50 years ago--the Anglican Church of Canada votes to ordain women to the priesthood

As reported by Canadian Press and published in the Montreal Gazette, June 19, 1975:

QUEBEC--Ordination of women to the priesthood was approved last night by 88 of 106 lay delegates to the 27th general synod of the Anglican Church of Canada.

Seventy-five of the 105 clergy voted yes while 26 of the 34 in the House of Bishops voted their approval.

It was the second time the synod had approved the ordination of women. Approval in principle was given at a 1973 synod but it is necessary for a second synod to approve the action for it to become fact.

Also approved was a resolution that women be ordained at the discretion of diocesan bishops after consultation with the House of Bishops.

This allows a bishop to refuse ordination if he opposes the principle.

On this motion, 95 of the lay delegates voted yes and nine no. The clergy voted 86 in favor and 19 against while bishops voted 27 for and seven against.

There are deep feelings in the church on the question. It has been before Anglican communions since 1862 when a bishop of the Church of England ordained a deaconness. The Canadian church has deaconnesses.

The Lambeth conference of 1968 accepted the principle that deaconnesses are within the diaconate but it does not ordain them as priests.

The general synod of 1973 approved ordination in principle but specified that it not be implemented until the House of Bishops developed a pattern that included an education process.

As reported by Canadian Press and published in the Montreal Gazette, June 20, 1975:

...The final act of synod was to state that no person should be penalized as a result of synod's accepting the principle that women be admitted to the priesthood.

Two decisions of major import affecting the entire church were made at the week-long meeting with synod stting that women can be priests and deciding to end negotiations for union with two other Protestant churches.

Both steps troubled the delegates and feelings during debate ran high, even nearing the end as the "conscience clause" was adopted.

This came out of Wednesday's synod acceptance of women priests. Many in the house said it was "sad" that a church law was necessary to enforce an idea that should be accepted by a Christian church.

Archbishop [E.W.] Scott said the action was necessary for canonical and legal reasons.

The adopted resolution said:

"No bishop, priest, deacon or lay person, including postulants for ordination of the Anglican Church of Canada, should be penalized in any manner, nor suffer any canonical disabilities nor be forced into positions which violate or coerce his or her conscience as a result of general synod's action in affriming the principle of the ordination of women to the priesthood..."

Some bishops oppose ordination of women on theological grounds and have said they will refuse to ordain them. They were given discretion in this but it was feared by many clerical and lay members that penalties would be imposed if they refused...

Putting women in positions of leadership in a church is not only a sign of further apostasy to come but also of how much apostasy has already progressed. How has the Anglican Church of Canada's 1975 decision worked out? In 1975 there were 1,015,016 people listed on parish rolls. It peaked in 1964 at 1,365,313. By 2022 it was down to 294,931, a 70% decline since 1975 and more than 78% since 1964. According to its own 2019 report, the Anglican Church of Canada will be dead by 2040. The ordination of women as priests was a major step in the church's process of suicide.

More evidence of apostasy in the Church of England

Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. II Timothy 3:5

As reported by Harriet Sherwood of The Guardian, July 29, 2023:

A Cornish church that banned women from applying to be its new vicar – despite once counting Dawn French, star of the TV comedy The Vicar of Dibley, among its flock – has reversed the decision under new management.

A newly elected governing council at St Fimbarrus church in the picturesque port of Fowey in Cornwall has told parishioners that a “new season” has begun.

In a statement, the parochial church council (PCC) said the previous regime’s decision to advertise for a male priest to fill its four-year-old vacancy was “misguided and unrepresentative” of the parish and the town.

The decision had been taken without consultation and many people in the parish expressed a “strong desire for change”.

The new PCC wanted the church “to be accessible to all … The PCC has voted unanimously to rescind the previous PCC’s resolution requiring male leadership … We are keen to recruit the best candidate to meet the needs of Fowey parish church, regardless of gender.”

Merisa MacInnes, a member of the PCC, said: “We are encouraged that numbers in the congregation have doubled in recent weeks and we are confident that the right person to be vicar will come forward in the coming months.”

In March, the previous PCC defended its decision to ban female applicants for the vacancy, insisting it was “not sexist”.

It said: “As an evangelical church we look to the Bible for all matters of faith. The Bible is very clear on equality – all are equal …. There is, however, debate over the roles women play within the church.”

It understood that its desire for a male priest-in-charge “can be difficult to understand looking from the outside into the church, but [we] would robustly defend that this position is not sexist, is widely established in the worldwide church, and accommodates all views in the membership of our church without exclusion”.

Andy Virr, the previous chair of the PCC and a local Conservative councillor, and two other PCC members stood down in May amid objections to the stance.

Under exemptions from the Equality Act, the Church of England permits local churches to reject female lead priests and the oversight of a female bishop.

Martine Oborne, the chair of Women and the Church (Watch), an organisation that campaigns for equality in the C of E, and a vicar in west London, said the Fowey decision was good news.

She added: “I think it’s time for church members to assert themselves and not defer to clergy who seek to limit women’s roles in the church.”

Fowey was not unique, she said. Some churches had taken decisions to reject female priests without proper consultation or transparency.

The fight for equality was not over despite 30 years having passed since women were allowed to become priests in the C of E.

“I think personally it’s time for the C of E to find a generous way to bring the arrangements that allow churches to go on limiting or not recognising women’s ministries to an end,” she said.

Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. Romans 1:24-32

As reported by Alexandra Topping in The Guardian, August 30, 2023 (links in original):

Most Church of England priests want the C of E to allow same-sex weddings and to drop its opposition to premarital and gay sex, according to a survey.

In a major shift in attitudes over the past decade, a survey of priests in England conducted by the Times found that more than half supported a change in law to allow clergy to conduct the marriage of gay couples, with 53.4% in favour compared with 36.5% against.

The last time Anglican priests in England were asked, in 2014, shortly after the legalisation of same-sex civil marriage, 51% said same-sex marriage was “wrong”, compared with 39% who approved.

Last year a row erupted at the first Lambeth conference (a meeting of Anglican bishops from around the world) in 14 years, with the archbishop of Canterbury faced sharp criticism for affirming a 1998 declaration that gay sex was a sin.

But the new poll found that 64.5% of priests in England backed an end to the teaching that “homosexual practice is incompatible with scripture”. It also found that 27.3% of priests supported an end to any celibacy requirement for gay people, while 37.2% said they were willing to accept sex between gay people in “committed” relationships such as civil partnerships or marriages, and around a third (29.7%) said the teaching should not change.

Andrew Foreshew-Cain, founder of the Campaign for Equal Marriage in the Church of England, said the survey showed there was “no excuse for further delay and equivocation” in welcoming gay people into the church.

“The clergy of the Church of England are kinder, more generous, and more welcoming towards LGBTI people than the current official position allows,” he said. “The C of E, and in particular our bishops, needs to stop wringing its hands over gay people and move forward towards blessings and, in time, to celebrating same-sex marriages in our parishes.”

The survey results were encouraging, said Robbie de Santos, director of communications at Stonewall. “We hope that church leaders reflect on these findings,” he said. “Too often, LGBTQ+ people of faith face discrimination and prejudice simply for being themselves.”

The survey also found that three-quarters of respondents thought Britain could no longer be described as a Christian country. Almost two-thirds (64.2%) said Britain could be called Christian “but only historically, not currently”.

In the 2021 census of England and Wales for the first time fewer than half of the population described themselves as Christian.

The Times poll found that two-thirds of priests in England thought attempts to stop the drop in church attendance would fail, with only 10.1% thinking it would be halted, and 10.5% believing that congregations would grow again. Average attendance for Church of England Sunday services in 2021 was 509,000, down from 1.2m in 1986.

Archbishop of York whines about "oppressively patriarchal" Lord's Prayer

This provides more evidence that you can't be a satirist anymore--assuming that this item wasn't meant as satire. As reported by Harriet Sherwood in The Guardian, July 7, 2023 (links in original):

The archbishop of York has suggested that opening words of the Lord’s Prayer, recited by Christians all over the world for 2,000 years, may be “problematic” because of their patriarchal association.

In his opening address to a meeting of the Church of England’s ruling body, the General Synod, Stephen Cottrell dwelt on the words “Our Father”, the start of the prayer based on Matthew 6:9–13 and Luke 11:2–4 in the New Testament.

“I know the word ‘father’ is problematic for those whose experience of earthly fathers has been destructive and abusive, and for all of us who have laboured rather too much from an oppressively patriarchal grip on life,” he said.

His comment – a brief aside in a speech that focused on the need for unity – will divide members of the C of E, a body whose differences on issues of sexuality, identity and equality have been highly visible for years.

After Cottrell’s speech, Canon Dr Chris Sugden, chair of the conservative Anglican Mainstream group, pointed out that in the Bible Jesus urged people to pray to “our father”.

He said: “Is the archbishop of York saying Jesus was wrong, or that Jesus was not pastorally aware? It seems to be emblematic of the approach of some church leaders to take their cues from culture rather than scripture.”

Rev Christina Rees, who campaigned for female bishops, said Cottrell had “put his finger on an issue that’s a really live issue for Christians and has been for many years”.

She added: “The big question is, do we really believe that God believes that male human beings bear his image more fully and accurately than women? The answer is absolutely not.”

In February, the C of E said it would consider whether to stop referring to God as “he”, after priests asked to be allowed to use gender-neutral terms instead.

It agreed to launch a commission on gendered language, saying “Christians have recognised since ancient times that God is neither male nor female, yet the variety of ways of addressing and describing God found in scripture has not always been reflected in our worship”.

As reported in the Irish Times, February 8, 2023:

The Church of England is considering alternatives to referring to God as “he” after priests asked to be allowed to use gender-neutral terms instead.

The church said it would start a project in the spring to decide whether to propose changes or not.

