Oddly enough, the main Christian churches over the last number of years have developed
what might be called a "left-wing foreign policy"
- anti-America, anti-Britain, anti-Israel,
and generally sympathetic to Arab and Muslim causes
and foreign tyranny.
The Christian churches are clearly going to be of no help in
the current war
to protect (among other things) their world too.
Roland Shirk, December 14, 2010, asks why the churches have become left-wing on many issues (the economy, foreign policy, Islam) since the late 20th century.
"It would take not a single blog post but a very long essay indeed to analyze why Christian churches and leaders now embrace irresponsible leftist politics that they never would have in previous decades - as if the text of the Bible or the Church Fathers had suddenly morphed, yielding radically different doctrines than prevailed for some 20 Christian centuries."
Of course, I'm not a fan of their previous doctrines either!
But it is interesting how they have changed.
I am not a Christian, but I wish the Christian churches
would focus on defending Christians against persecution
everywhere in the world.
From
Dry Bones Blog.
Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester, Apr 2007,
praises the terror state of Iran
for not killing its
British hostages.
"I saw on the one hand what Iran was doing,
and what the president [of Iran] said had much to do with the moral and spiritual tradition
of their country.
The president talked about the religious background to the release,
with reference to the Prophet's birthday and the passing over of Christ.
What struck me was that if there were any values on the British side
they were free-floating and not anchored in a spiritual and moral tradition."
Let's parse this. The unelected, so-called
"president" of Iran is involved in killing British soldiers in Iraq,
oppressing his own people, and persecuting, torturing and executing minorities
and political dissenters.
These are his "values",
those of eastern despotism and cruelty,
and we are supposed to admire them
because they are overlain with a veneer of religious bullshit?
Meanwhile, the brave British soldiers are fighting and dying
in order to give Iraqis
one chance at freedom, one chance to escape from the Iran-like despotism
that has dominated their history and the entire region.
The British soldiers are the ones who are fighting a brave fight of good against
utter evil,
and they are the ones whose values are in question,
because they do not cover them with a veneer of religious bullshit?
What Michael Nazir-Ali is saying, as so many religious people have said throughout history, is:
"No matter how evil you are, no matter what you are doing,
if you spout about religion, I will in some way admire you."
On Islam in Britain:
"there has been a worldwide resurgence of the ideology of Islamic extremism. One of the results of this has been to further alienate the young"
[i.e. young British Muslims]
"from the nation in which they were growing up and also to turn already separate communities into "no-go" areas where adherence to this ideology has become a mark of acceptability.
Those of a different faith or race may find it difficult to live or work there because of hostility to them and even the risk of violence. In many ways, this is but the other side of the coin to far-Right intimidation."
The Bishop of Durham,
Tom Wright,
attacks Western countries for trying to depose non-Western dictators:
"For Bush and Blair to go into Iraq together was like a bunch of white vigilantes going into Brixton to stop drug dealing. This is not to deny there's a problem to be sorted, just that they are not credible people to deal with it".
The Archbishop of York,
David Hope,
attacks Blair for deposing Saddam:
"Undoubtedly, a very wicked leader has been removed, but there are wicked leaders in other parts of the world."
See Oliver Kamm
in reply.
The Archbishop of Wales,
Barry Morgan,
issued the most disgusting
statement
on the death of the terrorist and mass murderer
Yasser Arafat
in 2004:
"When I heard the news of his death this morning, my initial reaction was to pray that in death Yasser Arafat will find that peace which only God can give and which was denied him in life."
Bishop Stephen Venner
said:
"We've been too simplistic in our attitude towards the Taliban.
...
simply to say therefore that everything they do is bad is not helping the situation. The Taliban can perhaps be admired for their conviction to their faith and their sense of loyalty to each other."
In the past, churchmen made cruel and arbitrary moral judgements
based on a nonsensical holy book.
In the present, their job is to attack anyone who makes any moral judgements at all
as "simplistic".
I'm not sure which is worse.
Perry de Havilland, 14 Dec 2009:
"But how is 'conviction' and 'loyalty' in the service of evil somehow admirable?"
Nile Gardiner is brilliant, 14 Dec 2009:
"During the Second World War, remarks like these about the enemy would have rightly been regarded as an act of treason.
...
Bishop Venner's comments are a sickening disgrace
...
At a time of war, political and religious leaders must never give comfort to the enemy. That is exactly what Venner has done - he has crossed the line and disgraced his position.
He should also do the decent thing and step down from his post - it's hard to see how Bishop Venner can serve his country with an ounce of dignity after offering the Taliban a propaganda coup."
And because we know, we just know that the Bishop
has only vague ideas about what exactly the Taliban do,
here again is
The Taliban way of war.
Someone better:
George Carey, Archbishop of Canterbury (1991-2002)
Carey
criticises Islam, 2004:
"it is sad to relate that no great invention
has come for many hundred years from Muslim countries."
