If, as Barnabas Fund suggests, 2016 will be remarkable for the battle for religious freedom, what's to be done about it?
It's worth mentioning that the religious freedoms we have long enjoyed in this nation were won - and maintained - in a Christian culture. Religions who want to impose alternatives by force are no friends of freedom. And atheistic organisations who want to prevent Christians from practising their beliefs are no friends of freedom either.
John 8:36 says "If the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed." Gal 5:1 says "Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free."
(Freedom is not freedom to do as you please. That's not freedom. Freedom is freedom to do the right thing. That's freedom.)
There are two things that a Christian can do here. He can compromise, pretending that any religion will do, accepting any sort of sexual lifestyle, or believing that there is more than one way to heaven. (There isn't.) Or he can stand.
Ephesians 6 says:
Be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might.
Put on the whole armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
Therefore take up the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.
Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness,
And having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace;
Above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one.
And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God;
Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints.
Not just words of comfort. Not just words of encouragement. But words of detailed instruction in preparation for the battle.
After the resignation of Baroness Warsi as faith minister, Prime Minister David Cameron has handed her role to Eric Pickles, who will fill the faith brief in addition to his job as Communities Secretary.
A couple of years ago, after the National Secular Society obtained a High Court decision banning councils having prayers to open council meetings, Mr Pickles fast-tracked laws to override the decision. "The Government recognises and respects the role that faith communities play in our society," he said.
He complained in a speech last year: "In recent years long-standing British liberties of freedom of religion have been undermined by the intolerance of aggressive secularism."
And in April this year he told the Conservative Forum: "I've stopped an attempt by militant atheists to ban councils having prayers at the start of meetings if they wish. Heaven forbid. We're a Christian nation. We have an established church. Get over it. And don't impose your politically correct intolerance on others."
He explained: "The Government has backed British values. And we've stopped Whitehall appeasing extremism of any sort. Be it the EDL, be it extreme Islamists or be it thuggish far-left, they're all as bad as each other."
Says the New Statesman: "Eric Pickles's appointment as Faith Minister is bad news for secularists."
And in a blog post about the appointment, Stephen Evans, campaign manager for the National Secular Society, asks: "Rather than a 'minister for faith,' perhaps we need a minister for freedom of belief?"
Critics complain that Baroness Warsi produced nothing but words. So will Eric Pickles do a better job as faith minister?
Time will tell.
But if his appointment causes the secular humanists to draw in their horns a little, that can't be a bad thing, can it?
I was at a conference in Belgium 30 years ago. A young Chinese girl living in the West had returned from China, where she had visited believers in underground churches. She had photographs, one of which is burned in my memory.
"How many of you have Bibles?" she had asked. "Hold up your Bibles." They had held up their Bibles. Their faces were radiant. Their Bibles were two pages torn from an exercise book with several Bible verses written on them in pencil.
In recent years the authorities have permitted Bibles to be printed in China. Times have changed somewhat. But it's reckoned that about half of China's estimated 100 million believers still don't have a Bible. The appropriately named American organisation Bibles for China has just returned, having given out 20,000 copies of the Bible in Mandarin to rural Christians.
Some of the recipients had been following Christ for 40 years without access to the Scriptures. One of the recipients was 91. He had waited 50 years for his first Bible, and was overwhelmed that someone should have travelled so far to give it to him.
You can see a video of Chinese Christians receiving their first Bibles here. The origin of the video is unknown.
A survey of teachers suggests a rise in the number of schoolchildren with emotional, behavioural and mental health issues. So says an article in Christian Today.
Almost 80 per cent of the 844 teachers surveyed, by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, believed the rise in bad behaviour was due to a lack of boundaries set by parents in the home.
Sixty-two per cent said behaviour was worse now than two years ago. Seventy-seven per cent reported verbal aggression, and 57 per cent physical aggression. Some 23 per cent reported students breaking or ruining the belongings of others. Teachers reported being spat at, kicked, punched and scratched by pupils.
The History Channel's 10-part series on the Bible has been a surprise hit in the United States, with viewing figures that have confounded critics.
Not like the situation in Europe, says Cristina Odone, where secularist authorities have created total ignorance of the basics of Christian religion among two generations.
"Schoolchildren today know that they should take off their shoes when they enter a mosque and what the Diwali Festival is about, but couldn't recite more than two of the Ten Commandments or name the Four Gospels. This ignorance is not confined to schools but blankets university campuses, factories, City trading floors and even BBC newsrooms. . .
"Maybe the Coalition should make the History Channel's compulsive series compulsory viewing in schools. . . and at the Beeb."
Are the two subjects connected? They certainly are.
Former Cabinet minister Ann Widdecombe says she was asked to take part in a scene for the BBC's family show for Comic Relief that was "so grossly offensive that it should have been unthinkable to approach an elderly practising Catholic, but they don't think, believing naively that their humour is universal and that everyone seeks fun in filth.
"BBC bosses believe that raising money for charity justifies anything."
And Peter Hitchens at MailOnline deplored "the embarrassingly bad lines, full of coarseness and crudity," mouthed by Rowan Atkinson on Comic Relief.
"Even ten years ago, these events would have caused an enormous row, not the mild media tremor they actually brought about. We have been shocked so much that we are numb. What worries me is this: if this could happen in 2013, what will be considered normal in 2023?"
Good question.
