Bartholomew's Notes

Haggard to be Investigated by Pastor who Denounced Pokemon as Occultic

I suppose I should be grateful to Mike Jones, the male escort whose somewhat unexpected allegations against Ted Haggard are no doubt responsible for a sudden surge of hits to my blog posts concerning the now ex-head of the National Association of Evangelicals. The Colorado Springs Gazette has perhaps the most in-depth coverage:

Jones said he had advertised himself as an escort on the Internet and that a man who called himself Art contacted him. Jones said he later saw the man on television identified as Haggard.

…The Rev. Ross Parsley, associate senior pastor, will serve as acting senior pastor for 14,000-member New Life Church while the investigation into the allegations proceeds.

Parsley has since informed the media that Haggard has admitted to “some indiscretions”, and a planned press conference of national evangelical leaders to offer support has reportedly been called off. The Gazette continues:

…Greg Montoya, editor of a newspaper that focuses on Denver’s gay, lesbian and transgender community, Out Front Colorado, said Jones is a well known figure who was voted by the paper’s readers three times as the best massage artist and personal trainer in the area.

Jones’s website reveals that he was also “Former state bodybuilding and powerlifting champion”. The report adds that

…Montoya said rumors about Haggard’s love life have circulated through Denver’s gay community for the past year.

Meanwhile, Jones has been contacted by Jeff Sharlet, whose fair but critical profile of Haggard appeared in Harpers in May 2005:

I just talked to Jones on the phone. He’s not vindictive, nor particularly political; he’s voted for Republicans and Democrats. He struggled with his decision, out of compassion for a man in the closet. He was motivated, he said, simply by being a gay man who’s been around long enough to know how Ted’s politics play out in the ordinary lives of people Jones cares about. That’s about as good a motive for outing someone as I’ve ever heard.

Fair enough, although whether such an alleged revelation can be squared with the ethic of discretion that must be central to Jones’s profession is another matter. Sharlet also links us to a story he wrote for Nerve about Christian Right books on sex for men:

…Of course, if you ask [James] Dobson why homosexuality looms so large in the evangelical mind, he’ll tell you it’s because godless humanists planted it there by way of subversive signals in our television programming. Ask Pastor Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, and good cop to Dobson’s bad cop at the top of the evangelical world, and he’ll offer a more nuanced answer. Like most fundamentalists, Haggard believes that sexual sin is among the worst; he also knows it is the most common. Evangelicals, he’ll say, aren’t more obsessed with sexuality these days; rather, homosexuals are, somehow, more homosexual. The official line is that gay marriage marks a tipping point (Haggard, like many evangelicals, is a fan of Malcolm Gladwell’s book of that name) into wholesale hedonism. The unofficial line, among leaders such as Haggard and Dobson is that it’s a fight their side has already lost.

…Christian conservatives loathe all forms of homo- and bisexuality, of course, but it is the gay man (singular; he’s an archetype) who looms largest in their books and sermons and blogs and cell group meetings. Not, for the most part, as a figure of evil, but one to be almost envied. “The gay man” is the new seductress sent by Satan to tempt the men of Christendom. He takes what he wants and loves whom he will and his life, in the imagination of Christian men’s groups, is an endless succession of orgasms, interrupted only by jocular episodes of male bonhomie. The gay man promises a guilt-free existence, the garden before Eve. He is thought to exist in the purest state of “manhood,” which is boyhood, before there were girls.

New Life Church, meanwhile, has put out a statement (links added):

…Under the governing structure of New Life Church, there is a board of overseers consisting of four senior pastors of other congregations. Those overseers have authority to conduct an inquiry, to discipline the senior pastor, to remove him from his position, or to restore him to ministry. The overseers of New Life Church are: Rev. Larry Stockstill, Senior Pastor of Bethany World Prayer Center, in Baker, Louisiana; Rev. Mark Cowart, Senior Pastor of Church For All Nations in Colorado Springs; Rev. Tim Ralph, Senior Pastor of New Covenant Fellowship in Larkspur, Colorado; and Rev. Michael Ware, Senior Pastor of Victory Church in Westminister, Colorado.

That team should be able to get to the bottom of things – after all, in 1999 Mark Cowart discovered that Pokemon was a occultist conspiracy:

…While driving with his kids, he heard them in the back seat talking about “Abra” and “Cadabra,” and “my antenna went up,” Cowart said.

Cowart said one of his concerns is that one of the Pokeman characters sprouts horns. Another concern, he said, is that children exploring a Pokemon Web site can click to other games, including “Magic: the Gathering,” a game similar to Dungeons and Dragons.

