Category Archives: Religion

The God Gap, Revisited

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For the past few years we’ve been subjected to Amy Sullivan’s admonitions about the Democratic Party’s “God Gap” and how liberals need to learn to talk about religion as glibly as conservatives do.

Well, look who’s got a God problem now. Kathleen Parker writes in today’s Washington Post —

As Republicans sort out the reasons for their defeat, they likely will overlook or dismiss the gorilla in the pulpit.

Three little letters, great big problem: G-O-D.

I’m bathing in holy water as I type.

To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn’t soon cometh.

Simply put: Armband religion is killing the Republican Party. And, the truth — as long as we’re setting ourselves free — is that if one were to eavesdrop on private conversations among the party intelligentsia, one would hear precisely that.

“Intelligentsia” being party elites, at the heart of which are “professional conservatives [who] are lifelong Washingtonians who live comfortably as organization heads, lobbyists and publicists,” per David Brooks. This group is neither more nor less Christian than any other random segment of America, and if put on the spot to talk publicly about religion I doubt they’d be any more successful than was Howard Dean.

Parker gets better —

Which is to say, the GOP has surrendered its high ground to its lowest brows.

Is she saying that evangelicals are “lowbrows”? And how do we spell “elitist”? K-A-T-H-L-E-E-N P-A-R-K-E-R?

In the process, the party has alienated its non-base constituents, including other people of faith (those who prefer a more private approach to worship), as well as secularists and conservative-leaning Democrats who otherwise might be tempted to cross the aisle.

Here’s the deal, ‘pubbies: Howard Dean was right.

That’s last one’s going to infuriate movement conservatives more than dissing God.

Ronald Reagan found a way to speak to white evangelical voters that touched their deeply ingrained and tangled narratives about religion, patriotism and race at a time when Bible Belt culture was being exported nationwide via Christian television programming. The Republican Party and a new generation of evangelical media stars like Pat Robertson forged a mutually beneficial alliance that was less about God than it was about money and secular power. And it worked for them for a while, at least in large parts of the country (although not the Northeast).

George Bush caught on to the same trick and was able to keep the alliance going. But the times do change, and most of the nation figured out what a clown Bush is. I also think the Terri Shiavo episode clarified the religion matter, so to speak, for a lot of people.

Social-Christian conservatives might argue that it’s their party, too, and maybe it was the neocons who really screwed the pooch. Or the small-government, deregulation uber alles conservatives who wore out their welcome. And I say there’s plenty of blame to go around.

Pass the popcorn. And tell Amy Sullivan to find a new issue.

Is This Discriminatory?

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Maggie Gallagher is shocked that people would make this nasty ad about the Mormons. As Andy Sullivan points out, Mormons have put considerable money and effort to pass Proposition 8 in California, which would ban same sex marriage. Mormons are not the only people to support Prop 8, however, so I don’t think it was necessary to call them out.

I’m of two minds on this. If a religious faction is trying to change laws to suit its doctrines, then I think it’d better be prepared to take hits from people who disagree with them. This is about political activity, not religious activity. If the ad were criticizing Mormon doctrine that would be a different matter.

Put another way, Mormons have a right to practice whatever religion they want to practice. But when they try to impose their religious views on everyone through law, then they should be expected to be treated like a political faction, not a religion.

As I said, I’m of two minds on this. I don’t like to see a religious group demonized or caricatured. But when a religious organization is operating in the political sphere, criticizing its political activities is not necessarily anti-religious bigotry.

Christianity’s Real Enemies

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Yesterday an eighth-grade boy in Paramus, New Jersey, came to school dressed as Jesus, and was sent home. Yesterday was Halloween, notice. Today the wingnuts are in full battle cry that the Paramus, New Jersey school system hates Christianity. One wingnut:

Assault on Christianity not just About Christmas, NJ Boy Sent Home Dressed in Halloween Jesus Christ Costume

Halloween is a Christian holiday now? I realize Catholics try to pretend it is with All Saint’s Day. But the truth is that it’s an old pre-Christian Celtic holiday, and the other truth is that we still celebrate it as such. There’s nothing Christian about it.

Having been raised Christian, I’d like to think I still understand Christianity. And I think a Christian argument could be made that dressing as Jesus for Halloween is blasphemy. I believe if some kid had worn a Jesus costume in my old Bible Belt no-teaching-of-Darwin-allowed school system in the Ozarks, he’d not only have been sent home but his entire family would have had to face the wrath of the born-again community.

