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The abuses of organized, established churches are often pointed to, but a terrible story from Wisconsin demonstrates how "religious isolationists" making their own rules can be as disastrous. Parents who prayed as their 11-year-old
daughter died of untreated diabetes have been charged with
second-degree reckless homicide.
Dale and Leilani Neumann - she an aspiring preacher - were urged to get help for their daughter, but considered the illness "a test of faith" and thought Madeleine was under a "spiritual attack" . On Easter Sunday, she died after months of symptoms. The
Neumanns each face up to 25 years in prison if convicted. They are not educationally subnormal. Mr Neumann is a former policeman . But they drew the conclusion - solipsistically - that the poor child's illness was" the devil is trying to stop Leilani from
starting her own ministry". Hard to sympathize.
Joanna writes: Scripture candy and Bible bonbons - were these what King Soloman was talking about when he wrote
"Fraudulent food is sweet to a man, but afterwards his mouth is filled with gravel" - Proverbs 20 v 17? Decide for yourselves with our list of the top ten religious treats available.
These soft peppermint puffs allow you to learn a verse while sucking on a mint.
The seven foods of Deuteronomy, Wheat, Barley, Raisins, Honey, Figs, Pomegranates, Olive Oil, are packed into this Bible Bar providing "nutrition God's way".
Pass on the word with these breath fresheners wrapped in Biblical text
Or chew over some scripture with Biblegum
Continue reading "My sweet Lord: Top ten religious treats" »
 Barbie dolls and other western toys will lead to "destructive and cultural consequences" for Iran, the country's leading prosecutor wrote in a letter to the Iranian vice-president, published in the Mardom Salari newspaper. "The appearance of personalities such as Barbie, Batman, Spiderman and Harry Potter and ... computer games and movies are all a danger " A toy seller Masoumeh Rahimi adds that Barbie in particular is "foreign to
Iran's culture" , wanton, and " more harmful than an American missile". Luckily she sells Islamic equivalents to Barbie & Ken - Sara and Dara. Here they are. 
Sara's too young for a headscarf but one is supplied in case she hits puberty in the toybox overnight (possibly by lying next to Buzz LIghtyear).
Meanwhile, by the way, Morocco has started training women as imams, for the first time: though they won't actually lead prayers , the hope is they will promote a more moderate version of Islam. Which raises the tantalizing possibility that one day we might see Imam Barbie. But whatever creeds future Barbie embraces in our increasingly touchy global religious scene, they are really going to have to do something about those non-bendable knees.
 St Francis of Assisi, the 13th century friar, is seen as patron saint of the poor, as well as lover of animals. His hometown Assisi, however, now steps into the unforgiving, tourist-dollar-grabbing 21st century by banning begging. The right-wing
Mayor Claudio Ricci has stopped people seeking handouts, lying down or
sitting on the ground within 500 metres of town churches, other
places of worship, squares and public buildings, La Repubblica reports.
The Vatican is unimpressed. "Saint
Francis is the saint of the poor..."Begging is not
a crime," said Monsignor Renato Martino, head of a Pontifical council
for justice and peace. "I don't understand why it has to be banned by
adopting a law. Even if some people take advantage, helping those who
are in need is always a good thing to do." More hard-headedly, the head of Assisi's
Franciscan monastery, Vincenzo Coli, says that
St Francis "recommended recourse to begging only when it was not
possible to sustain oneself through work."
Whatever next? a ban on feeding the birds?
The case of Sayeed Pervez Kambaksh (see numerous earlier faith central posts) has not yet reached a resolution. The journalism student, condemned to death for circulating a paper questioning Islamic attitudes to women, remains in prison. Our Foreign Secretary's blog takes no different a line to his original one, and conveys no sense of urgency in the matter. Reporters without borders Asia editor Vincent Brossel sent Joanna this bulletin: "The lawyers are working on the defense and we guess it [the appeal]
will start before the end of May. He is now in a safe cell in Kabul. Its true that several Afghan embassadors told us that he [President Karsai] will never sign the death sentence order." RSF have an interview with his brother,online.
