Is a Neurotic Form of Christianity Destroying America?

July 12, 2013  

Posted by: Robert De Filippis

 

 
“The deconstruction of Christianity is not an attack on the church but a critique of the idols to which it is vulnerable – the literalism and authoritarianism, the sexism and racism, the militarism, and the love of unrestrained capitalism with which the church in its various forms has today and for too long been entangled, any one of which is toxic to the kingdom of God.”
“Strategically, diplomatically, socially, politically, morally, economically, evangelically, in every possible way we are witness today to a low point in American leadership, an ethical, social, political and biblical catastrophe.”
These passages from the book, What Would Jesus Deconstruct: The Good News of Postmodernism for the Church (The Church and Postmodern Culture) by John Caputo, taken out of context, might suggest that religion is the singular cause for the continuing trajectory of a deepening dysfunction in our society. But a twisted popular form of Christianity catalyzes two other more powerful ingredients; predatory capitalism and a government that serves the interests of big money.
These three powerful components work together to drag us down the slope to more and more dysfunction in the name of a more moral society – a moral society based on a set of values that are so misapplied as to become destructive.
In other words, these three components create a moral society that destroys its own villages in order to save them.
For instance, while we hammer home the lessons of radical individualism in the guise of moral virtue, we reduce the resources or opportunities required to become self sustaining for great portions of our citizenry.
Just to be sure no one mistakes our moral lesson of self-sufficiency, we raise the interest rates on student loans, and the vital college education needed for success in the future becomes less accessible to the masses.
To be sure our moral lessons continue,  we keep our taxes low and maintain our spending on defense against an imagined enemy and our educational system is gutted to balance the budget.
We are cursed with near sightedness. We can’t seem to see the long term effects on the country when a low skilled, minimally educated workforce must shoulder the tax load of the future or compete with highly educated citizens of other nations.
We have an amazing ability to blame the victims in our troubled society and justify our accusations on a revisionist Christian morality which would be unrecognizable to the Christ himself. Not so much because Christianity was St. Paul’s invention, but because of the absurdity of present day revisionist interpretations.
This modern form of Christianity has become an expedient for the infiltration of a radical form of capitalism intermingled with our public institutions. The very same institutions that were formed to protect the interests of the citizenry, who are now doing the bidding of the mega wealthy, while pointing to the moral failure of the masses they were intended to serve.
Yes, Mr. Caputo, we have many idols. And although I’m encouraged by your efforts to  deconstruct Christianity, I doubt our ability or willingness to take the same actions with capitalism and governance.
It would never get through the Republican led House of Representatives. That’s the one with all the good Christian Tea Party moralists.
Rather, they are satisfied to keep Americans dancing around the golden calf, with the improbable hope that eventually some of capitalism’s largesse will trickle down into their laps.
We are minimum wage, millionaires-in-waiting, fully immersed in this form of idolatry, trusting our day will come.
If there is an unpardonable sin, it’s using religion to separate and discriminate rather than to connect and make whole.
On America’s behalf, Mea Culpa!
Robert De Filippis

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Religious Right Furious Pope Francis Wants Them To Follow The Bible

 Religious Right Furious Pope Francis Wants Them To Follow The Bible

Written by: Sarah Wood

Many on the religious right are livid that Pope Francis would have the audacity to want people to live up to the actual teachings of the Bible which fully negates their agenda of sweeping the poor under the rug and rewarding the already obscenely wealthy.

“How dare he say trickle-down economics doesn’t work!” said Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX). “The beloved Ronald Reagan, who was far more religious than any Pope said if we keep giving the wealthy more money, everyone will have more money. We just need to wait a little bit longer to see it work!”

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), devout Catholic, said of the Pontiff, “He is obviously reading from the wrong part of the book. Wealth and greed are beautiful Biblical concepts that go back even further than Jesus.”

“I just don’t diddly understand why therefore and more what this here supposed religious leader-type thingy thinks he’s up to,” said Sarah Palin.

Many in the religious right are denouncing the anti-capitalist remarks of Pope Francis. They don’t want any sort of actual religious facts and teachings to derail their attempt at creating a feudal society.

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Conservative Christian Leader Says Single Moms Should Put Their Kids Up For Adoption

 
Author: Stephen D. Foster Jr. November 27, 2013 3:59 am

In what sounds like a strong suggestion for taking kids away from single moms by force, a ‘Christian’ leader urges them to give their kids up voluntarily. Photo from JuicyEcumenism.Com.

In what seems like a single step away from advocating that we take kids away from their single moms by force, a conservative Christian leader is urging them to give up their children voluntarily.

A conservative Christian leader says single moms should surrender their kids to Christian homes with two parents.

Right Wing Watch reports that Southern Baptist leader Richard Land is calling on single mothers to put up their kids for adoption so that Christian households with two parents can raise them.
In a November 23rd article published on The Christian Post, Land urges single mothers across the nation to stop being selfish and hand their kids over to good Christian parents so they can be raised properly, the way he thinks God intended.

“Keeping the baby is almost never preferable to allowing a baby to be adopted into a solid, faithful Christian home,” Land claims. “A single mother who keeps her baby is quite often denying that baby the father that God wants for that baby, and every baby, to have. Furthermore, in most circumstances, keeping the baby circumscribes and forecloses both the mother’s and the baby’s economic futures in tragic and unfortunate ways. If the mother is doing what is best for her baby (one of the defining marks of maternal love), she will part with her baby so that it will have the future God intended for him or her to have… Adoption allows the mother to give her child both a mother and a father who will love and cherish the child.”

Richard Land calls for a policy that would increase the number of kids in need of adoptive homes by millions.

Land says he understands that there are already 100,000 children waiting to be adopted in the United States, but he still thinks all 11 million single moms in the nation should freely surrender their kids. Why? Because he says the children of single moms are being raised improperly and really should be given the chance to have a father in their lives, even if they have to squander their childhood in orphanages waiting to be adopted.
Apparently, Land has no clue how many children that is. Try about 20 million. That’s how many children would be flooding the adoption system if Land had his way. Earlier in his article, before he completely insulted single moms, Land tried to make the case for adoption instead of abortion. He says that women should always choose adoption rather than seek an abortion. Since an estimated 1.2 million abortions are performed every year, that would be 1.2 million babies that the already overworked and underfunded adoption and child services system would have to deal with each year, in addition to the 20 million Land expects single moms to give up. Can anyone possibly imagine this turning out well?
Unless conservatives are literally willing to order their congressional puppets to open the government wallet and write a gigantic check (Can anyone honestly imagine that happening?), the system would implode upon itself. Millions of children would be stranded. And millions of children would be added to the million-plus children who are now homeless in America. It would create a crisis of epic proportions, with not enough Christian households around to solve it.

Richard Land’s call carves a dangerous path.

The fact is, abortion is a necessary choice that all women should have. Sure, they have ability to choose adoption. But it seems that Land is suggesting forcing that choice upon women. There are already so many children who have no home, why force women to thrust more children into that situation? It’s seriously insane.
Furthermore, after single moms read what Land said, it wouldn’t surprise me if they tarred and feathered him in a public square. As if conservatives haven’t attacked single mothers enough, this guy is openly claiming that they don’t raise their children right and that the only way they can do so is to have a husband. This personally enrages me, because I was raised by a single mother, as are millions of children every single year. Is it hard? Sure it is. But does that mean my single mother wasn’t a fantastic parent who raised me well? Absolutely not.
Land’s call for single moms to willingly surrender their children is a dangerous signal from religious conservatives. You know how conservatives are currently cheering for Russia to forcibly take children away from gay couples? It sounds like conservatives are now one step closer toward forcibly taking children away from single mothers here in America. I’m not sure what conservatives call that, but most sane people would call it kidnapping, which is illegal. Furthermore, Land’s call to for single moms to give up their kids to Christian couples is highly suspicious. Clearly, these Christian fundamentalists would be free to indoctrinate these kids. Basically, Land wants to take kids away from their single moms so they can be brainwashed with hate, fear, prejudice, and ignorance. Again, I’m not sure what Land calls that, but most sane people would call that child abuse.

