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<a href="http://www.velocitygetter.com/carrot-pie/"><img src="http://www.beenut.com/shirleylam/cake-reciepie.gif" border=0></a><font color="#ffffff">26 April 2005 12:49 PM: More Jack Abramoff fallout: The Republican "superlobbyist" who keeps popping up in unfortunate poses ever since Tom DeLay's fundraising activities came to light takes another blow with the revelations in a Newsweek report that he'd redirected donations made by Native Americans for inner city youth to help the ultra-Orthodox Israeli settlement of Beitar Illit purchase high-tech military equipment to fight the Palestinian uprising. Through a charity Abramoff established himself, the Capital Athletic Foundation, money intended for poor city kids instead helped purchase sniper scopes, night-vision binoculars, camouflage suits and other "security equipment" for the outpost -- Israel's second largest settlement with a
history of residents fighting with Palestinians. A lawyer for the Saginaw Chippewa Indians, which had donated $25,000 to Abramoff's foundation, called the news "'outer-limits bizarre,'" and said the tribe would never have donated money for such a cause. 26 April 2005 12:01 PM: Minority students at Trinity International University in Illinois returned to classes on Monday, a week after 43 of the evangelical college's black and Latino students were evacuated to a hotel in response to threatening racist letters sent through the campus mail. Last week, after three students -- two black and one Latino -- received letters containing increasingly violent threats and all sent within the anniversary dates of the Columbine school shooting, Hitler's birth and the Oklahoma City bombing, the school urged 200 of its 300 minority students to leave their dormitories. Jesse Jackson met with the
letter-recipients last Friday, and praised the school's record on race and its response to the threats with student support services and added security, and upon the evacuated students' return, many of their classmates wore yellow T-shirts from an African-American event last winter as a show of solidarity. Update: The Chicago Tribune reports on the strange conclusion of this case, with the arrest of an African-American female Trinity student who allegedly sent the letters because she was unhappy at the school and wished to convince her parents that it was a dangerous environment. The unidentified woman has been charged with disorderly conduct and committing a hate crime. 26 April 2005 11:21 AM: Could it be, Hillary Clinton, not meaning what she said? Attempting to crassly manipulate voters with lukewarm appeals to both sides of an issue in the hopes she won't be held to promises made to
either one? We've been cheated on by Hillary too, so we're almost sympathetic to the wounded cries of the freshly-dumped Christian Defense Coalition, but our pity -- and CDC's pain -- is tempered by the mileage the conservative Christian group hopes to get out of the breakup, starting with a D.C. press-conference scheduled for today at noon. CDC director, Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, has issued a press release charging that his organization and other pro-life groups were "snubbed" by Clinton for two months as they attempted to set up meetings with senator following her January speech calling for dialogue and common ground between pro-choicers and pro-lifers. Mahoney said the CDC was "'profoundly disappointed'" that Clinton's comments now appeared to be "'politically motivated and not sincere,'" and that voters should pay attention to Clinton's actions rather than her words as the
presidential campaign season begins. What can we say, Pat? We'd offer you a glass and a chair, but maybe we should wait to see how Hillary responds. These first break-ups never last. 26 April 2005 10:33 AM: A new nationwide survey conducted by the Anti-Defamation League has found that 14% of adult Americans hold hard-core anti-Semitic beliefs, especially on the old standby topics: Jews' loyalty to the country, the death of Jesus, and power. The new poll indicates a slight rise (2%) in overall anti-Semitism since the ADL's last survey in 2002, with specific jumps by category -- 30% of respondents blame Jews for the death of Christ, up from 25% three years ago; while the percentage of people who believe Jews have too much power has dropped from 20% to 15%. 25 April 2005 5:11 PM: Revealer editor Jeff Sharlet discusses his cover story from the May issue of Harper's, "Soldiers of Christ:
Inside America's Most Powerful Megachurch," tonight at 9:22 pm est with Janeane Garofalo and Sam Seder on Air America's "The Majority Report." 25 April 2005 9:46 AM: While Bill Frist's video appearance on yesterday's "Justice Sunday" telecast is earning him rebukes aplenty, he does have one solid friend in Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who writes a plaintiff op-ed for The Courier-Journal, wondering why Democrats are allowed to have a monopoly on religious language and are seen to be "reaching out" when they invoke God, while Republicans are shouted down as being "divisive." Really? Dems? Huh? Sounds unlikely to us, but McConnell does a thorough job listing Democratic campaign appearances at churches over the last ten years. Whether or not such church stumping is equivalent to telling the parishioners that the other side is attacking all believers and the rules of governing need to be
changed in order to prevent anyone from standing in the way of these, God's messengers, is another question. But lest McConnell's affected concern for the separation of church and state mislead you about where he really stands, absord the essay's companion illustration: yet another Iwo Jima spin-off, this time trading the hoisted flag for a hoisted cross, and the bloody battlefield background for a snapping American flag. As though the filibuster debate needed to be compared to yet another type of warfare. 25 April 2005 9:27 AM: Gorillas in Israel kept kosher this Passover: with zookeepers and handlers unable to handle leavened bread, the gorillas and other animals also ate matzo instead of their normal morning meal of bread with cream cheese. "'We call this environmental enrichment,'" said Tel Aviv's zoo curator, Emelia Turkel, "'Jewish style.'" 22 April 2005 10:20 AM: Is "under God"
Christian? Don't listen to the Supreme Court arguments; listen to Colorado Christians. A Colorado middle school counselor, Margo Lucero, has angered local Christian parents with her ecumenical delivery of the Pledge of Allegiance one morning last week, changing the "one nation under God" to "one nation under your belief system." But it wasn't the clumsy phrasing or well-intentioned untruth of the statement -- we're not, after all, one nation under Sufism -- that roused the evangelical PTA beast. It was the decentralization, for a minute and a half, of Christianity, of course. Said one parent, who claimed her child was left "confused" by the revised Pledge: "'[Lucero] said, "I believe that everybody should have their own beliefs and that we shouldn't have to say, 'under God.'" Obviously, I was pretty upset by the way she was acting. I made it very clear that I was a Christian and I didn't
