Capt. Ryan Jean wanted to perform well on the Army's psychological evaluation for soldiers. But he also wanted to answer the questions honestly. So when he was asked whether he believed his life had a lasting purpose, Jean, an atheist, saw no choice but to say no.

Those and other responses, Jean says, won him a trip to see the post chaplain, who berated him for his lack of faith.

"He basically told me that if I don't get right with God, then I'm worthless," said Jean, now an intelligence officer at Fort Meade. "That if I don't believe in Jesus, why am I in uniform, because this is God's army, and that I should resign my commission in order to stop disgracing the military."

Jean says experiences such as that confrontation three years ago, when he was serving at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, have spurred him to seek Army recognition as a humanist lay leader — on a par with the lay Christians, Jews and Muslims who help military chaplains minister to the troops.

Jean is one of as many as a dozen atheists throughout the U.S. military in the process of applying for the status, which they and their supporters see as necessary to secure for nonbelievers the acceptance and support that they say Christians in uniform take for granted.

Continue reading "Atheists in military seek recognition, acceptance" »

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In the days before Gov. Martin O’Malley came out in support of same-sex marriage, Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien privately urged him against “promoting a goal that so deeply conflicts with your faith.”

“Preserving the central role of the natural family unit has always been — and should continue to be — the reason why our government recognizes marriage as existing between one man and one woman,” the archbishop wrote to the governor in a letter dated July 20.

Two days later, O’Malley said he would introduce legislation next year to allow gay couples to marry.

“As a free and diverse people of many faiths, we choose to be governed under the law by certain fundamental principles or beliefs, among them ‘equal protection of the law’ for every individual and the ‘free exercise’ of religion without government intervention,” O’Malley said. “Other states have found a way to protect both these rights. So should Maryland.”

A same-sex marriage bill cleared the state Senate this year, but it was pulled from the House floor after vote-counters determined they were a few delegates shy of a majority. With O’Malley’s active support, backers are hopeful of success next year.

O’Malley, who is Catholic, opposed same-sex marriage when he first ran for governor in 2006. He said at the time that he had been “raised to believe that marriage is between a man and a woman.”

His announcement last month came weeks after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed legislation that made New York the sixth state to allow gay couples to marry — and enjoyed a boost in his national profile.

“I am well aware that the recent events in New York have intensified pressure on you to lend your active support to legislation to redefine marriage,” O’Brien wrote, in a letter released Monday by the governor’s office.

Continue reading "O'Brien urged O'Malley against backing gay marriage" »

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Rabbi Yaakov Menken is the Director of Project Genesis, a Jewish cyber-outreach organization based in Baltimore.

Two weeks ago, as the mercury soared to record highs across much of the United States, electrical demand rose with the temperature as air-conditioning systems ran full blast. Years ago, Baltimore Gas & Electric created a program called Peak Rewards, intended to help reduce demand when it neared capacity.

Roughly 453,000 customers (including the Menkens) were given remotely programmable thermostats with free installation -- and a catch: when necessary, BGE could shut off our air-conditioning compressors for 50%, 75% or even 100% of each hour during extraordinary situations. And for years, those customers were rewarded with monthly credits on their electricity bills during the summer months, whether or not the system was ever activated.

Friday of that week, the system was activated -- and people reacted as if they'd been coerced rather than given hundreds of dollars to participate in the program. Among the more intemperate [sic] remarks given to the Baltimore Sun: "What outrages me is there's no alternative for people in special circumstances."

There was, of course, always an alternative: not participating in the program. I'm not saying that it wasn't uncomfortable; our upstairs thermostat reported temperatures in the high-80s by 5 pm. But "Peak Rewards" was designed for times of peak demand, not when the outdoor temperature is 75.

It might not be the bargain we expected, but it was the agreement we made.

Even in circumstances like this one, we have to accept responsibility for the choices we have made. And personally, I still think we made the right decision!

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Culture, Guest Posts, Yaakov Menken
        

Rabbi Yaakov Menken is the Director of Project Genesis, a Jewish cyber-outreach organization based in Baltimore.

According to a new book from a professor at UCLA, the media's left-wing bias is so overwhelming and pervasive that the few balanced news outlets appear to have a conservative slant.

"It's like concluding that six-three is short just because it is short compared to professional basketball players," writes Professor Tim Groseclose. He asserts that by a neutral standard, Fox News and the Drudge Report are centrist, with perhaps even a minor left-wing tilt -- but due to the steep liberal bias of every other major outlet, "commentators mistake relative bias for absolute bias." From the article:

Groseclose opens his book quoting a well-known poll in which Washington correspondents declared that they vote Democratic 93 percent to 7 percent, while the nation is split about 50-50. As a result, he says, most reporters write with a liberal filter. "Using objective, social-scientific methods, the filtering prevents us from seeing the world as it actually is. Instead, we see only a distorted version of it. It is as if we see the world through a glass—a glass that magnifies the facts that liberals want us to see and shrinks the facts that conservatives want us to see."

If the liberal media tends to "shrink" conservative facts, this is true to a still more extreme degree with anything concerning religion. The Deseret News, the commercial paper of the Mormon Church, recently published a two-part series on news coverage of religion -- or the lack thereof. Journalists not only tend to be much more liberal, but much less religious, then the American population.

A 2002 survey (the most recent data available) of 1,149 randomly selected journalists conducted by the Indiana University found that 34 percent of journalists say they have no religious affiliation, compared with 13 percent among the general population who said the same in a 2002 Pew Research Center survey.

The journalists were also asked how important religion or religious beliefs were to them. Roughly a third (35 percent) said they were “very important.” By comparison, the figure among the general population, as measured that same year by Gallup, was nearly double at 61 percent.

Continue reading "Menken: Bias has consequences" »

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Associated Press drama writer Mark Kennedy reports:

"The Book of Mormon" nabbed a leading 14 Tony Award nominations Tuesday, earning the profane musical one nod short of the record for most nominations and putting it in the driver's seat when the awards are handed out next month.

An unlikely hit about two Mormon missionaries who find more than they bargained for in Africa, the musical was written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of Comedy Central's irreverent "South Park," and Robert Lopez, co-creator of the equally irreverent Tony Award-winning musical "Avenue Q." All got nominations.

"The Book of Mormon" has been a critical and box-office darling even without big-name stars and has tapped into a decidedly un-Broadway vein with songs about AIDS and one man's loud lament about having maggots in his scrotum.

"This is a brand of humor that very much existed in our culture — on television and films," said Andrew Rannells, who won a best leading actor in a musical nomination. "It was just not reflected on Broadway. Obviously, there's a huge audience for this so why shouldn't it be a musical?"

On the animated series "South Park," about a group of potty-mouthed school kids in Colorado, Parker and Stone have lampooned everything and everybody from Jesus to Saddam Hussein to Barbra Streisand to Scientology to Tiger Woods to New Jersey. And they've mocked The Church of Latter-day Saints on the Comedy Central TV show, too, mostly by showing Mormons as relentlessly cheery.

"This is dangerous in the best sense. People are excited when they sit down in those seats because they don't know what's going to happen," said Rory O'Malley, who won a nomination for best actor in a featured role for "Mormon."

As for the Mormons, the church would not add to the comment they first issued when the musical opened: "The production may attempt to entertain audiences for an evening, but the Book of Mormon as a volume of scripture will change people's lives forever by bringing them closer to Christ."

Continue reading "'Book of Mormon' picks up 14 Tony nominations" »

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Associated Press correspondent Elaine Ganley reports:

Karima has a plan. If police stop her for wearing a veil over her face, she'll remove it — then put it back on once they're out of sight. If that doesn't work, she'll stay home, or even leave France.

For Muslim women in France who cover their faces with veils, it is the moment for making plans. Starting April 11, a new law banning garments that hide the face takes effect. Women who disobey it risk a fine, special classes and a police record.

The law comes as Muslims face what some see as a new jab at their religion: President Nicolas Sarkozy's party is holding a debate Tuesday on the place of Islamic practices, and Islam itself, in strictly secular but traditionally Catholic France.

The increasing focus on France's Muslims — who number at least 5 million, the largest such population in western Europe — comes with presidential elections a year away and support for a far-right party growing. A recent palpable rise in tensions has also been boosted by fears of a mass migration of Muslims due to disarray in the Arab world.

Interior Minister Claude Gueant put it bluntly Monday.

"This growth in the number of (Muslims) and a certain number of behaviors cause problems," he said in remarks carried on French radio. "There is no reason why the nation should accord to one particular religion more rights than religions that were formerly anchored in our country."

Continue reading "Veil ban comes amid tightening focus on Muslims" »

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Associated Press correspondent Tom Breen reports:

When Chad Holtz lost his old belief in hell, he also lost his job.

The pastor of a rural United Methodist church in North Carolina wrote a note on his Facebook page supporting a new book by Rob Bell, a prominent young evangelical pastor and critic of the traditional view of hell as a place of eternal torment for billions of damned souls.

Two days later, Holtz was told complaints from church members prompted his dismissal from Marrow's Chapel in Henderson.

"I think justice comes and judgment will happen, but I don't think that means an eternity of torment," Holtz said. "But I can understand why people in my church aren't ready to leave that behind. It's something I'm still grappling with myself."

The debate over Bell's new book "Love Wins" has quickly spread across the evangelical precincts of the Internet, in part because of an eye-catching promotional video posted on YouTube.

Bell, the pastor of the 10,000-member Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Mich., lays out the premise of his book while the video cuts away to an artist's hand mixing oil paints and pastels and applying them to a blank canvas.

He describes going to a Christian art show where one of the pieces featured a quote by Mohandas Gandhi. Someone attached a note saying: "Reality check: He's in hell."

"Gandhi's in hell? He is? And someone knows this for sure?" Bell asks in the video.

Continue reading "Who's in Hell? Pastor's book sparks eternal debate" »

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The Associated Press reports:

In the old translation of the world's most popular Bible, John the Evangelist declares: "If anyone says, 'I love God,' yet hates his brother, he is a liar."

Make that "brother or sister" in a new translation that includes more gender-neutral language and is drawing criticism from some conservatives who argue the changes can alter the theological message.

The 2011 translation of the New International Version Bible, or NIV, does not change pronouns referring to God, who remains "He" and "the Father." But it does aim to avoid using "he" or "him" as the default reference to an unspecified person.

The NIV Bible is used by many of the largest Protestant faiths. The translation comes from an independent group of biblical scholars that has been meeting yearly since 1965 to discuss advances in biblical scholarship and changes in English usage.

Before the new translation even hit stores, it drew opposition from the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, an organization that believes women should submit to their husbands in the home and only men can hold some leadership roles in the church.

The council decided it would not endorse the new version because the changes alter "the theological direction and meaning of the text," according to a statement. Similar concerns led the Southern Baptist Convention to reject the NIV's previous translation in 2005.

At issue is how to translate pronouns that apply to both genders in the ancient Greek and Hebrew texts but have traditionally been translated using masculine forms in English.

Continue reading "Gender-neutral Bible language draws critics" »

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UPDATE: NPR President and CEO Vivian (no relation) Schiller has resigned. And I’ve renewed my WYPR membership.

The Rev. Jason Poling is Pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

James O’Keefe has struck again. The guerrilla filmmaker, famous for posing as a pimp seeking tax advice from the Baltimore chapter of ACORN, managed to catch NPR’s top fundraiser Ron Schiller on tape expressing his contempt for vast swaths of America. NPR is no doubt relieved that Schiller had already left NPR for the Aspen Institute when the story broke.

NPR claims to be “appalled” by Schiller’s comments, describing them as “contrary to what NPR stands for.” As a longtime NPR listener and sometime (I was about to renew when Juan Williams got fired) member of my local station, I think this statement is patently absurd. There’s a reason you don’t see a lot of NPR tote bags at Tea Party rallies, just like there’s a reason you don’t see a lot of Fox News bumper stickers on Priuses. I do believe that NPR strives to be accurate and evenhanded, and that for the most part it succeeds. But it is also the case that its business model depends on the voluntary financial support of a demographic that by and large sympathizes with the sentiments Schiller expressed on tape.

What caught my attention about the story was Schiller’s description of the Tea Party as “fanatically involved in people’s personal lives and very fundamentalist Christian – I wouldn’t even call it Christian, it’s this weird evangelical kind of move.” If Schiller had listened to his own network’s coverage of the Tea Party, he’d have learned that the significant differences between its core libertarian impulses and the social conservatism of traditional Republican constituencies presented a tension that was more managed than resolved during the last election cycle. That such disparate factions are seen as similar by a person in such a senior position in such an influential media organ is troubling to me, but what is more troubling is the suggestion that evangelicalism is Christian fundamentalism gone wild.

If anything it’s the opposite, and perhaps Schiller just had his labels mixed up. For those of you just tuning in, evangelicalism as we know it today started in the aftermath of World War II when fundamentalists decided they wanted to follow Jesus without being a jerk about it. They held onto their high view of Scripture, their orthodox Christian theology, their belief that Jesus is good news worth telling and their commitment to follow him in every aspect of their lives. But they left behind the anti-intellectualism, the closed-mindedness, the insularity, the paranoia, the parochialism and the overall backwardness that they believed would consign fundamentalist Christianity to the ash heap of religious history. It used to be you could tell the difference between a fundamentalist and an evangelical by asking what he thought of Billy Graham: The evangelical loved that he was bringing people to Jesus, and the fundamentalist thought he’d gone apostate because he’d welcome the local Methodist (or Catholic!) bishop on stage with him.

Continue reading "Poling: On weirdness and evangelicalism" »

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The Rev. Jason Poling is Pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

Saturday saw the funerals of two men who took their own lives earlier this month. One was famous, the other known only among his family, friends and coworkers. I may well be the only person in the country to have known both, and I knew neither of them well enough.

I met Dave Duerson while in New Orleans for a conference in mid-November of 2009. Finding a cigar bar a few blocks down from my hotel, I settled in with a Romeo y Julieta. The TV was replaying the New England-Indianapolis game from Sunday night, the one where Belicheck went for it on 4th and 2 and lost. I made a comment or two to the mustachioed African-American gentleman next to men, but he was busy with his smart phone and didn't seem too sociable. But as we watched a crucial play, cigars smoldering, he suddenly broke out with the kind of analysis I'd heard only from the guys on TV.

"You really know your stuff," I said. He replied with practiced humility, "I used to play the game." Two minutes later I learned that I had been coughing up my very amateur opinions on a big game in the presence of an All-Pro safety elected to the Pro Bowl four years in a row, a member of the legendary "Super Bowl Shuffle" 1985 Chicago Bears squad.

Dave talked with pride about his children, and with sorrow about the failure of his marriage. He had come from a long line of Baptist pastors but converted to Catholicism to marry his wife Alicia, and between that and his success as a captain (and, later, trustee) at Notre Dame he spoke with profound affection about his Catholic identity even as he affirmed the spiritual force of his Baptist forebears. "I tell you what," he said as he ordered another Hennessy, "if I had it to do over again I'd go to Pope school. Those priests at Notre Dame, they drank more Chateau Lafite than I do, and I drank a lot of it." We exchanged a couple of emails the following week, and though from time to time I thought about dropping him a note I never did get around to it.

Continue reading "Poling: Two funerals, and one regret" »

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Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien has entered into a friendly wager with the Catholic bishop of Pittsburgh over Saturday’s Ravens-Steelers game.

If the Ravens win, Bishop David A. Zubik of Pittsburgh will make a donation to Our Daily Bread, the Catholic Charities program that serves more than 250,000 hot meals in Baltimore each year.

If the Steelers win, O’Brien will make a donation to the Catholic charity of Zubik’s choice.

“I am looking forward to delivering Bishop Zupik’s check to Our Daily Bread after the Ravens beat the Steelers,” Archbishop O’Brien taunted Thursday. “I have great faith that Coach Harbaugh, a product of Catholic schools, will have his team well-prepared for the game and the Ravens will move one step closer to the Super Bowl!”

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Associated Press writer Rachel Zoll reports:

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. – In the ballroom of an upscale hotel a short train ride from New York, advertisers, food industry executives and market researchers mingled — the men in dark suits, the women in headscarves and Western dress. Chocolates made according to Islamic dietary laws were placed at each table.

The setting was the American Muslim Consumer Conference, which aimed to promote Muslims as a new market segment for U.S. companies. While corporations have long catered to Muslim communities in Europe, businesses have only tentatively started to follow suit in the U.S. — and they are doing so at a time of intensified anti-Muslim feeling that companies worry could hurt them, too. American Muslims seeking more acknowledgment in the marketplace argue that businesses have more to gain than lose by reaching out to the community.

"We are not saying, `Support us,'" said Masood, a graduate of the University of Illinois, Chicago, and management consultant. "But we want them to understand what our values are."

There are signs the industry is stirring: Faisal Masood, a Wall Street executive who organized the gathering, had attracted only 200 or so attendees when he started the event last year. This year, he had to close registration at 400 to keep from going over capacity.

The worldwide market for Islamically permitted goods, called halal, has grown to more than half a billion dollars annually. Ritually slaughtered meat is a mainstay, but the halal industry is much broader, including foods and seasoning that omit alcohol, pork products and other forbidden ingredients, along with cosmetics, finance and clothing.

Continue reading "American Muslims: A new consumer niche" »

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The Rev. Jason Poling is pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

It’s that time of year again, and if you’re dreading the prospect of throwing the same old discs into the changer while you tend to the roast, here’s a rundown of several 2010 holiday offerings.

The Good

Erin Bode: A Cold December Night

This disc is by far my favorite of this year’s new holiday music, and I think Erin Bode is my favorite discovery of the year. With a voice and style reminiscent of Norah Jones, Bode displays both greater musical range and a deeper sense of perspective. The opening track, “Skating,” which Bode co-wrote with backing musician Adam Maness, establishes the mood right away: comfortable but not lazy, relaxed but not apathetic, friendly but not garrulous, thoughtful but not brooding, cool but not self-consciously hip. Much credit is due to Bode’s band; Syd Rodway’s basswork establishes a musical foundation that flows when it needs to and sits still when it should. The entire ensemble seems to be taking the music seriously, themselves not too.

Bode’s album succeeds where so many other solo female holiday albums fall short: Shawn Colvin’s Holiday Songs and Lullabies is heavy and over-produced, Sarah McLachlan’s Wintersong is thin and over-produced, and Sara Groves’ O Holy Night bears an unrelenting intensity that just doesn’t fit the artistic form. This is an album I wanted to listen to again after it was done, and I’ve kept coming back to it as often as possible.

The December People: Rattle and Humbug

What would your favorite Christmas carols sound like if they were played by the bands you hear on classic rock stations? Bassist Robert Berry gathered some of California’s top session and touring rock musicians to produce “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” as it would have been played by Boston, “Angels We Have Heard On High” as Peter Gabriel would have done it in the ‘80s, and a ‘90s U2 rendition of “What Child Is This?” Santana gets aped on “Feliz Navidad,” of course.

Continue reading "2010 Holiday Music: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" »

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The Associated Press reports:

The Pentagon's study on gays in the military has determined that overturning the "don't ask, don't tell" ban on serving openly might cause some disruption at first but would not create widespread or long-lasting problems.

The study provides ammunition to congressional Democrats struggling to overturn the law. But even with the release of Tuesday's report, there is no indication they can overcome fierce Republican objections with just a few weeks left in this year's postelection congressional session.

Still, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, said Congress should act quickly because of a recent effort by a federal judge to overturn the law.

Gates said the military needs time to prepare for such an adjustment, even though he said he didn't envision any changes to housing or other personnel policies. He said a sudden, court-issued mandate would significantly increase the risk of disruption.

"Given the present circumstances, those that choose not to act legislatively are rolling the dice that this policy will not be abruptly overturned by the courts," Gates told reporters.

The co-chairs of the study, Pentagon General Counsel Jeh Johnson and Army Gen. Carter Ham, wrote, "We are both convinced that our military can do this, even during this time of war."

Overall, the survey found that some two-thirds of troops don't care if the ban is lifted. Of the 30 percent who objected, most were members of combat units.

In fact, at least 40 percent of combat troops said the acceptance of gays serving openly would be a bad idea. That number climbs to 58 percent among Marines serving in combat roles.

Continue reading "Pentagon study dismisses risk of gays in military" »

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The Associated Press reports:

A pastor who said Facebook was a "portal to infidelity" and told married church leaders to delete their accounts or resign once testified that he had a three-way sexual relationship with his wife and a male church assistant.

The Rev. Cedric Miller confirmed the information reported Saturday by the Asbury Park Press of Neptune, which cited testimony he gave in a criminal case in 2003. The relationship had ended by that time.

Miller gained national attention when he issued the Facebook edict this week. He said it came about because much of the marital counseling he has performed over the past year and a half has concerned infidelity stemming from the social-networking website.

The 48-year-old leader of Living Word Christian Fellowship Church in Neptune Township had claimed Facebook ignites old passions, and he ordered about 50 married church officials to delete their accounts with the social networking site or resign from their leadership positions.

Miller had previously asked married congregants to share their login information with their spouses — as he does — and now plans to suggest that they give up Facebook altogether. The minister also said he would leave the site this week.

In court testimony he gave in April 2003, Miller said his wife had an extramarital affair with the church assistant. Miller said he participated in many of the sexual encounters and said the assistant's wife was sometimes present, too.

Continue reading "Facebook-banning pastor acknowledges threesome" »

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Associated Press correspondent Wayne Parry reports:

Thou shalt not commit adultery. And thou also shalt not use Facebook.

That's the edict from a New Jersey pastor who feels the two often go together.

The Rev. Cedric Miller said 20 couples among the 1,100 members of his Living Word Christian Fellowship Church have run into marital trouble over the last six months after a spouse connected with an ex-flame over Facebook.

Because of the problems, he is ordering about 50 married church officials to delete their accounts with the social networking site or resign from their leadership positions. He had previously asked married congregants to share their login information with their spouses and now plans to suggest that they give up Facebook altogether.

"I've been in extended counseling with couples with marital problems because of Facebook for the last year and a half," he said. "What happens is someone from yesterday surfaces, it leads to conversations and there have been physical meet-ups. The temptation is just too great."

Miller is married and has a Facebook account that he uses to keep in touch with six children, but he will heed his own advice and cancel his account this weekend.

On Sunday, he plans to "strongly suggest" that all married people to stop using Facebook, lest they endanger their marriage.

"The advice will go to the entire church," he said. "They'll hear what I'm asking of my church leadership. I won't mandate it for the entire congregation, but I hope people will follow my advice."

Continue reading "Pastor: Thou shalt not use Facebook" »

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The Associated Press reports:

Editorials in a Catholic prep school's student newspaper about same-sex marriage and gay teenagers are sparking debate about free speech in Minnesota.

Student-written opinion pieces in the newspaper at Benilde-St. Margaret in St. Louis Park, Minn., defended gay teenagers and criticized a DVD by Minnesota's Catholic bishops that denounced same-sex marriage.

The editorials and the nearly 100 comments they generated were deleted from the newspaper's website over the weekend. The principal says they created confusion about church teaching and an intensity that made an unsafe environment for students.

Some comments praised a gay student's courage for writing about his experience. Others said the editorials shouldn't have been published at a Catholic school.

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Associated Press correspondent Diaa Hadid reports:

A mysterious blogger who set off an uproar in the Arab world by claiming he was God and hurling insults at the Prophet Muhammad is now behind bars — caught in a sting that used Facebook to track him down.

The case of the unlikely apostate, a shy barber from the backwater West Bank town of Qalqiliya, is highlighting the limits of tolerance in the Western-backed Palestinian Authority — and illustrating a new trend by authorities in the Arab world to mine social media for evidence.

Residents of Qalqiliya say they had no idea that Walid Husayin — the 26-year-old son of a Muslim scholar — was leading a double life.

Known as a quiet man who prayed with his family each Friday and spent his evenings working in his father's barbershop, Husayin was secretly posting anti-religion rants on the Internet during his free time.

Now, he faces a potential life prison sentence on heresy charges for "insulting the divine essence." Many in this conservative Muslim town say he should be killed for renouncing Islam, and even family members say he should remain behind bars for life.

"He should be burned to death," said Abdul-Latif Dahoud, a 35-year-old Qalqiliya resident. The execution should take place in public "to be an example to others," he added.

Over several years, Husayin is suspected of posting arguments in favor of atheism on English and Arabic blogs, where he described the God of Islam as having the attributes of a "primitive Bedouin." He called Islam a "blind faith that grows and takes over people's minds where there is irrationality and ignorance."

If that wasn't enough, he is also suspected of creating three Facebook groups in which he sarcastically declared himself God and ordered his followers, among other things, to smoke marijuana in verses that spoof the Muslim holy book, the Quran. At its peak, Husayin's Arabic-language blog had more than 70,000 visitors, overwhelmingly from Arab countries.

His Facebook groups elicited hundreds of angry comments, detailed death threats and the formation of more than a dozen Facebook groups against him, including once called "Fight the blasphemer who said 'I am God.'"

Continue reading "Palestinian held for Facebook criticism of Islam" »

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Associated Press correspondent Dana Wollman reports

Amazon is no longer selling a self-published guide for pedophiles.

It wasn't immediately clear whether Amazon.com Inc. had pulled the item, or whether the author withdrew it. Amazon did not immediately return messages Thursday.

The book, "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover's Code of Conduct," offers advice to pedophiles on how to make a sexual encounter with a child as safe as possible. It includes first-person descriptions of such encounters, purportedly written from a child's point of view.

The availability of the book calls into question whether Amazon has any procedures — or even an obligation — to vet books before they are sold in its online stores. The title is an electronic book available for Amazon's Kindle e-reader and the company's software for reading Kindle books on mobile phones and computers. Amazon allows authors to submit their own works and shares revenue with them.

Amazon issues guidelines banning certain materials, including those deemed offensive. However, the company doesn't elaborate on what constitutes offensive content, saying simply that it is "probably what you would expect." Amazon also doesn't promise to remove or protect any one category of books.

Once discovered Wednesday, the book triggered outrage from commenters on sites such as Twitter. Some people threatened to boycott the online store until Amazon removed the book. Two petitions on Facebook alone won more than 13,500 supporters.

Continue reading "Amazon no longer selling guide for pedophiles" »

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The Associated Press reports:

The first Sikh to go through U.S. Army basic combat training in 30 years is graduating at a South Carolina military installation, just hours after becoming an American citizen.

Spc. Simran Lamba was completing his training Wednesday at Fort Jackson outside Columbia. He was permitted to wear unshorn hair and a turban under a religious accommodation granted by the nation's largest military branch.

Army policies had effectively prevented Sikhs from enlisting since 1984.

The Army has two Sikhs who became medical officers in recent years, but no Sikh has served in the enlisted ranks in decades.

Lamba was recruited under a special program seeking speakers of two languages in India, Hindi and Punjabi.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
        

Associated Press correspondent Dana Wollman reports:

Amazon is selling a self-published book defending pedophiles, sparking discussions about the retailer's obligation to vet items before they are sold in its online stores.

The book, "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover's Code of Conduct" by Philip R. Greaves II, offers advice to pedophiles afraid of becoming the center of retaliation. It is an electronic book available for Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle e-reader.

The book has triggered mounting outrage on Twitter and beyond. A chorus of Twitter users is calling for Amazon to pull the book, with a few threatening to boycott the Kindle store until it does.

Amazon did not immediately respond to an inquiry about whether and how it vet books sold in its store.

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Associated Press correspondent Nicole Winfield reports:

Pope Benedict XVI strongly defended traditional families and the rights of the unborn Sunday, directly attacking Spanish laws that allow gay marriage, fast-track divorce and easier abortions as he dedicated Barcelona's iconic church, the Sagrada Familia.

It was the second time in as many days that Benedict had criticized the policies of Spain's Socialist government and called for Europe as a whole to rediscover Christian teachings and apply them to everyday life.