Conservatives have stopped at nothing to attack single mothers.

This is yet another aspect in the GOP’s war on women. They simply can’t stand single moms, even though it’s a good bet that many right-wingers were raised by them. Despite that, conservatives have stopped at nothing to attack single mothers.
Kansas Republicans are increasing the cost of childcare across the state to fund abstinence-only programs that don’t work. You know who is going to be affected by that the most? Single moms. In Wisconsin, the GOP thinks single moms actually want fatherless children and have compared single motherhood to child abuse. Republicans even blame single moms for the epidemic of gun violence in this country.
But that’s not all. Republican policies such as abstinence-only programs and their anti-contraception crusade lead to more women becoming single moms. Not only that, their policies only make the lives of single mothers harder, thus making it more difficult to care for their children. GOP efforts to eliminate child care services, preschool, food stamps, and equal pay for women have only made things harder for single women.
Here’s a thought. The he-man woman haters within the GOP should get off their collective asses and begin pushing birth control and comprehensive sex education. The number of unintended pregnancies would drop as would the number of abortions. And here’s an even better idea. What if Republicans actually supported and enacted equal pay for women? What if they increased child care services and pre-school at the same time? Those combined efforts would reduce the number of women who become single mothers via unintended pregnancies. And single mothers would have a large enough income and the assistance they need to take care of their kids.

Richard Land’s call is sure to drive more women and their children into the welcoming arms of the Democratic Party.

Conservatives have the gall to wonder why women are voting for Democrats, and yet they attack women on all fronts. Of course, it’s not going to get any better for the GOP considering one of their own just insulted millions of single mothers and the millions of children who are raised by them. On that same note, let’s not forget that young people are increasing voting against the Republican Party. By attacking their moms, the GOP is just giving them another reason to vote Democrat.

Richard Land, and conservative men like him, are sexist assholes.

It’s amazing how conservative men can claim to know so much about child-rearing when they have made it abundantly clear that they expect women to do all the work. Maybe if Republicans advocated for teaching men to be good partners with the women they have a child with, more kids would have a father in their lives. Unfortunately, conservative men like Richard Land are too busy being sexist assholes, and you can’t expect sexist assholes to teach other men not to be one. In short, these anti-women conservative men are totally unfit to raise children and are totally unqualified to judge single mothers and how they raise theirs.

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The Religious Right With Their Weaponized Jesus Are Not Christians

The Religious Right With Their Weaponized Jesus Are Not Christians 

 

By: Hrafnkell Haraldsson
Tuesday, November, 26th, 2013, 7:28 am

It is instructive that Lieutenant General William G. “Jerry” Boykin (retired), who now works as the Family Research Council’s executive vice president, cares more about what Jesus looked like than what Jesus taught.
Boykin, another one of those who says Islam is not entitled to First Amendment protections, and thinks God, not the American people, chooses our presidents, told the audience of a Men’s Prayer Breakfast at William Jessup University, that,

[Jesus] was a man. He was a man’s man, but we feminized him in the church…he was a tough guy and that’s the Jesus that I want to be like. That’s the side that I want to be like. But we’ve feminized Jesus in the church and the men can’t identify with him anymore; not the kind of men that I want to hang out with, they can’t identify with this effeminate Jesus that we’ve tried to portray. He was a tough guy. He was a man’s man.

For Boykin it was bromance at first sight and perhaps a wee bit of latent homosexuality as he waxed over Jesus’ “big, bulging biceps…thin waist” and “strong shoulders” (Who knew Jesus was the Marlboro man?)
Boykin’s accidental outing of himself aside, we don’t know what Jesus actually looked like. But we do know that he was not the strangely Germanic blond guy of popular imagination. He was a dark-skinned Semite:

There is also no doubt that Jesus smelled bad. They didn’t have deodorant in the first century of the Common Era so Jesus smelled bad, Peter smelled bad, Pontius Pilate smelled bad, Caiaphas smelled bad, the guys who nailed Jesus to the cross smelled bad, and so did the two rebels he was executed with and the people who watched, including Jesus’ mother. We get that. But smelling bad doesn’t make you a man when everyone – women included – smells bad. This sort of reasoning is why Boykin is working for the FRC.
We get that too.
But it’s a shame Boykin and the FRC care more about what Jesus smelled and looked like than they do the important things, like what Jesus taught about the poor coming first and the rich, having sold their souls to the dark powers that ruled the age to become rich, coming last. That would be swell, but people like Boykin prefer the Weaponized Jesus of the twenty first century to the apocalyptic prophet of the first.
Jesus is often portrayed as a carpenter but he might well have been, like Socrates, a stone mason, since the word used, in Mark 6:3, τέκτων (tekton), means only that he made things with his hands; it does not specify which craft he practiced. So yes, he would have been a hardy, no doubt muscular fellow, though Geza Vermes, whom I often cite here, points out that the language used – “son of a carpenter” – is used in the Talmud to mean somebody who is “learned” and therefore might have simply signified that Jesus was wise. Of course, we already figured that out, given what he said about rich people chances of getting into heaven (Matthew 19:24).
He might have been big, strapping, smelly AND wise. We’ll just never know. And it really doesn’t matter.
And that is because most of us would agree that what Jesus said was more important than what he looked like. Think about the Beatitudes and Jesus’ words, “Blessed are the peacemakers” (Matthew 5:9) and think about them particularly in terms of what President Barack Obama has accomplished with regards Iran and its nuclear program.
Because it is Obama the Republican response was automatically negative but their response should have been to remember Jesus’ words, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone” (John 8:7).
What we get instead is Bryan Fischer proclaiming that God will curse America for making a deal with Iran. Fischer forgets Jesus entirely and goes all Old Testament on us:

What he cursed us with are people like Bryan Fischer and Jerry Boykin and groups like the Christian America Patriots Militia, who have been claiming that Jesus and the Second Amendment together gives them the right to assassinate the president.
If Republicans really cared about Jesus, and what Jesus taught, they would be talking less about their Savior’s manly odor, flip open the New Testament that supposedly informs their beliefs, and realize that having done what Jesus wanted, Obama is blessed, not cursed, and that even if he does something you don’t like, you forgive him, not kill him.
It is too much to say that Jesus would say he wants his religion back. It was never his religion to begin with, after all. It is beyond contestation that Jesus was a Jew who preached an apocalyptic message to the Jews, that he ignored the Gentiles (Pagans) and not only ignored them, but told his disciples to avoid them, referring to Gentiles in true Jewish fashion as “dogs” and “swine” (Matthew 7:6).
Jesus did not invent Christianity. Christianity is a religion that was invented about Jesus, based, allegedly, on his teachings and not his appearance. But Jesus would certainly want those teachings heeded. He did not walk all over a Galilee infested with bandits, rebels, Herodians, and Romans, just for yucks. It was hot, dangerous – and smelly, after all.
We have to assume (assuming a historical Jesus in the first place) that he was serious about what he said.
He died for it, after all.
Whether Jesus was right or wrong about what he taught, whether he was an illiterate Galilean craftsman or divine, he died miserably and in great agony on the cross. And in at least one of the mutually contradictory versions of his death, he told his Father to “forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). He did not say “nuke ‘em till they glow” or “bomb them into the Stone Age,” like would a Republican.
We should respect that, Christian or otherwise.
But Jerry Boykin and his ilk have no genuine respect for Jesus. Jesus has become “weaponized” – a club used to bludgeon enemies. This is not at all what Jesus would have wanted, since he said to “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:39) and that if somebody steals your shirt to give them your cloak as well (Matthew 5:40) and to “love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44).
The only weapon here is love.
But conservatives hate that Jesus. Hate is more their speed. Old Testament wrath. A god who tosses nukes with his fingertips. That god profits them and their friends in the military industrial complex. That’s a Jesus they can get behind. That’s the Jesus Boykin really loves with all his manly man’s heart.
Unfortunately, that’s not the Jesus in the gospels, which is, after all, supposed to be a good message, not a bad.
The thing is, if Christianity is a religion about what Jesus taught, then these people on the Religious Right are not Christians at all. How much greater their crime if they claim Jesus actually created Christianity.
Yes, I do think Jesus would want his gospel heeded if he put in an appearance today. And I suspect he would have a few words for the dogs and swine on the Religious Right who have been masquerading as followers of the rabbi from Galilee.