appreciate the fact that she had taken that out." The principal and school district have since apologized profusely for Lucero's Pledge, and plan to send a letter home with students explaining what happened. 22 April 2005 9:36 AM: Mainline Protestants fight back: NYT "conservative beat" reporter David D. Kirkpatrick, with Sheryl Gay Stolberg, bring us signs of a liberal Christianity gearing up for battle, as representatives challenge Senator Bill Frist for his planned participation in an upcoming Christian right event designed to denigrate Democrats as against "people of faith." Frist is a member of the Presbyterian Church of the U.S.A, a mainline denomination that embraces a more ecumenical view of religion. Or does it? A crucial element left unstated in the Times' report is the growing evangelical movement within the mainline, as churches bound to a liberal denomination by the
economics of bricks and mortar gravitate in spirit to the conservative, combative Christianity currently dominating the country. 21 April 2005 11:02 AM: Jewish leaders from the American Jewish Congress, the Anti-Defamation League, the National Council of Jewish Women, the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism and B'nai B'rith International have all bristled at the conservative message -- promoted in recent events like Tom DeLay's speech at the "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith" conference and the upcoming "Justice Sunday" telecast -- that "religion is under judicial attack," as an affront to democracy, to the separation of church and state and that between government branches, and a manipulation of fear to set the stage for far-right Supreme Court judges. In an essay in The Forward, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, director of The Shalom Center, accused DeLay and Sen. Bill Frist of trying
to make a religious test for the judiciary that, as such, was an attack on Judaism by "[casting] contempt on other religious paths as 'anti-faith' and [seeking] to impose their own religious views on the body politic" by imposing it on the courts. 21 April 2005 9:53 AM: In the town vying for the title of America's holy warringest city, there's also an Air Force Academy, and lately, the differences -- and overlaps -- between Colorado Springs' young soldiers and its civilian brigades of evangelical spiritual warriors have come under scrutiny. Over the past four years there have been 55 complaints of religious harassment or discrimination from non-Christian cadets, and a group of divinity school observers say the bias -- such as an advertisement placed in the Academy paper each year declaring Jesus the only savior and signed by 200 members of the (federal government employed) school staff;
the Air Force chaplain encouraging Protestant cadets to proselytize and pray for the salvation of their fellow cadets during basic training as those not "'born again will burn in the fires of hell'"; Protestant cadets being encouraged to chant the phrase, "'This is our chapel and the Lord is our God'" -- comes from the surrounding culture, which "values evangelical Christian beliefs above others." Students from the Yale Divinity School were invited to observe the school's chaplains and worship services during basic training, and to report their observations about the atmosphere of religious tolerance at the school, after a 2003 cadet survey showed that 50% of the students had heard religious jokes and slurs at the academy. Following the Yale report, the Academy has developed a new sensitivity training program, "Respecting the Spiritual Values of All People (RSVP)." 21 April 2005 9:38 AM:
A bit belatedly, John Kerry chastises Republicans for their God politics: for politicizing religion, having an "'orthodoxy of view,'" and suggesting they understand Judeo-Christianity better than liberal believers; and for "using God" to justify political moves. Speaking to a group of Massachusetts voters down to visit D.C., Kerry said he was "'sick and tired of a bunch of people trying to tell me that God wants a bunch of conservative judges on the court and that's why we have to change the rules of the United States Senate,'" and also sick and tired of the whole bunch's values talk: "'We're talking about values? You show me where in the New Testament Jesus ever talked about the value of having taxes and taking money from poor people to give to the rich people in this country.'" 21 April 2005 9:19 AM: Hawley: Stirrings in the conservative underworld: The New York Times reported this
week on the political fortunes of Ralph Reed, formerly of the Christian Coalition, who is running for Lieutenant Governor in Georgia. Pat Robertson has denounced his old protégé, saying Reed is serving Mammon. According to the story, Reed’s lobbying firm took money from Indian casinos, despite its stated moral opposition to gambling. Reed’s supporters say he got paid by a "broad based coalition" of anti-casino groups, and was unaware that some of these were rival casinos. Lurking in the background is Jack Abramoff, the well-connected Republican lobbyist who hired Reed’s firm to work on anti-gambling campaigns. Currently under investigation by the Justice Department and the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, Abramoff also surfaced in a story in last Saturday’s Washington Post. The Post reported that Abramoff may be linked to The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and its
growing allegiance to the repressive government of Malaysia. Lobbying firms connected to Heritage began representing Malaysian business interests around the same time that Heritage began to give the Malaysian government favorable ratings. As the fiscal improprieties of these prominent conservatives play out -- especially avowed Christians like Reed -- it will be interesting to note how major news outlets frame the issue. The Times puts Pat Robertson’s damning quote high up in the story, putting the attacks on conservative Christians in the mouths of other conservative Christians. The Post avoided the language of political perception in favor of a straight investigative story. It’s interesting whose values take center stage, those of a corruption-busting reporter or a political or religious insider. 20 April 2005 2:02 PM: The media strikes the Catholic news while the public-interest
iron is still hot, delivering these two cute, and ever-so-slightly irreverent stories to transition us from JP II praise songs to Hitler's Youth exposés: First, the Catholic priest-shortage has led to the realization of a Jay Leno joke, with the news that the work of running parishes and saying Mass will likely be outsourced to Indian priests in what's becoming a familiar historical reversal of the missionary spread of the gospel. Second, the Virgin Mary's been spotted again, this time in a yellow and white salt stain on the side of a train underpass wall in Chicago, in a pose that appears to some believers as an embrace between Mary and Pope John Paul II. The report doesn't go so far as to make the obvious "Piss Christ" reference, or raise much of an eyebrow at the types of "salt run-off" that tend to stain subway station walls, but it's probably safe to say this isn't a story that
