Is The Era of Religion in Politics Over? According to Jim Wallis, "Yes."

Jim Wallis was on "The Daily Show" recently and in the interview, he declared that the era of religion in politics is over:

Click here for the clip

Like it or not, Americans, as a whole, are religious. But as we've seen throughout history, and especially in the last few years, when you mix religion and politics, the result is usually tragedy. Politics is the rule of law over the people. Religion is the rule of God over man. But because God didn't make it 100% clear exactly what he wanted, differing interpretations, each of which is convinced of its own veracity, can lead to a great deal of strife. Your god may believe that I shouldn't be allowed to marry someone of the same sex, but my god does not. Your god may believe that I should be able determine what happens within my own body, but my god does not. And the beat goes on...

The religious right was the reason why John Kerry lost the election in 2004. It's why Huckabee won the caucus in Iowa. It's part of the reason why every single president we've ever had has been a believer, and will be for the foreseeable future.

So is the period of religion in politics over yet? I don't think so. But my hope is that the era of James Dobson and Pat Robertson is soon coming to a close, that Christian demogogy will soon be trumped by Christian compassion and progressivism. For the sake of our country, I pray it.

CNN Chooses Its Own Election Winner By Choosing Candidate Headshots

Sorry guys, that Supreme Court post I promised is forthcoming, but in the meantime, thought I'd point out something I didn't see anywhere else.

I was checking out CNN's political coverage on its site (Didn't you hear? They have the best political team on television) on the night of the Michigan primary and I noticed that the candidates headshots were chosen in a very interesting way:


Clinton, Obama, and Edwards start cheery at the top, but by the time you get to Gravel, not only are you completely turned off, you're afraid for your life. Certainly this doesn't represent proof that CNN has a bias or preference towards certain candidates, although that phenomenon has been well documented in the past. But anyone that looks at this page is going to come away with a more favorable impression of Obama than of Dodd.

If CNN is so fair and impartial, why did they have to make the lesser candidates so completely unappealing and frightening?

News roundup

(Photo by me!)

Hey guys,

Sorry it's been quiet around here lately...I usually get off at least one substantial post per week but that hasn't happened recently just due to life circumstances. I will try to get back on track this weekend and next week. In the meantime, there's been a TON of stuff happening recently all over the news, much of it relating to religion. Here are some links for your pleasure:

More Evangelicals Concluding that God Is Green - After years of believing that the world is ours to do what we want and that "The Rapture is going to come any day now, so who the heck cares how much we pollute?", some Evangelicals are finally waking up to the notion that yes, our children might be the ones that have to shoulder the consequences of the disastrous violence we've inflicted upon the environment. About time.

Pat Robertson Back Giuliani - What?! Ultra-conservative Robertson backs a presidential candidate who has had three wives (one of which was his second cousin), who cross-dresses on occasion and is a supporter of gay and abortion rights?

It Will Take Us at least a Generation to Recover from the Bush administration - From the war to the disastrous tax cuts, this administration will leave a legacy that has an impact in all the wrong places. I fear for my children and their children if our next president doesn't recognize the problems and turn things around.

Obama Supporters Tried to Keep Stephen Colbert Off the Ballot - Because we could all afford to laugh a little less in this horrendous political climate, am I right guys? Seriously though, their actions were understandable but completely unnecessary.


That is plenty of reading for now. If you like this type of thing, maybe I'll try to do one of these a week, plus a post. Let me know, and thanks for reading!

Welcome To The Turning of the Tide

Alternet reports on a new study by the Barna group:

A study released last week by the Barna Group, a reputable Evangelical research and polling firm, found that under-30s -- both Christian and non-Christian -- are strikingly more critical of Christianity than their peers were just a decade ago. According to the summary report, Barna pollster David Kinnaman found that the opinions of non-Christians, in particular, had slid like a rock in that time frame. Ten years ago, "the vast majority" of non-Christians had generally favorable views of Christianity. Now, that number stands at just 16%. When asked specifically about Evangelicals, the number are even worse: only 3% of non-Christian Millennials have positive associations with Evangelicals. Among the Boomers, it's eight times higher.

What you reap is what you sow; we are finally beginning to see the deleterious effects of the Christian Right's misguided and self-defeating war on homosexuality. The anti-gay movement is not something that Jesus fought for, and it's probably something that Jesus would have fought against.

Addicted with power, conservatives like Dobson and Falwell knew they could use Christian's visceral homophobia as a way to galvanize a political movement. But what they failed to see, and what we're finally beginning to see now, is that such a movement was not sustainable in the face of progressive politics and culture, and that ultimately, a plan like this would lessen, not strengthen, the Christian political movement.

Young Evangelical Christians are the future face of the movement. I'm one of them. And we're all sick and fed up with what we see. It's time for a politics of peace, not a politics of hate. It's time for a change. Welcome to the turning of the tide.

Fundamentalist Mormonism = Worse than Fundamentalist Christianity?

