Tag Archives: inherit the wind

September 9, 2015 · 07:00

With Bible in Hand: Anti-Gay Christians & Religious Tyranny

Protesters outside Judge Bunning’s Home

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

As I write this I can almost hear people echoing these words of Reverend Brown in the movie Inherit the Wind being uttered by some of my less than happy readers against me: “Oh, Lord of the tempest and the thunder, strike down this sinner, as thou did thine enemies of old in the days of the Pharaohs! Let him know the terror of thy sword! Let his soul, for all eternity, writhe in anguish and damnation!”

But then, what’s new? Since I have stopped the hijacking of the site by such commentators that is all they can do. I tolerated their crap for too long, my generosity was treated with contempt, so screw them. I totally agree with the words of Frederick Douglass who wrote:

“Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels…He who is the religious advocate of marriage robs whole millions of its sacred influence, and leaves them to the ravages of wholesale pollution. The warm defender of the sacredness of the family relation is the same that scatters whole families, — sundering husbands and wives, parents and children, sisters and brothers, — leaving the hut vacant and the heart desolate. “

According to some readers I represent and stand alongside a vocal minority that is intent on destroying America, minority that is despised and hated by many people in the name of their God. The group I speak of are homosexuals, and their supporters which include me, as well as those people who actually support the rule of law in this country. The 14^th Amendment, which was the basis of the Supreme Court’s majority ruling in the case of Obergfell v. Hodges, the ruling which legalized Marriage Equality in all 50 States says:

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Sadly, the opponents of Marriage Equality, or for that matter of any kind of civil rights for Gays use the same arguments against the rights of Gays that their Christian ancestors, in both the North and the South did to defend the institution of Southern Slavery. In His book Christianity’s Dangerous Idea, British Evangelical-Anglican theologian Alister McGrath observes how “the arguments used by the pro-slavery lobby represent a fascinating illustration and condemnation of how the Bible may be used to support a notion by reading the text within a rigid interpretive framework that forces predetermined conclusions to the text.” Then he asks a dangerous question, a very important question for modern Christians who might be tempted to support a position using the Bible to deny the rights of others for the same reasons today, “Might not the same mistakes be made all over again, this time over another issue?”

When I see the rabid politicians, preachers and pundits supporting the right of a public official to violate the civil liberties of others in the name of their interpretation of scripture, it is troubling. In this case they support Kim Davis, the Recalcitrant County Clerk of Rowan County Kentucky. Mrs. Davis violated the oaths of office that she took, defied the Governor of Kentucky, as well the rulings of multiple courts including the Supreme Court of the United States and was jailed on contempt of court charges.

It wasn’t that long ago that people used the Bible for this

Sadly I see disturbing parallels in their arguments to the arguments of Christians in the North and the South before the Civil War regarding slavery, and the disenfranchisement of newly emancipated African Americans following the Civil War, during Reconstruction and during the Jim Crow era.

The supporters of Mrs. Davis view the world through the lens of Manichean dualism. Those who agree with them, agree with God and those who do not, are evil, and deserving of no liberty, nor life. Before the Civil War, Southern theologian James Henley Thornwell presented the conflict between northern evangelical abolitionists and southern evangelical defenders of slavery in Manichean terms. He and many others believed that by arguing for abolition that Christian abolitionists attacked religion itself. It was not just an attack on their belief in validity of the institution of slavery, it was an attack on their faith. Thornwell wrote:

“The “parties in the conflict are not merely abolitionists and slaveholders,…They are atheists, socialists, communists, red republicans, Jacobins, on one side, and friends of order and regulated freedom on the other. In one word, the world is the battle ground – Christianity and Atheism as the combatants; and the progress of humanity at stake.”

Thornwell was joined by Robert Lewis Dabney, a southern Presbyterian pastor who later served as Chief of Staff to Stonewall Jackson in the Valley Campaign and at Seven Pines and who remained a strident defender of slavery, and opponent of civil rights for blacks long after the war was over. Dabney’s words remind me very much of the words of the militants speaking up for Mrs. Davis and condemning all who support the rights of Gays. Dabney wrote:

“we must go before the nation with the Bible as the text and ‘Thus saith the Lord’ as the answer….we know that on the Bible argument the abolition party will be driven to reveal their true infidel tendencies. The Bible being bound to stand on our side, they have to come out and array themselves against the Bible. And then the whole body of sincere believers at the North will have to array themselves, though unwillingly, on our side. They will prefer the Bible to abolitionism.”

But I think one of the most reveling are the words spoken by the Reverend William Leacock of Christ Church, New Orleans declared in his Thanksgiving sermon of 1860:

“Our enemies…have “defamed” our characters, “lacerated” our feelings, “invaded “our rights, “stolen” our property, and let “murderers…loose upon us, stimulated by weak or designing or infidel preachers. With “the deepest and blackest malice,” they have “proscribed” us “as unworthy members… of the society of men and accursed before God.” Unless we sink to “craven” beginning that they “not disturb us,…nothing is now left us but secession.”

The very personal nature of Leacock’s complaint in his sermon about abolitionists following the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 is startling when you compare it to the words of so many anti-LBGT politicians, pundits and preachers, some of who even urge civil war and secession if they do not get their way. Mike Huckabee says that Davis being jailed on contempt of court charges “removes all doubt of the criminalization of Christianity in our country.”

The invective against Judge Bunning, a Republican who was appointed to the bench by George W. Bush, and all who support the law is reaching the level where frustrated supporters will resort to violence. It has happened before. In fact, one of the leaders, of the protest outside Judge Bunning’s home yesterday on charges of “violating the law of God” was the Reverend Flip Benham. Benham is no stranger to precipitating violence against those he deems violators of God’s law by stoking the fear and anger of his followers. In 2009 one of those followers, murdered a doctor who performed late term abortions in the man’s church. Likewise, Benham has stalked others and he has defended the murderer of others. If he can motivate people to kill abortion providers, why not gays and their supporters? Thus I have legitimate concerns for the safety of Judge Bunning and anyone who gets in the way of Benham and his followers.

Mrs. Davis was released jail yesterday, and ordered her not to interfere with the issuing of gay marriage licenses. Judge Bunning released her because he was satisfied that her office is “fulfilling its obligation to issue marriage licenses to all legally eligible couples.” Her supporters will claim this as a victory, but it will not change the law, and I imagine that if she interferes with her subordinates, Judge Bunning says that she will end up back in jail. She and her lawyers and Mike Huckabee exited the jail to the cheers of their supporters. Their words and actions showed a arrogance and defiance of law that only American Christians of our era, as well as the ante-Bellum South, and the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras seem capable. We will see what happens, I am not optimistic so long there is a dollar and political point to be gained.

With this “victory” the lawyers who led her down the primrose path to jail will move on and leave Mrs. Davis behind if she complies with Judge Bunning’s order. Their “success” will encourage others to do the same. These politicians, preachers and pundits who led this charge want a conflict, and they need a conflict to legitimize themselves. They also need it to make lots of money donated by their followers without accomplishing anything. They hate Gays, and liberals and make their money playing the victim, when it is they who seek to deny the rights of others. One of their most influential writers, an adviser to Rand and Ron Paul expressly said so:

“The long-term goal of Christians in politics should be to gain exclusive control over the franchise. Those who refuse to submit publicly to the eternal sanctions of God by submitting to His Church’s public marks of the covenant–baptism and holy communion–must be denied citizenship, just as they were in ancient Israel.”

North’s words apply to everyone who stands against his interpretation of Christian Dominionism.

But with Bible in hand they will go forward, and I am reminded of the words of Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird:

“Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of (another)… There are just some kind of men who – who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.”

These people are a scary bunch. Their right to discriminate against others based on their religious beliefs matters more than the Constitution, and matters more than bearing a true witness of God’s love to the world.

Peace

Padre Steve+

3 Comments

Filed under civil rights, faith, laws and legislation, LGBT issues, News and current events, Political Commentary

Tagged as 14th amendment, atticus finch, flip benham, frederick douglass, gary north, gay marriage, inherit the wind, james henley thornwell, judge bunning, kim davis, marriage equality, robert lewis dabney, rowan county ky, supreme court, to kill a mockingbird, William Leacock

July 7, 2015 · 15:48

Strike Down the Sinners: The Politics of the Christian Right

Friends of Padre Steve’s World

This is a topic that sadly I am again forced to return to in light of the incredibly vocal and strident calls of leaders of the Christian Right in response to the Supreme Court ruling on Marriage Equality. The tragic thing is that these men and women seem not to care about the long term damage they are doing not only to the political system, but the witness of Christians and the continued viability of the Christian church in the United States.

Nineteen years ago today, when I was ordained as a priest I was a part of a church that was heavily invested in the political machinations of the Christian Right so I do understand from experience the mindset of some of these leaders. This is not to say that everyone in leadership of that church were like this, but some were, and they held important positions.

I write this on the anniversary of my ordination because I do care about the witness of Christians and the long term viability of the church. Since I am a historian I do understand what happens when church leaders allow their insistence on maintaining or gaining political power and influence to override the words of Jesus and the mission of the church. I want to point out, that while I certainly fall on the progressive to liberal side of the Christian faith that I know many wonderful conservative Evangelicals who while maintaining the their beliefs, still do all they can to be gracious and loving to all, and in their actions show that love and respect to people that they disagree with on doctrinal, social and political issues. Sadly, the actions of the leaders of the Christian Right are obliterating the efforts of these really good and caring Christians to maintain a witness of love, and that offends me. I was talking to one of these pastors today, an old friend from the Navy Chaplain Corps who is now retired and serving as pastor of a Baptist church here in Virginia, and we commiserated about what the actions of these leaders are doing.

