Some Reflections on Separation of Church and State, Southern Baptists, and the Rise of Religious Fundamentalism

Rev. Welton Gaddy, president of The Interfaith Alliance

Last night, my husband, our college-aged daughter, and I attended a meeting at a local town hall where Rev. Welton Gaddy, president of The Interfaith Alliance, gave a well-received speech on the separation of church and state. Of course, he was preaching to the choir. Most of us, if not all of us, tend to vote the Democratic ticket, and the majority of us were over the age of fifty. Our daughter and a couple of other kids accompanying their parents were the only ones under the age of twenty-five.

Many of us were probably at one time or another allied with a church that had scrupulously practiced separation of church and state back in the day when people knew what that meant. Some of those religious organizations have since abandoned that traditional/Constitutional view of separation of church and state, causing an exodus of members who refuse to bow to a politically-minded religious fundamentalism. I speak here most specifically of myself and my husband. I was reared in the Southern Baptist Church, but I left the organization after years of questioning its increasing fundamentalism. (I've written about some of that experience here). Reverend Gaddy is one of those folks, too, only he had a place quite a bit more elevated on the Southern Baptist organizational ladder than the likes of me. Before the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, Dr. Gaddy served on many leadership committees, including the Executive Committee (1980-1984) and Director of Christian Citizenship Development of the Christian Life Commission (1973-1977). (see bio from which I found this information here).

In the 1970s, there was a concerted effort, led by Paige Patterson and Texas judge Paul Pressler, to transform the Southern Baptist Convention, to get the convention to abandon its traditional stand on "priesthood of the believer" (members were free to interpret the Bible as they felt God leading them, so there was a diversity of belief, and local churches had some freedom in their expression of those beliefs) and to promote a fundamentalist view on inerrancy of the scripture and an uncompromising creed.  My husband knew Paul Pressler in the early 1970s when he was a teenager and was living in Houston with his parents.  He and his family attended Bethel Independent Presbyterian Church, where Judge Pressler and his wife, Nancy, were leaders of the youth group that Tom attended.  (Tom remembers some particularly "interesting" advice this couple gave the group about dating.)

As with many such wranglings over national church leadership, Paul Pressler's struggle for power seems to have begun locally, in the Second Baptist Church of Houston, where he and his wife had been members and Sunday School teachers. Pressler and another member of that church, John Baugh, have differering views of that time, but evidently the Presslers were removed as Sunday School teachers. According to John Baugh, one of the reasons for that removal was that "the Presslers were working with a small Presbyterian church and taking students from Second Baptist." That would have been the years the Presslers were leading that youth group at Bethel Independent Presbyterian Church which Tom attended.

Anyway, John Baugh became associated with moderate Baptists and Paul Pressler with fundamentalist Baptists. Eventually, moderate Baptists were forced out of leadership positions in the Southern Baptist Convention, and pastors such as Dr. Gaddy united to form the moderate Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

The climax of the struggle between moderate and fundamentalist Baptists was happening during the years when Tom and I lived in College Station, Texas, where we attended Texas A&M University and were members of a Baptist church that was moderate and that accepted members with a diversity of views. So, as we listened to Dr. Gaddy last night, we had all this background history which gave us, perhaps, a different view of the presentation than some of the folks in the audience. (As Tom said later, we'd heard all the preacher jokes before.)

Dr. Gaddy is an interesting and thoughtful speaker; he has a sense of humor and a smile that just makes you want to trust him, good pastoral characteristics. He began with references to some of the mean-spirited things being advocated from pulpits today, noting two particularly hateful speeches, though he didn't name the men responsible. However, I had heard excerpts from these particular sermons, so I knew he was referring to Louisiana pastor Dennis Terry, of Greenwell Springs Baptist Church, and to either Charles Worley, of Providence Road Baptist Church in Maiden, North Carolina or Sean Harris, senior pastor of Berean Baptist Church in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

