The Blog of the Coalition for Secular Government

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Wednesday, March 3, 2010 Conservative Deceit about Christian Liberty By Ari @ 10:00 AM [From Ari Armstrong's blog:] Some of my fellow Coloradans wish to outlaw the birth control pill and subject my wife to the death penalty if she takes it, yet today David Limbaugh dismisses as "paranoia" concerns about "the intersection of Christianity and the public square." Limbaugh is amazed by "how much [critics] fear something that represents such a little threat to them." Let us review, shall we? Many Christians in the United States advocate the following political goals: Outlaw all abortion, even in cases of rape, incest, fetal deformity, and risk to the woman's health, from the moment of fertilization, with criminal penalties extending to execution. Outlaw all fertility treatments, birth control (including the pill), medical research, and medical treatment that may involve the destruction of a fertilized egg. Impose mandatory waiting periods and ultrasounds before a woman may obtain an abortion. (This is a marginal step toward the goal of complete prohibition.) Outlaw all expression involving consenting adults that is arbitrarily deemed "obscene." (Various Christians want to outlaw all material deemed pornographic.) Force Americans to subsidize religious institutions for "faith based" welfare. Expand welfare (the forced redistribution of wealth) because of Biblical principles of helping the less-well off. Imprison American adults for consuming various drugs, including marijuana taken for medical purposes, regardless of the level of police powers necessary to achieve this goal. (Some Christians even want to return to alcohol prohibition.) Require religious prayer and religious instruction at tax-funded schools. Deny equal protection under the laws to homosexuals, including the right to form romantic contracts and adopt children. A few Christians want to execute homosexuals and adulterers and explicitly call for theocracy (see Christian Reconstruction or the comments of a Christian radio host.) No, nothing to worry about! Limbaugh makes a couple of basic mistakes in his article. First, he pretends that the only relevant issue is freedom of expression. Second, he pretends that the only debate is between "the left" and Christian conservatives. Obviously the left with its campaign censorship laws and media controls at least matches conservative Christianity in its hostility toward free expression. Unfortunately, as seen with President Obama's expansion of President Bush's "faith based" welfare, the left increasingly mingles politics with religion as well. True, many Christians fight for liberty in at least some areas. Whether that effort flows from Christian doctrine, or is ultimately incompatible with it, is a debate for another day. But for Limbaugh to dismiss as "paranoia" concerns about the efforts of many Christians to base politics on religion is ludicrous. Labels: Christianity, Politics E-mail Ari    PermaLink ()    Comments      Monday, February 8, 2010 Christianity and Totalitarianism By Diana Hsieh @ 10:00 AM William Stoddard recently posted the following remarks in a comment thread on NoodleFood. When you say that "If the Church had the weapons of the 20th century, God (metaphor) only knows how many they would have killed," I would go further than this. We have, shall we say, a Christian myth about how God runs the world and what he intends for it, one that many Christians believed was literally true. And what it says is this: God is a self-appointed dictator who cannot be voted out of office, and who makes the law by unilateral decree God constantly watches everything human beings do, both directly and through a secret police corps of angels appointed to watch over us At any time, we can be taken into God's hands by death and called before him to be judged Under his law, we are automatically guilty and cannot defend ourselves against his charges When found guilty, we will be sent to a concentration camp where we will be tortured forever, without hope that death will release us Those who affirm that these actions are signs of God's justice and love, and plead for mercy, will be let off and assigned to join a propaganda corps that spends eternity praising God, and that is permitted to see the tortures of the damned perfectly in order more fully to enjoy their own salvation If someone you loved on Earth goes to Hell, your salvation entails rejoicing both at their being in Hell and at your being in Heaven apart from them In sum, Christianity envisioned all the horrors of totalitarianism, millennia before human dictators achieved the technological capability to realize them on Earth. And said that they were desirable; indeed, it called them the Good News. These striking parallels between the theology of Christianity and the practice of totalitarianism make clear -- yet again -- that political freedom cannot be founded on the Christian faith. Labels: Christianity, Politics, Religion E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink ()    Comments      Thursday, January 28, 2010 The Christian Ideal: Suffering By Diana Hsieh @ 10:00 AM I'm simply overwhelmed to read Tony Judt's account of a single night stuck in the prison of his body, ravaged by ALS (a.k.a. Lou Gherig's disease). Here's how he describes his basic condition: By my present stage of decline, I am thus effectively quadriplegic. With extraordinary effort I can move my right hand a little and can adduct my left arm some six inches across my chest. My legs, although they will lock when upright long enough to allow a nurse to transfer me from one chair to another, cannot bear my weight and only one of them has any autonomous movement left in it. Thus when legs or arms are set in a given position, there they remain until someone moves them for me. The same is true of my torso, with the result that backache from inertia and pressure is a chronic irritation. Having no use of my arms, I cannot scratch an itch, adjust my spectacles, remove food particles from my teeth, or anything else that--as a moment's reflection will confirm--we all do dozens of times a day. To say the least, I am utterly and completely dependent upon the kindness of strangers (and anyone else). Please, go read the whole thing. While I don't know what Mr. Judt's own religious views are, I regard his life as a clear demonstration of the life-hating brutality of Christian doctrine. To wit: Christianity regards suffering like that of Mr. Judt as not merely noble and elevated, but positively divine. It's not good to live fully, happily, robustly according to Christianity: it's good to suffer and die. That's what Jesus taught -- and then he lived and died by that ideal. Christianity regards the body as a vile, despicable prison that leads a person's divine soul astray into the dark depths of sin. Mr. Judt is positively lucky, as his body really is a prison: he cannot indulge pleasures of the flesh, not even the seemingly minor ones like scratching his own itches. Christianity regards Mr. Judt's life as God's property, not as his own. So Mr. Judt must be forbidden by law from ending his own life, if and when it becomes intolerable. If anyone attempts to help him end his life, that person should be imprisoned as a murderer. As a bonus, if Mr. Judt manages to end his own life somehow, the loving Christian God will consign him to the torments of hell for all eternity. Of course, many Christians do not live by such dark principles. They are kind, decent people, loathe to see anyone suffering from such a tragic condition. They might even support stem-cell research, and even assisted suicide. To that extent, their values are more American -- loving science, seeking happiness, and upholding individual rights -- than Christian. As Leonard Peikoff states in his essay Religion Versus America: It is time to tell people the unvarnished truth: to stand up for man's mind and this earth, and against any version of mysticism or religion. It is time to tell people: "You must choose between unreason and America. You cannot have both. Take your pick." If there is to be any chance for the future, this is the only chance there is. Amen, brother! Labels: Christianity, Euthanasia, Religion, Right to Die E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink ()    Comments      Tuesday, January 26, 2010 Biblical Inscriptions on Gun Sights and Kant Speaks from the Grave By Gina Liggett @ 10:00 AM Last week, a story broke about how the gun site manufacturer, Trijicon, has been for years placing subtly-imprinted biblical references on the gun sights of standard issue combat rifles used by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. Michael Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), which seeks to preserve the separation of church and state in the military, explained that this practice should be stopped because, "It's wrong, it violates the Constitution, it violates a number of federal laws. It allows the Mujahedeen, the Taliban, al Qaeda and the insurrectionists and jihadists to claim they're being shot by Jesus rifles." The company has agreed to discontinue this obvious attempt at proselytizing the Christian view to U.S. soldiers, and that it will provide kits to remove the inscriptions---a victory for MRFF and anyone concerned with separation of church and state. But what is more menacing about this story is the response by an influential member of the American intelligentsia, columnist Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald. In his January, 23 national column he took a superior-attitude pot-shot at the company president's little work for Jesus by asking, "But is that really faith, when you reduce God to a bigger version of you?" In other words, how dare that company president show a glimmer of self-expression of his beliefs--albeit a misguided and totally inappropriate action violating the separation of church and state. Pitts shows by comparison what REAL faith should be, best exemplified by nonetheless than the two most saintly figures of the 20th century: Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King, Jr. Mother Teresa's faith drove her to foreswear material riches and spend half a century working to uplift the wretched poor of Calcutta. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s faith drove him to gamble his very life in a dangerous campaign to win human and civil rights for African-American people... [T]he point is that truest faith is not seen in a secret code on a gun sight.....Rather, faith is seen in the substance of a life lived in service to others, lived as if God were "not" in fact one's personal echo chamber in the sky. [emphasis mine] Well, my oh my. Isn't 19th century philosopher Immanuel Kant alive and well and speaking to the opinion-makers right from the grave. In explaining Kant's philosophy, Ayn Rand says, Kant's expressly stated purpose was to save the morality of self-abnegation and self-sacrifice.....As to Kant's version of morality....it consisted of total, abject selflessness. An action is moral, said Kant, only if one has no desire to perform it, but performs it out of a sense of duty and derives no benefit from it of any sort, neither material nor spiritual; a benefit destroys the moral value of an action. Who better than Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King, Jr. to demonstrate for us duty of sacrifice without regard to themselves? To Pitts, Trijicon's little slipup with the Constitution to advance the cliche, "there are no atheists in fox holes," is simply a trivial waste of morality. In his view, what society REALLY ought to be striving for is a deeper, broader, truer test of faith: total abnegation of the self in a life dedicated " in service to others." That is in fact President Barack Obama's mission: to be the next Mr. Mother Teresa as our President. (Violins, please.) "His story is the American story -- values from the heartland, a middle-class upbringing in a strong family, hard work and education as the means of getting ahead, and the conviction that a life so blessed should be lived in service to others." (This is from the White House website, introducing Mr. Obama as our 44th President.) (Stop the violins, please.) When a member of the intelligentsia is trying to upstage another Christian, we are having a cultural war. Not only must we continue to fight the puritanical and rights-violating agenda of the Religious Right, we also have a more-focused and committed Religious Left whose altruistic, socialist agenda is already invading our liberties. Little do these ostensible opposites realize they were already married in a shotgun wedding many decades ago, presided over by preacher Immanuel Kant. Labels: Christianity, Ethics, Separation of Church and State E-mail Gina Liggett    PermaLink ()    Comments      Friday, January 22, 2010 Deism in the Declaration By Diana Hsieh @ 10:00 AM My husband Paul Hsieh (of Freedom and Individual Rights in Medicine) recently pointed me to an essay by Eric Raymond entitled Deism and the Founding Fathers. I'd definitely recommend reading the whole essay, but I wanted to except a few critical passages: Religious conservatives are fond of replying by pointing excitedly at the references to "Nature's God", "Divine Providence", and the "Creator" in the Declaration of Independence. Raymond then quotes the relevant passages of the Declaration: When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor. Raymond then cites some other passages in Jefferson's writings where he displays as obvious hostility to Christianity. So Raymond asks, "Of what 'God', if not the Christian one, was Jefferson speaking?" He replies: The answer to this question -- which also explains the references in the Declaration of Independence -- is that Jefferson, like many intellectuals of his time, was a Deist. The "Creator" and "Nature's God" in the Declaration of Independence, and the God of Jefferson's altar, is not the intervening Christian God but the God of Deism. Deism was an early attempt to reconcile the mechanistic world-view arising from experimental science with religion. Deists believed in a remote sort of clockmaker-God who created the universe but then refrained from meddling in it afterwards. Deists explicitly rejected faith, revelation, religious doctrine, religious authority, and all existing religions. They held that humans could know the mind of God only through the study of nature; in many versions of Deist thinking, the mind of God was explicitly identified with the laws of nature. Thus "the Laws of Nature and Nature's God"; in Deist thought these concepts blurred together. The phrase "endowed by their Creator" could be rendered accurately as "endowed by Nature". In modern terms, this is an entirely naturalistic account of human rights. That's exactly right. Finally, Raymond notes: Jefferson’s "altar of God" quote and the references in the Declaration of Independence are easy to misconstrue today because Deism did not long outlive the Founding Fathers. In their time it functioned as a sort of halfway house for intellectuals who rejected traditional religion but were unwilling to declare themselves atheists or agnostics. As the social risk of taking these positions decreased, Deism waned. Given the bravery of the early Americans in opposing the British Empire, I doubt that intellectual cowardice was the reason for their deism. I suspect -- although I've not much researched the subject -- that they accepted some version of the Argument from Design. Absent a solid grasp of the fact that physical laws are the necessary expression of the identity of entities and absent an explanation for the great diversity and complexity of living organisms, the Argument from Design would seem quite plausible. It's still flawed, purely on philosophic grounds, but the mistake was understandable in the 18th century. Deism was the rather benign result of that mistake. Today, people have far less excuse for believing in God's existence on such grounds, as the scientific and philosophic objections to the Argument from Design are well-known and devastating. They have no excuse for leaping from such arguments to claims about the truth of Christianity. The Argument from Design, even if sound, could not lend the slightest bit of support to the myths and dogmas of Christianity. For more, see my three podcasts on the Argument from Design: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Part 4 is forthcoming. Labels: Christianity, Founders, Religion E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink ()    Comments      Friday, January 1, 2010 In Defense of Secularism By Diana Hsieh @ 10:00 AM Fellow OActivist Amesh Adalja recently published this letter in defense of secularism in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review: Theocrats more harmful Wednesday, December 30, 2009 Despite Brad Tupi's protestations to the contrary in his letter "Secularism harms U.S." (Dec. 25 and TribLIVE.com), secularism is inherent in this nation and it is Christian theocrats like Mr. Tupi who have done more damage to this nation than any secularist. While it is true that the Founders often uttered conflicting statements regarding religion, they chose to make the U.S. Constitution and the nation's currency entirely devoid of any reference to a deity -- proof of their desire for a separation between government and religion. It is the religionists who have taken the Christian idolization of sacrifice to new heights by creating a welfare state where each is his brother's keeper, women are castigated for exercising the right to their own bodies and people fear openly expressing their sexual orientation. As Thomas Paine aptly stated, "mingling religion with politics, may be disavowed and reprobated by every inhabitant of America." Amesh A. Adalja Butler Labels: Christianity, Founders E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink ()    Comments      Monday, December 28, 2009 What Have the Personhood Folks Been Up To? By Gina Liggett @ 10:00 AM I'm taking a break from my investigation into the Religious Left and have decided to focus on what the Colorado Fertilized Egg Gang has been up to lately. And those Fertilized Eggers have been really boiling and rockin' and rollin'! They've been working on their public relations campaign to come across as... more, more... well... well... better at expropriating intellectual property rights as well as attempting to violate individual rights. In particular, they have a YouTube announcement of their intent to try to get another constitutional amendment on the Colorado ballot for 2010. In their attempt to grovify themselves across a broader spectrum of the electorate, they've selected the works of singer/songwriter "Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers" as their rallying really-cool song. Playing loudly in the backgroud, Tom Petty's, "I Won't Back Down" introduces their rejuvenated attack on the culture. They are going to try again in 2010 to get another Personhood Amendment on the ballot in Colorado. Because I really dig "Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers" and really disagree with the Personhooders, I sent an email to the record company informing them that Mr. Petty's song was being used to advance "Colorado Personhood USA's" agenda to grant full legal rights to fertilized eggs. If the rock group is in agreement with this agenda, then that is their own business and their right, and I acknowledged as much in my email. But I would be very surprised if this Colorado Religious Right activist group had obtained proper permission to propagandize with this incredibly groovy song. So, who are the players now, and what scrambled eggs get rights in the next election? Let's be clear: these activists are not to be underestimated. They have studied very carefully why their amendment failed by about 75% in the last Colorado election. They are not going to make the same mistakes twice. So they've altered the language of their proposal. Previously, the key wording referred to rights of "any human being from the moment of fertilization." Now, they have altered the wording so it is more palatable to the general electorate: An amendment to the Colorado Constitution applying the term 'person' as used in those provisions of the Colorado Constitution relating to inalienable rights, equality of justice and due process of law, to every human being from the beginning of the biological development of that human being. The key phrase is: "from the beginning of the biological development," rather than from "from the moment of fertilization," which is easier for many mainstream religious Americans to accept. The next step is to get enough signatures, around 76,000 registered Colorado voters, to place the measure on the ballot. Let us not underestimate these people. They may be your next-door neighbor, or the person in line at the supermarket, or your coworker. These are Americans who believe that those "at the beginning of biological development" have rights; and because of their religious beliefs, they maintain that somehow fetuses are people and the right to abortion is wrong. Let me bring us back to the fundamentals of human existence in a rational way. The right to life only applies to the living, born human being. Ayn Rand, the genius novelist and philosopher of Objectivism cogently writes: Rights do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born. The living take precedence over the non-yet-living... Never mind the vicious nonsense of claiming that an embryo has "right to life. A piece of protoplasm has no rights--and no life in the human sense of the term... To equate a potential with an actual, is vicious; to advocate sacrifice of the latter to the former, is unspeakable... We must watch these people because they are evil. Our true right to life is at risk. Labels: Abortion, Amendment 48, Christianity E-mail Gina Liggett    PermaLink ()    Comments      Thursday, December 24, 2009 Merry Christmas! By Diana Hsieh @ 2:00 PM Onkar Ghate published an excellent essay on the joy of Christmas in US News and World Report. It begins: I'm an atheist, and I love Christmas. If you think that's a contradiction, think again. Do you remember as a child composing wish lists of things you genuinely valued, thought you deserved, and