May 23, 2007 | 2:36 pm

Gay bishop not invited to Anglican gathering

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Follow me on

When the archbishop of Canterbury sent out more than 800 invitations to the once-a-decade worldwide Lambeth Conference, two names were conspicuously missing: Martyn Minns, the Virginia bishop of a conservative break-away group, and V. Gene Robinson, the gay bishop of New Hampshire whose appointment has embodied the Anglican Church’s fracture.

From the NY Times:

Bishop Robinson said he was extremely disappointed at his exclusion and asked in a statement, “At a time when the Anglican Communion is calling for a ‘listening process’ on the issue of homosexuality, how does it make sense to exclude gay and lesbian people from the discussion?”

The archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, who has expressed liberal views on homosexuality in the past, has been determined to keep the communion intact. In his invitation letter, Archbishop Williams wrote, “I have to reserve the right to withhold or withdraw invitations from bishops whose appointment, actions or manner of life have caused exceptionally serious division or scandal within the communion.”

 

May 23, 2007 | 1:27 pm

‘All types of nonsense’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

There is no doubt the following statement from a Catholic News Service article is accurate.

LONDON—The media spread “all types of nonsense” about religion, sometimes out of malice, but usually out of ignorance, said U.S. Archbishop John P. Foley.

The Revealer and GetReligion do a good job showing that. But the Dallas Morning News’ religion blog thought the same shoe could be put on the other foot:

LONDON—The clergy spread “all types of nonsense” about the media, sometimes out of malice, but usually out of ignorance, said Fill-in-the-Blank-Expert.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

May 23, 2007 | 11:05 am

Jewish ‘security-hawk’ and Iraq veteran turns against the war

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Jon Soltz, a Jewish Army veteran, was an Iraq idealist. Now, he’s the man behind a half-million-dollar anti-war advertising effort that launched last week. From the Forward:

Soltz, 29, is one of the leading protesters of the Iraq War, but don’t call him a pacifist. A self-described “security hawk,” he fell in love with the idea of military service while touring Israel as a teenager. He describes himself as a “pro-Israel, pro-military guy.”

And in May 2003, he arrived for duty in Iraq as a supporter of the war.

“When I went to Iraq, I didn’t change my dog tags — I kept ‘Jewish’ on my dog tags because I believed in the war, because I believed, when I watched the president, that I was fighting for the national security of America,” Soltz recalled. The decision to keep his faith close to his heart, he noted, could have landed him “in big trouble” if he were to be captured by Iraqi insurgents, but he said he felt it was “the morally, religiously, right thing to do.”

            By the time that Soltz returned home in September 2003, having served as an operations manager for logistics convoys, he was worried that the troops, stretched too thin with too few resources, were on an impossible mission.

1 Comments — Leave your comment

May 22, 2007 | 11:07 pm

The Simpsons gospel and edible goodies

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I have a 26-year-old friend who still eats a Flintstones vitamin every day. But now, if he wishes, he can suck down a Simpsons Squirts, thanks to St. Hill Pharmaceutical Corp. (Hat-tip: Bible Belt Blogger)

Speaking of The Simpsons, Orlando Sentinel religion reporter Mark I. Pinsky, who is Jewish, is about to release an expanded version of his 2001 book, “The Gospel According to the Simpsons.” I just got a copy in the mail yesterday. Hopefully, I’ll enjoy it more than this guy.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

May 22, 2007 | 1:40 pm

Jewish parents decide to not circumcise

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

This story has been going around for a while. Today it creeps up in the Chicago Tribune, under the headline “Some Jewish parents break ranks over circumcision.”

  When Leo Grossinger was 8 days old, his parents invited their relatives and friends to a ceremony welcoming him into their midst, as Jewish families have done for thousands of years.

They recited Hebrew blessings, lit candles, shared wine and challah, a braided bread. A rabbi conferred Leo’s Hebrew name, Asiel, which means “created by God.” When the ceremony was over, the guests ate bagels and lox.

  All in all, the event looked a lot like any other bris, or ritual circumcision. The only difference was that Leo never had to shed his diaper.

