Know your faith, celebrate difference

From Episcopal Café. The Awareness Project - know your faith, celebrate difference:

Attacking the other

Will Bunch, writing at the PHiladelphia INquirer blog Attytood:

In 2010, a large swath of the American public -- led by ratings-mad media mavens and immoral politicians like Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin -- had declared out all-out war on "the Other" in America in all its alleged forms, from immigrants to Muslims to non-white aides working in the West Wing of the White House and of course the president himself. ...

So a smooth-talking, mixed-race Democrat in the white house becomes a demon, and the code word "Muslim" begins to represent everything they are afraid of. Muslims and gays.

Bishop Gene Robinson wonders at the timing of the new religious demonization relative to the sudden movement on GLBT rights. He writes,

Now, however, it appears that gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people’s success in achieving equal rights in this country is impending and virtually assured. It makes me wonder, then, if a new “enemy” is now being chosen—Muslim Americans and Islam.

However, it's worth remembering that the common thread to both of these is the opposition of the rigid Christian Right. Christopher Hitchens picks it up, writing about on Glenn Beck's tent revival on the mall:

In a rather curious and confused way, some white people are starting almost to think like a minority, even like a persecuted one. What does it take to believe that Christianity is an endangered religion in America or that the name of Jesus is insufficiently spoken or appreciated? .....Saturday's rally was quite largely confined to expressions of pathos and insecurity, voiced in a sickly and pious tone. The emotions that underlay it, however, may not be uttered that way indefinitely.

And in fact, already the ugly side of American bigotry is out in the open, fanned by religious fervor.

• Item: A New York taxi driver is attacked by a knife-wielding passenger who asked "Are you Muslim?"
• Item: a gay candidate for office in Kansas receives a death threat
• Item:A series of attacks against GLBT people in Covington KY by white supremecists
• Item: Arson against the construction site for a mosque in Murfreesboro, TN
• Item: Seattle shop clerk attacked as a Muslim (though he was probably Sikh)
• Item: Teenagers harass and fire shots at a mosque in western NY

Yes, there is some pushback. Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York, is offering a spirited defense of the non-mosque that is proposed for not-ground-zero, and so did Orrin Hatch of all people. There are other examples of people who get it. But the simmering violence under the surface in this declining republic continues to bubble over. Too many people are afraid and ignorant, and the spark of their fear is fanned by strident demagogues wrapped in religion.

It seems to me that if any issue cries out for moral voices, it is this one. Can anything be more fundamentally opposed to both American ideals and truly Christian values? Or perhaps it is easier to think, "I did not care, because I am not a Muslim." At some point, we will all be "other". Will anyone speak for us?

Tenor and baritone wed

Catholic school fires lesbian for marrying her partner

Same sex marriage may be legal in Massachusetts but it's a problem for the Roman Catholic church.

Christine M. Judd, who served as athletic director and dean of students, said she is no longer an employee of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield school system after a meeting Wednesday with administrators of the Catholic high school.

The diocese listed her departure as a resignation, but Judd said she is still exploring her legal options.

“I was given a choice of termination or resignation,” Judd said. “I’m hurt, but I wish nothing but the best for Cathedral, its students, the parents, the athletic teams, administration and faculty. I bleed purple (the school’s color).”...

“I married my partner this summer,” Judd said. “I was hoping that my loyalty, my professionalism the last 12 years would supersede the current hypocrisy that has already been shown with the Diocese of Springfield.”

Asked to elaborate on her claim of hypocrisy, Judd said she questions if there are lay persons who work for the Catholic diocese who divorce and remarry without an annulment, or employees who use birth control, or men who have had vasectomies, or individuals who are pro-choice on abortion.

A private school is entitled to employ who it wants. So I suspect that Ms Judd is out of luck on this one. But I applaud her for pointing out the hypocrisy and selective enforcement of matters of doctrine. And I applaud her for making it public.

Apparently she did not flaunt her marriage, but someone got a picture and sent it to the diocese. She has since decided that she will not try to sue the diocese, but may try to find some way to challenge the person who turned her in.

So, when will the Diocese ask how all those families have only 1 or 2 children? When will they fire a woman teacher for picking up The Pill at the pharmacy? When will they comb the files for re-married parents and employees so they can fire them? After all, if it's just a matter of doctrine, then being gay should be no different than any other act of sexual immorality, right?

Right?

