Though Newt Gingrich is still playing coy games about rumors he’s created himself about whether he’ll for President in 2012, he’s busy promoting himself in other ways, creating a propaganda organization that’s dedicated to the theocratic goal of “restoring our Judeo-Christian heritage” – a private, non-governmental heritage that’s shared by only by a diminishing number of Americans. As part of this mission, Gingrich is now calling for the government to prohibit Muslim worship in certain Islam-free zones in the United States.

“There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia,” Gingrich says. Of course, no one is proposing building a mosque near “Ground Zero” (a term which used to refer to the place where an American nuclear bomb detonated over Hiroshima) in New York City. The building that’s being proposed is an interfaith community center.

I wouldn’t want to live in Saudi Arabia, where Islam is strictly enforced, but that’s because I don’t think any religion should be strictly enforced. The Gingrich model for dealing with Saudi theocratic tyranny is to impose a similar theocratic tyranny here in the United States.

It’s a fine approach, if your goal is to have Christianity win over Islam. If your goal is to have American liberty prevail over efforts to restrict religious freedom, however, Newt Gingrich’s plan looks a lot like surrender.

Dear Sarah Palin:

You have repeatedly issued declarations online asking that “Peaceful New Yorkers, pls refute the Ground Zero mosque plan” and that New York issue “a decision not to allow the building of a mosque.”

Let’s make a quick check of the facts:

1. It’s not “a mosque.” The Cordoba Center will be an inter-religious community center dedicated to inter-faith outreach, open to people of all faiths in New York City. It will have an auditorium, a swimming pool, exhibition spaces, meeting rooms, stores, restaurants and a mosque inside.
2. It’s not at Ground Zero. It’s three blocks away. A lot of things are within three blocks of other things in Manhattan.
3. There are 14 Christian and Jewish churches and synagogues that are also close to Ground Zero.

Anyone who exerts herself or himself can verify these facts.

You write this week with frustration of your call to ban the Cordoba Center that “This is nothing close to ‘religious intolerance,’ it’s just common decency.” But here’s a helpful hint: if you don’t want to attract accusations that you’re engaged in “religious intolerance,” you might not want to write an essay based on arguments about “sacred ground,” and you might not want to give your essay the title: “An Intolerable Mistake on Hallowed Ground.” It’s crazy, but people might get the idea that you were using religion to be intolerant.

Also helpful on that point would be not asking New York to use its power to ban a building because it is associated with a religion you don’t like. Some Americans are a little touchy about that kind of thing; apparently it has something to do with some sort of “Amendment” thingamabob.

There’s a friendly music festival just up the road from where I live this weekend, so I wasn’t surprised to see a group of teenage girls under a tent at a nearby state park this afternoon, holding a sign that read, “Free face painting”. I also took it for granted that I could trust them when a couple of the girls approached me and asked me if they could tell my 5 year-old daughter, who was over on the playground, a story. She was within my line of sight, and an easy 5 seconds away if she started to look uncomfortable. But, why would she feel uncomfortable? I figured that the girls just wanted to tell a story about a bunch of friendly barnyard animals, or something like that.

I hate to think about how naive I was in that assumption.

5 minutes later, the story was done, and my daughter walked over to where I had been sitting under a tree, watching her.

“Hi daddy,” she said.

“Did you have a good time with those girls?”

“Yes, daddy.”

“What kind of story did they tell you?”

“It was a story about God?”

“What kind of story about God?”

“It was a story about how God is my real father.”

My daughter and I then had a short talk about stories. We talked about how there are all kinds of stories that talk about a lot of fanciful things, silly things, but that we don’t really believe what those stories say. “It’s like with Not The Hippopotamus,” I told her. “There aren’t really hippopotamuses who go to restaurants to drink juice, but we tell stories that pretend that they do, because it’s fun.”

My daughter understood what I was getting at, and she looked disappointed. I didn’t like to disappoint my daughter, but then, I didn’t really feel that I had a choice, after these strangers told her a story in which I wasn’t her real father. The thought came into my mind, though I didn’t speak it to my daughter, that if there really is a supernatural being that’s her real father, he ought to come over to our house sometime, because there are a lot of bills that need to be paid, and he needs to start pulling his weight.