Barry Goldwater, the man who was one of the most responsible for the resurgence of American Conservatism, had a keen sense of the danger faced by the conservative movement if the Christian Right ever took control of the Republican Party. Goldwater whether you liked him or not or disagreed with his political thought was no fool. In 1981 after the Christian Right had risen to power and helped Ronald Reagan win the presidency, Goldwater realized that the Christian Right was not content with being part of a conservative coalition but wanted control of the Republican Party. On the floor of the Senate Goldwater spoke these words:

“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.”

Goldwater was right and the takeover of the Republican Party by the Christian Right is an accomplished fact. The Republican Party is now the party of the Christian Right and the party of religious conservative culture warriors. It is unbending, uncompromising and many of its leaders, including most of the announced presidential candidates believe that they are acting in the name of God.

It is an incredibly dangerous situation, not just for the nation and our political system, but for the Church itself.

Our current political climate reminds me of the movie Inherit the Wind, the fictional portrayal of the Scopes Monkey Trial. In the movie one of the most stalwart critics of evolution, the former presidential candidate and preacher Matthew Brady played by Frederic March, led the city where the trial is being held into an anti-secular fervor. At the beginning of the trial he encourages the townspeople to attend a “prayer meeting.” The meeting becomes quite heated as the town’s preacher, Reverend Brown, played by Claude Akins launches into a full assault on all that oppose Brady, and therefore God.

The preacher works himself into a frenzy, condemning the accused and all that would defend him, including his very own daughter:

“Oh, Lord of the tempest and the thunder, strike down this sinner, as thou did thine enemies of old in the days of the Pharaohs! Let him know the terror of thy sword! Let his soul, for all eternity, writhe in anguish and damnation!”

His daughter, who is engaged to the accused cries out: “No! No, Pa! Don’t pray to destroy Bert!”

Then the reverend utters words which remind me so much of what I heard in Iowa this weekend:

“Lord, we call down the same curse on those who ask grace for this sinner—though they be blood of my blood, and flesh of my flesh!”

At this point, Brady, realizing that the situation is getting out of control stops the preacher and says:

“it is possible to be overzealous, to destroy that which you hope to save — so that nothing is left but emptiness.” He then quotes from the book of Proverbs: “Remember the wisdom of Solomon in the book of Proverbs. “He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind.”

To me this seems to be analogous to the current dilemma faced by the Republican Party. For decades has helped to create, sustain and institutionalize monster of the Christian Right. Old leaders see the danger but cannot admit their culpability in its rise and takeover of that party. As such they continue to enable it. Goldwater was one of the very few Republicans to see this coming and now, as he feared, the preachers have taken control of the party. Like Reverend Brown they will damn all who do not agree with them, even those of their own party.

The leaders of this political-religious movement have been overzealous, and will continue to be so because like Matthew Brady and Reverend Brown and their supporters, they cannot acknowledge that their zeal may be misdirected and malevolent.

Like Reverend Brown, they are consumed by their hatred for non-believers, that they are even willing to destroy the people closest to them to do so. I know this is true, because when I expressed doubt and did not tow the party line of my former church I was thrown out. Sadly, most of the men that I had previously counted as my closest friends abandoned or even condemned me.

I find the similarities amazing. But even more troubling I find the fear, hatred and paranoia the leaders of the Christian Right display all too reminiscent of church leaders in Germany during the 1920s and early 1930s. Those leaders, Protestants and Catholics alike supported Hitler, because Hitler promised to fight against the things that they hated; Jews, Socialists, Communists, homosexuals, immigrants, and of course atheists, agnostics and other non-believers.

Martin Niemöller, a man who now is nearly universally lauded for opposition to Hitler initially supported him. Niemöller, later regretted that support and wrote:

“I hated the growing atheistic movement, which was fostered and promoted by the Social Democrats and the Communists. Their hostility toward the Church made me pin my hopes on Hitler for a while. I am paying for that mistake now; and not me alone, but thousands of other persons like me.”

German Christians, like Niemöller, felt that their values were under attack by Communists, Socialists, and Jews and yes, even homosexuals. In order to maintain their influence and power they willingly allied themselves with the Nazis. After the Nazis took power, the only spoke up against the Nazi abuses it to defend their own ecclesiastical power and place in society, and seldom to speak up for the victims of the Nazis. When the war was over and young people began to question the actions of those that led the Church in Germany it began a process that has led to the de-Christianization of that country.

The current leadership of the Christian Right, especially those with yearnings to be the next President, are doing the same thing as their German brothers did in the 1920s and 1930s. The constant hate filled attacks of Christian leaders on those that are not Christians will come back to bite them. This is not fantasy, it is reality. One only has to look at the history of the Church to see it played out time after time. But then, unless we decide to re-write history like the fraudulent pseudo-historian David Barton does so well, why bother reading it?

The actions of many Christian leaders are dangerous to the faith as a whole, but it seems that they are willing to throw that away in order to gain political power, and as Ron and Rand Paul’s adviser Gary North wrote:

The actions of the leaders of the Christian Right are blatantly short sighted and ultimately will hasten the decline and fall of what we know as Christianity in America, but they don’t seem to care. These leaders have subscribed to an Imperial Church model that must take and hold political power in order to maintain their own political, economic and social dominance, even at the expense of the Gospel. Instead of the message of reconciliation they preach pre-packaged, focus group tested selections of “Biblical Values” which they and their political allies know are useful as wedge issues to win political power.

The leaders of the Christian Right rail against things they consider “sinful” such as homosexuality, abortion and birth control. At the same time they willingly turn a blind eye to the treatment of the poor, support efforts to disenfranchise poor and minority voters, even Christians that tend to vote for Democrats. They advocate wars of aggression and bless cultural and economic norms that go entirely against the Christian tradition as they go about with a Bible in one hand and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged in the other.

The effects of this politicization are more and more apparent and the statistics don’t lie. The United States is not Christian nation and any sense of the definition, and this is not the fault of secularists. It is the fault of Christians especially those political partisan pastors and pundits of the Christian Right that for the past 40 years have sold their souls for political power at the expense of the Gospel.

A recent Barna survey noted that less than one half of one percent of people aged 18-23 hold what would be considered a “Biblical world view.” This is compared to about one of every nine other adults. Other surveys bear this out.

Think about it: The Barna Group in another survey of people 18-29 years old asked what phrases best described Christians: The top five answers “Anti-homosexual, judgmental, hypocritical and too involved in politics.” This view was held by 91% of non-Christians and a staggering 80% of young churchgoers.

This hypocrisy is demonstrated time and time again. In 2013 these politically corrupted religious leaders turned a blind eye to and even cheered the gutting of the Voting Rights Act of 1964 by the Supreme Court, or cheered that decision despite the fact that many of not most of those adversely affected by that decision are African American Christians. The next day they lambasted the same justices for overturning the Defense of Marriage Act and refusing to hear a challenge to California’s Proposition 8, dealing with the Federal recognition of Gay marriage. Just over a week ago the same leaders were apoplectic when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Marriage Equality and Gay Marriage, and upheld the Affordable Health Care Law.

The histrionics exhibited by them would be comical if the men and women ranting away were not so vehemently hateful towards their opponents, and some have suggested killing gays and their Christian supporters to root out evil. This isn’t just political theater for them, they really mean it. The real tragedy of their behavior is that even more people will turn away from Jesus. Mahatma Gandhi said it so well “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

The leaders of the Christian Right continue to wage the culture war, but what cost? Here I am not even dealing with the politics, as one can debate the merits of the Obama administration as well as its decisions and policies, and even Supreme Court decisions. Even many progressives criticize the President and the Supreme Court on a wide number of issues, so that is not the point.

The fact is that young people are leaving the church in unheard of numbers and it is very evident to me why they are doing so. The Church has embraced the culture wars over preaching the Gospel, which if I recall correctly is based on loving people, even ones enemies. Jesus said it so well: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:35 NRSV.

In 2014 leaders of the Christian Right were able to bring enough culture warriors to the polls hold their majority in the House of Representatives and gain the majority in the Senate. But it was an election where less than 40% of eligible voters voted and most of the contested seats were in areas where they dominate, which magnified their strength. But in the coming 2016 Presidential election the demographics do not favor them and get worse in every year. The leaders of the Christian Right know this and still continue on and wage their culture war with greater zeal further alienating millions of people not just from their political position, but the message of Jesus himself.

Perhaps Christian leaders who have sold their souls for such paltry political gains should be asking these questions: What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul and what does it profit the Church to wield political power but lose its soul?

It is a question that Christians need to ask. Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wryly noted “If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.” Sadly, that train has left the station and the leaders of the Christian Right are not only on it, but they are driving it into oblivion.