Despite a petition with more than half-a-million signatures protesting at moves to legalise same-sex marriage, Prime Minister David Cameron says he is "absolutely determined" to go ahead with legalising it.
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg reportedly thinks people who do not agree with homosexual marriage are bigots. (The word was included in a draft of a speech Nick Clegg was to give which was issued to the media and later withdrawn.)
Veteran broadcaster Roger Bolton said that in the modern culture of broadcasting, anyone who opposed homosexual marriage was treated as a lunatic if it was because of his or her religious beliefs.
The petition I mentioned in the first paragraph was organised by Coalition for Marriage - who incidentally are organising a sell-out rally with Ann Widdecombe and Lord Carey as speakers at Birmingham City Hall on the day of the Chancellor's speech at the Conservative Party conference. The same Coalition for Marriage commissioned a legal opinion on the implications of homosexual marriage and liberty of conscience from Aidan O'Neill QC, a leading human rights lawyer.
He said that if same-sex marriage were legalised
* A hospital, armed forces or university chaplain who preached that marriage was only for one man and one woman could be disciplined by his employer, even if he were preaching in his own church in his own time.
* A school would be within its legal rights to sack a primary school teacher who refused to use a recommended storybook about homosexual marriage because it was against her religious beliefs.
* Parents would not have the right to insist for deeply-held religious reasons that their child be withdrawn from school lessons on the history of homosexual marriage.
* A church which would conduct only opposite-sex marriages could be stopped from hiring council-owned property.
* A ban by churches on homosexual weddings in church could be overturned under European human rights laws. Churches, in general, would be better protected from hostile litigation if they stopped holding weddings altogether.
* Because the Church of England is the established state church, the UK Government could be in breach of human rights laws if it allowed the Church of England to refuse homosexual weddings. The church would be in a safer position if it were disestablished.
* If homosexual marriage became law then it would have to be taught as part of sex education.
Legalising same-sex marriage would not be the end. Judging by what has happened elsewhere, legalising same-sex marriage would be followed by further demands, like allowing three or more people to marry each other and decriminalising incest.
Is it time, do you think, for 'bigots' and 'lunatics' to take a firm stand?
Basildon Academy in Essex, opened last year with almost 1,600 pupils at a cost of £45 million, was not doing well, according to this morning's newspaper.
Parents said graffiti covered the walls, there was little homework set, none of it was marked, and pupils would get up in the middle of class to go for a cigarette. Truancy, fighting, bullying and teachers unable to cope were commonplace.
Then a new headteacher took over.
On his first day he sent 109 pupils home for wearing wrong items of uniform. In three days he sent home 151 pupils. Scores were given detention and dozens put in an isolation centre.
Within 48 hours teachers reported they no longer had to practise "crowd control" and they had twice the amount of time for teaching.
Said the headteacher: "The change is just remarkable. The morale of the teachers is high, there is no bullying and the pupils are happy. And we are instilling good habits that will make them good citizens and employees."
Is it permissible to ask why someone didn't do this before?
Over the past decade, some 30 Muslim graduates or students at British universities have been involved in Islamic-inspired terrorism.Writes Melanie Phillips:
So why is it that, with the Security Service periodically issuing chilling warnings that it's monitoring more than 2,000 dangerous Muslim fanatics and dozens of terrorist plots, Britain is still failing so dismally to curb its home-grown industry of Islamic terrorism and extremism? . .
Most of the British establishment is in denial about what it is up against. Our leaders know there is a major threat of terrorism.
But they remain wilfully blind to the fact that the terrorists' ultimate aim, the Islamisation of Britain and the West, is being pursued by Islamic groups that are not violent, as well as those that are. . .
The establishment is so heavily imbued by a deadly cocktail of political correctness, multiculturalism and 'human rights' law that, far from curbing Islamic extremism, it has actually fanned the flames.
Over the past decade and more, the judges have made it all but impossible to police Britain's borders against undesirables or throw extremists out of the country.
Universities have shamelessly refused to crack down on extremists on campus, even though countless Muslim students are being radicalised there by Islamist speakers with no fewer than four university Islamic Society presidents having been involved in major acts of terrorism.
Idiotically, politicians cravenly attempting to defuse Islamic rage by appeasing the Muslim community have funded organisations that have turned out to be extreme.
Even more extraordinarily, to this day the Government is employing radical Islamists in Whitehall as political advisers on curbing Islamic extremism.
The core reason for this supine approach is that the establishment refuses to acknowledge that Islamic terrorism is rooted in religious fanaticism - an extreme interpretation of the religion that dictates Muslims must impose Islamic law throughout the world.
While most British Muslims most certainly do not accept this interpretation, it is rooted in theology and history, and is supported by the major religious authorities in the Islamic world.
So truly moderate Muslims cannot make their voices heard. The extremists therefore have the whip hand. And the way they intend to achieve their ends is through a pincer movement comprising both terrorism and cultural infiltration to gain social, economic and political power.
The threat of violence makes it more likely they will succeed in infiltrating British institutions. And that in turn makes it even harder to curb radicalisation. It also galvanises the extremists, who perceive correctly that the society they have in their sights has no stomach for the fight. . .
Because our political and security establishment has defined extremism as involving violence, it is blind to the steady process of Islamisation that is taking place.
