Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Talk2Action talks back

    More on Jim Wallis and Mark Pinsky, at Talk2Action, which was the object of much of their criticism/bullying.

    It was bad enough when Mark I. Pinsky recently took to the op-ed page of USA Today to smear four Jewish writers who have had the temerity to write critically and well about dominionism and related matters — comparingtheir work to historic anti-Semitic smears including the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  Then Jim Wallis chimed in last week, accusing unnamed liberal writers of engaging in thought crimes against evangelicals.  His charges were as unsubstantiated as Pinsky’s, whose essay he praised and linked to.

    Some of us who figured to be among the unnamed decided it was time to speak, perchance to be heard.  So we wrote an Open Letter to Jim Wallis asking that he please stop mischaracterizing our work and that he rethink and renounce his endorsement of Pinsky’s outrageous smears.  I am pleased to report that our modest effort has helped spark some discussion in the greater blogosphere.

    Pinsky comments.

     I stand by the point of the piece. The exigencies of politics/academics/journalism/fundraising notwithstanding, this is about a need for a boogeyman, particularly in an election year.  I maintain these theological doctrines are numerically marginal and their influence on any serious GOP presidential candidates tenuous. I seriously doubt that more than five percent of the suburban evangelicals who form the bedrock of the demographic would recognize the bizarre tenets of the New Apostolic Reformation; that figure might bump to the 10-15 percent range for Dominionism.

    Glib, isn’t it – who cares what he “doubts,” even seriously? Maybe he should have found out before writing that article, instead of just going by his hunch.

    Chip Berlet retorted:

    Having just spent two days at the 2011 Values Voter Summit in DC I assure you that Christian Nationalism in the form of Dominionism is hardly marginal. Major Republican Presidential hopefuls pitched to the audience of over 2000 committed conservative activists. Jews are given revocable full citizenship in the Christian nation they envision. You still owe us an apology.

    Stay tuned.

  • Opening the door

    It’s starting already.

    Hundreds of people are expected to gather tonight on Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard to declare themselves “without religion.” The move follows the recent District Court ruling granting author Yoram Kaniuk recognition as “without religion” by the Interior Ministry.

    The meeting, to be held in the abandoned building on Rothschild Boulevard which has become an ad-hoc community center for protesters, is being organized on Facebook by Tel Aviv poet Oded Carmeli. So far, about 600 people have confirmed they will be attending.

    Participants will be signing affidavits in the presence of attorneys, informing the Interior Ministry of their change of status to “without religion.”

    Mazel tov!

     

  • There’s probably no bus

    Oxford Christians tell Dawkins where to get off.

    In 2009, atheists in London paid for 200 adverts on the city’s buses, declaring: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

    Now Premier Christian Radio has paid for its own version on Oxford buses, after the distinguished evolutionary biologist turned down the chance to debate with Christian philosopher William Lane  Craig when he visits the city later in the month.

    The new advert reads: “There’s probably no Dawkins. Now stop worrying and enjoy Oct 25th at the Sheldonian Theatre.”

    The trouble with that as a witticism is that it isn’t true. It’s as if X taunts Y by saying “You flunked out of high school!” and Y returns the favor by saying the same thing, when in the first case it’s true and in the second case it isn’t. That’s one of the first things you learn as a child: when exchanging taunts with a sibling/cousin/friend/enemy you have to avoid that particular trap.

    There are good reasons to think there is a Dawkins. I’ve seen him myself, I’ve exchanged a few words with him. I know other people who have talked to him. I’ve seen him on DVDs and YouTube, I’ve heard him on the radio and in podcasts, I have books he’s written. I don’t think Oxford University is deceived about his reality. That’s just a few of the good reasons to think there is a Dawkins.

    God is very different in this respect. I’ve never seen God or exchanged words with it. I don’t know anyone who has. I don’t know of any reliable accounts of anyone who has – not one. All the purported information about God that I know of is in the form of stories or apologetics. I’ve never seen God on tv or You Tube or heard God on the radio or in podcasts. I have no books that God has written, though I have one it’s purported to have written (but is obviously written by a number of human beings). There are good reasons not to think God exists, and no good reasons to think God does exist. There are good reasons to think God doesn’t exist.

    So the two ads are asymmetrical, you see. Because there are good reasons to think God doesn’t exist, the sentence ”There is probably no God” is not a daft sentence, while because there are good reasons to think Dawkins does exist, “There is probably no Dawkins” is a daft sentence.

  • Christian bus ad: “There’s probably no Dawkins”

    Sophisticated.

