The decision of the Court of Ghent against Jehovah’s Witnesses is dangerous for the Catholic Church

The decision of the Court of Ghent against Jehovah’s Witnesses is dangerous for the Catholic Church

Willy Fautré, director of Human Rights Without Frontiers

Catholic priests in Belgium and all other countries are forbidden from blessing same-sex couples and are at risk of being prosecuted for discriminating against homosexuals, as a consequence of a judgment issued yesterday by the Court of Ghent against Jehovah’s Witnesses.

On 16 March, the First Instance Court of Ghent condemned the Christian Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses (CCJW) to a fine of 12,000 EUR on the ground that their teachings about the social distancing of their members from excluded members and other ex-members amount to discrimination and incitement to hatred.

The Catholic Church and the ban on the blessing of homosexual couples

In the last few days, in a message approved by Pope Francis, the Roman Catholic Church announced it cannot bless same-sex marriages regardless of how stable or positive the couples’ relationship may be. That statement came in response to recent questions whether the church should reflect the increasing social and notably legal acceptance of same-sex unions.

“Does the Church have the power to give the blessing to unions of persons of the same sex?” the question asked, to which the response was “Negative.” The Vatican added that that marriage should be limited to a union between a man and a woman, and that same-sex marriage is not part of God’s plan for family and raising children.

Explaining this decision in a lengthy note, the Holy See referred to same-sex unions as a “choice” and described them as sinful.

“The blessing of homosexual unions cannot be considered licit,” the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote in the statement.

God “does not and cannot bless sin,” the statement added.

This doctrine stated and to be strictly implemented by the clergy was fixed by the Catholic Church in Rome on the basis of its interpretation of the Bible.

Catholic priests in Belgium and all other countries are therefore forbidden from blessing same-sex couples and are at risk of being prosecuted for discrimination against homosexuals and incitement to hatred.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses’ case

On 16 February, a trial started against the Christian Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses (CCJW) at the criminal court of Ghent (East Flanders) on the alleged grounds of discrimination and incitement to hatred with a particular focus on their shunning (ostracization) practice in cases of disfellowshipping (exclusion) and disassociation (voluntary resignation).

A former Jehovah’s Witness who had voluntarily left the movement in 2011, filed a criminal complaint against the CCJW in 2015, and managed to have it supported by over a dozen more former Jehovah’s Witnesses.

According to the internal religious practice of Jehovah’s Witnesses, when the elders of a local congregation exclude a member or are notified about a voluntary resignation, they make a short neutral public announcement which states: “[Name of person] is no longer one of Jehovah’s Witnesses”. The CCJW is not involved in the making of that neutral announcement but is notified about the decision.   

In their conclusions provided to the Court before the trial, they said that they do not segregate excluded or resigning members as these can always attend their religious services. They also point out that baptized Jehovah’s Witnesses who no longer actively associate with fellow believers, are not shunned.

Clarifying the relations between Jehovah’s Witnesses and disfellowshipped or disassociated family members, they say: “In the immediate household, although the ‘religious ties’ the expelled or disassociated person had with his family change, … blood ties remain. The marriage relationship and normal family affections and dealings continue.” In other words, normal family affection and association continues.

In addition, the CCJW had provided the Court with nine statements of individuals who had been excluded and who had since been reinstated as Jehovah’s Witnesses. In their testimonies, they explained how they had been fairly treated by congregation elders, family, and others in the congregation when they were excluded.

The social distancing doctrine stated and practiced by Jehovah’s Witnesses in Belgium and all other countries was fixed by their Central College in the United States on the basis of their interpretation of the Bible.

The CCJW considers it is not legally responsible for the intra-familial relations between its members and former members, as it is an individual choice.

Conclusion

Are we on the way to put in the dock the Bible, the interpretation and the implementation of its doctrines fixed by the highest religious authorities and powers in the name of interpretations and implementation of human rights fixed by national judicial powers? If so, this would be a pandora box that would affect other religions and other holy scriptures.

Jana Riess: ‘Allergic to religion’ — Conservative politics can push people out of the pews

There’s a massive religious shift occurring in America as one of the world’s most religious nations becomes more secular every year.

