Historical Image of the Day

Ghost dancers, late 19th century

Apocalyptic Preachers

I've always been fascinated by those who predict the specific date of the end of the world. They are always wrong. Yet, despite the fact that they are wrong, the very same charlatans continue to gain new followers. Take this group who claims the world is ending on May 21, 2011:

Camping is not the first person to fix a date for the end of the world. There have been dozens of such prophets, and so far, they've all been wrong.

Camping himself has had to do some recalculation. He first predicted the end would come Sept. 6, 1994. He now explains that he had not completed his biblical research.

"For example, I at that time had not gone through the Book of Jeremiah," he explains, "which is a big book in the Bible that has a whole lot to say about the end of the world."

So he's not planning for May 22?

"Absolutely not," Camping says. "It is going to happen. There is no Plan B."

Maybe if you are the kind of person inclined to believe the world is ending tomorrow, you will not take it as proof that your ideas are idiotic if it doesn't happen that day. Because it's sure to happen the next. Or something like that.

Inhofe Hearts Gbagbo

Jim Inhofe continued his run as America's Worst Senator with a speech yesterday defending Ivory Coast dictator Laurent Gbagbo against the attacks by U.N. supported and fairly elected Alassane Ouattara. Why would Inhofe do this?

Because Gbagbo is an evangelical Christian and Ouattara is Muslim.

The right conducts its foreign policy in no small part based upon their comfort with the religion of the individual they are talking to. Right-wing evangelical Christianity has had no problem supporting murderous dictators who have converted. Guatemala's Rios Montt is possibly the most famous example of this. Gbagbo is a more recent example.

In the 1960s, the entire foreign policy establishment operated this way. Powerful American Catholics such as John Foster Dulles and Mike Mansfield supported Diem in Vietnam because he was a member of the Catholic elite in a Buddhist nation.

This was a tremendously stupid way to run foreign policy. Democrats and some Republicans have moved on from this myopia. Neoconservatives and the evangelical right very much have not.

Oregon Cracking Down on Faithhealing Parents Who Murder Children

It's long past time the state cracked down on these faithhealing parents. Allowing your children to die from easily treatable illnesses is murder, regardless of religious beliefs. Oregon is a tolerant state and that's generally a good thing, but protecting children from their parents is part of a state's duty.

Organizing and Religion

Soon after writing my post on the cultural divide and union organizing last week, I ran into this story about the Memphis branch of the United Campus Workers-CWA Local 3865 conducting a sort of pray-in as part of their campaign for a pay hike. In full disclosure, I helped start this union at the University of Tennessee back in 2000 and still do occasional work for them.

My essay was more about the disconnect between young college graduates who become organizers and the white working class. But there's little question that the cultural divide runs deeper to broader differences between working-class people and college graduates. Religion is most certainly one of those places. It's hardly revelatory to say that while many college students are quite religious, the lefty pseudo-anarchist kids who often become professional organizers today aren't usually among them. In fact, while I think most serious young organizers wouldn't be stupid enough to denigrate religion to the people they work with, I also think a whole lot of them roll their eyes and deal with it. It's hard to imagine too many young organizers embracing religion as central to their organizing mission with true and honest passion.

I don't think this is so much organizers' fault as its a reflection of the adversarial nature of religion in early twenty-first century America. Evangelical Christianity has so aligned with the Republican Party and taken a you-are-with-us-or-against-us stance to everything in American life that many young people, progressives, and other well-meaning white folk have shied away from religion entirely, or certainly don't feel comfortable talking about it publicly and using it as a central organizing strategy. I suspect that these Memphis workers are largely African-American. And there remains a different relationship between young organizers and the black working class than the white working class. So in this context, one can see it still working. It's nice to see activists centering their organizing around their own religion, but it's a reminder of what we've lost as much as it is a way forward, at least for a lot of people.

