• Today is the first day of Kwanzaa. Unless you're in the bbb family in which case it is the only day of Kwanzaa. My big problem with Kwanzaa is that it takes to long. If you include Festivus, Christmas and New Year's, that is ten straight days of joy. Ummmm, no. I pack my seven principles into about seven hours. At the hour this is published, I'm celebrating Ujima.
• If you are wondering how the repeal of DADT will change the military, I can tell you right now: not at all. Except good people wont get thrown out anymore. The mission will still be primary. Good order and discipline will be kept. Camaraderie and fighting spirit will remain. Orders will still be followed, from Lt. Dan Choi right up the line to the Commander in Chief, no matter who that person is. God Bless America.
• The New York Times reports that President Obama is set to make some mid-term staff changes:

  A reshaping of the economic team, beginning by naming a new director of the National Economic Council, is among the most urgent priorities of the new year. Gene Sperling, a counselor to the Treasury secretary who held the position in the Clinton administration, is among the final contenders to succeed Lawrence H. Summers in the job, along with Roger C. Altman, a Wall Street investment banker who also served in the Clinton administration.

  The president has handled these sorts of tasks well, calmly moving people out, and adroitly moving people in without bumps. From his campaign, through the transition, and into the White House, he's been good at management. One of the untold stories of this White House is how well managed it is.
  

• It is a good thing when people believe in evolution:

  Vice President Joe Biden says the country is evolving on the issue of gay marriage and he thinks it's inevitable there will be national consensus.

  ...

  Gay marriage is still not legal in most states. President Barack Obama recently said his feelings on the gay marriage issue are evolving, but he still believes in allowing strong civil unions that provide certain protections and legal rights that married couples have.

  Good. Maybe I can speed this along. Simply put: everyone should be able to marry any consenting adult of their choice. Rinse, repeat.
  

• I was raised up Anglican. I love the church and attend the same Carribean Episcopal church I grew up in. I try to keep up with what other bishops around the community are preaching, especially the Christmas homily. From England, the Right Reverend Nicholas Reade, the Bishop of Blackburn, on austerity:

  The Rt Rev Nicholas Reade, the Bishop of Blackburn, will tell his congregation that they can fight against job losses and public service cuts made by the coalition Government with a “legitimate Christian protest in the face of continuing injustice.”

  The comments will come in his annual Christmas Day sermon at Blackburn Cathedral tomorrow.

  He says the annual message will be used to send a message of support to the “broken and disheartened.”

  His sermon will say: “Perhaps it will need to be the note of anger in Our Lord’s voice that we hear, and proclaim, in the coming year as we raise legitimate Christian protest on behalf of those losing their jobs, seeing their public services undermined, their hopes for higher education jeopardised, or their fears realised through the creation of what increasingly seems like a less caring, more brutalised society, and where vast bonuses form the contemptuous retort to any mention of restraint, and the black economy of the super-tax dodger is seen as a legitimate moral code.”

  Amen.

• Yesterday was Christmas for most Christians. To all Christians, Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox or Evangelical: don't forget why our Lord was sent here in the first place:

  And He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up; and as was His custom, He entered the synagogue on the Sabbath, and stood up to read... "The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, because He appointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are downtrodden, to proclaim the favorable year of the LORD... Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

  Luke 4:16-21

  Jesus Christ was the first radical liberal.
  

• Of all the Christmas movies that have been made, the only one I have ever truly loved is the 1970 musical Scrooge directed by Ronald Neame  and starring Albert Finney as Mr. Scrooge. Some of the songs are just downright jaunty like "December the 25th" or the bouncy "Thank You Very Much", although I'd have to say my personal favorite is "I Hate People." Great film, wonderful acting and choreography, and some of the best Christmas songs ever made. Get it today and enjoy with eggnog.

  Here is a scene where they are literally dancing on Mr. Scrooge's coffin:

• 
  

Ian Sansom on a clan described as the Kennedys of Nigeria

In 1925, the Reverend Canon Josiah J Ransome-Kuti, a Nigerian Anglican priest and composer of hymns, recorded a series of 78s, sung in Yoruba, for the pioneering Zonophone record label in London. The Reverend had adopted the name Ransome from the missionary who had converted him. Fifty years later, Ransome-Kuti's grandson, also a musician, abandoned the slave name, calling himself instead Anikulapo, meaning "He who carries death in his pouch". According to Michael E Veal, an ethnomusicologist and professor of music at Yale University, Ransome-Kuti's musical descendant was not only "one of the most important musicians in the world of black music", but also "one of the most important musicians of the post-world war two era". He was Fela Kuti.

Olufela – "Fela" – Olusegun Oludotun Ransome-Kuti was born to middle-class parents in Nigeria in 1938, the fourth of five children. His father, the Reverend Israel Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, like his father before him, became an Anglican priest and was also a union activist and a school principal. Fela's mother, Funmilayo, was a human-rights campaigner who was awarded the Lenin peace prize (the Soviet Union's equivalent of the Nobel peace prize) in 1970. "She beat the hell outta me, man," said Fela. Fela's older brother, Olikoye, became a doctor, and went on to become Nigeria's minister of health and deputy director-general of the World Health Organisation. His younger brother, Bekolari, also a doctor, became secretary general of the Nigerian Medical Association. His sister Yemisi is executive director of the Nigeria Network of Non-Governmental Organisations. The Kuti family have been described as the Kennedys of Nigeria. But there was never a Kennedy like Fela.

Sent to London to study medicine, aged 19, Fela instead enrolled to study piano and composition at Trinity College of Music. He formed a band and during the late 1960s and early 1970s, began to develop his distinctive musical style, with long, polyrhythmic songs lasting up to 30 minutes, incorporating looping guitar riffs, bass grooves, chants and a two-saxophone horn section. He described his work as "African classical music".

After touring in America and becoming politicised through the Black Power movement, Fela returned to Nigeria, where he set up his own studio compound, which he declared the Republic of Kalakuta, with himself as president. He also ran his own nightclub, the Shrine, and in 1977 he released his landmark album, Zombie, an outspoken attack on the Nigerian government and military. The government's response was swift and brutal: they attacked the compound, razed it to the ground, beat up Fela, and threw his mother from a second-storey window. She died of her injuries.

According to the Nobel-prize winning Nigerian poet and playwright – and Fela's cousin – Wole Soyinka, Fela was a "scourge of corrupt power, mimic culture and militarism" whose mission was nothing less than "to effect a mental and physical liberation of the race". He was certainly a fearless opponent of the government, formed his own political party, was imprisoned, married 27 wives and when he died in 1997, aged 58, of an Aids-related illness, tens of thousands of people turned out on the streets of Lagos to pay their respects.

In his biography, Fela: The Life and Times of an African Musical Icon (2000), Michael E Veal describes Fela as combining "the autocratic bandleading style and dancing agility of James Brown, the mystical incantations of Sun Ra, the polemicism of Malcolm X, and the harsh, insightful satire of Richard Pryor".

Fela Kuti had seven children, and during his lifetime released more than 50 albums. His youngest son, Seun, now leads his father's band, and his eldest son, Femi, has a band of his own, the Positive Force. Fela's unique style has influenced musicians from Missy Elliott to Brian Eno and just about every skinny-jeaned English indie band. The musical Fela! is running at the National Theatre in London, and a film based on his life is due to be released in 2011.

Even as officials rage at what they have called the “invasion” of illegal immigrants, mostly Mexicans, Arizona has welcomed thousands of legal immigrants from such grief-torn lands as Somalia, Myanmar and Iraq, and is known for treating them unusually well...


Only three states accepted more refugees on a per capita basis over the past six years. Arizona took nearly twice as many refugees per capita as its liberal neighbor, California, and more than twice as many per capita as New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. ~ NY Times

We can certainly use the term "post-modern" to refer to many aspects of our life in the world now. There certainly are discontinuities with the recent past. But I conclude that an over-emphasis on the post-ness of our situation can lead us to celebrate the greater tolerance, the end of "Christendom," the fall of Reason-capital-R, and the openness to the spiritual, without seeing that it is based on a kind of hyper-modernity that is perhaps more antithetical to Christianity than ever. ~ link

(KAMPALA) - Defence leaders from Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo are meeting Sunday in Kampala to discuss new ways to combat rebel groups in the region, notably the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).

"We will discuss security matters, especially border insurgency by negative forces, the Lord's Resistance Army and others," Ugandan Defence Minister Crispus Kiyonga told AFP.

"We expect this meeting to come up with comprehensive measures to deal with negative forces to ensure there is peace in the region, and to see that there is smooth movement of goods and services between the two countries," he added. Tens of thousands of people have been killed in two decades of fighting since LRA chief Joseph Kony took up arms, initially against the Ugandan government.

Long since driven out of Uganda, the guerrillas have carved out a vast region of control in the dense forests of northeast DR Congo, as well as southern Sudan and the Central African Republic, and their insurgency has been marked by appalling violence against civilians.

UGANDA and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have vowed to work together to annihilate the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels who are threatening the security of the two countries.

Defence minister Dr. Crispus Kiyonga and DRC’s defence and veterans’ minister Charles Mwando made the declaration after a meeting in Munyonyo on Saturday.

The ministers met under the Ngurdoto agreement signed by President Yoweri Museveni and his counterpart, Joseph Kabila in Tanzania on September 8, 2007. The ministers will meet again in November.

According to a statement, the ministers reviewed the security situation along the border and commended each other for the joint operations against the LRA rebels in Congo.

They also thanked each other for the on-going operations against the Alliance Defence Forces (ADF) leaders in Eastern DRC.

“In this respect, they agreed to do everything possible to neutralise Joseph Kony, his group, and the ADF rebels,” the statement said.

Kony is the leader of the LRA rebels, who fought an atrocious war in northern Uganda, maiming, looting property, raping and abducting people.

Kiyonga stated that Uganda was ready to support efforts against lawless Ugandans destabilising peace and security in the region.

Mwando thanked the Ugandan government for arresting rebels like Gen. Gadi Ngabo. Ngabo, the leader of the Patriotic Front in Congo, had declared war on the government of Joseph Kabila, claiming it had failed to keep its promises.

Uganda offered training space at its military academies to DRC forces.

Yesterday, Mwando visited the Kimaka Senior Command and Staff College in Jinja. He was briefed on the history, objectives, course modules and administrative structure of the college.

Two Ugandan bishops have told US officials that regional dialogue with the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels would work better than a military option against it.

"The issue is no longer the LRA and Uganda," Archbishop John Baptist Odama of Gulu told Catholic News Service in Washington on Wednesday. "The issue now is regional."

Archbishop Odama has headed the Gulu Archdiocese in northern Uganda since 1999 and, during that time, has worked to end hostilities between the UPDF and the LRA.

He travelled to Washington with Anglican Bishop MacLeord Baker Ochola II, retired bishop of Kitgum.

The bishops recently said they do not oppose the LRA Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act, which US President Barack Obama signed into law in May, but were urging US officials to end the use of force in dealing with the LRA.

The cited numerous occasions on which force did not work against the rebel group.
Efforts by the government to make peace with the rebels, on four times, through dialogue have yielded nothing with LRA leader Joseph Kony refusing to sign the peace agreement --- the last being in 2007.

The break in the talks forced the UPDF to launch an operation christened Lightening Thunder on the rebels’ bases in DR Congo.

But an LRA rebels’ delegation has reportedly written to the United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-Moon appealing for the resumption of the talks with the government.

The bishops met with State Department officials, who have until November to develop a strategy for disarming the LRA and they also met with congressional leaders.

"We are afraid," Archbishop Odama said.

"Let us bring [their] leaders together -- the new stakeholders."

Bishop Ochola said those opposed to peace -- those who advocate continued fighting -- should also be invited to the dialogue. He said the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative leaders have offered to mediate multiple times.

Since late 2008, the LRA have killed more than 2,500 civilians in southern Sudan. About 90,000 Sudanese in Western Equatoria province have been displaced from their homes, and 25,000 refugees from Congo and Central African Republic have sought refuge in the province.

Archbishop Odama and Bishop Ochola said capturing or killing Kony would not necessarily end the conflict, because the situation is so complex and includes splinter groups and tribal conflicts.

Kony and his bandits have shifted their base from northern Uganda and now operate in southern Sudan, Congo and the Central African Republic.

THE army says calls by the Lords Resistance Army rebels to the UN to initiate fresh peace talks with the government is diversionary and intended to buy time.

UPDF 4th Division Intelligence Officer, Major Victor Opira says peace talks between the government and the LRA were concluded and what is remaining is for the LRA leader, Joseph Kony to sign the final peace agreement document.

He says government is aware that the LRA is not serious and has always wanted to seek for survival means.

Opira also revealed that the strength and capacity of the LRA have greatly been reduced and weakened in the recent operations against the LRA.

September 16, 2010 (MALAKAL) - The Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) on Thursday called for the quick and timely provision of security information, saying that delays in passing on sensitive information to relevent authorities in the region, such as that relating to security, results in delays in crucial intervention.



Photo: SPLA spokesperson Gen Kuol Deim Kuol (Photo Ajang Monychol)

Kuol Deim Kuol, official spokesman of the SPLA told Sudan Tribune from Juba that the latest Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) attack in western Equatoria, occurred just eight miles away from Yambio, capital of the state and the information about their presence was not passed onto the SPLA forces in the area early enough.

The LRA is a northern Ugandan rebel group with no coherent demands which continues to commit atrocities across the region. At its centre is a messianic cult around its leader, the International Criminal Court charged, Josephy Kony.

“It was made known to our forces after the emergence of reports that civilians have sighted them moving about in the area before the attack,” said Kuol. He explained that the provision of information is important as it helps in preparation and proper positioning of armed forces, in order to provide quick and timely intervention.

“You see, in Western Bahr el Ghazal, LRA has limited activities because once elements associated with it are sighted by the civilians; they give information very fast to our forces. This is what is required. Cooperation in coordination and provision of security is very important,” he added.

Kuol pointed out that the LRA is active in the area, especially in the two counties of Nzara and Yambio because of lack coordination and information sharing. “We have deployed enough manpower but this is not what counts. What counts is not the number of security forces but provision of information on time and logistics. There is need for cooperation in this area,” he added.

Kuol also expressed concern over the presence of the LRA off southern soil: “The LRA operates from the Democratic Republic of Congo and our forces have no mandate to enter DRC territory. This is one. The other issue is logistics for the movement of our forces. The last and most important of all is provision of information on time. Intelligence play central role and this is what counts.”

He made an appeal following a report urging the ministry of SPLA and veteran affairs by the regional parliament to increase deployment of the armed forces in Western Equatoria State.

On Wednesday Aleu Ayieny Aleu, chair of the special committee for security and public order responded to a motion previously raised by Bernado K. Martin, a member of parliament, on increased activities and operation of LRA in the area.

The security and public order report was deliberated by undersecretary of the ministry of SPLA and veteran affairs, Bior Ajang and Obote Mamur on behalf of the SPLA chief of general staff, reulsting in eight recommendations.

The committee noted that the inaccessibility of roads was leading to the formation of LRA hideouts. That it is operating in Democratic Republic of Congo and Southern Darfur in Sudan. Lack of coordination and sharing of information on operation and activities of the LRA at the border areas was observed.

The comittee report also indicated that the LRA has established close relationships with unlawful groups, citing cattle raiders and nomads like Ombororo. TIt also suggested that the LRA is receiving logistical and military support from Khartoum’s Sudanese Armed Forces through its liaison office in South Darfur.

It accused the ruling National Congress Party of colloding with the LRA to destabilize the region by undermining the implementation of the CPA in regard to the preperations for the upcoming referendum.

To maintain peace in the region, the parliament recommended that the SPLA end the armed incursion of the LRA and Ombororo nomads wandering about in the region and called on the Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS) to make every effort to support operations of the armed forces, particularly in combating the LRA.

The parliament further urged the ministry of SPLA and veteran affairs to increase the number of the armed forces in the area, to prevent flow of illegal arms and movement, as well as to monitor allegations of the smuggling of arms.

It called for the construction of security roads in order to facilitate the quick movement of the military against illegal armed groups in the region, in particular the LRA.

The regional parliament finally called on the SPLM controlled GoSS to lead regional efforts to combat rebels, in collaboration with the Khartoum’s Government of National Unity, Uganda, Democratic of Congo and Central Africa Republic and in the hope of mediating peace with the LRA. (ST)

CHURCH and civic representatives from four key African countries have signed a declaration appealing for international action to stop guerrilla forces terrorising the region.

About 30 community leaders made up of senior clergy and government representatives put their signature to a communiqué calling on national and international leaders to do more to prevent attacks by the Lords Resistance Army in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and the Central African Republic.

The declaration calls on the countries’ governments to work together to quell the LRA threat, demanding that further pressure on the four nations be applied by the EU, the UK, the USA and the UN.

Further articles outlined in the document include an appeal for more humanitarian support to help refugees and displaced people and there is a plea for a resumption of peace talks to bring the LRA threat to an end.



Photo: Bishop Eduardo Hiiboro Kussala of Tombura-Yambio, South Sudan

In an interview with Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need, Bishop Eduardo Hiiboro Kussala of Tombura-Yambio, who organised the conference, stressed the continuing threat posed by the LRA.

Speaking yesterday (Tuesday, 14th September) at the end of the four-day meeting, Bishop Hiiboro underlined the need for international pressure to step up security in the region.

He told ACN: “We have been forgotten by our own government, forgotten by the international community and this means the LRA think they can do anything they like.