The Religious Right With Their Weaponized Jesus Are Not Christians was written by Hrafnkell Haraldsson for PoliticusUSA.

© PoliticusUSA, Tue, Nov 26th, 2013 — All Rights Reserved

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The American Family Association wants Christians to boycott Radio Shack. But WWJD?

November 25, 2013 By Dan Wilkinson

 

The American Family Association is calling for a boycott of Radio Shack. Why? Because in their holiday advertising Radio Shack uses the word holiday instead of Christmas.
The AFA regularly seeks to impose upon the world its particular brand of distorted Christianity by means of boycotts and similar campaigns, so this latest call to action is hardly a surprise.
Is this really how Christians want to make their voices heard? Do we really want to be known for demanding that others explicitly recognize and promote our religious holidays?
Would Jesus boycott a store that didn’t celebrate his birthday?
I don’t think so. I think he would have gone out of his way to shop at such a store, to engage with the people there, to show them the warmth, compassion, and love for which he gave his life. I think the petty economic activism advocated by the AFA is the antithesis of how Christians are supposed to interact with the world.
I don’t regularly shop at Radio Shack. But the AFA’s latest “campaign” sure makes me want to.
The AFA is asking its supporters to leave comments on Radio Shack’s Facebook page, and to call the company’s corporate office (817-415-3011, opt 0) to “let them know you are serious about taking your business elsewhere.”
I will be contacting Radio Shack. But I’ll be letting them know that, as a Christian, I wholeheartedly support their all-inclusive holiday advertising. I encourage you to do the same. If enough of us do that, maybe the AFA will learn something they seem to be missing about the real message of Christmas.

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Dan Wilkinson
Dan is a writer, graphic designer and IT specialist. He lives in Montana, is married and has two cats. He blogs at CoolingTwilight.com.

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Just How Stupid, Mean and Spiteful is the Evangelical-Controlled GOP/Tea Party South? Here’s How Stupid

November 22, 2013 By Frank Schaeffer

“What we could see, 10 years from now, is a Mason-Dixon line of health care… And [the GOP South] is doing it out of spite. Elsewhere, the expansion of Medicaid, the health care program for the poor, has been one of the few success stories of Obamacare… One side (with exceptions for conservative Midwest and mountain states) would be the insured North, a place where health care coverage was affordable and available to most people…
“On the other side would be the uninsured South, where health care for the poor would amount to treating charity cases in hospital emergency rooms. The South, already the poorest region in the country, with all the attendant problems, would acquire another distinction — a place where, if you were sick and earned just enough money that you didn’t qualify for traditional Medicare, you might face the current system’s version of a death panel.”  By TIMOTHY EGAN ( The South’s New Lost Cause, NY Times)

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Who’s Destroying Christianity? It Sure as Hell Isn’t the Liberals

November 24, 2013 By Allen Clifton

It’s my belief, as was the belief of our Founding Fathers, that religion and politics should never mix. Honestly, what good can come from it?  Even among the seemingly endless denominations within the Christian faith there’s not a consensus of what is right and what is wrong.
I’ve been to the households of Baptists where drinking is strongly forbidden and against their religious beliefs, and let’s just say I’ve been far less than sober at a Catholic wedding.
But there’s undoubtedly a war being waged within this country by the far-right “Christian fundamentalists” (the ones I call followers of Republicanity) and real Christians who actually follow the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Since I founded Right Off A Cliff and co-founded Forward Progressives, I’ve made it part of my mission to reclaim Christianity from those who I personally feel don’t follow the Christian faith at all.  Another group I would highly encourage all of you to check out as well is The Christian Left.  It’s another great page that fights the ignorance of Republicanity.
It’s amazing though how so many conservatives really believe liberals are a bunch of godless heathens out to destroy Christianity.  It’s a claim that’s absolutely absurd.  There are tens of millions of liberals who are Christians in this country.  The difference is, we practice our faith in private like it should be.  We don’t stand on some alter, preaching down to others about how they should live their lives.

Still, I can’t count the times I’ve heard conservatives claim that liberals are out to destroy Christianity.
And while their ignorance concerning the idea that liberals are trying to destroy Christianity is apparent, they are correct about one thing — millions of people are destroying Christianity.   They are.

Republicans are the biggest enemy to Christian values I’ve ever witnessed.
You know what I’ve literally never heard, not even once?  ”I’m no longer a Christian because of the beliefs of liberals.”
But you know what I have heard numerous times?  ”I’m no longer a Christian because of the ignorance of so many conservatives who claim to be Christians, yet act like ignorant, hateful pricks.”
Story after story from people who no longer considering themselves Christians, though they were raised one, because of the ignorance of those who take Christianity and destroy it with their own selfish, hateful desires.
Liberals aren’t driving people from Christianity, conservatives are.  It’s the Republican party who acts like they’re some representatives of “Christian values” while being supported by hateful, paranoid, delusional, angry, fearful bigots who hate anything and everything that isn’t just like them.
“Oh, but I go to church and tithe 10%.  I’m also in the choir and I volunteer at all the church functions.”
Neat.
When someone says something like that to me this is what I hear:

“I was raised to go to church because it’s what God orders me to do.  I’ve also been told that I’m supposed to give 10% to the church otherwise I might end up in hell.  Oh, and if I’m not involved in church my friends and family will judge me, but it’s okay, I don’t really mind that because I’m surrounded by people in church who are just like me and we can gossip and judge everyone who isn’t just like us.”

Anyone who’s ever worked with the public will tell you the absolute worst day of the week to work is Sunday.  When I was a server at a restaurant right across the highway from one of the largest churches in the city I was living in at the time, Sunday morning was the shift where we had the rudest people, worst tips and our lives were miserable until the day was over.

You know, once the “good church people” arrived.
But like I said, people aren’t flocking from Christianity because of liberals.  They’re flocking from the religion because of the absolute ignorance of conservatives.  Who, as I’ve said many times now, don’t follow Christianity — they follow Republicanity.
And as a Christian who accepts people of all faiths, no faiths and all things in between, I’m going to continue to stand up for Christianity.  I will continue the fight to reclaim Christianity from the ignorant clutches of these right-wing fanatics.
I just hope more people join me in this fight.

