The Whys of a Doubter

Friday, May 22, 2009, 12:56 PM

People ask me why I began to doubt my religious convictions, eventuating in a vigorous skepticism.

A perfect example appeared in today's Globe on page 4C. Headlined "Young mom charged with killing son on playground," the story reports on the murder of a 3-year-old boy, suffocated by his homeless mother in Albuquerque.

The sobering account of the act went like this:

The police chief said Toribio told detectives that she suffocated her son in Alvarado Park before dawn on May 13 by putting her hand over his mouth and nose.

She said she had second thoughts and performed CPR on the boy, resuscitating him, but reconsidered and smothered him again. Investigators said she then buried him under the climbing gym's hanging bridge, where the body was found two days later.

Now, I know there are those who believe that God makes parking spaces at Wal-Mart available to them after a prayer request. And I know there are those who believe that God speaks to them, if not audibly, at least sufficiently understandably to encourage them to do things, like give money to televangelists or write letters to the newspaper.

There are also people who believe that God steers hurricanes toward sinful cities, causes earthquakes in reprobate regions, and brings plagues like AIDS upon hedonistic homosexuals. I know people believe such things because I know many of them.

But I don't know anyone who can explain why God—who believers contend hears and answers prayers, who they insist is interested in every detail of life, and who they are certain is infinitely knowledgeable and powerful—could not persuade someone to go to Alvarado Park before dawn on May 13 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and stay the hand of that little boy's mother, who not once, but twice, smothered him to a dreadful death.

I have read and studied more theology than I care to admit, and have listened to every conceivable explanation for the incongruence between believer's speculations about the attributes of God and the testimony of reality in places like Albuquerque or—lest we forget Rowan Ford—Southwest Missouri.

Nothing in all the words written or spoken in defense of God, who allegedly can but won't intervene in such horrific acts, serves to assuage my doubts and make me believe that there sits on a throne in heaven an omnipotent and omniscient being, full of Love, watching 3-year-old Tyruss Toribio suffer at the terrible hands of his mother without dispatching help.

Nothing written by earnest Christians on the opinion pages of the Joplin Globe about "the love of God"—or more often "the wrath of God"—or any other such fantasy, serves to explain why 9-year-old Rowan Ford was raped and murdered by (still, "allegedly") two fellow-citizens, one her slobbish stepfather, the other his six-foot, six-inch ally, while God, who supposedly cares whether homosexuals marry each other, could not so much as whisper to one knee-bent believer that the little girl needed help.

And that is why I doubt.

Sex and Central Planning

Wednesday, May 27, 2009, 07:43 AM

I heard the most amazing thing on Larry King last night. Dennis Prager, a popular Jewish conservative radio host, was on the show defending traditional marriage. He made an argument against gay marriage I had never heard anyone on the Right make.

His argument went like this: Research is showing that female (but not most male) sexuality is "fluid," in that it can be influenced by social circumstances. Therefore, it is necessary for the state to protect traditional marriage so that it encourages little girls not to grow up and become lesbians, but to grow up and marry men because it is "best to be raised by a mom and a dad."

Essentially, the conservative Dennis Prager (another "family values" guy who has been married three times) is advocating that the government retain marriage between a man and a woman as part of a grand social engineering scheme to prevent an increase in lesbianism.

Unconvinced that Mr. Prager had really meant that his opposition to gay marriage was culturally pragmatic rather than moral, I found a column he wrote last year in which he said:

Much of humanity — especially females — can enjoy homosexual sex. It is up to society to channel polymorphous human sexuality into an exclusively heterosexual direction — until now, accomplished through marriage.

And you thought liberals were the social engineers of our political family.

KZRG Is Out To Get Me

Tuesday, April 28, 2009, 11:30 AM

Awakened Monday morning by the clock radio, the alarm mistakenly set for 2:45am, I was entertained by a program on Mark Kinsley's beloved KZRG called, "Coast To Coast AM with George Noory," apparently broadcast each night from Midnight to 5:00am.