From Faithworld this update; and The British Ambassador to Afghanistan, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles did speak out at the Oxford Literary Festival: "We are lobbying, we have been lobbying
and will lobby. We do so in private and we do so collectively. The least effective way to get the Afghani law to climb down is to us the megaphone " He added "it was decided that Afghanistan should be an Islamic republic and Sharia law should be part of that and we are seeing the consequences of that."
 In case anyone in Protestant Britain is feeling a bit left out as tens of thousands of devotees go to see the exhumed corpse of Padre Pio (see earlier posts), be comforted. His mask was made by a British company
founded in 1885 which does faces for museums and private clients. They did John Paul II, too.  Here he is. We may not be Italian in our taste for sanctified cadavers, but we lead the world in holy waxworks.
 Well, it's happened. The corpse of Padre Pio, exhumed amid protests from relatives and locals in his home town (see earlier post) has been displayed in a glass coffin and launched with a special open-air Mass by a Cardinal. "Padre Pio was dressed in a brown robe and his was covered in a life-like silicone mask" says the report, and already over 700,000 people have registered to view his body at the Capuchin friary in San Giovanni Rotondo. The priest died in 1968, at the age of 81, after living for decades with bleeding wounds on his hands and feet - 'stigmata" - which were never explained. The Vatican once opposed the cult as hysteria, and there have been doubts thrown on the miraculous wounds, as either symptoms of mental illness or downright fraud; but lately he has been canonized. Even many Catholics are uneasy at this particularly Italianate aid to worship. The word creepy comes to mind. The mask - though some of the faithful may think they are looking upon Padre Pio himself - was apparently supplied by a company which works with Madame Tussaud's waxworks.
It had to happen. In another example of a secular state being challenged by strong Islamism, Muslim scholars in Algeria are protesting at a longstanding government ban on women wearing veils in passport photos.
Elsewhere the issue has come up too: In Russia the Supreme Court overturned a 1997 Interior Ministry ruling against headscarves in passport photos, it seems, and in the UK in 2000 we had the case of Fareena Alam's case - she was refused a new passport because she was wearing a hijab on her photograph. She won, and the new guidelines mildly say "Provided that photographs show the full face... photographs should not be rejected where a religious head covering is worn." Wearers of the niqab or burqa must unveil in private to a female officer, which is not against their law or culture.
Two moments from the big debate between Lord Winston and Prof Daniel Dennett at the British Council:
Prof Dennett : " religion ... doesn't just disable, it honours the disability. People are revered for their capacity to live in a dream world, to shield their minds from factual knowledge and make the major decisions of their lives by consulting voices in their heads that they call forth by rituals designed to intoxicate them."
Lord Winston: "Religion is built into human consciousness...Apart from the survival of our prehistoric ancestors, in recent times there are powerful examples of how a notion of the transcendental has spurred humans on in desperate situations. Viktor Frankl, in the midst of the extreme deprivation, dehumanisation and despair of Auschwitz observes how, in his assessment, only those with some spirituality - not necessarily a belief in God - survived the depravity of the camp."
This is Syed Soharwardy, founder of Muslims Against Terrorism. He has set off on a cross-country walk against violence. “Walking will give me an opportunity to shake hands with people — to go to small towns, sit down with them, eat with them,” he said. “You can’t reach out to people in places of worship only.” It's a long way. This is the distance on googlemap. The Muslims against Terrorism website is interesting, despite some rather odd messages posted. And does quote Mohammed "A Muslim is that person from whose hands and tongue others are safe".
Poor old St George. What a lousy feast day. First of all a furious strop is aroused by my mention of Pont's "British Character" on his day - though as England's champion he is one of the four patron saints of the British isles. Then a St Andrews academic, Dr Ian Bradley, says in a new book that George shouldn't be patron of England at all because he is just " a Greek-speaking soldier of the Roman Empire from Anatolia in modern-day Turkey who had no direct connection with the British Isles until his "legend" was brought to England by returning Crusaders". He wants the job to go to St Aidan of Lindisfarne.
