A Baptist minister in Deland Florida has taken a four week leave of absence while police investigate death threats against him.

His crime?
Rev. Sean Allen started at First Baptist Church last September and made the decision to remove the US flag and the ‘Christian flag’ from the front of the sanctuary in October.

I have to be honest, I didn’t even know what a Christian flag was until a few years ago.

Police are taking the threats very seriously, he’s received at least 3, including in his home mailbox. I’d get the family outta Deland too because I don’t think people who mix up religion and nationalism and carry their belief to threat level can be reasoned with.
Nationalists equate faith with symbols of nationhood.

If upset church members think they need a ‘theological’ explanation for not having flags at the front of a worship space, then I don’t think any explanation is going to be satisfactory.

It’s possible the threats aren’t coming from a member of the church, but that doesn’t lessen the danger, and it’s a big leap.

The first note showed up in February in the mailbox of Allen’s DeLand home, the police report said. It said, “Time to resign.”

On April 13, the pastor discovered another note left in a hymnbook on his chair in the church that said, “To stop rumors resign,” Long said.

The May 1 letter that showed up in his home mailbox and prompted his leave of absence seemed to contain a threat and ultimatum, Allen told police.

“The letters were not addressed to him but were obviously meant for him,” Long said.

According to a church member who asked not to be named, Allen was concerned primarily about the safety of his wife and young children

The U.S. and church flags were not necessarily present each and every Sunday but were in the sanctuary a majority of the time and on special occasions like Christmas, Easter and Veterans Day, Long said.

Allen tried to address the issue through meetings with individuals, community groups and congregation members, Long said. Long said the flag issue had not come up for discussion again since those meetings.

Rev. Allen’s picture is not in it’s slot on the church staff page. Wise.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Nationalism

 
For over two years an SBC minister who is a consummate politician and  lightning rod for the fighting in the Southern Baptist Convention has done some amazing blogging. He has attracted some of the worst venom I’ve ever seen from SBC leaders who wanted him silenced and pulverized and used every means at their disposal to shut him up.

It didn’t work. Instead Burleson’s work and the attacks made national news. His blog has been a window into the infighting, tactics, insularity and power struggles this beleaguered denomination engages in. The stronger the attacks, the more Burleson shone, always responding with his main weapons. Truth, spoken with grace.

Not smarmy southern politeness, the kind of truth and grace that comes from mature faith.

Burleson is hanging up his blog Grace and Truth to You for a six month hiatus; he’s ambitious, busy with his church, writing 3 books and he needs to step away from the power struggles. True leaders inspire and empower others instead of demanding their conformity, I think this Oklahoma minister has worked hard to do that.

His blogging will be missed. Always patient, he could have spilled the beans on some of the top conservative power brokers in the denomination and made good money doing so. He didn’t, which is a credit to his maturity. Too bad fundamentalist leaders in control throughout the conservative resurgance and fawning fanboys who attacked him lacked that maturity. Perhaps his opponents and perceived opponents gained some social empathy and emotional I.Q. growth interacting at the blog. Burleson has been an informative and spiritually useful read. I wish him well.

When a reporter sits through a two hour round table or meeting of a politician and community faith leaders, it’s hard to summarize lively moral discussion in a small article.

A community newspaper writer in Milton shows how hard it is. While quotes are used in this article, you’d think from the coverage Baptists were politically illiterate and isolated, Anglicans and  Baha’i were informed and up to date on federal legislation. Imams, Catholics and Hindus weren’t worth a mention.  You’d never know all the faith groups in Milton were represented at the round-table, it appears protestants got the reporters attention.

Turner asked for faith leaders stance on moral issues around controversial bills which were debated at MP’s round-table discussion with the faith leaders. They were happy to meet with him.

The meeting was with at least 20 leaders in MP Garth Turners (Lib) riding, and there were several things discussed.

Bill C-484 was one of the issues up for discussion. As was war.

