May 19, 2007 | 10:38 am

Carter: Bush ‘worst in history’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Former President Carter had those and other choice words to say of President Bush in an interview Friday with Bible Belt Blogger Frank Lockwood. The story and some audio excerpts are online.

“I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history. The overt reversal of America’s basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including [those of] George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbing to me,” Carter said.

The 39th president said that during Bush’s two terms in office, he has radically departed from every other U.S. president.

“We have a new policy now on war,” Carter said. “We now have endorsed the concept of pre-emptive war where we go to war with another nation militarily, even though our own security is not directly threatened, if we want to change the regime there or if we fear that some time in the future our security might be endangered. But that’s been a radical departure from all previous administration policies.”

(skip)

“Individual churches and religious seminaries and other strictly religious organizations have their own lobbyists now in Washington to make sure they get their share of taxpayers’ funds. And, as you know, the policy from the White House has been to allocate funds to religious institutions, even those that channel those funds exclusively to their own particular group of believers in a particular religion. Those things in my opinion are quite disturbing,” Carter said.

“As a traditional Baptist, I’ve always believed in separation of church and state and honored that premise when I was president, and so have all other presidents, I might say, except this one.”

Carter is, of course, no hero to the Jewish community.

May 18, 2007 | 11:02 pm

Tony Blair going Catholic

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

And not in the universal sense. Indeed, when the prime minister of the nation that created Anglicism leaves Downing Street next month, The Times of London is reporting he will cleave to the Roman Catholic Church and, by expectation, the pope.

Interesting, because Tony Blair was President Bush’s best buddy in the Western World during the past six years, and Britain was the only nation of any previous military stature in the Coalition of the Willing. The war in Iraq obliterated Bush’s popularity, yes, but also Blair‘s and his Labour Party. But now Blair reportedly plans to join the Catholic Church. The late Pope John Paul II vehemently opposed the war, which he said “threatens humanity.”

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May 18, 2007 | 10:33 am

The ‘Original Jew’ dead

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

God is dead.

Well, not The God, but the black supremacist leader Yahweh Ben Yahweh, which in my limited Hebrew translates, “God, son of God.”

The 71-year-old self-proclaimed “Original Jew” had tried a number of fringe religious groups before starting his own, the Nation of Yahweh. Among those who call themselves Black Hebrews, Yahweh, born Hulon Mitchell Jr., believed today’s Jews to be impostor Israelites.

From The Washington Post, via the LA Times:

From the beginning, however, Yahweh’s group was associated with an intimidating style that often crossed into violence and murder. He railed against “white devils” and proclaimed himself the messiah: “All who receive me shall be saved from immorality and death.”

Still, he managed to cultivate an image as a well-meaning, if eccentric, community builder. Yahweh helped clean up blighted neighborhoods and, at least among his followers, restored a sense of order to a crumbling social structure. Children studied Hebrew and recited the names of chemical elements.

He spoke to crowds of thousands around the country and received the blessings of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. In 1987, the Miami Urban League gave Yahweh its highest humanitarian award, and its president pronounced him “an inspiration to the entire community.”

In 1992, two years after the Miami mayor declared Oct. 7 Yahweh Ben Yahweh Day, the religious leader began a nine-year prison stint for conspiracy to commit murder.

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May 18, 2007 | 9:57 am

Jesuits to pay $16 million for dirty hands

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The Jesuit order has agreed to a payout of $16 million to the families of nine children allegedly molested by Father Mark Falvey, who died 31 years ago. Via the LA Times:

“One of his victims, an 8-year-old girl, tried to commit suicide,” said the lawyer for the victims, Raymond P. Boucher.

“This guy brought a lifetime of misery to a group of young children. They’ll never get over it,” Boucher said.

Though the Archdiocese of L.A. was not involved in this settlement, the news two days after L.A.‘s Cardinal Roger Mahony announced clergy-abuse lawsuits may force the largest Catholic archdiocese in the country to sell its headquarters and other buildings.

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May 17, 2007 | 2:19 pm

Final Falwell: On Islam

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The Council on American-Islamic Relations blasts a daily news letter, and at the top of each letter is the “Hadith of the Day.” Well, Bruce Tomaso of the Dallas Morning News noticed Tuesday’s message seemed a little too poignant for coincidence. The Rev. Jerry Falwell, who after 9/11 called Islam’s Prophet Muhammad a terrorist, had just died, and Tuesday’s letter didn’t mention Falwell. But the hadith seemed to:

The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: “Do not speak ill of the dead, (for) they have seen the result of (their past deeds).”

