Magic Statistics

Former Soviet Socialist republic Belarus confirms its title as Europe’s most oppressively anti-religious nation.  Viktor Orekhov, a Baptist pastor in south-western Belarus, has been fined the equivalent of two weeks’ wages for organising a summer vacation for church families.

Baptists in the south-western Brest Region were denied permission to rent leisure facilities they had used in earlier years. After they went ahead in June with a camp on private land, police invaded the camp to question the children and threatened to close it by force. Orekhov was fined on 24 August for the creation or leadership of a religious organisation without state registration. "We are to blame, it seems, for being believers," Orekhov pointed out. "This is why I was prosecuted and fined."

Religious affairs official Vasili Marchenko indignantly defends the state’s actions.

"What can you do with such people? They were given a chance to put everything right, but they violated everything it is possible to violate." Explaining that "a whole procedure" exists for holding a children's holiday camp, the religious affairs official referred to requirements for its location and the provision of "clean air, sun, nature – everything necessary for a normal, OK holiday." Strict fire regulations and hygiene standards also apply, he added, "so that none of the kiddies gets food poisoning." It is the state's responsibility, he insisted, "to ensure the provision of such a holiday."

When reminded that the Baptists organised a family holiday, not a children’s camp, Marchenko calls them liars.

Marchenko accused them of being "cunning and deceiving". "They said it was just a family holiday, but we know it wasn't. The children there were part of an educational camp."

Mind-reading is apparently an essential skill for Belarusian religious affairs apparatchiks.

Previous related posts:

• Belarus off the hook for human rights violations
• Human rights situation worsening in Belarus: UN
• Belarusian Pentecostal church raided on Pentecost

Archbishop of York John Sentamu (at right) has fired off a stinging attack against Britain’s do-nothing policy on Zimbabwe.  The “racist” dictator Robert Mugabe has brought the once-prosperous country to the brink of destruction.  Zimbabwe is no longer “an African problem needing an African solution - it is a humanitarian disaster.”

The statistics alone are devastating: the average life expectancy for women in Zimbabwe is 34 years; for men, it is 37. Inflation rages at 8,000 per cent; the shelves are empty of bread and maize; in the hospitals and clinics, children die for lack of vitamins, food and medicine, while the ravages of Aids are exacerbated by government indifference.

In the cramped townships now home to those supporters of the opposition whose homes Mugabe destroyed in a frenzy of destruction called 'Clean Out the Filth', there is no electricity or fresh running water and sewage spews out of the dilapidated buildings. The first cholera deaths were reported last week.

The archbishop likens Mugabe to Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, under whose regime Sentamu was imprisoned for three months before fleeing to the United Kingdom.

Like Idi Amin before him in Uganda, Mugabe has rallied a country against its former colonial master only to destroy it through a dictatorial fervour. Enemies are tortured, the press is censored, the people are starving and meanwhile the world waits for South Africa to intervene. That time is now over.

Abp Sentamu calls on PM Gordon Brown to spearhead a co-ordinated international campaign targeted against Mugabe and his supporters.  Sanctions similar to those that helped end apartheid in South Africa should be brought to bear against the oppressors of the Zimbabwean people.

Last night the British Foreign Office said that the government is still relying on Zimbabwe’s neighbours to lead action against Mugabe.  In other words, Britain plans to continue a failed policy, apparently because it fears Mugabe’s pompous and self-serving allegations of racist colonialism.  The Foreign Office should listen to the African-born archbishop.

Previous related posts:

• Bishop Kunonga: Church must support Mugabe policies
• Displaced Zimbabweans shafted again
• Zimbabwe now officially a socialist kleptocracy
• New church report documents repression in Zimbabwe
• Multiculturalism has betrayed the English

This morning's processional hymn at Christ Church Cathedral, Whitehorse. (Hymn #474 in the Anglican Church of Canada's hymn book, Common Praise.)

Jesus, where'er thy people meet,
there they behold thy mercy seat;
where'er they seek thee thou art found,
and every place is hallowed ground.

For thou, within no walls confined,
dost dwell with those of humble mind;
such ever bring thee where they come,
and, going, take thee to their home.

Great Shepherd of thy chosen few,
thy former mercies here renew;
here, to our waiting hearts, proclaim
the sweetness of thy saving Name.

Here may we prove the power of prayer
to strengthen faith and sweeten care;
to teach our faint desires to rise,
and bring all heaven before our eyes.

Lord, we are few, but thou art near;
nor short thine arm, nor deaf thine ear;
O rend the heavens, come quickly down,
and make a thousand hearts thine own!

Words: William Cowper, 1769.
Music: Wareham, William Knapp, 1738.

English poet and hymn writer William Cowper (pronounced “Kooper”) suffered most of his life from serious physical and emotional infirmities.  At age 32, he attempted suicide several times and was committed to an insane asylum.

After eighteen months of institutionalisation, he read in Romans 3:25 about Jesus Christ, “whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God”.  He soon experienced forgiveness of his sins through a personal relationship with Christ.

In 1767, he moved to Olney, Buckinghamshire, where John Newton, former slave trader and author of “Amazing Grace”, was curate of the Anglican parish church.  He and Newton collaborated in writing Olney Hymns (1799), an important and influential collection of evangelical hymns.

Among Cowper’s best-known hymns are:

• “O for a Closer Walk with God”
• “God Moves in a Mysterious Way”
• “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood”

William Cowper died in East Dereham, Norfolk, in 1800; the funeral service was conducted by his long-time friend and hymn-writing partner John Newton.

The collect for today, the 15th Sunday after Trinity, from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer:

Keep, we beseech thee, O Lord, thy Church with thy perpetual mercy; and, because, the frailty of man without thee cannot but fall, keep us ever by thy help from all things hurtful, and lead us to all things profitable to our salvation; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Galatians 6:11-18
The Gospel: St Matthew 6:24-34