Peace

Padre Steve+

2 Comments

Filed under christian life, ethics, faith, film, History, laws and legislation, LGBT issues, News and current events, Political Commentary

Tagged as barna survey, barry goldwater, biblical values, christian right, church state relations, claude akins, dietrich bonhoeffer, frederic march, gary north, inherit the wind, mahatma gandhi, martin niemoller, opposition to gay marriage, scopes monkey trial, spencer tracy

June 9, 2015 · 16:15

Duggared: The Moral Implosion of the Christian Right

There was a time when child molestation was considered a sin by conservative Christians and there was a time when multiple criminal acts of a sexual nature committed against children would have been condemned by anyone even claiming to be a Christian. Of course that that didn’t mean that such acts did not happen, but at least in public Christian leaders condemned the criminal acts that we used to call mortal sin, even if they offered the offender a chance at repentance and reconciliation.

But that was before the days of “culture war” proclaimed by Pat Buchanan and the Christian “jihad” to use the terms of Roman Catholic theologian Peter Kreeft, a convert from Evangelical Protestant Calvinism to the Catholic faith in his book Ecumenical Jihad. For Buchanan, Kreeft and others like them defending the indefensible is the norm if it supports the dominance of Christians over their non-Christian neighbors. Kreeft’s whole thesis follows the premise that the “liberal elites” are attacking the very basis of Christian civilization, as such the “culture war” and “fanaticism” perfectly acceptable. While Kreeft does not openly endorse violence as a response, his thesis does not necessarily condemn it. The reason for this is that Kreeft promotes the idea of a militant Church that is linked to the state and has the power to punish and persecute its enemies. Of course this is a page that Kreeft borrows from radical Islam and by doing so he does’t seem to mind throwing out the teachings of Jesus. Instead Kreeft, Buchannan and many others, especially Christians who follow “Dominionist” theology return to the model of the imperial church in which believers have all right to rule over unbelievers because God wants it that way.

Interestingly enough the Duggars have been out there preaching the same message, which is why I had to mention it.

As a person who cut his teeth during the heady early days of the Christian Right’s march to power I am astounded to see the moral implosion of what properties to call itself “conservative Christianity” in the United States. This implosion has been on full display in the situation involving the Duggar family, a fundamentalist Christian family who due to their ability to breed like rabbits have enjoyed a near cult like status with the Christian Right, complete with reality television show, book deals and political influence with many of the 2016 Republican Presidential contenders.

Now let me be clear. I have nothing against large families, people sharing their faith, or even endorsing political candidates. As for the Duggars as I do not know them. I only know them by their carefully crafted media image which is in the process of coming apart. That being said, what is going on here is a disaster for people who actually value the Christian faith and do9 what they can to share the love of Jesus in word and in deed with their neighbors. It is a disaster for the Christian culture that the Duggars supposedly defend.

The story has all of the elements, except murder, that make a great crime novel: admitted sexual crimes of the family’s oldest son Josh, who admits to molesting, not one, not two, not three, but four of his sisters and, at least one other girl, some of them while they were asleep. The story features a father and mother who covered up the crime and refused to get their son any real mental health treatment, and a police Department that did nothing about the situation even after they were notified. To add some spice it features a host of politicians, pundits and preachers, which remind one of the townspeople in he classic film Inherit the Wind. Interestingly enough almost all of these people boast of their Christian moral superiority and routinely condemn other people’s supposed sexual sins, especially Gays. Not only do they do this, they throw all of their political and moral capital into ensuring that Gays and Lesbians do not have the same rights as they have.

Since the story broke the political hacks of the Christian Right have been working overtime to spin the story as “Christian persecution” by the supposedly “Left Wing media.” Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee, a Southern Baptist preacher was among the first to defend the Duggars and make this claim. But he has to do this, the Duggars are among his most influential supporters. The pictures Huckabee smiling with Josh Duggar all over the internet in the wake of Huckabee’s candidacy announcement make for great copy if the scandal goes away. If not they are a liability. But the Huckster isn’t alone in defending the Duggars. Supposedly conservative “Christian” pundits, politicians and preachers have been coming out of the woodwork, not to condemn the crimes which are admitted to and documented, but to attack those who throw the bullshit flag on the Duggars.

This my friends is an important distinction, because if the Duggars were some poor family with no money or influence the Christian Right would never defend them. However, the Duggars are not some poor family that is just out there minding its own business, who had a child commit sexual crimes. They are a family that has used its fame and fortune to mercilessly attack anyone who disagrees with their cultish view of the Christian faith. Of course this is almost always on display at political rallies and meetings where they incessantly condemn the Gays and fight against marriage equity, where quite often it was the perpetrator of the crimes in the Duggar family, Josh, who was leading the charge. After their sins and crimes came to light the parents had the nerve to trot out two of their daughters to defend Josh and say that it was minor molestation. When I saw that I realized that this family has no regard for real Christian morality or faith. Sadly they will stoop to anything to protect their franchise and keep the money coming in. But why should we be surprised at any of this. Eric Hoffer wrote, “A doctrine insulates the devout not only against the realities around them but also against their own selves. The fanatical believer is not conscious of his envy, malice, pettiness and dishonesty. There is a wall of words between his consciousness and his real self.”

Though their television show has been cancelled they are getting a lot of air time as the Fox News Network does all that it can to defend them. Likewise the Duggar family’s “image crisis” is being managed by Mike Huckabee’s long time adviser Chad Gallagher of Legacy Consulting.

But even then, a few Fox commentators, Greg Gutfield and Geraldo Rivera took the time to go off the reservation and condemned the Duggars. Gutfeld dared to ask what the Duggars defenders would be saying if the Duggars were not Christians, while Rivera asked viewers to take religion out of the equation and ask what they would think of any family that allowed such crimes to happen and then to cover them up. Note that Gutfeld and Rivera are not Christians. Rivera is Jewish, and and Gutfeld, a former Catholic altar boy is an “Agnostic Atheist,” thus, unlike many of the Fox hosts, neither has a need to defend “Christianity” by defending criminals. I think that this gives them a bit more objectivity in the matter, despite the fact that they work for Fox.

While the fight the Christian Right is waging involves the Duggars, who they are desperately trying to rehabilitate, it is bigger than that. The the political leaders of the Christian Right are waging an ideological war on all comers, something that Pope Francis recently condemned. The Pope said:

“In ideologies there is not Jesus: in his tenderness, his love, his meekness. And ideologies are rigid, always. Of every sign: rigid. And when a Christian becomes a disciple of the ideology, he has lost the faith: he is no longer a disciple of Jesus, he is a disciple of this attitude of thought… For this reason Jesus said to them: ‘You have taken away the key of knowledge.’ The knowledge of Jesus is transformed into an ideological and also moralistic knowledge, because these close the door with many requirements. The faith becomes ideology and ideology frightens, ideology chases away the people, distances, distances the people and distances of the Church of the people. But it is a serious illness, this of ideological Christians. It is an illness, but it is not new, eh?”

Pope Francis nails the issue. The more that these supposedly Christian leaders do to defend the indefensible behaviors of their own people and the more that they do to attempt to use the police power of the state to enforce their beliefs on others, the more people they will drive away from the faith. Most people tend to like what they see in Jesus, even non-believers often admire his teachings, but they do not like the leaders of the Christian Right and are fleeing the churches in astronomical numbers.

So, these leaders can keep Duggering around with their Jihad, making a mockery of faith, of friendship and inciting hatred in the name of God while defending actions for which there is no defense. I have to wonder where it will stop.

The Duggars and their supporters are sowing the wind, and in doing so they will reap the whirlwind and they are blind to what they are doing.

So that is all for today,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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Filed under christian life, faith, News and current events, Political Commentary

Tagged as child molestation, christian dominionism, christian right, culture wars, duggar family, ecumenical jihad, eric hoffer, fox news, geraldo rivera, greg gutfeld, inherit the wind, josh duggar, mike huckabee, pat buchanan, peter kreeft

March 12, 2015 · 15:30

The Winner Takes it All: American Christian Greed

Do you remember that there was a time when Conservative Christian Politicians and preachers actually supported working people and the poor? There was a period where this was true, but with the economic affluence and the political influence that we have enjoyed since the end of the Second World War we have left those days far behind.

I mean really, there was a time when preachers were not just lobbying for tax cuts for the rich in the name of the “Prosperity Gospel” or and extolling the wealthy “job creators” over the people who actually produce or serve products. Late last night I had an interaction on Facebook that was discouraging, wealthy preachers defended the most opulent and extravagant excesses of mega-church pastors. It was disheartening, especially one attacked a man who I went to war with, and who since has endured more trying medical issues than most of us will experience in our lives when he challenged the Episcopal Priest. What I read broke my heart.

