Why should they be ashamed? It's because there is a tiny gay church in a town called Halcottsville (it's such a small town you can't find it). The pastors there are gay and they adopt children with HIV. They want to be a member of the Interfaith Council, and are trying to force their way in through terrifying the voting body but the Interfaith Council isn't letting them in fast enough.
The tiny church at Halcottville is Catholic or in some kind of a split-off from Catholicism that started in Brazil in the 1940s. It's called Holy Innocents. This church is something of a splinter group. The Pope in Rome won't accept this bunch. I have some friends who go there, and know a heterosexual but very radical female pastor who split with the Episcopalians to join that church.
Holy Innocents demand that they be included in the Interfaith Council in Margaretville, a group of churches that is dragging its feet to allow them entry. Or maybe they've just been slow to act. It seems they have lots of saving homes and giving out turkeys to do, and may not be terribly aware that the Holy Innocents are knocking upon their door. If they are hoping the Holy Innocents are going to go away peacefully if they are ignored long enough, they don't know much about the aggressiveness of the left. I have been reading about this and wondering whether the Interfaith Council will cave, meanwhile gay journals and blogs are upping the ante to force their brethrens' way into the Council. If you look around the internet gay journals and blogs are piling on, and screeching like cicadas that the Holy Innocents must be included or else the terrorism is just beginning.
http://www.watershedpost.com/2012/churchs-struggle-interfaith-inclusion-goes-viral
This kind of bullying is everywhere now. It's more Saul Alinsky than St. Paul, but it's been quite effective. My wonder is whether this can be considered Christian behavior.
If a group wants to exclude me, I would never force my way in. Using shaming and humiliation and calling the churches "Philistines" seems extremely childish and rude and intemperate. If I feel that other people are rude, I just avoid them. But that's me. I don't go to football games and yell, "Why don't you try reading my poems!" I just write poems, although few people read them.
This kind of behavior however works well in the left and has been steadily successful in knocking down walls. It's not Gandhi, or rather, it's Gandhi goes Terrorist. I'm quite used to it, and it's one thing that's driven me out of the left. I think people should be allowed to use their own conscience. Consciousness-raising today is often just social terrorism. I find this use of social force appalling.
I assume the Interfaith Council will truckle and allow the intruders (called Holy Innocents) in, and then slowly disband, because their conscience won't allow them to sanction the unBiblical behavior or mannerisms of those they would have politely wished to exclude. To be a Christian is to be at odds with the general secularizing nature of the culture, and in particular with its growing acceptance of any and every kind of sexual enactment from gay to masochist to sadist to serial monogamy to orgies and bestiality and eating excrement or even pissing on each other while listening to Bach.
It's a problem everywhere in these days of political correctness if you aren't inclusive of every extreme. Did St. Paul use tactics to bully people into belief? He did when he was Saul, but not when he was Paul. It's a Saul Alinsky tactic. While Marxism is a kind of Christian heresy, Alinsky was also aligned with gangsters to the right, and the Amish to the left. Psychological warfare was what he learned from the Amish. Shunning works. But is it peace? Psychological warfare is effective. But it's not so much community organizing as community take-over and community terrorizing. It denies freedom of conscience to others. In essence it's the Marxism of Stalin and Pol Pot arrived in a somewhat wolfish guise of sheepishness. Almost everyone is cowed. I find it fishy. I find it gets my goat. It turns everything into a Diet of Worms.
I personally am not much of a joiner. I like what Groucho Marx said. "I would not like to be a member of any club that would accept me." I think to some extent Christians are meant to remain as outsiders. I think we should accept that stance. Jesus was born in Bethlehem and was an outsider. He fled to Egypt and upon his return He was slaughtered and hung out to dry. I can relate to that. Holy Innocents in Halcottsville instead has a different tactic. "We will force everyone to accept us, and we will therefore be more powerful." That would seem to be their motto. This seems somewhat opposite to Christianity. Instead of outsiders forcing their way into a group that doesn't want them, it should be outsiders refusing to be part of anything that would have them. Christians don't call themselves Holy Innocents. They call themselves Guilty as Charged and therefore unworthy of any group, and any acceptance, and yet accepted nevertheless by God (for reasons only He understands).
79 comments:
I worry that as various religious denominations are bullied for inclusion that the definition of Christianity will simply be replaced by conformity to the Stalinist mobs and their high-placed journalists. If that is to be the case then the fundamental tenets of the first amendment will be lost. Those are freedom of religious conscience and freedom of speech. Both.are among the first losses when the Stalinists get their jackboots on the neck of the populace. Poets die soon after as do religious people. First they must be silenced. Then their murder is far easier to achieve.
aliens with hope that's what the christians are oddly disenfranchised but seeking the light always seeking and testifying to some things found answers hard to refute
i'm fed up to the forehead over all this gaygaygaygaygaygay stuff yuck leave me alone all of you i've had enough won't you just please go away and leave me alone in my catholic church the way it is who are you people to think you have the clout to change anything i think those gayshsaypalybaywaygreydayphaydoowaygay folks are just preoccupied with power with pushing themselves into matters and forcing the change to their ideology and it stinks all of it they should just shut up and pray the rosary and go to confession and receive communion like everyone else and shut up and try to live good lives they know somehow that what they propose is ickyicky stuff and it freaks people out and when they're freaked out they have emotional power over the people who are freaked out but i just want them to shut up and go away...i believe there is some proven therapy that can help people come around to finding the right trajectory for that angle on the dangle so to speak...so that babies can be made and not just o how sweet the sweet couple is so content and friendly blugh it makes me sick the wedding frenzy says all that can be said about open pop media
kirby if you would've worked a little harder at getting elected we could have made arrangements to have this stuff centralized in ohio like i proposed months ago
we're stuck with this hollywood nightmare theatre of the ludicrously macabre
maybe the christians need to get behind polygamy lord knows there's lots more of that than the queer stuff we need to welcome the polygamists into the fold as being very natural good people who just happen to have too many spouses that's what the christian world need to do welcome home the polygamists...i know jesus was kindof hard on the divorce idea but i think even he'd come around to a big concession of letting the polygamy people in complete with the many wives re-establish the old testament model it worked for the mormons for awhile maybe it'd work for the orthodox world...i'm going on record here i want polygamy to be given social acceptance and even encouragement...it will be in this way that women will learn to be subservient again and learn that serving the men is one of the important ways they've been made by god to exist in the world...harems...bring on the harems and then start some serious conversations with our muslim brothers on the nature of natural law and balancing the good with the bad in a careless world of indifference and stoic boldness...i don't want to hear about the phayphaygaygayblayblayplayplaytaytaypoopaygaygay stuff anymore take it somewhere else
humanist ethics are petri dishes of heinous presumption
help mister wizard!
jh
If I ever get my German translations published they'll be in a chapbook I'll call Poems Committed In The First Degree.
sometimes craig makes things sound like torment well-endured
i want a signed copy of those translations
i'll pay good money for that
:)
jh
Ahhh, the whole thing's absoid.
I like your commenting on your own essay. It's like your split into two people--mirror images, like the furniture brothers on Antiques Roadshow. You can't tell one from the other, but they both are enthusiastic about what they do, and can show you every little bit of vague evidence about the construction of a chair or a high-boy, who made it, where it came from, what it's worth, and whether or not it was tampered with to deceive a buyer.
A lot of men in the antique trade are gay. I guess Kirby could make something out of that. Maybe it's a communist plot to take over the collectibles market. Since gays and communists obviously are struck from the same mold, I think we ought to be on our guard with them. A gay may be the advance guard of the tribe of Marx. Or a socialist may be wanting to seduce your daughters. Sex and communism. Furniture and bad taste. What are things coming to?
Was Stalin a closet gay? Is Obama an Al Quaeda operative? These are serious matters which we ought to pay attention to. Saul Alinsky wanted to undermine religious freedom. Which is why Canada wants to conquer America, to get its pharmaceutical industry. I heard this on the radio, like in Cocteau's movie, where secret codes are transmitted via car sets.
It's the true crystal.
Three strikes and you're out. Or in.
Kirby,
OK, I've done a little poking around. Are you aware that the Episcopalian Church decided this summer to approve same sex marriage? And that there is an Episcopalian congregation in Margaretsville?
Somehow, I doubt that the other churches in the Interfaith Council have gotten around to throwing out the Episcopalians for having entered into the "sin" that has kept them from embracing Holy Innocents. Of course, they do understand that throwing out the Episcopalians will make them look ridiculous, all the more so because the Episcopalians likely hold the mortgages on their sanctuaries and parsonages. Prejudice, as usual, picks on the weak and grovels before the powerful.
The local Episcopalians are in general not fully compliant with the national body. The national church bullies the regionals into sundering their individual conscience. Power is tricky.
The churches are not completely democratic, and don't operate as do governments. Or they don't operate exactly as they do.
In churches God is worshipped. This means we seek to align ourselves with God's will. But in many churches it is difficult to distinguish the will of certain parishioners from that of God, because they see themselves as God, or they see their own will as that of God's.
The Episcopalian churches in this area are under the jurisdiction of the Albany diocese. I've spoken with many Episcopalians. Some are aligned with the gay marriage and gay ordination movement but most are not. The Bishop of the Albany diocese was not. But I don't know if that has switched.
The difference between the Lutheran and the Episcopalian churches is that the Lutheran churches are owned by the congregation. This means if they want to switch to another synod they can. But Episcopalian churches are owned by the national office.
So they can't leave. Individual members can leave, but the churches themselves cannot. In many cases they will empty out as the churches radicalize, and they will end up as discos. Or art museums. Or just falling down.
The congregations are already much older.
Power is quite tricky. Above the democratic vote there is God. God is almighty. When it is said we are made in the image of God, it doesn't really mean that we are God, unless of course you are a Marxist, which means that you are in fact God. But we are fallen. He isn't.
