This week’s “Hoosier bringing embarrassment to the state” entry:
A pastor brought out a dirt bike during a church service to demonstrate the concept of unity. Now he’s demonstrating the concept of healing.
Jeff Harlow, the senior pastor at Crossroads Community Church, broke his wrist when he lost control of the motorcycle at the start of Sunday’s second service, driving off a 5-foot platform and into the vacant first row of seats. He underwent surgery on the wrist Monday.
“Jeff has already laughed a lot, so he’s OK. I think his pride was bruised,” said his wife, Becky.
The story doesn’t say, but I bet he even let go of the snakes when he fell.
This report compares the 2007-2008 textbooks that are currently posted on the website of the Saudi Ministry of Education with those analyzed in our 2006 study, and shows that the same violent and intolerant teachings against other religious believers noted in 2006 remain in the current texts.
They assert that unbelievers, such as Christians, Jews, and Muslims who do not share Wahhabi beliefs and practices, are hated “enemies.” Global jihad as an “effort to wage war against the unbelievers” is also promoted in the Ministry’s textbooks: “In its general usage, ‘jihad’ is divided into the following categories: …Wrestling with the infidels by calling them to the faith and battling against them.” No argument is made here that such references to jihad mean only spiritual and defensive struggles.
Aren’t allies wonderful? This analysis concludes that what the Saudis are doing amounts to “moving around the furniture, not cleaning the house.” That conclusion is significant because the Saudis, after negotiations with the U.s. “committed” to the removal of intolerant teachings ffrom all Saudi textbooks by, um, September of this year. Maybe the U.S. should have insisted on a timetable for the withdrawal.
A lot of people — including the guy who directed the survey — are expressing surprise that America is such a tolerant nation when it comes to religion:
Overwhelming majorities of Americans say they believe in God (or a “universal spirit”). But substantial majorities from all major religious categories also say they believe their religion is not the only path to eternal life, and that there’s not just one correct version of their faith.
[. . .]
The researchers also said the results indicate that it’s wrong to assume that Americans can be pigeonholed on the basis of religion. There is a wide diversity of beliefs and behaviors, even among people who say they belong to the same religious group, said John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum with a long history of studying faith-related polls.
“I was stunned by just how diverse it was,” he said. “The diversity goes all the way down.”
But this goes beyond mere tolerance. People aren’t just saying, “My church is the right way to heaven, but that guy is allowed to believe whatever he wants to.” They’re saying, “Well, maybe there is more than one path, and both of us will get there.” If that is so, what’s the point of being a Catholic or a Methodist, a Muslim or a Buddhist? The survey hints at that: About half of those surveyed said they wanted their churces to express their views on day-to-day social and political questions. So, while 92 percent say they believe in God, it seems they’re OK with a decided secular drift in their churches.
I don’t think we should take that 92 percent as gospel — a lot of people tend to tell pollsters what they think they should say rather than what they actually think. As the story notes, about 40 percent told the pollsters they attend church regularly, which is in line with other surveys. But actual studies of regular church attendance put it at about 20 percent of the population.
Give thanks that freedom of speech is still valued on this side of the pond (at least outside college campuses):
A teenager is facing prosecution for using the word “cult” to describe the Church of Scientology.
The unnamed 15-year-old was served the summons by City of London police when he took part in a peaceful demonstration opposite the London headquarters of the controversial religion.
[. . .]
The decision to issue the summons has angered human rights activists and support groups for the victims of cults.
[. . .]
The incident happened during a protest against the Church of Scientology on May 10. Demonstrators from the anti-Scientology group, Anonymous, who were outside the church’s £23m headquarters near St Paul’s cathedral, were banned by police from describing Scientology as a cult by police because it was “abusive and insulting”.
Can you imagine if writing “abusive and insulting” blog posts in this country were prosecuted, how little time there would be for authorities to handle other crimes?
