June 30, 2008 | 8:05 pm

Vote ‘Jesus for President’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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This story is not about voting for Jesus this November. He is often a popular write-in, but he won’t be on the ballot and I’m not sure what would even happen if he won. This story is about a movement that makes liberal-leaning Christians sound a lot likely socially minded Jews. It focuses on the message of Shane Claiborne, owner of a mean set of dreadlocks and co-author of “Jesus for President.”

“This whole project is about the political imagination of what it means to follow after Jesus,” Claiborne said. “The language of Jesus as Lord and savior is just as radical as it would be to say ‘Jesus as our commander in chief’ today.”

Young evangelicals represent an important swing-voting bloc. They’re not a lock for Republicans as their parents were. Their feet are firmly planted on issues dear to both parties. Traditional family values are, as they have been in the past, an important issue.

But these voters say views on abortion and homosexuality won’t define them in November. The environment and social justice are moving to the forefront of their discussions.

(skip)

Back on stage Claiborne takes the crowd through a multimedia presentation.

“With the respectability and the power of the church comes the temptation to prostitute our identity for every political agenda.”

Controversially, he quotes Harry S. Truman and Adolph Hitler, saying each used Christianity to support their ideologies.

The speech is fiery at times, pensive at others. It emphasizes caring for the poor and the downtrodden.

He talks about war and the environment. He also talks about how Jesus stood up to the Roman Empire, a message he believes is relevant to the United States now.

“For many of us, Caesar has colonized our imagination, our landscape and our ideology,” he says while a picture of Mount Rushmore flashes behind him. On the screen “Vandalism” pops up in black letters.

Trading lines back and forth from a script with Haw, they save the most wrath for Christians who they say have missed the point of the cross.

“We’ve profaned the blood at the foot of the cross and turned it into Kool-Aid and marketed it all over the world. We’ll make an art and a business out of taking the Lord’s name in vain,” Claiborne says as images of Christ on the cross and the American flag flash behind him.

They endorse no candidate and make no effort to sway the voters for one party or another.

Yada, yada, yada—the evangelical vote will matter this fall.

Let’s, however, not kid ourselves: Claiborne and his fellow travelers are not in the mainstream of American evangelicalism. This is not a bad thing. It’s just something that should be noted in a CNN story that provides little context. Indeed, social and environmental awareness are increasingly important to younger evangelicals, and emergent-church types. And many share the sentiment that Christianity has been abused for political means. But Claiborne is a radical, nonetheless; in fact, that is the subtitle of his book. The worthy question is whether he represents the vanguard of the Christian future. Unfortunately, I don’t know the answer.

(Team Jesus for President will be in California July 11-13, but won’t make it farther south than Ventura. Here Sam Barrington shares his experience listening to Claiborne, “a great prophetic voice,” in Michigan.)

June 30, 2008 | 3:18 pm

Surname swap: Homosexual for Gay

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Here is a real gem of a flub from the ultra-conservative American Family Association’s news site. It deals with the news of Tyson Gay sprinting into the Olympic Games. Here’s the screen grab:

This story has been corrected, but the Friendly Atheist points out that a story mentioning Rudy Gay of the Memphis Grizzlies has not.

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June 30, 2008 | 1:39 pm

Barack and the Bible

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Understanding the Word of God is a difficult, dangerous endeavor, which is why politicians usually steer clear of citing chapter and verse in support of public policy. In light of James Dobson attacking Barack Obama’s “fruitcake interpretation” of the Bible, Christianity Today takes a look at the perils of political theologizing. The article and a bit of explanation after the jump:

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June 30, 2008 | 10:49 am

Yes, Virginia, there is a Jewish media conspiracy

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Those words did not appear in a New York Sun editorial, unlike these. But someone could get the impression of a Jewish media conspiracy after reading about Barack Obama’s effort to reach out to prominent Hollywood Jews in Ted Johnson’s column in today’s Variety (or by watching TV and movie credits):

The mobilization is test of how well the candidate’s campaign can counter a narrative that Obama is weak on Israel and, by extension, national security. His opponent John McCain is capitalizing on such notions, particularly in wooing former supporters of Hillary Clinton.

