Bishop John

Below is an excerpt from an article in Newsweek Magazine February 13, 2012 by Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

We hear so often about Muslims as victims of abuse in the West and combatants in the Arab Spring’s fight against tyranny. But, in fact, a wholly different kind of war is underway—an unrecognized battle costing thousands of lives. Christians are being killed in the Islamic world because of their religion. It is a rising genocide that ought to provoke global alarm.

The portrayal of Muslims as victims or heroes is at best partially accurate. In recent years the violent oppression of Christian minorities has become the norm in Muslim-majority nations stretching from West Africa and the Middle East to South Asia and Oceania. In some countries it is governments and their agents that have burned churches and imprisoned parishioners. In others, rebel groups and vigilantes have taken matters into their own hands, murdering Christians and driving them from regions where their roots go back centuries.

Read the full article – Ayaan Hirsi Ali:The Global War on Christians in the Muslim World

A prayer for the persecuted and for the suffering church:

Our Father in heaven

Thank You that You are the Lord who provides and that You meet all our needs, in

ways that we often do not recognise.

We pray for all those who are suffering harassment, discrimination and persecution

for their faith in You, O Lord. We pray that You will give them daily strength to

endure their pain, whether it be physical, emotional or spiritual. Today, we think

particularly of those who have been left homeless because of persecution and

violence. We pray that they will remain steadfast in their faith and seek Your face

in their trials, and that You will meet them in their time of need.

Lord Jesus, help us to remember to give thanks for all that You have provided for

us and to remember our responsibility to provide for other members of Your family.

(Prayer taken from Barnabas Fund Suffering Church Sunday resources)

Also see What the Arab Spring Means for Christians, “Australian Parliament calls for an end to Coptic Persecution in Egypt“

The Venerable John T., a noted cleric of our missionary diocese, is engaged in an innovative outreach project – wine making from the most varied of nature’s resources.

This particular hobby combines his love of birds (he and his family are keen “Twitchers”) and wine making. How? Well, this is the narrative as I understand it:

It’s amazing what wine can be made from: honey, flowers (dandelions, roses, jasmine), leaves (walnut, oak, elderberry), seeds (corn, rice, almonds, coffee), stems (rhubarb, grapevine), and roots (parsnips, ginger, beetroot, carrot)! But nothing too oily; e.g., coconut, peanuts, chocolate. Some of John’s wines have more than one basic ingredient: Beetroot and Pineapple, Clove and Ginger.

But how do you bring bird watching into wine making?

Well, each variety of wine is named after a Tasmanian bird. But this naming is not haphazard! The name of the key ingredient in a wine is matched with the name of a Tasmanian bird that the wine maker has sighted and photographed. Moreover, the name of the key ingredient and the name of the bird must be alliterative – this is essential!

Hence, Wattle Bird Walnut Leaf,  Firetail Fig and Banana  and Albatross Apricot and Date.

Some sample labels:

Outreach activity? Yes, invite friends to guess ingredients and suggest labels. A fun time. Enjoy!

Note: this outreach activity comes with health benefits 1 Timothy 5:23 and a health warning! – Proverbs 23: 29-35

PS  I can personally commend the wines 🙂

While I am very disappointed that Brad Green will not captain the ‘Mighty Demons’ (Melbourne AFL team) I am delighted that despite his personal disapointment he has a positive attitude to his role as a team player:

1. He will use the experience and skills he has to support the leadership. 

Green said everyone at Melbourne would need to shoulder some of the  leadership burden to help  Jack Trengove and Jack Grimes  deal with the  co-captaincy role.

“It’s going to be challenging for them. … so that is where this whole  football club has to embrace everyone becoming a leader and embracing these  guys, because they are going to need it,” Green said.

2. In whatever role we are placed we are to contribute positively to the team and its goals.

”I want to get out there and perform for these boys and help them win games  and  get back to playing finals.”

Great stuff from a true team player and leader.

Thanks Brad.

