False Sense of Maturity

It has all the makings of a reality show: president-elect Obama is suspected to be looking for a church near the White House, and there are many eager contestants:

Churches in Washington, D.C., have started extending invitations to President-elect Barack Obama and his family, touting their African-American roots, their ties to presidents past and to Obama himself.

The choices are abundant. Numerous, thriving congregations are an easy walk from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Just across Lafayette Square from the White House is St. John’s Church, an Episcopal parish known as the “Church of the Presidents,” where presidents as far back as James Madison have worshipped. St. John’s has a standing invitation: Pew 54 is the President’s Pew, reserved for the nation’s leader.

I’d like to see him eliminate one church a week in the style of The Bachelor or Flavor of Love. But instead of giving out the advancing churches a rose or giant clock necklace, he could hand out mini crucifixes, or maybe a page that he rips out of a Bible. Or better yet, if Obama wants to be certain to avoid another Rev. Wright type fiasco, he could stop going to church permanently.

I recently discovered RaptureReady.com - which proudly announces that it’s “your prophecy resource for the end times” - via this Newsweek article. Rapture Ready is the brainchild of Todd Strandberg, a man who is constantly on the lookout for signs that the world is ending. One of the hottest topics over on Rapture Ready is what impact Barack Obama will have in bringing the Rapture, and if he is indeed the Antichrist. Even the most circumstantial of evidence is considered:

Already Barack Obama had drawn the attention of apocalypse watchers after an anonymous e-mail circulated among conservative Christians in October implying that he was the Antichrist. Former “Saturday Night Live” ingénue Victoria Jackson fueled the fire when, according to news reports, she wrote on her Web site that Obama “bears traits that resemble the anti-Christ.” Now Strandberg was receiving up-to-the-minute news from his constituents in Illinois. One of the winning lottery numbers in the president-elect’s home state was 666— which, as everyone knows, is the sign of the Beast (also known as the Antichrist). “It is very eerie, and I take it for a sign as to who he really is,” wrote one of Strandberg’s correspondents.

A British bishop blames a better educated population for a drop in the number of practicing Catholics:

The Rt Rev Patrick O’Donoghue, the Bishop of Lancaster, has claimed that graduates are spreading scepticism and sowing dissent. Instead of following the Church’s teaching they are “hedonistic”, “selfish” and “egocentric”, he said.

In particular, the bishop complained that influential Catholics in politics and the media were undermining the Church.

While not naming names, he suggested that such people had been compromised by their education, which he said had a “dark side, due to original sin”.

There you have it, straight from a bishop: ignorance is a powerful tool for the Church.

Some Russians were able to find a practical use for a nearby church:

. . . Orthodox officials in a central Russian region say an abandoned church building that was to be put back into use has been stolen by local villagers.

Orthodox priest Vitaly of the Ivanovo-Voskresenskaya diocese said officials last saw the two-story Church of Resurrection intact in late July. Sometime in early October, however, people from the nearby village of Komarovo, northeast of Moscow, dismantled the building, he said.

Villagers apparently sold it to a local businessman, one ruble (about 4 cents) per brick, Vitaly said. Orthodox priests use only one name.

It’s sort of sad, considering the church was 200-years-old, and it’s likely that the thieves will use the money to buy booze and drugs. Still, you have to admire their confidence that there is no hell.

I still despise Ted Haggard, the former mega-pastor who met his downfall after frequenting a meth dealing male prostitute, though now I also feel a little bad for him after he revealed being sexually abused as a child in two recent sermons:

Haggard said one of his father’s employees “had a sexual experience with me” when Haggard was 7, according to audio recordings of the sermons posted on the ABC News Web site.

Haggard said he later became “a conservative Republican, loving the word of God, an evangelical, born-again, spirit-filled, charismatic, all those things.

The good people at the American Humanist Association are decking out Washington DC buses in time for the holiday season:

Ads proclaiming, “Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake,” will appear on Washington buses starting next week and running through December. The American Humanist Association unveiled the provocative $40,000 holiday ad campaign Tuesday.

In lifting lyrics from “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” the Washington-based group is wading into what has become a perennial debate over commercialism, religion in the public square and the meaning of Christmas.”We are trying to reach our audience, and sometimes in order to reach an audience, everybody has to hear you,” said Fred Edwords, spokesman for the humanist group.

