Michelle Obama as Political Art: Get Religion, August 31, 2012 August 31, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Get Religion, Politics, Press criticism.Tags: Fuera de Serie, Huffington Post, Le Monde, Michelle Obama, Portrait d’une Négresse
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Is this Spanish news magazine cover of Michelle Obama art or porn? Is it racist and sexist? Or is it a political fantasy of the noble savage, an incisive commentary on the centrality of Mrs. Obama’s sexuality in the presidential election campaign? Is it Granada I see or only Asbury Park in this profile of the First Lady?
The cover ignited a firestorm of controversy and prompted accusations of racism in the “black blogosphere”, the Huffington Post reported. But behind the fun over the racy cover lay an article that exemplified a secular worldview — a philosophical construct about the meaning and purpose of life that sees the acquisition of power as the chief aim of life and where God is absent (or far off on the margins.)
But before I become too airy fairy let’s start with the fun. On 9 Aug 2012 Fuera de Serie, a weekly magazine insert of the Madrid business daily Expansión published a profile of Michelle Obama. The article “Michelle se como a Obama” was illustrated by a cover painting of the First Lady draped in an American flag and posed in the style of a famous 19th century painting — Portrait d’une Négresse on exhibition at the Louvre by French artist Marie-Guillemine Benoist (1800).
On 29 August the magazine published the full text of the story and some background to the cover in an online piece entitled “La polémica desnudez de Michelle Obama”.
The initial controversy was missed by the American press, but animated African-American publications and blogs. The Huffington Post put the story into play within the mainstream press, shortly followed by Le Monde and other American and European publications. But their coverage focused on the cover, not the content of the article.
The Huffington Post was not pleased. It quoted one blogger as saying:
“By choosing to use such a jarring image to tell the story of how America’s first lady “seduced the people of the United States” and “stole the heart of Barack Obama,” as Fuera de Serie describes her,” writes Brande Victorian of Madame Noire, “it’s clear the magazine agrees with that mentality and wants to spread the message loud and clear: todavía estamos esclavos. We are still slaves.”
It cited other black interest publications who voiced similar objections, and likened the furore to the 2008 New Yorker cover that portrayed Michelle and Barack Obama as afro-centric terrorists.
Some European observers saw this negative reaction as an example of America’s lubricious Puritanism — a sentiment best summarized by Pascal Bruckner in last year’s Dominique Strauss-Kuhn affair.
It’s not enough though to describe [America] as puritanical because what governs [America] is a twisted puritanism which, after the sexual revolution, talks the language of free love and coexists with a flourishing porn industry.
Le Monde was less censorious than the Huffington Post and suggested the cover might not be so bad. It said the Portrait d’une Négresse was a celebration of the abolition of slavery and a symbol of liberation, of modernity, of freedom. It also gave the artist, Karine Percheron Daniels, space to deny charges of racism.
In my eyes, the image I created is of a beautiful woman with a beautiful message. For the first time in history the First Lady of the United States is a black woman who proudly displays her femininity (nudity), her roots (the slave) and her power (first lady of the United States embraced by the American flag). … I’m not racist. I’m trying with my art to show the beauty not the dirt.
So what is going on here? And where is the GetReligion ghost in all of this? Let’s go inside the story and see.
Like the cover painting, “Michelle se como a Obama” and “La polémica desnudez de Michelle Obama” are artistic interpretations of the meaning of Michelle Obama. Facts are present, but the meaning of these facts are a construct of the author who frames the article from the very beginning as a hagiography. Michelle Obama is a secular left-liberal saint, whose:
popularity ratings exceed those of her husband, President Barack Obama. Experts even suggest that she will be the key to the reelection of Democrat in November elections. But how the first lady has managed to [steal the hearts] of the American people?
The article answers this question by contrasting Saint Michelle with the Wicked Witch of the West: Sarah Palin. While “attractive” and “quintessentially America” the former Alaska governor was also “vulgar, predictable, uneducated and arrogant.”
Mrs. Obama in contrast is “sleek, friendly, outgoing, direct, sometimes irreverent, and mother of two daughters.” A woman whom nine out of ten voters believe “shares their values and understands their problems,” Fuera de Serie said. The article continues along these lines before moving to the heart of the story — the “why” of Michelle Obama.
Michelle is the daughter of Fraser Robinson, a worker who earned her living scrubbing floors in a water treatment plant in the city of Chicago, at the rate of $ 479 per month.
And it was this solidarity with the workers that drove the young Michelle to go on to Princeton and Harvard Law School and with Barack champion the cause of the poor and oppressed and right the “injustices” of the Bush Administration.
From the humble streets of their city [Chicago] emerged a community spirit, the spark that drove her husband to pursue his presidential dream … even though politics was “a waste of time” that would detract from [Barack Obama’s] responsibilities as a father and husband.
And like any good story from the Lives of the Saints, the article recounts tales of the miraculous and promises of divine intervention through the invocation of the saint’s name. For you see Michelle Obama is a better campaigner than her husband, one expert voice told Fuera de Serie, and her “passion and drive have triggered fantasies” that if her husband loses to Mitt Romney in the Fall, Michelle can carry forward the banner of change.
Let me step back a moment and say I am not denigrating or advocating the re-election campaign of President Barack Obama, nor am I slighting the First Lady. My target is this dreadful news profile of Mrs. Obama that is so over the top, so ludicrous, so one-sided that it is more likely to lead to ridicule than to admiration of its subject.
And absent from this entire story is any sense of what lay behind the family values and ethics of the parents that reared the young Michelle Robinson on Chicago’s South Side. Belief in God? Belief in history? We have snippets and slogans that hint at solidarity with the masses, but nothing else. The Michelle Obama in this article is identical to the artists portrait on the cover — a stylized fantasy that represents a cause, but is not representative of a person.
So GetReligion readers, tell me, is this racist, sexist, or vulgar? Is it beautiful, ennobling, a celebration of hope and change for a better world? Or am I taking a shovel to a souffle — seeing shadows and specters where none exist? What say you?
First printed in GetReligion.
Canterbury condolences for Ethiopian Patriarch: The Church of England Newspaper, August 26, 2012 p 6. August 29, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Archbishop of Canterbury, Church of England Newspaper, Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church.Tags: Abune Paulos
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The Archbishop of Canterbury has written to the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church offering his condolences following the announcement of the death of the church’s patriarch, Abune Paulos.
On 16 August 2012 the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry released a statement that Abune Paulos had died but gave no cause of death. However an opposition newspaper, the Ethiopian Review, reported the 76 year old leader of Ethiopia’s 40 million Orthodox Christians since 1992 suffered from hypertension and had died of a heart attack following a service he had conducted on Wednesday.
Born Gebre Medhin Wolde Yohannes in Ethiopia’s Tigray Province, the future patriarch was educated at St Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary in New York and earned a doctorate at Princeton Theological Seminary. Imprisoned following the 1974 overthrow of the Emperor Haile Selassia by the communist government of Mengistu Haile Mariam, he went into went into political exile in the United States after being freed and later returned to Ethiopia following an amnesty granted by the government.
Abune Paulos was elected Fifth Patriarch and Catholicos of Ethiopia, Ichege of the See of St Tekle Haymanot, and Archbishop of Axum in 1992, a year after the communist regime collapsed and was instrumental in modernizing the institutions of the Orthodox Church in the country.
Dr. Williams stated Abune Paulos “played a unique role in reviving and strengthening his church after a period of prolonged crisis and much suffering. The Ethiopian Church is now seen as a major presence in international Christianity, rising to the new challenges of modern Africa.”
“His Holiness provided steady and dependable leadership for his people and won great love and veneration. He served the world Church as a President of the World Council of Churches showing particular leadership in support of refugees and in inter-faith dialogue.”
“Our prayers are with all the faithful of the Ethiopian Church as they mourn their Father in God; and we join them in giving thanks to God for the sacrificial ministry of Abune Paulos over the years, and in the hope that his legacy in consolidating the faith of his people will be a lasting one,” Dr. Williams said.
First published in The Church of England Newspaper.
Archbishop “appalled” by police massacre in South Africa: The Church of England Newspaper, August 26, 2012 p 6. August 29, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Southern Africa, Church of England Newspaper.Tags: labour unrest, Lonmin Platinium, Riah Phiyega, South Africa, Thabo Makgoba
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The Archbishop of Cape Town has called for a “strong, but measured and proportionate” response from the South African government after police opened fire on striking miners killing 34.
Speaking to the press on August 17, National Police Commissioner Riah Phiyega said the police were compelled to use deadly force against striking miners at the Lonmin Platinium mine, located 62 miles northwest of Johannesburg, after 3000 miners gathered on a hillside overlooking Marikana to call for a pay rise of £600 a month.
Police sought to surround the striking miners and the melee began after shots were fired at the police and the miners charged police ranks wielding machetes.
Molaole Montsho of the Sapa news agency said he saw police use water cannons, tear gas and stun grenades to break up the protest. “And then in the commotion – we were about 800m [2,600ft] from the scene – we heard gunshots that lasted for about two minutes,” he wrote.
Commissioner Phiyega reported that 34 miners were killed, approximately 78 were injured and 259 taken into police custody.
The mine workers union, a political ally of President Jacob Zuma’s African National Congress, has called for a government investigation into the shooting – the deadliest police clash since the end of the apartheid era. Some activists have likened the shooting to the 1960 Sharpesville massacre, where police opened fire on demonstrators killing 69 – an event credited with radicalizing the anti-apartheid movement.
In a statement released on 17 August, Archbishop Thabo Makgoba of Cape Town said he was “stunned and appalled” by the shootings.
“Whatever the merits of the various disputes – whether between employees and employers, between unions, between workers and union leaders, between miners and police – whatever the legality of the strikes or the responses to them, this death toll is unacceptable,” the archbishop said, as “even one death is one too many.”
The archbishop called upon the Ministers of Justice, and of Mining and Mineral Resources to give “strong, but measured and proportionate, interventions to end this warpath and stop the killings.”
“We must also make resoundingly clear that common sense must prevail, and that sincere, mature, negotiation must always be the route to solving our differences. Violence is never the answer,” Archbishop Makgoba said.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Boko Haram violence a threat to the “Nigerian project”: The Church of England Newspaper, August 26, 2012 p 6. August 29, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Church of Nigeria, Islam.Tags: Boko Haram, Diocese of Kaduna, Goodluck Jonathan, Josiah Idowu-Fearon, Nicholas Okoh
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The Archbishop of Nigeria has called upon the government of President Goodluck Jonathan to stop the drift towards anarchy as more Christians were killed last week by Islamist terrorists. Attacks on churches and Christians were reported across Northern and Central Nigeria, with 19 worshipers attending a Pentecostal service in Okene in the central Kogi state murdered by gunmen.
In an interview with Punch, Archbishop Nicholas Okoh said that at the “rate we are going, the country is drifting fast into anarchy and if people now capitalise on that situation, it will degenerate to dog eat dog.”
Anti-Christian violence has prompted some Christians to flee the North, while many churches report sharp decreases in worship attendance. The Bishop of Kaduna, the Rt. Rev. Josiah Idowu-Fearon told his synod last week that the latest outbreak of violence had caused a 30 per cent drop in attendance.
On 6 August 2012, gunmen attacked a Bible Study held at the Deeper Life Bible Church in Okene. Local press accounts of the attack say that the attackers shut off the generator plunging the church into darkness and then sprayed the building with machine gun fire. Nineteen were killed in the attack, and two soldiers were killed in a firefight the following morning with the suspected gunmen.
In a communique released at the close of the 19th Kaduna Synod, the diocese warned Nigeria was sliding towards anarchy. Nigeria could soon see its own version of the Rwandan and Bosnian “ethnic cleansing” of recent years.
The Muslim militant group Boko Haram posed a threat to the “98 year old Nigerian project” the synod warned by its “acts of bombing, shooting and other forms of destructive attack on the Nigerian state.”
First posted in The Church of England Newspaper.
Are There Muslim Evangelists? Get Religion, August 28, 2012 August 28, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Get Religion, Islam, Persecution, Press criticism.Tags: Aamir Liaquat, Ahmadi Muslim, da'i, Da'wah, evangelist, imam, Lauren Frayer, National Public Radio, Pakistan, preacher, sheikh
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How far should the press go to acculturate their overseas news stories — to make them palatable to an American audience while also being true to the underlying facts? NPR Morning Edition reporter Lauren Frayer had a great story last week that “gets religion”, but also brought this issue to mind.
Her report broadcast on Pakistan’s Aamir Liaquat was an example of solid reporting. Her story entitled “Pakistani Televangelist Is Back On Air, Raising Fears” meets the Orwell test for journalism as it is free from cant, has a moral compass, is well researched and well crafted. But were the correct nouns used?
Here is the lede:
Pakistan’s most famous, and infamous, TV evangelist has been rehired by a top station. In 2008, Aamir Liaquat made on-air threats against a religious minority, the Ahmadis. Those comments were followed by widespread violence against the group. Liaquat’s return to the airwaves has rekindled the controversy.
As Pakistan’s media has expanded in recent years, there’s been a rise in Islamic preachers with popular TV call-in talk shows. And they’ve had their share of scandal. One famous TV host fled the country after embezzlement allegations. Others are accused of spewing hate speech
That’s the case for Pakistan’s most popular televangelist, Aamir Liaquat, who’s just been rehired by the country’s top TV channel despite accusations that he provoked deadly attacks in 2008.
I have some small knowledge of the political and religious culture of Pakistan and can say she knows what she is talking about. I encourage you to listen to the broadcast. To often Western reporters are parachuted into overseas hotspots and report on issues they know nothing about — either mangling the facts or mouthing a script written by others. My colleague at GetReligion M.Z. Heminway reported on a particularly egregious howler along these lines committed by the New York Times.
I applaud NPR for bringing this story to an American audience. Given the growing U.S. involvement in the Muslim word, it behooves the American press to cover these stories and not confine them to the ghetto of specialist publications.
In writing about the Muslim world, however, I wonder how appropriate it is to use Christian terminology. Terms such as “fundamentalist Muslim” are often dropped into stories to give Western readers some context or equivalence. In the headline of this story, and in the opening paragraphs the term evangelist and televangelist are used to describe Liaquat. Is that right?
Using the Associated Press style book as a guide, using this terminology is not wrong — but it is not quite right either. It states:
evangelist
Capitalize only in reference to the men credited with writing the Gospels. The four Evangelists were Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. In lowercase, it means a preacher who makes a profession of seeking conversions.
Conversions to what? To proselytize is the verb that means to attempt to convert someone to another faith or point of view, while a Muslim evangelist traditionally has been someone who seeks to convert Muslims to the Christian faith. Turning to Wikipedia provides little clarity as it defines an evangelist as one who practices Christian evangelism, while the Merriam-Webster‘s dictionary further refines evangelist as a:
Protestant minister or layman who preaches at special services [or] an enthusiastic advocate <an evangelist for physical fitness>
On one level it may well be appropriate to use terms familiar to readers to illustrate a story. That is after all the purpose of an analogy. But is this appropriate when language is available to describe the same fact set in the terms of the culture being described?
A Muslim preacher who seeks to evangelize is called a sheikh or imam. Da‘wah, meaning the issuing of a summons, call or invitation, is the duty of every Muslim to invite people to their faith or to recall lapsed or nominal Muslims to a deeper faith. A Muslim who practices da‘wah, either as a preacher, religious worker or someone engaged in a faith-building community activity is called a da‘i, plural du‘at.
To a Muslim audience, Aamir Liaquat is a da‘i — someone who seeks to renew the Muslim faith, proselytize non-Muslims, and combat false teaching. Yes, he is an enthusiastic advocate for Islam, but should Christian terms be used to describe this activity when then are Muslim terms to describe such actions?
At the same time there is a danger in taking this too far.
A Saturday Night Live skit that aired on 10 November 1990 and can be viewed here made fun of the mock Spanish some television reporters used on air. Entitled “NBC News Employees”, the skit starred Latino actor Jimmy Smits and the shows regular cast. The scene opens with a reporter speaking on air from Nicaragua, who says the word Nicaragua in a hyper-Spanish phonology. The skit progresses with the Anglo characters pronouncing Spanish place names (Los Angeles, San Diego, Honduras), foods (enchilada, burrito), and even sports teams (Denver Broncos) in a ridiculous Spanish accent.
Jimmy Smits’ character, Antonio Mendoza, is introduced to the Anglo reporters and says his name with an American English accent. The other actors respond by saying his name with an excessive accent and Smit’s character becomes more and more uncomfortable as the skit progresses. He finally states:
If you don’t mind my saying, sometimes when you take Spanish words and kind of over pronounce them, well its kind of annoying.
So, GetReligion readers, is it kind of annoying to Muslim terms for Muslim religious leaders in news stories? Is it too politically correct, or effete — perhaps pretentious? Unnecessary? Ridiculous? A tele-sheikh? Or is it demeaning to the non-Western world to subsume all things into an American milieu? What say you?
First published in GetReligion.
Slander suit splits Pretoria cathedral: The Church of England Newspaper, August 26, 2012, p 6. August 28, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Southern Africa, Church of England Newspaper.Tags: Cathedral of St Alban the Martyr, Diocese of Pretoria, Jo Seoka, libel, Paul Pretorius, S’khumbuso Sibiya
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A libel suit has been initiated against a lay leader of the Cathedral Church of St Alban the Martyr in Pretoria after writing in the cathedral’s newsletter a diocesan administrator had stolen money from the cathedral.
The law suit is the latest scandal in the dispute between the cathedral’s lay leaders and the diocese. Last month the Bishop of Pretoria was charged with assault. Police in Pretoria are investigating the claim that the Rt. Rev. Johannes Seoka struck Mr. Albert Wright, verger at the Cathedral Church of St Alban the Martyr on 30 June 2012.
