July 27th, 2011

Phillip Jensen
July, 2011

There is no virtue in poverty but affluence is not the answer.

Heaven is pictured in the Bible as wealth not poverty. Even in this world, God has richly given to us all things to enjoy (1 Timothy 6:17). Paul said of God “he did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness” (Acts 14:17).

But mindless acquisition of wealth creates affluence. Affluence is when a treat becomes trite and a luxury becomes a habit. The trouble with affluence is that it is self-defeating. The more we possess the less we value what we possess and the more we are ourselves possessed by our possessions.

Affluent tourists cherry pick the bits of culture that fit in with our affluence and imagine that we have crossed cultural boundaries and become world citizens. We fail to see that a little bit of art, possibly a religious statue or a ‘genuine indigenous’ piece of bric-a-brac displayed in our home is nothing more than our own culture of affluence. When affluence imports culture it evacuates it of its value and distinctive character.  A Chinese restaurateur complained that although he had over 100 dishes, westerners always ordered the same two or three and claimed how much they enjoyed Chinese cuisine.

Similarly, wealth removes the seasons from us and so reduces the rhythm of life and the joy of anticipation. Seasonal fruit such as cherries, oranges and nectarines can be imported and delivered to us all year round. Our refrigerators and freezers can deliver whatever food we wish without any reference to the season of growth. So the rhythm of life is removed from our consciousness. We no longer look forward to something with gleeful anticipation or remember anything with nostalgic pleasure – for everything is immediately available. Certainly it is pleasurable to be able to have whatever you like whenever you like it, but you cannot have that and at the same time enjoy the rhythm of life and its seasons, the anticipatory longings or sweet memories.

Always comfortable

By our affluence we can air condition our weather – from the house to the garage to the car to the office – never moving out of the same temperature range. We have lost the joy of warming up or cooling down for we are always 22 degrees comfortable. The brisk chill on a winter wind or the balmy breeze on a summer’s day is lost to us as we sit in perfectly controlled and conditioned air.

Affluence exercises on the bike and treadmill in the gym without the inconvenience of the wind, sun and scenery. We can gain the cancerous possibility of a solarium suntan without the sand, salt and surf of the beach. We can travel the world for work, socialising with our spouse via Skype while warehousing our children. We can communicate at all times electronically and are constantly contactable by clients and customers on our ball-and-phone. We own houses and apartments, but know no home. We know and are known by more people than ever but the only friends we trust are our trainer and therapist. We are the world travellers who have forgotten where we came from and have never worked out our destination.

So what antidote is there to affluence? It is not the materialism of atheistic secularists. Their philosophy feeds the materialism of our life style. For to them there is nothing more to life than the good life on earth. But placing our affluence in perspective requires living for something greater than ourselves and greater than this world. The carbon pricing debate illustrates this difficulty, as the motivation for sacrifice is ‘the environment’, ‘the future’, or ‘your (non-existent) grandchildren.’

Some forms of Hinduism, Buddhism and the new age Spirituality find the antidote in the denial of this world and its physical pleasures. They reject not only the creator but also reality – specifically the reality of God’s creation.

Antidotes to affluence

The Bible’s antidote comes from viewing the creation as good, created by God to be received with thanksgiving (1 Timothy 4:3f) and created for us to enjoy and to share with others (1 Timothy 6:17f).

So here are two of the Bible’s antidotes to affluence: thankfulness and generosity. They are not separate antidotes but inextricably bound to each other; for our thankfulness to God is for his generosity and his generosity arouses our generosity towards others. These antidotes contribute towards contentment and the removal of envy. They help us see beyond both immediate gratification and our own self-interest.

God’s grace, or generosity, is a key characteristic of his nature which he displayed in his prodigal creation and his salvation of prodigals. His creation is prodigal in its wealth and beauty. His patience with us, in our wilful rebellion, is beyond any reasonable justice. His grace and mercy in sending his Son for our salvation is the love that surpasses knowledge – the riches of his glory. It is with good reason that he is called “The God of all grace” (1 Peter 5:10). It is impossible to know God without being overwhelmed by giving him thanks and praise for who he is and what he has done.

