While We're Doing Litmus Tests ...

... let's make a game out of it, shall we? Bishop Tobin says he can't suport a pro-choice candidate, whose position is a "defection" from Roman Catholic teaching.

So let's ask ourselves: For whom should a party-line Romanist vote in 2008? That is, if they want a candidate whose life and policies will both reflect the Church's values and teachings? (Click the link to compare their positions.)

Let's establish some basic criteria. Rome is loudly and publicly opposed to both abortion and capital punishment, so the winning candidate must also oppose both. That eliminates most Democrats on one count, and most Republicans on the other. (To his credit, Sam Brownback admits to being "conflicted" about the death penalty, but he nonethless supports its use in some cases. See Bishop Tobin's comments, below, regarding Pilate). At this point, Ron Paul may be the last man standing.

Rome supports the Ten Commandments, including the prohibition against adultery, which it interprets as also prohibiting remarriage. This knocks out McCain, Giuliani (repeatedly), Gingrich and Delay. Probably a bunch more, too.

But Rome also favors the just-war theory, which specifically prohibits pre-emptive warfare; and in fact, John Paul II publicly denounced the Iraq invasion as immoral. So the winning candidate must have, at a minimum, failed to support the 2003 attack. (Ideally, he or she will have publicly opposed it, as did the Pope and millions of protesters all over the world). This eliminates most Republicans, as well as Clinton and Edwards.

Now, those are the most readily-defined issues. And they already leave us without one clear candidate for our sisters and brothers of the Roman persuasion. But if we take into account the Roman Catholic social teachings on justice for the poor, and especially immigration, things get even murkier. We need a candidate who is either faithful in marriage or celibate in singleness; who opposed Iraq and votes against capital punishment; with a track record of support for programs that aid the poor and protect the rights of immigrants. (This is where Ron Paul hits the theological skids. Up to here, Nancy Pelosi would be ideal; sadly, of course, she is a defector on the question of abortion.)

Well, readers, good luck to you all, as you enter play the Candidate Game. And good luck to Bishop Tobin, as he searches for a candidate. Please write if you find the Magic Contestant. And if, by election day 2008, you still haven't found one, then let me propose something else: not using religious doctrine as a litmus test for electoral poitics.

Roman Bishop Supports Adultery

This is, at least, one possible interpretation of an article by Bishop Thomas J. Tobin, on the subject of Rudy Giuliani.

Seems the bishop was invited to a Giuliani fundraiser. He doesn't know why: "I don’t know the mayor; I’ve never met him. I try to avoid partisan politics. Heck, I’m not even a Republican. But most of all, I would never support a candidate who supports legalized abortion." Writing in the The Rhode Island Catholic, Tobin goes on to excoriate Giuliani for his pro-choice "defection from the Catholic Faith." He considers Giuliani's position illogical as well as immoral. His sharpest barb is probably this one: "I can just hear Pilate saying, 'You know, I’m personally opposed to crucifixion but I don’t want to impose my belief on others.'”

But here's what jumps out at us: Tobin doesn't say a word about adultery, which Giuliani has committed often and publicly, nor about his several subsequent divorces. Nor a word about capital punishment, which Giuliani supports (and which was, we might point out, Pilate's actual crime).

It may be that Bishop Tobin doesn't know enough about Giuliani to be aware of the many other areas in which he has defected from Roman Catholicism. Or it may be that he does know, but is so single-minded in his focus on abortion that none of the other issues matters to him. (He tells he won't support a pro-choice candidate; would he support one who endorses executions, or admits adultery? Because there are plenty running this year). And isn't his refusal to condemn those practices really just a tacit endorsement?

"Mere Monotheists"

Fine sermons on the Holy Trinity are tough to come by. Here's one.

Dems Hide Clark Under a Bushel

Okay, that's as obscure a tagline as I've ever written. But here's the beef: Wesley Clark has the military training, the high-level command experience, the Washington-insider chops and the personal temperament (read "guts") to be one hell of a President, especially at a time in history when national security looms large on the screen. No other announced candidate, Democrat or Republican, mixes those characteristics into quite so potent a cocktail.

And yet Clark barely got a tumble from his party in the last primary season, and has basically been ignored in the current run-up. "I think about running every day," he says, wistfully, to a reporter. But he's not running, at least not in any meaningful way. And why? Because the Democrats are fixated on a showdown between two junior senators, one a virtual newcomer on the national scene, the other toting so much baggage that Wonder Woman couldn't lift it. Oh, and if those two wind up in Mutual Assured Destruction (as they probably will), the Dems' backup plan is a good-looking ambulance chaser whose entire history of public service is one term in the senate.

Memo to Dems: Senators love running for President -- but Americans hate voting for senators. Fact of life. The only senators in history elected to the White House were JFK and (ugh!) Warren Harding. And we don't much care for lawyers, either -- which is what Clinton, Obama and Edwards really are.

Memo to Dems, Part 2: If the Republican disarray pays off, and you take power in '08, remember that you'll still have to govern. And yes, we know how good you all are at managing economic policy, education, and so forth; we even trust that you have some solid ideas about trade, hi-tech, and health care. But a big part of governing will involve the deployment of US troops in a way that projects American power while rebuilding at least a little bit of our shattered American prestige. Oh, and actually keeping us safe from a determined and decentralized enemy. That is not work for lawyers or senators (any more than it has been, obviously, for a baseball franchisee). It is work for a soldier.

So why don't you draft one?

Right Wing Blasts Wrong Cheney

Mary Cheney and her partner are "just playing house," and the birth of their son is part of a "tragedy." This according to somebody named Stephen Bennett, who is apparently the spokesman for something called Concerned Women of America, which is apparently "one of the largest religious right groups." I say apparently because I've never heard of him, or of his group.

Apart from the venom of the guy's press release, which you can sample for yourself by clicking the link, I am struck by the fact that the Concerned Women of America have chosen a man to speak on their behalf in the public arena. How ... post-feminist?

"Outmoded, Amateurish, and Untreliable"

Per today's Times:

"As the Bush administration completes secret new rules governing interrogations, a group of experts advising the intelligence agencies are arguing that the harsh techniques used since the 2001 terrorist attacks are outmoded, amateurish and unreliable."

Outmoded, amateurish and unreliable: in a nutshell, the Administration's entire approach to national security. (And plenty of other things.)

Still, read the article. The comparison between the highly-trained, language-proficient interrogators of WWII, who spent hours prepping for each hour spent questioning prisoners, is a stark contrast to the intelligence officers of today, whose training never seems to have included foreign languages, much less a review of the relevant academic and professional literature of interrogation.

The weirdest revelation is that the various forms of torture used by US interrogators seem to be "reverse-engineered" -- that is, borrowed from Cold War-era Army manuals which described the methods we thought our enemies might be using. How many things are wrong with that picture? We are borrowing what may have been the torture techniques of an Evil Empire -- techniques which, to judge from the empire's fate, never worked all that well.

We're spending $200 million per day in Iraq. How much would our intelligence-gathering capacity be expanded if a week's worth of war funding were diverted to advanced training in Asian languages for soldiers and spies, and if another's week's worth were diverted to rigorous, systematic, peer-reviewed study of successful, proven, morally acceptable methods of interrogation?

The Coming Polygamy Explosion

A report in the Times of London (click the link) claims that 1,000 men in Britain, more or less, are living with multiple wives. Unsurprisingly, most of them seem to be Muslims. Shariah permits polygamy, but British law does not. But it seems that immigration officials have been instructed to look the other way in questionable cases.

This will no doubt be dismissed, for a while, as an oddity. But in fact, it is food for thought.

First, we should recognize that this modest number of cases will increase, rapidly in European nations and more slowly in the United States, as the number of Muslims increases. Although most Muslim marriages involve one husband and one wife, exceptions -- especially among the affluent -- are not unheard of. So Western nations, largely unacquainted with plural marriage, will need to think hard about some of the questions that the practice raises.

For example, our laws generally prohibit the practice, mostly as a matter of habit rather than a matter of principle. Sooner or later we will need to ask whether there is in fact a principle at stake in this prohibition -- and whether it is a principle of law, of social policy, or of absolute morality. And in any of those cases, opponents will need to make a compelling argument that the principle at stake outweighs the apparent right of Muslims to a free exercise of their religion. (We went through this with Mormons, in the mid-1800s, but I'm not sure that the philosophical legwork of the era will stand up to rigorous scrutiny. it seems to have depended upon vague appeals to "decency," followed by a lot of gunplay).

In this conversation, those of us who have in recent years argued for an expansion of the legal definition of marriage, so that it can include same-sex couples, may find ourselves in an uncomfortable position. I already do. Can we in conscience maintain that position if it leads us logically to permit civil laws that recognize polygamy? And how will we respond when, in a generation or so, the Young Turks within the Church itself begin to argue for Christian solemnization of such marriages? And they will, if only because there is no idea so bad that some Christians will not give it a whirl.

Girlfight!

Click the link to Slate, where Emily Bazelon and Dahlia Lithwick deconstruct Monica Goodling's testimony before Congress.

Money quote:

"Ever since Goodling surfaced in the middle of the e-mail traffic about the U.S. attorneys purge, her gender has been crucial to the role she's played in the tale. She's the only one who cried to other DoJ officials. She's the only one who took the Fifth. This woman who was single-handedly firing interns and hiring immigration judges and stonewalling new applicants, brilliantly cast herself this week in the earnest helpmeet role. And the reason this has worked so well for her is that it's hard to call attention to that without getting tied up in knots. The first thing we noticed on Thursday (didn't everybody?) was Goodling's hair—great highlights! But to even say that is to trivialize her, right? And for us to say it, as women, is to launch a catfight. It's to separate her from the big boys, by calling her a girl.

"But we're prepared to wade into the girl stuff because, to be lawyerly for a minute, it was Goodling who first put it into evidence."

They then go on to compare her, not unfairly, to Fawn Hall. Kinda takes ya back, don't it?

