Bartholomew's Notes

One hundred and eighty teachers in Tokyo face a reprimand for declining to sing the Kimigayo, Japan’s national anthem, in graduation ceremonies:

May the reign of the Emperor continue for a thousand, nay, eight thousand generations and for the eternity that it takes for small pebbles to grow into a great rock and become covered with moss.

As ideology, these lyrics are no worse than “God Save the Queen” – atheists might even say they are slightly better, as they avoid mentioning God, although the Emperor’s past status as a divinity needs to be remembered. However, the song is controversial for reasons of context. The words go back to the ninth century, and the tune to Meiji era, but for many the anthem (which was made official only in 1999, despite its long history) carries nationalistic overtones that recall Japanese colonialism and the nationalism of the 1930s and 40s. As well as those who object to the anthem for historical reasons, the Asahi Shimbun (linked via History News Network) notes that some

think the anthem and the flag are just fine, but refuse to be treated like puppets, forced to sing or stand up when they don’t feel like it.

With so many differences of opinion, would it not be going overboard to force every single person at any school ceremony to stand facing the flag and sing the anthem?

The crackdown was ordered by the Tokyo Board of Education on instruction from Tokyo Governor Ishihara Shintaro. This in itself is likely to have put a lot people off: Shintaro is a populist authoritarian who has accused the Chinese of exaggerating the Rape of Nanking and has warned that when the next earthquake comes the biggest problem will be rioting foreigners. The dissenting teachers recall to me the famous event of 1891, when the Christian Kanzo Uchimura failed to bow low before the Imperial Rescript on Education, also in Tokyo. Uchimura was forced to resign his post.

Meanwhile, a district court has found PM Junichiro Koizumi’s visits to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo to be an unconstitutional breach of religion-state separation. The shrine, which commemorates Japanese war dead, is also controversial because in 1978 the souls of several war criminals were enshrined within it, including that of Hideki Tojo. Prime Ministerial visits to the shrine have been going on for some years, despite protests from various groups within Japan and from Japan’s neighbours. Koizumi’s defence, like that of his predecessors, is that he is visiting as a private citizen, not as Prime Minister. This “private” explanation got short shrift back in 1979 when PM Masayoshi Ohira (a Christian, by the way) visited. One Korean-Japanese, despite having a brother enshrined at the site, objected to the visit and noted that:

Even though Ohira says his visit is private, the fact that he used an official car and signed the registry giving his title as Prime Minister has given his visit a strong public colouring. (1)

Koizumi also signs himself as “Prime Minister”, and he has declared that he wants to make official visits.

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Postscript: Before the Second World War, Japan developed “State Shinto”, which was distinct from “Sect Shinto”. The government argued that State Shinto was civic rather than religious, and so its citizens could reasonably be obliged to show respect for its symbols and rituals whatever their personal religous beliefs (it was abolished after the war). Reading about how the American Pledge of Allegiance was recently defended brings this to mind. As Leon Wieseltier at the New Republic puts it (link via Vincent at Religion Related Injuries):

In the Pledge of Allegiance, the government insisted, the word “God” does not refer to God. It refers to a reference to God. The government’s argument…solicitor general [Theodore B. Olsen] maintained, “is a statement about the Nation’s historical origins, its enduring political philosophy centered on the sovereignty of the individual.” The allegedly religious words in the Pledge are actually just “descriptive”–the term kept recurring in the discussion–of the mentality of the people who established the United States. As Olson told the Court, they are one of several “civic and ceremonial acknowledgments of the indisputable historical fact that caused the framers of our Constitution and the signers of the Declaration of Independence to say that they had the right to revolt and start a new country.”

Although in the age of Bush and Ashcroft this may be unfashionable, might we not get some mileage out of the old American Civil Religion Thesis, which sometimes spoke of an “American Shinto”?

(1) Quoted in Mark R Mullins, Handbook of Christianity in Japan, p. 367.

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As Britain remains fearful of an attack by Islamic extremists, the UK public can feel confident that airport security officials know how to spot a terrorist. According to Nigerian newspaper The News, in March 2002 a perfectly innocent Nigerian Muslim named Abdullah Adeyanju Binuyo entered the country at Oxford airport after a flight from Dublin. Following an unexpected interrogation, close scrutiny of his passport yielded damning evidence: this Muslim’s birthday was 11 September!

Thinking he had found someone with a link to the terrorist attacks in New York, the official was thrilled. He went back to his duties, ordering Binuyo to stand aside…”He just told me that in spite of the fact that he did not find anything incriminating against me, he would not allow me to enter Oxford because my birthday and the terrorist attacks fall on the same date,” Binuyo said.

