“Canada does not have freedom of speech, and I have already spoken, putting me in a special class and at risk.” says US Christian author.

Stephen Boisson, Alberta Public Enemy #1 and recipient of future-crime complaints because of his Christian stance on homosexuality, brings us a surreal conversation with a Human Rights Commission employee.

He said the following recommendations were the responsibility of the people who invited me, not my responsibility.

2. Ask the church to get a signed consent form from everyone, parents and children, everyone, stating that they are not forced to attend and are there of their own free will. Later he added that this consent should be drawn up by a lawyer who is familiar with the Human Rights Laws.

3. The weekend retreat is considered one-occasion situation and that a license was probably not required.

4. The church needs to contact the education people and take a curriculum of the program and demonstrate that it is an educational program that is not unwelcome by the group there and everyone is there by consent. Also, the church needs to ask the education people if a license is required. At this point Ralph was uncertain and seemed to think a license would be helpful if problems occurred.

5. The church needs to contact the police to make sure they do not view the program as bordering on criminal activity—need to show them the curriculum so they know what is going on and do not arrive on the scene.

WTF? With the exception of the occasional 8-year-old who would probably prefer to be at home playing Wii, people are usually at church or any church program by their own free will. There aren’t people herding them in at gunpoint.

I then told Ralph that the church had already distributed a CD of mine to each of their families to prepare for the retreat that had some statements on it about homosexuals. He said that they needed a consent form from each family that this was not unwelcome material and that their kids would not be talking about any of it in the schools.

He said, “You may have a problem with the CD if it is seen as gay bashing and if anyone who has it displays it before the public, i.e., talking about it in a classroom. It needs to be used by a select group who consented to receiving the material. Religious material must not be forced on anyone who is not a part of the group who consented. If a student did this, and the person complained, you would be liable and it would not matter that all the safeguards were in place.”

Again, that free will thing. But even more worrying, what is this about keeping teachings secret and not talking about them with others? Is it now official policy of the Alberta Human Rights Commission to drive Christianity underground? Are we in Iran, where Christian teachings must be done in basements and behind closed curtains, never letting the neighbors know? Is this still Canada?

This is absolutely terrifying, if you stop to think about it. Whether you are Christian or not, you must agree that it is heinous that the main religion of Canadians is being forced into hiding by these Commissions. Is this what was originally intended when our government drew up the Charter?

Nowadays, kids go to school and learn about every religion except Christianity. No one is allowed to complain. But if one of these kids attending the workshop goes to school and tells his friends about it, all hell will break loose. It has to be kept a secret. The founding religion of the modern world: Now a dirty little secret for backrooms and speakeasies.

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Introduction:

This is a descriptive review of Black Theology & Black Power by James H. Cone, (New York: [Harper & Row, 1969]. It is not an attempt to politicize Cone’s arguments, but to simply explain what the book attempts to put forth. Keep in mind that according to Cone’s ideas in 1969, Black theology demands “blackness as the sole criterion for dialogue (p. 148)”. Additionally, as much as Cone would have liked his works to become the definitive explanation of Black Theology, many Black theologians dispute the fact and point out that Cone’s Black Theology is actually Black Liberation Theology.

Rev. Eugene Rivers of Azusa Christian Community in Boston described Black Liberation Theology when interviewed on Hannity & Colmes May 2, 2008.

“Black Liberation Theology is left-wing social science masquerading as theology . . . it’s warmed over defunct Marxist structuralism.”

Review

The primary question that the book intends to answer is, “What is the theology of Black Power, and why is a theology of Black Power necessary if blacks are to regain their identity?” Two preliminary questions are: “Is it possible for men to be really black and still feel any identity with the biblical tradition “that has been interpreted by whiteness (p.33)?”, and, “Must black people be forced to deny their identity in order to embrace the Christian faith (p. 33)?”

To answer these questions, Cone first addresses the nature of the Gospel of Jesus. Because the teaching about Jesus Christ is the center of Christian theology, Cone argues that “Jesus’ work is essentially one of liberation,” because in Christ, “God enters human affairs and takes sides with the oppressed (p. 35-36).”

Christ’s defeat of Satan means the defeat of white racism in America (p. 40-41). Freedom in Christ’s liberating work means that “liberation is directed for and by the oppressed (p. 42).”

God’s righteousness is tied to God’s justice, which means that God will protect those in bondage from the ungodly (pp. 44-45). Cone explains that “those who wish to share in this divine righteousness must become poor without any possibility of procuring right for themselves (pp. 45-46).”

If love is to exist “between men,” it must exist between equals, and it cannot be spoken of apart from justice and power (p. 53-54). It is the work of love to destroy what is against love, and “violence may be the black man’s expression . . . of Christian love to the white oppressor (pp. 54-55).”