  • Message before suicide attack: forget secular education

    The suicide bomber who killed more than 100 people near Somalia’s education ministry was a school dropout who said young people should wage jihad instead.

  • Hundreds of Israelis to declare themselves ‘without religion’

    The move follows the recent District Court ruling granting author Yoram Kaniuk recognition as “without religion” by the Interior Ministry.

  • Hitchens at Texas Freethought Convention

    He was emphatic that though his “time” is rapidly approaching, he wouldn’t stop doing his best to shed light on the fraudulent claims made by religion.

  • Seen today in Trafalgar Square

    Terry Glavin reports that Peter Tatchell went to a stoppers’ rally in Trafalgar Square today.

    Attaboy Peter.

  • Libbruls unfair to evangelicals

    Richard Bartholomew signs an open letter to Jim Wallis from writers about US religion and politics. The letter says

    Dear Jim Wallis,

    We are writing in response to your e-mail to the Sojourners list on September 29th, and your similar piece on The Huffington Post, in which you claim that “some liberal writers” — whom you do not name — are broad brushing evangelical Christians as “intellectually-flawed right-wing crazies with dangerous plans for the country.” You characterize unnamed writers — writers like us — as people who are “all too eager to discredit religion as part of their perennial habit and practice.” This charge is as unfair as it is unsubstantiated.

    …

    we are concerned that you have endorsed the essay by Mark I. Pinsky that appeared recently in USA Today. That piece attacked some of us by name and all of us by implication. Pinsky’s is but the latest in a series of prominently published smears against those of us who write about these subjects and their ties to powerful political interests. We are disturbed that you would cheer on these ad hominem attacks.

    Finally, Pinsky tries to blame much of the published criticism of these elements of evangelicalism on left-wing Jews. We, including the majority of us who are not Jews, view this as a transparent effort to intimidate Jewish writers. We are shocked that you are endorsing and promoting Pinsky’s attack on these writers, whose work is well-sourced and painstakingly researched.

    …

    We want to remind you that in his essay Pinsky goes so far as to compare the work of those four Jewish writers to some of the worst anti-Semitic smears in history, including false claims that Jews had “horns and tails, ate the blood of Christian children and poisoned the wells of Europe with plague.. [and] conspired to rule the world through our Protocols.”

    Whatever one may think of any of our published work, the fact is that none of it is remotely analogous to the false claims in the various notorious anti-Semitic forgeries known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Pinsky ‘s equation of the work of the writers he names with the Protocols is despicable.

    …

    We value honest disagreement and debate, and hope that you value these as well. Indeed, as writers we know how essential they are to clarifying and even resolving differences, correcting errors of fact — and dare we say, perspective. These are necessary ingredients for democracy itself. We invite you take issue with any specific facts or characterizations in our work. Then we will have something to talk about. But we will not be silent in the face of smears and intimidation tactics — which are so very far from the values of the faith traditions from which many of us hail, and the civic values of free speech and respect for religious pluralism that we all share.

    We call on you to stop making false characterizations of our work and stop promoting the false characterizations of others. We also specifically ask that you rethink your support for Pinsky’s smear and withdraw it.

    The letter is also signed by Barry Lynn and Rachel Tabachnick among others.

    There are even more things wrong with Wallis’s article than the ones cited in the open letter.

    Let me try to be clear as someone who is part of a faith community that is, once again, being misrepresented, manipulated, and maligned. Most people believe me to be a progressive political voice in America. And I am an evangelical Christian.

    I believe in one God, the centrality and Lordship of God’s son Jesus Christ, the power of the Holy Spirit, the authority of the scriptures, the saving death of the crucified Christ and his bodily resurrection — not as a metaphor but a historical event. Yep, the whole nine yards.

    I take him to be agreeing with the “most people” who consider him a progressive. The things he believes are incompatible with his being a progressive. That doesn’t necessarily mean he isn’t a progressive in some sense, just as a scientist “can” also be religious, but it does mean that his religious beliefs are in tension with his politics. That’s because what he believes is a matter of dogma and authority, and it includes “the Lordship” of Jesus. It’s hierarchical and it’s inherently arbitrary and thus authoritarian, because there is no good reason to believe any of that. Believing arbitrary authoritarian things for no good reason is not progressive.

    I love my liberal church friends, but am more theologically conservative. I have many allies on the religious left, but I am not a member of it. I work closely with brothers and sisters of other faith traditions where we have common concerns, but I will never compromise the truth of my own faith.

    Same again. It’s not “progressive” to think that way. The last ten words are inherently anti-progressive.

