…it’s time for the Minnesoros “Independent” to focus on the real enemy: those damn Christians.

Even Christians among them. Chris Steller compares Senator Burris’ uppity sense of faith to that of Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin:

Democrats in the U.S. Senate appear ready to join God in backing Burris’s appointment by Illinois Gov. Rod “Nothing but Blue Sky” Blagojevich to join their ranks, it might be a good time to review who really calls the shots in American politics. After the jump, videos of Burris, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin discussing the key role God played in their ascension to public office.

Christians who are uppity.

Big scoop there, Steller.

I think I’m going to be sick (again).

This just popped (or pooped-right AC?) into my Yahoo mail.

“wake up and unlock your own personal happiness in 2009”

All you gotta do is listen to Oprah on XM.

You first.

The United States of America is coming to an end in 2010 which presents an enormous opportunity.

MOSCOW — For a decade, Russian academic Igor Panarin has been predicting the U.S. will fall apart in 2010. For most of that time, he admits, few took his argument — that an economic and moral collapse will trigger a civil war and the eventual breakup of the U.S.

A polite and cheerful man with a buzz cut, Mr. Panarin insists he does not dislike Americans. But he warns that the outlook for them is dire.

Bummer for sure, but 2010 is when I am going to make all of my electronics and furniture purchases and put them all on “Two Years Interest Free” financing. Just as they come due:

Thousands Worldwide Prepare for the Apocalypse, Expected in 2012

You have to understand, there will be nothing, nothing left,” Geryl told ABC News from his home in Antwerp, Belgium. “We will have to start an entire civilization from scratch.”

Just when my stuff comes due.

Perfect.

Every year, reading stories like this, the idea of switching to the Russian Orthodox Church – with its January 7 observance of Christmas – resonates.

Just a little.

From Luke – one of history’s original bloggers, 2,000 years ago (give or take a few):

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night.

An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.

But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.

Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ^[a] the Lord.

This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.”

Merry Christmas, all.

Posting will be, obviously, pretty nonexistant today.

Vice-President Elect Joe-Blow Biden is such a buzzkill.

Dec. 22 (Bloomberg) — Vice President-elect Joe Biden said he is worried about the “exceedingly high expectations” that world leaders have placed on President-elect Barack Obama.

“Their expectation for Barack’s presidency is overwhelming,” Biden said, according to excerpts from an interview with CNN’s Larry King Live, scheduled to air at 9 p.m. tonight, New York time. “They are so hungry to have an American leader who they think has a policy that reflects our stated values, as well as one they can talk to.”

Obama’s three-million-jobs-created goal pulled from thin air this week notwithstanding, it turns out Barack Obama may have somehow, unbeknownst, inadvertently, created expectations for his administration that he may or may not be able to manifest.

Shocker.

Newsflash: Some of us never believed anything he said then or now.

I think I know what Joe is saying, at least here at home. People will have to pay their own mortgages, work for a living and go back to worshiping the incumbent savior, Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

Oh – I almost forgot – and do their own Christmas shopping (despite the sentiment expressed in our recent poll).

Obama can still walk on water, as long as it’s frozen. Less hopey, less changey. More samey, more lamey.

Bummer.

In what is becoming regular enough for a pay-per-view event, the monks are back to brawling in Jerusalem:

Israeli police rushed into one of Christianity’s holiest churches Sunday and arrested two clergyman after an argument between monks erupted into a brawl next to the site of Jesus’ tomb.

The clash between Armenian and Greek Orthodox monks broke out in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, revered as the site of Jesus’ crucifixion, burial and resurrection.

The brawling began during a procession of Armenian clergymen commemorating the 4th-century discovery of the cross believed to have been used to crucify Jesus.

Just a reminder that all of that violence you see between Shi’a and Sunni Moslems today was pretty normal between the 53 flavors of Christianity between 500-1000 years ago.

On Saturday’s NARN show, Ed and I spent a segment talking about the Catholic Church’s relative silence (at least in America) on abortion in politics (a conversation Ed continued at Hot Air this morning).

I’m a Protestant, of course, and mildly peeved that the state of discourse is now such that I have to painstakingly disclaim “I’m not anti-Catholic”. 

But I’ve had a few questions for American Catholics for a very, very long time.

Catholic doctrine – to this goy, who had exactly a semester in Catholic school, and that only because my elementary school had to be torn down, so we rented a room at Saint John’s Academy – has always seemed like a bit of a paper tiger among American Catholics.  Catholics in the US seem scarcely less willing than us goyim to do all the stuff the priests and nuns told ’em not to way back when – use birth control, get divorced, knock back a couple of Big Macs on Friday, what have you.  As to being pro-life?  Many of America’s most-Catholic cities – Boston, New York, Philly, Saint Paul, New Orleans – are also the most left-leaning, ergo most pro-“choice”.  And that’s not a demographic accident; generations of American bishops, archbishops and (I dunno) flying-buttressbishops, like Minneapolis/Saint Paul’s former Archbiship Flynn, were scarcely farther to the right than Barack Obama on any issue, and seemed conveniently and consistently silent as re politicians’ stances (especially those of “Catholic” pols, like Joe Biden, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi and, lest we forget, pro-“choice” congresswomen Betty McCollum, not merely Catholic but graduate of Catholic women’s college and pristinely-liberal hothouse Saint Catherine’s, in Saint Paul which, like neighboring Saint Thomas, seems to find Catholic doctrine more a matter of fund-raising than a moral foundation.

