Tag Archives: Evangelical

Matthew Shephard Hate Crimes Prevention Act passes Senate

Retired Law Professor Howard Friedman has an interesting blog he calls Religion Clause. He posts several items daily, relating to court cases and legislative actions that impact the first amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

This morning, Professor Friedman reported on Congressional action on the so-called “Matthew Shepherd Hate Crimes Protection Act”. Matthew Shepherd was the young man from Wyoming who was brutally tortured then murdered for no apparent reason except that he was gay. His mother is now the leading advocate for the bill. Friedman reports,

On Thursday night, the U.S. Senate agreed to add the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act as an amendment to the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act. First by a vote of 78-13, the Senate agreed to an amendment clarifying that the hate crime provisions should not be construed or applied to infringe on First Amendment rights. Then the Senate voted 63-28 to invoke cloture on the hate crimes bill [overriding a Republican filibuster attempt]. Voice vote passage immediately followed.

The essence of the bill is to increase the juridical penalties when a defendant is convicted of a felonious act of violence against another and the act was proven to be motivated by:

prejudice based on the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of the victim

What is most curious about the whole issue is the nature of the opposition.

Senator McCain pontificated his righteous indignation that the bill was attached to the National Defense Act. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the process of legislative wrangling, at least the Senator from Arizona had some rational basis for his opposition. The same cannot be said of the right wing rumor mongering that is downright false.

Pam Spaulding in her popular blog, Pam’s House Blend, lists the lies and their refutation, relying on talking points arranged by People for the American Way.

Lie number 1, which comes from James Dobson’s Focus on the Family:

Because the liberals in Congress would not define sexual orientation, we have to assume that protection under the law will be extended to the 30 sexual disorders identified as such by the American Psychiatric Association. Let me read just a few of them: bisexuality, exhibitionism, fetishism, incest, necrophilia, pedophilia, prostitution, sexual masochism, urophilia, voyeurism, and bestiality.

Indeed, some right wing organizations refer to the Matthew Shepherd bill as the “Pedophilia Protection bill.” Spaulding reports that the estimable Pat Robertson suggests the bill will “protect people who have sex with ducks.”

Here’s the truth:

Pedophilia is not a sexual orientation by anyone’s definition – only in the imagination of Religious Right organizations and political figures trying to derail the legislation with the most inflammatory charge they can come up with. As Rep. Tammy Baldwin pointed out during debate, sexual orientation is explicitly defined in the federal hate crimes statistics act as “consensual heterosexuality and homosexuality. And in spite of the Right’s claims about paraphilias, the American Psychiatric Association defines sexual orientation very clearly as homosexuality, heterosexuality, or bisexuality.

Despite Dobson’s lie that the “the liberals in Congress would not define sexual orientation", the bill clearly does that. Secondly, “sexual orientation” is clearly defined by the American Psychiatric Association as “homosexuality, heterosexuality, or bisexuality”. Pedophilia and the rest of Dobson’s list that rolls off his tongue so easily are not included in the definition of sexual orientation.

Lie number 2, the bill violates rights to free speech and expression and also violates the freedom of religion.

“if anybody speaks out about homosexuality, says it’s a sin, says its wrong, says it’s against the Bible, that individual would be charged with a quote, hate crime.”

These are Robertson’s words, but they reflect the false claims of a broad swath of the religious right.

Here’s the truth:

First, according to Professor Friedman, the Senate yesterday passed an amendment 78-13 that clarified that the act “should not be construed or applied to infringe on First Amendment rights.” According to the language of the act itself,

3) CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTIONS.—Nothing in this division shall be construed to prohibit any constitutionally protected speech, expressive conduct or activities (regardless of whether compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief), including the exercise of religion protected by the First Amendment and peaceful picketing or demonstration. The Constitution does not protect speech, conduct or activities consisting of planning for, conspiring to commit, or committing an act of violence.
(4) FREE EXPRESSION.—Nothing in this division shall be construed to allow prosecution based solely upon an individual’s expression of racial, religious, political, or other beliefs or solely upon an individual’s membership in a group advocating or espousing such beliefs.

Second, the act presupposes a felonious act of violence against another. In other words, it is not speech or thought or expression or association that is actionable – it is only a physical act of violence against another that rises to the level of a felony. The act does not criminalize behavior that was previously legal; it merely adds penalities to actions that are already criminal when that criminal act is motivated by hate against a protected group.

As an active member of a Christian congregation and a Christian denomination, I am galled at the self-righteous, judgmental, and deceptive actions of the self-appointed watchdogs of morality on the religious right whose behavior seems to me to be decidedly unchristian. One has to wonder about the religious right’s abject failure to follow the command, You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. Mr. Dobson, Mr. Robertson, and the rest of your ilk, you do not speak for me.

