Shall we Sing a Song for you?

No, don’t re-adjust your sets, this really is a post on SWS about local politics! In fact, I would have posted this a few weeks ago but I was waiting for Gary to get me stuff.

On Saturday 4th February there was a protest at the DUP’s Annual Conference – by Christians. They were protesting because the party had told their local councillors to abstain from voting on the issue of allowing council premises to be used for ‘civil partnerships’. The leaflet that the protestors handed out at the Conference explains:

4th February 2006
Dear DUP Delegate,

We are a group of concerned Christians who would like to lobby the DUP to change their position on Local Councils’ recent vote on Civil Partnership ceremonies.

Late last year Central Government legislated to introduce civil partnerships throughout the United Kingdom. The DUP, quite rightly, opposed this legislation as homosexuality is so contrary to God’s Word and such a heinous sin in His sight.

Following this legislation Local Councils were requested to grant all the trappings of a marriage ceremony to these lesbian and gay couples. Unfortunately, due to the threat of legal action, all councils to date have allowed this request to be granted.

While we understand the repercussions of a ‘No’ vote on this issue, we cannot support the decision of the DUP to abstain on this hugely important moral issue. Therefore, we request that the party as a whole, reconsiders their position, and regardless of the threat of fines and loss of Council seats, ‘dare to be a Daniel’ (Remember Daniel risked much more – Daniel ch 5), and from now on vote AGAINST these proposals.

Additionally, the Local Councils that have already allowed these non-statutory ceremonies to be granted by their abstentions, should be given the support of the wider party to revisit this vote at the earliest opportunity to have this affront to human decency overturned.

Daniel’s God still lives today, and if Christians are prepared to stand for Him, He WILL reward their actions. It is on this promise we stand as we appeal to the DUP to reconsider their position on this vitally important issue.

Yours Sincerely,

Concerned Christian

So basically, the DUP have been threatened with fines and the loss of council seats if they try and block the homosexual legislation, so they’re trying to force all their councillors to abstain and let it through. They aren’t going to stand up for righteousness if it will cost them as a party.

The media are having a field day, showing how their practice is far different from their rhetoric, but anyone they interview from the party won’t give a straight answer at all. It was reported in the News Letter that Ian Paisley said the DUP was ‘a political party, not a church’. A party source said that this issue was a sign of strain between the DUP’s ‘spiritual’ and ‘political’ wings at “grass-roots level” (Irish News – 31 Jan 2006)

To really get a flavour of what is going on, you can listen to part of Radio Ulster’s Sunday Sequence programme from the 5th of February. The DUP are torn to shreds in the program as they have no comeback. George Dawson is on and he just won’t answer the questions they throw at him. Instead, he calls the protestors ‘anti-politics’ and even brings in (and of course misrepresents) the Covenanter position!

About 3 or 4 minutes into the broadcast, Paisley comes out with the worst thing I’ve ever heard him say. The interviewer asks him “Are you at all taken aback to find the DUP facing protests?” and Paisley replies “If they called the master of the house, as Christ said, Beelzebub, what will they not call His servants”. This is against people who are protesting that the party is compromising on homosexuality! I can’t believe how bad that statement is – not to mention that as usual he doesn’t attempt to answer why the party is compromising on homosexuality. Apparently the DUP have a record over the last 30 years of compromising when to stand firm would really cost them – ig over Sabbath trading of pubs etc. DUP supporters are trying to defend themselves by saying it would be ‘illegal’ to vote ‘No’ – Paisley’s been in jail 3 times and suddenly they’re all concerned whether something is technically illegal or not!

The DUP are even saying themselves (contrary to what many are led to believe) that they’re not a Christian party, but just a secular party with a religious influence. Of course, the DUP have never claimed to stand for the Kingship of Christ in all areas of life, but that hasn’t stopped many RPs voting for them. Maybe now those who think that voting for the DUP is better than not voting will reconsider.