Part of the program involved a host, who was quite serious, taking calls from people with various accounts of strange powers or strange experiences. Like Julie in Oshkosh, who reported that the ringing in her ears correlated with various earthquakes around the world. Or Jacqueline, who described her abduction, in which she was taken into the sky, and her belief that the government was tracking her via microchips placed strategically in credit cards she receives in the mail. The host, helpfully, reminded her that they could just as easily be planted in her body, and he also advised her to get a body scan. "Maybe, I will get one next week," she said.

And there was Linda in Chicago, who speculated that the latest swine flu virus may have been engineered by the government, as a weapon. The host, in a rare moment of rationality, assured her that, as of yet, there wasn't enough evidence to believe the government was involved.

Another part of the program featured a couple, Cathy O'Brien and Mark Phillips, whose story is, well, miraculous. It seems Ms. O'Brien, an alleged victim of the CIA's MK-ULTRA research program, was "covertly rescued from her mind control enslavement by Intelligence insider Mark Phillips." While it would take too long to go into the intricate details, here is a summary of the things the couple have alleged happened to Ms. O'Brien, some mentioned on the show on Monday:

O'Brien alleges that she was abducted by the CIA as a child and forced to participate in a mind control program named Project Monarch, which is said to be a subsection of MKULTRA and Project ARTICHOKE.

O'Brien claims that, as part of Monarch, she was forced to serve as "a top-level intelligence agent and White House sex slave" for (among others) Hillary Rodham Clinton, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter with West Virginia Senator Robert C. Byrd working as her handler for the latter part of her time in the program. She states that she remained in the program until 1988 when she was rescued by Mark Phillips, who she claims is a former CIA operative.

O'Brien alleges that her daughter Kelly (born 1980), currently a ward of the state of Tennessee, is also a victim of Monarch.

Of O'Brien, religion scholar Matthias Gardell writes:

O'Brien claims to have been abused since she was a toddler. Forced to partake in satanic sadomasochistic child pornography movies produced for Gerald Ford, she was eventually sold to the CIA, which was looking for traumatized children for their mind-control program ... U.S. Presidents Ford, [and many other world leaders] all sexually brutalized her. She recounts in graphic detail how the elder George Bush raped her thirteen year old daughter and how she was forced to have oral sex with Illuminati witch Hillary Clinton ... While being sodomized, whipped, bound and raped, O'Brien overheard the globalist elite planning a military coup in the United States and conspiring to usher in the satanic New World Order.

On websites, O'Brien claims she was rescued in 1988, which suggests that her daughter Kelly was no more than eight years old when last abused. Phillips stated in a Granada Forum lecture in 1996 that Kelly was in fact institutionalized when she was eight and has been raised in a mental institution.

Now, while I thought it strange and perplexing that any radio station that calls itself "News Talk, Radio You Can Depend On" would resort to such tacky overnight programming, I soon figured it all out.

On the "Links of Interest" page on the KZRG website, there are, understandably, links to local Republican representatives, who, after all, dominate our politics. But there is a link to the Missouri Republican Party and no such link to the Missouri Democratic Party. Further, the last time I checked, we had a Democratic Governor, whose website might perhaps qualify as a "link of interest." But Gov. Nixon enjoys no such connection to the Joplin conspiracy-believing public.

So, I surmised that only Republicans—currently bewildered by their lack of political power—would be interested in conspiracies in order to understand and explain their electoral crisis. And to offer such paranoid Republicans some spiritual support, KZRG offers on Sundays from 8am to 11am a talk show hosted by perhaps the most famous Republican of all, Jesus Christ.

And then I realized the KZRG's attempt to cater to the conspiracist crowd wasn't just limited to overnight programming. I remembered that the story of the CIA-controlled, White House sex-slave, Cathy O'Brien, was told and presented as truth on the same station that carries Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.

