Let The Churches Deal With Them

I just have one more thing to say about this whole “let the churches care for the poor” viewpoint which, let’s be honest, is not unique to Rep. Stephen Fincher, but is pretty pervasive among conservatives of all stripes.

Nothing is stopping any church from helping anyone. Please, churches, knock yourselves out. Feed as many people as you want: old, young, whatever. We need you to do this, we really do. Wasn’t that the whole point of Bush’s Office of Faith-Based Initiatives? Guess what, haters: the Mooslim Usurper Nobummer didn’t close that office, he expanded it. So yes, churches: feed us, house us, help us.

And indeed, the faith community is helping. Good grief, I’ve been part of more church-based programs helping the poor in this town than I can count: Room In The Inn, Rooftop, the Martha O’Bryan Center, Safe Haven Family Shelter, you name it. Here’s Nashvllle’s Downtown Presbyterian Church which feeds hundreds of homeless every week (much to the chagrin of local businesses,who don’t like having a soup kitchen on their doorstep). The Salvation Army has soup kitchens all across the country feeding the hungry (for which they are reimbursed by the government, I might add.)

But the need is great. There are not enough congregations doing enough of this work to help everyone. Every church-based effort I’ve been part of has had to ration the amount of help it provides because the need is simply greater than funds allow. At Rooftop, which provides temporary, one-time rental and mortgage assistance to keep people from being evicted, we routinely ran out of money and had to suspend services, sometimes for an entire month.

The need is great. Many churches are helping the poor. But many do not. C’mon, you know it’s true. Many church organizations prefer to spend their money on bullshit marketing efforts like the Scripturally-dubious I Am Second campaign, whose billboards have popped up all over town. Harold Camping’s Family Radio empire raked in millions of dollars in donations, money which could have been spent helping the hungry and needy. Instead, it went toward buying thousands of billboards across the country proclaiming a hilariously wrong prediction about the Second Coming.

No one can tell any faith community how to spend its money. And they don’t always spend it on the needy. Sometimes they spend it on ideological bullshit like this. How many kids could have been fed if the Mormons had channeled their $20 million somewhere other than the Prop 8 campaign?

Right-wingers are always telling us we don’t need the government to provide services, “charity” should take care of it for us. But what do right-wing billionaires spend their money on? Think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, and Cato Institute, whose sole purpose is to promote conservative ideology. Or phony conservative “foundations” like Citizens for a Sound Economy (now known as FreedomWorks) and Americans For Prosperity — political groups spreading the low-tax, low-regulation, free-market message. Maybe if Richard Mellon Scaife and the Koch brothers redirected the billions they spend on political power toward social welfare, the need wouldn’t be so great. Maybe if they walked their talk, their views might have more credibility. And yes, I know these and other billionaires spend a lot on charity, I’m not saying they don’t. But they spend at least as much, if not more, on political power.

And that’s the problem. The fact that so many billionaires would rather spend their fortunes on politics not people proves our point. The lure of power is great, is it not? Indeed, too often the lure of power is greater than the lure of helping your neighbor. I’m pretty sure Jesus and the Old Testament prophets knew this.

This is why we need government programs like SNAP: to fill in the holes left by human nature’s failure to always do the right thing. Charities and faith communities are doing a lot but they can’t do it all. Ask any social worker and they will tell you. Ask any secretary of an urban church, inundated with calls for help on a daily basis. They will tell you.

But this discussion is all big a waste time. Because people like Rep. Fincher don’t really care about the poor, do they? When I hear someone say, “let the churches deal with x, y, z problem,” what I’m really hearing is, “I don’t want to deal with x, y, z problem.” That’s really what it’s all about, isn’t it?

If only the poor would just go away. But they won’t, Rep. Fincher. They won’t just “go away.” They will always be with us, as Jesus said, as an eternal reminder of human failure — an eternal reminder of our sin, to use church parlance.

The poor will always be with us as long as we expect someone else to deal with the problem.

“Our Life Together Can Be Better”

Rev. Jim Wallis was on The Stephanie Miller Show today. I just caught the last few minutes of the interview but someone pointed me to it over here on Soundcloud.

I recommend giving it a listen. Wallis is so refreshing. He’s a much-needed counter to the frothy-mouthed “gays and feminists caused x, y, z disaster” we usually get from religious circles. He’s promoting a new book about bringing back the old ethos of social responsibility and the common good; in fact, he told Miller the first line of the book is, “our life together can be better.” I really like that. I think we forget sometimes that we really do have a part to play in all of this. If we want everything to be better for more people, we can actually make it happen. We can, you know.