(From Flickr user paulsid, via CC)

Sorry for the lack of updates recently folks. Work has been destroying me, but I had a window tonight to write some, so here I am.

Several stories have surfaced in the news recently that paint a disturbing portrait of fundamentalist Mormonism. In the New York Times, there was a heartbreaking story of boys cast out of Warren Jeffs' polygamist camp:

When his parents discovered his secret stash of DVDs, including the “Die Hard” series and comedies, they burned them and gave him an ultimatum. Stop watching movies, they said, or leave the family and church for good. With television and the Internet also banned as wicked, along with short-sleeve shirts — a sign of immodesty — and staring at girls, let alone dating them, Woodrow made the wrenching decision to go. And so 10 months ago, with only a seventh-grade education and a suitcase of clothes, he was thrown into an unfamiliar world he had been taught to fear.

Then, on CNN today, this story from the flipside, of a girl who fled because she feared being promised to a stranger:

Sara Hammon saw some of her sisters pulled out of school to be married to men they didn't know. She dreaded a similar fate. And so, she ran away from home before she was old enough to drive legally. She left behind 19 mothers, 74 siblings, and a father she says could never remember her name, even though he repeatedly molested her. And, she left behind a culture she says was oppressive for young women.

Fundamentalism presents a great challenge to modernity. It claims to know the truth in a world of relativism. It insists on separating itself from the rest of society. And ultimately, it is viewed with disdain by mass-culture as oppressive and backwards. What's interesting is that this is true of Fundamentalist Christianity as well as Fundamentalist Mormonism.

I think it's too easy for Christians to read these stories and look down on Mormons. It's easy for Christians to think to ourselves, "Well, they obviously have no idea what the hell they're talking about." But in reality, Fundamentalist Christianity also takes the Christian message and basically destroys it, stripping away grace and putting in its place wrath. That's not the message of Jesus Christ.

Jesus said we should be in and not of the world. Too many people forget the first part.

High Point Church Finds Out War Vet Is Gay, Cancels Memorial, Gets Flayed By the Media

I'm not one to defend churches very often, but today a line has to be drawn. On the front page of Reddit Saturday morning was this story about High Point Church:

A megachurch canceled a memorial service for a Navy veteran 24 hours before it was to start because the deceased was gay. Officials at the nondenominational High Point Church knew that Cecil Howard Sinclair was gay when they offered to host his service, said his sister, Kathleen Wright. But after his obituary listed his life partner as one of his survivors, she said, it was called off.

So at first I'm reading this, and I'm thinking "Terrible! Yet another example of Christian intolerance laid out for all the world to see. How awful an example this High Point Church has set for everyone."

But look closer.

The church’s pastor, the Rev. Gary Simons, said no one knew Sinclair, who was not a church member, was gay until the day before the Thursday service, when staff members putting together his video tribute saw pictures of men “engaging in clear affection, kissing and embracing.”

Simons said the decision had nothing to do with the obituary. He said the church offered to pay for another site for the service, made the video and provided food for more than 100 relatives and friends.

In other words , the church went above and beyond to call of duty (no pun intended) to provide services for the funeral of this person who was not a church member. All they asked for was that the funeral not take place on the church. For their kindness and their beliefs, they get a flaying from the media.

His sister, Kathleen Wright, had the following inflammatory remarks to say about the situation:

“It’s a slap in the face. It’s like, ’Oh, we’re sorry he died, but he’s gay so we can’t help you,”’ she said Friday

Liberals are often confused at why conservative Christians think believe themselves to be victimized when the Republicans have ruled for so long. One answer? Ridiculous articles like this. All this church wanted to do was to advocate its beliefs in the privacy of its own congregation. It treated the deceased veteran with care and respect, but declined to host the funeral. Its only crime was defending and sticking by its own ethics. The Associated Press and Kathleen Wright should be ashamed of themselves.

Also, I say this completely unironically: You never hear about the Christian churches that DO graciously host funerals for gay people. Only the ones that cancel them. The media has all sorts of biases but portraying the church in a positive light is not one of them.

***
Related articles:

The Romeo and Juliet Effect

Premarital Sex: Where Christians Get It Wrong

More Thoughts on Abortion

***

God DOESN'T Hate Fags, Fred Phelps. He Really Doesn't

I can't believe I've written this many blog posts without giving a shoutout to Fred Phelps. According to the Minnesota Monitor:

The Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., plans to stage protests at funerals of victims of the 35W bridge collapse to state that God made the bridge fall because he hates America, and especially Minnesota, because of its tolerance of homosexuality.

Here's the thing: Fred Phelps isn't completely useless as a human being. In fact, I believe he contributes to public discourse on religion in America by challenging the very notion of Christianity to its very core. Here is a man who goes after people in their most vulnerable, their most hurt, their most grief-stricken states and pickets them with grotesquely offensive signs and messages, accusing them of things that they're not even necessarily responsible for (i.e. tolerating homosexuality). It's absolutely disgusting. And he does it all in the name of God.

One is left with many, many questions. My own personal questions? How can someone take God's message so wrong. And if there is a God, why does He allow this to happen?

