Child abuse, or not?

Problems concerning Child Abuse

I have not been writing on this English version of my swedish blog for quit some time... But several of my articles on the swedish blog are referring to a growing debate in Sweden about child abuse. I personally have come accross several cases of families who have been accused of abusing their newly born babies

Recently the Swedish Supreme Court in a second similar verdict stated that a condemned father who earlier had been imprisoned should have his case gone through a second time. The problem of maldiagnosed child abuse have now been discovered by media. Above you can se the front page of Dagens Nyheter, the biggest Morning Paper in January and recently also the journalistic Magazine "Filter" wrote about this in a long article "Without my daughter" that describes a case (the one where permission by the Supreme Court to take up the case was granted which also the "pippigroup" And in the radioprogram "Kropp och Själ" gave a good description the status of the problem. The three doctors Ingemar Thiblin, Lina Davisson and Gabriel Otterman, whom I all have met where discussing the clinical and pharmaceutical implications.

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Above there is a cut from Texas, USA describing one of the cases. According to "Kropp och Själ" (swedish radio program) there are more than 1000 people in the USA are put to jarl due to these accusations. There the situation is however a lot more polarized, doctors fighting each others in the courts.

We have started the organisation  RFFR, Riksförbundet för familjers rättigheter ("national organization for the rights of families"), where we already are  150 medlemmar. We hope that more people will join, more information on our website and facebook!

Se also Dagens juridik, Expressen, Forskning och Framsteg,

DN on the Mio-group 

Ulf Ekmans conversion to Catholicism

 

Here you can see Ulf Ekman preaching at last sundays service at Livets Ord church ("Word of Life") in Uppsala, Sweden. He explains why he and his wife Birgitta are in the process of converting to the Catholic Church.

For those of us who have followed the development at Livets Ord over the last few years this does not come as a great surprise, even though it must have been a bit of a chock for a lot of members in the church (and all over the globe) that the Ekman couple do not end by just showing a mere interest and openness toward the historic Churches, but actually choose to leave the church they have founded and pastored for 30 years and join the Catholic Church (Ulf Ekmans motivation in the Swedish main paper Dagens Nyheter).

I personally consider this a very thrilling turn of events! I can honestly state that as for me, being a christian, it is subordinate which church or denomination I belong to. I am totally convinced that it is possible to be a devoted and bornagain (a carismatic expression) christian, no matter which church you belong to! I could concider being an orthodox, a catholic, a lutheran, a methodist, a hutterite, a pentacostal, a baptist of a carismatic ("livetsordare"="wordoflifer") and what other -ist or -an you could think of. As long as the Bible is the guideline, and the Apostolic Confession (and also the Athansian, which states that Jesus is at the same time 100% God and 100% man).

For me, it is not the visible rituals, the doctrines, the way you organize the service / mass, or who is the leader that matters, but the personal faith and relationship with the Lord. I am alos convinced that it in all churches are warm and zealous believers which also means that the docrines can be understood in connection to the context, even though they can be concidered strange and appalling to others. In the same way there are in all different traditions (even at Livetsord) a "cultural christianity" where people belong just because the are born and grown up in the church and have never really made any personal decision neither "for" nor "against". Naturally this form of religiosity is more common within catholic circles it is such a big and old church where so many generations have been raised with this identity rather than they have made a chose out of their own convincement. 

I which Ulf and Birgitta Ekman all the best on their future path. Only a few weeks ago we had a sensational report from a Kenneth Copeland conference i the US. Kenneth Copeland has been a key figure in the "faith movement" and inspired Ulf Ekman in the beginning. At the actual service one of Copelands earlier coworkers, Tony Palmer, gave a speech, including a greeting taken up on Palmers' IPhone to the conference. So similare processes are taking place in several places. 

Saying all this I would like to wish all the best to Joakim Lundqvist, the new pastor at Livets Ord, Uppsala. Ulf and Birgitta leaving the church should not be seen as a rejection of Livets Ord or as an act of alienation, which they also themselves pointed out. Ulf Ekman is very satisfied with the development and contents of Livets Ord. But now Joakim will be there and he will as the pastor point out a clear heading for the church as an evangelical, carismatic church, even though a lot of the members are feeling insecure about the future development. I think everything will be just fine! The best is yet to come!

See the papers ViD, (interview), (editorial), opinions from churchleaders,

Dagen, (interview) , editorial

DN

SvD

Tv4

AB, Birro

UNT

Radio Uppland

Bengts´ blog

Tommy Dahlman

Stefan Svärd

Joel Halldorf

This is a transcript of my Swedish-speaking blog!!

Lucia in Mikaels church

My daughter Rebecca is one in the choire singing in Mikaels´ Church in Uppsala. She opened the concert with a Christmas song on the cello. It is the music profile classes of her School making this traditional Lucia concert on the 13th of december. However the repertoire was not that traditional - very entertaining though!

Swedish female Zebra Crossing

In Sweden it has been decided to replace half of the "Herr Gårman" ("Mr Walkman", can also be understood as "Here you walk") - signs with female versions. All in the name of equality of sexes. The problem is that in Uppsala the wrong version of the sign has been erected (UNT) and it is to be replaced by a more moderat version, with longer skirt and hair and smaller breasts (the article above).

Ebba Busch, the Christian Democratic vice mayor thinks the wrong signs should be auctioned out in order to cover some of the costs. It is now possible to make a bid on Tradera! 

Actually the "wrong" version of the sign was designed by Kars-Gustaf Gustafsson - the designer of the original male sign.

You can read more on funny Swedish traffic signs here, see another femalizied sign here, and here you can see the original sign

DN, DN, AB,

What´s the problem with the Swedish Democrats?

I have followed the thrilling result of the counting of the votes in the Swedish Parliament election. The right wing "Alliance" coalition does not succeed in gaining a majority lacking only 9 votes in Gothenburg and 7 in Värmland! Now all the votes are counted. But it has already been challenged...

When we, the Christian Democrats in Uppsala, followed the count right after the election everyone shouted with excitement when the forecast of 175 mandates for the "Alliance" came up (175 makes a majority out of the 349 seats in the Swedish Riksdag). And of course it would have been wonderful if a historical Swedish right wing majority government would have been reelected! A unique period would have been followed by another unique one.

But I see no problem with the Swedish "Alliance" government ruling as a minority government! The common situation in Sweden has been the Social democrats governing with support of a minority in the parliament and the passive support of the more or less undemocratic leftist party (former communists). What then is the problem with an Alliance government depending on a passive support of the Swedish Democrats?

The left wing coalition has showed themselves from the worst side critizising the government for cooperating with the Swedish Democrats. It is natural that the biggest coalition form a government! Or are the left coalition prepared to vote against the "Alliance" with the only result that they themselves would have to depend on SD?

No, hypocrats and bad loosers are what the leftists are! They should accept that they have lost the election and let prime minister Reinfeldt & Co go on with governing Sweden in peace!

Dn 1,2, XP 1, SVT 1, SvD 1,2,3,4 AB 1,2,3, 4