Wallis is supposedly of the evangelical persuasion, but he seems to spend all of his time and energy preaching about caring for the poor and marginalized and building a just society. Most evangelicals who cross my path seem to spend 99% of their energy trying to lead people to Jesus and little time worrying about them beyond that. If that’s all you get out of the Bible then I have no time for you.

Also, something I’ve noticed lately — and maybe it’s just because I’m somewhat disconnected from that world — but it seems like there’s been a real lack of Jesus-y stories in the aftermath of the Boston; West, Texas; and Newtown tragedies. You know how whenever there’s a horrible tragedy we always hear stories about how God stepped in and performed some kind of miracle? And then all the parties involved appear on The 700 Club and such to talk about it? And Christian musicians write songs about it? Martyrs pulled from the rubble and all that?

I’m thinking of Columbine shooting victim Cassie Bernall, who supposedly was asked if she believed in God with a gun to her head. The story was that Cassie responded yes (later versions of the story in Christian media had her being told to deny her religion and be spared, and Cassie refusing). Michael W. Smith wrote a hit song about it. Other witnesses disputed these accounts, but it didn’t matter, the story was trotted out as an evangelism tool. We got a similar story after the Heath High School shootings in Kentucky and the Aurora theater shooting.

Anyway, I haven’t heard any stories like this after any of our recent tragedies. Maybe I’ve missed them, or maybe this brand of religion is truly dying. It certainly doesn’t seem to be doing much for the people it’s supposedly trying to help — and yes, glossy multimedia marketing campaign, I’m looking at you. Those annoying “I Am Second” billboards have started popping up all over Nashville and people, they are everywhere.

I’m just trying to figure out how an artsy black and white photograph of Scott Hamilton or Darrell Waltrip topped by the words “I Am Second” is supposed to help someone working at the local multiplex who’s just had their hours cut because Regal Entertainment would rather give their CEO a 31% pay raise than pay for their employees’ health insurance.

This is the kind of stuff that worries people like Jim Wallis, and it should worry more church people. This is the kind of issue that makes the church “relevant,” not the production values on a multimedia marketing campaign. Just sayin’, guys.

Suckers

I know Christians like to think they’re better than everyone else, at least the ones around here do. But is there some evidence that they’re healthier than anyone else? If there is I sure haven’t seen it. But Kentucky is poised to pass a “Christians-only” healthcare plan that singles out Jesus people:

House Oks Christian health care plan for Ky.

[...]

The proposal would exempt the Medi-Share ministry from state insurance regulations. A Franklin County circuit judge ordered the ministry to shut down last year at the Kentucky Insurance Department’s request. The bill in its current form would require members to sign a notice acknowledging they’re aware they may not have their claims paid.

The plan resembles secular insurance in some ways but only allows participation by people who pledge to live Christian lives with no smoking, drinking, using drugs or having sex outside of marriage.

Whew boy. First of all, this just reeks of a scam to me. Hey, let’s give insurance companies another reason to deny people claims! You missed Bible study on Wednesday! No bypass surgery for YOU! And let me say, the idea that people who don’t drink or smoke or have sex outside of marriage or use drugs are living a “Christian lifestyle” is just hilarious. Why not have a health care plan for vegans and exempt them from state insurance regulations? Seems like there’s actual evidence that a vegan diet is healthier than the gravy-slathered deep-fried fat balls most good Southern Christian folk I know shove done their gullets on Sundays.

But look, the whole dang point of being a Christian is not that you’re somehow better than everyone else and living a perfect, sinless life so you get the earthly reward of cheap health insurance. That’s not what the freaking Bible is about, people! It’s about a relationship with God. It’s about things like forgiveness and community building and welcoming your neighbor and caring for the vulnerable.

It’s not about being perfect and if you stumble you don’t get your insurance claim paid, and we get to do the personal responsibility happy dance.

Cripes I’m so over Jesus people these days. This just screams exploitation and grift to me. The marriage of faith and commerce is absolutely antithetical to real Christianity. Any sucker signing up for this is asking to get ripped off.