So our will isn't really equal to His. So this means we are still supposed to read Leviticus carefully. Many just toss that chapter. And toss anything else that bothers their will. The usual move is to say one thing is eternal, and another thing is historical, or social.
But that gets trickier and trickier. Finally, pastors start talking about God and instead try to legitimate themselves through social action, or works.
One of the things you can find when you look up the Halcottsville church is that they've called upon Queer Power throughout the nation to prevail upon the interfaith council, whom they have defined as "Philistines."
This kind of rhetoric creates bad blood, and has no doubt poisoned the air all around. Which will mean that many will secede from the proceedings. The communists never care about this, because for them everything is always already about power, and discouraging the other side is a good thing.
The gay movement has realized that symbolism is very powerful and that churches and universities and journalism contains that kind of power. They've wielded it very effectively and have largely won. The other side is not nearly as advanced in its image-making and unmaking power.
But is power all that there is? Is might therefore right? Rightness has to come from God. Therefore, we have to align ourselves with God. How can we do this except through reading the Bible? Christ himself says that marriage is between a man and a woman. Matthew 19: 4-6. "Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female?..."
The left has very tricky rhetorical readings of these passages. If you stand up to them you generally get bombarded with violent and scary countervalent messages. You are prejudiced, or you are a bigot, is the least of it. You are also an idiot and a Philistine.
The people in the churches have been quite vulnerable and yet miraculously they've often retained their original readings, and survived. The churches that have caved in have also cratered as churches. They're disappearing.
It's very hard to get the Christian message right. It's a lifelong process and we can't ever be too sure we're in the right. I think Judas had decided that Christ Himself was in the wrong when He allowed the woman in Matthew Chapter 26 to pour the expensive perfume on his feet. Judas thought that expensive perfume could have been used to give money to the poor. He thought that Christ therefore was not the Messiah but a bad person. The other disciples also saw this as something for which they could be "indignant." "To what purpose is this waste?" They ask.
But Christ then says, "For ye have the poor always with you." Matthew 26: 11.
The beauty of the churches as expensive as they might be are the perfume that we place on Christ's feet. That money could go to the poor. But the lion's share of the money should go to worship of the lamb.
These things are very hard to get right, and no doubt there is much to argue about here. But the point is not to bully, but we have to leave each conscience to settle these questions for themselves. Which isn't to say that there aren't standards, too. But the standards have to come out of the Bible, and especially the red passages. This doesn't mean that the OT isn't also in play. It's a big part of the whole problem of interpretation.
At any rate, Margaretville is a good 40 minutes from here. I rarely go there. It's a nice town. It has an older population and a new contingent that has moved up from the city. The two communities are constantly at each others' throats, as the city people consider the rural people to be backward. The rural people consider the city people to be rude and bereft of decency.
I'm probably more like the city people. I've spent a lot of time in cities both in this country and in Europe. I've lived in Paris and in Finland for six years. I am more familiar with their art and literature, and can speak French and read Finnish fairly well (Finnish is by far the harder language to master as there is almost no similarity, whereas French is already in English by virtue of the Normans). The locals are fascinated by country music and deer hunting and church going is also a big part of their culture. I've developed a respect for the local people and their culture. They're often quite decent. Many of them yesterday spent the day blowing deer away which I always appreciate too. Deer bring Lyme with them, and it's better to destroy them.
I only wish they could do it from helicopter gunships. Deer are not themselves terrorists, but the ticks use them as collateral, and march on us using the fur as their cover stories. The locals sit in deer blinds or stands, and destroy all that moves.
Therefore it's very important to priase them. Obama wants to tax their guns out of existence. Yesterday a hundred thousand deer lost their lives, which means many more children will not get Lyme, but Obama feels that clinging to God and guns means that there are people who are not wholly subserviant to him, and he hates that.
Obama's a mistake, and the deer hunters are right, but I've never eaten venison. I'm far more likely to be found eating sushi. But do local populations get to practice their own lives using their own conscience? For them, the deer are theirs, and often make up enough meat to get them through the winter. They are eating locally. It is natural. Most of us have no idea where our meat comes from, but it comes from enormous industrial plants, and it's filled with pesticides and garbage before it reaches us. The local people are generally not as well-educated as those moving in. The spelling is horrific. The grammar is troubled. They've never even heard of Andy Warhol. But they've got the big picture right. Anal sex is a big part of the culture moving in. Those moving in are reprobates too often who only pretend to care about one another, but merely want power, and are using the culture to get it, and to preserve it.
And yet, when you compare the locals to those moving in, their families are often intact, and they have tremendous love for their sisters and brothers and parents, while those moving in are reprobates in that sense who have often ceased to speak to one or more members of their families.
I grew up in the Appalachians so I've always known these people. I like them. The people of Appalachia have always been put down as hillbillies and know-nothings. But even in Beverly Hillbillies you see how they stick together as a family. They still love their grandmother. There is an attachment that doesn't break.
Jethro and Daisy May fight but they stick together. In a film like Deer Hunter it's lamented that hicks like that were sent for no good reason to Vietnam to die. In a film like Deliverance it's hinted that the locals are cannibalistic monsters who rape outsiders for no good reason.
It's a bunch of bull. Appalachia has its own culture and it's far better than any of the garbage coming out of NYC. Now if only I could teach them to spell, and know the difference between its and it's, and stop using "so" as an intensifier...
One of the big problems with the sexual avant-gardes is that it's all they want to talk about. They think it's so interesting that they are doing something different. Most people would prefer to play Frisbee with children, or to make dinner. But with the sexual avant-gardes the big news is that they are gay or involved in orgies or like animals, or whatever. Most people don't want to hear about this. Fisting at the altar is the fun of the sexual avant-gardes. I find it just appallingly self-absorbed. It's an enormous distraction.
But it's just part of what we all have to deal with now, 24/7. Church used to be one of the few places you could hear about something else.
If religion is the opiate of the people then all illegal drugs should be immediately incorporated into all Christian ceremony and practice. Each and every parishioner should be required to get high before every service.
if freud could've seen television and movies he would have adjusted his judgement of opiates
of the people
in the canonical recipe for holy incense one of the ingredients happens to be "opium"
wow
as james brown once stated
i feel good
jh
Kirby,
The local Episcopalians are in general not fully compliant with the national body.
Yeah, I get it. They'll skate by until the local congregation solemnizes its first gay marriage, and the way things go, the lucky couple won't be ex-urbanites, they'll be children of established long-timers. Who, because they're Episcopalian, will know which fork goes with which course.
The national church bullies the regionals into sundering their individual conscience. Power is tricky.
Yeah. The Presbyterians and Methodists were scheduled to vote on gay marriage this summer. The Presbyterians did, and the measure failed 52-48. No one thinks that's the last time the question will be considered. Conservative elements in the Methodist church scheduled debate on the question last, and ensured that there was enough other business to make sure the issue would not be debated and voted on. Power is tricky.
In churches God is worshipped. This means we seek to align ourselves with God's will.
I think it is important that people on both sides see that there opponents are trying to align themselves with God's will too. There are two sides to this question.
The difference between the Lutheran and the Episcopalian churches is that the Lutheran churches are owned by the congregation.
This is incorrect. In the ELCA, there is a distinction between congregations that came to the synod out of the ALC or AELC, in which case the congregation owned the building, and congregations that came out of the LCA or were constituted after the merger, in which case the synod has (but rarely exercises) the right to retain the building. The distinction here is that the LCA and ELCA invest heavily into mission congregations, and if there's a viable subgroup of a dividing congregation that wants to continue within the synod, they'll get the building, even if they're in the minority.
These things are very hard to get right, and no doubt there is much to argue about here. But the point is not to bully, but we have to leave each conscience to settle these questions for themselves.
This is an unrealistic attitude. There are times when the community either acts or does not act, e.g., in solemnizing a gay marriage. The core problem here isn't actually the particular question before us, as there is always another divisive question. It's how we as a community deal with disagreement.
Obama's a mistake, and the deer hunters are right, but I've never eaten venison.
Well, I don't see Obama as a mistake. I have no problem, though, with the deer hunters. We've suppressed the natural predators of the deer for our own safety and convenience, and now have to step into that role to maintain ecological balance. And I have eaten venison. It is delicious, and it doesn't taste at all like chicken.
I can only imagine what it tastes like as I am a vegetarian. I think if you are going to eat meat though it shoild be something you've shot so uou can see it was healthy. Saw a doc called Food.inc and it opens w some poor kid who dies after a bad bout with beef.
I generally try to stay out of local politics but this piece interests me for several reasons. For years I've heard of grumbling from locals about elitists moving up here and mocking the locals. There is massive resentment. But there isn't much of a way to fight back. I like to occasionally stick a finger into the wheels of PC politocs to see if anyone cares. There is general a violent Stalinist Amish reaction.
I was happy that three people wrote email to say they would never speak to me again. One person who I don't know on the other hand thanked me for saying something. Like you say Stu the Methodists and the Presbys can't hold out forever. Lavender Stalinism will prevail. One vote after another will be held intil 666 seals it as it did w the ELCA. But even w that the debate merely begins. Congregations vote w wallets w feet and w silence or just confusion. As the norms are attacked and killed and no one stands up for them I occasionally mount a quixotic defense. But I love to lose. Chaos will prevail until the retuurn of Pantocrator. Then heads will fly.
For right now Satan just wants a place at the table.
The thing not said is that the Innocents come directly out of the Marxist tradition of liberation theology. As innocent as death! Can regionalism hold out against a sophisticated multinational church.. More likely it will end in takeover and all the receipts will go to help gay causes. It's how it works. Me I'm for the CWL.
Kirby,
I generally try to stay out of local politics but this piece interests me for several reasons. For years I've heard of grumbling from locals about elitists moving up here and mocking the locals. There is massive resentment.