Cowart got his children’s pastor to give a demonstration; he

burned Pokemon trading cards with a blowtorch and struck a plastic Pokemon action figure with a 30-inch sword.

Hopefully Haggard’s interrogation will be less intense…

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ASSIST Ministries reports on the plight of Suhad Massad, the wife of a Palestinian pastor who has been refused re-entry to Gaza by the Israeli authorities:

Suhad is a Jordanian citizen, residing in Gaza. Suhad and her husband, Rev. Hanna Massad, pastor the Gaza Baptist Church. Several months ago, Suhad and her 21-month-old daughter, Joyce, left their home in Gaza to visit her parents in Amman, where she gave birth to their second daughter, Jolene.

Recently, Dr. [Hanna] Massad was able to leave Gaza to come to Amman to take his wife and family back home. For some reason, Suhad’s visa application was denied, and only Pastor Hanna was able to return to Gaza (Joyce is an American Palestinian. Jolene is an American and will be issued a Palestinian ID when she enters Gaza).

So much for the Gaza “withdrawal” being a step forward for Palestinian self-determination, then. This was on 27 October; a more recent report adds:

…On Monday, Rev. Massad spoke with his attorney, who confirmed that their only option is to once again take the case to the Supreme Court in Jerusalem. This is not the first time Pastor Hanna has been forcibly separated from his family. In 2002, shortly after their marriage, Suhad returned to visit her parents in Amman and was refused a visa to return to her husband. Then, as now, a Supreme Court decision was required to reunite the couple.

No answer from the court is expected until late November.

This is the second ordeal for the Massads; the couple were separated for fourteen months in 2001-2002. Back in August, I blogged on the similar case of Grace El Yateem, the wife of the Lutheran minister Khader El Yateem. The El Yateems are both Palestinian-Americans, but during a trip to see relatives in Beit Jala Grace and their children were denied entry into Israel at the Jordanian border. The two cases highlight a widespread tragedy that’s been unfolding in recent months, and which the Middle East Times reported on a few days ago:

Last May Adel Samarra’s wife of 31 years left the West Bank to go to Jordan to renew her Israeli visa for the 126th time.

…Like thousands of other Palestinians, Samarra was left stranded by Israel’s recent decision to close a loophole that allowed thousands of foreign passport holders to remain in the Palestinian territories by renewing tourist visas every three months.

The new policy, which Israeli officials say is merely enforcement of an already existing law, has divided scores of Palestinian families and threatens to split up many more.

…The Israeli crackdown on the tourist visas is part of a broader campaign to undermine the Hamas government, observers say, but Palestinians say that it is collective punishment for their democratic choice in January’s parliamentary elections.

…Those turned away have been predominantly American passport holders, of which there are about 35,000 living in the West Bank and Gaza, according to the US embassy in Tel Aviv.

Apparently we’re not supposed to ask ourselves why so many people living under Israeli occupation have been obliged to follow such a strategy for such a long time (and much less should we compare their situation with the ease by which Jewish immigrants make their way to residency in Israeli settlements in the same Palestinian Territories). The cases of El Yateem and Massad, however, suggest that the policy of exclusion extends beyond just those who have to re-enter the country frequently in order to stay with their families.

When I blogged the El Yateem case, I suggested that some American politicians might like to bring some pressure to bear – particularly Michael McCaul and Joe Crowley, two US congressmen who made a huge show of their concern over “the plight of Palestinian Christians” back in June (as I blogged here). The two men sponsored a draft resolution calling for Palestinian Christians to be protected from Muslim extremists and from the Palestinian Authority; unsurprisingly, the phrase “Israeli occupation” was kept firmly off the agenda. Of course, this was all just cant and wind – the reality of Palestinian Christians suffering as a result of Israel’s policies stirred no interest, let alone indignation.

The situation of Suhad Massad is unlikely to inspire much action either, and details of her 2002 exclusion fell on deaf ears in Washington. ASSIST reported at the time:

Friends in the United States have tried to help by asking Rep. Dick Armey (R-TX), Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and others to intercede on Pastor Hanna’s behalf. Every request was refused.

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Lib Dem MP Removes His Name from List Supporting Operation Christmas Child

From The Guardian‘s diary column:

So you’re a backbench MP. You see a cuddly early day motion praising a group that sends much-needed Christmas presents to deprived children abroad. Do you sign it? Well, of course. Do you check the group out first? Well, probably not.