In “Secular Surge: A New Fault Line in American Politics,” political scientists David E. Campbell and Geoffrey C. Layman of the University of Notre Dame and John C. Green of the University of Akron argue that the nation’s secular population is larger and more diverse than previously acknowledged — and that a big part of what’s driving secularity is actually religious people’s political behavior.

In other words, some highly vocal and visible religious people are inadvertently pushing other people who don’t share their political views out of religion.

The dramatic rise of various kinds of nonreligion in the U.S. population has been tracked by numerous surveys. This is the group of people who check “none” or “nothing in particular” when asked about their religious affiliation. They are large — and still growing.

“This is a stunning change in the American social landscape,” Campbell, said in a Zoom interview. “To put it in context, prior to 1990, virtually no Americans identified in public opinion surveys as nonreligious. It was as low as 5%, which is close to the margin of error. And by the time we get to the year 2000, at that point you’re talking about 14% to 15% of the population. And now, that is a huge change. We do not typically see change of anything on that scale in a relatively short period of time.”

What’s responsible for this rapid change? Various studies have argued that one reason for the rapid rise of the nones is a backlash against the actions of the religious right, since so many people who leave religion also seem to be politically liberal. Campbell and his colleagues designed a series of experiments that could test that hypothesis: Was it a coincidence? A correlation? Or was religious people’s political activism actually causing increasing numbers of Americans to vote with their feet?

The first phase of each experiment asked people to choose their religious affiliation from a list and also asked other questions about their behavior and beliefs. The second phase, given to the same respondents a week later, had them read a news story that looked realistic but was actually fictionalized. The news stories were all about examples where people had mixed religion with politics, like a clergy member who was active in politics, or a politician who repeatedly referred to his faith on the campaign trail. Then, at the end of the survey, they were given the same demographic questions as before, including the one about their religious identity.

The researchers compared how people responded to the religious affiliation question to the baseline they had established a week earlier. For respondents who had already identified themselves as Republicans, being presented with these examples of the mixing of God talk and politics had no effect on how they characterized their religious identity the second time around.

Democrats, however, showed a clear aversion after reading the reports about mixing religion and politics. When surveyed the second time, their rate of religious affiliation had dropped by 13 points.

Campbell said the findings were dramatic. Just reading the news story, he said, is apparently “enough to push a sizable number of people away from holding a religious affiliation. That’s one story at one point in time, and we can get that effect. Imagine what happens when people are exposed to hundreds of stories over many, many years. It would only reinforce that idea that religion and the Republican Party go together, and that if you’re not sympathetic to the Republican Party, you don’t want anything to do with religion.”

While most of the attention has been given to the way nones are leaving religion because of the religious right’s political stances on issues like LGBTQ rights or anti-Muslim immigration policies, the left doesn’t have a pass to mix religion and politics, either, Campbell said.

“I would say to churches, on both the left and the right, that if you want to bring people back to the pews, you want to stay out of politics. And that’s true of mainline Protestant churches, Catholic parishes, Jewish synagogues — any religious community. While most of the allergic reaction is against the right, there is a general sentiment among people that they really don’t like the mixture of the two.”

“Secular Surge” does a deep dive into what the rise of the nones — and their demonstrated allergy to mixing religion and politics — might mean for politics in America going forward. In addition to the massive religious-secular divide in America as a whole, in which Republicans remain highly religious and most nonreligious people gravitate toward the Democratic Party, there’s also an intraparty fault line that could become a problem in the near future.

“In the Democratic Party, this is a brewing storm,” Campbell said. “The secular activists are a large number of the grassroots volunteers for the Democratic Party.” But the Democratic Party has traditionally been the home of African American and Latino voters, who are often highly religious. Will the party be able to hold together in its aims, given that religious and secular voters often have very different priorities?

“Frankly, the Biden administration will be the test. Can Joe Biden manage to keep these two wings of the party together? Thus far, they have managed to tamp down any potential tensions between the religious and secular wings of the party. But I wouldn’t be surprised if in the next four years, you do see more of those tensions arising.”

