Christian Tories rewrite party doctrine

By Chris Cook

Published: February 12 2010 17:23 | Last updated: February 12 2010 17:23

Tim Montgomerie, a committed Christian and founder of the ConservativeHome website, is seen as the voice of grassroots Tories

A Conservative MP was stage-whispering in the leathery, dark Pugin Room of the House of Commons late last year. With a view of the Thames, teacup in hand, he hissed at me: “They’ve campaigned to change the processes so that they can bus in their voters, stuffing the selection meetings with their people. They don’t outnumber us, but they can out-organise us. They’re taking over the party.”

“They” are evangelical Christians, and the MP was prompted to speak by a meeting a week earlier. The party had held an “open primary” (in which members of the public can vote) to choose a candidate to stand for a safe Tory seat – Congleton, Cheshire – in this year’s general election. The two leading names on the ballot were Matthew Hancock and Fiona Bruce. Both are well-known within Tory circles. Hancock is an economic adviser to the party, Bruce a solicitor who fought valiantly, if unsuccessfully, for a seat in the north-west in the 2005 general election. The main difference is religion: Hancock is secular, Bruce an evangelical Christian.

Bruce won comfortably, taking a majority of the 220 votes cast in the first round. But a rumour soon spread that most of her votes had come from members of the New Life church, a local evangelical congregation. Buses were alleged to have ferried 150 Christians from the church.

In truth, according to churchgoers and constituency officials alike, only between 40 and 60 of the people voting were parish regulars, and they made their own way to the meeting. Bruce had addressed the church shortly before the selection – but, then, all candidates had been welcome to do so.

Still, the Pugin Room MP continued: “You know, the Christians send e-mails to one another asking them to pray for them at selection meetings, but the point of the messages is to make sure that they all know who is standing where and when.”

As Conservatives grasp the real possibility of victory this year, some are asking what degree of power a few evangelical Christians – only 3 per cent of the party members, according to one poll – will wield. The answer will determine the shape and sturdiness of any Conservative government.

As wary as some Tories are of their evangelical brethren, their current opinion poll lead comes in large part on the back of an alliance between secular liberals and a small core of evangelical Christians. In December 1990, weeks after the internal party coup that toppled Margaret Thatcher, a group of young Christians at Exeter University founded the Conservative Christian Fellowship (CCF). “It was at a time when Tory MPs had appeared to abandon a moral case for conservatism and become narrowly economic,” says Tim Montgomerie, one of the founders. “We hoped an organised Christian group could reignite the party’s compassion.”

Two years later, when he left university, Montgomerie – the son of an army officer – joined the Bank of England. But away from work, he concentrated on running the CCF, and, in 1998, gave up his job to run it full time. The Tory party, meanwhile, was slumping into oblivion. It had been devastated in the 1997 election. Staff at Conservative Central Office (CCO) recall speculating about what politics would be like “after the Tories”.

CCO came up with “Listening to Britain”, an exercise to reconnect the party to voters. And as part of a deal with the party, in which he was given a desk and a telephone, Montgomerie started an offshoot, “Listening to Britain’s Churches”. He contacted 300 churches around the country to ask about their concerns. Through this, he realised that the political priorities of church leaders were “much more linked to poverty, debt and drugs than they were about sexuality or bioethics”. Montgomerie is staunchly anti-abortion, and had been influenced by US Christian conservativism, but he recognised that if Christian Tories were more interested in solving social problems than debating moral flashpoints, the party should respond.

Early on, most of Montgomerie’s important allies were not Christians. He met with Jonathan Sacks (now Lord Sacks), Britain’s chief rabbi, who helped line up £300,000 funding from Sir Stanley Kalms, a Tory donor. The only condition was that the organisation be non-denominational – and so Renewing One Nation was born, to run alongside the CCF. The new group largely recruited from the CCF and continued its policy work on poverty. Within the party, David Willetts, the Tories’ foremost intellectual and my former employer, became a helper despite his own agnosticism. The atheist Oliver Letwin, now the Tory head of policy, also offered support. And the Jewish Daniel Finkelstein, then head of party policy and now executive editor at The Times, backed the project, too. Of Montgomerie’s notable internal supporters, only one was Christian: David Lidington, an MP in the party’s higher echelons.

Montgomerie’s most important ally, however, was Iain Duncan Smith. Elected to the party leadership in 2001, the Roman Catholic was best known for his staunch Euroscepticism. But during a visit to the Easterhouse Estate in Glasgow in 2002, he became convinced of the need for social reform. Poverty moved up the agenda, and Montgomerie rose to become chief of staff.

. . .

“No one wants to cast a vote that makes them feel selfish,” Montgomerie says. This attitude extended beyond poverty. As Duncan Smith’s right-hand man, Montgomerie also advocated a more liberal line on sexuality than most of his co-religionists would be comfortable with, recommending, for example, that the Tories vote for the abolition of “section 28”, a clause in the Local Government Act that forbade the “promotion” of homosexuality in schools. “[The legislation] was supposed to stop some of the odd things local authorities were giving kids,” he says. But many people saw it as homophobic in its singling out of gay-related material. Montgomerie agreed. “They were giving kids all sorts of objectionable things. I thought it was absolutely wrong to pick on gay people.”