Astonishingly, it is tolerating - and even encouraging - the relentless incursion of Islamic religious law. Yet this is inimical to British values, and not just because it denies the human rights of women, homosexuals or anyone who wants to renounce Islam.
Fundamentally, it does not recognise the superior authority of the law of the land, against which it therefore asserts itself.
But it is a fundamental principle of a democratic society that there must be only one law for all. And yet in Britain today, blind eyes are being turned to sharia courts meting out not just family law judgements that oppress women, but even criminal sanctions, too.
In addition, there has been in this country an enormous growth of Islamic banking - despite the fact this serves as an umbrella for the financing of Islamic terrorism and is a vehicle for putting yet more pressure on British Muslims to subject themselves to sharia law.
Almost every week, more examples surface of the way in which British culture is giving way to Islamic practices. As a recent BBC Panorama programme demonstrated, some Muslim schools are teaching their pupils to hate 'unbelievers' - all under the nose of Ofsted, the schools watchdog organisation. . .
In short, Britain is being steadily Islamicised, and the establishment appears paralysed like a rabbit caught in the headlights.It's time to do something about jihad. While there's still time to do something about it.
Russell Moore is an American Bible teacher who grew up in Mississippi, where some of the folks were Catholic, and some Baptist."Around me," he writes, "I saw Catholic casino night fundraisers and Baptist business meetings, and neither looked much like the Book of Acts. When it came to the divide between Catholics and evangelicals, we knew there were some big differences which resulted in the Protestant Reformation and all, but day to day those differences seemed to my friends and me to amount to little more than who had a black spot on their foreheads once a year and whose parents drank beer right out in the open."
Much of the differences between Catholics and Baptists, he says, were summed up on what the British call Pancake Tuesday and Americans know as Mardi Gras. Or Fat Tuesday, if you prefer."Some of the older Baptists in my community," he says, "downright hated the whole idea of Fat Tuesday. They knew that Mardi Gras was the day before Ash Wednesday. After Mardi Gras was the beginning of Lent, the forty days of fasting rooted in Jesus' time without food in the wilderness temptations. And they saw this party as blasphemy."'Those Catholics, they just go out and get as drunk as they want to, eat till they vomit,' I remember one neo-Puritan naysayer lamenting. 'They're just getting it all out of their system before they have to get all somber and holy for Lent.'"As the years have gone by, I've concluded that we Baptists had Mardi Gras too. This phenomenon was seen in Baptist churches dotted all over the South. Mardi Gras Protestantism didn't celebrate a day on the yearly calendar, but on the calendar of the lifespan."The cycle went like this. You were born, then reared up in Sunday school until you were old enough to raise your hand when the teacher asked who believes in Jesus and wants to go to heaven. At this point you were baptized, usually long before the first pimple of puberty, and shortly thereafter you had your first spaghetti dinner fund-raise to go to summer youth camp. And then sometime between fifteen and twenty you'd go completely wild. . ."After a few years of carnality, you'd settle down, get married, start having kids, and you'd be back in church, just in time to get those kids into Sunday school and start the cycle all over again. If you didn't get divorced or indicted, you'd be chairman of deacons or head of the Woman's Missionary Union by the time your own kids were going completely wild."It was just kind of expected. You were going to get things out of your system before you settled down. You know, I never could find that in the Book of Acts either."British evangelicals are a bit like that. (I hope I don't get too pointed here.) They buy a Bible for each of their children and take them to church for an hour each Sunday. Then when the children get to 13 or 14, they decide they are not going to church any more, and parents are left with some years of heartache trying to win them back again.Some youngsters will do their best to kick over the traces no matter what. If you are parents with rebellious teens, don't feel condemned. I understand. I feel for you.But it does take more than the gift of a Bible and an hour's exposure to Christian doctrine each week to keep them on the straight and narrow. It takes love, it takes discipline, it takes personal example, it takes personal instruction, and it takes patience. Christian friends can help too.Whatever young teens may think, God made us. He made us to worship Him. Because He made us the way He did, the only thing that will satisfy is a life of personal relationship with the living Lord. Without that, there will still be an emptiness inside.Do continue bringing up those youngsters to a life of relationship with Him. They are infinitely precious. They deserve to have lives that are effective; lives that satisfy.
The BBC has been heavily criticised for extravagance, for anti-Israel bias, for left-wing bias, for slashing religious programming and for bias against Christianity. Not without cause.
But credit where credit's due.
This coming year is the 400th anniversary of the publication of the Authorised Version of the Bible, also known as the King James Version. It was in 1611 that the 54 scholars brought together at the instigation of King James I to produce a new English translation completed "the noblest monument of English prose." The King James Version has not only provided inspiration and spiritual instruction for four centuries, but has left its mark on the English language like no other book.
The BBC is to devote Radio 4 on Sunday, January 9, to readings from the King James Bible, between 6am and midnight. Space will be found for the most popular Radio 4 programmes, like the Archers and Gardeners' Question Time, but in between will be a total of seven hours' Bible reading in 28 portions of 15 minutes.
Introductions will be by people as diverse as Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, Simon Schama and Will Self; the readings by actors like Samuel West, Hugh Bonneville, Emilia Fox and Niamh Cusack.
There is a suspicion that the BBC is looking not so much to the King James' spiritual content as to its influence on the literary life of the nation, but the BBC's decision will please the church.
The secular humanists, as you may imagine, are somewhat peeved.
