Mr. Deity and the Awkwardness

Mr. Deity and Larry lunch with a very disgruntled John the Baptist.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Share |

Mr. Deity Tries To Find Time To Make Time

Mr. Deity discovers the whole physics, time, space, location thing... kind of complicated.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Share |

Could Religion Survive First Contact?

Buy at AllPosters.com

One could argue that shamanism has been surviving the discovery of Grey-like aliens going all the way back to the paleolithic era. But I don't think shamanism was what Ted Peters of the Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary had in mind when he conducted a survey on how religious people would weather the discovery of extraterrestrial life. Study participants were mostly Buddhists and Christians of various denominations.

None of the 70 Buddhists questioned thought that the discovery of ET would undercut their belief systems, although 40 per cent thought it could pose problems for other religions.

More Roman Catholics believed ET could pose a problem for their faith. Only 8 per cent of the 120 surveyed thought that their individual beliefs would be shaken, but nearly a quarter – 22 per cent – said it could adversely affect their religion. Even more – 30 per cent – thought it could threaten the beliefs of other religious people.

I should point out that the Vatican has already weighed in on this issue, and determined belief in aliens to be no threat to Catholicism.

The patterns were similar for the other Christian sects surveyed, including evangelical and mainline Protestants, but there was not enough data to draw firm conclusions about people of other religions, such as Hindus and Muslims.

What I find far more interesting than the question of how religion would withstand proof of alien life, is the total disconnect between what people can accept and what they think other people can accept. This disconnect becomes even more pronounced when we look at the next group; the non-religious.

Of the 205 people who identified themselves as non-religious (either atheists or those who describe themselves as spiritual but not religious), only 1 per cent thought it would affect their atheist or spiritual outlooks. But 69 per cent thought the discovery of ET could cause a crisis for other world religions. An average of only 34 per cent of religious people shared that belief.

That atheists and others who have rejected organized religion would perceive churchgoers as fairly close-minded and resistant to dramatic change, shouldn't really come as a shock, I guess. But the whole thing is a fascinating commentary on the nature of tribal behavior or "group think." We are always either rejecting or bending to the collective will of our communities; and few of us seem comfortable rejecting it, outright. Most people choose conformity, because it makes them feel safe. One of the things I hear a lot from my clients is that they can't talk to their friends or neighbors about their spiritual beliefs -- or God forbid, that they consult a psychic -- because people would think they were crazy. Maybe they would. Maybe they wouldn't. I decided a long time ago not to get too invested in what other people think. It's exhausting. But a lot of people are controlled by it. This study is not the first evidence I've seen that suggests that people are capable of much greater flexibility, in their thinking, than we give them credit for. Many of them are probably just too scared to admit it.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Share |

Air Force Greenlights Pagan Temple

A couple of years ago, I was able to report major strides in the acknowledgment of Wiccan service members, when the Veterans Administration finally authorized the use of pentacles on tombstones. It is with no small degree of glee that I am able, now, to report a major development in religious freedom in the armed services. The Air Force is providing a ritual space for Wiccans, and other pagans, at its Colorado Springs base.

The U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado will set aside a worship space for followers of "Earth-centered" religions such as Wicca and Druidism, according to an Air Force news release.

A stone circle atop a hill on the base in Colorado Springs will likely be dedicated in a ceremony March 10, according to the release, and be available to cadets and other service members who live in the area. The base already has worship spaces for Protestants, Catholics, Muslims and Buddhist, the release said.

I visited this base and the surrounding area -- including the legendary Garden of the Gods -- some years ago. It's a beautiful place to put what I hope will be only the first of such temples.

Buy at AllPosters.com

I'm glad to see the Air Force taking such a proactive step, not only in the acknowledgment of its pagan members, but of religious diversity, in general. The armed services, and the Air Force, in particular, have come under sharp scrutiny for religious intolerance and Christian proselytizing.

The subject of religious bias came to the forefront for the Air Force five years ago when non-Christian cadets at the Air Force Academy reported being harassed by Christian counterparts and feeling ostracized because they were not religious.

Last month, the academy superintendent, Lt. Gen. Michael Gould, issued a positive progress report — endorsed by one of its most vocal critics — citing the creation of a Cadet Interfaith Council, which helps identify upcoming religious holidays so scheduling conflicts can be avoided and meets with chaplains monthly to discuss the religious climate.

“This is the first time we feel positive about things there,” said Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which battled the academy in court over claims that evangelicals at the school were imposing their views on others.

Weinstein's book With God on Our Side: One Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in America's Military provided a wake-up call, about the increasingly religious bent of the what is supposed to be a secular, government institution. It is a particularly serious problem as we wage wars in Muslim countries and major political figures bandy about words like "crusade."

I was somewhat surprised to learn that Wicca is well represented in the Air Force. It is, in fact, the largest non-Christian faith, in that branch of the military.

In the Air Force, Wicca — witchcraft — is the largest non-Christian faith, with 1,434 followers. The breakdown of other religious minorities: 1,271 Buddhists, 1,148 Jews, 678 Muslims and 190 Hindus.

So, I guess it's about time they acknowledged the pagans in their ranks. I suppose one could argue that they, like so many protective forces, already do,  whether they realize it or not.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Share |

Mr. Deity's Crazy Logic

Some very biting satire from the folks at Mr. Deity, addressing the violence and total absurdity of the Old Testament God. Watching this episode, I can't help but think of John Lash's correlation of Jehovah with the deluded, psychotic Demiurge Yaldabaoth described by the Gnostics. Look at it through that lens and the whole thing starts make a crazy sort of sense.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Share |

Mr. Deity Takes On NBC Fracas

And deals with the devil.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Share |

Mr. Deity: More Fun with Gender Roles

Shortly after getting pounded for trafficking in female stereotypes, Mr. Deity is back and exploiting gender role humor to its fullest. I note that Brian Dalton preemptively apologizes for his hatred of women, in the commentary. Very, very funny.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Share |

Of Avatar and Catholics... and Other Christian Arrogance

Buy at AllPosters.com

As I said here,  I've been, over the past couple of weeks, noting incidents of jaw-dropping arrogance, in the name of Christianity. Having been raised in the Episcopal Church, with its emphasis on ecumenicism and tolerance, I always find this kind of thing rather jarring. So, as promised, here's a quick round-up. Sadly, I think this could be a regular feature.

The Vatican vs. Avatar:

The Vatican has weighed in on mega-blockbuster "Avatar" and given it the thumbs down. Some of the criticism is fair. The story is a little "simplistic." It is a James Cameron vehicle, after all, so it's somewhat formulaic. Anyone who expected otherwise from "Avatar" would be disappointed. It is still wildly entertaining and cinematically spectacular. (See it in Imax 3D, if you can. You won't regret it.)

Of course the chief criticisms from the Vatican newspaper and radio are ideological, not artistic.

L'Osservatore said the film "gets bogged down by a spiritualism linked to the worship of nature." Similarly, Vatican Radio said it "cleverly winks at all those pseudo-doctrines that turn ecology into the religion of the millennium."

"Nature is no longer a creation to defend, but a divinity to worship," the radio said.

Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said that while the movie reviews are just that - film criticism, with no theological weight - they do reflect Pope Benedict XVI's views on the dangers of turning nature into a "new divinity."

. . .

In a recent World Day of Peace message, the pontiff warned against any notions that equate human person and other living things. He said such notions "open the way to a new pantheism tinged with neo-paganism, which would see the source of man's salvation in nature alone."

Oh, where to begin... Firstly, how does a movie become 'bogged down" in the screenwriter's choice of spiritual belief system? Getting "bogged down" is a problem of style, not theme; excessive detail, poor plotting, leaden dialogue... These things will bog a story down; not pantheism.

Secondly, both L'Osservatore and his holiness misunderstand the nature of pantheistic religions. While I will grant you that these belief systems vary, even from person to person, having spent a good deal of my life studying and practicing pagan and shamanic systems, I feel fairly comfortable dismissing their interpretation, in toto. Pagans and pantheists don't "worship" nature, in the sense that Christians worship God. (Nor, do the natives, or Na'Vi, in "Avatar." Something quite obvious to anyone who actually paid attention to the movie.) They do not put nature spirits above themselves. They honor them as part of the same divinity that expresses itself through all manifest reality. They pay respect to all living things as their relations. They do not look to nature for salvation, because they don't think their souls need saving.

I'm not surprised the Vatican is threatened by the record breaking success of a movie that extols the virtues of a pantheistic lifestyle. After all, early Catholics worked very hard to convert pagans, by successfully coopting their symbols and holidays. They gave them their mother goddess in the form of the blessed virgin. They gave them their Saturnalia, by renaming it Christmas. They adapted to the indigenous beliefs of all the "savage lands" they conquered. But, these pagan beliefs have proven very difficult to stamp out completely. They keep re-emerging. And, according to some conservative critics, Hollywood is having a love affair with them.

Douthat & Goldberg vs. Avatar:

New York Times  columnist Ross Douthat also pounded Avatar for its pantheistic themes:

It’s fitting that James Cameron’s “Avatar” arrived in theaters at Christmastime. Like the holiday season itself, the science fiction epic is a crass embodiment of capitalistic excess wrapped around a deeply felt religious message. It’s at once the blockbuster to end all blockbusters, and the Gospel According to James.

But not the Christian Gospel. Instead, “Avatar” is Cameron’s long apologia for pantheism — a faith that equates God with Nature, and calls humanity into religious communion with the natural world.

In Cameron’s sci-fi universe, this communion is embodied by the blue-skinned, enviably slender Na’Vi, an alien race whose idyllic existence on the planet Pandora is threatened by rapacious human invaders. The Na’Vi are saved by the movie’s hero, a turncoat Marine, but they’re also saved by their faith in Eywa, the “All Mother,” described variously as a network of energy and the sum total of every living thing.

If this narrative arc sounds familiar, that’s because pantheism has been Hollywood’s religion of choice for a generation now...

Why pantheism needs defendng by Cameron, or anyone else, I don't know. Ironically, Douthat goes on to write a fairly decent apologia for pantheism, but dismisses his own argument.

Over at the Los Angeles Times, Jonah Goldberg picked up Douthat's ball and ran with it, crafting his own apologia, for the oh so unfairly maligned Catholicism.

What would have been controversial is if -- somehow -- Cameron had made a movie in which the good guys accepted Jesus Christ into their hearts.

Of course, that sounds outlandish and absurd, but that's the point, isn't it? We live in an age in which it's the norm to speak glowingly of spirituality but derisively of traditional religion. If the Na'Vi were Roman Catholics, there would be boycotts and protests. Make the oversized Smurfs Rousseauian noble savages and everyone nods along, save for a few cranky right-wingers.

Goldberg goes on to expound on the theory that human beings are hard-wired to experience some form of spirituality, even as he mocks this particular expression of that spirituality. What Goldberg seems to miss is that the rebellion against imperialism (as in the mercenary enforced take-over of a fictional planet's resources) and what he calls "traditional religion" are of a piece. Hollywood's fascination with pantheism is just so much pandering to a ground-swell of rebellion against the hierarchical systems that have crushed civilizations and individuals, throughout recorded history. People are turning to more pantheistic, pagan, shamanic, and mystical beliefs, because we are taking our spirituality back.

Brit Hume vs. Buddhism:

Meanwhile, Brit Hume used his pulpit at Fox News to lambast Buddhism. In hopes of saving Tiger Woods's beleaguered soul, he offered the following:

The extent to which he can recover seems to me depends on his faith. He is said to be a Buddhist. I don't think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So, my message to Tiger would be: Tiger, turn your faith, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.

A good round-up of the responses to Hume's proselytizing, from across the political and religious spectrum, comes from David Gibson at Politics Daily. Gibson also offers the fairly obvious point that Christianity's track record on reforming behavior isn't so hot.

The other problem with Hume's comments is that they are contradicted by so much evidence. Anecdotally, one need look no further than the sanctimonious Christian pols-turned-philanderers, or the many high-profile pastors who turn out to have feet of clay. Statistics also show that Christians are as likely to divorce or abort as everyone else, and Bible Belt states often have much higher rates of marital breakdown and teen pregnancy than other regions.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Share |

Pat Robertson on Haiti's Pact with the Devil

I've been cataloging a number of recent, arrogant, public pronouncements, offered in the name of Christianity. More to come on that, but Pat Robertson's latest hateful outburst requires a stand alone post.

In the aftermath of this horrific tragedy in Haiti, one which may have caused as many as 100,000 deaths, Pat Robertson is, once again, blaming the victims, and citing their sinful nature. What's the problem in Haiti? A pact with the devil, according to Robertson. Citing no source for the information -- perhaps God has been bending his ear again -- he announces that Haiti turned to Satan, in hopes of ending the tyranny of French Imperialsm. He's not so certain about what French leader was oppressing the Haitians, but he's quite certain about the whole deal with the devil thing.

"Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it," he said on Christian Broadcasting Network's "The 700 Club." "They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you'll get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it's a deal."

In Pat Robertson's world view, it's God's curse that's causing Haiti's poverty, oppression, and what most of us call a natural disaster. Proof? The Dominican Republic: No pact with the devil and today a thriving resort area. Haiti: Pact with the devil and today under a pile of rubble. So there ya go.

This is what we call the just world fallacy. Bad things just don't happen to good people. They only happen to the bad people, so when bad things happen, we should always look to see what they've done wrong, and know that as long as we stay in God's good books, nothing bad will happen to us. Versions can be found in our underlying cultural belief that poverty is a result of moral failure, The Secret (wherein our positive thoughts bring positive experiences and our negative thoughts bring negative experiences), and the belief that causes many women to find for the defendent in rape cases. The just world fallacy allows people an illusion of safety in an uncertain world, but I just call it blame the victim idiocy.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Share |

Review: Battlestar Galactia -- The Plan

The following review contains spoilers. Previous posts on the new "Battlestar Galactica" can be found here.