“Think of the number of people who have fled their homes, the number of people who have lost their lives and the number of people left as orphans.

“The whole state [of Western Equatoria] is living in panic – not just in South Sudan but in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. It is just too much.”

Bishop Hiiboro said a reminder of the LRA threat came just days before the conference got underway last week when eight people were hacked to death by machetes.

A further 14 were badly wounded, some seriously, during the attack which took place in Yambio, the regional capital of Western Equatoria State where the bishop is based and where the conference was held.

Stressing the gruesome violence typical of LRA attacks, Bishop Hiiboro said: “The impact of the LRA is terrible. There are huge numbers of refugees and displaced people trying to escape attack.

“They destroy property, leave children as orphans and, with so many leaving, there are no schools or social services.”

But, underlining the limitations of a military response to the LRA threat, he said: “We have seen what happens by following the military way.

“People continue to suffer and die. We want to say that we need another option – an option for peaceful dialogue.”

A year ago, the remains of six people were discovered nailed to a tree close to Yambio in an atrocity that was likened to a crucifixion scene. Again the LRA was implicated.

Amid widespread reports pointing to LRA collusion with Sudan President Omar al Bashir’s Islamist regime in the capital, Khartoum, Bishop Hiiboro said it was unclear who was backing the insurgents.

He added: “There are people who give them weapons, food and enable them to have telephone communications.

“It is difficult to say who helps them. It is obvious that they receive significant support because they are so very well equipped.”

The LRA issue is expected to have a major bearing on the outcome of the long-awaited referendum on the possible cessation of South Sudan, due in January.

At a time of continuing fear of attacks, reports have shown that voters are likely to be swayed by the government – be it the semi-autonomous administration in the south or the Khartoum-based government of national unity – best placed to bring the LRA threat to an end.

WASHINGTON (CNS) - Two Ugandan bishops -- one Catholic and one Anglican -- traveled across Africa and the Atlantic to tell U.S. officials that regional dialogue with the Lord's Resistance Army would work better than a military option against it.

"The issue is no longer the LRA and Uganda," said Archbishop John Baptist Odama of Gulu. "The issue now is regional."

Archbishop Odama has headed the Gulu Archdiocese in northern Uganda since 1999 and, during that time, has worked to end hostilities between the Ugandan military and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army, known for its brutality and especially for kidnapping children to use as soldiers and sex slaves. The LRA, once based in northern Uganda, has spread its operations to Southern Sudan, Congo and the Central African Republic.

The archbishop is president of the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative, an interfaith organization formed in the late 1990s to respond to the violence in northern Uganda, where the Acholi ethnic group is based. He traveled to Washington with one of the founding members of the organization, Anglican Bishop MacLeord Baker Ochola II, retired bishop of Kitgum.

Both men told Catholic News Service in mid-September that they do not oppose the Lord's Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act, which President Barack Obama signed into law in May, but were urging U.S. officials to end the use of force in dealing with the LRA. The cited numerous occasions on which force did not work against the rebel group.

The bishops met with State Department officials, who have until November to develop a strategy for disarming the LRA. They also met with congressional leaders.

"We are afraid," Archbishop Odama told CNS. He said the LRA currently is involved in a conflict to destabilize Uganda's northern neighbor, Southern Sudan, which is scheduled to vote in January on whether to secede from Sudan.

Congo and the Central African Republic, two countries that border Southern Sudan, also have an interest in its stability, the archbishop said.

"Let us bring (their) leaders together -- the new stakeholders," he said. "We say: peaceful approach."

Bishop Ochola, whose daughter committed suicide in 1987 after being brutally attacked by the LRA, said those opposed to peace -- those who advocate continued fighting -- should also be invited to the dialogue.

He said the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative leaders have offered to mediate multiple times. In 2008, rebel leaders had begun negotiations when a Ugandan military offensive drove them into neighboring countries.

In early September, religious leaders from areas affected by the Lord's Resistance Army met in Southern Sudan to outline a path to peace. In a statement, the leaders said LRA atrocities gave "no sign whatsoever of being on the decrease."

The leaders said that in Southern Sudan, the LRA was attacking urban centers with "massive abductions, displacements and killings." They said they feared "enemies of peace" would use the LRA to prevent the secession referendum.

Since late 2008, the LRA has killed more than 2,500 civilians in Southern Sudan. About 90,000 Sudanese in Western Equatoria province have been displaced from their homes, and 25,000 refugees from Congo and Central African Republic have sought refuge in the province.

Archbishop Odama and Bishop Ochola said capturing or killing LRA leader Joseph Kony would not necessarily end the conflict, because the situation is so complex and includes splinter groups and tribal conflicts. They said adding to the complexity of the situation was that most LRA soldiers were kidnapped and are serving involuntarily.

YAMBIO, Sudan, SEPT. 15, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Religious and civic leaders from four nations are calling for negotiation and better coordination of international efforts to bring an end to two plus decades of terror caused by the Lord's Resistance Army.

Bishop Edward Hiiboro Kussala of Tombura-Yambio, in southern Sudan, organized a four-day meeting last week, which brought together some 60 representatives including delegations from Uganda, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Central African Republic. Muslims and non-Catholic Christians were also present.

The 46-year-old bishop leads one of the dioceses most hard-hit by the Lord's Resistance Army. The Sudan Tribune reported that at least seven of his parishes have been badly attacked by the rebel group, which is known for brutality.

Bishop Hiiboro spoke Tuesday with Aid to the Church in Need about a reminder of the LRA threat when eight people were hacked to death by machetes in Yambio just days before the religious leaders' conference got under way in that city. Another 14 were badly wounded.

"The impact of the LRA is terrible," he said. "There are huge numbers of refugees and displaced people trying to escape attack.

“They destroy property, leave children as orphans and, with so many leaving, there are no schools or social services.”

Forgotten

The bishop, who has led the Diocese of Tombura-Yambio for just over two years, contended that "[w]e have been forgotten by our own government, forgotten by the international community and this means the LRA think they can do anything they like."

“Think of the number of people who have fled their homes, the number of people who have lost their lives and the number of people left as orphans," he said. “The whole state [of Western Equatoria] is living in panic -- not just in South Sudan but in the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. It is just too much.”

Though Bishop Hiiboro said it is not clear who backs the army, it is clear that they are well-sponsored.

"There are people who give them weapons, food and enable them to have telephone communications," the bishop explained. "It is difficult to say who helps them. It is obvious that they receive significant support because they are so very well equipped."

Open door

A final statement with 30 signatories from the conference was released Sept. 10. The religious leaders cautioned against military "solutions," noting the dire effects of past efforts.

“The international community has so far failed to develop a comprehensive plan to deal with the LRA as a regional threat, instead addressing the crisis in a piecemeal and haphazard way in the four different countries,” the report stated.

It called for collaboration from the governments of the four nations terrorized by the LRA, and urged greater international pressure from the European Union, the United States and the United Nations.

Bishop Hiiboro told the Fides agency that he is advocating a political solution, which he just recommended in a meeting with the defense minister of Uganda.

"The LRA leader, [Joseph] Kony, has sent me a letter which was delivered to various other regional and international figures -- including the U.N. secretary-general -- saying that he is willing to enter into peace talks once more," the bishop noted. “Let's not close the door on negotiations."

...Government Spokesman Omer Adam Rahma, affirmed government's preparedness for negotiations, brushing aside the movement's accusations of government's attacks on its forces in cooperation with the LRA, adding that LRA was non existent in Darfur. He said, " Nobody can believe in the existence of the LRA troops there." ...

THE residual LRA rebels’ delegation to the stalled Juba peace talks has written to the secretary general of the UN, Ban Ki-Moon, appealing for the resumption of negotiations with the Government.

In a September 6 letter, the LRA supporters asked the UN boss to take urgent steps to bring the peace talks back on track.

“The leadership of the LRA peace team makes an appeal to the UN secretary general for urgent action to revisit and once again attend to the peace question in Uganda so as to assist in reviving the stalled ‘Northern Uganda peace process,” a letter signed by Justine Labeja, the acting leader of the rebels peace team, stated.

The Government accused the LRA rebels of not being committed to the peace talks.

The Juba peace talks were the fourth time the Government had attempted to end the brutal northern Uganda war through peaceful means. In all attempts, the LRA leader, Joseph Kony, refused to sign the final peace agreement.

The LRA have fought an atrocious war in the north for nearly two decades, killing, maiming and raping people, and looting and torching homesteads.

During the Juba peace talks, the rebels said they were fighting marginalisation by the Government.

After the collapse of the peace talks in January 2007, the Government launched Operation Lightening Thunder on the LRA bases in the DR Congo. Several rebels were killed, captured or surrendered.

However, the rebel collaborators say the military offensive only spread war to the DRC, southern Sudan and the Central African Republic.

LRA top commanders were indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Testimony from former Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) fighters who were recently captured near Yambio in Sudan’s Western Equatoria state indicates that a notorious LRA commander, Dominic Ongwen, recently crossed into Sudan from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Ongwen, who was indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity and war crimes in 2005, is part of the LRA’s top leadership, second or third in command after leader Joseph Kony. BM

A rare 3-day meeting of about thirty religious and community leaders as well as local government officials from the Southern Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central Africa Republic, and Uganda has criticized the "lack of a coordinated and comprehensive strategy" to tackle the Lords Resistance Army (LRA).

This came after the leaders met in Yambio town of the Western Equatoria State. The recommendations of the conference called on the UN to intervene and be deployed as quickly as possible to the region in order to halt the LRA activities.

(AFP/Khartoum) Co-ordinated action must be taken to end the long-running brutal campaign by the Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels, leaders from the four countries affected said yesterday.

A rare three-day meeting of 30 religious and community leaders as well as local government officials from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), south Sudan, the Central African Republic (CAR) and Uganda criticised the “lack of a co-ordinated and comprehensive strategy” to tackle the rebels.

“The LRA is committing atrocities across very remote areas of already unstable nations,” read a joint statement following the meeting in the southern Sudanese town of Yambio, state capital of the badly affected Western Equatoria region.

Better co-ordination is needed, they warned, adding that “LRA atrocities give no sign whatsoever of being on the decrease.”

Tens of thousands of people have been killed in two decades of fighting since LRA chief Joseph Kony took up arms, initially against the Ugandan government.

Long since driven out of Uganda, the guerrillas have carved out a vast region of control in the dense forests of northeast DRC, south Sudan and CAR.

“DRC, Sudan and CAR all have internal conflicts that prevent them from sufficiently allocating their forces in a fight against the rebel group,” it added, calling on all national armies to work to boost troop deployment in affected areas.

“The international community has so far failed to develop a comprehensive plan to deal with the LRA as a regional threat, instead addressing the crisis in a piecemeal and haphazard way in the four different countries,” it added.

The signatories demanded that UN peacekeepers be given a “greater capacity to deploy quickly” in response to attacks.

However, the leaders praised the Washington administration for passing a law in May, which commits it to develop a strategy by the end of November to end the rebel campaign of carnage.

The LRA’s acts of startling brutality—including murder, rape, and the forced conscription of children—have forced more than 25,000 people to flee their homes in south Sudan alone since January, the UN says.

Many thousands more have been massacred, abducted or forced from their homes in CAR and DRC by the rebels, whose chiefs are wanted by the International Criminal Court.

The leaders yesterday also called for clarification of the Ugandan army’s role, which has led the hunt for LRA leaders across Sudan, DRC and CAR, since it launched a botched offensive following the collapse of peace talks.

The December 2008 Ugandan-led attacks smashed the rebels’ jungle hideouts in northeast DRC, but analysts suggest the LRA was tipped off and most fighters escaped beforehand, launching reprisal raids across a wide area as they fled.

(KHARTOUM) - Coordinated action must be taken to end the long-running brutal campaign by the Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels, leaders from the four countries affected said on Saturday.

A rare three-day meeting of 30 religious and community leaders as well as local government officials from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), south Sudan, the Central African Republic (CAR) and Uganda criticised the "lack of a coordinated and comprehensive strategy" to tackle the rebels.

"The LRA is committing atrocities across very remote areas of already unstable nations," read a joint statement following the meeting in the southern Sudanese town of Yambio, state capital of the badly affected Western Equatoria region.

Better coordination is needed, they warned, adding that "LRA atrocities give no sign whatsoever of being on the decrease."

Tens of thousands of people have been killed in two decades of fighting since LRA chief Joseph Kony took up arms, initially against the Ugandan government.

Long since driven out of Uganda, the guerrillas have carved out a vast region of control in the dense forests of northeast DRC, south Sudan and CAR.

"DRC, Sudan and CAR all have internal conflicts that prevent them from sufficiently allocating their forces in a fight against the rebel group," it added, calling on all national armies to work to boost troop deployment in affected areas.

"The international community has so far failed to develop a comprehensive plan to deal with the LRA as a regional threat, instead addressing the crisis in a piecemeal and haphazard way in the four different countries," it added.

The signatories demanded that UN peacekeepers be given a "greater capacity to deploy quickly" in response to attacks.

However, the leaders praised the Washington administration for passing a law in May, which commits it to develop a strategy by the end of November to end the rebel campaign of carnage.

The LRA's acts of startling brutality -- including murder, rape, and the forced conscription of children -- have forced more than 25,000 people to flee their homes in south Sudan alone since January, the United Nations says.

Many thousands more have been massacred, abducted or forced from their homes in CAR and DRC by the rebels, whose chiefs are wanted by the International Criminal Court.

The leaders on Saturday also called for clarification of the Ugandan army's role, which has led the hunt for LRA leaders across Sudan, DRC and CAR, since it launched a botched offensive following the collapse of peace talks.

The December 2008 Ugandan-led attacks smashed the rebels' jungle hideouts in northeast DRC, but analysts suggest the LRA was tipped off and most fighters escaped beforehand, launching reprisal raids across a wide area as they fled.

The religious leaders on Saturday insisted that the "preferred sustainable solution is a negotiated settlement" of the LRA crisis "after decades of failed military interventions."

Meanwhile, reports suggest that Dominic Ongwen -- the LRA's second or third in command -- has moved from DRC back to south Sudan, according to testimonies of former fighters collected by the Washington-based Enough pressure group.

Ongwen's reported move is "worrying", it said, with south Sudan approaching a historic vote due in January on its potential full independence.

"Sudan is preparing for a very important referendum early next year, and the LRA has a proven record of destabilising entire regions with few soldiers," said the Enough report, released on Wednesday.

Northern Sudan has been accused of employing rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) to unsettle southern Sudan and the Darfur region ahead of the south’s independence referendum scheduled for January 9, 2011. But an official from the LRA, which has embarked on a mass recruitment, has debunked the claims and suggested that they are rather seeking a peace deal with the region.

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - A Darfur rebel group said on Thursday it was attacked by Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army guerrillas in Sudan's west.

"A group of LRA attacked our forces in Dafak in South Darfur yesterday," Haydar Galucuma Ateem, vice president of the Darfur rebel Liberation and Justice Movement (LJM), told Reuters from Qatar-based peace talks.

South Sudan, which fought decades of civil war against the north, accuses the northern government of arming the LRA to destabilise the semi-autonomous region ahead of a January 9, 2011 referendum which most believe will result in a vote for independence.

Known for their abduction of child soldiers and extreme brutality, the LRA sought refuge in neighbouring south Sudan during the civil war.

Kampala accused Sudan's central government in Khartoum of providing support to the LRA, a charge Khartoum denies.

After a 2005 north-south peace deal, which did not include a separate conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan, LRA rebels went on the run and south Sudan said some had moved towards Darfur to receive support from Khartoum there.

South Sudan's government says it cut off Khartoum's supply lines to the LRA after the 2005 accord so the Ugandan rebels moved north to Khartoum-controlled territory in Darfur to get resupplied.

Ateem said two small reconnaissance groups of about 20 young LRA rebels carrying light arms shot and killed one LJM soldier before retreating into dense forest in remote South Darfur.

"Their language was one of the ways we knew they were LRA," he said, adding the Ugandan guerrillas in the past year had often crossed the remote and porous border between South Darfur and the Central African Republic.

"They probably have a relationship with the government of Sudan," Ateem said. "Many of the young people in the area say they are arming the LRA -- the LRA first entered South Darfur about a year ago."

The International Criminal Court issued its first arrest warrants for LRA commanders, whose tactics include mutilating their victims by cutting off their lips and ears.

Groups of LRA soldiers also frequently attack south Sudanese villages near the border with the lawless Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the United Nations and south Sudan government.

Survivors of the 1995 Atyak massacre repairing the monument built for the 250 people who were killed by the LRA

In April 1995, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels led by Vincent Otti attacked Atyak township in the morning and massacred more than 250 civilians, leaving behind about 80 survivors and 100 orphans.

The survivors have appealed to the President to fund the building of a big multipurpose hall and library in Atyak township in memory of the deceased.

They also requested the Government and other development partners to build a bigger monument with a recreation centre across Ayugi River where the bloodbath occurred.

Jacob Nokrac, the chairman of the Atyak Survivors’ Association, on Tuesday observed that the Government helped the injured and bereaved families of the July 11 bomb blasts in Kampala.

“We appeal to the Government to provide us with livestock for income generation and at least sh5m as a revolving fund for the survivors,” he said.

Nokrac also called for grinding mills to process their produce. He said some survivors had bomb fragments in their bodies and needed to be operated upon.

Nokrac disclosed that the survivors had formed a saving and loan association where each member saves between sh1,000-5,000 every week. He said the orphans needed school fees.