An “early day motion” (EDM) is a subject tabled to be debated in Parliament, but which will probably not in fact reach the floor of either House. Its purpose is to allow MPs to show their support for the issue concerned by signing their name to it. Of course, the idea of MPs checking out a group before endorsing it is an optimistic one – the satirical TV show Brass Eye showed several years ago that politicians are very easily manipulated when presented with the chance to be associated with a good cause.

So let’s not be too hard on Timothy Farron, [Liberal Democrat leader] Ming [Campbell]‘s principal private secretary, who put down an EDM last week endorsing the work of Operation Christmas Child’s shoebox appeal. Or MPs such as the rightwing Tory Andrew Rosindell, who put his name to it. How could they know that the charity’s leading light and founder Franklin Graham prompted controversy both here and in the US by describing Islam as a “wicked and evil religion”?…Contacted yesterday, Lib Dem MP Mike Hancock, one of the signatories, wrote to the table office asking for his name to be removed from the EDM. Mr Farron said that while he deplored Mr Graham’s remarks, the charity’s good works seemed more important. Mr Rosindell also supported the charity’s work but said he could not be expected to check the bona fides of every group he endorsed in an EDM…

The shoebox appeal is, of course, an offshoot of Samaritan’s Purse International, which combines humanitarian aid with proselytisation. As well as Graham’s notorious 2001 remarks on Islam, I noted in July that Ken Isaacs of SPI had tactfully declared that Israeli bombing of Lebanon had “softened the hearts of many Muslims in Lebanon to the spiritual truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ”.

Operation Christmas Child has been controversial in the UK for some time; the Guardian first raised concerns in 2002:

The charity says about 4,500 volunteers were involved in last year’s British appeal, which was backed by GMTV. For the past three years, Kwik-Fit has supported the initiative, allowing donors to leave boxes at its 650 tyre, exhaust and brake centres. In its annual report for 2000, SPI states that its objectives are “the advancement of the Christian faith through educational projects and the relief of poverty”, and it describes itself as “a faith relief mission agency”, although the latter does not appear in the 2001 report. The glossy appeal leaflets, which instruct children and parents what to put in boxes and how to pack them, do not make any mention of a missionary role.

However, SPI’s website features links to a Samaritan’s Purse newsletter from Graham, in which he states that God has blessed Operation Christmas Child “because it is about more than Christmas presents”. He says: “It is about introducing children and their families to God’s greatest gift – His Son, Jesus Christ. As long as evangelism is the focus, God will continue to bless it.”

…The Rev David Applin, chief executive of SPI, admits that a religious pamphlet – “The greatest gift of all” – is distributed with the boxes (though not inside them). But he denies that the appeal is evangelical.

As a result of this report and subsequent concerns raised by the Charity Commission, the organisation rewrote its fundraising material to make its religious mission clearer, and appointed David Vardy (brother of the controversial Creationist businessman Peter Vardy, whom I blogged on here) as new director. However, negative coverage continued, and in November 2003 the Co-operative Society broke links with the organisation:

Following complaints from Muslim pressure groups and its own members, the Co-op yesterday said it would no longer participate in Operation Christmas Child, a project supported by thousands of schools, churches and other organisations.

…”You are aware that we have received a large number of complaints regarding the comments of your trustee, Franklin Graham. Indeed, had we been aware of his views in advance, we would not have participated in Operation Christmas Child this year. It is unfortunate that our work together has come to an end in this way, as the shoe boxes of customers’ gifts will undoubtedly bring joy to many deserving children this year.”

Such coverage elicited a response from Vardy in the Guardian letters page:

…Samaritan’s Purse works in many countries and dispenses humanitarian aid to all, irrespective of race, political background or religion.

For example, Samaritan’s Purse has provided supplies and equipment to Al-Yarmouk hospital in Baghdad. Its director, Dr Mahdi Jasim Moosa, a Muslim, told Christianity Today: “Workers with Samaritan’s Purse didn’t preach or attempt to convert people.” Surely this has a degree of veracity which outweighs the opinion of those who fail to understand the reality of our aid operations, and our all-encompassing approach to assist anyone who needs help?

The Christianity Today article – which indeed shows that SPI’s humanitarian work is appreciated in Muslim countries – can be seen here.

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An advert currently featured on various news websites links to a site making a rather peculiar claim – over to World’s Last Chance:

THE BIBLE REVEALS NEXT AND LAST POPE WILL BE A DEVIL IMPERSONATING JOHN PAUL II

Interminable exegesis of the Book of Revelation follows – the basic argument is that the Lateran Treaty created the first Pope-King in 1929, six popes have followed him, and the next one will be an impersonation of one of his kingly predecessors:

…Now the most important reason: Which of the 7 kings is most known, loved and respected in today’s generation? If Satan would want to lead the world into imposing universal laws for exalting his false Sabbath (Sunday), who would be the most effective personality other than John Paul II?…Again, no one is better suited for carrying the agenda of Satan than John Paul II. Hence, impersonating him makes the most sense for Satan, who is intent on deceiving the whole world.

