July 31, 2009 | 3:08 pm

There are easier ways to skip church

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Follow me on

The big religion news yesterday was of a 7-year-old Salt Lake City boy who stole his parents car and went joyriding in an attempt to avoid going to church. You can see the ordeal in the above video, which for some reason has no audio. Mollie at GetReligion wrote that she was going to pan the video as overplayed by the media—until she watched it.

“The end,” she wrote, “is comedy gold.”

So is the last line in this Salt Lake Tribune brief about the not-so-high-speed chase:

No charges were filed because the boy is too young to prosecute

Gold, Jerry. Gold.

July 31, 2009 | 2:17 pm

Reverend Ike moves on

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I forgot to mention yesterday this bit of religious news, which popped up today on the LA Times obit page:

The Rev. Frederick J. Eikerenkoetter II, the flamboyant, lavish-living preacher known as Reverend Ike, whose message of success and prosperity reached millions, has died. He was 74.

Rev. Ike, who had a stroke in 2006, died Tuesday in a hospital in the Los Angeles area, where he had been living for the last few years, said family spokesman Bishop E. Bernard Jordan.

Jordan told The Times on Thursday that Rev. Ike “lifted the consciousness of people globally, and he was such an inspiration as a black man, an African American doing the kinds of things he was doing in his generation.”

The message of Rev. Ike, who could pack Madison Square Garden and who tooled around in a Rolls-Royce, Jordan said, was one “of empowerment and hope—and definitely prosperity.”

You can read the rest of that obit here. The New York Times also had a good one.

And you already know what I think about the prosperity gospel.

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July 30, 2009 | 4:49 pm

The end of an era: UCLA kills Undie Run

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

424 forever

In case you’re wondering what I’ve been working on this morning, I’ve been fielding media calls to discuss UCLA’s killing of the Undie Run.

“What started out as a UCLA student tradition to relieve stress during finals has turned into a free-for-all event attracting large numbers of people who are not affiliated with UCLA and who have demonstrated they have little consideration for the well-being of our students or the surrounding community,” Robert Naples, associate vice chancellor and dean of students, said in a statement. “While we regret having to call off the run in the future, we must ensure the safety of our students and the community and also look after UCLA’s relationships with our neighbors.”

Kind of odd that UCLA put the kibosh on Undie Run almost five months before the next run. Few students on campus and the Daily Bruin publishing only once a week—hmmmm. Reminds me of a politician who resigns at 7 p.m. on a Friday for “personal reasons.”

The irony is that Undie Run began as a response to UCLA’s harsh crackdown on Midnight Yell, which, to be fair, had descended into rioting. This act will return finals week to the primordial stage that gave life to our creation—and almost certainly will spawn something new, maybe even something the university would prefer Undie Run to.

In the seven years since Undie Run’s founding, the thrice-annual event had grown from our core group of 13 dudes bouncing around in their BVDs to 8,000-plus runners. Violence, mayhem, vandalism, bare cheeks—all became a part of an event started by a few guys deeply involved in the Bel Air Presbyterian college group. At least Rhetter can rest easy.

None of us ever expected the Undie Run to get as big as it did, but, once it did, we knew this day would eventually come. UCLA had threatened for years to cancel the event if the problems didn’t stop. But it’s still sad.

RIP, Undie Run.

After the jump, an LA Times video on the spring 2008 run and the origins story I wrote three years ago for UCLA Magazine:

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July 30, 2009 | 3:24 pm

Mother Teresa, Mass and another clergy abuse lawsuit

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Here’s an ugly story from the SF Weekly. A 30-year-old man is suing one of Mother Teresa’s spiritual adviser for sexually abusing him two decades ago, immediately after served as an altar boy at a ceremony honoring the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize winner. The Weekly’s way of retelling the boy’s ordeal is compelling for readers and damning for the priest, the Rev. Donald McGuire, but it also puts a lot of stock into accusations found in the lawsuit.