would have run last week, and may signal the nearing end of the accolade phase of this particular news cycle. 20 April 2005 1:01 PM: The gay-friendly empire is striking back. A resistance is underway. An alliance has been formed between rabbis of all three major non-orthodox branches of Judaism -- conservative, reform and reconstructionalist -- and Jerusalem's Gay and Lesbian Center to support the international gay pride parade scheduled for this August as a "'basic democratic right.'" In supporting the controversial parade, these allies may take on the other surprise alliance that sprung up last month between conservative Jews, Muslims, Catholics and evangelical Christians who put their homophobia disapproval of homosexual behavior above petty theological differences. Explained one Team Rainbow rabbi, Ehud Bandel, "'I come here in the wake of the strange coalition of leaders that was
brought together by intolerance, extremism, and fanaticism,'" and others referred to the conservative coalition as an "'unholy alliance'" of religious leaders misusing their authority to support bigotry over justice. Team Hetero member, Rabbi Yehuda Levin, countered that the liberal rabbis were turning Judaism upside down and travelling "'from holiness to paganism.'" Who'll win the showdown is hard to say -- the police are ultimately in charge of deciding whether the parade, planned for the same week as the Gaza pullout, will go on -- but The Jerusalem Post seems to be leaning in the direction of public opinion -- 3/4 of which is opposed to the event -- by devoting the majority of its article to rebuttals from conservatives, and labelling a photo of past parade participants with the curious choice of terminology, "homo-lesbian community." But perhaps that's a cultural misunderstanding on
our part, and in Jerusalem, "homo" is an accepted, unoffensive regionalism, and not a 7th-grade smear that's unfit for use in a respectable publication. 20 April 2005 12:19 PM: A meeting of the Muslim Council of Britain, the main umbrella group for Muslims in Britain which gathered to discuss a "voter guide" for the next general election, was disrupted by a group of young Muslim protesters thought to be associated with the fringe group Al Muhajiroun. Members of the group slapped the MCB chief; said that voting was against the Islamic faith and condemned any voters as apostates; declared MCB a mouthpiece for Tony Blair; and said Blair was a devil who "'should go to hell.'" The MCB, which had hoped to graduate from a series of regional meetings to an eventual audience with Tony Blair to discuss Muslim concerns about anti-terrorism laws, education, discrimination and other issues, described
the demonstration as a PR-disaster for the public perception of Islam. But, though the MCB chief laughed off the scuffle as "democracy in action," a Conservative MCB candidate suggested another PR problem: that many Muslims, both traditionalist and reform-minded, do not feel represented by the MCB and the protesters should be seen as part of a "'growing cancer'" of young, disenchanted Muslims who "'don't want to engage.'" But disaffected youth is supposed to be such a decadent West thing... 20 April 2005 11:32 AM: Sharlet: Paul Asay of The Colorado Springs Gazette reports on the minor media blitz surrounding New Life Church, a congregation of 11,000 in his hometown pastored by Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, and thus a power player in the current political climate. Among the gawkers: Me. Asay focuses on my forthcoming Harper's cover story, "Soldiers of
Christ: Inside America's Most Powerful Megachurch" (May issue). What's interesting about his balanced report are Haggard's responses to my article, which might be said to be critical. Haggard takes two tacts. His free market theology leads him to a strong free press position, and then some: “I think it’s the role of the secular press to do analysis,” Haggard told Asay in response to questions about my article. “It is our role (as a church) to read it thoughtfully and correct the problems we’ve got.” That's a subtle ecclesiology and a lovely concept of the relationship between reporter and subject. But part of the story here is that Haggard, as a spokesman for politically conservative evangelicals, speaks two languages -- one for the world, and one for the believers. Speaking of my story, Haggard told Asay: "It is a wonderful, entertaining article that communicates what it’s like
for a totally secular person to come and visit our church.” Far be it from me to complain about such graciousness. I'll point out only that I am not a "totally secular" person, and that I said as much to Haggard; indeed, we discussed a mutual acquaintance, a member of his church, whose work I've proudly published here on The Revealer and elsewhere. For Haggard to characterize me as such -- and in doing so, the media that's beating a path to his door -- is not a matter of misrepresentation, but of poor translation. Calling me "totally secular" defuses my critique of his theology for most of his fellow believers; by definition, I'm missing something about their experience of faith. It signals to fellow believers that this representation of their faith, some of it "out of context" is "other," from the land of them, the "unbelievers." My report, says Haggard, is that of an anthropologist
from Mars. Such a characterization neglects the fact that the two languages spoken by Haggard share a great many terms. It fails to recognize that a reporter, even a "totally secular" one, visiting a politically powerful church, is not wholly an outsider. Haggard and the secular press may not be united in faith, but they our bound together by governance. The value of the secular press to the church is not as an outside observer (nor as an "objective" commentator), but as an inquisitor, not grand, related by marriage. 20 April 2005 11:06 AM: Maureen Dowd fits a little bit of everything God-newsy into her Times column on the state of the Voice of God today: the image of stately Ted Koppel balking at covering "wet burka" contests; the VoG authority of old patriarch news anchors and old patriarch, well, patriarchs; the lunchtime implications of the election of Joseph Ratzinger as pope for
Cafeteria Catholics; the various Republican channelers of VoG, from Bush to Tom DeLay to Bill Frist's anxiously-awaited debut in this week's "Justice Sunday" testimony. But forget all that and get to the juicy part: Dick Durbin thinks God's a girl. 19 April 2005 1:34 PM: "I must confess that I was reeled in by its slick production values. Granted, its use of scripture is an embarrassment and the Christian characters in it are either mysterious Vatican types or, as I'm assuming we'll soon see, Protestant fundamentalists, however as a long-time X Files fan, I felt right at home." UCC minister Rev. Chase Peeples watches Revelations at the wonderfully-named CONGOBlog. 19 April 2005 12:19 PM: The Supreme Court has decided to hear a case on whether or not a Brazil-based church in New Mexico may continue to use a hallucinogenic tea containing a drug banned in the U.S. in its religious services.