Like Terry Sanderson, president of the National Secular Society. "It is fair enough," he said, "to have a programme devoted to it, but the coverage is so excessive it beggars belief. The BBC is supposed to be for everybody, not just Christians, so to devote a whole day to a minority, which is what Christians now are, is unfair to other listeners who may want something different."
(There are, of course, other BBC radio channels.)
Said the BBC: "The King James Version of the Bible remains one of the most widely published texts in the English language and it has been recognised for centuries as both a religious and literary classic.
"It is also generally accepted to have had a significant impact on our language, the arts and music and the wider cultural impact of the King James Bible cannot be overestimated."
Good for the BBC.
The politically correct children-must-have-more-sex-education-at-all-costs brigade is still going full tilt.
(A report by Ofsted complains that schools are failing to consult parents about the content of lessons, teaching pupils all they need to know about the biology of sex but placing little emphasis on the importance of marriage, failing to discuss the possibility that children can say no to sexual intercourse, and exposing children to materials inappropriate for their age. About time too, you might think.)
Family and Youth Concern reports on the experience of Mrs Lisa Bullivant, a young mother from Lincolnshire. She received a brief letter from her daughter's Church of England primary school saying the children would be having sex education lessons but giving no details of materials to be used. Some of the children had recently turned seven. She assumed the materials would be appropriate for the children's ages.
Says Mrs B: "How wrong I was. My daughter came home and tearfully informed me that she had learned about sex and that it had frightened and upset her. . . The effects of what our children had been taught became alarmingly apparent. Children were found simulating sex on top of other children and some children were telling much younger children what they had learned, much to the horror of their parents. Still others were openly stating to their parents that they now wanted to have sex.
"Some children, including my daughter, became very upset and worried about the whole matter. She was not emotionally or mentally able to cope with this information. She would often burst into tears if she started to think about it and I had to spend a lot of time comforting her and talking to her, trying to repair the damage that this DVD had caused to her innocent young mind."
The DVD was Channel 4's Living and Growing.
"I managed to find out what DVD the school had used and I and other parents watched it on the internet in horror. It was so graphic and the narrative was appalling. It promoted sex as a wonderful feeling and exciting - no wonder some of the children now wanted to try it.
"A number of parents made formal complaints in writing to the governing body and the local authority. . . We were fobbed off at every point. Our request for a meeting with the school's complaints committee was not even acknowledged and a final letter I received was inconsistent and full of false claims. The local authority backed these claims and said they were satisfied that the school had acted properly."
Morally deformed individuals in positions of authority are messing up the lives of innocent children, which makes me very angry. And very sad.
In case you haven't heard, the UK's National Secular Society has instructed lawyers to take Bideford Town Council to the High Court. The reason: the council begins its council meetings with prayer, and the NSS doesn't like it.
The society says it has had a complaint from a Bideford councillor, one Clive Bone, who is an atheist. He says the prayers are "embarrassing," and he knows people who might have become council candidates, but are put off by prayer.
The society says it wrote to the council without satisfactory result, and it wants a judicial review of the situation. It will argue that prayer at the beginning of council meetings contravenes human rights legislation.
Keith Porteous Wood, the NSS's executive director, is reported as saying that the majority of people in this country do not enter a church, except perhaps for weddings and funerals, from one year's end to the next, and it is not appropriate in modern-day Britain for councillors to be put in the uncomfortable and embarrassing position of being subjected to "this archaic practice." The council's purpose was to provide local services, not church services.
George McLaughlin, clerk to the council, said the issue of prayers at the beginning of council meetings was a national one, not a local one. He did not know why the NSS had picked on them. In fact, the society, or its supporters, has approached some 140 councils regarding their habit (or not) of opening proceedings with prayer. The case, if it comes to the High Court, could set a precedent.
The council, which has been opening meetings in prayer since the days of Queen Elizabeth I, has voted by a majority to continue to open its meetings with prayer in the meantime.
There are people in the UK who are continually pushing for the legalisation of euthanasia. Whenever they speak of legalising euthanasia, they say there would, of course, be adequate safeguards.
On the subject of safeguards, bioethicist Wesley J. Smith points out on his blog Secondhand Smoke two things that are happening in Belgium, where euthanasia is legal. First, only something like 25 per cent of cases of euthanasia are being reported, as the law requires. Second, last year there were 40 per cent more reported cases than the year before.
He says:
This is what happens when a country jumps off a vertical moral cliff.
First, the euthanasia numbers are climbling dramatically. Secondly, the guidelines become virtually meaningless. As we have seen in the Netherlands, once a society countenances medical killing by doctors, the [doctors] tend to do anyone they think should be euthanized regardless of the guidelines, and then just don't report their own lawbreaking.
We are told that legalizing euthanasia makes it all so transparent. We are told it will be strictly restrained by legalization to only the most intractable cases. The pretense is clearly not working in Belgium. But will that cause the country to backtrack? Not on a bet. Once medicalized killing is accepted, the details cease to matter.
So much for adequate safeguards.
The Christian man arrested in Workington, Cumbria, and charged with a public order offence for saying that the Bible says that homosexuality is a sin - about whom I wrote here and here - has had some good news.
The Crown Prosecution Service has written to Dale Mcalpine (and his name is spelled Mcalpine and not McAlpine - newspapers please note!) saying the case has been dropped because of a lack of evidence. Mr Mcalpine says he is relieved.