The Best Friend Terrorists Have Ever Had

I've always thought Joe McCarthy was a far better agent of the Soviet Union than whoever was actually spying for them. McCarthy weakened American democracy, undermined the Voice of America, gave the U.S. a horrible international reputation, and made the nation's rhetoric about freedom look like hypocrisy. What actual agent could do more?

Similarly, I don't know who could better advance terrorist aims more than Terry Jones. Who could do more to undermine American foreign policy aims, our relationship with the Islamic world, and to expose everything we say about freedom as complete hypocrisy? No one. The proof is in the increasingly bloody pudding.

Go Texas!

A new University of Texas/Texas Tribune survey asked Texans about their beliefs on religion and evolution. The answers are not encouraging:

– 51 percent disagree with the statement, “Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals.”
– 38 percent agree with the statement, “God created human beings pretty much in their present form about 10,000 years ago.”
– 30 percent agree with the statement, “Humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time.” Another 30 percent said they “don’t know” whether the statement is true.

It doesn't look good in pretty pie charts either.

Of course this is hardly just a Texas problem. At least I don't know of any cases like this Missouri high school that banned t-shirts with images of evolution on them.  Of course, given that Texas is trying to rewrite high school text books to push right-wing beliefs and that some Texas school districts are forcing long-haired 5 year old boys into isolation in order to ensure conservative heteronormativity, it's probably just that they haven't had the opportunity to ban the t-shirts.

Give Me That Old-Time Intolerance

The case of Melissa Hussain is making the rounds. An 8th grade science teacher in North Carolina, she posted on Facebook about her Christian students harassing her openly about religion, which she is calling a hate crime.

I'll get to Hussain's teaching in a minute, but there's no question that her students and their parents and the atmosphere in the school that tolerates this behavior is indicative of the utter hypocrisy of evangelical Christians. They push their ideas on everyone, both in the U.S. and around the world. They don't tolerate other viewpoints. And then they have the temerity to complain of discrimination against them because they can't have a copy of the Ten Commandments in a courtroom.

Amanda says it well:

The reports I could find on this don’t explain why they think Hussain isn’t a Christian.  It could be her last name---I’d be shocked if that wasn’t a factor---or the fact that she’s a science teacher.  Or maybe she isn’t a Christian and didn’t take pains to hide that fact.  So what?  This country supposedly respects religious freedom, and that counts even for school teachers and even for women and even in North Carolina.  The levels of harassment this woman was subject to are shocking, even for a bunch of ignorant rednecks.  The harassers are admitting that they were provoked by the fact that Hussain taught real world biology that included the theory of evolution.

On her Facebook page, Hussain wrote about students spreading rumors that she was a Jesus hater. She complained about her students wearing Jesus T-shirts and singing “Jesus Loves Me.” She objected to students reading the Bible instead of doing class work.

But Annette Balint, whose daughter is in Hussain’s class, said the students have the right to wear those shirts and sing “Jesus Loves Me,” a long-time Sunday School staple. She said the students were reading the Bible during free time in class.

So, what appears to be happening is that the parents are encouraging their children to disrupt class to harass a woman they believe deserves no respect by refusing to do their schoolwork, and loudly singing hymns.  And when called out on it, they play innocent, acting like open disruption of the classroom is just a legitimate, harmless expression of belief.  This is not all that Hussain was subject to.  Students got into the habit of leaving religious materials on her desk to taunt her.  Postcards with pictures of Jesus were left on her desk so that students could act all butt hurt when she did what you always do when junk mail is left for you, which is throw it away.  Bibles were left on her desk, presumably to create the same kind of faux outrage if she treated them like anything short of magical objects.  After the evolution dust-up, when kids tried to stop the lesson by squawking about Jesus and no doubt freaking out on the teacher, a student left a Christmas card on Hussain’s desk with the word “Christ” underlined.