Anne Boleyn’s Head

Peggy Noonan is a very weird lady. Noonan wrote a column scolding liberals and liberal Catholics for having the temerity to hold an opinion that differs from Peggy Noonan’s on the next Pope. For your enjoyment, an excerpt:

I once read an account of Anne Boleyn’s death. In the moments after she was beheaded her head was held aloft by her executioner, to show the crowd. Her nervous system was shocked, her neurons misfired, her head didn’t know it was severed from her neck. Her eyes blinked, her mouth moved crazily. Those critics who go on TV now to tear down what they don’t even understand: they are removed and unknowing. They are Anne Boleyn’s head.

Well, that’s an interesting characterization. I guess comparing us to Hitler no longer had the desired shock value.

Now that it appears Anne Boleyn’s zombie head has prevailed, maybe Nooners will shut her own yap.

Also, be warned: I have claimed Anne Boleyn’s Head as the name of my all-female punk rock band.

Dear News Media: Get A New Hobby

[UPDATE]: 2

Wow. A liberal Jesuit from Argentina. This is shocking.

[UPDATE]:

Apparently we have a new Pope. Wikipedia is on it! Charlie & Norah’s Italian Adventure is over.

————-

Let me state for the record: I do not give a rat’s ass who the next Pope is.

I understand why this is important. There are an estimated 1.2 billion Catholics on a planet of six (seven?) billion people; that’s a pretty hefty market share in this religion business (and I do mean business.) But I am not one of them, and I find the media’s obsession with all things Papal a little ridiculous.

I actually feel kind of sorry for the news media. At this point, there’s no news. There’s nothing to cover, so they’re forced to issue “BREAKING NEWS” alerts about black smoke and fill the gaps with well-worn features like “Papal security: How Catholic leader is kept safe.”

Guys, we just went through this whole rigamarole eight years ago; it’s not like we haven’t already covered every piece of Vatican-related trivia in really recent memory, okay? This is an institution which has stood for hundreds and hundreds of years and is famous for its resistance to change. Really, y’all could just recycle 90% of your stories from April 2005, as far as I’m concerned.

I think the most hilarious coverage has to be found on CBS This Morning. Seriously, give it a rest, guys. Right now their home page looks like Vatican TV; every single story is Pope-related. You’d think the selection of the next Pope was the most critical issues facing Americans since the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

(By the way, have you guys noticed it’s the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War? The one the news media helped drag us into because getting that embed assignment would be so fun and super-cool? No? Sorry I asked.)

CBS has sent a massive team to Rome, including morning hosts Charlie Rose and Norah O’Donnell. They’re on it! Live, as it’s happening! Except, of course, nothing is happening, so we get lame fluff like Rose’s Vespa tour of Rome with Italian actor Pierfrancesco Favino, or Scott Pelley’s interview with three priests-in-training. I find it completely puzzling that CBS has devoted so many resources to this story, as if it were the Olympics or a royal wedding. Indeed, royal wedding is the best analogy here: there’s something very Kate and Andrew William about the news coverage. All of that ritual and ceremony, the Old World hierarchies that America was created in opposition to. Yet our cultural gatekeepers keep foisting this stuff on us, as if we’re all so fascinated by these arcane European traditions which have very little relevance to our lives. How very, very odd.

Also, the news media really doesn’t know how to cover religion. Two years ago the Presbyterian Church (USA) voted to allow the ordination of gays. I don’t remember anyone at CBS This Morning mentioning the news. The print media buried the story in their religion sections and that was that. But crackpot fundie pastors with congregations numbering in the tens gain national attention for burning Muslim holy books and “God hates fags” picket lines. Now why is that? Why do conservative Catholic Bishops who deny Democrats communion get splashed across the front page, but the Nuns On The Bus are ignored?

I wonder if CBS News plans to cover these pastors who are making a stand against the immoral Ryan Budget? Doubtful: where the American media is concerned, all religion is Republican. Anything that doesn’t fit their narrow frame is ignored.

So I guess we’re in for a few more days/weeks of “breaking news” about the royal wedding Vatican succession, followed by “breaking news” about the baby bump new Pope. It’s all very silly and irrelevant as far as I’m concerned.

Goodbye, B16

Call it “end of an error,” call it what you will, but the Pope is resigning.

Frankly, I didn’t know they were allowed to do that. But, y’know, whatever.

