Sunday, December 31, 2006

Happy New Years Eve, and a belated Christmas wishes!

Okay, okay.. I've been terrible for posting anything lately. This holiday season saw a lot of eggnog and family relatives - usually at the same time! With the countdown to New Years Eve just hours away, I thought I would take time to ask the Lord for blessings on your house, my house, and all those who seek it.

May this year be blessed with joy, and not much sorrow - if we must endure it, hopefully it is only enough for us to appreciate the joyful moments we have in our lives.

May this year be blessed with personal wealth, good fortune, and plenty of time! Time seems to be the one thing I am always in constant demand for, and personal wealth and good fortune are fringe benefits for a student.

May this year be blessed with more peace than fighting. This year saw more world conflict in a time in which we should be working more together, not apart.

May this year be blessed with good health, and a clear mind. God knows I certainly didn't have either this year past. LOL.

May this year be blessed with a year without another election - Please God. Okay, I know it's selfish, but I had to throw that one out there.. I just hate going to the polls every 365 to 375 days.

May your family be blessed with love, you be blessed with love, and the New Year be a heck of a year - better than the one past. Take care, and God bless!

Shawn
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Friday, December 08, 2006

Only Among Charismatic Evangelicals....

... could you not be fundamentally disturbed at hearing that the leader of an organization called "The Fire Center" sponsors an annual summer program entitled "Kids On Fire." Some readers may be familiar with this program, a summer camp which was recently the subject of a documentary called "Jesus Camp," the DVD release of which I am awaiting most eagerly. The camp was the brainchild of Pentecostal pastor Becky Fischer (of said "Fire Center") and was located, of all places, near Devils Lake, North Dakota. Before going further, I should note in fairness to Fischer and other "fiery" people involved that F.I.R.E. is actually an acronym for "Families Ignited for Revival and Evangelism," which in some ways sounds even more disturbing, since it's implying that the fathers and mothers of the children are going to be lit on fire as well. Nero would be pleased: after over a millennium and a half as the dominant religion of the West, now we're going to be doing his work for him. Or we're just going to be burning ourselves (and you can use whatever definition of "burn" that you like there). Or something. The Fire Center's webpage can be found here, and if you want their "spiritual vision" (which is Christianese for "business plan"; the two actually have very similar terminology), just click on the "About Us" tab.

This isn't a church so much as a children's ministry with some of the trappings of a family-friendly church, so we'll start with the youth, just the way church does. Indoctrination works better when you start at a younger age. Their "PowerClub" kids ministry (here) promises to explore "typical topics" like "hearing God's voice, giving prophetic words, being led by the Spirit of God, healing the sick, the blood of Jesus, intercessory prayer, radical worship, the gifts of the Spirit, missions, and so much more." The only ones on that list that don't disturb me are ones that don't sound entirely fit for teaching to six year olds, but I'm sure they know what they're doing. They add that "This is definitely not your "same old" children's ministry! Our mandate is simple--to raise up a generation that can openly display the raw power of God!" Once the kids have been Powered Up, video game style, they graduate to the "Club Ignite!" teens ministry, where "our teens are being filled with the Holy Spirit and stepping into beginning levels of the prophetic through seeing mini-visions and receiving simple words from God that have impacted and encouraged the group." Fantastic. Again, the goal is to display the "raw power of God!" I wonder how they're going to do that. Rain fire down on San Francisco? Among other things, it turns out that they wrap tiny fetus dolls in American flags and pray over them to end abortion in America (here). Isn't that nice. The last time there was a Children's Crusade, the kids were sold off into slavery. Hopefully that doesn't happen again.

Anywho, the Fire Center's leader headed up the Kids on Fire summer camp, which has some truly entertaining and disturbing video footage on the likes of YouTube. (Depending on your views of the copyright laws, I imagine you could also find some othe method of getting the film "Jesus Camp," though I don't necessarily recommend it.) Ninety minutes of chilling footage of children turned into religious zealots, twelve-year-old automatons for Christ. It's like Hamas for Jesus.

What really breaks my heart about the whole thing is that the next generation of activists is being raised "pledging allegiance to the Christian Flag" and being told that "there are two kinds of people in this world: people who love Jesus and people who don't," and believing that "we're being trained to be God's Army." It is time for an end to zealotry. If we must have movements going forth, it should be movements of people willing to think critically and challenge idiocy. Teaching your children that it is good that "Galileo gave up science for Christ" is not just asinine, it is horrifying and immoral.

Writer's postscript: I'd just about finished writing this when Shawn posted that he, too, used to be "on Fire for the Lord." I think it's time for a new organization: Christians Against Self-Immolation.
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Thursday, December 07, 2006

Christianity to me, now and then..

Sometimes, I lay awake and wonder about how my faith has changed (I was going to use the term evolved, but I think some might have issue with the word being used in conjunction with the notion of faith. LOL) over the years. I've concluded I must either be a terrible Christian or I've been living in faith for so long it just feels natural.

When I was younger, and in my teens, I was a teenage 'Christian Radical'. I was 'on Fire' for the Lord, and enjoyed praying. I enjoyed service. I enjoyed the retreats and getaways.

Now, I'm so damn eager to leave the service so I can get the free cookies and coffee I almost knock over the little old ladies on the way. I mean, the service is good.. And prayer, well, okay.. not so much as I used to. Reading scripture.. well, that too has been rather.. sporatic. Sometimes, someone talks when the priest offers, and I can't help but wish they'd let the preist get back to his service.. I'm there to hear him, not them.. but none this seems very Christian, and I guess I see myself becoming more complaicent with my Christianity.. something I don't think is any good.