Bush Prefers Diplomacy to War

I know, you think I'm kidding.

But according to an Internet reporter named Steve Clemons, there is a divide over Iran in the White House, between State+CIA+SecDef on one side, counseling diplomacy, and Pentagon+Veep on the other, rattling sabers. POTUS is said to lean so heavily toward Condi and her boys that Cheney doesn't trust him to steer the right course, and is actively working to create a situation which will force the president into (more) military action in the Middle East.

Here's the gist. Cheney and his network of widely-dispersed acolytes are apparently trying to create a situation in which Israel launches a preemptive strike on Iran, prompting Ahmadinejad & Co. to attack US forces in the Gulf, plunging us into war.

Think about it. The Vice-President is concocting a strategy which deliberately endangers the lives of American soldiers and sailors -- that is, one which deliberately exposes them to an attack which will then be declared "unprovoked" even though it is not, and made casus belli. He's going to kill our soldiers as an excuse for starting a war. It's like planting a bomb on the Maine.

This is scary stuff. It is, in fact, the stuff of all those "evil conspiracy inside the government" thrillers they used to make in the 1970s -- from "Three Days of the Condor" to Kevin Costner's belated "No Way Out." People say Cheney is Darth Vader, but they're wrong. Lord Vader is a lame comic-opera Ruritanian in contrast to this sort of wickedness. Cheney is Voldemort.

A Belated Post

Along with the beautiful and reverend Mrs A. and our darling little baby (click the link to see his blog), Father A. spent Friday and Saturday some weeks back at our annual Synod Assembly. Oh joy, oh bliss.

For those who have never had the pleasure, the Lutheran churches of our region (or "synod") gather each year to do business. Each parish sends its pastor(s), and two or three laypeople. The setting is usually either a hotel ballroom or a large church building -- this year, the latter. While we are together, we hear reports from various officers and agencies (our seminary and social-service agencies, for example); we talk about the mission and ministry of our local parishes and the synod as a whole; we elect people who need electing (this year, a delegate to the churchwide, or national, assembly). And we fight.

Mostly, we fight.

Mostly, we fight about sex.

A few years ago, as the ELCA was putting into place the ecumenical agreements that arose from thirty years of dialogue with our Reformed and Anglican sister churches, we used to fight about the meaning and terms of Christian unity. But these days, mostly, we fight about homosexuality. The precise issuse varies from year to year, but usually it has something to do with whether or not we can tolerate gay and lesbian pastors living openly in committed relationships.

I could write more about the various levels of irony and hypocrisy involved in this debate. (One of the leaders of the anti-toleration wing, for example, is a boozer, who should probably have been defrocked years ago, after the assembly where he staggered around drunk at breakfast.)

But today, all I can think about is how silly and sterile the debate has become. We've been talking abut this for years, and -- so far as I can tell -- it has been years since anybody changed their mind. We all know where we stand, both as individuals and as a community. There really isn't much left to talk about, and the conversation itself is increasingly toxic and personal. Moreover, the historical tide has turned; reactionary Boomers wil make up an ever-decreasing portion of these assemblies, replaced eventually by Genration X and its polymorphously perverse heir, GenY. The age that rallied for or against Stonewall is being replaced by one that grew up watching Madonna get rich by emulating gay club culture. The battle in our culture is long since over. So why does the minority camp keep fighting, and why does the majority not simply declare victory and move on?

Here's my theory. Our congregations are closing down at an accelerating rate. We start new missions, but most of them fail or -- far worse -- limp along, draining our resources. Meanwhile, as our numbers and dollars, decline, we are losing our ability to act effectively in the public arena -- to ameliorate poverty, create fair working conditions or help immigrants and prisoners. There isn't much that we can do as a church these days, and this debate allows us to feel that we are doing something, when in fact the partisans on both sides have merely been enliusted as unwitting soldiers in the culture war.

It is significant that, although the US has been engaged since 2003 in an unjust and unpopular war, our synod assemblies (which are historically eager to offer opinions on matters they cannot change) have not passed a single resolution dealing with the subject. This might sound like a newfound humility, nut I suspect it is not. I suspect, on the contrary, that it reflects a collective cowardice, which is given protective cover by the sexuality debate. We can remain frozen, impotent, mute in the face of Abu Ghraib and Haditha and the rest of it, while consoling ourselves wih the false illusion that we are still somehow addressing the great issues of the day.

But we aren't. We're choking ourselves withy rage and frustration as we grapple over the great issues of 1975.

Crossing the Tiber

Francis J. Beckwith is an associate professor at Baylor University, and until the other day served president of the Evangelical Theological Society. This makes him a leader, albeit in a modest academic way, among American Protestants. Which is why so many people are surprised by his return to the Roman Catholic Church.

Nota bene: "return," rather than conversion. Beckwith was raised Roman, and did not need to be catechized and confirmed. He simply went to confession. It's really very sweet, as these things go. (And they do go; this sort of thing isn't all that unusual.)

What is not sweet at all, we regret to say, is the response that Beckwith has encountered from angry Protestants. Per the WashPost, a colleague accused him of 'embracing serious error," and Beckwith reported "that strangers have called him at home to berate him, and that his Internet server was overwhelmed by 2,000 e-mails a day to his personal Web site, which in the past seldom generated more than 90 a day." Surely the fatwas and burning crosses will follow soon.

Roman Catholicism is, in a sense, the United States of Christianity: a complex, powerful, and often-misunderstood Colossus, by turns loved, hated, admired and feared by the simpler, smaller and less potent would-be Colossi in its orbit. Both institutions are often better, truer and more beautiful in theory than in reality. Beckwith's decision to reclaim his citizenship -- influenced by his reading of Ratzinger's theology -- would seem a matter of principle, where one often supects that more overtly political converts of the John Paul II vintage are motivated less by theology than by power. We hope that Beckwith will not -- like so many converts -- drink the Kool-Aid and become a reckless idelogue, but that he will be like Newman at the first Vatican Council, and have the courage to advocate for the beauty and truth of theory when they are threatened by the harsh reality of power and prestige.

Falwell is Dead

Alive, he was a wretch. In death, he is -- gulp! -- a saint. That is the wonder of the righteousness imputed to the baptized by God's grace.

Click to read the NPR obit, which is fairly even-handed. I'm not so sure about the NewsHour talking-heads piece last night, with Tony Perkins and Tony Campolo. Perkins insisted that his mentor was a misunderstood, bear-hugging father figure; Campolo said that however reprehensible Falwell's political positions may have been, he was a competent theologian and a gracious human being. I think PBS might have considered a third possibility -- that he was a creep, pure and simple.

Well, this is a sticky wicket. Tradition adjures us to speak no ill of the dead. But the thought of a bear-hug from that smarmy bigot makes my skin crawl. And his decades of right-wing political maneuvering seem to outweigh the blessing of decent table manners. He may have apologized for blaming 9/11 on gays and Democrats, but he has plenty more slander to apologize for in Purgatory. (Or, failing that, to rejoice for having been forgiven as he strums a harp in the clouds).

I'm Not Saying Episcopalians are Pompous, But ....

... the National Cathedral is going to offer tours of its garage.

No doubt they expect it to be registered as a national landmark.

"God Help Me!"

That is what the Haitian refugees are reported to have been shouting as they drowned in heavy seas last Friday. There were 160 or so of them on the capsized sailboat; more than sixty died

Early reports said that their boat was "towed to safety" by a Turks and Caicos patrol boat. But that was reported while the survivors were still being held incommunicado. Even this was dubious -- towing an overcrowed boat in heavy weather, when the passengers have no life jackets, is a dubious rescue technique. But the truth appears to be far more disturbing.

As the survivors have begun to speak with reporters, disturbing new allegations have begin to appear: that their boat was minutes away from shore when it was rammed, perhaps twice, by the patrol boat. That the patrol boat towed the Haitians not to safety, but out into deeper (and shark-infested) water. That when the Haitians tried to pull themselves onto the patrol boat, they wwre beaten back with batons and abandoned in the water.

About half the passengers died.

Bush's War on Christians

One little-publicized effect of the Iraq adventure has been to make life much, much more dangerous for Christians in the Middle East. The recent murder of Christian bookstore workers in Turkey is one example. But closer to Ground Zero, the situation is far worse.

Since the 2003 invasion, 25 Iraqi churches have been bombed; nuns have been murdered; Christian women who wouldn't adopt the veil have been disfigured with acid -- and, as Paul Isaac observes in the International Herald Tribune -- there has been a massive exodus of Christians from Iraq. Approximately one third of the 1.6 Iraqi million refugees (and another third of the 1.8 million "internally displaced persons") are Christians whose lives have been threatened by the rise of Islamist militias.

Typical recent case: one of the militias has delcared a fatwa against the Assyrian Christians in a baghdad suburb, giving them 24 hours to convert or die. Needless to say, a lot of people did the sensible thing, by packing their bags and running.

There are two possiblities here. Either the President and his advisors simply didn't think through the details of this war, running in with neither a viable long-term plan nor any understanding of the society they would disrupt -- or else they did know what they were doing, and started the war anyway. Because George Bush hates Christianity, and is seeking to destroy it.

"...And Ne'er the Twain Shall Meet."

cAs Kipling knew when he wrote those words, East and West have long since met -- indeed, have they ever truly existed independently of one another? And yet the countinuing encounter of Orient and Occident is as important now as it has ever been, and perhaps a great deal more so. From Iraq to the Parisian exurbs, from China to Nigeria, there are few subjects more loaded with promise and danger for the coming century.

Pay attention, then, to Jane Kramer's article in the New Yorker, entitled "The Pope and Islam." This is far more than a quick rehash of the Reghensburg flap. It is a subtle and well-researched piece of writing, which implies more than it says, and which (blessedly) lacks the condescension, trivialization and outright ignorance of religious nuance that one expects from, say, the Times.

Kramer contrasts the styles of John Paul II and Benedict XVI in their interactions with the Muslim world. She offers a quick analysis not only of what may be at stake for the Vatican but also for some of its partners in the conversation, especially Turkey.

