About.com won’t let me embed non-About videos, so I’m putting it here.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| The Best F**king News Team Ever – Tiger Woods’ Faith | ||||
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h/t The Worst Horse
Category Archives: Religion
As Governor, Huckabee Found Some Prisoners More Pardonable Than Others
I’ve just learned the man being sought in connection with gunning down four Lakewood, Washington, police officers is an ex-convict who was freed by then Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.
Maurice Clemmons, the 37-year-old Tacoma man being sought for questioning in the killing this morning of four Lakewood police officers, has a long criminal record punctuated by violence, erratic behavior and concerns about his mental health.
Nine years ago, then-Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee granted clemency to Clemmons, commuting his lengthy prison sentence over the protests of prosecutors.
Several people have noted that Clemmons didn’t have a record of homicides; his convictions were for burglaries and aggravated assaults. Even so, why would a governor go out of his way to give clemency to a convict over the protests of prosecutors? (I have a theory, which I’ll get to in a minute.)
Those with long memories will remember that this is not the first Huckabee commutation with a bad ending. The case of Wayne Dumond got a good deal of attention in the 2008 presidential campaign.
Wayne Dumond was a convicted serial rapist whom Huckabee arranged to be released. After his release, Dumond raped and murdered at least one other woman and possibly others.
I wrote about Dumond and another Arkansas convict, Frankie Parker, almost two years ago in “A Tale of Two Prisoners.” For reasons explained in the earlier post, Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister, was pressured by the Christian Right into pardoning Dumond.
But the Christian Right kept silence on Frankie Parker, who was executed in 1996 over the objections of Mother Theresa and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. In fact, Governor Huckabee was so keen to execute Frankie Parker that he intervened to move the execution date up by six weeks so that Parker could be executed sooner. He was so keen to execute Parker that moving up the execution date was Huckabee’s first official proclamation as Governor of Arkansas. Clearly, this was an itch that Huckabee was rarin’ to scratch.
It is true that Parker was convicted of committing two murders while under the influence of drugs. He admitted he had done this. He wasn’t asking for a pardon; just life.
What made Frankie Parker’s life so untenable? In prison, he had acquired a copy of the Dhammapada, which inspired him to convert to Buddhism. He corresponded with a Zen priest and also worked with a Little Rock Buddhist group to learn the practice. He became a spiritual leader within the prison. A Buddhist spiritual leader. Can’t have that.
So if people are wondering why Mike Huckabee took it upon himself to grant clemency to Maurice Clemmons, look for a religious angle. I don’t know that there is one, but I’ll be surprised if there isn’t.
Swat Valley Blues
I haven’t been following events in Pakistan all that closely, but I take it that the Taliban has been allowed to take over the Swat Valley as part of an agreement with the government of Pakistan. No one seems even to be pretending this is going to settle anything.
By all accounts the Swat Valley is a lovely place, popular with tourists. Centuries ago it was the site of a thriving Buddhist civilization. It was said that at its peak of Buddhist influence, the Swat Valley was filled with fourteen hundred stupas and monasteries. Until very recently, museums of Buddhist art and the ruins of temples were drawing many tourists from places further east, such as Japan. There’s no news I can find about what’s happening to the relics of Buddhism remaining in the Swat Valley, and I assume they are being destroyed.
I wrote an article on the history of Buddhism in Pakistan and Afghanistan for the other website that some of you might find interesting. In a nutshell, Buddhism reached Pakistan-Afghanistan — an area once called “Gandhara” — during the reign of the Emperor Ashoka (ca. 304–232 BCE) and thrived there for well over a thousand years, until some time after the 12th century CE.
Among several things I learned while I was researching the article is that the artists of Gandhara were the first to depict the Buddha in human form. Most of the conventions common in depictions of the historical Buddha to this day were invented in Gandhara and then spread to east Asia. Early Gandharan art was in the style of Greek and Roman art and is especially beautiful.
The other thing I learned is that Buddhism and Islam peacefully co-existed in the Middle East for several centuries. Islam reached Afghanistan and Pakistan in the 7th century, and some Buddhist monasteries were still operating as late as the 12th century, although for how much longer after that no one knows. For the most part the Muslim rulers of the area left the Buddhists and their art and monasteries respectfully alone. Buddhism was not forcibly driven out of the Middle East, but seems to have just withered away.
Beside the lost Bamiyan Buddhas of Afghanistan, there were no end of smaller stone Buddhas, cave paintings and other artifacts in the Middle East that survived mostly intact all these centuries — until the Taliban. The real concern is for the living people subjected to Taliban atrocities, of course, but I thought someone should say something about the art.
