Recently in Religion - Christian Dominionists Category

Landover Baptist weighs in on Pullman as only they can...

Particularly since it's read by Garrison Keillor:

The Gospel of Jesus Read by Garrison Keillor

Centuries ago, early Christians listened as the Bible was read to them. This new recording continues that tradition with a conversational translation performed by America’s favorite storyteller. Garrison reads a version of the New Testament that blends details from all the gospels into a single book-length story.

Based on the New Living Translation, a Bible famous for putting the Word into everyday English, it’s a pleasure to hear. 8 hours.

No doubt the wingnuts will freak at the concept, though, since any attempt to boil down all four canonical gospels into one reading just has to be heretical to them.

Ah, yes, back to school week. Moms cry as their little darlings go off for their first day of school, and the wingnuts come out of the woodwork, looking to ban books:

BOLIVIA, N.C. -- Brunswick County school officials will consider a procedure for students' parents to challenge books available at school libraries.

This comes one year after a public, nationwide discussion about allowing religious materials to be distributed in Brunswick County high schools.

If you look at the tit-for-tat here, it's a clear example of why these people need to be called out whenever they start. The fundigelicals want to be able to challenge books on Wicca and such because they were not allowed to distribute bibles in schools. Because they couldn't make like The Gideons and put a bible in the hands of every child, they now want to be able to pull books off of library shelves.

Apples-and-oranges. Shoot, this is Apples and dinosaurs, the two are so unrelated. The fundigelicals are clever, though. Look at this guy's statement:

Board member Jimmy Hobbs said he sees the importance of reviewing the policy.

"The issue is a valid issue," Hobbs said. "I'm not attacking Harry Potter. When the issue of Bibles in schools came up last year, the ones that raised the most opposition was the group known as Wicca. Does this policy give them a free pass to get their materials into the schools?

I'll wager that there's at least one bible on the shelf at each Brunswick Co. library location. I'll even be bold enough to suggest that a library patron can get their hands on biblical commentary works as well. The wingnut doesn't want you thinking about that, though. They want you to believe that the Godless Homos are putting evil books in the hands of your children.

Call bullshit on them, and call it loudly, when you hear someone spewing this garbage.

Banning books is one of the very few exemptions from Godwin's Law I'll allow. As soon as the wingnuts start on the subject of challenging books on library shelves, it's time to remind them of Nazi book-burnings.

The Book of Revelation is not a foreign policy manual.

it's the tagline of a commentor in my DailyKos diary...and so true!

...because these people should be made to hurt

(via Tbogg)

I'm not talking about the outright make-shit-up mode that people like OReally and "William the Bloody" Kristol use regularly, but when a conservative uses classic propaganda tactics.

I was pointed to this Michael Gerson column in WaPo from Atrios and Thers. Their snarky take on this idiot is enjoyable, but the subject of abstinence programs is one i feel a bit closer to, being the father of teens.

Gerson uses statistics from a sociologist from UVA named W. Bradford Wilcox, and the intellectual obfuscation starts right at the mention of the man's name. Gerson's on-line editor provides not a link to Wilcox's data or paper, but a generic search link for UVA--no mention of Wilcox. Then Gerson cites Wilcox's work for something called the "Russell Sage Foundation," with simply a link to the foundation's home page. In both of these cases, WaPo makes it extremely difficult to get to the souce data. Maybe I'm just spoiled with sites like Wired or Salon, but when someone cites statistical data without giving me a crack at the source, I get suspicious. When WaPo does it, I figure it's more than a simple oversight. When a conservative writing for WaPo does it, the words "fucking liar" pop up in my mind.

But OK, let's work under the assumption that the study is legitimate at some level. Gerson's personal dishonesty starts to kick in. He says:

When the statistics on teen sexuality are controlled for social and economic factors, conservative Protestant teens first have sex at about the same time as their peers -- the average is midway through their 16th year. That is hardly comforting to conservative Protestant parents, who would expect more bang for the bucks they spend funding Sunday schools -- well, actually, less bang.

For openers, I'm amazed that a WaPo columnist feels the need to go for Beavis-and-Butthead humor: "huh huh huh, he said 'bang'." Look at his conclusion:

But these numbers shift when controlled for religious intensity. For those who attend church often, sexual activity is delayed until nearly 17, while nominal evangelicals begin at 16.2 years, earlier than the national average.