Any potential alterations, which would mark a departure from traditional Jewish and Christian teachings dating back millennia, would have to be approved by synod, the church’s decision-making body.

Rev Dr Michael Ipgrave, Bishop of Lichfield and vice-chair of the liturgical commission responsible for the matter, said the church had been “exploring the use of gendered language in relation to God for several years”.

Church of Ireland marks 30 years of women priests

As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths. Isaiah 3:12

Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church. I Corinthians 14:34-35

But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. I Timothy 2:12

As reported by Patsy McGarry of the Irish Times, November 30, 2020:

The 30th anniversary of the ordination of women to the priesthood in the Church of Ireland will be marked at its General Synod this week.

The General Synod was originally to have taken place at Croke Park last May but was postponed due to the pandemic. It will now happen online, on December 1st and 2nd.

The ordination of women priests and bishops was approved by General Synod in May 1990 and in the following month two deacons – Rev Irene Templeton and Rev Kathleen Young – became the first female priests in Ireland following their ordination at St Anne’s Cathedral in Belfast by then Bishop of Connor Samuel Poyntz.

Though attended by several hundred people, television cameras were excluded from the actual ceremony on June 24th, 1990. However, Bishop Poyntz’s words of ordination were relayed outside on loudspeakers.

The Church of Ireland’s first woman deacon, Rev Katharine Poulton, was ordained to that role three years previously in June 1987. In 2010 she was the first woman Dean of Ossory and installed that Easter at St Canice’s Cathedral, Kilkenny.

The Church of Ireland’s first woman bishop, Most Rev Pat Storey, was consecrated as Bishop of Meath and Kildare on November 30th, 2013.

Currently about one in five of the Church of Ireland’s 500 serving clergy are women.

This week’s General Synod will be the first presided over by new Primate of All Ireland and Archbishop of Armagh John McDowell, who assumed office last April. His predecessor Archbishop Richard Clarke retired last February.

Dr McDowell will deliver his first General Synod Presidential address on Wednesday morning.

All relevant reports have already been made available online to General Synod attendees. The Representative Church Body, the central trustee body of the church, has reported that its total funds in 2019 increased by 13 per cent, from €179.3 million to € 203 million.

Women in places of leadership in a church is not only a reliable indicator of the extent to which apostasy has already taken place, but of future apostasy and decline. According to Revd Dr William M. Marshall in The Oxford Companion to British History:

Today with two archbishoprics and twelve dioceses, it has a total membership (1990) of 437,000 (340,000 in the North and 97,000 in the Republic).

As reported by the Church of Ireland itself (current as of the time of this post):

The Church of Ireland has around 375,400 members – 249,000 in Northern Ireland and 126,400 in the Republic of Ireland.

The Church of Ireland has lost almost 62,000 members in the 30 years since it began ordaining women to the priesthood. I have no explanation for the increase in the Republic of Ireland; maybe C of I members have been migrating from north to south.

Religious Council of Tel Aviv-Jaffa to name its first lesbian member

Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:
And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,
Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful:
Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. Romans 1:24-32

Tel Aviv continues to live down to its reputation, as reported by Itay Blumenthal of Ynet News, August 6, 2020:

The Religious Council of Tel Aviv-Jaffa is set to appoint a lesbian religious woman as a member for the first time, Ynet has learned on Thursday.

Avigail Sperber is a cinematographer and film and television director. She is the founder and owner of Pardes Film Productions. Sperber is also a social activist and the founder of Bat Kol - Religious Lesbian Organization.

"I will be happy to be there, and I believe they approached me because I am religious and feel the need to represent the religious needs of LGBT people," said Sperber. "I am sure that the religious council will understand that LGBT people also have religious needs and not all of them are anti[-religious], the exact opposite."

"One of my goals is to link between the LGBT identity and the religious identity because non-religious LGBT people have religious needs, such as the conversion of children born in surrogacy or adoption abroad."
Tel Aviv-Jaffa City Council member and adviser to the mayor on LGBT affairs Etai Pinkas-Arad, who also nominated Sperber, praised the move.

"The LGBT community is an integral part of the religious public. There are thousands of religious people who are also LGBT and religious services belong to them too," said Pinkas-Arad.

"Avigail Is part of the Orthodox community in Israel and her joining the council is very exciting for us. The LGBT religious community has a voice and it's an integral part of the religious public. I am sure she will have a good influence on Tel Aviv's religious services regardless of the LGBT issue.

Sperber is the daughter of Israel Prize laureate Rabbi Prof. Daniel Sperber who announced lately his opposition to gay conversion therapy, claiming they ineffective and damaging.

See also my posts:

Tel Aviv voted "best gay city" (May 15, 2012)

Thousands of Israelis protest passage of surrogacy law that excludes sodomite/lesbian couples (July 23, 2018)

Women now comprise the majority of priests in the Church of Sweden

As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths. Isaiah 3:12

Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church. I Corinthians 14:34-35

But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. I Timothy 2:12

More evidence of increasing apostasy, as reported by Agence France-Presse, July 22, 2020:

Stockholm - For the first time in history, Swedish female priests outnumber their male counterparts, sixty years after they were first allowed to don the clerical collar, the Church of Sweden said Wednesday.

Of the 3,060 priests currently serving in Sweden, 1,533 are female, or 50.1 percent, according to Cristina Grenholm, secretary for the Church of Sweden.

"From a historical perspective, this parity happened faster than we earlier imagined. A report from 1990 estimated that women would be half of the total clergy in 2090. And it took thirty years," Grenholm told AFP.

Unlike the Catholic Church, the Lutheran Church of Sweden has allowed female priests since 1958 and first ordained three women in 1960.

In 1982 the Swedish parliament also scrapped a "conscience clause" that allowed members of the clergy to refuse to cooperate with a female colleague.

Women have been over-represented on theological courses, especially since the separation of church and state in 2000, and accounted for 70 percent of those training for ordination in a study in 2013.

"Many parishes during the Sunday service try to have both a man and a woman at the altar," Grenholm said.

"Since we believe that God created human beings, both men and women, in God's image, it is essential that we do not only speak about it, but that it is also shown," she added.

However, there is a wage gap between male and female pastors -- averaging 2,200 Swedish kronor ($248 or 215 euros) per month according to the church's newspaper Kyrkans Tidning.

Grenholm said this was due to more men being in higher positions of authority.

In Sweden, ministers in the Church of Sweden have the title of priest, while those serving in parishes outside the former State Church are referred to as pastors.

American feminists pay Orthodox Jewish synagogues to hire female leaders

It seems that Orthodox Judaism in the United States is becoming as corrupt and apostate as much of what passes for Christianity; as reported by Marcy Oster of Jewish Telegraphic Agency, November 7, 2019 (links in original):

A new initiative is paying Orthodox synagogues to hire female spiritual leaders.

The Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance announced Sunday that it is giving grants of up to $10,000 per year to synagogues that hire women in newly created positions as spiritual leaders.

Synagogues can receive a matching grant equaling half of the money that they commit, meaning that they would have to commit $20,000 to receive the maximum $10,000 grant per year. Synagogues can receive funding for two years.

The funds for the project were donated by Ann and Jeremy Pava of West Hartford, Connecticut.

The ordination of women as rabbis and spiritual leaders is fraught in the Orthodox world.

A decade ago, Yeshivat Maharat opened in New York as the first Orthodox institution in North America to ordain women as clergy members. The institution has faced pushback from many in the establishment Orthodox world, including the Orthodox Union.

The Conservative and Reform movements have been ordaining women as rabbis for decades.

70 years ago: The Reformed Church of France continues on its downward liberalizing direction by allowing women to become pastors

Like so many mainline denominations, the Reformed Church of France began a downward slide into apostasy in the 19th century. By 1949 the liberalism had extended to the decision to allow women into the clergy. The Edmonton Journal of September 3, 1949 contained the following report from an unidentified international source:

Paris -- National synod of the Reformed Church of France has voted to admit unmarried women as pastors in certain exceptional cases.

First exceptional case will be that of Mlle. Elizabeth Schmidt, an Alsatian, who since she took up church work during a pastoral vacancy in 1928, has been unofficially acting as a pastor, with great success.

As is inevitably the case, the decision to put women in positions of leadership was both a harbinger of greater liberalism in the future and an indication of how far the liberalism had already spread in the Reformed Church of France, which declined to the point that it was no longer able to exist on its own, but merged with the liberal Evangelical Church in France in 2013 to become the United Protestant Church of France, which not only ordains women, but performs same-sex "marriages."

Religious liberalism on display at World Scouting Jamboree

As reported by Alan Smason of Crescent City Jewish News via Jewish Telegraphic Agency, August 2, 2019 (link in original):

GLEN JEAN, West Virginia — A Reform rabbi from Maryland is leading the Faith and Beliefs program at the World Scouting Jamboree, the first such event held in the United States since 1967.

For the past two weeks, some 45,000 Scouts representing 156 nations have gathered at the Summit Bechtel Reserve here for sports, camping, stadium shows and cultural celebrations.

As the chair of this year’s Faith and Beliefs area, Rabbi Peter Hyman is supervising all 10 participating religions – Protestantism, Won Buddhism, Buddhism, the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church, Sikhism, Islam, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Judaism and Hinduism.

Also included are the Messengers of Peace, a global community service program Hyman helped establish with funding from the late King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

Hyman, a longtime religious leader of the Boy Scouts of America, is no stranger to world Jamborees, which are organized by the World Organization of the Scouting Movement, of which the BSA is a member. This is his eighth World Scouting Jamboree.

Hyman, who has previously served congregations in Sarasota, Florida, Beaumont, Texas and suburban Philadelphia, has only missed two national and world jamborees – each typically held every four years, since 1981.

