Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee

[From the Guardian]

Beijing denied a story about an Olympic Bible ban spread by the rightwing media but it was actually a Catholic news service that shut it down.The story had everything going for it. It was outrageous. It was emotionally laden. It involved suppression of religion by godless communists. The flurry of attention in the comments section of rightwing political and religious websites was instantaneous. The problem was that it wasn’t true.

A recent editorial in the conservative New York Sun kicked off the fuss by citing a report from the Catholic News Service asserting that the Chinese government would bar athletes from bringing Bibles to the upcoming Beijing Olympic Games. Pajamas Media, home of many a rightwing blog, followed up with a report, also citing CNS, and adding the strange cavil “if true”.

The facts, by the way, are that Bibles circulate freely in China, despite the Chinese government’s bad record on religion and human rights. An official Chinese government statement said that it would prefer that athletes bring Bibles for personal use only, but stopped well short of a ban.

In fact, Olympic organizers in China said there would be no restrictions on Bibles in the Olympic village. Later, the reporter for the Italian newspaper unconvincingly defended his story by asserting that a ban on “pamphlets and materials used for any religious or political activity or display” meant Bibles, even after the Chinese issued a clarification changing the banned category to “promotional materials”.

Read about it here.

[From me]

There are enough human rights violations in China than to make up accusations that aren’t true. This ought to be a lesson to all of us to check out our stories before we say something to friends or gossip about it to someone else.

What do you think?

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