But who is this riding to the rescue? Why, Peter Tatchell, polymathic campaigner for and against an immense number of causes. He blogs that "We should celebrate St George as a symbol of English freedom, dissent and multiculturalism....he wasn't white or English. He was a rebel from the Middle East . His father was Turkish and his mother Palestinian. He rebelled against the Roman Emperor Diocletian and was executed for opposing the persecution of Christians by the Romans. An early defender of human rights, he is a heroic symbol of protest and the right to freedom of belief and expression."
 Catholic priests may be celibate, but that does not rule out adventure (or trouble). Hopes, alas, are fading for Father Antonio di Carli, who set out attached to 1000 helium party balloons on Sunday, on Sunday to break a 19-hour flight record he set earlier and raise money to build a spiritual rest-stop for truckers in Paranagua, southern Brazil. They've found the balloons, in shark-infested seas; the only hope is that with his survival gear he found a shore to rest on.
What not a lot of people know (but I bet Fr Antonio did) is that the very first balloon was dreamed up by another Brazilian priest, Bartolomeu de Gusmão, and exhibited at the Portuguese Court on August 8, 1709 in Lisbon. He was a Jesuit, a mathematician and linguist, and presented his airship design to King John V of Portugal. The vessel was to be propelled by the agency of magnets. Here it is. In the end poor Fr. Bartolomeu was chased away by the Spanish Inquisition.
If you thought peace had broken out everywhere between Protestant and Catholic bigots, think again. The Neanderthal football-supporting community north of the border keeps it going. The Scottish Sunday Herald has been forced to print a full page apology after a sports writer referred contemptuously to 'bead-rattling' Catholics apropos the Celtic/Rangers rivalry . The paper -which seemed unbothered by contempt for rosaries at the copy-checking stage - has now said such expressions are "clearly unacceptable in a quality newspaper", following an outcry from Celtic supporters. But if you think it's an isolated outbreak of nastiness, read the blog responses on the Celtic site. Like this: "One good example of Glasgow catholic solidarity was your wee pals the McCanns milking their catholic backgrounds for all it was worth at a special event for their 'missing' daughter at Celtic Park."
Don't you just love the inverted commas round 'missing'? Eugh.
 An interesting essay on the BBC site by Shiraz Maher
about the 'death penalty' imposed by some Hadith writings (not the Quran itself) on those who leave the Muslim faith. He himself was "staggered" that it was not actually in the Quran and formerly, he says, would have actually agreed with it. Now, it seems, attitudes are softening. But one example of that softening is a family in Turkey who rather than have their son killed, just disowned him. "They said 'go away, you're not our son.' They told people I died in an accident rather than having the shame of their son leaving Islam." Still medievally harsh, then.
Meanwhile also in Turkey we have reached the one-year mark of the slaughter of three Christians. The impartiality of the judges in the case is called in doubt, and the young men on trial have now shifted the blame to one man. They were all found at the scene last April with butchers' knives, having entered the offices of a Christian publisher pretending they wanted to study Christianity. The assailants - two of them converts from Islam - were tied up, tortured and their throats were slit. “We did this for our country,” said notes in their pockets. “They are attacking our religion.”
 A ginger tabby, possibly looking a bit like this one, has written an "authorized" biography of Pope Benedict. Which is not quite as fey and silly as it sounds (though almost so) because he does like cats, a lot. When he was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the German newspaper Bild wrote, he tended to the cats that frequented the garden of the congregation’s building in the Vatican and bandaged their wounds.
And Popes get keen on cats more often than you'd think. According to “The Papacy: An Encyclopedia,” by Philippe Levillain, Leo XII, in the 1820s, raised his grayish-red cat, Micetto, in the pleat of his cassock. And according to The Times of London, Paul VI, pope from 1963 to 1978, once dressed his cat in cardinal’s robes. I suppose the great thing about cats is that they don't answer back, they don't keep demanding women priests and they're rarely gay.
