Calgary Church Loses Charity Status: Opposition to Abortion, Homosexuality Cited as Reasons

CALGARY, Alberta, January 21, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has revoked the charitable status of Kings Glory Fellowship (KGF), a Christian church in Calgary. CRA cites a number of issues with KGF's application, but the decision is based, in part, on the ground that certain KGF Board members have spoken out strongly against abortion, and other moral issues.

"The members of the Board of Directors espouse strong negative views about sensitive and controversial issues, which may also be viewed as political, such as abortion, homosexuality, divorce, etc.,” wrote CRA agent Dian Prodanov in an October 29th letter.

These “political” views make the church ineligible because, according to the agent, a registered charity “may only engage in non-partisan political activities as long as it devotes substantially all (usually 90% or more) of its resources to charitable activities."

KGF's pastor, Artur Pawlowski, is also the founder and pastor of Street Church Ministries, which has made headlines because of its battle with the city of Calgary to uphold its right to preach to and serve the city's poor. Read more
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Why every school should have its own policeman (or woman)

[...] No government, can legislate for good behaviour. My big idea is to provide every primary school in the country with a policeman or woman, and on a permanent basis. Now don’t throw your hands up in horror. I’m not an apologist for any authoritarian tendency. It’s quite simply this; get the youngsters and police to build up excellent relationships at the earliest possible opportunity, helping to foster and nuture respect, responsibility and understanding. This builds perfectly upon the work already undertaken by Labour investing in Early Years - Sure Start, Children’s Fund, Family Centres and so on.

Oodles of evidence points to the fact where primary schools have adopted local cops; there’s a noticeable drop in crime rates in that area in later years. Head Teachers I’ve spoken to love the idea.

It’s not of course a panacea and needs to work in conjunction with other initiatives such as restorative justice schemes.

Crucially though allowing each primary school a police officer is simple and is not rocket science. Yes it’s costly and it’s not just for one term. There’s a cost too to letting the status quo rule. No one said democracy was cheap. The long term benefits will surely be manifestly clear, and be something in time we can all celebrate." Read more
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That deep maternal urge . . . to kill your child

True love, I’ve grown to believe, is when you experience someone else’s pain as your own. There is no synaptic pause between their grave news and the summoning of empathy. Your reaction is visceral, involuntary: a winded blow when your wife loses her job, a sickened disappointment when your daughter is the sole girl not asked to the party. The proper seat of love is not the heart but the guts.

It would be a foolhardy woman who claimed a mother feels a child’s suffering more than its father. So I’ll let a man do it. Simon Carr, whose wife died, leaving him to raise his sons alone — and whose memoir The Boys Are Back in Town has been made into a film — said this week he believes a mother is more protective, less able to permit risky japes, because the child’s body came from her own body, flesh of her flesh, and will always be so. Certainly when my sons were small I found myself grasping my own knees after they fell.

And I’ve come to wonder how much of modern overweaning coddling of our kids, never letting them free to roam, is not motivated so much by fear of what might happen to them, but self-protection: a terror of the bereavement we know would obliterate our own lives. The mortality of one’s children, the notion that they will ever die at all — even years after your own death — is, as Martin Amis says in Experience, “immensely onerous to contemplate”. Read more
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Should we tell jokes about gays and lesbians? BBC asks the nation

The BBC is to ask the nation if its comedians should be allowed to tell jokes about lesbians and gays. The issue will be part of the most wideranging piece of research on sexuality that the corporation has commissioned.

Tim Davie, BBC director of audio and music, will chair a working group on the portrayal and inclusion of lesbian, gay and bisexual people. It will examine how they are reflected in the corporation’s use of language, tone, stereotyping, humour and scheduling.

The report was commissioned last August, months before the corporation received hundreds of complaints over a headline on the BBC News website relating to a debate on Ugandan government policy. It asked: “Should homosexuals face execution?” The corporation apologised and amended the headline. Read more
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Judge is refused care authorities’ report in Edlington torture case

Care authorities have refused to allow a High Court judge to read a confidential report into their handling of two young brothers who sadistically tortured two children and left them for dead.