The social conscience at the top of the party did not last long. Duncan Smith was ousted in 2003 and replaced by Michael Howard. Though Howard had promised to continue the focus on social policy, leading from “the centre”, the party tacked to the right and poverty became a backwater issue. Supplanted, Duncan Smith decided to carve out a new role. With Montgomerie and Philippa Stroud, another Christian activist, he set up the Centre for Social Justice – a successor to Renewing One Nation. While secular in its arguments, the CSJ was Christian in tone and hiring.

In 2005, Howard resigned the leadership after another general-election drubbing for the Tories. A leadership election followed that turned into a contest between David Cameron, known as a modernising liberal, and David Davis, the shadow home secretary and a “security Tory”. Neither contender initially had social conservatives in the bag. Cameron, however, won over suspicious rightwingers with Eurosceptic pledges and a promise to continue the work on social policy that had begun under Duncan Smith – endorsing an early proposal by the CSJ to introduce an income tax break to support marriage.

Christians were a small part of the coalition that won Cameron the leadership battle, but they became crucial to him in office. His mission was to “decontaminate” the Tory party’s “devil take the hindmost” image. Along with environmentalism, poverty became one of his big themes. But the older right-of-centre think-tanks rarely looked at welfare – only the CSJ devoted resources to it. In the words of one research department official, when it came to starting the push on social deprivation, “we had no support at all. Our family and welfare policy was all outsourced to the CSJ. Oh, and Frank Field [a prominent Christian Labour party MP].”

Soon after Cameron’s election, Duncan Smith was invited to write a series of reports on poverty as part of the party’s policy review. And while some at the CSJ were concerned about losing their independence, it was worth what they won: relevance. Two years after being exiled by Michael Howard, a small group of Christian Tories was defining the party’s social policy. Today, the CSJ says it has crafted a full 70 Conservative policies.

Among the secular members of the party machine, there is unease about that sort of influence. The use of the CSJ’s research, in particular, causes concern. One official – who, like all party staff I spoke to, refused to go on the record – said: “Their hearts are in the right place, but loads of their stuff is ropey. They just seem to make up statistics or use dodgy assumptions.” The think-tank’s support for subsidising marriage through the tax system is a particular bugbear. Another official said: “The CSJ claims that there is evidence marriage helps the poor. But you have to chase down a jungle of references to find anything serious. It’s mostly rubbish that doesn’t overcome the self-selection problem [that couples who choose marriage are more likely to have qualities that make it easier to stay together and be good parents]. We have repeated some wholly indefensible claims.” The CSJ stands by those assertions. A spokesman said that “it is not simply a matter of selection. Regardless of socio-economic background, cohabiting couples are at least twice as likely to break up as their married counterparts and new research has revealed that 97 per cent of intact families with children aged 15 are married. To dismiss marriage as irrelevant is to ignore the evidence: children need stable, two-parent families and in the vast majority of cases, this means marriage.”

Cameron’s public position on tax and marriage has been undermined by murmuring from party apparatchiks, some of whom insist the marriage support proposal will never be implemented. As one adviser put it: “Will we really spend billions of pounds subsidising middle-class women to stay out of work if unemployment is rising? Of course not.” This whispering campaign meant that when Cameron seemed to shift his position on marriage last month, the social conservatives and the rightwing press had every reason to think the worst. But the party scrambled to reassure them. The alliance between social conservatives and the party’s metropolitan leadership has required tending; Cameron will not, at least ahead of the election, allow it to fail.

The tensions within the party, however, run deeper than concern over a few pieces of disputed research or a single policy. Last year, Samantha Callan, who produced the CSJ’s policy review papers, took up a post in the Tory internal policy unit. There, she produced a position paper on the “commercialisation” of childhood, in which she proposed a tough line on sexualisation of young girls. The government, she said, should “extend the rules on teenage magazines and give them a statutory underpinning by applying them to all magazines with a significant readership of under-18s”. The vague proposal could be interpreted as advocating government censorship, and received a frosty reception from the largely secular staff of Conservative Campaign Headquarters (CCHQ), as CCO is now known. Callan endured a number of bitter arguments with party colleagues about a long-mooted proposal to abolish the formal distinction between the UK’s current same-sex marriages – civil partnerships – and heterosexual civil weddings. After only 10 months within CCHQ, she left – frozen out by a Tory apparat that is overwhelmingly liberal, particularly on sexual mores and civil liberties. This division may be a harbinger of things to come.

. . .

