the Just Gospel conference

At the beginning of last month, before Coronavirus lockdowns, a sizable and impressive conference took place at Garrett Kell’s Del Rey Baptist, in the Washington, D.C. area.

It was not bad that those Americans dared to look at the issues of politics and the church and touched on issues from poverty to immigration as well. In what will be a volatile election year with many evangelicals involved in Christian nationalism the Just Gospel looked like a healthy and solid event.

The Del Rey Baptist church is a daughter church of Capital Hill Baptist.

The Just Gospel described itself as following:

No one saw the 2016 presidential election coming. No one predicted the effect the election would have on the country — and the Church.

To some extent, our tribalism has been exposed and perhaps deepened. Unity has become more fragile.

In all likelihood, the Church will face the same stark choices and the same potential for misunderstanding, disunity and tribal politics. This time, however, we have an opportunity to approach politics and the election differently… like Christians… like the pilgrims and aliens we are in the world.

The goal of Just Gospel 2020 is NOT to engage in partisan debate or endorse any party’s platform. Nor is our goal to bind the consciences of attendees to a particular policy prescription the Bible does not require. We will not recommend or even comment on any candidate.

The Just Gospel 2020 conference goal is to help Christians think biblically and deeply about being Christians and taking our Christian identity and perspective into our political lives.

The organisers of the conference in any case had good intentions/

We hope to aid each other in our discipleship. We are “strangers and exiles on the earth” who “desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one” (Heb. 11:13, 16).
We hope to model how Christians who differ in secondary and political matters can nevertheless do so charitably and in a way that preserves both unity and freedom of conscience. We hope to make a difference — for the Church and the country.

We need and want healing conversations that serve the Church We need pilgrim politics that bear witness to Christ and Kingdom to which we are headed. Join us!
 

The Neo-Calvinist movement addresses the situation of racism or even hate groups. Traditional evangelicals and Trinitarian Baptists have failed substantially on this issue and have ignored, downplayed or just haven’t really spoken to this topic. Garrett Kell in his ministry has been consistent on pushing back against those in the Southern Baptist Convention who embrace Christian nationalism and marry faith and politics. When the Southern Baptists had their regular meeting in Dallas, Texas in 2018 it was Garrett Kell who tried to replace Vice President Mike Pence speaking to the Convention with a time of prayer.

The conference was well balanced and covered a large number of issues form immigration, to poverty,  to politics and the church. What surprised me is that there were more outsiders than the traditional 9 Marks church circuit speakers. That made this conference well needed and necessary.

Negative views of immigrants, Muslims and Jews

Both non-practicing and churchgoing Christians are more likely than the unaffiliated to hold negative views of immigrants, Muslims and Jews

The Pew Center survey, which was conducted following a surge of immigration to Europe from Muslim-majority countries, asked many questions about national identity, religious pluralism and immigration.

Most Western Europeans say they are willing to accept Muslims and Jews in their neighbourhoods and in their families, and most reject negative statements about these groups. And, on balance, more respondents say immigrants are honest and hardworking than say the opposite.

But a clear pattern emerges: Both church-attending and non-practicing Christians are more likely than religiously unaffiliated adults in Western Europe to voice anti-immigrant and anti-minority views.

For example, in the UK, 45% of church-attending Christians say Islam is fundamentally incompatible with British values and culture, as do roughly the same share of non-practicing Christians (47%). But among religiously unaffiliated adults, fewer (30%) say Islam is fundamentally incompatible with their country’s values. There is a similar pattern across the region on whether there should be restrictions on Muslim women’s dress, with Christians more likely than “nones” to say Muslim women should not be allowed to wear any religious clothing.

After display of unity back to disunity

European countries according to the EU (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Back to reality After a display of unity in Rome, it was back to disunity in Brussels as EU countries split - again - over how to deal with refugees in the block. Interior ministers discussed how to boost “returns” (deportation, to you or I) and had the now traditional row about relocating refugees across the EU.  “We had an honest and frank discussion,” said Dimitris Avramopoulos, the commissioner responsible for migration.