After I was done talking with my daughter, I took a keener interest in what was going on near the playground. It turns out that there was a pretty slick operation going on. Some of the girls would stay at the facepainting tent, and proselytize the children they had lured there. At the same time, other girls were scouring the playground, looking for new prospects, and waiting for the chance to spread their religious message about God the “real father” to other small children. They were cultural hunters, using little kids as prey in order to fulfill their mission.

The worst part of it was the coordination. There was a man who looked to be about 50 years old, hanging around the tent, taking photographs of the children with the girls. The girls would report back to him every few minutes, and he would give them new directions.

I’ve heard a lot of Christians complaining about how they feel excluded from the public sphere. Today’s experience confirms to me that, in fact, the public sphere is swarming with Christians. Often, these Christians in the public sphere aren’t just practicing their religion for themselves. They’re out there, pushing their religion on other people who are just trying to use the public sphere in peace.

I’m all for freedom of speech, and freedom of religion. We adults simply have to learn to deal with people that we find to be annoying. It’s not against the law to be annoying, after all. There’s a line that’s crossed when it comes to dealing with other people’s children, however. Walking up to other people’s children and telling them that their fathers aren’t really their fathers isn’t freedom of religion. It’s fraud. It’s a violation of the trust that we have in creating public spaces where we’re supposed to bring our children to play.

Go ahead and believe whatever crazy stuff you want to believe about spirits with super powers. Just keep it away from my kids.

“America Bless God” — Littlefield Memorial Baptist Church, Rockland Maine

“America Bless God Ministry’s purpose is to awaken our country and the world to how we can truly bless God.
It is our obedience to God which truly blesses Him. We must live according to His Word, the Bible.” — America Bless God Ministry Thoughts to Consider

“America Bless God… God needs us to prove our love for Him” — Lena Marie’s Discipleship Page

“Yes, God needs us. He has placed the spreading of the Gospel in our hands. We must continue to develop the knowledge and skills necessary to meet this tremendous responsibility. We must not fail our God.” — Does God Need Me?

“Yes, God needs us to love and adore him, as he does adore us.” — Does God Need You?

“The one who blesses becomes an agent of self-realization and fulfillment for the one who receives the blessing. We ‘conjure’ a blessing. Even for God. And when we ‘bless’ God, since God is the source of all life, we effectively enable the Holy One to bless us. In blessing God, we are blessing ourselves!” — Lawrence Kushner and Nehemia Polen, Filling Words with Light

To ponder, while sinking your toes in the hot sand:

What is the definition of the word RELIGION?

…no, don’t go with the definition they’ve got in the printed in the big-bound dictionary. Share the definition as you think the word is actually used, or ought to be used.

How can you tell the difference between something that’s religious, and something that isn’t?

Do you remember the hubbub and hullaballoo this spring over claims that Prahlad Jani, an 83 year-old man of India, went for 15 days straight without eating a thing while under strict scientific supervision? Why, the scientists observing Prahlad Jani say he didn’t even take a single drink of water!

Of course, it’s turned out that he was allowed to regularly “gargle” and bathe during that time, that the presence of independent monitors were refused, that Prahlad Jani was allowed his “privacy,” and that the principal investigator’s pre-existing goal in his research is to prove Jain religious teachings about transcending bodily limitations through fasting. His research philosophy:

In fact, every single rule in Jain Darshan has a science behind it, as lord Mahavir was Omniscient. Our Modern science can have and has limitations & therefore we have to change our views every now and then. While Jain Darshan is shaswat & does not need to change.

Whatever mistakes we perceive in the religious texts , could be interpretation errors or perhaps science may evolve for our understanding of those facts ,or may be there were errors in translation or some texts are missing. We have to keep faith in our religion., Yes, absolute faith & devotion. A woshiping temper, rather than egoistic ruthless attitude.

