Sadly, the video may be a parody, but the underlying truth of Islamic religious cleansing that it illustrates is no parody at all in many parts of the world. This Christmas, how about a thought for the Christians facing it in the Palestinian Territories, Iraq, Indonesia, Nigeria, etc.
With all of the expected bile et. al. inherent in a national election campaign, I thought this was a fine story:
"When Sen. John McCain accepted the minister's public endorsement in late February, Donohue asked McCain to reject it, as he had been aware of what he considered anti-Catholicism in Hagee's writing for several years. The McCain campaign's response did not satisfy Donohue. For seven straight days, Donohue issued press releases pressuring the McCain campaign to renounce Hagee. The story was picked up by the national media. By the time McCain made a statement rejecting Hagee's anti-Catholicism, John Hagee's reputation was in tatters.
In the middle of the controversy, I received a call from Ralph Reed, who was growing concerned about the impact of Donohue's charges against his friend Hagee. "John Hagee is a good man," he told me. "I want you to talk to John and then talk to Bill." As I remember that initial phone call, I am struck by Reed's ability to imagine the possibility of reconciliation between the two men. When I agreed to make the call, I didn't think there was any chance for a truce -- there was just too much heat."
It made for an interesting juxtaposition with a second insidecatholic.com story, which discussed the required divide between theology and politics. That article includes some timely thoughts from Cardinal Ratzinger/ Pope Benedict, and also quotes the Catholic Monsignor Gilbey:
"We are not led to undo the work of creation or to rectify the Fall. The duty of the Christian is not to leave the world a better place. His duty is to leave this world a better man."
The Jewish approach differs somewhat, but the position explained in the article is more nuanced than this quote, and understanding those nuances is valuable to anyone grappling with these issues.
By random chance, on Friday I picked up a used copy of Hume's "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion" at the awesome renaissance Bookshop at the Milwaukee Airport.
I was led there by Susan Nieman's "Evil in Modern Thought," about which I may try and write later. That was a challenging book...
And either I'm much smarter now and so more aware of the deep subtleties in books like this, or a whole lot dumber than I was in college when they were easy to read.
At right, "The Three Crosses," by Rembrandt
Sometime on the Friday after Passover, almost 2,000 years ago, Roman soldiers, acting on orders of Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea, took Jesus of Nazareth to a low hill outside Jerusalem and crucified him to death. As crucifixion deaths went, Jesus' death came pretty quickly, within a few hours. It was not unusual for victims to linger on the cross for days.
There were two criminals also crucified alongside Jesus. Because it was Passover week, emotions ran high among the Jews who had made pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the holy observances. There were many thousands of pilgrims there, some historians say more than 100,000. At sunset on Fridays the Jewish Sabbath began then as now, and even hardened Roman soldiers were uneasy about the execution of these men continuing when the Sabbath began during this particular week. So they decided to break the victims' legs in order to make quick their suffocation to death. Crucifixion is, after all, a form of hanging, killing by suffocation. With their legs broken, the victims could not push up to take a breath and so would die a quick, though brutal death ("excruciating" derives from the same root as "crucifixion," and it is no accidental relationship).
But when they came to Jesus to break his legs, they discovered he had already died. Another soldier, probably more experienced and thus leaving nothing to chance, took his long spear and plunged it into Jesus' side, almost certainly penetrating his heart, since that would have been the whole point of spearing him to begin with.
Before sundown, the Romans permitted some of Jesus' friends to retrieve his body and entomb it.
Read the rest at Sense of Events.
Take a look at this photo. Care to guess what it is?
OK, guessing over. It's from Michael Yon's recent dispatch:
"Today, Muslims mostly filled the front pews of St John’s [church]. Muslims who want their Christian friends and neighbors to come home. The Christians who might see these photos likely will recognize their friends here. The Muslims in this neighborhood worry that other people will take the homes of their Christian neighbors, and that the Christians will never come back. And so they came to St John’s today in force, and they showed their faces, and they said, "Come back to Iraq. Come home." They wanted the cameras to catch it. They wanted to spread the word: Come home. Muslims keep telling me to get it on the news. "Tell the Christians to come home to their country Iraq."
I've just returned from three days of the Bishop's Convocation of the Tennessee and Memphis Conferences of the United Methodist Church. The theme of the convocation was "Restoring Methodism." I'll not address the content of the convocation in this post except to note that the presenters, Professors James and Molly Scott, offered excellent ideas and processes for a potential restoration, if one is to be done. Their book and CD can be found here.
However, despite my enthusiasm for their ideas, I am pessimistic that anything can be done to reverse the decades-long downward trend in the number of people belonging to the UMC in the United States. (The UMC is a worldwide denomination and is growing outside the US.) In 1968 there were almost 13 million UMs; now there are about 8 million. Of these, we were told, the average age is 60. They didn't say what the median age is, but I expect it's higher. However, for this post I'll assume that the median age and the average age are about the same (as they are for UM's clergy). The median age for all Americans is 36.4 years (Census tables here).
