May 9, 2007 | 1:21 pm

End of the road for the Religious Right?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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Syndicated columnist Cal Thomas, who I’ve seen preach at Bel-Air Presbyterian, thinks it might be. Here’s what he has to say in a column that opens with the closure of conservative Christian powerhouse Dr. D. James Kennedy’s Center for Reclaiming America:

Nearly 30 years after religious conservatives decided to re-enter the political arena—after abandoning it as “dirty” and leading to compromise—what do they have to show for it? The country remains sharply divided and the reconciling message they used to preach has been obscured by the crass pursuit of the golden ring of political power. In the end, they got neither the power, nor the Kingdom; only the glory and even that is now fading, as these older leaders pass from the scene.

This is not to say there is no role for conservative Christians in the civic life of their nation. There is. But Christians must first understand that the issues they most care about—abortion, same-sex marriage and cultural rot—are not caused by bad politics, but are matters of the heart and soul. Some evangelicals wish to broaden the political agenda beyond these issues to poverty, social justice and the environment. Politics can never completely cure the ills of any of these, but the message Christians bring about salvation and redemption can. Besides, they can never “convert” people to their point of view.

Too many conservative Christians have focused on the “seen” rather than the “unseen,” thinking appearances at the White House, or on “Meet the Press,” is evidence that they are making a difference. And too much attention has been paid to individual personalities, rather than to the One these preachers had originally been called to exalt.

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To paraphrase a verse familiar to most Christians, what shall it profit a man if he gains the White House, but loses his own soul?

Christians are also fond of saying God never closes one door without opening another door. The “door” of the Center for Reclaiming America has closed. The new doors can produce a more effective politics, if what’s on the other side is based on a message that has less to do with partisanship and more to do with the One who transcends all politics and Who lends His power only to those who will use it as He instructed.

(Hat-tip: Bible Belt Blogger)

May 8, 2007 | 11:09 pm

The God Blog’s not infallible

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I’ve been experiencing problems the past few days with Blogger. Because the free blogging service does not provide any live customer support, I’ve had to create a new blog—bradgreenberg.blogspot.com—to which thegodblog.org will re-route.

Please subscribe to this post feed. I’ll start re-posting archived pieces here. Sorry for the inconvenience.

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May 7, 2007 | 11:22 pm

Democrats get religion

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

This is why I tell my friends I don’t vote for political candidates based on their religious beliefs: Politicians are shapeshifters who say what you want to hear. So Sunday’s story in the Chicago Tribune—“Democrats find religion on the campaign trail”—came as no surprise. Three years ago, George Bush got a second term as president by using the Jedi force of evangelical activists. Well, it looks like some Republicans have lost religion—with sins like those of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, it’s difficult to talk pious without being hypocritical—but the Democrats are now talking about their spirituality.

Reversing recent political history, it’s the leading Republican candidates who for various reasons have so far been reluctant to speak too much about matters of faith.

Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a divorced Catholic, holds liberal views on abortion and gay rights. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a divorced Episcopalian, has a tense relationship with leaders of the Religious Right. And former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is a devout Mormon whose religion arouses suspicion among many evangelicals.

“Give the advantage to the Democrats at this point,” said Rich Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals. “You would have to conclude that the Democrats have a lot more interest in faith than the Republicans based on what they’ve had to say.”

To sort through the campaign noise for those who want to know what the candidates believe, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life created this website.

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May 7, 2007 | 12:57 pm

Made the move

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I’m sitting at my new desk, working on a newly ordered computer, in Koreatown. After leaving the Daily News on Thursday and spending most of the three-day weekend in Yosemite with my wife, I’m settling into my digs at the Jewish Journal. Blogging will be a bit sporadic for a few days, but I’ll be posting fresh pieces at least daily.

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May 7, 2007 | 10:02 am

Religion aces college

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Despite what many conservative religious parents believe – I know; I grew up with them – American universities are not brainwashing their children to be godless intellectuals. According to the International Herald Tribune, which interviewed dozens of university officials, “students are drawn to religion and spirituality with more fervor than at any time they can remember.”

University officials explained the surge of interest in religion as partly a result of the rise of the religious right in politics, which they said has made questions of faith more talked about generally. In addition, they said, the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, by Islamic zealots underscored for many the influence of religion on world affairs.

And an influx of evangelical students at secular universities, along with an increasing number of international students, has meant that students arrive with a broader array of religious experiences.

Gomes said a more diverse student body at Harvard had meant that “the place is more representative of mainstream America.”

“That provides a group of people who don’t leave their religion at home,” he said.