As he headed to the church named for the sacred family, about 200 gays and lesbians staged a 'kiss-in' to protest his visit and church policies on homosexuals, condom use and a host of other issues. Church teaching holds that gays should be treated with dignity and respect but that homosexual acts are "intrinsically disordered."

Benedict has focused much of his pontificate on trying to fight secular trends in the West such as the legal recognition of same-sex unions. Benedict has visited Spain twice so far and has a third trip planned next year, an indication he sees this once staunchly Roman Catholic country as a battleground for the future of the faithful in Europe.

During his homily Sunday, Benedict noted that the Sagrada Familia church, a soaring, Art Nouveau marvel begun over a century ago, was initially conceived of as a temple to the family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

As he inaugurated the church's main altar, he railed against same-sex marriage and divorce, saying families are built on the "indissoluble love of a man and a woman" who should be provided with financial and social benefits from governments. The pontiff also consecrated the building for use as a church in a colorful ceremony seldom seen performed by a pope.

Continue reading "Gay protesters stage 'kiss-in' as pope drives by" »

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Associated Press correspondent Anne Gearan reports:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Congress should act quickly, before new members take their seats, to repeal the military's ban on gays serving openly in the military.

He, however, did not sound optimistic that the current Congress would use a brief postelection session to get rid of the law known as "don't ask, don't tell."

"I would like to see the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" but I'm not sure what the prospects for that are," Gates said Saturday, as he traveled to defense and diplomatic meetings in Australia.

Unless the lame-duck Congress acts, the repeal effort is considered dead for now.

The current, Democratic-controlled Congress has not acted to lift the ban, which President Barack Obama promised to eliminate. In his postelection news conference Wednesday, Obama said there would be time to repeal the ban in December or early January, after the military completes a study of the effects of repeal on the front lines and at home.

With Republicans taking control of the House in January, and with larger margins in the Senate, supporters of lifting the ban predict it will be much more difficult.

Gates also urged the Senate to ratify a stalled arms control treaty with Russia before the end of the current legislative session in January.

The defense chief said the huge midterm gains for Republicans will not set back Obama's strategy for the war in Afghanistan. Obama wants to begin pulling U.S. forces home next summer, so long as security conditions allow it.

Continue reading "Gates urges Congress to repeal 'Don't ask, don't tell'" »

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Associated Press correspondent Shelia Byrd reports:

The lesbian who successfully challenged a rural Mississippi school district's ban on same-sex prom dates says she wept when she read about the recent spate of gay teen suicides linked to harassment.

Constance McMillen, who was recently named one of Glamour magazine's "Women of the Year 2010," told The Associated Press that she became a bullying victim after she challenged the Itawamba School District over a policy that prohibited her from bringing her girlfriend to the prom and wearing a tuxedo.

McMillen, 18, said she became emotional after reading about the suicides of 13-year-old Seth Walsh, of California, who hanged himself outside his home after enduring taunts from classmates, and of Tyler Clementi, an 18-year-old Rutgers University freshman who killed himself after his sexual encounter was secretly streamed online.

"I read it on Facebook. I was so upset about this that I could not sleep," McMillen said. "I knew it had to be terrible for them to choose death as a way to escape what they were living in."

McMillen said she has had her own suicidal thoughts.

"But I never really considered it to the point where I almost did it," she said. "Everybody thinks about it when times get hard."

Continue reading "Miss. teen talks about anti-gay bullies" »

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Associated Press correspondent Nicole Winfield reports:

Pope Benedict XVI formally created a new Vatican office Tuesday to revive Christianity in Europe, his latest attempt to counter secular trends in traditionally Christian countries.

In a decree, Benedict said the new office would promote church doctrine, use the media to get the church's message out and mobilize missionary-type activities.

But even on its first day of existence, the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization ran into an all-too-typical Vatican snag: The four-page decree instituting the office was issued in only Latin and Italian.

Asked how the pope expected to bring the church's message to the world in such relatively unknown languages, the head of the new office, Monsignor Rino Fisichella said he hadn't been in charge until Tuesday and wasn't responsible for how the decree was issued.

He stressed that he planned to have language sections in his department to deal with the faithful in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, German and Slavic languages.

Continue reading "Pope outlines new effort to revive Christianity" »

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The Associated Press reports:

Former White House correspondent Helen Thomas acknowledges she touched a nerve with remarks about Israel that led to her retirement. But in a radio interview, she says the comments were "exactly what I thought," even though she realized soon afterward that it was the end of her job.

"I hit the third rail. You cannot criticize Israel in this country and survive," Thomas told Ohio station WMRN-AM in a sometimes emotional 35-minute interview that aired Tuesday. It was recorded a week earlier by WMRN reporter Scott Spears at Thomas' Washington, D.C., condominium.

Thomas, 90, stepped down from her job as a columnist for Hearst News Service in June after a rabbi and independent filmmaker videotaped her outside the White House calling on Israelis to get "out of Palestine." She gave up her front row seat in the White House press room, where she had aimed often pointed questions at 10 presidents, going back to Dwight D. Eisenhower.

She has kept a low profile since then.

It was "very hard for the first two weeks," Thomas said. "After that, I came out of my coma."

Rabbi David Nesenoff, who runs the website rabbilive.com, said he approached Thomas after he'd been at the White House for Jewish Heritage Day on May 27. He asked whether she had any comments on Israel.

"Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine," she replied.

"Remember, these people are occupied and it's their land. It's not Germany, it's not Poland," she continued. Asked where they should go, she answered, "They should go home."

"Where's home?" Nesenoff asked.

"Poland, Germany and America and everywhere else," Thomas replied.

"I told him exactly what I thought," she told Spears.

Continue reading "Helen Thomas on anti-Semite charge: 'Baloney!'" »

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The Rev. Jason Poling is the Pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

Her tragic death notwithstanding, the career of Anna Nicole Smith delighted plastic surgeons, dieters and reality TV fans, not to mention readers of Playboy magazine and patrons of strip clubs. It was one of these last, J. Howard Marshall II, who became Mr. Anna Nicole Smith in the waning years of his life.

The facts are well-known to most readers: Ms. Smith, then 26, married Mr. Marshall, then 89, in 1994. Upon Marshall’s death 13 months later, his son E. Pierce Marshall contested Ms. Smith’s claim to half of his estate; the case ultimately wound up in the Supreme Court, which decided in Ms. Smith’s favor in 2006. Although both Ms. Smith and Mr. Marshall are now deceased, Mr. Marshall’s estate continued to pursue the matter, and the Supreme Court has announced that it will once again hear the case.

Oddly enough, this turn of events presents us once again with the reality that for a brief, shining moment, Ms. Smith replaced Michael Schiavo as the poster child for family values.

Obviously the disposition of a will can involve complicated decisions, and family tension is by no mean unknown in this sort of situation. Probate lawyers can explain all of the variables to anyone who’s interested in them, but the basic principle of law and the clear message of the Supreme Court’s 2006 ruling is this: If the choice is between a spouse and another family member, the spouse wins.

Much the same conflict was operative in the Schiavo case: Ultimately the courts decided that when Terry Schiavo’s husband and parents disagreed over her medical care, it was her husband’s right as her spouse to make decisions for her despite her parents’ disagreement with his choices.

Continue reading "Poling: Two Cheers for Anna Nicole Smith" »

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A Georgia teen who officials said continued to evangelize outside a library after officials warned him to stop has been banned from the Chattahoochee Valley Regional Library System for six months, the Associated Press reports.

Kirsten Edwards, acting manager of the North Columbus Public Library, said in a letter that 16-year-old Caleb Hanson repeatedly asked patrons about their religious faith and offered biblical advice.

The teen said library employees had warned him to stop. "Then they took me into an office and told me not to do it," he said.

He said he then began talking to people outside the library, and patrons continued to complain.

Claudya Muller, director of the library system, said the ban had nothing to do with what the teen was saying. "As people came in, he would approach them. He prevented people from simply using the library."

Continue reading "Ga. teen barred from library proselytizing" »

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Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell's plan to put Virginia's state-run alcohol sales in private hands and triple the number of liquor stores scored a big endorsement from the Christian right, the Associated Press reports.

Jerry Falwell Jr., the chancellor of Liberty University and namesake son of the late minister and political activist, endorsed McDonnell's liquor privatization proposal Tuesday.

Falwell said he felt the founders never intended for government to be in the liquor retailing business.

But McDonnell has encountered resistance to his plan from an interfaith coalition concerned that boosting the number of stores from 332 now to 1,000 will worsen alcoholism, damage families and put more drunks on the highways.

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"The Daily Show" host Jon Stewart is hosting a "million moderate march" in Washington — for people who think shouting is annoying — but faux political nemesis Stephen Colbert will be nearby to keep fear alive against those "dark, optimistic forces."

Colbert, host of Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report," and his arch enemy on the network plan to hold opposing political rallies on the National Mall just before the November elections, the Associated Press reports.

Stewart interrupted his regular fake newscast Thursday night to announce a "Rally to Restore Sanity" on Oct. 30. He said it's for people too busy with their normal lives to go to other political rallies.

"We're looking for people who think shouting is annoying ... who feel that the loudest voices shouldn't be the only ones that get heard," Stewart writes in promotion for his rally. "Think of our event as Woodstock, but with the nudity and drugs replaced by respectful disagreement."

No Adolf Hitler mustaches allowed at the Stewart rally — unless it's drawn on a photo of the German dictator (or Charlie Chaplin).

Nearby, Colbert also announced a "March to Keep Fear Alive" to restore "truthiness" to the nation on his show Thursday night. For those who don't know, truthiness was a 2006 word of the year that means "truth that comes from the gut, not books."

Continue reading "Colbert to rally against Stewart on National Mall" »

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Britain's advertising watchdog has banned an Italian ice cream ad featuring a pregnant nun, saying it causes offense to Catholics, the Associated Press reports.

The magazine ad for ice cream maker Antonio Federici showed the nun eating a tub of ice cream, with text that read: "Immaculately conceived ... Ice cream is our religion."

The Advertising Standards Authority said Wednesday it has received 10 complaints from magazine readers who said the ad was offensive to Christians. The agency said imagery used to illustrate immaculate conception was likely to be seen as mocking the beliefs of Roman Catholics.

The Italian company said the idea of conception represented the development of their ice cream and the ad aimed to gently satirize religion.

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The French Senate on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a bill banning the burqa-style Islamic veil in public, but the leaders of both parliamentary houses said they had asked a special council to first ensure the measure passes constitutional muster amid concerns its tramples on religious freedoms, the Associated Press reports.

The Senate voted 246 to 1 Tuesday in favor of the bill, which has already passed in the lower chamber, the National Assembly. It will need President Nicolas Sarkozy's signature.

Legislative leaders said they wanted the Constitutional Council to examine it.

"This law was the object of long and complex debates," the Senate president, Gerard Larcher, and National Assembly head Bernard Accoyer said in a joint statement explaining their move. They said in a joint statement that they want to be certain there is "no uncertainty" about it conforming to the constitution.

The measure effects less than 2,000 women.

Many Muslims believe the legislation is one more blow to France's second religion, and risks raising the level of Islamophobia in a country where mosques, like synagogues, are sporadic targets of hate. However, the vast majority behind the measure say it will preserve the nation's singular values, including its secular foundation and a notion of fraternity that is contrary to those who hide their faces.

Continue reading "French Senate approves Muslim veil ban" »

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A Muslim stonemason who spent nearly four decades helping to restore a Roman Catholic cathedral in France has been immortalized as a winged gargoyle peering out from its facade — with the inscription "God is great" written in French and Arabic.

It was conceived as a symbol of inter-religious friendship that reflects the city of Lyon's links to its large Muslim population, the Associated Press reports. But a widely publicized outcry from a small extreme-right group has forced the Archdiocese of Lyon into damage control.

"This has nothing to do with religion. It's a sculptor who wants to pay homage to a construction site chief," said the Rev. Michel Cacaud, rector of the cathedral. "That's all."

In France, where Islam is the country's second religion, the government has worked to integrate Muslims into French culture, while at the same time confronting cases of Islamophobia, from the desecration of Muslim graves to attacks on mosques.

Ahmed Benzizine, who was born in Algeria, a former French colony, sees the gargoyle in his image as "a message of peace and tolerance."

"When I started to work in churches ... exactly 37 years ago, it was considered a sin that a Muslim enter a place of worship other than a mosque," he said.

He has worked off and on since 1973 at St. Jean Cathedral, which dominates the old city of Lyon and has been honored as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Benzizine is tickled to see his likeness on the facade of the cathedral, which dates to the 12th to 14th centuries and combines both Gothic and Roman architecture.

"It looks like me except for the ears," the 59-year-old told The Associated Press. "They're pointed like the devil. But the sculptor told me that angels have pointed ears, too."

Continue reading "Catholic church honors Muslim worker" »

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Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo might seem like an unlikely person to be pushing a bill to cut federal taxes on small beer-makers: A member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he abstains from alcohol.

But Crapo's effort, with senators from Oregon, Massachusetts and Maine, illustrates the deep bond between Idaho Mormons and the beer industry, the Associated Press reports.

Mormon farmers raise barley for Budweiser and Negra Modelo beers, and last year, Mormons in the Idaho Legislature helped kill a plan to raise beer and wine taxes to fund drug treatment, fearing it could hurt farmers.

Crapo touted the tax cut for brewers during a recent appearance at the Portneuf Valley Brewing Co. in Pocatello and said his position is simple: He won't impose his own religious beliefs on others, especially when it could affect a growing industry.

"The (Idaho) wine industry is growing, too," he told the AP. "I'll probably get asked to help the wine growers out. And I probably will."

Continue reading "Teetotalling Mormons grow barley for beer" »

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Note to big companies hoping to tap into France's lucrative but long-neglected Muslim consumer market: Pitfalls may await, and not only in the form of complaints from the far-right.

As of this week, the Associated Press reports, 22 outlets of popular French fast food chain Quick are serving burgers it says respect Islamic dietary law. And while many Muslims are delighted, the powerful main Paris Mosque complained Thursday that Quick's criteria aren't all-encompassing enough, and that the operation is meaningless.

Quick's meat is certified as halal, but Cheikh Al Sid Cheikh, assistant to the rector of the Paris Mosque, said the burger chain should have had the other ingredients checked as well, from its mustard to buns to fries.

"The rest must be validated too, or else there's no point," he told The Associated Press. Quick responded that it has no intention of making any of its restaurants halal through-and-through — beer is still served there, for example, said spokeswoman Valerie Raynal.

Such cultural sensitivities are new territory for many French companies. Until recently in France, a country obsessed with secularism, companies were hesitant to reach out to France's Muslim population, estimated to be 5 million, the largest in Europe.

Continue reading "Mosque objects to burger chain's Muslim outreach" »

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Archaeologists in Jordan have unearthed a 3,000-year-old Iron Age temple with a trove of figurines of ancient deities and circular clay vessels used for religious rituals, the Associated Press reports.

The head of the Jordanian Antiquities Department, Ziad al-Saad, said the sanctuary dates to the eighth century B.C. and was discovered at Khirbat 'Ataroz near the town of Mabada, some 20 miles (32 kilometers) southwest of the capital Amman.

He said the complex boasts a main room that measures 388 square feet (36 square meters), as well as two antechambers and an open courtyard.

The sanctuary and its artifacts — hewn from limestone and basalt or molded from clay and bronze — show the complex religious rituals of Jordan's ancient biblical Moabite kingdom, according to al-Saad.

"Today we have the material evidence, the archaeological proof of the level of advancement of technology and civilization at that period of time," he said.

The Moabites, whose kingdom ran along present-day Jordan's mountainous eastern shore of the Dead Sea, were closely related to the Israelites, although the two were in frequent conflict. The Babylonians eventually conquered the Moabites in 582 B.C.

Continue reading "Archeologists unearth ancient temple in Jordan" »

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Strippers dressed in bikinis sunbathe in lawn chairs, their backs turned toward the gray clapboard church where men in ties and women in full-length skirts flock to Sunday morning services.

The strippers, fueled by Cheetos and nicotine, are protesting a fundamentalist Christian church whose Bible-brandishing congregants have picketed the club where they work, the Associated Press reports.

The dancers roll up with signs carrying messages adapted from Scripture, such as "Do unto others as you would have done unto you," to counter church members who for four years have photographed license plates of patrons and asked them if their mothers and wives know their whereabouts, AP correspondent Jeannie Nuss writes.

The dueling demonstrations play out in central Ohio, where nine miles of cornfields and Amish-buggy crossing signs separate The Fox Hole strip club from New Beginnings Ministries.

Club owner Tommy George met with the preacher and offered to call off his not-quite-nude crew from their three-month-long protest if the church responds in kind. But pastor Bill Dunfee believes that a higher power has tasked him with shutting down the strip club.

"As a Christian community, we cannot share territory with the devil," Dunfee said. "Light and darkness cannot exist together, so The Fox Hole has got to go."

AP Photo

Continue reading "It's Christians vs. strippers in rural Ohio" »

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A new poll finds skepticism among Americans that Islam is likelier than other faiths to encourage violence. But the survey also finds that their overall view of the religion has worsened over the past five years, the Associated Press reports.

In addition, the poll by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center finds that the public leans 51 percent to 34 percent against building a Muslim center near the former site of New York's World Trade Center.

By 42 percent to 35 percent, most think Islam does not incite violence more than other religions. That's about the same as said so last year.

But more people have unfavorable than favorable views of Islam by 38 percent to 30 percent. In 2005, it was reversed: 41 percent had favorable views, 36 percent unfavorable.

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Gay couples who had been gearing up to get married in California this week had to put their wedding plans on hold once again after a federal appeals court said it first wanted to consider the constitutionality of the state's same-sex marriage ban, the Associated Press reports.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals imposed an emergency stay Monday on a trial court judge's ruling overturning the ban, known as Proposition 8. Chief U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker had ordered state officials to stop enforcing the measure starting Wednesday, clearing the way for county clerks to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

"It's saddening just to know that we still have to keep waiting for this basic human right," Marcia Davalos, of Los Angeles, a health care advocate who had planned to marry her partner, Laurette Healey, said when the stay was issued Monday. "We were getting excited and then all of a sudden it's like, 'Ugh.' It's a roller-coaster."

Lawyers for the two gay couples who challenged the ban said Monday they would not appeal the panel's decision on the stay to the U.S. Supreme Court. They said they were satisfied the appeals court had agreed to fast-track its consideration of the Proposition 8 case by scheduling oral arguments for the week of Dec. 6.

"Today's order from the 9th Circuit for an expedited hearing schedule ensures that we will triumph over Prop. 8 as quickly as possible," said Chad Griffin, president of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, a group funding the effort to get the voter-approved gay marriage ban permanently overturned. "Our attorneys are ready to take this case all the way through the appeals court and to the United States Supreme Court."

Continue reading "Gay weddings on hold in California" »

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A name like Maria or Jose isn't a solid clue anymore that the person who answers to it will worship in a Catholic church on Sunday, the Associated Press reports.

An Associated Press-Univision poll finds that younger Latinos, as well as those who speak more English than Spanish, are much less likely to identify as Catholics than older, Hispanics who mostly speak Spanish.

The poll of 1,500 Latino adults also found significant divisions on social issues such as same-sex unions and abortion, along lines of age, language and whether one is Catholic or Protestant.

It's been more than a year since Melissa Solis went to Mass. An executive assistant at a New York financial firm, she was raised by a pious Catholic mother but calls herself "nonpracticing."

"There is peace in the house of God for me, but there is also inner peace," said Solis, 35. "I do believe there is a God, and that has helped me through tough times. But you can practice your religion in your home, and it doesn't necessarily have to be in a building labeled the house of God."

Overall, 62 percent of Hispanics identify as Catholic, but that includes only 55 percent of young adults 18 to 29, compared with 80 percent of elders 65 and over.

Continue reading "Poll: Young Latinos less likely to be Catholic" »

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A federal judge overturned California's same-sex marriage ban Wednesday in a landmark case that could eventually land before the U.S. Supreme Court to decide if gays have a constitutional right to marry in America, the Associated Press reports.

Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker made his ruling in a lawsuit filed by two gay couples who claimed the voter-approved ban violated their civil rights.

Gay couples waving rainbow and American flags outside the courthouse cheered, hugged and kissed as word of the ruling spread.

"This is a victory for the American people. It's a victory for our justice system," said former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson, who delivered the closing argument at trial for opponents of the ban.

He said the ruling "vindicates the rights of a minority of our citizens to be treated with decency and respect and equality in our system."

Despite the favorable ruling for same-sex couples, gay marriage will not be allowed to resume immediately. Judge Walker said he wants to decide whether his order should be suspended while the proponents of the ban pursue their appeal in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Continue reading "Federal judge overturns California gay marriage ban" »

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Over at the Huffington Post, New York media and fashion mogul Russell Simmons writes that the debate over construction of a mosque near Ground Zero is "digging a hole in the soul of America."

Simmons, the activist cofounder of the Def Jam record label and the Phat Farm fashion line, writes of being able to see the hole that remains at Ground Zero from his apartment in Lower Manhattan, and of greeting the firefighters at his neighborhood station, who lost nearly all of their comrades on Sept. 11, 2001.

This is my neighborhood, my backyard. And in my backyard, I have no tolerance for a new fear-mongering, hateful rhetoric that has sprung up over the proposed $100 million Islamic cultural center that they plan on building blocks away from Ground Zero.

It is not insensitive to put a cultural center of any sort, that has a place of worship, anywhere in our city. This is what makes our country and our city great. As a nation that was founded by men and women who were being persecuted for their particular faith, we should know that the best path to finding freedom is finding freedom for others. We were formed as a pluralistic society and this means we welcome all religions. Islam did not attack the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, sick and twisted men did, who not only hijacked four airplanes but also hijacked a religion. Let us not stereotype the over one billion Muslims around the world because of the evil acts of a few. A decision like this one, to support or not support the construction of this center, defines who we are as a nation. It's at the essence of our values, our freedom of expression, freedom of religion and religious tolerance.

As the Chairman of The Foundation Of Ethnic Understanding, my partner Rabbi Marc Schneier (also the Vice President, World Jewish Congress; Chairman, World Jewish Congress United States) and I have worked tirelessly to promote dialogue among different ethnic groups all over the world, particularly Jews and Muslims. We have witnessed the power of the fostering of this dialogue. We know that we must fight Antisemitism and Islamaphobia together and at the same time. We welcome and support this cultural center, as it will continue constructive conversations around a moderate approach to co-existence between all people, regardless of religious preference. In fact, we strongly feel that this center will bridge the divide that many of our nation's citizens have with the Islamic faith.

Continue reading "Simmons: Ground Zero mosque 'not insensitive'" »

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Prison officials may ban employees from wearing religious headscarves out of concerns they pose a safety risk, a U.S. appeals court in Philadelphia ruled Monday in a split 2-1 decision.

The majority said that prison officials have legitimate concerns the headscarves can hide drugs or other contraband, or be used by an inmate to strangle someone, the Associated Press reports.

The ruling dismisses a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of three Muslim women employed at the Delaware County Prison in suburban Thornton. The EEOC had said they were being forced to compromise their religious beliefs to keep their jobs.

The suit was filed against the Geo Group, a Boca Raton, Fla.-based contractor that formerly operated the facility.

After the prison implemented a ban on hats and headscarves in 2005, nurse Carmen Sharpe-Allen was fired for refusing to remove her headscarf, or khimar, at work. Intake clerk Marquita King and correctional officer Rashemma Moss, after some deliberation, agreed to remove their headscarves on the job.

Continue reading "Court: Prison may ban Muslim headscarf" »

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Christians staged a free concert Monday promoting "PTL," or praise the lord, near where the cast of MTV's "Jersey Shore" enjoy "GTL," or the gym, tan and laundry lifestyle, the Associated Press reports.

The Toms River, N.J.-based Move the Earth ministry organized the "Jesus Shore" event on the boardwalk in Seaside Heights, N.J., as an alternative to the "fighting and fornicating" that organizers say the reality TV show celebrates.

The Rev. Anthony Storino, pastor of Abundant Grace Church in Toms River, says members are not against the TV program. But he says there's another side to the Jersey shore.

The concert featured Christian bands and a Christian-themed tattoo contest. Vendors also sold Christian books and T-shirts.

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Darcy Bisset is a member of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

I spent the better part of last fall reading through Anne Rice's Christ the Lord books with a group of friends (reluctantly at first -- when our discussion group voted, my pick lost). I found myself captured by the beauty of Rice's writing and impressed by the theological and historical care she took with her subject matter.

And so when I heard the news last week that Rice had announced she was leaving Christianity and was no longer Christian, I felt a twist of emotions. I was sad, because I thought the Christ the Lord books were brilliant and I wanted more from that voice.

I was sympathetic, because I've been in that boat, where some one or some group, purportedly speaking for Christianity, is saying something you think is SO WRONG and you want to wear a big button proclaiming "I am not with them!"

I was also incredulous because, well, did she not know about the Roman Catholic Church's stance on homosexuality and birth control when she joined up?

It kind of reminds me of when people get divorced after a few years of marriage, citing as "irreconcilable differences" a bunch of personality quirks about which they were fully informed when they decided to get married.

I decided that if Anne Rice can make silly over-reaching statements, then so can I. Therefore, on behalf of Christianity and Christians, I refuse to accept her resignation.

Continue reading "Guest Post: Memo to Anne: Resignation declined" »

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Amare Stoudemire already knows some Hebrew phrases and sports a Star of David tattoo. Now he's gone to Israel to explore what might be his Jewish heritage, the Associated Press reports.

The five-time NBA All-Star who recently signed with the New York Knicks is on a weeklong visit to learn about Israel, its language and religions. He believes he has "Hebrew roots" through his mother, Carrie.

"She studied the scriptures and history and she believes she is a Hebrew," he told The Associated Press on Friday in Jerusalem. "I grew up in a very spiritual home. It's not about religion, it's about spirituality for me."

Stoudemire said he was "soaking up the culture," with his girlfriend and a few other friends from home.

He has long suspected his Jewish lineage — Judaism is passed down through the mother's side. Stoudemire's agent, Happy Walters, said his client is a "student of history" and is "exploring religions in general." He added that Soudemire may turn to a genealogist when he returns to New York to dig deeper.

The 6-foot-10 forward signed a five-year, $100 million contract with the Knicks three weeks ago. He will now be playing in the city with the largest Jewish population in the United States.

The NBA features two Jewish players: Israeli Omri Casspi of the Sacramento Kings and Jordan Farmar of the New Jersey Nets. When Farmar joined the Los Angeles Lakers in 2006, he became the NBA's first Jewish player since Danny Schayes — son of Hall of Famer Dolph Schayes — retired in 1999.

Continue reading "NBA star Stoudemire in Israel to trace Jewish roots" »

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Novelist Anne Rice remains committed to Christ. But she is quitting Christianity.

The “Interview With The Vampire” author, who in recent years has spoken publicly about her faith and written a series of novels tracing the life of Jesus, wrote on her Facebook page Wednesday that she was finished with organized Christianity.

For those who care, and I understand if you don't: Today I quit being a Christian. I'm out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being "Christian" or to being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to "belong" to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outside. My conscience will allow nothing else.

She followed that post a few minutes later with more details:

As I said below, I quit being a Christian. I'm out. In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen.

On Thursday, Rice posted a series of passages from the New Testament:

Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household.

Continue reading "Anne Rice quits Christianity -- but not Christ" »

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French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday ordered authorities to expel gypsy illegal immigrants and dismantle their camps, amid accusations that his government is acting racist in its treatment of the group known as Roma, the Associated Press reports.

Sarkozy called a government meeting Wednesday after Roma clashed with police this month after the shooting death of a gypsy youth fleeing officers in the Loire Valley.

Sarkozy said those responsible for the clashes would be "severely punished" and ordered the government to expel all illegal Roma immigrants, almost all of whom have come from eastern Europe.

He pushed for a change in France's immigration law to make such expulsion easier "for reasons of public order." He said illegal gypsy camps "will be systematically evacuated," calling them sources of trafficking, exploitation of children and prostitution.