My Church History professor at Southwestern Baptist seminary back in 1988 and 1989 Christian attitudes then that is even more appropriate today. He noted that a:

“reason that many Christians are not servants is more honest: it is that we just don’t want to be servants. We live today in a “winner” society. We value the winners, whether it be in sports, business, or wars….The American Dream is success, climbing to the top of the ladder, making it, winning…. In most metro areas, on most weekends, you can go to a conference in some church where a person (for a fee) will tell you how God wants you rich….This obsession with success, money, and power is the American dream carried to its logical conclusion. It is middle-class Americanism, pure and simple. It is more motivated by greed, selfishness, and pride than by Christ. And in the churches, we have bought it. We want to be “at the top”,” not “at the bottom.”…..We coat our Americanism with a thin veneer of Christianity in an attempt to make it more palatable, but God will not have it. Let’s call this version of the American Dream what it is: selfishness, self-righteousness, and sin.” (Young, Doyle L New Life for Your Church Baker Book House, Grand Rapids Michigan 1989 pp.55-56)

I heard Dr. Young speak about this in class. I was a young Army officer, who had just left active duty to go to seminary. We were in the process of a financial meltdown brought about by the Texas oil bust of the late 1980s and my wife’s illness. We were learning what it was like to be poor. We lost almost everything but ourselves and our dogs during that time. We went to churches where the opulence was over the top, where the pastor drove a Porsche, and not a bottom end or used one. We struggled through seminary and made it, with me working two jobs and being in the National Guard. Most of the time we wondered where the money to get the next meal, tank of gas, prescription medicine, tuition payment or books. When I called the TBN prayer line just for prayer during the darkest days I was told be a “prayer warrior” that “it was obvious that I was not in God’s will because otherwise God would be blessing me.” That angered me and hardened my resolve to get through seminary. There were a good number of people who helped us, some because they felt that god wanted them to help us, others just because they were compassionate souls. This made me very sensitive to social justice and wary of those who get rich off of God’s people.

It wasn’t always this way.

William Jennings Bryan was one of the most influential politicians of his era. He served as Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson, he was a Senator and three time Presidential Candidate. He was also a very conservative Fundamentalist Christian perhaps most famous, or perhaps infamous now as one of the prosecuting attorneys at the Scopes “Monkey” Trial of 1925. In fact I can find that Bryan’s handling of that case played to the basest religious and social hatred of his day and though “defending” “Biblical” ideas ended up making Christians look but small minded, intolerant and hateful. The movie Inherit the Wind, though a fictional account of that trial show how decent Christians can become consumed with hatred in the name of righteousness, little different than other “sincere believers” that are willing to kill in the name of God.

Whether one agrees on certain points of religious doctrine regarding the creation of the earth or the manner of how God created the earth that he espoused one has to admit that of pre-Great Depression politicians he was quite amazing. This was especially true in how he saw through the Godlessness of unbridled Capitalism. He saw how workers by were devalued by those who saw them as nothing more than a way to increase their wealth. As an American and a Christian look at the body of work and life of a man. Though I find much fault in Bryan and his supporters in the Scopes Trial, I do not throw out the good things that he did and got right.

I think the apex of Bryan’s political thought is encapsulated in his speech at the Democratic National Convention of 1896, what is now called the Cross of Gold Speech.

When one looks at it now it really is timeless. Bryan saw through the charade that was being played out by politicians and the big money Wall Street types that they represented with great verve. It was a speech that one might have heard come from a prophet in the Old Testament.

I am just going to quote a couple of pertinent sections from the speech to trigger your thoughts, for you will not hear this in the vast majority of conservative Christian churches of all denominations which have been infected with the so called “Prosperity Gospel.” These churches have thrown their support behind ideas that are nothing more than unvarnished, crude materialism of the worst kind. In fact I believe that it is nothing more than the “baptism” of such thought by Christians are among the biggest reasons for the exodus of people from the churches and the rise of the “Nones,” or those with no religious preference.

Bryan said:

“We say to you that you have made the definition of a business man too limited in its application. The man who is employed for wages is as much a business man as his employer; the attorney in a country town is as much a business man as the corporation counsel in a great metropolis; the merchant at the cross-roads store is as much a business man as the merchant of New York; the farmer who goes forth in the morning and toils all day, who begins in spring and toils all summer, and who by the application of brain and muscle to the natural resources of the country creates wealth, is as much a business man as the man who goes upon the Board of Trade and bets upon the price of grain; the miners who go down a thousand feet into the earth, or climb two thousand feet upon the cliffs, and bring forth from their hiding places the precious metals to be poured into the channels of trade are as much business men as the few financial magnates who, in a back room, corner the money of the world. We come to speak of this broader class of business men.”

His words are striking in their directness and honesty. They are not only Christian but they are deeply American. He called his Party, which had been as bad as the Republicans during the age of the unregulated Robber Barons who used the Gold Standard to manipulate the markets and eliminate silver as currency to their benefit to be different:

“Upon which side will the Democratic Party fight; upon the side of “the idle holders of idle capital” or upon the side of “the struggling masses”? That is the question which the party must answer first, and then it must be answered by each individual hereafter. The sympathies of the Democratic Party, as shown by the platform, are on the side of the struggling masses, who have ever been the foundation of the Democratic Party.”

He talked about two ideas of government and economics:

“There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.”

He concluded his speech with this statement.

“Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world, supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests, and the toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standard by saying to them: “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”

When I hear the Unholy Trinity of Politicians, Pundits and Preachers who extol the virtue of Capital over labor and the worship of wealth as the highest good I wish that there would be some that would remember that the people who actually make things, grow things, fix things and maintain things are not just human capital, but people.

That’s enough for today. Expect some more on this and similar topics soon.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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March 9, 2015 · 14:08

Another Year on the Margins of the Church

Me and my Little Buddy, Minnie Scule

I have been living on the margins of American Christianity for a bit over seven years now. The watershed moment was when I returned from Iraq in February 2008 my faith shattered and my soul wounded suffering from severe PTSD. I was not in good shape then and two years later after faith returned, albeit in a different form I realized that I no longer fit in the mainstream of conservative American Christianity.

The process of return took me to the margins of the faith that I knew and grew up in. For a while I felt like a victim, but over the course of the years I have discovered a tremendous freedom in living on the margins of the church. Jamake Highwater wrote something that really struck me as true:

“What outsiders discover in their adventures on the other side of the looking glass is the courage to repudiate self-contempt and recognise their “alienation” as a precious gift of freedom from arbitrary norms that they did not make and did not sanction. At the moment a person questions the validity of the rules, the victim is no longer a victim.”

When I began to express some of those changes, which mainly had to do in the manner of how I viewed others I got in trouble. At the time I was part of a pretty conservative Episcopal-Catholic denomination with very strong Evangelical and Charismatic leanings. I wrote that I thought that homosexuals could be Christians and not automatically damned to hell. I wrote that not all Moslems were bad. I expressed a great deal of empathy for non-believers, particularly Atheists and Agnostics having recently come out of a period where for all intents I was an Agnostic praying that God really did exist and care. I also asserted that I saw no reason why women could not or should not be ordained to the Priesthood and the Episcopacy and I expressed other views that while not connected with anything to do in the Christian faith was not politically correct in conservative circles.

During that time period I found that I was getting slammed and “unfriended” on Facebook by people I had previously considered friends whenever I had the nerve to disagree with them, or innocently post something that they disagreed with on my Facebook page. I think that was the hardest part for me, I was shocked that people who I had thought were friends, who knew what I was going through were so devoted to their ideology that they condemned me and threw me away. I found that I agreed with Mahatma Gandhi who observed: “I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” Of course I say that with a fair amount of humility because most of the time I am not a very good Christian, if that means actually trying to emulate Jesus.

Of course that is not uncommon in the annals of Christianity. Ulrich Zwingli, the Reformer of Zurich was so upset when his students and closest associates became Anabaptist that he had them drowned in the Rhine River. In fact any time Church leaders have had significant powers over people through the levers of the State they have quite often used that power to crush anyone that did not believe like them or questioned their authority.

In a sense for two millennia various groups of Christians have been creating God in their own image and inflicting their beliefs on others. Christians punishing other Christians for having views that they do not agree is so common. Last week a Chaplain of a Nazarene college was fired for questioning Christian support for war in the wake of the movie American Sniper. Sadly most of the time that Christians are condemned by other Christians it is not even for any of major doctrinal beliefs found in the Creeds, the great Ecumenical Councils of the Church, or even of the various Confessions or Statements of Faith of any denomination. Instead they usually have to with unpopular stands on political or social issues. Anne Lamott has a pithy little thought that I love which I think describes this type of Christian persecution: “You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

In September of 2010 I was asked to leave that church, even though my actual theological orthodoxy, as to what I believed about God and Christ was unchanged. Thankfully another church, the Apostolic Catholic Orthodox Church, a denomination of the Old Catholic tradition took me in. It is a tiny denomination, much like the Old Catholic Church of the Netherlands, but very affirming and I fit well in it.

As far as my old church, it was going through a difficult time and the Bishop who threw me out was a big part of the problem. He was removed a few months later when it was revealed that he was plotting to take all of the military chaplains out of the denomination to another without consulting the other bishops. One friend who is still in that church speculated that I was asked to leave by the bishop because he thought I might reveal his plans, even though he had not told me directly about them.

What was odd about that church was that in 2004 I was censured by the then second ranking archbishop in that church, forbidden from publishing and even having or having any personal contact with his clergy where I was living because I was “too Catholic.” The irony was that this bishop was a big cause of the trouble that the church went through including the massive splits that occurred in 2005-2010. He left that church, became the editor of a conservative Catholic website and now is a Priest in the Anglican Ordinate and effectively a Roman Catholic Priest. I love irony.

Thankfully I still have a number friends in my old church, and thankfully there are good people there doing their best to live the Gospel. I can’t say that I would fit in there anymore, but I have no residual animosity to the current leadership of that denomination and pray that they continue to recover from the tumult and division that marked their struggle from 2005-2011. I admit that it was a painful time and for a while I was quite bitter about how I had been treated, but it has been easier to live by forgiving. C. S. Lewis noted: “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.” Since I have been forgiven for so much how can I not at least try to live in a forgiving manner?

