Presented without comment, from The Independent:
David Cameron has claimed divine inspiration was at work when it came to drafting a key concept for Conservative Party policy.
Speaking last night at his Easter reception in Downing Street, the Prime Minister reportedly said he was simply doing God’s work when he launched the “Big Society” initiative of volunteering and civic responsibility.
“Jesus invented the Big Society 2,000 years ago,” Mr Cameron said. “I just want to see more of it.”
. . . He went further than any recent prime minister in speaking publicly about his faith, according to the Daily Mail, and took the opportunity to offer his support to Britain’s Christian community.
“It is the case that Christians are now the most persecuted religion around the world,” Mr Cameron said. “We should stand up against persecution of Christians and other faith groups wherever and whenever we can.”
And offering his services to help the Church keep up its commitments to Jesus’s Big Society concept, he a little bizarrely compared himself to a company that unblocks drains.
“If there are things that are stopping you from doing more, think of me as a giant Dyno-Rod,” he said.
Mr Cameron faced a backlash from his own Conservative Party MPs yesterday over the way he handled Ms Miller’s resignation.
Speaking after the soprano at the reception had finished her rather apt choice of hymn last night, the Prime Minister said: “The Bible tells us to bear one another’s burdens. After the day I’ve had, I’m definitely looking for volunteers.”
A giant Dyno-Rod? Really? Does this kind of Jesus-y stuff go down well in the UK? And Christians are persecuted? (Well, maybe in Islamic countries, but where else?). After all, the official religion of the UK is a Christian one.
h/t: Chris
UPDATE:
Twitter is having fun with the #CameronJesus hashtag
Our crazy Tory government has to go. After Eric Pickles’ comment of a few days ago it’s clear they have no clue about their own populace. Exactly how does Cameron see Christians as persecuted? The same way as they see themselves persecuted I suppose – by not being allowed to foist their lunatic superstitions on everyone else.
The Eric pickles comment really annoyed me,claiming atheists are similar to right wing and Islamic fundamentalists groups,and we should keep our opinions to ourselves
As for Cameron,the Daily Mail and it’s readership will love it,and that say’s it all.
The Daily Mail associates it with the Maria Miller incident, and the commenters aren’t convinced either:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2601426/David-Cameron-turns-God-Maria-Millers-expenses-resignation.html
(link removed, only go there if you actually can’t resist)
argh, bloomin’ wordpress. I left the http: out deliberately and it put it in!
That’s a feature, not a bug.
So who do you want to replace them with? Milliband & Balls?
Not really,but can you offer a better alternative than a “revolving-door” approach? None of them are any good…
Complaining about politicians is a British sport second only to talking about the weather. Even if a totally reputable and intelligent person (such as myself) was elected or William Pitt got resurrected from the dead, I’m sure everyone wouldn’t like it… Oh and the weather looks good for the next few days.
Vote for somebody else, other than the three main parties. Its not like there aren’t other candidates out there.
What the heck is that strange contraption in your picture?
And please account for your movements at the time flight 370 was lost.
Miliband at least is, like a certain website owner, an atheist Jew.
Yes. There isn’t time to put a credible left leaning alternative together. If the Blue Tories get in again they’ll be able to claim a mandate and they’ll tear this country apart. We have to get the Red Tories in simply to slow the bastards down then use the five years to start working on a government for the majority. The lackof a credible left alternative is exactly why UKIP are doing so well; people have literally no-one to vote for so they’re using UKIP as a “none of the above”.
I would rather have Cameron and Osborne to Miliband and Balls any day. As someone who is going to be wanting a professional job within the next 4 years, the Tori economic policy is far more appealing to me.
But this religious nonsense needs to go. Pressure like this will make short work of that.
The depressing thing is that some people voted for them. People in another country, to be more precise, voted for them.
Cameron and co are doing a lot of the Scottish Independence campaign’s work for them.
I’ve loathed him since the day the people of the UK were misguided enough to vote him into office. And now he is delusional.
It doesn’t actually do a lot for them, I think. I suspect Pickles’ and Cameron’s sudden religiosity is intended as cultural dog whistles to UKIP voters without being explicitly racist. Cameron’s timing – straight after Maria Miller was forced to quit – is unfortunate (for him).
Totally agree about the UKIP statement!
Canada’s Stephen Harper has to go too, but he is very very sneaky about his religious fanaticism, he hides it so much better than Cameron.
Harper is ant science and that is what annoys me about him the most.
anti-science, I assume?
I doubt you’d object to an expert on Hymenoptera! 😉
I blame auto-correct without even knowing how you typed that!