But the focus of Gaddy's speech, titled "But God Told Me I could be President--Religion and the 2012 Election," was about the separation of church and state and how that separation is being undermined by political and religious leaders. Political leaders are using religion cynically to garner votes, and religious leaders are using religion to gain political power, that is, power to change legislation that will impact all Americans. He referred specifically to the Affordable Health Care Act and how its attempts to cover all Americans is being unhelpfully and uncompassionately undermined by religious groups that erroneously claim the act tramples on their religious freedom. Gaddy reminds us that your religious freedom stops where the other person's religious freedom begins, that a secular government has the responsibility to respond to the needs of ALL its citizens and that a woman's right to make choices about her own body should not be determined by one religious group. Of course, he believes strongly that individuals have the right to act on their own religious faith, just not that they should expect others to defer to that faith in the arena of governmental legislation.

Compassion and humility seem to be two important words to Dr. Gaddy, compassion for others different from us and humility about our own self-importance and self-righteousness. I like how he concluded his speech with a reminder that we all need humility, the willingness to accept that we might be wrong. He administered some stern injunctions with that very kind smile of his, sweetening the sting of some of his words, for he had some criticisms of the Obama administration as well.


other links:
Editorial by Todd Dorman, "Entangling Religion and Politics Diminishes Both," in The Cedar Rapids Gazette, 1 December 2011.

State of Belief with Rev. Welton Gaddy--radio show production of The Interfaith Alliance Foundation

Self-Righteousness, Resentment, Anger...and the Girl Scouts

As I type this post, my door is open, and I can hear doves cooing, the kwirrr of a red-bellied woodpecker, and the rising "turreee" of towhees. It's a warm January day in south Louisiana. When I went outside to fill the bird feeder, I saw a black swallowtail butterfly fluttering around the yard. The peacefulness of this place provides for me such sharp contrast to what I hear and read about the political culture at large. Every day I thank whatever higher power there is--if she cares--for this respite from the anger, self-righteousness, and resentment that I confront in the news every day. There seems to be little room for grace and mercy these days--except for those who helped muster in this sad state of affairs. Somehow,  folks who loudly, vocally (and often aggressively) identify as Christian are ready to vote for a man who helped create the poisonous political culture we now live in and are ready to pronounce him "redeemed" from his sin of adultery.

Well, I don't care if he married three women, but I do think that how he treated those first two women says something about his character, and I also believe that how he condescends to others says something about his character, as well as his readiness to make those nasty connections to racial resentment and hatred: Obama is the "food stamp" president;  to Juan Williams work is a "strange concept." And anyone who isn't "you" is "elitist." Come on. We know exactly to what prejudices those comments pander.

But I'm not here today to talk about the Newt, really. What really bothers me is how self-righteousness, resentment, anger and pitiless judgment affect those of us who can't afford a half-a-million dollar credit at Tiffany's to help us cope with life's little meannesses.

Take the Girl Scouts, for example. Who cannot like the Girl Scouts? Well, those folks who think Girl Scouts shouldn't have reproductive counseling and sex education or allow transgendered children within their ranks. The Girl Scouts are very "pro-girl," in that they have from the inception of the program provided girls with the power to become whatever they can be in a changing culture. Some folks want those girls back in the kitchen making the cookies and not in the boardroom managing the marketing of those cookies.

Oh, and if you are transgendered, the Girl Scouts East Louisiana troop doesn't want you. In fact, some parents are so afraid of the POSSIBILITY of getting cooties from a transgendered child that they will take their kids out of the local troop even when that troop publicly announces it will not accept transgendered children and no transgendered children have even applied to join the troop. No, the refusal was just not "fast enough" for those folks:

But Susan Cramond, a troop leader who had two children in the group that met at Northlake Christian School in Covington, said she and other like-minded parents felt Louisiana Scouting policy-makers should never have had to discuss the transgender issue in the first place. Cramond said when she first contacted Louisiana’s Scouting leaders to ask whether a transgendered child could be accepted into a local troop, she didn’t get the quick and unequivocal “no” she was hoping for.

