June 19, 2007 | 8:56 am

Holy Land hotties look to boost Israeli tourism

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Seeing Miss Israel in a Maxim spread can’t be the religious experience most people associate with the Holy Land. But according to Israeli officials, nothing about the tiny nation appeals to foreign men—except, of course, holy hotties.

“All the surveys we have done shows that the biggest hasbara problem that Israel has is with males from the age of 18-35,” said David Saranga, the consul for media and public affairs at Israel’s consulate in New York.

“Israel does not seem relevant for them, and that is bad for branding,” he said. “In order to change their perception of Israel as only a land of conflict, we want to present to them an Israel that interests them.”

To promote the “Israeli Defense Forces” spread in the July Maxim, the lad mag and the Israeli consulate in New York are throwing a party in Manhattan tonight.

Colette Avital, who previously served as consul general in New York and last week became the first woman to seek the Israeli presidency, deemed the photo spread “pornographic” and asked whether “the best way to encourage tourism to Israel is by developing sex tourism.”

June 18, 2007 | 7:18 pm

Mid East meltdown

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

No, not that meltdown, but with the nuclear ambitions of so many Arab nations, not to mention Iran, such a future is not hard to imagine. I’m talking about the epidemic fragmenting of Middle East nations under the weight of sectarian enmity and economic volatility that historian Niall Ferguson writes about in today’s LA Times.

Any lingering hopes of a two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians evaporated last week as the Islamist extremists of Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the more secular Fatah party, now finds himself president of the West Bank only. The next Middle Eastern peace plan will have to be a three-state solution: Israel, Hamastan and Fatahland.

Did I say three? I meant four. Because no peace could last long if it didn’t somehow end the threat to Israel posed by Hezbollahstan — the strip of Lebanon controlled by the Iranian-backed terrorists whom Israel failed to obliterate last summer.

Meanwhile, even as hooded Hamas gunmen and Fatah forces traded bullets in Gaza, and even as another anti-Syrian politician was blown to pieces in Lebanon, Sunni militants in Iraq destroyed the twin minarets of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, finishing the job they began last year, when they demolished its golden dome. Nothing could be better calculated to intensify the sectarian conflict there and push the country another step closer to bloody partition.

And don’t forget Kurdistan, the semiautonomous republic in northern Iraq that is set to be the third state in Iraq’s three-state (dis)solution. The Turks haven’t. They’re currently massing troops on its border.

Last week in the Forward, Martin van Creveld, professor of military history at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, suggested that once the Palestinian divorce is over—leaving Fatah to rule the West Bank while Hamas controls Gaza—perhaps at least the Levant will be a better place for Israelis and Palestinians.

Today, President Bush and the European Union said they will recognize the Fatah government of Mahmoud Abbas and will resume dialogue and aid. Hamas, written about by David Remnick last winter after they won a majority of parliament, shouldn’t expect any western love.

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June 18, 2007 | 5:05 pm

No ‘curing’ gays?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Christian organizations that try to “cure” gays are increasingly uncertain they are dealing with a personal choice. The Rev. Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, gave this discussion national prominence this winter when he suggested homosexuality might be a genetic trait. Today, Stephanie Simon of the LA Times warrants back to back mentions on The God Blog for this story:

Alan Chambers directs Exodus International, widely described as the nation’s largest ex-gay ministry. But when he addresses the group’s Freedom Conference at Concordia University in Irvine this month, Chambers won’t celebrate successful “ex-gays.”

Truth is, he’s not sure he’s ever met one.

With years of therapy, Chambers says, he has mostly conquered his own attraction to men; he’s a husband and a father, and he identifies as straight. But lately, he’s come to resent the term “ex-gay”: It’s too neat, implying a clean break with the past, when he still struggles at times with homosexual temptation. “By no means would we ever say change can be sudden or complete,” Chambers said.

In related news, President Bush’s controversial—aren’t they all?—nominee for surgeon general believes in ex-gay therapy, which “puts him in direct conflict with virtually the entire American medical community.”

