Perhaps it’s my naturally laissez-faire attitude combined with a Western tolerance for others, but I simply cannot imagine anything that a church, of any size, in Afghanistan could do that would cause me wake up 5 minutes earlier on a Saturday, much less march in the streets. Or make a sign. Or burn another religion’s book. I might toast their ill health and eternal damnation, but only if I was drinking anyhow.
Still, this Terry Jones character is being burned in effigy in a country where not one person in a million has a clue what he looks like. C’est fantastique! We should all aspire to be so despised by the enemies of religious liberty, if only we could do so without being total jerks who need to be denounced by the greatest American general in 60 years.
Over at The Anchoress, her commentators are vigorously tearing into Barry Petersen. For some reason I cannot embed the video, so here’s the story.
Mr. Petersen’s wife, Jan, suffers from early onset Alzheimer’s disease. She’s only in her mid fifties and can no longer recognize him when he comes to visit. He has since moved in with a widow who helps care for Jan.
Most of the commentators over at the Anchoress seem infuriated about Mr. Petersen, while Rod Dreher’s seem more understanding. I’ve no idea what I’d do in if in Mr. Petersen’s shoes. But if I ever become crippled with Alzheimer’s, my future spouse has my permission to move on. When seeing me causes those who love me pain, they are free to stop seeing me. With improvements in technology, Jan Petersen could well be alive for another three decades. That’s a long time to be such a cross to bear. Were I in her shoes, I would not wish to be such a burden on somebody.
I believe, pretty firmly, that people shouldn’t be polled in detail about religious matters. This poll reinforces my belief.
80% of Americans believe that prayer is effective, no matter what a person believes. I don’t like to get into theology, here or anywhere, but that’s preposterous. If I believe that my cat is some sort of two-faced god who can see both the past and future, and that she will give me her vision if I offer up wine as a sacrifice and then drink it during my prayers, I’m not sure of any Christian denomination that believes my prayers will be effective. My knowledge of other religions is broad and shallow, but I certainly don’t think that the main non-Christian religions in America (Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam) would believe that me drinking wine in honor of my cat would allow me to pick tomorrow’s lottery numbers.
I will be charitable and reword the pollster’s question so that it resembles what the pollees heard: “If someone prays to your god in the manner you are accustomed to, do you believe that that person’s prayer will be answered in accord with how you believe prayers are answered, regardless of what that person believes?” I’d be among the 80% of people who answer yes to that, regardless of what my cat does when I drink wine.
Apollo posted this at 1:43 AM EDT on Thursday, May 6th, 2010 as Amer-I-Can!, Faith
Christopher Hitchens might be misstating the church’s position on contraception and homosexuality—I’m not enough of an expert on Catholic dogma to know the exact teachings here—but he’s very much right about the problems of pedophile priests:
Almost every week, I go and debate with spokesmen of religious faith. Invariably and without exception, they inform me that without a belief in supernatural authority I would have no basis for my morality. Yet here is an ancient Christian church that deals in awful certainties when it comes to outright condemnation of sins like divorce, abortion, contraception, and homosexuality between consenting adults. For these offenses there is no forgiveness, and moral absolutism is invoked. Yet let the subject be the rape and torture of defenseless children, and at once every kind of wiggle room and excuse-making is invoked. What can one say of a church that finds so much latitude for a crime so ghastly that no morally normal person can even think of it without shuddering?
It’s interesting, too, that the same church did its best to hide the rape and torture from the secular authorities, even forcing child victims (as in the disgusting case of Cardinal Sean Brady, the spiritual chieftain of the Catholics of Ireland) to sign secrecy oaths that prevented them from testifying against their rapists and torturers. Why were they so afraid of secular justice? Did they think it would be less indifferent and pliable than private priestly investigations? In that case, what is left of the shabby half-baked argument that people can’t understand elementary morality without a divine warrant?
For the record, I believe that the Catholic Church is one of the great forces for good in the world, but unless it cleans house, whether it will so remain is an open question. I realize that Hitchens is hardly a friend of religion, but some things are true about the church even if he says them.
This list of people banned from the UK for their extremist views is up on Drudge. I guess if you’ve got your own country and you want to keep Michael Savage and Fred Phelps out, that’s your prerogative. It just seems like more trouble than its worth in their cases.
What’s interesting are the people about whom this list reveals precious little information. Putting out a list of people banned from your country seems like a worthwhile occasion for specifying what, exactly, is so unacceptable about their behavior. While it’s fairly detailed about the reasons for banning people with Anglo or European style names, the reasons for banning people with more interesting names is more opaque.
AMIR SIDDIQUE
Preacher. Considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour by fomenting terrorist violence in furtherance of particular beliefs.
WADGY ABD EL HAMIED MOHAMED GHONEIM
A prolific speaker and writer. Considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour by seeking to foment, justify or glory terrorist violence in furtherance of particular beliefs and to provoke others to commit terrorist acts.