In June the Anglican Church of Southern Africa initiated an investigation into charges of misconduct by Bishop Seoka and convened a task force of the House of Bishops charged under Canon 21.3 with investigating the claims. Bishop Seoka told The Church of England Newspaper the charges aired in the South African press by his critics that he had embezzled R500,000 from church coffers and that he had bullied his opponents were “ridiculous”.
On 14 June 2012 the Pretoria diocesan administrator, Mr. Paul Pretorius, filed suit in Pretoria High Court against Cathedral warden S’khumbuso Sibiya, saying Mr. Sibiya had uttered and published defamatory statements about him.
In February the cathedral chapter notified the police that R145,000 was missing from its accounts, and said they suspected Mr. Pretorius was responsible for the defalcation. Mr. Sibiya is alleged to have also published in the 12 Feb issue of the cathedral newsletter this claim.
After Mr. Sibiya declined to retract his charges, Mr. Pretorius brought suit saying: “The innuendo, inter alia in the context of the defamatory matter, being that the plaintiff was a thief, a common criminal, dishonest, corrupt, a fraudster and untrustworthy.”
In May Bishop Seoka and the diocesan standing committee suspended worship services at the cathedral after infighting amongst the congregation led to the resignation of the priest in charge.
The decision to temporarily suspend worship services was prompted by a desire to restore order and bring calm to a distressed congregation, the Bishop of Pretoria explained. “The truth is that all that is happening at the cathedral conflicts with the gospel, and the teachings of the Church.”
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
11 year old girl with Downs Syndrome jailed for Blasphemy: The Church of England Newspaper, August 26, 2012 p 6. August 28, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Church of Pakistan, Persecution.Tags: Blasphemy Laws, Islamabad, Rimsha Masih
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The Government of Pakistan has confirmed that an 11 year old Christian girl with Downs Syndrome has been arrested for blasphemy and is being held by police for questioning – and for protection from a mob that is seeking her death.
A spokesperson for Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, said the president has taken “serious note” of the arrest of Rimsha Masih and has directed the Interior Ministry to look into the matter.
The sequence of events that led to the arrest of Rimsha (also spelled Rifta) Masih remains unclear. However the Express Tribune reported that officials at the Ramna Police Station outside Islamabad had confirmed the girl had been accused of burning a Muslim text – variously described as 10 pages from the Koran or portions of the Noorani Qaida – a children’s Koran reader. The girl has since been taken into custody, the police have confirmed.
The police said after the complaint was filed on 16 August the girl and her mother were assaulted by a mob. The website “Christians in Pakistan” which first reported the arrest, stated the girl who lived in the Mehrabadi neighborhood of the capital had Downs Syndrome – a fact subsequently confirmed by the police after a medical examination.
Following her arrest, local mullah’s called for all Christians to leave the village. The Pakistan Christian Post reports that approximately 1000 Christian families have fled the Islamabad slum out of fear of reprisals from Muslim extremists.
A police investigation into the incident is underway, however, on local official said that if the girl had not been taken into custody, she might have been harmed by the mob. Under Pakistan’s Blasphemy Laws, those found guilty of insulting Mohammad or the Koran can be sentenced to death.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Ordinariate Denies Favoritism Charge: Anglican Ink, August 25, 2012 August 25, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Ink, Anglican Ordinariate.Tags: Anglicanorum Coetibus, Jeffrey Steenson
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The head of the U.S. branch of the Anglican Ordinariate, Msg. Jeffrey Steenson, has denied accusations it has given preference to former Episcopal clergy in its ordination process. However, among its first class of priests, 16 of 19 are former Episcopal clergy, with only 3 receiving their formation and orders from the continuing church.
Questions and concerns about the implementation and interpretation of Anglicanorum coetibus have met the Vatican’s initiative to create a liturgical home for Anglicans with the Roman Catholic Church. In an interview with PBS’s Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, Dr. Ian Markham, Dean of the Virginia Theological Seminary criticized the pastoral provision for Anglicans for sheep stealing.
“There was a perception that this was poaching by the Roman Catholic Church of Anglicans around the world. It was discourteous, it was stealing sheep, it was unecumenical,” he said, adding “It’s viewed as not recognizing the value of and integrity of our traditions.”
Read it all in Anglican Ink.
BBC Bias? Sharia law and Egypt: Get Religion, August 24, 2012 August 24, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Get Religion, Islam.Tags: Al Ahram, BBC, Egypt, Egypt Independent, MEMRI, Mohammed Morsi, Muslim Brotherhood, ribah, Sayyid Qutb, Sharia Law, usury
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Above all – Allah is our goal… The shari’a, then the shari’a, and finally, the shari’a. This nation will enjoy blessing and revival only through the Islamic shari’a. I take an oath before Allah and before you all that regardless of the actual text [of the constitution]… Allah willing, the text will truly reflect [the shari’a], as will be agreed upon by the Egyptian people, by the Islamic scholars, and by legal and constitutional experts…
Mohammed Mursi: Jihad Is Our Path, Death for the Sake of Allah Is Our Most Lofty Aspiration, the Shari’a Is Our Constitution. Misr-25 TV, 13 May 2012. Video clip and translation provided by MEMRI.
From time to time it is important to remind readers (and me) about GetReligion‘s mandate. This site does not seek to discuss religious issues of the moment and their intersection with politics, culture, the arts, economics and the like. It critiques press coverage of religion. The underlying issues are not central to a GetReligion story line.
Nor is this a “gotcha” site. I have made mistakes as a writer and have suffered from the deprivations sub-editors pruning and mis-titling my work. An example of a religion article that is not a proper GetReligion story is this article from the Seattle Times entitled: “Pakistani Christians flee after girl, 12, is accused of blasphemy”.
The subheading states: “A 12-year-old Muslim girl is in jail while Pakistani police investigate allegations that she burned a Quran, a crime that, if she is convicted, carries a life sentence.”
Now this is a dumb mistake. The girl is described as Christian in the article but called a Muslim in the subheading. This is not a question of the Seattle Times not getting religion, but a sub-editor’s mistake.
The mission of GetReligion is to point out what our editor TMatt calls “religion ghosts” — examples of an article misunderstanding, omitting or denigrating the role religion plays in a story. A classic example of this sort of religion ghost appears in a BBC story printed today entitled “Egypt requests $4.8bn loan from visiting IMF chief”.
The story opens:
Egypt has asked the International Monetary Fund for a $4.8bn (£3bn) loan to help revive its struggling economy. The request was made during talks in Cairo between President Mohammed Mursi and IMF chief Christine Lagarde.
Ms Lagarde said the IMF would respond quickly, while Prime Minister Hisham Qandil said he hoped the deal could be finalised before the end of the year. It is needed to cover budget deficits resulting from shrinking tourism and foreign investment revenues.
The article unfolds as a straight forward international finance story, discussing Egypt’s parlous economy, its “balance-of-payments crisis and high borrowing costs”, summarizing negotiations with the IMF, exploring possible U.S., Qatari and Saudi aid, and describing the terms of the loan:
After meeting [IMF chief Christine] Lagarde on Wednesday, Prime Minister Qandil said he expected the IMF loan would be for five years, with a grace period of 39 months and an interest rate of 1.1%.
Perhaps you are asking yourself where the GetReligion angle lies? Is this not a straight forward, somewhat dull, international economics story? Yes — but go back to the top of the article and look at the comments made by candidate Mohammed Mursi to the Muslim Brotherhood. If elected he would govern Egypt under the dictates of Shari’a law — which means a banking system without interest.
Throughout its time in opposition and underground, the Muslim Brotherhood denounced Western banking as being contrary to Shari’a. Sayyid Qutb, the ideologue of the Muslim Brotherhood interpreted the Koran’s verses on riba (interest or usury) to apply to commercial banking. He accused banks of “eating the flesh and bones” of the poor and “drinking their sweat and blood” through the charging of interest. Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the Brotherhood, in 1947 wrote to the leaders of Muslim state calling for them to repudiate Western banking practices in favor of interest-free Islamic banking.
The religion ghost in this story is whether Mohammed Mursi will jettison his protestations about Sharia law being the cornerstone of his administration in exchange for cheap interest loans from the West to keep his economy afloat.
Reuters and the Telegraph made no mention of the religion angle in their stories also, while the AP noted that past negotiations had been stalled by opposition from the Islamists. The Financial Times reported:
Analysts say the IMF’s loan terms could impede its acceptance by an Islamist government with populist pretences and a rhetorical commitment to thinning the gap between rich and poor.
The religious ramifications of the interest bearing loans were not omitted in the Egyptian press however. The Egypt Independent reported:
The government should not borrow from the International Monetary Fund to boost the country’s cash reserve, the Salafi Nour Party stated on Wednesday. “Borrowing from abroad is usury,” said Younis Makhyoun, a member of the party’s supreme committee. “God will never bless an economy based on usury.”
Mahkyoun called on Prime Minister Hesham Qandil to find other ways to raise funds instead of “allowing foreigners to interfere in our affairs.” The government should reduce spending, apply an austerity policy, set a maximum wage, apply Islamic regultations to stock exchange speculations and repatriate funds siphoned abroad, Makhyoun added.
Al-Ahram reported the left was outraged too by the prospect of IMF loans.
Dozens of demonstrators, meanwhile, protested outside the Cabinet building in downtown Cairo during Lagarde’s visit. Protestors, consisting mainly of leftist and revolutionaries, called on Egypt to reject the loan.
They chanted slogans and held signs against the proposed loan –and capitalism in general – such as “No to crony capitalism,” “Down with capitalism,” and “Reject the loans.”
“Why did we have a revolution? Wasn’t it to improve the living conditions of the people? We know that the money from these loans is pilfered by the authorities and will only lead to the further impoverishment of the people,” protest organiser Mary Daniel told Ahram Online.
IMF and World Bank loans are notorious among leftist activists in Egypt, as in the rest of the world, as they are generally seen as a means of spreading capitalism throughout the world.
The state-run daily, which has the largest circulation of any newspaper in Egypt, also noted that Islamists had been quiet.
Notably, Islamist political forces – which rejected a similar IMF loan offer last April – were nowhere to be seen in Wednesday’s protest.
In April, Egypt’s Islamist-led parliament said that the government’s economic programme failed to provide details on how the key problems facing Egypt’s economy – namely, unemployment and security – would be solved.
Some Islamists went so far as to say that such loans were haram (religiously proscribed) since they relied on interest, which is forbidden according to the tenets of Islam.
Let me offer a historical analogy. In the Fall of 1932 Adolf Hitler toned back his anti-Semitic tirades and played the bourgeois, President Paul von Hindenburg, the army and Germany’s wealthy industrialists. When he was appointed chancellor in 1933 some expected the Nazi leader’s anti-Semitism would dry up as he had achieved his goal of power.
The liberal German-Jewish playwright Carl Zuckmayer wrote at that time:
… even many Jews considered the savage anti-Semitic rantings of the Nazis merely a propaganda device, a line the Nazis would drop as soon as they reached power.
At that time it seemed reasonable that Hitler would drop the anti-Semitic rantings that had helped bring him to power as it no longer served a rational political or economic purpose. Are we seeing something similar happening in Egypt?
Is the Morsi government shedding its ideology, its fundamental commitment to a state governed by the dictates of Sharia law in return for cheap Western loans? Now that the army has been neutered, parliament dissolved and the opposition broken Mohammed Morsi can do as he likes. It would seem to make rational sense that he would drop his anti-modernist religious views now that he has a modern state to run — but will he?
Is there a religious ghost in the IMF story? Is the BBC bringing a Western secular worldview to this story that misses its inherent non-Western faith-driven elements?
Should these two stories be kept separate? Keep financial news in the business section and religion in the Saturday lifestyle supplement? Or, is there a religion angle in this finance story that must be explored in order for the reader to understand? What say you GetReligion readers?
First printed in GetReligion.
Cash-strapped Canadians coming to the aid of Michael Ingham: The Church of England Newspaper, August 26, 2012 p 6. August 23, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Canada, Church of England Newspaper, Property Litigation.Tags: Diocese of British Columbia, Diocese of New Westminster, Diocese of Toronto, James Cowan, Michael Ingham, Murray Henderson
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The cash-strapped Diocese of British Columbia has given $100,000 to the Diocese of New Westminster to help pay its expenses in the litigation over breakaway congregations.
On 3 August 2012 the Anglican Journal reported that Bishop James Cowan of British Columbia “sent a $100,000 cheque to New Westminster’s bishop, the Rt. Rev. Michael Ingham” to help defray its expenses in its fight with conservative congregations.
However, it its report to the January meeting of the British Columbia synod, the finance committee reported the diocese would have a budget deficit of $180,000 for 2012 and had approximately $2.2 million in debt. The 2012 budget for British Columbia would give the national church offices in Toronto $440,000; Administrative Costs would consume $450,000; the Bishop’s Office would draw $277,000, leaving $348,000 for programmes
To fund the shortfall in its 2012 budget and to pay its debts, including $315,000 in legal fees expended to evict the parishioners of the Church of St. Mary of the Incarnation, the diocese has been closing churches and selling the properties.
But in his letter to New Westminster, Bishop Cowan said his diocese was “mindful of the sacrifice made by the Diocese of New Westminster in its defence of not only property but our polity.”
In June 2011, the Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear the appeal of a group of breakaway congregations in New Westminster, upholding a British Columbia high court decision that held parish properties were held in trust by a diocese for the minister of the Anglican Church of Canada.
The British Columbia gift follows a 16 June gift of $250,000 from the Diocese of Toronto’s Ministry Allocation Fund. “This is a contribution to offset the costs of litigation borne by the Diocese of New Westminster in establishing the property rights of dioceses in the Anglican Church of Canada,” Toronto Archbishop Colin Johnson wrote.
“We offer this contribution in recognition of the Diocese of New Westminster’s leadership in pursuing the court’s decision that affirms the principles that undergrid our ecclesiology and governance as Anglicans,” he said.
However, Toronto Diocesan Financial Council member the Rev. Murray Henderson stated he was “deeply chagrined” by the “tithe” to New Westminster.
“As a member of the Council which made the decision, I warned that conservatives would regard this action as a slap in the face. In fact many are angry; others are deeply discouraged. The money, a tithe from Toronto’s Ministry Allocation Fund, might well have been sent instead to a northern diocese in need, an action which would have the support of all Canadian Anglicans. Instead, the Diocese of Toronto has chosen to share the money in a way which can only further divide the church. As one recommending that conservative Anglicans remain within the Anglican Church of Canada, my task has been made far more difficult,” Dr. Henderson said.
“Any way you cut it, it’s a slap in the face,” he said.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Maverick bishop backs mining ban in Australia: The Church of England Newspaper, August 19, 2012 p 6. August 23, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Australia, Church of England Newspaper, Environment.Tags: Diocese of Gippsland, John McIntyre, mining
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The Australian Bishop at the center of that church’s controversy over gay clergy has taken up a new cause, writing in his diocesan newspaper that he would close down local coal mines until the government had determined they posed no threat to the environment.
Speaking to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation last week, Bishop John McIntyre of Gippsland said that if he had the power, he would “lock the gate and I would invite my neighbours to do the same” until Exxon Mobil and other mining companies agreed to his terms.
Writing in the August issue of the Diocese of Gippsland newspaper, Bishop McIntyre said coal seam gas extraction was unsafe and posed a threat to the environment. The Victorian state government had an obligation to study its environmental impact before permitting any further mining and drilling.
Exxon Mobil had a “questionable reputation in our communities for not being transparent in its dealings with local people” he wrote, adding that he was surprised the Victorian National Party was “standing with the landholders” in this dispute.
He told the ABC: “I did that to be a little bit provocative I guess because it strikes me that too often a lot of decisions that get made by governments are made sometimes more often for political reasons than they are for actually looking at the facts of the matter.
In his presidential address to the 36th meeting of the Synod of the Diocese of Gippsland in May, Bishop McIntyre said that as a matter of conscience he could not conform to the House of Bishops protocol on gay clergy.
“I will appoint to office in our diocese those whom I believe God is calling to minister among us,” he said adding that this as “my commitment to God and to you, and I am willing to live with any consequences that may arise from remaining true to that commitment.”
At their March meeting the bishops agreed that they accepted “the weight” of the 1998 Lambeth Resolution on Human Sexuality as well as resolutions adopted by the Australian General Synod as “expressing the mind of this church on issues of human sexuality” and agreed not to ordain, license, authorise or appoint persons known to be in a sexual relationship outside of marriage.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Where have all the foreign correspondents gone?: Get Religion August 22, 2012 August 22, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Myanmar, Free Speech, Get Religion, Politics.Tags: Burma, Claire Berlinski, Daily Telegraph, Emma Larkin, George Orwell, Los Angeles Times, New York Times
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“Truth is true only within a certain period of time,” observed a spokesman for the Burma’s military junta in the aftermath of that country’s 1988 pro-democracy uprising, reported Emma Larkin in her 2004 political travelogue-cum-biography “Finding George Orwell in Burma”. “What was truth once may no longer be truth after many months or years.”
My mind turned to Burma and these musings on the nature of truth after reading Thomas Fuller’s solid story in the New York Times on the end of press censorship in Burma. Reading this piece also brought home the importance of having a correspondent in place that knows the territory, the players, the culture – a reporter who not only is in place, but who “gets it”. Compare the coverage in the New York Times with its story datelined Bangkok with that of the Los Angeles Times article written from California and you can see what I mean.
The LA Times opened its article with:
Journalists in Myanmar will no longer have to send their articles to state censors before publication, a landmark step announced Monday toward lifting restrictions on the press.
But reporters in the changing country still fear being punished for what they write. Free speech activists say other rules that clamp down on government criticism or touchy topics are still in place, inhibiting journalists from writing freely.
It followed with analysis, drawing quotes from scholars and Burmese activists outside of the country. On its face a nice, but thin story.
Compare it to the New York Times piece which opened with:
BANGKOK — The government of Myanmar said on Monday that it would no longer censor private publications, a move that journalists described as a major step toward media freedom in a country where military governments have tried for decades to control the flow of information.
