October 31, 2008 | 8:43 pm

Christian ministers prefer McCain

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Follow me on

It amazes me that some people still don’t know who they are going to vote for. Christian ministers, for instance. A LifeWay Research poll shows that 53 percent of Protestant pastors plan to vote for John McCain. When I read that I assumed the big news was that nearly half would vote for Barack Obama. That would be groundbreaking, but it’s incorrect to assume Obama will receive the difference of 100 less 53.

Somehow 22 percent of those poll weren’t sure who they were going to vote for. Something tells me if they don’t know by now they’re not really going to know Tuesday either.

October 31, 2008 | 6:29 pm

Comparing gay marriage to Hitler

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

You know, and many of you disagree with, what I think about Proposition 8. But have you heard what Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute, thinks of the measure that would change California’s constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage?

In the above video, via Pam’s House Blend, Dacus likens defeating gay marriage to fighting back against Hitler:

“There was another time in history when people, when the bell tolled. And the question was whether or not they were going to hear it. The time was during Nazi Germany with Adolf Hitler. You see he brought crowds of clergy together to assure them that he was going to look after the church.

“And one of the members, bold and courageous, Reverend Niemoller made his way to the front and ... said, ‘Hitler, we are not concerned about the church. Jesus Christ will take care of the church. We are concerned about the soul of Germany.’

“Embarrassed and chagrined, his peers quickly shuffled him to the back.

“And as they did Adolf Hitler said, ‘The soul of Germany, you can leave that to me.’ And they did, and because they did bombs did not only fall upon the nation of Germany, but also upon the church and their testimony to this very day.

“Let us not make that mistake folks. Let us hear the bell! Vote on Proposition 8!”

The Rev. Martin Niemoller, who, with Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was a leader of the Confessing Church, is best known for this moving call to action:

  They came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;

  And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up.”

Not surprisingly, the Anti-Defamation League was “outraged and deeply offended” by Dacus’ comparison. From a strategic standpoint, I’d agree it was a blunder. Voting yes on Prop. 8 is not a move toward Nazism, but Hitler rounded up and murdered gays along with the crippled and the Jews. I don’t think you’d want to make that association.

14 Comments — Leave your comment

October 31, 2008 | 2:34 pm

Pedro the Lion likes Obama

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

David Bazan, the former frontman—everyman, really—for Pedro the Lion, spoke during a show earlier this month in Spokane about why he’s voting for Barack Obama. The footage is above. To watch his whole set, click on the video after the jump and then surf around the chopped up clips.

Bazan’s faith in Christ might be on hiatus (I hope it’s coming back), but his tunes still tug at my heartstrings. Honestly, I listen to at least two of his CDs each week.

Read more of this post

2 Comments — Leave your comment

October 31, 2008 | 4:26 am

Obama to tap Jewish congressman as chief of staff?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Rumors abound this time of year, but here is one that would make American Jews even more comfortable with Barack Obama than they already are: In the event he wins the election, Obama is considering U.S. Rep. Rahm Emanuel, one of the highest-ranking, best-respected Jews in the House, as his chief of staff.

Emanuel would be the third Jewish chief of staff at the White House. President Bush’s current top deputy, Joshua Bolten, is Jewish.

5 Comments — Leave your comment

October 30, 2008 | 11:10 pm

Digging into ‘My Jesus Year’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Benyamin Cohen, founding editor of the now-defunct American Jewish Life magazine, spent a year hanging out with Christians in the Bible Belt and has turned those experiences into a memoir. “My Jesus Year” is, in many ways, a parallel reality for me and Cohen is the bizarro me.

He was raised an Orthodox Jew, the son of a rabbi, but overtime came to find his faith dead. By spending time with evangelicals, his religious beliefs were reinvigorated. Click here and here to see how that compares to my journey from Bel Air Presbyterian to The Jewish Journal.

I’ll be spending some time writing a review of “My Jesus Year” for Christianity Today this evening and a feature for The Journal tomorrow morning. In the meantime, you can watch below Cohen’s appearance on CNN Sunday morning:

5 Comments — Leave your comment

October 30, 2008 | 7:18 pm

Americans in Israel voting big for McCain

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Early election results of Americans living in Israel show a big advantage for John McCain. I don’t expect these numbers, courtesy of DK, to hold for American Jews living at home—the latest poll gave Obama 74 percent of those voters and many Israel-firsters were already voting for McCain. But exit poll data is thus far surprising:

A startling 76 percent of those polled said that they had voted for John McCain. This contrasts sharply with pre-election polls of American Jews in the U.S., which indicate a strong preference for Obama.