Sure, but this sort of thing comes in waves. Probably half or more the old timers moved there in the 60's, "tune in, drop out," etc, or are the descendants thereof. They've subsequently become an integral part of community through a process of mutual assimilation. The same thing will happen now. It will take a decade or so to sort out, but in the meantime, the migration prevents negative population growth (as there's a tendency for the kids to settle elsewhere), and so has likely lifted housing values that would otherwise fall. There may be massive resentment, but that's not stopping anyone from cashing the checks.
Like you say Stu the Methodists and the Presbys can't hold out forever.
It's not so simple. In the short term, I expect contemporary Protestantism will divide, much as it did on the 1840's and '50's over the issue of slavery, but the nature of the division will be different. Rather than splitting denominations in half (as happened with the Baptists), I suspect that whole denominations will pick one side of the issue or the other. This arrangement will likely sustain itself over our lifetimes and maybe even that of our grandchildren, because it provides an outlet for gays who want to remain active in the church, and for those who are convinced that homosexuality is sinful. The situation won't truly stabilize until one of the evangelical denominations decides to accept gays, but it will happen.
But even w that the debate merely begins. Congregations vote w wallets w feet and w silence or just confusion.
Different congregations will respond different ways. The last I heard, roughly 4% of the ELCA congregations left over the 2009 vote. But several previously estranged, gay-friendly congregations have rejoined. And of the 96% of congregations that stayed in the ELCA, some have lost members over the issue, and others not. I'm not aware of any losses in my congregation specifically attributable to the ELCAs stance on gay marriage (and gays in ordained ministry), although it's perfectly conceivable to me that we're in the "skating by" phase where the issue isn't pointed because it's had no direct impact on us yet.
Can regionalism hold out against a sophisticated multinational church.. More likely it will end in takeover and all the receipts will go to help gay causes. It's how it works.
Not really. Let's take the Presbyterian and Methodist issues as models. The Presbyterian Church, like most Protestant denominations, has a national polity. Thus, the question of same-sex marriage, etc., will play out in the Presbyterian Church of the USA as a national issue, and will likely (if trends that have been in place for the past 30 years continue) adopt some sort of sanctioned same-sex union within the decade.
The Methodist Church, on the other hand, has an international polity when it comes to doctrinal issues. This may, in your mind, mean that it is more likely to "flip" first, but you're wrong. There's not a big Methodist presence in Europe, but there is a huge Methodist presence in Africa and East Asia. The African bloc, representing 30% of the polity, is vehemently anti-gay. This is an endemic issue in Africa, where homosexuality is often (and erroneously) associated with the colonial period, and there have been active efforts by American evangelicals to stoke anti-gay feelings. This has resulted, e.g., in a murderous anti-gay law in Uganda, and I use the word murderous literally: it is murderous in its intent, and it has been murderous in its effect. That's how it works.
What is that drives missionary efforts?
Why do all religions want to expand?
How much is enough?
Why can't religions just stand on their inherent appeal, instead of wanting to "convert" everyone else?
It's vanity on a grand scale. Not generosity. Not beneficence.
"I WANT YOU!"
It's chilling.
I always felt that religious missionaries were like oppressive mothers, wanting to smother you with their domineering control.
Who wants Gays in their church? Gays want in, but what is their motive?
They want to legitimate themselves, so they can be "accepted" into society. The symbolic capitulation of that "acceptance" is parity through institutional inclusion. But it's just the same old tired saw. Tell us we're loved and that our perversion is okay to practice.
The Catholic church has been a haven for Gays and pedaphiles for centuries. Now they want official recognition.
I could care less if churches accept Gays. They deserve each other.
curtis is starting to think in the mobius curve at last
juggling standing on one foot
with 5 screwballs
the catholic church has been a haven for all sinners for derelicts for whores for addicts and destitute stragglers but also for artists and thinkers and thousands upon thousands upon millions of simple loving basic families husbands wives children who learn to live in a good way
the world seems to be a greater haven for sexual deviance it was freud who categorized the whole sex shebang the church understanding was always more open and freeing and less judgemental always accepting humna sexual psychological struggle as a very real aspect of the pascal mystery in the world...the problem seems to be a very secular enlightened form of sexual awreness versus a profound tradition of human understnding which is quite coherent and understanding of human temperaments in way that modern clinical and social psychology just are not not not not not
monndieu
i shant care whether or not you have an opinion about offical RC politics but i do worry about your reading list curtis i mean the range is wide for catholic titles and i'd be willing to do book business if you'd like
they call me the
book angel
the sacrament holds out to the possibility of holy lives being led
the possibility seems to have offered a [place for transcendental virtue above and beyond the call of human normalcy
you know i don't want to complain or anythig but if i'm not mistaken curtis has been a real snotty priss for months and it seems like we tolereate him like the problematic drunk in back of church laughing at redemption
the highest level of social nobility is understood in the context of love between a man and a woman and the rearing of lovely children...and engaging lovingly in the loveshattered world
hey kirby
i still get a significant cut of the literary cashing in you do on my words ... i mean i know you take first rights but i expect my literary due ... when the cashbarrell comes in let me know
i'm still very impressed with the level of conversation on this blog
it's ridiculous in many ways
but impressive too
like an overly ornamented facade on a baroque church
maybe the protestant catholic split is really more a matter of geography like simon shama posits the people of the north were inclined toward beauty in nature and wondering while in the south they loved art and expression of every sort and renditions of the faith in paint in marble in mosaic in bronze in gold lord knows they used gold
in some way the southern part of europe ignored the printed word craze they were immersed in the visible and the audible opera was big in the south for a century before it caught on in the north
what am i babbling about
peace
jh
"the highest level of social nobility is understood in the context of love between a man and a woman and the rearing of lovely children...and engaging lovingly in the loveshattered world "
If this is what jh believes he should not harp endlessly about the vaiues of organized religion.
It should be "join a church, any church, just so long as it doesn't interfere with government or the rights and freedom of others."
But of course that won't happen.
jh, I could do with a little less of your "snotty priss" business and a little more substance.
Who is being snotty, anyway? You're the one calling names.
And your style, as usual, is getting in the way of sense. Better to speak in whole sentences and to get the grammar right.
It's best to babble intelligently and not like the unwashed rabble.
Curtis,
What is that drives missionary efforts?
Love of fellow man. Seriously. The sense that what we have in our faith is so valuable, so essential to our sense of completeness and purpose as humans, that we want our fellow man to have the same benefits, the same sense of completeness and purpose.
It's vanity on a grand scale. Not generosity. Not beneficence.
I respectfully disagree, and as someone who is actually interested in and involved in evangelism, I claim a preferred perspective on what drives evangelistic efforts.
Who wants Gays in their church?
I do. I want the Good News of Jesus Christ to touch as many lives as possible. My experience with congregations that have embraced gays is that they've been blessed with the gifts of the spirit: they enjoy more vibrant communities. Counterintuitively to what many here might expect, congregations that embrace gays often see substantial increases in their straight membership. I had a straight friend who joined such a congregation -- curiously enough, a Methodist reconciliation congregation -- who told me, "If they accept them, they'll accept me." I think it is important to realize that the motivations of the unchurched are different from the motivations of the churched, and if we're to be serious in our evangelical charge, we have to understand that. Many unchurched feel that there is a high wall between them and full acceptance. Sadly, it is often so.
The African have broken with the American Episcopalians. It started with the Bishop of Nigeria. Colonialism has many sides. After all, we brought malarial nets, we brought education, we brought Jesus. We also brought slavery but also democracy. It's a very complex trade going on, and not all of it can be summed up as underdevelopment. Dinesh D'Souza argues that India had a longer period of colonialism and that's why India is in a position superior to most of Africa. Bishop Spong said the reason that the Africans wouldn't accept gays is that they had just gotten down out of the trees and were still trying to figure out what it means to be human. This is what liberalism means to me: a superficial tolerance under which is a very tight intolerance. I wish I could post some of the emails I got on this post. I have asked for permission.
Kirby,
Colonialism has many sides. After all, we brought malarial nets, we brought education, we brought Jesus. We also brought slavery but also democracy. It's a very complex trade going on, and not all of it can be summed up as underdevelopment.
For the most part, I agree. Colonialism was purposefully extractive, which is to say that the goal of the colonial power was to extract wealth from the colony; but in many cases the colonial power realized that the most effective way to do this was by lifting up the colony. Greater education, purposeful investment, and raising the standard of living of the colony were often repaid in greater wealth extraction. The result can be a confusing legacy that tangles up resentment with a sense of (intellectual, political) indebtedness.
Dinesh D'Souza argues that India had a longer period of colonialism and that's why India is in a position superior to most of Africa.
I think D'Souza misses some important points. India, unlike Africa, was developed by a single colonial power, England. The colonization of India provided something it had previously lacked: a more-or-less universally understood common tongue. There was also a huge scale mismatch: India was huge relative to England, and the notion that a England could maintain in India an English army and an English bureaucracy capable of dominating the country without significant participation from the native population was not viable. The result was that British trained Indians how to manage their country politically and economically.
Africa, on the other hand, saw a patchwork of colonial powers: Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, English, German. Moreover, these powers were often capable of pursuing policies that either kept the indigenous population in political and economic subjugation (cf., the Congo), or even of something between genocide and exclusion (cf., the Boers). This required either relatively more people, or a relatively greater technological gap, and it didn't always end well for the colonial powers (cf., Isandlwana).
Bishop Spong said the reason that the Africans wouldn't accept gays is that they had just gotten down out of the trees and were still trying to figure out what it means to be human.
Well, I've looked up Spong's remarks, and unsurprisingly, you misrepresent them. Here's a hint: "animism" does not mean animal-like, instead it refers to a religious system that attributes souls to plants, inanimate objects, etc.
That quote is bandied about quite often. I have a friend who purportedly heard him say it. After that he claims he mispoke. Or he tries to.qualify what he said. I think this was the beginning of the asymmetry between gays and blacks. Blacks see themselves but not gays as worthy of inclusion within the norm. That's changing but is still apparent. I love to cite it because it galls liberals that they are a patchwork of mutual animosities.