The Bush administration has argued that the tea is illegal and dangerous and that the state has a "compelling interest" in stopping an illegal market in the drug. The church, a hybrid of Christian and traditional Amazon basin beliefs, counters that the tea is a central sacrament to its worship services, and its lawyers argue that law-abiding citizens using the tea does not constitute drug use or threaten to start a black market in the tea. [ More: ] F.O.R. (Friend of Ratzinger) "God becoming man! I can only laugh at the arrogance of men -- males --to shrink God into a creature so small." Just another "radical feminist"? Not exactly. Read more from Pope Benedict's long-time intellectual comrade, Uta Ranke-Heinemann, at one of our favorite religion magazines, SOMA. [ Continue reading: ] White-Hot Brother Love The Revealer's Jeff Sharlet on using sex as a weapon, at Nerve: "Take, for
example, God's Gift to Women (the title of a manliness guide for young men), male 'headship' of the American family. Women can't get enough of good headship, but a man must be careful; a woman's hunger for his headship may lead him to abuse its potency through the sin of anger. A few years ago, I learned in an evangelical magazine what to do in such a situation: push your anger down and store it inside your heart, where Jesus will work it over it until it is ready to be 'released,' transformed into 'white-hot brother love...'" [ Continue reading: ] Nice Guy Ratzinger Sharlet: I listened to the pope yesterday on a long drive from New York to New Hampshire. When I tuned in -- NPR and BBC, depending on reception -- NPR was swooning over the pomp and circumstance, casting about for... [ Continue reading: ] Angels and Demons and the Small Antimatter Trap Kate Hawley: A lavish, illustrated
edition of Angels and Demons, the prequel to The DaVinci Code, comes out in May. The approximate size and heft of a textbook, it’s filled with photos and illustrations of Christian sites and symbols. The book’s hero, one Robert Langdon, Harvard symbologist, must navigate these in order to find an evil weapon -- antimatter... Angels and Demons, first published in 2000, drew nowhere near the vitriol The DaVinci Code did three years later, in part because it took liberties not with church history but with scientific accuracy. [ Continue reading: ] Rockin' With Roy As media enthusiasts, we can't claim to honor the second commandment -- no graven images -- but we always hoped the true believers would steer clear of idols. But everybody's a fan of something: "At Reclaiming America, [Judge Roy Moore's Ten Commandments] Rock sits out front, fresh off a tour of twenty-one states, perched on the
flag-festooned flatbed of a diesel truck, a potent symbol of the 'faith-based' justice the Dominionists are bent on imposing. Activists at the conference pose for photographs beside the rock and have circulated a petition urging President Bush to appoint Moore -- who once penned an opinion calling for the state to execute 'practicing homosexuals' -- to the U.S. Supreme Court." This and plenty more oogie-boogie details from a Christian right conference in Ft. Lauderdale in Rolling Stone. Is this story hysterical and overstated? Sure. Are its subjects -- an A-list of the Christian far right gathered around D. James Kennedy -- hysterical and overstated? You decide. "In the conference's opening ceremony, the Dominionists recite an oath they dream of hearing in every classroom: 'I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag, and to the Savior for whose kingdom it stands. One Savior, crucified,
risen and coming again, with life and liberty for all who believe.'" [ Continue reading: ] Paradoxes of the Pope Ariel Dorfman on the pope and five minutes in Chile that define the paradox of the papacy. And the retired archbishop of Brazil on the pope's divided heart -- John Paul II, says the cardinal, wrote a letter to the Brazilian bishops declaring liberation theology necessary; seems to have censored or even altered the records of the Synod of Bishops in Rome; and, when the Brazilian cardinal retired, refused to sign a letter condemning the Brazilian presented to him -- as if it were written by his own hand -- by the Roman Curia. More at Open Democracy, a fine new site. [ Continue reading: ] Myth-Making in the Fullness of Time By Kate Hawley: Less than a week after his death, it’s impossible not to be numbed by the relentless sameness of network TV news’ Pope talking points. We
get the biography so simple it seems the stuff of folklore, followed by his battles with Communism, Liberation Theology, the sins of our material culture and, finally, Parkinson’s. It’s tough to produce a deeply felt, personal story about a man whose life was defined by an institution, and obituaries are hardly vehicles for originality, especially those about people who have carefully cultivated their public personas. The Pope, like Ronald Reagan (also a supposed defeater of Communism) is less a man than a myth. [ Continue reading: ] Written on the Body Sharlet: I have very little to add to the media storm following John Paul II's death this afternoon. I was addressing a meeting of Gegrapha, a Christian journalists association (of which I'm not a member) at the New York Evangelical Seminary. We were alerted to the death by the sound of bells, followed by bagpipes -- very traditional
religious media. The group paused and said a prayer for the pope; and I was surprised for a moment by how sad it made me. I'm rarely saddened by the deaths of public figures, especially those who are very old. And I have no special love for the pope, nor any spiritual connection to his authority; indeed, I dread the inevitable tributes which will claim that the pope defeated communism, a mass public exercise in bad history. But the bells that marked his death also gave voice to the sentiments of those who mourn his passing, more effectively than most do themselves. The bells distilled what about the pope made all those Catholics who didn't live according to his dictates, who suffered for them, mourn anyway: the sound of great bells is collective, that of an instrument too grand for any one person to make on his own, a beautiful noise that has for centuries reshaped the flow of time,
marked the mundane as sacred, at least to someone. The bells announce: Someone has lost something sacred... [ Continue reading: ] You're Persecuted? No, I'm Persecuted On Thursday, a Seattle jury convicted three young men from northern Washington of assault and committing a hate crime for savagely beating Micah Painter with a beer bottle last June because Painter is gay. So reports the city's major daily, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, with a few added notes on the jury -- half of which wished it could deliver a stronger sentence -- and the implications of the verdict for the state's pending gay-rights bill. The tidiness and brevity of the PI's report is apparently par for the course in the media treatment of this case, according to Eli Sanders of Seattle's alternative weekly, The Stranger, who notes that when the story has been covered at all, it has been cast as a clash of culture-war