Simon Calvert, of the Christian Institute, which has been assisting Mr Mcalpine, says the police must be held to account.
"Cumbria Police can't just walk away from this," he said. "They have arrested and charged an innocent man for no other reason than that he has peacefully expressed his Christian beliefs. And it's happened in other parts of the country too, so there is clearly a problem with the system, and it has to be put right."
There are a number of questions still rolling round in my mind. Like - for example - would the case have been dropped if Mr Mcalpine had not had an organisation to fight for him? And would the case have been dropped - and so promptly - if details of the case had not been all over the media on both sides of the Atlantic?
Christians have been everybody's Aunt Sally for long enough. That Christians are beginning to fight back is nothing if it's not good news.
David Toma, the 12th child of a Christian mother, was a detective on the vice, narcotics and gambling squad in crime-ridden Newark, New Jersey. He became a master of disguise in order to infiltrate drugs gangs.
He made thousands of arrests without ever firing his gun, though he was himself hospitalised numerous times with shot and stab wounds. He had a 98 per cent conviction rate. He was given the title "The World's Greatest Cop" by fellow policemen. Two series of television programmes were based on his experiences.
He has spent countless thousands of hours speaking to audiences about the dangers of alcohol and drugs. He has received numerous humanitarian awards and several honorary doctorates.
Denny Hartford quotes on his blog something of what David Toma has to say about teenage pregnancy:
Kids are having kids! Eleven year old, twelve year old and thirteen year old kids are having babies! Why? Because they are having sex! Unfortunately they don't think that having sex will lead to getting pregnant. Kids don't think about their consequences, they just want to have sex. And that's the problem.
My 50+ years of experience, talking to millions and millions of kids, tells the story: teen sex leads to babies, teen sex leads to unwanted pregnancy, teen sex leads to suicide, teen sex leads to drug addiction, teen sex leads to alcoholism, teen sex leads to Aids and HIV, teen sex leads to STDs. Teen sex is not only a moral issue, it's a health issue and it's a national health issue! . . .
Parents, what are you going to do about this national crisis? School administrators, what are you going to do about this national crisis? Local government and health agencies, what are you going to do about this national crisis? Some 'experts' preach non-abstinence based on the theory that kids will have sex anyway, so why not teach them to have safe sex. These experts haven't seen what I saw on the streets as a detective. They haven't heard the personal stories, thousands of them, that I heard while a beat cop in Newark, New Jersey.
Parents have given up on teaching total abstinence to their kids. They take their daughters to the doctor to get them birth control pills, so they won't get pregnant. Well guess what? They get pregnant anyway! There is no birth control pill that is 100% safe, and many have dangerous side effects, like blood clots that lead to death! Condoms are not 100% safe either. Protected sex is not the answer, total abstinence is. I am a parent and now a grandparent and guess what my wife and I taught our kids and are now teaching our grandchild? Total abstinence. Was it easy? No! But I will not surrender to complacency. I did whatever it took to make sure my kids knew that premarital sex was not an option. . .
The 40,000,000 (that's right, forty million!) kids I have talked with over my career gives me the expertise to tell you that absolute abstinence is the only thing that works. I have heard personally the horror stories of back alley abortions that went wrong. I have personally visited kids in the hospital who tried to kill themselves and their unborn babies because they were too scared to tell their parents they were pregnant. Imagine being so afraid to tell your parents you were pregnant that you would rather kill yourself and an innocent growing inside you! I have held young girls in my arms as they died from Aids which they contracted from having oral sex. They thought that oral sex was safe sex! I have counseled thousands of girls who were gang raped because they had a reputation for being easy.
My twenty years on the streets as a cop and then as a detective made me see things I still have nightmares about: mothers throwing their babies off bridges into freezing rivers, babies killed by their teenage mothers because they wouldn't stop crying, babies in dumpsters, babies thrown away like garbage! We are in a throwaway society and we throw our babies away too! I have seen it all!!!
Don't tell me that non-abstinence and sex education are the answer, because you are dead wrong. The only answer is absolute abstinence. . .
I have preached absolute abstinence for over 50 years. I will not surrender to popular theories by people who are supposed experts who don't have my background and don't know what they are talking about. I can absolutely guarantee you that your child will not get pregnant, will not get Aids, and HIV, will not get STDs, will not end up killing themselves when you teach your children the value of a strong moral code of conduct. . .
Let me tell you that when I talk to kids at schools about absolute abstinence, I get a standing ovation. They want to hear more about how to live a good clean life and how to live the right way. They want someone to love them and discipline them. They know I love them, and they know I know what I am talking about. Your kids want your guidance, your kids want your love. Love your kids enough to teach them absolute abstinence.
Well, you can't argue with that, can you?
Incidentally, you'll find David Toma's website at www.davidtoma.com.
Whether his name is Mcalpine or McAlpine is a mystery still. But his arrest in the Cumbrian town of Workington became international news, with reports and comment both sides of the Atlantic.
Dale McAlpine (or is it Mcalpine?) is a Christian. From time to time, he preaches from a stepladder in Workington's shopping precinct. When he isn't preaching, he hands out Christian leaflets to individual passers-by, with perhaps a few words of conversation. "He is not aggressive or threatening," said a shopworker in the precinct. "He is gentle. He hands out leaflets, he says his piece, and then he leaves."