That is not to say the Christians will be completely disappointed by a Cameron government. Even if they lose all their fights with the party machine, on issues where CCHQ has no say, such as abortion, traditionally a “free vote” topic, policy will change. FT research, looking at polls of parliamentary candidates and the existing stock of MPs’ voting records, suggests that a Tory government elected with a single-digit majority would probably have enough support in the House of Commons to tighten abortion laws. Senior Tories expect that the cut-off dates for abortions under ordinary circumstances will be reduced from 24 weeks after conception to 20. This is not an indicator of growing religiosity among the Conservative party, nor renewed pro-life fervour. Rather, it is a herd effect. A liberal Tory adviser described it, tetchily, as “rightwing political correctness”. “They think it goes with the package: pro-nuclear power, pro-nuclear weapons, pro-army, pro-life.”

While the votes may come from secular Tories, the ringleaders of any abortion-tightening attempt will be Christians. In 2008, when parliament was debating embryology, Nadine Dorries, a high-profile backbench Tory MP, led the charge against abortion – and says she is informed by her Christianity (though “if you mention God in an argument in the UK, you lose,” she says). One leading anti-abortion activist noted that behind the scenes the Christian Medical Fellowship and the Lawyers Christian Fellowship were “absolutely indispensable. They did most of the heavy lifting on research. But we could never acknowledge their role. Never. People would never take us seriously again.” (Dorries says another reason she avoids talking about faith in parliament is out of fear it will set a precedent by which Muslim MPs could express – and impose – theirs. “There is no place for sharia law in Britain and as politicians we have to be aware and vigilant to ensure that we don’t ease or facilitate its acceptance,” she says.)

As well as tightening the abortion laws, Dorries expects to launch an attack on the Embryology Act. In parliament, she compared the current law’s provisions to (false) claims about Soviet research programmes: “Stalin told his top scientist, Ilya Ivanov, to turn his skills to breeding an ultimate soldier by crossing human beings with apes … The Department of Health says that what we do today will never be abused or subject to experimentation in the future, but I would not be so sure …” In contrast to the abortion debate, however, on embryology Dorries and other Christian Tories will fail. As Boris Johnson put it to MPs as they went through the lobbies, it’s a vote “for science or against science” and fewer MPs are willing to obstruct medical research than tighten abortion restrictions.

. . .

At last year’s party conference, Cameron delivered an angry riff on the UK’s poverty trap – and received a standing ovation for it. Montgomerie says it brought tears to his eyes. After all, it was the culmination of two decades of largely behind-the-scenes work. Now the 39-year-old is a more public figure. Five years ago, he set up the website ConservativeHome. Thanks to its strong following, he is seen as the voice of the conservative grassroots. Having built a research machine to craft the party’s policies on poverty, he now has a weapon to force the party to follow through. If Cameron does renege on his tax and marriage promises, for example, Montgomerie will make his views heard.

During the election campaign, Montgomerie will behave himself. He has made little of recent Tory gaffes and has called for activists to remain loyal. But, in the past, he has proved willing to stand up to CCHQ. In 2005, he successfully opposed plans to strip party activists of their votes in leadership elections; in 2007, he was a driver of a political argument about grammar schools that helped lose the party its opinion poll lead. Individual MPs are worried. Andrew MacKay, who was forced to stand down in the expenses row, credits Montgomerie for his scalp. Another MP says of his vote on abortion laws: “I don’t want to be just a constituency MP, answering letters. I want to be a minister. And the last thing I want is for ConservativeHome to take against me because I dared to vote against the approved Tim Montgomerie line.”

The party machine is worried, too. One central office adviser said that “Tim’s name is probably mentioned more [inside the party headquarters] than any other single outside observer, pressure group or journalist”. (A shadow cabinet minister attempted to play down his influence: “Well, I wouldn’t put Tim in the inner circle. He’s probably not even in the top 10 most important people in the Tory party.”)

In the past decade, Montgomerie has worked to build a broad, inclusive conservativism. In the coming decade, he could play a role in splitting the party. As he said last year, about Europe, where Cameron is planning a purely cosmetic Eurosceptic policy: “If Britain’s relationship with the [European Union] is fundamentally the same after five years of Conservative government, the internal divisions that ended the last Tory period in government will look like a tea party in comparison.”

And while poverty brought Montgomerie and Cameron together, another “decontaminating” element of the modern Tory platform may yet divide them: climate change. Montgomerie has become increasingly vocal in his scepticism. As he said just two months ago: “It is an issue that can split conservative parties around the world.” Cameroons, take note.

Chris Cook is a leader writer for the FT

San Francisco’s Answer to Westboro Baptist Church

by Ed Hunsinger on January 29, 2010

photo by EDW Lynch

Westboro Baptist Church showed up to protest in front of Twitter’s San Francisco office on Thursday, but found themselves severely outnumbered by a crowd of absurdist pranksters, including guest blogger EDW Lynch above.

photo by Rubin Starset

WBC’s hate-promoting signs were answered by multiple signs of randomness, nonsensical yelling, and even a unicorn. A portable stereo blared Lady GaGa, while press and people passing by ignored the WBC signs and took pictures and videos of the more entertaining signs. I was also there and turned on the video camera while holding my sign.

