December 4, 2007 | 1:24 pm

‘Huckabee: “A different kind of Jesus juice”’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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An odd headline, right? But you know religion has become a central theme of the presidential election when the Republican candidate making a late run for the nomination goes out of his way to tell a reporter that his brand of “Jesus juice” is different than the others. (OK, but what is he going to do about Iraq?)

Mike Huckabee wants you to know that while everyone else is Pepsi and Coke, he is Jones Soda—maybe the Christmas Ham flavor I just received in the Jones Christmas Pack.

He is the Southern preacher who favors droll wit over brimstone sermonizing, a rock ‘n’ roll bass player who believes in creationism, with an Oprah-ready story about a 110-pound weight loss that probably saved his life.

Here in Arkansas, where Huckabee ruled as governor for 10 1/2 years, voters grew accustomed to a different brand of Republican—a governor with an idiosyncratic agenda that was sometimes difficult to categorize, but always driven, Huckabee insists, by his Southern Baptist faith. That faith influenced major policy decisions that could be deemed moderate, if not liberal, including a significant environmental initiative and a vastly expanded healthcare plan for low-income children.

Though Huckabee took strong stands against abortion and same-sex marriage, his record on taxes—a key pillar of Republican orthodoxy—was distinctly heterodox. He supported tax hikes on cigarettes, gasoline, groceries, sales and income. A video circulating on YouTube—and played, in part, on the CNN-YouTube Republican debate Wednesday—shows Huckabee addressing the Arkansas Legislature in 2003 and suggesting that he would be open to raising a broad range of taxes.

Still, Mark Stricherz, the new contributer to GetReligion thinks the LA Times reporter on this story forgot to ask a pretty basic question:

The only real omission in Fausset’s story is the origins of Huckabee’s worldview. Did Huckabee manufacture it himself after years in office? Or is there a deeper, moral and philosophical grounding for it?

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Is it possible that this former Baptist minister embraces the social teaching of the Roman Catholic Church, or has, at the very least, been influenced by it? Talk about another good story.

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December 4, 2007 | 8:30 am

Cardinal Mahony assaulted because of clergy scandal

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The LA Daily News reported today that shortly after the Archdiocese of Los Angeles agreed to a massive settlement with victims of pedophile priests that Cardinal Roger Mahony was beaten up outside Cathedral Our Lady of the Angels.

Mahony, 71, revealed the attack during an annual conference in October before hundreds of stunned priests, saying a man assaulted him because of the scandal, according to four priests who attended the conference.

News of the assault comes as the bulk of the church’s $660 million settlement with victims began being paid out Monday, with more than $500 million in checks going out in the mail. The settlement with 508 alleged victims was approved by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge July 16.

The attack on Mahony occurred in July near Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral in downtown Los Angeles, and it took the cardinal about a month to heal, said the Rev. Sal Pilato, principal at Junipero Serra Catholic High School in Gardena. The cardinal was dropping off letters at a mailbox when he was assaulted, priests said.

“Somebody recognized him and attacked him,” Pilato said Mahony told the gathering. “It was shocking because it was an act of violence and it was someone we know and respect.”

Mahony declined to comment on the reports.

“Whatever conversation might have taken place between the priests and their bishop was a private conversation and not meant to be public,” said Carolina Guevara, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Archdiocese.
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Mahony told the priests that after his attacker recognized him, the man began shouting expletives and knocked him to the ground, said another priest who asked not be identified.

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It was not known whether Mahony’s attacker was a victim.   

Those at the October conference at Our Lady of the Angels said Mahony shared the story about the assault within the context of the sexual-abuse scandal. Priests described the confession as both deeply moving and, because of the violence, disturbing.

Mahony was telling the priests they all had a price to pay for the sexual abuses perpetrated by their brethren when he relayed the story of the assault as an example of the personal toll he’s endured, several priests said.

I believe that Cardinal Mahony is sincerely sorry for the behavior some of his parish priests exhibited before and after he took charge of the archdiocese in 1985. I can even accept that church officials thought sending pedophiles to therapy instead of reporting them to police was in the best interest of everyone. But, considering Mahony’s legacy, Father Joseph Shea’s intimation that he took the attack like a sacrificial lamb—“Like Jesus, we must offer our lives and even suffer for Christ, even for things we didn’t do”— is a bit sickening.

(Hat tip: Brent Hopkins)

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December 3, 2007 | 5:42 pm

Simpsons evolution: Best. Couch gag. Ever.

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The couch gag is one of my favorite parts of “The Simpsons.” This bit, used last night, was hilarious. If God’s creation formula included any human evolving directly from monkeys, not to mention primordial ooze, it certainly included Homer Simpson.

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December 3, 2007 | 1:47 pm

A pig named Muhammad, er, Bill Keller

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I’m on deadline right now and procrastinating, so I just started visiting the blogs I read daily and found this ditty from Dallas:

Contributing to the civil discourse in the world, a publicity-seeking Christian preacher responded to the Sudanese persecution of a teacher whose class named its teddy bear Muhammad by naming a pig likewise. He did that, unlike the teacher, knowing that it would be offensive to Muslims. Now that the teacher has been pardoned (which doesn’t make the earlier calls for her death any more palatable, btw), I wonder how the preacher will react. But I must admit I don’t wonder too much. Normally I offer facts, names, and links to this kind of thing. But in this case: I figure he’s getting more pub than he deserves as it is…

I hadn’t heard about this gimmick. Google News quickly solved that, providing as the top link this story from WorldNetDaily. (It should be noted that WND is not known for its subtle Conservative tone.) The preacher is Bill Keller, who lost his TV program this summer for slamming Islam.

