So how many Western Isles anti-Sunday ferry campaigners are prepared to come out and agree with well-known Christian evangelical Pat Robertson? Or disagree with him?
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Pat Robertson does not speak for all Christians. Neither do ministers on the Isle of Lewis – although unfortunately some of them act as if they do.
Ooh, I would say a big fat zero. Why waste their time on a ridiculous question and an utterly bizzare extrapolation on the ramblings of a crazy old coot. Pat Robertson is to Christianity what Abu Hamza is to Islam.
What a preposterous question, Iain!
No doubt everyone in your profession – yourself included – agrees with Fox news, the ‘Sun’, John Macleod, Alastair Campbell, the ‘Sunday Sport’, …
You’ve got to look beyond the label to taste exactly what’s contained within the tin.
You have to remember, my dear Mr Murray, that it is not that long ago since much-revered island churchmen strongly suggested that their interventionist God had sent a mini-tornado to wreak havoc in Stornoway – apparently as revenge for the introduction of Sunday sailings.
Labels or otherwise, the only difference that we ill-informed heathens with a thirst for truth can see between them and the adorable Pat Robertson is in terms of scale of destruction. The core of the religion tghese people preach is is that we must blindly worship a manifestly jealous, cruel and destructive God or else.
That medieval belief system may be preposterous to those of us who grew up being told that God was love and that he had a Son who lived his life based on love and forgiveness as an example of how we should live our lives.
Surely, it is also preposterous for sensible Christians to stand by while such rubbish is spouted in the name of Christianity.
They have suddenly lost their tongues. Are there no sensible Christians left on Lewis any more?
You must be thankful you now live on Shetland where peace, love and forgiveness are still the foundation stone.
I disassociate myself utterly from Pat Robinson’s comments. They are fantastic, abominable and republic.
Please stop repeating the claim that island ministers ‘strongly suggested that their interventionist God had sent a mini-tornado to wreak havoc in Stornoway – apparently as revenge for the introduction of Sunday sailings.’ It is a lie. No minister said any such thing.
I meant, of course, ‘repugnant’, not ‘republic.’ Funny how the brain works: the ghastly Pat Robinson is of course prominent in the GOP.
I can’t resist the opportunity to hoist you with the tip of your own biro – or petard as the case might be.
Which island minister(s) are you referring to?
Even, however, if you do come up with a name, I cannot see how any individual can be considered representative of the Christian faith as a whole. One has to balance the likes of Pat Robertson and the constricted and constricting followers of the Presbyterian traditions at home against the thousands of people with strong faith who selflessly work to save human souls in places like Haiti and elsewhere. It is often those who have strong Christian beliefs who sacrifice their own comfort to help others in these situations. I only wish that I had the strength to undertake tasks like these.
I know very well where you’re coming from, Mr Maciver. For many years I rejected Christ because of the utterances I heard from so-called men of God. They defended racist thugs like Vorster (whose brother one preacher informed me was the moderator of the Dutch Reformed Church. Holiness, by association – until you discovered the nature of the organisation.) They supported Ian Paisley – the Grand Old Duke of York of Ulster Presbyterianism. They chained up swings on a Sunday….
Look beyond the narrow limits of the Minch, Mr X. There’s a wide and wild world out there.
PS – I think we’ve responded to your question – ‘Do island Christians agree with Pat Robertson?’
But we’ll leave it to your intelligence to work it out – for all that we know that’ll be more than a little difficult for someone who hails from Bernera!
You choose to use the past tense, a Dhomhnuill. Were it only so. A church figure here still supports Paisley. He writes to me occasionally to put me right on that one.
No surprise. He, like so many people here, is a signed-up member of a church which subscribes to the Westminster Confession of Faith.
You will be aware of Chapter 25 v6 which, it is generally accepted, makes hateful bigotry an official part of doctrine. Such lovely people.
Despite the protestations of yourself and Mr Macleod, preachers here allegedly preached on God Will Not Be Mocked at the first Sunday sailing. Certainly, members of their flocks claim they uttered doom-laden warnings of what was to become. Maybe they were mistaken. Whatever.
Another church figure chose to describe the ferry breakdown a couple of days beforehand as God’s providence. Is that not the code for intervention from on high?
All I did was wonder aloud how many are still of that mindset.
We’ve wandered a long way from Haiti and Pat Buchanan, Iain. A very circuitous route even by your usual meandering and rambling standards. Yet, of course, with your unerring instincts, you still end up somewhere in the dark recesses of a manse, somewhere, perhaps, in the vicinity ofBroadbay – as if those with that mentality are typical of Christianity as a whole, both within and outwith the island.
I think not. Among most professing Christians,
there have been many changes over the last decade or two. The ones who supported Rev Iain Paisley and his gun-licence brandishing group of Orange bandolero-wearing Fascists are dwindling in number – if they were ever that large. Those who chained up the swing-park are long gone….
