Bartholomew's Notes

Just as Christianity Today reports on the persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia (a subject of this blog here), the AP provides details on the “anti-religious trial” currently underway in Moscow:

Yuri Samodurov, who manages the Andrei Sakharov Museum, was charged after holding an exhibit titled “Caution, Religion” in January 2003.

Samodurov and his colleague, Lyudmila Vasilovskaya, face up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $17,000 if found guilty of inciting religious hatred, while artist Anna Mikhalchuk faces a prison term of up to four years and a fine…

And what exactly did they exhibit to face such a heavy penalty?

Exhibited works by about 40 artists included a Russian Orthodox-style icon with a hole instead of a head where visitors could insert their faces.

Another work featured a Coca-Cola logo against the usual red background but with Jesus’ face drawn next to it and the words, “This is my blood.”

The AP also adds that:

The exhibit was vandalized four days after its opening. The six attackers were detained and charged with hooliganism, but the charges were dropped after a publicity campaign conducted by a Russian Orthodox priest.

And who would the priest be? Art News Online reports:

In January 2003, a gang of Russian Orthodox activists destroyed an exhibition in the Sakharov Museum and Public Center called “Caution! Religion.” Last December two Sakharov Museum…

The vandals were locked in the gallery by an alert custodian and arrested by the police. But they had influential protectors. All of them were members of the congregation of St. Nicholas in Pyzhi, whose archpriest, Alexander Shargunov, is a well-known radical fundamentalist. A graduate of the Institute of Foreign Languages in Moscow and a former translator of poetry, Shargunov abandoned literature for the priesthood and since the early 1980s has been campaigning for the canonization of Russia’s last czar, Nicholas II, and his family. In 1997 he established a movement called the Social Committee “For the Moral Revival of the Fatherland.” In 2001 the committee’s Web site carried instructions on how to vandalize “immoral” billboards by splashing paint on them, and followers promptly destroyed 150 billboards in Moscow. Now the Social Committee is agitating against the ad campaign for the popular Red Devil Energy Drink, which Shargunov believes promotes Satanism.

Shargunov, as it happens, was a subject of the very first day of this blog, where I noted both his pamphlet about the soldier Evgeny Rodionov and his compilation about Tsar Nicolas II, that states that:

Even if many will become silent out of fear of the Jews about the murder of the Royal passion-bearers, the rocks will cry out.

Funnily, that doesn’t count as inciting religious hatred…

The outcome of the trial would appear to be a foregone conclusion, their guilt having already been affirmed by the Russian Parliament:

In February 2003, the Duma passed a decree stating that the 1999 exhibition’s purpose had been to incite religious hatred and to insult the feelings of believers and the Orthodox Church. The state prosecutor was ordered to take action against the organizers, with 265 of 267 deputies present approving the measure. Sergei Yushenkov, leader of the Liberal Russia party and one of the two who voted against the measure, mounted the podium and stated sadly, “We are witnessing the origin of a totalitarian state led by the Orthodox Church.” (Yushenkov was murdered in Moscow a few weeks later. Four men were convicted of his murder in March.)

However, Art News notes also that the Patriarchate itself is not calling for the harsh penalty against Samodurov. Probably his defence of Chechen human rights is the real reason the government wants him put away: the outrage of religious fundamentalists is just a means to an end.

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Michael Newdow may have lost the Supreme Court case over “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance, but Yahoo News (via Christianity Today) reports on a consolation prize: he’s just won a $1 million dollar libel suit against the Rev Austin Miles, although he does not expect to receive the cash:

In an Internet posting shortly after the federal appeals court ruling [favouring Newdow in 2002], Miles accused Newdow of perjury, saying he lied about his daughter suffering “emotional damage” and “a sense of being left out” for not reciting the pledge at school.

Newdow argued that he never said any such thing. Miles has also claimed that Newdow had undertaken frivolous lawsuits against WorldNetDaily and ASSIST News Service (which Miles contributes to), among many others, with the aim of persecuting Christians. Newdow is a qualified attorney, and Miles sought to use all these grounds to have him disbarred in California. Miles’ full complaint, filed in 2003, can be found here.

Miles also objected to Newdow on moral grounds. Writing in BushCountry.org, he tells us that:

Michael Newdow, the atheist whose persistence resulted in having the Pledge of Allegiance declared illegal shortly after the attacks on America on 9/11 (which made his actions even more outrageous), is a man who can count on support from the liberal establishment. One would be hard-pressed to witness a more traitorous action than that of this man who latched onto one of America’s greatest emergencies in order to bring attention to himself; giving comfort to the enemy in the process while dividing America (to the delight of the enemy) and harpooning the morale of a grieving and shocked country still digging for bodies of loved ones buried under the rubble of the World’s Trade Buildings and the Pentagon.

Miles also claims that Newdow runs Evolvefish, which contains a link to (weird grammar and square brackets in original)

the most shocking blasphemous website of all that Newdow is connected to, called: God’s ex boyfriend. The site is blatantly homosexual and explicit and the name of the ‘writer’ is Scott, which is possible [to be] one of the names that Newdow uses. And to suggest that God is homosexual and had a ‘boyfriend’ is, I believe, the unpardonable sin.

However, Evolvefish, which is based in Colorado, denies any official connection with Newdow, (although it supports him) and Miles offers no reason why he thinks Newdow is Scott, except that Newdow is a Bad Person. But a look at Scott’s website shows it to be an obviously unconnected blog by someone else who just happens to agree with Newdow. Miles, a 70 year old who has suffered two strokes, also makes much of Newdow supposedly persecuting an old man in ill health.