Westboro had scheduled an appearance in front of the Golden Gate Theatre later that evening to protest Fiddler on the Roof. Fellow guest blogger, Burstein!, reports:

Unfortunately or fortunately depending on your perspective, Fred Phelps and his followers cancelled their appearance before Fiddler on the Roof. Apparently, they were all hated out from their big day and just had no more hate to spare. Nevertheless, even in their absence a small crowd gathered and gave rise to an elegantly dadaist protest in which accordions, random signs of love and hate, and rick rolls abounded. While many of those attending Fiddler were bemused and confused, the staff and crew apparently loved this counter-protest and the director, stage manager, and choreographer all came out to thank these ridiculous protesters.

photo by sandwichgirl

Here’s more coverage of the protest:

photos by LiveSoMa

photos by Sam

photos by Chad Armstrong

See also: God Hates Twitter, Westboro Baptist Church Plans Protest At Twitter Headquarters

UPDATE: Here’s an absurd sign generator to help you prank the Westboro Baptist Church when they come to your town.

Worldwide Day of Prayer to Heal Trig Palin: pray4trig.com

"Science has no way to undo this condition, which is the result of an extra chromosome; but God can. When Trig Palin is found to be miraculously healed, everyone but the most hardened atheist will have to acknowledge God's Majesty!" Pray 4 Trig, the "Worldwide Day of Prayer to Heal Trig Palin." (via Steven Leckart)

ABC News reports that high-powered rifle sights provided to the US Army and Marines by Michigan weapons maker Trijicon include coded references to Bible passages about Jesus Christ:

The sights are used by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and in the training of Iraqi and Afghan soldiers. The maker of the sights, Trijicon, has a $660 million multi-year contract to provide up to 800,000 sights to the Marine Corps, and additional contracts to provide sights to the U.S. Army.

U.S. military rules specifically prohibit the proselytizing of any religion in Iraq or Afghanistan and were drawn up in order to prevent criticism that the U.S. was embarked on a religious "Crusade" in its war against al Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents.

One of the citations on the gun sights, 2COR4:6, is an apparent reference to Second Corinthians 4:6 of the New Testament, which reads: "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

U.S. Military Weapons Inscribed With Secret 'Jesus' Bible Codes (ABC News)
Trijicon (corporate website)

Muslim woman 'abused' over dress by Christian hotelier

The couple arrived in court in Liverpool earlier

A Muslim woman was asked by a Christian hotelier if she was a terrorist and a murderer because she was wearing Islamic dress, a court has been told.

Ericka Tazi told Liverpool magistrates she faced a tirade of abuse from Benjamin Vogelenzang and his wife Sharon, at their hotel on Merseyside.

She said it was because she was wearing a hijab head covering and gown.

Mr and Mrs Vogelenzang deny using threatening, abusive or insulting words which were religiously aggravated.

Members of campaign group The Christian Institute demonstrated in support of the couple outside the court.

Mrs Tazi, who converted to Islam 18 months ago, spent a month at The Bounty House Hotel on Church Avenue, Aintree, Liverpool, while attending a course at Aintree Hospital.

Clothes 'mocked'

Prosecutor Anya Horwood told the court Mr Vogelenzang, 53, called the prophet Mohammed a "warlord" and likened him to Saddam Hussein and Hitler.

And his 54-year-old wife told Mrs Tazi her Islamic dress represented "oppression" and was a form of "bondage", the court heard.

Mrs Tazi had worn European dress during her four-week stay, but the row flared after she came down on her last day in traditional Islamic dress.

She said Mr Vogelenzang asked her "Why are you wearing those clothes?" and began laughing at her, the prosecutor told the court.

Ms Horwood said the hotelier then began to discuss his Christian faith but became angry - at which point his wife joined in.

He asked me if I was a murderer, if I was a terrorist Ericka Tazi, hotel guest

Mrs Tazi walked away but was followed by Mr Vogelenzang, who was acting like "a whirling dervish", repeatedly asking her if she was a "terrorist".

Giving evidence, Mrs Tazi told the bench that dressing in her hijab seemed to "trigger something" in the hotelier.

The 60-year-old, who suffers from fibromyalgia and lives with chronic pain, said: "He just couldn't accept the way I was dressed.

"He asked me if I was a murderer, if I was a terrorist. I'm a 60-year-old disabled woman, I couldn't understand where it was coming from, it was shocking to me."

Mrs Tazi said Mr Vogelenzang followed her into the dining room "flailing" his arms and "jumping up and down".

She added: "Sharon came running in, she was shouting 'you started this with your dress' and she was pointing in my face and I was frightened at this stage. I was absolutely traumatised by it all."

Beatles fan

Later that night Mrs Tazi contacted Merseyside Police. When detectives questioned the couple they claimed they had been sharing their "faith views".

Mrs Tazi told Hugh Tomlinson QC, for the defence, that she was not trying to make a statement by wearing the hijab and denied having robust arguments about religion with other guests.