The announcement was made to editors on Monday and posted on a government Web site. “All publications in Myanmar are exempt from the scrutiny of Press Scrutiny and Registration Department,” the government said in a terse statement.
It then moves to an analysis of the event, quoting Burmese journalists in Burma before moving to the close with context and further detail.
Like the democratization process itself in Myanmar, the government has scaled back censorship gradually. In June 2011, articles dealing with entertainment, health, children and sports were taken off the list of subjects requiring prior censorship. In December, economics, crime and legal affairs were removed. Education topics were taken off the list in March. The only two topics remaining on the list — religion and politics — were freed from censorship on Monday.
Like the New York Times, the Telegraph’s South Asia editor took an upbeat tone, but what the Times put in its last sentence the Telegraph put in its first:
Until yesterday all political and religious news had to be submitted to the government’s Press Scrutiny and Registration Department for prior approval, but the requirement was dropped in what was hailed as another significant step in Burma’s fast-moving democratic reform process.
In the past twelve months, since democracy movement leader Aung San Suu Kyi met former military leader President Thein Sein, the government has relaxed censorship and controls on trade unions, freed hundreds of political prisoners, and held a series of by-elections which were almost all won by the Nobel Laureate’s National League for Democracy and hailed as ‘free and fair.
Given that there has been a gradual relaxation of press restrictions over the past year, it makes sense that politics would be one of the last taboos. But why would religion reporting be banned?
The LA Times article does not mention the topic of religion at all, while the New York Times does not explain why religion reporting and not economics, for example, was banned. Why would a report on Burma’s parlous economic state be less of a threat to the regime than a report on a religious topic?
My assumption is that as Buddhist monks have been at the forefront of the pro-Democracy movement news about religion would be controlled by the state – but I have no knowledge on this point, and none of the articles address this. Nor is this likely to be something that falls within the catch-all of conventional wisdom about Burma – for until recently foreign reporters were banned from the country and its citizens were threatened with jail if they spoke with foreign reporters.
Why was religion so dangerous to the military junta? I can guess, but after reading these articles I do not know.
The New York Times however did a good job in capturing the excitement resident Burmese journalists felt. A joke current in Myanmar during the year Emma Larkin researched her book about George Orwell, who served as a colonial policeman in Burma during the 1920’s, was that “Orwell wrote not just one novel about the country, but three: a trilogy comprised of ‘Burmese Days,’ ‘Animal Farm’ and ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’.”
Larkin saw some truth in this joke noting that Orwell’s 1934 novel “Burmese Days” savaged British colonial rule; “Animal Farm” (1946) prophesied Burma’s “miserable experiment with socialism,” which transformed the country from one of the richest in Asia at the time of the left-wing military coup in 1962 to the one of the poorest today; while “Nineteen Eighty-Four” (1949) foresaw the transformation of the country into a society dominated by informers, doublespeak, political repression, torture and censorship.
In “Nineteen Eighty-Four” the protagonist Winston Smith works as a clerk in the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth, redacting history to conform to the party line of the present. Just as Winston Smith would “vaporize” dissidents from memory, until last year it was a crime in Burma to write the name of someone held to be an unperson, like pro-Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
The tone of the New York Times piece better states, to my mind, the freedom felt by the Burmese, as does the Telegraph story. While skill in the craft of journalism plays its part, I also credit the high quality of these stories to the presence of Western reporters in the region.
This is now to often the exception rather than the rule. In an article entitled “How to Read Today’s Unbelievably Bad News” published by the Gatestone Institute, the Istanbul-based American journalist Claire Berlinski argues:
In-depth international news coverage in most of America’s mainstream news organs has nearly vanished. What is published is not nearly sufficient to permit the reader to grasp what is really happening overseas or to form a wise opinion about it. The phenomenon is non-partisan; it is as true for Fox News as it is for CNN.
Do look at this great piece by Ms. Berlinski — whose work I long have admired. It speaks to the reasons and consequences of the collapse of overseas reporting. Focusing on overseas religion reporting for GetReligion, I feel at times that I am working under a double disadvantage. The quantity and quality of international news coverage in U.S. and British newspapers has declined — and on top of that the few remaining foreign correspondents sometimes do not “get religion”.
First published in GetReligion.
AMiA’s Uganda option closes: Anglican Ink, August 22, 2012 August 22, 2012
Posted by geoconger in AMiA, Anglican Ink, Church of the Province of Uganda.Tags: Chuck Murphy, Diocese of Bunyoro-Kitara, Nathan Kyamanywa
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Bishop Nathan Kyamanywa
The Anglican Mission in America (AMiA)’s Society for Mission and Apostolic has lost one of its two ecclesial sponsors. In a 22 August 2012 statement given to Anglican Ink, the Church of Uganda said the canonical cover offered by one of its bishops to clergy who wish to affiliate with the society under the leadership of Bishop Chuck Murphy had been withdrawn.
Earlier this month clergy who had been affiliated with the AMiA received a letter from its headquarters in Pawleys Island, South Carolina asking that they choose one of two canonical jurisdictions. Last month Bishop Murphy, accompanied by his assistant the Rev. Canon Kevin Donlan, traveled to Africa to arrange alternative provincial oversight in light of the severance of relations with the Anglican Province of Rwanda and the end to the temporary oversight provided by the Anglican Province of the Congo.
Read it all in Anglican Ink.
Stained glass ruling from Guildford Consistory Court: The Church of England Newspaper, August 19, 2012 p 5. August 21, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Church of England, Church of England Newspaper.Tags: church architecture, Consistory Court, Diocese of Guilford, St Nicolas Cranleigh
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Nave of St Nicolas Cranleigh
The alleviation of tedium during a sermon is insufficient grounds for objecting to the installation of stained glass windows in a church, the judge of the Consistory Court of the Diocese of Guildford ruled last week.
At a hearing held before Andrew Jordan, Chancellor of the Diocese of Guildford and a judge of the Consistory Court, a petition brought by a parishioner of the Church of St Nicolas in Cranleigh challenged the decision by the parish council to install stained glass windows.
In 1944 a V-1 rocket exploded some seventy yards from the church, destroying the Church Room and Infant School, and doing considerable damage to the Church. Of the fourteen stained-glass windows, only three on the south side were preserved. Clear panes of glass were installed at the east end of the church behind the altar.
The Consistory Court approved a Parochial Church Council decision for Baynard’s Chapel to revert to a stained glass window designed by Rachel Mulligan.
One parishioner objected to the plan saying the clear light from the windows was aesthetically appealing, and provided a view of a cedar tree grown from a sapling brought from the Holy Land by a previous rector.
In his ruling the judge held this was insufficient grounds to object to the installation of stained glass windows.
“Whether the movement of an ancient cedar tree seen through clear glass is an aid to devotion or merely passes the time in one of the duller moments of the rector’s sermon will be a matter of personal taste or private spirituality, but the same may be said of stained glass,” the court held.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Ramadan poisoning victims told to keep silent: The Church of England Newspaper, August 19, 2012 p 6. August 21, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Church of Pakistan, Persecution.Tags: Karachi, Ramadan
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Nine Christian nurses hospitalized last month after allegedly being poisoned for violating the Ramadan fast in Karachi, have been warned that if they speak out they will be punished.
In a statement posted on his Facebook page, Capuchin Father Abid Habib, president of the Major Superiors Leadership Conference of the Roman Catholic Church in Pakistan stated the nurses were “warned that giving out information could result in hospital authorities slapping a court case on them, accusing them of taking drugs before drinking the tea.”
“We are still convinced that they were victims of religious intolerance,” Fr. Habib said. Police have launched an investigation into the 29 July poisonings of the student nurses at Karachi’s Civil Hospital. Supporters of the nurses claim that their decision not to participate in the dawn to dusk Ramadan fast angered Islamist extremists, who retaliated by poisoning their tea.
When the nurses returned to their hostel after their shift and made tea, they became ill and had to be hospitalized.
Nasreem Gill, the hospital’s chief nursing superintendent, told local newspapers that tests of the tea and blood samples from the nurses were being examined at the hospital’s laboratory and results were expected shortly.
The Catholic UCA news agency noted that Christian activists in Pakistan have claimed that the country’s Ramadan law, which bans eating, drinking or smoking in public places during the fasting hours, has been used to persecute Christians. Violations of the Ramadan law are subject to a three month prison sentence or fine.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Newcastle inter-faith talks ended over EAPPI vote: The Church of England Newspaper, August 19, 2012 p 6. August 20, 2012
Posted by geoconger in British Jewry, Church of England, Church of England Newspaper, Judaism.Tags: Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel, General Synod, Representative Council of North-East Jewry
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While formal relations between the Anglican Communion and Judaism appear unaffected by last month’s General Synod vote to endorse the work of the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI), the 9 July vote has seen a breakdown in some local ecumenical relationships with the Church of England.
The Representative Council of North-East Jewry has broken off relations with Bishop Martin Wharton of the Diocese of Newcastle in response to his support for the EAPPI motion. However, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s office reports that a two-day meeting held after the synod vote of the Anglican-Jewish Commission of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Chief Rabbinate of Israel had been cordial.
Meeting from 31 July to 1 August at Mansfield College, Oxford, the Anglican-Jewish Commission received papers Dr Jane Clements on “Anglicanism and the Secular State” and Rabbi Rasson Arousi on “Democracy in Judaism’s Political Vision”.
A communique from the gathering stated the commission also discussed “various matters of concern, including the recent Private Member’s Motion that related to Israel/Palestine at the Church of England’s General Synod.”
The commission acknowledged the strain imposed on Anglican-Jewish relations by the Synod vote stating “there was acknowledgement that this had caused much distress within the Jewish community in Britain and also within the Christian community as well as in Israel and beyond.”
However, it also noted there was “appreciation” for the “efforts of all those who were engaged on the issue to introduce greater understanding and a wider perspective. The Commission discussed steps that could be taken to address the complexities of the challenges raised.”
Last week the Jewish Chronicle reported that the presidents of the Representative Council of North-East Jewry, Brian Mark and Eric Joseph, had written to Bishop Wharton about his vote in favour of the EAPPI motion. They were perturbed he had endorsed EAPPI “despite…our grave concerns about that proposal, especially that it would encourage anti-Semitism.”
The bishop also aroused their ire by agreeing to attend a meeting sponsored by EAPPI “in Gateshead in November, which plans to include a session on boycotts and divestment by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.”
These actions make “any further contact with the Jewish community in the North-East impossible,” they said.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Hindu state prayers draw protests from church leaders: The Church of England Newspaper, August 19, 2012 August 19, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Church of South India, Hinduism, Politics.Tags: abhishekha, Church - State relations, drought, Jagadish Shettar, John S. Sadananda, Karnataka
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A Hindu priest in Karnataka performing an abhishekha by pouring libations on the image of the deity being worshiped, amidst the chanting of mantras.
Government plans to pay Hindu temples to offer prayers to propitiate the gods and ask for rain for the drought stricken Karnataka State in Southern India have prompted outrage by Church leaders and secularists. The BJP-led state government’s funding for Hindu rituals violates India’s secular constitution, critics charge, and will inflame sectarian tensions.
Last month the Karnataka Department of Revenue released a circular to 34,000 Hindu temples asking it to conduct “abhishekha”, “varuna mantra”, “jalabhishekha and other rituals on 27 July and 2 August as it was “convinced” that it was necessary to conduct these rituals in view of the seveare drought, and “for the welfare of people and cattle”. Upon performing the prayers, the government led by Jagadish Shettar would give each temple Rs 5000.
India’s monsoon June to September monsoon season began late this year and has so far provided inadequate rains, leading to fears of famine. The northern Indian states of Haryana and Punjab, which produce over 60 per cent of India’s grain crop has seen 65 per cent less rain this year than the long-term average, Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) in New Delhi reports.
Nation-wide, the monsoon has been more than 20 percent below its average, sparking fears of drought. “Lack of rain is a worry for everyone … Let everyone pray for rain. But we cannot approve of the government spending money to conduct prayers in temples,” the Rt. Rev. John S. Sadananda, Bishop in the Karnataka Southern Diocese of the Church of South India (CSI), told ENI.
“The government should have spent that money to help farmers” affected by the drought the bishop said.
Writing in Mainstream magazine, Fr. Ambrose Pinto SJ of St Joseph’s College in Bangalore said the state’s support of one religious faith violates the Indian constitution.
Article 27 of the Indian Constitution “rules out public funding of religion,” he noted, but the Karnataka government “has extensively funded religious groups.”
Fr. Pinto added the constitution’s “Article 15(1) states that the state shall not discriminate against any citizen on grounds only of religion. With the grant of money to temples and issue of circular to conduct rituals there to bring down rain from heavens, the State has violated all these norms.”
Indian secularism is committed to the idea of “principled distance” from all religions and strict neutrality in matters of religious practices, he argued. “It is only when the state maintains an equal distance from all religions, the state can put an end to inhuman practices of religions like untouchability, child marriages and devadasi system and initiate progressive changes by framing laws towards communities oppressed and suppressed sometimes with the legitimacy derived from religion.”
The BJP government in Karnataka has abandoned the progressive principles of a modern democratic society and was “taking people back into superstitions, encouraging beliefs and myths. It is in the interest of the secular state therefore citizens irrespective of religions may have to come together to defeat the sinister designs of the State Government,” Fr. Pinto said.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Pod People: Goofy Catholics and Mercy for Murderers: Get Religion, August 19, 2012 August 19, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Get Religion, Issues Etc, Press criticism.Tags: Inclusive Catholics, Marc Dutroux, Michelle Martin, Missouri’s Public Prayer Amendment
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In this week’s podcast Issues Etc. host Todd Wilkin and I discussed three recent GetReligion stories: Doggie Masses offered by Inclusive Catholics in Australia, one-sided reporting on Missouri’s Amendment 2, and the parole of Michelle Martin.
Todd opened the show asking why I had lambasted the coverage of the Public Prayer Amendment in Missouri in the report from RNS. The gist of my response was that the article was unbalanced. Offering man on the street responses from Columbia, Missouri (a liberal university town not representative of the state as a whole) was unwise. Having three “no’s” to one “yes” quotes when “yes” garnered 83 per cent of the vote was a text book case of how not to use man in the street quotes. The preponderance of negative coverage was in inverse proportion to the amendment’s support. A political reporter should not allow his own feelings of disgust with the ignorance of the electorate to color the story.
Our discussion of the coverage of the Inclusive Catholic Mass in Melbourne centered on whether or not the author of the article was making sport of the subjects of his story. I could not answer the question. If I had wanted to ridicule Inclusive Catholics I would have written the article the way the religion reporter for The Age did by showcasing the foolishness of the geriatric hipsters in the story. Todd suggested the reporter may have written the article in a sympathetic tone — and what I found absurd the reporter found enchanting. So we are left with the mystery of ridicule or reverence.
The discussion of the parole of Michelle Martin touched mainly on the diversity of the Belgian press — Catholic, secular, liberal, conservative. The original report in GetReligion prompted discussion in the wider blogosphere that I followed with great interest.
Writing in the American Conservative, Rod Dreher’s article “Belgian Nuns Help Free (Sort Of) A Monster” showcased the sharply divided opinions about the underlying story. It also pointed out the limits of GetReligion‘s coverage which focuses on the reporting, not on the underlying story.
This can be frustrating at times as there is a latent opinion journalists in every reporter — but at GetReligion we are charged with reporting on the reporting. However, part of the fun of appearing on Issues, Etc., is that I can let fly every so often with an opinion about the issues.
So GetReligion readers, drop on by the Issues, Etc, podcast page and hear me make fun of Inclusive Catholics offer sober analyses of religion reporting.
First printed in Get Religion.
Anglican Unscripted Episode 48, August 18, 2012 August 18, 2012
Posted by geoconger in 77th General Convention, AMiA, Anglican Church of North America, Anglican.TV, Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop of York, Canon Law, Church of England, Church of the Province of Uganda, Church of the Province of West Africa, South Carolina.Tags: Crown Nominations Committee
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Not a week goes by (even in August) when the Unscripted team can’t dig up some interesting news. Kevin and George discuss the “new thang” with AMiA and the turmoil at Pawley’s Island. They also reveal some Crown Commission secrets, Anglican Job Postings and Affinity Dioceses. Peter Ould talks about an Englishman trying to sell more books and Allan gives some interesting history about leaving and staying in TEC at the same time.
Who determines who is a Jew?: Get Religion, August 17, 2012 August 17, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Get Religion, Judaism, Press criticism.Tags: Alan Furst, Associated Press, Christopher Hitchens, Csanad Szegedi, Der Sturmer, Gregor von Rezzori, Hungary, Jewish identity, Mischling
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In his 2008 Atlantic review of Gregor von Rezzori’s Memoirs of an Anti-Semite Christopher Hitchens retells a “sour old joke” from the Nazi era.
Two elderly Jews [are] sitting in a Berlin park, with one of them reading a Yiddish paper and the other one scanning the pages of Der Stürmer. The latter Jew is laughing. This proves too much for the former Jew, who says: “It’s not enough you read that Nazi rag, but you find it funny?”
“Look,” replies the other. “If I read your paper, what do I see? Jews deported, Jews assaulted, Jews insulted, Jewish property confiscated. But I read Der Stürmer, and there’s finally some good news. It seems that we Jews own and control the whole world!”
Change the setting, transform Der Stürmer to any one of a number of Arab-language newspapers or television broadcasts, move the date to 2012 and the same joke would be fresh and relevant today. While the Muslim world today may be the most vocal source of Jew hatred, European anti-Semitism is alive and well too. And it takes a surprising number of forms: from the Church of England to 68′ers, in the salons of the chattering classes and amongst pro-Palestinian activists. Anti-Semites can be found from left and right.
