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The chilling proposals are spelled out in a Home Office document discussed at a meeting of Whitehall officials and council leaders last month.
It warns emergency plans may be needed in areas where there are not enough graves to cope.
The 59-page document talks about using “a grave that is for a number of unrelated persons, excavated mechanically in advance and designed for efficient preparation and use”.
It said this approach would create a “burial site for multiple graves and consecutive burials”.
But it stressed there must still be “marking of the position of individual burials.”
The document is called A Framework for Planners Preparing to Manage Deaths.
The meeting heard the number of burials could more than double within a few weeks of a full-blown pandemic.
It heard a presentation on the Home Office guidance from John Barrelled, a senior official from Westminster City Council.
The document warned some cemeteries “may experience shortage of grave space, in particular in inner city areas”.
Freight containers and “inflatable” storage units may be needed to provide extra mortuary space.
But it stressed “refrigerated vehicles and trailers should not be used”.
Cemeteries and crematoriums may need to work seven days a week and hire extra staff to cope.
It also warned there may be a need for more “basic and shorter services at the chapel” or for “memorial services” to be held at a person’s home instead.
It may no longer be possible to bury some people in family plots.
New laws could be passed to allow “streamlined” cremations.
Whitehall officials are speaking to coffin makers to see if they can meet demand.
Retired docs could be drafted in to issue death certificates so GPs can focus on patients.
It may also become impossible to fly home the bodies of Britons who die abroad. Presently 30 per cent of people are buried.
New cases of swine flu have fallen sharply from a peak of over 110,000 a week in late July.
Looking across the moral landscape of the last half-century, one issue looms larger than all others — abortion. Considered from a historical perspective, the intensity and duration of the abortion debate came as something of a surprise. Handing down its infamous Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, the majority of justices on the U.S. Supreme Court declared the abortion question settled and closed. They were wrong.
Almost four decades after Roe v. Wade, Americans are still torn over the issue of abortion. Indeed, the intensity of the abortion debate in 2009 exceeds that of 1973. The controversy over abortion is not only unsettled and unresolved — it is still developing before our eyes. To the great consternation of abortion-rights proponents, Americans have not accepted abortion on demand as a permanent reality. As a nation, we have debated any number of issues beyond abortion in recent years, but abortion remains the controversy that is most central, unavoidable, and deeply personal.
The personal dimension of the abortion controversy came to light this week from two unexpected witnesses. The first is Sarah Kliff, a reporter for Newsweek magazine. In a very personal column, Kliff describes her experience visiting Omaha, Nebraska and the abortion clinic of Dr. LeRoy Carhart, now perhaps the nation’s sole specialist in late-trimester abortions. As Kliff writes, her experience covering abortion for the magazine over the past two years has led her into contact and conversation with a range of persons on both sides of the abortion debate. She recognizes that, “both sides feel abortion is an issue worth waging war over.”
Given her journalistic experience, Kliff describes herself as “well-versed in abortion policy, the pro-choice and pro-life arguments, the latest legislation.” Her next sentence delivers the surprise: “But I’d never actually seen an abortion; I’d never watched the procedure that activists vehemently defend or deplore.”
But that is exactly what happened when Kliff went to Omaha to research her article on Dr. Carhart. Even as she anticipated observing the abortion, Kliff confessed to hesitancy and reluctance. She observed a first-trimester abortion, even though Dr. Carhart does perform late-term abortions. Why was she so ambivalent?
In her words:
Why was I reluctant to watch? To be fair, I’d never observed a surgery and knew myself to frequently flinch at ‘Grey’s Anatomy.’ But abortion isn’t like the complex, bloody operations you see on television: medically speaking, it’s a simple and common procedure. About 1.2 million were performed in 2005, the same, numberwise, as outpatient cancer surgeries. I was nervous, I think, to watch something so controversial; no one protests outside cancer clinics. I didn’t know how I’d react. Would I find the surgery repulsive? Encounter women whose choices troubled me? Whom I disagreed with? I was uneasy about coming in such close contact with such substantial decisions.
