While everyone is discussing the Conservative party victories in the recent British local elections, one begins to wonder what kind of society is being conserved?
Church care homes could be forced to remove crucifixes from their walls in case they offend “atheist cleaners” under the new Equality Bill, Catholic bishops have warned.
The way the bill is written means non-Christians could sue for harassment if church authorities do not remove religious imagery, according to Monsignor Andrew Summersgill, general secretary of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales.
There’s more:
The bishops are also worried that they Equality Bill will establish what they believe would amount to a “hierarchy of rights”, with the rights of homosexuals overruling those of religious expression.
We’ll have to see how this develops.
June 8th, 2009 | 6:43 pm
Paul – great to see you blogging on First Things. Congrats!
The trajectory of events effecting our beloved Lord’s Church in England is troubling. Events in Brazil also are troubling. It won’t be long until we see attempts at the same begin to happen in the U.S. and that is the criminalization of Christian beliefs and the living of the faith.
Pravda had an interesting editorial a week ago Friday about how fast the U.S. was becoming a Marxist state (http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/107459-0/).
In 1962 the Supreme Court w/o precedent started us on this path of removing all reference to the natural moral law and Christian prnciples our Founder’s all believed and wrote about. John Adams himself wrote that the Constitution is based on fundamental Christian moral principles and that without these principles the Constitution is worthless.
We are on a dangerous trajectory which makes the state supreme (Marxism) and the practicing of religion a crime.
The state supporting immoral behavior (such as gay marriage) as a civil right, which it is not, is just one element of an overall assault on Christianity, the foundation of this country.
George Washington was oh so right in his farewell address to the nation when he wrote:
…”Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice ? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. “…
and that religious principle as George Washington understood it was not atheism, or secular humanism, but Christianity!!
June 8th, 2009 | 9:41 pm
This isn’t the Cranky Conservative site? I’m so confused!
British Christians are beginning to feel like a beleaguered minority in their own homeland.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/5413311/Christians-risk-rejection-and-discrimination-for-their-faith-a-study-claims.html
June 9th, 2009 | 5:19 pm
[...] Could British Christians be sued for having Crucifixes in their homes? [...]
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