Paramus, New Jersey is not exactly the Bible Belt, but it’s conservative enough to have blue laws. The malls are closed on Sunday, and what stores are open have stuff roped off that you cannot buy. As I remember it, toys are OK, but you can’t buy nails or paint, for example. It’s annoying. Every now and then the blue laws get put up for a vote, and Christian ministers rally and get them re-approved.

Anyway, I wonder sometimes if the “war on Christianity” people are Christians themselves, or if they just get off on being outraged. Don’t answer that; I already know.

McCain’s God Gap

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I didn’t watch the Rick Warren thing last night; I have too much respect for Christianity to watch it debased like that. But I think meeting the white evangelical crowd was something Obama needed to do, if only so they can see he’s just a guy and not the Antichrist.

My entirely subjective opinion is that Obama is the more genuinely religious of the two candidates. McCain is just going through the motions. This may be why most religious voters prefer Obama.

A study released this week by the Barna Group, a Christian research and consulting firm based in Ventura, Calif., finds that Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, currently enjoys the support of more faith-driven voters, including Christians, than his Republican rival.

The poll, which shows Obama ahead of McCain 43 percent to 34 percent among likely voters, also finds Obama leading in 18 of 19 different religious faith communities defined by the survey’s strict standards. McCain leads in only one—evangelicals. In that category, however, the Republican has a huge lead, 61 to 17.

The problem is that in the U.S., and in particular U.S. news media, evangelicals (especially white ones) are the only religious people who count.

The Barna poll uses unusual methodology. Many pollsters take voters at their word when they say they are evangelical Christians, but the Barna survey is unusually specific about its categorizations. It asks voters a battery of nine questions about their religious beliefs—whether, for example, they think the Bible is accurate in everything it teaches, and whether they feel a personal responsibility to share their beliefs about Christ with non-Christians. Only when all nine questions are answered affirmatively are voters categorized as “evangelical.”

That might be a bit strict. However, I still haven’t recovered from the 2003 Pew poll that determined how “religious” someone is by whether they believe in a literal Judgment Day.

The Barna pollsters err in thinking that “evangelical Christianity” is primarily religious. It is not; it is tribal. It is identity. A large part of those who fervently believe themselves to be evangelical Christians don’t know Jesus’ teachings from eggplant.

This significantly reduces the survey’s estimate of the total number of evangelical voters. By Barna’s estimate, only 8 percent of U.S. voters are truly evangelical. “That is a much smaller group than you might think,” says George Barna, the poll’s director.

Ah, but the tribe is much bigger.

The survey shows that the much debated “God gap” between Republicans and Democrats among Christian voters as a whole may not be nearly as dramatic as it appeared in 2004. Indeed, among those who self-identify as “evangelical” but who don’t fit the Barna group’s criteria, McCain holds only a 39 to 37 lead over Obama, with nearly 1 in 4 voters saying they are still undecided.

Among most other Christian groups, the Democratic candidate continues to enjoy a comfortable lead. Obama has a huge advantage among non-Christians, atheists, and agnostics, but he also leads among nonevangelical, born-again Christians (43 to 31), Christians who are neither born-again nor evangelical (44 to 28), Catholics (39 to 29), and Protestants (43 to 34). “If the current preferences stand pat,” says Barna, “this would mark the first time in more than two decades that the born-again vote has swung toward the Democratic candidate.”

I’m a little confused by “nonevangelical, born-again Christians.” Historically, the “born-again” experience was the sine qua non of evangelicalism and what set it apart from older denominations of Protestantism. If anyone out there understands this and can explain it to me, I would be grateful.

Anyway, what we know is that religious people, including most Christians, tend to favor Obama. The one group that does not is evangelical Christians. In most universes, the evangelical Christian vote would be considered an anomaly. However, in this universe, the evangelical movement is the “norm” and everyone else is the anomaly. Go figure.

Irony Is SO Dead

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Or perhaps John McCain has entered a temporal anomaly, as often happened to the various Star Trek crews. Yesterday McCain said of the Russian military action in Georgia,

My friends, we have reached a crisis, the first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War. This is an act of aggression.

To which I say (singing):

Have you forgotten how it felt that day
To see your homeland under fire
And her people blown away?
Have you forgotten when those towers fell?
We had neighbors still inside
Going through a living hell
And you say we shouldn’t worry ’bout Bin Laden
Have you forgotten?