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With the last Left Behind novel topping the bestseller lists and American television preparing for Revelations, an apocalyptic thriller penned by Omen author David Seltzer (see here), comes news (via email from Publishers Lunch) that the film rights have been bought for Joel C. Rosenberg’s novels The Last Jihad and The Last Days. Weirdly, the rights have been acquired by Freddie DeMann; DeMann has produced a couple of films, but he is better known as sometime manager to Madonna and Michael Jackson.

Rosenberg is an Evangelical Christian of Jewish Orthodox background, and he has an impressive conservative CV, according to his website: political columnist for World magazine, collaborator with Steve Forbes on a number of Regnery titles, Rush Limbaugh’s Research Director, and employee of Benjamin Netanyahu. Both of his novels are published by Forge, an imprint of the firm that also owns the SF and fantasy imprint Tor, and to his followers he is a “modern Nostradamus” with “eerily prescient” imaginative abilities. His website gives examples, the most impressive being that The Last Jihad features Islamic fundamentalists using a hijacked plane to attack an American city, months before 9/11. (That this rather obvious method of terrorism had also previously been imagined by William Pierce and the Columbine killers, among others, is not noted) His other “Fact or Fiction?” moments concern acts of violence in Israel/Palestine that have been paralleled in real life, such as the deaths of CIA agents in last October’s Gaza bombing. He also helpfully provides links to show why his prediction of Yasser Arafat’s assassination may well come true, and would be a good thing.

The books themselves are standard schlock, although the novels may require considerable reworking for the big screen, since the first one features Saddam Hussein as a major character. Reviewer Patrick Anderson describes The Last Jihad:

The president is James MacPherson — Vietnam hero, Wall Street legend, former governor of Colorado — who has succeeded George W. Bush. Between them, Bush and MacPherson have brought joy to our troubled land. The war on terrorism is won, Osama bin Laden is dead, and al-Qaeda is obliterated. Taxes are low, employment high and our hearts even higher: “Presidential promises made were promises kept. And the sense of relief is palpable.”

However, Saddam is plotting his “Last Jihad” just as Israelis and Palestinians are about to enjoy peace as the result of an oil bonanza. Israeli intelligence discovers that Saddam has acquired nuclear Scuds, and the novel ends with (*spoiler*) the US President nuking Baghdad. As Rosenberg explains:

After working in Washington for a decade at that point—most recently for former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Natan Sharansky—I was convinced that the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was real and that American policymakers were not properly focused on that threat. I wrote The Last Jihad almost as a Paul Revere-like exercise to raise people’s awareness of what could happen if we ignored Saddam Hussein for too long. I never imagined it would be published just as the debate over Iraq was heating up and just months before coalition forces went to war.

Rosenberg is generous enough to reproduce an NY Times profile that describes the books as “not very good novels. The plots streak along at breakneck speed. But there is no subtlety and no attempt at character development.” The profile links his success to his connections on the right, with endorsements coming from Limbaugh and Oliver North.

Talking about the apocalyptic element to his novels, Rosenberg explains that Jesus gave

His followers a checklist, a “Road Map,” if you will, of things to watch for. And the research I began coming across was so intriguing, I decided to name my next novel THE LAST DAYS and begin raising the same questions for others.

The LaHaye and Jenkins bandwagon, of course, had nothing to do with it.

(NB – Don’t confuse Joel C. Rosenberg with fantasy author Joel Rosenberg)

UPDATE (7 May): See my post for today.

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The British Daily Telegraph carries an interview with Tim LaHaye to coincide with the last Left Behind novel (well, last except for the numerous spin-offs, prequels and postscripts in the offing). LaHaye explains the Rapture, the Tribulation and the 1,000 year millennial kingdom, where

there’ll be trees that, each month, will grow a different fruit. It will be familiar to this world, but more perfect. Sheep will still be sheep. Grass will be grass. But they will be perfect…There will probably be singles’ groups [for the unmarried]…We’ve been told that we will be able to travel at the speed of thought. Personally, I plan to go planetary exploring.

LaHaye also talks of his links with Bush:

he met the President ahead of the election and has been told that Bush is a supporter of his work.

“I would think that he is a believer [in the Rapture],” he says. “He said he had a personal faith in Jesus Christ as his Lord and Saviour, and that he prayed on a regular basis.”

However, this should be qualified by noting LaHaye’s comments to Rolling Stone back in January:

I have seen nothing from this president that would indicate that he is influenced one way or the other by my prophesy teaching.

By supporting LaHaye’s “work”, Bush is more likely to be referring to LaHaye’s long-time conservative activism.

The pre-election meeting between Bush and LaHaye was at a closed conference of the Council for National Policy in 1999. Skipp Porteous of Freedom Writer ordered a set of tapes of the meeting, only to find the Bush speech missing by order of the Bush election campaign. What Bush said to the CNP remains unknown.