She told him she tried "many religions" before converting to Islam when she married.

Mrs Tazi said: "My journey has been a long, long journey, it was a very difficult decision to wear these clothes... I'm a normal Warrington girl who liked the Beatles."

Guests at the hotel told the court that Mrs Tazi was left distraught by the row.

Pauline Tait, 52, a committed Christian, described it as "a very upsetting and volatile exchange".

Another guest, Shirley Tait, said she was in her bedroom when she heard Mr Vogelenzang shouting the words "nazi" and "warlord".

The case was adjourned until Wednesday.

Good to see some of that old fashioned Christian tolerance in action!

Rajinder Singh says he supports far-right party's anti-Islam stance

• Haroon Siddique
• guardian.co.uk, Friday 20 November 2009 14.47 GMT
• Article history

A Sikh man who has campaigned for the BNP in support of its anti-Islam stance has been put forward to be the party's first non-white member.

Rajinder Singh, who is in his late 70s, has twice lent support to Nick Griffin during the British National party leader's court appearances and appeared in an election broadcast for the party in 2005. There have been suggestions that he could stand as a BNP candidate at next year's general election.

Singh, who came to Britain in 1967, used to pen a regular column for the party's Freedom newspaper and has spoken at BNP meetings where he has been vehement in his criticism of Muslims, talking about his experiences at the partition of India in 1947. He was born in Lahore, which became part of Pakistan after partition, and blames Muslims for the death of his father during the bloody split of India.

The BNP's senior members voted last weekend to hold a party-wide ballot on whether to allow non-white people to join. That followed the party's agreement to a court order last month to use all reasonable endeavours to revise its constitution so that it did not breach the equality bill in the face of a challenge to its membership policy by the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Martin Wingfield, the communications officer for the party's two MEPs and the its prospective parliamentary candidate for Workington, wrote on his blog in support of admitting non-whites, and Singh in particular. "I say adapt and survive and give the brave and loyal Rajinder Singh the honour of becoming the first ethnic minority member of the BNP," wrote Wingfield.

Singh, a former teacher from Wellingborough in Northamptonshire, said he would be "honoured" to become a full member of the BNP.

"I got in touch with the BNP on certain core policies that appeal to me," he told the Independent. "I also admire them since they are on their own patch and do not wish to let anyone else oust them from the land of their ancestors."

In 2001, after the September 11 attacks on the US, he said he wanted to set up an Asian Friends of the BNP group to act as a supporting body and conduit for funds for people sympathetic to the party's anti-Islamic stance.

A BNP spokesman said he would be "quite happy" to have Singh as a member, adding that the retired teacher recognised that he was a "guest of ours". "We have always maintained it's not really about skin colour, it's about ethnicity," he said. He emphasised that the party's membership list, suspended following last month's court order, remained closed for the time being.

And in other news, turkey set to vote for Christmas.

 
This is one of those stories that, when you are confronted with it, seems like a parody from the Onion, but upon closer examination ... it’s not. No, it’s a “truth is stranger than fiction” kinda thing. Actually, it’s more a case of her truth is stranger than fiction. This is some real Michelle Bachmann-level goofiness going on here. What am I talking about?

I’m talking about the marvelous loopy opinion piece written by one Kimberly Daniels, founder of Kimberly Daniels Ministries International, who describes herself as “a recognized prophetic voice” (whatever that means, details were not forthcoming). Kimberly penned what might be charitably described as a “controversial” essay for Charisma magazine, published online at its website and also picked up by Pat Robertson’s CBN website but removed as the story began to receive ridicule on the Internet. What was her essay about that caused such a reaction, you ask?

Well, you see, Kimberly wants to destroy Halloween! That’s right—she wants to destroy Halloween because of the demonic candy handed out during the holiday. Not just any candy, but accursed candy, the worst kind!

From her essay:

During this period, demons are assigned against those who participate in the rituals and festivities. These demons are automatically drawn to the fetishes that open doors for them to come into the lives of human beings. For example, most of the candy sold during this season has been dedicated and prayed over by witches.

I do not buy candy during the Halloween season. Curses are sent through the tricks and treats of the innocent whether they get it by going door to door or by purchasing it from the local grocery store. The demons cannot tell the difference.

Sound the alarm! And be on the lookout for this evil, demonic candy! Why hasn’t someone alerted Fox News??!

Daniels goes on to write:

Halloween is much more than a holiday filled with fun and tricks or treats. It is a time for the gathering of evil that masquerades behind the fictitious characters of Dracula, werewolves, mummies and witches on brooms. The truth is that these demons that have been presented as scary cartoons actually exist. I have prayed for witches who are addicted to drinking blood and howling at the moon.

