More Honorary Degree Lunacy

Procrasinator's Link of the Day: First, a housekeeping note: there have been a disturbing number of people linking to this blog from Salt Lake City ever since I published links to the Mormon documents at Wikileaks. Does this mean the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is about to drop the heavy end of the hammer on the Church of the Orange Sky? I sure hope not. My god is bigger than your god, but I don't think she does copyright litigation. In my defence I haven't actually published or distributed any copyrighted material myself. The fault lies with the copyright violators at Wikileaks.

In other news, recently I suggested that Phyllis Schlafly might perhaps not deserve the honorary degree she's being given by Washington University for her lifetime of work in suppressing women's rights. Some media muttering about this issue led someone to point out that the University of Massachusetts once gave Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe, whom one of my professors humorously refers to as "Zimbabwe Bob," an honorary doctorate too. A doctorate of laws, in fact. Now the University in question is considering whether to revoke the honorary degree.

Can you revoke a university degree? If so, what's the point of giving an honorary one in the first place?

Yet another reason not to give out honorary degrees: the person might turn into a dictator.

In related news, I've just discovered a really cool site, Feministing.com. At the moment, the recent news on the site is a summary that would seem to suggest - though they don't say so explicitly - that, at least in Georgia, you can legally rape a woman as long as you've had sex with her at least once consensually. This beats even Schlafly's pathetically half-assed "rape can't happen in the marriage bed" compromise position. At present Georgian precedent also allows the defendant to claim, in his defence, that the victim had shaved her pubic hair and was not a virgin.
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Fun Times with Mormons

Procrastinator's Link of the Day: WikiLeaks, a massive online repository of leaked documents from governments, banks and churches all over the world. It's basically Wikipedia combined with the New York Times - a publicly compiled and edited collection of illegal documents. I remember the group that was trying to get this together a couple of years ago, wondering whether there would be enough people willing to risk their careers to keep such a site operational. There was - the site is actually completely flooded on a constant basis. You can get anything here - in the recent past the site has defied publishing bans in various countries, leaked U.S. military instructions on violating the Geneva Conventions, and revealed all kinds of corruption schemes. At some point propagandists may figure out how to use the site for their own nefarious purposes but in the meantime it seems to be just pissing them off.

Naturally this earns considerable indignation from those who feel they have a right to preserve secrets from the public. Unfortunately for them, Wikileaks is also one of the latest examples of Internet data that seemingly exists beyond the rule of law. Like the AACS encryption keys to HD DVD and Blu Ray discs, which were released onto a few geek sites last year, then exploded into an internationally recognized story literally overnight after a horrifically mismanaged attempt by the Licensing Authority to suppress the key turned into a challenge for bandwidth and power between the Authority's legal staff and ten million geeks, activists, and libertarians. The result was predictably one-sided.

Wikileaks had its own trial by fire a few months ago when it posted some corruption-related documents from a Swiss bank, Julius Bear, and as a result was "taken offline" by order of a U.S. court. Its wikileaks.org URL was vacated. Wikileaks then revealed a dizzying array of international mirrors, linking to an equally byzantine global network of servers run by anonymous techs. Two weeks after Wikileaks was supposed to have been "killed," the judge ordered its main site brought back online, admitting that the U.S. judicial system wasn't actually capable of suppressing the site. So now Wikileaks is back to pleasing journalists and enraging bureaucrats.

Normally, all of this might seem dull to everyone who isn't either (a) a political scientist with a specialization in government secrecy, or (b) a conspiracy theorist, or perhaps (c) both, but in this case a few recent arrivals on the site are relevant to the Church of the Orange Sky.

Here, for example, is a "Female Beauty Manual" produced by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It starts with a lengthy "questionnaire" about "what you want in a man," and it goes rapidly downhill from there. "Downhill" like off a cliff. Most of the book is devoted to advice on your clothing and appearance, which, it explains, are essential because if you don't look as pretty as you can you aren't going to meet and marry the best man possible. Starting on p. 53, there are some asinine lists of what "a girl" should know about "mature femininity," which apparently amounts to being a happy, pleasant being without a care in the world, largely because she lacks the intelligence to have such cares. (Men, by contrast, are strong and respectable authority figures, enterprising, firm but still compassionate, and so on and so forth. The usual, basically.) Basically this is a tame version of Cosmo written for Mormon girls.

Somewhat more fun from other perspectives, if also very dry in places, is the 200-page Church Handbook of Instructions, also Mormon. It's apparently intended for possession only by various "presidencies" and "high counsilors" and other authorities within the church. Interesting sections includes those on transsexuals (this is bad, naturally), homosexuality (ditto), living arrangements for missionaries, and so on, but I have to say it was less exciting than I'd hoped.

The LDS, naturally, is fighting like hell to get these documents off the Internet, though if they think they're going to succeed against Wikileaks, I have to think it's not going to work very well for them. They've also started going after websites who host links to the material in question, so I sincerely hope this won't be the last post on Jesus Drives an SUV. If it is, at least we'll have gone out standing in opposition to the tyranny of those who would seek to end the free exchange of knowledge.

