Post 222--Boy Scouts--Mormons-- Post-Gender

The components of this post title seem like strange or, at least, unusual "bed partners," a term that in this context is kind of a pun. I don't know about you, but I love puns and frequently look for them. After you read this post, you may well appreciate this one.  

Not only does the title consist of unusual bed partners, but I may well have just coined a neologism, that is, a new word--"Post-Gender."  At least, I do not recall ever having come across the term.That's another thing I love to do: coin neologisms in my writings. Just because a word is not in the latest dictionary does  not mean it is wrong or illegitimate. Languages grow because of people like me, who create new words that then slowly gain in popularity, till even the dictionary editors agree and include it. Language is one of the most democratic entities in the world. Even the most oppressive civilizations continue to create new words and no one can stop that process--or progress!

As to the connection between these bed partners, I invite you to read the article below by Jim Denison.  Yes, it's an American story, but it will undoubtedly affect the Canadian scout movement as well. I have not done any research on the Canadian scouts and have not come across any media stories about them on the issue of this post, but I would not be surprised if they have beat the Americans to the draw, for Canadian culture is often more quickly accepting of such changes in culture, something I am not proud of. 

I am not sure of my reactions to this change in the Scouts, for I am not familiar enough with them to know what practical effect it would have.  Furthermore, I am wary of gender changes among children and teens, for apparently research is showing that tendencies at that early age are often reversed in the early twenties. I believe that we should fully accept genuine trans-gendered persons, for they are not that by choice but by factors over which we have little control and which they do not voluntarily choose.  
But I also suspect that we need to be careful of this feature in early life.  So, for me the jury is still out.

I do have some advice for my Mormon neighbours. Instead of creating your own scouting equivalent, consider joining the very successful equivalent my own church, the Christian Reformed Church, has been operating for years already.  

Nevertheless, I pass on this article to give you a feeling of the social disruption such radical changes introduce into society.  Should I say, "Enjoy the read?" Not sure.   

The Boy Scouts are dropping "Boy" from their name

Dr. Jim Denison | May 10, 2018

READ TIME: 4 minutes--plus 1 minute for my intro.

I remember fondly my years with the Boy Scouts. Overnight campouts with my father. Lessons in outdoor survival and the care of nature. Building camaraderie in an environment uniquely suited to develop boys into men. As a teenager, I became too involved in academics and other activities to continue in the Boy Scouts, but I have always admired the Eagle Scouts I met and consider their achievement to be enormously significant. The list of notable Eagle Scouts includes President Gerald Ford, astronaut Neil Armstrong (the first man on the moon), Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, and businessman Sam Walton. The Boy Scouts have been one of America's great cultural institutions. Five years ago, things began to change. What the BSA has done From their inception in 1910, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) excluded openly gay people from membership or leadership. The Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that they had a legal right to continue this position. Then companies such as UPS, drug manufacturer Merck, and the United Way began opposing the organization's policy, choosing to stop or postpone their financial support. A gay advocacy group gathered more than 1.2 million online signatures to protest the BSA's position. In response, the BSA voted on May 23, 2013, to open the organization to openly gay individuals. On July 27, 2015, they chose to permit openly gay Scout leaders. On January 30, 2017, the BSA announced that transgender boys would be allowed to enroll in boys-only programs, effective immediately. On October 11, 2017, they announced that girls would be allowed to become Cub Scouts in 2018 and that a separate program for older girls would begin in 2019. To further the inclusion of girls, the BSA is now dropping "Boy" from the name of its signature program. Starting in February 2019, the Boy Scouts program for boys ages eleven to seventeen will be called Scouts BSA. The overall organization will remain Boy Scouts of America. The organization said the decision was in response to the needs of families and because of dropping membership. The BSA has lost about a third of its members since 2000. Why the Mormon response is important When the BSA decided to include openly gay Scouts five years ago, a leader in the organization told me that the key reaction to watch would come from the Mormon Church. For a century, any boy who was part of a Mormon congregation was automatically part of the Boy Scouts. As a result, more Scouts have come from Mormon churches than from any other organization. However, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has announced it will sever all ties with the BSA. Their affiliation will end on December 31, 2019. This change will affect hundreds of thousands of Mormon boys in more than thirty thousand congregations across the country. The church will create its own youth program, to be launched in January 2020. The church said it was "deeply troubled" by the BSA's decision to lift the ban on openly gay adult leaders in 2015. The Mormon Church opposes same-sex marriage, teaches that sex outside of marriage is sinful, and does not permit openly gay men or women to hold leadership roles. Abandoning vital distinctives I recently read an advance copy of John S. Dickerson's Hope of Nations: Standing Strong in a Post-Truth, Post-Christian World. Dickerson is a pastor, researcher, and award-winning journalist. His latest book is an illuminating, troubling, and inspiring look into the likely future for our culture. In light of Dickerson's outstanding research, it is clear to me that BSA leaders are responding to a culture that should trouble us all. Dickerson notes that 89 percent of Americans believe "people should not criticize someone else's life choices." A frightening 74 percent of Millennials believe morality to be a matter of cultural consensus (compared with 39 percent of Elders who agree). Bernie Sanders ran for president in 2016 as an overt socialist. More Millennials voted for him in the 2016 presidential primaries than for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton—combined. Clearly, the younger Americans are, the less committed they are to traditional values and biblical truth. BSA leaders apparently believe that compromising their traditional values and distinctives by including all sexual identities and genders is the way forward in this pluralistic, relativistic day. I would respond that they are abandoning what made them such a unique and vibrant part of our national ethos. If a ship in a storm jettisons the cargo it was intended to protect, it fails its mission. How to be good ambassadors You and I are "ambassadors for Christ" (2 Corinthians 5:20). Ambassadors have three jobs: (1) understand the foreign culture where they now live; (2) represent the authority on whose behalf they serve; (3) work faithfully until they are called home. Today, you will be the presence of Christ to those you meet. They will judge your Master by his messenger. If you ask the Holy Spirit to author your words (Mathew 10:19) and sanctify your character (Galatians 5:22–23), he will. Jesus came "to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor" (Luke 4:18–19). Let's join him.