The decline of religion (UPDATED X 2)

My new best blog-friend (Doug Kings at Cyber Spirit Cafe) and I have exchanged posts and comments about the decline of religion, and today he raises the topic again by referencing a recent post of Andrew Sullivan. In the London Sunday Times, Sullivan says:

[R]eligion must absorb and explain the new facts of modernity: the deepening of the Darwinian consensus in the sciences, the irrefutable scriptural scholarship that makes biblical literalism intellectually contemptible, the shifting shape of family life, the new reality of openly gay people, the fact of gender equality in the secular world. It seems to me that American Christianity, despite so many resources, has ignored its intellectual responsibility.

If Sullivan is right, why? Why have religious progressives surrendered the podium to the religious right? Why have we allowed others to claim theirs is the only voice of christendom? Blogger Rich Warden suggests “that the far right has given religion a bad rap, made it untouchable in the progressive community.”

Perhaps the better question is not “why”, but “how”. How do we take it back? How do we put a progressive face on American religion?

UPDATE: In a May 22 post, Soong-Chan Rah, offers an optimistic take. He suggests that Christian immigrants will keep Christianity vital and breakdown Christian “racial and ethnic lines with a shared value system rather than a political agenda.”

When I was a pastor in Boston, I consistently heard the lament over the decline of Christianity in the city of Boston. However, the Boston I knew was filled with vibrant and exciting churches. New churches were being planted throughout the city. Christian programs and ministries were booming in the city. Boston is alive with spiritual revival, particularly among the ethnic minority communities. But very few seem to recognize this reality, even as this trend begins to appear nationally.

UPDATE # 2: Here’s a post that ties together my discussion on the decline of religion with my discussion of Douthat and Dan Brown. The Naked Theologian, references Douthat’s article about Dan Brown:

[R]eligious trends are shifting toward a “generalized ‘religiousness’ detached from the claims of any specific faith tradition.” While a growing numbers of Americans are abandoning organized religion (Douthat bases this claim on recent polling data), they are, by and large, not opting for atheism. The stay-at-home religionists are actively seeking and building their own eclectic and high-personalized theologies “with traditional religion’s dogmas and moral requirements shorn away.”

The Naked Theologian, a UU PHD candidate, makes a Bonhoeffer like charge of “cheap grace” that has diluted American religion.

Another answer: many of us are quasi-universalists–any God worthy of that name loves us and is simply too good to condemn us. We’ve removed God from the judge’s bench in the sky. The all-about-love God, the one to whom we’re willing to pray, no longer sits in judgment of us. God loves us, unconditionally.

And since God loves us, unconditionally, God loves us regardless of how much money we make (how we made it and what we do with it) or how many times we’ve been married (even if our kids end up with exponentially-more-difficult lives).

So, is the unconditional-love God really the kind of God we want?

CNN Torture Survey

CNN reports that more than 6 in 10 evangelicals believe torture is justified while only 3 in 10 mainline Christians hold similar views.

White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified — more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.

The analysis is based on a Pew Research Center survey of 742 American adults conducted April 14-21. The survey asked: “Do you think the use of torture against suspected terrorists in order to gain important information can often be justified, sometimes be justified, rarely be justified, or never be justified?”

Roughly half of all respondents — 49 percent — said it is often or sometimes justified. A quarter said it never is.

The religious group most likely to say torture is never justified was Protestant denominations — such as Episcopalians, Lutherans and Presbyterians — categorized as “mainline” Protestants, in contrast to evangelicals. Just over three in 10 of them said torture is never justified. A quarter of the religiously unaffiliated said the same, compared with two in 10 white non-Hispanic Catholics and one in eight evangelicals.

Blogger Steven Waldman, editor in chief of Beliefnet suggests, “The real question: why hasn’t Christianity led to the opposite result, a revulsion against torture?”

Blogger Andrew Sullivan in his blog post called “Jesus Wept” makes the astute comment, “And people wonder why atheism is gaining in this country.”

Disguised as a conservative Christian, Ivy Leaguer learns fundamentals of Falwell’s university

Article by Eric Tucker of the AP, quoted in Newser.com

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Kevin Roose managed to blend in during his single semester at Liberty University, attending lectures on the myth of evolution and the sin of homosexuality, and joining fellow students on a mission trip to evangelize partyers on spring break.

Roose had transferred to the Virginia campus from Brown University in Providence, a famously liberal member of the Ivy League. His Liberty classmates knew about the switch, but he kept something more important hidden: He planned to write a book about his experience at the school founded by fundamentalist preacher Jerry Falwell.

Each conversation about salvation or hand-wringing debate about premarital sex was unwitting fodder for Roose’s recently published book: “The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University.”