Ha ha! Yes it was auto correct. It would be funny for a politician to express hatred or love for ant science.
Not down here in the US and A. I’d wouldn’t be the least surprised if Kansas made the subject illegal in state universities because of Jesus.
Indeed.
Remember Sarah Palin’s “I kid you not” remark suggesting that funding for fruit fly research was a huge and obvious waste?
Yeah I remember that one too.
She thought it was some sort of personal attack- digging into her background and all that…
Cameron isn’t a religious fanatic, he’s an opportunist with (like the rest of his cabinet) an overly strong sense of entitlement.
David Cameron is a devout worshipper of Mammon, and only considers lesser gods as an aspect of said one true religion.
I don’t like politicians using religious justifications period — it doesn’t matter if I happen to agree that “this war is wrong” or “volunteering is good.” Once the supernatural is used to support any view at all it can just as easily be used to support the opposite view. Give us your reasons, not your faith.
Are Christians persecuted? I remember that a while back PZ linked to a poll on a Christian website which had the overwhelming majority expressing fear that people who love Jesus were soon to be incarcerated or worse in the United States. What I found shocking about this result was that the website was one which tracked real and genuine persecutions around the world, dealing primarily with things like missionaries being imprisoned or executed in foreign (mostly Muslim) countries.
Apparently the regulars saw little to no difference between actual violence and “Happy Holidays!” There are no degrees.
Popehat has written about this quite comprehensively a number of times.
The answer is: Yes. But also, no.
It happens in countries where the government felt that blasphemy laws must be passed to protect the feelings of the religious. The blasphemy laws are then used with gay abandon by the majority religion to bully members of minority religions.
As to whether Christians in Britain are persecuted – not even remotely; unless you think that a herd of elephants could convincingly argue that they were being persecuted by the mice that sometimes looked at them and squeaked a request not to be trodden on.
Popehat article
Bit shit crazy
sub
yup.
Those poor Christians with only 26 seats in the House of Lords in a constitutionally Christian country.
How do they manage?
This won’t cut much ice here in UK. He’s only trying this because the churches are speaking out about the government’s cruel attitude to our most vulnerable citizens. Margaret Thatcher tried the same thing at the church of England’s general synod in the 1980s in much the same circumstances. That didn’t work either.
I’m no fan of Christianity (like much of UK) but even the churches know how very far Cameron’s callous policies are from the sermon on the mount and the metaphor about rich men and camels passing through the eye of the needle.
Don’t judge UK society by the inane witterings of the most hated prime minister since Thatcher.
‘most hated prime minister since Thatcher.’
I reckon Blair pips him to that one.
Yeah and Gordon Brown, John Major…
I wouldn’t read too much into this personally. He’s simply trying to claw back lost ground from legalising marriage. That’s all it is. Bear in mind as well that the few people in the UK that still believe in God are generally older, and pensioners are one of (if not the) highest voting dmeographic. There’s an election on the horizon!
True, and it’s increasingly hard to find anyone to vote for amongst these buffoons.
Right, so if you’re against him you’re against God. Convenient. When fascism comes to the UK it will be wrapped in the Union Jack and carrying a cross.
There’s already a cross on the Union Jack. Wouldn’t that be redundant?
Technically, there are three crosses …
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It’s curious they gave it that title; it doesn’t seem to be a quote as he doesn’t mention “God’s work” anywhere. His reference to Jesus is not necessarily an endorsement of the theology of Christianity at all, though he’s obviously trying to appeal to the Christian community.
Well, the dude he is referring to often abides by the last name Christ.
I’d say that’s a pretty strong indication of what god it is he’s talking about.
*and theology.
Yes, but Jesus is still a historical personage. One can admire Jesus without theological implications. Nietzsche was a big fan of JC, but not, I think, a believer in Christian theology.
Whether anyone by the name of Jesus as described in various scripture ever existed is up for debate.
I’m not a historian, but my understanding is that no conclusive evidence exist.
There may have been several preachers and the bible could simply be a re-collection of previous myths and religious traditions gathered as an attempt at political unity.
Constantine would be the captain of that team as far as I know.
Are you really sure about that? The evidence is a lot more ambiguous than commonly supposed.
Except, of course, for the fact that he wasn’t.
There is an extensive contemporary and near-contemporary record of that time and place in history, including a significant cache of original documents (the Dead Sea Scrolls) as well as first-person accounts by major figures (Philo, Pliny the Elder, others). Not a one of them even breathes the slightest hint of Jesus or of any of the events in his life.