And what he, by his gracious generosity has done in loving and forgiving us, must find its place in our treatment of others. ‘God loves the cheerful giver’ (2 Corinthians 9:7). ‘Forgive our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors’ (Matthew 6:11). ‘Beloved if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another’ (1 John 4:11). This turning of sinful human values on their head is seen in God’s command: “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather do honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need” (Ephesians 4:28).

Working in order to give to others is not only the opposite of theft but also a wonderful antidote to anyone’s affluence.

We are told that Anders Behring Breivik, the man who bombed Norway’s government buildings and then went on to slaughter 92 of Norway’s youth while they were on a summer camp, is a Freemason. Here he is in his regalia. His Lodge must be appalled by the association. Breivik has been variously described as a ‘Christian fundamentalist’, a ‘neo-Nazi’, and a ‘Right-wing extremist’. His Grace has written before on the disconnect between left-right political philosophy and vernacular terminology, and the pervasive demonisation of the Right: how National Socialism is an expression of the political Right is an interesting discussion, but today His Grace would like to focus on the reported ‘Christian fundamentalist’ who is also a mass murderer.

Religious fundamentalism is not a new phenomenon: indeed, it is as old as religion itself, and is concerned with the believer’s adherence to foundational precepts. There is no one school of thought even within one religion: one Muslim fundamentalist may pray five times a day, fast during Ramadan, and adhere to the Five Pillars; another will seek to wage war against the values of liberal democracy, blowing us all to smithereens and martyring himself in the process. The former is ‘devout’ while the latter has become an ‘Islamist’: the one who follows literally the example of Mohammed in bringing the sword to unbelief in order to establish the Caliphate. There are also Sikh fundamentalists and Hindu fundamentalists; indeed, all religions will have those whose belief is concentrated upon the fundamentals of their faith.

Like Christianity itself, Christian fundamentalism is expressed differently within each nation state and community. In South America, adherents of Liberation Theology who seeks social justice for the oppressed are widely considered to be dangerous political subversives and so fundamentalist. In the US, fundamentalism arose as a reaction to religious liberalism and tends towards literalism: that is, every word in the Bible means exactly what it says. For ‘creationists’, this means the world was created in six days. For others, the focus is on issues of morality like abortion and homosexuality: the ‘Religious Right’ are considered fundamentalists simply by virtue of their conservative views on family values. But if such views render Evangelical Protestants fundamentalist, a fortiori must they make Pope Benedict XVI fundamentalist, as many readers of The Tablet may attest. And if he be so, then so are all Roman Catholics who adhere to the traditions and obey literally all the teachings of the Magisterium. In the UK, the socially-conservative, ecumenical parliamentary group Cornerstone is considered somewhat fundamentalist; indeed, Alan Duncan once referred to them as the ‘Tory Taliban’. ‘Fundamentalism’ is a slippery term when applied to Christianity.

But never over recent centuries has ‘Christian fundamentalism’ been used to justify mass murder. We are not talking about bombing Dresden or sinking the Belgrano or any appalling loss of life within a context of war: we are talking about a professing Christian who decides to take the law into his own hands and act unilaterally. Anders Behring Breivik shows a remarkable ignorance of the teachings of Jesus, who exhorted Peter to put away his sword. To be a fundamentalist follower of Jesus would be to dedicate one’s life to celibate pacifism. And not only that, it would be to give away all that one has to the poor and live in a commune where everyone shares everything and all possessions are in common. Socialists often claim their political inspiration from such teachings, ergo the ‘fundamentalist Christian’ would be a ‘Left-wing extremist’ rather than one of the Right. The Christian is concerned with Scripture, tradition, and reason. And there are those who would add experience. But no Christian tradition at all, from the era of the New Testament and the Church Fathers through the Middle Ages, Reformation, Enlightenment, and on to modernity and postmodernity, could possibly, reasonably or scripturally be used to justify the shooting of 92 teenagers enjoying their summer holiday.

