June 21, 2012 | 10:28 pm

Westboro Baptist to protest Inland Empire soldier’s funeral

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Westborough Baptists. Photo by Wikipedia/ArizonaLincoln

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that the Westboro Baptist folks had a First Amendment right to protest near the funerals of dead soldiers, no matter how offensive their message was because they were addressing an issue of public concern. (The decision is widely expected; even I anticipated the Court’s reasoning.) Tomorrow they are bringing their hate-filled message to San Bernardino.

My old paper, The Sun, reports:

Members of the controversial Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., known for their extremist stand against the military and homosexuals, have said that they plan to picket Friday at the funeral for Army Pcf. Nathan Davis at Yucaipa Christian Church, according to a news release.

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Assemblyman Paul Cook, R-Yucaipa, on Thursday also urged the public to come out in support of Davis.

“Unfortunately, a hate group is threatening to picket his services,” Cook said in a statement. “Let’s show his family the best of Yucaipa by supporting his sacrifice and commitment to our freedom in a manner that is reverent and respectful. The city is helping to organize people to stand along the processional route, and I encourage anyone available to support this effort.”

Representatives from Westboro Baptist Church couldn’t be reached for comment.

Read the rest here, and more on the organization here and here.

It remains to be seen whether Westboro Baptist follows through on their plans. Last year they canceled plans to picket a 9-year-old’s funeral.

June 20, 2012 | 9:38 am

Joe the Plumber: No gun control, no Holocaust

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher (Joe the Plumber). Photo by Wikipedia/Rona Proudfoot

Not that Joe Wurzelbacher was ever a favorite of Jewish voters—his name, after all, is Joe the Plumber, not Joe the Doctor or Joe the Lawyer. But his choice to invoke Godwin’s law on gun control in a campaign video is likely to alienate any Ohio Jews who liked Wurzelbacher for Congress. Via JTA:

“In 1939, Germany established gun control. From 1939 to 1945, six million Jews and seven million others unable to defend themselves were exterminated,” Wurzelbacher said in the video.

In response, NJDC President and CEO David Harris said in a news statement, “Using the memories of the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust to make a political point is never appropriate, under any circumstances. For Ohio Republican House candidate Samuel Wurzelbacher to imply that these innocent lives were taken because of gun control laws is simply beyond the pale.”

Read the rest here. And more from Raw Story here.

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June 19, 2012 | 9:22 am

Alice Walker calls Israel ‘Apartheid state’; refuses to license Hebrew version of ‘Color Purple’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Photo by Wikipedia/MDCarchives

Calling Israel an “Apartheid State,” Alice Walker, the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Color Purple,” refused to license a Hebrew version of the book.

JTA reports:

In a June 9 letter to Yedioth Books, Alice Walker said she would not allow the publication of the book into Hebrew because “Israel is guilty of apartheid and persecution of the Palestinian people, both inside Israel and also in the Occupied Territories.”

In her letter, posted Sunday by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel on its website, Walker supported the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement and offered her hope that the BDS movement “will have enough of an impact on Israeli civilian society to change the situation.”

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Walker said Israelis policies were “worse” than the segregation she suffered as an American youth and said South Africans had told her it was worse than Apartheid.

Read the rest here.

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June 18, 2012 | 11:07 pm

Southern Baptist Convention to have its first black president

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Fred Luter Jr. will be the first black leader of the 167-year-old Southern Baptist Convention. Church leaders say the move is in part an effort to distance the denomination from a racist past. Reuters reports on what is a pretty big deal:

First Baptist New Orleans Pastor David Crosby, who will nominate Luter, said the move is a statement that “we not only love people of color, we want them in our leadership.”

“We need his perspective. We need him at the table to help us understand who we are as Southern Baptists in this new era.”

Luter, 55, has already served as the first African-American in various leadership positions within the convention, including as its current first vice president.

The New Orleans civic and religious leader said he is both optimistic and realistic about what he can accomplish during his short tenure. His leadership role will initially last just one year but can be extended for a second, he said.

Luter said his hope is to “let people know that ... we’re open minded, and it’s open to different ethnic groups.”

