Tag: Jesusland

Friday Night Lights: Illuminating and Proselitizing

Trish

The age-old question of which side is God on has taken a decidedly local turn in these parts. Our independent weekly recently ran a couple of stories about a football coach who forces kids not just to pray before games, but to adopt his Christian evangelical POV. Parents, the stories reported, were afraid to protest to school board and administrative authorities, fearing retribution against their sons in winning college football scholarships. The reaction among the independent weekly readers was that the coach, and his supporters, were all wrong.

On prayers before high school football games: “If God is there, could He just take time out from sports to fix the rest of the world?”

But then our local daily, the St. Augustine Record, caught wind of the story, and ran a prayer-friendly version. The reaction among the daily readers — where the story was that all high school football coaches force prayer upon their players and what’s wrong with that? — was that the coach was a hero. Their follow-up story said 74 people wrote in support of the crusading coach and five against.

That’s the background. Here’s a great letter to the editor on the subject in the local daily:

I am against prayer before, after or during a football game.

Players are not praying for welfare of all mankind, for a responsible government, for peace in the demolished land of Iraq. They are praying to win a football game. They should pray that if they are to be hurt, let it be on the football field. They will have some medical coverage.

The Constitution calls for separation of church and state. Whose religion are we talking about? We see plenty of “Jesus” in the arguments for prayer. How about those who want to pray to Adonai or to Allah?

…The Record said it had 74 reactions for school prayer, and five against.

Does that make those five wrong? Does it say something about our city, our community?

My parents came out of World War II convinced there was no God. And if there was a god who let 20 million people die, he is an awful god.

Seeing what is happening today, I do not believe in God either.

If God is there, could He just take time out from sports to fix the rest of the world?

Poll: Intolerance of Gays Drives Up Christianity’s Negatives among Young People

Jon Ponder

Opposition to gay civil rights has become an extremely effective fundraising tool for the Christian right. In 2005, for example, four of the leading organizations focused on institutionalizing homophobia — Focus on the Family, the American Family Association, the Family Research Council and the Traditional Values Coalition (which advocates execution of gays) — raised $169 million.

Overall, 91 percent of 16- to 29-year-old non-Christians and 80 percent of young churchgoers believe Christianity is anti-gay.

But the effectiveness with which these groups have gotten their message out is proving to be a double-edged sword. While it has ginned up antipathy toward gays — which simultaneously stalled progress on gay civil rights and served as a powerful political tool that Republicans used to seize power — a poll released last month by Barna, a Christian research group, suggests that the relentless intolerance has seriously damaged the image of Christianity among young people:

Interestingly, the study discovered a new image that has steadily grown in prominence over the last decade. Today, the most common perception is that present-day Christianity is “anti-homosexual.” Overall, 91 percent of [16- to 29-year-old] non-Christians and 80 percent of young churchgoers say this phrase describes Christianity.

As the research probed this perception, non-Christians and Christians explained that beyond their recognition that Christians oppose homosexuality, they believe that Christians show excessive contempt and unloving attitudes towards gays and lesbians.

One of the most frequent criticisms of young Christians was that they believe the church has made homosexuality a “bigger sin” than anything else. Moreover, they claim that the church has not helped them apply the biblical teaching on homosexuality to their friendships with gays and lesbians.

Attitudes toward Christianity among today’s youth are much more negative than they were a generation ago, says Barna:

[…]

AFA Cranking Up Its Christmas Witch Hunt

Buck Banks

‘Tis the season. Since Halloween is almost upon us, the American Family Association has cranked up its annual witch hunt for companies that don’t include Christian messages or symbols in their marketing and advertising materials. In other words, companies that don’t commercialize Christmas by slapping baby Jesuses all over their packaging and ads are somehow bad, according to the AFA (which, by the way has $32 million in dough it has collected from dumb Christians).

The first victim of this season is that godless dough ho’ Mrs. Fields Cookies.

How did this come to the AFA’s attention? An anonymous call:

When Diane H. of Michigan called Mrs. Fields and asked to speak with a supervisor in customer service about why they banned Christmas, the supervisor told Diane that they do not offer anything with Merry Christmas because they don’t want to offend anyone.