Here’s a portion of the lede:

It was at McGuire’s bidding that the 11-year-old came to serve as an altar boy that morning at St. Paul’s Convent, a boxy building of yellow stucco that rises from a tree-lined block near the intersection of 29th and Church streets. (The convent houses local novices in the international Missionaries of Charity order, founded by Mother Teresa in 1950.) The priest was close to the boy’s family: He had baptized the boy, and offered his mother spiritual and psychological counseling over the years. Indeed, within church circles, McGuire was something of a celebrity himself.

Steeped, as are all Jesuits, in the cerebral traditions of Catholicism, McGuire dazzled his many admirers with his command of ancient history and literature. He could speak eloquently about philosophy and theology, and deployed his rhetoric to powerful effect during multiday religious seminars based on the teachings of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the Jesuits’ founder. He had silvering brown hair and a round, red Irish face that often creased into a puckish smile. He liked to give advice. And he liked to hear confession.

On that morning almost 20 years ago, however, McGuire’s interests were more profane than sacred. Following a morning Mass, he asked the boy to retire with him to a private chamber reserved for the priest at the convent. While the nuns and Mother Teresa milled about, McGuire closed the door to his room and asked his favored altar boy to join him, in his cot, for a nap. The boy lay down. The priest lay on the outside of the narrow bed and then reached across the boy’s body and into his pants.

So said the boy in a recent interview with SF Weekly. Now 30, he is suing the Jesuits for turning a blind eye to McGuire’s repeated acts of child molestation.

The headline, “For He Has Sinned,” also assumes guilt in this case. But that’s likely because of McGuire’s subsequent sex-crime convictions:

In 2006, the priest was convicted in a Wisconsin court of molesting two teenage boys he had taught decades earlier at a prominent Jesuit high school in the Midwest. Earlier this year, a federal judge in Illinois sentenced McGuire to 25 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of traveling abroad with a teenage boy to sexually abuse him. (For his part, McGuire still insists he is innocent and has appealed his latest conviction.)

Read the rest of the Weekly story here. And here’s the Bishop Accountability page on McGuire.

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July 28, 2009 | 7:35 pm

Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades warns Baron Cohen to watch his back

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

More bad news for Sacha Baron Cohen.

First his summer film “Bruno” was met with shock and disappointment. Then he was accused of stretching the definition of “terrorist leader,” when he described Ayman Abu Aita as one. And now he’s been threatened by the very militant group that Abu Aita is affiliated with, the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, which he tried to get to kidnap him.

“We reserve the right to respond in the way we find suitable against this man. The movie was part of a conspiracy against the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades,” according to a statement from the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades that was published Monday.

A Jewish conspiracy?

Unfortunately for Baron Cohen, no one is jockeying to impersonate Bruno like they did Borat.

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July 28, 2009 | 7:07 pm

Bernard Madoff gives first jailhouse interview

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I was really hoping to get Bernard Madoff’s first jailhouse interview, but I’m not sure he was fond of the coverage I’d given him. But, apparently in the interest of protecting his wife, Madoff was willing to open up to a lawyer representing one of the many victims suing him.

ABCNews.com has the story, which describes Madoff as “buff looking”—guess he’s enjoying his time in the prison yard. Here’s the word:

“There were several times that I met with the SEC and thought ‘they got me,’” Madoff told Joseph Cotchett, a San Francisco lawyer threatening to sue his wife, sons and brother on behalf of a group of victims.

Cotchett said he and his partner, Nancy Fineman, met with Madoff for four and a half hours Tuesday afternoon at the federal prison in Butner, NC, where Madoff is serving his 150-year sentence.

“He looked pretty good and seems to be working out,” said Cotchett. “He looked a lot better than he has in some months since I’ve seen photographs of him.”

Cotchett said Madoff was “very articulate, very direct” and did not appear to hold back anything. “He talked about how he pulled it off, how many years he got away with it,” the lawyer said.

A bit more here.

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July 28, 2009 | 5:13 pm

Reflecting on my Jew-ish journey

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

It seemed pretty obvious that the week before last wouldn’t really be my last at The Jewish Journal.