But compared to my youth? I remember being chained to Morgentaler's Clinic. I remember shouting at the steps of EveryWomen's Clinic. I remember being taken away in a paddy wagon from Scott's Clinic. I remember objecting to gay rights. I don't think I was very tolerant then. Very devout, I suppose. I don't know if what I was could be considered 'Christian'. Christ, after all, taught us to be compassionate towards others even when we disagreed with the way they lived their lives. I'm certianly more compassionate towards others now, with my views towards gays and abortion changing. Does this make me Christian? I don't know. Does being more devout make me more Christian? Again, I don't know. But I suppose the minute I stop asking these questions, then that in of itself answers the question, does it not?

Shawn
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Monday, December 04, 2006

Sure, this isn't religion, but...

Women do not like to read.

This according to the Wall Street Journal, which is implementing changes next year in order to make itself more attractive to women. The executive vice-president of Dow Jones (which publishes WSJ), L. Gordon Crovitz, says that the paper will be using more summary boxes, more colorful graphics, and an easier to read font. It will also have "more headlines with words like 'will and 'why' in the headlines," according to Crovitz (yes, he needed to repeat "headlines" for emphasis). Crovitz further explained that "women... seem especially enthusiastic about the format." CBS is covering this exciting development (here) and naturally couldn't resisit peppering their online article with inane and unnecessary metaphors about the WSJ geting a "facelift," etc, etc. CBS seems to think the changes are a good idea, since they found women readers of the WSJ to say the changes were good, and male readers of the WSJ willing to say that the changes were unwanted.

So there you have it. Women need more point-form summaries and graphics if we expect them to understand the complex topics that the male readers of the leading business press have been pondering for generations. Incidentally, there's also a Woman's Wall Street here, which has no relation to the WSJ but exists "to help women... manage their" investments, and whose CEO, fittingly, is a man. Because even if their husband isn't around, women do need a man's guidance to keep their affairs in order.

The WSJ's real concern is the amount of paper they're using - Dow Jones says they're going to save $18 million a year, which is a tidy sum in an industry that's taking heavy bombardment for the ubiquitous free news available over the Internet. So the appeal to women as the new financial investor seems a little crass. (CBS noted that the LA Times, the Washington Post, and USA Today are also cutting in similar fashion, but didn't say whether their corporate executives also blamed the need to downsize the paper on the idiosyncrasies of female readers.) However, this attempt at reaching out to women seems like a parody of equity to me. And it's not just the WSJ who's guilty.

Let's run through the list. The WSJ needs to be thinned down so that the fairer sex can read it comfortably. Women need special advice so that they will be able to manage their investments as well as men (incidentally, the last three press releases on the site are, in reverse chronological order, "Valentine's Day: What Women Really Want"; "Survey reveals Top Five New Year's Resolutions"; and "Women reveal their holiday spending 'cents'"). My home province, British Columbia, has a Minister Responsible for Women's Issues, because apparently health, employment, education, finance, and the environment are not, in fact, issues for women. What the intangible "women's issues" are remains as mysterious as why women can't read a real newspaper article.

The WSJ should call its cost-cutting measure exactly what it is, and people should stop paying lip service to equity by creating inane, patronizing figureheads.

Thus spake Reverend Dave.
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Thursday, November 23, 2006

All together now..

I read this article with a tad bit of disappointment, but at the same time, a bit of excitement: at least they are trying to work together to find the common ground that they have lost. Growing up in a family with both Angelicans and Catholics, it would be nice for me to see the two churches unite. After all, I believe that little more than a name and a few theological differances seperate the two.

For me, I think that in the end, in order for the church to survive and be relevant it will have to be united under one banner anyways. I am glad that they also see that too, and are working towards those goals.

It should be interesting to see how the same-sex marriage, female preists, and other issues get dealt with. It could signify whether the churches choose to become more progressive or not.
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Wednesday, November 22, 2006

So, apparently, we're in the running for best religious blog..

After being nominated, it appears we've made it to the second round, which is pretty cool. As one of the writers here I would like to thank all that voted for us, and hopefully we can take it - for the glory of God, no doubt.

All this makes me believe that intellegent Christianity will prevail over blind faith Christianity. When we started the site, it was part of a discussion that focused on a paper that I had wrote in my teens that I meant to complete. I called it 'The Christian Aethist'. The notion behind it was that Christians could be intellegently motivatived, but spiritually enlightened. Far too common nowadays, is the assumption that in order to be a good Christian you must check your brain at the door. Christ never taught us that, nor ever encouraged that, and I believe as Christians we need to get back to that - or risk becoming irrelevant.

Anyways, I'm getting too damn serious when I'm feeling this good.. so I'll stop there, and wish you all a good one. Thanks again, and I look forward to posting some more blogs for you to read and comment on.

Shawn
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Wednesday, November 15, 2006

The Irrelevancy of Denominations

Denominations are something that has existed with Christianity for a while now.. With the breaking off of the Catholic church by the Lutherans and the Protestant reformation that followed, it seems like the last twenty years has seen a introduction of a new branch of Christianity custom tailored for your viewpoints. But lately, something has beginning to happen, and it was interesting to see it unfold: Angelicans are talking with Catholics, even holding services together sometimes, United is coming together with Methodists and Presprebtrain, and Bapists and Evanglicals are.. well, I'm not sure about that department.. but you get the hint. Part of this harkens ( sorry about that, I just wanted an excuse to use the word harkens ) back to the day, in which we thought that the end times would come with the merging of churches as one (Rev ? Still looking into this) body of Christ.

