“Stepping Stones Nigeria does not believe that children can be ‘witches’. However, Stepping Stones Nigeria acknowledges the right of individuals to hold this belief on the condition that this does not lead to the abuse of child rights as outlined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC)”.

It’s not just Freedom of Belief that’s now being demanded by Traditional Religion – it’s Freedom of Action, and Freedom from secular constraint. Hence Uganda. Hence the Catholic Paedophilia cover-up. Hence the many bills working their way through state legislatures in the US and elsewhere demanding religious exemptions from laws everyone else has to follow. “Freedom of Conscience” they call it, and I can see their point. Much evil has been done by persecuting believers.
It’s when they demand the right to impose their beliefs on others that the border is crossed, and for Traditionalists, they consider the right to impose their beliefs on others an inherent part of their doctrine, Any constraint on that is an attack on their Religious Freedom.
With such a position, I see no end to the Culture War without Religion as a whole suffering a massive defeat, with many, many innocent casualties. Islam being first in the firing line.
I also see Evangelical Christianity in the US being colonised and “converted” to beliefs strongly held in Africa, where Christianity is waxing strong, not waning. When I was young, to have a US politician prayed over to protect them from witches would be seen as, well, insanity. Starting with Palin, it appears to becoming more mainstream. Not usual yet. Yet.
In a world where “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”, superstition is making a comeback.

In private, some have argued to me that these matters are significant but that the left distorts the truth too so this is not important. A few evangelical leaders have written to take me to task for our book, saying it helps the secular left. They argue that the end justifies the means (accuracy is not important if your cause is right).

See what I mean?
A lie that supports The Cause is to be propounded.
A truth that undermines The Cause is to be suppressed.
How many politically active Evangelicals are not Culture Warriors? 20%? 10? Less?
Irrationality reigns. Not just in the US, not just in the Republican/Christianist or Christianist/Republican party, but in the Zeitgeist of the times. A longing for old fashioned Traditional values. In some places – Uganda comes to mind – the consequences can be deadly. New Guinea is the latest flashpoint.

“They took them to Siguyagu creek before releasing the wife, son and the other man. They took Ogono (deceased) to the village and interrogated him in a hastily convened court comprising four church pastors, a peace officer, and a village court chairman,” the eyewitness, who declined to be identified in fear of his life, said.
He said at around 11am, the villagers led by a prominent village leader (named) interrogated Ogono, forcing him to admit to practicing sorcery.
The deceased’s last words, according to the eyewitness, were: “In the eyes of the leaders, only God knows, I am innocent.”
The pastors are from the Four Square, Lutheran, Baptist and Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) churches.

Witchburning is making a comeback worldwide. And the pastors who might rein it in cannot, for the tenets of American Evangelical Christianity as practiced by missionaries involve belief in demons, witches evil spirits. It’s the “Secular Left” who are opposing this, not them. It’s the same in the Islamic world, the extremists are taking over. In Africa, where animism is still rife…. the Charismatics affirm that sorcery exists.

Attackers collecting body parts of albinos for witchcraft have hacked off the hand of a seven-year old boy in Tanzania, the latest in a series of bloody assaults, officials said on Sunday.
“The boy was attacked on Saturday by three people as he walked home with his four school friends,” said Apolinary Macheta, the local government leader in Tanzania’s southwestern Milepa district.
The boy, Mwigulu Magessa, is recovering in hospital, Macheta added.
The attack came just days after an albino mother of four had her arm chopped off by machete-wielding men, with police on Saturday saying they had arrested five men after discovering the decomposing limb hidden in a field.
In Tanzania, albinos are killed and dismembered due to a widespread belief that charms made from their body parts bring good fortune and prosperity.

It’s even infected the Catholic church, which is taking an increasingly hard line on Intersex people in places like Australia.

Senator PRATT: So you would like to see, if religious exemptions were to continue, intersex status specifically taken out of those exemptions?
Gina Wilson : Certainly. To allow anybody to discriminate against intersex people and to allow religious organisations to have an exemption from the law is no different to allowing a religious organisation to discriminate on the basis of colour of skin or a disability that you were born with.
Senator BRANDIS: No, it is not, because there is an ethical difference.

Intersex people being inherently sinful, the spawn of Satan, the result of un-natural congress with Demons. Twice, the soon-to-be-ex-pope called them a “threat to humanity’s existence”. Not that that was well publicised.
It’s really difficult not to over-generalise here. But Religion as a whole, worldwide, is becoming inceasingly superstitious, increasingly assertive, and increasingly irrational. I don’t know what’s triggered this, but the pattern’s pretty clear.
War has been declared on the”Secular Left”.. Not that they’re particularly Leftist, they’re just painted that way in order to Demonise them.