The thing that I'm left grasping for is...if there is a God, He doesn't hate homosexuals. I don't think so anyway. All I can think of is Psalm 119. Reflect on these words from the Bible that Phelps so hatefully misuses:

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand.
When I awake,
I am still with you.
If only you would slay the wicked, O God!
Away from me, you bloodthirsty men!
They speak of you with evil intent;
your adversaries misuse your name.
Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD,
and abhor those who rise up against you?
I have nothing but hatred for them;
I count them my enemies.
Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.

The truth of the matter is, God made each and every one of us. And although there are so many flaws and so much evil that we're capable of, every one of us is still, in some deep, imperceptible, yet profound way, beautiful.

The Minneapolis Bridge Collapse and the Pornography of Destruction

(Photo by benalkaline3, via CC)

[No photos or videos of yesterday's bridge disaster will be included in today's post]

According to Merriam-Webster's dictionary, the word "pornography" has several definitions. One of the less-often referred to ones:

"the depiction of acts in a sensational manner so as to arouse a quick intense emotional reaction"

Around 6 p.m., local time, yesterday, the highway bridge that ran over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis collapsed. Nobody could have predicted this, but what was far more predictable was the media feeding frenzy that this event has spawned:

(screenshots altered to remove photos)

The New York Times, CNN.com, and many others offer up a full buffet of heart-wrenching photography, and allow you to stream devastating videos of the incident from the comfort of your own home. In today's world, the dissemination of information, images, and video is as immediate as it is informative. But it is also pornographic.

The human psyche is excited by these images of destruction. We saw this when the television shows repeatedly played footage of the two towers collapsing on September 11th. Again and again, they showed that footage and we looked on, as we would towards brutal train wreck or car accident. Did we realize we were watching people die? Did we even think about it? (The film "Why We Fight" has one father's heart-breaking testimony of how he insisted they stop showing footage of those towers collapsing - his son died in one of them).

The heartrate quickens, the eye twitches, and the arms get goosebumps. Millions are made at the box office every week by films that promise to vicariously give us the thrill of death, of destruction, of insane action. But I would argue, today, that for real life we should try and have a little respect.

People died horrible deaths yesterday. They were, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons, daughters. They didn't know they would die. The bridge collapse was swift and brutal. They had dreams, they had hopes, they had careers. They were just trying to get home during rush hour traffic when their lives were torn from them brutally. They were, in short, just like you and me.

So today, I guess what I'd ask my readers is: try not to look at the images. Look away. Sate your morbid curiosity and get your thrills from something other than the death of others. I'm not saying it's easy for me...as a photographer, I'm fascinated by such images of destruction and a part of me almost wishes that I was there to visually document the event. There is something enthralling about such a massive architectural undertaking failing so spectacularly, so suddenly, and with such disastrous results.

But just for today, I'm going to try not to look.

My Take On That Chickenhawk Video

Over the weekend, the following video was posted on the Huffington Post, and subsequently exploded:



Young Republicans are notorious for their lavish, excessive parties and are generally not people I'd want my daughter to be hanging around. This video tries to demonstrate this notion.

So what do I think? I'm not one to pull my punches with Republicans or with Christians, but this video is 50% interesting and 50% travesty. The biggest selling point of the video lies in the fact that he asked a bunch of people why they don't go and fight in the war. While some of them beg off with lousy reasons (embarrassingly lousy, and rightfully so), several of them actually appear to have medical issues, and seem like they genuinely want to serve their country in this way. This seems to be lost on the interviewer/blogger, who casts these situations as spurious. Despite the interesting points he could have made, in the end, the interviewer comes off as more of a jerk than anything else.

As for the Christians made to look like idiots, I can't really say anything in their defense...

Sexual Abuse Cases in LA Reach Settlement

According to the New York Times, the massive church sex abuse case in Los Angeles is finally coming to an end:

Lawyers for more than 500 people who say they were abused by Roman Catholic clergy members said last night that they had settled their lawsuits against the Archdiocese of Los Angeles for $660 million. If approved, it will be by far the largest payout made by any single diocese since the clergy sexual abuse scandals first became public in Boston in 2002. It will dwarf the $85 million paid for 552 claims by the Archdiocese of Boston.

Later in the day, Cardinal Mahony apologized to people for the Catholic Church's crimes:

"There really is no way to go back and give them the innocence that was taken from them ... The one thing I wish I could give the victims, I cannot -- and that is a restoration to where they were originally."

Words escape me when I try to express the horror I feel at such a thing. More than 500 people filed lawsuits. That's 500 lives that were unspeakably impacted by the sick minds and crimes of others. Five hundred lives whose minds will be forever changed, who will never live a normal, unfettered life. Five hundred stories of heartbreak, anger, and despair. And that's just the people who filed a lawsuit. And that's just in Los Angeles.

Someone on Digg pointed out something obvious that I didn't really think of: None of that money is coming from the Vatican; instead it's coming from people's donations, their tithes. This is assuredly not what God had in mind when he asked us to give a tenth of what we earn to further His kingdom.