In his latest devotional being sent to his subscribers, Keller states: 

Of course there will be Muslim apologists who say that these are only the extremists, just like they try to distance themselves from their brothers in this “peaceful religion” who flew the planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the one intended for the Capitol building that was crashed in a Pennsylvania field by some real American heroes. ... 

These people are not about love or peace or unity. They are about one thing.  Converting the world to their false religion and those who get in their way or who refuse to follow their lies will be silenced and killed. The word “Islam” literally means “submission.” Maybe you don’t understand what it means when their “holy book” says “death to all infidels.”

 

“Bill Keller’s pink pig is a terrific tribute to Muhammad!” said WND reader Stephen Mayfield. “If only we could load B-52’s with a week’s take of Farmer John’s swine intestines, and bombs-away them over Khartoum.”

Another WND reader, Clay Hestilow of Houston, Texas, took the opposite view, stating, “Senseless. Ignorant. Hateful. This ‘minister’ is a poor representation of the love that Christ has for all of mankind.”

Below is the video Keller posted on YouTube, in which Keller is the pink pig convert from Islam who invites you to know Jesus and calls Islam’s great prophet a “murdering pedophile” and the Quran “a book of fairy tales.” This guy is really off his rocker.

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December 3, 2007 | 12:36 pm

The apocalypse is upon us

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

      The sky is falling! The end is near!

Just in time for the Christmas season, Pat Buchanan has published yet another jeremiad warning that America is about to go belly up. You’d think that the American public would get tired of the unrelenting gloominess of the far right and left. But you’d be wrong. Already the book is climbing up the bestseller lists, giving us further proof that, despite our collective obsession with living the good life, we Americans love the sweet rush of anxiety. Maybe it’s just the antidote for our apathy.

You have to admit that there’s something unseemly about citizens of history’s most powerful country—economically, militarily and culturally—always fretting about their coming demise. Sometimes it gets downright pornographic.

But like it or not, it’s part of who we are, the flip-side of our patriotic jingoism and a legacy of those intensely religious Puritans that lives on in this secular age. In the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan called the United States a “shining city on a hill,” he was borrowing—and embroidering—a famous line from the 17th century governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop. Winthrop didn’t use the word “shining” in his original 1630 sermon; his message was not triumphalist.

Winthrop and his fellow Puritans believed that in their escape from religious persecution and their settling of a new world, they had entered into a covenant with God. They were ordained to be an example to the world and to establish God’s kingdom in wild, chaotic North America.

That meant they had a high standard to live up to. If they pleased the Lord, the Almighty would bless them. But if they did not, Winthrop cautioned, “We shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of this good land.”

Read the rest of Gregory Rodriguez‘s column here.

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December 3, 2007 | 9:18 am

‘The 9 Most Badass Bible Verses’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The list from Cracked.com (Parental advisory: explicit lyrics) begins with the passage in Exodus in which Moses kills an Egyptian:

You can almost picture the scene: An Egyptian soldier is wailing on a hapless Hebrew when Moses, clothed in head-to- toe black, drops down from the ceiling. Moving with cat-like grace, he sneaks up behind the soldier and, taking his head in his hands, snaps the man’s neck with one savage twist. As the lifeless body slumps to the ground, Moses lights up a cigar. “Well,” he quips, “looks like someone bit off more than he could Jew.”

The list also includes the stories of Ehud killing the king Eglon and of Samson slaying a thousand men with the jawbone of a donkey. Not on the list? When Joshua re-circumcised the Israelites before they marched on Jericho.

What else is missing? Maybe Shadrach, Meshach and Abendego, David and Goliath, Sodom and Gomorrah?

(Hat tip: Bloggish)

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December 2, 2007 | 10:45 am

Tod and God’s Chanukah adventure

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

From Jewlicious:

That was the latest holiday viral video by my pal and obsessive Scrabulous partner Will of Shabot6000 fame. The video is meant to promote the Website MyJewishLearning.com, described as “a trans-denominational website of Jewish information and education geared toward learners of all ages and educational backgrounds.” Funded by The Samuel Bronfman Foundation, The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Foundation, Jewish Life Network/Steinhardt Foundation and The Abramson Family Foundation and partnered with a whole slew of neat-o organizations, the site is chock full of awesome Jewy information!

Now, Jewlicious isn’t funded by anyone but, inspired by this awesome video, I think we can contribute a few things to the state of Jewish Literacy! For instance, depictions of images of God are problematic in the Jewish religion. So while watching this video may or may not be prohibited, it’s probably not a good idea to worship the golden toothed funkster depiction of God presented within. Also, while God teaches Tod about Hanukkah, prior to leaving, God lights a cigar off of the Chanukiah. Now, God being omnipotent and all, can probably do that with impunity, but Jewish law, and the blessings we recite upon lighting the candles are pretty clear - unless you are an omnipotent being, lighting stogies off of a Chanukiah, or using it for anything other than the commemoration of the miracle of Hanukkah, is strictly prohibited.

Yay! Trans-denominational Jewish Literacy is fun!

 

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