THE DAILY BLADE: G-d Makes A Comeback In Europe
Wall Street Journal reporter Andrew Higgins notes that in Europe, which has become emphatically secular, "Christian groups are growing, faith is more public, and wonders, " Is supply-side economics the explanation?"
This anecdote with which Higgins leads off nicely illustrates the dichotomous relationship that Swedes have with G-d and Lutheranism, still – though nominally – the country’s state religion:
Late last year, a Swedish hotel guest named Stefan Jansson grew upset when he found a Bible in his room. He fired off an email to the hotel chain, saying the presence of the Christian scriptures was "boring and stupefying." This spring, the Scandic chain, Scandinavia's biggest, ordered the New Testaments removed.
In a country where barely 3% of the population goes to church each week, the affair seemed just another step in Christian Europe's long march toward secularism. Then something odd happened: A national furor erupted. …
Scandic, which had started keeping its Bibles behind the front desk, put the New Testament back in guest rooms.
But why is G-d resurgent in Europe? "Part of the reason, pretty much everyone agrees, is an influx of devout immigrants. ... [T]he demise of Christianity in Europe has led to warnings that the continent risks becoming "Eurabia," a land dominated by Islam."
Here's how the fear that Europe is becoming inexorably Islamicized explains market forces driving people back to the pews, according to Higgins:
Some scholars and Christian activists, however, are pushing a more controversial explanation: the laws of economics. As centuries-old churches long favored by the state lose their monopoly grip, Europe's highly regulated market for religion is opening up to leaner, more-aggressive religious "firms." The result, they say, is a supply-side stimulus to faith. …
In the U.S., the American Revolution ended ecclesiastical hegemony in the 11 colonies that had an established church and unleashed a raucous tide of religious competition. As Methodists, Baptists, Shakers and other churches proliferated, church-going rose, reaching around 50% in the early part of the 20th century, he says.
Europe never developed such a religious bazaar. The Church of Sweden, the Church of England, the Catholic Church in Italy and France, state-funded churches in Germany and others lost their de-facto "monopoly" status to other denominations over a century ago. But they retained their ties to the state and economic privileges.
The bottom line: "Competition" from a huge influx of Muslim immigrants into Sweden is spurring renewed interest in the Church of Sweden, and in other Christian denominations.
Can Samson Slay Spiderman In The Store?
Wal-Mart will be stocking 425 of its 3,300 stores with faith-based toys from One2believe, to cater to parents who prefer that their children play with a Queen Esther doll or a Samson action figure than a Bratz doll or a Spiderman action figure. The chosen stores - those that "sell a lot of bibles," Wal-Mart spokeswoman Melissa O'Brien tells USA Today - will devote two feet of shelf space to the One2believe line:
The toys are based on biblical stories. For example, there's a set of 3-inch figures based on Daniel in the lion's den for about $7. A 12-inch talking Jesus doll is about $15. And 14-inch Samson or Goliath action figures are about $20.
Toy industry experts disagree on whether the One2believe toys, meant for kids from pre-school to pre-teen, will sell well in a big box store:
But until now, most faith-based toys have sold successfully only in specialty religious stores, not at mass-market retailers, warns Jim Silver, editor of Toy Wishes magazine. …
Since 9/11, there's been a surge in faith-based products, says Bob Starnes, vice president of licensing at Big Idea, the firm behind VeggieTales.
Parents who don’t live in the vicinity of a Wal-Mart that carries the bible-based toys can purchase them online at one2believe.com.
D.C. Will Defend Its Handgun Ban Before Supreme Court
After the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled that a ban on handguns enacted in 1976 is unconstitutional on the grounds that the Second Amendment applies to individuals as well as to militias, D.C. Mayor Adrian M. Fenty vowed to petition the Supreme Court to overturn the lower court ruling. This week, Fenty announced that he will soon make good on his promise.
The ban prohibits D.C. residents from keeping handguns in their homes and carrying a gun without a license. Licensed firearms are required to be kept unloaded and disassembled – to ensure that they cannot be used in just the sort of circumstances that enables an armed individual to avoid becoming another rape or murder statistic.
Six D.C. residents challenged the ban, because they wanted to keep guns in their homes to protect themselves against crime.
If the justices agree to hear the case, it would be the first Second Amendment case before the high court in 70 years.
The Founding Fathers would no doubt be perplexed that their clear and forthright statement that gun ownership was a natural individual right is controversial and open to interpretation.
In a commentary published by Townhall.com, Terence P. Jeffrey, the editor of Human Events, compares the attitude towards firearms by municipal authorities in Newton, MA, in 1775 and Washington, D.C, in 2007:
On Jan. 2, 1775 … the good people of Newton held a town meeting. …
"Voted," say the town records, "that the Selectmen use their best discretion in providing fire-arms for the poor of the town who are unable to provide for themselves."
D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty does not see guns the way our Founders did. In his view, they are not tools for defending individual liberty, they are instruments of criminality. …
Because the District implicitly argued that Founding-era-type militias no longer exist, [Appellate Judge Laurence] Silberman said, the unavoidable conclusion, if the District's argument is accepted, is that the Second Amendment is meaningless.
"(I)n fact, at oral argument, appellees' counsel asserted that it would be constitutional for the District to ban all firearms outright," said Silberman. "In short, we take the District's position to be that the Second Amendment is a dead letter."
The generation of Americans who ratified the Second Amendment would see such an outcome as a prelude to the extermination of all the other rights of the "people" recognized in the Constitution. …
What’s at stake? As Jeffrey notes, "Three months after the people of Newton resolved to provide firearms for the poor, English regulars marched on nearby Concord with the aim of disarming the American people."
An armed populace willing and able to defend their Constitutional rights is the only sure-fire guarantee of keeping those rights.
As I was able to point out in a letter to the WaPo 5/20, I work graveyard in a convenience store where I have been robbed seven times. I have on two other occasions been sexually assaulted. I was unarmed. No police officer was ever there, just him and me. So unless and until the Court can take the weapon out of his hands, don't take the gun out of mine. And before someone says something about guns being the problem rather than the solution, the scariest robbery of the bunch was a knife wielder. He came tearing around the counter right up to me and I knew with religious conviction I was going to die. And all I could do was flinch. Let the Court keep that in mind.
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After all you have been through, good for you that you are armed an know how to use a gun! Liberals love to claim that criminals will disarm you and kill you with your own gun. Not if you've been through an NRA course!
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Why do you leave out the 'o' in in the spelling of God (i.e. G_d)? Is this some type of political correctness that I don't know about?
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This is a practice that The Stiletto adopted from an Orthodox Jewish friend. In his religion, it is disrespectful to spell out "G-d." The Stiletto belongs to a Christian denomination that does not get ashes on Ash Wednesday, but she adopted that practice from her Catholic friends. The Stiletto regards both as expressions of humility.
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