The protest has also harmed the Free Presbyterian Church as their ministers have come out in support of the Party rather than the cause of Righteousness. It used to always rile me in school when even my friends used to think I belonged to the Frees, and many people believe that there’s not much difference between the FPC and the RPC apart from a letter, or maybe the fact that they sing man-made-hymns. I have friends and relatives who are all good people that belong to the Frees, but I’ve really had my eyes opened about the denomination from talking to my roommate Gary (who, in case you don’t know, was in the Free P College training for the ministry before he gave up the Fundamentalism and joined the RPs). He wrote 40 reasons why he left them, and says he could write many more now, but the main points are:

- They’re not Reformed (in doctrine, worship or practice)
- They’re not Presbyterian
- They don’t administer biblical church discipline
- They let women lead in public worship and even preach on the mission field!

Gary also tells me that many of them hold that the blood of Christ was divine (and of course, if Christ wasn’t fully human he could save no humans) and that Paisley in fact holds that the after Christ’s death, his blood was collected up and God keeps it in Heaven (in a jar or something presumably!). People are then sprinkled with ‘the blood’ when they’re converted and Frees even pray for it to be put on buildings to keep the devil out! If a sermon mentions ‘the blood’, the gospel has been preached. If it doesn’t, it hasn’t, no matter what the rest of the content is. This just seems so weird that I feel that Gary may be on the drugs again, but he assures me its true. This article on the Loughbrickland site is actually there to refute their views (basically, the historic Reformed position has been that when the epistles speak of ‘the blood of Christ’, they are referring to the virtue and effectiveness of Christ’s life and sufferings, which reached its highest point in the shedding of His blood on the cross).

G summarises it that they treat the blood as a superstitious charm which was the view of the papacy before being adopted by American ‘Mentalists.

Related Links: Sunday Times – 5th Feb 2006: A poll they did at the conference showed that 36% of those questioned felt that the party should have opposed the use of council premises for homosexual civil partnerships

Crawford has a post on Irish Reformation promoting the Psalms. Hopefully most SWS readers are already convinced that “the most pious productions of uninspired men are a shallow stream; the Psalms an unfathomable and shoreless ocean” (Henry Cooke) but thinking our worship is great because we only sing the psalms is one of the easiest traps we can fall into. We often tell man-made-hymn-singers about how the Psalms represent every emotion – but how often do we actually sing all these different emotions? Crawford reminds us:

Merely singing Psalms may not answer all our needs. Even our use of the Psalms can be emotionally selective. Very often our use of the Psalms reflects the development of a canon within the canon, a much smaller list of Psalms that we deem appropriate to New Testament worship. Instead of stretching our emotional imbalance, misuse of the Psalms can reinforce it. Only the prayerful, spiritual and especially systematic singing of the Psalms can prevent our worship from becoming emotionally – not to mention theologically – stunted. If we are going to sing the Psalms, we need to sing them all.

We would react with horror at the thought of a minister picking random passages rather than preaching systematically though Scripture, but have we ever considered ‘systematic singing of the Psalms’? Of course, the two things aren’t the same, and it’s great to have all the psalms based around what the preaching is on, but I feel that Crawford’s is a timely warning. I know Dromore are systematically singing through the new Psalter (every verse, not just every psalm) with 2 psalms on Lord’s Day evenings, but are many others doing it? (It’s a good thing to do in Family Worship). Being vacant, we’ve noticed that visiting ministers do tend to pick the same psalms (which reminds me of a pet annoyance of mine: only about one in five visiting ministers actually bother explaining the psalm before we sing it rather than just reading out a few verses!). But it’s still better becoming more familiar with God’s Word by singing the same Psalms a lot than singing what some man thought up!

