November 3, 2012 | 6:40 am

And in the sixth year ... The God Blog rested

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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You've probably noticed that The God Blog has been quiet of late. It's not that I've run out of things to say. Impossible! We're just on hiatus -- or more appropriately, sabbatical. See you next August!

August 20, 2012 | 12:22 am

Catholic churches in France accused of being ‘homophobic’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Prayers at Catholic Churches throughout France last week prompted accusations that the churches are homophobic. The story is reminiscent of what we saw in the U.S. after the Chick-fil-A chief said he and the company value traditional marriage.

Reuters reports:

The rare clerical foray into political debate, on the Assumption Day holiday observed in traditionally Catholic countries in Europe, referred only indirectly to the new marriage law the government plans to pass next year.

But the carefully worded text, first published earlier this month, dominated the news headlines in France, where the media have presented it as a strong attack on the reform.

Church leaders insisted their aim was to launch an open debate about plans to legalize same-sex marriage and euthanasia, two in a list of 60 pledges made by Francois Hollande in his successful election campaign for the presidency last spring.

“The Church wants a debate about social reforms that are coming soon and that really worry us,” Monsignor Bernard Podvin, spokesman for the bishops’ conference, told LCI television.

Read the rest here.

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August 19, 2012 | 9:04 pm

Who gets to decide who is a Jew?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Responding to news reports last week about the anti-Semitic Hungarian politician, Csanad Szegedi, who discovered he is Jewish, George Conger at GetReligion (now part of Patheos!) asks a centuries-old question. Who is a Jew? With a twist:

He writes:

How should journalists decide who is a Jew? In this story the conservative/orthodox matrilineal definition is used. This may be appropriate as the Jewish community in Hungary follows this line. Yet the AP’s readers are found in the Angl0sphere, where the majority of Jews follow the Reform view of Jewish identity. Should it not interpret events according to the lights of its readers?

Nazi race ideology would classify Szegedi as a mischling — a half Jew. A German mischling was subject to severe restrictions under the Nazi race laws, but mischlinge in the Eastern territories occupied by the Nazis were classified as full Jews and exterminated. Szegedi appears not to want to accept his Jewish ancestry — and protests that he is a Christian and 100 per cent Hungarian.

Distasteful as this topic may be, has Szegedi the right to construct himself? Is he a Jew? Should he be a Jew? Who gets to say?

So how should journalists deal with this question? Does it depend on whom they are talking to or about? Is someone with only a Jewish father not a Jew if the story is about Conservative Jews but a Jew if the story is about Reform Jews?

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August 18, 2012 | 9:56 pm

Arizona pastor lands in jail for church meetings at his home

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Cities have zoning restrictions that limit how a piece of property may be used. Not every piece of property can be used for an organized religious gathering that would effectively make the property a house of worship. And so every now and then you read about a Bible study or small religious gatherings being shut down because of a non-comforming land use.

The story of Michael Salman is a little different. He didn’t just get ticketed for holding church services in his home. His hosting a Bible study landed the Arizona pastor in jail.

Beliefnet reports:

Like the Apostle Paul some 2,000 years ago, Salman has devoted his time in custody to sharing his faith other inmates. As he faced the final 30 days, his church prayed for a miracle to shake open the prison doors — as in the Book of Acts’ Bible story of the Philippian jailer. However, Salman’s jailer is already a Christian – famed Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who is staying out of the controversy that landed Salman behind bars.

(skip)

Officials say he violated a previous agreement by continuing to hold religious services in violation of zoning and building codes – hosting as many as 80 visitors at his 4-acre property in a 2,000-square-foot “game room” that has a pulpit and pews and for which he has enjoyed a church exemption from property taxes.

Phoenix zoning officials say the case has nothing at all to do with Salman’s faith, but everything to do with zoning ordinances, occupancy permits and insufficient handicapped parking spaces.

Read the rest here.

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August 18, 2012 | 8:33 pm

How many Americans are atheists?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

A headline from Slate caught my eye this week: “Poll Shows Fivefold Increase in Ranks of U.S. Atheists.” But the details of the story didn’t really bear that out. The article reported that a new study found that 1 in 20 Americans now consider themselves to be atheists. That’s 5 percent.

But since at least 2006, most researchers have been estimating the American atheist population at 3 percent to 10 percent—not the mere fraction of a percent that the Global Index of Religiosity and Atheism poll had previously found. From an article I wrote for the LA Daily News:

Depending on the definition, researchers estimate atheists make up 3 to 10 percent of the U.S. population.

Most likely to be educated and men and ranging from liberals to libertarians, experts say, atheists’ chief interest shifts from promoting science to fighting religious influence on politics, depending on the cultural climate.

Part of the reason that researchers have struggled to peg the atheist population is that there is no clear definition of who is an atheist. It might not be as vexing a question as Who is a Jew? But it’s a similarly difficult question to answer.

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August 17, 2012 | 3:41 pm

Ahmadinejad calls Israel a ‘cancerous tumour’ soon to be destroyed

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren, said this week that Israel’s clock on Iran is “ticking faster” than President Obama’s. Not that the Iranian president needs a reason to advocate for the destruction of Israel—he did so unprovoked about two weeks ago—but I wonder if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad heard Oren.