But who is Austin Miles? Several stories from the mid 1990s have been gathered by someone called Shy David here [UPDATE: Shy David has now contributed to the comments]. It appears Miles has clashed with the law in the past:

A former evangelical preacher has been convicted of violating a state law by publishing a sheriff deputy’s home address in his conservative Christian newsletter.

Prosecutors said the Rev. Austin Miles published the address of Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Deputy Charles Mould in The Connecting Link as a protest last year after county officials took over custody of a 6-year-old with leukemia.

Miles had also allegedly claimed that there exists an “alternative treatment for cancer including herb therapy which has been proved amazingly effective”.

Miles is a former clown and ringmaster, and is the source of a number of other claims, most recently that school children in California were being indoctrinated into Islam, a story Miles broke in ASSIST. He also tells us that Madalyn Murray O’Hair almost converted to Christianity before an unnamed evangelist she was impressed by fell from grace. Interestingly, for a while Miles was himself an atheist, having left the Assemblies of God and Jim Bakker’s entourage, and during this time he wrote an exposé, titled Don’t Call Me Brother. This book contains the following accusations, according to an advert:

Austin Miles opened the door on the steam room where Jim Bakker was cavorting – in the nude – with three other men.

Austin Miles watched the development of Jim Bakker’s violent mood swings and saw the chilling possibility that Jim Bakker could have become another Jim Jones.

Austin Miles was there when Jim Bakker started a fist fight with his producer over the favors of the current Miss America.

However, another Christian has taken issue with Miles’s book:

Miles does spend a great deal of time describing how the Assemblies of God church ruined his life, his health, his finances, and so on, supposedly with some help from the FBI. Yes, the FBI. I must admit that I do find much of what I read in his tell-all hard to believe. After all, it seems odd that Miles should have been privy to so many damaging and important conversations, been victimized by so many people, been at just the right (wrong?) place at just the wrong (right?) time so many times, peeking in doors, standing in hallways, just as this or that person does this or that thing that evokes a startling revelation…had we not known otherwise, we would have supposed that this was the biography of a Montana Freeman. But that’s what he’d have us swallow, and I’ll just have to accept it at face value. If I didn’t, he’d undoubtedly accuse me of being judgmental.

No doubt the same malign forces that have victimized Miles through the years will now be held responsible for Newdow’s legal victory against him.

UPDATE 1: Austin Miles has re-surfaced in relation to James Watt. See here.

UPDATE 2: The default judgement has been set aside. See here.

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The Ghanaian Chronicle has been reporting on Ghana’s Charismatic churches, with an emphasis on the powerful Winners Chapel:

we have learnt that at Winners Chapel alone, over $60,000 was sent monthly from Ghana to the Nigerian headquarters of the church – tax-free! It is significant that but for the current leadership struggle in the church, the average citizen and probably the ordinary church member would never have learnt the truth of how the tithe and offering money were changed into dollars on the black market and sent to Lagos, smuggled in car tyres and what not, like some drug barons trying to launder their dirty money.

What has been revealed so far about the strange goings-on in that church points to just one thing: a massive illegality has been perpetrated against this country and as far as we at The Chronicle are concerned, must be accounted for, no matter whose ox is gored.

According to an earlier report, this has all come out because the leader of Winners Chapel of Ghana, Bishop George Adjeman, had decided to stop making the payments to Nigeria. The church’s Nigerian head, Bishop David Oyedepo, responded by dismissing Adjeman against the wishes of the Ghanaian congregation, leading to secession, legal action, and – if an astonishing piece of gossip is to be believed – regional tension:

news [is] going round that the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo, has threatened to stop supplying oil to Ghana if a Nigerian did not replace the Ghanaian bishop.

Oyedepo is very popular on the international circuit of Charismatic and neo-Pentecostal speakers, and is an associate of NAE leader Ted Haggard. Oyedepo’s flagship Faith Tabernacle in Lagos is described by one Christian source, writing in 2000, as follows:

the largest church facility in the world, seating an approximate 53,000 people. In addition to this mega sanctuary, their campus also consists of a Bible college, residential quarters and various other facilities that enhance their outreach to the city. Judging by the more than 47,000 attendees in one service, they are doing an excellent job of impacting their region.

The BBC, profiling the Tabernacle in 1999, provides some wider context:

As living standards have collapsed in the past 15 years, and as schools and hospitals fall down, so bigger and bigger churches are still being built.

Online Nigeria provides a profile of the man himself:

David Oyedepo, general overseer of Living Faith Ministries aka Winners Chapel has grown to become an oak tree in Christendom. His 50,000 capacity worship centre known as Cannanland in Otta, Ogun State , has attracted Christian worshippers from within and outside the country. Newswatch learnt that in the last 10 years of his ministry, many barren women have given birth to babies after attending his miracle programmes. Many more claimed that they received healings, secured employment, financial breakthroughs, turn-arounds in their respective businesses and deliverance from ancestral curses.

Oyedepo’s motivational, faith-building teachings have also endeared him to many. As part of his outreach programmes, the church acquired an aircraft in 1996 to facilitate his evangelism programmes to countries outside Nigeria . Tagged “Gospel on Wings,” the programme was launched as an arm of the World Mission Agency Incorporated – the organ responsible for foreign mission operations.

Today, the church is said to exist in every state of Nigeria and in some other African countries. Oyedepo has more than 20 books published by his Dominion Publishing House to complement his soul- winning efforts.