Anti-Semites have also risen to prominence in some political parties including Hungary’s Movement for a Better Hungary (Jobbik Magyarországért Mozgalom). Jobbik leaders have accused Jews of buying up the country’s lands, taking over the banks and newspapers, and exercising a fell hand over the affairs of state.Into this mix comes an Associated Press story about one of Jobbik’s leaders, Csanad Szegedi. The lede begins:
BUDAPEST, HUNGARY — As a rising star in Hungary’s far-right Jobbik Party, Csanad Szegedi was notorious for his incendiary comments on Jews: He accused them of “buying up” the country, railed about the “Jewishness” of the political elite and claimed Jews were desecrating national symbols.
Then came a revelation that knocked him off his perch as ultra-nationalist standard-bearer: Szegedi himself is a Jew.
Following weeks of Internet rumours, Szegedi acknowledged in June that his grandparents on his mother’s side were Jews — making him one too under Jewish law, even though he doesn’t practice the faith. His grandmother was an Auschwitz survivor and his grandfather a veteran of forced labour camps.
Since then, the 30-year-old has become a pariah in Jobbik and his political career is on the brink of collapse. He declined to be interviewed for this story.
Szegedi is reported as being shocked by these revelations. However, his fierce xenophobic politics and his Presbyterian faith appear not to be enough to prevent his Jobbik allies from cutting him dead. A Jew is a Jew by blood — not by faith or self-identification it appears for the fascists in Hungary, who seem perturbed at having a Jew in their midst.
The odious Mr. Szeged has sought the counsel of Rabbi Slomo Koves of Hungary’s Orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch community to help him through this trauma of learning he is Jewish.
“As a rabbi … it is my duty to receive every person who is in a situation of crisis and especially a Jew who has just now faced his heritage,” Koves said.
…”Csanad Szegedi is in the middle of a difficult process of reparation, self-knowledge, re-evaluation and learning, which according to our hopes and interests, should conclude in a positive manner,” Koves said. “Whether this will occur or not is first and foremost up to him.”
The Szegedi controversy reminds me of a passage from Alan Furst’s 2001 book Kingdom of Shadows: “Morath didn’t mention Bethlen’s well-known definition of the anti-Semite as ‘one who detests the Jews more than necessary’.”
Though this wonderful novel may be the non-specialist’s introduction to the aphorism, it is none the less a true statement made by Hungary’s pre-war Prime Minister Count István Bethlen.
The article goes into further detail as to why Szegedi is considered to be a Jew.
Judaism is traced from mother to child, meaning that under Jewish law Szegedi is Jewish. Szegedi said he defines himself as someone with “ancestry of Jewish origin — because I declare myself 100 per cent Hungarian.”
Under the traditional definition of “who is a Jew”, this definition is correct and is the criteria used by Conservative and Orthodox rabbis. Yet Reform Judaism in 1983 recognized patrilineal Jews—those born of a Jewish father and a Gentile mother—as full Jews, provided they followed the Jewish faith.
A further twist in this debate is Israel. Reform Judaism’s position is not accepted by the Israeli rabbinate, which takes matrilinealism as the criterion for Jewish descent. Most Conservative rabbis and almost all Orthodox rabbis would also decline to recognize conversions performed by Reform rabbis for converts to Judaism on halachic grounds.
How should journalists decide who is a Jew? In this story the conservative/orthodox matrilineal definition is used. This may be appropriate as the Jewish community in Hungary follows this line. Yet the AP’s readers are found in the Angl0sphere, where the majority of Jews follow the Reform view of Jewish identity. Should it not interpret events according to the lights of its readers?
Nazi race ideology would classify Szegedi as a mischling — a half Jew. A German mischling was subject to severe restrictions under the Nazi race laws, but mischlinge in the Eastern territories occupied by the Nazis were classified as full Jews and exterminated. Szegedi appears not to want to accept his Jewish ancestry — and protests that he is a Christian and 100 per cent Hungarian.
Distasteful as this topic may be, has Szegedi the right to construct himself? Is he a Jew? Should he be a Jew? Who gets to say?
What say you GetReligion readers? Who has the right to decide — and how should the press approach such situations?
First printed at Get Religion.
American Ordinariate accused of being ‘insufficiently Catholic’: The Church of England Newspaper, August 12, 2012 p 5. August 16, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Ordinariate, Church of England Newspaper, Roman Catholic Church.Tags: Jeffrey Steenson, liturgy
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The American branch of the Anglican Ordinariate is insufficiently Catholic, critics charge, following the announcement the Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter will not use the traditional Latin mass – the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite.
Clergy who had been permitted to use the Latin mass by their Anglican bishops tell The Church of England Newspaper they are nonplussed in being forbidden to use the traditional rite now that they are Catholic priests.
On 30 July, Mgr Jeffrey Steenson, the ordinary of the Chair of St Peter and the former bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande, released a statement clarifying the Ordinariate’s liturgical formularies after some new converts claimed he was bullying them by forbidding the use of the Latin mass.
On 29 July 2012 the Anglo-Catholic website posted a story stating Mgr Steenson had discouraged his clergy from using the Latin mass, directing them to use only approved Anglican and Catholic English-language liturgies.
Christian Campbell stated that he had it on “unimpeachable authority that there is an ongoing crackdown on those AU/Ordinariate priests who would dare to learn or celebrate the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite on the part of [Mgr] Steenson” and other Ordinariate leaders.
The “affected priests are naturally frightened, and unwilling to go on record, but make no mistake, the leadership of the US Ordinariate at present has set itself against both Summorum Pontificum and Anglicanorum coetibus,” he stated, adding: “I also have it on good authority that this intimidation, an abuse of power, is being reported directly to the Roman Authorities. And the contention that the traditional Latin Mass has no bearing on the Anglican Patrimony — this simply has me flabbergasted.”
Other traditionalist Catholic websites picked up the story, with many commentators berating Mgr Steenson. By not allowing the traditional Latin mass the ordinary was forbidding the use of the liturgy that “shaped the Anglo-Catholic movement.”
“The Mass celebrated by [Blessed] John Henry Newman is not apt for the Anglican converts of the Ordinariate,” was how one commentator characterised Mgr Steenson’s actions.
But in a statement posted on the Ordinariate’s website, Mgr Steenson responded to his detractors saying those elements of the Anglican liturgical patrimony incorporated into the liturgical life of the Ordinariate sought to balance “two historic principles — that Christian prayer and proclamation should be offered in the vernacular and that the language of worship should be sacral.”
The Ordinariate’s “Book of Divine Worship Rite I” was its principal liturgical resource, while “those congregations that prefer a contemporary idiom, the Roman Missal 3rd edition could be used.”
Ordinariate clergy who “want to learn also how to celebrate” according to the traditional Latin mass were “certainly encouraged to do so” under the “supervision of the local bishop,” Mgr Steenson said, so as to “assist in those stable communities that use the Extraordinary Form.”
However the traditional Latin Mass, (the Extraordinary Form) “is not integral to the Anglican patrimony, it is not properly used in our communities,” Mgr Steenson wrote.
A spokesman for the Ordinariate told CEN that over the past seven months, Mgr Steenson “has undertaken the incredible task of building what is essentially a national diocese from the ground up, and with few resources.”
“Looking back, we can see all that has been accomplished, including a high quality application and formation programme for clergy; ordinations of more than 20 priests in two countries in just six months – with more on the way; new communities being received into the Ordinariate regularly, with the next one in Boston this August; and policies, procedures and a structure being put in place to ensure the Ordinariate has a firm foundation for a healthy future.”
However, she noted that “bloggers always will speculate, but the focus of the Ordinariate continues to be on building up this new community of faith, with a healthy presbyterate and healthy local communities.”
The American branch of the Anglican Ordinariate is one of three so far created in response to the provisions of the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorun coetibus. In addition to the Chair of St Peter in America and Our Lady of Walsingham for England and Wales, the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross was established in June for Australia.
A former Church of England clergyman who became a bishop of the Traditional Anglican Communion, the Rev Harry Entwistle was appointed as the first ordinary.
Fr Entwistle was born on 31 May 1940, at Chorley, Lancashire. After studies at St. Chad’s Theological College in the University of Durham, he was ordained a priest in 1964 for the Diocese of Blackburn.
After serving parishes in Fleetwood, Hardwick, Weedon, Aston Abbotts and Cublington, he was a chaplain in the prison service from 1974 to 1988, serving as Senior Chaplain at HM Prison Wandsworth before emigrating to Australia, where he took up the post of Senior Anglican Chaplain for the Department of Corrective Services in Western Australia. In 2006 he joined the Traditional Anglican Communion and was appointed Western Regional Bishop and Parish Priest of Maylands in Perth.
The head of the English Ordinariate, Mgr Keith Newton said he was pleased to learn of the appointment. “Fr Entwistle has a wealth of experience from his Anglican ministry in England and in Australia, and I look forward to working with him closely as we seek to articulate the vision of Anglicanorum coetibus,” he said.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
China anger over new schools plan: The Church of England Newspaper, August 12, 2012 p 5 August 16, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Education, Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui.Tags: Chinese Model National Conditions Teaching Manual, Donald Tsang, Hong Kong Professional Teachers Union
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Tens of thousands of protesters marched in Hong Kong last week in protest to a government plan to introduce a “Chinese Model National Conditions Teaching Manual” for the territory’s schools that critics charge whitewashes the crimes of the Communist regime.
Organisers of the march from Victoria Park to the government education department offices stated 90,000 parents, children, teachers and concerned residents of Hong Kong took part in the demonstration chanting slogans denouncing “brainwashing” and “thought control”.
Hong Kong’s Anglican, Evangelical Lutheran and Roman Catholic parochial schools have vowed not to use the “patriotic education” programme, which they say was adopted by the government of the outgoing pro-Beijing Chief executive Donald Tsang without public consultation or review by the legislative council.
The manual was prepared by the Hong Kong Patriotic Education Services Centre organized by the 26,000-member Hong Kong Federation of Education Workers – a teacher’s alliance run by the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong political party with the closest ties to the mainland’s communist government. The Tsang administration gave HK$13 million to the Centre to produce the booklet.
The 32-page booklet extols the virtues of the mainland government and one-party state. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is described as “progressive, selfless and united” in contrast to the two-party American and multi-party European political systems. While short references are made to recent mainland political and economic scandals there is no mention of the 10-year Cultural Revolution, the 1989 Tiananmen massacre or state-induced famines of the Maoist era.
The Hong Kong Professional Teachers Union, which represents the majority of teachers in the territory with a membership of 80,000, called upon the government to drop the patriotic education programme. Teachers’ Union chairman Fung Wai-wah said the government “should not wait until students refuse to show up in class before it reviews the course,” the Hong Kong press reported.
Private Schools are not required to use the curriculum. The state-aided Anglican, Lutheran and Catholic parochial schools – which comprise a third of the territory’s schools — have declined to use the materials, while Taoist and Muslims schools will join secular state schools in using the materials. Schools were offered $530,000 grants for implementation of the curriculum, which will become mandatory for primary schools in 2015 and for secondary schools four years later.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Christchurch Cathedral plans rejected: The Church of England Newspaper, August 12, 2012 p 6. August 16, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Aotearoa New Zealand & Polynesia, Church of England Newspaper.Tags: Christchurch Cathedral, Diocese of Christchurch, Victoria Matthews
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The Bishop of Christchurch, the Rt Rev Victoria Matthews, has rejected as unsafe and expensive a proposal to rebuild the city’s earthquake-damaged cathedral.
Last week, Bishop Matthews said she was not persuaded by the arguments put forth by the Great Christchurch Building Trust that there were feasible alternatives to demolishing the cathedral and that it could be restored.
The difference in cost would “probably be about $15 million, and it’s very interesting in post-earthquake Christchurch we talk about millions like we once talked about hundreds. But when you think about $15 million it could do a great deal of good in other places,” the Bishop said.
No decision had yet been made on the final design of the new cathedral, Bishop Matthews said, but it would not be a replica or a radical departure in style from the Gothic cathedral but a reconstruction.
On 22 February 2011 the city of Christchurch on New Zealand’s South Island was badly damaged by a 6.3 magnitude earthquake. The cathedral’s tower collapsed and the walls and masonry were badly damaged, while the rose window above the altar was destroyed in a June aftershock.
At a 28 October press conference the Bishop and Dean announced the cathedral would be deconsecrated in preparation for rebuilding. Bishop Matthews said the new cathedral would never look “exactly as it used to”, but would be a “mix of old and new”.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
South Carolina mulls secession: The Church of England Newspaper, August 12, 2012 p 5. August 15, 2012
Posted by geoconger in 77th General Convention, Church of England Newspaper, South Carolina.Tags: Mark Lawrence, secession, St John's Moultrie, William McQueen
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The Diocese of South Carolina is on the brink of secession from the Episcopal Church, following the 77th General Convention’s vote to permit a local option on same-sex blessings.
At a 25 July meeting of the South Carolina clergy, Bishop Mark Lawrence said he no longer sees a place for the diocese in the General Convention and announced he would spend the next 25 days praying as to what his, and the diocese’s, next steps might be.
At last month’s General Convention in Indianapolis, the Episcopal Church voted to endorse provisional local rites for the blessing of same-sex unions. Some dioceses have interpreted the vote as permission to authorise their clergy to perform gay marriages in states that recognise such unions. Bishop Lawrence and six of the eight members of the South Carolina deputation to the Convention withdrew from its proceedings after the gay blessings vote, perturbed by what they saw as abandonment by the Episcopal Church of the universal witness of the Church on the purpose and meaning of Christian marriage.
In a letter prepared on 30 July by the canon to the ordinary of South Carolina, the Rev Jim Lewis, a summary of the clergy meeting was shared with those unable to be present.
Bishop Lawrence summarised the remarks he gave to the House of Bishops in private session when he announced his withdrawal. By voting for the “adoption of authorised provisional rites to bless same gender relationships, the doctrine, discipline and worship of this Church have been profoundly changed,” the Bishop said.
“He told the Bishops that the magnitude of these changes was such that he could no longer in good conscience continue in the business of the Convention. In fact, he was left with the grave question of whether he could continue as a bishop of an institution that had adopted such changes,” the letter said.
Canon Lewis wrote that “since that time, and in the gathering of the Diocesan Clergy, the Bishop stated that he believes the Episcopal Church has crossed a line he cannot personally cross. He also expressed to the clergy that though he might act one way if he were a priest in a diocese, as a Bishop he feels deeply his vow before God to faithfully lead and shepherd the Diocese of South Carolina. Both dimensions of this dilemma weigh upon him at this time.”
Bishop Lawrence urged the clergy not to take any precipitous actions in the coming weeks and asked “for a period of grace as he prayerfully seeks the face of the Lord, and asks for God’s direction,” the letter said.
“Upon his return at the end of August he will meet with the Standing Committee and the clergy of the Diocese to share that discernment and his sense of the path forward.”
Should Bishop Lawrence recommend the Diocese withdraw or distance itself from the General Convention of the Episcopal Church it is likely that a large majority will follow him. However a small number of congregations and clergy are self-identified supporters of the national Church and will likely instigate civil and canonical legal proceedings against the bishop and departing clergy should they secede.
Should Bishop Lawrence recommend staying, it is likely that a number of the Diocese’s parishes will unilaterally withdraw.
In the neighbouring Diocese of Georgia, one parish has already announced its decision to quit the Episcopal Church. Last week the rector and vestry of St John’s Episcopal Church in Moultrie announced they were resigning their offices and would form St Mark’s Anglican Church under the oversight of the Anglican Church of North America.
The Rev William McQueen, the former rector of St John’s, told The Church of England Newspaper that the vestry had turned over the keys of the church to the bishop and would meet for the time being in a chapel provided by a local Baptist church. He expected all of the congregation would leave St John’s.
“We have disagreed with The Episcopal Church for a long time, most notably over the issues of women’s ordination, the national Church’s stance on abortion, certainly the events of 2003 and beyond, but most importantly the erosion of the historic catholic faith surrounding who Jesus Christ is, and the authority and interpretation of Holy Scripture,” Fr McQueen said.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Interview: Issues, Etc., August 14, 2012 August 15, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Interviews/Citations, Issues Etc, Religion Reporting.Tags: Amendment 2, Inclusive Catholics, Marc Dutroux, RNS
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Here is a link to an interview I gave to the Issues, Etc. show of Lutheran Public Radio broadcast on Aug 14, 2012.
Interview: Issues, Etc., June 29, 2012 August 15, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Church of Denmark, Issues Etc, Religion Reporting.Tags: gay marriage
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Here is a link to an interview I gave to the Issues, Etc program of Lutheran Public Radio broadcast on June 29, 2012.
3. Media Coverage of Gay Marriage in Danish Churches – George Conger, 6/29/12
Category: Podcast
Tagged: Denmark, Gay Marriage, GetReligion.org, Media Coverage, Same-Sex Marriage, Seventh Day Adventists
La France Catholique Renaissante: Get Religion, August 14, 2012 August 14, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Get Religion, Press criticism, Roman Catholic Church.Tags: France, Le Figaro, Phillipe Barbarin, Reuters
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Everything is at root dependent on politics
Jean Jacques Rousseau
The Feast of the Assumption of Mary — August 15 — will be marked by the Catholic Church in France by the revival of prayers for the eldest daughter of the Church (France).
Reuter’s report on the prayers characterizes them as:
opposing the same-sex marriage and euthanasia reforms planned by the new Socialist government.
The prayer, to be read in all churches on Aug 15, echoes the defense of traditional marriage by Pope Benedict and Catholic leaders around the world as gay nuptials gain acceptance, especially in Europe and North America.
King Louis XIII decreed in 1638 that all churches would pray on Aug 15, the day Catholics believe the Virgin Mary was assumed bodily into Heaven, for the good of the country. The annual practice fell into disuse after World War Two.
While there may be more to the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary than its being of benefit to France, overall this article is nicely done — tight, balanced and precise. Yet I cannot help but wonder if an American political lens is the one through which this prayer is being viewed. The Reuter’s article demonstrates there are political ramifications to the prayers — but should these be the focus of the story?