What the convocation ignored was what the graying of the denomination portends. Once the mention was made of UMs' ages, the subject was dropped and we moved on to discussing how to fix the machinery of the denomination as a whole.
Russia Today carried a story that I liked a lot:
"An amateur astronomer from the Russian Republic of Adygea has built his own planetarium out of locally available materials. Victor Matyushin, a Baptist priest, explains the structure of the universe to his visitors, including from a religious point of view.... When the lights go off, the mystery of space unfolds. Using home-made projection devices, Matyushin shows his visitors Saturn and its rings, the sun and the stars. He says some guests are so fascinated that they come back several times. The place is open to everyone and free for all.... At 76, Viktor is full of hope that someday he’ll be able to save money for modern astronomy equipment. So he can share with his guests - young and old - even more secrets of the universe."
A religious person who also has a passion for science? That's not hard to believe at all. Civilization needs more of them.
Combat and the problem of forgiveness
For someone who professes to follow Jesus Christ, or at least follow his teachings, the subject of forgiveness is probably one of the most vexing. Jesus taught plainly that his followers are obligated to forgive, for example, “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Mt. 6:14-15).
If, in combat, an enemy takes the life of your best friend, or blows off your leg, and if you think of yourself as a disciple of Jesus Christ, are you required to forgive that enemy? Is a Christian soldier required by the commandments of Christ to forgive those who have sought to kill him, or who have killed or wounded his comrades?
More thoughts about this over at www.donaldsensing.com
Update: See also, "Forgiveness, Justice and Hate," by Joe Katzman (August 2003) , who presents some Jewish perspectives.
Sunday night's Discovery Channel show, "The Lost Tomb of Jesus," has disappeared from serious consideration faster than the Iraq Study Group's report did. If you wish to read my takedown, here a link to my own post at donaldsensing.com:
Archeo-porn! Conspiracy Theory! Hallelujah!
In brief, the entire thesis of the show is a conspiracy theory. And like most such theories, it requires it adherents to dismiss historical facts and replace them with enormous conjecture. In this case, the entire thesis rests on completely dismissing Jesus as a first-century Jewish religious figure and recharacterizing him as an anti-Roman revolutionary. That was a claim made explicity on the show. But there is absolutely no evidence for it and no less a figure than Pontius Pilate himself directly contradicted the notion.
And I'd sure like to know how this scene relates to the rest of the show at all; in fact it is more evidence that this show was a decidedly unserious work.
Ya'll 'scuse me while I snore though James Cameron's latest epic, ""The Lost Tomb of Jesus," which he claims will prove that Jesus of Nazareth - yes, that Jesus - was buried in a tomb in Jerusalem far from where church historians say he was, stayed there, and that a stone ossuary in the tomb, discovered in 1980, once held Jesus' bones. He also claims other ossuaries found in the tomb once held the bones of Mary, Jesus' mother, Mary Magdalene, assumed to be Jesus' wife, and Judah, son of Jesus.
Snooooooze.....
It's the latest crisis of the year for Christianity, right on time: not long before Easter.
HWGA - Here We Go Again. They've even dragged out John Dominic Crossan, ulta-left Bible scholar, a founder of the fiercely anti-Scripture Jesus Seminar. He's been claiming for many years that the foundational claim of Christianity, the resurrection of Jesus, is hokum. He can be relied on by "documentarians" to reinforce anything they want to knock down the edifice.
Nuff of all that here - read the rest at DonaldSensing.com: "The Christian street won't stand for it! Oh, wait, uh, yes it will. . . ."
As you may imagine, December is a pretty busy time for ministers, so my posting will be light for the next three weeks or so. In the spirit of the season, I've posted a Christmas quiz at my own site. I'll post answers tomorrow. There are no trick questions. Have fun, and don't go googling the answers until after you've tried to answer them all!
See Islamic Council of Victoria director Waleed Aly:
"Here, the vociferous protests came from people who, quite clearly, have not bothered to read Benedict's speech. Worse, some (like al-Hilali and Ameer Ali) themselves regularly complain of being quoted incorrectly and out of context. Had such critics done their homework, they would have noted Benedict's description of Manuel II's "startling brusqueness". Manuel's point was that violent doctrine could not come from God because missionary violence is contrary to rationality. Benedict's point was a subtle one: that Manuel draws a positive link between religious truth and reason. This was the central theme of the Pope's address. He was silent on Manuel's attitude to Islam because it was beside the point he was making."
The rest is also worth reading, and I especially liked his use of the phrase "overblown response of surreal imbecility"; surely a keeper for future situations of all kinds. But his first 2 paragraphs nailed it, echoing Rev. Sensing's point yesterday before making his own:
