Death [Be/Be Not] Proud

We at the Egg spent a rainy spring day at a meeting of our synod's ministerium yesterday.  In one sense, it was a jolly time.  Our colleagues are a fine bunch, and we greatly enjoy their company, almost without exception -- and the exceptions didn't make the trip.

In another sense it was a bit frustrating.  The chief issue before us is the election of a new bishop next month.  The topic raises some anxiety, and our interim bishop, David Olson, had invited us to talk about it.  He started the ball rolling with an interesting question:  Since bishops are not superheroes, and need to divide their time like anybody else, how involved did we pastors hope that the new bishop would be in evangelism and church growth (as opposed to administration, teaching, discipline, or I suppose tea parties with wealthy widows, like David Niven in that great Christmas movie)?

The question was good, but the responses were ... well, weird.  For perhaps half an hour, we watched our friends get up and talk about their own experience as evangelists.  Dear Bishop Olson thanked them each in turn, and then reminded each of the question that he had actually asked.  Some of this was posturing by aspirants to the Big Hat, but most was not.  People just didn't want to talk about the new bishop as much as much as they wanted to talk about themselves.  It's actually kind of touching:  they find their own ministries more interesting than any other subject in the world, and well they might.

We got a bit closer toward the end of this session.  There was much discussion of whether numbers (attendance, membership, offering) are a good indicator of effective evangelism -- an old question, but one of unending interest, since ministers compare numbers the way investment bankers compare penis sizes.  A member of the synod staff, who does not serve a parish in our city, averred that evangelism is easy, and that the trick to building large parishes is "to get the right people [i.e., pastors] in there."  A young pastor serving the suburbs declared that numbers were actually the measure of a pastor's competence, and that the rest of us were soft for occasionally telling a friend that it wasn't his fault when things went south.

Statements like these bear some scrutiny.  Consider a certain parish we know -- let's call it by a coy nickname: "St. John's," in the mythical realm of "Greenpoint."   It was founded 1867, and in 1918 -- despite competition from another more liberal Lutheran parish blocks away -- it claimed 2500 members, half of them children.   By 1944, as the neighborhood changed and the Brooklyn suburbs expanded, that number had dropped to 758.  By 1963, as the city's fortunes declined, the number stood at 353.  In 1982, it was 116 members, and in 2003, according to the official records of our denomination, membership stood at 33.  That's not a typo, and it's not our smallest parish, either.  (Paging Mt Calvary, in Ruby NY)

My question, then, is whether every single pastor to serve St. John's since 1918 has been the wrong people, or whether, just possibly, there might be other things at work to affect the fortunes of a parish.  (And I have a follow-up question, posed to a former bishop who once told a group of young pastors the powerful story of how a certain colleague had gone to St. John's and "loved them back to life" in the 1980s, making some of those young pastors feel terribly guilty about their inability to do likewise with intractable parishes:  How did that work out in the end?  Hmm?)  

This sort of talk is the worst kind of clericalism.  Pastors are not superheroes, any more than bishops are; expecting us to "save" a moribund parish is just foolish.  The most gifted can catch hold of changes in a neighborhood's population and exploit them effectively.  This can buy time, but it cannot turn back the tide.  Only God can do that -- and, as the reliability of tidal charts demonstrates, God generally does not.

The truth is that between the 1850s and the 1920s, Lutherans in New York City built an enormous number of congregations, to serve enormous communities of Lutheran immigrants.  Within a few generations, as the neighborhoods changed, many of those congregations became redundant.  It is not that the city doesn't need the witness of Lutheran churches -- merely that it doesn't need the same number it once did, many of them within blocks of each other.  This is an obvious fact, more or less proven by decades of actual experience.  Churches close, fairly often in New York, because their time has passed.

But as Bishop Olson said, "The one thing I can tell you is that nobody who admits this will ever be elected bishop."  Much as we hate to say so, he may be correct.  Because since at least the 1960s, bishops and other church leaders have seen the wave coming, and with it a threat to their influence.  Their response has been to deny the reality of it all, to declare that all the church needed to do was change -- to find the right formula of language, worship, social work -- and everything could be as it once had been.  Some inspiring rhetoric along these lines has heartened generations of frightened people, both clergy and laity.  And churches have changed, dramatically in some cases; some very fine ministry has come out of these efforts to become newly-relevant to an altered neighborhood.  But decade after decade and year after year, parishes (including the ones that change according to the prescription of the day) have continued to close -- and often, those closures are accompanied not only by the natural and appropriate grief of the faithful, but also by wholly unnatural and inappropriate hard feelings, blame, shame, and lawsuits.

The denial of death, as you will be told by any physician, is not a viable health-care strategy.  Nor would we at the Egg have much use for a physician who proposed it.  And yet, year after year, that is what we look for from our leaders.

This means, of course, that declining congregations cannot often be effective parts of the greater church's mission strategy.  They expend their every asset (and often, the time and money of the synod as well) in the vain effort to survive, rather than asking how they can pass on their treasures -- a building, an endowment, a treasury of experience -- to those who might use it best.  Because we cannot admit that they are dying, we cannot help them plan their estate.  Biblically speaking, they eat up their seed, rather than letting it fall into the ground.

 

Worse yet, there is a theological issue in this mess.  One suspects that for many Christians, the faith does serve as a massive engine of denial:  Jesus will make the cancer go away.  Jesus will keep my Grandma on life support so that she will never die.  Obviously, most of us know better.  All pastors and nearly all laypeople know, from frequent experience, that death comes.  To pretend otherwise is both foolish and un-Christian, because death is central to our faith.

If we deny the reality of death, we deny the Cross itself.  Jesus did not seem to die, as some heretics once insisted; he died.  And his death does not keep you, me or Grandma from dying.  Death is real.  It is simply not the ultimate reality, represented for us by the empty tomb and the new Jerusalem.  

In a similar way, the pretense that a parish, once established, has the right or even need to exist forever is a denial of reality, and it prevents us from proclaiming the ultimate reality:  death, including the death of a local community, is a thing which cannot be evaded, but not for that reason a thing which should be feared.  Our parish churches and their worship are precious and deserve our love; but they are not feast for which we live our lives in longing: the liturgy of the Heavenly City, where saints and angels gather around the throne, and they gaze upon the Lamb of God. 

Clinton and Obama are Both "Losers"

That's the blunt assessment of Gerard Baker at the London Times.  He is merciless, especially regarding Obama's otherwise-widely-hailed speech on religion.  But I can't help thinking that he may have just said what American voters have been slowly realizing, even while the pundits don't quite say it.

Even in the midst of war, recession, declining American prestige, global warming and an international food crisis -- all of which have been created or at least exacerbated by Republican policies -- it may be a tough battle for the eventual Democratic candidate.

Al Qaeda Chief Sides With Tancredo

Ayman al-Zawahri, bin Laden's #2, released one of his occasional tapes to the media.  It's the predicatable homicidal rant.  We get it already:  you don't like Shiites, Americans, the Japanese or much of anybody else.  Honestly, the feeling is mutual.

But right near the end of the story, he drops a thought-provoking little nugget:  According to al-Zawahri's interpretation, it is against Islamic law for any Muslims to take up permanent residence in a Western country, where they would "have permanent stay under the laws of the infidels."

Hmmm.  What does that judgment look like in practice, do you think?  Are all Muslim citizens of the US or other Western nations therefore candidates for the Salman Rushdie treatment, no matter how otherwise faithful and shariah-observant they might be?  (And not just citizens, but permanent "guest workers"?)  Ought Western nations, out of respect for foreign customs and in order to preserve the peace, bar all Muslims from permanent residence?  I'm thinking tourist and student visas only, three weeks and three months respectively, with mandatory weekly check-ins with Homeland Security.

Obviously, we at the Egg would never support policies like this.  But we know plenty of people who would, many of them currently occupying lawn chairs at the Arizona-Mexico border.  Apparently, Tom Tancredo and Ayman al-Zawahri are political allies.

Bitterness versus Elitism

Good Thomas Frank (What's the Matter With Kansas?) op-ed piece at the WSJ, to which I was referred by Andrew Sullivan.  He explores the notion of Obama's supposed elitism.  Two particular passages stand out:

Conservatism [unlike liberalism] has no problem with bitterness; as the champion strategist Howard Phillips said almost three decades ago, the movement's job is to "organize discontent."  And organize they have.  They have welcomed it, they have flattered it, they have invited it in with millions of treason-screaming direct-mail letters, they have given it a nice warm home on angry radio shows situated up and down the AM dial.  There is not only bitterness out there; there is a bitterness industry.

This opens a window onto something that I have been arguing for a long time.  The so-called conservative and neo-conservative movements appear, more and more clearly, to be misnamed.  They do not desire to "conserve" anything in particular.  Or rather, they desire to conserve only particular things.  For example, they restore Teddy Roosevelt's imperialist foreign policy, while leaving their opponents to continue his very progressive antipathy for "malefactors of great wealth."  Nor are they really conservative in the sense of exercising restraint.  The Reagan and Bush administrations spent money like a fleet of drunken sailors.  (In both cases, that's roughly what they spent the money on, too.)  More broadly, what Americans call "conservative" trade and fiscal policies are what the rest of the world calls "neo-liberal."  It is maddening.

The root of the linguistic problem is that "conservatives" have claimed, with greater or lesser frequency, to uphold a single set of values which are both consistent and traditional.  The claim is demonstrably false, but it has been repeated so often that many people now make the mistake of imagining that Bush, for example, somehow reflects the ideals of some vanished age, most likely that of the Founding Fathers.  The mind reels.

Meanwhile, except perhaps for the Great Society era, their opponents have resisted this rhetorical move.  True leftist politics, of the kind that have never really flourished in America, are indeed all about sweeping theories, and often startlingly dumb ones.  Likewise, the politics of the right.  And even if the Democratic Party has provided a notional home for crazed ideologues, the style of government for which it has shown a preference is driven largely by casuistry -- that is, by research and planning for actual eventualities, rather than sweeping Platonic theories of how things ought to be.  That's why Democratic presidential candidates have so often seemed a bit enervated: they are usually technocrats, rather than visionaries. 