Biden, he noted, has been unusual in being so public about his Catholic faith, both on the campaign and in his presidency. “Here you have a candidate who is very open about his religion, but he’s heading up a party that has this strong secular wing.”

A rupture is not inevitable, he said. But preventing it will take sensitivity to divergent points of view within the party.

Don Lemon says God is not about judging people and religion is a ‘barrier’ that keeps people from ‘actually getting to know each other’

CNN host Don Lemon said that Christians need to re-examine their beliefs and claimed that God doesn't judge people when responding to a statement from the Vatican on same-sex unions.



Lemon, 55, made the theologically questionable comments as a guest on "The View" on Monday


Co-host Meghan McCain quoted a comment from the Vatican saying that the church could not bless same-sex unions because "God cannot bless sin," and asked Lemon, who is openly gay, to respond.



 "Do you think this sends a damaging message? How do you feel about that given that obviously you're now engaged and going to get married?" McCain asked.



'Well I think there are, listen, I respect people's right to believe in whatever they want to believe in their God," Lemon claimed.



"But if you believe something that hurts another person, or does not give someone the same rights or freedoms, not necessarily under the Constitution because this is under God," he continued. "I think that this is wrong, and I think that the Catholic Church and many other churches really need to re-examine themselves and their teachings. Because that is not what God is about. God is not about hindering people or even judging people."

‘Go out and have a barbecue’

Lemon went on to put the issue in the “context of race” by quoting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who decried segregation in churches.

“So I think that religion and the pew keeps us from actually, they are barriers from people actually getting to know each other,” Lemon continued.

“So I would say to the Pope and the Vatican, and all Christians or Catholics, or whomever, whatever religion you believe out, you have to belong to out there, go out and meet people and try to understand people and do what the Bible and what Jesus actually says, if you believe in Jesus, and that is to love your fellow man and judge not lest ye be not judged,” he misquoted.

“Instead of having the pew hinder you, having the church hinder you, instead of being segregated in the church and among yourselves, go out and have a barbecue,” he concluded. “And meet people and start breaking bread with people and getting to know them.”

Some Christians on social media objected to Lemon’s watered down version of historical Christian teaching.

Here’s the video of Don Lemon’s advice to Christians:

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Don Lemon Addresses Trump, Voter Suppression, Racism in Book “This Is the Fire” | The View

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Love is Sophia Brown’s ‘religion’

Recording artiste Sophia Brown has teamed up with fellow artiste, Duane Stephenson, on a soulful acoustic reggae track titled My Religion.

The song, which was produced under Brown’s Music Mecka label, was released last month. She said that it is a track to which everyone can relate.

“It is speaking about promoting love and not hate because no matter how we look at it, racism is still a big factor in our society,” Brown said. With such a strong message delivered over an easygoing beat, it’s no wonder that the song has performed quite well since its release.

“The response has been great, the song is very relatable so I didn’t expect anything less than the response I’m receiving currently. We have also had tremendous feedback as well,” the singer said.

While she started her label in 2006, Sophia Brown has been spreading her art since the 90s. A well-rounded creative, the artiste has balanced her time in the studio with her feats as an accomplished dancer and choreographer. Her previous tracks include Stronger, Senorita and Changes, which features Ginjah.

“I do contemporary, lovers’ rock and social commentary. I make music for everyone; there is something in the Sophia Brown catalogue for everyone,” she said.

Supreme Court’s COVID-19 cases stir up battle between religion, same-sex couples over foster care

John Fritze
 
| USA TODAY

Show Caption

WASHINGTON – As religious freedom emerges as a major theme at the Supreme Court this year, some court watchers predict a series of opinions involving COVID-19 restrictions have put that issue on a collision course with gay rights.

‘Saint Maud’ Review: An Unsettling and Fantastic Story of Trauma and Religion

Assam polls: ‘Politics of religion should not be done,’ says Rajnath Singh

Mar 14, 2021, 11:33PM ISTSource: ANI

Defense Minister Rajnath Singh during his address in poll-bound Assam’s Dergaon on March 14 expressed concern on the current status of Congress and accused them of joining hands with All India United Democratic Front for the sake of votes. Defense Minister said that politics should be done to build the country and society but politics of religion should not be done. “We believe in justice for all, appeasement of none,” he added. Giving reference of former Congress Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi’s government, which ruled Assam for 15 years, Rajnath Singh said, “Tarun Gogoi’s government was here for 15 years, but it never joined hands with AIUDF. But today for the sake of votes, Congress has aligned with a party like AIUDF. What has happened to it?”