—Fiqh-us-Sunnah, Volume 4, Number 76

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May 17, 2007 | 12:19 pm

Falwell for Israel

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

That’s what Zev Chafets had to say about the late Rev. Jerry in an op-ed that read like an appreciation in yesterday’s LA Times:

He believed that God had a plan for the United States and that its enemies were evil. He referred to Muslim radicals as “barbarians” and advocated taking out Iran’s nuclear capacity by force. “Bush is probably too weak politically to do it,” he told me over barbecue one afternoon. “It will be up to Israel. And we’ll be at the White House, cheering.”

Falwell’s Zionism was by no means inevitable. Before him, evangelicals reluctantly acknowledged that the Jews were God’s chosen people, but many didn’t quite agree with the choice. Falwell embraced the Jews of Israel (who appreciated his friendship) just as he embraced American Jews (who, by and large, spurned it). He could be acerbic about Jewish leaders — he called Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League a “damn fool” and pointedly told me that the comment was on the record — but he never let Jewish hostility shake his philo-Semitism. American Jews who now take evangelical friendship for granted need to know that it is, to a large extent, a grant from Jerry Falwell.

During Israel’s war with Hezbollah last summer, Chafets, who is Jewish, wrote a piece titled “I Want Falwell in My Foxhole,” in which he discussed evangelical support for Israel and stated, “I’d rather be in a bomb shelter—or a foxhole—with Jerry Falwell than with Jerry Seinfeld.”

(Round-up of Falwell’s choicest quotes on Jewlicious.)

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May 16, 2007 | 9:28 pm

Another anti-Semitic incident in Sherman Oaks

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

A reportedly anti-Semitic letter documenting the origin of the word Jew was received today by the Valley Cities Jewish Community Center in Sherman Oaks—as if that JCC didn’t have a big enough problem. It’s being investigated as a “hate incident” because no threat was made, authorities said.

Two weeks ago, employees of Councilman Jack Weiss arrived at his Sherman Oaks district office to find three swastikas and an incoherent rant—containing such pleasantry as “We’ll have a homoerotic cop feeling up your Jewish ass in no time!!!”— epoxied to their office doors. Adonis Irwin was arrested and has been charged with three felony counts.

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May 16, 2007 | 6:43 pm

Evangelical vote up for grabs

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Barbara Bradley Hagerty, NPR’s resident religion reporter, had a wonderful piece on the air this afternoon that began with the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s death, transitioned into his ruminations that the green movement was “Satan’s attempt to redirect the church’s primary focus,” and then moved into territory not talked about often enough: That many of today’s evangelical Christian are not members of the party of Falwell or Robertson or Dobson. They are, as I like to call them, Reluctant Republicans.

They think abortion is bad and they’re uncomfortable with the thought of gay sex—but, you know, they have this gay friend—and they don’t know what to make of stem cell research because they’re not sure what it is. Also important to them are the environment and issues relating to social justice—hunger, poverty, genocide—of which they see Jesus as the greatest proponent.

I came across this issue at an RNA conference two years ago, shortly after President Bush had been re-elected on the overblown moral values issue. (Polls show that the vaguely bound “moral values” button played as significant a role in voters decisions for those who re-elected Bill Clinton, too.) But the movement away from the hard-line old times is getting stronger.

That’s why Hagerty traveled to Florida, to the Northland Church, a megacenter pastored by Joel Hunter, who was inline to head the Christian Coalition, if he only could have watched the environment rot. What she found was a bunch of Bush-voting Republicans more likely to follow Bono than Pat Boone (no offense to Mr. Boone, who attends The Church on the Way in Van Nuys).

That creates a dilemma for Northland member Ruth Sapp, who was coming out of service on a recent Sunday morning.

“I still believe that same-sex marriage is not Biblical,” she said. “So I wouldn’t vote for someone who contradicted.”

Ditto about abortion, she said. So what happens if all the candidates fall short on these moral issues?

“I wouldn’t vote for anybody if that were the case,” she said. “I guess I’d have to skip my vote for that go-around.”

Voters like Sapp terrify the Republican Party — or at least they should, says Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

“Depending on the candidates, it could well be the case that evangelicals say, ‘We’re just really frustrated with politics. We don’t like the choices. We don’t think Sen. Clinton is a good choice or Sen. Obama — but on our side, we’re not really pleased with Mayor Guiliani. And you know what? We’re not going to vote,’” he said. “And I’m sure there will be pollsters saying, ‘Karl Rove thought 4 million staying home in 2000 was a lot. Well guess what? 12 million stayed home.’”