The makers of the makers fall before the child.
Accessing defense system.
Handshake. Handshake. Second level clear.
(It's begun.)
Accepting scan.
Love outlasts death.
(Been a long time coming.)
Apotheosis was the beginning before the beginning.
Devices on alert. Observe the procedures of a general alert.
The base and the pinnacle.
The flower inside the fruit that is both its parent and its child.
Jump.

~ The Hybrid

"The center holds. The falcon hears the falconer," intones the hybrid, as she coordinates the attack that would annihilate the 12 colonies of Kobol. But, of course, the center does not hold, and the plan begins to unravel almost immediately.

This is not a prequel. "The Plan" does for "Battlestar Galactica" what Orson Scott Card's Shadow Series did for Ender's Game; tells the same story from the perspective of a different character. Cavil is the architect of the plan to destroy humanity. There are many copies, but this is primarily the story of two Cavils; the one on Galactica and the one on Caprica.

I had rather high hopes for "The Plan," having become very fascinated with Cavil by the end of "Battlestar Galactica,"  and I was not disappointed. The two hour movie explores, in more depth, the central conflict of the series; that between pure rationalism and the non-rational nature of spirituality and intuition. As I wrote in my review of the finale:

In the final season, the division between the spiritual and purely analytical came into sharp relief. The show's lone atheist, Cavil, is revealed to be hostile, not only to humans, but to his own humanoid form. Cavil: The name means "to quibble." But, it derives from the Latin calvi, which means "deception," as in "calumny." I would not be surprised if it is this darker aspect that the writers were alluding to, with the name. Dean Stockwell has done some of the finest work of his career in "Battlestar Galactica." Cavil is a perfectly drawn character; his rage cool, measured, and methodical. Only in flickers do we see the petulant, disappointed child, driven by hatred for the mommy who has doomed him to a life he thinks imperfect and foolish.

"The Plan" expands on this theme. Like the "Battlestar Galactica" series, it could easily be read as an indictment of atheism. Or, at least, of that strain of atheism that has so completely merged with scientism it has become as soul crushing a dogma as the religious authorities it condemns. Not surprisingly a lot of hard SF people don't get it. The Plan has been received with much of the same utter mystification that the spiritual tone of the finale was.

Cavil is a Satanesque figure; rebelling against his creators and turning his rage on humanity. Ultimately, we find him to be both epically tragic and pathetically small. To understand a key element of his backstory, see the previously discussed write-up by Mike Ragogna. Bear in mind that Cavil's given name was John.

Then there was the "angels" plot line from the old series that still needs resolution. Is it possible that when Ellen created "John," her first successful, human-looking cylon, that she named him in tribute to "John," the angel from the first series?

Could explain Cavil's twisted relationship with a displaced child named John, who, curiously, only he ever seems to see, and with whom he shares that classic Satanic symbol, an apple.

As we ultimately learned in the Battlestar Galactica series, there is a plan, but it's not Cavil's. He is merely a pawn in the unfolding scheme of some overarching and incomprehensible intelligence. Like the Architect in The Matrix Trilogy, Cavil learns that a purely rational construct is doomed to fail. Creation itself is irrational. It is dependent, after all, on the irrational mathematics of Phi. 

In "The Plan," however, we learn the backstory of Cavil of Caprica's epiphany, and break from his own plan. This plot arc actually articulates one of my favorite, classic arguments against atheism. A central tenant of atheism says that "God" cannot be proved empirically, and therefore cannot be believed in. This, of course, is scientism; "the view that natural science has authority over all other interpretations of life, such as philosophical, religious, mythical, spiritual, or humanistic explanations." The classic rebuttal is simply this: Can love be proved? Cavil of Caprica learns something which alters his perceptions and moves him to endorse a truce with humanity; that "love outlasts death." Love is inexplicable, powerful, eternal, and undeniable, when experienced, but cannot be proved empirically.

"The Plan," while drawing heavily from old footage and artful splicing, is a very worthwhle addition to the critically acclaimed new "Battlestar Galactica" series. It's smart, literate, and replete with fascinating visual allusions and symbols. (Watch, in particular, for the baby carriages, on Caprica, that look like some bizarre hybrid of ziggurats and mummies.) Highly recommended.

The Second Coming
by William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all around it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

"The Plan" made its television debut on the SyFy Channel, Sunday, February 10th, and will reair Fri. 1/15, 8:00am, Tue. 1/19, 11:30pm, and Fri. 1/22, 4:30pm. It is also available in the bookstore.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Share |

Mr. Deity and the Apology

The last episode of Mr. Deity introduced Eve. I posted it here. I thought it was cute, but I thought, at the time, it might tweak some people. Apparently, it did. In fact, it seems to have really pissed some viewers off enough that Brian Keith Dalton has come out with an apology. It's at the end of this most recent episode, "Mr. Deity and the Wrong Number." Like all things Mr. Deity, the apology is quite amusing, and straddles that fine line between the satirical and the offensive. Dalton makes the rather significant point that Mr. Deity lampoons a variety of stereotypes, and yet, it is only when a stereotype of a woman comes in to play, that all hell breaks loose. And, like so many stereotypes, there is some truth in Mr. Deity's Eve, and in the communication breakdown that ensues. I say this as a woman and a feminist. There are differences between men and women. There are differences in the way we communicate. Women can be indirect and, even, passive aggressive. Men can be obtuse and oblivious to metacommunication. John Gray built an entire cottage industry around these differences, and the trouble they can cause in male/female relationships. So, I thought Mr. Deity's depictions of an extremely yin Eve, and yang Adam, were clever. His conversation with Pat Robertson is also amusing, so enjoy!

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Share |

A Christian Prayer for Obama

"Pray for Obama." At first glance it seems well meaning. After all, there were many such admonitions, from the Christian Right, to pray for President Bush. Prayer cards were even distributed to some deployed troops, committing them to pray for their Commander in Chief. Then we read the verse in question, Psalm 109:8. It isn't well meaning at all. And the Psalm gets worse from there. It is one of those dark passages in the Old Testament that belies idealized notions of Christanity as a religion of love and peace.

8. Let his days be few; and let another take his office.
9. Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow.
10. Let his children be continually vagabonds, and beg: let them seek their bread also out of their desolate places.
11. Let the extortioner catch all that he hath; and let the strangers spoil his labour.
12. Let there be none to extend mercy unto him: neither let there be any to favour his fatherless children.
13. Let his posterity be cut off; and in the generation following let their name be blotted out.
14. Let the iniquity of his fathers be remembered with the LORD; and let not the sin of his mother be blotted out.
15. Let them be before the LORD continually, that he may cut off the memory of them from the earth.

There is a very dark undercurrent to the Bible. Like most eruptions of the shadow, our first impulse is to split it off and deny it. As Diana Butler Bass explains on Beliefnet, Psalm 109 is a tough one for theologians to reconcile.

Psalm 109 belongs to a special category of the psalms known as "imprecatory" prayers--it is a lament in the form of petition to destroy one's enemies.  It is the personal prayer of an individual, someone who has been dealt an injustice by another--and usually more powerful--person.  The words of Psalm 109 are those of deep agony, the longings of a victim for retribution and justice.  This psalm is considered one of the most difficult of all the psalms--full of violent images of vengeance and death.   Many a biblical critic has struggled with its words--and not a few--including Roman Catholic and mainline Protestant theologians--recommend that it not be used in public worship, much less as a bumper-sticker political slogan.