The article states the prayer that children “cease to be objects of the desires and conflicts of adults and fully benefit from the love of a father and a mother” is a rejection of gay adoption, while the prayer that Catholics pray for government leaders “so that their sense of the common good will overcome special demands” is a rejection of the Socialist government’s plans to authorize gay marriage and euthanasia.
The article notes:
The prayer is unusual for French bishops, who usually keep a low political profile. Church spokesman Monsignor Bernard Podvin said they wanted to “raise the consciousness of public opinion about grave social choices.”
The article also ties the story into a wider global political context citing Pope Benedict XVI’s January statement that gay marriage threatened the “future of humanity itself” along with the political push to legalize gay marriage in the U.S. and the U.K.
A front page interview in Le Figaro printed on 14 August with the Archbishop of Lyon, Mgr. Phillipe Barbarin entitled: «Il ne faut pas dénaturer le mariage» may strengthen a political interpretation of these prayers. In response to questions from Le Figaro about their political nature, Mgr. Barbarin stated:
Politics is not a “dirty word”! Prayer has a political dimension, but it is primarily a spiritual act. We turn to God with confidence, asking his help for our loved ones, especially those living in hard times. Nothing is more natural than to pray for our family or our country. [Catholic] prayer has never ignored the issues of social life, let alone human suffering. We can say that our prayer is marked by the living conditions of the society in which we find ourselves.
Nicely said — I would almost characterize this as an American response that defends the place of religion in the public square. American in that, as Reuters notes, the French hierarchy has a reputation of being politically supine.
Le Figaro responds by asking whether the church’s intervention crosses a line, violating the secular nature of the state. And Mgr. Barbarin again pushes back:
Secularism prohibits prayer? Is that what you are asking? Do we live in tyranny? Must we submit our rituals and our formularies to the dictates of group think? … The situation is serious. … But the primary mission of the church is prayer, and I hope she will be faithful to that calling and speak regardless of public opinion.
But when we get to the text of the prayer, through a question from Le Figaro asking why the church would use the occasion of the Assumption Day prayers to express its opposition to “gay marriage and the adoption of children by such couples”, Mgr. Barbarin changes tack.
Have you read this prayer? None of the phrases you use is there. We can pray for the commitment of spouses, children and youth so that they “fully benefit from the love of a father and a mother” without being accused of homophobia I hope! These are the intentions that rise spontaneously in the heart of believers.
Perhaps the archbishop is being coy in decrying any specific reference to gay marriage/adoption, but he has no problem in a forthright rejection of euthanasia. “A law which would justify euthanasia supports the idea that some lives are not worth living,” the archbishop said, adding that speaking out against Euthanasia on the Feast of the Assumption of Mary was a duty for the church.
The archbishop also appeared to be pleased by the harsh reaction from secular quarters, saying the Catholic Church will no longer be
the doormat on which [French intellectuals] wipe their feet. This suggests that, in these reactions — paradoxically and happily — some seem to be afraid of prayer. Prayer is powerful, indeed!
Let me say I am not criticizing the Reuter’s story not developing the context and providing an analysis of what these prayers mean for France. In the space allotted and in the format of a wire service story, it does a great job.
Yet, I would argue that taken in conjunction with the Le Figaro interview, we are seeing new things — a politically resurgent Catholic Church in France (as Reuter’s points out), but also an intellectually and theologically confident Catholic Church in France.
Do others see this confidence in these reports? And if so, how should a reporter tell this story? Should this story even be touched by a secular reporter? Is this primarily a political story or a religious one? Must everything be reduced to politics and the political, or is it possible for journalists to address a changing intellectual and moral world?
First printed in Get Religion.
Jewish leaders denounce anti-Semitic synod statements: The Church of England Newspaper, August 5, 2012 p 5. August 14, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Church of England, Church of England Newspaper.Tags: anti-Semitism, Board of Deputies of British Jews, Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel, General Synod
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British Jewish leaders have denounced anti-Semitic comments made by members of the General Synod during its vote last month on the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI).
At last month’s meeting in York, a private member’s motion brought by John Dinnen of the Diocese of Hereford asked Synod to affirm the “vital work” of the EAPPI and encourage churches to support its work by inviting the group’s members to speak to the conflict in the region. After the 9 July vote, the chairman of the Council of Christians and Jews (CCJ) Bishop Nigel McCulloch stated that he had warned Jewish leaders against “overlobbying” as Jewish interference in the synod deliberations may have “led us to vote the other way”.
The Board of Deputies responded to Bishop McCulloch’s comments stating: “The Jewish community does not need lessons from the Anglican Church in justice and peace, themes which originated in our tradition. Moreover, to hear the debate at Synod littered with references to ‘powerful lobbies’, the money expended by the Jewish community, ‘Jewish sounding names’ and the actions of the community ‘bringing shame on the memory of victims of the Holocaust’, is deeply offensive and raises serious questions about the motivation of those behind this motion.”
Jewish leaders had urged synod to reject the EAPPI motion saying it would harm Christian – Jewish relations. EAPPI’s perspective of the conflict was “one-sided” and failed to provide its volunteers with a “full reflection” of issues, the Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, told The Times before the vote. “Minimizing Israel’s well-founded fears… will not advance the cause of peace,” he said.
The Vicar of Baghdad, Canon Andrew White, had also urged rejection of the EAPPI motion saying it would strengthened the “culture of incitement against Jews and Christians” in Palestine and also failed to take into account the rocket campaign waged from Gaza against Israel.
After the vote supporters of EAPPI hailed the decision as a step towards peace. The ACNS news service cited Helen Drewery, General Secretary of Quaker Peace and Social Witness as having applauded the vote. “Within hours of hearing the General Synod vote, we also heard of further attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians living in the village of Yanoun, while tending their crops and flocks. We see Synod’s affirmation of EAPPI as strengthening its nonviolent efforts to bring peace to the region,” she said.
However, the Board of Deputies of British Jews – the umbrella organization representing the majority of Jewish organizations in the U.K. – released a stating saying “Justifying its decision using the views of marginal groups in Israel and the UK, the Synod has ridden rough shod over the very real and legitimate concerns of the UK Jewish community, showing a complete disregard for the importance of Anglican-Jewish relations.”
“Whilst EAPPI’s aims may appear admirable, its program lacks any kind of balance and shows nothing of the context of a hugely complex situation,” the Board of Deputies said.
“Unsurprisingly its graduates return with simplistic and radical perspectives, giving talks against Israel which do nothing to promote an understanding of the situation in the Middle East, much less promote a peaceful and viable solution to its problems. Members of Jewish communities across the country have suffered harassment and abuse at EAPPI meetings and yet Synod has completely dismissed their experiences,” the board said.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Crown Nomination Committee meets to review Canterbury candidates: The Church of England Newspaper, August 5, 2012 p 5. August 14, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Archbishop of Canterbury, Church of England, Church of England Newspaper.Tags: Crown Nominations Committee
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The Crown Nominations Committee met last week to consider the appointment of the next Archbishop of Canterbury. Details of the 26-27 July meeting, including its location and whether potential candidates were invited to meet the committee have not been disclosed.
While the committee has maintained its internal discipline and not leaked details of deliberations to the press or favored insiders as in past years, lobbying by pressure groups for favoured candidates continues. A letter seen by the Church of England Newspaper that was written by primates attending the Global South Conference last week in Bangkok has urged the committee to consider archbishop’s pan-Anglican duties when it reviews the candidates.
“At a time when the Christian faith faces challenges from other religions as well as secular worldviews, the new Archbishop of Canterbury must be committed to uphold the orthodoxy of the Christian ‘faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints’,” the primates said.
The next Archbishop of Canterbury will be a “guardian of the faith” charged with uniting the wider Anglican Communion, “especially on issues that have led to the present crisis in the Communion”, they said and must be able to “communicate effectively and gain the respect and confidence” of the wider church the 21 July 2012 letter said.
Chaired by the Lord Luce, the committee consists of six members elected by the Diocese of Canterbury Vacancy in See Committee: The Rev Canon Clare Edwards, Mr. Raymond Harris, Mr. David Kemp, the Rev. Canon Mark Roberts, Mrs. Caroline Spencer and Bishop Trevor Wilmott,
Six further members of the committee were elected by the General Synod: Mr. Aiden Hargreaves-Smith – Diocese of London, Prof. Glynn Harrison – Diocese of Bristol, Mrs Mary Johnston – Diocese of London, The Very Rev Andrew Nunn – Diocese of Southwark, The Rev Canon Peter Spiers – Diocese of Liverpool and the Rev Canon Glyn Webster – Diocese of York.
The Rt Rev James Newcome, Bishop of Carlisle, and the Rt Rev Michael Perham, the Bishop of Gloucester were elected by the House of Bishops of the General Synod, and Archbishop Barry Morgan of Wales was elected by the Anglican Consultative Council to serve on the committee as well.
Three non-voting members also serve on the committee: the Archbishops’ Secretary for Appointments Ms Caroline Boddington, the Prime Minister’s Appointments Secretary Sir Paul Britton and the Secretary General of the Anglican Consultative Council, Canon Kenneth Kearon.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Nurses ‘poisoned’ for breaking Ramadan fast claim: The Church of England Newspaper, August 12, 2012 p 6 August 14, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Church of Pakistan, Persecution.Tags: Karachi, Ramadan
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Christian leaders in Pakistan have called for a government probe after nine nurses were allegedly poisoned for breaking the Ramadan fast by drinking tea.
On 30 July, nine Christian nursing students at the Karachi Civil Hospital were taken ill after drinking tea during a work break. At least three of the nurses were in intensive care following the poisoning but all are expected to recover.
Police have launched an investigation into the incident, which Christian leaders believe was staged by Muslim extremists who were angry the nurses were not observing the dusk-to-dawn Ramadan fast. Catholic Archbishop Joseph Coutts of Karachi told the charity Aid to the Church in Need that he had asked that the incident be investigated by the Pakistan Catholic advocacy organisation the National Commission for Justice and Peace (NCJP).
“It is still unclear what the motive was behind this incident of poisoning,” the Archbishop said. “Was it a religious motive, was it a criminal motive or was it purely accidental?”
According to a report printed in the Express Tribune, one of the nurses brewed the tea in the nurses’ hostel before the start of the evening shift at 10:00 pm. After drinking the tea they all became ill and had to be taken to the hospital’s emergency department.
Mr Saleem Khokhar, a member of parliament, said he did not believe this was a religiously motivated crime as the poisoned tea was consumed after dusk, when the Ramadan fast was over, while the hospital’s medical superintendent, Prof Saeed Quraishy said he did not believe this was a criminal act as the Christian nurses had made the tea themselves.
However, Christian leaders remain convinced this was a religious attack. Speaking at the Karachi Press Club, William Sadiq – a Christian NGO worker – said it was likely the tea had been poisoned earlier in the day. Tensions over Christians not observing the Ramadan fast arose during the day.
“Whatever the truth, it is definitely a cause for concern,” the Archbishop said.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Church ‘no’ to gay marriage in Scotland: The Church of England Newspaper, August 5, 2012 p 6. August 13, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Scottish Episcopal Church.Tags: gay marriage, Mark Strange, Nicola Sturgeon
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The Scottish Episcopal Church (SEC) has restated its opposition to the Scottish Government’s plan to introduce legislation creating same-sex marriage.
In a statement released last week the SEC said that it would “engage with the Government’s consultation process on the draft Bill when it is published” and would issue a formal response through its Faith and Order Board, but the mind of the church was expressed through its canons which did not contemplate same-sex marriage.
On 25 July 2012 the Scottish Government said it would legalise same-sex marriage. “We are committed to a Scotland that is fair and equal and that is why we intend to proceed with plans to allow same sex marriage and religious ceremonies for civil partnerships,” Scottish Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said.
“We believe that this is the right thing to do.”
The announcement came after Prime Minister David Cameron said his government would push legislation through Parliament creating gay marriage in England. Speaking to members of a gay community group in London, the prime minister lauded the changes in equality legislation in recent years and stated “I just want to say I am absolutely determined that this coalition government will follow in that tradition by legislating for gay marriage in this parliament.”
A spokesman for the Catholic Church in Scotland responded to the government’s plans saying: “The Scottish government is embarking on a dangerous social experiment on a massive scale. However, the church looks much further than the short-term electoral time-scales of politicians.
“We strongly suspect that time will show the church to have been completely correct in explaining that same-sex sexual relationships are detrimental to any love expressed within profound friendships.
“However, in the short term and long term the church does not see same-sex marriage as an appropriate and helpful response to same-sex attraction.”
The Church of Scotland also objected to the plans for same-sex marriage. The Rev. Alan Hamilton stated “We are concerned the Scottish government is rushing ahead on something that affects all the people of Scotland without adequate debate and reflection.”
In its December 2011 submission to the Scottish Government on same-sex marriage, the SEC stated its “Canon on Marriage currently states that marriage is a ‘physical, spiritual and mystical union of one man and one woman created by their mutual consent of heart, mind and will thereto, and as a holy and lifelong estate instituted of God’.”
Bishop Mark Strange of Moray, Ross & Caithness noted: “The Canon on Marriage is clear in its wording and that has given the working group set up by the Faith and Order Board a common basis on which to discuss the issues raised in the Government’s Paper. The Church’s current position is that marriage is a union between a man and a woman.”
Gay marriage a greater moral threat than terrorism, bishop warns: The Church of England Newspaper, August 5, 2012 p 6. August 13, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Kenya, Church of England Newspaper, Human Sexuality --- The gay issue, Terrorism.Tags: al Shabaab, Diocese of Mombasa, Julius Kalu
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The Anglican Bishop of Mombasa has come under sharp criticism for saying the moral threat to society posed by gay marriage was of greater long term consequence to Kenyans than the threat from terrorism.
On 22 July 2012 Bishop Julius Kalu told worshipers at Mombasa’s Anglican cathedral “our greatest fear as Church should not be the grenade attacks, but the new teachings like same sex marriages.”
Kenya has witnessed an upsurge of sectarian violence in recent months. In April a grenade attack on a church killed one worshiper and on 1 July gunmen raided two churches killing at least 17 and wounding more than 60 people in Garissa, the capital of Kenya’s Northeast Province along the border with Somalia. Garissa serves as the Kenyan Army’s base of operations in its campaign against the al Qaeda linked Somali Muslim terrorist group al Shabaab.
Bishop Kalu told the cathedral congregation that churches had seen a fall in attendance since the start of the al Shabaab bombing campaign as people have stayed at home, afraid of the violence. While not deprecating the threat of terrorist violence, the bishop stated the greater evil was the lies of Satan that would pull people away from the faith – not the attacks of men.
“Christians must be fully armed spiritually as it is only divine intervention that will enable the country overcome these challenges,” the bishop said according to the East African Standard.
“The Church is at war with enemies of the faith,” Bishop Kalu said, citing those who sought to change the doctrine of marriage.
An editorial in the Nairobi Star took the bishop to task for his comments arguing that “these gays are not hurting anyone. They are minding their own business. And what they do behind closed doors with a consenting partner should remain private, just as it should for husband and wife.”
“Terrorism on the other hand is a deadly threat to Kenya,” the Star said as “many Kenyans die each year at the hands of al Shabaab. Tourism at the Coast is depressed because of terrorism. Gays do not hurt Kenya. Terrorists do hurt Kenya. It is extraordinary that Bishop Kalu cannot see this,” it said.
First printed in The Church of England Newspaper.
Balancing quotes on Amendment 2: Get Religion, August 9, 2012 August 13, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Get Religion, Politics.Tags: Missouri’s Public Prayer Amendment, Religion News Service
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I write with some disappointment about the report from the Religion News Service (RNS) on Missouri’s Public Prayer Amendment (Amendment 2). Entitled “Missouri prayer amendment passes” in the version printed in USA Today, the article is rather thin. It does not provide quotes from the amendment but seeks to summarize its language.
Given the nature of the beast — a wire service article with limited space to tell a story — the absence of direct quotes is not a defect. The defect comes in the author’s choice to frame the story in an unbalanced manner. It reverses the quote ratio — providing more responses from voters who voted “no” even though it was overwhelmingly endorsed.
The reader comes away from this article knowing little more than the Amendment passed. The “why” and “how” questions are not properly addressed.
The article begins:
Voters in Missouri overwhelmingly approved a “right to pray” amendment to the state’s constitution on Tuesday, despite concerns about the measure’s necessity and legality.
Amendment 2, which supporters said would protect the freedom of religious expression in public schools and other public spaces, received nearly 80 percent of the vote.
The editorial voice of the article is made clear from the start. Amendment 2 is overwhelmingly endorsed by the electorate, but was unnecessary. After a quote from the Amendment’s sponsor, the article recounts which religious groups supported and opposed the bill and then offers the views of unnamed experts.
… Legal experts almost unanimously predict that the amendment will wind up in court.
Critics also argued the amendment is redundant — the U.S. Constitution already protects religious freedom. And some warned that it would spark countless lawsuits and bring unintended consequences.
Who are these experts and critics? One is:
… Greg Grenke, a 22-year-old voter from Columbia who voted against the amendment. He said he’s not against prayer — he just doesn’t think the amendment was necessary.
This is followed by:
Pediatrician Ellen Thomas, 48, said the amendment seemed like propaganda.
“I really just think it’s designed to stir up angry sentiment.” She added, “There’s no infringement on people’s right to pray as it is.”
And then we have:
Kathy Rowland, 55, of Columbia, Mo., said the amendment seemed “well-intentioned,” but unnecessary.
A contrary view, representing the 80 per cent is then offered:
“I was glad to see it,” said Margie Cravens, 87, as she left her Columbia polling place. “And we need prayer now more than ever before.”
The “man in the street” comments may provide color, but they do not answer basic questions. What was the legislative/political journey that led to the vote? Why was the vote so lop-sided? Why did liberal religious groups reject the amendment? Why did other religious groups back it? What do constitutional law professors say?