    Millions of evangelicals are neither conservative Republicans, part of the Religious Right, nor members of the tea party, and they don’t believe that Christian “Dominionists” or any other religious group, should take over America — despite what a rash of recent articles and commentaries have said.

    I wonder if he actually knows that, or just made it up. Millions? Really? How many millions? Two? Does anyone know that?

    Now for Mark Pinsky’s article –

    Though some of the writers hail from Brooklyn or Washington, D.C., the tone is what I’d call ”Upper West Side hysteric,” a reference to the fabled New York City neighborhood. The thrust of the writing is that these exotic wackos — some escaped from a theological and ideological freak show — are coming to take our rights and freedom.

    Chief among these are books such as Michelle Goldberg’s Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, Rabbi James Rudin’s The Baptizing of America, and several titles by Sara Diamond.

    These days, it’s hard to turn to liberal websites, public radio or MSNBC without encountering some “investigation” or “exposé” of a splinter, marginal figure, such as David Barton or John Haggee, from the evangelical world — followed by some tenuous if not tortured connect-the-dots link to a presidential or congressional candidate. Most recently, Rachel Tabachnick’s Web piece on the New Apostolic Reformation has generated ink and air.

    I’m as left wing a Democrat as they come, and I have lived among and reported on evangelicals for nearly 20 years. Let me tell you, this sensational, misleading mishegas has got to stop.

    Oh no it doesn’t. It’s not splinter or marginal enough to ignore. It’s not safe to ignore active theocrats.

    If, as Jews, we replace the old caricature of hayseed fundamentalist mobs carrying torches and pitchforks with one of dark conspirators trying to worm their way back into political power at the highest levels, we run the risk of accusing them of doing to others what we are doing to them: demonizing. We didn’t like it when people said we had horns and tails, ate the blood of Christian children and poisoned the wells of Europe with plague, much less conspired to rule the world through our Protocols.

    Nice – comparing investigative journalism with lies and forgeries.

    With friends like Jim Wallis…you know the rest.

  • Ratzinger at home

    The pope talked to the Bundestag a couple of weeks ago, and according to the Iona Institute, his remarks went down a treat. The II says they gave him a two-minute standing ovation, as if he’d sung an aria or acted Hamlet.

    (Why, one wonders? German boy made good? Big famous holy guy in gleaming white outfit? Name recognition? Why?)

    His talk was the usual bullshit – the Catholic church had a great deal to do with the wonderful flawless perfect morality we have today, even though the morality we have today is quite different from the morality we had when the Catholic church had real power and didn’t hesitate to use it, and even though the pope spends a lot of his time and talk saying how bad and rotten the morality we have today is and what a crying shame the world doesn’t pay more attention to the Catholic church when it thinks about morality.

    …he reminded MPs that our concept of human rights is ultimately derived from Christianity.

    He said: “The conviction that there is a Creator God is what gave rise to the idea of human rights, the idea of the equality of all people before the law, the recognition of the inviolability of human dignity in every single person and the awareness of people’s responsibility for their actions.”

    Really. Is that a fact. Then why was there no such thing as equality before the law during the many many centuries the church was in the ascendant? Why did the conviction that there is a Creator God fail to give rise to the recognition of the inviolability of human dignity in every single person the Spanish conquistadors bumped up against in the Americas? For that matter why did the conviction that there is a Creator God fail to give rise to the recognition of the inviolability of human dignity in every single child a Catholic priest ever encountered?

    Ratzinger needs to stop telling other people to remember and ponder and think about things, and do some real thinking himself.

  • Funeral of Wangari Maathai in Uhuru National Park

    Thousands of mourners lined the route.

  • Kerala: Christian churches reward big families

    Several Christian parishes in the Indian state of Kerala have begun offering incentives to couples who produce more children, officials say.

  • Dawkins suggests schools should not teach nonsense

    Such as “the world is 6,000 years old.” Just a thought.

  • BMJ exchange on homeopathy

    Sikorski v Ernst, the Nightingale Collaboration v Sikorski, Sikorski v Sense About Science, and much more.

  • No bouquets are handed out to women alas

    I learned of True Woman and Nancy Leigh DeMoss from Frank Schaeffer’s AlterNet article on Bachmann.

    The irony was that Pride preached a dogmatic, stay-at-home, follow-your-man philosophy for other women while turning her lucrative homeschooling empire into a one-woman industry. So Pride may be added to the list of powerful women — like Michele Bachmann — who just love those “traditional roles” for other women. And Pride’s successor in the patriarchy movement, Nancy Leigh DeMoss, was also one of those do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do best-selling career women doing high-paid speaking gigs while encouraging other women to stay home and submit to their men.