I think McCain should be evaluated for possible Alzheimer’s. I’m serious. In early stages, people remember past clearly but can’t remember recent. Early stage Alzheimer’s would explain a lot.

Sam Stein writes,

Speaking to reporters about the situation in Georgia, Sen. John McCain denounced the aggressive posture of Russia by claiming that:”in the 21st century nations don’t invade other nations.”

The man’s brain neurons are not firing.

Sometimes the headline says it all:

Bush, Decrying ‘Bullying,’ Calls for Russia to Leave Georgia

Delicious. Meanwhile, the Creature still thinks he rules the world by imperial fiat:

President Bush Wednesday promised that U.S. naval forces would deliver humanitarian aid to war-torn Georgia before his administration had received approval from Turkey, which controls naval access to the Black Sea, or the Pentagon had planned a seaborne operation, U.S. officials said Thursday.

As of late Thursday, Ankara, a NATO ally, hadn’t cleared any U.S. naval vessels to steam to Georgia through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, the narrow straits that connect the Mediterranean and the Black Seas, the officials said. Under the 1936 Montreaux Convention, countries must notify Turkey before sending warships through the straits.

Pentagon officials told McClatchy that they were increasingly dubious that any U.S. Navy vessels would join the aid operation, in large part because the U.S.-based hospital ships likely to go, the USNS Comfort and the USNS Mercy, would take weeks to arrive.

“The president was writing checks to the Georgians without knowing what he had in the bank,” said a senior administration official.

BTW, the President, who just got back from spending most of a week sitting in the stands of various Olympic competitions in Beijing, today is beginning a two-week vacation in Crawford, Texas.

Update: My long-time fan the Confederate Yankee doesn’t like the way we lefties are giggling over McCain’s “first probably serious crisis internationally since the Cold War” line. In particular he accused Matt Yglesias of “intellectual dishonesty” for writing this:

Satyam notes “the Gulf War, 9/11, and the Iraq War, to name a few” as possible alternatives. But beyond McCain’s seemingly poor memory, the interesting thing is the confusion in terms of high-level concepts. It was just a little while ago that McCain was giving speeches about how “the threat of radical Islamic terrorism” is “transcendent challenge of our time.” Now Russia seems to be the transcendent challenge. Which is the problem with an approach to world affairs characterized by a near-constant hysteria about threat levels and a pathological inability to set priorities.

To this the CY says,

Is Yglesias actually daft enough to suggest that acknowledging a new or renewed threat is wrong, and that it should be ignored so you can stick with your party’s pre-planned script?

No, Yeglesias is not that daft, because that’s not what he suggested, as anyone with working critical thinking skills who can actually read beyond a third-grade level would have understood.

Simple answers to simple questions …

Missionary Position

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Sometimes you run into people who are so clueless you wonder how they dress themselves. Today I ran into a blog being kept by a Christian missionary in Thailand. I’ll just link to one post without comment. It parodies itself.

Here’s a post on another blog that talks about Christian missionary work in Thailand. Techniques for converting the Thais include scare-mongering and emotional blackmail.

Update: Here’s one more — “Buddhist migrants pressured to convert to Christianity.” I bet they’re not as aggressive with the Muslims.

I wish some of these deadheads would stop and think how they would feel if some group representing another religion tried the same tricks on them, or on other Christians. Do unto others, etc.

Interesting Times

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Sorry I’ve been scarce. I need two of me to keep up with things sometimes.

Yesterday hundreds of Shugden Dorje devotees and Dalai Lama supporters clashed outside Radio City Music Hall and had to be separated by NYPD. I’m sorry I missed it.

If you’ve seen the Shugden groupies — they go around protesting His Holiness the Dalai Lama everywhere he speaks — you may have wondered what their issues are. I just wrote a long backgrounder on the other blog. Essentially, the Shugdenistas are a fundamentalist cult, and what’s going on is a power struggle within Tibetan Buddhism.

The leaders of the Shugden sect recruit lots of soft-headed westerners, feed them highly revisionist versions of Tibetan history and Buddhism, and get them all worked up into believing His Holiness is an enemy of religious freedom. But the protesters really are just pawns in a bigger game. And you can bet China is involved. This is all explained on the other blog.

So if you see the Shugden culties in the future, just ignore them. And pity them, if you like.

Notice to Shugden culties: If you want to argue with me, go to the Buddhism forums. Any nonsense you leave here will be deleted.