Betty Acan, 31, a survivor, said she could not continue with education because her brother who used to pay her school fees was killed in the massacre.

The Atyak sub-county chairman, John Bosco Ocan, called on the Government to take over the running of Lwani Memorial Community Secondary School which was built by the community in memory of those massacred by the rebels.

The New Vision, Uganda, Monday, 06 September 2010: A former Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) commander, Thomas Kwoyelo, has been charged and committed to the War Crimes Court to face trial. Kwoyelo, 39, appeared before Buganda Road Court Chief Magistrate Vincent Mugabo, who did not allow him to plead to the charges. He becomes the first suspect to be charged with offences relating to war crimes.

Thank you for reading Congo Watch.

One of the key myths of the American Catholic imagination is this: After 200 years of fighting against public prejudice, Catholics finally broke through into America’s mainstream with the 1960 election of John F. Kennedy as president. It’s a happy thought, and not without grounding. Next to America’s broad collection of evangelical churches, baptized Catholics now make up the biggest religious community in the United States. They serve in large numbers in Congress. They have a majority on the Supreme Court. They play commanding roles in the professions and in business leadership. They’ve climbed, at long last, the Mt. Zion of social acceptance.

So goes the tale. What this has actually meant for the direction of American life, however, is another matter. Catholic statistics once seemed impressive. They filled many of us with tribal pride. But they didn’t stop a new and quite alien national landscape, a “next America,” from emerging right under our noses.

While both Barna Group and Pew Research Center data show that Americans remain a broadly Christian people, old religious loyalties are steadily softening. Overall, the number of Americans claiming no religious affiliation, about 16 percent, has doubled since 1990. One quarter of Americans aged 18-29 have no affiliation with any particular religion, and as the Barna Group noted in 2007, they “exhibit a greater degree of criticism toward Christianity than did previous generations when they were at the same stage of life. In fact, in just a decade . . . the Christian image [has] shifted substantially downward, fueled in part by a growing sense of disengagement and disillusionment among young people.”

Catholic losses have been masked by Latino immigration. But while 31 percent of Americans say they were raised in the Catholic faith, fewer than 24 percent of Americans now describe themselves as Catholic.

These facts have weight because, traditionally, religious faith has provided the basis for Americans’ moral consensus. And that moral consensus has informed American social policy and law. What people believe—or don’t believe—about God, helps to shape what they believe about men and women. And what they believe about men and women creates the framework for a nation’s public life.

Or to put it more plainly: In the coming decades Catholics will likely find it harder, not easier, to influence the course of American culture, or even to live their faith authentically. And the big difference between the “next America” and the old one will be that plenty of other committed religious believers may find themselves in the same unpleasant jam as their Catholic cousins.

At first hearing, this scenario might sound implausible; and for good reason. The roots of the American experience are deeply Protestant. They go back a very long way, to well before the nation’s founding. Whatever one thinks of the early Puritan colonists—and Catholics have few reasons to remember them fondly—no reader can study Gov. John Winthrop’s great 1630 homily before embarking for New England without being moved by the zeal and candor of the faith that produced it. In “A model of Christian charity,” he told his fellow colonists:

We are a company professing ourselves fellow members of Christ . . . That which the most in their churches maintain as truth in profession only, we must bring into familiar and constant practice; as in this duty of love, we must love brotherly without dissimulation, we must love one another with pure heart fervently. We must bear one another’s burdens. We must look not only on our own things, but also on the things of our brethren . . . We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So we will keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

Not a bad summary of Christian discipleship, made urgent for Winthrop by the prospect of leading 700 souls on a hard, two-month voyage across the North Atlantic to an equally hard New World. What happened when they got there is a matter of historical record. And different agendas interpret the record differently.

The Puritan habits of hard work, industry and faith branded themselves on the American personality. While Puritan influence later diluted in waves of immigrants from other Protestant traditions, it clearly helped shape the political beliefs of John Adams and many of the other American Founders. Adams and his colleagues were men who, as Daniel Boorstin once suggested, had minds that were a “miscellany and a museum;” men who could blend the old and the new, an earnest Christian faith and Enlightenment ideas, without destroying either.

But beginning in the nineteenth century, riding a crest of scientific and industrial change, a different view of the Puritans began to emerge. In the language of their critics, the Puritans were seen as intolerant, sexually repressed, narrow-minded witch-hunters who masked material greed with a veneer of Calvinist virtue. Cast as religious fanatics, the Puritans stood accused of planting the seed of nationalist messianism by portraying America as a New Jerusalem, a “city upon a hill” (from Winthrop’s homily), with a globally redemptive mission. H.L. Mencken—equally skilled as a writer, humorist and anti-religious bigot—famously described the Puritan as a man “with the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

In recent years, scholars like Christian Smith have shown how the intellectual weakness and fierce internal divisions of America’s Protestant establishment allowed “the secularization of modern public life as a kind of political revolution.” Carried out mainly between 1870 and 1930, this “rebel insurgency consisted of waves of networks of activists who were largely skeptical, freethinking, agnostic, atheist or theologically liberal; who were well educated and socially located mainly in the knowledge-production occupations, and who generally espoused materialism, naturalism, positivism and the privatization or extinction of religion.”

This insurgency could be ignored, or at least contained, for a long time. Why? Because America’s social consensus supported the country’s unofficial Christian assumptions, traditions and religion-friendly habits of thought and behavior. But law—even a constitutional guarantee—is only as strong as the popular belief that sustains it. That traditional consensus is now much weakened. Seventy years of soft atheism trickling down in a steady catechesis from our universities, social-science “helping professions,” and entertainment and news media, have eroded it.

Obviously many faith-friendly exceptions exist in each of these professional fields. And other culprits, not listed above, may also be responsible for our predicament. The late Christopher Lasch argued that modern consumer capitalism breeds and needs a “culture of narcissism”—i.e., a citizenry of weak, self-absorbed, needy personalities—in order to sustain itself. Christian Smith put it somewhat differently when he wrote that, in modern capitalism, labor “is mobile as needed, consumers purchase what is promoted, workers perform as demanded, managers execute as expected—and profits flow. And what the Torah, or the Pope, or Jesus may say in opposition is not relevant, because those are private matters” [emphasis in original].

My point here is neither to defend nor criticize our economic system. Others are much better equipped to do that than I am. My point is that “I shop, therefore I am” is not a good premise for life in a democratic society like the United States. Our country depends for its survival on an engaged, literate electorate gathered around commonly held ideals. But the practical, pastoral reality facing the Gospel in America today is a human landscape shaped by advertising, an industry Pascal Bruckner described so well as a “smiling form of sorcery”:

The buyer’s fantastic freedom of choice supposedly encourages each of us to take ourselves in hand, to be responsible, to diversify our conduct and our tastes; and most important, supposedly protects us forever from fanaticism and from being taken in. In other words, four centuries of emancipation from dogmas, gods and tyrants has led to nothing more nor less than to the marvelous possibility of choosing between several brands of dish detergent, TV channels or styles of jeans. Pushing our cart down the aisle in a supermarket or frantically wielding our remote control, these are supposed to be ways of consciously working for harmony and democracy. One could hardly come up with a more masterful misinterpretation: for we consume in order to stop being individuals and citizens; rather, to escape for a moment from the heavy burden of having to make fundamental choices.

Now, where do Catholics fit into this story?

The same Puritan worldview that informed John Winthrop’s homily so movingly, also reviled “Popery,” Catholic ritual and lingering “Romish” influences in England’s established Anglican Church. The Catholic Church was widely seen as Revelation’s Whore of Babylon. Time passed, and the American religious landscape became more diverse. But the nation’s many different Protestant sects shared a common, foreign ogre in their perceptions of the Holy See—perceptions made worse by Rome’s distrust of democracy and religious liberty. As a result, Catholics in America faced harsh Protestant discrimination throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. This included occasional riots and even physical attacks on convents, churches and seminaries. Such is the history that made John F. Kennedy’s success seem so liberating.

The irony is that mainline American Protestantism had used up much of its moral and intellectual power by 1960. Secularizers had already crushed it in the war for the cultural high ground. In effect, after so many decades of struggle, Catholics arrived on America’s center stage just as management of the theater had changed hands -- with the new owners even less friendly, but far shrewder and much more ambitious in their social and political goals, than the old ones. Protestants, Catholics and Orthodox, despite their many differences, share far more than divides them, beginning with Jesus Christ himself. They also share with Jews a belief in the God of Israel and a reverence for God’s Word in the Old Testament. But the gulf between belief and unbelief, or belief and disinterest, is vastly wider.

In the years since Kennedy’s election, Vatican II and the cultural upheavals of the 1960s, two generations of citizens have grown to maturity. The world is a different place. America is a different place—and in some ways, a far more troubling one. We can’t change history, though we need to remember and understand it. But we can only blame outside factors for our present realities up to a point. As Catholics, like so many other American Christians, we have too often made our country what it is through our appetite for success, our self-delusion, our eagerness to fit in, our vanity, our compromises, our self-absorption and our tepid faith.

If government now pressures religious entities out of the public square, or promotes same-sex “marriage,” or acts in ways that undermine the integrity of the family, or compromises the sanctity of human life, or overrides the will of voters, or discourages certain forms of religious teaching as “hate speech,” or interferes with individual and communal rights of conscience—well, why not? In the name of tolerance and pluralism, we have forgotten why and how we began as nation; and we have undermined our ability to ground our arguments in anything higher than our own sectarian opinions.

The “next America” has been in its chrysalis a long time. Whether people will be happy when it fully emerges remains to be seen. But the future is not predestined. We create it with our choices. And the most important choice we can make is both terribly simple and terribly hard: to actually live what the Church teaches, to win the hearts of others by our witness, and to renew the soul of our country with the courage of our own Christian faith and integrity. There is no more revolutionary act.

Charles J. Chaput is the archbishop of Denver.

The attack on mainstream liberal protestantism in the USA did not arise from a revolt against abortion

The evangelical activist and historian Randall Balmer spilled the beans back in 2006 about what he called "the abortion myth": Contrary to what its leaders would have you believe, opposition to legalized abortion was not the organizing principle behind the religious right. Abortion was an after-the-fact justification — and sustaining principle — of a movement organized largely in response to a 1975 IRS attempt to lift the tax-exempt status of racially segregated Christian schools such as Bob Jones University.

In the years since the Carter administration, which ended in 1981, religion in the public square has taken an undeniable and deliberate turn to the right. The hard right. Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority emerged in the early 1980s as part of a broader initiative to promote fundamentalists' values and influence in society. Its successor, the Ralph Reed-led Christian Coalition put a gentler face on much the same agenda while solidifying the role of evangelicals as "foot soldiers" for the Republican party, a role they were happy to play as long as they believed it would bring them influence within the party. Later, they may have come to regret the deal, as Reed drifted into ignominy, crossing the line from advancing the conservative movement to shilling for the corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff, sometimes against the very evangelicals he claimed to represent in public.

There were other currents. Under Pope John Paul II and his enforcer Joseph Ratzinger, the Catholic church suppressed liberation theology in Latin America and packed the U.S. church hierarchy with increasingly dogmatic opponents of abortion. The Catholic bishops' crusade against pro-choice Democrats was enough to convince ambitious Republicans that the Catholic church was a beneficial ally and a timid Democratic party to shy away from engagement with religious voices.

That wasn't the only way Democrats managed to shoot themselves in the foot. According to the journalist and historian of the radical Religious Right Frederick Clarkson, neo-conservative Democrats, opposed to the liberal trajectory of the party under George McGovern, formed the Institute for Religion and Democracy. Founding members included Richard John Neuhaus and Michael Novak. The IRD quickly garnered financial and ideological support from conservative foundations as well as an ongoing mission: to attack progressive positions taken by mainline Protestant denominations and their umbrella advocacy group, the National Council of Churches (NCC). They successfully did so through "smear jobs," such as the 60 Minutes segment that "revealed" the NCC was funding Fidel Castro and Marxist rebels in Zimbabwe, and by fomenting divisive controversies within the churches around homosexuality and abortion. The IRD has been, and continues to be, relentless in hounding mainliners to recognize that their liberal leaders are out of touch with the righteous conservatives in the pews. Only when the leaders are correctly aligned with the laity (by the standards of the IRD), can mainline denominations begin to grow again. Meaning the hierarchy folds and endorses a conservative social agenda.

It has been a struggle for religious lefties to come back from these four decades of organized assaults. But they are finally finding themselves. In recent years, the United Church of Christ has endorsed same-sex marriage, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has admitted gay clergy to its ranks and the Presbyterian Church (USA) has inched toward the same position. Most famously, the Episcopal Church — the American branch of Anglicanism — has stared down conservative schismatics, elected two gay bishops, and played Archbishop Rowan Williams to a draw as he works to keep the Anglican communion together, even at the cost of sacrificing tolerance as a core value.

Aren't these just interchurch ping-pong? Not entirely. They are also firm responses to the depredations and fake controversies sponsored by the conservative movement. They are signs that the denominations that have been a major voice for liberalism in the past fifty years are ready to shrug off the burdens imposed upon them by a hostile conservative movement. They are reclaiming their prophetic voices. The next step is effective organizing on the issues, as the avowedly liberal Unitarian Universalist Association has begun to do with immigration reform, for example.

"Behold," in other words, "I am doing a new thing."

Child abuse by German cleric among claims causing crisis for Vatican

For Father Rupert Frania it seemed the best way. His parishioners in the Bavarian spa town of Bad Tölz had just learned a terrible secret.

It had been reported that one of their curates was a convicted paedophile, Peter Hullermann. The curate who had officiated at the children's mass. The one who had been with their sons and daughters the year before at a campsite in the mountains over their medieval town.

Frania decided to tackle the issue from an angle. In his sermon at the main mass last Sunday morning, he began with the parable of the prodigal son – and was stopped dead in mid-sentence.

"I cannot listen to that," shouted a man who was soon to have been married by Hullerman. "You just cannot dodge the issue any longer," he continued as other parishioners broke into applause and some began shouting "shut your mouth" at their parish priest.

It was a raucously rebellious start to a week in which the disclosure of hundreds of cases of alleged clerical sex abuse in the Roman Catholic church's European heartlands shook the allegiances of millions and forced their pastors to make unprecedented admissions of guilt and mortification.

In Armagh on St Patrick's Day the primate of All Ireland, Sean Brady, told the congregation in his cathedral that the clergy should admit "the full truth of our sinfulness".

Brady, who in 1975 was involved in the swearing to silence of two young victims of Ireland's most notorious clerical paedophile, was one of scores of prelates bowing their heads in disgrace in the Netherlands, Austria, Germany and the German-speaking parts of Switzerland and Italy.

So far almost 700 new cases have come to light. It was a week of unmitigated calamity for Benedict XVI, who became pope pledging to shore up Christianity in an increasingly secular Europe.

"It is such a big story because everything about it is extreme," says the religious affairs author and journalist Clifford Longley. "It is the worst crisis for the Vatican since the middle ages."

Longley believes the Catholic church is embedded in European history like nothing else. "It claims divine foundation. The pope's title of Vicar of Christ means he still claims to represent supernatural power. It has been loved and hated, with passion and sometimes loathing. It dominated the middle ages, launched the Crusades, triggered the Reformation; the Enlightenment was a direct reaction against it."

The topic of child sexual abuse provokes strong emotions, even more so when people learn of the steps taken to conceal it. Nowhere has this veil of secrecy been lifted higher than in the Irish Republic, the focus of three reports since 1994.

At the start of the millennium the Catholic church in England and Wales commissioned Lord Nolan to investigate priestly abuse. It resulted in measures to improve child protection policies and reporting procedures, but did little or nothing to address or repair the damage of past abuse.

The 2007 Cumberlege commission reviewed the church response to the Nolan report, but only two of its 72 recommendations dealt specifically with historic cases. This oversight is something support groups are all too aware of and there are demands for a UK inquiry.

Graham Wilmer, who runs the Lantern Project which has helped hundreds of sexual abuse victims since 2003, said: "The psychological and emotional damage has affected them throughout their lives. Until they made contact with us, they have had little if any help in dealing with the aftermath."

Wilmer was sexually abused by a teacher at a Catholic school and spent years trying to bring his tormentor to justice. He wants the British government to establish a truth and reconciliation commission to address the issue.

Longley says the scandal "brings into contrast the priest as man of God, symbol of purity and holiness and the sexual abuse of children as the ultimate betrayal of innocence, representing unspeakable evil. And conspiracy in high places to hide the scandal. No novelist could have invented such a plot."

In spite of earning outright condemnation for its clumsy attempts to sweep matters under the carpet, the church will probably overcome these difficult times. Unlike the Anglican Communion, which buckles under the weight of polarised opinion on homosexuality, the Catholic church always emerges, not entirely unscathed, from adversity.

Longley says the church survived nazism, fascism and communism and will outlast the EU, the UN, the US. "Bad though this crisis is, it has survived much worse. At the start of the 16th century the Vatican was little better than a shit-hole."

The question remains why this situation should be judged so grave when the numbers involved are smaller than in the US, where a 2004 report found evidence in support of almost 7,000 allegations.

One possible answer is the cumulative effect of abuse in so many countries. The crisis has spread from the US to Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and now the German-speaking heart of Europe. Not the least of the difficulties is financial. The church has already had to find some $5bn (£3.3bn) in compensation and now faces the prospect of having to fund more compensation, settlements and legal fees at the same time as disgusted Catholics stop their contributions.

