David Penberthy, Cardinal Pell, Phillip Jensen, and how to confuse race with religion ...

(Above: found at the 20 coolest atheist T-shirts for sale on the web, thanks to the UK Terror).

Over at The Punch today, in Deeply irritating columnist versus seriously flawed law, David Penberthy manages to expose the level of stupidity, and the level of hysteria, and the level of paranoia in News Limited in relation to the matter of Andrew Bolt:

I went on radio last year to decry a plan by a Newcastle health service to perform female circumcisions on the basis that some Islamic communities were performing backyard operations. I described the practice as barbaric and sub-human and said legitimising it was the worst form of moral relativism where we surrendered our own standards to practices which had no place in this country. Sounds a bit racist in retrospect.

Actually if the reference was to Islam, it wasn't even the slightest bit racist in retrospect or right at this moment. Islam isn't a race, and 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act doesn't refer to religion.

And so on and on, as he babbles on about Bob Carr talking of a problem of criminality within the Lebanese community. Lebanon isn't a race. And when he babbles about Jewish Australians suing the Greens for their boycott of Israel, he suggests they do so on the basis that such a boycott is anti-semitic.

Last time I checked Israel described itself as a parliamentary republic. It's hard to be racist about the policies of a republic. And so on and on, as acccording to Penberthy, it seems the Serbs and the Sudanese also fall under the blanket matter of race.

He might be referring to the wording of Section 18C of the act, which talks of national or ethnic origin, as well as race or colour (18C).

But if you're going to defend Bolt - as Penberthy does with many disclaimers and much hand-wringing and comparing him to notorious pornographer Larry Flynt - get the phrasing of the paranoid examples right.

And then there's the other paranoias:

It’s been written since, most notably in the Fairfax press where the festival of schadenfreude is entering its fourth day, that Bolt could have avoided sanction if he simply got his facts right.

Uh huh. Still the war with Fairfax, as if any of this has to do deep down with some tribal journalism thing, as opposed to people pointing out the emperor didn't wear any clothes, and as if cardigan wearers at the ABC like Jonathan Holmes didn't stand up for Bolt. (Bolt, Bromberg and a profoundly disturbing judgment).

The counterpoint to this is that if Bolt got his facts wrong, as the Judge said he did, there is an existing redress for the plaintiffs through the laws of defamation, where it is impossible for a fair or accurate comment to be made about an individual if it is based on a falsehood. Each of the nine plaintiffs could have sued him for defamation. Instead, they have pursued him under a law which puts the onus on the respondent to prove they have an exemption to an otherwise racist act.

But the provision relating to offensive behaviour because of race, colour or national or ethnic origin has been around since 1995, and Bolt presumably knew it - if he didn't he's even more derelict than simply getting his facts wrong - and he should have adjusted his copy and got things right. But the piece reads as if he wanted to be offensive and provocative for the sake of being offensive, and to hell with the law.

And it's not up to those offended to use defamation simply because it suits Andrew Bolt or others better. The plaintiffs weren't after money, they wanted a symbolic victory and they got one.

Sure, Bolt is deeply offensive, and he has the right to be deeply offensive, but the squealing coming from News Limited is tragic, as they treasure their source of hits and advertising revenue, while simultaneously trying to wash their hands of the vexatious, troublesome beast.

Such is life, and in the meantime, could someone please explain the difference to Penberthy between race, nation, colour and ethnicity.

Hey ho, on we go, knowing that Collingwood was beaten, Eddie "poker machines a footy tax" McGuire suffered mightily, and it was all for the good of the game.

So what news from the pews this week?

Well let's remember that in the good old days, sitting in a pew was rather like getting a seat in the dress circle, or a box, as a way of avoiding standing in the pit's rush-strewn, nutshell-layered floor, surrounded by penny-paying groundlings (Globe Theatre).

Yep, you could get a slightly easier path to god if you had the cash and the contacts:

In some churches, pews were installed at the expense of the congregants, and were their personal property; there was no general public seating in the church itself. In these churches, pew deeds recorded title to the pews, and were used to convey them. Pews were originally purchased from the church by their owners under this system, and the purchase price of the pews went to the costs of building the church. When the pews were privately owned, their owners sometimes enclosed them in lockable pew boxes, and the pews were frequently not of uniform construction. (Pew)

Ah the good old days of a capitalist path to heaven. Blessed are the rich pew owners, because they can pass through the eye of a camel, or a stitch in time needle, or some such thing.

But enough already with the pews, though they're more interesting than Cardinal Pell's week old letter from Jerusalem in the Sunday Terror.

About the only point of interest is that Pell has taken to quoting that Irish sociopath Ned Kelly for his closing line:

Such is life.

