Online students fight anti-gay Christian course

Students nationwide have joined an online protest against a campus based Christian course which encourages gay students to suppress their homosexuality.

The controversy surrounding the course called Pure, began after pilot courses were held at Edinburgh University. The pilot was deemed a success and the Edinburgh University Student newspaper printed details of the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship plans to roll out the courses across Britain.

The course recommends literature that has been labelled homophobic and suggests students "Say farewell - it’s a No Go!" to homosexual relationships.

What Some of You Were by Christopher Keane is one of the texts recommended by the course. It tells the stories of "ex-gays" who have rejected the temptations of homosexuality in accordance with Christianity. It cites the case of Christopher, a "reformed homosexual", who says: "I shudder to think what may have happened to me if I had gone to a counsellor (or to a church) who had not upheld the Scriptures and had affirmed me in my homosexuality. If that had happened I may well have been dead from AIDS now."

The book also comments on the characteristics of gay relationships, claiming that lifelong, quasi-marital fidelity in homosexual partnerships is a myth, contradicted by the facts. "The truth is that gay relationships are characterized more by promiscuity than by fidelity."

In response to the course, students at Edinburgh set up a Facebook group called "Stop Pure", which has enlisted 1,400 members within a fortnight. Students from around the country have joined from universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, St Andrews and Kings College London.
Group creator Lucy Chambers said: "We want to use the group to help make students aware of the issues raised by the presence of this course on our campuses and to encourage them to make a stand. Facebook is a great means to contact lots of students up and down the country in the space of a few minutes.

"We have already set in motion a process whereby our students’ association is investigating the course and it is our hope that we will be able to use the group, or perhaps set up a new one, to affect change nationwide."

Responding to criticism of the course, a spokesman from the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship said: "Surely it’s completely reasonable for a Christian to believe what he or she believes and to say what he or she believes. I am perfectly happy for LGBT members and the gay community at large to be gay – I don’t agree with it but I will defend their right to be gay.
"Remember that you choose your partner, it is a choice, and Christians should have a right to voice their beliefs and not be labelled homophobic."

More from The Times

We are biased, admit the stars of BBC News

It was the day that a host of BBC executives and star presenters admitted what critics have been telling them for years: the BBC is dominated by trendy, Left-leaning liberals who are biased against Christianity and in favour of multiculturalism.

A leaked account of an 'impartiality summit' called by BBC chairman Michael Grade, is certain to lead to a new row about the BBC and its reporting on key issues, especially concerning Muslims and the war on terror.

It reveals that executives would let the Bible be thrown into a dustbin on a TV comedy show, but not the Koran, and that they would broadcast an interview with Osama Bin Laden if given the opportunity. Further, it discloses that the BBC's 'diversity tsar', wants Muslim women newsreaders to be allowed to wear veils when on air.

At the secret meeting in London last month, which was hosted by veteran broadcaster Sue Lawley, BBC executives admitted the corporation is dominated by homosexuals and people from ethnic minorities, deliberately promotes multiculturalism, is anti-American, anti-countryside and more sensitive to the feelings of Muslims than Christians.

And the BBC's 'diversity tsar', Mary Fitzpatrick, said women newsreaders should be able to wear whatever they wanted while on TV, including veils. Ms Fitzpatrick spoke out after criticism was raised at the summit of TV newsreader Fiona Bruce, who recently wore on air a necklace with a cross.

Political pundit Andrew Marr said: 'The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It's a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people. It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias.'

Andrew Marr told The Mail on Sunday last night: 'The BBC must always try to reflect Britain, which is mostly a provincial, middle-of-the-road country. Britain is not a mirror image of the BBC or the people who work for it.'

More from the Evening Standard

Pentecostal and Charismatic Groups Growing

A survey of Pentecostal and charismatic Christians in 10 countries in Asia, Africa and the Americas shows they are gaining converts and are more politically engaged than experts had thought.

Only 100 years since the birth of Pentecostalism in a street revival in Los Angeles, the movement has grown to include one in four Christians worldwide — or about half a billion people, according to the study. It was released Thursday by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, a research group in Washington.

Pentecostals are Christians who belong to denominations that practice what they call “the gifts of the Holy Spirit,” like speaking in tongues, prophesying and praying for divine healings. Charismatics have adopted some Pentecostal practices, but belong to other churches, mostly Roman Catholic and Protestant. The Pew survey used the word “Renewalists” as an umbrella term to describe Pentecostals and Charismatics.

The survey (available online at pewforum.org/surveys/pentecostal) found that in Brazil, Guatemala and Kenya, about half the population or more were renewalist Christians. In many of the countries studied, a majority of the Protestants were renewalists, and in Latin American countries, many left Roman Catholic churches for Pentecostal ones. Change has happened quickly, in part because Pentecostals and charismatics are far more likely than other Christians to say they share their faith at least once a week with nonbelievers, the survey shows.
“Pentecostal beliefs and practices are literally reshaping the face of Christianity throughout the developing world,” said Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, in a telephone news conference on Thursday.

Renewalists and evangelicals are often political allies, and share some beliefs, like the authority of the Bible and that Jesus is the only way to salvation. But renewalists and evangelicals are not synonymous. Many evangelicals are critical of Pentecostal religious practices, and their missionaries often regard one another as rivals.

The survey looked at 10 countries where renewalists are numerous: the United States, where it found 23 percent of the population were renewalists; Brazil had 49 percent; Chile, 30 percent; Guatemala, 60 percent; Kenya, 56 percent; Nigeria, 26 percent; South Africa, 34 percent; the Philippines, 44 percent; South Korea, 11 percent; and India, 5 percent.

The data was based on national samples except in Brazil, South Africa and South Korea, where the survey group was disproportionately urban, and in India, where surveys were conducted in districts of three states with large Christian populations.

In many of the 10 nations, majorities of the overall population are conservative on issues like homosexuality, divorce and alcohol consumption, but the survey showed that renewalists were even more likely than their countrymen to hold conservative views on those issues.

In the past, Pentecostals had been known as rather apolitical, being more inclined toward “supernatural” and “other worldly” solutions to their problems, Mr. Lugo said. But the survey found that Pentecostals and charismatics were likely to say that religious groups should be involved in politics, and that it was important for political leaders to be religious. They are also highly concerned about what they see as moral decline.

John C. Green, senior fellow in religion and American politics at the Pew Forum, said, “This is a group much more interested in politics and public affairs than we anticipated.”
Renewalist Christianity has won converts because of its exuberant and joyous worship, its adaptability to local cultures and its creation of communal networks that provide social and economic support for new urban migrants in these developing countries.

But its decentralization and diversity means it will probably not move in lockstep politically or theologically, said Harvey G. Cox Jr., professor of divinity at Harvard Divinity School, after reading the Pew report.

“Part of this enormous growth pattern is enormous fragmentation,” said Professor Cox, the author of “Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century.”

“The authority system is very decentralized,” he said. “Even in the big denominations like the Assemblies of God, they have precious little control over what the congregations do.”
Correction: Oct. 11, 2006

A chart on Friday with an article about the growth in the number of Pentecostal and charismatic Christians in 10 countries referred incorrectly to Guatemala. It is in Central America, not South America.

From the NYT.