After the
Westminster jihad attack of March 2017,
John Hall made a comical speech.
He said
the attack had left the nation "bewildered".
He added:
"What could possibly motivate a man to hire a car and take it from Birmingham to Brighton to London, and then drive it fast at people he had never met, couldn't possibly know, against whom he had no personal grudge, no reason to hate them and then run at the gates of the Palace of Westminster to cause another death?
It seems likely that we shall never know."
He is serious. That would be hilarious
if not for the fact that it illustrates the continued blindness of half the West,
15 years after 9/11.
You have to decide to be this blind.
Anti-Israel Anglican vicar
Stephen Sizer
poses
with
Jew-hating Islamic fundamentalist
Raed Salah.
Formerly
here
(2011 post).
Sizer's hatemongering against Israel began with his PhD thesis in 2003
and continued for decades.
In
Dec 2022,
a church tribunal into his anti-Israel campaigning
found Rev. Stephen Sizer guilty of "conduct unbecoming and anti-Semitic activity".
The tribunal considered
11 allegations
against him.
Anti-Israel dhimmi
Karin Brothers,
of Canada's
largest Protestant church,
takes to the stage in Toronto, Aug 2011, with a load of fanatic Khomeinists who want to enslave her under Islamic law.
See the other speeches.
This is the annual festival of Islamic terrorism and Jew hatred called
"Quds Day".
EAPPI's
Chain Reaction
magazine, Issue 6, Summer 2007,
advocates hacking attacks against Israel.
Shame on the World Council of Churches
and anyone who associates with them.
Note their support for the
anti-Israel Irish charity
Trocaire.
"I feel very strongly that economic links to America have made us very blind to the moral issues",
said the Archbishop, who thinks that the moral issue is to oppose, not support, the war.
"I think as a nation there has not been sufficient questioning of these rendition flights and the link of Ireland with the war in Iraq, whether we like it or not.
I feel that the Irish Government have compromised themselves.
People will say that politics always has an element of compromise, but I believe one of the chief moral issues of today is the issue of war."Again, this arrogant assertion that morality is on his side
rather than on his opponents' side.
He just assumes his opponents are driven by economic greed, or some other compromise.
It never seems to occur to him that his opponents are driven by morality too.
Tony Allwright says
it is shocking that people like John Neill,
and members of the Green Party,
"have such little regard for one of the Arab world's few constitutional democracies
that they likewise would wish to impede its legitimate Government's desire for foreign assistance in trying to bring security to its beleaguered people.
...
Ireland should be proud of its small contribution in making Shannon available to the brave American soldiers as they try to help the Iraqis.
Ms McKenna
and her cohorts should be ashamed of their obstructionism and the additional loss of Iraqi life this could entail were they successful in thwarting the Americans."
Susan Hood, of the
Church of Ireland's Representative Church Body,
led an Irish ecumenical (Anglican, Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian)
visit to the Holy Land in 2008.
I admire her scholarly work on Irish history,
but not her understanding of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The delegation went
"to identify with the plight of 200,000 Christians left in Israel/Palestine."
She says Christians are
"now diminished to just 2 per cent of the overall population".
She does not complain about the
repression of Christians by the Palestinians,
the hatred and incitement to murder
in Palestinian schools and TV,
the terror attacks against Jewish women and children,
and the lack of democracy or any desire for peace among the Palestinians.
Rather,
she complains about
counter-terrorism measures that would be removed the day the terror threat ended.
She complains about
"the devastating effects of the Separation Wall"
and so on, as if these were the causes of the conflict.
Reply
to Susan Hood:
"I was disappointed and a little shocked that neither she nor the churchmen she interviewed saw fit to mention the chief reason for much Christian suffering in the region, namely the attacks on Christians and on churches by militant Muslim groups.
These attacks, many resulting in bloodshed and murder, have been calculated attempts to remove a non-Muslim presence from Gaza and the West Bank. The Christian population there has declined severely, whereas the community in Israel has increased steadily over the past 60 years. Other religious minorities in Israel - notably the Baha'is, a community persecuted or banned in all Muslim countries - have flourished. By ignoring this disparity, the article leaves the reader with a broad impression that Israel is to blame for all these problems.
How far from the truth that is."
Rev. Patrick Comerford, 6 Aug 2012,
declares that Israel is more of a problem than Iran or Syria or North Korea!
"Meanwhile, three countries remain outside the NPT regime ... India, Pakistan and Israel, each with its own nuclear capacity ... These are real threats to our survival, more so than the imaginary threats posed at the moment by Iran, Syria and North Korea."
He cannot understand why America would treat democracies different to dictatorships:
"It is hypocrisy that the US ... is applying economic sanctions and threatening military action against Iran which has not got a single nuclear weapon, while the US opposes any sanctions against Israel, which has as many as 400 nuclear warheads".