“I wanted to feel that connection with tradition,” said Leo’s mother, Erica Wandner. And it was important to her that the baby be given a Hebrew name in memory of Wandner’s mother. But neither Wandner nor her husband, Robin Grossinger, wanted to inflict pain and trauma on their new baby for a surgical procedure doctors say is not medically necessary.

The couple, of Berkeley, Calif., are among a small but growing number of American Jews who are questioning what is arguably the most sacred rite in Judaism.

First off, I think some people believe that eating bagels and lox is the most sacred rite in Judaism.

Second, despite the fact that the “rate of U.S. babies being circumcised before leaving the hospital has gone from an estimated 85 percent in 1965 to 57 percent in 2004,” it’s not universally accepted that circumcision is without health benefits. In December, the National Institutes of Health reported that circumcision dramatically reduces the transmission of AIDS in Africa.

As for why Jews have traditionally circumcised their boys—and, thank God, not their women, as some Muslim cultures promote—stems from this conversation God had with a 99-year-old, soon-to-be-circumcised Abraham.

Aside from the certain pain of Joshua circumcising the adult Israelites before taking Jericho, the bris has at times caused deeper trauma, including, in 2004, an ultra-Orthodox New York mohel’s infecting three babies with herpes, one of whom died.

(Here’s what is being said in The Jewish Journal’s reader forums.)

1 Comments — Leave your comment

May 22, 2007 | 9:52 am

Muslim attitudes *

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

After speaking with more than 1,000 American Muslims, the venerable Pew Research Center reported today that Muslims are generally happy in the United States and aren’t hung up with the issues that have caused the global “clash of civilizations.”

This, though, was a startling discovery:

Muslim Americans reject Islamic extremism by larger margins than do Muslim minorities in Western European countries. However, there is somewhat more acceptance of Islamic extremism in some segments of the U.S. Muslim public than others. Fewer native-born African American Muslims than others completely condemn al Qaeda. In addition, younger Muslims in the U.S. are much more likely than older Muslim Americans to say that suicide bombing in the defense of Islam can be at least sometimes justified. Nonetheless, absolute levels of support for Islamic extremism among Muslim Americans are quite low, especially when compared with Muslims around the world.

In fact, a poll last month by WorldPublicOpinion.org found “most respondents have mixed feelings about Al Qaeda.”

The survey only found about 2.35 million Muslims living in the United States, far fewer than the seven million that CAIR claims live here. Other key findings:

- American Muslims have a positive view of society.

- The majority believe hard work pays off.

- Though many are relatively recent immigrants, they are fairly assimilated.

(* Update—here’s the AP story.)

1 Comments — Leave your comment

May 21, 2007 | 8:03 pm

The stoning in Iraq

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

For more than a year, Iraq has been besieged by sectarian assassinations—Sunnis and Shiites killing each other simply because each Muslim group considers members of the other heretics. We’ve grown callous to this news. But the story of the 17-year-old Iraqi girl stoned to death in an “honor killing” makes me burn with anger, almost to the point of tears. From the LA Times:

BAGHDAD — The video is shaky, but the brutality is clear.

A slender, black-haired girl is dragged in a headlock through a braying mob of men. Within seconds, she is on the ground in a fetal position, covering her head with her arms in a futile attempt to fend off a shower of stones.

Someone slams a concrete block onto the back of her head. A river of blood oozes from beneath her long, tangled hair. The girl stops moving, but the kicks and the rocks keep coming, as do the victorious shouts of the men delivering them.

In the eyes of many in her community in northern Iraq, 17-year-old Duaa Khalil Aswad’s crime was to love a boy from another religion. She was a Yazidi, a member of an insular religious sect. He was a Sunni Muslim. To Duaa’s uncle and cousins, that was reason enough to put her to death last month in the village of Bashiqa.

Women’s groups say the video shows Iraq’s backward slide as religious and ethnic intolerance takes hold.

“There is a new Taliban controlling the lives of women in Iraq,” said Hanaa Edwar, a women’s rights activist. “I think this story will be absolutely repeated again. I believe if security is not controlled, such stories will be very common.”