knew would bring you pleasure? Do you remember eagerly awaiting the arrival of Christmas morning and the new bike, book, or chemistry set you were hoping for? That childhood feeling captures the spirit of Christmas and explains why so many of us look forward to the season each year. That joyful spirit of Christmas, Ghate argues, is part and parcel of a commercial Christmas. It's nowhere to be found in a truly Christian Christmas. So ... May you enjoy all the delights and pleasures of a secular, capitalist Christmas! Labels: Capitalism, Christianity E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink ()    Comments      Thursday, December 17, 2009 Conservative Sees the Light on Pragmatism By Diana Hsieh @ 10:00 AM Crossposted with permission from The American Individualist. Conservative Sees the Light on Pragmatism By Joseph Kellard Over at the conservative commentary site townhall.com, I was intrigued to read "Principle vs. Pragmatism," a column by Ken Connor, who is unknown to me. Halfway through reading this column, I thought that perhaps a conservative has come to see the light about the destructiveness of pragmatism. Heck, he even invokes Aristotle: "The truth of the matter is that when it comes to the most fundamental questions about human society, culture, and government, the middle ground is not a sensible place to occupy. When it comes down to the fundamentals, things are either right or they are wrong; to suggest that they may be right for me and wrong for you is nonsense. Moral relativism comes into conflict with the Law of Non-Contradiction when operating at the level of fundamental values." But, alas, the light this conservative was seeing came from Heaven. "There are, as our forefathers recognized, certain universal and self-evident truths. Human beings, for example, have been endowed by their Creator with an unalienable right to life. It is, therefore, wrong to murder an innocent human being, regardless of whether they are in the womb or in a nursing home. The act of murder is wrong regardless of who makes the decision to carry it out (mother, doctor, family) or how it is denominated (abortion, mercy killing, euthanasia). The character of an act is not changed by the rhetoric that accompanies it or the person who performs it. Such an act cannot be both right and wrong--right for you and wrong for me. It is either right or wrong--period. "There are certain principles that define the world view of Christian conservatives, principles that we are unwilling to budge on …" Connor goes on to invoke God and "other principles" that he and other Christians will not compromise on, without noting what those alleged principles are exactly. Since Connor's basis of morality is God's arbitrary commandments and not the one-and-only reality from which principles are rationally derived, Lord only knows what those "other principles" of his may be, but you can safely bet that they are not a proper foundation for freedom. Labels: Christianity, Politics E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink ()    Comments      Monday, December 14, 2009 The Religious Left: Obama and Black Liberation Theology By Gina Liggett @ 10:00 AM New Home Church is Politically Correct for Religious Leftist Obama President Obama finally found a home church last June after breaking his 20-year-old spiritual ties with his former pastor, the venom-spewing Reverend Jeremiah Wright. The First Family now belongs to the same non-denominational Christian church attended by former President G.W. Bush, Evergreen Chapel at Camp David. It was probably more politically palatable for Obama to align with a church open to hundreds of military personnel with sermons delivered by a Navy Lieutenant chaplain, than to join another church that proselytizes Black Liberation Theology. As we know, for decades the Religious Right has been bludgeoning the wall separating church and state. Now the Religious Left has made its national debut, with President Obama as the poster child. While leftist Christianity may seem like an oxymoron because of the Marxist influence on the American Left, it's actually a perfect marriage of irrational ideas. Defenders of capitalism and freedom have at least as much cause to worry about the Religious Left's agenda as the puritanical obsessions of conservative evangelicals. The newly-empowered Religious Left is egalitarian, tribal, anti-reason, and deeply anti-capitalist. And unlike the Religious Right which focuses on the soul and the glory of heaven, the Religious Left promotes activism in Jesus's name in the here and now. In examining Black Liberation Theology, which has been our President's spiritual bedrock for over 20 years, it becomes very clear where he will take America -- despite the eye-rolling stunt to appear more worthy of the title "Commander-in-Chief." Foaming at the Mouth: What the Reverend Wright Says to America and Obama Months before the 2008 Presidential election, the media let a spitting, scratching cat out of the bag: Reverend Jeremiah Wright. YouTube videos of his pugilistic, outrageous sermons shocked many Americans, ultimately leading to Obama disavowing his relationship with the fire-breathing Reverend. You may remember Reverend Wright's infamous sermon in the late fall of 2001 in which he blamed American friendship with Israel for the 9/11 attacks by Islamic terrorists: Last year's conference in Africa on racism, which the United States would not participate in because somebody dared to point out the racism that still supports both here and in Israel. I said that dirty word again... Don't be skerd! Don't be skerd! You don't see the connection between 9-1-1-0-1 and the Israeli-Palestinian?! Something wrong?! You wanna borrow my glasses?" Or how about the "chickens come home to roost" sermon in which the Reverend expands his sphere of contempt for American foreign policy and his blatant multiculturalism to imply that America deserved 9/11. ... We have moved from the hatred of armed enemies to the hatred of unarmed innocents. We want revenge, we want paybacks, and we don't care who gets hurt in the process. Now, I asked the Lord, "what should our response be, in light of such an unthinkable act?" ... I heard Ambassador Peck on... Fox News... This is a white man... and an ambassador! He pointed out that what Malcolm X said ... was in fact true: that America's chickens are coming home to roost! We took this country, by terror, away from the Sioux, the Apache, the Arawak, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism! We took Africans from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism! We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians, babies, non-military personnel. We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenagers and toddlers, pregnant mothers, and hard-working fathers! We bombed Qaddafi's home and killed his child. Blessed are they that bash your children's head against a rock! We bombed Iraq! We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living! We bombed a plant in Sudan to pay back for their attack on our embassy, killed hundreds of unarmed people ... We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon. And we never batted an eye... We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans. And now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas has now been brought back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost! Violence begets violence, hatred begets hatred, and terrorism begets terrorism. And then there is Reverend Wright's best example of what he thinks the American political system and capitalism are all about: Who cares what a poor, black man has to face every day in a country and a culture controlled by RICH, WHITE, PEOPLE. ... Jesus was a POOR, BLACK man who lived in a country and who lived in a culture controlled by RICH, WHITE, PEOPLE. ... It just came to me within the past few weeks why so many folks are hating on [candidate] Barack Obama. He doesn't fit the model. He ain't WHITE. He ain't RICH. He ain't PRIVILEGED. ... Hillary fits the mold. Europeans fit the mold. ... Hillary ain't never been called a nigger. ... I'm so glad that I got a God who knows what it is like to be a poor, black man in a country and a culture controlled by and run by RICH, WHITE, PEOPLE. ... [Jesus] never let [his enemies'] hatred dampen his hope. When the Reverend is not at the pulpit arousing the envy and resentment of his mostly-black congregation, he credits Black Liberation Theology in forming his views. The founder of Black Liberation Theology in the 1960s, James Cone, explains that it is essentially about doing Jesus's work for the poor and oppressed in the here and now, as applies specifically to black oppression in America. In a 2008 NPR interview he said: Black Liberation theology sees God as primarily concerned with the poor and weak ... in society. It's not just for black people. ... Justice for the poor is the very heart of what God is about. ... The white church didn't talk about blacks struggle for justice. ... The gospel isn't about going to heaven; it's about justice and peace. ... Salvation in the Bible means being delivered from bondage. ... Jesus was crucified ... because he disturbed the consciousness of the people. He also explains that it is blacks who don't love themselves, and that the justice Jesus fought for is for them too, in this way merging Malcom X's Black Power with Martin Luther King's Christianity. Now decades past the Civil Rights era, Reverend Wright has exploded the tenants of "Jesus Justice" into a tirade of rage against what he considers the symbols of an evil America: war (regardless of the reasons for it): cultural repression (regardless of American ideals of freedom and individual rights); and racism (regardless of the fact that America has eliminated the evil of slavery and made quantum leaps in correcting past legalized oppression of blacks). Yet still, proponents of the various permutations of Black Liberation Theology profess that America should be transformed into a society characterized by: 1. Mysticism: That Biblical Scripture, not a Constitution, should be the law of the land. 2. Socialism: That taking care of the "poor" and "oppressed," rather than promoting capitalism and the freedom of individuals, should be the social mandate. 