alternative hippopotamus

Timing is everything. Just a couple of days ago I posted about the documentary “Jesus Camp” and one of its more disturbing characters, Ted Haggard. As it turns out, to borrow an old phrase, he may have rendering unto Caesar in the most biblical sense of that expression.

As we learn from the Washington Post:

One of the nation’s most influential conservative Christian leaders, the Rev. Ted Haggard, resigned yesterday as president of the National Association of Evangelicals and temporarily stepped aside as pastor of a Colorado mega-church after a self-described male escort accused him of paying for gay sex.

Haggard, an outspoken opponent of same-sex marriage, vigorously denied the allegation. “Never had a gay relationship with anybody, and I’m steady with my wife. I’m faithful to my wife,” he told a Colorado television station, KUSA.

One needn’t look too hard to discover a Clintonesque parsing of “Never had a gay relationship with anybody, and I’m steady with my wife. I’m faithful to my wife” (and yes, I agree the expression Clintonesque is most unfortunate in this context).

But I’ll leave sentence parsing to the sentence parsers. My point is that the right’s obsession with homosexuality leads straight to their downfall. Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that their embrace of the fundamentalist sect of Christianity leads them to an inescapable schism: those who are shunned are also the shunners. There are gay men and lesbians both within the fundamentalist base, as well as the Republican party as a whole. Yet, instead of preaching the gospel of mutual acceptance, they appear to preach the gospel of self-hatred.

Speaking of which, I heard a very interesting interview with James Moore, author of Bush’s Brain, an account of Karl Rove’s lifelong jihad against the Democratic party. He has a new book out on Karl, with some details on Rove’s relationship to his father:

But there was an argument that ensued behind closed doors, and Louis Rove left, and he was not there for Christmas Day, which also happens to be Karl’s birthday. And it turned out many years later that Louis — not many years later. Many years later I found out about it. But Louis Rove went to Los Angeles and decided to live openly as a gay man. He had been gay all of his life, but had repressed it and had tried to live as a heterosexual, but he decided to live the second half of his life openly as a gay man.

He retired to Palm Springs, California. And when he passed away, there was no — his friends, many retired gay men there who were close friends with Louis Rove, were unaware of any memorial service. Karl has taken exception with what my book says, that there was no public memorial service. Karl indicates I’m trying to claim that there was no service at all whatsoever. That’s not the case. However, it seems as though Karl was trying to suppress and continues to suppress the notion that and the fact that the man who raised him, a man who he has said he had a loving, open, honest relationship with, was, in fact, a gay man.

Karl buried his father Louie Rove in July of 2004. There was no public notice in the newspaper. And then he got on the campaign plane, and he went to eleven key swing states to help facilitate the anti-gay marriage amendment around this country, which drove turnout in the last election.

Well, there’s enough in those dozen lines to keep an armchair psychologist busy for years. I’ll leave it at this: it’s said that what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. Not necessarily. What doesn’t kill you can continue to eat you for years, driving you psychotically.

The vociferous youngsters at NRO seem to be in a pickle. While they don’t want to support the public prosecution of Parkinson victims, they don’t want to support Michael Fox’s pro-stem cell views, either.

This has always been a dicey area in theocratic-Republican circles. They may well know someone who is suffering from Parksinson’s and other diseases that would benefit from stem cell research. But, like a B Science Fiction movie from the 1950’s, they believe that without their supervision, Science will go too far. They truly believe that they posess that piece of objective knowledge that allows them to discern when God’s law is being violated, and human intervention is needed.

Which is why they’re mostly comfortable that “Fake Jesus” (the actor who starred in The Passion of the Christ) is doing an anti-stem cell commercial. As the moral authorities they approve “Fake Jesus” because his views correspond with WWJD, while “Not Fake Michael Fox” should STFU.

As far as using Fake Jesus to advocate for a candidate, why not? I’ve even written my own Political Jesus commercial:

Hi! I’m Jesus. Over 2 thousand years ago I started a religion based on the principle of treating others like yourself. I confounded the scribes and pharisees of my time with a message that the poor in spirit, the meek, and those who thirst after righteousness are blessed. I turned water into wine, fed the masses with 3 loaves of bead, and brought a dead man back to life. Now, I sit at the right hand of the Father, where I judge the quick and the dead.

My name is Jesus, and I approve this message.

Usually I hear church and state issues spoken about from the perspective of the Constitution. By design, the state cannot support one religion over another. (Though, I’d be curious to see how much Islamic groups have received from the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives.) To do so would create a national regligion, which is something that our country’s leaders, or more recently followers, have traditionally avoided. Why? Well some would say because the Constitution says so. I’ll add my $.02: because it would be creepy.

Not just because it would be bad for the state. It would also be bad for religion. Here, I’m using “religion” loosely. Much in the same way a 10 step program will use the phrase “higher power.” I don’t mean it in terms of the organized Catholic church, for instance.

Religion is what’s sacred to each individual. The mixing of politics with religion is that of mixing the sacred and the profane. It ceases to be a religion, a worship of the divine, and becomes instead, the worship of power.

In the Senate race in Minnesota, Pastor Mac Hammond of Living Word Christian Center, a large suburban chuch, held a campagin rally to support the Republican candidate Michele Bachmann. Here’s what Hammond has to say about his endorsement of her race: (Minnesota Monitor)

I said important that we put men and women of God in office in our government. I don’t want any more letters about church and politics don’t mix. If that’s your opinion then you need to get saved, because the bible makes clear that we are to have an effect on the world in which we live.

The article linked to suggests that this will be enough for Living Word Christian Center to lose their tax-exempt status. It’s like the good book says: you gotta render unto Ceasar what is Caesar’s.