You may recall that at the end of the purported experiment on May 6, principal investigator Dr. Sudhir Shah issued a press release in which he declared:

All the reports and results will be scientifically analyzed, subsequently and will take some
time. The entire study team will meet periodically to discuss the findings and draw valid conclusions.

Now Dr. Sudhir Shah has released an update on his Prahlad Jani experiment in which he explains that:

The investigators intend to carry on dialogue by periodic meeting among themselves with data
processing as and when the data come through, to come out with some scientific conclusions
which will take some time. The publication of the study in a scientific journal can only be
considered thereafter at the discretion of principal investigator.

It’s been two months after the completion of his study and with the data still “coming through,” we’ve seen none of it. We may never see the data if, “at the discretion of principal investigator,” publication of the study in a peer-reviewed scientific journal is avoided.

I just received a letter in the mail from Tim Wildmon, President of the American Family Association. I get a little cheer in my heart when such letters come. For one thing, I know that the fundamentalist and theocratic AFA just frittered away a little bit of its budget on printing and mailing costs. For another thing, I get an opportunity to learn a little bit more about what makes the fundamentalist theocratic heart beat as it does.

In today’s letter, Mr. Wildmon declares that in a 2001 “radio he bemoaned the fact that the Warren Supreme Court ‘never entered into the issues of redistribution of wealth.’”

The “he” in that sentence is President Barack Obama. I happen to have previously transcribed that 2001 interview, a joint interview by Chicago Public Radio moderator Gretchen Helfrich of both Illinois state senator Barack Obama and constitutional expert Dennis Hutchison. You can listen to the entire interview here if you don’t believe me.

This is actually what Barack Obama said:

Dennis Hutchinson: The federal constitution doesn’t provide any warrant for intervention.

Barack Obama: Exactly. So, what’s interesting is that suddenly, a whole bunch of people start bringing these claims to state courts…

Dennis Hutchison: The idea that you could use the due process clause for redistributive ends, socially, that would be stable I think was an astonishing assumption in the mind of litigators about what they could accomplish over time, and it just didn’t last very long.

Barack Obama: And it essentially has never happpened. If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples. So that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it I’d be okay.

But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society, and to that extent as radical as people tried to characterize the Warren court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted, and the Warren court interpreted it in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can’t do to you, it says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn’t shifted.

One of the I think, the tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change and in some ways we still suffer from that.

In that quote Barack Obama does not bemoan the fact that the Warren Supreme Court “never entered into the issues of redistribution of wealth.” He used the word “ventured,” to start off with a triviality. More substantially, Obama bemoaned that activists spent their energies trying to get the Warren Supreme Court to do so, rather than engaging in grassroots activism to enact change outside the courts, which he thinks would have been a better idea. Barack Obama’s 2001 idea regarding the Supreme Court and redistribution of wealth was actually the opposite of what Tim Wildmon says it was.

If you don’t get the point yet, let’s look at what else Barack Obama said in the very same interview:

Moderator Gretchen Helfrich: Let’s talk with Karen. Good morning, Karen, you’re on Chicago Public Radio.

Karen: Hi. The gentleman made the point that the Warren Court wasn’t terribly radical, my question is, with economic changes. My question is, is it too late for that kind of reparative work economically and is that that the appropriate place for reparative economic work to take place?

Helfrich: You mean the Court?

Karen: The Court. Or would it be legislation at this point?

Barack Obama: You know, maybe I’m showing my bias here as a legislator as well as a law professor, but I’m not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. You know, the institution just isn’t structured that way.

You just look at very rare examples during the desegregation era the court was willing to for example order, you know, changes that cost money to a local school district. The court was very uncomfortable with it. It was very hard to manage, it was hard to figure out. You start getting into all sorts of separation of powers issues, you know, in terms of the court monitoring or engaging in a process that essentially is administrative and takes a lot of time. You know, the court’s just not very good at it and politically it’s very hard to legitimize opinions from the court in that regard.

So I think that although you can craft theoretical justifications for it legally, you know, I think any three of us sitting here could come up with a rationale for bringing about economic change through the courts, I think that as a practical matter our institutions are just poorly equipped to do it.

