Discussion between liberals/progressives and conservatives is always difficult because we see the world so differently. What makes it more difficult is when objective facts are left out or worse, stated exactly opposite of reality. Sometimes it is an unintentional misstatement akin to Barack Obama saying during this campaign for president that he had been to all 57 states. I suspect he was aware that there aren’t 57 states in the United State. Sometimes, false claims are made due to a lack of familiarity with the topic. Sometimes, they are just plain lies. I am not sure how to classify Joy Behar’s rewriting of the history of the Republican Party and blacks. Joy is one of the regulars on the ABC’s television show, “The View,” and a couple of weeks ago she claimed the Republican Party hasnt been black friendly over the many centuries in this country’.

Was Behar intentionally dishonest or does she not know history? I don’t know how to answer that question. First of all, Continue reading …

When I have an opportunity I enjoy watching John Stossel’s Show on FOX (weekly) or FOX Business (daily). John Stossel is a Libertarian and although I disagree with him on many things I find his style engaging, his questions well thought out and sometimes provocative. In a show this past weekend, that I believe was a rerun, he was interviewing various experts on questions like, should the government be involved in marriage? Should drugs be legalized? Should individuals be allowed to sell their organs for a profit? Along the way surrogate pregnancy was mentioned and David Boaz, Executive Vice President of the CATO Institute (a public policy think tank) pointed out that although the surrogate mother’s expenses were reimbursed, they weren’t really allowed to make money on their services. The discussion went further into adoption and the question was raised as to whether parents should be allowed to sell their children. David Boaz responded with the claim that one could not sell their children because a child isn’t property and a parent can’t own them. We might call this the myth of human rights. Continue reading …

So this week, I’m back to try to convince you to take a look at classicist Sarah Ruden‘s new book Paul Among the People:The Apostle Reinterpreted and Reimagined in his Own Time. I rarely plug a book this much and that should say something about how informative and thoughtful I think this book is. Rob Dreher at Beliefnet calls Ruden a “joyful iconoclast.” And that she is. She takes on three of the major iconic objections to the morality of Christianity –homosexuality, slavery, and the treatment of women– and dispels the myths surrounding the angst that has been leveled at Paul. That Christianity supported or at least turned a blind eye to slavery is not as common a salvo as it has been in the past. But its still there, lurking in the background. Did Christianity support slavery? The evidence can be damning. The early church fathers stopped short of denouncing slavery. In the US new denominations were created over the slavery issue prior to the civil war with Christians divided on the morality of slavery. Here’s a sermon from 1838 entitled “Slavery” quoted in Ruden’s book: Continue reading …

One of my favorite words to teach my students when I taught high school English was “neologism.” Its a word that means something like “newly made up word.” I would tell my students that the purpose of new vocabulary was to annoy and confuse your friends. After all, if your vocabulary was sufficiently erudite, you could insult someone and they wouldn’t even know it. Neologisms are everywhere. Four times a year, that bastion of all that is correct in the English language, The Oxford English Dictionary or the OED, adds a few precious words to the canon of English vocabulary. This year? For the Military minded, we have “field-strip.” For the techno-geek, the OED added “auto-complete” and the snarky are now able to add “wienie” officially to their repertoire of insults.

In theology, a neologism has a slightly nuanced meaning. Continue reading …

When New York artist Andres Serrano plunged a Qur’an into a glass container of his own urine and photographed it under the title Urine for the Qur’an, he said he was making a statement on the misuse of religion.

Controversy has followed the work ever since, but reached an unprecedented peak on last week when it was attacked with hammers and destroyed after an “anti-blasphemy” campaign by French Islamic fundamentalists in the southern city of Avignon.

The violent slashing of the picture, and another Serrano photograph has plunged secular France into soul-searching about Islamic fundamentalism and Nicolas Sarkozy’s use of religious populism in his bid for re-election next year.

It also marks a return to an old standoff between Serrano and the religious right that dates back more than 20 years, to Reagan-era Republicanism in the US.

The photograph, full title Urine for the Qur’an, was made as part of Serrano’s series showing religious objects submerged in fluids such as blood and milk. In 1989, rightwing senators’ criticism of Urine for the Qur’an led to a heated US debate on public arts funding. Republican Jesse Helms told the senate Serrano was “not an artist. He’s a jerk.”

Serrano defended his photograph as a criticism of the “billion-dollar terrorism-for-profit industry” and a “condemnation of those who abuse the teachings of Mohammed for their own ignoble ends”.

The photograph had been shown in France several times without incident. For four months, it has hung in the exhibition I Believe in Miracles, to mark 10 years of art-dealer Yvon Lambert’s personal collection in his 18th-century mansion gallery in Avignon. The show is due to end next month, but two weeks ago a concerted protest campaign began.

The Muslim Brotherhood, a lobby group that says it aims to re-Islamize France, launched an online petition and mobilised other fundamentalist groups. The staunchly conservative Imam of Vaucluse, called Urine for the Qur’an “odious” and said he wanted this “trash” taken off the gallery walls. Last week the gallery complained of “extremist harassment” by fundamentalist Islamic groups who wanted the work banned in France.

Lambert, one of France’s best known art dealers, complained he was being “persecuted” by extremists who had sent him tens of thousands of complaint emails and bombarded the museum with spam. He likened the atmosphere to “a return to the middle ages”.

On Saturday, around 1,000 Islamic protesters marched through Avignon to the gallery. The protest group included a regional councillor for the extreme-right Front National, which recently scored well in the Vaucluse area in local elections. The gallery immediately stepped up security, putting plexiglass in front of the photograph and assigning two gallery guards to stand in front of it.

The above account is true but the religion has been changed to make a point. Continue reading …

Two stories that caught my attention this week have to do with persecution of Christians in foreign countries. I’m always amazed at how many people have no idea that Christians are persecuted in other parts of the world. It is something that often escapes my friends on the far left of the political spectrum. It seems in the minds of many, religious persecution is something that happens only to minority religions or Islam. When questioned about Christian persecution, I can almost see the images of lions and Roman arenas forming in the heads of my friends, rather than say a lone Chinese preacher languishing in a cell or in recent events: A lone Pakistani member of parliment who dared protest Pakistan’s blasphemy laws as a representative of all the non-Muslim citizens of Pakistan. Shahbaz Bhatti was remarkable. I only heard of him after his assassination which is sad. I would like to have followed him before he became famous for dying. But his death is what he will always be remembered for:

I think the most poignant moment in that interview Continue reading …

Being a student of history, I enjoy reading books, articles, poems and speeches, even technical works, in their historical/grammatical setting. This is true of the Bible as well as other historical works. Doing so gives me a real view into the lives and thinking of folks of yester year. Joy and I have spent a fair amount of time over the years going to Civil War battlefields and reading notes and letters from soldiers on both sides of that terrible conflict. How very human they were and befuddled about the obstinance of those on the other side. The commander of the Army of the Potomac, General George B. McClellan, held a low view of President Abraham Lincoln, referring to him as a baboon. Although McClellan was outstanding at training and preparing an army, he was fairly worthless as far as actually taking an army into battle. He was frozen into inaction by always believing he was outmanned by the other side. At one point, Lincoln sent him a note saying along the lines of: Continue reading …