The Swedish church (Lutheran, formerly the state church) is advising its clergy not to baptize converts to Christianity among the asylum-seekers who reside in Sweden. The rationale is that being baptized could put an asylum-seeker in danger, especially if he subsequently returned to his home country, and would not help him in any case. This is the first time I’ve ever heard of an established church trying not to spread the faith and deliberately avoiding baptism.Meanwhile, while everyone’s attention has been focused on the deadly Koran-burning protests in Afghanistan, demonstrators in Bangladesh have been violently protesting a new government policy that would give women equal inheritance rights. Besides burning cars and beating people up, the protesters have called a general strike.
In other news, workers at the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan were forced to empty more than 11,000 tons of radioactive water into the sea in order to make room in storage structures for much more highly radioactive water that must be drained from the reactors.
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Thanks to AC, C. Cantoni, Caroline Glick, CSP, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, KGS, Steen, TV, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.
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4 comments:
In the early Christian church, baptisms were often done in secret.
Why are the Lutherans so terrified of Islam?
If Christ is true God and true Man, they really have nothing to fear.
Christianity, essentially, is not about how a person fares in the world, it is about how he fares in the next.
Baptize them any way. It's only water.
It leaves no stain at all.
If the people asking to be Baptized are asking for the wrong reasons (asylum or assimilation), then, No, don't Baptize them. Otherwise it sounds pretty silly not to Baptize if they truly embrace Christianity.
This doesn't appear to be a truly religious motivated response. It appears to be more of a cultural socio-political response to their immigration problems. They may stop doing "official" public baptisms, but I'll bet money to donuts no good Lutheran pastor would refuse to do a real Baptism, even if it had to be done in secret.
Lindsay Graham might be able to redeem himself or at least raise himself from the slime by committing to guard this woman's life and property with his own. The 5th post reminds me of 1st Amendment concepts that seek more speech to bring light to issues, to open the pussy wounds inorder for healing to begin. Graham, I believe, is a reserve military officer, who must know better that the men who are dying in the Islamic countries of the Middle East do so to safeguard this woman's and the Florida preacher's constitutionally protected right to continue to do speak in such forceful and poignant way. The Supreme Court of the US recently protected a Church that harangued a family near a church at the funeral of their Marine son, in order to make a political statement.
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