At least a few decades later, if not a century or more, the Christians wrote for themselves obviously-fantastical religious faery tales about Jesus. These constitute the best “evidence” for his existence, despite the fact that they matter-of-factly describe massed zombie invasions of Jerusalem and other comparable absurdities.
At about the same time, Christians were passionately attempting to persuade Pagans that they should be taken seriously precisely because Jesus was no different from any other Pagan demigod, only evil demons had tricked the Pagans into believing in false demigods so they’d dismiss Jesus as a Johnny-come-lately third-rate knockoff.
Shortly after, the earliest non-Christian mentions of Christians appear in the historical record, and they all dismiss Christianity and their new god as the same type of lunatic fringe cult as the Raelians or the Branch Davidians.
Finally, after a couple centuries of power politics and the like reminiscent of what the Mormons and Scientologists are attempting today, Christians managed to get their superstition officially upgraded to a religion, and then adopted as the preferred religion of the Roman Empire. And as they still had that status when the Empire fell, they inherited what remained of the Empire’s power and possessions, eventually becoming the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, with the Catholics splitting first at the Reformation, and then fracturing violently ever since.
Er…no.
Jesus very famously commanded all his followers to make a blood sacrifice at his altar by slaughtering all non-Christians. And, yes; Christians cry, “Allegory!” when you mention that inconvenient fact, but the allegory is of Jesus’s own promised return come Armageddon when he himself will wield his flaming sword and not only kill all those who don’t bow down before him but hand them over to his uncle for infinite torture.
And he came not to bring peace but a sword and to set parents against their children and generally wreak havoc. Hell, even in the Sermon on the Mount, right there in the opening stanzas, he promised infinite torture for every man who has ever admired a pretty woman and failed to immediately thereafter gouge out his own eyes and chop off his own hands. And all this is before we get to the incessant anti-Semitism and still more nastiness that makes Hitler look saintly in comparison.
Yeah, sure. He had a couple good quotes. So did Hitler, I’m sure. Big fucking deal. Kissing a few babies and mouthing some platitudes doesn’t mean jack shit when you’re busy planning a war of global conquest with torture for all who don’t kiss your ass in just the right way.
Cheers,
b&
Whether a Jesus was a historical person is still up for grabs and probably never provable. The problem with admiring Jesus (even if you’re an atheist) is that he never to our knowledge wrote anything. So you’re picking and choosing from Jesus to suit your own notions: circular reasoning.
For example, the recently deceased atheist M.P. Tony Benn often compared Jesus to the Diggers and Levellers, as coming from the radical tradition in favour of the dispossessed: David Cameron cherry-picks Jesus above. For Cameron, there are theological ramifications: who better to use as an influence than the Son of God? Why not J.S. Mill, for instance? For an atheist to use Jesus as an authority is misplaced and historically questionable. He was after all a first century rural and raggedy Jew.
My mordant anti-theist temperament would love for a Jesus figure never to have existed and it would relish the delightful irony: but I don’t think you can say that definitively.
There is a lot of early references for Jesus: he differs from other religious Jewish figures around that time in that we have a lot of allegations about what he said and did. Contrast that with the paucity of tales about, say, Honi the Circle Drawer, Hanina ben Dosa, Agabus and Theudas. So why should it be that all these theological imaginings coalesced around the Jesus figure, and not say Yohanan ben Zakkai? Nevertheless, you can ask the question: why, if we believe the historicity of the 5 Jews I mentioned, should we discard that of Jesus?
And they did come in all likelihood from different people and different places (although some such as Matthew and Luke definitely used Mark as a source). And we should bear in mind that these early documents were written, not as scripture, which they subsequently became, but as apologia for a particular sect. Historically speaking, you therefore have to include non-canonical texts in your sources (e.g. The Gospel of Thomas, the Didache).
The outcome is that you get very different views of Jesus: you therefore have to ask why that writer in that circumstance presented Jesus in such-and-such a way – what the Germans call, ‘Sitz im Leben’. What is the significance of the differences between the early texts? Why is Matthew sooo anti-Jewish? Why can you interpret Luke in such a ‘socialistic’ fashion – to import an atavistic term? The corollary is that much as Cameron and Benn use Jesus as an authority nowadays, those Matthian and Lukan communities used Jesus as their expert witness.
Which takes you to the nature of the early stories and sayings Gospels about Jesus. They are not merely fairy tales, even though they contain elements of the genre. The miracles fit easily with the tales of Honi and Hanina: they are of their time. But Mark, even though his Koine Greek was stylistically pretty inept, seems to have invented a new genre: the theological biography. He did weave biography, sayings, parables, biblical commentary into his text. As well as intertwining ancient prophecy and allegory into his allegation that in his own day, they had been fulfilled: here, in the real world. That’s new, a sort of cut, copy and paste from the OT.