So Cramond and fellow troop leader Susan Bryant-Snure, a Lacombe doctor, informed other parents. She said they collectively decided to abandon the Girl Scouts and seek affiliation with American Heritage Girls, a similar organization that describes itself as a “Christ-centered leadership and character development ministry.”

Bryant-Snure said by banning transgendered children, the Louisiana board eventually made the “right decision; they just made it in a way that made us nervous.”

[Bruce Nolan, "Transgendered Girl Scout in Colorado Causes Stir in St. Tammany," The Times-Picayune, 22 January 2012.]

I guess the American Heritage Girls are sweating in the kitchen baking those cookies they hope they can sell more quickly now that so many like-minded folks are boycotting Girl Scout cookies.

Yep, this is where we live now....in a state of mind so rigid that just the possibility of otherness causes panic. Think I'll sit here and listen to the doves.


h/t: Mary Elizabeth Williams, "The Right's Latest Target: Girl Scout Cookies," posted in Salon, 23 January 2012.

Morning Reading, Morning Thoughts

My morning's reading:

• Ryan Lizza's "Leap of Faith," about "the transformation of Michele Bachmann from Tea Party insurgent and cable-news Pasionaria to serious Republican contender in the 2012 Presidential race," in The New Yorker. I found this article particularly interesting because, like Michele Bachmann, I was early influenced by evangelical Christianity; only for me, that influence was in a country Southern Baptist Church that my paternal grandmother helped establish. I also read Francis Schaeffer's works in search of an intellectual way to verify my beliefs, and for a time, the church in which I was a member focused on eschatology and most specifically on Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth. So there is nothing in Michele Bachmann's far-right views that is unfamiliar to me. The difference is that I rejected those views. Brain-washing* is a peculiar thing: when you're under the influence, you don't realize that you are being manipulated--or if you suspect, as I did, you search for ways to justify your continued adherence to the views of your group while also fearing the rejection that will come when you leave the group. When you shake yourself free--not easily and not unassisted--you are appalled by your emotional and rational--and even moral--submission to views you now find untenable. Having been under the influence of far-right Christianity as a youth, I certainly don't want to experience being under that same influence as a citizen. While I find much to admire in the teachings of Jesus, I find much to abhor in how those teachings are expressed in far-right Christian theology.
  
  
• "Your Head on My Shoulder: Parasitic Twins and other Half-Formed Siblings," by Jesse Bering, in Slate--This article was interesting in its gruesome descriptions of parasitic twins, in which one twin is born healthy and another is mal-formed, incomplete, and attached to the healthy twin. And, also, the author's comments at the end connect to the current movement in this country to ban abortions. We have leaders advocating banning abortion of any kind, even if the young woman is a victim of rape or incest. Evidently, these same people would ban abortions of mal-formed twins (some of which are just a jumble of parts) though such intervention might promote the health of the fully-formed and viable twin. When Michele Bachmann and others such as she say they believe in "liberty," they don't mean the liberty for women to make their own reproductive decisions, even when those decisions are based on sound science and/or compassion.
  
  
• Dave Weigel's piece in Slate, "Republicans for Tax Hikes (Republicans have finally found a group they want to tax: poor people)"--My previous post responds to this crazy turn of events in the Republican party. But Weigel's analysis points out that there is a method to this madness: Tax the poor more so that they will support lowering taxes for everyone. That way, there is more support for keeping taxes low on the rich.

  In 2002 and 2003, long before it got Huntsman in the room, the Wall Street Journal editorialized that poor people who didn't pay income taxes were "lucky duckies." The poor slob with a low income and child tax credit would get a small or nonexistent tax bill, not one that would "get his or her blood boiling with tax rage." The problem here wasn't that the poor slob wasn't paying any taxes; the problem was that his meager tax bill failed to foment enough anger to reduce taxes on other people. Tax cuts for the rich—tax cuts for anyone, really, but the Journal has always been concerned about tax cuts for the rich—require a broad base of outrage.