What drives a priest to molest a child? What drives his superiors, presumably men of God, to cover up the crimes? I don't really have a good answer for the second one, but in answer to the first one, to paraphrase a radio DJ I once heard, this seems like a possible expected outcome when you tell people not to have sex and stick them in a small room all the time where other people are forced to tell them their deepest darkest sins and secrets.

In Mark chapter 9, Jesus says the following:

And if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to be thrown into the sea with a large millstone tied around his neck.

Amen to that. Amen to that...

The Decline of the Recording Industry

(Photo by yanec, via CC)

Rolling Stone has a fantastic piece summarizing all the major developments over the last decade or so that have contributed to the Recording Industry's decline. The critical moment the RIAA could have stopped this entire ordeal is identified very clearly in the article:

"The record companies have created this situation themselves," says Simon Wright, CEO of Virgin Entertainment Group, which operates Virgin Megastores. While there are factors outside of the labels' control -- from the rise of the Internet to the popularity of video games and DVDs -- many in the industry see the last seven years as a series of botched opportunities. And among the biggest, they say, was the labels' failure to address online piracy at the beginning by making peace with the first file-sharing service, Napster. "They left billions and billions of dollars on the table by suing Napster -- that was the moment that the labels killed themselves," says Jeff Kwatinetz, CEO of management company the Firm.

Overall, the article is a cautionary tale about survival of the fittest and failure to adapt.

The article is especially interesting in light of Universal's recent tussle with Apple about iTunes pricing. One thing that's proven true time and time again: From suing Napster to suing their own (poorest and innocent and dead) customers, the recording industry has shown that they know how to destroy good things when they see them.

Nifong Disbarred; Media Leaves Duke Lacrosse Story, Misses Amazing Opportunity To Improve Public Discourse

(From Flickr user digital image fan via CC)

The backlash against Mike Nifong, the DA in the Duke Lacrosse Case, has started in earnest...and WHAT a backlash it is. According to the Associated Press:

Nifong was disbarred Saturday, a ruling that came one day after he stunned his staff and own attorneys by announcing through tears he planned to resign as Durham County's district attorney. In imposing punishment, a disciplinary committee called Nifong's prosecution of Dave Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann a politically motivated "fiasco." The five-day ethics trial ended Nifong's three-decade legal career, which he spent entirely as a prosecutor in Durham County. He was generally viewed as an honest lawyer...

The list of misdeeds that Nifong has been accused of (and undoubtedly actually did) is long and shocking. He withheld exculpatory evidence. He made inappropriate statements to the public about the case. He pressed on with the case even when he knew that there was no way he could win a conviction. And that's just off the top of my head (Go to Nifong's wikipedia page for some more details).

Part of me feels for this man, whose career has now ended in a spectacular flameout. However, a part of me also knows that the men who were accused of the rape have had a bad enough time these past few years that Nifong's disgrace is probably nothing in comparison. It's both refreshing and terrifying that we live in a country where being accused of being a rapist can be almost as bad as being convicted of the same thing.

Now ABC reports that, with regards to the case, the media is packing up its bags and moving on:

The word on the street around Duke University is that the Duke lacrosse story has outlived its shelf life...Despite interest in the story, it looks like the media parade is leaving. "The high intensity moments are over," Setrakian said. Edmisten said the chairman of the hearing in the case referred to the events as a dangerous soap opera. So, while further legal movement in the case may be in store, at least for the residents of Durham, this show is fading to black.

Here's why this gets me: By packing up leaving in the aftermath right now, at this critical moment when Nifong is finally being punished for his crimes, the media demonstrates yet again how it is beholden to sensationalism, and ultimately, to profit. To many of you (and even to me), this is old news. But I couldn't resist bringing it up anyway.

Not only that, but the media is missing an amazing opportunity to engage in public discourse about the litany of deeper issues underlying the Duke case. The reason they latched onto the rape case in the first place was because it was a spectacular attention-grabber: three white preppy, elite lacross players (a sport which seems to epitomize the upper class) from a top-tier university brutally assaulted a black, lower-class single mom who went to a state school. There were a lot of issues this case brought up, and a lot of fires that it stoked. It was a case that brought up struggles and conflicts that have haunted us throughout our country's history: namely, the conflict of the upper class against the lower class, the race issues between whites and blacks, and, to tie it all together, the destructive psychological devastation of rape.

But now that the case is over, there are different questions that we should be asking. Questions like why do we live in a society where being accused of rape is as bad as being convicted (i.e. where the media has grossly asymmetric rules about who it can name and who it can't)? Where the media (even the New York Times) can actively and powerfully propagate such destructive misinformation and get away with it without being held to account? Where lawyers yield such tremendous power over all of us in the form of prosecutorial discretion?