 This is an Afghan family getting some time out from their country's troubles by watching an Indian soap opera. For the last time. As from today, the country's conservative religious authorities are banning them. It seems to have a lot to do with bare midriffs. Dell Jan is an Afghan widow and a mother of six who relies on a car battery to watch Indian soaps that offer her a peek into a different way of life. "I like Tulsi a lot and my also children like her a lot. When the series started on television, we stopped all of our work, even eating, and kept watching the series. We love it, it’s entertainment for children." For an example, watch here. Opaque to many of us, but the words "cold-blooded murder" occur startlingly in English.
Joanna writes: Ever wished you could e-mail God or join his mailing list? The new and achingly cool Dear God site allows you to petition the deity of your choosing with worries and requests and to read other people's. Replies not guaranteed.
It's Post Secret for people who believe and boasts it's the non-denominational way for people to "share" their "inner-most hopes and fears" with their "version of God".
Bill Tikos, creator of thecoolhunter.co.uk the barometer of cool, set up the site, which launched a week ago and has already had 130,000 page views and now receives 60 prayers a day. Tikos's e-mail name is "Mighty God" but he promises he's not religious in any way, that the site is not a spiritual organisation and has no axe to grind. So what is motivating the endeavour? Tikos says he "woke up one morning and decided to create Dear God" but advertising is available on the site so presumably profit has something to do with it.
But curiously in these financially chilly times "God" has yet to be asked for help with cash flow by anyone e-mailing him.
Fascinating, the way surveys get reported. Yesterday with some glee it was reported that the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, set up by a deeply religious Quaker, had with delicius irony done a survey which concluded that a great 21st century evil is religion - which "not just in its extreme form - is intolerant, irrational and used to justify persecution". So the paper said. So the National Secular Society echoed, with glee. The faith school issue, clearly, has fuelled this view, as has Islamist terrorism. The Bish of Southwark is wheeled out to protest.
But get this...a fuller reading of the research makes it utterly clear that long before they got to religion people were worried about violence, gun crime, binge drinking, knives, drugs, child exploitation, poverty and inequality. Moreover, somewhat bigger than religion was the observation that the media "propagate negative and damaging attitudes" and that the big businesses which fund them "fuel inequality and consumerism". Moreover, earlier Rowntree research points out the usefulness of much religion as "social capital".
What do we make of this? Ask a bright sixteen-year-old. Sam Tarran's blog says "It seems to be that the fundamentalist version of Christianity so often portrayed in the media has now been lumped with Islamic Jihadism as a reason to dismiss all religion".
These next five days mark the celebration of Passover, one of the greatest feasts of the Jewish religion and affirmations of Jewish identity. Israel has called off hostilities in Gaza for the duration, so it is reported. On a rather less serious note the sale of 'normal' - ie leavened - bread in shops in Israel has caused outrage.
"It is a tough blow to the symbols of the Jewish nation," said Eli Yishai, a cabinet minister whose Orthodox Shas party is a key member of the coalition government. To commemorate the Israelites' exodus from Egypt, ritual Jewish law forbids eating leavened products.. 
On an even less serious note, a warning has gone out about the danger of fainting from excessive cleaning for the festival. Everything must be cleaned ritually three times without soap. On an even less serious note than that, Ben and Jerry's has created a Matzah flavoured ice-cream only for Israel and only for the Passover. Can it get less serious? Well, since a feast is a feast, however religious, I direct you with slight misgivings to the Jewlarious joke site (Jewish run, but frankly, if a non-Jew told some of the jokes they would be hauled up before the PC police. But you can tell jokes against yourself, however stereotypically insulting..I suppose...anyway, I chose a less offensive one...)
Returning to seriousness, Chag Kasher
V'Same'ach, all, and L"shalom.
The German police stopped a man on a major highway running along with a three-wheel trailer made out of an old roof luggage box. It turned out he was a Catholic Pole on his way home from a 3000 km pilgrimage to Portugal. The officers inspected it, declared it fully roadworthy, and sent him on his way. "Initial astonishment quickly turned into admiration" said a police spokesman. Bavaria is, after all, pretty Catholic itself. Even if it tends to do its pilgrimages in BMWs.
