July 19, 2012 | 8:47 pm

Jewish ‘death rapper’ has very Jewy rhymes

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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You’d think that Necro, the Jewish “death rapper,” had recorded a track for the “Hebrew Hammer” sequel with his latest, “For the Streets.” DISCLAIMER: Very explicit lyrics and more yiddishkeit than Asher Roth would be comfortable with.

July 18, 2012 | 11:28 am

At least seven killed in terror attack on Bulgarian bus carrying Israeli tourist

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

A reminder that Jews are always a terror target. Everywhere. JTA reports:

At least seven passengers reportedly were killed in an explosion on a bus carrying Israeli tourists in Bulgaria in what is being described as a terrorist attack.

Israeli and Bulgarian outlets reported that as many as seven people were killed in the explosion Wednesday afternoon at Sarafovo Airport in Burgas, a city on the Black Sea Coast popular with Israeli tourists. At least 27 passengers have been rushed to the hospital, reported the Bulgarian news agency Novinite.com. The explosion hit one of three tour buses carrying Israelis, Israel’s Channel 1 reported. Some 40 people are reported to have been on the bus.

The explosion occurred while the bus was still in the terminal. Some news reports said a suicide bomber boarded the bus as it was taking the Israeli tourists to the terminal. Others quoted Burgas Mayor Dimitar Nikolov as saying that explosives were in the luggage area of the bus.

The explosion occurred on the 18th anniversary of the terrorist attack on the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires that left 85 people dead.

Israeli search and rescue teams have been dispatched to Burgas, including a delegation from ZAKA, the Israeli rescue and recovery service.

Continuing updates here.

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July 18, 2012 | 10:39 am

Chick-fil-A prez on opposition to gay marriage: ‘guilty as charged’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

In an interview with the Biblical Recorder, and carried by the Baptist Press, Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy talked at length about the famously closed-on-Sundays fast-food joint’s Christian values. He also responded to criticism that Chick-fil-A is opposed to gay marriage:

“Well, guilty as charged,” said Cathy when asked about the company’s position.

“We are very much supportive of the family—the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.

“We operate as a family business ... our restaurants are typically led by families; some are single. We want to do anything we possibly can to strengthen families. We are very much committed to that,” Cathy emphasized.

“We intend to stay the course,” he said. “We know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles.”

Read the rest here.

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July 18, 2012 | 10:21 am

Wheaton College sues Obama for ‘contraception mandate’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Wheaton College is announcing this morning that it will filed suit in federal court to enjoin President Obama’s so-called “contraception mandate.” The Illinois evangelical school is not the first religious institution—and not the first Protestant one—to file such a lawsuit.

Sarah Pulliam Bailey writes for Christianity Today:

“This morning, the Board of Trustees filed a lawsuit in the Washington, D.C. District Court opposing the mandate, which, if enacted, would force the College to violate its religious beliefs or pay severe fines,” Ryken wrote in an e-mail to Wheaton’s faculty and staff. “We are joining with Catholic University of America in order to demonstrate that a deep concern for the sanctity of human life and a strong belief in the importance of religious freedom are areas of commonality that transcend our theological differences.”

Ryken said that The list of approved contraceptives includes “abortifacient ‘morning after’ and ‘week after’ drugs, presumably referring to contraceptives such as Plan B and Ella.

“I have every hope that Wheaton College will continue to provide excellent health care to all of its employees,” he said in the e-mail. “However, we stand to face punitive fines for not complying with the HHS regulations as of January 1, 2013.”

The mandate goes into effect August 1, though most religious institutions have another year to comply. But for non-church faith-based organizations whose insurance plans on February 10 did include contraceptives, the mandate comes into effect on or after August 1.

I’m interested to see how these lawsuits shake out.

Courts are not likely to find that the contraception requirement violates the First Amendment. History with challenges to similar state laws suggests as much—in large part because freedom of religion does not exempt religious conduct from generally applicable laws.

However, it may well violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which requires a federal inaction imposing a substantial burden on religious practice to pass strict scrutiny. Is the contraception mandate really the least restrictive means to achieve a compelling government purpose?

With lawsuits by religious institutions continuing to accrue, we’ll soon see.