Observing the abortion, Kliff writes of seeing a woman prepared for the procedure and then of the suction tube that was inserted within her. Her report is both chilling and honest. “Carhart used a suction tube to empty the contents of the uterus; it took no longer than three minutes. The suction machine made a slight rumbling sound, a pinkish fluid flowed through the tube, and, faster than I’d expected, it was over.”
As Kliff recounts, she felt no physical discomfort observing the procedure. Nevertheless, she did experience a very strong emotional reaction. After describing this emotional reaction and her encounters with patients in the abortion clinic, Kliff tells of returning home only to discover that her friends who supported abortion rights “bristled slightly when I told them where I’d been and what I’d watched.”
In a profound statement, Sarah Kliff acknowledges that Americans just do not talk about abortion as they talk about other surgical or medical procedures. “Abortion may be a simple procedure medically,” she explains, “but it is not cancer surgery.”
Sarah Kliff does not condemn abortion in her article and she does not articulate a pro-life understanding of the abortion issue. Indeed, she speaks of abortion as involving a weighty choice that, “depending on how you view it, involves a life, or the potential for life.” This is a very weak way of describing the moral question of abortion, but it is at least a start. Sarah Kliff’s honest reflections on her experience of observing an abortion are, perhaps more than she knows or recognizes, a witness to the horror of abortion. Her description of “pinkish fluid” flowing through the suction tube is almost impossible to force out of one’s mind.
Another unexpected witness this week is actress Kourtney Kardashian. Her recently announced unplanned pregnancy became part of Hollywood’s scandal and publicity circus. But what caught the attention of the media this week was her decision to keep the baby and the straightforward logic behind her decision.
Kardashian has not adopted a pro-life position on the abortion question. Indeed, she told People magazine: “I do think every woman should have the right to do what they want, but I don’t think it’s talked through enough.” The actress told of many friends who just assured her that abortion was the easy way out. “Like it’s not a big deal,” the actress recalled.
Interestingly, Kardashian’s decision to keep her baby was at least partially prompted by her experience of reading the testimonies of women who regretted their abortions. “I looked online, and I was sitting on the bed hysterically crying, reading these stories of people who felt so guilty for having an abortion,” she explained.
“I was just sitting there crying, thinking, ‘I can’t do that,’ . . . And I felt in my body, this is meant to be. God does things for a reason, and I just felt like it was the right thing that was happening in my life.”
As she thought about her decision, Kardashian concluded that “all the reasons why I wouldn’t keep the baby were so selfish.” She also received encouragement from her doctor. “My doctor told me there is nothing you will ever regret about having the baby, but he was like, ‘You may regret not having the baby.’ And I was like: That is so true.”
The Culture of Death looms as a massive threat, but its foundations are crumbling. Unexpected witnesses such as Sarah Kliff and Kourtney Kardashian help us to see how moral insight can emerge from unexpected experiences, reflections, and witnesses. Some of the most profound witnesses to the horror of abortion and the sanctity of human life do not even know that they are so. The evil of abortion cannot be hidden once it is seen, and a voice for life cannot be forgotten once it is heard.
A much-needed new book is coming from Yale University Press: The Cartoons That Shook the World by Jytte Klausen, a professor of politics at Brandeis University. It discusses the cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad that were published in the largest newspaper in Denmark, Jyllands-Posten, late in 2005, touching off murderous rage from Muslims around the world.
Such a book could be a useful exploration of the free speech issues that the cartoon controversy raised. And it has already shed new light on the Islamic challenge to free speech represented by the response to the cartoons, even before it has been published.
But it has done so in a way that neither Jytte Klausen nor Yale University Press intends.
For Yale University Press, according to the New York Times, checked with twenty-four “diplomats and experts on Islam and counterterrorism,” as well as other authorities, and they all made the same recommendation: this book about the Muhammad cartoons should not actually include the Muhammad cartoons. John Donatich, the director of Yale University Press, explained that “the cartoons are freely available on the Internet and can be accurately described in words,” and thus “reprinting them could be interpreted easily as gratuitous.” He said he had “never blinked” when publishing controversial material before, but “when it came between that and blood on my hands, there was no question.”