Now you know. Every time you turn on a light, you’re helping kill the polar bears. It’s your fault:
Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne listed polar bears as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act yesterday, saying the loss of Arctic sea ice in a warming climate could drive them to the brink of extinction in less than four decades.
Too bad the ringed and bearded seals didn’t have their own Coke commercial.
Believing that the universe may contain alien life does not contradict a faith in God, the Vatican’s chief astronomer said in an interview published Tuesday.
The Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, was quoted as saying the vastness of the universe means it is possible there could be other forms of life outside Earth, even intelligent ones.
“How can we rule out that life may have developed elsewhere?” Funes said. “Just as we consider earthly creatures as ‘a brother,’ and ’sister,’ why should we not talk about an ‘extraterrestrial brother’? It would still be part of creation.”
In the interview by the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, Funes said that such a notion “doesn’t contradict our faith” because aliens would still be God’s creatures. Ruling out the existence of aliens would be like “putting limits” on God’s creative freedom, he said.
Do I get to see evidence of alien life, or must I take it on faith? Just kidding. I’d think finding alien life would add to faith in God, or “a” god, anyway. Why would an omnipotent God create the universe in all its vastness and just do this one tiny experiment?
The ulema in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province have declared that use of mobile phones by women is haram, or forbidden in Islam. The Urdu-language newspaper Roznama Khabrain reported that the imam of Jama Masjid Hazrat Umar Farooq made the announcement during his Friday sermon.
There are two church-state issues that can be in conflict: 1. Freedom of religion requires government to keep its distance and let people worship the way their conscienses dictate. 2. But religion can’t give cover to practices that are clearly against the law of the land. It can be tricky to determine when the behavior is so unacceptable that the state is justified in stepping in. Remember the Santeria members who got in trouble for killing chickens because it violated laws against “animal sacrifices”? They should have just fried and eaten the chickens afterward — no problem! And doesn’t the fact that so many jurisdictions are enacting medical marijuana laws weaken the prohibitions against using weed in religious ceremonies?
And the raid on the Texas compound of course has given us lots of fodder for the debate. The state upped the ante when it took the unprecedented step of confiscating all 462 children and separating them from their mothers. Even if we accept the premise that maintaining a polygamous community somehow creates the potential for harm, how can what the state did not be called child abuse?
Then there is this couple, who let their 11-year-old daughter die of untreated diabetes while they prayed over her:
According to court documents, Leilani Neumann said in a written statement to police that she never considered taking the girl, who was being home-schooled, to a doctor.
“We just thought it was a spiritual attack and we prayed for her. My husband Dale was crying and mentioned taking Kara to the doctor and I said, ‘The Lord’s going to heal her,’ and we continued to pray,” she wrote.
They have been charged with second-degree reckless homicide and could face up to 25 years in prison if convicted. Maybe that’s a little harsh, but I can’t say I have all that much sympathy for them. They don’t belong to any organized religion or faith but are said to be religious “isolationists” involved in a prayer group of five people. The mother, especially, seems to be in some kind of twilight zone between fanaticism and severe mental illness.
But we don’t have to make that judgment to say: Don’t kill the kids. You have the right to believe whatever you want to, even if that causes you to take actions that end up harming you. But there is a line you can’t cross when it involves children who don’t yet have the capacity to make reasoned judgments. We can debate whether that line was crossed in Texas. Here, it most certainly was.
A lot of bloggers are writing about a CNSNews.com story from a couple of days ago to the effect that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “made up” a Bible verse:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is fond of quoting a particular passage of Scripture. The quote, however, does not appear in the Bible and is “fictional,” according to biblical scholars.
In her April 22 Earth Day news release, Pelosi said, “The Bible tells us in the Old Testament, ‘To minister to the needs of God’s creation is an act of worship. To ignore those needs is to dishonor the God who made us.’ On this Earth Day, and every day, let us pledge to our children, and our children’s children, that they will have clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and the opportunity to experience the wonders of nature.”
Cybercast News Service repeatedly queried the speaker’s office for two days to determine where the alleged Bible quote is found. Thus far, no one has responded.
