"Why Most Christians will Die and Go to H-E-L-L"

This is the title of a tract that a man handed Nadia outside a coffee shop in my neighborhood. It's from a fundie Baptist church nearby. Lot's of raging quotes; here are a couple, complete w/ colonial-style over-capitaliziation-of-Nouns:

"Churches and Pastors and Christians today do not know anything about holiness. They are so worldly and the world is so churchy. Preachers today do not preach against the sins they preached against in yesteryear. Where's the Prophet? Where's the Man of God? Who'll cry out against the sins of the Church members."

"Most preachers are controlled by pulpit committees and the IRS."

"Call us if you're searching for a hellfire & brimstone Baptist Church in your area that believes the King James bible and stands for something"

"We welcome all Religions & Cultures"

This last one is particularly rich given that the man who handed the tract to Nadia is Latino and speaks very limited English. While one never knows, it's a safe guess that he's not a cradle fundamentalist Baptist, and neither are his friends and family--but good chance they're Christians. Nothing like being "welcomed" by being told your faith isn't good enough and you're going to burn in h-e-l-l.

This is the thing that makes it hard for me to go too far down the "conservative and liberal Christians each have their blind spots and intolerances; let's meet in the middle and try to understand each other better--we're all equally guilty in this area." (And yes, I know that this tract comes from some pretty fringy folks, but the mainstream religious right sentiment is softer and kinder more than it's substantively different.) But, while the liberal church may read the Bible just as selectively as the religious right, ignore just as many of its own doctrinal tensions and contradictions, and look down on people who disagree, I've never, ever heard a left-leaning mainliner--fringe or otherwise--say or even imply that conservative Christians aren't real Christians, or that they're going to hell.

This is a difference that matters.

The cutting edge of hating on the LGBT-affirming liberal church

Then: You're not really Christians.

Now: You don't even EXIST--see, that prayer you just prayed didn't really happen!

Phil Rizk talks about his detainment

He wasn't physically harmed, but otherwise a pretty rough go. From this NYT story:

“I was held for four days, but the people of Gaza continue to be held in a form of prison, and there are others in Egypt who are also being held,” he said. “I want to move the attention to others who are still in this situation.”

61 votes: appeasing the incoherent center

Smart words on the stimulus from Ross Douthat:

[The centrists have] done absolutely nothing to widen the terms of debate about what should go into the bill, and they've shaved off just enough money to reduce its effectiveness if Paul Krugman is right - but not nearly enough to make it fiscally prudent if the stimulus skeptics are right.

More.

I agree with Ezra: end the filibuster.

Sorry, can't resist posting one more Drew comic

Two in a day! This is a first for me. But this one's so gentle and bridge-buildy:

Cool new Apple toy!

With apologies to my baby sister, who once--when she was MUCH younger than she is now--sincerely challenged my older sister and me to a "Coldplay-liking contest":

Philip's release

The Egyptian authorities released Philip Rizk on Wednesday, February 11, after five days in custody.

Chicago demonstration for Phil Rizk

A protest is being organized for tomorrow at the Egyptian consulate on N Michigan.

More here.

Free Phil Rizk

Phil Rizk, a journalist and activist in the Middle East, has been taken into custody by Egyptian police after leading a march in solidarity with Palestine.

Phil's a Wheaton acquaintance/friend-of-friends. Here's a Facebook group with more information.

UPDATE: Here's an eyewitness report.

AND: for DC-area people, there will be a protest tomorrow at the Egyptian embassy.

The bomb throwers have it

You know, in general I try not to be too quick to side with the bomb throwers over the bridge builders. I have a fairly instinctual preference for building stuff over blowing it up, to the point that I find myself spending more time defending people I disagree with to other people I also disagree with (i.e., evangelicals and very-liberal mainline Protestants and back again) than actually saying what I myself think. (Those who know me will point out that it's not that I don't find time to say what I think--I just talk a whole lot. I'm speaking relatively here.)

That said: pastordan talks some good sense here. As much as I might try to get excited about the new Third Way "governing agenda," there just isn't that much there.

How Wal-Mart took over the country

If you dare:

FlowingData has a fairly terrifying visual representation of the spread of Wal-Mart.

It's sorta awkward when one arm's longer than the other

So the pope has a long right arm.

Rose (w/ apologies to Michael Lerner): what about his LEFT arm?

Plenty room for Change® at USDA

If you've been here long you've perhaps noticed that I'm no fan of USDA's behavior in the recent past. And none of us foodie types has been too thrilled with the choice of Tom Vilsack as Obama's secretary of agriculture.

But more recently there are signs that Vilsack might not be all bad (see another Tom, and yet another one). Among other things, he's signaled that he intends to make USDA less...blatantly racist.

That's right: not only do your tax dollars pay for big-agriculture thugs to do their food-safety-/local-community-/environment-destroying dirty work in federal uniforms, but they're also paying to explicitly discriminate against black farmers.

But perhaps not for long.

"Did you mean? crises rutherford"

Eddie Gehman Kohan asks a good question: why is the new White House Web site so light on information about food, even omitting any reference to WH chef Cristeta Comerford?

Benedict: The St. Pius kids are alright

The pope is making nice with his right flank. No huge surprise there, but it's worth reading to the end of the article if only to get to this great quote, in which George Weigel out-Weigels himself:

It is not easy to see how the unity of the Church will be enhanced unless the Lefebvrists accept Vatican II’s teaching on the nature of the Church, on religious freedom, and on the evil of anti-Semitism, explicitly and without qualification; otherwise, you get cafeteria Catholicism on the far right, as we already have on the left.

Weigel's sensible! He's moderate! He's...taking a potshot at liberals in an article about extreme conservatives. Because everyone knows that more mainstream conservative Catholics are never guilty of a cafeteria approach.

Wal-Mart saves the earth with the innovation of...concentrated laundry detergent?

