March 10, 2010 | 7:37 am

Muslims massacre Christian in Nigeria

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Living in the comfort of the United States, I scoff when people try to tell me how hard it is being a Christian in our society. It’s not hard. It is if you’re Cassie Bernall, but stories like hers are so rare that such tragedy serves as our only reference for someone standing up for God at the most difficult time at home.

In Iraq, in the West Bank—that’s where it’s difficult to be a Christian. In an American mall when shops are wishing you a happy holiday instead of a merry Christmas—that’s not.

You can also add Nigeria to the list of places that, as a Christian, you’d prefer to not live in. There, over the weekend, Christian villagers were rounded up in nets and then hacked to death by a bunch of pissed off Muslims. From the LAT:

Reports on the death toll differed wildly, with some placing it at about 200 and others reporting 528 killed and thousands injured. Casualty figures in the recurrent Muslim-Christian violence in Nigeria’s volatile Plateau state are often difficult to ascertain, as each side inflates its losses.

However, attacks in January and on Sunday have left at least 500 dead, making it the worst violence here for some years.

Hundreds of nomadic Fulani herdsmen launched coordinated attacks on three Christian villages—Dogo Nahawa, Ratsat and Zot, just south of Jos—about 3 a.m. Sunday.

The killers planted nets and animal traps outside the huts of the villagers, mainly peasant farmers, fired weapons in the air, then attacked with machetes, according to human rights lawyer Shehu Sani of the nongovernment Civil Rights Congress, who visited the villages and interviewed dozens of survivors.

“People came out of their houses and started falling into the animal traps and mosquito nets and then they were hacked down,” he said. “They were the kind of traps used for wild animals.”

Read the rest here. It’s not clear the origin of this interfaith fighting, but it appears the recent massacre stems from allegations that the Christian villagers attacked the Muslim herdsmen’s camp last month, killing four and stealing 1,200 cattle.

March 10, 2010 | 1:29 am

Evangelicals and the sins of Sodom

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

This one has been on the must-mention list. Sorry for the delay. It’s Nicholas D. Kristof’s column from two weeks ago, and it concerns changes in the social political agenda of conservative Christians.

A growing number of conservative Christians are explicitly and self-critically acknowledging that to be “pro-life” must mean more than opposing abortion. The head of World Vision in the United States, Richard Stearns, begins his fascinating book, “The Hole in Our Gospel,” with an account of a visit a decade ago to Uganda, where he met a 13-year-old AIDS orphan who was raising his younger brothers by himself.

“What sickened me most was this question: where was the Church?” he writes. “Where were the followers of Jesus Christ in the midst of perhaps the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time? Surely the Church should have been caring for these ‘orphans and widows in their distress.’ (James 1:27). Shouldn’t the pulpits across America have flamed with exhortations to rush to the front lines of compassion?

“How have we missed it so tragically, when even rock stars and Hollywood actors seem to understand?”

Mr. Stearns argues that evangelicals were often so focused on sexual morality and a personal relationship with God that they ignored the needy. He writes laceratingly about “a Church that had the wealth to build great sanctuaries but lacked the will to build schools, hospitals, and clinics.”

In one striking passage, Mr. Stearns quotes the prophet Ezekiel as saying that the great sin of the people of Sodom wasn’t so much that they were promiscuous or gay as that they were “arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.” (Ezekiel 16:49.)

Hmm. Imagine if sodomy laws could be used to punish the stingy, unconcerned rich!

Read the rest here. Giving a critical analysis of the reportage here would be something I reserve for GetReligion. But I can simply say that Kristof definitely seems to get religion—and where he might not he takes the time to figure it out.

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March 9, 2010 | 10:57 pm

If Ben Folds played Christian music

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Christian rockstars are real. In the music industry, artists who start out in CCM are generally talked about as “crossing over” to a mainstream market—a la Amy Grant, MercyMe and Switchfoot. But what if the brilliant and profane Ben Folds went the opposite direction like Boby Dylan and Johnny Cash did?

Cathleen Falsani says his music might look like this. It’s the Michael Gungor Band, and it makes me want to rock out.

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March 9, 2010 | 1:27 am

Missing Mr. Bush?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Short answer: No. Long answer: Nooooooooo.

President Bush has been out of office little more than a year, and it looks like some people are already longing for brighter days. Stanley Fish is saying “I told you so.”

Well it’s a bit more than a year now and signs of Bush’s rehabilitation are beginning to pop up. One is literally a sign, a billboard that appeared recently on I-35 in Minnesota.

(skip)

And now, right on schedule, Bush has resurfaced (just as I imagined him doing a year ago last September ) to join Bill Clinton in a humanitarian relief effort. He is officially a member in good standing of the ex-presidents club, and the longer he lives the more his reputation will be burnished. To be sure, his post-presidency resume is still thin, but we can expect it to be beefed up by good deeds, ceremonial appearances and the activities that will surround the building and opening of his library at Southern Methodist University. We’ll see Bush the tour guide and Bush the patron of historical scholarship and, perhaps, even Bush the seminar leader.

And the judgment of history? Well, I’m not that foolish, but I will venture to say that it will be more nuanced than anything the professional Bush-haters — indistinguishable in temperament from the professional Obama-haters — are now able to imagine. He will not go to the top of the list, but neither will he be the figure of fun and derision he seemed destined to be only a year ago.

Read the rest here.

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March 8, 2010 | 11:06 pm

Do the Navi speak Hebrew?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I missed the Oscars last night because I was rounding out my Sunday of studying in the library. But listening to a discussion of the awards show on NPR this morning, I was pretty sure I heard a blue, big-eared version of Ben Stiller sprinkle some Hebrew into the Na’vi language. Bloggish confirms it. Check a bluish, Jewish Stiller in the above video.

“That means, this seemed like a better idea in rehearsal.”

I wonder if Ron Artest thought the same thing after the Lakers dropped their third straight yesterday.

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March 7, 2010 | 3:58 pm

Lakers’ Artest’s Hebrew defense

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Jordan Farmar is still the Lakers’ only Jew. But check out Ron Artest’s hair for today’s game against the Orlando Magic.

There are Hindi and Japanese characters on the back, but that’s definitely Hebrew in the front. In three different languages,

Dennis Rodman’s

Artest’s dyed hair says “Defense.”

Do we have a new Hebrew Hammer?

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March 7, 2010 | 11:29 am

Jewish leaders meet with University of California president

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

University administrators don’t envy Mark Yudof these days. The UC president has been under heavy fire for tuition hikes and faculty pay-cuts stemming for California’s fiscal insolvency; he’s had to written letter to the entire university system promoting diversity after that “Compton Cookout”; and he’s still dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—at UC Irvine.

Last week, a day before massive protests at Berkeley and UCLA, Orange County Jewish leaders brought their concerns about the climate at UCI to Yudof’s Oakland office. According to a press release from the group—Shalom Elcott, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation Orange County; Gerald Solomon of the Samueli Foundation; and Jeff Margolis and Dr. Jim Weiss of the Jewish Federation’s Rose Project—Yudof told them he was unhappy with the way students involved with the Muslim Student Union repeatedly disrupted a recent speech by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren and that:

These students should be prosecuted for violating the student code of conduct and breaking the law.

He agreed that, pending an investigation with full due process, the Muslim Student Union (MSU) should be disciplined for their violations of campus codes of conduct.

As for the future of the University of California and my tuition of $40,000 next year ...

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March 5, 2010 | 11:34 am

Godless racism

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

There is a lot of complete craziness in our country’s legal history. I found one such gem while reading for my constitutional law course this morning. In Loving v. Virginia, in which the US Supreme Court invalidated a state law criminalizing interracial marriages between whites and non-whites because it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the reversed a trial judge who had this to say in convicting the couple of miscegenation:

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

Thank God those days of ignorance are gone, though religion is far too often still used to further ungodly ends.

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March 5, 2010 | 1:12 am

Stampede at Hindu temple leaves 63 dead

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

There was a tragic stampede today at a Hindu temple in India. The death toll is 63—all women and children. What amazed me most about this story was a line I heard on NPR—that this was the deadliest stampede in India in past few months.