So when I see this story, about Denver’s archbishop questioning Biden and Obama on “choice”, and lighting a figurative fire under his followers’ (parishioners?  Archbishopricticioners? Prelatistas?) figurative feet over “choice”…:

Denver Roman Catholic Archbishop Charles Chaput labeled Barack Obama the “most committed” abortion-rights candidate from a major party in 35 years while accusing a Catholic Obama ally and other Democratic-friendly Catholic groups of doing a “disservice to the church.”

Chaput, one of the nation’s most politically outspoken Catholic prelates, delivered the remarks Friday night at a dinner of a Catholic women’s group.
His comments were among the sharpest in a debate over abortion and Catholic political responsibility in a campaign in which Catholics represent a key swing vote.

…my response wasn’t so much “there y’go” as “why is this news?” 

Of course, it is news; of America’s bajillion archbishops, Chaput would seem to be one of very, very few actually telling Catholic politicians to reckon with Catholic doctrine in adopting their positions.

And, possible Reaganesque flight to the right notwithstanding, an awful lot of Catholics will be voting for The One next month. 

Compare and contrast; when evangelical Protestants don’t vote their faith, it makes the news; when the Catholic hierarchy asks Catholics not even to vote their faith, but for Catholic pols to be aware of the rules, regs and beliefs of that faith, it’s newsworthy.

Where is the Catholic hierarchy?

A Nebraska judge tosses a lawsuit against God:

Judge Marlon Polk threw out Nebraska Sen. Ernie Chambers’ lawsuit against the Almighty, saying there was no evidence that the defendant had been served. What’s more, Polk found “there can never be service effectuated on the named defendant.”

Chambers had sued God in September 2007, seeking a permanent injunction to prevent God from committing acts of violence such as earthquakes and tornadoes.

It’s good to know there’s some sort of brake on judicial activism.

Oh, wait – it was “to prove a point”:

Although the case may seem superfluous and even scandalous to others, Chambers has said his point is to focus on the question of whether certain lawsuits should be prohibited.

“Nobody should stand at the courthouse door to predetermine who has access to the courts,” he said. “My point is that anyone can sue anyone else, even God.”

Chambers, an avowed atheist, said he decided to make that point after at least two attempts in the Nebraska Legislature to limit “frivolous lawsuits.”

Laws against “frivolous lawsuits” are indeed stupid – provided you believe in the integrity of judges and juries…

…and we should just change the subject, shouldn’t we?

…to read this particular bit by John “Not Jon” Stewart over at NightWriter today.

No comment; just saying.

Top Hamas leader’s son is now a Christian:

In an exclusive interview with Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, Masab Yousuf, son of West Bank Hamas leader Sheik Hassan Yousef, slammed Hamas, praised Israel and said he hoped his terrorist father will open his eyes to Jesus and to Christianity.

“I know that I’m endangering my life and am even liable to lose my father, but I hope that he’ll understand this and that God will give him and my family patience and willingness to open their eyes to Jesus and to Christianity. Maybe one day I’ll be able to return to Palestine and to Ramallah with Jesus, in the Kingdom of God,” Masab said.

Aside from the little bit of joy all of us Christians feel when someone accepts Christ (congrats, Mr. Yousuf!), it’s such a thumb in the eye for…well, you know who.

Which isn’t perhaps the reaction Christ wants us to have.  I guess I have to ask forgiveness right quick here.

(Via Heavy)

Some of my best friends are atheists.

Me? Nah. I’ve never found the scientific case against God remotely compelling. The cases of Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are so hate-clogged they’re pretty easily dispatched; indeed, I’d love to see debate between one of them and a genuine Christian thinker, especially one that wasn’t moderated by some NPR suckup; it’d be like a lawnmower going through a cabbage patch. Christopher Hitchens is more acerbic – and easier, since while he rejects “God”, he still buys the notion of some kind of universal energy of one kind or another.

But at least there’s an argument you can try to respect.

Well, for some of ’em anyway.

The big problem with the latest wave of atheists isn’t their beliefs – because their beliefs are irrelevant. It’s all about their hatred of faith. Read their blogs, watch their cable-access shows – it’s less about “the case against God” and more “aren’t people of faith Christians stupid!” It’d be like packs of fundamentalist Christians filming themselves mocking (stereotyped) gay behavior for cruel, cheap yuks, if you can imagine that (and, as a rule, you do have to imagine it).

No. I mean just like it.

Reading the local Sorosphere’s fawning coverage of PZ “Meyers” Myers’ extended game of “monkey in the middle” with a consecrated host (the wafer from a Catholic communion that’s been blessed by a priest – which, orthodox Catholics believe, “transubstantiates” into the literal body of Christ as related in the Last Supper) is…depressing. Myers, a biology professor and one of the more prominent atheist bloggers, declaims about religion from atop what he seems to consider a mountain of logic. And he pays, indeed, some lip service to common decency, as most people, faith aside, would understand it…:

I don’t favor the idea of going to somebody’s home or to something they own and possess and consider very important, like a graveyard—going to a grave and desecrating that. That’s something completely different. Because what you’re doing is doing harm to something unique and something that is rightfully part of somebody else—it’s somebody else’s ownership.

And yet…:

The cracker [host, presumably] is completely different. This is something that’s freely handed out.

Well, no. It’s not.

I’m not Catholic – and, like most Protestants, I take an allegorical rather than literal view of the host. But it’s not remotely “freely” handed out. The Catholic communion involves jumping through some spiritual hoops (as does the Protestant communion, in most cases) to “commune” with God; in the Catholic tradition (stop me if I’m wrong, Catholics) involves being in a “state of grace”, of having ones’ sins forgiven, before receiving the Body and Blood of Christ. Not everyone who walks into a Catholic Church gets communion. The host is no more “freely” handed out than is an “A” in one of Myers’ classes. I presume.

