March 14, 2010 | 1:02 pm

An homage to ‘hairy Hindustan’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I first gave my mustache a ride two summers ago. It reappeared that November when I participated in the facial hair version of a walkathon to raise money for prostate cancer research.

That’s a lot of play for the mo’ on a blog about religion. And today, only a few days after returning to my face, the mustache makes a return to The God Blog. My excuse: my classmates wanted to have a little fun with Mustache March. This blog’s excuse: an interesting story from The Washington Post about mustaches going the way of the buffalo in India.

Here goes:

For generations of Indian men, a mustache was a must—especially here in southern India, where fabulous facial hair has long symbolized masculinity. Among younger urban Indians, however, it’s the cleanshaven men whom women prefer to kiss, date or just hang out with, according to a recent AC Nielsen survey conducted in eight major cities.

“Our fathers thought they were not men without their mustaches. But ‘hairy Hindustan’ is over,” said Kumar, using a time-honored nickname for the subcontinent. “It’s old India. The mustache is for my father, not for me.”

The number of women rejecting facial hair appeared to surprise many Indian cultural commentators, but they were ready with explanations. Some considered the disappearing mustache an indicator of youthful city-dwelling Indians’ growing globalization. Others thought it was significant that the findings took women’s opinions into account.

The survey found that 72 percent of the women who responded in Mumbai and 83 percent of those surveyed in the southern city of Chennai said they were more likely to want to kiss a cleanshaven man. The numbers were similar in New Delhi, India’s capital, and in the eastern city of Kolkata, often seen as a center of tradition.

In “Hair India: A Guide to the Bizarre Beards and Magnificent Moustaches of Hindustan,” Richard McCallum and photographer Chris Stowers chronicle their travels among the camel-herding tribes of Rajasthan in the north and the backwaters of Kerala in the south to find India’s “facial foliage” before it becomes a part of history.

“The mustache represents all the aspects of old India—the corruption, the baddie cop in an old film, the government job for life—that the young generation want to leave behind,” said McCallum, a pogonologist, or student of facial hair. “Besides, no one wants to look like their parents.”

Read the rest here. And comment on my mustache, or see a higher-res picture, here. As you can imagine, I’ve had a really difficult time holding a serious conversation with anyone. Not really sure how my dad pulls it off.

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March 14, 2010 | 10:23 am

Pope touched by sex-abuse scandal in Germany

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Pope Benedict XVI has been been clear that the priesthood has no room for pedophiles. But Benedict has been touched by the ever-widening sex abuse scandal in Germany.  During an era when the church thought perverted priests could be treated, when the pope was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the archbishop of Munich and Freising, he approved a pedophile priest’s transfer for therapy.

From The New York Times:

A subordinate took full responsibility for allowing the priest to later resume pastoral work, the archdiocese said in a statement.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said he had no comment beyond the statement by the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, which he said showed the “nonresponsibility” of the pope in the matter.

The expanding abuse inquiry had come ever closer to Benedict as new accusations in Germany surfaced almost daily since the first reports in January. On Friday the pope met with the chief bishop of Germany, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, the head of the German Bishops Conference, to discuss the church investigations and media reports.

Problems in the German church have already come close to the pope, whose brother, Msgr. Georg Ratzinger, 86, directed a choir connected to a boarding school where two former students have come forward with abuse claims. In an interview this week, Monsignor Ratzinger, who directed the choir from 1964 to 1994, said the accusations dated from before his tenure. He also apologized for slapping students.

At a news conference following a one-on-one meeting with Benedict on Friday, Archbishop Zollitsch said the pope was “greatly upset” and “deeply moved” by the abuse allegations, and had urged the German church to seek the truth and help the victims.

An honest mistake or more? Regardless, Benedict has little to worry about. Look at how long Cardinal Roger Mahony lasted.

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March 11, 2010 | 2:31 pm

Court upholds ‘Under God’ in Pledge of Allegiance

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Those liberal Ninth Circuit judges are at it again:

The words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance are an appeal to patriotism, not religion, and do not violate the separation of church and state, a federal appeals court ruled today - the same court that declared the pledge unconstitutional in 2002.

In a separate ruling, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel in San Francisco upheld the placement of the national motto, “In God We Trust,” on coins and currency. The language is patriotic and ceremonial, not religious, the court said.

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“The Pledge of Allegiance serves to unite our vast nation through the proud recitation of some of the ideals upon which our republic was founded,” Judge Carlos Bea said in the majority opinion.

He said “one nation under God” referred to “our founding fathers’ belief that the people of this nation are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.”

“Congress’ ostensible and predominant purpose was to inspire patriotism,” said Bea, who was joined by Judge Dorothy Nelson. “The phrase ‘one nation under God’ does not turn this patriotic exercise into a religious activity.”

Check that.

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March 10, 2010 | 10:18 pm

Cartman knows that gingers have souls

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Seven days until the return of “South Park.” And like this kid, Cartman wants you to know that gingers do have souls.

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March 10, 2010 | 5:55 pm

More trouble for Sen. Ensign

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Months ago Sen. John Ensign gave the C Street house a real black eye. Now previously undisclosed e-mails reveal an odious intersection of adultery and political repayment:

The messages are the first written records from Mr. Ensign documenting his efforts to find clients for Mr. Hampton, a top aide and close friend, after the senator had an affair with his wife, Cynthia Hampton. They appear to undercut the senator’s assertion that he did not know the work might involve Congressional lobbying, which could violate a federal ban on such activities by staff members for a year after leaving government.

The e-mail messages also hint at what Mr. Ensign’s office now says was an effort by the Las Vegas firm, a small energy investment business called P2SA Equity, to improperly link Mr. Ensign’s possible assistance to a promised donation.

The F.B.I. and the Senate Ethics Committee are investigating whether Mr. Ensign, in trying to contain the fallout from his affair with Ms. Hampton, conspired to find lobbying work for her husband despite the federal restrictions. They are also examining a $96,000 payment Mr. Ensign’s parents made to the Hamptons.

Mr. Hampton has said that the senator promised to work around the lobbying ban and help him make up the income that he and his wife, a former Ensign campaign staff member, lost when they left their jobs after the affair ended in 2008.

What would The Family say now?

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March 10, 2010 | 7:17 am

Cheeseburger Pringles not kosher

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

flickr

Pringles has recalled its cheeseburger flavored chips. No, not because that sounds disgusting. Instead, there is concern these chips were contaminated with salmonella.

From the Christian Science Monitor:

If you were about to pop the top on a can of taco- or cheeseburger-flavored Pringles, you might want to hold that thought

The meat-inspired chips are the latest products added to a recall stretching back to Feb. 26. Pringles’s parent company Proctor & Gamble announced the voluntary recall Tuesday.

The chips contain hydrolyzed vegetable protein (HVP), a common “flavor-enhancer,” made by Basic Food Flavors, Inc., that has been found to be contaminated with salmonella.

Products from 26 other brands have already been recalled (See here for complete list of products affected). That list could continue to grow, as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is still investigating.

That doesn’t sound kosher, even if we set aside the mixing of dairy and meat. A sign from God to keep kosher? If so, look out Doritos.

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March 10, 2010 | 5:37 am

Muslims massacre Christian in Nigeria

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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.

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March 9, 2010 | 11:29 pm

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 | 8:57 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 8, 2010 | 11:27 pm

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.

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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 | 9:06 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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