(revised – link to Rolling Stone via Get Religion 5 April)

UPDATE (8 April): This article in the NY Times contains a quote from the novel, as Jesus takes out the armies of the Anti-Christ:

Men and women soldiers and horses seemed to explode where they stood…It was as if the very words of the Lord had superheated their blood, causing it to burst through their veins and skin…Even as they struggled, their own flesh dissolved, their eyes melted and their tongues disintegrated.

Not sure what the horses are supposed to have done to deserve this…

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Several bloggers (Jesus’s General, John Gorenfeld) have been having sport over Reverend Moon’s pronouncement that he is returning to Korea. In a rather rambling and disjointed report in which Moon explains why he has made this decision, he also reflects on The Passion, Jews and Middle East peace.

First, the historical background:

Who tried to kill Jesus? It was not initiated by the Romans. The Jews killed Jesus at that time.

After telling us that he went to the see the movie because he had promised his wife, Moon turns film critic:

It wasn’t that great in terms of artistic value or production, but it was very timely concerning who is Jesus and who killed Jesus. The main teaching of True Father is that Jesus should not have had to die… The fact that there was talk the Jesus was the King of Israel was very serious and contributed to Jesus death. The reality is that the Jews of 2000 years ago did reject and kill Jesus.

“Father” then applies his deep insight to the contemporary situation:

The Crisis in the Middle East is serious. Now Korea has calmed down and the Middle East is hot.

However, the Unification Church is doing its bit, and Moon describes several church events in Israel/Palestine, including one in a Jerusalem park in December 2003 where Moon adherent Rev. Michael Jenkins

before all proclaimed welcome Home Jesus!! and that Jesus is the Messiah and the King of the Jews and the King of Peace… Major leaders of Israel and Palestine were in support including Chairman Arafat and top Israeli Jewish leaders… If that ceremony hadn’t taken place all the Jews in the spirit world and those who will go to the spirit world would face impossible suffering. Because of this event this condition was liberated and the Jews are free and forgiven before heaven.

What’s this? Moon’s UPI wire service gives a puff-piece on the event that describes “two people representing the Jews”, who, by placing a crown and robe on a seat, restored the Jews’ “rejection of Jesus.” An Israeli report gives further details:

Three thousand Moon adherents (they evidently resent being called Moonies…) arrived in Israel from 70 countries to sit in the cold in Independence Park to listen to a two hour program of speeches full of platitudes, interspersed with musical selections from a Sufi Chant Ensemble, the Black Hebrew Choir of Dimona and the Gaya Band.

Bemused Israeli Arabs were bussed in from the Galilee, although there were also “a few Jewish peace activist types”. The report also claims that the organisers had billed themselves as the “Inter-religious & International Federation for World Peace”, and that the Moon connection had been revealed by the Jerusalem Post, leading to a far smaller gathering than was hoped for.

So who were the “top Israeli leaders” supporting the event? Jenkins’s speech tells us: “Dr. Eliezar Glaubach, a professor and long respected City Council member”. Er, that’s it…

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As the last Left Behind novel hits the shelves, WorldNetDaily reports that Israeli intelligence has uncovered an “Islamic messianic whirlpool” of ideas. If you think LaHaye and Jenkins are living in a fantasy world, try

the march of Islam through Russia, the return of Islam to Andalusia and a victory parade in Jerusalem with liberated Saddam Hussein at the lead. This will follow after a war in Syria and the assassination of King Abdullah of Jordan.

All of this will attend the coming of the Mahdi, an eschatological Islamic figure with whom Osama bin Laden may or may not be identifying himself. There’s a bit of astrology thrown in too.

Something about all this reminds me of Criswell.

(PS [27 May] – I wrote this before I realised just how wacko WorldNetDaily actually is, rather than just conservative. It’s quite possible that the above was completely made up.)

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Speaking at the National Religious Broadcasters’ convention, Passion public relations man Paul Lancer announced that

This movie has been operating on a God level. [This film] is a work of God.

But there may be evidence! Another production company is working on a TV special called Changed Lives: Miracles of the Passion. The makers are looking for stories such as

a marriage being rescued, an addict who was set free, a Jew who now accepts Jesus as Messiah, someone who experienced physical or emotional healing, and so on.

The executive producer of this project is Jody Eldred, a member of Jack Hayford’s Charismatic Church on the Way in Van Nuys, California (audio interview, where he comes across as personable). Eldred is a director and photographer of thirty years experience, working on a variety of secular and religious projects. As well as a website for his Passion project, he has one of his own which shows him working in Kuwait and Iraq as a freelance for ABC last year. Here he tells us that al-Jazeera was “Iraqi state-run TV”. Ahh, so that’s why al-Jazeera journos in Iraq have to be imprisoned and abused.