India is a patchwork still plus it has the complications of hundreds of local languages and competing religions. Some areas are better off than others. Christian areas are better off. Muslim areas worse off. Buddhists run Ceylon and aren't peaceful about it. Goa is almost western compared to many areas. The Portuguese owned it.
I think many who served in those countries tried to love the locals. Orwell did. It's a complicated history. We still haave a complicated hostory w complicated solutions.
Marxism is the worst of all solutions. Lutheranism the best. Surrealism isn't really a solution but did offer Appreciation for Africcan and Oceanic arts.
I should have said the left is a patchwork of competing senses of victimization. The top three ar race gender and class. It tops out at about 70% of Americans if you count all women. Then you have their enablers. I try to joke by adding the CWL. There are also all the animals. White male Christians are thought by the various vengeance groups to be what's wrong with the world. Then what's right. Those who have been wronged are always right. And they're the left. It's a tsunami of entitlement based on grievances as opposed to compete ncies. Marx becomes the justification for everything. He 's the great explainer. What can't be explained is how Marxism invariably levels countries and causes the economy to crater as ours is now w the world's most expensive Affirmative Action prez winning his second term.
The media is almost completely trained in to help to hoodwink the population.
Can anything stop it?
Romney was the last hope. It will too late for Rubio. There will be nothing left to save.
Or maybe by some miracle things will turn around. Maybe I will change my mind as I did in 2004. Maybe I will start to see BHO as competent. He'll have to haalve the debt and halve the unemployment rate and stop singing bad versions of Al Green.
Kirby, a question - are you sincerely blind to the identity politics that the right plays wrt what it means to be 'normal,' to be 'American,' to be 'traditional?'
The sense that 'New York' and 'California' and the coasts aren't REAL America -
I am blind to this. It may be true in the deep south where I've never lived or even ever been. I did read TKAM and am familiar with racial segregation. I don't see it and haven't seen it in Seattle or New York where I've lived. What I see instead are policies that destroy the lower classes by throwing them out of work by making demands on industry that disincentivize hiring women and minorities but which are seemingly on favor of the poor. Fluke gets her foam and everyone gets food stamps but most wwould rather have a meaningful job. It's not clear how anyone can have that except through jard work. A government check or foam isn't meaningful. The attempt to take away workplace protections and envirmental protections on the right is more than balanced vbu the attempt to force companies into Obamacare and to reduce freedom of speech on campuses and to reduce religious rights for Catholic institutions. Everywhere a battle rages between Calvinist and communist values which are the default players for right and left. These play out with great regional variation. Not sure but capitalism remains constant like gravity. Unemployment at 15% in terms of real numbers of people without decent work. In minority communities it's far worse. Only Asians are escaping this downward sucking ecenpmic whirlpool pulling many communities permaently under. Republicans don't knpw howw to mobilize the race factor without appearing to be racial demagogues. They speak in universals. How to speak across race is a huge stimbling block. Maybe Rubio knows. It seems to me that Republicans care about the big picture better and that handouts can't continue without increasing dependency and debt accrual. People need to get to work and get off drugs and beer and stop living for dumb stuff like foam and sex. Those things are temporary kicks for kids that aren't sustainaable and are kicks that are for kids. Asians embrace deeper values ehich os why these succeedingg. It's Jery Springer forr the rest of us. Typed on a tiny Kindle. Sorry for typos.
Stu:
I think you fail to acknowledge the vast gulf between how organized religion actually functions, and what its meaning is to most of its respective adherents, and how your highly intellectualized personal convoluted version of it applies.
This is what I've been trying to get at all along.
You come up with these sophisticated responses, as if that somehow closed the deal. You're engaged in a debate, and you use all your wits to win.
That's fine, but most organized religion isn't about philosophical debate. It's about ordinary people of modest intelligence clinging to simple concepts as a way of socializing and fending off fear and doubt and confusion, as well as enabling certain kinds of prejudice and hatred.
I don't see a reconciliation here for you. In the end, since you've rejected rationality and empiricism, you're no better than mystics and snake-oil salesman. You've sided with sinister superstition. In your professional life, you publicly subscribe to all the things we do to get along, and then privately you wrestle with these doctrinal conundra. I think it's a bit schizophrenic (in the popular sense).
Watching Ken Burns documentary on the Dust Bowl last night, I was reminded of how otherwise conservative farmers decided to "become Democratic" when FDR moved to create programs designed to improve their plight and change the ill-advised agricultural practices that had caused the problem.
Radical conservatives would recommend that we "let nature (and the economy) takes its course" and let "private industry" and "nature" and "faith" solve the problem.
People saw the value of cooperation and federal intervention with Sandy, and it may well have been that demonstration case that clinched the election for Obama.
If you'd been living in New Jersey, Kirby, you'd be bitching right along with the rest about how frustrating it is to "wait for" the help and charity you "deserved". But you sit back and gripe about how Obama "bought votes" with benefits.
Benefits may be bribes. But favorable tax policies are bribes are too. Do you suppose Romney would even have been able to mount his campaign without the support of big money and the corporations, which sought to dismantle social programs and low tax rates?
Oh, right, I get it, corporations and super pacs are "people too."
Right.
Curtis,
I think you fail to acknowledge the vast gulf between how organized religion actually functions, and what its meaning is to most of its respective adherents...
On the contrary. I'm very much aware of variation in the practices of various organized religion, as well as what it means to its participants. I write from the specific perspective of my religion, indeed, from my specific congregation and my role in it. I don't view my experiences as being necessarily universal. Neither are yours.
...and how your highly intellectualized personal convoluted version of it applies.
I am a scholar, I have a scholar's faith. You are a scholar, too. A scholar's faith is available to you, even if you lack other accessible models as to how such a faith works.
You come up with these sophisticated responses, as if that somehow closed the deal. You're engaged in a debate, and you use all your wits to win.
I don't see this discussion as having victory conditions, so I'm at a loss as to what it might mean to win. We discuss things, and in particular some of our most deeply held beliefs. Perhaps winning means nothing more than that the conversation continues, or even that a small amount of mutual enlightenment takes place. Of course I use my wits. So do you. A witless discussion would hold no interest to either of us.
I don't see a reconciliation here for you. In the end, since you've rejected rationality and empiricism, you're no better than mystics and snake-oil salesman.
I am offended by this. I have by not rejected rationality or empiricism, and you've had plenty of evidence to that effect in my writings. What I do reject is the notion that rationality and empiricism are of themselves fully adequate to deal with the questions of my life. I might make a similar claim, for that matter, about faith. Rationality, empiricism, and faith provide interdependent insight, yet no two together provide all of the insights provided by the third.
You've sided with sinister superstition. In your professional life, you publicly subscribe to all the things we do to get along, and then privately you wrestle with these doctrinal conundra. I think it's a bit schizophrenic (in the popular sense).
This is exactly wrong. Schizophrenic means torn apart -- as if I have two different set of beliefs, and hold to one in Church, and one at work. I do not. I have one set of beliefs. In my professional life, my faith is available (e.g., I have a couple of Orthodox religious icons in my office), although I don't push it. I am my student's teacher, and I don't abuse the power of this relationship to open discussions of faith. If my students open the issue, I'll respond, but this is rare. At Church, I'll argue that evolution is the best system for understanding the diversity of life on earth against the occasional creationist claim.
Stu:
You're so cool and dry.
I wonder where your passion is.
I don't see how rationality, empiricism and faith could interact in your consciousness, since you show so little emotion. Creative thought involves some feeling.
Sensibility is defined as the specific combination--or intertwining--of feeling and thought. Thought alone can't account for how we respond to stimuli, but feeling isn't simply intuition and raw reactive impulse.
If I'm to understand what drives your religious persuasion, I'm going to need more than mere "training" or habituation or adoption of tenets to convince me you're not just apologizing for blind faith.
I knew within a few weeks of first attending Presbyterian church that I had nothing in common with the people--mostly old women and bucolic modest young couples--who went to service. As well, I knew the instructors in Sunday School cared more for shoving catechistic rote memorization down our throats that any serious examination of the meaning of faith.
At college, my second roommate was a devout dark-haired young Italian Catholic, a suppressed homosexual who hid his amusement and skepticism behind a rigid exterior of propriety and solemnity. He was obviously attracted to me, else he'd not have given me the time of day. We talked occasionally about religion, but he was completely conflicted, and could not address his personal struggles. He needed badly to go into analysis, but down the road I'm sure he was "liberated" into his perversion. He eventually became a psychiatrist, something I couldn't have predicted at the time, but which in retrospect seems about inevitable.
My feelings and opinions about religion are formed from my life experience, not from intellectual animadversion. Religion is a personal affair, at least as I see it. I was never interested in the formal, organized versions of "shared" devotion. But then, I'm somewhat anti-social by nature--which is obvious.
religion is a communal affair
religion comes about because people are united in the intuition of its necessity
and the person the individual must then work out the negotiations of relevance but the religion and i will only speak for christianity yet the other major religions could hardly disagree the relgion hangs together by community consent
the boundaries of doctrinal
coherence always seem to manifest the shrambles and tatters of human differences somehow held in check...thus the fractions within christiandom are somehow held dangling together
the american myth of authentic individuals is a horrific hollywood cartoon with monsters and fiends taking the foreground and dominating the narrative...it's a horror show...demented hagiography
substance you want substance
the church's ultimate goal is to provide a context for human spiritual and intellectual freedom...the tradition has carried with it the understanding that humans attain this through trial discipline and guidance taken very seriously...it's a shame to disregard people who have worked at intellectual and spiritual insight within a tried and true ancient tradition....like they don't matter...an actress perhaps is more interesting and more pertinent...a pop star...a psychiatrist
the humanist tirade has proven debilitating yet it seems to me there is no adequate critique from within...the movement exists on its own excrement
curtis
you ain't half bad to talk to when the spit of vituperation ceases
there are no gay people only people who act that way
it's the behavior not the social identifier we need to focus on
reason screaming at human inherent irrationality
intrinsic disorder prevails
jh
i reread the post piece
i find it terribly ironic
that the church would be named
holy innocents
audacity is no stranger
in the halls of orthodoxy
Kirby: I order you to move to Amarillo, Texas.