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Methodist Marriage: Robin Hynicka State of Belief Radio Interview

Methodist Marriage: Robin Hynicka State of Belief Radio Interview, November 23, 2013

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Christian Patriots Calling For Assassination Of Obama And A New Revolution

  

by: Mindy Fischer

 November 24, 2013

There are right-wing Christian groups popping up all over the country who are determined to remove or kill President Obama. They all seem to have a few things in common. First, they all believe that God is guiding them to do this. They all also believe that they have the right to start a revolution, and that they have a duty under the Constitution to forcefully remove Obama. And they all believe that they will be protected by their beloved 2nd Amendment.
The fact that all of these groups interconnect in some way, makes you wonder if this movement isn’t more organized than we originally thought.
Larry Klayman and his followers are so certain that they can remove or kill Obama and his administration, that he has already planned out and organized a second Constitutional Congress to take over. Klayman has organized what he calls, a “Second American Revolution.”
Klayman told WorldNetDaily that, “the tyrant evil fool in the White House will retire to his favorite golf course in Tehran.” He explained that after his Reclaim America Now group was done removing the “Mullah in Chief” at the White House, they were moving on to Philadelphia where,

“Delegates of the Tea Party and other patriots from all 50 states will deliberate, plan for the rest of the revolution, and elect a government in waiting, ethically and competent poised to take over the reigns (sic) of a real government responsible to the people.
I command you to join our forces. The time has come for action. The time is over for talk.”

Klayman has been telling anyone who would listen that he and his forces of millions would overthrow Obama by on November 19. He swore that the pressure of the millions demanding forceful removal of the POTUS, would cause Obama and his family to flee and leave the country.
Well, to spite all of the hate-filled rhetoric and promises, the big Reclaim America Now rally actually drew far less that millions. We could probably easier count them by the dozens.
But here’s the really concerning thing about this, Larry Klayman is not a lone lunatic for this cause. There are many people and organizations popping up all over the country with the sole intent of removing or killing President Obama. Most of them call themselves Christians and Patriots and they all believe that they have the legal right and duty under the 2nd Amendment to kill or violently remove Obama.
Another of these extremist Christian groups who supports forcibly removing the President is the “2 Million Bikers to D.C.” The group’s coordinator, Belinda Bee, spoke to the less-than-massive crowd at the rally at the White House on November 19.

“Our mission statement starts off with: We at the 2 Million Bikers to D.C. do believe in God, Country, Our Constitution, and Our Bill of Rights- as written. That means there should not be change. We don’t care about all of those Bill of Rights that came after the original. We are one nation under God, and without God, we are not Americans.”

Seriously, these people claim to be Christians, and absolutely freak out when anyone dare call them racists or sexist. But then they make this insane demand that only the original Bill of Rights should be recognized. This means that any Amendments that came after the original would be null and void. Yeah, no big deal there….except that it would remove Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, the ability to elect Senators, and bring back poll taxes. And ironically, it would also remove Presidential term limits. Third term for the Black Zulu Kenyan anyone??
The editor at WorldNetDaily, Joseph Farah, said he was so inspired by Larry Klayman’s rally on November 19, and he believes it will launch a whole anti-Obama movement. Farah is also a big supporter of the 2nd American Revolution, and the forceful overtaking of the government.
Farah wrote Friday,

“America is nearing the point of no return- a historic moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point. The only thing that can stop it is a massive outpouring of strength and force by the remnant of Americans who will dare, as America’s founders did, to sacrifice their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to preserve and restore liberty, morality, and common sense no matter the cost.
It’s time. The hour is late. Get mobilized. Be ready!”

The group Christian American Patriots Militia is another place for right-wing nut-jobs to congregate. The moderator of their Facebook page, Everest Wilhelmsen, wrote a frightening post on the day Klayman gathered at the White House. He called for the assassination of Obama outright. He wrote that we, “now have the authority to shoot Obama, i.e. to kill him.”
This group is calling for a violent removal of the President using deadly force. Whilhelmsen promised that Obama will be “dead within the month.” He also told his group that Christians have the right and duty to bear arms against any government having a design to reduce us under absolute Despotism.”

 

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Christians have not been ‘reading the Bible this way for 2,000 years’

Christians have not been ‘reading the Bible this way for 2,000 years’

November 24, 2013 By Fred Clark

Whenever I write something critical of the relatively recent dogma of “biblical inerrancy,” someone always responds by insisting that Christians have been reading the Bible this way for 2,000 years.
That’s not true. It’s not possible.
Christians haven’t been reading the Bible this way for 2,000 years, because for most of the last 2,000 years, most Christians weren’t reading the Bible at all.
For the first of those 20 centuries, Christians weren’t reading the New Testament because it was still being written. Even 1,900 years ago, many of the texts we refer to as the New Testament were still a work in progress.

For much of Christian history, many of the biblical texts read by most Christians were neither texts nor biblical. (“Descent of Christ to Limbo,” church fresco in Florence by Andrea di Bonaiuto, ca. 1368.)

It took another 200 years after that for those texts to be collected into anything like a formal canon. That only came about after Emperor Constantine made Christianity Rome’s official religion. The next step, then, was to translate the Bible into Latin so that every Roman-therefore-newly-Christian could read it. Jerome didn’t finish that project until 405.
At that point — 1,600 years ago — it might finally have become possible for Christians to start reading the Bible in the same way that white evangelical inerrantists read it today, but that’s not how they read the Bible. Take a look at Augustine or any of the other early church writers from the first five centuries of Christianity and you’ll find all kinds of approaches to the text — wildly inventive allegorical schemes, symbolism, reinterpretations of the New Testament almost as radical as the NT authors’ reinterpretations of the OT — that would give contemporary defenders of “biblical inerrancy” the howling fantods.
Well, then, what about after Augustine? How did Christians read the Bible in the next several centuries?
They didn’t. Not most of them, anyway. The Western Roman Empire fell in 476 and literacy in western Europe collapsed right along with it. During the Dark Ages, books were hard to come by, and people who could read and understand them were too. Christians were reading the Bible during those many long centuries, but not most Christians. It was read by, and within, the church. The prevailing hermeneutic, in other words, was nothing like the individualistic, face-value literalism that characterizes the approach of modern inerrantists. The prevailing hermeneutic was to interpret the Bible as meaning what the church says it means.
The majority of Christians during those centuries didn’t read the Bible at all, lacking both the ability and the opportunity to do so. They heard bits of the Bible read to them — in Latin, which they may not have understood — and they learned a lot of biblical lore from songs, statuary, pageants and plays. That was mixed in, of course, with a lot of other lore that was likely regarded as biblical, even though it came instead from, say, the Gospel of Nicodemas or the Vision of Tundale.
That’s how things remained for about half of those 2,000 years during which Christians have supposedly been reading the Bible in just exactly the way we’re reading it today.
The big changes didn’t come until more than 1,000 years after St. Jerome finished his Latin translation. The biggest change didn’t have anything to do with the church itself. The biggest change was technological — the invention of the printing press and the publication of the Gutenberg Bible in 1454.
Another big change came with first the Geneva Bible and then the King James Version in 1611 — more than a century after Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press, these made English translations of the Bible widely available for the first time. And thus, for the first time in the English-speaking world, it became possible to begin reading the Bible the way that proponents of “inerrancy” read it today.
So if we can’t say that most Christians have been reading the Bible this way for 2,000 years, can we at least say that some Christians have been reading the Bible this way for 400 years?
Yes, I think that’s fair. I think the same hermeneutic now championed by Al Mohler’s Southern Baptist faction and by things like the “Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy” first began to take shape about 400 years ago.
And here’s a brief timeline of some of that theological development:

1607: Jamestown founded in Virginia.

1611: King James Bible published.