Distinguished biblical scholars, however, cast doubt on the existence of the passage.
OK, it’s not nice to make up Scripture, even in support of Earth Day. But it’s hard for me to believe Pelosi would actually think no one would fact-check her on the Bible. I wonder if she or somebody on her staff is just a little unclear on the rules for quote marks. Her “passage” is a paraphrase of a lot of verses in the Bible that say the same thing about being good stewards of the Earth.
Here are just two: “I brought you into a plentiful land to eat its fruits and its good things. But when you entered you defiled my land, and made my heritage an abomination.” (Jeremiah 2:7) And: You shall not pollute the land in which you live…. You shall not defile the land in which you live, in which I also dwell; for I the Lord dwell among the Israelites.” (Numbers 35:33-34)
I went to the Carbon Footprint Calculator and was a little disappointed in the results. My footprint is only 6.561 tonnes per year (it’s a British site). That’s somewhat above the worldwide average of 4 tonnes, but lower than the 11-tonne average in industrial nations and well below the average of 20.4 tonnes in the United States.
I’m just going to have to do more — drive longer distances for lunch, leave more lights on in the house for longer periods (especially before I have to switch to CFLs), really crank that air-conditioning up, do smaller and therefore more loads of laundry.
What a nifty new concept – ninja buddhists! I can see the TV series now, perhaps starring Jet Li or Jackie Chan, and, of course, Steven Segall and David Carradine have to be technical consultants:
State media, meanwhile, labeled a group linked to the Dalai Lama’s India-based government-in-exile a “terrorist organization” — building on claims that recent anti-Chinese protests were part of a violent campaign to overthrow Chinese rule and sabotage the Beijing Olympics in August.
The Tibetan Youth Congress said China’s communist leadership had long sought to destroy its effectiveness by smearing its reputation.
[. . .]
China has accused supporters of the Dalai Lama — whom it calls the “Dalai clique” — of orchestrating the violence within its borders.
The Dalai clique? Come on, that’s just a euphemism for ‘gang,” right? It has become accepted wisdom in the “war or terror” that the Muslim militants are outmaneuvering the West in the PR department, brilliantly playing the press. Thank goodness China is still so ineptly heavyhanded when it comes to manipulating the media.
This interesting Wall Street Journal article hints at why China is trying so hard to discredit the Tibetan Youth Congress. Most TYC members are devout Buddhists who still revere the Dalai Lama as a religious symbol. But they’re becoming impatient with his wish to remain part of China and his low-key tactcs. If the Chinese repression continues, the TYC leader says, “we can’t guarantee our struggle will be nonviolent forever.” A threat to fight back is the new terrorism.
Happy first day of spring — I knew you could make it without leaving town. Now go hunt up your Easter outfits:
Easter always comes on the Sunday after the first, or Paschal, full moon following the first day of spring.
Spring arrives on Thursday and the moon will be full on Friday, the earliest Paschal moon since 1913. And that means Easter, the Christian holiday marking the resurrection of Jesus Christ, is this Sunday. It won’t come this early again for another 220 or so years.
That’s darn near as complicated as the Democratic presidential nomination process.
As a strong believer in individual rights and responsibilities, I’ve watched with dismay as collectivism of one sort or another has made inroad after inroad. Now, even sin is no longer a personal matter:
He said that priests must take account of “new sins which have appeared on the horizon of humanity as a corollary of the unstoppable process of globalisation”. Whereas sin in the past was thought of as being an invididual matter, it now had “social resonance”.
“You offend God not only by stealing, blaspheming or coveting your neighbour’s wife, but also by ruining the environment, carrying out morally debatable scientific experiments, or allowing genetic manipulations which alter DNA or compromise embryos,” he said.