Connoisseurs will quickly recognise that we’re in “Seventh-Day Adventist offshoot” territory, and a bit of Googling brings us to a February press release:

Egyptian businessman Galal Doss officially offers $64,000 to any individual who can prove the Bible shows that Christ or any one of his disciples sanctioned the transfer of the holy Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. Mr Doss is determined to show the world that major religious figures, including many Popes of Rome, have been misleading their followers, and hopes this initiative will encourage Christians to challenge received wisdom on the subject.

All those who would like to challenge Mr Doss on the subject of the Sabbath and stand a chance of winning $64,000 are encouraged to provide their evidence here: http://www.worldslastchance.com/competition.html.

Mr Doss has been in the news in the past, and in 2003 he was profiled in Al-Ahram:

For the past two years, Galal Doss, the chairman of a popular cosmetic and food company, has been distributing thousands of brochures and calendars featuring his ideas on Christianity to Egypt’s Coptic Christian community. Doss is a former member of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church who left the group in 1999 to propagate Adventist beliefs on his own because he felt the church was not doing enough.

…Doss told Al-Ahram Weekly that he was born and raised as an Adventist, but that he left the group in 1999 because of “their weakness in dealing with social and religious issues”. Since then he has practiced independently, and prefers to refer to himself as someone who is “preserving God’s commandments”. Although he says he is not the “leader of any group”, Doss says between 10-20 people have the same beliefs as he does.

Doss’s efforts at converting the Copts have, unsurprisingly, annoyed the Coptic patriarch:

Al-Keraza, a weekly church magazine which [Pope] Shenouda edits, has featured several articles by Shenouda himself critical of the Adventist- inspired group’s creeds.

One bemused Coptic recipient of Doss’s pamphlets and calendars described the material as “very strange”.

EDGAR Online tells us about Doss’s business interests:

Galal P. Doss

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Family Nutrition, S.A.E.; Chairman, Family Cosmetics, S.A.E. (both Egyptian companies listed on the Egyptian Stock Exchange).

Zawya adds that Doss is Canadian-Egyptian, and that Family Cosmetics is a subsidiary of Avon (premium content; gleaned from Google). According a 2005 $treet Authority report, Doss also has US interests (link added):

A.T. Cross has been in business since 1846, and over the years this company’s high quality writing instruments have built valuable name-brand recognition in the minds of consumers…Cross is a closely held firm, as insiders own the majority of the shares. Director Galal Doss alone owns roughly two-thirds of the company.

EDGAR also tells us that Doss is a director of Phoenix Resource Companies, Inc., which is involved with drilling for oil in Egypt. And – just to provide even more information than anyone might possibly be interested in – from Baking & Snack International we learn that

Family Nutrition SAE, located in 10th Ramadan City, Egypt, is the leader in the biscuit category with an estimated 19% value share. The company produces a wide range of sweet biscuits including brands such as Borio, Nice and Rasco. It also has leading brands with Nity in cakes and Tac in salty biscuits.

One Coptic website alleges that Doss uses his position as a bully-pulpit:

…He tries to force his doctrines upon his factory workers, employing various methods…It is unethical for him to take advantage of the workplace to attempt to convert originally Orthodox persons, teaching them unorthodox doctrines!

This is why we encourage our Coptic Orthodox congregation to ban Family Foods and Avon Products.  And, if he does terminate our Coptic Orthodox engineers and workers, many of our businessmen everywhere are willing to hire them.  We are not concerned lest our people are terminated, but on the contrary, we are concerned lest they remain!

More details appear in a second document:

[Seventh-Day Adventists] came to Egypt in 1932, as a Christian denomination (a false claim), offering help to the needy; and establishing orphanages, schools, and hospitals.

…The priest [sic] named Helal Doss led this group; and Mr. Galal Philip Doss became one of their most active leaders.  Currently, he is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Family Foods Co., previously known as Nutrition Co.  He is also the CEO of Avon Co., for cosmetics.

In the former company are 1000 Christian workers and staff members; while in the latter, 446 Christian. The two companies have factories in the Tenth of Ramadan City, as well as many subsidiaries, similar to sales outlets.  These include subsidiaries for Avon Co., in Alexandria, Aghakhan, Merry Land, Maady, and Garden City.