Few would argue that Obama will dominate support in the entertainment business—a stronghold of Democrats and of supporters of Jewish causes. To Obama backers, the stream of viral rumors and misinformation lies at the heart of his Jewish “problem”—in quote marks because, after all, a Gallup poll on June 26 showed him favored nationwide by Jewish supporters 62% vs. 29% for McCain. But the level of support could make a difference in certain battleground states.

Perceptions of candidates in the age of the Internet can’t simply be addressed by a 30-second ad spot or even a press release. Rather, Obama’s camp is looking to the grassroots to take it upon themselves.

The GOP continues to seize on the fact that Obama is new and untested, and in their eyes, a blank slate.

That is particularly resonant when it comes to Israel, which Cal State political science professor Raphael J. Sonenshein wrote recently in the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles is “the all-purpose mantra of embattled Republicans.”

In another article, Sonenshein wrote, “McCain offers the Republican brand identification on foreign policy and on Israel, years of familiarity to the Jewish community and the help of independent, former Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut. Obama is still making himself known.”

On June 16, entertainment figures like Jeffrey Katzenberg, Michael Lynton and Mike Medavoy, as well as politicians and other business leaders, gathered at the Beverly Hills home of longtime Democratic activist Carmen Warschaw in the first meeting of the Obama Los Angeles Jewish Community Leadership Committee, a campaign-sanctioned effort created in part to stem what they say are misperceptions.

“There has been a persistent effort to undermine and distort (Obama’s) record early on,” former Rep. Mel Levine, who presided over the meeting with Rep. Howard Berman (D-Los Angeles), told Variety. “Our goal is to get the facts out, and as they get out, his support in the community will grow.”

Here is the rest of the column. Should it bother Jews that Obama has an effort targeting Hollywood’s members? No. Was there any good reason for me to blog about this? Sure: as an excuse to write what follows.

Today’s Hollywood Jews are familial and cultural heirs to the town their ancestors built. Neal Gabler recognized that with his definitive 1988 book “An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood.” This was not an anti-Semitic text, but a keenly observant cultural history. The big difference between Gabler’s book and, say, those of Kevin MacDonald, is that one offers telling portraits of a peculiar phenomenon while the other blames the protagonists for a conspiracy to corrupt American attitudes.

There is no Jewish plot to control our minds through entertaining, godless propaganda; there is an ancient affinity for telling stories. And, as I’ve mentioned before: If Jews really worked in media to get out a unified message at the expense of their gentile neighbors, they sure do a poor job.

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June 30, 2008 | 10:10 am

Israel’s ill-conceived prisoner trade

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I never expect Commentary to push concessions for peace, but when I read yesterday about Israel’s plan to trade with Hezbollah four prisoners, one a venomous murderer, for two likely dead soldiers, I shared these sentiments:

one might expect Israel’s political leadership–which overwhelmingly approved the deal yesterday–to declare that Israel is achieving some sort of strategic benefit through the prisoner swap. After all, a prisoner swap only becomes a strategic liability when the adversary believes that it could achieve the release of more prisoners–and all the political benefits that come with it–through future kidnapping raids. For this reason, leaders typically spin prisoner swap deals as somehow enhancing their states’ strategic outlook, aiming to undermine support for future raids among the enemy’s constituency.

Yet Ehud Olmert is hardly your typical leader. Indeed, rather than making any argument for Israeli strength in the aftermath of the prisoner swap, Olmert has declared total failure, saying:

There will be much sadness in Israel, much humiliation considering the celebrations that will be held on the other side.

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June 29, 2008 | 1:03 pm

Schism grows in Anglican Communion

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

A long time coming, Anglican conservatives—we call them Episcopalians in the States—voted today for a mini-split from the Anglican Communion. Technically, they will remain within the church, but will not submit to the authority of a council of African bishops and not the Archbishop of Canterbury. The reason, as we’ve discusses before, is differing opinions on the righteousness of homosexuality.

The announcement came at the close of an unprecedented meeting of Anglican conservatives in Jerusalem, who contend that they represent a majority of the 77 million members of the Anglican Communion.