Personally, as a Christian, I have come to see Denominations much in the same way I see name brands like: Levis, McDonalds, Wal-Mart, Roots, etc because it has less to do with Christ's intentions (personally I think he's just happy we're good Christians), and more to do with marketing and branding. When we start to treat our values like commodities on a open market, something is terribly wrong. I think this is why people have been moving towards this interdenominational churches which are little more than some halls with people praying. People want to get back to the value part of Christianity, and away from the political/economical aspect of it. Church shouldn't be some fancy shirt you wear because you're cool.

Another reason why I think interdenominations are catching on is obvious: people really aren't that caught up in the details, and don't care if Joe sitting beside them thinks that no meat other than fish should be eaten on Friday. They're there to pray, to meet other people who believe in God, and find common ground, not to look for what is differant.

Finally, I find most interdenominational churches are informal. Which is a nice change of pace. Sometimes it's nice to have structure, and that's why I will go to an Angelican or a Catholic service. But other times, it's nice just to hear somebody say like they see it. Kinda like Christ did.
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Tuesday, November 14, 2006

The Reverend Reads the Papers

(The reverend is me. My church is here.)

After one more tedious conversation on an evangelical Internet forum about the anti-Christian leftist slant of the mainstream media, I signed off and, as I do several days per week, trudged down to the university cafeteria to eat a sampling of roast beef, fish, or whatever other mass-produced delicacy the administrators of the residence communion choose to bless us with on a daily basis. As usual, I also purchased a newspaper to peruse the salacious scandals and exciting events which happened yesterday before press time. My newspaper today was the Toronto Star, without argument the farthest left of the major Canadian print media (the Globe & Mail defines the centre, and the National Post is somewhere off to the right). I expected to be besieged by the satanic forces of secular humanism upon turning over simply to the second page, so I thought about spending several hours in prayer in advance, and perhaps reviewing my favourite psalm (Psalm 137:9, perhaps, which is another banner verse from the Rev. Dave's Family Friendly Bible, Uncensored Edition®).

I was not to be disappointed. Turning over the front page (which was on the Toronto municipal election results and therefore of no interest to me), I was greeted with a glaring headline: VOICE OF ARAB WORLD GOES GLOBAL. Oh, dear, the secular humanists have weakened our democracy again by letting in the propaganda of... Al Jazeera? Ah, well. At least it's as balanced as Fox News is. And it was odd to hear it was "going global," since Al-Jazeerah was approved to compete for cable licensing in Canada by the CRTC a year or two ago, and presumably was elsewhere as well. Reading on, it turns out that "going global" actually means that it's developing an English-language channel. How typical of the leftist MSM (which is a peppy acronym for "mainstream media," the secular humanists that hound us Christians) to make such an egotistical assumption.

Turning a few more pages, I reach the section devoted to the ongoing disaster we are reconstructing in Afghanistan, and am greeted by the headline "Taliban regime ousted five years ago." Geez. I'd heard that the print media was falling behind their electronic brethren, but I hadn't realized things had got so bad down in the newsrooms.

Then it's on to the editorial pages, where presumably I will be bombarded by the full force of the secular humanist left, since it no longer has to be shrouded in pretentious journalistic objectivity as it does on the so-called "news" pages. You can imagine my horror, therefore, when I notice that the leading column for the day is by two of Toronto's leading Anglicans, condemning both the federal and provincial governments for their senseless cuts to low-cost housing (most of which is the result of a spat between the two levels of government over fund redistribution disputes, for which the lowest of the poor are bearing most of the pain), at a time when hundreds of people die in Toronto alone because the rest of this supposedly grand nation could not bother to give them shelter and a little food.

The cynical part of me observes that when a downtown Anglican preacher condemns the suffering of the poor, he's probably speaking as much to the interests of his core constituency as is the Baptist preacher in the suburbs when he condemns the suffering of his flock at the hands of the encroaching gay invaders. Or perhaps that's not the cynical part: perhaps the latter simply has the wrong constituency and the wrong interests at heart. Perhaps it should matter more to the church that people suffer needlessly in our ridiculously wealthy country than that some homosexuals (most of whom probably aren't members of the church anyways, since we've driven them out by now) who want government recognition of their relationship. Maybe Christians who are obsessed with the "sanctity of the institution of marriage" should be more concerned about the fact that the secular government seems to hold the keys to that "institution" at all, rather than about whom that government grants it to.

Maybe it also means that this supposed leftist mainstream is neither as anti-Christian nor as misguided as some like to think. The fact that the left is convinced the media has a right-wing bias and the right is convinced that the media has a left-wing bias might mean that the media is actually less biased than either side wants to admit.
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Sunday, November 05, 2006

Prophets for Profit

It was a bad week in American Christendom. First, a male prostitute in Colorado claimed that evangelical preacher and head of New Life Church Ted Haggard had paid him for a series of... um... appointments over the past several years. To add some fuel to the fire, it also surfaced - apparently from the same source - that Haggard had also purchased crystal meth. Just a few days later, another prominent evangelical, creationist Kent Hovind, was convicted of tax fraud in Florida after failing to pay about $850 000 in employee taxes at his creationist theme park, where, among other things, he provides evidence that dinosaurs and humans once walked the earth together. (Hovind's entertaining if scientifically dubious theory of creation is that Noah boarded his ark just before an ice meteor crashed into the earth, causing a shower of "super-cold snow" which buried the mammoths, shattered the canopy which protected the earth from the water beneath the crust, and resulted in an ice age lasting several hundred years.)