1619: First 20 Africans sold into slavery in Jamestown.

1620: Plymouth Bay Colony founded in Massachusetts.

1636: The Desire, the first North American slave ship, built and launched in Massachusetts.

1643: Plymouth adopts a fugitive slave law.

1657: Virginia adopts a fugitive slave law.

1661: King Charles II of England calls for the Christian conversion of African slaves.

1667: Virginia passes law saying that slaves who convert to Christianity will remain slaves.

From there on it’s just a matter of filling in the details.
The shape of contemporary white evangelicalism — including the way it reads and interprets and wields the Bible — flows from that. That’s where the argument began and that’s where the argument remains.

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Republican Jesus’ Ten Commandments

Author: Justin "Filthy Liberal Scum" Rosario May 20, 2013 12:01 am

 

And Lo, did Republican Jesus come down among the masses and holding his tablet PC did he give unto his disciples the NEW (and improved) Ten Commandments: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Socialism, out of the house of Communism.”

1. You shall have no other gods before me, especially that terrorist monkey god, Mohammed.[i]
2. You shall not make for yourself any carved image; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them except for the Holy Benjamins. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting poverty of the fathers on the children of those (as in those people) who hate me, but showering material riches unto thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments. Also, you shall have guns. All you want.
3. You shall not take the name of your God, Ronald Reagan, in vain, for the Lord will hold him guiltless of treason and malfeasance.

4. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. If you are a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, six days you shall labor and do all your work, that should just about do it for the year[ii], but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor the stranger who is within your country illegally unless they are off the books then they shall work all seven days without respite. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, including dinosaur bones and rested the seventh day.
5. Honor your father and your mother by ensuring that they keep their Social Security even as you shall taketh it away from all others.
6. You shall not murder unless they are Muslim. Or gay. Or abortion doctors. Or government workers. Or black. Or whatever group is currently out of favor with mine chosen White (not white, White) People.
7. You shall not commit adultery and get caught during an election year.
8. You shall not steal unless it’s from the worker’s pensions.
9. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. Just kidding, Fox News. Go forth and bear away.
10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s. Instead, you shall go forth and buy these things for yourself on credit and keep the “too big to fail” banks happy.
And thus did Republican Jesus™ lead his Chosen White people to that paradise on earth known as Somalia where they did not have to render unto Caesar anything and freedom showered from the heavens like Manna.
And then they all died of dysentery.
Come join me on Facebook, my home blog or just follow me on Twitter @FilthyLbrlScum
 

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Bill Maher Looks At Sarah Palin & Pope Francis' Heated Twitter War

Bill Maher Looks At Sarah Palin & Pope Francis' Heated Twitter War

Posted: 11/18/2013 3:34 pm EST

Sarah Palin made headlines last week after an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper, where she said that some of Pope Francis' statements sounded "kind of liberal." Palin has since apologized, explaining that her point was about not trusting the media.
Ok, sure, why not?
But if you get your news from Bill Maher, then you know that the story was much more incendiary than a poorly worded comment followed by an apology. In the world of "Real Time," Palin's gaffe led to a heated twitter war between the Pontiff and the former Governor/VP candidate.
Watch Maher's fanciful take on the war of characters that didn't actually ensue ensued above.

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Paul Ryan: Poor People Need Jesus, Not Food Stamps

Paul Ryan: Poor People Need Jesus, Not Food Stamps

• By Jonathan Chait

Paul Ryan has spent more than a year furiously distancing himself from the wreckage of the 2012 Republican campaign. Even in the closing weeks before the election, Ryan gave a high-profile speech about poverty that amounted to a personal escape pod from Mitt Romney’s disastrous caught-on-tape denunciation of the moocher class. Since then, Ryan’s team has openly discussed the need to rebrand him and the particular danger, in the wake of the 47 percent tape, of his association with Ayn Rand-ism.
Today, we see the next step in Ryan’s rebranding, in the form of a largely credulous Washington Post story outlining his plans to launch himself into anti-poverty policy.

The article asserts, “Unlike Romney, Ryan is no child of privilege.” And Ryan certainly did not come from Romney-esque riches; he was born into “one of the most prominent families in Janesville,” and received a share of two family trust funds. Ryan Lizza reported in a profile of Ryan last year:

Three families, the Ryans, the Fitzgeralds, and the Cullens, sometimes called the Irish Mafia, helped develop the town, especially in the postwar era. The Ryans were major road builders, and today Ryan, Inc., started in 1884 by Paul’s great-grandfather, is a national construction firm.

Ryan does carefully tend his working class bona fides – when his visit to a Belgian brewery was discovered, he let it be known he prefers Miller Lite and found the foreign beers on tap unfamiliar.

The substance of Ryan’s anti-poverty agenda remains yet to be announced, but the general spirit of the endeavor can already be discerned from Ryan’s previous remarks, and those of the allies helping him formulate it. Ryan believes that the main impediment facing poor people is the existence of government programs that give them money and health care – a problem his budget rectifies by cutting subsidies to the poor. Those subsidies, Ryan has said, amount to a “a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency, that drains them of their will and their incentive to make the most of their lives.”

Ryan’s new line seems similar to the old one:                                           

“Paul wants people to dream again,” Holloway said of Ryan. “You don’t dream when you’ve got food stamps.”

In fact, lots of people who survived on food stamps — like J.K. Rowling — went on to achieve great things.

The other emerging element of Ryan’s anti-poverty agenda is Jesus:

“You cure poverty eye to eye, soul to soul,” he said last week at the Heritage forum. “Spiritual redemption: That’s what saves people.”

Basically, Ryan loves the poor the way fundamentalist Christians love gays.

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Embarrassing New Poll Shows Practically Nobody in Texas Wants Rick Perry as President

November 19, 2013 By Allen Clifton



As a Texan, I’ve seen the enigma that is current Governor Rick Perry first hand.  Trust me when I say that most people don’t like him in this state, and that includes many Republicans.  His favorability rating seems to hover anywhere between the low to mid-40′s with the number of people who disapprove of his job performance almost always being higher.
These numbers obviously weren’t helped during his 2012 presidential bid that can only be described as a total embarrassment.
Well, the rumor mill continues to churn pointing to the very real possibility that Perry is contemplating yet another presidential bid.
Something which I’m sure gets comedy writers excited, but it seems very few Texans actually want to see happen.
Recently, Public Policy Polling did a survey where they asked Texans who they’d like to see as the GOP nominee in 2016 — and almost nobody chose Rick Perry.
In what should surprise absolutely no one, Ted Cruz led the field, garnering 32% of the vote.  As for the rest of the field, 13% picked Jeb Bush and Chris Christie, 10% chose Rand Paul, 6% favor Bobby Jindal and 5% like Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan.
Three percent chose Rick Perry.
Think about that for a moment.  The governor of Louisiana ranks higher among Texans than our own governor.Hell, Rick Perry ranked so poorly that if the presidential race were between himself and Hillary Clinton—he would lose Texas.  
It just goes to show what an epic embarrassment Rick Perry has been to the state of Texas.  The only reason he’s been our longest serving governor is because he’s never really faced a true Republican challenger and Democrats in this state stand almost no chance at winning a state-wide election.
Granted, such strong opposition to the thought of him being the 2016 GOP candidate probably isn’t entirely based on his track record as governor.  I’m fairly certain his disastrous run in 2012 plays a significant part.  It’s not every day you see a presidential candidate unable to name the three agencies of government he would eliminate if he were president.