Voila! Of course! It wasn't so strange that KZRG would carry wee-hour programs such as "Coast to Coast, " with its appeal to paranoics, because much of the daytime programming at KZRG is also about fear and paranoia, about Obama plots and Democratic schemes, about, well, government conspiracies.

Some of these daytime hosts entertain callers who also phone in with wild tales, most as nutty as Jacqueline's account of being whisked skyward by her secret abductor. On the same day that Cathy O'Brien and Mark Phillips were guests on "Coast to Coast," Rush Limbaugh took a call from Christine in Westchester :

CALLER: Thank goodness for you and the Heritage Foundation, otherwise I don't know what we would do. The reason I'm calling you today is I'm commenting on your comment regarding Saul Alinsky and Barack Obama's being a great student of his, and I think as a more contemporary person I would focus on George Soros. I mean, it just seems to me that the little bit that I know about him, it's not just about the money, it's just... If you look at everything that Obama is doing, it's George Soros.

RUSH: Well, we can argue about, you know, who is the man behind the curtain, but why do you think there is one?

CALLER: (laughs)

RUSH: Really, no, I'm serious.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: This is not a trick question. Why do you think there's somebody, whoever it is, behind Obama?

CALLER: Because I don't think he's good enough to have done all of this all on his own.

RUSH: You mean at age 47 and as a community organizer, you're not really prepped to be president?

CALLER: You betcha. Yes, I do.

RUSH: And after a hundred days working in the Senate, you're not qualified enough to be president?

CALLER: No absolutely not.

RUSH: So you think that somebody picked Obama because they knew that the combination of things Obama is -- his race, his eloquence, his ability to read the teleprompter -- would sort of make him immune from any criticism, that nobody will have the guts to be critical of Obama?

CALLER: I think so. I think he's been primed for a lot longer than most of us ever even imagine. Now, I may sound a little crazy, and maybe I'm a little bit of a conspiracy kook.

RUSH: Okay, so why do you... Well, this is what happened. She's reacting, by the way, folks, to a comment I made a little over an hour ago. I had a bunch of houseguests in for the week, 15 people here from Wednesday night through Saturday night (they all left on Sunday) and at dinner every night, all these topics were discussed. One of the things that was discussed is it turned out everybody had a theory explaining Obama, much like yours, Christine. They just don't think this guy could have risen himself from his own background, had to have a sponsor, had to have somebody orchestrating, directing it, so forth and so on. So everybody started talking about names, who might it be, and of course Soros is a popular one because his hatred of America is well known. His hatred of Republicans is well known. His pocketbook size is also well known.

One of the guests suggesting that it was even somebody like the king of Saudi Arabia after Obama's bow, because Obama is eager to paralyze our ability to defend ourselves, which is what our enemies want. One person, just to show you how much fun we have when we get together -- Christine, you'll probably love this -- one guy in the group said, "Everybody's waiting on a second terror attack. There's not going to be a second terror attack. There isn't going to be one! The terrorists, they're entertainers. They know performance requirements. They know theatrics. They know if they do a second terror attack. They're going to have to make it much bigger than 9/11. Your second act has to be bigger than the first act." He said, "Besides, they don't need a second act. Obama is the second terrorist act!" I mean, I had opinions in my house going all over the ballpark. It was fascinating. And these are all, in their own right, involved, intelligent people.

But somebody actually thought Obama is terrorist attack number two. Obama is the follow-up to 9/11. So I find it interesting that among those who oppose Obama a lot of people think he couldn't be doing this on his own. There's gotta be somebody behind him, somebody writing the speeches. We know that's Axelrod. Somebody putting words in the teleprompter. We know that that's Axelrod. Somebody who may have chosen him, prepped him, groomed him, what have you, some man behind the curtain. So she thinks it's Soros. In the discussion in the last hour, I mentioned, "It's Alinsky! It's Saul Alinsky. It's Rules for Radicals. It's the book."

