"Jerusalem" hymn banned by politically correct clergy

It's probably the hymn I love best: "And did those feet in ancient times.... ''. With the marvellous William Blake writing the words and the music by Parry, it had to be good. Comments below by the Revd Dr Peter Mullen, Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill

Funny how the "liberals" in the Church have developed this fondness for banning things. First they banned their own modern Alternative Service Book after only 20 years in use. Now, the Very Reverend Colin Slee, the Dean of Southwark, has banned the hymn Jerusalem from his cathedral because it is "not in the glory of God" and is too nationalistic. But surely there is the radiance of divinity in "And was the Holy Lamb of God on England's pleasant pastures seen"? The pseudo-scholarly clergy don't like that line because they deny the Glastonbury legend about Jesus coming to England with Joseph of Arimathea. This shows a numbskull literal-mindedness.

When I preach the Resurrection on Easter Day, I try to evoke the Lord's appearances around Galilee, and on the walk to Emmaus, as if they had happened in my beloved Yorkshire Dales. Blake didn't think Jesus came to England, either. He was a poet and his lines are the stuff of imaginative allusion. But imagination is a bit beyond the reach of the polite mechanicals among the modern clergy.

Christians in England are redeemed by Christ, as surely as the first disciples were redeemed by him in Galilee. Blake's magnificent poem is a way of bringing this home to us, building the truth of the experience into our hearts and minds by using homely, national imagery. The spirit of God breathes all through Jerusalem. Take the fervent line, "Bring me my chariot of fire." It is straight out of the Bible, the ecstatic vision of the prophet Elijah carried up to heaven in the whirlwind (II Kings 2:11). "Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand" is clearly a reference to "the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God" (Ephesians 6:17).

What the modern clergy can't stand is the powerful evocation of England. When they see the word "England" they don't hear the music of ancient Albion. They see patriotism and national pride, which to them are the next worse things to fascism and expansionary imperialism. But, as Chesterton said, if a man won't love his country, it is difficult to believe he loves anything. Blake's hymn was a prelude to Milton, and he knew that Paradise Lost, the Fall of Man, happens down the Old Kent Road as definitely as anywhere else.

Odd, the trendy clergy's preference for abstractions and internationalism when it was abstracted international communism under Stalin and Mao which slaughtered millions more even than the ueber-nationalists in the Third Reich.

There is nothing abstract or theoretical about Blake's hymn. He wasn't writing a report for the General Synod. As a poet of genius, he knew that the way to convey spiritual realities is to incarnate them in things: swords, chariots, clouded hills, mountains green. St Margaret's, "Parliament's church" in Westminster, disapproves of the line about "dark satanic mills" only by misunderstanding it. No English literature scholar imagines for a minute that Blake was referring to the cotton mills and weaving sheds in Lancashire.

One of our finest biblical commentators, Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham, says: "The 'dark satanic mills' were not the cotton mills and steel mills of the new, noisy and smoky industrial revolution. They were the great churches, such as Westminster Abbey and St Paul's Cathedral, which Blake saw as being hopelessly in thrall to the follies of the world, follies he saw all too clearly in the great thinkers of what was already calling itself the Enlightenment. He faced down the scorn of Voltaire and Rousseau against the deep mysteries of faith. 'You throw the sand against the wind,' he wrote, 'and the wind blows it back again.'?"

Now, at last, we are getting close to understanding this sour prejudice against Jerusalem among so many clergy. For Blake is attacking them - those who, though they promised at ordination to challenge the follies of the age, actually aid and encourage them. It is the Jerusalem haters who have swallowed whole all the dogmas of Rousseauism and the secular superstitions of the Enlightenment in its most recent form: political-correctness.

If Blake could hear for five minutes these people banging on about their true preoccupations, the follies of the age - anti-racism, gender egalitarianism, compliance, the foreign aid industry and the paranoid fantasy of global warming - he would sing all the more loudly against this lot: "Bring me my bow… bring me my arrows… bring me my sword…"

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Deportation ruling enrages spy chiefs

British court says bin Laden's 'ambassador' can remain in London

Britain's intelligence chiefs - John Scarlett of MI6 and Jonathan Evans of MI5 - are warning Prime Minister Gordon Brown that judges in an appeals court have "seriously damaged the war on terrorism," The court ruled that Abu Qatada, one of the world's most dangerous terrorists and described by a Spanish court as Osama bin Laden's "ambassador in Europe," cannot be deported to Jordan to face further terrorist charges because to do so would "breach Britain's human rights laws." The infuriated intelligence chiefs have told Brown the decision has "left Britain's anti-terror laws in tatters and raised serious questions in Washington and European capitals about Britain's commitment to fight terrorism."

Abu Qatada, a heavily bearded Jordanian father of five, has been linked to a number of global terror conspiracies. But the Court of Appeal said he cannot be deported to face prosecution in his native Jordan "because the alleged evidence against him there may have been obtained under torture."

The court ruling means not a single terrorist has been forcibly deported from Britain since the London bombing attacks -- despite a Memorandum of Understanding secured by the Home Office from Jordan and other countries that terror suspects would not face torture.

