Lutheran bishops worldwide condemn criminal prosecution
of Finnish MP Päivi Räsänen
By Anugrah Kumar,
Christian Post Contributor|
Friday, July 30, 2021
Lutheran bishops from around the world have issued a statement condemning the criminal prosecution of Päivi Räsänen, a Christian politician who is facing six years in prison for sharing her biblical beliefs on sexuality and marriage, and Finnish Bishop-elect Juhana Pohjola, who distributed a pamphlet written by Räsänen.
“The actions of the Finnish State in prosecuting Christians for holding to the clear teaching of the very words of Jesus regarding marriage and sex (Matthew 19:4-6) are egregious,” says the statement issued by the International Lutheran Council and joined by the bishops and presidents of dozens of Lutheran church bodies worldwide.
Räsänen, a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, could face up to six years in prison after being charged with three counts of ethnic agitation related to statements she made expressing her beliefs about human sexuality and marriage.
Ethnic agitation??? Seriously?
A longstanding member of the Finnish Parliament, Räsänen publicly voiced her opinion on marriage in a 2004 booklet on sexual ethics, describing marriage as between one man and one woman. She also expressed her views on a 2019 radio show and tweeted church leadership on the matter.
Pohjola, the bishop-elect of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland, has also been charged with one count of ethnic agitation for publishing Räsänen’s booklet.
“… The accused clearly affirm the divinely given dignity, value, and human rights of all, including all who identify with the LGBTQ community,” says the letter, titled “A Protest and Call for Free Religious Speech in Finland.”
“We Lutherans make this strong confession along with Drs. Pohjola and Räsänen,” it continues. “The vast majority of Christians in all nations, including Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, share these convictions. Would the Finnish Prosecutor General condemn us all? Moreover, shall the Finnish State risk governmental sanctions from other states based on the abuse of foundational human rights?”
Apparently, Finland's foundational human rights differ from the EU's version of foundational human rights, which were recently invented.
Prosecutors determined that Räsänen’s previous statements disparage and discriminate against LGBT individuals and foment intolerance and defamation. The mother of five maintains that her expressions are “legal and should not be censored.”
“I cannot accept that voicing my religious beliefs could mean imprisonment,” said Räsänen in a statement previously issued by ADF International, which is representing her. “I do not consider myself guilty of threatening, slandering or insulting anyone. My statements were all based on the Bible’s teachings on marriage and sexuality.”
She added, “I will not back down from my views. I will not be intimidated into hiding my faith. The more Christians keep silent on controversial themes, the narrower the space for freedom of speech gets.”
In May, law professors and scholars called on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom to pressure the State Department to sanction Finland’s prosecutor general for prosecuting Räsänen and Pohjola.
In an open letter published by Real Clear Politics, professors from Ivy League institutions like Harvard University, Yale University and Princeton University argued that the prosecution of the politician for her remarks could “compel Finland’s clergy and lay religious believers to choose between prison and abandoning teachings of their various faiths.”
Räsänen is no stranger to controversy as she has become known as a prominent Finnish defender of traditional Christian views on marriage, euthanasia and abortion.
As Evangelical Focus noted earlier, Räsänen’s views are often more conservative than those in the ECLF leadership.
That's not hard to believe. I really don't think very highly of European churches, even evangelical churches.
Ukrainian far-right clash with pro-LGBT protesters at topless ‘rave’
held in support of new anti-discrimination law
30 Jul, 2021 16:46
Police in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, were forced to intervene with tear gas and truncheons after right-wing political activists attacked the participants at an LGBT+ pride march outside the walls of the president's office.
At least one officer was injured during the scuffle, which took place on Friday and saw ultranationalists doused with incapacitating spray. No information on arrests has been made public.
The rally, which took the form of a rave and saw participants strip off to dance to electronic music, had been called in support of Ukraine's LGBT+ community as the country's parliament considers a new law on discrimination and violent attacks against protected groups.
In May, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmyhal brought forward a bill to the Verkhovna Rada that would outlaw discrimination based on skin color, language, sexual orientation or gender identity. The move was adopted as one of the conditions of the Association Agreement that would pave the way to membership in the European Union.
In August last year, neo-Nazi groups attacked an LGBT+ march held as part of 'Pride Month' in the coastal city of Odessa.
The organizers said that local police did not react quickly enough, but asked them to “prosecute the perpetrators” and take action against the right-wingers for “hatred and inciting violence.” Sixteen people were arrested and charged with petty hooliganism and disobeying police orders.
Ousted Episcopal school teacher slams woke curriculum:
'There is no math without objectivity'
This is allegedly a Christian School
By Ryan Foley,
Christian Post Reporter|
Friday, July 30, 2021
Grace Church School in Manhattan, New York. | Google Maps
A teacher who was ousted after publicly airing his concerns about "antiracism" training at an elite New York City private school warns that an ideology taking aim at the concept of “objectivity” is harming American students.
Paul Rossi, a former math teacher at the Grace Church School in Manhattan, appeared on Fox News Thursday to explain that the curriculum embraced by the $57,000-per-year school associated with the Association of Episcopal Schools is not an isolated incident.
Rossi shared his concerns in an April 13 op-ed titled “I Refuse to Stand By While My Students Are Indoctrinated.”
“I got into trouble because at a racially segregated Zoom meeting, I questioned the facilitator’s assertion that values like objectivity and … individualism were characteristics of white supremacy. I wanted to model for my students, who I knew had doubts that they couldn’t voice, that it’s okay to question these beliefs and ideas that were being misrepresented as knowledge.”
The former teacher noted that after he raised objections, “students did start to ask questions.”
Rossi said he was publicly reprimanded and had his classes reassigned. After he published the op-ed in April, he was "barred from the building.”