The report, prompted by an horrific attack on two children aged 9 and 11 in Edlington, near Doncaster, is said to reveal numerous failings by care professionals who dealt with the brothers and their violent family over years. A copy was leaked to the BBC, which says the report details 31 occasions on which nine different agencies failed to take action over the brother’s offending behaviour before the Edlington attack last April.

The brothers, who were aged 10 and 11 when the assault took place, will be sentenced today after jointly admitting grievous bodily harm, robbery and causing a child to engage in sexual activity.

A request for a copy of the report was made by Sheffield Crown Court at the request of Peter Kelson, QC, representing the elder of the siblings, who had urged the judge, Mr Justice Keith, to read it before passing sentence.

He said that a study of the boy’s case by a consultant child psychiatrist, Susan Bailey, had found “a causal link” between the failings of the care authorities and the brothers’ grotesque violence.

A request for a copy of the full serious case review was made on Wednesday to the Doncaster Safeguarding Children Board, a multi-agency body including representatives from Doncaster Council, South Yorkshire Police and health agencies. Mr Justice Keith told the court yesterday: “I have been informed that I won’t be supplied with the document.” Read more
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Row over 'Biblical' rifle sights for UK troops

British soldiers fighting in Afghanistan will be issued with rifle sights bearing Biblical references, it emerged today.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) said it was not aware of the significance of the markings on the advanced combat optical gunsights (ACOGs) when it placed an order for 400 from US firm Trijicon.

There are fears that the inscriptions could lead to allegations that the battle for Afghanistan is a "religious war". Read more
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Far-right Dutch MP Geert Wilders on trial for anti-Muslim stance

The Dutch far-right MP Geert Wilders was greeted with applause from the public gallery as he faced court for the first day of his landmark trial on charges of inciting racial hatred against Muslims.

Mr Wilders, 46, sat impassively as his lawyer argued that the leader of the Freedom Party, which made big gains at last summer's European elections, had made his critical remarks about Islam in his role as an elected Member of Parliament.

Bram Moszkowicz said that Mr Wilders had a mandate to speak out against what he saw as the Islamisation of the Netherlands and argued that he had not discriminated against a specific national group, saving his attacks for the ideology of political Islam.

Around 200 supporters of Mr Wilders had travelled from as far as Cologne in Germany to hold up placards declaring that free speech was under assault by Islam and by the politically correct. The case is being watched as a test of the limits of political tolerance in the Netherlands after years of relaxed immigration policies which have seen the Musim population rise to around 1 million out of 16 million.

"This case is about more than Mr Wilders," Mr Moszkowicz told Amsterdam District Court this morning. "It touches us all. It is such an important and principled question that could have far-reaching consequences." Read more
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West turns Africa into gay battlefield

The trial of a young male couple charged with unnatural practices and gross indecency after announcing their engagement in Malawi was adjourned last week when one of the accused collapsed in court while enduring jeers from the public gallery.

Tiwonge Chimbalanga, 20, was made to return with a mop to clean up his own vomit, even though he has malaria.

He and his boyfriend, Steven Monjeza, 26, have been held in Chichiri prison, Blantyre, for more than a week — in order, the judge says, to protect them from mob violence.

Chichiri has a reputation for overcrowding, disease and homosexual rape. The couple say they have been badly beaten and Peter Tatchell, the British gay activist, describes their conditions as appalling.

Such scenes will only increase the pressure from western human rights activists and donor countries on Malawi’s government to moderate its draconian anti-gay laws, for which the couple have provided a test case. They face up to 14 years in jail. Read more
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The day I decided to stop being gay

A minor incident in a barber’s shop last week has helped me to realise that I may no longer be gay. Not a fully fledged homo, anyway; perhaps not even a part-timer who helps the team out when it’s busy. It appears I may be going straight.

I was in Tenterden, the Kentish village where I was brought up and to which I have lately returned, working at a nearby aerodrome as a helicopter pilot. I was waiting my turn for a chatty Latvian to apply the hot towels and razor.