This isn't Hovind's first legal trouble, though presumably it is the most serious (we haven't heard what the sentences will be yet for either him or his wife, who was also convicted of 44 counts). In 2002, he was charged with assault by his former secretary, but the charges were dropped. The same year, he was charged with several local regulation violations at his Dinosaur Adventure Land (I'm sorry; I have to keep mentioning this park because it's just such an amusing concept). Hovind lost most of these cases and paid moderately small fines (but spent tens of thousands in legal expenses to protect his dinosaur-human propaganda center). In 1996, he tried to file for bankruptcy but was found to have lied about his possessions and income (he claimed that as a minister, everything he had belonged to God and therefore he was not subject to the American tax system). Two years later, he claimed to revoke all signatures he had ever written on government documents on the grounds they had been signed under duress. In 2002 he failed to pay his taxes again, and this time went on the offensive by suing the IRS for harassment. In 2004, they raided his home to confiscate financial records, eventually leading to his current difficulties. Apparently Hovind forgot about the "give to Caesar what is Caesar's" part when he was busy taking his Bible so literally that he convinced himself that mammoths were all buried standing up by a massive wave of cold, hard snow.

Haggard seems to have had a cleaner record, at least up to the present. He denied all of the allegations, and the prostitute subsequently failed a polygraph test he had volunteered for to verify the claims (although the administrator noted that the man was stressed and had not recently eaten or slept). However, Haggard resigned anyways, on the grounds that he would "seek both spiritual advice and guidance" while an "overseer process" could investigate the claims "with integrity." Senior officials from his mega-church promptly told the local TV that he had admitted to some of Jones's claims, and wrote to their parshioners that Haggard "confessed to the overseers that some of the accusations against him are true." The next day, Haggard admitted that he had purchased crystal meth but claimed he had only received a massage from Jones. To paraphrase Clinton, "I did not have sex with that man!" The overseer board concluded shortly afterwards that "our investigation... prove[s] without a doubt that he has committed sexually immoral conoduct," and they affirmed his removal from his job.

From our perspective outside the fishbowl, it seems almost inevitable that many major Christian leaders will be arrested for some sort of behaviour that they themselves have railed against as deviant. During the 1980s, there was a mass of televangelists exposed as in some way sinful - Swaggart screwed a prostitute, Bakker screwed his secretary, and Roberts, Whittington, and others ended up out of a job for various suspicions of fraud. Peter Popoff, distributor of miracle spring water (i.e. non-Catholic holy water) which apparently comes from Chernobyl (yum... radioactive water), was revealed to perform his miracles via planted audience members and an in-ear radio receiver through which he could hear prompts from his watchers in the crowd... I mean, from the Holy Spirit of God, of course.

I'm not really qualified to judge whether the entire Christian mass preaching industry is riddled with corruption or not, although certainly large sections of it are. I've just acquired an old documentary from the 1970s on the career of Marjoe Gortner, a travelling preacher of the time who spent six months preaching and the next six months smoking pot with his friends in San Francisco (he explained on his tours that he raised money for six months and then spent six months ministering to the youth and drug addicts of the inner city). He eventually decided he could no longer live with this tactic, but rather than just resign or come clean in a public press conference the way most would today, he decided to take a film crew along for his last revival tour. The documentary alternates between scenes of wild Christian merriment in revival tents and charismatic churches, and footage of Gortner back in the hotel explaining to the film crew the various aspects of his scam. (Among other things, Gortner explains how to prophecize, speak in tongues, and administer various other miracles.)

The fact that these individuals turn out to be grossly corrupt and in it for the money isn't really the part that disturbs me. People in the big church business are entrepeneurs, and like people in any other business, they're going where the money is. Issues of personal morality are not particularly relevant to this. Those who are genuinely honest, and there are probably at least a few, doubtless aren't having the same exciting sexual adventures, but because we never hear news like "Billy Graham did not have an affair this week" (for the simple fact that it's a non-event), we probably get a skewed picture of what's going on. Not every Republican congressman is attracted to his teen-aged interns, but occasionally one is, and the rest get tarred for it. (Of course, if they weren't so judgemental in the first place, it wouldn't be such big news that they were guilty of the same things they condemned others for. Perhaps this is one of the reasons the Bible says we should not judge others.) The rush to condemn the particular individuals involved can be a little unseemly too sometimes. The church either rallies around people they think could be innocent, or shoves out someone they realize is guilty, as though they're worried that he'll contaminate them if he's not cast out fast enough. A former pastor of mine used to say that the Christian army was the only one to shoot its own wounded. A few months after I met him, we shot him, too. The pursuit of collective holiness apparently requires that individuals occasionally be sacrificed for the greater good.
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Monday, October 30, 2006

Jesus Says "No Bad Words!"

Procrastinator's Link of the Day: The Parents Television Council, source of the most complaints about television obscenity in America by several orders of magnitude and self-proclaimed defender of the faith when it comes to the evil which seeps through the white picket fences and into the vulnerable minds of the youth of the unsuspecting traditional family via their TV sets. The PTC's greatest service is providing a stoplight-style rating system for all shows presently on television (or at least all the ones that they can risk reporting on). I learned of them when they rated Buffy the Vampire Slayer as one of the most immoral TV shows ever (thanks to the combination of lesbian characters, occult themes, too much sex, too much violence, and so on), seconded later on by Whedon's other long-lasting TV creation, Angel. (Unfortunately, Firefly was cancelled before Whedon could successfully go for the trifecta. The only show I have seen on television this year which was not a re-run was from the drama/neo-noir Veronica Mars, and I was very disappointed to see that that show's combination of constant innuendo and a rape victim as the main character was somehow insufficient to merit a quadruple-red rating. That '70s Show, by contrast, got a triple-red rating, but didn't have enough violence to pick up the fourth red light. I guess what the PTC really hates is homosexuality and occult magic, since these are the two greatest threats to morality in America today.