Post 209--Church and Limits of Solar Energy

Sometimes I get disgusted with the denomination of which I am a member, the Christian Reformed Church (CRC). So often it does not live up to its own theology.At other times I am really proud of it and that's the case today. The church or its members can sometimes be very imaginative, at the front edge of things, creative.  

Today's story is about an American community. Now, I am not an American and I do not live in America. I am a Canadian living in Vancouver BC. However, my denomination straddles the border between our two countries; it has both Canadian and American members and churches. This story is American but in the context of an international church.

I share with you a story from the January issue of the CRC monthly, The Banner. It's a short story, but a powerful one, for it can serve as a model to be followed. And if all the churches were to follow its example, just imagine how much energy would be saved to be used for other causes!  And, of course, just imagine how much money each church would save that could be used for more positive things.  

The only thing I hope is that this would not deplete the supply of solar energy!  Not sure whether that is possible. My question here is: Is solar energy inexhaustible. Can we use too much of it like we do oil?  I have long ago been told that nothing is infinite except God. But what of solar energy? 

Here then is the article:

        “New Mexico Church to Run on Solar Energy”

            By Amy Toornstra

This fall, the people of Bethany Christian Reformed Church in Gallup, N.M., watched as a local company constructed an 1,800-foot carport fixed with 100 solar panels in their church parking lot. The solar energy collected from the panels will provide all the electrical needs for the church building. The carport project was initiated by the church’s “green team” coordinated by Rick Kruis, a member of Bethany CRC and leader in the Christian Reformed Office of Social Justice Climate Witness Project. The new construction was funded by investors within the church. The investor team will sell the solar energy back to the church in the first several years at a fixed cost of 12 cents per kilowatt hour until the system has paid for itself. With those costs less than the current utility rate, the church will save approximately $10,390 over eight years. After that, for the 25-year lifespan of the system, the church will have its energy supplied at no cost, saving about $172,000 over time. The church’s carbon output will also be reduced, eliminating approximately 944 tons of carbon dioxide over the life of the system. —

In The Banner, January 2018, p. 14.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/prod.assets.thebanner/37131%20Banner%202018-01_final%20lr_0.pdf

 

Post 97—Do You Have a Cigarette?

Het is geen man

Die niet roken kan

Smoking in Lutjegast

That little vignette is one I grew up with in my Dutch village Lutjegast. It means simply that if you don’t smoke, you’re not a man. And our village meant it, seriously. As a young boy, I knew every single person in the 1100-person village, barring none. And I knew a great deal of child-appropriate stuff about almost everyone, barring one or two.  But there were two categories of people who puzzled me: those who were not married and those who did not smoke!  That married thing affected both genders, but the smoking only males. Women did not smoke, period. One who did would hardly be considered female—the complete opposite. 

And smoke the men did—with a few exceptions, but they were not men anyway, these mysterious creatures. Everyone, from pauper to pastor smoked. Though pretty well all Christians in today’s Canada oppose smoking and see it as an unhealthy addiction, that was not the case in Lutjegast or in the rest of the country. Even our church elders during their monthly meetings would smoke cigarettes, pipes or cigars, possibly accompanied by wine.  My Dad, a serious Christian, was one of the main cigarette merchants in town. As Christians, we were strictly opposed to so-called “worldly amusements,” but smoking was not one of them.

As to myself, during my early teens I was eager to join the ranks of adult men. One of the rights of passage to arrive there was to smoke. So, I would rush the season by occasionally “borrowing” a package of cigarettes from my Dad’s supply and share cigarettes with my friends. Just imagine the hero I was!  Ah, yes, we were getting there!