BBC is reporting, via Holy Weblog!, that police are trying to bring a case against the temple managers for criminal negligence:

The temple is owned by a Hindu holy man, Jagadguru Kripalu Ji Maharaj, who police say was marking the anniversary of the death of his wife with a ritual feast.

Thousands of people had gathered for the ceremonial feast and free distribution of clothes - the stampede occurred when people scrambled to collect the offerings being handed out.

Local journalists told the BBC they were mostly poor people from local villages.

Police officials said an iron gate leading to the temple complex collapsed, leading to a crowd surge.

The BBC’s Ram Dutt Tripathi in the state capital, Lucknow, said the temple gate was under construction when it collapsed.

The chief minister of Uttar Pradesh state, Ms Mayawati, has ordered an inquiry into the incident.

Government officials say it appears that the organisers of the event had been unprepared to deal with the size of the crowd.

Read the rest here.

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March 3, 2010 | 3:10 pm

The buxom babe on the side of your airplane

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

This controversy was a no-brainer that any casual observer could have spotted coming down the runway:

Orlando-based AirTran, which has its largest hub in Atlanta, has adorned one of its Boeing 737 jets with the image of a swimsuit-clad woman in heels, as part of a partnership with Sports Illustrated for the magazine’s swimsuit edition.

The promotion is ending and AirTran will remove the image from the plane soon,  spokesman Christopher White said.

The AJC has learned that the Association of Flight Attendants at AirTran voiced its objections in a message to members.

“It is our feeling that this is not only contrary to the family image that this company tries to promote, but also potentially offensive to their female employees, the majority of their flight attendants who will have to work on this aircraft,” the union said, adding that it “creates a potential for verbal abuse by male passengers.”

VF Daily refers to the flight attendants’ complaints as having to do with “moral folly.” Tasteless? Maybe. Even that’s probably a stretch. Opening flight attendants up to treatment that might resemble old stereotypes. Maybe too. But moral folly ... did I miss something?

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March 3, 2010 | 11:09 am

Are liberals and atheists smarter?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I’m having a difficult time understanding the findings of this study, which is either an indication of my values or that the writing is really, really bad, but it appears that a new study suggests liberals and atheists are smarter than conservatives and the God-believing:

he study, published in the March 2010 issue of the peer-reviewed scientific journal Social Psychology Quarterly, advances a new theory to explain why people form particular preferences and values.  The theory suggests that more intelligent people are more likely than less intelligent people to adopt evolutionarily novel preferences and values, but intelligence does not correlate with preferences and values that are old enough to have been shaped by evolution over millions of years.”

“Evolutionarily novel” preferences and values are those that humans are not biologically designed to have and our ancestors probably did not possess.  In contrast, those that our ancestors had for millions of years are “evolutionarily familiar.”

“General intelligence, the ability to think and reason, endowed our ancestors with advantages in solving evolutionarily novel problems for which they did not have innate solutions,” says Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science.  “As a result, more intelligent people are more likely to recognize and understand such novel entities and situations than less intelligent people, and some of these entities and situations are preferences, values, and lifestyles.”

This study found different bedfellows than the groups more likely to blame Jews for the financial crisis.

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March 3, 2010 | 7:47 am

A list of the best religion blogs

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Last summer I was invited to participate in the Social Science Research Council’s survey on the religion blogosphere. The council’s report was recently published, and it includes a few quotes from the creator of The God Blog. (That’s me.) That I expected. But the report also includes an acknowledgment I didn’t expect: that this blog is considered among about 100 of the most influential religion blogs:

As a feature on the website of the Los Angeles-based Jewish Journal, Brad A. Greenberg maintains spirited commentary on the religion headlines, often bringing little-known perspectives to bear. Greenberg is a Christian working for a Jewish site, but his coverage—which began in March of 2007—is hardly sectarian. He has a particularly good eye for how religion plays out in American popular culture.

I’m not sure what that’s worth. I’m not even sure there are 100 religion bloggers these days. But I appreciate the recognition regardless.

The God Blog can put this on the mantle next to being recognized by the Times of London as one of the top 30 religion blogs and by the Los Angeles Press Club as 2007’s blog of the year.

Check out the rest of the blogs that made the council’s list here. You’ll see GetReligion, which I also write for, and a lot of the blogs I regularly link to here.

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