Today is a general election in the UK. Tony Blair's Labour Party look like they win big again despite the fact that it is impossible to find anyone who is really enthusiastic about them.

But which way should a Christian vote? First, let me say that we have a duty to vote and Christians owe it to society to make sure they get out and do so. Incredibly, some extreme Moslems have been threatening people who vote saying it is against Islam. Luckily, most UK Moslems think these guys are off their rockers.

On specific Christian issues, abortion does not loom large in the UK but its profile is getting bigger. The conservatives will make time to change the law to cut the limit to 20 weeks and for this the Catholic Church has said that its flock should no longer automatically vote Labour. Blair won't change the law and the Liberal Democrats don't know what they'll do.

Poverty and debt relief for the Third World are also big Christian issues. The aim of writing off third world debt and 'making poverty history' is shared by Catholics and Protestants. Here, the vote would have to be the Labour's chancellor, Gordon Brown, who is widely expected to take over from Blair as Prime Minister in the next few years. However, I am suspicious of the practical value to some of the projects in this direction and fear they encourage African dependency and bad government. Free trade in agriculture and raw materials would do the Third World most good but no party I know of is offering the dismantle EU and US subsidies.

On social matters, the Conservatives used to stand up for the family but have dropped most of this to try and become more 'inclusive'. But they are still the better party for civil liberties which Labour seem to want to trample all over (hunting, ID cards, house arrest) and Labour should be applauded for the support they give to children but sadly they don't do enough to make sure children have two parents in a married relationship.

On the Iraq war, Christians have generally been against in the UK and that means a vote for the Liberal Democrats, who were the only main party to stand against the war. For myself, I am not convinced the war was a mistake even though it is clear Blair misled us in the run up.

So, on balance, Christians will just have to decide what matters most to them. As will everyone else. But for God's sake, do vote!

Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.

With the release of Ridley Scott's new movie Kingdom of Heaven, the crusades are very much in the news at the moment. The critics seem to be greeting the latest historical epic with all the lack of enthusiasm with which they met Troy, King Arthur and Alexander. Gladiator this is not. Indeed the slew of second rate historical epics can be laid squarely at Ridley Scott's door for giving us such a great movie that everyone has been unsuccessfully trying to emulate.

We have been discussing the crusades at the Bede's Library yahoo group and several interesting links have been suggested. I've read the classic account by Steven Runicman, Edward Gibbon's opus and a few others. Runciman's three volume work is a masterpiece and set the scene for much of today's discussion. His bias is more pro-Byzantine than pro-Islam and it was he who promoted the fall of Constantinople in 1205 to the position of greatest crusader atrocity. He also doesn't like Normans very much either (see also his The Sicilian Vespers) and we should be thankful he never wrote about 1066.

Today we can all agree that war is a bad thing. But this is a radical idea not shared with most of humanity through most of history. The reason, I think, we believe that violence is evil is partly the carnage of the Great War and partly the strongly pacifist colouring of modern Christianity which it passed on to the political left (at least in Europe). As Jonathan Riley Smith points out, the pacifism of Christianity, now well represented by the Catholic Church itself, was not its position in the Middle Ages. To them , violence was morally neutral and what counted was the end to which it was aimed.

The major misunderstanding about the crusades, especially in the Middle East, is to see them as proto-imperialist ventures. Our angst over nineteenth century colonialism is responsible for this anachronism, carried back to the Middle East by the alumni of western universities like the London School of Economics. In fact, the crusades are simply part of a long series of wars between Christendom and Islam that lasted from the eighth to the eighteenth centuries. Interestingly, Islam can justifiably claim to have won the crusades but this tends to be forgotten as they now perceive they have lost the war. But using the crusades as a way of reinforcing the Moslem culture of victimhood is not doing them or anyone else any good.

Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.

While waiting for the baby to get to sleep last night, I stumbled upon this paper by Kyle Gerkin which is part of a refutation of Lee Strobel's The Case for Faith. By chance I received an email from an atheist ranting on, by his own admission, in a similar vain about the crimes of Christianity. I would like to write something substantial to show that Christianity has been a vastly good thing despite its very real misdemeanors. My correspondent didn't want to enter into a debate.