The AFP reports on Ahmadinejad calling Israel a “cancerous tumour” during an anti-Israel rally in Tehran today. He went on:

“The Zionist regime and the Zionists are a cancerous tumour,” he said.

“The nations of the region will soon finish off the usurper Zionists in the Palestinian land…. A new Middle East will definitely be formed. With the grace of God and help of the nations, in the new Middle East there will be no trace of the Americans and Zionists,” he said.

Read the rest here.

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August 15, 2012 | 12:32 pm

Paul Ryan, Ayn Rand and Jesus

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The American Values Network, not to be confused with Gary Bauer’s organization American Values, released the above video a few months ago and a friend of mine recently shared it in light of Mitt Romney teaming up with Paul Ryan. The title, “Paul Ryan and Ayn Rand vs. Jesus,” is quite sensationalized. But there has been much discussion about Ryan’s love of Ayn Rand and his statement that the morality she created had a deep influence on his budget plan, which has led some to question whether his budget plan is “un-Christian.”

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August 14, 2012 | 8:42 pm

Leader of anti-Semitic Hungarian political party discovers he’s Jewish

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Don’t you just hate it when this happens:

One of the leaders of Hungary’s Jobbik Party, which the Anti-Defamation League says is one of the few political parties in Europe to overtly campaign with anti-Semitic materials, has discovered that he is himself a Jew.

As the AP says, Csanad Szegedi had in the past railed about the “Jewishness” of the political class. According to the ADL, his party’s presidential candidate referred to Israeli Jews as “lice-infested, dirty murderers.”

For Szegedi all of this came to a screeching halt, when in 2010 a prisoner confronted him with evidence that he had Jewish roots. According to the AP, Szegedi tried to bribe the prisoner to keep him quiet, but rumors and innuendo reached a fever pitch by late last year and in June, Szegedi conceded that his mother was a Jew. According to Jewish law, that makes Szegedi Jewish, too.

That’s from NPR. Much more from the AP and JTA.

Csanad Szegedi discovering he’s Jewish—good for the Jews?

My knee-jerk reaction is ask why any Jew would want to call him a fellow MOT. On the other hand, maybe Szegedi can make a change in the Jobbik Party as a result of this revelation.

Moreover, this story is not as surprising as it seems at first blush. History is replete with just anti-Semites ignorant of their own Jewishness and also closet Jews whose anti-Semitism is motivated by a hatred of their own people.

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August 14, 2012 | 9:44 am

Must Christians vote Republican?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

In a post titled, “Was Jesus a Democrat or Republican?”, Jeff Myers writes:

I recently received an email from my Christian friend, Bruce, who expressed some of the same frustration. He wrote: “Some of my church brothers and sisters were appalled when I showed up at home group sporting my Obama tee-shirt and parked my ‘Obama-mobile’ front-and-center in the parking lot (pretty much assuring that I’ll never be an elder . . .). It’s almost as though they question the legitimacy of my faith because I don’t support the Republican viewpoint (I’m not a Democrat, either—I’m a ‘decline to state’ dude).”

I certainly have known the feeling.

I’m not a decline-to-state dude. I’m a left-of-center Republican, and one who has become increasingly frustrated with Republican political priorities of the past decade. And I distinctly remember attending a wedding a few years back at which a number of friends from my high school church youth group were shocked to hear that a Christian could vote for a Democrat.

Of course, evangelical Christians come in all shapes and colors. I’ve mentioned this recently in regards to gay marriage, but it is germane to non-hot-button political issues too.

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August 14, 2012 | 6:22 am

New look for Ultra-Orthodox men who want to see less

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

YNet reports on a poor prescription tool used by Ultra Orthodox Jewish men who want to avoid seeing women they consider to be immodestly dressed:

The ultra-Orthodox community’s unofficial “modesty patrols” are selling glasses with special blur-inducing stickers on their lenses. The glasses provide clear vision for up to a few meters so as not to impede movement, but anything beyond that gets blurry – including women. It’s not known how many have been sold.

For men forced to venture outside their insular communities, hoods and shields that block peripheral vision are also being offered.

The glasses are going for the “modest” price of $6.

For some reason, I don’t see these blurring glasses becoming the next fashion statement of NBA stars.

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August 13, 2012 | 9:58 am

Still on Interstate 10

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Blogging from the road on a three-day drive across the country has proven a bit more difficult than anticipated. Time to get caught up on what’s been happening in the world not involving Paul Ryan.

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August 11, 2012 | 9:48 am

Head east, young man?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

It’s been a taxing last two weeks getting my family’s affairs in order and boxing up our place.  At midnight last night, my co-pilot (aka my dad) and I jumped on the 10 and started driving east. Destination: Miami, where I’ll be working for the next year (and where there is an eclectic mix of religious communities).

The move has thus far taken a lot more out of me than expected, evident in the all-quiet nature of The God Blog the past few days. I’ll be updating from the road; hopefully they have data networks in western Texas. Posting over the next three days will probably be like it was during the California bar exam: sporadic.

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