So, I really don’t know much about this stuff, but just as an outside observer who remembers Pope Benedict XVI coming to power at the height of the Bush years, I have to think this sends a broader message about conservatism in general. Benedict XVI (the kids on the intertoobz are calling him “B16″) ascended to the head of the church when the world was enmeshed in a sharp, muscular conservatism, a rightward lurch that seemed as inevitable as it was overwhelming. Roll back the calendar to 2005 and remember what it was like then: we had a second Bush term, Karl Rove gloating about his “permanent Republican majority,” gays reeling from marriage equality bans in state houses all across the country, and the unraveling of abortion rights. A staunch Catholic, John Roberts, was named chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. People like Ann Coulter were regularly on Sunday panel shows. Rick Santorum was still a United States Senator, not a political punchline. The pro-Iraq war government of Tony Blair was re-elected for a third time.

That was the view from the U.S. and the appointment of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to the position of Pope just seemed to cap a global turn to the right.

Remember this? Remember President George W. Bush granting Pope Benedict VI immunity in a molestation lawsuit? Bush met with B16 three times while he was in office (he also met with Pope John Paul II three times — more Papal visits than any other U.S. president).

Ratzinger was criticized by liberals for being a conservative reactionary, a vocal culture warrior on stands against women’s rights and GLBT rights, even a Nazi. The scandal of the Church’s pedophile priest cover-up would peak under his reign — not especially ironic, since B16 was a key player in the cover-up. Then there was the “Vatileaks scandal,” which saw the arrest of the Pope’s personal butler. Stories like this point to a weakened Papacy and a church in utter disarray:

The Vatican is disintegrating into dozens of competing interest groups. In the past, it was the Jesuits, the Benedictines, the Franciscans and other orders that competed for respect and sway within the Vatican court. But their influence has waned, and they have now been replaced primarily by the so-called “new clerical communities” that bring the large, cheering crowds to Masses celebrated by the pope: the Neocatechumenate, the Legionaries of Christ and the traditionalists of the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) and the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter — not to mention the worldwide “santa mafia” of Opus Dei.

They all have their open and clandestine agents in and around the Vatican, and they all own real estate and run universities, institutes and other educational facilities in Rome. Various cardinals and bishops champion their interests at the Vatican, often without an official or recognizable mandate. At the Vatican, everyone is against everyone, and everyone feels they have God on their side.

The U.S. media didn’t cover the Vatican banking scandal or any of the other “Vatileaks” revelations, so today’s news is mostly a rehash of Vatican talking points, while pretending none of the scandals ever happened. This is par for the course.

U.S. Catholic bishops have been stomping their feet a-plenty over U.S. healthcare policy, so to say what happens in Rome doesn’t affect us is ludicrous. I don’t profess to know anything about Vatican politics but I have to wonder what will happen if a real reformer ascends to the Papacy through all the mess and splinter groups currently sniping at each other in Rome. Perhaps a social justice champion from South America? It will be interesting to see.

Because It’s Not About Birth Control

Okay, who didn’t see this one coming a mile off?

Bishops Reject Birth Control Compromise
By ROBERT PEAR
Published: February 7, 2013

WASHINGTON — The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops on Thursday rejected the latest White House proposal on health insurance coverage of contraceptives, saying it did not offer enough safeguards for religious hospitals, colleges and charities that objected to providing such coverage for their employees.

The administration said the proposal, issued last Friday, would guarantee free employee coverage of birth control “while respecting religious concerns” of organizations that objected to paying or providing for it.

[...]

Under the latest proposal, churches and nonprofit religious groups that object to providing birth control coverage on religious grounds would not have to pay for it. Women who work for such organizations could get free contraceptive coverage through separate individual health insurance policies. The institution objecting to the coverage would not pay for the contraceptives. Costs would be paid by an insurance company, with the possibility that it could recoup the costs through lower health care expenses resulting in part from fewer births.

How does this “not offer enough safeguards” to address religious groups’ objections? Simple: women can still get their hands on some birth control, that’s how! They want a law that gives employers control over women’s health choices. Hell, they’ve already done it.

Look, can we stop trying to appease people who will never, ever be appeased? This is not about birth control! Half the institutions fighting this were already offering their employees contraception coverage and only stopped when it became news.

This is about the failure of the church. This is about the church’s great shame at being completely impotent in the face of cultural change. This is, specifically, about the Catholic church preaching against contraception for years and years and years and nobody paying attention — hell, even Catholic priests and nuns have ignored that piece of church doctrine. The church hierarchy wants the U.S. government to do what they’ve been unable to do, which is to get people to stop using birth control by making it too expensive and too hard to obtain.