However, UCLA’s Spirituality in Higher Education study reported in 2003 that college students have high levels of spirituality—but that schools typically do a poor job supporting it.

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May 3, 2007 | 6:03 pm

Obama faltering with Jews

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The Christian Science Monitor has an insightful read today on Sen. Barack Obama’s lackluster start courting the much needed “Jewish vote” in his quest for the presidency. (I put that in quotes because, despite the relevance of garnering the votes of Jews, God’s people do not vote as one.)

Washington - For a candidate intent on courting the Jewish vote, some of the headlines for Sen. Barack Obama in recent weeks have been less than heartening.

“Obama comment draws fire from Jews,” the Des Moines Register declared after the senator’s unscripted remark at an Iowa campaign stop in March that “nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people” from stalled peace efforts with the Israelis.

“Obama on the Mideast: Not quite comfortable,” The Chicago Jewish Star said after his first major policy speech on the Middle East, to a pro-Israel group in his hometown.

And at last week’s Democratic presidential debate in South Carolina, Senator Obama’s omission of Israel in response to a question about America’s top allies gave moderator Brian Williams an opening to revisit the Iowa flap in front of a television audience of more than 2 million.

No mention was made of Obama Christ.

Even in that short span, his remarks have undergone a subtle evolution.

In March, he spoke of relaxing restrictions on aid to the Palestinians and said “both the Israeli and Palestinian people have suffered from the failure to achieve” the “goal” of “two states living side by side in peace and security.” While asserting that the United States should isolate Hamas and other Palestinian Islamic militants, he said that “Israel will also have some heavy stones to carry” in any peace process.

By last week, however, the references to Palestinian suffering and Israeli heavy-lifting were gone, replaced by a less nuanced pro-Israel stance nearly indistinguishable from that of his chief rival for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

“When I am president, the United States will stand shoulder to shoulder with Israel in search of this peace and in defense against those who seek its destruction,” Obama told an audience at the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC), where his staff also handed out a 29-page “American-Israeli Relationship Issue Packet.”

Yet two days later, when asked at the debate at South Carolina State University to name America’s three most important allies, Obama listed the European Union, NATO, and Japan.

“I didn’t hear you mention Israel,” Mr. Williams interjected, asking whether the senator still stood behind his statement that “no one is suffering more than the Palestinian people.”

“What I said is, nobody has suffered more than the Palestinian people from the failure of the Palestinian leadership to recognize Israel, to renounce violence, and to get serious about negotiating peace and security for the region,” Obama replied. “Israel has been one of our most important allies around the world.”

Senator Clinton learned the price of striking an off note on Middle East politics early in her first Senate campaign. In 1999, she kissed Suha Arafat, the wife of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, moments after Mrs. Arafat accused Israel of gassing Palestinian women and children. Clinton later claimed Mrs. Arafat’s remarks had been mistranslated and eventually denounced them, but the episode threatened to derail her campaign.

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May 3, 2007 | 3:02 pm

Christians and Jews together on Israel

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The Forward has a biting piece tomorrow about the newfound friendship between “John Hagee, the firebrand evangelical Christian minister from San Antonio, Texas,” who stole the show at Aipac’s convention in March, and a growing number of Jewish federations:

“If you search through Jewish stories around the U.S., a lot of us have pieces of personal memory where non-Jews were there for us — not because they had a hidden agenda, but because they believed it was the right thing to do,” said Michal Kohane, the Israeli-born executive director of the Jewish Federation of the Sacramento Region. “There is a strong aspect of CUFI in which they are the descendants of that ideological concept.”

Just as liberals have criticized Aipac for giving Hagee the dais, they are now speaking out against the pastor’s grass-roots fundraising dinners. Most recently, a Democratic congresswoman from Minnesota, Betty McCollum, declined an invitation to attend an April 29 “Night To Honor Israel” in Brooklyn Park, a suburb of Minneapolis, citing what she called “Hagee’s extremism, bigotry and intolerance.”

Critics complain that Hagee’s hawkish, biblically based views on Israel do not serve the Jewish state, and that his conservative domestic agenda — including opposition to gay marriage, abortion and immigration — is squarely at odds with the liberal views of most American Jews.

“I don’t like that they would not like to see Israel trade land for peace, because in my view that’s a very important formula,” said Rabbi Jonathan Biatch of Temple Beth El in Madison, Wis. “The real bottom line is the fact that this organization would like to exacerbate tensions in the Middle East so it will lead to Armageddon.”