The Reagan revolution was in a sense the victory of a visionary, theory-driven wing of the Republican party over the more traditional and practical wing.  This victory was cemented by the rise of the neo-cons, and the near-eclipse of, for example, the "realist" foreign policies associated with Bush pere and Brent Scowcroft.  Iraq, the high-water mark of their influence, was a war driven entirely by theory, and a proportional contempt for evidence.

None of this makes sense if we believe that "conservatives" are defined by genuine conservatism.  But if we realize that their actual goal has always been to achieve power by organizing discontent (or "bitterness"), it all makes sense.  They should call themselves Bitterists, or at least Discontenters.  And their opponents, who may or may not care about freedom ("liberals") or progress ("progressives") ought really to go by their own distinctive characteristic:  the Casuists.

All this leads Frank to his climax, which is less original but still worth noting.  He calls upon the supposedly more "liberal" of the two Democratic contenders to move in a genuinely, as opposed to rhetorically, conservative direction:

If Barack Obama or anyone else really cares to know what I think, I will simplify it all down to this.  The landmark political fact of our time is the replacement of our middle-class republic by a plutocracy.  If some candidate has a scheme to reverse this trend, they've got my vote, whether they prefer Courvoisier or beer-bongs spiked with cough syrup.

Turning back the clock!  Reversing the trend!  Now that's conservative.

Fantasy Ideologies

Are we at war with al Quaeda?  Almost seven years after 9/11, this fundamental question remains impossible to answer.  In war, after all, there are two or more sides, each seeking to achieve political goals.  Terms can be negotiated, surrender accepted.  But the goals of bin Laden and his devotees are inscrutable at best, and it is by no means clear that there is any authority, including his, with which the US could nengotiate terms or from which it could accept surrender.

In a provocative Policy Review essay, Lee Harris argues that "war," in the Clausewitzian sense, is the wrong metaphor to use in understanding 9/11 and its aftermath.  Instead, he says that Quaeda as possesses a "fantasy ideology," in which action, including violent action, is undertaken not primarily to effect any meaningful strategic goal, but rather to express and validate the actor's chosen self image.

Harris draws an analogy to Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia.  There was no real prize to be won -- the nation offered neither a threat nor any resources to strengthen Italy.  Conquering it was merely a symbolic action, serving to illustrate the Fascist myth of a resurgent Roman Empire. In the same way, al Quaeda has no realistic hope of destroying America, much less the West as a cultural force; but that was never the objective.  Bin Laden seeks merely to illustrate the myth of a divinely-empowered Islamic militancy.

This is exactly correct.  Harris describes the behavior perfectly:  

What is common in such interactions is that the fantasist inevitably treats other people merely as props -- there is no interest in, or even awareness of, others having minds or wills of their own.  The man who bores us with stories designed to impress us with his importance, or his intellect, or his bank account, cares nothing for us as individuals -- for he has already cast us in the role that he wishes us to play:  We are there to be impressed by him.

As I said, Harris describes the behavior.  Sadly, he fails to use its proper name.  Like many think-tank professionals, especially on the right, he is more comfortable with intellectual history than with social science, and so he spends a lot of time sorting through William James, Vilfredo Pareto and Georges Sorel, when he might simply cut to the chase by calling this "fantasy ideology" by the name that psychologists have long given it:  narcissism.

Had he done this, his conclusions would have been greatly strengthened.  There is a lot of good writing, based on clinical study, about narcissistic personalities -- their magnetism, their ruthlessness, et cetera.  People who study business, for example, have read the psychology and started to come up with advice for corporate honchos who have a narcissist in middle-management.  (Bottom line:  they can get great results -- just remember that they have no loyalty, and don't care who they hurt, up to and including your company.)  An earnest effort to grapple with the effect of narcissistic leadership styles on geopolitics would be new and exciting.

Lamentably, Harris misses the boat.  His essay concludes with a tepid effort to find substitute metaphors for the present conflict.  Instead of "war," he argues, we should talk about "disease," to be eradicated.  Offhandedly, he suggests that this substitution would help people understand the need for racial profiling, making an embarrassing analogy to screening immigrants at Ellis Island.  Worse yet, he argues that President Bush's early characterization of OBL et al. as "evildoers" was right on target, and criticizes liberals who objected to the phrase because it "dehumanizes" the enemy.

This last bit shows the particularly partisan failure of Harris's imagination, in two related ways.  First, he proposes that to dehumanize the enemy is exactly what the situation calls for, on the grounds that by first dehumanizing us, they have effectively dehumanized themselves.  This is just nonsense.  The enemy is as human as we are, and can only be understood -- and fought effectively -- when we accept this, and deal with it.  Harris shies away from psychology for the same reason that incompetent interrogators gravitate toward torture rather than the more sophisticated and effective means of extracting information:  driven by moral outrage, none of them is willing to exert the intellectual self-discipline required to perceive the enemy as fully human.

And ths, of course, leads into his second partisan failure.  Harris lucidly describes the behavior of the narcissist -- or the "fantasist" -- and identifies it in the behavior of the enemy.  But he seems blind to the reality that the American response has also been far less than Clausewitzian.  What was, or is, the strategic goal of our Iraq invasion?  There is none; it is an effort to illustrate the fantasy of imperial potency.  Strategically, it has weakened the US beyond words -- alientating our allies, draining our treasury,  and limiting the flexibility of our armed services.  Trusting a magnetic leader whose ultimate loyalty is not to our national interest but to his own self-image, we have blundered into a combat which serves only to project a fantasy, and not to further any meaningful strategic goals.  Just like our enemy.

Tancredo Attacks Pope

And guess what the issue is?

Tom Tancredo, who gives Know-Nothing a sublime double meaning, proposed recently that Benedict XVI's concern for immigrants, legal or otherwise, is merely a ruse to get more bottoms into Roman Catholic pews.  Per the Denver Post, he said:

"I suspect the pope's immigration comments may have less to do with spreading the gospel than they do about [sic] recruiting new members of the church.  This isn't preaching; it's faith-based marketing."

For the record, Tancredo is both an ex-Catholic and an ex-candidate for anything that requires a single Hispanic vote.

Ben Stein Channels Michael Moore

Ben Stein, as we have said before, is our favorite Nixon staffer.  Or at least he was, before we learned about his new movie, Expelled:  No Intelligence Allowed.  From the ads that run on Comedy Central, we had concluded that it was some sort of academic romp, on the order of Animal House or Stein's own star-making turn in Ferris Bueller.

It is not.  Expelled is a documentary, which intends to show that exponents of creationism, or its deracinated clone intelligent design, are being treated unfairly by the academic establishment. And in a display of paranoid camp worthy of Michael Moore at his most excessive, Stein argues that the schools that deny creationists tenure and the journals that reject their articles are tools of a totalitarianism on par with those of Stalin or Hitler. 

This is nonsense.  ID is a philosophical position, not a scientific one -- and whatever consideration it deserves belongs in classrooms dedicated to philosophy, not science.  Moreover, and despite the film's various misstatements of fact (or "lies," as they used to be called) it appears that no otherwise qualified scientist has lost either a post or tenure specifically because he or she supported ID.  Note the "otherwise qualified" there.  A scientist with poor teaching skills, a weak publication record, or limited ability to bring in grant money -- in other words, a marginal performer -- is always in danger.  And if two such marginal cases are in competition for the same job, support for an hypothesis which is not taken seriously by most of your professional cohort surely cannot help.

Worse yet (and more like Moore), Stein has apparently filled his movie with fakery -- a "lecture at Pepperdine University," for example, was delivered to a room full of movie extras, in space rented for the occasion.  No wonder they run their ads on Comedy Central; this is the sort of "journalism" we expect from correspondents to the Daily Show.  (Which, as its host takes great pains to remind us, is fake news.)

We at the Egg are surprised and confused by all this.  Surprised, because Stein has always seemed like a pretty sharp cookie, with strong commitments to the reality-based community.  And confused because ... well, golly, Ben, what do you hope to gain from lining up with the crazies, particularly as their star begins to set?

"World's Worst Religious Leaders"

Per Foreign Policy magazine.

These guys are bad, and they're only the tip of the iceberg.  I just have to keep reminding myself that Stalin was an atheist.  As were the Khmer Rouge.

Hindu Goddess Born Again

A baby with two faces has been born in India, and is being received as an incarnation of the Goddess.

She has a truly stupefying condition -- craniofacial duplication, which gives her two mouths and noses, and a total of four eyes, all of them apparently functional.

Here is why we have a soft spot for Hinduism.  In the West, this little girl's life would suck eggs.  At worst, she would be a sideshow exhibit; at best, she could look forward to decades of surgery.  In the East, people make pilgrimages to touch her feet.  

McCain Threatens to Destroy Economy

Asked about his plans to balance the federal budget, John McCain told a Connecticut audience that he would emulate Ronald Reagan.  Heaven help us if he does.

As the Times reporter points out, Reagan actually tripled the deficit, by cutting revenue while raising expenses.  (No matter what they tell you, balancing a budget is simple:  take in more than you spend.  Period.  There's no other way to do it.  And no matter how you try to pretend military spending isn't really "spending," those tanks still cost money.)

But it gets better.  Here's what McCain actually said:  "When Ronald Reagan came into office, we had 10 percent unemployment, 20 percent interest rates, and 10 percent inflation, if I've got those numbers right.  And so what did we do?  We didn't raise taxes, and we didn't cut entitlements.  What we did was we cut taxes and we put in governmental reductions in regulations ...."

Well.  Where to begin?  How about "if I've got those numbers right."  Which he doesn't.  To his credit, McCain is about right on interest rates.  He's somewhat fuzzy on inflation, which peaked in the Carter administration, but never exceeded 14%.  It was declining fast when Reagan took office, so let's call it 11%. 

Where McCain blows it is employment.  When Reagan took his oath of office, civilian unemployment was 7.5%; within a year, it was 8.6%, and within two years it was 10.8%.  In other words, Reagan quickly helped push unemployment up to its postwar high.