Imagine our surprise when we immigrated to Canada in 1951. For the first time in our lives we met Christians who thought smoking sinful, especially Baptists.  What kind of Christians are these? we wondered. Smoking sin?  Aw, get off the pot (pun intended)!  We were from a Reformed church in The Netherlands and smoked lustily right after our Christian Reformed (CRC) morning service—outside, for all to see.  We became known as the “smoking church,” a derisive distinction among Canadian Christians.

That was the 1950s.

Baptist versus Reformed

The tradition continued for some time after our immigration to BC, also in my own life. Though I was too young to be a dedicated smoker, Dad did occasionally allow me to smoke a cigarette. I have several pictures from that period of my smoking, one of them in our living room right after coming home from church. Over time I became a regular smoker, though never a heavy one. I actually went in and out—quit and resumed, quit and resumed. Later, during my 50s in Nigeria, I would smoke an occasional  cigar or pipe, but Nigerian Christians severely reprimanded me. I eventually gave that up as well, not because I considered it sin, but it hurt my throat and vocal chords—which, I guess, did turn it into a sin, since we are not to abuse our bodies. My Dad, he was a chain smoker for some 40 years.  

Fast forward to the 21^st century—2016. Somewhere along the line at around 60, my Dad suddenly quit cold turkey and from there on chastised anyone who could not manage such a drastic change—really, kind of hypocritical. But today you will hardly see anyone smoking after a CRC service. Neither will elders smoke during their meetings. We’ve become Canadians!  Indigenized. Smoking is sin, we now argue vigorously. The Baptists were ahead of their time. Well our time anyhow. Not just time wise, but even ethic-wise.   They were right; we were wrong! Wow, that was a hard one to swallow.  Baptists more right than we Reformed?  Was that possible?  Well, they were, possible or not. Some of us are still smarting from that humiliation! 

But in Canada we’re pretty well on one page on this one now, Baptist or Reformed, Christian or Secular. There’s a strong awareness that smoking kills and is, in fact, one of the most ferocious killers in the country.  Many places are now out of bounds to smokers, including restaurants and city parks, most major buildings, not to speak of church facilities. Remaining smokers are feeling the pressure and are defensive. Things have turned topsy-turvy.  Now it’s almost a matter of

                                                                  

                       Het is geen man

Die nog roken kan

“It’s not a man who still smokes,” but now women (vrouw-en) have to be included as well, like:

Het is geen man of vrouw

Die nog roken wou

By now you can probably figure it out! But, just in case, here it is in the Queen’s English:

It is not a man or woman

Who still wants to smoke

Doesn’t quite sound like a limerick in English, but it makes the point.

The following public practices have become offensive and are seen as ill-mannered:

         

Smoking in any crowd, thereby forcing people to inhale your secondary smoke, even on the sidewalk, at a bus stop, in the park or on the beach.

          Dumping your cigarette butt carelessly on the                 street. It’s considered littering, especially when               your city has attached butt trays to lamp posts for           that purpose.

Smoking yourself to death at my expense. Of course, that holds for all unhealthy practices, some of which, I am hesitant to admit, I practice as well.  So we all end up in the same ball park.

What of those who argue smoking is part of our freedom?  Should it even be that?  When it creates so much sickness leading to death and I have to pay for the results of your addiction through our medical system? Why should I?  Our forced insurance system logically leads to a great increase of my public responsibility for my health and for a restriction of my freedom to smoke or engage in other personally harmful practices. I have at least the moral, if not legal, right to demand you stop. Through our insurance system, we have become each other’s keepers—exactly where Jesus wanted us to begin with. It took a Baptist preacher-politician to get us there almost over the dead bodies of the RCMP. 

Even as a human right smoking is now frowned upon.  The last couple of days there’s been a story in the media about an employer who for years has refused to hire anyone who smokes, on or off the job, even at home. Even in “human rights-cracy” Canada, so far no one has sued him. No one has yet tried to make a quick legal buck of this practice? That says something about how far we’ve come—a long way indeed.

What of those who argue smoking is part of our freedom?  Should it even be that?  When it creates so much sickness leading to death and I have to pay for the results of your addiction through our medical system? Why should I?  Our forced insurance system logically leads to a great increase of my public responsibility for my health and for a restriction of my freedom to smoke or engage in other personally harmful practices. I have at least the moral, if not legal, right to demand you stop. Through our insurance system, we have become each other’s keepers—exactly where Jesus wanted us to begin with. It took a Baptist preacher-politician to get us there almost over the dead bodies of the RCMP. 

The best solution to all this is to encourage each other to live our lives along the best health guidelines as possible and remember our responsibility to each other.

Now try that last version of that Dutch limerick on your smoking friend!