After hearing Limbaugh discuss his and his guests' conspiratorial delusions, I concluded that the people on "Coast to Coast," those who believe that they are routinely abducted by aliens or the CIA, didn't seem so crazy after all. And at least those people are sequestered on nighttime radio, on programs with anemic ratings and inconsequential hosts, where their peculiar and paranoia-soaked theories do not enjoy much legitimacy.

But rightwing talk radio in the daytime is much different. In some markets it is quite popular, but that's not the main reason it is so hazardous to our collective health. The fact that Republican politicians—among them future party leaders—refuse to criticize such programs and their hosts is the real danger in the proliferation of paranoia facilitated by stations like KZRG. There is apparently nothing that Rush Limbaugh can say or do that would cause a single Republican politician of consequence to criticize him, without later repenting in a fit of sycophantic prostration.

Sadly, Limbaugh is free from censure from the very people who might be able to rescue the Republican Party from its troubles. And as long as potential Republican leaders stand in his shadow, they will serve a party that is itself only a bit player in our national politics. And as long as they remain silent about comments like the following, made on Monday, they will give legitimacy to them:

LIMBAUGH: The reason that the swine flu and the torture garbage is out there is to cover up the mess that is the United States of America right now.

Is it any wonder that Linda in Chicago can believe that the government might be in the business of creating flu viruses?

The Age of Reason

Thursday, April 16, 2009, 12:00 PM

Just a few comments about the Joplin Tea Party:

First, John Putnam, who was introduced as an "organizer" of the event, shared with the crowd approximately 50,000 principles (actually, I think it was 10) he believed the Founding Fathers would want us to follow to maintain our freedom. One of those principles happened to have something to do with Obama's birth certificate. A prescient bunch, those founders.

In any case, the crowd cheered loudly when Putnam bravely broached the birth certificate "issue." He explained again that, "as a Fee Agent for the Carthage License Office," (just how did he get the job and how long will he keep it ?) he was well positioned to understand that if the rabble had to show a birth certificate to get a driver's license, it wasn't too much to ask a presidential candidate to show one to prove he wasn't beamed here from Tralfamadore. Well, he didn't use the Vonnegut reference, probably because Kurt is not on his approved reading list, but his point was the same. That, he said, is why he asked Sen. McCaskill about it because as a member of Congress she might have some authority to get to the bottom of it.

Notwithstanding the nuttiness of Putnam's mentioning this nonsense as some kind of oblique threat to our liberty, it is more than disingenuous to assert that he only asked Sen. McCaskill the question so she could somehow try to resolve the issue. He knew what her position would be. She was one of Obama's first and most ardent supporters in the Congress. I suspect the real point of bringing it up the night she was here, and at the Tea Party, was to arouse suspicion in those who were only vaguely familiar with it, and to stoke the hostility among those who knew it inordinately well, all of which serves to keep the phony issue alive to undermine the president's policies, if not the president himself.

In an attempt to sound "fair and balanced," Putnam tried to qualify his remarks about the birth certificate with this:

I don't say that to disparage Barack Obama. He might be a fine man, I'm not sure.

Now, that bit of dancing around the puddle he made simply isn't enough to excuse his public infatuation with Obama's alleged illegitimacy as president. After the 2000 election, when extremists on the left were upset with the Bush victory via the Supreme Court, I recall conservatives hammering those extremists for their lack of respect for the "courts" and the "process." If Putnam really isn't trying to disparage Barack Obama, he should do what conservatives told liberals to do in 2000: Get over it and move on. You lost.

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The second curious thing about the Tea Party was the use of children as props for reinforcing political points. Some of these children were holding signs saying things like, "USA not USSR." Given the ages of many of these children, it is highly unlikely they knew much if anything about the Soviet Union, not to mention the implication that what is going on in our country somehow resembles that former totalitarian giant.

Sadly, these children were deemed useful props because one of the themes of the rally was that we are passing on a tremendous debt to our children and grandchildren. Well, we may be, if the debt is never repaid; that is, we may be, if future Republicans--who want to spend, spend, spend and simultaneously cut the taxes of the wealthy-- get another opportunity to squander the surplus handed to them by future Democrats.