opposites, an ugly enactment of the dispute between rural and urban America, between straights and gays. But in a hefty investigation of the case -- exceptional for the depth of its reporting, the sharpness of its writing, and its able grasp of history -- Sanders presents a far more complicated picture of both Painter, a once-promising gymnist who fell into drug-use and prostitution after running away from alleged physical abuse at the hands of his evangelical preacher father, and his attackers, all Russian and Ukrainian evangelical immigrants whose families came to America in the '80s and '90s as part of the exodus of evangelical Christians fleeing Soviet persecution, and who were simultaneously committed members of their Slavic Baptist church in Bellingham, WA, and wild, heavy-drinking kids who frequently ran afoul of the law. [ Continue reading: ] The Music is Not the Message Brendan
Boyle: When a drummer stops the set, something has usually gone wrong. When Mark Nicks, drummer of Nashville three-piece Cool Hand Luke, brings the music to a halt, something is going entirely right. In the days leading up to the 2003 Cornerstone Music Festival in Bushnell, Illinois, Nicks had a minor revelation and now onstage, half hidden behind two snares and a high-hat, he wants to confess it. The crowd, teenaged and feverish, quiets as he begins. "There’s so much about this festival, this music scene, that isn’t about Jesus and it's breakin' his heart. We walk around with our friends...and Jesus' name isn’t even mentioned. And it’s breakin' my heart too." [ Continue reading: ] Big 'R' Redemption Kate Hawley: In the Metro section of Tuesday's New York Times, David Gonzales writes artfully about "urban gleaner" Charles Kelly, who for 21 years has made his living redeeming cans and
bottles for a five cent deposit. But, as Gonzales points out, Kelly isn’t just redeeming the detritus of our consumer society for money. According to his pastor, Rev. Earl Kooperkamp, he’s part of a "moral economy of redemption." Implicit in the story is a powerful idea: that our work, however humble, can have moral dimensions. And it’s rare to see journalism about religion interwoven with the fabric of everyday life. Still, what Gonzales is doing is not new. He is, as the Times takes care to remind us especially often at holiday time, remembering the neediest, in the Protestant progressive tradition of the press. [ Continue reading: ] Living Church of God A few years ago, a colleague and I reported a story about an attack on a church in Henderson, North Carolina. In that case, the shooter used blanks; everyone got a fright, but no one was hurt. The members of this little church did
absolutely nothing to merit such terror. But when we started spending time at the church, we began to see how a mentally disabled person could be easily... confused. This was a non-denominational pentecostal church with a persistent focus on apocalypse; indeed, the only artwork in the church were two identical paintings of a modern city being "raptured," with great violence. Church members viewed their attacker as demonically possessed. I thought about that little church as I read about the Living Church of God in Brookfield, Wisconsin, where seven congregants were killed on Saturday by one of its own members, who then took his own life. The killer, described as an exceptionally gentle man, was no doubt in some kind of psychotic state. The church's beliefs have nothing to do with this awful event. To suggest otherwise would be the ugliest of secular slurs on religious belief. Or would
it? [ Continue reading: ] Shirts & Skins Kate Hawley: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled on Tuesday that the AmeriCorps gang can teach in religious schools. But if they want to teach anything religious, they have to strip their AmeriCorps uniforms. One can only imagine a series of theatrical quick changes: AmeriCorps polo shirt on for math class, but quick, whip it off in time for prayer assembly. On for biology, off for catechism. On for history, off for the Bible as literature. Wait. That one’s complicated. Maybe they could wear their AmeriCorps shirt only half on. Just around the neck, or over one arm. Maybe inside out? So you could read the AmeriCorps logo, but backwards? Would that be Satanic? Undemocratic? [ Continue reading: ] Near the Looking Glass Gal Beckerman: What to make of a book entitled "Best Religion News Writing"? Two obvious questions come to
mind before even flipping open the deceptively breezy-looking, pastel cover: Well, firstly, what is "religion news"? Is it the news of institutional happenings, papal health, and gay ordinations? Or is it something else entirely? [ Continue reading: ] Disney's Wardrobe Kate Hawley: The aptly named Motive Marketing made sure Christians came out in droves to see The Passion of the Christ. Now, according to The New York Times, Disney has hired the California-based P.R. firm to work similar magic for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the film adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s classic children’s book, out in December 2005. The London Daily Telegraph frets the film will be The Passion of the Christ for kids. Which begs a leap into the land of political cliche: after a divisive red state/blue state election, what color will the film adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe be? Lewis’s
book defies easy categorization. It’s both a deeply religious allegory and an imaginative work of literature. And it’s English. But Disney is good at bridging divides to reach broad audiences, by taking stories rich in cultural significance and serving them as lukewarm oatmeal. So maybe the answer is: beige. To be fair, the movie’s not out yet. Maybe Andrew Adamson, the director of the Shreks, will bring us something artful that believers of all shades can enjoy. And look at the casting, which features two great actors: gender illusionist Tilda Swinton as the White Witch, and Brian Cox, the sympathetic pedophile from L.I.E., as the voice of Aslan. Perfect for the secular humanist child in all of us. [ Continue reading: ] Donkey God While Hillary busies herself unveiling the religion she's always had and the rest of the Democratic establishment gets God as good as it can, a state rep.