Newswatch gives further details:

David Oyedepo, bishop of Living Faith Outreach more popular as Winners’’ Chapel, is a man who lives like an accomplished person. Whenever he or Faith, his wife is going out in the town, either separately or together, they usually go out with a convoy of vehicles and blaring of siren to beat the traffic. The couple like riding in posh jeep vehicles with one or two vehicles in front and a similar number of cars following the one occupied by either of them.

Although the Winners’ Chapel is one of Africa’s fastest-growing Pentecostal churches, Oyedepo is often invited for crusades by other churches. He has a global vision of evangelism and has taken the gospel outside the shores of Nigeria, which have yielded a lot of financial rewards. “Your financial revolution is tied to what you do with your finances on the gospel,” he often tells his congregation.

As part of his outreach programmes, Oyedepo, who is stupendously rich acquired a multi-million naira aircraft in 1996 to facilitate his evangelism programmes to countries outside Nigeria. This earned him the appellation “Jet-Age pastor”. This powerful man of God believes that he is sent to a generation and not just a denomination to work signs and wonders. Only recently, Oyedepo established the Covenant University in Ota, Ogun State, thereby using his wealth for the promotion of tertiary education in Nigeria.

Dipo Ajayi, a pastor of the church, however, said that the money Winners’ Chapel has made came from voluntary contributions. “Your financial standing as a Christian, born-again is not dictated by the economy of the nation. We are self-sufficient; we operate the heavenly budget,” he said.

Last autumn Oyedepo contributed to a book about the global significance of Nigerian Christianity edited by C Peter Wagner, the influential American Charismatic who promotes “spiritual warfare” ideas. The article from 2000 also notes that in Wagner’s terminology, Oyedepo is running an “Apostolic reformation” church, meaning a church held together through the spiritual charisma of its leader rather than a denominational structure. Wagner sees these kinds of churches as the future of Christianity, and just last October Oyedepo was speaking at a revival conference convened by Wagner at Haggard’s New Life Church in Colorado. Perhaps a financial accountability conference should be next on the agenda?

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Part One

For a while now Hal Lindsey has been promoting Zion Oil & Gas, a company that introduces itself as a

private U.S.-based corporation formed under Delaware corporation law [the laxest in the USA – RB], exploring for oil and gas in Israel on a licensed area of approximately 95,800 acres located onshore between Tel Aviv and Haifa.

The company is looking for funds that

will be principally used to drill one or more high-risk oil and gas exploratory wells on the license. In the event of a commercial discovery, following recoupment of certain exploratory costs, Zion intends to donate 6% of its gross revenues from the license to two charitable trusts to be established by Zion, one in Israel and one in the U.S.

According to Lindsey, writing recently in WorldNetDaily:

[Genesis 49] predicts [Jacob’s] great blessing [to Joseph] will come from “the deep that lies beneath” his land. And specifically on “crown of his head.” The land that was allotted to Joseph’s two sons forms the profile of a man’s head.

Now listen to another prophecy about the blessing of another of Jacob’s sons whose land adjoins Joseph’s.

Moses proclaimed blessings on Jacob’s sons just before he died. He predicted concerning Asher:

Asher is most blessed of sons; let him be favored by his brothers, and let him dip his foot in OIL.

– Deuteronomy 33:24

Not sure about the geographical Rorschach test (Hal provides a map; you can judge for yourself), and one suspects some kind of anointing oil is suggested in Deut 33 (any Hebraists out there?), but those suitably impressed by Hal’s previous predictions (the USSR attacking Israel and nuking the USA comes to mind for some reason, or the end of the world in the 1980s) should know that Zion Oil and Gas is a hot Hal tip for investors:

The land allotted to Asher looks like a leg with a foot. Its toe points straight at the crown of Joseph’s head. Zion Oil’s leases are directly under where Asher’s toe points. Coincidence? If it were anywhere other than Israel, I would say it is merely coincidence. But here we are dealing with a nation of miracles in the crosshairs of God’s prophetic Word.

One thing Lindsey doesn’t tell us, though: Zion Oil and Gas includes on its board as a director Ralph F. DeVore, who is described as being also “a director of Hal Lindsey Ministries”. The Dallas Business Journal last year noted that

The company listed 72 shareholders of record as of July 11. Chairman and CEO John M. Brown currently owns 69.5% of Zion; director Ralph DeVore owns 18.1%.

Meanwhile, an old Jack Kinsella Omega Letter reposted here (“Excerpted from the Omega Letter Daily Intelligence Digest Volume 32, Issue 8″) states that:

Last week, Hal Lindsey came to Toronto to speak at a prophecy conference…With Hal was his cousin and fellow evangelist, Ralph, of whom I had heard much but had not yet met. Ralph is also involved in the oil exploration efforts ongoing in Israel. Ralph directed me to the Scripture that has guided Zion Oil and Gas to drill in a specific place in northern Israel.

There’s no other Ralph connected with Zion Oil, so this must be Ralph DeVore. In other words, Hal Lindsey informs us that Zion Oil is an excellent investment, but does not tell us that his cousin is a major shareholder.

Part Two

Meanwhile, The Observer today reports on an Israeli company that claims to have struck oil:

In an announcement that could shift the power balance in the Middle East, it claims to have discovered a £3 billion oilfield in the centre of Israel. But Tovia Lushkin says his company, Givat Olam, needs £18 million to develop wells and extract the oil.