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June 18, 2007 | 12:51 pm

‘I am both Muslim and Christian’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The Pacific Northwest is the least religious region of the United States, with less than 40 percent of Washington state residents religiously affiliated. Which makes the story of Ann Holmes Redding all the more surprising.

While most her compatriots can’t even pick one religion, Holmes recently chose to affiliate with two starkly different—and wars throughout history attest to that—monotheistic faiths. From the Seattle Times:

SEATTLE—Shortly after noon on Fridays, the Rev. Ann Holmes Redding ties on a black headscarf, preparing to pray with her Muslim group on First Hill. 

On Sunday mornings, Redding puts on the white collar of an Episcopal priest.

She does both, she says, because she’s Christian and Muslim.

Redding, who until recently was director of faith formation at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral, has been a priest for more than 20 years. Now she’s ready to tell people that, for the last 15 months, she’s also been a Muslim — drawn to the faith after an introduction to Islamic prayers left her profoundly moved.

Her announcement has provoked surprise and bewilderment in many, raising an obvious question: How can someone be both a Christian and a Muslim?

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“There are tenets of the faiths that are very, very different,” said Kurt Fredrickson, director of the doctor of ministry program at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif. “The most basic would be: What do you do with Jesus?”

Proving controversial statements by leaders of the Episcopal Church will never cease, Redding’s bishop, the Rt. Rev. Vincent Warner, told the Seattle Times he accepts her as an Episcopal priest and a Muslim, and that he finds the “interfaith possibilities exciting.”

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June 18, 2007 | 12:24 pm

Religion safe at secular universities

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

A study appearing this month in the journal Social Forces reports that the widely held belief that religious students abandon their faith at a altar of secular colleges is flat wrong.

It’s not that colleges necessarily encourage faith, said (Mark D. Regnerus, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Texas and an authors of the study), but for all the talk about how intellectuals are out to destroy students’ relationships to their religions and God, the main obstacles to such relationships have to do with maturing and how young people spend their time. “Some kids were bound to lose [their faith] anyway and they do,” Regnerus said. But the evidence suggests that college isn’t responsible.

Last month, the International Herald Tribune surveyed scholars, academic administrators and students and found that not only were students not losing their faith, but they were pursuing it more fervently than any other time in recent history.

(Hat-tip: Bible Belt Blogger)

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June 18, 2007 | 10:04 am

The New Atheists

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The Nation covered an analysis last week of the ascent of The New Atheists, four bestselling, unbelieving authors—Sam Harris, Richard Hawkins, Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens—who “each sees himself as breaking a taboo.”

The most remarkable fact is not their books themselves—blunt, no-holds-barred attacks on religion in different registers—but that they have succeeded in reaching mainstream readers and in becoming bestsellers. Is this because Americans are beginning to get fed up with the religiosity of the past several years? It would be comforting if we could explain this as a cultural signal of the end of the right-wing/evangelical ascendancy. Such speculations are probably wishful thinking—book buyers are such a small slice of the population that few sociologists would stake their careers on claiming that book buyers’ preferences reflect anything like a national mood.

The success of the New Atheists may, however, reflect something significant among their audience.

In fact, it seems the taboo that is being broken is not by the book writers but book readers. As I wrote about in November, more and more non-theistic Americans are “coming out of the closet,” speaking confidently about their lack of faith and mobilizing politically. In March, U.S. Rep. Peter Stark, D-CA, became the first member of Congress to out himself as an atheist.

While atheists remain the most reviled of socio-religious groups—according to a 1999 Gallup poll, only 49 percent of Americans would be willing to vote for an atheist president, 40 percentage points lower than for a Catholic, Jew or African-American and 10 points lower than for a gay candidate—The New Atheists and their followers are trying to change that.

“People tend to think of religiosity or being involved in religion as something that is a proxy for being a good person, being a moral person, being a trustworthy person and being a good citizen,” said Penny Edgell, University of Minnesota associate professor of sociology and the study’s lead researcher.

“Most people don’t even know an atheist. It becomes this label that people respond to that doesn’t say much about the group in question but says a lot about people’s assumptions.”

