Church Times – If Jefferts Schori is at meeting, I won’t come, says Primate

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Church Times – If Jefferts Schori is at meeting, I won’t come, says Primate.

First of all, “Primate?” Really? This about describes the good old boy network at work here.  Apparently, Rev. Ernest, Archbishop of the Indian Ocean (how can you be a bishop of an ocean?)  can smell the taint of woman thousands of miles away and refuses to participate in a summit because of the U.S. Presiding Bishop, Jefferts Schori’s attendance. It’s crap like this that convinces me that church hierarchical structures should do us all a favor and come tumbling down before it’s too late to salvage such nonsense.

The party line goes like this: Jesus was a man, therefore his priests can’t be anything but men. How about this? Jesus appointed men as apostles therefore women cannot be apostles? Or how about this? Only 4 women are named in the bible as part of Jesus’ inner circle therefore only 4 women are allowed to be disciples? Or, here’s a good one, Jesus and the disciples were Jewish. Therefore only his priests can be ethnic Jews? Right? Peter had a mother-in-law therefore all priests should have mothers-in-law? Makes sense to me. (Extreme eye-rolling here).

Better yes, how about women boycott all religions that exclude us because Jesus had different genitals? I’ll go first.

Related Articles

• Katharine Jefferts Schori, Embattled Episcopal Bishop, Seeks Allies Overseas (huffingtonpost.com)
• Woman is ordained as Catholic priest in Canada (globalnation.inquirer.net)

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It’s Not Hard to Get My Goat This Morning

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A couple of things bother me today.

Yesterday, had a lovely lunch with my daughter, my best friend, and my sister. Alcohol and other things were involved and as usual it ends with my sister yelling at the top of her voice at me because she disagrees with me politically. My friend sits there bemused and the exchanges sends my daughter outside to smoke. Meanwhile everyone in the neighborhood can hear the exchange which is embarrassing. Should I have stopped it? Yes. Did I? No, because old habits die hard.  You see, my sister is a Christian fundie racist who listens to Glenn Beck and believes all the apocalyptic things the quasi-Christian/Republican right says on the radio/fox news/etc. I used to be just like her. I believed all the doom and gloom stories that I was fed, was a racist, and wanted everyone to just leave me alone so I could do with my money as I saw fit.

Then I met someone on the other side of the world with a loving, compassion about them who challenged me. I also deconverted from a Christianity like my sister’s that blames people for the circumstances they are in without ever thinking “there but for the grace of God…” I no longer mix my politics and my religion. My personal ethic is based on “been there, done that” to the extent that my sister’s never will. I believe politics has to hit home somehow before the reality of what you are espousing sinks in. She says she’s not a bigot, yet rails on about blacks who come to the ER to get their drug fixes. I challenge her on it, but she says she’s right because she sees it. I said that doesn’t mean the whole world is that way and we had a few white people in our small town blowing themselves up in meth labs. We went round and round. Still, when I left that particular brand of Christianity and began listening to something more hopeful, more helpful, and less rugged “screw everybody else” individualism, I became a better person.

This ideological transformation didn’t happen overnight and I still harbor some of the same awful beliefs from that time, but I fight it and anyone who challenges me on it from a racist, fundie standpoint. They can keep their bigoted religious viewpoint if they want, but trying to get them to see without those tinted eyeglasses on seems a lost cause to me.  What set this off? My suggestion to my sister that we’d all be better off if we had a system of health care that helped everyone not just the extortionist insurance industry. My sister is a nurse, and boy did that hit a nerve. Why? I don’t know. But she’s been “Beck-ified.”  I wish I could say that her ideas aren’t typical, but sadly they are typical in the type of churches we hale from.  These types of christians have not been converted to Jesus, but to a type of christo-facist nationalism that equates personal wealth and individualism with salvation, none of which Jesus personally preached.

She later apologized for yelling but “not for her viewpoints.” Of course not. That would mean changing one’s views, which requires a great deal of introspection and humility and an ability to admit when we are wrong. Pretty much in short supply in America these days.

And the other thing that bothered me today?  …. er…I forgot.

