2007 January

Last week a real saint died. Abbe Pierre, was the type of Christian who was in direct opposition to Fox News watching, Christian abortion that is the evangelical right. In other words, he was not the type of person who was more interested in protecting a particular brand of western suburban lifestyle from anyone different, rather than actually helping the unfortunate. After saving the lives of thousands of Jews and political refugees, working with the French Resistance during WWII, he dedicated his life, as a Catholic priest, to helping the homeless, when he found a destitute, pregnant woman, lying on the mud floor of a shelter in Paris, with two dead children next to her. He admitted breaking his vows on more than one occasion, saying that the hardest thing to resist was the tenderness of a woman. He survived both a plane crash and a shipwreck. As an atheist,…

A pastor in the UK who mentally abused children, accusing them of witchcraft and praying for them to die, cannot be charged, after a 10 month investigation by police, since the law that covers child abuse does not cover mental abuse. This is the same as the situtation in the US, and is a perfect illustration of why laws against mental abuse of children are needed, to challenge the excesses of extreme religion which specifically target children. Telegraph | News | Child “witches” case dropped

I watched a very disturbing film last night. It was a film about child abuse, about the kind of child abuse that leaves mental scars that take far longer to heal than physical abuse. And this abuse is both legal and widely encouraged, because there are many good people taken in by it. We have a natural revulsion towards seeing children being forced to act like adults, in that most adult of traits, sexuality. At first I couldn’t understand what it was that bothered me most about the interviews with the children of fundamentalist evangelical Christians in the documentary, Jesus Camp then I realized. They did not sound like children at all, but were spouting off rehearsed indoctrination with adult vocabulary, opinions and mannerisms. Levi: At five I got saved… Becky Fischer: Yeah? Levi: …because I just wanted more of life. This is like a line from a world weary…