The Christian fundamentalist who advocates that such an atrocity may be justified as a reactiontion to multiculturalism is certainly no type of Christian. They may be fundamentalist, but their fundamentals are not founded upon New Testament principles, where we read that we must submit to the ruling authorities, love our neighbours and our enemies, and pray for those who persecute us. The foundation, the crucial things in Christianity, were articulated by Hooker for the Church of England:

This is then the foundation, whereupon the frame of the gospel is erected: that very Jesus whom the Virgin conceived of the Holy Ghost, whom Simeon embraced in his arms, whom Pilate condemned, whom the Jews crucified, whom the Apostles preached, he is Christ, the only Saviour of the world: ‘other foundation can no man lay’.

To believe this is to be a ‘Christian fundamentalist’, and His Grace is proud to be so. Individual believers may hold some things ‘weakly’, but those who deny them absolutely are in certain error. No Christian church can directly deny this foundation without ceasing to be such. Everything else – absolutely everything – is secondary, tertiary, or utterly peripheral.

Just a day after a ‘right-wing extremist’ systematically slaughtered around 100 Norwegian teenagers, Vince Cable goes on national television and denounces the ‘right-wing nutters’ in the US who don’t want to raise the debt ceiling. The ‘Tea Party’ Republicans, he says, pose a bigger threat to the world economy than any problems in the eurozone.

Just a few months ago the right-wing Freedom Association and Norris McWhirter were caricatured by the BBC as fascists and neo-Nazis, and even Margaret Thatcher’s official biographer Charles Moore now asserts that Right is wrong. International Development Minister Alan Duncan equates socially-conservative, right-wing Tories with the Taliban; the co-Chairman of the Conservative Party Baroness Warsi has had a swipe at the Right; and David Cameron isn’t averse to talking about ‘right-wing extremists’; a ‘right-wing fascist party’; ‘far right groups’ and ‘the hard right’.

The subliminal message is inescapable: ‘Left is good; Right is bad’, because right-wing beliefs breed right-wing philosophy which spawns right-wing extremism which is malignant. Ergo, those who tend towards the political Right must be subject to state surveillance.

And so we arrive at the unquestionable BBC state orthodoxy and narrative of enlightenment. It is ‘spin’, but of such an Orwellian subliminal manipulation of the vernacular that any contrary utterance strikes a chord of jarring dissonance, and the speaker or writer is cast into political, social or spiritual oblivion. Norman Tebbit, Simon Heffer, Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, Daniel Hannan, Peter Hitchens, John Redwood, Melanie Phillips, The Freedom Association… These are the new ‘fascists’ of the Right; they exist at the periphery of social acceptability, while the fascistic tendencies of those left-wing groups which seek to intimidate and silence any reasoned protest against socially-liberal, ecumenical, europhiliac multiculturalism are completely ignored.

It appears now that if you believe in small state, low tax policies; are fiscally conservative; oppose on-tap abortion; support the traditional, nuclear family; seek to limit immigration; support withdrawal from the EU; advocate freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association, freedom of expression, freedom of conscience and freedom of belief, you are without doubt a racist, bigoted zealot, and almost certainly a ‘right-wing extremist’ or a ‘right-wing nutter’.

And if it is ‘fascist’ or ‘extremist’ or ‘right-wing’ to say this, then it would appear that His Grace also needs watching. But so do the vast majority of Britons who are proud to stand up for such beliefs and advocate such policies, for there beats yet the Conservative heart of the nation.

posted by Archbishop Cranmer at  Permalink

Iran’s Supreme Court has upheld a lower court ruling that Yosef Nadarkhani, a 32 year-old Iranian evangelical pastor, must reject his Christian faith or be put to death. It’s the latest incident in the Islamist Republic’s continuous and increased assault on its small Christian population.

Nadarkhani was first arrested on the charge of apostasy (leaving Islam for another faith) in October 2009 and sentenced to death by hanging for his refusal to teach Islam to Christian children. While Nadarkhani hadn’t practiced any faith before he became a Christian at age19, he was born to Muslim parents and thus considered to be a Muslim under Islamic law.

As such, Nadarkhani’s conviction was upheld in September 2010 by a lower Iranian court when it found that he had proven his apostasy by “organizing evangelistic meetings, sharing his faith, inviting others to convert, and running a house church.” At that point, Nadarkhani appealed to Iran’s Supreme Court to have his death sentence reversed but that appeal has now been rejected.

To Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, Nadarkhani’s attorney, the Iranian court decision came as a surprise as only one month ago he had been under the impression that his client’s appeal had been granted. Instead, Nadarkhani now stands to be the first Iranian Christian executed for apostasy since 1990.

Ironically, Mohammad Ali Dadkhah finds himself unable to provide his client further legal assistance as he has just been sentenced by an Iranian court to nine years in jail and a ten year ban on practicing law for “actions and propaganda against the Islamic regime.”

Needless to say, the Iranian court decision brought a quick rebuke from the US State Department, which issued a statement which read in part, “He (Nadarkhani) is just one of thousands who face persecution for their religious beliefs in Iran…While Iran’s leaders hypocritically claim to promote tolerance, they continue to detain, imprison, harass and abuse those who simply wish to worship the faith of their choosing.”

Understandably, Nadarkhani’s case has also brought an outcry of protest from a bevy of Christian organizations and human rights groups. One such group, Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), has pressed the Iranian government to honor its adherence to the International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights (ICPPR), a treaty which Iran signed and one which “guarantees freedom of religion and freedom to change one’s religion or belief.”

Of course, that seems a rather unlikely path that the Iranian government will take. While Iran’s government has claimed that it tolerates other religions — often citing Christians “protected” religious minority status under the Iranian Constitution — the reality is far different. According to the 2010 State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report, Iran’s religious minorities — which represent 2 percent of its population — face “substantial societal discrimination.”

That “societal discrimination” includes a history of harsh government retribution against those who have dared to abandon the Islamic faith, reprisals which have included mass arrests of Christians and other religious minorities. Unfortunately, this suppression has only increased in intensity over the past year.

Specifically, the Iranian government has been targeting Iran’s growing network of “house churches.” While the Iranian government allows officially sanctioned Christian churches, they are closely monitored by Iranian authorities. To avoid that scrutiny, Iranian Christians — many of whom are former Muslims — congregate in private residences for prayer and Bible readings.

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Broken Promises: How the AIDS Establishment Has Betrayed the Developing World | By Edward C. Green | Polipoint Press | Pbk: 288 pages (Feb, 2011) |

A key player in the prevention controversy documents how the AIDS establishment has betrayed the developing world.

Dale O’Leary in MercatorNet

Harvard University researcher Edward Green rose to prominence in the AIDS controversy with his 2003 book, Rethinking AIDS Prevention. His new book, Broken Promises: How the AIDS Establishment has Betrayed the Developing World, chronicles the continuing battle over how to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. Green, a key player in the struggle, documents how two radically different strategies have competed for funding and support.

The first is ABC: Abstinence (or delay of sexual debut); Be faithful (only one sexual partner); Condoms for those who engage in high risk behavior in spite of warnings and for couples where one is already infected. This is a risk elimination strategy

The second is the condom code. The supporters of condoms as the primary prevention method insist that any program be “sex positive”. In other words, there is no need for anyone to change their sexual behavior as long as they use a condom every time. This is a risk reduction strategy since new infections would not be eliminated, only reduced, given the known failure rate of condoms and the fact that even the most motivated sexually active persons rarely achieve 100 per cent usage.

Green and others studied the results of condom programs:

We simply compared the prevalence of HIV among people in three groups: those who never used condoms, sometimes did, and always did. And we found no association between HIV status and consistent condom use… those who reported using a condom with every sex act were just as likely to have HIV as those who had never used one at all…we also found that inconsistent users had the same or greater HIV prevalence as non-users… And sporadic use is the norm in Africa and in countries everywhere. (pp 223-4)

As an anthropologist with years of experience in field work, Green was trained to listen to the local people. He familiarized himself with their traditions and customs. He takes great pains in the book to point out that he is not a social conservative or a religious zealot, but a professional who respects the people he studies. Before becoming involved in the battle over AIDS prevention, he worked for population control groups and on a condom marketing study. He approached the problem of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa with an open mind, seeking to discover which strategies worked (that is, decreased new infections) and which strategies failed.

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