Post 89--Pegida—Germans and Refugees

            

           The following is about a German organization known as PEGIDA. I have taken            it over from Wikipedia and therefore cannot vouch for 100% accuracy. I realize            I am taking a great risk in posting this document, for PEGIDA has a bad name              in the media. But that media is mostly liberal, leftist in orientation and generally            condemns the sentiments expressed in this post without giving it a fair hearing.              Some of the statements below are purely local German politics for which I     

           cannot vouch either. Some of it is definitely questionable and would need    

           greater nuance before I would support it. Nevertheless, the document as a                      whole draws our attention to some refugee issues that the liberal mainline           

           politicians and media tend to hide, obscure or flatly deny, if not ridicule. 

I believe you, my readers, have a right to hear the PEGIDA folk themselves out and make up your own mind. And then see what you can take away from it and apply to Canadian refugee policy. You will note that in the document PEGIDA recommends Canada’s refugee policy. So that their perspective can’t be that bad, right?

Unfortunately, much of Canada’s policy is based on a totally inexperienced and quick-to-talk Prime Minister, who has forced himself into an unceasing process of chipping away at his questionable campaign promise of hauling in 25,000 refugees before the end of 2015. How could Canadians fall for such immaturity? 

It can only be explained in terms of the “monster” that Harper portrayed himself to be, a monster Canadians wanted to get rid of at all costs. Well, they did. I’m glad we got rid of the “monster,” but I’m not so sure we did not simply replace him with another type of monster, one who has shown himself either to be ignorant during his campaign or deceitful or, perhaps worst of all, populist; not sure which. Whether ignorant or deceitful or populist, as one who sought the leadership of a nation, any one of these three would turn him into a monster Prime Minister. Perhaps the jury is still out on that one.

I want it understood that I welcome refugees. A hundred of them are at the moment my next-door neighbours, having been put up in a hotel. I see them every day. I stop to welcome them and chat with them as much as language allows. Before long, an unceasing flow of refugees will be the neighbours of my church, the First Christian Reformed Church of Vancouver on Victoria Drive and Tenth Avenue. A welcoming centre is under construction next door to this church and I have voted for that church to support a chaplain cum social worker to help the Centre “process” refugees, a move the Centre itself welcomes with open arms.

But I do resist careless acceptance of refugees without rigorous due process.  Previous recent posts on this blog have indicated that it is often lacking in rigour.  I don’t need to repeat all that.

I do remember years ago, when I would visit friends and relatives in my “old country,”  The Netherlands, that I predicted that with the end of the Cold War, Islam would become the West’s next challenge. I warned my listeners that the guest workers they were importing at the time, would become serious problems for Europe in the future. They dismissed me as a “red neck.”  Some of them recall those discussions and no longer apply that epithet to me.

So, here then a brief Wikipedia introduction to PEGIDA and then its document translated from its own German words.  Read it. Think about it. Reject the inappropriate and then insist on policies for our own Government that are based on actual facts and have an eye for potential dangers.

Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident^{[note 1]} (German: Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes), abbreviated PEGIDA or Pegida, is a German anti-Islamisation^[1][2][3] political movement founded in Dresden in October 2014. The organisation team in Dresden usually holds demonstrations every Monday, at a location and time specified beforehand on its Facebook page, against what it considers the Islamisation of the Western world, calling for more restrictive immigration rules, particularly for Muslimswho refuse to integrate (see Item 16 of its Position Paper). Offshoots of Pegida have been formed in various countries.

10 PEGIDA Demands on German Asylum Politics

On 11 September 2015, Pegida posted 10 demands on German asylum politics on its Facebook page, as reported by heute.^[62] Although an official Pegida translation exists on its Facebook page, the following is an improved version that harks back to the original German:

1.) We call for an immediate stop on asylum seekers, and we call for a German asylum emergency law - now!

Our asylum laws were conceived after the war for the manageable quantity of approximately 2,000 refugees per year and not for the million we expected to reach in 2015!

2.) We call for strict border controls! We demand IMMEDIATE suspension of the Schengen Agreement - on all of Germany's borders!

Other EU countries already monitor their national borders again - even though the completely failed Dublin procedure is a burden rests mostly on Germany's back. The temporary reintroduction of border controls during the G7 summit has proven that border controls hinder illegal border crossings, the flourishing business of the smuggling mafia and the entry of criminals.

3.) We demand that the group of "safe countries of origin" be expanded to ALL Council of Europe member countries!

This Council of Europe has 47 member countries with 830 million citizens and over 1,800 European officials.

All member states have committed themselves to the preservation of democracy and rule of law as well as the recognition of fundamental human rights. That should be enough to count these countries as safe countries!

4.) We call for a TEMPORARYLY LIMITED right of asylum for war refugees!

Of course, real war refugees and accepted asylum seekers are to be granted temporary protection and full coverage on a MODEST scale. But once the situation in the home country improves, the refugees have to leave our country again.

5.) We call for a binding limit on the annual reception of asylum seekers, set namely by ourselves, the host country Germany!

This vital question about the future of our country must be carried out by means of direct democracy - through a referendum!

6.) We demand honesty, at long last, in the integration debate and the end of the red-green^{[note 3]} social-romantic tale of wanting to integrate masses of male, African asylum seekers here!

