May 16, 2007 | 6:43 pm

Evangelical vote up for grabs

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Barbara Bradley Hagerty, NPR’s resident religion reporter, had a wonderful piece on the air this afternoon that began with the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s death, transitioned into his ruminations that the green movement was “Satan’s attempt to redirect the church’s primary focus,” and then moved into territory not talked about often enough: That many of today’s evangelical Christian are not members of the party of Falwell or Robertson or Dobson. They are, as I like to call them, Reluctant Republicans.

They think abortion is bad and they’re uncomfortable with the thought of gay sex—but, you know, they have this gay friend—and they don’t know what to make of stem cell research because they’re not sure what it is. Also important to them are the environment and issues relating to social justice—hunger, poverty, genocide—of which they see Jesus as the greatest proponent.

I came across this issue at an RNA conference two years ago, shortly after President Bush had been re-elected on the overblown moral values issue. (Polls show that the vaguely bound “moral values” button played as significant a role in voters decisions for those who re-elected Bill Clinton, too.) But the movement away from the hard-line old times is getting stronger.

That’s why Hagerty traveled to Florida, to the Northland Church, a megacenter pastored by Joel Hunter, who was inline to head the Christian Coalition, if he only could have watched the environment rot. What she found was a bunch of Bush-voting Republicans more likely to follow Bono than Pat Boone (no offense to Mr. Boone, who attends The Church on the Way in Van Nuys).

That creates a dilemma for Northland member Ruth Sapp, who was coming out of service on a recent Sunday morning.

“I still believe that same-sex marriage is not Biblical,” she said. “So I wouldn’t vote for someone who contradicted.”

Ditto about abortion, she said. So what happens if all the candidates fall short on these moral issues?

“I wouldn’t vote for anybody if that were the case,” she said. “I guess I’d have to skip my vote for that go-around.”

Voters like Sapp terrify the Republican Party — or at least they should, says Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

“Depending on the candidates, it could well be the case that evangelicals say, ‘We’re just really frustrated with politics. We don’t like the choices. We don’t think Sen. Clinton is a good choice or Sen. Obama — but on our side, we’re not really pleased with Mayor Guiliani. And you know what? We’re not going to vote,’” he said. “And I’m sure there will be pollsters saying, ‘Karl Rove thought 4 million staying home in 2000 was a lot. Well guess what? 12 million stayed home.’”

Cromartie doubts there will be such a large shift. But even if a small percentage of these new evangelicals stay home or vote Democratic, that could translate into a couple of million votes. Far less is needed to become president. In Florida, the home state of Northland church, George W. Bush won by 537 votes in the year 2000 — a small fraction of the worshippers streaming into the church on any given Sunday.

May 16, 2007 | 10:02 am

Sex abuse will spur archdiocese to sell headquarters

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The LA Archdiocese will have to sell its headquarters and possibly other properties because of the growing costs of fighting and settling lawsuits for clergy abuse, Cardinal Roger Mahony said yesterday. Plaintiffs’ attorneys said the doomsday announcement was a PR ploy intended at generating sympathy. Via the LA Times:

“The cardinal has instructed his attorneys to pull out every weapon to try to deny victims a single nickel,” said plaintiffs attorney John Manly. He said the church has enough insurance coverage and other assets to settle the cases without unloading real estate. “The notion that the cardinal would have to sell buildings to pay settlements is just laughable,” Manly said.

A Mahony spokesman declined to answer any questions about the prospective sales, and an attorney for the archdiocese did not respond to an interview request.

The church has land holdings in Southern California worth an estimated $4 billion, a Times analysis has found.

The 12-story Mid-Wilshire headquarters, donated by Thrifty Payless donated in 1995, is worth more than $40 million. (Some history of the archdiocese’s payouts from my blog morgue.)

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May 15, 2007 | 6:15 pm

Talk about interfaith marriage

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The St. Petersburg Times has this story last week. Just read the lede, which paints a more powerful portrait than my words could:

ST. PETERSBURG—On Sundays after church, Tom and Libit Jones head to the beach. Together, they scout for seashell treasures: cat’s paws and worms.

Hand in hand,  visors slung low,  arms wrapped around each other,  they stop to smooch as the sun starts its slow slip down.

Their public affection camouflages a deep divide.

Tom, 63, is an evangelical Christian, raised in a Kentucky Southern Baptist church. Libit, 52, is Mormon, raised in a Texas congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Both consider themselves faithful Christians who believe in Jesus Christ and the promise of eternal life. Both want the other to convert. But Tom runs Christian Research & Counsel, a ministry designed to educate the public about what he calls “counterfeits of Christianity.”

His work focuses on Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Hat-tip to GetReligion, which resurrected this story on the blogosphere yesterday.

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May 15, 2007 | 3:43 pm

Unless he is demon possessed ...

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

... this video has no religious hook. But a friend of mine found it on DevilDucky, and it’s pretty funny. If you can last through the first 90 seconds, you’ll see why someone might think there’s a spirit moving through Josh Silberman.

