Another Clerical Apology

Do Church of England bishops do anything other than apologise the whole time?

I ask because, following on from the apology of the entire church for slavery, from the personal apologies of Williams and Sentamu for slavery, from Williams' apology for the work of Christian missionaries in Africa, and from Williams' apology for criticising freemasonry, we are privileged to witness yet another Anglican Bishop coming out and grovelling. This time, it's once again over slavery:

The Rt Rev John Packer, Anglican Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, has made a public apology for the way in which Christians misused their scripture 200 years ago to justify, defend and perpetuate human slavery.

The comments, which also raise questions about the dogmatic use of the Bible in current arguments about issues like sexuality, came in a debate on the legacy of the slave trade in the House of Lords on Thursday 10 May 2007.

Does the House of Lords have nothing better to talk about? Apparently not. I'd also like to hear more about "the dogmatic use of the Bible in current arguments about issues like sexuality". What, precisely, did the Right Reverend gentleman say about this?

Bishop Packer has been active in his support for social justice, fair treatment for migrants and asylum seekers, and the development of a positive vision for Christian mission in a plural society.

"Fair treatment for migrants" (I assume he doesn't mean deporting them, which is what I'd call "fair treatment"), "social justice", a "plural society". Doesn't he sound just dreadful?

The parliamentary session on Britain's role and responsibility in relation to slavery was introduced by Baroness Howells. She expressed her own regret over the slavery, racism and colonial domination, together with and its “modern debris” of inequality.

The examples of human degradation cited included sub-standard housing for black people, their over-representation in the prison population and the mental health service, underachievement in education and disproportionate exclusions from schools.

Okay, let's get one thing straight. Blacks are not disproportionately poor, or disproportionately criminal, because of slavery. White liberals, and whiny players of racial politics, need to learn that not everything bad that happens to a black person is the fault of the wicked white people. Rather, the problems within the black community, and caused by that community (notably the predilection of a disproportionately high number of its members for shooting and stabbing one another, and the culture from which that predilection is derived), are to blame. No amount of apologising is going to change that simple fact.

Meanwhile, the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds urged people not to consider slavery a "past matter", as something that had been removed and resolved by the abolition of the nineteenth century trade.

He said that an expression of gratitude for the abolitionist measures taken 200 years ago needed to be matched by actions today to reverse consequent cycles of injustice and oppression.

Christians, in particular, had much to repent of, including the use of the Bible to legitimate actions and structures which contradicted the message of the Gospel and of Jesus.

Why are white Christians expected to grovel and apologise for events that happened 200 years ago (and which Christian groups worked the hardest towards ending, although the Bishop doesn't seem to mention this), while Muslims must be shielded from any blame whatsoever for what they are doing today? Double standards, anyone?

Sex Slavery and Paedophilia: another day in the Muslim World

A local husband and his wife have been arrested by the Palestinian Authority police on charges of selling their two daughters to young men.

The two girls, aged 12 and 13, were sold for 2,700 Jordanian dinars [approximately NIS 15,000] and NIS 7,000, said Col. Issa Hijo, commander of the Ramallah District Police Force.

He said the two men who bought the girls were brothers aged 23 and 25 and that they had been arrested on charges of raping minors.

"What is astonishing about this case is the fact that the two girls were sold with the approval of their mother and the parents of the two men," Hijo said. "This incident takes us back to the period of slavery. What is even more shocking is the fact that the two men's mother argued that this was an accepted custom."

Had the officer been better informed, he would have known that this is not an isolated event, and that Islamic parents commonly treat their daughters as items of property. There was the man in Pakistan who gave away his daughter in payment for a £75 gambling debt, for example. Or the two Saudis in their seventies (one of whom already had three wives) who married their teenage daughters off to one another (the daughters were not, of course, consulted). And it's spread to Britain as well: in 2004 the British High Commission in Islamabad dealt with 100 cases of forced marriage of British-born Muslim girls.

Yet another example of why we mustn't let Islam take root in Britain.

Hat-tip: Dhimmi Watch