Did an Environics poll suggest that most Canadians are unaware of Criminal Code law and want a fetal homicide bill instead of enforcing what is already in place or working to reduce domestic violence?
The accuracy of the poll wasn’t addressed, just mentioned. I  doubt most Baptist or Pentecostal ministers are as uniformed as the article implies, limited word counts requires pithy short quotes.

However, it was the last quote used by the reporter that got a blogger for The Conservative Party fired up, along with  Milton letter writer Cam Battley. Battley’s letter started the smear,  “MP owes soldiers apology for disrespectful comment” over the final Turner comment the reporter wrapped with:

We don’t have funding for youth centres but we do have $150,000 for every shell bought for the sole purpose of destroying a village in Afghanistan.

Battley said his MP’s ‘verbal assault was an ignorant slur against the character of Canadians serving in Afghanistan.

Oh.

Conservative Party blogger Steve Janke at Angry at the Great White North couldn’t leave this alone, after all it is his job to twist, spin and smear and he and The National Post are milking it for all it’s worth. It’s worth your time to give it a full read. No MP, MPP or municipal counsellor gets through a term without attack.

The reality is far less dramatic; picking up on Janke, a few Canadian military felt the need to respond and fired off emails to the MP’s Halton office. Staff responded promptly. C-484 was not the issue, angry military was. I don’t think the 24 faith leaders would be amused either. Garth Turner: Anatomy of a Smear:

So there you have it. From a meeting with religious leaders, to weekly newspaper report, to Conservative militant, to out-of-context quote, to an accusation of murder, to slathering Tory blogger, to the public domain, to Edmonton, to Kandahar and God only knows where by Thursday at noon.

“We don’t have a problem, Esther,” I said. “They do.”

An hour later I wrote the soldiers, saying: The words you refer to were taken out of context from a newspaper report and interpreted and embellished by a political opponent. Of course I am aware of the shells, their origin, purpose and usage. I also voted to extend the Afghan mission - twice. I believe our troops are fighting for the principles of freedom and democracy, as much as some people here try to defeat them with deliberate falsehoods.

Thank you for your service to Canada.

The 150 thousand dollar Canadian artillery shells have been covered in traditional media.

The way to address smears, conclusions by voters and what military read from a blogger or a letter are to address them all head on. A MP with a blog has a better opportunity to do so, rather than relying on a rookie community reporter or traditional media that doesn’t fact check. It helps to have a top notch staff to stay on top of misinformation and opposition attacks.

PS: Turner took on Charles McVety and Rhondo Thomas of Canada Christian College head on, and for that (his brash self-promotion skills aside) I will always be grateful to him.
He had McVety’s number long before traditional media did. 
Many voters will now no matter what political stripes we claim. The politically active and funded fundamentalists targeted Turner and his riding and probably will do so again. 
Voters will be better informed on who they wish to support - our homegrown religious right or an MP who has hung in there and worked to listen to his constituents, use the internet to promote and provide a platform for issues for anyone who wishes to read his blog, The Turner Report.

Toronto Star:

A provincially funded Christian group is appealing part of a tribunal ruling that found it violated the rights of a worker who had to quit after revealing she was gay.

Background here.

There is no word on which remedy(s) the organization lawyers are appealing. This business was co-operative on a past complaint, and has been given a flexible time frame to work on it’s employment policy regarding this complaint.

I do not agree with how this employee was treated, I made that clear in the previous post; nor do I agree with  hyperbole by writers such as Deborah Gyapong of Canadian Catholic News reprinted in Canadian Christianity, but emotional and erroneous reaction is to be expected.
The sky isn’t falling, religious organizations are not under attack, but that doesn’t sell religious magazines and most people are not going to read a lengthy employment ruling. 
I also don’t agree with hyperbole from politicians calling for more punitive measures.
This organization showed a willingness to comply with employment law in the past on a prior complaint, and has indicated it will again.
Christian Horizon lawyers have the right to launch an appeal on any part of the ruling they chose to and they have. The organization also has the option to return to private funding if it wishes. I agree with Mr. Lauwers somewhat that perhaps people who agree with groups would not support them financially if they went private.