The vote will be held on Tuesday during the convention’s annual meeting in New Orleans, home to the church Luter rebuilt into the denomination’s largest congregation in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina devastated it in 2005.

With no opposition so far, his likely election comes as the Southern Baptist Convention considers ways to become more inclusive and less identified with slavery, ties to which led to its founding in 1845. Southern Baptists split off from the First Baptist Church in America in the pre-Civil War days over the issue of slave ownership.

Read the rest here.

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June 18, 2012 | 10:16 pm

U.S. Open winner Simpson newest member of ‘holy hall of fame’?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Webb Simpson holds the U.S. Open Championship Trophy June 17. Photo by REUTERS/Danny Moloshok

Webb Simpson, who yesterday became the surprising winner of golf’s U.S. Open, might be the anti-Tiger Woods. After the winner, Sarah Pulliam Bailey wrote on the Christianity Today Liveblog that Simpson might be the newest member of the “holy hall of fame.”

“It was a cool day. I had a peace all day,” Simpson told reporters. “I probably prayed more on the last three holes than I’ve ever done in my life, and that kept me calm and got me home in 2 under.”

He won his first PGA Tour victory at the Wyndham Championship last August.

“I’d be stupid not to thank my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, because it was tough out there and I was nervous, and I felt his presence all day,” he told CBN.

More on Simpson’s faith here.

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June 18, 2012 | 2:34 pm

Ultra Orthodox Jews reportedly vandalized Yad Vashem

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

A worker cleaning graffiti sprayed at Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem Jun 11. The graffiti (R) reads in Hebrew: "If Hitler didn't exist, the Zionists would have invented him". Photo by REUTERS/Ammar Awad

If you have any doubts about Israel’s intra-tribal conflict, look no further than news that yesterday Ultra Orthodox Jews vandalized the Holocaust memorial at Yad Vashem.

Alex Klein of the Daily Beast reports:

Beside a statue of Mordecai Anielewicz, the hero of the Warsaw uprising, dripped a crude cartoon of an Auschwitz-bound train. Below an engraved procession of victims looped rows of hateful graffiti: “Hitler, thanks for the Holocaust,” “Israel is the secular Auschwitz,” and so on.

But the neat cursive writing was not in Arabic; it was in Hebrew. And although the police have not identified any suspects, a museum spokeswoman told The Daily Beast, it’s almost certain that the can-wielding vandals were haredim, or ultra-orthodox Jews. Yad Vashem’s chairman, Avner Shalev, has already told the press that one of the tags was signed “World Haredi Jewry.” According to a guide at the site who asked not to be named, a few key grammatical errors in the Hebrew would confirm authorship by a member of the ultra-orthodox—many of whose first language is Yiddish. “Arabs didn’t write this,” he told me, visibly shaken.

There is a lot in the archives about Israel’s Jewish problem—or, more aptly put, Israel’s problem of trying to get two very different Jewish communities, built on different understandings of Jewish values, to live harmoniously. The 8-year-old girl spit on and insulted for not being dressed modestly enough; trashing an ice cream shop for “promoting promiscuity”; using Holocaust images in protests.

This latest news is particularly disturbing. Not just because the vandals made Nazi references to Israeli policies that don’t comport with the Ultra Orthodox lifestyle. But because of where they did it.

This isn’t the Knesset building or the prime minister’s residence. Yad Vashem is not a political arena. It is a global monument—a reminder of the worst that humanity has to offer and the strength to rebuild in the aftermath of such atrocities. It doesn’t matter that the Ultra Orthodox have a different perspective on the cause of the Holocaust, that they many oppose Zionism.

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June 16, 2012 | 11:56 pm

Mormon author ‘emphatically not a Christian

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

David Mason, author of “My Mormonism: A Primer for Mormons and Non-Mormons,” had an op-ed in the New York Times this week in which he took issue with the apparent need of Mormon newsmakers to be liked.

Mason wrote:

This is the so-called Mormon Moment: a strange convergence of developments offering Mormons hope that the Christian nation that persecuted, banished or killed them in the 19th century will finally love them as fellow Christians.

