Standing with the protesters, the Christian groups might have done well to learn some of their tricks and tried to come to a consensus with the administration at St. Paul.

As we are continuing to see, a collection of people, whether they call themselves a movement or a religion, are quickly distracted from their priorities when they make little effort towards reconciliation or agreement. 

I guess that because a few US lefties in the past have used bombs/guns, it’s only a matter of time until the OWS folks pick up arms and begin executing day traders.

You’re making my point for me.

Jesus never said that if your neighbor — or your church — was being insufficiently generous, you can override their decision.  Perhaps you and the “Christian groups” here think housing the protesters is important enough to break the law and risk arrest.  That’s fine; civil disobedience has a long and respectable history, and it is sometimes the only way to bring enough attention to unjust laws or decisions.  However, no one should trick themselves into thinking the “Christian groups” have a legal or even moral right to physically block the protesters from being evicted.

2) Your logic is bogus on every count: For one thing, the people in the pews do not give money with the assumption that they can make decisions on how to use the church, there are still rules about how to treat the area, and St. Paul’s is not a Catholic church so it probably doesn’t care what people in Rome or the Vatican think.

3) And if you had actually read the Bible verses Mac mentioned, you would know that the ownership of the fields was not mentioned, and that it is really a story about how to interpret the commandment about keeping the Sabbath holy.

The Ch. of Eng. is considered a “State” church & accorded, by the gvt., what’s considered fitting status & respect. [etc...]

I don’t think you know anything about the CoE.

It has a couple of ties left to the UK government, but is financially independent (receiving no government funding), owns all its own property, and in no sense is it influenced or controlled by the government any more than any other religious organisation in the country.

The remaining ties are:

26 bishops of the CoE have seats in the House of Lords, and hence have some influence over legislation. However they are a tiny minority.

Some ceremonial functions involve the CoE, such as royal weddings.

That’s it. The whole thing is basically vestigial. Hopefully this makes it clear why your rant is woefully inaccurate.

It would also be unhelpful of me to generalize about the christians bombing women’s health clinics (and I remember the sustained bombing campaign in 80s) and murdering gynecologists who perform abortions..  – but I would say your generalizations about christians not doing that (maybe that isn’t obscure enough an issue of dogma to be upset about?) are also unhelpful.

And its refreshing to see one group of Christians start being active in pointing this out.

Jesus probably did not talk much about respecting other peoples’ property because he assumed people would remember and obey the commandments about not stealing and not coveting your neighbor’s house or other property.  He never said “If your neighbor is being a bit stingy, keep him out of his house and let a bunch of hippies camp there and make a mess of it.  Do this in my name, amen.”  As far as I remember, he also never prioritized convenience of protest (futile, as this is, or not) over sanitation or over people coming together in worship.

(If these people really were St. Paul’s, as you seem to think they are, why would they need to engage in civil disobedience for protesters to stay?)

All else aside (like the fact that St. Paul’s is not “someone else”), when God says “worship me or I will make you eternally suffer a fate worse than death” he is doing what, exactly?

I thought the idea was to occupy lsx, not St Paul’s?

They are occupying LSX. Thing is that St Paul’s is across the street from LSX. They’ve done their best to arrange themselves so as to not block access to the cathedral – there’s a wide path to it – and are quite unhappy about the fact that (a) the media keeps focussing on St Paul’s, and (b) despite doing everything they’ve been asked to do short of going home, and not having received any further requests, the cathedral authorities seem to have decided that their presence is a problem.

Bleh – give me a break. Most Christians are decent and charitable. Most PEOPLE are decent and charitable It is their vocal minorities that makes the news and presents the faith and other groups in a negative light. 

Yep – he actually took his neighbour’s food to feed his followers.   That’s right – he and his followers literally walked into fields that didn’t belong to them and took grain.     It’s in the Bible – Luke 6:1-4

He was criticised by the law at the time for it. 

So far, we know that Jesus took food that didn’t belong to him and picked up a weapon and attacked money changers.

That may not be the ‘Jesus’ that we were taught about at school – but it is the historical character.   Sometimes morality isn’t as cut & dry as we’d like to teach our kids.

Every sunday we could get together and feel vague sense of guilt about everything we’ve done in the past week.

I think the biggest issue here is not the protesters or the use of Church property, but the sin of Christians reveling in their theological and political differences and airing their divisions on the front page.

So the first duty of Christian leaders is to protect their corporate image?

Regardless of what you think about US Christians, you don’t find them killing each other over obscure issues of dogma, preventing women from voting/driving, or forming war-bands out of kidnapped youngsters.

I guess that you don’t consider Mormons to be Christians. And as to the war bands, there are churches teaching children to be warriors for Jesus, and not the spiritual kind. Just because they haven’t attacked yet doesn’t mean that they’re not there.

A church is not its congregation.  (This is not advanced epistemology or law.)

Perhaps not a CoE one like St Paul’s, but this isn’t universally true. Notably, the Congregational Churches and the Baptists take a rather different view.

The Christian thing to do is not so easy to spell out. Sure, Jesus said to give away your extra coat and whipped the money lenders, but this is just glossing the surface.

Read the “Parable of the Laborers,” or the ”Parable of the Talents,”  or Matthew 22:21. Jesus has some hard words about taxation and wealth.

The good advice isn’t limited to the New Testament. If everyone had heeded Proverbs 22:7 we could have avoided this whole mess, altogether.

I think the biggest issue here is not the protesters or the use of Church property, but the sin of Christians reveling in their theological and political differences and airing their divisions on the front page.