“The first time I was a chaplain at an international event was the Jamboree in [New South Wales] Australia in 1988,” said Hyman. “It was the most moving, inspirational and hope-filled experience I’ve ever had and, to this day, it remains that.”

An Eagle Scout, Hyman as been immersed in the Scouting movement since his youth and was drawn to serve as a Jewish leader early on. He previously served as the chairman of the National Jewish Committee on Scouting for four years and was its National Chaplain for 24 years.

Hyman said he was chosen to lead this year’s faith programming “because of the depth of my experience. But also the fact that I enjoy – with great humility and a real sense of gratitude – a good reputation in the Boy Scouts of America. The senior leadership with whom I’ve had relationships over the years at various events nationally and internationally felt that I was capable of making it work.”

Chip Turner, the rabbi’s co-chair and a former Religious Relationships Committee chair for the BSA, has been working with him for more than three decades, sometimes as his boss, at other times as his co-chair.

“We’ve grown to be great friends, strengthened by our opportunities to serve together and joined by Scouting principles,” said Turner, who has served on the board of Programs of Religious Activities with Youth, an organization of Protestant and independent Christian churches. “Hyman is gifted with tremendous personal skills, which makes working with him an even greater pleasure.”

At this year’s World Scouting Jamboree, the chaplaincy was located in four major camps for scout contingents and a single camp for the International Service Team comprised of nearly 9,000 adults from around the world. Each camp was further subdivided into four subcamps.

In addition to a daily minimum of four Catholic masses in each of the subcamps, the Faith and Beliefs program is responsible for an exhibits area that includes all of the participating faith groups. A large worship tent has been designated for the daily prayers and meditations of Muslims and Buddhists, for example.

A Torah scroll was borrowed from a nearby Charleston congregation for observant contingent members to hold worship services on Monday, Thursday and Saturday mornings. Observant Jewish scouts, predominantly from England, France and the United States, were treated to a kosher Oneg Shabbat on Friday night and a Kiddush following Shabbat worship services.

Kosher meal services were available to all observant Jewish scouts who requested them and special events such as a central Havdalah service were coordinated through the Faith and Beliefs team.

Sunday morning brought services for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a unified Protestant offering, an Eastern Orthodox service officiated by an Archbishop from Sitka, Alaska, and several Catholic masses, all attended by groups from the hundreds into the thousands.

A papal nuncio officiated at the Sunday morning Jamboree Catholic along with several bishops and priests.

Hyman is mindful of his duties as a Jewish faith leader, but he has to be open and welcoming as well as to the other, larger numbers of scouts from the world’s religions.

“What the Boy Scouts of America has allowed me to do is nothing short of amazing,” the rabbi said. “It gives me goose bumps and it humbles me. I’ve been able to represent the United States, the BSA and Judaism in a number of fronts and a number of places and been relatively successful in those moments.”

Hyman was the first BSA chairman of the Messengers of Peace in 2006, which has a huge worldwide Islamic component, he said.

“This makes a statement on a global level for me to have been chosen as the chairman of the Messengers of Peace. That I got to chair it and that I was selected by the World Jamboree leadership also makes a profound statement of inclusion of recognizing that talent is spread out among all of us,” he said. “It’s remarkable.”

As a result of his work with the Messengers of Peace, Hyman traveled to Saudi Arabia in 2006 and was given an award by King Abdullah, an event he considers one of the most significant of his life.

Hyman also weathered a storm of controversy during the turbulent years when the BSA’s adult standards policies dealing with the LGBT community forbade same-sex parents and leaders along with gay scouts. That put him at odds with his own Union for Reform Judaism and the Conservative movement.

“When we were going through the issue of membership standards, there were people in my congregation who tried to make me resign,” Hyman said. “What I basically said to them was: in order to enact change, one must be on the inside. You can never change from the outside in, only from the inside-out.”

A 2013 vote by the BSA’s membership allowed gay youth in the organization. In 2015, the executive board voted to end its ban on gay adult leaders.

“I’m very proud of the fact that we were able to move that in a direction that allowed many of us to remain in the organization, loyal to the organization and continue to participate in it,” Hyman said.

What hasn’t changed is the BSA’s insistence that scouts and leaders demonstrate “an obligation to God” and subscribe to its “Declaration of Religious Principle.”

“Baden-Powell had a vision for the world,” Hyman said, referring to Robert Baden-Powell, the British army officer who founded the scouting movement in 1922. “It is not unlike the vision of the world that we see presented in Jewish liturgy, a world where people are connected, where people get along, respect each other and recognize the image of God on the face of the person whose eyes you are looking into.”

As reported by Mr. Smason in Crescent City Jewish News, undated (late July or early August 2019):

Religious figures have always provided integral and necessary counseling at World Scouting Jamborees. Rabbis, rectors, priests, pastors, and imams representing all of the major established religions have dispersed spiritual guidance and pastoral support for the thousands of Scouts who make the journey from near and far to encamp with their counterparts in Scouting once every four years.

Such is the case again at this year’s 24th World Scouting Jamboree being sponsored by the World Organization of the Scouting Movement (WOSM) in the Appalachian mountains of West Virginia. Held at the Boy Scouts of America’s Summit Brecthel Family Scout Reserve, some 45,000 Scouts from 156 countries are actively camping for the fortnight period that ends on August 3 expressing mutual respect and love of Scouting.

For the first time this year’s Faith and Beliefs chaplain staffers are a part of the International Service Team (IST) at the Jamboree. Great strides are being achieved by ladies, who are assuming more responsibilities than ever before at this year’s World Scouting Jamboree.

As the leader of a small, pluralistic Jewish congregation mostly attended by octogenarians, Rabbi Susan Elkodsi’s new role as a Jamboree chaplain is a major change for her. “This is a big difference and I have to say it’s a wonderful experience to see all these young people behaving as though there’s no difference – the Americans in one campaign and the Senegalese and the Poles and the Galicianna – they’re behaving like teenagers and it’s just wonderful,” she said.

Elkodsi envisions bringing her years of experience as a rabbi to the Jamboree participants. “To me, a chaplain is someone who helps a person to access his or her own spiritual resources (and) to help that person cope with what’s going on,” she mused.

She believes that international events like the World Scouting Jamboree can have a positive effect on the world at large. “We hate what we feel,” the rabbi continued. “When we get to know each other and we realize what other people fee like, we can bond over the things that unite us rather than focus on the negativity.”

Although she is a veteran of the 2007 National Jamboree in her native Sweden, the Rev. Mali Karlsson is attending her third World Scouting Jamboree, having been to both the 22nd gathering held in Sweden in 2011 and 2015’s 23rd , but more importantly, her first as a Lutheran chaplain.

Karlsson sees her job as a chaplain as not much different from her male counterparts. “It’s mostly the same,” she considered. “I’d say when it comes to the chaplaining parts, there shouldn’t be any difference.”

Karlsson oversees Alpha Camp, one of four Scout encampments with a population of about 6,700 Scouts. he Scouts are amping at four camping sites at the Summit, the largest World Scouting Jamboree in history.

“I have two chaplains in every sub-camp,” she explained. “They are the ones who are primarily in charge of the people in their sub-camp. The way I’ve interpreted my role is I’m more in charge of them and, I think they will have more stress than me.”

Two years ago, at the 2017 Boy Scout National Jamboree (also at the Summit), United Methodist Church Scouter Tanya Edwards Evans was both the first woman chaplain and the first African-American to be selected to serve. A woman of French, Caribbean, Native-American and African heritage, Evans, a minister, was selected to serve Scouting by her UMC bishop after a long association as both a church member and a mother of Scouts.

It turned out that many Scouting units charter-partnered with the United Methodist Church were being run by women instead of the traditional male Scout leaders. As there was little or no female or African-American representation from the church, Evans was asked to help support the existing units.

“I’ve learned how to use coping skills,” Evans said in recounting her life’s struggles as a member of two minorities.

“A lot of countries accept women in this role,” Evans added. “It’s harder for Americans to accept this role,” she noted. “We’ve got to change the culture in this country.”

The World Jamboree has given Evans an opportunity to appreciate all the possibilities found in the Scouting program internationally. “It is wonderful to see the diversity of women that are here from India to Korea to Viet Nam. Some of them are wearing their native dress, but all of them are Scouts. All of them; have the (inter)national Scout symbol. All of them know the scout Law,” Evans observed.

She has accepted her position as a chaplain with gratitude and hopes to make a difference at the World Jamboree and beyond. “I fill that position, but I also know how to treat people with dignity and respect,” she commented and then added: “You tell me what you need.”

As a final comment, the chaplain issued a challenge to other churches to support Scout troops. “It’s mentoring young people. Period,” she explained. “It doesn’t matter if they’re male or female, find a group of young people and give them structure.”

Universalist Orthodox Church in Toledo certainly isn't biblically orthodox

The red flags that identify the church mentioned in the following article as being unbiblical are so glaring and numerous that I'll leave it to the reader to notice and count them. As reported by Nicki Gorny of the Toledo Blade, July 1, 2019:

With its chanted antiphons and sweet-smelling incense, a divine liturgy at Toledo’s Joy of All Who Sorrow Parish is in some ways like any other in Eastern Orthodoxy.

In other ways, it’s decidedly not.

A commitment to full social, structural and sacramental inclusion of all people – regardless of their gender and sexuality – positions the parish outside the mainstream church hierarchy. While they remain true to what their founding bishop sees as an authentic expression of Eastern Orthodoxy, they’re carving out their own space in the ancient faith tradition.

“What do you do when such an integral part of your identity is in direct conflict with your values?” the Rev. Mother Maeve Leroux asked in a recent interview. “I definitely think the only option for me was to make the space.”

Mother Maeve, who established Joy of All Who Sorrow Universalist Orthodox Church in 2016, celebrates the first anniversary of her consecration as a bishop on Sunday. She described a winding path to that moment, one that gives her great familiarity with the struggle of loving and identifying with a faith tradition that – in one way or another – is also a source of conflict.