So the stunt Myers is defending – a college student, Webster Cook, who kyped a consecrated host from a mass, drawing all sorts of emotional reactions from Catholics, some of them terribly overwrought – was as much vandalism (devaluing something of value to another by defacing, damaging or destroying it) as theft.

To Myers, of course, it’s a big joke; like stealing a hat from a kid on the playground and tossing it around among the other little reprobates. It’s a cruel little giggle – after all, it’s not your hat that you’re having fun with! – and if the kid gets pissed and decks you, you can run to the principal and get him in trouble.

I read PZ Myers, and I can’t feel angry, really.  All I can feel is sad.

And not just in a spiritual sense.  This is a guy – and a huge pack of suckups – who think this is cutting-edge shiznit.  Sticking it to the man priest; Effing with a host (hahaha, they think it’s the body of Jeeeebus!)

I was going to write “I’m not sure what bothers me more – the stunt, and Myers’ puerile reaction in support, or the local Sorosphere’s fawning coverage and belief that it’s “news” and that Myers is a profile in courage for doing it” – but I stopped.

The answer is “neither”.

Here’s why: this is probably good news for people of faith. If this – and Dawkins, and Harris – is the best atheists can do, God is not only alive, but He is so confident in our ability to withstand the real challenges to our faith that He’s sent us some puffed-up, arrogant, self-important buffoons to laugh at.

To:  Paul Schmelzer, Minnesoros “Independent”

From: Mitch Berg, schmuck blogger

Re:  Interview

Paul,

While I think the Mindy has become a pretty risible exercise, you are without a doubt a writer that could make it at a real publication.

Now, since you do write for a lefty propaganda shill site, I know that one of the ground rules is that you have to titter and chuckle at any traditional representation of religion (with exceptions made for lesbians declaring themselves ordained priests, Jewish supporters of Hamas and that sort of thing).

But reading this bit here, I gotta say:  interviewing PZ “Meyers” Myers about religion (with breathless, Tiger-beat-style credulity, no less; “The incident with college student Webster Cook comes as religious passions everywhere are incredibly inflamed –- Shiites and Sunnis, Evangelicals and atheists, etc. Does this say anything about the state of religion?”) is a little like interview Andy Dick about the state of method acting.

That is all.

UPDATE:  And no, Paul and PZ – the incident says nothing about the “state of religion”.  It says something about the state of atheism/agnosticism.  They’re reduced to playing “monkey in the middle” with the artifacts of ceremony. 

Pathetic.

I’m not Catholic.  I never will be.  I have my theological reasons.

I have nothing against Catholicism or Catholics. Many of my best friends, and some of my relatives, are Catholic.  I agree with John Paul II – there are many paths to salvation.  I don’t believe Catholicism is a detour on the road to salvation. 

As it happens, I’m Presbyterian.  The theology of the Presbyterian Church just makes more sense to me (even though the actions of the Presbyterian Church in the USA’s non-clerical governing body on temporal issues frequently don’t).  I believe strongly in its focus on scripture, its mix of justification by faith with strong encouragement of putting ones’ faith into action, its governance, John Knox’s founding beliefs on the relationship between government and the faithful (hint:  it strongly influenced how this country was founded), and many, many other things.

Which isn’t to say there aren’t things I respect about Catholicism – indeed, as a newly-minted conservative in the mid-eighties, Pope John Paul II’s example was downright inspirational.

But given a choice between…:

1. starting a pressure group within the Catholic Church – say, “Catholics for Justification By Faith Without Eschewing Works, An Attitude of Judging Civil Authority By Its Record On Being Good Versus Evil, and An Elected Church Governing Hierarchy”, and spending decades/centuries duking it out with a church that is based on theologically inimicable principles, or…
2. …joining a church that actually practiced these things…

…the choice seemed fairly simple (presuming one doesn’t live merely to fight fruitless battles the end of which one will never see).

Which is why I see things like this:

Saying they don’t want to go back in the closet, gay and lesbian Catholics and their supporters took their annual prayer service celebrating gay pride outdoors Wednesday night…About 100 people marched from the parking lot to the front of St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church in south Minneapolis, where they celebrated a [GLBT prayer service] officials from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis had banned from the church itself.

I’m totally with ’em about not going back into the closet.

But…well…

Lucia Engelhardt, 2, was helping her sister Anna, 9, carry a sign reading “Gay love is not a mortal sin.”

I may or may not agree on that count.  I’m pretty “live and let live” on these sorts of things.

But to the Catholic Church, the way of the gay is a mortal sin.  And changing the Catholic Church is like changing the orbit of the planet.

Their 7-year-old sister, Ingrid, also carried a sign supporting gays in the Catholic Church.

“We’re here to support our gay friends,” said their mother, Stephanie Vagle. “And to show our displeasure with the Catholic Church over this issue,” their father, Bill Englehardt, quickly added.

So here’s a question; if you disagree so completely with the Catholic Church over something that the Church itself is so adamant about not changing, why stay Catholic?

Why not leave?

Why not find a church that reflects your beliefs?  It’s an ancient, honorable thing;  the Armenian and Coptic and Chaldean and Indian and finally the Greek Churches left over creeds and doctrines and, I dunno, the heights of miter caps for all I remember.  We Protestants left over all manner of things, and have collected half a billion unforced turnovers since then.  The Episcopals seceded over the whole “my king beats your pope” thing.

Just saying – it’d be nothing new.

I’m genuinely curious – for the second day in a row, as it happens; why stay in a church whose beliefs are so inimicable to you?

Is it the incense?  The nuns?  The tradition?

Someone explain it, please.

I was going to write about this bit here – about local gay Catholic groups complaining about Archbishop Nienstedt’s cracking down on LGBT services at a liberal local parish.