Hmmm. As cool and happy as the stock boy looks in the photo, that there's some serious greenwashing.

Or worse.

I'm in "the fake DC" this weekend

So I'm back in DC for the inauguration right now, and, as someone who tries hard to live in the moment, I'm feeling the DC pride as if I still lived here.

Inevitably, with a hip and classy new president coming to town--one who'd rather check out a trendy restaurant or theater company then go out and clear some brush somewhere--the national media has turned its elitist, patronizing attention to DC and its cultural scene. Did you know that there are artists in Our Nation's Capital? And even restaurants?

Here's a good specimen of the genre: a piece on the dining scene in "the real DC," which seems to mean roughly the opposite of what Sarah Palin means by "the real America"--the real DC is apparently a place where rapid gentrification is welcome, everyone has money, and cuisine is judged primarily on its relative haute-ness. This will certainly be news to DC's many, many poor people.

And, you ask, what publication might have run this article implying that

• it's a pleasant surprise when anything remotely fashionable happens in a city of fewer than five million people
  
• DC is a cultural wasteland waiting to be rescued by a celebrity president
• "real" people routinely spend $50 on dinner?

A hint: it rhymes with the "blue fork crimes."

Gordon Cosby's last sermon

The Post ran a good article last week about the last sermon of Gordon Cosby, a legend in DC faith-and-activism circles, and about the future of the Church of the Saviour, which Cosby founded, and its many ministries.

Good comments here, here, and here.

Just give me a f***ing neighborhood-based thing!

I missed this last week, but my kid sister didn't: Obama's people are dealing w/ the faith-based-initiative hot potato by refashioning it so as not to be strictly faith-based. Clever.

No, USA Today headliner, it doesn't. Not even close.

I like Luis Lugo, and religious diversity on Capitol Hill certainly matters.

But the headline for this piece--which, obviously, Lugo himself didn't write--is appalling. Last I checked, people of different religions don't necessarily LOOK different. Meanwhile, we're down to zero black senators again (or one, depending whom you ask).

Our long national nightmare is documented

I finally read Vanity Fair's lengthy oral history of the Bush administration. Fair, non-reactionary, focused almost entirely on the words of actual actors and witnesses with minimal editorializing.

I haven't been so angry since...well, since I watched No End in Sight.

New Year's advice

If you're ever in Chicago at 9 pm on New Year's Eve and you're looking for somewhere to not go, I strongly recommend the liquor store at the corner of Belmont and Sheffield.

"I have always found the middle class slightly annoying."

One of the many people whom we didn't elect president last month is the poet Sparrow, who runs pretty much every time. The current issue of The Sun--do you subscribe to The Sun? If not, stop reading and go do so, right now--includes excerpts from this year's campaign journal. (Sparrow ran this time around as the candidate of the Sudoku For All Party.) Here's a sample:

There's been a lot of discussion in this election about saving the middle class. Let me confide in you, my electorate, that I have always found the middle class slightly annoying. I am running to protect the hobos, stevedores (I'm not sure exactly what a stevedore is, but I love the word), opera singers, prostitutes, people who dress up as rabbits, and experts on Chaucer. The middle class, with their comfortable couches and macaroni casseroles, can probably take care of themselves.

I like this entry because, as a Steve, I too am fascinated by the word "stevedore." Furthermore, the broad coalition he seeks to protect includes two different vocations I briefly considered for myself. (I'm going to make you guess.)

More importantly: seriously, I think it's pretty gross when every time a politician not named John Edwards wants to talk about poor people, his/her people do a global find/replace and make it about the middle class instead. Now, talking about how rising inequality is squeezing the middle class out of existence is another thing. But then you're still talking about poor people (i.e., in the general sense--both the poor and the low-income in policy parlance--people who are struggling to make ends meet even w/o any expectation of middle-class comforts).

In summary: read The Sun, stand up for the poor, and Sparrow's funny. That's my philosophy.

What happened to slow news weeks right before Christmas?

Busy week for me, and even more so for the religion internets.

The Newsweek cover story on same-sex marriage made a bit of a splash, to say the least. Mollie was predictably unimpressed. Many of her criticisms are spot-on, but I can't quite figure out why she's so pissed that the article focuses specifically on biblical arguments (as opposed to e.g. natural law ones) against same-sex marriage. No, biblicism isn't the whole story here, but it's not exactly a straw man, either. (Had she asked, I'd have been happy to do a Google search for her.) Waldman has a good analysis of the inside-the-media side of the story.

Meanwhile, turns out our United Methodist, Episcopal-worshiping, NE-patrician current president is, horror of horrors, a theologically liberal mainline Protestant. Just another unlikely hero of a cynically waged culture war...good thing his faith was interrogated as fiercely pre-election as the very similar views of the president-elect!

And New-Kind-of-Evangelical® hero Rich Cizik has finally been ousted from his position as head lobbyist for the NAE. A long-sought-after win for the old-line religious right, which, you'll recall, is dead/dying/whatever.

Elsewhere, the old debate between the pro-LGBT-and-abortion-rights religious left and the common-ground-common-good-anti-poverty-etc. religious center-left resurfaced this past week. Yawn.

And here's a really interesting standalone piece: from Sightings, the issue of interfaith work and proselytizing.

What is blog?

I've been talking to a lot of folks lately who are interested in "the internets" and "blogging" but feel they lack a sophisticated understanding. My responses tend to be rather rambling, but I discovered recently that my friend Jon has a more concise response:

"Beg for mercy, strawman!"

Don Byrd's takedown of this Chuck Norris column is pretty fun.

High-speed rail! High-speed rail!

This is cool:

Teach a man to Google, and you have cut down on his irritating requests for a lifetime

Hey, I live in Chicago, so I probably know where to find, say, a boring sandwich there, right?

Tired of people asking you for information they could have figured out themselves w/ a simple Web search? The internets have just the thing.

"A big day for Roy Bourgeois"

You think?

