Religious Right Watch

For God So Loved the 1 Percent ... - NYTimes.com

 

in 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower presided over the first presidential prayer breakfast on a “government under God” theme and worked to promote public religiosity in a variety of ways. In 1954, as this “under-God consciousness” swept the nation, Congress formally added the phrase to the Pledge of Allegiance.

 

In the end, Mr. Romney is correct to claim that complaints about economic inequality are inconsistent with the concept of “one nation under God.” But that’s only because the “1 percent” of an earlier era intended it that way.

via campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com

The Religious Right Ain't What it Used to Be

Frederick Clarkson at Talk To Action:

The Los Angeles Times reports:  

Pastor Cary Gordon is warning Christian voters in Iowa not to trust Newt Gingrich. The attack, in the form of a three-minute satirical Web video....

[T]his is not the kind of thing that the GOP envisioned would happen when it encouraged the Religious Right to bend and break the perfectly reasonable IRS proscriptions against electioneering by churches.  The abandonment of political restraint is evident.  While Gordon's video release may be within the IRS guidelines as an act of an individual, he and his church were the subject of a complaint filed by American United for Separation of Church and State last year, for having violated its tax-exempt status in organizing (successful) electoral efforts against three Iowa Supreme Court judges.  (The judges had ruled in favor of marriage equality.) Gordon said at the time:

"The orthodox Christian pastors of Iowa do not and cannot recognize, with regard to the definition of marriage, the imaginary authority of the Iowa Supreme Court. History has already shown who inevitably wins when state wages war against the authority of the church of the living God. So let the battle between state and church begin."

via www.talk2action.org

Avila Resigns Over Anti-Gay Column | Right Wing Watch

Major kudos to Right Wing Watch for their continued good work exemplified by their spotting in a Roman Catholic publication the indefensible demonization of an entire swath of humanity.

As first reported by Right Wing Watch, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ point person on marriage issues Daniel Avila claimed in a Catholic newspaper, The Pilot, that Satan was responsible for making people gay by “disturb[ing] otherwise typical biological development.” Following our story and criticism from his fellow Catholics, Avila’s column was retracted and both Avila and the newspaper’s editors apologized. The column can still be found here at the Religion News Service.

The Associated Press is now reporting that Avila is resigning his post.

via www.rightwingwatch.org

Avila apparently said good riddance after his rubbish was deemed bad enough by his handlers. It might be pointed out that what Avila did is not only unethical and immoral, but theologically juvenile at best, heretical at worst, even from the standpoint of Roman Catholic doctrine which is anti-modern and anti-science enough as it is already (except when it comes to some matters of physics and astronomy, because it would seem that The Vatican has a big telescope and now feels sort of kind of bad about having excommunicated Galileo, or maybe sort of kind of doesn't:

Atila Sinke Guimarães, a conservative Catholic writer, dismisses the church's mistreatment of Galileo as a "black legend." The scientist, he says, got what he deserved. "The Inquisition was very moderate with him. He wasn't tortured.")

(Image: Galileo Galilei Before the Holy Office (1847), by Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury, depicting an imagining of events in 1633. Click to enlarge...a bit.)

What does Michael D. Coe say about Mormonism?

Joseph Smith had a sense of destiny; ... this is how he transformed something that I think was clearly made up into something that was absolutely convincing.

Michael D. Coe (born 1929) is an American archaeologist, anthropologist, epigrapher and author. Primarily known for his research in the field of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican studies (and in particular, for his work on the Maya civilization, where he is regarded as one of the foremost Mayanist scholars of the latter 20th century), Coe has also made extensive investigations across a variety of other archaeological sites in North and South America. He has also specialised in comparative studies of ancient tropical forest civilizations, such as those of Central America and Southeast Asia. He currently (as of 2005) holds the chair of Charles J. MacCurdy Professor of Anthropology, Emeritus, Yale University, and is Curator Emeritus of the Anthropology collection in the Peabody Museum of Natural History, where he had been Curator from 1968 to 1994.^[1]

Coe worked for the CIA as a part of the front organization Western Enterprises in Taiwan created to subvert Mao's China. Reference Tim Weiner's book, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA.

With over four decades of active research experience, Coe is a prolific author of scientific papers across a broad range of archaeological, anthropological and ethnohistorical topics. He has also authored a number of popular works for the non-specialist audience, several of which have been best-selling and much reprinted, such as The Maya (1966) and Breaking the Maya Code (1992). He also co-authored the book Mexico: From the Olmecs to the Aztecs (1962,sixth edition, 2008) with Rex Koontz.