Kramer's picture of John Paul is flawed -- she leaves a casual reader with the impression that he was all outgoing personality, unsupported by theological acumen. In fact, although certainly not a theologian of Ratzinger's caliber, Wojtyla was a well-regarded philosopher in his own right. Those grand gestures were not naive or impulsive, either; they were the calculated moves of a man with a plan.

She describes well what seems to be Benedict's contention, that Europe must reclaim its Christian heritage in order to understand, or be understood by, the Muslim nations. She only begins to touch on some of the weaknesses in this idea, but even her quick touches are provocative. What, for example, about the millions of Asian Catholics, many of them as hostile toward Israel as any [other] Palestinians?

Anyway -- click the link. It's a long article, and well worth reading.

Mitt Romney a Tasteless Clown

He may be a good governor; we live in another state, and couldn't really judge. He might even be a decent president -- only time will tell. But Gov. Romney is clearly no literary critic. So saith the Boston Herald:

"Already under scrutiny for shifting positions on key issues and his Mormon faith, presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has made a bizarre new flip flop - saying on national TV his favorite novel is Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s 'Battlefield Earth.'

"The former Massachusetts governor told Fox News his favorite book was the Bible but his favorite novel was the science fiction tome “Battlefield Earth.”

"'Actually, the one by L. Ron Hubbard,' Romney said when asked to name his favorite novel. "I’m not in favor of his religion by any means, but he wrote a book called ‘Battlefield Earth’ that was a very fun science fiction book.' The Mark Twain novel "Huckleberry Finn" tops the book list on Romney’s My Space page. 'Battlefield Earth' isn’t on the list."

The article goes on to note that Romney has a reputation for tailoring (and re-tailoring) his message, in an effort to appeal to every coceivable interest group. Why he would think that it was good politics for a Mormon presidential candidate to make nice-nice with the Scientology people escapes us.

But we at the Egg are less interested in the political angles here than the literary ones. Assuming the Governor wasn't just pandering, we have to believe that he really has come to prefer a Fifties space opera, too damn silly even for most wild-eyed fanboys of the Goddard era, to the novel from which Hemingway wrote that "all modern American literature comes."

Quite a conundrum for voters. It would be one thing if Romney preferred a merely bad book to classic -- you know, if he chose "For Whom the Bell Tolls" over "Farewell, My Lovely," or (for you fanboys out there) "Glory Road" over "The Demolished Man." In cases like that, gustibus really non disputandum est. But he has defected to a catastrophe from a masterpiece. it's like choosing "My Mother the Car" over "The Twilight Zone." And what does that say about the man's judgment?

So unless Gov. Romney tells us that he was lying, I say we can't trust the man. On the other hand, if he announces that he IS lying, I will embrace him like a brother, no matter what the cost to his political future.

Crackdown on Psychics

The obvious joke: They didn't see it coming.

Philadelphia police have begun to enforce an old law against fortune-telling. Now, Father A. holds no brief for these charlatans, and feels a confusing mixture of sadness and contempt for the deluded nitwits who actually make decisions based on this sort of mumbo-jumbo. (And yes, we are thinking of Nancy Reagan and her Vassar-educated astrologer).

On the other hand ... and we really hate to say it ... what about free speech?

Click the link to read a local report on the case. We are especially troubled by the guy who claims that Jesus was a fortune-teller, and that he is himself therefore just like Jesus. *Sigh* Paging Simon Magus.

And if these were the Middle Ages, or some theocratic hellhole like Calvin's Geneva or [insert modern Middle Eastern nation here], rousting a few spiritual quacks would be par for the course. (See under: Michael Servetus). But these are, or at any rate were until recently, the United States of America. Land of the .... you know. And this is Philadelphia, home of that bell. You know the one I mean. Big brass thing, crack on one side. That one.

But we live in a strange new world, in which reporters go to jail for refusing to tell which administration official lied about what; in which the President says "we do not torture," while organizing torture on an international scale; in which wiretapping and eavesdropping are so common that we don't know how common they may be; in which the fairly liberal mayor of New York organized his own nationwide infiltration of church and community groups, a la J. Edgar Hoover. The old verities -- that is, civil and human rights -- seem to be passing quickly away. So it is no surprise that Philadelphia would give up on the First Amendment.

And anyway, in a nation losing its way as quickly as this, fortune-tellers may really qualify as enemies of the state.

Buckley, Jr.: The War is Lost

The White House (joined, as always, by its friends at Fox) has been scathing in its responses to Senator Harry Reid's observation that "the war is lost." I wonder how the President and Mr. Cheney will respond to essentially the same observation from the pen of a man whose name is a byword for conservatism, William F. Buckley, Jr.?

In fairness, Buckley doesn't -- quite -- say the war is lost. Instead, he compares it unfavorably to Viet Nam, in which the enemy at least had a headquarters. And he seems to assume that we will remember that despite this tactical advantage, things didn't go well for us in Nam. (This nuance may be lost on Bush and Cheney, neither of whom had any personal experience of that war. Had they been replaced, at any stage, by combat verterans like Messrs. Gore, Kerry, Kerrey, McCain, Murtha or Hagel, we might not be quite so far into the Big Muddy by now).

Buckley also compares Iraq to Prohibition -- a effort to achieve by governmental force a goal to which the people were obstinately opposed. And most disturbingly, he talks about Christianity and the Roman Empire, when "The generation of Christians moved by their faith overwhelmed the regimented reserves of the Roman state." That's right: in his analogy, we're the Romans and our opponents are the Christians. Making the current President either Tiberius or Caligula, I'm not sure which.

In truth, Buckley's comments -- made quite briefly, in a consideration of the new book by George Tenet -- are more forceful than anything Senator Reid or Representative Pelosi have said so far. We hope the Administration will also note that they are far more damning.

"He Didn't Get Killed"

That's a White House insider's verdict on the Gonzales testimony, as reported to CNN. He didn't get killed.

Talk about faint praise.

So, with senators on both sides of the aisle calling for his resignation, and Gonzales saying that he will only resign if the President asks him to, it looks like yet another opportunity for President Bush to show us what he's made of. Will he show here the same steadfast, rock-solid support for his most loyal soldiers that he showed for, say, Donald Rumsfeld? The same iron-willed refusal to give in to pressure that he has on Iraq?

Probably. And that's a disturbing thought, because Bush's stubbornness on Rumsfeld and Iraq will go down in history books as the defining failures of a head of state as dangerously out of touch with reality as anybody since Louis XVI.

Gonzales is a Weenie

We at the Egg spent some time yesterday listening to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testifying before a Senate committee. Now, granted, the senators were pretty hostile. But "hostile," in this case, simply means that they weren't giving him a free pass every time he lied.

Nor were they ready to accept his other tactic, which boils down to "Why, Senator, I've already admitted that mistakes were made [or: "that could have been handled better"]. Now can't we stop talking about all this and move on?

Gonzales genuinely doesn't seem to understand that the "mistakes" he is trying to blow past are serious. They consist of (a) collaborating in an attempt to turn the Department of Justice into a partisan political organization; and then (b) lying about it consistently, if not convincingly. Now, compared to his stirring defense of torture, this may not be so bad; but it is bad indeed. If we cannot trust the Department of Justice -- justice! -- to be impartial, then what hope for a free society do we have?

By the way, we can usually tell a weenie from a statesman by his use of the passive voice. Trapped in lie after lie, Gonzales can barely bring himself to say "I made a mistake," which is the very least of what he has done. Instead, he says, "Mistakes were made." How Reaganesque. Sadly, however, mistakes are not made in the abstract; they are made in the concrete, by real people. In this case, by Gonzales, as well as the people who pressured him to demean his office and ultimately the person who appointed him to that office. They have all made mistakes, and they should all be held accountable.

Later, talking to the PBS NewsHour, Senators Leahy and Specter seemed to describe the two different ways of looking at Gonzales' testimony. Leahy, a Democrat, suggested that it revealed a systematic effort to undermine democratic institutions. Specter, a Republican, thought this was overkill -- in his estimation, Gonzales merely showed that he was incompetent. While we are prone to side with Leahy on this, if "mere incompetence" is what it takes to remove Gonzales, then so be it.

And on a religious nore, enjoy the irony: the holier-than-thou Bush administration has ignored all those Biblical warnings about "perverting justice." (E.g., Prov. 17:23).

Administration in Flames

Think about it. In today's news alone, we learn that:

+ Paul Wolfowitz, architect of the Iraq disaster, has been caught providing an giant raise in pay to his own girlfriend. If he doesn't lose his job at the World Bank, it can only be because the Bushies simply don't see what's wrong with cronyism, nepotism and the abuse of power.
+ Four YEARS of Karl Rove's email is "missing" -- but may yet show up. Either way, it will prove that the Administration has never troubled to distinguish between politics and government.
+ Surge notwithstanding, America can't pacify Baghdad, or even protect the Green Zone. McCain, who weirdly chose to claim otherwise, now looks fatally out of touch, and will probably drop out in a few weeks.

No president -- not Harding, not Hoover, not Buchanan -- will leave behind a more disastrous legacy. America will be a weaker nation, and the world a more dangerous place, because of George W. Bush's incompetence and bad judgment.

Yoga Stalking

Clever piece in Slate by Ron Rosenbaum, on the "hostile New Age takeover of yoga." The highlight is Rosenbaum's common-sense recital of a yoga-magazine story about a woman stalking her ex-flame, and learning to "forgive" when he tells her to get a life.

Confession: While no real yogi, Father A. has done his share of Downward-Facing Dogs over the years. And he works mighty hard to screen out the blathering yogaspeak that some instructors use. ("I'm sorry," said a very fine teacher one time. "That was a such a goober-yoga-teacher thing to say.") The truth is that after years of trying, I still can't follow the direction to 'breathe into your hamstring" for the very simple reason that my hamstring has no lungs.