Brian “Saint Paul” Ward, however, beat me to it with a huge headstart pointing out correctly that…:

To put it in terms a journalism school graduate might appreciate, the Catholic Church not hosting a Gay Pride event is dog bites man. It happens every day.

Now, a Catholic parish hosting these events, as apparently St. Joan of Arc in Minneapolis has been doing so for the past several years, is man bites dog (i.e., an unusual, infrequent event more likely to be reported as news than an ordinary, everyday occurrence).

Reasonably speaking, that is what should have been covered the past few years. Maybe some shock headlines, “Catholic Parish Hosting Gay Pride Event” followed by quotes from founders of obscure pressure groups for traditional values accusing the organizers of spiritual violence and Christophobic hatred.

Of course, the local agenda-media coverage – Grow at the MNPost, Andy Birkey in the Minnesoros Monitor “Independent” – took the “man biting dog” angle with dreary predictability and impeccable punctuality.

…the most thoroughly dishonest portrayal comes from the new media. Here are excerpts from Doug Grow at the website MinnPost.

Remember when it was OK for Catholics to pray with gays and lesbians?

Be careful whom you pray for…Apparently with a straight face, McGrath said that this isn’t some new crackdown because Archbishop John Nienstedt is now in charge. Recently retired Archibishop Harry Flynn would have cracked down on this, too, had he known of it, McGrath said. Maybe…Many are saddened and angry ? but probably not surprised.

There’s got to be an award for reporting this awful. (A Pulitzer maybe?) Of course, this dispute has absolutely nothing to do with who you pray with or who you pray for. The Church encourages gay activists to attend Mass (sans sacraments, as with anyone in a state of mortal sin) and practically requires Catholics to pray for all those in mortal sin. At his age and experience, Grow should know this. In fact, comments testifying to these facts were in the article he linked to. But he ignores that, misrepresents the issue entirely, questions the integrity of the Church spokesman, and casts his favored actors as oppressed victims. Not bad for a couple of paragraph’s work.

The big question:  When did Doug Grow turn into Nick Coleman?

Grow is a former columnist for the Star Tribune. The only silver lining here is realizing he’s now at an online liberal ghetto like MinnPost, instead of working the monopoly newspaper in town. His ability to confuse the issue and demonize his political enemies in the public’s imagination is now severely limited. Let’s be thankful for small favors.

Andy Birkey?  This is your future!

Is this a way to reach out to Catholic voters – Algore imitating Pope John Paul II?

Habemas Demigogam?

There’s another that came out via email…:

Isn’t that supposed to be “and lo, I shall be with you always?”

Saint Thomas University – the Twin Cities’ main and most prestigious Catholic university – just can’t win for losing.

For years, they sell their Catholic soul to try to appeal to the urban, big-money, soft-left crowd they apparently seek.  And what does it get them, according to the City Pages?
I mean, if they try to act Catholic and all?

For Tara Borton, choosing a place to volunteer over the summer for school credit was a no-brainer. The first-year student at the University of St. Thomas School of Law was interested in women’s issues, so she decided to donate her time to Planned Parenthood.

“I’d volunteered there when I lived in Florida,” Borton explains. “I wanted to get involved again.”

It’s a “no-brainer” to do something that the Catholic Church explicitly deems non-Catholic?

Apparently.

But Borton’s choice, hardly worth a second glance at most schools, has become the latest political controversy to roil the University of St. Thomas. Last summer, St. Thomas infamously disinvited Archbishop Desmond Tutu from speaking on campus for fears that his Palestinian-friendly remarks would offend Jews. Shortly thereafter, a deal with Allina Hospitals & Clinics to set up a medical school fell through amid whispers that St. Thomas’s Catholic views would be incompatible with standard medical training on sexual and reproductive health.

Ahem – aren’t we missing a controversy?

I digress:

The latest controversy has forced St. Thomas’s law school to weigh its secular, prestige-oriented ambitions, underlined by its recent ascension to third-tier status in the influential U.S. News & World Report rankings, against the pressure to hew to the Catholic Church’s doctrinaire leadership, reinforced by Pope Benedict’s stern speech to Catholic educators during his recent visit to America.

I dunno.  Somehow, other Catholic institutions manage to make the list. Have they all tossed the whole “church” thing overboard?

The current fracas was set in motion earlier this month, when Borton sought permission to meet her public service requirements by spending the summer working for Planned Parenthood. All students are required to complete 50 hours of volunteer service—anything from pro bono legal work for the poor to building houses for Habitat for Humanity—in an effort to encourage them to serve the needy.

And naturally, Saint Thomas told Borton she couldn’t work for Planned Parenthood at all – right?

Following standard procedure, Borton took her request to the Public Service Board, a student-run committee charged with lining up volunteer opportunities and deciding which projects are worthy of students’ time. Last Monday, after a tense, hour-long deliberation, the board issued its decision: In a 10-4 vote, it ruled that Borton could work at Planned Parenthood on cancer treatment, adoption services, and sexually transmitted disease testing, but would have to refrain from any volunteer work involving contraception or abortion.

Ah.  So Borton actually got to work for Planned Parenthood, in other words?   In a way that didn’t contravene the rules the Catholic church that runs St. Thomas, and of which Borton was certainly aware when she applied?

Oh, of course not.  This is Saint Thomas; the place where the administration of  President Father “Havana Denny” Dease screws up in the secular and ecclesiastical veins – picking and choosing both the First Amendment  rights and  the ecclesiastical rules that will apply to his students.