Blood on his hands? Really? While it may seem laudable to want to protect Yale University Press staff and employees from violent reprisals by Islamic jihadists, in fact Yale University Press’s position represents a capitulation of astonishing proportions. He is demonstrating that threats of violence work, and that Western non-Muslims will not stand up and defend the principle of free speech against Islamic supremacist intimidation.
John Donatich and Yale University Press seem to have forgotten that there is no freedom of speech without the freedom to ridicule and even to offend. The instant that any ideology or belief system is considered off-limits for critical examination and even ridicule, that belief system has established an ideological hegemony that destroys free thought and free inquiry. Westerners seem to grasp this when it comes to affronts to Christianity, even when they are as offensive as Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ or Chris Ofili’s dung- and pornography-encrusted Holy Virgin Mary. But the same clarity doesn’t seem to extend to an Islamic context.
Even worse, when Donatich speaks of blood on his hands, he shows that he has, in a pathetic manifestation of intellectual Stockholm Syndrome, adopted the world view of the violent Muslim foes of free speech around the world. For what if the decision had been made that The Cartoons That Shook the World would reproduce the cartoons? Would that really have been “gratuitous”? Of course not. It would have been precisely appropriate to the book at hand. And what if Islamic supremacist thugs murdered more innocent people because of the book? Would that blood have been on the hands of John Donatich or Jytte Klausen? Only in the eyes of the Islamic supremacists themselves. But not in reality. For if someone flies into a murderous rage because of a perfectly reasonable action, the reasonable actor does not thereby become responsible.
If I meet someone who says that he will kill a person every time I step on a crack in the sidewalk, I do not thereby become responsible for the deaths of those people he murders as a result. And if I began to behave as if I were indeed responsible in such a case, I would only be feeding the psychosis of the killer.
The Yale University Press’s cowardly decision not to reprint the Muhammad cartoons in a book about those cartoons only feeds the murderous Islamic supremacist psychosis that is responsible — truly responsible — for so much violence around the world today.
On December 14, 2005, I wrote in Human Events that “the cartoon controversy indicates the gulf between the Islamic world and the post-Christian West in matters of freedom of speech and expression. And it may yet turn out that as the West continues to pay homage to its idols of tolerance, multiculturalism, and pluralism, it will give up those hard-won freedoms voluntarily.” And here we are.
The idea of a 42-ton lorry with no one at the wheel looming in your rearview mirror is pretty terrifying.
But we had all better get used to it because driverless juggernauts could be on Britain’s motorways within ten years, experts predicted yesterday.
And the trucks look like being the forerunners of a robot revolution.
According to the Royal Academy of Engineering, artificially intelligent robots and computers capable of making life and death decisions will become more and more common in all aspects of life.
The academy wants a public debate about the social, legal and ethical issues raised by the increasing use of ‘thinking’ machines such as surgeons, soldiers, babysitters, therapists, carers for the old and even sex partners.
Their report, called Autonomous Systems, explains how the computer-directed trucks would use data from laser-radar, video cameras and sat-nav to steer through traffic and pedestrians.
Report co-author Professor Will Stewart, of Southampton University, said driverless lorries and cars would make motoring far safer.
‘The machine is a perfectly safe object. It is not prone to some of the things that you and I are prone to,’ he said. ‘It can run 24 hours a day without getting tired and it will always do the same thing.’
He said the technology is already in place for driverless cars and robotic taxis that take passengers to any destination are likely within 20 years. Fully automated trains are already in use on London’s Docklands Light Railway and a driverless taxi that can do 25mph on a network of narrow roads will be launched next year at Heathrow.
Professor Stewart said automated vehicles would be most useful for haulage, adding: ‘I think in ten years 30 per cent of trucks could be machine-operated.’ Their computers will be programmed to predict the behaviour of other road users, to slow down safely if other vehicles get too close and to learn from their mistakes.
