Yet another nail in the coffin of Free Speech & Religious Liberty.
Christian B&B loses Supreme Court appeal | News | The Christian Institute.
Month: November 2013
Happy Thanksgiving 2013
Happy Thanksgiving to all my Colonial friends!
May the Lord richly bless you and I pray the significance of the day may not be lost on your nation.
O give thanks unto the LORD, for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever.’ Psalm 107:1
If the Top Men take over, who will ask the hard questions? – Reformation21 Blog
Good article by Carl Trueman on Janet Mefford’s interview with Mark Driscoll.
If the Top Men take over, who will ask the hard questions? – Reformation21 Blog.
Another Gospel
Thought this was well said.
Abortion Debate Audio
The Abortion Images Debate that took place in early October is available to download. You can download it from here.
I have listened to the debate and it is worth an hour and half of your time. I listened to it in the car travelling to work. Your jaw will drop at some of the statements from Ann Furedi (and some of the questions from the floor) as she seeks to defend the indefensible.
More on Conservatives attack Free Speech
Before you read this I need to put a very large Caveat in here: Our God is Sovereign, Jesus is the only Saviour, Our God is in control. The Gospel of the grace of God is our priority. But we are also citizens, tax payers if you will, and as such we ought to be involved at some level in the political discussion. After all, we will be asked to vote in the next General Election. If our tick is good enough at the ballot box then so should our comments be good enough now.
Had an update on this come through the post from The Christian Institute yesterday morning (Saturday 16/11/13). We are being encouraged to write again to our Member of Parliament (MP). Just the other day I received a reply from my MP to a previous letter – not connected to the CI.
In it he extolled the virtues of our countries past history blah blah blah. Then he talked about how he supported Christians winning the right to wear a crucifix. (but as I argued before on this blog, what use is it to be allowed to wear a crucifix if you can’t preach the Cross of Christ – Two very different things!) But the final sentence took it all away. Here’s his last sentence. This MP by the way is ‘Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Justice’. A friend then of Theresa May if he wants to keep his job. He writes:
Likewise it is legitimate for political leaders to speak about religious institutions as they see them affecting our society, not least in the vital area of equality and tolerance.
There are many ways to unpack that. Am I right to be very concerned about what he has written? The words ‘equality’ and ‘tolerance’ are very loaded words depending on who uses them and how they are used. The letter from my MP arrived a few days before the announcement by Theresa May. He must have known she was going to announce this. We know the words ‘equality’ and ‘tolerance’ mean nothing of the sort.
Who would have thought in our day we would be seeing such things. Truth has already fallen in the streets – Parliament doesn’t want to hear any truth that conflicts with its agenda. It’s an agenda that doesn’t want God or Christians except mealy-mouthed platitudes. It doesn’t want the Gospel and you can be sure it won’t get it from the established church either! I’m sure he’s a nice bloke and I’m told that he is a Christian but if only Justin Welby would forget the politics, forget the economy and get on with preaching the Gospel to sinners (all of us) – but he won’t. Or at least not the unadulterated Gospel of the Bible. He will preach – and many like him do – what the Bible calls another Gospel and not the Gospel at all. Remember it’s not just what is said that we need to guard against but what is NOT said.
To read more on this subject go here and for resources from the Christian Institute go here.
Christians face new free speech threat from ASBO law | News | The Christian Institute
Christians face new free speech threat from ASBO law | News | The Christian Institute.
I’ll post this because it was ready, but there’s more info to follow on this. Here’s more commentary related to the previous post from The Christian Institute. If you follow the above link note this paragraph (my emphasis):
‘I am sure this was not the intention of the Government, but this legislation was badly conceived, is badly written and will stop many reasonable and hitherto lawful activities.”’
That’s being very polite but I would beg to differ on the above: I am sure it WAS (and IS) the intention of the Government. Josh Williamson makes the point that all changed with the passing of Same-Sex Marriage. There can be NO dissent despite Cameron wishing he hadn’t forced it through. It was the trouble it caused but not the issue – he’s (Cameron) fully persuaded it’s the right thing. If Gospel preachers rightly insist Homosexuality is a Sin as the Bible clearly teaches, you can be sure according to the State the Bible must be wrong, or the interpretation must be wrong and not Homosexuality.
It’s impossible for no-one to be offended. It’s purely subjective – different things offend different people. The State is going to decide what is offensive. So an offense will be whatever the State decides and there is no defense against that. Sounds a lot like Stalinist Russia to me. Christians are always being offended, it’s a staple for a great many comedians. That’s Democracy, that’s Free Speech! I’m offended and annoyed by power-hungry, greedy, lying, thieving, dis-loyal, hypocritical immoral manipulative propagandist politicians (a bit of free flowing subjectivity).
Just one important point to note here. If this goes through it will affect us all – the humanist religion as well. So unless you dislike Free Speech and prefer a Police State you better get used to being offended.
There’s a good interview with Josh Williamson (Arrested for street preaching in UK) on Janet Mefford that’s well worth a listen. Josh is first up and speaks with a lot of sense in this. There could be another Humanist / Christian alliance on this!
More to come on this topic.