I want to be on record about this. I’m about as genuine a Mormon as you’ll find — a templegoer with a Utah pedigree and an administrative position in a congregation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I am also emphatically not a Christian.

For the curious, the dispute can be reduced to Jesus. Mormons assert that because they believe Jesus is divine, they are Christians by default. Christians respond that because Mormons don’t believe — in accordance with the Nicene Creed promulgated in the fourth century — that Jesus is also the Father and the Holy Spirit, the Jesus that Mormons have in mind is someone else altogether. The Mormon reaction is incredulity. The Christian retort is exasperation. Rinse and repeat.

This is one reason that in 2008 evangelicals said Mitt Romney was not “guided by God.” But, as Mason notes, it’s a distinction that Romney has painfully been trying to avoid on the campaign trail. He doesn’t want Christians to think he’s different than them.

That’s why Romney’s faith this time around has been the world’s worst kept secret. And it’s at times worked for him.

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June 16, 2012 | 7:34 pm

Taken from bookstore, first edition of Book of Mormon found

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I’ve long assumed that religious book stores don’t have to deal with a lot of shoplifting. After all, who has the gall to steal a copy of the Bible?

But that calculus changes when the religious paraphernalia is more of an artifact and is worth significant money. A Torah, for instance, costs thousands of dollars and have on occasion gone missing. A story from this past week demonstrates that.

Federal marshals discovered in a Herndon, Va., apartment a first edition leather-bound Book of Mormon that had allegedly been stolen from a Phoenix bookstore. It is valued at $50,000 to $100,000.

Michelle Boorstein of The Washington Post reports:

Jay Michael Linford, a fellow Mormon bookseller who had been “like a grandson” to the shop’s owner, was arrested at his friend’s apartment and charged with theft and trafficking in stolen property.

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The news last month that Helen Spencer Schlie’s first edition had been stolen spread quickly through the small, tightknit world of rare-book dealers, who were aware of Schlie’s book as one of 5,000 original 1830 copies of the Book of Mormon, which is viewed by Mormons as sacred text.

But the theft didn’t elicit much sympathy for the Mesa, Ariz., widow, who had become something of a pariah for removing individual pages from the book and offering them for sale.

“Divine intervention,” a prominent Salt Lake City bookseller said about the theft.

Read the rest here.

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June 16, 2012 | 10:48 am

President Reagan on God and government

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Interesting compilation of President Reagan talking about being a Christian and God’s place in governing, via the Christian Post, which had this to say about the video:

Being the president of the United States is not an easy task and he knew God had his hand over his Presidency. President Ronald Reagan was a man after God’s own heart. This is possibly the most profound and inspiring video tributes to President Reagan that you will ever see.

The video was apparently compiled by my home church, Bel Air Presbyterian, which was Reagan’s church when he was president.

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June 15, 2012 | 11:29 am

Days after evangelicals call for softening immigration laws, U.S. announces end to some deportations

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The second-biggest news this morning—after the Tebow barnburner, of course—is that the United States is going to stop deporting hundreds of thousands of immigrants who came to the country illegally as children. The New York Times explains:

The policy, effective immediately, will apply to people who are currently under 30 years old, who arrived in the country before they turned 16 and have lived in the United States for five years. They must also have no criminal record, and have earned a high school diploma, remained in school or served in the military.

These qualifications resemble in some ways those of the so-called Dream Act, a measure blocked by Congress in 2010 that was geared to establish a path toward citizenship for certain young illegal immigrants. The administration’s action on Friday, which stops deportations but does not offer citizenship or even permanent legal status, is being undertaken by executive order and does not require legislation.

What the younger immigrants will obtain, officials said, is the ability to apply for a two-year “deferred action” that effectively removes the threat of deportation for up to two years, with repeated extensions. “This is not immunity, it is not amnesty,” said Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary. “It is an exercise of discretion.”

All joking aside, this is a major moment in U.S. immigration policy. And a recent push from evangelical leaders may have played a part. This week, about 150 major evangelical leaders released the “Evangelical Statement of Principles for Immigration Reform,” calling for a massive overhaul of U.S. immigration policy and a softening of anti-immigrant policies.

