Southern Baptist Scholar Links Spouse Abuse to Wives’ Refusal to Submit to Their Husbands

One reason that men abuse their wives is because women rebel against their husband’s God-given authority, a Southern Baptist scholar said Sunday in a Texas church.

Bruce Ware, professor of Christian theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., said women desire to have their own way instead of submitting to their husbands because of sin.

“And husbands on their parts, because they’re sinners, now respond to that threat to their authority either by being abusive, which is of course one of the ways men can respond when their authority is challenged–or, more commonly, to become passive, acquiescent, and simply not asserting the leadership they ought to as men in their homes and in churches,” Ware said from the pulpit of Denton Bible Church in Denton, Texas.  

In North Texas for a series of sermons at the church on “Biblical Manhood & Womanhood,” Ware described his “complementarian” view as what “Southern Seminary as a whole represents.”

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.”

Ware said God created men and women equally in God’s image but for different roles.

“He has primary responsibility for the work and the labor and the toil that will provide for the family, that will sustain their family,” he said. “He’s the one in charge of leadership in the family, and that will become difficult, because of sin.”

Ware also touched on a verse from First Timothy saying that women “shall be saved in childbearing,” by noting that the word translated as “saved” always refers to eternal salvation.

“It means that a woman will demonstrate that she is in fact a Christian, that she has submitted to God’s ways by affirming and embracing her God-designed identity as–for the most part, generally this is true–as wife and mother, rather than chafing against it, rather than bucking against it, rather than wanting to be a man, wanting to be in a man’s position, wanting to teach and exercise authority over men,” Ware said. “Rather than wanting that, she accepts and embraces who she is as woman, because she knows God and she knows his ways are right and good, so she is marked as a Christian by her submission to God and in that her acceptance of God’s design for her as a woman.”

Ware cited gender roles as one example of churches compromising and reforming doctrines to accommodate to culture.

“It really has been happening for about the past 30 years, ever since the force of the feminist movement was felt in our churches,” Ware said.

He said one place the “egalitarian” view–the notion that males and females were created equal not only in essence but also in function–crops up is in churches that allow women to be ordained and become pastors.

Ware said gender is not theologically the most important issue facing the church, but it is one where Christians are most likely to compromise, because of pressure from the culture.

“The calling to be biblically faithful will mean upholding some truths in our culture that they despise,” he said. “How are we going to respond to that? We are faced with a huge question at that point. Will we fear men and compromise our faith to be men-pleasers, or will we fear God and be faithful to his word–whatever other people think or do?”

Ware offered 10 reasons “for affirming male headship in the created order.” They include that man was created first and that woman was created “out of” Adam in order to be his “helper.” Even though the woman sinned first, Ware said, God came to Adam and held him primarily responsible for failure to exercise his God-given authority.

Bob Allen, 06-27-08, Ethics Daily.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

Einstein Letter

AFP   |   May 14, 2008

Albert Einstein described belief in God as “childish superstition” and said Jews were not the chosen people, in a letter to be sold in London this week, an auctioneer said Tuesday.

The father of relativity, whose previously known views on religion have been more ambivalent and fuelled much discussion, made the comments in response to a philosopher in 1954.

As a Jew himself, Einstein said he had a great affinity with Jewish people but said they “have no different quality for me than all other people”.

“The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.

“No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this,” he wrote in the letter written on January 3, 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind, cited by The Guardian newspaper.

The German-language letter is being sold Thursday by Bloomsbury Auctions in Mayfair after being in a private collection for more than 50 years, said the auction house’s managing director Rupert Powell.

In it, the renowned scientist, who declined an invitation to become Israel’s second president, rejected the idea that the Jews are God’s chosen people.

“For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions,” he said.

“And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people.”

And he added: “As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them.”

Previously the great scientist’s comments on religion — such as “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind” — have been the subject of much debate, used notably to back up arguments in favour of faith.

Powell said the letter being sold this week gave a clear reflection of Einstein’s real thoughts on the subject. “He’s fairly unequivocal as to what he’s saying. There’s no beating about the bush,” he told AFP.

Faith of Our Fathers

Timothy Egan, New York Times, Opinion, April 23, 2008

Watching the polygamists in West Texas come into the sunlight of the 21st century has been jarring, making you feel like a voyeur of some weird historical episode.

You see these 1870 Stepford wives with the braided buns and long dresses, these men with their low monotones and pious, seeming disregard for the law on child sex — and wonder: who opened the time capsule?

But when Texas authorities removed 437 children earlier this month from the compound of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints they did more than give Larry King something to talk about between anorexia stories of the stars. They gave us all a glimpse into what a religion was like before it took on the patina of time — with the statues, murals and polished narratives.

