Category: Religion

In God We Tryst

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Hmmm…..An 80 year old megachurch leader has been charged with perjury as a result of a sex scandal.

80 years old? I had no idea that the psalms were so “uplifting”.

An 80-year-old leader of a suburban megachurch who is at the center of a sex scandal has been charged with lying under oath for saying he had sex outside marriage with only one other woman, court documents show.

A warrant for the arrest of Archbishop Earl Paulk, co-founder of Cathedral of the Holy Spirit at Chapel Hill Harvester Church, was issued Monday, according to court documents. …

Former church employee Mona Brewer is suing Paulk, his brother and the church on allegations that Paulk manipulated her into an affair from 1989 to 2003 by telling her it was her only path to salvation. In a 2006 deposition stemming from the lawsuit, the archbishop said under oath that the only woman he had ever had sex with outside of his marriage was Brewer.

But the results of a court-ordered paternity test revealed in October that Paulk is the biological father of his brother’s son, D.E. Paulk, who is now head pastor at the church. As part of Brewer’s lawsuit, eight women have given sworn depositions that they were coerced into sexual relationships with Earl Paulk.

I get the sense that super-sizing your church has much the same effect on one’s spiritual fitness as super-sizing one’s fast food does on one’s physical fitness.

Sally Quinn Is Concerned

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Oh my, Sally Quinn is shocked.

It appears that the House of Representatives has passed a resolution (H.R. 847) declaring that “Expresses continued support for Christians in the United States . . . acknowledges and supports the role played by Christians and Christianity in the founding of the United States . . . rejects bigotry and persecution directed against Christians, both in the United States and worldwide; and expresses its deepest respect to American Christians.”

She expresses concern that, “Earlier this year the House also passed resolutions honoring Islamic and Indian holidays but nothing that so equated a single faith with America and Americans”.

Gee, I wonder who might have created this.

I don’t know, maybe those people who valued pleasant DC cocktail party conversation over real discussions of issues and real values.

Maybe those who favored phony protestations of faith as a good way to “play the game” of politics”, because, of course, inside the Beltway, where all the important people live, policies don’t matter.

Whether you are a Washington Post editor (or just married to one), a congressional page, a lobbyist, a reporter, or a Washington DC pundit, you make decent money, are guaranteed steady work, have excellent health care benefits, and a pretty good retirement package.

You can’t take policy seriously, it gets in the way of your parties. It makes conversation stilted. It makes people think that you aren’t a “very serious person”.

Sound like anyone you know?

Why Are Talibaptists So Bloodthirsty?

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Matthew Yglesias comments on the Washington Post OP/ED by Harold Meyerson. They both ask why if the the words in the Christian Bible are so full of peace and love, that the Christo-Fascists are so mindlessly selfish, punitive, violent, and warlike.

Meyerson mentions the punitive nature of their immigration positions, which favor punishing children of illegals.

It’s not just Bush whose catechism is a merry mix of torture and piety. Virtually the entire Republican House delegation opposed the ban on waterboarding. Among the Republican presidential candidates, only Huckabee and the not-very-religious John McCain have come out against torture, while only libertarian Ron Paul has questioned the doctrine of preemptive war.

But it’s on their policies concerning immigrants where Republicans — candidates and voters alike — really run afoul of biblical writ. Not on immigration as such but on the treatment of immigrants who are already here. Consider: Christmas, after all, celebrates not just Jesus’s birth but his family’s flight from Herod’s wrath into Egypt, a journey obviously undertaken without benefit of legal documentation. The Bible isn’t big on immigrant documentation. “Thou shalt neither vex a stranger nor oppress him,” Exodus says the Lord told Moses on Mount Sinai, “for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

Yet the distinctive cry coming from the Republican base this year isn’t simply to control the flow of immigrants across our borders but to punish the undocumented immigrants already here, children and parents alike.

So Romney attacks Huckabee for holding immigrant children blameless when their parents brought them here without papers, and Huckabee defends himself by parading the endorsement of the Minuteman Project’s Jim Gilchrist, whose group harasses day laborers far from the border. The demand for a more regulated immigration policy comes from virtually all points on our political spectrum, but the push to persecute the immigrants already among us comes distinctly, though by no means entirely, from the same Republican right that protests its Christian faith at every turn.

I would add the death penalty, support for Iraq, opposition to social programs.

I do not know the whys of this. I am not a Christian, and I have read little of the Christian theological works, so my understanding of this cognitive dissonance is limited.

By the same token, I am not in the least surprised. While I am not a student of Christian theology, I AM a student of Jewish history, and the behaviors that they are all so very shocked about have long standing historical precedents.

History shows that the use of the Christian texts to promote hate is the rule rather than the exception.

More happened in 1492, for example, than Columbus going to America.

Covering Religion Made These Guys Lose Their Faith

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Stephen Bates, former religion reporter for the Grauniad*, his work covering religion caused him to lose his faith.