This behavior, of course, is bullying, and it appears to be encouraged by parents.  Bullying is the absolute favorite tactic of the religious right, from women’s clinic blockades to calling the cops on women who dare admit while pregnant to being anything but as blissed out as a dog suckling her pups.  Men are subject to this kind of bullying, but generally, wingnuts prefer to set their sights on female targets, because they believe women are weak, and like all bullies, they prefer to pick on someone they perceive as weak.

Indeed.

Now, the other issue here is whether Hussain should have complained about this on Facebook. And the answer is of course not. Rule #1 in modern teaching should be to never talk about the specifics of teaching problems in a public or semi-public forum. There should be clear avenues for dealing with these problems. On one level, you discipline students--you control the classroom, you report them to the principal, you suspend them, you make their lives hell in your classroom. Of course, this is a lot easier for a man to do than a young woman. And who knows if she has the right temperament to handle a classroom of right-wing 8th graders. Lots of us don't.

If parents and your administration don't support you, take it higher up. Take it to the superintendent. Make someone listen. And if no one will listen, then you can consider taking it public, but in very specific ways that would probably include you quitting your job first.

Now, obviously this was a frustrated and hurt teacher who faced a very difficult situation that she didn't expect. I really feel for her. I can't say I know what I'd do in her situation. But I think the lesson for me if I am ever teaching on the pre-college level is to control the classroom and to tolerate none of that kind of behavior. I really couldn't care less if the students like me or not. That's actually  harder to do on the college level because administrators actually believe that teaching evaluations are legitimate critiques on your effectiveness as a teacher. In the public schools,  I can't see how your students not being a little afraid of you is a good thing.

Carnaval in Brazil 2010 (I) - Pre-Carnaval

Next week marks the official start of Carnaval, though informal street celebrations began this weekend in Rio, as well as in other parts of Brazil. As always, even the informal blocos (street parades and musical groups) had a "theme," and this year, they apparently were promoting keeping Rio clean (text is Portuguese only, though the pictures are universal).

While the official Carnaval events haven't begun yet, there are always controversies leading up to and during the celebration, and this year is no different. The government is gearing up to hand out 55 million free condoms to citizens throughout the country as part of its ongoing campaign to promote safe sex and combat the spread of AIDS. Though the Catholic Church has condemned the government in the past for this program, the Church has remained fairly quiet this year.

Additionally, judges have eliminated a ban on religious symbols during the events of Carnaval, ruling that the ban impinged upon free speech. Officials originally established the ban in 2007, believing it to be "imprudent" to have crosses and saints alongside the, shall we say, not-so-saintly clad women and men in the parades. This story is amusing not only because it features people being uptight about the religious implications of having scantily-clad individuals in the vicinity of crosses and saints (rather than being uptight about the scantily-clad individuals); there's also the fact that, well, Carnaval is (nominally) a religious event, celebrating debauchery and gluttony in the days leading up to Ash Wednesday, which begins the religious season of Lent and the accompanying sacrifices many make in that season. So the fact that religious symbols had been banned from an ostensibly religious commemoration is more than a little amusing.

On a far more serious note, the Viradouro samba school (they of the banned Holocaust float a few years ago) is stirring up a much different kind of controversy by picking Julia Lira, a 7-year-old girl, to serve as its Queen of the Drum Corps (Rainha). As the article points out, the role is usually reserved for women in their early-20s due to the fact that the Rainhas are often among the most scantily-clad (and, subsequently, most famous) participants in Carnaval. The symbol of the Rainha has come to be equated with the sexuality and beauty that many associate with Carnaval. Thus, the selection of a Lira for a position that is usually associated with sex and nudity is causing quite a stir, and a judge is considering even blocking the girl's participation. While I agree with the girl's father (who is also president of the samba school) that anybody thinking sex when they look at a 7-year-old has a real problem, that doesn't stop some people from looking at 7-year-olds and "feeling excitment," as Lira's father puts it, and I think the concern over the fallout of viewing children as sexual objects in a country that has struggled with childhood prostitution is a legitimate concern. Ultimately, while it is completely in Viradouro's rights to pick who they want for their Rainha, it's pretty clear that they like to make controversial decisions. It's not that they couldn't have gotten some young model or starlet; it's that they deliberately chose not to do so. In the end, I think it will actually be disappointing if Lira walks as a Rainha; after all, there are real, negative effects that her participation in this particular role could have on cultural and social attitudes. I think it would be preferable if Lira waited until she actually was in her late-teens/early-twenties to serve as Rainha; she can still participate in the samba parades before then, in a less sexualized-role. We'll just have to wait until later this week, though, to see just what happens.