Mr. Galal Doss conducts daily meetings, for groups of workers in these companies.  He gives 35 lectures to each group, most of them attacking the Christian faith and the Orthodox dogma.  After the block of lectures has been delivered, he publicly asks, “who became an Adventist”? Anyone who was convinced of what he said will then undergo another set of lectures, to fortify their deviated Adventist dogma.

He conducts other meetings in his own house, in the Sheraton Towers, every Saturday.  He even assigns special cars to pick up those living far distances, yet want to attend the meeting.  Furthermore, he regularly visits and calls people persistently and with enticement.  Moreover, he distributes non-Orthodox books and cassette tapes for free.  He also utilizes the companies’ funds to facilitate medical treatment fees for those who attend the meetings.  Further, he accepts the workers’ children into Adventist language schools.

Meanwhile, Doss has also targeted the Ten Commandments Commission:

“Time will prove that the misguided initiative of TCC is but a bold step towards the fulfillment of Bible prophecy, which foretold the day when church and state in the USA will work together towards the forced exaltation of Sunday as a day of worship…”

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From the Middleton Guardian:

MIDDLETON Guardian journalist, Jeni Harvey, rubbed shoulders with the great and the good during a high profile awards ceremony on Monday night.

The 24-year-old journalist, who has been with the Middleton & North Manchester Guardian for 18 months, was shortlisted for the prestigious Paul Foot Award for her work in exposing the financial and emotional costs of the satanic child abuse scandal which rocked Langley.

Private Eye magazine (1170) has further details:

Fighting against the full weight of the law and the determination of the local council to prevent the appalling injustice of the Rochdale satanic child abuse affair being exposed to public scrutiny, Harvey challenged court order and used the Freedom of Information Act to reveal the highly dubious practices of Rochdale Council’s social services department. Refusing to let the scandal rest, Harvey used both her own paper and a BBC documentary to, as the judges put it, “expose the full horror of a despicable affair the council was determined to keep secret”.

The award-winning series itself can be seen here. The “despicable affair”, of course, was the removal of children from their homes on bogus grounds of “Satanic abuse” in 1990, as part of a panic that had spread all the way from California (where the McMartin Preschool case has also unravelled). We would like to think that such panics are now a thing of the past; but the hysteria shows sporadic signs of making a comeback – see my Talk to Action article here.

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The Washington City Paper brings us back to a topic that has been an on-going area of enquiry for this blog: the neo-Pentecostal grouping known as Every Nation. Details of interest appear in a profile of a certain Mark Brunell, who is apparently a famous player of American football (links added):

In the fall of 2004, during his lousy first season with the Skins, Brunell was part of a group that included former Jacksonville teammate Tony Boselli that invested in InPop Records…Brunell’s stable of talent includes several righteous rockers who are or were at one time on the fringe of the mainstream music scene, acts such as Newsboys, Mat Kearney, Petra, and Superchick.

…InPop is only the most audible of Brunell’s off-field commercial projects. In the noncommercial vein, he’s long been a frontman for Every Nation, an evangelical organization based in the Nashville area. Other celebrity proselytizers for the ministry include Boselli and former Redskins Tim Johnson and Darrell Green.

…Newsboys’ go-to slogan, featured on the front page of the band’s Web site, is “every tribe, every tongue, every nation.” Newsboys’ last major tour was called the “Have You Done the Purple Book?” campaign. At the shows, attendees were given copies of the “Purple Book,” also known as Biblical Foundations for Building Strong Disciples, which is the handbook that those in the Every Nation flock are tasked with memorizing.

…Brunell is also the public face of a group called Champions for Christ, whose catchphrase is “Every Person. Every Team. Every Sport. Every Nation.”

The report notes that Brunell’s former marketing representative was Greg Feste, who has long-standing links with Every Nation’s leaders. Feste was allegedly “accused of putting the fear of God into Chicago Bears running back Curtis Enis to get him to switch agents.”

There is also a predictably negative quote from Rick Ross, followed by details of a couple of cases where Every Nation has been accused of coercive behaviour. One of these, concerning Hillsboro High School, has been discussed on this blog already; the second, however, is news to me:

…in January, Judy Peters, a former Fairfax County schoolteacher now living in the Pittsburgh area, brought Ross in for an intervention in hopes of deprogramming a daughter who had turned on her kin after being recruited by Every Nation on the Boston University campus.

