, the “non-realist” Christian Don Cupitt, or radical Biblical scholarship by the likes of Gerd Lüdemann, or books sympathetic to gay Christians. However, the philosophy was that these were issues which intelligent people, particularly clergy, ought be aware of, and the SPCK was providing a useful service by stocking them. Hence also the reason, I’m sure, for selling the Koran.

The Church Times has further details of the SSG’s agenda:

Concerns over Islam are apparent on the SSG’s website, where the charity reports: “England has not only become extremely secularised in recent years, but has witnessed the explosion of Islam. . . In an effort to stem the growth of non-Christian faiths and re-establish Christianity in areas where it has been driven out, the Trust has acquired a beautiful building [the redundant St Mary Magdalene’s] in Bradford. (This city has one of the highest percentages of resident Muslims in the UK.)”

Text on the website has been amended since the Church Times published the report announcing the partnership. References to the “misguided beliefs” of those who turned to the Roman Catholic Church, and other references to the Orthodox Church as “the only Church true to the Word of God, and therefore the only one that offers true salvation and eternal life”, have been removed.

…The charity is headed by Mark Brewer, managing director of the Texan law firm, Brewer & Pritchard, who is a former judge advocate for the US Air Force at RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk.

According to the Brewer & Pritchard website, Brewer is a member “of Saint Joseph (the Betrothed) Orthodox Christian Church (Antiochian Archdiocese)”. That would appear to be this church, in Houston. The Antiochian Orthodox church split from the National Council of Churches in the USA last year.

How long before the SSG decides that Biblical higher criticism, or certain positions on homosexuality, are “inimical to Christianity” and should therefore be banned from the SPCK shops? Will certain books published by the SPCK eventually be excluded from the bookshops that bear their name?

(Hat tip: MediaWatchWatch)

****

(1) C. Rose, “The Origins and Ideals of the SPCK 1698-1740” in J. Walsh, C. Haydon and S. Taylor, eds., The Church of England c.1689-c.1833, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 178, quoting Thomas Bray, A Course of Lectures upon the Church Catechism, Oxford, 1696, epistle dedicatory (no pagination).

(2) William Kemp Lowther Clarke, A Short History of S.P.C.K., London: SPCK, 1919, pp. 84, 86. This work should not be confused with his A History of the SPCK, published forty years later, in which “S.P.C.K.” has become “SPCK” – an important point in the days of computer catalogues.

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WorldNetDaily moves into Christian publishing:

What would you do if armed terrorists broke into your church and starting attacking your friends with automatic weapons in the middle of a worship service?

Would you be prepared to defend yourself and other innocents?

…There is one man in the world who can address these questions with first-hand experience.

His name is Charl van Wyck – a South African who was faced with just such a shocking scenario.

…In “Shooting Back: The Right and Duty of Self-Defense,” van Wyk makes a biblical, Christian case for individuals arming themselves with guns, and does so more persuasively than perhaps any other author because he found himself in a church attacked by terrorists.

This was the 1993 St. James Church Massacre, in which eleven people were killed and 58 wounded in a church in Kenilworth. The terrorists were three members Azanian People’s Liberation Army, a militant anti-white South African group run by the Pan-African Congress, and under orders from Letlapa Mphahlele. A 2003 article has further details:

The horror of these attacks burnt itself into the imagination of South Africa, and the Apla soldiers who carried them out were hunted down and prosecuted. The man who commanded them could have stayed beyond prosecution since he flitted in and out of South Africa and was not present during the attacks. But this did not fit the mould of Letlapa Mphahlele.

‘I’ve never shied away from taking responsibility for Apla activities at the time I was Director of Operations,’ he says in his quiet but decisive voice. ‘At the time the Heidelberg Tavern was attacked I had issued an order suspending attacks on civilian targets. I waived this order after the murder of five schoolchildren by the South African Defence Force in Umtata (in the Eastern Cape).

…In 1998 Mphahlele met Charl van Wyk, one of the survivors of the St James’s Church massacre. ‘Charl was the man who returned fire and wounded one of the Apla cadres in the church,’ says Mphahlele. ‘My meeting with Charl was facilitated by journalists who had interviewed us separately and so before TV cameras we shook hands and shared our experiences from different viewpoints. This was the beginning of an exciting journey I was to travel.’

Van Wyck is a long-time sidekick of evangelist Peter Hammond – he’s the Deputy Director of Hammond’s Frontline Fellowship, the Director of his African Christian Action, and a missionary with his In Touch Mission International organisation. Van Wyck’s book was originally published in 2001 by Christian Liberty Books, which is mostly a platform for Hammond.