French Roma representatives were not invited to Wednesday's presidential meeting, which included the interior, justice and immigration ministers and top police officials.

Community leaders contend the very principle of the meeting — which singled out an ethnic group in a country that is officially blind to ethnic origins — is racist and warn of grave consequences if their side isn't heard. France's government does not count how many of its citizens are of a certain ethnicity; everyone is simply considered French.

"Today ... I am afraid we're preparing to open a blighted page in the history of France, which could sadly lead to acts of reprisal in the days ahead," said lawyer Henri Braun said at a Wednesday news conference by French Roma leaders. "There is a huge problem of racism in France towards this population, there is enormous discrimination."

Continue reading "France expels illegal Roma immigrants" »

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The population of Amish is growing in North America, and their search for affordable, fertile farmland is sending them into new areas to accommodate a population currently estimated at 249,000, the Associated Press reports.

A study released Wednesday by Elizabethtown College's Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies shows settlements in 28 states and Ontario. Amish have even been scouting for land recently in Alaska and Mexico.

The number of Amish has increased nearly 10 percent in the past two years alone, and it's more than doubled since 1992.

Nearly all Amish are descended from a group of about 5,000 in the early 20th century.

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The Mississippi school district that canceled a high school prom rather than allow a senior to bring her girlfriend has reached a settlement with the student, her attorneys said Tuesday.

The Itawamba County School District has agreed to pay 18-year-old Constance McMillen $35,000 plus attorneys fees, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. The district also agreed to implement a policy banning discrimination or harassment on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity – the first such policy in Mississippi – according to the ACLU.

"I'm so glad this is all over,” McMillen, a student at Itawamba Agricultural High School in in Jackson, Miss., said in a statement distributed by the ACLU. “I won't ever get my prom back, but it's worth it if it changes things at my school.”

According to the ACLU, McMillen suffered such harassment at IAHS that she transferred to another school to complete her senior year. The ACLU has accused district officials of staging a sham prom for McMillen while classmates attended a separate event elsewhere.

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Categories: Culture, Education, Law and Courts, People, Politics, Sexuality
        

The Rev. Jason Poling is Pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

Every once in a while I encounter something that forces me to question some of my most deeply held beliefs. Sometimes it's being told about an experience I don't think ought to be able to happen. Sometimes it's a person doing something totally unexpected that somehow works out for the good. And sometimes it's a bunch of bigoted jerks disrupting a military funeral.

For a small church in Kansas, the Westboro Baptist Church has a presence that looms large over our area. Their 2006 protest at the Westminster funeral of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder prompted a lawsuit which will make its way to the Supreme Court this fall. For those who are unfamiliar, WBC's membership consists primarily of the pastor's relatives, and its activities consist primarily of stretching the limits of First Amendment protections and going to court against their opponents.

This spring WBC announced that it would protest at the funeral of University of Virginia lacrosse player Yeardley Love at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen. Apparently a young woman's violent death presented an opportunity to address the issue of pedophilia in the Roman Catholic Church by waving signs and shouting slogans with content unsuitable for a family blog.

I couldn't have been prouder that someone from our congregation was on site to hold up sheets and tarps to protect Love's family from seeing the WBC protesters (who, as it turns out, never showed). Much the same service was provided to Snyder's family by the Patriot Guard Riders, a corps of motorcyclists who fire up their Harleys at military funerals to drown out the voices of WBC protesters.

My libertarian streak runs deep and wide. Generally speaking I'm inclined to note that it's the right to free speech, not the right to not be offended, that is enshrined in the First Amendment. So on the question of offensive South Park episodes, as I argued on this blog several months back, a person who doesn't like how his prophet is being portrayed should change the channel rather than threatening violence against the show's creators.

So when people want to protest outside a political event, or a rock concert, or a Wal-Mart, or even an abortion clinic, I see that as an exercise of free speech that the people who don't like it have to tolerate anyway -- in this country, that's how we roll. To have true freedom of speech means to allow speech that is inconvenient, that is unwanted, that may be upsetting.

Yet at the same time there's a lot of sense in carving out space for civility and decorum in the midst of these freedoms in a few circumstances. And if there's any place where speech might legitimately be curtailed, I have to say as a pastor that it's at a funeral. I'd probably want to include weddings as well. It's not unreasonable for a free society to say, "You don't have the right to not be offended. But you do have the right to bury your son in peace," without people yelling across the street that his death should be celebrated as God's vengeance on America for its various moral failures.

Continue reading "Jason Poling: Barbarians well outside the gates" »

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Argentina legalized same-sex marriage Thursday, becoming the first country in Latin America to declare that gays and lesbians have all the legal rights, responsibilities and protections that marriage brings to heterosexual couples, the Associated Press reports.

After a marathon debate in Argentina's senate, 33 lawmakers voted in favor, 27 against and 3 abstained in a vote that ended after 4 a.m. Since the lower house already approved it and President Cristina Fernandez is a strong supporter, it becomes law as soon as it is published in the official bulletin, which should happen within days.

The law is sure to bring a wave of marriages by gays and lesbians who have found Buenos Aires to be a welcoming place to live. But same-sex couples from other countries shouldn't rush their Argentine wedding plans, since only citizens and residents can wed in the country, and the necessary documents can take months to obtain. While it makes some amendments to the civil code, many other aspects of family law will have to be changed.

The approval came despite a concerted campaign by the Roman Catholic Church and evangelical groups, which drew 60,000 people to march on Congress and urged parents in churches and schools to work against passage. Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio led the campaign, saying "children need to have the right to be raised and educated by a father and a mother."

Nine gay couples had already married in Argentina after persuading judges that the constitutional mandate of equality supports their marriage rights, although their validity was later challenged by other judges. Congressional passage now removes that doubt.

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Thousands of demonstrators opposed to same-sex marriage have gathered outside Argentina's congress ahead of a key vote by lawmakers, the Associated Press reports.

Supporters of the measure also took to the streets in loud rallies in the capital and other cities.

Argentina's House of Deputies has approved same-sex marriage and sent the legislation to the Senate for consideration on Wednesday. President Cristina Fernandez promises not to veto the measure if it reaches her desk.

The legislation would open the way to adoptions by same-sex couples and faces strong opposition from the Roman Catholic Church and other religious groups.

The main slogan for Tuesday's protest against the legislation was "the children have a right to a mother and a father."

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France's lower house of parliament overhwelmingly approved a ban on burqa-like Islamic veils Tuesday, a move that is popular among French voters despite serious concerns from Muslim groups and human rights advocates, the Associated Press reports.

There were 336 votes for the bill and just one against it at the National Assembly. Most members of the main opposition group, the Socialist Party, refused to participate in the vote — though they support a ban, they have differences with President Nicolas Sarkozy's conservatives over some aspects of it.

The ban on face-covering veils will go in September to the Senate, where it also is likely to pass. Its biggest hurdle will likely come after that, when France's constitutional watchdog scrutinizes it. Some legal scholars say there is a chance it could be deemed unconstitutional.

The main body representing French Muslims says face-covering veils are not required by Islam and not suitable in France, but it worries that the law will stigmatize Muslims in general.

France has Europe's largest Muslim population, estimated to be about 5 million of the country's 64 million people. While ordinary headscarves are common, only about 1,900 women in France are believed to wear face-covering veils. Champions of the bill say they oppress women.

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The Church of England national assembly decided Monday that women should be allowed to become bishops, making only minor concessions to theological conservatives who have threatened to break away over the issue, the Associated Press reports.

Dioceses will now consider the draft law, which would leave it up to individual bishops to allow alternative oversight for traditionalists who object to serving under women bishops. The dioceses must report back by 2012 and a final vote by the ruling body, the General Synod, will still be needed, but supporters say a milestone has been passed.

"The decision to consecrate women as bishops has been taken," said church spokesman Lou Henderson. "Everybody recognized the importance of offering safeguards and assurances to those who find it very difficult (to accept women bishops), but in the end Synod as a whole was not prepared to go as far as the traditionalists would have liked."

The decision was not final and still faced many hurdles.

After the dioceses make a decision over the draft law, the Synod will need to hold a final vote to approve it. That could be complicated by the formation and desires of the next incoming assembly, Henderson said.

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Mormon church leaders have restated the faith's unequivocal position against gay marriage in a letter to members in Argentina, where the government is debating whether to legalize gay unions, the Associated Press reports.

"The doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is absolutely clear: Marriage is between one man and woman and is ordained of God," said the July 6 letter from church President Thomas S. Monson.

A copy of the letter and its English translation began circulating over the weekend on websites for former Mormons.

Church spokeswoman Kim Farah on Monday confirmed the letter was sent to local leaders in Argentina, where the faith has more than 371,000 members, according to a 2010 church almanac. The country's population is more than 41 million.

Argentina's Senate is debating whether to approve either gay marriage or a civil union law. The country's other legislative body — the House of Deputies — approved same-sex marriage legislation in May. President Cristina Fernandez has promised not to veto the measure if it reaches her desk.

The letter falls short of calling for political activism by members in Argentina, but is an echo of a 2008 letter from Monson to Latter-day Saints in California. Monson had called for Mormons to give their time and money to help pass Proposition 8, a state ballot initiative to ban gay marriage.

The church was seen as a driving force behind that initiative's success, with members donating tens of millions of dollars to the campaign.

In a statement, Farah said "the church has taken no official position on the legislation being considered" in Argentina.

Still, Mormon historian D. Michael Quinn, said the letter is a significant step in political activism for the church outside the United States.

Continue reading "Mormon church restates opposition to gay marriage" »

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A judge's rulings in Massachusetts that the federal law banning gay marriage is unconstitutional could have implications far beyond the state if they're upheld by a higher court after an appeal by the Obama administration, the Associated Press reports.

U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro said the law, the Defense of Marriage Act, interferes with the right of a state to define marriage and therefore denies married gay couples some federal benefits. He ruled Thursday in favor of gay couples' rights in two separate challenges to DOMA, which the administration of President Barack Obama has argued for repealing.

The rulings apply to Massachusetts, but if a higher court with a broader jurisdiction were to hear an appeal and agree with the judge's rulings, their impact would spread, said Boston College professor Kent Greenfield, a constitutional law expert. The rulings might encourage other attorneys general who oppose DOMA to sue to try to knock it down, he said.

"One thing that's going to be really interesting to watch is whether the Obama administration appeals or not," he said.

An appeal would be considered by the First Circuit, which also includes Rhode Island, Maine and New Hampshire.

The Department of Justice didn't immediately say whether it would appeal; it was reviewing the judge's decisions, spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said.

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Presbyterian leaders voted Thursday to allow non-celibate gays in committed relationships to serve as clergy, approving the first of two policy changes that could make their church one of the most gay-friendly major Christian denominations in the U.S., the Associated Press reports.

But the vote isn't a final stamp of approval for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) or its more than 2 million members.

Delegates voted during the church's general assembly in Minneapolis, with 53 percent approving the more liberal policy on gay clergy. A separate vote is expected later Thursday on whether to change the church's definition of marriage from between "a man and a woman" to between "two people."

Under current church policy, Presbyterians are eligible to become clergy, deacons or elders only if they are married or celibate. The new policy would strike references to sexuality altogether in favor of candidates committed to "joyful submission to worship of Christ."

But such changes must be approved by a majority of the church's 173 U.S. presbyteries.

The assembly voted two years ago to liberalize the gay clergy policy, but it died last year when 94 of the presbyteries voted against it.

Still, the proposed changes "have the potential to be historic," said Cindy Bolbach, an elder at National Capital Presbytery in Washington and the assembly's elected moderator.

Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is ranked the 10th-largest church in the U.S. with 2.8 million members, according to the National Council of Churches' 2010 "Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches." The church's media materials tout 2.1 million members.

Earlier this week, both proposals were approved by assembly committees. The gay clergy change passed 36-16, and the definition of marriage cleared on a vote of 34-18.

"There are still big steps ahead, but I'm feeling better about this than I ever have before," the Rev. Ray Bagnuolo, the openly gay pastor of Janhus Presbyterian Church in New York City, said ahead of the clergy vote.

Some conservative-minded Presbyterians have tried to rally opposition to the changes.

"Blurring or obscuring the clear teaching of God's Word in order to keep in step with secular laws and changing personal morals only confuses our witness and causes innumerable problems for the future," Presbyterians for Renewal, a group opposed to the changes, wrote on its website.

Continue reading "Presbyterian leaders take step toward gay clergy" »

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The fundamentalist church that picketed the Westminster funeral of a Maryland Marine killed in Iraq with anti-gay signs argued Wednesday that its actions were protected by the First Amendment, the Associated Press reports.

An attorney for the Westboro Baptist Church submitted a 75-page brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will hear arguments in a lawsuit against the church this fall. Albert Snyder of York, Pa., claims that the church's free-speech rights did not trump his right to peacefully assemble for his son's funeral.

The Topeka, Kan.-based church claims that U.S. military deaths are God's punishment for America's alleged tolerance of homosexuality. Founder Fred Phelps and six of his relatives picketed the 2006 funeral of Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder in Westminster carrying signs that read "Thank God for Dead Soldiers" and "You're Going to Hell," among other statements.

Margie Jean Phelps, the daughter of Fred Phelps and, like several in the family, an attorney, will argue the case before the Supreme Court. She argued in her brief that Westboro did not disrupt the funeral in part because its protest was 1,000 feet away from the church, on a public street. Snyder did not see the protesters and could not read their signs during the funeral, but was aware of their presence.

"He was able to go to and leave the funeral without any slightest disruption or interference," Phelps wrote. "WBC was out of sight and sound; maintained a very reasonable distance; acted peacefully and engaged in no disruption or intrusion. ... This is the wrong case to decide whether there is a privacy interest in a funeral."

Phelps also argued that the church was engaging in public speech on a matter of public concern; that the funeral was a public event; and that the church did not assert provable facts but instead expressed "hyperbolic, figurative, loose, hysterical opinion."

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France's justice minister went before parliament Tuesday to defend a hotly debated bill that would ban burqa-style Islamic veils in public, arguing that hiding your face from your neighbors is a violation of French values, the Associated Press reports.

Michele Alliot-Marie's speech at the National Assembly marked the start of parliamentary debate on the bill. It is widely expected to become law, despite the concerns of many French Muslims, who fear it will stigmatize them. Many law scholars also argue it would violate the constitution.

The government has used various strategies to sell the proposal, casting it at times as a way to promote equality between the sexes, to protect oppressed women or to ensure security in public places.

Alliot-Marie argued that it has nothing to do with religion or security — she argued simply that life in the French Republic "is carried out with a bare face."

"It is a question of dignity, equality and transparency," she said in a speech that made scant mention of Muslim veils. Officials have taken pains to craft language that does not single out Muslims: While the proposed legislation is colloquially referred to as the "anti-burqa law," it is officially called "the bill to forbid covering one's face in public."

Ordinary Muslim headscarves are common in France, but face-covering veils are a rarity — the Interior Ministry says only 1,900 women in France wear them.

Yet the planned law would be a turning point for Islam in a country with a Muslim population of at least 5 million people, the largest in western Europe.

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Jermaine Jackson, who performed with his brother Michael as a member of the Jackson 5 and later became a high-profile convert to Islam, tells the BBC World Service that the faith would have saved him.

"I felt that if Michael would have embraced Islam he would still be here today and I say that for many reasons," Jackson tells the BBC's Ed Butler. "Why? Because when you are 100 per cent clear in your mind as to who you are and what you are and why you are and everybody around you, then things change in a way that’s better for you. It’s just having that strength. God is so powerful. He was studying. He was reading a lot of books, because I brought him books from Saudi Arabia. I brought him books from Bahrain. I was the one who originally put him in Bahrain because I wanted him to get out of America because it was having a cherry-picking time on my brother."

Butler asks whether Michael was willing to convert.

"Not that he wasn’t willing to convert," Jackson responds. "All of his security became Muslims because he trusted Islam, because these are people who would lay their lives down and also who were trying to be the best kind of human beings they could possibly be not for Michael Jackson, for Allah. So having those people around, you knew that you would be protected because it is protection from God.

"Michael was most concerned about children around the world going to bed without food. He would talk about it. And he was concerned about our planet, what we are doing to this planet because of greed. And that was his whole thing to bring an awareness. He was doing these things before the Al Gores, and global warming-ists, he was on it. And he sung about it. He did videos about it. Spent millions and millions and millions of dollars on videos just to show the world for three minutes, look at what we are doing."

More excerpts from the interview, which is scheduled to air Friday, after the jump.

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When Jake and Elwood Blues, the protagonists in John Landis' cult classic "The Blues Brothers," claimed they were on a mission from God, the Catholic Church apparently took them at their word, the Associated Press reports.

On the 30th anniversary of the film's release, "L'Osservatore Romano," the Vatican's official newspaper, called the film a "Catholic classic" and said it should be recommended viewing for Catholics everywhere.

The film is based on a skit from "Saturday Night Live." In the story, Jake and Elwood -- played by John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, respectively -- embark on an unlikely road trip featuring concerts, car chases, clashes with the police and neo-Nazi groups, and attempts at revenge from a spurned lover, all, ostensibly, to raise money for the church-run orphanage where they grew up.

But aside from a brief appearance from Kathleen Freeman as a wrist-slapping nun referred to as "The Penguin" and the brothers' periodic claim that they were on a mission from God, spirituality does not play a significant role in the film.

In addition to Belushi and Aykroyd, the film featured an all-star cast including musicians James Brown, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, John Lee Hooker, and Chaka Khan, in addition to noted actors John Candy, Carrie Fisher, Charles Napier, and Henry Gibson, and cameo roles for Frank Oz, Steven Spielberg, Landis, Mr. T, and Paul Reubens (Pee Wee Herman).

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From time to time, we post an item that might not deal directly with religion, but airs a conflict between competing values that we believe might interest our readers. This report from the Associated Press is one such item.

A Rhode Island boy whose school banned a hat he made because the toy soldiers on it carried tiny guns was awarded a medal on Friday for his patriotic efforts, the Associated Press reports.

Lt. Gen. Reginald Centracchio, the retired head of the Rhode Island National Guard, gave 8-year-old David Morales a medal called a challenge coin during an appearance on WPRO-AM's John DePetro show.

Centracchio said the second-grader should be thanked for recognizing veterans and soldiers.

"You did nothing wrong, and you did an outstanding job," he said. "We can only hope that kids of your caliber will continue to defend this country."

Centracchio also gave David a certificate that allows him to call himself a brigadier general.

David was assigned to make a hat last week for a project at the Tiogue School in Coventry. He chose a patriotic theme and glued plastic Army figures to a camouflage baseball cap. But school officials said the hat ran afoul of their no-weapons policy because the Army men held tiny guns.

The school has said David was offered the chance to wear the hat if he replaced the toy soldiers holding weapons with ones that didn't have any. Centracchio said that didn't make sense because soldiers are armed, and met with school administrators Thursday to share his concerns.

David said he felt great and called it an honor.

"I think it's really special," he said. "I'm going to definitely enjoy this day for a long time."

Also Friday, the Rhode Island chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union said it sent a letter to Coventry Superintendent Kenneth DiPietro saying the school's policy was an unconstitutional violation of students' free speech. It called on the district to revise the policy.

DiPietro did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

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Muslims around the globe remain uneasy about the U.S. and are increasingly disenchanted with President Barack Obama, according to a poll that suggests his drive to improve relations with the Muslim world has had little impact, the Associated Press reports.

Even so, the U.S. image is holding strong in many other countries and continues to be far better than it was during much of George W. Bush's presidency, according to the survey.

There is one glaring exception: Mexico, where 62 percent expressed favorable views of the U.S. just days before an Arizona law cracking down on illegal immigrants was signed in April, but only 44 percent did so afterward.

The findings by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, conducted in April and May in the United States and 21 other countries by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, come amid a global economic downturn and U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The poll has been measuring the views of people around the world since 2002.

Among the seven countries surveyed with substantial Muslim populations, the U.S. was seen favorably by just 17 percent in Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan and 21 percent in Jordan. The U.S.'s positive rating was 52 percent in Lebanon, 59 percent in Indonesia and 81 percent in Nigeria, where Muslims comprise about half the population.

None of those figures was an improvement from last year. There were slight dips in Jordan and in Indonesia, where Obama spent several years growing up. Egypt saw a 10-point drop, even though Obama gave a widely promoted June 2009 speech in Cairo aimed at reaching out to the Muslim world.

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Rabbis Itchel Krasnjansky and Peter Schaktman hail from different branches of Judaism and hold starkly contrasting views on whether same-sex couples should be permitted to form civil unions in Hawaii.

What they have in common, the Associated Press reports, is the ear of Republican Gov. Linda Lingle, who has until June 21 to announce whether she may veto the only pending civil unions legislation in the nation.

Lingle, in the final months of her second and last term, faces a momentous decision that carries political and legal implications, AP correspondent Herbert A. Sample writes. For the rabbis, with whom the governor has consulted on the issue, her choice is about much more.

Krasnjansky, who heads the Orthodox community group Chabad of Hawaii, said the Torah teaches that homosexuality, and by extension same-sex marriage, "is not something that should be condoned or should be legalized," he said.

But Schaktman, who leads the Reform Temple Emanu-El, insists Judaism teaches that all people regardless of sexual orientation are and should be treated as "children of God," and thus should not face discrimination.

"Civil unions are a legal arrangement," he said. "Therefore, anyone who uses religion to oppose civil unions is purely using religion to further homophobia."

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Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich — a recent convert to Catholicism — is in Poland promoting a documentary he co-produced on Pope John Paul II's role in defeating communism, the Associated Press reports.

Gingrich, a Republican, is preaching to the converted: the Polish-born pope is revered, and Poles credit him with inspiring the struggle that eventually helped bring down the Soviet-backed communists in eastern Europe.

Gingrich said Wednesday that his film, "Nine Days that Changed the World," is still needed to remind young Poles, secular historians and people worldwide of John Paul's anti-totalitarian convictions. The film, which will be screened at American universities this fall, is also being translated into Chinese and Spanish in hopes it will inspire people in Cuba and elsewhere, Gingrich said.

"We believe the pope's message of freedom through faith and his principle that no government can get between you and God is a principle that is relevant in every country, for every person around the world," Gingrich said at a news conference in Warsaw attended by the film's director and the other producers, among them his wife, Callista Gingrich.

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The Anglican Communion has responded to the consecration of Mary Glasspool, the openly gay Annapolis priest who was became a bishop in Los Angeles last month, by suspending U.S. Episcopalians from serving on ecumenical bodies, the Associated Press reports.

The U.S. church opened a rift in the global communion, and within its own ranks, seven years ago by electing a gay man, V. Gene Robinson, as bishop of New Hampshire. Conservative African Anglicans have taken a lead in opposing moves in the United States and Canada to promote gays and to bless homosexual relationships.

Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion, had called for a moratorium on appointing homosexuals to leadership positions. He asked for action against the Episcopal Church after Glasspool, formerly canon to the bishops of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, was made an assistant bishop of Los Angeles.

The Anglican Communion is an association of 44 regional and national member churches, most founded by Church of England missionaries, with more than 80 million members in more than 160 countries.

The Rev. Canon Kenneth Kearon, secretary general of the Anglican Communion, announced Monday that Episcopalians had been downgraded from members to consultants in formal ecumenical dialogues, annual meetings between Anglicans and clergy in other churches intended to build friendship and better understand one another's traditions and issues of mutual concern such as points of theology and ways of worshipping.

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Groups that have long demanded that women be ordained Roman Catholic priests took advantage of the Vatican's crisis over clerical sex abuse to press their cause Tuesday, demanding the Vatican open discussions on letting women join the priesthood, the Associated Press reports.

Representatives of a half-dozen Catholic reform groups marched on St. Peter's Square on the eve of a three-day rally marking the end of the church's yearlong celebration of the priest. Vatican officials have said the during the rally Pope Benedict XVI may apologize for the decades of rapes and molestation that children suffered at the hands of priests.

The umbrella group Women's Ordination Conference said the Vatican shouldn't be celebrating the priesthood while "turning a blind eye when men in its ranks destroy the lives of children and families."

"While the hierarchy spends their time covering up scandals and throwing major celebrations for themselves, Catholic women are working for justice and making a positive difference in the world," said Erin Saiz Hanna, the Women's Ordination Conference executive director.

She spoke at a news conference before a dozen members of the reform groups marched to the Vatican in a bid to hand out flyers to tourists, priests and other passers-by. Police stopped them when they reached the square and asked them to leave, which they did.

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Although this year's homicide totals continue to be on a slower pace a year ago, Earl El-Amin said he and his faith-based brethren have grown tired of the violence, Baltimore Sun colleague Brent Jones reports.

"We're called to be keepers of peace," said El-Amin, of the Muslim's Community Central of Baltimore and a member of Baltimore's Interfaith Coalition. "That is essentially our mission. When you study history, all the great sages that came, they came to establish peace in environments that were out of sync."

El-Amin and about 50 other religious leaders, along with representatives from the city state's attorney office, announced an anti-violence initiative Thursday that will use money collected from religious services to fund activities for children.

Organizers of the program, called "Fifth Sunday: Violence to Virtue," are asking the more than 1,200 churches, mosques and synagogues in Baltimore to take up an offering every fifth weekend and donate the money to a local nonprofit, which in turn would disburse the funds to individuals or organizations that work with kids.

It is the first major program under the newly organized Baltimore Interfaith Coalition, which formed last spring after several religious leaders met with police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III, who called upon the faith-based community to help curb violence.

"We've challenged ourselves to break down barriers among ourselves and work for the greater good of the people in Baltimore," said BIC co-chairman Bishop Douglas I. Miles, pastor of Koinonia Baptist Church in Northeast Baltimore. "This is a means of funding small operations that may not have [nonprofit] status but are doing great things in our community — like people who work with marching bands, people who do mentoring on the weekends — something so they have means of getting funding to help advance their work."

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

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The questions on the ads aren't subtle: Leaving Islam? Fatwa on your head? Is your family threatening you?

A conservative activist and the organizations she leads have paid several thousand dollars for the ads to run on at least 30 New York City buses for a month, the Associated Press reports. The ads point to a website called RefugefromIslam.com, which offers information to those wishing to leave Islam, but some Muslims are calling the ads a smoke screen for an anti-Muslim agenda.

Pamela Geller, who leads an organization called Stop Islamization of America, said the ads were meant to help provide resources for Muslims who are fearful of leaving the faith.

"It's not offensive to Muslims, it's religious freedom," she said. "It's not targeted at practicing Muslims. It doesn't say 'leave,' it says 'leaving' with a question mark."

Geller said the ad buy cost about $8,000, contributed by the readers of her blog, Atlas Shrugs, and other websites. Similar ads have run on buses in Miami, and she said ad buys were planned for other cities.

Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials said Geller's ad was reviewed and did not violate the agency's guidelines.

"The religion in question would not change the determination that the language in the ad does not violate guidelines," MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz said Wednesday.

Continue reading "Islam target of NYC bus advertising campaign" »

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Writer, public health professional and attorney J. Samia Mair of Baltimore is the author of the children’s books Amira’s Totally Chocolate World and The Perfect Gift.

Muslims are required to pray 5 times a day at specific times. For 4 of those prayers, there is a relatively lengthy period (hour or more) in which they can be done. For example, Muslims pray Fajr anywhere between dawn and just before sunrise. Maghrib, however, must be prayed shortly after sunset. During any given day, chances are that a Muslim living in the United States will not be at home or near a masjid (mosque) for all 5 prayers and therefore will be required to find a suitable alternative.

In Muslim-populated countries finding a place to pray is not an issue. There are abundant masajid (mosques) and no one would find it odd to see someone pull out a rug and pray in public. When I was in Saudi Arabia for the Hajj several years ago, people prayed everywhere—on sidewalks, in stores, and along hallways.