I have written a lot about my frustrations with American Christianity in particular the conservative Christian subculture. Looking at what I wrote I can see that I definitely exist on the margins of that world. But that is not a bad thing, there is a certain amount of freedom as well as intellectual honesty and integrity that I have now that I could not have being for all intents closeted in my former denomination.

Living on the margins allows me to echo Galileo who wrote: “I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.” It allows me to be at the intersection of faith and unbelief and allows me entry into both worlds, both of which I believe to be sacred and both need to be heard, as well as protected.

Thus when I champion religious liberty, it is not the liberty to use religion to bludgeon others or to use the police power of the State to enforce their religious views on others. Unfortunately that is what I see going on in this country as conservative American Christians especially Evangelicals, Charismatics and conservative Roman Catholics wage a Kulturkampf against modernism and secularism. It as if many of the leaders of that movement desire to set up a Christian theocracy. Gary North, a longtime adviser to Ron Paul and many in the Tea Party movement wrote:

“We must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.”

Personally, and with no invective intended I have to imagine that if a Moslem leader in this country said something similar that the Religious Right would be screaming bloody murder and that Bill O’Reilly and Fox News would be leading the charge.

Thus we see a reprise of the Scopes Monkey Trial in efforts to diminish the teaching of real science in schools and replace it with various religious theories of origins such as Young Earth Creationism. It doesn’t seem to matter what the issue is: equality for women, minorities, gays, teaching science, caring for the poor, the sick and the weak, acknowledging the value of other cultural traditions and religions it seems that many politically charged conservative Christians have no tolerance for anyone outside their often quite narrow belief system. North wrote:

I’m sorry but again this sounds not too dissimilar to the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, without the sheep and the comfortable clothes, or the Moslem Brotherhood types, Hezbollah or the Iranian Imams. The religion of North might be different from the Taliban but the goals are eerily similar, and only a fool would not see that. But then we Christians are quite good at ignoring the hate being preached by those that claim to be defending us from those “evil” Moslems.

This is no empty threat, throughout the country Christian Conservatives and their political front men are ramming through laws that have but one intent, the establishment of a Christian theocracy and the persecution of those who do not agree. Allegedly all of these laws are designed to “protect religious liberty” but in fact are nothing more than a legislative attempt to disenfranchise non-believers or others that the majority does not approve. Unfortunately the people pushing these laws do not understand that once the become law they can be used against them if another group comes into power. They set precedent and under such precedent even Sharia Law could be enacted in Moslem dominated areas of the country, such as Dearborn Michigan, or polygamy in separatist Mormon communities in Utah and Idaho.

I am sorry but that is antithetical to the thoughts of our founders and the real defenders of religious liberty in the early days of our republic. John Leland, head of the Virginia Baptists and a key player in the drafting of the First Amendment and religious liberty protections in Virginia wrote:

“The notion of a Christian commonwealth should be exploded forever…Government should protect every man in thinking and speaking freely, and see that one does not abuse another. The liberty I contend for is more than toleration. The very idea of toleration is despicable; it supposes that some have a pre-eminence above the rest to grant indulgence, whereas all should be equally free, Jews, Turks, Pagans and Christians.”

Leland understood what he was talking about, because in Virginia Baptists and others were being persecuted by Anglicans who before the Revolution had been the State Church of Virginia and wanted to be again in the new republic. James Madison wrote of the danger: “Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other sects?”

I will defend the right of religious conservative to believe what they want, including the right to teach it in their churches, church schools and homes and to express those views in the public square as part of real dialogue. I may not agree with them, but if I want my views to be protected I should grant others what I would want. What I cannot support is the attempt of some politically active Christian conservatives to force those views on others through the power of the State, the public schools or any other place where the citizens of our very diverse and pluralistic society have to co-exist.

Likewise, I have become much more outspoken in defending those who are the targets of real Christian hate, in particular the LGBT community, unbelievers, especially atheists and agnostics and Moslems. That may seem odd, but really, if we as Christians do not show God’s love to them, just how do we expect that they will embrace what we believe?

I love the movie Inherit the Wind. I especially love the scene where Spencer Tracy playing the fictionalized version of Clarence Darrow gives a logical yet passionate defense of religious, civil and intellectual liberty.

“Can’t you understand? That if you take a law like evolution and you make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools? And tomorrow you may make it a crime to read about it. And soon you may ban books and newspapers. And then you may turn Catholic against Protestant, and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the mind of man. If you can do one, you can do the other. Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding. And soon, your Honor, with banners flying and with drums beating we’ll be marching backward, BACKWARD, through the glorious ages of that Sixteenth Century when bigots burned the man who dared bring enlightenment and intelligence to the human mind!”

Since I don’t want to go back to the 16th Century I will be content to live in the freedom that I have on the margins of contemporary American Christianity. Personally I would rather be there than in the 16th century.

Back in 2010 when I was getting kicked out of my old church and suffering the rejection of friends it wasn’t something that I enjoyed. However, I am grateful to be where I am now and to have the freedom that I enjoy. I certainly didn’t plan it this way, but I am definitely okay with the way things have turned out. Living on the margins of American Christianity beats the hell out of living within the hateful, greedy and oppressive structures that permeate our American Christian landscape.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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January 25, 2015 · 23:33

Inheriting the Wind: Iowa & the GOP 2015

I wonder about the people now leading the Republican Party, especially the Christian Right and the politicians that fall all over themselves to ingratiate themselves to get their vote. I wonder if they have any clue as to the long term damage that they are doing to that party, their faith or to the country.

I should know something about this, because for most of my adult life I was a Republican, and at times subscribed to some of the same beliefs as the current leaders of the Religious Right that dominate my former party. To watch the events of this weekend, like so many others of the past couple of decades before, was mind-numbing.

Mike Huckabee. the Trinity of Evil Incarnate: Preacher, Pundit and Politician

The establishment GOP wants the votes of the Christian Right and the Tea Party, however, despite that they really don’t want them running the party. The establishment wants to have it both ways. They want to look like the boring conservatives of the pre-Reagan and Gingrich eras but they need to capture the votes of a base that is anything but that. That is why I find the potential candidacies of Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney so amusing. Neither man can meet the ideological and religious litmus tests of the people who helped the GOP capture both the House and Senate and neither stands a bat’s chance in hell at winning the nomination, or if they do to secure the support of the base. In order to do that they would have to deny who they are, the true descendants of the less than ideological Republican Party of men like Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Nelson Rockefeller and Gerald Ford. Men whose relatively moderate beliefs were swept away by the so called Reagan Revolution and Gingrich takeover of 1994.

But Barry Goldwater warned us about them. Goldwater said back in 1981:

The situation reminds me of the movie Inherit the Wind, the fictional portrayal of the Scopes Monkey Trial. In the movie one of the most stalwart critics of evolution, the former Presidential Candidate and Preacher Matthew Brady played by Frederic March, who has helped lead the city where the trial is being held into an anti-secular fervor. At the beginning of the trial he encourages the townspeople to attend a “prayer meeting.” The meeting becomes quite heated as the town’s preacher, Reverend Brown, played by Claude Akins, who has launched into a full assault on all that oppose Brady, and therefore God.

Reverend Brown works himself into a frenzy, condemn the accused and all that would defend him, including his very own daughter:

His daughter, who is engaged to the accused cries out: “No! No, Pa! Don’t pray to destroy Bert!”

Then the reverend utters words which remind me so much of what I heard in Iowa this weekend:

“Lord, we call down the same curse on those who ask grace for this sinner—though they be blood of my blood, and flesh of my flesh!”

Brady, not seeing just how he has brought this about stops the good Reverend Brown and tells him:

“it is possible to be overzealous, to destroy that which you hope to save — so that nothing is left but emptiness.” He then quotes from the book of Proverbs: “Remember the wisdom of Solomon in the book of Proverbs. “He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind.”

To me this seems to be analogous to the current dilemma faced by the Republican Party. It has helped create, sustain and institutionalize a monster, and now seeing the danger doesn’t know what to do about it, and cannot admit its culpability in for it. Goldwater realized this in the earliest days of the movement which has consumed the Republican Party. The preachers have taken control and they will damn all who do not agree with them to destruction, even those of their own party.

The have been overzealous, and will continue to be so because like Matthew Brady they cannot acknowledge that their zeal may be misdirected and malevolent.

Like Reverend Brown, they are consumed by their hatred for a a non-believer, and they are willing to destroy the people closest to them to do so. I know this is true, because when I expressed doubt and did not tow the party line of my former church I was thrown out. Sadly, most of the men that I had previously counted as my closest friends abandoned or even condemned me.

My situation reminds me of a another exchange in the film between Brady and his opponent, Henry Drummond played by Spencer Tracy. Brady said: “Why is it, my old friend, that you’ve moved so far away from me?”

To which Drummond replied: “All motion is relative, Matt. Maybe it’s you who’ve moved away by standing still.”

In standing still and condemning all who differ from their beliefs on any point, the preachers who now, in conduction with their business benefactors will indeed inherit the wind.