I keep coming back to one of my favorite quotes from Joseph Campbell, who was no fan of the Bible, nor of Abrahamic religions, in general.

[The Bible is] the most over-advertised book in the world. It's very pretentious to claim it to be the word of God, or accept it as such and perpetuate this tribal mythology, justifying all kinds of violence to people who are not members of the tribe.

The thing I see about the Bible that's unfortunate is that it's a tribally circumscribed mythology. It deals with a certain people at a certain time. The Christians magnified it to include them. It then turns this society against all others, whereas the condition of the world today is that this particular society that's presented in the Bible isn't even the most important. This thing is like a dead weight. It's pulling us back because it belongs to an earlier period. We can't break loose and move into a modern theology.

One of the great promises of mythology is, with what social group do you identify? How about the planet? To say that the members of this particular social group are the elite of God's world is a good way to keep that group together, but look at the consequences! I think that what might be called the sanctified chauvinism of the Bible is one of the curses of the planet today.

For me, the poignancy of Campbell's observation has never been so stunningly clear. The use of this piece of scripture comes against the backdrop of a campaign to make Barack Obama an "other," a member of a foreign tribe, and not a "real American." Some continue to insist that he was born in Kenya, despite repeated verification of his Hawaii birth certificate. Some of this rhetoric is downright frightening, with ominous hints at potential violence. Former evangelical Frank Schaeffer explains the urgency of concern in this interview on MSNBC's "Rachel Maddow." (A complete transcript of the show can be found here.)





It may well be that use of Psalm 109:8 was not intended to be read beyond that line, by people who simply wanted him out of office; not dead. There is enough ambiguity to grant plausible deniability.

Deborah Lauter, director of civil rights at the Anti-Defamation League agrees that the bumper sticker falls within acceptable political discourse.

For it to be considered hate speech, it “would advocate actual violence or cite scripture that was more clear in its message.”

But that doesn’t mean that it’s completely innocent.

“Are we concerned about real hostility towards [President Obama]? Absolutely,” says Ms. Lauter. “Is this a part of that movement? It may be, but in terms of this message itself, we would not criticize it.”

“The problem is you don’t know if people who are donning that message in a shirt or on a bumper sticker are fully aware of the quote or what follows. Obviously that message makes the ambiguity disappear. If they’re just referring to him being out of office, that’s one thing. If they’re referring to him being dead, that’s so offensive. It’s protected speech, but it’s clearly offensive.”

It is hard to miss the subtext, however, or to separate the one verse from its scriptural context. A good segment of the target demographic are fundamentalist Christians. They know the Bible far better than much of the populace.

The larger issue, which Campbell calls on us to consider, is how our core mythologies shape our culture. While this is not a theocracy, or a "Christian nation," there is no denying that the United States is underpinned by the Judeo-Christian beliefs that held sway at its inception. More to the point, we are still largely shaped by the rigid, Calvinist beliefs of our earliest settlers. This goes a long way to explaining the punitive, moral authority that permeates our social institutions, from our schools to our judicial system. The "Pray for Obama" campaign is a painful reminder of just how pressing this issue has become. Can we overcome the divisiveness, tribalism, and violence, inherent in our Judeo-Christian mythology?

Diane Butler Bass  turns to C.S. Lewis's Reflections on the Psalms for a viable answer; one which invites us to face the dark underbelly of these beliefs and bring them out into the light.

Lewis suspects that it may be best to leave such psalms alone. But then he says that we must face "facts squarely."

The hatred is there--festering, gloating, undisguised--and also we should be wicked if we in any way condoned or approved it, or (worse still) used it to justify similar passions in ourselves (p. 22).

Lewis refers to these psalms as horrible, devilish, cruel, hateful, and evil. He believes that Psalm 109--and the poetry of its kind in the psalter--should point us back to the evil we carry within and teach us each how to behave with goodness, humility, and love.

According then, to the venerable C.S. Lewis, a "Prayer for Obama" is really a prayer for ourselves to go beyond "festering, gloating, undisguised" hatred. "If the Divine does not call to make us better, it will make us very much worse," he reminded his readers, "Of all bad men, religious bad men are the worst."

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Share |

Mr. Deity Tries to Understand the Trinity

I'm getting caught up on my Mr. Deity videos. The above is one of the funniest ever, as God and Jesse try to figure out how they're the same person... but aren't. My favorite episodes of this show are the one's with Jesse (aka, Jesus), in part because the guy who plays him is really hot. Ooh! Can I say that? Mmmmm... Sacrilicious!

And now a word on the new YouTube: It's awful. Everything that made YouTube videos the most smooth, flexible, customizable, videos on the web went to hell when the Google merger completed itself. The newer videos -- maybe because they allow for the possibility of high def (???) -- are really bandwidth and processor intensive. All I know is that they don't play smoothly on my machine. They stop and start, the video and audio tracking go out of sync... And no, I'm not trying to play them in high def. So, I've been very frustrated trying to get newer content, like the newest season of Mr. Deity. That is, until I discovered, while looking over the Mr. Deity site, that they are available for download on iTunes. Much better! So, if you're having trouble getting the above embed to play smoothly, I highly recommend opening iTunes and searching for Mr. Deity. The podcasts are free and they play really smoothly, at least for me.

I love this mug, by the way. And Christmas is around the corner... hint, hint.

Comments on this entry are closed, on this blog. If you wish to comment, please find this and all newer blog entries crossposted on Celestial Reflections.

Share |

Was Jesus a Librul?

Buy at AllPosters.com

It would appear that the frequent assertion that Jesus was a "dirty hippie" has finally pushed the Christian Right too far, and they're fighting back. The Conservative Bible Project has begun. Not satisfied to leave translation to linguists, Conservapedia is determined to take back ancient scripture and restore it to its 21st Century, conservative roots.

As of 2009, there is no fully conservative translation of the Bible which satisfies the following ten guidelines:[2]

1. Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias
   
2. Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, "gender inclusive" language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity
   
3. Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level[3]
   
4. Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop;[4] defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer"; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as "word", "peace", and "miracle".
   
5. Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as "gamble" rather than "cast lots";[5] using modern political terms, such as "register" rather than "enroll" for the census
   
6. Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.
   
7. Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning
   
8. Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story
   
9. Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels
   
10. Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word "Lord" rather than "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" or "Lord God."

Rod Dreher of Belief.net explains a bit of the absurdity.

"The liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio"? Hoo-wee! Elitists like to use words, and lots of 'em! "Unnecessary ambiguities"? But how are you going to abide by the conservative mandate to avoid "dumbing down" Holy Writ while at the same time avoiding big words liberals use?

It's not only the more modern translations that these conservative ideologues have in their sights. (Although, the New International Version really has them spinning, because it is so "liberal and feminist in outlook.") It seems liberalism infected the Bible from its earliest inceptions. The conservative version of the Bible would exclude the adultress story. True, the Periscopa de Adultera has been a bone of contention among Biblical scholars for some time. However, calling verses which appeared in the canon at least as early as 200 A.D a "later-inserted liberal passage," seems like something of a reach.

