Shall we Sing a Song for you?

At last week’s IFA EGM yet another attempt was made to scrap the law banning football being played on the Lord’s Day over here. Members voted 69 to 28 to lift the restrictions, however the vote fell just short of the 75% majority needed to change the law. This was a big change from last year, when a similar motion was defeated by 54 votes to 28. (Incidentally, the number of potential voters is approx. 850, one from each club!).

Since then, some joker is trying to sue the IFA for ‘unlawful discrimination’ for not letting him organise six-a-side football competitions on a Sunday. The report says:

The civil bill seeks a declaration that the IFA have discriminated on grounds of religious belief against the plaintiff in refusing to provide goods, facilities or services for organising the playing of competitive football on a Sunday, seeks an injunction restraining the IFA from doing this, and seeks damages.

However, as someone has asked on ILF, ‘What religion is it that requires you to play football on a Sunday?’

As usual following such a vote, Sabbath observers are getting a bashing in the press. Some punk called Eamon Sweeney launched a 2-page rant against ‘the fifth commandment’ (sic) in this week’s Londonderry Sentinel. Among other gems, he comes out with:

Biblical literalism has a lot to answer for in Northern Ireland. It has been used for excusing murder and mayhem on our streets for the best part of 40 years.

Egg-chaser Richard Bullick provides a slightly less deranged view in today’s News Letter. It’s still pretty bad. His ‘Watching the Hypocrites’ article is based on the assumption that those who voted against Sunday Football will happily sit down and watch the World Cup Final on Sunday week. Sadly this may well be true in the case of some, but Bullick leaves no room for the possibility that people exist who will try to consistently oppose Sunday sport of whatever form. He also suggests that shopowners are less likely to keep their status as conscientious objectors if they are going to be hit financially in the face of Sunday trading. The article is accompanied by a picture of Andrew Trimble, golden boy of both Ulster Evangelicals and anti-Sabbatarians, and it is implied that he is the example Christians should be following. Bullick however does mention some who refused to play on Sundays…before basically labelling them and us as sectarian!

“The issue has also unfortunate implications in terms of the religious divide in Northern Ireland as almost all opposition to Sunday sport appears to come from the Protestant community…If it supports policies or practices which pander to beliefs almost exclusively rooted on one side of the divide here, the IFA will have given Northern Ireland’s enemies within another rod with which to beat the Association…after all the efforts to give sectarianism the boot, the Sunday soccer issue has the potential to make the IFA look like bigots, which would be most unfortunate.”

“Above all you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you.” Exodus 31:13

Related posts: The Sabbath Football issue (just over a year ago)

SWS: Keeping Strob updated with goings on in the RPCI

I took a tour down to Synod with my dad for the Tuesday morning and afternoon sessions. We arrived just after Andrew Kerr had given 14 reasons why he had left the PCI and was applying to become a minister in the RPCI. It would have been good to hear them! (Anyone take notes?!) Apparently worship and ecumenicalism featured highly.

Funniest moment came after about 10 minutes of trying to decide which Monday in September to have the day of prayer on, when Mr S. asked if he could be radical and propose it take place on a Tuesday! (Which was initially accepted, but in the end it reverted back to Monday!)

Played h’s and v’s at lunch time with the college boys.

That’s about it. Tullyvallen is nice apart from being nearly 2 hours away and there being no mobile reception! On the Wednesday they voted to allow sessions to decide whether to use communion tokens or not.

Dublin Airport:

Spending a night in an airport is NOT a great way to start a holiday!

Debs stole some boy’s wheelchair as there were no chairs available. The rest of us tried to sleep on a glass floor

Venice:

Linds and Debbie

St. Mark’s Square

Bombing around in a boat

Sunset

Florence:

The 4th biggest Cathedral in the world. Or maybe Italy. Florence are always trying to out-do Rome apparently.

Pretty impressive

The Baptistry. Where Baptists live I take it

We paid some euros for the privilege of climbing thon tower you can see in the first photo of the Cathedral. 600 steps or something, which is about 3 more than Renwick. This is what people (and the Baptistry) looked like from up high.

Firenze from the top. Firenze is not just a centaur from Harry Potter, apparently.

We spent the Lord’s Day in 2 different parks

Our revered leader

Rome:

In Rome and Venice we stayed in a Plus Camping place. The Rome one was amazing. We had a chalet, with a kitchen and even a veranda for us to eat on.

The coolest bus driver ever. I wanted to roll him home.

Around the Vatican

The fountain was some job

The Pope’s house

The Trevi Fountain. Very nice.

The metro in Rome was good for travelling about in. The metro stations had big massive elevators

The Pantheon

Inside it

The Roman Forum

The Colosseum

Inside

The bottom bit is where all the prisoners, gladiators and animals were kept

A few more snaps from the forum

Where the senate met

The Victor Emmanuel monument, with the tomb of the unkown soldier

Watching the Sawker on the big screen back at the campsite

Naples

Naples from our balcony. Looks ok from here, but it’s the biggest dump ever. The Italian Ballymena

Pompei

I’d wanted to go there since first year Latin!

Matt joined us for me and Andy’s last 15 hours or so!

The ro-ad

An ancient Roman sheep dip. A bit shallow though

There were still wall paintings and graffiti, 2000 years on

A temple

Debbie and Lindsay

The theatre

Pompei had their own wee Colosseum

A dead person

Some pots

Andy sleeping in Gatwick airport

More photos

Seeing as I put a plea on SWS for people to apply for our GO team to stop it being cancelled, I thought I should let you all know that God has provided enough people for the Faughan team to go ahead! We have much to give thanks for! At this stage it is planned that the team will be involved in leaflet distribution (10,000), a Holiday Bible Club (primary school age), a Youth Club (secondary school age – we started up the Youth Club during the last school year) and work with the young people in our own congregation. No door to door! Controversial!

So if that all sounds like a plan, we have plenty of room for more people to come and help! Now we know the team’s going ahead, there is no deadline for applying! And please keep praying for us!