Enough of this merry Popefoolery. I blame the spring weather. Faith Central now returns to the far from funny subject of Christians persecuted throughout the Middle East: the Archbishop of Canterbury spoke eloquently about it last night, saying that Christian groups are increasingly seen as a "foreign and aggressive presence" as a result of Western policies. 
Many have been forced to flee Palestine, and the historic Christian communities in the lands where Christianity was born are becoming, he says, "museum pieces" because of an extremist form of Islam filling the void left after the peak of Arab nationalism. He warns that the Middle East could become a "monochrome" area dominated by an "unfriendly" form of Islam. He said that Christians in the West ignore and forget the beleaguered co-religionists in the Arab lands, and strongly blamed Western governments and the "American global project" for the rising hostility. There will be ructions.
For background the BBC website is useful; for accounts of the problems in Syria from the US right a furious essay here; in Palestine here.
Joanna writes: As two of the world's most powerful men sit in the White House Oval office what's being said? Answers in the comments below please
(Libby writes: "Is the rug from IKEA as well, George?")
 The BBC website has a particularly nice 'reporter's diary' section on covering the Pope' visit to the US. It all starts with Sister Giovanna handing out speech copies, and then there is the usual media mayhem on the plane. Only there isn't. Under the last Pope, apparently, "There was a lot of climbing over seats to try to hear what he was saying ...Pope Benedict is different. The good German theology professor does not like disorder around him, and I can't say I blame him, remembering the flying tripods and the hectic scrambles of some journalistic encounters on previous papal trips."
 After my yelp of surprise when the Pope Trivia Quiz claimed that it is illegal for a Scot to become Pope on pain of banishment, kindly reader "Recusant" linked me to the original 1560 text of this law: and yes, it is still on the statute book. Government websites confirm. So, prospective Scottish cardinals please note:
"The Jurisdictioune and autoritie of the bischope of Rome callit the paip within this realme in tymes bipast hes bene verray hurtful and preiudiciall to our soueranis autoritie and commone weill of this realme Thairfoir hes statute and ordanit that the bischope of Rome haif na Jurisdictioun nor autoritie within this realme in tymes cuming And that nane of our saidis soueranis subiectis of this realme sute or desire in ony tyme heireftir title or rycht be the said bischope of Rome or his sait to ony thing within this realme vnder the panis of barratrye That is to say proscriptioune banischement and neuir to bruke honour office nor dignitie within this realme" So there. 
The sardonic Archbishop Cranmer blog puts us onto a report produced in Wales about the financial profitability of 'faith communities" and their contribution to the UK economy. Over 2.1 billion, it seems. "While Cranmer sees no need to justify God in terms of Mammon, this positive contribution does somewhat negate the blind assertions of ‘worthlessness’. Pretty dry stuff, though, but the pdf is there is you really want it. The really interesting thing would be to know how much is tied up in US religion...
Try this quiz. I got 8 out of 10. I cannot believe, however, that the answer to Question 10 is real. Seriously?
God help us. No sooner do Protestants and Catholics manage an uneasy truce in Northern Ireland than the south is - according to Time magazine - riven by disagreements and mutual despising between Sunni and Shia Muslims. Both lots refugees from Iraq, neither lot - so this piece claims - willing to drop their enmity.
 This rather sprauncy and faintly Satanic picture of Prof. Richard Dawkins is to celebrate a somewhat muddled but heartfelt attack on his atheism by Mark Ravenhill. Who believes that Christianity is a myth but on the other hand it inspires great art. Such as - er - his own plays. "The late Sarah Kane acknowledged that her youthful Christianity was the single most formative influence on her playwriting. It's strange to think that her Blasted and my Shopping and Fucking wouldn't have been written without the Christian church. But that's the truth. There's something about their sharp iconography and intense language that suggests a youthful experience of Christianity on the part of the writer. And I resent the possibility that aggressive secularism would deny future generations this inspiration."
But, er again... Prof Dawkins does not attempt to deny the cultural aspects. He sings carols. We reported as much last Christmas...
