February 9, 2010 | 11:20 am

The BlackBerry First Church of 1600 Pennsylvania

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I’ve long since tired of the oddsmaking and speculating about where President Barack Obama and his family would worship or why they weren’t at church on any given Sunday. (Besides, the answer is obvious—maybe painfully so.) But this story from ABC News held my attention:

If church attendance is one measure of a man’s faith, then President Obama may appear to have lost some of his. The first family, once regular churchgoers, have publicly attended services in Washington just three times in the past year, by ABC News’ count, even bypassing the pews on Christmas Day. ...

“My Faith and Neighborhood Initiatives director, Joshua DuBois, he has a devotional that he sends to me on my BlackBerry every day,” Obama said. “That’s how I start my morning. You know, he’s got a passage, Scripture, in some cases quotes from other faiths to reflect on.”

Keeping the faith in quiet moments of worship may be the best Obama can do given the realities of the presidency that make it nearly impossible to join a church without inflicting a heavy burden on taxpayers, fellow churchgoers and his own spiritual life, sources say.

Security concerns mean costly and complicated measures to ensure the president’s safety on church outings, including screening every member of the congregation for weapons and sweeping the church building and areas around it for threats.

Incessant media attention is also distracting for any president trying to commune with God, exposing what is traditionally a private practice to public scrutiny

I agree with the latter part of that, and part of the former. Other presidents have made it work. President Reagan famously attended my church when he was back in California. But no church on Christmas?! See, Obama is Muslim!

Read the rest here. You’ll see some familiar names from Obama’s spiritual inner circle.

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February 9, 2010 | 8:08 am

Stan Lee’s League of Super Churches

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

This video from the drama department at Bel Air Presbyterian is not nearly as entertaining as, say, this one. But it features a most fascinating cameo.

At the end of this comic book tale of different churches working together, re-iterating an ongoing theme at Bel Air of transforming Los Angeles, Stan Lee—AKA Stanley Martin Lieber or just The Godfather—appears and says:

“And thus was born, that day, the League of Super Churches, transforming the city and bringing on the kingdom, one mission at a time.”

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February 8, 2010 | 10:38 pm

Boxing champ Yuri Foreman to speak at Jewlicious

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I spoke last year at Jewlicious Festival about my Jew-ish identity. It went well—listen for yourself—but I’ve been replaced by a real heavyweight. Well, technically, Yuri Foreman is a welterweight. And he’ll be speaking in Long Beach this month:

What should Jewlicious Festival goers expect? Well, a general increase in both testosterone and spirituality and a talk from Yuri about Jewish identity. Or a seminar on how to kick ass. We’re not sure yet. We don’t really care, we’re just thrilled to have him and we all look forward to meeting him.

More about Jewlicious Festival here.

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February 8, 2010 | 10:12 am

Baron Davis and Jewish World Watch join forces

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

If I wasn’t going to be doing my best Baron Davis impression—that means playing in my IM game tonight with a beard—I’d be checking out this Jewish World Watch rally. The guest of honor is none other than B-Diddy.

I’m not sure what it would cost you, but Davis will be shooting hoops with attendees. Proceeds will go to Jewish World Watch’s Darfur Dream Team’s Sister School Program:

Jewish World Watch will present Baron Davis, Darfur Dream Team Co-captain, and John Prendergast, Co-founder of the Enough Project, with a check for $115,000. These funds will be used to improve the education of nearly 4,000 Darfuri children through the building and rehabilitation of school buildings and by providing school supplies, teaching training, and sports equipment.  Jewish World Watch plans to continue raising funds to support a third school.

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February 7, 2010 | 9:22 pm

No mention of abortion in Tebow ad

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

That was it? That was the Super Bowl commercial featuring Tim Tebow that was a source of major controversy? That one?

It was billed as an anti-abortion ad, but there was no mention of abortion, only that Pam Tebow suffered some complications while carrying Timmy. Could not have been more apolitical. Even on the Focus on the Family site that the ad directed viewers to, the Tebows talk mainly about the fact that God had a special plan for their son and that’s why He spared him in the womb and since.

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February 7, 2010 | 9:13 am

Stewart on O’Reilly: ‘thinnest kid at fat camp’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Prophet and preacher. The highlight of this exchange was a line that I sent to one very worth friend: About being the sanest voice on Fox News, Jon Stewart told Bill O’Reilly that his honors were equivalent to “being the thinnest kid at fat camp.”

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February 7, 2010 | 6:18 am

Faithless football

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Today is the day the NFL says has been building to. Seems as apt a time as any to mention this column from Friday’s Wall Street Journal. It’s one I wish I had written. I didn’t, but I’ll still take some credit because Sarah Pulliam Bailey, my colleague at GetReligion, referenced in the column a quote that I included in a previous blog post about Kurt Warner’s faith.

Here’s an excerpt from Sarah’s column, “Where God Talk Gets Sidelined”:

Peter King, a senior writer for Sports Illustrated, admits his own skepticism when players bring up their faith after a game. “I’ve seen enough examples of players who claim to be very religious and then they get divorced three times or get in trouble with the law,” Mr. King said earlier this week. “I’m not sure that the public is crying out for us to discover the religious beliefs of the athletes we’re writing about.”