Religion has always been about faith and a certain degree of mythology. It’s pointless to argue whether the Red Sea actually parted, or if Jesus turned water into wine to keep a wedding party going, or if the freezing of the Mississippi River was one of the miracles that allowed early Mormons to flee persecution and build a theocracy in the desert.

Faith is a moving thing; witness the throng in Yankee Stadium who came away in a fever of fellowship after listening to the Pope last weekend, or the 55,000 moved to practice random acts of compassion by the Dalai Lama at Qwest Field in Seattle two weeks ago.

But religion can also be used as an excuse for awful behavior – from the torture of the Roman Catholic Inquisition, to beheadings by Jihadist killers, to the sexual manipulation of children by early Mormons and their latter-day sects.

Mormonism is the most homegrown of American religions, and the fastest-growing in the Western Hemisphere. There are more Mormons in the United States than Presbyterians. The church has been vocal about denouncing the renegade Mormons in Texas, and quick to point out that it abandoned polygamy in 1890, as a condition of Utah’s statehood.

For a long time, though, the church was at odds with basic American ideals, and not just because old guys sanctioned marital sex with dozens of teenage girls. What you see in Texas — in small part — is a look back at some of the behavior of Mormonism’s founding fathers.

When Mitt Romney, in his December speech about his religion, said, “My faith is the faith of my fathers — I will be true to them and to my beliefs,” he was taking on a load of historical baggage.

His faith was founded in 1830 by Joseph Smith Jr., an itinerant treasure-seeker from upstate New York who used a set of magic glasses to translate a lost scripture from God. His personality was infectious, the religion very approachable.

It would have been just another Christian faith had not Smith let his libido lead him into trouble. Before he died at the hands of a mob, he married at least 33 women and girls; the youngest was 14, and was told she had to become Smith’s bedmate or risk eternal damnation.

Smith was fortunate to find a religious cover for his desire. His polygamy “revelation” was put into The Doctrine and Covenants, one of three sacred texts of Mormonism. It’s still there – the word of God. And that’s why, to the people in the compound at Eldorado, the real heretics are in Salt Lake City.

As his biographer, Fawn Brodie, wrote, Joseph Smith “could not rest until he had redefined the nature of sin and erected a stupendous theological edifice to support his new theories on marriage.”

Smith was also a commander-in-chief of his own militia, and a candidate for President, running on a platform of “bringing the dominion of the Kingdom of God” over the United States. His successor, Brigham Young, married 57 women – a harem that attracted curious libertines like Sir Richard Burton to study the American social experiment.

And when the church set up a huge polygamous theocracy in the West, President James Buchanan was forced in the 1850s to send an army of 2,500 – nearly one-sixth of American forces – to uphold the law.

The church did not give up its sexual practices without a long fight. As late as 1880, as Jon Krakauer notes in his book “Under the Banner of Heaven,” Mormon leaders preached that polygamy was above the laws of the land. The church’s then-supreme leader, John Taylor, said that polygamy “has been handed down directly from God. The United States cannot abolish it.”

Fast forward to this century, when the polygamist group makes the same argument at their West Texas compound and at their earlier one in Colorado City, on the Utah-Arizona border. I was at that Colorado City compound, twice in the last four years. It spooked me: the gnarly old men and their child brides, the creepy guards in their pickup trucks, the sing-songy women tending to a dozen children in houses the size of a Motel 6. They were ripping off the state, living on welfare and food stamps, even as they defied civil authorities.

In Colorado City, I spent time with DeLoy Bateman, a high school science teacher, who told of losing his daughter after church authorities ordered her to leave her husband and marry her father-in-law – a man twice her age.

And despite the best efforts of the wealthy, modern Mormon church to leave a big part of its past behind, some Mormons still support the defiance of modern-day polygamist leaders, judging by the comments of Saints who are appalled by the breakup of the compound in Texas.

“Back then, we were the ones in the compound,” wrote Guy Murray, a Mormon lawyer who writes a blog on his faith. He should be applauded for his honesty. But I’m not sure I’d want to be holding that baton of belief, passed through years. Sometimes, the faith of our fathers is better left to the revisionists.

Soldier Sues Army, Saying His Atheism Led to Threats

Kevin Moloney for The New York Times, 4/26/08

FORT RILEY, Kan. — When Specialist Jeremy Hall held a meeting last July for atheists and freethinkers at Camp Speicher in Iraq, he was excited, he said, to see an officer attending.

But minutes into the talk, the officer, Maj. Freddy J. Welborn, began to berate Specialist Hall and another soldier about atheism, Specialist Hall wrote in a sworn statement. “People like you are not holding up the Constitution and are going against what the founding fathers, who were Christians, wanted for America!” Major Welborn said, according to the statement.

Major Welborn told the soldiers he might bar them from re-enlistment and bring charges against them, according to the statement.