Related Articles

• oh no, not again (righteousorbs.com)
• Democracy Now: Alexander Zaitchik on ‘Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance’ (crooksandliars.com)
• Time’s Klein: Beck a ‘Telecharlatan’ Who Will Have Hard Time Entering ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ (newsbusters.org)

A Semester At Liberty University

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Would you take a semester off from an Ivy League college to attend Jerry Falwell‘s bastion of conservative education and politics? Kevin Roose did and he wrote about it in detail in his book Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University. I wish I could go into detail right now about all the things he gets right about being submerged in the Christian subculture, but I can only say right now is that is it very fair and not at all that different from belonging to an evangelical church. He describes people who are blindingly obtuse and those that are open and loving. As with anyone who subscribes to religious or political ideologies as the whole truth, there are good people and not so good people encamped therein.

Roose’s assessment never hits a false note and his complete openness to the experiment is a credit to his Quaker parents and Episcopalian grandparents. Although they “feared for his life” down there in the bowels of Jerry Falwell’s hell (to hear them tell it), Roose intelligently and compassionately tried his best to experience everything as a new student and newcomer to Christianity. And while he may not have been converted, he came away with a new respect for folks that, while demonized in the press, are not so different as those students he attended Brown with. All of them struggled. There were bigots as well, just as in his circle of friends who wished Falwell dead for his statements about 9/11.  No, liberals can also be as un-compassionate as their evangelical counterparts. Sometimes rabidly so. Neither side holds the final majority on compassion.

I’m glad I read this book. The people he describes can be found in any evangelical church in America. I recognized some of my friends in those students. It also gave me hope that those much younger than me are taking openness more seriously than my generation is; that he’s willing to open up a dialogue with those that others have assumed are strange and probably sprouting horns of some kind.  My generation has sadly become entrenched and committed to warfare. This book is a very easy and pleasant read and one I’d recommend to Christians and atheists alike who keep an open mind. I admire Roose’s effort to get more constructive dialogue going rather than just rehash all the demonizing and tired old arguments that get us nowhere. We need to start with people not dogma.

Related Articles

• Can a book about Jerry Falwell bring people together? (boingboing.net)

“Unless She Can’t Think….”

John Piper and all his ilk explain exactly why women need to steer clear of any male dominated religions:

I need to see videos like these and read articles pertaining to this doctrine to remind me why I no longer adhere to Christianity. Like Anne Rice, author of Vampire Chronicles long before Stephanie Meyer was born, I’ve given up on that religion and really any religion that glorifies a male prophet/God: Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Baha’i, etc.

Guide: Beth Moore is a prominent bible teacher/expositor in the Baptist tradition. Elizabeth Eliot also.

Giving Up Popery For Lent

On second thought, this pisses me off. Everyone should have one long Fat Tuesday for Lent and unashamedly so! Therefore, I’m breaking my Lenten fast before it starts! I’m giving up religious dogmatical rules (I thought I’d done this already) that have an appearance of wisdom, but merely indulge the fantasies of old men. Let the games begin.

Beating Your Wives For Jesus’ Sake!

Oh, my freakin’ God, again another religious asshole justifies abusing women by absolving men of personal responsibility. Check this out! (Thanks to Ethics Daily for providing the article) How much clearer can he say, “She made me do it!”

Men, Ware says, can ONLY respond in two ways, beat her or become a wuss:

Commenting on selected passages from the first three chapters of Genesis, Ware said Eve’s curse in the Garden of Eden meant “her desire will be to have her way” instead of her obeying her husband, “because she’s a sinner.”

What that means to the man, Ware said, is: “He will have to rule, and because he’s a sinner, this can happen in one of two ways. It can happen either through ruling that is abusive and oppressive–and of course we all know the horrors of that and the ugliness of that–but here’s the other way in which he can respond when his authority is threatened. He can acquiesce. He can become passive. He can give up any responsibility that he thought he had to the leader in the relationship and just say ‘OK dear,’ ‘Whatever you say dear,’ ‘Fine dear’ and become a passive husband, because of sin.”

Gee, which one do you think Ware HOPES men will choose? How sick is this man and how horrific that people are listening to him. Notice that Ware cannot conceive of any options but two. This is typical of the binary thinking of the hyper-fundamentalist mind.

By all means read the rest of the article. You’ll love the “women are saved” by having babies part. I predict many a man will go home from the sermon that day justified in his belief that smacking his wife around is the “manly” thing to do to keep the little lady in line. Disgusting.