This, for what it’s worth coming from a non-Catholic, is a crock. Sin with “social resonance”? The globilization of offending God? For 1,500 years, the church has felt seven deadly sins — lust, gluttony, avarice, sloth, anger, envy and pride — sufficient. Now, with Catholics losing interest in going to confession, it is apparently thought that seven new deadly sins will spice things up. We are warned not to stand before God having indulged in genetic experimentation, tampered with the order of nature, polluted the Earth, brought about social injustice that caused poverty, accumulated excessive wealth or taken or pushed drugs.
Guess I’m going to have to brush up. I’ve been pretty good at breaking the original seven, but some more than others. Gluttony, lust and sloth have been high on my list, pride and envy on the bottom, anger and avarice somewhere in the middle. I also have mixed results with the seven holy virtues. I think I’ve done pretty good with patience, kindness and and humility, but I could use a little work on chastity, abstinence and temperance. The jury is still out of diligence. (Have you noticed, by the way, what s a fine line there is between patience and sloth?)
I think we need some clarification. Does the Vatican differentiate between legal and illegal drugs? Am I committing a deadly sin by continuting to drive instead of using a bicycle? I’ve never been involved in genetic experimentation, but I think cloning has some real potential — where does that put me?
I have written before that I have both libertarian and conservative instincts when it comes to gay marriage. My libertarian side says that if two consenting adults want to enter into a union, it’s not government’s business to decide who should or should not be able to. But my conservative half says that marriage has been defined one way in most places in most times and we should be careful messing around with it (unintended consequences and all that). Interestingly, it was my libertarian ire that was roused over this account of the Healthy Marriage movement, which is about preserving the old-fashioned, one man-one woman kind of marriage:
If you’re planning to get married soon in any of 37 Fort Wayne-area churches, it might take a little more than you expected.
Clergy from the churches – ranging from Queen of Angels Catholic Church and Tillman Road Church of God to True Love Baptist Church and Blackhawk Ministries – pledged Friday to take dispensing marriage vows seriously indeed.
Representatives from the multidenominational churches signed an agreement during a kickoff at the Allen County Public Library. The agreement was developed by Healthy Marriages of Allen County and designed to promote lifelong marriages and stable families.
Among the provisions: encouraging couples to have at least one year of courtship before getting married; having them undergo four months of marriage preparation, including four to six counseling sessions; and completing a premarital psychological inventory to discover their strengths and weaknesses.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against healthy marriages — who could be? Considering the fragile state of marriage these days, a lot of couples could benefit from things like pre-marital counsling and longer courtships. A little more look before the leap, and fewer marriages will end on the rocks. It’s the requiring of such things to even permit a marriage that’s bothering me, and in so many venues that people who want to get married on a quicker schedule (some of those unions do work) might have to start going to Las Vegas again. The story didn’t say they were going to start putting these requirements on civil cermonies, too, but it did say they were going to seek more people with a “secular focus” to sign the pledge of agreement, people like judges, local government officials and businesses.
This is all funded with a $540,000 from the federal government, a grant from President Bush’s faith-based marriage promotion initiative. Faith-based. On the issue of marriage, we already allow a mingling of church and state to a degree that would horrify us in any other endeavor. Never mind horrified, it simply wouldn’t be allowed. Marriage can be just a civil cermony or just a church ceremony, or it can be both, and it doesn’t really exist unless there is that little piece of paper from the state, and the state gets to say which of the religious cermonies count and which don’t. This initiative just further intertwines church and state in a way that we should be careful about.
I know that with Sen. McCain’s candidacy, there has been a lot of worry about choosing someone too old to be an effective leader. But do we really want to start turning important institutions over to the kids?
SALT LAKE CITY - The new president and prophet of the Mormon church is in some respects a throwback, an 80-year-old man with a fondness for talking in parables and quoting Charles Dickens.
[. . .]
Monson was named on Monday as the 16th president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and immediately declared the 13 million-member denomination would not veer significantly from the course set by his predecessor, Gordon B. Hinckley, who died Jan. 27 at age 97.
An 80-year-old whippersnapper? Shouldn’t they let him season a few more years?