3. Racism: That identity is based on race, rather than on the metaphysically given primary, the individual; and 4. Multiculturalism: That we should consider as morally equal to America all societies, such as World War II-era Japan and Germany, Palestinian terrorists, primitive tribal societies, dictatorial Libya, etc. etc. Obama Disavows Wright but Not the Ideas If there is any doubt about whether or not the Reverend Wright had a profound influence on Obama's present-day thinking, there should not be. In a 2007 interview, Obama said: During this holiday season and during this political season I'm continually reminded that the values that I learned at Trinity (Wright's church) and as part of the UCC (United Church of Christ) community are values that can't just stay in church but have to be applied outside of church. ... I realized that Scripture and the words of God fit into the values I was raised in... [W]hat was intellectual and what was emotional joined, and the belief in the redemptive power of Jesus Christ, that he died for our sins, that through him we could achieve eternal life -- but also that, through good works we could find order and meaning here on Earth and transcend our limits and our flaws and our foibles -- I found that powerful. As a poignant summary of Obama's creed: "Race is a central test of our belief that we're our brother's keeper, our sister's keeper ..." How the theology of Obama translates into the policies of his Administration will be the subject of my next post. Labels: Christianity, Politics, Religion E-mail Gina Liggett    PermaLink ()    Comments      Monday, December 7, 2009 Religious Right Takes a Deep Philosophical Breath By Gina Liggett @ 10:00 AM For two decades, the Religious Right has reveled in the successes of their crusade to erode the wall separating church and state. Since America's sharp Left turn in 2008, they have not been so quick to gloat. Dr. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, said, "I'm not grieving over Barack Obama's victory, but over the loss of things that I've fought for, for 35 years," particularly concerning abortion rights and advancement of the so-called homosexual agenda. The Religious Right itself seems to be taking a soul-searching sabbatical, to get back in touch with its deeper mission: to live by the rule of God. In October over 500 evangelical Christian leaders attended a conference at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary on "renewing the evangelical mission." Many felt that evangelicals had veered from the mission of Jesus. As one pastor put it: "The missing ingredient is not the primacy of the mind and doctrine. It's the willingness to suffer." To this point, attendees sang a hymn with the words, "We spurned God's way and sought our own, and so have become worthless." I'm not sure if in this context "worthlessness" pertains to human beings or to evangelism's usefulness to society. Indeed, one pastor lamented, "We've become useless in a society that desperately needs us." Another theologian urged pastors to talk less about fulfilling individual potential and teach more from Old Testament prophets like Prophet Joel, who urged repentance before God. Others argued for embracing Christian Reconstructionism, a movement emphasizing the total reformation of society according to God's Law. Yet another pastor, spoke of his frustration in getting evangelicals of differing perspectives to collaborate on goals such as fighting abortion rights. But in the end, all conferees agreed that Scripture should be the foundation for whatever direction Christianity is to take. In a well-publicized coming-together, another prominent group of Catholic and Protestant leaders announced in November their joint document called The Manhattan Declaration: a Call of Christian Conscience. It states: We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good and to call upon our fellow citizens...to join us in defending them. These truths are: the sanctity of human life; the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife; the rights of conscience and religious liberty.....We make this commitment not as partisans of any political group but as followers of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. As defenders of Christianity's 2000-year-old legacy of "proclaiming God's word," they claim that it because of Christian "obedience to the one true God...who has laid total claim on our lives..." that the moral good has manifested in society (e.g., babies being rescued from ancient Roman trash heaps, and the emergence of modern democracy). It is in this spirit that the Christian leaders have drawn their philosophical line in the sand: (W)e will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family. We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar's. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God's. These two events, the writing of the Manhattan Declaration and the Gordon-Conwell conference, have made it clear that the Religious Right is getting back to its philosophical roots: that truth and human society should be "grounded in Holy Scripture." Contrast this with Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. Ayn Rand integrated the inescapable axiom that "existence exists" with the fact that humans rely on their faculty of reason to survive, validating that the moral good is the pursuit of human life-enhancing values. In direct opposition are the Christian beliefs of a dual universe consisting of a mystical God ruling over humans, the reliance on Scripture as the source of truth, and self-sacrificing service to God's laws as the moral good. These fundamentally irrational ideas are anti-life in the most profound sense of the term, and can lead only to tyranny. The Christians are returning to their philosophical roots. It is time for rational individuals to follow the religious right's example of philosophical introspection. But let's become grounded in a philosophy that holds as absolute--not God--but reason, reality and rational egoism. Labels: Christianity, Theocracy E-mail Gina Liggett    PermaLink ()    Comments      Wednesday, February 11, 2009 A Terry Schiavo Case in Italy By Gina Liggett @ 12:01 AM Remember in 2005 when then-President Bush rushed back to Washington to get the Republican-dominated Congress to intervene directly in the Terry Schiavo right-to-die case? Terry Schiavo had been in a persistent vegetative state for 15 years, alive only because she was receiving nutrition through a feeding tube. Her husband and legal guardian--who knew she would never want to live like that--fought Terry's staunchly Catholic family in the court system for years over her right to die in such a circumstance. A Florida state appeals court agreed with Terry's husband and allowed the feeding tube to be removed in spring of 2005. Out of all legal options, the family went to the top of the political ladder, and got President Bush and his religious-right powerhouse in Congress to counteract that ruling. Congress passed, and Bush signed, emergency legislation, sending the case back to the federal court. But wisely, the federal court did not overrule the previous decision. The feeding tube was not reinserted, and Terry was allowed to die. The case was a sickening display of not only the breach of the separation of powers as well as the separation of church and state, but also of how quickly and deeply one's personal life can be penetrated by a government. A federal appeals court judge in Atlanta quite eloquently admonished Congress and the White House for acting “in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers’ blueprint for the governance of a free people — our Constitution.” Fast forward to 2009, and there is an eerily similar kind of family nightmare in Italy. A 37-year old woman, Eluana Englaro, has been in a coma since a car crash in 1992. Her father, who claims that her daughter would not want to live in such a vegetative state, has spent years petitioning the Italian court system to allow her to die. Finally, doctors were allowed to implement a medical protocol for withdrawing Eluana's artificial nutrition--that is, until Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, after consulting with the Vatican, issued an emergency decree stating nutrition cannot be withdrawn. Magnifying the absurdity of the Italian government's and Vatican's interference in the private lives of these citizens is the Prime Minister's justification for his decree: physically at least, Eluana was "in the condition to have babies." Allow me to elucidate. Irregardless of the comatose woman's inability to consent to anything, the Italian Prime Minister and the Vatican are in effect saying that it would be acceptable for someone to impregnate this woman, have her body incubate a fetus, then deliver it; but to allow her to die a natural and dignified death by withdrawing artificial nutrition would be immoral, despite what Eluana would have wanted. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who pleaded with Berlusconi to not permit Eluana to die, told him "We have to stop this crime against humanity." (I must say, I find it ludicrous and ironic that the religious institution responsible for the horrific crimes of the medieval Crusades and the systematic enabling of pedophilia in the priesthood has the audacity to say anything about crimes against humanity.) In these two right-to-die cases, Terry and Eluana were young when they suffered their irreversible brain damage and had not made their wishes explicitly known in writing. But those closest to them and legally responsible for making decisions on their behalf have a better idea than the government or the Church about whether or not they would want to linger for decades in an unconscious state. Even more fundamentally important than the ethics of proxy medical decision-making is the right to die. I think this right is a corollary of Ayn Rand's concept of the right to life: "There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man's right to his own life." In their quest to take away the right-to-die, the Vatican and America's Religious Right are basically taking away the right to life, claiming your life belongs to God, not to you. This religious view is the reason the Schiavo family fought Terry's right to die; this was the reason they took their case to a President who actively promulgated religious initiatives; and this is what the Italian father is fighting. Your right to life includes your right to end your life according to your values. If you would not want to be kept alive for decades in a comatose state--and your proxy decision makers know that--then they have the ethical and legal obligation to carry out your wishes. And any governmental or church interference with that right is an immoral and egregious offense to the citizens of a society obligated to uphold their Constitutional rights. An update: Eluana died Monday Feb. 9 as the Italian legislators debated her case. The Italian government plans to continue to push for an anti-right--to-die law. Labels: Christianity, Religion, Right to Die E-mail Gina Liggett    PermaLink ()    Comments      Wednesday, January 7, 2009 Vatican Cites Environmentalist Objections to the Pill By Diana Hsieh @ 12:01 AM Another news item of interest from the iFeminists news feed: Vatican newspaper slams 'the pill' January 4, 2009 The contraceptive pill is polluting the environment and is in part responsible for male infertility, a report in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said on Saturday. The pill "has for some years had devastating effects on the environment by releasing tonnes of hormones into nature" through female urine, said Pedro Jose Maria Simon Castellvi, president of the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, in the report. "We have sufficient evidence to state that a non-negligible cause of male infertility in the West is the environmental pollution caused by the pill," he said, without elaborating further. "We are faced with a clear anti-environmental effect which demands more