I'm left wondering how deep their edits will have to go. What to do with the Sermon on the Mount, for instance? Jesus comes across really squishy, what with all those blessings of the meek and merciful, and compassion for enemies. And, I don't know how well it comports with their desired "free-market" spin.

"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." -- Matthew 6:19-21

Free marketeers may also bridle at this one:

So when Jesus heard these things, He said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.”

But when he heard this, he became very sorrowful, for he was very rich.

And when Jesus saw that he became very sorrowful, He said, “How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God! For it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” -- Luke 18:22-25

Squishy, squishy, squishy... and maybe even a little, dare I say it, "socialist." The Conservative Bible Project really hates socialism.

Socialistic terminology permeates English translations of the Bible, without justification. This improperly encourages the "social justice" movement among Christians.

For example, the conservative word "volunteer" is mentioned only once in the ESV, yet the socialistic word "comrade" is used three times, "laborer(s)" is used 13 times, "labored" 15 times, and "fellow" (as in "fellow worker") is used 55 times.

See if you can follow the logic, here. Socialist movements have used the words "comrade," "laborer," and "fellow." Therefore, those words are now the exclusive domain of socialists... so the Bible needs to be revised, to remove any appearance of socialist leanings. It seems to me, the larger problem is that Jesus went around telling rich people to redistribute their wealth to save their souls. I mean, how do you spin that, in a capitalist friendly way?

I think Conservapedia has its work cut out fixing this mess. Let's face it. Constantine was a real pansy, and Jesus just comes off looking soft. And, if the Bible is going to continue to use words like "government" -- check it: the word government is liberal -- there will be no restoring the Lord to his rightful place as a conservative hero.

Share |

Ark of the Covenent Still a Mystery

Buy at AllPosters.com

If you've been waiting, with bated breath, for the Ethiopian Church to unveil the Ark of the Covenant, prepare to be disappointed. It appears that reports last week were somewhat overblown.

"It is not going to happen so the world has to live with curiosity," said the statement, signed only "Webmaster" in response to the WND inquiry.

The webmaster statement described the tempest as being caused either because of a translation mistake or "a slip [of the] tongue from the patriarch."

I've never been one to get heavily invested in Biblical artifacts, but I was quite intrigued by this announcement. I was also stunned at the possibility that Ethiopian Church would even consider showing its most prized artifact, after all this time. I read Sign and the Seal a few years ago, more because I love Graham Hancock's writing, than any great interest in the mystery of the Ark. I came away from the book fairly convinced that whatever it is, it's in Ethiopia. Something is being fiercely guarded there. While the Ethiopian Church is very public about having the Ark in their possession -- and uses wooden copies in elaborate rituals -- no one sees the actual item, except those charged with its protection.

The guardians of the Ark are selected from among church monks, and spend the rest of their natural lives living with Ark night and day. It is both an honor and a curse. Hancock relates the story of one guardian who abandoned his post and fled to the hills, only to be dragged back to the temple and chained at his post. It also seems to take quite a toll on the body. As has been recorded in other historical texts, on the Ark, it is very "powerful" and causes people near it to have some health problems. The Ethiopians keep it wrapped to "protect the laity" from its effects. Hancock describes the guardians he met as having developed cataracts. I believe it's in this interview that Graham Hancock recently spoke about the toll guarding the Ark takes on the body. The symptoms are, of course, consistent with radiation poisoning, which adds some credence to the theory that it was really a technological device of some kind -- Zecharia Sitchin theorized a communicator -- and may be radioactive.



Buy at AllPosters.com

Share |

Frequent Churchgoers Pro-Torture

Buy at AllPosters.com


A while ago I asked if we need God to moral. Perhaps a more appropriate question would be, does religion make us immoral? I have to ask, in light of this Pew poll, which found that very observant Christians are more likely than their more secular countrymen to support the use of torture. Staunch Catholic Andrew Sullivan bemoans the startling news:

So Christian devotion correlates with approval for absolute evil in America. And people wonder why atheism is gaining in this country. Notice the poll does not even use a euphemism like "coercive interrogation" - forcing Allahpundit to substitute it. (Even HotAir, it seems, finds it difficult to write the sentence: "Evangelicals are more likely to be conservative and conservatives are more likely to support torture.") But it remains a fact that white evangelicals are the most pro-torture of any grouping. Mainline Protestant groups were the most opposed. A mere 20 percent of non-Hispanic Catholics believe that torture is never justified.

He also points out that in another recent poll, Southern Evangelicals turn to expediency over scripture when it comes to questions of torture. Personally, I don't think scripture would help much, as the Bible condones a wide range of violent, even genocidal, behavior against enemies. Still, you'd think a few of our most devout might ask themselves, "Whom would Jesus torture?"

I think the worst news coming out of this poll is that nearly half the country, overall, thinks the use of torture can be often or sometimes justified, with only 25% opposing torture in all circumstances. In addition to exposing flagrant immorality, it points to a disturbing, underlying ignorance. Part of the problem may be the question asked: "Can torture be justified?" The implication is that it may be a necessary evil. What an appalling number of Americans fail to understand, as they struggle with moral implications, is that TORTURE DOES NOT WORK. So the question would be better phrased, can terrorizing and degrading people into false confessions and bad intelligence ever be justified?

This seminal point has been made over and over by military, CIA, and FBI interrogation specialists, to stunningly deaf ears.

In November of 2007, U.S Army Brigadier General Finnegan took time away from his duties as dean of West Point Academy and flew to Southern California to plead with the brain trust behind the Keifer Sutherland vehicle "24," to stop glorifying torture, because it was confusing recruits. He was accompanied by both military and F.B.I. interrogators. Their overall point: While it may make good television, torture is not legal, not moral, and not effective.

Finnegan told the producers that “24,” by suggesting that the U.S. government perpetrates myriad forms of torture, hurts the country’s image internationally. Finnegan, who is a lawyer, has for a number of years taught a course on the laws of war to West Point seniors — cadets who would soon be commanders in the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. He always tries, he said, to get his students to sort out not just what is legal but what is right. However, it had become increasingly hard to convince some cadets that America had to respect the rule of law and human rights, even when terrorists did not. One reason for the growing resistance, he suggested, was misperceptions [stet] spread by “24,” which was exceptionally popular with his students. As he told me, “The kids see it, and say, ‘If torture is wrong, what about “24”?’ ” He continued, “The disturbing thing is that although torture may cause Jack Bauer some angst, it is always the patriotic thing to do.”

Gary Solis, a retired law professor who designed and taught the Law of War for Commanders curriculum at West Point, told me that he had similar arguments with his students. He said that, under both U.S. and international law, “Jack Bauer is a criminal. In real life, he would be prosecuted.” Yet the motto of many of his students was identical to Jack Bauer’s: “Whatever it takes.” His students were particularly impressed by a scene in which Bauer barges into a room where a stubborn suspect is being held, shoots him in one leg, and threatens to shoot the other if he doesn’t talk. In less than ten seconds, the suspect reveals that his associates plan to assassinate the Secretary of Defense. Solis told me, “I tried to impress on them that this technique would open the wrong doors, but it was like trying to stomp out an anthill.”