Here is what Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family, told Christianity Today‘s Sarah Pulliam Bailey, whose questions are in bold:

When you look at it, the immigration issue is not just a legal issue. We respect what needs to be done there and hopefully we can strengthen laws, enforce laws and do all the things that we need to do in that way, because it’s important for a country to establish its borders and maintain its borders. But when you look at the family impact now and the stories we’ve received over the past year or two, it’s pretty tragic what’s occurring.

I was aware of stories here in Colorado of people who have been waiting in line for green cards and once they get their green card they’re waiting seven, eight years for their immediate family members to be able to get into the country. And I put that in the context of my two boys, Trent and Troy, 11 and 9, and I think, if I were in their shoes, stood in line, got the card, worked here in the United States and it would take me seven years to get my kids with me? They would be going off to college and I would have missed their entire teen years. It just seems immoral that we don’t come up with a better system to fast-track immediate family members who have gone through the process properly.

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As we looked at who joined the statement, we also noticed who isn’t on the list, people like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council or maybe those from the American Family Association. Do you expect a coming discussion with these groups that are not on the list?

Do you want an on-the-record response? [Laughed] I don’t know. I haven’t really talked to those folks.

Do you expect more polarization to come?

Did you see the headline news [story] feature about the little boy singing in church about Romans 1:27, “Ain’t no homo gonna make it into heaven?” I think in some ways that’s a litmus test. I had two reactions: the heavy-hearted one. My heart broke for that little boy, for that congregation, to see that pastor smiling from ear to ear. And about that person’s soul, that grieved me. I think the other response is this competitive jubilation of we’re winning or we’re keeping them down. I think we’re at a fork in the road in the culture now where God’s heart for humanity needs to show through us. With the core sense of the culture—this 24/7 news cycle and the polarization—we cannot take the bait as the Christian community. We’ve got to be more mindful of God’s character and how he expresses himself through us.

Read the rest of their conversation here. And the video of that boy singing can be seen here.

Evangelicals weren’t exactly out in front on the immigration issue, but their shift shows a broadening opposition to strict anti-immigration policies. It also marks a major change within the community, much like we’ve started to see to a smaller degree with outlawing same-sex marriage.

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June 15, 2012 | 11:15 am

Tebow to preach on Father’s Day at Chargers’ stadium

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Half a year ago, Tim Tebow started for the San Diego Chargers’ bitter rival. Sunday he is delivering a Father’s Day sermon on the field at Qualcomm Stadium.

Tebow was invited to speak by Shadow Mountain Community Church, which relocated the service to Qualcomm after realizing that their church building was going to be a little too small for the crowd Tebow draws. Remember, as if anyone could forget, Tebow is Jesus Christ’s football star. “In Christianity, it’s the Pope and Tebow right now.”

The story from NBC Sports:

“If there’s anybody in our country today who illustrates what it means to live with passion and break the mold, and to rise above what everybody says are your limitations, it’s Tim Tebow,” Shadow Mountain spokesman David St. John told the North County Times. “He did that as a quarterback in Florida, he did that in the NFL with the Denver Broncos, and I certainly wouldn’t want to be in the camp that bets against him as he continues his career with the Jets. There are a lot of folks who will be sitting in the bleachers on Sunday who have been given the same kind of message — either, ‘You’re not talented enough’ or ‘You’re not capable of leading.’”

While I’m a Tebow fan and supporter, I don’t have quite the crush that my wife does and won’t be making the trip. Not even for my first Father’s Day as a new dad. On the other hand, if he was speaking at Qualcomm for Mother’s Day ...

(Hat tip: Sarah Pulliam Bailey)

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June 15, 2012 | 10:58 am

Matisyahu without the beard in music video for ‘Sunshine’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

First Matisyahu shaved his beard, worrying fans that he’d lost his way; then he started to bring it back. Now the Jewish reggae star appears clean-shaven again, as the above teaser for his new song “Sunshine” shows.

The VideoJew had this reaction:

Sporting frosted tips, multiple scarves, skinny jeans and no kippah (headcovering), the new baby-faced Matisyahu seems to resemble a love-child between an L.A. hipster and a youth group advisor.

Unchanged is his voice and musical style, which still reminds us why we love him today.

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