It’s not so easy in the United States. Every day, I need to review my schedule and decide where I am going to pray that day. Fortunately, the Baltimore area is rich in cultural and religious diversity; and in my experience, most people are respectful of others’ beliefs. There are places in the United States where I literally would be physically afraid to pray in public. Until recently, I have never had a problem in this regard. I have prayed in parks, parking lots, museums, restaurants, mall dressing rooms, and in storage areas. Most businesses have been extremely accommodating. Granted, there are some businesses where I felt uncomfortable asking to pray. But overall, finding a place to pray has not been too challenging here. It just requires planning.

Not long ago, I had my first hostile reaction. I needed to pray during a movie. Without asking, I found a quiet spot down a dark hallway and off to the side. No one was around when I started. During my prayers, I noticed a man’s shoes in front of me and slightly to the left. His presence was intrusive and intimidating. When I finished my prayer, he told me that I had “offended another customer” and company policy did not allow religious displays on the premises. He also refused to accommodate my request to find an alternative spot. Not at all satisfied with the interaction, I wrote several higher ups, including the president of the company, which is a national chain. I was informed that company policy did not prohibit me from praying and that if I ever needed to be accommodated at that theater again, all I needed to do was ask. As an extra conciliatory gesture, headquarters sent me eight complimentary movie tickets. Ultimately, I was more than satisfied with the outcome. But the experience made me think.

Continue reading "Guest post: Where Muslims pray" »

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Pakistan blocked YouTube and many other Internet sites Thursday in a widening crackdown on online content deemed offensive to Islam, reflecting the secular government's sensitivities to an issue that has ignited protests in the Muslim country, the Associated Press reports.

The move came a day after the government obeyed a court order to block Facebook over a page called "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!" that encourages users to post images of Islam's Prophet Muhammad. Most Muslims regard depictions of the prophet, even favorable ones, as blasphemous.

Supporters of an Islamist political party protested against Facebook in at least three cities in small and peaceful rallies. The government, which is unpopular among many Islamists for siding with the United States in the war against the Taliban and al-Qaida, is hoping that the website bans will lessen anger in the days ahead.

"We are ready to die protecting the honor of our beloved Prophet Muhammad," said Aysha Hameed, one of 1,000 female protesters in Multan city.

Others — mostly members of the more secular, educated elite — accused the government of blocking freedom of expression and hurting small businesses that use Facebook for marketing. Many questioned need for the entire Facebook and YouTube sites to be blocked, instead of individual pages on them.

Continue reading "Pakistan blocks more websites" »

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Pakistan's government ordered Internet service providers to block Facebook on Wednesday amid anger over a page that encourages users to post images of Islam's Prophet Muhammad, the Associated Press reports.

The page on the social networking site has generated criticism in Pakistan and elsewhere because Islam prohibits any images of the prophet. The government took action after a group of Islamic lawyers won a court order Wednesday requiring officials to block Facebook until May 31.

By Wednesday evening, access to the site was sporadic, apparently because Internet providers were implementing the order.

The Facebook page at the center of the dispute — "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!" — encourages users to post images of the prophet on May 20 to protest threats made by a radical Muslim group against the creators of "South Park" for depicting Muhammad in a bear suit during an episode earlier this year.

In the southern city of Karachi, about 2,000 female students rallied demanding that Facebook be banned for tolerating the page. Several dozen male students held a rally nearby, with some holding signs urging Islamic holy war against those who blaspheme the prophet.

"We are not trying to slander the average Muslim," said the information section of the Facebook page, which was still accessible Wednesday morning. "We simply want to show the extremists that threaten to harm people because of their Mohammad depictions that we're not afraid of them. That they can't take away our right to freedom of speech by trying to scare us into silence."

Continue reading "Muslim anger leads Pakistan to ban Facebook" »

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One runs her own company, another is a housewife and a third, a divorcee, raises her children by herself. Like nearly 2,000 other Muslim women who freely wear face-covering veils anywhere in France, the Associated Press reports, their lives will soon change and they are worried.

On Wednesday, French Justice Minister Michele Alliot-Marie presented a draft law to the Cabinet banning Muslim veils that cover the face, the first formal step in a process to forbid such attire in all public places in France, AP correspondent Elaine Ganley writes. It calls for euro150 ($185) fines and, in some cases, citizenship classes for women who run afoul of the law.

"Citizenship should be experienced with an uncovered face," President Nicolas Sarkozy told the Cabinet meeting, in remarks released by his office. "There can be no other solution but a ban in all public places."

Although the Interior Ministry estimates there are only 1,900 women who cover their faces with veils, the planned law would be another defining moment for Islam in France as the nation tries to bring its Muslim population — at least 5 million, the largest in western Europe — into the mainstream, even by force of law.

The bill is to go before parliament in July, and despite the acrimonious debate that is sure to come, there is little doubt the measure will become law. Sarkozy, who says such veils oppress women, wants a law banning them on the books as soon as possible.

Sarkozy welcomed the bill, saying the government is embarking on "a just path" and urging parliament to take its "moral responsibility" and approve it.

The measure notably creates a new offense, "inciting to hide the face," and anyone convicted of forcing a woman to wear such a veil risks a year in prison and a euro15,000 ($18,555) fine, according to a copy of the text.

"If the law is voted, I won't take off my veil ... No one will dictate my way of life" but God, said Najat, a divorcee, who gave her age as "45 plus." She was one of a half-dozen women who, in a rare move, met with reporters on Tuesday to express their worries about changes they say will impact their lives to the core.

Continue reading "Women protesting French veil ban" »

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A Dutch sex shop says it will give away 2,000 "pope condoms" this weekend in a dig at the Roman Catholic Church, Reuters reports.

De Condoomfabriek, which translates as The Condom Factory, said it wanted to make a point about sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies and the Vatican's opposition to contraceptives, according to the British news agency.

The condom wrapper includes a image of a papal figure with the words "I SAID NO! We say YES!" Reuters reports.

Read the rest of the story.

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On Saturday, the Rev. Mary Douglas Glasspool, the Annapolis priest who has served the last nine years as canon to the bishops of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, is to be consecrated a bishop herself in the Diocese of Los Angeles.

She will be the second openly gay bishop in the worldwide Anglican Communion, and the first since the 2003 ordination of V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire strained relations both within the Episcopal Church and between the Episcopal Church and the communion.

Baltimore Sun colleague Arthur Hirsch has produced a profile of Glasspool. It begins:

The Maryland priest at the center of a seismic tumult in the worldwide international Anglican Communion is slim and stands just over 5 feet, wears her gray hair cut short and greets visitors with a strong two-handed grasp. She's known to former parishioners and colleagues for emotional and insightful sermons, administrative skill, high energy — and for occasionally wearing a giant foam wedge of cheese on her head to honor her favorite NFL team.

The Rev. Canon Mary Douglas Glasspool, due to be consecrated today as bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, is known to the rest of the world by a phrase that would fit on a bumper sticker: "first openly lesbian bishop."

If the label seems handy, Glasspool said she hopes it soon outlives its usefulness.

"People who know me, the label will disappear. All I'm asking is an opportunity to get to know me," Glasspool, 56, said recently in an interview at the Baltimore headquarters of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland. As canon to the bishops for the past nine years, she has served there as principal adviser to the leaders of the church.

She'll have more than enough meeting and greeting to do as she begins shuttling in the next few weeks between her home in Annapolis and Los Angeles, where she assumes her new post July 1. She'll work as bishop suffragan, or assistant, to Bishop J. Jon Bruno in a multilingual diocese of some 70,000 members in six counties, known for some of the most progressive parishes in the Episcopal Church.

"The Diocese of Los Angeles is tremendously exciting to me," said Glasspool, who spoke of the "very creative ways in which the church there does its mission and ministry," and the fact that on any given Sunday across the diocese, the liturgy is being celebrated in some 40 languages.

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Having already caused a fuss this spring with the depiction of the prophet Muhammad on "South Park," Comedy Central said Thursday that it has a cartoon series about Jesus Christ in the works, the Associated Press reports.

"JC" is one of 23 potential series the network said it has in development. It depicts Christ as a "regular guy" who moves to New York to "escape his father's enormous shadow."

His father is presented as an apathetic man who would rather play video games than listen to his son talk about his new life, according to Comedy Central's thumbnail sketch of the idea. Reveille, the production company behind "The Office," "Ugly Betty" and "The Biggest Loser," is making "JC."

It wouldn't be the first time Jesus Christ has been on a Comedy Central cartoon; he's a recurring character on the long-running "South Park."

Comedy Central was the target last month of an Internet threat for a "South Park" episode that supposedly showed Islam's prophet in a bear costume.

Whenever "South Park" features Muhammad in an episode, Comedy Central obscures the character with a black box; Muslims consider any physical representation of their prophet to be blasphemous. Following the Internet threat, Comedy Central angered "South Park" producers by editing out a character's speech about intimidation in a subsequent episode.

Continue reading "Comedy Central planning cartoon about Jesus" »

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The Rev. Jason Poling is Pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

If memory serves, Oriole Park and the Light Rail opened the same year. Every morning that summer of ‘92 I took it from Lutherville to catch the MARC train down to my summer internship in D.C. When work or socializing (OK, usually socializing) put me on the night’s last train back to Baltimore, I often trudged up the hill to the Mount Royal stop only to find myself having to squeeze into a train full of suburbanites going home from that night’s game.

Times have changed.

Yesterday I pulled into the parking lot at the Falls Road stop and was afraid I had the wrong day printed on my ticket. Not an hour before game time, I hopped onto a half-empty train that still had open seats by the time we got to the ballpark. After the game, I pushed my way through a throng of despondent Red Sox fans waiting for the southbound train to take them to their airport hotels, and hopped onto the northbound train just as it was pulling out. Again, half-empty. Which was a relief, since a 10-inning game on a sweltering day makes for ripe-smelling fans you really don’t want standing next to you holding the overhead bar.

But, boy, was it depressing.

That first summer my friends and I would get to the ballpark 2 hours early to score standing-room tickets, and we were glad to have them. Camden Yards was the hottest ticket in town, and even after the novelty of a new ballpark wore off they were still packing them in during the last years of the Ripken era. Now, less than a month into what will likely be the O’s 13th losing season in a row, an overwhelming number of those officially in attendance are disguised convincingly as empty seats.

At a fundraiser this weekend I spoke with a local media personality whose career in Baltimore stretches back decades. He told me he was done. He’d still support the team and get down to the Yard once in a while, but he just couldn’t muster the emotional energy to care about the O’s any more. Not long after Cal Ripken retired I asked a guy who’s well connected at the highest levels of Major League Baseball what he thought of the prospects for turning the team around. He just shook his head and said, “There’s no vision, and as long as that’s true of the club’s leadership the Orioles will be a losing team.”

That was eight years ago.

But this post really isn’t about the Orioles. (This is, after all, the religion blog.) Tufts University recently did a study on clergy who have lost their faith but remain in the pulpit. The miniscule sample size and the strong anti-religion bias of study author Daniel Dennett should give pause to anyone looking to extrapolate too much from what the researchers conclude. Surely there are clergy whose doubts have led them to conclude that they cannot stand by the convictions of their faith tradition even as their mortgage statements have led them to conclude that they can’t afford to just walk away.

Continue reading "Jason Poling: The Oriole Way (church edition)" »

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Categories: Christianity, Culture, Evangelicalsm, Jason Poling, People
        

The Rev. Jason Poling is pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

When the 2005 publication of the Mohammed cartoons in a Dutch newspaper made headlines, I felt torn. As a libertarian, I wouldn’t want to say it should be illegal to publish such cartoons. But as someone who tries to be sensitive to the religious views of others, I would also not want to publish them in order to avoid giving offense. Perhaps it’s cowardice for me to want a world where they can be published but where I don’t publish them.

The same angst returned for me when South Park’s portrayal of Mohammed in their 200th episode was censored by Comedy Central. A pornographic from the Bible, of all things, has resolved the tension for me.

A few years back I preached through the book of Ezekiel. For those unfamiliar with it, it’s one of the longer prophetic books in the Bible; it’s also one of the most outrageous. Not once but twice (in chapters 16 and 23, if you’re interested) God describes the unfaithfulness of his people with language that would make a sailor blush. Naturally, I was pretty fired up to preach these passages.

When I got to chapter 16, I was five minutes into my sermon when a family with young kids slipped into the back of the church and sat down without hearing the warning during our announcements that the sermon would be dealing with some R-rated material. Rapidly downshifting from R to PG, I still managed to get my point across. (But I never saw them again.) When I came to chapter 23, I gave strict instructions to the ushers not to let that happen again. I also made sure that folks were aware that the sermon that day would deal with some mature subject matter, providing warnings in our bulletin, in the announcements, and at the beginning of my sermon.

The sermon was not well received by everyone. One visitor contacted the senior pastor of the church that planted us to express her disapproval, and wrote a long letter excoriating me for…well, preaching the text that I had in front of me. She said she would not be returning to New Hope until we changed our ways. I had the good manners not to ask if that was a promise or a threat.

You won’t find these passages preached in most churches; most aren’t willing to go into that kind of territory, even when the Bible does. At New Hope, we believe that having a high view of Scripture means that we treat all of it as inspired — the red letters, the black letters, and the purple prose, too. And I must say that I feel no responsibility whatsoever for the offense our visitors took that day: They were made aware of what was coming three different ways. They were warned that they were about to be exposed to offensive material, so they really couldn’t complain when it happened as promised. Even if the [WARNING: Gratuitous male nudity ahead] Pompeiian fresco of Priapus was projected on the front wall of the sanctuary. Which it was.

Continue reading "Jason Poling: You bastards!" »

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Shaukat Malik is a Muslim-American Certified Public Accountant from Potomac. He writes in response to recent controversy over the depiction of the Prophet Muhammad in the satirical cartoon series "South Park."

Islam does not prohibit pictorial representations.

Muslim clerics all over the world are desperate for relevance. In the early days of Islam people worshipped idols. The prohibition of pictorial representations during the prophet’s time was intended to discourage this practice. Pictorial representations of the Prophet Muhammad are not banned in the Quran; any references in the Quran are by reference to substituting images for God. I reproduce for you the relevant verse that refers to dedication of stones/statues in place of God.

005.090 YUSUFALI: O ye who believe! Intoxicants and gambling, (dedication of) stones, and (divination by) arrows, are an abomination, - of Satan's handwork: eschew such (abomination) that ye may prosper. PICKTHAL: O ye who believe! Strong drink and games of chance and idols and divining arrows are only an infamy of Satan's handiwork. Leave it aside in order that ye may succeed. SHAKIR: O you who believe! Intoxicants and games of chance and (sacrificing to) stones set up and (dividing by) arrows are only uncleanness, the Satan’s work; shun it therefore that you may be successful.

Clerics also use sayings of the prophet or “Hadith” that were written a century after the prophet’s death by self-serving males to ban pictorial representation of the holy prophet. Even if the prophet said something about statues, it was in the context of his time and bears no relevance to today’s world. Of course in the Arabia of 1400 years ago there were no Picassos, cameras, or cartoonists to make people think.

Continue reading "Guest post: Images of the prophet" »

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Producers of "South Park" said Thursday that Comedy Central removed a speech about intimidation and fear from their show after a radical Muslim group warned that they could be killed for insulting the Prophet Muhammad, the Associated Press reports.

It came during about 35 seconds of dialogue between the cartoon characters of Kyle, Jesus Christ and Santa Claus that was bleeped out.

"It wasn't some meta-joke on our part," producers Trey Parker and Matt Stone said. Comedy Central declined to comment.

Earlier this week, the radical group Revolution Muslim said on its website that "South Park" had insulted their prophet during last week's episode by depicting him in a bear costume.

The group said it wasn't threatening Parker and Stone, but it included a gruesome picture of Theo Van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker killed by a Muslim extremist in 2004, and said the producers could meet the same fate. The website posted the addresses of Comedy Central's New York office and the California production studio where "South Park" is made.

Despite that, Parker and Stone included the Muhammad character in this week's episode. Muhammad appeared with his body obscured by a black box, since Muslims consider a physical representation of their prophet to be blasphemous. When the bear costume was removed, it was revealed to be Santa Claus.

Continue reading "'South Park' Producers: Network cut fear speech" »

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Comedy Central's "South Park" included a representation of the Prophet Muhammad as a character this week despite a radical Muslim group's warning that its producers could be killed, the Associated Press reports.

Muhammad appeared on Wednesday night's episode of the cartoon with his face obscured by a black box, since Muslims consider a physical representation of their prophet to be blasphemous. Last week, the character was briefly disguised in a bear costume. When that same costume was removed this week, Santa Claus appeared.

The bear costume had angered the New York-based group Revolution Muslim, which posted a message on its website saying that producers Trey Parker and Matt Stone had insulted their prophet.

The message included a gruesome picture of Theo Van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker murdered by a Muslim extremist in 2004 after making a movie about a woman who rejected Muhammad's teachings. The message said the "South Park" producers would "probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh" for airing the show.

The posting included Comedy Central's New York address, as well as the address for Parker and Stone's California production studio.

Continue reading "South Park episode airs despite Islamist warning" »

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A radical Muslim group has warned the creators of "South Park" that they could face violent retribution for depicting the prophet Muhammad in a bear suit during last week's episode, the Associated Press reports.

The website RevolutionMuslim.com has since been taken down, but a cached version shows the message to "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone. The article's author, Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee, said the men "outright insulted" the religious leader.

The posting showed a gruesome picture of Theo Van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker who was shot and stabbed to death in an Amsterdam street in 2004 by a fanatic angered by his film about Muslim women. The film was written by a Muslim woman who rejected the Prophet Muhammad as a guide for today's morality.

"We have to warn Matt and Trey that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show," Al-Amrikee wrote. "This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them."

The posting listed the addresses of Comedy Central's New York office and Parker and Stone's California production office. It also linked to a Huffington Post article that described a Colorado retreat owned by the two men.

CNN, which first reported the posting, said the New York-based website is known for postings in support of jihad, or holy war, against the West and Osama bin Laden.

Al-Amrikee told The Associated Press that the posting was made to raise awareness of the issue and to see that it does not happen again. Asked if Parker and Stone should feel threatened by it, he said "they should feel threatened by what they did."

Continue reading "Islamist group warns South Park creators of death" »

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Russia suspended all adoptions to U.S. families on Thursday until the two countries can agree on procedures, the Associated Press reports. The move comes a week after an American woman sent her 7-year-old adopted son back to Russia on a plane by himself.

The boy's return — without supervision or explanation aside from a note he carried from his adoptive mother saying he had psychological problems — has incensed Russia and prompted aggressive media coverage of foreign adoptions.

A U.S. delegation will visit Moscow "in the next few days" to discuss international adoptions and a possible bilateral agreement, Russian foreign ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said.

"Russia believes that only such an agreement which will contain effective tools for Russian and U.S. officials to monitor the living conditions of adopted Russian children will ensure that recent tragedies in the United States will not be repeated," Nesterenko said in a televised briefing.

The Tennessee woman who sent back the 7-year-old boy last Thursday claimed she had been misled by his Russian orphanage about his condition.

Russians have been outraged that no charges have been filed against her.

For several years, Russian lawmakers have suggested suspending U.S. adoptions after other cases of abuse and even killings of Russian children adopted in the United States, but no formal measures had been taken until Thursday.

More than 1,800 Russian children were adopted in the United States last year, according to Russia's Health and Education Ministry.

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The publisher of the Baltimore Jewish Times, to which we have often referred on this blog, is filing for bankruptcy protection Wednesday afternoon after stumbling financially when it lost a major lawsuit to a printing company, Baltimore Sun colleague Gus Setementes reports.

Gus writes that Baltimore-based Alter Communications Inc., which also publishes Style and Chesapeake Life magazines and other publications, plans to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. District Court of Maryland in Baltimore:

The bankruptcy filing will not affect the company's day-to-day operations for employees, readers and advertisers, the company said. The Jewish Times and the other publications will continue to be published, the company said in a statement.

"Here's the headline: we're not going anywhere," said Andrew Alter Buerger, president, publisher and chief executive of Alter Communications said. "Our family and our company have been deep in the fabric of this community for five generations, and we are committed to continuing that relationship."

For less than a dollar per week, the Jewish Times has been a fixture for news coverage of the Jewish community in the Baltimore area for years. Maryland residents receive the weekly paper, which averages 120 pages, for an annual subscription of $46.59. The paper is distributed to a readership of more than 50,000, according to its Web site.

Read the story at baltimoresun.com

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Rabbi Yaakov Menken is the Director of Project Genesis, a Jewish cyber-outreach organization based in Baltimore.

The Passover break gave me an opportunity to catch up on some reading, and I came across an article in Commentary Magazine (by Andrew Ferguson, a senior editor at the Weekly Standard) about the NY Times' Caricature of the Tea Party Movement. It is an interesting read, exploring the methodologies employed by a purportedly unbiased media to subtly -- and not-so-subtly -- discredit, and even demonize, a wave sweeping across the American political landscape.

This is a particularly compelling topic, because the media's campaign has apparently been surprisingly effective -- and come to think of it, I haven't been immune. I acquired a dim view of these Tea Partiers through media reports, and still don't know enough about them. So please don't come away thinking I am a supporter of anything other than accuracy and impartiality in the media.

There is a strange disparity between how people perceive the views of the Tea Partiers, and how they perceive the movement itself. In a recent Rasmussen poll, respondents were asked whether the views of the president or the average tea party member were closer to their own. 48 percent went for the Tea Partiers, vs. only 44 percent for the president.

Especially given that 44 percent is within a couple points of the president's approval rating, one might expect that roughly half of Americans have a favorable opinion of the Tea Party movement -- and one would be wrong. In fact, whereas in December a WSJ/NBC poll found the Tea Party movement was held in higher esteem than either the Democratic or Republican Party, a recent Fox News poll shows just the opposite is true today.

It wasn't until the ninth paragraph of the Commentary piece that I recognized how relevant all of this was to the Orthodox Jewish community, which, though relatively conservative politically, is not well represented at the tea parties. That's when I encountered this sentence: "It was difficult to find a story mentioning the Tea Partiers in which the words fear or anger didn’t figure prominently." That sounded all too familiar -- after all, when is the last time you read an article about a conflict involving Orthodox Jews, especially charedim, "in which the words fear or anger didn’t figure prominently?" Typical are these words from a Conservative Rabbi: "Since the death of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, the Haredi community has become more radicalized because of their hatred and fear of modernity in general and especially egalitarianism." Revisiting Ferguson's list of the methods used to discredit the Tea Party Movement, I was struck by the parallels.

Continue reading "Guest post: Tea Partiers and Orthodox Jews" »

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The Vatican has finally made peace with the Beatles, saying their drug use, "dissolute" lives and even the claim that the band was bigger than Jesus are all in the past — while their music lives on, the Associated Press reports.

Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano paid tribute to the Fab Four in its weekend editions, with two articles and a front-page cartoon reproducing the crosswalk immortalized on the cover of the band's album "Abbey Road."

The tribute marked the 40th anniversary of the band's breakup.

"It's true, they took drugs; swept up by their success, they lived dissolute and uninhibited lives," said the paper. "They even said they were more famous than Jesus," it said, recalling John Lennon's 1966 comment that outraged many Catholics and others.

"But, listening to their songs, all of this seems distant and meaningless," L'Osservatore said. "Their beautiful melodies, which changed forever pop music and still give us emotions, live on like precious jewels."

It is not the first time the Vatican has praised the legendary band from Liverpool.

Two years ago, Vatican media hailed the Beatles' musical legacy on the 40th anniversary of the "White Album." And last month the Vatican paper included "Revolver" in its semiserious list of top-10 albums.

Now, L'Osservatore says that the Beatles' songs have stood the test of time, and that the band remains "the longest-lasting, most consistent and representative phenomenon in the history of pop music."

Giovanni Maria Vian, the editor in chief of L'Osservatore Romano, said Monday that he loves the Beatles.

He said that at the time of Lennon's sensational statement, Osservatore "commented that in reality it wasn't that scandalous, because the fascination with Jesus was so great that it attracted these new heroes of the time."

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

A Northern Virginia pharmacy that received the blessing of the Catholic Church because of its pledge not to sell contraceptives has closed, the Associated Press reports.

When it opened in October 2008, Divine Mercy Care Pharmacy was one of at least seven pharmacies nationwide refusing to sell contraceptives.

Robert Laird, executive director of DMC, says the store closed March 4 because it wasn't working financially. Laird says the pharmacy was losing tens of thousands of dollars a month.

The business was located next to a Catholic bookstore with two Catholic parishes nearby. But Laird says it had trouble attracting regular customers.

He says closing the pharmacy "was like a funeral."

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 4:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (26)
        

In another sign of the rapidly changing relationship between the Catholic Church and the Irish, a judge in Limerick has ruled that the city’s pubs may open on Good Friday.

District Court Judge Tom O’Donnell ruled that the city’s 110 pubs may open next Friday, the day on which Christians remember the crucifixion of Jesus, because the city is set to host a major Irish rugby match expected to draw tens of thousands of visitors, the Associated Press reports.

The ruling comes amid a growing crisis over abuse in the Irish church. Earlier this week, Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation of a bishop accused of endangering children by failing to follow the church's own rules on reporting suspected pedophile priests to police.

AP correspondent Shawn Pogatchnik describes the import of the ruling:

Such a judgment would have been unthinkable in the Ireland of old, where the Catholic Church enjoyed unquestioned authority from the public and deference from the government. Commentators were quick to suggest that Thursday's judgment represented a watershed in the shifting relations between church and state in this rapidly secularizing land.

"This could be the beginning of the end of Good Friday, because now legislation will have to be changed," said a jubilant David Hickey, one of the Limerick pub owners who successfully sued the state for the right to do business like any other Friday. "The option should be given to let publicans open if they want to and close if they want to. Today was a huge decision in that direction."

Continue reading "In a first, Irish pubs may open on Good Friday" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (38)
        

The prom's still off at a Mississippi high school that canceled it instead of letting a lesbian student bring her girlfriend, but a federal judge ruled Tuesday that the district's actions did violate the teen's constitutional rights, the Associated Press reports.

U.S. District Judge Glen H. Davidson refused the American Civil Liberties Union's demand to force the Itawamba County school district to put on the April 2 prom, AP correspondent Shelia Byrd writes. However, he said canceling it did violate 18-year-old Constance McMillen's rights and that he would hold a trial on the issue.

That would come too late for the prom to be salvaged at Itawamba Agricultural High School. Still, Kristy Bennett, ACLU Mississippi legal director, called the decision a victory.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued the district to force it to put on the prom and allow McMillen to bring her girlfriend and wear a tuxedo. School officials said in U.S. District Court this week that they decided to cancel it because McMillen's challenge to the rules had caused disruptions.

The judge noted that McMillen has been openly gay since she was in the eighth grade and that she intended to communicate a message by wearing a tuxedo and escorting a same-sex date.

"The court finds this expression and communication falls squarely within the purview of the First Amendment," Davidson said.

Continue reading "Court: Gay student's rights violated, but still no prom" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (33)
        

 The Associated Press has an interesting feature about the Jewish origins of Curious George.

A new museum exhibit illustrates the development of the beloved children's character by a Jewish couple as they fled wartime Europe for the United States.

The story by Ann Levin begins:

Ever wonder why Curious George is so curious? Or why the monkey hero of the "Curious George" children's books is so fond of travel, so prone to mischief, yet always narrowly escapes disaster?

A new exhibit at New York's Jewish Museum suggests that curious readers need look no farther than the real-life adventures of the intrepid husband-and-wife team who created the beloved character.

H.A. and Margret Reys — he changed the name from Reyersbach — were German Jews living in Paris on the eve of the Nazi invasion, increasingly concerned about finding safe haven. Two days before the Germans marched into Paris, they fled on bicycles carrying drawings for their picture books, including one about a mischievous monkey then called Fifi.

Curator Claudia Nahson explains that Hans and Margret created the monkey character that is always on the run while they themselves were on the run. The recurring motif of the monkey's narrow escape from danger is another autobiographical detail.