Last month, Specialist Hall and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an advocacy group, filed suit in federal court in Kansas, alleging that Specialist Hall’s right to be free from state endorsement of religion under the First Amendment had been violated and that he had faced retaliation for his views. In November, he was sent home early from Iraq because of threats from fellow soldiers.

Eileen Lainez, a spokeswoman for the Defense Department, declined to comment on the case, saying, “The department does not discuss pending litigation.”

Specialist Hall’s lawsuit is the latest incident to raise questions about the military’s religion guidelines. In 2005, the Air Force issued new regulations in response to complaints from cadets at the Air Force Academy that evangelical Christian officers used their positions to proselytize. In general, the armed forces have regulations, Ms. Lainez said, that respect “the rights of others to their own religious beliefs, including the right to hold no beliefs.”

To Specialist Hall and other critics of the military, the guidelines have done little to change a culture they say tilts heavily toward evangelical Christianity. Controversies have continued to flare, largely over tactics used by evangelicals to promote their faith. Perhaps the most high-profile incident involved seven officers, including four generals, who appeared, in uniform and in violation of military regulations, in a 2006 fund-raising video for the Christian Embassy, an evangelical Bible study group.

“They don’t trust you because they think you are unreliable and might break, since you don’t have God to rely on,” Specialist Hall said of those who proselytize in the military. “The message is, ‘It’s a Christian nation, and you need to recognize that.’ “

Soft-spoken and younger looking than his 23 years, Specialist Hall began a chapter of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers at Camp Speicher, near Tikrit, to support others like him.

At the July meeting, Major Welborn told the soldiers they had disgraced those who had died for the Constitution, Specialist Hall said. When he finished, Major Welborn said, according to the statement: “I love you guys; I just want the best for you. One day you will see the truth and know what I mean.”

Major Welborn declined to comment beyond saying, “I’d love to tell my side of the story because it’s such a false story.”

But Timothy Feary, the other soldier at the meeting, said in an e-mail message: “Jeremy is telling the truth. I was there and witnessed everything.”

It is unclear how widespread religious discrimination or proselytizing is in the armed forces, constitutional law experts and leaders of veterans’ groups said. No one has independently studied the issue, and service members are reluctant to come forward because of possible backlash, those experts said.

There are 1.36 million active duty service members, according to the Pentagon, and since 2005, it has received 50 formal complaints of religious discrimination, Ms. Lainez said.

In an e-mail statement, Bill Carr, the Defense Department’s deputy under secretary for military personnel policy, said he “saw near universal compliance with the department’s policy.”

But Mikey Weinstein, a retired Air Force judge advocate general and founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, said the official statistics masked the great number of those who do not report violations for fear of retribution. Since the Air Force Academy scandal began in 2004, Mr. Weinstein said, he has been contacted by more than 5,500 service members and, occasionally, military families about incidents of religious discrimination. He said 96 percent of the complainants were Christians, and the majority of those were Protestants.

Complaints include prayers “in Jesus’ name” at mandatory functions, which violates military regulations, and officers proselytizing subordinates to be “born again.” After getting the complainants’ unit and command information, Mr. Weinstein said, he calls his contacts in the military to try to correct the situation.

“Religion is inextricably intertwined with their jobs,” Mr. Weinstein said. “You’re promoted by who you pray with.”

Specialist Hall came to atheism after years as a Christian. He was raised Baptist by his grandmother in Richlands, N.C., a town of less than 1,000 people. She read the Bible to him every night, and he said he joined the Army “to make something of myself.”

“I thought going to Iraq was right because we had God on our side,” he said in an interview near Fort Riley.

In the summer of 2005, after his first deployment to Iraq, Specialist Hall became friends with soldiers with atheist leanings. Their questions about faith prompted him to read the Bible more closely, which bred doubts that deepened over time.

“There are so many religions in the world,” he said. “Everyone thinks he’s right. Who is right? Even people who are Christians think other Christians are wrong.”

Specialist Hall said he did not advertise his atheism. But his views became apparent during his second deployment in 2006. At a Thanksgiving meal, someone at his table asked everyone to pray. Specialist Hall did not join in, explaining to a sergeant that he did not believe in God. The sergeant got angry, he said, and told him to go to another table.

After his run-in with Major Welborn, Specialist Hall did not file a complaint with the Army’s Equal Opportunity Office because, he said, he was mistrustful of his superior officers. Instead, he told leaders of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, who put him in touch with Mr. Weinstein. In November 2007, Specialist Hall was sent home early from Iraq after being repeatedly threatened by other soldiers. “I caution you that although your ‘legal’ issues are yours and yours alone, I have heard many people disagree with you, and this may be a cause for some of the perceived threats,” wrote Sgt. Maj. Kevin Nolan in Specialist Hall’s counseling for his departure.

