Helen Clark and atheism

A few paragraphs from the NZPA Newswire for Friday 7/11/2008

Yesterday Miss [Helen] Clark ’s day started with a session at Newstalk ZB
Among callers was Lesley who was unhappy with the PM ’s claim she lived by Christian values.
"Your agenda and action in public for the past nine years has been to wreck the tenants of Christianity in our country."
Miss Clark reminded her the more controversial pieces of social legislation were private members bills.
She told Lesley that it was often said the Labour Party in New Zealand owed more to Methodism than to socialism and there had always a very strong brand of Christian socialism in it. She said many Christian principles were good.
"I spent my childhood (going to) Presbyterian Sunday school and of course going to Presbyterian church every Sunday while I was in high school... I do know what I am talking about on this I think there are good and basic principles. I don ’t personally happen to be a religious person but I do recognise those common good values."

In a NZ Herald article the following paragraphs appeared:
She [Helen Clark] made the declaration yesterday in response to a claim by Dr Brash that she was an atheist.
"I am not going to have Dr Brash describe my personal beliefs," she said. "I'm not aware I have ever described myself as an atheist.
"I describe myself as an agnostic."
Later, she told the Herald she was brought up a Presbyterian, went to Sunday school every week at Te Pahu, and at Epsom Girls' Grammar walked "in a crocodile" every Sunday morning to St Luke's Church in Remuera.

It's good to know that Helen does not class herself as an 'atheist', even though many of her detractors would call her that, and have done.

Helen Clark writes to Mr Mugabe

Care to take a dictation, Mr Mugabe?

Under the guise of Helen Clark, NZ Herald's Jim Hopkins writes a letter to Mr Mugabe, telling him how to handle the situation as she would.

As 'she' writes, there's "no need to be a bully when you can be a sneak. See, Blob, we've got this issue here in Outer Roa. Smacking. And its dodgy, Bob. Dodgy.

Well, dodgy for the gummint, anyway. Something you'd understand all too well, I imagine."

Read the rest on the NZ Herald site.

Lost to UnLost

In Don Everts and Doug Schaupp's, I Once Was Lost, the authors identify "five thresholds" by which most young converts come to Christ. Using the parable of the growing seed in Mark 4:28–29 to frame the process, Everts and Schaupp outline five distinct "seasons":

• from distrust of Christians to trust;
  
• from spiritual complacency to curiosity;
  
• from being closed to Christianity to being open;
  
• from meandering to seeking;
  
• entrance over the "threshold of the kingdom.

Evert and Schaupp's book departs from a modern, rationalistic model for doing evangelism. It doesn't offer a manual. It is fresh, real, and based on the authors' direct experience. The label postmodern is held loosely, meant simply to describe "how things are right now," rather than to conform to a technical definition.

From a review entitled, The Five Steps of Getting Un-Lost, by Chap Clark.