Bishop Barron Address to members of Parliament

I've been keenly aware of the erosion of not only the historic churches but also, concurrently, the erosion of freedom of speech in Great Britain in recent years.  

Our cousins in the UK have never had the same robust safeguards to freedom of thought and expression that we enjoy here in the US, and recent years really have seen an erosion in these rights. 

Long before J.D. Vance recently upset the European establishment by pointing this out (for the UK and Germany and other places), I've been following with dismay as certain political and even religious speech - including silent prayer by Christians in certain locations - has been punished under the law, or else punished informally through police harassment.
  
Meanwhile, Muslim members of Parliament are overtly pushing to make "insulting Islam" a "hate crime" in the UK. 
I've been open in the past about my skepticism about criminalizing "hate speech" and my views have not changed on this point.  

I'm praying for a revival of Christianity in general and of classical Anglicanism in particular in the UK which, I trust, will also bring about a renewed respect for individual liberties.  Others may not have noticed this, but I believe it is no coincidence that the most religiously fervent country in Western Civilization (the US) is also the most robust defender personal freedoms and individual rights. 
These things go together. 

I'm glad to see that, while the bishops of the Church of England tilt at windmills, at least American Roman Catholic Bishop Robert Barron is trying to evangelize the culture.  Here are his remarks to a group including members of Parliament meeting at Westminster: 

The Most Censored Content in History?

 

Courage: When you Pass Through Fire

 Here is part three of my sermon series on Courage: 

Cardinal and Anglican bishop pray for martyred family

In what may be a more common occurrence in the future, more and more Christians are coming together across denominational lines to pray and speak out on behalf of our persecuted brothers and sisters.  Recently a Muslim mob in Pakistan burned to death two young Christian parents and their unborn daughter as well (the mother being pregnant), for allegedly insulting Islam.

After these despicable acts, acts that do indeed cause many in the civilized world to look at contemporary Islamic culture with suspicion to say the least, a Roman Catholic cardinal and an Anglican Bishop joined together, not to hurl stones at Muslims, but to pray for the victimized family and speak out for the rights of religious minorities everywhere.  I hope and pray that as we become more aware of atrocities against Christians around the world we will see more and more unity among the church in prayer, in compassion, and in advocacy for freedom of religion and freedom of conscience and speech around the world.
I hope that statesmen and political leaders will be invited to these events to be reminded of the great needs and injustices that exist in these days and their duty as leaders to address them.

You can read the full story here.

Secular Politicians touting the goodness of Islam?

When I was in high school, our school was sued by the ACLU because each Monday a student would pray over the intercom.  This was deemed by the ACLU an unacceptable promotion of religion as such by an arm of the government, and the court agreed.  It has come to be accepted orthodoxy in our legal circles that government organizations or representatives should not favor or promote one religion over another, or over non-religion.  So this raises the interesting question asked in THIS ARTICLE at The Economist blog:

"SHOULD democratically elected leaders in more or less secular countries ever say that this or that religion is essentially good or essentially bad?"  

Are they not acting as theologians when they claim that Islam is a good and beautiful and peace-affirming faith?  Are they not promoting one religion over another?  I've never heard our President make such sweeping positive claims about United Methodism - though I would be happy if he did.  Could it be that they do not trust the general public to think for ourselves and come up with the "right" decision regarding the relative merits of Islam?  Here are a few more quotes from the article:

"In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11, arguments about the fundamental nature of Islam caused some acrimony between George W Bush and his evangelical supporters. The Bush administration's line was that Islam as such was not the adversary. On the contrary, it was worthy of respect as a great and inspiring religious tradition in which millions of people found comfort....
Meanwhile Tony Blair went through a phase of carrying a Koran around with him, and arguing passionately that Islam in its truest self was an inspiration to peace and altruism. He seemed convinced that his own passionate Christian beliefs gave him some insight into the problem of scriptural interpretation. A few days ago, it was Barack Obama's turn to make a solemn distinction between Islam itself and people who claimed to be waging a terrorist war in its name. In a speech to the UN General Assembly, he said:The United States is not and never will be at war with Islam. Islam teaches peace. Muslims all over the world aspire to live with dignity and a sense of justice...

The article goes on to raise the issue - always an important one in any theological statement or statement about theology - of authority or credibility.  Presidents Bush and Obama and British Prime Minister Tony Blair all claim to be practicing Christians who have never been practicing Muslims.  Do they really know more about Islam than those "Islamic State" militants who have been practicing Muslims all their lives?
As the article states: 

...it is somehow odd for a Western politician to be telling anybody, however horrible and unworthy of respect: "You don't understand your own religion, but I do..." 