…constitutional lawyer Peter Lauwers in an interview from Toronto. “It really challenges social welfare organizations that are run by Christian and other faith groups on the basis of whether they will continue provide the services they do.”

Lauwers pointed out most Christian organizations serve out of a sense of vocation and fidelity to moral standards. He wondered how many people who contribute time and money to these organizations will continue to do so if they no longer reflect their authentic religious convictions.

It’s hubris to imply (as Christian Horizons has attempted to) that Christian organizations are the only groups who serve the public good out of a sense of vocation and fidelity to moral standards. It is also not realistic or honest for organizational lawyers and representatives to speak publicly about their concerns around this particular case and omit the reasons why this one did not meet established special exemptions.

Steve Paiken’s back story on Mark Steyn and the Maclean’s Three.

To Steyn’s credit, he may have offered the first olive branch when he said as I was closing the show, “would you guys like to go for dinner?” One of the lawyers immediately said, “No!” They may not have broken bread, but they did continue the dialogue.

What became clear is that the rancor that started the evening was gone by the end of it. We’re now trying to see whether we can bring all four participants back some time towards the end of the month, in hopes of having a somewhat calmer discussion about the actual arguments in Steyn’s book. We didn’t get to much of that last night because so much time was taken up with questions about whether Maclean’s was practising good journalism or not.

While there may be several morals to this story, one I’d like to highlight is this: many bloggers were taking potshots at various parties yesterday as the behind-the-scenes negotiations went on. While it may have made for provocative reading, much of it bore no resemblance to the truth at the time, and obviously not to what transpired in the end.

It reminded me of an expression I recently heard: 90% of what we worry about never happens.

TVO debate.

Did Donna Cadman, widow of Chuck Cadman and candidate for the Conservative Party in Surrey North understand she was calling Doug Finlay and Tom Flanagan yahoos?

“I hope eventually the RCMP will find out who offered what,” said Cadman in an interview yesterday. “Chuck never told me who they were. I’m in the dark as much as anyone else and it would be nice to know who these two people were. They could be just yahoos.”

Happy Mother’s Day Mrs. Martin.

With all the confusion and strong emotion expressed this week by many people wanting to know about a style of ministry getting media attention in Florida, it’s time to refocus.
Here is a blessing from a UK singer named Aled Jones.

Deep peace of the running wave to you
Deep peace of the flowing air to you
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you
Deep peace of the shining stars to you
Deep peace of the gentle night to you
Moon and stars pour their healing light on you
Deep peace of Christ, of Christ the Light of the world to you
Deep peace of Christ to you.

For 11 years anti-abortionists have gathered in Ottawa for a few days of marching, mass and seminars. This year they had 2 US speakers. A 43 year old Ottawa police officer, directing traffic around the march was hit by a car yesterday.

I wonder how many of the the protesters cared enough to send him a card or donate to The Police Benevolent Fund or responded kindly in any way?  Commenter at CBC.

I was simply trying to get my elderly father from his radiation treatment to his home in downtown Ottawa. For two hours we circled his street as he became more & more weak & thirsty. My own desperation levels certainly matched those of the drivers around me who were trying to (during the height of the business day) get to meetings/appointments, to pick up children/deliver packages & in one case get to a funeral.

We know that any group wishing to protest on Parliament Hill must obtain official permission so that there are not conflicts & so there is enough RCMP presence to protect and control the crowd on the Hill.

What we feel we saw yesterday was a group that simply decided to do its own thing & take it’s protest to the streets at the worst possible time without pre-arranging road closures or notice to the police or public. The lack of any discernible plan was the fault for this accident & if, it turns out that the “anti-abortion” movement did, as suspected, just start walking with an intent to disrupt as many people and as much business as possible then they are fortunate the officer wasn’t killed.

That would have put the ultimate ironic face on their basic claim of respect for life.

