the "bishop", the "right-wing extremist group", and "that" film...

A few weeks ago several of my disparate feeds in my blog reader came together.

It started with the Swedish News feeds."Right Wing Extremist allowed to use Church buildings" caught my attention. Expecting it to refer to the usual suspects- neo-Nazi, skinheads, motorcycle gangs, etc, was read on to discover that they were referring to SSPX in Sweden.

This group of extremist catholics had, in a reaction to Vatican 2 become schismatic after they went ahead and consecrated 4 bishops without papal authority. Because the Roman Catholic Church in Sweden wouldn't allow them to use their buildings they used (Lutheran) Church of Sweden and Church of England (the Diocese of Gibraltar has two Anglican Churches in Sweden) buildings for their services.

At the same time other news feds (both secular and religious) started running a story that SSPX bishop Williamson had been quoted as denying the Holocaust (again).

At the same time, Catholic (and Anglo-Catholic) blogs were running stories that rumours were surfacing that the pope would lift the excommunications and start the process of allowing SSPX back into the fold.

The rest is history... the rumours became fact and the excommunications were lifted... the outrage at Williamson's words grew and after Several weeks the pope declared that he would have to recant before being allowed back.

However, whilst everyone seems to be castigating Williamson they are forgetting the context of his interview- the original Swedish documentary which gave rise to the first news feed.

For whilst everyone seems content to distance themselves (rightfully) from Williamson's shameful words, and attempt to portray this as one twisted person (his comment on women in trousers didn't help either!), they have failed to respond to the central argument of the documentary.

The film was not an expose of Williamson (a quick google search will show that he's been providing evidence that he's a pallium short of a full set of vestments for a while...), but instead a catalogue of links between SSPX in Sweden and far-right, extremist, and anti-Semitic groups. The film argues that this is more than a simple problem of one troublesome priest, that the whole organization is riddled with this kind of problem.

Again, this is not a new allegation, what is new is that this is being overlooked and one man is being scapegoated so that the rest of the organisation can continue. Williamson may be under censure for his remarks, but what about the rest of the whole sorry lot?

Now, in case your Swedish isn't up to it, you can watch the documentary with English subtitles here until 21st Feb.

What's the most important news story here at the moment?

Well it might be the proposed electronic surveillance bill been debated and voted on tomorrow (I might post about it later), but actually its more likely to be what the weather is going to be on Friday.

Why?

Because Friday is Midsummer's Day and highlight of the festive year!

(and sadly since the weekend its being grey, cloudy, showery, and sometimes stormy)

The weather centre say that Friday could be dry, or showery!
-They'll be more certain after Wednesday.

So what is Midsummer's all about... maybe this will help!

(this is an IKEA Germany ad which was pulled after IKEA HQ saw it and was banned from being shown on TV)

(I'll let you know after the weekend if its accurate!)

don't they teach history in San Francisco anymore

spotted at a Free-Tibet demo when the torch was passing through...

Stuff of life

Who's Irresponsible now?

The Union Unite (disclaimer: I used to belong to this union in of its earlier guises...) is threatening a 48hr strike at the Grangemouth refineries over pensions... The owners Ineos, claim that they will have to shut the plant down for safety reasons and that this will put it out of action for a month. Now I've heard two "experts" give differing views about this proposal, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and accept the stoppage is necessary for safety.

What I won't accept is Ineos claiming that this "risks petrol shortages" and claims that the union would be responsible.

The same "experts" claim that the UK has a 70 day reserve...

So the talk about shortages is just Ineos spouting rubbish in an attempt to portray the union in a bad light...

The thing is, if they aren't lying, and they didn't know about the reserves, then they really shouldn't be in business and the unions claims sound much more believable...

Fair Share?

This story is rather telling.

The Swedish town of Södertälje (population 84,00) has taken in more Iraqi refugees than has the whole USA. This despite the fact that Sweden had nothing to do with the invasion of Iraq and its "reconstruction". What happened to the old signs in shops,"all breakages must be paid for?"