That ain’t happening.

Stop paying attention to these idiots. Catholics don’t even pay attention to them. And if the Catholic church wants to spend its money fighting a legal battle it lost long, long ago instead of using that money to care for the poor and marginalized, then that tells you everything you need to know about the Catholic church. They’re a bunch of phonies.

Leaving The Cult

Following the exit of people like Libby Phelps-Alvarez, two women have left the cult known as the Westboro Baptist Church; one, Meghan Phelps-Roper, was in charge of the group’s “social media.” From this interview she gave to gay Christian author Jeff Chu, social media played a big part in her release from the cult’s ideological grip:

Her departure has hurt them already—she knew it would—yet there was no way she could stay. “My doubts started with a conversation I had with David Abitbol,” she says. Megan met David, an Israeli web developer who’s part of the team behind the blog Jewlicious, on Twitter. “I would ask him questions about Judaism, and he would ask me questions about church doctrine. One day, he asked a specific question about one of our signs—‘Death Penalty for Fags’—and I was arguing for the church’s position, that it was a Levitical punishment and as completely appropriate now as it was then. He said, ‘But Jesus said’—and I thought it was funny he was quoting Jesus—‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’ And then he connected it to another member of the church who had done something that, according to the Old Testament, was also punishable by death. I realized that if the death penalty was instituted for any sin, you completely cut off the opportunity to repent. And that’s what Jesus was talking about.”

I’m always fascinated by cults, cult-like groups, and those belief systems which offer their members certainty, but only so long as no one looks outside the bubble at opposing views. It seems like a very delicate balance to strike: “our belief system is the One True Way to salvation/prosperity/greatness/ whatever but by all means, don’t look at any other alternatives because that would be Wrong.”

In particular I’m curious about the precipitating events which cause people to suddenly “wake up” — the thing that penetrates the shield of indoctrination and pops that bubble. For Meghan Phelps-Roper it was a Jewish person pointing out the error of WBC’s devotion to one passage of Leviticus and blindness to the rest. For Paul Haggis, it was reading Scientology’s Tommy Davis lie to the press about the church’s disconnection policy, a church-ordered shunning of “suppressives,” since the Haggises had been forced to do this to members of their own family who had left Scientology. Vyckie Garrison left the Quiverfull movement when one of her kids attempted suicide, and she realized the promise of perfect Christian family life was a hoax.

I know several Mormons who broke from the church-induced fog after realizing that nothing in the Book of Mormon is archeologically accurate: horses, oxen, goats, cattle, barley and wheat were all introduced to the New World after Columbus’ arrival, though they are mentioned several times in the Book of Mormon. That got them wondering why, for instance, you can go to Israel and visit places named in the Old Testament and archaeologists are still uncovering shards of antiquity in that part of the world, but nothing from the Book of Mormon has been uncovered in America.

It seems like the precipitating event is always something comparatively small or inconsequential; I mean, Paul Haggis, really? The whole Xenu thing didn’t get you but church officials lying to the St. Petersburg newspaper did? But I get it, I do. It’s easy to believe the fantastical thing, it’s the mundane day-to-day stuff that trips people up.

These aren’t epiphanies, they’re drops of reality that boink a person on the head at just the right time, causing them to have one of those “hey, wait a minute” moments. In America’s political world, I’m convinced Hurricane Katrina was just such a moment, it was a bucket-load of reality that hit millions of people square in the face and showed that government really isn’t the enemy, small government really doesn’t work, and Republican government really doesn’t function. That started it and the right-wing bubble kept getting hit with more bunker-busting reality bombs: the real estate bubble bursting, the economic collapse, Republican Senators embracing TARP, Alan Greenspan’s mea culpa, and on, and on.

Another important reality bomb was the last presidential election. This one hit people waaay inside the bubble, the Kool-aid drinkers who really, truly believed the polls were skewed and Fox News was the only unbiased media source. The election results proved every one of their experts wrong, and Fox is now scrambling to regain its credibility.

Conservatives are frantically at work at their rebranding effort, though if columns like this RedState piece are any indication, they still seem to think the problem is not their failed ideas but their failed image. Here’s an actual screenshot from that RedState.com story:

In other words, don’t change the thing that needs to be changed. Awesome! Enjoy repeating this process over and over again then, because these reality bombs will keep falling.

Leaving cults is scary because you really do feel alone. You can’t cross over to the other side, which has been your sworn enemy for so long. But you can’t go back to that old way of thinking, either.