“Every Nation controlled her entire life, and they were so abusive and coercive,” says Peters. “Everybody who was not a part of their church was dead to her. They brought her to Nashville and put her in a two-bedroom apartment with five girls for what they called ‘training.’ [In Boston] they had her working more than 80 hours a week for the church, most of it fundraising, and for that she was being paid $550 a month…They told her who to trust, who not to believe, who she could hang out with, what she could read—she had to memorize the Purple Book—and what music she could listen to.”

(Hat tip to a reader)

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There is a popular anecdote among Christian apologists that Voltaire (1694-1778) once remarked that the Bible would soon become a forgotten book, but the house in which he made this prediction later became the headquarters of a Bible Society who used it to publish or distribute Bibles…The Bible society in question is variously identified as the Geneva Bible Society and the British and Foreign Bible Society.

So begins an article by David Ross which appeared in a New Zealand humanist publication in 2004. Ross debunks the story and expresses scepticism about the supposed statement attributed to Voltaire.

However, the Bible Society now finds itself part of another anecdote about a building being reused in an ironical way; the PA reports:

The Church of Scientology unveiled its new London headquarters today with a grand opening ceremony.

The controversial religion, which counts Hollywood stars Tom Cruise and John Travolta among its followers, is expanding its British operation.

It has bought and refurbished the former home of the British and Foreign Bible Society, latterly the offices of BP, for its new HQ.

This is 146 Queen Victoria Street, at the heart of the City of London.

…speakers at the event included United Nations peace envoy Dr Iftikhar Ahmed Ayaz, who praised the faith and told the crowd: “It is my personal belief that this church can restore what this world has lately lost.”

Kevin Hurley, divisional commander of the local Snow Hill police station welcomed the church to the City and said its members were “raising the spiritual wealth of society”.

Ayaz has had public links with Scientology for several years. In 2004, he was part of an interfaith meeting at the new religious movement’s UK HQ in East Grinstead:

Dr. Iftikhar Ayaz, OBE, Honorary Consul for Tuvalu and the representative of the Pacific Islands in a United Nations Peace Forum, commented, “the best outcome was that all the religions and non-religious organisations agreed to form a collective organisation in order to pursue the ideas for creating interfaith and intercultural and inter-ethnic harmony in the British society and to try and make an impact on the various conflict areas of the world, so that we can make our own contribution to the ongoing struggle for realising peace and harmony. Unity gives strength, and the more unity we can create the more strength we will have.”

Last November, he contributed to a Scientology-sponsored conference on children’s rights; Open Press reported:

Participants to an international conference titled “The abuse of Children in Europe and beyond”, held in Brussels today, have unanimously launched a strong, clear-cut appeal to democratic institutions, governments and civil society – to stop any and all abuses committed against children. The conference has also signed a declaration demanding that forced drugging of children on so-called behavioural disorders be ceased immediately due to the growing evidence of harmful effects, such as suicidal tendencies and aggression – a key theme of the expert discussion panel at the end of the Universal Children’s Day conference. The Conference’s Declaration is being forwarded to European national governments and otherwise spread and circulated through the human rights NGO network.

Amongst the participants to the conference held at the European Human Rights Office of the Church of Scientology International, Dr Iftikhar Ayaz, Member of Minority Rights Group of the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC), Dr. Roberto Cestari, Consultant of the Tuscany and Piedmont Region of Italy for Human Rights and Mental Health and president of the Citizen’s Commission on Human Rights, Italian MEP Luciana Sbarbati, and UK author and psychiatrist, Sami Timimi. Dr. Liwiski, Vice President of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, Dr. Liwski, also addressed the conference in Brussels via a video conference link from Buenos Aires.

Meanwhile, Kevin Hurley’s involvement in the celebrations for the new London centre has brought him criticism; the Guardian reports:

Chris Peeler, of the Family Action Information Resource Centre, which works with families who believe relatives have been indoctrinated into cults, said yesterday police officers had to be careful which groups they endorsed. He complained to Chief Superintendent Kevin Hurley over comments he made at the opening of the Scientologists’ centre in the Square Mile on Sunday. Mr Hurley said the group was a “force for good” and praised it for helping victims of the July 7 attacks last year. Mr Peeler said: “I asked him if…he was aware that the organisation had a controversial record.”

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From the Hirondelle News Agency (via All Africa):

A Rwandan catholic priest, Abbot [i.e. “Father”] Jean Marie Vianney Uwizeyeyezu, head of the parish of Kaduha (district of Nyamagabe, Southern Rwanda), was condemned on October 6th to 12 years of imprisonment for “having downplayed the genocide”, his lawyer has declared.