She said she was never eager to pursue ordination in the way that she has, which runs against a restriction in her tradition that only men enter the priesthood. Mother Maeve is transgender; her ordination is not recognized by the mainstream church. She said she felt called to the role as a way to create the inclusive Orthodox space she and others did not find anywhere else.

“It became pressingly apparent to me that, unfortunately, if we wanted any kind of inclusive Orthodox space, I would kind of have to do it,” she said. “Which was not a comforting thought. I don’t particularly like talking publicly. I don’t particularly like being in the front of any room.”

“But that was kind of the only way forward,” she said.

Mother Maeve came to Eastern Orthodoxy as a child, recalling a wind-knocked-out-of-her moment during a liturgy at a local church when she first she first felt the presence of God. By the time she was 18, she was essentially set on becoming a priest or a monk, options that were open to her in the mainstream structure of the tradition because she had not yet come out as female.

Once she made it to the monastery, though, she described an increasing disillusionment, much of it related to the hypocrisy she saw in her church in regard to issues of inclusion. Some of it was related to sexuality, she said; Eastern Orthodoxy is theologically opposed to homosexual acts. She said she also struggled with the restriction on women serving in the altar.

Even with a thorough reading of church canon, it just didn’t make sense to her, she said. In her understanding of the tradition then and in the understanding that she brings to her ministry now, she looks to the inclusiveness that she sees in the early church, if not necessarily in some of its canons. Orthodoxy is not as unchanging as it’s perceived to be, she said, describing historical pushes for women in ministry, even an early rite believed to be for a same-sex marriage.

“Inclusion is not innovative within ancient Christianity,” she said. “Inclusion is usually more authentic.”

It wasn’t that she hadn’t thought about what would become these internal conflicts before she entered the monastery. But “it’s kind of like any relationship where you fall in love,” she explained. “You fall in love and you think, ‘There are some issues … but this is what I want. Maybe it’s not that big a deal. These people seem good. Maybe it’ll work out.’ And you kind of put it away from your mind for a while, because you’re enamored.”

When she finally reached the point where she couldn’t justify wearing the monastic robe anymore, she left the monastery. Adrift without the faith tradition that had been such a firm anchor for so long in her life, she said she spent some time looking for a spiritual fit in others, first in Christianity, then in other traditions altogether. None of them felt like hers.

Then came a turning point. At a local interfaith service, she came across the Rev. Beverly Bingle, a Roman Catholic Womanpriest who pastors Holy Spirit Catholic Community in Toledo.

Roman Catholicism, like Eastern Orthodoxy, does not allow for the ordination of women. The Rev. Bingle describes her ordination as “valid, but not legal,” meaning that she is ordained in a valid line of apostolic succession, but her ordination is not recognized by the Catholic Church.

For Mother Maeve, the encounter sparked an idea.

“It really kind of inspired me to think: Orthodoxy doesn’t have to be confined into the boxes that history has put it in over and over,” she said. “I had always assumed that I had to accept Orthodoxy on its own terms, and that’s it,” she continued. “So I started thinking about it. I started looking: If there’s a Roman Catholic Womanpriest movement in Catholicism, does Orthodoxy have something like this? Have people gotten fed up?”

“The answer is no,” she said with a laugh. “Not really.”

It would fall to her, then, she decided. She sought a bishop to ordain her in the Independent Sacramental Movement, a network of self-sustaining faith communities that operate outside the structures of mainstream churches, but that retain the same apostolic succession of these same mainstream churches. As with the Rev. Bingle, the mainstream church hierarchies generally do not recognize the ordinations of clergy in the Independent Sacramental Movement, even though the lineages of these clergy – who ordained whom ordained whom ordained whom – can be traced back to the same foundational ministers.

Mother Maeve admits she herself had initial qualms about tying herself to the Independent Sacramental Movement. But when individuals began reaching out after her ordination as a priest, sharing their own stories of excommunication or their denial of the priesthood – stories, like hers, of those who felt marginalized by their own faith tradition – she found herself leaning further into it.

She began to pursue ordination as a bishop, believing she would hold a greater capacity to address these types of situations in this role.

“You have people coming to you. You have people who want to learn the liturgy from you, learn the tradition from you, they just want to take communion again after a decade of not being able to take communion anywhere,” she said. “So you kind of say, Who cares what I think? Or who cares what other people think? If it’s needful, you should do it.”

A year into her consecration as a bishop and three into the establishment of her parish, she today ministers to a modest community at Joy of All Who Sorrow. She and her partner, Jess Bernal, who as an ordained priest is known as Presbyter Theophan, said they typically hold services for only a handful of parishioners on Sunday.

Some are local, some drive hours for a divine liturgy. Sometimes it’s just the two of them.

Presbyter Theophan typically leads the service, her voice blending with Mother Maeve’s in the litanies and antiphons. When it comes time to consecrate the Eucharist, it’s her at the altar, behind the icons that are a standard in any Orthodox worship space – even one that’s a temporary setup each Sunday. They meet in the chapel of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church.

Their reach and ministry stretches beyond Toledo, though, in several satellite parishes in other cities and in those with whom they connect through their website or social media. Their stories of feeling drawn to the faith tradition or desiring to remain in it despite the roadblocks they see in gender, sexuality and other issues keep coming.

“There are definitely out there,” Mother Maeve said. “And a lot of them experienced what I experienced, where you look and you look and you look [for an inclusive community] and there is nothing. Then suddenly, you look, and there is one thing that pops up. … So it’s been rewarding for people to kind of be for people what I had wanted in the first place.”

100 years ago--Baptist church in New Brunswick hires the province's first female minister

Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law.
And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church. I Corinthians 14:34-35

Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.
But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
For Adam was first formed, then Eve.
And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression...
...This is a true saying, if a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work.
A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife,... I Timothy 2:12, 3:1-2a

For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city, as I had appointed thee:
If any be blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children not accused of riot or unruly. Titus 1:5-6

On June 27, 1919, Esther I. Clark of Fredericton became the first female minister in New Brunswick when she was hired as pastor of the Baptist Church in Grangeville. It does come as a surprise to this blogger to see this evidence of present and future apostasy occurring in a Baptist church before it occurred in the mainline churches such as the United Church of Canada and the Anglican Church of Canada, but I take it as evidence that end-times apostasy has deep roots indeed.

See also my posts:

80 years ago: United Church of Canada ordains Canada's first female minister (November 7, 2016)

40 years ago: Anglican Church of Canada ordains its first female priests (November 30, 2016)

50 years ago: Presbyterian Church in Canada ordains its first female minister (May 30, 2018)

More middle-aged women are opting for Church of England priesthood (August 20, 2018)

Presbyterian church in New Hampshire hires Brazilian female "pastor" in an effort to reverse its decline (September 1, 2018)

Female Church of England "bishop" wants to redefine God (September 18, 2018)

Percentage of female clergy in liberal denominations has increased greatly in the last 20 years (October 21, 2018)

Louisville witches are upset with U.S. President Donald Trump's use of the term "witch hunt"

As reported by Joseph Gerth of the Louisville Courier Journal, December 18, 2018:

If President Donald Trump is courting the witches' vote, he’s going about it the wrong way.

In recent months — and increasingly so, it seems — Trump has called the investigation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller a “witch hunt,” and in the process, he has angered, well, actual witches.

“It conjures up for me the burning of 10,000, mostly women, in England and surrounding areas who were accused as witches — right out of the Inquisition playbook,” said Ann Hardman, a Louisville high priestess in the Fellowship of Isis.

“I am incensed with this term. And I have been ever since he did it the first time. It’s insulting; it should be eliminated from the vocabulary. In some ways it’s like the N-word,” Hardman said.

The president’s frequent use of the term, in fact, is angering witches around the country. A story on the Daily Beast website recently said some witches have cast spells on Trump while one group tried to hex Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

The spells and hexes don't seem to have worked yet — unless that explains Trump’s otherworldly skin tone.

At about 6:30 a.m. Tuesday, Trump tweeted: “Biggest outrage yet in the long, winding and highly conflicted Mueller Witch Hunt is the fact that 19,000 demanded Text messages between Peter Strzok and his FBI lover, Lisa Page, were purposely & illegally deleted.”

So far, the investigation that Trump calls a “witch hunt” has netted nearly three dozen indictments or guilty pleas and has seen some of Trump’s top personal and campaign aides sentenced to prison.

He tweeted the term four times on Sunday and once on Saturday. He’s done it 22 times since Thanksgiving, a holiday that traces its roots back to ancient pagan harvest festivals.

In all, he has tweeted more than 60 times complaining about a “witch hunt.”

On Dec. 13, he tweeted just the words “WITCH HUNT!”

“Some find it very hurtful,” said Lady Vanessa, of Louisville, a third-degree Gardnerian Wiccan high priestess and a practitioner of British Traditional Wicca. She said she tries to ignore much of what Trump has to say, but she is finding that more and more difficult to do.

Witches, not the type that you see on Halloween, are all around.

They don't ride brooms, play quidditch, or stand around a cauldron in the woods late at night repeating incantations from Macbeth.

They follow some of the many Wiccan traditions that are nature-based spiritual traditions or religions.

“We feel kinship with Native Americans, though they would not call themselves pagans and witches,” said Lady Vanessa, who goes by her spiritual name and doesn't want her legal name used.

For practitioners of Wicca, or witches, the term “witch hunt” conjures up images of times in America and in Europe when people were rounded up and killed because they were believed to have been witches.

Some of them may have been practitioners of Wicca while others — particularly those at the Salem Witch Trials in the 17th century — were simply accused of being witches without evidence.

That’s where the term “witch hunt” to describe an unfair investigation comes from.