  Diabolical. And I don't mean that in an admiring way.
  
  
• Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog post, "Affirmative Action for Colonial White People," on The Atlantic's website--Actually, I read this piece last night, but it seems to me that what Coates points out here about how slaves (black) and servants (mostly white) were manipulated to prevent their finding common ground speaks to how people continue to be manipulated by those in power in order to prevent those without power from uniting against that power. (See above.)
  
  ___________
  
  *"Brainwashing" may be too strong of a word to describe my experience in the Southern Baptist Church, but the message I got as a child was full of fear and loathing--loathing for the physical self, fear of damnation--and it was sometimes delivered in scary ways. We had preachers who would get all worked up about sin and hell until they were shouting and stomping around the pulpit. At the close of sermons, at what is called "altar-call," we were asked to close our eyes and raise our hands if we felt we needed forgiveness. "Don't worry," the pastor would say, "Only I and God can see your raised hands." But then, once we would raise them, he would tell us that if we had raised our hands, we now needed to come forward publicly and make a confession, implying that we fell "short of the glory of God," in the Apostle Paul's words, if we didn't have the courage to do so. Guilt was a mighty tool. And that time we were studying Hal Lindsey's books was a very dark time, full of foreboding. I had nightmares about Jesus coming back in the clouds and my feet not being able to leave the ground to join the throng of believers in the sky. And one of our pastors would get so excited when our church's gospel quartet sang "The King is Coming," that he would begin screaming. Really.
  

Christians and Hatred

Justin Elliot of TPM Muckraker points out today that the guy who showed up with an AK-47 at an event where Barack Obama spoke attends a church where the pastor preaches sermons with titles such as "Why I Hate Barack Obama." In fact, Chris Broughton, the man with the AK-47 and handgun, had heard just that sermon the day before showing up armed. I tried to listen to the entire sermon, but I couldn't stand to hear such hatred. The preacher referred to "the whoredoms and witchcrafts of the U.S. government and Barack Obama" and said that he prays to God that Barack Obama will "die and go to hell."

We might be tempted to wave a hand dismissively and label this pastor as a small feeder on the fringe. But elected Republicans are spouting language that is just as incendiary. Republican Senator John Inofe (Oklahoma) told his constituents, "We're almost reaching a revolution in this country." (h/t Steve Benen, Josh Marshall) He says he doesn't know what's in the health reform bill, won't read it, and will vote against it (in the full splendor of his self-proclaimed stupidity). Representative Michele Bachman (R-MN) wants her constituents to be "armed and dangerous." These people may claim to be using such language "figuratively," they may be punctuating their calls to arms with little moues of self-righteousness, but they are building a fire they will not be able to control.

"Weaponized Christianity"--THIS is What Jesus Would Do?

In Khaled Hosseini's novel, The Kite Runner, the homicidal Assef, childhood bully of the main character and his friend, has joined the Taliban. Afghanistan is under an extreme-fringe interpretation of Sharia law. The law is really whatever the Taliban rule. Mobs of young Taliban men massacre people in the streets and destroy centuries-old artifacts. In a climactic chapter of the novel, the first-person narrator, Amir, is confronted by his childhood enemy, Assef, who describes to Amir the massacre of members of an Afghani minority group:

"You don't know the meaning of the word 'liberating' until you've done that, stood in a roomful of targets, let the bullets fly, free of guilt and remorse, knowing you are virtuous, good, and decent. Knowing you're doing God's work. It's breathtaking." He kissed the prayer beads, tilted his head.

It's a horrifying scene and a horrifying philosophy, that rampant murder of innocent people is blessed by God. As the writer of the novel wants to convey, that philosophy does not reflect the true philosophy of Islam, that it is the philosophy of fringe elements, bullies, thugs.