explanation on the part of the manufacturers," added Castellvi. The article was promptly dismissed by several organisations. "Once metabolised, the hormones contained in oral contraceptives no longer have any of the characteristic effects of feminine hormones," said Gianbenedetto Melis, vice-president of a contraceptive research association, quoted by the ANSA news agency. The hormones contained in the pill such as oestrogen "are present everywhere... in plastic, in disinfectants, in meat that we eat," added Flavia Franconi, of the Society of Italian Pharmacology. ... The alliance between capitalism and religion in the 20th century in America was artifact of the rise of atheistic communism. It's not a sustainable union: a religious worldview cannot ground the rights of the individual to pursue his own happy life by his own rational judgment as required by capitalism. (On that point, see Ayn Rand's essay "Faith and Force" in Philosophy: Who Needs It.) More particularly, the Christian scriptures preach disdain for this world, blind obedience to the whims of God, abject sacrifice for the sake of the poor and weak, acceptance of sin, the positive value of suffering, and the moral corruption of wealth. A person who takes those values seriously cannot preach or practice capitalism. (See this LTE and this one.) Consequently, I'm not surprised to see supposedly "conservative" religious institutions abandon their marginal respect for individual rights in favor of statist causes like the welfare states and environmentalism. Of course, the Catholic Church has never been a defender of individual rights, particularly not reproductive rights. But its embrace of environmentalist arguments to further that end is something new -- and ominous. Labels: Birth Control, Christianity, Religion E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink ()    Comments      Friday, December 19, 2008 Evangelicals Leverage Downturn By Ari @ 12:01 AM (Reposted:) An article in the New York Times verifies what many of us suspected: economic downturns are good for certain churches. The paper notes that "evangelical churches around the country... have enjoyed steady growth over the last decade. But since September, pastors nationwide say they have seen... a burst of new interest..." There seem to be two main reasons for this. As one pastor told the paper, "When people are shaken to the core, it can open doors." The article also discusses an economist who sees the increased attendance as more related to economic concerns: churches provide a safety net, and people without jobs aren't busy on Sundays. The article mentions "Good Sense," a church-based financial management program. A downloadable document reveals some of the details. It praises "avoiding consumer debt and saving for the unexpected" -- good advice -- but it also advocates greater political control of the economy, demonstrating yet again that evangelicals hardly advocate economic liberty as a rule. The document states: On a macro level, increased regulation of certain sectors of our financial markets, about which some have warned of excesses for some time, will become reality and will hopefully prevent repeats of the abuses that have led to the situation we are in now. Capitalism must have moral restraints and while those can’t be legislated, regulations can at least make it harder to do wrong and easier to punish those who do. Most significantly, we are reminded that earthly treasures can succumb to rust, moths, thieves and to economic upheavals and that it is our treasures in heaven that are safe for eternity. This also shows the tension within the Christian movements for financial planning. I've heard claims that God wants us to be rich, that the Bible counsels hard work and the prudent accumulation of wealth. Yet the stronger Biblical strain is egalitarianism and the call to renounce wealth. One televangelist told the Times we're living in a "time of fear and greed." Yet this fails to distinguish the "greed" of political manipulations and wealth transfers from the self-interest of free markets and individual rights. Thus, the evangelical movement offers two conflicting messages: be responsible in how you accumulate wealth, but realize that wealth doesn't matter relative to an eternity in heaven. I did find this line from the Times humorous: "At the Life Christian Church in West Orange, N.J., prayer requests have doubled -- almost all of them aimed at getting or keeping jobs." Yes, all we need is a divine stimulus package. Labels: Christianity, Religion E-mail Ari    PermaLink ()    Comments      Wednesday, December 17, 2008 A Profile in Influence: The Family Research Council By Gina Liggett @ 12:01 AM The next in my profiles of religious right organizations is the Family Research Council, founded by James Dobson of Focus and the Family and headed by Tony Perkins. The Family Research Council (FRC) doesn't even pretend to be an "educational" organization. Its intent has always been to change the culture to comply with their religious perspective through passing legislation at the federal and state levels: Since its inception in 1983, Family Research Council has been shaping public policy, as it relates to our nation's families and our religious freedoms, in Washington D.C. and in state capitals across the country. We have successfully crafted and promoted policy initiatives.. There is so much going on with this organization, that I almost don't know where to begin. But let's start with their "25 Pro-Family Policy Goals." Before the 2008 election, he FRC encouraged pastors to pass around their 25-point proposal for a new America. This booklet contains so many proposals to regulate our most private lives, that it's beyond the scope of this post to describe it in detail. Needless to say, it is worth reading to get the impact of how broadly the Family Research Council is targeting their efforts. Below is a sampling of some of the FRC's goals in summary form: Prohibit embryonic stem-cell research. Prohibit women from voluntarily donating their eggs for research or to infertile couples. Ensure that pro-abortion judges (whom they call "activist") are not appointed. Further restrict access to abortion. Support "faith-based" programs in prisons. Require the teaching of "creationism" in the schools as a companion to the teaching of the facts of evolution. Censor the publication of adult pornography to "protect children." Require the teaching of "abstinence before marriage." Pass and uphold state and federal constitutional amendments defining marriage as between one man and one woman. Promote the maintaining of a marriage through the manipulation of divorce laws. Prohibit gays from joining the military. What is striking about the Family Research Council's approach in selling their plan is the scare tactics and disinformation they use to justify their proposals. For example, in their recommendations that restrict access to abortion, they claim that women are not being given proper informed consent before their procedure: The failure to provide information concerning the risks of abortion for women's reproductive and overall health represents a major gap in the promotion of true health care. This is just a laughable and flagrant falsehood, as there are already very strict regulations and ethical requirements concerning informed consent about any surgical-type procedure. And Planned Parenthood, enemy number one at the FRC, educates its clients about all their options concerning pregnancy, including those preferred by the religious right. Another example is the FRC's distorting claims about embryonic stem-cell research: The claims made for embryonic stem cells are wildly oversold and exaggerated, and cruelly give patients and their loved ones false hope. Meanwhile, the real facts about their potential are ignored or distorted. In 27 years of embryonic stem cell research, not a single patient has been treated. This is a ludicrous statement. There is absolutely no false promises being made whatsoever. The science explicitly brands itself as being in the "early stages" of basic biological research in the field. And as a science-based, fact-based education will teach you (as opposed to one based on mythical stories like creationism), it is a long, arduous road from basic biological research to actual application of treating disease. Moreover, President Bush implemented one of the religious right's favorite policies by restricting federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research back in the early 2000s, slowing the whole process down. Besides the FRC's basic 25-point framework, this organization has begun to change its strategy. Not deterred by the underwhelming support for religious candidates and initiatives this November, the FRC has already begun to broaden their base of support beyond the Republican Party. The FRC's plan is stated in a new book, "Personal Faith Public Policy," by Harry R. Jackson, Jr. and Tony Perkins: While some argue that evangelicals lose influence when they fail to vote as a bloc for a particular political party, the ability to seed both parties and operate as a political 'free agent' could prove to have a much greater impact on actual public policy. In their book, they advocate expanding FRC's influence beyond the traditional so-called "pro-family" activities to: "immigration policy, poverty and social justice, racial reconciliation, and global warming." The Family Research Council is soliciting a $250,000 matching donation. They have the money -- they have the determination -- they have the networking -- and they have a broadening political strategy to foster a new America in their religious image. Let's keep our eyes and ears out for this group, and counter their influence with pro-reason and pro-reality values. Labels: Christianity, Politics E-mail Gina Liggett    PermaLink ()    Comments      Wednesday, December 10, 2008 Dobson Insists on Faith-Based Politics By Ari @ 12:01 AM (Reposted:) James Dobson of Focus on the Family makes two main argument in a recent posting that was brought to my attention by 5280 magazine. First, the religious right didn't really lose in the last election, and second, the religious right should continue to make explicitly religious arguments to advance their faith-based politics. As I've pointed out, the religious right got trounced in Colorado. Voters rejected McCain and his evangelical running mate, picked a United States Senator who penned a particularly eloquent defense of the separation of church and state, ousted a House member known for her faith-based views, rejected an anti-abortion candidate for state senate, and defeated the "personhood" initiative (which Dobson endorsed) by 73 to 27 percent. The religious right hardly could have taken a worse beating. To "refute" this obvious fact, Dobson points out that voters in "California, Florida and Arizona voted to define marriage in their constitutions as the union of one man and one woman..." But that hardly proves Dobson's point. Defining marriage as heterosexual is hardly the same thing as endorsing the religious right's vicious anti-homosexual agenda. It is common to want to restrict "marriage" to heterosexual