Ten years ago I could not have imagined this, but when I read the transcripts of many of the speakers fighting for the GOP leadership in Iowa this weekend it was yet another epiphany, in a series of epiphanies since I served in Iraq. The Iowa conference was a gathering of true believers, appealing to true believers. It was the proverbial self-licking ice cream cone with Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Ted Cruz, Steve King, Ben Carson, Scott Walker, Rick Perry and the ever imbecilic Donald Trump leading the way. The Iowa meeting was more like the prayer meeting in Inherit the Wind than anything remotely connected with a normal American political meeting regardless of the party. Self congratulatory in denial the meeting was profound for its vapid rancor.

As far as me, watching this and all the other shenanigans of the Christian Right, I am sorry that I didn’t see it coming sooner. It took me until 2008 to realize that I really had not moved, but that the GOP moved, and continues to move away from me.

That is the scary part. Barry Goldwater was all too right in his analysis of those who have taken over the GOP. It is hard to believe that the only Republican bold enough to speak out against this takeover before it happened was the original “true conservative” of the GOP, a man whose 1964 campaign for President opened the door for their takeover of the party. Unlike those who attempted to claim his mantle including Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater really understood the danger of the genie that he let out of the bottle.

The irony is truly profound.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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January 9, 2015 · 23:59

Power Hungry Religionists Will Inherit the Wind

“An idea is a greater monument than a cathedral. And the advance of man’s knowledge is a greater miracle than all the sticks turned to snakes or the parting of the waters.” Henry Drummond (Spencer Tracy) in Inherit the Wind

Evil is evil is evil, especially when it is done in the name of God, no-matter what one’s name is for God is. Since the attacks of 9-11-2001 most of the attention for terrorist attacks and murder in the name of God have been focused on radical militant Moslems, a I dare say with good reason. Whether it was the 9-11 attack, the 3-11-2004 attacks in Madrid which killed 191 people and wounded another 1800, 7-7-2005 attacks on in London which killed 52 people and wounded over 700 more, the 26-11-2008 attacks in Mumbai, India which killed 164 people and wounded another 308, and the most recent attacks in Paris are the wave tips of radical Islamic terror.

Done in the name of Allah and his Prophet, allegedly for the misdeeds and foreign policy of the West and Israel, the attacks are meant as revenge and retaliation for the deaths of Moslems in various places, or in the case of the Paris massacre of the Charlie Hebdo staff, blasphemy.

These attacks are rightful condemned, as are thousands of others committed by Islamic extremists, most of which are directed at other Moslems. While those against the West and Israel get the most attention, the vast majority of these ruthless killers victims are other Moslems. I think just last year alone over 15,000 Iraqis, the vast majority of whom were Moslems were killed by other Moslems, especially those of the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. Also victimized were Arab Christians and others. Their crime, not being the right sect of Moslem, or some other similar reason.

Said Kouachi

However, though a sizable number of Moslems agree with, condone and support such actions, in a religion that numbers close to 1.6 billion adherents, they are a minority and the vast majority of Moslems condemn their radical beliefs.

Said Kouachi and Cherif Kouachi after killing Paris Policeman Ahmed Marabet

While Moslem extremists account for most of these crimes committed in the name of God, they are not alone. In India there are fundamentalist indus who routinely kill Moslems and Christians, burn their villages and commit other atrocities. There are some Orthodox Jews who routinely take out their violence on Israeli Arabs, many of whom are Christians as well as Jews who are, well to put in in the words of the Orthodox, heretics, no better and maybe even worse than non-believers.

But sadly there are Christians who committed similar murderous acts through terrorist activity.

Anders Behring Breivik

Anders Behring Breivik, a Norwegian went into action to kill the enemies of Western Civilization and Christian culture on July 22nd 2008. In an assault that included a car bomb which killed 8 people and wounded 209 and an attack on a youth camp which killed 69 and wounded another 110, almost all of them children.

Eric Rudolph justified his 1996 bombings of an Atlanta abortion clinic and the Olympic village on his “Christian” faith. Likewise, Scott Roeder a professed “pro-life” Christian murdered Dr. George Tiller in Wichita Kansas, in Tiller’s church, because the latter was an abortionist. Both Rudolph and Roeder claimed their authority as Jesus and the Bible.

Timothy McVeigh who killed 168 people and wounded over 400 more was to a Moslem, but a lapsed Catholic who had what best can be said a confused religious identity alternating between Catholicism, whose last rights he received before his execute, the Nazi concept of a Believer in God, and that of an agnostic. His motivations were not religious but political.

And sadly, those again are just the wave tops of terrorism, and that does not count the supposedly Christian members of the Irish Republican Army and Protestant paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, the murder of liberal Catholics and those accused of being Marxists in Brazil, Argentina, El Salvador and other South and Central American countries by “conservative Catholics” or “Evangelical Christians,” or the Rwanda genocide when Christian Hutus and Tutsis slaughtered each other with abandon killing about a million people.

Back in the days of state churches British Anglicans persecuted Roman Catholics as well as Separatists and Baptists, Catholics in France, Austria, Spain and Italy used the power of state religion to persecute dissenters of any kind, and in the American Colonies Puritans conducted witch trials, persecuted and executed Baptists and Quakers, and practiced genocide against native Americans, including those who had converted to the Christian faith. Need I even go into the extermination of the Native American tribes by English and Spanish colonists and those who followed them in the name of Manifest Destiny; or those who enslaved African Americans in this country, claiming the backing of God and the Bible?

Almost all of these acts were done in the name of God, as are hundreds, if not thousands of acts done every year. I shan’t go into the crimes committed by the Nazis, which though done in the name of the Nazi ideology included the justification that the Jews were the “Christ killers,” nor shall I go into depth about the various pogroms in Russia, be they Czarist, Communist or by the new Russia state, or the crimes committed by the Chinese Communists or Imperial Japan.

I could go on and on and on, but that would just be beating a dead horse and I am against abusing animals, even after they are dead; but the list can go on, and on, and on, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

The fact is that no-matter what group kills in the name of their God, or if no God, their ideology, race hatred, or tribal rivalry, it should be condemned by all.

What happened this week in Paris was just another chapter in the inhumanity of people motivated by their interpretation of God, and their attempt to punish non-believers. Some might attempt to accuse me of using false equivalents, or attempting to deflect legitimate blame for these horrible murders in Paris, but that is not so. I condemn them, those who conducted and supported them and those who plan the next round: which sadly will happen again, and again and again; because the bloodlust of the true believer cannot be satiated.

The Al Qaeda Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) claimed credit for the attack and one of its leaders, Sheikh Usama (RA) said in his message to the West: “If there is no check on the freedom of your words, then let your hearts be open to the freedom of our actions.”

In our time it appears that the Islamic extremists have ensured that a generational war between radical Islamists and the West occurs. That war will likely claim the lives of millions of people before it is done. I would hope that saner heads would prevail, but religion and ideology are powerful motivators. If we still value the rights of freedom, freedom of speech, dissent and thought we have to defeat them, sadly with the these extremists that will mean taking them on in a war, since others of the Al Qaeda and Islamic State have promised to continue such attacks. We would be fools to bury our heads in the sand.

What happened in Paris was an attack against the values of freedom of speech and expression which lie at the heart of modern Western and American political belief. Sadly, though, even in the West there are men like Catholic professor and philosopher Peter Kreeft who call for an “Ecumenical Jihad” of Catholics, Evangelical Christians, Orthodox Christians, Jews and Moslems against secularism, which he has identified as the common enemy of all. To such people ideas and thought contrary to their doctrine, and the people that support them are the enemy.

You see the attack on Charlie Hebdo was a blow against secularism and the freedom of speech and expression. It was a crime not only against humanity, but ideas. Just because radicalized Moslems did it doesn’t mean that others, like Breivik, Rudolph, Roeder and their fellow travelers would not do the same in the name of their God given the opportunity.

But then in our own country there are those who want to want to establish Biblical Law as the law of the land in this country. These Christian religionists and extremists have claimed a powerful place in American politics and daily advocate silencing and persecuting all who disagree with them. Against science, against tolerance, against pluralism, against the rights of all who disagree with their theological construct they believe it is God’s will that they rule the earth. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson wrote:

“[I]n our country are evangelists and zealots of many different political, economic and religious persuasions whose fanatical conviction is that all thought is divinely classified into two kinds — that which is their own and that which is false and dangerous.”

Gary North, a leader in the Christian Reconstructionist movement and advisor to both Ron and Rand Paul and leader of Evangelicals in the Tea Party movement wrote:

Such words cause me to tremble for they strike at the heart of the American republic. Madison, Jefferson and other founders warned against such religious-political ideology. In Inherit the Wind Henry Drummond, a fictionalized version of Clarence Darrow protested to the judge and jury:

As a Christian, or rather what I would rather say now as a follower of Jesus, I agree with Henry Drummond played by Spencer Tracy when it comes to religious extremists and other no-compromise ideologues:

“As long as the prerequisite for that shining paradise is ignorance, bigotry and hate, I say the hell with it.”