Reagan didn't cut entitlements.  Which is strange, really.  The soi-disant "conservatives" like him, even though he tacitly continued the welfare state they used to complain about.  Meanwhile, conservatives can't quit bitching about Clinton, who actually did enact massive welfare reform.  All of which suggests that the people who call themselves conservatives in this country either (a) don't actually believe anything they say, or (b) can't count.

As for deregulation .... Hmm.  Oh, yeah, Reagan deregulated like crazy.  And how did that work out in the long run?  Ask the airlines.  Since the Reagan era, they have gone from flying comfortable jets and making a comfortable profit, down to bankrupt economic jokes flying airborne hellholes.  Oh, make that terrifyingly unsafe airborne hellholes, since just yesterday, they had to ground big portions of the fleet.  It turns out the FAA hasn't been making them inspect their planes.  And are all struggling to stay in business.  All told, we sort of like some regulation on our industries.

So McCain wants to take Reagan as his economic mentor?  Get ready for him to double our present 5% unemployment rate, and cripple a few more of our industries.  But hey, it won't all be bad news -- at least we'll get the dole back.

Pope to Address Sex-Abuse Crisis

According to Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone,  Benedict XVI "recognizes the damage and pain caused by the clergy sex abuse crisis" -- to which one can only wonder how anyone could be sufficiently callous and out of touch, even by Vatican standards, not to recognize those things.

Bertone says that, in his upcoming US junket, the Pope will "address" the problem by delivering "a message of trust and hope."

Sigh.  Trust and hope are what got them into the mess in the first place.  People trusted their priests, and hoped that the bishops would know how to handle those who went astray.  Wrongly so, in both instances.

The message required now is not hope, and certainly not trust -- it is a series of public smackdowns.  Here is what the Pope should do, and should have done long ago:  (1) Cooperate fully with law enforcement, and require that every diocesan bishop and the superior of every order do likewise; (2) Remove the faculties of every priest known to have abused those in his care; (3) Send bishops who have failed to exercise adequate discipline to titular sees, such as good old Partenia; and finally (4) Declare publicly and often a zero-tolerance policy for present or past infractions.

I hope the Pope does this, and soon.  Because then, and only then, will American Catholics begin to trust again.

Wright's Jeremiad

A few weeks ago, when Obama's parish pastor was all the buzz, we wanted to say a few words on the subject, but were distracted by weightier concerns, such as the annual celebration of our Lord's Passion and Resurrection.  (Click the link for a thoughtful discussion of Jeremiah Wright and Chicago's Trinity UCC, by Kelefa Sanneh of the New Yorker.)  Here's our two cents:  the whole flap was at the same time enlightening and a little silly.

Enlightening because it opened a window for many of us, the Egg included, onto a unique ministry and its theological vision.  Trinity is the largest congregation in the United Church of Christ, the prodigiously left-leaning denomination that is the direct linear descendant both of colonial Puritanism (think Jonathan Edwards) and of the catholic revival within Calvinism once led by John Williamson Nevin from his base at Mercersburg.  Perhaps more significantly, it was also the denomination in which Paul Tillich found an American home.  The press has for the most part been satisfied to quote ad nauseam a few words from one of Wright's sermons, and to paint him as a radical whose message flirts with the revolutionary ideologies of the 1960s -- which seem dangerous to conservatives of a certain age, and quaint to most other people.  But the press has largely overlooked the more interesting story, of an Afrocentric congregation led by a radical preacher which is the tallest steeple in a largely white, largely middle-class, denomination still wrestling with its own complex and contradictory beliefs.

Enlightening further because it has reminded many of us that James Cone, the principal theorist of "black liberation theology," is not yet an historical relic.  He still teaches at Union Theological Seminary, and many preachers continue to be shaped by his vision of the Gospel.  This is not a bad thing, by the way.  Although it may be argued that Cone has taken significant liberties with the English language, redefining words like "black" (which he uses to mean "in solidarity with the oppressed"), when you cut through it all his theology offers a sharp challenge to the comfortable version of Christianity which has been conformed to its culture, like the seat of a Town Car conformed to the rear end of a plutocrat.  That is why, along with his well-publicized criticism of the United States, Wright has also been sharply critical of the "prosperity gospel" preached by frauds like Creflo Dollar.  In seminary, we studied Cone, at least in passing, and our professors took pains to point out his intellectual debt to Karl Barth.  At the time, we thought they were pushing it -- at Princeton, they can make a cloud in the sky look like Barth.  But by gum, they were onto something.

Enlightening  yet further because it has cast a beam onto the generational divide between Obama and his pastor -- and onto the generational continuity.  Obama has suggested, as delicately as he can, that he is among the number to whom the firebrand posturing of Wright's era looks less prophetic than quaint.  But he has also made it clear that even if the style has become a little embarrassing, he honors the substance -- both theologically and politically.  It's a bit like having an old uncle who won't stop talking about how he "kilt a lotta gooks back in the war," and you wish he wouldn't talk that way but you don't stop being proud that he won a medal at Okinawa.

And of course the whole kerfluffle was also a tad silly, because the TV news seemed to have an awfully difficult time distinguishing Obama from his (retired) parish pastor.  Look, we at the Egg say some pretty wild things from the pulpit -- for example, we talk, almost obsessively, about a guy rising from the dead.  Then we claim he's still here with us, somehow, in a cup of wine and piece of flat wafer we euphemistically call "bread."  And we know that on a typical Sunday, there are some people who think we are a little daft for believing all that.  They have a different vision of what the Gospel means, and they have come to church not because they agree with every word that drops from our golden tongue, but for reasons of their own.  So they sit politely through our sermons, sometimes enjoying the rhetorical flourish and sometimes squirming at what seems like the embrace of irrationality.  And when it's over, they take away something else -- the pleasure of being with friends, or the connection to their heritage, or even the renewed hope that they may someday come to believe what they do not yet.  

But here's the point:  We love them, even when they disagree with us. And vice-versa.   Adults, including adult religious believers, can have that kind of relationship.  As, apparently, do Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright.

Marianne Williamson Will Not Vote With her Vagina

Or so she claims.

Williamson, the "interfaith minister" (whatever exactly that means) who was raised Jewish and is now connected to Unity and the New Thought movement, insists that Obama's proposed policies are more "feminist" than Clinton's.  She then goes on to redefine "feminist" as, essentially, "feminine."

Let's set aside the merits of her argument, or of her theology, and agree on one important fact:  Marianne Williamson is awfully pretty.  In fact, I think she may be the single hottest interfaith minister I've ever seen.  Years ago, I would have been reluctant to write that, for fear of offending feminist sensibilities -- but glory be, I'm free at last, courtesy of the said redefinition.

Click the link.  Then keep watching as Florence Henderson interviews Charo -- I think my head just exploded.

McCain Confuses Jewish Princess With Candy-Eating Ghost

Another gaffe from the Israel junket:  A day or two after Joe Lieberman had to correct McCain about terrorist training, he had to explain that Purim isn't really the Jewish version of Halloween.

No biggie here -- a secular nation does not require its leaders to know much about religious holidays.  (And McCain, who over the years has had trouble deciding whether he is an Episcopalian or a Baptist, can certainly be excused for ignorance of Judaism, and even applauded for his lame effort to learn quickly about a celebration he doesn't understand.)

But a really strong candidate would have made it his (or, especially, her) business to get these things right -- to know something about the whistle-stop visit to a religious celebration, and much more to the point, who our real enemies are.  

Can we risk yet another president who refuses to do his homework?

The Reality-Based Community is Still in Danger

John McCain's campaign for President is based on support for the Iraq occupation, which he claims represents the mature judgment of a senator with decades of foreign-policy experience -- and which makes it especially embarrassing when he makes elementary gaffes regarding foreign policy.

But it goes beyond either a display of ignorance or a slip of the tongue when, having been corrected about who is training whom in Iran, he continues to repeat the same false information for the rest of the day, as reported by HuffPo.

Apparently, his strategy is to combine Bush's bellicosity with Bush's contempt for the facts.  How delightful.

How Low the Mighty Have Fallen

An important public figure has been caught, red-handed, in behavior that is both legally and morally suspect. Prosecution follows, but it pales beside the public humiliation -- and the outrage of the crowds, who scream, "But we looked up to you!"

Eliot Spitzer, you say? Roger Clemens?

No. Dawn Wells. You may remember her as Mary Ann on Gilligan's Island.

Apparently, the former Miss Nevada was caught driving erratically and in possession of a little marijuana. She claims the drugs were left in her car by a friend and/or hitch-hikers, and that she was swerving all over the road because she couldn't find the heater in her new vehicle. We believe her, because -- well, after Julie Newmar, and maybe Yvonne Craig, it was Dawn Wells who made our early adolescence possible.

The judge gave her five days in the slammer for reckless driving, along with probation and a $410 fine.

Click the link for what may the single cutest mugshot of all time.

"Our Most Thrilling Poet"

Claire Tomalin thinks it's Milton.

I suppose that depends upon what thrills you. If prolixity and Puritanism (granted, a freakishly un-puritanical Puritanism), then Jack's yer man. But we at the Egg find more thrills in fourteen lines of Donne (we're thinking of the vastly underrated Holy Sonnets) than in any given book of the Paradises. And if willful obscurity is what thrills you, there's always Pound.

Yet ANOTHER Gay Anglican Bishop

Depending, at least, upon one's definition of "gay."

The Rt. Rev. Paul Moore, late bishop of New York, was a major figure in the Episcopal Church. Born into great wealth, he was a Marine war hero who disappointed his family by pursuing life as a priest rather than a businessman.  As an inner-city pastor, he was active in the struggle over civil rights.  As bishop, he spoke and acted on behalf of the great cities, when they suffered from the flight of both money and people to the suburbs. 

On a personal note, I might add that a New Yorker profile of Bishop Moore published in the 1980s helped move me on my way to seminary.  Reading it, I said "That is the way I understand Christianity, and that is the kind of work a Christian ought to do."

There were, however, some things about Bishop Moore that were not covered in the 1986 profile.  For better or worse, that was rectified this week by his daughter, the poet Honor Moore, in another New Yorker piece.  She reflects on her father's life, death, and ministry, as well as on their sometimes difficult father-daughter dynamics.  She also reveals that, in addition to his two wives, Bishop Moore had sexual relationships with men that extended over many years.