Anglican roundup: the insanity rumbles on

Week after next, the Common Cause-affiliated conservatives will gather at my alma mater. Not for worship led by an archbishop who remained silent when asked at GAFCON only to go so far as to condemn violent hate crimes against gays and lesbians--not THIS time. No, they say they'll be forming a new province of the Anglican Communion, a rival North American church.

Adrian Worsfold's response: he's starting his own Anglican Church, too. So there.

And Jim highlights one (of many!) reasons why the difference between an established church and American-style separation matters, even post explicit-financial-support: because the covenant that the Archbishop of Canterbury, in his capacity as leader of the Anglican Communion, wants the different primates to sign--in particular, the U.S. and Canadian presiding bishops--is ILLEGAL for the AofC HIMSELF to sign in his capacity as head of the Church of England...because he isn't really the head.

That would be the queen.

Jim:

A pattern is beginning to emerge here. The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada must cease blessing same-sex relationships, but the Church of England does not have to because it does so quietly. The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada must relinquish their autonomy and sign on to a covenant that will almost certainly be used to marginalize them, but the Church of England doesn't have to because it is an established church.

The Archbishop of Canterbury continues to demand from the North American churches what he does not ask from his own people. And the peculiar thing is that nobody seems to find this objectionable.

Finally, on a lighter note--or at least a gallows-humor note--it seems the Anglican Communion's hiring. (Orphans preferred.)

Better late than never: infamously outlandish rock-star claims edition

The Vatican has forgiven John Lennon.

(And RNS has committed the cardinal sin of Beatles-related headline writing: punning on a song title written by the wrong Beatle. Particularly ironic in this case, given that even a moderate-to-serious [i.e., not a crazed, dogmatic, Kinks-and-Dylan-and-Velvets-and-everyone-else-dismissing] Beatles fan like myself knows that Lennon hated this song...because he understood it to be pro-religion in general and pro-Catholic in particular. ["Mother Mary comes to me..."] Oh well.)

A couple good health-care reads

A clear and informative op-ed by folks from the New America Foundation: 5 Myths on Our Sick Health-Care System.

And a story about two girls with cancer, one in the US and one in the UK, that puts some holes in the old "you'd-better-not-have-to-deal-with-socialized-medicine-in-a-crisis" saw. Good piece--but the remarkable thing, as Ezra points out, is that IT'S PUBLISHED IN FORBES.

Some people make the "it's a slippery slope--what's next? polygamy?!" argument more credibly than others

Mark makes a good observation: It's no small irony that one of main forces behind Prop 8's passage was the LDS church, which, not that long ago, WAS the group fighting for a more expansive (vs. "traditional") view of marriage.

Marketing vegetarianism to 14-year-olds

Via Meghan:

So who's right about my representative?

Michael Lerner?

Or Barack Obama:

Microphone interference=spiritual seekers go home w/o visiting the espresso bar or the bookstore

This is weird. Especially: only megachurch pastors use wireless microphones? And Shure--producer of the industry-standard live microphones used in virtually every live music or speech context--is "an audio-visual company working with megachurches and other users"?

What about pastors of medium-sized churches, and pastors of small churches that aren't quite small enough to not need microphones, and people who aren't pastors but still, incredibly, want to have their voices amplified w/o being attached to a cable?

The story behind the story: perhaps megachurch pastors are especially concerned about microphone interference because their worship aesthetic is so dependent on smoothness and technical perfection. And perhaps, unlike small-church pastors who are busy, you know, writing sermons and balancing budgets and visiting the sick or whatever, megachurches can devote staff time toward fighting the FCC. Really very strange.

Okay, sorry for that curve ball. Next post will be on our nation's new trinity of hope: Obama, Jesus, and Obama. I promise.

The Obama rally

It was a beautiful night in Grant Park, and I'm perfectly happy to have underestimated Obama's margin of victory earlier today. I was disappointed w/ the crowd's booing of Gov. Palin in Sen. McCain's concession speech. (Also: hints of the old, human McCain in the speech.) Otherwise, a great crowd and wonderful to be there. Back at my office in downtown Chicago now, with cheers and chants of "yes we can" in the streets below. Quite an experience.

Now my brother and I are off to catch the packed late-night train back to my apt. But well worth it.

Wes Anderson and David Lynch on the McCain payroll?

I missed this before--apparently the reason McCain's low on cash is that he spent it all hiring big-shot film directors to shoot attack ads for him. Check it out:





Via Hannah.

(Cross-posted at the Posse.)

Election day predictions!

I'm going to keep my predictions positive but conservative: Obama wins, but not big--he gets 295 electoral votes (i.e., he wins NC but loses the other toss-ups). The Democrats pick up a few Senate seat for a total of 58, including Lieberman and Sanders but not including any comedians or best-sellers of factually slippery books calling people "lying liars" right in the title who then carpet-bagged it back to their "home state" they hadn't lived in for many many years and asked for the votes of a famously polite and non-presumptuous electorate. Democrats pick up 22 seats in the House.

Pestilence, war, and famine

Mark Silk has a good anecdote about the Christian Science Monitor, that excellent, independent, quirky, and recently online-only daily paper.

RIP Studs Terkel

The writer/activist/radio personality/music lover died today at 96. (Living in Chicago, always hoped I'd get to meet him at some point.) He understood something many people miss: that you can't really participate in improving the situation of marginalized people without taking the time to LISTEN to them.

Two observations about the evangelical landscape

First: This little number from Focus on the Family is outrageous and reeks of desperation. (Remember, Dobson himself hasn't endorsed a candidate...)

Second: Every single comment on the CT politics blog's post about this is critical of Focus. (The post itself, as is typical of Sarah Pulliam's fine work, stays neutral.)

Both obvious points, I know. But the point is this: as critical as I am of the evangelicals-go-Democratic media narrative, I'm pleased that people are finally understanding the ideological DIVERSITY of evangelicals, electoral realities aside. And was the distance between mainstream neo-evangelicals and right-wing culture warriors ever in sharper relief than in this CT thread?