Seriously, every time I watch that video I get a good chuckle.
The sad part is, I highly doubt these numbers would have any impact on Perry’s decision to run.  In his mind, I’m sure he believes he stands a real shot at not only winning the GOP nomination, but actually becoming president.I hate to break it to Governor Perry (actually, I don’t), but if the people in your state would rather see the Governor of Louisiana as the GOP nominee or would choose a Democrat for president over you—you don’t stand a chance in hell. 

About Allen Clifton
Allen Clifton is from the Dallas-Fort Worth area and has a degree in Political Science. He is a co-founder of Forward Progressives, and author of the popular Right Off A Cliff column. He is also the founder of the Right Off A Cliff facebook page, on which he routinely voices his opinions and stirs the pot for the Progressive movement. Follow Allen on Twitter as well, @Allen_Clifton.

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When Christians Are Christianity's Worst Enemy

When Christians Are Christianity's Worst Enemy

Justin Lee

Author, 'TORN: Rescuing the Gospel from the Gays-vs.-Christians Debate'

The story: The pastor was part of a large party who ate at this server's restaurant. Like many American restaurants, this particular one has a policy of adding an automatic 18 percent tip for large parties. It's something the computer does automatically, not something the server has any control over.
According to the server, the pastor's party tried to get around the automatic 18 percent tip by asking for separate checks, even though the same person was paying for the whole table. The server says that everyone was happy with the service; they just didn't like the idea of a compulsory tip.
The result? The pastor scribbled out the tip, leaving none at all, and adding the note, "I give God 10%. Why do you get 18?"
(As a side note, I suspect the server would have been happy with 10 percent of the diner's income as a tip. Only 18 percent of the cost of the meal is a bargain.)
Oh, and just to drive the point home, the diner made sure to add the word "Pastor" above the signature at the bottom.
Really?
In my book "TORN: Rescuing the Gospel from the Gays-vs.-Christians Debate," I argue that we Christians have often become our own worst enemies. In many communities, our reputation is that of uncompassionate culture warriors, quick to shout about gays or abortion or political candidates, but slow to show grace and mercy in our everyday lives. And these acts of ungrace by Christians have far more power to damage Christianity's reputation and influence than any attack launched at the church from the outside.
"But wait," some of my Christian friends have said. "It's not fair to judge the whole church by one ungracious jerk, even if that person is a pastor."
I agree, and I know many generous Christians. But unfortunately, this pastor's bad behavior isn't an isolated incident. There are enough Christians out there behaving similarly to give us all a bad name.
In my book, for instance, I tell the story of my first job waiting tables:

"Sundays are the worst," one of the servers explained to me. "That's when the church crowd goes out to eat." "What's wrong with the church crowd?" I asked.
"Oh, honey," she said. "They're usually the most demanding, and they're always the worst tippers. I guarantee you, if you see your table praying before the meal, you can mentally subtract a third from your tip."
Standing nearby, the manager cracked a smile. "They already gave at church," he said. "They don't have any money left."

In conversations with my server friends across the country, I've heard the same sentiment echoed time and time again. As a Christian, I find this infuriating. Yes, a lot of us think the tipping system in America could be improved. In many countries, servers are paid a decent wage, and tips are an added incentive to reward a job especially well done. I know a lot of people who think it should be that way in the United States, too. But it's not. In most states, servers are paid only a little over $2 an hour (yes, you read that right), with the expectation that they will make their living from tips. You might not like that system, but if you choose to express your displeasure with it by tipping your server poorly, the only person you're hurting is the server -- someone who is already living on very little money and depending on your tip to help them pay their bills.
As a former server myself, I always tip at least 18-20 percent unless the service was just so unbearably horrible that it destroyed the dining experience. Even then, I still tip, just not as much. If I can't afford the tip, I don't eat out, or I eat someplace where diners aren't expected to tip. Otherwise, I consider paying my server to be part of the cost of the meal.
I think everyone should tip that way. It's the right thing to do, regardless of your faith, and followers of Jesus are especially called to be generous and give more than people expect. Personally, I'd love to live in a world where non-Christians said of Christians, "I don't agree with their beliefs, but those folks sure do know how to tip!"
But if there's nothing I can say to convince you to tip well, then at least do me this one favor: Don't go out to eat after church, don't pray before your meal, and don't sign your receipt with the word "pastor." In short, don't let people know you're a Christian. Because your bad behavior is reflecting on my God and the faith that I love. We Christians are supposed to be the generous ones, not the stingy and selfish ones. And I can tell you from experience, when servers see a pattern of Christians who tip poorly, it gives them one more reason to distrust anything and everything connected with Christianity.
And for heaven's sake, whatever you do, please don't make the mistake some of my customers did:

Some of them would leave fake "money" as part of their tip -- pieces of paper designed to look like high-value bills until you picked them up and realized they were tracts telling you about giving your life to Jesus. Why would anyone think that tricking and disappointing a broke food-service employee would be a good way of spreading the Christian good news? ... Don't misunderstand me. I know that Christianity isn't about us at all. It's about Jesus. Our human failure to live up to what we believe doesn't make the gospel any less true. But as the old saying goes, we are the only "Jesus" most people will ever see. People inside and outside of the church judge Christianity by what they see in its practitioners.

Remember, my fellow Christians: Whatever you do, wherever you go, whenever you tip, you are representing Jesus. And what makes the most difference in that moment isn't your words or your theology; it's your grace, love and generosity. If we miss that, we've missed the Gospel.

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Pope Denounces Buchanan and Palin for Questioning his Agenda

Pope Denounces Buchanan and Palin for Questioning his Agenda 

Written by Alex Kuzio November 17th 2013


(Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
(Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis today denounced conservative icons Pat Buchanan and Sarah Palin, calling their recent objections to his leadership style “confusing,” “hypocritical” and “borderline-heresy.” The pontiff—who was elected to lead the Roman Catholic Church in March—complained that Buchanan and Palin should “look into their own hearts” before questioning his actions, and suggested that they are “simply jealous, having repeatedly failed to be elected to high office themselves.” Francis, formally a Cardinal from Argentina, was responding chiefly to an article published on Townhall.com Friday in which Buchanan—a longtime soldier in the so-called “culture wars”—wrote that the pope was wrong to move “the Catholic Church to a stance of non-belligerence, if not neutrality, in the culture war for the soul of the West.” Buchanan said he believes that unless the Church remains aggressively opposed to abortion and LGBT rights—as it was under Francis’s predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI—it will lose its moral authority and surrender to relativism. In a blog post published on the Vatican’s website Monday morning, Pope Francis—who has argued that Catholics should embrace members of the LGBT community, relax efforts to convert atheists to Christianity, and stop being “obsessed” by abortion and gay marriage—responded to Buchanan’s criticism, writing that the former presidential candidate and aide to Ronald Reagan should “reflect on his own opinions” before criticizing others. “This is a man who has dabbled in Holocaust denial and has a documented history of anti-Semitism,” Francis wrote. “Of course he doesn’t want the Church to become more inclusive. He’d probably like it if we segregated mass services from now on.” “Opening up the Church to all of God’s children is the just and moral thing to do,” Francis continued, “and I won’t be persuaded otherwise, especially by a man who couldn’t even beat Bob Dole in the ’96 Republican primaries.” The Holy See also had harsh words for former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, another of his American conservative critics. Palin—who, unlike Buchanan, is not a Catholic—said Thursday that she is “taken aback” by some of Francis’s decisions and is dismayed by his “liberal” comments. “What does Palin know about leadership?” Francis wondered. “This is a woman who couldn’t even make it through one term as governor of Alaska before resigning, and who, let’s be honest, was probably the worst vice presidential nominee in American history.” Francis also questioned Palin’s grasp of religious tenets. “I’m not convinced she knows the first thing about the Bible,” Francis wrote. “In fact, I’m not even confident that she knows how to read.” - See more at: http://www.newslo.com/pope/#sthash.ocL7yhtj.dpuf