We Are Not a Nation Founded on Christian Principles

Yet another piece of evidence to this fact:

The Treaty of Tripoli. Passed unanimously by the U.S. Senate and signed by President John Adams in 1797.

"As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never entered into any war, or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties, that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries."

Via Helmut.

Proof There Is a God

And it's a benevolent god.

After Genesis, is there an Exodus?

This makes me happy. The linked article is from a wing-nutty news site, and is a summary of research conducted on 1,000 20-somethings who regularly attended evangelical churches as children. The result? Two-thirds end up leaving the church in their 20's. There are some other interesting results, namely that the seeds of doubt, as it were, seem to be sown in primary and secondary school, not college, and that children who regularly go to Sunday School are more likely to question the scripture.

Ken Ham, a young Earth creationist who believes the Earth to be 6,000 to 10,000 years old, argues that the cognitive dissonance that occurs when kids read the Genesis story and what they learn in school (not just evolution, but presumably other kinds of "controversial" issues like geology, carbon dating, fossils, plate tectonics, etc.) sets them on a path away from fundamentalist readings of the Bible. The Bible-as-history folks have a real problem with Genesis, since it is perhaps the most fantasically unbelievable part of the Bible. To quote the article on this issues: "The key issue is that this doubt about the Bible's account of origins causes youth to doubt the authority of Scripture".

The crux of the article is really hawking the guys book (which is a sort of handbook for fighting the "increasingly secular and atheistic public education system"), but I found the results of the survey interesting. Of course, the survey may be skewed to help the guy sell his book. In any event, if this is true, we should be happy that 2/3 of evangelically-raised children will reason their way out of believing unbelievably false assertions (like young Earth creationism). I mean, come on-- I don't want to take shots at a person's personal beliefs, especially the many reasoned, well-intentioned, moderate Christians, but if you really, honestly believe that the Earth is 6,000 - 10,000 years old... well, you're an idiot.

Historical Image of the Day

Slaves' religious service, South Carolina, 1863

Indian Elections: A victory for secularism in a land of many gods

This first sentence from The Telegraph, a renowned publication from the eastern Indian city of Calcutta pretty much summed up my own reaction to the Indian election results:

“The idea of India — a vibrant, secular, plural, resurgent nation that can transcend its myriad differences and complexities to reaffirm an essential unity of purpose — received a resounding victory today as the world’s largest electorate shed the politics of extremes and delivered a decisive mandate to the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance.”

This road to victory wasn’t always clear, however.

As Ananya Vajpeyi explains, over the past few years the world’s largest democracy has become increasingly undemocratic, one where minorities and marginal groups are struggling to survive, and where election campaigns are based on divisiveness along religious lines.

Many candidates from the conservative nationalist party, the BJP, which represents the Hindu and Sikh communities of India, have invoked hate speeches against Muslims in order to further their campaigns. One such contender, who went far enough to say that he would “cut the heads of Muslims;” was jailed for a month before charges against him were dropped.

Of course, this is not entirely new to Indian electoral campaigns. Politics of identity, regionalism and religiosity is but natural in a land where so many different creeds populate what would be the American equivalent of a block in a cosmopolitan city. However, despite the depth of diversity that exists in the subcontinent, India’s national campaigns have been relatively secular in the past, even if not at the communal or individual level, certainly at the political party level.