"Hypocrisy"!
He wants America to treat democracies the same as dictatorships!
Only on
Communism has the church a record
of standing on the side of good
and against evil.
It has a dreadful record on Fascism and Islamism.
It's a bit like the secular left that way.
Only on
Fascism has the left a record
of standing on the side of good.
It has a dreadful record on Communism
and Islamism.
The fight for human freedom
- Fascism, Communism, Islamism.
The church has only been good on the middle one.
The moral sickness of the modern church was made clear
in Feb 2003,
when the Pope granted an audience to the Iraqi butcher
Tariq Aziz,
trying to find a way to help him and his fellow mass-murdering thugs
stay in power.
Aziz prayed at the tomb of St. Francis of Assisi
and called for "peace".
The Pope did not condemn Aziz's regime.
Pious Nonsense:
The unholy "Christian" case against war
by Christopher Hitchens, March 10, 2003.
Hitchens is, like me, an atheist amused by the church opposition
to the War on Saddam's Iraq in 2003.
People regard this as having some moral force,
ignoring the churches' appalling record on war.
The church did not support the Allies in World War Two, for example.
The Vatican's sympathy for Saddam at his capture, Dec 2003
- "I felt pity to see this man destroyed,
... They could have spared us these
pictures
... Seeing him like this, a man in his tragedy, despite all the heavy blame he bears,
I had a sense of compassion for him"
On economics, the Catholic church also at some point, without anyone noticing,
became bog-standard socialists.
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, Jan 2009, rather overreacts to the present financial crisis:
"he went on to say that in 1989, with the collapse of the Berlin wall, that 'communism had died'.
In 2008, he said, 'capitalism had died'."
"Want a bet?", is all I'll say.
Go away and come back in 10 years and see who's right - me or the churchman.
Left-wing Charities
- The Catholic church runs a range of Anti-Israel and Anti-American charities.
He says about the Iranian terror masters:
"they have then chosen to put their faith into action to resolve the situation.
Faith in a forgiving God has been exemplified in action by their good deeds.
They are offering to release the sailors and marines, not just as the result of diplomacy,
but also as an act of mercy in accordance with their religion."
Their "religion" being eastern despotism, cruelty,
and the arbitrary whims of tyrants.
"We all profess to hold a faith that comes from Abraham - the Father of all Nations."
No we don't.
"We all adore the one, merciful God, who will be mankind's judge on the last day."
I don't, and he will not be, and there will be no such day.
"All nations form one community: we come from the one God who created us,"
No we don't.
There is no evidence we were created by anyone.
"and we will return to the one God as our common destiny."
Again, nonsense. We will not "return" anywhere.
I guess if Thomas Burns believes all this made-up nonsense,
it's no surprise he is impressed that the Iranian thugs believe the same.
Someone better:
Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, 2006:
"In my own reading of the Koran, I began to note down invocations to violence.
There are so many of them, however, that I abandoned this exercise after 50 or 60 or 70 pages."
Pope John Paul II,
who once stood up to Soviet tyranny,
said:
"At this hour of sadness at the passing of President Yasser Arafat ...
While entrusting his soul into the hands of the Almighty and Merciful God ...".
Disgusting.
Whatever moral authority the pope had during the Cold War,
he's burnt it now.
If you can show me where these moral idiots
called for a boycott of
Cambodia,
China,
Cuba,
Egypt,
Iran,
Libya,
North Korea,
Pakistan,
the Palestinian Authority,
Russia,
Rwanda,
Saudi Arabia,
Sudan,
Syria,
Vietnam
and
Zimbabwe,
tell me here.
John McAreavey, Catholic Bishop of Dromore,
talks politicised rubbish about Israel, Jan 2016.
He attacks "illegal" Jewish settlements.
He has strong opinions about where Jews should live.
The Catholic church forced the Jews of Rome to live in a
Ghetto
from 1555 to 1870.
It is still angry today about Jews living in the wrong place.
Trocaire,
the Catholic church's anti-Israel "charity".
"Zionism Will Not Tolerate Doctrine of Christ",
The Irish Catholic, 19 May 1949.
Shows Irish and European Catholic reaction to the foundation of Israel in 1948.
Is it any wonder that the church and its charities are often anti-Israel today?
See full size.
The Irish Catholic above approvingly quotes
a 1949 broadcast by Vatican Radio, which declares that
"Zionism is a new Nazism".
(Not that the Vatican was particularly opposed
to actual Nazism during the war.)
Modern lefties like
David Norris
and
Frank McDonald
would of course agree with these 1940s Catholics
that Zionism is the new Nazism.
The broadcast claims that Israel will destroy the Christian holy places.
Of course, the opposite happened.
Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Christians are safe.
advocates hacking attacks against Israel.