This year, they also expanded into rating the best and worst advertisers (and noting the channels and shows on which they appear). Altria, formerly Philip Morris and the leading marketer of cigarettes, is the sixth-best advertiser. GM, Toyota, Volkswagen, and DaimlerChrysler are the worst. How the PTC decides what advertisers are moral or immoral isn't clear, since their press release doesn't mention their methodology. However, they do say at one point that it has to do with "wise advertising decisions," which seems to suggest that they're being rated based on the shows their ads are associated with. Perhaps it's a points-based system: If a GM ad airs during a That '70s Show rerun, it's -6 points. If it airs during American Idol or Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, which are examples of rampant populist capitalism and therefore Christianity at its finest, then it gets +10 points, for an overall score of +4. This is good, but it loses out to Target, which advertised only during Bernie Mac and therefore picked up a score of +5. The fact that these corporations are actually trying to profit from their ads takes a backseat to their apparent responsibility to defend the family.

The PTC's front page is full of articles reflecting the usual siege-mentality, us-against-the-evil-secular-world that one finds on most conservative Christian sites these days. These people never seem to realize the contradiction betwen claiming that they are servants of an all-knowing, all-powerful God and fretting over whether the secular humanists will take over the world if the churches don't stop them. They cheer about their complaints about obscenity on the Emmys, in a Madonna concert, General Mills ads, and prime-time television in general. In this latter case, they are demanding heavy fines be levied against "scripted profanity" which is aired "as early as 7 pm." According to the PTC press release, their righteous anger was provoked by two unspeakably evil incidents just in the last month:

    New broadcast channel My Network TV scripted the “s-word” into the September 21st broadcast of the prime time soap, Desire. The incident occurred during the 8:00 pm hour on the East and West coasts and during the 7:00 pm hour in the Central and Mountain Time Zones, and, even worse, the word in question aired during the opening sequences of the program.

    And just last week, NBC scripted the word ‘t*ts’ into the October 5th broadcast of ER, which airs at 9:00 pm in the Central and Mountain Time Zones.

The fact that the words are so evil they can't even be named properly in the press release is evidence of the evil that has been unleashed upon America by the satatnic secular humanist directors of My Network TV and NBC, respectively. Oddly enough, seeing dead people on television doesn't merit a similar warning, because the first rule of being pro-life is that profanity is more dangerous than violence, as is sex.

In honour of the PTC's crusade to cleanse the public airwaves of non-family-friendly material, I have decided to provide a special reading from that grandmaster of family classics, the Holy Bible. Today's scripture reading is from Ezekiel 23:

    1 The word of the LORD came to me: 2 "Son of man, there were two women, daughters of the same mother. 3 They became prostitutes in Egypt, engaging in prostitution from their youth. In that land their breasts were fondled and their virgin bosoms caressed. 4 The older was named Oholah, and her sister was Oholibah. They were mine and gave birth to sons and daughters. Oholah is Samaria, and Oholibah is Jerusalem.
    5 "Oholah engaged in prostitution while she was still mine; and she lusted after her lovers, the Assyrians-warriors 6 clothed in blue, governors and commanders, all of them handsome young men, and mounted horsemen. 7 She gave herself as a prostitute to all the elite of the Assyrians and defiled herself with all the idols of everyone she lusted after. 8 She did not give up the prostitution she began in Egypt, when during her youth men slept with her, caressed her virgin bosom and poured out their lust upon her.

    9 "Therefore I handed her over to her lovers, the Assyrians, for whom she lusted. 10 They stripped her naked, took away her sons and daughters and killed her with the sword. She became a byword among women, and punishment was inflicted on her.

    11 "Her sister Oholibah saw this, yet in her lust and prostitution she was more depraved than her sister. 12 She too lusted after the Assyrians—governors and commanders, warriors in full dress, mounted horsemen, all handsome young men. 13 I saw that she too defiled herself; both of them went the same way.

    14 "But she carried her prostitution still further. She saw men portrayed on a wall, figures of Chaldeans [a] portrayed in red, 15 with belts around their waists and flowing turbans on their heads; all of them looked like Babylonian chariot officers, natives of Chaldea. [b] 16 As soon as she saw them, she lusted after them and sent messengers to them in Chaldea. 17 Then the Babylonians came to her, to the bed of love, and in their lust they defiled her. After she had been defiled by them, she turned away from them in disgust. 18 When she carried on her prostitution openly and exposed her nakedness, I turned away from her in disgust, just as I had turned away from her sister. 19 Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. 20 There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses. 21 So you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when in Egypt your bosom was caressed and your young breasts fondled. [c]

    22 "Therefore, Oholibah, this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I will stir up your lovers against you, those you turned away from in disgust, and I will bring them against you from every side- 23 the Babylonians and all the Chaldeans, the men of Pekod and Shoa and Koa, and all the Assyrians with them, handsome young men, all of them governors and commanders, chariot officers and men of high rank, all mounted on horses. 24 They will come against you with weapons, [d] chariots and wagons and with a throng of people; they will take up positions against you on every side with large and small shields and with helmets. I will turn you over to them for punishment, and they will punish you according to their standards. 25 I will direct my jealous anger against you, and they will deal with you in fury. They will cut off your noses and your ears, and those of you who are left will fall by the sword. They will take away your sons and daughters, and those of you who are left will be consumed by fire. 26 They will also strip you of your clothes and take your fine jewelry. 27 So I will put a stop to the lewdness and prostitution you began in Egypt. You will not look on these things with longing or remember Egypt anymore.

    28 "For this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I am about to hand you over to those you hate, to those you turned away from in disgust. 29 They will deal with you in hatred and take away everything you have worked for. They will leave you naked and bare, and the shame of your prostitution will be exposed. Your lewdness and promiscuity 30 have brought this upon you, because you lusted after the nations and defiled yourself with their idols. 31 You have gone the way of your sister; so I will put her cup into your hand.