in Colorado appears to be the real article, pastor of a tiny church, liberal down the line, and feisty as hell. Rep. Terrance Carroll is obviously on the make, and Denver Post writer Douglas Brown seems happy get in on the legend early. Were tough questions asked? Was theology examined? Political positions explored? Nah. But it's still an interesting profile -- Brown has a story on his hands and he knows it, and with that knowledge he can't go far wrong. [ Continue reading: ] Hook, Line, and Sink 'Em Next Wednesday, on March 9th, the National Association of Evangelicals will hold their annual convention in Washington, D.C., during which they will officially release their long-discussed guidelines for evangelical political engagement, "For the Health of the Nation: An Evangelical Call to Civic Responsibility." The guidelines prompted a lot of excitement last June, when reporters and
liberal pundits misread a draft version of the document as signalling a more progressive evangelical politics, more focussed on poverty than culture war. In October, a revised version of the guidelines stripped away or dulled much of the language or provisions that could have been seen as progressive. Now, on the eve of their debut (released simultaneously with a collection of essays, Toward an Evangelical Public Policy), Rob Garver of The American Prospect suggests that the real story of the guidelines' release is not its policy content so much as the announced arrival of a mighty political power. [ Continue reading: ] The Faith of a Killer Sharlet: CNN headlines the fact that Dennis Rader, the just-arrested, alleged "BTK" serial killer of Wichita, Kansas, conforms to that classic trope of American gothic horror, the "evil preacher": "BTK suspect was dogcatcher, church leader." Rader
wasn't a preacher, but he was the president of the local Christ Lutheran Church. The creepy vibe foregrounded by CNN has antecedents in stories such as Night of the Hunter and contemporary corollaries in the Catholic priest abuse scandal. There's a narrative frisson whenever someone publicly coded as good and honest turns out to be secretly evil and devious. Fox News, however, for once eschews the sensationalism of archetype, so vigorously, in fact, that in its 772-word main report, 100 words longer and otherwise much scarier than CNN's, it doesn't mention Rader's 30-year church affiliation (in a sidebar piece they mention that he was "active in his church," but not that he served as its president). That's probably just as bad for the story, but good for the church, which doesn't deserve to be tarred by Rader's crimes. Surely, such horrors are unrelated to the church's teachings. Or are
they? No, I'm not suggesting that the Gospel leads one to murder. Rather, that Rader's life for the last 30 years has contained two powerful moral worldviews, seemingly at odds. Fox deals with that by ignoring Raders' life in the church; CNN deals with it by using it to tie the news to the tradition of b-movie villains. I've written Rader via an email address for him listed on a cached version of the church's website, asking him whether, if he concedes his guilt, his faith and his church life played a role in his crimes, either as a restraining force or, in some twisted fashion, a justifying force. I don't expect an answer, of course, and I'm not going to request an interview through his lawyer. But if this story develops, as I suspect it will, into another entry in the evil preacher subgenre, I hope some reporter will investigate the role of faith, for better or worse, in the mind of
the killer. [ Continue reading: ] Little White Stones In the second installment of a three-part series on the place of religion in Europe, Peter Ford of The Christian Science Monitor finds "waves of spirituality" in the "secular ocean" that is the continent of Europe. Among these new wave-makers, Ford notes some violent, "noisy" types: radical Muslims who bombed the trains in Madrid and murdered Theo van Gogh, and the "angry mob" of brick-throwing Sikhs who forced the closure of a British play last December. But that's not to worry anyone that the rise of religion is potentially divisive; Ford's also found "signs of a quieter and less divisive return of religion and spirituality to European lives": charmismatic Christian movements in the American tradition, a surge in religion-related publishing, and increased interest in Buddhist meditation. Sound like a familiar divide? [ Continue
reading: ] In Defense of Libraries By Ben Daniel: On January 28th, Freedom House, an organization that monitors human rights and promotes democracy and American-style freedoms worldwide released a report entitled "Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology Fills American Mosques," detailing the presence of Saudi-funded tracts that advocate a strict Wahabi Islam and denounce all things Western, with particularly strong condemnations of Christians, Jews, moderate Muslims, and women who dare to consider themselves human. It is clear from reading the report that Freedom House sees the content of libraries in American mosques as a potential battleground in the war on terror. [ Continue reading: ] Hunter S. Thompson, Revelator Hunter S. Thompson shot himself yesterday. Thompson was not a religion writer, but he was surely a religious one. He put his faith in the explosive power of revelation and set
about dynamiting all that he found unholy, most of which tended to be that which the rest of the world found very holy, indeed. He was, in his way, a pious writer, dedicated without compromise to chronicling the unending jihad between American myth and American corruption. He relied on what new agers might call "spiritual guides," cut-rate Virgils such as Oscar Zeta Acosta, the "Brown Buffalo." And he wrote like the Bible's last John, exiled to Patmos, dreaming of apocalypse and rambling on in feverish prose meant to suggest the end of the world through sanctified hyperbole. There were precedents for his work, but not in the last couple millenia. And his imitators are legion, and awful. His legacy is a generation of vipers, nasty little would-be gonzos lacking not only the wit but also the less-noticed moral fever with which his best writing sliced arteries. No one should try to write
like Hunter Thompson. But every journalist -- especially those of us mucking around in the intangible swamp of "religion" -- ought to read him. He wrote American scripture. In 2000, The Paris Review interviewed Thompson. "Almost without exception," the journal noted, "writers we’ve interviewed over the years admit they cannot write under the influence of booze or drugs–or at the least what they’ve done has to be rewritten in the cool of the day. What’s your comment about this?" Thompson's reply: "They lie... Did you interview Coleridge? Did you interview Poe? Or Scott Fitzgerald? Or Mark Twain? Or Fred Exley? Did Faulkner tell you that what he was drinking all the time was really iced tea, not whiskey? Please. Who the fuck do you think wrote the Book of Revelation?" [ Continue reading: ] Evangelical Rainbow Attack Kathryn Joyce: Eight pastors -- four white, three black and one