The Jesus figure is not mentioned independently of what became the Christian tradition for years: not in Philo, an Alexandrian Jew. Not in Josephus (in my opinion, although many scholars disagree with me). Not in the Qumran Scrolls (but then again they mention no prominent 1st century inhabitant of Judah).
By the 2nd century, what is often overlooked is that the emerging Christians had strong financial incentive to split from their Judaistic roots: following the Jewish revolt in 66-74 CE, all Jews in the Empire were taxed for being Jews, a levy which lasted centuries. By that time they were proselytizing amongst the Greeks and Romans, after their refusal to participate in the anti-Roman uprising. No wonder there was bad blood between them and their erstwhile Jewish co-religionists. And no wonder they accreted onto Jesus the Greco-Roman mythological parts of the biography.
And little wonder that God emerged from his previous Hebrew invisibility to become the Zeus-like vision of majesty and power. We started with an itinerant Jewish country-boy in an obscure aniconic back-water. We end, not with Phiz’s sketch of Fagin, but with Robert Powell suffocating on the cross, an image of Hellenistic masculine beauty.
Slaínte.
I am fairly sure Tony Benn was not an atheist
According to our old friend Giles Fraser, he was: GF could be wrong, I don’t know. TB certainly went for the Jesus as sage proto-socialist interpretation. Beyond that, I can’t recall TB saying anything much about God.
Cheers.
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/20270
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No, I would not ask that question.
Rather, I would ask why you believe the historicity of those five individuals in the first place.
Are you really so gullible as to think that there really lived a Jewish Rip Van Winkle who stamped his foot and thus made YHWH piss in command?
What evidence do you have for the actual existence of Honi or any of the other figures?
If I presented you with comparable evidence for other similarly-described individuals, would you also believe they really existed?
And if your complaint is that, unless we open our minds so much when attempting to learn about history that our brains fall out we won’t actually know anything about history…then my response would be, “Tough shit.” Just because you want to know more about history than can reasonably be known doesn’t actually mean that you really know it, even if you pretend really hard that you do.
I challenge you to identify a single story of Jesus that wasn’t either banal (washing somebody’s feet) or blatantly ripped off from then-popular religious mythology (virgin birth, water into wine, zombification, etc.). Oh — and, if you choose to take up this challenge, I urge you to first acquaint yourself with Justin Martyr. If your example is to be found in his First Apology, I’ll merely dismiss you with that reference.
Cheers,
b&
No. That’s nowhere near what I wrote. Again, Ben you ascribe to a commenter an opinion they never advanced.
References for the 5 Jews:
Honi: Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 14:22-9, Mishnah Taanit 3-8.
Hanina ben Dosa: Mishnah Berakhot 5:1, Tosephta Berakhot 2:20: Babylonian Talmud Berakhot 33a, 34b, 61b, Jerusalem Talmud Berakhot 9a, 9d, Babylonian Talmud Taanit 24b, Babylonian Talmud Hagigah 14a, Mishnah Sotah 9:15, Mishnah Abot 3:9-12
Agabus: Acts 11:28, 21:10, Josephus Antiquities of the Jews 20:101
Theudas: Josephus Antiquities of the Jews, 20:97-8
Yohanan ben Zakkai: Talmud Menahot 65a, Talmud Baba Batra 115b, Yadayim 4:5 and many others…
I could have mentioned ‘The Egyptian’ (mentioned in Josephus’ 2 major books), Eleazar (Antiquities), Jesus son of Ananias (Josephus’ War…), John the Baptist (Antiquities).
Why on earth would I want to present a story of Jesus that wasn’t banal or supernatural? An odd request of yours seeing as I remember you expressing admiration for parts of the Beatitudes.
Slaínte.
And, yet, that’s who Honi was, who the historical sources describe him as, and here you are claiming he really was a real person. What, are you saying that there was some random schmuck with that name but who didn’t do the circle rain dance thing and didn’t take a 70-year-long snap?
Let me guess: you think that Paul Bunyan was a real person, too, only he was a mere 6′ tall, didn’t have an ox, wasn’t a lumberjack, and never left his home town of Bhopal, or maybe Mumbai or was it Shenzhou…?
Honi was a figure from a century before Josephus was even born — and he doesn’t exactly have a reputation for being a reliable historiographer; he was much more of a gossip first and foremost, and secondly obsessed with kissing Flavius’s ass. And the Mishnah are superstitious religious writings from a quarter millennium after Honi’s era — that would be like quoting me today as an authority on pre-Revolutionary American figures.