Faith is the belief in things unseen. Sportswriters are trained to write about the observable. “One of the problems that we have is determining the veracity of a person’s claim that he has just won this game for his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,” Mr. King said.

In the Baltimore Sun before last year’s Super Bowl, Washington Post reporter Rick Maese characterized his fellow journalists as “notebook-toting cynics who worship at the altar of the free media buffet.” But he softened his language and cut his colleagues some slack when I spoke to him recently. A sports reporter might write one story with a strong religion angle and feel like the idea is no longer fresh for the next athlete he covers, Mr. Maese told me. “It’s not like the reporter’s going to bring an athlete’s beliefs or religious affiliation up out of the blue,” he said. But “if that’s something the player cites as a motivating factor, I don’t think you’re telling the full story if you don’t explore that angle a little bit.”

Read the rest here. And, I guess since this is The God Blog, go Saints.

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February 4, 2010 | 1:49 pm

Rabbi is appalled by mayor’s ‘Christian community’ statement

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

In response to the Lancaster, Calif., mayor saying his city was “Christian community,” Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater of the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center sent this perspective:

As a clergy person and proud American citizen, I am appalled and dismayed by the brazen and overt display of religious intolerance that the Mayor of Lancaster and a member of their city council have recently exhibited in calling for their city to be a “Christian community.”  We live in the United States of America, predicated on the notion of separation of church and state, the notion that all religions have the right to practice freely without coercion or threats from the government.  The insensitivity shown by these city leaders cannot be allowed to go unnoticed and unchallenged. 

There are proud Jews and Muslims in Lancaster, as well as many people of other faiths, and no faith, I would imagine.  The gross stereotyping displayed by City Councilwoman Marquez, saying on her Facebook page that Islam is “all about beheadings and honor killings…” is an insult to people of faith, including the Christians she purports to defend and support.  Calling for Lancaster to be a “Christian community” is unacceptable and should be fought with the full force of the law.  And not because there is anything wrong with a “Christian community,” but as Americans, we understand what it means to have religion in the government.  We fled Europe for that very reason.  We have failed in so many ways with the covert intrusions of religious beliefs into our civil government, and the not so subtle ways that non-Christians have to tolerate being excluded from many areas of local, state and federal displays of Christianity; yet, to have a mayor of a city declare his intention to use his authority as an elected official to create a specifically religious community is over the line.

All good people of faith should stand together in fighting this intolerance and religious prejudice.  I stand with the people of Lancaster who are being excluded from their own city and call on others to do the same.

What do you say?

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February 3, 2010 | 1:08 pm

A trippy relationship with God

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

This ABC News report is a few years old, but I don’t recall seeing it before. Thanks for sending it along, Dennis.

The headline, “Can You Find God in a Pill?,” is a reference to a 1966 pamphlet opposing the spiritual effects of hallucinogens. I think we know what Craig X Rubin would say. The question here reminds me of a point addressed in one of my first blog posts:

“You have to give people a feeling or a sense of the sacred and then you have to bond them in community,” Robert C. Fuller, a religion professor at Bradley University in Illinois and author of Stairways to Heaven: Drugs in American Religious History, told me. “The fact of the matter is anything that helps with those two function has religious values.”

Thoughts?

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February 3, 2010 | 8:37 am

If ‘Lost’ had been based on a flight from Israel

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I never got into “Lost.” Instead, I made the mistake of falling for “Heroes”—only to have my heart broken when the plot collapsed in its second season. (It was briefly resuscitated that spring, but has been among the living dead since at least the fall.) That being said, I didn’t see the return of “Lost” last night and have nothing to discuss today regarding what happened in the beginning of the end. But I can engage in some pop culture revisionism.

What if that Oceanic Airlines flight from Sydney to L.A. had instead been an El Al plane out of Tel Aviv? The JTA staff imagines how different the island would have been:

# Jack would not have been the only doctor.

# John Locke would have been named Yeshayahu Leibowitz.

# Sayid would have never made it on to the plane.

# Instead of his makeshift radio, some of the Israeli passengers would have set up a high-speed Internet link.

# Some Lubavicther would have shown up before long to open up a Chabad house.

# There would be more than just one recklessly driven, German-made vehicle on the road.

# The existence of a nuclear weapon on the island would never have been acknowledged.

# Gratuitous shots of Kate in her underwear would be replaced by quick peeks of haredi women sans sheitels.

# The island would suddenly have attracted the attention of the entire world, with the U.N. accusing the passengers of illegally occupying territory and using disproportionate force to fend off attacks by the Others.

Any mention of El Al reminds me of my experience getting hassled en route to Israel. I wrote about this for JTA during the High Holidays. I don’t think I ever shared that story, but you can read the whole thing after the jump:

Read more of this post

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February 2, 2010 | 1:31 pm

Limbaugh’s God wouldn’t allow global warming

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Media Matters keeps emailing me these religion-related statements being made by Rush Limbaugh. Today, Limbaugh said he couldn’t conceive of a rationale reason that God would create a world that could be ruined by people:

I simply cannot accept the fact that we would be created to destroy our own life-sustaining environment.

Obviously, Limbaugh is not a history buff.

Previously on The God Blog:

“Washington Times, cultism and global warming”

“Evangelicals overcommitted to the Bible”

“Pope attacks climate change ‘prophets of doom’”

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