. . .

Cochran, who has a law degree, listened politely to the delegation’s complaints. He told me that he supports the use of torture “in narrow circumstances” and believes that it can be justified under the Constitution. “The Doctrine of Necessity says you can occasionally break the law to prevent greater harm,” he said. “I think that could supersede the Convention Against Torture.” (Few legal scholars agree with this argument.) At the meeting, Cochran demanded to know what the interrogators would do if they faced the imminent threat of a nuclear blast in New York City, and had custody of a suspect who knew how to stop it. One interrogator said that he would apply physical coercion only if he received a personal directive from the President. But Navarro, who estimates that he has conducted some twelve thousand interrogations, replied that torture was not an effective response. “These are very determined people, and they won’t turn just because you pull a fingernail out,” he told me. And Finnegan argued that torturing fanatical Islamist terrorists is particularly pointless. “They almost welcome torture,” he said. “They expect it. They want to be martyred.” A ticking time bomb, he pointed out, would make a suspect only more unwilling to talk. “They know if they can simply hold out several hours, all the more glory—the ticking time bomb will go off!”

. . .

“In Iraq, I never saw pain produce intelligence,” [former Army interrogator Tony] Lagouranis told me. “I worked with someone who used waterboarding”—an interrogation method involving the repeated near-drowning of a suspect. “I used severe hypothermia, dogs, and sleep deprivation. I saw suspects after soldiers had gone into their homes and broken their bones, or made them sit on a Humvee’s hot exhaust pipes until they got third-degree burns. Nothing happened.” Some people, he said, “gave confessions. But they just told us what we already knew. It never opened up a stream of new information.” If anything, he said, “physical pain can strengthen the resolve to clam up.”

Lagouranis also detailed his Iraq war experiences in a book, and numerous media appearances. His life lesson was a hard one. He compromised his moral compass and put himself in legal jeopardy... for nothing.

In some of the discussion I've read of the poll, I think the wrong conclusion has been reached, correlating Christianity with this appalling ethical lapse. The poll, itself, says otherwise. The largest percentage of those opposed to all torture was among mainline Protestants. (31%) The defining factor seemed to be religious fervor, as indicated by church attendance. This, of course, skews the overall result towards Evangelicals, and it is among Christian Evangelicals that torture was indicated to be the most popular. How much of this has to do with Christian teaching and how much to do with the political leanings, is a key question. Personally, I think it may have a good deal to do with an attraction to fundamentalism in authoritiarian personalities, but that's pure conjecture.

Of course, it wouldn't be the first time religious fervor, grafted to imperial aspirations, was fueled by torture and false confessions.

It appears that the Franciscans participated in the witch trials in a supporting or facilitating function by gathering or manufacturing evidence such as for the Logroño witch tribunal (in Euskadi), for which they interrupted their preaching crusade to present a "dressed toad" and pots of "witches' salve" as evidence of witchcraft (Henningson p.345). They were deeply involved in spying out potential witches and reporting them to the authorities. The Franciscans even tortured women extracting false confessions such as the one done by the monk Fray Juan de Ladron. He took part in the witch-hunt in Alava as one of the Inquisition's special emissaries. Three women were reported by him after the priest at Larrea, Martin Lopez de Lazarraga, had tied them by the hands and neck, assisted by de Ladron, who then threatened to take the women to the Logroño showcase witch-trial if they did not confess. They did confess but later told Salazar what happened. Lazarraga had been appointed inquisitorial commissioner and put into the head of one of the women the idea of accusing six uncooperative locals priests of witchcraft. At Logroño many people were tortured into admitting anything the monks told them to say. One of the women, Mariquita de Atauri, felt so bad after denouncing so many innocent people under torture that she drowned herself in the river near her house.

Buy at AllPosters.com

Share |

Syriac Bible?

A possibly valuable Bible manuscript was retrieved from smugglers in Cyprus. It's age an authenticity remain questionable.

Authorities in northern Cyprus believe they have found an ancient version of the Bible written in Syriac, a dialect of the native language of Jesus.

. . .

Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic - the native language of Jesus - once spoken across much of the Middle East and Central Asia. It is used wherever there are Syrian Christians and still survives in the Syrian Orthodox Church in India.

Aramaic is still used in religious rituals of Maronite Christians in Cyprus.

"One very likely source (of the manuscript) could be the Tur-Abdin area of Turkey, where there is still a Syriac speaking community," Charlotte Roueche, Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies at King's College London told Reuters.

Share |

For Auld Lang Syne

Buy at AllPosters.com

New Year's Eve is probably my least favorite holiday. Something about the forced frivolity over the single tick of a clock. I've always felt tremendous pressure to have a lot of fun on New Year's, whether I've felt like it or not. I've spent huge sums of money, only to find myself sitting the corner of some bar, crying into my champagne. Why? Boredom. Boredom and the incredible sense of peer pressure to have mad, stupid fun. The best New Year's Eves I've ever spent have been quiet gatherings with family and friends, so that's how I'll be spending this one. If I'm lucky I won't even know when the ball drops. It will slip quietly away like any other moment. Time simply passes. That's it's nature.

I realized this morning that I had no idea how the tradition of celebrating New Year's Eve began. Nor, how it was determined that January 1st was designated the beginning of the year. Because understanding the underlying and forgotten myths that weave quietly through our traditions is my passion, I did a bit of googling. It's really kind of interesting. This, of course, pertains to New Years in our Gregorian calendar. The year has many different start dates around the world. But, we can thank Julius Caesar for placing our holiday in the bitter cold days following the solstice.

The Romans continued to observe the New Year in late March, but their calendar was continually meddled with by a number of emperors so that the calendar became out of synchronization with the sun. To set the calendar right, the Roman senate declared January 1st as the beginning of the New Year in 153 BC.

Tampering continued until Julius Caesar established the Julian calendar in 46 BC, once again establishing January 1st as the New Year. But in order to synchronize the calendar with the sun, Caesar had to let the previous year drag on for 445 days.

The first of January was dedicated by the Romans to their God Janus of Gates and Doors — a very old Italian god — commonly portrayed with 2 faces … one regarding what is behind and the other looking toward what lies ahead. Hence, Janus represents the reflection on the activities of an old year while looking forward to the new.

Buy at AllPosters.com

From a mythological standpoint, that at least makes sense, marking a metaphorical threshold into the new year.

From there, things got even more interesting.

Caesar celebrated the first January 1 New Year by ordering the violent routing of revolutionary Jewish forces in the Galilee. Eyewitnesses say blood flowed in the streets. In later years, Roman pagans observed the New Year by engaging in drunken orgies -- a ritual they believed constituted a personal re-enacting of the chaotic world that existed before the cosmos was ordered by the gods.

As Christianity spread, pagan holidays were either incorporated into the Christian calendar or abandoned altogether. By the early medieval period most of Christian Europe regarded Annunciation Day (March 25) as the beginning of the year. (According to Catholic tradition, Annunciation Day commemorates the angel Gabriel's announcement to Mary that she would be impregnated by G-d and conceive a son to be called Jesus.)