I suspect Karl Rove is trying to offer a life raft to those folks who feel disillusioned and abandoned by the failures of conservatism these past few years. Problem is, he’s so associated with those failures that I don’t think anyone wants to climb aboard with him.

Does Jesus Really Want A $750,000 Church Marketing Campaign?

I am loathe to write another religion post, seeing how swimmingly it went the last time (/sarcasm) but this story was plastered all over the front of my daily fishwrap today, and I just had to say something.

For those of you who can’t get past the firewall, the story is about I Am Second Nashville, a marketing campaign featuring Nashville celebrities in slick, stylized videos talking candidly (“giving their testimony” in Christianese) about how their faith in God helped them overcome big challenges. It’s an offshoot of the I Am Second campaign launched in Dallas last year by Norman Miller, chairman of Interstate Batteries.

The Nashville campaign, the story says, will launch next year and cost a whopping $750,000. It will include billboards, radio and TV ads, and — of course! — there are companion books published by Thomas Nelson Publishers. Because there’s always a companion book, amiright? So, it’s sorta like those “Pass It On” ads by the Foundation For A Better Life, but with more Jesus, more consumerism, a bigger production budget, and a heckuva lot hipper.

And after reading about it and watching some of the videos I just think .. aagh. Here we go again. You know what? This kind of media-genic, cross-platform, consumer-oriented marketing campaign is exactly the kind of stuff that turns me off about the contemporary church. It made me sick to my stomach in my brief foray in Christian music, and it’s a huge turnoff to me now. The professional Christian media loves this stuff, though: I suspect because it makes them feel “hip” and “relevant” and shows they can “tackle the tough issues” and “be relatable.” But it all just seems a tad too contrived for me.

Long ago the contemporary church adopted the value set of secular pop culture; there seems to be this belief that if they just modeled themselves after that, they can stop the bloodletting in their congregations, change lives, make everything hunky dory, etc. etc.

I’ve watched a few of these videos (you can see some here), they’re well done and some of the stories are quite compelling, don’t get me wrong. But for my money, hearing people talk about their faith isn’t nearly as effective as seeing them act on it. I got more fuzzy-warm “God-is-good” feelings from that picture of NYPD Officer Larry DePrimo giving a homeless man a $75 pair of boots than I do from a $750,000 mega ad campaign for God. I have no idea what DePrimo’s faith is — he could be a Buddhist, atheist, or fundie Christian for all I know. But I don’t need to know.

And I guess that’s the nut of it. I’m okay with people having whatever kind of spirituality they want. I read that story about formerly homeless Iraq veteran Curtis Butler paying the utility bills of the other people in line with him at the Georgia Power office and I don’t need to know that God told him to do it (though for the record, Butler does credit his church with helping him overcome PTSD). I just like knowing there are good people out there in the world helping their neighbors. I kind of think that’s how God works in the world, an eternal, powerful energy flow of good, unbounded by time or space, that is a part of us and also separate from us. You can call it Jesus or your Guardian Angel or Karma or Yahweh or a Flying Spaghetti Monster of a lamp post: it doesn’t matter because it’s so much bigger than us, that what we call it is a mere human construct, and I sure don’t need crosses and swelling hymns and “Touched By An Angel” backlighting all around it. But I know it when I see it, I think we all do.

And by the way, I sure don’t want to be told I’m going to hell for thinking this way. A big part of this campaign is getting people eager to “learn more” and then bringing them into “small groups” for further indoctrination discussion. I wonder how that’s going to work. If you’re struggling with your gender identity, what is your small group going to do? That will be interesting.

Like the Republican Party, Evangelicals need to understand that the problem isn’t the medium, it’s the message. Stop hating on gay people. Stop telling people who don’t believe the same as you that they’re “not saved” and are outside God’s family. Stop telling women that if you have an abortion you will live a lifetime of searing emotional pain, but somehow carrying a fetus to term and giving up a baby for adoption leaves no psychic scars whatsoever. Stop telling people that all they have to do is accept Jesus and all of their problems go away, and any new problems that may arise are wonderful blessings, all part of His glorious plan to share your testimony in a glitzy $750,000 marketing campaign.

You know what? I think maybe my biggest problem with Evangelical Christianity is the “evangelism” part. Seriously, y’all? A $750,000 campaign? This is what Jesus wants for Christmas? It just doesn’t sit right with me.

