It's Opening Day

If you're not optimistic, you're crazy*
C'mon Sox. Play Wicked Hahd at the Ball Pahk.
Sox vs. KC Royals 4:00 pm
Other game of note: TB at the Yuckees 1:05 pm


*Terry Francona as quoted in today's Boston Globe.

The Church and State Question

I've moved this back to the top of the blog, due to its importance, and added some links. No matter your faith or in this case your right to be an atheist if you so choose, you've got a stake in this ruling.

You know those guys that Newsweek called the King Makers? (that would be Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson)? All three are dominionists, meaning they believe the United States is destined to be a Christian nation, a theocracy if you will, and anyone who does not fall into their narrow view of what a Christian is will be destined to a more subordinate role in society (kind of the same role they put women into in their churches and families).
this ruling brings them one step closer to that theocracy. And all three are lobbying their constituency especially hard to have this ruling over-turned. The fact that these three are for it, should make any rational person strongly against it.

From today's New York Times Editorial:

The Supreme Court hears arguments today in a case that could have a broad impact on whether the courthouse door remains open to ordinary Americans who believe that the government is undermining the separation of church and state.

The question before the court is whether a group seeking to preserve the separation of church and state can mount a First Amendment challenge to the Bush administration’s “faith based” initiatives. The arguments turn on a technical question of whether taxpayers have standing, or the right to initiate this kind of suit, but the real-world implications are serious. If the court rules that the group does not have standing, it will be much harder to stop government from giving unconstitutional aid to religion.

Under the Bush administration, federal grants to religious organizations have increased 38% and faith-based intitiatives are providing everything from sex education (generally abstinence based) to food for the poor.

As the child of a preacher man, I believe that church groups can do many things better than federal programs can, but I object strongly to federal dollars being used to fund programs that can discriminate based upon religious preference. And faith-based groups are discriminating based upon religion.

This means that if you're not an Evangelical Christian, your own tax money actually funds a program where you can be denied employment for which you are qualified. These groups can't discriminate based upon color, but they can and do discriminate based on religion. Which is fine-- as long as they aren't taking Federal money.

The Bush Administration has done serious damage to the wall that separates church and state. Hopefully, this ruling will provide a way for Americans to challenge this slide toward a theocracy.

3/1 UPDATE: Americans United, an organization headed by the Rev. Barry Lynn, reports on the hearing yesterday.
Slate's take on yesterday's hearing. Most chilling quote from this wry essay?

"When most of the justices are treating the key precedent as a punch line, it's a good clue they are preparing to pull the plug."

Findlaw has the legalese take on this.
Crosswalk reports that "humanists and atheists" gathered.......
Jay Sekulow, regarded by many as the Christian Right's finest legal mind weighs in.

Thought For the Day

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
---C.S. Lewis

CENSORED

Google seems to have one standard for Christianity and another for Islam. Nick Gisburne has been posting videos questioning Christianity for some time, yet when he turned his attentions to Islam, You Tube banned him, saying "After being flagged by members of the YouTube community, and reviewed by YouTube staff, the video below has been removed due to its inappropriate nature. Due to your repeated attempts to upload inappropriate videos, your account now been permanently disabled, and your videos have been taken down."
When Google decides against you (be it your adsense account or your You Tube account), there's very little you can do.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin weighs in

Lord, What's In It For ME?

I detest modern worship music. (I could have said "I have a hard time with modern worship music" but that wouldn't be an accurate statement--I hate the stuff.)

Partially it's because I'm a traditionalist and I'm uncomfortable with electric guitars and drums and light shows in church. But mostly, it's because of the inanity of the lyrics and what my mom calls the no-brainer melodies (easier to sing along with, I realize, but awfully predictable).

Consider the song that opens Alexandra Pelosi's latest documentary "Friend of God."
The song is 4:37 long. The lyrics are:

Who am I that You are mindful of me
That You hear me when I call
Is it true that You are thinking of me
How You love me it's amazing

(Chorus)
I am a friend of God
I am a friend of God
I am a friend of God
He calls me friend

God Almighty, Lord of Glory
You have called me friend

(Repeat Chorus)

He calls me friend
He calls me friend...