Hammond and his ministries have a controversial history, and his perspective is one of belligerent fundamentalism, anti-Communism and anti-Islamicism. Here’s a taster from the African Christian Action Newsletter:

When the President of South Africa calls for “an African Renaissance”, what exactly does he mean? Is he calling us to the humanism of the European Renaissance that culminated in the French Revolution and the Soviet Gulags? Or is he merely desiring a return to the pre-Christian Paganism and Animism that afflicted Africa prior to the spread of the Gospel?

…We want God to bless South Africa. However, we cannot expect God to bless a nation which is in rebellion to His Laws.

…The consequences that flow from Atheism, Evolutionism, situation ethics and other cardinal tenants of humanism are very tangible and very tragic: euthanasia, abortion, gun control, humanistic education in state schools, concentration camps, massacres and marxist tyranny.

…The other choice before us is for a Biblical Reformation. The Bible contains the Law of God, the absolute and unchanging principles by which all areas of life must be governed. History records that where nations are built upon the principles of God’s Word, true freedom and justice flourishes.

Naturally, Hammond has links with the hard-core Christian dominionists of the Chalcedon Foundation.

Hammond is British, but he served in the South African National “Defence Force” in the 1980s. An essay by Jeffrey Marishane (1) has some background:

…Foremost among such [right-wing Christian] groups is Frontline Fellowship, formerly known as the Motorbike Mission. Formed in 1981 as a prayer fellowship within SADF ranks, Frontline Fellowship is led by its founder, Peter Christopher Hammond…and is one of the groups affiliated with [United Christian Action].

The UCA is an umbrella body for several Christian groups, and at that time was headed by Ed Cain, who was also associated with Fred Shaw’s Christian League of Southern Africa. CLSA was named as a secret beneficiary of state funding by Eschel Rhoodie before his death in 1993, although Hammond rejects similar accusations against the UCA (“The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, Volume two, Chapter six is entitled ‘Special Investigation into Secret State Funding’. It deals exhaustively with the former government’s secret projects, naming the projects of the defence force, foreign affairs, the police, national intelligence and the education department. Nowhere does United Christian Action appear.”).

Frontline Fellowship at this time was particularly concerned with “persecuted churches in Mozambique, Angola and the Cape Verde Islands”; critics charged that it was a front for the deployment of South African military men in Southern Africa under the guise of being “missionaries”, and in October 1988 Hammond and some associates were detained for a week in Mozambique.

This was exactly a year after an arrest in Zambia; this undated essay by Brian M. Abshire has some details, which I’ll quote at length:

Peter Hammond, South African missionary to the persecuted church and director of Frontline Fellowship, recently briefed me on one of the most exciting developments in central Africa, the Christian Reconstruction of Zambia.

…In October 1987, Peter Hammond and three other Frontline Fellowship missionaries, experienced first hand the hospitality of this Marxist miracle when they were arrested for bringing Bibles into the country…They were finally confined in Lusaka Central Prison, the maximum security facility…

…What Peter and his colleagues did not realize was that they were sharing their cells with the next government of Zambia!  During the following weeks of Bible study, prayer and vigorous discussions in the prison, they were able to teach Biblical principles of government to the very men God would raise up after He deposed the Marxists; the future vice-president of Zambia – General Godfrey Miyanda – and a few cells away, Frederick Chiluba, the future Christian President of Zambia.

…The first freely elected President, Frederick Chiluba, promptly testified to the saving power of Christ and called for a day of prayer. At a simple ceremony in December 1991, the new President publicly confessed the national sins of witchcraft and corruption and committed Zambia to becoming a Christian nation!  When he was asked if he intended writing a new Constitution, Chiluba replied that he didn’t have to. It was already written – the Bible. He held up the Bible to the full view of the world press.

…They distributed tens of thousands of Christian Reconstructionist booklets, tracts, Bibles and Christian books in prisons, government departments, schools and churches throughout Zambia. They then launched a “Salt Shakers” ministry, small groups committed to prayer, strategy and action throughout Zambia. They presented Christian Reconstructionist, pro-life, pro-family, messages on national radio and TV, in schools and churches. Zambia Christian Action was launched under the leadership of Pastor John Jere. Frontline also held Biblical Worldview Seminars in Ndola and Lusaka, took part in delegations to the various government departments and presented copies of Reformed and Reconstructionist books to the vice-president…

Pastor John Jere, incidentally, now runs a church which is part of the Every Nation neo-Pentecostal organization; I’ve been keeping an eye on this particular grouping for some time. There’s no space here to discuss Chiluba and Zambia as a “Christian nation”; I would advise all those interested to read Paul Gifford’s book African Christianity: Its Public Role. The “Biblical Worldview Seminars” (BWS) have become a particular strategy used in by Hammond and his team in various African countries, along with the wide distribution of his book Biblical Principles for Africa.