latino; representing various theological and political backgrounds and church types; all of them evangelical -- walk into a bar. Make that a hotel room near Chicago's O'Hare airport. It's not the set-up for a joke, but for something that's becoming about as regimented: religion reporting that tries so hard to avoid stereotyping evangelicals as Falwell-esque culture warriors that it ends up inadvertently relaying a new PR line for a post-Falwell era. [ Continue reading: ] Let Them Eat Blog Hey newspaper editors: Want to make sure nobody complains about "bias" ever again? There's a simple solution! Let them eat blog. Julie M. Moos, managing editor of Poynter Online ("everything you need to know to be a better journalist") asks "Are there people of a particular faith (Jewish, Baptist, Catholic, other) who feel ignored [by your paper]?" Y'think? Sure there are... [ Continue reading: ] [
More: ] Leather God "'The flogger, with each lash of the whip,'" says Master Skip, a man of God and leather, "'has one message: now, now, now, now.'" For Skip Chasey, a Christian leatherman, such immediacy lifts one from worldly distraction and into communion with God, whom he defines as "everything you can't say." More lived religion in Nerve's excellent ongoing "Moral Values" issue. [ Continue reading: ] The Moon Position "Moonie" mass marriages are legend; but what about the consumation? Yolanda Elise Brener recalls her days of passion and holy handkerchiefs with her Unification Church-appointed "eternal spouse" in Nerve's "Moral Values" issue. [ Continue reading: ] Reading Niebuhr Instead "For all his love of country, Niebuhr never learned to stop worrying and love the bomb. What he did love was that Americans, as a nation, really worried about the bomb. We knew our power, and
understood that we were free, and suddenly capable, to exercise it -- but never without guilt. The irony of our history was based in knowing our real culpability in becoming a world power, in recognizing that we were far less innocent than our theories of democracy, free-market capitalism, militarism, and evangelicalism assumed...The enemy had the audacity to claim divine purpose. America, said Niebuhr, knew better." Revealer Books Editor Scott Korb reads Reinhold Niebuhr's The Irony of American History and finds a worthy model of Christian realism for the reality-based community. [ Continue reading: ] The Reverent and the Rude Media in the Home of the Free and the Brave, by Garret Keizer: "Is the Pope Catholic?" we ask, meaning, "Are you kidding?" But when a pope dies, one is tempted to ask, "Is the media Catholic?" and one is not kidding... [ Continue reading: ] Big In The Trading Card
World Religious kitsch is a fact of life for religion writers, and after awhile the wobbly pope dolls and the wind-up nun who spits sparks and the neon psychedelic Jesus get pretty old. It is especially rare to find a work of religious Americana, combining flag and Bible, that has anything new to offer. But such is "America, We Stand As One," by Dennis Madalone. It is, as we are fond of saying of our favorite religious writing, the Word made strange -- and the word here is "Corny." Transcendently corny, cheese so pungent it redeems. Tinkerbell angels, grandma angels, sexy angels; floating firemen, firemen's widows', firemen's widows smiling, angel-inspired babies; an entire ocean transubstantiated into an American flag. Madalone's music video takes a long time to download, but open two windows so you can read all about it while you wait. On the "about" page, scrolling behind pictures of
Madalone buried beneath cats and dogs, we learn that he is stunt coordinator and stuntman for numerous Star Trek spin-off shows, and "is also featured on the Star Trek Trading Cards, which in the trading card world is a high honor, and a valuable collectible." And to think: We stand as one with such a man. [ Continue reading: ] Moralistic Therapeutic Deism Scott Korb: They are not running away. They are not rebelling. They may not actually know, or be able to articulate, what they believe, but almost every one of them -- ninety-seven per cent -- believes in God. The vast majority of them -- like the vast majority of us -- are Christians. Very few are what might be called spiritual seekers; hardly any of them know what it means to say (or be) "spiritual but not religious." When prompted, nearly all of them speak positively about religion, yet with each other they hardly ever talk -- much
less argue -- about it at all. They are conventional and, according to Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, they "may actually serve as a very accurate barometer of the condition of the culture and institutions of our larger society. Far from being alien creatures from another planet, American teenagers actually well reflect back to us the best and worst of our own adult condition and culture." [ Continue reading: ] Last Papal Picture Show Peter Manseau, author of the forthcoming Vows, a memoir of his Catholic priest father and his mother the nun, writes on the big daddy of his family: "During my first year of college, I had a pope fixation. I never went to church in those days, and I was not yet a religion major, so the reasons behind my preoccupation were neither pious nor academic. There was just an unnamable something that drew me to the image of the man. When my dormitory
roommate taped to one of our shared cinderblock walls an enormous poster of a woman in a bikini and roller blades, I countered with the biggest picture I could find of John Paul II in his prime. Dressed in a snow white soutane, his face tan with travel, the new, young pope -- “God’s athlete,” he was called back then -- stood above St. Peter’s Square with his arms outstretched in blessing. I hung the photograph not as moral rebuke of my roommate’s decorative taste but as simple contrast -- if he insisted on being boorish in one direction, I would answer equally in the other. When my roommate put up a second poster in response -- different woman, same outfit; this time on the ceiling above his bed -- I complained that people could see his rollerblading ladies through the window. 'It just makes us look stupid,' I told him, 'like dumb frat guys.' 'Well, people can see the pope, too,' he
said. 'How does that make us look?'" Read more of "The Last Papal Picture Show" at Killing the Buddha. [ Continue reading: ] Convicted Matthew Moran: "I looked at Mark and wondered silently. Wondered if we would be making proclamations about faith and new beginnings the next time Mark was sent upstate. I had interacted with him too much to make any proclamations. I had listened to his rambling monologues and knew that in Mark’s world, the universe could tilt upside down or right-side up in a weekend or less. He is the only person I know that could be suicidal on Friday and bring a friend to church on Sunday. It made me wonder what seeing with 'eyes of faith' actually looked like. Does being Christian mean that we are required to be optimists?" At Killing the Buddha. [ Continue reading: ] The Evangelicals Are All Right (Aren't They?) By Jeff Sharlet: The New York Times has declared
itself on the subject of megachurches -- and thus, in the paper's logic, evangelicaldom -- with an 8,107 word story in its Easter Sunday edition of the magazine, "The Soul of a New Exurb," by contributing editor Jonathan Mahler. I read it with terrible dismay, not because it's bad, but because it's pretty good, and, as it happens, on Good Friday I put to bed a 10,000-plus word story on a megachurch -- New Life, in Colorado Springs -- and exurbanism for Harper's magazine. [ Continue reading: ] Showdown: Disaster Epic Meets Bible Epic Kate Hawley: By now, most of us have been sufficiently primed for the coming of Revelations, NBC’s New Testament-inspired miniseries opening April 13. But when the trailer came on last night as I was (yes, I’ll admit it) watching an episode of Vegas, I gasped and nearly dropped my Nutella. There was something about Bill Pullman and Natascha McElhone