While Abu Qatada remained in a high security prison, the intelligence services had spent three years putting together what one officer called "irrefutable evidence" that he is closely linked to bin Laden and Ayman Al Zarqawi, the deputy leader of al-Qaida. Videos of Abu Qatada's virulent sermons were found in the Hamburg flat of Mohammed Atta, one of the members of the 9/11 terrorists. German intelligence, BND, passed them to MI6 to strengthen the case against Abu Qatada.

Both MI6 and MI5 also provided evidence seen by the Court of Appeal that Abu Qatada, 44, who was born in Bethlehem, had arrived in Britain under a forged United Arab Emirates passport. He claimed asylum and was granted refugee status. He also received monthly welfare benefits.

From his home in Acton, West London, he called on British Muslims to "martyr yourselves in a holy war on British oppression." When he was first arrested in 2001, he was found to have about $1.4 million in his possession, including $1,600 in an envelope marked "for the mujahedin in Chechnya."

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Prescription For Quotas

Post below recycled from Discriminations. See the original for links

If I weren't a product of both undergraduate and graduate programs at Stanford, I would be critical of this report ("Latinos underrepresented in medical profession") of quota-mongering at the Stanford Medical School. But since I am, I am both ashamed and embarrassed as well as critical. The Stanford Daily article begins by noting that

Latino Americans only make up five percent of California's doctors, according to a recent study at UC-San Francisco, though they constitute one-third of the state's population[,]

and goes rapidly down hill from there.

Fernando Mendoza, Associate Dean for Minority Advising and Programs at the Stanford School of Medicine, said the lack of diversity within the medical profession can actually reduce the effectiveness of physicians. "A lot of work has been done that's shown how physicians communicate with patients and the barriers to that communication," he said. "Studies have reported that there are biases in health care and that they are quite often unconscious; in order to deal with those unconscious biases, we need to diversify the work force and develop more culturally competent positions."

Along with their diplomas, perhaps medical schools and/or state medical licensing boards could begin issuing certificates of cultural competence. Of course, before they could do that they would have to develop a curriculum in it, devise tests to measure it, etc. Or in the alternative, they could simply let skin color or ethnicity (visible or claimed) be a certified proxy. (What? You say they're already doing that? Oh well...) In any event, after the Stanford Medical School or the California Medical Association develops a valid test for "unconscious biases," I hope they will share it with the world. But I digress. Let us listen to Dr. Mendoza's prescription:

In order to increase diversity in the medical school student population, Mendoza ... encourages the admission office to evaluate potential candidates on a broader spectrum of criteria. "One thing I think is evident," he said. "We're well behind the curve and have a long way to go to get the number of Latino physicians up to where they represent the proportion of the general population.

Note that Dr. Mendoza does not say that he endorses quotas. Defenders of affirmative action never say they they endorse quotas, and usually hotly deny that they do. No, Dr. Mendoza doesn't call for quotas. All he wants is for the number of Latino students admitted to the Stanford Medical School, and the number of physicians practicing in California and presumably the rest of the United States, "to represent [their] proportion of the general population."

And while we're speaking of proportional representation (not quotas!), if the goal (not quota!) is for the proportion of doctors who are Latino to reflect the proportion of Latinos in the general population, then Stanford and the remainder of the medical establishment must take some rather dramatic steps to reduce the proportion of admitted medical students and physicians who are Asian or Jewish, since those groups are now substantially "overrepresented" at Stanford and everywhere else.

Weeding out the Jews and Asians, however, can be a tricky business. Asians are usually easy to spot, even where their names are not giveaways, but Jews are not always so obvious. We don't all have Jewish-sounding names, and many Jewish-sounding names aren't even Jewish. Nor is photographic evidence, even in profile, completely reliable.

And even if those problems were solved (if Stanford can combat "unconscious bias," surely it can come up with ways to spot Asians and Jews), what of the "Latino" category itself? Should all of the "Latino" physicians in California be Mexican or Mexican-American, or do Dr. Mendoza and his Stanford colleagues think that, say, Cuban-Americans are "culturally competent" enough to treat Mexicans?

Sorry, but that's all I have time for right now. I'm off to meet with our accountant re taxes, though now I'm worried that he's not culturally competent enough to figure out how the tax code applies to us.

UPDATE

Roger Clegg of the Center for Equal Opportunity has posted this comment on the Stanford Daily's web site:

Aggressive outreach - casting a wide net--to make sure that you get the best qualified applicants possible, of all colors and socioeconomic backgrounds, is fine. Getting rid of conscious or unconscious bias in selection is fine, too. So is making sure that your selection criteria really produce the best, most qualified students.

But weighing ethnicity to decide which applicants are admitted is not. If you give weight to ethnicity, then you are no longer admitting the best qualified people. That shortchanges future patients--of all national origins.

It is wrong to discriminate in order to ensure that the med school looks like the general population, and it makes no sense to do so. Cultural competence can be taught to doctors of any color. Gentiles and non-Asians have not suffered from the historical "overrepresentation" of Jewish and Asian doctors. A quota is a quota is a quota.

