September 10, 2007 | 11:18 am

Jesus loves company

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Are you reading this Roy Moore?

From the religion blog for Monday-morning thieves:

The courthouse in Slidell, La., had a portrait of Jesus on the wall, with the words, “To know peace, obey these laws.” This put a burr under the saddle of the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed suit to have the portrait removed.

The court responded by adding portraits of Napoleon, Confucius, Hammurabi, Moses, Charlemagne, Octavian, Louis IX, John Marshall and other historical figures—plus a framed copy of the Constitution. Here‘s a story from Christine Harvey of The Times-Picayune in New Orleans.

Mike Johnson, a lawyer from a Christian advocacy group representing the court, said the idea was “to erect an artistic display to emphasize the importance of following the law to maintain a peaceful society.”

  I think Johnson has the ACLU checkmated. It’s hard to argue now, it seems to me, that the courthouse display is more religious than historical—particularly since many public buildings, including he U.S. Supreme Court , contain similar art works depicting “great lawgivers of history.” (The Supreme Court friezes do not include Jesus—but they do include Moses, Solomon, and Muhammad. Yes, Muhammad.)

Yes, but there is also the issue of history and intent. Does this pass the smell test?

September 9, 2007 | 1:22 pm

Israeli neo-Nazis

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Jews too can be great anti-Semites. History proves that. (Not the same as Larry David whistling Wagner.) Still, this article today in Haaretz, sent to me by Paul in Barcelona, is surprising and most certainly unsettling.

The Interior Ministry said Sunday that it would consider revoking the citizenship of eight teens suspected of running a neo-Nazi cell in Petah Tikva, if they are convicted.

The suspects, aged 17 to 19, confessed to assaulting dozens of people, mainly foreign workers around Tel Aviv’s central bus station and Carmel market, causing many of them serious injury. The eight were arrested a month ago, and a gag order on the arrest was lifted Saturday.

According to police, the neo-Nazi cell comprised individuals who have distant ties to Judaism and nonetheless immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet Union under the Law of Return, which grants all Jews the right to immigrate.

Government officials from the prime minister on down sound really concerned in the article that Israelis will look suspiciously at all youths from the 1990s wave of former Soviet emigration.

Superintendent Revital Almog, who was in charge of the investigation, said that the police learned that a “neo-Nazi cell was being operated in Israel by people living in Israel but believing in Nazi ideology and in Hitler.”

“We discovered that besides their meetings, at which they praised Nazi ideology, they used to go out to Tel Aviv in a group to perpetrate racist attacks,” Almog continued.

Almog said that the teens would deliberately select victims who they deemed too weak to complain. Most of them were foreign workers who the teenagers would attack, telling them that because they were not white, they would be harmed.
One video shows some of the teens surrounding a young Russian heroin addict, who admits he is Jewish. Later they order him to get down on his knees and beg forgiveness from the Russian people for being Jewish and a junky. They beat him mercilessly, along with another man who comes to his aid.

The group was also reportedly planning to celebrate Hitler’s birthday at Yad Vashem.

Everyone knows there are problems with Israel’s Law of Return, which ensures that anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent can immigrate and obtain citizenship. But will a story like this be enough to incite change? 

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September 9, 2007 | 12:01 pm

The transsexual minister and the president’s pick for America’s physician

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Talk about worlds colliding.

The LA Times this morning took note of a transsexual United Methodist minister—the former Rev. Ann Gordon, now Drew Phoenix—mentioned here in May. But an interesting twist on the story is this:

(w)hen Phoenix, 48, was reappointed to another year of ministry this spring by his bishop, it sparked a protest in the United Methodist Church.

The denomination’s highest authority, the Judicial Council, will take up the case next month, deciding whether the church should accept transgender pastors. The decision will determine Phoenix’s future; it could also have political implications.

Presiding over the Judicial Council is Dr. James W. Holsinger Jr., President Bush’s nominee for surgeon general and a longtime lay leader of the United Methodist church. Democrats have objected to Holsinger in large part because of work he has done for his church over the years.

Holsinger, whom you might remember from here and here and here, has been attacked fro the left and right because of his position on homosexuality. He wrote a 1991 paper for the denomination describing homosexuality as unnatural, ruled last year in favor of a minister who wouldn’t allow a gay man to join his church and supports ex-gay therapy.

The United Methodist playbook—known as the Book of Discipline—has “no specific policies regarding gender reassignment.”