“The Holy Spirit is the power of God at work in the world,” and, “living according to the Spirit means that one’s will becomes God’s will, one’s actions become God’s action (pp. 57-59).”

“Black Power, then, is God’s new way of acting in America (p. 61).” The White church has “enshrined” racism, which “is a denial of the Incarnation and thus of Christianity (pp. 72-73).”

Therefore, the white denominational churches are unchristian, and not of God, so renewal “seems out of the question (pp. 72-73, 115).”

The Black churches in America should proclaim the revolutionary gospel of “the black Christ (p. 114).”

Cone argues that eschatology is not centered in future expectations of a “reward” in heaven, because it is related to what “God has done, is doing, and will do for his people (p.1 26).”

White values “must be revolutionized or eliminated (p. 131).”

Cone subordinates questions of good, evil, violence and revolution, as relative to real human decisions between less and greater evil (pp. 142-143). Reconciliation cannot come about until “white people are prepared to deny themselves (whiteness), take up the cross (blackness) and follow Christ (black ghetto) (p. 150).”

Cone offers a systematic presentation of Black Theology, which expands the social gospel as a religion of protest through the works of various theologians such as that of Jòrgen Moltmann’s, “political hermeneutics of the gospel (p. 37).”

Cone’s theology is Christological in that his theology is centered in the Gospel of Jesus. Cone dialectically seeks to uncover the true nature of Christ. His conclusion is that Christ is united with the oppressed, and “God has chosen black people. (p. 151).”

Cone’s primary concern, and thesis, “is to show that the goal and message of Black Power. . . is consistent with the gospel of Jesus Christ (p. 48).”

The task and purpose of Black Theology is “to criticize and revise the language of the church,” and “to analyze the black man’s condition in the light of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ with the purpose of creating a new understanding of black dignity among black people, and providing the necessary soul in that people, to destroy white racism. (pp. 31, 84, 89, 117).”

Conclusion:

It is difficult to evaluate this book from its unwanted white perspective. The hyperbole of Cone’s language is indicative of the initial stages of the development of a militant Black Christian identity. Now that a generation has passed since its writing, and because Cone’s Black Liberation theology demands “blackness as the sole criterion for dialogue” (p. 148), the issue of reconciliation between the races can never be honestly addressed through the lens of Black Liberation Theology.

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Over the years I have come to expect that atheists and secular humanists would take advantage of the anonymity provided by the internet to further their world view at the expense of those that lead a life based on faith in God. With little exception unmoderated discussion boards, internet based news outlets and blogs that bear any sign of religious content end up attracting those who seek validation by attacking the faithful.

However I did not expect the partially moderated discussion boards at Amazon.com to be one of those places. How wrong I was.

For those who have nothing better to do than listen to themselves supposedly wax philosophic about how “God is both the murderer and the murdered” or ponder the question, “Is masturbating allowed?” then Amazon.com is the place for you.

Lest anyone think that these subjects are the exception to the rule I suggest you have a look for yourself. Even the discussions that have the most sincere beginnings are soon infiltrated by trolls that have a determined goal of spreading their faith based hate.

All you need do is stop by any one of these hot topics to join in on the fun:

• Evil Bible - in this forum discussion you can discuss the evil of the “Biblical god, who is so immoral, so evil and so blood-thirsty he makes Hitler look like a pussycat.”
• Satan is the light - in this discussion you can continue the theme of the evil bible thread by iterating “the evils perpetrated by the Christian god.” Note that by sheer luck these two threads are started by the same baiter who goes by the pen name Peter. Get it? Peter. Denial of Jesus. Ha. Sorry pal, story doesn’t stop there. Typical.
• In Are creationists liars or scientifically challenged? you can attack everyone who believes in intelligent design based on the fact that “scientists are trained to be objective and unbiased” while religious people are, well, you know, the opposite.
• If these topics aren’t enough to keep you entertained you can always slink over to Christians cant handle the harsh realities of life and the universe, If you believe in Creationism then you approve of incest, or my personal favorite, Jesus was probably gay.

There is no shortage of anti-religious subject matter in the 1200+ active discussions on Amazon’s forum. A point that has me wondering a couple of things:

1. Most companies have rules against this sort of prejudice in the workplace. Considering that Amazon.com employees actively delete posts that someone somewhere has deemed offensive didn’t it occur to any manager that perhaps this sort of content was inappropriate for Amazon.com in general? Why facilitate this stuff at all?
2. Given the hateful rants of many of the posts I wonder what it takes to actually get deleted. Certainly anti-religious subject matter isn’t in that category.
3. Would Amazon leave these discussions up if the topic was derogatory toward any one of the left’s protected special interest groups?
4. Although not a personal fan of the term hate speech I wonder where the Amazon.com management falls within this realm? If ever there was an example of hate speech this forum is it.
5. Does Amazon.com gain any business advantage by having an open forum for lefties and radical nut jobs to attack Christianity?

