October 29, 2007 | 12:37 pm

Evangelical political split gets big play in NYT

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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I’ve been talking for a while now about evangelicals who fall into the camp of reluctant Republicans, but, holy political soldiers, The New York Times Magazine dedicated some 7,500 words to the subject. I don’t have much time today to offer my insights, but here is the nut:

The 2008 election is just the latest stress on a system of fault lines that go much deeper. The phenomenon of theologically conservative Christians plunging into political activism on the right is, historically speaking, something of an anomaly. Most evangelicals shrugged off abortion as a Catholic issue until after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. But in the wake of the ban on public-school prayer, the sexual revolution and the exodus to the suburbs that filled the new megachurches, protecting the unborn became the rallying cry of a new movement to uphold the traditional family. Now another confluence of factors is threatening to tear the movement apart. The extraordinary evangelical love affair with Bush has ended, for many, in heartbreak over the Iraq war and what they see as his meager domestic accomplishments. That disappointment, in turn, has sharpened latent divisions within the evangelical world — over the evangelical alliance with the Republican Party, among approaches to ministry and theology, and between the generations.

October 29, 2007 | 12:21 pm

Go west, old man

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Well, folks at The Forward might have wanted Joe Torre, but the latest scuttlebutt is that the former Yankees skipper will be coming to Los Angeles. No, not to join The Jewish Journal, but to manage the Dodgers.

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October 29, 2007 | 11:21 am

‘The Crisis of Modern Fundamentalism’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

From Christianity Today:

Fundamentalism is still with us, though you won’t hear many evangelicals talk about it. Not so with the fundamentalists, who worry about a growing number within their ranks who have wandered toward evangelicalism. A 2005 survey released on the popular fundamentalist blog SharperIron “revealed that many in the newest generation of fundamentalist leadership were still committed to fundamentalist theology but uncomfortable with some of the more extreme positions on secondary separation, association, worship music, extra-biblical standards, and other issues.” A resolution approved during the 2004 annual meeting of the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship International (FBFI) revealed the concern of fundamentalist leaders. They urged “young men to reject any temptation to lower biblical standards in order to gain acceptance of those in the world or among theologically accommodating Christian movements.” According to Tim Baylor, reared in fundamentalism but now attending an evangelical seminary, “Militancy is at an all-time-low in Fundamentalism, and Fundamentalists are looking for someone to blame.” Who worries today’s fundamentalist leaders? According to the FBFI’s 2005 resolutions, “Rick Warren and his Purpose Driven Life movement represents an incomplete gospel, a negligent carelessness in the use of Scripture paraphrases, extreme pragmatism, and a disdain for biblical separatism.”

For an interesting piece on Rick Warren teaching Jews how to do outreach—Christians call it evangelizing—check out this piece. And, to be honest, I’ve always thought of Pat Robertson (pictured) as the “crisis of modern fundamentalism.”

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October 29, 2007 | 9:30 am

Young Israel rabbi reportedly mugged

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Luke Ford reported this weekend that Young Israel of Century City’s Rabbi Elazar Muskin was held-up on Shabbat. If so, add one more to the long list of observant Jews who have been mugged walking to and from shul. I wrote this spring about a spate of these attacks that had shaken LA’s Orthodox community and reminded them of a more frightening time 15 years ago.

“It was like an epidemic,” said Isaac Naor, Mordechai’s son. “Every week, somebody else was getting mugged. Everybody was walking to shul with a gun.”

Among those attacked was the then-president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California, Rabbi Jack Simcha Cohen, who also was the leader of the Naor’s synagogue.

On Shabbat, Cohen was walking near his home with his son when two strangers approached, one asking for directions.

“Before I knew what was going on,” Cohen said, “he put me in a stranglehold and started banging my right arm across the sidewalk. Just kept smashing it and snapped it.”

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October 26, 2007 | 3:28 pm

A devolving debate

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Pharyngula is a fairly popular science blog by a biologist at the University of Minnesota, Morris. Today he has this take on the perils of evolutionists debating creationists:

Last night, Jeffrey Shallit debated a creationist. We must now shun him for violating the code of the evilutionist. No, not really. But it’s another case where the best tactics aren’t clear and simple. On the one hand, we do want to engage the public in a discussion of the ideas, and sometimes a debate is a good way to do that; but on the other, it’s giving the anti-science opponent a platform and a good deal more credibility than he deserves. I’m confident that Shallit mopped the floor with the twerp, but that’s not the point — it’s that a creationist was given equal standing with science, which is not a good result. Another concern is that if Shallit had a bad day and did not clobber his opponent, the creationist will have much to crow about. This is a game where the science has nothing to gain and everything to lose.

This is not an uncommon belief. Frankly, it’s true. The father of the intelligent-design movement, Phillip E. Johnson, laid it out in “Darwin on Trial.” Johnson, a UC Berkeley law professor, realized that the way to win the debate against evolution was to convince people the debate existed. Read “Monkey Girl” and you’ll see what success that theory has had. It should be mentioned that believing in evolution does not mean dismissing the divine hand of God in creation. Francis Collins will vouch for that.

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October 26, 2007 | 10:04 am

Science imitating art

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I was flipping through the new Wired yesterday and I came across a Q&A with Jonah Lehrer. The son of former Los Angeles ADL chief David Lehrer, Jonah is an editor at large for Seed and in his new book, “Proust was a Neuroscientist,” he argues that artists predict the scientific future.

Wired: Do you really think that we’ll find answers to science’s Big Questions in the arts?