If you had any shred of a doubt about what Barack Obama meant, he cleared it up for you in that exchange, declaring that the Supreme Court is not structured to bring about redistribution of wealth, that the court would not be good at it, that politically such a move would be very hard to legitimize and that even if you wanted such a thing the Supreme Court would be poorly equipped to do it.

Tim Wildmon’s assertion about Barack Obama’s 2001 radio interview is clearly, demonstrably wrong. Speaking of “wrong,” there’s something that the Bible declares to be wrong. Exodus 20:16 states it flat-out: “Thou shalt not bear false witness”.

Either Tim Wildmon never actually looked up the quote he inverted, in which case he is bearing false witness against Barack Obama by falsely asserting himself to be knowledgeable on the matter he uses to condemn the president, or Tim Wildmon actually did the research, came across the words you just read above, and knowingly twisted Barack Obama’s words to falsely condemn him. In either case, Tim Wildmon has committed a sin against his own purported value system.

Which value does Tim Wildmon hold more highly? The value of scoring political points against a partisan opponent, or the value of being truthful in accusation?

Let’s find out. Today I’m sending a letter in the mail directly to Tim Wildmon. It reads:

July 6, 2010

Dear Mr. Wildmon,

In an “Action Letter” dated July 2010, you wrote of Barack Obama in 2001 that “in that same radio interview he bemoaned the fact that the Warren Supreme Court ‘never entered into the issues of redistribution of wealth.’”

This is a false accusation. The radio interview (which you may listen to or read an online transcription of via http://wp.me/pdWLh-4VX) actually demonstrates, in no fewer than three passages including the very one you partially quote, that Barack Obama articulated the opposite position. The then-state-senator declared in the radio interview that due to practical difficulties, political considerations and constitutional restraints involving the separation of powers, it would have been a bad idea for the Warren Court to have “ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth.” Far from bemoaning the Warren Court for failing to redistribute wealth, Barack Obama bemoans the strategy of activists who tried to convince the Warren Court to redistribute wealth.

Exodus 20:16 reminds Christians that “thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”

I hope that you have not made this false claim knowingly, although in such a circumstance you have made the false assertion of having the authority to make such a factual assertion. I encourage you to issue a public retraction of this false claim at the earliest opportunity and to all those who received your accusation in the mail or otherwise.

This would be the Christian thing to do. I look forward to your response.

I’ve just put the letter in the mail, and I’ll share with you not only any response I receive, but also whether Tim Wildmon chooses to repent for his episode of bearing false witness.

Over here on the East coast, there are only five hours left before the end of the 4th of July. That’s only five hours for the prediction of a U.S. government’s atomic bomb attack on one of its own cities either to come true or to be established as yet another in the long line of hysterical imminent-attack predictions that didn’t come true.

The nearly-done nature of July 4 hasn’t stopped the conspiracy theorists from dreaming up some new predictions for today:

Imagine…..

Heavy fireworks sabotaged with nuclear waste – so when they explode the dust is ejected and lingers over the crowd and is blown slowly into the waters….

The sabotaged fireworks are fired in NYC; in Washington; in Boston and Miami.

They are fired in Cleveland and Chicago and Pittsburgh and Des Moines.

Fired in OKC; Dallas, Houston and Denver.

Cheyenne; Portland, Seattle and San Francisco.

That would be one hell of a shitty 4th of July, would it not?

(PS… still think ff could mean ‘For Fourth’; false flag being a little too obvious and not the kind of thing ‘They’ would need to tell their followers on the street)

Yes, imagine that. Then imagine that Skeletor and the Decepticons ride Unicorns onto the Brooklyn Bridge and unlock the ghost portal to the 5th Dimension, unleashing the power of the undead upon the Big Apple, and Yonkers too. The terrorists would love that, wouldn’t they?

Since we’re talking about apocalyptic predictions, let’s not forget the apocalypse with a capital A. Linda Newkirk’s prophesy for the Second Coming of Christ to be revealed in “a few months” is overdue, considering that it was made back in December of 2009.