Continue reading "Out of Europe, with a beloved monkey" »

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Lawmakers in Florida have voted to advance legislation to allow organized prayer at school-sponsored events. Josh Hafenbrack, a statehouse reporter for Baltimore Sun sister paper the Sun-Sentinel, has the story:

Students could lead prayers at school functions such as football games and the senior prom, under a controversial bill advanced by a Florida House committee Wednesday.

Despite objections from Democrats and civil liberties groups who called the effort "patently unconstitutional," the House PreK-12 Education Committee approved the prayer bill (HB11) on a largely party line, 10-3 vote.

Students would be allowed to initiate and lead prayers at assemblies and extracurricular events. The bill bans teachers, administrators and school boards from "discouraging or inhibiting the delivery of an inspirational message," which includes a "prayer or invocation."

Opponents said the prayer-in-school bill would subject students from minority religions, such as Jewish and Muslim students, to majority Christian views.

"When we start breaking down the First Amendment, it is the breaking of our fabric," said Rep. Kevin Rader, D-Delray Beach. Rader, who is Jewish, recalled sitting uncomfortably during team prayers while he was a high school student-athlete. "I remember it like it was yesterday."

Supporters, however, cast the bill as a free-speech issue for students who want to pray at school functions.

"That's the reason we have to have this bill – to protect people's First Amendment rights," said Rep. Greg Evers, R-Baker. "This is not necessarily a prayer bill. It's a rights bill."

Continue reading "Florida lawmakers advance school prayer bill" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (24)
        

The Episcopal Church has confirmed the election of an Annapolis priest as the first openly lesbian bishop in the worldwide Anglican Communion.

The Rev. Mary Douglas Glasspool, who has served in the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland since 1992, said Wednesday that she was “overjoyed and overwhelmed” by news that a majority of bishops and diocesan committees had approved her election as assistant bishop in the Diocese of Los Angeles.

“And grateful,” she added. “I’m grateful to so many people, and to God.”

When she is consecrated in May, Glasspool will become the first openly gay bishop in the 77 million-member Anglican Communion since the 2003 election of V. Gene Robinson in New Hampshire brought a decades-long divide over homosexuality within the church out into the open.

Glasspool, 56, said she knows “not everyone rejoices” in her election, and pledged to “work, pray, and continue to extend my own hands and heart to bridge those gaps, and strengthen the bonds of affection among all people, in the name of Jesus Christ.”

Her confirmation is likely to further strain relations in a church that has lost members, parishes and dioceses over differences on homosexuality. One prominent traditionalist said he was “saddened but not surprised” by her confirmation.

“It is contrary to the teaching of Holy Scripture and the mind of the church catholic,” said the Rev. Kendall Harmon, canon theologian of the Diocese of South Carolina. “One would have hoped that at least the bishops would have waited until they were gathered at their upcoming House of Bishops meeting to discern prayerfully their response together. They instead sought to embrace a way of life which the church through the Bible has always understood to be forbidden.”

Continue reading "Glasspool confirmed bishop in Los Angeles" »

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Rev. Jason Poling is the Pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

Over on the Midnight Sun blog the illustrious Owl Meat Gravy has offered a critique of some conventional understandings of St. Patrick. Although I'm a recovering political science major, I don't buy his imperial reading of the Saint -- "St. Patrick's missionary' work was a Roman-supported campaign, an act of political domination by Romano-Britons, probably with all the attendant brutality that comes with conversion at the point of a sword" -- because I think that picture better fits the practices of a later era when derivative hagiographies of Patrick (quite possibly conflating his life with that of another Christian leader, Palladius) were produced.

The institutional memory of Patrick, it seems, highlights his success in making disciples of Jesus especially among the women of Ireland. Patrick's own narrative (preserved in one of two extant works) recounts his kidnapping from Britain, six years of adolescence and young adulthood spent as a slave in Ireland, and a successful escape by boat prompted by a supernatural nudge toward the dock. But it doesn't stop there: Like the apostle Paul, who had a vision of a beckoning Macedonian, Patrick has a vision of an Irishman bearing a letter pleading with Patrick to come to Ireland.

A call to return to the place where he was enslaved, that’s no slouch as a plot turn (ineffective as it was in the third Matrix movie). And Patrick’s influence as an evangelist is rightly celebrated by those who celebrate that sort of thing.

But more significant, I think, and of more lasting importance, was Patrick’s firm stand against the Arian heresy that Jesus was and is not fully God. During Patrick’s time the Church came to agree on some vitally important theological tenets that survive in the great Creeds of the Christian Church and are still held today (at least on paper) by all Christian traditions. Although it is merely attributed to him, having been composed centuries later, the hymn known as “St. Patrick’s Breastplate” reflects the robust Trinitarian orthodoxy for which St. Patrick stood so firmly. Join me in enjoying a pint while you meditate on these words:

St. Patrick’s Breastplate
trans. C. F. Alexander, 1889

I bind unto myself today
the strong Name of the Trinity,
by invocation of the same,
the Three in One, and One in Three.

Continue reading "Jason Poling: Thank God for St. Patrick's Day, Part III" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Christianity, Culture, Holidays, Jason Poling
        

Brent Childers is executive director of Faith In America, a national nonprofit organization founded "to educate Americans about the harm caused when religious teaching is misused to justify prejudice, discrimination and violence against people based solely on their sexual orientation."

If the Texas State Board of Education moves to include mention of Phyllis Schlafly and Jerry Falwell in school textbooks, Faith In America hopes they will document how harmful their anti-gay actions have been to millions of gay and lesbian youth.

The Texas State Board of Education in a 10-5 party line vote approved some controversial alterations to what most students in the state and other areas of the country will be studying as history. After a public comment period, the board will vote on final recommendations in May.

According to an Associated Press story, it would mean not only increased favorable mentions of anti-gay activist Phyllis Schlafly but also more discussion about the anti-gay Moral Majority and Heritage Foundation.

The bigotry, prejudice and violence that has been justified and promoted by these so-called conservative groups has inflicted a horrific toll on the lives of gay and lesbian individuals, especially youth. It's unimaginable that millions of kids across this nation may now be taught that people who espouse and promote religion-based bigotry are to be looked upon as favorable.

History, time and time again, has judged such religion-based bigotry as harmful and unacceptable, whether such bigotry and prejudice was perpetrated toward American Natives, women or African-Americans. Apologies have been issued by the church and others for their role in promoting religion-based bigotry toward a minority group.

I recall how his own past bigotry and prejudice toward gay Americans was fostered and reinforced by Falwell and other anti-gay figures who for years used the religious and political arenas to promote the attitude that it's OK to be prejudiced and hostile toward gay and lesbian individuals.

Continue reading "Guest post: Document harm of anti-gay actions" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 2:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

The Rev. Jason Poling is pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

The Anglican pastor and theologian Robert Farrar Capon notes, "Practically the only place where people now sing when they are cold sober is in church; and, to tell the truth, it sounds like it." Truth is, there aren't many places people sing together in any state of inebriation. Watch a European soccer match and you hear partisans lustily singing songs at each other, but here it seems that it's become too much to expect people to put their hands over their hearts at ball games, let alone sing along with the National Anthem. Sure, fans will sing along with their favorite artists at live concerts, but that doesn't really count.

Stop by an Irish bar on St. Patrick's Day, though, and you're in another world. I don't claim to be any sort of expert on the musical genre; I developed a mild appreciation back in college when two friends featured an "Irish Song of the Week" on a radio show otherwise devoted to political talk. While I was working in St. Paul one evening shortly after graduating, my boss handed me a twenty and told me I had to spend the evening somewhere other than the office; at the Half Time in St. Paul I met a duo that called themselves the Irish Brigade. (I didn't know at that point that pretty much every other band playing at Irish bars goes by that name as well.) Sean and Mike were either true Irishmen from Cork or able to sustain a convincing accent between sets as well as behind the microphone.

One evening I gave them a mix tape I'd put together featuring a mess of obscure singer-songwriters they'd never heard of but I thought they'd like. Apparently they thought I was the one on the tape, because the next time I saw them they asked me to play through a break between sets that weekend. I did so Friday night. I was not invited back on Saturday.

Still, every year as St. Patrick's Day approaches I dig out an old collection of Irish drinking songs entitled "Irish Drinking Songs" and spend a happy few days whistling "All For Me Grog" until my wife tells me to stop.

Continue reading "Jason Poling: Thank God for St. Patrick's Day, Part II" »

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Categories: Christianity, Culture, Guest Posts, Jason Poling
        

The Rev. Jason Poling is the Pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

Those of us in the clergy have a strained relationship with the holidays enjoyed by the rest of our neighbors. Christmas for me is the day I recover from staying up late assembling Christmas presents after getting home from the midnight Christmas Eve service. Easter is the day I get up early to throw lamb in the oven so that after preaching I can serve it to several dozen international students, then go home and collapse. Thanks to an ill-considered dalliance with campaign politics in my youth I always associate July 4th with an all-day sweat earned by running up and down parade routes handing out stickers and candy. Even my birthday is usually a disappointment, falling as it does in the middle of December when nobody, including me, has time or mental bandwidth for anything but the demands of the holiday season.

So when my kids asked me last week what my favorite holiday was, I was glad to have St. Patrick’s Day coming up right around the bend. What’s not to like? I do have a wee bit of Irish ancestry on my father’s father’s mother’s side, not that any of us really needs it to celebrate March 17th. Like St. Patrick himself, I’m a good Trinitarian, so I offer my fellow In Good Faith readers these three points of appreciation. I begin with the fare.

The first beer I drank outside of a college dormitory was enjoyed at an Irish pub in Washington, DC after some friends and I had made the trek from New England to mark the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Sitting with a pint in one hand and a cigarette in the other, I felt very grown up as I assaulted my senses with dark, rich smells and flavors. At the time I wasn’t aware that Guinness is actually less alcoholic than the keg swill to which I had grown too quickly accustomed; I just knew that it was a beverage that demanded respect, if not a knife and fork.

Since that day I have had Guinness in innumerable cities, from the sacrilegious joint in San Antonio that served it in a frosted mug to the “English Pub” at Epcot where I was allowed to repair while my wife chaperoned her youth orchestra around Disney World. Invariably I find my fellow Guinness drinkers to be a genial lot, whether they be introverts or extroverts (or progress from one to the other after a few pints). Three months out of college, having fled to St. Paul to avoid the embarrassment of an involuntary separation from my employer in Baltimore, I found solace and fellowship in a few pints and a few games of pool (and indigestion in the White Castle burgers I threw down on the way home).

Continue reading "Jason Poling: Thank God for St. Patrick's Day, Part I" »

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Categories: Christianity, Culture, Guest Posts, Jason Poling
        

A lesbian student who wanted to take her girlfriend to her senior prom is asking a federal judge to force her Mississippi school district to reinstate the dance it canceled rather than let the couple attend, the Associated Press reports.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi on Thursday filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Oxford on behalf of 18-year-old Constance McMillen, who said she faced some unhappy classmates after the Itawamba County School District said it wouldn't host the April 2 prom, the AP reports.

"Somebody said, 'Thanks for ruining my senior year.'" McMillen said of her reluctant return Thursday to Itawamba Agricultural High School in Fulton.

The lawsuit seeks a court order for the school to hold the prom. It also asks that McMillen be allowed to escort her girlfriend, who also is a student at the school, and wear the tuxedo.

The district's decision Wednesday came after the ACLU demanded that officials change a policy banning same-sex prom dates because it said it violated students' rights. The ACLU said the district violated McMillen's free expression rights by not letting her wear a tux.

McMillen said she never expected the district to respond the way it did.

"A lot of people said that was going to happen, but I said, they had already spent too much money on the prom" to cancel it, she said.

Continue reading "Lesbian teen sues school district over prom" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (21)
        

As allegations of sexual predation, some dating back decades, roil the Catholic church in Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and other European countries, Vatican officials have insisted that such abuse is not specific to the church.

As if to affirm their assertion, two members of the Vienna Boys' Choir -- not affiliated with any church -- say they were sexually abused by their supervisors, a top Austrian newspaper reported Thursday.

The Der Standard daily reported on its Web site that the allegation was made by the choir alumni, now adults, the Associated Press reports.

One of the Austrian victims, a 33-year-old who now lives in Berlin, was cited as saying he and others were pressured to wash their genitals in the shower while supervisors watched, the AP reports. He also said an older choir member forced him to perform oral sex at one point while he was a member of the choir from 1985 to 1987.

Another member, described as a 51-year-old psychologist living in Munich who sang with group between 1966 and 1970, said a choir master rested his hand on his thigh for two hours while on a bus tour.

The newspaper cited choir officials as saying the allegations would be investigated.

The story follows a string of abuse allegations in Austria. It surfaced just hours after Catholic officials announced that three priests had been relieved of their clerical duties because of allegations of sexual misconduct with minors, and after one admitted to carrying out the acts of which he is accused.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

A federal appeals court in San Francisco upheld the use of the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and "In God We Trust" on U.S. currency, rejecting arguments on Thursday that the phrases violate the separation of church and state, the Associated Press reports.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel rejected two legal challenges by Sacramento atheist Michael Newdow, who claimed the references to God disrespect his religious beliefs, the AP reports.

"The Pledge is constitutional," Judge Carlos Bea wrote for the majority in the 2-1 ruling. "The Pledge of Allegiance serves to unite our vast nation through the proud recitation of some of the ideals upon which our Republic was founded."

The same court ruled in Newdow's favor in 2002 after he sued his daughter's school district for having students recite the pledge at school.

That lawsuit reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 2004, but the high court ruled that Newdow lacked the legal standing to file the suit because he didn't have custody of his daughter, on whose behalf he brought the case.

So Newdow, who is a doctor and lawyer, filed an identical challenge on behalf of other parents who objected to the recitation of the pledge at school. In 2005, a federal judge in Sacramento decided in Newdow's favor, ruling that the pledge was unconstitutional.

"I want to be treated equally," Newdow said when he argued the case before the 9th Circuit in December 2007. He added that supporters of the phrase "want to have their religious views espoused by the government."

In a separate 3-0 ruling Thursday, the appeals court upheld the inscription of the national motto "In God We Trust" on coins and currency, saying that the phrase is ceremonial and patriotic, not religious.

Reached on his cell phone, Newdow said he hadn't been aware that the appeals court had ruled against him Thursday.

"Oh man, what a bummer," he said.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)
        

The decision by a Rome high school to install condom vending machines has set off a storm in Italy, with the Catholic Church charging the move will encourage young people to have sex and Rome's mayor saying it sends the wrong message, the Associated Press reports.

But the Keplero high school vowed Thursday to go ahead with its experiment, billed as the first in the capital. While it's a relative novelty for Italy, schools in several other European countries have installed the machines in hopes of curbing teen pregnancy and HIV.

"This is not about stimulating the use condoms or intercourse," Antonio Panaccione, the school headmaster, told The Associated Press. "On the contrary, it's about prevention and education."

The school plans to install six vending machines as part of educating students about sexuality and HIV protection. The price: euro2 (US$2.70) for a pack of three, lower than market prices.

Cardinal Agostino Vallini, the pope's vicar for Rome, said the decision trivialized sex. He said it "cannot be approved by Rome's ecclesiastical community or by Christian families who are seriously concerned with the education of their children."

The newspaper of the Italian Bishops' Conference said Thursday that sex was being reduced to "mere physical exercise." The newspaper, L'Avvenire, lamented that young people these days have no spiritual guidance on sexuality, and that educators are more concerned with "the health and hygiene consequences of sex" than its moral implications.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 3:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)
        

The point of a caricature depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a dog was to show that artistic freedom allows mockery of all religions, including the most sacred symbols of Islam, the Swedish artist who created it tells the Associated Press.

Lars Vilks — the target of an alleged murder plot involving an American woman who dubbed herself "Jihad Jane" — said Wednesday that he has no regrets about the drawing, which is considered deeply offensive by many Muslims.

"I'm actually not interested in offending the prophet. The point is actually to show that you can," Vilks told the AP in Stockholm. "There is nothing so holy you can't offend it."

Vilks made his rough sketch showing Muhammad's head on a dog's body more than a year after 12 Danish newspaper cartoons of the prophet sparked furious protests in Muslim countries in 2006.

Continue reading "Muhammad cartoonist: Nothing too holy to mock" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)
        

A Catholic school in Colorado is drawing criticism for its refusal to readmit the young children of a lesbian couple.

The school of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in Boulder has informed the couple that the older of the two children may attend kindergarten next year, but may not advance to the first grade; the younger child may complete preschool, but may not advance to kindergarten.

News of the exclusions drew some two dozen protesters outside Mass on Sunday, Denver station KMGH-TV reports.

"God and Jesus would not allow discrimination in that way," Joellen Raderstorf told the ABC affiliate. At least one parishioner appeared to agree.

"I just feel the Catholic Church is a church that should be teaching acceptance and tolerance,” Juli Aderman-Hagerty said as she was leaving Mass. “I just don't think this is an example of that.”

Denver Archbishop Charles J. Chaput called it a “painful situation.”

“The Church never looks for reasons to turn anyone away from a Catholic education,” he wrote in a column for the Denver Catholic Register. “But the Church can’t change her moral beliefs without undermining her mission and failing to serve the many families who believe in that mission.”

Chaput drew attention during the 2004 presidential campaign when he told The New York Times that voting for a candidate such as John Kerry, a supporter of abortion rights, would be a sin, and Catholics who did so would be required to confess before they could take communion.

More recently, he decried a “spirit of adulation bordering on servility" among some Catholic supporters of President Barack Obama. “In democracies,” he said, “we elect public servants, not messiahs."

In his column, Chaput writes that the church does not claim that people of homosexual orientation are “bad,” or that their children are less loved by God.

“Quite the opposite,” he writes. “But what the Church does teach is that sexual intimacy by anyone outside marriage is wrong; that marriage is a sacramental covenant; and that marriage can only occur between a man and a woman. These beliefs are central to a Catholic understanding of human nature, family and happiness, and the organization of society. The Church cannot change these teachings because, in the faith of Catholics, they are the teachings of Jesus Christ.”

He writes that the policies of the Catholic schools exists to protect all parties, including homosexual couples and their children.

“Our schools are meant to be ‘partners in faith’ with parents,” he writes. “If parents don’t respect the beliefs of the Church, or live in a manner that openly rejects those beliefs, then partnering with those parents becomes very difficult, if not impossible. It also places unfair stress on the children, who find themselves caught in the middle, and on their teachers, who have an obligation to teach the authentic faith of the Church. …

“Most parents who send their children to Catholic schools want an environment where the Catholic faith is fully taught and practiced. That simply can’t be done if teachers need to worry about wounding the feelings of their students or about alienating students from their parents. … Persons who have an understanding of marriage and family life sharply different from Catholic belief are often people of sincerity and good will. They have other, excellent options for education and should see in them the better course for their children.”

The LGBT group Boulder Pride says on its Web site that it “extends its support to the family and stands in solidarity with the teachers at Sacred Heart who disagree with the Archdiocese's decision and with members of the community who are concerned that the Archdiocese has ignored the fullness of Catholic understanding of welcome and love, and instead is using a child to make a political point and not a theological one. All schools, private and public, should provide safe, welcoming learning environments to all students. A child should never be singled out to make a political statement.”

Continue reading "Catholic school excluding children of gay couple" »

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A Reform Jewish task force on intermarriage said Monday that the movement should do more to encourage mixed-faith couples to be active in Jewish life, including creating special blessings for major life events such as weddings and funerals, the Associated Press reports.

The panel proposed no changes in the movement's policy on officiating at interfaith weddings. Reform Judaism formally opposes the practice but allows each rabbi to decide, according to the AP.

Instead, the panel proposed other steps, including educating rabbis on how they can engage intermarried families, and creating blessings for ceremonies that involve a non-Jewish spouse.

Leaders of the task force said their two-year study represents a shift away from trying to prevent intermarriage and toward encouraging mixed-faith couples to create Jewish homes.

The intermarriage rate for U.S. Jews has been above 40 percent since at least the 1990s. Slowing the trend has become one of the biggest concerns of the Jewish community.

The Conservative and Orthodox movements bar rabbis from presiding at interfaith weddings. The Reconstructionist movement also opposes officiating but gives rabbis individual discretion.

The task force was created by the Central Conference of American Rabbis, which represents nearly 2,000 Reform clergy. The report was released at an assembly in San Francisco. The Reform movement is the largest branch of American Judaism.

Read the Associated Press story.

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The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday that it would consider whether the hate-filled anti-gay protests held at a Maryland soldier’s funeral in Westminster were constitutionally protected by the First Amendment, Baltimore Sun colleague Tricia Bishop reports.

The 2006 funeral for Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, who was killed in Iraq, drew members of the enthusiastically hateful Westboro Baptist Church, who picketed outside with signs reading “Fag troops” and “Thank God for dead soldiers.”

The 75-member, mostly interrelated congregation based in Topeka, Kansas, says soldiers are dying because of the nation’s tolerance of homosexuality. In 2007, a federal jury in Baltimore awarded Snyder’s father nearly $11 million in a civil suit against church leaders.

The amount was reduced to $5 million a few months later.

In September, a federal appeals court reversed the award, ruling that the protests were protected speech and that they did not violate the privacy of the Snyder’s family. The high court will review that decision.

Snyder's funeral was one of many picketed by the Westboro Baptist Church; our newsroom fax machine fills with notices of coming demonstrations. The Web address for the group is godhatesfags.com. The site once -- and might still, I can't be bothered to look -- ran an animation of murdered college student Matthew Shepard surrounded by flames with a counter purporting to track the number of days he had spent in Hell.

AP photo

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 3:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (19)
Categories: Christianity, Culture, Law and Courts, People
        

The conflict that led to hundreds of demonstrators to walk out of Mass at a Dutch church on Sunday appears to have come to an end.

Dutch gay rights groups have called for a halt to protests against a Catholic church southwest of Amsterdam after it said it would no longer seek to bar homosexuals from taking communion, the Associated Press reports.

The Sint-Jan church in Den Bosch -- also called 's-Hertogenbosch -- says it will leave it up to believers to decide whether they are ready to receive communion, according to the AP.

Activists staged the walkout to protest a priest’s refusal to give communion to a practicing homosexual. Having foreseen the protest, the church had decided not give communion to anyone.

The dispute began in February, when a priest in nearby Reusel refused communion to the openly gay carnival prince of that nearby town, the BBC reports. Same-sex marriage is legal in the Netherlands, but the Catholic Church teaches homosexual acts are sinful.

Thanks to BankStreet for sending us a heads-up.

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The Archdiocese of Washington will change an employee health care policy because of a same-sex marriage law expected to take effect in D.C. on Wednesday, the Associated Press reports.

As of Tuesday, the church will no longer let employees of its Catholic Charities add spouses to their health care coverage.

Catholic Charities, which provides services such as substance abuse treatment programs and shelters, employees some 850 people.

Archdiocesan spokeswoman Susan Gibbs says currently about 10 percent of those employees have their spouses covered by their health care plan.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 9:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (74)
        

An atheist group asked students at the University of Texas, San Antonio, to trade in their Bibles for pornography.

KENS-TV in San Antonio reports that the activists set up a table on campus with a sign advertising "Trade in Holy Text 4 Porn" -- a deal they described as "Smut for Smut."

Some students gathered nearby to pray, KENS-TV reports.

After the event, the atheist group posted on their Twitter page, "Too often are we ignored this seems to get people to actually talk to us instead of ignore us."

The atheist group told KENS-TV it would donate its Bibles to local libraries.

http://www.kens5.com/news/local/Smut-for-smut-Bibles-for-porn-offer-draws-protesters-at-UTSA-85857462.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (49)
        

Movies about a widower who journeys by helium balloon, the migrations of animal families and Baltimore Ravens lineman Michael Oher are winners in the fifth annual Beliefnet Film Awards, announced on Tuesday.

From the Beliefnet release:

Best Spiritual Film

• The Road – Winner of the Judges’ Award
• The Blind Side – Winner of the People’s Choice Award

The Road, based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy, is winner of Best Spiritual Film for portraying the treacherous journey of a father and son struggling for survival in a post-apocalyptic world, as they “carry the fire” that symbolizes their hope for humanity. The Blind Side celebrates the heartfelt, true story of a homeless, traumatized boy who, with the support, love, and faith of an adoptive family, lives the dream of becoming an All-American football player.

Continue reading "And the winner is ..." »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 3:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Hundreds of activists in the Dutch city of 's-Hertogenbosch walked out of Mass on Sunday to protest a priest’s refusal to give communion to a practicing homosexual, the BBC reports.

Having foreseen the protest, the Roman Catholic church of Sint-Jan had decided not give communion to anyone, according to the BBC.

The dispute began in February, when a priest in nearby Reusel refused communion to the openly gay carnival prince of that nearby town. Same-sex marriage is legal in the Netherlands, but the Catholic Church teaches homosexual acts are sinful.

On Sunday, the BBC reports, several hundred demonstrators in pink wigs and clothes left the church in protest.

Read the BBC report.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)
        

Political liberalism, atheism and sexual exclusivity among males may be reflections of intelligence, according to a study of Americans by an evolutionary pyschologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

CNN reports that the study by Satoshi Kanazawa correlated data on these behaviors with IQ from a large national U.S. sample and found that, on average, people who identified as liberal and atheist had higher IQs. This applied also to sexual exclusivity in men, but not in women. The findings are to be published in the March 2010 issue of Social Psychology Quarterly.

From the CNN report:

The IQ differences, while statistically significant, are not stunning -- on the order of 6 to 11 points -- and the data should not be used to stereotype or make assumptions about people, experts say. But they show how certain patterns of identifying with particular ideologies develop, and how some people's behaviors come to be.

The reasoning is that sexual exclusivity in men, liberalism and atheism all go against what would be expected given humans' evolutionary past. In other words, none of these traits would have benefited our early human ancestors, but higher intelligence may be associated with them.

"The adoption of some evolutionarily novel ideas makes some sense in terms of moving the species forward," said George Washington University leadership professor James Bailey, who was not involved in the study. "It also makes perfect sense that more intelligent people -- people with, sort of, more intellectual firepower -- are likely to be the ones to do that."

Bailey also said that these preferences may stem from a desire to show superiority or elitism, which also has to do with IQ. In fact, aligning oneself with "unconventional" philosophies such as liberalism or atheism may be "ways to communicate to everyone that you're pretty smart," he said.

Read the story at cnn.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (35)
        

Less than a year after dethroned Miss California USA Carrie Prejean stirred up controversy with her remarks against gay marriage, a similar war of words is brewing in Beverly Hills, the Associated Press reports.

Beverly Hills Mayor Nancy Krasne said Wednesday she is outraged over a Miss California USA contestant who is claiming to represent the city in the upcoming pageant and who spoke out against same-sex marriage in recent media interviews.

Krasne said in a statement that 23-year-old Lauren Ashley does not live in Beverly Hills or represent the city in any capacity. Krasne said she was shocked to see statements made by a beauty pageant contestant under the name of Beverly Hills, "which has a long history of tolerance and respect."

Ashley recently told Fox News and other media outlets that same-sex marriage goes against God and the Bible.

Keith Lewis, a K2 Productions stage director for the Miss California USA pageant, told the Los Angeles Times that contestants choose the area they represent and Ashley chose to compete as Miss Beverly Hills in November 2010.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)
        

While the Anglican church has gotten much of the attention relating to differences over gay clergy, questions of embracing or condemning homosexuality are roiling many Protestant denominations. The Associated Press has a story about the debate within the nation's largest Lutheran denomination:

Until a few weeks ago, the Rev. Gail Sowell was pastor at two Lutheran churches in the small Wisconsin town of Edgar. That was before members of both congregations jumped headfirst into the simmering debate over gay clergy in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.

"It was pretty gruesome," Sowell said, recalling shouting matches inside the sanctuary; the mass resignation of one church's council, save one member; even whispers around town that she was a lesbian. "For the record, I'm not," she said.