If a lorry detected a mechanical or software fault it would pull over and radio for help.
Professor Stewart added: ‘It will always give way to other vehicles and people could begin to exploit that by cutting in.
‘The first person likely to be killed by an autonomous vehicle is probably going to be a driver who is chancing it.’
However, the report admits there could be huge legal problems if an automated car were in an accident.
The animated newspapers of the Harry Potter books will come a step closer next month with the appearance of the world’s first video magazine advert.
America’s Entertainment Weekly will contain a wafer-thin screen and mini-speaker that will allow readers to watch a video when the publication is opened.
CBS, the US TV station paying for the advert, said the device would be tough enough to cope with the rough and tumble of printing, binding and delivery.
The screens will be no bigger than two inches by 1.5 inches, roughly the size of a mobile phone screen.
The first wave of advertisements will be for American TV shows such as The Big Bang Theory and Two And A Half Men.
New shows will also be previewed, and the soft drink Pepsi will also light up the small screen.
Built-in buttons will allow readers to select which clips they want to watch.
Fiction to fact: The technology has been likened to that used in the ‘Daily Prophet’ newspaper featured in Harry Potter where people’s photos move
How much the screens cost to produce – and how much advertisers will be charged – has not been released, but until the technology becomes more widespread, and cheaper to produce, it is likely to be a costly exercise.
Paul Caine, president of the Time Inc. magazine group that includes Entertainment Weekly, said the ballpark dollar cost for one of the units is in the ‘low teens’, the Wall Street Journal reported.
He said the cost may come down before the issue comes out.
But for advertisers the premium might be worth it, as the adverts are likely to grab the reader’s attention.
George Schweitzer, president of CBS’s marketing group, said: ‘As a rule, 90 per cent of people will say they heard about new programming on television.
‘This is the first way we can get video samples into the hands of entertainment enthusiasts off the television screen.’
The screens will appear in selected copies of Entertainment Weekly’s September 18 edition.
Other examples from the world of fiction include 2002′s Minority Report, where Tom Cruise goes on the run – and even has to hide from the adverts.
In reality, the world has been inching closer to moving screens – from e-book readers promising to revolutionise book-reading to e-ink screens promising digital newspapers that update constantly.
A British scientist has been awarded more than £100,000 to develop a real life Harry Potter invisibility cloak.
Physicist Prof Ulf Leonhardt of the University of St Andrews believes he can make a ‘major leap’ towards a cloaking device in just two years.
The professor – who cites the Invisible Woman and J K Rowling as sources of inspiration – will use the cash to develop a material that bends light around itself, making it invisible to the naked eye.
Scientists have been attempting to create invisibility for years. However, the methods used in the existing prototypes only work with a narrow range of light waves.
Prof Leonhardt – who describes his works as ‘geometry, light and a wee bit of magic’ – believes his cloaking device could be more practical.
Normally, when light hits an object, it bounces off the surface and into the naked eye, making it visible.
An invisibly cloak would work by ‘grabbing hold’ of light waves and making them flow smoothly around an object. The light waves would be deflected in such a way to make an object vanish.
‘Broadband invisibility clearly is blue-skies research,’ said Prof Leonhardt.
‘I will try my best to explore how far one can go, but I cannot guarantee that at the end of the project invisibility will be easy to achieve in practice.
‘I will most certainly find easier ways of cloaking, but it remains to be seen how practical they are.
‘The important thing is to understand the foundations and come up with something new or take an existing idea to extremes; using technology and ideas to make things happen – technology we cannot imagine would ever exist.’
The professor is basing his work on Einstein’s theory of curved space. According to the theory, any large object such as a star distorts the fabric of the universe so that light travelling past it curves.
For an cloaking device to work, light would have to be bent around an object in such a way that it vanished.
‘Imagine a transparent material that guides light around an object without distorting the light,’ he said.
‘The object would disappear from view.
‘One way of achieving this feat is to let the material act like a coordinate transformation of space: the cloaking device condenses space, enclosing the object into a single, invisible point.’