Perhaps it is a sign of immaturity or more likely a sign of insecurity and ignorance by those who fail to comprehend the spiritual nature of those who define life and happiness through something bigger than themselves. Who knows.

What I can’t comprehend is how Amazon.com justifies providing a forum for such content.

This article is crossposted at Newsbusters.

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Serial killers are the subjects of many documentaries, books, speculation, study, etc., but still no one knows why they do what they do. Browsing late night TV last night, I came across Confessions of a Serial Killer on MSNBC profiling Jeffrey Dahmer and his family circa 1994. I’ve always been fascinated by the serial killer phenomenon because of their random nature. No one has any answers. Not even the experts. Sure, they can point to certain similarities, age groups, race, but none of it is exact.

Yet, watching the Dahmer interview, I finally heard something that made sense. Dahmer, looking very calm and very poised told Stone Phillips that he is responsible for all his crimes and his parents are not. And when asked what made him feel this responsibility he replied,(I’m paraphrasing) “I bought into the lie that evolution was the truth. That we came from slime and when it’s over it’s over. There’s nothing else. And that cheapens life. Then I started reading creation science books and realized that there is no scientific proof for evolution and that it is a lie. I came to realize that we are not here by accident and we are accountable to the Lord.”

Now, I may have gotten one or two words out of order, but that was the gist of it. But his assessment of the cheapening of life perpetrated by the evolution- pushers struck me as the piece missing in this puzzle. How many times have I written about the cheapening of life in the form of abortions where a child is actually pulled out of the womb and stabbed to death by a monster who calls himself a doctor, or the pulling of a feeding tube from a woman whose family is begging for mercy, the infants thrown into trash cans and left to die among the rubbish, and creating embryonic life to disect it and throw it away. We have been bombarded with experts and respected members of our culture who are determined to lower the value of human life! But those are the obvious examples. Dahmer’s thoughts shone a light on the insidious life-haters hiding in the hallways of your child’s school.

It always struck me weird that the “theory” of evolution is treated as a law in public school. So much so that no other “theory” is allowed to be discussed unless it is with a tone of ridicule. And here is the result. A boy, brought up to believe that life is worthless, that we’re all just animals trying to survive for the grand prize of turning back into the dust from which we came. With this as a basis for his belief about what human beings are, he did not see why he should restrain his desires to end that life. For what? For who? We’re all just mammals anyway. If there is no judgment, no God in heaven, no reward, no hope, then why the hell do we do any of the crap we do? Why do we obey the law? Why don’t we steal from our neighbor? The threat of jail isn’t enough. Jail has cable and, as Richard Speck showed us, lots of drugs and sex!

This idea could go a lot of different places. But let me just say that we should all be concerned with the aggressive God-killing going on in the schools that is affecting young people’s lives. There is a chance that another boy like Jeffrey Dahmer is paying attention to his teachers’ distorted view of human existence who is deciding on a path that will devastate everyone around him. If there is no eternal damnation or eternal salvation, then what is the argument you will use to keep your child on a righteous path? Why is murder wrong if there is no God. Why can’t you murder your classmates in cold blood because they were mean to you? Because some judge says so? Or the Constitution? Without God, the Constitution is just a piece of paper with no authority. By whose authority are our rights given? Men? What is the value of human life? These are all questions that should be asked and would be far more educational than how to put condoms on bananas.

The left is on a constant campaign to make us feel and act like animals with no souls. It is my belief that these values (or lack thereof) have led to creating people with no remorse capable of unspeakable horrors.
Man was made for higher existence and for greater purpose than to just go through life as a slab of meat who eats, drinks, poops and screws like a dog. There is something more. Humankind can achieve marvelous things. Why do we keep insisting that it’s all for nothing? Why can’t we see the divine in ourselves, and not in a weirdo crystal-stroking way, but the actual reflection of God, the reflection of the Father in ourselves? We were created in His image. And like you may have your mother’s nose or your father’s feet, you also have your Father’s qualities! And I see that. I see it in great achievements like skyscrapers and in acts of incredible kindness, I see it when tragedy strikes and people rise to their best selves and commit acts of heroism, or in unconditional patience and love, and the ultimate sacrifice of a person who lays down their life for another.

But there is also evidence of evil all around us, as we have daily proof. And yet, there are so many who want to deny its existence. But evil is like a lion roaming the earth, seeking whom it may destroy. Evil is a living thing and it wants your children. It lives in chat rooms and encourages your children to join suicide clubs or teaches them how to build a bomb to slaughter their classmates. It speaks in movies encouraging cultural rot, self-absorption, selfishness and depravity. What are we doing to stop it? What can fight darkness like that?