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September 7, 2007 | 6:57 pm

Grace and idolatry on the gridiron

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Yes, with the Colts blowing out the Saints last night, another pro football season is upon us. Hallelujah. (Though for me, the big gameday is college Saturday.) In honor, Christianity Today questions the righteousness of all our armchair quarterbacking in a lengthy story published online today, “Why We Love Football.” A sampling from Steel Town U.S.A.:

When the Steelers made their remarkable, improbable Super Bowl run two years ago, the atmosphere across the region was electric, all day, all night, each week bringing a new level of primal voltage, powering countless parties, conversations, newscasts, even classrooms. At the college where I teach, students, faculty, and staff could speak of little else, to the sometimes flamboyant annoyance of the out-of-staters in our midst. Two guys, one from Ohio, the other from Cyprus, shaved their heads in protest, not of the Steelers so much as their fans. That included me, I suppose: I wore my Steelers necktie on Mondays and my “replica jersey” on Fridays—Black-and-Gold Day citywide, all month, as Pittsburghers sported their truest colors in effusive display.

January was, you might say, unusually warm that year, the temperature rising as the mercury dropped. Musicians wrote and recorded dozens of Steelers songs, some of which were played on radio stations, made available through the internet, and danced to at clubs and bars. (“What is it about the Steelers’ success that makes people say, ‘Where’s my kazoo?’” quipped Pittsburgh Post-Gazette columnist Gene Collier.) When at last Super Bowl Sunday arrived, I was amused and charmed most by the elderly woman who wore into our staid two-century-old Presbyterian church a plastic Steelers vest and Steelers earrings, hobbling into her pew with a glimmer in her eye. How did the pastor make it through the sermon? It’s hard enough under ordinary circumstances to preach to restless pew-sitters, let alone when they’re wearing face paint, as the children in one family did.

Few dimensions of our common life so totally capture the 21st century American zeitgeist as the National Football League. Perhaps none do. (skip)

Here’s what I wonder: What kind of organization provides us with everything we want, from extraordinary spectacles to godlike athletes to dancing girls? And what kind of people accept such offerings?

These are dangerous questions, costly to ask. So we don’t.

But ask we must—if that troubling, first-century category “the world” and the older notion of “idolatry” are to have any contemporary meaning. What do these ancient words get at if not a people’s steady refusal of the true pathway to life and their accompanying preference for counterfeits? (skip) At its best, sport may lead us more fully into an experience of health, an experience of community, play, joy—all good gifts of the Creator. But this happens only if it is enfolded within a grander, richer participation in life, in which another set of rites and symbols and songs takes us more deeply into gratitude and grace, sourced in the Creator and centered on the Cross.

I bit heavier reading than I expected. But I get what author Eric Miller, an associate professor of history at Geneva College, is trying to say: Don’t be blinded by the pleasures and distractions of this world. After all, for a lot of people, sports become religion. For 2,500 words more regarding football and religion, here’s a story I wrote two years ago about an American Muslim teenager playing football on the empty stomach required during the month of Ramadan. (Photo: Those are the Chargers Girls during a Halloween game.)

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September 7, 2007 | 1:02 pm

Goat sacrifice and frequent flyer miles

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Whenever I am in need of a post topic, I visit my friend the Bible Belt Blogger and he fills me up, today with a BBC story about how an Indian airline was chopping off goat heads to appease the gods. The BBB says:

This may be the first time that goats have died to prevent Boeing 757s from experiencing mechanical difficulties. However, I’ve read that chickens are sometimes fired, at high speeds—into the sides of jumbo jets to be sure they’re structurally sound.

(For added enjoyment, download this song.)

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September 7, 2007 | 9:24 am

Nuns on the run (sort of)

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Sister Angela Escalera didn’t molest Catholic youths, but the sins of the fathers—and the $660 million settlement the Archdiocese of Los Angeles made with more than 500 people who claimed they were sexually abused by Catholic priests—is forcing out Escalera and the other nuns of Sisters of Bethany house in Santa Barbara. From the LA Times:

SANTA BARBARA—For 43 years, Sister Angela Escalera has lived and often worked out of her order’s small convent on this city’s east side, helping the area’s many poor and undocumented residents with translation, counseling and other needs.

Now retired and partly disabled at 69, the nun thought she would live out her days here, in the community where she is still an active volunteer and in the dwelling that was built for the order in 1952.

But she and the other two nuns at the Sisters of Bethany house recently received word that their convent, which is owned by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, will be sold to help pay the bill for the church’s recent, multimillion-dollar priest sex abuse settlement.

The nuns have four months to move out, according to a letter from the archdiocese. The notice, which was dated June 28 but not received until the end of August, asked the women to vacate the property no later than Dec. 31—and noted that an earlier departure “would be acceptable as well.” Signed by Msgr. Royale M. Vadakin, the archdiocese’s vicar general, the letter offers the nuns no recourse but thanks them for their understanding and cooperation during a difficult time.

“We’re just so hurt by this,” Escalera, the order’s local superior, said this week. “And what hurts the most is what the money will be used for, to help pay for the pedophile priests. We have to sacrifice our home for that?”