Coe received his Ph.D. in anthropology from Harvard University in the early 1950s. Shortly after commencing his graduate studies program there, in 1955 he married the daughter of the noted evolutionary biologist and Russian émigré Theodosius Dobzhansky, Sophie, who was then an undergraduate anthropology student at Radcliffe College.

via en.wikipedia.org

 Coe on the Mormons.

Meet The Kendrick Brothers: God's Faithful Filmmakers - via Talk To Action

"Christian entertainment is a big, increasingly mainstream business," Time magazine recently pointed out (http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2090429-2,00.html). "The Shack, a self-published 2007 novel about a man who meets God in a cabin in the woods, became a bestseller; the postapocalyptic Left Behind series [co-authored by Tim LaHaye, a longtime religious right leader] has sold more than 60 million copies worldwide. Major Christian recording artists such as rapper Toby Mac move millions of albums and anchor massive concerts like the four-day Creation Music Festival, held twice a year in Pennsylvania and Washington.

"But with the exception of Mel Gibson's $370 million hit The Passion of the Christ, films with overt Christian themes haven't been significant players at the box office. Meyer Gottlieb, president of Samuel Goldwyn films, which helped distribute Fireproof, calls the faith-based audience 'huge and underserved.'"

According to Time, Sherwood Baptist Church has used some of the proceeds from the films to build "a two-story prayer tower where volunteers pray for the movie studio and the region 24 hours a day. For the city of Albany (one of the poorest cities of its size in the country, with a per capita income of just $21,300), the church has constructed an 82-acre sports park complete with an equestrian center. It also stocks food shelters throughout southwestern Georgia, supports a local drug and alcohol treatment facility and is launching new churches nationwide, including two in Baltimore and one in San Francisco."

The Kendrick brothers - especially in the interviews I saw featuring Stephen Kendrick -- appear to be generous with their time and skills: According to Murphree, "Stephen Kendrick says they are eager to assist and encourage aspiring filmmakers and churches by using their experience to teach in seminars and mentor others." In an interview, Kendrick told Murphree that, "Christian films are going to get better and Alex and I are trying to help teach the next generation of filmmakers what we're learning -- by speaking at events and conferences."

Box Office Mojo's Ray Subers pointed out that while Courageous was "Made outside of Hollywood without any major stars, [it] managed to fly under most radars...until very recently. It's unfair to ignore the vast majority of church-going Americans for whom typical Hollywood fare isn't of great interest, though, and Sherwood Pictures has impressively found a way to mobilize this subset of the population.

via www.talk2action.org

A very muscular brand of Christianity | The Guardian

After 2,000 years, the Messiah is getting a makeover.
.....
The macho Jesus movement has been bolstered by books like No More Mr Christian Nice Guy and The Church Impotent – the Feminisation of Christianity. But it's artist Stephen Sawyer, whose paintings of the Son of God as a tattooed biker and boxer have captured the imagination of Christian men searching for a more manly role model.

As Kentucky-based Sawyer, 58, points out: "I scarcely think Jesus could have overturned the tables of the money-lenders and driven them from the temple if he was a wimp. The model I use for my paintings is a surfer guy who's built like a brick shithouse."
.....
According to recent polls, the ratio of women to men worshippers in this country is 65% to 35% – and too much girliness is getting the blame for the gender imbalance.

Hence the rising number of conferences and sermons aimed at men that present a more muscular version of Jesus, along with the continuing success of Christian lad's mag Sorted.

via www.guardian.co.uk

A new "Jesus is a hawt!" aesthetic? Arguably, not so new insofar as in the 1400s and 1500s, Jesus was sometimes depicted, in part as an evocation of Christ as the New Adam, as a prototypical man, "The Man," as it were. 

Ecce Homo,* Man of Sorrows (c. 1525) by Flemish artist Maerten van Heemskerck is one of several extant examples (this particular one is now at Bob Jones University, Greenville, South Carolina) of religious imagery in which Christ's virility and, perhaps, more symbolically his resurrection from death, is indicated, albeit in a literally shrouded manner.

Interestingly, some far earlier depictions of Christ depicted him in a more hermaphroditic manner, which is assumed by many art historians to be an indication of the theology of Christ's salvific actions' sufficiency for--and all his actions relevance to--all of humanity The best example of this is the mosaic above the Arian Baptistery in Ravenna, Italy.