Your Religion News: March 13, 2021

Businesses thrives on principles and not on religion – Economic Consultant

On Religion: Is ‘Southern’ more important than ‘Baptist’?

When megachurch pastor J.D. Greear became the 62nd president of the Southern Baptist Convention, he saw all kinds of statistics headed in all kinds of directions.

After decades of growth, America’s largest Protestant flock faced steady decline as many members joined thriving nondenominational evangelical and charismatic churches. Ominously, baptism statistics were falling even faster. On the other side of the 2018 ledger, worship attendance and giving to SBC’s national Cooperative Program budget were holding strong.

But one set of numbers caught Greear’s attention, he told the SBC’s executive committee, as he nears the end of his three years in office.

“Listen, I made diversity … one of my goals coming into this office, not because it’s cool, or trendy, or woke,” he said. “It’s because in the last 30 years, the largest growth we’ve seen in the Southern Baptist Convention has been among Black, Latino and Asian congregations. They are a huge part of our future. … Praise God, brothers and sisters.”

Greear’s blunt, emotional address came during a Feb. 22 meeting in Nashville in which SBC leaders ousted two churches for “affirming homosexual behavior” by accepting married gay couples as members, and two more for employing ministers guilty of sexual abuse.

Those issues loomed in the background during Greear’s remarks, which ranged from a fierce defense of the SBC’s move to the right during 1980s clashes over “biblical inerrancy” to his concerns about “demonic” attacks from social-media critics who are “trying to rip us apart.”

“I’ve read reports online that I was privately funded by George Soros with the agenda of steering the SBC toward political liberalism,” he said. “My office has gotten calls from people who say they’ve heard that I am friends — good friends — with Nancy Pelosi and that we text each other regularly; that I am a Marxist; a card-carrying member of the Black Lives Matter movement and that I fly around on a private jet paid for by Cooperative Program dollars.”

Greear urged a renewed focus on evangelism and church planting, with a steady drumbeat of references to the Great Commission — the command by Jesus that Christians should spread the faith worldwide. After all, back in 2012, the SBC’s national meeting approved the use of “Great Commission Baptists” as an unofficial name — a move hailed by those seeking distance from the term “Southern” and the convention’s roots in an 1845 split over slavery.

“Do we want to be a Gospel people or a Southern, Republican culture people?” asked Greear. “Which is the more important part of our name — the ‘Southern’ or the ‘Baptist’?”

The ultimate challenge, he said, will be creating a “movement of churches that engages all of the peoples in America, not just one kind. … That is very difficult. Bringing together people of different backgrounds and cultures and ethnicities into one body creates challenges, and anybody who says that that’s not true has never actually done it. People bring in their music and their style preferences and political approaches and they all are as passionate about these things as we are, and that creates friction. But it is biblical.”

In recent months, leaders of the SBC’s National African American Fellowship have expressed concerns about statements by seminary presidents that — while condemning racism outright — claimed “affirmation of Critical Race Theory” is incompatible with the Baptist Faith and Message doctrinal statement. Several prominent Black pastors, in response, led their congregations out of the convention.

Greear stressed the need for SBC leaders to commit to more “robust, Bibles open, on our knees” dialogues with Black church leaders on what parts of CRT are inherently secular and clash with biblical teachings on racism and sin.

“We should mourn when closet racists and neo-Confederates feel more at home in our churches than do many of our people of color,” he said.

The painful reality is “that if we in the Southern Baptist Convention had shown as much sorrow for the painful legacy that racism and discrimination have left in our country as we have passion to decry Critical Race Theory, we probably would not be in this mess. It’s not that clarity about the dangers of Critical Race Theory is not important. It is. It’s that, as Jesus said, we’ve ignored some of the weightier parts of the law — justice, mercy and compassion.”