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June 17, 2007 | 2:32 pm

Evangelicals: Romney not ‘guided by God’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

As I’ve written about before, Mitt Romney is suffering heavily in his quest to become the next American president because of his Mormon faith. In yesterday’s LA Times, Stephanie Simon illuminated the problems surrounding the Mormon factor by talking to evangelicals—the politically active and conservative brand of Christians who were so influential in electing, and somehow re-electing, President Bush.

“When it comes right down to it,” says (Bible book store worker Marty) Thomas, 40, “a Mormon’s strength is human. A Christian person’s strength is superhuman. I want [a president] who has that extra on his side.”

In his quest for the Republican presidential nomination, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney — a lifelong Mormon — has often reminded voters that he’s running for commander in chief, not pastor in chief. What’s important, Romney says, is that he has strong faith; the details are irrelevant.

But a sharp concern about the Mormon Church shows up in poll after national poll. About one in three voters would be less likely to support a Mormon candidate. The faith draws among the most unfavorable ratings of any religion. Doubts run especially deep among evangelicals, who may account for as many as half the votes cast in Republican primaries in the South.

Some evangelicals can articulate specific Mormon beliefs that disturb them — for instance, the teaching that only married couples can achieve the most exalted realms of heaven.

Many others want to give Romney a chance; they like his conservative politics. Yet they feel uneasy about turning over the country to a man who has a radically different — and in their view, heretical — understanding of God.

This is not an arcane theological dispute; to some born-again Christians, it’s at the very core of presidential leadership. If Romney does not understand what they take to be God’s true nature, can he still receive divine guidance? If he doesn’t accept the Trinity as they conceptualize it, can he still be filled with the strength of the Holy Spirit?

Such concerns about Romney’s faith, are, of course, based on the premise that government officials, particularly the once-clear-though-now-disputed leader of the free world, should share the religious views of their constituents.

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June 15, 2007 | 3:04 pm

Dr. Death: Not a religious man

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Jack the Reaper has been making the media rounds since being released from prison two weeks ago. Mike Wallace gave him a friendly interview on “60 Minutes” and then attacked a NY Times editorial that said Dr. Jack Kevorkian “has emerged from prison as deluded and unrepentant as ever.”

Mitch Albom, the Detroit Free Press’ famed columnist and author of The Five People You Meet in Heaven, wasn’t quite so kind after sitting down with Kevorkian.

  Are you at all religious, I asked him?

  “Religion is all bunk. ... If you’re really religious, you can’t think for yourself.”

  Would you call yourself an atheist?

  “Agnostic.”

  What do you think happens when we die?

  “You stink. You rot and stink.”

  No soul?

  He laughed. “What’s a soul?”

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I don’t know what’s the way to go. But after an hour, I knew I wouldn’t want to go via Jack Kevorkian, a man for whom the world is bleak, happiness is rare, belief is a waste of time and life is a finite, meaningless entity. The act he champions may indeed be one of compassion, but how can it be delivered by such a cold, cold heart?

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June 15, 2007 | 12:32 pm

Why it’s not good to keep it in the ‘family’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Polygamy is one of the dark not-so secrets of Mormon Church history. Until about 100 years ago, it was common practice. In fact, presidential contender Mitt Romney is the great-great grandson of a venerated polygamist martyr.

Only its fundamentalist break-away sect, lead by previously most-wanted Warren Jeffs, still practices polygamy, which has caused them plenty of problems, including health, according to ABC News.

In a dusty neighborhood under sheer sandstone cliffs studded with juniper on the Arizona-Utah border, a rare genetic disorder is spreading through polygamous families on a wave of inbreeding.

The twin border communities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona, have the world’s highest known prevalence of fumarase deficiency, an enzyme irregularity that causes severe mental retardation brought on by cousin marriage, doctors say.

“Arizona has about half the world’s population of known fumarase deficiency patients,” said Dr. Theodore Tarby, a pediatric neurologist who has treated many of the children at Arizona clinics under contracts with the state.

“It exists in a certain percentage of the broader population but once you get a tendency to inbreed you’re inbreeding people who have the gene there, so you markedly increase the risk of developing the condition,” he said.

