France's Interior Minister has announced today that a smartphone-based version of the hardcopy 'exceptional permit' (we require this to go outside for a maximum of 1 hour per day, dated, with the time and our signature, since our lockdown) will be available from April 6.
I was going to place a large wager on it coming with a QR code, but thought it only sporting to check first, and it does (link in French).
My point is that "your contacts" need to include your kids' contacts. The proposal was for an electronic means of tracking who "your contacts" are - which people sat near you on the bus, who you were in the pub or at church with. That has to include "whose children shared playground climbing equipment with your children" if it's going to work, doesn't it? As it warms up, kids are going to be more and more keen to be outside.
Well, there can't be any with you in the pub or church as both are closed.
I have zero problem with bans of all gatherings, including religious ones, for as long as it takes to get testing up to the level being done in South Korea, because that's the only way it's going to be safe for people to gather. Religious gatherings don't just endanger the people who attend them; they endanger everyone in the surrounding communities. Your right to practice your religion ends when it threatens my life.
South Korea isn't just doing testing: it's doing massive individual surveillance. How do you, from the US civil liberties tradition, view the prospect of every person attending every church gathering logging their presence there using a QR code on a smartphone at the door?
Because absent a massively available, safe vaccine, which must surely be at least months (away, I can't see any other way of getting back out of lockdown than mass testing AND surveillance, and I fully expect it.
I don't think this level of surveillance is possible in the US. The practical reason is that almost 1 in 5 Americans still doesn't own a smartphone.. The principled reason is the tradition of civil liberties you raise. Things in the US will thus be messier and deadlier than in South Korea when we move toward lifting stay at home orders. So all the more reason for religious people here to stay the fuck at home now. In Sacramento County, almost one-third of the known cases are connected to churches (source): "That includes 24 infections spread among one church whose congregants have continued to hold in-person fellowship meetings during the growing pandemic."
The broader question is therefore when "liberty" becomes another word for "irresponsibility".
Indeed, there's a more general sense that we wouldn't need various of these laws if people had shown themselves capable of carrying out appropriate behaviours without them.
One of the escalations of shutdown in Australia basically occurred because of footage of great crowds of people on Bondi Beach.
More locally, a nature park was closed because last weekend over 500 people had the same 'bright idea' of thinking that they could still go out there away from the city and crowds. I literally predicted that would happen, when one overly smart person I knew suggested that kind of idea some weeks ago when other countries were closing, and I said to him, what happens when hundreds of other overly smart people have the same idea?
The broader question is therefore when "liberty" becomes another word for "irresponsibility".
Indeed, there's a more general sense that we wouldn't need various of these laws if people had shown themselves capable of carrying out appropriate behaviours without them.
One of the escalations of shutdown in Australia basically occurred because of footage of great crowds of people on Bondi Beach.
More locally, a nature park was closed because last weekend over 500 people had the same 'bright idea' of thinking that they could still go out there away from the city and crowds. I literally predicted that would happen, when one overly smart person I knew suggested that kind of idea some weeks ago when other countries were closing, and I said to him, what happens when hundreds of other overly smart people have the same idea?
One of the things I am thankful for in the current situation is living on an island where non-essential ferry and plane travel has been restricted so the chances of encountering another soul within 200m on the beaches, nevermind 2m, remain almost as slim as they do in winter. My sincerest sympathies are with those stuck in flats and tenements in the big cities at this time.
I don't think this level of surveillance is possible in the US. The practical reason is that almost 1 in 5 Americans still doesn't own a smartphone.. The principled reason is the tradition of civil liberties you raise. Things in the US will thus be messier and deadlier than in South Korea when we move toward lifting stay at home orders. So all the more reason for religious people here to stay the fuck at home now. In Sacramento County, almost one-third of the known cases are connected to churches (source): "That includes 24 infections spread among one church whose congregants have continued to hold in-person fellowship meetings during the growing pandemic."
For the record, I don't have any argument with the danger of contagion from religious gatherings, since I've been pointing out for several weeks now that a church gathering in Mulhouse, France (before any restrictions were in place or the seriousness of what was going on was understood) looks like the single largest source of contagion in the entire country and on that basis was militating for our church gathertings to cease before the government ordered it.
France could not legally enforce South Korea levels of surveillance either, but I fully expect there to be far less social resistance to it and more social pressure to comply with any voluntary scheme (which is what the government is now making noises about).
Over two weeks into lockdown, I'm amazed at the levels of compliance here given that we do not have an omnipresent police force to perform controls at every street corner. Social pressure is a huge thing, I've discovered. Not owning a smartphone is not going to look libertarian or old-fashioned, it's going to look as threatening to your personal health as attending a church gathering. I expect social norms to shift in this respect.
It's well-known that the way to persuade people to accept more surveillance is to present it as a service - like smart cards, tap-in tap-out travel cards, Facebook, etc. Present a QR app as a way of protecting your health and it will be embraced.
The thing about surveillance is, most of our lives are far more boring than we ourselves suppose, and most bureaucracies don't have nearly enough resources to care about us all.
Of course computers may help them be more efficient... but then again, I've also witnessed just how spectacularly bad bureaucracies can be at actually implementing any kind of computerised system.
The thing about surveillance is, most of our lives are far more boring than we ourselves suppose, and most bureaucracies don't have nearly enough resources to care about us all.
Anecdotes:
1. when a pastor I know applied for French nationality in the early 1990s, he was called for interview by the police. During the interview they produced a leaflet handed out by his church plant about ten years previously.
2. a friend of a friend also applied for nationality and had a similar interview. She was asked whether she had ever taken part in any demonstrations. She said no, and was then confronted with a photograph of her taken in a demonstration from her high school days.
I still don't have a tinfoil hat, and agree about bureaucratic incompetence, but stories like these are a reality in this country.
The thing about surveillance is, most of our lives are far more boring than we ourselves suppose, and most bureaucracies don't have nearly enough resources to care about us all.
Of course computers may help them be more efficient... but then again, I've also witnessed just how spectacularly bad bureaucracies can be at actually implementing any kind of computerised system.
@Eutychus has given us a number of examples of French officialdom, and, IIRC, somewhere (on these boards) remarked that despite a veneer of democracy, the country is still a police state.
Without wishing to derail the thread, hasn't this been the case in France since the Revolution/Napoleonic era?
I still don't have a tinfoil hat, and agree about bureaucratic incompetence, but stories like these are a reality in this country.
So much for liberté, not so sure about the egalité and fraternité! That is truly shocking.
I think a lot of it is cultural. Nobody here thinks twice about having to carry an ID card even in normal times, whereas Brits don't seem the least bothered about widespread automatic number plate recognition, neighbourhood watch, and massively intrusive criminal background checks in which all details are forwarded to third parties, none of which we have on anything like such a scale here.
In F'ton, NB, Canada we have a cluster of 5 cases from a religious group who didn't practice physical distancing. Public health trumps religious freedom. Our Education Minister was attempting last fall to eliminate religious exemptions from vaccination from school age children. There was the predictable push back and even Cabinet was divided. It will interesting to see people's approach t this question after the pandemic has ended.
Personally I don't think there should be a religious exemption for vaccination. However my understanding is that it's OK from the medical point of view if it's only a tiny proportion of the population.
I still don't have a tinfoil hat, and agree about bureaucratic incompetence, but stories like these are a reality in this country.
So much for liberté, not so sure about the egalité and fraternité! That is truly shocking.
I think a lot of it is cultural. Nobody here thinks twice about having to carry an ID card even in normal times, whereas Brits don't seem the least bothered about widespread automatic number plate recognition, neighbourhood watch, and massively intrusive criminal background checks in which all details are forwarded to third parties, none of which we have on anything like such a scale here.
Quite a lot of us are very uncomfortable about some of those, and many of the other intrusivenesses of modern life.
Others may disagree, but I'd prefer to have a Government ID card than lots of cards issued by unaccountable commercial organisations. And Govt already holds a great deal of information about us.
Well, there can't be any with you in the pub or church as both are closed.
The suggestion was for electronic tracking as a tool to allow partial re-opening of public activities. There's not much point in talking about tracking people when nobody is going anywhere.
Others may disagree, but I'd prefer to have a Government ID card than lots of cards issued by unaccountable commercial organisations. And Govt already holds a great deal of information about us.
Yes, but even government seems unaccountable these days...once the neo-fascists take over completely, and we find ourselves in a one-party totalitarian state, they'll be able to do just what they like.
Personally I don't think there should be a religious exemption for vaccination. However my understanding is that it's OK from the medical point of view if it's only a tiny proportion of the population.
Herd immunity breaks down at a lower percentage than most free riders think. And it varies by how easily a given disease spreads. As this strain of coronavirues seems to spread rather easily, the percentage of free riders would need to be very low indeed.
Free riders are selfish bastards.
Others may disagree, but I'd prefer to have a Government ID card than lots of cards issued by unaccountable commercial organisations. And Govt already holds a great deal of information about us.
There's nothing that the Govt can put on a card that they don't have anyway. If you have a National Insurance number then you are part of the great organ of the state.
Years ago we had from Christian Science family friends who were told that their son had to receive vaccinations in oder to start school. Their response to the child was, these shots are not going to help you in anyway, but they will not harm you either. It will just be a little poke to go to school. Times have changed...
Between them, the Catholic, Anglican and Uniting Churches here cover 45% of the population - at least nominally (very much so for Anglicans). In the greater Sydney region, perhaps more generally, they had closed voluntarily before government edict. So it's hard to say that the government order was a state attack on religious freedom.
The broader question is therefore when "liberty" becomes another word for "irresponsibility".
If you only have liberty so long as you use it “responsibly”, you don’t have liberty.
We seem to have to repeat this every single time. Freedom (aka liberty) cannot be complete because complete freedom for one person necessarily limits freedom for other people. Freedom in a society has to have limits or it is merely selective freedom for some and more limited freedom for others.
The thing about surveillance is, most of our lives are far more boring than we ourselves suppose, and most bureaucracies don't have nearly enough resources to care about us all.
Anecdotes:
1. when a pastor I know applied for French nationality in the early 1990s, he was called for interview by the police. During the interview they produced a leaflet handed out by his church plant about ten years previously.
2. a friend of a friend also applied for nationality and had a similar interview. She was asked whether she had ever taken part in any demonstrations. She said no, and was then confronted with a photograph of her taken in a demonstration from her high school days.
I still don't have a tinfoil hat, and agree about bureaucratic incompetence, but stories like these are a reality in this country.
Maybe some governments are less incompetent than others...
Also, Le Bureau des Légendes is a truly excellent TV show. Just saying.
I still don't have a tinfoil hat, and agree about bureaucratic incompetence, but stories like these are a reality in this country.
So much for liberté, not so sure about the egalité and fraternité! That is truly shocking.
Not meaning to pile on France, but it is a country which until some time in the last decade, had laws against insulting the president, and where parents were required to name their children from a list of state-approved names, dating from the Napoleonic era.
I suppose those could be justified under fraternite, holding the nation together with inviolable symbols. That might be an overly charitable interpretation.
I should also say that my own visa in the Republic Of Korea forbids me from participating in politics. So, were I to apply for citizenship, it might be held against me if it were found I had broken the law by going to demos etc.
When I needed a Canadian security clearance they knew about every parking ticket. I began to wonder if they knew about me being sent the principal in grade 4. In the pre-computer era.
Not meaning to pile on France, but it is a country which until some time in the last decade, had laws against insulting the president, and where parents were required to name their children from a list of state-approved names, dating from the Napoleonic era.
I've never heard of that first law (hello Thailand) but at least the second did keep in check the tendency to name kids after the Spice Girls or one's favourite soccer team.
@stetson how do my predictions for an endgame in Europe for places of worship match with what is actually happening in South Korea?
Freedom in a society has to have limits or it is merely selective freedom for some and more limited freedom for others.
Which means it’s limited freedom for all. That may be the best solution, but we might as well call it what it is.
"...let limited freedom ring" "Give me limited freedom or give me death!" “When I discover who I am, I’ll be limitedly free.” “Better to die fighting for limited freedom then be a prisoner all the days of your life.”
Not meaning to pile on France, but it is a country which until some time in the last decade, had laws against insulting the president, and where parents were required to name their children from a list of state-approved names, dating from the Napoleonic era.
I've never heard of that first law (hello Thailand) but at least the second did keep in check the tendency to name kids after the Spice Girls or one's favourite soccer team.
@stetson how do my predictions for an endgame in Europe for places of worship match with what is actually happening in South Korea?
If you want to read up on it, you can do a duckduckgo on a Guardian article called Insultimg The French President No Longer Criminal Offense.
I am not sure what your predictions were about the endgame for churches. I will go back and read, but for now I will just say that social distancing in the ROK continues to be practiced on very much a voluntary basis. I was speaking to one woman the othet day who told me her church is still holding services, but I did not ask her what precautions, if any, they were taking.
There was some controversy a few weeks back when some right-wing church, in a snit against the centre-left government, was gonna hold a big rally in Seoul. I think it went ahead, but they got a lot of flack.
And of course, the main conduit for the virus in Korea was that one church whose members had gone to Wuhan. They were being criticized from the left, but I also heard them being blasted from their fellow fundies due to their heterodox beliefs(eg. their leader is Jesus). My understanding, though, is that they were generally co-operative in turning over their membership lists to medical investigators, contrary to initial reports.
When I needed a Canadian security clearance they knew about every parking ticket. I began to wonder if they knew about me being sent the principal in grade 4. In the pre-computer era.
But a parking ticket is information that the government would have been given as a matter of legal requirement. Eutychus' anecdote involved the police conducting surveillance, albeit of an apparently non-invasive sort, on churches and protestors.
I am 100% certain of my first anecdote, and about 75% certain of the second. And it's kind of difficult to quote actual sources for information pertaining to intelligence services. There's a reason I took anecdotes from a fair while back in the past, too.
I am 100% certain of my first anecdote, and about 75% certain of the second. And it's kind of difficult to quote actual sources for information pertaining to intelligence services. There's a reason I took anecdotes from a fair while back in the past, too.
It is not that I doubt your incidents happened, it is that I question whether they are representative.
The first one is in my view entirely representative of French intelligence services' interest in religious gatherings, especially non-Catholic ones. I've been in a Prefecture meeting with representatives of several faiths with a couple of fish-eyed intelligence officers in the corner listening to everything and saying nothing. As reported previously, I've spotted what I am pretty sure were intelligence officers coming to check out morning worship a couple of times over the years - they stick out like a sore thumb. The local head of intelligence is an actual guest at the annual Iftah meal put on by the local Muslim community, as I can attest having been a guest at it several times myself.
What exactly are the spooks afraid these religious groups might do? FWIW, most of the Xtian loony-toons I've heard about causing problems in France were associated with the Catholic Right.
The UK had ID cards during WW2, then ditched them 7 years after the war as they were seen as state overreach in peace time. There was much more deference to the state in that era, but they didn’t even last as long as food rationing.
I think the U.K. Supreme Court is something of a safeguard for issues of civil liberty.
What exactly are the spooks afraid these religious groups might do? FWIW, most of the Xtian loony-toons I've heard about causing problems in France were associated with the Catholic Right.
What exactly are the spooks afraid these religious groups might do? FWIW, most of the Xtian loony-toons I've heard about causing problems in France were associated with the Catholic Right.
In the mid 90s, the Order of the Solar Temple was involved in a number of mass suicides in France and Switzerland. ISTM that this definitely influenced the anti-cult movement that came along a few years later. Certainly you can question whether the often rather pedestrian little protestant churches that they investigate need anything like that level of surveillance, but there is a reason why the French are very wary of fissiparious religious movements.
What exactly are the spooks afraid these religious groups might do? FWIW, most of the Xtian loony-toons I've heard about causing problems in France were associated with the Catholic Right.
Surveillance doesn't necessarily stem from fear.
Then I am curious as to what other emotion you think it could stem from.
Anything I could come up with would be in the same general neighbourhood of fear, eg. distrust, suspicion.
Historically, France has more of a surveillance culture than many other Western democracies. It just likes keeping tabs on people. Generally, I'd say this intelligence is used discreetly and wisely.
Somewhat provocatively, I could hypothesies that it stems from a Catholic culture and a code-based approach to law. The Catholic church here also seems to have a vast intelligence system (not so much in terms of spies, but in terms of record-keeping).
Sometimes the two intelligence systems overlap. Within the last year, an evangelical church in my city received a whole questionnaire originating with the intelligence services about various security-related issues in the wake of our terrorist attacks*... sent via the Catholic diocese, to which the request had been sent, and which requested that the information be returned to it. Twice.
==
*The aim of the questionnaire was as much to ensure protection of the place of worship as to ensure that it wasn't going to produce seditious propaganda.
What exactly are the spooks afraid these religious groups might do? FWIW, most of the Xtian loony-toons I've heard about causing problems in France were associated with the Catholic Right.
In the mid 90s, the Order of the Solar Temple was involved in a number of mass suicides in France and Switzerland. ISTM that this definitely influenced the anti-cult movement that came along a few years later. Certainly you can question whether the often rather pedestrian little protestant churches that they investigate need anything like that level of surveillance, but there is a reason why the French are very wary of fissiparious religious movements.
That makes sense(and fwiw would fit under the general heading of "fear").
I can somewhat sympathize, though if their concern is rooted in Solar Temple type groups, they'd probably be better off getting a list of people who have checked The DaVinci Code out from libraries.
I'll also make the observation that I made at the time of the Solar Temple suicides, ie. more people have died from suicide over unhappy love affairs than have died as a result of suicide cults.
From my perspective the Solar Temple type of concern is not really typical of the motives for surveillance; that's just the kind of thing that gets media attention.
For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
Jesus says the minimum is two
And gathering with one other person is currently against the law where I live unless you happen to live under the same roof. I find myself in a situation in which the minimum basic requirements for the presence of Christ, according to the Bible according to @TheOrganist, are prohibited by law.
I'll survive, but the point is that it is possible for legal measures to render worship as usually understood impossible; my question is about the point at which one might decide faithfulness to God overrode obedience to man (undoubtedly part of Rodney Howard Browne's excuse).
(ETA it's a bit like the Overton window. Imagine how you would have responded to churches being forbidden to gather for worship - on any grounds - in any of our Western countries just a few weeks ago).
A tad literalistic E. It's one of Jesus' legion figures of speech. He's present with each one of us alone, alongside. There is no midst He can be in. Picking at metaphors leaves a nasty scab.
Comments
I was going to place a large wager on it coming with a QR code, but thought it only sporting to check first, and it does (link in French).
Well, there can't be any with you in the pub or church as both are closed.
I don't think this level of surveillance is possible in the US. The practical reason is that almost 1 in 5 Americans still doesn't own a smartphone.. The principled reason is the tradition of civil liberties you raise. Things in the US will thus be messier and deadlier than in South Korea when we move toward lifting stay at home orders. So all the more reason for religious people here to stay the fuck at home now. In Sacramento County, almost one-third of the known cases are connected to churches (source): "That includes 24 infections spread among one church whose congregants have continued to hold in-person fellowship meetings during the growing pandemic."
Indeed, there's a more general sense that we wouldn't need various of these laws if people had shown themselves capable of carrying out appropriate behaviours without them.
One of the escalations of shutdown in Australia basically occurred because of footage of great crowds of people on Bondi Beach.
More locally, a nature park was closed because last weekend over 500 people had the same 'bright idea' of thinking that they could still go out there away from the city and crowds. I literally predicted that would happen, when one overly smart person I knew suggested that kind of idea some weeks ago when other countries were closing, and I said to him, what happens when hundreds of other overly smart people have the same idea?
This.
One of the things I am thankful for in the current situation is living on an island where non-essential ferry and plane travel has been restricted so the chances of encountering another soul within 200m on the beaches, nevermind 2m, remain almost as slim as they do in winter. My sincerest sympathies are with those stuck in flats and tenements in the big cities at this time.
France could not legally enforce South Korea levels of surveillance either, but I fully expect there to be far less social resistance to it and more social pressure to comply with any voluntary scheme (which is what the government is now making noises about).
Over two weeks into lockdown, I'm amazed at the levels of compliance here given that we do not have an omnipresent police force to perform controls at every street corner. Social pressure is a huge thing, I've discovered. Not owning a smartphone is not going to look libertarian or old-fashioned, it's going to look as threatening to your personal health as attending a church gathering. I expect social norms to shift in this respect.
It's well-known that the way to persuade people to accept more surveillance is to present it as a service - like smart cards, tap-in tap-out travel cards, Facebook, etc. Present a QR app as a way of protecting your health and it will be embraced.
Of course computers may help them be more efficient... but then again, I've also witnessed just how spectacularly bad bureaucracies can be at actually implementing any kind of computerised system.
Anecdotes:
1. when a pastor I know applied for French nationality in the early 1990s, he was called for interview by the police. During the interview they produced a leaflet handed out by his church plant about ten years previously.
2. a friend of a friend also applied for nationality and had a similar interview. She was asked whether she had ever taken part in any demonstrations. She said no, and was then confronted with a photograph of her taken in a demonstration from her high school days.
I still don't have a tinfoil hat, and agree about bureaucratic incompetence, but stories like these are a reality in this country.
In this case it would be a simple app.
Without wishing to derail the thread, hasn't this been the case in France since the Revolution/Napoleonic era?
Not that that makes it any better, of course.
I think a lot of it is cultural. Nobody here thinks twice about having to carry an ID card even in normal times, whereas Brits don't seem the least bothered about widespread automatic number plate recognition, neighbourhood watch, and massively intrusive criminal background checks in which all details are forwarded to third parties, none of which we have on anything like such a scale here.
Wasn't there some proposal here in the UK re identity cards a while back?
The suggestion was for electronic tracking as a tool to allow partial re-opening of public activities. There's not much point in talking about tracking people when nobody is going anywhere.
Yes, but even government seems unaccountable these days...once the neo-fascists take over completely, and we find ourselves in a one-party totalitarian state, they'll be able to do just what they like.
Free riders are selfish bastards.
There's nothing that the Govt can put on a card that they don't have anyway. If you have a National Insurance number then you are part of the great organ of the state.
If you only have liberty so long as you use it “responsibly”, you don’t have liberty.
Maybe some governments are less incompetent than others...
Also, Le Bureau des Légendes is a truly excellent TV show. Just saying.
Not meaning to pile on France, but it is a country which until some time in the last decade, had laws against insulting the president, and where parents were required to name their children from a list of state-approved names, dating from the Napoleonic era.
I suppose those could be justified under fraternite, holding the nation together with inviolable symbols. That might be an overly charitable interpretation.
Not sure if they'd be keeping tabs on me though.
@stetson how do my predictions for an endgame in Europe for places of worship match with what is actually happening in South Korea?
Which means it’s limited freedom for all. That may be the best solution, but we might as well call it what it is.
If you want to read up on it, you can do a duckduckgo on a Guardian article called Insultimg The French President No Longer Criminal Offense.
I am not sure what your predictions were about the endgame for churches. I will go back and read, but for now I will just say that social distancing in the ROK continues to be practiced on very much a voluntary basis. I was speaking to one woman the othet day who told me her church is still holding services, but I did not ask her what precautions, if any, they were taking.
There was some controversy a few weeks back when some right-wing church, in a snit against the centre-left government, was gonna hold a big rally in Seoul. I think it went ahead, but they got a lot of flack.
And of course, the main conduit for the virus in Korea was that one church whose members had gone to Wuhan. They were being criticized from the left, but I also heard them being blasted from their fellow fundies due to their heterodox beliefs(eg. their leader is Jesus). My understanding, though, is that they were generally co-operative in turning over their membership lists to medical investigators, contrary to initial reports.
But a parking ticket is information that the government would have been given as a matter of legal requirement. Eutychus' anecdote involved the police conducting surveillance, albeit of an apparently non-invasive sort, on churches and protestors.
What exactly are the spooks afraid these religious groups might do? FWIW, most of the Xtian loony-toons I've heard about causing problems in France were associated with the Catholic Right.
I think the U.K. Supreme Court is something of a safeguard for issues of civil liberty.
In the mid 90s, the Order of the Solar Temple was involved in a number of mass suicides in France and Switzerland. ISTM that this definitely influenced the anti-cult movement that came along a few years later. Certainly you can question whether the often rather pedestrian little protestant churches that they investigate need anything like that level of surveillance, but there is a reason why the French are very wary of fissiparious religious movements.
Then I am curious as to what other emotion you think it could stem from.
Anything I could come up with would be in the same general neighbourhood of fear, eg. distrust, suspicion.
Somewhat provocatively, I could hypothesies that it stems from a Catholic culture and a code-based approach to law. The Catholic church here also seems to have a vast intelligence system (not so much in terms of spies, but in terms of record-keeping).
Sometimes the two intelligence systems overlap. Within the last year, an evangelical church in my city received a whole questionnaire originating with the intelligence services about various security-related issues in the wake of our terrorist attacks*... sent via the Catholic diocese, to which the request had been sent, and which requested that the information be returned to it. Twice.
==
*The aim of the questionnaire was as much to ensure protection of the place of worship as to ensure that it wasn't going to produce seditious propaganda.
That makes sense(and fwiw would fit under the general heading of "fear").
I can somewhat sympathize, though if their concern is rooted in Solar Temple type groups, they'd probably be better off getting a list of people who have checked The DaVinci Code out from libraries.
I'll also make the observation that I made at the time of the Solar Temple suicides, ie. more people have died from suicide over unhappy love affairs than have died as a result of suicide cults.
A tad literalistic E. It's one of Jesus' legion figures of speech. He's present with each one of us alone, alongside. There is no midst He can be in. Picking at metaphors leaves a nasty scab.