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September 7, 2007 | 9:20 am

Anti-Semitism and homophobia—kissing cousins

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

In today’s Jewish Journal, Daniel Hemel argues that Jews should oppose the forced resignation of scumbag Sen. Larry Craig because, much to Jewry’s surprise, Craig has turned out to be a strong supporter of Israel.

While I don’t believe that those who love Israel must love politicians who share the sentiment, no matter how vile their other public policies or private actions, Hemel draws an interesting comparison between the perceived double standard in the GOP—Craig solicits sex in a men’s bathroom and has to resign; Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana’s number appears on a madam’s phone list but an apology suffices—and the atmosphere for anti-Semitism.

As the late Yale historian John Boswell showed, where there is homophobia, anti-Semitism very often lurks around the corner.

“The same laws which oppressed Jews oppressed gay people; the same groups bent on eliminating Jews tried to wipe out homosexuality,” Boswell wrote.

While his study was based on medieval Europe, his words ring true in modern America. Jews may disagree about the status of homosexuals within our own religious communities, but when there is an upsurge of homophobia in society at large, all Jews should take note.

Craig, even though he insists he is not gay, appears to be a victim of homophobia.

Is Craig a victim of homophobia? And, if so, should that be enough to swing the pendulum back in the direction of getting to keep his job?

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September 6, 2007 | 1:04 pm

Why Christians should love Israel

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Is it mere coincidence the same week two American academic elites’ book criticizing the power of “The Israel Lobby” hit bookshelves that ”Christianity Today, the “magazine of evangelical conviction” that I write for often, published an editorial explaining why Christians should love not only Israel but Jews, too?

The key complaint offered against dispensationalists is that they talk as though God had separate plans for saving Israel and the church. And contemporary Reformed Christians are accused of having a “replacement theology” in which the church takes the place of Israel, inheriting all of God’s promises with no remainder for the Jewish people. The one view tends to find no fault with Israeli government decisions as long as they do not compromise dispensational theology. The other view tends to consider the continued existence of the Jewish people a historical anomaly with little theological significance.

But we cannot read the New Testament without seeing that the Jews continue to have a place in God’s economy. Gentile Christians do not replace the Jews, but are joint heirs and wild branches grafted onto the Jewish olive tree. God’s ultimate purpose in saving Gentile Christians is to save the Jews (Rom. 11).

The evangelical mainstream needs to do some rigorous theological work on its relationship to Judaism, to the Jewish people, and to the state of Israel. The concerns we must address include:

The list continues here. For more: Check out David Remnick’s commentary on Walt and Mearsheimer’s book, which StandWithUs likens to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

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September 6, 2007 | 10:24 am

In Burg’s world, Hitler won

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Avraham Burg, “the apostate” former speaker of Knesset who this summer said the Israeli dream is dead, gets gutted by Hillel Halkin in a Commentary piece titled “A Wicked Son.” Only an abstract is online free, but here two poignant portions of the article on L’affaire Burg:

It is as if Al Gore, after losing to George W. Bush in the year 2000, had denounced the Declaration of Independence, called the United States a cultural and spiritual wasteland, compared it with pre-Hitler Germany, prepared asylum for himself in a European country, and recommended to all Americans that they follow his example.

...

Avraham Burg is against military might. In another passage [of his book “Defeating Hitler”] about the Holocaust, this one touching on the Warsaw Ghetto revolt and its being made a symbol of Jewish resistance, he writes:

Had I lived in one of the ghettos, I’m not sure I would have chosen to take up arms [against the Nazis]. I think I would have asked myself until the moment of my death weather armed revolt was not foreign to the spirit of Judaism. ... In the end I would have turned to the spiritual repertoire of Mahatma Gandhi and sought to stir Europe with a wave of non-violent protest.

One rubs one’s eyes with disbelief. A wave of non-violent portest in the Europe of World War II, as if Auschwitz was Amritsar—or Selma, Alabama!

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September 6, 2007 | 1:01 am

The saga of Patrick Henry ... College

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The story of tiny Patrick Henry College, a school in Virginia that has a high percentage of students that were home-schooled by conservative Christian parents and has become a feeder for government internships, has gotten a lot of mileage.
I mentioned it in a story two years ago about Christian parents choosing to home-school their children. But, of course, I was not the first to the story. Hanna Rosin was. And now Rosin has a book about PHC titled “God’s Harvard: A Christian College on a Mission to Save America,” reviewed this week by Newsweek.