Specifically, his coverage of the entire “Gay Bishop” brouhaha in the Anglican Church”

….

There is also no doubting, personally, that writing this story has been too corrosive of what faith I had left: indeed watching the way the gay row has played out in the Anglican Communion has cost me my belief in the essential benignity of too many Christians.For the good of my soul, I need to do something else.

….

The trouble with these people, my wife always says, is that they don’t read their Bibles, for they know nothing of charity. I think she’s right and I am in mortal danger of losing mine. It’s time to move on.

The whole article is rather forceful about what he found that turned him off of religion, and I feel that he is entirely justified.

You should also look at William Lobdell’s article, Religion beat became a test of faith, where he describes how covering the abuse scandals and similar obscenities in the Catholic Church, along with the “capitalist nearest to God” con games of “prosperity gospel” of some of the mega churches, which seem even more obscene to me, caused him to lose his faith.

There are strong arguments to be made that organized religion is inimical to real faith.

Luckily for me, I am not a member of an organized religion, I am a Jew, to paraphrase Will Rogers.

*According to the Wiki, The Guardian, formerly the Manchester Guardian in the UK. It’s nicknamed the Grauniad because of its penchant for typographical errors, “The nickname The Grauniad for the paper originated with the satirical magazine Private Eye. It came about because of its reputation for frequent and sometimes unintentionally amusing typographical errors, hence the popular myth that the paper once misspelled its own name on the page one masthead as The Gaurdian, though many recall the more inventive The Grauniad.”

Now Krauthammer is Hating on the Talibaptists

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First Peggy Noonan goes after the religious right, and now it appears to be Charles Krauthammer’s turn. (Apologies to the townhall.com link)

….

The right answer, the only answer, is that the very question is offensive. The Constitution prohibits any religious test for office. And while that proscribes only government action, the law is also meant to be a teacher.

In the same way that civil rights laws established not just the legal but also the moral norm that one simply does not discriminate on the basis of race — changing the practice of one generation and the consciousness of the next — so the constitutional injunction against religious tests is meant to make citizens understand that such tests are profoundly un-American.

….

This is pretty elementary stuff. I haven’t exactly invented hot water here. The very rehearsing of these arguments seems tiresome and redundant.

But apparently not in the campaign of 2008. It’s two centuries since the passage of the First Amendment and our presidential candidates still cannot distinguish establishment from free exercise.

It appears that the corporate green heads that have used the religious right for years cannot abide Huckabee, and this time, a few worda about abortion will not mollify his supporters.

I experience some Schadenfreude, but the thought of a Christian Dominionist as a major presidential candidate is rather more worrisome than my uncharitable amusement.

Bigots in California Vote to Seceed from Episcopal Church

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Please, play hardball. The national church can take the property and bank accounts, and it should.

The New York Times reposts that this appears to be the case:

The Episcopal Church has said that people can depart, but they must leave their property, which, it contends, is held in trust for the church. If the diocese sticks to its position, the church would likely vacate the diocese and reconstitute it with the congregations that choose to remain and a new bishop. The church and loyalist dioceses are already involved in several lawsuits against breakaway congregations that have insisted on keeping their property.

This is a game of chicken, and one wonders who blinks first.

My guess is that it will be the non-bigots, who are concerned about civility, as opposed to the bigots, who don’t care.

Bill Donohue and His Merry Band of Bigots Call “Golden Compass” Anti-Catholic, American U.S. Conference on Catholic Bishops Disagrees

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The Catholic League has represented itself as the voice of American Catholics while ignoring statements by the religious hierarchy. This time, it’s directly disagreeing with the Bishops, calling for a boycott, while the USCCB, “thought that series helped reinforce faith, and finds value in Golden Compass.”

At some point, I’d like to see someone in the Catholic church with legitimate religious authority disavow Donohue and the rest of those anti-Semitic bastards.

Top Televangelists Refusing to Respond to Senate Inquiries

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About a month ago, I mentioned that Senator Grassley (R-IA) was requisting spending data from major televangelists, in order to look for evidence of things like self dealing, living high on the hog, etc.

As I said then, requiring churches to file form 990, like other tax exempts, would make all of this data publicly available, and the cost is minimal.

It appears now that most of the televangelists are ignoring the Senate’s Finance Committee’s request. Only the Joyce Meyer Ministries has turned over data to this point.

I have to figure that some of them are overcompensating their preachers.

I would remind you that the Trinity Foundation has been doing good work for years documenting fraud, waste, and lavish spending.

Oral Roberts’ Son Resigns as President of Oral Roberts University

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Shades of Elmer Gantry. They go into the more prosaic stuff, like a nearly $40 thousand shopping spree, and a nearly $30 thousand senior trip for his kids, repeatedly remodeling their home, and requiring students to work on a political campaign for a specific candidate.

