Lord's
Prayer okay in legislature, Ontario court rules
The Ontario legislature can begin each
day with the Lord's
Prayer if it wants to, and it is not the place of the provincial human rights commission to say
otherwise, the Ontario
Court of Appeal has ruled. "The House must be absolutely free to set
its own guidelines for how its legislative sessions will be carried out,"
Mr. Justice George Finlayson wrote for the court. "The Standing Orders
that detail the operation of parliamentary procedure must be considered
privileged and insulated from outside review." The commission was acting
on a complaint by Henry Freitag, a Holocaust survivor who claimed the
recitation of the Lord's Prayer discriminated against him on the basis of
creed. Freitag has vowed to take his fight elsewhere. "There is the
Supreme Court and there is the United Nations," he told the Canadian
Press, adding he wants the Ontario legislature to follow the practice
adopted in the House of Commons of having a non-denominational or
multi-denominational prayer. Freitag also told The
Globe and Mail that he had received death threats and hate mail
while pursuing this case. The only other Canadian legislatures that recite
the Lord's Prayer are those in Prince
Edward Island, New Brunswick
and Nova Scotia -- which, as a
result of the court case in Ontario, has seen some
controversy of its own on this subject in recent months.
Chinese fugitive converts
Lai Changxing, the Chinese fugitive at the centre of an international
controversy for his alleged role in China's largest smuggling operation,
and his wife Tsang Mingna say they have become Christians through the
ministry of Reverend Moses Cheng of the Protestant Canaan church. And now,
Lai, who is awaiting a refugee hearing later this month, says he wants to
be baptized in his Vancouver jail. Rev. Dick Reeve, chaplain at the
Vancouver pre-trial centre, told The Vancouver Sun that Lai had
attended Bible studies, but said he was not sure how sincere Lai was about
his conversion. "There are people who are desperate who will make all
kinds of confessions for all kinds of reasons," said Reeve. "We don't want
the system abused for that and mock those whose faith is genuine."
Canadian immigration officers want to deport Lai and Tsang and consider
them to have entered the country illegally, but Lai and Tsang fear they
will face the death penalty if they are forced to return to China.
Wrestlers
pound the mat for Jesus
Spiritual warfare is given a whole new twist, courtesy of the Christian Wrestling
Federation, reports Aidan Enns in The Vancouver Sun. "We are
going to wage war against the devil!" is how CWF founder and promoter Rob
Vaughn greets the 400 parents and children who show up for a wrestling
event in Oregon. Dan and Tami Howell, who homeschool their children, say
the CWF is a good substitute for the World
Wrestling Federation, which they find "too wild" -- "This gives kids a
lot better role models," says Dan. Other parents, such as Bill Boyden,
agree: "I'm hoping my kids will see something that brings glory to God."
For his part, Enns says he has mixed feelings about the event: "The
message I got was messy -- an uncritical mix of religion, pop culture,
consumerism, mortal angst and a God-sanctioned, community-blessed
propensity for revenge. I think the American dream is in there somewhere
too, but all I could see was the New York Nightmare."
Will
HarperCollins censor Narnia, or merely downplay its Christian
elements?
First, HarperCollins announced they were going to commission new books in the Narnia
series. Now, they seem to be downplaying the Christian elements in the
books that already exist, as they prepare to give C.S. Lewis's classic
children's stories a new marketing push. "Obviously this is the biggie as
far as the estate and our publishing interests are concerned," wrote a
HarperSanFrancisco executive, in a memo leaked to The New York
Times. "We'll need to be able to give emphatic assurances that no
attempt will be made to correlate the stories to Christian
imagery/theology." The news has upset many Christian fans of the series.
John G. West,
co-editor of The
C.S. Lewis Readers Encyclopedia
and an associate professor of
political science at Seattle Pacific University, is disturbed by the
publisher's plans to merchandize Lewis's books: "They're turning Narnia
into a British version of Mickey Mouse. What they've figured out is that
Harry Potter is a cash
cow. And here's a way they can decompartmentalize the children's novels
from the rest of Lewis. That's what is so troubling. Narnia is a personal
creation, and they're turning it into a corporate creation." This story
was picked up and amplified somewhat by The
National Post, which also ran an opinion
piece and an editorial
on the subject. But the writers of these articles, as well as the author
of a similar piece in The
Vancouver Sun, seem to think HarperCollins is planning to make
changes to Lewis's original stories themselves, which is something the original New York Times article never claims.