Here is an additional link to the reel for “the craziest kid in Hollywood.”

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May 15, 2007 | 2:00 pm

Jerry Falwell felled

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I’ve been out all morning, and during that time the news of Jerry Falwell being found unconscious in his office turned into his obituary. Falwell, the 73-year-old founder of the once powerful Moral Majority, a fundamentalist firebrand, died of a heart-rhythm irregularity.

From CBS.com:

He had an unlikely beginning for the Christian ministry: his grandfather was a self-avowed atheist; his father, an agnostic who hated preachers and ran a moonshine operation during Prohibition. But Falwell decided early on, in his teen years, to devote his life to Christian service, calling himself a spiritual streetfighter.

“If we lose our moral bearings, we shall surely collapse,” he once said.

(skip)

“Abortion, family values, the moral underpinnings on which the nation was built we call the Judeo-Christian ethic, is important to us,” Falwell said.

He was a man of strong opinions. That often got him in trouble.

In 1999, he charged that a popular children’s television character, one of the Teletubbies, could be gay because he was purple and carried a handbag. One Falwell critic responded by saying he’d “rather watch the ‘Teletubbies’ than televangelists.”

After Sept. 11, Falwell declared God’s anger with gays, lesbians, abortionists and feminists had contributed to the terrorist attacks. He later apologized, saying only the terrorists were to blame. But in 2002, this comment led to deadly riots in the Muslim world:

“I think Muhammad was a terrorist. I’ve read enough of the history of his life, written by both Muslims and non-Muslims, that he was a violent man, a man of war.”

Again Falwell was stung by criticism. But he still had the ability to deliver big bucks and votes to political candidates — and that gave him power to keep pushing his moral agenda.

Though his televangelism would experience problems — he once lost his tax exemption when the IRS determined his “Old Time Gospel Hour” was being used for political purposes — he nevertheless kept broadcasting.

It’s what Jesus would have done, he said.

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May 14, 2007 | 8:59 pm

Rebuilding spiritually in Greensburg

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

When 95 percent of Greensburg, Kan., was leveled May 4 by an F5 tornado, the town’s 1,400 residents were left homeless. But yesterday, more than twice the tiny town’s population returned to Greensburg for spiritual replenishing.

News reports referred to the mass worship service as a non-denominational gathering. In Los Angeles, that would mean it included Christians and Jews and Muslims and Hindus and non-believers, too. In Kansas,  it means Methodists and Catholics and Lutherans.

It remains unclear what will come of Greensburg. USA Today asked, “Can the town be saved? And if so, will enough folks return to make it the community it was 10 days ago, before the tornado?”

For the religious minded, this is, of course, one of the most difficult occurrences to reconcile with a benevolent God.

At the worship service, Tim Henning, pastor of Peace Lutheran Church in Greensburg, compared town residents to Job, whom God tested by allowing Satan to take strip from him his family, his prosperity and his health.

“We are like him, we lost everything,” he said.

Henning reminded residents that God was still with them.

“Trust in the Lord with all your strength — God bless Greensburg,” he said.

 

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May 14, 2007 | 5:16 pm

Jews too powerful, talk too much about Holocaust

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

That’s according to 2,700 European adults surveyed by the ADL.

The survey found that a majority of those in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland believe Jews are more loyal to Israel than the country they live in; that Jews have too much power in business (39 percent of those polled) and financial markets (44 percent); talk too much about the Holocaust (47 percent); and are responsible for killing Jesus (20 percent).

In other news: Europeans have discovered a Jewish conspiracy for world domination, informally dubbed The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.

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May 13, 2007 | 8:38 pm

More than abortion and gays

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Evangelical phenom Rick Warren made a refreshing statement yesterday at a three-day summit in the heart of Religious Right activism, Colorado Springs, Colo. Via the LA Times:

“We’ve got some people who only focus on moral purity and couldn’t care less about the poor, the sick, the uneducated. And they haven’t done zip for those people,” said Warren, a mega-church pastor in California and author of the best-selling “The Purpose-Driven Life.”

Warren hastened to say that he also opposed abortion and gay marriage. But too often, he said, Christians these days are defined by their “big mouth” — what they argue against, not what they embrace. He pointed to a verse from the Book of James that calls caring for orphans an essential element of a “pure and undefiled” faith.

“It’s time for the church to stop debating the Bible and start doing it,” Warren said.

To be sure, several speakers stated that providing a viable adoption meant finding a safe home with “both a mommy and a daddy.”

(Extra reading: Check out Rob Eshman’s column about Warren’s Shabbat visit to Sinai Temple last year.)

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May 13, 2007 | 7:00 pm

‘Is Christianity Good for the World?’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Christian theologian Douglas Wilson and atheist Christopher Hitchens are debating that question at ChristianityToday.com. Here’s a snippet:

Hitchens: if (sic) Christianity is to claim credit for the work of outstanding Christians or for the labors of famous charities, then it must in all honesty accept responsibility for the opposite. I shall not condescend to your readers in specifying what these “opposites” are, but I suggest once more that you pay attention to the Golden Rule. If hymns and psalms were sung to sanctify slavery—just to take a recent example—and then sung by abolitionists, then surely the non-fanatical explanation is that morality requires no supernatural sanction? Every Christian church has had to make some apology for its role in the Crusades, slavery, anti-Semitism, and much else. I do not think that such humility discredits faith as such, because I tend to think that faith is a problem to begin with, but I do think that humility will lead to the necessary conclusion that religion is man-made.