Hammond has maintained a public profile in the post-Cold War world; his many books have been praised by the likes of Joseph Farah and D. James Kennedy. One publication, however, became the focus of a free-speech debate in 2002:

At the end of January, the newly released book The Pink Agenda became the first non-pornographic book since 1994 to be lobbied for banning. Written with the underlying Biblical belief that the homosexual lifestyle is wrong in God’s eyes, author Christine McCafferty, along with Peter Hammond, wrote The Pink Agenda in an attempt to engage South African society in an open debate concerning what they outline in the book to be a homosexual agenda in South Africa….After the book’s publication there was an immediate and outraged response from the Gay and Lesbian Equality Project, saying the book “instills hatred” and is “the worst homophobic hate speech ever published in South Africa.” Claiming that the book “instills hatred” is of course a direct plea to consider The Pink Agenda as one of the few types of speech that is specifically not protected in our constitution…The book was brought up for review by the Film and Publications Board at the end of January, with their final ruling being that the book should be sold with an adults-only age restriction. Those under 18 would not be allowed to read it since it promotes a viewpoint, and draws conclusions from research, that are considered, as one reviewer put it, “close to constituting hate speech.”

Hammond and Van Wyk’s newsletter claimed that this was “homo-fascism”, and that the legalisation of sodomy was just one of many “privileges for perverts”.

A few months later, Hammond was arrested in the Sudan while giving a “Biblical Worldview Seminar”; WND reported:

Rebel forces in southern Sudan detained an Anglican bishop and a missionary on charges of “treason and insurrection,” according to a U.S.-based evangelical Protestant group.

…Rev. Peter Hammond, director of Frontline Fellowship, and Bishop Bullen Dolli of the Episcopal Church of Sudan were arrested Saturday in Yei Province by the Public Security Office of the SPLM, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement… Kristi Messick, ITMI administrator of African affairs, told WorldNetDaily she believes the arrests were made by junior officers of the SPLA, against the wishes of senior officials.

That’s probably the case; the SPLA has no problem in principle with foreign missionaries, and I blogged a while back on the case of Sam Childers, a pastor from Florida who is also an SPLA commander. Hammond was released a few days later, and he claims the incident was a conspiracy hatched in Khartoum.

Last year, Hammond was arrested yet again – this time in South Africa, and in circumstances not lacking in bathos:

Controversial Christian evangelist Peter Hammond confirmed on Wednesday that he has been charged with assault following what he said was a Halloween “accident” with a paintball gun.

…He said his family — he has a wife and four children — do not approve of Halloween, which they see as an “occult holiday celebrating human sacrifice, witches and goblins”.

His children had wanted to do a “counter-Halloween”, and he had agreed to drive two of them around to “do paintballing” on trick-or-treating youngsters on October 31.

…He said his 10-year-old son initially paintballed some youngsters who appeared to have just strewn rubbish across the road as a Halloween prank, shooting low and from a distance, and then called out to another child, asking whether he was a trick-or-treater.

The boy came over to the car, saw the paintball gun, swore at Hammond’s son and tried to pull it out of his hands.

The gun went off, and Hammond drove away.

The victim, apparently, hurt his jaw…

***

(1) Jeffrey Marishane, “The Religious Right and Low-Intensity Conflict in Southern Africa”, in Jan P. Nederveen Pieterse (ed.), Christianity and Hegemony, New York and Oxford: Berg, 1992, pp.59-119

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A fascinating article on religious protest in Belarus, from Forum 18:

When Catholic parishioners in Grodno announced a hunger strike to begin on 1 December if officials fail to overturn their decade-long refusal to allow them to build a new church, they took their inspiration from protests by New Life Church. This Minsk-based charismatic congregation held a high-profile hunger strike in October to try to prevent the authorities seizing their church. “We are grateful to the Protestants for giving us courage,” Fr Aleksandr Shemet declared.