    32 "This is what the Sovereign LORD says:
    "You will drink your sister's cup,
    a cup large and deep;
    it will bring scorn and derision,
    for it holds so much.

    33 You will be filled with drunkenness and sorrow,
    the cup of ruin and desolation,
    the cup of your sister Samaria.

    34 You will drink it and drain it dry;
    you will dash it to pieces
    and tear your breasts.
    I have spoken, declares the Sovereign LORD.

    35 "Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says: Since you have forgotten me and thrust me behind your back, you must bear the consequences of your lewdness and prostitution."

    36 The LORD said to me: "Son of man, will you judge Oholah and Oholibah? Then confront them with their detestable practices, 37 for they have committed adultery and blood is on their hands. They committed adultery with their idols; they even sacrificed their children, whom they bore to me, [e] as food for them. 38 They have also done this to me: At that same time they defiled my sanctuary and desecrated my Sabbaths. 39 On the very day they sacrificed their children to their idols, they entered my sanctuary and desecrated it. That is what they did in my house.

    40 "They even sent messengers for men who came from far away, and when they arrived you bathed yourself for them, painted your eyes and put on your jewelry. 41 You sat on an elegant couch, with a table spread before it on which you had placed the incense and oil that belonged to me.

    42 "The noise of a carefree crowd was around her; Sabeans [f] were brought from the desert along with men from the rabble, and they put bracelets on the arms of the woman and her sister and beautiful crowns on their heads. 43 Then I said about the one worn out by adultery, 'Now let them use her as a prostitute, for that is all she is.' 44 And they slept with her. As men sleep with a prostitute, so they slept with those lewd women, Oholah and Oholibah. 45 But righteous men will sentence them to the punishment of women who commit adultery and shed blood, because they are adulterous and blood is on their hands.

    46 "This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Bring a mob against them and give them over to terror and plunder. 47 The mob will stone them and cut them down with their swords; they will kill their sons and daughters and burn down their houses.

    48 "So I will put an end to lewdness in the land, that all women may take warning and not imitate you. 49 You will suffer the penalty for your lewdness and bear the consequences of your sins of idolatry. Then you will know that I am the Sovereign LORD."

I'm certainly glad my kids won't be exposed to the word "shit."
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Thursday, October 26, 2006

The Separation of Church from State

Note: This feature was initially developed at Notes from the Abattoir, but is now being provided here as a free service of the author of that blog for your pleasure and entertainment.

Procrastinator's Link of the Day™: Dr. James Dobson's monthly rant for October, Family in Crisis. Dobson's column is published through his "ministry," Focus on the Family, on a monthly basis as a means of persuading his subscribers that he is waging an important battle on their behalf, and therefore needs large sums of money, since all the good religious battles these days cost money. Somewhere in the Bible, God said that Christianity wasn't worth doing if it couldn't be done profitably.

Back when the Abattoir blog was up and running, I posted a link to Focus on the Family as a link of the day once before. However, I've decided to do so again since this time Dobson's newsletter has entered new territory, and I thought readers should be aware of this. As a heartless cynic, I suspect that Dobson's new ventures are a result of the fact that it is election season in the U.S., and he's casting about for reasons to get his flock excited. I don't know whether or not Dobson wrote this letter before it turned out that Mark Foley was not only a Republican but also a pedophile, but that certainly helps explain the transition made by other conservative writers.

In his "Family in Crisis" article, Dobson presents a variety of ludicrous claims linking Christianity with American national security, and national security with the traditional family. Yes, it's the Grand Chain of connections, Dobson style, which promise that if we let slip in one area, the others will fall as a matter of course. I can only hope that us Canadians will be spared the tragic results of America's downfall, but I don't hold out much hope, since the junior siblings of empires rarely fare well when their big brothers go down.

Dobson correctly notes that this letter is the first time in the 29-year history of Focus on the Family that "I must address the burgeoning threat posed by Islamic fundamentalism... [to] family values." Using some made-up statistics to prove that there are 12 million Muslims who want to "bomb our homeland or blow up themselves or their children on suicide missions," he points out that Muslims "pulled four American civilians out of a Humvee, then murderd these unarmed prisoners in cold blood"; they also tried to bomb some planes, and beheaded a journalist, and so on. Which is easily worse than invading countries, killing tens and possibly hundreds of thousands, in the name of our vaguely defined new international religion of democracy and freedom, spread by B-2 bombers, M-16s, and friendly dictators everywhere. But the threats don't end there! He also makes sure to include Venezuela, since he believes that a nuclear-armed Iran will give away nukes free to Hugo Chavez. Why the Islamist revolutionary government in Iran would want to support a socialist state in South America is beyond me, since the Islamists were trying to kill the socialists in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and did so in large numbers thanks to cheap weapons supplied by the Americans. But there you have it: the forces of darkness are arrayed against us. Further mixing his political ideologies, Dobson goes on to say that Iran and Venezuela are new Nazi Germanies in the making, that attempting to make friends abroad is "limp-wristed" and unmasculine, and is going to "bring about the destruction of Western civilization."

Well, that's politics these days. You might ask what these have to do with religion and the family. It turns out they have nothing to do with the family, since Dobson never makes the connection again; he moves on to his usual issues, like the importance of making sure gay people don't get the right to marry, because it's very important for an organization like Focus on the Family to put obstacles in the way of people who love each other enough to spend the rest of their lives together. Apparently there's also a vote to continue banning abortion in South Dakota, and Dobson thinks it's extremely important that Christians go out and vote so that they can outlaw behavior that is "morally wrong." He also heaps praise on the incredibly brave, gracious George Bush, America's saviour in these dark days of trial.