Peace

Padre Steve+

2 Comments

Filed under civil rights, faith, film, History, News and current events, Political Commentary

Tagged as al qaeda, Anders Behring Breivik, attack on charlie hebdo, christian dominionism, eric randolph rudolph, freedom of speech, gary north, george tiller, henry drummond, inherit the wind, Islamic terrorism, justice robert jackson, religionists, scott roeder, spencer tracy, terrorism, timothy mcveigh

March 26, 2014 · 20:11

The Freedom of Living on the Margins of American Christianity

Me and my Littlest Buddy, Minnie Scule

I have been living on the margins of American Christianity for a bit over six years now. The watershed moment was when I returned from Iraq in February 2008 my faith shattered and my soul wounded suffering from severe PTSD. I was not in good shape then and two years later after faith returned, albeit in a different form I realized that I no longer fit in the mainstream of conservative American Christianity.

In a sense for two millennia various groups of Christians have been creating God in their own image and inflicting their beliefs on others. Anne Lamott has a pithy little thought that I love: “You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

What was odd about that church was that in 2004 I was censured by the then second ranking archbishop in that church, forbidden from publishing and even having or having any personal contact with his clergy where I was living because I was “too Catholic.” The irony was that this bishop was a big cause of the trouble that the church went through including the massive splits that occurred in 2005-2010. He left that church, became the editor of a conservative Catholic website and now is a Priest in the Anglican Ordinate and effectively a Roman Catholic Priest. I love irony.

Thankfully I still have many friends in my old church, and thankfully there are good people there doing their best to live the Gospel. I can’t say that I would fit in there anymore, but I have no residual animosity to the current leadership of that denomination and pray that they continue to recover from the tumult and division that marked their struggle from 2005-2011. I admit that it was a painful time and for a while I was quite bitter about how I had been treated, but it has been easier to live by forgiving. C. S. Lewis noted: “To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.” Since I have been forgiven for so much how can I not at least try to live in a forgiving manner?

Last night I wrote about my frustrations with American Christianity in particular the conservative Christian subculture. Looking at what I wrote I can see that I definitely exist on the margins of that world. But that is not a bad thing, there is a certain amount of freedom as well as intellectual honesty and integrity that I have now that I could not have being for all intents closeted in my former denomination.

Personally, and with no invective intended I have to imagine that if a Moslem leader in this country said somethings similar that the Religious Right would be screaming bloody murder and that Bill O’Reilly and Fox News would be leading the charge.

This is no empty threat, throughout the country Christian Conservatives and their political front men are ramming through laws that have but one intent, the establishment of a Christian theocracy and the persecution of those who do not agree. Allegedly all of these laws are designed to “protect religious liberty” but in fact are nothing more than a legislative attempt to disenfranchise non-believers or others that the majority does not approve. Unfortunately the people pushing these laws do not understand that once the become law they can be used against them if another group comes into power. They set precedent and under such precedent even Sharia Law could could be enacted in Moslem dominated areas of the country, such as Dearborn Michigan, or polygamy in separatist Mormon communities in Utah and Idaho.

Peace

Padre Steve+

6 Comments

Filed under christian life, civil rights, faith, laws and legislation, Political Commentary, Religion

February 16, 2014 · 21:41

The Insidious and Orwellian “Religious Liberties Protection Act” of “Christian” Kansas

“There is no such thing as part freedom.” Nelson Mandela

In their desire to protect the rights of conservative Evangelical and Catholic Christians the representatives of the State of Kansas enacted a new law. It really is an amazing law that enshrines discrimination against homosexuals based on religious preference. The law is targeted to allegedly protect people who do not want to serve homosexuals based on their religious beliefs. However, the law is so broadly written that it can be used against anyone for any reason by an individual, business or organization “if it would be contrary to the sincerely held religious beliefs of the individual or religious entity.”

It is legislation that is reminiscent of Jim Crow laws used against blacks, Nazi Germany’s Nuremberg Laws against the Jews of the 1930s, and the laws of Islamic nations that allow non-Moslems or more open minded Moslems to be prosecuted or even killed for anything that offends Islam.

Kansas Representative Charles Macheers

The language of the authors of the Bill is Orwellian. It is called The Religious Liberties Protection Act. The sponsor of the legislation State Representative Charles Macheers noted:

“Discrimination is horrible. It’s hurtful … It has no place in civilized society, and that’s precisely why we’re moving this bill. There have been times throughout history where people have been persecuted for their religious beliefs because they were unpopular. This bill provides a shield of protection for that.”

However, Macheers and his supporters seek to prevent discrimination by enshrining it as law. Unlike Bills in some other states, this Bill does not simply apply to private business or individuals, but it also empowers government employees to discriminate against people if it violates “their sincerely held religious beliefs.” It is a law that allows public employees, paid by taxpayers being free to discriminate. (Read the Bill as enacted here: http://www.kslegislature.org/li/b2013_14/measures/documents/hb2453_01_0000.pdf)

What this does is to give anyone claiming a “sincerely held religious belief” in a private or public capacity to deny people basic civil rights and liberties. It is license to discriminate and it is something that James Madison warned us about:

“Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other sects?”

The authors of this legislation and its supporters throughout the country don’t seem to get the fact that once you begin down this path that you set precedent. That precedent to discriminate against a person or group of people based on religious beliefs is dangers. The writers seem unconcerned about the ramifications of what would happen if this bill became law. In their hatred of homosexuality and homosexuals they forget that any law can which legalizes discrimination can be used against anyone, including those that enact it order to supposedly protect their religious liberty.

They also fail to understand the words of Thomas Jefferson who wrote:

“I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”

I am a defender of religious liberty, but religious liberty needs to be for all, not just for some. Religious liberty is something that our founders understood, and they took great care to ensure that the rights of religious minorities and unbelievers were respected in our Constitution. Just as I do not want the government regulating religion, even religious views that I do not agree, I do not want religion to be used to deny the civil rights of others simply because those people are different from those that choose to use the law to discriminate. I wonder what those that support this law would do if in another state the same kind of law was passed to discriminate against their basic civil and human rights. I don’t think that they would like it very much.

My view is much like Andrew Sullivan. I may not agree with someone’s deeply held religious convictions, they may be intolerant and even hateful must be allowed the space to speak about them and even enter into the public discourse. I do not want to see religious people silenced. I may disagree with what some say and how they say it but they like everyone else need to have the space to speak their convictions. Allowing that space is what “true liberals do.” Sullivan notes that those who advance the agenda of Gay rights and equality “should be wary of being seen to trample on religious freedom and be defined as discriminators of another sort.”

I agree with Sullivan on this, the fact is that Gays like so many others have been the target of state sanctioned religious discrimination throughout history. It is natural that the LGBT community, which has been so hated and discriminated against would want to push hard against those that use religion to attack, demean and marginalize them. But it is important remember that reconciliation and acceptance is a two way street. The actions of the late Nelson Mandela after the fall of Apartheid in South Africa should be a model. Mandela said: “For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”

Unfortunately in Kansas, many religious people, for reasons, some real but many imagined; feel the compelling need to use the power of the law to suppress LGBT people or others that they believe threaten them. In other places religious people attempt to use the police power of the government at the Federal, State and Local level to suppress anything or the activities of anyone they deem to be against God, or rather their interpretation of God.

Though I am not Gay I feel the sting of these laws because although my Church will allow me to marry a Gay couple I cannot in the state that I reside or many others. I know a number of Gay couples that have asked me if I could perform their marriages, but such will have to wait until we can find a time and a place where I can legally perform their nuptials. The sad thing is that in some places like Indiana there are legislators who in defending their religious freedom would criminalize an attempt by me or any other minister performing such an act if they could. Thankfully that amendment to the Indiana Constitution has been pushed back for at least two years.

Their belief compels them to use the law against homosexuals, non-Christian religious minorities, secularists and humanists and attempt to curtail the advances and discoveries of science, archeology and history. I believe that such attempts are short sighted and do violence to the religious beliefs that many espouse. Eric Hoffer wrote in his book The True Believer that “Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves.”

The proposed law in Kansas, which looks as if may stall in the State Senate is an evil being enacted to supposedly support the good. Nothing good can come of it, if passed it will poison the hearts and minds of the very people it is supposedly written to protect. It will give them legal right to treat people who are different than them in a way that does not reflect the Gospel, and encourage the worst type of self-righteous behavior, and it will blow back in their face.

The attempt of the Kansas legislature to pass this Bill into law reminds me of something that Spencer Tracy’s character, Henry Drummond said in the film Inherit the Wind:

“I say that you cannot administer a wicked law impartially. You can only destroy, you can only punish. And I warn you, that a wicked law, like cholera, destroys every one it touches. Its upholders as well as its defiers.”

This is a wicked law, and if it is made law it will do great harm to those that is directed against, those who the precedents in it may be used against in the future and those that think that will protect their. It is Orwellian and at its heart it is evil. If it is enacted into law it should be opposed at every opportunity by every person of good will, no matter what their faith, political ideology or sexual preference, because all people have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Peace

Padre Steve+

1 Comment

Filed under faith, laws and legislation, News and current events

Tagged as andrew sullivan, charles macheers, discrimination, eric hoffer, establishment of religion, evil laws, first amendment, god, henry drummond, inherit the wind, islamic law, james madison, jim crow laws, kansas legislature, lgbt, marriage equity, Nelson Mandela, nuremberg laws, orwell, orwellian, religious liberties protection act, religious liberty, spencer tracy, the true believer, thomas jefferson, u.s. constitution

December 29, 2013 · 02:47

Inherit the Wind: A Film for Today

“As long as the prerequisite for that shining paradise is ignorance, bigotry and hate, I say the hell with it.” Henry Drummond (Spencer Tracy) Inherit the Wind

It is fascinating that a play and film set about an incident that actually occurred in the 1920s remains so timeless. It is hard to believe that 90 years after the trial and over 50 years after the movie that our society would still be debating the issue in the movie and that legislatures and school boards are still attempting to pass religious doctrine off as science.