In the 2000 and 2004 elections, Israel had the third-largest group of American voters abroad, after Canada and Britain.

A Rabin Center for Israel Studies poll published Monday by Ynet also found that Israeli, if they could vote in U.S. elections, would choose McCain over Obama by a 12-percentage-point margin. Surprisingly, Palestinians also prefer McCain.

5 Comments — Leave your comment

October 30, 2008 | 7:02 pm

Video from the L.A. Times Obama-Khalidi protest

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

As promised, VideoJew Jay Firestone brought footage back from the protest outside the Los Angeles Times. (Quick refresher: McCain and some supporters are accusing the newspaper of protecting Barack Obama by refusing to release a video of Obama at a 2003 farewell celebration for Rashid Khalidi.) Jay’s re-edited video is below, though I’ve got to say that Khalidi’s past involvement with the PLO—McCain called him a spokesperson—is heavily disputed

.

Omri Ceren, a USC PhD student who writes the blog Mere Rhetoric, also stopped by the protest and posted photos and some footage.

I particularly liked the photo at left because it is true the media is dying. But it has nothing to do with the Times’ breaking this story back in April and now honoring the commitment they made to a source.

Comment below, e-mail me at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or follow me on Twitter. I recommend doing at least two of the three.

1 Comments — Leave your comment

October 30, 2008 | 3:49 pm

Lynched effigy of Obama even uglier

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Photo: Daily Breeeze

The hanged effigy of Sarah Palin was offensive, but the effigy hanging from Linda Castaneda’s balcony was Redondo Beach is downright disgusting.

I’m not sure how well-versed Castaneda is in American history, but until not that long ago, lynching black men was a socially acceptable, though morally reprehensible, action. In fact, you don’t need to know much about history: The ATF announced this week that it had arrested to young skinheads who planned to decapitate 14 African Americans and assassinate Barack Obama.

But there an effigy of Obama was, hanging from Castaneda’s home with a meat clever through his neck, a jacket covered in blood and a sign on his chest that read “Nobama.”

Not surprisingly, a bloody UCLA sweatshirt hung next to the effigy and a McCain-Palin sign was posted in the yard.

The display, which Castaneda took down after inflaming tension and being visiting by Redondo authorities, was a few miles from my place, though I didn’t see it. I’m not making any assumptions about Castaneda’s beliefs—other than that she’s probably a Trojan fan. But her Halloween display was at best shockingly ignorant.

9 Comments — Leave your comment

October 30, 2008 | 2:58 pm

Protesters storm LA Times, demand Obama-Khalidi tape

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Times building

We’re now on Day 3 of Obama-Khalidi video watch at The God Blog.

Tuesday McCain joined the conservative bloggers and pundits demanding the Los Angeles Times release a video of Barack Obama at a 2003 farewell dinner for scholar Rashid Khalidi, an outspoken critic of Israel. Yesterday demands from angry readers grew and McCain, on the campaign trail, accused the Times of protecting its favored son. Today protests have been organized outside the Times’ building on Spring Street. VideoJew Jay Firestone is there right now; we should have footage up soon.

This whole “controversy” will be moot by this time next week, regardless of whether the tape is ever released. And don’t count on it to be. A surprising defense of the Times and reporter Peter Wallsten—one I would agree with—comes from Fox News:

To me, it’s pretty simple. Reporter Peter Wallsten made an agreement with a source to refrain from publicly disclosing the tape. Unless that source lets Wallsten off the hook, the reporter is journalistically bound to abide by the agreement, regardless of how much heat his newspaper takes from pundits on TV.

Indeed, Wallsten has little choice in the matter. If he were to cave in to mounting public demands for the tape, no self-respecting source would ever give him another shred of information. Nor should they.

Again, I don’t understand why the newspaper won’t release a transcript of the tape or why Obama was only paraphrased and not quoted. But all the protesting in the world isn’t going to push the Times to make the tape public. I would hope that Wallsten has gone back to the source, over and over, and urged their permission to release the tape. But, if he hasn’t, attacking his reputation isn’t going to encourage him to do so.

12 Comments — Leave your comment

October 30, 2008 | 2:54 pm

Churches buckling under economic pressure

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

No surprises in this AP story about churches suffering in the economic downturn. The reason is the same as it was for synagogues in the LA Jewish community: increased needs often follow decreased resources during times like these.