Within hours, Dean Thomas Mengler’s email inbox was flooded with dozens of angry emails from faculty, students, and alumni. The messages shared a common question: How can St. Thomas, as a Catholic institution, lend volunteer support to Planned Parenthood, a notorious facilitator of abortions?

Mengler acted swiftly. In an open letter he sent out the next day, before the board’s decision had been publicly announced, the dean overruled the vote.

But wait!

But his edict was muddied by school bylaws, which don’t explicitly grant the dean authority to overrule the Public Service Board without a grievance from the volunteer in question. By claiming that authority, Mengler angered a large contingent of students. Though the school is hunkered down for final exams, 80 students found time to sign an open letter challenging the dean’s authority.”A vocal minority of students and faculty were allowed to overturn a decision by a representative student body without a formal appeals process,” the students wrote. “Law school has taught us to be proud of living in a democracy where people—right or wrong—are allowed their day in court and their opportunity to be heard. Ours has been denied.”

Note to Fr. Dease and Saint Thomas; if you shoot yourself in the foot repeatedly, consider switching from a machine gun to a revolver.

I’m pleased as punch to note that two of my favorite, er, let’s say “niche” publications are still in business.

I was working at Cray Research fifteen years ago when I encountered The Journal of Irreproducible Results, which is  to science what The Onion is to news.  What I didn’t know was that the JIR’s history goes back over half a century.  And while their usual fare revolves around parodies of scientific publications (and since I was a technical writer at the time, the format certainly resonated), this bit here is near and dear to any blogger that runs a comment section.

The Wittenburg Door and I go back even further; a high school classmate of mine served as its editor back in the late eighties.   It’s like…well, here’s another Onion reference; it’s The Onion of religious writing.  The Door has always been a hand-to-mouth project – but when it occurs to me to go read it (every couple of years, lately) it’s always a great read.

Background follows.

Back in college, two of my professors, a husband and wife team that taught Math and English, respectively, went through a flash of tragic fame. The Swans had been Christian Scientists, and as their son fell ill with meningitis.

They followed their faith – and the boy died. The Swans left the church (although they apparently kept their faith in a broader sense), and have spent a few decades lobbying to change state laws that protect parents whose religious practices lead to their childrens’ deaths. It’s an issue fraught with emotion on both sides…

…and one I stay happily out of. I’m a Christian who sees no rational reason to find conflict between an allegorical reading of the Old Testament and science. There is no battle between “creationism”/intelligent design and evolution. It’s pretty simple.

And I regard zealots on both sides – the snake-handlers along with the fevered, bigoted caricatures that Big Atheism sends forth to do battle in the media – with suspicion and a little bit of sorrow.

Fast forward to today, and the dumbest post that’s ever appeared on Anti-Strib that wasn’t written by Ed Salden. It’s written by a fellow named Jeff, who must have gotten video of Tracy Eberly doing something really awful to get included in the Anti-Strib stable of writers in the first place.

Of course, part of the problem becomes clear at the conclusion:

(via Pharyngula.)

P.Z. Meiers is to religion as David Duke is to black people.

Onward to be beginning:

Just when you think that prayer can’t do any harm:

“Even as her 11-year-old daughter lay dying on a mattress on the floor of the family dining room on Easter Sunday, Leilani Neumann never wavered in her belief in the power of prayer.
“We just thought it was a spiritual attack and we prayed for her,” Neumann said, according to a police report. “My husband, Dale, was crying and mentioned taking Kara to the doctor, and I said the Lord’s going to heal her and we continued to pray.”

Prayer didn’t save Madeline Kara Neumann, who died of untreated diabetes March 23.”

No, it didn’t.

Neither, “John’s” claims notwithstanding, did it “do harm”. A couple of parents with a view of God and faith that is, to say the least, on the far fringe of orthodoxy, did.

So what’s my point? I’ve often accused faith of having no accountability, and this is exactly what I mean.

Well, good for you!

Except that for people of faith, accountability is a constant thing. Yes, accountability to God is a pretty powerful force, and if people see that accountability differently than you do (see also: female circumcision, suttee, substituting prayer for medicine, faith-healing, whatever) it can seem anything from “weird” to “barbaric” to “just plain wrong”.

And that accountability is why Christians devote 25% more – of their own free will, rather than via government coercion – to charity than do secularists, and are more likely to vote and volunteer for civic causes than atheists.

At any rate, “Jeff” seems to have missed (or never really understood) the Christian injunction to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s”. Understandable, perhaps – liberals think means nothing more than “be happy to pay for a better Galilee Minnesota“. It actually means that Christians need to recognize civil authority (although the Protestant Reformation added the rather important bit about “evil governments are bad”). So there’s nothing “unnaccountable about faith”; there are merely people of faith who, through over-narrow interpretation or over-broad religious hubris, make the wrong choices.

And this wrong choice, like the Swans’ a couple decades back, ended in tragedy. Life happens. You live and – like the Swans – you learn, or at least, like the couple from Wisconsin, get some nasty consequences.

I might add that science – which is often delegated to merely another religion around these parts

That’s right, “Jeff”, which is why we have the North Memorial Snake Handling Auditorium, Regions Prayer Center, and the University of Minnesota Faith Healing Center, and why you can’t find a doctor on any regional golf courses.

Bad choices – whether driven by a fringe-y view of faith or its mirror image, the belief that ones’ self is the only intelligence that really matters – are the problem.

That, and Tracy Eberly’s lax HR standards, apparently.

Fifty years ago, the great slander against Catholic politicians was that they’d have to take orders from Rome.

That might almost be preferable to the world Pope Benedict seemed to espouse last week.  He seems to be cuddling up to the UN:

Pope Benedict on Friday called for collective diplomacy, and not “the decisions of a few” to resolve conflicts and said human rights had to be based on “unchanging justice” and not the legal whims of the day.