After packing up my desk, I still needed to pen my reflections on being a Christian reporter for a Jewish newspaper. And, not surprisingly, I struggled to get it done.

So last Tuesday I turned in my final version, slipped into the office to see a story on the page for the final time and grabbed the three boxes I’d left behind.

The first-person piece, “My So-Called Jewish Life,” ran Thursday. I think I’ve only done this once before—not coincidentally when I celebrated Yom Kippur for the first time—but I’m going to republish the entire article below.

Here goes:

Should I tell him I’m not a Jew? I wondered this over and over as I sat in the Cal State Long Beach office of academia’s leading anti-Semite.

People make many assumptions about a reporter named Greenberg who lives in Los Angeles and writes for The Jewish Journal. Maybe, I wondered, Kevin MacDonald, a professor whose books on Jews have been compared to “Mein Kampf” and “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” would speak more freely if he knew I was, in fact, a practicing Christian.

But then I thought about the personal setback I would be subjecting myself to for the sake, possibly, of a few good quotes.

I’d been writing for The Journal for a year, and while I was open about being a churchgoing Christian — my father, a Jew, and my mother, who was raised Catholic, both converted to Protestantism when I was a kid — I was adamant in my belief that the Jewish story was also my family’s story, that purpose and promise and persecution link my ancestors to Moses and Einstein and the Beastie Boys.

So I kept quiet. I let the professor think of me whatever he was inclined to think. As the interview progressed, I realized the disclosure would not have mattered to MacDonald. But it certainly would have mattered to me.

When, in 2007, I joined The Journal — which I am leaving now to enter law school at UCLA — the impetus was as personal as it was professional. Sure, I saw an opportunity to advance my career — and having received some top honors from the Los Angeles Press Club during my time here, including best blog and journalist of the year, I’d say the Prophets couldn’t have promised anything more. But, maybe more importantly, I thought the move would help me sort out my complicated Judeo-Christian identity.

I typically observe Passover in a church, and growing up in a San Diego suburb, the extent of my Jewish upbringing was being the target of money jokes. Despite having three Jewish grandparents, including both grandmothers, and facial hair that draws comparisons to Matisyahu, I was, at best, Jew-ish.

But at The Jewish Journal I began working on my Yiddish tongue; I went to Yom Kippur services for the first time. I traveled to Israel and even got hassled by El Al security screeners; I observed Shabbat in Sderot and experienced the terror of hearing a red alert and having only a few seconds to run for a bomb shelter; I haggled at a market (OK, I was already pretty good at that); and I learned that I had an incredible amount more in common with the Jews I was sojourning among than the gentiles I grew up with.

There was speculation among a few colleagues that my joining this paper was an indication that a Prodigal Son was coming home. But this had not been my father’s house for more than two decades. And not everyone welcomed me back.

“The ‘Jewish’ journal continues to employ this Christian with a Jewish name to tell us about Jews,” a reader of my blog, The God Blog, wrote in one of a handful of similar comments in 2007. “How ‘bout this: let the JJ change its name to the ‘Apostate Journal,’ and BG can change his name to Christian Berg.”

Those sentiments didn’t surprise me. In fact, I had assumed such opposition would be prevalent, and when Journal Editor-in-Chief Rob Eshman contacted me at the Los Angeles Daily News and asked me to lunch, I quickly let him know that he might want to move on to a candidate who better fit the bill.

“It’s OK,” he responded. “Some of my best friends aren’t Jewish.”

Still, I had no illusions about the insider-outsider place I would occupy in the community. Nevertheless, I found that most readers evaluated me by the quality of my work, not by the fact that, much like most L.A. Jews, I didn’t daven daily.

I didn’t struggle with the alphabet soup of Jewish communal life — with discerning JVS (Jewish Vocational Service) from JFS (Jewish Family Service) from JFL (Jewish Free Loan) — but remembering all the holidays ... oy. I also found that there is much more to understanding the Jewish community than just being able to differentiate between an eruv and a mikveh.

Never was this more apparent than when I visited the Jewish State.