But far more to the point is this: Father A. spent some time studying in India, and even wrote a master's thesis on representations of the goddess Kali in art and literature. At one time in his life, he could fairly easily describe the differences between the Devi-Mahatmya and the Devi-Bhagavata. And nothing that I ever came across, either on the street in India or in the dusty Asian Religion stacks of university libraries, sounds much like the "philosophy" of the standard yoga class.

(There are exceptions, and I will even name one: a teacher named Tony Luttenberger, up in the Berkshires. He's got an old-hippie vibe, and sometimes seems half-cracked. But the man knows his ancient texts.)

Republican Family Values

Newt Gingrich was having an extramarital affair even as he led the charge against Bill Clinton over Monicagate. That is to say (for those of you who are keeping count) that he was cheating on his second wife with the woman who would eventually become his third.

Newt and Rudi are both serial adulterers. So, it certainly seems, is Bill; but at least he's managed to keep his marriage going, even if he has had trouble with the vows. McCain's first wife raised their kids while he was a POW; this did not keep him from cheating on her and divorcing her (for a drug addict beer heiress who later stole meds from a charity she worked for).

I've got a sense that the GOP isn't trying anymore. They figure that, if the public puts up with a recovering alcoholic who talks to God and hears that torture is okay, nobody much cares about traditional values anymore. And by gum, they may be right.

Heather Has Three Mommies

Nice Boston Globe opinion pice by Alex Beam, assessing Mitt Romney's chance of becoming president. Musing upon a PBS documentary, Beam considers the matters of polygamy, racism, homophobia and -- far more important -- the overall strangeness of Mormonism. Then he writes:

"By now, almost every newspaper in America has published an analysis of Mitt Romney's presidential aspirations titled "Can a Mormon Be Elected President?" The stories follow a preordained path to arrive at the politically and socially desirable answer: Yes.

"These set pieces serve mainly to make the not particularly religion-savvy political commentariat feel good about themselves. The writer appears unbiased, and the article inevitably validates the cherished American myth about our tolerance for diversity.

"Can a Mormon be elected president in 2008? No."

I guess we'll find out.

Inter-Atheist Kerfluffle

Atheism is on the rise!

Not that people are leaving Christianity, Islam, Buddhism or Hinduism in droves -- quite the contrary, in fact. But over the past couple of years, the smallish number of people who believe there is no God have started talking, and writing, about their convictions with particular fervor. The much larger number of people who kinda-sorta don't believe, but aren't sure why, have been given considerable comfort by the recent writings of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, et alii. Call it the New Atheism.

First off, let's be honest: Given the faith-based horror of the last few years, both in the Middle East and in America, it is hard to blame these guys. Neither Pat Robertson nor Moktada al-Sadr makes the notion of a transcendent being sound very appealing.

That doesn't mean that Dawkins and Harris are right as to the matter in dispute, God's existence. Naturally, the Egg joins with the vast majority of human beings, both now and through history, in affirming that God exists. But more important is this: the fact that one can appreciate the motivation of the the New Atheists does not mean that their actual arguments are any good. They aren't.

And proof of this is a series of rather savage reviews, written not by apologists for theism but rather by the Old Atheists -- scientific and literary types who have long disbelieved in God, without attempting to make a career of it. They are unsettled first by the efforts of the young Turks to assault religious faith without any particular knowledge of its content. Literary theorist Terry Eagleton begins: “Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.”

No less seriously, they point out that the New Atheists seem intent on blaming religion and its adherents for all the world's problems, in a manner that is surprisingly irrational and, well, bigoted. the old Atheists, even if they do not believe in God, can see the good that believers have done through the ages, and continue to do. (Don't believe me? Come visit my parish men's shelter.)

And the Old Atheists have been aropund long enough to recognize that there are plenty of problems caused not by religion but by its absence. H. Allen Orr writes, of his fellow biologist, “Dawkins has a difficult time facing up to the dual fact that (1) the 20th century was an experiment in secularism; and (2) the result was secular evil, an evil that, if anything, was more spectacularly virulent than that which came before.”

As we have said before, friends, the problem isn't God. The problem is human nature. And taking God out of the picture won't improve human nature. So even those who do not believe might find, upon sober reflection, that their own best interests are served not by railing against religion in the abstract, but rather by encouraging the world's religions to live up to their own high standards.

One More Thing ....

... about that letter from James Dobson and other Christianist leaders, calling for the removal of Richard Cizik from leadership in the National Association of Evangelicals.

The signers aren't members of the NAE.

This means they have as much authority to boot Cizik as I do to change the Pope. Or the Pope does to change the Archbishop of Canterbury. Or a US president does to change the leaders of other foreign nations. (Ooops. Bad analogy.)

Dobson Jumps on the Dust-Heap of History

In the last year or so, the National Association of Evangelicals (yes, Ted Haggard's group) has begun to use its considerable political clout in support of environmental issues, especially global warming. This is just a matter of common sense and good theology, and if the NAE is late to the game -- mainline churches got there decades ago -- it is still a welcome player.

Except to James Dobson and his ilk -- the "Christianist Right," as my man Sullivan calls them. A group of influential political figures with church connections (Dobson, Gary Bauer, Paul Weyrich) sent a letter to the NAE's leadership calling for the ouster of the Rev. Richard Cizik, the association’s vice president for government affairs. They accuse him of using global warming to " divert the evangelical movement from what they deem more important issues, like abortion and homosexuality."

Hmm. Fate of the earth on one hand, buggery on the other. Which one is more important? Really?

Of course, the signers argue that global warming isn't really a problem, human beings can't affect it anyway, and so forth. How very 1999 of them. At this point, nobody -- not even President Bush -- believes their line of data-denying dithering anymore. Evanglicals are no more stupid than any other people, and realize that global warming is a grave and immediate danger which requires prompt political action. That's why the NAE will keep Cizik on, and probably give him a raise. He's leading them in the direction than most Americans, including American evangelicals, know we need to go.

So whence the letter? Simple. Dobson and Company have made their bones (as the mobsters say) on abortion and homosexuality. They have become famous, powerful, and wealthy by flogging those two ponies. And they don't know what else to ride. So they'll keep doing what they know how to do, even as the world changes around them, and wind up pathetic old remnants of an ugly period in American social history.

I can't wait.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

Conservapedia bills itself as (and we'll bet you had already guessed this) the conservative answer to Wikipedia. It looks very, very, similar. Similar enough that a semiliterate term-paper writer at a B-list school could mistake one for the other when trolling for stuff to plagiarize. Worse yet, the said young author might deliberately choose Conservapedia, as a salubrious antidote for Wikipedia's notorious liberal bias.

First off: we never thought that Wikipedia -- a colossal, user-edited online encyclopedia -- had any particular bias. How could it, we reasoned in our naivete, with so many contributors from all over the world? Fortunately, the Conservapedia editors set us straight. Their homepage features a clear analysis of Wikipedia's bias, including what they consider the obvious smoking gun: many articles feature English spelling. (You know: tyre, saviour, judgement).

Never mind that England, under Labour no less, has been Bush's closest, and indeed only, ally in Iraq. Never mind Edmund Burke and George Orwell and Maggie Thatcher. English spellings are a sign of liberal bias because, well, they aren't American.

And "conservative," in the mind of the Conservapedia editorial staff, seems to equal two things: American and Christian. In fact, virtually nothing else seems to matter to them. We at the Egg know this, because we checked. We searched for a few of our favourite -- omg! favorite -- things, and here's what we found.

Thomas Jefferson: The first two sentences describe his life and work. The rest of ther article, which is not long but still fourteen or so sentences -- is devoted to Jefferson's religious convictions, and especially to the thesis that although TJ is often called a Deist, he described himself on at least one occasion as a Christian. Whether this is true or false, we at the Egg are willing to gamble our immortal souls that Jefferson considered his role in founding the United States, doubling its geographic size, and exploring the continent more important than his religious convictions. Heck, he probably considered gardening, wine and Sally Hemmings more important too, and none of them gets a shout-out.

Benjamin Franklin: Flew a kite, invented a stove. And in the second sentence, we learn that he, too, is called a Deist but wasn't really. The rest of the article is devoted to his religious convictions, and the strong, but astonishingly ill-argued, assertion that they were not Deist.

George Washington: ran a country, won a war. From the second sentence, the article is devoted to proving that he was a Christian.

Do you see the pattern? (There are rather bad articles on Luther and Aquinas, but at least the editors didn't feel any need to prove that those two were Christians.)

As for the figures you might expect in something called Conservapedia: there is no article on Barry Goldwater. Or Patrick Buchanan. Or anybody named Buckley.

But all this would be okay if the articles were thoughtful, well-written and well-sourced meditations on the spiritual lives of great Americans. In fact, we would welcome such a wiki. But so far, this ain't it. Despite constant urging to cite sources, the articles are full of opinions, often ill-informed ones. And the prose rises, at its very best, to the level of a middle school expository essay. Consider this beautiful and apt instance, from the rousing conclusion of the entry on a well-known medieval poet: "The account of Hell is known as 'Dante's Inferno,' and it is frightful."

Frightful indeed.

Screwed Again

Oh, my. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's Board of pensions is planning to switch members' health insurance from an Aetna PPO to Blue Cross/Blue Shield HMO coverage. That's bad enough; what really offends the Egg, however, is the grotesque flummery of the press release (q.v. with a click).

Others may complain, but Father A. has been quite pleased with his Aetna coverage over the years, and so have his physicians -- many of whom will need to be replaced when he can't afford to pay them out of pocket and they don't take Blue Cross. On the other hand, every ELCA pastor (or at least every one of us who serves a small church) knows that health-care costs are crippling our congregations. If this is what it takes, then so be it.

(On the third hand, one of the reasons that these costs have grown especially fast in metropolitan regions, where the churches are generally smallest and poorest, is that Board of Pensions' decision, some years ago, to stop equalizing costs without regard to geography. It was a bad, short-sighted decision, and many of us protested it at the time.)

Anyhoo, that's all background to the aforementioned flummery.