When the smoke cleared, the congregation at St. John Lutheran Church narrowly voted to not leave the ELCA. Across town at Peace Lutheran, they voted to leave and fired Sowell. "Fortunately, I'm thick-skinned," she said.

Not all ELCA congregations have seen that level of turbulence over the ELCA's decision last August to allow pastors in committed same-sex relationships to serve openly. But by most accounts, it has been a confusing and murky time in the nation's largest Lutheran denomination.

Several hundred congregations are moving toward a permanent split with the ELCA and more will likely come, but the number is still a small portion of the 10,000-church denomination.

Last week, a conservative Lutheran group announced its plans to establish the North American Lutheran Church, a new denomination that will recruit dissident congregations. Rather than setting up a clear-cut choice, though, even some critics of the ELCA's new policy say the move could further confuse already splintered Lutherans at a time when Protestantism in general seems to be moving away from a denominational model.

"It just feels like we're stepping off a sinking ship, and I'm not inclined to get on another boat," said the Rev. Bill Bohline, lead pastor at Hosanna! in Lakeville, Minn., which had been the state's second largest ELCA church until its members voted overwhelmingly in January to sever ties with the denomination. "That's not where the spirit is moving."

Read the rest of the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)
        

A Haitian aphorism holds that the nation is 80 (or 70 or 90) percent Catholic -- and 100 percent Voodoo.

Henri Astier of the BBC has produced a feature on the role of Haiti's traditional religion, an amalgam of West African and Roman Catholic beliefs, in the aftermath of disaster.

A month before Haiti's devastating earthquake, prominent musician Theodore "Lolo" Beaubrun and a few friends were summoned by spirits who tried to warn them about the impending cataclysm.

"They told us to pray for Haiti because many people would die," says Mr Beaubrun - the frontman of the group Boukman Eksperyans.

"I thought it was about politics. I didn't know it was going to be an earthquake."

The spirits may have failed to make themselves understood, but according to Mr Beaubrun -- whose music and outlook are steeped in voodoo culture - they are standing by the Haitian people in their hour of need.

"We are extremely traumatised," he says.

"We have seen death. But the spirits entered the minds of people to advise and help them heal. They speak to us. It's like therapy."

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Culture, International, Voodoo
        

Christians in India are outraged after a picture showing Jesus Christ holding a beer can and a cigarette was discovered in primary school textbooks, Agence France-Presse reports.

The French news agency reports that the image was used in a handwriting book for children in church-run schools in the Christian-majority Indian state of Meghalaya, where it was used to illustrate the letter "I" for the word "Idol."

"We are deeply shocked and hurt at the objectionable portrayal of Jesus Christ in the school book. We condemn the total lack of respect for religions by the publisher," Shillong diocese Archbishop Dominic Jala told AFP.

Police now are looking for the owner of the New Delhi-based publisher, Skyline Publications, who faces charges of offending religious sentiment, police superintendent A.R. Mawthoh told AFP.

The Roman Catholic Church in India has banned all textbooks by Skyline, while Protestant leaders called for a public apology, AFP reports. The state government also denounced the publication.

Read the Agence France-Presse story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

Apologies, real and imagined, Part III

The Rev. Jason Poling is Pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

Now that’s what I call an apology.

No "I deeply regret that the citizens of Baltimore have had to go through this ordeal with me," no sideways allusions to a prayer of confession for “any words or deeds of mine that may have” stigmatized Israel. This was the real thing.

In brief: All of you have every right to be mad at me, because I screwed up. I hurt a lot of people in a lot of ways, and I’m sorry. Nobody else is to blame for this pickle that I’m in. It’s my fault, and I’m sorry. I’m embarrassed, as I ought to be. So I’m taking responsibility for my actions, I’m doing what I need to do to try to fix what I’ve broken, and I’m doing so even though I don’t know if I’ll succeed. I know I need help and I’m getting it, as in right now, so I’m leaving to get more help. I’ll see you when I see you.

Some found Woods’ apology a bit too thorough — "the best words ... money could buy," as David Zurawik put it. Clearly his statement was not scribbled on the back of an envelope on the limo ride over; it reflected what must have been a long and arduous editing process. Woods had a lot to say, and his transitions between topics were often anything but smooth. No doubt there were times when he said (as all of us who’ve done any writing have done), “Well, I gotta have this in there and this is as good a place as any to put it.”

Was Woods’ apology ghost-written? One can only hope that the people with whom he has been working had a hand in coaching Woods on his apology. It was not by surrounding himself with people who had permission to speak into his life that Woods entered into a pattern of betrayal. The “money and fame” that made it easy for him to go after those “temptations” to which he felt “entitled” also made it easy for him to insulate himself from criticism.

But his statement bears every mark of being a painfully and personally wrought stake in the ground that is and will continue to be significant as a declaration of his understanding of the causes and results of his behavior, and his intentions to amend it. Certainly it is the product of the work he has been doing in rehab, and a frank posturing of himself as someone who is still very much in recovery. (And it was admirably frank without being inappropriate for something being broadcast live at 11:00 am.)

Continue reading "Jason Poling: Tiger, Tiger, shame burning bright" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 3:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Christianity, Culture, Ethics, Guest Posts, Jason Poling, People
        

Americans aged 18 to 29 are less likely to be affiliated with any particular faith than their parents and grandparents were at the same age, and less likely than older Americans now to attend religious services or describe religion as very important in their lives, according to a new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

But while young adults have less formal contact with organized religion, the Pew Research Center finds that their beliefs about life after death and the existence of heaven and hell and miracles closely resemble those of older Americans, and the percentage who say they pray every day rivals that of previous generations at the same age.

Other findings of “Religion Among the Millennials,” the Pew Forum report released this week:

In their social and political views, young adults are clearly more accepting than older Americans of homosexuality, more inclined to see evolution as the best explanation of human life and less prone to see Hollywood as threatening their moral values.

At the same time, Millennials are no less convinced than their elders that there are absolute standards of right and wrong. And they are slightly more supportive than their elders of government efforts to protect morality, as well as somewhat more comfortable with involvement in politics by churches and other houses of worship.

Read the report at pewforum.org.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 2:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (71)
        

Several prominent Anglican British bishops are urging Christians to keep their carbon consumption in check this Lent, the Associated Press reports.

For most Western churches, Wednesday marks the start of the 40-day period of penitence before Easter during which Christians traditionally choose an item or habit from which to abstain.

The Anglican initiative, the AP reports, aims to convince those observing Lent to try a day without an iPod or mobile phone in a bid to reduce the use of electricity — and thus trim the amount of carbon dioxide spewed into the atmosphere.

Bishop of London Rev. Richard Chartres said that the poorest people in developing countries were the hardest hit by man-made climate change.

He said Tuesday that the "Carbon Fast" was "an opportunity to demonstrate the love of God in a practical way."

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

And Lindsay Lohan becomes the latest celebrity to fray Christian sensibilities with a crucifixion pose.

Bill Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights has demanded that Lohan apologize for her appearance on the cover of the French fashion magazine Purple with arms outstretched and a crown of thorns around her head.

In a statement, Donohue called the pose inappropriate and the timing, on the eve of Lent, offensive. (He also squeezes in a shot at Tiger Woods.)

“Lohan, an ex-Catholic who is spiritually homeless, recently said, ‘I’m all about Karma … what goes around comes around.’ If she believes that, then it behooves her to apologize to Christians before it’s too late.

“Looks like Tiger Woods is not the only celebrity who would benefit by converting to Christianity these days. Forgiveness occupies a central place in Christianity, but the predicate to forgiveness is repentance.”

Taking exception is American Atheists President Ed Buckner, who said Donohue is “no civil libertarian and no fashionista.”

"Actors, film makers and writers have a long history of being attacked by the churches, and this is just another example," Buckner said in a statement. "Ms. Lohan is in good company – many pop stars have been the target of the Catholic League's indignation, including Madonna and Britney Spears. What Donohue seems to forget is that no one is being forced to buy albums or magazines, and that in America, churches do not dictate the content of popular culture.”

Continue reading "Lindsay Lohan's imitation of Christ" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 2:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (17)
Categories: Atheism, Catholicism, Christianity, Culture, International, People
        

The former Catholic nun behind the ordination this month of two women priests and one deacon in Florida says she welcomed a church threat to excommunicate any Catholic who attended the ceremony.

"Good!" Bridget Mary Meehan, one of five American bishops in the international Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement, told the Sarasota Herald Tribune. "They're upping the ante. People will have to be courageous to support us and that is what this is about. Like our sister Rosa Parks, we refuse to sit on the back of the bus any longer."

The Catholic Diocese of Venice had warned Catholics away from the ceremony in Sarasota, which the church considers illegitimate. The diocese said the threat of automatic excommunication followed orders set forth from Rome.

"This situation is sad for the entire Church," the diocese said in a statement published by the Herald-Tribune. "The Diocese prays that all those involved in this attempt to 'ordain', 'Roman Catholic Womenpriests' will be reconciled with the Church, and that the harm and division caused will be healed."

Read the Herald-Tribune story at heraldtribune.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Thousands marched through downtown Oslo on Friday to protest the publication of a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad by a Norwegian newspaper, the Associated Press reports.

The demonstrators chanted "God is great" in Arabic and waved placards calling for a boycott of the Dagbladet daily, according to the AP.

The protest followed the newspaper's publication last week of a photograph showing a man in front of a computer screen with a depiction of Muhammad as a pig. The picture accompanied an article that said users were posting offensive material about Muslims and Jews on the Facebook page of Norway's security police.

The item came nearly four years after the appearance of cartoons depicting the figure Muslims consider the last and greatest prophet in a Danish newspaper set off sometimes violent protests throughout the Islamic world.

Dagbladet's acting editor-in-chief, Lars Helle, told The Associated Press that he doesn't regret printing the offending image and that he welcomed Friday's protest.

"It was a test for Norwegian society — whether this would be a peaceful protest or not," Helle said.

He said Dagbladet has not received any direct threats since it published the caricature. A hacker attack originating from Turkey brought down the newspaper's Web site for two hours Wednesday evening, but Helle said it's unclear whether that attack was connected to the caricature.

Protesters said they wanted to show Norwegian media how hurtful such images are to Muslims. Islamic law generally opposes any depiction of the prophet, even favorable, for fear it could lead to idolatry.

"We have done nothing to anybody. We want to live here in peace. Norway is our home. Our children live here. Why should they (Norwegian media) hurt us like this?" said Naradim Muhammad, a 43-year-old school teacher who helped organize the demonstration.

The demonstration was peaceful, except for a firecracker that was apparently thrown by a protester onto a restaurant patio. It caused burn damage to a patio sofa, but nobody was injured. After the blast, organizers ordered the crowd to disperse, encouraging them to go home or to a local mosque to pray.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 3:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (71)
        

On the day after the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences announced its award nominees, Beliefnet is releasing candidates for its own film prizes. We note some overlap with the Oscars (category names link with video at Beliefnet.com):

Best Spiritual Film

“Avatar”
“The Road”
“The Stoning of Soraya M.”
“A Serious Man”
“The Blind Side”

Best Spiritual Documentary

“More Than a Game”
“Enlighten Up!”
“Oh My God”
“Unmistaken Child”
“Earth”

Best Inspirational Film

“Precious”
“Up”
“American Violet”
“Away We Go”
“Invictus”

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)
        

John Travolta has piloted a jetliner carrying relief supplies, doctors and ministers from the Church of Scientology into Port-au-Prince, the Associated Press reports.

"We have the ability to actually help make a difference in the situation in Haiti and I just can't see not using this plane to help," the 55-year-old actor said. He compared the mission to efforts following Hurricane Katrina: "We were there right away, with this airplane, because you know we have the ability and the means to do this so I think you have responsibility on some level to do that."

The flight Tuesday comes as aid groups have been desperate to fly their own planes into the over-stressed airport, the Associated Press reports. U.N. humanitarian spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said Tuesday that at least 800 planes with relief items are on a waiting list for the airport, which can handle only about 130 flights a day due to a lack of space to park planes as they unload.

The aid group Doctors Without Borders has complained that the flight scheduling priorities of U.S. military controllers running the airport delayed the arrival of field hospitals, resulting in some deaths.

Travolta and Preston returned to Florida as soon as their supplies and passengers were unloaded.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 2:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

A French parliamentary panel will recommend a ban on face-covering Muslim veils in public areas from hospitals to schools but will stop short of pressing for the garb to be outlawed in the street, the Associated Press reports.

The 32-member panel's report due Tuesday culminates a six-month inquiry into the wearing of all-encompassing veils that began after President Nicolas Sarkozy said in June that they are "not welcome" on French territory, AP reporter Elaine Ganley writes.

Andre Gerin, a Communist lawmaker who heads the multiparty panel, said the report contains a "multitude of proposals" to ban such garb in places like schools, hospitals and other public buildings, but not private buildings or on the street. He said the proposals would cover "domains that concern everyday society," a phrase that would seem to include public transportation, although he did not mention that specifically.

Gerin stressed the need to move "progressively" toward a law banning the attire in the streets and to work "hand in hand" with Muslim leaders and associations.

Critics of the veils call them a gateway to extremism, an insult to gender equality and an offense to France's secular system. A 2004 French law bans Muslim headscarves from classrooms.

Muslim religious leaders have warned that a law banning face-covering attire in the streets could stigmatize Muslims and drive some to extremism. They were joined last week by Roman Catholic and Jewish leaders who said they consider such a drastic step unnecessary.

France has Western Europe's largest Muslim population, estimated at some 5 million. Only a tiny minority of Muslim women wear such attire, usually a "niqab" pinned across the face to cover all but the eyes.

Read the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 9:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

The Roman Catholic primate of Belgium has likened homosexuality to an eating disorder, Radio Netherlands Worldwide reports.

"Homosexuality is not the same as normal sex in the same way that anorexia is not a normal appetite," Monsignor André-Joseph Léonard, the archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels, told a Belgian television station, according to RNW. He added that he would "never call anorexia patients abnormal."

As bishop of Namen in Belgium, RNW reports, Léonard provoked controversy when he called homosexuality abnormal. Pope Benedict XVI named him archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels last week, making him primate of Belgium.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (154)
        

The Associated Press has an interesting story about Grant Desme, the Friday Oakland Athletics prospect who announced Friday he is leaving baseball for the priesthood -- after hitting .315, knocking in 27 and clouting a league-leading 11 home runs in 27 games in the Class-A Arizona Fall League.

The story by AP baseball writer Ben Walker begins:

As a top prospect for the Oakland Athletics, outfielder Grant Desme might've gotten the call every minor leaguer wants this spring.

Instead, he believed he had another, higher calling.

Desme announced Friday that he was leaving baseball to enter the priesthood, walking away after a breakout season in which he became MVP of the Arizona Fall League.

"I was doing well at ball. But I really had to get down to the bottom of things," the 23-year-old Desme said. "I wasn't at peace with where I was at."

A lifelong Catholic, Desme thought about becoming a priest for about a year and a half. He kept his path quiet within the sports world, and he startled the A's on Thursday night when he told them he planned to enter a seminary this summer.

General manager Billy Beane "was understanding and supportive," Desme said, but the decision "sort of knocked him off his horse." After the talk, Desme felt "a great amount of peace."

"I love the game, but I aspire to higher things," he said. "I know I have no regrets."

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 9:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Americans are more than twice as likely to express prejudice against Muslims than they are against Christians, Jews or Buddhists, according to a report to be released Thursday by the Gallup World Religion Survey. While nearly two-thirds of Americans say they have little or no knowledge of Islam, a majority say they have an unfavorable view of the faith.

Associated Press religion writer Rachel Zoll breaks down the results:

Just over half of Americans said they felt no prejudice against Muslims. However, 43 percent acknowledged at least "a little" prejudice against Muslims, a significantly higher percentage than for the other four faiths in the survey.

About 18 percent of respondents said they had some level of prejudice against Christians, while the figure was 15 percent toward Jews and 14 percent toward Buddhists.

Asked about knowledge of Islam, 63 percent of Americans say they have "very little" or "none at all." A large majority of respondents believe most Muslims want peace. Yet, 53 percent of Americans say their opinion of the faith is "not too favorable" or "not favorable at all." By comparison, 25 percent of Americans say they have unfavorable views of Judaism, while 7 percent say they have "some" or "a great deal" of prejudice toward Jews.

Personally knowing a Muslim is not linked to a lower level of prejudice, although not knowing a Muslim is related to the greatest level of bias. The authors of the report say this finding underscores the need for better education on what Islam teaches.

"What really seems to impact one's perception of a group much more than knowing an individual is having a positive opinion of that group's distinguishing characteristic, which in this case is their faith," said Dalia Mogahed, senior analyst and executive director of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies. "That one person being nice enough could simply be explained as that person being an exception."

Respondents who say they attend religious services more than once a week are significantly more likely to have a favorable view of Muslims. Mogahed said people who are more religious generally consider prejudice a moral evil and often have respect for the devout of other faiths.

Researchers also found a link between prejudice against Jews and Muslims. Americans who acknowledged "a great deal" of bias toward Jews were much more likely to feel the same about Muslims. The survey results could not explain why the two prejudices are linked. Mogahed said bias against both groups should be tracked and studied together to understand the dynamic.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

The Church of England might not be ready to celebrate openly gay clergy, but Anglican bishops are poised to consider whether to extend the rights and benefits now afforded to married priests’ spouses to same-sex partners.

The proposal is to be debated by bishops and senior clergy next month at the church’s general synod. The Telegraph of London has a story:

Traditionalists have expressed strong opposition to the move, which they claim would give official recognition to homosexual relationships.

They warn that affording equal treatment to heterosexual and homosexual couples would undermine the Church's teaching on marriage.

At present, the Church bars clergy from being in active gay relationships, although it bowed to pressure to allow them to enter civil partnerships on the condition that they are celibate.

Liberals believe that the motion, to be unveiled this week, could be a major breakthrough in securing rights for gay clergy.

It calls on the Archbishops' Council, chaired by Dr. Rowan Williams, to introduce changes that would "provide for pension benefits to be paid to the surviving civil partners of deceased clergy on the same basis as they are currently paid to surviving spouses.”

The 2003 consecration of an openly gay Episcopal bishop in New Hampshire brought long-simmering divisions over homosexuality within the Anglican Communion out into the open. Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, warned the Episcopal Church last month against consenting to the consecration of Mary Glasspool, a lesbian Maryland priest elected bishop suffragan by the Diocese of Los Angeles.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 3:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

An atheist group is objecting to coded references to New Testament passages that a Michigan manufacturer is inscribing on rifle sights it provides to U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Trijicon has a $660 million contract to provide up to 800,000 sights to the Marines, and other contracts with the Army. ABC News reported Monday that the manufacturer, founded by a Christian, had long marked its products with what ABC News called “secret ‘Jesus’ Bible codes:”

One of the citations on the gun sights, 2COR4:6, is an apparent reference to Second Corinthians 4:6 of the New Testament, which reads: "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

Other references include citations from the books of Revelation, Matthew and John dealing with Jesus as "the light of the world." John 8:12, referred to on the gun sights as JN8:12, reads, "Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."

Trijicon confirmed to ABCNews.com that it adds the biblical codes to the sights sold to the U.S. military. Tom Munson, director of sales and marketing for Trijicon, which is based in Wixom, Michigan, said the inscriptions "have always been there" and said there was nothing wrong or illegal with adding them. Munson said the issue was being raised by a group that is "not Christian." The company has said the practice began under its founder, Glyn Bindon, a devout Christian from South Africa who was killed in a 2003 plane crash.

American Atheists President Ed Buckner warned that Islamic extremists could take advantage of what he called "a major blunder that seriously risks efforts to reach out to people in Muslim countries threatened by groups like the Taliban and al-Qaeda."

Continue reading "Objections to Marines' Bible-coded rifle sights" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (28)
        

The Rev. Jason Poling is pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

It’s been said that if you give an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters an infinite amount of time they will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. Then again, this scenario may explain the genesis of the blogosphere.

There’s a basic principle to keeping blogs healthy: Don’t feed the trolls. Every blog has them, the people who delight in vituperative attacks on others (known as “flaming”), obnoxiously long screeds, and monopolizing the virtual conversation. But if you engage the actual content of his remarks, you will find yourself sucked into a black hole of back-and-forth posts involving bad logic, worse grammar and endless frustration. It’s a lot like arguing with a four-year-old: the minute you start, you’ve lost, because in doing so you have effectively declared that a rational adult ought to seriously debate the merits of sleeping under all of the blankets in the closet sorted first by color then by texture.

But there is a remedy: the universal shorthand “Dude, STFU” which translates to “Kindly be quiet.” This treatment, which only works if applied sparingly, essentially declares: “What you are saying makes absolutely no sense. Nothing good will come of discussing it with you. You’re annoying everyone on this blog. So cut it out.” Such an approach steadfastly and resolutely refuses to reason with the unreasonable, to join a battle of wits with the unarmed, to punch the tar baby.

Much the same principle applies to the outlying voices in our media landscape. There may have been some gaps in my seminary education, for I cannot begin to fathom how I might evaluate Pat Robertson’s claim that the entire nation of Haiti in the course of its battle for independence made a pact with the devil. What would be the text of such a pact? Would everyone in the nation need to agree to it? Every adult? A majority, or perhaps a super-majority? Would it need to be signed in blood? The mind boggles.

In much the same way, I have difficulty finding handles with which I might begin to grapple with other ideas promoted by Robertson: that Hurricane Katrina constituted an exercise of God’s wrath against New Orleans for its wickedness, or that 9/11 happened when God withdrew his protection from America when some obscure ACLU lawsuit was filed somewhere that morning and he decided he had simply had enough.

Continue reading "Jason Poling: A message for Pat Robertson" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (128)
        

I’ve had an interest in Voodoo dating back to my first-ever (college) newspaper interview, which was with Wade Davis, the Harvard ethnobotanist who explored pharmalogical bases for many of its claims, and continuing through my time in the Caribbean and travels in Latin America, where Voodoo and its cousins, Santería and Obeah, are commonly practiced.

A common complaint among adherents to the three religions, all of which combine elements of West African beliefs with Roman Catholicism, is their association in American popular culture with evil – a tradition, the University of Miami religion scholar Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado writes at religiondispatches.org, that continues in Disney’s The Princess and the Frog:

I do not know where to begin my comments on how this film perpetuates offensive stereotypes about Voodoo. The loas are represented as evil spirits full of greed and anger. The masks themselves are vengeful, and end up killing Dr. Facilier when, in inevitable Disney fashion, his evil plan fails. This climax occurs, of course, in a graveyard, reaffirming the film’s association of Voodoo with death.

The African style of the masks connects their sinister nature with African religion. Dr. Facilier is often presented with his shadow, who moves independently and manipulates human actions. His big song, “Friends on the Other Side,” emphasizes his connection to the spirits. The “fairy godmother” is Mama Odie, a “good” Voodoo priestess who makes two brief appearances and is not in any way associated with spirits or masks. Both the good and evil sorcerers are associated with snakes. Two snakes wrap around Prince Naveen in order to turn him into a frog and Madame Odie has a snake as her mascot. The use of blood is prominent in the film. Dr. Facilier needs the prince’s blood and keeps it in a smaller African mask. This is hung around the servant’s neck in order for him to maintain the physical appearance of the prince.

The terms Voodoo, Hoodoo, and conjuring are used interchangeably throughout. In the end one is presented with an evil religion that will ultimately fail.

I did not expect critical race analysis or a sophisticated presentation of Voodoo when I walked into the theater. It is, after all, Disney. I did not expect such a blatant, racist, and misinformed presentation of Voodoo, however. The reduction of religion to magic is also reaffirmed in the curious absence of Catholicism in the film. My son is correct, Disney Voodoo is bad magic; it just doesn’t have anything to do with the authentic African Diaspora religion.

Read the rest of the piece at religiondispatches.org.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Brit Hume says reactions have been mixed since he stunned his fellow Fox News Sunday panelists when he recommended that Tiger Woods address his current woes by converting to Christianity (and suggesting in the process that Buddhism was inadequate to the task).

While Washington Post television writer Tom Shales recommended Tuesday that the Fox News personality apologize, Hume has declined to back down. He spoke at length on the subject – and more explicitly – Monday on the O’Reilly Factor.

O’Reilly began by asking whether Hume was proselytizing. Hume's response:

I don't think so. I mean, look, Tiger Woods is somebody I've always rooted for as a golfer and as a man. I greatly admired him over the years, and I always have said to people it was the content of his character that made him, beyond his extraordinary golf skills, so admirable.

Now we know that the content of his character was not what we thought it was. He is paying a frightful price for these revelations. I – my sense is that he has basically lost his family, and there's a lot of talk about the endorsements he's lost. But that pales, I suspect, in his mind, with what he's lost otherwise.

And my sense about Tiger is that he needs something that Christianity, especially provides and gives and offers. And that is redemption and forgiveness.

And I was – I was really meaning to say in those comments yesterday more about Christianity than I was about anything else. I mentioned the Buddhism only because his mother is a Buddhist and he has apparently said that he is a Buddhist. I'm not sure how seriously he practices that.

But I think – I think that the – Jesus Christ offers Tiger Woods something that Tiger Woods badly needs.

Hume described the feedback he has received since the segment aired.

Continue reading "Hume doubles down on Tiger comments" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 3:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (69)
        

Over at Religion Dispatches, Austin Dacey has an interesting rumination on the death of an Atheist.

At the funeral of Herbert “Sibanye” Crimes, Dacey, a fellow nonbeliever, felt compelled to point out that according to his friend’s beliefs, he had not gone on to “a better place.”

“The person I knew and admired, having had no hope for a life hereafter, devoted most of this life’s energies to making this world that better place,” Dacey writes. He goes on:

Believers in the beyond often ask unbelievers how they can accept the prospect that death is the end. Some even confess they are motivated to believe by their wish to vanquish the grave. It is true that the atheist has nowhere to go in death but to the “mankind making/Bird beast and flower/Fathering and all humbling darkness,” as Dylan Thomas puts it in his astonishing poem to end all eulogies, “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, By Fire, Of a Child in London.”

This non-destination makes every death an infinitely greater loss, and makes unmitigated grief the only appropriate response. In this, only the secular way of death fully honors the dead, where “better place” platitudes betray him. Thomas’ paradoxically titled “Refusal to Mourn” is in fact the refusal to mitigate grief, to paper over the universe’s forever-loss of singular person in guaze-promises of eternity: “I shall not murder/The mankind of her going with a grave truth.”

Yes, dying may be harder for the atheist. But what I cannot understand, and reject totally, is the further claim that the life stopped short of eternity is thereby robbed of sense or worth: If it all comes to an end, what’s it all for? The first thing to observe about this existential anxiety is that we can’t resolve it just by postulating an eternal afterlife. Consider the sorts of good things that might possibly await us in paradise: knowing and loving other persons (including God), being known and loved, apprehending truth, experiencing beauty (and, in the afterlife of some, fine food, drink, and other sensual delights). These goods worth wanting in the next world are goods that we already have in this one—things like love, knowledge, beauty, and pleasure (even praising an Almighty!). If a life there is worth having, then a life here is worth having. Every treasure laid up in heaven has been stolen from earth, and the joys of paradise are parasitic on the joys of the world.

Yes, having more joy is better than having less, all else being equal. And that is why death is a loss. It takes away the possibility of participating in any goods whatever. But that is not the same as showing them to have never been goods at all. When our participation in a good is cut short, we may wish it could go on, but the wishing is a sign that it was worth pursuing after all. The recognition that we missed out on some of its value is evidence that the value did not lose all of its sense.

Read the complete piece at religiondispatches.org.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (24)
        

Regular readers of this blog likely will have noticed that we have had little information here on the Amish, and even less on Verne Troyer. Which is why we are delighted this morning to address both circumstances in a single post.