The story, as I understand it, is this. While handing out leaflets one day Mr McAlpine had a conversation with a woman shopper about his faith. He mentioned a number of sins listed in 1 Corinthians, including fornication, adultery, homosexuality and drunkenness.
As the woman walked away, she was approached by a police community support officer, who spoke with her briefly. The PCSO walked over to Mr McAlpine and identified himself as a homosexual and the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender liaison officer for Cumbria police. He said a complaint had been made. Mr McAlpine admitted he did sometimes say that the Bible says that homosexual behaviour is a sin. The PCSO warned Mr McAlpine he could be arrested for using racist or homophobic language.
Mr McAlpine began his sermon - during which he did not mention homosexuality. While he was preaching a wagon arrived with three policemen, he was arrested, placed in a police cell for seven hours and charged with an offence against the Public Order Act. He appeared before a magistrates' court and is awaiting the date of a full hearing.
Sam Webster, a solicitor-advocate with the Christian Institute, said case law had ruled that the orthodox Christian belief that homosexual conduct is sinful is a belief worthy of respect in a democratic society. "The police have a duty to maintain public order but they also have a duty to defend the lawful free speech of citizens. It's not for the police to decide whether Mr McAlpine's views are right or wrong."
Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in the USA, made some interesting comments:
The Telegraph's report includes the ironic and chilling explanation that Dale McAlpine was arrested for saying that homosexuality is a sin and for doing so "in a voice loud enough to be heard by others." Is not the purpose of any speaker to be heard by others? Are we to assume that the British police would suggest that Dale McAlpine hold fast to his beliefs, but mutter them only under his breath?. . .
We are witnessing the constriction of Christian speech and the criminalizing of Christian ministry. The Bible clearly condemns homosexual behaviors, and the Christian church has been clear about this teaching for twenty centuries. But now, the statement that homosexuality is a sin can land a preacher in jail.
We will soon learn which nations truly believe in religious liberty and freedom of speech. Cases like this are inevitable when the logic of hate speech and special rights for "sexual minorities" prevails.
Do not for a moment think that this troubling development is of consequence only for street preachers in Britain. The signal sent by this kind of arrest reaches right into every church and every nation where a similar logic takes hold. . .
We will soon learn which nations honor religious liberty - but we will also soon learn which preachers are determined to honor God's truth, whatever the cost. Paul's command to preachers to preach the Word "in season and out of season" is about more than when preaching is more and less popular. It may well mean preaching the word in jail or out of jail.
Just ask Dale McAlpine.
So where will the next attempt come to silence the Christian voice in public? It's difficult to know. But it will be interesting to see.
Gary McFarlane is a Christian who worked as a relationship guidance counsellor for Relate. When he qualified as a psychosexual therapist, he raised concerns about a potential clash between his work and his Christian views. He was unwilling to give sex therapy to homosexual couples.
A lawyer concerned with his case said Mr McFarlane wanted his religious beliefs to be accommodated by his employer, "which in the specific facts of the case was not unreasonable." Instead, he was sacked.
He complained to an employment tribunal, which decided he had not suffered religious discrimination. Mr McFarlane, who said that his treatment was "without a doubt" an example of Christians being persecuted in modern Britain, asked the Appeal Court for permission to appeal the employment tribunal ruling.
Last week permission was refused. Lord Justice Laws said legal protection for views held on religious grounds was "deeply unprincipled."
"In the eye of everyone save the believer," he said, "religious faith is necessarily subjective, being incommunicable by any kind of proof or evidence. It may of course be true, but the ascertainment of such a truth lies beyond the means by which laws are made in a reasonable society.
"Therefore it lies only in the heart of the believer, who alone is bound by it. No one else is or can be so bound, unless by his own free choice he accepts its claims.
"The promulgation of law for the protection of a position held purely on religious grounds cannot therefore be justified. It is irrational, a preferring of the subjective over the objective. But it is also divisive, capricious and arbitrary."
Lord Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, concerned with other senior church leaders that in past cases judges had disparaged Christianity and had in effect called Christians bigots, had asked that the case be considered by judges with an understanding of religious issues. The judge rejected his request also.
Lord Carey said the judgment heralded a "secular" state rather than a "neutral" one. "It says that the sacking of religious believers in recent cases was not a denial of their rights even though religious belief cannot be divided from its expression in every area of the believer's life.
"While with one hand the ruling seeks the right of religious believers to hold and express their faith, with the other it takes away those same rights."
Andrea Williams, director of the Christian Legal Centre, said the judgment was "alarming" and in effect sought to rule out Christian principles of morality from the public square. It seemed a Christian who wished to act on his Christian beliefs on marriage would no longer be able to work in a great number of environments.
Melanie Phillips, writing in the Daily Mail, said the judge arrived at his conclusion by cherry-picking human rights law. He said human rights law conferred upon believers the right to "hold or express" religious views, when in fact the European Convention on Human Rights gives people the right to manifest "freedom of thought, conscience and religion" through "worship, teaching, practice and observance."
Writing in the Telegraph, Michael Nazir-Ali, former Bishop of Rochester, said Lord Justice Laws' judgment "has driven a coach and horses through the ancient association of the Christian faith with the constitutional and legal basis of British society.
"Everything from the Coronation oath onwards suggests that there is an inextricable link between the Judeo-Christian tradition of the Bible and the institutions, the values and the virtues of British society. If this judgment is allowed to stand, the aggressive secularists will have had their way.