As I read the novel, I realized that we have our own religious fringe elements, people who say they are "Christians" and yet who tout a philosophy not unlike that of Assef. They might not be massacring people on Mainstreet, U.S.A., but they are communicating that philosophy politically through other means, and even, yes, with weapons.

Here are a few examples of how this idea of a "weaponized Christianity" is spreading, intentionally in some ways, unintentionally in other ways, yet no less creepy and insidious.

The war in Iraq has particularly brought out the militant in the Christianity fringe. We see evidence of this in stories about Blackwater, the military contractor that sent many people to Iraq to guard government personnel. The owner of Blackwater, Erik Prince, and his company have been under investigation for some time for illegally smuggling arms into Iraq and for killing Iraqi civilians. Now Prince is getting a closer look: A former employee of Blackwater and an ex-Marine who worked in security for the company have filed sworn statements in court against Prince and his company:

The two men claim that the company's owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life." (from "Blackwater Founder Implicated in Murder," by Jeremy Scahill, in The Nation, posted August 4, 2009.)

According to one of these former Blackwater employees, Erik Prince deliberately hired men who

shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades.

Mr. Prince operated his companies in a manner that encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life. For example, Mr. Prince's executives would openly speak about going over to Iraq to "lay Hajiis out on cardboard." Going to Iraq to shoot and kill Iraqis was viewed as a sport or game. Mr. Prince's employees openly and consistently used racist and derogatory terms for Iraqis and other Arabs, such as "ragheads" or "hajiis."

Despite these allegations and previous investigations, Blackwater, which has been renamed Xe, continues to be hired by the Obama administration to provide security overseas. (See "U.S. Still Paying Blackwater Millions," Jeremy Scahill, The Nation, 7 August 2009.)

As Jeremy Scahill relates in an interview with Keith Olberman, one of these former employees of Blackwater was also in management in Blackwater, someone who would be intimately familiar with the culture of the company. He and the second Blackwater employee provided this startling information in "sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia." Jeremy Scahill has been researching the use of privatized armies for some time and has written a book based on his research.

These are not frivolous allegations, and their content unnervingly reflects an apocalyptic viewpoint expressed by other people in our government, including, evidently, former president George W. Bush. Jacques Chirac, president of France when the Bush administration was pushing invading Iraq, has revealed the language President Bush used to try to convince France to join the coalition:

"Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East. ... The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled. ... This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people's enemies before a New Age begins." (from "Agog over Bush's Comments on Gog and Magog," Saturday Gazette-Mail, posted 22 July 2009, by James Haught--h/t to David Crisp; See also, Mitch Potter, "Did He Feel the Hand of God?: Apocalyptic fervor may have held sway in White House," Toronto Star, 29 May 2009, posted on TheSpec.com--h/t to Kevin Drum)

Evidently puzzled by this language President Jacques Chirac asked a theologian at the University of Lausanne to explain the strange references. Thomas Romer, the theologian, later "recounted Bush's strange behavior in Lausanne University's review, Allez Savoir." He explained to Chirac that the arcane references were to Biblical scripture from the books of Ezekial and Revelation. It's troubling to me, as it should be to all Americans, that our president may have been making decisions of war based on an interpretation of Biblical scripture that remains in great dispute among Christians.

Also evident in these stories is the racist attitudes expressed toward Muslims and citizens of Middle Eastern countries. People who incline toward racism in the first place are emboldened when their attitudes are supported, tacitly or explicitly, by their leaders. In his article for Harper's, "Jesus killed Mohammed: The crusade for a Christian military," Jeff Sharlet describes how a Special Forces unit in Samarra carried out their military mission: by openly denigrating the religion of the people they were there to "liberate." Sergeant Jeffery Humphrey and his squad of nine men were assigned to guard the 10th Special Forces Unit, who called themselves "the Faith Element." He recalls how the men that Easter Sunday were shown Mel Gibson's bloody re-telling of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Then the 109th National Guard Infantry rolled out to confront insurgents; they returned under fire from a furious crowd, and the compound remained underseige for the rest of the day.