What he said. And you can quot[a] me on that.



American protected classes don't include us. We are targeted for genocide

Bertolt Brecht has a poem in which the leaders of the former East Germany say to the people: “You have disappointed us. We are going to go out and elect another people.” Is nature imitating art, as Oscar Wilde claimed?

The United States Constitution provides for a bill of rights for "individuals." It had no intent to provide or define special protected classes of people or organizations that got privileged treatment. That intent has failed to be realized. That failure of our government has created classes of people and organizations that have no concern for our nation. Their only concern is for their specific group. Their greed serves to divide our nation into warring tribes for its ultimate destruction.

Inalienable God given American freedoms are being eroded one at a time. The first to go for "unprotected" classes is freedom of speech. American Citizen Free Speech is dead. Free speech is now defined as hate speech by Marxists and Corporate Globalists who want to destroy the United States. The only people who can speak their mind in this new world of big brother are protected classes that include everyone but us. We are the unprotected classes targeted for submissive destruction.

The only groups not classified as a "protected" classes are the: American (male or female of any age) Citizen of European Descent; or, of a color designated as "White;" or, not queer in their sexual preference; or, with the Christian faith as their belief regardless of race or national origin.

If you belong to this group or any of its subgroups, it is perfectly all right to beat you, force you into silence or even kill you. You will be designated as a racist hater and will be openly shunned and banished from society if you do or do not defend your self. Your silence used to defend yourself hastens your demise.

The major identifier of these non protected class groups is their magnanimous acceptance of this horrid treatment by privileged protected classes of all other races, religions and national origins, including non citizens. The new victim non protected classes willingly accept their fate without complaint. They are individually isolated by their attackers in the news media and government.

Victimized non protected classes of American Christian Citizens (white, black, non queer), appear to willingly accept their "punishment" for supposed wrongs their ancestors allegedly committed. The only reason this is occurring must be because of widespread psychological conditioning that creates a self hatred in maligned citizen groups. That strategy was used to suppress blacks in America for a long time. It is an effective tool of most tyrants.

Tyrannical attackers only succeed when victims permit their victimization and remain silent. Evil comes for us now. World War II German Activist Pastor Martin Niemoller's address to the U.S. Congress as reported in the Congressional Record: October 14, 1968, page 31636:

"When Hitler attacked the Jews I was not a Jew, therefore I was not concerned.
And when Hitler attacked the Catholics, I was not a Catholic, and therefore, I was not concerned.
And when Hitler attacked the unions and the industrialists, I was not a member of the unions and I was not concerned.
Then Hitler attacked me and the Protestant church -- and there was nobody left to be concerned."

The only thing that will save non-protected class groups or any group targeted for genocide from annihilation with destruction of their national heritage, and rule of law; is continued silence and failure to fight this outrage in every way possible.

We must start immediately with trials and sentencing to death of our treasonous elected officials that promote this racial and religious hatred and criminal genocidal attempts to destroy us. You must fight for your rights.

Common sense and a long history of relationships between species and between human beings resulted in a natural fear of those things and beings that bring harm to us. A zebra is naturally wary of lions lurking in the grass because they have been attacked and seen other zebras killed. Human beings have a natural fear of snakes and falling. These natural and learned fears are safe guards against harm.

Only a fool without any natural survival instincts would live in a world where they fail to recognize inherent dangers from society and specific races. FBI statistics indicate a rise in black on white crime and rate of crime of black on white crime is much higher than white on black crime. The news media fails to report that fact.

Presidential candidate Hussein Obuma should discuss these disparities when he defines one as a racist if they fear someone demanding money from them in an aggressive manner as his white grandmother reported. That is not racism that is self protection based on a reasonable suspicion of potential harm. His grandmother was no more racist than a zebra is when they automatically run when a lion approaches. Failure to be aware of the risks can only result in harm.

It is natural to have innate fears of known risks. Ask the Asian student who was fleeing from a black gang last Friday, if it was reasonable to run when they attacked him. Too bad he can't answer he is dead. If Obuma wants to end the fears between the races he must end the black attacks on other citizens of all races.

If that doesn't provide Obuma with the understanding he clearly lacks, ask those black victims of black crime if they have a natural fear of black men who dress or behave in a particular way. Or ask those who have family members beheaded by Muslim murderers if they have a fear of the Muslims. Survival is not about race, religion or any other criterion. It is about being safe instead of sorry based on available data in a dangerous world.

The status quo is no longer acceptable. Government designed plans to destroy our nation with racial population politics is evident. Illegal alien invasion, black on white crime, a restorative justice system that punishes victims of crime instead of the criminals are all a part of the Marxist communists' efforts to promote disharmony and racial conflict to advance their objectives.

World corporatists share that agenda for different reasons and join the Marxist to subjugate all of us under one world government rule. We the non protected class victims can not let false accusations of racism or haters hinder our resistance to this evil murdering millions around the world.

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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