This New York Times piece has more about the USA's scandalous behaviour when it comes to Iraqi refugees.

Law & Faith

Here's a video of an interview with N. T. (Tom) Wright, Bishop of Durham, talking about law, faith, democracy, secularism and fundamentalism, politics and religion. (I know I promised myself not to prop up the Times religious correspondent, but on the plus side, she only asks the questions...)

Dialogue at Davros...

Over at God's Politics Brian McLaren has a reflection on (inter)religious dialogue at the recent Davros World Economic Forum.

Its worth the short read... You can find it here. Please go check it out.

Poor Old Rowan...

I feel sorry for the Archbishop of Canterbury. ++Williams always puts a lot of thought into what he says and his words are well chosen and nuanced...

Sadly that doesn't make for good sound bites.

So it’s not surprising that his latest comments about Sharia law are causing controversy.

If you actually looked at what he said, he was saying that it should be introduced in only certain areas- notably family law and some financial cases.

The funny thing is this... despite all the claims that the courts should not be based on religion, or that the laws shouldn't be varied, etc, etc, what the commentators are forgetting is that in the UK we already have faith based courts which routinely rule on these matters and which are binding in English law. They are called the Beth Din and they serve the UK's orthodox Jewish communities.

If it works for one (smaller) religious community in this country, why not with Sharia? And if the politicians, community leaders and journalists really have a problem with the principle of religious based jurisprudence, surely it’s hypocritical for them not to call for its abolition- or are they just Islamophobic (or worse)?

That Romney Speech...

I’ve watched several online conversations following Romney’s speech last week. And yet I find it hard to join in enthusiastically. I think its because I look at things from a European context.

Such a speech would not be made here. Our former prime minister has since gone on the record stating that he didn't talk about his faith because he would be viewed as a "nutter". Whilst it made an amusing soundbite, I think the real reason is deeper contemporary European resistance to the role of religion in public life.

We resist for several reasons; secularism/multiculturalism, the decline in religious practice, historical precedent.

We in Europe, unlike the United states have either had wars of religion, or conflicts which used religion to further secular/political causes (unless you count the Governor of Missouri's 1938 Mormon "extermination order"). These wars have affected pretty much every country in our continent over the last thousand years, so you can see why we are weary of people in power who argue theta religion and freedom are inseparable- that simply hasn't been the European reality. We also look back and see examples of where the state has co-opted religion. Hitler's first speech declared that he saw that "both Christian denominations the most important factor for the maintenance of our society". The German church was largely subverted by the Nazi regime (the church was used by Franco in spain too).

We are also weary, because historically our rulers claimed a divine right to rule. This led them to act, often in the interests of a small minority without accepting dissent. It was the abuse of this claim that led to the down fall of several of Europe's ruling dynasties (through revolt or rebellion) and the beginning of constitutional secularism. So you can see why we get shivers down our spines when someone like Franklin Graham saying G W Bush was president because "God wanted him to be" (I thought he was president because the supreme court wanted him to be) or when Mike Huckabee tried to claim, God was behind his recent improved poll showing last week..

Europe is also a continent where religion is in decline. In Western Europe (even in the few countries which still have established churches) church attendance averages between 3-15%. So we recognize we are in a minority and so Christianity can't claim to be a dominant tradition anymore. Within the 27 EU states religious discrimination (either negative or positive) is illegal, so Europe is a de facto secular or multicultural continent. (This also leads to some interesting questions about popular Adventist eschatology, for example how can one envisage a universal Sunday law in such a context?)


We also worry whenever anyone tries to use a Christian "tradition" as an argument is that in Europe this is often code for nationalism/neo-fascist/"white" supremacy movements.

For all these reasons, we Europeans find it hard to believe that Mitt Romney not only said what he did, but that he felt he needed to in the first place. We find it hard to believe that a country which claims it is so advanced and is an example to the rest of the world would want advocate a medieval view of church and state. We understand that the USA lacks the history, but we hoped it would look to Europe and see the problems we had.