Terry Mattingly leads GetReligion.org and lives in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He is a senior fellow at the Overby Center at the University of Mississippi.

On Religion: The old hymns and new anthems of the Covid year

It’s a hymn that the faithful start singing whenever a Baptist church organist plays the opening chords – because everyone knows it by heart.

All together now: “When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll; whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, It is well, it is well, with my soul.”

Chicago attorney Horatio Spafford wrote those words after losing his son to scarlet fever and then, a few years later, all four of his daughters in an 1873 shipwreck. His wife, Anna, survived, and her telegram home from England began: “Saved alone. What shall I do?”

No one should be surprised that worship leaders frequently turned to “It Is Well With My Soul” as their people wrestled with the coronavirus pandemic, said the Rev. Roger O’Neel, who teaches in the worship and music program at Cedarville University in Ohio.

“People were feeling their way in 2020,” he said. “It wasn’t just the pandemic and people being locked down, worshipping in (online) streamed services. We were also facing all the bitter political conflicts in our nation and the racial divisions that we were experiencing. … People were trying to find hymns that would speak to all of that, to the pain that everyone felt last year.”

Faithlife, a Bellingham, Washington, company that publishes online worship and Bible study tools, recently released a report covering 2020 trends spotted in its Proclaim software. “It Is Well With My Soul” topped the hymns list, with usage increasing 68 percent after the pandemic hit.

The classic hymn “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” came next, with a 64 percent increase. It begins: “Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father; there is no shadow of turning with Thee. Thou changest not; Thy compassions, they fail not. As Thou hast been, Thou forever wilt be. Great is Thy faithfulness! … Morning by morning, new mercies I see; all I have needed, Thy hand hath provided – great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me.”

In contemporary music, the unofficial pandemic anthem was “Way Maker,” by Osinachi Kalu Okoro Egbu of Nigeria, a Pentecostal songwriter known as Sinach in America. This hit topped charts in Christian radio and was No. 1 in the Faithlife “worship songs” list, along with the year’s rankings with Christian Copyright Licensing International. Christianity Today noted that “Way Maker” was sung by many marchers calling for racial justice.

It’s easy, agreed O’Neel, to see how these lyrics spoke to millions in 2020: “You wipe away all tears, you mend the broken heart. You are the answer to it all, Jesus. … Way maker, miracle worker, promise keeper, Light in the darkness – my God, that is who you are.”

For centuries, hymn writers and pastors have wrestled with sobering questions linked to the theological term “theodicy.” The American Heritage Dictionary defines theodicy as a “vindication of God’s goodness and justice in the face of the existence of evil.”

There was no way to avoid dealing with that in 2020.

“I don’t want to debate the theological intricacies as to whether God is allowing the virus or caused the virus, but I do know that He is in control,” wrote O’Neel in an online essay for clergy and students, posted early in the pandemic. “I don’t want to presume to know what He is doing in allowing this in our lives and in the lives of people all around the world. …

“Perhaps God is making us lay down for some rest or spiritual renewal,” he continued. “If so, embrace the rest. Don’t spend too much time thinking about what you are missing, worrying about the virus or economy. … Maybe your Shepherd is making you lie down.”

Now, many worship leaders are contemplating what they have learned after months away from sanctuaries packed with worshippers belting out Christian-rock anthems, hands raised high in the air.

“We’ve joked that some people had to learn how to do church without their smoke machines,” said O’Neel, referring to the clouds of mist that make lighting more dramatic in some modern sanctuaries. “We want to get back to normal, but what is ‘normal’? One guitar or one piano? When will we have a full band? When will we reach the stage where choirs return?

“We all had to pause this year and ask questions about how we worship.”

Terry Mattingly leads GetReligion.org and lives in Oak Ridge, Tenn. He is a senior fellow at the Overby Center at the University of Mississippi.

What Is the Difference Between Religion and Spirituality?

The Life Changing Power of the Cross and the Resurrection – Easter Devotional – March 5
You can try to bury Power, but it won’t stay there. You can try to bury Truth, but it is not dead. You can try to bury Love, but it cannot be contained.
Mar 05, 2021