In the United States, politicians feel the need to take a strong pose of religious belief. In 2008, Barack Obama coordinated his campaign with networks of Christian churches and organized Christian gospel tours. Mike Huckabee declared that he would create a Christian nation as President and autographed Bibles at campaign stops. Atheists were evicted from the Democratic National Convention.

According to polls, a majority of Americans wouldn’t vote for any atheist to become President. It’s not a solely American attitude, though. In Brazil, for example, only 13 percent would vote for an atheist.

Why? Is an atheist an inherently ineffective leader?

Now, the world has a test of that presumption. Julia Gillard, who became Australia’s Prime Minister just a few days ago, is an open atheist. If she is able to be an effective national leader, will that change Americans’ resistance to voting an atheist into the White House?

Yesterday, the Republican governors of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas orchestrated an official Day of Prayer to stop the onslaught of the offshore oil spill from the site of the wrecked BP Deepwater Horizon. Five official declarations called for coordinated intercessory prayer to stop the still-spilling oil gusher at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

The oil hasn’t stopped gushing yet. It hasn’t even slowed in its pace.

What explains this? Are the people of these states poorly skilled in the execution of their prayers? Did they use the wrong incense or wear the wrong hats? Does the god they prayed to not really care about massive environmental devastation? Is the god they prayed to too weak to stop the oil spill? Or does the god they prayed to not exist?

If only King Henry VIII had not died, he would have been 519 years old today. 465 years ago, the OctoKing gave a speech before Parliament explaining a great threat to Christianity: People besides priests were reading and talking about the Bible. He said to the nobles,

“Although you be permitted to read holy scripture, and to have the word of God in your mother tongue, you must understand, that it is licensed you so to do, only to inform your own conscience, and to instruct your children and family, and not to dispute, and make scripture a railing and a taunting stock against priests and preachers, as many light persons do. I am very sorry to know and hear how unreverently that most precious jewel, the word of God, is disputed, rhymed, sung, and jangled in every alehouse and tavern, contrary to the true meaning and doctrine of the same.”

Henry’s advice: Don’t argue or sing about the Bible. It will only lead to taunting priests with scripture!

Maine Republican gubernatorial nominee Paul LePage couldn’t possibly have been more upfront this year about his advocacy for putting creationism in public schools. Asked “Do you believe in creationism, and do you think it should be taught in Maine public schools?”, LePage’s complete response was, “I would say intelligence, uh, the more education you have the more knowledge you have the better person you are and I believe yes and yes.”

Surely in this day and age, you may be saying to yourself, a state like Maine in liberal New England would never put a creationist in charge of state government. Such a candidate must be far behind in the polls, right?

Wrong. According to the latest poll numbers released by Rasmussen, Paul LePage is favored by 43% of likely Maine voters, Democratic nominee Elizabeth Mitchell is favored by 36% and independent Eliot Cutler is the favorite of 7%. LePage’s lead is outside the poll’s margin of error.

Yesterday in Congress, Louie Gohmert, a representative from Texas, declared the following:

“The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul. I don’t think we emphasize that enough these days.”

Is this true? Prove it. Here’s the Louie Gohmert Bible Challenge for today:

Go to the Christian Bible and show me in which part of the books of Exodus, Matthew, Isaiah or the writings of Paul the following aspects of the Bill of Rights are discussed:

- Free speech
- Freedom of religion
- Freedom of the press
- Protection from unreasonable search and seizure
- Protection from double jeopardy
- Freedom from quartering soldiers
- The right to a jury trial
- A ban on excessive bail

It’s a statement attributed to the Buddha, Siddhartha Guatama, from ages ago, but it’s not a statement worth repeating because it was made by the Buddha or because it’s ages old. The idea is that people should not follow teachers of wisdom, but should instead cultivate their own wisdom.

Listen to others, by all means, but test every assertion made by leaders, and if their assertions don’t match reality, don’t follow the paths they have cleared. Go your own way, and trust your own skeptical mind.

It’s a pre-modern version of the popular aphorism, question authority, written within the outline of the meditating heretic of Hinduism.

Let experience be your guru.