Lady Vanessa noted that since so many charges and convictions have arisen from the Mueller investigation, not only are Trump’s words hurtful, “it’s wrong historically to apply that to his situation.”

She's not heard of any local witches trying to place a spell on Trump or any of his appointees.

Martin English, a high priest of Nordic Wicca, said he’s talked to several Wiccans about Trump’s use of “witch hunt” and even discussed it with Nordic Wicca elders who are upset with Trump’s words.

“They were concerned about how the word is so flippantly thrown around,” English said. “It’s considered taboo to irreverently discuss the inquisitions and witch hunts like that.”

Maybe they'd be happier if Mr. Trump substituted the word "feminist" for "witch." Canadian sociologist Philip G. Davis argue in his book Goddess Unmasked: The Rise of Neopagan Feminist Spirituality (1998) that modern Wicca isn't a revival or continuation of an ancient practice, but is an invention of modern feminism.

See also my post Witches in Brooklyn plan to hex U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh (October 14, 2018)

Swiss feminists publish A Women's Bible to advance their antichrist agenda

There's nothing new about feminist rebellion against God, always masquerading as justice. The reader will note that feminist twisting of scripture easily surmounts denominational divisions. As reported by Agence France-Presse, November 27, 2018:

Tired of seeing their holy texts used to justify the subjugation of women, a group of feminist theologians from across the Protestant-Catholic divide have joined forces to draft "A Women's Bible".

As the #MeToo movement continues to expose sexual abuse across cultures and industries, some scholars of Christianity are clamouring for a reckoning with biblical interpretations they say have entrenched negative images of women.

The women we know from translations and interpretations of Bible texts are servants, prostitutes or saints, seen dancing for a king or kneeling to kiss Jesus' feet.

But while many feminists have called for The Bible, Christianity and religion altogether to be cast aside, an eclectic group of theologians instead insists that if interpreted properly, the Good Book can be a tool for promoting women's emancipation.

'Feminist values'

"Feminist values and reading the Bible are not incompatible," insisted Lauriane Savoy, one of two Geneva theology professors behind the push to draft "Une Bible des Femmes" ("A Women's Bible"), which was published in October.

The professor at the Theology Faculty in Geneva, which was established by the father of Calvinism himself in 1559, said the idea for the work came after she and her colleague Elisabeth Parmentier noticed how little most people knew or understood of the biblical texts.

"A lot of people thought they were completely outdated with no relevance to today's values of equality," the 33-year-old told AFP, standing under the towering sculptures of Jean Calvin and other Protestant founders on the University of Geneva campus.

In a bid to counter such notions, Savoy and Parmentier, 57, joined forces with 18 other woman theologians from a range of countries and Christian denominations.

The scholars have created a collection of texts challenging traditional interpretations of Bible scriptures that cast women characters as weak and subordinate to the men around them.

Parmentier points to a passage in the Gospel of Luke, in which Jesus visits two sisters, Martha and Mary.

"It says that Martha ensures the "service", which has been interpreted to mean that she served the food, but the Greek word diakonia can also have other meanings, for instance it could mean she was a deacon," she pointed out.

Overturning religious orthodoxy

They are not the first to provide a more women-friendly reading of the scriptures.

Already back in 1898, American suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton and a committee of 26 other women drafted "The Woman's Bible", aimed at overturning religious orthodoxy that women should be subservient to men.

The two Geneva theology professors say they were inspired by that work, and had initially planned to simply translate it to French.

But after determining that the 120-year-old text was too outdated, they decided to create a new work that could resonate in the 21st century.

"We wanted to work in an ecumenical way," Parmentier said, stressing that around half the women involved in the project are Catholic and the other half from a number of branches of Protestantism.

In the introduction to the "Women's Bible", the authors said that the chapters were meant to "scrutinise shifts in the Christian tradition, things that have remained concealed, tendentious translations, partial interpretations."

'Lingering patriarchal readings'

They take to task "the lingering patriarchal readings that have justified numerous restrictions and bans on women," the authors wrote.

Savoy said that Mary Magdalene, "the female character who appears the most in the Gospels", had been given a raw deal in many common interpretations of the texts.

"She stood by Jesus, including as he was dying on the cross, when all of the male disciples were afraid. She was the first one to go to his tomb and to discover his resurrection," she pointed out.

"This is a fundamental character, but she is described as a prostitute, ...and even as Jesus's lover in recent fiction."

The scholars also go to great lengths to place the texts in their historical context.

"We are fighting against a literal reading of the texts," Parmentier said, pointing for instance to letters sent by Saint Paul to nascent Christian communities.

Reading passages from those letters, which could easily be construed as radically anti-feminist, as instructions for how women should be treated today is insane, she said.

"It's like taking a letter someone sends to give advice as being valid for all eternity."

The theologians' texts also approach the Bible through different themes, like the body, seduction, motherhood and subordination.

The authors say they consider their work a useful tool in the age of #MeToo.

"Each chapter addresses existential questions for women, questions they are still asking themselves today," Parmentier said.

"While some say that you have to throw out the Bible to be a feminist, we believe the opposite."

At least Ms. Parmentier is honest enough to say that she and her feminist colleagues are "fighting against a literal reading of the texts." That's true, because there's no way that you can make the Bible support feminism unless you reject a literal reading and put a feminist twist on scripture. When it comes to deacons, one of the qualifications for a deacon is to be "the husband of one wife" (I Timothy 3:12), the same as for a bishop/overseer. That disqualifies Martha. As for Mary Magdalene, the feminists are employing a straw man argument; although it's commonly believed that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute, nowhere does the New Testament say that. She's merely described as someone out of whom seven demons had been cast (Luke 8:2).

Feminists attempt to invade Hindu temple in India

Feminists are not only attempting to take over nominal and actual Christian churches (see post below), but are attempting the same in non-Christian religions. Submitted for your approval, the following, as reported by Kai Schultz of The New York Times, October 23, 2018 (links in original):

NEW DELHI — Before Hindus can climb the 18 golden steps leading to the Sabarimala Temple, a centuries-old hillside shrine in southern India, there are customs to observe.

Devotees fast for 41 days, avoiding alcohol and tobacco. They prepare bundles of goods to be tied to their heads, filling pouches with jaggery, flattened rice and turmeric powder. And they observe a ban on women of childbearing age from visiting, because the shrine’s deity, Lord Ayyappa, is celibate.

Last month, after India’s Supreme Court struck down that ban, furious protests burst the calm surroundings at the Sabarimala Temple, located in a forested patch of the state of Kerala.

When the temple reopened for six days on Wednesday, for the first time since the court’s decision, the pilgrimage path became a kind of conflict zone, pitting traditionalists against police officers who vowed to enforce the law and protect any woman who wished to visit.

At least 12 women attempted the journey. Each was met with a mob that variously shouted in her face, pummeled the police, set vehicles on fire, hurled rocks and blocked the steep, three-mile trail leading to the temple by lying on its slippery stones. All of the women were forced to turn back. One was so overwhelmed that she fainted.

Now, with the temple closed again for about two weeks before its peak season starts, officials are scrambling to figure out what to do. On Tuesday, India’s Supreme Court announced that it would hear petitions next month challenging its ruling. The court did not elaborate; some lawyers said it was too early to say whether the justices had been swayed by the protests, but that a reversal of the ruling seemed unlikely.

For now, Krishna Kumar, a commanding officer posted near the temple, said the focus was on law and order. He gave a dry laugh when asked if the police were ready for November’s reopening. The annual event is often compared to the rush at Mecca, and a crush of millions of pilgrims can clog the trail for hours.

“This is a huge problem,” Mr. Kumar said, “a very huge challenge for the police.”

It is not unusual for Indian court rulings to go unenforced, particularly in remote rural areas. The Supreme Court put that to the test with its September ruling, which overturned a 1991 decision by the High Court of the state of Kerala that banned menstruating women — defined as girls or women between the ages of 10 and 50 — from visiting the temple.

Advocates of the ban argued that it should be respected because it had been in effect for so long, and that the temple’s celibate deity had constitutional rights. But in a 4 to 1 decision, the court disagreed. “Religion cannot become a cover to exclude and to deny the right of every woman to find fulfillment in worship,” Judge Dhananjaya Y. Chandrachud wrote in his opinion.

Almost immediately, thousands of protesters who disagreed marched in Kerala, threatening violent repercussions for women who tried to visit the temple.

Bhakti Pasrija Sethi, a lawyer who was involved in challenging the ban, said she was baffled by the backlash, saying the dismantling of exclusionary rules in other places of worship, like the Haji Ali, a mosque and tomb in Mumbai, or temples in west central India, were not met with the same level of vitriol.

In any case, she said, there was evidence that women had peacefully visited the Sabarimala Temple decades ago for rice-feeding ceremonies, which mark a baby’s first intake of solid foods. Other temples dedicated to Lord Ayyappa also allow women to enter, she said.

“They are giving superstition the cover of religion,” Ms. Sethi said of the protesters. “What they are doing is not religion. The Hindu religion is not teaching you violence.”

Kerala’s chief minister, Pinarayi Vijayan, attributed much of the chaos to members of fringe Hindu groups disguising themselves as pilgrims and then “spreading terror.” Kerala is run by a coalition of communist parties; opposition politicians in the state have warned the police not to use force against protesters and argued that India’s central government, which is led by a party with Hindu nationalist roots, should take over security at the temple.

Initially, the police encouraged women to visit. When a female journalist for The New York Times tried to climb up the path on Thursday, several officers went before her, insisting that it was safe to continue even as the mob began throwing stones. She was struck on the shoulder but was not injured.

As the security situation grew more intense, the government seemed to waver on enforcing the court’s ruling. On Friday, two women, Rehana Fathima, a social activist, and Kavitha Jakkal, a journalist, began climbing the trail in helmets and shoulder pads, escorted by about 100 police officers in riot gear.