I’m not going to touch that one, but check out some of the other “secret, wicked, cruel activities that go on behind the scenes” during Halloween:

      * Sex with demons
      * Orgies between animals and humans
      * Animal and human sacrifices
      * Sacrificing babies to shed innocent blood
      * Rape and molestation of adults, children and babies
      * Revel nights
      * Conjuring of demons and casting of spells
      * Release of “time released” curses against the innocent and the ignorant.

Who knew? Now that we are aware of the problem, what are we, as a society, going to do about it?

Here’s Kimberly’s final advice:

There is no doubt in my heart that God is not calling us to replace fall festivals and Halloween activities; rather, He wants us to utterly destroy the deeds of this season. If you or your family members have opened the door to any curses that are released during the demonic fall festivals, renounce them and repent. I already have.

Cross posting this from Brand X

A central Wisconsin couple who prayed rather than seeking medical care for their 11-year-old dying daughter were sentenced to six months in jail and 10 years probation in the girl's death.

Dale and Leilani Neumann could have received up to 25 years in prison for second-degree homicide over the death in March 2008 of Madeline Neumann, who died of an undiagnosed but treatable form of diabetes.

Marathon county circuit court Judge Vincent Howard told the Neumanns they were "very good people, raising their family who made a bad decision, a reckless decision".

"God probably works through other people," he told the parents, "some of them doctors."

The case was believed to be the first of its kind in Wisconsin involving faith healing in which someone died and another person was charged with a homicide.

Prosecutors claimed that the Neumanns recklessly killed their youngest of four children by ignoring obvious symptoms of severe illness as she became too weak to speak, eat, drink or walk. They said the couple had a legal duty to take their daughter to a doctor but relied totally on prayer for healing.

The girl, known as Kara, died on the floor of the family's rural Weston home as people surrounded her and prayed. Someone called the emergency dispatcher only after she stopped breathing.

"We are here today because to some, you made Kara a martyr to your faith," Howard told the parents.

In testimony at the trial and videotaped interviews with police, the parents said they believe healing comes from God and that they never expected their daughter to die as they prayed for her and summoned others to do the same. A friend who was at the family's rural Weston home called the ambulance after Kara stopped breathing.

During the sentencing, Leilani Neumann, 41, told the judge her family is loving and forgiving and has wrongly been portrayed as religious zealots.

"I do not regret trusting truly in the Lord for my daughter's health," she said. "Did we know she had a fatal illness? No. Did we act to the best of our knowledge? Yes."

Dale Neumann, 47, read from the Bible and told the judge he loved his daughter.

"I am guilty of trusting my Lord's wisdom completely ... Guilty of asking for heavenly intervention. Guilty of following Jesus Christ when the whole world does not understand. Guilty of obeying my God," he said.

The Neumanns held each other as Howard sentenced them, a Bible on the table nearby and their three teenage children sitting behind them in the courtroom.

Prosecutors had asked for a three-year suspended prison sentence and 10 years probation. Defence lawyers had sought four years probation.

The judge ordered the couple to serve one month in jail each year for six years so that the parents can "think about Kara and what God wants you to learn from this". One parent would serve the term in March and the other in September. Howard suspended the jail sentences until the appeal is heard.

As part of their probation, the parents must allow a public health nurse to examine their two underage children at least once every three months and must immediately take their children to a doctor for any serious injuries.

The assistant district attorney, LaMont Jacobson, said justice was served by the sentences, but he was disappointed that the parents never said they were sorry for what happened.

"They allowed Kara to die because they got themselves too caught up in the misguided belief that they were being tested by God," the prosecutor said.

Dale Neumann, who once studied to be a pentecostal minister, told reporters that the couple continues to trust in God.

"We live by faith," he said after the sentencing. "We are completely content with what the Lord has allowed to come down, but he is not done yet."

Liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations. There are three sources of errors in conveying biblical meaning:

• lack of precision in the original language, such as terms underdeveloped to convey new concepts introduced by Christ
• lack of precision in modern language
• translation bias in converting the original language to the modern one.

Of these three sources of errors, the last introduces the largest error, and the biggest component of that error is liberal bias. Large reductions in this error can be attained simply by retranslating the KJV into modern English.^[1]

As of 2009, there is no fully conservative translation of the Bible which satisfies the following ten guidelines:^[2]

1. Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias
2. Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, "gender inclusive" language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity
3. Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level^[3]
4. Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop;^[4] defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer"; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as "word", "peace", and "miracle".
5. Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as "gamble" rather than "cast lots";^[5] using modern political terms, such as "register" rather than "enroll" for the census
6. Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.
7. Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning
8. Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story
9. Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels
10. Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word "Lord" rather than "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" or "Lord God."

Thus, a project has begun among members of Conservapedia to translate the Bible in accordance with these principles. The translated Bible can be found here.

Benefits include:

• mastery of the Bible, which is priceless
• mastery of the English language, which is valuable
• thorough understanding of the differences in Bible translations, particularly the historically important King James Version
• benefiting from activity that no public school would ever allow; a Conservative Bible could become a text for public school courses
• liberals will oppose this effort, but they will have to read the Bible to criticize this, and that will open their minds

How long would this project take? There are about 8000 verses in the New Testament. At a careful rate of translating about four verses an hour, it would take one person 2000 hours, or about one year working full time on the project.