A handsome young dad entered with a small, fair-haired boy at his side. The man took a seat and hoisted the wide-eyed child proudly on to his knee. The first haircut, I speculated inwardly, as an unfamiliar fatherly glow and feeling of mild envy swept over me. I could not tear my attention away from the mirrored reflections.

From time to time, the dad leant forward as they waited and whispered close to his son’s ear, tenderly kissing his fair head. Touching stuff.

But then my eyes lowered and I became transfixed by the sight of the boy’s tiny pink fingers gripping his father’s huge, workman-like fist. And I almost wanted to burst into song.

I think my life changed at that moment. Read more
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World misled over Himalayan glacier meltdown

A WARNING that climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 is likely to be retracted after a series of scientific blunders by the United Nations body that issued it.

Two years ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a benchmark report that was claimed to incorporate the latest and most detailed research into the impact of global warming. A central claim was the world's glaciers were melting so fast that those in the Himalayas could vanish by 2035.

In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC's 2007 report.

It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

Related Links

* Global warming blamed for rise in malaria

* Experts clash over sea-rise ‘apocalypse’

Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was "speculation" and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change. Read more
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Anjem Choudary: I’m smiling because sharia is coming

The radical Muslim who threatened to hold a march through Wootton Bassett is ready to defy the ban on his group and says a coup could make Britain an Islamic state.

Obviously I was never going to see eye to eye with the benefitchogging Muslim hate cleric Anjem Choudary, but I didn’t realise how many of his own community think he’s dreadful, too. Few of the cafes on his home turf — London’s East End — will accommodate the bearded 42-year-old firebrand and self-styled “most hated man in Britain”. Indeed, just after he flounces out of our interview in one of the few that will — a halal diner in Whitechapel — a waiter asks me: “Is that the coffin man? I can’t bear him. All he wants is fame, and the easiest way to get that is say that Christian people should be persecuted. I don’t see much difference between him and Nick Griffin.” Read more
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Google beards Chinese tiger

Google’s dispute with China over censorship and spying is fascinating on many levels. But one aspect that has been largely overlooked is the sheer scale of the financial sacrifice Google is making by taking its moral stand. In pursuit of their laudable aims, the co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page are burning dollar bills on an industrial scale.

It is hard to think of any listed company flushing away anything more than petty cash on a matter of principle alone. Yet Google is poised to write off certainly hundreds of millions of dollars, probably billions of dollars.

To recap, Google, after falling victim to a string of cyber-attacks on customers who were human rights activists, announced this week that it would continue to operate its Chinese language service Google.cn only if it was no longer subject to censorship by the authorities. Water buffalo are more likely to fly than Beijing is to allow uncensored coverage of topics such as the Tiananmen Square massacre, so Google.cn looks like (sesame seed) toast.

The potential financial impact has been played down by some. It is argued that Google’s Chinese revenues, estimated at $350 million, are a tiny fraction of Google's $20 billion of total sales.

But revenues are a poor proxy for value. It is China’s exciting growth prospects, vast population and soaring appetite for search which makes the business so valuable. Google is number two in China, with a 30 per cent market share, a well entrenched position that most firms in most industries would drool over. Nasdaq-listed Baidu, the search market leader in China with 60 per cent share, is valued at $16 billion. Even at a conservative estimate, therefore, the Chinese arm of Google would surely have a price tag in the low billions. Read more
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Anglican Covenant 'Whitewashes' Denomination's Immorality: Retired Archbishop

As the worldwide Anglican Communion moves fullspeed toward a full implementation of a covenant held out as a means of restoring unity, an influential evangelical retired archbishop is not overly enthusiastic.

On the contrary, he has advised fellow Anglican leaders not to waste their time on church structures which the Bible describes as dung and instead to concentrate on the supreme tasks of evangelism and discipleship, which he has succeeded in doing in America.