Reactions to this last revelation have been curious.  A Times reporter found one of Moore's old parishioners who said, essentially, "We all knew, we just never said it aloud."  Well, maybe.  But it seems that most people, including his family, weren't part of that "we."

The excellent religious-press blog, GetReligion.org, has a good takeout, but the numerous comments degenerate into a meaningless semantic debate over whether Moore was "gay," "bisexual," or something else.  Yawn.

At the other end of the spectrum, several of my friends have tried to draw attention away from the bishop's sex life, and toward his religious life -- noting especially his profound reverence for the Eucharist, which the article describes in a few lambent passages.  But of course a bishop who loves the sacraments is not news; we expect that from our bishops.  A bishop who hides something important about himself -- now that's news.

Honor Moore's memoir her father would be well worth reading even if there were not a hint of scandal in it.  In quick, short strokes it paints a touching picture of Moore not only as a priest but as a husband and father.  Her childhood understanding of his vocation is especially affecting:  how his towering height made her think he was closer to God; how he seemed a different man when he changed out of his vestments or clericals.  But, at least for now, most people will read it for the sexy stuff.  

And surely Honor Moore knew that they would.  When the entire Anglican communion is in upheaval about the ordination of a single out-of-the-closet gay bishop, the publication of evidence that one of its modern heroes lived at least part of his life deeply in the closet is surely intended to provoke reflection.

So let's reflect.  Was Bishop Moore's ministry diminished by an attraction to other men?  If so, one would be hard-pressed to show how.  Or was his ministry diminished by the practice of deceit, carried on over many years?  And what about his soul?  Could Moore have been strengthened, both a bishop and as a human being, by a church and a society that permitted him to be honesty about who he was?

On the other hand, perhaps Ms Moore is trying to tell us that a public airing of one's deepest emotional life is not essential to effective spiritual leadership.  She suggests pretty strongly that her father's two marriages were hurt  by the conflict between his love for his wives and a certain  -- ahem -- limitation to his physical interest in them.  But she makes it clear that the sacraments he celebrated were still precious, and that his leadership in the church was still visionary.  Keeping secrets hurt him as a man, but we cannot see clearly how it hurt him as a bishop.

Larry Norman, "Father of Christian Rock," Is Dead

I've never heard of this guy. Still, he quit his first successful band when other members started flirting with Scientology. That's good enough for me.

Buckley is Dead

It is often said that he founded the modern conservative movement. Ehhh. We're not so sure that's fair to McCarthy, Goldwater or Satan. Nor have we ever been much impressed either by Buckley's own sesquipedialian ramblings on television, or by the ranting of the National Review crowd in general.

That said, Buckley had some undeniable charms. Take, for instance, his "Blackford Oakes" spy thrillers. We at the Egg were especially touched by one in which the villainess had attended our own alma mater, and the villain lived on our own street in Brooklyn Heights. Buckley certainly knew his enemies' demographic.

And at a more earnest level, in his last years Buckley was an eloquent and thoughtful advocate for the legal use of marijuana by people with a medical need. (Click the link for an example.) His case was not only clear and sharp, which one expected from Buckley -- it was also compassionate, which one did not always expect.

Republicans Pay Illegal Foreign Lobbyist

Conservative anti-tax activist and mean-sprited nutjob Grover Norquist hired and helped the career of an Australian named Michael Kamburowski who, even while he was lobbying Congress and serving briefly as chief operating officer of the California Republican Party, was working in the United States without a green card.

And on what issues did Kamburowski lobby Congress? You guessed it: immigration reform.

Well, that and dozens of others. Including something called the "Ronald Reagan legacy Project," which is -- seriously -- a program to get government buildings named after the co-star of Bedtime for Bonzo. Savor, if you will, the irony of people who claim to hate big government seeking to preserve the legacy of somebody who claimed to hate big government by, yes, lobbying for favors from that same big government. But we digress.

If Norquist were a woman, seeking either elective or appointive office, and had hired Kamburowski to care for his the little Norquist kiddies, then this would be his Nannygate, and we would soon see him shuffle off to whichever public-arena limbo they use to keep the likes of Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood. Although, in fairness, hiring an illegal nanny is way more serious than hiring an illegal lobbyist, because a nanny might influence America's most precious resource, The Children, while a lobbyist can only influence America's laws and lawmakers. Oh, and war heroes running for for the Presidency -- but again, we digress.

Anyway, here's the bottom line: Conservative icon employs illegal alien as lobbyist. How can you not love the hypocrisy?

Hey, Now That Romney's Out ...

... you think any of his five sons will serve their country by enlisting to fight in the war he claimed to support? You know, now that they're not serving that other way, by helping their pop lose in the primaries?

The War on Valentine's Day

(With a nod to FoxNews. We also considered "the St. Valentine's Day Massacre" and "the War of the Roses.")

Saudi Arabia, staunch ally of the Bush dynasty and therefore, supposedly, of the United States, has struck another blow for freedom by banning the color red. Especially in roses, and especially on or around February 14.

Per Sheikh Khaled Al-Dossari, "As Muslims we shouldn't celebrate a non-Muslim celebration, especially this one that encourages immoral relations between unmarried men and women. " Per college student and blogger Ahmed al-Omran, the government decision will give people another reason to make fun of the Saudis "but I think that we got used to that by now."

Bush Supports Fraud

That's the logical conclusion, anyway.

Per the AP, the Administration's proposed rules to crack down on companies that defraud the government will specifically not cover those doing work overseas, including Iraq and Afghanistan -- where almost 30% of government contract spending will occur.

Why? Basically, because the companies complained that it would be cumbersome and expensive for them to start reporting all their bribes. Seriously, that's what it boils down to.

And apparently the Administration (co-helmed, never let us forget, by a man with an overt financial interest in the success of a major overseas contractor) considers the profit of its contractors more important than any fiduciary responsibility it might have to, I dunno, the United States.

I never, ever want to hear another Republican complain about pork-barrel spending, big government or a welfare state. These people obviously believe the Rapture is imminent, because they spend money like there's no tomorrow.

"If Any Question Why We Died ..."

"...Tell them: because our fathers lied." That bit from Kipling's Epitaphs of War has been quoted a lot since the Bush Administration's gross deceptions over Iraq became known. But let's admit it: We can't blame Bush forever. At a certain point, the Democrats must take responsibility for their own politically-motivated failure to do the will of the people.

Matt Taibbi sums up, with considerable vitriol, the Dems' failure to take any decisive action on Iraq, despite their two-year-old electoral mandate to get us the hell out of there. It's all gold, but here's a sample quote:

"Though few congressional aides would think of saying so on the record, in private many dismiss their party's lame anti-war effort as an absurd dog-and-pony show, a calculated attempt to score political points without ever being serious about bringing the troops home.

"'Yeah, the amount of expletives that flew in our office alone was unbelievable,' says an aide to one staunchly anti-war House member. 'It was all about the public show. Reid and Pelosi would say they were taking this tough stand against Bush, but if you actually looked at what they were sending to a vote, it was like Swiss cheese. Full of holes.'"

If the epitaph about "our fathers" condemns the Republicans, the very next poem in the same book may speak an unwelcome truth about the Washington political class as a whole. It's for "A Dead Statesman":

I could not dig: I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?

Archbishop Jumps Shark

The link above will send you to a recent speech by Rowan Wiliams, Archbishop of Canterbury and nominal head of what we used to call the Anglican Communion. (It needs a new name, now that the bishops refuse to commune with each other).

The speech, called "Civil and Religious Law in England: a Religious Perspective," has been widely and often unfairly criticized in he past few days. The critics make it sound as though Williams is advocating a wholesale recognition of sharia, or Islamic law, among Muslims in Britain. In fact, he stops well short of this. His actual argument, if I have read it correctly, is that civil law ultimately depends upon theology to distinguish right from wrong; that therefore religious argument and conviction will always have a place in the making of laws; and that this role ought best to be overt and freely discussed, rather than closeted.

His case is erudite and nuanced. It will surely sound familiar to those Christians accustomed to discerning in the Decalogue a "natural law" established by God, which they claim can and should be mirrored by civil law. It is a serious argument, which deserves to be taken seriously.

And it is dead wrong.

A blog isn't the place to write the long essay that this task requires, especially when it is Saturday and one really must be writing sermons. Suffice it to say for now that Williams is hobbled by two things: his Englishness and his Anglicanism.

By which snotty remarks I mean to say, first, that as the leader of an established church, he is accustomed to the fact that, as he says in the speech,"church law is the law of the land." In Britain, of course, that fact is little more than an historical curiosity -- "why look, the Queen has to nominate their bishops, at least once the fix is really in." To Americans, however, the dangers of an established church are all too clear -- many of ancestors came here to escape them. Why, we even made Saint JFK promise on a stack if Bibles that he wouldn't be a lackey for the Pope. (About that stack of Bibles: we don't always get the secularism thing quite right. But if England is caesaropapist in law and secular in practice, we are just the reverse -- and our way is much better for everybody, not least because it offers a fundamental check on the power of those tyrants whom religious zeal, like any other zeal, will predictably produce.)

As for the limitation imposed by Williams' Anglicanism -- perhaps this is a bit harsh, but I can't help thinking that if he had been conditioned by the sharp distinction between iure divino and iure humano that is the essence of the Lutheran reformation, he wouldn't be making a muddle of the two in this speech.

Rick Warren Seeks to Kill Protestantism

Per the WaPo: "Rick Warren, a megachurch pastor and philanthropist who is courted by political leaders worldwide, says he thinks Christianity needs a 'second Reformation' that would steer the church away from divisive politics and be 'about deeds, not creeds.'"

This may give pause to those of us who owe a debt to the first Reformation - 95 Theses, Augsburg Confession, that stuff. Because after all, the Church of Luther's era also wanted to put an end to divisive doctrinal debate, and made quite a big deal about the importance of doing good work -- orthopraxis, as theologians say, at the expense of orthodoxy. Luther's objection, remember, was never to indulgences per se -- it was to the way they obscured the doctrinal content of the Gospel.