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Good News issues statement on UM Council of Bishops request

November 15, 2013 By UMReporter Staff 

Good News, the independent group of United Methodists committed to promoting “orthodox Wesleyan Christianity,” has issued the following statement in response to the United Methodist Council of Bishops statement earlier today requesting the filing of a complaint against the actions of Bishop Melvin G. Talbert:

Good News, a renewal and reform ministry working within The United Methodist Church, applauds the statement issued today in response to the same-sex union service performed by Bishop Melvin Talbert October 26 in Birmingham, Alabama.  We view the statement as an implied rebuke of Bishop Talbert’s actions.
The fact that the Council requested that complaints be filed against Bishop Talbert for both “conducting ceremonies which celebrate homosexual unions” and “behavior that undermines the ministry of another pastor” is very significant.  It is virtually unprecedented for a bishop to file a complaint against another bishop.  (The Council as a whole is unable to file complaints, according to the Discipline.)  We hope that Bishop Wenner and Bishop Wallace-Padgett will follow through prayerfully and promptly with the Council’s request to file complaints and initiate the judicial process.
The church is watching to see if it can hold its leaders accountable to the promises they made to the church at their ordination and consecration.  All eyes will be on Bishop Elaine Stanovski (Mountain Sky Area), who is the president of the Western Jurisdiction College of Bishops, to ensure that any complaints are processed according to the Discipline.  The judicial process will take time, and there is no guarantee of the final outcome, but this is the process we have of holding persons accountable when they are accused of violating the sacred trust of their ordination.
While we wish the statement would have called for Bishop Talbert’s resignation, we are pleased that the Council united to hold him accountable by criticizing his actions and initiating judicial processes against him.  We affirm comments made by Bishop Rosemarie Wenner at a press conference following the meeting, where she said, “The bishops have to play a role in the [judicial] process … bishops have to follow through due to the charge we are given.”
We call upon other parts of the church to now fulfill their responsibilities of accountability.  We further call upon all United Methodists to stand down from schismatic actions and honor the process of holy conferencing.  Continued violation of ordination vows will only serve to deepen the division in Christ’s body and hasten a separation of the body that would harm the mission of the church.

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Council of Bishops requests complaint against Talbert

November 15, 2013

by United Methodist News Service

By Heather Hahn*

LAKE JUNALUSKA, N.C. (UMNS) — After hours of closed-door sessions throughout the week, the Council of Bishops has “respectfully” requested a formal complaint be filed against retired Bishop Melvin G. Talbert, who officiated at a same-sex union on Oct. 26 despite church law.

Retired Bishop Melvin G. Talbert. A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose.

The council specifically urged the complaint be submitted by Germany Area Bishop Rosemarie Wenner, the council’s president, and Birmingham Area Bishop Debra Wallace-Padgett, who oversees the North Alabama Annual (regional) Conference where the wedding took place.
The complaint would go before the Western Jurisdiction, from which Bishop Talbert retired.
The council also recommended that its executive committee “initiate a task force to lead honest and respectful conversations regarding human sexuality, race and gender in a worldwide perspective in our shared commitment to clear theological understanding of the mission and polity of The United Methodist Church.”
The bishops in their statement acknowledged that neither they nor the other members of the church they lead are of one mind regarding ministering with gays and lesbians.
The statement said, “pain exists throughout the connection, including persons who support Bishop Talbert’s actions and persons who object to them. We express our pastoral concern and care for all people.”
Oklahoma Area Bishop Robert Hayes Jr., the Council of Bishops secretary, read the full statement at the start of the council’s session Friday, Nov. 15.
After the statement was read, Wenner told the council and observers that the bishops “commit ourselves as bishops in the church to be shepherds in our church, pastoral leaders for all people in our denomination.”
“We commit ourselves to invite and engage with our people in the areas to be in prayer so that God may through the Holy Spirit guide us to see Christ’s face in all God’s people and guide us to engage with all God’s people to whom we are sent,” she said.

Bishop Rosemarie Wenner. Photo courtesy of the Council of Bishops.

Wenner then reiterated the denomination’s mission to “make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.”
Talbert and Wallace-Padget sat at neighboring tables while the statement was read. Talbert later told United Methodist News Service he did not feel he should speak publicly on the actions of the bishops.
“In our due process in the church, it is not appropriate for me to comment when a complaint is filed,” Talbert said. “So I will just simply wait to see the process unfold.”
Wallace-Padgett said she planned to speak later after Wenner speaks at a 12:30 p.m. ET news conference.
The Book of Discipline, the church’s law book, since 1972 has stated that all people are of sacred worth, but “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” Church law bans United Methodist clergy from performing, and churches from hosting, “ceremonies that celebrate homosexual unions.”
The council directs that the complaint against the bishop be “under the provisions of Paragraph 413 (of the Book of Discipline) for undermining the ministry of a colleague (Paragraph 2702.1f) and conducting a ceremony to celebrate the marriage of a same gender couple (Paragraph 2702.1b) within the bounds of the North Alabama Conference.”
General Conference, the denomination’s top lawmaking body, approves the contents of the Discipline and is the only body that officially speaks for the church. Bishops do not have a vote at the assembly, which will next meet in May 2016.

Background of the tension

Talbert officiated at a ceremony at a United Church of Christ in Birmingham, Ala., that celebrated the marriage of Joe Openshaw and Bobby Prince.
Talbert, who has long advocated changing this part of the Discipline, said after last year’s General Conference he “felt compelled as a bishop to declare that the derogatory language and restrictive laws in our Book of Discipline are wrong, immoral and unjust, and no longer deserve our loyalty and support.”

Bishop Debra Wallace-Padgett. Photo courtesy of Debra Wallace-Padgett.

Before the ceremony, Talbert notified Wallace-Padgett of his plans, and she requested Talbert not to go to Birmingham for that purpose.
“For a bishop or any ordained or licensed minister to disregard a law of the church creates a breach of the covenant they made at their consecration, ordination or licensing,” she said in a statement.
She also expressed concern that Talbert’s actions “would encourage the public to only define The United Methodist Church in North Alabama by one matter and not by the rich range of ministries of North Alabama local churches.”
The Executive Committee of the Council of Bishops also urged Talbert not to officiate, reminding him that conducting same-sex wedding ceremonies is a chargeable offense under church law.

What happens now

“When there are violations of the Book of Discipline, a response is required,” the council’s statement said. “However, the General Conference has given the Council of Bishops limited authority for the task of holding one another accountable. Such authority and accountability resides in the College of Bishops and the Jurisdiction or Central Conference Committees on Episcopacy. (Paragraph 413.and Paragraph 403.1.f)”
That means it is up to the Western Jurisdiction College of Bishops.
Mountain Sky Area Bishop Elaine Stanovsky is the president of the Western Jurisdiction College of Bishops.
“We keep faith with the guidance that we get from the Book of Discipline,” she told United Methodist News Service. She noted that church law gives bishops some leeway in addressing complaints.
“We seek a just resolution,” she said. She also noted that the Discipline calls church trials “an expedient of last resort.”
The 2012 Western Jurisdictional Conference adopted a petition stating that “the sense” of the jurisdiction — based on its welcoming attitude to people regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity — was to impose only a 24-hour suspension on any bishop convicted of ordaining or appointing a self-avowed practicing homosexual.
In October, the Judicial Council — the denomination’s top court — voided the resolution.  “The Discipline grants to the trial court the exclusive power to set a penalty in a church trial which results in a conviction and the full legislated range of options must be available to a trial court in its penalty phase,” the court states in Decision 1250.
“A jurisdictional or annual conference may express disagreement with other bodies of The United Methodist Church, but it is still subject to the Constitution, the Discipline and the decisions of the Judicial Council,” the ruling says.
“The current controlling principle is that a conference — jurisdictional, central or annual — resolution may express disagreement with the current language of the Discipline and may express aspirational hopes, but a conference may not legally negate, ignore or violate provisions of the Discipline, even when disagreements are based upon conscientious objection to those provisions.”
*Hahn is a multimedia news reporter for United Methodist News Service. Contact her at (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.