Though with a different unit now at Fort Riley, Specialist Hall said the backlash had continued. He has a no-contact order with a sergeant who, without provocation, threatened to “bust him in the mouth.” Another sergeant allegedly told Specialist Hall that as an atheist, he was not entitled to religious freedom because he had no religion.

Responding to questions about Specialist Hall’s experience at Fort Riley, the staff judge advocate, Col. Arnold Scott, said in an e-mail message, “In accordance with Army policy, Fort Riley is committed to ensuring the rights of all its soldiers are protected, including those of Specialist Hall.”

Civilian courts in the past have been reluctant to take on military cases, and the Justice Department has yet to respond to Specialist Hall’s lawsuit.

“Even if it doesn’t go through, I stood up,” Specialist Hall said. “I don’t think it is futile.”

 

Bush’s Last Fans

Frank Schaeffer, Huffington Post, 3/13/08

President Bush was on my old stomping grounds this week. Back in the early 1980s I was also the keynote speaker at the NRB (National Religious Broadcaster’s) convention.

According to the New York Times, (March 12, 2008):

President Bush delivered a rousing defense of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on Tuesday, mixing faith and foreign policy as he told a group of Christian broadcasters that his policies in the region were predicated on the beliefs that, freedom was a God-given right and ‘every human being bears the image of our maker…’ Calling freedom a ‘precious gift,’ Mr. Bush said: ‘The liberty we value is not ours alone. Freedom is not America’s gift to the world; it is God’s gift to all humanity.’ His words were punctuated by shouts of ‘Amen.’

When I spoke to the NRB I was introduced by Pat Robertson. I delivered a rousing take-back-America-from-the-godless-humanists speech. I was cheered too. I spoke shortly before I quit working as a “Professional Christian.” I didn’t quit as soon as I should have, because you can lose your faith and still pretend, because there are bills to be paid, because you are booked up for a year, because this is what you do.I finally got out of the evangelical movement in 1985 when I belatedly outgrew my fundamentalist background. I wanted to be a writer, not of religious propaganda but of actual books. I also quit because I had slowly woken up to the fact that the religious right I was in bed with — because my late father Francis Schaeffer was one of their leaders, and in the nepotistic evangelical tradition I followed in his footsteps — were not conservatives. They were anti-American agitators for a thinly disguised theocracy.

On the same day as the NRB/Bush story quoted above was published the Times also happened to report that William J. Fallon, the commander of American forces in the Middle East whose outspoken public statements on Iran and other issues put him at odds with the Bush administration, is retiring early. Admiral Fallon upset the Bush administration with comments that according to the Times; “emphasized diplomacy over conflict in dealing with Iran, that endorsed further troop withdrawals from Iraq beyond those already under way and that suggested the United States had taken its eye off the military mission in Afghanistan.” A senior administration official said that Fallon’s comments, “left the perception he had a different foreign policy than the president.”

As he has for the last eight years Bush disregards the advice of his military leaders when they don’t agree with him. (Disclosure: My son volunteered for the Marines in 1999 and served in Bush’s wars so this is personal.) As if answering admiral Fallon In his NRB speech Bush said; “The decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision… It is the right decision at this point in my presidency, and it will forever be the right decision.”

These days most Americans would have booed Bush’s statement, but not the right wing evangelicals at the religious broadcasters convention.

Don’t get me wrong, not all evangelicals support Bush. For instance I have plenty of emails from evangelicals glad I’m rooting for Senator Obama. And I could write pages about all the good things evangelicals are doing around the world, often in places no one else will go. But there are still lots of evangelicals willing to believe Bush’s lies. The broadcasters greeted him so enthusiastically that he laughed and called them, “kind of a rambunctious crowd.”

The rest of us, including many moderate Christians, aren’t laughing. We know that we’ve had eight years of failed Republican/Bush misrule-by-fear that’s produced a war in Iraq without end, and that risks losing the war in Afghanistan, and that has given us an American president instigating — and even defending — torture.

After he was cheered Bush returned the favor. He praised the broadcasters and promised to veto any legislation that would reinstitute the so-called “fairness doctrine,” which once required broadcasters to give air time to opposing views. Bush has also done what he can to slow a congressional investigations into the larceny that typifies the many “successful” religious broadcasters with their “nonprofit” twenty-thousand square foot homes, jets and fleets of luxury cars.

After Bush what next for the Republicans? McCain is also beholden to the right wing evangelicals. In fact he’s courting them. He has to in order to win. A big man is becoming as small as his party’s base.

Bill Buckley — who opposed the war in Iraq and called it foolish — is dead and so is the thoughtful conservative movement he recreated out of the bitter ruins of a bigoted dying 1950s-60s conservatism. Buckley pushed back against the right wing ideologues of his day, such as the John Birch society. By comparison those old Bircher anti-Communists were paragons of reason when juxtaposed to the broadcasters wildly cheering the failed president.