The book originated with an article Rosin wrote two years ago for The New Yorker. Here’s the lede:

In the last days before the 2004 Presidential election, Patrick Henry College, in Purcellville, Virginia, excused all its students from classes, because so many of them were working on campaigns or wanted to go to the swing states to get out the vote for George W. Bush. Elisa Muench, a junior, was interning in the White House’s Office of Strategic Initiatives, which is overseen by Karl Rove. On Election Day, she stood on the South Lawn with the rest of the White House staff to greet the President and Mrs. Bush as they returned from casting their votes in Texas. Muench cheered along with everyone else, but she was worried. Her office was “keeping up contact with Karl,” and she knew that the early exit polls were worse than expected. Through the night, she watched the results, as Bush’s electoral-vote total began to rise. The next morning, after Kerry conceded, she stood in the crowd at the Bush campaign’s victory party, in clothes she’d been wearing all night, and “cried and screamed and laughed, it was so overwhelming.”

I found Muench in the Patrick Henry cafeteria at lunchtime one day a few months later. She is twenty-one years old and has clear, bright hazel eyes and sandy-brown hair that she straightens and then curls with an iron. Patrick Henry is a Christian college, though it is not affiliated with any denomination, and it gives students guidelines on “glorifying God with their appearance.” During class hours, the college enforces a “business casual” dress code designed to prepare the students for office life—especially for offices in Washington, D.C., fifty miles to the east, where almost all the students have internships, with Republican politicians or in conservative think tanks. When I met Muench, she was wearing a cardigan and a navy skirt. The boys in the cafeteria all had neatly trimmed hair, and wore suits or khakis and button-down shirts; girls wore slacks or skirts just below the knee, and sweaters or blouses. Most said grace before eating, though they did it silently and discreetly, with a quick bow of the head.

Muench told me that she loved working for Rove—answering the phone and having a senator on the line, meeting Andrew Card, the chief of staff (“He’s a nice guy”), and Vice-President Dick Cheney (“He’s really funny”). She took a bus from Patrick Henry at six every morning to arrive at the White House by seven-thirty. Her work with Rove, she told me, affirmed her belief that he was a political genius.

In her sophomore year, Muench had become the first—and, so far, the only—woman at Patrick Henry to run for a student-government executive office, when she entered the race for vice-president. Campaigns are unusually intense at Patrick Henry; candidates hire pollsters and form slates. One of Muench’s friends, Matthew du Mée, was on an opposing slate, and the race caused a strain. (Both lost.) Muench’s internship with Rove has given her a reputation, much envied on campus, as someone worth knowing. The day we spoke, a sophomore leaned across the table and asked, “How much do you make, starting salary, working on the Hill?”

“I’m not sure,” Muench said.

“I heard one of the graduates working for Joe Pitts is making, like, thirty-two thousand dollars. That’s not that much.” (Pitts is a Republican congressman.)

“Well, it’s not too bad if you’re a single person,” Muench told him.

“Do you have any intentions of running for office?” the sophomore asked.

“Yes,” she said.

At that moment, Muench’s cell phone rang. It was Cheney’s office, calling to thank her for volunteering for the Vice-President’s Christmas party, and to ask if she would allow her name to be put on a list for future openings.

Muench, like eighty-five per cent of the students at Patrick Henry, was homeschooled, in her case in rural Idaho. Homeschoolers are not the most obvious raw material for a college whose main mission, since its founding, five years ago, has been to train a new generation of Christian politicians. Politics, after all, is the most social of professions, and many students arrive at Patrick Henry having never shared a classroom with anyone other than their siblings. In conservative circles, however, homeschoolers are considered something of an élite, rough around the edges but pure—in their focus, capacity for work, and ideological clarity—a view that helps explain why the Republican establishment has placed its support behind Patrick Henry, and why so many conservative politicians are hiring its graduates.

It’s a long story—not by New Yorker standards, but still long—but it’s worth reading the rest. And if you do, let me know what you think are the benefits and dangers of a small school like PHC being such a feeder of young politicos.

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September 5, 2007 | 7:10 pm

Worst political sex scandals

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

In honor of disgraced GOP Congressman and admitted sexual deviant Larry Craig, Maxim, the ever authoritative lad mag, offers its 10 favorite political sex scandals. Here’s the list without the summaries. They should be familiar, mostly:

1. Larry Craig
2. Clarence Thomas
3. Gary Condit
4. Mark Foley
5. Catherine the Great
6. Bill Clinton
7. Jim McGreevey
8. The D.C. Madam
9. Gary Hart
10. Strom Thurmond

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September 5, 2007 | 4:40 pm

The Simpsons-Star Wars spoof

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

This has nothing to do with religion, but “The Simpsons” is one of my favorite shows on TV. And one of my favorite parts of the show has always been the variety of the introduction. Bart’s written many different things on Ms. Krabappel’s chalk board and the family has squeezed onto their couch in many different ways. But this intro, linked here and embedded below, is new to me.

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