“As a responsible American citizen, I couldn’t just ignore the fact that there are a lot of Christian college students out there,” said Roose, 21, now a Brown senior. “If I wanted my education to be well-rounded, I had to branch out and include these people that I just really had no exposure to.”

Formed in 1971, Liberty now enrolls more than 11,000 residential students, along with thousands more who study through Liberty’s distance-learning programs. The university teaches creationism and that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, while pledging “a strong commitment to political conservatism” on campus and a “total rejection of socialism.”

Roose’s parents, liberal Quakers who once worked for Ralph Nader, were nervous about their son being exposed to Falwell’s views. Still, Roose transferred to Liberty for the spring 2007 semester.

He was determined to not mock the school, thinking it would be too easy — and unfair. He aimed to immerse himself in the culture, examine what conservative Christians believe and see if he could find some common ground. He had less weighty questions too: How did they spend Friday nights? Did they use Facebook? Did they go on dates? Did they watch “Gossip Girl?”

It wasn’t an easy transition. Premarital sex is an obvious no-no at Liberty. So are smoking and drinking. Cursing is also banned, so he prepared by reading the Christian self-help book, “30 Days to Taming Your Tongue.”

He lined up a publisher — Grand Central Publishing — and arrived at the Lynchburg campus prepared for “hostile ideologues who spent all their time plotting abortion clinic protests and sewing Hillary Clinton voodoo dolls.”

Instead, he found that “not only are they not that, but they’re rigorously normal.”

He met students who use Bible class to score dates, apply to top law schools and fret about their futures, and who enjoy gossip, hip-hop and R-rated movies — albeit in a locked dorm room.

A roommate he depicts as aggressively anti-gay — all names are changed in the book — is an outcast on the hall, not a role model.

Yet, some students also grilled him about his relationship with Jesus and condemned non-believers to hell.

After a gunman at Virginia Tech killed 32 people in April 2007, a Liberty student said the deaths paled next to the millions of abortions worldwide — a comment Roose says infuriated him.

Roose researched the school by joining as many activites as possible. He accompanied classmates on a spring break missionary trip to Daytona Beach. He visited a campus support group for chronic masturbators, where students were taught to curb impure thoughts. And he joined the choir at Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church.

Roose scored an interview with the preacher for the school newspaper, right before Falwell died in May of that year. Roose decided against confronting him over his views on liberals, gays and other hot-button topics, and instead learned about the man himself, discovering among other things that the pastor loved diet peach Snapple and the TV show “24.”

Roose would duck away to the bathroom to scribble down anecdotes or record them during lectures. He never blew his cover, even ending a blossoming romantic relationship rather than come clean. He revealed the truth on a return trip to campus. He grappled with guilt during the entire project, but said he ultimately found forgiveness from students for his deception.

“If he told me he was writing an expose or maybe if the book turned out to be what I considered unfair, then I might have been more troubled,” said Brian Colas, a former Liberty student body president who befriended Roose.

The university administration has been less receptive. Chancellor Jerry Falwell Jr. said in a statement that Roose had a “distorted view” of Liberty before he arrived and gave an incomplete portrait of the school.

“We appreciate Kevin’s generally positive tone toward LU but he admittedly comes from a culture that has very little tolerance for conservative Christianity and even less understanding of it,” Falwell said.

Roose said his Liberty experience transformed him in surprising ways.

When he first returned to Brown, he’d be shocked by the sight of a gay couple holding hands — then be shocked at his own reaction. He remains stridently opposed to Falwell’s worldview, but he also came to understand Falwell’s appeal.

Once ambivalent about faith, Roose now prays to God regularly — for his own well-being and on behalf of others. He said he owns several translations of the Bible and has recently been rereading meditations from the letters of John on using love and compassion to solve cultural conflicts.

He’s even considering joining a church.

Study: Evangelicals Trail Other Faiths on Global Warming

(RNS) While a majority of white evangelicals believe there is solid evidence that the earth is warming, only one in three says human activity is the cause, according to a recent survey.

As the world celebrates Earth Day, a survey conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life shows significant disagreement among U.S. religious groups on climate change and its causes.

Nearly half of all Americans blame global warming on human activity, according to the survey, but only 34 percent of white evangelical Protestants do the same. Seventeen percent of that group say natural patterns are the cause, and 31 percent are not convinced that the earth is warming at all.

That stance is at odds with black Protestants, white non-Hispanic Catholics, white mainline Protestants, and religiously unaffiliated Americans, all of whom are significantly more likely to accept evidence of global warming, according to Pew.

Black Protestants (39 percent); white, non-Hispanic Catholics (44 percent); white mainline Protestants (48 percent); and religiously unaffiliated Americans (58 percent) are all also more likely to attribute climate change to humans, the survey found.

Daniel Burke

Religion News Service, quoted in the Pew Forum