No one wants that. The green socialists use the refugees to create a red-green job wonder for bachelor graduates of chatter sciences here. The pathological altruism and do-gooders with feigned empathy are moral invisibility cloaks, which cover the highly lucrative migrant market.

7.) We demand that all rejected asylum seekers and hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants be deported at once, as logic would have it!

Again: We call for MASS deportations - and do it NOW!

8.) We demand that the refugee problem be resolved locally, in their own cultures!

Our so-called representatives of the people should show some backbone and take Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to task.

These wealthy, huge Sharia paradises are much better suited to accommodate the crowds of Muslim asylum seekers than a Europe of unbelievers! And we need, at long last, asylum audits right in the countries of origin. Applications for asylum in Germany have to be decided by fast-track procedure locally even in North Africa!

9.) We demand that foreign criminal, who stand in alliance with Islamic terrorist organizations be deported immediately!

This naturally also includes the adopted "sons and daughters" of German Minister of Internal Affairs de Maiziere, all these jihad returnees and all known and violent Salafists - these people also deserve to be deported from Europe immediately!

10.) The expected resistance from Brussels about any changes in German immigration and asylum policies must be answered with exit from this bullying dump EU.

The future French President Marine Le Pen has summarized it concisely in the demand for "the destruction of this EU"

It’s only this radical way which works! This EU will never be able to reform - who would rationalize away his own highly paid job?

Asylum seekers driven by nothing other than economic reasons are NOT welcome! Christian refugees, especially those who are oppressed by murderous Islamists, are absolutely welcome in Germany and we provide the shelter, food and life support they need, because this is a natural German trait. To all others: STAY OUT!

We, the people of the European nations, need to unite, to conserve and to defend our values, our culture, our freedom. We need to unite against the self-declared kings and queens in Brussels. We, the German people, need international support against our own politicians in our German parliaments.

Our politicians want to change the current form of government of the Federal Republic of Germany substantially, they want to abolish the German state and replace the German people with a multicultural society, they want to establish a multiethnic state on German soil - this behaviour is high treason!

Well, there it is. Plenty of food for thought.  You now have it directly from the horse’s mouth—from PEGIDA, not me!  Does the paragraph above this one not remind you of Trudeau Sr? And now of our current Jr?  I am not sure I'd call it "high treason," but we should ask what it is we are seeing—the inexperience of youth or populism or what? Are we sure we want to go there?  Do we know what that might look like?  Or are we just barging into the unknown and gambling with the future of an entire nation--of our children and grandchildren?

I’m off to one of the largest annual conferences in downtown Vancouver: Missions Fest Vancouver.  I’m on their Board and thus have plenty to keep me busy over the weekend. See you next week. Perhaps I'll give you a report.

Post 86—The State of the United Church of Canada

           

I am not expert on the United Church of Canada (UCC), but I do know a few things about it. When we first immigrated to Canada in 1951, I was a boy of thirteen. We spent our first year in Pitt Meadows, BC, and then moved to Alberni on Vancouver Island. You will no longer find that name on the map, for the city has merged with and is now known as Port Alberni, its former twin city. That’s where I first became aware of UCC.  It was largely a negative awareness, for I, along with our local CRC congregation, considered it a totally liberal church that had long ago forsaken the Gospel. We did not feel the need to become more familiar with the denomination or its local congregation. It was liberal. Punkt. The end of the matter. We wanted nothing to do with it.

I carried that attitude with me to college and, later, into my seminary, Calvin Theological Seminary, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I graduated in 1965. During my years there, I wrote a research paper for a Church History course in which I traced the history of UCC from its beginning in 1925, when two and a half Canadian “mainstream” denominations, all of them known to be liberal, merged to form UCC. I “faithfully” described the church as fully liberal in a less than sympathetic spirit.  Though I still have some seminary research papers in my archives, this one unfortunately got lost—or is that perhaps fortunately? It might have ended up on my website and I bore you with its denunciations of that liberal church.  So, consider yourself lucky, if not fortunate. But, sorry, now you’re reading about it here! Sometimes you just can’t get away.

We are now 50 years further down the pike. Many things have changed, including denominations and individuals, including my denomination, the CRC. Whereas previously it looked at the UCC askance from afar, the two churches now meet each other in the context of the Canadian Council of Churches and other ecumenical settings, including the newly formed World Communion of Reformed Churches (WCRC).  The CRC has become more sure of itself and feels free to reach out to churches with which it generally tends to disagree. It is also member of the Evangelical Fellowship of Churches. It eats from both sides, precisely because it rejects the one-sidedness of both traditions and embraces both, a natural consequence of the Reformational pattern of the Canadian section of the CRC.

