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And shame it is to see — let
priests take heed -
A shitten shepherd and a clean sheep
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Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1340-1400), Canterbury
Tales, General Prologue {Parson}
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Christian Churches continue to exert political power. This
takes many forms, from Roman Catholic bishops in Ireland instructing
their diminishing flocks on how to vote in State referenda,
to US Baptist ministers fund-raising for extreme right-wing
politicians; from English bishops sitting in Parliament to European
Christian Democrats keeping Turkey out of the European Union
explicitly because it is not a Christian country.
  Christian
Churches are still active throughout the world, fomenting dissent
against governments. By attributing their own political views
to God, they are able to justify any form of illegality. To
subvert an elected government might be treason against the state,
but to fail to do so would be treason against God. Those who
believe themselves to be guided by God inevitably believe that
their divine inspiration supplies a higher authority than any
man-made law. God's law over-rides all others. So it is that
Churches ignore national laws that do not suit them. They smuggle
illegal books into dozens of countries. They continue the long
tradition of vandalising non-Christian religious icons. They
defy court orders in Asia, Europe and the Americas. They protect
war criminals, child molesters and other criminals from the
secular law. They perform illegal ceremonies and hold illegal
meetings. Around the world a stream of adults and children die
through so-called exorcisms and other privations sanctioned
by fringe and mainstream Churches alike*.
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Most Churches - including the normally
progressive Anglican Church - accept and practice exorcism
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 In
2012 the chief exorcist of the Vatican revealed some improbable
beliefs in a rare interview. According to him the Anti-Christ
was waging a war against the Holy See and the Devil was lurking
in the very heart of the Roman Catholic Church. Father Gabriele
Amorth, then aged 85, claimed to have performed 70,000 exorcisms.
He said people possessed by Satan vomit shards of glass and
pieces of iron the size of a finger. According to him, the Devil
can remain hidden, and speak in different languages. At times
he makes fun of Father Amorth. The machinations of the Devil
explain all sorts of ills within his Church from widespread
violence and paedophilia committed by Catholic priests to the
large number of Cardinals who no longer believe in God. He also
revealed that "His Holiness believes wholeheartedly in
the practice of exorcism. He has encouraged and praised our
work"*..
 School
children are often taught religious opinions as though they
were established facts, often by schoolmasters who have been
selected for their religious orthodoxy. In Britain schools are
legally obliged to teach school children hundreds of hours of
religion, yet most children leave school without ever having
spent five minutes studying the elements of law, medicine, economics,
politics or philosophy. In the USA they might never learn any
science and leave school without understanding, or even ever
having heard about, the most important ever discovery in biology.
Many will leave school believing the Bible to be the literal
word of God, unaware that hardly any modern theologians share
this discredited view.
 Despite
their unlawful behaviour, Christian Churches continue to enjoy
significant privileges in countries around the world. Churches
are often state-funded, they run state schools, and sometimes
state universities, they operate their own courts, and they
are exempt from numerous taxes and from certain laws.
In Britain clergymen enjoy personal privileges such as exemption
from conscription and from jury service. Bishops still sit in
the House of Lords, even after parliamentary reforms made in
2000. By favouring a minority in this way other people are penalised:
those others pay more taxes and shoulder a greater burden of
civic responsibility while being under-represented in the legislature.
 Another
area of concern is the Church's commitment to stopping child
abuse in its ranks, or lack of it. Widespread child abuse is
now acknowledged in many Churches mainly in English speaking
countries where the matter has been investigated by secular
authorities. Churchmen have acknowledged that paedophiles will
be attracted to Holy Orders by the prospect of easy pickings
and that it is impossible to identify a genuine vocation from
predatory opportunism. Widespread abuse has been revealed in
every country where it has been properly investigated. It is
curious therefore that no Church seems to have thought to carry
out its own global investigations, so that perhaps millions
of children are still being sexually abused around the world
in the countries where the secular authorities are not powerful
enough or not willing to instigate investigations.