We do find one mention of the importance of the Islamists again, though. Dobson writes that "I thank God for the United States military, which is protecting us by its sweat, blood and tears. It is the only force standing between us and those who would do us harm." Coming from someone who is supposedly a Christian leader, this statement is so twisted I'm not even sure where to begin. Apparently God wants us to buy guns so we can fend off the hordes of barbarians. It's so delightfully War-of-Civilizations, just like the Romans fighting the Germanic tribes. We used to kill barbarians for Jesus, then we killed Muslims for Jesus, then we killed Catholics for Jesus (or Protestants for Jesus, depending on whose side you were on), then commies for Jesus, and now we're back to killing Muslims for Jesus again. Good times.

Partly because of the religious battles being fought over issues like the right to teach creationism in schools (or its cunningly disguised heir apparent, "intelligent design"), the term "separation between church and state" has lost a lot of its meaning lately. Evangelicals view it as a complicated challenge that needs to be overcome, and the non-religious think it's their last defence against the foaming zealots. This battle is stronger in the U.S., where the constitution actually says that Congress will make no laws concerning religious establishments. In Canada, we have a slightly weaker battle in the form of "freedom of religion" and "freedom of expression" guarantees in the Constitution. (That Constitution also recognizes the "supremacy of God," which would no doubt come as a surprise to the rabid critics in the U.S. who were so disgusted to see us legalize gay marriage.) In theory, most evangelical churches recognize the separation of church and state even if it's not stated explicitly in the national law - the Evangelical Baptist church I'm still technically a member of, for example, says so in its constitution and statement of belief. However, what this "separation" actually means is evidently open to considerable interpretation, and, in an unusual twist for people who are usually so literalist about written words, it turns out that "separation" doesn't actually mean "separation." If it did, our denominational organizations wouldn't spend useful money hiring lobbyists in Ottawa to persuade the government to discriminate against gay people and ban abortions. Personally, I think this should give the government the right to install "representatives" in individual church congregations, but apparently the privilege of access only goes one way, which sounds like a useful working definition of "hypocrisy" to me.

I think that one important part of the separation between church and state - which people have forgotten in the current mania of preventing the one from interfering with the other - is that their agendas cannot be combined without leading to decidedly un-Christian abuses of power. Chaining the health and well-being of the Christian gospel to the power of the state gives a really easy, blunt instrument with which to bludgeon the immoral in society (like homosexuals, to name the issue du jour), but it also forces unacceptable compromises. There is, for example, absolutely no reason that a religious leader like Dobson should be providing foreign policy advice on how best to deal with Muslim fundamentalists, whether or not there really are twelve million of them waiting to blow up the White House, as he seems to believe there are. The Bible which these people claim to take so literally is absolutely clear that God gave his special blessing to the well-being only of exactly one ethnic nation, the ancient Hebrews. Since the ancient Hebrews are no longer a nation as such (the modern State of Israel not being an exclusively Jewish theocracy, just a Jewish-majority democracy), it follows that God has very little invested in the apparatus of any modern state, be that the United States, Canada, Britain, or North Korea. The values we cherish here - like freedom of expression, religion, and assembly - may be nice, but the Bible does not prescribe them, so we cannot say that they are what makes us a "Christian civilization," if indeed anything at all makes us a Christian civilization, past or present.

I don't know, ultimately, what a Christian agenda for politics would be. In democracies, where in theory at least all citizens possess some degree of political power, I believe it would be irresponsible for us to withdraw entirely and have no opinion on the political process of our country. On the other hand, I am skeptical of using that process to in some way spread Christian values or the Christian gospel. Historically, both Christians and Marxists have thought of using the state in this fashion, and both have ultimately chosen to guarantee the well-being of the state. It's not an irrational decision: once you decide that you need the power of the state to disseminate what you believe is truth, it logically follows that you must ensure that the state is in a position to carry out those wishes. However, there is something fundamentally flawed about Christians believing that they must possess and use such political power, even for such supposedly benevolent purposes as outlawing abortions, given that our Lord came to earth as the impoverished son of a lower-class labourer in an oppressed colony of one of the largest empires the Mediterranean world had yet seen.

On the other hand, contemporary Christian anarchists - like the folks at Jesus Radicals - argue that because the state is fundamentally an instrument of human secular coercion, Christians should have nothing to do with it, and I'm skeptical of this as well. It is true that the establishment of a secular government - in the form of a monarchy - in ancient Israel was condemned by the prophets in that society as an unnecessary usurpation of God's will. However, the Christian message is a transformative one: that is, Christianity does not simply cast aside what is currently present in humanity, but transforms it into a better representation of the love, mercy, grace, and justice of the Lord we claim to model ourselves after. Historically, Christians have used state systems and laws for arguably good causes - the abolition of slavery in Britain between the 1760s and 1830s comes to mind, as but one example - as well as for undeniably evil causes, such as the continuation of slavery in the U.S. and in the British colonies during that same time period.

Personally, my politics tend to alternate between some form of libertarianism and some form of socialism coupled with pacifism, all of which sounds like a great contradiction except that I have yet to come to the conclusion whether the state can actually serve a strong role in society yet remain benevolent (in which case I don't mind social democracy bordering on socialism), or whether it cannot do so. In either event, the modern political state as it exists is not a Christian institution, and neither its goals nor its methods are Christian in any way; therefore, what I can say with absolute certainty is that religious groups should stop lavishing millions of dollars upon preachers who tell us to vote for a strong moral party so that they can fight terrorism and gay people in the name of God. Christian organizations take in $250 billion a year, and I'm pretty sure there are other worthy causes we could direct some of that money towards.