Warren's main point, speaking to a group of WaPo writers, was twofold. First, that he has personally spent too much time fretting publicly about the right-wing litmus test issues, like abortion, and now wants to put those into perspective by talking about equally important things, like AIDS. And second, that years of obsessive attention to the litmus test at the expense of the big picture on the part of conservative religious voices has done much to diminish civility in American public discourse. As he says (now): “You have no right to demonize someone just because you disagree with them.”

All true, and he is welcome aboard. We in the mainline churches, although we have certainly spilled a lot of blood and ink over our own hot issues, have generally managed to keep civil about it -- at least unless the Institute for Religion and Democracy was paying us to be nasty. We are pleased by the growing determination of the evangelical right to recognize the existence of a bigger picture -- that, for example, Christians have a duty not only to support marriage, but also to care for the earth. Despite our differences of emphasis, this new direction may well prove helpful to both the mainline and the evangelicals, by allowing us to find common ground in the public sphere. Rick Warren has the potential to make an enormous difference here.

But we hope that he will not do it at the expense of doctrine. Because doctrine really does matter. When Warren tells the reporters "I don’t care why you do good as long as you do good," he sounds like just the sort of reasonable religious voice the secular world is yearning for. And so far as the public arena goes, he is right: Christians can happily work alongside Buddhists or Muslims in pursuit of peace, for example. But within the Christian community itself, our pattern of endless debate over the content of our faith and its ethical imperatives serves a vital purpose. It keeps us from doing the wrong thing in the mistaken belief that it is right -- selling indulgences, say, or buying masses for the dead. Our division over such questions reflect important differences of interpretation, which we gloss over at our peril. Still more important is our historic agreement on certain fundamental issues -- such as the divinity of Christ, debate over which occasioned several of those creeds Warren speaks of so breezily.

Charles Porterfield Krauth, in many ways the the founder of evangelical catholicism in America, put it simply and best when he said that "an age without creeds is an age of darkness." Let us do good together -- and let us do it as we walk in the light of a faith that is carefully articulated and faithfully proclaimed

I Voted My Conscience

After many years as an Independent, Father A. has, within the past few years, registered as a Democrat -- less because of any enthusiasm for that sad little band of wonks and dreamers, than as an expression of outrage over the malfeasance of their chief competitors.

As a New Yorker, my vote in national primaries has customarily been worthless, coming too late in the season to affect a race. This year, thanks to the madness which has given us Super-Duper-Jumbo-Chalupa Tuesday, things were otherwise. And so, after a few hours of pastoral care, I trotted toward a local middle school to cast what is -- if memory serves -- my first vote in any party primary.

Walking over, I did not yet know for whom I would cast that newly-relevant vote. Over the opast four years, I have continued to dream of a Wesley Clark presidency, but that wasn't going to happen. Of the Dems to run, I confess a certain fraternal affection for Kucinich, who is, like me, a short man with a taller and more glamorous wife. But I never wanted him to be President. For that job, the only candidate who appeared qualified by the actual experience of governing was Bill Richardson. (One can harldly consider service in the Senate as governing anymore; it has been reduced in over the years to a matter of posturing and bloviating in the distant hope of election to the Oval office). Of course, he was out early, and I had settled on John Edwards, about whose ability I had considerable doubt but whose platform could not help but pull a minister's heartstrings.

But the talking heads had informed me that my choices, at this point, were two, and neither very appealing.

Yes, Senator Clinton is a smart woman, a fine legislator, and posessed of a seemingly iron will. And people say she's much friendlier in person. On the other hand, there are those negatives. For no sound reason, she provokes a profound animosity from many people, which her political enemies have had many years to practice exploiting. She would be an easy target for during a campaign, and it is hard to imagine that her time in office would be much better than a partisan firefight. And we've done that already, for too long.

And Senator Obama -- well, sure, he's exciting. His intelligence is obvious, and he seems genuinely eager to move past the reflexive polarization of our curreent politics. On the other hand, that may simply mark him as naive. Clinton has an actual track record of making laws alongside McCain; Obama often sounds readier to teach law than to make it.

So a vote for Hillary is a vote for a hardened warrior, and guarantees years of continued war, with the hope that she might win more than she loses. A vote for Barack is a vote for the earnest hope of a cease-fire, and risks overwhelming defeat. (I am talking about the battle in Washington, mind you, not Iraq).

I didn't know, even as I entered the middle school, which way I would go. I didn't even know as I shut the curtain and reacquainted my self with New York's trusty old mechanical-lever voting machinery. And then I looked at the actual ballot, and started to laugh, provoking the nice old lady outside to ask if I were all right.

There was Governor Richardson. Or at least his name. Along with Edwards and Kucinich. (What happened, Gravel? You chicken out?) He had been my original choice, and the possibility of voting for him remained, so I flipped the toggle. Of course he won't win, but I still voted for the best candidate available to me.

But since Richardson had no pledged delegates, and since we vote for them separately, I still had some decisions to make. If in fact the convention is contested, these delegates will be called upon to make a difference. I voted for my assemblyman, because I like him, even though he is pledged to Clinton. For the rest I voted for all the delegates pledged to Edwards. He had been my second choice, and his delegates were still out there. These were people who agreed with me, at least on this. Why shouldn't I choose them?

All the way home, I heard the voices of some friends, scolding me for "wasting" my vote, throwing it away on people who did not have a realistic chance of winning. But, despite a few misgivings, I felt pretty good. Because I hadn't made another "least worst" choice, in a world that is full of them. I had voted my conscience.

McCain Insane?

That seems to be the opinion among some of his Senate colleagues, including those within his own party. Or, if not insane, prone to explosions of rage -- and temperamentally unsuited to the Presidency. Per the WaPo:

"The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine," Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) ... told the Boston Globe recently. "He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."

Atheists Attack Boy Scouts

Apparently, the Scout oath ("do my best for God and country," or, across the pond, "God and the Queen") bothers them.

Actually, they are bothered by the fact that all Scouts are required to say the oath, whether or not they believe in God. And further, by the fact that the Scouts will make exceptions allowing Muslims to mention Allah, Buddhists to mention the Dharma, but will not make an exception allowing atheists to remain silent. And -- perhaps centrally -- they are bothered that the Scouting website calls the movement "inclusive," even though it apparently excludes those with a strong objection to God.

Let it be said that the atheists, represented here by the British Humanist Association and National Secular Society, have at least half a case. To call yourself "inclusive" when you aren't sounds misleading, doesn't it? Except, of course, that "inclusive" isn't the same as "all-inclusive." For example, many churches call themselves inclusive, by which they are usually hinting that they welcome gay people or racial minorities or somebody else who often feels excluded. But they are still churches. A Hindu is welcome to visit, but can't very well join and remain a Hindu.

Strangely enough, the British Humanist Association has a similar rule. I consider myself a pretty typical Christian Humanist, of the Erasmian variety. (We pretty much invented the concept, generations before anybody thought to secularize it.) But so far as I can tell, the BHA's definition of "humanism" extends only to secular humanists. And while, according to their website they welcome "those who are not [secular] humanists but who support our aims for society and who wish to contribute and stay in touch," they will not extend to us the full privileges of membership, specifically including a vote in their affairs. That is to say, they will "welcome" those of different opinions than their own, to the extent of accepting our filthy theist money, but invite us to keep our opinions separate but equal.

Sort of like letting the atheist kid come on your camping trip, even if he can't wear your neckerchief.

Oh, and another thing: I was going to suggest that, instead of pissing on the Scouts, the secular types might consider starting their own camping club. Then I learned that they had, since 1925 -- the UK's Woodcraft Folk. They don't wear uniforms, just lookalike sweatshirts. Nobody much joins, because, frankly, it looks lame next to those snappy Scout uniforms and merit badges.

Churches Boycott the Superbowl

At least they should.

For years, churches have adopted an "if you can't beat 'em" approach toward Superbowl Sunday, speeding through services, cancelling evening events, and capitulating to the world by holding "Superbowl parties," showing the game on their own giant TV sets. (Some feel that this is an effective outreach to the young and unchurched, about which more momentarily.)

But the party's over. The NFL has sent out letters threatening legal action. Apparently it is a violation of copyright law to show their games on any set larger than 55 inches. Sports bars have a legal exemption.

Okay -- how stupid is this? First off, why does the NFL care about the size of thee TV set their hundred bazillion viewers use to view the game? Two hundred bazillion eyes is a lot of eyes, whether they are distributed in living rooms or gathered in fellowship halls. Second, what kind of country gives exemptions to bars but not to churches?

So we side with the churches, to be sure. No surprise there. But we have a few other points we'd like to raise. To wit:

1) This is an old, old dance. In Renaissance England, the Puritans were so offended by sports played on Sunday that they banned them. One of the many ways in which James I disappointed them was his support for sport -- after Mass, to be sure. He even wrote a book on the subject, because that's just the kind of guy he was.

2) It's an old dance, only now, the churches aren't leading. They are leaning like horny debutantes on the arms of Big Steroid, and hoping to be swung gracefully around the ballroom. They are yearning for love, and willing to put out a little if it gets them a ring. But like that deb, all they're really going to get is screwed.

3) Churches are kidding themselves if they think this is evangelism. When the WaPo writes about a huge Presbyterian congregation in Virginia that uses this as outreach to disaffected youth, and quotes the Director of Communication saying "we thought we had found our magic bullet," wiser heads shake sadly. Sure, the Superbowl is a great way to get young people into your church -- for the Superbowl.

3) Why do all these churches have TV sets bigger than 55 inches? Yikes. Don't they know that television was invented by the Other Place? Especially since the writers' strike?

Nope. All told, the NFL's seeming smackdown is (like Paul's shipwreck, or the Decian persecutions)just a cleverly-disguised gift from God. It is a chance for churches to stop kissing the culture's smelly rear, and stand apart -- proudly. Rather than trying to get in on the action, churches should take some time this Sunday afternoon to be churches. Worship God. Hold a Bible study. Deliver your collection of coats to the nearby shelter. Sure, you won't get a lot of people -- but guess what? You'll be doing what God called you to do.