If I’ve ever learned anything useful about Catholicism, it’s not to mess with the communion wafers, or you might end up in jail like this crazy guy:

Meet Jonathan Ricci. The Florida man was arrested Saturday morning after he allegedly tried to steal “a handful of communion wafers” from a priest at a Catholic church in Jensen Beach. Ricci, 33, sought to swipe 15 wafers valued at $1, according to a Martin County Sheriff’s Office report, a copy of which you’ll find here. During mass at around 9 AM, Ricci accepted a wafer on the Communion line, but “walked away without taking the communion into his mouth.” After refusing a priest’s requests to “accept” the wafer, Ricci “turned to the priest and grabbed a handful of the wafers from the plate and attempted to leave” St. Martin de Porres Church, according to the report. “Due to the religious significance of the holy communion, the parishioners were very upset at his callous treatment of their holy ritual” and sought to detain him. An “enraged” Ricci then began to act “crazy” and scuffled with parishioners, two of whom (men aged 82 and 66) sustained minor injuries. Ricci, pictured in the below mug shot, was charged with theft, battery, and disrupting a religious assembly.

Well, at a pricey dollar a pop, I could see why he’d want to steal them. The funny thing is, I’ve heard that they don’t taste all that great, so he would have been better off stealing from a bakery.

The United States tends to be an Islamophobic place these days, but that wasn’t always the case. Some surprising aspects of American culture have been influenced by Arab or Muslim customs, as Al’ America, a new book by Jonathan Curiel, chronicles:

Al’ America offers a quirky tour of sites, sounds and personalities that are quintessentially American and also reveal fascinating vestiges of Islamic and Arab influence. Musical stops include the Surf Sound of 1960s southern California, the Mississippi Delta blues and the startlingly spiritual confines of Elvis Presley’s Graceland. The King, it turns out, kept a copy of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet on his bedroom nightstand.

One of Curiel’s most colorful excursions takes him to the fez-festooned conclaves where Shriners still greet each other by declaring, “salaam aleikum” (peace be upon you). At their apogee in the 1920s, when they had 500,000 members, the Shriners paraded through downtown Washington, D.C., were publicly hailed by presidents and drew a welcome committee of Marine Corps musicians dressed in Arab garb. Washington merchants even dressed up their storefronts as ersatz mosques. Those were different times.

Another entertaining digression takes readers to mid-19th-century Bridgeport, Conn., where circus impresario P.T. Barnum built a mansion in quasi-Islamic style and called it Iranistan. The grand house, with its pseudo-minarets, is long gone. But Iranistan Avenue survives, now pronounced “Arn-i-stan,” Curiel reports with the light, bemused tone that makes the book a pleasurable read.

So if Elvis were alive today, he would be accused by Christian fundamentalists as being a Muslim.

Before the election, there was lots of talk about how the evangelicals might vote more Democratic, and that the Jewish vote could switch to the Republicans. But the CNN exit polling proves that there were no major changes in how different religious groups voted, and all the talk was overblown. Some examples:

–McCain won the white born-again vote 74% to 24%

–Obama won the Jewish vote 78% to 21%.

–Obama won the Catholic vote 54% to 45%.

–Among people with no religious preference, Obama won 75% to 23%.

I’ve come to notice that Islamic clerics have way too much time on their hands. The latest target of their scorn? Malaysian tomboys, of course:

Malaysia’s main body of Islamic clerics has issued an edict banning tomboys in the Muslim-majority country, ruling that girls who act like boys violate the tenets of Islam, an official said Friday.

The National Fatwa Council forbade the practice of girls behaving or dressing like boys during a meeting Thursday in northern Malaysia, said Harussani Idris Zakaria, the mufti of northern Perak state, who attended the gathering.

Harussani said an increasing number of Malaysian girls behave like tomboys, and that some of them engage in homosexuality. Homosexuality is not explicitly banned in Malaysia, but it is effectively illegal under a law that prohibits sex acts “against the order of nature.”

Appealing to a person’s religious beliefs as a way to exploit them is pretty low, but what about exploiting religion to sell beer? Well, that’s actually kind of cool:

In the beginning, there was a long line for Judgment Day ale.

Shortly after the doors opened on the 27th Great American Beer Festival, a crowd congregated at the booth offering that and other pours from The Lost Abbey of San Marcos, Calif., where the tap handle is a Celtic cross and the legacy of beer-brewing monks endures.

Standing under a banner promising “Inspired beers for Saints and Sinners Alike,” proprietor and former altar boy Tomme Arthur had a confession: He’s using God to sell some beer.

If you have ever dreamed of suing God, this case sets a bad precedent for you:

A judge has thrown out a Nebraska legislator’s lawsuit against God, saying the Almighty wasn’t properly served, because of his unlisted home address. State Sen. Ernie Chambers filed the lawsuit last year seeking a permanent injunction against God.

He said God has made terroristic threats against the senator and his constituents in Omaha, inspired fear and caused “widespread death, destruction and terrorization of millions upon millions of the Earth’s inhabitants.”