The press release describes this decision not as a cost-cutting move, but as the exciting! new! adoption of a "wellness plan." This means that if you exercise and eat right, they will give you some credit --up to $300 per annum. Fine idea, especially for those of us who do exercise and eat right. The problem is that the deductibles are going to escalate from $350 to $600. So there goes your wellness rebate.

And then there's this: "As a self-employed individual without these benefits, I am almost envious of the opportunity that this plan offers," T. Van Matthews, Simpsonville, S.C., told the trustees' products and services committee, which he chairs. "In my world, there seems to be only one incentive that the insurer considers and that is to simply raise rates," he said.

Wow. So a guy who doesn't participate in the plan, but wants us to, is recommending it. In fact, he's "almost" envious.
And he's so glad that our new coprporate overlords ... care about us. It's touching.

Honestly, the BOP health plan covers 50,000 pastors and lay staff at 11,000 congregations. That's a big plan -- you'd think Aetna would have negotiated down to something we could all live with. But what does the Egg know?

Magdalene = Ringo?

Click to read a sharp piece in Wired about the James Cameron ossuary film. (Regarding which, Father A. offers a contemptuous "ho-hum.") Money quote:

"If that's all Cameron has to go on, he's not going to make a very strong case to anyone besides the skeptics who want to destroy Christianity. Yet what will be so ironic about skeptical acceptance of such paltry evidence will basically be that it will involve cynics swallowing many basis Christian beliefs (such as the Bible's reliability and the existence of Jesus) that they have always sneerfully eschewed."

Akinola Threatens Canterbury

Most coverage of the Anglican crisis paints it as a matter of the Global South, led by Peter Akinola, versus the Episcopal Church, led by Katherine Jefferts Schori. But click the link to see a different perspective, from a Somali newspaper.

Briefly, Bonny Apunyu treats the South's ultimatum as a threat to break unity not only with the US province, but also with the Church of England itself. She quotes Akinola to this effect, although not in any detail.

Western reports have assumed that Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams will be able to negotiate some series of compromises, in which the unity of the Anglican Communion is largely preserved, even if the status of the American church is greatly reduced. But if, in the view of the Africans, even the English church is hopelessly corrupted by gay-tolerating liberal modernism, it is entirely possible that in the near future, there will be two international "Anglican" communities, not in communion with each other -- one led by England, the other by Nigeria.

This possibility raises any number of questions. Is it "Anglican" if it out of communion with England? But the one that piques our interst concerns the conservative Americans. If they are forced to choose between communion with the Mother Church and accommodation to theology they consider heretical, most will surely choose the latter. It is a matter of principle, after all.

But the residual Englishness of Anglicanism is no small matter, and one must suspect that many Episcopalians, perhaps even more in the pews than the pulpits, will be reluctant to surrender the formal connection to Canterbury. This means that the American schism -- predicted to involve something like a quater of the church -- could be considerably reduced. Or the schismatics might divide amongst themselves, both sides agreed that they can't live with the Episcopalians, but one nonethless able to keep its ties to England.

Our Favorite Nixon Staffer

In our misspent youth, it was Liddy. These days -- much as we like John "Worse Than Watergate" Dean -- it's Ben Stein. Why? Well, he used to be the host of a terrific, and funny, game show. That wins him points. But the main attraction is his Times business-section column, which we don't think gets nearly enough attention. Week after week, Stein applies his legal and economic smarts and his traditional (meaning pre-Reagan) values to the present world. Often, he does it with the mordant wit you remember from his show. But sometimes -- such as today's column -- he lets loose with a howl of moral outrage.

O tempora! O mores! Could Ben Stein be our nation's Cicero? You decide:

"Now, you remember how we were having those tax cuts for the very rich so they could invest more and make America grow? Remember that?

"Well, surprise! Some of that money is going to lavish Sweet 16 parties and $10 million bat mitzvahs, with Tom Petty and Kenny G and private jets flying the guests around. Five-hundred-thousand-dollar parties in New York and Malibu are no longer at all unusual. Even million-dollar parties for the rich are not out of the ordinary, according to the party planners on the [Donny Deutsch] show.

"...Is this what America is all about? We’re in a war and we cut taxes to stimulate the economy — and it probably did — and we are having million-dollar parties at home while our soldiers are paid starvation wages to offer up their lives in Iraq? We’re in a war and the government cannot afford to pay for adequate training for our soldiers, but the society at home is routinely having million-dollar weddings and bar mitzvahs?
"
"Can anyone say 'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'?"

Neo-Nazi Fears Extraterrestrial Invasion

Jean-Marie le Pen, leader of France's ultra-rightist National Front, has begun to present himself as an environmentalist.

According to Le Monde, Le Pen has promised that, if elected, he will be "the president who ... goes to the UN General Assembly to boldly propose shared management of of planetary property," by which he means water, food, medicine and education.

On the surface, it sounds like typical French grandiosity -- a centralized economy for everybody! He goes so far as to say that this plan would mark a French "return to the global scene." Yes, we get it -- Old Europe still feels marginalized because Certain People wouldn't listen to them about a Certain Middle Eastern Country. But upon reflection, we think there is more going on here than meets the eye. Le Pen is following the advice of his advisors, including who Jean-Claude Martinez, who have asked for "a more planetary vision."

Internationalism and ecology aren't traditional talking points for the right wing in any nation, are they? What those guys care about is race or, in its new variation, immigration. So when Le Pen and his ilk start talking about a "planetary vision," it can only mean one thing: they want to protect our whole planet -- from immigrants.

I'm thinking Klingons. Or maybe Romulans.

George Bush, Sodomite

According to a new biography of Ariel Sharon, President Bush once told the former Israeli premier that, if he ever caught up with Osama bin Laden, "I'll screw him in the ass."

I hope that Archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria never hears about this. His branch of Anglicanism has a very firm policy against ass-screwing.

Amazon Apes

In my youth, feminists were accustomed to argue that, if only women were in charge, there would be no wars or violence. After all, they argued, women are by nature pacific and nurturing, while men are violent and aggressive.

Needless to say, this argument depended upon a Victorian vision of women, dismissed by later versions of feminist theory as "essentialist." Apart from matters of theory, it would have been politically inconvenient to advocate for assigning female soldiers to combat duty while maintaining that they were genetically averse to violence.

Well, no problem. It turns out that women may have invented weapons.

Such, at least, is the hypothesis emerging from recent studies of some chimpanzee populations, in which the meat is scarce, and the males are disinclined to share what they kill. The female chimps -- lacking the brawn of their male competitors -- sharpen sticks with their teeth, and use them as spears. Apparently, the boys aren't bright enough to figure this out.

When is 100-Year Sentence Too Short?

When the crime is the gang-rape and murder of a 14-year-old Iraqi girl by an American soldier.

According to his guilty plea, Sgt. Paul Cortez, of the 101st Airborne was one of five US soldiers who took part in the premeditated violation of the girl in Mahmudiya. His conviction is the second so far; two more soldiers are awaiting courts-martial, while the accused ringleader -- who has been dicharged from the military -- will be tried in Federal court.

Apart from the horror of the crime, the thing that pisses us off here at the Egg is that, under the terms of his plea-bargan, Cortez does not get life in prison, but a 100-year sentence. Under military sentencing rules, he could be out on parole in 10 years.

I'm sorry, Mister Cheney. Did you say we would be greeted as liberators?

God Help the Muslims

That's not a sentiment we at the Egg have expressed very often. But we just learned that Michael Jackson has converted to Islam.

This means that the soi-disant King of Pop (or NY Post-disant Wacko Jacko) is no longer a publicity nightmare for the Jehovah's Witnesses -- a fact which saddens us just a bit, as his ertswhile affiliation added so much zing to those Saturday-afternoon chitchats with wide-eyed doorbell-ringers at the rectory. ("So Jehovah has given you a distinctive moral code, eh? Hey, I read about this guy with a glove and a giraffe ....")

But it also means that Jackson, in the waning days of his career, has managed to hook himself up to one of the greatest publicity-engines imaginable. He is already absurdly famous overseas, a fact long since confirmed for me in remote Andean villages and Indian schoolrooms. But now he will have the fame of a prestige convert to the world's second-largest faith. It will help him sell millions of his lousy records in Muslim nations -- at least the ones that permit people to buy records.

Old News, But Worth Hearing

There are gay priests! We've said it before, and we'll say it again. Anybody who is surprised by this just hasn't been paying attention for the last thousand years (that being about how long when celibacy has been effectively enforced in the West).

Still, the Egg just stumbled on a 2005 Mother Jones article by JoAnn Wypijewski which talks about the Vatican's ill-advised crackdown on gay (as opposed to, say, criminally pedophilic) clergy. And along the way, she gives a beautiful and touching description of how people of the last few generations have managed to avoid paying attention to the inconvenient presence of all those purple stoles. Here's a sample:

"For a long time, heterosexuals didn’t think about this much, because no one in the straight world had a clue about the way gay people hid. Even the most flamboyant priest was beyond sexuality. It was all part of the old world, and the church ladies loved the gay priests, the way they loved Liberace, because they were at an angle to the gender universe. No one who grew up in the church pre-Stonewall could miss the way the priest who organized the talent shows and liturgical pageants, decorated the church, drank martinis, and dressed just so dazzled the women, and if in private he rued the deception of it, we wouldn’t have guessed. It wasn’t all deception, of course, but a complex bargain in which renegades from straight sex roles got a measure of authenticity, safety, certainly prestige, though not without sacrificing their most intimate selves in loyalty to policies that declared them deviant, dangerous, sick."

Read the rest, if only for her jaundiced reflections on the "saintly" Padre Pio.

Scariest Thing We've Read Today

The torture of Guantanamo 063.

An article by Steven Miles on the "American Journal of Bioethics" describes in detail the torture of Mohammed al-Qahtani. It is a blood-curdling account. FBI agents participating in the "interrogation" left the room at certain points (the dogs were too much for them), and later filed a complaint which prompted an official investigation. The stunning part is that the Army's official report effectively clears the torturers of any wrongdoing. Read the description of what they did and decide for yourself whether it was right or wrong.

