The world’s first lesbian bishop of a mainstream Christian denomination has put forth a call for one of the country’s seaport churches to remove its crosses, so as to avoid offending Muslims.
Bishop Eva Brunne of the Lutheran Church of Sweden has proposed to remove the Christian symbols of the Seamen’s Church in Freeport to make it more inviting for visiting sailors from other religions, according to a report by SVT.se, a Stockholm-based news outlet.
Her plan calls for removing crosses and other Christian symbols while setting up a prayer room inside the church that marks the direction of Mecca. The idea is to have rooms within the church that cater to people of other religions, thereby accommodating Muslim visitors. It would also make the church less offensive to the tens of thousands of Muslims entering Sweden from the Middle East and North Africa as refugees.
“Making a room available for people of other faiths does not mean that we are not defenders of our own faith. Priests are called to proclaim Christ. We do that every day and in every meeting with people,” according to Brunne. “But that does not mean that we are stingy toward people of other faiths.”
Sweden has “surrendered without so much as firing a shot,” said Pamela Geller author of “Stop the Islamization of America.”
“Sweden has lost it,” Geller told WND. “It is sacrificing its own heritage to accommodate immigrants who will not be as accommodating to native non-Muslim Swedes. The bishop is paving the way for the Islamization of Sweden.”
The Church of Sweden is the largest Christian church in Sweden and the largest Lutheran denomination in the world. The primate of the Church of Sweden is Archbishop Antje Jackelén — Sweden’s first female archbishop.
Robert Spencer, an Islam expert and blogger at Jihad Watch, said “this is what a society and culture in the midst of suicide looks like.”
“How wonderful and generous and ecumenical and multicultural this is,” Spencer wrote.
Spencer suggested that imams in Stockholm and across Europe are likely laughing at the ease with which Christians there are willing to surrender to Islam.
“Watch for mosques everywhere to remove their mihrabs and install crosses so that Christians will feel comfortable praying there,” Spencer said with biting sarcasm.
Of course, not all Swedes are happy about the bishop’s plan.
Patrik Pettersson, priest of the Oscars parish in Stockholm, writes on his blog:
“The church chapel can not reasonably be equated with prayer rooms at airports and hospital chapels anyway. The Christian churches and chapels are not public areas at any time.”
Seamen’s Mission Director Kiki Wetterberg also does not agree with the bishop.
“I have no problem with Muslim or Hindu sailors coming here and praying. But I believe that we are a Christian church, so we keep the symbols. If I visit a mosque, I do not ask them to take down their symbols. It’s my choice to go in there,” she wrote to the newspaper Dagen.
“If you think this story sounds too bizarre to be true, then you haven’t acquainted yourself with the progressive ‘utopia’ that is Sweden,” writes Paul Joseph Watson, a U.K.-based writer. “This is a country in which some politicians have called for giving free housing, jobs and welfare to returning ISIS jihadists – all at taxpayer expense.”
Sweden is also a country that hires ISIS-sympathizers to run its immigration boards, Watson noted. And the country’s taxpayer-funded “expert” on Islamophobia, Michael Nikolai Skråmo, also went on to join ISIS.
Netherlands politician counters E.U.’s multicultural ‘utopia’
Geert Wilders, head of the Dutch Party of Freedom, is one politician who isn’t buying into the E.U.’s multicultural utopia.
Wilders has been calling for years for a more aggressive counter jihadist program. His party is now the fourth largest in the Dutch Parliament and continuing to gain strength.
“All the politicians are, I have to say, ignoring the problem. They are fooling their constituents (about Islam), even your own president, Mr. Obama,” Wilders told Jamie Glazov in a recent interview.
Wilders said Western politicians and diplomats such as John Kerry are mischaracterizing the Islamic State, ISIS, as “not Islamic” and a group that has “hijacked” one of the world’s great religions.
“I have to tell you, it’s all lies,” Wilders said. “The problem we face today in our free Western society is we have imported millions of people form Islamic countries with a background, a culture, an ideology of hate, a totalitarian ideology.”
Wilders said to stop the Islamization of Western cultures, the nations of the West must stop Islamic immigration, which has led to a steady erosion and degradation of every Christian country where it has been tried.
West should look to Lebanon for example
Lebanon, for instance, was majority Christian until rampant Islamic immigration turned the demographics in the 1950s and 60s. By the 1970s Jihadist attacks on Christian families and Christian-owned businesses were commonplace and it has been unsafe ever since for Christians to live and practice their faith.
What was once the “Paris of the Middle East,” Beirut, became a Third-World conflict zone. Europe, short of a 190-degree turn in policy, is now on the same path, Wilders said.
“I believe, if we don’t want to see in our own countries happening what we see today in Iraq and Syria, we should fight against the Islamization of our own free society, which means we should stop the Islamization of our society, that we should stop the immigration from Islamic countries. We should expel all the people that have even the slightest sympathy for the Islamic State,” Wilders told Glazov. “We should encourage the voluntary repatriation of people from Islamic countries. We should de-Islamize our societies in order to stay free. We should not only fight the Islamic State over there, but we should fight the Islamic monster in our own free societies.”