One of the laudable things about Indian elections – and this was true up until the late nineties – is that campaigns were rarely exclusionist in terms of certain groups of the population, castes or religions, perhaps owing to the myriad number of small – but by no means insignificant – political parties that exist in the country’s political landscape. But in the aftermath of the religious animosity engendered by the Gujarat riots of 2002, the Mumbai blasts, and more recently against Christian groups in the southeastern state of Orissa, this has changed.

People from minority religions have been marginalized, in some states being forced to flee to other regions, and Hinduism, which has historically been celebrated for being exceedingly tolerant of other religions, has been used for political reasons by the BJP, whose acronym literally translates to “party of the people,” but which really is the Hindu nationalist party. In some regions of the country the recent terror attacks and increasing resentment toward Muslims have led to the popularity of pro-Hindu political leaders.

Robert Kaplan raises this very point in last month’s issue of The Atlantic, characterizing Narendra Modi, head of the western Indian state of Gujarat as the possible “new face” of India. Celebrated for his ruthless efficiency and his incorruptible personality (a rarity in a country where every other government official has at the very least a bribery charge against him), Modi’s lesser-touted characteristic is his intense hatred of Muslims. Modi is said to have perpetrated the infamous riots of 2002, where more than a thousand people were killed.

In the midst of religious and political unrest in neighboring Afghanistan and Pakistan, political stability and religious tolerance in India becomes that much more important.

As Kaplan eloquently articulates,

“...as the influence of an economically burgeoning India now seeps both westward and eastward, to the Iranian plateau and to the Gulf of Thailand (the borders of viceregal India and its shadow zones a hundred years ago), it can grow only as a force of communal coexistence, a force that rests on India’s strengths as the world’s largest democracy. India, in other words, despite its flashy economic growth, will be nothing but another gravely troubled developing nation if it can’t maintain a minimum of domestic harmony.”

The route to that domestic harmony – at least for now, is the re-election of the pan-Indian, less marginal, more moderate, exceedingly progressive Congress party with Manmohan Singh at its helm. This mandate did not just signal a victory for religious tolerance in India, but was also a referendum on an increasing desire for social equality in a country where slums continue to grow along the feet of towering skyscrapers.

Singh, who is credited with the liberalization of the Indian economy in his role as Finance Minister in the early nineties, and the country’s resultant economic boom, was criticized by aspiring, free-market advocates just a couple years ago for appealing to business leaders to exercise restraint, regulate executive pay, and allow more demographic representation among employees.

A graduate of Cambridge and Oxford, Singh has no doubt been a free-market advocate for much of his life. But as Prime Minister, owing to an alliance with the socialist-leaning Leftist party, but more importantly - pragmatism in a land that houses 456 million people below the global poverty line - he has displayed a strong commitment toward the social and public sectors and insisted on providing economic security, health benefits, and greater representation to the underprivileged.

The task is certainly cut out for Singh and his party if they plan to deliver on their promise of balancing economic growth with social equality, but getting elected is a step in the right direction.

The Inauguration

Hi! Perhaps it is a bit cliché to write my first post on the first day of our new presidency, but I can live with that...

As I sit watching the inauguration, I am amazed at how much religion is still present in the ceremony. Even though President Obama explicitly stated that the United States is a nation of Christians and Muslims and even non-believers, the ceremony opened and closed with Christian prayers, and the oath was taken on the Christian bible. Obama also quoted scripture in his address, calling on the American people to "turn away from childish things."

I guess there are no specific contradictions to the constitution, which states only that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . ." But it still seems odd that Christianity plays such a large part in the traditions of the inauguration. Don't get me wrong - I think the prayers were great, and I liked how the cameras showed people in the crowd during the prayers, which reminded me of being a kid looking around the dinner table at Thanksgiving to see whose eyes were open during the blessing. But during an inaugural address that seemed so focused on inclusion, it seemed to certainly exclude a large part of the American people.

I began to wonder how people would react if those religious elements were taken out of the ceremony, but then I realized that I don't think a non-Christian candidate would be elected. Is religious diversity really more of an obstacle to the presidency than race?