Father A. is very proud of the FBI. And he is very, very deeply ashamed of the United States Army.

The Genius of President Bush

John Gartner, at Wired, does a funny bit with the President's newfound enthusiasm for ethanol (he calls is "worshipping at Biomass"). Here's the best bit:

Always the master at understanding the subtleties of how things are interconnected, the President understands the relationships between cars and fuel, as quoted by the Washington Post: "If you really want to reduce the amount of oil that you consume, you have to reduce the amount of gasoline you use."

NY Guv Supports Vice

New York's newly-elected governor, Eliot Spitzer, came into office in a cloud of self-proclaimed virtue. In years of pre-campaigning as Attorney General, he had gone after Wall Street heavies, and at a time when Empire Staters generally found Albany to be both corrupt and ineffective, he cultivated a tone of moral indignation. That's why we elected him.

So we are a little perturbed to see that, in one of his first major decisions, Spitzer has thrown his considerable weight behind the plan to build a casino in the Catskill Mountains.

The casino plan, promoted by the Mohawk tribe, has been tossed around for several years. The Indians (whose reservation, btw, is no where near the Catskills, a fact which will require some legal loopholing) like it because they will make money; real-estate developers feel likewise. Let's admit it: they have a case. Some of the locals like it because they have been led to believe that the project will generate jobs, and bring back the supposed good old days of the Borscht Belt. Their case is a lot weaker. Casino jobs pay badly, offer no significant benefits, and are more than offset by the social costs. Don't believe me? Ask Atlantic City or Connecticut how well their Average Joes and Janes have done.

Environmentalists oppose the plan because the Catskills are forest preserve, and protect a fragile watershed. Father A. is himself a native of this forest, and would be heartbroken to see it ruined. So that's a problem. But let's be clear: the biggest problem with casinos isn't that they despoil the environment. The biggest problem with casinos is that they are evil.

That is to say, casinos are places where people go to smoke, drink and gamble. They are places set apart for vice, and specifically for the purposes of exploiting those who are addicted to vice. And where these vices are indulged, others -- prostitution, drug abuse, usury (in the form of "payday loans") -- are likely to be found as well.

And yes, beloved. Father A. knows perfectly well that some people can shoot craps all night without surrndering their dignity, self-control or mortgage. But you know what? Some people can shoot heroin without paying the penalty; that doesn't mean we make it legal, and it certainly doesn't mean we provide governmental assistance to shooting galleries.

Wake up, America: Gambling is not your friend!

The Silence of the Dems

Click the link to read a Times piece about Democrats closing the purported "religion gap." It's an interesting bit, especially for those who accept uncritically the periodic Republican claim to be America's "Party of God," protecting us from godless secular humanists like Jimmy Carter.

Yes, we know all about John Edwards' naughty staffers -- but the truth is that the Dems have always been a pretty religious bunch. They just don't talk about itas much as the GOP.

Al Gore, Gary Hart and Jerry Brown all studied for ministry. Carter teaches Sunday School. The traditional base of Democratic support in the North was massively Roman Catholic, at least until the Reagan revolution. Some of that support remains: Nancy Pelosi is a weekly Massgoer, and sent her kids to parochial school. Of the Bennett Brothers -- Bob and Bill -- it's the Republican who has strayed from the party of his upbringing, to choose a life of moralizing and million-dollar poker losses. Oh, and of course there are the Revs. King, Coffin, Berrigan and (we may as well admit the facts) Jackson and Sharpton.

But they don't talk about this much. In recent years, they have barely talked about it at all -- John Kerry is a reasonably devout Catholic, but could barely be forced to say so in the '04 campaign. (He did, on a couple of occasions, give long and articulate testmimony as to why he wouldn't testify to his faith. Classic Kerry). Instead, Dems of the present generation have tried to keep religious faith -- including their own -- out of the public square. They have sat by, silently, while Reagan talked about God but never went to church. They have been mute while Bush I apealed to his own (Episcopal) bishop for a ruling that Iraq I was a "just war," and when that was not forthcoming, ran off to Billy "Even Vietnam was Just" Graham. They stayed mum when Bush II -- already famous for his love of executing the disabled -- offered sermons instread of policies, and when his henchman Novak appealed to the Pope for a "just war" ruling on Iraq II, which was also denied.

Worst of all, they have spoken the language of politics and prudence when faced with policies designed to aid the rich, crush the poor, despoil the environment, and wage an unjust war so brutally and incompetently that it strengthens our enemies and drives away any decent friends we ever had. To this, they have talked politics when they should have talked morality, and justice, and the Gospel. They should have spoken not only of their convictions, but of the place from which those convictions spring -- the Magnificat, the God who "lifts up the lowly" and protects the poor.

The silence of the Dems has helped to comfort the rich and oppress the poor, and has brought us the present Middle Eastern bloodbath. It has been a disaster, politically, theologically and morally. Thank God it is beginning to end.

And yes, the Democrats have also been the party, of the two big ones, most hospitable to those of little faith, or none at all. Perhaps too much so, in the specific sense that the silence of the faithful has allowed the faithless to feel that they were the ones in charge. But doesn't Scripture urge us to welcome the stranger? Of course it does. There is much to be said for being a big tent, a party in which those whose reasons differ may join together in the quest for civil justice. The presence of a few "cultured despisers" in the ranks, while embarrassing today, is no great shame. The shame has been the silence of those who believe.

Omnibus Novissimi

Lunch-hour site for Latinists: Ephemeris, a website offering the news in Latin.

Now, this isn't some traditionalist Roman Catholic site, full of "news" about how great Robert Bellarmine was. When Ephemeris writes, for example, "Madonnae imminêre anathĕma ecclesiasticum," they are talking about the pop singer, not the Blessed Mother. But then, that was obvious from context ... right?

"...Full of Grace?"

Bradley Schmeling has lost his case. For those who don't know, Schmeling is the pastor of a Lutheran congregation in Atlanta. Some months ago, he informed his bishop, Ronald B. Warren, that he was in a committed relationship with another man. The bishop asked him to resign both from his call and from pastoral ministry; Schmeling refused, and his congregation stood beside him. Because ELCA bishops don't have the canonical authority to remove pastors, the case was referred to a disciplinary committee of the national church.

The committee's decision reveals a lot about where the ELCA is these days. They found that Schmeling had indeed violated the standards prescribed by the church for its ordained leaders, and accordingly instructed that he be removed from the clergy roster. (For those unfamiliar with the ELCA's tepidly corporate lingo, that means defrocked.)

But the committee also found that, if the rules in question were not in place, they would with near-unanimity endorse Pastor Schmeling's ministry. Bishop Warren said much the same thing, but the committee went a step further and recommended that the denomination change its protocols, to permit permanently partnered gay people to serve as pastors.

(Pr. A's opinion is that the ELCA will not change the protocols at its churchwide assembly this summer. The arguments over sexuality have been so divisive, and the stalemate of the past few years has been achieved with such difficulty, that few voting members will likely want to rock the boat.)

It appears, then, that we have an instance in which none of the interested parties -- pastor, congregation, bishop or discipline committee -- thinks that Schmeling is doing a bad job. On the contrary, they seem to think he is doing a very good job, providing the pastoral are that his community needs with scandalizing or giving offense to the faithful. But they are duty-bound to respect rules which conflict with their own observations, as well as their own convictions. And although they have recommended a change in the rules, it is unlikely -- although not impossible! -- that their recommendation will be followed.

This means, to put it simply, that the church is enforcing rules in which a great many of its leaders do not believe. This curious situation, in which unity and the comfort of the rear-guard are valued over one's own convictions, probably occurs often when slow-moving institutions are in the midst of change. It is a position doubtless famiiar to many Roman Catholic priests just before Vatican II -- or on the eve of the Reformation.

It is understandable, and even pitiable. But let's be fair: it's also hypocritical.

And to make it all more piquant, the date upon which Pastor Scmieling will again be simply Mister Schmeling, at least in eyes of his denomination, is August 15th. For Lutherans, that is the Commemoration of the Blessed Virgin Mary. As in "Hail Mary, full of grace," the angel's greeting. It will be a strange occasion upon which to mark the victory of rules over reasons, or of law over grace.

Navy Chaplain Disobeys Orders; Looking for New Job

Back in May, 2006, the Egg mentioned Gordon Klingenschmitt, a US Navy chaplain who didn't like the Navy's (admittedly strange) policy regarding where, when and how he could pray. So he disobeyed them, and was facing charges. The right wing webmedia turned him into a hero, making all sorts of righteous noise about freedom of conscience. We felt then, as we do now, that people who don't like the military's policies are free to disobey them -- as civilians. But as a commissioned officer, Klingenshmitt had signed on to follow orders.

We also suggested that Klingenschmitt was part of a series of lawsuits and other challenges to the standards of military chaplaincy, all coming from the Christianist right in an effort -- apparently a successful effort -- to take power away from the mainstream denominations.

At the time, a reader wrote in with great hostility, told us we didn't know what we were talking about, that we should make a point of being better informed, and assuring us that Klingenschmitt's trial was going to be a slam-dunk victory.

Bottom line: We were right, the reader was wrong. Klingeschmitt lost his military trial. The Navy later kicked him out, for other reasons. But that's not, and never was, the point. The point was and remains that if there is going to be a military chaplaincy, the chaplains have a duty to follow orders. Slam-dunk.

Where There's Smoke

Bangor, Maine, is now the first city to ban smoking in cars -- at least with children. Drivers who expose kids to cigarette smoke can be fpulled over and fined fifty smackers.

The "Thank You For Smoking" lobbyist quoted in the Times article says the ban is based on "junk science." Because, apparently, he doesn't believe that ciggies are bad for your health. And he makes a big to-do about the government "taking away the right to personal property," a seeming non sequitur which we can only suspect is intended to make a few extremeist think "Ha-ha! Next thing, the ZOG comes for our assault rilfes."