Giancarlo Galli, the Italian author of Finanza Bianca, a study of the Vatican's finances, said: "There is nothing less transparent than the accounts of the church. It is known that with all the troubles in the US, the church was very much looking north, across the Alps, and above all to Bavaria, for support."

It has even been suggested that some of the cardinals who elected the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as pope cast their votes with one eye on the material benefits of having a German pontiff.

This is scarcely the first crisis involving what an Australian victims' group, Broken Rites, has termed black-collar crime. But never before has a scandal cast doubts on the judgment and authority of a pope.

So far the debate has focused on his role in the Peter Hullermann affair. Hullermann was transferred to the Munich diocese when Ratzinger was archbishop, ostensibly for therapy. Though known to be a paedophile, he was moved to a parish where he was convicted of abusing another child.

Christian Weisner, the spokesman for the lay movement, Wir sind Kirche, said that in Munich: "People are asking: 'What did [Benedict] know? What did he do?'" Many Catholics in Bavaria and elsewhere were ready to accept the diocese's version – that the decision to reassign Hullerman was made by Ratzinger's deputy. But Weisner added: "The pope is asking for transparency. So he too should be transparent and ask his successor to open the archives for people to see exactly what happened."

The issue of Benedict's responsibility goes far beyond Munich to encompass his subsequent role as pope.

Weisner argues that this pope "learned more about clerical sex abuse than any other bishop or cardinal and has done more to fight it than any other cardinal or pope".

But there is a sharp distinction between his attitude while a cardinal and his activities as pope that could yet leave an indelible stain on the reign of Benedict XVI.

In 2005 he was elected days after declaring that the time had come to sweep "the filth" from his church. By then he had read – and was disgusted by – files on more than 3,000 clerical abuse cases that were channelled to his department by a decree issued four years earlier by John Paul II.

Most of the cases dealt with by the Vatican department in recent years resulted in the accused being removed, if not defrocked.

The problem for Benedict is that, as in many other theological respects, he changed his mind. The US Vatican-watcher John Allen this week published in National Catholic Reporter an extract from the transcript of a conference in Spain that showed that, as late as November 2002, Ratzinger dismissed the American abuse scandals as the result of a "planned campaign" in the media.

By 2002 the then cardinal had signed what critics claim was an incitement to the obstruction of justice. A letter he circulated to bishops the previous year reminded them that internal church inquiries into certain serious offences were covered by what is known as papal secrecy, for which the penalty is excommunication.

"The question is whether Ratzinger's past may trump Benedict's present," wrote Allen.

Sometime in the late hours of Saturday night the call will come in. Philbert (not his real name), like many of his Christian lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) buddies, wait anxiously for the call in order to know the time and place of the van pickup, and where it’ll drop them off to a safe and secluded place for Sunday worship. Last week’s worship service was in Montego Bay, just 50 miles from Negril’s Grand Lido, one of the flagship resorts in Jamaica, where Philbert works the night shift at the bar. This week Philbert hopes for a closer worship space, perhaps a safe space in Gales Valley, just 40 miles from work.

Every Sunday Philbert and his friends have to worship in a different space. The risk is too high if it’s found out they’re queer.

"My experience as a gay man living in Jamaica is one which is marked by periodic incidences of abuse, both verbal and physical. I have lost count of the number of times I have been verbally abused, called 'battyman,' 'chi-chi,' 'sodomite,' 'dirty battybwoy,'" an unnamed gay man shares on the Jamaican Forum of Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays (J-Flag) in 2003.

When Jamaica's leading gay rights activist, Brian Williamson, was murdered in his home in June 2004, multiple knife wounds savagely mutilated his body. A Human Rights Watch researcher witnessed the crime, reporting a crowd gathered after the killing, rejoicing and saying, "Battyman [Jamaican slang for homosexual], he get killed!" Others celebrated Williamson's murder, laughing and calling out, "Let's get them one at a time," "That's what you get for sin," and "Let's kill all of them." Some sang, "Boom bye bye," a line from renowned Jamaican reggae artist Buju Banton's then popular anti-gay song about killing and burning gay men. (Banton has a long history of advocating the killing of LGBTQ people in his lyrics, yet he was nominated for a Grammy this past year for his album “Rasta Got Soul”).

In 2005, a gay man was harassed at the beach, and a mob pursued him. To avoid the homophobic wrath of the mob he ran into the sea and drowned.

In 2007, a pastor’s church was attacked by an angry mob on Easter Sunday because of the presence of people accused of being homosexuals were at a funeral service he performed earlier in the week.

And in November 2008, Rev. Richard Johnson, one of the leading Anglican priests on the island, was found nude and stabbed 25 times, in the rectory of St. Jude's Anglican Church in Kingston, because he was thought to be gay.

Homophobia is so intense in Jamaica and goes unchallenged that people who speculate about who’s LGBTQ can easily plot to kill them, and unabashedly announce their intent with impunity, because the police won’t protect Jamaica’s LGBTQ citizens from mob-led murders and violence; they instead incite the country's homophobic frenzy by either being present and inactive during these assaults or by following and watching them all the time.

In 2010 nothing has changed. So when the van arrives on Sunday morning before the island has risen, Philbert and friends stealthily pack into it and off they go.

Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) provides most of the vans, helping these underground Christians find sacred space. Sunshine Cathedral (MCC), in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, has chartered a Sunshine Cathedral mission Church in Jamaica. The mission Church is active in several cities in Jamaica and has monthly island-wide meetings at changing locations.

Jamaican LGBTQ Christians welcomes MCC’s outreach ministry to them, but the church is viewed by many of the islanders as an abomination.

In a letter to the editor of the “Jamaica Observer” titled “Wilson's homosexual theology ain't right,” JM Fletcher of St. Andrew expressed his outrage:

“I note with interest an article written by an American lesbian preacher Nancy Wilson, who is bent on crusading and promoting her chosen lifestyle. My concern about homosexuals is that if allowed to run unchecked they move from their outward recruitment drive to deliberate thrust of their lifestyle on the rest of us. This can be seen in how they are moving into every segment of the community - even the church - to try to perpetuate their lifestyle.” Fletcher states.

“If Ms. Wilson is an American, why is she so desperate to start a foundation for homosexuality in other countries? She cares nothing for the culture of other nations? She might ask us soon to allow a man to marry a pig! Because from a Christian perspective, what would be the difference? Both are an abomination to God, yet homosexuality happens and bestiality too -- if one is made legal, so should the other, and the homosexual church can allow for a man to marry a dog -- if he finds the companionship of a dog preferable to that of humans ... For the pastors claiming to be Christians who are approving of such churches, I repeat, they are not of God.”

The Reverend Elder Nancy Wilson is unquestionably a woman of God, and was the first pastor of MCC Boston in the 70s. Rev. Wilson is now the Presiding Elder and Moderator of the Universal Fellowship of MCC, a global denomination with now 300 churches in 28 countries.  Founded by Troy Perry, an ex-communicated gay Pentecostal minister, MCC is a radically inclusive church opened to all people, regardless of theological background, gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, age, or ability, and is a leading force in the development of queer theology. (In the 80s MCC saved my life, welcoming me as a member of MCC, NYC).

In April 2008, Cambridge (Mass.) City Councilor Ken Reeves, the son of Jamaican immigrants, traveled to Kingston, Jamaica to join Wilson and Rev. Pat Bumgartner of MCC, NYC in a demonstration denouncing violence against LGBTQ citizens on the island. And in June of that year Reeves put together the panel, “Jamaica: Yes, Problems --- A Visit to Homophobia,” held at Christ Episcopal Church in Harvard Square, to seek out solutions.

But in a country with no federal hate crime bill, police enforcement and church to protect LGBTQ Jamaicans, solutions can’t found.

So in the meantime, Philbert and his friends wait anxiously for the call on Saturday night to be told where their sacred space will be. And when the van arrives on Sunday morning before the island has risen, Philbert and friends stealthily pack into it, and off they go.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church web site," Beck urged his audience. "If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!"

Jesus [Matthew 25]:

31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:

32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:

33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?

38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?

39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me....

We'll get to the rest of what Jesus has to say below, in the last section.  But first, a word from His churches....
The Anglicans:

Anti-Racism and Gender Equality

The election of the first black President of the United States was an historic event in our nation???s history, but this singular occasion, although a celebration of equality, does not eliminate racism. In a way, it exposed just how deeply the issue of race is still ingrained in the country and that racism still exists in our society. Because it has existed for centuries, many of us are unaware how the history of racism affects how we all think, live and behave even today. In order to become more aware of our actions???personally, interpersonally and institutionally???and move toward a church without racism that openly welcomes all races, The General Convention of the Episcopal Church named racism a sin and has mandated anti-racism training for all church leaders, both ordained and lay.

If your parish, diocese, seminary, commission, committee, agency or board is actively seeking to join the Gospel work of working against racism as well as other related oppressions, the Advocacy Center will work with you in achieving that goal. We???re offering to facilitate training events, train members of your group to become certified anti-racism trainers, and provide relevant and motivational materials and resources for conventions and other events. We also have an expansive list of recommended books, articles, videos and websites that can be used to learn more about how we can all join together to eliminate racism in our church and society.

The American Baptist Churches:

ABCUSA [American Baptist Churches, USA] Vision Statement

Through the cross of Christ we embrace the world as neighbor. Our vision for mission energizes a multitude of servant ministries of evangelism, discipleship, leadership, new church development, social justice, healing, peacemaking, economic development and education. Empowered by the Holy Spirit, we work together in mutual submission, humility, love, and giving that the gospel might be preached and lived in all the world.

The United Methodists:

The United Methodist Church has a long history of concern for social justice. Its members have often taken forthright positions on controversial issues involving Christian principles. Early Methodists expressed their opposition to the slave trade, to smuggling, and to the cruel treatment of prisoners.

A social creed was adopted by The Methodist Episcopal Church (North) in 1908. Within the next decade similar statements were adopted by The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and by The Methodist Protestant Church. The Evangelical United Brethren Church adopted a statement of social principles in 1946 at the time of the uniting of the United Brethren and The Evangelical Church. In 1972, four years after the uniting in 1968 of The Methodist Church and The Evangelical United Brethren Church, the General Conference of The United Methodist Church adopted a new statement of Social Principles, which was revised in 1976 (and by each successive General Conference).

The Social Principles are a prayerful and thoughtful effort on the part of the General Conference to speak to the human issues in the contemporary world from a sound biblical and theological foundation as historically demonstrated in United Methodist traditions. They are a call to faithfulness and are intended to be instructive and persuasive in the best of the prophetic spirit; however, they are not church law.  The Social Principles are a call to all members of The United Methodist Church to a prayerful, studied dialogue of faith and practice. (See ? 509.)

The Catholics:

PART THREE
LIFE IN CHRIST
SECTION ONE
MAN'S VOCATION LIFE IN THE SPIRIT
CHAPTER TWO
THE HUMAN COMMUNION
ARTICLE 3
SOCIAL JUSTICE
1928 Society ensures social justice when it provides the conditions that allow associations or individuals to obtain what is their due, according to their nature and their vocation. Social justice is linked to the common good and the exercise of authority.
I. RESPECT FOR THE HUMAN PERSON
1929 Social justice can be obtained only in respecting the transcendent dignity of man. The person represents the ultimate end of society, which is ordered to him:

What is at stake is the dignity of the human person, whose defense and promotion have been entrusted to us by the Creator, and to whom the men and women at every moment of history are strictly and responsibly in debt.35

1930 Respect for the human person entails respect for the rights that flow from his dignity as a creature. These rights are prior to society and must be recognized by it. They are the basis of the moral legitimacy of every authority: by flouting them, or refusing to recognize them in its positive legislation, a society undermines its own moral legitimacy.36 If it does not respect them, authority can rely only on force or violence to obtain obedience from its subjects. It is the Church's role to remind men of good will of these rights and to distinguish them from unwarranted or false claims.
1931 Respect for the human person proceeds by way of respect for the principle that "everyone should look upon his neighbor (without any exception) as 'another self,' above all bearing in mind his life and the means necessary for living it with dignity."37 No legislation could by itself do away with the fears, prejudices, and attitudes of pride and selfishness which obstruct the establishment of truly fraternal societies. Such behavior will cease only through the charity that finds in every man a "neighbor," a brother.
1932 The duty of making oneself a neighbor to others and actively serving them becomes even more urgent when it involves the disadvantaged, in whatever area this may be. "As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me."38
1933 This same duty extends to those who think or act differently from us. The teaching of Christ goes so far as to require the forgiveness of offenses. He extends the commandment of love, which is that of the New Law, to all enemies.39 Liberation in the spirit of the Gospel is incompatible with hatred of one's enemy as a person, but not with hatred of the evil that he does as an enemy.
II. EQUALITY AND DIFFERENCES AMONG MEN
1934 Created in the image of the one God and equally endowed with rational souls, all men have the same nature and the same origin. Redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ, all are called to participate in the same divine beatitude: all therefore enjoy an equal dignity.
1935 The equality of men rests essentially on their dignity as persons and the rights that flow from it:

Every form of social or cultural discrimination in fundamental personal rights on the grounds of sex, race, color, social conditions, language, or religion must be curbed and eradicated as incompatible with God's design.40

1936 On coming into the world, man is not equipped with everything he needs for developing his bodily and spiritual life. He needs others. Differences appear tied to age, physical abilities, intellectual or moral aptitudes, the benefits derived from social commerce, and the distribution of wealth.41 The "talents" are not distributed equally.42
1937 These differences belong to God's plan, who wills that each receive what he needs from others, and that those endowed with particular "talents" share the benefits with those who need them. These differences encourage and often oblige persons to practice generosity, kindness, and sharing of goods; they foster the mutual enrichment of cultures:

I distribute the virtues quite diversely; I do not give all of them to each person, but some to one, some to others. . . . I shall give principally charity to one; justice to another; humility to this one, a living faith to that one. . . . And so I have given many gifts and graces, both spiritual and temporal, with such diversity that I have not given everything to one single person, so that you may be constrained to practice charity towards one another. . . . I have willed that one should need another and that all should be my ministers in distributing the graces and gifts they have received from me.43

1938 There exist also sinful inequalities that affect millions of men and women. These are in open contradiction of the Gospel:

Their equal dignity as persons demands that we strive for fairer and more humane conditions. Excessive economic and social disparity between individuals and peoples of the one human race is a source of scandal and militates against social justice, equity, human dignity, as well as social and international peace.44

III. HUMAN SOLIDARITY
1939 The principle of solidarity, also articulated in terms of "friendship" or "social charity," is a direct demand of human and Christian brotherhood.45

An error, "today abundantly widespread, is disregard for the law of human solidarity and charity, dictated and imposed both by our common origin and by the equality in rational nature of all men, whatever nation they belong to. This law is sealed by the sacrifice of redemption offered by Jesus Christ on the altar of the Cross to his heavenly Father, on behalf of sinful humanity."46

1940 Solidarity is manifested in the first place by the distribution of goods and remuneration for work. It also presupposes the effort for a more just social order where tensions are better able to be reduced and conflicts more readily settled by negotiation.
1941 Socio-economic problems can be resolved only with the help of all the forms of solidarity: solidarity of the poor among themselves, between rich and poor, of workers among themselves, between employers and employees in a business, solidarity among nations and peoples. International solidarity is a requirement of the moral order; world peace depends in part upon this.
1942 The virtue of solidarity goes beyond material goods. In spreading the spiritual goods of the faith, the Church has promoted, and often opened new paths for, the development of temporal goods as well. And so throughout the centuries has the Lord's saying been verified: "Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well":47

For two thousand years this sentiment has lived and endured in the soul of the Church, impelling souls then and now to the heroic charity of monastic farmers, liberators of slaves, healers of the sick, and messengers of faith, civilization, and science to all generations and all peoples for the sake of creating the social conditions capable of offering to everyone possible a life worthy of man and of a Christian.48

IN BRIEF
1943 Society ensures social justice by providing the conditions that allow associations and individuals to obtain their due.
1944 Respect for the human person considers the other "another self." It presupposes respect for the fundamental rights that flow from the dignity intrinsic of the person.
1945 The equality of men concerns their dignity as persons and the rights that flow from it.
1946 The differences among persons belong to God's plan, who wills that we should need one another. These differences should encourage charity.
1947 The equal dignity of human persons requires the effort to reduce excessive social and economic inequalities. It gives urgency to the elimination of sinful inequalities.
1948 Solidarity is an eminently Christian virtue. It practices the sharing of spiritual goods even more than material ones.

Heck, even the Mormons:

The Book That Built a Better World
By Chris Conkling

....

Some skeptics see the Bible as the enemy of history and science without realizing that, in part, it made science and history possible. Surrounding Israel were religions of accommodation that merely sought to help people survive in, not change, their worlds. In contrast, "Judaism ... affirmed that [history] was a meaningful process leading to the gradual regeneration of humanity." 15 By introducing the concept of linear historical progress-the idea that because history is leading to a millennial state, our actions matter in helping create a better world-the Old Testament inspired great changes in human history. Whereas other religions of the period never "produced a major social revolution fired by a high concept of social justice, ... 'the prophets of Judah were a reforming political force which has never been surpassed.' " 16

And that's just the low-hanging fruit from the websites!

Now, remember at the beginning of this post, where I quoted from Matthew 25?  It went like this:

31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:

32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:

33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.

34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?

38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?