The U.N. recently reported that these “honor killings” were on the rise in Iraq; in the first two months of the year, 40 women were killed for alleged “immoral conduct”—from having an affair to simply sitting in a car with a non-relative male.

I decided not to embed the video, but you can click here to watch it.

1 Comments — Leave your comment

May 21, 2007 | 3:18 pm

Anti-Darwinist is national school board shoo-in

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

There is one person running for president-elect of the National Association of State Boards of Education, the NY Times reports—a member of the Kansas school board who supported efforts to not teach evolution.

The candidate is Kenneth R. Willard, a Kansas Republican who voted with the conservative majority in 2005 when the school board changed the state’s science standards to allow inclusion of intelligent design, an ideological cousin of creationism. Voters later replaced that majority, but Mr. Willard, an insurance executive from Hutchinson, retained his seat. If he becomes president-elect of the national group, he will take office in January 2009.

The group, based in Washington, is a nonprofit organization of state school boards whose Web site (www.nasbe.org) says it “works to strengthen state leadership in educational policymaking.”

(skip)

“We don’t set curriculum standards or anything like that,” Mr. Willard said of the national organization, adding that it handled issues like advising state boards on how to deal with governance concerns or influxes of immigrant students or ways to raise academic achievement among members of disadvantaged groups.

He said, though, that he personally thought students should be taught about challenges to the theory of evolution, like intelligent design. And while he said he had not heard of a possible challenge to his candidacy, Mr. Willard added that he was not surprised by it.

“Some people are mindless about their attacks on anyone questioning anything Darwin might have said,” Mr. Willard said.

 

As I’ve written before, plenty of scientists—though not the majority—see no conflict between evolution and the creation of life by God above.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

May 21, 2007 | 9:15 am

Larry Flynt: Godspeed, Falwell

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

“The porn king and the preacher,” a sketch drawing of Larry Flynt sitting in bed, staring at a nudie mag with the Rev. Jerry Falwell, thumbing through the Bible, by his side—that was the cover of yesterday’s Opinion section in the LA Times. The cover opinion piece was a first person appreciation of Falwell, who died Tuesday, and it was far more interesting than the other Falwell stories I’ve mentioned here.

Falwell and Flynt were for years pitted in an incredibly ugly freedom-of-speech battle. Flynt had been a whipping boy for Falwell’s preaching, and Hustler’s hero decided to fight back. His magazine ran a spoof in which Jerry Falwell was purportedly describing his “first time”—in an outhouse with his mom, “drunk off our God-fearing asses.”

The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where Flynt won. It remains a critical free-speech case taught in universities and law schools.

THE FIRST TIME the Rev. Jerry Falwell put his hands on me, I was stunned. Not only had we been archenemies for 15 years, his beliefs and mine traveling in different solar systems, and not only had he sued me for $50 million (a case I lost repeatedly yet eventually won in the Supreme Court), but now he was hugging me in front of millions on the Larry King show.

It was 1997.

(skip)

In the years that followed and up until his death, he’d come to see me every time he was in California. We’d have interesting philosophical conversations. We’d exchange personal Christmas cards. He’d show me pictures of his grandchildren. I was with him in Florida once when he complained about his health and his weight, so I suggested that he go on a diet that had worked for me. I faxed a copy to his wife when I got back home.

The truth is, the reverend and I had a lot in common. He was from Virginia, and I was from Kentucky. His father had been a bootlegger, and I had been one too in my 20s before I went into the Navy. We steered our conversations away from politics, but religion was within bounds. He wanted to save me and was determined to get me out of “the business.”

My mother always told me that no matter how repugnant you find a person, when you meet them face to face you will always find something about them to like. The more I got to know Falwell, the more I began to see that his public portrayals were caricatures of himself. There was a dichotomy between the real Falwell and the one he showed the public.

He was definitely selling brimstone religion and would do anything to add another member to his mailing list. But in the end, I knew what he was selling, and he knew what I was selling, and we found a way to communicate.