They depicted their efforts as the culmination of an anti-colonial struggle against the church’s seat of power in Great Britain, whose missionaries first brought Anglican Christianity to the developing world. The conservatives say many of the descendants of those Anglican missionaries in Britain and North America are now following what they call a “false gospel” that allows a malleable, liberal interpretation of Scripture.

The New York Times has the story, quoted above, and Ruth Gledhill of the Times of London has the statement from the conservative faction, posted after the jump.

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June 27, 2008 | 4:10 pm

Israel’s sugar daddy, Sheldon Adelson

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

“He gives more money to Israel than the U.S. government.”

A friend, who has worked for Sheldon Adelson, the third-richest man in the United States, behind Buffett and Gates, offered that analysis recently. It’s not quite accurate—no one provides more aide to Israel than the United States—but it wasn’t far off either.

Adelson’s Israel-related charity is overwhelming to the point that it could whitewash even the most blemished biography, not to make any implications of Adelson’s. Fifty-five million dollars to birthright israel over the past two years to finance first trips to the Jewish state for tens of thousands of diaspora Jews; $25 million to the Holocaust museum Yad Vashem; $4.5 million for a think tank.

But Adelson’s reach hasn’t been limited to charity. In fact, some say he uses money to meddle in Israeli politics, pushing a right-wing vision void of a peace process through his connections with American politicians—Bush called the Republican donor “some crazy Jewish billionaire”—and his free daily newspaper, Israel Hayom, which observers criticize as being stuffed with propaganda for Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu.

At a formal dinner attended by more than a hundred senior officials of various Israeli and Jewish organizations, guests were offered the opportunity to tell Peres what they considered the biggest challenge facing the Jewish people. Adelson, according to Ha’aretz, declared, “I think Jews should have lots of sex. That is the solution to our demographic problem.”

After Adelson addressed the conference, Nahum Barnea wrote in his column in Yedioth Ahronoth, “I saw a gambling tycoon from Las Vegas who bought my country’s birthday with three million dollars. I thought with sorrow: Is the country worth so very little? Were the champagne, wine and sushi that were given out for free in the lobby—breaking convention for such events—worth the humiliation?” Barnea went on:

Adelson is a Jew who loves Israel. Like some other Jews who live at a safe distance from here, his love is great, passionate, smothering. It is important to him that he influences the policies, decisions, and compositions of the Israeli governments. He is not alone in this, either; even back in the days of Baron Rothschild, wealthy Jews from the Diaspora felt that this country lay in their pocket, alongside their wallet. Regrettably, in the latest generation, we are being led by politicians who look at these millionaires with calf’s eyes.

In Israel, where political, academic, and business leaders tend to be outspoken, there is a striking reticence at the mention of Sheldon Adelson. Even people who are diametrically opposed to his politics refuse to be interviewed. “There is a discernible amount of self-censorship going on,” the liberal Israeli-American writer Bernard Avishai said. “There is no ideological justification for what Sheldon is doing among the Israeli intelligentsia—and a revulsion at an American weighing in so heavily on Israeli politics, in such a crude, reactionary way. But they won’t speak.”

These details come from Connie Bruck’s masterful and revealing profile of Adelson for this week’s New Yorker. It’s been getting a lot of buzz for its insight into the mindset of a right-wing American Jew whose love for Israel spans from his Lithuanian father too poor to set foot there to his sabra wife. But what really shocked me was a portion a little closer to home for Adelson, whose non-union Venetian was in 1999 being picketed by the Culinary Union:

Las Vegas’s Temple Beth Sholom was holding a dinner to fête the new mayor of Las Vegas, Oscar Goodman. Adelson, a member of Beth Sholom, had recently pledged two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to the temple’s new-building fund. The dinner was to be held at the Venetian, but Mayor Goodman said that he would not cross the picket line, and synagogue officials decided to go elsewhere. Adelson excoriated Beth Sholom’s rabbi, Felipe Goodman. Rabbi Goodman told the Review-Journal that Adelson had been “so verbally abusive. I was very upset because no one had ever talked to me like he talked to me.” After the dinner took place at the Four Seasons, Adelson withdrew his pledge to Beth Sholom. He gave large sums to the local Chabad, a branch of the Hasidic Chabad-Lubavitchers, for the construction of a new center.