Evangelicals and Jews have had an unusual alliance over Israel for years—from the Israel-Christian Nexus, which I encountered at the Israel Independence Day Festival at Woodley Park last Sunday, to the Jerusalem Prayer Banquet being held in Beverly Hills on May 17, which will bring together Pat Boone and Ehud Danoch, among others.

This morning, one of my colleagues asked me why some Christians fervently support Israel. Last November, the New York Times attempted to answer that question under the headline,

For Evangelicals, Supporting Israel Is ‘God’s Foreign Policy’

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In short, Christians with a certain reading of the book of Revelation—theologians call them premillennialists—believe Christ’s 1,000-year reign on Earth, before he takes his children home, will not occur until Israel has been restored to the Jews. (This was a premise of the “Left Behind” book series.)

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May 2, 2007 | 6:02 pm

Gay former governor entering seminary

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Jim McGreevey, the former New Jersey governor who came out of the closet while in office and resigned because of an alleged affair, has converted into the Episcopal Church and will enter its General Theological Seminary in Manhattan. (The ordination of gay priests has become, to put it mildly, a contentious issue in the U.S. branch of King Henry’s church.)

Here’s the word from the Newark Star-Ledger, which broke the story online today:

“This is something he’s been thinking about for years,” said David France, who last year co-authored McGreevey’s best-selling memoir, The Confession. “His spiritual life has always been central to who he is. From the time he was a kid, he thought about going into Catholic seminary a number of times. The idea of going into the Episcopal seminary has been in his mind for at least a couple of years.”

McGreevey, 49, resigned in August 2004 after announcing he was gay and had an affair with a male staffer, who has denied it.

News of McGreevey’s plans come a day after his estranged wife, former first lady Dina Matos McGreevey, released her own tell-all memoir, called Silent Partner: A Memoir of My Marriage. The McGreeveys are embroiled in a nasty divorce and custody battle, which has boiled over in recent weeks and led a Superior Court judge in Elizabeth to instruct the couple to use common sense and remember that their daughter will one day read everything they’re saying about each other.

While in office, McGreevey’s pro-choice political stance put him at odds with the Catholic church. And soon after his resignation, McGreevey began attending Episcopal services. A central point of contention between the McGreeveys in their divorce is whether their 5-year-old daughter, being raised Catholic by Matos McGreevey, should be allowed to accept communion while at services with her father.

Of the Episcopal discernment protocols, Bean said: “There’s a whole process that takes place within his parish here at St. Bart’s, of discernment. That is followed by a process of further discernment at the diocesan level, involving the bishop and all. The decison to go to seminary is part of a more thorough process of discernment to ordination. It’s not just going to seminary that gets you ordained ... It’s a pretty extensive.”

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May 1, 2007 | 6:18 pm

Gere’s sexual offense

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Have you heard that story about Richard Gere? No, not the gerbil hoax that tainted Dr. T when I was a kid. But the one about Gere smooching Bollywood babe Shilpa Shetty at an AIDS awareness event in New Delhi last month.

As my friend Manya Brachear points out on her blog for the Chicago Tribune, Gere’s actions “enraged some Hindus who thought the public display violated laws of public obscenity.”

If apprehended, Gere can be sent to jail for up to three months, fined or both. He is not in India now but can be held if he visits the country again, which he does for at least three weeks each year to study Tibetan Buddhism under the tutelage of the Dalai Lama, who lives in exile in northern India. He is also involved with AIDS prevention groups there.

Daniel Gold, a professor of South Asian religions at Cornell University, said exceptions are traditionally made for Bollywood stars and Westerners who do not abide by Hindu laws.“In general public displays of affection are not part of Indian traditional culture and most people are rather restrained about that,” Gold said. “The world of Bollywood stars is a whole other world. They have inter-caste marriages, inter-religious marriages. People accept it. But it’s nothing that they would do.”

But Vasudha Narayanan, a professor of religion at the University of Florida, said it wasn’t until recently that kissing was considered acceptable by censors, no matter how sexually suggestive an actor’s gestures might be.

“As a general rule of the thumb it would be expected that any visitor to the country should follow the norms and customs of that place and not do anything that would be knee-jerk offensive,” she said.

“Many people are against these types of lawsuits saying it depicts India in a very negative light and India is in many ways an extraordinarily progressive country,” she added. “But like any other place particularly so in India, it’s a land of extremes.”

According to Britian’s gossip magazine Now, Shetty thinks the whole scandal is ridiculous:

“Can you believe it? It’s so, so stupid,” Shilpa, 31, exclaims. “The lunatic fringe went ballistic over nothing.

“Richard was bending me backwards and he kissed me on the cheek. But the news stations were rewinding and replaying the same shot over and over again on primetime TV. They didn’t talk about the HIV problem that faces this country.