I would also ask, what was the thinking behind the selection and number of color quotes? Was it appropriate to have three no comments and one yes, when the vote was 80 per cent yes and 20 per cent no? I am not saying that the proportion of quotes should match the vote tally — but I find it odd that the ratio is reversed in this story between the quotes and the vote.
There are wire service religion reporters who consistently do an excellent job in providing solid information and strong quotes in a limited space. I’m afraid that this story is not one of those occasions. My verdict: “Needs work. Could do better.”
First published in Get Religion.
Doggie masses down under: Get Religion, August 6, 2012. August 6, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Get Religion, Roman Catholic Church.Tags: animal souls, Eucharist, Inclusive Catholic Church, Laika, The Age
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Can a dog be a good Catholic? Must a dog be baptized before it receives Holy Communion? For that matter, can a dog be saved? Will all dogs go to heaven, or does Laika’s 1957 launch mark the apogee of canine celestial progress?
Must a commitment to inclusivity by a liberal Catholic mandate the rejection of speciesism?
Religion reporter Barney Zwarts writing in The Age — one of Australia’s great national newspapers — has an article that brought these questions to my mind. But I am not sure whether he meant to do this. Is he playing it straight or writing with tongue in cheek in this article about inclusive Catholics in Australia?.
The 6 August article entitled “Dissidents preach a new breed of Catholicism” begins:
FATHER Greg Reynolds wants his church of dissident Catholics to welcome all – ”every man and his dog”, one might say, risking the non-inclusive language he deplores – but even he was taken aback when that was put to the test during Mass yesterday.
A first-time visitor arrived late at the Inclusive Catholics service in South Yarra with a large and well-trained German shepherd. When the consecrated bread and wine were passed around, the visitor took some bread and fed it to his dog.
Apart from one stifled gasp, those present showed admirable presence of mind – but the dog was not offered the cup!
Father Reynolds, a Melbourne priest for 32 years, launched Inclusive Catholics earlier this year. He now ministers to up to 40 people at fortnightly services alternating between two inner-suburban Protestant churches.
The congregation includes gay men, former priests, abuse victims and many women who feel disenfranchised, but it is optimistic rather than bitter.
A few details of the service are offered, with the article stressing that the lector and homilist were women as were the lay eucharistic ministers who distributed the elements consecrated by Fr. Reynolds. The shift from narrative to analysis comes with this paragraph:
Inclusive Catholics is part of a small but growing trend in the West of disaffiliated Catholics forming their own communities and offering ”illicit” Masses, yet are slightly uncertain of their identities. The question was posed during the service: ”Are we part of the church or are we a breakaway movement?”
The article does not seek to answer this question, but returns to narrative by providing biographical details of Fr. Reynolds, whom it describes as “still a priest, though now on the dole.” Some rather predictable, but still crisp quotes are offered by participants. To whit: “This is inclusive and welcoming.” and “Intelligent, educated, adult Catholics have had enough.”
The article closes with this encomium for the inclusive Catholic movement:
But if there’s one thing that unites Inclusive Catholics and the mainstream church, it’s their reliance on hard-working women behind the scenes. The volunteer who made the name tags given out yesterday turned 88 during the week.
I am undecided as to the author’s editorial voice. Is he playing it straight yet allowing the subjects of the story to make fools of themselves, or does the pro-inclusive church framing of the story represent the author’s editorial voice? Let’s lay out the evidence for either proposition.
In favor of the ridiculous theme, we have the juxtaposition of the articles beginning and ending with its pivot paragraph. At the head of the story is a photograph of the congregation, Fr. Reynolds and the dog. A quick scan indicates that save for the dog, no one appears to be under 65 years of age. The closing sentence mentions the industrious work of the volunteer who writes out the name tag — noting her 88th birthday. Against this we have the “small but growing trend” argument put forward in the middle of the story. Are the photo and birthday greetings for this aging crowd to be set against the claim of a new movement in the church meant to ridicule Fr. Reynolds and his congregation, or demonstrate its strength?
The selection of quotes is also telling. We have two cliched quotes in support of Fr. Reynolds’ work, but nothing from the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne about the activities of this unlicensed, yet still in good standing Catholic priest. Did the author choose to leave the story unbalanced to allow the comments made by the subject to impeach their cause? Or, were the comments so self-evidently true that there was no need to balance them with a contrary view?
The shaggy dog story at the start of the article might also lend support to the ridicule thesis. The article starts with a joke about “inclusive” language, relates the story of the dog receiving the host, and then makes a joke about Fido not receiving the wine — here we can tell this is a Roman Catholic not Anglo-Catholic mass as the Anglicans would doubtless have required the dog to receive the elements in both kinds.
And without seeking to explain why someone in this congregation would gasp at the dog’s reception of the sacraments, we move into a litany of the sorts of persons who attend this service.
My vote is for satire. A crowd of aging hipsters celebrating a mass that is in bad taste and theologically and sacramentally scandalous with no comment, context or correction seems likely to be a way for the author to hold this group up to ridicule. Or, the author of this story is playing it straight and declines to offer context, contrary voices, or to develop the shaggy dog story at the start of his narrative because he does not believe it necessary.
Last month I reported on the discussion held by the bishops of the Episcopal Church on the appropriateness of prayers for animals. A proposed prayer put forward by the church’s liturgy committee was vetoed, the Bishop of Missouri, the Rt. Rev. George Wayne Smith reported and an alternate prayer provided by the Prayer Book committee “no longer express the desire for our animals to be part of the resurrection.”
The question of the place of animals in heaven is of real pastoral concern and the Christian tradition is divided on this point. I’ve touched on this issue at GetReligion in the past, noting that according to Oxford theologian Andrew Linzey there is “an ambiguous tradition” about animals in Christianity. Thinkers as diverse as Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Fenelon, and Kant and have held that animals do not have rational, hence immortal souls. Descartes defended a distinction between humans and animals based on the belief that language is a necessary condition for mind and as such animals were soulless machines (Descartes, Discourse on the Method)
Others theologians, philosophers and writers as diverse as Goethe, St John of the Cross, C.S. Lewis, Bishop Butler, and John Wesley held the opposite view and believed that animals will find a place in heaven. Billy Graham is purported to have said:
I think God will have prepared everything for our perfect happiness’ in heaven. If it takes my dog being there, I believe he’ll be there.
The Episcopal Bishop of North Dakota, Michael Smith made this same point when asked by the press at the General Convention if animals went to heaven.
These are “theological issues not many of us have thought through,” he said, “but if a little girl needs Fluffy the cat to see the beatific vision, then Fluffy will be in heaven,” Bishop Smith said.
But lets come back down to earth and return to Melbourne — is this Inclusive Catholic Church pressing the theological envelope on these issues? Or has the author structured his story to expose a group of wayward elderly Catholics doing silly things and playing at church? What say you GetReligion readers? Serious or satire?
First printed in GetReligion.
Anglican Unscripted Episode 47, August 4, 2012. August 4, 2012
Posted by geoconger in AMiA, Anglican Ordinariate, Anglican.TV, Church of England, Georgia, South Carolina.comments closed
The Diocese of South Carolina is in a 25 day waiting period before Bishop Lawrence makes a decision on the way forward following the aftermath of General Convention. Plus a church from Pawleys Island and Moultrie Georgia makes plans to move foreword. Kevin and George also discuss Archbishops of Canterbury news and the Society of Bishop Murphy. The show closes with Kevin and George addressing the international boycott of Anglican Unscripted and what you can do to help.
Both Peter and Allan have the week off, but the news and a teaser continue on. Paypal donations to anglicantv@gmail.com – comments to anglicanunscripted@gmail.com – twitter #AU47
‘No reprisals’ Nigerian archbishop tells embattled Christians: The Church of England Newspaper, July 29, 2012 August 4, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Church of England Newspaper, Church of Nigeria, Islam, Persecution, Politics.Tags: Boko Haram, Diocese of Kebbi, Edmund Akanya, Kaduna
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The Archbishop of Kaduna has called upon Christians in Northern Nigeria to “stay and pray” in the face of sectarian attacks by Islamist militants and not respond to violence with violence.
In an interview published last week in the Sunday Tribune, Archbishop Edmund Akanya urged Christians “to pray. We are against the issue of reprisal and attacks because that would not lead anybody anywhere. Two wrongs don’t make a right. What we preach is peace; we do not preach violence. We do not encourage it and we are telling our members not to join in that kind of reprisal. That is the stand of the church on this issue.”
On 7-8 July, Muslim Fulani herdsmen reportedly attacked Christian Berom farmers in Plateau state killing more than 100 people including two government officials. While clashes between migrant herdsmen and farmers have taken place in the past, the Muslim militant group Boko Haram has claimed involvement in the latest clashes.
Boko Haram spokesman Abu Qaqa, told Nigerian reports his group “wants to inform the world of its delight over the success of the attacks we launched…in Plateau State on Christians and security operatives, including members of the National Assembly. We will continue to hunt government officials wherever they are; they will have no peace again.”
Security experts have questioned the Islamist terrorist group’s involvement in these latest attacks, but former U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria John Campbell writing on the website of the Council on Foreign Relations stated “whether Boko Haram was actually involved or not, Abu Qaqa’s rhetoric looks, indeed, like he is trying to incite all-out religious war.”
Reprisal attacks have also been launched against Muslim targets, and on 17 July a Muslim school was bombed in the state capital of Jos killing a boy.
Archbishop Akanya said churches in Northern Nigeria were taking steps to defend themselves. “We are encouraging our churches to put fence and gates; they should disallow cars from entering. They should get security men who can man the place. In many churches that I have visited, the bombers were not able to get access because of these barricades that are there.”
Those carrying out reprisal attacks were not true Christians, the archbishop said. “These boys that even carry out these reprisals do not go to church. That is the truth. I know what I am saying because those who go church will put their succor and relax their case in the hands of God and not going to fight back because they went to fight outside of the church environment. If it is self-defense, it would not have been outside of the church environment.”
Christians must not take the law into their own hands. “I do not think, by my conviction and the Bible I read that we have that instruction to go and be fighting people as a church or Christian. If anything, we should all cry to God to forgive our iniquities. Who knows if God is using this to warn us and to turn our hearts back to him. We should look at those facets and begin to think of how to cry unto God. We have seen cases that were worse than this in scriptures and how God delivered the people and it is still the same God. He can still do it for us,” Archbishop Akanya said.
Swaziland elects first women bishop for Africa: The Church of England Newspaper, July 29, 2012 p 6 August 4, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Southern Africa, Church of England Newspaper, Women Priests.Tags: Diocese of Swaziland, Ellinah Wamukoya, Thabo Makgoba
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The Diocese of Swaziland has elected Africa’s first Anglican woman bishop. On 18 July 2012 the Diocesan Elective Assembly meeting in Mbabane elected the Rev. Ellinah Wamukoya as fifth bishop of the diocese.
Bishop-elect Wamukoya (61) will be the first female Anglican bishop in Africa and one of only two serving women bishops among the continent’s mainline churches – in 2008 the Rt. Rev. Joaquina Nhanala was elected the Methodist bishop of Mozambique. The first woman bishop in Africa was the Rt. Rev. Purity Malinga, a Methodist bishop in South Africa.
Educated at the University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland (now the University of Swaziland), the new bishop has exercised a bi-vocational ministry. She serves as Anglican chaplain at the University of Swaziland and at St Michael’s High School in Manzini. Bishop-elect Wamukoya is also the Town Clerk and CEO of the City Council of the town of Manzini and is a skilled and seasoned financial administrator and has also worked as a planning officer for the Government of Kenya.
Cape Town Archbishop Thabo Makgoba, who oversaw the election stated, “When it was announced that she had received the necessary votes, there was great rejoicing both that a person of undeniable skills and personal qualities had been chosen, and that it was Ellinah herself, who obviously commands considerable respect and affection across the Diocese of Swaziland.’
‘It is rather fitting that the Diocese of Swaziland should elect our first woman to be a Bishop, since it was here, 20 years ago, that, amidst both tears and joy, our Provincial Synod agreed that both the priesthood and episcopate should be open to both men and women’ the Archbishop said. ‘We have waited a long time for this moment!’
“I am humbled by the trust and confidence placed on me by the people of Swaziland, a person like me of humble beginnings” said Mrs. Wamukoya after the election. “My prayer is to be able to listen and be guided by the Holy Spirit in everything I do. My vision is to see that the people of God are restored and transformed, in order for them to be a church in mission, for, as it is said, ‘a church that does not reach out, passes out’.”
The new bishop enters the stage at a difficult moment in the political and ecclesial life of Swaziland. The diocese had been led by vicar-general since the resignation last year of her predecessor, the Rt. Rev. Meshack Mabuza.
Bishop Mabuza had been a sharp critic of King Mswati III, the last absolute monarch in sub-Saharan Africa. King Mswati has ruled the landlocked mountain kingdom since 1986 and has been denounced by church and civil society leaders for mismanagement of the economy. The king also has earned a public image as a profligate ruler unconcerned with his subjects’ poverty.
Last year Bishop Mabuza told the BBC “the answer [to Swaziland’s problems] really lies in regime change in terms of the traditional, feudalistic, archaic form of government,” and “has to be replaced with multi-party democratic rule.”
The Diocese of Swaziland has also been rocked by internal dissension. In 2011 Bishop Mabuza was investigated and cleared of charges that he had mismanaged money given to the diocese by its overseas partners, the Dioceses of Brechin and Iowa.
The financial misconduct charges were only part of the bishop’s worries. On the evening of 21 February 2011, traffic officers from the Lobamba police station stopped Bishop Mabuza while he was driving along the Manzini-Mbabane freeway. The Bishop failed a breathalyzer test and arrested him for driving while under the influence of alcohol.
Following his archiepiscopal visitation in January 2012, Archbishop Makoba released a pastoral letter stating that he believed the diocese was “in a healthy state in spite of all the challenges it went through. Bishop Mabuza must be congratulated and complimented for his effective leadership.”
Women clergy have stood for election as bishop in the Anglican Church of Southern Africa before, but Saturday’s election marks the first time a woman has been elected bishop since the ACSA synod voted to ordain women to all orders of ministry in 1992.
Of the 38 Provinces of the Anglican Communion, 7 do not ordain women: Central Africa, Melanesia, Myanmar, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, South East Asia, and Tanzania.
Two provinces ordain women to the diaconate only, Congo and the Southern Cone while 26 provinces and the extra-provincial Church of Ceylon have ordained women to the priesthood: Bangladesh, Brazil, Burundi, Central America, England, Hong Kong, North India, South India, Indian Ocean, Ireland, Japan, Jerusalem & the Middle East, Kenya, Korea, Mexico, Pakistan, Philippines, Rwanda, Scotland, the Sudan, Uganda, Wales, West Africa, and the West Indies. Southern Africa becomes the fifth province to elect a women bishop, joining the Episcopal Church, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and has the extra-provincial diocese of Cuba.
‘Don’t forget us’ overseas leaders tell Crown Nominations Committee: The Church of England Newspaper, July 29, 2012 p 6. August 4, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Archbishop of Canterbury, Church of England, Church of England Newspaper.Tags: Crown Nominations Committee, Global South
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‘Think globally, not locally’ when selecting the next Archbishop of Canterbury, 17 overseas archbishops told the Crown Nominations Committee (CNC) last week.
From 18-20 July 2012 the leaders of the Global South movement of the Anglican Communion met in Bangkok during the group’s Conference on the Decade of Mission and Networking and issued a communiqué reminding the CNC that the Archbishop of Canterbury was not solely the property of the Church of England.
“We deeply respect and appreciate our historical and spiritual relationship with the See of Canterbury,” the 20 July communiqué said. “We have written to the Crown Nominations Commission with concerns from the Global South and important principles for consideration as it nominates candidates for the appointment of a new Archbishop of Canterbury.”
While the text of the letter to the CNC was not made public, leaders of the Global South movement have voiced concern over the parochial appointment process in the Church of England. Speaking to the Telegraph earlier this month, Dr. Mouneer Anis, Bishop of Egypt and Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East, said the “voice of the Anglicans from the global south is really very limited and not one of the 16 members of the Crown Nominations Commission represents the global south.”
“Not one single person comes from elsewhere in the Anglican Communion except the Archbishop of Wales which is part of the United Kingdom … the selection of the new Archbishop is an expression of not really caring for the Anglican family.”
Dr. Anis noted that while the Archbishop of Canterbury was the “spiritual father” of the Anglican Communion, the Anglican Communion “has no say whatsoever” in his appointment.”
Running the show “from England” would be “acceptable in the 19th Century but not now,” the Egyptian bishop said. “It is a colonial approach.”
The two day conference entitled “Be Transformed by the Renewing of the mind to Obedience of Faith for Holistic Mission in a Radically Changing Global Landscape” drew Anglicans from the developing world and the West, organizers reported and “explored the trends in mission in the 21st century amidst the post-1989 global landscape, and evaluated the effectiveness of Anglicans in missions.”
In their communiqué, the 17 archbishops voiced “great sadness” in the actions of the 77th General Convention of the Episcopal Church in authorizing same-sex blessings. “This action confirms our disappointment that The Episcopal Church has no regard for the concerns and convictions of the vast majority of Anglicans worldwide.”
Present at the meeting were the Primates of Jerusalem & the Middle East, Nigeria, the Indian Ocean, South East Asia, Kenya, Myanmar, the Congo, the Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Melanesia, Papua New Guinea, and representatives of the primates of Southern Africa, West Africa, Central Africa and the Southern Cone.
Is Reuters denying Holocaust denial? — Get Religion August 4, 2012 August 4, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Get Religion, Politics, Press criticism.Tags: Auschwitz, Fatah, Fawzi Barhoum, Hamas, MEMRI, Palestinian Authority, Reuters
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Finding the line between sensation and responsible reporting can be a difficult task. There are times when the subject of a news story will say something outrageous that causes a reporter to lay down his pen and ask, “Did you really mean that?” Over the top quotes can make a story pop — providing better placement in a newspaper and a brief “buzz” for the story. It can also distort the narrative, changing the story from the issues under discussion to comments about the issues.