Yet you persist only in seeing these ghosts and fighting battles with them. Let them go, Mr X.
There are few these days who ‘are still of that mindset’.
Time to stop wondering aloud. Open up your eyes instead!
Iain, you demanded of ‘Western Isles Sunday ferry campaigners’ that we come out and make plain whether or not we agree with Pat Robinson’s disgusting remarks. I have now done so, repudiated them, and called your bluff. I appreciate this must be profoundly irritating for you, but I can happily ignore you in future if you wish.
You have also asserted that ‘it is not that long ago since much-revered island churchmen strongly suggested that their interventionist God had sent a mini-tornado to wreak havoc in Stornoway – apparently as revenge for the introduction of Sunday sailings.’
That is a lie. Only one island churchman – my own minister, Dr James Tallach – was quoted in any newspaper on this unfortunate storm. He said, ‘”I’m not in a position to say this was the will of God. I don’t have that information here.”
Which is exactly what a spokesman for Caledonian MacBrayne also told the newspapers that day: “We don’t feel qualified to judge if this was an act of God.”
I myself had a column in the Scottish Daily Mail on the same day where I expressly ridiculed the notion that this tornado incident – most distressing and frightening for those involved – was a divine judgement; as I suspect you know perfectly well.
So what you said was not true. Period. You are now wittering on, quite irrelevantly, about Iain Paisley; sermons delivered on the day the Sabbath ferry sailed – I think we may safely assume you did not attend any – and the faltering engines of the ISLE OF LEWIS a day or two before the occasion.
You are entitled to your obsessions, and to ooze inchoate and indeed incoherent prejudice if you wish. What is evident is that you are capable neither of reasoned argument nor factual accuracy. People like you certainly have a right to blog, if they must; but I do feel you have now forfeited the right to be heard.
I must confess I disagree with John on, at least, one sentence of the above. I think people always have the right to be heard – provided that they are not causing unnecessary offence to others. (Think there are times when it might be necessary to be offensive – but that’s something I’ll reserve for another discussion.) In short, within limits, I agree with the words wrongly attributed to Voltaire.
‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.’
And that applies most especially to those with whom I disagree.
Including you!
Gosh. All I did was ask a question. I was not even referrring to the ministers quoted in newspapers – apart from the one who commented on the breakdown.
Actually, it is the intolerance that is offensive. You cannot even ask a question without the rabid attack dog being unleashed. Whoopee.
Yes, Iain X, you asked a question – ‘Do island Christians agree with Pat Robertson? I think we should be told’… , ‘So how many Western Isles anti-Sunday ferry campaigners are prepared to come out and agree with well-known Christian evangelical Pat Robertson? Or disagree with him?’… and I have answered it. We do not. Period. Mr Robinson’s views are wicked, indefensible, and repugnant (to say nothing of Republican.) End of argument… though never, of course, an end to your quiet little cottage-industry of hate regardless.
You and I are both journalists. We are both from and on the Isle of Lewis.
But there is one wee difference.
At real and at times painful cost to myself, I have spent my entire 22-year career standing up for its culture, its values, and its religion… for what was my inheritance and for the way of life in which I was brought up.
And you have built yours by doing it down – gleefully, lucratively, often irresponsibly and, really, rather tragically. ‘The night cometh, when no man can work.’
Intolerance? Offended? Rabid? Oh, purr-lease. You’re neither as evil as you pretend to be or – as yesterday’s delicious email let slip – as clever as you think you are.
And if I’m wrong, it’ll take a few seconds of your time to name and shame the minister who publicly declared the breakdown of the ISLE OF LEWIS (and, indeed, the tornado) was the wrath of God.
You are entitled to stand up for whatever you choose. And I am entitled to be somewhat more sceptical of the culture that has seen friends of mine hounded from the island by stone-hearted curamach relatives, others cursed by sham Christians and I have endured prayer meetings where dire warnings were handed down to all Sunday sailors. Jolly stuff, as you would say.
I suspect people who were actually present may read this and it would be up to them to confirm what a certain preacher said about divine weather-related intervention.
And don’t say I’m not evil. I have a reputation to live down to.
John Macleod – For information the religion of the Isle of Lewis where I hail from is not exclusively the Free Kirk – I don’t really expect anything else from John Macleod as he is in the belief that he can judge who is and who is not a Christian. He sets it out in his cowardly fantasy entitled The Banner in the West (or something like that) where he mocks the dearly departed but interestingly not those among us – Mmmm yes very brave of you. Only one can judge who is one of the select of God and thats not you Mr Macleod. You walk on very thin ice.
“We don’t feel qualified to judge if this was an act of God.”
http://nalil.blogspot.com/2009/05/rathlin-ferry-mca-admission-calmac.html