What next? Pell quoting from the Jerilderie letter?

Any man knows it is possible to swear a lie, and if a Policeman loses a conviction for the sake of swearing a lie, he has broke his oath. Therefore he is a perjuror either ways. A Policeman is a disgrace to his country, not alone to the mother that suckled him. In the first place he is a rogue in his heart, but too cowardly to follow it up without having the Force to disguise it. Next, he is a traitor to his country, ancestors and religion, as they were all Catholics before the Saxons and Cranmore yoke held sway. Since then they were persecuted, massacred, thrown into martyrdom and tortured beyond the ideas of the present generation.

Ah Ned, the suffering's still the same for the faithful:

On our return in the evening our descent was punctuated by loud explosions from fire crackers, which some Arab youths were letting off to disconcert or delight the pilgrims.

Damned Arab youths. Calling David Penberthy!

But enough of the suffering of the Irish and the vexations of Arab youths, it's off to the Sydney Anglicans, and by golly, Phillip Jensen is suffering too, as he explains in Black and White Evangelism:

He was wearing a black t-shirt with white writing on it proclaiming himself a member of the atheist club. His shirt and the message it bore were stark and confronting.

I was speaking at a lunchtime public meeting on a university campus when I saw him – or rather his shirt. There was no doubting the sincerity and earnestness with which he held his viewpoint. However, his shirt made it clear that he came not to listen, but to argue.

Dear sweet lord, a black T-shirt with an atheist message is stark and confronting? What on earth did it say?

Just guessing, but if it did, now that's outrageous. How to return fire?

Whether by accident or purpose, the Christians were advertising their meetings with similar black t-shirts and white writing. Our message was as confronting and stark as the atheists. But when it is your own message the volume with which you shout seems a lot quieter than those who shout at you.

Dear sweet absent lord, what on earth did they say?


Oh right, the promise of hellfire for all eternity, and as we know, eternity is way past the twelfth of never.

Well there are a couple of handy T-shirts for that line of argument:

But we digress, which is terribly easy to do when forced to chose between reading Phillip Jensen and googling up images of atheist T-shirts (go on, you can do it too).

Anyhoo, the long and the short of Jensen's anguished piece is that while you can be self-effacing, or build bridges, or be culturally sensitive or engage in public debate, and so on and so forth, the atheists have lowered the bar (remember, offering people an eternity of abuse in hellfire is just telling the truth about justifiable punishment for naughty behaviour):

While all manner of people have argued with great subtlety of mind and diplomacy of language for causes like atheism and feminism, it is the Richard Dawkins and Germaine Greer’s of this world, with their ‘take-no-captive’ approach, who have forced their issues onto the public agenda and brought about a shift in culture. Their opponents may not like them, and they may embarrass their friends but their crude advocacy has had an enormous impact.

Dammit, the shameless crude vulgarians.

This does not mean that Christian preachers should model themselves on these advocates, but the pragmatic argument of effectiveness in communication must take their success into account.

Indeed. So what's a preacher to do when confronted by these satanic fiends? Well you can forget the hypocrisy of self-effacement for starters, or trying to soften the message or engaging in debate.

... in the end the gospel is a proclaimed truth not an optional opinion for humans to sit in judgement upon.

Dr Lloyd Jones wrote against debating the gospel - for the gospel is not open to debate. It is not for people to sit in judgement of God, for we are under the judgement of God. Professor Lennox recently said in Sydney that he does not aim to win debates but to use them to give a credible explanation of the gospel.

Move along folks, nothing to debate here. It's all over, and you've been judged and found wanting, it's an eternity of hell for you, and that's all to be said about it.

As for that talk of a Credible Explanation of the gospel? Oh right, that needs a different T-shirt or two:

In the way of any rounded essayist or sermoniser, Jensen returns to his T-shirt theme in his concluding par, just to wrap things up:

Black and white t-shirts are loud advertisements – too loud for private conversation. But hiding them under our jumper risks the hypocrisy of people not willing to nail their colours to the mast.

Yep, it's time for preachers to get down and dirty, nail their black and white colours (oh okay maybe they aren't colours, but you catch the drift) to the wall, drag out their confronting T-shirts, and really hammer it to those wretched satanic atheists. Trouble is, the atheists seem to be doing a better line in punchy T-shirts:

Hmm. Maybe not. Let's keep it light:

Oh no, not the bloody dinosaurs. Let's just settle down with a nice drop:

Calling David Penberthy. This site has been racist about Christians. Well to balance it, let's make a note of Islamic justice systems:

Oh dear, that's a bit like that one Atheists don't fly aeroplanes into buildings. Calling Penberthy. This site has been racist about the Islamic religion ...