It turns out that the actor, best known for playing Mini-Me in the Austin Powers movies, grew up around the Amish. Even considers himself ex-Amish, in a way.

“I used to be Amish,” Troyer tells something called Bang Showbiz. “I had to stay a lot with my grandparents or aunts and uncles who are Amish, so I was sort of partially Amish. When I go back there now I still get into that culture. I can drive a horse and buggy because they don't use cars. And, of course, there's no electricity. I respect them a lot. The Amish like to live a very plain lifestyle, the way they think God intended. It sort of brings you back to like 'Little House on the Prairie' days or something."

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The Council on American-Islamic Relations is objecting to new measures announced by the Transportation Security Administration over the weekend that focus on flights from 13 Muslim-majority countries.

The move follows the attempt by a Muslim from Nigeria to blow up an airliner from Amsterdam as it landed in Detroit on Christmas Day.

The 14 nations on the list include four designated by the State Department as state sponsors of terrorism – Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria – and 10 additional “countries of interest:” Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen. Travelers from these countries will face automatic pat-downs and baggage searches before they are allowed to board a flight to the United States.

In a release on Monday, CAIR said the list discriminates unfairly against Muslims.

“Under these new guidelines, almost every American Muslim who travels to see family or friends or goes on pilgrimage to Mecca will automatically be singled out for special security checks -– that’s profiling,” CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said in a statement. “While singling out travelers based on religion and national origin may make some people feel safer, it only serves to alienate and stigmatize Muslims and does nothing to improve airline security.”

“We all support effective security measures that will protect the travelling public from an attack such as that attempted on Christmas Day. But knee-jerk policies will not address this serious challenge to public safety.”

Awad suggested alternatives to what CAIR called “faith-based security checks:"

“First look at behavior, not at faith or skin color," he said. "Then spend what it takes to obtain more bomb-sniffing dogs, to install more sophisticated bomb-detection equipment and to train security personnel in identifying the behavior of real terror suspects.”

Continue reading "Muslim objections to new flight security measures" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 3:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (39)
        

Did President Barack Obama mislead Christians about his faith during the 2008 presidential campaign?

The question, posed by the Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney of the Christian Defense Coalition, has provoked an interesting exchange. In a release last week, Mahoney said Obama has not gone to church regularly as president, and his family has yet to find a church home in Washington.

"It is important to note that it was President Obama who made his regular church attendance and the importance of a local church community a major part of his campaign,” Mahoney says. “He stated in the national press that he, 'regularly attends church while on the campaign trail.'

"The issue is not whether a President has to attend church on a regular basis to be an effective President. They do not. The issue is one of integrity and honesty. To portray yourself as person of deep Christian faith and very involved in the life of the local church during the campaign and then abandon that position after you are elected reduces faith to a commodity and religion to a political tool.”

Over at Religion Dispatches, the Rev. Candace Chellew-Hodge questions whether the majority of Americans who don’t attend church weekly themselves are likely to care about Obama’s church attendance.

“Being in church doesn't make you any more a Christian than being in a garage makes you a car,” writes Chellew-Hodge, associate pastor of Grace United Church of Christ and founding editor of Whosever: An Online Magazine for GLBT Christians. “Most Americans, I would think, could tell the character of a person's faith by how they live, not where they spend Sunday morning. By that measure, I myself, have some questions about Obama's faith, especially as he backpedals on his promises to the gay and lesbian community, his penchant for bending to Republican pressure, and his commitment to continuing Bush's war in Afghanistan – but his church attendance isn't something I care about.

Continue reading "Did candidate Obama mislead on his Christian faith?" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (60)
        

The New York Times on Monday has an interesting story on the role that a visit by three American Evangelicals to Uganda last year played in legislation now before the parliament there to make homosexuality a capital crime.

Scott Lively, Caleb Lee Brundidge and Don Schmierer were presented as “experts on homosexuality” at a conference in March in the African country, where reporter Jeffrey Gettleman says they discussed “how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.”

Lively, Brundidge and Schmierer all have attempted to distance themselves from legislation the Gettleman writes has made Uganda “a far-flung front line in the American culture wars, with American groups on both sides, the Christian right and gay activists, pouring in support and money as they get involved in the broader debate over homosexuality in Africa.”

“I feel duped,” Schmierer tells Gettleman, and says that he had been invited to speak on “parenting skills” for families with gay children. He acknowledges telling audiences how homosexuals could be converted into heterosexuals, but he said he had no idea some Ugandans were contemplating the death penalty for homosexuality.

“That’s horrible, absolutely horrible,” he says. “Some of the nicest people I have ever met are gay people.”

As Gettleman notes, Lively and Brundidge have made similar comments. But he adds that the Ugandan organizers of the conference admit helping draft the bill, Lively has acknowledged meeting with Ugandan lawmakers to discuss it, and he has blogged that the campaign had been likened to “a nuclear bomb against the gay agenda in Uganda."

“I pray that this, and the predictions [of a ‘significant improvement in the moral climate of the nation’] are true,” he wrote.

Continue reading "Tracing Ugandan anti-gay bill to U.S. evangelicals" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (39)
        

Fox News analyst Brit Hume has some advice for Tiger Woods: Convert to Christianity.

One segment of Fox News Sunday involved predictions for 2010. When it came to sports, Hume focused on the golfer who has withdrawn from the sport in the wake of an infidelity scandal:

Tiger Woods will recover as a golfer. Whether he can recover as a person I think is a very open question, and it's a tragic situation with him. I think he's lost his family. It's not clear to me that – whether he'll be able to have a relationship with his children.

But the Tiger Woods that emerges once the news value dies out of this scandal – the extent to which he can recover seems to me depends on his faith. He's said to be a Buddhist. I don't think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith.

So my message to Tiger would be, “Tiger, turn your faith – turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world."

We haven’t seen Woods call himself a Buddhist, but he did tell Reuters in 2008 that his Buddhist mother had taught him to meditate.

“We also have a thing we do every year where we go to the temple together,” he said.

“In the Buddhist religion, you have to work for it yourself, internally, in order to achieve anuthing in life and set up the next life. It is all about what you do and you get out of it what you put into it.”

Continue reading "Hume to Tiger: Find Jesus" »

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The Associated Press has an interesting story on Taqwacore, a movement of Muslim and Hindu punk bands among the American children of Middle Eastern and South Asian immigrants.

Datelined Wayland, Mass, the story by Russell Contreras begins:

Artwork from the Punjab state of India decorates the Ray family home. A Johann Sebastian Bach statue sits on a piano. But in the basement — cluttered with wires, old concert fliers and drawings — 25-year-old Arjun Ray is fighting distortion from his electric guitar.

For this son of Indian immigrants, trained in classical violin and raised on traditional Punjab music, getting his three Pakistani-American bandmates in sync is the goal on this cold New England evening. Their band, The Kominas, is trying to record a punk rock version of the classic Bollywood song, "Choli Ke Peeche" (Behind the Blouse).

"Yeah," said Shahjehan Khan, 26, one of the band's guitarists, "there are a lot of contradictions going on here."

Deep in the woods of this colonial town boils a kind of revolutionary movement. From the basement of this middle-class home tucked in the woods west of Boston, The Kominas have helped launched a small, but growing, South Asian and Middle Eastern punk rock movement that is attracting children of Muslim and Hindu immigrants and drawing scorn from some traditional Muslims who say their political, hard-edged music is "haraam," or forbidden.

The movement, an anti-establishment subculture borne of religiously conservative communities, is the subject of two new films and a hot topic on social-networking sites.

The artists say they are just trying to reconcile issues such as life in America, women's rights and homosexuality with Islam and old East vs. West cultural clashes.

"This is one way to deal with my identity as an Arab-American," said Marwan Kamel, the 24-year-old lead guitarist in Chicago-based Al-Thawra. "With this music, I can express this confusion."

Continue reading "Muslim, Hindu punks spark musical movement" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

More religion news from Uganda: Twenty renegade Catholic priests who are either married or want to marry have broken from the mainstream Roman Catholic Church in the African nation and formed a new church where celibacy is not required, members told the Associated Press.

The Ugandan government said Thursday it was investigating the breakaway Catholic Apostolic National Church in Uganda and would ban it if found to be illegal, the AP reports. Vatican officials said the priests were now considered "outside" the Catholic Church and would likely be excommunicated.

The creation of the splinter church underscored the increasingly vexing problem of enforcing celibacy for Roman Catholic priests in Africa, which has the world's fastest-growing Catholic population but where there have been several cases of priests living openly with women and fathering children.

Earlier this year, the Vatican summoned African bishops to Rome for a three-week meeting on problems of the church in Africa, and celibacy was a key topic of discussion. The Vatican, however, has remained firm that priests must not marry, although there are exceptions for priests of the Eastern rite and for converts from Anglicanism.

Continue reading "Married priests form new church" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 2:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)
        

The Pray at the Pump Movement, which gained notice recently when it helped to organize a prayer vigil for Tiger Woods, now is urging President Barack Obama to visit conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh in the hospital.

Limbaugh was resting comfortably on Thursday after suffering chest pains while vacationing in Hawaii, according to a statement on the Web site of his radio program. Obama, Limbaugh’s principal target, is also vacationing in Hawaii.

The Pray at the Pump Movement, which describes Limbaugh as Obama’s “enemy,” is “strongly urging” a visit.

"It is the right and Christian thing to do," said Rockville resident Rocky Twyman, founder of the group that says its prayers and activism lowered gas prices in the country. “These actions would be unpopular in the Democratic Party, but may help to unite the country as we approach a New Year full of endless possibilities of peace."

“”Because the movement to lower gas was national in scope, we have prayer warriors in Hawaii that are ready to offer powerful prayers at a session where both men are present,” the group says in a release. “This small gesture could be the beginning of the start of a Glorious Revolution of Peace.”

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (63)
        

God created women to be companions to men, not to be slaves nor bosses, Pope Benedict XVI said during his weekly audience on Wednesday, according to Agence France-Presse.

"God created woman from Adam's rib and not, for instance, from his head, so she would not be dominating, or a slave, but his companion," Benedict said, quoting 12th-century theologian and Paris bishop Peter Lombard, according to AFP.

"Just as woman was created from Adam's rib while he was asleep, the Church sprung from the sacraments that spread from Christ's side as he was asleep on the cross, which . . . delivered us from suffering and wiped out our guilt."

Benedict had said Sunday that family life was "based on the marriage of a man and a woman," a foundation that should be "protected and promoted because it is of utter importance to humanity's presence and future."

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
        

In no particular order, as selected by the brain trust at In Good Faith world headquarters, and barring any unforeseen developments in the hours that remain. Comments?

Jewish Community Center opens on Saturdays, over objections of Orthodox community

Maryland priest becomes first lesbian Episcopal Bishop

Baltimore Hebrew University closes; reopens at Towson University

Muslims meet in Baltimore, denounce terror

Episcopal nuns join Catholic Church en masse

Catholic Diocese of Wilmington declares Bankruptcy

Death of Rabbi Mark Loeb

Towson Catholic High School closure surprises students, parents

Ecumenical Patriarch, head of Orthodox Christianity, visits Maryland

City Council passes first-in-nation regulations on faith-based crisis pregnancy centers

Atheists target Baltimore, ask: Are you good without God?

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Over the last two decades, the Catholic Church has been as rich a target as any for The Simpsons. Now, as the primetime cartoon celebrates its 20th anniversary, L'Osservatore Romano -- the Vatican newspaper -- is offering praise.

We rely on Catholic News Service to translate and paraphrase from the Italian:

Marking the 20th anniversary of the Simpsons, created by Matt Groening, the paper described the show as a “tender and irreverent, scandalous and ironic, boisterous and profound, philosophical - and sometimes even theological - nutty synthesis of pop culture and of the lukewarm and nihilistic American middle class.”

Of the myriad themes treated in the show’s almost 450 episodes, “one of the most important - and most serious” is that of God and the relationship between each person and God, done in a way that mirrors “the religious and spiritual confusion of our times,” it said.

“Simultaneously reflecting modern people’s indifference toward and great need for the sacred, Homer ... finds his ultimate refuge in God” - even if he doesn’t always get God’s name right, it said.

The paper cited one episode in which Homer sort of prays: “I’m usually not a religious man, but if you’re up there, save me, Superman.”

Misnaming God actually is just a momentary lapse on Homer’s part, the paper said, “because in reality the two know each other quite well.”

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (23)
        

It survived Hitler, Stalin, the decision to make Hebrew the official language of the State of Israel and the adoption of English by immigrants to the United States.

Now Yiddish, for 1,000 years the everyday language of European Jews, is facing another threat: budget cuts.

We have a story in Monday's Baltimore Sun about the dim future for Yiddish at the University of Maryland, one of the few schools in the nation that has consistently offered intruction in the Germanic tongue (Harvard, Columbia, Michigan and UCLA are others.)

The recent announcement that the Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies would be dropping it in the fall shocked area Yiddishists. The center now has cobbled together the money to pay its longtime instructor through the next academic year. But after that, director Hayim Lapin says, it is unlikely to continue funding a full-time faculty member dedicated to the language.

"This is not about Yiddish," says Lapin, whose parents spoke and taught the language. "What this is about is responding to the budget crisis and actually cutting back on just about all of our visiting faculty and programming, So we have less Bible than we had. We have less history than we had. We have less or no Yiddish."

Professor Miriam Isaacs, who has taught elementary and intermediate Yiddish at Maryland for 15 years, worries about a future without the language.

"It's not just at Maryland that I'm concerned," says Isaacs, born in postwar Germany, where Yiddish was her first language.

"We're at a critical point in that the generation of Holocaust survivors, my parents, they're not around anymore," she says. "Or if they're around, they can't do a lot of translating. So if nobody learns it, you know, the Holocaust Museum archive is full of Yiddish materials. The University of Maryland has been acquiring Yiddish books galore. Who is going to read them? Who is going to be able to have access to them?"

Read the story at baltimoresun.com.

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In the months since we started In Good Faith, we've attracted readers and commenters from all over the world. Ties to the Baltimore area will be helpful in spotting some familiar faces in the video above (the list appears at the end).

I wanted to take a moment to say a sincere thank you to all who have stopped by, and particularly to those who have joined in the spirited debate taking shape on these pages. During this holiday season, we wish the very best to everyone of every faith, and no faith at all.

I expect to be posting only lightly over the next few days as I take time off to spend with my family. As my father would say: Talk amongst yourselves.

Best,
Matt

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

A South Carolina priest missed the $1 million top prize in a poker tournament to be televised this weekend but he won $100,000 for his church and he hopes his participation gives viewers a "fun twist" on their perceptions of the priesthood, the Associated Press reports.

The Rev. Andrew Trapp told the AP he entered the PokerStars.net Million Dollar Challenge in hopes of putting St. Michael Catholic Church "super close" to its $5.5 million fundraising goal to build a new facility. He also wanted to strike a public relations blow for priests.

"At the very least, even if I didn't win any prize money, I was hoping it would help people to see that priests can have fun and be normal people and hopefully get a little bit of a fun twist on the image of the priesthood," the assistant pastor said Tuesday.

The top prize went to retired New York Police detective Mike Kosowski. But Trapp won $100,000, untaxed, in a semifinal round in October for the coastal church's building fund, which has amassed $4 million after four years of fundraising.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 3:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

A risqué billboard outside a progressive Anglican Church is causing outrage in New Zealand, The Times of London reports.

The advertisement shows an apparently post-coital Mary and Joseph in bed, Mary looking disappointed and Joseph looking dejected. The copy reads: "Poor Joseph. God was a hard act to follow."

The vicar of Auckland's St. Matthew-in-the-City Church tells The Times that the image was intended to challenge literal interpretations of the Bible.

“The idea was to lampoon and ridicule the idea of a male God in the sky who somehow impregnated Mary,” Archdeacon Glynn Cardy says. “We would question the virgin birth in any literal sense. We would question the maleness of God in any literal sense.”

The Roman Catholic diocese of Auckland is not amused. Spokeswoman Lyndsay Freer describes the image as disrespectful, offensive, and also inaccurate.

“Our Christian tradition of 2,000 years is that Mary remains a virgin,” she tells The Times.

Read the story at timesonline.co.uk.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)
        

Congregation Beth Simchat Torah of New York, which bills itself as the world's largest synagogue for people of all sexual orientations and gender identities, announced on Tuesday that its Senior Rabbi, Sharon Kleinbaum, had accepted an invitation from President and Mrs. Obama to attend the White House Hanukkah reception on Wednesday.

"I am delighted to represent the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and queer communities at the White House in celebrating this holiday of freedom and liberation with President and Mrs. Obama,” Kleinbaum said in a statement. "The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community knows what it is to fight for equality and freedom and we are looking to President Obama to exercise leadership in this struggle. I am honored to be included and look forward to inviting the President and Mrs. Obama to CBST.”

In a release, Congregation Beth Simchat Torah said it is “committed to the idea that gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Jews are wholly legitimate members of the Jewish people, are equally legitimate members of civil society, and have a unique and essential contribution to make to the life of Judaism and society. It is this commitment to social justice and gender equality that has also attracted straight and even non-Jewish adults to our community.”

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
        

Lawyers for the Roman Catholic Church have urged a court in Malaysia to let Christians use "Allah" as a translation for God and overturn a government ban that has become a symbol of religious grievances in the Muslim-majority nation, the Associated Press is reporting.

The High Court began hearing legal arguments Monday in the dispute, which began in late 2007 after the government blocked non-Muslims from translating God as "Allah" in their literature on the grounds that it would confuse Muslims.

Authorities have insisted that the name should be used exclusively by Muslims. The ban mainly affects the Malay-language edition of the Catholic Church's main publication in Malaysia, The Herald, which is read mostly by indigenous tribes who converted to Christianity decades ago.

"Our position has been made clear to the court," The Herald's editor, the Rev. Lawrence Andrew, told the AP. "The main thing is we've been using this word ... for a long time, for centuries."

But in recent years, authorities have seized some Malay-language Bibles that used "Allah."
We are reminded of reports a couple of years ago that a Catholic bishop in the Netherlands wanted Dutch Catholics to call God “Allah.”

Tiny Muskens, then the bishop of Breda, told a Dutch television station that using the name in church, as is common in many Muslim countries, would eventually promote rapprochement between Islam and Christianity.

"Someone like me has prayed to Allah yang maha kuasa [Almighty God] for eight years in Indonesia and other priests for 20 or 30 years,” he said. “In the heart of the Eucharist, God is called Allah over there, so why can't we start doing that together?"

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Baltimore's Mircale Temple Seventh-day Adventist Church and the Pray at the Pump Movement, which organized "vigils of hope" last summer, now are turning their attention to Tiger Woods.

And President Barack Obama, whom they identify as "also vulnerable to womanizing."

And also NFL quarterback Michael Vick; Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, former Gov. Eliott Spitzer of New York; District of Columbia Councilman and former Mayor Marion Barry; movie star Mel Gibson and former Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho.

The church and the movement have scheduled an "URGENT CHRISTMAS PRAYER VIGIL" for Woods and the rest from 7:30 to 9 p.m. Wednesday at the Temple Seventh-day Adventist Church, at 100 South Rock Glen Road. The press release follows.

BALTIMORE HOLDS URGENT CHRISTMAS PRAYER VIGIL FOR TIGER WOODS

Baltimorians call for the world and especially the media to turn to the Bible and follow its principles of love as they deal with Tiger Woods sex scandal

Public and especially concerned Godly golfers are urged to stop by and pray for Tiger

Continue reading "Baltimore church to pray for Woods, Obama" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (15)
        

Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien, spiritual leader of the Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore, Bishop Mitchell T. Rozanski, the vicar for Hispanics, and the Spanish-speaking priests of the archdiocese will celebrate a Mass for Our Lady of Guadalupe at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Baltimore Basilica.

Catholics believe Mary appeared to an Indian peasant, Juan Diego, in 1531 on a hill near what is now Mexico City. Images of Our Lady of Guadalupe our popular throughout Latin America.
A vehicle procession begins at 11 at Our Lady of Pompei Church, 229 S. Conkling St. and will follow the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe through the streets of Baltimore and ending at the Basilica. At 1 p.m., children carrying flowers and wearing traditional costumes that reflect the different countries and cultures represented in Baltimore’s Hispanic community will follow the image into the Basilica.

Five hundred years after a Spanish priest celebrated the first Catholic Mass in North America at St. Augustine, Fla., Latinos are expected to become a majority in the U.S. Catholic Church. Already more than 50 percent of Catholics under 25 are Hispanic, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. About 70 percent of the 47 million Latinos in the United States are Catholic.

Eighteen parishes in the Archdiocese of Baltimore offer Masses in Spanish.

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The Rev. Jason Poling is the Pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

I wouldn’t describe myself as a Disney fan, in much the same way that I wouldn’t describe Bob Ehrlich as a Martin O’Malley fan. But I was deeply impressed by The Princess and the Frog.

It wasn’t the animation, though having been exposed to far too many of Disney’s “dreck-to-video” offerings it was a pleasure to see an animated film produced with such care. Nor was it the story, with its predictable Disney-esque plotlines. It wasn’t even the brilliant minor comic figures, though they were outstanding: one of the virtues of animation is that characters may be literally overdrawn, achieving comic effect that would be tiresome in a formulaic live-action movie. (So that I don’t spoil anything for folks who haven’t seen the movie, let’s just say that the show was stolen by a firefly named Ray who could have been the love child of Sir Mix-A-Lot, Thomas Edison and the Cavity Creeps.)

No, I was most impressed by the quality of the film that will no doubt emerge as the most controversial: the spiritual. And I don’t mean spiritual in the “believe in yourself” sense that pervades so much of the Disney cosmology; this film features real-live demonic activity and otherworldly malevolence that deserves a G rating as much as the original (un-Victorianized) Grimm tales do.

The villain in The Princess and the Frog is, like every Disney villain, rotten to the core: egotistical, manipulative, deceitful and power-hungry. Yet while Dr. Facilier exhibits enough nastiness to frighten Disney’s core audience, what strikes real terror into the hearts of men is his shadow side …literally. We see on the screen not merely Dr. Facilier but what my Jewish friends would call his yetzer hara, the evil essence of his soul, portrayed as a shadow that manifests the true intentions behind his sneering grin.

Photo courtesy of Disney

Continue reading "Jason Poling: The princess, the frog and the demonic" »

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Categories: Christianity, Culture, Evangelicalsm, Guest Posts, Jason Poling
        

Author Robert Greene, whose books on power and strategy have found an audience in the hip hop community, will be a featured guest at 9:15 a.m. Sunday at Bethel AME Church at 1300 Druid Hills Ave., Baltimore.

Greene's works include "The Art of Seduction," "The 33 Strategies of War," and "The 48 Laws of Power." His latest book, "The 50th Law," co-written with the rapper 50 Cent, is a favorite of the Rev. Dr. Frank M. Reid III, senior pastor at Bethel, who has been passing it out to church members and friends.

Greene will speak to the congregation and sign copies of the book.

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Nearly half of all Americans say they have had a religious or mystical experience, according to a new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, and significant minorities say they have seen a ghost or communed with the dead.

The percentages of Christians reporting such experiences, or holding such New Age or Eastern beliefs as earthly reincarnation, astrology and the presence of spiritual energy in objects such as trees, mountains or crystals is only slightly lower than those of the public in general.

Such mixing and matching of beliefs is characteristic among Americans, according to Pew.

"The religious beliefs and practices of Americans do not fit neatly into conventional categories," the forum reports. "Many say they attend worship services of more than one faith or denomination – even when they are not traveling or going to special events like weddings and funerals."

Twenty-nine percent of Americans say they have been in touch with the dead, 18 percent report having seen or been in the presence of a ghost and 15 percent say they have consulted a psychic or fortune teller, according to the survey of 4,013 adults conducted in August in English and Spanish. The percentages of Christians reporting such experiences were the same or only slightly lower than those among Americans in general.

Read the full report at pewforum.org.

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Categories: Christianity, Culture, New Age
        

We sat down on Tuesday with the Rev. Canon Mary D. Glasspool, who on Saturday became the first openly lesbian Episcopal priest elected a bishop in the Anglican Communion.

Following is a transcript of our conversation, which started with a question about Williams' warning.

With respect to the Archbishop of Canterbury, he has a personal relationship with the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, and I leave that in their realm. Certainly, I’m not ignorant of issues in the culture and the church, so yes, I can say I anticipated some kind of reaction. You never know what kind of reaction.

I want to be quick to say that personally, I have received hundreds, maybe a thousand at this point, and one negative e-mail among all of them. I’ve received e-mails from all over the world – from an 18-year-old gay man in Auckland, New Zealand, who said how proud and thrilled he was for the church. Episcopalians in the Diocese of Dallas, which is one of our more conservative dioceses, and a married couple, lay people, who wrote and sent their congratulations. A Lesbian couple who are Roman Catholic in England who said they were having such difficulty in their own church and they were so proud that the Episcopal Church was taking leadership in this way, demonstrating not only the reality of who we already are, but the inclusiveness of Jesus’ love for all people.

On the role in which she now finds herself:

Well, it’s very humbling, because first of all, I mean, here’s one of the bylines that was said to me by one of my mentors in this diocese: ‘Always remember you’re a celebrant and not a celebrity.’ And what that means is I’m a servant of God in Christ. And as a servant, I’m here to serve God’s people. As a bishop, to be a chief shepherd of the people. And I never want to lose that centeredness in the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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Ed Buckner is president of American Atheists, Inc.

Claims abound that both Thanksgiving and Christmas are Christian in origin, but in fact both are grounded in non-Christian ideas and rituals that the churches have co-opted for their own purposes.

CHRISTMAS. Christianity is not the first, nor even the tenth religion to co-opt the Winter Solstice as their own holiday. For example, the Pagan festival of Yule (as in 'Yuletide') was a celebrated winter event centuries before Jesus' alleged birth. Indeed, nearly every tradition currently associated with Christmas has non-Christian roots. As an educational organization, American Atheists urges all Christians to ask their ministers why December 25 was chosen to celebrate Jesus' birth (enjoy the hemming and hawing).

WINTER SOLSTICE, The celestial event that started it all has been measured and celebrated since man first looked up. The solstice affects all life on earth, and the human traditions surrounding it are rich and plentiful. While Christmas is a Christian holiday, the Solstice is the real 'reason for the season', and it belongs to everyone.

A small, well-funded, and vocal minority of Christians are unhappy with the fact that their holiday has not totally eclipsed all others. They want all other celebrations squashed out, in an effort to make the season uniquely Christian, and organize protests and boycotts against any company which promotes an all-encompassing tolerant attitude ("Happy Holidays" vs "Merry Christmas"). American Atheists acknowledges that such views are only shared by an ignorant and bigoted minority of Christians, but at the same time we look to the more tolerant Christians to quell this attitude. As it is with Islam, the health and growth of Christianity depends on those within the church.

Atheists and others who demand strict separation of church and state seek only to prevent government agents from deciding, for anyone, whether or how to celebrate the season. The multitude of seasonal celebrations underscores the importance of the government's neutrality.

Atheists enjoy parties, celebrations, presents, and life. To those who celebrate America's diversity, we extend our heartfelt wishes for a wonderful season. To those who selfishly try to claim the whole season as their own, we wish a lousy one.

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The Archbishop of Canterbury has issued a sharp rebuke of the election Saturday of Marylander Mary D. Glasspool as the first openly lesbian bishop in the worldwide Anglican communion.

“The election of Mary Glasspool by the Diocese of Los Angeles as suffragan bishop elect raises very serious questions not just for the Episcopal Church and its place in the Anglican Communion, but for the Communion as a whole,” Rowan Williams, head of the Protestant denomination, said in a statement released Sunday.

“The process of selection however is only part complete. The election has to be confirmed, or could be rejected, by diocesan bishops and diocesan standing committees. That decision will have very important implications.

“The bishops of the Communion have collectively acknowledged that a period of gracious restraint in respect of actions which are contrary to the mind of the Communion is necessary if our bonds of mutual affection are to hold.”