At the United Nations, normally formal diplomats and bureaucrats snapped pictures of the pope with their cell phone cameras and jostled to get close as he moved through the institution’s corridors.Praising the founding principles of the U.N., Benedict said the world body should and does serve as an “active example” of how conflicts can be solved based on shared regulations and values.

Scott Johnson discusses his conversation with a Minnesota Department of Education official that would seem to support the loophole the Tarek Ibn Ziyad Academy seems to have found in the state’s laws separating church and government school funding.

You should read the whole thing for the background.

The conclusion?

Morgan [the official whom Scott interviewed] commented that so long as prayer is voluntary and not led by school officials, it does not detract from the school’s nonsectarian character. He had no knowledge of after-school instruction, but so long as it was voluntary and the school afforded equal access to other providers, that too would be in keeping with the school’s nonsectarian character. He added that the department was following up on Kersten’s Sunday column with a site visit and a letter to TIZA’s principal inquiring into the issues it raised, as it had done in 2004 following Tammy Oseid’s Pioneer Press article.

“Equal access to other providers?”

Like if I offered to start a Presbyterian youth group for the school’s after-hours activities?

Johnson concludes:

Muslim activists have found a workable seam in the purported separation of church and state in Minnesota. One does not need to engage in much speculation to foresee the day when Minnesota’s burgeoning Muslim population will be educated in separate charter schools like TIZA at taxpayers’ expense, where they will receive religious instruction courtesy of the likes of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota.

What is an opponent of the phenomenon represented by TIZA to do? If TIZA’s arrangement passes muster with state authorities, an opponent is left with two options. One must either await judicial intervention at the behest of some party with standing to bring a lawsuit raising the obvious First Amendment issues, or one must work for the demise of charter schools.

The demise of charter schools is not an option; indeed, for many of us parents in the city, charter schools have been an unqualified Godsend.

So maybe the third option is to take reciprocal advantage of the loophole; the city’s other charter schools that have adopted the structure, if not the dogma, of religious education should also take the opportunity to offer after-school activities to their kids.

When it comes to education, the separation of church and state has never really worked.  Not that it’s not possible, or even in a sense very desirable, to have a secular education system, really – but ours just keeps getting worse and worse.

Among Minnesota’s charter schools are several successful programs that adopt the structure and ideals of religious schools – with the religion itself kept carefully segregated out.  Even amid the chaos (and success) of Minnesota’s charter schools, these schools frequently stand out as excellent ones (although they are far from the only successful idea in Minnesota’s charter system).

So when word came out that someone was going to try an Islamic charter school, I thought “let’s wait and see what happens”.  If they followed the model of Minnesota’s other pseudo-religious charter programs, it could be a very good thing, a model for helping Minnesota’s mass of Moslem immigrants both assimilate and retain the parts of their culture they care about.  Minnesota already has Hispanic, Afro-centric and H’mong charter schools – and some of them are among Minnesota’s most successful charter schools.  They are a success largely because parents are voting for them with their feet; one in eight Saint Paul public school parents has decamped their kids for the charters in recent years.

But Katherine Kersten – the single best columnist at the Strib – shows us that the one bit “if” seems to have come up “No”:

Evidence suggests, however, that TIZA is an Islamic school, funded by Minnesota taxpayers.

TIZA has many characteristics that suggest a religious school. It shares the headquarters building of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, whose mission is “establishing Islam in Minnesota.” The building also houses a mosque. TIZA’s executive director, Asad Zaman, is a Muslim imam, or religious leader, and its sponsor is an organization called Islamic Relief.

Students pray daily, the cafeteria serves halal food – permissible under Islamic law — and “Islamic Studies” is offered at the end of the school day.

Zaman maintains that TIZA is not a religious school. He declined, however, to allow me to visit the school to see for myself, “due to the hectic schedule for statewide testing.” But after I e-mailed him that the Minnesota Department of Education had told me that testing would not begin for several weeks, Zaman did not respond — even to urgent calls and e-mails seeking comment before my first column on TIZA.

Now, however, an eyewitness has stepped forward. Amanda Getz of Bloomington is a substitute teacher. She worked as a substitute in two fifth-grade classrooms at TIZA on Friday, March 14. Her experience suggests that school-sponsored religious activity plays an integral role at TIZA.

Arriving on a Friday, the Muslim holy day, she says she was told that the day’s schedule included a “school assembly” in the gym after lunch.

Before the assembly, she says she was told, her duties would include taking her fifth-grade students to the bathroom, four at a time, to perform “their ritual washing.”

Afterward, Getz said, “teachers led the kids into the gym, where a man dressed in white with a white cap, who had been at the school all day,” was preparing to lead prayer. Beside him, another man “was prostrating himself in prayer on a carpet as the students entered.”

“The prayer I saw was not voluntary,” Getz said. “The kids were corralled by adults and required to go to the assembly where prayer occurred.”

Islamic Studies was also incorporated into the school day. “When I arrived, I was told ‘after school we have Islamic Studies,’ and I might have to stay for hall duty,” Getz said. “The teachers had written assignments on the blackboard for classes like math and social studies. Islamic Studies was the last one — the board said the kids were studying the Qu’ran. The students were told to copy it into their planner, along with everything else. That gave me the impression that Islamic Studies was a subject like any other.”

After school, Getz’s fifth-graders stayed in their classroom and the man in white who had led prayer in the gym came in to teach Islamic Studies. TIZA has in effect extended the school day — buses leave only after Islamic Studies is over. Getz did not see evidence of other extra-curricular activity, except for a group of small children playing outside. Significantly, 77 percent of TIZA parents say that their “main reason for choosing TIZA … was because of after-school programs conducted by various non-profit organizations at the end of the school period in the school building,” according to a TIZA report.