…In the wake of this year’s presidential elections, the Evangelical Belarus Information Centre reported that on 20 March more than half of those demonstrating against the regime in central Minsk raised their hands when asked who would join in prayers for Belarus: “The next day almost everyone responded to the same request, and the day after that the majority of songs heard in the tent camp were Christian.”

However, this faith-based dissent needs to be balanced against the support Belarussian dictator Alexander Lukashenko gets from the Russian Orthodox Church. Back in August Private Eye (1164, p. 19) published a “Letter from Minsk” which touched on the subject:

A few years ago [Lukashenko] presented the Russian Orthodox Patriarch with $85,000 worth of gold, silver and jewel-encrusted banners for the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. In return, Patriarch Alexis II commended Lukashenko for resisting the “cult of force, self-destruction and lack of morals that permeate the west”, then he decorated senior Belarus KGB men (we have not bothered to make the secret police sound more customer-friendly) with the Order of Apostle Grand Duke Vladimir (no relation) for “decisive implementation of the government’s policy of spiritual development of the nation.”

In 2001, Alexy presented Lukashenko with a prize from the “International Foundation for Unity of the Orthodox Peoples”; he followed this up in 2002 with the Order of St. Sergius of Radonezh, “for strengthening unity of Slav peoples”. After the farcical recent election in Belarus, Alexy wrote with words of gushing appreciation:

Seeing the impressive results of your previous work in this office, the multinational people of the republic have again given you a vote of confidence through supporting your candidature by a majority of votes’, the patriarchal messages says.

‘…As primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, I am very much gratified with the fact that good relations have been established between the religious and secular leaders in Belarus in the last years. These relations are called to show common concern for the restoration of shrines ruined in the past, for religious education, Christian enlightenment and moral health of society,’ the document notes.

Meanwhile, Lukashenko has recently been swapping notes with another leader noted for using religion to bolster a reactionary and oppressive agenda:

(Pic from Wolny, via Belarusan American Blog)

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From the website “Learn from history.eu“:

They gave us our roots. We cut them off and sent them to die in places like Auschwitz, Dachau and Birkenau. While we were silent they disappeared like smoke before our eyes.

Apparently “we” does not refer to a bunch of ancient Nazis; “we” are the people of Europe in 2006, who need to make amends for Nazi atrocity. And how?

Now it is time to repent and learn from history. Only by confronting the past can we build a better future in Europe. No longer can we remain silent when the calls to destruction are again echoing in the world.

Now it is time to repent and learn from history. Only by confronting the past can we build a better future in Europe. No longer can we remain silent when the calls to destruction are again echoing in the world.

This time let’s get it right. Perhaps the old roots can start to give life again? Perhaps the rain will fall again over the hills of Europe, and the trees bear new fruit.

…The objective of this initiative is to make the week leading up to January 27 also a week of remembrance, and pro-active action against anti-Semitism, for the church in Europe. What role did the church play in Europe in the 1930’s? What role could we play today in order NOT to repeat the mistakes of the past? Are the Jewish people still threatened to destruction today?

The answer of course, is “yes”: there’s Ahmadinejad, Hamas, Islamist extremists in Europe chanting “Death to the Jews” (along with “Death to pretty much everyone else as well”, but let’s not dwell on that), Holocaust deniers, plus condemnation of Israel from the bloke who wrote Sophie’s World (Jostein Gaarder, mis-spelt on the site). Does this not prove that Holocaust Day should also become a day of unconditional support for the State of Israel? That would seem to be the inference:

“Learn from History” will provide you with speaking points, background material and a DVD about how Christians today are raising their voices against anti-Semitism and are promoting better relations between Europe and Israel.

…Sign up today – adopt January 27 as a day of remembrance in your church. Our goal is to have churches in each 25 member states signing up to take part in the campaign. During the Remembrance event we will also provide you with an opportunity to financially support the work which is today carried out by European Coalition for Israel to fight anti-Semitism and improve relations between Europe and Israel.

I looked at the European Coalition for Israel here; it’s a project of Christians for Israel International, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, Bridges for Peace and the Christian Friends of Israel. The lobby group was founded in Jerusalem in 2004, with the blessing of hard-right Israeli politician Yuri Stern, of the racist anti-Arab Yisrael Beiteinu party.

“Learn from History” also has a leadership team:

Colin Dye, Pastor, Kensington Temple London, United Kingdom

Dye is influential in British charismatic Christian circles; as it happens, I visited his church early in 2003, just before the invasion of Iraq. I recall Dye prophesied an easy victory, followed by a mass conversion of Iraqis.