Sergeant Jeffery Humphrey describes how the men in the compound prepared four Bradley Fighting Vehicles to run from the compound in order to draw enemy fire and how "his lieutenant, John D. DeGiulio," and a couple of sergeants were snickering because they had convinced their interpreter, an Iraqi from Texas, to paint in Farsi on the side of the vehicle: "Jesus Killed Mohammad." At dusk, this tank, along with the others, rolled into the streets of Samarra, a holy city of Iraq, with its militarized Christian message on its side and the Iraqi interpreter shouting from a bullhorn, "Jesus kill Mohammad, Jesus kill Mohammad," while local Iraqis were being called to evening prayers. Of course, the tank came under increasing fire, and its superior firepower exploded house after Iraqi house. Who was firing from those houses? Just insurgents? Or perhaps, also, Iraqi civilians angered by the lack of respect shown their religion?

"Humphrey heard Lieutenant DeGiulio reporting in from the Bradley’s cabin, opening up on all doorways that popped off a round, responding to rifle fire—each Iraqi household is allowed one gun—with 25mm shells powerful enough to smash straight through the front of a house and out the back wall."

According to Jeff Sharlet, a militarized version of Christianity permeates American armed forces. He cites example after example of highly-placed military leaders who view the United States' intervention in Iraq through apocalyptic lenses; they are holy warriors. How, then, do they--and we, if we do not work diligently to maintain our Constitutional ideal of separation of church and state--differ from the Assefs of the world?

Sources and Further Reading:

• James Haught, "Agog over Bush's Comments on Gog and Magog," Gazette-Mail, 22 July 2009.
  
  
• Mitch Potter, "Did He Feel the Hand of God?," Toronto Star, 29 May 2009, posted at TheSpec.com.
  
  
• Jeremy Scahill, "Blackwater Founder Implicated in Murder," The Nation, 4th August 2009.
  
  
• Jeremy Scahill, "US Still Paying Blackwater Millions," The Nation, 7 August 2009.
  
  
• Jeff Sharlet, "Jesus Killed Mohammad: The Crusade for a Christian Military," Harper's, May 2009.
  
  
• Scott Horton, "Blackwater's Dark Secrets," No Comment, Harper's, posted 6 August 2009.
  
  
• Bill Moyers interviews Jeremy Scahill on PBS's Bill Moyer's Journal about the use of Blackwater mercenaries on U.S. Soil, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. See, also, Bill Moyers' website on PBS: Information about Blackwater and extended interview with Jeremy Scahill.
  
  
• David Antoon, "The Cancer from Within," Truthdig, posted 7 November 2007. (one man's experience and opinion)
  
  
• Eric Mandonnet, "Chirac, Bush et l'Apocalypse," L'Expresse.fr, published 26 February 2009. (h/t truthout.org).

When Religion Rules

The earlier words of my colleague from Iran have proven true. When I had asked her if she were avidly following the election in Iran, where young people were taking to the streets in large numbers to support Mir Hossein Mousavi against Ahmadinejad, she shrugged. "In Iran, you know," she said, "votes can be stolen." She dejectedly reminded us that the name of the country reflects the true power in the government: the Islamic Republic of Iran. And indeed, the election results indicate that votes were not merely stolen but that the goods are being brazenly flaunted. Ahmadinejad has been announced the winner by a wide margin, even from areas where opposition support was strong, that no one believes. The supreme religious rulers of the country have made a mockery of the will of the people. And that's what happens when religion rules: whoever speaks for the religious group always claims to have God on his side, the ultimate power. Laura Secor has an interesting article at The New Yorker: "Laura Secor: Iran's Stolen Election," News Desk, New Yorker, June 13, 2009.