“What’s the effect on our society when the most powerful people send their kids to schools that teach those kids there’s no such thing as objectivity and individualism is racist and you can judge someone by the color of his skin?” host Tucker Carlson asked Rossi.
Rossi said, “students are being sort of seduced away from their personal identity, their preferences, their character, their interests, goals and dreams into this group identity based around race and gender.”
“My school, like so many others, induces students via shame and sophistry to identify primarily with their race before their individual identities are fully formed," Rossi told Carlson. "Students are pressured to conform their opinions to those broadly associated with their race and gender and to minimize or dismiss individual experiences that don’t match those assumptions.”
“The morally compromised status of ‘oppressor’ is assigned to one group of students based on their immutable characteristics," he added. "In the meantime, dependency, resentment and moral superiority are cultivated in students considered oppressed."
Rossi warned that once that "collectivist mindset” is exposed to children by third or fourth grade, they will “run on top of that kind of operating system" based on "all of the various claims that are made about our history, the one-sided claims.”
While he acknowledged that there is “much truth” to the claims, he alleged, “they present a one-sided view of that and also about how that carries through to the present day.”
“I’m a math teacher. There is no math without objectivity,” he declared. “We have … black and brown students struggling in math across the country. How does it help them succeed to tie objectivity to what is an ultimate evil?”
Rossi announced that he is working on a book illustrating for parents “how these ideas manifest for their children in the classroom and … what is happening on the ground for students.” The book will include interviews with teachers, students and psychological experts, he added.
In his April op-ed, Rossi said that the “Antiracist” training at his school "requires teachers like myself to treat students differently on the basis of race."
"Furthermore, in order to maintain a united front for our students, teachers at Grace are directed to confine our doubts about this pedagogical framework to conversations with an in-house 'Office of Community Engagement' for whom every significant objection leads to a foregone conclusion," he said. "Any doubting students are likewise 'challenged' to reframe their views to conform to this orthodoxy."
In his op-ed, Rossi admitted that he knew that publishing the piece could lead to loss of employment as an educator because too many schools are "captive to this backward ideology."
"But witnessing the harmful impact it has on children, I can’t stay silent," he argued.
"They report that, in their classes and other discussions, they must never challenge any of the premises of our 'antiracist' teachings, which are deeply informed by Critical Race Theory. These concerns are confirmed for me when I attend grade-level and all-school meetings about race or gender issues. There, I witness student after student sticking to a narrow script of acceptable responses. Teachers praise insights when they articulate the existing framework or expand it to apply to novel domains. Meantime, it is common for teachers to exhort students who remain silent that 'we really need to hear from you.'”
Encyclopedia Brittanica defines critical race theory as an “intellectual movement and loosely organized framework of legal analysis based on the premise that race is not a natural, biologically grounded feature of physically distinct subgroups of human beings but a socially constructed (culturally invented) category that is used to express and exploit people of colour.”
Those who subscribe to critical race theory believe that “the law and legal institutions in the United States are inherently racist insofar as they function to create and maintain social, economic, and political inequalities between whites and nonwhites, especially African Americans.” Several states have worked to ban the teaching of critical race theory in public schools in recent weeks.
Grace Church School has come under fire for its “Inclusive Language Guide,” which advised students and staff members to refrain from using the terms “Mom and Dad,” “traditional family,” “Happy Holidays” and “boys and girls.” The guide suggested the use of phrases such as “grown-ups, folks or family,” “Have a great break” and “people, folks, friends, readers, (and) mathematicians” as more inclusive alternatives.
The guide characterized the term “traditional family” as “outdated” because “each family is unique.” It also asserted that “human sexuality exists across a spectrum,” “sexual orientation is a choice rather than an identity,” and that when “we see the skin tones of people,” “assumptions are made about how someone identifies racially.” Therefore, people cannot be “colorblind as it pertains to race.”
‘Flag worth defending’: Swedish Army places front-page newspaper ad
ahead of Stockholm Pride, triggering debate online
1 Aug, 2021 12:14
The Swedish Armed Forces have paid for a pro-LGBTQ ad in one of the country’s leading newspapers, featuring soldiers standing beneath a rainbow flag. The campaign has provoked some fiery discussions online.
The front-page ad in the Svenska Dagbladet daily features a group of soldiers in full combat gear, one holding a large rainbow flag.
The text at the top of the image reads, “A flag worth defending,” and, in smaller print below, it says, “We defend human rights, equality for all, and our right to live as we choose.”
The ad was published ahead of the week-long Stockholm Pride festival, which kicks off this Monday.
Its liberal portrayal of the country’s armed forces has led to heated debate online. Some argued that the military should not be involved in activism, especially when it is paid for with taxpayers’ money.
“Shouldn’t the army defend Sweden’s borders, important sites and all of Swedish life? Rights are the responsibility of politicians, aren’t they?” one person asked on Twitter.
“Can we please have a single institution that is not politicized and riddled with activism? I don’t think it’s a particularly high requirement,” another wrote.
Others did not consider the ad controversial. “Many here seem to think that treating homosexuals as equals and defending the country are the opposite things. Why is that?” one user said.
Another commenter dismissed the critics as homophobes. “Do you realize that younger generations see you as dinosaurs?” he wrote. “Nobody listens to you anymore.”
Except for God!
The Swedish Army regularly places pro-LGBTQ ads during Pride events. In 2017, it posted an image of rainbow-colored shoelaces on army boots.
In 2018, it ran a recruitment campaign under the slogan “We don’t always march straight,” and, a year later, under the tag line “Come as you are.” The 2018 ad featured posters of soldiers applying rainbow-hued camouflage to their faces.
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