…According to Imvaho Nshya, a pro-government weekly published in kinyarwanda, the national tongue, the priest, while officiating back in April during the commemoration of the genocide, would have understated the massacre of Tutsis in 1994. The newspaper states that the priest’s discourse contained several Rwandan sayings that were interpreted as negationism.

This was in violation of a law passed on 6 September 2003. Whether or not such a law is a good idea, the context is somewhat different from France outlawing Armenian genocide denial; it should be noted that in recent years several genocide survivors in Kaduha have been murdered to prevent them giving testimony in court. The nature of Rwandan “genocide denial” is discussed in a 2005 report from Front Line, an Irish human rights organisation:

President Kagame and Government officials repeatedly accused former Prime Minister [Faustin] Twagiramungu, Kagame’s only credible opponent in the [2003] presidential race, of promoting ethnic divisions and denying the genocide…The accusation of genocide denial stems from Twagiramungu’s testimony in defence of Pastor Elizaphan Ntakirutimana at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (Ntakirutimana was convicted). There, Twagiramungu did not deny the genocide per se, but rather that it was planned and that it only targeted Tutsi. He also proposed some pernicious revisionism: that more Hutu were ‘probably’ killed than Tutsi during the period from 1990 to 1994.

Alexandre Kimenyi, himself a survivor and now a professor of Linguistics and Ethnic Studies in the USA, gives further details in an article from the UCLA International Institute:

Kimenyi was critical of the widely used phrase “Rwandan genocide.” This made it difficult for people out side the country to fix in their minds who was being killed. The term “Rwandan genocide,” Kimenyi said, is used by some writers not to signify the murder of the Tutsis “but to suggest apparently that the two groups were killing each other.”

Another term used to deny genocide in Rwanda is “civil war.” Because “if there are acts of war, two groups kill each other.” Not a civil war but a massacre took place in the spring of 1994. The number killed, Alexandre Kimenyi said, “is more than a million, although the UN and other governments refuse to accept that number.”

Alexandre Kimenyi said that he was particularly concerned because many Hutu spokespeople who deny the Tutsi genocide “are very well educated, they have very influential friends. They not only raise these arguments on the internet but they also have journals where they publish articles, well footnoted, where they claim the victims were the ones responsible for the killings that took place.”

…In Professor Kimenyi’s opinion, the many well-educated Hutus who live abroad create a problem in disseminating the truth because of their efforts to convince foreign public opinion of their position of denial.

But what about the hapless Uwizeyeyezu? Details are scarce, but a priest of the same name and from the same area was featured in a 1999 report entitled “Damien Biniga: UN Genocide Sans Frontieres”, and published by African Rights (and posted here). And if this is the same person, this where things get a bit odd – because this report describes Uwizeyeyezu as someone who helped Tutsi refugees in the face of obstruction from his priestly superiors:

Jean Marie-Vianney Uwizeyeyezu, âgé de 34 ans, se prepare actuellement pour sa prêtrise au grand séminaire de Nyakibanda, à Gishamvu, Butare. A la mi-1993, il était en stage à la paroisse de Muganza, aidant les abbés Sagahutu et Jean-Marie Rwanyambuto. En visite chez ses parents à Nyamagabe, Gikongoro, il réalisa que les Tutsis étaient tués et que leurs maison étaient incendiées, suite à la mort d’Habyarimana . Il retournait à Muganza lorsqu’il apprit que l’abbé Rwanyambuto avait quitté Muganza et que l’abbé Sagahutu était seul. Il espérait que le fait d’être hutu le protégerait des violence et qu’il pourrait ainsi aider ceux qui en avaient besoin.

He also testifies to the slaughter of Tutsis:

Le 15, les génocidaires sont revenus avec des grenades, des fusils, des machettes, des lances etc.. Ils étaient trop nombreux. Ils nous nous ont encerclés et ont commencée à tuer. Beaucoup de Tutsis ont été tués immédiatement, d’autres ont été blessés. Ils ont tué jusqu’au soir . Après leur départ, nous avons commencé à ramasser les blessés, mais il n’y avait pas moyen de les soigner. Certains n’avaient plus de jambes. Nous étions complètement découragés.

Uwizeyeyezu also apparently appeared as a witness at the trial of Mgr Augustin Misago, who was accused of refusing to shelter Tutsis from Hutu mobs (he was eventually acquitted, amidst some controversy).

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EU Vice-President: “We are against fundamentalism, but we support religion”

More melodramatic rhetoric in the debate over religion in Europe. ASSIST Ministries reports:

Persecution is coming to the West. Under the guise of tolerance Bible believing Christians of all confessions are subjected to suppressive intolerance, warns a declaration issued at the Ecumenical Confessional Convention in Blankenburg, East Germany.