At the risk of reopening a can of worms...

My original point on the religion post that seems to have caused all this drama was that "trend" stories like the one Erik linked are terrible, shoddy, attention-grabbing journalism and are a huge part of why I think the field has gone downhill.

If you didn't know, Karthika and I are both working on our master's in journalism, and one of the first things they told us about accurately reporting on 'scientific' surveys like the one quoted in the article was that you have to report the questions asked and how they were worded, the sample size, how the participants were selected, etc.

This survey used a random sampling of 1000, and I'm going to assume that the people doing it had reason to believe that that was a large enough number to be able to generalize it to the American population at large.

But what the reporter did not do was list the questions asked. Instead, he repeatedly used the word "could," which leads me to believe that the question was something like "Do you believe that God could save a gravely ill or dying person?"

Which, of course, is a quite different statement than "Do you believe that God will save a gravely ill or dying person?"

A woman interviewed for the article, who was not a survey participant, made the same point that I did in my rather hasty first response post: "When you're a parent and you're standing over the body of your child who you think is dying ... you have to have that" belief, Loder said.

The survey also asked questions primarily about trauma and accidents, which are more shocking to people and allow them less time to prepare for the death of a loved one.

And as one of the doctors pointed out, it is quite rare that cases such as Terri Schaivo's actually happen.

If you read the article, you can also see a trauma nurse noting a certain "miraculous" cure that she saw herself.

In any case, "trend" stories, as journalist Caryl Rivers points out in Slick Spins and Fractured Facts (which I happen to be reading right now for my thesis) often rise out of one media outlet reporting one set of 'scientific' results which may or may not be repeatable. The headline on this story is far more sensationalistic than the actual article, which was more balanced (though as I've said, to report accurately on this survey the questions asked have to actually be included). But especially in the era of click-on-the-headline news, the heads have to draw you in.

Nevermind that for many of us, all we have time to do is skim the headlines.

So what would your answer be if you were asked this question?

"Do you believe that God has the power to save people who are beyond medical hope?"

Would it be a different answer than the answer to...

"If your loved one was lying in a hospital bed after being hit by a car, would you pray for a miracle?"

I lost a friend this year. She was 24 years old. She had a drug interaction that put her into a coma, and doctors were fairly sure she wasn't going to wake up. She had zero brain activity.

Her parents are Jehovah's Witnesses. Her husband is an atheist. The three of them agreed, however, to wait a day just in case, and to give themselves time to come to terms with what had happened to her before they unplugged life support.

It gave my sister and I time to go down to Baltimore and hold her hand one last time.

We slept in the hospital that night with a bunch of her friends who had been there since the accident. We didn't hold hands and have a prayer vigil over her body, but we were all there waiting for some miracle. Waiting for her to wake up and laugh at us, even though we knew deep down it wasn't going to happen.

I prayed that night. I don't normally. And I'll bet that most of us did, no matter what our level of belief might be.

They took her off life support. They didn't keep her on in the continued hope that if they prayed hard enough, God would save her. That's the kind of belief most people have, and it's hardly dangerous the way say, George W. Bush's belief is.


On another note, a couple of people have apologized for the way they spoke in the other threads. Let me be clear about two things: One. I am not 'hurt.' I was quite annoyed for a bit by the way people seemed to be talking to me as opposed to the way I saw them talking to Erik or to each other.
Two. Declarations that entire groups of people are 'stupid' have no place on this blog. (Unless McCain gets elected president, in which case you'll see me ranting about the stupidity of America for a while ;) ). You never know who you're offending. And there are plenty of "smart people" who are quite religious. This guy and this guy are some good examples. (I particularly encourage you to check out the first one. I don't share his religious views but I find his story fascinating).

Religion, redux.

I can't believe I'm already having to repeat myself here, but here goes:

Why is it that on a blog that considers itself progressive, we still feel perfectly justified in writing off a large number of people's beliefs as "stupid"?