Not all Jews, I learned, looked like me: poor-sighted, fair-skinned, curly haired. In Los Angeles you could go years without running into a Jew who wasn’t either from Eastern Europe or Iran. But the breadth of diversity in Israel — where Jews arrive from India and Ethiopia and Australia and China and Argentina — pushed aside everything I thought I knew about who is a Jew, and what it means to be a Jew, and what it is to live a Jewish life.

Whether writing about the fragility of life in Israel or economic pressures on Jewish communal life or L.A.’s Jewish hoops hero, Jordan Farmar, I met Jews who had grown up with a strong identity and those just developing one; Jews who were Jews in name only and others who considered themselves Jewish only when others wanted them to be; Jews who felt a God-given obligation to defend the faith and those who felt just as strong a responsibility to reform it.

Like Los Angeles itself, I found that Jewish life is a vast landscape, ranging from sandy beaches to snow-capped mountains, from hardscrabble desert to dense forest. It’s a place where even a Christian named Greenberg could find a home.

I’m not a Messianic or a Jew for Jesus. I’ve never pretended to be a partial practitioner of Judaism. But I’ve also found that I deeply appreciate Jewish life — the commitment to community-building and supporting the less fortunate, to education and culture, to reading and writing, to remembering God.

Pretty early during my employment at The Journal, I realized how to definitively answer the question I had gotten so used to hearing: “Are you Jewish?”

“Well,” I would say, “that really depends on who’s asking.”

The issue of Jewish identity is, after all, a thousands-year-old debate; I don’t expect to be the answer.

I’m happy to be accepted by those who can accept me, but I understand if you can’t. Personally, I don’t think I could feel more Jewish. Except for that whole faith-in-Jesus thing. And he is kind of a deal-breaker.

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July 28, 2009 | 2:29 pm

North Carolina crew charged with plotting ‘violent jihad’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Last week, Long Island boy Bryant Vinas pleaded guilty to terrorism charges. This week it was a North Carolina father and son, and a few others, who were charged with planning “violent jihad” against the United States. From the Daily Mail:

The group was led by Daniel Patrick Boyd, a married 39-year-old who lived in an unassuming lakeside home in a rural area south of Raleigh, where he and his family walked their dog and operated a drywall business, federal authorities added.

But two decades ago, Boyd, who is a US citizen, trained in terrorist camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan and fought against the Soviets for three years before returning to the United States.

No specific terrorist plans or targets overseas are listed in the charge sheet released yesterday, although it claims some of the defendants traveled to Israel in 2007 with the intent of waging ‘violent jihad’ and returned home without success.

‘These charges hammer home the point that terrorists and their supporters are not confined to the remote regions of some far away land but can grow and fester right here at home,’ US Attorney George E.B. Holding said.

He would not give details of the alleged plots beyond what was in a news release and indictment.

The seven men made their first court appearances in Raleigh on Monday, charged with providing material support to terrorism.

The New York Times has the full text of the indictment against Boyd et al. Read it here. I’m going to be blogging more about this story for GetReligion later today, so stay tuned.

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July 27, 2009 | 3:17 pm

Jon Stewart needs to bring back Leibowitz

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Leibowitz was not Jon Stewart‘s sidekick in the early episodes of “The Daily Show.” It was Jon Stuart Leibowitz’s given name. And, writing an open letter to Stewart (neé Leibowitz), Ron Rosenbaum of Slate says “The Daily Show” host needs to get more Jewy:

At this point, it wouldn’t hurt you. It would only help you: Most of your fans would see it as a touching gesture. And you’d no doubt get lots of comedic mileage out of it. I’m sure that you could milk the buildup and get a good-natured laugh out of the audience every time you used Leibowitz or pretended to get confused.

And, on a more serious note, it would represent the end of a shabby, antiquated era, pronouncing that aspect of anti-Semitism now (hopefully) dead and gone. It might even make it easier for young comedians, actors, and rock stars to resist the temptation to try to “pass.” (Although, frankly, I hope that Gene Simmons of Kiss keeps his origins hidden from those who don’t know about them.) It could be an important cultural moment.