I’ve played this game. When writing for the Jerusalem Post a few years back I submitted a story about a call for divestment from Israel made by the General Synod of the Church of England. The article moved from the back of the newspaper to the front page after the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey told me the vote made him “ashamed to be an Anglican” — this comment ensured the story was a three-day wonder.
On another occasions I have omitted comments from a story that were equally strong — but would have distorted the story by changing the focus from the issue to offensive or dumb comments made by one of the subjects of the story.
A recent Reuters story on comments made by a Hamas spokesman following the visit to Auschwitz by an aide to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas brought this issue to mind. Should Reuters have given the complete quote? Should Reuters have mentioned the religious angle lying beneath the story? Let me show you what I mean. “Hamas slams Palestinian visit to ‘alleged’ Holocaust site” begins:
The Hamas Islamist group in charge of the Gaza Strip on Wednesday denounced a Palestinian official’s visit to the site of a Nazi death camp in Poland, and called the Holocaust in which 6 million European Jews perished an “alleged tragedy.”
Ziad al-Bandak, an adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas who governs in the occupied West Bank, had made a rare visit by a Palestinian official to the site of the Auschwitz death camp late last month.
“It was an unjustified and unhelpful visit that served only the Zionist occupation,” said Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for Hamas. Hamas rejects Israel’s existence and interim peace accords reached by Abbas’ more moderate Fatah group with Israel.
Barhoum further called Bandak’s visit to Auschwitz, a camp where the Nazis killed 1.5 million people, most of them Jews but also other Polish citizens, during World War Two, as “a marketing of a false Zionist alleged tragedy.”
He said he saw this as coming “at the expense of a real Palestinian tragedy,” alluding to Israel’s control over territory where Palestinians live and seek to establish a state.
The article continues with mention of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial and the political split within the PA between the Hamas controlled Gaza Strip and the Fatah controlled West Bank. The story closes by saying:
Bandak’s visit to Auschwitz, where he laid a wreath at the invitation of a group working for tolerance in Poland, was a rare one by a Palestinian to the death camp site. Muslim officials from other countries have also paid respects there.
Last week the AP reported on plans for the trip and included the detail that Bandak was a Christian.
Ziad al-Bandak, a Christian who advises Abbas on Christian affairs, visited prisoner blocs, gas chambers and a crematorium in the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex, which the Germans built and operated in southern Poland during their World War II occupation of the country.
Does this nugget advance the story, or does it polarize it by adding a faith dimension to Holocaust denial and Anti-Semitism?
And, the invaluable MEMRI news service provided the full quote from the Hamas spokesman, which was much stronger than the version printed by Reuters. The report entitled “PA Official’s Auschwitz Visit Evokes Enraged Responses from Hamas” said:
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said: “The visit helped Israel to spread the lie of the Holocaust, and does not serve the Palestinian cause. It has been clearly proven that the Israeli narrative [of the Holocaust] is fraudulent. [The Israelis] exaggerate what happened in order to garner international sympathy, which for years has come at the expense of the Palestinians.”
The “lie of the Holocaust” quote is extraordinary. Its omission lowers the temperature of the story. But does the omission change the story?
The traditional school of Anglo-American journalism seeks to present the world as it is, seeking to separate the reporter’s worldview from the narrative. But is that possible? In the example I offered from my own work, I demonstrated how I sought to exercise editorial judgment in preparing a story. I led with the ashamed quote in the JPost story because I did not believe it was dumb — but others might say that it was a foolish statement that distracted from the underlying story.
Omitting mention of the Christian faith of the Palestinian statesman and downplaying the severity of the Hamas quotes, Reuters chose to exercise its editorial judgment — letting us know what it believed was important. I disagree with this judgment. To my mind the faith of Ziad al-Bandak and his position as an adviser on Christian Affairs is significant to the story as it sets up the underlying split between Hamas and Fatah — Christians are under the gun in Gaza and reports place the blame on Hamas.
I would also argue that Reuters sanitized Barhoum’s words. A story about reactions to the visit would not have been distorted by Barhoum’s extraordinary, delusional — some would say evil — comments. What say you Get Religion readers? Did Reuters let down its readers? Should it have led with the “lie of the Holocaust” or was it right to downplay these sentiments? Is Reuters denying Hamas Holocaust denial?
First printed in Get Religion.
Forgiving monsters — The Dutroux Case: Get Religion, August 2, 2012. August 2, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Abuse, Corruption, Get Religion.Tags: Le Soir, Marc Dutroux, Michelle Martin, Poor Clares
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One of the most notorious criminal cases in modern European history has returned to the public eye, dominating the front pages and leaders of Belgium’s newspapers. A judge has agreed to release Michelle Martin from prison on the condition she enter the Convent of the Les Soeurs Clarisses de Malonne (Poor Clares) and remain under police supervision.
The news of the parole has prompted an appeal by state prosecutors, public protests, outrage in the press — and the mayor of Namur has ordered police to guard the convent. Why such a fuss? The opening paragraphs of a solid AP story tells us why.
BRUSSELS — The ex-wife of a notorious pedophile who aided her husband’s horrific abuse and murder of young girls – and who let two children starve to death while her husband was in jail – was approved Tuesday for early release from prison, infuriating the victims’ parents and reopening a dark chapter in Belgian history.
Michelle Martin, who is now 52, received a 30-year prison term in 2004 for not freeing girls her then-husband Marc Dutroux held captive behind a secret door in their decrepit, dirty basement in Marcinelle, 40 miles south of Brussels.
Dutroux, 55, is serving a life term for kidnapping, torturing and abusing six girls in 1995 and 1996, and murdering four of them.
During those years, Dutroux also spent four months in jail for theft, leaving it to his wife to feed Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo, a pair of friends imprisoned in the basement. Martin let the girls starve to death. They were 8 years old.
Bumbling police work and claims by Dutroux that he was part of a wider pedophile network that included politicians, judges and police officials prompted public protests in Belgium and nearly led to the fall of the government. King Albert intervened and ordered a reorganization of the criminal justice system. The Dutroux affair had a profound effect on Belgium’s national psyche, some have argued, damaging public trust in the country’s civil institutions. Sixteen years into her 30 year sentence, Michelle Martin may be leaving prison to enter a convent.
While this has been a gruesome true crime, political intrigue and corruption story, it has now become a religious liberty story with faith taking center stage in this drama. The AP article closes with these paragraphs:
Under the terms of her release, Martin will have to remain at the convent and be assigned a task daily. Moreau, Martin’s lawyer, said it took some time for the convent to agree to have her live there. But in the end they realized that no one else would take her in, he said.
“They accepted because their vocation is to welcome people nobody wants,” he said.
The convent’s decision to give refuge to Michelle Martin has not been warmly received by the Belgian press, some of whom cite the clergy sexual abuse scandal as evidence of its institutional failings. The coverage of the Michelle Martin parole is a great example of the strengths and weaknesses of European advocacy style journalism. Working from the same fact base, the European press can give widely diverse interpretations of events. While you may not find a single truth in the diversity of accounts, a European reader will come away much better informed of the events and issues at play than an American reader.
For example, in its articles the liberal national daily Le Soir has taken an outraged stance. Its editorial argued:
There is great doubt, it not total disbelief about the chosen place of [Martin’s] reintegration into society. .. . Certainly, the gesture of the Poor Clares is a remarkably generous. But a convent, cut off from the world and managed by women who have voluntary withdrawn from real life and any professional activity, should become a place for rehabilitation is breathtaking. That the Church – which has not shown great courage or clarity in recent years when confronted with deviant behavior – will serve as the monitor and guarantor of Martin’s reintegration adds to the disorder.
Objections to her release were founded upon a belief that Michelle Martin was the incarnation of absolute evil — “l’incarnation du mal absolu” — the conservative national daily La Libre Belgique reported. But no person was beyond redemption, the newspaper argued, saying the law must not “deprive anyone, not even the most heinous criminal, of any hope of getting out of jail. To challenge this principle based upon hatred of the criminal would be unreasonable.”
The Sudpresse’s editor disagreed, saying this was “un impossible pardon”. The Belgian judiciary in complicity with the Catholic Church had committed a coup against the Belgian people: “mauvais coup (de la justice belge), perpétré avec la complicité de l’Eglise catholique”.
However, De Standaard has endorsed the church’s intervention. Its editor said the news of the parole had led him to experience two feelings at the same time: horror over the crimes of Michelle Martin and respect for the Catholic convictions of the Poor Clares.
De Standaard printed a letter from the Abbess of Malonne, where the sisters explained their decision to give Michelle Martin a home. They stated they had agreed to take her in as she has no family and no half-way house or other institution would have her due to the notoriety of her crimes. They stated that while she would be residing at the convent under the supervision of the judicial authorities, she would not be a entering the order but would be the guest of the Poor Clares. And, they felt it was their Christian duty to act as they did.
Nous avons la profonde conviction qu’enfermer définitivement le déviant dans son passé délictueux et l’acculer à la désespérance ne serait utile à personne et serait au contraire une marche en arrière pour notre société. Michèle Martin est un être humain capable, comme nous tous, du pire comme du meilleur.
Ideology plays its part in the coverage of this story. Self-identified Catholic newspapers have stressed the theme of penitence and redemption. Some secular newspapers have objected to the intrusion of Catholic sensibilities into the parole of a “monster”, but others have advanced ethical theories of crime and punishment. No one newspaper encompasses all of these views, but collectively the debate over the parole of Michelle Martin is an example of the best of the European press.
Can Michelle Martin be forgiven? Is parole a form of forgiveness? Should the church be accorded a custodial role in a secular state? All great questions. What say you?
First published in Get Religion.
Knife and Faith in Italy: Get Religion, August 1, 2012. August 2, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Get Religion, Sikhism.Tags: kirpan, La Stampa, religious liberty
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The Obama administration is not the only government to have come under fire from its critics for abusing the religious liberty of its citizens. Italy has refused to recognize Sikhism as a religion and denied Sikhs the right to practice their faith reports La Stampa, the Turin-based Italian daily newspaper.
A great religious liberty story, but is it true? The framing of the 23 July 2012 article entitled “Il pugnale sacro che fa litigare Italia e sikh” by La Stampa might well cause the reader to assume that the Minister of the Interior ‘s decision not to carve out a religious exemption from the country’s weapons laws to allow Sikhs to carry in public a Kirpan — a ceremonial dagger — served as a ban to the public profession of faith for its adherents. Yet, the story neglects to say what non-recognition by the state means. Nor are we told how this took place.
There is much cry and no wool in this article. No context and only one side of the dispute is offered. Let me walk you through the story and show you what I mean.
Worldcrunch, an invaluable website that has translations and paraphrases of non-English language news stories, has recast the lede for the La Stampa story from:
E’ un pericolo andare in giro con un coltellino da boyscout o con una delle piccole lame multiuso svizzere? Per il ministero dell’Interno in caso di questioni di culto si tratta di armi improprie e per questo ha negato ai sikh in Italia il riconoscimento della loro religione.
into:
Should a boy scout walking around with a Swiss-army knife be considered dangerous? Should Swiss-army knives be banned altogether? Well, for the Italian interior minister, if the small knife is carried for religious reasons, then the answer is yes.
Last May, after years of court cases and appeals, the interior minister announced that it was refusing to recognize Sikhism as a religion, on the grounds that the kirpan, the small ceremonial dagger that Sikhs must carry at all times, is dangerous.
That is not quite what the lede says in Italian — but the gist is correct, and for consistencies sake I will work from the Worldcrunch translation. The article is laid out in traditional style, with comments from a leader of the Sikh community followed by a those of an Italian politician who has tried to intercede on behalf of the Sikhs. The politician’s encomium for his Sikh constituents is priceless:
” … They are the pillars of the production of the Parmesan cheese, just to give an example,” says Andrea Sarubbi, a member of parliament with the center-left Democratic Party …
However, the Sikh contribution to the Italian semi-hard cheese industry appears not to have persuaded the government to overlook the problem of the kirpan. La Stampa states:
Sikhs have to follow many rules. Men cannot cut their hair and must cover their heads with turbans. They also have to carry a comb, which is a sign of cleanness, traditional pants, a steel bracelet — and the much disputed kirpan dagger.
The turban has also been an issue in the past. The Italian Interior Ministry only authorized its use in official ID photos in 1995. Even if, once in a while, there are some problems at airport security checks, the issue of the turban is considered settled.
But this is not the case for the ceremonial dagger. After a first refusal from the interior ministry, Italy’s main administrative and judiciary body, the state council, confirmed that the kirpan was illegal in June 2010. In August 2011, Sikhs appealed, pointing out that the dagger was only carried under the belt, and could not be drawn. Moreover their religion does not require a specific length and so the knife can be shorter than 4 centimetres – so as not to be considered a weapon. Last May, the ministry rejected these objections.
The article closes with comments from the Italian Sikh leader asking for respect and further words of wisdom from the Italian politician.
“A multicultural society has to face the dimension of the different faiths. They are difficult challenges but they cannot be avoided. They exist and need solutions,” says Sarubbi.
As it has been crafted, this article gives but one side of the story. No explanation is offered as to why the state acted as it did. Nor is there an explanation of what non-recognition means. The story is also context free. Islam, for example, is not a recognized religion in Italy. In 2010 the AKI news service reported the government had declined to add Islam to the list of faiths eligible to receive state financial support from income tax revenue.
Mosques in Italy will not receive a share of income tax revenue the Italian government allocates to religious faiths each year. Hindu and Buddhist temples, Greek Orthodox churches and Jehovah’s Witnesses will be eligible for the funds, according to a bill approved by the Italian cabinet in May and still must be approved by parliament.
Until now, the government had earmarked 8 percent of income tax revenue for Italy’s established churches. The great majority of these funds go to the Catholic Church, although if they wish, individual tax payers may elect to give the money to charities and cultural projects instead.
…
Islam is not an established religion in Italy and there is only one official mosque in the country, Rome’s Grand Mosque (photo). Politicians from the ruling coalition cite radical imams, polygamy and failure to uphold women’s rights by Muslims immigrants as obstacles to recognising Islam as an official religion in Italy.Until now, only the Catholic Church, Judaism and other established churches including Lutherans, Evangelists, Waldensians and 7th-day Adventists have received the income tax revenue from the Italian government.
Did the Sikhs seek a share of income tax revenue and were turned down? Was this solely an issue having to do with the kirpan? It is difficult to say what happened with precision because so much is missing from the story.
The collision of Sikhs and the state in the West over the kirpan and the turban has been an on-going topic for years. But the bottom line with this story is that sufficient information is not provided for a reader to understand the dispute. While the religious explanation for wearing the kirpan is provided, the secular argument against possession of weapons in public is not. And is it fair to say that Italian government’s refusal to give an exemption to Sikhs to allow them to wear a kirpan amounts to a prohibition of their faith?
What say you Get Religion readers? Doth this article protest too much? Is this a case of the violation of religious liberty? Is it a fair report on the controversy?
First printed in Get Religion.
Ordinariate denies crackdown underway against traditionalists: Anglican Ink, August 1, 2012 August 1, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Ink, Anglican Ordinariate.Tags: Jeffrey Steenson, liturgy
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The Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter has dismissed claims that clergy of the newly formed home for Anglicans in the Catholic Church are being bullied by its leader, Msgr. Jeffrey Steenson, for using the traditional Latin mass – the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite.
On 29 July 2012 the Anglo-Catholic website posted a story stating Msgr. Steenson had discouraged his clergy from using the Latin mass, directing them to use only approved ordinariate and Catholic English-language liturgies.
Christian Campbell stated that he had it on “unimpeachable authority that there is on ongoing crackdown on those AU/Ordinariate priests who would dare to learn or celebrate the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite on the part of [Msgr.] Steenson” and other ordinariate leaders.
The “affected priests are naturally frightened, and unwilling to go on record, but make no mistake, the leadership of the U.S. Ordinariate at present has set itself against both Summorum Pontificum and Anglicanorum coetibus,” he stated, adding “ I also have it on good authority that this intimidation, an abuse of power, is being reported directly to the Roman Authorities. And the contention that the traditional Latin Mass has no bearing on the Anglican Patrimony — this simply has me flabbergasted.”
Read it all in Anglican Ink.
Romney on the Palestinian work ethic: Get Religion, July 31, 2012 July 31, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Get Religion, Islam, Israel, Judaism, Press criticism.Tags: Mitt Romney, Washington Post
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The elected Christian is in the world only to increase this glory of God by fulfilling His commandments to the best of his ability. … Brotherly love, … is expressed in the first place in the fulfillment of the daily tasks given. … This makes labor in the service of impersonal social usefulness appear to promote the glory of God and hence to be willed by him.
Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism (1905/2002),pp. 108-9.
Reporters on the campaign trail have a difficult task. They must report faithfully on the words and actions of their subject — while at the same time rendering these words and actions interesting and intelligible to their readers. The two do not always go hand in hand as campaign handlers works very hard to make sure their candidate does not stray from a script, keeping “on message” at all times. It is a good day then, when a candidate says something new, interesting or controversial for it allows a good reporter to show his command of the craft.
The presumptive Republican Party presidential candidate has been taking some hits for comments made on his latest overseas tour. Some members of the press corp have been putting a bit of stick about in their coverage of Mitt Romney, characterizing his latest comments as insensitive gaffes. Romney is not ready for prime time is the song playing on the campaign radio right now.
A 30 July 2012 story in the Washington Post entitled “Romney faces Palestinian criticism for Jerusalem remarks as he heads to Poland” is representative of this style of reporting. But in their zeal to play gotcha with the Mittster and focus the criticisms, the five WaPo reporters credited on the story have overlooked ethical and religious ghosts that might well have made this a better piece. And what is better? Better is an article that peals away on campaign cant giving a fresh look into the mind of Mitt Romney.