Churches should boycott the Superbowl, not to harm the NFL, but for their own good.

The Field Narrows

And gets more pathetic.

Edwards and Giuliani are both out now, so my feelings are a mixture of grief and relief. Grief, because Edwards was my last hope for a Democratic candidate who would speak for the poor. (Clinton won't, and Obama doesn't represent either people or values, so far as I can tell -- he represents process. Which is nice, if you are a process.) And relief, because Giuliani was the candidate most likely to become a tyrant of Neronian proportion, blaming the press while Rome burns.

What does this leave Republicans with? Not much. The Huckster and Mom's old boyfriend are still kicking around, but the serious contenders appear to be McCain and Romney. They are not an inspiring pair, and will get less inspiring as the weeks drag on.

Case in point: the headlines about last night's debate read "Romney Accuses McCain of Dirty Tricks." This actually sounds promising. Did he hire Cubans and ex-CIA people to burgle campaign headquarters? Engage in push-polling about ROmney's putative biracial daughter?

Oh, no, my mistake. He attacked his record. Specifically, McCain said that Romney wants timetables on Iraq; Romney said this wasn't true. According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, Romney called last year for "a series of timetables and milestones" leading to withdrawal.

Okay, let's parse this mess. McCain is telling the truth, and Romney calls it a lie. That's pathetic. On the other hand, timetables and milestones are a very good idea, and the fact that neither man will say so is also pathetic.

Worse yet is the full form of Romney's accusation: that accurately citing his record in a "dirty trick that Ronad Reagan would never have approved of." What, you mean the guy who paid Lee Atwater to run his campaigns? Who lied every time he opened his mouth, most notably on the self-destructive abuse of executive power we call Iran-Contra? Seriously, guys, this is the wrong mantle to wrap yourself in. Reagan's dissidents still hold a grudge, and in the eyes of his acolytes you can only make yourselves look smaller by comparison.

It's gonna be a long year.

Giuliani Is a Jerk

Nothing really new here -- just further proof that the "hero" of 9/11 was really part of the problem.

Saturday's Times reports the release of an NYPD internal memo regarding the strange choice of the World Trade Center for the mayor's emergency headquarters: “Seven World Trade Center is a poor choice for the site of a crucial command center for the top leadership of the City of New York,” said the memo, put together by the police with input from the Secret Service. Why? Because of "the building’s public access, the center’s location on the 23rd floor, a 1,200-gallon diesel fuel supply for its generator, a large garage and delivery bays, the building’s history as a terrorist target, and its placement above and adjacent to a Consolidated Edison substation that provided much of the power for Lower Manhattan."

Simply put: it was an easy target for the people who had already gone after it once. Common sense.

But Giuliani didn't listen to common sense or expert opinion. He wanted what he wanted, and he wouldn't listen to those who thought he was making a mistake. As a direct result, the worst day in New York City's history was made that much worse when the mayor's emergency bunker was rendered useless, not because a clever enemy struck it, but because it happened to be in a really bad place.

Some hero.

Obama Alienates Homophobes, Also Homosexuals

Give him credit for guts. Speaking at Martin Luther King's sometime parish, Ebenezer Baptist, Barack Obama spoke a little unwelcome truth when he told worshipers that “If we are honest with ourselves, we’ll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King’s vision of a beloved community. We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them.”

And this on the MLK holiday weekend!

It helps to remember that, as much homophobia as there may be in church circles generally, there appears to be considerably more in black church circles. This made Obama's remark fairly daring for a black man courting black voters, especially when many of them already suspect that he is "not one of us."

On the other hand, it seems like a great way to impress liberals in the broader electorate, especially those with a strong interest in gay rights. Which is apparently what happened, as the gay blogosphere caught fire -- for a while. "How gutsy," they said; "how daring." And, one suspects, just a hint of "He looks like them, but we know he's really one of us."

Then Obama was endorsed by Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, pastor of a huge black church in Texas, the website of which advertised one of those "ex-gay" ministries that work so well and are so deeply beloved of all homosexuals. Even though Caldwell denied any knowledge of the ministry, and removed it from his church website, Obama's flurry of support devolved into a flutter of confusion. "How gutsy is he really?" And, more importantly, "Is he really one of us?"

We like Obama. We really do. He is trying to move the political dialogue beyond tired old identity politics, which is something that absolutely must happen for the good of the nation. But, just as it took Nixon to go to China, so dismantling identity politics might be better accomplished by somebody with a more distinctive identity.

Rush Limbaugh Has No Manners

Or, to be accurate, he is ignorant regarding them.

Limbaugh recently blathered on about a photograph of the Democratic candidates, claiming that Senator Clinton was 'the only one sitting there who could not cross her legs." Apparently, in his strange little mind, crossing your legs is a qualification for high office. Go figure.

According to Miss Manners, a lady's "at-ease"position while sitting is to cross her ankles -- which is what Clinton was doing.

Limbaugh later added that his comment had been in bad taste, and that he had 'quasi-apologized, but not really." Wow -- talk about doublespeak. And gutlessness. And ignorance. Reminds us of our old favorite joke from the 90s: How is Rush Limbaugh different from the Hindenburg?

Satan Is Off His Game

According to the carabinieri, Satan-worshipers broke into a Turin church and stole some holy water and a missal. Experts on magic say the holy water has no special value in their rites. The missal wasn't historic or valuable; it was just a typical twenty-year-old altar book. Frankly, there's nothing in it you couldn't download off the Net in five minutes.

Oh, Satan! Is this what it's come to now -- reduced to symbolic petty theft? Remember your glory days? Remember the Black Death, the papal indulgences, the witch-trials, the religious wars, colonialism and the World Wars? Remember AIDS and 9/11 and the Florida recount? Ou sont les malefices d'antan?

Wait a sec. This just in: Satan is doing fine, thanks; it's only his followers who content themselves with silly antics instead of the real thing. Just like Jesus.

Church is Full of Hypocrites

That is what 72% of non-churchgoing Americans believe, according to a recent survey by a Southern Baptist polling organization. And you know what? They are absolutely right.

Churches are full of hypocrites -- every pastor knows this. For the record, so are Congress, the White House, corporate offices, law firms, gas stations, locker rooms, faculty clubs, newspapers, classrooms (except maybe kindergarten), NASA, the military, the EPA, the mainstream media, blogs, yoga studios, ballfields, and your living room.

Any place where you have people you will also have sinners, including hypocrites. What makes the Church distinctive is that it provides an opportunity to admit this up front, and try to do better. Most of those other organizations would rather keep on denying it all.

Giuliani Will Lose Florida

As those wags at Wonkette put it, "Rudy has only ever campaigned in Florida, and now he's in fourth place there."

Now, let's be fair, he's just a point behind Huckabee, who isn't going to win the nomination either. But the Huckleberry has already won a primary, whereas the Nasty Man's whole strategy has appeared to hinge on the Sunshine State. Our best guess is that he has worked out a little New York style under-the-table payoff action to whichever company makes Florida's notoriously accurate voting equipment. Because failing that, the guy is toast.

On behalf of New Yorkers, including those who have relocated to Fort Lauderdale, I say, "Huzzah!"

My Mother Dated Ron Paul.

Only once. But it really did happen, many years ago, when he was in college and she was a prospective student. As far as I know, she forgot about it until recently. Honestly, it wouldn't be worth mentioning now, except that saying "Ron Paul" is apparently a good way to boost traffic to your website.

So. Now that all you Ron Paul supporters are reading the Egg anyway, you might as well stay a while. Look around. You'll find that we like the Constitution, too, although maybe not in that wild-eyed maniacal way you guys do.

Democratic Debate Rigged by Corporate Overlords?

Click to read the suggestion that Dennis Kucinich may have been barred from the TV debate by MSNBC because he is the only Democrat to consistently oppose the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump. After all, MSNBC is owned by General Electric, which makes nuclear power plant generators.

It's just a theory. Sure, it's more likely that MSNBC looked at his dismal results in the early primaries and decided that there was no way in Hell he would ever be the candidate. Whether it was the job of a network to make this decision before the voters did is a legitimate question, but that's not the point. The point is that they didn't toss him because of a corporate conspiracy, they tossed him because of his primary results.

That's an another theory and, conveniently, there's a way to test it. Rudolph Giuliani, who received a smaller percentage of the vote in Michigan than Kucinich, is doing miserably in the early primaries. He is neck and neck with Ron Paul, whom nobody believes has a shot at the candidacy. This makes him a fringe candidate, too, pretty much by definition. So will MSNBC exclude Rudy from their next televised Republican debate?

I suppose it depends what their corporate overlords tell them to do.

Huckabee Loses Gut Check

Stumping in South Carolina, Mike Huckabee has taken to embracing another nation's flag. A nation, now defunct, that existed for the sole purpose of perpetuating slavery. Yes, folks, it's Neo-Confederate time on the campaign trail.

"You don't like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag. ... If somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell them what to do with the pole. That's what we'd do," he declared to applause at a campaign rally in Myrtle Beach Thursday, according to Thomas Edsall at the HuffPo site.

This is pure politics. Just as the Huckster came out with this new trick, John McCain was attacked by something called Americans for the Preservation of American Culture, with ads that accuse him of calling the Confederate flag a racist symbol. I don't know if he has done this or not, but if he hasn't let me do it for him. It is. And as for APAC, it is run by Mike Crane, who periodically seeks office on the "Southern Party" ticket. Let those with ears, hear.

South Carolinians use the shibboleth "states' rights" (and sometimes "Southern heritage") to defend waving the flag of their defeated insurgency. They never actually say "segregation" or "slavery" (or "lynch mobs" or keeping the you-know-whos in their place"), but those ideas are never far from the debate. Nobody with a commitment to the United States as presently constituted can seriously treat the display of the Confederate flag as a neutral matter.

On the other hand, it is just a flag -- a symbol and nothing more. A politician truly committed to freedom of expression can certainly argue along the lines of "I loathe your flag, but defend your right to display it." Same argument applies to burning Old Glory in protest, because this is really a very similar action.