Unfortunately, the media won't be asking those questions, not to any meaningful extent anyway. The reasons for this are legion, but up at the top of the list I'm sure are both a lack of desire to criticize itself and the endless and self-defeating quest for ratings. To ask these questions would require an informed dialogue and citizenry, a level of public discourse that challenges deeply held assumptions and uses logic and reason behind its arguments. And really, if they did address these issues on TV, is there really anyone who would watch?





[Note: To paraphrase Sideshow Bob, I'm aware of the irony of using an article on ABC News reporting on the media in order to report about the media, so don't bother pointing that out]

John Edwards Is Creepy

Time Magazine has a fascinating excerpt from Robert Shrum's new book, No Excuses. In it, Shrum details the decision-making that went behind John Kerry's decision of John Edwards as his runningmate, and how in retrospect, hindsight is 20/20 (i.e. Kerry should not have picked Edwards and should have "gone with his gut").

But of particular interest to me was the following passage:

Kerry talked with several potential picks, including Gephardt and Edwards. He was comfortable after his conversations with Gephardt, but even queasier about Edwards after they met. Edwards had told Kerry he was going to share a story with him that he'd never told anyone else—that after his son Wade had been killed, he climbed onto the slab at the funeral home, laid there and hugged his body, and promised that he'd do all he could to make life better for people, to live up to Wade's ideals of service. Kerry was stunned, not moved, because, as he told me later, Edwards had recounted the same exact story to him, almost in the exact same words, a year or two before—and with the same preface, that he'd never shared the memory with anyone else. Kerry said he found it chilling, and he decided he couldn't pick Edwards unless he met with him again. When they did, Kerry tried to get a better personal feel for his potential number two; as rivals for national office since 2000, shortly after Edwards had entered the Senate, the two men hadn't spent a lot of time together. Kerry also wanted a specific reassurance. He asked Edwards for a commitment that if he was chosen and the ticket lost, Edwards wouldn't run against him in 2008. Edwards agreed "absolutely," as Kerry recalled him saying. If Kerry had shared this at the time, I would have told him what I did later: it was naive to think he could rely on a promise like that.

Lessons learned:

1) Politics is cut-throat (not really learned, just reaffirmed)
2) John Edwards is creepy

Evangelical Teens MORE Likely To Have Lost Virginity Than Either Mainline Protestants or Catholics

Today, two of my favorite writing topics infiltrate this blog yet again: Sex and religion.

This morning, Slate has a new book review of Forbidden Fruit: Sex & Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers by Mark Regnerus. Essentially, the book argues that teens who identify themselves as "evangelical" and "born again" are more likely than those from Mainline Protestants or Catholics to have had sex. Hanna Rosin writes:

Evangelical teens are actually more likely to have lost their virginity than either mainline Protestants or Catholics. They tend to lose their virginity at a slightly younger age—16.3, compared with 16.7 for the other two faiths. And they are much more likely to have had three or more sexual partners by age 17: Regnerus reports that 13.7 percent of evangelicals have, compared with 8.9 percent for mainline Protestants.

This is attributed to two reasons:
1) The explosion of the Evangelical church, with mega churches and the like, that have dramatically lowered "barriers to entry" for any prospective believers, and
2) It's difficult to be a teenager in America and not have sex in a sex-saturated society:

"Be in the world, but not of it," is the standard Christian formula for how to engage with mainstream culture. But in a world hypersaturated with information, this is difficult for tech-savvy teenagers to pull off. There are no specific instructions in the Bible on how to avoid a Beyoncé video or Scarlett Johansson's lips calling to you from YouTube, not to mention the ubiquitous porn sites. For evangelicals, sex is a "symbolic boundary" marking a good Christian from a bad one, but in reality, the kids are always "sneaking across enemy lines," Regnerus argues.

Other interesting statistics from the book/book review:

• Religiosity determines sexual activity more than religion - 16 percent of American teens who describe religions as "extremely important" are less likely to break a pledge of abstinence
• 84 percent of Asian-American church-goers are virgins.
• Mormons are extremely unlikely to have had sex before marriage and if they have, they are unlikely to repeat the experience.
• 30 percent of Catholics/Mainline protestants have had sex before marriage
• 17.6 percent of Jews have had sex before marriage, but Jews are more likely to say that sex is pleasurable.

As readers of this blog know, this is a topic I've written about before and that's near and dear to my heart. I hope Regnerus' book serves as a wakeup call not just to the Evangelical church, but to the Christian church as a whole.

The Church needs to confront the growing reality that what it's doing right now and the way it's educating kids about sex simply isn't working. Not only that, it makes our teens physically and emotionally worse off than they would be otherwise.

Evidence that this will not happen: Did you guys see this? We, as Christians, can't even seem to confront scientific realities and confirmed facts; how will we address something much more serious (for our lives, anyway) and much more disputed?

Related Articles:
-The Romeo and Juliet Effect
-Premarital Sex: Where Christians Get It Wrong

Missing Girl's Parents Get To Meet The Pope - Millions of Other Aggrieved Parents Get Nothing

According to "America: The Book" (the foremost reference on these sorts of subjects), this is the Body Count Conversion rate that the American Media uses, when determining how important news is:

2,000 Massacred Congolese = 500 Drowned Bangladeshis = 45 Fire-bombed Iraqis = 12 Car-bombed Europeans = 1 Snipered American

Or in this case, 1 missing white girl.