Then Don “Wildman” Wildmon, chair of AFA, called for a boycott of Mrs. Fields products.

But if you go to Mrs. Fields’ Web site, it’s Xmas stuff out the wazoo. Did Mrs. Fields cave in just a day to the AFA’s bullying? Lord no:

So all Mrs. Fields is really guilty of is having the good taste to not start hawking its Xmas goods until after Halloween. Shucks, the AFA bully boys must be disappointed — “Curses! Foiled again!”

Use the AFA’s own mail-out system to send a letter of support to Mrs. Fields by going here.

Ann Coulter Has a Christian Message — Really

Buck Banks

Who knew Ann Coulter was a Christian? We all knew she is a freaking nut case and so far to the right of moderate she makes Newt Gingrich look like a peacenik Yippie type, but a Christian?

Oh, but of course, she’s a Christian in that predictable but inimitable Ann Coulter way. On the CNBC show “The Big Idea” Monday night Coulter suggested to host Donny Deutsch that the U.S. would be a better place if there weren’t any Jewish people. She also said that Jews need to “perfect” themselves into Christians:

It led Deutsch to suggest that surely he couldn’t mean that, and when she insisted she did, he said this sounded “anti-Semitic.”

Asked by Deutsch regarding whether she wanted to be like “the head of Iran” and “wipe Israel off the Earth,” Coulter stated: “No, we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say. … That’s what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament.”

You can read a transcript here.

With Christians like Coulter around, who needs fanatical Islamists?

More Evangelical Corruption – This Time It’s Oral Roberts’ Heirs

Jon Ponder

Via Digby who makes the point:

We really are getting to the point where it’s easier to assume that conservative religious leaders are crooks, perverts or liars. Sometimes all three. It’s amazing that the Christian right (to which I would add the Catholic Church’s moral teachings in light of the priest scandal) has thrived as long as it did.

One of my colleague Buck’s favorite moments in the annals of televangelism was Oral Roberts’ unique fundraising campaign in 1987 in which he told his sheeple that God had put a ransom on his head. The Big Guy was demanding that Roberts’ followers cough up $8 million or else He would smite Roberts dead.

Amazing it seems, this bizarre fundraising appeal worked. In fact, it wasn’t even considered much of a scandal at the time.

Now Roberts, who is 89, may be facing real scandals in the organizations he founded and in his family — scandals that include political skullduggery, Jim and Tammy Bakker-style lavish spending and purportedly “scores” of improper text messages sent by Oral’s middle-aged daughter-in-law to underaged males:

Now, his son, Oral Roberts University President Richard Roberts, says God is speaking again, telling him to deny lurid allegations in a lawsuit that threatens to engulf this 44-year-old Bible Belt college in scandal.

Richard Roberts is accused of illegal involvement in a local political campaign and lavish spending at donors’ expense, including numerous home remodeling projects, use of the university jet for his daughter’s senior trip to the Bahamas and a red Mercedes convertible and a Lexus SUV for his wife, Lindsay

She is accused of dropping tens of thousands of dollars on clothes, awarding nonacademic scholarships to friends of her children and sending scores of text messages on university-issued cell phones to people described in the lawsuit as “underage males.”

According to Charity Navigator,Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association has negative net assets of $-12, 687,594. Richard Roberts, who is president and CEO, receives a salary of $105,000. Lindsay Roberts, executive vice president, receives salary of $77,000.

NationalPornSunday – Oct. 7, 2007

Jon Ponder

It’s not what you think:

Over the last two years, almost 200 churches throughout the country have taken part in National PornSunday.
October 7, 2007…

… is your chance to bring hope to those who are struggling with pornography. For some, it is ludicrous to link three X’s with church. For others, it’s long overdue. The one undeniable truth that can’t be ignored is the blatant push for all things sexual in our society. PornSunday seeks to drive the conversation about pornography into our churches, families, and lives. PornSunday wants to bring healing and recovery to those struggling with pornography.

One day. One message. Your voice. Churches across the country have become the strength and hope for those struggling with this dirty little secret, and now it’s your church’s opportunity. PornSunday allows you to begin this conversation and then, be equipped to talk about pornography and be prepared for the events that follow after addressing your congregation.