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UM polity expert asks Council of Bishops to “stop the trials”

November 13, 2013 By Jay Voorhees, Exec. Editor 

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. — In an “Open Letter to the Council of Bishops (COB)” released today, Wake Forest University professor and United Methodist polity expert the Rev. Dr. Thomas E. Frank asked the council “…for the sake of the unity of the church, to stop the trials.” “We need to engage our differences through “Christian conversation” within our conferences and particularly within our orders of elders. Church trials are “an expedient of last resort” and are not the way forward,” Frank wrote.
Frank is noted expert in United Methodist history and polity, and the author of Polity, Practice, and the Mission of The United Methodist Church, which is the standard textbook on United Methodist polity in many denominational seminaries. Frank is an elder in the Missouri Annual Conference, and the son of the late Bishop Eugene M. Frank.
Frank believes that the constitution of the United Methodist Book of Discipline empowers the bishops to act in opposition to the will of the General Conference in the face of peril to the denomination. He wrote:

Your servant leadership of the church does not and cannot mean that you are simply servile to the actions of General Conference. The 2012 session in Tampa failed to acknowledge our lack of consensus and refused a legislative path forward. The Council of Bishops now must act, and can do so under its constitutional powers. The episcopacy is established in our constitution as a constitutive body alongside the General Conference and the Judicial Council. When you as a Council see the unity of the church at risk, you have a constitutional duty to act.

Frank believes that it is within the power of the bishops to refrain from referring complaints to counsel for the church, and the subsequent church trials. “You have discretion as the chief pastors of the church over the manner, purpose, and conduct of any supervisory response and just resolution under ‘fair process.’”
Frank told The United Methodist Reporter that he is issuing this letter because the council is meeting this week and that he believes the church cannot afford to continue addressing this issue in a judicial process. Frank has been asked to consult in the upcoming trial of The Rev. Frank Schaefer in Pennsylvania, and he expressed concern about how that process is being handled. Those concerns led him to issue the Open Letter today. 

The Council of Bishops has been meeting all week in Lake Junaluska, N.C., and the issue of clergy and episcopal obedience in regards to the issue of homosexuality and same-sex marriage is assumed to be on the agenda of the bishops as they have met in executive session. The COB has been asked by at least one advocacy group to file a complaint against Bishop Melvin G. Talbert for his presiding at a same-sex celebration of union service in Alabama, and his ignoring requests from the area bishop and the COB Executive Committee to refrain from that action. Currently no time-line for when the bishops will respond to this request has been issued.
From his perspective, Frank believes that the judicial approach to dealing with this divisive issue is harmful to the mission and ministry of the Untied Methodist Church:

The continuation of church trials is a disgrace to our heritage. It is divisive, bringing interference from interest groups outside the annual conference and introducing the language of “prosecution,” “defense team,” “conviction,” “judge,” and “jury” to our church as if we were all players in “Law and Order.” We are not considering criminal acts; we are deliberating about pastoral judgment. Trials are an exorbitant expense for a process that does no good for our church. Of course, any member of our church has the constitutional right to request a trial. But at this moment, I do not see other circumstances under which our church should be conducting them.

The Council of Bishops meeting will be meeting until Friday, November 15
The full text of Frank’s letter is included below.

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE UNITED METHODIST COUNCIL OF BISHOPS
November 12, 2013
To our episcopal leaders:
I ask you, for the sake of the unity of the church, to stop the trials. We need to engage our differences through “Christian conversation” within our conferences and particularly within our orders of elders. Church trials are “an expedient of last resort” and are not the way forward.
The constitution of our church charges you as a Council with “general oversight and promotion of the temporal and spiritual interests of the entire Church.” The church over which you preside is deeply divided and these “interests” are now at stake. While you are also charged as a Council with “carrying into effect the rules, regulations, and responsibilities prescribed and enjoined by the General Conference,” clearly our church lacks consensus on our pastoral duties with gay and lesbian church members. This is no time to continue with church trials that only exacerbate our differences. If we are to find unity in our diversity, we must do so in conference and in our orders.
Your servant leadership of the church does not and cannot mean that you are simply servile to the actions of General Conference. The 2012 session in Tampa failed to acknowledge our lack of consensus and refused a legislative path forward. The Council of Bishops now must act, and can do so under its constitutional powers. The episcopacy is established in our constitution as a constitutive body alongside the General Conference and the Judicial Council. When you as a Council see the unity of the church at risk, you have a constitutional duty to act.
I am not asking you to change the church’s statements on homosexuality. Clearly that is not within the powers of the Council. I am asking you to acknowledge that a large number of faithful United Methodist ministers in good standing cannot in conscience restrict their pastoral duties to accord with these statements.
Nothing in the Book of Discipline requires that you refer complaints to counsel for the church and subsequent trial. You have discretion as the chief pastors of the church over the manner, purpose, and conduct of any supervisory response and just resolution under “fair process.” You also have discretion to assemble the pastors under your appointment to address issues that divide us. A church trial court is only a miniature annual conference of thirteen peers in any case. The church is better served by bringing the whole conference and order into conversation.
Many pastors across our church view the performance of same-sex wedding ceremonies as a pastoral duty, particularly with longtime church members. Far from “flaunting” church law, as a recent press headline put it, they are being pastors to their members. At the moment we have the prospect of church trials for at least two different ordained elders who performed such ceremonies for their own beloved children. Really? We have come to the point of trying our pastors for acts, even within their own families, that exemplify the love and ministries of the church?
The continuation of church trials is a disgrace to our heritage. It is divisive, bringing interference from interest groups outside the annual conference and introducing the language of “prosecution,” “defense team,” “conviction,” “judge,” and “jury” to our church as if we were all players in “Law and Order.” We are not considering criminal acts; we are deliberating about pastoral judgment. Trials are an exorbitant expense for a process that does no good for our church. Of course, any member of our church has the constitutional right to request a trial. But at this moment, I do not see other circumstances under which our church should be conducting them.
Our church is desperately in need of open conversation on these pastoral issues. We are retreating into our various camps and avoiding the hard work of engaging each other’s views. You as a Council and as individual bishops can set a new tone in which we can speak together openly and honestly, without fear of retribution. As Wesley’s Large Minutes began, “It is desired, that all things be considered as in the immediate presence of God; that every person speak freely whatever is in his heart.” This is the collective spirit in which the Holy Spirit is welcomed, and the conversation flourishes. Please lead us in that spirit.
Thank you for your consideration and for your faithful leadership of our church.
Thomas Edward Frank
University Professor
Wake Forest University

Jay Voorhees

The Rev. Jay Voorhees is the Executive Editor of The United Methodist Reporter and a managing partner of CircuitWriter Media LLC which operates this site and www.methoblog.com. In addition Jay is the pastor of the Old Hickory United Methodist Church located in Northeast Nashville.

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