"Sunday Morning" -- "contemporary" worship

This amusing video was actually produced by an Evangelical mega-church. They are presumably trying to say, "oh we aren't THAT type of church", and people have passed it around to laugh at themselves. On the other hand, people outside the tradition think of it as satire. Regardless, it's pretty funny.

"Sunday's Coming" Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

Rowan on Hawking

CNN reports ABC Williams reaction to Stephen Hawking's new book. I don't think he has read the book - just reacting to what has been said about it.

Religious leaders in Britain on Friday hit back at claims by leading physicist Stephen Hawking that God had no role in the creation of the universe.
In his new book "The Grand Design," Britain's most famous scientist says that given the existence of gravity, "the universe can and will create itself from nothing," according to an excerpt published in The Times of London.

"Spontaneous creation is the reason why there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist," he wrote.

"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper [fuse] and set the universe going."

But the head of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams, told the Times that "physics on its own will not settle the question of why there is something rather than nothing."

He added: "Belief in God is not about plugging a gap in explaining how one thing relates to another within the Universe. It is the belief that there is an intelligent, living agent on whose activity everything ultimately depends for its existence."

Williams' comments were supported by leaders from across the religious spectrum in Britain. Writing in the Times, Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said: "Science is about explanation. Religion is about interpretation ... The Bible simply isn't interested in how the Universe came into being."

Tea Party mentality: their own reality

Glenn Beck's tent revival on the Washington Mall was hyped up by the Tea Party, who claim hundreds of thousands of attendees. A professional company and a consultant were hired by CBS news and estimated 87,000 ± 9000 were there. But crowd estimates are contentious. As noted by the consultant,

Because of the wild pre-inauguration predictions of how many would attend in person -- up to 5 million! -- my reality-based estimate was ignored by many left-wing commentators and embraced by those on the right..... I am amused to see that those who embraced my Obama inauguration estimate as soberly realistic are now attacking the Beck rally estimate, produced using exactly the same methods, as deliberately biased."

More disturbing, the company has received "hundreds of hate mails and angry phone calls" about their crowd estimates from angry tea-partiers.

Hate mail. Over a sober technical calculation.

In the days to come, I'll be posting some ruminations about the air of suppressed violence that seems to accompany the tea-partiers.

Uncivil discourse: from DC to HOA

We're having one of those contentious home owners' association elections in our neighborhood. Unfortunately it has exposed a rift in the community. Partly generational, the younger people would like to make some changes. The older people are resistant. This is normal.

What's not normal is the vehemence with which it's being fought. Instead of reading the different candidates' statements and deciding on the merits of their arguments, supporters of the status quo are walking around the community advocating a vote against the challenger, claiming she'll "do something illegal," and scare-mongering about higher HOA fees, etc. Rather than advocating positively for their own side, they are making threats and false accusations.

The net effect of this is to deepen the rift and entrench the opposition. Instead of finding the compromises that make for a modus vivendi, and mutual government in this shared community, it makes people unhappy and angry and disenfranchised.

It's not unlike Washington. The cynicism of the "scorched earth" policies of the Republicans is breathtaking. There is no longer any pretense of balance or the good of the country: just power, power, power that serves the oligarchs and the elites, facilitated by a compliant judiciary that has sold elections to the highest bidder. The days of actual statesmen in Congress, who compromised each other into the middle to mutual benefit, is eliminated. That shining city on the hill is dark and befouled, and is poised to be even worse after November.

As pointed out in this MUST READ article in the New Yorker, the "activism" of the tea partiers is fueled by the super-rich oil-baron Koch brothers, who have extreme libertarian views that would eliminate all regulation (environmental chief among them), all social safety nets, and of course, taxes for themselves. Indeed, many things that benefit the angry teapartiers, would be eliminated by these shadowy conspirators who hide behind shell organizations and think tanks, and have limitless pockets. The society they want to return to is almost feudal in its abuses, with grim images of Dickensian London coming to mind.

The Libertarian Party platform called for the abolition of the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., as well as of federal regulatory agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Energy. The Party wanted to end Social Security, minimum-wage laws, gun control, and all personal and corporate income taxes; it proposed the legalization of prostitution, recreational drugs, and suicide. Government should be reduced to only one function: the protection of individual rights. William F. Buckley, Jr., a more traditional conservative, called the movement "Anarcho-Totalitarianism."

What's amazing to me is how these teapartiers are persuaded to oppose their own self-interests and support this excrement.

As for our neighborhood? We used to like it. But with this viciousness, we're not as happy any more, and will probably more seriously consider moving.

I don't see the same option nationally.