And Steven Benen at The Washington Monthly points out that not only our major news networks (which are poor purveyors of news in the world, anyway) but also cable news channels have done a poor job covering the results of Iran's elections and the violent aftermath. Newspapers, evidently, have done a much better job. He also points to Nico Pitney's post on Huffington Post, which is a compilation of a number of news sources, from Twitterers, e-mailers, news columnists in Iran, etc.: "Iran Violence: Protests Erupt, Riot Police Launch Crackdown," posted June 14, 2009.

Here's Middle Eastern expert Juan Cole's take on the elections in Iran: "Stealing the Iranian Election," posted June 13, 2009, on Cole's blog Informed Comment. Cole hedges his analysis with uncertainties, but he theorizes that Mousavi was perhaps bringing in enough votes to be declared the victor in the election but when that news reached Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, "who has had a feud with Mousavi for over 30 years," the religious leaders "sent blanket instructions to the Electoral Commission to falsify the vote counts."

Gross Manipulation of Christian Scripture

Today Steven Benen has a link to GQ magazine, where Robert Draper, the author of the Bush-endorsed biography Dead Certain, has a long article on Donald Rumsfeld and the Department of Defense during the Bush Administration. Frank Rich's column discusses that article in The New York Times today, as well. According to Rich, "Draper reports that Rumsfeld’s monomaniacal determination to protect his Pentagon turf led him to hobble and antagonize America’s most willing allies in Iraq, Britain and Australia, and even to undermine his own soldiers." I haven't read Draper's article yet; I'm printing it out to read later because I have more manual labor planned for this afternoon. However, I have looked at the selection of "cover sheets" that Rumsfeld and his department prepared for President Bush daily. These cover sheets "were approved for the Secretary of Defense Worldwide Intelligence Update, a highly classified digest prepared for a tiny audience, including the president, and often delivered by hand to the White House by the defense secretary himself" (Rich, NYT, May 16, 2009).

Frank Rich calls these "triumphal color photos of the war headlined by biblical quotations" creepy. A Christian would (or should) call them blasphemous. The Department of Defense used scripture from the letters of St. Paul and St. Peter, which were meant to encourage early Christians in their daily living in a highly militarized culture opposed to the teachings of Christ ("love your enemies," "Do good to those who hate you"), to promote war. Sure, Paul used military metaphors because these were metaphors his Greek audience would understand:

Put on the full armor of God so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. (Letter of Paul to the Ephesians, 6:13-17, NIV)

Rumsfeld and his department took these scriptures entirely out of context to manipulate those for whom they were intended, specifically a president of the United States who called himself a "born-again believer." St. Paul was not telling his readers to arm themselves literally with weapons. As he wrote just previous to the scripture quoted above, the war he foresaw was not one "against flesh and blood" but against evil. Christian faith, Paul said, was the weapon against evil. In addition, these words come at the very end of a letter in which Paul had more specifically described how those Ephesians should live: husbands and wives loving one another, masters and slaves treating one another well, fathers being kind to their children, people speaking truthfully to their neighbors and not allowing the sun to go down on their anger. "Live a life of love," Paul exhorted those early Christians, "as just Christ loved us" (Ephesians 5:1).

Any true Christian would be appalled to see those words accompanying a picture of an army tank bathed by the glow of a desert sunset. Any Muslim who saw that picture accompanied by those words would have every right to conclude that the U.S. government was engaged in a "holy" war against Muslims. Above a slide of Saddam Hussein, these words are quoted from I Peter 2:15: "It is God's will that by doing good you will silence the ignorant talk of foolish men." I am disgusted that these words were used to promote war. Sure, Saddam Hussein was an evil man who tortured and massacred his own people. But St. Peter's words were meant to encourage followers to live justly and righteously in a very repressive society. St. Peter was encouraging those early Christians to persuade by actions acted out of love and faith, not anger and retribution.

The more that is revealed of our government's actions in the "war on terror," the more appalled I am at how much of those actions are diametrically opposed to all I have believed about the values of our country and about the religious values with which I was reared (steeped and marinated).

What's Up with Public Prayer?