couples and still confer full legal rights to homosexual couples. In this case, many voters side with the religious right by coincidence. Dobson simply ignores all of the other electoral outcomes. But here is the more substantive point: Dobson calls on Christians to attempt to enforce their distinctly religious views through politics. Dobson rejects Barack Obama's stance that political policies must be based on "some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.” Dobson calls on Christians to reject the "invitation for believers to show up, but then only to be allowed to make arguments that are not based in their deepest beliefs." And what are Dobson's priorities? "We will continue to stand up for the sanctity of human life, the sacredness of marriage and the right to have a say in the principles that will continue to guide this nation founded on biblical principles." Banning abortion is his first priority; discriminating against homosexuals is his second. (No serious person protests Dobson's right of free speech; that's hardly the issue.) And Dobson frankly admits that both these causes are particularly religious in nature. With an agenda like that, it's no wonder that most Americans (particularly in the Interior West) have rejected the faith-based politics of Dobson and the Republican Party. Labels: Christianity, Politics, Religion E-mail Ari    PermaLink ()    Comments      Monday, December 8, 2008 Focus Offers Obama Nightmare By Ari @ 12:01 AM (Reposted:) Westword pointed to a document from Focus on the Family titled, "Letter from 2012 in Obama's America." I figured I'd take a peek. The document purports to describe events that could happen. "Many of our freedoms have been taken away by a liberal Supreme Court and a Democratic majority in both the House and the Senate," the letter predicts. How might this happen? Obama could select three Supreme Court justices who are "far-Left, American Civil Liberties Union-oriented judges." (Apparently the ACLU is still a scare word in some circles.) What is the harm in that? Does Focus on the Family worry about eroded economic liberties? Eroded personal liberties? After all, the purported concern of the letter is freedom. The answer is no: The most far-reaching transformation of American society came from the Supreme Court's stunning affirmation, in early 2010, that homosexual "marriage" was a "constitutional" right that had to be respected by all 50 states because laws barring same-sex "marriage" violated the Equal Protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. The first thing to notice is that such a ruling would in no way restrict "our freedoms" in any way, unless by "freedom" Focus on the Family means the freedom for the majority to impose controls on the minority. Such a ruling would expand the freedoms of some. My freedom is in no way restricted if my gay friends get married. This hardly raises a blip on the Scarometer. I am not much concerned whether gay couples go the route of "marriage" or "domestic partnership." But what is interesting is that this is the top concern of Focus on the Family, even though such a ruling would have no practical significance for the day-to-day lives of most Americans. The Court might also further violate rights of contract and free association in the name of anti-discrimination. Obviously I'm against that. However, conservatives have hardly taken a consistent position on the matter. Government-school training on the virtues of homosexuality? I doubt it. If it were a problem, the solution is to separate school and state. But, generally, evangelicals have been more interested in capturing tax-funded schools for their own purposes, not restoring liberty in education. Those who want school prayer and the tax-funded teaching of creationism can hardly whine when their opponents want to capture the same system for their own purposes. "There are no more Roman Catholic or evangelical Protestant adoption agencies in the United States." It's unclear to me why religious organizations should have the "freedom" to place children according to religious doctrine. Those organizations don't own the children. Outlawing "offensive" speech from the Bible? Well, if the justices are ACLU types, we hardly need to worry about that. The irony of the evangelical movement whining about censorship is palpable. The evangelical movement poses the much more dangerous threat to free speech. Controls on doctors? Again with the hypocrisy. Hello! Focus on the Family wants to throw doctors in prison -- or worse -- for performing abortions. I share the concern about controls on association and contract. But the religious right hardly offers a better alternative than the left. Focus on the Family's concern with fertility treatments is especially laughable. Remember that Focus praised Amendment 48, which would outlaw most fertility treatments because they involve the destruction of fertilized eggs. Focus on the Family then tries to argue that outlawing abortion and censoring pornography is somehow consistent with freedom. Notice that, in the same document, the same organization laments censorship of religious speech even as it advocates censorship on religious grounds. For demographic reasons -- evangelicals tend to be more rural and suburban -- the religious right sides with gun ownership. Well, that's great. But in the general context of faith-based politics, such a right is practically meaningless, as the greatest threat to our liberty is the government. Focus on the Family worries about Obama's foreign policy and health policy. But of course George W. Bush, the evangelical president, was a complete disaster on both fronts. (Bush did allow Health Savings Accounts, but at the cost of a massive expansion of health entitlements.) The letter's closing paragraph states, "I still believe God is sovereign over all history, and though I don't know why he has allowed these events, it is still his purpose that will ultimately be accomplished." In other words, all of this concern expressed by Focus on the Family about freedom is merely a front. The organization doesn't fundamentally care about freedom; it cares about seeing God's alleged will imposed on earth. Labels: Christianity, Politics, Religion E-mail Ari    PermaLink ()    Comments      Friday, December 5, 2008 Is the U.S. a Christian Nation? By Diana Hsieh @ 12:01 AM Sociologist Dr. William Martin -- the author of the excellent history of the rise of the religious right, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America -- recently debated the question Is the US a Christian Nation? on Opposing Views. Dr. Martin's careful approach to the debate is exemplified in his first comment -- What Do You Mean By That? -- in which he clarifies the question and his position. Labels: Christianity, Founders, Religion E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink ()    Comments      Wednesday, December 3, 2008 The World Of The Framers: A Christian Nation? By Diana Hsieh @ 12:01 AM What were the religious views of the major Founding Fathers? University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone answers that question in this excellent podcast. The description reads: The World Of The Framers: A Christian Nation? It has become commonplace in American political discourse for Christian evangelicals to assert that the United States was founded as a "Christian nation" and that in recent decades secularists have gained control and distorted our nation's founding traditions and values. In this lecture, Professor Geoffrey Stone examines the beliefs of the Framers on this question. What did they think about Christianity, about the role of Christianity in the American nation, and about the relationship between religion generally and self-governance? The answers to these questions are important not only to constitutional interpretation, but even more fundamentally to an understanding of who we are -- and who we are supposed to be -- as a nation. Geoffrey Stone is Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago Law School. This talk was recorded April 21, 2008 as part of the Chicago's Best Ideas lecture series. Labels: Christianity, Founders, Law, Religion E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink ()    Comments      Monday, December 1, 2008 Christian Law = Hell on Earth By Diana Hsieh @ 12:01 AM The American legal system is built on a foundation of respect for individual rights, particularly the rights of life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. Unfortunately, that foundation is only very imperfectly understood and even more poorly implemented. Throughout the history of America, the principle of rights has been corrupted to varying degrees by statist ideals -- worst of all by slavery but also by collectivist claims for the sacrifice of individuals to "the common good," environmentalist demands to sacrifice human life and values to pristine nature, and much more. Today's list of violations of individual rights is as long as the Federal Register and then some. Yet despite those corruptions, some core respect for individual rights -- for the fact that each individual ought to be free to use his own resources as he sees fit, based on his own independent judgment, without forcible interference from others -- remains in our legal system. Unfortunately, many Christians seek to inject Christian principles into the American legal system. Christians on the right seek to outlaw abortion and prevent gays from marrying. Christians on the left seek to tax the rich to care for the poor. Neither of those schemes is consistent with the principles of individual rights. Consequently, I -- and the Coalition for Secular Government -- oppose them. However, those schemes are child's play compared to the attempt to wholly remake the American legal system according to Biblical law. For a sample of what that view would entail, read this blog post from Dani, a self-described "right-wing Christian fanatic": This is how it should be according to the Bible if this were truly a Christian Nation: YOU SHALL NOT MURDER: Judges will execute those convicted of murder (Gen. 9:6; Ex. 21:12-14; 20:13; Lev. 24:17, 21; Num. 35:16-21, 31; Deut. 19:11-13; 1Ki. 18:22, 39-40; 1 Tim. 1:8-10) including those euthanizing, starving, or aborting (Ex. 21:22-23) human beings from the moment of fertilization to natural death. Judges will flog those guilty of assault and impose restitution for lost income and medical expenses (Ex. 21:18-19), and for permanent injury also require an eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, life for life (Lev. 24:19-20). Judges will carry out all corporal and capital punishments swiftly and painfully, within twenty-four hours of conviction; and limit floggings to forty blows (Deut. 25:1-3; Lev. 24:19-20; 19:16-21; 1 Pet. 2:20). Judges will not convict for the use of force in defense of property and the innocent, in escalation to match the perceived threat up to lethal force; nor for purely accidental homicide (Deut. 19:4); will execute those guilty of negligent homicide (Ex. 21:28-30; Deut. 22:8); and flog those who could have avoided otherwise accidental homicide, and anyone committing revenge