By now you've probably heard of the tragic story of Madeline McCann, the girl who disappeared from the family's hotel room while her parents were in Portugal. New developments - now, according to CNN:

The parents of a four-year-old British girl who disappeared while on a vacation with her family in Portugal will be presented to Pope Benedict XVI at the pontiff's weekly general audience Wednesday. Vatican officials said on Monday that the McCann family would be among those brought up to greet the pope during his weekly audience with faithful in St. Peter's Square. The presentation of VIPs and of others who have won permission from the Vatican to personally greet the pope traditionally takes place at the end of the audience, following the pope's homily to the faithful.

The family of that missing girl has won an audience with the pope, undoubtedly due in no small part to the media's faithful coverage of their situation. Amazing...

There are many factors that went into making this happen. 1) The parents of Madeline are incredibly media savvy, and knew exactly how to get the word out about their daughter, 2) Madeline is a white girl, and 3) The American media thrives too much on spectacle and "human interest" stories that make no difference on the world stage. Take away one of these three things and the story becomes on a non-story.

It's a tragedy whenever any child anywhere goes missing. But let me put this in perspective. TODAY ALONE, 24,000 people will die of hunger. Eight thousand people will die of AIDS. Today, 1.1 billion people don't have access to clean water. Forty-five (estimated) people will be murdered in America. Untold thousands will die in Darfur today.

And believe it or not: For most of these stats, there are clear, definite things America can do to make the numbers lower! But we don't. The outcry isn't heard. And the media insists on continuing to waste our time telling us about this missing white girl.

As I've mentioned before, Time Magazine's naming of "You" as the person of the year only cemented in popular opinion that traditional media has abdicated its responsibility as a caretaker of information. Coverage of the McCann story demonstrates that this shows no signs of letting up. Whenever I see the media covering these sorts of things, instead of bringing us news that might actually make a difference in our lives, it really gets my blood boiling. It's a misuse of power at the most high, and an affront to those of us that believe the media should be used responsibly as a force of good in this world.

So what should good journalism be like, these days? I'm not sure, but maybe this list would be a good start.

[Update: My brother wrote to me in response to say that the Natalee Holloway story is a better example of the madness described here. I tried to ignore any and all mentions of this in the news when it was happening, and in case you did the same, here's the Wikipedia article to give you an idea of how much time and energy was expended into the search and media coverage.]

[Update 2: There've been some great comments to this post, so let me try and respond:

1) Several have brought up the issue of the corporatization of the media and I wholeheartedly agree; today, news doesn't only provide us with information in a neutral fashion, it is meant to generate profit for companies. The high ratings that these types of stories get feed into the neverending quest for more ratings and more profit. I vote with my eyes and choose not to watch when this type of stuff comes on.

2) There's been criticism about how the phenomenon I'm describing isn't uniquely American. My first reaction is: Just omit all mentions of "US" and "American" from my post; the criticism still stands.

My second reaction is: Perhaps you are all right and all news all around the world is always like this, but for my money, I'd trust the BBC news over CNN any day. Also, I'd be interested in what people have to say about this and also about this.]

[Update 3: For more relevant opinions on the subject, please see this recent post with video included: Jon Stewart Interviews Al Gore.]

Abortion film wins top prize at Cannes

CNN is reporting that the top prize at Cannes this year is going to an abortion-related film. From CNN's article:

Romanian director Cristian Mungiu won the Cannes Film Festival's top prize Sunday with "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," a harrowing portrait of an illegal abortion in communist-era Romania. The low-budget, naturalistic film about a student who goes through horrors to ensure that her friend can have a secret abortion beat out 21 other movies in competition for the Riviera festival's top prize, the Palme d'Or -- including films by well-known directors like Quentin Tarantino, the Coen brothers and Wong Kar-wai.

This seems like an important film that people should see, especially if they have an active voice in the abortion debate. Illegal abortions are a horrific phenomenonn that visit violence upon the women that partake in them. Before people make a judgment about whether or not abortions should be legal, they should at least see the visual and circumstantial reality of illegal abortion. Obviously the film will have a bias, an opinion on the matter, but then again, most of the best films do.

As a side note, it's too damn hard to see these films. Hopefully a US Distributor will pick it up and we'll see it on DVD; otherwise, we'll be forced to resort to imports....

Related posts:
-A new breed of evangelicals
-More thoughts on abortion

Jon Stewart Interviews Al Gore

Comedy Central: Why do you torture me (and everyone else) with time limits on your videos? By doing so, you have prevented thousands upon thousands of people from seeing your programs through sites like mine. Mini-rant over.