If that’s the best you have, can you blame me for dismissing such nonsense out of hand? Can you not understand the scorn I feel for “historians” so wretchedly desperate and gullible as to gulp down such homeopathic gruel?
Because, I repeat, you claimed:
I am challenging that claim; the diametric opposite is, in fact, the truth. Everything in the Gospels about Jesus is a faery tale. Almost all of it is supernatural bullshit — with all said examples of supernatural bullshit having been shamelessly and transparently stolen from the Pagan “Sons of Jupiter,” as Justin Martyr called them. Strip all that away, and you’re left with banal inconsequentialities, like Jesus washing somebody’s feet or riding an ass. (And if we are to pick “the” Jesus out of the rest of the Galilean population from the “fact” of him being an ass-riding foot-washer, then we’re stuck with everybody in the lineup, including not just Jewish men, but pagans and women and children.)
If it’s me, it’s from a long time ago, before the last time I read them. They’re not at all admirable, especially not in context; rather, they’re “Y’all be good niggers and sit at the back of the bus with none of this uppity noisemaking, hear?” drivel.
Cheers,
b&
Ben, the historical question is how much weight you give to the sources. Of course you give less weight to the late rabbinic texts: nevertheless you have to look at each individual historical claim before you dismiss them out of hand without even reading them.
Your characterization of Josephus does not tell the full story. Yes, he included gossip and yes, he wished to present the Jews in the best light to the Flavians. And absolutely, like any historian, he has to be read critically on the details. But he is the first Jew we know of who attempted to write history in the tradition of Herodotus and Thucydides. He is a major source for the Jewish Revolt and for the Anti-Seleucid revolt.
Why in the cases of Honi, Agabus, Theudas, The Egyptian, Eleazar, Jesus son of Ananias and John the Baptist would he make them up? It’s possible that he did make some or all of them up: in which case, go to the text and give your reasons. Your blanket dismissal of him as a source for anything confuses me. When I once pointed out to you that John the Baptist appears in Josephus, you were happy to posit his probable existence. Why was Josephus a reliable source then for JtB, but not now? How have your historiographical criteria changed?
A rational approach to all these texts demands that we do the work. For instance, the initially attractive point that The Dead Sea Scrolls don’t mention Jesus breaks down: they don’t mention any prominent 1st century inhabitant of Judaea. I’ve pointed that out to you before, yet you repeat it. We cannot use arguments, even if they appear to bolster the case, that we know are incorrect. That’s what Christians do.
It’s a lovely Spring day here. Life is beautiful and I have a daughter to frolic with.
Slaínte.
Did I not mention? Josephus was born a century after the alleged time of Honi, and didn’t start his writing career until long after he would have been eligible for Social Security. Imagine a modern retiree writing about Abraham Lincoln’s side career as a vampire hunter and you’ve got roughly the proper perspective.
Hell, Josephus could have been Ken Burns and he still wouldn’t be a credible source, if that’s all we had.
Bur we’re not talking about a “prominent 1st century inhabitant of Judaea.” We’re talking about a dude whose birth of a virgin was known by the whole region and beyond, who walked on water, who turned water into wine, who raised a zombie army, and who flew up into the sky after spending a month and a half continuing to do that which the Roman Empire had very publicly had him executed for doing.
And if you want to claim that Jesus was anything other than that, you’re going to have to show the documentary evidence that such an individual not only existed, but that said individual was the same one whom everybody else was convinced was an honest-to-the-gods demigod, the real deal incarnate. That means that you can’t use anything in the Bible, nor the apocrypha, nor any of the apologetics, nor the Pagan mentions — not even Eusebius’s interpolation of the Testamoinum into Josephus’s words; they’re all documentation of Zombie King Christ, not of “prominent 1st century inhabitant of Judaea” Jesus.
So you not only have no evidence for your own mythical fantasy of Jesus-as-random-schmuck, all the evidence you would have us believe is evidence for the schmuck is instead evidence for the demigod — the very entity Christians actually believe in and that you yourself would have us believe never existed.
Cheers,
b&
Oh dear Ben. Re: Honi, you’ll usually find that a minimum requirement for being a historian is being born after the events you describe.
As for the rest of the tirade – Sheldon Cooper meets Father Jack – it would be a waste of my time to summon up the effort to respond.
Have a nice day: I’ll crack open a bottle of IPA tonight, after the girls are upstairs for the sleepover, and have another good laugh at your last post.
Slaínte.
