How'd I miss this one? Richard Dawkins has given money toward the running of a summer camp for the young and godless. A letter-writer to the Times comments:
Maybe Dawkins's atheist kiddy camps can educate these already overindulged middle-class children as to why more than 80% of all voluntary and charity work in this country is carried out by faith (mostly Jewish and Christian) groups. That he might prevent them from turning out to be as smug, selfish and generally joyless as the majority of adult atheists is already a lost cause, I fear.Julie Burchill
Brighton
Julie Burchill! Now there's a name I haven't seen in print for ages. She used to do music writing in the 1980s, when I read the music press regularly, and I recall seeing her name from time to time since attached to rather strident political commentary. Definitely a woman not to be tangled with. What's she up to now? Well, the onetime atheist now calls herself "a Christian Zionist, as well as a Christian feminist and a Christian socialist.," adding, " But over the past two decades, almost without me knowing it, the Christian part has become the most important."
Julie Burchill, just imagine! The converted Anglican leftie goes on:
[H]opefully, Bishops Sentamu or Nazir-Ali will be leading our raggle-taggle legions soon. I've come to the conclusion that the rejuvenation of our church will come from its non-white leaders and worshippers, unburdened as they are with pallid guilt.Meanwhile, I'm about to start my second volunteer job, and I shall doubtless also continue to give away money like a sailor on shore leave. It's not so much the camel and the eye of the needle jive I subscribe to - more the great Andrew Carnegie's strict Protestant dictum: "He who dies rich dies shamed."
My favourite vicar, the Reverend Gavin Ashenden of Sussex University, never says, "I am a Christian," but rather "I'm trying to be a Christian". Me too. Between the darkness that faces me from within and the darkness that faces me from without, it may just prove to be the hardest thing I've ever done. I love it.
Julie Burchill may have found Jesus, but she hasn't lost her punk edge. I bet she and I would violently disagree on 10 things before breakfast, but learning what road life has taken her on makes me feel good. I'll say a prayer for her, and hope she would do the same for me.
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Secular Charities. Those that do good because it's the right thing, not for heavenly gains or hellish avoidances.
That is not why Christians do these things, you either have no understanding of Christian beliefs or are intentionally perverting them. One could say that secular charities do what they do to gain the praises of men, couldn't one?
As far as how much churches "give back", bear in mind that charity is not the primary purpose of churches, the primary goal of churches is the formation of Christian communities (many of whose members then engage in charitable work). Christian para-church organizations whose primary goal is charity do as well or better than their secular counterparts. Also bear in mind that accounting can be rather slippery and that many of the expenses of a church could be recast in charitable terms if necessary. For instance, the pastor's salary could be considered an "educational" expense based on his weekly sermons. (Many charities do the same thing, they include an "educational" brochure in with their fund-raising materials and then classify the whole mailing as "educational" rather than as fund-raising.)
Eric, can you give a citation for your claim? It seems a pretty extreme claim to make, esp. given that "religious groups" is a very broad category. If some are indeed giving only 10% to the needy, surely some are giving more (or less)--they're not all run by the same governing board or anything. Are you saying that churches give about 10% of ALL their money to the needy? (Including the money meant for maintaining buildings and buying books?) Because that would be a completely different subject.
My own church's welfare system/humanitarian aid is run entirely by volunteers and I donate to it partly because I know that dollars are going to their intended destination.
http://www.punk77.co.uk/groups/womeninpunk2.htm
Julie Burchill along with her sidekick Tony Parsons were solely responsible for mapping the NME lifeline to Punk Rock in its adolescent years of 1976-79 .This teenage Bristolian answered an ad for a 'hip young gunslinger' in the New Musical Express and luckily the serious music paper that had no finger on the pulse of any teenager offered her the job. She up and left her Bristol roots and headed to the metropolis in early 1976. She went on to cram many a blank page with wit, venom, and good old fashioned libel. This 16 year old typewriter baby was working in an enviroment of people taking drugs, getting drunk and having nervous breakdowns and all this was just in the NME offices alone ! Take all this and stick it against a backdrop of Punk Rock and what more could a 16 year old want ? She became the hack from hell which got her noticed and soon moved on to more mainstream journalism when punks first wave crashed.But not before a parting shot of venom in 'The Boy Looked At Johnny' where she slags the whole scene. Julie, after two marriages ( bye bye Tony) and a short time as a lesbian, and being a mother is still as venomous and agressive in her writing style but in tabloid publications such as the Telegraph,Time Out and Londons Evening Standard. Her targets are now political or simpering books like her one on Diana. Another punk made good or bad ? Who cares ?
Oh my...
Burchill's frothymouthed, pre-suicide-bomber malice is precisely why atheist children need refuges in the first place.
Rod, if she'd written those exact same words about Sarah Palin's kids would you have praised her like this?
I never thought I'd be defending Julie Burchill but how on earth does calling kids 'over-indulged' equate to 'nasty names'? I've just been in a cafe. Nasty, spoiled, ten year old brat lying over three seats screaming. Mummy-wummy-kins said, "Oh, darling pixie-lixie-kins, what *is* the matter? You're making mummy feel bad." Brat kept screaming. People left their lunch. Brat kept going. Over-indulged is the nicest thing that can be said about far, far too many children.
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