The irony is that the people McCain is appeasing these days in order to “unite” his party, are the same people who in 2000, spread (and believed) the racist nonsense about his black adopted child being illegitimate etc. The people he must suck up to now undid his candidacy then.

The sad truth is that the 2000 election was McCain’s moment. The right wing evangelicals (and the Republican establishment) handed the presidency to Bush and the rest is history. Now McCain’s moment has past, swept away by a river of needlessly shed blood and by the politics of fear.

Any group that–post-Iraq five years on, and post-our failure to secure Afghanistan six years on — is still being willingly influenced by the likes of the religious broadcasters such as James Dobson etc., along with their secular fellow travelers such as Rush Limbaugh, William Kristal, Ann Coulter and the rest of the proponents of global war without end, should be beyond the pale. Any candidate that must cater to the fundamentalists (some of whom belong to the National Religious Broadcasters) who are saying that Barack Obama is a Muslim and/or that he might even be the Antichrist! — should be repudiated. This is the company that McCain now must keep.

Independent voters, moderate evangelicals, other religious believers and nonbelievers, Democratic Party members and authentically conservative Republicans must work to make sure that either McCain stands up to the evangelical right or that he loses. It’s long past time that McCain’s old enemies and now his new “friends” — inherited from Bush, and otherwise known as the “Republican base”–are sent packing.

The rest of us have a job to do: undoing the damage done to our country by the born-again president whose miserable presidency was brought into existence by and aided and abetted by the religious right. Barring some unlikely radical reform of the Republican Party before November, the best thing that could happen to the Republican Party is to lose. Then they might have a chance to repent and change.

The lesson is this: 4000 American war dead, 40,000 wounded, countless killed Iraqis and our country in hock to the Chinese (and other lenders) tells us that next time the religious right likes a presidential candidate vote for the other guy. And if you hear those religious broadcasters cheering be afraid, be very afraid.

Frank Schaeffer is a writer and author of “CRAZY FOR GOD-How I Grew Up As One Of The Elect, Helped Found The Religious Right, And Lived To Take All (Or Almost All) Of It

Moses High on Hallucinogens?

The bible is packed with drug-fuelled visions of miracles and according to a leading academic when Moses met God to receive the Ten Commandments he was on a hallucinogen-induced high.The theory, published this week in international philosophy journal Time and Mind, claims that key events of the Old Testament are actually records of visions by ancient Israelites high on hallucinogenic drugs.

Benny Shannon, a professor at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, where he was head of the psychology department, believes that a popular plant concoction could hold the key to some unexplained “miracles”.

“In the southern regions of the Holy Land and in the Sinai Peninsula there grow two plants containing the molecules that together constitute the key ingredients of one of the most powerful psychedelic substances in existence,” he wrote.

The substance is a drink called Ayahuasca, and is today still used by Amazonians in Brazil for their religious rituals.

The professor came up with the theory when reading the Bible and deciding the events described were similar to visions he had after trying this drink 15 years ago.

Professor Shannon undertook further “research” and textual analysis.

He claims that five accounts of Moses’ life were induced by hallucinogens.

One was the vision of the Burning Bush, which was on fire but not consumed, a miracle explained by the drug-induced sense of time slowing.

Another was Moses’ encounter with God on Mount Sinai, when he received the Ten Commandments and the Bible.

Other Biblical stories are “suggestive that the ancient Israelites regarded psychoactive plants in high esteem.”

These include the story of the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden and accounts of “incense” offerings in the Jerusalem Temple.

Saudis to Execute Woman Accused of Witchcraft

Donna Abu-Nasr| February 14, 2008 06:49 AM EST |Ap

BEIRUT, Lebanon — A leading human rights group appealed to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah on Thursday to stop the execution of a woman accused of witchcraft and performing supernatural acts.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a statement that the kingdom’s religious police who arrested and interrogated Fawza Falih, and the judges who tried her in the northern town of Quraiyat never gave her the opportunity to prove her innocence in the face of “absurd charges that have no basis in law.”

Falih’s case underscores shortcomings in Saudi Arabia’s Islamic legal system in which rules of evidence are shaky, lawyers are not always present and sentences often depend on the whim of judges.

The most frequent victims are women, who already suffer severe restrictions on daily life in Saudi Arabia: They cannot drive, appear before a judge without a male representative, or travel abroad without a male guardian’s permission.

Witchcraft is considered an offense against Islam in the conservative kingdom.

In Falih’s case, the judges relied on a coerced confession and on the statements of witnesses who said she had “bewitched” them to convict her in April 2006, according to the group.

Falih later retracted her confession in court, claiming it was extracted under duress, and said that as an illiterate woman, she did not understand the document she was forced to fingerprint.