At the Guardian, Again
The Guardian Comment Is Free site published another one of my little essays. I wrote and submitted this in February, as I remember, and I’d thought the editors had forgotten it. Now that I’ve re-read it, I don’t think I like it very much. The comments are pretty nasty; I stopped reading them.
Such a Day I’ve Had
First off, if anyone does wander here from The Guardian, please visit my Buddhism site at About.com. Thanks!
Now for the rest o’ y’all: I had an invitation in my inbox this morning to write an essay about the Dalai Lama for the Guardian “comment is free” site, and here it is. Written in a rush this morning. I’m afraid to read it. At least, I wish they hadn’t picked up that awful photo from About.com. If they’d asked, I would have sent them another one. Like maybe somebody else’s.
This has truly been Dalai Lama day, as this morning I also finished another essay about him for About.com, more of a bio. Today is the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the sequence of events that led to the Dalai Lama’s exile from Tibet (see Kundun). Like anything else Tibetan, writing about it requires stringing together at least five prepositional phrases. Oh, well.
Frank Schaeffer Roars
Start your week off right, by watching this powerful interview of Frank Shaeffer, as he plugs his memoir, Crazy for God. Schaeffer’s parents, Francis and Edith, were well-known evangelicals during the 70s and 80s, and helped architect the religious right. Franky, as he was known back then, went along, but eventually he turned his back on what the religious right became. I found this interview on Huffington Post, where Schaeffer has an Open Letter to the Republican Traitors (from a former Republican) – it’s pretty scorching, and is excerpted below. I have rarely heard anyone speak so powerfully to the kinds of things we’ve been talking about on this site for ages:
You Republicans are the arsonists who burned down our national home. You combined the failed ideologies of the Religious Right, so-called free market deregulation and the Neoconservative love of war to light a fire that has consumed America. Now you have the nerve to criticize the "architect" America just hired — President Obama — to rebuild from the ashes. You do nothing constructive, just try to hinder the one person willing and able to fix the mess you created….
As the father of a Marine who served in George W. Bush’s misbegotten wars let me say this: if President Obama’s strategy to repair our economy, infrastructure and healthcare fails that will put our troops at far greater risk because the world will become a far more dangerous place. So for all you flag-waving Republicans who are trying to undermine the President at home — if you succeed more of our troops will be killed abroad.
When your new leader Rush Limbaugh calls for President Obama to fail he’s calling for more flag-draped coffins. Limbaugh is the new "Hanoi Jane."
For the party that created our crises of misbegotten war, mismanaged economy, the lack of regulation of our banking industry, handing our country to rich crooks… to obstruct the one person who is trying to repair the damage is obscene.
Just imagine where America would be today if the 14 to 20 million voters — "the rube base" who slavishly follow the likes of Limbaugh — had not voted as a block year after year thus empowering the Republican fiasco. We would have a regulated banking industry and would have avoided our current financial crisis; some 4000 of our killed military men and women would be alive; over to 35,000 wounded Americans would be whole; we would have been leaders in the environmental movement; we would be in the middle of a green technology boom fueling a huge expansion of our economy and stopping our dependence on foreign oil, and our health-care system would be reformed….
The worsening economic situation is your fault and your fault alone. The Republicans created this mess through 8 years of backing the worst president in our history and now, because you put partisan ideology ahead of the good of our country, you have blown your last chance to redeem yourselves. You deserve banishment to the political wilderness
Big Buddhas
If you are tired of the state of the world, go feast your eyes on some really big buddhas (scroll down for photo index).
Rick Warren
There is much weeping and wailing on the Left today, because Rev. Rick Warren, God Nazi and pastor of the fundie Saddleback Church, will give the invocation at the inaugural.
“Your invitation to Reverend Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at your inauguration is a genuine blow to LGBT Americans,†the president of Human Rights Campaign, Joe Solomonese, wrote Obama Wednesday. “[W]e feel a deep level of disrespect when one of architects and promoters of an anti-gay agenda is given the prominence and the pulpit of your historic nomination.â€
Warren isn’t just a walking insult to LGBT Americans; he’s a walking insult to our species, especially women. What Warren represents makes my skin crawl. His presence in the inaugural program is particularly galling to religious liberals, who have been vilified and marginalized for years by the so-called “Christian” Right. And then to have religion represented by this creep at the inauguration … . well, yes, people are angry. This is certainly understandable.
On the other hand, one could see the Warren invocation as a fairly meaningless conciliatory gesture that (I assume) is meant to signal Americans that Obama intends to be the POTUS of all Americans, not just the ones who support him, as was the case with G.W. Bush. Warren’s presence on the inaugural program is hardly a signal that Warren is going to be given a cabinet position.