Money for the two year research project comes from the Royal Society’s Theo Murphy Blue Skies award. The award is given for researchers working on novel and ground-breaking research.
He will investigate ‘optical metamaterials’ – materials with unusual electromagnetic properties.
If the work is a success it could lead to the sort of invisibility shields used by James Bond, Harry Potter and the Romulans in Star Trek.
The professor believes similar shields could manipulate other types of waves – and could even protect the coastline from ocean waves.
The work, which he calls broadband cloaking, could also lead to devices that enhance visibility – such as brighter cats eyes on roads, better microscopes and improved lenses.
Earlier this year, New Scientist magazine predicted that invisibility cloaks could be part of everyday life in 30 years.
So far scientists have only managed to make objects invisible using microwaves rather than visible light waves.
Scientists are only months away from creating artificial life, it was claimed yesterday.
Dr Craig Venter – one of the world’s most famous and controversial biologists – said his U.S. researchers have overcome one of the last big hurdles to making a synthetic organism.
The first artificial lifeform is likely to be a simple man-made bacterium that proves that the technology can work.
But it will be followed by more complex bacteria that turn coal into cleaner natural gas, or algae that can soak up carbon dioxide and convert it into fuels.
They could also be used to create new vaccines and antibiotics.
Researchers successfully transferred the DNA of one type of bacteria into a yeast cell, modified it and then transferred it into another bacterial cell.
The pioneering ‘gene swap’ was performed on a simple species of bacteria called Mycoplasma mycoides.
Carole Lartigue and colleagues removed the bacteria’s entire genome and inserted it into the yeast – an organism that is distant from bacteria on the tree of life.
Yeast is easier to manipulate in the lab and this process allowed the team to alter the genes – in this case, deleting one gene not necessary for bacteria to live.
The cell went on to divide normally, producing a new healthy strain of the modified bacteria.
In January, the team created the entire genetic code of a new bacterium. They now hope to transfer such artificial DNA into a host cell to create a new species, the journal Science reported.
Yesterday Dr Venter said: ‘Assuming we don’t make any errors, I think it should work and we should have the first synthetic species by the end of the year.’
The team successfully transplanted the genome of one bacteria into another for the first time in 2007.
They then created the first entirely man-made genome. But previous attempts to introduce the synthetic genome into another organism and take control of the new bacteria all failed.
Now the team has harnessed a biological process called methylation – where special molecules are added onto the cell’s DNA – to protect them from viruses.
Writing in Science, they said their method might be used to tinker with the genetics of a range of bacteria that have been difficult to engineer.
‘Many medically or industrially important microbes are difficult to manipulate genetically,’ they wrote.
‘This has severely limited our understanding of pathogenesis and our ability to exploit the knowledge of microbial biology on a practical level.
‘We hope that the cycle presented here can be applied to other species, to help solve these problems.’
Ms Lartigue, who is now at the Biotechnology Industry Organisation, said there may have already identified a direct application in the development of animal vaccines.
The Mycoplasma mycoides bacterium they used causes a disease called pleuropneumonia in cattle and goats.
‘There is an urgent need for vaccines,’ they wrote. ‘This technology could accelerate the construction of live vaccine strains.’
Last month, Exxon Mobil Corp signed a $600million (£362million) deal with Dr Venter’s privately held Synthetic Genomics Inc to work on making biofuel from algae.
Venter has said he hopes to manipulate organisms to produce biofuels, clean up toxic waste and sequester carbon to slow global warming.
Researchers already regularly engineer life forms by adding or deleting genes.
I saw the fast-moving, misshapen, unusually-wide funnel over downtown Minneapolis from Seven Corners. I said to Kevin Dau, “That looks serious.”
It was. Serious in more ways than one. A friend who drove down to see the damage wrote,
On a day when no severe weather was predicted or expected…a tornado forms, baffling the weather experts—most saying they’ve never seen anything like it. It happens right in the city. The city: Minneapolis.