39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Well, that's the part that was written for those who would listen.  Next came the part that was written for folks like Glenn Beck:

41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:

42 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:

43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.

44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?

45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.

46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.

Now, I can understand why Beck would want to stir himself up a religious war, since that's always worked out so well in the past just what the religious right has been doing for the last 100 years or more.  By why would he want to so clearly take the side of Satan?

Well, there truly are some things that passeth all understanding.

Thus endeth the lesson.

Every Saturday at noon, Historicist looks back at the events, places, and characters—good and bad—that have shaped Toronto into the city we know today.

Image of Frederick Barnard Fetherstonhaugh by Newton McConnell.

In 1905, a group of editorial cartoonists produced a volume of caricatures of the city's leading businessmen, politicians, and public servants. Torontonians As We See 'Em was published under the auspices of the Canada Newspaper Cartoonists' Association. The participating cartoonists were Elisha Newton (Newt) McConnell, J.W. Beatty, Newton McConnell, Victor C. Wright, John D. (Jack) Innes, and Jack Radford.

Building on the popularity of early cartoonists, such as J.W. Bengough, Canadian newspapers regularly featured editorial cartoons by the turn of the twentieth century. In the early twentieth century, newspaper cartoonists were rarely vicious towards their subjects, as noted by Peter Desbarats in The Hecklers (McClelland and Stewart, 1979). The caricaturists of Torontonians, the book's introduction stated, intended to picture each subject "with a penetrating yet a friendly eye."

A far cry from the acerbic wit Canadian caricaturists would become especially known for after the Second World War, those in Torontonians were depicted in a straight-forward manner, "emphasizing their most prominent characteristics." In an era when, as Desbarats put it, "even their victims generally applaud [the caricaturist's] work," the social and business elite would've been enthusiastic to subscribe to the publication and be immortalized among its pages for the benefit of posterity.

And so, Torontonians was more commemorative than cutting, and had much in common with the biographical dictionaries that became popular in the post-Confederation period, such as Henry James Morgan's The Canadian Men and Women of the Time, Second Edition (William Briggs, 1912).

The caricatures included in the Torontonians rogues gallery, as Robert Lanning said of biographical dictionaries in The National Album (Carleton University Press, 1996), say much "about the culture, time and place in which they were written [or, in this case, drawn], as well as about the particular social contexts of their subjects and the contributions they made to society." Torontonians is a time capsule of Toronto society at the turn of the twentieth century.

Image of John Macdonald by Jack Radford.

Born with all the advantages, the younger Macdonald grew up in "Oaklands," one of the city's finest mansions, at 116 Farnham Avenue, and was educated at Upper Canada College. Whether through lack of interest or the unbearable weight of expectations, Macdonald had a less successful career than his father. He was a director of Confederation Life and a member of the Board of Trade, as well as being involved with the British Empire League and the Caledonian Society, among other groups. But he made little attempt to diversify the company's interests. Under the younger Macdonald's tutelage, the dry goods firm's profitability dwindled until closing in the 1920s, surpassed by Eaton's more innovative business model.

Image of Albert Edward Kemp by J.W. Beatty.

Raised in the Eastern Townships of Quebec, Albert Edward Kemp had developed business and accounting acumen as a bookkeeper in a Montreal hardware store before opening his own shop at age twenty-one. Seeking to expand the business, he and his bride, Celia Watson, relocated to Toronto in 1885. Kemp and his brother eventually bought out partners and turned a struggling tin and stamping firm into Canada's largest manufacturers of graniteware and tinware. Buoyed by the tariff protection of the Conservative government's National Policy, the success of the Kemp Manufacturing Company spurred the establishment of branches in Winnipeg and Montreal.

"Canadian society has always been less egalitarian than that of the United States," Desbarats argued about the importance of "[b]irth, education and social connections" in this country's business and politics. Kemp understood this well and cultivated connections with the city's "cloistered, often smug business and political elites" through membership in the Sherbourne Street Methodist Church, and acting as president of the Canadian Manufacturing Association (CMA) in 1895–1896 and the Board of Trade in 1899–1900. Through these and other social clubs, Kemp became, according to the Dictionary of Canadian Biography (D.C.B.), "a recognized figure among the 'better elements' of Toronto society."

An avid Conservative, and a leading member of the Albany Club, Kemp's wealth and influence helped rebuild the Conservative Party, left tattered by the death of Sir John A. Macdonald. Kemp entered active politics himself in 1900 with election to the House of Commons, although he was seen as a bit of an elitist and cold to the common man. A close relationship with Robert Borden ensured Kemp a place in cabinet when Borden became prime minister in 1911. During the Great War, Kemp's business skill was essential in ensuring the efficient management of the war effort, and he would eventually be elevated to the Senate. Kemp was one of a handful of millionaires included in Torontonians.

Image of J.J. Wright by Newton McConnell.

In addition to the established merchant class, those involved in the development of new technologies figured prominently in Torontonians. An English-born machinist, John Joseph Wright became interested in the promise of electricity while visiting the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876. Entering the employ of Thomson and Houston, Wright helped install North America's first electric street light. Returning to Toronto, Wright opened the first commercial power station in 1882, using equipment provided by his former employers, and strung transmission wires across rooftops to power some electric arc lamps in downtown businesses. Having set up a demonstration track and train at the Industrial Exhibition in 1884, he was credited for constructing the first electric railway in Canada.

Wright's career as an entrepreneur came to an end in 1884, when he became superintendent and manager of the Toronto Electric Light Company and, after a merger, the Toronto Power Company Limited. Working in a field of such rapid technological development, the self-taught Wright seems to have struggled to keep up with advances. While others promoted long-distance transmission from Niagara, he continued to promote the usage of steam power and was left behind as hydro-electric power emerged. He died in 1922.

Image of Frederic Thomas Nicholls by Newton McConnell.

Other than being English-born and receiving some of his education in Stuttgart, Frederic Thomas Nicholls' origins are somewhat murky. But by 1880, the ambitious young businessman—by now relocated to Toronto—launched a business magazine that became the official publication of the Canadian Manufacturing Association, of which he was secretary between 1886 and 1891.

Acting as a bridge between finance and engineering, Nicholls used personal contacts at the CMA to develop a syndicate to invest in the growing electricity business. From 1889, the Toronto Incandescent Electric Light Company Limited used technology provided by proven American firms rather than developing proprietary technologies. As noted in the D.C.B., the company brought together "the three men who were to dominate the industry in the city for the next decade: Nicholls, [Henry Mill] Pellatt, and William Mackenzie." The three looked to develop hydro-electric power generation at Niagara, leading to a monopoly that, in turn, prompted calls for public ownership of utilities.

Nicholls later became instrumental in the management of Canadian General Electric, a conglomeration of the Canadian operations of at least five electrical and electric supply companies. As a result of his connection to Mackenzie, Nicholls was appointed as executive officer to no fewer than thirty companies by 1905, including a great number of Mackenzie's railway properties. He was a perfect example of the interlocking composition of the city's boardrooms.

Nicholls was not the only businessman who benefited from associating with Mackenzie, who was also depicted in Torontonians and had an indelible impact on Toronto business. Noel G.L. Marshall, manager of a coal company since 1879, took over the firm with Mackenzie's financial backing in 1893, renaming it the Standard Fuel Company. Now president of the new company, Marshall sat on the boards or was director for Sterling Bank, Title and Trust Company, Toronto Industrial Exhibition Association, Imperial Guarantee and Accident Company, and the Buffalo, Lockport & Rochester Railway. By 1911, he was considered a millionaire. In civic affairs, he sat on the board of education and Board of Trade, and was president of the National Club from 1903 to 1906. A sportsman, he was involved with the Ontario Motor League, Royal Canadian Yacht Club, Toronto Hunt Club, and the Ontario Jockey Club.

Image of Samuel Nordheimer by Newton McConnell.

Demonstrating another side of the city experience at the turn of the twentieth century, Samuel Nordheimer was included in Torontonians.
Born in Bavaria, of Jewish descent, Nordheimer and one of his brothers, Abraham, immigrated first to New York, and then to Kingston where they opened a music store. In 1844, the brothers relocated their store to Toronto. With Samuel as president from 1862 to 1912, the A & S Nordheimer Company specialized in the retail of music books, pianos, and sewing supplies. In 1890, they began manufacturing pianos of very high quality—producing more than twenty thousand pianos between 1890 and 1927.

The company began to publish sheet music, largely as a means of stimulating demand for their pianos, and enjoyed overwhelming success as exclusive copyright holders for the first edition of "The Maple Leaf Forever" (1871). Providing a distinct level of much-needed worldly refinement in post-Confederation Toronto, Nordheimer arranged shows by prominent foreign singing stars, such as Jenny Lind. He was, for many years, a director of the Toronto Philharmonic Society.

It was rare for an immigrant (from somewhere other than the British Isles) to rise to such prominence, but the Business Man's Magazine declared him to be: "More widely known than any other man in Toronto." Although listed as being of Jewish descent in The Canadian Men and Women of the Time, his religion was listed there as Anglican. He certainly ingratiated himself in Toronto society, marrying Edith Boulton, scion of one of the city's oldest families. As if imitating a Scottish laird, Nordheimer named his Davenport Hill manor Glenedyth.

Image of James E. Roberts by Victor C. Wright.

The book of caricatures also featured less well-known, middle-class characters, including James Edward Roberts, one of many engaged in the insurance business. Hailing from Nantwich, England, a seventeen-year-old Roberts came to Canada and found a job with the London Guarantee & Accident Company. He rose through the ranks from cashier to inspector, superintendent, and acting manager before becoming manager of Dominion of Canada Guarantee & Accident Insurance Company in 1897. Around the time Torontonians was published, he had risen again to become a managing director. "A quiet but able guide in insurance matters," according to the Toronto Globe, Roberts does not seem to have been very active in social or club life. If not for the caricature and a very brief entry in Morgan's tome, it is doubtful he'd be remembered beyond family and friends.

Others included in Torontonians were not deemed important enough for The Canadian Men and Women of the Time, which appeared at around the same time. Ironically, a number of the cartoonists themselves didn't merit inclusion.

Although editorial cartoons frequently require the news-of-the-day context to decode their symbolism and meaning, they remain accessible, decades later, as art. Although the people depicted would've been known publicly when Torontonians was first published, and therefore were presented with little explanation or commentary, combining these images with information from biographical dictionaries offers a glimpse into the varieties of experience in Toronto at the turn of the twentieth century.

Although having achieved a certain degree of success in a given field, most of those depicted in Torontonians were ordinary, middle-class (or upper-middle-class) citizens. Most would not have been fodder for the caricaturist on the newspaper page for anything short of outright scandal. "The cartoons often stay alive," Desbarats concludes, "long after the dense columns of print have lost their relevance for all but a few historians. The words fail, but the pictures still speak."

We're haunted by the idea that religious figures might influence the political process. But would that be such a disaster?

The question: Should religious leaders tell us how to vote?

Pope Gregory VII haunts the English imagination. Like any self-respecting ghost he never fully reveals himself. But he's there, hovering in the background, the spectre of aggressive religious interference.

Gregory's papacy was short (1073-1085) and ended in exile and apparent defeat. But he was responsible, more than anyone else, for the transformation of Rome into a papal monarchy, which claimed the right to depose emperors and absolve subjects of their allegiance. Within 130 years, when King John was forced to surrender his entire kingdom to Pope Innocent III and receive it back as a papal vassal as a way of ending a particularly acrimonious battle with Rome, it seemed as if Gregory's mission was accomplished.

In reality the later Middle Ages saw papal power wane across Europe and the Reformation effectively stamped it out in Britain. Yet despite, indeed because of this shift in political allegiance, the papacy has ever since been a bogeyman for the English, embodying the divided loyalties which apparently make kingdoms fall.

Ghosts can scare us but they have little substance. Contemporary Christian documents on electoral issues are shy, sometimes too shy, of indicating any party political preference. In his recent encyclical Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict reiterated the Roman Catholic teaching that "the church does not have technical solutions to offer and does not claim to interfere in any way in the politics of states". Nobody reading Choosing the Common Good, the recent publication from the Catholic bishops conference of England and Wales will find a secret manifesto there. Those who react badly to papal statements on equality legislation (they tend not to react so badly to statements on economic regulation or international development) need to understand that statements are not infringements. Benedict is no Gregory.

The Church of England, once known as the Conservative party at prayer, can no longer be so described today. Studies show that Anglican clergy tend to be socially conservative, opposing moves to liberalise legislation on euthanasia, abortion and drugs, but economically left-of-centre, concerned to promote high levels of employment, to extend welfare provision and to boost Britain's overseas aid budget. Antagonistic to the Thatcher government – the Tories famously labelled the Faith in the City report "Marxist" – Anglican clergy flocked to Tony Blair's "third way" in the 90s, along with millions of others.

Arguably this political bent shapes their public statements, hence the interest in the report, Moral, But No Compass which criticised Labour for "a significant lack of understanding of, or interest in, the Church of England's current or potential contribution in the public sphere". However, there is a long way between having a reasonably coherent political view and telling your congregation how to vote. I have a yet to hear an Anglican minister tell me which spot X should mark.

On the face of it Muslims seem most likely to be be politically directed by their leaders, as they are comparatively homogeneous in their political views. In spite of the Iraq war, the majority of British Muslims consider themselves to be and intend to vote Labour. However, Islam's decentralised structure makes such political coaching highly improbable. Indeed, whether the Muslim vote is in fact a Muslim vote, as opposed to one that is simply disproportionally young, urban, lower-income and unemployed, is debatable.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying the "religious leaders tell their mindless flock which political pen to rush into" is usually just scaremongering, invoking the Gregorian ghost as a way of frightening "the rest of us" into political action or, more ominously, anti-religious feeling.

None of this is to claim that there is no tension between religious and political affiliations. The spat between John Kerry and the American Catholic bishops during the 2004 US elections, over the former's attitude to abortion, came perilously close to witnessing the bishops tell US Catholics they could not vote Democrat. Indeed, de facto that is arguably what it did.

However, even if the US Catholic bishops had done that, would it have been a problem? It may have been ecclesiastically divisive, pastorally crass, and distasteful to those Catholics who loathed George Bush (there were quite a few). But it would not have been qualitatively different to the stance taken by the "Marxist" Anglican leadership during the mid-80s, or to the violently partisan political position that Archbishop Desmond Tutu adopted in the 1980s. Perhaps religious leaders should be willing to throw themselves off the political fence with a bit more force. If we don't like what they say, we can always ignore them.

5. What did you do when you heard about the proposed Ugandan law?

I wrote to the most influential leader I knew in that country, the Anglican Archbishop of Uganda, and shared my opposition and concern. He wrote me back, saying that he, too, was opposed to the death penalty for homosexuals. There are thousands of evil laws enacted around the world that kill people (For instance, last year, 146,000 Christians around the world were killed because of their faith.). In this case, I knew the Archbishop in Uganda, so I did what I could, but my influence in that nation has been greatly exaggerated by the media.

And I went on to write:

So, is Warren saying that 146,000 Christians were killed because of their faith in accord with "evil laws"?  What laws, exactly would those be?

I called his PR organization, hoping to get some clarification.  When they called me back, it was just sort of a "what is it exactly that you want to know?" kind of call.  I talked to them a little about what I discovered myself below, just to push them a bit, and maybe they'll get back to me on Monday with something substantive. But on the face of it, this is simply a bald-faced lie, and there's really no way out.

While there certainly still is widespread religious persecution in the world (a reminder of why America's separation of church and state is a good thing), there is relatively little religious killing as a matter of course.

Open Doors is a decades-old organization identified as "Serving persecuted Christians worldwide." It produces an annual World Watch List of the 50 worst countries in terms of persecuting Christians world-wide, but its literature is remarkably free of any sorts of mass murders on the scale one would need to get anywhere near 146,000 martyrs--as I explained to Warren's PR flack, who at first seemed pleased that I was referring to this site.

Later the next week I received an email reply, not from Warren directly, and after puzzling over it a bit, I've decided to return to the matter, because it's not just Warren.  Apparently, the mythology of mass martyrdom is one of the religious rights' big lies that somehow never gets discussed in polite company.  I kind of think it's time for that to stop.
Here is the email response I received from Karen May, Assistant to A. Larry Ross of A. Larry Ross Communications, Warren's PR person whom I did not identify by name in my original diary:

Larry Ross just heard from Rick Warren's assistant with the answer to your question.  Larry is running to catch a plane and asked me to forward the information to you, hoping that it is in time to meet your deadline.

This is what we can confirm, according to the Open Doors ministry research:  The number of persecuted believers is around 100 million worldwide, and Christians are being persecuted in at least 60 countries worldwide.      

Another source (International Bulletin of Missionary Research) puts the number at 176,000 from mid-2008 to mid-2009.  This, according to the authors, compares to 160,000 martyrs in mid-2000 and 34,400 at the beginning of the 20th century. If current trends continue, it is estimated that by 2025, an average of 210,000 Christians will be martyred annually.  It has been estimated that more Christians were martyred in the 20th Century than in the previous 1,900 years combined.

We are not able to get the exact source where Pastor Warren got his number -- he's traveling in Africa right now - but it appears his number quoted is less than other sources we can find.

The total number of state murders worldwide in 2008 was around 2400, according the NY Times article on Amnesty International's report in March of this year:

Amnesty International said at least 2,390 people were executed worldwide in 2008, compared with its 2007 figure of at least 1,252.