Don’t you think it’s about time for Jews to reject the rejection of their ancestry and the WASP-ification of their names? Not just you, but all Jews in show business, indeed all Jews in business business. The practice might once have served a purpose, back in the ‘20s and ‘30s, when it was insisted upon by powerful but fearful Hollywood movie moguls who wanted Jewish talent but were afraid of Jewish names seeming un-American to the mass of the populace who, it’s probably true at that time, suffered from a low-grade case of anti-Semitism.

Indeed, times have changed.

As this post indicates, Stewart is not afraid to crack Jew jokes. And, unlike Tim Whatley—see the above video—he can do that. The Rev. Jim Wallis even likened Stewart to a Hebrew Prophet. And Stewart must mention his Jewishness at least every episode, so often so that others reference it.

The Leibowitz movement is already gaining ground.

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July 27, 2009 | 12:58 pm

What do Starbucks and Baptists have in common?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

No, it’s not highly caffeinated employees. It’s, apparently, a feeling that their business would be better served by, at least in some cases, avoiding the name that built its brand.

First, the story from The Seattle Times:

When is a Starbucks not a Starbucks? When it’s a 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea.

The ubiquitous coffee-shop giant is dropping the household name from its 15th Avenue East store on Capitol Hill, a shop that was slated to close at one point last year but is being remodeled in Starbucks’ new rustic, eco-friendly style.

It will open next week, the first of at least three remodeled Seattle-area stores that will bear the names of their neighborhoods rather than the 16,000-store chain to which they belong.

Names and locations for the other two shops have not been finalized. If the pilot goes well in Seattle, it could move to other markets.

The new names are meant to give the stores “a community personality,” said Tim Pfeiffer, senior vice president of global design. Starbucks’ logo will be absent, with bags of the company’s coffee and other products rebranded with the 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea name.

When I was at The Sun in San Bernardino, I wrote about a parallel phenomena affecting the old American Baptist Church in Colton. That story is no longer online, but this link from Adherents.com carries numerous similar stories. The common theme: American Baptist and Southern Baptist congregations dropping Baptist from the name outside their building and opting for something more nondenominational.

After the jump, a 2000 column from The Bergen Record both summarizes and mocks the movement:

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July 26, 2009 | 4:55 pm

Sarah Palin: It is finished

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Sarah Palin’s stint as the only Alaska governor you’ve ever heard of drew to a close today. What the future holds for the former vice presidential running mate remains unclear. Despite the speculation that Palin was stepping down to run for president, her spokeswoman said no such decision has been made.

“I cannot express enough there is no plan after July 26. There is absolutely no plan,” she told The Associated Press. “The decision (to quit) was made in the vacuum of what was best for Alaska, and now I’m accepting all the options, but there is nothing planned.”

More from the AP:

A few things are known: She is scheduled to speak Aug. 8 at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California, and has said she plans to write a book, campaign for political candidates from coast to coast and build a right-of-center coalition. ...

Friend and foe alike have speculated that Palin may host a radio or TV show, or launch a lucrative speaking career. Her political action committee, SarahPAC, has raised more than $1 million, said Meghan Stapleton, a spokeswoman for the committee and the Palin family.

Read the rest here.

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July 25, 2009 | 10:11 pm

Tony Alamo sees sex-crime conviction as proof he’s a prophet

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

When Alamo was arrested

Well, the Tony Alamo sideshow is winding down, but not without a flurry before the finale.

Today Alamo, the oddball religious leader who may or may not have his own cult, was convicted of sex crimes that included taking underage “wives”—a euphemism for rape. He faces up to 175 years in prison.

But Alamo, 74, is clearly still out of touch with reality.

“I’m just another one of the prophets that went to jail for the Gospel,” Alamo called to reporters as U.S. Marshals escorted him back to jail.

Yeah, right. And Bernie Madoff is the Messiah.

Read the rest here. Hat tip to David Neff.

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