It is a film about what is commonly called the “Scopes Monkey Trial” which was litigated in July of 1925 and featured an epic battle between populist three time Presidential Candidate and former Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan and famed defense attorney Clarence Darrow.

The trial was brought about after the passage of the Butler Act in Tennessee. It was an act that made it a criminal offense to teach evolution in any publicly funded school. The act stipulated:

“That it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.”

The author of the act was Tennessee State Representative John W. Butler, a farmer and the head of the World Christian Fundamentals Association an interdenominational organization dedicated to a “New Protestantism” based on the Pre-Millennial interpretation of Bible prophecy.

Butler was heavily influenced by William Jennings Bryant who with his followers had gotten legislation banning evolution in 15 states. H.L. Mencken commented that over the years of his public life that Bryan had “transformed himself” into some “sort of Fundamentalist Pope.”

Butler was opposed to the teaching of evolution and the act passed the house by a vote of 75-1. No public hearings had been held on it and no debate proffered.

Butler’s legislation did face some opposition in the State Senate. However it passed there on a vote of 24-6 after the famous Fundamentalist evangelist Billy Sunday preached as series of revival meetings to incite public opinion in favor of the bill. Sunday’s message was clear, he preached that “Education today is chained to the Devil’s throne” and praised Butler and the House for their “action against that God forsaken gang of evolutionary cutthroats.” The bill was signed into law by Governor Austin Peay, but Peay expected little to come of it.

The American Civil Liberties Union put the law to the test using high school biology teacher John Scopes who was charged with breaking the law. The trial ended up becoming less about the guilt or innocence of Scopes or even the constitutionality of the law, but rather as the field where the conflict between religious and social issues and faith versus intellectualism was fought. Butler, the man who legislated the law on religious grounds covered it as a correspondent.

Mencken wrote of the trial:

“The Scopes trial, from the start, has been carried on in a manner exactly fitted to the anti- evolution law and the simian imbecility under it. There hasn’t been the slightest pretense to decorum. The rustic judge, a candidate for re-election, has postured the yokels like a clown in a ten-cent side show, and almost every word he has uttered has been an undisguised appeal to their prejudices and superstitions. The chief prosecuting attorney, beginning like a competent lawyer and a man of self-respect, ended like a convert at a Billy Sunday revival. It fell to him, finally, to make a clear and astounding statement of theory of justice prevailing under fundamentalism. What he said, in brief, was that a man accused of infidelity had no rights whatever under Tennessee law…”

http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/580245/Inherit-The-Wind-Movie-Clip-We-Are-Simple-Folk.html

It was an epic event covered by news outlets across the nation and the atmosphere in the town outside the courthouse was circus like, something that the movie depicts very well. The defense was not allowed to produce Scientists as witnesses, even to the chagrin of Butler who despite his opposition to evolutionary theory felt that it was not fair. When all was said and done Scopes had been convicted and a fine of $100 assessed, which was overturned on appeal. Bryan died a week after the trial and of the 15 states with similar legislation to Butler passed them into law.

The film is based on the play of the same name written in 1950 by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. It was written during the height of the McCarthy Era and opened in 1955. The first film version starring Spencer Tracy as Henry Drummond (Clarence Darrow), Frederic March as Matthew Harrison Brady (William Jennings Bryan), Gene Kelly as E.K. Hornbeck (H.L. Mencken) while Dick York played Bertram Cates (John Scopes). Lawrence and Lee invented some fictional characters including Reverend Brown played by Claude Akins.

The film directed by Stanley Kramer captures the raw emotions of the trial, the participants and the spectators who came from near and far. The depiction of the angry mob of Christians is terrifying to watch. In the film they sing:

“We’ll hang Bertram Cates to a sour apple tree, we’ll hang Bertram Cates to a sour apple tree, we’ll hang Bertram Cates to a sour apple tree. Our God is marching on! Glory Glory Hallelujah! Glory Glory Hallelujah! Glory Gory Hallelujah! His truth is marching on. We’ll hang Henry Drummond to a sour apple tree, we’ll hang Henry Drummond to a sour apple tree, we’ll hang Henry Drummond to a sour apple tree, our God is marching on.”

March’s depiction of Matthew Harrison Brady is riveting. The Brady of the film does not do justice to other parts of Bryan’s life. Bryan, outside his fight against evolution was ahead of his time in many ways. Earlier in his career he had pressed for Universal Suffrage, fought against war and labored against the social Darwinism of the banks, business and the Robber Barons. However the loss of three Presidential elections left him bitter and it is believed that he saw the trial as an opportunity to regain the limelight and perhaps build a base to again run for President. This speech by Brady is a fair characterization of Bryan’s beliefs:

“I have been to their cities and I have seen the altars upon which they sacrifice the futures of their children to the gods of science. And what are their rewards? Confusion and self-destruction. New ways to kill each other in wars. I tell you gentlemen the way of science is the way of darkness.”

The problem with the Bryan of the Scopes Trial was that he was a caricature of his former self, he played to the crowds. The trial played to the worst parts of his character and that shows in the movie depiction. Some Christians find this an unfair portrayal and even call it a lie, however even though March’s portrayal is fictional it does fit the spirit of the trial which is captured in the writings of many of the contemporary commentators of the trial. Mencken wrote of the real Bryan: It is a tragedy, indeed, to begin life as a hero and to end it as a buffoon.

http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/179726/Inherit-the-Wind-Movie-Clip-Time.html

Another of those commentators, Marcet Haldeman-Julius wrote of the real Bryan:

“As he sat there in the court room, day after day, silent, fanning, fanning, his face set I was appalled by the hardness, the malice in it. No one who has watched the fanatical light in those hard, glittering black eyes of Bryan’s can doubt but that he believes both in a heaven and in a hell. At the same time the cruel lines of his thin, tight-pressed mouth proclaim, it seems to me, that he would stop at nothing to attain his own ends. It is anything but a weak face–Bryan’s. But it is a face from which one could expect neither understanding nor pity. My own opinion is that he is sincere enough in his religion. Also that in it is included the doctrine Paul so frankly taught–that a lie told for the glory of God is justified…”

But I think that the real drama and tension in the film comes from Spencer Tracy in his portrayal of Drummond. This speech is taken almost verbatim from the trial:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_DQUAuNUvw

I think that this speech is the real crux of the tension that we face even now. Legislators in a number of States have enacted laws of much the same kind of spirit as Butler and defended them with the same kind of fire as Bryan. Civil libertarians, especially secular ones bring up the same issues as Darrow did. I am a Christian and a Priest and my thinking about this is much like that espoused by Drummond in the movie.

So the film may be a fictional depiction of the Scopes Trial, but it is a film that I think that people would do well to watch. I don’t expect everyone to agree with me or the issues that I agree with brought up by the character of Henry Drummond. However, I think that everyone should watch the film and come to their own conclusions as well as to ask themselves how their particular ethic, whether secular or religious informs them in how they deal with this issue and so many others that divide us today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECITwTYSIs

I just know when I watched it again this week that it could have been in the news this week, only with a different cast of characters. My concern is that there is a very loud minority that wants to inflict its particular religious view on everyone and use the public treasure to do it. The attitude of many of these people is much like the characters from the actual Scopes Trial including their view that pushes both demonizes those they oppose and their desire to regulate the secular opposition to the sidelines.

I know that the same accusation is made by religious people of secularists, however I have seen the results of religious wars in Iraq and the Balkans, and from history. Those conflicts and the brutality of religious people in them give me great pause when I see religious and political leaders here suggest curtailing the civil liberties and even using the law against those that they oppose. As Drummond asked in the movie: “Must men go to jail because they find themselves at odds with a self-appointed prophet?”

That is why this film is so important.

Peace

Padre Steve+

4 Comments

Filed under faith, film, History, laws and legislation, movies, Religion

Tagged as aclu, austin peay, bertram cates, billy sunday, butler act, clarence darrow, claude akins, dick york, e k hornbeck, evolution, frederic march, gene kelly, h l mencken, henry drummond, inherit the wind, jerome lawrence, john scopes, john w butler, marcet haldeman-julius, matthew harrison brady, robert e lee (playwright), scopes monkey trial, spencer tracy, stanley kramer, william jennings bryan, World Christian Fundamentals Association

Tag Archives: inherit the wind

With Bible in Hand: Anti-Gay Christians & Religious Tyranny

Strike Down the Sinners: The Politics of the Christian Right

Duggared: The Moral Implosion of the Christian Right

The Winner Takes it All: American Christian Greed

Another Year on the Margins of the Church

Inheriting the Wind: Iowa & the GOP 2015

Power Hungry Religionists Will Inherit the Wind

The Freedom of Living on the Margins of American Christianity

The Insidious and Orwellian “Religious Liberties Protection Act” of “Christian” Kansas

Inherit the Wind: A Film for Today

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