Lushkin is an ultra-Orthodox Jew, and he too uses Deuteronomy 33 as his guide:

Blessed of the Lord be his land, for the precious things of heaven, for the dew, and for the deep that coucheth beneath…and for the precious things of the eternal hills [Givat Olam], and for the precious things of the earth and fullness thereof.

However, The Observer does not tell us that this is not the first time Givat Olam has discovered black gold. A website called Prophecy Corner archives a 1998 email from Christian Zionist group Bridges for Peace:

Bridges for peace: Clarence H. Wagner, Jr., International Dir. – Jerusalem: 11 Dec 98 OIL EXPLORATION IN ISRAEL

“The Givat Olam Oil Exploration Company redrilled a well near Rosh HaAyin to confirm the presence of oil in the area. A huge gas flame, more than seven meters high, shot from the well, confirming the presence of gas or oil.

“Tests will be done over the next few days to determine the quality of the gas or oil. In addition, Givat Olam is trying to raise NIS 60 million on the Tel Aviv stock market to finance the drilling of another well three kilometers away.”

So what happened? Well, an AP report from last month, when the current claim was first made public, includes the following:

Israeli oil expert Amit Mor said the company had made claims of oil discoveries in the past that had not born fruit. “They have a credibility problem,” he said.

Part Three

As it happens, there is one real reference to oil in the Bible, although no-one seems to talk about it. This is in 2 Maccabees 1:19ff, where we read how the sacred fire of the First Temple had supposedly been preserved:

When our fathers were being exiled to Persia, devout priests of the time took some of the fire from the altar and hid it secretly in the hollow of a dry cistern, making sure that the place would be unknown to anyone. Many years later, when it so pleased God, Nehemiah, commissioned by the king of Persia, sent the descendants of the priests who had hidden the fire to look for it. When they informed us that they could not find any fire, but only muddy water, he ordered them to scoop some out and bring it. After the material for the sacrifices had been prepared, Nehemiah ordered the priests to sprinkle with the water the wood and what lay on it. When this was done and in time the sun, which had been clouded over, began to shine, a great fire blazed up, so that everyone marvelled…When the event became known and the king of the Persians was told that, in the very place where the exiled priests had hidden the fire, a liquid was found with which Nehemiah and his people had burned the sacrifices, the king, after verifying the fact, fenced the place off and declared it sacred…Nehemiah and his companions called the liquid nephthar, meaning purification, but most people named it naphtha.

My New Jerusalem Bible judiciously notes that “The story combines elements of Persian fire worship, v.34, with some knowledge of the properties of naphta – crude petroleum – which so impressed Greek and Roman geographers and naturalists”. Just the thing to inspire modern oil worshippers.

UPDATE (14 June): I finally found the Givat Olam website (link added above) where you can see Lushkin with the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson.

UPDATE 2 (5 Feb 2005): Ralph DeVore has quit Zion Oil, citing the company’s “rebellion against God” for allowing itself to become more Jewish than Evangelical. See here.

UPDATE 3 (26 Sep 2005): A bit on John Brown’s inspiration, James R Spillman (Hal Lindsey stole his idea, by the way).

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Salon is running a piece on the Republican Party of Texas,

the crucible in which Karl Rove helped craft the presidency of George W. Bush. It is the home of U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Sugar Land. The party has seized control of every statewide office in Texas, won majorities in both chambers in the Statehouse for the first time in more than a century, and along with ideological soul mates, captured the U.S. Congress.

The authors note that school vouchers are a major priority for the Texas GOP:

In particular, during the 2002 election cycle, a San Antonio hospital bed magnate named James Leininger invested $624,774 mostly in GOP candidates, according to campaign watchdog Texans for Public Justice, apparently with the goal of establishing a voucher program in Texas. From 2000 to 2004, Leininger’s entire family gave $2,497,250 to state candidates, which does not include the contributions of numerous companies in which he owns sizable interests. This past February, Leininger and his wife joined Texas Gov. Rick Perry and his wife along with anti-tax guru and Washington lobbyist Grover Norquist, among others, on a private cruise in the Bahamas to “talk about school finance.”

Salon tells us nothing more about the elusive Leininger. However, a journalist by the name of Debbie Nathan has been tracking him for some time. According to Nathan, writing in the Austin Chronicle:

Few know that his anti-abortion and Christian-school-board campaign giving is only the tip of an iceberg of one-man benevolence — much of it sunk into right-wing projects that have changed the political landscape in Texas, and to some extent, the nation…Hardly anyone is aware of the role he has played in making the Texas Supreme Court one of the most anti-consumer, pro-business judicial bodies in the nation; or about his instrumental and sometimes smear-tactic efforts to pack the State Board of Education with Christian conservatives; or how he has been associated with a group implicated in federal campaign finance scandals; or of his support for attempts to gut the Endangered Species Act; or the way he funds anti-choice groups.

Raised in “fundamentalist Lutheranism”, Leininger went through an agnostic period but returned to religion after his failing business turned around following prayer. Nathan’s lengthy article includes the information that Leininger is now a member of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), which (says Nathan) split from other Presbyterians over civil rights and feminism. His actual place of worship is Faith Presbyterian Church, where

the pastor, Tim Hoke, is as modest as his church. He doesn’t yell, and his sermonizing touches as much on complex questions of grace as on the simpler horrors of Satan.

Faith Presbyterian also does not appear to share the same obsessions as another PCA church I came across a while back, Harvestwood Covenant (discussed in World O’Crap).