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Monday, October 23, 2006

A new study out of California

Yessiree.. this is a bad week for the devil. The Jonathan F. Thompson Center for New Religious Studies has released findings showing the devil is as popular as disco. With 'disco sucks' bumper stickers abounding, his Unholiness is left wondering how to migate the uncoolness factor. What was a means of pissing off your parents has been replaced by voting Republican/Conservative or becoming a Har Karishna, as children weren't getting the same effect from their parents with the revelation that they are satanists. 'Mom and Dad just grunted, and didn't even look up from their newspapers when I broke the news' one source is quoted,' I had to find a more effective way. The Har Karishna's provided me with the means to be a normal teenager rebelling against my parents!'

But the devil disagrees, and points to the Rapture Ready Index. 'See?', his Unholiness thundered,' It's gone up by one this week. I know I am making progress. That stuff in England is bang on.'

Several representatives of Christianity agreed with the devil's comment, although they cautioned that this probably would not signify a new period of detente in the long dispute between the two sides over the legitimacy of the heavenly regime. According to Reverend Isaac Calvin at the Truehall Biblical Research Institute in Illinois, "We don't think there's any evidence to indicate that the devil is any less a threat to the people of this country today than he was ten years ago. We live in dangerous times as it is and my fellow countrymen should be careful not to let their guard down because of foolish rumours." Calvin worries that the apparent decline in Satan's power could even be a charade by the Dark Prince: "We've seen this sort of thing before, and he's always come back."

Calvin suggested that concerned citizens check out Exposing Satanism and Satan's Rapture for one example of how the devil has effectively used modern media to spread his subversive message of despair.
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What would Jesus drive?: A discussion on religious economy

Welcome to the online portion of the worst idea we've ever had, a joint blog on Christianity and anything else that seems worth talking about. Our authority on these matters is wide-ranging and widely respected, as we're a couple of university students with backgrounds in economics, political science and history. More importantly, we speak as ordained ministers of the Universal Life Church (and you can be one too, by filling out the form at the Universal Life Church website (here)). We've also sharpened our teeth with, respectively, cynical religious commentary at Notes from the Abattoir (here, though the site is non-functional for the foreseeable future), and highly influential political discussion at the Big Mac Political Hack Attack (here). Religious discussion between a former Catholic and a former Baptist should prove to be a fantastic source of peaceful cooperation. Hopefully we won't kill as many people this time around as we did during the 1500s.

This blog was originally going to be called Inspirational Messages from the Cynically Uninspired, but was changed at the last moment to reflect our recent discovery of a new debate in the U.S. over what kind of car Jesus would drive. When one of us first came up with the phrase "what would Jesus drive" a year or so ago, it was meant to be completely humorous, an attempt to extend on the profitable line of "What would Jesus do" bracelets and shirts with similarly helpful messages to Christians in search of guidance, like "What would Jesus say?", "What would Jesus read?", and "Who would Jesus fuck?" According to Dan Brown, the answer is Mary Magdalene; accoridng to the church, we're probably going to hell (or at least purgatory) for even asking. Anyways, someone more important than us has finally asked the very important question "What would Jesus drive?", and so we've decided to help develop a Christian answer. Christian answers are important because non-Christians will get their answers from the satanists lurking in the shadows if we're not Always Ready, and you just can't trust those satanists to provide reliable information, even if their founder did work in a carnival. (As did one of us, which means he might be a covert Satanic agent, so be careful.)



We were reflecting the other day over a discussion that seemed to take place between these two schools of thought on what Jesus might've drove. Here and here are the discussions. Both make some interesting points. One argues for an suv, the other argues for a fuel economy car - supposedly a compact. It got me thinking about it. I disagree with both assumptions.

Lets look at the time in which Jesus lived. There was four modes of transport: walking, camels, asses, and horses. Camels could be the fuel economy car. Asses could be the mid-sized urban vehical, and Horses would be your suv. Walking would be public transportation. Seeing the bible talks about Jesus walking everywhere, I'm left to conclude that Jesus would use public transit. Heck, He might even be the bus driver. What a great way to meet the masses, eh?

All jesting aside - althougth, I do think it leads to a more serious discussion for Christians everywhere - is the need to have a talk about religious economy. I am not talking about buying a plastic jesus to put on your dashboard of your said vehical. I am talking about being Christian in our pursuit of wealth. Is wealth pursuit a sin or not? Well, the bible says 'for the love of money is the root of all evil', but one of the seven deadly sins is sloth. We are to be productive with ourselves, and to produce goods - nothing in the bible says we can't make money either, just not to love it - but what happens in the context of production at the expense of the dominion that God gave us? How productive are we supposed to be? When reading scripture are we supposed to take away a model of the economy that is : a) capitalist? b) socialist? c) communist?

I ask this very seriously because prior to the 1700's the Catholic church insisted that wealth pursuit was a sin, and that poverty, or living within your means brought you closer to God. The Protestant movement brought in a differant kind of thinking that reflected the German nature of industrialism, and argued that sloth like behaviour was more of a sin, and wealth pursuit was a worthy cause.

Taking an example from the bible, Job was rewarded with wealth for his devotion to God, as was others. Are we to assume those who are wealthy and devoted as being looked upon by God with favor?

Looking at this from the opposite angle, as caretakers of the dominion that God has given us, if we destroy what He has created for our benefit, would He be pleased with us as his servants? Probably not.

Well, for solutions.. I don't have any. But I think I am going to jump in my car, drive across the block, pick up something to eat at the local grocery store that is wrapped in plastic and a styofoam container and microwave it high for five minutes... or not.
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