Lehrer: Virginia Woolf isn’t going to help you finish your lab experiment. What she will do is help you ask your questions better. Proust focused on problems that neuroscience itself didn’t grapple with until relatively recently — questions of memory that couldn’t be crammed into Pavlovian reinforcement: Why are memories so unreliable? Why do they change so often? Why do we remember only certain aspects of the past?

Wired: Has the separation of the disciplines held them back?

Lehrer: It has affected both cultures adversely. You read the diary of Woolf and the letters of Cézanne and realize they thought they were discovering something true—in the same real way that science is true—but we don’t think of artists that way anymore. The separation has also led science to neglect this other side of the mind. It’s important to acknowledge that when you discuss the brain only in terms of proteins and enzymes, you’re missing something.

 

Art, obviously, also has a lot to say about God, religion, faith, et al. I’m not really talking about Da Vinci’s “Last Supper” or Michaelangelo’s “David” but the themes of art and literature that reveal how we see our place in creation and define our relationship with the divine. “The Chronicles of Narnia” and “The Divine Comedy” are easy examples. Anybody have others?

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October 26, 2007 | 1:29 am

Overheard in the Rockies locker room after Game 2

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

“My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”

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October 26, 2007 | 1:06 am

A different scarlet letter

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The Friendly Atheist posted this winning symbol from fellow non-religionists. But Andrew Sullivan notes that it looks a bit like the scarlet letter. Only, in the case of atheists, they have achieved increased acceptance in recent years as an actual movement has taken off. At least that is the rhetoric. But if we look at the trials of Thomas Jefferson, maybe we see a different picture.

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October 25, 2007 | 4:10 pm

Muslim leader: Western Wall part of mosque

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

From the Bintel Blog:

Holocaust denial may be big in the Muslim world, but it’s not the only kind of Jew-targeting denial that’s popular. There’s 9/11 denial. And then, of course, there’s Temple denial. The Jerusalem Post reports:

 

The former mufti of Jerusalem, Ikrema Sabri, has made the claim that there never was a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount, and the Western Wall was really part of a mosque.

“There was never a Jewish temple on Al-Aksa [the mosque compound] and there is no proof that there was ever a temple,” he told The Jerusalem Post via a translator. “Because Allah is fair, he would not agree to make Al-Aksa if there were a temple there for others beforehand.”

Sabri rejected Judaism’s claim to the Western Wall as part of the outer wall of the Second Temple.

“The wall is not part of the Jewish temple. It is just the western wall of the mosque,” he said. “There is not a single stone with any relation at all to the history of the Hebrews.”

 

Not a single stone!

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October 25, 2007 | 11:56 am

Militants use Google Earth to attack Israel

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

From the Guardian, via Seraphic Secret:

Palestinian militants are using Google Earth to help plan their attacks on the Israeli military and other targets, the Guardian has learned.

Members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a group aligned with the Fatah political party, say they use the popular internet mapping tool to help determine their targets for rocket strikes.

“We obtain the details from Google Earth and check them against our maps of the city centre and sensitive areas,” Khaled Jaabari, the group’s commander in Gaza who is known as Abu Walid, told the Guardian.

Abu Walid showed the Guardian an aerial image of the Israeli town of Sderot on his computer to demonstrate how his group searches for targets.

The Guardian filmed an al-Aqsa test rocket launch, fired into an uninhabited area of the Negev desert, last month. Despite the crudeness of the weapons, many have landed in Sderot, killing around a dozen people in the last three years and wounding scores more.

One of the saving graces for people living alongside the Gaza border has been the limited accuracy of Kassam rockets. But if Palestinian militants know what they’re aiming at, I fear casualties might become more common.

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October 25, 2007 | 11:18 am

What’s wrong with Post religion reporting?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Daniel Pulliam at GetReligion doesn’t care for “the snarky, uninformative feature/news stories in The Washington Post’s Style section,” especially a recent report on the Values Voter Summit that told him more about the reporter’s “day at the Hilton Washington than the latest plots from the religious right to take over America, or at least install a president to its liking in 2008.” Here’s part of the story: 

On the subterranean concourse level of the Hilton, it was very easy to feel you were in a different world. Former Reagan administration official and 2000 Republican presidential candidate Gary Bauer told those assembled, “You are Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid’s and Hillary Clinton’s worst nightmare.”

Across the way, the exhibition hall would probably require the Democratic Party’s leadership to order a mass prescription of Ambien as well. There, both Exodus International and PFOX (Parents and Friends of ExGays and Gays) supplied literature offering ways out of homosexuality. Centurion Mutual Funds offered a “Biblically responsible” alternative to financial planning. For $499 (plus shipping), you could buy from the Family Research Council a stand called the “Cultural Impact Center.” It comes fully stocked with literature like “Partial-Birth Abortion on Trial” and “Dealing with Pornography: A Practical Guide for Protecting Your Family and Your Community.”

Standing by the Abstinence Clearinghouse Booth, which offered a plethora of items including “Pet your dog, not your date” T-shirts, Kurt Gernaat and his wife, Mary Beth, explained their own sense of struggle.

And Pulliam’s reponse:

Aren’t those evangelicals just a riot? I’m surprised (reporter Sridhar) Pappu didn’t bother to mention that this whole thing happened a few yards away from the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan. What other juicy details can Pappu deliver from a conference in a hotel?

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October 25, 2007 | 10:56 am

Coulter speaks at USC

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Ann Coulter spoke at USC last night as part of “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.” Luke Ford was there:

Half the crowd rose to give Ann a standing ovation when she walked in and 95% of the crowd rose to applaud her at the end.

About 30 protesters held up placards and chanted against bigotry outside. “Down with Coulter, stop the war!”

“Hey hey, ho ho, racist bitch has got to go!”

 

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