Some of the earliest known depictions of Christ are in the mode of Hermes, who was also symbolized (before Christ was) as a "good shepard," as sage or philosopher in the Greek manner, and as Apollo the Sun God. Examples of all three types of those depictions exist on early Christian funerary art.

*Latin, "Behold, [the] Man."

Doonesbury on Creationism

Hat-tip to AU on Facebook. (Click to enlarge the image; but, the whole thing's here--Doonesbury's 7/10 strip.)

 

Frank Schaeffer Talks About His New Book “Sex, Mom, and God” - The Daily Beast

Frank Schaeffer saw the birth of the religious right from the inside. His father, the brilliant Presbyterian theologian Francis Schaeffer, was the intellectual father of the movement.... His three-party documentary, How Should We Then Live?. which Frank produced, inspired a whole generation of evangelicals into politics, including Michele Bachmann, who cites it as a formative influence....

Now, though, he has a new message. The Christian right, he says, is fundamentally motivated by an anxious, terrified obsession with sex, an obsession that once drove him as well.
.....
there are always gaps between people’s private lives and public selves. But Schaeffer insists that among those who imagine themselves God’s elect, they’re more like chasms. [Schaeffer says,] “The mix of power, money and fame is noxious. When you add in that you are the voice of God on top of it, it’s the most toxic mix you can imagine.”

Part of what’s at work, he says, is a powerful elitism.

via www.thedailybeast.com

Historical Ignorance Warps American Politics: Jonathan Alter

Bachmann, like Palin, is a natural dog whistler. In politics, a dog whistle refers to a coded message meant to appeal to certain constituencies while flying right past the general public. A classic recent example was George W. Bush’s saying in a 2004 debate that he wouldn’t appoint anyone to the Supreme Court who supported the Dred Scott decision. This peculiar reference to an 1857 slavery case was meant to signal right-to-lifers that opposition to Roe v. Wade was a litmus test for Bush.

Bachmann is dog whistling when she pledges to “take back America.” The question this raises is: from whom? From a “socialist” president?

Let’s give Bachmann the benefit of the doubt and stipulate that no racial message was intended. A subliminal racial message, among others, will still likely be received. “Take back America” is also a dog whistle for “Take America back” -- back to a better time before a man like Barack Obama was president. Before, say, the number of Hispanics taking the national history assessment test in eighth-grade more than doubled in a mere five years.

via www.bloomberg.com

And about Bachmann's reading of Gore Vidal's historical novels:

Bachmann's simplistic view of Vidal's novels (she's cited both 1876 and Burr, only one of which has to do with our Founding Fathers) reveals her mindset--folks are big on the not-new but once-academic term "worldview" these days. It is a mindset that that also allows her to be comforted in her pre-scientific conservative evangelical religiosity. She hadn't the sense or ability to read an imaginary first-person narrative as being subjective, even purposefully untrustworthy through the novelist's craft. (An elderly Aaron Burr provides that perspective in Burr, Charles Schuyler in 1876, and both characters are clearly flawed, each a mix informed insight but also bias.) It's Literature 101 kind of stuff, and she didn't even get it.

Epistemological fundamentalism doesn't mesh as well with subtly, diversity, or compromise as it does with literalism, pigeon-holing, and inflexibility. It's mindset as the electrician's comparator--a reality with only two modes on offer and completely committed to either one or the other. Such black-and-white thinking is not suited to the job of head of state of our republic in a complex global era.

Biblical Expert: Faith-Based Anti-Marriage Arguments Empty | EDGE

Dudley told the newspaper, religious denunciations of marriage equality are based less on the Word of God than on the self-interest of those who promote faith-based legal and social inequality.

"The community of evangelical biblical scholars, almost exclusively white heterosexual men, has a history of producing interpretations of the Bible that reflects its own interests and disadvantages those without power," the scholar noted.

"The same leaders that insist on the most rigorous, stringent reading possible on homosexuality come up with all sorts of nuances and complicating considerations to justify leniency for themselves when it comes to more obvious biblical condemnations of divorce. So, why is it that same-sex relationships don’t get the same treatment?"

via www.edgeonthenet.com

If what the Bible says affects your justification for or against marriage equality, you might find Mr. Dudley's questions relevant for you. However, to even more people, they are going to be at least interesting. Dudley's book, Broken Words: The Abuse of Science and Faith in American Politics, is available online.