I do not think, as some have assumed, that Obama is trying to pick up rightie religious voters in future elections. If he is, then he’s stupid, but I don’t think Obama is that stupid. Certainly Warren and his followers will not stop being opponents of everything beneficial and humane in government policy. However, Warren’s participation in the program may send a signal to not-crazy Christians that, see, we aren’t opposing the religious Right’s agenda because we want to destroy them. We tolerate them, more than they tolerate us. We just disagree with them. It’s not personal. This is not a bad signal to send. If nothing else, it shows that Obama is bigger than they are.
Overlooked in the anger over the choice of Warren is the choice of the Reverend Dr. Joseph E. Lowery to give the benediction.
On the third hand, if I had one, I think that if there is going to be prayer and other religious expression at what is a government function, religions other than Christianity ought to be represented. Otherwise, the program appears to be a form of religious establishment.
Update: Read Pastor Dan’s take. Pastor Dan believes the choice of Warren was strictly personal on Obama’s part, not part of some political calculation. I am inclined to agree with that. Also,
One of the reasons “Wrightgate” didn’t take off is that Americans don’t like folks coming between them and their pastors. The dynamic is going to be the same with Warren, except that it’ll have the added benefit of fueling the “liberals hate God” line of crap. I can almost guarantee you that Bill O’Reilly has his storylines already written: the nutroots can’t stand religion because they don’t like poor little Ricky Warren. As if that weren’t bad enough, because it’s a personal choice, Obama is more than likely going to get his back up about it. Standard disclaimers apply: I’m not telling anyone not to protest this, just understand what you’re getting into, blah blah blah…
On the other hand,
On a strictly professional level, this is a goddamn embarrassment.
For the Bible Tells Me So
The current issue of Newsweek is running an article by Lisa Miller that argues the Bible does not define marriage as being between one man and one woman. I think she makes a good case. Most of the Old Testament guys were polygamists, after all, and Jesus and Saint Paul didn’t explicitly say anything about one-man-one-woman marriage in the New Testament.
A Christian minister named R. Albert Mohler Jr. takes issue with Ms. Miller at the Washington Post‘s On Faith site. But Mohler’s arguments, IMO, don’t make sense. Basically his argument is, OK, so marriage as described in the Bible were not like marriages today, but they were still heterosexual and about procreation. So the Bible can’t be used to argue in favor of same-sex marriage.
But I don’t think Ms. Miller is using the Bible to argue in favor of same-sex marriage as much as she’s just saying that biblical marriage was not the one man-one woman thing current conservative Christianity wants written into law. Thus, there is no biblical authority supporting the way most conservative Christians define marriage. A number of other commenters at On Faith, including Christian clergy, admit this, and also argue that a Christian case could be made in favor of gay marriage.
And, of course, I don’t give a bleep what the Bible says about marriage or sex or procreation or asparagus. Writing something into law because it’s in the Bible is a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
Writing at NRO, Mark Hemingway sputters in outrage over the Newsweek piece.
The cover story in this week’s Newsweek, which makes “the religious case for gay marriage,†has come under fire from a large swath of the religious community. Newsweek’s own blog has been keeping track of the controversy, with religious heavyweights such as Albert Mohler, Ralph Reed, and Richard Land criticizing the article. The Politico devoted an entire article to cataloging the backlash, The Weekly Standard called it a “dire mess,†and countless blogs commented unfavorably. (Not to mention that the piece was not popular in the Hemingway household.)
I can’t believe these people are still citing Ralph Reed as some kind of spiritual authority.
While there is certainly a religious debate to be had over the validity of gay marriage, most of the criticism of the article sidestepped the main issue to comment on how the author, religion reporter Lisa Miller, wrote the article. Aside from making numerous basic factual errors,
I’ve yet to see any of these “factual errors” clearly pointed out. The couple of “errors” cited by Mohler were matters of interpretation, his inference of what some passages meant.
the author insisted — before the end of the first paragraph — that biblical views of marriage are déclassé: “Would any contemporary heterosexual married couple — who likely woke up on their wedding day harboring some optimistic and newfangled ideas about gender equality and romantic love — turn to the Bible as a how-to script?â€
And, if you read Miller’s piece, she makes a good case that we would not, because marriage in biblical times was in no way about gender equality and romantic love. But Hemingway doesn’t even answer this. He quotes Miller as if no civilized person should ever be allowed to suggest that marriage today is different from what it was in Old Testament times, even though it plainly is.