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Which leads me to another "theme" of the party. A populist rally that essentially and aggressively promotes lower taxes for our wealthiest citizens is a very strange populist rally. Having previously doubted the liberal critique of the whole Tea Party idea as simply rich conservatives manipulating gullible citizens, I now have to wonder. There were many loyal bubbabots in the audience who actually cheered when someone from the podium protested the high tax rate on the wealthy. Now, that is a fine piece of elitist workmanship that would have William Jennings Bryan rolling in his Fundamentalist grave.

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Finally, many of the speeches were liberally peppered with quotes from Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. Now, I suspect many, if not all, of those who spoke are committed Christians. And to quote Jefferson and Paine like they were Jesus and Paul is a little disconcerting.

I have in my library a copy of the Jefferson Bible, a handy little volume because it doesn't take up much shelf space, since the Founding Father cut out the parts of the New Testament that didn't suit his fancy. I also have a copy of The Age of Reason, Thomas Paine's commentary on the Bible, which contains many reasons for not believing the Good Book, useful for those after-church picnic discussions or Wednesday-night Bible studies.

So, I was a little offended that the pious defenders of our contemporary liberty have resorted to quoting deists and atheists (I thought I heard a Ben Franklin reference during the proceedings).

Anyway, given the revolutionary implications of the Tea Party, I thought I would pass on a friendly Biblical reminder to those whose thoughts might be turning, Texas-like, toward an insurrection:

"For rebellion as is the sin of witchcraft." 1 Samuel, 15:23

Okie Biology, Texas Theology

Tuesday, April 21, 2009, 12:41 AM

I would be derelict in my blogging duties to not at least mention the silliness of Oklahoma state congressman Todd Thomsen last month.

Mr. Thomsen, who was first elected to the Oklahoma House in 2006 by a total of two votes, introduced legislation in the Oklahoma legislature opposing the "one-sided" teaching of evolution and the appearance at the University of Oklahoma of noted evolutionist, Richard Dawkins.

Dawkins' real crime, of course, is that he doesn't believe in God, which, apparently, is an offense worthy of legislative censure in Oklahoma, according to Mr. Thomsen. While he has every right to believe fantastic tales about our origins, Mr. Thomsen should exercise a little discipline over his unruly need to impose his beliefs on other, less gullible, Oklahomans, who may want to avoid the intellectual isolation of fundamentalist Christians.

Summing up this controversy in particular and the creationist movement in general, Dawkins said:

They've lost in the courts of law; they've long ago lost in the halls of science; and they continue to lose with every new piece of evidence in support of evolution. Taking offense is all they've got left. And the one thing you can be sure of is that they don't actually know anything about what it is that they reject.

In another example of creationist dogma intersecting with state government, the Texas state board of education last month adopted what scientists are calling "flawed state science standards." While apparently creationists on the board didn't get everything they wanted, they did manage to amend the standards in such a way that they would "encourage" presentation of creationist claims that the complexity of the cell, the incompleteness of the fossil record, and uncertainties about the age of the universe are all reasons to doubt the theory of evolution.

A refreshing twist of electoral fate gives us this response from Obama's official science advisor, John Holdren:

I think we need to be giving our kids a modern education in biology, and the underpinning of modern biology is evolution. And countervailing views that are not really science, if they are taught at all, should be taught in some other part of the curriculum.

Of course, Mr. Holdren only holds a PhD in plasma physics, a fact that probably disqualifies him from speaking authoritatively on biblical science, but I, at least, am encouraged that our new president will not be getting his science advice from James Dobson or Pat Robertson.

Ray Gun

Wednesday, April 22, 2009, 12:03 AM

Here is a brief summary of Ray Downen's letter to the Globe on Tuesday:

1. Obama supporters believe the Constitution doesn't matter.

2. Obama is a foreigner.

3. Obama should not share the presidency with John McCain on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, like the Erstwhile Conservative suggested, if Obama is truly a foreigner.