Joanna Sugden writes: When the Pope lands stateside tomorrow there will be an industry of related tack to greet him. But bumper stickers, mugs, t-shirts, keyrings and Popes-on-ropes have been out tacked by Bobble-Head Pope who even stars in this advert for the Washington Metro. The ad is promoting the Mass-Pass as the only way to travel to see the pontiff when he arrives in DC. The Archdiocese of Washington has asked for the advert to be scrapped and reminded people that tickets for the Mass cannot be resold as attendance should be free of charge.
The Archdiocese of Washington has sanctioned the following merchandise for the visit and hosted it on Catholictothemax.com
Pope Benedict kissing baby keyring
I heart the Pope bumper sticker
Needless to say this Pope on a rope (worringly available in used and new) is not an official Vatican product. 
But apparently the Pope has welcomed this Benedict Beer from a German Brewery - they were struggling until pictures showed Benedict XVI enjoy a pint or two.
To go the full papal mile you can drink it out of this I love my German Shepherd beer mug.
And to accompany your beverage why not crack some nuts with this Benedict Nutcracker?
Not to be left out or outdone this Atheist Online site offers its own homage to the Pontiff
After the enormous brouhaha about whether the Islamic 'call to prayer' should be amplified and broadcast from the Oxord Mosque, with every newspaper in Britain shouting the odds about it, and people sending death threats to the supportive Bishop, it now appears that they never put in an application at all. The mosque's treasurer, Masood Ahmed says no planning application to broadcast the call-to-prayer was made - "some members had considered having three two-minute calls a day or calls only on Fridays, and looked into the idea." and that they "may have been "slightly misguided....we would have consulted our neighbours first before we went ahead. All we did was just inquire what the planning applications involved, and that was all, there wasn't any formal planning application whatsoever.
Well, blessed are the peacemakers , I say. Pity they didn't mention this earlier. It's been going on since January.
Nice piece in the New Statesman this week about Jesus and blindness. It began with resentment at slurs on 'the blind leading the blind', and concludes more happily.
 Immigration changes the face of churchgoing across the world. Reuters report how in a Dallas suburb, a congregation reflect the ever broader diversity of Catholicism in the US: Vietnamese, HIspanic, NIgerian faces join the more 'traditionally' Irish, Italian and Polish Catholics of the US who will greet Pope Benedict next week. It is also observed that the newer Catholic immigrants are more in tune with official Vatican stances than native-born Americans - think homosexuality, women priests, abortion. On the other hand, they're more likely to be socially leftish. Meanwhile in the UK the Times visits the Portugese community in the Oval, London: “We founded the Mass four years ago with four people,” says Manuel Eduardo Santos, 57, a sandwich-shop worker from Lisbon. Now their numbers have swelled by waves of migrants from Brazil and Madeira. Meanwhile round the corner in Vauxhall the pews are crammed with families from Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru, all here for the weekly Spanish-language Mass. Which can, apparently, last for mellow hours rather than the brisk 45-minute canter favoured by Anglo-Saxon Catholics.
The Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan, has told Good Evening Wales that the current organization of devolution is "immoral" as the Welsh Assembly should have more law-making powers. "People like myself can't divorce themselves from the life of politics" he says, "Because politics is about the way we organise ourselves in society and, therefore every single aspect of life ought to have relevance to the Gospel, and that's why I'm speaking out."
Immoral? A curious context, from a Bishop. Is Wales, in fact, a moral entity? Can a legal structure which does not oppress or brutalize individuals, or deny them choice in life, be condemned by a churchman in his religious role? And does this mean that for centuries before devolution (which was only narrowly voted for in Wales) the entire structure of the UK was immoral?
Inspiring little story in the Scottish DAily Record, from Italy. Sister Donatella Ciucciumei saw an elderly man douse himself in petrol in a street in San Severino Marche. She ran towards him, and as the flames engulfed him she leapt on top of him and used her thick habit to douse the fire. She was unhurt, he is recovering, and she visits him daily to cheer him up. He was depressed because his wife left him. Proves, among other things, that the more modern orders of nuns were wrong to dump the flapping habit in favour of tedious tweeds.