This is non-negotiable*.
You must live there for a year.
All the best,
-- Brett
*If you find a job in a place with a similar political and social make-up, then we can discuss other locations.
Having been involved in Evangelical / non-denominational religious institutinos in highschool and college, one of the phrases that I grew to like least was 'it's not a religion, it's a relationship.'
This seemed like a case of responding to criticism by denying some basics of the premise - a criticism like 'religion is just blind soulless dogma blahblahblah' - instead of touting the good of religious organizations, institutions, traditions, and yes, dogma, they decided to say 'no, it's not a religion, it's a RELATIONSHIP.'
Whatever that really means.
The people in Loma Linda live longer, happier lives than the rest of America.
And that has little to do with each member of their church having a certain kind of relationship to Jesus Christ on a personal level ...
It has to do with their religion, and how it structures and orders their lives to be healthy and fulfilling.
Singing communally, having dietary restrictions, having scheduled, consistent exercise in groups... These sorts of things are simply good for humans to do, and these sorts of things are found in religion.
For Christians, perhaps souls are saved by Grace.
But lives are saved by law - by 'religion' - by the ordering of lives in healthy, positive ways.
We live in a society where people don't sing together, don't often dance together (especially not in healthy ways), don't eat together, don't walk together, don't have principled eating habits (as opposed to the weirdo dieting fads), don't have symbols and artistic experiences that create meaning and unity...
But in Religion, some of this, to varying degrees, happens.
Most of this happens at summer camp, too - it's why people are so much happier there.
It's why people are so 'on fire' for God at Christian retreats for a few days - because you're living in the manner that we are meant to live, that science tells us our brains react to in the most healthful ways.
It's often easy for us to condemn / deride folks in modern-day America for being unhappy when we have it so 'easy' and our lives have so much material wealth.
But if you were to ask me to give out a prescription for a lifestyle and a society that scientifically restricted the happiness and health of folks, it'd look very similar to the basic day-to-day of being many an American, especially if ones not involved in a religious (or other) organization that fights against the unnatural and unhealthy lifestyle that permeates our communities.
My beef with a lot of the psychiatric community is that everything's been labeled a 'disease' that should be fixed with a pill - but if you bring me someone who's depressed (which is a legitimate chemical problem in the brain that I've experienced myself), I would look at their lifestyle and say:
do they play in the dirt.
do they have meaningful relationships with others.
do they sing and dance communally.
do they explore nature.
do they have anchors.
And if the answer is 'no' to one or all of those questions, the prescription would be a lifestyle change.
Bring me my religion - fasting may not save me, but it is good for my mind, body, and soul. It will make me live longer. (studies show this. And it increases HGH by 2000%, which means it keeps you young).
Let me sing in groups. Give me someone who consistently reminds me how to live well and be good. Give me the enriched environments and mental stimulation created by religious ritual.
Every night, at summer camp, we'd stand in a circle, arms around each other, and sing the few same, short, peaceful, 30-second songs.
There's a reason we'd then go on to sleep better. Our brains were happier and more relaxed.
I'd rather not live in the south. And I am not a big fan of Baptists or goofy grapes like that. I'm here outside Charlottesville and inside Dollar General a bunch of folk started praising God and I was chagrined. it was effusive. people should never be enthusiastic. people should just be quiet otherwise how can I even think? oh la la.
many believe that love is the answer. Jesus said only loving Him counts.
shema
golden rule
beatitudes
only possible
through love of His cross
and him bloody on it
and all that happens in the wake of that
torn curtain to holy of holies
and all
Whatt if there's an error in the transmission and he meant straight is the gait and narrow the rude that leads to laughs? Without mistakes music would not exist. He began as a mistake that turned out to be music to His forebears.
certainly our old pal jesus
knew the profound human dilemma
of being misunderstood
i was born in a crossfire hurricane
did jesus ever think...
you know
none of this makes any sense
mistakes become musical ornaments
musical theories
whole symphonies
compared to baroque order
20th century serialism sounds like
a system of mistakes
still i have to trust
the men who took pains
to get it right
to translate and transmit
with utmost integrity
i really believe in fact i know without doubt those people did
exist and continue to exist
we are the heirs
of a noble priesthood
wherein sacrifice
is the only rite
there must be some way out of here
said the joker to the thief
thanksgiving
a hard one to celebrate
the devastations that followed
like turkeys burned whole in a big bonfire of vanities
L-tryptophan dreams and football
what a strange culture
blessings all around
jh
Thank you JH. Blessings back. Where did ttolerance come from? It's not a Puritan value. Luther wasn't tolerant. The Pope isn't tolerant. Calvin wwsn't particularly tolerant. Jesus was not tolerant. It seems to come from Locke. Maybe I should reject him along with Keynes. When we thinl of the Pilgrims and the first feast and Thanksgivving and our long sejourn here it's hard to understand the tradition and all the attacks on it. Tolerance is not a Christian value. It appears to derive from reason. I'm against reason. I might even have reasons. It's got no foundation to it but floats free of faith like math and science its offspring
The only math I trust is pataphysical and has to do with the laws governing exceptions.
Kirby:
You have the luxury of living by the fruits of reason and intelligence and order, but you repudiate them in the name of your faith.
I regard this as a form of dishonesty and immorality. You take the values of science and mathematics to your bosom, but then deny their importance to your life. You're a hypocrite.
Your tone is one of eclectic scatterbrained free association, but that hardly excuses your inconsistencies. It isn't cute to say you're reasonable and unreasonable in the same breath. You can't have it both ways.
You can't "choose" to employ reason when it's convenient, and to reject it when it's not. If you can sit in church and listen to the recitation of animadversions on fairy-tales on Sunday, and then teach public university students how to think using their reason and sense on Monday morning, there's a contradiction that disingenuous humor can't bridge. Call it Lutheran Surrealism, it's just a huge oxymoron.
My argument is that reason can't operate without a priori values which are not themselves susceptible to reasoning. They are like the axioms of geometry. The ten comandments and the other precepts with regard to Leviticus and Romans can be tossed aside in favor of an endless tolerance without principles but that also legitimates Manson and Sade.
let me see
how can i defend kirby here
whitman said i am wide i contain multitudes how's that whitman believed in irrationality and hyperbole and satire and contradictory cognitions kirby has the right to be a goofball a rhetorical literary goofball i mean he's strapped with having to carry on the legacy of the great inimitable catholic poet gregory corso...as a lutheran that's pretty damn sweet...i commend you for such a noble task my friend kirby
engarde herr monsiuer faville
i applaud kirbyeez intuition to bring the truly stupid into the argument i mean it's a very christian thing to do to sit back and let the stupid have their say
plus that's where entertainment begins with the goofballs and comedians and provocateurs
thomas merton once wrote
i never trust the serious reasonable men
kirby is willing to say almost anything in order to get a conversation going... and it works...even stu takes him up and makes the effort to adjust kirbeez madness to some level of humn acceptable reason...but rarely does this pan out....kirby always always always goes back to the incredibly flippant conceptualization...adn what's more he relntlessly promotes this kind of thinking...i should hope there are students graduating from college who poopoo the academy and the presumptions of serious thinking...good god...we're willing to be his fools because because because because because.... because of the wonderful things he does
curtiss instead of attacking our lutheran bumbllebrain try engaging him in worthwhile rhetorical encounter....there has been a learning curve here but it's been sort of like a mobius twist...and the curve one makes while slipping on a banana peel
i don't know
if kirby had to lift himself up to curtis's level of intellectual seriousness this blog would become sclerotic...we wouldn't want that
we wouldn't want kirby to suffer from blog sclerosis
by agreeing to be the one idiot we can always trust
he serves the world with valour
like a chivlaric lutheran knight jousting at wind turbines and harkening to the truth in windy turmoil of postpostmodern mythologies
who else will do this if not kirby
the world needs kirby
and his students need to know
that their work is almost very inmportant
and that cockroaches can ride skateboards through the theories of humanist blather
all hail the master of the unbelievably ludicrous juxtaposition of terms
someone bring in the toilet seat with wings
jh
JH, this is very kind of you to be so kind. I think Stu feels that I dissed him when I said he was my parasite. But the joke was that host and parasite are part of the same organization, part of the same organism. It takes one to know two.
I think it's almost very important that the heart started out as a parasite on the body, and the body was a parasite on the brain, and all was set into motion by the paraclete.
Or so it seems in my devoutly ahistoric imagination.
"JH, this is very kind of you to be so kind. I think Stu feels that I dissed him when I said he was my parasite. But the joke was that host and parasite are part of the same organization, part of the same organism. It takes one to know two."
Host and parasite are phenomena of nature, developed--like all other life forms--through the genetic descent of species through opportunistic mutation(s).
"I think it's almost very important that the heart started out as a parasite on the body, and the body was a parasite on the brain, and all was set into motion by the paraclete."
This is nonsense. The heart and the brain are organs which developed along the line of descent. Primitive hearts and brains exist in primitive forms in nature. Human brains are the highest development of the form. The heart doesn't have feelings. The brain is dependent upon the heart. All concepts of a "feeling" heart are nonsense.
"Or so it seems in my devoutly ahistoric imagination.
"
"A-historic" imagination? You mean you get to choose which parts of history support your arguments, and which don't. And to decide how to interpret history to your satisfaction.