XXXchurch.com has compiled some of the best resources dealing with pornography and put them all in one PornSunday kit, that equips your church to talk about pornography and prepares your church to deal with the issues after PornSunday is over.

Call me old fashioned but I think pornography ought to be kept out of church.

AFA: We Didn’t Lie And Morningstar Still Hates Christians

Buck Banks

Man, Joe Mansueto must have really rattled the Wildmons, American Family Association’s head henchmen, when he responded by e-mail to all the AFA drones who sent him an e-mail through the AFA site criticizing his company for not taking an ad from Faith Financial, as we reported earlier. See, most organizations who are slimed by the Wildmons choose to meet with them privately. Mansueto, chair and CEO of Morningside, chose to take the fight to the public.

Several hours later, the Wildmons are in full spin mode, quoting Faith Financial’s version of what happened as a way to deflect criticism:

‘Based on the fact that Morningstar takes advertisements for liberal social interest groups, it still appears to AFA that the Faith Financial ad was rejected due to it’s Christian content.’
— Tim ‘Wildman Jr.’ Wildmon

Faith Financial attempted to amplify its message of values-based investing on a national platform. To that end, it worked with a global ad agency named Come And Stay which suggested using Morningstar.com, one of the largest and most popular investor information resources in the industry. The ad agent worked with Faith Financial to craft an ad that met both the criteria of Faith Financial and Morningstar then submitted an offer/invoice (what is generally considered a contract) to CEO Stephen Bolt of Faith Financial who signed it and sent it back to be presented along with the 80 word text of the ad to Morningstar. Much to the surprise of both the ad agent and Faith Financial, the ad was rejected by Morningstar. Faith Financial Planners was told by the ad agent after he had consulted with Morningstar that ‘Unless you change the message completely and eliminate the Christian undertones…’ the ad will not be accepted.

The ad agent submitted an offer/invoice to CEO Stephen Bolt of Faith Financial who signed it and sent it back to be presented along with the 80 word text of the ad to Morningstar. From Faith Financial’s perspective, the offer/invoice was a binding agreement as is stated in the contract, but Faith Financial recognizes that Morningstar.com never accepted Faith Financial’s ad and thus, Morningstar never signed an agreement with Faith Financial.

Anybody who has ever dealt with advertising knows that signing an insertion order is a contract between the advertiser and the advertising agency, not the publisher. That’s why there’s an agency percentage — for the work and the financial risk. So, there was never a contract between FF and Morningstar — but that’s what Tim Wildmon said. So who’s lying? I’d bet on both Faith Financial and Wildmon. The above was offered by Wildmon by way of explanation.

He then accuses Morningstar of anti-Christian bias while not offering one iota of justification other than to say that because Morningstar rejected the ad, then it is de facto biased. Oh, except for this:

Based on the fact that Morningstar takes advertisements for liberal social interest groups, it still appears to AFA that the Faith Financial ad was rejected due to it’s [sic] Christian content.

I went to the Morningstar site and I had a devil of a time finding an advertisement. And here’s where you can find the advert for Faith Financial.

I went to the Faith Financial Web site and to tell you the truth it looks to me like some kind of Christian multilevel marketing pyramid scheme. Judge for yourself by going here.

I could see how Morningstar, which is one of the largest financial sites in the country that does real analysis and provides real content regarding financial matters might be put off by Faith Financial, which looks kind of questionable.

And last time I checked it is within the rights of a private business to choose to do or refuse to do business with whomever it desires. And if there are consequences to that decision, then so be it. People are free to boycott and demonstrate any business that clearly demonstrates bias, but refusing to play ball with a bunch of flaky Christian scam artists is not against the law.

Unfortunately, neither is lying — with one hand on the Bible — to people to get them to follow your misguided agenda.

AFA Caught in Another Lying Smear Campaign

Buck Banks

A couple of days ago I received an e-mail from Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association. In typical seething indignation, the missive exhorted me to leap to the condemnation of Morningstar, a provider of financial information, for its refusal to run an ad on its Web site from Faith Financial Planners:

Like any bullies, the Wildmons — pater and son — exaggerate their organization’s power and significance, and wield the threat of economic boycott like a baseball bat when they attack on behalf of Jesus.

We have learned that our friends at Faith Financial Planners were denied a paid advertisement on the website of Morningstar unless they removed the “Christian” content from their advertisement. Morningstar — one of the largest providers of financial information on mutual funds, stocks, and portfolios for individual investors and institutions in the world — told Faith Financial that the company had to “change the message completely and eliminate the Christian undertones.” This is a clear example of bigotry just because Faith Financial represents a Christian message about values and investing. Faith Financial is a company that, through one of its subsidiaries, provides information for Christians to use in reflecting their values in their investments. The information alerts values-based investors to those companies that are involved in pornography, abortion, the homosexual agenda, etc.

But Wildmon wasn’t finished yet:

In an unprecedented move, after a contract had been signed by both parties, an ad sales agent for Morningstar informed Faith Financial that Morningstar had reversed its decision to accept the ad and decided that Faith Financial must censor the “Christian undertones” in order for the ad to be acceptable. American Family Association is asking you to let the leadership at Morningstar know that this kind of Christian bigotry is unacceptable.

I, of course, took action. I like to take the AFA’s stock letter copy and rewrite it to take the polar opposite position. In a perverse way, it relaxes me and is mightily entertaining. Today I received a response to my e-mail from Morningstar Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Joe Mansueto:

The AFA’s email alert claimed that Morningstar asked a company called Faith Financial Planners to “eliminate the Christian undertones from their ad,” reneged on a contract, and rejected an advertisement on the basis of anti-Christian bias.

These allegations are false. First and foremost, at no time did Morningstar sign a contract with Faith Financial or any group representing Faith Financial, and no one at Morningstar asked Faith Financial to “eliminate the Christian undertones from their ad.” The AFA is also incorrect in accusing us of bias in our decision not to run the ad in question.

Seems Morningstar had pretty good grounds for not running the ad:

This ad, which was submitted to us by a third-party agency, was a special promotional offer for a free copy of the book “Money on Loan from God.” A variety of companies run these types of promotional offers, which are made available to people who sign up for Premium Membership service on our Web site, Morningstar.com.

To give you a better sense of our internal process, our ad sales team evaluates each ad submission on a case-by-case basis, within our stated advertising guidelines. We have limited sponsorship opportunities available for the special offer area of our Web site and often turn down promotional requests based on a number of factors.

We also frequently turn down ads that we believe make unreasonable or risky promises to investors. The text in this particular ad — “Achieving a double bottom line on your investment, financial and moral!” — raised a red flag with our ad rep. Also, our ad rep was not familiar with the author of the book or the book’s contents.

Taking all of these issues into consideration, as well as our advertising guidelines, our ad rep made the judgment call to turn down the promotional offer for this special area of our site.

So, let’s review the facts, since AFA apparently didn’t: There was no signed contract, Morningstar didn’t ask Faith Financial to change its ad copy, the ad probably violated Morningstar’s ad policy and it wasn’t Faith Financial but a third-party agency that submitted the ad.

This is a familiar approach by American Family Association — trump up some nonexistent instance of alleged bias against Christian values, distort the facts, rouse its base to action and smugly await some hoped-for free media coverage.

The AFA simply practices thuggery in the name of Jesus. Like any bullies, the Wildmons — pater and son — exaggerate their organization’s power and significance, and wield the threat of economic boycott like a baseball bat when they attack, supposedly in defense of Jesus.

Morningstar’s Mansueto did the right thing by showing the AFA for what it is — a gang of lying, bullying Christian fundamentalist extremists.

Update: AFA has compounded its earlier lies with new ones. Read more…

At Secret Meeting, Christian Nationalists Threaten to Leave GOP If Giuliani Is Nominee

Jon Ponder

More signs that Christian extremists are awakening to the fact that their nearly 30-year marriage to the mainstream Republican Party has been a sham from the start:

Republicans brought Christian nationalists into the fold in the wake of Watergate when it became clear that their rapidly dwindling coalition of country club-types, gun nuts and isolationist-paranoiacs was not large enough to win against Democrats.

According to anonymous sources present at a clandestine breakaway session held alongside the secret thrice-annual meeting of the extreme rightwing Council for National Policy, a handful of America’s top Christian nationalists signed onto a resolution that threatens to leave the GOP and run their own candidate if Republicans select Rudolph Giuliani as their party’s nominee next year.