“To me, at best, it (the Anglican Communion Covenant) is whitewashing so the Church remains one and is not split; a lot of crack underneath is not shown,” said The Right Reverend Moses Tay, the immediate past Singapore Anglican bishop and retired first archbishop of the Anglican churches in Southeast Asia and Nepal. Read more
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Reported Death of Fr Michael Harper

FATHER MICHAEL HARPER (1931-2010)
I heard from a friend that Father Michael Harper died on the Feast of the Theophany (Jan. 6 i.e. Western "Epiphany"). He began his ecclesial life as an evangelical. It was while he was a curate at All Souls' Langham Place that he underwent his pentecostal experience of the Holy Spirit. Subsequently he became an early pioneer of charismatic renewal in the U.K., and, indeed, around the world. Read more
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More than 230 schools have ditched Christian assemblies

More than 230 schools have applied to councils for exemption from the legal requirement to hold a daily act of collective worship of a "wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character".

In some of these schools, Islamic assemblies are held instead, with readings from the Koran. Other schools run secular or multi-faith assemblies where Christianity is avoided or relegated to just one example of a faith among many.

Religious organisations said Christianity in schools was being marginalised and accused schools of failing children.

"The worst thing of all that schools can do, whether they have a determination or not, is a multi-faith mish mash," said Colin Hart, the director of the Christian Institute.

"The British Social Attitudes survey found that 69 per cent of parents backed daily prayers in schools. Yet Christianity in schools is being marginalised. Parents do not want assemblies to be either secular or a confusing amalgam of faiths. Look at the massive number of parents of other faiths who apply to Church schools. They don't like the secularism that is pervading community schools." Read more
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Jihadists groom children in the UK under 10

Police have identified children as young as seven being groomed for terrorism, with some expressing a wish to become suicide bombers.

Up to 10 primary school pupils, aged between seven and 10, have been placed on a government outreach programme for individuals considered at risk of being radicalised and turning to violence.

Some have taken inspiration from jihadi websites or after viewing extremist material in Islamic bookshops.

One child was referred to the programme by his teacher after writing on a school book: “I want to be a suicide bomber.”

Other youngsters were identified by their parents after suddenly adopting traditional Muslim dress or espousing extremist views.

At least 228 people, mostly teenagers and young men aged 15-24, have been referred to the anti-terrorism Channel project after being singled out as “potentially vulnerable to violent extremism”. Read more
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Heroes of the moral resistance against Adolf Hitler

The anti-Nazi resistance within Germany took different forms: some fought against Hitler, and some thought against Hitler; some defied the horror physically, and others intellectually.

Chief among the latter group was Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, the Christian thinker and jurist, who used the power of his mind and the strength of his beliefs to oppose fascism, and was executed by Hitler in January 1945.

Von Moltke’s widow, Freya, died last week after a lifetime spent chronicling her husband’s wartime activities: the von Moltkes offer a powerful reminder that heroism in war is not always a matter of bombs and bullets.

For many years after the war, discussion of anti-Nazi resistance was all but taboo, as if focusing on the small majority who opposed Hitler might excuse the German majority who supported him. In this Manichean struggle there was little room for sympathetic Germans or, for that matter, unsympathetic Allies.

Gradually, a more nuanced history has emerged. The Reader (Der Vorleser) by Bernhard Schlink dared to depict a young man’s love affair with a former concentration camp guard. The film Downfall (Der Untergang) portrayed Hitler as a believable human being, rather than some inhuman maniac. And finally the stories of the resisters, the anti-Nazi plotters, the handful of good men prepared to stand against the tide of evil, have emerged from the shadows of history.

Last year saw the release of Valkyrie, starring Tom Cruise as Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, author of the failed plot to assassinate Hitler in July 1944. The film did not trouble to go into great psychological depth. As in all Tom Cruise films, the hero simply set off down the straight path of righteousness: this was Mission Impossible in jackboots.

But behind men of action such as von Stauffenberg was another sort of resister, who relied not on violence but the power of belief, intellect and morality to oppose the horrors of Hitler’s regime. One such — perhaps the greatest — was Helmuth von Moltke.