4. Obama should spend the rest of his life in the penitentiary.

5. Obama is an imposter, therefore Joe Biden can't be president.

6. Obama 's election was purchased for an unspecified amount by unidentified rich people, who continue to pay unspecified amounts to other unidentified people to keep the foreigner in office.

7. Obama is running up "trillions" of dollars in "bills" and no one knows where the money has gone or if it will ever come back or if it does come back what it will be worth when it's all over, which will be when Bonanza, starring Lorne Greene, is cancelled.

Now, Ray didn't mention it, but there is a rumor that Obama is about to order the National Guard to go into all Wal-Marts in the United States and confiscate the Reynolds Wrap, so that suspicious citizens cannot arm themselves against the CIA's new prefrontal cortex disintegrator gun.

The impounded aluminum foil will be shipped, via a flotilla of Somali pirate ships, to all Muslim countries so that Obama's kinfolk can protect their turban-wrapped heads from the intense radiation, which would otherwise render them unable to express coherent thoughts.

The beauty of the CIA's new prefrontal cortex disintegrator gun, which President Obama developed in collaboration with Bill Ayers, is that its victims do not suspect that their prefrontal cortex has been nebulized and they continue to write letters to local newspapers expressing irrational ideas that only serve to prove that Obama's critics are crazed conspiracists.

Meanwhile the foreigner continues to reign like he is the legitimate President of the United States.

Crazy For Conservatism

Monday, March 9, 2009, 10:01 AM

Frank Schaeffer, the youngest son of famous evangelical leaders, Francis and Edith Schaeffer, has written a book about his adventures in the big-time religion industry. Crazy for God is apparently Frank’s penance for all of the damage his once-doctrinaire theology has done to our culture.


For those who don’t know much about the Schaeffers, they were quite popular in the 1970s and 1980s, with a large following among conservative evangelicals and other fundamentalists. My first encounter with Francis Schaeffer was through his book, A Christian Manifesto, published in 1981. The thesis of the book was that modern America, ignoring its biblical roots, had become ungodly and it was up to Christians to reestablish Bible-based, absolutist morality by engaging in political activities, including civil disobedience, if necessary.

Arguably, Francis Schaeffer was the first prominent culture warrior, believing that “secular humanism,” with its alleged commitment to relative truth, was at war with biblical Christianity, with its assumed commitment to absolute truth. Imagine Bill O’Reilly or Rita Crowell with brains and you’ll have an idea where Francis was coming from. Schaeffer influenced many in the evangelical world to become activists against abortion, including Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue.

But Frank Schaeffer, who played a large role in making his father famous, regrets much of his efforts in promoting liberal-hating, which was the practical result of the Schaeffers’ ministry in America. The subtitle of Crazy for God is, How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back. Throughout the book, which is often quite funny, Frank expresses his honest doubts about most things he once preached with certainty.

He also has much to say about the sanctimony and profitability of the Christian right, including unflattering characterizations of some evangelical stars:

James Dobson: “A power-crazed political manipulator cynically abusing his followers.” “The most power-hungry and ambitious person I have ever met.”

Pat Robertson: “A lunatic.” “Would have a hard time finding work in any job where hearing voices is not a requirement.”

Jerry Falwell: “Unreconstructed bigot reactionary.”

But there is an interesting connection in Crazy for God to the controversy surrounding Rush Limbaugh and his “I want Obama to fail” remarks. In commenting on “the new breed of evangelical leadership” in the early 1980s, Mr. Schaeffer says:

Empire builders like Robertson, Dobson, and Falwell liked rubbing up against (or quoting) my father, for the same reason that popes liked to have photos taken with Mother Teresa.

What I slowly realized was that the religious-right leaders we were helping to gain power were not “conservatives” at all, in the old sense of the word. They were anti-American religious revolutionaries….