This is vanity.
actually i've been designated
co-host
i get to wear the propeller beany almost every day
the parasites are drastically different
they suck blood
it's downright wrong to mistake symbiosis even of a cyber sort with host/parasite dynamics
but o what can anyone do
everyone interprets history to their satisfaction
ken burns does it
why can't kirby
a day after any event fiction sets in...ten minutes
historical truth is a fading photo
maybe the superman kirby needs
a lex luther in curtis
st martin luther pray for us
jh
The Interfaith Council voted to include the gay church. I don't know any of the pastors on that COUNCIL so have no idea what really went on. The gay church said that the Interfaith Council were all philistines so I don't know why they wanted to be a part of such a group. Maybe they want to be Philistines too. The individual mental state of the Council is unclear and will remain so. A conscience is a delicate thing. The left generally doesn't care about individual difference so long as there is outward conformity. Stalin didn't care. Equality is an outward feature that denies the reality of individual differences. In fact the whole notion of equality is a fraud perpetuated by the hopelwss in the name of hope or it's lovelessness in the name of love or maybe it's evil in the name of goodness. I don't think equality exists. It's mysterious fiction that attempts to designate fairness where there is none. Meanwhile the people of Prattsville are still diggingbout as are the people of Long Island. God help them. Gore is everywhere but not in the media. A hundred dead and whole townsbwrecked and Benghazi still smoulders but these are no longer issues. Inclusion is itself a mystery. Why did Jesus get so many fishermen among the elect of his disciples? The jewelers and journalists and the shoemakers should file suit along with tailors and candlestick makers to say nothing of the unemployable.
"In fact the whole notion of equality is a fraud perpetuated by the hopelwss"
" I don't think equality exists."
"It's mysterious fiction that attempts to designate fairness where there is none."
Here is the evidence of a fascist--who believes that all men are created unequal, and that it is our duty and privilege to discriminate among them for our selfish purposes. Any principle espoused to unite men in legion against hunger, poverty, ignorance, exploitation, etc., is to be mistrusted.
Is it cold this Winter up in Delhi?
Kirby,
Sorry to be out of circulation. I have a bit of catching up to do here. It was an interesting weekend. My parents and my daughter and husband visited for the Thanksgiving weekend, which meant a full house, and my attention was with them rather than here. A great time was had by all, but this isn't to say that all went smoothly.
When we set up this visit late summer, it was with the assumption that my wife and I would have already made a down-sizing move from the house in which we raised our kids to a condo in the same town, leaving us temporarily in possession of a "spare house." It didn't work out that way. We're still getting the condo, but we won't close until the end of the year after much drama. So we all had to "squeeze" into our house, which meant that my office became a bedroom (hence, no desktop computer over the weekend).
In the meantime, we had the usual kinds of friction that seem to wait for visits from family. The kids' flight, which was supposed to get in at 1am (yes, 1 am) on Thursday morning, was delayed 3 hours. The power line that runs from the poll to our house partially failed, dropping one of the phases into the house. Comm Ed came out about 6 hours later and confirmed that the problem was with their infrastructure. Fortunately, we don't actually need 220v, having replaced the electric range with a gas range 20 years ago, and so they were able to jumper over the missing phase until they can replace the line. Finally, the kitchen refrigerator chose this weekend to die. I'll try to get the service guy out today to either resurrect it or pronounce it dead. My luck, he'll be there the same time as Comm Ed.
It was a good weekend, in the way that multigenerational renunions often are, with that familiar creative tension between order and chaos.
Anyhoo, back to the fray...
I think Stu feels that I dissed him when I said he was my parasite. But the joke was that host and parasite are part of the same organization, part of the same organism. It takes one to know two.
Yeah, I was a bit miffed, but not so as to absent myself for that reason. I just believe symbiot captures the relationship better. YMMV, but if I'm reading him right, jh agrees with my interpretation.
Curtis,
Is it cold this Winter up in Delhi?
Just a quick note. The answer, at least in as much as New York tends to get Chicago weather a day later, is "no." We've had a remarkably mild winter. No measurable snow accumulation yet (we did have a few transient flurries). Daytime highs have mostly in the 50's until last week (we saw 22 degrees Friday morning), with a gentle warming trend through this week. We're back to day-time highs in the upper 30's, heading to a predicted high of 60 degrees for Sunday. Keeping in mind that weather isn't climate, this year's weather has been consistently hot.
This actually plays into one of Kirby's bete noire's. There's a strong link between the increased prevalence of Lyme disease and climate change, documented by a surprisingly voluminous scholarly literature. It turns out that 38 degrees is a critical threshold. At or above 38 degrees, the deer ticks are active, capable of reproduction, feeding, etc. These days, there are a lot more deer (due to the supression of natural predators, and a misguided squeamishness about herd maintenance), but also a much longer effective tick season, resulting in larger tick populations, and higher activity levels per tick.
We're not likely to fix the Lyme problem via helicopter gunships. But getting control of carbon emissions, and proper maintenance of the northeastern deer herd (it is now at something like 10x pre-colonial populations), would make a large practical difference.
i knew it i knew it i knew it
stu would eventually make a full strategic avowal to the tick problem in the northeast and get in with kirby on helicopter gunships i take this as a serious political affront i mean look at those deer's eye's c'mon you guys these are deer as the deer longs for running streams that sort of thing you bring those gunships in and it tears up not only the deer population but the forest all around not to mention scaring the shit out of squirrels and chipmunks or is that chipmonks i never can remember anyway not to drift too far into semantics but this preoccupation now this political wedge you insert into the discussions here are really cruel and unusual mostly unusual but the violence or the potential violence if funding is given and i don't see why not i mean even obama is getting concerned about the rusting of the wars of weaponry i mean all those metal planes and copters just sitting there like old horse skeletons slowly slowly returning to the soil war needs objectives sure enough but one has to recognize consequences as well
besides it's winter now the ticks are slow and the deer just want to nibble around for acorns and tufts of grass under snow and dance sweetly and quietly through yonder wood...i making one last appeal from the "be kind to deer" people
unless you're hard up for venison i think the attentions should be turned to the arab spring and the dissolution of morals amongst young women in america no all over the place the general decline in feminine virtue the world over let's talk about that ...these topics in my humble estimation deserve far more attention than the woodtick and deer problems
lymeys aside
isn't that what we call the british
bliderberg research committee
that's what this blog needs
let's do a runddown on the most powerful alliance on the globe so powerful that even the pope has suggested that they require a moral oversight board of ecumenical weight religious leaders from around the world to mediate monetary and resource allottments
i will gladly put forth kirbyeez name to sit on this moral oversight board but he'll have to get his priorities right
no more clownin' around
this is serious business
now
a little thesis on
why public farts are so funny in public
where was i
o yeah
pweeze pweeze leeve doze pwetty wittoh deeahs awone
we want it quiet oveh heeah
jh
bilderberg ... sorry
i meant bilderberg
does anyone know anything about these people
it sounds pretty dangerous to me
but i mean
it's not like they own bill gates
or george soris
but what the hell it's a fright
i'm not sure if they put lyme on the agenda but they are a serious group no doubt in my mind in my little human mind
ah hem
jh
jh,
I disavow a full embrace of Kirby's gunship proposal. After all, his objective is the eradication of all deer, which strikes me as both immodest and dangerous in the sense that we can't know the consequences. Perhaps the great north will be overgrown with kudzu or some similar plague if we don't have enough deer around to keep things in check.
But I do accept the argument that we have to actively manage the size of the deer herd, and that the effect of large populations (especially in the northeast) has been to kill off most of the deer's natural predators, and to put humans into close contact with deer (and their parasites). Proper management of the herd would involve roughly a 90% reduction in the size of the current herd. As deer prefer to avoid human interaction, this would likely result in a 95% (or greater) reduction in human-deer interactions, including indirect interactions like Lyme and cougar(!).
Moreover, I doubt that proper herd management would result in a large reduction in venison (which is delicious). It would result in fewer starving deer, and fewer deer harvested by tracter trailers and station wagons.
koyaanisqatsi
Kirby's one practical preoccupation--at least here on his blog--is the Lyme Disease plague.
Lyme Disease is not new.
In the last 10 days, a new study has been released which shows that Lyme Disease is probably not a "chronic, permanent" condition, but that the worst cases appear to be the result of "re-infections" from repeated tick bites.
In one sense, this is good news, but in another, it suggests that infection rates are on the rise. Is this the direct result of deer population? Probably not, since excess deer populations have been above historical norms in the New England are for decades. It may be related to other mammal populations, such as rats and mice and squirrels. We don't yet know.
In the meantime, spreading fear and jumping to conclusions isn't helpful. In the vast majority of cases, Lyme isn't serious, though repeat infections may be more virulent. The danger is that an active disease may mutate, given expanded numbers of hosts, into more lethal forms, or those immune to chemical cures.
I think the Lyme phenomenon may prove to be a more familiar problem as we go forward. With exploding human populations, viruses and bacteria are going to prove more virulent and opportunistic. Disease may be the "armageddon" religionists warn us of. We think medical science can get us out of these risks, but the time-line of effective preventative measures is very short--we've only been using inoculations for about a half century, and the bugs are mutating to adapt and overcome them. Viruses are god's little mickey finn.
Reduce populations and you cut down on crowding, which is the crucible of infection and super-bugs.
Kirby,
The Interfaith Council voted to include the gay church. I don't know any of the pastors on that COUNCIL so have no idea what really went on.
Perhaps they decided that God is not just the god of some of us, he is the God of all of us. Generally speaking, local interfaith councils extend beyond Christianity, and include other monotheistic religions -- usually Judaism, sometimes Islam. AFAIK, Mormons rarely participate in interfaith councils, but that's usually their choice.
The gay church said that the Interfaith Council were all philistines so I don't know why they wanted to be a part of such a group. Maybe they want to be Philistines too.
More likely, they viewed the decision to include them as a renunciation of philistianism on the part of the Interfaith Council.
The left generally doesn't care about individual difference so long as there is outward conformity.
Projection. The right is generally speaking more authoritarian than the left, and there's scientific evidence to that effect. This doesn't rule out authoritarianism in certain circles of the left, any more than it rules out anti-authoritarianism in certain circles of the right, but it does speak to prevalence.