As they crested the hill, becoming the only women yet to make it that far, a police officer said there was news: The Kerala government had called to say it was not particularly pleased with the situation.

Kadakampally Surendran, an official with the state Devaswom, a religious trust that helps manage temples, told reporters in Kerala’s capital, Thiruvananthapuram, that the authorities could not allow the shrine to become a place where “activists can come and showcase their power.”

Ms. Fathima said she was not there for activism, but Sunil Arumanoor, a public relations officer with the temple, called her “publicity hungry.” He said those who visited the temple specifically to make a point would be turned away. “This temple belongs to true devotees,” he said in an interview.

After Ms. Fathima and Ms. Jakkal reached the temple’s entrance, a crowd of protesters blocked their way. The temple’s priest warned that he would lock the doors if the women proceeded. They turned back.

Since then, several more women have tried their luck, but the obstacles seemed to pile up. On Saturday, when an advocate for the rights of Dalit people told the police she wanted to go, they discouraged her from doing so because of the heavy rains, and they subjected her to a background check. Others were so badly harassed by protesters that they did not even make it to the trail.

By Monday evening, when the temple complex shut, the message, at least for the moment, seemed clear: The Supreme Court’s ruling had no bearing there.

“History not made,” read a headline on NDTV, an Indian news channel.

The temple was scheduled to reopen on November 16, 2018; go here for the latest news.

Several things about the article above struck this blogger as interesting. The reader will notice that false gods and religions make extraordinary demands on their followers; such is the way with man-made religion, which always involves salvation or self-improvement by works. The God of the Bible, on the other hand, is a God of love and grace, who has not only done everything necessary and sufficient for salvation Himself, but has given us everything we need for "life and godliness" (II Peter 1:3).

India's Supreme Court is just as activist as the Supreme Courts of Canada and the United States, making a ruling to push their agenda and then inventing the most absurd legal justification for it. The "right of every woman to find fulfillment in worship" is given precedence over the right of the religion itself to determine its own doctrines and practices. This isn't a matter with wider social significance (such as whether Jehovah's Witnesses can deny blood transfusions to children who aren't yet of age), but a matter just within the religion itself as to what constitutes permissible worship. The Indian Supreme Court's invention of this "right" is one to keep in mind, to see if and when North American courts invoke it in future rulings restricting religious freedom.

The male Hindu traditionalists mentioned in the article above may be aware of Vox Day's second law of Social Justice Warriors: SJWs always double down. In striking contrast to the wimpiness so often seen among professing Christians in the West, they aren't meekly submitting to an activist court ruling, but are vigorously asserting their right to preserve and practice their religion, even if it means opposing the courts and police. You seldom see that among professing Christians in Western nations.

Roman Catholic feminists continue to try to force their way into church leadership

Feminist behaviour in churches is a perfect example of Vox Day's second law of Social Justice Warriors: SJWs always double down. As apostate mainline Protestant--and increasingly, "evangelical"--churches have shown, and continue to show, feminists in churches won't be satisfied until they're ruling over men and running the churches, and they'd rather destroy the churches than repudiate or dial back their feminist agenda. The Roman Catholic Church will end up the same way, if feminists and other suspicious people in the church have their way; the reader of the following article will note the Jesuit support for feminism. As reported by Reuters, October 23, 2018:

VATICAN CITY — Catholic women say there’s a clerical stained glass ceiling in the Vatican, and they want to shatter it.

They want to vote in major policy meetings. They want Pope Francis to deliver on his promise to put more women in senior positions in the Holy See’s administration. And some of them say they want to be priests.

“Knock knock! Who’s there? More than half the Church!” several dozen Catholic women chanted outside the Vatican on Oct. 3, the first day of this year’s synod of bishops from around the world.

The role of women in the Church has been a recurring theme at the month-long meeting, which brings together some 300 bishops, priests, nuns and lay participants. Only about 35 are women.

The subject has come up in speeches on the floor, in small group discussions and at news conferences by participants in the gathering, officially titled “Young People, Faith and Discernment of Vocation.”

Only “synod fathers,” including bishops and specially appointed or elected male representatives, are allowed to vote on the final recommendations to be sent to the pope, who will take them into consideration when he writes his own document. Other participants are non-voting observers, auditors or experts.

Some of the attendees have pointed to what they say is a contradiction in the rules of the synod, which takes place every few years on a different theme.

This year, two “brothers”, laymen who are not ordained, are being allowed to vote in their capacity as superiors general of their religious orders.

But Sister Sally Marie Hodgdon, an American nun who also is not ordained, cannot vote even though she is the superior general of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Chambery.

“I am a superior general. I am a sister. So in theory, logically you would think I would have the right to vote,” Hodgdon, who is also vice president of the International Union of Superiors General (UISG), an umbrella group of Catholic nuns, told reporters.

The membership of female religious orders is about three times larger than that of male orders.

A petition demanding that women have the right to vote at synods has collected 9,000 signatures since it opened online at the start of this meeting. It is sponsored by 10 Catholic lay groups seeking change in the Church, including greater rights for women and gays and a bigger role for the laity.

“If male religious superiors who are not ordained can vote, then women religious superiors who are also not ordained should vote. With no ontological/doctrinal barrier, the only barrier is the biological sex of the religious superior,” it reads.

The cause has won some influential clerical male backers.

At a news conference on Oct. 15, superiors general of three major male religious orders – the Jesuits, the Dominicans and one branch of the Franciscans – expressed support for changes in synod rules in order to allow women to vote in the future.

Backing also came from Cardinal Reinhard Marx, archbishop of Munich, president of the German Bishops Conference and one of the most influential Catholic leaders in Europe.

“We must face up to the often uncomfortable and impatient questions of young people about equal rights for women also in the Church,” Marx said in his speech to the synod.

“The impression that the Church, when it comes to power, is ultimately a male Church must be overcome in the universal Church and also here in the Vatican. It is high time.”

The Holy See, as the offices of the central administration of the 1.3 billion-member Church are known, and the State of Vatican City have a combined workforce of about 4,100 people. About 700 are women.

Of the approximately 60 departments in the Holy See, about 10 must be headed by priests because they deal with governance and jurisdiction over other ordained ministers or other sensitive doctrinal matters, the Church says.

Francis has promised to put more women in senior roles in those other 50 departments. But more than five years after he was elected, there are only six women in such roles. Five are lay women and one is a nun. None of them heads a department.

Francis told Reuters in June he had to “fight” internal resistance to appoint 42-year-old Spanish journalist Paloma Garcia-Ovejero as deputy head of the Vatican’s press office.

He declined to name those who had resisted, but said he had to use “persuasion,” an apparent reference to the powerful conservative wing of what has been an institution run exclusively by males for 2,000 years.

The Vatican Museums, which are part of the State of Vatican City, are headed by Barbara Jatta, the first woman to hold the high-profile post which oversees nearly 1,000 employees.

The pope’s critics, including former Irish President Mary McAleese, say he is moving too slowly.

“How long can the hierarchy sustain the credibility of a God who wants things this way, who wants a Church where women are invisible and voiceless in Church leadership?” she said at a conference in Rome in March.

Sister Maria Luisa Berzosa Gonzalez, one of the participants at the current Synod, thinks it is time for change — in the Synod, and in the wider Church.

The Spanish nun, whose energy belies her 75 years, has dedicated her life to educating the poor and underprivileged in Spain, Argentina and Italy and is still going strong.

“With this structure in the synod, with few women, few young people, nothing will change. It should no longer be this way. Its participation should be broadened,” she told Reuters.

Berzosa, who took her vows in 1964, said she supports a female priesthood, a position not very common among nuns her age.

The Church teaches that women cannot become priests because Jesus chose only men as his apostles.

Proponents of a female priesthood, like 32-year-old Kate McElwee, who organized the protest on the synod’s opening day, say Jesus was merely acting according to the norms of his times.

“Some women feel called by God to be priests. They discern a vocation to the priesthood just as men do,” said McElwee, the Rome-based executive director of the Women’s Ordination Conference, a US lobbying group.

McElwee has found kindred spirits in nuns like Berzosa.

The nun said she knows women won’t be priests in her lifetime because change comes slowly and piecemeal in the Church.

Still, between one easy laugh and another, her frustration slipped through.

“I lead spiritual exercises, I develop a deep rapport with people, I teach them how to pray, and then someone else comes along to say the Mass,” Berzosa said. “It’s not fair.”

Percentage of female clergy in liberal denominations has increased greatly in the last 20 years

As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths. Isaiah 3:12

This is a true saying, if a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work.
A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife,... I Timothy 3:1-2a

For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest set in order the things that are wanting, and ordain elders in every city, as I had appointed thee:
If any be blameless, the husband of one wife, having faithful children not accused of riot or unruly. Titus 1:5-6

It comes as no surprise to this blogger to see that the most liberal religious denominations, such as those mentioned in the following article, are the ones where the percentage of women in positions of leadership has been increasing in recent years. The Unitarian-Universalists, of course, aren't Christian in any way (although, with the direction in which evangelicalism is heading, I wouldn't be surprised to see a movement for "Christians and Unitarian-Universalists Together"). The United Church of Christ is as apostate a denomination as you'll find that still claims to be Christian. As reported by Adelle M. Banks of Religious News Service, October 18, 2018:

The share of women in the ranks of American clergy has doubled — and sometimes tripled — in some denominations during the past two decades, a new report shows.

“I was really surprised, in a way, at how much progress there’s been in 20 years,” said the report’s author, Eileen Campbell-Reed, an associate professor at Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, Tenn. “There’s kind of a circulating idea that, oh well, women in ministry has kind of plateaued and there really hasn’t been lot of growth. And that’s just not true.”