Related articles
- Be Careful What You Wish For: UK to Crack Down on Street Preachers and Other People Deemed ‘Annoying’ (patheos.com)
- New Asbo plans are assault on basic freedom, says former DPP Lord Macdonald (telegraph.co.uk)
- The new ASBO is an assault on our liberty (bigbrotherwatch.org.uk)
- The Independent View: Anti-Social Behaviour Bill – A new legal threat to public protest (libdemvoice.org)
- Christians face new free speech threat from ASBO law (shanemark71.wordpress.com)
Cranmer: Theresa May seeks to outlaw Christian street preachers
Cranmer: Theresa May seeks to outlaw Christian street preachers.
I didn’t expect such a quick follow-up to yesterdays post about Free Speech & Religious Liberty. I was alerted to the latest move against Free Speech & Religious Liberty in our ever more Totalitarian country through listening to Janet Mefford. Interesting how our American friends see us.
The above link to Cranmer says it all. Some interesting comments as well.
Remembrance Day Hypocracy
It’s Remembrance Day today. The Eleventh Hour, of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month.
What were (and are) these people fighting for? We are told with serious countenance and hushed tones that they (and subsequently) were fighting for Freedom. My Dad died in his Eighties trusting in The Lord Jesus Christ as his Saviour. He (with my Mum) became a Christian much later in life. I can remember as a youngster sometimes hearing him moan in his sleep as he relived the horror of war. From a historical perspective he didn’t talk too much about the war and I now wish that I’d ‘interviewed’ him about his experience. He managed to write a few pages though (I could post his words in a later post) At just 17, he was a dispatch rider in the Reconnaissance Corps – always at the front!
Over the years he had many invitations to various ‘old soldier’ meetings and could have gone over to Europe to re-visit some of the sites of the conflict. He turned them all down because the memories were so bad. It was only a few years before he died that he even went to the Remembrance Sunday parade though he always watched the Remembrance Day service on TV. Watching him march with the old soldiers did make me proud of him. The picture is of him at an 11, 11, 11 meeting. He said they gave out medals like sweets and it was only at the encouragement of a serving Christian soldier in the Church that he got them out of the drawer and had them mounted. This same soldier (Ian Fraser – now retired) also encouraged Dad to attend the Remembrance Sunday service.
What is the point of saying all this? I know my Dad would be appalled at the steady but relentless loss of Religious Liberty we are experiencing in this country (and the US) and that he thought he was fighting for. And so on the news we see Prime Minister Cameron and cronies ‘Remembering’ the fight for freedom while all the while steadily taking it away. It appalls and sickens me but we must trust in our God & Saviour. As Christians we must speak out while we can. The night is coming. The world hates Christ, hates The Gospel and hates the Word of God.
Bonfire Night – A Celebration of Ignorance
Usually the week before (at least) and the week after Bonfire Night (or Guy Fawkes night) on the 5th November fireworks are going off throughout the evening. And last night proved that to be no exception. It was laughable in some ways. Here’s the scene if you can picture it. American friends might struggle to picture it though.
We are in Church, one of the members leads the Church in a time of public prayer. All the time he is praying (and right from the start of the service actually) there are loud explosions and a continuous loud crackling of fireworks going on all round the Church building. All through the singing and through the preaching there continues to be loud explosions.
What is Bonfire Night you may ask? Originally it was designated by Government (Parliament) to be a day of public thanksgiving.
The Observance of 5th November Act 1605 (3 Ja. I, c. 1) also known as the “Thanksgiving Act” was an Act of the Parliament of England passed in 1606 in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot.
Even though there might be some faint knowledge of the event – here’s how I read the significance: So here we are in a secular society that has all but forgotten God letting off fireworks that point back to an Act of Thanksgiving to the very God whose knowledge they seek to repress.
To be honest, back in my non-Christian days I was just as ignorant as those outside the Church last evening.
In the prayer on the right note the following prayer to God in giving thanks for the ‘Loving kindness to our Church and Nation, in the preservation of our Religion and Liberties’. Then later note further thankfulness to God that our ‘Holy Religion, which now again thou hast so wonderfully Rescued and Established a Blessing to us’.
What a contrast to our present day when for the State only the hypocritical husk of a true and lively religion remain. What a turn round from former days! The Christian Religion is under attack, of this there can be no doubt. But it is a double-edged sword because once Christian freedoms disappear it’s only a matter of time when other freedoms too will disappear. There’s a reason why so many freedom loving people want to live here – but that will change.
How the mighty have fallen! Here’s the opening paragraph to a prayer from 1606 upon the deliverance.
‘Forasmuch as almighty God hath in all ages showed his power and mercy in the miraculous and gracious deliverance of his church, and in the protection of religious kings and states, and that no nation of the earth hath been blessed with greater benefit than this kingdom now enjoyeth’.
It would be worth Prime Minister Cameron, his cabinet and government thinking on these things to discern how far we are removed from past glories and a reliance upon the grace of God to our Nation. The irony is that we as a Nation are just as reliant on the grace of God as we have ever been. But now it’s not openly confessed. Instead it is repressed.
These reflections I confess are based on one service in one Church on one evening. But I think the evening illustrates the chasm that is opening between the True Church of Jesus Christ and the sham of religiosity.