Yeah, that’s mature.

Clearly, Adelson does a ton for Israel and world Jewry, but at what cost? Or, to turn an old question on its head (and possibly incite a nasty response from Team Adelson): Is Sheldon Adelson good for the Jews?

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June 27, 2008 | 3:00 pm

Ha’aretz calls Israel an ‘apartheid state’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Last fall, the liberal Israeli daily Ha’aretz likened the situation in the occupied territories to political apartheid. But roll out the red carpet for Jimmy Carter, but today Ha’aretz took the indictment several steps further in an editorial from Publisher Amos Schocken about the Citizenship Law:

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June 27, 2008 | 2:21 pm

Christian lawyer to Supreme Court: ‘Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Truly terrifying:

Mathew D. Staver, dean of Liberty University School of Law and founder of Liberty Counsel, picked the title of a patriotic song from World War II to celebrate the U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision Thursday that struck down the District of Columbia’s handgun ban. “‘Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition’ is the best way to describe today’s decision,” Staver said in a statement released by his conservative law firm.

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June 27, 2008 | 11:18 am

Savage says: Olmert leading Israelis to ‘gas chamber’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I usually delete e-mail from Media Matters without even reading it. But I couldn’t pass on this gem. It seems talk show nutjob Michael Savage had an anti-Olmert outburst on his nationally syndicated radio program. Responding a few nights ago to news that an Israeli police officer committed suicide while French President Nicolas Sarkozy prepared to board a plane, Savage speculated that it wasn’t a suicide at all. No, his sources in Israel suggested it was an attempt on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s life;

“There is speculation that there was an attempt to kill Olmert because he has sold the country down the river, and he is selling the people to their death—he is leading them to the gas chamber. He is a—the equivalent of those who led the Jews into the gas chambers in World War II, according to many Israelis who see the handwriting on the wall.”

Olmert has been bad—really bad—for Israel. The guy’s main interest is self, prolonging a political career until his countrymen just can’t take it anymore. But only the rosh yeshiva of Yeshiva University and Rabbi Shalom Dov Wolpe have joked/suggested that he should die for his governance.

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June 26, 2008 | 12:31 pm

God and the presidential election

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

“Could God be a swing vote?” This is really, really good.

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June 26, 2008 | 10:38 am

The virgin push—he, she and Jesus

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I’ve been on a Jeff Sharlet kick of late, and this morning I will be interviewing him about his new book, “The Family.” I considered this as worthy a time as any to pull my favorite article from the Sharlet archives. It’s about young, hip and devout Christians unwilling to budge on pre-marital abstinence, “The Young & the Sexless”:

What if the true face of the Christian right in America is not that of Dr. James Dobson or Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson; not that of an aging, comb-over preacher orange with pancake makeup, smiling orca rows of ungodly white teeth on The O’Reilly Factor or Hardball? Nor that of spittle-flecked Fred Phelps of Topeka, Kansas, roaring that God hates fags? What if the true face of the Christian right is, instead, that of a twenty-four-year-old religious-studies graduate student at New York University?

Matt Dunbar is a handsome young man, though his face is still ruddy with acne. He has rounded cheeks, a soul patch beneath his lips and soft eyes that hold yours like he trusts you. He’s not a prude. He will say the word “fuck,” but he will never, not even in the wedding bed he hopes God has prepared for his future, embody it as a verb. He will make Christian love. What most of us call sex he calls communion, and he believes it can happen only within marriage.

Chastity is a new organizing principle of the Christian right, built on the notion that virgins are among God’s last loyal defenders, knights and ladies of a forgotten kingdom. Sex outside of marriage is, in the words of D. James Kennedy, pastor of the influential Coral Ridge Ministries in Florida, “an uprising against God.” But if sex is the perfect enemy of the blessed lifestyle, it is also the Holy Grail for those who wait: “A symphony of the soul for married couples,” according to John Hagee, author of What Every Man Wants in a Woman.

“Abstinence,” says Dunbar, “is countercultural,” a kind of rebellion, he says, against materialism, consumerism and “the idea that anything can be bought and sold.”

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