Lifesite - Largest Canadian March for Life ever

That crowd of people filling up four major roadways, creating massive traffic delays around Parliament? What crowd of people - timeimmortal

Police are surrounding the protesters. Need to keep them in line. Pro-aborts can be violent. SoCon or Bust 1:35 - Crowd is getting louder and louder. Excitement is building. Crowd is starting to slowly move toward the streets. Crowd moving toward Wellington Street. Front of line is the Knights of Columbus - about 100 of them in rows of 4. Lot of High School students with their banners and signs. Chanting has now started “Hey, hey, ho, ho, abortion laws have got to go”. Christian Women’s League for Life present.

sigh

Try to think about this.

You survive a cyclone with winds of 190 km/per hour. Storm surges bring 12 foot waves inland. You live on a delta, and 5 thousand square kilometres around you flood. 95% of buildings are destroyed.

Everything is flattened. People you know are dead or injured. There is no infrastructure, communication systems are down, there no clean drinking water, little shelter.

An open cut can be fatal. Cholera, dysentery, malaria will follow your hunger and thirst.

Some indigenous relief workers are in the country, working with the UN, Doctors without Borders, World Vision, the World Food Program.
After 6 days of little to no help one in five children have diarrhea.
(UNICEF/ Doctors without Borders)

You live in a country ruled by superstitious military. Westerners are not welcomed or wanted, and Asian neighbours are being kept out. The police and military are dumping bodies in rivers and selling what little food or water is being allowed in.  Your government tells you 21 thousand people died in the storm and go on about their referendum a week after the worst storm you’ve lived through.

Soldier are not equipped to help, many of those you fear aren’t getting fed either and you wonder if the world has forgotten you. You’re getting to sick to care. The temperature is 40C and heavy rain is on the way. Soe Moe:

“It’s been 6 days since the cyclone Nargis struck Myanmar and the situation is getting worse day by day due to the decomposed animals and human lying around the effected areas. Recent days, we had witnessed the generosity of the world as the humanitarian aid in millions of dollars. But it is very sad to find out that Burmese government is hesitating to grant visa to UN aid workers and NGOs in the name of politics. It is not the time for politics during the time of humanitarian crisis. And it is very sad to hear on news that the western nations are willing to provide the aid needing by the cyclone Nargis victims while Burmese government is refusing to accept them.

“Today first UN aid plane has landed in Yangon International Airport after 2 days delay due to the visa issues. And more planes are waiting permission from Burmese government to land in Yangon. Italy, Thai, India and Indonesia aid planes had been allowed to land in Yangon. We have seen the death toll increasing dramatically over the days.

“What we desperately need is experience aid works and rescue units to help the survivors, to dispose the dead bodies properly and to control the deadly diseases. We need helicopters to go to the most remote areas where the aid is greatly needed. In Burmese air force, we have limited numbers of helicopters and they won’t be able to help those from remote areas. US military is offering aid mission. The US airbase in Thailand is ready to send its helicopters and ships to Burma for search and rescue mission. And again, Burmese generals are not going to accept the offer because they are Americans. This is not the time for like or dislike. This is the time to save as much people as we can.”

Global Voices Online
Asia Times
The Irrawaddy News (english. Opposition newspaper)

Wah Eh Htoo - Burmese World Vision worker first person account. 600 World Vision Burma workers are facing logistical nightmares. Many have lost everything, but have been able to provide water, food and clothing for about 1000 families, for now. They need to get their experts and supplies in.

Our bus became the leader of a convey of trucks and other buses attempting to head into the city. Progress through the wreckage-strewn streets was slow. It took us three hours to drive a mere three miles.

The journey to Yangon was like entering a battlefield with the wounded and dying lying on ground. Flood water filled the neighborhoods we passed.

Yangon had been excommunicated with no electricity. I wondered how news of the disaster was going to reach the outside world.

A CNN reporter snuck into the country. He almost didn’t get out.  What is it like for highly trained relief workers to have to sit in Thailand with food, water, medical supplies, tents and know that each day that passes 1.5 people need your help now?
Times London reporter - I stopped counting the bodies