Equality is an outward feature that denies the reality of individual differences.
Yes, but the left is hardly arguing for equality, cf., the hilarious insult that Thaddeus Stevens gives to George Pendleton in Spielberg's Lincoln movie: "How can I hold that all men are created equal when here before me stands, stinking, the moral carcass of the gentleman from Ohio, proof that some men are inferior? Endowed by their maker with dim wits, impermeable to reason, with cold pallid slime in their veins instead of hot red blood? You are more reptile than man, George. So low and flat, that the foot of man is incapable of crushing you."
And I claim the legacy of Lincoln and Stevens, a legacy of liberalism and equality, and deny that it is your's or the Republican Party's. Lincoln spent his most valuable political capital in the cause of advancing equality before the law, a cause to which Stevens devoted his entire life.
What they argued for, and their successors argue for today, is equality before the law. When we have it, we'll stop arguing. We're not there yet.
jh,
My model of the world is that the Bilderberg meeting is an annual meeting of those of the rich and self-important who have economic foreign policy interests from American and Europe, and that the meeting is three-parts affirmation of self-importance and one-part networking. This isn't to say that it's unimportant, but rather to say that their policy discussions do not matter per se, but do matter as a means of increasing the robustness of a certain international social, economic, and political network.
I think the right reaction is not jealousy, but emulation, in the sense that we should work at increasing the robustness our networks.
There has been snow on the ground for the last several days. Some weeks have been colder than others. I don't think it legitimates or necessitates a World Council on Climate Control which is in fact a socialistic takeover of world governments by the Gore people so that they can batten down on fracking but also deny food to anyone who doesn't vote for the Democrats, the way that Stalin starved the people of the Ukraine for being insufficiently excited about control by the Georgian creep.
We need local control.
We need self-determination.
Once these big councils start someone generally gets on them and becomes the pilot at the eye of the storm, moving the phynancing toward their own pet projects against the general will of the council most of whom are probably conflict avoidant types, unable to deal with the Stalinist(s) among them.
Even Trotsky wasn't quite capable of understanding quite how ferocious Stalin was, and look at the result -- an unhealthy icepick right in the cranial capacity. Call that a picnic?
I say avoid larger councils. Secede. States' rights. Deny Obamacare. Watch out for the huge dragnets of public policy. Autonomy is almost very important.
Avoid large herds, and cut down those that do exist. Slaughter the deer from the air before they get to thinking they own the place.
Separate the church from the state. Watch out for all unilateral actions. Disengage and drag your feet when unsure. Skulking and slight displeasure should always be left unexpressed, but somewhat present.
We've definitely been under 33 degrees for about four days. How long does it take for the deer ticks to croak, Stu? Do they croak or just become inactive?
I have an alternative: spray the woods with RAID. It kills bugs dead.
This would also help the company and the distribution points. Let's foam up the woods and then frack like mad.
This would give the green people a lot of stuff to clean up, keeping everyone in business. Also, Sandy is still sand all over Long Island and Staten Island. I've been out of circulation too for most of the week thumbing through photos of the kids who went fishing and played together with cousins. One of my kids learned to cross his eyes very nicely for the camera it seems.
It's hard to know where to place one's priorities. Lyme? Eyes crossing? Interfaith councils?
Helicopter gunships?
The main thing is to keep everyone talking. We are less than 1% of the population, but we must wrap our heads around 100% of the problems, and propose absurd solutions which anger almost everyone, while avoiding responsibility for any tragedy that might occur as a result of our reckless theorizing.
Let Greenland be green!
I didn't realize these Interfaith Councils were a widespread phenomenon. It makes sense to me that they are, because more people can do more. But there must be a point at which they become unwieldy. Muslims and Jews on the same council might create a lot of bickering and destroy the ability of the Council to do much more than to work out differences between members. With gays and Baptists on the same Council you may have similar difficulties. Unitarians can work with anyone I presume as long as they haven't got any firm clear standards. This is the problem with religions: they have firm clear standards. I do think midgets should be allowed to pastor, but I would find it hard not to laugh at times. I know, I know. But really midgets are not supposed to pastor. It says it in Leviticus. Also, people with horribly bumpy noses.
They would be distracting I think.
Noses should be as aquiline as the Spire of the main cathedral in Strasburg.
So that as they point upward everyone is inspired.
God said.
If you're just going to say God can go to hell if He thinks we're honoring the prohibition on midgets, then I wouldn't know if God would stick around. We might get the absconditus fella at that juncture.
I wouldn't know. I think religion is partially a question of blindly following the rules. If you can't live with them, start a social club in which everyone is invited.
You'd have Charlie Manson next to Dolly Parton. Criminals and saints (Dolly's a saint in my eyes because of her brilliant saying, "You have to put up with the rain if you want the rainbows."
I assume that the problem of inclusion is something all groups face.
It's the problem of Locke's latitudinarianism. The left thinks he's too far to the right. The right thinks he's too far to the left.
At this juncture there is precious little that all groups can agree upon. Maybe that it's wrong to molest kids (there will probably be some there who think it's ok, but they wouldn't be foregrounding the fact). also, sex trafficking not ok.
As soon as you hit abortion or gay ordination you're all over the place.
Questions of phynancial priorities would also be different I assume (helicopter gunships to limit deer herds would be a hard sale, I suppose, but with the right rhetoric, voila!).
I don't know. I think there are sticking places, as Lady MacBeth put it to her husband.
You have to be able to get along. It sounds to me often as if we're talking about throwing thirty drunks into a burlap bag and turning the lights out.
Let's see how they get along when they wake up, is what I meant.
I think you have to make a clear distinction here between those who think oral and anal sex among males (or females) is an acceptable behavior and those who do not.
Tolerance of monosexuality must either be restricted to those who are "born" with it (whatever that means), and everyone else. You can't have people whose practice you believe is a limited deviation trying to "convert" everyone else--or to base a new platform of acceptance on generalized concepts of "love" and "equality."
Until you arrive at a clear demarcation here, all your talk of inclusion/exclusion in organized faiths is just idle speculation..
Not being a religionist, my positions regarding monosexuality are all secular in nature. I see the political expansion of deviant sexualities as a perversion of our morality, but this has no religious implications for me.
If you can tolerate it in the secular realm, I see no escape from the requirement to tolerate it in church.
I thought someone would object to my characterization of religious personnel as drunks in my hypothetical. Whatever happened to "smash demon rum"? I still hope to revive the abolition of booze, and to raise Carrie Nations from the dead. It's odd to me that most people can accept drinking as morally normal behavior. No one should ever drink. I'm so surprised that people do it. When you drink you are cutting off oxygen to your brain. Why is this permitted?
We need to expand the network of taboos, and to revive some of those which have been nixed.
I basically follow Leviticus to the letter. I think that midgets have to be drummed out of the pastoral service centers, as they are infesting the place with their bizarre problems and creating unnecessary distractions. People should also have their noses checked.
Drinking: out.
I wonder what other seemingly atavistic taboos should be revived for the glory of God?
People don't take seriously enough today the taboos against the mixing of various kinds of grain. They just think you can do anything you want with your grains. There is a grain of truth in all these prohibitions.
The thing to do is to tighten all prohibitions and make about a thousand more. If there are some new ones to be made they should be based on diet. No Twinkies (the economy took care of that). Mac and Cheese: out. Slim Jims? Out. We should have all kinds of new dietary taboos. I also believe that French cars should be abolished in this country and anything that is made in North Korea. (Is anything made in North Korea?)
I think we should also ban the people who want to make Virginia and China into one country. Because it would be called vachina, and this would mean that that would turn into a permanent blue state.
Which makes me turn even redder.
What kind of a mind turns naturally to superstition for inspiration?
What kind of a mind looks for more prohibitions to enforce, as if freedom were a form of evil?
What kind of a mind seeks to alienate man from man, nation from nation, in order to return to a prehistoric body of nonsense invented in a time of man's ignorance?
i once new a girl from vichina
who'd inevitably nickel and dime ya
she'd borrow and steal
and swing a sweet deal
then promise to one day wine and dine ya
in a time of man's ignorance
then something else was revealed
holy science now disproves
regards with scalpels of skeptical wedging
what others discern through ancient eyes
where wisdom cooly but firmly reclines
what people fail to recognize is that life was better for everyone when the taboos were somewhat clear
now it's a slim line of justice
and smug certainties prottecting the flimsiest of human rights those based on the mere autonomy of the individual the monad trumps the family the community each dog for himself
sexual perversion is an old conundrum...old as the hills and dales...and the regard of christians is always one of charity but great hope that humans will one day glimpse the truth of it all and surprise many actually do
the enlightenment has turned out to be a flashlight with fading batteries
freedom is a form of evil when it is not graced with important discipline
the purpose of torah and talmud is always to provide a context for the ultimate freedoms as is the liturgy
vichina
good one kirby
jh
Kirby,
It's odd to me that most people can accept drinking as morally normal behavior.
Let me point out that if Jesus had converted water to tea at Cana, no one would have given a damn. Jesus came to us, eating and drinking, and not fasting. Are we not to live as he lived?
People drink for lots of reasons, some acceptable (it is a social lubricant) and others not (e.g., as an escape from pressing problems). I have no problem with people who abstain out of preference or necessity. But people who think that abstaining makes them virtuous, oh, I do have a problem with them.
I basically follow Leviticus to the letter.
This is an easy call: bullshit.