But I as an individual have also changed and become more broadminded and ecumenical. When we went “church shopping” in Vancouver in 2001, the UCC was a serious contender for our loyalty. Rather than repeat this story, I refer you to Volume 4 of our memoir, Every Square Inch, pp. 64-67 (www.SocialTheology.com/Boeriana.htm).  You will learn there that I had become more nuanced and recognized good things in UCC as well as negatives. Nevertheless, we ended up across the street at First Baptist Church (FBC) of Vancouver, though I am still tempted by UCC for its broader cultural approach to the city. We are now associated with both the CRC and FBC.

The question is now: Have I been wrong, or, at least, partially wrong about the UCC all these years?  Is the situation more nuanced? Well, yes, it is and probably always has been. But please remember what I wrote in the previous post on this score and compare that sentiment with an article by Douglas Todd of the Vancouver Sun (VS) entitled “Atheist Clergy Should Remove Masks” (July 4, 2015, p. I-5), a controversial one, I might add (See letters to editor in VS July 11, 2015).  Among other things, Todd adduces the views of some scholars.  Mark Noll, a well-known scholar at Notre Dame University, holds that the church “has declined in part because it embraced secularism, pluralism and multiculturalism.”  That, of course, brings her right in line with the dominant Canadian culture, exactly as suggested in Post 85 above.  Then there is Ontario scholar Nancy Christie who thinks the church “faltered because it promoted personal freedom above public morality.” 

A feature related to the above is that the UCC tolerates atheist preachers on its pulpits. Well, yes, why not if you have embraced the three

“-isms” in the above paragraph?  Todd talks of “the strange case of Vosper,” a female UCC pastor who loudly proclaims atheism and has even published books on the subject. He considers her case “strange” not because of what she preaches, for her thoughts are very commonplace among humanists and other secularists, nothing new or unique about them. It is “strange” because the UCC tolerates this conviction on the pulpit. He writes, the UCC “has become so freedom-fixated and inclusive—often boasting ‘We Welcome Everyone’—that it has lost its boundaries.”              

Todd further suggests that it is time for UCC “to reform itself by becoming more honest.” It suffers from “a lack of authenticity” and concludes with the hard-hitting paragraph

Just as … Vosper should do the honourable thing and leave the United Church, so too should the more secretive clergy who won’t declare they really are atheist, mainly because they don’t want to lose their gig in a denomination in danger of becoming The Church of Niceness. 

He borrowed that term from Canadian psychologist Evelyn Sommers, the author of The Tyranny of Niceness: Unmasking the Need for Approval. According to Sommers, this need has “a dark side to needing to be liked.” That is precisely what Todd suspects to be the case with “open-minded church members who tolerate Vosper’s employment are guilty of”, which makes the Church seem “so Canadian.” And that brings us again back to Post 85, where it is suggested the UCC is losing out precisely because of its loss of Gospel punch and its appropriation of the Canadian liberal public spirit. It is one thing to support the marginalized and even promote all that emerges from public good will, but when this is at the cost of losing sight of the basic antithesis between the Spirit of God and the “powers and principalities” that have such powerful influence in the society, then the “tyranny of niceness” has taken over.

My wife and I attended the weekly jazz session at St. Andrews-Wesley UCC here in downtown Vancouver this past Sunday. It was a wonderful musical experience interspersed with a fine sermon  scattered throughout the programme by Gary Patterson, the senior pastor. The music was indeed superb. I sat there absolutely enthralled as I not only heard the music but also observed the musicians from close up with their facial expressions and bodily postures. Patterson utilized all his amazing gifts as an orator as he presented the UCC version of the Gospel. It was all about grace in our lives. 

The thing was that it was not defined; it was left vague so that one came away wondering what the core of all this was. I am afraid, we once again ran into the typical UCC liberalism that is so all-embracing that it has no borders left and is almost forced to leave core values vague. Vintage UCC: exhilarating combination of music and oratory laced with the finest humour; core values left indefinite. We were glad we went. Thanks, UCC. Thanks, Gary. But that core.....?

I encourage all my readers to practice niceness towards UCC, Holy Spirit niceness.  We should not regard that Church as a lost cause. The Spirit of Niceness is still around and can turn that Canadian polite niceness into the real thing and the UCC once again become  a revitalized spiritual powerhouse in our nation.  For that we all need to pray. What could be nicer than that?

United Church of Canada, we love and stand by you.  But, please, fill in            those blanks with genuine Gospel core.

Post 81--Better Help to Refugees

Douglas Todd of the Vancouver Sun (VS) wrote a very sensible column under the title “Poviding better help to refugees” (Nov. 28, 2015, D5) that I am going to partially summarize for you. And unless I come across something else spectacular on the subject of refugees, I will try to let the topic rest for a while after this one. Notice the careful nature of this promise? “I will try….”

Todd reports how almost every Canadian supports Trudeau’s efforts to welcome refugees, thousands of them. There’s a lot of Canadian compassion floating around in Canada’s frigid airspace, along with sympathy. Many people look at it as a “feel-good policy,” a phrase Todd borrows from Oxford’s economist Paul Collier.

