Muscular Christianity or latent homosexuality?

Muscular Christianity or latent homosexuality? Beth Skwarecki has noticed something rather strange about a fundamentalist Christian in the US of A called Jack Chick who
denounces homosexuality while filling his evangelistic tracts with
burly men mysteriously taking their shirts off. Mmmm, I wonder what's
going on there...

Non-religious spring school holidays

This report in the Observer on Sunday provoked "outrage" from some Christians. The Observer also commented that "Christianity remains a force for some social good in Britain. But
for all that some define Britain as a Christian society, we must
recognise that it remains Christian in name more than in observance.
With church attendance in sharp decline, the de-coupling of state
institutions and organised religion is long overdue."

I couldn't agree more. If it makes educational sense for schools to
have fixed holidays, then the Church should be supporting the changes,
as it is for the benefit of children's education and therefore society.
For Colin Hart of the Daily-Mail-moralistic and increasingly ridiculous
"Christian" Institute to claim that the fact that one-third of the British people attend
church at Easter means that we should have school holidays around it is
nonsense. We don't even have school on Sundays, so people can still go
to church at Easter. There would still be public holidays for Good
Friday and Easter Monday.

In fact, local authorities in mainly Christian areas can still
choose to have their Spring holiday over Easter if they wish, so no
change required. But in mainly Muslim, Jewish or Hindu areas, the
authority could change the holidays if is was more appropriate to do so.

The way Christians seem to get het up about the slightest affront to their faith is so annoying. They don't seem able to accept that Britain is a multi-faith society nowadays. They're like the Conservative neo-imperialists who can't see the global picture. Sad.

Death in the afternoon

So Jenny and I are sitting on a bench in the middle of
Stow-on-the-Wold on Sunday afternoon, surrounded by grass, creamy
Cotswold stone buildings, tourists with ice creams and with the sun
blazing down from a clear blue sky. May in England doesn't get much
better.

And there's this family - father, mother, daughter, and grandparents
- wandering near us. Grandfather taking photos of granddaughter
playing. Father and grandmother laughing. The girl, who is aged around
4, settles up next to grandmother on bench opposite us, and her voice
cuts through the chatter of a village afternoon. "Why did Mummy died?
Why did Mummy died?"

Grandmother's voice is inaudible as she tries to explain - or can
anyone explain? "Mother" is probably actually mother's sister, or
perhaps another aunty or just a friend. The family scene that we
thought we were watching was not quite what it seemed. Death is hardly
an uncommon or distant experience. But sometimes we forget that it gets
everywhere.

We felt sorry for that little girl, growing up without her mummy.
But she isn't alone. We went home soon afterwards, and forgot about
her. Almost.