Do you include salt with all your offerings (Lev 2:13)? It is required of you. Have you ever eaten fat (Lev 3:16-17)? It is a perpetual statute that all fat belongs to the Lord, mortal. Have you ever failed to sacrifice a female goat without blemish for a sin of omission, once it is brought to your attention (Lev 4:27-28)? Have you ever touched anything that would make you ritually unclean (Lev 5:2)? Or uttered a rash oath (Lev 5:4)? You owe a sheep or a goat, or a couple of turtledoves or pigeons if you can't afford the livestock. You can, I assume, afford two pigeons. Have you ever eaten ham, pork, or bacon? It is forbidden (Lev ll:7). Shellfish (Lev 11:10)? Did you circumcise your son(s) on the eighth day (Lev 12:3)? Did your wife bring sacrifices to the priest at the entrance to the tent of meeting after her days of purification after birth were passed (Lev 12:6)? Do you abstain from work on the Day of Atonement (Lev 16:29)? Do you wear garments made of two (or more) different materials? It is forbidden (Lev 19:19). Have you ever eaten fruit from a tree that is less than five years old (Lev 19:23)? It is the Lord's, and is forbidden to you. Do you trim your sideburns or cut your beard (Lev 19:27)? Do you rise before the aged, and defer to the old (Lev 19:32)? Do you treat resident aliens as citizens (Lev 19:34)? Have you ever worked on the Sabbath (Lev 23:3)? Have you ever eaten leavened bread during the seven days of Passover (Lev 23:6), or worked during it (Lev 23:7)? Have you fasted on the Day of Atonement (Lev 23:27)? If not, you're to be cut off from the people. Have you abstained from work during the first and last day of the festival of booths (Lev 23:35-36)? Have you followed the jubilee laws (Lev 25)? Have you ever bought or sold land in perpetuity (Lev 25:23)?
And you do realize, don't you, that bullshit is to be burned outside of the camp (Lev 16:27)?
It's a blood pressure med with fewer side effects.
Alcoholics generally know they're alcoholics.
It's a chemical dependency, to which a certain percentage of the population is prone.
For the rest of us, it's a pleasant diversion.
Like anything, moderation is the key.
Two cocktails twice or three times a week won't kill you, but more may make you a bit unstable.
Wine--red wine in particular--is presently regarded as healthy for your heart.
Heart attack candidates can be just as at risk from high tension jobs, as from over-indulgence in alcohol, and a little alcohol can actually help them relax.
I think Kirby was born 100 years too late. He'd have made an excellent abolitionist or prohibitionist. He missed his calling.
in west africa the men drink fermented juice right from the tree i forget the name of this stuff but i'd like to try it sometime
the discovery of wine must've been a joyous occasion i suppose the whole culture which supported the making of wine beer and spirits is one of survival people found ways to have good things to drink when water supplies weren't so good
well at least there's beer
sourdough bread is merely beer that is made with a lot of flour and ferments then it's formed and baked voila beer you can eat with butter
wine is powerful because it is both very delightful to drink the pleasure factor is almost immediate with very good wine but it is also dangerous there is a darkness in wine that pulls people into mushy places of dark ambiguous oftentimes poetic places but howevr dark dark and drunken sunken in the drunk dark seawash splash of thought against a wall and cognitive mayhem in the brain and sensory dissolution ever y t hin g breaks and the headaches whoooooeeee the headaches and the stupor in the wake of too much drink there is sickness in it and a drive toward excess people in montana measure distance between towns by sixpacks
moderation in all things including moderation
whoopee
wine loosens the tongue
i saw in spain families people old and young sitting in bars families of course there are the technobeat clubs for the young and horny but on the streets of madrid the taverns were places of family and friend interaction amid good things to drink and good food for the most part
one of the things protestants have always judged catholics with harshly....did i write that...is the porpensity to drink and regale catholic culture has always been a festival culture of kicking up your heals and striking up the band and getting some food together and dancing till dawn....people should get wild like that once in awhile
on the eve of all saints when i was in madrid the plazas were packed people were drinking sholting shouting jolting dancing acting miming laughing eating shouting singing drinking walking looking for life in an communally drunken state of collective mayhem...it was interesting....sort of a way of containing society by allowing for mass levity
my grandmother a rather tormented metis woman had a shot of jim beam religiously every night and she smoked kool cigarettes she lived to be 93 and was as flippant and french and high witted till the very end when the stroke took over
one of my uncles however drank himself into the grave
the call of lutheran surrealism is quite a bit stranger than john brown or carrie nation...or...at least it has been for me...is that a broken violin i hear
it's a blood pressure med with fewer side effects
when i was really sick as a child my father would mix up a concoction of brandy butter honey and lemon...i don't know if the sickness went away but i recall feeling really good after i drank it :)
jh
thirty drunks in a burlap bag in the dark might result in a whole new approach to societal priorities
what would happen if we interpreted historical progress only from the point of view of the people who sobered up fastest
one historical theory has it that custer was drinking rather heavily
We need more taboos.
maybe we need one kosher store
in every town or at least every county oyveh
i think we need to look into a widespread distribution of totem poles....wherein...story has a chance
women have left the encampments
men no longer know what to do
even the roofers are women now
society teeters on the edge
oh well
there's always tomorrow
if we can perhaps restore the buffalo herd to the west i think civilization may have a chance it just might not saying for sure but it just might
bring back the buffalo
jh
jh,
Usually you talk sense, albeit with somewhat nonsensical surface characteristics, but this time I have to take some exception.
maybe we need one kosher store
in every town or at least every county oyveh
Look, I'm all in favor of kosher stores, and it hurt like heck when Al's Deli closed hereabouts, taking away the one place in the neighborhood I could get decent lox. So don't take this the wrong way. But there are some mighty backward, intolerant counties out there. It's bad enough to have to run a deli in the bible belt, but it seems positively inhumane to me to condemn someone to running a kosher store in one of the thoroughly Mormonized, sparsely settled counties of Utah. It's one thing that the manischewitz sits on the shelf gathering dust, but it's really too much to have the goyim calling descendants of Abraham and Sarah "gentiles."
women have left the encampments
men no longer know what to do
Humbug. Men still know what to do, it just involves pursing 'em a bit further.
mormons are kind of like old testament jews are they not i mean they have multiple families and temporal kings rather strict law regimens just like jews of old not the modern jews o no we know about the whole modern thing haskala haskala haskala oyveh all these fears that jews run the world nonsense they run the markets they the chinese and armenians and the spanish aristocracy these four elements run everything in the world we might as well face it everything else is just entertainment for the business class
most mormon men take old testament names...that's proof perfect...kosher delis would be fine in utah...next to the truck stops
bring back the couriers do bois
then we'll get things running again
america lacks a certain je nez c'est pas
tabacco anyone
yo
jh
jh,
Look, I agree that Mormon's play at being the true Israel, and in so doing adopt practices that they believe represent historical Judaism including polygamy. But like so much about Mormonism, the history they reconstruct is artificial. Surely there was polygamy in the patriarchal period, and we certainly see attestations of polygamy among the royals (especially David and Solomon) during the monarchies. But as far as I can recall, no non-royal during the monarchy is described as having more than one wife, and I don't believe that even royals had more than one wife in post-exilic Israel.
Likewise, the Mormon dietary laws, which are strict and peculiar, just like the Jewish dietary laws, are not the same. Mormons can't drink alcohol or caffeine, and the conservative ones won't do business with people who do. Can you imagine a functioning kosher store that doesn't have coffee? It is outside of my experience.
if i'm not mistaken mormons drink cocacola now they own cocacola
and they've decided that persons of african heritage are in fact people...so they have some flexibility they grow and learn...you get those mormons slurping matzaball soup and chewing on gefiltefisch they'll love it...plus they dance i don't know how they would take to klezmer but they do dance....maybe it would be a way to include mormons into the WCC - if they agreed to eat kosher
i get no respect
jh
jh,
if i'm not mistaken mormons drink cocacola
I've hunted around, and the answer seems to be that the Mormon church on the whole has not proscribed caffeinated soft drinks, but that many of it's congregations and smaller administrative units (bishoprics?) have. So... it's possible, but edgy. Coffee is definitely out, though.
and they've decided that persons of african heritage are in fact people
So generous of them...
This remains a sticky problem for us. The first amendment guarantees religious freedom, and this would presumably include the right to discriminate, including a right to say no to gay ordination, to ordination to dwarves, or ordination to women, among other possibilities. Freedom of speech would also seem to mean that one is able to speak out against dwarves, women, Mormons, blacks, or gays. In many countries of Europe this is banned. But our first amendment seemingly allows this.
And then it also disallows an employer from discriminating solely against someone solely on the basis of such views (it should be a question of competence at their job that determines promotions, etc.).
This is a very sticky area. One of the problems JADL faced at the UW was not only that he was a veteran and deeply discriminated against for that but that he was also a practicing Roman Catholic. I didn't know anyone at the UW English department who was a practicing Christian (there were over 80 profs) and the dominant viewpoint was that religion was at best a topic for Monty Python's crowd to giggle about.
Jews were permitted, but not Christians.
This is true probably throughout academia.
It's a de facto discrimination. After this post one art dealer in Andes wrote to me by email that she hoped she would not see me at their community pool next summer, and if she did, she would treat me the way whites treated blacks in Mississippi in 1950.
I asked if I could repost her email, but she didn't respond. I thought it was a fascinating email and would provide us with much discussion.
There have been numerous Civil Rights laws passed in this country. It seems to me that we tend to forget how it protects religious minorities, even when those minorities in turn might not protect the same distinctions within their own communities.
There is also the separation clauses which have never been law but have been interpreted as such by various Supreme Court cases.
"In a 1979 consultation on the issue, the United States commission on civil rights defined religious discrimination in relation to the civil rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Whereas religious civil liberties, such as the right to hold or not to hold a religious belief, are essential for Freedom of Religion (in the United States secured by the First Amendment), religious discrimination occurs when someone is denied " the equal protection of the laws, equality of status under the law, equal treatment in the administration of justice, and equality of opportunity and access to employment, education, housing, public services and facilities, and public accommodation because of their exercise of their right to religious freedom."[
WRT JADL'S problems at UW, hard to say if it was because he was a vet / Catholic, or because he was a jerk.
Being notajerk is important in any work environment, and JADL, with his positives, oft had a problem not being a jerk.
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