But for Huckabee, this new direction marks a failure of nerve. He has been running on the basis of his gentle Evangelicalism, summed up by phrases like "I love the Bible but I'm not angry about it." While solidly clinging to Christianist pieties about, say, abortion, he has also appealed to moderates and liberals with his apparent concern for the poor and oppressed. After seven years of Bush, there is some desperation out there for leadership with an a priori commitment to human decency. For a while, it looked as though Huckabee might be that man.

Instead, he has sold his soul to the idea of electability, of "motivating the base," and so forth. McCain made the same devil's bargain in 2000, and has since repented -- whence the APAC ads. Frankly, for those of us who actually like the USA, and are glad it won the Civil War, that pretty much doomed his candidacy at the time. With any luck, this will doom Hickabee's.

"Roncalli Receives Scare from Lutheran"

Relax. It's a Wisconsin high-school basketball story. But admit it: for just a second, you thought that the ghost of Pope John XXIII had been startled when the ghost of Franklin Clark Fry jumped out of a closet and shouted "boo." Didn't you?

So. Iowa.

Well, Huckleberry looks awfully strong, at least if you listen to the mediacrats, whose take on it amounts to "Ohmigosh, an Evangelical won the Republican caucus! The Reagan Coalition is doomed!"

That's what we thought, until Brian Lehrer reminded us that Pat Robertson also won Iowa, once upon a time. Before going on to get blown out of the water, and spend the rest of his life blaming gays for 9/11 in a desperate bid for attention of any sort at all. And remember that unlike Robertson, the Huckster actually has experience governing.

All Huck's lucky night proves is that there are a lot of Republicans in Iowa who care more about abortion than they do about anything else, including a finger on the nuclear button that can answer basic questions about a trouble zone like, say, Pakistan. (Yeah, I know what you're thinking: a talking finger?! Just go with it.)

As for the Dems, those same mediacrats are this close (see my fingers almost touching?) to declaring Clinton dead in the water. In fact, she is one delegate behind Obama. And, based on the Jackson and Sharpton campaigns, black candidates actually poll better in states with smaller black populations, presumably because there is less racial tension. So watch for a thrill ride in, say, Ohio.

No, the real news out of Iowa is John Edwards. He's one delegate behind Clinton and, with Kucinich out of the picture, represents what is left of Democratic liberal populism. And yet mysteriously, per the Times, he scored best among Iowans who described themselves as "conservative Democrats." We're not sure what that means, but we think it is probably good. This really s a three-horse race, no matter what the talking heads try to tell us. And, just entre nous, that third horse doesn't look bad at all.

Yet Another Gay Anglican Bishop

In a better world, it wouldn't even be news. I mean, "gay" and "Anglican" go together like tea and clotted cream. The problem is that the bishop in question, Lindsay Unwin, is a prominent leader in the CofE's -- ahem -- rising homophobe wing.

Bear in mind, the allegations (posted on a blog by "Dennis," no last name given) are allegations, as in yet-to-be-proven. Still, they are pretty scorching: "we hooked up twice during Holy Week." Dennis knew that his new crush was a priest, and a candidate for bishop, and deeply closeted, and was warned by a mutual acquaintance that Unwin had an unsavory reputation; so he broke it off, left for the US, and never said a word on the subject. After all, whose business was it, really?

Except that, some fifteen years later, Unwin is My Lord Bishop of Horsham, and recently signed a letter of support for the Diocese of San Joaquin following its decision to leave the Protestant Episcopal Church in the USA, specifically in protest against PECUSA's whole gay-bishops thing.

Smelling a little hypocrisy -- okay, a lot of hypocrisy -- "Dennis" spoke up. Generally speaking, we at the Egg don't think highly of outing. In this case, it seems warranted.

That said, here are some considerations: (1) The story might be false. Frankly, we would be surprised if it were, for the reason given in our first graf. Still, Christian charity requires that we at least acknowledge the possibility. (2) Unwin, as a commentator points out, is an Anglo-Catholic; in theory, this means that he could just commit the acts, confess them, and move on with a clean slate. In his own mind, therefore, he isn't a "gay bishop;" he is a bishop who has occasionally "done gay things." The point being that "gay" isn't a description of his nature, but of his actions. Fair enough; but if those actions are habitual, one wonders whether he quite got the part about "firmly intending amendment of life." (3) Ultimately, as many conservatives will argue, the issue isn't about the behavior of individual clerics, but abut the public teaching of the Church. And that's at least half-right. Theology is important. But theology isn't just -- or even primarily -- a series of doctrinal assertions. It is also and perhaps above all the experience of authentic Christian living, which includes both the frank acknowledgment of the truth about oneself, and the capacity to treat others with love and dignity. Hiding behavior of which you are ashamed while seeking to punish those who behave likewise is bad theology.

Blair Crosses Tiber

After months of speculation in the press, Tony Blair has left the Church of England and entered the Church of Rome.

This isn't an especially important story; although certainly an important figure, Blair is no longer Prime Minister. His wife and children are Roman Catholic, and he has never made any secret of either his religious faith in general or his attraction to the Roman version in particular. (Nor, we might point out, has he worn either those things on his sleeve as tools for getting elected, unlike certain American politicians we could name).

The Archbishop of Canterbury was polite enough to wish him well, which simply shows that Anglicanism isn't one of those religious movements that threatens to kill you if you quit. (You know who you are.)

Nope, all told this is pretty small fish. The big news will come when (as has occasionally been suggested) Prince Charles goes Orthodox. That will cause all sorts of trouble, and raise the serious question of how the future head of the CofE can very well be a communicant in some other church entirely. At which point somebody will no doubt point out that the Hanoverians were, up through Victoria's time, a bunch of Lutherans.

Romney's Nose Gets Longer

Turns out he was not telling the truth when he said that stuff on TV about "I saw my father march with Martin Luther King Jr."

We have already hinted that his remarks on "Meet the Press" may have been intentionally misleading. Okay, we called them lies. Now this. Naughty, naughty, Willard.

A Christian Nation

As we recently pointed out, America is not "a Christian nation" by any traditional standard. Britain is, even though a great many of its subjects do not practice Christianity.

Click the link to see why we're better than they are, nanny-nanny-foo-foo.

Personally, we at the Egg hope Britain never disestablishes, for several reasons: (1) We like being able to tell American Christianists that they already have an English-speaking Christian nation to live in, if they so choose, while we are handing them their emigration papers; (2) We are curious to know what it will be like when a nation's state church is no longer the chosen faith of ANY of its inhabitants; and (3) Most important, we like to think we make our old junior-high Social Studies teacher proud by declaring ourselves to be antidisestablishmentarians.

Worst. Endorsement. Ever.

David Brooks, the Times Op-Ed's resident "conservative," wants Democrats to vote for Obama in the primary. Here's his logic:

"Hillary Clinton has been a much better senator than Barack Obama. She has been a serious, substantive lawmaker who has worked effectively across party lines. Obama has some accomplishments under his belt, but many of his colleagues believe that he has not bothered to master the intricacies of legislation or the maze of Senate rules."

He goes on to explain that, despite Clinton's superior job performance, Dems should go the other way because, "Obama is an inner-directed man in a profession filled with insecure outer-directed ones."

Huh. Wowie. So instead of track-record, Americans should choose our candidates based on amateur pop-psychology? So when can Dr. Sigmund Brooks make time to deal with Romney's Daddy issues?

We at the Egg have suspected for some time that Brooks is a weenie, and this pretty much clinches it. Like all weenies, he man obviously wants to wear a bow-tie.

Anglicanism Still a Mess

No news there; it will take years for those guys to sort their stuff out.

Meanwhile, comes now an argument, reasonable if quixotic, that the churches out of communion with Canterbury ought not to style themselves "Anglican." None of the insurgents will listen, of course, but the argument is worth a read. Peter Toon, of the Prayer Book Society, handles his matter elegantly, and not until the last graf does he reveal the depth of his devotion to lost causes.

New Jersey Joins the Civilized World

That's somebody else's comment on an important story: When Gov. Corzine signs the bill recently approved by the legislature, New Jersey will become "the first state in the modern era of capital punishment to repeal the death penalty," according to the Times.

Maybe there's hope for this wicked little country of ours after all.

Paultards Rejoice!

Andrew Sullivan supports Ron Paul for the Republican nomination. Click the link to read why, but the core argument is this: "He's the real thing in a world of fakes and frauds."

That's well said, and we think it actually does reflect the central appeal of Paul's candidacy. He reflects a kind of conservatism that is worthy of the name: serious about small government, checks and balances, the Constitution and the rights it guarantees. In short, he reminds us that there was a time when "conservative" wasn't a codeword for a nativist, corporatist, militarist, government octopus committed to executive power, eager to spy on citizens, torture captives, and execute convicts -- and convinced that it should be allowed to do so without scrutiny. There was a time, in other words, when "conservative" did not mean "Stalinist."

We're not endorsing him, mind you. Not by a long shot. But can see why somebody might.

Pseudoscience on the March

The Institute for Creation Research, one of those nutty creationism outfits, wants a license to train science teachers in -- where else? -- Texas.

Okay, let's make this short. Creationism is bogus pseudoscience, and everybody with an IQ in the double digits knows it. If the evidence could support it, scientists -- who can get rich and famous by publishing ground-breaking hypotheses -- would be on it like brown on rice. Sadly for all the grad students who could make their bones on a radical revision of paleobiology, the evidence just isn't there.

But the proponents don't care about evidence, because they think this is really about personal opinion, just like elections for homecoming queen. An ICR spokesperson says "Our students are given both sides. They need to know both sides, and they can draw their own conclusion."

I wonder if they teach both sides of the famous "2+2=6" debate?

But the best part of this isn't that America -- and especially Texas -- is fertile ground for wackjobs who still don't get the whole 'reality-based community" thing. No news there! The best part is not even that the the ICR's application has already been approved by a state advisory group, further reducing the chance that any future Nobelist in the natural sciences will have been educated in the Lone Star State.