You see how we all borrow from each other? I borrow from Todd, who borrows from Collier and others whom you’ll meet in this post. Except perhaps for the most brilliant among us, we all do so borrow. It’s a borrowing world. We are “homo mutuatis,” a "somewhat Latin" for “borrowing man,” a phrase I just concocted from a more classic expression. And sorry for the exclusive male reference. That’s just the way Western cultures formed their languages in the past. There might be some alternatives: “Thinking person” would be something like “persona mutuatis,” while “thinking woman” might come out as “femina mutuatis.”  Don’t mind me. I just like to play around with such expressions, even when I’m not sure of their exact forms.

All this “feel good” stuff turns it into an emotional issue for many. Now there’s nothing wrong with emotions, but when it beclouds reasonable judgement, it can become dangerous, especially if it involves the destinies of many thousands of people and even of nations. When I expressed my misgivings about the 25,000 goal and the need for proper vetting to a retired professor for whom I have high respect, he dubbed my reaction as “paranoia.” Me paranoia?  Me, who has lived for 30 years in a country that now has some 80 million Muslims, who has throughout all these years kept a research eye on events around me and collected research materials on the subject all these years, me who ultimately published a series of eight volumes on Christian-Muslim relations in that country and numerous other articles? (Go to www.SocialTheology. com/Islamica.htm.) That went too far for me and, though I hid my reaction from him, I felt insulted at his unthinking (?) dismissal of my experience and surprised that someone of his stature could be so misled by emotions as to isolate him from larger reality. Remember my earlier warning that compassion, like love, should not be blind. As to the impossibility of proper—and, thus, safe--vetting, also remember that letter to the Prime Minister in Post 78. 

But maybe I am doing the same thing, when I so dismiss the man’s opinion about paranoia. He is an experienced psychologist and thus knows a thing or two about paranoia as I do about Christian-Muslim relations! Now where do I go?!

But sympathetic as most of us are, polls also indicate that roughly half of us question the Government’s asylum programme.  We mostly approve of their intentions but doubt the way it is being done. The CBC, being aware of the deep suspicion floating around in our collective mind, has gone out of its way to make the process of accepting individual refugees transparent, In the meantime, even the Government itself has already scaled back from its campaign promise of 25,000 by end 2015, which, truth be told, could only be described as something close to ridiculous. Germany and Sweden, two countries who are accepting far more refugees per capita than we are, Todd reminds us, are having second thoughts about their “carrying capacity.” Sweden, in fact, has since “closed its borders.” 

Todd also adduces the opinions of recognized experts on refugees such as Michael Teitelbaum of Harvard and Collier, whom you’ve already met. Since the number of refugees accepted by the West, though perhaps overwhelming for the host countries, in reality represents only a tiny fraction of displaced persons, the money spent on that fraction would go a lot farther if spent on helping “the ten million Syrians who are living safely, but in poverty, in refugee camps or on the margins of society in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.” The West, according to Teitelbaum, needs to far more support the UN refugee agency, which is “chronically underfunded.” Todd quotes Teitelbaum that this is “hardly a humanitarian” situation. “It is well established that most refugees would prefer to stay near their home countries in hopes of returning when conditions stabilize.”  “The same funds now spent on refugees “could protect far more people in need.”  Germany alone has budgeted $ 7 billion for its refugee programme. That’s more than one-third of the amount needed by the UN to adequately fund its programme for the entire global refugee situation. That one-third would proportionally help a lot more people than Germany’s expected 800,000.  The same would be true of the Canadian budget.

Collier describes Western refugee policies as “often short-sighted.”  “Encouraging the mass emigration of their most enterprising young people” is not helpful in the long run. Canada today is struggling with a lack of skilled labour and professionals. Perhaps behind the scenes of government our refugee approach is less compassion than a cynical and calculated effort to supply our own manpower needs.  Who knows? Governments are extremely clever in their public relations. 

I am reminded of the colonial era during which Western governments hoodwinked their citizens with the ideology of a God-given “white man’s burden” for other races and nations.  In reality it was our own economic self-interest that was the real motivation. Believe me on this one, for here, too, I published a dissertation on the subject, a summary of which can be found on my < www.SocialTheology.com/boeriana.htm >.  

But then again, perhaps the Canadian Government’s motive is a combination of compassion wedded to self-interest, but that would then be short-sighted compassion for thousands of individuals while it short changes their home countries. No doubt someone will come out with a book explaining the full picture for us. I am eagerly waiting….

In the meantime, let us welcome with Christian grace and compassion all the refugees Canada is accepting. I am happy I am member of the Vancouver Christian Reformed Church that “happens” to be next door to the world’s very first refugee welcoming centre that is soon to open its doors to the incoming crowds and that does not constitute a welcome into a refugee camp. Even if their arrival is/were (The correct form of the verb depends on your opinion of the situation!) the result of short-sighted policies, since they’re coming, let us embrace them wholeheartedly. They need all the love and compassion with which many Canadian hearts are overflowing. Let's not waste that.