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Our stance against certain religions and immigrating people

Though crime may have decreased, lots of people do think there is more criminality than a few years ago. We can see that there is a lot of discrepantion in the ciphers and real feeling.

Statistics which have been made recently are based on extensive crime survey research and not police figures. though some people suggested that the national statistics must be masking concentrations of problems on deprived housing estates, where life gets ever more brutal. Yet others suggested conspiracies of data-fiddling or statistical jiggery-pokery.

When people walk on the streets of big cities they see more foreign faces and people who clearly show to be from an other culture. Perhaps this frightens them more than they nod to have fear. The unknown cultures frightens them off.
Many want to blame the migrants for  the crimes taking place in their environment. It does not help when youngsters of foreign origin are related to certain crimes which reach the news.

In a series on immigration Marcus Ampe tries to offer some insight on the attitude people take and the attitude people should take to come to a community where everybody can share the different things with each other.

Ally Fogg of the Guardian writes:

Criminologists have documented extensive evidence of correlations, and some causal relationships, between fear of crime and negative psychological and physiological outcomes. It is commonly cited as a factor in the development of many mental health conditions. Other research invites caution. While people may report generalised anxiety about crime, they often struggle to recall many occasions when they have themselves felt fearful at the time. Of course, this could be explained by individuals adapting their lifestyles to avoid or avert situations they perceive as risky, and one of the most damaging effects of excessive fear may be on social capital – the benefits accrued by communities when neighbours meet in shared spaces, relate to each other and help and support each other.

Sceptics might suggest that the fear of crime has in itself helped to reduce actual levels of crime. If everyone lived behind reinforced shutters, only venturing out to drive a steel box from one locked garage to another, then of course there would be a reduction in crime. This is rather belied by data showing that family violence within the home is declining just as rapidly as stranger violence outside. It would appear that it is not just the opportunities to commit crime that are declining, but the motivation too.

Can anything be done to reduce fear of crime? It won't be easy. Psychology has taught us how cognitive biases skew our perceptions of risk. Neurologists explain that we have evolved physiological and emotional mechanisms to identify and avoid physical danger, which operate far more quickly and effectively than any conscious rationalisations. Newspaper editors and broadcasters have always known what sells their products and rule No 1 in the book is this: if it bleeds, it leads. Charities and campaigners have little incentive to report good news and progress made. Those who would stoke unease about immigration and community cohesion have always found fertile ground in fear of crime. Politicians realise there are very few votes to be won in calm reassurance that things are, in one respect at least, improving. The prevailing mood is always that the world is going to hell in a handcart, and woe betide any political candidate who suggests otherwise.

All in all, just about the only people who have nothing to gain from disproportionate anxiety are those who experience it. Acknowledging the truth may be difficult for some but the alternative is to live with needless stress and ill health, to wilfully accept a narrative that corrodes communities, degrades our society, and propagates racism, class prejudice and fear.

 

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Please do find the articles:

1. Migrants to the West #1
2. Migrants to the West #2
3. Migrants to the West #3
4. Migrants to the West #4
5. Migrants to the West #5
6. Migrants to the West #6
7. Migrants to the West #7
8. Migrants to the West #8
9. Migrants to the West #9 
10. Migrants to the West #10
11. Immigration consternation

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We should all unite no matter of which origin, culture or religion and spread love and peace

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Religion, fundamentalism and murder

The self-confessed mass murderer of 76 people in Norway was an apparently normal youth who showed no signs of what he was planning even in the months right before the massacre, his ex-stepmother Tove Oevermo told The Associated Press.

Oevermo and Breivik's father divorced 10 years later, around the time Breivik claims, in his 1,500-page manifesto, that he became estranged from his father. Oevermo, 66, recalled the split, but declined to comment on what precipitated it. She did say, however, that she got the feeling Breivik wanted to have a relationship with his father, though he never spoke of their relationship.

