NILC is a Waste of Time

In this piece in the Mail and Guardian Pastor Ray McCauley (leader of Rhema church) and the organisation he founded (National Interfaith Leadership Council) says that they are going to raise again the issues of abortion and gay marriage in South Africa.

I'll tell you why this is a waste of everyone's time and effort.

You can't combat relativism with relativism.

The obvious example (in that same piece) is in NILCs condemnation of former constitutional court judge Kriegler's Foundation Under Law's attempt to get the Judicial Services Commission to look again at the decision not to investigate the behaviour of Cape Judge President Judge Hlophe.

Why would they weigh in on that? They say that they regarded the decision of the JSC not to proceed as 'drawing a line' under the case, and condemned the criticism from Kriegler. That seems to me entirely consistant with an organisation constituted around fudging truth. And as an aside, it does make one wonder (along with McCauley's cosying up to politicians in the run-up to this year's elections) about the political agenda of NILC, given the ANC's support for Hlophe.

An interfaith leadership council is almost by definition relativistic and not interested in truth. It is only concerned with everyone getting along - at almost any cost.

Don't get me wrong, I want to get along. I want Muslims to be free to practice Islam, just as I want to be free to tell them that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Here's the thing. In any relativistic past-time like NILC, sooner or later you come up against a big problem. It's called Absolute Truth. Either it's there - and gay marriage, abortion and, yes, interfaith councils are wrong by those standards; or it's not - and they're all perfectly ok.

But you can't have it both ways Ray.

Churches in Edinburgh and Scotland

Great site listing churches in Edinburgh, and also going out to cover Glasgow, St Andrews, Perth, Stirling, Aberdeen, Dundee, Paisley.

Origin Scotland provide this as a service to the community and it's completely free! They hope one day to cover all of Scotland with it.

Churches in Cape Town

Really useful website of churches in Cape Town, South Africa. A directory listing, each entry is checked by a real human on the telephone before it goes into the directory.

Not claiming it's a complete list, but definitely the best one out there, and growing all the time.