In the Texas Observer, Nathan notes Leininger’s links to Christian Reconstructionism. She also discusses how he helped to ensure people he approved of have been voted onto school boards:

Focus Direct, a Leininger company in San Antonio that does slick, direct mail work for companies and politicians, produced and mass-mailed a leaflet featuring a photo of a black man and a white man kissing and accusing [Donna] Ballard’s opponent Mary Knott Perkins of wanting to teach Texas children about oral and anal sex. Perkins, a grandmother many times over who is by no means a political radical, lost the election to Ballard. The other two Christian conservatives also won. The victories gave the elected state school board its first-ever Republican majority.

More articles about Leininger have been gathered at this rather unexpected (it’s run by a Welsh witch or witches) website.

Salon also could have noted the existence of sometime GOP VC David Barton, a noted Christian Reconstructionist. Another Texas Observer journalist has looked at Barton’s role within the production of Texan educational products, and even alleges links with Christian Identity.

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Richard Dawkins writes a letter to The Guardian about Peter Vardy:

Your readers may remember the case of Emmanuel college, the notorious creationist school in Gateshead. The prime minister (Bush’s praying partner, let’s not forget) defended it on grounds of “diversity” and exam results, but both apologias ring hollow for a school whose head of science dates the origin of the universe some time after the middle stone age. The school’s sponsor, the evangelical car salesman Peter Vardy, is now trying to move in on Doncaster. He has already succeeded in taking over Thorne Grammar school, renamed Trinity Academy.

Now, a worried science teacher informs me, Vardy has his eye on Northcliffe comprehensive too. A group of local parents are concerned about the threatened subversion of their children’s school (www.cadpag.co.uk)

Richard Dawkins
University of Oxford

Not sure what Blair as “Bush’s praying partner” has to with it, but he draws attention back to a controversy that’s being going on now for a few years. Many UK state schools have a church affiliation, but this is a very different development: a private religious foundation is being given state schools to run. As the Northcliffe parents report, as well the Creationism

We have conflicting reports as to whether the new school will follow patterns at Emmanuel like a compulsory GCSE Religious Education Examination, and a compulsory course in Philosophy, Theology and Ethics, at A Level.

At Emmanuel, reported The Observer a while ago, pupils must carry two Bibles at all times (an NIV and a Gideon NT) or face punishment. Plus:

Each week pupils must attend two-hour ‘Special Lectures’ concerning spiritual subjects and use these as the basis of a compulsory long essay at the end of the school year. No backsliding is permitted.

According to the school’s own website (not updated for quite some time):

Finally, and centrally, as part of our commitment to the all-round spiritual, moral and intellectual development of young people, all subjects seek to set their teaching within context in which Christian values and Biblical revelation can be discussed and analysed. It is such a context which gives learning a proper fullness.

Interviewed on the BBC’s Today progamme, Vardy explained that:

We do teach creationism alongside evolution [interruption] – we present both – one is a theory, the other is a faith position and it’s up to the children. We give them an all-round education, so both are presented to the students and we think that is fair education

What he failed to make clear, however, was that the Creationism is taught by a believing science teacher – i.e. as a scientific position; www.cadpag.co.uk links to a lecture by Stephen Layfield, science teacher at Emmanuel College, that shows this. Layfield stated that science teachers should

Note every occasion when an evolutionary/old-earth paradigm (millions or billions of years) is explicitly mentioned or implied by a text-book, examination question or visitor and courteously point out the fallibility of the statement. Wherever possible, we must give the alternative (always better) Biblical explanation of the same data.

In 2002 Vardy reportedly told Richard Dawkins (see this Guardian report) that Layfield’s “personal view” on Creationism was not taught in science classes. Layfield’s lecture (removed from the website of the Christian Institute when the controversy broke) and Vardy’s statement on Today suggest that Dawkins was lied to.

However, what no-one appears to have noticed is that Creationism is also doing well in independent Christian schools in the UK. For example, Maranatha Christian School, based in Sevenhampton, near Swindon, boasts a

Christian, Creation-based curriculum [that] has been developed over the last 25 years and is now used in thousands of schools all over the world.

Don’t worry if you think your GCSE results will suffer, for instead of the General Certificate in Secondary Education, you can qualify with the National Christian Schools Certificate. According to Paragon Christian Academy, based in Hackney, East London:

The NCSC is accepted by universities in the UK and abroad (including Oxford University), as an alternative to the usual GCSE and GCSE ‘A’ level route (see the UCAS Handbook).

What’s more, according to Maranatha

At the same time a child is taught to read, he will also start to learn some of the sixty biblical character traits which are reinforced throughout the whole School of Tomorrow curriculum…The student will also begin to memorise Scriptures associated with the character trait, building up a deep well of Godly wisdom.

The School of Tomorrow curriculum is derived from the USA, and provided by Accelerated Christian Education:

Accelerated Christian Education’s worldwide team of professional educators currently serves over 7,000 schools, one government contract, and thousands of home educators in 135 countries. This Global Support Team provides curriculum, program, and school services as well as in-service and leadership training for schools and home educators in their areas.

In addition, Accelerated Christian Education’s in-house team of professionals at the International Ministry Offices in Largo, Florida, provide materials and support services to help meet the educational needs of communities everywhere.

In Britain, its products are sold by CEE Ltd (Christian Education Europe Ltd), which holds that

The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are the verbally and plenary inspired Word of God. The Scriptures are inerrant, infallible, and God-breathed, and, therefore, are the final authority for faith and life. The sixty-six books of the Old and New Testament are the complete and divine revelation of God to man. The Scriptures shall be interpreted according to their normal grammatical-historical meaning.

