Monthly Archives: February 2005

Church, MobLog

Christianity is a Religion for Women and Wimps

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As a followup to my posting yesterday over the charity donation from a gala of Jerry Springer, Ekklesia today reported on the appearance of their director on the Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2, in discussion with Stephen Green of Christian Voice.

I’ve previously blogged about Stephen Green’s appearances on TV and radio, where he often comes across badly, and this appearance was no exception. He defended his actions saying they were principled, and showing that Christianity wasn’t a religion for wimps and women. He also said that he believed that God would make up the shortfall in funding for the charity. However when challenged by Jonathan Bartley to make up the shortfall if his prediction didn’t come true, he refused.

This produced a pretty adverse reaction from callers to the show, some Christian, expressing dismay at his reluctance to “put his money where his mouth was”, and also at his comments about women.

In addition to the reaction to the head-to-head, two church denominations have criticised Christian Voice, and MP John Cryer has issued a statement condemning the action.

Church, MobLog

Is this a Christian Voice Protection Racket?

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I just came across a news item on the BBC site, also being repeated on the international Reuters feed, that after protests from Christian Voice, Maggies, a Scottish Cancer Charity have refused the proceeds of a charity gala performance of Jerry Springer: The Opera. The gala performance had been advertised as in support of the charity as part of the campaign to build a Maggies Centre in London, and in addition to proceeds of £10 per ticket, all of the cast of the show had donated their wages.

Whilst any charity is perfectly justified in accepting or refusing any donation, reading the articles, the charity only chose to refuse the proceeds following the intervention of Christian Voice. It seems that Christian Voice effectively blackmailed them into not accepting it by threatening them with a Christian boycot of the charity, and also threatening to protest outside their offices if they accepted the donation. As Stephen Green of Christian Voice says in the Reuters item “Effectively, I think we saved this charity from a public relations disaster.” However to me, it seems like the primary cause of any public relations disaster would have been Christian Voice protesting outside their offices and highlighting their protests in the media, prior to today I didn’t know anything about the gala or donation. However bear this in mind, had the donation gone ahead, there would have been little publicity, if there had been protests, I doubt it would have registered much, particularly not at a national or international level. Having refused the donation the story is now being reported internationally. As a Maggies representative says in The Scotsman:

“This isn’t about us. They [Christian Voice] are seeking to publicise their activities by this initiative. We have no affiliations to any religious group and we have no link to Christian Voice.”

However other Christian groups and organisations have been critical of the decision, and of Christian Voice. Ekklesia have pointed out that Jesus often put compassion ahead of religiousity, and as quoted by The Independent Rev Richard Thomas, the Oxford Diocese Communications director who has complained to OFCOM over the show said that ethically one of the best ways to redeem “dirty” money was to put it to a good cause, and made the following statement:

“You have to look at the use of money, and balance that against the way it is raised and this would seem to be an ideal use of money for a very worthwhile cause regardless of the questions about how it has been raised,”

From my point of view, it seems to me like Christian Voice effectively operated a protection racket against the charity. The massive publicity the BBC showing of the show generated means that most people would be aware of the content, and Maggies were quite happy to accept the donation despite all that publicity. Then along comes Christian Voice and suddenly Maggies changes their mind, I’m sure fearful of the negative publicity that Christian Voice could generate. Having said that, they were effectively put in a no win situation, as the current news reporting, although much of it is critical of Christian Voice (the Independent article is headlined “Revealed: how Christian activists deprived cancer charity of cash”), a lot of the rest of the publicity is negative towards Maggies itself. All of that is a great pity, for a non-Christian charity whose primary aim is to build centres that help people to live with Cancer.

Church, General, MobLog

Tuesday Snow, Evangelical Atheists and Royal Weddings

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As predicted, today the first of the snow in our current “big chill” arrived. Thankfully for us it was only a light dusting, and no ice, however that is due to change tomorrow, and get worse for Thursday.

View from the window

Anyway, it does look pretty, just a pain with my daily commute!

Today was also the last full day of Beth’s parents visit to the UK. I have a batch of photographs from last week which I will get round to posting, and was planning to work on last night. However last night I was somewhat distracted dealing with the self proclaimed “UK’s Leading Atheist” Steven Carr who had taken an interest in one of my postings. Having posted three variations of the same comment on Sunday afternoon to one thread, and another comment to Beth’s posting on Re:Jesus, and two more yesterday, he was showing a suprising level on interest. What was somewhat annoying was that it was fairly apparent that he hadn’t been reading what I was saying, not so much wanting a discussion as taking it in turns to make comments, and for all the world reminded me of the times I have been doorstepped by Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons, in that you get the impression that they are tightly trained to deliver their particular line rather than participate in discussion.

I initially considered responding to the points, but then thought I’d dig around and see what Steven Carr had posted elsewhere, and also check my logs. He has an extensive website that details his beliefs, and also includes a number of debates he has had with theologians. He also appears frequently on Usenet newsgroups. Log wise I came across a specific search for God in the tsunami from Google that had come through to the site, so it looked like he could have been specifically looking for a Christian comment to respond to.

On that basis I decided that it would go nowhere if I carried on trying to discuss points with someone who seemed to only want to preach at me, so I decided to block his access, which I have now done. I’ve linked and quoted a couple of comments in my final response to him, so I won’t go over them again, but on a positive note it is a great example of why preaching at somebody doesn’t work, and perhaps something that Christian groups can learn from in how they deal with people who do not share their beliefs. It also reminds me of an incident when I was younger when a local Church managed to get hold of the mailing list of the local synagogue and proceeded to send them a mailing detailing why they should all become Christian. I’m sure everybody can guess how many converts the mailing produced, and of course the negative publicity the whole incident produced was significant. Whilst he has obviously considered his beliefs extensively, and feels that those beliefs should be shared, the method by which he chose to do so has only resulted in him being banned, or blocked from all sorts of sites, whereas a more reasonable, dare I say it, less evangelical approach may have worked better.

One final note, I’ve just heard on the news that the ongoing Charles and Camilla farce continues with the news that the Queen will not attend the wedding. Officials are quick to point out that it isn’t a snub as she will attend the blessing, and host the reception. PM again had a legal expert on tonight questioning the legality of the whole thing, so I suspect it will degenerate even further than it has done already.

Anyway, with that, to bed, as I think the journey to work tomorrow is probably going to be slow and filled with ice and snow. Roll on spring…

General, MobLog

Maybe Las Vegas

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The ever growing farce of the upcoming wedding of Prince Charles to his long-time ‘companion’ continues to occupy large amounts of time and space in the news media. There are essentially two threads to the debate, the first relating to the civil ceremony, and the various problems our legislation causes, and the second being whether it is legal for a Royal to marry in an English civil wedding in the first place.

Looking at the legality of the whole process, the interesting discussion today was caused by the fact that it transpires that a previous government gave the opposite advice to the Queen over allowing Princess Margaret to marry in the mid-1950’s. The key point being related to a clause in the 1836 marriage act banning royals from marrying in a civil ceremony that was not explicity addressed by the 1949 act.

Assuming that the wedding is legal, there is an increasingly farcical series of problems with the location. Initially the location was to have been at Windsor Castle, but this was changed because by applying for a license to hold the wedding, the castle would automatically be open to anybody to have their wedding in the castle. However this now lands residents of Windsor with the bill for security. Today, the ongoing farce continued, with the news that under the law, the general public are allowed to attend a civil wedding. It is worth bearing in mind that Princess Anne dodged problems with English law by marrying outside England when she re-married, choosing instead to marry in Scotland. Having said that, with the ongoing problems, maybe they could combine Charles proposed visit to the US with a trip to Las Vegas to tie the knot, although even that is looking like it might have problems too.

MobLog, Movies & TV

24 Picks Up Again

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So after what I thought was a bit of a dud episode last week, 24 has picked up again with an episode where the main lead works out that he is being followed and crashes himself into a truck, but not before having given Jack and CTU enough information to work out where the terrorist hide out is. However as the clock ticked over to midday, Jack was outside having been told that the President has ordered an air strike as the marines were still twenty minutes away. As the credits rolled you just knew that Jack was going to try and race the bomb to free the prisoners. All of this and we are still not even a quarter of the way through!

Anyway, to tie in with the new series, for all you budding Jack Bauer’s there is now a CD of the soundtrack from the first three series available on CD. (Which on the UK version includes a couple of bonus tracks, and the CTU ringtones 😮 )

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