Wilson: In short, if we point to our saints, you are going to demand that we point also to our charlatans, persecutors, shysters, slave-traders, inquisitors, hucksters, televangelists, and so on. Now allow me the privilege of pointing out the structure of your argument here. If a professor takes credit for the student who mastered the material, aced his finals, and went on to a career that was a benefit to himself and the university he graduated from, the professor must (fairness dictates) be upbraided for the dope-smoking slacker that he kicked out of class in the second week. They were both formally enrolled, is that not correct? They were both students, were they not?

What you are doing is saying that Christianity must be judged not only on the basis of those who believe the gospel in truth and live accordingly but also on the basis of those baptized Christians who cannot listen to the Sermon on the Mount without a horse laugh and a life to match. You are saying that those who excel in the course and those who flunk out of it are all the same. This seems to me to be a curious way of proceeding.

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May 12, 2007 | 9:54 pm

Out of the cocoon

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

New look and logo for The God Blog, with a little branding for my new home, The Jewish Journal. I wouldn’t say I’ve matured too much, however, with this mug shot, a favorite of my wife, gracing the page.

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May 11, 2007 | 12:42 pm

The media’s Mormon problem

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

This is getting really old. Mitt Romney is a legitimate candidate for the Republican presidential ticket. A conservative governor of one of the most liberal states in the union, maybe he could rebuild some of those political bridges burnt and blown up during the past six years. But Romney won’t be president. He won’t even edge the hapless—and surprisingly popular, though increasingly less so—pro-choice Rudy Giuliani.

Why is it unlikely he’ll get the primary nod? Because he is Mormon—in fact, his great-great-grandfather was a polygamist martyr—and that is all the media seems to be able to talk about. The Washington Monthly, Reuters, The New York Times, and even conservative talk-show host Hugh Hewitt.

In November, Time asked “A Mormon for President?” shortly after two-thirds of Americans said they wouldn’t vote one of Joseph Smith‘s followers into the Oval Office (though there are 15 in Congress). In March, however, Gallup released a new poll saying 72 percent of Americans would vote for a qualified Mormon for president. Back came Time yesterday with this story:

John F. Kennedy’s election in 1960 was supposed to have laid the “religious question” to rest, yet it arises again with a fury. What does the Constitution mean when it says there should be no religion test for office? It plainly means that a candidate can’t be barred from running because he or she happens to be a Quaker or a Buddhist or a Pentecostal. But Mitt Romney’s candidacy raises a broader issue: Is the substance of private beliefs off-limits? You can ask if a candidate believes in school vouchers and vote for someone else if you disagree with the answer. But can you ask if he believes that the Garden of Eden was located in Jackson County, Mo., as the Mormon founder taught, and vote against him on the grounds of that answer? Or, for that matter, because of the kind of underwear he wears?

Slate editor Jacob Weisberg threw down the challenge after reviewing some of Joseph Smith’s more extravagant assertions. “He was an obvious con man,” Weisberg wrote. “Romney has every right to believe in con men, but I want to know if he does, and if so, I don’t want him running the country.” That argument, counters author and radio host Hugh Hewitt, amounts to unashamed bigotry and opens the door to any person of any faith who runs for office being called to account for the mysteries of personal belief. He has published A Mormon in the White House?, a chronicle of Romney’s rise as business genius, Olympic savior, political star. But Hewitt has a religious mission as well when he cites a survey in which a majority of Evangelicals said voting for a Mormon was out of the question. If that general objection means they would not consider Romney in 2008, Hewitt warns, then prejudice is legitimized, and “it will prove a disastrous turning point for all people of faith in public life.”

The Mormon question has settled in right next to the issue of whether a twice-divorced man has credibility discussing family values or whether changing one’s mind on an issue like abortion is a sign of moral growth or cynical retreat. Unlike in 1960, today the argument is less about the role of religion in public life than in private. It is about what our faith says about our judgment and how our traditions shape our instincts—and about what we have the right to ask those who run for the highest office in the land.

 

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May 11, 2007 | 11:10 am

‘The Terrorists Next Door?’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

It’s a scary time to be an American Muslim. Islamophobia is more pervasive now than it was in the wake of 9/11. Those sentiments could have only been heightened Tuesday when the government announced it was charging six foreign-born “radical Islamists” with plotting to attack Jersey’s Ft. Dix and kill as many soldiers before dying as martyrs. The news was followed by these headlines Thursday:

“The Terrorists Next Door? Plot Suspects Lived Quietly in Suburb”

and

“Religion Guided 3 Held in Fort Dix Plot”

That first story was in The Washington Post. The second is from The New York Times.

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