Read more: Green sad he’s not skipper, happy to be Demon

Church plea on Pontville by Helen Kempton, The Mercury, February 11, 2012

TASMANIA’S church leaders are lobbying Canberra to keep the Pontville detention centre, despite Immigration Minister Chris Bowen being firm in his commitment to close it as promised.

The Anglican Bishop of Tasmania spoke directly to Mr Bowen on Thursday to add his voice to the chorus of locals asking that the centre’s original six-month tenure be extended.

Mr Bowen has been inundated with correspondence from Tasmania this week, but said the state’s first asylum seeker detention centre would close by the end of the month, as first announced.

Bishop John Harrower said Mr Bowen’s response to him on the phone was in line with his recent public statements but the level of community support justified a change of policy.

Bishop Harrower said Mr Bowen had been wise to set a time limit when he first announced the plan to establish a detention centre just outside Hobart.

He said the time limit gave the Federal Government an out if the centre became an unwanted burden on the community.

But he said this had proved not to be the case.

“The minister should now be assured of the level of local community support. It is more than enough to justify amending his original commitment,” Bishop Harrower said yesterday.

“Those who hold him to the time limit must ask themselves whether they are motivated by principle or politics.”

The church said more than 45 local Anglicans were among the 300 or so people who have already signed petitions calling for the Pontville detention experiment to continue.

Bishop Harrower said he would prefer mandatory detention to play a minimal, or no role, in Australia’s asylum seeker processing policy.

“However, if we are to have detention centres, we should have centres like the one at Pontville where detainees have been able to interact with the local community,” he said.

See, Church plea on Pontville  and in a related Mercury article you can join me in voting ‘No’ to closing the Centre using the online poll.

*Also, please sign the PETITION – Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Australia: Keep Pontville IDC Open

In all of this media activity please keep the well-being of the refugees in the centre of your heart and mind.

Examiner newspaper article, Pleas on detention centre rejected.

You’ve got to love it!

Do you agree that there is no fundamental difference between human beings and animals?

If you answer, “No difference.” then you will agree that just like humans, animals should not be treated as slaves. Therefore, liberate the whales from slavery. Let the orcas free!

No, it’s not an April 1st trick. It’s a court case in the USA:

A federal judge for the first time in US history heard arguments in a case that could determine whether animals enjoy the same constitutional protection against slavery as human beings.

“… a federal court heard arguments as to whether living, breathing, feeling beings have rights and can be enslaved simply because they happen to not have been born human. By any definition these orcas  have been enslaved here.”

Orca rights are human rights. Right?

No. Sorry, wrong!

On what grounds might we humans disagree?

Well, why aren’t the orcas’ judicial courts hearing the case or at least presenting it to a human court? – just a thought 😉

My argument: Jews and Christians believe human beings are different to animals and more highly valued than animals because human beings carry the very image of God. This belief is grounded in their sacred accounts of life’s beginnings in the Book of Genesis where humankind is God-breathed.

Hence, in the Judeo-Christian understanding of life, orcas do not have the same rights as humans. That’s why I like the newspaper’s sub title: “We’re talking about hell unleashed”. A quote,

If the court  were to grant orcas constitutional rights, Shaw warned the  ruling would  have profound implications that could impact everything from the  way the  U.S. government uses dogs to sniff out bombs and drugs to how zoos and   aquariums operate.

“We’re talking about hell unleashed,” he said.

But it is not just hell because animals have the rights of humans but, more strongly, that humans will have been reduced to animals.

It’s the old “nothing but” argument that reductionists use to state for example that a person is “nothing but” a composite of chemicals and therefore of only modest physical and financial value. Or that human beings are “nothing but” a randomn statistical piece of space junk hurtling mindlessly through space as it decays to oblivion .

I can only imagine that accepting orca rights as human rights would have interesting implications for Articles 1 and 3 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. (Article 1)

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. (Article 3)

Clearly, these Articles are based on the view that there is something very special about human beings. But why? That’s the million dollar question. Your answer?

Read more: ‘We’re talking about hell unleashed’: whales sue Sea World  and  In the Image of God: Human Rights-Religion.