Religion Not Allowed on Library Noticeboards

Well, the great white-washers of religion have struck again. The latest place to be hit in their attempt to remove all visible trace of religion from the public area is a library notice-board in Camden, North London. They told The Roman Catholic Our Lady Help of Christians parish church that it could not put up posters about climate change, because they mentioned Christianity and God.

You mustn't mention God... council bans church from putting up notices about its
meetings http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1213714/You-mustnt-mention-God--council-bans-church-putting-notices-meetings.html#ixzz0RRB4I1Df

In July, the Sunday school at St Mary’s Church was told that it could not put up posters advertising a craft, singing and drama day for children, because it had religious content.

Library bans Sunday school’s ‘religious’ poster
http://www.derrenbrown.co.uk/blog/2009/07/library-bans-sunday-schools-religious-poster/

One wonders whether the two libraries in question have any books that mention God. I certainly hope so. Because if not, they’ll be left with a very small library. Even you get rid of the religion section, there’s still travel, culture, holidays and festivals, literature, history, biographies and novels that have to be thrown out.

But even if they did manage to remove all visible traces of God from public libraries, they could not remove all traces of Him completely. Because every time a Christian walked through those library doors, they would be bringing God in with them. And there’s a lot of Christians who visit libraries. Some of them even think of God while they’re there.

But that’s one of the things that makes the removal of faith-based public notices quite ridiculous. I haven’t seen the notice-boards in question, but I’m willing to bet that a notice advertising a fun day for children and a notice that mentions climate change and God would be relevant and interesting to more people than any other notice that is allowed. Not too many people are interested in things like council notices, high school plays, book clubs, tae kwan do classes, pilates or walking groups. Even with declining number, an average weekly church service is going to attract more people than any of these events. And what happens at Christmas time? Remove all notice that say ‘Christmas’ not ‘Xmas’, thereby getting rid of all the notices that people most want to hear about during the festive season.

Another reason why it’s so ridiculous is because library notice-boards are meant to be community notice-boards. And churches, whether we like it or not, a very real and very important part of our communities. But strangely enough, for the most part, society likes them being part of their communities. We like them visiting the sick, feeding the poor, comforting the mourners, welcoming the strangers and volunteering with community organisations. So considering all the wonderful work they do for the community, shouldn’t they be allowed to post a community notice?

Erasmus' paraphrase of the Book of James

Today I am going to have a bit of a lazy day and let others do the speaking. This is Erasmus’ paraphrase of James. I read this last night and I liked it so much I wanted to share it.

Now Martin Luther did not like the Book of James at all. And I can understand why. For a person who was big on the whole ‘faith, not works’ things, it does jar a bit. However, I think the very reasons why Martin Luther disliked James is what makes me like it so much.

But just because we are saved through faith, not works, does not mean we should just be turn our back on everything that God wants us to do. We can’t simply say ‘Well I’m saved through faith’ and therefore I do not even need to think about doing anything to please him. As this paraphrase makes clear, our professions of faith should not just be meaningless words. Our faith needs to be acted out in our lives.

The book of James and this paraphrase reminds us that being a Christian is not just a matter of going to church every week and looking spiritual and thinking we are saved because we have faith. We also need to be doing God wants. Not to earn our salvation. But because we love Him.


Erasmus’ paraphrase of the Book of James

But what is faith without love? Love moreover is a living thing; it does not go on holiday; it is not idle; it expresses itself in kind acts wherever it is present. If these acts are lacking, my brothers, I ask you, will the empty word ‘faith’ save a person? Faith which does not work through love is unproductive; no, it is faith in name only. An example here will make clear what I mean. If someone says blandly to a brother or a sister who lacks clothing or daily food, ‘Depart in peace, keep warm, and remember to eat well,’ and after saying this, gives him or her none of the things the body needs, will his fine talk be of any use to the ones in need? They will be no less cold and hungry for all his fine talk, which is of no help to their need. He gives him only verbal support, but does nothing in actual fact. A profession of faith will certainly be equally useless if it consists only of words and does nothing except remain inactive as though dead. It should no more be called faith than a human corpse merits the name of human being. Love is to faith what the soul is to the body. Take away love and the word faith is like something dead and inert. It will do you no more good before God to confess in words an idle faith than fine speech benefits a neighbour in need when he must be helped with action. People think they are being mocked when you say to them, ‘Keep warm and well fed,’ and give them neither food nor clothing. Just so the person who offers no tangible proofs of his faith but repeats every day, ‘I believe in God, I believe in God,’ seems to be mocking God. A person who gives lip service to love possesses a fruitless charity. In the same way a person whose belief is only a matter of words possesses a faith that serves no purpose.

(Image details: Erasmus by Hans Holbein the Younger. Courtesty of Wikimedia Commons. Image is in the public domain.)

Keep the Faith

On 1 July 2009, The Australian published an article by Giles Auty, called ‘The Left is Killing Religion’. The original article can be found HERE. In this article, Auty discussed a talk he gave for the annual St Edmund Campion lecture, which was titled ‘Are we truly evolving? Reflections of the life of an Elizabethan saint’.

He starts off by saying that in Elizabeth England, Catholic priests struggled to keep the faith alive. And then makes this comparison:

“Now, instead of finding itself persecuted by Elizabethan spies, informers and hangmen, Catholicism finds itself under severe assault from the self-righteous, politically correct social engineers of Britain's political Left.”

Although he says this has not happened yet in Australia, he worries that it may not be far away. He also makes the point that Christianity is being ‘treated with increasing contempt’.

It is an interesting comparison. We like to think of ourselves as progressing. Well, some of us do. I personally have a problem with the word ‘progress’, but I’ll leave that for another day. We are getting better and better all the time – supposedly. We are getting smarter and learning more and throwing away the superstitions of the past.

But this has all been done before. Some people may find it hard to see the similarities between Elizabethan England and today’s postmodern world. I mean, Elizabethan England was completely different, wasn’t it? They were still holding onto old religious superstitions. Today’s world wants to get rid of them.

But see, the Protestants in Elizabethan England also thought they were getting rid of old superstitions. They might still have believed in God. But they thought they were doing something new, something that go rid of the useless traditional religion, something that was more progressive. And Catholicism, so they thought, was just a religion that had passed its used by date.

And now we have the postmodernists who are trying to make a secular society. They say this is in the name of progress. They’re not progressive. They’re in fact, regressive. They’ve gone back to a time when people tried to remove all traces of a religion they disagreed with. It failed then. And it will fail again. Because people of faith aren’t that progressive either. They’ll go back to doing what they have done many times before.

Because just as the world continues to bring forth people who want to suppress religion (in either one or all forms), so too does the world continue to bring forth people who are willing to fight and even to die for it. People are not just going to sit back and let faith quietly slip away from the world. Even if all traces of religion were removed from public life, people will still be there, behind the scenes, hiding if they must, risking their life if they must, fighting to keep the faith alive.