(“East Germany”?!)

The event with 130 Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox representatives was convened by the evangelical missiologist Prof. Peter Beyerhaus. The so-called Blankenburg Proclamation speaks of a dangerous anti-Christian influence on legislation, academic life and school education.

Scientists, who believe in God as the creator, were subjected to public defamation. Christians, not willing to compromise their faith, had to face ridicule, intolerance, stigmatization and career obstacles.

Who these “scientists” supposedly are is not explained, and one fears that Beyerhaus is actually trying to dress up objections to Intelligent Design and other forms of Creationism as some sort of persecution.

…According to the proclamation this “concealed affliction” may soon turn into open persecution. The threat could come from several directions – from globalization favoring the formation of totalitarian regimes, from growing syncretism, and from Islam.

The report mentions the families of German home-schoolers being subject to prosecution, and the falling population rate. This latter trend has been the subject of sensationalist Jeremiads from Roman Catholic neo-con George Weigel; I gave my own critique of this here.

Beyerhaus, it should be recalled, is the evangelical leader closest to the Pope; Christianity Today noted last year:

As a professor at Tübingen during the turbulent ’60s, Ratzinger forged an alliance with Peter Beyerhaus and other evangelical leaders to stand together against the forces of unchecked secularism and unbelief.

“We saw,” Benedict said, “that the confessional controversies we had previously engaged in were small indeed in the face of the challenge we now confronted, which put us in a position of having, together, to bear witness to our common faith in the living God and in Christ, the incarnate Word.”

Meanwhile, similar worries have been expressed by EU Vice-President Mario Mauro, speaking at a conference entitled “Europe at a turning point: confrontation of civilizations or a new dialogue?”. According to Interfax-Religion, Mauro believes there

…is a ‘conviction of many in that Europe should be build without religion and that this strategy is needed for opposing fundamentalism.’

‘They confuse fundamentalism and religion. We are against fundamentalism, but we support religion. Religion is a human dimension,’ the vice-president of the European Parliament remarked.

According to him, those opposing the participation of Churches in the European public life may become a ‘source of destruction of a political project of the one Europe.’

In his presentation at the conference Mauro said that moral relativism is a main challenge to Europe at present. ‘An attempt of certain countries to build society without God brings about very serious problems.’

‘However, Europe that does not believe would disappear sooner or later,’ a European deputy is convinced.

In particular, Mauro complains about a recent court ruling that the ban on women visiting Mount Athos violated human rights:

‘For the last ten years the Europarliament accused the Orthodox and Catholic Churches of violating human rights more then thirty times, but not once brought similar accusations against such states as, for instance, China or Cuba,’

This is a complaint that has also been made by “theo-con” politician Rocco Buttiglione, which I blogged on (and critiqued) back in 2004, and it is no surprise that the two men are close. From a dodgily-translated 2003 article:

During the Press Conference held yesterday with Italian Minister for European Affairs, Rocco Buttiglione as well as the organising group of [European People’s Party-European Democrat] MEPs…400,000 signatures gathered by the civil society in support of the explicit recognition of the Christian heritage of Europe in the future Constitution were presented to Minister Buttiglione as representative of the Presidency of Council…Mr Mauro (EEP-ED, [Forza Italia]) recalled the explicit recognition of the Christian heritage in the Constitution does not threaten the “laicité” of the European institutions. It is in fact the guarantor of the very “laicité” that marks European society.

The morbid hysteria over secularism in Europe is a subject that I’ve also looked at here and here.

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Christian Retailing magazine has a short interview (2 October 2006, p. 35) with Ken Ham about his latest project, a children’s book entitled It’s Designed to Do What It Does Do:

…Sadly, children are growing up thinking the Bible is just a book of nice stories and has nothing to do with fossils, dinosaurs and so on…The majority of children believe dinosaurs didn’t live with people.

That’s a big change from my day, when One Million Years BC enjoyed frequent showings on TV. However, Ham believes dinosaurs have an evangelical purpose:

Because children are enamored of dinosaurs, creationists can use them to teach children the truth – that they were created on day six beside Adam and Eve, that they were vegetarians before sin entered the world and that the average dinosaur was the size of a sheep. Children need to know that the Bible’s account of history explains dinosaurs…

This reminds me of G. Thomas Sharp, a creationist whom I blogged here. According to Sharp, dinosaurs are “God’s Gospel Lizards”.

(Image via Jesus’ General)

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