With at least 1,718, China was responsible for 72 percent of all executions in 2008, the report stated. After China were Iran (346), Saudi Arabia (102), the United States (37) and Pakistan (36), according to the group.

"Together they carried out 93 percent of all executions worldwide," the report said.

Nice company we keep, no?  And it's even possible that some of those state murders have a religious component to them.  But martyrdom is something a bit more specific--it's death that results from refusing to renounce one's beliefs.  While it's equally heinous that one should be put to death, say, for publicly observing a forbidden religious practice, that's not quite the same thing--unless, of course, one is told that the death penalty would be dropped, if only one would renounce one's faith.  Because of such subtleties, it's certainly possible that cases of true martyrdom can be found in these numbers.  But there is nothing here comparable to the mass executions of martyrs in olden days.

But--setting aside the whole "bad "laws" question--what about those claims of mass martyrdom more generally?  Well, to begin with, 176,000 murders worldwide is an awful lot of murders.  How many?  Well, according to the UN-derived numbers here, which are about a decade old--the average murder rate is about 1 in 10,000, or approaching almost 700,000 per year.  That means that according to Warren's source, one out of four murders worldwide is a Christian dying for their faith.  And it's not on all the networks 24/7?

Heck, not only is not on all the networks, it's not even on the websites that track the persecution of Christians worldwide.  Open Doors, for example, has a "Christian Martyrs" page which announces:

Hundreds of Christians Martyrs around the globe are dying for their faith.

Not "hundreds of thousands a year", but "hundreds" without any given time-frame.  That's at least three orders of magnitude less than what Warren and the International Bulletin of Missionary Research wildly claim.  But it's probably far less than even that.  After all, if there actually were hundreds of martyrs dying around the world every years, couldn't Open Doors easily find five examples from last year?  But the "Christian Martyrs" page has links to five cases, of which only three happened last year, while one happened in 2007 and another in 2005. What's more, one case from 2009, from Colombia, contains no indication whatsoever marking it as a case of martyrdom.

In short, the best evidence appears to show that martyrdom is, fortunately, a rare, though disturbing event in the world today.  If there really were evidence to the contrary, it should be very easy to produce.  So where is it?

False Martyrs?

There's something even worse than a lack of evidence of widespread martyrdom: evidence of false marytrdom.   Such apparently may have been the case with one of the victims at Columbine, as recounted in a 2008 article in Christian Century, by Jason Byassee, "How martyrs are made: stories of the faithful".  The article begins:

ONE OF THE TEENAGERS killed in Colorado's Columbine High School shootings in 1999 was Cassie Bernall. Soon after her murder, reports emerged about how one of the shooters had found Bernall under a table, pointed a gun at her head and asked, "Do you believe in God?" She said yes and was promptly shot.

Within weeks of that event I heard a sermon at an Episcopal church praising Bernall's witness and urging Christians to imitate her faithfulness. Prognosticators predicted another Great Awakening in American life sparked by Bernall's martyrdom. Billboards appeared that announced, "She Said Yes." Her mother penned a memoir using the phrase as its title, and a Web site started selling "She Said Yes" T-shirts and other merchandise.

There was one problem: the reported exchange between Bernall and her killer may never have happened. Students who were within earshot of the event disputed the account. One survivor claimed that she, not Bernall, had been the one questioned by the shooter. Those who made grand claims for Bernall started backpedaling. Some suggested that the story was important whatever the facts behind it. Elizabeth Castelli, who recounts this history in Martyrdom and Memory, points out that this latter rationalization was an odd one to come from Christians who also adhere to biblical literalism; they would never say the truth behind a biblical story is what counts, whether or not the event happened. Stories like Bernall's suggest some of the reasons to hesitate when confronted with claims to martyrdom.

It's not Byassee's intent to deny Bernall's martyrdom, or to dismiss martyrdom in general, but to unsettle people from their preconceptions. Indeed, his article is a very serious consideration of martyrdom, drawing largely on the non-violent Anabaptist tradition (particularly Mennonites.)  But it is permeated with questioning, and challenges to certainty. For example:

In To Share in the Body: A Theology of Martyrdom for Today's Church (Brazos), Craig Hovey, a Mennonite theologian trained at Fuller and Cambridge, argues that Christianity is a training for martyrdom. Martyrdom is not a tragic mistake, nor is it a historical relic from a bygone age. It is "a gift of God to the church." Christians cannot and should not hope for martyrdom, but they must be prepared for it.

Hovey argues against any utilitarian reading of the martyrs. Martyrdom makes no argument. Martyrs should not be used to argue that someone else's religion is bad or that some other country deserves retribution. In the New Testament "martyrs do not die because they fight for what is right, but precisely because they refuse to fight for what is true."

Of course, the evangelical practice of using martyrs is what got me writing this diary in the first place.  And it's the deeper meaning of the phrase "False Martyrs" that heads this section.  The Anabaptists cited in this article point in a very different direction:

Chris Huebner, another Mennonite theologian (he teaches at Canadian Mennonite University), argues in A Precarious Peace (Herald) that the ambiguity that surrounds claims to martyrdom is all to the good. The truth about martyrs is always something a community must pursue, without claiming to capture or possess it. In fact, arguing about martyrdom is part of the church's growth in holiness. Martyrdom is a "work of memory"--no one can declare herself a martyr, only the community can. "The very designation of martyrdom is a fragile and tenuous one, existing ... between the twin extremes of suicide and victimhood." Huebner grants to Elizabeth Castelli the point that remembrances of martyrs are always constructs, never able securely to capture truth.

The attitude here is strikingly different from the smug self-certainty of the evangelicals, which Byassee does not comment on directly. Early on in the article, however, Byassee does offer the following restrained commentary on claims of mass martyrdom:

An emphasis on mission to a godless world keeps martyrdom, or the possibility of martyrdom, a major theme for evangelicals. Touchstone magazine has a regular section devoted to the topic. Organizations like The Voice of the Martyrs send out magazines, e-mail blasts, and a steady stream of speakers to local churches and radio stations to raise awareness of the number of contemporary Christian martyrs. They often cite data from the International Bulletin of Missionary Research, which forecasts that 175,000 Christians will be martyred worldwide in 2008. That's 480 per day.

Another oft-cited source is the World Christian Encyclopedia, produced by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary outside Boston. It declares there have been some 70 million Christian martyrs in history, and more than 45 million in the 20th century. In evangelical circles one often hears the claim that there were more Christian martyrs in the 20th century than in all previous centuries combined.

These numbers deserve more scrutiny than can be offered here, but it should be noted that the Encyclopedia treats every victim of Stalin as a Christian martyr and says there were 1 million "Jewish Christian" martyrs in the Holocaust. It also gives some problematic data in listing causes of death: between 1,000 and 10,000 martyrs may have been "quartered," we are told; a similar number were "eaten by piranhas" and as many again "eaten alive." Between 10,000 and 100,000 (notice the broad range) have been "frightened to death," from 1 to 2 million "liquidated" and 4 to 10 million "lowered into sewage." Even more nonspecific: between 500,000 and 1 million were "wiped out."

That the data on martyrdom can be exaggerated does not mean that there are no real martyrs. In recent years, a number of Christian martyrs have made the news. Newspapers covered the story of Gracia and Martin Burnham, Bible translators with an organization called New Tribes in the Philippines, who were kidnapped in May 2001 by Abu Sayyaf, a terrorist group aligned with al-Qaeda (see Eliza Griswold's brilliant profile of the Burnhams in the New Republic, June 4, 2007). While being held, the couple apparently treated their captors with sacrificial love. During a rescue effort, Filipino soldiers inadvertently killed Martin. After his death, applications to New Tribes soared. As Tertullian famously said, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church--or, nowadays, of the mission agency.

My point in all this is rather simple: Religion is serious business. Martyrdom makes it all the moreso.  In contrast, folks like Rick Warren are shameless charlatans who make a mockery of everything genuine about religion.  Allowing them to become the public face of Christianity is in itself a blasphemous act... or more precisely, a blasphemous failure to act.  The rightwing fanatasy of mass martyrdom is just one more way that the idolatrous religious right seeks to build its moral capital on lies, the better to justify bossing others around... and ultimately, making martyrs of them.

At least when the religious right sets out to crucify the gays, it makes perfectly clear which side it is on.  They cannot speak the truth, any more than they can hide it.

Bishop of London who turned to Catholicism after showing strong opposition to the ordination of women

Monsignor Graham Leonard, successively bishop of Willesden, Truro and London, who has died aged 88, was third in the Church of England hierarchy and one of its leading bishops. He evoked strong support in many parishes and among Anglo-Catholic clergy, and was widely influential. He was chairman of many church bodies, including the Board of Education and the BBC and IBA Central Religious Advisory Committee. As bishop of London, he was a privy counsellor and a member of the House of Lords, was frequently involved in reunion discussions and visits to other parts of the Anglican communion, and was a representative at the World Council of Churches.

However, in 1994, three years after his retirement from London, and after conversations with the Roman Catholic archbishop of Westminster, his friend Cardinal Basil Hume, he was received into the Roman Catholic church and was ordained priest sub conditione. At Leonard's own consecration in 1964, an Old Catholic bishop from the small churches that have separated from the Roman Catholic church, but are in full communion with the Church of England, had joined the bishops who consecrated him. This eased his reception into the Roman Catholic church, and he was made a monsignor.

Leonard was brought up in his father's evangelical parish and at Monkton Combe, Somerset, a school which then emphasised individual conscience, a literal interpretation of the Bible and male leadership in the church. At Oxford, like his wife, Priscilla, whom he married in 1943, Leonard read botany. He served in the forces from 1941 to 1945. He reacted against the evangelicalism of his home and school and against the mainstream Anglicanism of the William Temple mission to Oxford that he attended. He warmed to Anglo-Catholic worship, remembered the processions and incense that he witnessed in a south London mission when he was 11, "and knew that was right for me".

During his time at Westcott House theological college in Cambridge, he turned away from the theology of the faculty and from the more catholic Anglicanism of Sir Edwin Hoskyns and later Michael Ramsey. Leonard relied on the earlier, pre-critical works of the Right Rev Charles Gore as his standard authority. The disciplines of New Testament study and the history of the development of doctrine never attracted him. He was unsympathetic with the English reformers, and with Bunyan and Wesley.

Leonard's career in the 1950s and 60s as curate, incumbent, director of church schools and archdeacon was exemplary. He was energetic, efficient, caring and prepared to face down the "Sir Humphreys" in Whitehall, among the church commissioners and in the town halls. He was assiduous in visiting and publishing devotional books, urging frequent communion. He used to say, "you don't kiss your wife once a week, do you?", with the implication that the Eucharist should be attended daily. He produced a new parish communion book of his own devising.

Older priests occasionally found the former adjutant slightly laughable and questioned his assumption that his way to holiness was the only way. But he was young and enthusiastic, and so they forgave him as much nicer than some pompous ecclesiastics. He was greatly admired by Anglo-Catholics for his stress on "objective revelation".

As bishop of Willesden (1964-73), Leonard became involved in church politics, especially the ecumenical plans suggested by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey, the most catholic archbishop the church had seen that century. Their minds did not fuse. Perhaps the stress on literalness and individualism that Leonard had imbibed in his evangelical days made it hard for him to get alongside his archbishop, eccentric, learned and wise. Leonard was urged by some of his followers to defeat the ecumenism of the archbishop, casting Leonard in the role of "Athanasius contra mundum". To be Catholic in their eyes was to take no risks in befriending Protestants and to adopt a narrowly defensive stance.

Many Anglo-Catholics who were hoping for rapid reunion with Rome hailed Leonard's form of leadership. He was a beacon for priests who longed for the authority of Rome and distrusted historical and theological research, which they viewed as weak liberalism. Leonard also welcomed support from conservative evangelicals. His refusal to moderate his fixed positions was respected by many. He had no fear of being in a minority. The difficulty for the archbishops of his time and for his episcopal colleagues was that he claimed that his views were "absolutes" and that reunion with Methodists, covenanting with the free churches or ordaining women would damage the church. He opposed the admission of divorced women to the Mothers' Union.

His individuality showed in his clothes: he had a strong sense of theatre. As a curate, he startled the Cambridge parishioners of St Andrew's, Chesterton, by bicycling in a cassock and a biretta, though eventually the bicycle chain chewed up the cassock. As diocesan education secretary, he raised eyebrows at the "ministry" (as it then was) in Curzon Street, central London, by appearing in a black, Spanish-style, broad-brimmed priest's hat. In Truro (1973-81), full of firm Methodists and Atlantic storms, he might appear at an ordination attired in mitre, ceremonial gloves and gremial (a silk apron-like covering for the lap of bishops). He was deeply disappointed during his tenure at Truro not to be nominated for Canterbury. He was never comfortable with the practice of shared responsibility in the Church of England.

As bishop of London (1981-91), Leonard was an unwise picker of men as suffragan bishops and canons. Against Archbishop Robert Runcie's advice, he went to take a confirmation service at a church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, no longer recognised by the Episcopal church, enraging American bishops, not least because the bishop of London seemed to be harking back to colonial days when London was bishop to all American churches. Although the English House of Bishops did not formally rebuke him, they did not endorse his action. Mainstream Anglicans in London felt that their bishop was unsympathetic and his sermons detached from their real problems.

Politically, he was fortunate in Margaret Thatcher. She was in the habit of saying, rather loudly, that Leonard was the only man in the Church of England who made the kind of sense she was looking for. He had shrewd political judgment and was an excellent negotiator. Whereas Lord (William) Whitelaw, who was losing influence in government circles, was a friend of Runcie, Thatcher felt she could do business with Leonard. She had been astute in appointing him to London instead of the Right Rev John Habgood, archbishop of York, whom many had hoped could be a mediator to calm the divisions in the diocese.

Leonard's attitude to ecumenism was sympathetic to Rome, but critical of the churches of the Reformation. He would not co-operate with Methodists in London. Early in his ministry, in 1952 at Ardleigh, Essex, his parish was preparing for the customary remembrance service with the Methodist minister preaching. In the words of the local British Legion chairman: "Graham Leonard put a peremptory stop to all that. To him, the Methodists were dissenters from the form of worship practised in the church." Leonard argued that only the reordination of Methodist ministers would give them validity. By rejecting the proposed service of reconciliation, he humiliated both his own archbishop and the Methodists. He led the opposition of those who defeated both reunion with Methodists and the covenanting proposals.

The crisis of his career began in 1984 when the General Synod, after decades of discussion, started to legislate to ordain female priests. Leonard had been admirable in his pastoral concern for female staff at Church House. He had an unusual number of female workers in parishes in his diocese. He was notably honourable in ordaining 71 women as deacons at St Paul's Cathedral on 22 March 1987. This ordination weakened the arguments against the ordination of women as priests, but he went ahead. Still, he was hesitant about allowing women to exercise authority. He appointed an area bishop to Kensington who directed that no woman should be in the sanctuary when he was celebrating, even though Kensington had many female deacons and female servers. Leonard once used the law of trespass to prevent 100 men and women accepting the ministration of a female priest ordained abroad. After his retirement, when the London ordinations of female priests finally took place in St Paul's in 1994, more than 5,000 worshippers crammed the cathedral. Instead of acting as a focus of unity, he left the diocese of London with an unhappy, unreconciled minority.

Leonard was a compassionate and painstaking confessor and adviser. He would spend time with the victims of injustice or misfortune. Before and after services and on parish occasions, he was warm, friendly and good-humoured.

It was his misfortune to be summoned to London, the diocese of which he had dreamed, just when two opportunities – a new ecumenism and a new status for women – were opening to Christianity in England. His childhood and early education had led him to believe profoundly that to make changes in favour of women would be to compromise the gospel. Had he been able to engage in open-minded dialogue and research, he would have been a leader who could have greatly enriched the Church of England – such was the strength of his inner convictions and his commitment to be a bishop.

Leonard retired to Witney, Oxfordshire, celebrating mass as a Roman Catholic parish priest and helping out wherever needed. He also did a great deal of retreat work, leading conferences, giving lectures and engaging in spiritual direction.

He is survived by Priscilla and two sons.

• Graham Douglas Leonard, Anglican bishop and Roman Catholic priest, born 8 May 1921; died 6 January 2010

• Alan Webster died in 2007

Uganda news round-up: Opposition parties promise surprise demonstrations after march called off; district administrators 'worst for corruption'; mandatory vocational training in church schools; new brand of female condom launched

Ugandan police have been criticised for heavy-handed tactics in blocking a protest by an opposition coalition this week.

The planned march, organised by the Inter-Party Cooperation, an alliance of the four main political parties, was due to take place on Monday to protest the closure of the CBS radio station and the re-appointment of allegedly discredited top officials at the Electoral Commission. However, a deployment of officers to key locations along the route on Sunday meant the protesters were unable to march and the protest was called off.

The police chief, Kale Kayihura, told reporters that he ordered the deployment of officers on Sunday because he had not been given the required seven days notice that the march was taking place. The opposition claim he had been well informed.

An article posted on the Daily Monitor website today questioned what impact Kayihura's actions could have on future opposition rallies in the run up to 2011 elections. The IPC has promised to organise "surprise" protests in the coming months.

In September, Kampala was rocked by two days of riots when the government banned Ronald Muwenda Mutebi, the king of the Baganda people – Uganda's largest ethnic group – from visiting the capital. More than 20 people were killed in clashes between protesters and police that brought to the capital to a standstill. Hundreds more protesters were believed to have been arrested. The media were censured over coverage of the protests and the CBS radio station was closed by the government for allegedly inciting violence. According to the Monitor, the Uganda president, Yoweri Museveni, said CBS would not re-open until he felt reassured the station would not engage in "subversive broadcasting, sectarianism, and inciting violence".