That's it. Four and a half minutes of "I am A Friend of God I am a Friend of God. He calls me friend. " It's all about me and my responding to God. Theology subsituted for a trivial emotional response. Me, ME, ME

One of the most popular praise songs, "Lord I Lift Your Name on High" goes like this:

Verse:
Lord, I liftYour name on high
Lord, I love to sing Your praises
I'm so glad You're in my life
I'm so glad You came to save us

Chorus:
You came from heaven to earth
To show the way
From the earth to the cross
My debt to pay
From the cross to the grave
From the grave to the sky
Lord, I lift Your name on high

Again, it's about me and how God makes me feel rather than a focus on God, His Divinity, his ability to awe (not the pop culture definition).

Compare those lyrics to a traditional hymn of about the same length:

1. Crown Him with many crowns,
The Lamb upon His throne:
Hark! how the heav'nly anthem drowns
All music but its own!
Awake my soul, and sing
Of Him who died for thee,
And hail Him as thy matchless King
Thru all eternity.

2. Crown Him the Lord of love:
Behold His hands and side--
Rich wounds, yet visible above,
In beauty glorified.
No angel in the sky
Can fully bear that sight,
But downward bends his wond'ring eye
At mysteries so bright.

3. Crown Him the Lord of life:
Who triumphed o'er the grave,
Who rose victorious to the strife
For those He came to save.
His glories now we sing,
Who died and rose on high,
Who died eternal life to bring
And live that death may die.

4. Crown Him the Lord of heav'n:
One with the Father known,
One with the Spirit thru Him giv'n
From yonder glorious throne.
To Thee be endless praise,
For Thou for us hast died;
Be Thou, O Lord, thru endless days
Adored and magnified.

Lyrics that inspire both the soul and the mind. There is imagery and direct reference to scripture; there is praise and a reverence for an omniscient God. There is no ME. There is God and His creation and His victory over death.

Certainly there is good contemporary Christian music and there are horrible old hymns (my Dad's favorite is "In the Garden" and I can't sing it without busting out in hysterical laughter), but overall, contemporary worship music is a reflection of what is wrong with the evangelical movement in America: dumbed down, emotional, lacking in substance, and focused on the wrong priorities.

Friends of God

Did anyone else happen to watch Friends of God, the Alexandra Pelosi documentary on HBO last night? (If you didn't, it's re-running all weekend on HBO and is available on demand. I recommend it. I think it's a good attempt to try to understand the more fundamental segment of the Evangelical nation).

So I have just one question for anyone who happened to watch: when Ted Haggard asked his two church members how often they had sex with their wives, and the first guy said "EVERY DAY!" and then the second guy said "Twice a day!" did you think "9th Commandment! You shall not bear false witness"? I sure did.

And then my follow-up question to you is when Ted asked them how often their wives climaxed during sex and they both said 100% of the time, did you think, oh, their wives are liars, too? I sure did.

Based on my upbringing there were one or two surreal deja' vu moments for me--the sex discussion was not one, I assure you, although I can also assure you that the born-again kids in my hometown (me for one) were having just as much sex as their heathen peers (but the Christian kids' pregnancy rate was much higher. Abstinence education does NOT work). And I need to state for the record that my parents NEVER expected their kids to believe in creationism vs. evolution, nor do they believe that dinosaurs walked the earth with Job.

Now I'm not even going to discuss the creepy factor of the conversation given what we now know about Ted.....



UPDATE: I've added the video clip.

Bring It....

Atheist author Sam Harris and Christian blogger/pundit Andrew Sullivan are debating the merits of faith in a blogologue forum.

In Sam's first post he defines "faith":

Where I think we disagree is on the nature of faith itself. I think that faith is, in principle, in conflict with reason (and, therefore, that religion is necessarily in conflict with science), while you do not. Perhaps I should acknowledge at the outset that people use the term "faith" in a variety of ways. My use of the word is meant to capture belief in specific religious propositions without sufficient evidence—prayer can heal the sick, there is a supreme Being listening to our thoughts, we will be reunited with our loved ones after death, etc

and he states that they both have an issue with fundamentalism. Andrew counters with an explanation of why he finds fundamentalism so troubling:

It is its inability to integrate doubt into faith, its resistance to human reason, its tendency to pride and exclusion, and its inability to accept mystery as the core reality of any religious life. You find it troubling, I think, purely because it upholds truths that cannot be proved empirically or even, in some respects, logically.

One of the reasons that I read Andrew every day is because of his faith and his willingness to call Christianists (a term he coined last year and a term that bugs the heck out of many religious conservatives) on the carpet for their hypocrisy and deceit.

This should be very interesting.

For the Rev. Martin Luther King: Sing!