Contents [hide] 1 Possible Approaches 2 Building on the King James Version 3 First Example - Liberal Falsehood 4 Second Example - Dishonestly Shrewd 5 Third Example - Socialism 6 Advantages to a Conservative Bible Online 7 References 8 See also

Possible Approaches

Here are possible approaches to creating a conservative Bible translation:

• identify pro-liberal terms used in existing Bible translations, such as "government", and suggest more accurate substitutes
• identify the omission of liberal terms for vices, such as "gambling", and identify where they should be used
• identify conservative terms that are omitted from existing translations, and propose where they could improve the translation
• identify terms that have lost their original meaning, such as "word" in the beginning of the Gospel of John, and suggest replacements, such as "truth"

An existing translation might license its version for improvement by the above approaches, much as several modern translations today are built on prior translations. Alternatively, a more ambitious approach would be to start anew from the best available ancient transcripts.

In stage one, the translation could focus on word improvement and thereby be described as a "conservative word-for-word" translation. If greater freedom in interpretation is then desired, then a "conservative thought-for-thought" version could be generated as a second stage.

Building on the King James Version

In the United States and much of the world, the immensely popular and respected King James Version (KJV) is freely available and in the public domain. It could be used as the baseline for developing a conservative translation without requiring a license or any fees. Where the KJV is known to be deficient due to discovery of more authentic sources, exceptions can be made that use either more modern public domain translations as a baseline, or by using the original Greek or Hebrew.

There are 66 books in the KJV, comprised of 1,189 chapters, 31,102 verses, and 788,280 words.^[6] The project could begin with translation of the New Testament, which is only 27 books, 260 chapters, 7,957 verses, and less than 200,000 words.

Retranslation at rate of 20 verses a day would complete the entire New Testament in about a year. With 5 good retranslators, that would be an average of only 4 verses a day per translator. At a faster rate of 20 verses per day by 5 good translators, the entire New Testament could be retranslated in less than 3 months.

First Example - Liberal Falsehood

The earliest, most authentic manuscripts lack this verse set forth at Luke 23:34:^[7]

Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."

Is this a liberal corruption of the original? This does not appear in any other Gospel, and the simple fact is that some of the persecutors of Jesus did know what they were doing. This quotation is a favorite of liberals but should not appear in a conservative Bible.

Second Example - Dishonestly Shrewd

At Luke 16:8, the NIV describes an enigmatic parable in which the "master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly." But is "shrewdly", which has connotations of dishonesty, the best term here? Being dishonestly shrewd is not an admirable trait.

The better conservative term, which became available only in 1851, is "resourceful". The manager was praised for being "resourceful", which is very different from dishonesty. Yet not even the ESV, which was published in 2001, contains a single use of the term "resourceful" in its entire translation of the Bible.

Third Example - Socialism

Socialistic terminology permeates English translations of the Bible, without justification. This improperly encourages the "social justice" movement among Christians.

For example, the conservative word "volunteer" is mentioned only once in the ESV, yet the socialistic word "comrade" is used three times, "laborer(s)" is used 13 times, "labored" 15 times, and "fellow" (as in "fellow worker") is used 55 times.

Advantages to a Conservative Bible Online

There are several striking advantages to a conservative approach to translating the Bible online:

• participants learn enormously from the process
• liberal bias - and lack of authenticity - become easier to recognize and address
• by translating online, this utilizes the growing online resources that improve accuracy
• supported by conservative principles, the project can be bolder in uprooting and excluding liberal distortions
• the project can adapt quickly to future threats from liberals to biblical integrity
• access is free and immediate to the growing internet audience, for their benefit
• the ensuing debate would flesh out -- and stop -- the infiltration of churches by liberals pretending to be Christian, much as a vote by legislators exposes the liberals
• this would bring the Bible to a new audience of political types, for their benefit; Bible courses in college Politics Departments would be welcome
• this would debunk the pervasive and hurtful myth that Jesus would be a political liberal today

References

1. ↑ The committee in charge of updating the bestselling version, the NIV, is dominated by professors and higher-educated participants who can be expected to be liberal and feminist in outlook. As a result, the revision and replacement of the NIV will be influenced more by political correctness and other liberal distortions than by genuine examination of the oldest manuscripts. As a result of these political influences, it becomes desirable to develop a conservative translation that can serve, at a minimum, as a bulwark against the liberal manipulation of meaning in future versions.
2. ↑ Additional less important guidelines include (1) adherence to a concise and dignifying style, such as use of "who" rather than "that" when referring to people and also use glorifying language for the remarkable achievements and (2) recognizing that Christianity introduced powerful new concepts that even the Greek and Hebrew were inadequate to express, but modern conservative language can express well.
3. ↑ The NIV has supplanted the KJV in popularity.
4. ↑ For example, in 1611 the conservative concept of "accountability" had not yet developed, and the King James Version does not use "accountable to God" in translating Romans 3:19; good modern translations do.
5. ↑ For example, the English Standard Version (2001) does not use the word "gamble" anywhere in translating numerous references to the concept in the Bible.
6. ↑ http://www.biblebelievers.com/believers-org/kjv-stats.html
7. ↑ Quoted here from the NIV.