Bush administration confirms separation between Bush administration and separation

Remember the to-do about Obama's version of what Karl Rove likes to call the "f***ing faith-based thing"? Some media-driven confusion as to whether BO plans to allow organizations receiving federal funding to use a religious litmus test for hiring decisions. (He doesn't.)

The current administration, to no one's surprise, sees things differently. But lest there be any doubt, the Justice Dept recently posted a memo from last year to its Web site.

Item: Is WBEZ pushing the prosperity quasi-Dharma?

Heard this week on my local NPR affiliate's pledge-drive chatter:

When I give to public radio, I do it knowing that I won't miss the money--because the good karma I get in return will more than make up for my donation.

This is what you get when the Elite Liberal Media starts paying more attention to evangelicals, Pentecostals, and garden-variety crazy-religious-provincials: the (shudder) prosperity quasi-Dharma. Makes the New Age scare of the 80s look like harmless self-help crap...

Why won't the candidates talk about food?

It's astonishing how little attention the presidential campaigns have given to food policy. As Michael Pollan and others keep telling us, it's intimately connected w/ a wide variety of issue areas that demand priority status: health care, global warming, energy, international trade, cost-of-living squeezes on working people. (And whoever's telling the candidates that no one wants to talk about food didn't poll me or my friends. It's pretty much all we talk about [when we're not talking about electoral politics itself].)

Anyway. My main-writer-crush Tom Philpott has a good column about where McCain and Obama stand on food and farms, to the extent that they stand anywhere at all. The short version: Obama's the clear better-than, but his ethanol pandering is Illannoyin'. But read the long version.

Also, Elanor recently covered a panel of experts discussing what they would do were they made food policy adviser (!) to the new president. What should his priorities be? etc. Good stuff.

Well hello there

Sorry for the long delay. I've moved and am working full-time again, and I'm trying out the idea of doing w/o Web access at home--the better to read things in print, spend time w/ friends and family, cook, etc. Which will mean lighter posting, though hopefully not as light as the last couple weeks (i.e., not at all).

One thing I will continue updating frequently is my link blog/shared items list. So if that's useful to you, consider subscribing to its discrete feed.

Posting is light because...

...I'm moving this week. Back soon.

Aunt Jemima: Racist image or symbol of wholesomeness and quality? We report, you decide.

At last week's Family Research Council conference, a table run by the Obama Waffles guys was protested and eventually shut down (though not before they sold quite a few boxes of waffle mix to the Values Voters present). Much of the coverage of the event has focused on the question of whether this image




is racist. You know how this goes: One side says a picture of Barack Obama w/ exaggerated features selling waffles that look an awful lot like those on Aunt Jemima packaging is racist. The other side says no it's not, it's about him waffling on the issues. Far be it from the new media to say this is OBVIOUSLY, BLATANTLY RACIST. They just report that a difference of opinion exists. The way that "some scientists" think evolution is a load of crap. The way that many voters (and lawmakers!) say that drilling in the Gulf and/or ANWR will bring gas prices down, even though every expert says otherwise. Now why would the voters think THAT?

Anyway. Sarah Pulliam sticks to the facts but has a more informative piece than most. Also essential is this press release from the waffle guys, in which they make the classically racist move of explaining how un-racist they are:

There was no mention in the AP report that upwards of 1/3 of those who bought the Obama Waffles were Asian, African Americans, Hispanics, or from other ethic groups - all of whom thought the product was hilarious and anything but racist. By the way, the last person to buy was an African-American woman who purchased three boxes of Obama Waffles.

Regarding the charge of being racists, the AP story failed to report that Bob is married to a Hispanic woman while Mark and his wife have adopted a daughter from China. Is that what racists do?

I'm convinced.

A penny saved is 90-odd percent of a penny earned

Roben Farzad on how we're sticking it to responsible savers.

Opposite day

It's bizarro-world time on the church-and-politics front.

A Catholic bishop from Madison is joining the chorus of his peers calling out Sen. Biden and Speaker Pelosi for their recent statements about abortion (and their pro-abortion-rights stances generally). In 2004, John Kerry was similarly criticized. He plead separation of church and state--he may believe such and such as a Catholic, but that doesn't mean he can legislate that in the public square, etc. Now, Pelosi and Biden are being accused not of misappropriating, putting too much stock in, or hiding behind separation--all fair criticisms of Kerry's perspective--but of VIOLATING it by offering their perspective on Church teaching. WTF?

Meanwhile, conservative Southern Baptist leaders are bending over backward to explain why, despite their steadfast opposition to women's leadership not only in the church but anywhere outside the home, voting for a female vice presidential candidate makes lovely sense. Of course it does! Robert Parham isn't having it. Neither am I.

What's nerdier than a speculative theology blog?

A PARODY of a speculative theology blog. Named ΨΕΥΔΟΘΕΟΛΟΓΙΑ.

My favorite news item of the day

Obama whatever!
Palin blah blah blah!
Conservative Anglicans are pissed etc etc!

The Cubs September callups include outfielder Felix Pie. As soon as this guy can figure out how to hit consistently, he's going to win himself a golden glove and lead the league in stolen bases.

A world in which black leaders are judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their MLK rating

Jeff Sharlet wishes that Obama were less of a social-gospel liberal and more of an MLK-style liberationist.

Well, sure. But I think he gives the social gospel movement in its classic form too little credit. It wasn't just a baptism of standard liberal ideas, with their "cautious optimism." In fact, its optimism was pretty radical, and it was rooted in theological particulars: the postmillennial emphasis on the church's ability to build the kingdom of God on earth. (Obama sparked controversy some time ago when he made a particularly postmillennial-sounding statement.)