Some say that religion is an opiate for the masses, to control the populous, to keep us in line. Maybe. But if the opposite is true, and an absence of religion means chaos and anarchy, or cooking your neighbor for dinner….I’ll take religion.

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Via Boortz: University of Oxford researchers will spend nearly $4 million to study why mankind embraces God.

The grant to the Ian Ramsey Center for Science and Religion will bring anthropologists, theologians, philosophers and other academics together for three years to study whether belief in a divine being is a basic part of mankind’s makeup.

“There are a lot of issues. What is it that is innate in human nature to believe in God, whether it is gods or something superhuman or supernatural?” said Roger Trigg, acting director of the center.

Four large, huh? I wonder how much of that goes to the guy who simply thought of doing this. Five percent?

Because at 200k a pop, seems to me what follows are bullets flowing from solid gold keystrokes.

Why do people take the words “increase in minimum wage” literally, when with just a little tiny bit of thinking they could see what really happens is that jobs are outlawed unless the jobs meet a specific criteria. It’s easy to explain how nice folks could fall for this once or twice. How does it continue to happen for the better part of a century?
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Warning: This article contains graphic language, reader discretion is advised.

Yesterday I read that Israel has once again found the need to put the military and her citizens on high alert. But let’s be honest here; can Israel ever really afford to go off of high alert? Anyhow, there is an official declaration of high alert after the death of Jihadist commander Imad Mughniyeh. Hezbollah has accused Israel of killing Mughniyeh and says that it will retaliate “against Israeli targets anywhere in the world”.

Israel ordered its military, embassies and Jewish institutions overseas to go on alert earlier in the day, fearing revenge attacks for the car bomb that killed Mughniyeh Tuesday night in Damascus. The former Hezbollah security chief was one of world’s most wanted fugitives, accused of masterminding attacks that killed hundreds of Americans in Lebanon in the 1980s.

Maybe Israel did it, maybe Israel didn’t, who knows? The point is how many more decades need to go by before Israel is allowed to really retaliate against those that not only intend on wiping her off the map? It can be done slowly or quickly but one can not deny that Israel is constantly in the cross hairs of those who mean to do it’s people harm. Yes, I think that Israel should strike hard and I think that all free nations around the world should support such actions until those who continually assault Israel are wiped out or stop the attacks. I know that innocent people will die but how many decades must the world sit by while innocents are killed repeatedly by terrorists? Don’t those innocents count?

It is time to stop screwing around. I can tell you that Radical Islam isn’t screwing around; they are training men and women everyday to end freedom and create tyranny.

Yesterday I heard that Muslim woman are making bomb apparatuses using a prosthetic pregnant belly to get past security. Woman Honor Thyself had the story:

That’s not a pregnant belly - that’s a bomb.

The NYPD is warning business owners to be on the lookout for female jiha–dists who can hide explosives by faking pregnancy or sweet-talk their way past security officers.

“The threat posed by women is real, and it can’t be overlooked,”.. an NYPD intelligence specialist, said at a security conference yesterday.

I am seriously at the point where 1) I honestly don’t care if it was the Israel took out one of the world’s most wanted terrorits. Clearly, Radical Muslims are nuts; c’mon already….and 2) When are we going to get rid of our bonehead politicians that are dicking around, exacerbating radicalism by using political correctness as the only tool in their arsenal.

I’m just waiting for political correctness to bite us on this fake Muslim pregnancy thing too. I predict that various security tactics will be attacked with the fake outrage of racial profiling. It will be turned into a politically correct attack on pregnant Muslim woman instead of being framed as the commonsensical “Don’t like it? Tough shit. We are profiling pregnant Muslim woman because it has come to our attention that Muslim women are using fake pregnancies as a means to kill innocent people”. As a result you can bet that the dumb ass policy makers will be cowed into searching non-Muslim pregnant woman; after all we can’t do a “profile” to catch the bad guys, or in this case girls, so let’s inconvenience everyone else who don’t actually fit the “profile”.

Between the apologists in America and England with its pro-Sharia F’in Archbishop Rowan Williams - What the hell?

Canadian blogger Right Girl said it best:

Our leaders - be they political or religious - are too wrapped up in politically-correct doublespeak to be able to defend us from this insidious evil. It saddens me that it’s up to a bunch of bloggers and cartoonists to save the world from the new Caliphate, but I have seen more guts come from Dutch filmmakers than I have from my own government, who no longer even believe in freedom of the press.

No truer words have ever been spoken. It is up to the bloggers and cartoonists because most of those who are in the position of power seemingly don’t give a shit and are comfortable with being pacifists.

