Dear Louise,
Radio 4 Daily Service 3 April 2006
I want to thank you for your sympathetic hearing given to my phone call today concerning the distress caused by the content of today’s ‘Daily Service’ that was presented by Michael Wakelin.
Witnessing for Christ has never been and will never be an easy task and this is probably truer today than ever before. Today, any notion of there being an absolute, exclusive, narrow ‘truth’ in the spiritual realm flies totally in the face of the ‘spirit of this age’ – an age that is characterised by an unwillingness to accept the ‘truth’ of absolute ‘truth’, that promotes as dogma, both religiously and politically, the supposed ‘truth’ of ‘truth’ being relative and that despises those who would preach an absolute ‘truth’, such as faithful Christian witnesses [a good example was both the audience and some panel reaction to the participation of Stephen Green of Christian Voice in the BBC’s Question Time on 29 September 2005] and ministers of The Gospel. In recent years the focus of the world has been very much directed to the religion of Islam. Constantly high-ranking politicians such as Tony Blair and George W Bush tell us that ‘Islam means peace’. Well, even the new Pope has more sense than to agree with such an erroneous statement. In a report of an interview given by the Pope to journalists, the Roman Catholic Zenit News Agency reported as follows [25 July 2005]
When Tony Blair became British Prime Minister his popularity and reputation grew rapidly thanks to the efforts of one man – Alister Campbell – who became known as his ‘spin doctor’. Mr Campbell made sure that the press and media were kept fully informed about all that would enhance the standing of Mr Blair with the citizens of the United Kingdom and even further afield.
Well, if the Dalai Lama ever needs his own ‘spin doctor’ then he should seriously consider Alf McCreary, ‘Religion Correspondent’ with the Belfast Telegraph. In November 2005 the Dalai Lama paid a return visit to Northern Ireland and any reader of the Belfast Telegraph would be entirely without excuse if they claimed to be unaware of his visit.
Each Saturday in the Belfast Telegraph Mr McCreary authors a page entitled ‘This Life’ and it is usually made up of a lead article and perhaps one or two smaller items. On consecutive Saturdays [19th and 26th November] the lead article for each ‘This Life’ page was devoted to the Dalai Lama. One article was called ‘A welcome visitor’ and the other ‘The Dalai Lama and an Ulster “Blackman”’ [the term ‘Blackman’ refers to a member of a particular fraternal organisation and has nothing to do with race or colour].
Several years ago there was a programme on television called ‘Fantasy Football’ [for Australian and American readers that is ‘football’ as in the ‘soccer’ variety’]. I never did personally watch the programme so I can only surmise that with its title it contained a large proportion of ‘make-believe’content and the intent would have been for it not to be identified with the real world of ‘football’.
On Saturday 3rd December 2005, in a funeral that was watched by millions around the world, Northern Ireland said farewell to George Best who was without doubt the most naturally gifted football player ever to have represented us on the stage of world soccer. Following his tragically early death at the age of 59 when he lost a long-running battle with alcoholism multitudes of articles were written about him in scores of newspapers. Continue reading
A glut of highly significant secular and religious autumn anniversaries provides a stimulating context for my subject. Using more broadly the now-universal convention of identifying momentous events like New York’s ‘9/11’, Madrid’s ‘3/11’ and London’s ‘7/7’, I cite first some famous secular examples from more distant history. First, we may recall ‘10/14’, the Battle of Hastings, the last of four major invasions of the British Isles in a millennium by ‘Europeans’ – 1066 and all that, of course! Then, more positively in this bicentenary year, there’s ‘10/21’ when ‘Europe’ was on the receiving end of Lord Nelson’s decisive broadsides at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Not until 1940 was this country seriously threatened again by a foreign power. I pass by ‘10/25’ in 1415. Agincourt, Henry V and the savage nationalism of the Hundred Years War warrant national shame rather than pride. Indeed, driven by the power-hungry Plantagenets, the whole era has something of an ‘Iraq War whiff’ about it! Another noted ‘10/25’ was of course the distant Crimean Battle of Balaclava in 1854. Inglorious for the British High Command, the heroism of ‘the six hundred’ is justly celebrated. Stepping into November, and closer to home, we rightly remember annually the enormous costly sacrifice represented by ‘11/11’, the Armistice of 1918, when the four-year horror of the First World War came to an end.
On Tuesday 1st November 2005 a service of remembrance was held in St Paul’s Cathedral in London in memory of those who died when Islamic suicide bombers detonated their devices in four locations in London on 7th July 2005.
In the course of the service, a ‘sermon’ was ‘preached’ by the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. The following is a transcript of a section of what he said –
‘The last few months have seen many people trying to respond to this widespread fear, trying to calm and reassure us. One reaction is through security provisions and new legislation [TV camera focuses on Prime Minister, Tony Blair]; another has been in the powerful and consistent response of all our faith communities [TV camera focuses on 6 young people representing Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Judaism and Buddhism who will later each light a wick in a large communal ‘candle of hope’]. As it happens, today’s commemoration falls at a time when several of us are marking [Muslim ‘Eid’ and Hindu ‘D’wali’] or approaching [‘Christian Christmas’] very significant festivals in our religious calendars. So we face the tragedy together today, drawing on our most important resources.
Earlier this year BBC 1 Children’s Television had a special week of programmes called ‘ISLAM WEEK’ that were broadcast on the children’s news programme called NEWSROUND. I had sent a number of emails to the BBC information office but eventually there was ‘silence’ on the part of the BBC so I then emailed the Director General of the BBC, Mark Thompson on 27 April and herewith is the email I sent him and subsequent emails that have been exchanged.
It was during the second half of 2004 that I felt led of the Lord to invite someone to come to Belfast to speak on the topic of ‘GOD [channel] TV: helpful or Harmful’. Initially a speaker and series of meetings were provisionally planned for the end of January 2005 but the Lord over-ruled in both instances [the speaker and timing] and so now this topic is to be addressed by Alan Morrison in a series of meetings planned for 2nd-19th April [DV].
In recent years the ‘Church Growth Movement’ has looked increasingly for guidance to ‘The Message’ and ‘The Methods’ of one man and of one church. That man is RICK WARREN and the church is the church he pastors – SADDLEBACK COMMUNITY CHURCH in Southern California. His ‘Purpose Driven’ books have sold by the millions in Christian bookstores worldwide. Many churches have engaged in ’40 Days of Purpose’ and thousands of Pastors have attended seminars promoting Rick Warren’s ‘Purpose Driven’ vision for Christianity. However, the Bible tells us in Ecclesiastes 1:9 “THERE IS NO NEW THING UNDER THE SUN”.
If like me you were one of the almost 50,000 people who contacted the BBC to protest against their screening of the vile and blasphemous ‘Jerry Springer – The Opera’ on BBC 2 Television on Saturday 8th January 2005 then the following course of lawful protest may be something you wish to seriously consider.