Israellycool

As usual, it’s a crowded field, but I couldn’t go past the pastor.

A Baptist pastor has admitted telling Jewish leaders that Jews were “going to hell” and faced a fate “worse than the Holocaust” because they had not accepted Jesus as their saviour.

But Pastor Kevin Harris of the Illawarra Community Baptist Church in Wollongong says his comments were “misunderstood and misquoted” in a mass email circulated yesterday by the chief of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, Vic Alhadeff.

Mr Harris, a US-trained minister from Virginia, said his comments applied to all people who rejected Jesus, not only Jews, and were based in scripture. “The Bible says that all have sinned and all are worthy of hell,” he told the Herald. “That includes everyone, until we receive Jesus as our saviour.

“Jesus and the Apostles were Jewish. They explained that the Old Testament Jewish faith looked forward to the messiah and the New Testament reveals Jesus as the messiah.”

But despite Mr Harris’s attempt to clarify his remarks, Mr Alhadeff said he was shocked to hear the leader of a Christian congregation speak so bluntly.

“It was a chilling experience,” he said. “While one is only too aware that there are fundamentalist beliefs and extremist preachers out there, his brazen approach and the fact that he is influencing others on a daily basis are the issues of real concern.”

Mr Alhadeff and the board’s education manager, Lynda Ben-Menashe, met Mr Harris six days ago on a tour of the Shoalhaven region to consult religious leaders, including Anglican and Catholic bishops. He told the Herald that Mr Harris’s comments reflected a “religiously charged attitude”, rather than racial anti-Semitism.

“The pastor was extremely welcoming and had a smile on his face throughout the meeting,” Mr Alhadeff said. But he feared such language might provoke racial hatred towards Jews.

Mr Harris said his comments were made in a private meeting “in my lounge room” and admitted using the word “holocaust” but said it was Biblical language.

“I explained that I love the Jewish people very much and that some awful times were coming for them but I did not wish that upon them at all.”

I know he’s not alone in these misguided beliefs, but he gets bonus moron points for his “Hey, you won’t be alone in hell” defense.

..so I can pound it with my fist.

Police rushed into one of Christianity’s holiest churches Sunday and arrested two clergyman after an argument between monks erupted into a brawl next to the site of Jesus’ tomb.

The clash broke out between Armenian and Greek Orthodox monks in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, revered as the site of Jesus’ crucifixion, burial and resurrection.

It began as Armenian clergymen marched in an annual procession commemorating the 4th-century discovery of the cross believed to have been used to crucify Jesus. It ended with the arrival of dozens of riot policemen who separated the sides, seizing a bearded Armenian monk in a red-and-pink robe and a black-clad Greek Orthodox monk with a bloody gash on his forehead. Both men were taken away in handcuffs.

Six Christian sects divide control of the ancient church. They regularly fight over turf and influence, and Israeli police are occasionally forced to intervene.

The feud revolves around a demand by the Greek Orthodox to post a monk inside the Edicule - the ancient structure built on what is believed to be the tomb of Jesus - during the Armenian procession. The Armenians refused, and when they tried to march the Greek Orthodox monks blocked their way.

“We were keeping resistance so that the procession could not pass through … and establish a right that they don’t have,” said a young Greek Orthodox monk with a cut next to his left eye.

Presumably not including right hooks.

The monk, who gave his name as Serafim, said he sustained the wound when an Armenian punched him from behind and broke his glasses.

Don’t these monks know it is not very nice to hit someone with glasses?

Father Pakrat * of the Armenian Patriarchate said the Greek demand was “against the status quo arrangement and against the internal arrangement of the Holy Sepulcher.” He said the Greeks attacked first.

Archbishop Aristarchos, the chief secretary of the Greek Orthodox patriarchate, said his monks had not initiated the violence. “I’m sorry that these events happened in front of the Holy Sepulcher, which is the most holy religious monument of Christianity,” he said.

Seems like he is apologizing for the location of the brawl, and not the brawl itself.

After the brawl, the church was crowded with police holding assault rifles and equipped with riot gear, standing beside Golgotha, where Jesus is believed to have been crucified, and the long smooth stone marking the place where tradition holds his body was laid out.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said police were forced to intervene after fighting was reported. They arrested two monks, one from each side, he said.

The feud is only one of a bewildering array of rivalries among churchmen in the Holy Sepulcher.

The government has long wanted to build a fire exit in the church, which regularly fills with thousands of pilgrims and has only one main door, but the plan is on hold because the sects cannot agree where the exit will be built. In another example, a ladder placed on a ledge over the entrance sometime in the 19th century has remained there ever since because of a dispute over who has the authority to take it down.

More recently, a spat between Ethiopian and Coptic Christians is delaying badly needed renovations to a rooftop monastery that engineers say could collapse.

* Not to be confused with him

Here’s video of a Muslim woman insulting a Christian preacher, prompting the preacher to state that Mohammed was a pedophile.

Hilarity ensues.