"We have already had a rash of cases involving magistrates unable to serve on the bench because of their religious beliefs, registrars losing their jobs because they cannot, in conscience, officiate at civil parnerships, paediatricians unable to serve on adoption panels. . . Will this trickle gradually become a flood, so that rather than conforming to the Church of England, the new discrimination tests will involve conforming to the secular religion as promoted by Lord Justice Laws? . . .
"I fear that we are entering an absolutist era where there is no room for believers."
The day after news of the judgment came news of a 21-year-old Muslim's appearance in court for defacing a war memorial in Burton-on-Trent with graffiti proclaiming "Islam will dominate the world," "Osama is on his way" and "Kill Gordon Brown." The court was told his actions had nothing to do with religious belief and he was given a conditional discharge for criminal damage.
Then Dale McAlpine (described in some newspapers as Dale McAlpine and elsewhere as Dale Mcalpine) was arrested in Workington, about which more shortly. . .
A few weeks ago I wrote about Rom Houben, a brain-damaged Belgian man in a coma for 23 years who began to communicate, and who had apparently been conscious the whole time.
Now the story appears to be not quite as good a story as it first appeared.
Rom is still physically disabled. A speech therapist was holding his finger as he moved from letter to letter to spell out words on a keyboard. More extensive tests have revealed that the therapist had unwittingly been projecting her own thoughts, presented as the patient's.
But doctors still believe he is conscious. "We'll simply have to find another way to him," said the doctor in charge.
Then came news that researchers had discovered how it was possible for patients in a so-called persistent vegetative state to communicate, giving responses to simple biographical questions.
The brain signals for "yes" and "no" are complicated, so a team headed by Dr Adrian Owen of Cambridge and a Belgian neurologist asked a PVS patient to think of playing tennis for "yes", and think about moving around the patient's home - which causes activity in a different part of the brain - for "no."
Using a hi-tech functional magnetic resonance scanner, they picked up the resultant brain activity. The patient's responses were correct every time.
The researchers believe 17 per cent of PVS patients will be able to communicate with doctors.
Then there is the story of Martin Pistorius.
At 12 years old, Martin developed meningitis and tuberculosis of the brain and was left in what doctors said was a vegetative state. His parents refused to consider withdrawing food and water and clung to the hope that he would recover.
In fact Martin was conscious - just unable to communicate. "I was locked inside my body, my brain screaming for relief, feeling overwhelmed and utterly powerless. There were times when I was really, really frightened. All I looked forward to was death."
It was a good day if a fly walked across the ceiling. At least it gave him something to look at.
When he was 26, an aromatherapist who came to give Martin massage "saw something in his eyes" that told her he was conscious. She talked with Martin's parents, who agreed he should be assessed at a specialist centre.
He was asked to gesture to indicate his choice between objects. He couldn't gesture, but they could tell from the way that his eyes focussed that he understood and was trying to respond.
His mother gave up her job to help him. He had intensive physiotherapy and operations to correct deformities caused by his spastic condition. He regained the use of his hands and learned to use a speech synthesiser similar to the one used by Stephen Hawking.
Martin still uses a wheelchair to get around. But he is working as a website developer, studying towards a degree in computer science - and married to a beautiful young lady. They are deeply in love, and looking forward to a long and happy life together.
"Helping people to die" is not the answer. Human life is infinitely precious. Caring, not killing, needs to be the aim.
Nine days to go to the election - and the BBC has been asking Will Christians swing the 2010 UK election?
The fact that the question is being asked at all is evidence that something is happening. Christians are waking up. They are recognising that they have a responsibility in the world out there and that they need to make a difference. They are taking an interest in this parliamentary election in a way that certainly hasn't been seen in recent years.
The Christian Party is putting up more than 100 candidates. The Christian Peoples Alliance is putting up a further 18. The Westminster Declaration 2010, upholding Christian belief and Christian conscience, has been signed by more than 38,000 people in just over three weeks.
The Christian Institute, which has had 10,000 copies of its 48-page election briefing downloaded and is posting out 40,000 printed copies this week, says there are three touchstone issues for Christians at this election: religious liberty, the sanctity of marriage and the sanctity of human life.
People have suggested Christian voters should find out whether candidates are genuinely interested in moral issues, whether they would put moral issues above party, and whether they seek election for self-interest or in the interests of others.
A number of organisations, like CARE and Christian Concern for Our Nation, suggested Christians should hold hustings - meetings to which parliamentary candidates would be invited so they could be questioned about their stance on moral issues.
More than 260 hustings are now being advertised, which means that they will be held in more than one in three of the total of 650 constituences and hundreds of candidates will be asked where they stand on matters of Christian concern.
Unlike the United States, where candidates for public office are expected to have some Christian background, public confession of Christian faith here has been looked on as political disaster. But things, it seems, are beginning to change.
What difference will the Christian vote make this time? Zoe Dixon, of the Liberal Democrat Christian Forum, said it could make a difference in marginal seats. Elizabeth Berridge, of the Conservative Christian Fellowship, said while there might generally be a low turnout at the polls, some 80 per cent of Christians could be expected to vote.
Meanwhile Scotland's Catholic bishops are urging voters to back candidates who oppose abortion, embryo research, homosexual marriage, homosexual adoption and assisted suicide.