I always kicked his ass about his crazy ideas and the things he said. Every time I’d call him, I’d get put right through, and he’d let me berate him about his views. When he was getting blasted for his ridiculous homophobic comments after he wrote his “Tinky Winky” article cautioning parents that the purple Teletubby character was in fact gay, I called him in Florida and yelled at him to “leave the Tinky Winkies alone.”

When he referred to Ellen Degeneres in print as Ellen “Degenerate,” I called him and said, “What are you doing? You don’t need to poison the whole lake with your venom.” I could hear him mumbling out of the side of his mouth, “These lesbians just drive me crazy.” I’m sure I never changed his mind about anything, just as he never changed mine.

I’ll never admire him for his views or his opinions. To this day, I’m not sure if his television embrace was meant to mend fences, to show himself to the public as a generous and forgiving preacher or merely to make me uneasy, but the ultimate result was one I never expected and was just as shocking a turn to me as was winning that famous Supreme Court case: We became friends.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

May 21, 2007 | 8:50 am

Jimmy Carter gets cold feet

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Former President Jimmy Carter was just on NBC’s “Today” for an exclusive interview responding to his comments Friday that the Bush administration is “the worst in history.”

Not surprisingly, and entirely unconvincingly, the former peanut farmer backed away from his damning comments about the former oil man. Speaking with Meredith Viera, Carter said his comments were “careless” and claimed that when he said “worst in history,” he was only comparing Bush to Nixon and only on the issues of foreign policy.

Plenty of notable scholars—and The Donald—have shown far more chutzpah when talking about George W. Bush.

0 Comments — Leave your comment

May 20, 2007 | 3:34 pm

Gingrich to Liberty grads: beware ‘radical secularism’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Delivering the commencement at the conservative university founded by fundamentalist Christian Jerry Falwell only four days after the reverend’s death, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich encouraged the young graduates to confront “the growing culture of radical secularism” with Christian values. From AP:

‘‘A growing culture of radical secularism declares that the nation cannot profess the truths on which it was founded,’’ Gingrich said.

‘‘We are told that our public schools can no longer invoke the creator, nor proclaim the natural law nor profess the God-given quality of human rights.

                                                                                                        ‘‘In hostility to American history, the radical secularists insist that religious belief is inherently divisive and that public debate can only proceed on secular terms.”

Read the entire speech at Liberty University here. The Virginian-Pilot offered a bit more color about the mood on campus following the death of Falwell, a man who though more conservative and confrontational than most evangelical Christians helped galvanize the community’s political power.

(The photo is from conspiracyworld.com)

0 Comments — Leave your comment

May 20, 2007 | 10:23 am

Muslim run-down at UC Irvine

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Just when it seems religious tension at UC Irvine can’t get any higher ...

Last week, the Muslim Student Union held a series of rallies centered around the theme “Israel: Apartheid Resurrected,” and on Monday night, Yasser Ahmed claims he was followed by an unmarked sedan as he drove a moving truck from a parking lot to UCI’s Free Speech Zone. From the LA Times:

Ahmed, 21, said he got out of the truck, walked to the car and asked the driver why he was following him. The driver did not respond, Ahmed said, and he tried to snap a photo of the license plate with his cellphone camera. At that point, Ahmed said, the car nudged him with its front bumper and he got out of the way. He was not injured.

The man behind the wheel drove off but was stopped almost immediately by a campus police officer, who had responded to cries for help from Ahmed and other students. The driver identified himself as an FBI agent “who was doing surveillance,” Henisey said.

On Friday, Ahmed, an economics major and lifelong Orange County resident, said he was still reeling.

“He didn’t open his window and didn’t let me know who he was. He never said anything,” Ahmed said. “All he had to say was that he was FBI or law enforcement and this wouldn’t have happened. I was frightened. He pushed me with the car, which had tinted windows and then tried to drive away. What’s one supposed to think?”

The incident, which is under investigation, comes a year after an FBI agent was quoted telling a Newport Beach business group that the bureau was “monitoring” Muslims at UCI and USC.

In other anti-Israel campus news: This morning at UCLA, “a diverse group of Southern California activists, both       secular and from all religions, and including Arabs and       Israelis” will host an event called Israel, Zionism and Apartheid.

0 Comments — Leave your comment