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The most famous Archbishop of Canterbury was the martyred Thomas a Becket, a man who was ostensibly the victim of a political assassination, yet who essentially died for his faith. He’d been a hard living young man but, when his best friend Henry II invested him as Archbishop of Canterbury, the most important seat in the British religious hierarchy, he went through a profound change and began to take his religion seriously — so seriously that he took political stands antithetical to Henry’s interests, something that came as a great surprise to the latter, who had assumed that Becket’s would be “his man” in the Bishopric. Eventually, Becket’s attempts to defend the church’s integrity against Henry’s political desires irked the latter so much that he exclaimed “Who will rid me of this troublesome priest?” A handful of his loyalists, rather than viewing this as a purely rhetorical question, took it literally, and cut down Becket within the hallowed walls of his own church.

Thinking about Becket, I rather wonder what he would have made of the current occupier of his Bishopric, which is still the most important position in the Church of England:

The Archbishop of Canterbury says the adoption of certain aspects of Sharia law in the UK “seems unavoidable”.

Dr Rowan Williams told Radio 4’s World at One that the UK has to “face up to the fact” that some of its citizens do not relate to the British legal system.

Dr Williams argues that adopting parts of Islamic Sharia law would help maintain social cohesion.

For example, Muslims could choose to have marital disputes or financial matters dealt with in a Sharia court.

He says Muslims should not have to choose between “the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty”.

An approach to law which simply said - there’s one law for everybody - I think that’s a bit of a danger
Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury

In an exclusive interview with BBC correspondent Christopher Landau, ahead of a lecture to lawyers in London later on Monday, Dr Williams argues this relies on Sharia law being better understood. At the moment, he says “sensational reporting of opinion polls” clouds the issue.

I can’t figure out if Williams is naive, stupid or a genuine Fifth Column within the C of E. Aside from the peculiarity of a church leader arguing for the hegemony of another religion, his ignorance is scary. He doesn’t seem to understand that sharia is a package deal. Just today, I read a little bit about that package:

Two sisters – identified only as Zohreh and Azar – have been convicted of adultery in Iran.

They have now been sentenced to be stoned to death.

Adultery is a crime punishable by death in the Islamic Republic of Iran, in accordance with the canons of Islamic Sharia law. The Iranian Supreme Court has upheld the stoning sentence.

Zohreh and Azar have already received 99 lashes for “illegal relations.” Yet they were tried again for the same crime, and convicted of adultery on the evidence of videotape that showed them in the presence of other men while their husbands were absent. The video does not show either of them engaging in any sexual activity at all.

Their crime is non-existent, their trials a miscarriage of justice, and their sentencing a barbarity.

All those who believe in human rights and human dignity should protest against this sentence.

Proponents of sharia law in the West like to point out that it’s just a little thing that helps neighbors mediate fights, or husband and wife avoid (or, if need be, embrace) divorce. They willfully ignore the fact that sharia law is the single most misogynistic law in the world and, perhaps, in history. They — the same people who quiver at the mention of waterboarding — also turn a blind eye to sharia’s demands for whipping, dis-limbing, hanging and beheading. If we in the West let this camel’s innocuous little nose into the tent, if we just look to it just as a mediator of little neighbor disputes, I can assure you that very quickly that whole camel, beheading and all, will have nosed its way into the center of the Western criminal and judicial system, with horrific effects on all, especially women.

Hat tip: JL

UPDATE: Hot Air also caught and commented on this story.

UPDATE II: Another glimpse at the sharia law Williams finds so innocuous.

UPDATE III: Considering Britain’s problem with alcoholism, this little riff on sharia attitudes towards drinking alcohol (a 22 year old being hanged for drinking alcohol four times), might actually be a good thing. (And yes, that was sarcasm.)

See Also: Captains Quarters, The Anchoress
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One of the most striking things about the Jewish Bible is the respect it demands for dead bodies. As a result, Jewish ritual holds that the dead cannot be mutilated in any way and must be interred as quickly as possible — preferably within 24 hours of death. Desecration is anathema to the Jews. Many people ascribe this respect to the Jewish belief in resurrection. Others though, believe that there is one other element to the requirement that bodies be treated with respect, which is the fact that the Jewish religion arose during pagan times — and pagans were deeply committed to body mutilation.

In pagan cultures, which had no separation between “church” and state, the religious leaders would routinely sacrifice people to the Gods and then, before or as part of the death process, the victims’ brains and internal organs would be ripped out by the priests for study and ritual cremation for the gods. (The story of Isaac is, as everyone knows, the definitive Biblical statement against human sacrifice.) Even if people weren’t deliberately sacrificed, but died for other reasons, the state priests could still desecrate the corpses for religious purposes. The instant burial required under Jewish law was almost certainly an effort to protect bodies from assault by pagan priests. To this day, religious Jews will not allow themselves to be cremated.