Oh. My. God. I had a baked potato with my steak Wednesday night. What if it was the Virgin Mary? What have I done?
MARION COUNTY, Fla. — Pastor Renee Brewster and her husband Bishop Winston Brewster are a very spiritual couple. But the site of their savior in a potato has reinvigorated their faith and their desire to help others.
“That’s Jesus on the Cross. Just looking at it I don’t have to convince,” said Renee.
OK, class. Site, sight, cite. Look ‘em up if you don’t know, for God’s sake.
I know it’s a musty old joke, but now seems like a good time for it. Why don’t Baptists believe in pre-marital sex? Answer: It might lead to dancing:
The first on-campus dance ever allowed at Anderson University attracted several hundred students over the weekend, although they mostly stood around and danced in large groups.
The university, which was founded in 1917 and is affiliated with the Church of God, had prohibited dancing until the school’s trustees approved a policy change last fall.
Hoof it a good lick, Ren and Willard. Rev. Moore may not be done yet.
No souls were harmed when the Indiana Senate session opened Tuesday:
Sen. Patricia L. Miller, R-Indianapolis, opened the Senate’s proceedings Tuesday with a nonsectarian prayer, following threats last month of a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana.
The prayer lasted about a minute and did not mention Jesus Christ or any other deity by name.
ACLU attorney Ken Falk apparently wasn’t offended, so I guess the state can get on with its business now.
OK, the pope has a point that seeking “pleasure at all costs” isn’t a good way to live and has either caused or worsened many of the world’s problems. But most of us aren’t going to follow his advice and go completely in the other direction:
Instead, the pope held up Mother Teresa — the Roman Catholic nun who devoted her life to serving the poor in India and elsewhere — as an example.
“Every day, she lived next to misery, human degradation and death,” the pope told thousands of faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square. “Yet, she offered the smile of God to everybody.”
From what we’ve learned lately, it seems living with all that degradation took its toll on Mother Teresa, and that “smile of God” masked deep pain. I think most of us are like Mac Sledge, the Robert Duvall character in “Tender Mercies.” If we’re lucky, we learn to trust happines, a little.
I’m having trouble understanding this; can someone explain?
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” today that he wept with relief when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the Mormon church, announced a 1978 revelation that the priesthood would no longer be denied to persons of African descent.
Romney’s eyes appeared to fill with tears as he discussed the emotional subject during a high-stakes appearance that he handled with no major blunders.
“I was anxious to see a change in my church,” said the Republican presidential candidate, appearing for the full hour just two weeks ahead of the crucial Iowa caucuses.
He “wept with joy” because his church had finally made the change he was “anxious” for it to make. So he thought his church was wrong, but he remained a member. I can understand staying in a club even if you aren’t comfortable with all its practices, or in a political party even if you don’t accept all its principles. There are limited choices, and you make the best one based on a study of the balance sheet. But an organized religion has a concrete, specific take on God’s ordering of the universe and how humankind must behave to fit in that order. Romney is saying that he and God understood something that the Mormons were a little slow in grasping.
Sorry, but that’s just as bogus as the Catholics who fervently believe women should be priests but stay in the church anyway, or the Teddy Kenedy Catholics who say they accept the church’s teaching that abortion is murder, but, well, they don’t want to impose that on other people.
I swear to God, the choices in this election absolutely suck.
Singapore - Muslim women under the age of 45 will be barred from making the annual haj pilgrimage to Mecca unless accompanied by a close male relative starting next year, news reports said on Monday in Singapore.
The Islamic Religious Council of Singapore said it would no longer appeal to Saudi Arabian authorities on behalf of women who wish to make the month-long pilgrimage unaccompanied.
The age of 45 is probably a good cutoff point, though. This is all about possible sexual impropriety, and, as we all know, women stop being interested in sex at about that age.
I guess I should not have been dismissing “The View” as a loony gabfest by some awfully silly women. The history and religious insights I have been missing!