The village of Sevenhampton is also home to the British branch of Answers in Genesis, and no doubt this Creationist organisation is also closely linked with Maranatha.

UPDATE: Back in 2003, Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith gave strong backing to Tabernacle School, a small Pentecostal school in Kensington which follows the ACE curriculum (see also here).

NB: Do not confuse the evangelical Peter Vardy with Dr Peter Vardy, the Catholic theologian at Heythrop College, University of London.

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As part of a series of posts profiling the strange concept of “Christian libertarianism”, which seems more often than not to mean “Christian theocracy”, I recently chanced upon Christian libertarian and WorldNetDaily contributor Vox Day (Theodore Beale), who believes that women should be denied the vote. Since I, among others, appeared critical of his position, he issued a challenge to anyone to refute his idea. I wrote a few points, to which Vox has now responded on his blog. This is my response to that.

Normal “religion in the news” blog service will be resumed after this, exceptionally lengthy, entry

Part One

Well, Vox Day has wielded his flaming sword in my direction. I have been mildy singed in a couple of places, but, in my opinion at least, his weapon quickly fizzles out. Readers can judge for themselves.

He begins with the following headline:

I’m not gay, I’m English

Correct on both counts, although he shouldn’t assume that British people are English or that English people are not gay – but I suppose recognising that Englishness and gayness are not necessarily the same thing is an advance on PJ O’Rourke’s assertion that the English are “a race of cold-blooded queers with nasty complexions and terrible teeth who once conqured half the world but still haven’t figured out central heating.”

He then moves on to my actual points. I began with an informal note, written very quickly, and then provided him with the text of my blog entry from Monday. The informal note referred to his claim that since children were not allowed to vote because they were not responsible, then this means that exclusion was recognised as legitimate. I responded with the suggestion that:

Your recent comment about children is not valid: it is not discriminatory to deny them the vote because everyone was once a child and so subject to the same restriction.

His response to that is to point out that by the same grounds the elderly could be discriminated against and that furthermore:

discrimination against children is justified on their inability to make responsible decisions, not the universal nature of childhood.

I’ll concede the point. One for the flaming sword.

We then move on to American history, where I suggested “there is no evidence that there was less mobocracy in times when women or others were denied the franchise”. Response:

Sure there is. The Founders were concerned about a mob voting itself bread and circuses, while Joseph Schumpeter predicted the inevitable devolution of any universal democracy into socialist tyranny. An analysis of federal spending per capita easily illustrates this playing out right now.

But surely mobocracy is more than just “a mob voting itself bread and circuses”? To me it means the mob bringing about any political action or legislation that is a) manifestly foolish or ignorant or b) oppressive to non-members of the mob. Even if Vox’s interpretation of federal spending as an example of mobocracy is correct, totting up how much mobocracy there was before women were allowed to vote is rather more complicated and subjective. And even if – a big if – more mobocracy is indeed a vice that attends universal suffrage, that still has to be measured against the vices found in other forms of government.

Vox then adds, in reply to my comments about the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights in relation to democracy:

The USA is not a democracy, never was, and was expressly designed not to be. In his first formal point, Bartholomew demonstrates that he has no understanding of the source of American rights and liberties.

I was aware of this issue, as it happens – Gore Vidal brings it up a lot. But America presents itself to the world as a democracy, most Americans believe themselves to live in a democracy, and democracy is the political system the USA claims it wishes to see spread globally. Vox, of course, sees this as a corruption of republican (small r) ideals. Fine, but it seems to me that “rights and liberties” are better protected in a democracy than the kind of republic he would prefer (although I am a “republican” in relation to the idea of monarchy).

Moving on to my second point, that if women could be excluded so could others, he writes:

First, it would indeed be very good sense to deny those groups who are determined to sabotage their self-interest.

This is more confused. I thought libertarianism was about personal responsibility, not ensuring that people don’t “sabotage their self-interest”. To achieve the latter, surely a fairly authoritarian big government is needed? I assume he really means “sabotage the general interest” or “other people’s interests”. But that’s why we have constitutions and/or independent judiciaries, as the best way to stop the worst excesses of people who want to bring about bad things.

Precisely this reasoning is presently being used to deny the Iraqi people the right to self-determination; I don’t know any so-called “democrats” who actually favor allowing open elections in Iraq as I do. Are they racist too?

Are they making such a case? If someone is arguing that given the conditions of the country at present a short delay is necessary to set up the checks and balances that can keep mobocracy at bay, then that is a reasonable proposition (although whether it truly reflects the situation in Iraq is another issue). If they’re saying that Iraqis cannot handle democracy based on their Arabness, then yes, they’re racist. And why does Vox favour “open elections” there but not in the USA?

Second, women are a unique group in that they are provably biologically different. These biological differences have a direct effect on their ability to think and reason, as numerous scientific studies have proven that women have literally different brains than men. There are both spiritual (Christian) and scientific (evolutionary) and psychosexual reasons that women are inordinately inclined to favor the “security” offered by Big Daddy government intervention. This is not true for any other group, except, possibly, the homosexual community, if one accepts the homosexual argument that their abnormality has a genetic base.