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Yan, who blogs at Glutter, reports that Typepad sites have been banned in China. To tie in with this news, today’s entry concerns religious freedom in that country.

In 2002, Jiang Zemin announced that, “All the world’s people, including the people of China, should be free to choose how they live, how they worship and how they work.” Nice sentiment, but at the moment only government-approved temples, churches and mosques are allowed. For those outside the “approved” organisations, things are rather more dangerous.

There are plenty of sources for what is going on. A recent news article, reproduced on this Tibetan Buddhist site, provides a decent round-up of the current situation, including oppression faced by the Muslim Uighurs. The US State Department International Religious Freedom Report provides further details. There is also a handbook published by Human Rights Watch, China: State Control of Religion.

I’ll just note a couple of very recent developments from 2004:

Catholicism: The Tablet reports that

Catholics in China’s “underground” Church, which recognises the Pope’s authority, are bracing themselves for a fresh wave of government attacks following the arrest last week of one of its most outspoken bishops…Bishop Wei Jingyi of Qiqihar in northern China was arrested on 5 March on suspicion of travelling abroad illegally, and detained in a prison in Harbin.

The “underground” Catholics number about 10 million; the “patriotic” official Catholics 4 million.

Protestantism: ASSIST reports:

China Aid Association (CAA) has just had confirmation of the arrest of 19 house church leaders in Henan Province. On 24 January 2004, Ms Qiao Chunling and her husband, leaders of a house group church with some 100,000 members, were arrested in their home, and their computer, Christian literature, phone, cash and other belongings were confiscated. The Qiaos had with them the train tickets for 19 of their house church leaders to attend a Seminar on Christian Marriage that day in Beijing.

Later, all 19 house church leaders were arrested either at Luoyang City Train Station or on the train. The Qiaos are reportedly being held in Mangshan Detention Centre, Henan province. The location of eight of the ten still in custody is unknown.

Christians have also just been arrested for speaking out about what’s going on.

Falun Gong: Reported on their website:

NEW YORK (FDI) – During the month of February 2004, details of 30 deaths of Falun Gong practitioners in China were uncovered despite a continued black-out maintained by Chinese authorities on information about Falun Gong-related cases.

Many of the deaths occurred in the past few months, while some were deaths from 2002 and 2001 that have only recently been uncovered.

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The current New York Review of Books discusses the history of hand relief, with a review of a book on the subject by Thomas W Laquer. The case of Samuel Pepys (who blogs here) in particular caught my eye:

Only on such solemn occasions as High Mass on Christmas Eve in 1666, when the sight of the queen and her ladies led him to masturbate in church, did Pepys’s conscience speak out, and only in a very still, small voice.

The Sin of Onan was actually about failure to procreate, and punishing Percy in the palm was not such a big deal before it became a medical issue in the eighteenth century:

Within the monastery anxiety focused far more on sodomy than on masturbation, while in the world at large it focused more on incest, bestiality, fornication, and adultery.

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A report in the Washington Times confirms what I already suspected, about the gushing reports of new churches opening across Iraq. The reality, according to a local pastor, is that

“While the number of churches increases, the number of Christians does not.”

The missionaries lavish money in poor Christian areas, and cause annoyance by presenting local Christians with Bibles, causing Bishop Meti Mattoka of the Syrian Catholic Church to ask:

“Do we really need this huge amount of Bibles? Do they think we don’t know Jesus Christ?”

What’s more, local Christians seem not to share American optimism about the future of Iraq:

Some are deliberately lowering their profile in anticipation of a diminishing American military presence.

The report also states that Yonadam Kanna, the only non-Muslim member of the Governing Council, had failed in an effort not to have the children of mixed marriages automatically registered as Muslim.

Kanna, as I’ve noted before, was the only member of the Council to argue for exiled Iraqi Jews being allowed to come home – he didn’t get very far there either. The Times also notes that “dozens” of Mandeans have been killed since last year – a shockingly large figure also attested by the Sabian Mandaean Association of Australia which as of last July was citing eighty dead, and many rapes since the fall of Saddam.

Meanwhile, one (rather crude) set of statistics by the Pew Research Center reveals that:

Majorities in Morocco (73%), Pakistan (62%) and Turkey (52%) express negative views of Christians.

In this context, one hopes that American missionaries are being careful not to jeopardise local Christians by their actions. Certainly, a number of missionary organisations appear to be above-the-board humanitarian outfits that enjoy the respect of local Muslims. But others may be making life a lot more dangerous for those without the option of fleeing to the USA if things go wrong.

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