Internal fighting could cost government votes

Government in-fighting could cost the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) votes in next year's elections, a senior official warned this week.

Ofwono Opondo, the deputy spokesman for the NRM, which is holding its national executive committee meeting next week, said the party expected "a major political shift on the ground in our favour" when the country goes to the polls in 2011, but admitted that "our major weakness is internal rivalry. We are likely to have many disputes especially as we head towards 2011, and the challenge is how we shall address them before our delegates' conference".

Disputes seem to centre around internal election rules and personality clashes.

Opondo said the party had gained support in the north of the country and the Teso region, in which Katine sub-county, where the Guardian is tracking development work by the NGO Amref, is found.

Opondo went on to criticise the Inter-Party Cooperation (IPC) alliance of four opposition parties (the Forum for Democratic Change, the Uganda People's Congress, Justice Forum – JEEMA – and the Conservative party), calling it "very disorganised and weak". However, he added that the alliance was being taken "seriously" by the NRM.

Last month, the IPC agreed to field one candidate for the presidential election next year in the hope of ousting President Museveni, who has been in power since 1986. FDC leader Kizza Besigye is being tipped by the NRM as the frontrunner for candidacy.

The IPC, set up in August 2008, is being funded by the Swedish government NGO the Christian Democratic International Centre and is attracting interest from the EU and other European bodies keen to see electoral reform in Uganda.

The Democratic party has so far refused to join the IPC alliance. One member, Evaristo Nyanzi, a minister in Museveni's first government who was later jailed for trying to overthrow the president, has backed his party's decision. In an interview with the Ugandan Observer he said he did not believe the IPC could beat the NRM.

District administrations 'most corrupt'

District administrations are perceived to be the most corrupt public institutions in Uganda, according to a report published yesterday.

The Inspectorate General of Government (IGG) said during the last financial year, which ended in June, it received more complaints against district administrators than any other public sector workers.

In its report, the IGG said complaints against district administrators included mismanagement, misappropriation of public funds and resources, abuse of office and embezzlement. More than 2,930 complaints were received last year, of which only 288 had been investigated and concluded.

"The public officials have individually continued to use their offices for private gain. The nature of cases mostly reported in this category include abuse of office, conflict of interest, forgery and uttering false documents, property disputes and victimisation," said the report.

Kampala district received the highest number of complaints.

Acting inspector general Raphael Baku warned that chief administrative officers faced prosecution if they didn't take action against corrupt officials.

The police and education authorities also ranked in the top five for complaints of malpractice.

Presenting the findings to parliament, Baku criticised the government for failing to debate its reports and take action against corruption over the last 10 years. "Since 1999 our reports have not been touched and this has affected the way we do our work," Baku reportedly said.

Vocational education mandatory in church schools

Compulsory vocational training will be given to pupils in all schools founded by the Church of Uganda in a bid to cut unemployment rates in the country.

Bishop Zac Niringiye, the chairman of the Church of Uganda's board of education, said giving students practical skills will mean school-leavers will be able to serve their communities and earn a living.

The bishop told a recent Anglican headteachers conference that since central government took over the education system in the 1960s, which led to the church's withdrawal of most of its schools, education standards had declined.

Launch of new female condom

The Ugandan Ministry of Health is hoping a new brand of female condom will offer women greater control over their bodies and prevent HIV infection and unwanted pregnancies.

According to a report for IRIN, a new brand of female condom has proved popular among a test group of women since it was launched in February last year. Women had complained that a previous version of the condom was smelly and noisy during sex.

The ministry, the UN Population Fund and the NGO Programme for Accessible Health Communication and Education are promoting the benefits of the female condom, which they hope will be widely available later this year.

An official at the sexually transmitted diseases clinic at Mulago hospital in Uganda said the condom was also being offered to gay men, as it can be used during anal sex.

Diaspora call for end to investment discrimination

Members of the Ugandan diaspora are calling on the government to offer incentives to all investors in the country, not just those from overseas.

At a recent two-day diaspora investment summit in Kampala, the president of the North American Association (UNAA) Atlanta chapter, Flex Kabuye, argued that all the benefits enjoyed by foreign investors, such as tax holidays, should be extended to everyone to create employment opportunities in the country and encourage local entrepreneurship.

"We have the potential to develop our country, but some unfavourable policies are holding us back. The government should treat all investors equally if the country is to develop," Kabuye told reporters.

He added: "Here the word investor is more meaningful when referring to a foreigner but this is technically wrong. In developed countries an investor is respected no matter where he/she comes from and enjoys the same rights."

The executive director of the Uganda Investment Authority Executive, Maggie Kigozi, denied there was any discrimination, saying incentives were available to all investors.

The Ugandan government has already announced plans to create a diaspora department in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which an editorial in New Vision yesterday said was a "step towards Uganda being truly open to viable investment".

Anti-gay protesters in Kampala New York Times photo by Marc Hofer

This article in Sunday’s New York Times posted by Jeffrey Gettleman from Uganda’s capital, Kampala, details the important role that three US anti-gay activists played in promoting the spirit—and even, Gettleman reports, some of the language—of the country’s proposed “Anti-Homosexuality Bill”. It’s a draconian bill that, if passed, would impose the death penalty in some cases for people convicted of having sex with someone of the same gender.

In the article, Gettleman quotes the Anglican priest, Rev. Kapya Kaoma, who published  one of the most important recent background paper on American homophobia in Africa.

Gettleman reports, of course, that the three Americans who peddled their over-the-top homophobia at a March conference in Kampala, have tried to distance themselves from the bill. But he also reports:

[T]he Ugandan organizers of the conference admit helping draft the bill, and Mr. Lively has acknowledged meeting with Ugandan lawmakers to discuss it. He even wrote on his blog in March that someone had likened their campaign to “a nuclear bomb against the gay agenda in Uganda.”

Scott Lively’s fellow American conference speakers—Caleb Lee Brundidge and Don Schmierer—now claim they didn’t know that their anti-gay rhetoric would be translated into such a draconian law in Uganda. But Lively cannot claim such innocence.

Gettleman doesn’t mention it, but Lively’s previous homophobic missionary-activism was in the Baltics. In Latvia and especially in Lithuania, he learned that American homophobia translates easily into law when taken to foreign shores.

Gettleman writes:

Human rights advocates in Uganda say the visit by the three Americans helped set in motion what could be a very dangerous cycle. Gay Ugandans already describe a world of beatings, blackmail, death threats like “Die Sodomite!” scrawled on their homes, constant harassment and even so-called correctional rape.

More...

Spare a thought -- and perhaps also a prayer -- for Iraq’s beleaguered Christians, who yesterday observed the somber Feast of the Holy Innocents. Perhaps nowhere else does this particular occasion cut closer to the bone: In Iraq, Christians mourn their friends, the most recent martyrs for the faith, on the same day that Christians around the world are called to remember the Church’s very first martyrs, the infants slaughtered en masse in Bethlehem on Herod’s orders after the birth of Jesus.

Today is also an appropriate time for all Americans, believer and unbelievers alike, to consider their moral responsibilities toward an invisible minority caught up in a forgotten war. After all, one of the unintended -- and unacknowledged -- consequences of Iraq’s liberation in 2003 was the swift and ongoing demise of Iraq’s ancient Christian communities. While this tragedy was unforeseen, it was by no means unforeseeable, if only U.S. policymakers had paid due attention to Iraq’s complex religious landscape and recent history. Worse yet, U.S. officials have deliberately refused to take any steps to safeguard Iraq’s persecuted Christians -- or even to acknowledge their plight -- for fear of being seen as aiding unpopular and unfashionable religious minorities.

This policy of malign neglect helps explain why so few Americans are even aware that Iraq still remains a rich ethnic and religious mosaic beyond the simple tripartite division of all Iraqis into three warring tribes: Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds. Fewer still are aware that Christianity in Mesopotamia dates from the mid-first century, when local tradition holds that the Apostle Thomas (the same doubting Thomas who appears in John’s Gospel) founded what became the Church of the East, the only enduring Christian community formed outside the borders of the Roman empire during apostolic times. Thomas’s mission predates the arrival of Islam by six centuries and serves as a needed reminder that early Christianity was an essentially Eastern phenomenon.

Today, the vast majority of Iraqi Christians share common roots in the Church of the East, which split into two branches in the 16th century, one Roman Catholic (Chaldean) and the other essentially Orthodox (Assyrian). Both churches worship partly in Arabic and partly in Aramaic, the same language that Jesus spoke. Smaller Christian denominations include Syriac Christians (mainly Roman Catholic, but also Orthodox), Latin Rite Roman Catholics and other historic Middle Eastern churches (mainly Orthodox and Armenian), and some Protestants (mostly Anglicans) and Evangelicals.

It was not so long ago that Iraqi Christians belonging to all these churches played a unique and vital role in the common life of modern Iraq. Their contributions, both institutional and individual, once formed an irreplaceable part of the fabric of Iraqi life. And their contributions in turn played a wholly disproportionate role in relation to their actual numbers in an overwhelmingly Muslim society.

On the one hand, there was a web of church institutions -- schools, hospitals, clinics, and orphanages -- that served all Iraqis regardless of faith. Of these, none was more prominent than Baghdad College, a remarkable Jesuit preparatory school for boys that turned out a disproportionate share of Iraq’s political and cultural elite between 1931 and 1968. As with most other church schools, fully half the student body were Muslim. Even today, 40 years after the American priests and seminarians were expelled and all private schools nationalized in the wake of the Six-Day War, Baghdad College’s legacy endures.  In the December 2005 parliamentary elections, three of the four leading candidates for prime minister (all Muslims, of course) were former students. So too are many other distinguished Iraqis, such as Kanan Makiya, whose 1989 classic Republic of Fear shattered the wall of silence around the Baathist dictatorship. Yet this one school’s splendid example is by no means a strictly Iraqi or purely historical phenomenon, as Christian schools continue to educate an outsized share of local Muslim elites in places as diverse as Egypt (Gamal Mubarak) or Pakistan (the late Benazir Bhutto).

On the other hand, there was and remains individual Christian witness to values that are in notably short supply in Iraq nowadays, especially respect for one’s neighbor regardless of faith and willingness to resolve disputes without recourse to violence. These particular values are ones their Muslim neighbors most often acknowledge and admire, as I learned while living and working as a Catholic seminarian in Jordan a decade ago. And they are precisely the same ideals Pope Benedict XVI cited in his annual Christmas message on Saturday:

How can we forget the troubled situation in Iraq and the little flock of Christians which lives in the region? At times it is subject to violence and injustice, but it remains determined to make its own contribution to the building of a society opposed to the logic of conflict and the rejection of one's neighbor.

Yet these same values have made Iraqi Christians easy targets for Sunni and Shiite extremists and common criminals in the utter collapse of law and order that followed the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. Unlike their Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish neighbors, Iraqi Christians have no private militias, no powerful foreign patrons -- and no fighting ideology like the political Islam of the Muslim Brotherhood or its Shiite counterparts. They are thus the only group in Iraq without blood on their hands, holy innocents caught up in an unholy war.

Last year, I wrote about how practically every Christian neighborhood, parish, or family was repeatedly forced to pay protection money (jizya) to avoid exile, murder, or forced conversion to Islam. These evils were universally justified by their perpetrators on the basis of the same Koranic verses dealing with subject peoples, but they were seldom if ever publicly denounced as a perversion of Muslim faith by Iraq’s influential Muslim clergy.

This year, Iraq’s dwindling Christian communities are still being targeted on the basis of their faith. That is especially the case in Mosul, long the most lawless and violent place in Iraq. By an unhappy coincidence, Mosul is also located in the ancestral heartland of Iraqi Christianity, and is thus the last refuge (short of exile) for Christians fleeing targeted violence in Baghdad, Basra, and other places.

Mosul is therefore a target-rich environment. In December alone, at least seven churches, convents, and schools have been bombed, claiming dozens of lives, including the latest holy innocent, an eight-day-old baby girl. Iraq’s central government deserves credit for dispatching some 3,000 additional police after a similar spate of bombings and attacks in October, but their presence has brought little improvement as Christians continue to flee Mosul for overcrowded and underdeveloped villages such as Qaraqosh in the adjacent Nineveh plain. Meanwhile, the situation around Kirkuk, also in northern Iraq, remains nearly as dire for Christians caught up in the Arab-Kurdish struggle for control of the area’s oil fields.

While the Iraqi government has belatedly taken some modest steps to ease the suffering of Iraqi Christians, the U.S. government’s consistent policy of studied and shameful indifference forms rare common ground between the Bush and Obama administrations. It is an indelible stain on American honor that two administrations did nothing to assist, much less protect, a beleaguered religious minority. Such was not the case in the Balkans a decade ago, when the Clinton administration came to the aid of embattled Muslim minorities in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo with decisive military force in similar circumstances. In Iraq, however, America’s unmet moral obligations were and are the direct consequence of the security vacuum arising from the American-led destruction of Saddam’s Republic of Fear.

When pressed by religious-freedom advocates, Bush-administration officials invariably ducked responsibility by claiming that overall security improvements, beginning with the 2007 surge, would trickle down to Iraq’s most vulnerable and helpless minorities. The Obama administration takes the same hands-off approach in October’s annual State Department report on religious freedom: “The ‘surge’ by the Multinational Forces in Iraq, in coordination with Iraqi Security Force operations, reduced the overall level of violence in the country; however, significant effects were slow to trickle down to the country’s minority communities.” But the real reason for inaction, as several senior Bush-administration officials admitted to me off the record, was that being seen to help Christians was simply too controversial at home and in the Muslim world. It was a matter of scarce political capital better spent elsewhere, I was told.

A couple of weeks ago, a Chaldean-American friend of mine raised the issue of American responsibility for the plight of his brothers and sisters at a public forum convened by a mid-level State Department official. According to the Detroit Free Press, this official “said he couldn’t comment on whether Iraqi Christians were hurt by the U.S.-led war.” “I can’t answer that,” he said. “Let’s leave that to the historians.”

On the same day that my friend was try to get a straight answer from the State Department, more than 120 Christian leaders met in Baghdad to issue yet another urgent plea for targeted security assistance and development aid. Similar pleas for equally modest measures have long fallen on deaf ears, not least in Kurdish-controlled areas, where the treatment of Christians seeking refuges leaves a lot to be desired.

Meanwhile, the plight of Iraq’s surviving Christians worsens. In churches around the world today, Christians will hear the passage from Matthew’s Gospel (2:13-18) that recounts the slaughter of the holy innocents and ends with these words of the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah:

A voice was heard in Ramah,
sobbing and loudly lamenting:
it was Rachel weeping for her children,
refusing to be comforted because they were no more

The time is fast approaching when Iraqi Christians are no more.

-- John F. Cullinan, a regular NRO contributor, has written frequently about Iraq’s religious dynamics since 2003.

Only by imitating God's generosity and responding to his call for community can humanity survive

The Christmas message is supposed to be "good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people." How, though, is this credible amidst such encircling economic and eco-gloom?

The Copenhagen Conference has ended somewhat inconclusively. The prospect of a binding and ambitious agreement on reducing carbon emissions seems itself to have been reduced to a prelude for further negotiations. How the human race is collectively to face the reality of climate change in the 21st century remains troublingly unclear.

Yet the decisive action that Copenhagen had promised, but ultimately has failed to deliver, cannot be avoided forever. The Christian community is being recalled by this crisis to a more genuinely Biblical view of creation and our place within it. It is clear that the effects of climate change will be felt first by some of the most vulnerable communities in the world and those least able to bear the costs of adaptation. 'Loving thy neighbour' in the 21st century embraces Pacific islanders and those who make a living in the low lying delta regions of the world, as well as our children and the inhabitants of our own islands.

Quite apart from the climate question we are using up the sink capacity of the earth, sea and sky at an alarming rate. Bishops are often accused of talking rubbish. I do not apologise for doing so. It is a very important subject. We were meant to use the earth and take it into ourselves with thanksgiving. Instead we have taken it for granted. What is more, we have converted much of it into refuse.

In the UK, government figures suggest that 25% of all the food we buy is wasted, yet there are many families who cannot afford a healthy diet. The EU estimates that between 40 and 60% of the fish caught in European waters are discarded before they are brought on shore. We should be treating our earth with respect, knowing that our wellbeing depends on the wellbeing of our planet. We should be mindful of the hungry in a land of plenty, where we can apparently afford to discard a quarter of what we buy.

Another impotent symbol of what we have done is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a life destroying soup of plastic waste which floats on either side of Hawaii, equal in extent to the continental United States of America.

The scars on the earth are the visible symbol of a selfish way of being in the world. What is to be done? More rhetoric is not going to help us. But just as the Spirit moved over the face of the waters in the beginning of creation so when human beings seemed to have reached the limits of their capacity, a messenger of God visited the Virgin Mary.

At the heart of the Christmas story is generosity. God so loved the world that he gave himself a human face and lived a human life. Instead of behaving as a dictator and demanding submission to his will, God came as a vulnerable child to love the loveless into loving.