I was thinking of the pagan state’s interest ripping out the deads’ internal organs when I read this, out of England:

Gordon Brown has thrown his weight behind a move to allow hospitals to take organs from dead patients without explicit consent.

Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, the Prime Minister says that such a facility would save thousands of lives and that he hopes such a system can start this year.

The proposals would mean consent for organ donation after death would be automatically presumed, unless individuals had opted out of the national register or family members objected.

Pragmatically speaking, Brown is right — a lot of perfectly good human organs go to waste when they could be put to use in the living. Nevertheless, there is something creepy and frightening about the state harvesting dead bodies, and it made me think of Jews in pagan times. On the one hand, you had the Jews with their tremendous respect for humanity, and their rules aimed at elevating the human condition and, on the other hand, you had the pagans who viewed the body as something that could be folded, spindled and mutilated depending on how the priests interpreted the whims of the Gods.

The other reason to get worried about this proposal is the “soylent green” nature of it. Once the government gets into the business of harvesting body parts — especially if it’s the same government that runs the health care system — you might want to go somewhere other than a state hospital if you’re at imminent risk of death. Once in the hospital, you may discover to your cost that it’s cheaper for the government to let you die so that it can use your organs for someone who might subsequently be less of a burden on the health care system than you are. Indeed, the plan seems to be set up precisely to achieve that cost effective goal:

But patients’ groups said that they were “totally opposed” to Mr Brown’s plan, saying that it would take away patients’ rights over their own bodies.

There are more than 8,000 patients waiting for an organ donation and more than 1,000 a year die without receiving the organ that could save their lives.

The Government will launch an overhaul of the system next week, which will put pressure on doctors and nurses to identify more “potential organ donors” from dying patients. Hospitals will be rated for the number of deceased patients they “convert” into donors and doctors will be expected to identify potential donors earlier and alert donor co-ordinators as patients approach death. [The emphasis is mine because, if this isn’t scarily Orwellian, I truly don’t know what is.]

Organ donation can be a great gift and I honor those who decide to make it a part of their death. Nevertheless, I cannot conceive of a situation in which it should be anything but voluntary. Having the same government that provides medical treatment make the decision is the stuff of the worst kind of Utopian totalitarianism.

UPDATE: The above story was from the right leaning Telegraph, which presents the plan as something upsetting (something with which I agree). Here’s how the left leaning Guardian presents the same story, with the focus on the needy transplant recipients, not on the state’s increasing control over life, death and after death:

A revolution in the way organs are donated for transplant is called for today by the government’s chief medical officer as concern grows over the acute shortage of donors and the rise in unnecessary deaths.

An expert report to be published this week says that every major hospital in Britain must have an organ donor specialist skilled in persuading grieving families that the hearts, lungs, kidneys and other vital organs of their deceased relatives should be used to save the lives of others.

Sir Liam Donaldson, England’s chief medical officer, will back the findings of the government’s taskforce on organ donation, but wants to go further and introduce a new system of donation because the shortage of organs is so severe. Three people a day are dying while on the waiting list for a transplant as the demand for a new organ is rapidly outstripping their supply.

Donaldson is advocating a system of ‘presumed consent’, where everyone in Britain would be presumed to be a donor unless they had specifically opted out, or unless their families had objections.

‘We have one of the lowest rates [of organ donation] in Europe, far lower than Spain,’ he told The Observer. ‘We have one thousand or more patients dying on the waiting list each year, and there is a lot of suppressed demand, with doctors not even referring patients on to the list because there is no hope for them. That is a lot of patients dying.

‘I think at the moment people often don’t know whether their relative would have wanted to be a donor. Families are being approached when they are in a very distressed condition and, faced with uncertainty, their default position is to refuse consent. Often the quality of their dealing with clinical staff is not as good as it should be - the dialogue could be better. It does require considerable skill to handle such sensitive situations.’

Today we reveal the heartbreak of those who are waiting for organs and the uplifting stories of families who have consented to donate, and launch a campaign for the UK to move to the new system of presumed consent so that hundreds more lives can be saved.

As for me, having read that, I still find too Orwellian the thought of the government, in all its bureaucratic splendor, deciding who lives and who dies, and desecrating the dead in between those two extremes.

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Bloody Mary — or Mary I, her more official title — was Henry VIII’s oldest daughter by his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Raised by staunchly Catholic parents, she too was staunchly Catholic. By the time she was about 16, however, Henry VIII was troubled by Catherine’s inability to bear a son (because the dynastic consequences were huge) and was madly in lust with Anne Boleyn.