Anyway, I thought this was a great interview that had as much insight into Jon Stewart's work, as it did into Al Gore's:

Chris Matthews Lays The Smackdown on the Bush Administration

I think this was less of an interview with Joe Biden and more of a way for Chris Matthews to release some tension that's been building up inside:

Chris Matthews Interview with Joe Biden -


Keep up the good work, Chris (seriously).

A New Breed of Evangelicals?

(Flickr user Ann Althouse via CC)

[Read an update to this post here]

The New York Times has a decent story up about the "new breed" of Evangelical Christians:

Typified by megachurch pastors like the Rev. Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif., and the Rev. Bill Hybels of Willow Creek Community Church outside Chicago, the new breed of evangelical leaders — often to the dismay of those who came before them — are more likely to speak out about more liberal causes like AIDS, Darfur, poverty and global warming than controversial social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage.

I think I speak for a large portion of this generation of Christians when I say: It's about damn time.

As tempting as picketing abortion clinics with pictures of dead babies may be, it's important to realize: Every day, people are dying of preventable causes. Children go without food and water, and die of starvation/dehydration. AIDS continues to spread rampantly in Africa. And genocide and war ravage many parts of the world as I type these words.

And that's not even talking about the environment; God gave us charge of his creation and we've been doing a crappy job of taking care of it. It's time to step up and make sure that we don't leave a desolate and uninhabitable wasteland for our descendants.

The NYTimes article ends a little bit ominously:

There are other signs of attitude changes among younger evangelicals. Recent surveys conducted by the Barna Group show that younger “born again” Christians are more accepting of homosexuality than older ones and are less resistant to affording gays equal rights. But on abortion, they remain almost as conservative as their parents — more fodder for both political parties to weigh as they consider the future.

In other words, although our generation can put aside gay marriage and divorce as a major, divisive issues, the abortion question is one that will probably remain unresolved in our lifetimes. Still don't know how I feel about this one...

Any thoughts?

Four Questions for Atheists and Four Questions for Christians

(From Flickr user kierkier under CC)

There has been a lot of talk recently of Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney's religion. Everyone from Slate to Time Magazine to the NYTimes have commented on how his chances of winning the Republican nomination are low, given that many Evangelicals view Mormonism as a cult.

I was watching Bill Maher's "Real Time" the other day and Maher asserted that unlike Christianity, which took place thousands of years ago, the origin of the Mormon church took place only a few centuries ago and that there were historical "facts" about the history of the Mormon church that could easily be disproved.

I was curious about this, so I took a look around and found this article which asked five questions about the Book of Mormon, that apparently no one has been able to answer satisfyingly. They are as follows:

1. Linguistics. Why, if the American Indians were descended from Lehi, was there such diversity in their languages, and why were there no vestiges of Hebrew in any of them?
2. Why does the Book of Mormon say that Lehi found horses when he arrived in America? The horse did not exist in the Americas until the Spaniards brought them over in the sixteenth century.
3. Why was Nephi stated to have a bow of steel? Jews did not have steel at that time, and no iron was smelted in the Americas until the Spanish colonization.
4. Why does the Book of Mormon mention "swords and cimeters" when scimitars (the current spelling) did not come about until the rise of Islam after 500 A.D.?
5. Why does the Book of Mormon mention silk, when silk did not exist in the Americas at that time?

The matter-of-factness of these questions is almost humorous at times (e.g. the question about silk). I don't know how revealing or relevant these questions actually are so if anyone knows, please do comment/e-mail me.

However, what I do know is that these questions got me to thinking about what questions about my own faith in Christianity, and unanswered questions I have about God. In recent days, I've been reading a lot about atheism. Christopher Hitchens new anti-religion book was recently released and the reviews are mostly good. Richard Dawkins, of course, remains a force to be reckoned with on the lecture circuit. This piece that was posted on Dailykos was an incredibly well-written perspective (and defense) of atheism. And now there's stories in the news about the Blasphemy Challenge:



Atheism is on the rise in pop culture but there are many other, better articles that document this more thoroughly than this blog.

But what I give you is one Christian's perspective. That article above prompted me to ask four questions that I personally haven't been able to answer about Christianity, and four questions I haven't been able to answer about atheism as well. These should NOT be compared to the five questions about the book of Mormon above (although it did make me think about the subject), as I don't think these are unanswerable, nor do I claim to be a scholar. Furthermore, I don't think that any lack of answers indicates a death blow to that respective system of belief. Right now, I'm just confused and looking for the truth. And right now, for me, neither Atheism nor Christianity provides all the answers.

As with all things on this blog, the purpose is not necessarily to convince, but rather, to start a dialogue. Here are the questions, in no particular order:

Four Questions For Christians:

1) The Environment - I read this horrifying article yesterday (on Reddit) and I remain convinced more than ever that humans from the 20th and 21st century are well on our way to destroying planet Earth (or at least, our ability to live on it). If Christianity is true, God gave humans care of planet earth, yet he also gave us the ingenuity to destroy it. Why didn't God command people, more forcefully, to take care of His creation? Nor warn us of the ways in which we could destroy it? The human population is growing at an unprecedented rate and we are quickly overusing the limited resources we have. What would God have to say about this?