The community of about 10,000 people, who shun outsiders and are taught to avoid newspapers, television and the Internet, is home to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), a sect that broke from the mainstream Mormon church 72 years ago over polygamy.

The group, who wear conservative 19th-century clothing, is led by Warren Jeffs, who was arrested in August and charged as an accomplice to rape for using his authority to order a 14-year-old girl against her wishes to marry and have sex with her 19-year-old cousin.

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June 14, 2007 | 4:20 pm

Ruth Graham heads home

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

MONTREAT, N.C.—Ruth Graham, who surrendered dreams of missionary work in Tibet to marry a suitor who became the world’s most renowned evangelist, died Thursday. She was 87. Graham died at 5:05 p.m. at her home at Little Piney Cove, surrounded by her husband and all five children, said a statement released by Larry Ross, Billy Graham’s spokesman.

“Ruth was my life partner, and we were called by God as a team,” Billy Graham said in a statement. “No one else could have borne the load that she carried. She was a vital and integral part of our ministry, and my work through the years would have been impossible without her encouragement and support.

“I am so grateful to the Lord that He gave me Ruth, and especially for these last few years we’ve had in the mountains together. We’ve rekindled the romance of our youth, and my love for her continued to grow deeper every day. I will miss her terribly, and look forward even more to the day I can join her in Heaven.”

Ruth fell into a coma yesterday. There had been some debate about whether she would be buried with Billy in Charlotte or in the mountains, but it seems she decided to stand behind her husband. More from the Associated Press.

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June 14, 2007 | 3:40 pm

Global warming: Israel wipe out

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Will global warming beat Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the job of wiping Israel off the map? Jewish groups long have been concerned about the consequences of global warming, but, according to the Forward, they’re now framing that debate around the catastrophe global warming would spell for Israel.

In a series of briefings last week on Capitol Hill and with Jewish organizations, a team of experts from Israel presented data indicating that if action to stop global warming is not taken immediately, moderate regimes in the Middle East might collapse and tensions between Israel and its neighbors might rise due to a decrease in rainfall, loss of water sources and increase in extreme weather phenomena.

Already, according to Israel’s Ministry of Environmental Protection, rainfall is down and summer is getting hotter. (That sounds a lot like Los Angeles.)

The main changes, the Israeli experts predicted, would be a drop in the water supply — already a scarce commodity in the Middle East — and an expected rise in temperature that will make it even more difficult to replenish water sources. According to the information presented this week, if action is not taken, then Israel might be facing a loss of up to 100 millimeters of rain a year — almost 20% of the country’s annual rainfall.

For Israel, water shortages could influence not only its population but also the future of its relations with neighboring countries. Israel is already facing difficulties fulfilling its agreement — as part of its 1994 peace treaty with Jordan — to transfer water to the Hashemite kingdom, and will face great problems when trying to work out water arrangements with Palestinians in a final status agreement. The Jordanian monarchy, which is based on support of the agricultural communities, might be in danger. The same is true for the Palestinian leadership, which might encounter an uprising of extremists who will feed on the poverty and despair caused by the collapse of agriculture due to lack of water.

In Egypt, the expected rise of the Mediterranean Sea level could flood rich areas in the Nile’s Delta and lead to food shortages, which could destabilize the regime.

 

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June 14, 2007 | 1:36 pm

It’s hip to be anti-Muslim

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Those aren’t my views, but according to a report today by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, they belong to an increasing number of Americans. The “Presumption of Guilt” study reported that anti-Muslim incidents increased 25 percent last year, with California accounting for 29 percent of cases. Click to read the entire report.

This is not a new phenomenon. Muslims feel more discriminated against now than in the months following 9/11. I’ve written many times about this growing concern of Islamophobia.

In related news, Investor’s Business Daily published an editorial Tuesday indicting CAIR as a foreign front group—as others have claimed, or worse.

The days of legitimizing and mainstreaming CAIR — now an official unindicted co-conspirator in a major terror case — must end before it can lobby against one more antiterror measure, boycott one more airline for protecting passengers from suspicious Muslim men, or sue one more John Doe tipster who could save hundreds of lives.

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