{"id":4096,"date":"2010-05-08T14:01:58","date_gmt":"2010-05-08T22:01:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=4096"},"modified":"2010-05-08T14:05:24","modified_gmt":"2010-05-08T22:05:24","slug":"the-demons-of-bedford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/the-demons-of-bedford\/","title":{"rendered":"The Demons of Bedford"},"content":{"rendered":"

The failure of Britain’s Conservative party to secure a parliamentary majority in the general election\u00a0is a major\u00a0disappointment. In a contest where every seat counted,\u00a0 one must (I suppose) even lament the failure of Tory Philippa Stroud to win election. Philippa Stroud?<\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/em> (no friend to the Conservative party admittedly) has the details<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The Conservative candidate who founded a church that tried to “cure” gay people by driving out demons failed in her attempt to become an MP. Philippa Stroud, the high-flying Tory hopeful who was tipped to take Sutton and Cheam from the Liberal Democrat Paul Burstow, was narrowly beaten into second place in a 73% turnout. The Observer reported on Sunday that Stroud, executive director of the Conservative thinktank the Centre for Social Justice, had set up an evangelical church in Bedford where homosexuality, according to former members, was ascribed to demonic influence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Demonic influence”, who knew?<\/p>\n

The most interesting thing, perhaps, about this strange\u00a0tale is the larger story lurking beneath it: the increasing presence of American-style evangelical churches\u00a0in Blighty. They are yet\u00a0another symptom of\u00a0the waning of the established\u00a0Church of England, a church traditionally bland, benign, and not too keen on chatter about demons. It will be missed.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Rarely seen in Sutton and Cheam<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The failure of Britain’s Conservative party to secure a parliamentary majority in the general election\u00a0is a major\u00a0disappointment. In a contest where every seat counted,\u00a0 one must (I suppose) even lament the failure of Tory Philippa Stroud to win election. Philippa … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[535,536,250,489],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4096"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4096"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4100,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4096\/revisions\/4100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}