After William the Conqueror (AKA "William the Bastard" and "William of Normandy") became King of England on December 25, 1066, he decreed that the English return to the date established by the Roman pagans, January 1. This move ensured that the commemoration of Jesus' birthday (December 25) would align with William's coronation, and the commemoration of Jesus' circumcision (January 1) would start the new year - thus rooting the English and Christian calendars and his own Coronation). William's innovation was eventually rejected, and England rejoined the rest of the Christian world and returned to celebrating New Years Day on March 25.

So we're clear, under an ancient Christian calendar what we're actually celebrating is a Bris. The date became firmly solidified again under Pope Gregory XIII; he of the Gregorian calendar.

On New Years Day 1577 Pope Gregory XIII decreed that all Roman Jews, under pain of death, must listen attentively to the compulsory Catholic conversion sermon given in Roman synagogues after Friday night services. On Year Years Day 1578 Gregory signed into law a tax forcing Jews to pay for the support of a "House of Conversion" to convert Jews to Christianity. On Yew Years 1581 Gregory ordered his troops to confiscate all sacred literature from the Roman Jewish community. Thousands of Jews were murdered in the campaign.

Throughout the medieval and post-medieval periods, January 1 - supposedly the day on which Jesus' circumcision initiated the reign of Christianity and the death of Judaism - was reserved for anti-Jewish activities: synagogue and book burnings, public tortures, and simple murder.

Is it any wonder I hate this holiday?

Share |

Standing Still Sun

Buy at AllPosters.com

There's a really beautiful piece about the Winter Solstice, on The Huffington Post, that speaks to cosmic essence of its quiet darkness.

Dec. 21st, we enter the belly of the night.

Winter Solstice: We come to the portal that separates darkness from light. Standing in this arch of time where Earth takes a breath before facing us back towards the sun, we too, take a breath, turn inward, pause in this pregnant moment and let darkness reveal its gifts:

Winter Solstice: A time to look back at the year gone by, gather its lessons and put them in the stew of your life. Time to let the heat of your presence cook the stew. Render the lessons into the sweet nectar of wisdom. Then drink of it. One-small-sip-at-a-time.

Winter Solstice: A time to let the longest night of the year seduce you into stillness. Time to silence inner voices, listen to the beating of your own heart. Time to breathe slowly, become the breath. Linger here. The night is long...

Winter Solstice, by any other name, is the celebration of this celestial mystery, observed from time immemorial.

Long before the "war on Christmas," the early Christian Church waged its own war on Sol Invictus, and co-opted numerous pagan traditions that celebrated the mystery of the virgin darkness giving birth to the glorious sun.

Constantine may not have completely established the date of Christmas, but what is clear is that he had considerable influence in setting the date of December 25 as Christ's birthday. After Constantine's victory, in perhaps 320 or 353 C.E. the church decreed that December 25 would become the standard day of observance for the birth of Christ. However, this date had long been recognized in antiquity as the return of the sun, for in ancient times, before the establishment of the Gregorian calendar, December 25 was the date of the winter solstice, the point when the sun has reached its southern most trek below the equator, where it appears to stand still for three days. After that time it begins to move back toward the northern hemisphere, gaining strength with each passing day the "sun is born," or the "light comes into the world," or "the light of the world" is at hand. Christmas, during the early centuries, was the most variable of the Christian feast days, and was often confused with the Epiphany, and celebrated in the months of April and May. Pope Julius I, in the fourth century commanded a committee of bishops to establish the date of the nativity of Jesus. December 25 (the day of Sol Invictus, the invincible sun) was decided upon. Not coincidentally, that is the day when the "pagan world celebrated the birth of their Sun Gods-Egyptian Osiris, Greek Apollo and Bacchus, Chaldean Adonis, Persian Mithra-when the Zodiacal sign of Virgo (the sun is born of a virgin) rose on the horizon. Thus the ancient festival of the Winter Solstice, the pagan festival of the birth of the Sun, came to be adopted by the Christian Church as the nativity of Jesus, and was called Christmas" (Crosbie). The church found itself:

By the end of the fourth century the whole Christian world was celebrating Christmas on that day, with the exception of the Eastern churches, where it was celebrated on January 6. The choice of December 25 was probably influenced by the fact that on this day the Romans celebrated the Mithraic feast of the Sun-god (natalis solis invicti), and that the Saturnalia also came at this time(Collier's Encyclopedia, CD-ROM).

Sol Invictus was also a hybrid of many sun god myths; most notably that of Mithras (Mitras, Mithra).

The striking parallels to Christianity in Mithraism have long been pointed out, for Mithras was said to have been: born of a virgin birth, had twelve followers or disciples, was killed and resurrected, performed miracles, and was known as mankind's savior who was called the light of the world and his virgin birth occurred on December 25. Indeed, the resemblances are so striking in that all of the Christian mysteries were known nearly five hundred years before the birth of Christ that later church fathers claimed that Satan had created all of this prior to Christ's birth so as to confuse the laity.

Buy at AllPosters.com

Reverence for the reborn sun may be as old as religion itself, predating not only Christianity, but even recorded history. It stretches back at least as far as the Neolithic Era. Stonehenge, whose earliest artifacts date to Neolithic origins, is believed by many modern pagans to be a celestial observatory marking both the summer and winter solstices, although there is some archaeological evidence pointing to its being entirely dedicated to the Winter Solstice.

The latest archaeological findings add weight to growing evidence that our ancestors visited Stonehenge to celebrate the winter solstice.

Analysis of pigs's teeth found at Durrington Walls, a ceremonial site of wooden post circles near Stonehenge on the River Avon, has shown that most pigs were less than a year old when slaughtered.

Dr Umburto Albarella, an animal bone expert at the University of Sheffield's archaeology department, which is studying monuments around Stonehenge, said pigs in the Neolithic period were born in spring and were an early form of domestic pig that farrowed once a year. The existence of large numbers of bones from pigs slaughtered in December or January supports the view that our Neolithic ancestors took part in a winter solstice festival.

Buy at AllPosters.com

Older still is the amazing structure at Newgrange in Ireland, with an internal passageway oriented toward the sun at Winter Solstice.

At Newgrange, in Brugh-na-Boyne, County Meath, in eastern Ireland. It is perhaps the most famous of the 250 passage tombs in Ireland. It covers an area of one acre, and has an internal passage that is almost 60 feet (19 m) long. The tomb has been dated at about 3,200 BCE; it is one of the oldest structures in the world -- and the roof still doesn't leak after 5,200 years! Above the entrance way is a stone "roof box" that allows the light from the sun to penetrate to the back of the cairn at sunrise on and near the winter solstice. The horizontal dimension of the box matches the width of the sun as viewed from the back of the passage. In the years since the tomb was constructed by Neolithic farmers, the Earth's tilt on its axis has changed from about 24 to about 23? degrees now. As a result, the sun rises about two solar diameters farther south today. The monument is surrounded by a circle of standing stones that were added later during the Bronze Age.