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July 17, 2012 | 1:44 pm

Obama’s Mideast efforts a failure?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

From JTA:

President Obama said in an interview that he has failed to advance the Middle East peace process “the way I wanted.”

“I have not been able to move the peace process forward in the Middle East the way I wanted,” he told WJLA-TV, the ABC affiliate in Washington, on Sunday in response to a question on whether there was “anything you believe you failed at, not because Congress wouldn’t play ball, but that rests squarely on your shoulders.”

Obama said, “It’s something we focused on very early. But the truth of the matter is, that the parties, they’ve got to want it as well.

Have Obama’s efforts really failed?

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July 15, 2012 | 1:36 pm

Matisyahu to throw first pitch at Dodgers’ Jewish Community Day

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Every season, Dodgers Jewish Community Day is on calendars throughout the Jewish community. Dodger Stadium has Canter’s year round (they’d be better off with Langer’s), but this is the one day you can get kosher concessions at the ball park.

Jewish Community Day is today, and Matisyahu, who is a bit less Jewish this time around, will throw out the first pitch. Amazingly, of the two guys wearing Dodgers jerseys in this picture, Matisyahu is the one without the long, bushy beard.

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July 15, 2012 | 12:49 pm

Douthat: Liberal Christianity’s slow death

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Prompted by recent Presbyterian and Episcopal denomination meetings that once again made news because of resolutions on the churches’ treatments of gay marriage (and efforts to divest from Israel), Ross Douthat asks an important question in the Sunday Times: “Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?”

What he means is that many mainline denominations—the stalwarts of Protestantism—and in particular the U.S. Episcopal Church have lost their moorings. They have become “flexible to the point of indifference on dogma, friendly to sexual liberation in almost every form, willing to blend Christianity with other faiths, and eager to downplay theology entirely in favor of secular political causes.”

An excerpt:

What should be wished for, instead, is that liberal Christianity recovers a religious reason for its own existence. As the liberal Protestant scholar Gary Dorrien has pointed out, the Christianity that animated causes such as the Social Gospel and the civil rights movement was much more dogmatic than present-day liberal faith. Its leaders had a “deep grounding in Bible study, family devotions, personal prayer and worship.” They argued for progressive reform in the context of “a personal transcendent God ... the divinity of Christ, the need of personal redemption and the importance of Christian missions.”

Today, by contrast, the leaders of the Episcopal Church and similar bodies often don’t seem to be offering anything you can’t already get from a purely secular liberalism. Which suggests that per haps they should pause, amid their frantic renovations, and consider not just what they would change about historic Christianity, but what they would defend and offer uncompromisingly to the world.

Absent such a reconsideration, their fate is nearly certain: they will change, and change, and die.

It’s hard to argue with that. But maybe this is a case of damned if they do and damned if they don’t. (For some, that phrase might cut a bit too close.) By that I mean that if the Episcopal Church stayed tied to hundreds of years of dogma, congregational rolls would continue to shrink as elderly members died. But the progressive path hasn’t attracted younger members because much of the emergent generation (and not just this guy) is generally tired with the institutional church—progressive or traditional.

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July 14, 2012 | 12:19 pm

Gallup: American confidence in organized religion hits new low

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The organized church continues to struggle, and today, according to Gallup’s annual “Confidence in Institutions” survey, only 44 percent of Americans have a great deal of quite a lot of confidence in “the church or organized religion.” That’s the lowest confidence level since the organized church started its decline in the early 1970s.

From Gallup:

Currently, 56% of Protestants express a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the church/organized religion, compared with 46% of Catholics. This is in line with an average 12-percentage-point difference in the two groups’ confidence, according Gallup polling from 2002 through 2012, with Protestants consistently expressing higher confidence. There are too few respondents of other specific religions to analyze separately; however, confidence among all other Americans combined is 29%, far less than either Protestants’ or Catholics’.

That disparity likely has a lot to do with the clergy sex abuse scandal mentioned in my previous post and in the above clip from “South Park.” Read more survey results here.