St. George's Episcopal Church will celebrate its next U2charist on Saturday January 20 at 5 pm.
This Saturday's service will honor the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr and is open to all including (at least this time), the BBC.

The Reverend Dr. Paige Blair, wasn't the first pastor to use U2's music or Christian message in a church service, but St. George's did originate the U2charist. St. George's holds a U2charist every three or four months (the last coincided with the "Stand Up to End Poverty" Day organized by the One Campaign) and changes the service each time in accordance to the liturgical season.

The U2charist movement is now international with services in places like New Zealand, South Africa, Atlanta, and Hong Kong.

The BBC will be filming this service as part of a documentary that they're making, but also so that it can be used as a model for a U2charist performance at St. Swithin's Church in London. That performance will bre broadcast nationally in the UK on Good Friday.

Dr. Blair will start this U2charist with "Pride (in the Name of Love)" and end the service with "MLK".

More background on U2's message can be found here and here. The Official U2charist page is here.
For a lot of background on the spritual journey of U2, I recommend the book Walk On by Steve Stockman.

"One man caught on a barbed wire fence
One man he resist
One man washed on an empty beach
One man betrayed with a kiss
In the name of love.
What more in the name of love?"

UPDATE: Correction. As a commenter so kindly pointed out, the first U2charist was not held at St. George's but rather at St. Mary's Outreach Center (SMOC) in Baltimore, Maryland in April of 2004. Sorry about the misinformation.

Must See TV--For Our House Anyway

Friends of God: a Road Trip with Alexandra Pelosi, January 25th @ 8 pm on HBO.
It will re-air on HBO2 on January 28th.

Yes, Alexandra is Nancy's daughter. You might remember her from her first documentary "Journey's With George", which was an inside look at W's 2000 campaign.

It features Ted Haggard, who according to Pelosi, was instrumental in making this film a valuable documentary (and I write this without any irony, whatsoever). He took her into his family, he introduced her to Jerry Falwell, and showed her Christian subcultures like Christian Wrestling (again, no irony. Not a drop.).

Begin Irony here--Pastor Ted has this little moment in the movie:

“You know all the surveys say that evangelicals have the best sex life of any other group,” Mr. Haggard says slyly to the camera, to which the effusive Ms. Pelosi responds, “No way.”
Mr. Haggard then asks a parishioner at his 14,000-member church how often he has sex with his wife. The man says: “Every day. Twice a day.” Pastor Ted then asks, "How many times a day does she climax?"

Oh. My. Goodness.

In defense of the 80 million evangelicals Ms. Pelosi has this to say:

“I believe in the culture war,” she said. “And you know what? If I have to take a side in the culture war I’ll take their side,” meaning the Christian conservatives. “Because if you give me the choice of Paris Hilton or Jesus, I’ll take Jesus.”

She might take Jesus, but more and more I wonder if Jesus would take most of America's current Evangelical Christians (you know, like the ones who singled Ted out as their best and brightest and then conveniently denied that he was even a Christian after his little indiscretion).

A New Year ; Resolutely

Resolutely. If there's a word that defines me, it's NOT resolutely (showing firm determination or purpose). I'm a Pisces for goodness sakes'. I am weak-willed and easily led (I have good traits as well but that's not the point of the post).
Since I lack resolve, and because I'm the world's most gifted procrastinator I've waited three days into the New Year to make my resolutions formal. Because I've always made New Year's resolutions and I've always kept them. For about 5 hours. But this year is different.
This year, change is inevitable:

• my husband is now officially retired (officially because the neighbors and his children thought he retired years ago). He appears reluctant to find another job, nor does he need to, but having him around all the time is going to be a change.
  
• my company is for sale and the sale will close in 2007. I'm guessing that this will require a relocation back to the 'Nasty (Cincinnati). Now that's a wicked change.
  
• youngest son is getting married in June and I'm betting that I'll be a grandmother before I hit my mid-40's and I'm not going to be thrilled about that little change in social status.
  

And so, in this New Year, I'm resolved to
1) embrace the change;
2) manage the change (instead of it managing me);
3) use the change for good, personally and for others; and
4) finally to come to understand my utter dismay at and disdain for all things religious (the religious right, the church who is more worried about abortion than genocide, the evangelicals who are more worried about stopping sex than saving a life. Oh could I go on and on....) and how that impacts my faith. It's either evolving my faith to a higher level or contributing to a faith lost, and I intend to answer that question.

These are resolutions that must be kept in order to keep my good humor and my sanity. My, aren't we going to have a fun year?