See also

• Conservative Bible
• Gospel of Mark (Translated)
• Epistle to Philemon (Translated)
• Feminist Bible
• Bible Translations
• Bible Retranslation Project
• Word Analysis of Bible
• NIV

Retrieved from "http://conservapedia.com/Conservative_Bible_Project"

Categories: Bible | Bible Versions | Conservative Bible

Author of His Dark Materials trilogy included on American Library Association's 2008 list

• Ed Pilkington in New York
• guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 30 September 2009 19.10 BST
• Article history

His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman. The books have been challenged in America. Photograph: PR

The novelist and children's writer Philip Pullman has been showered with awards that include a CBE, a Carnegie Medal and several honorary professorships. This week he notched up a new distinction: he is ranked second in the top 10 books that people have tried to ban across America.

Pullman's fantasy trilogy, His Dark Materials, has leapt to the top of the target list of would-be censors in the new rankings issued this week by the American Library Association. It tracks cases where individuals or groups have attempted to have books stripped from bookshelves in schools and libraries across the US.

Its newly released rankings for 2008 recorded 513 cases where books were targeted for censorship, of which 74 were successfully banned or restricted. Pullman's trilogy was the second most commonly attacked, a result, the ALA believes, of an organised campaign that the anti-defamation group the Catholic League launched against the film version of The Golden Compass.

Several schools across America faced requests from parents to remove the book. One challenge at a school in Winchester, Kentucky was made on the grounds that the book's main character drinks wine and eats poppy with her meals. Another school in Oshkosh, Wisconsin pulled the trilogy because of its "anti-Christian message".

Reached by the Guardian, Pullman quipped that he was "very glad to be back in the top 10 banned books". But he added: "Of course it's a worry when anybody takes it upon themselves to dictate what people should or should not read. The power of organised religion is very strong in the US, and getting stronger because of the internet."

Almost 4,000 attempts to ban books have been recorded over the past eight years, though the ALA believes the figure is a gross understatement. All cases are voluntarily reported, and many more are likely to go unrecorded, sometimes because librarians have been threatened with dismissal if they sound the alarm. Most would-be censors are parents concerned about their children's reading or members of religious groups. The most common complaint is against books with explicit sexual content or offensive language.

In recent years, the ALA has spotted a growing intolerance towards children's books that deal with homosexuality - a quality most famously displayed by Sarah Palin who tried in the late 1990s as then mayor of Wasilla in Alaska to have Daddy's Roommate, a tale about a gay father, removed from the town library.

Three of the top 10 most challenged books in 2008 had gay or lesbian characters, including the single most censored volume, And Tango Makes Three. The fact that it tells the true story of two gay penguins at the Central Park zoo in New York does not appear to have placated opponents.

Nor does the fact that number eight on the list, Uncle Bobby's Wedding, features a couple of gay guinea pigs. Deborah Caldwell-Stone, acting director of the ALA's office for intellectual freedom that compiles the censorship list, says that children of gay and lesbian couples have found such books valuable. "Kids with same-sex parents are thrilled to find books in school libraries that reflect their lives.

"That's why it's so important to resist censorship. We believe parents do have the right to dictate their children's reading, but that right exists for their children alone and should not be extended to others."

As Pullman's high ranking shows, religion is another major cause of complaints, and within that an important subset are books featuring witchcraft. The subject was put in relief this week when Matt Latimer, a former speechwriter for George Bush, alleged in his new memoir of life in the White House that Bush had refused to grant JK Rowling the Presidential Medal of Freedom because her writing "encouraged witchcraft".

The Harry Potter books have been a mainstay of the ALA's banned list since the late 1990s; in Georgia a Christian missionary is still waging a one-woman battle to have them removed from all state schools.

In the 2008 top 10, two separate volumes were objected to on groups of witchcraft or satanism - Scary Stories and Bless Me, Ultima. In many cases, the censorship bids are lodged by fundamentalist Christian groups that take the Bible's admonition to fight witchcraft literally.

Some of the most cherished books in the American literary cannon have fallen foul of censorship rows by dint of their language or sexual content.

Titles that have made it to the ALA's banned list in recent years include JD Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (it includes many "fucks"); John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men (for its strong language and political message that riles conservatives); and The Colour Purple by Alice Walker (people have objected to its homosexual theme and offensive language). The left is as capable of censoring as the right. A regular entry is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn which anti-racists have tried to ban on grounds that Mark Twain uses the word "nigger".

As for Pullman, he confidently expects to be back in the top 10 next year.

His forthcoming book, a novel for adults, is called The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ.