Religion

The BHA is appealing for its supporters to use an Internet tool to send a message to the 26 bishops who sit in the House of Lords: Time for a reformed second chamber! Click here to go to the BHA site.

Thanks to Catherine Bennett, I've learned a new 'ology - eschatology, literally the study of the last. So, if there's an eschatology, there must be eschatologists, right? Gosh, they must be fun in the pub. "Oh, hello, what do you do?" "I study the end of the world." Pause. "Really? How does that happen?" "Well, the dead could be resurrected, or the Devil could be set free, or adultery and fornication will be performed in the open, or ..." "Where's my drink?"

It's tedious, hearing those in Parliament wittering on about "secularism", when they clearly haven't a clue what it means. But then, neither do a majority of religious leaders (including Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury) who complain about "aggressive secularism".

Personally, I'm feeling quite aggressive about the latest threat to secularism; John Denham, the Communities Secretary, has announced that a new panel of religious experts has been set up to advise the Government on making public policy decisions. I'd hoped that that sort of nonsense would have been dropped when Hazel Blears departed, but no.

The question was asked by a student from Liberty University in Virginia, US.

This was first posted in November 2007, but as it's Operation Christmas Child time again, I'm reposting it (August 2009). I was alerted by an appeal for knitting wool for gifts to go in OCC's shoe boxes in Hadleigh. Please tell anyone who might have considered contributing that they should not support this appeal.

I don’t know how many American missionaries there are, or where they all are, but there are a lot of them. I posted a story in June about the Joshua Project:

Our Mission ... to highlight the people groups of the world that have the least Christian presence in their midst and to encourage pioneer church-planting among every ethnic people group.

I wrote “Mad missionaries” because they do seem to suffer from a collective psychosis. They’re programmed to go and poke their interfering evangelical noses into communities that “have the least Christian presence”, regardless of the existing religious beliefs, or lack of beliefs, of the people involved. Their unshakeable belief that they’re doing God’s will is not just misguided, it’s very destructive.

I missed this programme but will listen now, via this clip. On Mark Thomas’s BBC Radio 4 Manifesto programme, audience member Laura proposed, to enthusiastic applause:

There should be a minimum age of consent before anyone joins a religion, because the vast majority of religions’ members were put through ceremonies by their parents when they were far too young to know what was going on. And while many of them renounce their faith when they are older, indoctrinating children allows religions to claim more members and more influence than is actually justified.

I was going to write about Easter, for the benefit of those who’ll ask things like, “And what do you poor atheists do at this time of the year if you don’t believe in Easter?”, but I’m too busy gardening. However, Cath Elliott’s saved me the bother.