Glasspool, canon to the bishops of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, was elected bishop suffragan of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles on Saturday. The Annapolis resident is to be installed in May, pending the consent of the bishops and standing committees of the 108 other Episcopal dioceses of the United States.

In a release, Bishop of Los Angeles J. Jon Bruno said the denial of consent “would be a violation of the canons of this church. At our last General Convention, we said we are nondiscriminatory.”

Bruno, whom Glasspool would assist as bishop suffragan, acknowledged rumors of a concerted effort not to give consent over her sexuality. Glasspool has been in a committed relationship with her partner for two decades.

"I would remind the Episcopal church and the House of Bishops they need to be conscientious about respecting the canons of the church and the baptismal covenant to respect the dignity of every human being,” Bruno said. “To not consent in this country out of fear of the reaction elsewhere in the Anglican Communion is to capitulate to titular heads."

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The Rev. Canon Mary D. Glasspool, canon to the bishops of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, was elected bishop suffragan of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles on Saturday.

The Annapolis resident is the first openly lesbian priest to be elected a bishop in the Episcopal Church, and is the first openly gay bishop chosen since the 2003 election of V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire brought a longstanding divide over homosexuality within the church out into the open.

“I’m very excited about the future of the whole Episcopal Church, and I see the Diocese of Los Angeles leading the way into that future,” Glasspool, 55, told delegates at the diocese’s annual convention. “Thanks be to our loving, surprising God. I look forward, in the coming months, to getting to know you all better, as together we build up the Body of Christ for the world.”

Ordained in 1981, Glasspool served in parishes in Philadelphia and Boston and St. Margaret’s in Annapolis before becoming canon to the bishops in 2001, according to the release. She has served on the diocese’s Standing Committee, the board of Episcopal Community Services of Maryland, and has been elected four times to head the deputation to General Convention.

She is one of two priests elected bishops suffragan for Los Angeles on Saturday. As suffragans, they are to assist the Right Rev. J. Jon Bruno, Bishop of Los Angeles.

The Right Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton, bishop of Maryland, offered congratulations.

“This is a great day in the life of the Episcopal Church,” he said in a statement. “I have often said that the staff of the Diocese of Maryland is one of the finest in the Church. When one of its members is called to other important positions in the church, then all of us are honored. As canon to the bishops since 2001, Mary has distinguished herself as a faithful and gifted priest who is well prepared to assume the mantle of leadership incumbent upon a bishop.”

Glasspool’s election comes months after the Episcopal General Convention, the principal governing body of the church in the United States, voted to declare homosexuals eligible for any ordained ministry and began writing prayers to bless gay unions.

A smaller group has broken away to form the Anglican Church of North America, a conservative body seeking separate recognition within the worldwide Anglican Communion. The Vatican, meanwhile, has announced plans to make it easier for disaffected conservative Anglicans to join the Catholic Church.

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Dr. Chris A. Brammer is pastor of Hampstead Baptist Church.

In the 1960’s there was a young school boy who refused to read the Bible in a classroom in a Baltimore public school. Rather than taking his turn to read the Bible, he threw the Bible out the window. Later in life, this self-proclaimed atheist had a change of mind and a change of heart. We had him speak at our church in 1993 to an overflow crowd.

Having personal knowledge of this man’s experience, I am not alarmed at the “new” atheism that is promoted by men such as Victor Stenger in his book, "The New Atheism," or Christopher Hitchens in "God Is Not Great." However, I am concerned about the promotion as to how it will damage young people who are seriously looking for answers and direction regarding life and eternity.

If the Baltimore Coalition of Reason wishes to have an affirmative answer to their question they will need to rephrase their thesis. Their question that is literally put before us is, “Are you good without God? Millions are.”

I would first need to ask, does anyone really know a million people, let alone know them all well enough to know that they are good people? We are not saying that they don’t do good things, but are they good people without God? Many good things have been done for selfish, self-serving, self-centered motives. These motives would certainly discredit any person’s good deeds from contributing to a reputation of being a good person; actually this person could be considered wicked -- for the religious or non-religious thinking person.

The question they should ask is, “Can you be good without believing in God?” The answer to that is an obvious yes. However, that does not mean that a person is good without God. This simply states that the good person doesn’t believe in God.

Continue reading "Guest post: Goodness without God?" »

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A Roman Catholic cardinal has drawn on an unusual rebuke from the Vatican for saying that homosexuality is “an insult to God” and “transsexuals and homosexuals will never enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, the retired head of the Vatican’s Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers, made the comments Wednesday to a conservative Web site, the British newspaper The Telegraph reports.

“People are not born homosexual, they become homosexual, for different reasons: education issues or because they did not develop their own identity during adolescence.

“Perhaps they aren’t guilty but by acting against the dignity of the body they will certainly not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

The comments prompted a response from Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi, who said the Web site to which Lozano Barragan spoke should not be considered an authority on Catholic thinking “on complex and delicate issues such as homosexuality.”

Current Catholic teaching acknowledges that some people have innate homosexual tendencies but that homosexual acts are “disordered.”

The Telegraph also quotes a reaction from the Italian rights group Arcigay.

“It’s true, we won’t ever get into your heaven, which is a murky and unjust place.”

Read the story at telegraph.uk.co.

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We posted on Tuesday about the launch of the Baltimore Coalition of Reason, a group of atheists, agnostics and others that is introducing itself to the area this week with a billboard campaign aimed at reaching out to nonbelievers while telling the religious among us that it's possible to be good without God.

Now there's a full story in Thursday's paper, an interesting part of which is the reaction among local religious leaders. We reached out to several in the course of reporting, and heard back from two.

"Of course we know that someone can be good without believing in God," said the Right Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton, the Episcopal bishop of Maryland. "We don't believe in God in order to be good. We believe in God in order to connect with the holy within us, which helps us to love everyone in the world, even those who don't believe in God, even those who don't see the point of religion, even those who would harm us. As is it says in our Scriptures, 'God is love.' "

The Rev. Danny O'Brien, senior pastor of Grace Fellowship Church in Timonium, said the local campaign "underscores the notion that we have all been created with a yearning to be part of something bigger, something noble.

"As a follower of Christ, I would love for everyone to not only experience this yearning but to also know the creator who imbued us with it," O'Brien said. "But, being part of a free, pluralistic society is living in community with people who have different faith commitments or no faith commitment at all and to work together to find common ground in working toward the common good."

Read the story at baltimoresun.com.

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Ted Haggard is preaching again – and some of his old friends are not happy about it.

The former head of the National Association of Evangelicals and founder of the influential New Life Church, whose ministry fell apart amid allegations brought by a male prostitute of gay sex and drug use, has been holding prayer meetings in a family barn.

As Wendy Norris writes in a critical piece over at Religion Dispatches, several former peers have voiced their displeasure:

H.B. London, the dour head of pastoral ministries at Focus on the Family, denounced the prayer services in the press, in a widely-circulated email, and on his blog. London reportedly told the Religious News Service of Haggard’s plans to hold prayer services, “When you think of the ethics of that, it, to me, just defies explanation.” Not to be left out of the media feeding frenzy, other high-profile pastors in the conservative evangelical Christian community quickly piled on.

C. Peter Wagner, who co-founded the World Prayer Center with Haggard and is well known for the exorcism-obsessed New Apostolic Reformation movement, told the Colorado Springs Gazette that Haggard is deceiving himself and that he’s not fit to preach. “He must have someone confirm him in the body of Christ” before he can preach again, Wagner said.

Former Foursquare pastor Jack Hayford, another NAR bigwig and member of Haggard’s now-disbanded restoration team, and Gary Black of Rock the Nation youth ministry echoed the tightly-scripted public excoriations about the incomplete apostolic protocol. Said Black, “I would be shocked to think he’s ready to lead a church.”

“I don’t believe I will ever be forgiven by the modern day Pharisees,” Haggard tells Norris. “Redemption can never come to the sinner. I’m going on with my faith walk and they despise me because of it.”

Read the story at religiondispatches.org.

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A coalition of atheists and agnostics is hoping to get Baltimoreans talking with a billboard campaign that poses the question: “Are you good without God?”

The effort, which includes signage on I-895, I-95 and near M&T Bank Stadium, is part of a campaign that has hit states blue (New York, California, Massachusetts), red (Texas, South Carolina) and purple (Virginia).

"The point of our national billboard campaign is to reach out to the millions of humanists, atheists and agnostics living in the United States," Fred Edwords, national director of the United Coalition of Reason, said in a statement. "Nontheists sometimes don't realize there's a community out there for them because they're inundated with religious messages at every turn. So we hope this will serve as a beacon and let them know they aren't alone."

An additional goal is promoting understanding of non-theistic ethics, Baltimore Coalition of Reason coordinator Emil Volcheck said. The complete text of the billboards read: “Are you good without God? Millions are.”

"It is often assumed that one can't be moral without belief in a deity," Volcheck said in a statement. "In actual fact, we humanists, freethinkers, agnostics and atheists make moral issues and social activism primary. Now we'd like others to be aware of that."

The billboards are located on Russell Street in front of M&T Bank Stadium, on I-895 South after Childs Street, on I-95 North after the Ft. McHenry Tunnel and I-95 S before Caton Avenue.

The campaign coincides with the release of "Good without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe," by Greg Epstein, the Humanist chaplain at Harvard University. Epstein is scheduled to speak at 4 p.m. Sunday at the First Unitarian Church at 1 W. Franklin St. A reception and book signing begins at 3 p.m.; the event is free and open to the public.

Photo courtesy of Baltimore COR

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Categories: Atheism, Culture, Events
        

Beliefnet.com is asking readers to identify the Most Inspiring Person of the Year for 2009.

As the Web site puts it: The Most Inspiring Person of the Year award is bestowed upon someone who has risen above expectations. He or she may have demonstrated courage, forgiveness, self-sacrifice or love under difficult and challenging circumstances – or simply spread life-affirming joy in a creative and uplifting way.”

The 10 finalists include actor and embryonic stem cell research advocate Michael J. Fox, USAir pilot Chesley Sullenberger, the couple who turned the YouTube popularity of their wedding dance into a fundraising tool to combat domestic violence, the Iranian protesters who took to the streets after the disputed reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and a slew of folks who did good in their communities.

Readers may vote once daily. More details are available at Beliefnet.com.

Last year’s honoree was the late Carnegie Mellon Prof. Randy Pausch, whose inspirational final lecture, which he delivered while suffering from terminal cancer, became a bestselling book. Reocognized in previous years were the slain Virginia Tech Prof. Liviu Librescu, who held off gunman Sieung-Hui Cho long enough to allow all but one of his students to escape to safety, and the Amish Community of Nickel Mines, Pa., for what BeliefNet.com called “their remarkable spirit of forgiveness” following the murder of five young girls.

“It’s simply breathtaking how one true act of selflessness can inspire and encourage an entire nation—sometimes even the world—in empowering and life-affirming ways,” Michael Kress, Beliefnet’s managing editor, said in a statement. “While this year has been a tough one for many, each of 10 our nominees have revealed an amazing inner spirit and sense of caring and concern for others. Their selfless actions remind us of the strength and resilience of the human spirit, and inspire each of us to do better, be better and live life fully.”

A listing and descriptions (from BeliefNet.com) of this year’s nominees, after the jump.

Continue reading "Vote for most inspirational of 2009" »

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A new Web site is soliciting information about gay priests in the Archdiocese of Washington, it says, to use in a campaign to counter church activism against same-sex marriage.

“This site was created to provide you with the opportunity to save LGBT youth from the hypocrisy of priests in the Archdiocese of Washington who are socially, romantically or sexually active gay men, yet stand silent while Archbishop [Donald] Wuerl and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops increase their dogmatic war against gay families,” reads an introductory passage at ChurchOuting.org. “If you have information that a priest in the Archdiocese is gay (or having a heterosexual affair) please share your story.”

The effort, organized by liberal netroots pioneer Phil Attey, follows the pastoral letter approved by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops last week defining marriage as the union of a man and woman, and comments by Wuerl that legislation in the District of Columbia that would recognize same-sex marriage could jeopardize the social services that the archdiocese currently provides to residents of the city.

“The Church hierarchy has crossed the line in diverting the mission of the church from helping the poor and caring for the sick to waging political campaigns to strip LGBT citizens of civil rights protections,” Attey said in a statement. “We can no longer remain silent while this happens. Nor can our parish priests.”

A spokeswoman for the archdiocese declined to comment. Not so Bill Donohue, who said his Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights “is prepared to assist any priest in the Archdiocese of Washington who is the victim of harassment, intimidation or stalking.

“Whatever resources the priest needs, we will see to it that he is served,” Donohue said in a statement. “If radical gay activists want a showdown with the Catholic League, we will not disappoint them.”

The name ChurchOutting.org notwithstanding, the site says its goal “is not to force Catholic priests out of the closet against their will,” but rather “to aggregate reports on every gay priest in the Archdiocese, so that we can work with them, one on one, helping them stand up to the … church hierarchy's stand on this important issue.”

The site includes links that allow users to submit information.

Continue reading "Web site targeting 'hypocritical' gay priests" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (42)
Categories: Catholicism, Church and State, Culture, Politics
        

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has become the latest Christian denomination to spawn a breakaway church over differing interpretations of homosexuality, the Associated Press is reporting.

Leaders of Lutheran CORE, which opposed the decision of the nation's largest Lutheran denomination in August to welcome gay clergy, told reporters on Wednesday that they planned form an alternate Lutheran church body.

Lutheran CORE members believe the Bible condemns homosexuality. Other Lutherans, and Christians in other denonimations, have called for what some describe as a more inclusive reading of scripture.

Lutheran CORE leaders said they had heard from like-minded Lutherans and congregations from around the country, the AP reports. They said they didn't know how many ELCA congregations might join the new denomination, which they hope to start by August 2010.

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The American public remains concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism in the United States and around the world, but a survey taken shortly after the shootings at Fort Hood shows only a modest increase in these concerns since 2007, according to the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Fifty-two percent of Americans say they are "very concerned" about the possible rise of Islamic extremism in the United States, according to a Pew survey of 1,003 adults conducted from Nov. 12 through 15.

That's up from 46 percent in April 2007. Meanwhile, the percentage who say they are "somewhat concerned" fell by a similar amount, from 32 percent in 2007 to 27 percent this month.

Forty-nine percent of Americans say they are "very concerned" about the possible rise of Islamic extremism around the world, up from 48 percent in 2007. The number who say they are "somewhat concerned" fell 33 pecent to 29 percent.

The survey began one week after the Nov. 5 shootings that left 13 dead an 30 wounded. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a Muslim of Palestinian heritage who is said to have been critical of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been charged with premeditated murder in the attacks.

Read the report at pewforum.org.

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Could the U.S. bishops rescind the right of the University of Notre Dame to call itself Catholic?

Months after the nation's flagship Catholic university ignited a firestorm within church circles by inviting President Barack Obama to give a commencement speech and receive in honorary degree, the nation's Catholic bishops met behind closed doors today to discuss increasing oversight of the nation's Catholic colleges and universities.

Obama supports abortion rights; the church opposes abortion. The bishops are holding their fall general assembly this week at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront.

Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, told the Associated Press that he had formed a task force charged with reviewing relations between the bishops and the nation's more than 200 Catholic colleges and universities.

In most cases, the bishops excercise no formal authority over the institutions, which, with few exceptions, operate independently of their local dioceses.

"Can bishops just pull the plug on us? It's not that simple," Richard Yanikoski, president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, told the AP.

"If those relationships — which don't mean control, they mean relationship — are now weakened, then we have to think of ways to enter discussion in order to strengthen them, and to redefine perhaps what are the criteria for a university or any other organization to consider itself Catholic," George told the AP.

Read the Associated Press story.

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The nation's Catholic bishops had a busy day Tuesday, approving a pastoral letter on marriage, a document on reproductive technologies and a revision to an existing document on healthcare for the dying and chronically ill.

The bishops are holding their fall general assembly at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront.

"Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan" breaks no new ground, but bishops said it would provide a foundation for the church’s campaign to promote marriage as the union of one man and one woman going forward.

"Life-Giving Love in an Age of Technology" reiterates Catholic teaching against in vitro fertilization, egg, sperm and embryo donation, surrogates and cloning. For infertile couples, the church counsels hormonal treatment and other medications, surgery to repair reproductive organs, and other means.

The revision to “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services” underscores what the church says is the moral obligation to provide nutrition and hydration to patients in a persistent vegetative state.

The bishops also approved new English translations of the Roman Missal.

Read more at baltimoresun.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Well, this much seems to be clear: The Mayan Long Count Calendar does conclude a 5,125-year Great Cycle on or about the Winter Solstice in 2012. Whether that means the end is nigh is another question.

With the release of the film 2012, the doomsday chatter that has long festered on the Internet and late-night talk radio has come out into the open. While details vary, the general gist is that the ancient Maya predicted some sort of cataclysm on 12/21/12, with speculation now coalescing around the appearance of a rogue planet that could disrupt the earth's rotation, orbit and/or magnetic poles.

Scientists say that a planet approaching Earth could, indeed, wreak havoc. But if one were on its way, we'd have seen it by now.

The best comment I heard while reporting a story on the phenomenon for Friday's newspaper came from Ben Radford, managing editor of the Skeptical Inquirer: "I've got a calendar on my wall that ends on Dec. 31. I'm not particularly worried that there isn't going to be another one after it."

The comparison is apt, according to an anthropologist who studies the ancient peoples of Mesoamerica.

Continue reading "The end of the world as we know it?" »

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We had a story in the newspaper Thursday about a project to digitze the Islamic manuscript collection at the Walters Art Museum and upload it to the World Wide Web, where documents dating back to the ninth century may be seen free of charge by anyone with an Internet connection.

Art historians at the Smithsonian and the British Museum praised the project, which they say puts the Walters at the forefront of a movement to increase online access to such holdings. they are hoping for an explosion in scholarship, as professionals, amateurs and students pore over the richly illuminated Qurans and lavishly illustrated volumes of poetry and history.

Read the story at baltimoresun.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 8:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

We have been thinking of reading “Life After Death: The Evidence,” the new book by conservative pundit-turned-Christian apologist Dinesh D’Souza, which hit our desk last week. Now we come across Jerry Adler’s heartbreaking essay in the current issue of Newsweek, which may be summed up as: Don’t bother.

Adler opens with a scene from last spring, when he opened the front door of his Brooklyn home to find an Eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly on the steps. It was three months after the death of his son.

The butterfly, with its otherworldly beauty and silence, is, of course, a common metaphor for the soul. Its emergence from entombment as a chrysalis may have inspired ideas about human resurrection. In the newsletter of the Compassionate Friends, a support group for bereaved parents, the sudden appearance of butterflies (and birds, cloud formations, and particular songs on the radio) is sometimes cited as evidence of communication from beyond the grave. So let me be clear about where I stand: not only do I not believe it, but I can't understand why anyone would take comfort from it. I would hate to think of Max, with his fierce intelligence and tenacity, reduced to sending mute signals by way of insects.

Adler groups D’Souza’s book with mathematician David Berlinski's "The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions," physicist Frank J. Tripler's "The Physics of Christianity," and National Institutes of Health Director Francis S. Collins' "The Language of God" as constituting an attempt by believeers to confront the new atherism of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens et al "on its own intellectual turf, without benefit of scripture or revelation."

In the case of D'Souza, at least, Adler is skeptical of the result.

The "evidence," of necessity, is indirect: D'Souza doesn't claim to have communicated with anyone who has died, and he doesn't expect to. Instead, he looks to the human heart, and finds therein a universal moral code underlying acts of self-sacrifice and charity that appear to run counter to the Darwinian imperative to outcompete thy neighbor. This is a time-honored argument for the existence of a God who created human beings in his image and imbued them with a moral sense, as well as the free will to follow, or ignore, it. Berlinski uses the argument in his book, and Collins credits it with turning him from atheism to evangelical Christianity. (D'Souza acknowledges that the prominent atheist Richard Dawkins has offered an evolutionary explanation for human goodness, but he doesn't buy it.) In a Jesuitical display that does credit to his reputation as "an Indian William F. Buckley Jr.," D'Souza turns to his advantage one of the atheists' favorite arguments, God's apparent tolerance for human suffering. Precisely because evil so often goes unpunished in this world, he asserts, the moral code must reflect another reality, in which souls are judged, punished, or rewarded after death. "The postulate of an afterlife enables us to make sense of this life," he writes. It worked for Dante, didn't it?

Continue reading "D'Souza argues for evidence of afterlife" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)
        

A devastating newspaper series based on the allegations of former high-ranking church officials. A fraud conviction and prison sentences in Europe. The resignation of perhaps the church’s most prestigious celebrity, who writes a letter confirming practices that the church has denied.

“The Church of Scientology,” Associated Press religion reporter Eric Gorski writes, “is going through a difficult season.”

Gorski has produced a useful summary of the events and developments that have rocked the embattled church founded by the science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard.

Church spokesman Tommy Davis tells Gorski that Scientology is flourishing, with assets and property holdings doubling over the past five years, membership growing in the United States and “absolutely in the millions” worldwide.

"From our perspective, things are going pretty great," Davis says. "In fact, that's downplaying it. Actually, what's happening with the church right now is frankly spectacular. To the degree there are these various things happening, it really is a lot of noise."

But Gorski finds a different picture in the American Religious Identification Survey, which showed that the estimated number of Americans identifying Scientologists rose from 45,000 in 1990 to 55,000 in 2001, then plummeted to 25,000 in 2008, according to the American Religion Identification Survey.

Perhaps the biggest problem facing the church is the allegations raised by four former high-ranking church officials, who told the St. Petersburg Times that they witnessed church leader David Miscavige beating church staff members.

Continue reading "Scientology's 'difficult season'" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

When I was living in London 20 years ago, I was touched one Halloween when a British friend surprised me with a card to mark the holiday.

It was the first and only Halloween card I've ever received. Obviously, I didn't tell her that. She thought she was helping me to feel at home in her country by remembering a tradition from mine; why tell her that it isn't really a holiday for exchanging cards?

Since then, however, Europeans have become more familiar with Halloween. Which is why the Vatican has grown more vocal in its condemnation of the annual observance.

In an article in L'Osservatore Romano, the Holy See says Halloween is a pagan celebration of "terror, fear and death." The official Vatican paper warns parents against allowing children to dress up as ghosts and ghouls.

(We're getting this from British newspapers, because we haven't been able to find the original story at the L'Osservatore Romano Web site.)

The article, headlined “The Dangerous Messages of Halloween,” quotes liturgical expert Joan Maria Canals as saying 'Halloween has an undercurrent of occultism and is absolutely anti-Christian” and urging parents “'to be aware of this and try to direct the meaning of the feast towards wholesomeness and beauty rather than terror, fear and death.'

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Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (26)
Categories: Catholicism, Culture, Holidays, International, Wicca
        

We noted yesterday that the Council on American-Islamic Relations was condemning a shooting at an Orthodox Jewish synagogue in Los Angeles. Now the most vocal of the Muslim advocacy groups is demanding that HBO apologize for an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” in which the main character inadvertently splatters urine on a painting of Jesus.

That puts CAIR in the unusual position of seconding Bill Donohue’s Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, which condemned the episode earlier in the week. Muslims believe Jesus was a prophet, but do not believe, as Christians do, that he was the incarnation of God.

“It is beyond tasteless to insult the religious sensibilities of billions of people in America and around the world with such a cheap and vulgar publicity stunt,” CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad wrote in a letter to HBO CEO Bill Nelson. “Jesus, peace be upon him, is loved and revered by both Christians and Muslims. Muslims view him as one of God's greatest messengers to mankind.

“The Quran, Islam’s revealed text, states: ‘Behold! The angels said: ‘O Mary! God gives you glad tidings of a Word from Him. His name will be Jesus Christ, the son of Mary, held in honor in this world and the Hereafter and in (the company of) those nearest to God.’’ (The Holy Quran, 3:45)

“The Prophet Muhammad said: ‘Both in this world and in the hereafter, I am the nearest of all people to Jesus, the son of Mary. The prophets are paternal brothers; their mothers are different, but their religion is one.’

Continue reading "CAIR now siding with Catholic League" »

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Over at Religion News Service, Greg Warner has an interesting story on the rare but real problem of clergy suicide.

According to Warner, the September death of the Rev. David Treadway, pastor of Sandy Ridge Baptist Church in Hickory, N.C., was at least the fourth suicide among clergy in the Carolinas in the last four years. He writes:

Those who counsel pastors say Christian culture, especially Southern evangelicalism, creates the perfect environment for depression. Pastors suffer in silence, unwilling or unable to seek help or even talk about it. Sometimes they leave the ministry. Occasionally the result is the unthinkable. ...

Being a pastor—a high-profile, high-stress job with nearly impossible expectations for success—can send one down the road to depression, according to pastoral counselors.

“We set the bar so high that most pastors can’t achieve that,” said H.B. London, vice president for pastoral ministries at Focus on the Family, based in Colorado Springs, Colo. “And because most pastors are people-pleasers, they get frustrated and feel they can’t live up to that.”

When pastors fail to live up to demands imposed by themselves or others they often “turn their frustration back on themselves,” leading to self-doubt and to feelings of failure and hopelessness, said Fred Smoot, executive director of Emory Clergy Care in Duluth, Ga., which provides pastoral care to 1,200 United Methodist ministers in Georgia.

Warner quotes Matthew Stanford, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor, as saying it's likely that a quarter of all pastors are depressed.

Read the rest of the story at religionnews.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
        

Online retailer eBay said Tuesday that it will block an auction planned to raise money for the man charged with killing Kansas abortion provider George Tiller, the Associated Press is reporting.

Supporters of Scott Roeder wanted to raise money for his defense by auctioning off items including an Army of God manual, an underground publication for anti-abortion militants that describes ways to shut down clinics, including bombing.

Also to be auctioned was a prison cookbook compiled by Shelley Shannon, the Oregon woman who shot and wounded Tiller in 1993 and was later convicted in a series of abortion clinic arsons and bombings.

"Based on the details we know about the anticipated listings, we believe these would violate our policy regarding offensive material," eBay said in a statement.

If the items were posted, eBay said it would remove them from the online marketplace site because the company "does not allow listings that promote or glorify violence, hate, racial or religious intolerance.

Read the rest of the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Randall Terry, the Operation Rescue founder who has alienated even some fellow abortion opponents with his confrontational tactics, is calling on people to burn effigies of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid this Halloween as part of a "Burn in Hell" video contest to protest the health care legislation in Congress, the Associated Press is reporting.

Terry said Tuesday that the contest serves as a political and spiritual statement that "gives people a chance to peacefully vent their rage."

"If Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid force us to pay for child killing and they die unrepentant, they will burn in hell for this," Terry told the AP.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer called the contest "unfortunate."

"I don't think appealing to people's anger and in effect inciting them to acts which either display or in any way project violent acts is consistent with rational discussion of very critical issues," the Southern Maryland Democrat told reporters at his weekly pen-and-pad session on Tuesday.

As the AP explains, federal law currently bars the use of federal funds to pay for abortion except in cases of rape and incest or if the mother's life would be endangered. But the Democrats' health overhaul bill would create a new stream of federal funds not covered by the restrictions.

House Democrats are trying to address anti-abortion lawmakers' concerns by specifying that people receiving government subsidies to buy health insurance couldn't use that money for abortions.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

Over at Read Street, the Baltimore Sun books blog, they're giving away a copy of The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb.

The jacket copy describes the anatomically comprehensive work by the underground comic artist as "THE FIRST BOOK OF THE BIBLE GRAPHICALLY DEPICTED! NOTHING LEFT OUT!" And there's a warning on the cover: "ADULT SUPERVISION RECOMMENDED FOR MINORS."

Sun colleague Nancy Johnston says: "It's gorgeous, graphic and much more seriously handled than you might expect from the irreverent Crumb." Details on how to win are at Read Street.