And more to the point, what purpose on earth is served by having a 12-comment thread about how stupid those people are? I posted a link to an actual writer dealing with the war in Georgia--no comments. We get more mileage out of insulting people because they believe that maybe, even when the odds are stacked against them, prayer will help?

Have any of you ever watched someone in the prime of their life slowly die of colon cancer? And if you have, would you have told that person that they were "stupid" for going to church again, "stupid" for praying every morning and night that just maybe they'd get another day? That their daughter and husband were "stupid" for praying that just maybe they'd get to keep their mom, their wife around a bit longer? That maybe she'd recover, or just stop being in horrible pain?

If this is the kind of party we've got here, count me the hell out.

DVD Reviews and the Jesus-Derek Jeter Connection

Every week, either on Tuesday or Wednesday, I receive my list of movies that are available for me to review on DVDVerdict.com. Two weeks ago was a strong week, featuring No Country for Old Men and Darjeeling Limited among some others so, of my list of eight releases, I received my fourth choice, a short film series called Crave. A lot of the movies available to me are complete unknowns, so I have to judge things off of sight and recommendation. This case was a black cover with a red fingerprint on it and no real indication of its content. The links on Amazon pointed to horror films, so I assumed it was a series of horror shorts. This would have been fantastic, but how wrong I was.

I got horror of a non-traditional kind, with a DVD of Bible study material featuring three ten minute shorts and discussion questions before and after the film presented by the church founder, Edwin McManus. To be fair, this name is on the cover but I took this as the director's name. If you recognize the name, it would turn you on or scare you off. Anyway, it was dumb and pandering, but at least it was short. I wrote the most fair review I could, negative for sure, but fair. It was no problem, at least two-thirds of my reviews are negative, but nobody ever really cared until now (actually, there were a bunch of people who didn't like my review of Masada, but that's mostly because people are blinded by Peter O'Toole's shoddy, drunken acting).

Part of the site is a feedback function where people wanting to write to me directly comes straight into my email box, seemingly unfiltered. All tolled, I had previously received four email: two from my mom, one from an old friend of mine who found me through the site, and somebody who was compelled to agree with me that Masada sucked (he was totally right). The review of Crave posted last Tuesday, its street date and, since then, have received four pieces of "feedback," or spam more appropriately, in regard to this review. All of a sudden, as soon as I review a piece of religious material (something I masochistically like to do and did a lot of on an old job), people come out of the woodwork to tell me the most bizarre things. They seem to be form letters, but I've deleted them in my rage, so can't reference them to be sure. I guess this came about because of the mild negativity, but it's amazing the things I've been told this week.

Apparently, Jesus is a reader of the website, as my review is sending me to Hell. I'm not surprised at this, a lot of things are sending me there. More troubling is information given to me about Satan's conspiracy to take over the World Bank and his continued attempts to resurface Communism and his fostering of radical Islam to destroy the Christian way of life. All this because I thought some crappy film series pandered to its audience. I guess that kind of libel is now punishable by an eternity of hellfire and brimstone. Either that, or it's my ticket to the head of the World Bank if I formally align myself with Satan. Not a bad deal, really.... My real trouble, though, is the frequency I hear about America's attempts to squelch the voice of Christianity. In every way, it's obviously a ridiculous thing to assert, yet I hear it more often than I can believe. If I wrote a review slamming a series of Atheist short films, a bunch of Christ-hating jerks wouldn't be writing me telling me how stupid I am, but the Christ-loving jerks do at will. Anti-Christian conspiracy my ass. Jesus is like the Derek Jeter of religious figures: defended to the point of suspicious doubt, and a lot more aggravation than he's worth.

Historical Image of the Day

Jesuits preaching to Native Americans, 1600s

Historical Image of the Day

Daniel Alexander Payne, bishop of African Episcopal Methodist Church. Co-Founder and first president of Wilberforce University