What’s worse, for Hemingway, is that editor John Meacham does not explain Miller’s piece as “just her opinion,” but instead writes,
No matter what one thinks about gay rights—for, against or somewhere in between —this conservative resort to biblical authority is the worst kind of fundamentalism. Given the history of the making of the Scriptures and the millennia of critical attention scholars and others have given to the stories and injunctions that come to us in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament, to argue that something is so because it is in the Bible is more than intellectually bankrupt—it is unserious, and unworthy of the great Judeo-Christian tradition. …
… In this light it would seem to make sense for Americans to look anew at the underlying issues on the question of gay marriage. One can decide to oppose it in good faith, but such opposition should at least be forged by those in full possession of the relevant cultural and religious history and context. The reaction to this cover is not difficult to predict. Religious conservatives will say that the liberal media are once again seeking to impose their values (or their “agenda,” a favorite term to describe the views of those who disagree with you) on a God-fearing nation. Let the letters and e-mails come. History and demographics are on the side of those who favor inclusion over exclusion.
Good for Meacham! But the Right cannot stand the idea that a news magazine would publish anything other than (b) unfiltered right-wing propaganda, or (2) mush. Miller’s piece stands on its own. She makes a strong case that it’s nonsense to cite the Bible to “prove” what marriage “ought” to be. I haven’t seen anyone on the Right honestly answer Miller’s arguments. They just think it’s outrageous anyone would make those arguments.
Newsweek also is in the news itself this week because its circulation numbers dropped like a rock in the past year, and the magazine’s managers are considering slashing the number of copies printed by about 1.6 million. The editorial focus may move away from reporting news to becoming more of an opinion magazine, or a “thought leader.”
I’m of mixed views on this. What the weekly news magazines can sometimes do very well, when they try, is in-depth reporting like the recent “Secrets of the 2008 Campaign.” But I don’t subscribe to any of the weeklies any more. I don’t remember why I stopped getting Newsweek — probably because I never had time to read it — and I canceled Time because of the infamous Ann Coulter issue of April 25, 2005. Oh, and because I decided Joe Klein is a dork.
I think that at some time during the Bush years the weekly news magazines started to seem so damn insipid. They were too careful not to piss off the Right, and in doing so pulled their punches on the Bushies far too many times. Most of the time I could get better, and fresher, information from the web.
Maybe now Newsweek has decided that publishing applesauce to please the Right wasn’t getting it anywhere, and it’s going to publish some meat now and then.
Xtianists, Make Up Your Minds
Have you ever noticed how often the Christmas guerrillas trivialize Christmas even as they defend it? Here’s an example, by a Darlene Darleen Click [she won’t debate me, but she wants her name spelled correctly, so I’m obliging], who is upset because the University of North Carolina libraries will not be displaying Christmas trees this year. According to Eric Ferreri of the Charlotte Observer,
The trees, which have stood in the lobby areas of Wilson and Davis libraries each December, were kept in storage this year at the behest of Sarah Michalak, the associate provost for university libraries.
Michalak’s decision followed several years of queries and complaints from library employees and patrons bothered by the Christian display, Michalak said this week.
To which the above-linked Ms. Click wrote,
If these cranks aren’t loudly complaining in restaurants about being offended by the birthday cake on the next table, we can safely chalk this up to another lesson in Cultural Tolerance(tm) by Judea-Christophobic Leftists.
Ah, Ms. Click, how art thou stupid? Let me count the ways.
Let us first take up the knee-jerk assumption that people complaining about the Christmas trees must be “Leftists.” They might have been atheists (surely there are right-wing atheists), or Jews (could a Jew be a “Judea-Christophobic Leftist”?), or Seventh-Day Adventists. They might have been small-government conservatives complaining about their taxpayer dollars being spent on decorations.
That last part always confuses me. Small-government conservatives don’t want to spend taxpayer dollars on anything — well, except war. They don’t want to fund public education, maintain infrastructure, rebuild New Orleans, keep starving children from dropping dead on the streets, etc. But suggest not spending taxpayer dollars on religious displays (with which some taxpayers may disagree), and suddenly one is a “Judea-Christophobic Leftist.”
One can argue that Christmas is as much a secular and cultural holiday as a religious one, for which much of the trappings (notably anything to do with Santa Claus, flying reindeer, Christmas elves, etc., not to mention mistletoe and Yule logs, which are leftovers from Druidism) have nothing to do with the Christian religion, Claus’s mythic connections to Saint Nicholas of Myra notwithstanding. I think that’s a legitimate argument. But if you’re going to make that argument, you can’t very well complain that not observing that holiday is dissing Christianity.