Breivik would often speak of a book he was writing, Oevermo said. He was proud of the book, but was evasive about its contents.

Breivik spoke about politics "like every normal person does, not more than that. He never touch Islam and this hatred for it he must have had for it," Oevermo said.
As for the attack itself, Oevermo said she was horrified to learn the "quite informed and well spoken" man she had known.
"People say, 'I'm shocked.' They don't know what shock is all about, physically and psychologically. It was so unreal. I couldn't believe it. I refused to believe it," she said. "If I'd had some kind of suspicion — some kind of idea that something was not right with him, it would have been easier, I think."

Not only in Italy were there is still a strong fascist group we could find some reactions to think of.

A politician in a party in Italy's governing coalition called some of Norway massacre suspect Anders Behring Breivik's ideas "great" while the leader of a British far-right group to which Breivik claims links called the attacks a sign of "growing anger" in Europe against Muslim immigrants.

Mario Borghezio, a European parliamentarian who belongs to Italy's right-wing Northern League party, told a mainstream Italian radio station that he sympathized with some of Breivik's ideas.
"Some of the ideas he expressed are good, barring the violence, some of them are great," he told Il Sole-24 Ore radio station.
The Northern League, the junior partner in Premier Silvio Berlusconi's government, has caused a stir with its increasingly virulent anti-immigrant, anti-Islamic rhetoric.
Meanwhile, Stephen Lennon, leader of the English Defense League, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that he does not condone Breivik's rampage but "the fact that so many people are scared - people have to listen to that."
"People should look at what happened in Oslo and understand that there is growing anger in Europe," said Lennon, 28. "You suppress people's rights you suppress people's voices and people will just continue to go underground - but that doesn't make the problem go away."

Also Patrick Buchanan gives us something to look out for, as he wrote:
"Breivik is evil - a cold-blooded, calculating killer - though a deluded man of some intelligence, who in his 1,500-page manifesto reveals a knowledge of the history, culture and politics of Europe. ...
But, awful as this atrocity was, native-born and homegrown terrorism is not the macro-threat to the continent.
That threat comes from a burgeoning Muslim presence in a Europe that has never known mass immigration, its failure to assimilate, its growing alienation, and its sometime sympathy for Islamic militants and terrorists.
With her native-born populations aging, shrinking and dying, Europe's nations have not discovered how to maintain their prosperity without immigrants. Yet the immigrants who have come - from the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia - have been slow to learn the language and have failed to attain the educational and occupational levels of Europeans. And the welfare states of Europe are breaking under the burden. "

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Mr.Buchanan's writing is the biased idea of the predisposed general people opposing a growing cultural amalgam and a danger and prevention to cultural diversity. It are those ideas which are also a threat for the evolution of a inter-cultural global society
He is clearly creating a soil for anger against something which can only be attributed to a few fundamentalist groups which sickens all the rest.


Others should look out and also be careful for the extreme right wing ideas.

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Read more:

Christian fundamentalism as dangerous as Muslim fundamentalism

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Breivik geen enkeling

Please do also to Read:

Pat Buchanan: Norwegian Right-Wing Terrorist ‘Breivik May Be Right’

and
Related articles

• Reacting to the Norway Attacks: Why a Western Terrorist Is No Different than a Muslim One (globalspin.blogs.time.com)
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• Breivik “an ordinary Norwegian,” ex-stepmom says (cbsnews.com)
• Norway Muslims share nation’s grief and hope for unity – Reuters (news.google.com)
• Italy lawmaker: Some of Breivik’s ideas “great” (cbsnews.com)
• Pat Buchanan “Breivik May be Right” [Dean's Corner] (scienceblogs.com)
• Pat Buchanan: Norway Terrorist Anders Breivik “May Be Right” (alan.com)

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2013 update:

Related articles

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