This won’t make any difference to tory voters as they are already deranged.

Oh yes straight out of the American Christian right. They hate gays, blacks, poor, and woman.

It is very odd that so much of the media has bought the Cameron lie that he has made the tory party more moderate.

In every way they are more exreme than ever before.

I just don’t understand the viciousness of the postings. Having just returned from living in the USA and seen and heard the violent partisan nonsense from all sides, it is very alarming to see it here.

Why doesn’t everyone just calm down. If you disagree with Tory policies, just don’t vote for them, They are not deranged or sinister, just wrong on many issues. This can surely be said of all parties.

Lib Dems have always impressed me by often being the voice of reason, rather than aggressive and underhand politicking. Don’t start attacking a women for her church or for some perceived unacceptable praying that she denies having done 20 years ago.

3 Thanks for your concern trolling.

If you disagree with Tory policies, just don’t vote for them

Substitute “Tory” for BNP, or the Nationalizt Arbeite Socialist Partei – then see how much sense that makes.

And they are going to be in power, thanks to Nick Clegg, by the end of the week….

Back in my student days I met a number of people involved in NFI churches, and even attended a “service” at one. I found the local church to be cult-like, intolerant and anti-intellectual.

However, I do wonder where this is going. By all means ask Phillipa Stroud to clarify her views on issues where NFI have odd views, but I do worry about the sectarian implications of trying to identify and critique politicians by what religion they are (or are not).

Twenty or thirty years ago it seemed to me that politicians whose religious views were public knowledge (Norman Tebbit’s atheism, or Margaret Thatcher’s methodism, say) were the exception. There are any number of major politicians from then (eg. Neil Kinnock, Denis Healey, Michael Foot, Michael Heseltine, Jeffrey Howe, Douglas Hurd) whose religious beliefs I have no idea of at all. I find it slightly disturbing that we now people seem keen to pigeonhole politicians by their faith (or lack thereof).

I think the obvious side effect of voting and campaigning against people because of their religion, is to push people to vote on sectarian lines more generally.

Have nominations for the annual Fruit Cake Awards opened yet?

Mind you, Phillipa Stroud and her faith colleagues are not the only ones recently concerned about pervasive demonic influences at work in venerable religious institutions:

“Sex abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church are proof that that ‘the Devil is at work inside the Vatican’, according to the Holy See’s chief exorcist.

“Father Gabriele Amorth, 85, who has been the Vatican’s chief exorcist for 25 years and says he has dealt with 70,000 cases of demonic possession, said that the consequences of satanic infiltration included power struggles at the Vatican as well as ‘cardinals who do not believe in Jesus, and bishops who are linked to the Demon’.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7056689.ece

I suppose the challenging question for Cameron, were he to become PM in a hung Parliament by some twist of fate, is whether a new government, with him vested as Primus Inter Pares, will give due consideration to creating a new National Exorcism Service in these time of financial stress or, instead, allow the natural inclinations of Conservatives for deregulation to prevail, even to the extent of permitting unbridled satanism.

I think we should know before the election.

5. It does make sense. I would never vote for BNP or anyone else that I disagree with.

I thought it was repulsive of people to attack Ruth Kelly over her Opus Dei membership. How different is this?

But will Cameron, if he becomes PM, allow unbridled satanism to prevail or establish a National Exorcism Service to protect us from the demons within?

I think we are entitled to know before the election.

*Any* politician who owes their allegiance to a supernatural being rather than their own constituents is a dangerous fruitloop.

Secularisation is a prerequisite for democracy.

The really nasty prospect is the emergence of the Religious Right as a force in politics in Britain.

It was probably bound to happen in emulation of most things American. The situation there seems to have developed to the extent that aspiring Republican candidates for the Presidency have come to need the endorsement of the Religious Right in order to advance their personal chances of success and that doesn’t bode well for politics here.

Please read this reply by Philippa. http://adrianshort.co.uk/2010/05/02/philippa-strouds-statement-regarding-the-observers-story/

It was not surprising to have seen this sort of thing being said but I’d really encourage you all to be careful not to react so much to things you read in a newspaper like this. They’re clearly looking for spin and clearly trying to get this sort of
reaction out of people by twisting things. Philippa loves and cares about everyone and does not hold prejudices against people as this story would try and make out.

Shatterface 11

> Secularisation is a prerequisite for democracy.

So you see no hope for democracy in the many countries round the world where majority hold religious views ?

Strange, because it out from such countries that democracy grew…western democracy that is.

Surely, it would be a more evidence-based position, to say that religion does not have to be the enemy of democracy: but that some religions live more happily with democracy than others.

And now for another perspective from the press yesterday:

“The New Frontiers church to which Philippa Stroud belongs and where her husband is a major star is the fruit standard of fruit loopiness among English evangelical Christians. It was at a New Frontiers church in Brighton that I once went to hear the New Zealand evangelist Bill Surbritzky, a man who believes that not merely homosexuality but smoking and swearing are caused by demonic infestation.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2010/may/03/religion-conservatives

@14: “Strange, because it out from such countries that democracy grew…western democracy that is.”

But we usually credit city states in ancient Greece as the original inspiration for the practice of democracy and the prevailing religions in those states were polytheistic.

The medieval Christian church, with its standard doctrine of the divine right of kings to rule, was hardly a model of democratic practice or the source of prescriptive advocacy for democratic political institutions as we understand them.

Bob

You can cite ‘original inspiration’ if you wish.

But you didn’t disagree, that that some religions live more happily with democracy than others.

And that it was out of the judo-christian west, that modern democracy did arise (not Greece) – with not a few christian figures very active throughout.

“But you didn’t disagree, that that some religions live more happily with democracy than others.”

I’ve fond recollections of many conversations in the early 1970s with a work colleague who originally came from India. He was nominally Hindu although neither he nor I were religious in any reasonable sense of that term.

In recent years, I’ve had special reason to recall a prediction he made in the 1970s that Muslim states would find it verging on impossible to make the fundamental changes necessary to adopt democratic institutions and practices. By contrast, it was not a problem in India, he argued, because Hindu was a polytheistic religion so Hindus grew up familiar with the basic notion of rivalrous deities. It was but a short step from there to understanding the notion and workings of a multiparty democracy. In India, governments have come and gone with elections and it continues to function as the democratic country with the largest population.

Judo-christian countries have very patchy histories in introducing and maintaining democratic practices, as I recall. In Northern Ireland, part of the population there still celebrates the Battle of the Boyne of 1690.

Bob

yes, you’ve mentioned that colleague on LC before.

Have I interpreted your post as suggesting the following heirarchy of compatibility with democracy: from most compatible to least:

hinduism
christianity
islam

“Have I interpreted your post as suggesting the following heirarchy of compatibility with democracy: from most compatible to least:”

Making no claims to telepathic faculties, I’ve no insights into your interpretations or the rationales. Besides, I’ve less familiarity with non-Christian religions. What is evident from the historic record is that Chistian doctrines are contradictory and the record of the Christian churches on promoting democracy and open debate is very patchy.

Very sensibly, the US Constitution precludes the Federal Government from promoting religion, which makes the ascendancy of the Religious Right there especially worrying.

Bob

I was only asking for your view – but anyway I see that some months back on LC you wrote:

“Perhaps more interesting questions concern which of the three religions has turned out to be the most tolerant of ideological diversity and the most compatible with democratic forms of governance. The answer has to be Christianity, to its credit.”