That is, sadly, a perfect demonstration at the utter lack of academic integrity that runs rampant throughout a certain philosophical school of the humanities these days.
In any other field, inappropriate reliance upon secondary sources — let alone un-provenanced tertiary sources in the case of Josephus or far worse in the case of the Mishnah — is something that even undergraduates know will earn them an instant failing grade. For far too many historians (but, thankfully, not all), it’s not merely not even remarkable, it is, as you’ve just demonstrated, a point of pride.
If there is a reason those in the hard sciences so often lack respect for the humanities, you’ve just demonstrated it. Again, fortunately, there are others who actually do have academic integrity — and, to be fair, even the hard sciences have their Pons and Flieschmann incidents. But the humanities desperately need to clean house….
Cheers,
b&
But the humanities desperately need to clean house….
Starting with theology departments!
With so many people doing God’s work for him, it is no wonder that he has not been around for 2,000 years.
Is he technically correct that Christians are the most persecuted religion in the world? Yes, because when you look at the whole world (including Islamic nations), the largest number of people who are persecuted happen to be Christians. But that doesn’t mean Christianity is under attack specifically, it just means Christians are the largest minority in countries that persecute all religious minorities.
Not really, it only goes down well with a smallish 10% minority. However, that minority would be a much larger fraction of local Conservative associations, and they have influence beyond their numbers since politicians calculate that they can gain but not lose votes by appearing religious. We need to change that.
Jesus fucking christ….that spoiled, rich arsehole is complaining about persecution? He is so deeply privileged he probably thinks eating pheasant on week-ends makes him just like a regular pauper….
I’m no fan of Cameron on this, but before we get too pharyngulite in response, he was talking about persecution of Christians “around the world” — Nigeria (Boko Haram), Pakistan, Egypt, etc, where persecution is very real. We should surely support him on that issue.
Yes, I agree with you. But then he shouldn’t then have gone on to say: “Jesus invented the Big Society 2,000 years ago, I just want to see more of it.”
That after Baroness Warsi gloating about how “this government does God” and Pickles saying that British atheists were intolerant and should get over it makes for one gigantic foot-in-mouth episode on the part of the Tories.
They’re trying to appeal to the conservatives who have lately been wooed further right. Make no mistake, this is all about getting votes. It has nothing to do with protecting the individual liberties of minorities.
Sure, but he is using those cases to imply persecution for all christians. He is deliberately trying to paint a picture of christianity as a persecuted community “around the world”. When the persecution is real, we should definitely support anyone who speaks against it. When it´s not, you don´t get to use it to win pitty points…
And by the way, in those countries the problem is that PEOPLE are being persecuted for their believes, not that they are christian. That is entirely irrelevant and doesn´t need to be mentioned unless you are specifically trying to paint christianity as a persecuted community.
The largest persecution of Christians in recent times has been by other Christians, in Rwanda. Christians are persecuting Muslims in Central African Republic.
Well, first, the syntax is wrong.
“It is the case that Christians are now the most persecuted religion around the world”
ought to be either
“…Christians are now the most persecuted people…”
or
“Christianity is now the most persecuted religion…”
Regardless, implicit in that statement seems to be that only extramural persecution counts. If it’s Muslim on Muslim (incl Muslim men on Muslim women) it doesn’t count.
I lived in the UK from 1972-1990, and even during the Thatcher years I don’t remember bullshit like coming from Downing St. What’s happening there??
Career politicians who have had little life experience outside politics. The triumph of style over substance.
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There is nothing to him. He is like a hollow Easter egg with no bag of sweets inside. Cameron will say absolutely anything if he thinks it might get him elected. If a shock poll was published saying 99% of the British public were enthusiastic paedophiles, he would drive through the streets in an open-top bus surrounded by the Mini Pops. He’s nothing. He’s no one.
— Charlie Brooker, Guardian, april 2007
Don’t say you didn’t see it coming.
Substitute Blair and that’s certainly true. He was far more a political chameleon.
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He sounds drunk. Maybe he had a bit too much sherry at the Easter reception.
Or the election party.
Or communion wine?
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“Does this kind of Jesus-y stuff go down well in the UK?”
Absolutely not – except for, as you might expect, a tiny (and in this country I really do mean absolutely, vanishingly minuscule) minority of religious cranks. The UK isn’t a nation of atheists: it’s a nation of people too utterly uninterested in and apathetic about religion even to count as a nation of atheists. For the vast majority of the population religion simply isn’t on the radar except, for older folk, in the loosest possible cultural sense. I haven’t travelled to the US (yet) but I get the distinct impression that a lot of Americans (believers or atheists) would be *very* surprised at just how little religious adherence or affiliation there is in day-to-day life in the UK. Every city has its cathedral and every town and village its mossy, ancient parish church, but these are museum pieces: people look at them take photos of them, even get married in them from time to time because they look nice, but as attendance figures show, a puny minority of people (about a million – and falling year on year – in a nation of sixty million) actually go for religious reasons.
