The following letter was published by Guelph's student newspaper, The Ontarion, on Feb. 7, 2013

Dear Editor:

Re: Sugar Coated Relationships, January 31, 2013

I was appalled to hear of a university professor here in Guelph  pushing the notion that prostitution for students is no big deal. She argues that giving sex for money has existed, “throughout the history of human relationships.”  But stealing, lying, killing, raping, etc. have also been around for quite some time, so the longevity argument for prostitution is not particularly compelling.

Dr. Ruth Neustifter defends the idea of students prostituting themselves for tuition because after all it’s “nothing new” and not something “necessarily negative.”  She goes on to support the practice because after all, even though it is sex work,”that doesn’t make it good or bad.” I find these comments absolutely appalling.

Way to go professor—you have turned thousands of years of history on its head.  Has it not been the norm for most of recorded history to discourage girls from prostitution? Tragically in our endarkened age respecting all things sexual we seem to be going in the other direction.  But allow me to pose this simple question, “Would you encourage your daughters to work as prostitutes to pay for tuition?” And if not, how dare you encourage young women who are someone else’s daughters to step into this degrading and enslaving lifestyle in order to earn a few dollars.

As an evangelical minister I recently heard from a former sex trade worker who spoke at one of our meetings in Guelph. Her story is one of enslavement, victimization, and brutality. Katrina (I share her name with her permission) was formerly a sex-trade worker who escaped the snares of prostitution and now openly shares her story to protect the vulnerable from getting enslaved and to help those who want out. Her story can be accessed at (risingangels.ca) . It is well worth reading.

I long for the day when our universities might once again be places of light and wisdom. If that’s too much to hope for—may they at least be a safe place for our daughters. 

Royal Hamel, Guelph

Will Christians defend the Jews?

Even as a young boy I read avidly. Born shortly after the Second World War, by the time of my early teens, I found plenty of articles and stories about the war years. And so I became aware at an early age of the appalling holocaust of the Jews at the hands of the Nazi regime.

I remember my revulsion and indignation at this horrific injustice against totally innocent people. I didn’t understand how people could allow such evil to take place. I remember thinking, “If I had been there I would have stood up, I would have tried to protect the Jewish people.”

As the years passed, I discovered to my shame that far too often church people had been among the worst offenders in persecuting the Jews. Indeed, under Hitler a large part of the German Protestant Church accepted the Nazi racist doctrines and allowed the persecution. As an evangelical Christian I am ashamed that Christians throughout history, on many occasions, permitted or joined the persecution of Jewish people.

In many areas of the world today Jewish people live in fear for their safety. There appears to be a growing anti-Semitic trend in many parts of the world. Guy Milliere, in his excellent article, The Full-Blown Return of Anti-Semitism in Europe, documents synagogue burnings, vandalism of cemeteries, anti-Jewish inscriptions on walls, and assaults on Jewish people. He writes that in some cities in Sweden and France the level of persecution has forced Jewish people to flee. On Feb. 6, 2013, The Huff Post headlined an article:Anti-Semitism On the Rise In Europe, according to Anti-Defamation League Report.

Canada is not exempt. Thestar.com reported on Feb. 6, 2013 that Ottawa has been urged to tackle anti-Semitism amidst a startling increase of hate crime. The article stated that Stats Canada released a report in January, 2012 indicating a 42 per cent increase in hate crime in 2009 as compared to 2008. Shockingly, 71 percent of these crimes were motivated by religion and had targeted the Jewish community.

During the time of Hitler’s bloody targeting of the Jews, some Christians stood up and tried to help. Sadly they were not many. Dietrich Bonhoeffer stands as a stellar example of one clergyman who resisted the Nazi regime by attempting to rescue Jews destined for slaughter.

I hold a sombre concern about the response of today’s Evangelical Church if a new holocaust were to threaten the Jewish people. I wonder if Christians and pastors would stand up to an evil power? Would they resist tyranny and defend Jewish lives? I hope they would. I pray they would. But I wonder.

Here is my great concern. Over the last 100 years most evangelical Christians have been programmed to abstain from political involvement. In my own lifetime I have witnessed evangelicals abandon their duty to defend moral principles over and over again—precisely in the area of politics. For example, very few white evangelicals got involved in the civil rights movement of the 1960s that sought to bring justice to black people. And to this day most evangelicals seem to have little concern for the innocent unborn child in the mother’s womb.

I profoundly hope that any renewed persecution of Jewish people would awaken thousands of Christian defenders like Bonhoeffer. Just maybe, Christians in this generation will abhor evil, stand against political tyranny, and fulfill our call to seek justice. I live with that hope. But given our track record—I wonder.

The whole tenor of this article is hypothetical. But in fact the new anti-Semitism is far from hypothetical—it is actually happening on our watch. We who follow Christ must wake up to the times! Let us defend our Jewish friends now, before the storm is fully upon them, not after it is over.

Published in The Guelph Mercury, Feb. 9, 2013

Royal Hamel is a freelance journalist and the author of Unmuzzle Your Inner Sheep (Word Alive Press), available in bookstores in early April, 2013.