A Canadian woman claims to have been denied a job with a
Norwegian wilderness tourism company because she was a Christian. The emailed
reply to her job application included the following phrases: “we are not a Christian organization, and most of us
actually see Christianity as having destroyed our culture, tradition and way of
life”; “unlike [the Christian university you attended], we embrace diversity
and the right of people to sleep with or marry whoever they want;” and it
described God as “the very reason for the most horrendous abuses and human
rights violations in the history of the human race”. The company claim that she
was rejected solely because of her qualifications and experience, but a member
of the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association said, “You have obligations
as an employer to act in a non-discriminatory manner. We don’t usually see
discrimination cases that are quite this stark.
”
In Malaysia, the leader of a
Muslim supremacist group said that “burning the Bible was merely a defence of
Islam.” The Malay government has decided not to raise criminal charges against
him for his words after deciding that his statement only applied to a few
specific bibles with the word ‘Allah’ in them. Christian groups have protested
strongly and called for the resignation of the Government’s justice minister.
A prominent scientist has spoken out against teaching evolution as an
understood fact, because he and other scientists admit they don’t understand it.
“Micro-evolution, I understand,” he said, “we do it all the time in my chemistry
lab. But macro-evolution – when you have speciation changes, when you have
organs changing, when you have to have concerted
lines of evolution, all happening in the same place and time – not just one
line – concerted lines, all at the same place, all in the same environment …
this is very hard to fathom.”
The argument over conscience-based
exemptions from Obamacare, specifically its requirement for employers to pay
for employees’ contraception and abortion treatment, continues. The latest instalment
is that seven churches in California, which have been told to provide abortion
coverage by the state of California, have appealed to the federal government.
Also in the USA, marriage
registrars have been given legal advice that they are not required to carry out
gay marriages if they object to doing so, as long as they can appoint a
suitable deputy to do it. This contrasts with the situation in England and
Wales.
Susan Boyle, the singer who shot
to fame through the TV show Britain’s Got Talent, spoke about her faith
in an interview with a Christian blogger. “My faith is incredibly important to me on every
level,” she said. “It gets me through those moments of self-doubt and also
allows me to understand that this gift of my career, later in life, is from a
higher power.”
In sport, football’s European
Championship qualifiers have produced some surprise results. France have
qualified as tournament hosts, but none of the other Western European
powerhouses (Germany, Holland, Spain, Portugal and Italy) top their qualifying
groups; and former champions Greece lie second from bottom of their group, just
one point ahead of the Faroe Islands.
The beneficiaries include all the British Isles teams; England, Wales
and Northern Ireland top their groups, and Eire and Scotland lie second and
third in (the same) group.
And finally, a British man who
lost his parrot in Southern California was reunited with it four years later –
only to find that it no longer speaks English, but only Spanish. The vet who
returned the parrot to him has been searching for her own lost African grey
parrot for nine months, and so far has facilitated five reunions of missing (microchipped)
parrots with other owners.
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