More importantly: I get that the fact that Obama's convention speech came on the anniversary of "I have a dream," and that the campaign dressed up the stage w/ Roman pillars to bring to mind the Lincoln Memorial, makes the comparison sort of inevitable. But still: Come on. Dr. King, of course, never ran for public office. More importantly, Obama isn't claiming to be the next King, and we've got to stop expecting him to be. It's both unrealistic and unfair. (If Sen. Clinton had won the nomination, we'd be spending our time wishing she were more like, say, Susan B. Anthony...)

Eucharist and food

One of the things I like about the church Nadia and I attend in DC is its appreciation for the significance of food in Christian spirituality. We receive communion gathered around the altar, a table across which everyone in the community is visible and present to everyone else. The sacrament truly feels like a meal.

While the congregation worships upstairs, a parish-run hot meals program is serving lunch downstairs. Nadia sometimes serves as one of the two lay eucharistic ministers who take bread and wine from the altar, walk downstairs to the lunch room, and serve communion to all who wish to receive it. One of the better ways to connect theology w/ praxis that I've encountered--and all of it related to food.

Yes magazine--a publication I often avoid for its pesky optimism--has a great q+a with Sara Miles, an Episcopalian whose adult conversion was deeply connected to the spirituality of food and hospitality. Miles now runs a large food pantry out of her church in San Francisco and consults with others--a practice that, among other things, brings liberal Episcopalians and conservative Pentecostals in conversation about the Christian imperative to feed.

Via Eliacin Rosario-Cruz.

On gaffes

Sam Stein is pleased to report Palin's first gaffe and a roundup of reactions to it.

Not so fast, says Ezra Klein. A gaffe is a MISTAKE, which would require that she know the right answer in the first place.

God the locavore

From RNS, an early example of what may well become a full-fledged trend piece: food ethics as specifically religious practice.

Palin and the Pentecostal fringe

The church in which I grew up is a fairly mainstream evangelical place. But its roots are charismatic, and over the years it's dabbled in (w/o every fully embracing) some of the less mainstream elements of Pentecostal practice. (Slayings in the spirit and talk of spiritual warfare were regular features of my church upbringing, as were the dominionist tendencies that infused such movements by the 1980s. We never got too into the holy laughter stuff, though I experienced it elsewhere. And we loved to sing about the prophet Joel's notion of "latter rain.")

So anyway, I was very interested to see Ruth's in-depth treatment of Gov. Palin's connection to the Third Wave or Latter Rain movement, a fringe-y Pentecostal thread that's been condemned by, among others, the Assemblies of God church and a variety of less-charismatic-leaning conservative evangelicals.

Unless you really know a lot about this stuff--and hardly anyone outside Pentecostal-charismatic circles does, including myself and especially including the MSM--start w/ this backgrounder. Then read her Palin-specific post. Sober-minded, even semi-scholarly, and very fair--yet still pretty damn scary.

"1,000 points of bullshit"

Jon Stewart on bash-community-organizing night at the RNC:

Fr. Bourgeois continues endearing himself to the powers that be

The Maryknoll priest who started the annual protest at the School of the Americas has recently been pretty outspoken in his support for women's ordination.

Does Palin believe the destruction of first the Muslim world and then Israel is part of God's plan? And might this be problematic in a VP?

Frederick Clarkson examines Palin's dispensationalist streak.

$10,000 a year. What an elitist.

The second half of this Jay Smooth video is particularly good--on how despicable it is to mock community organizing:



The suggestion that community organizing--in Obama's case and many others, working long hours for very little pay trying to help marginalized people stand up for their rights and engage the political process--is somehow elitist and/or irrelevant, while accepting the status quo power system represents regular American values or whatever, is not just rude. It's completely idiotic.

Via Adam Serwer.

Words that strike fear in the hearts of decent people everywhere:

Chris Matthews for Senate.

A (dry) night club full of Republicans

While it may be known on the coasts primarily as the capital of Garrison Keillor's Fabulous World of Charming Traditional Lutherans, the Twin Cities area is also a hub of Hip Cool Church for the Youngsters--of both the Emergent and the original-recipe-evangelical varieties.

This place exists within the world of the latter group. I wonder how well the Republican delegates fit in there? I mean, the ones that don't have Bible-verse tats or rock-and-roll-for-Jesus side gigs?

Woody Allen and Billy Graham

I've never seen this before. It's from a special Woody did in the late 60s:



Via Kevin Cawley.

The federal food regulators hate America, part the third

The first, the second. (With feds this infuriating, we may just have to turn this into a regular feature. But I'm careful about what I wish for. Because it might just happen, which isn't actually what I want.)

Anyway: A federal appeals court is allowing the USDA to prevent a small beef producer from testing its animals for mad cow disease, because larger companies--you know, the ones that could actually afford to do more thorough testing--don't want to be forced to do it, too.

FORCED, you say? How would this force the big guys to do the same? Well, it's market pressure that would push them to do so. (Because why buy the possibly mad cow when you can get the definitely sane one for a fair price?) And, as Dean Baker reminds us, big business doesn't actually support free markets over government intervention, and neither does the Bush administration. It's a question of whom the markets are benefiting, and on whose behalf the government is intervening.

Darwin and the existence of God

Looking ahead to the 200th anniversary of Darwin's death and the 150th of On the Origin of Species, Jonathan Sacks offers some good thoughts on how Darwin's insights can actually be HELPFUL to people of faith as they contemplate God and nature. He also makes the very good point that the argument for God's existence from design--the particular thing people are referring to when they say that Darwin directly challenges God or whatever--is pretty foreign to the Hebrew Bible. In fact, it comes from the intellectual world of ancient Greece.

Via The Lead.

Palin

Okay, one more election-related post...

McCain's choice of Gov. Palin to be his running mate struck me as pretty foolish on his part at first--she's younger and less experienced than Obama, she's hardly the kind of woman that Clinton supporters will vote for, etc. But Nate Millman is fairly persuasive. It's going to be interesting.