Look, we know it sounds a little totalitarian -- from a smoker's perspective. That is to say, if you have been raised to believe that you have in inalienable right to stink up your neighbor's air, any smoking ban seems like a gratuitous infringement of that right. And once you've been kicked out of the office, the factory and the bar, you may think "Well, at least they can't tell me what to do in my own damn car." And now they are doing exactly that.

But here's the thing. Cigarette smoke is toxic. Everybody knows this, even the companies that make the damned things. Exposing your kids to it, or somebody else's kids to it, is just cruel. And a fair number of accidents, so we're told, are caused by people fumbling to open a cellophane packet or snap a Zippo.

And another thing. Cigarette smoke is nasty. Not just poisonous, but also foul-smelling. Smokers don't notice -- their addicts, after all. B ut the rest of us do, especially those with the unimpaired sensory organs of children. Forcing them to breathe your smoke, especially in an enclosed space, is a vicious assault.

Father A. is a lifelong nonsmoker, who as a child was frequently trapped in the car with smokers. It caused headaches, smelly clothes, and a great deal of discomfort. The smoke stinks, and to this day makes me want to retch. On sunny days, the various adults would open the window, so I only got to smell part of the ferocious reek from up front. Some of the smokers in my early life believed that a slightly-cracked window sucked the smoke out of the car. This just wasn't true. The window had to be basically open, and the car travelling at highway speeds, for the smoke not to wind up in the back seat. And at that point, the back seat was like a wind tunnel, so riding there was still a pretty unhappy experience.

And anyway, on cold days (which were many) or rainy days (which were nerve-wracking) the windows stayed shut, or nearly so. Those rides were just excruciating. To this day, the memory of one particular thunderstorm on the New York State Thruway, with the windows closed and two smokers puffing away up front, summons up a terrible combination of disgust and rage.

I complained -- a lot -- but to no avail. In fact, I think that the various chain-smoking adults just thought of me as a little whiner. And that is eaxctly what the people outraged by the Bangor ban feel about their opponents. But you know what? I have no sympathy. Pull 'em over, hit 'em with a fine -- and do it for the kids.

Episcopal Trial By Fire

It's not what you think.

A dear friend from seminary let us know -- in a comment on the site -- about the Third Sunday in Advent excitement at St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral, in San Diego. Somebody tried to torch the place ... wait for it ... during the service.

The apparent arsonist succeeded in destrying the ladies' loo (I believe that's the Anglican word; we Lutherans use something less printable), and doing about $100,000 in damage. But nobody was hurt, and Christmas services will take place as planned.

So what happened here? Oh, it could have been some sort of political protest -- not very effective, because not at all articulate. Or a genuine attempt to commit mass murder, no pun intended.

But the most likely explanation is that a very, very disturbed person was working out some psychological issues that the rest of us will never understand. That person clearly needs help, and lots of it. Which we hope he or she gets from inside the appropriate penal institution.

Meanwhile, keep the people of St. Paul's in your prayers tonight. I will.

Lutheran Church has European Members

There's a news flash.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the world's largest Lutheran body, has "associations" for various ethic communities among its membership -- "African-Americans, American Indians/Alaska Natives, Hispanics, Asians/Pacific Islanders and Arab/Middle Eastern Heritage." And now, at long last, they have approved an association for the other 97 (or so) percent: European Americans.

Oh, we can hear the jokes already. But fair's fair; Father A. is a a proud Euro-American himself, and has long felt a little left out of the limelight. I mean, apart from all the presiding bishops, nearly all the bishops, and the vast majority of pastors and laypeople, the ELCA hardly has anybody like me in it. So I'm happy to have a special-interest group in which to pursue my owhn identity's identity politics.

But there is a serious problem. Because with only one new association, we Finns are going to be tossed in with those insufferably snotty Swedes. Not to mention the Germans with their crypto-Calvinism (and occasional tendency to invade Poland).

Frankly, the whole thing sounds like another plot to keep us down. Hey, Pharaoh -- let my people go!

Religion of Peace, Part ....

... crap, we lost count.

Indonesian religious police raided a hairdresser's shop, because the women weren't wearing head scarves, and the men should have known that Sharia prohibits them from having a woman cut their hair. (The whole Jezebel thing, we suppose).

For crying out loud. When will people -- scratch that, the billion or so perfectly reasonable Muslims in the world -- get so sick of this nonsense that they put their collective foot down and demand a better way? Can you imagine a Christian religious police, in any nation on earth? No -- not since Cromwell. And there was a reason that after him they brought back the Stuarts.

Or, as Benedict XVI said, in one of those wicked quotes of his, "In religion, there is no coercion." And which repressive medieval anti-Islamic polemic did he get that one from again? Oh yeah -- the Quran.

The Sleep of Reason

A San Diego [make that Bakersfield -- see the first comment] man, draped in an American flag, poured gasoline over himself and lit a match. He did so -- get this -- to protest the school district's decision to uyse the terms "Christmas" and "Easter" in describing its vacation schedule. He was wearing a sign that said "[deleted] the religious establishment."

Honestly, people, we at the Egg would just like to point out, yet again, that secular types are as capable of being violent extremists as anybody else.

Give Me Liberty . . . .

Two large and historic Episcopal parishes are leaving PECUSA to join the Church of Nigeria. Truro Church and Falls Church, both in Virginia, have voted to deep-six their ongoing discussions with the denomination, and instead submit themselves to the authority of Peter Akinola, the Nigerian archbishop who has been a loud conservative voice in the Anglican wars over sexuality.

Now consider the irony. George Washington served on the vestry of the Falls Church, and Francis Scott Key later led services there. (Although, nota bene, Key was a lawyer and not a priest.)

In contrast to these two heroes of freedom, Archbishop Akinola has led a movement in his country to criminalize not only homosexual behavior, but any advocacy for the civil or human rights of gay people. He has supported laws that make it illegal to publish editorials or take part in demonstrations supporting these rights. Such is Akinola's contempt for gay people that, rather than hear them argue for their place in society, he would abrogate the freedoms of speech and assembly for which George Washington and others like him were willing to die.

The two parishes may imagine that they are "traditionalist" and "conservative," but then, the advocates of oppression often do.

Anglican Bishop Makes a Fool of Himself

Tom Butler, the Bishop of Southwark, attended a party at the irish Embassy, and turned up the next day, bruised and bloody, missing his briefcase and cellphone. He claims a memory lapse, and assumes he was mugged; the police think otherwise. Witnesses report seeing "a white haired man in a cassock" climb into the back seat of a Mercedes, throw toys around (!) and say "I'm the Bishop of Southwark, it's what I do."

Well, he made a fool of himself. But it's still not as bad as the new Episcopal PB's acilm that Episcopalians are proud to be in decline because it shows how smart and environmentally-conscious they are. And she was apparently sober when she said it ....

Christian Bookshops Drop Quran

SPCK, the UK's oldest chain of Christian booksellers, will no longer sell the Quran or other books it considers "inimical to Christianity."

Behind the story is something interesting: majority interest in the chain has been sold to representatives of an Orthodox agency, the mission of which is to build an Orthodox presence in still-nominally-Latin Britain. Anglicans still hold a minority position on the SPCK board, and voted against the decision to stop carrying "inimical" books.

As a matter of business strategy, the decision makes some sense. Define your brand, and so forth. And on the surface, it seems like a reasonable mission strategy as well. Why should any organization devoted to the "propagation of Christian knowledge" have an interest in propagating knowledge of other faiths?

But that question is not entirely rhetorical. Arguably, at least, Christians may be better-prepared to articulate their faith in a pluralistic society if they have a working knowledge of the other faiths with which it is inevitably to be contrasted. Any decent missionary knows this. So we wonder if the SPCK move, for all its common-sense appeal, does not in fact represent a step away from Christian engagement with non-Christian culture, and toward the sort of circle-the-wagons, last-holy-remnant attitudes which often seem to flourish in declining, ethnocentric churches -- like the Orthodox.

Church of the Lost Ark

Archaeologists working at Shiloh have dug up a very, very old Christian church.

The article linked above may overstate the claim -- if it comes from the late 4th century, this won't come close to the house-church at Dura, for example. By the mid-4th-century, Constantine and his mother had already been on a bit of a church-building spree in the Holy Land. Should this prove to be part of that, it will tell us little or nothing about the most primitive, pre-Constantinian, era of Christian worship. (On the other hand, it will probably be the remains of a well-funded and therefore beautiful building.)

More interesting than the date of this building is its location. Before the construction of the Temple, the Ark of the Covenant was kept at Shiloh. In fact, the team (supported by locals) may keep digging, in hope of finding evidence of the ancient Tabernacle.

So it is kind of cool to know that 4th-century Christians built a church on this Jewish sacred site (as well as the overtly Christian sites connected to COnstantine, such as the Holy Sepulchre). After all the studies are in, we may know a lot more about how they perceived themselves in relationship to the Jewish heritage of Christianity -- and perhaps even in relation to the Law.

Anti-American Racist Freaks Oppose Episcopal Bishop

We've been reading a fair number of slams against the new PECUSA Presiding Bishop, Katherine Jefferts Schuori. Here at the Egg, we continue to be a little disturbed by her comparatively brief tenure as a priest, and her remarkable lack of parish experience before ascending to the throne.

But that said, these various slams -- many of them made in passing, by writers with other concerns -- have been troubling us. They are often pretty nasty in tone, but short on details.

Several complain that she apparently permitted same-sex unions in her former diocese, but provide no details. Now, for a bishop to "permit" something may mean any of several different things. It might mean that she was gung-ho for the practice, or simply that she lacked the canonical ability, or political clout, to discipline a popular maverick in the ranks of her parish clergy. She really ought to be judged not by an unspecified case or two from years ago, but by what she does in the next few months, as the Episcopal Church wrestles with its internal divisions and with the divisions of the Anglican Communion.