As for Christians being persecuted: worldwide Cameron may be correct, but remember that the UK is a de facto secular soceity but a de jure religious state since we have an established state church, a monarch who is the head of that church and 26 bishops in the House of Lords as of right, deciding on and framing our laws and – as in the very recent case of same-sex marriage – doing their best to halt progress. There are only two nations in the world where clerics form part of the government by right: one is England.
The other is Iran.
There are some handy statistics here:
http://www.whychurch.org.uk/trends.php
‘If the Church in England was the national football team we would have sacked the manager long ago. A European social study (published in 2002) put the UK at the 4th lowest rate of Church attendance in Europe.’
My local vicar’s flock consists of around a dozen regulars, who are in their 70s & 80s… according to my aged stepfather, I hasten to add. Apparently, owing to the shortage of punters, he has at least 3 different parishes, which he commutes between on a bicycle.
My stepfather invited him to tea and I was curious to meet him, but unfortunately (!?) he got lost on the way, an incident I attribute to divine guidance.
I do think they could make better use of those wonderful buildings.
When I was in the UK for a couple of years as a kid (we’d visit any building with a few hundred years on it), I though Harvest Festivals were rather nice; but of course there’s a pretty short season for that, and not so meaningful to the urban population. The main current functions are recording and celebration of births, deaths, marriages, solstice and equinox festivals, and ‘teaching’ of certain distorted strands of history. All worth doing, and a bit of pomp and ceremony doesn’t hurt; it’s just religion that needs to go, the other functions of the church could continue to use the real estate.
*One is the UK.
Jesus invented the Big Society? Sheesh….
Is there an emoticon for “major face palm”?
Oh look… another unscrupulous twit has his grubby mitts on England’s tiller.
Bah humbug….
If David Cameron had a mental breakdown, how would one know?
He would start making sense?
Re 22:
Next up Bonker Boris.
I await with barely suppressible glee the next cover of Private Eye. Or, there are half a dozen regular contributing cartoonist’s who could have a field day with the notion of Cameron holding a turd and thanking Jesus for the inspiration..and to think this is the twit who claimed that Richard ‘just doesn’t get it’, without of course specifying just exactly what ‘it’ was.
And this is surely a gift too for a J&M strip.
I’m probably an outlier in this company – I voted Conservative in the last UK General Election, and expect to do so again in the next. I actually think Cameron isn’t too bad as a Prime Minister, and certainly far preferable to the plausible alternatives. However, even having said that I think this Jesus stuff is silly and pointless. As someone said higher up the thread, active religious belief is seen as a curious eccentricity among native Brits, and most people will be entirely indifferent to this kind of thing.
On economic policy I’d likely join you in supporting the Tories. However, Pickles, Warsi and now Cameron are really trying hard to repel me.
Ditto.
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PS. Although I actually voted Lib. Dem. Power sharing… well, that hasn’t worked out too well for Nick.
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I tend to agree. As PMs go, he’s a lot better than the last two. Not sure that I can bring myself to vote Tory though. Although it will be a long time before I’d trust Labour again…
While I did not vote Conservative last time, I was considering it as – as also an outlier – O think the government has not done that bad a job (though TBH that is probably true because the LDs have halted the more wilder Con ideas). Certainly Labour would have been way, way worse.
But now I really and not sure. Frankly, PMs and politicians who do anything based in Faith (instead of facts, for instance) scare me. Let it not be forgotten that the last guy who did stuff because he “believed it was right” (despite plenty of evidence the other way) the Tony Bliar (spelling deliberate!), the biggest criminal ever to live at No 10. The trouble with those of a religious bent is that they are used to the idea of ignoring logic and facts in favour of belief. And they scare me.
Snag is who the hell do I vote for now? The LDs are washed up as clearly they cannot be trusted on anything at all – all the moral spine of a strawberry jelly. Labour have shown themselves to be authoritarian and the greatest threat to basic fundamental freedoms we have ever seen (no apology yet for what they did and tried to do when in power last time). Cons are increasing sounding dangerously religious. And UKIP – who I like on Europe – are, once you scratch the surface, regretably just racist Colonel Blimps.