At any rate, it's now certain that, one way or the other, January's Inauguration Day will mark a historic first. I'm in no way suggesting that this makes the two tickets equally desirable. But still.

Last DNC post

A few bits and pieces--

A seriously alarming video of a cop arresting an ABC News producer for standing on a public sidewalk and photographing senators meeting with VIP types:



As a defense-attorney friend likes to remind me, it's a serious mistake to assume that not doing anything wrong will keep you out of trouble with the cops. And this guy wasn't some anarchist blogger with a cell-phone camera--he's from ABC! Don't the powers that be at the DNC and the Denver PD know what he can do...wait, actually, the video isn't even featured on the ABC site, and it has yet to get 1,000 viewings on YouTube. Looks like nobody cares. Via Firedoglake.

On a lighter note, the Illinois delegation loves each other:



Anyone who's ever followed Chicago or Illinois politics knows how bizarre this is. Via Chicago Public Radio.

Apparently Cameron Strang is getting quite a bit of grief for his decision to pull out of the DNC benediction slot. And Kristin asks why white Protestants such as Strang were asked to pray at the Pepsi Center but not included in the interfaith panel.

Dave takes issue w/ Obama's borrowing from the New Testament in his speech last night. Mark is less concerned.

Okay, no more election posting for awhile...hard to avoid right now.

Obama the theocrat?

Adele Oltman makes the fairly bizarre argument that the Martin Luther King Obama resembles is actually King Sr.--because Obama's theology and views of church and state are too liberal conservative [corrected typo--thanks, Anonymous] for the younger King.

Not so fast, says Mark Silk.

Anti-pluralism on the right

The Republicans get out the English-class-slacker vote:

Via Josh.

Abie Nathan is dead

Gideon Levy has a remembrance.

Not sure whose tax plan will help you more?

Wonder no more.

Birthdays

Today, my little sister is 24.

And this blog is one.

Each is EXTREMELY advanced for her/its age. I'd totally rent a car to my sister w/o adding an age surcharge; I'd also vote for her to represent me in Congress. And the blog's been walking for weeks--we're thinking of starting piano lessons this fall.

Thanks for reading.

WTF, food feds? part two: USDA on beef safety

In part one, we looked at the FDA's affection for irradiated food. Well, mostly we fantasized about the unlikely possibility of an Obama administration actually prioritizing a better farm bill in 2012, but we BEGAN the post intending to look at the FDA thing.

Today, the USDA. The agency's Food Safety and Inspection Service decided recently to combat the food safety problems of large beef producers by tightening regulations on...small beef producers.

With a deck this stacked, it must be infuriating to be a small-scale farmer selling at a market and to have to politely answer questions about why things are more expensive than over at Costco or whatever.

DNC digest

Sifting through hundreds of "are-the-Democrats-really-united?!" pieces, I did manage to find a few interesting things:

The National Journal's audio slideshow of the interfaith gathering.

Donald Miller's benediction apparently was toned down a bit by the convention organizers. The problem had nothing to do w/ implicitly acknowledging the Republicans as equals or addressing Jesus by name. Instead, he was asked to back off a statement about the U.S.'s diminished standing in the world. The DNC: We'll push your faith buttons all day long, but we're too scared to talk about the fact that the world hates America for reasons CAUSED LARGELY BY THE OTHER GUYS. Here's the prayer:



Elsewhere, Sister Helen Prejean did her usual "hey, maybe we shouldn't be torturing and killing people" schtick. Crazy nun. So far out of the mainstream! And Ezra offers an uncharacteristically reflective post about the distance between The Poor of the DNC and the poor of Denver.

Finally, for those of you who share my evident frustration with the small-bore version of Change® the Democrats continue to represent, Glenn Greenwald and Jane Hamsher put on their muckraker hats and crash the Blue Dog/AT&T party:

Back in the Twin Cities

This billboard will greet the RNC:

Via Bennett.

New McCain ads contradict each other

I'm house-sitting for friends w/ cable and thus watching a lot of MSNBC and CNN.

Since Obama announced Sen. Biden as his running mate, McCain has hit back quick w/ two negative ads--two ads that make pretty much the exact opposite argument.

The first points out that Biden had some critical things to say about Obama in the primary. The guy's running mate doesn't even like him--WTF?! Vote McCain: His running mate likes him and doesn't say bad things about him.*

The second offers that the only reason Sen. Clinton didn't get the nod is that she was brave enough to speak the truth in the primary: the anti-Obama truth. He refused to offer her the VP slot just because she asked serious questions about his candidacy--WTF?! Vote McCain: His running mate will be someone who isn't afraid to criticize him.

Naturally, the cable networks are re-playing the ads for free and talking about which constituencies they're aimed at, etc.--w/o bothering to call McCain out for the utter incoherence of this argument. Fortunately, the baseball game's about to start. Time to change the channel.

*Unless his name is Mitt Romney, in which case his running mate admires him but isn't afraid to engage in spirited debate during the primary. You know, like Joe Biden.

FDA: The answer to dangerous food is different dangerous food

You'd think that with all the food safety scares coming at a time of existing anxiety about global warming and energy supplies, local food advocates would get a hearing at higher levels of the advocacy and government communities. You'd be wrong, of course. Instead, you get the FDA ruling in favor of solutions such as this one.

Maybe you can hope for better policy if and when the feds work for Obama. Furthermore, maybe he'll push for a better farm bill in 2012 than the one you finally got this year. Of course, he'll be running for re-election and needing to prove himself a Friend of Business and generally a Non-Extremist at each and every turn. Not that you've ever counted on Democratic leadership on food issues anyway...