I didn’t expect much from Mitt Romney’s “faith” speech — what could be added to what JFK said in 1960? So I was pleasantly surprised; the speech was pretty good and had some nice touches. I liked this one:
I believe that every faith I have encountered draws its adherents closer to God. And in every faith I have come to know, there are features I wish were in my own: I love the profound ceremony of the Catholic Mass, the approachability of God in the prayers of the evangelicals, the tenderness of spirit among the Pentecostals, the confident independence of the Lutherans, the ancient traditions of the Jews, unchanged through the ages, and the commitment to frequent prayer of the Muslims. As I travel across the country and see our towns and cities, I am always moved by the many houses of worship with their steeples, all pointing to heaven, reminding us of the source of life’s blessings.
It’s important to recognize that while differences in theology exist between the churches in America, we share a common creed of moral convictions. And where the affairs of our nation are concerned, it’s usually a sound rule to focus on the latter, on the great moral principles that urge us all on a common course. Whether it was the cause of abolition, or civil rights, or the right to life itself, no movement of conscience can succeed in America that cannot speak to the convictions of religious people.
Most of the speech was like that, talking about the overall role of faith in American life and American politics, rather than getting into the specifics of a single religion. He didn’t dwell on Mormonism anymore than Kennedy did on Catholicism, and he shouldn’t have to. If being a Mormon dictated what kind of public servants people would be, then Harry Reid and Orrin Hatch would be the same kind of senator.
But of course it does matter to a lot of people, which is why Mike Huckabee is exploiting the issue in none-too-subtle ways — “the Christian candidate” says one of his ads running in Iowa. (Imagine, says columnist Charles Krauthammer, that Huckabee were running one-on-one against Joe Lieberman and ran an ad like that; the bigotry would be so blatantly obvious that the howls of outrage could be heard from coast to coast.)
It matters to me, too, but in a broader sense. I want to know everything I can discover about the candidates, especially the things that make them the kind of people they are. What faith people have or don’t have is a big part of how they see the world and what kinds of decisions they would make. Is Hillary Clinton really religious, for example, or just faking it because the electorate wouldn’t consider her otherwise? Does Huckabee really dismiss evolution out of hand? How does Giuliani square his faith with how he has conducted his private life?
As Romney says in the speech, we have gone too far in this country in pushing religion out of the public square. Our faith is intertwined with our history. But having accepted that, we can’t then turn around and say, “Well, somebody’s religion doesn’t matter.” I might not vote for or against somebody for being part of a specific religion, but that candidate’s approach to religion is one part of the overall picture I will certainly pay attention to.
Let’s put our thinking caps on. But come to think of it, why bother?
AN overwhelming majority of Americans believe in God and signicant numbers also think that UFOs, the devil and ghosts exist, a new poll shows.
[. . .]
Almost equal numbers said they believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution (42 per cent) - the belief that populations evolve over time through natural selection - and creationism (39 per cent) - the theory that God created humankind.
Seventy per cent of Americans said they were very (21 percent) or somewhat (49 per cent) religious, while around one-third of those polled also said they believe in UFOs, witches and astrology.
The headline says it all: “Americans believe in pretty much everything.” No wonder the public eats up every scare campaign whipped up by sloppy journalists misreporting the science they do not understand.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - An anti-Semitic church formed by white supremacists has abandoned its neo-Nazi imagery, such as swastikas, to make its message more palatable, a change that a leading Jewish group called an attempt to “sanitize hatred.”
The group banned the use of Nazi uniforms, red arm bands and similar regalia because they were an instant turnoff to people who might otherwise be open to the church’s teachings, including the belief that white Anglo-Saxons — not Jews — are God’s chosen people in the Bible.
“We don’t like the swastikas. We don’t like the negativity,” said Jonathan Williams, the leading pastor of the United Church of YHWH. “The majority of people see all that as pure evil.”
Yes, get rid of the “instant turnoff” symbols, and people will flock to your message of tolerance and understanding.
