Let's Focus on Things that Matter

I am no fan of President Obama. I cannot support his deathworks policies.

But let's go easy on his sense of humor.

Here's where people said he was making fun of Jessica Simpson:



The girl is on the cover of a national magazine publicizing how she used to be fatter. What Obama said is pretty mild...and amusing.

Now some rail against him for making fun of the Special Olympics. Here's what happened on the Tonight Show:



Give the man a break, please. He was making fun of himself and everyone who was buttering him for bowling a 129.

Until he does something like this, he's not making fun of anyone (it begins in a familiar fashion, then goes off the tracks at 0:13)

Welcome, our Conquering Liberal Overlords!

The Connecticut Legislature is debating a bill that would madate Roman Catholic Churches be administered by an elected lay board, upon which the pastor and his bishop would have no vote. Obviously, many Catholics are up-in-arms, as it would redefine Catholicism. An editorial in The Advocate notes,

"Free exercise" of religion includes the way a Church chooses to organize. Strip the bishops and priests of their role in financial matters and their message becomes subject to the approval of those holding the purse.

Historically, "under trustee control, not only was pastoral authority practically eliminated, but the Church's message was utterly dependent upon the congregation's cultural and political condition."

The writer grants that many protestant churches have chosen such an arrangement. Nevertheless, the First Amendment grants churches the right to choose.

There are a multitude of directions this can go. I may pursue some of them in the days to come. Here is one:

Patrick Archbold at Creative Minority Report writes,

Some have written, what is the big deal? It is not likely to pass. It is a big deal, passage or not. This is how fictional rights are created and real rights eliminated. First is always the trial balloon. It is destined for failure, but passage is not the intent. The intent is to bring it into the conversation. The intent is to start a trend in other states with lawmakers proposing similar statutes, all under the guise of protecting regular folks. Then, after you have heard about it several times, it doesn't seem like a big deal anymore. Then maybe, just maybe, it passes somewhere. Then the gates will be opened and religious liberty in this country is over.

It reminds me of the proverb that error first demands toleration, then equality, lastly superiority. The slippery slope. How to boil a frog.

We see the same in every arena: politics, church, home. The trial balloon, the testing of boundaries, followed by further discussion and deliberations, and finally new laws or rights to protect us. The ELCA has been at this approach regarding homosexual unions for a decade or more. It looks like they will finally get their prize in allowing ministers to shack up with whatever they wish, as long as it's not serial or unseemly.

Beware the exploratory committee. Make sure you know what and where they are exploring. And remember, they will be back.

Death and Capitalism

From Second Terrace:

...the Christian Right complains about abortion, the destruction of embryos, hyper-socialism, termination of the aged and disabled, and the chic redefinition of aberrant sexual proclivity as conferring "minority" status – these are all issues about which I wholeheartedly agree with my right-wing heterodox friends.

But they are not-so-strangely silent, in their insouciance, about encroaching totalitarianism, consumerism, war-as-aggrandizement, environmental rapine, and hyper-capitalism: these concerns are just as Biblical, and should be just as salient -- even in such a restricted view thatsola scripturaallows.

You would be hard pressed to find a fundamentalist Christian who will say a critical word about capitalism, given their multi-generational catechism that defines the Beast as a red communist for sure. If you turn the radio dial enough, late at night (or the url-bar), you can still hear the static of cheap polyester declaiming Gog and Magog at the Kremlin.

Rhetorics in the Second Grade

On the way to school several days ago, my daughter asked me who I was voting for. I told her McCain. She asked why I was not voting for Obama. I tried to tell her, in 2nd grade terms, that despite good qualities in Obama, and despite some of the positions of his party, that I cannot in good conscience vote for someone who is in favor of abortion. I don't like it, but I am a single-issue voter for now.

I had to explain abortion to her.

The next day she told my wife and I, "Grace at school wanted to vote for Obama, but I asked her, 'Grace, don't you love babies?' She said she did. Then I said, 'Well, Obama thinks killing babies is good. You don't want to vote for a baby killer, do you?' And guess what? She's not voting for Obama anymore!"

That killed me, in her Seven-year-old earnestness: "Don't you love babies?"

I had to re-explain to her that Obama himself is not a murderer. That Obama doesn't actually do this himself, and that "baby killer" is not the most helpful way of describing him.

But what a rhetorician!

Pray for America. Vote your conscience. God Bless America.

Is It Paranoia if They Are out to Get You?

"What if, in a society characterized by a Goldilocks economy, we can't find anything to worry about? What if we somehow go looking for things to fear, things that will destroy this economy, things that will reach every corner of government, every
enterprise, every man, woman, and child?" --Special Agent Fox Mulder

The Faith of Barack Obama: A Review

Thanks to Mr. Michael Hyatt, President and CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, I received a copy of The Faith of Barack Obamaby Stephen Mansfield on the promise to write a review.