We Didn’t Leave The Church, The Church Left Us

My daily fishwrap has a front page story on the demise of the Religious Right (I’ve linked to the same story in another, non-firewalled publication, just FYI.) I found the story interesting but it’s also nothing we haven’t talked about here for years.

So, check this out:

Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., and a national Religious Right leader, said the election was an “unmitigated disaster.”

He believes the country will become much more secular and look more like Europe. “It is going to be a chastening, humbling moment for American Christians to realize that we are going to be in the position across this country of speaking as a minority,” Mohler said. Today, about 1 in 5 Americans has no religious affiliation.

That doesn’t mean that the faithful will give up on politics or on trying to shape American culture to fit their values. But it does mean they need to pay more attention to the Bible and less to the GOP, said author and speaker Stephen Mansfield.

[...]

To remain relevant, Mansfield said, conservative Christians also have to learn how to express their views in a way that appeals to the general public, not just like-minded believers. They can’t just hold up the Bible and expect people to agree with them, he said.

No, that’s absolutely wrong. The problem is not the way you express your ideas. The problem IS your ideas. Many of which, let me point out, are not even Biblical, nor are they the church’s historical position. For example, back in the ’60s, evangelicals were pro-choice:

In 1968, Christianity Today published a special issue on contraception and abortion, encapsulating the consensus among evangelical thinkers at the time. In the leading article, professor Bruce Waltke, of the famously conservative Dallas Theological Seminary, explained the Bible plainly teaches that life begins at birth:

“God does not regard the fetus as a soul, no matter how far gestation has progressed. The Law plainly exacts: ‘If a man kills any human life he will be put to death’ (Lev. 24:17). But according to Exodus 21:22–24, the destruction of the fetus is not a capital offense… Clearly, then, in contrast to the mother, the fetus is not reckoned as a soul.”

The magazine Christian Life agreed, insisting, “The Bible definitely pinpoints a difference in the value of a fetus and an adult.” And the Southern Baptist Convention passed a 1971 resolution affirming abortion should be legal not only to protect the life of the mother, but to protect her emotional health as well.

I would love to get my hands on a copy of that vintage 1968 Christianity Today, wouldn’t you? I bet it’s been purged from the archive.

Isn’t that interesting, though, that what is considered a cornerstone of conservative Christianity today — being “pro life” — is a complete reversal of what the church believed 40 years ago? I find that fascinating. I guess, like Scott DesJarlais, conservative Christians have “evolved” on this issue. (Wait — I thought they didn’t believe in evolution?)

The church changed for political reasons, not theological ones. Until Jerry Falwell came along, Christians largely stayed out of politics — it was, in fact, a guiding principle of Southern Baptists and other denominations to not get involved in worldly things like lobbying Congress and launching boycotts and showing up on the evening news in a frothy lather over some imagined offense like a War on Christmas. Falwell changed all of that, and 40 years later the church finds itself no longer relevant. To think these two things aren’t somehow connected is ludicrous.

And before Al Mohler starts fearmongering again about European-style secularism destroying Christianity, he needs to read this old post of mine. I wrote it after another of his anti-Europe rants in 2009:

Mohler and his kind are most ignorant in their favorite tactic of using Western European countries as their warning of what’s in store for America if we don’t DO something, quick, like stop teaching evolution in public schools and outlaw abortion. These folks like to talk about how secular Western Europe is, all the tolerance for nasty things like teh gaii, but they fail to mention that many of their worst secular offenders (Scandinavian countries, for example) have a state religion!

This astonished me when I was in “secular, liberal” Norway last spring. In fact, it was just one year ago next week that the Norwegian government changed its constitution, so that the Lutheran Church is no longer the state religion.

Yes, that’s right, up until last year, every person born in “secular, liberal” Norway was automatically born a Lutheran. If you wanted to raise your kids Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, Baptist or atheist, you had to petition the government. Can you believe that?

The Norwegian government still finances the Lutheran Church, and until last year appointed church bishops. In other words, the government had authority over the church. Can you imagine? Can you imagine your tax dollars funding church salaries?

The surest way to kill a religion is to make it your state religion — to remove that wall of separation. A generation ago religious people in this country knew that, they knew the wall separating church and state protected the church from the state, as much as the other way around. But along came Jerry Falwell and the rest of the ignoramuses of the Moral Majority, and here they are.

I find it all incredibly, hilariously ironic.