Those who like the wise men enter the darkness of this world's peril, searching for the way forward, find themselves leaving behind the light pollution which in our great cities prevents us from seeing the stars. Key to any response to this generosity is living in a generous way ourselves. It is impossible to do this without relating to our neighbour so we are called to form generous communities. The world stands in need of a spiritual renewal of this character of community life, which is concerned not only with cherishing members but which reaches out to all living beings.

This is the heart of the mystery which is revealed at Christmas time. The more we go beyond ourselves in love for others; the more we grow into the people we are meant to be. The more we lose ourselves in love; the more other people find us to be a source of inexhaustible life.

God chose to come as a little child, inspiring compassion and calling people beyond their individual selves into membership of a new community whose work is to transform the world by opening up a fissure so that God's future, his kingdom could come.

At the end of the Divine Comedy, Dante describes his vision of divine reality – "all the scattered leaves of the universe bound by love in one volume". This is the hope held out to us in the coming of the Son of God and the work given to the community of those who have responded to his generosity.

This is an edited version of the bishop's address to his diocese.

Image by rbieber via Flickr

• "Cave men/women" -- "Adam & Eve"
• "Billions of years ago" -- "Earth created 6,000 years ago"
• Fossils of extinct animals all over" -- "Ignore it; it will go away"
• "Plate tectonics, land moving" -- "World made as we see it now"

• All the animals got on the ark (but I never really thought about it)
• Adam named all the animals (but I never really considered it)
• Sun standing still for Joshua (I knew nothing of astronomy)
• In a literal, physical hell for all sinners (but I could never imagine it)
• The Scripture is true (well, except for some of those verses,...)
• There is Power in the Blood (what a dumb song)
• A President who was a Believer would be good for our country (sigh...)

• Those images of Jesus people would see (Dumb; and no bible backup)
• Pope, Lutherans, Unitarians, Anglicans, etc. (not "true believers")
• Speaking in tongues, new revelations (felt kinda wacky to me)
• Tithing (that's for OT times not NT times. Keep your mitts off mine!)

The U.S. arm of the Episcopal Church has done it again -- elected an openly queer bishop. At the 114th annual convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, the Rev. Mary Glasspool was elected to become its eighth bishop suffragan.

But the reception is mixed.

Integrity, a grassroots organization working for the full inclusion of LGBTQ persons in the church, considers Glasspool’s election a clear sign of the church moving forward.

"As Episcopalians, we are proud of the historic links between the founders of our church and the uniquely American democratic process that influences our church polity. We are very different from the Church of England and the Church of Rome, and we rejoice that lay members are valued for their significant role in the choosing of our leadership, and empowered to stand as radical witnesses that can heal past discrimination and prejudice,” Integrity wrote.

But with the Church still wrestling over Bishop V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire’s consecration as the church’s first openly gay bishop, Glasspool’s election is a slap in the face to conservatives.

Last July, the House of Bishops voted overwhelmingly to overturn a three-year moratorium on the election of LGBTQ to the episcopate. But the Anglican Communion Network, known as the “Breakaway Conservatives,” also suggested that Robinson resign to avoid disintegration of the Anglican Communion.

Is the Episcopal Church's impending schism really about the theological rift that ensued after the consecration of Robinson? Or, is the brouhaha instead about a church embattled with itself over how to be financially solvent and theologically relevant in today's national and global competitive religious marketplace?

While the U.S. has, at best, approximately 2.2 million Episcopalians today, the center of Anglican gravity is neither here nor in Britain, but in Africa. There are approximately three million Episcopalians in Kenya, and nine million in Uganda. But those two countries combined do not even come close to the 20 million in Nigeria, making Peter Akinola, the archbishop there, one of the most influential men in the Anglican Communion.

A vociferous opponent of LGBTQ civil rights, Akinola has used the issue of homosexuality to flex his muscle as a sign of African power in the Anglican Church, and has expanded his missionary power by capitalizing on the theological schism that has developed.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has been trying to bridge the gap between liberals and conservatives on homosexuality by floating the idea that there might be "two styles of being Anglican."

"The ideal is that both 'tracks' should be able to pursue what they believe God is calling them to be as Church, with greater integrity and consistency," Williams said. And I agree with Williams.

While many would like to believe that secessionist congregations battling sodomy-endorsing liberal bishops brought on the financial crisis in the Episcopal Church, the coffers were bare prior to Robinson's consecration. The reasons: declining membership for over four decades; the rise of Third World bishops from countries in Africa, South America, and Asia; and egregious acts of inhospitality and exclusion toward its LGBTQ population.

At least if Glasspool’s election is approved, the Episcopal Church will be taking a step on the road toward improvement.

Photo courtesy of miraclebaby's Flickr photostream.

Race and queer divide with election of lesbian priest

By Irene Monoe

iOn December 5th cheers reverberated across the country with the news that at the 114th annual convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles two women were elected as bishops- Rev. Diane Jardine Bruce of California, and Rev. Mary Douglas Glasspool of Maryland

While both elections bring their own controversy, Glasspool's keeps the church's issue of queer bishops front and center.

If both women are approved by a majority of bishops their elections will signal that the U.S. arm of the Episcopal Church is aggressively moving forward on both gender and gay justice.

But for many Episcopalians of color the issue of racial and diversity justice still hangs in the balance as many of their urban ethnic churches struggle to survive. With nearly one-half of L.A.'s population Latino concerns arose with the election of two white women over Latino candidates.

"There was this feeling that once an Anglo woman had been elected Friday, maybe we should support a Latino candidate," said the Rev. Brad Karelius, one of the senior priests of the L.A. diocese. "But the two Latino candidates did not have the leadership depth I saw in Mary and Diane."

The election for bishop suffragan of the Diocese of Los Angeles was a fiercely close race between Glasspool and the Rev. Irineo Martir Vasquez of St. George's in Hawthorne, CA.

Given the theologically conservative make-up of the laity and Spanish-speaking congregants of the L.A. Diocese a lot of support went for Vasquez. According to the Rev. Altagracia Perez, rector of Holy Faith Church in Inglewood, CA diversity was an issue for some of the delegates who supported Vasquez's candidacy. However, Glasspool had 153 clergy votes, with 123 needed to win, and 203 lay votes, with 193 needed to win. Vasquez had 87 clergy votes and 177 lay votes.

The issue of diversity in the governance and election of bishops in the Episcopal Church is of great concern to congregants of color in light of shifting racial and ethnic demographics in big urban cities like L.A.

And with the shifting demographics from white to ethnic groups of color the Episcopal Church, perhaps unintentionally, has chosen to build up one ethnic or minority church over another. And, too often, it feels to many ethnic churches of color that they are always pitted not only among themselves, but also against white queers.

For example, the unresponsiveness to dying black urban churches is emblematic of the Episcopal Church's ineptitude to grapple with the ways that racism and classism choke not only the spiritual life out of a church but its monetary life as well. With the Episcopal Church's urban landscape changing, the denomination has opted to pour its support, money, and energy not into these historic black churches but instead into developing urban Latino churches. The gentrification of the urban church by replacing one minority group with another sets up a paradigm of "divide and conquer" that makes neither group feel welcomed, but both expendable.

"Those Latino churches are set up like a 'reservation system' within the Episcopal Church," said Juliana Gutierrez, a lesbian Mexican American who worships in an Episcopal Church in Chicago told me.

Comprised primarily of a migrant population from all over Latin America, these newcomers form missionary congregations set up by the Episcopal Church. Unlike parishes, missionary congregations are not free-standing: they cannot call their own rector, and cannot make their own decisions. According to Gutierrez, these missionary congregations have a paternalistic relationship with the Episcopal Church because they are not only dependent on the church for monetary support but also for a place to worship. Oftentimes Episcopal churches seek to remedy the tension by devising "separate but equal" worship hours between Spanish-speaking missionary congregations and English-speaking parishes that must share the same facilities. "The two groups come together only for special events and the Eucharist," Gutierrez said.

I have my own queries for the Episcopal Church, dubbed by many as the "ruling class at prayer," with respect to its urban churches, including:

•    Will the Episcopal Church move as aggressively on race issues as it has on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) issues?  
•    Can Episcopalians only talk about the welcoming inclusion of its church in the context of women and LGBTQ issues in white face, but can't when the issue is race?  
•    Does the Episcopal Church's catholicity fall short with people of color because its hegemonic model of being Christian is not only racially white, but it is also theologically and liturgically Anglican?  

A joint survey by the Pew Hispanic Project and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life reports that the emergence of Latino-oriented churches are changing the country's religious landscape not only in the Catholic Church but also in the Protestant Church.

The survey also reports, "While the prevalence of Hispanic-oriented worship is higher among the foreign born, with 77% saying they attend churches with those characteristics, the phenomenon is also widespread among the native born, with 48% saying they attend ethnic churches."

The L.A. Diocese began its outreach ministry in the 1940's to Latino immigrants.
Holy Family Church in North Hollywood was the first Latino congregation in the diocese.

Queer Latino Episcopalians like Gutierrez feel tore in a church that has elected either white queer or Latino heterosexual bishops.

Glasspool is fluent in Spanish, has served in urban cities across the country and is not a single-issue cleric. She told a reporter at the annual convention that the church is ready to go beyond " "superficial characteristics and boxes in which we put people, to really look at individual people and assess the needs of the diocese and pair them with the gifts and skills that Diane and I each bring. In that sense, in all ways, we are moving to a point where we can look beneath the skin color and any single characteristic and really rejoice in the wholeness of every individual person."

However, for Gutierrez the post-racial revolution hasn't come. Gutierrez wants to see more Latinos in church leadership roles because race still matters.

Most of the best art is religious, but then religion's always had the best funding stream – not to mention captive audiences

The question: Does God have all the best art?

Yes. Except not God, and not all. Religion has most of the best art. How much that is because the church has the best funding stream would be hard to determine. And the creation of devotional statuary, paintings, and song has always been accompanied by creation of secular works.

It may be particularly relevant to music that the church also supplies excellent captive audiences. The congregation must listen or be damned. From great composers to carolling parishioners clutching hymn books, this has been a huge attraction to many.

Does religion have so much great art because the subject matter is so inspirational? Until we find a way to look at the financial, social, and political power of the church separately from its spiritual power, we can't answer that.

He who pays the piper names the tune. I can imagine a piece whose working title was "Spring in the Harz Mountains" and whose final title is "Mass in A Minor Commissioned by Random Wealthy Burgher in Honor of Pope Yournamehere". Lyrics make it trickier. Brahms, not a devout man, was pressured to insert John 3:16 into Ein Deutsches Requiem to make it more suitable for Good Friday use. (He got out of it.)

As a result of churchly influence, many promising themes have been crushed. The subject of the separation of church and state, an ideal I am devoted to, recently came up in conversation with composer JJ Hollingsworth. I was enchanted to hear that she had written a piece dedicated to this very subject.

"A Love Letter from Thomas Jefferson", sets to music a recently-discovered 1801 letter Jefferson wrote to the Delaware Baptist Association, and shows that Jefferson shares my love for church-state separation. They had written congratulating him on being elected president and blessing him. "Thanks for the blessings, fellows" Jefferson replied (I paraphrase). "Speaking of blessings, isn't it great that the government stays out of church business and vice-versa?"

He put it more tactfully. In an 1802 thank-you letter, this one to the Danbury Baptists, he created the enduring metaphor of a wall of separation between church and state. Before the American Revolution, the Baptists had been shut out by the established Anglican church, unable to perform recognised marriages and so forth. When Jefferson decried "the usurping domination of one sect over another," they knew what that was.

I was lucky enough to hear the piece premiered (at Temple United Methodist Church in San Francisco, not at a religious service). The score was brilliantly interpreted by a piano/percussion duo, Synchronicity, and the letter's text sung by soprano Ellen St Thomas.

It was thrilling to hear even this short piece on such a subject. No one could tell me of any other music about church-state separation, until a Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) member drew my attention to a song by FFRF co-president Dan Barker. Called "The Battle of Church and State", it's set to the tune of "Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho." The chorus ends "We got to fight the battle of church and state/Or the wall'll come tumblin' down". Despite some strained rhymes, it's a toe-tapper, even danceable. Judging by the gospel original, a roomful of people could rock out to it (if they were the right people).

Now I want a stadium anthem, something people can bellow drunkenly, of the order of "Who Let the Dogs Out?" or "We Will Rock You." With a good bassline and a melodic hook, I hope some day to behold 30,000 people belting out "Delaware Baptists, Tell 'em when to stop!" "Who let the priests out?" "Hey hey, ho ho, usurping domination's got to go!"

But who's going to pay for it?

In his Oslo speech, Obama showed that he understands politics is a messier, more nuanced business than many like to imagine

Barack Obama should not have got the Nobel peace prize. The award was too premature, too wishful, too lacking in awareness, too much of a hostage to fortune. It told you at least as much about the committee as about the man who received it in Oslo yesterday.

But at least Obama gave the committee the reply they deserved. He was at the start and not the end of his labours, he pointed out in Oslo. Compared with some of the earlier recipients, "my accomplishments are slight", he said. Others "are far more deserving of this honour". Given that, by Obama's own admission, he is also the commander-in-chief of a nation in the midst of two wars, this was surely right.

Obama's speech, though, contained a deeper reprimand – and not just to the committee. Running throughout was his insistence that politics will always be more complicated, nuanced and messy than high-minded liberals often seem to understand. Rarely can the speech of a man receiving a peace prize have contained a more subtle and serious defence of the necessity of war than Obama offered. It was the speech of a grownup and practical political leader wrestling in public with what he admitted were immensely difficult questions.

When they announced their award, the Nobel committee were not to know that the president would come to Oslo in the same month he announced that he was sending a further 30,000 American troops to Afghanistan to take part in a conflict that has dragged on for eight years and whose casualties during 2009 have far exceeded those in any previous year. Indeed never has the tension between what liberals would like to think about Obama and the actions taken by Obama himself been stretched as tight as it is now.

For some the tension with Obama has reached breaking point. "I did not think he would lose me so soon," recently lamented the historian Garry Wills, a fellow Chicagoan who 18 months ago wrote a soaring comparison of Obama's Philadelphia campaign speech on race with the campaign speeches of Abraham Lincoln. Though others gave up earlier, "I kept hoping". But then came the Afghanistan announcement. "Obama will not get another penny from me, or another word of praise, after this betrayal," Wills announced.

Betrayal? Not in my book. A mistake? Perhaps. The dilemma in Afghanistan is profound. Obama's chosen course may prove disastrous, masterly or, more likely, somewhere in between. But that does not make it a betrayal. I yield to few in my admiration for Professor Wills. In my eyes, Garry Wills is up there with Hugo Young as one of the commentarial paragons of my era. But betrayal? If the Nobel committee was naively premature in elevating Obama to the pantheon, Wills is surely naively premature in banishing him from it.

Betrayal has long provided a liberal comfort zone from which to survey the difficult issues in modern politics. But it's becoming a default setting, enhanced by the blogosphere. And not just about Obama. Only a couple of days after Wills's diatribe, my eye was caught by an anguished attack by the Times religious affairs commentator Ruth Gledhill against Rowan Williams for, in her view, selling the pass on gay rights and women in the Anglican church. The dreams of the liberals who believed in Williams as the man who could lead the church into the modern world "are almost dead", she wrote.

The late Henry Drucker pointed out long ago that the British left loves to wallow in the warm bath of betrayal. Since 1997, a leitmotiv among British liberals has been the sense of disappointment, disillusion and betrayal about the Blair and Brown governments. Whether it's Iraq or social justice, climate change or civil liberties, the default liberal stance is that Labour has let us down, failed to achieve much and has gradually proved itself – along with much of the rest of the political class – as incompetent, contemptible and corrupt. Criminal too, in Blair's case.

This month two new scaffolds are being erected on which politics will again prove itself unworthy of the hanging jury of liberal opinion. Whatever their actual outcomes, the Copenhagen climate change conference is guaranteed to be branded a betrayal of the planet, while the Chilcott inquiry into the Iraq war is already condemned as a whitewash.

My argument with other liberals does not depend on the view that Obama is right to increase troop numbers in Afghanistan, that Rowan Williams is sensible to try to keep the church together, that the Blair government was actually rather a good one, that limited agreements at Copenhagen are better than none at all, or that the Iraq inquiry is doing a pretty useful job in spite of some of the Vicars of Bray who have turned up to give evidence at it – although as it happens I believe all these things.

My argument is that the world's big problems are inherently complex and difficult, that solutions are inescapably imperfect, and that liberals who wish to be taken seriously must not stand aside from the process of forging them. Politics is the least worst way of attempting to take decisions about conflicting human needs. Politics does not necessarily produce agreements. But it can produce treaties and settlements.

Politicians are neither bad nor stupid. They are wrestling with difficulties. That does not mean that all compromises are as good as all others, or that every imperfect solution is the best that can be achieved. It is as important to avoid Panglossian pragmatism as to learn to discard habits of political thinking – about the paramountcy of economic efficiency, for example – that may have worked once but which no longer apply in changed circumstances. I do not advocate luxuriating in difficulty, but liberals must learn that in politics, dirty hands are better than clean ones.

I accept a world in which Tiger Woods is flawed not perfect. I feel the same, along with some unease, about Obama's fragile foreign policy, Williams's handling of the conservatives, Blair's efforts to move Labour beyond its core vote – and indeed David Cameron's uneven progressivism. The right has always thought politics can never achieve anything. The left is now slipping into an equivalent middle-class heresy. Obama was right, when he said in Oslo: "We can understand that there will be war and still strive for peace." He hasn't lost me yet. But the only Messiah is the one by Handel.