Others among the slamming community, however, don't even have this much ammunition to fire. They just write mean, sneering stuff, the general tone of which seems to be "I don't like her, and you -- my readers -- already know why."

Exhibit A: Bill Murchison. Our beloved godfather recently forwarded us a piece Mr Murchison had written for the Dallas Morning News. It mocked the new bishop's installation sermon, apparently -- one couldn't be sure -- for having a political agenda. The sermon argued that God's peace is made real in the world through care for the poor, and for the environment. Murchison said, essentially, that these were not the Church's business, but the business of politics and government. He accused her of betraying her heritage.

Oh, and he doesn't like Bono. Not sure how that fits into his article, but he mentioned it.

"Hmmn," though the Egg. "How odd." We had always thought that care for the poor was very much the Church's business. And we had also thought that the Church had a duty to promote that concern by speaking to politicians and governors. As to the matter of "heritage," we had thought -- been entirely certain, rather -- that the Anglican churches had been created in the crucible of a complex interrelationship between matters of faith and matters of public policy. (See under: Cranmer, Thomas; Stuart, James I et seq.; Tudor, all of them).

And for the record, we think Bono is a pretty decent guy.

So, having read this article, and finding it strangely free of ideas and just as strangely filled with nasty remarks, we were moved to wonder: "What's with this Murchison guy?" And we Googled his sorry cracker behind. Here's what we learned:

Bill Murchison used to be reporter; he teaches at Baylor, and has a reputation for solidly conservative Episcopalianism. No problem there. (Well, small problem -- he was brought on board by Sloan, a president so bad the faculty demoted him before he could dfestroy their institutional credibility.)

But a few more clicks revealed the remarkable fact that Murchison is part of something called the League of the South. This is a neo-Confederate organization. As in the Confederate States of America. As in the guys who lost the Civil War. The slaveholding, union-busting, Lincoln-assassinating Confederacy. The league is committed to secession from what it calls the American "empire." It's elected president, Michael Hill, advocates not only strict immigration control, but also kicking out "aliens," including Arabs and Jews.

The South will rise again, and my gorge with it.

Basically, these people are to Timothy McVeigh what the Wahabis are to bin Laden: the theoreticians of terror. They don't actually make the bombs; they don't even tell anbody to use the bombs; hell, if pushed, they'll talk about how bad bombs really are -- but they do explain why it might be nice if some bombs exploded. And for the same reason: the bad old American Empire.

So if one of their mouthpices doesn't like the new Anglican primate of the United States, then we say "Rule Brittania."

Getting Ugly in New York

The New York senate campaign, pitting an obscure ex-mayor of Yonkers against the woman who has the Republican party trembling, has never promised anything more than theatrics. After all, John Spencer can't possibly beat Hillary Clinton, and everybody knows it. Rumors are that his whole candidacy is just a Trojan Horse to get back his old job. In Yonkers.

But theatrics can be entertaining -- in fact, that's their purpose. (At least if we read Aristotle's bit about provoking fear and pity to create catharsis as "entertainment.") So the question is whether Spencer was just playing his part with gusto when he claimed that his opponent had spent millions on plastic surgery, or whether in fact he truly is a mean-spirited sexist. (Not to mention blind. Any decent close-up shows that the incumbent has plenty of hard-earned and un-Botoxed wrinkles).

Spencer's team is spinning wildly (we'd give links, but are experiencing Blogger difficulty), but the best their candidate can come up with by way of an apology is, and the Egg kids you not, "At least I didn't call her a lesbian."

Even if the guy weren't wrong on the issues, even if his experience were even remotely comparable to Clinton's, he would still deserve to lose just for being such a jerk.

Regarding the Pope

In a novel Father A. once read, a newly-elected Pope keeps a cat in his private quarters; he swears his staff to secrecy about it, fearing that if he is known as a cat-fancier, the faithful will deluge him with their kittens.

The Egg has struggled with Pope Benedict's, um, indiscretion at Regensburg. In the context of his speech, the now-infamous quotation from Emperor Manuel Paleologus is clearly a small (and dispensable) point. He is talking about the role of reason in constructing a system of religious belief, which is precisely the sort of thing that Catholic theology should work at. And yes, he takes a moment in passing to drege up some medieval anti-Muslim rhetoric, cited as a not-very-effective testimony to the putative Western heritage of non-coercive apologetics.

The Pope was clearly having a momentary lapse of memory -- he thought he was a college professor, when in fact he is a Pope. Professors are allowed, even encouraged, to provoke their students with tendentious illustrations and sly asides. Popes, as Benedict will not soon forget, are required to exercise superhuman restraint, and neither speak nor write a word that has not been considered with extreme care. Otherwise, he will be deluged with kittens ... or much, much worse.

On the other hand, we continue to be outraged by the Muslim reaction to Benedict's lecture. It displays a level of intolerance, and a disregard for free speech, that are simply unimaginable to the post-Enlightenment West. In extreme cases, the violence and threats of violence suggest that Manuel Palologus -- not the Pope, mind you, but the dead mediaeval emperor he was quoting -- may have had a point.

Raymond Ibrahim, over at Victor Davis Hanson's righty blog, does a great job on this. Click the link, but here are his money quotes:

In the context of the Pope’s speech, the point in evoking this anecdote was twofold: 1) to show how even centuries ago, there was inter-religious dialogue — a good thing to be preserved; and 2) to show that there is no room for violence where faith is concerned. ... Moreover, the Pope made it a point to mention one of the Koran’s most tolerant verses — “There is no compulsion in religion” [Koran 2:256].

Had the Pope really wanted to defame Islam, he could have quoted from the much more numerous “sword-verses” of the Koran, which most Muslim theologians are agreed have abrogated the more tolerant ones: “Fight those of the People of the Book [Christians and Jews] who do not believe in Allah nor the Last Day, nor forbid that which has been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth [Islam], until they pay tribute with willing submission, and feel themselves utterly subdued” [Koran 9:29]. Or “When the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever you find them — seize them, besiege them, and make ready to ambush them” [Koran 9:5]

Ibrahim goes on to deal with a point that has not been made much by us in the tolerant lefty blogosphere, much less the press, but which is worth considering. Paleologus is right: most of the growth of Islam, in that era, had taken place as the result of military conquest. Growth as the result of trade and migration came only after the initial conquest of Arabia, North Africa, and western Asia. While peaceful growth may be the historic norm for Islam, conquest is the heart of the movement's creation myth.

Christianity is in many ways the reverse. For the first three hundred years, it spread entirely through peaceful, non-coercive preaching, including the willingness of adherents to suffer torture and execution rather than surrender their faith. Converts were, in fact, required to quit jobs such as soldier or judge which might require them to kill another human being. It was only after Constantine that Christianity was even considered compatible with military service. Of course, from that point forward, things began to change, so that well before time of Paleologus (and well afterward) the religion was indeed spread by armies of conquest. So, while conquest and colonization were for a long time the historic norm for Christianity, the heart of the movement's creation myth is preaching and persuasion.

The Old Switcheroo

Father A. tries to keep this blog centered on things that everybody cares about -- sex, religion, politics. And maybe a little Latin poetry. But tonight, he's going to go off topic for just a moment, to say one thing:

Watch Battlestar Galactica. Start now.

For those of you whose development was not arrested in adolescence, it's a teevee show, on the Sci-Fi network. About human beings traveling through space, hunted by robots. Sounds goofy, right? And in fact, the original, 1970s Galactica was pretty goofy -- Lorne Greene's lowest ebb, including the Alpo commercials. But the new show is a tense, gutsy drama, with some of the best-developed characters on television.

And these characters have real sex, the kind with with emotions and subtext. They have real politics, the kind with both ideals and compromises. And they have real religion -- the kind with both casual observers and intolerant fanatics.

All this was true last year, too. But this season, things took a wild twist. Without trying to explain a complicated story, let me just say this: All along, it has been possible -- natural -- to think of the story as an allegory for modern geopolitics, in which the human beings are bunch of decent, more-or-less secular people just going about their business, while they are stalked by a shadowy army of inscrutable killers, motivated by incomprehensible convictions about a God the humans don't understand. Pretty much the way the West sees itself in relation to Islamic fanaticism, right?

As of tonight's season premiere, things are suddently reversed. The humans had found a nice safe planet to settle down on, but the robots invaded it. For no special reason. They installed a puppet government, which everybody hates and any decent human being opposes. This government claims it wants peace and freedom, and wonders why the people it is crushing under foot don't greet its soldiers with open arms. Wonders why its human police force is regarded as a bunch of collaborators.

Oh, and the president claims his government doesn't torture, even though one of the main characters had an eyeball plucked out in prison.

So guess what? The robots are shocked when a few humans -- not all, by any means, but a highly motivated few -- begin suicide bombings.

It was an amazing premiere, specifically because, by the end of it, you could feel your guts tighten, as you tried to decide whether you wanted the suicide bombings to go on or not, tried to decide what you would do in the same position, tried to decide what the definition of words like "hero" and "necessary" and even 'war" really were.

Smartest piece of television I've seen in years. Even with robots.

Like Rugs

That's how the Bushies continue to lie, about 9/11, the Iraqi WMDs, and George Tenet. Today's Times (linked above) documents some of the misdirections and partial truths that continue to issue from the lying lips of the President's people.

Per the Times, Woodward's new book, while not perfect in every detail, accurately captures the then-new Administration's lack of concern about pre-attack intelligence, and its continuing effort to blame George Tenet and the CIA for what were in fact its own failures.

My favorite is John Ashcroft's snarky remark that he was never briefed on the impending attack by Tenet, and "I'm surprised he didn't think it was important enough to come by and tell me." Classic half-truth: the CIA head didn't do the briefing perosnally, but Ashcroft was briefed. He was warned, in advance, that terrorists were planning a second attack on New York City. But Ashcroft (who, in all fairness, is clinically insane) was more interested in recording patriotic country songs and draping naked statues with velvet to, I dunno, protect America.