The tornado happens on a Wednesday…during the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America’s national convention in the Minneapolis Convention Center. The convention is using Central Lutheran across the street as its church. The church has set up tents around it’s building for this purpose.
According to the ELCA’s printed convention schedule, at 2 PM on Wednesday, August 19, the 5th session of the convention was to begin. The main item of the session: “Consideration: Proposed Social Statement on Human Sexuality.” The issue is whether practicing homosexuality is a behavior that should disqualify a person from the pastoral ministry.
The eyewitness of the damage continues:
This curious tornado touches down just south of downtown and follows 35W straight towards the city center. It crosses I94. It is now downtown.
The time: 2PM.
The first buildings on the downtown side of I94 are the Minneapolis Convention Center and Central Lutheran. The tornado severely damages the convention center roof, shreds the tents, breaks off the steeple of Central Lutheran, splits what’s left of the steeple in two…and then lifts.
Let me venture an interpretation of this Providence with some biblical warrant.
1. The unrepentant practice of homosexual behavior (like other sins) will exclude a person from the kingdom of God.
The unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 6:9-10)
2. The church has always embraced those who forsake sexual sin but who still struggle with homosexual desires, rejoicing with them that all our fallen, sinful, disordered lives (all of us, no exceptions) are forgiven if we turn to Christ in faith.
Such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:11)
3. Therefore, official church pronouncements that condone the very sins that keep people out of the kingdom of God, are evil. They dishonor God, contradict Scripture, and implicitly promote damnation where salvation is freely offered.
4. Jesus Christ controls the wind, including all tornados.
Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him? (Mark 4:41)
5. When asked about a seemingly random calamity near Jerusalem where 18 people were killed, Jesus answered in general terms—an answer that would cover calamities in Minneapolis, Taiwan, or Baghdad. God’s message is repent, because none of us will otherwise escape God’s judgment.
Jesus: “Those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” (Luke 13:4-5)
6. Conclusion: The tornado in Minneapolis was a gentle but firm warning to the ELCA and all of us: Turn from the approval of sin. Turn from the promotion of behaviors that lead to destruction. Reaffirm the great Lutheran heritage of allegiance to the truth and authority of Scripture. Turn back from distorting the grace of God into sensuality. Rejoice in the pardon of the cross of Christ and its power to transform left and right wing sinners.
Most reports from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) assembly today attempt to tie together the denomination’s vote to adopt a sexuality statement and the tornado strike on the Minneapolis Convention Center where the Lutherans were meeting. (No one was injured.)
“We trust that the weather is not a commentary on our work,” said Steven Loy, chairman of the committee overseeing the statement.
But WordAlone, a renewal group within the ELCA, reported that both sides sought to find commentary in the weather: “A supporter of the social statement typified the storm as a mighty wind of the Holy Spirit and as a positive message. Some WordAlone Network members heard a different message, a warning of God’s anger at the ELCA in the wind.”
John Piper, whose Baptist church is just down the road from the convention center, thought the storm was a message as well. “The tornado in Minneapolis was a gentle but firm warning to the ELCA and all of us: Turn from the approval of sin. Turn from the promotion of behaviors that lead to destruction.”
Hours later, delegates voted on the sexuality statement, which needed 2/3 approval. It passed by exactly that margin: 676-338. One or two votes could have changed the outcome. The Minneapolis Star-Tribune notes that the vote came near dinnertime and some delegates had already started to leave. Twenty-nine of the 1,045 registered voters did not vote on the statement. (Any who opposed the sexuality statement are almost certainly kicking themselves this morning and are probably not telling their friends about it…)
The headlines are both dramatic and careful: “Lutherans move toward more open view on gays” (Associated Press), “ELCA validates ‘chaste’ same-sex relationships” (Minneapolis Star-Tribune).