Let me walk you through this story and show you what I mean. The lede begins:
JERUSALEM — Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney angered Palestinian leaders on Monday when he suggested here that the Israeli economy has outpaced that of the Palestinian territories in part because of advantages of “culture.”
Palestinians said that Romney was ignoring long-running Israeli restrictions on crossings from the Gaza Strip and West Bank, which are an enormous drag on commerce.
“All I can say is that this man needs a lot of education. He doesn’t know the region, he doesn’t know Israelis, he doesn’t know Palestinians, and to talk about the Palestinians as an inferior culture is really a racist statement,” Saeb Erekat, a top aide to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said in an interview.
Though this appears in the domestic politics section of the Washington Post, the Post’s reporters have written a story about the opinions of second-tier Palestinian government officials. An accusation of racism is leveled at the top of the story by a Palestinian official in response to Romney’s comments on culture.
The article notes Romney’s comments on the sharp economic disparity between Israel and Palestine and recounts the words that led to the racism charge. Citing a 1998 book by Harvard economics professor David Landes entitled “The Wealth and Poverty of Nations,” Romney said:
“Culture makes all the difference. Culture makes all the difference,” Romney said, repeating the conclusion he drew from the book, by David Landes. “And as I come here and I look out over this city and consider the accomplishments of the people of this nation, I recognize the power of at least culture and a few other things.”
A decision was made by the authors of this narrative to enter the story through the door of response to comments. Why? As we go deeper into the article there are signs the Romney campaign were unhelpful. It moves to denials by the Romney campaign of any “attempt to slight the Palestinians.” The article did note that Stuart Stevens, Romney’s chief strategist, pushed his boss deeper into the mire: “Reporters pressed him to explain what Romney meant by ‘culture,’ but he declined to do so.”
The action shifts to Washington with comments from the Obama campaign and World Bank officials before it moves on to the next leg of Mitt’s overseas adventure. A diagram of the article’s content and perspective would be: Key Sentence: Romney is a racist Palestinian official claims — Palestinian quote — Romney quote — Romney campaign non-explanation — Obama response critical of Romney — Expert voice critical of Romney — Close as scene moves to Poland.
The Romney campaign appears to have been unhelpful and their man comes off badly from their actions. Yet what is also missing is an inquiry by the Post into Prof. David Landes and his book — which would go a long way toward answering the question of “what is culture?”.
And it is here was have the ethical and religious ghosts to this story for Landes’ book places great stress on the role of religion in economic development.
Two avenues of inquiry immediately present themselves — corruption and Islam. Is Mitt Romney saying that the Muslim culture of the Palestinian Authority is less conducive to economic advancement than the Jewish culture of Israel? Sociologists have been debating the role of religion and economic growth for over a century — most famously we have Max Weber’s “Protestant work ethic” thesis. The National Bureau of Economic Research released a paper last year entitled “Religious Identity and Economic Behavior” that found in the U.S. there were differences between the faith groups/denominations on their attitudes toward work.
We randomly vary religious identity salience in laboratory subjects to test how identity salience contributes to six hypothesized links from prior literature between religious identity and economic behavior. We find that religious identity salience makes Protestants increase contributions to public goods. Catholics decrease contributions to public goods, expect others to contribute less to public goods, and become less risk averse. Jews more strongly reciprocate as an employee in a bilateral labor market gift-exchange game.
While Islam did not play a part in this study, recent academic studies have sought to include the attitudes toward work in the Muslim world and define an Islamic work ethic. Is the economic success of Israel due to its Jewish culture — and are the economic failures of the surrounding states tied to their Muslim cultures?
And then there is corruption. It is odd the Washington Post article would stress the economic disadvantages of the security check points and trot out an expert to say this is a cause of the problem — some commentators have taken this idea and rather foolishly run with it even further. Why I saw it is odd is that the World section of the Post has featured articles discussing the problem of corruption for the economic, social and political development of the Palestinian Authority. A March 2012 Palestine Public Opinion Poll identified corruption as a significant problem in the PA.
73% say there is corruption in the PA institutions in the West Bank while only 62% say there is corruption in the institutions of the dismissed government in the Gaza Strip. These percentages are similar to those obtained three months ago. In the context of the recent step by the PA in the West Bank to submit corruption cases to courts, we asked the public if it thinks the PA is serious about fighting corruption: 53% said it was serious and 43% said it was not serious.
Is corruption a Muslim problem or a Palestinian problem? I don’t think so. In my own work I have reported on the problems of corruption within the Christian churches of the Palestinian Authority, and have written dozens of stories over the years about corrupt and crooked bishops from the U.S. to Africa.
Also, please hear what I am not saying — I am not saying Israeli security measures do not have some degree of harm for the Palestinian Authority’s economy — I am saying that there are other factors involved that may play as great or a greater role.
And, I am also saying the Washington Post story missed an opportunity to tell us more about Mitt Romney. There is a hundred years of sharply contested scholarship on the intersection of religion and economic advancement. Given Romney’s Mormon faith and its pronounced views on this topic I would have thought that this area would be explored in any story on culture and the economy emanating from the campaign. What we have is a rather tired and predictable story that advances a silly claim by a Palestinian functionary and partisan campaign officials. It is not really worth the time it takes to read.
What say you Get Religion readers? Did the Post miss the story? Was it justified in playing “gotcha” in light of the apparent unhelpful Romney campaign? With five reporters on the story should it have cracked open the covers of the book that formed Romney’s thinking on nations and culture? Or, because I write about religion, do I see it everywhere? Was this really just a Romney gaffe story? Or, has the press decided the trip was a failure and hence everything that arose from it must be deemed a failure?
Photo courtesy of Shutterstock. First published in Get Religion.
All Saints Pawleys Island may go ACNA: Anglican Ink, July 30, 2012 July 31, 2012
Posted by geoconger in AMiA, Anglican Church of North America, Anglican Ink.Tags: All Saints Pawleys Island, Chuck Murphy, Robert L Grafe Jr.
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The flagship parish of the Anglican Mission in America – All Saints Pawleys Island – is set to vote at a special parish meeting this fall on its rector’s proposal the congregation join the Anglican Church in North America.
The Rev. Robert L. Grafe, Jr., rector of the founding parish of the AMiA, told Anglican Ink his congregation was entering a “season of prayer and discernment.”
He noted that a “change in affiliation requires an amendment to our by-laws and a parish vote,” which could take place later this year.
In a 27 July 2012 letter to the congregation, Mr. Grafe wrote that in the wake of the December split within the AMiA “it became clear that there would be other Anglican options for affiliation to consider.”
Read it all in Anglican Ink.
Catholics, Commies and Gays … Oh my!: Get Religion July 27, 2012 July 27, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Get Religion, Press criticism, Roman Catholic Church.Tags: Associated Press, Pope Benedict XVI, Robert Brezak, Slovak Republic
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Where is Dan Brown when you need him?
The story of Archbishop Róbert Bezák is ready made for the Da Vinci Code treatment. Yet the press has bungled a Catholic story — the Associated Press piece that ran in most U.S. newspapers devoted more space to a rehash of the clergy pedophile scandal than the church conflict in the Slovak Republic.
This story has gays, Nazi sympathizers, Communist secret police agents, liberal Catholics, Vatican intrigue, and the “Rottweiler” — Pope Benedict XVI — playing the heavy. And what we are offered is the tired (and irrelevant) clergy abuse saga.
Our tale begins — in press terms — with the announcement from the Vatican that Archbishop Róbert Bezák of Trnava had been sacked. The AP story opens with:
The pope fired a 52-year-old Slovak bishop on Monday for apparently mismanaging his diocese in a rare show of papal power over his bishops.
Usually when bishops run into trouble – either for alleged moral lapses or management problems – they are persuaded by the Vatican to resign. But Pope Benedict XVI has become increasingly willing to forcibly remove bishops who refuse to step down, sacking three others in the last year alone.
His willingness to do so raises questions about whether he would take the same measures against bishops who covered up for sexually abusive priests. So far he has not.
As you can see, while the story ostensibly is about Archbishop Bezák, it really is another opportunity to club the pope and the Catholic Church. We do learn a bit about the unemployed archbishop. The AP story states:
On Monday, the Vatican said Benedict had “relieved from pastoral care” Bishop Robert Bezak of Trnava, Slovakia. No reason was given, but Italian news reports suggested administrative problems were to blame and Slovak news reports quoted Bezak as saying he thought his criticism of his predecessor may have had a role.
But this detour into news soon ends and we go back to assumptions and assertions.
The exercise of the pope’s ability to fire a bishop has important implications, particularly concerning bishops who mishandle pedophile priests.
In the face of U.S. lawsuits seeking to hold the pope ultimately responsible for abusive priests, the Holy See has argued that bishops are largely masters of their dioceses and that the pope doesn’t really control them. The Vatican has thus sought to limit its own liability, arguing that the pope doesn’t exercise sufficient control over the bishops to be held responsible for their bungled response to priests who rape children.
The ability of the pope to actively fire bishops, and not just passively accept their resignations, would seem to undercut the Vatican’s argument of a hands-off pope.
And so on and so forth. I’ve read this sort of thing dozens of times before and repetition does not make it any more newsworthy.
The front page of the 23 July issue of Pravda — not that Pravda, but the other one, the Bratislava daily newspaper — is devoted to a discussion of Church/State relations in the Slovak Republic and the fallout from the Bezák affair. The Pravda lede begins:
[Slovak] churches will receive more than 37 million euros in state support this year, and from this amount 21 million euros will be given to the Catholic Church. The state is facing a financial shortfall and church support is a huge burden, but so far the government has been reluctant even to begin discussing the separation of church and state.
… The debate on the separation of church and state is once again in the public eye due to the events surrounding the appeal [of the dismissal] of Trnava Archbishop Robert Bezák …
The focus of the Pravda story is on the return or restitution to the Catholic Church of properties confiscated by the Communist regime. The neighboring Czech Republic has been debating the issue in Parliament and the Slovak government is about to follow suit. However, the no-compensation group has a strong political base, Pravda notes.
One expert is cited in the article saying that during the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, the Czechoslovak Republic of 1919 to 1938 and the Nazi-puppet Slovak Republic of 1938 to 1945 the state owned church properties, which were entrusted to the Catholic Church for the use and benefit of the people. ”Each year [the Catholic Church] had to account to the state for the management of the property it used.”
The article then returns to Archbishop Bezák, with one expert saying the dismissal of the Archbishop of Trnava for his progressive social views was grounds not to compensate the church as it could not be trusted to put the interests of the people first. The bottom line — the Bezák story is not another episode in the clergy abuse saga but falls into another popular press theme — good liberal Catholics, bad conservative Catholics.
A 14 July story in TASR, the state news agency, reports that one of the letters of complaint lodged against Archbishop Bezák found its way to the TA3 television network.
Among the accusations listed by the Vatican in the documents are Bezak’s selection of homosexual priests and those having illegitimate children as his close associates, and alleged mockery of the cassock as a piece of clothing worn by sorcerers, while he himself wears jeans or sweatpants. The Vatican also asked whether it’s true that Bezak speaks of the pope merely as “Mr. Pope” in the public, and describes other Slovak bishops as “old and fogy”, while he is a “modern bishop and enlightened liberal”.
Bezak in a response said that his predecessor Jan Sokol didn’t alert him to any priests in the diocese that would have “dubious reputation”, while he isn’t interested in any ill-based accusations and observes the principle of benefit of the doubt instead. Similarly, Bezak rejected the accusation that he would have ever mocked the cassock and have worn indecent dress. He also said that he has never described himself as a “modern bishop and enlightened liberal”, as he had been in office less than three years, which was too little to define himself in any way. He further said that he describes the pope with due reverence, using terms such as “pope, pope Benedict XVI, Holy Father, Holy Father Benedict XVI and His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI”.
If the TASR story is true, one faction of the Slovak Church complained to the Vatican about the new archbishop’s liberal social views and progressive lifestyle. The story continues to build:
Drawing upon reports published by the Slovak newspaper SME, the English-language Slovak Spectator stated local protests by some Catholics followed the bishops removal. It offered further comments from political leaders perturbed by the Vatican’s removal of the young archbishop. Part of the dispute, the Slovak press reports, arises from the sharply different styles and personalities of the former archbishop and the new archbishop.
Bezák, aged 52, replaced controversial former archbishop Ján Sokol three years ago. The step was widely welcomed given Sokol’s repeated praise of President Jozef Tiso, a Catholic priest who led the Nazi-allied wartime Slovak state during which, among other atrocities, tens of thousands of Slovakia’s Jews were deported to Nazi death camps. Bezák won popular respect when he announced that Tiso should have resigned as soon as the first train transporting Jews left the country.
… [archbishop] Ján Sokol is known by Slovaks as one of the more controversial personalities in the local Roman Catholic Church, especially because his name appeared on the payroll of the communist-era secret police, the ŠtB.
Now I’ve not found an Opus Dei angle to the story so far, but a Gay-Nazi-Commie-Catholic-Conspiracy story is the sort of thing that religion reporters lie awake at night dreaming about.
It is not a crime for a journalist to run a short item. I am not criticizing the AP for being unaware of the back story of Archbishop Bezák. What troubles me is the padding of this story by the AP.
Yes, I get it. You don’t like Benedict and you are suspicious of the institution. But that sort of heavy breathing and speculation is inappropriate in a news story. The AP should have reported the fact of the archbishop’s dismissal and the Vatican’s decision to decline to comment. Droning on and on about bad Benedict and the clergy abuse scandal served no purpose. Simply put, by playing to its prejudices, the AP blinded itself and its readers to the real, much more interesting, story.
First printed in GetReligion.
Anglican Unscripted Episode 46, July 27, 2012 July 27, 2012
Posted by geoconger in 77th General Convention, Anglican.TV, Church of England, Orthodox Church in America, The Episcopal Church.Tags: Baptism, Eucharist, Forward in Faith, Metropolitan Jonah, Wallace Benn
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This week we talk about Forward and Faith and their resolution to the ACNA College of Bishops. Kevin and George also talk about Metropolitan Jonah and being spat out of the Holy Synod of OCA. The rest of the news includes Nigeria, Aurora, and that thing that happened in Bangkok. Peter Ould talks about guilt by association and Allan Haley lays into the chaos we call TEC. Send comments to AnglicanUnscripted@gmail.com #AU46
Anglican Unscripted Episode 45, July 18, 2012. July 27, 2012
Posted by geoconger in 77th General Convention, Anglican.TV, Property Litigation, South Carolina, The Episcopal Church.Tags: same-sex blessings
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Post General Convention 77 commentary floods the frames of this episode. Kevin and George discuss TEC’s “provisional” local rites for the blessing of same-sex unions, Humankind’s desire to identified by Acronyms, Bishop Lawrences actions, and Jesus’ discussion with Peter about the Rock. Alan Haley discusses the blood stains GC77 brought by charging nine Bishops for doing their duty. And finally, this week Peter Ould is giddy about Sports and humble about Women Bishops. comments to anglicanunscripted@gmail.com
Accusers named in Fort Worth 7 case: Anglican Ink, July 27, 2012 July 27, 2012
Posted by geoconger in 77th General Convention, Anglican Ink, Fort Worth, The Episcopal Church.Tags: F. Clayton Matthews, Fort Worth 7, Title IV
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The Rt. Rev. F. Clayton Matthews
The Title IV disciplinary proceedings initiated against the Fort Worth 7 has not been derailed by the intervention of the provisional bishops of Quincy and Fort Worth during the 77th General Convention, the accused have learned.
In an exchange of emails between seven bishops who endorsed an amicus brief in the Diocese of Fort Worth case pending before the Texas Supreme Court and the Rt. Rev. F. Clay Matthews, the Bishop for Pastoral Development in the Office of the Presiding Bishop, Bishop Matthews stated he would be “sending additional information to the Bishops involved after a period of reflection from the conversations at General Convention and some preliminary interviews. When a complaint has been received by the Intake Officer, the Disciplinary Canons are in effect.”
Bishop Matthews added “I trust this letter addresses the immediate concerns you raised, and you will hear more from me perhaps as late as September.”
Read it all in Anglican Ink.
Crown Nominations Committee meeting today: Anglican Ink, July 27, 2012 July 27, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Ink, Archbishop of Canterbury, Church of England.Tags: Crown Nominations Committee, Lord Luce
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The Crown Nominations Committee met this week to consider the appointment of the next Archbishop of Canterbury. Details of the 26-27 July meeting, including its location and whether potential candidates were invited to meet the committee have not been disclosed and the proceedings have so far not been plagued with the leaks and insider’s gossip past committees have suffered.
Read it all in Anglican Ink.
NZ Synod to study “nature of marriage”: The Church of England Newspaper, July 22, 2012 p 7. July 26, 2012
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Aotearoa New Zealand & Polynesia, Church of England Newspaper.Tags: gay marriage
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The General Synod of the Anglican Church of Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia has declined to endorse a motion calling for church blessings of same-sex partnerships, voting instead to commence a two year study on the “nature of marriage.”
On 10 July 2012, the synod meeting in Fiji adopted a motion proposed by the Rev Glynn Cardy that “asks Episcopal Units to hold conversations in our church and with the wider community about the nature of marriage.”
The motion was adopted without opposition, and followed a lengthy debate on the institution of marriage. A proponent of church-blessings for gay marriage, Mr. Glynn had argued that “marriage in the Bible is not restricted to one man and one woman – or in fact to any one model.”
Bisho Kelvin Wright of Dunedin urged the church rethink its stance on marriage as society had moved on from the traditional view espoused in church teaching. “We are still in the wedding business – but confused about it,” the bishop said, adding: “What are we doing here? We need to have a look again at what marriage is.”
A commission will explore the pastoral, theological, social and Scriptural dimensions of marriage and report back to the next meeting of General Synod in 2014. Motion 21 put forward by the Diocese of Waiapu asking the synod to “move forward with the provision of an authorized rite for the blessing of same-gender relationship” was turned aside by the 160 members of the AZNP synod in favour of the study motion, observers tell CEN.
Conger 