American Wobbly activist Joe Hill’s song, The Preacher and the Slave, describes how ‘Long-haired preachers come out every night, Try to tell you what’s wrong and what’s right’. But when asked for a bite to eat will decline and say you’ll have to wait till you get to heaven to experience the good life:
‘You will eat, by and by, In that glorious land above the sky; Work and pray, live on hay, You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.’
One wonders what Joe Hill would have made of the contemporary preachers who decided that rewards in heaven were for the poor, the downtrodden and the working class, but they, the preachers, wanted theirs here, now and plenty of it thank you very much.
The South China Morning Post (27 April) featured ‘8 of the richest televangelists of 2024.’ Type ‘rich pastors’ into a search engine and many more than eight are listed. Sitting at Numero Uno was Kenneth Copeland with an estimated worth of 300 million dollars. A Kenyan website, Tuko.co.ke has his worth listed as 760 million dollars.
The South China Morning Post’s eight nominees are all American whereas the Kenyan site is far more international, listing Nigerians, Malawians, Zimbabweans, South Africans as well as Americans. The gullible are found all over the world.
A common feature these snake-oil salespersons seem to share is a predilection for private jets and vast property empires. Also in on the racket are women but they don’t appear to come anywhere near the amounts amassed by the males. Joe Hill’s song: ‘Give your money to Jesus they say.’ What they’ve always meant was ‘give it to me’.
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Meanwhile, in Karachaevo-Cherkessia, a Muslim-majority region in southern Russia, the Islamic authorities have banned the wearing of the niqab, citing risks posed by the practice to security and sectarian tolerance, and follows a similar move in Dagestan. The niqab is a type of garment worn by women in some parts of the world which covers the body and face, except for the eyes. The Muftiate denounced people who claim that the niqab is mandatory in Islam, stating that the false claim is ‘introducing strife and division into society’. Under current circumstances there, the garment and similar items that fully cover the face ‘inflict practical harm to Muslims and threaten discontent in relations between religions and ethnicities’.
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The UK National Secular Society notes a report from the Commission for Countering Extremism which highlights the link between UK religious (Islamic) charities and anti-blasphemy extremism. It says that there is a ‘new generation’ of activists working to ‘make blasphemy a key issue of concern for British Muslims’. Incidents highlighted include ‘a teacher in Batley forced into hiding after allegedly showing pupils a drawing of Muhammad in 2021; screenings of the film The Lady of Heaven cancelled following protests in 2022; and a pupil receiving death threats in 2023 after a Quran was lightly damaged at a Wakefield school’.
DC
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