Ulf Ekman, Pastor, Word of Life, Uppsala, Sweden

Ekman is a preacher of the Prosperity Gospel, with links to Oral Roberts and an underground church in Afghanistan; I’ve touched on his activities in the past.

Ingolf Ellssel, Pastor and Chairman of Pentecostal European Fellowship

Ellssel, who represents 5 million Pentecostals, was in Israel just the other day, where he was joined by an official from the Holocaust museum Yad Vashem in re-enforcing the “criticise Israel and you’re an anti-Semite” message. The International Christian Embassy reported:

We regret that certain churches are considering divesting from Israel, while we’ve also seen some nations in Europe stepping away from Israel,” Rev. Ingolf Ellssel of Germany, the Chairman of PEF, told the gathering. “Pentecostal and Charismatic churches in Europe have a tradition of praying for and engaging with Israel, but we are determined to harness our rapidly growing movement to do even more for the Jewish people and their embattled nation.”

In response, Shaya Ben Yehuda, director of international relations at Yad Vashem, called the growing movement of Christian supporters of Israel the “modern righteous Gentiles of our day.”

…”We recognise that Israel remains elect of God and a focus of His redemptive plan for the entire world,” added Ellsell. “We understand that the remarkable Jewish return to this land is a fulfillment of biblical promises to Israel, and this encourages us to believe that God will keep His prophetic promises to us as well.”

Back to the list:

Johannes Fichtenbauer, Chief Deacon, Catholic Diocease of Vienna, Austria

Fichtenbauer is a Charismatic Catholic, and he founded an ecumenical charismatic grouping in Vienna called “Turn to the Lord“. He is also involved with “Toward Jerusalem“, which works with Messianic Jews.

Willem Glashouwer, Reverend, Reformed Church of the Netherlands, Chairman ECI

Glashouwer is president of the European Coalition for Israel; I previously noted his tasteful comparison between not feeling the need for religious references in the European Constitution and killing six million Jews.

Wolfhard Margies, Pastor, Church on the Way, Berlin Germany

That’s apparently the largest church in the city.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Agape Press offers a platform for the dominionist and anti-Arab Israeli far-right:

No more concessions to Palestinians — that is the pledge a pro-Jewish movement within Israel’s Likud Party has made if it is able to gain control of the leadership next year…Shmuel Sackett is co-founder and international director of the Jewish Leadership Movement, the largest faction within the Likud Party. Sackett says his group would take a much different approach to the Palestinian problem. “They will not be allowed to function as an independent people, as a state, with weapons inside God’s promised land,” he explains. “Absolutely, positively not.” He says the first thing they would do would be to immediately annex all of the covenant land that has been given away. “We will take back the Temple Mount. We will take back Jerusalem. We will take back all these areas,” he states. In general, he says, the Leadership Movement would make it very clear to the Arabs that “their future is not in the land of Israel.”

Perhaps those running the European Coalition for Israel do not share such an extreme view; but given their perspective and theology, would it be possible for them ever to speak out over Israeli treatment of the Palestinians? After all, Sackett belongs to a nation which, in the words of Glashouwer,

…”is not just one of the nations. It has a special dimension to it. They are God’s chosen people, the apple of His eye, His firstborn son.”

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The Exclusive Brethren’s recent habit of involving itself in political campaigning and scheming (despite not allowing members to vote in elections) is a phenomenon that has been noted in several countries; I looked at activities in Australia and New Zealand back in September. In New Zealand, the Brethren’s politicking has now had dramatic consequences, with the resignation of National Party opposition leader Don Brash. Brash’s links to the Brethren and other right-wing groups and individuals are exposed in a book by Nicky Hager, The Hollow Men, which was subject to a gagging order for several days due to its use of Brash’s private emails. Brash himself denies that the book is the reason for his resignation, but most commentators are sceptical. The book has now been covered extensively in the New Zealand press; news website Stuff gathers the reports in one place.

At the heart of the scandal is the disjunction between Brash’s public persona as a centrist and his secret backing from the radical right. Brash’s desire to downplay his links with the Brethren appears to have led him into dishonesty:

A key chapter in the book deals with the party’s Exclusive Brethren ties, including claims that on May 24 the Brethren outlined plans for a $1 million campaign to Dr Brash and finance spokesman John Key.

Dr Brash has said the first he knew of a Brethren pamphlet campaign was in August last year.

…The book also refers to a little publicised campaign by the Exclusive Brethren in April 2005 attacking Labour’s defence and anti-nuclear policies.