The heart of the matter is buried in the footnotes. “The difference between interpreters should not be understood as a conflict between those who seek to be ‘true to Scripture’ and those who seek to ‘twist the Bible’ to their own liking. The disagreements are genuine,” the document says. It continues:
When the clear word of God’s saving action by grace through faith is at stake, Christian conscience becomes as adamant as Paul, who opposed those who insisted upon circumcision. … However, when the question is about morality or church practice, the Pauline and Lutheran witness is less adamant and believes we may be called to respect the bound conscience of the neighbor. That is, if salvation is not at stake in a particular question, Christians are free to give priority to the neighbor’s well-being and will protect the conscience of the neighbor who may well view the same question in such a way as to affect faith itself. For example, Paul was confident that Christian freedom meant the Gospel of Jesus Christ was not at stake in questions of meat sacrificed to idols or the rituals of holy days. Yet he insisted that, if a brother or sister did not understand this freedom and saw eating this meat as idolatry to a pagan god, the Christian was obligated to “walk in love” by eating just vegetables for the neighbor’s sake!
The problem is that the statement focuses on conscience where it should focus on God’s commandments in the moral ordering of the Christian life, three dissenting members of the ELCA task force on sexuality said earlier this year:
By focusing on trust, freedom, and love of neighbor, the social statement … strains forward to see what God might be doing anew within the community of faith, particularly in regards to conduct of persons who are homosexual, rather than building on the foundation depicted in the creation accounts of Genesis. The concept of freedom of the Christian, while helpful in our understanding of salvation by faith alone, cannot be the justification for a lifestyle and behavior contrary to the biblical witness and the moral tradition. … By centering on justification by faith, the social statement minimizes the role of the Law in Christian life, contrary to Luther’s exposition of the Christian life in the catechisms, and is at odds with the Lutheran Confessions.
Lutherans Concerned, the main LGBT advocacy group within the denomination, hailed the vote as a victory: “There is still much work to do, but the door to full inclusion of LGBT members and their families is now most definitely open.”
Lutheran CORE (Coalition for Reform) decried the document: “We mourn the decision by the Churchwide Assembly to reject the clear teaching of the Bible that God’s intention for marriage is the relationship of one man and one woman. It is tragic that such a large number of ELCA members were willing to overturn the clear teaching of the Bible as it has been believed and confessed by Christians for nearly 2,000 years.”
Jaynan Clark, WordAlone’s president, was blunt: “It is appropriate that we call this a ‘social’ statement for we have just swapped society’s statements and trends for God’s Word and teaching.”
Still, the bigger battle is probably still to come: On Friday, the gathering will consider a change that would allow churches to call pastors and other church leaders “in publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships.”
(Update: On Friday, the ELCA Churchwide Assembly voted to allow “publicly accountable, lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships to serve as rostered leaders of this church.”
Only 12 percent of Israelis believe U.S. President Barack Obama’s policies are supportive of Israel, according to a poll released on Thursday.
The poll was conducted jointly by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Police and Survey Research and the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It was conducted between August 9 and 15.
The poll also found that 64 per cent of Palestinians still feel Obama’s policy is more supportive of Israel, while 40 per cent of Israelis think it is more support of the Palestinians.
The poll’s margin of error was 3 per cent.
According to the poll, a majority of Israelis were unhappy with the results of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah conference which ended Saturday, according to a joint Palestinian-Israeli poll published Thursday.
The poll found that 59 per cent of Israelis believe that in the light of the resolutions taken by the Fatah conference, Israel does not have a partner for peace negotiations.
While the Fatah conference said that resistance remains a legitimate option to liberate the occupied Palestinian territories, it nevertheless said that it gives full support for negotiations to resolve the decades-old Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Negotiations came to a halt following the election of a right-wing government in Israel headed by Benjamin Netanyahu. Palestinians demand a halt to Israeli settlement activities in the occupied territories and an acceptance of the two-state solution before negotiations can resume.
The United States Barack Obama Administration has been working with both sides to find common ground for resumption of negotiations.
It called on Israel to freeze construction in the settlements, including for the so-called reasons of natural growth, while calling on the Palestinians and Arabs to take confidence-building steps toward Israel.
Nevertheless, neither Palestinians nor Israelis interviewed for the poll have confidence in the U.S. policy in spite of its intensive involvement in the Middle East conflict.
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