“The fact that Saudi judges still conduct trials for unprovable crimes like ‘witchcraft’ underscores their inability to carry out objective criminal investigations,” said Joe Stork, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch.

There was no immediate comment on the statement from Saudi Arabia, where government offices are closed on Thursdays, the start of the Muslim weekend.

“Fawza Falih’s case is an example of how the authorities failed to comply even with existing safeguards in the Saudi justice system,” he added.

The Saudi court cited an instance in which a man allegedly became impotent after being bewitched by Falih, the rights group said.

An appeals court ruled in September 2006 that Falih could not be sentenced to death for witchcraft because she had retracted her confession. But a lower court subsequently reissued the death sentence for the benefit of “public interest” and to “protect the creed, souls and property of this country,” the group’s statement said.

HRW statement came a day after Yakin Erturk, the U.N. special investigator for violence against women, wrapped up a 10-day visit to Saudi Arabia during which she highlighted another controversial case that has attracted international criticism.

Ertuk met with Fatima and Mansour al-Timani, who were forcibly divorced by the wife’s family on grounds she had married someone from a lesser tribe.

The couple learned of the divorce on Feb. 25, 2006, when police knocked on their door to serve Mansour the divorce papers.

At a news conference on Wednesday, Erturk said she met the wife and husband who were in a “terrible state of mind” and that Saudi officials had promised her arrangements would be made for the couple’s reunion, according to Saudi newspaper Arab News.

___

On the Net:

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2008/02/13/saudia18046.htm

Whitewashing and Cherry Picking Religion

Tina Dupuy, Huffington Post, 1/2/08

I was born into the group the Children of God (COG) or as they are called now, the Family International — a Christian cult that started in the late ’60’s made up of dropout hippies in Huntington Beach. They went ‘international’ after the leader was sought for kidnapping and tax evasion. I’m in denial that anyone has heard of them. I pretend like they’re obscure. Many will remember the 2005 suicide of their heir apparent Ricky Rodriguez, right after he killed his childhood nanny Angela Smith. That was sensational enough to make headlines and inspire a Law and Order episode. Recently author Don Lattin released a book about the cult’s history titled Jesus Freaks.

My parents left the sect when I was five, while my uncle and cousins remained members for the next 20 years. I obsessively follow any press that the group gets. While watching CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 report detailing Rodriguez’s death and the group’s well-known child sex practices, Anderson said, “Well, that has nothing to do with Jesus!”

This is how the public has always reacted to the COG. It’s upsetting and so it’s dismissed outright as not actually Christian. It’s a quick effort to make sense of it.

That is how we deal with things we don’t like in religion. We reject all unpleasant elements as being frauds. Calling for the death of a teacher because she agreed to name a teddy bear Muhammad? That isn’t actually Muslim. The widespread molestation of boys by priests? That isn’t actually Catholicism. The institutionalized and systematic abuse of lower and lowest classes? That isn’t actually Hindu. We even go so far as to tout pre-Columbian religions as being peaceful and passive. If we sidestep all the human sacrificing and war-making, they were.

We spend so much time revising and rationalizing the track record of religion that we lose track of reality in the process. It’s like debating the atomic structure of the Oxford English Dictionary. Yeah, sure, we’re technically discussing the volumes — but we’re also completely missing the point.

Religion is a very effective way to control, manipulate and convince people to do almost anything. It’s more obvious in smaller cults. But it applies to the bigger denominations as well. Consider the fact that there is nothing wrong with homosexuality outside of religious belief. The same goes for Jews. And as best I can see it — science.

Because when everything is subjective — well, everything is subjective. There is no need for evidence, logic or fact. That means that hysteria is on a hair trigger. Which is fine - as long as you, your friends and anyone you care about are all on the right side of the wrath when it comes.

So if the COG has “nothing to do with Jesus,” then what does have to do with Jesus? The Crusades? The Inquisition? The Conquistadors? The witch hunts? The slave trade? Manifest destiny? The Holocaust? Miscegenation laws? Fred Phelps? Crimes against women of questionable virtue? The entire presidency of George W. Bush? They all have to do with Jesus because they were all justified by Christianity. Just like the COG’s prostitution and child abuse was justified.

When you say you are a Christian, you become everything that is or was Christianity. Good, bad or indifferent — it’s ALL Christianity. A drop of water doesn’t get to claim autonomy while swimming in the ocean — even if that drop of water happens to be Mormon and running for president.

The alternative is a skewed and inaccurate, albeit a more comfortable, belief in one’s faith. Like Sherri Shepherd on “The View,” — going one step further than regular creationists who believe that the world was created 6000 years ago and insisting that nothing existed before Jesus (2000 years ago). That’s the new iTestament where you can customize your beliefs so you can stand out among your friends. And why is that so bad? What could go wrong if we forget history under the guise of glossing over what’s objectionable? The first answer is that we can repeat it. We can have another preemptive invasion in the Middle East just like in the First Crusade. Shudder. If we wear rose-colored glasses and refuse to see the problems, then we will NEVER solve them.