“The ads would be saying things that many senior National Party people privately believed, but which they could not say openly without losing public support,” Mr Hager writes.

…The book claims that former National Party chief of staff Richard long had arranged with the Brethren that they would have a consistent line in the event of media questions about National’s prior knowledge of the advertising.

More general links with the Christian Right are also explored:

…Brash was a social liberal who supported the Civil Union Bill allowing a form of marriage between same-sex couples. But Hager argues that he lost his nerve as the polls fell and conservative Christian lobbyists turned up the heat. Bruce Logan, director of a Christian think-tank, the Maxim Institute, told him that “by supporting (the bill) National will gain a few votes. By rejecting it you will get thousands.”

…As part of his campaign to woo the Christian fundamentalist vote, Brash visited the Greenlane Christian Centre for a closed youth leadership conference during the election campaign. The next day, his PR man Bryan Sinclair sent an embarrassed email to the organisers saying that a photo taken of Brash might find its way into the mainstream media, who would use it “to deliberately embarrass both Don and your own organisation”.

The reason for Sinclair’s concern, writes Hager, “was that when the meeting prepared to pray, the leader had asked everyone to raise both their arms in the air and Brash had been photographed in this not very mainstream pose”. The organiser assured Sinclair that the digital photo had been deleted. Sinclair forwarded the news to Brash with a one-word comment: “Hallelujah.”

Away from specifically religious links, American readers might be particularly interested in one political detail:

…The Hollow Men contains e-mails detailing planned and actual meetings between Dr Brash and Dick Allen, a key figure in the campaigns of previous United States presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.

…Dr Brash was introduced to Mr Allen through former National Party staffer and political commentator Matthew Hooton and the pair corresponded and met face to face.

Mr Hooton advised Dr Brash’s office to keep the meetings secret because of Mr Allen’s “ultra” right-wing status, which had generated hate websites in the United States.

(Cross-posted to Talk to Action)

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From Reuters:

A Thai Buddhist monk cut off his penis with a machete because he had an erection during meditation and declined to have it reattached, saying he had renounced all earthly cares, a doctor and a newspaper said on Wednesday.

Alas for the unnamed monk (aged 35), perhaps he should have consulted the Buddhist scriptures; over to Bernard Faure’s The Red Thread: Buddhist Approaches to Sexuality (p. 35):

We are told that when the Buddha was in Sravasti, there was a monk who castrated himself by severing his penis in order to cut off desire. The Buddha scolded him, saying: “This foolish man, monks. Cut off one thing when another should have been cut off. Monks, one should not cut off one’s own organ. If anyone should cut it off, there is a grave offence.”…Vinaya 2:110

Faure gives examples of the practice within Chinese and Japanese Buddhism. A collection of Chinese Buddhist writings edited by Robin R Wang (1) adds another story from The Forty-Two Chapters Sutra (p.270):

The Buddha said: “There was a man who could not suppress his carnal desire. Worried about it, he made up his mind to cut off his penis.” The Buddha scolded him, “Rather than cut off your penis, you had better eliminate from your mind that which gives rise to carnal desire. The mind is comparable to a public officer who has the power to appoint and dismiss, and reward and punish. If the officer restrains his subordinates, they will behave. Without eliminating your obscene mind. It is of no use cutting off your penis.”

But all may not be lost: back in 2004, the AFP declared that Thailand was “the world center of penis reattachment surgery”, mostly due to the vengeful acts of wronged wives.

(Hat tip: Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

(1) Images of Women in Chinese Thought and Culture: Writings from the Pre-Qin Period to the Song Dynasty

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As I blogged last week, BBC’s Newsnight recently broadcast an exposé on the Islamist group Hizb Ut-Tahrir, featuring an anonymous infiltrator (“J”):

We’ve been told that it’s alright to hurt non-believers…The loyalty to the group, I had to show it…they actually asked me to take some money from three guys…By force…I threatened them and the gave me the money because of who I was with…This is Hizb ut-Tahrir.

The infiltrator was vouched for by a man named Dominic Whiteman, of an organisation called VIGIL. Newsnight also featured a second VIGIL member, Glen Jenvey, who monitors Islamist websites. Jenvey, as I noted at the time, is an associate of Jeremy Reynalds, who writes for the neo-Pentecostal news service ASSIST Ministries.