ABDULLAH QADRI AL AHDAL
Preacher. Considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour by seeking to foment, justify or glorify terrorist violence in furtherance of particular beliefs and fostering hatred that might lead to inter-community violence.
YUNIS AL ASTAL
Preacher and Hamas MP. Considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour by seeking to foment, justify or glorify terrorist violence in furtherance of particular beliefs and to provoke others to terrorist acts.
SAFWAT HIJAZI
Television preacher. Considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour by glorifying terrorist violence.
Preachers, you say. What church has such “particular beliefs”? Are they Methodists?
1Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.
2Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
3For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.
4Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.
5Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.
6Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.
7Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.
9Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities.
10Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.
11Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me.
12Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.
13Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee.
14Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness.
15O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise.
16For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering.
17The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.
Hubbard posted this at 6:48 AM EST on Wednesday, February 25th, 2009 as Faith, Uncategorized
How, exactly, can the living forgive great mass murderers? Those who live weren’t wronged so grieviously as the murderers’ victims. These thoughts came as I read this article (H/T):
LaPel—a serious man who divides his time between his native Cambodia and a church in Los Angeles that is part of the Purpose Driven network of churches—stood in the middle of the Sangker River and baptized Hang Pin in the muddy runoff from upstream clothing factories.
Hang Pin embraced his new life. “He was the most astute Bible student I have ever had,” LaPel remembers. Soon Hang Pin was a lay pastor.
Four years passed. In the middle of the night, back in Los Angeles, LaPel got a phone call from a man he had never heard of. The man’s message was simple: “Hang Pin is Comrade Duch.”
LaPel fell to his knees in shock.
“I hit myself in the head,” he says.
He had recalled instantly that Duch—the nickname of Kaing Guek Eav—was the warden of the Khmer Rouge’s notorious Tuol Sleng prison. The meek, depressed man who had become a diligent minister was one of the bloodiest mass murderers the world has known.
A few excerpts from the article about Comrade Duch’s conversion, with my thoughts:
“Once the Khmer Rouge come to Christ, they are committed,” LaPel says. “They were fanatical Communists, and now they are fanatical Christians.”
Anyone familiar with Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer should not be surprised. Fanatics need a cause, and when one cause burns itself out, they substitute another. We can be grateful that he became fanatically meek and humble, but he could easily have become a different (and more dangerous) kind of fanatic.
Did his daughter ever see a sign of the brutal man he’d been? “He was strict,” she says. “But not really a tough guy. He made us do chores, but he never touched his children. He was mostly strict towards himself.”
A Hoffer quotation comes to mind: The remarkable thing is that we really love our neighbor as ourselves: we do unto others as we do unto ourselves. We hate others when we hate ourselves. We are tolerant toward others when we tolerate ourselves. We forgive others when we forgive ourselves. We are prone to sacrifice others when we are ready to sacrifice ourselves.
“What created the Khmer Rouge is a mystery,” his sister says. “It was like everybody faced the same circumstances. You were either beaten or you were a slave or you were killed. Everyone just tried to survive.”
Now things are different for her brother, she says. “He has a commitment. He always tells me, ‘Accept the Lord. Only Christ has the answer.’ His faith is very strong.”
But Youk Chhang, the investigator who has helped the prosecution, has a different point of view. Whether Duch’s conversion is sincere or not, Youk says, justice demands that he be judged in court.
I must agree with Youk. We don’t know the state of Duch’s soul. But we do know what he has done. Perhaps one day, God will wipe the slate clean. But here on earth, the laws of men must be upheld, and Duch’s evil deeds must be punished.
Conor has thrown out a question: will same-sex marriage undermine religious liberty? My answer: Very possibly.
Catholic charities in Massachusetts once handled many adoptions, and they refused to place children in the homes of same-sex couples, which got them sued. When they lost the lawsuit and the court said they could not “discriminate” against same-sex couples, the Catholic charities shut down rather than be forced to go against their faith.
Hypothetical question: could a same-sex couple get married in a Catholic church? The church would argue that since they don’t recognize same-sex unions, they could not. Quite a few gay Catholics would love to pick a fight over this. As surely as George W. Bush will mangle the English language, someone is going to file a lawsuit about this.
Elizabeth Scalia (aka the Anchoress) foresaw this question and proposed a thoughtful and humane way to deal with it:
[T]he churches should reconsider their roles in authenticating marriage. Governments issue birth certificates; churches issue baptismal certificates. Governments issue death certificates; churches pray the funerals. Governments issue divorces; Churches annul. Both work within their separate and necessary spheres, serving the corporeal and the spiritual. It is only in the issue of marriage that church and state have commingled authority. That should perhaps change, and soon. Let the government certify and the churches sanctify according to their rites and sacraments.
Given that expensive litigation is as American as arrested development, we probably won’t do it her way. Let the ugly begin.