“I was furious when I saw people burning effigies of Richard. That sort of behaviour is not representative of my country.”

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April 30, 2007 | 11:57 am

If Turkey were secular

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Massive protests in Turkey yesterday highlighted the growing tension between religious Turks and their secular sisters in the predominantly Muslim country.

Two weeks after three Bible sellers were murdered by Turkish zeoloats, the at least 700,000 secular protesters were concerned about what Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul’s campaign for presidency would mean for non-religious Turks living in Istanbul and other major cities.

“People here are the real Turkey,” one protester told the New York Times:

It is an emotional reaction to a relatively new layering of society that began 20 years ago but has accelerated recently. A massive migration from rural areas to Turkey’s cities and a large-scale economic boom have drawn an entirely new class of religious Turks from the country’s heartland into the life of its secular cities.

The class is represented by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is challenging the secular elite, forcing a presidential candidate upon them whom they find completely distasteful.

On Friday, the military gave him a warning. It has ousted four elected governments since 1960, and seemed to be considering whether to make Mr. Erdogan’s the fifth. On Sunday, Mr. Erdogan gave a warning of his own: He will continue to push his candidate, an action that will probably lead to early national elections.

Secular Turks fear that Mr. Erdogan has a secret agenda to impose Islamic law on Turkey and that his party’s move to secure the presidency, the highest seat of secularism in Turkey, is one of the final steps needed to start that process.

But Metin Heper, a professor at Bilkent University in Ankara, said: “They fear these people, but these fears are groundless. Gradually, they will see that these people are no different from themselves.”

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April 27, 2007 | 11:09 am

Pharoah and the LAFD

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

LAFD’s public image continues to spiral down. My colleague, Eugene Tong, reported yesterday that someone had gotten on the PA of a fire station in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood (synonymous with L.A. Jewry) and sung, “Who let the Jews out?” to the tune of the Baha Men’s hit song.

That story hit the wire and caught the eye of New Yorker Sam Apple, who is Jewish and two years ago published a book called “Schlepping Through the Alps,” described by The Washington Post as “The liveliest, most unusual travel tale in recent memory.”

To promote his book, Apple created a Passover parody that he put up on YouTube.

Jewcy rated it the second best Jewish Viral Video based on “Jewishness, re-watchability and viral impact (basically, whether you would be proud to forward it).” Apple’s video, which features a distraught Pharoah and a caravan of Israelites driving slammed Caddies through a parted Red Sea, was called “Who let the Jews out?”

Apple, who obviously suffers from Jewish guilt, called Tong to apologize for any indirect harm he may have caused.

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April 25, 2007 | 11:13 pm

God and aliens

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Swiss scientist Michel Mayor, who was credited with co-finding the first planet outside our solar system, is now sleuthing for signs of alien life. What if he finds it? What would that mean for the religious faithful on planet Earth?

It’s a vexing question, mostly because it seems impossible to know the importance of the answer. Two years ago, Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders told me the existence of extraterrestrials wouldn’t contradict theological doctrine. Mormons and Seventh-day Adventists already believe aliens exist, though not the kind that tried to eat Sigourney Weaver. Scientology, on the other hand, is built upon scary space creatures.

From an article I wrote for The Sun (no longer available online):

The theological significance of extraterrestrial life has been debated for centuries. In the Middle Ages, as today, some argued that God could have created worlds better than ours; others maintained that Earth was the center of God’s universe.

“Although it became heretical to deny that God could create other worlds, it was dangerous to claim he had,’ Joseph L. Spradley, a physics and astronomy professor at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill., wrote in 1998 for a fellowship of Christian scientists.

The verdict from most Christians is still out. However, many theologians say, if God did create other worlds and other people, that would not contradict the biblical story of the sin of man being redeemed by the son of God.

“How God shares the story of creation and of love and of the ultimate hope for the restoration of all things in God’s design, I think that can be worked out in many different ways,’ said Philip A. Amerson, president of the Claremont School of Theology, a United Methodist seminary.

There could be different paths to God on different planets, Amerson said. Others accept a more traditional salvation model.

“Saint Paul would suggest to indicate, and it is just a hint, that if there is life on other planets, and these beings needed salvation or redemption, the death of Christ on planet Earth would be a sufficient price,’ said the Rev. John Jefferson Davis, a Presbyterian and professor of theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary near Boston.

Another possibility is that extraterrestrials would not need atonement, Seventh-day Adventists believe. Because these beings would not have been borne of Adam and Eve, they would be perfectly moral beings incapable of sin.

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