The two traditions with the highest percentages of women clergy were the Unitarian Universalist Association and the United Church of Christ, according to the “State of Clergywomen in the U.S.,” released earlier this month. Fifty-seven percent of UUA clergy were women in 2017, while half of clergy in the UCC were female in 2015. In 1994, women constituted 30 percent of UUA clergy and 25 percent of UCC clergy.

UUA President Susan Frederick-Gray credits the increase to a decision by her denomination’s General Assembly in 1970 to call for more women to serve in ministry and policymaking roles. She noted that as of this year, 60 percent of UUA clergy are women.

“All that work in the ’70s and ’80s made it possible for me, in the early 2000s, to come into ministry and be successful and lead thriving churches,” said Frederick-Gray, “and now be elected as the first female, first woman minister elected to the UUA presidency.”

Campbell-Reed and a research assistant gathered clergywomen statistics that had not been collected across 15 denominations for two decades.

The Rev. Barbara Brown Zikmund, who co-wrote the 1998 book “Clergy Women: An Uphill Calling,” welcomed the new report as a way to start closing the gap in the research.

“While the experiences of women and the evolution of church life and leadership have changed dramatically over the past two decades,” she said, “there have been no comprehensive studies on women and church leadership.”

Reached between recent convocation events at Andover Newton Seminary, the Rev. Davida Foy Crabtree, a retired UCC minister, said the report’s findings were reflected around her.

“I was sort of looking around and seeing so many women and remembering that in my years in seminary in the ’60s how few of us there were,” said Crabtree, a trustee and alumna of the theological school. “So it’s definitely a sea change in terms of women’s ordination.”

Campbell-Reed’s research found a tripling of percentages of clergywomen in the Assemblies of God, the Episcopal Church and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America between 1994 and 2017.

But Campbell-Reed also found that clergywomen — with the exception of Unitarian Universalists — continue to lag behind clergymen in leading their churches. In the UCC, for example, female and male clergy are equal in number, but 38 percent of UCC pastors are women.

Instead, many clergywomen — as well as clergymen — serve in ministerial roles other than that of pastor, including chaplains, nonprofit staffers and professors.

Paula Nesbitt, president of the Association for the Sociology of Religion, said other researchers have long observed “the persistent clergy gender gap in attainment and compensation.”

For women of color, especially, significant gaps remain, and for women in some conservative churches, ordination is not an option.

Campbell-Reed noted that clergywomen of color “remain a distinct minority” in most mainline denominations. Those who have risen to leadership in the top echelons of their religious groups, she said, have done so after long years of service.

“Some of them are also being recognized for their contributions and their work, like any other person who’s got longevity and wisdom, by being elected as bishops in their various communions,” she said of denominations such as the United Methodist Church and the ELCA.

Campbell-Reed also pointed out the role of women who serve churches despite being barred from pastoral positions in congregations of the country’s two largest denominations, the Southern Baptist Convention and the Roman Catholic Church.

Former Southern Baptist women like herself have joined the pastoral staffs of breakaway groups such as the Alliance of Baptists, which have women pastoring 40 percent of their congregations. And Catholic women constitute 80 percent of lay ecclesial ministers, who “are running the church on a day-to-day basis,” she said.

Patricia Mei Yin Chang, another co-author of “Clergy Women: An Uphill Calling,” said the new statistics prompt questions about the meaning behind them, such as changing attitudes of congregations or decreases in male clergy.

“Those are two really different causes,” she said, “and they may differ across denominations.”

Campbell-Reed, whose 20-page report concludes with two pages of questions for seminaries, churches, researchers and theologians, said the answers about the often-difficult job hunt for clergywomen relate to sexism.

“Just because more women enter into jobs in the church or are ordained does not mean that the problems of sexism have gone away,” she said. “At times, the bias is more implicit but no less real.”

Some women are reaching “tall-steeple” pulpits — leadership in prominent churches — instead of being relegated to struggling congregations, often in denominations on the decline.

Frederick-Gray said her denomination, which is working on race equality as well as gender equality, is seeing greater opportunities for women to preach in its largest churches. Of the 41 largest congregations in the Unitarian Universalist Association, 20 are served by women senior ministers.

Women’s leadership, Frederick-Gray said, is necessary at a time of decline for many religions.

“The decline is not the responsibility of women,” she said. “But maybe we will be the hope for the future.”

As usual, the clergyhag with the stereotypical hyphenated name has it wrong with those last comments. Putting women in positions of leadership is, and always has been, both a symptom and a significant contributing factor in declining membership and increasing apostasy. For a church to put women in positions of leadership is an indication of the liberalism that already exists within that body; and it invariably proves to be an indication of further apostasy and declining membership to come in whatever denomination adopts the unbiblical practice.

Recent articles from the Daily Telegraph document Britain's--and Western society's--increasing insanity

Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart rope:..
...Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! Isaiah 5:18, 20-21

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come...
...But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived. II Timothy 3:1, 13

Here, surely, is the world's record in the domain of the ridiculous and the contemptible... Sir Winston Churchill

Western society is getting more insane every day, fulfilling the prophecy above. The London Daily Telegraph has provided ample documentation of the increasing decadence in recent articles such as the following (links in original).

As reported by Camilla Turner, October 4, 2018:

Parents who refuse to let their son wear a skirt to school may need to be referred to social services, a council’s guidance has advised schools.

Mothers and fathers who dismiss a “gender questioning” child’s requests to change their name could also be a trigger for concern, according to Brighton and Hove City Council’s “Trans Inclusion Schools Toolkit”.

It comes after warnings that schools are "sowing confusion" in children's minds by over-promoting transgender issues, and that children are being encouraged to “unlearn” the difference between boys and girls.

The guidance advises teachers on how to handle a number of different scenarios, including if parents say: “I refuse to allow my son to change his name or wear skirts”.

Schools are advised that some parents may “struggle” to accept their child’s gender identity and it may be a long time before they accept the change.

“If a setting has a significant concern about the child’s wellbeing and or safety in relation to how the parents or carers are managing the exploration of the child’s gender identity it may be necessary and advisable to follow safeguarding procedures,” schools are told.

The Department for Education (DfE)’s statutory guidance on safeguarding says that staff with concerns about a child must alert the school’s safeguarding lead, and if necessary contact social services or the police...

...The guidance document, now in its third edition, was produced by Allsorts Youth Project, a charity that supports young people who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender or Queer (LGBTQ).

It advises that in “all cases”, transgender pupils should be allowed to use the changing room that corresponds to their gender identity, rather than their biological sex.

This means that any boy who identifies as a female should be allowed to use girls’ changing rooms, even if it makes other girls feel “uncomfortable”.

“It is important to ensure that these are safe environments for all by challenging underlying attitudes and bullying behaviours,” the guidance says...

...Earlier this year, it emerged that a teacher who was accused of “misgendering” a child was told by police that she had committed a hate crime.

The teacher, who claimed they were a “grammatical purist”, refused to acknowledge that the pupil self-identified as a boy and failed to use the pupil’s preferred pronouns of “he” or “him”.

As reported by Ms. Turner, October 11, 2018:

A student union is seeking to ban students from dressing up as Tories at fancy dress parties to avoid causing offence.

Kent University’s student union has drafted a new set of “Fancy Dress Guidelines” which say that groups are allowed to host fancy dress parties so long as costumes are not “offensive, discriminatory and prejudice to an individual’s race, gender, disability or sexual orientation or based on stereotypes”.

This is to ensure that the university is a “safe space" for undergraduates, where no one is embarrassed or upset by seeing a fellow student's costume, according to the Canterbury Journal.

Dressing up as “Tories” and “chavs” are given as examples of costumes to avoid, as these would breach the “class and political stereotypes” section of the guidance.

“Fancy Dress themes should also not be centred around political group stereotypes or the stereotypes of different levels of perceived class in the means to diminish their worth or validity,” the guidance says.

“This again would promote an unsafe and exclusive campus to which we do not tolerate.” Among the dozens of outfits it deems "offensive" are cowboys, Native Americans, priests and nuns, and anyone who wears a Mexican sombrero.

Students have also been warned against anything that has a sensitive historical or religious connotations. It gives the Crusades, Isis bombers, Israeli soldiers and The Prophet Mohammed as examples of costumes to avoid.

The guidance says: "Fancy Dress themes should also not be centred around political group stereotypes or the stereotypes of different levels of perceived class in the means to diminish their worth or validity.

"This again would promote an unsafe and exclusive campus to which we do not tolerate."

But the union does list cave people, aliens, Ancient Greeks and Romans, and doctors and nurses as acceptable attire choices.

Costumes of celebrities known for their sexual misconduct or abuse of power have also been banned, including the disgraced DJ Jimmy Savile and movie producer Harvey Weinstein.

Aaron Thompson, the Kent Union president, said: “Over the last few years we have received complaints over some student groups’ choice of fancy dress.

“As a result we have drafted some guidelines as a discussion point with some of our groups and as part of a proactive approach to ensure that student events remain inclusive.

“We of course want students to enjoy themselves and often host fancy dress parties in our own nightclub, but we would ask students to be mindful of their choices and whether any offence could be caused.”

He said the fancy dress policy document is currently in draft form, and will the union is seeking feedback on its proposals.

As reported by Jamie Johnson, October 17, 2018:

Waitrose is to change the name of its Gentleman’s Smoked Chicken Caesar Roll because feminist campaigners said it was sexist.

The roll, from Heston Blumenthal’s range at the supermarket, contains anchovy mayonnaise, similar to ‘gentleman’s relish’ but the name was branded “outrageous” on social media and the chain has issued an apology.

Amy Lamé, Sadiq Khan’s London night Czar posted an image of the product on Twitter and said: “I never knew sandwiches were gender specific. I’m female but thankfully Waitrose let me purchase this anyway.”