Here's a daydream. What if

• Obama wins in November.
• The Republicans, as expected, change their primary schedule effective 2012 but don't go so far as to stop letting Iowa and the other early states go first.
• Obama's people take political advantage of the fact that, as the party not running in the primaries, they're the ones who don't have to pander to big ag in Iowa.
• When the farm bill debate coincides with the general election campaign, Obama pushes for serious reform and attacks his challenger for pandering in Iowa.
• With congressional majorities strong enough to stand up to farm-state representatives up for re-election and the strong, this-is-finally-a-priority support of the White House, the Democrats pass a seriously reform-oriented farm bill. Unlike this last one, the bill is at least well on its way by November.
• Obama wins re-election. Farm-bill reformers get serious subsidy reform AND major initiatives to support small- and medium-scale produce and livestock producers. Everybody gets progress toward tastier and more healthful food, stronger communities, and pathogen outbreaks that are less common and far easier to track and contain.
  

I'm not holding my breath.

"I've used my skills as an impeccable wearer of blazers and boat shoes to avoid a principled stand on any subject"

Don't miss Sally Jenkins' column in the voice of of IOC president Jacques Rogge:

It's one thing for the Chinese government to jail dissidents, to forge the passports of underage gymnasts, and to set up official protest zones and then arrest anyone who applied to use them. These are matters that I met with disciplined silence, or as I so adroitly put it, with "quiet diplomacy." But I cannot ignore Bolt's disturbing spontaneity. Him, I feel compelled to rebuke.

And:

How is [Bolt] different, for instance, from the U.S. women's beach volleyball team, which shrieked, hugged each other, cavorted, and fell about in the sand for several minutes, before congratulating its opponents?

Isn't it obvious? They are women in bikinis.

Best of all:

To sum up, over the years I have been an ally to the Soviet Union, Iran and China, and now I have demonstrated that I am not afraid to take on a Jamaican.

DNC to be less Relevant!® than originally planned

Cameron Strang has backed out of giving a benediction, recommending Donald Miller in his place.

I'd quote Jeremiah Wright on (upper) "middle-classness" if it wouldn't betray me as an extremist and a hater-of-freedom

A CTI survey finds that the average senior pastor makes more than $80k annually. A couple questions this Christian Post story doesn't answer:

• $80k is the mean. What's the median?
• If you were to eliminate from the formula all televangelists who make the kind of money that is liable to, say, get them investigated by Republican senators, what would the mean be then?

Obviously, a simple average number like this one can be pretty skewed by just a handful of astronomically high outliers. Still: $80,000?! For folks w/ a job description that includes preaching the immanence of a kingdom not defined by worldly standards of wealth and value? Sad.

The world on Saddleback

Tom Heneghan has a nice digest of international press coverage of the Warren extravaganza.

Theda Skocpol takes the words right out of my mouth

Several hundred frustrated ones, to be precise.

In short: Start hitting BACK, Obama! If you do so truthfully and fairly, you won't have to sacrifice the moral high ground in which you've staked your claim...with the added benefit of having a (fighting!) chance of actually being elected president.

We get it: The Democrats have found their faith

Next week in Denver, the Democrats are throwing a tent revival convention. Speakers include a whole mess of strategically placed Christian leaders, a couple of whom no one's ever accused of being Democrats, along with four whole rabbis and, in lower-profile, non-prime-time-TV slots, a token Muslim or two a diverse array of religious leaders reflecting the party's commitment to the common good as articulated by our nation's rich patchwork quilt of faith traditions.

A house for some people

Some time ago I linked to a story about a church that barred an autistic boy from attending mass. Now, the Oregonian highlights some examples of more hospitable approaches.

Via The Lead.

The more-pithy-than-classy Richard Land

The SBC policy head, speaking as usual not for himself but for Christian conservatives generally, on why McCain's a better choice than Obama: "I'll take a third-class fireman over a first-class arsonist."

Slick move

Great Obama moment at Saddleback: Asked for an example of a time he put the country's interest above his own/his party's, Obama cited campaign finance reform--and gave McCain a shout-out for his leadership on the issue. How sportsmanlike! Of course, fairly or otherwise, the religious right crowd hates McCain for that one...

Asked the same question, McCain somehow neglected to mention McCain-Feingold. He did mention his opposition to torture, though not so much his later equivocation on the same...

The faith-based thing at the Saddleback thing

I haven't actually watched the Rick Warren thing w/ the two presidential candidates yet, at least not in full. Having seen clips and the transcript, I'm not sure I have the stomach to sit down w/ the whole thing: Seeing an evangelical pastor do a better job than any of the MSM debate moderators at actually asking questions about real things that matter BUT still fail to dig into more difficult territory about how one's faith actually influences one's beliefs about policy, governance, etc. is, well, depressing on multiple fronts.

One of the more interesting threads post-Saddleback has to do with this Warren question about the faith-based initiative program:

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 says that faith-based organizations have a right to hire people who believe like they do. Would you insist that faith-based organizations forfeit that right to access federal funds?

J. Brent Walker points out that the question's awfully biased in its wording. Barry Lynn, writing on his cool new BeliefNet blog he shares w/ Jay Sekulow, agrees and points to additional examples of bias in Warren's questions. (Of course, Lynn also opposed the Saddleback thing generally, on principle.)

Elsewhere, Jim Towey thinks Obama's position on the faith-based thing--BO wants to expand it but enforce fair hiring restrictions--is triangulation/double speak/whatever. Don Byrd takes Towey down concisely and effectively.

Another option for disgruntled conservative Episcopalians

If you're seeking a refuge from the big, bad, women-and-gays-loving TEC, you could always forgo developing-world archbishops in favor of an option much closer to home.

Vatican: No "Yahweh" in mass

The decision will affect OCP but not GIA, as the latter publisher already has a no-YHWH editorial policy.

Guess who the two highest-profile contributors to this year's Jewels of Elul are

Two hints:

• Neither one is Jewish
• Both are running for president
  

White House: Lousy endangered species can fend for themselves

Sorry if my headline isn't quite fair. Just trying to provide balance, because neither is the Post's. Giving the agencies more say over Endangered Species Act compliance! That has to be good, right? We're all about freedom here...