Evangelical Christian leaders and far-right religious folk are criticizing Barack Obama for not holding a formal White House event on the "National Day of Prayer." The President released a proclamation designating the first Thursday in May as National Prayer Day, a proclamation that included these words:

It is in that spirit of unity and reflection that we once again designate the first Thursday in May as the National Day of Prayer. Let us remember those who came before us, and let us each give thanks for the courage and compassion shown by so many in this country and around the world.

On this day of unity and prayer, let us also honor the service and sacrifice of the men and women of the United States Armed Forces. We celebrate their commitment to uphold our highest ideals, and we recognize that it is because of them that we continue to live in a Nation where people of all faiths can worship or not worship according to the dictates of their conscience.

Let us also use this day to come together in a moment of peace and goodwill. Our world grows smaller by the day, and our varied beliefs can bring us together to feed the hungry and comfort the afflicted; to make peace where there is strife; and to lift up those who have fallen on hard times. As we observe this day of prayer, we remember the one law that binds all great religions together: the Golden Rule, and its call to love one another; to understand one another; and to treat with dignity and respect those with whom we share a brief moment on this Earth.

However, these gracious words are not enough for the Dobson crowd. Becky Armstrong, marketing and media manager of the National Day of Prayer Task Force, said that not holding a public event at the White House "would be belittling to those millions of people" who are meeting publicly around the country to pray out loud. Sometimes I wonder where the real Christians are. Do these far-right religious people even read their Bible? What did Jesus say about prayer? Would Jesus expect Barack Obama to have a fancy prayer meeting at the White House? Well, let's just see what he might say.

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. (Holy Bible, Matthew 6:5-8, New International Version)

I've never understood the hysterical whining about public prayer--because as a child in the Southern Baptist Church, I read these words and figured that's just what Jesus wanted his followers to do: shut their mouths, go to their rooms, and pray to God. So what's up with all this fuss about public prayer?

WHY are more Americans hostile toward Christianity?

Three articles in the LA Times connected serendipitously for me today. I began with a post on Broadsheet, where Carol Lloyd discussed an article about a homemaking major offered at Southwestern Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. Only women are allowed to take these homemaking classes which are preparing women, according to seminary president Paige Patterson, to become home schoolers. Then, while perusing the online newspaper, I came across an article about Ann Coulter, who said in a recent interview on television that her ideal of a country would be one in which everyone is Christian. Her host, who is Jewish, protested. Coulter added that she believed that Jews could be"'perfected through conversion to Christianity," implying, of course, that Judaism is inferior to Christianity.

Finally, I noted an article on a poll that indicates changing attitudes toward American Christianity. The pollsters noted that while a decade ago "an overwhelming majority" of non-Christians, including those aged 16-29, had favorable perceptions of Christianity's role in society, those perceptions are today much more negative in this age group. Just 16% of the people in that age group felt favorably toward Christianity's role in society. Evangelical Christianity is in particular disfavor, with only 3% of young non-Christians being favorably disposed toward this group that has become increasingly high profiled during the Bush administration.

And why do these young people have a more negative attitude toward American Christianity? Well, they perceive it to be "judgmental (87%), hypocritical (85%), old-fashioned (78%) and too involved in politics (75%)." The pollsters also discovered that "even among Christians, half of young believers said they too view Christianity to be judgmental, hypocritical and too political. One-third said it was old-fashioned and out of touch with reality."

Here in the LA Times, American Christian evangelicals can discover how their embrace of the Bush administration has turned non-Christians against them. Their foray into national politics has diminished their religious message. Their rise to power, accompanied by the likes of Ann Coulter and James Dobson, has hurt their cause--if that cause is to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ.

One of the students taking the homemaking courses at the Southern Baptist Southwestern Theological Seminary says it really doesn't matter what she thinks in terms of a woman's role in society. As a woman, she is supposed to learn how to take care of the home so that her husband will not have to be responsible for any household duties. Is it any wonder that non-Christians have a negative perception of American Christianity?