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July 13, 2012 | 6:42 pm

Merkel: German Jews and Muslims can still circumcise sons

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Remember the circumcision wars in California last summer that ceased, at least temporarily, when a California state court said that the circumcision-ban ballot measure in San Francisco would violate California law?

Well, last month in Germany circumcision came a lot closer to being proscribed after a court in Cologne ruled that it was illegal. The decision was a shocker—and Jewish and Muslim communities quickly mobilized.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel responded today. Her spokesman promised that Jews and Muslims would be free to circumcise their boys, per their religious tradition. Reuters reports:

“For everyone in the government it is absolutely clear that we want to have Jewish and Muslim religious life in Germany,” said Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert. “Circumcision carried out in a responsible manner must be possible in this country without punishment.”

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Ruling in the case of a Muslim boy taken to a doctor with bleeding after circumcision, the Cologne court said the practice inflicts bodily harm and should not be carried out on young boys, but could be practiced on older males who give consent.

This is not acceptable under Jewish religious practice which requires boys to be circumcised from eight days old, nor for many Muslims, for whom the age of circumcision varies according to family, country and branch of Islam.

“It is well know that in the Jewish religion early circumcision carries great meaning, so it is a matter of urgency that this right be restored,” said Seibert, adding that Merkel’s own office would be involved in efforts to resolve the problem.

“We know a quick decision is needed and that this cannot be put off. Freedom of religious practice is a very important legal right for us,” he said.

Read the rest here.

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July 13, 2012 | 6:03 pm

SNAP: Catholic sex abuse cover-up continues

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

A portion of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests' ad

I’ve been meaning to mention an ad that the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests ran an ad in the New York Times this week. The full-page ad went to great lengths to document the on-going cover-up of clergy sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

The full ad is after the jump, but I recommend clicking this link and reading the footnotes. In particular, footnote five cites the cases against dozens of bishops who have broken the church’s promise of transparency, withheld documents, and, in some cases, refused to remove pedophile priests—and footnote seven, which lists pedophile priests still in ministry.

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July 12, 2012 | 11:50 am

Saudi Arabia bends to pressure; will send two women to 2012 Olympics

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

It’s hard to believe, but the 2012 Olympics will be the first time in history that every participating country will send at least one female athlete. Saudi Arabia sealed the deal when it bowed to international pressure and gave up its mantle as the only remaining Olympic nation to never send a female athlete to the Games. They’ll be represented by a judo competitor and an 800-meter runner.

Reuters reports:

Wodjan Ali Seraj Abdulrahim Shahrkhani, who will compete in the 78-kg category in judo, and teenager Sarah Attar will be the first Saudi women ever to take part after talks between the IOC and the country.

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At the Atlanta Games in 1996, 26 nations sent no female athletes, the figure falling to just three in Beijing in 2008.

In recent months human rights groups urged the IOC to ban Saudi Arabia from the Games unless it agreed to send women.

Powerful Saudi clerics denounce women for taking part in sport, saying it goes against their nature.

Women in Saudi Arabia are regarded as minors and require the permission of their guardian - father, brother, or husband - to leave the country and in some cases even to work. They are not allowed to drive.

It’s amazing that international pressure was needed. Then again, Saudi Arabia, where foreign soccer players get arrested for sporting Jesus tattoos and writers face execution for insulting Islam on Twitter, is not exactly a pioneer in human rights. Regardless, the result is that 40 years after Title IX the Olympics will have a little more gender balance.

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July 12, 2012 | 10:39 am

N.C. pastor vows to rebuild church destroyed by arson

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Moving perspective of a Jacksonville, N.C., pastor whose church was reduced to ashes by an arsonist last week. Via the Christian Post:

“We will rebuild – and we won’t let that stand there as a memorial. The foundation is still there, and we are going to build on the same foundation that they thought they had destroyed. The Scripture says ‘if the foundations be destroyed, where would the righteous be?’ So we are building on the same foundation, and we are going to extend the ministry out,” Joseph Morgan of Wings of Faith Ministries told The Christian Post in a phone interview.

Read the rest here.  Morgan goes on to refer to the incident as a “spiritual attack” and seems to be referring to the incident as one intended by spiritual forces to prevent Wings of Faith from its gospel mission.

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