I was just going to post a few anecdotes and funny clips from the weekend, but Jeff’s been sent to Coventry for a few weeks so here are the talks to keep you ticking over till he comes back:

Talk 1: Problems, Source and Purpose of Spiritual Gifts
Talk 2: Distribution and Variety of Spiritual Gifts
Talk 3: Discovering, Using and Developing your Spiritual Gifts

And here’s the bonus features you won’t get on rpc.org:

Why if cooks want people to bring tray bakes and bars to the kitchen they should say it straight out
FAO: Rich Ganz
John George doing a couple of book reviews
Questions people asked Robert R before the 3rd talk

I also recorded a few psalms with the voice recorder on my phone and they turned out quite well: Psalm 123 (Tune: Humility) and Psalm 3 (Tune: Belmont – beautfully raised by James Bun). (Those mp3s won’t play in Winamp for me, but they play in everything else). The singing at camp was amazing as always.

Other than that I don’t have much to say about what was a very good weekend. There were 103 people there including committee and cooks. The Beach Games were cancelled on Saturday for the second year running, but we (those who hadn’t rushed off to play tiddly winks for their club that is) still went and the Western Presbytery drew 10-10 with the rest in a straight 90 minute football match. Big Sam got us all to sign the guestbook at Glenmanus. Alarmingly, Cream Bun spells his own name wrong. I did my usual. I’ve now signed guestbooks at Cregagh Road, Newry (twice I think), Glenmanus, the Sterrett’s and Shakespeare’s birthplace or suchlike in England. I might take it up as a hobby. Although I believe guestbooks are becoming less popular. Peter says that Carrick don’t have one because they (guestbooks) aren’t Scriptural. However that didn’t stop Carrick putting up Christmas Trees and celebrating Halloween (well, Oakfield Community Centre at least!). Oh, and despite the party now being less popular than ever, Andrew A says its set in stone – “the laws of the Medes and Persians and all that”. The boys were particularly grieved that they missed seeing Chelsea get stuffed 3-0 by Middlesborough. If you haven’t seen the goals yet, you can download them here.

STOP PRESS: (I always wanted to say that). I was just about to post this when I found that Alistair Rolleston aka Colin Creevey (for taking loads of pitures) has posted loads of snaps of the weekend on bebo:

Setting up for football on Saturday afternoon. Leeroy’s having a rather animated conversation with me there.

Cromie Robert – the West’s star striker

…Although only after him and John McCune had made another charge up the ‘just clean mad’ charts by running headlong into the sea

Boring girls going for a walk

“Yeah great” as Willy would say

The party – doesn’t it just scream ‘FUN!’ at you?

Joel McCavro – he should hang around with us types more often

Other non-camp (chortle) stuff:

I wasn’t posting that much recently, but I hope you’re all aware of the linkblog over there on the right where I link to (and usually comment on) interesting sites / stories I came across. If you click on the word ‘Linkblog’ it will take you to the archive of all the stuff I’ve posted, so you can see what you’ve missed if the 3 most recent ones have changed since you were last on.
Got my exam results there: 62 (Imperial Germany), 63 (Conquest to Charter ig Medieval English History) and 71 (Plantations and Parliaments ig British History 1600-1660 – I answered a question on ‘How revolutionary were the Covenanters?’ in the exam). Getting a first’s a bit embarrassing, musn’t be playing enough pro evo…
Oh, and I updated my Highlights of 2005 post as I had a few photos I didn’t want to go to waste…

1. The Yorkie place – “why was Neil lying down?” – Joel

2. “When in Rome…speak Latin” – Joel

3. “Queen’s is lit” – Joel

4. Joel commented that a brick wall was clocked by speed cameras doing 15 mph. However I was left wondering what speed it was actually doing?

5. “Tell Lynda her face rings a bell” – Joel

6. “Common sense – not so common these days” – Joel

7.

“Or without…”

And here’s a quote that will be beneficial to everyone. Via Joel via Mark via John Woodside:

“Do the spiritual things naturally and the natural things spiritually”

Oh, and don’t use this picture tomorrow: