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Oct 15, 2022Liked by Mollie Simpson, Jack Walton

Christian cults like this do enormous damage to the public perception of all Christian faiths.

I've spent this week supporting a young mother from our church whose partner stormed out of their house taking all their money and threatening to take their child. We sorted out rent, gas, elec, nappies, food and counselling for her. Unfortunately the good we do is not as newsworthy as the cults.

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Understand that Ruth, and lovely to hear about the work you're doing. Fergus Bulter-Gallie, the writer/priest, wrote a fantastic New Statesman piece recently about the work of faith organisations supporting people in the face of the cost of living crisis. It's here:

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-politics/2022/08/cost-of-living-crisis-tearing-community-safety-nets-shreds (paywalled, but you can get a certain number of free articles monthly, I think)

Naturally, given the appalling nature of the rhetoric, we believe Harry's story to be a really important shining light on a group in Southport. But getting the balance is important too. Can I ask the name of your church/group and maybe we can chat?

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Thank you Jack for linking the New Statesman article and I appreciate them publishing an article on the good that Christian groups are doing in Liverpool.

I am a member of two churches in Liverpool. St.Barts in Roby is my home church and St.Lawrence in Kirkdale is my work church. You can reach me through https://twitter.com/Ruth_Smart if you would like to chat.

Extremism needs to be called out and I am grateful that Harry took the time to expose the cult in Southport as it's only through being open to criticism and scrutiny that Christianity can be relevant to people's lives in our age of atheism.

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Thanks for this courageous reporting. I guess you could say that you just don’t know who you’re living next door to. On the other hand, it’s important to remember that the vast, vast majority of people of faith are decent and caring and if anything, you’re more likely to be living next door to them. I was brought up catholic, and even though I’m now an atheist I have plenty of respect for anyone who chooses to follow a religion. I wonder what it was or is in these people’s lives that had drawn them to such despicable views. I suspect that they are scared and intimidated by the world around them, but then aren’t we all to some extent? And most of us find a way to deal with that fear without resorting to lies and hatred.

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Well done, Harry, for descending into this sewer. We need to keep mindful of ' ordinary, respectable' people s capacity for completely unjustified hatred and liies. A strange and sorry Southport story, reminding me of the brutal murders of six million civilians.

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Thank you Natalie, very kind of you to say. That's exactly what interests me about groups such as this, what brings 'ordinary, respectable' people to believe in antisemitic conspiracy theories? Glad you liked the article.

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Oct 15, 2022·edited Oct 15, 2022

Great piece. I was brought up Catholic but turned my back on religion once I was old enough to understand it. This shows me I made the right decision! Thanks for highlighting a part of Catholicism I never knew existed. The lack of any logic and common sense in some human beings never fails to surprise me.

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Crazy sub-sect of a 2000 year jewish cult hates the jews for killing the jew who only wanted the jews to be better believers and better humans. Whatever the truth of the existence of Jesus, these various offshoots of Judaism (inc Islam) only distort & pervert whatever he may have been trying to achieve. Thank god for atheism.

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What a terrifying time you must have had. Very brave of you to do this but I’m grateful you did. I am a lapsed Catholic but still have the right beliefs of kindness and love instilled in me from my early years regularly attending mass. It’s unbelievable that these ‘people’ can deny the mass killing of others who had no choice into what religion they were born only to be persecuted by extremists and fascist’s. I really am shocked as I was unaware of this group. Let’s hope as it’s made up of middle aged people the fanaticism will die with them eventually.

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Listening to a speech by Joe Biden recently with it's sinister blood red and black militaristic backdrop , which castigated and dehumanised millions of his fellow Americans was more troubling to me than a small group of probably lonely, deluded elderly people believing in nonsense in a coastal Lancashire town. Nevertheless, it was a good piece of journalism.

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Merseyside, not Lancashire. 😏

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Merseyside is crap though really. Why does it still exist? Who needs it? Lets get back to being Lancashire.

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