It could be said that there is not a lot of common ground between the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Catholic Church. The Watchtower, the JW’s publication, is seldom complimentary about Catholic doctrine, and telling the Jehovah’s Witness person who knocks at your door “I’m a Roman Catholic” is often enough to put them right off their spiel. There seems to be a silent compact that “RCs” are too difficult to convert, so it’s a fool’s errand to persist. I am told they also immediately depart if told “I used to be a JW, but I apostatised.”
The population at large often considers Jehovah’s Witness people a bore and a nuisance. Many are the comedians’ jokes about the ordeal of finding a JW on the doorstep. Even during World War II, the researchers at Mass Observation (the “listening post” which investigated and reported on the topics that preoccupied the general population) found many people regarded these religious evangelists as absolute pests.
Nevertheless, they deserve respect for their commitment and, indeed, their bravery. They were persecuted by the Nazis, made to wear purple and consigned to concentration camps. When told they could walk free if they recanted their faith, most of them did not do so. When sentenced to death, they would call out: “Thou shalt not kill.” To adhere to total pacifism in the face of terror is surely admirable.
And now the Jehovah’s Witnesses are being subjected to what amounts to repression in Russia, after the Supreme Court in Moscow branded them “extremists” and ruled that their 395 local organisations must be “liquidated”.
The British Government, represented by Baroness Anelay of the Foreign Office, has expressed “alarm” at this step, which, as she says, “effectively criminalises the peaceful worship of 175,000 Russian citizens”. Britain has called on the Russian government to “uphold its international commitment to freedom of religion”.
Bravo, too, to the Rev Giles Fraser, the Anglican priest who often broadcasts on BBC Radio 4, for defending the Jehovah’s Witnesses. They’re not everyone’s cup of tea, but they are peaceful people who are entitled to practise their faith. We should all uphold that.
Russia has always disliked any form of faith which is not specifically and patriotically Russian: there is a deep historic habit of state control, which is evidently coming to the surface again.
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Jeremy Corbyn says that if he becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, he will make St Patrick’s Day (March 17), St George’s Day (April 23), St Andrew’s Day (November 30) and St David’s Day (March 1) British public holidays. This, he says, would bring more parity between British bank holidays and Continental ones.
But, Jeremy dear, let me explain to you once again: Continental public holidays are based on their Christian Catholic heritage! If England hadn’t embraced the Protestant revolution, these ancient holy days would have continued. You will recall that the Cromwellian influence came to regard all holy days as, basically, “skiving”, and not in tune with the Protestant work ethic, which was to keep the shoulder to the wheel.
In France, moreover, the trade unions purposely ignored the secularists who called for the suppression of holy days. And thus Ascension, Assumption, Pentecost and All Saints’ Day are sacred to French workers’ rights. In Britain, the trade unions had no such tradition.
You know what you have to do, Jeremy. If you want saints’ days, then it’s back to honouring the old saints – no invocation without representation!
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Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, has taken some stick for his Evangelical – perhaps one might say fundamentalist – views on homosexuality, which he has said in the past he considers sinful. In television interviews, he’s been dragged over the coals about this, often to his discomfort. The outspoken (and atheist) Spiked commentator Brendan O’Neill writes that this is disgraceful: Mr Farron is fully entitled to adhere to his own personal convictions. He has never said he would change the law, or do anything restrictive, bad or unpleasant to homosexual people. But he should not be harangued for his personal beliefs, following the words of St Paul. On a lesser scale, as with the Russians, it’s a matter of freedom of belief.
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