The verdict on the appeal by Asher’s Bakery in Northern Ireland
has finally been delivered. The case concerned the bakers’ refusal to bake a
cake that said ‘Support Gay Marriage’. The bakers were convicted at first trial
following some tortuous reasoning about ‘indirect discrimination’ from the
judge which avoided addressing the key issues of whether the beakers were
objecting to the customer being gay (equality law) or to the message on the
cake (freedom of speech). The appeal failed on the grounds that, although the
bakers did not discriminate against the customer because he was gay, a refusal
to bake a cake with such a slogan was ‘direct discrimination’ – despite an
earlier intervention from the Attorney General of Northern Ireland who was
worried that a guilty verdict in the case might be seen as ‘coerced speech’. There
have already been calls to change the law as it could easily lead (as argued by
the prosecuting lawyer in the first trial) to Muslim T-shirt printers being
guilty of discrimination for refusing to print cartoons of the prophet Mohammed
(unless their terms of business refused to print any cartoons), or to a gay
baker being forced to bake a cake saying ‘Gay Sex is Sin’.
There have been reports from Aleppo that local Christian workers/missionaries
have been crucified by ISIL. Apparently the missionaries were given opportunities
to recant their faith and convert to Islam but refused to do so.
The first arrest of a Christian leader in Russia under the
new anti-evangelism law has taken place. Controversially the man arrested,
Sergei Zhuravlyov, was a member of the Ukrainian Reformed Orthodox Church who
was charged with ‘fomenting negative attitudes towards the Russian Orthodox Church’
and of having ties to a Ukrainian political party which is banned in Russia.
Zhuravlyov has been released on bail.
David Jenkins, the former Bishop of Durham has died at the
age of 94. Jenkins became infamous for describing the resurrection of Jesus as
a ‘conjuring trick with bones’; his views placed him at odds with the evangelical
wing of the Church of England, even though his ideas were less radical than
many of his former academic colleagues. When he was consecrated in York Minster
and the building was struck by lightning three days later, rumours of divine
retribution swept the media and the country. He was also outspoken on topics of social
injustice and against economics that relied on markets as the balancing/correcting
factor.
A pastor of a megachurch in Nashville,
Tennessee has resigned due to burnout. Pete Wilson and his wife planted Cross
Point church in 2003 and it has grown to hold over 7000 people. Wilson announced
to the congregation, “We’ve said that this is
a church where it’s okay to not be okay, and I’m not okay. I’m tired. And I’m broken
and I just need some rest.”
The
trial of Asia Bibi, the Pakistani Christian woman who is on death row for
alleged blasphemy after she drank from a bucket of water used by Muslim women
and allegedly insulted the prophet Mohammed, has been delayed yet again. The
case has inflamed tensions so much that various lawyers acting for Bibi and
judges in the case have received death threats, at least one of which has been
carried out. Bibi, a mother of five, has now been imprisoned without trial for
seven years.
The
Polish Parliament recently considered a bill to ban all abortions in the
country. It passed its first vote but was withdrawn after a protest march took
place to oppose it. Meanwhile there have been calls to remove funding from
Amnesty International for openly promoting or lobbying for abortion in several North
African countries, Nepal, El Salvador and Ireland.
Abortion
services at the UK’s biggest abortion provider, Marie Stopes International,
were suspended for a few months after a surprise inspection by the Care Quality
Commission. The Commission’s report raised concerns about ‘consent’ and about ‘training
and competence in sedation and anaesthesia’. Services have now resumed.
A sardonyx stone that was given to a Knight Templar around
1000 years ago and has been handed down through the family since is believed to
be one of the gems from the breastplate of the High Priest in Jerusalem. These
stones are historically mysterious since then Bible describes them as ‘Urim and
Thummim’, terms which have never had an agreed translation but which the book
of Samuel describe as a form of divine communication; the Talmud claims that
when a question was put to the High priest, the stones would light up to spell
out the answer. What is clear is that the stone has been cut in a hemisphere, a
technology that was believed to be beyond ancient capability; it has no
markings suggesting it was set in a ring or a necklace; and most intriguingly,
it has two inscriptions inside the stone, one of which appears to be the Hebrew
letter B in a form that was used around 3000 years ago, the other of which is either
a wolf or the Hebrew letter K.
And
finally, a 28 year old Russian woman whose boyfriend Roman Mazurenko died after
being struck by a car in Moscow has decided to ‘resurrect’ him using artificial
intelligence. She has combined his past text messages with a neural network
that has learned his patterns of speech, and can reply electronically to
queries. If the program can use Mazurenko’s actual speech, it will; if not, it
falls back on an extensive language database. A friend of Mazurenko’s who
tested the program said, “There are questions I had never asked him. But when I asked
for advice, I realized he was giving someone pretty wise life advice. And that
actually helps you get to learn the person deeper than you used to know them.”