Perhaps it would have made more sense for President Obama to point to the recent Open Letter from 120 Muslim scholars denouncing The Islamic State as "un-Islamic."  The problem is that there is disagreement and diversity of opinion among Muslims themselves as to what their religion requires or allows - what Allah desires - when it comes to the use of violence in the name of Islam.  So again we are left with a prickly question about what a supposedly secular leader should do?  Is it appropriate for a President or Prime Minister to promote certain understandings of Islam as actually more faithful to Allah or to "the true spirit of Islam" than others?  Or to swing the question around, would it be appropriate (though it has certainly happened before) for a President or Prime Minister to tell us that either Protestantism or Roman Catholicism was more true to Christ than the other?  

The suggestion at the end of the article actually makes good sense to me:

Almost exactly the same rhetorical effect could have been be achieved if Mr Obama had confined himself to saying something like: "We know that there are hundreds of millions of Muslims in America and across the world who share our abhorrence of Islamic State..."  That would be a statement about political science or religious sociology, rather than theology...

-------------------------------------------
In other news the Islamic State recently destroyed one of Iraq's oldest Christian Churches in its continued campaign of persecution against the followers of Christ.  As a pastor and Bible-teacher rather than a politician, I am quite sure that the Islamic State represents the most viciously evil and demonic political ideology that we have seen since the days of Stalin or Hitler; it is without a doubt "anti-Christ" in its aims and its actions.  

I'll leave it to Muslims (who know far more about the Koran than I) to debate whether the Islamic State is a legitimate expression of Islam.  It seems to me that the great majority of Muslims say that it is not true to Islamic teachings, but a sizable minority obviously believe that it is - which I suppose is what an outside observer would have to say if asked whether any particular Christian denomination is a legitimate expression of Christianity.  

Christians persecuted in chaotic Iraq

The CNN headline from this week: Facing fines, conversion, or death, Christians flee Mosul.

A couple years ago our media and political leaders were rejoicing at the "Arab Spring" that - everyone quite naively said - would bring a wave of (Western-style) freedom and democracy across the Middle East.  Instead we've got violence in Lybia, Egypt, and Iran, and all out civil war in Iraq and Syria.

Today there is much suffering among the civilian populations of these countries, but especially among our brothers and sisters in Christ, who have often been singled out for violence, and have been forced to flee their homes.  In the case described in the CNN report, Christians are compelled to convert to Islam, or pay a fine, or leave town.  Most seem to be choosing the last option (since they don't really know how safe they will be if they stay under the ISIS regime if they do pay), but it seems their homes and all their possessions are being stolen from them by ISIS.  This situation is all the more outrageous since Christians were living peacefully in these communities centuries before Mohammed or Islam were ever born.

What can we do who believe in Christ when we hear of such stories of persecution in the news?

First of all, we should pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ.  Pray that they will be safe; that the hearts of their enemies will be turned away from violent ideologies; pray especially that the followers of Christ will be strengthened by the Holy Spirit to boldly hold fast to the Savior of our souls, even in the face of persecution.  Pray that they will not respond to hate and violence with more hate and violence, but will dedicate themselves to truly following the Prince of Peace.

We should also remember that Jesus warned his disciples repeatedly that we would be hated on account of his name, and we shouldn't let platitudes about "the progress of freedom in the 21st Century" distract us from the fact that his words are proving true all around the world - and there is no immutable guarantee that we too, who currently live in free countries, will not one day face similar situations.

We should also urge our elected officials to speak out and seek to uphold freedom of religion and freedom of speech all for all peoples around this world (including right here as they pass laws that affect us).  I am trying to get in the habit of writing more actual 'stamp and paper' letters to my representatives - what good is having a voice, after all, if I don't use it to speak up?

I think that we should also urge our elected officials to take a less hawkish and more cautious approach to foreign policy goals - just because a tyrant is oppressive it does not necessarily follow that the country will become a haven of peace and freedom if we forcibly remove that tyrant from power.  Today we might seriously ask the question of whether the Iraqi people would have been better off had we left Saddam Hussein in power.  Without any doubt, the Christians of Iraq would have been (not to mention the tens of thousands of Iraqis who died in the war).
To be clear, I do not stand for isolationism, I do not hold that we should give up engagement altogether, or stop advocating for the God-given rights of all people (see above) - but it seems to me that we have been far too optimistic about what can really be accomplished through military means, and far too optimistic about the ability of the West to impose our values on other cultures, or the willingness and ability of Islamic culture to welcome our Western-style free democracy, since even the best real world examples have a questionable record when it comes to protecting minorities, and especially religious minorities.

We can also urge our church leaders and church mission organizations to respond - as best they can - to the needs of refugees in all of these countries, as in fact The United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) is actively doing in the Middle East.

Any more ideas that you have?  What else can we do?