There are also allegations that his wife had an inappropriate relationship with an underage student, or students, at the university.

There is a lot to be found, now that the rock has been turned over. I could see a reprise of the Jim and Tammy Fae Bakker PTL ministries.

Desmond Tutu Gets it on Homophobic Bigotry

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Basically, Nobel prize winning cleric is saying that with all the evil and hate in the world, the Church has no time to generate its own hate:

He said it should rather be focusing on global problems such as Aids.

“Our world is facing problems – poverty, HIV and Aids – a devastating pandemic, and conflict,” said Archbishop Tutu, 76.

“God must be weeping looking at some of the atrocities that we commit against one another.

“In the face of all of that, our Church, especially the Anglican Church, at this time is almost obsessed with questions of human sexuality.”

Alaska???? They have $50 Million Settlement in Alaska???

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Alaska…They have a cases in Alaska???? What’s next? Antarctica?

Satan on spaghetti!!!!!! When we travel to the stars, we will discover that Catholic Church abuse cases have preceded us by decades!!!

Yep, once again, it’s those fun loving pedophiles in the Catholic church, and the people to timid, or too encompetent to do anything but enable them.

100 people, all Alaskan Natives, my guess would be that they were Indian, not Eskimo from the location.

But still, how does this organization function?

Yes, Saddam Was a Tyrant, But He Had Nothing on the House of Saud

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A 19 year old woman is gang raped. The court’s solution is 200 lashes and a six-month prison sentence for her.

The House of Saud has created a backward and evil society, and bribed most of the Arab and Islamic world int following their twisted view of the world and divine using found money in the form of oil revenues.

Most of the 911 hijackers were subjects of the House of Saud.

If there is a bright and shining center to the Arab or Islamic world, the House of Saud is at the place farthest from it.

One of the Fat Cat Televangelists Complains About Senate Investigation

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Here is a picture of the good Reverend Eddie Long:

He’s complaining about having to turn over financial data to a Senate investigating committee.

Boo F&^%ing who. I used to run the largest (only really) event for a 501(c)3 non-profit, and we had to do a form 990, which is publicly available every year. Churches do not.

It’s was a lot more of pain for this non profit, which did not break $100K in gross revenues when I was there, than it is for his multi-million dollar mega-church.

The real solution is to eliminate the 990 exemption for churches, and let them play by the same rules as other not-for profits. We’ve seen more than enough corruption by the “God Squad” and they should operate under the same rules as other non-profits.

Hey, I Know, If I’m Offensive Enough, then I’ll Get Attacked by the Right Wing Blogs, and My Readership Will Skyrocket!!!

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On a more serious note it is true that religion defies logic. In fact the definition of religious faith is that it defies logic.

Religion is about knowing the unknowable, and as such, whether you take the tales literally, or as metaphor, the stories, narrative, and cosmology of any religion are supposed to be intellectually absurd. Religion is supposed to transcend the intellect on some level

This is why, for example, Talmudic discussions of exactly what substance the 10 commandments were supposed to be made of* hold little interest for me, except to the degree that they can be shown to be allegories that show us how to live our lives.

But for those of you who simply want to be offended, there is this (Praise be to Tshirthell.com):

.

*Sapphire. What’s more the first set, the ones Moses smashed, were supposed to be carved entirely by God, while the second set are supposed to have been cut into tablets by Moses, and then God carved the words on them. It’s supposed to indicate that God was displeased at that whole Golden Calf thing.

Senate Investigating Top Televangelists, Demanding Financial Records

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I should note that it is Republican Senator Charles Grassley who is appearing to take the lead on this.

They want to see if too much of the tax exempt* money is going to fund a lavish lifestyle.

Ole Anthony, of the Trinity Foundation has been trying to get coverage of this for years, and finally went to Grassley because the press would not cover it.

My guess is that part of the reason for the lack of press coverage is a fear of being attacked by the religious institutions, and the other reason is because churches are allowed to conceal their financial dealings in ways that other non-profits are not,‡ which makes it tougher for the average reporter to get the information they need to make a story.

With the threat of congressional subpoenas, the information that Grassley gets should be more complete.

*I actually have some experience with laws involving tax-exempt religious and educational institutions, section 501(c)3 of the tax code. In 1990, I incorporated a group that put on a literary conferences, Arisia as a Massachusetts non-profit and a federal 501(c)3†.
†Truth be told, in a sane world, it would have had to incorporate as a 501(c)7, a membership organization, but the 501(c)3 code is lax enough to slip it in, and we needed the low postage rates available for a 501(c)3, but not a 501(c)7. It was legal, as to the ethics, I try to think about Arisia as little as possible for any number of reasons.
‡BTW, one of the problems about getting information about how churches are run is that unlike other tax exempt organizations, churches are not required to file form 990s, which are public documents with fairly full financial disclosure.