They suggest Catholics ask candidates to answer a questionnaire on these issues, and consider which candidate will best respect their religious freedom and freedom of conscience.
"When you vote, make your faith count," the bishops say.
And according to leaked Government plans, Labour plan a reformed, all-elected House of Lords in which the number of Church of England bishops would be cut by half. The bishops would have a voice, but would be allowed to vote only on specific Church of England legislation.
"In an age where the role of religion in shaping social and moral attitudes is increasingly recognised to be highly significant," said a Church of England spokesman, "the idea of shaping the Lords on a purely secular model would be a retrograde step."
If you need proof that the world has gone mad you would find it in one of the daily newspapers this morning.
It tells how householders in Newcastle-under-Lyme have each been provided by the local council with no less than nine differently coloured containers - irrespective of whether or not they have room to keep them - in which they are required to place their refuse.
A silver bucket is for food waste inside the house, a green bin is for food waste outside the house, a blue box is for glass, foil, tins and aerosols, a pink bag is for plastic bottles and a green bag is for cardboard.
Then there is a white bag for clothing and textiles, a blue bag for papers and magazines, a wheelie bin with a brown lid for garden waste and a grey wheelie bin for everything else.
Another article on the same page tells how children as young as eight have been offered free condoms in the street by youth workers from a taxpayer-funded charity based in Hull.
The mother of a 13-year-old girl who found condoms the girl had been given in the girl's bedroom was fuming. "I feel she is being encouraged to have sex," the mother said.
"My daughter's sexual health is my responsibility. She's my daughter. She's not the Government's daughter, the council's daughter or the youth centre's daughter. They will not care about my daughter if anything happens. It's my responsibility."
Does anyone remember when Britain was Great Britain?
Former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey says senior judges in the UK should be prevented from ruling in religious rights cases because they are biased against Christianity.
He claims that some have made disturbing and dangerous rulings that could lead to Christians being banned from the workplace, and that they should stand down from Court of Appeal hearings involving religious rights to make way for judges with an understanding of religious issues.
Writes Melanie Phillips in the Daily Mail: As an insult to some of the biggest wigs in the land, this could hardly be exaggerated.
By throwing down the gauntlet to the judiciary in this way, Lord Carey is mounting a full-frontal challenge to some of those who most influence our society.
The last of several final straws for these clerics [Lord Carey has the support of other church leaders] was the case of Lilian Ladele, a registrar who was sacked by Islingtron council after she refused to conduct civil partnership ceremonies because they were against her Christian beliefs.
Led by the Master of the Rolls, Lord Neuberger - the second most important judge in England - the Appeal Court ruled that it was unlawful for her to refuse to do so.
It might be argued that these judges were merely ruling on the basis of anti-discrimination law and that they were right to do so.
But in fact, these judges had discretion to rule in Ms Ladele's favour because the law upholds not one principle relevant to this case, but two - and they compete with each other. For enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights is the right to exercise religious conscience.
Why, then, did the judges in this case set aside the Human Rights Convention, which they normally revere as Holy Writ? Because, said Lord Neuberger, it only protected those religious beliefs which were 'worthy of respect in a democratic society and are not incompatible with human dignity.'
So what the Master of the Rolls effectively seemed to be saying was that Christian beliefs are unworthy of respect in a democracy, and incompatible with human dignity - a truly preposterous claim, since Judeo-Christian precepts invented the concept of human dignity upon which Western civilisation is based.
Indeed, such a ruling comes very close indeed to criminalising Christianity. For if putting Christian belief into practice is outlawed, it won't be long before Christian believers find themselves outlawed.
This issue is particularly topical because Gary McFarlane, formerly a Christian relationship counsellor for Relate, is due to appear at the Court of Appeal today to appeal against an employment tribunal ruling that upheld his sacking for refusing to give sex therapy to homosexual couples.
Lord Carey has prepared a witness statement in support of Mr McFarlane, and will back an application by Mr McFarlane's lawyers for the case to be heard by a panel of judges with understanding of religious issues.
Melanie Phillips again: No wonder Lord Carey and his colleagues have been galvanised into militant action. For under the guise of promoting 'tolerance' and 'liberal' social attitudes, anti-discrimination law is deeply intolerant and illiberal.
That's because it has nothing to do with fairness and everything to do with ideology. It is innately on the side of minorities on the basis that they are by definition vulnerable to the majority. So in the hands of the judiciary, it has turned into a fearsome weapon against Britain's mainstream attitudes and faith.
The result is that Christianity is now in danger of being turned into a despised and marginalised creed practised only by consenting adults in private.
Christians are already being forced into renouncing their religious beliefs if they want to remain in certain jobs.
This is simply intolerable in a liberal society where freedom of religious conscience is a bedrock value.
Ironically, news of Lord Carey's stand came the same day that it was reported that the Department of Health will allow female Muslim doctors and nurses to wear long sleeves to protect their modesty - despite the fact that guidance that all staff should be bare below the elbow was introduced after long sleeves were blamed for spreading MRSA.
New guidance says staff can wear long sleeves provided they roll them above the elbow to wash and when on the wards. Those wanting to stay covered on the ward can use disposable over-sleeves. Sikhs are also to be allowed to wear Kara bangles.
Said Shirley Chaplin, the nurse who got into trouble with the NHS for wearing a cross she had previously worn every day for 38 years without problem: "It seems like life is stacked up against Christians these days."