The greater question is just what is God’s role in our economic calamity? David Van Biema of Time wrote recently that maybe He’s to blame:

Has the so-called Prosperity gospel turned its followers into some of the most willing participants — and hence, victims — of the current financial crisis? That’s what a scholar of the fast-growing brand of Pentecostal Christianity believes. While researching a book on black televangelism, says Jonathan Walton, a religion professor at the University of California at Riverside, he realized that Prosperity’s central promise — that God will “make a way” for poor people to enjoy the better things in life — had developed an additional, dangerous expression during the subprime-lending boom. Walton says that this encouraged congregants who got dicey mortgages to believe “God caused the bank to ignore my credit score and blessed me with my first house.” The results, he says, “were disastrous, because they pretty much turned parishioners into prey for greedy brokers.”

Others think he may be right. Says Anthea Butler, an expert in Pentecostalism at the University of Rochester in New York: “The pastor’s not gonna say, ‘Go down to Wachovia and get a loan,’ but I have heard, ‘Even if you have a poor credit rating, God can still bless you — if you put some faith out there [that is, make a big donation to the church], you’ll get that house or that car or that apartment.’ ” Adds J. Lee Grady, editor of the magazine Charisma: “It definitely goes on, that a preacher might say, ‘If you give this offering, God will give you a house.’ And if they did get the house, people did think that it was an answer to prayer, when in fact it was really bad banking policy.” If so, the situation offers a look at how a native-born faith built partially on American economic optimism entered into a toxic symbiosis with a pathological market.

I’ve railed before against the prosperity gospel, which I think is disgusting, particularly this, but Van Biema’s article makes a stretch I’m not willing to accept. It’s wasn’t the Christian Gospel of Wealth that got us into this mess. It was the American brand.

As far as God’s role, I can’t answer that question. He hasn’t informed me.

Read more of this post

1 Comments — Leave your comment

October 30, 2008 | 2:30 pm

Movember starts Saturday

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Movember is about 36 hours away. To prepare, I shaved last night the beard I had accidentally grown during the second half of October. (Really, who has time to think about shaving?) My mismatched mustache joined the chin whiskers in the sink this morning.

During Movember, when men around the world raise money for prostate cancer research by growing furry upper lips, I’ll post pictures marking my development every few days. Hopefully some of you will join me, and if you send in your pictures, I’ll post those too.

To register for Movember or start your own facial fundraiser, click here. If you’re not a man or at least on the Italian side of my family, you can still get involved by being a mo’ sista.

1 Comments — Leave your comment

October 29, 2008 | 11:02 pm

LA Times accused of protecting Obama, concealing info

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The Los Angeles Times was flooded with phone calls today. When I tried to reach Editor Russ Stanton, it seemed his phone had been left off the hook; it went straight to voicemail. His phone number had been listed on an incalculable number of conservative blogs, and angry readers were calling to demand that the paper release a videotape it mentioned in an April article titled, “Friends of Palestinians See a Friend in Obama.”

The article described a 2003 farewell dinner for scholar Rashid Khalidi, an at times harsh critic of Israel. The evening carried a few verbal assaults on Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, and present for these protests was Khalidi’s friend, Barack Obama. The Times broke this story in April, but some folks have become convinced that because the paper refuses to release the video they must be covering up something (i.e. Obama drinking the blood of a Jewish child).

Yesterday the McCain campaign demanded the paper release the tape. Today John McCain, who likened an evening with Khalidi to a neo-Nazi rally, and Sarah Palin accused the Times of protecting Obama. Forget the fact that McCain once chaired an organization that gave $500,000 to Khalidi’s Center for Palestine Research and Studies. Meanwhile, the Internet has gone nuts.

The most ridiculous move has been the republishing, over and over, of a supposed scoop from the hitherto unknown Doug Ross, who claims to have been told from someone in the know just what Obama can be heard saying on the tape:

Saw a clip from the tape. Reason we can’t release it is because statements Obama said to rile audience up during toast. He congratulates Khalidi for his work saying “Israel has no God-given right to occupy Palestine” plus there’s been “genocide against the Palestinian people by Israelis.”

It would be really controversial if it got out. That’s why they will not even let a transcript get out.

If that was true it would be controversial—though anti-Zionist Jews agree with the first statement and Benny Morris with the latter. That is neither here nor there. The reality is this drama, like so many this year, play off the electorate’s most prejudicial fears.

After parroting Ross’ quotes, Little Green Footballs offered this:

“Caveat: I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this. However, it certainly would explain why the LA Times is suppressing the video.”

Talk about reaching a conclusion without establishing your premise.

I’m not saying the L.A. Times is being an exemplar of transparency here. I imagine the paper has its reasons; I just wish they explained it a bit more clearly—like why exactly they can’t release a transcript, which a spokeswoman told me there was no plan to do.

4 Comments — Leave your comment