But let’s get back to the trivialization part. Is Ms. Click comparing Christmas to a birthday party that might annoy other patrons in a restaurant? How is that comparison valid? Is she saying that Christmas is no big deal and if one doesn’t like it one should just ignore it? That’s fine, except to make the comparison parallel to the UNC library trees we’d have to have the annoyed patrons being forced to not only tolerate the party, but to pay for it. And then be told they won’t be allowed to have their own parties in the same space.
(I’m not going into the Establishment Clause today, although of course it applies; here’s an old post about it.)
Christmas is either a big deal, or it isn’t. Christians believe Christmas is the observance of the birth of Jesus, who, per the Council of Nicea, is “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father.” And that this birth was an essential step toward redeeming the sins of mankind, a teaching at the heart of Christianity.
So, one would assume that Christmas is profoundly sacred to Christians. And if Christmas is profoundly sacred, it should not be trivialized by being compared to birthday parties or, for that matter, used to sell merchandise in department stores. One would think.
Awhile back on the other blog I wrote a post about South Carolina selling Christian license plates. The plates feature a Christian cross, which is a sacred symbol for Christians. It struck me that a practicing Buddhist would not want a Buddhist license plate, because to place a sacred symbol of Buddhism in a place where it would be splashed with mud and slush and road grime would be unthinkable. (I’m sure people have put sacred Buddhist symbols on their bumpers, but a deeply devout Buddhist would not do that.)
This gets us to the issue of sacred symbols and how one takes care of them, and sacred days and how one observes them. IMO a large part of people who use tax money and government authority to push their religion on the rest of us don’t seem terribly interested in taking care of the sacred symbols as sacred symbols. Apparently it’s more important to shove crosses in everyone’s face — obviously, as a display of tribal dominance — than to show respect for the cross as a sacred symbol and keep it out of the mud.
Likewise, years ago, Christian ministers complained that Christmas was too commercial; that Christmas observance should be taken out of department stores and kept in church. Now we’re told that if store clerks say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” that this is an affront to Christianity. (What if the store clerk — or the customer — is Jewish, and being forced by commercial enterprise to pay lip service to a Christian holiday? What is that an affront to?)
All that is really important about the observance of Christmas is that Christians are free to observe it, and I pledge that I will stand up for them in defense of that freedom if it is ever threatened.
However, religious observance of Christmas does not require that the taxpayers of North Carolina pay for Christmas trees in the state university libraries.
This week those of us practicing many forms of Japanese Buddhism, particularly Zen, are observing Rohatsu. Rohatsu is something like Zen High Holy Days. It is an observance of the enlightenment of the historical Buddha more than 25 centuries ago, and right now in every Zen monastery in the world — well, except for some western ones that observe Rohatsu later in the month — monks and lay students are cloistered in silent retreats, meditating. On December 7 (last night of Rohatsu, which ends December 8 ) many will meditate through the entire night. It’s a way big deal. (I’m doing Rohatsu Lite — I’ve driven to the local Zen center to meditate for an hour and a half every day this week, and will be there all day tomorrow.)
We do this because it is important to us to do this. We’re not asking taxpayers to pay for it, nor do we expect anyone who is not a Buddhist to give a bleep.
Likewise, Christians are free to put up as many Christmas displays as they like — on their own or the church’s property, with their own money. It’s their religion, and it’s up to them, not taxpayers, to take care of it.
I’m not personally bothered by Christmas displays, including taxpayer-funded ones. I think wreaths and Christmas trees are pretty. Some of my Buddhist readers of the other blog say they observe Christmas, albeit in a non-Christian way. “After I took refuge, my Christmas tree became an enlightenment tree,” said one.
Still, apparently the trees bothered some people. Back to Eric Ferreri of the Charlotte Observer,
Michalak said that banishing the Christmas displays was not an easy decision but that she asked around to library colleagues at Duke, N.C. State and elsewhere and found no other one where Christmas trees were displayed.
Aside from the fact that a UNC Chapel Hill library is a public facility, Michalak said, libraries are places where information from all corners of the world and all belief systems is offered without judgment. Displaying one particular religion’s symbols is antithetical to that philosophy, she said.
“We strive in our collection to have a wide variety of ideas,” she said. “It doesn’t seem right to celebrate one particular set of customs.”
Or, you could display all of them. I believe today is the first day of Hajj, for example. I’m sure Ms. Click wouldn’t mind if the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill used taxpayer dollars to put up a Muslim display to go along with the Christmas trees.
My point is that if Christians would stop taking affront at non-Christians who don’t kowtow to Christmas, and instead just observe Christmas with all the solemnity and reverence it ought to require, the world would be a better place.
(BTW, as thick as Ms. Click is, she’s a genius compared to Don Surber. He seems to think that because the UNC is in a town named Chapel Hill, the library must be a chapel. Or something.)