debating the end-times amidst shots of thunder-filled skies that struck me as obscene. [ Continue reading: ] Old News Kate Hawley: News flash: Christian holidays have pagan roots. A wide-eyed report from Agence-France Presse tells us it "seems odd" that Easter, a Christian holiday, can be traced back to a spring ritual named for the Anglo-Saxon goddess of fertility. Numerous variations on this story abound. Another story in The St. Petersburg Times this week introduces us to Purim, in a headline calling it "an untraditional tradition." It’s a fascinating turn of phrase, begging the question, untraditional to whom? Not to those who have celebrated it for thousands of years... [ Continue reading: ] The Media Do Suck (Why The Heathen Rage) By Jeff Sharlet: For the last ten years I’ve been writing stories the reporting of which often began with a subject telling me why he or she hates
“the media,” a phrase I surround with scare quotes not to suggest that it doesn’t really exist, but that “the media” so widely reviled is a hydra with no body; there is no common denominator to the hatred with which it is denounced. [ Continue reading: ] Buddha Born Again, Killed KillingTheBuddha.com -- "cheaper than church," "paved with good intentions," "god for the godless" -- lives. When I took the job of running The Revealer two years ago, I swore to my fellow Buddha killers that I wouldn't abandon the webmagazine we started in the fall of 2000. The Revealer, I hoped, would be a worthy, if wonkier, cousin of Killing the Buddha... [ Continue reading: ] St. Patrick's Pre-Purim Evangelical Indie Rock Party Wedding Warm-Up (A-weema-wah) Last night I went to church at the Journey, an evangelical, nondenominational, congregation of actors and singers and people who want to know
actors and singers. I was reporting a story about a couple of its members, but I was fascinated by the music: imitation indie rock, contemporary Christian music... but it was good! There were these interludes that reminded me of "Under the Milky Way," the Psychedelic Furs version, and there was a fine bass player that made the lyrics about being broken and healed and all that actually seem related to being broken and healed and all that. I was impressed; until I went downstairs, to the Hammerstein Ballroom, where, I was told, the hasidic Frank Sinatra was playing a special pre-Purim concert. I caught only the opening act -- but -- my God -- it rocked. Not faux-indie-rock-rocked; rather, only as a singer with a cantor's control and a big brass band behind him can. It was most decidely not "relevant," the buzzword in evangelicaldom these days, but this is how good it was: the guy sang "The
Lion Sleeps Tonight (Wimoweh)," af yidish, and it was so good I almost cried and definitely would have danced if the assembled hasidim hadn't already been eyeing me like maybe I was a lobster roll.... [ Continue reading: ] Milk "Mary, an unstable mystic, masturbates with holy ardor, turning a prayer -- 'Come, Lord Jesus, have mercy on me' -- into a lascivious incantation. Walter, a left-wing Episcopal priest who has been demoted to an outer-borough church for coming on to a teenager at Manhattan's Church of the Heavenly Rest, still desires boys; he spends his nights trolling gay bars and his days visiting Web sites 'for theologically minded adherents of S-and-M.'" Virginia Heffernan in The NYTimes on Darcey Steinke's new novel, Milk, "a furtive little book, a kinky Christian fable about three Brooklyn outcasts obsessed with God and sex." [ Continue reading: ] My Radio, My God Lisa
Anderson: "I haven't introduced myself to the KRCC staff as Lisa the Christian. And I thought that was okay until my second outing." NPR's gifts of the spirit and the Bible's strange demands. [ Continue reading: ] Slaughterhouse Story What a pleasure to read a story about Islam that has nothing to do with "the war on terror." Andrea Elliott offers up the story of a New Jersey halal slaughterhouse that is modest, evocative, and very fine to read: "...the call to prayer... slips out through a vent, blending with the drone of the New Jersey Turnpike. Inside, the voice moves from room to room, where chickens, bulls and goats arrive daily to meet their death. Blasted from loudspeakers, the sound hovers over the head butcher, Jaci DaSilva, a Brazilian immigrant who converted to Islam a decade ago." [ Continue reading: ] From the Standpoint of Grace Chris Lehmann: From Housekeeping to Gilead,
Marilynne Robinson has always been exploring what counts as genuine faith. [ Continue reading: ] Passion, Year One The anniversary of The Passion has arrived, and with it comes the alternate "awards" universe of Christian conservatives determined to right the wrong they believe was visited upon them by the Academy's apparent indifference to Gibson's masterpiece. You got that? It was a masterpiece. What's unfortunate, and revealing, about such responses is that in many regards The Passion was a very good movie. It certainly made my top 10 for the year, which Million Dollar Baby did not. But, leaving aside all the political and theological arguments swirling around its reception, it was flawed in such obvious ways that the commitment of Christian conservative intellectuals to declaring its near-perfection reveals, I think, an uneasiness, an awareness that the masterpiece of Christian pop
culture cinema is yet to come. [ Continue reading: ] Simpsons: Godless, Gay, or (Gasp) Both? Sharlet: Last week The Simpsons' Springfield went gay, but before that, The Simpsons was a Christian show. Well, sort of. Christianity Today dubbed Homer's okily-dokily neighbor, Ned Flanders, St. Ned, for his scrubbed-clean Christianity, John Ashcroft is said to be a fan of The Gospel According to the Simpsons, and pastors across the English-speaking world use the show as a source of pop culture parables. But when Heather McElhatton, a radio reporter for Weekend America, sat down with Patty Tattersall, a "self-described, hardcore, born again Christian" to watch the show, Patty was horrified. Listen here. (Scroll down to bottom of the page for the Simpsons segment. Disclosure: I'm a paid consultant for Weekend America.) And here's The Simpsons Archive's guide to religion in Homer's world. [
Continue reading: ] Haunted Derrida "For someone constantly accused of relativism, Derrida often sounds in these late works like a man haunted by the absolute. There is a sense in which, although he was an atheist, he practiced what a medieval scholar might have recognized as 'negative theology' -- an effort to define the nature of God by cutting away all the misleading conceptions imposed by the limits of human understanding." Scott McLemee on this past weekend's "Derrida/America" conference, in Inside Higher Ed. [ Continue reading: ] This Is What Christian Film Criticism Looks Like And the most damning indictment of evangelical passion for The Passion comes from... Christianity Today's Leadership Journal. "Maybe it's because (I know some readers will be tempted to write me off after reading this sentence) I was so frustrated by last year's promotional hype surrounding Mel Gibson's The
Passion of the Christ, and I was so frustrated by the movie itself," writes Brian McLaren, pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church in Spencerville, MD. "For whatever reason, when I walked out of the recent film Hotel Rwanda, the story of a hotel manager who saves more than a thousand Tutsi refugees from Hutu-led genocide,
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