As you all know, when the Pope, who was utterly dependent on Charles V of Spain, Queen Catherine’s nephew, refused to grant Henry either a divorce or an annulment, Henry found his own way out of the situation, which was to declare himself head of the British church. In effect, if he couldn’t divorce the Queen, he’d divorce Rome. Being of a bullying nature, he worked hard and brutally to force Mary to give up her allegiance to Rome, but she refused to do so — and suffered mightily for that refusal, including being barred from seeing her beloved mother as the latter lay dying.

Things got even worse for Mary after her father’s death, when Edward VI ascended the throne. Unlike Henry, who remained Catholic to his death, despite rejecting Roman supremacy, Edward VI was a hardcore Protestant, as were those who ruled in his stead (since he was a minor when he ascended the throne). Edward and his ministers worked hard during his short reign to remove all “Papish” influences from England, and to “Reform” the English church entirely. When it became apparent that Edward would not live past his 16th year, Edward and his ministers conspired to elevate Lady Jane Grey to the throne, despite the fact that Henry VIII’s will had given Mary the succession after Edward.

Poor Lady Jane reigned for only nine days before the people of England — or, rather, the people of Southern England, especially in and around London — who had no liking for being manipulated, surged behind Mary and placed her on the throne. (Incidentally, after Mary became queen, she tried being lenient to Jane Grey. When it became apparent, however, that Jane Grey was a rallying point for those who wished to see a Protestant England, Mary very reluctantly sent Jane to the block.)

Mary’s reign started with real hope. People liked her, they admired her tremendous loyalty to the old faith and to her mother, and they appreciated her resemblance to her father. The problem was that this same loyalty had created in Mary a kind of rigidity that she could not leave behind when forced to rule a more diverse England than that into which she was born. She immediately set about restoring Catholicism and reaffirming England’s allegiance to Rome, but she coupled that with a couple of things the English found intolerable: she married Phillip of Spain, and appeared to be giving him (and, therefore, Spain) more power than the xenophobic British people could stand and, when certain British people expressed a preference for Protestantism over Catholicism, she felt it was her bounden duty to burn them.

It’s rather interesting that the British took so much umbrage to the burnings. This was, after all, an exceptionally violent age. Bear baiting, and dog and cock fights, which invariably ended with all the animal combatants dead or horribly wounded, were considered good entertainment for the whole family. More crimes than we can imagine were punishable by death — hanging for the commoners, beheading for the rich and powerful. Torture was common.

Death was also omnipresent from natural causes. Plague still reoccurred on a regular basis; the sweating sickness, a killer disease unique to England showed up regularly; and people died from everything from an infected toenail, to childbirth fever, to measles, to you name it. Child morality hovered around 50%, as it would until well into the Victorian Age. Death — violent, horrible, suffering death — was omnipresent.

Yet for all death’s familiarity, ordinary Englishmen drew the line at burnings. Burnings were Spanish and Papist. They were foreign and utterly un-English. Mary’s burnings also had no class distinction and the common people, rather than being pleased by this macabre democratic approach to heresy, were appalled. Feelings hardened and even those people who had a laissez faire approach to religion, in that they would go whichever way the monarch went, suddenly decided that Catholicism was foreign and mean and ugly.

By the time the well-intentioned, fundamentally kind, but dogmatic and religiously fanatic Mary died, the British people were grateful to see the last of her. They were also grateful when the flexible, pragmatic Elizabeth came to the throne. She was happy with a middle way religion and freely professed that she had no desire to peer into her subject’s souls. It was very early in her reign, therefore, that the British settled into the great compromise, which was a religion that was an amalgam of Protestant and Catholic doctrine and ritual.

And so the Anglican church that we know was born under Elizabeth. Mary knew this would happen — she was resigned to it at her death — but it was a terrible heartache for her. Her tragic and pathetic life was defined by her hope that England would be restored to the true faith, and she viewed that as a gift she was bestowing on her people. She never could understand why they wanted to reject that gift, and why they viewed the burnings as an insult rather than a remedy aimed at the unpleasant, but necessary task, of purifying England to save the English.

It’s an interesting history, certainly, but why should we care today? We should care today because, for the first time since Bloody Mary died, her religion has truly been restored to British soil, and I’m not just talking about Tony Blair’s conversion. Instead, despite the fact that Britain’s Muslims are probably having more babies than any other religious groups, it is the immigrants from Eastern Europe and Southern Africa who are currently have the greatest effect on the country’s faith — they’re turning it Catholic:

Roman Catholics have overtaken Anglicans as the country’s dominant religious group. More people attend Mass every Sunday than worship with the Church of England, figures seen by The Sunday Telegraph show.

This means that the established Church has lost its place as the nation’s most popular Christian denomination after more than four centuries of unrivalled influence following the Reformation.

Girls from the Salisbury Cathedral Choire School rehearsing
Girls from the Salisbury Cathedral Choir School rehearsing. While church-going declines, cathedrals fare better

Last night, leading figures gave warning that the Church of England could become a minority faith and that the findings should act as a wake-up call.