Yup, lies, damn lies, and statistics. What percentage of the total surveyed in the first paragraph are we talking about here? But I don't know because Gerson didn't make it very easy for me to look at the source, did he?

Now, Gerson starts to truly deceive:

This trend is more pronounced in other measures of sexual behavior. Only 1 percent of conservative Protestants who attend church weekly cohabit, compared with 10 percent of all adults. (On this statistic, nominal evangelicals almost exactly mirror the nation.) Twelve percent of churchgoing evangelicals have children out of wedlock, compared with 33 percent of all mothers.

He's using adult numbers. Teens sex around in cars and in the back of movie theaters. Adults cohabit. He uses "out of wedlock" stats that are not adjusted for age.

But Gerson's just warming up. Here come the total bullshit conclusions:

These facts, according to Wilcox, support some liberal claims and some conservative ones. Liberals are correct that economic and cultural factors matter greatly, sometimes more than individual belief. Teens with good life prospects and a strong sense of the future -- kids with economic and educational ambitions -- tend to avoid risky behavior such as drugs and early sex. Without those prospects, the temptation to live for the moment is strong.

I suggest that Gerson sit his sorry ass in the back of a theater at a multiplex at the mall, so he can watch affluent, christian, suburban teens go at each other. That would at least give him an anecdotal perspective on the situation before his kid gets pregnant. Affluent kids avoid drugs and sex? So, all the kids driving their Hummers into ditches and trees are poor? This is the kind of paternal blinders that always amaze me. Usually you hear statements like "we gave that child every economic and educational advantage" at said child's funeral.

But, for all that Gerson talks up a load of crap, it's good to see that he endorses Hillary Clinton:

The facts also support a basic conservative belief: that it is difficult for teens to be moral alone. Wilcox argues that teen sexual behavior can be influenced -- that teenagers can be more than the sum of their hormones. But responsible behavior requires both "norms" and "networks." An intellectual belief in right and wrong is not sufficient. Teens require a community that supports their good choices, especially in times of testing and personal crisis. "Kids who are embedded in a social network with shared norms," he concludes, "are more likely to abide by them."

Yes, Mikey, it does indeed take a village.

No, this isn't a post about the Iraq war, and we're still talking about that much money. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles is going to pay out $660 million to victims of their priests who thought buggering little boys was fun:

Sobs and a moment of silence for those who died during years of negotiations punctuated a Monday hearing at which a judge accepted a $660 million settlement between the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles and alleged victims of clergy sex abuse.

"This is the right result," said Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Haley Fromholz.

The settlement is by far the largest payout by any diocese since the clergy abuse scandal emerged in Boston in 2002. Individual payouts, to be made by Dec. 1, will vary according to the severity of each case.

Two-thirds of a billion dollars would go a long way in improving schools in Los Angeles County. It certainly would help in re-building the Ninth Ward in New Orleans. But I don't begrudge the victims of The Holy Pole and Fr. Ratzinger, mind you. Let's just hope these foolish old men have realized they can't simply run-and-hide from buggery without very costly consequences.

via lucious_purple in the lj-comm religous_left, I've just finished reading an op-ed piece from Professor of Religion Charles Marsh of UVA in the Boston Globe. It's a very compelling article dealing with the role of evangelical Christians in the run-up to war in Iraq:

Why did American evangelicals not pause for a moment in the rush to war to consider the near-unanimous disapproval of the global Christian community? The worldwide Christian opposition seems to me the most neglected story related to the religious debate about Iraq: Despite approval for the president's decision to go to war by 87 percent of white evangelicals in April 2003, according to a Pew Charitable Trusts poll, almost every Christian leader in the world (and almost every nonevangelical leader in the United States) voiced opposition to the war.

Marsh invokes the words and memory of Dietrich Boenhoeffer, Lutheran pastor and martyr to his cause in Hitler's Germany. I am usually one of those who invokes Godwin's Law when someone plays the "nazi" card with respect to the piece of shit who lives in the White House, but this is one time where the parallel to what happened during World War II is valid:

Bonhoeffer, who had actively opposed the Nazis since the passage of the Aryan Laws of 1933 and was executed in April 1945, believed that the church had so compromised its witness to Jesus Christ that it was now incapable of "taking the word of reconciliation and redemption to mankind and the world." The misuse of the language of faith had humiliated the Word; any hope for renewal would need to begin with the humble recognition that God was most certainly tired of all our talk.

I encourage everyone, Christian or no, to read this article and give it some consideration.