I wonder if men are also “provably biologically different”, and therefore “unique” as well? And if homosexual men are to be denied the franchise also, we’ve now got an odd idea of one kind of woman but different kinds of men. By the way, I’m left-handed – does that give me the correct sort of brain to be allowed to vote or not? But even if women are biologically obliged “to favor the ‘security’ offered by Big Daddy government intervention” (which I doubt), and even if that is a bad thing (which is impossible to judge when the political programme is painted in such vague terms), does that mean women should not be allowed to vote? Even if “they” are prone to a vice here, what virtues might they have to make up for it? And what other vices might belong to men? Testosterone has also has “a direct effect” on the “ability to think and reason”, and often the result is irresponsible behaviour. Men could be denied the vote on that ground alone.

I then raised the issue that if women could be denied the franchise, so could religious conservatives. This invited a strange persecution fantasy:

What are hate crimes for? I fully expect the openly religious to be disenfranchised in the future. They’re already being fined. We’ll be fortunate if it stops with only losing the vote.

But clearly, Vox sees such an outcome as undesirable. So do I. But if you don’t want that to happen to you, how can you prescribe it for others?

We move on to the principle of exclusion itself:

He sees exclusion as undesirable; neither I nor the Founding Fathers do. What accountability comes with a universal franchise? I obviously don’t have that confidence, as I believe that most people, given the chance to vote themselves largesse from others, will do so every single time. History would seem to support this very strongly.

I’ve no argument with that, but the problem that “most people, given the chance to vote themselves largesse from others, will do so every time” is not solved by reducing the franchise. It merely makes it more likely that the enfranchised group will try to take an even bigger largesse, and will be more likely to succeed in doing so, being unaccountable. I recall that Communism started out with political idealists who thought their ideological correctness and economic knowledge meant they did not need to trouble with democratic processes and accountability. The results were most unhappy. Vox’s system would most likely degenerate into something like Margaret Atwood’s “Republic of Gilead”.

I then raised the practical issue, that women will not accept losing the vote. Response:

The civil strife [in that case] would be as nothing as what is going to happen once the present system collapses under the weight of centralization. One of the many nice things about women is that they’re not prone to serious violence.

Well, try taking the vote away from women who have it and see what happens. Besides, “serious violence” is not the only option for creating disruption. Women got the vote in the first place in many countries through self-sacrifice, not violence. Aristophanes’ Lysistrata provides a further possibility.

Vox also notes that “voting is mandatory in many totalitarian states”. But therefore what? I never said the voting was sufficient to ensure liberty, only that it is a necessary component.

Part Two

We also hear about the Palestinian situation, his solution to which I had also taken exception to:

According to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, 2,233 Palestinians have been killed in the present conflict, which is just heating up. Apparently Bartholomew was more offended by a suggestion that might actually help bring a final end to the conflict than he is by the actual “mass murder” of thousands of Palestinians. Or perhaps he believes that refraining from the intentional murder of children is hopelessly beyond those dusky savages now that the British Empire has laid down the White Man’s Burden.

Vox’s solution, you may recall, was killing 1,000 Palestinians for every one Israeli child killed, and 100 for every adult civilian. As it happens, the “actual ‘mass murder'” (of Palestinians and Israelis) does offend me more than Vox’s solution, but as he’s not responsible for the “actual ‘mass murder'” I didn’t mention it. My problems are as follows:

Every nation contains people who either cannot or chose not to refrain from killing children. Such people are not deterred by the idea of other innocent people being punished for his or her crime. Further, I would not wish to be killed as part of a collective punishment for the crimes of members of my ethnic group or nation, and suspect that attitude is fairly common. Why should Palestinians therefore be on the receiving end of such treatment?

It’s rather drastic for something that only “might actually help”. When has such a procedure ever helped? And even if it could help, that does not mean it is therefore the best way to proceed. Giving the Palestinians the same rights as the Israelis, either in their own state or as part of a bi-national state “might actually help” as well.

A particularly difficult point to grasp, it seems: it would be unethical. A central component of ethics is that you give up a very clear present advantage in order to protect long term values that will become corrupted otherwise. The deliberate mass slaughter of civilians to end a conflict (and not because they were in the way, as happened in WW2) would usher in a dark age of violence and savagery. The fact he can’t see that is perhaps the best evidence there is that being a Christian libertarian man does not necessarily confer a special wisdom and a greater right to vote.

That’s all I intend to say on the matter – Vox can have the last word if he wishes. What I’d really like to see, though, is how he sees himself as different from the Christian Thenomists and Reconstructionists, a number of whom leave enthusiastic comments on his blog.

Meanwhile, I have a blog on religion in the news to get back to…

UPDATE: Vox has sent me his response to the above, privately but with permission for me to post any part of it I care to. I’ve decided to put it in the comments section, as an appendix – it’s worth a read.

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While researching something else, I came across the website of Christians for Biblical Equality, an international evangelical organisation founded by Alvera Mickelsen in the 1980s. Somewhat to my surprise, the site features a prominent endorsement from Vox Day’s spiritual mentor Gregory Boyd (who, like Mickelson, once taught at Bethel College). Boyd may have exotic views about demons and spiritual warfare but he’s no sexist. We knew already that he agreed with women ministers, but there’s more:

Thanks to many committed Christian activists in the 19th century, the western Church woke up to the truth that the practice of slavery, allowed in the New Testament, was not part of God’s plan for all time. Yet many segments of the Church today persist in the assumption that the first century limitations placed on women are part of God’s plan for all time. The effects of this are not much less tragic than the effect of mistaking slavery for God’s ideal. I know of no organization that is doing as much as CBE to help the church wake up to God’s ideal regarding women in ministry and women in marriage. They are among the “abolitionists” of the 21st century and I’m proud to be among their passionate supporters!