I'm not convinced (as many in Europe are) that faith has no place in politics, however the contemporary, evangelical US example does little persuade me that European lessons have been learnt.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Yesterday the Muslim Council Of Britian voted to abandon its boycott of Holocaust memorial day. It had previously argued that the focous should be wider, the day should not just focous on the holocaust but also on other acts of genocide (such as Darfur). However, this position has been misinterpreted as anti-semitism so they have decided to support the day.

Interstingly, on the same day the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust released some results of a survey. It says that although 53% of Britons know that genocide is taking place in Darfur, only 17% will do anything about it...

Maybe the Muslim Council of Britian had a point...

(Christ/X)mas

A few stories in the press have got me thinking about christmas/securalism/”christianophobia”.

The first was a story in the “torygraph” which was picked up by the BBC. It claimed that in a survey of 100 schools, only 1 in 5 was having a nativity play. This was, it was claimed (with no quotes from the schools/local authorities/etc to back their propaganda up), “because schools don’t want to upset non-christians” and held up as an example of political correctness gone wrong.

Sorry but the rag has got it wrong.

Thinking back to my primary school days (over 20 years ago) even then we only had 1 nativity play in 4 years. The rest of the time it was plays based on fairy tales, or classic children's stories. This wasn’t due to political correctness either (the only non white was a Sikh classmate of mine...) no it was because school found it boring to produce the same play every year and wanted to mix it up a bit...

next...

Tory MP Mark Pritchard is calling for a parliamentary debate on what he is calling ”christianophobia”. He wants the country’s “Christian tradition” protected (oh yes he quoted the bogus nativity play “research” as evidence...). He went on to say "It's gone far enough. If there are those who want to see the Christian church reduced to the margins in this nation they should have the courage to say so, rather than using the rights of other religions as an excuse."
Well maybe he should check out the facts... less than 6% of this country goes to church on a regular basis... the church IS on the margins... and whilst I’m not happy about this I don’t think attacking multiculturalism is the answer (unless you’re a tory who is frightened that the BNP are getting your votes...)

But (before you write me off...) I was saddened on sunday to go to a christmas shop. There were over 20 different snowy town scene you could buy, but only one crib set... yep, we’ve forgotten the origin of christmas...

The Noble Peace Prize (or... why didn’t they complain last year?)

I read on several sites/papers/blogs that the IPCC & Al Gore don’t deserve the this year’s prize. Whilst I disagree with those who doubt climate change- I believe the science is mostly sound, I can understand why people might be asking why the “peace” prize...

But where were they last year when the same prize was won by an economist (Muhammad Yunus) and a bank (Grameen) in Bangladesh “for advancing economic and social opportunities for the poor, especially women, through their pioneering microcredit work”.

So why didn’t they complain that this wasn’t a “peace” prize but an “economic” one?

I think that many either have an axe to grind against either Al Gore or climate change itself, or simply don’t share the Noble committee’s wider understanding of peace.

Peace is not just the absence of violence or conflict, it is also the presence of justice and rights, and dare I say it, an environment to live in too...

(incidentally the 2004 winner, the kenyan Wangari Maathai was an environmental activist before a political one and her prize was partly for her contribution to “sustainable development”)

Anglocentric viewpoints...

I saw this story about an Alzheimer's blood test on the BBC yesterday. It claims the research is based at Stanford University in the US.

However, listening to Swedish Radio's English broadcast yesterday I heard that the research was a collaboration between 3 universities- an institute at the University of Göteborg, Malmö and Stanford... 2 Swedish Universities and one US...

Strange how that wasn't mentioned on the BBC!

Former Chief of Defence's & Defence Civl Servent's take on the "Just War"

Max Hastings has a good column in todays Guardian about Lord Charles Guthrie and Sir Michael Quinlan' book on the Christian Just War principle

Although not entirely happy with the theory (I side more the non-violent civil disobedience/pacifist view... most of the time- I'm complex, aren't we all?), It was one I used in sermons in the run up to the Gulf war as it had a history and was understood by members. As this column mentions, even on these criteria the current Gulf folly failed to find merit.