No sensible person would deny that Islamism is bad news and represents a danger. In the past I’ve given credit to Reynalds for his efforts in keeping an eye on Islamist websites, despite his extremely conservative views. However, something about VIGIL was disturbing: this shadowy group had no web presence that I could find, and Jenvey’s personal website linked to some very Wingnutty sites.

Now, however, HuT has come up with a counterblast against VIGIL. One is naturally reluctant to use HuT as a source, but its article contains links to other sites that speak for themselves. Firstly, it appears that VIGIL does have a web home after all:

The VIGIL network is a large non-profit, non-political network of former intelligence officers, anti-terrorist operatives and proven private terror trackers united in one (mostly online) offensive strategy against the Islamic extremists threatening the planet right now. VIGIL was formed consequent to the 7/7 attacks on London.

…Now the VIGIL Group has found its place within the IC-HUMINT network to strenghten and extend both our service!

Dominic Whiteman, Director of VIGIL

IC-HUMINT (“The Intelligence Community Human Intelligence Network”), however, appears to have particular religious perspective, which it expresses in melodramatic language:

Back in 1991, a young-man from a far-off country came to the Western-Sahara desert to meet with a group of people. They formed an alliance to establish a global network to form an army to fight the Evil-World to come and to serve for the glory of Jerusalem, the city of GOD!

(1991 was when UN peacekeepers were deployed in Western Sahara; whether this is what the above is referring to is anyone’s guess)

Recta Sequi … [“follow the right”]

Since then, many people came and went and we have been around in the world. But in 1998 we established ourselves on the internet. Using it as a portal for our global community. This network is what we now call the IC-HUMINT.

Welcome to the Intelligence Community HUMINT network!

So who was this “young-man from a far-off country”? The website is short on names. However, there is one clue:

Established and maintained by members of the British SAS and their respective global counter-parts. The IC-HUMINT stands for The Intelligence Community Human Intelligence. Together we form a global network of ex and current serving members of the various special forces and HUMINT intelligence operatives.

This appears next to the SAS logo. Elsewhere:

For at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people (Dan 12:1). Shalom Jerusalem, holy city of GOD! We are in service of the Mighty one. For there is but one God and only him we shall serve.

Most peculiar. Weirdly, the whole site declares itself to be “Crown Copyright”, a term which if used accurately means that a publication has been produced by the British Government.

Meanwhile, HuT directs us to Jenvey’s past internet activities via Wayback. It appears that Jenvey used to run a fake Islamist website under the name “Pervez Khan”, which he used to gain the trust of Islamists (particularly Abu Hamza). Then, in September 2002, he replaced his faux-Islamist site with a rather different message (links in original):

We’ve changed our mind about this whole terrorism thing.

Jehad is Crap!

…There is just one way to achieve a lasting peace and have an end to terror in the middle east. The entire Muslim Ummah must realize:

There is no such thing as a ‘Palestinian.’ There never was. It is a PR fiction, a Madison Avenue fantasy. There is no ‘intifada,’ El Aksa or otherwise. There is a Philistine Authority Pogrom, both against Jews and Arabs, by Arafat and his thugs. The main victims are the resident Arabs themselves. There is actually one reference in the Qur’an to the Palestinian People – and that is the Philistines,” – Shaykh Abdul Hadi Palazzi

Israel belongs to the Jews – because Allah gave that land to them – why, because the Philistines won’t act like decent human beings – and only decent humans deserve their own country. If the Philistines don’t like it, they should just find somewhere else to live. Except no other country on earth wants to have them because they are not acting like decent human beings.

And Kashmir belongs to the Indians – for the same reasons.

Let’s Roll

Johnathan Galt

We can only guess at Jenvey’s motive for deciding to post such an extremist message, but one fails to see how this does anything to undermine Islamism or promote rational discourse.

IC-HUMINT appears to have some apocalyptic religious agenda (“the Evil-World to come”), and it wants Muslims to believe it represents the intentions of the British government (“Crown Copyright”). Why would VIGIL decide to become part of such a project, when, according to Whiteman, “As an organisation we don’t ‘do’ religion”? I have no sympathy with HuT or any group like it, but Newsnight’s decision to elevate VIGIL to “expert” status while telling us nothing about its background and little about its methods is very questionable.

(Hat tip to a reader)

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In September, I blogged on President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s interfaith “Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions”:

Nazarbayev also graced the Congress with his own ideas, which include making 2007 “the Year of Religious and Cultural Tolerance”, and the creation of an “international center of cultures and religions”…The Congress eventually came up with “nine principles of inter-faith dialogue”. These include advice to “avoid prejudice and misrepresentation”; to engage in “effective listening and learning…in the spirit of tolerance on the basis of shared values”; and for dialogue to “assume equality of partners”.