Among those at the double-secret meeting were heads of two wealthiest organizations in the homophobia industry, James Dobson of Focus on the Family — with total revenues in 2006 of $142,279,843 — and Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, which had revenue in 2006 of $10,858,374. Also in attendance was Richard Viguerie, the conservative guru of direct-mail marketing, a cutting-edge political communications tool of the 1980s.

The breakaway session resulted in a written resolution stating that “if the Republican Party nominates a pro-abortion candidate we will consider running a third party candidate.”

According to Sourcewatch, the CNP is a “secretive forum that was formed in 1981 by Tim LaHaye” — a one-time John Birch Society member who is the multi-millionaire author of the theocratic fantasy “Left Behind” book series. Sourcewatch says CNP is “a networking tool for leading US conservative political leaders.” Mark Crispin Miller, author of “The Bush Dyslexicon,” is also cited, describing the CNP as a “highly secretive … theocratic organization — what they want is basically religious rule.” Another source says the CNP is a meant to counter the Council on Foreign Relations.

Republicans brought Christian nationalists into the fold in the wake of Watergate when it became clear that their rapidly dwindling coalition of country club-types, tax-haters, gun nuts and isolationist-paranoiacs was not large enough to win against Democrats.

For the first two decades, Republican leaders who were not particularly religious, including Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Newt Gingrich, paid lip service to the theocrats in order to keep them in line. It is ironic, however, that the fissure between the GOP and its religious extremists base has erupted during the presidency of George H. Bush, who claims to be an evangelical Christian.

If Christian nationalists do abandon the Republican Party, the numbers could look a bit grimmer for the GOP next year. Among the 31 percent of voters who describe themselves as Republicans, fewer than one-third say they are evangelicals. If the evangelicals move their support to a third-party candidate, the GOP nominee would be forced to try to court back an additional 10 percent of conservative independent voters, many of whom left the GOP during the Bush term because of the party’s profligate spending and a series of back-to-back scandals that have exposed the party’s corruption and hypocrisy.

Evangelicals Say To Hell with Global Warming

Buck Banks

For a group of people who believe the most outrageous things — the Great Flood, Moses parted the Red Sea, Mary was a virgin and Jesus arose from the dead — they sure seem averse to believing in something that seems damned obvious: global warming. A recent study by God’s statistician George Barna found that evangelical Christians are less likely to believe — despite photographic evidence — that the icecaps are melting.

Only 33 percent of evangelical Christians view global warming as a “major” problem facing the country compared to people of other faiths or nonbelievers, more than half of whom say the threat to the environment is severe:

Each faith audience interacts with the concept of global warming in distinct ways. Evangelicals would rather think about other things.

Among non-evangelical born-again Christians, 55 percent say global warming is a major problem and 59 percent of notional Christians agree. Overall, 51 percent of the nation’s Christian community views global warming as severe while 42 percent assigns the largely debated issue less importance.

Meanwhile, 62 percent of those associated with a faith other than Christianity and 69 percent of atheists and agnostics describe global warming as a major problem.

Catholics (59 percent) showed more concern about global warming than Protestants (52 percent). And mainline Protestants (59 percent) also expressed greater alarm than did non-mainline Protestants (49 percent).

The Barna stooge who directed the study insightfully interpreted his findings this way:

“The survey confirms that Americans disagree about climate change,” said David Kinnaman, who directed the study. “Each faith audience interacts with the concept of global warming in distinct ways. Evangelicals would rather think about other things. Non-evangelicals say the environment is important to them, yet they are far from convinced that global warming is as important as everyone says. By contrast, many non-Christians view global climate alterations as the central element of their environmental engagement.”

Duh. What Kinnaman fails to note is that evangelical and born-again Christians are more likely to view global warming in the context of millennialism — you know, Armageddon, the Rapture, the end of the world as we know it. Your basic Bible thumper has a difficult time getting worked up enough to reduce, reuse or recycle because he knows that Jesus is liable to show up any day now.

Well I for one am working on reducing my carbon imprint, planting trees and hunkering down for some rough weather ahead. I’m betting that global climate change will get here a lot sooner than Jesus.