The new religious right was all about religiously motivated “morality,” which it used for nakedly political purposes.

Frank then goes on to reference the old radioman, Father Charles Coughlin, whom he calls a “pro-fascist ‘Catholic’ xenophobic hatemonger”:

Father Coughlin would have understood Dobson, Falwell, and Robertson perfectly: Begin a radio ministry, move steadily to the populist right, then identify the “enemy”—in Coughlin’s case, socialism and Roosevelt; in the new religious right’s case, the secular humanists and the Democrats.

The connection to Limbaugh, besides the obvious comparison to the polarizing Father Coughlin, is the following comment by Mr. Schaeffer:

The leaders of the new religious right were different from the older secular right in another way. They were gleefully betting on American failure. If secular, democratic, diverse, and pluralistic America survived, then wouldn’t that prove that we evangelicals were wrong about God only wanting to bless a “Christian America?”

In the same vein, many conservatives, led by Limbaugh, are “gleefully betting” on the failure of “liberal” policies because the success of those policies would prove that conservatives were wrong about God only wanting to bless a “Capitalist America.”

Perhaps someday a scion of right-wing radio royalty will have the courage to write his confessional:

Crazy for Conservatism: How I Grew Up as a Dittohead, Helped Poison America, and Lived to Take All of It Back.

Remarks and Asides

Tuesday, March 17, 2009, 07:32 AM

Gordon W. Thompson has written one sentence to the Globe:

Johnny Kaje’s remarks (Globe, Feb. 28) stating that women do not have a soul gland in their ovaries to bestow personhood status as an embryo is another example of an arrogant unbeliever mocking God.

Apparently, Mr. Thompson has discovered that women do in fact have a gland that secretes soul stuff, which helps the embryo develop into a full-fledged person. Maybe next time Mr. Thompson contacts the Mother Ship, he can obtain permission to reveal the cure for cancer.
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And Donald Miller has treated us to this little gem:

The croissant-eating wine-drinking liberal pukes can take everything now that we have a foreigner with their mind-set in the White House.

Another patriotic American, brought to you by Limbaugh, Inc. People around these parts sure do love America, so long as America looks and thinks like a Republican.
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On page 4A of Sunday’s Globe an interesting AP story, “Borrowing haunts churches,” shows how even God’s elect got caught up in the ways of the world. The story says:

Roland Leavell, president of Rives, Leavell & Co, a church bond broker in Jackson, Miss., said that firms specializing in church financing often aped their commercial loan counterparts, lending too much money without a thorough check of what their clients could afford.

I wonder how Republican apologists will blame Democrats for forcing religious financiers to loan money to unworthy churches?

Also, I wonder what the evangelical world is coming to:

The Evangelical Christian Credit Union, a major church lender with more than $700 million in loans last year, moved to foreclose on seven of its 1,100 loans in 2008, said Mark Johnson, the company’s executive vice president. The company has had “a noticeable increase” in late payments, and two more foreclosures are expected this year, he said.

Foreclosing on fellow believers? What would Jesus do?
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And on the same Sunday page, another story, “Pastor gives advice to grieving flock,” has the Reverend Al Meredith, whose Ft. Worth church ten years ago fell victim to a deranged killer, seeking to give advice to the latest church victims in Illinois. He tells them:

I don’t have three points and a poem on how to deal with tragedy. I don’t have any magic formula on how to emerge triumphantly.

So far, so good. Then Reverend Al adds:

If out of our tragedy God can use (that) that give hope and help to others, then its not worthless. It’s redemptive.

Let me get this straight: God is using one tragedy to help the victims of another tragedy? If God is busy “using” these sorts of things to help people, why isn’t he at least equally busy “stopping” the tragedies in the first place? Reverend Al’s comments are all too typical of those who are trying to make sense of the senseless via their religious dogma.

Again: If God is active in redeeming senseless tragedies, it is only fair to ask why he isn’t as active in preventing them.