Two months on, human-rights organisation Forum 18 brings us the latest from multi-religious Kazakhstan:

Today (21 November) the demolition began of 13 Hare Krishna-owned homes at the Hare Krishna commune, spokesperson Maksim Varfolomeyev told Forum 18 News Service from the commercial capital Almaty.

(Always nice to find a fellow Bartholomew…)

…”I have no words to describe what I have seen,” Ninel Fokina, head of the Almaty Helsinki Committee, told Forum 18 from the demolition site. “They have no right to move people out of their homes in winter.”

…”It is indicative that the demolition of the homes began before we had been given the results of the state special Commission’s investigation into the conflict over the commune,” Varfolomeyev told Forum 18.

…Devotees are increasing sceptical that the Commission was anything more than a device to deflect any criticism of state religious intolerance.

The move against the Hare Krishnas echoes events in neighbouring Russia; in 2004 a temple in Moscow was demolished to make way for a city development, but a plot of land promised as a replacement was withdrawn by the mayor following complaints from the authoritarian Orthodox Church. That decision, however, was itself overturned in June.

Meanwhile, Nazarbayev has just visited London, and today’s Guardian marks the occasion with an article by Timothy Garton Ash:

As you will not have gathered from anything said by the prime minister, Kazakhstan is a hugely corrupt dictatorship with a dismal human rights record; a supine judiciary; controlled or intimidated media; and elections that do not, to put it very mildly, come up to the standards of Europe’s leading election monitors, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)…. According to some reports, Sultan Nursultan may now be one of the world’s richest men, but he has not kept his wealth to himself; he has spread it most generously around his immediate and extended family, who control much of the media and many state-owned companies. After socialism in one country, there is capitalism in one family.

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Reuters reports:

A lavishly illustrated “Atlas of Creation” is mysteriously turning up at schools and libraries in Turkey, proclaiming that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is the real root of terrorism.

Arriving unsolicited by post, the large-format tome offers 768 glossy pages of photographs and easy-to-read text to prove that God created the world with all its species.

…”The root of the terrorism that plagues our planet is not any of the divine religions, but atheism, and the expression of atheism in our times (is) Darwinism and materialism,” it says.

The book, as expected, is by Harun Yahya, the Turkish creationist and Holocaust denier. The book itself – which appears to concentrate purely on the subject of fossils – is previewed on his website.

As Reuters explains, there’s a political context here: Communists in the past would publicise Marx and Darwin, while creationism in schools would help to undermine Turkey’s secular nature. Education Minister Huseyin Celik is quoted as having told CNN that:

“If it’s wrong to say Darwin’s theory should not be in the books because it is in line with atheist propaganda, we can’t disregard intelligent design because it coincides with beliefs of monotheistic religions about creation,”

There’s also a quote from another Islamic group:

“Darwinism is dead,” said Kerim Balci of the Fethullah Gulen network, a moderate Islamic movement with many publications and schools but no link to the creationists who produced the atlas.

Fethullah Gulen is an educational philosopher who pontificates on the subject of evolutionary biology on his website:

It would be difficult to find another theory which, like Darwinism, has been battered and defeated so many times, and yet the corpse of it revived artificially again and again…To our knowledge, no scientific hypothesis except this one was ever sustained on the basis of so many, and so important “missing links.” What the scientists have discovered through observation proves the opposite of the evolutionary theory true: in spite of having many varieties, bacteria have not evolved into anything different and higher though they adapt very quickly…Man is, as we put it, exactly the same as he was created on the first day…

The alternative to evolution is design which necessarily leads to the concept of a transcendent and unitary power, the Designer Creator, God. Therein lies the reason for the continuing tyranny of the Darwinist theory: the fear that to acknowledge the Creator will bring down the edifice of an autonomous science, an autonomous human reason…

Gulen is apparently quite an influential figure. His website also includes a report which notes the following (footnotes removed):

The more than 300 elementary schools, high schools, college preparatory institutions, dormitories, and universities in over 50 countries that are associated with his name stem from a circle of students, colleagues and businessmen who formed about Fethullah Gulen in the 1960s. The schools have been established by individual agreements between the countries in which they are located and the educational companies founded for this purpose. Each school is an independently run institution, but most of the schools rely on the services of Turkish companies to provide educational supplies and human resources.

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