killing (Num. 35:26-27) of those guilty of capital crimes. YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT ADULTERY: Judges will execute those convicted of bestiality (Ex. 22:19; Lev. 20:15-16); those convicted of incest including with in-laws (Lev. 11-12, 14-15, 17, 19-21); of homosexual acts (Lev. 18:22, 29; 20:13); of child molestation; of kidnapping or rape (Ex. 21:15-16; Deut. 22:25-27; 24:7); and of adultery with a married woman (Lev. 20:10; Deut. 22:22; Ex. 20:14). Judges will flog those convicted of fornication; of public use of vulgar sexual and excretory language; of sexually suggestive dress or behavior; of intoxication; and of possession of pornography. Judges will flog more severely those convicted of transvestism; of public nudity; and of distributing pornography. And judges will flog more severely still those convicted of prostitution; of producing pornography for any use; and of sexual acts in public places. YOU SHALL NOT STEAL: Judges will flog and require restitution for convicted thieves, negligent recipients of stolen goods, and those who violate contracts (Deut. 25:1‑3). Judges will impose double restitution for recovered goods, the return of the goods plus one-hundred percent value (Ex. 22:4, 7-9; 20:15); quadruple for destroyed or sold goods; quintuple for intellectual, irreplaceable and sentimental goods (Ex. 22:1); seven times for insignificant goods (Prov. 6:30-31); and twenty percent for voluntarily surrendered goods (Lev. 6:1-7). The judge shall impose corporal punishment and life for life penalties for collateral damage from any crime, including bodily injury resulting from the destruction of property which warrants greater than even restitution. A person or his resources causing unforeseeable or unavoidable property damage including by natural disaster without negligence shall pay no restitution, or with negligence shall pay even restitution. Persons taking shared risk shall pay mutual restitution (Ex. 21:32-36; Lev. 24:18). Avoidable accident without negligence, including the malfunction of a maintained resource requires even restitution but with negligence, including by a neglected resource demands double restitution. Gross negligence requires quadruple restitution and intentional destruction demands quintuple restitution. Excepting those executed, judges will sentence those who cannot pay restitution, to indentured servitude for up to seven years with the victim receiving all service or earnings. YOU SHALL NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS: Judges will punish those convicted of perjury, false confession, credible threat, conspiracy, abbeting, attempt, fully as though they had personally committed the crime (Deut. 19:16-21; 2 Sam. 1:15-16; Ex. 20:16). Judges will flog and impose restitution on those convicted of slander. Judges will flog those in contempt of court, and execute those guilty of treason and violators of court orders which protect victims (Deut. 17:12-13). A man is not innocent until proven guilty. He is guilty the moment he commits a crime, but presumed innocent (Deut. 22:22-27) in court until convicted. Convicting the innocent and acquitting the guilty are equally unjust (Pro. 17:15). A judge at his discretion, suspends the rights of liberty including the use of weapons, for the credibly accused, and mandatorily confines one facing a likely sentence of maiming or capital punishment, until the rendering of a verdict. Reasonable evidence from two or three witnesses, whether from eyewitnesses, physical, or strong circumstantial evidence, shall suffice for conviction; individual rights shall not supersede the judge's God-given right to impose punishment on the guilty. Judges shall not grant nor have special immunity from prosecution; shall not give more lenient punishment to minors; shall not give special recognition to lawyers or experts in the law; may observe and advise other judges during trial; shall not allow witnesses to swear or give an oath (James 5:12, Mat. 5:34-37; 2 Cor. 1:17); and shall question witnesses directly. Judges shall not accept no-contest pleas or bargains; shall punish criminals for all collateral damage; shall permit witnesses and victims to participate in punishment (Deut. 13:9; 17:7); and shall show no mercy to the guilty (Num. 35:31; Deut. 19:13, 21; Pro. 6:30-31). America's Criminal Code shall be enforced by the King as authorized in The Constitution of America. Dani is right about one thing: that's what it would mean for America to be a "Christian nation." And that's why all freedom-loving people -- whether Christian or not -- must fight to strengthen the respect for individual rights in the American legal system. If American law is remade in the image of scripture, the result would be the worst kind of tyrannical hell on earth. Labels: Christianity, Law, Religion E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink ()    Comments      Friday, November 28, 2008 Ted Haggard in the Pulpit Again By Diana Hsieh @ 12:01 AM Ted Haggard -- the disgraced figure of the religious right from Colorado Springs -- has returned to the pulpit: Earlier this month, a guest took the pulpit at Open Bible Fellowship in Morrison, Ill., a 350-member church surrounded by cornfields. The speaker was an insurance salesman from Colorado named Ted Haggard. The former superstar pastor, disgraced two years ago in a sex-and-drugs scandal, had returned — this time as a Christian businessman preaching a message that was equal parts contrition and defiance. Haggard linked his fall to being molested in second grade and apologized again. His two sermons were posted, fleetingly, on Haggard's Web site under one word: "Alive!" While his exact plans remain unclear, Haggard is unmistakably making himself a public figure again, nine months after his former church said he walked away from an oversight process meant to restore him. Christian ethics are impossible to practice. Jesus explicitly demands that a person renounce all the values that make life on earth possible: reason, wealth, planning, pleasure, justice, and more. As a result, the worst kind of power-lusting fakers -- like Ted Haggard -- are sure to rise to the heights of power. Only they can maintain the necessary fraud. And like his disgraced predecessors, Ted Haggard can't seem to let go of his once-great power to bend people to his dishonest will. Labels: Christianity, Politics, Religion E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink ()    Comments      Friday, November 14, 2008 Southern Baptist Convention: For the Separation of Church and State, But... By Gina Liggett @ 12:01 AM The next in my series of profiles of the Religious Right is the political arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, The Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. The Southern Baptist Convention, with a yearly revenue over $200 million dollars, represents over 42,000 Baptist churches in the U.S., holds an annual convention, and sponsors missionary campaigns all over the world to spread their gospel and build more Baptist churches. The Southern Baptists explicitly lay out their basic beliefs, such as the Bible being written by divinely-inspired men, that those who accept Christ as their savior will go to Heaven and those who don't will go to Hell, and that a "wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband," etc, etc. The Southern Baptist stance on "Religious Liberty" is this: "Church and state should be separate. The state owes to every church protection and full freedom in the pursuit of its spiritual ends. A free church in a free state is the Christian ideal." Even Richard Land, the head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, speaks like a strong advocate of church-state separation -- but not because he's a man of reason, but because it would ultimately threaten religious belief: "I do not want state-sponsored religion, because state-sponsored religion destroys religion. And it interferes with what I call, and Pope John Paul II called, the 'sacred sanctuary of the soul.' No government has a right to interfere with a person’s relationship with God." That ideal would be compatible with what the Founding Fathers wrote in the freedom-of-religion clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution. But actions speak louder than words. And Richard Land and his Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission have been on the front lines of the religious invasion of Republican Party politics for years. Joining other Religious Right activists' frustration with getting the Republicans to advance their public policy agenda, Richard Land said in 1998: "The go-along, get-along strategy is dead. No more engagement. We want a wedding ring, we want a ceremony, we want a consummation of the marriage." It was time for the Religious Right to consolidate their forces and push the Republican party to impose Christian morals on society by outlawing abortion, censoring pornography, prohibiting marriage between homosexual adults, reintroducing prayer in the schools, obtaining tax deferrals for tuition at religious and private schools, and eliminating financial support for the National Endowment for the Arts. Looking to the 2000 election, Land said, "It's time for candidates who will not only work with us, but for candidates who are us." Well, they got their man, George W. Bush, and Richard Land couldn't be happier with the results: "There's no question this is the most receptive White House to our concerns and to our perspective of any White House that I've dealt with, and I've dealt with every White House from Reagan on." The Bush administration has been right in step with what the Southern Baptists claim the bible says about their most significant social issues of "abortion,.. homosexuality,.. [and] anti-obscenity enforcement." Much to their dismay, the Bush administration is over. The fact remains that the Southern Baptists are blatant hypocrites when comes to their dogma about religious freedom. Despite their self-interested credo supporting the separation of church and state, they nonetheless have deeply entrenched themselves within the Republican political machinery to impose a religious morality on all Americans. Consider Land's own words about the Religious Right's fight against gay marriage: We believe that marriage is a divinely ordained institution... In a representative democracy like the United States, if we believe that certain lifestyles should be affirmed and other lifestyles should be merely tolerated, we have a right to have that made into law. And that's not called a theocracy... We want a federal marriage amendment to keep the judiciary from forcing a secularist agenda on this country that this country does not want in the area of marriage. The only way to protect ourselves from that, given the current power of the judiciary, is to trump the judiciary by passing an amendment to the Constitution, which is aimed like a rifle -- not a shotgun, but a rifle -- at same-sex union. What could better exemplify not only this hypocrisy but what Ayn Rand calls the corollaries of faith and force? The Southern Baptists have lost their poster-boy, but they haven't lost the will