State funding of sectarian schools in many countries is widely
seen as another source of scandal — leading in Northern
Ireland for example to the perpetuation of ancient religious
conflicts. The so-called Troubles in Northern Ireland only make
sense when seen as the last vestige of the Wars of Religion
that raged throughout Europe in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth
centuries, and the unique sectarian school system in Northern
Ireland explains why this vestige has survived in modern times
from one generation to the next.
 As
Richard Dawkins has pointed out we allow parents to turn their
children into Christian (or Muslim, or Hindu, etc) children,
but would not contemplate parents imposing other personal preferences
and beliefs in the same way. Some people now regard religion
as a form of child abuse*.
Even in technically secular countries regressive religious ideas
still hold sway — denying legislative, social, medical
and scientific advances and promoting ignorance. Many people
in secular societies are mystified and frightened by the effects
of Christianity especially in the USA where, even in the Twenty
First Century, surveys reveal the continuing strength of fundamentalist
religious beliefs that contradict facts. Over half the population
reject the Theory of Evolution and believe the world to be less
than 10,000 years old — including some 25% of school teachers.
Around 20% of Americans still believe that the sun orbits the
Earth.
Higher up the academic ladder, theologians are over-represented,
particularly in the older universities where anachronistic professorial
chairs are reserved for them. In many countries Churches retain
a stranglehold on certain disciplines. For example, there are
really two distinct sets of university philosophers — the
ordinary university academics and the theologians. In some countries
the theologians enjoy a monopoly in philosophy departments,
a vestige of medieval times when scholasticism, a long discredited
form of theological philosophy, enjoyed a similar monopoly.
In other countries there are parallel structures of theologians
and academic philosophers. In either case theologians are appointed
to university chairs for their orthodoxy, not for their intellectual
ability. To appreciate how bizarre this it, it is rather as
though universities continued to fund pre-scientific disciplines
like alchemy or astrology, and to appoint professors of these
subjects on the strength of their Christian belief.
The grip of the Church is still powerful in other fields. Around
the world Christian laws still limit what other people can do,
especially on Sundays and other Christian festivals. Different
countries suffer different restrictions, but the pattern is
similar, always limiting people's freedom to have fun and to
do what they want to do: restrictions on drinking alcohol; restrictions
on singing and dancing; restrictions on games, sports and gambling;
restrictions on buying and selling; restrictions on art galleries,
exhibitions, music, theatre, cinema, concerts, circuses and
other public performances. In some places it is still almost
impossible to travel by public transport on a Sunday.
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Kit on sale to Christians expecting the
imminent End of the World
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Perhaps most worrying is the phenomenon of End-Timers in the
USA. End-Timers represent a reappearance of an early Christian
movement that imagined that it could help trigger the End Of
The World by promoting events that would presage the Second
Coming of Jesus Christ.
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An image of the Rapture, from an End-Timer
website
End-Timers imagine themselves experiencing a "rapture"
- being carried bodily up into heaven
before the rest of us perish in gastly ways predicted
by the Bokk of revelations.
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Reading works such as the book of Revelation early Christians
set themselves to destroy the Roman Empire. This was the motivation
for their repeated acts of arson, but their ultimate goals were
wars around the world and civil breakdown everywhere. Just like
these early Christians, modern End-timers believe the end of
the world to be imminent, and imagine that they can accelerate
its arrival by arranging to come to pass the same events that
those early Christians looked forward to: world war and civil
breakdown. The parallels are precise, with the European Community
(created by the Treaty of Rome) playing the role of the Roman
Empire.
We have no idea how many End-Timers are currently seeking political
office in the USA — certainly dozens, possibly hundreds
or thousands. They represent a real threat to world peace —
potentially occupying high offices in government and the armed
forces. Any internet search will reveal large numbers of web-sites
promoted by End-Timer Christians of various degrees of virulence,
many working to “hasten the inevitable”, anticipating
a Third World War and the Second Coming.
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