She tagged the organisation Everyday Sexism, who document instances of sexism experienced on a day to day basis.

Other people were quick to pile in with criticism of the supermarket, with Sian Murray saying: “What a ridiculous name!” and Joe Alessi calling it “outrageous”. Nikki Alvey said she was "disappointed" with the product's name.

The roll costs £3.80, but is currently on sale at a cutdown price of £2.85 and features a picture of a rooster dressed in waders holding a fishing rod with a fish at the end of the line.

Waitrose describes the roll as: “The ultimate Caesar salad to go. A parmesan ciabatta roll filled with pulled, smoked chicken breast, beechwood smoked bacon and Parmigiano Reggiano all topped with anchovy mayonnaise and Cos lettuce for crunch.”

The supermarket addressed the complaints about the product by apologising to anyone who felt offended by the name ‘Gentleman’s Smoked Chicken Caesar Roll’ and promised to change it.

A spokesperson told the Telegraph: "It's never our intention to cause offence - we're not dictating who should eat this sandwich - we hope anyone who tries it will love the distinctive flavours. However we are planning to change the name of the sandwich soon."

They did not confirm when the name change would happen, or what the new product will be called...

...The ‘Gentleman’s roll’ is not the first product to fall foul of sexism claims. Back in 2002, Nestle’s Yorkie chocolate bar launched a brash campaign in which it was labelled “Not for Girls.” The slogan stayed for ten years before being dropped quietly.

It's no wonder that schoolchildren are reporting increasing anxiety, given that the "adult" society is around them has declared war on nature and common sense. As reported by Laura Donnelly, October 9, 2018:

Schools will be asked to monitor children's happiness and mental health in a bid to tackle growing levels of anxiety among young people, the Prime Minister will announce today.

The new measures are part of a wider mental health strategy which will see thousands of therapists sent into classrooms, and annual publication of a ‘happiness index’ tracking the state of the nation’s youth.

Theresa May will also appoint the UK’s first minister for suicide prevention and £1.8m funding for the Samaritans, as she pledges to “end the stigma that has forced too many to suffer in silence”.

It comes amid concern about an epidemic of anxiety and distress among young people, with record levels of mental ill-health among a generation dealing with the fallout from social media.

Half of mental illness begins by the age of 14, and statistics due out later this year are expected to show levels far higher than has previously been recorded.

Under the plans, the Government will publish a “State of the Nation” report every year highlighting trends in young people’s mental well-being.

This will be the first time it has been given the same focus as physical health and academic attainment.

And all primary and secondary schools will be asked to regularly measure their pupils’ mental well-being, as part of lessons in relationships, sex and health education.

Officials said teachers would be expected to help young pupils to cope with modern pressures, while schools would be offered tools to help them assess pupil wellbeing.

It comes after The Daily Telegraph launched a duty of care campaign calling for more stringent regulation of sites like Facebook and Instagram, in order to protect children from harm.

A report from the National Audit Office today reveals a five-fold rise in the number of children and teenagers ending up at Accident and Emergency departments because of psychiatric problems over the last decade.

It also warns of falling numbers of child psychiatrists, at a time when demand continues to rise.

Today Mrs May will announce the launch of a new campaign to train a million people in mental health awareness, starting with a pilot in the West Midlands...

...Mrs May will announce that new mental health support teams will start working in schools across England next year.

The plans will see a new profession of healthcare professionals trained to deliver therapy in schools, and to ensure specialist help is given to those in need.

And she will appoint health minister Jackie Doyle-Price as the UK’s first minister for suicide prevention.

Around 4,500 people take their own lives each year in England and suicide remains the leading cause of death for men under 45.

In her new role, the minister will lead government efforts to cut the number of suicides, working with charities, clinicians and those personally affected by suicide.

It comes as Health Secretary Matt Hancock hosts the first ever Global Ministerial Mental Health Summit in London, attended by more than 50 countries as well as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

While taking what used to be considered sins or symptoms of madness and redefining them as normal and deserving of "human rights" protection from any opposing views, those who presume to define society's values are now criminalizing and pathologizing normal, although perhaps impolite, attitudes and behaviours. As reported by Martin Evans, October 17, 2018:

The drive to target hate crime is forcing police officers to spend valuable time investigating wolf-whistles, bad manners and impolite comments, a police leader has warned.

Sergeant Richard Cooke, the recently elected chairman of the West Midlands Police Federation, said forces were expected to record and follow up reports of hate crime, even when no criminal offence had taken place.

Writing in the Telegraph, Mr Cooke warns police officers would be dispatched to offer words of advice to people, but this meant they had less time to focus on "genuine crimes" such as burglary and violence.

Mr Cooke said he did not believe this was what the public expected of its police service. While applauding the principle behind protecting those at risk of hurtful abuse, officers have expressed their frustration at being drawn into what they see as social rather than criminal issues.

Mr Cooke, who represents 6,500 rank and file officers in the country's second largest police force, said: "I fear a dangerous precedent could be set, where our scant resources are skewed further and further away from the genuine crisis in public safety taking place on our urban homes and streets.

"Nobody, especially police officers, would ever want to see any elderly person or woman subjected to any sort of crime. The same goes for any other innocent member of the community. But we do have laws to address all manner of crimes and anti-social behaviour already."

Earlier this week the Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, announced that he had asked the Law Commission to consider whether misogyny and ageism should be added to the list of categories that constitute a hate crime.

It is hoped that by broadening out the definition of the offence, police and prosecutors will have more power to tackle and punish those who deliberately target vulnerable groups.

Newly published figures show how religious hate crimes rose by 40 per cent last year with attacks on Jewish people representing 12 percent of all offences.

Abuse against gay and transgender people and the disabled has also risen.

But there are increasing warnings that in the drive to identify and tackle the problem, police priorities are being impacted.

Mr Cooke said: "We all abhor and want to end genuine crimes motivated or aggravated by intolerance and prejudice. They should be investigated, and those who commit them should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, as should those who incite them."

But he went on: "Let us focus urgently on genuine crime, supported by basic evidence. Let’s not encourage people to think we can solve deep social problems or give impolite people manners.

"Are we really going to be required to routinely record, and potentially act on, incidents like a builder’s wolf whistle or an insensitive comment towards an elderly driver?

"I do not believe for one second that this is what the public, outside of the politically correct 'court of Twitter', expects or wants us to do."

South Yorkshire Police recently came in for criticism after urging people to report insults that did not necessarily constitute hate crimes.

Last month the newly elected chairman of the Police Federation, John Apter, warned that common sense policing was disappearing with officers forced to spend time intervening in trivial social media disputes rather than attending burglaries and other serious crimes.

He said it was time for a debate sensible debate about what the public expected of its police service.

"Where we get drawn into local disagreements, the argument over the remote control, the dispute in the playground, the row on Facebook it is frustrating. I certainly think police time can be better spent and it makes a mockery when we are so stretched," he said.

The immaturity and lack of self-discipline that often characterizes young people who are away from home without adult supervision for the first time is now considered a sign of mental illness, as reported by Ms. Turner, October 16, 2018:

For university students, falling asleep during lectures after staying up all night partying was once considered par for the course.

But now nodding off during classes at Buckingham University will be treated as a possible sign of a mental health disorder.

Under new plans, every member of staff at the university will be given mental health first aid training so they can spot signs of potential distress among students.

Starting from January, all university employees - from professors to cleaners, caterers and gardeners - will be enrolled on a compulsory half-day training course in mental health. They will also be able to sign up for a longer two-day course and become a mental health champion.

Dee Bunker, head of welfare at Buckingham University who is overseeing the staff training programme, said: “We will teach about the signs and symptoms of stress and of someone who is depressed: not being engaged, not attending classes, a lack of eye contact or a lack of sleep.

“If someone is anxious you may find them pale, sweating, wringing their hands or nervous. They may not be able to concentrate, look you in the eye, hold a conversation, sit still or sit in same room with you.”

Academics will be taught that if a “student is falling asleep in your lecture”, this could serve as “an indication that they are not sleeping at night” due to anxiety or depression.

"Our hope is that no member of staff would ever walk past anyone who is upset,” Ms Bunker said. “This training gives people the knowledge and confidence to say: ‘Are you ok? Is there anything I can help with?’ and signpost them towards where they can get more help.”

Ms Bunker said that staff will not be expected to diagnose mental health conditions on the spot. “It won’t make you an expert - but it means you won’t ignore someone who is distressed,” she added.

It is the latest in a series of mental health initiatives launched by Buckingham University, which will host a wellbeing in education conference this Friday.

Sir Anthony Seldon, the university's vice-Chancellor, said: "No member of staff should walk past a student clearly in distress. The aim is to save lives and we should all be playing our part.”

He has previously warned that universities are turning a blind eye to freshers’ week “excesses” and urged fellow institutions to end their “permissive” culture.

Sir Anthony, a former headmaster at Wellington College, said that said that first-year students should be offered alternative activities to parties and social events where heavy drinking and drug-taking are prevalent.

“Every student should be taught how to breathe deeply and to control the breath to manage stress,” the report said.

“Students who learn how to relax deeply and practise yoga, tai chi, pilates or other relaxation approaches develop growing resilience and confidence for life.”

His report, published last year by the Higher Education Policy Institute, outlines how to create "positive universities" also suggests first-year students take psychology courses that teach them about the importance of wellbeing and good mental health.

It suggests all students should be offered mindfulness classes, as well as a psychology programme in their first year which teaches them skills such as resilience, how to deal with emotions, build relationships and identify and use their own strengths...

Of course, it could just be that students drink and have parties because they enjoy it, and regard such activities as part of university life. The perceptive reader will notice that the Vice-Chancellor's solution involves mindfulness, a Buddhist practice masquerading as non-religious. I recommend searching the site of Lighthouse Trails Research Project for information on mindfulness.