Unfortunately, the name of the highly respected long-established organization that will operate the centre is “Immigrant Services Society”—ISS! The greatest of people, but that name! My advice? Change that name! Don’t fill your incoming guests with fear and suspicion even before they cross your threshold! Let them feel welcome, loved and secure at that moment.

Post 77-- Canadian Muslims and Refugees

These days we all talk about refugees, all of us, no matter our status, profession or religion.  The media are full of it, not the least the Vancouver Sun (VS). So are churches, including the two with which I associate, the Christian Reformed Church (CRC) and First Baptist Church (FBC), both of Vancouver. The former happens to be located right next to the world’s first refugee welcoming centre of its kind on Victoria Drive and is planning to be deeply involved in the centre’s programme, including prodding its fellow CRC congregations to sponsor refugees. FBC is in the early stage of sponsoring, not the first time for her.

But Christians are not the only ones participating in this crisis.  Muslims are as well, Canadian Muslims, that is. More specifically for our purpose here,  BC Muslims.  Douglas Todd of the VS covered the subject nicely in his “BC Muslims fear ‘backlash’” (Nov. 23, 2015, p. A3). According to his article, David Ali, spokesman for the BC Muslim Association, emphasizes the importance of the safety and security of Canadians as a prior concern, of all Canadians, not just Muslims. “It’s our No. 1 priority,” says Ali.  “If Canadian officials feel any possible refugee is suspect … they must do due diligence.”  In France, two suspects involved in the recent Paris bombing arrived in the guise of refugees. Any such happening in Canada would create a backlash for all Muslims. Ali says his people don’t want such people to cause problems for Canadian Muslims.  Apart from entertaining such fears, more positively, the 74,000 Muslims in Metro are collecting funds to sponsor refugees.

Those fears are not merely alarmist and Ali being Muslim, they can hardly be dubbed Islamophobic!  Many Canadians express them. Barry Cartwright, a criminologist at Simon Fraser University, thinks Ali’s concern is “well placed, since… it’s impossible to properly screen 25,000 refugees…in a couple of months.”  There’s no way, Cartwright argues, to “do criminal and police checks in a region where there are basically no recognized police departments.”  Where the do exist, they will be so corrupt that any "report" from them is at best suspect. The Federal Government seems to have acknowledged that difficulty by having extended the deadline to an indefinite one well into 2016.

So, Canada’s Muslims appear as concerned about the security issues involved in the refugee movement as are the rest of us, especially as it was first presented as a hasty procedure in which few people had any confidence. After all, militants have killed more Muslims all told than Christians, simply because there are more Muslims where militants operate, whether in the Middle East or in Nigeria’s far north. They have an equal stake in it with the rest of us. It can be even argued that they have more of a stake in it, for if things go wrong and militants pop out of the refugee woodworks, surely there will be a backlash against Canadian Muslims. Of course, they will have no stomach for that. 

But there is another stake they have in all of this: the missionary one.  Various Muslim world leaders have threatened the West that they will overcome the West through higher birthrate and the movement of Muslim peoples into the West. Various estimates have already forecast that Western Europe will in the foreseeable future be overrun by Muslims, not by the sword but by birth and immigration. It is not politically correct to agree with such predictions, but it is obvious, especially in view of the low birthrates among European Caucasians. And though the average Muslim may not be that concerned with these issues, there are leaders in the background who are consciously pushing the Muslim community towards that goal. Anyone who shrugs her shoulders at such suggestions is not doing herself or her compatriots a favour. 

Being a Christian missionary myself, I understand that “instinct.” There is nothing sinister about it and I do not deny them that missionary right. From their point of view, it is the best that can happen to the West.  Muslims are just more serious about their mission than Westerners are and will use all the powers at their disposal to advance it, including political and economic. And don’t kid yourself into thinking Canadian Muslims do not share that instinct.  Every Muslim allowed into Canada represents one tiny step towards that missionary goal. Every time the Federal Government accepts a Muslim refugee, it blindly contributes towards the achievement of that Muslim goal.  It is in plain denial. 

The above paragraph is not an argument for rejecting Muslim refugees, but it is an argument for extra carefulness. It is not an argument against compassion for Muslim refugees. Those that arrive should be embraced with compassion. But it is an argument for Canadian Christians to wake up and fight the ongoing legal and cultural struggles that are taking place against Christians by the secular powers in our own society, often behind the scenes in the courts, including fake “human rights” tribunals, where most people don’t notice. It is organizations like the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada (EFC) and the Association for Reformed Political Action (ARPA) who stand in the breach on our behalf. Follow them on the internet and support them.  And, I strongly  plead for Christian Canadians to sponsor fellow Christians, the ones who have suffered much more than their Muslim compatriots at the hands of these same Muslims throughout much of the Middle East for decades before anyone  even heard of refugees.  If this is interpreted as Islamophobia, so be it; Islamophobia at its best and most constructive for the future.