Acting to Heal Relationships Around Me

In a previous post I wrote about my dialogues with a pastor of the church I’d been attending for 4 years. I was a tad smarmy then of course. Thinking I was taking the high road, I see now what an ass I probably was. Last weekend, in a fit of humility and loneliness, I emailed her and apologized for the role I played in that little scenario. She wrote promptly back and graciously said she had put it behind her and I should too. We mutually agreed that we missed the friendship we had and we are letting old feelings past and allow for a renewing of friendship.

Why have I done this? Well, because, I am acutely aware that Christians are the worst when it comes to healing damaged relationships. Don’t get me wrong. Some relationships are irreconcilable and SHOULD BE, especially where abuse is involved. But, in church especially, minor quibbles and spats can quickly get out of hand. No one wants to be the first to back down and say that perhaps they were wrong. In the secular world, it’s even worse. Our culture is saturated with a “me first” attitude in even the smallest areas, like driving. Every single day I see examples of rude behavior, people flipping other people off from their cars, road rage, and numerous instances of non-courteous living. Well, I’m tired of expecting others to be the ones to change. I’m not responsible for them. I’m responsible for my reaction to them. So I could have stewed for years about what happened at my church, but I’m not going to anymore. Regardless of whether I felt hurt or was “right” or how wrong I thought the pastor was, it damaged our relationship and when that happens, the whole church is damaged. Of course, mine was a trivial matter. Other damages in church aren’t so easy to heal, but I am so used to looking out for ME all the time that ME is who I instantly side with in every argument, whether I’m right or not. It’s the way of the beast. I decided not to let that control me.

The same goes with culture at large. I am a person of very conflicted political, religious, and personal beliefs. I don’t write about some of my political opinions because it’s not safe to in this political climate. Thought police are everywhere and conspiracy theories are ripe. Some of my opinions are not popular right now. Neither are some of my religious ones. I don’t write what I really think sometimes I know that a lot of the people I know share different points of view. I’m also very tired of Christians ALWAYS being “the heavy” in the news. All that we see on television feeds into the worst ideas that most Americans have about Christians and conservatives in general. The media take extreme and non-mainstream examples of religious hucksters and conspiracy theorists, play the soundbites ad nauseum, and then act as if everyone in certain parts of the country or all of a race believe this way. If they do that would be scary, but they don’t.

It’s the same with politics. Everyone is playing the moral equivalence game. No one can be criticized, examined, or commented upon without someone else becoming “outraged” or “disturbed” about the “trends” we find in society and the “levels of civil discourse.” Apologies are demanded every day by somebody. No one can have an opinion unless it’s the most popular one. People from the coasts stream into the Midwest to film documentaries about all those strange people in the Heartland of America, as if they were going into the jungles of the Amazon! I can hear them now…Look at those rubes! Oh, how stupid they are! …Such forays only reveal the ignorance of those who believe them or buy their product. It’s a sickening display of hubris for starters and the fool’s way to a quick buck by pandering to your audience for another.

I have never come across anyone in the church community who displays the characteristics of those portrayed on television or in the news. The very reason those media shills and religious hucksters are rich and in the news is because they are tapping into a PARTICULAR message that feeds the fear and paranoia of those who don’t understand them. Sure, we shouldn’t be giving money to people like that. There are better uses of money and time, but people have to have IDEOLOGY in their lives; something that feeds their motivation. Politics is all about this feeding process. Again, I could sit and stew about how wrong the media are on television and how stupidly they portray things they do not understand, but it’s pointless. And because we are being lied to and manipulated this way, we are therefore not responsible for the hatred they create in the world. We are responsible ONLY for our corner of the world.

It’s a manageable scenario that works for me. I cannot trust anyone else for truth out there. I am responsible for discovering the truth by which I live my life. I cannot trust that my money goes where people promise it will go. I’m not letting media of any kind tell me what my beliefs are, how my relationships will work, or even convince me that I play a part in the political system, because I don’t. My job is right here in my small town, in my local businesses, in my local congregation, in my family. My job is to heal the damaged relationships around me one person at a time. My truth is in my corner of the world and the only thing I know for sure. If I can act on it, I can heal it.