When the faithful aren’t aware of the true, unflatteringly lit, warts-and-all history of their religion, its past follies and its vulnerability to mistakes — it leads to the insistence that America is and should be a Christian nation. Our Constitution is a product of the era of The Enlightenment where the foundation was reason. But we are told that our Constitution “rests on a foundation of faith.” This type of revisionist history causes the line of church and state to be blurred, which is precisely what our Constitution tries to guard against. And there is plenty of evidence that when that happens, it isn’t beneficial to the church or to the state.

So when stories of cults and abuse in the name of religion make national news, let’s look at the similarities instead of dismissing them because they don’t apply to us. See what they can teach us. And be open to the answers.

Theocratic Huckabee

Huckabee explained why he left pastoring for politics.
   

“I didn’t get into politics because I thought government had a better answer. I got into politics because I knew government didn’t have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives.”

 

He compared his entry into politics to “getting inside the dragon’s belly,” adding, “There’s not one thing we can do in those marbled halls and domed capitols that can equal what’s done when Jesus touches the lives of a sinner.”

 

The nation has descended gradually into crisis, Huckabee said, and repairing the damage needs to be gradual, too. He said the solution is simple: faith in Christ.

He also spoke of his early misconceptions of his duties as a pastor.

“In one of the first churches I was assigned to, I thought I was supposed to be the captain of a warship leading the congregation into a battle against spiritual darkness,” he said.  “But they wanted the captain of the Love Boat. They just wanted everybody to be happy. It was not about how many people were won to Christ”

Excerpts from an article in the ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE, June 8, 1998:  http://www.ardemgaz.com/prev/jonesboro/afhuckabee08.asp

Scientology Ban In Germany?

Today the German, Interior Minister calls it an unconstitutional organization and is moving to ban Scientology.  Founded by science fiction writer , L. Ron Hubbard in 1956, Scientology has been described by some German citizens as sinister, dangerous and “a sect just after our money.” 

Other Scientology criticisms today in Germany included, it is “trying to influence policy,” the “suppression of individuality,” and “brain washing of vulnerable people.”

$1.3 Million Church Pageant

“We’re having to compete against many theatrical things around the country, whether it’s MTV or the Rockettes or any show you might see on Broadway,” said the Rev. Mike Jefferies of the First Baptist Church of Fort Lauderdale. “We have made a conscious decision to pull out all the stops.”

Oh, this is true humility…. “I really believe it is such a great story. I’m sure we couldn’t actually compete with what really happened 2,000 years ago,” he said on “Good Morning America Weekend Edition”.

WWJS (What would Jesus say)….”I think Jesus would come to the show [and say], ‘Authentically you got it right,’” Thompson said.

Some visitors said they truly enjoy the vast production, but others believe the $1.3 million price tag of the pageant would be better spent on charity.

So Long, Gideons

The one thing travelers could reliably count on in their hotel rooms: a Bible in the bedside table. But like many traditions, this one may be dying.

 

 

What might be surprising to many Americans is that the Bible-free room isn’t a development just in hip New York City hotels. Across the country upscale accommodations are doing away with the Bible as a standard room amenity. And in its stead have arrived a slew of “lifestyle” products that cater to a younger, hipper (and presumably less religious) clientele. Since 2001 the number of luxury hotels with religious materials in the rooms has dropped by 18 percent, according to the American Hotel and Lodging Association. The Nashville-based Gideons International, which has distributed copies of the Christian scripture to hotels since 1908, declined to comment on this trend.  – Source: http://www.newsweek.com/id/69049

 

Based in Nashville, Gideons International distributes over a million Bibles each week in 176 countries and 80 languages. Most are found in hotels and motels, overnight health-care facilities, schools, prisons and places with military and public-safety personnel.  – Source: World Net Daily 

Must See TV

 http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/showdown/?campaign=pbshomefeatures_1_frontlinebrshowdownwithiran_2007-10-23

Why Should God Bless America?