The illustration, in Sr. Donatella's honour, is another from that fine website revealing the religious affiliation of comic book characters. Warrior Nun Areala was a 'real nun' who fought evil on behalf of the Vatican. In a garter. Her creators were genuinely devout. So we are told.
Oh dear oh dear. William Blake's great, strange paean "Jerusalem", written in revolutionary spirit as preface to his poem Milton, has been banned by clergy at Southwark Cathedral on the mimsy grounds that it is not sufficiently "to the glory of God" and is "nationalistic". Other churches in the past have called it "unChristian and too military in tone". St Paul's banned it for a bit, many have fretted over the reference to the legend of Christ coming to Glastonbury, and St Margaret's Westminster once, allegedly, rejected it because the 'dark satanic mills' line discriminated against city-dwellers. Doh! Blake (nice essay here by Kenny McEwen on the redflag website) more likely meant the fat-cat established churches and cathedrals when he spoke of the satanic mills. But you'd think that the idea of mental fight to establish a better, wiser Britain would appeal to clergy at least a bit. 
Blake was a great dissenter, a red-bonnet wearer, friend of Tom Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft, believer in individual freedom. Actually, he would probably be quite pleased to be banned by milksop Deans; as McEwen says furiously , "The conversion of this radical poem to a hymn typifies the way in which the establishment reinvents, as harmless dreamers, those that they cannot disregard."
But what about the point about it being nationalistic? It's not quite "Gott, Kaiser, Vaterland", after all. It offers only a desire to live up to Jesus' standards and have the Countenance Divine shine on our clouded hills. Shall we ban God Save the Queen (simply not inclusive enough in the EU age) and censure those who sing God Bless America? Or Finns for their national hymn "O Finland, your day is dawning"?
A fabulous little essay in the New York Times gives us a collection of international patriotic/religious songs from around the world from Vietnam to Mexico, and Jerusalem looks pretty mild and idealistic alongside Libya's bloodthirsty rant which ends: "Woe to the Imperialists!/ God is above the treacherous tyrant/
God is Greatest!/ Therefore glorify him, O my country/And seize the forehead of the tyrant/
And destroy him!"
 The London auction house Sotheby's has - following protests in India - withdrawn from sale a set of magnificent body armour which once belonged, it seems, to Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth and last religious leader of the Sikhs. It should, say believers, be housed at the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
The sale of religious artefacts has long been contentious. In the fourth century St Augustine denounced profiteers who roamed the land dressed as monks selling spurious relics.
In 1991 Mali attempted to prevent Sotheby's auctioning a religious statue of a ram in their sale of African art. The sale went ahead and the ram fetched $275,000. There have since been claims that the statue was in fact a fake.
More recently the International Crusade for Holy Relics has begun waging a war against the sale of religious artefacts on eBay.
Interest has been stirred by the move by Bishop Odd Bondevik of Norway who wants to remove the word 'hell' from the new translation of the Bible, not because he doesn't believe in it (as some don't) but because the word has been made banal by overuse (as in 'My hairdo hell, by celebrity weathergirl'). He wants to call it Gehenna. Only that's the name of a local death metal band. As you'd expect. So let us offer another couple of interesting and non-banal interpretations of hell. CS Lewis in The Great Divorce gives an idea of heaven as infinitely large, solid, real, and colourful, and hell as a dreary city of endless grey suburban streets, but which in reality is infinitesimally small - 'All Hell is smaller than one pebble of your earthly world, or one atom of this Real World'. The notion of hell as ultimate restriction, blindness, refusal to engage with the beautiful 'reality' of goodness and God, is curiously and ironically echoed in Sartre's miserabilist play 'Huis Clos', with the famous 'L'enfer, c'est les autres'. Confinement, boredom... nice essay here comparing it to Dante's more flamboyant torments. 'Hell is just an extension of the human condition...no need for supernatural demons or punishments'.
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