It's a slim book--only 147 pages plus endnotes. It's divided into six chapters, the first is biographical, outlining Obama's childhood and discussing the "Is Obama really a Muslim" question. Mansfield makes a presuasive argument that the years Obama spent in Indonesia were not formative for his religious faith. On the contrary, Mansfield, relying on Obama's books, The Audacity of Hope and Dreams from My Father, makes a convincing case that Obama was raised respecting religion without actually having a faith of his own (p. 16). The following chapters deal with Obama's connection to Trinity in Chicago (Chapter 2); his expression of the black liberation theology in his books and speeches (Chapter 3); a slight chapter entitled "Altars of State" (the endnotes call this chapter "Our Civic Religion"), outlining how religion plays out in past and present presidential politics, a throw-away chapter about the faith of Hillary Clinton, John McCain and President Bush, and a concluding chapter which essentially repeats points made above.

All this is to say, while Mansfield's book is well-written and an easy read it is thin. The author does convincingly demonstrate that Obama is no "Muslim Manchurian Candidate." But what comes rapidly to the fore is that Obama's faith itself is slight, is thin, is little more than a tinge of liberal Protestantism seasoned with the black church experience. Obama doesn't seem to believe in doctrine. His prayer life is depicted more as interior dialogue with himself rather than seeking communion or conversation with God. Mansfield harps on Obama's insistence that doubt plays a large part in religious experience and punctuates with quotes from the candidate that equate all major religions. It's no wonder the book is short and thin on substantive analysis: there's little there to analyse.

Toward the end of the book, Mansfield seems to grasp this, casting the this election in larger terms. He writes of the immense role religion has played in public life and policy for the past few election cycles, and argues it is at its peak now. Thus the faith that Obama has of immense importance. Mansfield that the electorate has "before them an opportunity that may, if they choose, be embraced as the path to a new history. It is an opportunity to heal, to take the historic wounds and generational conflicts that political debates are shoving to the fore and respond them in the spirit of the great healers, in the manner of those who whish to fashion a future rather [sic] a short-term political victory.... Indeed, it may well prove that this is the longer-term importance of this thrashing time in our history, just as it may well prove that this is the more important meaning of Barack Obama's presence in our history at this moment." (p. 132, 133).

But removing the overblown conclusion, the inclusion of nearly an entire chapter on the history of Rev. Wright's church and content of his sermons, the entire chapter dedicated to the faith of the other presidential contenders (at the time it was written), and what you have is a lengthy magazine article. Maybe a two-parter, but an article nonetheless. Again, it's not the author's fault so much as it is the subject. The book was bound to be written and Mansfield's approach and prose is fine. What's lacking is the subject.

Why I Don't Talk Economics

I feel somehow responsible for posting on the economic brouhaha that transpired last week while I was muddling through with a sinus and ear infection. As they say, America's economy was about to collapse.

I was vaguely unconcerned. I have virtually no investments. Oklahoma's economy is doing quite well. Even my town's economy is not too shabby, though we could certainly use more business development.

But everything's connected. I know that. Severe trouble would have to (will?) hit here too. And I realized today that the money I do have socked away to pay taxes with was in danger last week, since money market valuations briefly fell below $1--the standard.

My thoughts:

The king was in his counting house
counting out his money,
The queen was in the parlour
eating bread and honey

The maid was in the garden
hanging out the clothes,
When down came a blackbird
and pecked off her nose!

For Some, Politics Is Religion

Agree or disagree, but this guy's onto something:

If there is one thing that can be said of most democratic operatives, activists, and seriously interested groupies, it is that politics is for them religion. When they involve themselves in more traditional religious activities, it is usually for the sake of convenience and image. Thus the Annointed One’s [Obama's] enthronement ceremony involving old pagan forms was simply a more honest and appropriate ritual than that which we have seen before. Hats off to them. I mean, if you are going to rigidly support the state sanctioned killing of millions of babies, at least provide some decent ritual befitting of all that blood. Such is much more anthropologically sound.
The Ochlophobist

You Should Know Who You Vote For

My personal political statements on my personal blog (alles klar, IRS?):

Barak Obama, discussing the "burden" or trying to save the life of a baby who was born during a failed abortion, said,

"...and that essentially adding an additional doctor who then has to be called in an emergency situation to come in and make these assessments is really designed simply to burden the original decision of the woman and the physician to induce labor and perform an abortion." (unofficial transcript of Barack Obama on the Born Alive Infants Protection Act)

Listen to it here. In his own words.

What's he saying? That a woman, seeking to kill her unborn and failing, the baby coming out of her womb alive is "burdened" by an additional doctor assessing the baby (making sure it is alive) and whisking the baby away to be treated as a human baby. Or an animal, for that matter.

The alternative to trying to save the baby's life is to honor the mother's wishes and let the baby die outside the womb.

This is infanticide and evil.

Think McCain is too liberal? Don't like his Iraq policy? Think he's too old? That we need a new party in there for whatever reason? Don't want to vote for anybody?

Whatever his faults, he does not advocate the murder of babies born alive.

Think about this on election day. Think about what your non-vote or vote against would mean.

Thanks...and my children thank you too.

HT: Creative Minority Report and And Sometimes Tea

Obama's Creepy Soeteriology

Which is a fancy way of saying, "Some people think B. Hussein Obama is a kind of Messiah." Or The Messiah. Or a New Age "Lightbringer." Most of these people are kooks. This article addresses the latest developments. What is really creepy is how Obama himself uses messianic language in his speeches.

I've nothing more substantive to write. It simply gives me the willies.