Scion of a powerful military family, von Moltke challenged Nazism on the grounds that it was illegal, undemocratic and above all un-Christian. In our secular age, religious conviction is deeply unfashionable, but von Moltke was by no means the only resister to see opposition to Hitler not as a political necessity, but as a moral duty. The revolt against Hitler was, in part, a religiously motivated rebellion.

In 1942 von Moltke smuggled out a letter to the British writer and official Lionel Curtis: “An active part of the German people are beginning to realise, not that they have been led astray, not that bad times await them, not that the war may end in defeat, but that what is happening is sin and that they are personally responsible for each terrible deed that has been committed — naturally, not in the earthly sense, but as Christians”. Read more
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Labour performs U-turn on love and marriage ahead of election

Gordon Brown is preparing to pitch Labour as the party of marriage and the family in an audacious bid for core Tory votes.

In a shift in strategy ahead of the general election, the government is abandoning its long-standing ambivalence towards wedlock, conceding that children fare better if their parents are together. A green paper to be published in January will outline new measures to shore up “stable parental relationships”.

Labour’s 11th-hour acknowledgment of the importance of marriage has been derided by the Conservatives, who accuse the government of ignoring evidence about the benefits for the past decade. The Tories are preparing their own green paper on promoting family units, setting the scene for an election battle for the parental vote. Read more
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We need a shared story to underpin our national life

By any reckoning, Britons have had an uncomfortable and anxious year. Even as the implications of the financial crisis sank in and the belt-tightening began, news broke of the ride for which we had been taken by our political masters, via their expenses forms. The war in Afghanistan claimed the lives of more than 100 British soldiers. The Copenhagen summit raised awareness of environmental problems, but left it unclear what would or should be done about them. And attacks on the traditional family continued, with claims by ministers and "experts" that no one form of the family was to be preferred to any other.

It has been tough for everyone, but Christians in particular have found themselves under pressure. Nurses have been told not to pray with their patients; registrars ordered to conduct civil partnership ceremonies in spite of conscientious objections; evangelists forbidden to spread the word in "Muslim" areas; and permission for Good Friday processions refused on the grounds that they are a "minority" interest and do not warrant police time.

Given the sea of troubles with which we are faced – at home and elsewhere – what can we look forward to as we face 2010? First, we need to accept that the financial and political crises are not primarily about the failure of procedures and regulation. The angst about the war in Afghanistan, similarly, is not just about the sad loss of life. The broader problem is that there has been the loss of a common narrative, a story which underpins our national life. In the past, this was provided by the Judaeo-Christian tradition, derived from the Bible. This narrative has been at the root of those values which we regard as particularly British, whether to do with the dignity of the human person, with fundamental freedoms of belief, speech and assembly, or with equality – which is not about "sameness", but a recognition of the image of God in others. Read more
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Teenage alcohol abuse up, but fewer people counselled for hard drug use

Record numbers of teenagers are receiving help for drug and alcohol problems, but the number of those undergoing counselling for heroin and crack use is falling, official figures show.

A total of 24,053 under-18s in England were treated in 2008-09, according to statistics from the NHS National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse (NTA). That was 150 up on the previous year, suggesting that demand for specialist services such as counselling and harm reduction is levelling off, said the NTA.

Almost nine in 10 of those got help for problems associated with their use of cannabis (12,642) or alcohol (8,799). However, the number of those getting help for their use of heroin or crack has fallen by about a third in the last four years. In 2005-06 a total of 1,081 did so but, last year, that number had fallen to 657. Those figures confirm the recent generational shift among those under 30 away from the two drugs, a trend experts have welcomed.

Similarly, while the number of young people being helped to tackle cocaine problems had risen from 453 in 2005-06 to 806 in 2007-08, it dropped to 746 last year. That constituted 6% of all teenagers who received help.

Addiction is rare among teenagers, said the NTA. "Evidence continues to suggest that overall drug and alcohol use among the general population of young people is declining, and the increasing availability of specialist substance misuse services ensures that many more of the minority who do need help are getting it." Read more
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