Bel is thinking

Now about this report in the Daily Mail yesterday:

Schools are dropping the Holocaust from history lessons to avoid offending Muslim pupils, a Government backed study has revealed.

It found some teachers are reluctant to cover the atrocity for fear of upsetting students whose beliefs include Holocaust denial.

There is also resistance to tackling the 11th century Crusades - where Christians fought Muslim armies for control of Jerusalem - because lessons often contradict what is taught in local mosques.

I spent yesterday evening thinking about it, and concluded that we should not  be surprised. After all, as the Patrick Mercer episode taught us, where Truth conflicts with political correctness, Truth must bow the knee.

He really is such a coward, isn’t he? Ever since the pensions story broke late Friday night, there has been no sign of him. Instead, we have had his messenger boys spinning and lying on his behalf while he lies low somewhere. Say what you like about Blair, he at least would have appeared on a sofa somewhere, emoting for all it was worth, and affecting righteous indignation at being accused of anything. From Brown, however, nothing.

It is clear from their insistence on crowning this man the next Prime Minister, that New Labour MPs see nothing wrong with what Gordon Brown has done. They probably don’t know what all the fuss is about, anyway, seeing as MPs’ pensions are unaffected by Brown’s wicked decision. I thought New Labour was the party of the poor, the dispossessed, the pensioners. Actually, I never thought any such thing. I have always seen them for what they are, greedy, grasping, envious time servers content to reap where others have sown.

UPDATE. Gordon Brown has finally faced the press. He believes he made the right decision about the pensions, and he would do the same thing again.

I am not surprised. This is the same obstinate, unbending coward under whose control the Treasury has overpaid tax credits of about £2bn a year, and yet no apology or explanation from him to date. If he has been unable to admit to throwing away £2bn of taxpayers’ funds a year in this way, why do we expect he would be honest about what he has done to our pension funds, an error on a far larger scale?

The Sunday Telegraph brings news of some surprising comments by the Dean of St Albans, the Very Rev Jeffrey John. He disputes the doctrine that Jesus Christ died for sin.

They quote him as describing this teaching as ‘repulsive as well as nonsensical’. To him, the point of the crucifixion of Jesus was for him to ’share in the worst of grief and suffering that life can throw at us’.

The doctrine of the crucifixion as atonement for sin is the central message of Christianity. If the Sunday Telegraph report is true, these comments challenge the basis of Christianity, and amount to heresy.

As to the treatment of heretics, the Bible is clear: ‘A man that is an heretick after the first and second admonition reject’.

Let the Church warn Jeffrey John about his divisive teaching. And if he persists, let them warn him again. If, after the second warning, he pays no heed, let him be excommunicated. If he wants to preach ‘another doctrine’, let him do so from outside the Church.