I guess that leaves me with the Monster Raving Loony Party who are at least truthful…
What about the Greens?
Here in the States, the political spectrum has shifted so far to the right that even Reagan would be too liberal for today’s Democrats — never mind Republicans. The American Green Party, though, would be quite comfortable with FDR’s Democrats and the New Deal — with, of course, some technological upgrades now that we know that there’re better ways to power society than by building massive dams.
b&
Yes, he means that Christians are persecuted in Islamic countries (most of which no longer have any Jews), but one can’t say so publicly.
+1
From now on, if the persecution of Christians is mentioned to me, I will insist on noting this elephant in the room by saying loudly: “yes, they are in ISLAMIC COUNTRIES”.
I guess he basically sealed his fate as I’m sure he will be voted out; people in the UK don’t go for this crap!
Invoking Jesus for an “initiative of volunteering and civic responsibility” is rather inoffensive compared with Bush and Blair’s Christianity-besotted invasion of Iraq. Let’s kill 100,000 Iraqis for Jesus. The fact that they weren’t honest about their religious motivations, only makes their acts more insidious.
Well, it might read badly in the US but pretty much no-one here takes pronouncements like this seriously. He’s *obvious* in how completely tactless he is…
And to anyone who will vote Conservative: No, not me, never, learned that in the 70s as a nipper from my parents who were both teachers. Blair was lying scum (and very religious, as it turns out), Brown, well I’ve forgotten him already, but both of these arses were simply following on from Thatcher.
The current lot, just don’t get me started. They’re shameless about everything that they do. Gove, Hunt, the lot of them. I’m trying to work out whether they’re incompetent or actively evil.
I made the mistake of voting LibDem the last time round. I quite liked their views on a whole bunch of stuff… which they proceeded to throw out of the window, pimping themselves out to the highest bidder who then proceeded to screw them over (education, NHS, proportional representation) and they lay down and took it.
I’m very angry now!
“The current lot, just don’t get me started. They’re shameless about everything that they do. Gove, Hunt, the lot of them. I’m trying to work out whether they’re incompetent or actively evil.”
I give you Hanlon’s Razor: “Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
I have no idea what a Dyno-Rod is or means but is he actually saying that he’s one to help shit pass thru??
🙂
Yup. I can certainly see him as a giant Dyno-Rod. Enabling the shit……
I think he’s mistaking gradual errosion of undue privilege with persecution…
Christians are persecuted: by the priests they put their trust in and their imaginary lord in the sky that tells them they are all sinners.
I’ll see your David Cameron and raise you a Tony Abbott; formerly known as “The Mad Monk” even by his own side of politics. He’s a stupid, god-soaked bully, who embarrasses us internationally on a daily basis.
I feel for you. A misogynist too.
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The majority here in the UK don’t believe a word that comes out of his mouth. Cameron and his chums only worships one thing – power.
Why play the religion card now?
The impending election.
Camerooon is sucking up to Muslims via Baroness Warsi!
It seems in the light of Dave’s recent conversion the Conservatives have a new Party Code of Conduct
https://twitter.com/Unnamedinsider/status/454606001338351616/photo/1
I´m german. Could you please describe what “Dyno-Rod” means? I didn´t find it in dictionary and so I´m a little bit confused 😉
Thank you so much for your efforts!
P.S.
Your website is so important and I like it very much!
Best wishes from Germany!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyno-Rod – he’s using them as a metaphor for clearing blocked drains.
Thanks!
Does god really hate us that much?!
And low he excepted the seven million made by his family from the oh so holy slave trade how righteous of him!!!
@Ben Goren
Posted April 13, 2014 at 12:52 pm
Re-read the thread, Ben. You’re the only one who has stated that any of these religious figures really existed – John the Baptist, based on your judgement of Josephus’ good faith in that story.
You asked me to provide references for 5 Jews, which I did. My point is exactly that you then need to evaluate their credibility.
Asserting that these magical/religious figures didn’t exist raises an issue: it makes it less understandable culturally for the evangelists to allege similar abilities in Jesus. Why was it necessary in the first place for those powers to be ascribed to Jesus? That’s what I mean by the miracle stories being of their time.
On Theology Departments, agreed.
Slaínte.
Re: me. “On Theology Departments, agreed.” My bad: I meant Divinity Depts. I don’t agree with Diana.
Slaínte.
What we have here is failure to communicate. This latest claim of yours is so far removed from reality that it deserves no further response.
Considering your endorsement of theology in your next response, though, I suppose it’s not all that surprising that reality isn’t your strong suit.
b&
Andrew Copson, BHA Chief Executive:
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