Source and video:  http://www.rightwingwatch.org/2007/09/why_should_god_bless_america.html

For those who didn’t have the opportunity to watch the Values Voter Debate last evening, you missed quite a display of political pandering, ridiculous rhetoric and all-around right-wing lunacy. You also missed this lovely rendition of “God Bless America” performed by the Church of God Choir, from Springfield, Ohio – reworded to better reflect the Right’s agenda:

Lyrics transcribed below:

Why should God bless America?
She’s forgotten he exists
And has turned her back
On everything that made her what she is

Why should God stand beside her
Through the night with the light from his hand?
God have mercy on America
Forgive her sin and heal our land

The courts ruled prayer out of our schools
In June of ‘62
Told the children “you are your own God now
So you can make the rules”
O say can you see what that choice
Has cost us to this day
America, one nation under God, has gone astray

Why should God bless America?
Shes’s forgotten he exists
And has turned her back on everything
That made her what she is

Why should God stand beside her
Through the night with the light from his hand?
God have mercy on America
Forgive her sins and heal our land

In ‘73 the Courts said we
Could take the unborn lives
The choice is yours don’t worry now
It’s not a wrong, it’s your right

But just because they made it law
Does not change God’s command
The most that we can hope for is
God’s mercy on our land

Why should God bless America?
She’s forgotten he exists
And has turned her back on everything
That made her what she is

Why should God stand beside her
Through the night with the light from his hand?
God have mercy on America
Forgive her sins and heal our land

(Reading from 2nd Chronicles 7:14) If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and forgive their sin and heal their land

God have mercy on America forgive her sins and heal our land

God as Their Running Mate

Michael Kinsley, TIME essay, 9.6.07

Mitt Romney wants the J.F.K. deal with voters: If you don’t hold my religion against me, I won’t impose my religion on you. But that deal made little sense in 1960 and makes no sense today. Kennedy said, “I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair.” But the Roman Catholic Church holds that abortion is the deliberate killing of a human being. Catholic liberal politicians since Mario Cuomo have said they personally accept the doctrine of their church but nevertheless believe in a woman’s right to choose. This is silly. There is no right to choose murder. Either these politicians are lying to their church, or they are lying to us.

These days presidential candidates are required to wear their religion on their sleeve. God is a personal adviser and inspiration to all of them. They all pray relentlessly. Or so they say. If that’s not true, I want to know it. And if it is true, I want to know more about it. I want to know what God is telling them–just as I would want to know what Karl Rove was telling them if they claimed him for an adviser. If religion is central to their lives and moral systems, then it cannot be the candidates’ “own private affair.” To evaluate them, we need to know in some detail the doctrines of their faith and the extent to which they accept these doctrines. “Worry about whether I’m going to reform health care, not whether I’m going to hell” is not sufficient.

What exactly should we worry about? Most important, we need to know what forms of conduct a candidate’s religion forbids or requires and how the candidate interprets that injunction. Is it a universal moral imperative or just a personal lifestyle choice? Every religion has its list of no-nos. Mormonism’s is very long and includes alcohol, coffee, tea and such forms of sexual behavior as “passionate kissing” outside wedlock. If Romney’s church doctrines require efforts to impose these restrictions on others, Romney has a Cuomo problem: he cannot be a good Mormon and a good President. He needs to show at the least that he has thought about this.

Some church doctrines give offense even though they don’t constrain an outsider’s behavior in any way. They can imply a more general worldview, and voters have a right to know if a presidential candidate shares that perspective. Until recently, just about all religions had a built-in patriarchal worldview–God the Father, male priests and so on–that many today find offensive. To what extent has the candidate’s church moved with the times, and what has the candidate done to push his or her church in the right direction? I say the right direction, but many voters, of course, believe that this kind of modernization is the wrong direction. They also are entitled to know where the candidate stands and to vote on that basis.

In the online magazine Slate a while back, editor Jacob Weisberg called Joseph Smith, Mormonism’s founder, an “obvious con man” and wrote, “Romney has every right to believe in con men, but I want to know if he does, and if so, I don’t want him running the country.” Thus a third argument that religion can’t be a private affair for a presidential candidate: what a person deeply believes says something about his or her character, which voters may wish to take into account. Deeply religious people may find a candidate’s ability to make that “leap of faith” admirable or even essential. Or they may find it offensive if it conflicts with their own faith. (Some devout Christians object to Mormonism’s belief that the Bible is a mistranslation.) A skeptic may not want someone so credulous in the nation’s top job.

Proceed with caution here, of course. Every religion is full of doctrines and beliefs that may seem nutty to outsiders. Jesus could be seen as a snake-oil salesman if you don’t buy the snake oil. Weisberg says Mormonism is different because it is so “recent,” involving miraculous events in the 19th century in upstate New York. Well, I dunno. The patina of age may explain why Jesus’ walking on water is easier to believe than Smith’s golden plates and magic glasses. But it doesn’t go far in justifying the distinction. For me, any candidate who believes in the literal truth of the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Book of Mormon or the novels of Jane Austen is probably too credulous to be President.

Above all, we need to see some struggle. Precisely because all religious doctrines are hard to believe, believers and nonbelievers alike have an interest in how a candidate who claims to be deeply religious deals with religion’s improbabilities. It will be amusing if Romney is done in by a fear of his religious values because, as near as we can tell, he has no values of any sort that he wouldn’t happily abandon if they became a burden. But in politics, you are who you pretend to be.

·                                 Find this article at:

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1659734,00.html