    Here is DeMoss at True Woman with a call to Biblical Womanhood. 

    Due to the modern feminist revolution, the value of women has come to be equated with their roles in the community and in the marketplace. Relatively little value is assigned to women’s roles in the home.

    Today, no bouquets are handed out to women for being reverent and temperate or modest and chaste or gentle and quiet. Women are rarely applauded for loving their husbands and children, for keeping a well-ordered home, for caring for elderly parents, for providing hospitality, or for carrying out acts of kindness, service, and mercy. In other words, little attention is paid to the kinds of accomplishment that the Word of God says women should aspire to (1 Timothy 5:10; Titus 2:3-5).

    True. It’s also true that no bouquets are handed out to women or men for being good bus drivers or electricians or supermarket checkout clerks or farmers. Most people don’t get bouquets for what they do. Factory workers and coal miners and truck drivers are rarely applauded, too. Little attention is paid to the kinds of work that most people do.

    As for what “the Word of God” says women should aspire to –

    1. It’s not “the Word of God.”
    2. It’s only two items out of a very long bible (which is not the word of god anyway).
    3. Timothy is apocryphal.
    4. Who cares what “God” is supposed to have said a long time ago?
    5. God is not the boss of me.

    It’s all very well, but we simply aren’t going to limit ourselves to the domestic virtues.

    The feminist revolution was supposed to bring women greater fulfillment and freedom. But I can’t help feeling a sense of sadness over what has been forfeited in the midst of the upheaval—namely, the beauty, the wonder, and the treasure of the distinctive makeup of women.

    Oh, sure you can. Get over it. And if you want lashings of  the beauty, the wonder, and the treasure of the distinctive makeup of women, just watch one of those Real Housewives shows on Bravo. They’re full of it.

  • Beautiful Girlhood v. Courageous Boyhood

    Boys are to remain “steadfast in their conviction” while girls are to guard against “anything that would rob them of purity.”

  • An inspiration

    Via Libby Anne –

    Couple pleads not guilty in homicide of adopted daughter

    According to court documents, the couple’s adopted daughter, Hana Williams, 13, was systematically starved, beaten, forced to use an outdoor toilet and
    sometimes locked in a dark closet for days by the Williams.

    Hana Williams was found dead in May – naked, face-down in the mud in her own backyard – after she had spent much of a cold, rainy day outside as a punishment, according to court documents.

    Although she died of hypothermia, there were other contributing causes to her death, including severe malnutrition and chronic gastritis, doctors said.

    The Williams had adopted Hana from Ethiopia in 2008 as a diseased little girl to begin a new life in America.

    Instead, according to court records, she was beaten, starved, forced to sleep in a barn at times and deprived of love and basic necessities.

    Child Protective Services said there are reports that Hana had lost a
    significant amount of weight before her death. And the night she died, she was
    out in the yard naked on a rainy evening, with temperatures in the low 40s.

    Further investigation revealed that Hana had a number of injuries on the
    night she died, including a large lump on the head, bloody marks and injuries
    “consistent with disciplinary impacts with a switch,” according to court
    documents released Friday.

    Those same documents describe the hellish life that Hana endured in the months before her death – which included systematic withholding of food, forced times outdoors in the cold or locked in a dark closet, interspersed with regular spankings or beatings with a plumbing tool.

    In interviews with the parents and other children in the household, investigators determined that the Williams withheld food from Hana as a punishment for being “rebellious,” court documents say.

    And

    Hana also was forced to sleep in the barn on some nights or kept outside for hours in the cold without adequate clothing or shoes, court documents say – but she was allowed to wear shoes if there was snow on the ground.

    The Williams also confirmed that they used a flexible plumbing tool as a switch to punish Hana and some of the other children in their household.

    The children told investigators that Hana sometimes was beaten with a switch for standing more than 12 inches away from where she was told to stand or for speaking without permission.

    The Williams’ older biological children were sometimes encouraged to join in administering the punishment by their parents.

    Every refinement of horrible cruelty you can think of…for an adopted child…13 years old.

    They got their ideas about child discipline from Michael Pearl.

  • Adopted child, 8, dies of exposure and malnutrition

    A witness told investigators that the Williams got their ideas for the disciplinary measures from a book, “How to Train Up Your Child,” by Michael Pearl.

  • We demonstrate a noble submission to authority

    Here’s a fun new thing to explore: True Woman.

    It haz a manifesto.

    We believe that the creation of humanity as male and female was a purposeful and magnificent part of God’s wise plan, and that men and women were designed to reflect the image of God in complementary and distinct ways.