Although is he proud to have his theology linked to a video game designed by a man who wants to deny women one of the most basic signs of equality, namely the right to vote?

According to its Statement on Men, Women and Biblical Equality, Christians for Biblical Equality holds these beliefs, among others:

The Bible teaches that woman and man were created for full and equal partnership. The word “helper” (ezer), used to designate woman in Genesis 2:18, refers to God in most instances of Old Testament usage (e.g. 1Sam 7:12; Ps 121:1-2). Consequently the word conveys no implication whatsoever of female subordination or inferiority…

The Bible teaches that, in the New Testament economy, women as well as men exercise the prophetic, priestly and royal functions (Acts 2:17-18, 21:9; 1Cor 11:5; 1Peter 2:9-10; Rev 1:6, 5:10). Therefore, the few isolated texts that appear to restrict the full redemptive freedom of women must not be interpreted simplistically and in contradiction to the rest of Scripture, but their interpretation must take into account their relation to the broader teaching of Scripture and their total context (1Cor 11:2-16, 14:33-36; 1Tim 2:9-15).

But is this going to be the old “equal but different” cop-out – the old “yes, men and women are equally important, but men are better suited to discharging certain responsibilities”? An article by Alan Padgett on the site suggests not:

God freely calls believers to roles and ministries without regard to class, gender, or race.

Discussing Genesis:

We sometimes hear teaching in the churches today that the man is the “priest of the home,” or that women need the “spiritual covering” of a husband in order to be fulfilled. There simply is no biblical basis for this teaching. Women and men are both priests in Christ, as has already been stated. Men are not spiritually superior to women in the Bible. This is simply another form of traditional male domination of women—common to Western civilization for thousands of years—being read into the Bible by traditional, conservative Christian leaders.

Padgett then sets about deconstructing Paul’s letters to argue that where Paul implies male domination, a fuller contextual understanding shows that was not his intention (whether this truly reflects the historical Paul is debatable, but it’s a good case made).

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The Dark Window informs us that Christian libertarian Vox Day has responded to the mockers and the scoffers. Albeit indirectly, he touches on my suggestion that he does not appear to understand the meaning of the world “libertarian”:

Voting is not a God-given right as delineated in either the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights. Liberty, in fact, denies universal democracy, (or mobocracy as it was known), a fact that anyone who has read the Federalist Papers would know the Founding Fathers understood very well. The dichotomy of a libertarian favoring limited suffrage is only an apparent contradiction to the ideologically and historically ignorant.

Vox also challenges anyone to provide evidence that giving women the vote has proven anything other than bad for the USA, “unless you want to argue that divorce, illegitimacy, homosexuality and falling real wages are the historical signs of a healthy society.”

Well, while my perspective is probably clear to readers, the emphasis of this blog has usually been on providing background information rather than joining the thousands of others filling the blogosphere about “what I think” on this issue or that – readers can make up their own minds. However, as Vox has apparently seen my work, on this occasion I’ll make an exception, and briefly turn vicar:

1. Democracies use constitutions and independent judiciaries to guard against “mobocracy”, rather than denial of the franchise to particular groups of adults. While this may not be perfect, there is no evidence that there was less “mobocracy” in times when women or others were denied the franchise. Perhaps this is not spelt out in the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights, but if Vox Day’s interpretation of those documents is correct that only means that the USA is not the very best example of democracy after all, and could learn from others (I’m British, by the way).

2. If women as a whole can be denied the franchise because a majority of them support views of government he dislikes (leading to what he considers the social ills outlined above), then why not apply this rule to other groups should they show the same preferences? Answer: because if such a rule were applied to other groups it would be manifestly unfair, and in many examples would be racist (n.b: the answer to this is not “ahh, but no other group does share these views, so that issue does not arise”. Even if that is the case in fact, it is not so by necessity, and members of other groups would still risk exclusion as a whole in the future if some of their members came to dissent from the “libertarian”).

3. His argument is that he has judged certain ideas to be bad, and because a majority of women support those ideas they therefore should not be allowed to vote. So why shouldn’t I call for religious conservatives to be disenfranchised on the grounds that they vote for what I consider bad ideas? Well, a) I would be supporting an undesirable principle of exclusion; b) I understand that without the accountability that only comes with a universal franchise even good ideas will not be implemented well; c) I have confidence that as long as democracy endures the good ideas will eventually triumph. Vox Day does not have that confidence about his own ideas, it seems, which is why he wants them imposed by banning people from voting.

4. If women were denied the vote, they would protest, as they did in many countries before they got the vote, and many men would support them. The civil strife would be overwhelming. No doubt Vox Day, who is willing to contemplate the mass murder thousands of Palestinians for a greater good, would not shy away from quelling the complainants with brutal force. But that’s not libertarianism. Or Christianity.

Of course, that still leaves the question of whether the socio-economic trends he diagnoses can be traced back to the impact of women having voted for particular ideas he dislikes. But since his case rests on the mere citation of an ABC Poll that shows that less women than men want smaller government I shan’t bother to get into that.

PS: World O’Crap has more.

UPDATE (9 June): More on Vox’s spiritual mentor Greg Boyd.

UPDATE 2 (10 June): Vox has replied.

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Everything is falling into place. It can’t be long now. Ezekiel says that fire and brimstone will be rained upon the enemies of God’s people. That must mean they’ll be destroyed by nuclear weapons…Gog the nation that will lead all of the other powers of darkness against Israel, will come out of the north…Gog must be Russia…now that Russia has set itself against God…it fits the description of Gog perfectly.

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