The statistics show that attendance at Anglican Sunday services has dropped by 20 per cent since 2000. A survey of 37,000 churches, to be published in the new year, shows the number of people going to Sunday Mass in England last year averaged 861,000, compared with 852,000 Anglicans ­worshipping.

The rise of Catholicism has been bolstered by an influx of immigrants from eastern Europe and Africa, who have packed the pews of Catholic parishes that had previously been dwindling.

Read the rest of the story about the changing face of Britain’s Christianity here and here.

If Mary is in the Heaven in which she so devoutly believed, she’s quite happy right now.

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Update: Yahoo has an updated story today that includes the Muslim elements related to the girls death. But get this, despite the fact that the girl confided to friends that her father would kill her for not wearing traditional Muslim garb the Council for Islamic American Relations (CAIR) is defending the father calling it a case of “domestic abuse”. Not only that but idiots in the Canadian police department are saying that they haven’t determined a motive. This is a real life case of dumb and dumber.

Police spokesman Wayne Patterson said authorities were working at determining the motive and refused to confirm it was over the hijab, the traditional Muslim head scarf. A lawyer for father said there was “more to the story than just cultural issues.”

But friends said Aqsa Parvez was planning to leave home in Mississauga, Ontario because of tensions with her family over her decision to stop wearing her head scarf at high school. They said she often had bruises on her arms and that she predicted days before her death that her father would “kill her.”

“Her dad would want her to be about Muslim this, Muslim that, but she was more about living her life to the fullest. She just wanted to show her parents that you could be religious, but also be who you wanted to be,” said Alex Prasad, a friend and fellow student at Parvez’s suburban Toronto school, Applewood Heights Secondary.

Note the following statement by CAIR as well as the statement from the president of the Islamic Social Services Association who tries to blame it on the hormones and emotions of teens trying to assert their independence. Nice try.

Is it any wonder that American’s are sick of CAIR and like groups that try to protect radical Islamists from public scrutiny?

Selma Djukic, a spokeswoman for the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations, called it a case of domestic abuse.

“This is a tragedy. This another woman that has succumbed to domestic violence and we need to look at what kind of services are available to families who are immigrants and who are trying to make it in the Canadian framework,” Djukic said.

Shahina Siddiqui, president of the Islamic Social Services Association, also called it a domestic violence issue.

“To say it was about her not wearing the hijab, I think that’s an oversimplification. All we’ve heard is from her peers saying that,” Siddiqui said. “Many of us who have teenagers or had teenagers know this is a very difficult time. Their hormones and emotions are raging and they are trying to assert their independence.”

Globe and Mail - Canada is reporting that Muhammad Parvez, 57, murdered his 16 year old daughter, Aqsa Parvez for refusing to wear the hijab (H/T: Right Girl). As is typical of the thin skinned MSM you will not find one mention of the world Muslim or any sort of statement pointing out that the deranged man killed his daughter in the name of Islam. In fact the newspaper files the story under the generic non-judgmental headline, Father charged in teen’s killing.

Of course we know different just from reading the report because she was killed for refusing to wear a hijab.

A 16-year-old girl died in hospital late Monday night, hours after police in Mississauga received a call from a man saying he had killed his daughter.

Muhammad Parvez, 57, has been charged with murder in connection with the death of his daughter, Aqsa Parvez. He will appear Tuesday in a Brampton court.

The victim’s 26-year-old brother, Waqas Parvez, has been charged with obstructing police.

Students at nearby Applewood Heights Secondary School in Mississauga said the teen had recently clashed with her family after ceasing to wear a hijab and adopting a more Western style of dress.

According to police, the chain of events began yesterday morning with a phone call from a home near Hurontario Street and Eglinton Avenue.

“At 7:55 a.m., we received a 911 call from a man claiming that he had just killed his daughter,” Constable J.P. Valade of Peel Police said.

Constable Valade said when paramedics arrived at the single-family detached home on Longhorn Trail, they found a 16-year-old suffering from life-threatening injuries. The teenager was taken immediately to Credit Valley Hospital and later transferred in critical condition to the Hospital for Sick Children, where she died, according to police.

It seems that Canadian journalists are just as bad as their U.S. counterparts, if not worse. They lack the courage and testicular fortitude to mention what has fashionably become unmentionable. As such they are not reporters, they are note takers.

Sadly we sit here 6 years after 9-11 and I can only mention a handful of Muslims that have condemned this sort of behavior. Unfortunately Canada has no death penalty, not that it matters much though. The libs that are afraid to point out that this was an act of violence done in the name of radical Islamic teachings are just as likely to have a similar ho-hum attitude toward this senseless and needless death.

See Also: Michelle Malkin

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