Student “prayer is not mandated by TIZA,” [the schools’ principal] wrote, and so is legal. On Friday afternoons, “students are released … to either join a parent-led service or for study hall.” Islamic Studies is provided by the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, and other “nonsectarian” after-school options are available, he added…Until recently, TIZA’s website included a request for volunteers to help with “Friday prayers.” In an e-mail, Zaman explained this as an attempt to ensure that “no TIZA staff members were involved in organizing the Friday prayers.”But an end run of this kind cannot remove the fact of school sponsorship of prayer services, which take place in the school building during school hours.

Now, charter schools are supposed to be open to everyone.  Granted, it’s presumed that parents and kids have an interest in the program; I cant’ see pacifist parents sending their kids to, say, the General John Vessey charter, which borrows heavily from the military school model (with great results, according to some parents I’ve heard), but I can’t imagine Vessey would either turn ’em down or try to turn them into soldiers.  Would TIZA have the same forbearance with, say, a Lutheran kid who had no intention of converting?
What to think…

Conceptually?  If we blow open the restrictions about public funding for religious schools, then I say “go to it!”.  We can have Moslem, Hindu, Catholic, Buddhist, Jewish and many flavors of Protestant schools to go along with the agnostic ones we already have!

But given the current set of laws that we current have, for better or worse, I’m just not seeing that.  And with that as the case, I’m not sure there’s any way around the notion that we, the Minnesota taxpayer, are footing the bill for one brand of religious education that’s barred to everyone else.

While Islam is growing in many parts of the world, Diamand Dog at Freedom Dogs has some very good news.  The Dog notes:

Muslims are converting by the thousands to Christianity.

According to the website Islam Watch, in Russia, some two million ethnic Muslims converted to Christianity last year. Ten thousand French Muslims converted, as did 35,000 Turkish Muslims. In India, approximately 10,000 people abandoned Islam for Christianity.

In his book Epicenter, author Joel Rosenberg details amazing stories of Muslims converting to Christianity. In Algeria, the birthplace of St. Augustine, more than 80,000 Muslims have turned to Christ in recent years. This, despite the stiff opposition from Islamic clerics who have passed laws banning evangelism.

In Morocco, newspaper articles openly worry that 25,000 to 40,000 Muslims have become followers of Christ in recent years.

There’s plenty more – read the whole thing.

And DD adds:

Osama bin Laden may be the greatest catalyst the world has ever seen to convert Muslims to Christ.

Here’s the thing I think is interesting; these conversions are largely happening in places where people can see the differences between the faiths and their effects on peoples’ lives and societies, face to face.

I’ve pointed this out for years; none of the 9/11 hijackers were from India, Bosnia, Senegal, Mali, Turkey, Albania, or any other place where Moslems live in social pluralism, relative economic as well as political freedom, and exposed to more than one point of view about the world, society and faith.  This isn’t to say that there aren’t extremist Madrassas in any or all of those countries.  But the extremism and militancy that breed jihadism are tempered by exposure to the notion that other societies not only have validity, but work pretty darn well.

Whether that means people convert to Christianity (something Christ bade me to work, pray and hope for – and I do) or merely justs files off the edges of the militant extremism that plagues Islam in less-pluralistic parts of the world, it’s all good.

Somewhere in Corinthians, it says that God gives people gifts in the faith according to what people can best put to use – or words to that effect (I blame translation difficulties from the Greek for any misunderstandings. That’s the ticket).

Which is one of the reasons I don’t write a whole lot about religion; God’s seen fit to put my strengths in areas other than “being articulate about faith”.

But it’s always a treat – and a blessing, in every sense of the term – when I find someone who not only writes articulately about faith, but asks the big questions and reflects the churn a lot of us feel in looking (or waiting) for the answers.

Which is why I like Amanda Carranza’s “Within the Discord” so much.

Yes, I said big questions:

A lot of things have happened the last few days, a lot of things reminding me of just what an active role my Heavenly Father plays in not only my life, but my every happiness. A lot of these things are confusing, yet exciting, and I’m not exactly sure what to do with them. How do I harness this and bring glory to God through the written word? How do I encourage others with my blatherings, and yet not come across as self-important? (How do I not feel self-important when something I write just happens to make sense in my own head?) How do I convey my flaws, how do I prevent myself from shying away from them? How do I present who I am, my identity of who God sees me as, as accurately as can be expected, and yet still encourage each others and not thoroughly discourage myself?

Well, there’s a question, can I become thoroughly discouraged while examining myself through God’s eyes?

Of course, reading pushes me to ask the same questions – and that’s usually pretty revelatory, or at least something most of us could stand to do more of, no matter what we believe.

I’ve spent a bit of time in the past few weeks catching up on reading my leftyblogs.

And owwwie – my trip through the fever swamp has left me covered with bug bites and woodticks. There are some nutbars out there – and I’m not talking the fringey soloblogs, even; the Minnesota Monitor seems to have made a concerted effort to transform from an incompetent news organization to a laughable “Gawker”-style rantblog; while even Nick Coleman in his “prime” didn’t provide this much material, it eventually feels like playing football against six-year-olds; it’s easy to run up a score, but too easy to be really satisfying.

So it’s usually fun to read Charlie Quimby over at “Across the Great Divide”; he’s a lefty but he’s not dumb.

And so I flipped over there, and saw the latest headline: “Why Do Religious Conservatives Kill Their Kids?”

Ow. Talk about whiplash.

Here’s a topic for study by some enterprising PhD student: Do more religious conservatives than liberals murder their children?