Hubbard posted this at 10:03 AM EST on Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 as Faith, Here and Queer
It’s long been noted that those who have no qualms at offending Christians frequently have qualms when faced with the prospect of offending Muslims. I think, excluding fear of retaliatory violence, this is merely a subset of the patronizing views of the American left toward the spirituality of non-white peoples.
Does anyone seriously think that Playboy would apologize if a similar image had caused offense in America? I normally hate arguing with hypotheticals, but if Mary appeared on the American edition and some American Christians got cranky, we’d almost certainly get lengthy discussions about the First Amendment, and how important the right to offend is, and how complaining Christians are a threat to free speech. Moreover, we’d get a Saturday Night Live skit about evangelicals being a bunch of prudes. This ritual has been repeated so many times, it’s impossible to not see it happening.
But a darker skinned people has their religion offended, it’s time to apologize!
Apollo posted this at 9:29 PM EST on Saturday, December 13th, 2008 as Faith, Race
Hurricanes and Hitler are often cited as the most difficult challenges to the belief that God is good. A more compelling question is why He has allowed a world where its possible that Clint Eastwood will never play President Andrew Jackson on the big screen.
Old Hickory
Young Easty
Why, God? Why???
Tom posted this at 2:00 PM EST on Thursday, November 20th, 2008 as Faith, Film Rants
Much of the time, ‘Christianism’ is just a label applied to any conservative who expresses his religious views in a way that displeases Andrew Sullivan. Then there’s stuff like this.
Christopher Hitchens here writes about how terrible it is that McCain and Palin are railing against some of the billions of dollars the federal government spends on research. In the midst of which, we get this:
We never get a chance to ask her in detail about these things, but she is known to favor the teaching of creationism in schools (smuggling this crazy idea through customs in the innocent disguise of “teaching the argument,” as if there was an argument), and so it is at least probable that she believes all creatures from humans to fruit flies were created just as they are now.
A. All the recent stories have been that Palin is the only one of the four major candidates frequently having discussions with the media. It seems that lots of people get to ask her questions these days.
B. It doesn’t require a federal research grant to search the interwebs and find that Palin actually doesn’t promote the teaching of creationism. Hitchens has no excuse for peddling lies, though the irony of doing it in this particular column made it worth my time to read this. Flippin’ Wikipedia even got this one right.
C. I don’t think that Sarah Palin has said whether she’s a creationist or not, so the last line of speculation is largely baseless. I actually like that she doesn’t talk about that, since it’s a complete non-issue what our politicians think about the vast majority of scientific issues.
For someone so concerned about science and research, this was a remarkably fact-free tirade.
Hitchens then proceeds to a lengthy paragraph of unhinged and unsupported speculation about Palin as a religious fanatic. There’s not too much actually connecting Palin personally to religious fanaticism (and, by any historical or global standard, Pentecostals are some pretty mild religious fanatics), though I’m not sure it’s a terribly American past time to begrudge politicians their peculiar theological beliefs. It’s interesting for Hitchens, who hates all religion, and who understands the finer points of Christian theology about as well as a hammer understands a wine glass, to involve himself in such a discussion.
Apollo posted this at 5:17 PM EDT on Monday, October 27th, 2008 as Faith, Hitch-slapped!
I’m tired of the Bristol Palin pregnancy story. But I did see two commentaries about it that deserve more attention. First up (H/T) is a piece that discusses the evangelicals reaction, which is much different than how lefties think evangelicals react:
For what the Left sees as hypocrisy, most folks who are not Obama voters just see as falling short. As, of course, we, as humans, all do.
Bristol Palin’s journey is a human story. She tried to be good. She fell short. Instead of aborting the baby she will carry it to term and marry the father. To socially conservative America, there is nothing tragic about this.
You see, to many of the voters Barack Obama has not yet seemed to reach and who have thus far been ambivalent about McCain, this is exactly how these things are supposed to go. Their reality has not been shaken, the scales have not fallen from their eyes.
Sarah Palin did nothing “wrong.” And Bristol Palin did nothing other than sin, which we all do. She is now managing her sin as prescribed by tradition. To the traditionalist the situation is not ideal, no, but it is not a disaster.
This is a human story. The more the left attacks, attempts to expose “hypocrisy”, the more the personal will very much become the political. Unfortunately it will become political in a way that leads all those hard working Bubbas, all those church-going single mommas, right out to the polls to vote for that war hero and and those women they now identify with, Sarah and Bristol Palin.
What’s more concerning is the second take. David Frum essentially asks, why didn’t the McCain campaign handle this better?
Many conservatives, including my friends at the Corner, are outraged that the pregnancy of Bristol Palin has drawn swifter and more ferocious media attention than the adultery and (probable) out-of-wedlock fatherhood of John Edwards. They blame media bias, and probably they are right. Sexual adventuring or embarrassment involving Republican politicians is usually covered much more eagerly than that involving Democrats.
Question though: Is media bias a new or surprising fact about American politics? Wasn’t the reaction to the Palin pregnancy foreseeable? If so, why wasn’t it foreseen?