    …

    We realize that we live in a culture that does not recognize God’s right to rule, does not accept Scripture as the pattern for life, and is experiencing the consequences of abandoning God’s design for men and women.

    …

    Scripture is God’s authoritative means of instructing us in His ways and it reveals His holy pattern for our womanhood, our character, our priorities, and our various roles, responsibilities, and relationships.

    We glorify God and experience His blessing when we accept and joyfully embrace His created design, function, and order for our lives.

    …

    Men and women are both created in the image of God and are equal in value and dignity, but they have distinct roles and functions in the home and in the church.

    We are called as women to affirm and encourage men as they seek to express godly masculinity, and to honor and support God-ordained male leadership in the home and in the church.

    …

    When we respond humbly to male leadership in our homes and churches, we demonstrate a noble submission to authority that reflects Christ’s submission to God His Father.

    That one’s a real humdinger, isn’t it – when we pretend that men are the bosses of us, we demonstrate a “noble submission” – how can submission be noble? Have it both ways why don’t you. Did slaves demonstrate a noble submission when they responded humbly to white leadership? Did colonized peoples demonstrate a noble submission when they responded humbly to European leadership?

    It’s disgusting pernicious wicked crap, that’s what it is, pretending there’s some sort of virtue in arbitrary hierarchies and in one set of people “submitting” to another set of people.

    And what’s the point of “reflecting” Christ’s submission to “God His Father” or the Roman cops? You could say the same thing about the Jews who went to Auschwitz. They “submitted” because they had no option; did that reflect Christ’s submission to God His Father? If it did, why is that a good thing?

    They’re in love with “authority,” these people.

    Selfish insistence on personal rights is contrary to the spirit of Christ who humbled Himself, took on the form of a servant, and laid down His life for us.

    So nobody should have any rights; everyone should just grovel to everyone, because Christ humbled himself. Is that it? No, because men are supposed to do the opposite of that. No, it’s just inferiors who are supposed to humble themselves. Women are inferiors.

    God’s plan for gender is wider than marriage; all women, whether married or single, are to model femininity in their various relationships, by exhibiting a distinctive modesty, responsiveness, and gentleness of spirit.

    As befits inferiors.

  • Bishops running wild

    The Iona Institute tells us that the US  Conference of Catholic Bishops has set up a Committee for Religious Liberty. That’s very funny, in a sick kind of way. Here’s why: Catholic bishops don’t really give two shits about religious liberty as such; they care only about religious liberty for them.

    The Catholic church is not a Millian kind of organization. It’s not a liberal organization. It’s not dedicated to or interested in liberty. It’s a ferociously authoritarian hierarchical organization with a body of “teachings” that it does its best to impose on as many people as it can reach.

    The Catholic church has nothing to do with ideas about liberty and freedom, autonomy and independence, self-fashioning and self-reliance. It is not a friend to human concerns seen in human terms. It is devoted to a cult of a supernatural god and the supposed rules it issued to us 2000 years ago. The only reason the Catholic church has to mention “religious liberty” is because it has gotten itself into trouble with the law in many countries, and it’s anxious to preserve its privilege of ignoring laws and law enforcement. It wants to wrap itself in the flag of “religious liberty” so that all state actors will continue to let it do whatever it wants to.

    The Iona Institute doesn’t report it that way, of course.

    The news comes in the wake of moves by the Obama Administration to require insurance companies to fund contraceptive services, including sterilisation procedures and abortifacient drugs regardless of religious affiliation.

    The only exemption permitted to religious organisations is if they serve only individuals of their own faith. Cardinal Daniel DiNardo criticised the exemption as being so narrow ‘that the Good Samaritan would not qualify’ because he helped someone not of his faith.

    See? There it is. They want “their” hospitals and medical workers to be able to deny legal services and drugs to everyone on the grounds of their “religious affiliation.” That’s their idea of liberty: the liberty to cite invented gods to justify mindless opposition to contraception and abortion, and the refusal to provide them even when that’s part of their job.

    And then there’s the outrageous violation of the bishops’ “religious liberty” represented by the Justice Department’s attitude to the “Defense of Marriage Act.”

    The Justice Department’s attack on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), presenting DOMA’s support for traditional marriage as bigotry. In July, the Department started filing briefs actively attacking DOMA’s constitutionality, claiming that supporters of the law could only have been motivated by bias and prejudice. “If the label of “bigot” sticks to us-especially in court-because of our teaching on marriage, we’ll have church-state conflicts for years to come as a result,” Archbishop Dolan said.

    Wrong verb there. Archbishop Dolan threatened.

    Liberty. They shouldn’t be allowed to utter the word.