2) Religious Violence - As atheists are quick to point out, many people that believe in God spend a lot of time killing each other these days. They kill each other because of different beliefs about God or different beliefs about how to worship God. So why does God allow this to happen? There are clearly billions of people that want to worship Him. Why doesn't He come down with a loud voice and just clear things up for us by telling us which one of us is right? Does He really prefer to see us destroy each other in His name? Related to that note, more generally...

3) Using The Lord's Name In Vain - Why does God continue to allow bad things to happen in His name? For example, take one of the most famous Christians in the world today:
This man won the presidency in no small part because of his professed Christian faith. Yet he has been responsible for tremendous loss of human life and of civil liberties. This man has signed off on the practice of extraordinary rendition, on secret prisons, on secret government wiretapping.

Why does God continue to allow people like George Bush to profess Christianity and yet perpetuate some of the worst acts this country has ever seen? Why doesn't He step in and at least say "Hey, just so you all know, this guy doesn't represent what I stand for"?

4) Why Do Bad Things Happen To Good People? - I'm not talking about brutish dictators or serial killers inflicting their misdeeds on innocents. I'm not even talking about genocide, like that in Darfur. I'm talking about things outside of the realm of human control, like the tsunami in Thailand, like flooding in Indonesia, like hurricanes in the United States. These latter things are all presumably things God is in control of, yet he allows thousands to perish at the hands of his creation.

The closest that God comes to addressing this is in the Bible, in the Book of Luke. In the 13th chapter, Jesus refers to how The Tower of Siloam fell and killed 18 people in an apparently freak-of-nature disaster. Jesus' response? "Unless you repent, you too will perish." Direct and forceful, yet not very comforting or illuminating. So what are we to make of this?

(This point is best put by Sam Harris at this link.)

Four Questions For Atheists:

1) Human Emotions - I don't think that the world was created 10,000 years ago. I believe in evolution, and in species change over time. I believe in natural selection. But I don't believe that these things can account for the full panopoly of human emotions and of human experience. What scientific process explains why humans experience guilt, embarrassment, humiliation, sorrow, shame, joy, love? I know that science points to altruism as being evolutionarily beneficial, and although I can certainly buy that, I can't buy that that accounts for the human emotions we see and experience every day. Relatedly...

2) Majesty - I don't quote much scripture on this blog, but there's one verse in the Bible that strikes me as particularly relevant to the topic at hand: "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands" (Psalm 19:1-3). I've stood at the tops of mountains, I've stared at the vast firmament of the sky from the middle of the ocean, and I've seen lots of things in between. There's a sense of awe, a sense of wonder at the majesty of (what I believe to be) creation. I know I'm not the only one that feels it. So how did we evolve that awe, that appreciation? And more importantly, is all of the beauty we see in this world merely a result of some haphazard seeding of proteins and amino acids, with no rhyme or reason? To answer "yes" seems wrong on a visceral level, though of course, I acknowledge there's no way for an atheist to really rebut this point....

3) The Human Void - The great Christian and author C.S. Lewis wrote often (and often brilliantly) about Christianity. Lewis once opined that "creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists." This led him to draw the following conclusion: "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."

The vast majority of religious people turn to it because they feel some deep, profound need for fulfillment, something that only belief in God or some other supernatural being can provide. You can debate whether or not God actually exists but even most atheists will acknowledge that people are driven to seek meaning in their lives through the act of faith and/or belief?

So why does the preponderance of humanity have this deep, abiding need inside us to believe in a God? I've read evolutionary explanations [Times Select only] and come away unsatisfied.

4) Jesus - Despite claims to the contrary, Jesus bones haven't been found yet. So if Jesus wasn't God (and most Christians believe that He was), wouldn't archealogical digs have unearthed his remains by now? I understand that it's not incumbent upon atheists to defend why Jesus remains haven't been found, but I find it curious the fate of such a major historical figure, so major that our calendar is divided into before-he-was-born, and after-he-was-born, still remains shrouded (no pun intended) in mystery.

**

[Update 1: The comments have been phenomenal; thanks to everyone for making them. One of the biggest complaints about this post is about the #4 question for atheism. On reflection, yes it is a lame question; billions of people have died in the history of the world, and so there's no reason why we should have been able to find ONE person's remains.

I guess the impetus behind me putting that forth as a question is simply because I've been told since a very young age that if they were to find one bone of Jesus' body, it would disprove Christianity once and for all. Perhaps what I really crave is not knowledge that Christianity is true, but knowledge that there is some obtainable truth, whether it proves Christianity true or not. I don't need incontrovertible evidence; I just feel like I need a more solid, factual, and rational grounding for my faith. This post was a way for me to come to terms with that.

Ultimately, there are probably "better" questions that could be asked; my brother brought up a few good issues to me, like "Why does the Bible leave room for a young earth theory," which is an issue that's still tearing up our public school policy. So just so I'm clear, these 8 questions aren't the only questions there are, but they are ineffably my questions]