Abortion and the Democrats

The Democratic platform's new language on abortion--which several high-profile left-leaning faith-based types helped craft--has caused quite a stir.

David Brody posts the old and new language together and allows that, while hardly a paradigm shift, the change may put some anti-abortion folks who otherwise lean left more firmly in the Democrats' camp. Steven Waldman points out that, from an anti-abortion perspective, the language steps both forward and back: It names the goal of reducing the need for abortion, but it also eliminates the (in)famous Clinton language of "safe, legal, and rare." Amanda Marcotte makes the very important point that, by spelling out the need to help women who want to carry to term AND eliminating the word "rare," the new language actually does a better job representing pro-choice orthodoxy than the old language did. (If earlier debates about the distinction between "reducing the need for abortion" and "reducing abortion" had turned out differently, this would be a harder case to make.)

Steven goes on to say that the statement represents a missed opportunity for Obama to do some serious evangelical outreach. Mark Silk disagrees, arguing that Obama, and the Democratic party, are utterly pro-choice, and that it's unhelpful to try to talk your way out of that one. Elsewhere, Mark offers some helpful historical perspective on the argument the Dems are making--namely, that their policies will do more to actually reduce the abortion rate than the other guys' will. And Eric McFadden looks ahead to the Saddleback forum, calling on Rick Warren to ask Obama and McCain about "how women can be empowered to make other choices instead of abortion"--prompting Pastor Dan to push back against the use of the right's language and assumptions to frame an ostensibly left-leaning position.

Hmm. I've long been of two minds about this stuff. On the one hand, I'm in favor of anything that

• tempers the political power of the abortion mindless shouting match debate,
• encourages anti-abortion voters who lean left on economic and foreign policy to prioritize those beliefs and vote Democratic, and/or
  
• supports poor people.

On the other hand, the Wallis-Campolo-etc. trick of reducing the abortion question to a question of economic justice is awfully problematic. Insisting that disadvantaged women need to have real access to a full set of options is great as far as it goes, but it entirely (and, of course, deliberately) dodges actual, fundamentally moral questions about abortion itself. Still, avoiding those questions may be exactly what it takes to move the conversation forward, so a certain pragmatism may be helpful here. The bigger problem with this approach is that it's terribly patronizing: It implicitly paints women as helpless objects rather than decision-making subjects, a morally outrageous assumption and one that can't be good for progressive causes in the long run.

Anyway. I often have a hard time letting the philosophical stuff go in this sort of situation. I guess what matters most right now is this: The platform is likely to be at least modestly helpful in cutting through some of the abortion-debate crap, giving anti-abortion folks permission to stop being single-issue voters, and for crying out loud getting Barack Obama elected president. THAT all sounds good to me.

Meanwhile, having an abortion apparently does not cause mental illness. And more Protestants are avoiding artificial contraception in favor of natural family planning.

Our partners in freedom

The Saudis are cracking down on pet owners.

Harold Fording Obama

McCain's people want you to know that "hot chicks dig Obama":



Despicable. But Obama can't say so, as KD points out--the bizarre rules of this election dictate that if McCain race baits and Obama calls him on it, it's Obama who's guilty of playing the race card. And Obama's made it harder for the 527s to do this work for him, too.

Josh observes that it's pretty naive to think this isn't all part of McCain's team's calculated aproach.

And today's outrageous theological statement by a member of Congress award goes to...

...okay, no surprise, it's Congresswoman Bachmann again. The Republican from Minnesota pointed out today that Speaker Pelosi and others need not worry about saving the planet--because JESUS ALREADY DID THAT FOR US.

(Actually, good for her for allowing that Christ's redemption extends to the whole creation and not just to her personal, individualistic Soul. It's her conclusion that's troubling...)

Via Eric Kleefeld.

Well, I'M relieved

The Left Behind guys insist that, contrary to the McCain campaign's implications, Obama is not the Antichrist. Good for them. (Though it's important to note that their argument is about the details of the [supposed] biblical witness--the Antichrist is apparently unlikely to be an American politician--and not about, say, the fact that suggesting that your [Christian] opponent is the Antichrist is an astonishingly offensive thing to do.)

Elsewhere in premillennial dispensationalism land, folks wary of accidentally receiving the mark of the beast (oops!) should shift their attention from credit cards, SSNs, and microchips to...digital photos.

(Image from oldlutheran.com.)

200+ years after its most famous (slave-holding) member had the U.S. presidency designed for him...

...the Episcopal church is apologizing for slavery.

In other news, black TEC bishops observed that conservative Anglicans in the States have done little to build relationships w/ African-Americans--an irony given their ties to African archbishops. Of course, this speaks not only to racially and geopolitically fraught questions of Anglican identity but also to the wider reality of stateside evangelicalism: It's long been far better on global diversity than on racial integration in its own backyard. (At Wheaton, a fun parlor game is to look at posed, forcibly diverse publicity photos from the college and to point out which African country each black student hails from.) Obviously, there are many reasons for this--not the least of which is the fact that building international relationships is far easier than racial reconciliation. Almost anything is.

French Canadian amnesty for micro-organisms

I'm back, with a post about cheese to prove it.

In the States, raw-milk cheese aged fewer than 60 days is illegal. To get around this while staying within the letter of the law, you could always obtain some raw milk (by going to the farm in person to buy it and/or by buying a share of a dairy cow, depending where you live) and then make your own. OR you could just buy fish bait instead.

Another solution: Head to Quebec, which just legalized the good stuff.

Via Meghan.

Lambeth's over

Hello--I've been out of town all week, at the Jersey shore w/ Nadia's family. Then on to Wisconsin for a few days w/ MY family in the north woods. So very little blogging until next week.

The Lambeth Conference ended today. Here's the final "reflections" document; here's the final address from the Archbishop of Canterbury. Bishop Alan Wilson of Buckingham has some good thoughts.