Cromartie doubts there will be such a large shift. But even if a small percentage of these new evangelicals stay home or vote Democratic, that could translate into a couple of million votes. Far less is needed to become president. In Florida, the home state of Northland church, George W. Bush won by 537 votes in the year 2000 — a small fraction of the worshippers streaming into the church on any given Sunday.

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May 16, 2007 | 10:02 am

Sex abuse will spur archdiocese to sell headquarters

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The LA Archdiocese will have to sell its headquarters and possibly other properties because of the growing costs of fighting and settling lawsuits for clergy abuse, Cardinal Roger Mahony said yesterday. Plaintiffs’ attorneys said the doomsday announcement was a PR ploy intended at generating sympathy. Via the LA Times:

“The cardinal has instructed his attorneys to pull out every weapon to try to deny victims a single nickel,” said plaintiffs attorney John Manly. He said the church has enough insurance coverage and other assets to settle the cases without unloading real estate. “The notion that the cardinal would have to sell buildings to pay settlements is just laughable,” Manly said.

A Mahony spokesman declined to answer any questions about the prospective sales, and an attorney for the archdiocese did not respond to an interview request.

The church has land holdings in Southern California worth an estimated $4 billion, a Times analysis has found.

The 12-story Mid-Wilshire headquarters, donated by Thrifty Payless donated in 1995, is worth more than $40 million. (Some history of the archdiocese’s payouts from my blog morgue.)

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May 15, 2007 | 6:15 pm

Talk about interfaith marriage

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The St. Petersburg Times has this story last week. Just read the lede, which paints a more powerful portrait than my words could:

ST. PETERSBURG—On Sundays after church, Tom and Libit Jones head to the beach. Together, they scout for seashell treasures: cat’s paws and worms.

Hand in hand,  visors slung low,  arms wrapped around each other,  they stop to smooch as the sun starts its slow slip down.

Their public affection camouflages a deep divide.

Tom, 63, is an evangelical Christian, raised in a Kentucky Southern Baptist church. Libit, 52, is Mormon, raised in a Texas congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Both consider themselves faithful Christians who believe in Jesus Christ and the promise of eternal life. Both want the other to convert. But Tom runs Christian Research & Counsel, a ministry designed to educate the public about what he calls “counterfeits of Christianity.”

His work focuses on Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Hat-tip to GetReligion, which resurrected this story on the blogosphere yesterday.

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May 15, 2007 | 3:43 pm

Unless he is demon possessed ...

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

... this video has no religious hook. But a friend of mine found it on DevilDucky, and it’s pretty funny. If you can last through the first 90 seconds, you’ll see why someone might think there’s a spirit moving through Josh Silberman.

Here is an additional link to the reel for “the craziest kid in Hollywood.”

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May 15, 2007 | 2:00 pm

Jerry Falwell felled

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I’ve been out all morning, and during that time the news of Jerry Falwell being found unconscious in his office turned into his obituary. Falwell, the 73-year-old founder of the once powerful Moral Majority, a fundamentalist firebrand, died of a heart-rhythm irregularity.

From CBS.com:

He had an unlikely beginning for the Christian ministry: his grandfather was a self-avowed atheist; his father, an agnostic who hated preachers and ran a moonshine operation during Prohibition. But Falwell decided early on, in his teen years, to devote his life to Christian service, calling himself a spiritual streetfighter.

“If we lose our moral bearings, we shall surely collapse,” he once said.

(skip)

“Abortion, family values, the moral underpinnings on which the nation was built we call the Judeo-Christian ethic, is important to us,” Falwell said.

He was a man of strong opinions. That often got him in trouble.

In 1999, he charged that a popular children’s television character, one of the Teletubbies, could be gay because he was purple and carried a handbag. One Falwell critic responded by saying he’d “rather watch the ‘Teletubbies’ than televangelists.”

After Sept. 11, Falwell declared God’s anger with gays, lesbians, abortionists and feminists had contributed to the terrorist attacks. He later apologized, saying only the terrorists were to blame. But in 2002, this comment led to deadly riots in the Muslim world:

“I think Muhammad was a terrorist. I’ve read enough of the history of his life, written by both Muslims and non-Muslims, that he was a violent man, a man of war.”

Again Falwell was stung by criticism. But he still had the ability to deliver big bucks and votes to political candidates — and that gave him power to keep pushing his moral agenda.

Though his televangelism would experience problems — he once lost his tax exemption when the IRS determined his “Old Time Gospel Hour” was being used for political purposes — he nevertheless kept broadcasting.

It’s what Jesus would have done, he said.

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