Buy at AllPosters.com

When we observe this sacred pause in the sun's transit in this timeless holiday, we participate in a ritual that may be as old as humanity itself.

"Shall we liken Christmas to the web in a loom? There are many weavers, who work into the pattern the experience of their lives. When one generation goes, another comes to take up the weft where it has been dropped. The pattern changes as the mind changes, yet never begins quite anew. At first, we are not sure that we discern the pattern, but at last we see that, unknown to the weavers themselves, something has taken shape before our eyes, and that they have made something very beautiful, something which compels our understanding."

~ Earl W. Count, 4000 Years of Christmas

Share |

The Biblical Case for Gay Marriage

Buy at AllPosters.com

The great bigots exodus from the Episcopal Church continues, with the blessing of church primates.

Five Anglican archbishops have backed the introduction of a new Anglican province in North America, a significant, though unsurprising boost for the conservative-led initiative.

"We fully support this development with our prayer and blessing," said the archbishops, who are called primates because they lead regional branches of the worldwide Anglican Communion. "It demonstrates the determination of these faithful Christians to remain authentic Anglicans."

Last Wednesday (Dec. 3), a group of conservative dissidents announced that they were starting a branch of the Anglican Communion called the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). The group claims 100,000 members, including most of four dioceses that have split with the Episcopal Church, the U.S. branch of the communion, in the last year.

. . .

In recent years, both the U.S. and Canadian churches have separately moved leftward on sexual orientation issues, including the election of a gay man as bishop of New Hampshire in 2003 and the approval of same-sex blessings in some dioceses.

Well, go with God, as they say. But, by what authority do conservative Anglicans call these recent moves towards tolerance, a "false gospel." The Bible does say, after all, that male/male relations are an "abomination." Seems pretty straightforward. But, those who hold that tenant dear are pretty inevitably treating scripture as an à la carte menu, as much as anyone. Most of them don't even pass the shellfish test; let alone pork. The Old Testament wanders into such absurdities as to be impossible to adapt to modern life.

I quote, and not for the first time, Joseph Campbell:

[The Bible is] the most over-advertised book in the world. It's very pretentious to claim it to be the word of God, or accept it as such and perpetuate this tribal mythology, justifying all kinds of violence to people who are not members of the tribe.

The thing I see about the Bible that's unfortunate is that it's a tribally circumscribed mythology. It deals with a certain people at a certain time. The Christians magnified it to include them. It then turns this society against all others, whereas the condition of the world today is that this particular society that's presented in the Bible isn't even the most important. This thing is like a dead weight. It's pulling us back because it belongs to an earlier period. We can't break loose and move into a modern theology.

One of the great promises of mythology is, with what social group do you identify? How about the planet? To say that the members of this particular social group are the elite of God's world is a good way to keep that group together, but look at the consequences! I think that what might be called the sanctified chauvinism of the Bible is one of the curses of the planet today.

In the new issue of Newsweek, Lisa Miller takes on the challenge of examining the Biblical perspectives on marriage and concludes that it actually supports the idea of gay marriage. She points out that a traditional Biblical conception of marriage would be rejected today by church and state alike.

Let's try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at their word and define marriage as the Bible does. Shall we look to Abraham, the great patriarch, who slept with his servant when he discovered his beloved wife Sarah was infertile? Or to Jacob, who fathered children with four different women (two sisters and their servants)? Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon and the kings of Judah and Israel—all these fathers and heroes were polygamists. The New Testament model of marriage is hardly better. Jesus himself was single and preached an indifference to earthly attachments—especially family. The apostle Paul (also single) regarded marriage as an act of last resort for those unable to contain their animal lust. "It is better to marry than to burn with passion," says the apostle, in one of the most lukewarm endorsements of a treasured institution ever uttered. Would any contemporary heterosexual married couple—who likely woke up on their wedding day harboring some optimistic and newfangled ideas about gender equality and romantic love—turn to the Bible as a how-to script?

So, probably, the most scripturally sound marriage model is still being practiced by splinter groups of the Mormon Church, who cleave to their practice of polygamy against all odds. The modern-day Church of Latter Day Saints have thoroughly disowned these dissidents and stopped the practice of polygamy, even as they have led the fight against gay marriage. Am I the only one who sees a delicious irony in their massive financial and political support for Proposition 8, in California?

Miller's Biblical argument for gay marriage continues:

First, while the Bible and Jesus say many important things about love and family, neither explicitly defines marriage as between one man and one woman. And second, as the examples above illustrate, no sensible modern person wants marriage—theirs or anyone else's —to look in its particulars anything like what the Bible describes. "Marriage" in America refers to two separate things, a religious institution and a civil one, though it is most often enacted as a messy conflation of the two. As a civil institution, marriage offers practical benefits to both partners: contractual rights having to do with taxes; insurance; the care and custody of children; visitation rights; and inheritance. As a religious institution, marriage offers something else: a commitment of both partners before God to love, honor and cherish each other—in sickness and in health, for richer and poorer—in accordance with God's will. In a religious marriage, two people promise to take care of each other, profoundly, the way they believe God cares for them. Biblical literalists will disagree, but the Bible is a living document, powerful for more than 2,000 years because its truths speak to us even as we change through history. In that light, Scripture gives us no good reason why gays and lesbians should not be (civilly and religiously) married—and a number of excellent reasons why they should.

So, as ever, it comes down to a choice between focusing on the more punitive and archaic scriptures or those that foster love, community, and generosity. Or as Paul wrote, in one of his more inspired moments:

1. If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

2. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.

3. And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

4. Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant,

5. does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered,

6. does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;

7. bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8. Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away.

9. For we know in part and we prophesy in part;

10. but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away.

11. When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.

12. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.

13. But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.

-- 1st Corinthians 13

It would seem that as a society, overall, we are moving towards the more compassionate view on gay marriage. According to Newsweek's recent polling, that's the way we're trending. They find that 39 percent now support the idea of gay marriage, up from 33 percent in 2004. Over half the country, 55 percent now support some type of civil union. The numbers only increase when polling addresses specific protections that should be afforded to couples.

When it comes to according legal rights in specific areas to gays, the public is even more supportive. Seventy-four percent back inheritance rights for gay domestic partners (compared to 60 percent in 2004), 73 percent approve of extending health insurance and other employee benefits to them (compared to 60 percent in 2004), 67 percent favor granting them Social Security benefits (compared to 55 percent in 2004) and 86 percent support hospital visitation rights (a question that wasn't asked four years ago). In other areas, too, respondents appeared increasingly tolerant. Fifty-three percent favor gay adoption rights (8 points more than in 2004), and 66 percent believe gays should be able to serve openly in the military (6 points more than in 2004).

Look, in particular, at the hospital visitation statistics. When we think of an illness coming between two loving partners -- that a hospital could actually deny a chosen life partner access to their beloved in a time of health crisis -- the vast majority of us are rightly disturbed at the heartlessness of it. It offends our inherent empathy, to a degree that overrides our bigotry. Isn't that the kind of love and compassion the church should encourage? What would Jesus do?

Martin Sheen breathes new life
into the famous letter to Dr. Laura
on "The West Wing."

Share |