That’s have to be one mighty enterprising PhD student. While a parent’s religion might certainly be an element into an investigation into a murder, I don’t recall that a parent’s voting record has, for anyone this side of Kathleen Soliah.

Seriously; have you ever seen a story that kicked off:

A Framingham mother of three, active in her Massachusetts Democratic Party caucus, strangled her toddler yesterday.

Mary Noel Bilkosky-Mullins-Stoppard, 42, of Framingham, was booked on charges of murder yesterday.

Neighbors describe her as “a committed liberal.” “While most of us believe in a woman’s right to choose – I mean, duh – Mary Noel was very committed to the cause – almost like a fundamentalist”, said Bilkosky-Mullins-Stoppard’s neighbor, Ian Micah Schlumberg-Rossellini, interviewed at the local organic food market for this story.

You’ve never seen it, have you?

And you never will!

Hold that thought. We’ll come back to it.

(You can spare me the comments about abortion.

Well, actually, that enforces a certain myopia on the debate, doesn’t it? If one wants to discuss attitudes toward crime, life and death, and murder based on politics, why leave out the biggest single issue signalling group attitudes toward the value of life; that among most fundie Christians, a life has to do something very wrong to deserve being erased, while among the left, it’s (very generally) the opposite.

But OK. I’ll try to stay on Charlie’s topic here.

In Wisconsin this week, the home schooled daughter of a fundamentalist family died because her diabetes was left untreated. The mother says they are not crazy, religious people who belong to any organized faith. She just writes for an end-of-days ministry website on the side and actively proselytizes other women. Her sister-in-law, who called the sheriff, seemed to think there was a problem.

Whoah, Charlie! The whiplash is killing me!

OK. You found a piece that hit a bunch of the hot buttons that lefties find weird; fundamental Christianity, home schooling, healing by faith. Let’s limit our focus, shall we – Homeschooling is rarely lethal (indeed, it works better than school education in nearly every possible instance), and faith-healing is a very fraught issue to which I’m rather close, via this couple, both of whom were professors of mine in college. It’s a different, and much more complex, issue than Charlie’s focus.

Quimby started talking about Andrea Yates, who actively murdered her children – hardly the same thing.

In Iowa, an embezzling banker bludgeoned his wife and four kids to death before killing himself. In communications left behind, he indicated he believed his family was in heaven.

I’m not sure what Charlie’s trying to get at, here. Was he insane for clubbing his family to death? Or for claiming they’re in heaven? Or is the latter just snarky “evidence” of insanity, in case the whole “bludgeoning” thing didn’t convince you? Indeed, does belief in heaven make you either fundamentalist or insane?

Well, send a truck for me, Charlie. I believe they’re in heaven, too. Most of the people in this country’d probably agree.

Indeed, if you went out on the street and picked 100 people at random, almost anywhere in this country (shaddap about Berkeley), 90 of them would likely be one variety of Christian or another, and would hope at the very least there’s a heaven for the innocent victims of the insane. And while “fundamentalist” is a continuum rather than an association with standards and membership cards, probably around nine people of that sample would call themselves some kind of fundamentalist.
But Charlie’s digression has caused me to digress as well. It’s no excuse, but…

And, not to leave anyone out, a Muslim cab driver in Canada strangled his 16-year-old daughter because she refused to submit to his control and demands she wear traditional Muslim garb.

I’ve looked for a study that examines the role of political and religious beliefs of parents who murder their children. Haven’t found one. But golly, the circumstantial evidence doesn’t look good, does it? And it stands to reason, when you decide to kill your kids with a baseball bat, the idea you’re sending them to heaven might lets you swing just a little more freely.

Anyone offended yet?

No, just confused. Since most people of mainstream faith hold the concurrent belief that the same act that’d send your kids to heaven wil send you to a place under complete DFL control hell, Charlie’s implied conclusion (“fundamentalism helps predispose people to murderous lunacy” might not be word-perfect, but it’s close enough, given Charlie’s post’s title) makes less sense than saying, perhaps, that concluding “someone whose personality is defective enough to kill their children is newsworthy; if that same person is a fundamentalist, it’s newsworthy and indulges the urge to bash fundamentalists and/or people of faith in general”.

Oh, not to worry; Charlie is only yanking our chains. Right?

Psychiatric researchers may not see much merit in testing my only half-serious hypothesis. The research already indicates that filicide is a multidimensional crime, and like most human behavior, is not likely to reduce down to red state/blue state simplification.

But it’s hard to shake that whenever I see news of a suicide bomber or a murderous parent, God shows up pretty frequently in the story. John Kerry bumper stickers, not so much.

Well, most of the Islamofascist suicide bombers were hoping Kerry would win.
Hey, if Charlie gets to half-seriously yank chains, why not I?

But OK. Since Charlie can “half-seriously” connect correlation and causation based on an infinitesimally-tiny sampling of crimes, linked with either mental illness (the Yates and Iowa murders) or a sect of Islam that actively promotes murder, or a combination of the two (the cabbie and his daughter), why not join into the fun.

What’s the murder capitol of Minnesota? North Minneapolis and the Phillips Neighborhood on the south side.

Who did they vote for in ’04?

Well, I saw a lot more “Kerry” stickers over there.

Or to paraphrase Charlie, it’s hard to shake that whenever I see news of a neighorhood ruined by drug trafficking, where honest citizens are afraid to go out at night, Democrat bumper stickers show up pretty regularly; “WWJD” and NRA stickers and Milton Friedman T-shirts and, well, visible manifestations of religious faith, not so much.

Another question; is fundamentalism equally likely to cause society to devalue the life of the fundamentalist?

Onward…