No, friends. The best part of this story is that the ICR has applied to train teachers in pseudoscience ... wait for it ... online. Because the only thing less respectable than a certificate in bullshit is a certificate in bullshit that you earned from correspondence classes.

Mitt Lies on "Meet the Press"

In 1978, the Mormons received a new revelation allowing them to withdraw their longstanding policy of official discrimination against black people. Talking to Tim Russert today, Mitt Romney recalled his own emotional reaction:

"I can remember when, when I heard about the change being made. I was driving home from, I think, it was law school, but I was driving home, going through the Fresh Pond rotary in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I heard it on the radio, and I pulled over and, and literally wept. Even at this day it's emotional ... "

Touching. There is one small inconsistency in the tale which may or may not mean something. In 1978, Romney was not a law student. He had finished his joint JD/MBA at Harvard three years earlier, and was now a successful management consultant, about to change companies. There is a world of difference between being a graduate student and a wealthy businessman. We find it odd that he can be so specific about where he was on the road when he got the news, and so vague -- as in wrong -- about where he was in life.

Does it matter? Maybe not. But Romney, who in the interview speaks movingly of his parents' commitment to civil rights during the 1960s, is not known to have taken any stand, publicly or privately, against the entrenched racism of his own faith community. A casual listener, hearing the story as Romney tells it, may well think, "What do you expect? He was just a kid, a grad student -- what difference could his stand have made?"

But consider who he really was: the 31-year-old son of a former Michigan governor, Presidential candidate and Nixon cabinet member; a graduate of the LDS's own flagship school, and of America's most prestigious university; and (we'll say this part again) rich. It is entirely possible that Romney's voice could have made a difference in the LDS's internal deliberations.

It bothers us less that Romney was silent then, however, than that he seems a little cagey -- even deceptive -- about it now. But then, consistency is not one of Mitt's virtues, is it?

Been There, Done That

Buddhist monks and nuns in Japan hit the catwalk for a fashion show recently, trying to win back the nation's youth.

"We wanted to show the young people that Buddhism is cool, and temples are not a place just for funerals," said Koji Matsubara, a chief monk at Tsukiji.

Oh, you poor slobs. When our Baby Boomers started to come of age, and showed a generational indifference to church, Christians in America did everything in our power to pull them back (folk mass, anybody?). They knew we were pandering, and stayed away in droves. (Ironically, a lot of them flirted with Buddhism, and still do).

So here's my friendly advice to the Japanese Buddhists: Don't pander. You make yourself look like Jim Backus in "Rebel Without a Cause," wearing his wife's apron and driving James Dean around the bend. Suck it up, do your thing, and wait for the next generation to realize they were missiing out.

Merry Christmas, Morons.

Actually, I don't believe the Administration's advocates for waterboarding (Dick "No-Brainer" Cheney, for example; or Michael "I Don't Know and I Won't Check" Mukasey) really are morons. I believe they are soulless, blood-sucking monsters from Hell. But that wouldn't fit on the top line; I tried.

And it does seem that the soulless blood-suckers have a few morons working for them. Take Senator Kit Bond, R-Mo, who appeared on PBS' NewsHour and said waterboarding was like swimming -- "there are different ways of doing it ... freestyle, backstroke." He actually said that.

Obviously, two things are true: (a) Bond is a mental (and probably moral) defective, and (b) he will have his ass handed to him the next time he runs for office.

More important, however, is this. Armed Forces Journal, which is exactly what sounds like, recently published this sharp rebuke to Giuliani, Mukasey, and everybody else who has waffled on the question of torture:

"In an interview, Giuliani was asked for his views on using ... waterboarding. He responded that in a hypothetical scenario that assumed an attack, 'I would tell the people who had to do the interrogation to use every method they can think of.' Prompted again on the specific use of waterboarding, he repeated 'every method they could think of.' Mukasey said he found waterboarding to be 'repugnant,' but he wouldn’t answer whether it amounted to torture.

"Let AFJ be crystal clear on a subject where these men are opaque: Waterboarding is a torture technique that has its history rooted in the Spanish Inquisition. In 1947, the U.S. prosecuted a Japanese military officer for carrying out a form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian during World War II.

"Waterboarding inflicts on its victims the terror of imminent death. And as with all torture techniques, it is, therefore, an inherently flawed method for gaining reliable information. In short, it doesn’t work. That blunt truth means all U.S. leaders, present and future, should be clear on the issue."

Thank you, gentlemen. Pass that little Christmas gift up the chain of command, would you?

Nobody Gets It

Sigh. This is one of those stories where nobody knows what they're seeing. Except us, and we'll explain it for you.

"Opinionator", a Times blog, cites Amanda Carpenter at Town Hall to this effect:

“Democrats who supported a House resolution to honor Ramadan voted against a similar resolution to honor Christmas and Christianity last night. 18 Democrats voted ‘nay’ or ‘present’ on a resolution to ‘recognize the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith.’ An eagle-eyed Republican House staffer points out that those same members, with one exception, voted to ‘recognize the commencement of Ramadan,’ a Muslim religious observance in October.”

Opinionator then goes on to cite several participants in the debate, each playing their assigned role: (1) The Republican sponsor of the resolution says that America was "founded on Christian principles," , adding, "let’s worship Christ and let’s celebrate Christmas for the right reasons." (2) A Democratic opponent responds, "America is not a Christian nation. It is a nation of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and everyone in between. Our diversity is our strength and those who seek to use religion as a litmus test are doing a disservice to all of us." (3) And of course a conservative blogger is quoted as writing, "There IS a war on Christmas, Christians and WASPs in general."

Hoo-boy. Let's unpack this, shall we?

(A) America is, obviously, not a "Christian nation." There have been many nations which were legally "Christian" in the sense that some form of Christianity was the official, established religion. All of Europe prior to the 20th Century, and a few -- like Britain -- today. We aren't one of them

(B) "Founded on Christian principles" is a little murkier. Reasonable people can disagree about this. But we can certainly say that the principles upon which the US was founded are not exclusively Christian: No taxation without representation; freedom of speech, press and worship. Christians may well approve of these principles, and (as is sometimes argued) the Founders may have derived them from their own understanding of Christianity. But of course, there have also been Christians who have historically opposed these things without lurching into theological heresy -- Roman Catholicism prior to the 20th century was at least suspicious of several. "Christian principles," properly so-called, are things like belief in the Resurrection and lordship of Christ, turning the other cheek, and praying without cessation. You can look them up -- they're in the Bible.

(C) "The War on Christmas" is an advertising slogan created by Fox News. (And, may we say, a brilliant one: it combines two things most viewers love. Make it the "Sexy War on Clinton-Bashing Christmas," and you'd have a home run.)

But with all that, said, we have the real underlying issue:

(D) Democrats, and liberals in general, don't have the slightest idea how to talk about Christianity in public. (That's why the Times, while reporting the facts, missed the real story). Traditional 70s-80s era Dems will approve a resolution recognizing Ramadan, but not one recognizing Christmas. Why? Because they have been conditioned over the past generation to avoid Christianity and its images for fear of mixing church and state, while at the same time paying token respect to other religious traditions for the sake of honoring diversity. And they just can't see the contradiction.

Look, guys -- we pay you to make laws, not pass idiotic resolutions regarding private religious observances. But if you're going to do it anyway (and you know you are), then you have an obligation to be even-handed about it. "Diversity" includes the majority. Just as your Muslim constituents appreciate a little support in their annual fast, so too your Christian ones appreciate a smile during their winter feast. This isn't rocket-science. It is good citizenship and, as luck would have it, good politics. Give it a shot.

Vicious Attack on Lutherans by Right-Wing Hatemonger

According to radio host and apparent imbecile Michael Savage, Al Gore's Nobel was awarded by the "socialist perverts in Norway," ninety percent of whom "are into child pornography and molestation."

Since 83% of Norwegians are Lutherans, it is obvious that Savage is slandering Lutherans here. There is no way to know for sure that he's trying to launch a war on Christianity, but consider the facts. Savage has already run afoul of the Roman Catholic Church for his slanderous assertion that it was routinely violating Federal law by providing pastoral care to immigrants. Now he starts in on Lutherans. Watch out, Presbyterians -- you're next.

We're Back! (And Ralph Reed's a Putrid Reeking Relic)

Ralph Reed, one of the co-creators of the Religious Right, has had enough. Watching the Republican Party tear itself apart over the theological leanings of its candidates, Reed recently declared:

"We have been conducting doctrinal frisks and theological GI-tract exams of our candidates and we have to remember that these candidates are not running for president of the seminary and they’re not running for pastor in chief."

Apparently, Reed is a little confused. While traditional conservatives have always argued that you can't legislate morality, the Religious Right exists precisely because Reed, along with Jerry Falwell and their other friends, spent decades creating a base of voters who believe otherwise. Whether he likes it or not, he is responsible for instilling in a significant number of American voters the notion that candidates ought to be elected because they share, and will enforce as policy, the religious convictions of religious voters. The ideas that a foetus has a soul, or that condoms (much less injections that can prevent cervical cancer) should not be made available to sexually-active teenagers, do not derive from objective scientific research. They are by nature matters of faith.

What Reed may miss is that it is a very, very small step from demanding leaders who share your faith on these issues to demanding leaders who share your faith on other matters -- such as the Incarnation, the Trinity, or the Pope's role as Antichrist. Moral theology does not exist apart from doctrinal theology.

And, curiously enough, evolution proves to be the -- ahem -- missing link between them, at least in American politics. Reed's foot-soldiers have done a remarkable job of creating a world in which a widely-accepted scientific theory, confirmed by a significant amount of observational data, must be taught alongside a rival theory, supported not by observation but by philosophical logic (and, ultimately, Scripture). In other words, they have begun with local schoolboards and worked their way up, so that even otherwise sober candidates for high office must now publicly declare their skepticism about Darwin, if they have any hope of winning the Republican nomination.

You did this, Ralph. You and yours, in a cynical bid to obtain power by playing upon the prejudices of decent but unreflective people, have created a mass movement in which theological opinions are considered pari passu with opinions on taxation, military readiness, health care and education.

Congratulations. You must be very proud.