to fight. And neither should we. Labels: Christianity, Politics, Religion E-mail Gina Liggett    PermaLink ()    Comments      Monday, August 11, 2008 Airtight By Diana Hsieh @ 12:01 AM In a totalitarian society, individuals lack any kind of private life. Individuals are only a means to the end of society, everything -- from one's purchases to one's friendships -- is the province of the state. That same totalitarian impulse is present in American churches today, as illustrated by this news story on a pastor's prophetic sermons: Last Sunday, pastor Irwin Alton, 62, preached against several specific sins during his sermon. Some people in the audience gasped with recognition. "When he talked about skipping mid-week service to go to the lake, and buying a new boat when you haven't tithed, I felt nailed to my pew," said one man. "It was like the Holy Spirit was speaking right to me." But it wasn't the Holy Spirit -- it was the man's own blog where he had posted photos of himself and his buddies on his new boat on a Wednesday evening. Pastor Alton, who cultivates a reputation as a computer illiterate techno-phobe, is actually an avid reader of MySpace pages, blogs and personal websites of the people in his congregation. "I appear, shall we say, un-hip," he says. "Therein lies my advantage." Though he publicly refers to the Worldwide Web as the "Worldwide Waste" and e-mail as "sin-mail," in his home office is a bank of computer screens with more than 170 bookmarked sites -- personal web pages, blogs, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, Flickr and more. Each week Alton surfs the sites for hours to find evidence of questionable behavior by people in his church. He jots offenses down and incorporates them into his Sunday sermons. He even checks the blogs of friends of people in his church. That's where he found photos of Emily Dotson, 31, at a local sports bar. During the service last week Alton paused mid-sermon to say, "Some of you have been visiting places you shouldn't be seen in as a Christian, drinking establishments and the like." Emily was taken aback. "He was speaking right to me," she says. She came forward and repented for being at the sports bar, even though she'd been celebrating a girlfriend's birthday. "I knew I shouldn't have lingered in that environment," Emily says. "I could have gone in, said hi and left." [Update: Doh! It's actually a satire, even if a bit too close to real life for many Christians.] Liriodendron quotes a portion of that article, then writes the following: As for my own personal experience, I spent one year in a church that was dangerously close to Pastor Alton's. Right after college, I accepted a teaching position in a private Christian school in south Florida in order to take a year off from my education. In my incredible naivete, I assumed that the school would be as free-thinking as my Christian college had been, and I was assured that I would be able to teach evolution. Nevertheless, the school that I taught at was incorporated along with the church. As a condition of our employment, we were required to attend church weekly, "voluntarily" tithe 10% of our pre-tax income to the church, and serve on at least one church charity or ministry project. As someone who accepted the premise of altruism [at the time], I had no problem with these rules. My students got a good dose of actual education about evolution, but not without some parents discussing this matter with the administration. It became apparent that I was only to teach evolution from the standpoint of exposing its supposed fallacies. My most important lesson was learning what a consistently Christian life was all about. If your life is lived consistently according to religious values rather than your own implicit values, it becomes an agonizing web of deceit and dishonesty -- both with oneself and others. It was the worst, most stressful year of my life. There were several aspects of my personal life that I kept very secret, dreading the day when some church member might find out about it. One day I was confronted by the school/church administration for using the word "crap" in my classroom -- a student had reported that. I can't possibly hope to communicate with others who think Christianity is benign how oppressive a consistently Christian life is. It is something you must experience for yourself. If Christians choose to live in such personal confinement within the bounds of their own church, that's their right. However, they have no right to use government force to herd the rest of us into a such confinement via controls on obscenity, drinking, drugs, blasphemy, abortion, birth control, homosexuality, dress, and the like. For those of us who reject Christian morality -- who regard Christian values of faith, sacrifice, suffering, and submission as positively immoral -- such a life would be intolerable. That's precisely why I formed the Coalition for Secular Government: I do not wish to attempt to eke out a meager existence in an airtight Christian world. Labels: Christianity E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink ()    Comments      Monday, August 4, 2008 Our Secular Constitution By Diana Hsieh @ 12:01 AM The Christian theocrats are attempting to transform America into a thoroughly Christian nation in her laws, institutions, and mores. They demand that abortion be banned, solely based on their tenuous interpretation of scripture. They vigorously campaign against any attempt to allow loving homosexual couples to secure their bond by law. They demand that all television be prudishly "family-friendly," without a boob or butt in sight. One of the most common arguments of these theocrats for their coveted religious transformation is based on an appeal to our Founding Fathers. The Founders, they say, were devout Christians seeking to establish a Christian nation. The Founders, they say, never envisioned anything like the secularism of today's society and government. Most Americans feel some reverence for our Founding Fathers, yet they know little of the actual words and deeds of the men who shaped our country: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington, and others. (Thanks, government schools!) So too many American can be bamboozled by these claims of the theocrats. The snippets so often quoted by Christians to support their case are usually ripped from their proper context, then interpreted through Christian lenses. Any mention of God is read with an endorsement of Christianity and Christian government. The deism of many prominent Founders is ignored, as is their strident opposition to any kind of promotion of religion by the government. However, the most clear evidence that the Founders intended their new government to be independent of any religion is found in three places in the Constitution: First, the Preamble: We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Notice what is missing from that basic statement of purpose: God. Moreover, the Constitution attempts to secure the very kind of this-worldly goods like peace, security, and justice that Jesus admonishes his followers to ignore. And it does not aim to promote the otherworldly goods like the salvation of one's soul that Jesus admonishes his followers to seek above all else. Second, Article 6: The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. So all government officials are required to uphold the Constitution, yet none can be subject to any kind of religious test. They cannot be required to espouse belief in Jesus, nor even belief in God, nor even in some vague Higher Power. Surely, if the Founders wished to create a Christian nation, they would have required that government officials be Christian. Third, the First Amendment : Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. The First Amendment forbids the government from interfering in people's religious lives, whether by forbidding or promoting certain religious beliefs and practices. If a Christian nation was their aim, then the Founders should have required the government to promote Christianity -- not forbidden it from doing so. In future blog posts, I will say more on the relationship of the Founding Fathers to religion, as the half-truths and outright lies spread by the theocrats must be combated. Yet it's amazing that a clear look at just these few passages from the Constitution wholly undermine their basic claim that America was founded as a Christian nation. Labels: Christianity, Founders E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink ()    Comments      Friday, August 1, 2008 Young Earth? By Diana Hsieh @ 12:01 AM The funny geek-cartoonist xkcd has a great cartoon on the "young earth creationists" who believe that the earth is just a few thousand years old (!!) based on the genealogies of the Hebrew Bible. I won't ruin the twist at the end: check it out for yourself. Labels: Christianity E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink ()    Comments      Tuesday, July 29, 2008 Christian Stonings? By Diana Hsieh @ 12:01 AM In my last post, I reported on the impending stoning of people for sexual offenses in Iran. So would Christian theocracy be any more civilized? Surely not. The Hebrew Bible harshly condemns supposedly deviant sexual behavior as abominable to God. For example: If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbour, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death. The man who lies with his father's wife has uncovered his father's nakedness; both of them shall be put to death; their blood is upon them. If a man lies with his daughter-in-law, both of them shall be put to death; they have committed perversion; their blood is upon them. If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them. If a man takes a wife and her mother also, it is depravity; they shall be burned to death, both he and they, that there may be no depravity among you. If a man has sexual relations with an animal, he shall be put to death; and you shall kill the animal. If a woman approaches any animal and has sexual relations with it, you shall kill the woman and the animal; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them. (Leviticus 20:10-16) The evangelical Christians seeking to transform the United States into a Christian nation have not renounced those passages. (How could they, if the Bible is the unerring word of God?) Instead, they frantically oppose any and all attempts to portray and treat homosexuals as normal people. For example, see this response to a Heinz ad featuring a gay couple. Any recognition of the fact that gays can and do form loving families is horrifying to them; it must be squelched -- now. The Christian theocrats are not concerned to uphold and protect individual rights. They care only for God's will. As Colorado's Amendment 48 shows, they seek to impose God's law on everyone by force, including dissenters and disbelievers. That, combined with their obsessive dehumanization of gays, leads me to believe that Christian theocracy would be no more tolerant of homosexuals than the Islamic theocracy of Iran. It's a frightful prospect. Labels: Bible, Christianity, Homosexuality E-mail Diana Hsieh    PermaLink ()    Comments