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Danish minister suspended, but whether he'll be fired is up to government
In the last week, Weblog has read several crazy claims about Christianity. Two different authors are claiming that Jesus was gay, and the New Age Ulysses Press "would have us believe that Mary was a prostitute when she gave birth to Jesus, and that the grown-up Jesus committed unspeakable acts with his mother," according to the Associated Press.

Orthodoxy will face such nonsense until Christ's Kingdom is fully realized. But when a Christian minister starts spouting such guano, it's all the more troubling.

In a recent interview (the Associated Press doesn't say with whom), Lutheran minister Thorkild Grosboel of Taarbaek, Denmark, said, "There is no heavenly God, there is no eternal life, there is no resurrection." Hmm. Not much left in the Lutheran Book of Concord after that, is there?

Grosboel's bishop has demanded that he retract the statements and apologize. "There should be no doubt that priests have committed themselves to act within the church's confession of faith," said Lise-Lotte Rebel, adding that his remarks "caused confusion" in the church. She also suspended him from this duties as the town's pastor.

Suspended? Why not fire him? "In Denmark, Lutheran pastors are employed by the state, and bishops cannot fire them," the AP's Jan M. Olsen explains. Ah, the joys of a state church.

There's some indication that the government might sack him. Minister for Ecclesiastic Affairs Tove Fergo, for example, said it's not possible to be a pastor without believing in God and the resurrection.

In any case, Grosboel is a symptom of what's happening throughout the country. According to Operation World, 90 percent of the country belongs to the Danish National Church but most parishes only see 1 percent to 4 percent attendance. Less than 5 percent of the Danish population (about 252,000) are evangelicals—but it's dropping by 6 percent a year.

The World Christian Encyclopedia, however, has more encouraging news. Evangelicals are indeed lower than ever, it says, but a growing percentage of the population is Pentecostal/Charismatic (they make up about 4 percent of Denmark now). Operation World says only 1.5% is Charismatic and that the percentages are shrinking. In any case, the country needs prayer.

EU draft leaves out God:

• God and the E.U. | No room at Europe's inn (Time Europe)
  
  
• E.U.'s draft constitution sets up raucous debate | God is out, a European foreign policy czar is in, and some bare-knuckle brawling is almost guaranteed as citizens of 25 current and future EU nations begin digesting the first official draft of a continent-wide constitution (The Washington Times)
  
  
• Atheist premier attacks lack of Christianity in E.U. constitution | Poland's President Aleksander Kwasniewski, denounced the "Godless" tone of the European constitution yesterday, calling it shameful to highlight the pet ideologies of the Left but omit any mention of Europe's Christian heritage in the opening words (The Daily Telegraph, London)
  
  
• Doubting north wins battle to leave God out of it | God has failed to make an appearance in the E.U.'s new constitution, which states that the continent's humanistic values are nourished by the civilizations of Greece and Rome (The Guardian, London)
  
  
• God has no place in 'elitist' Giscard Euro blueprint | Europe's heritage is leavened by "spiritual impulse", according to the long-awaited preamble to the European constitution, but God is nowhere to be found in the document (The Daily Telegraph, London)
  
  

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June (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47