Last night I was thinking about political language and the tendency to treat fact as fiction, and fiction as fact. It’s very odd once you think about it. Michael Crichton writes a purely fictitious book about global warming, and it’s taken as evidence that scientists are exaggerating the problem. Michael Moore creates a documentary accurately showing the politics behind Iraq, and he’s denounced as a mad man. Peter Beinart calls for Democrats to denounce him (”And it requires a sustained battle to wrest the Democratic Party from the heirs of Henry Wallace. In the party today, two such heirs loom largest: Michael Moore and MoveOn.”).

Then, I turned on the tv, and saw the South Park episode on the Mormons. Some of the beliefs that Parker and Stone accuse the Mormons of having sounded pretty far out there. So, I was surprised to find that at least the Mormon beliefs about the origins of Native Americans appears to be consistent with the South Park episode:

According to the Book of Mormon, ancient Israelites traveled to America, and these were the so-called Native Americans who greeted Columbus, the Spanish Conquistadors, and the Pilgrims.

The Book of Mormon teaches that Christ came to America and visited them, just like he visited the Middle East. A recent Associated Press article about Southerton and his findings elaborates:

Christ visited them, yet their unrighteousness left them cursed with dark skin. The Book of Mormon says Lamanites will one day be restored to greatness through the fullness of the gospel. (The original 1830 version of the Book of Mormon said they would become “white and delightsome;” in 1981, the passage was changed to “pure and delightsome.”)

I’m willing to go out on a limb here and say that anyone who would believe that, will probably believe any fiction you can invent.

The story goes that Rumplestiltskin, upon hearing his name, flew into a rage and split himself in two.

That’s basically my take on conservative reaction to the DaVinci Code. Having read my share of alternative theories on the origins of life, the universe, the time-space continuum, the history of Egypt, Sodom and Gamorrah, the Kennedy assasination and of course the precise biographical facts behind the life of Jesus of Nazareth, I can say only that there are many things dreamt of, but not known in our philosophy, Horatio.

The problem is that there’s a type of personality that requires certainty in all things. Or, to put it more precisely than saying personality, let’s say that there’s an inclination of mindset and a habit of thought that requires a definitive answer.

The rub of course, is that some things by their nature cannot be answered definitively. Which causes conversations like that this one: (WaPo chat)

Washington, D.C.: I think it took three to four posts before you lost credibility with me by saying we ‘know’.

Regardless of the particular topic, one thing is for sure and that is that there is no consensus on any point. Would you care to re-visit or re-phrase your assertion that we ‘know’ Jesus was single?

Darrell L. Bock: No. We do know that. There is no evidence anywhere that Jesus was married. We have no text that makes such a claim. I admire your certainty about what do we not know, when scholars of all stripes have given their affirmation that this is one thing about Jesus that we can be confident about knowing.

I don’t know about the scholars with stripes, but ones without have their doubts. (see this orthodox, but less bovine analysis).

That being said, I’m not one of those who believe that Mary Magdalene and Jesus of Nazareth were married. Or, at least, I’d argue there’s insufficient support for that belief. I will argue that the early church conveniently “edited out” more detailed descriptions of Mary’s relationship to the other disciples, and role in the Christ drama. I find it hard to believe that gender politics didn’t play some part in the selection process. At any rate, one of the unintended consequences of that editing was that people have made up certain theories in order to fill in the gaps.

I’m actually fairly sympathetic to both sides in this particular blogospat.

Thing is, Christ’s teachings are pretty hard to distinguish from liberalism. But the dogma is pretty hard to distinguish from the practises of that entity known as the Christian Right.

Turns out, Christ had nothing to say about abortion, homosexuality, birth control, premarital sex, or school vouchers. (Don’t ask me to explain why the only thing that motivates the Fundies outside of sex is school vouchers. It’s one of those religious mysteries.)

He did have some interesting (if occasionally hard to fathom) notions about turning the other cheek, rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, believing it’s the meek and not the high and mighty who will inherit the earth, and condemning false prophets.

So, it’s with a mixture of fascination and horror that I have observed the Christian Right over the years spend less and less time on the things that Christ actually talked about, and more and more on the things he was completely silent on.

I saw this Christopher Durang post, and I thought he put it particularly well: (HuffPo)

It was great to be a 13 year old boy, and to worry and fret and use every ounce of one’s conscious abilities to avoid masturbation. That truly was always Christ’s core message: Stop touching yourselves!

And out of this profound and loving understanding of the inherent evilness of the body, the church came up with the idea of celibacy. Not only don’t touch yourself as a child, but have no physical closeness with anyone for your entire life. That is surely what’s best for grown men and women. Divorce yourself from your bodies.

As St. Paul, that holy mental case, wrote: “It is better to marry than to burn.” Which means if you can’t control your body, go ahead and marry, and thus avoid hellfire; but the implication is it’s better to be unmarried and unsullied by the disgusting human flesh that God seemingly created as a sick joke. Plus you’re only on earth a while, so you just have to put up with life and wait for your real lives in heaven. Plus, “the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit” - there, does that make it clearer why you should leave your bodies alone? You don’t want to be grossing out the Holy Spirit, who may be traveling around your body like Raquel Welch and the scientists bopping around the blood stream in the movie Fantastic Voyage.

I so admire the Catholic Church for guarding and stressing what has been important in the teachings of Christ.

Of course, you can cut and paste “Fundies” for “Catholic Church” without changing the meaning particularly.

My point is that what turns off the secular part of the progressive movement to religion, is in my opinion not the essence of the religion. It’s the dogma. It’s those things that have been aquired by various sects over the years, and now actually prevent Christians from understanding Christ’s teachings.

(In the above substitute Moses, Mahomed, Buddha, Shiva or Zaroastro where appropriate).