An even more frighteningly litigious group, which is far more infamous for defending its doubtful "copyright" claims to all manner of its religious truth, is also in trouble with Wikileaks - a group I'll call the Church of Shmientology. Awesomely, when the lawyers for this group threatened Wikileaks, the latter publicly declared it would retaliate by publishing thousands more pages in secret documents. You can search for them yourself on the site, but evidently some of them describe human and galactic history for as much as the last four quadrillion years. This church is probably one of a very limited number who make converts sign contracts rather than, say, baptism certificates, and Wikileaks has a copy of one of the contracts too. I'm not sure who their Scientology source, but evidently it's a good one. Probably someone associated with Operation Chanology.
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Church of the Orange Sky Awtaf No. 2

The Church of the Orange Sky proclaims that the authors of Child Labour Made My Jesus have been granted a unique gift of revelation by the Orange Sky and hails them for using this gift in constructing an imaginative and relevant witness of the glory of God to this lost world.
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Inspirational Messages from Inspirational Places

Procrastinator's Link of the Day™: First Baptist Church of Prince George, B.C., I noticed while out driving today, wants people to know that "kindness is the oil that reduces the friction of life." There are so many ways to snark about that, I'm not even sure where to begin. This came to passersby via the church's bright new sidewalk sign, which recently replaced an older, duller sign taken out by someone who was already too lubricated to be driving.

For many more dubious attempts at inspiration, check out Joel B.'s Crummy Church Signs website.
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Church of the Orange Sky Awtaf No. 1

As an expression of gratitude for repeated funding awards in the past, this author has graciously extended space upon this blog for electronic propagation of the Church of the Orange Sky's official public proclamations, officially known as the "Awtaf" series.

The Church of the Orange Sky is pleased to proclaim Tatsuya Ishida a gifted messenger of the divine who has been blessed with the will and capacity to make the will of the Orange Sky known to humanity.

His webcomic, SinFest, has been providing unique religious commentary for several years now. Some fairly recent work which attracted the attention of the Church of the Orange Sky may be found here, here, here, here, here, and here (that's Buddha on the cloud, I think).
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Mad Reverends, 2008 Edition

This series is sponsored by the Church of the Orange Sky.

Procrastinator's Link of the Day™: The latest dubious hate songs, apparently from Fred Phelps's Westboro Baptist Church are available here, in Flash, QuickTime, and WMV formats for your convenience. It goes without saying, hopefully, that the Church of the Orange Sky does not condone spreading any message of hate and provides this link only as a matter of convenience to loyal readers looking for something slightly more off-color than YWAM dance videos.

The centrepiece of the collection, unfortunately, is available from an alternate source - Google Video, here - and takes a marginally asinine 1980s social protest song to an entirely new level. "God hates the world," indeed.

This blog has been silent lately as the authors celebrate Christmas and other equally non-religious holidays. Rest assured, however, that new and exciting things are coming, including collaboration on a new website which will be a provocative and relevant witness of Christ to a new generation.
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I miss youth group

Procrastinator's Link of the Day™: Since I've finally run out of procrastinating time myself, I can't write lengthy commentaries these days, but my last deadline is now a day away and after that I'm sure I'll be able to write something.

In the meantime, this news article is so twisted and bizarre, from the unbelievably asinine youth group to the overly anxious mother inexplicably calling the police, that it needs no further commentary on my part. I'll simply quote one of the juicier bits:

Ms. Metz said at the Nov. 29 Young Life meeting, after her son and two other boys were selected to take part in the skit, they were taken to a rest room by an older teen and given adult diapers, bibs and bonnets and directed to take their clothes off and put the diapers, bibs and bonnets on. Her son took off his pants, but kept on boxer undershorts, his shirt, shoes and socks.

The boys returned to the group, where they were asked to sit in the laps of three girls. The girls spoon-fed baby food to the boys and then gave them baby bottles filled with soda pop. The first boy to finish was the winner.
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The New Christian Economics

Procrastinator's Link of the Day™: Meet Supply-Side Jesus, Al Franken's unholy re-interpretation of Jesus's teachings based on classical economics. (Hopefully the humour is still present without readers having to take a first-year economics course or immerse themselves in Christian conservative notions about politics and the economy.)

Unlike the almost anarchistic Jesus of the original four gospels, Franken's Jesus helps the poor by refusing to give them free handouts, relying on wealth trickling down through rampant consumerism, and eventually sailing to Rome to bceome a politician.

Speaking of trickle-down economics and first-year courses, here's some corrective medicine for students who've been misled to believe Adam Smith was the father of modern capitalism:

"To widen the market and to narrow the competition is always the interest of the dealers ... The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted, till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it."

"What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable."
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Indulgences are Making a Comeback

Procrastinator's Link of the Day™: Reserve your spot in heaven today.

There's limited space, the owners of this website warn, and you don't want to be stuck at the wrong end of a weeks-long lineup at the gates. For $13, you can purchase a unique heaven ID number, an early reservation, and a tourist's guide. I wonder how you're expected to take these items with you.

This is not a sponsored link.
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How to Be the Next L. Ron Hubbard

Catherine has posted an instructional video for aspiring religious leaders.

I wonder how I'm going to afford all those neat blue shirts for my servants.
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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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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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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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