So what are the great myths of Christian history. Here's a top ten with links to refutations where possible):

1. Christianity has opposed the rise of science (refuted).
2. The Crusades were uniquely destructive religious wars (refuted).
3. Christianity caused the Dark Ages (refuted).
4. The inquisition killed hundreds of thousands (refuted).
5. Millions of witches were executed (refuted).
6. Hitler was a Christian (refuted).
7. Jesus never existed (refuted).
8. Jesus married Mary Magdalene (refuted).
9. Christians destroyed most ancient literature (refuted) and the Library of Alexandria (refuted).
10. Christianity is supportive of slavery (refuted).

And on the other side? There is no doubt that Christianity has a history of anti-Semitism. Likewise, Christians have been too quick to accept normal standards of women's rights. Both the inquisition and witch trials are certainly wrong even if they are historically explicable and not as bad as often claimed. But in the end, the enormous force for good Christianity has been for two thousand years cannot be denied by anyone familiar with the real history.

Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.

The darkness described by Matthew that occured at the death of Jesus is believed by many scholars to have been a duststorm. Just in case you were wondering, here are some pictures of what they look like. Pretty dramatic but no surprise that ancient historians don't specifically mention it.

Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.

Kevin Rosero wrote to me about my pages on the Jesus Myth and gave me a link to his new blog, Rose and Rock. It is rather good, if still in a formative stage, and looks like it will develop into an excellent source of moderate Catholic thought. Thanks Kevin.

Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.

A couple of months ago, I posted some thoughts on some books about the Old Testament by William Dever and PN Lemche. I have now received a third book from Amazon: Kenneth Kitchen's On the Reliability of the Old Testament (OROT from now on). Kitchen is a distinguished professor of Egyptology who previously made waves by rubbishing the claims of new chronologists like David Rohl. It was clear then that Kitchen is a crotchety individual and the introduction and conclusion to OROT show further evidence of this. He launches into Lemche and some of his colleagues with attacks that really do his case no good at all. He also makes the mistake of labelling Lemche as a 'post modernist' as if this term alone invalidates his conclusions. As I explained in my review (from 13 and 15 March) of Lemche's The Israelites in Myth and Tradition, he is wrong but mainly because he is still using nineteenth century methods and not because he prefers trendy modern ones.

Kitchen is a Christian evangelical and quite fearsomely erudite. Whereas many OT scholars have given up on the Exodus and Conquest, let alone the Patriarchs, Kitchen stands by all of that. As far as he is concerned, the Bible is as accurate a historical text as the Assyrian or Egyptian chronicles. It is, he claims, based on contemporary records which make it biased but not ficticious. He illustrates his points with a quite unbelievable amount of factual data backed up by a hundred pages of footnotes to the scholarly literature. Taken as a whole, this is a prodigious achievement of encyclopedic breadth.

OK, you can't actually read this book from cover to cover. Despite being so long, it is terse and at times almost resembles notes rather than a completed text. It is also not a work for beginners. You will need to know your OT quite well to make sense of it and a passing familiarity with the current issues of Ancient Near Eastern history wouldn't go amiss either. And it helps if you also know who the Assyrians, Hittites, Babylonians and the rest are already. This, plus Kitchen's annoyingly unfocused remarks on other scholars are definitely minus points. Organisation is also rather strange. We start with the divided monarchy, then move on to the exilic period before moving back through the united monarchy, conquest, Exodus and Patriarchs. This can make things hard to find although the index is quite good and a full list of scripture references in provided.

On the whole, despite short comings, OROT is essential to anyone interested in the historicity of the Old Testament. Kitchen does not fall into the Albright trap of finding biblical sgnificance to every pebble in Palestine. When the evidence is lacking, like at Jericho, he says so and explains why he thinks this is so. On issues from pig bones to camels (both matters of debate in OT studies), he gives the lowdown and references to the literature. In summary, this book is about as fun as a trip to the dentist and every bit as necessary.

Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.

One thing is for sure. If the holy spirit was active at the conclave of cardinals, then the spirit of John Paul II certainly was too. The new pope was his chosen successor and the cardinals accepted that.

I will admit I would have preferred a pope who was not quite so much a conservative figurehead. The Hitler's Youth business just produces a ready made target for anti-Catholics. On the other hand, they hate the Church for what it is and would never warm to a pope unless he completely sold out to them. And that is something we did not want to see. As for my own predictions, the less said the better....

So what have we got? The finest intellect to occupy the throne of St Peter since... well ever, probably. A first class administrator when the Vatican administration is in a pretty poor state of repair. It is no good being a centraliser if the central machinery is not up to the job. A conservative yes, but one who has already admitted to some of the mistakes of the past. At least I don't have to worry about his orthodoxy.

One issue that I would like Benedict XVI to grasp with both hands is the liturgy. In the English speaking world, this has been on the skids for some time. We foolishly borrowed the Anglican ideas of 'inclusive language' and 'modern terminology' just when the Anglicans had rightly started to ditch the idea. I want to see the English liturgy develop some of the numinous lustre of the Book of Common Prayer, Latin to be used more often (especially Gregorian chant), traditional English hymns to be sung as they are by Anglicans and choirs that dress properly. It is the liturgy that allows most of us to get as close to God as we ever do and it needs to be a top priority. Here, at least, Vatican II was an unmitigated failure. Hard to believe that so much of the world's greatest music is set to the Catholic liturgy. Even Bach wrote a mass and he was Protestant!

Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.

Here is a fun site for all British readers wondering who to vote for at the General Election (and do vote or we make a mockery of democracy). I was greatly relieved to find I support the right party. My main disagreement with the Tories is I would keep university tuition fees which they want to abolish. Here's my results:

Who should I vote for?

Your expected outcome:

Conservative

Your actual outcome:

Labour -8
	Conservative 47
Liberal Democrat -48
	UK Independence Party 40
	Green 2

You should vote: Conservative

The Conservative Party is strongly against joining the Euro and against greater use of taxation to fund public services. The party broadly supported the Iraq war and backs greater policing and ID cards. The Tories are against increasing the minimum wage above the rate of inflation, and have committed to abolishing university tuition fees. They support 'virtual vouchers' for private education.

Take the test at Who Should You Vote For

Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group

A statement I am often having to defend is my claim that science arose only in Western Europe.

The usual objection is that science also arose in ancient Greece, China, the Islamic caliphate or anywhere else you care to mention (Mesoamerica is the most original suggestion that I have heard). To this, I would reply that what I mean by science is very specific. It is not just an interest in nature, or observation, or rejecting the supernatural explanation, although all of these feature in science. Rather it is a large bundle of preconceptions, axioms and methods which make up the practice of what we today understand as science. This only really came into being in early nineteenth century Europe and certainly did not exist in all the other civilisations that are claimed to be scientific. I admit we do talk about Islamic science, Greek science or medieval science but these are probably misnomers. But to be clear, when talking about science as we experience it today, I usually try to use the term 'modern science' to try and avoid this conclusion.

Of course, no one can deny that many of the roots of modern science are to be found outside Western Europe. But that doesn't mean that science itself could be found elsewhere. The roots may spread across the world, but the tree only grew in the one soil.

Comments or questions? Post them at Bede's dedicated yahoo group.

I am introducing a new feature to Bede's Library and Bede's Journal as of today. Rather than feedback coming in through email, the feedback form and blog comments, I am going to ask everyone to comment on a dedicated yahoo group. The reason for this is that blogger comments that could start a good discussion get lost in the either, while emails are private so no one sees them. I hope the new group will encourage further feedback and discussion into the issues raised both by this blog and Bede's Library.

I am also disabling the comments on the blog and try and persuade you all to move over to the new group!