And then the Lord said…well…

Being the good religion-blogger that I am I read blogs like The Revealer and Get Religion pretty much every day. I realize that they inhabit two different ends of the religious spectrum, The Revealer constituing the “left” (whatever that means) and Get Religion constituting the “right” (whatever that means). However both give good commentary and often find news stories I miss in my daily rounds of the internet.

Sometimes though Get Religion gets on my nerves a bit. Specifically when it comes to the issue of gays and their acceptance in the mainstream Churches. To say that many of my friends and associates are gay is akin to saying that Jim Henson knows quite a few muppets, so I obviously feel pretty strongly about the issue and have given it quite a bit of thought and attention.

Case in point being Terry Mattingly’s recent post on the controversy over gay clergy within the Anglican Communion (specifically the Episcopal Church). In the article he makes what I thought to be a pretty striking personal comment.

Who gets the parish keys if Canterbury is in Communion with the U.S. rebel alliance and not the empire based in the denominational headquarters in New York City?

I feel that using such value-laden cultural terms from Starwars shows exactly where Terry Mattingly stands on the issue. The conservatives who don’t want gays to be accepted as clergy are the “rebel alliance” fighting against the evil progressive “empire”. Any kid growing up in the 70’s and 80’s knows exaclty what one means when these terms are brought up.

Also, in a related issue (one brought up in these comments), even if Jesus had personally spoke out in length about the issue of homosexuality (which he didn’t) I truly doubt he would make the hateful “slippery slope” arguments I see many conservatives making. Furthermore, I find it funny how socially conservative Christians love to draw on things that the Bible says about gays, but then feel free to ignore the Bible (and the words of Jesus) when it comes to things like war, and global justice.

In the end it makes this non-Christian think that Christians are far more concerned with who wants to have sex with who than the far more pressing issues going on in the world today. Isn’t there a verse in the Bible about taking the plank out of your own eye? Hey in fact that could be a great title for a series of talks…

“Taking the plank out of your own eye for the straight guy”

In closing, if I ever were to convert to Christianity it would only be with a Church that fully embraced gays in all aspect of their lives, that includes ordination and marriage.

Deflating “Anarchist” Hysteria

Infoshop reports about how the media and police falsely stoked fears of progressive leaders by portraying them as “dangerous” anarchists. This included neopagan leader Starhawk who was mostly amused at the attention she was receiving.

?If all they could portray as dangerous people coming to town are me and Jaggi and Lisa, they were searching pretty hard,? Starhawk laughed. ?They?ve got a 53-year-old woman who?s been preaching nonviolence for 25 years, and Lisa, a union organizer, and Jaggi, who wasn?t even coming to New York. Truly, if these are the most dangerous anarchists in America, people should feel pretty safe.? – Starhawk

Several activists are currently considering defamation lawsuits against the New York Police Department for encouraging smears of them by feeding the information to the media.

The entire account of Starhawk’s trip to the RNC protests can be found here.

The Tree of Life

Conceptual artist Jonathon Keats has decided to put God on the map, the phylogenetic map that is.

“San Francisco conceptual artist Jonathon Keats announces a major simultaneous breakthrough in the fields of science and religion, expected to end the conflict, often violent, between reason and faith, that has plagued society for more than five centuries. Over the past eighteen months, with the assistance of researchers at leading institutions including UC Berkeley, the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and the Smithsonian, Keats has developed a novel method of genetic engineering that may soon allow scientists to place God on the tree of life alongside every other species, including slime molds, fungi, and humans. In so doing, Keats hopes to confer scientific legitimacy on religious belief, and to give science the tools to grapple with the one being that, until now, has eluded its grasp.” – Press Release

Build your own diety?



His efforts include trying to grow his own “divine” lifeforms by exposing cyanobacteria to prayer and developing a unique evolutionary category for the divine.

Recognizing that God probably is unique enough, genetically speaking, to warrant a category of his own, Keats added a fourth domain to the existing Archaea, Bacteria and Eucarya, dubbed Divinea. It includes Pagan and Hindu gods, as well as Diveneus deus, Keats’ scientific moniker for the monotheistic God known as Jehovah, Yahweh or Allah. – Wired News

The International Association For Divine Taxonomy will present it’s findings at the Modernism Gallery in San Francisco on Wednesday, September the 29th. Personally, I would love to see the visual conception of such a map. Hat-tip to The Revealer for finding this.

“Crushed To The Floor”

Charisma magazine reports on it’s feature on ExWitch Ministries an internet-based group founded by former Witch Kathi Sharpe. Sharpe, like most former “occult” practitioners have the usual song-and-dance about their fling with “satan”, and how they encountered the power of Christ.

“I got only 100 yards into the place before I felt I would be crushed to the floor if I did not leave,” she said. “Me, the occultist, found myself forced right back out of that building by the presence of God. … It was one of the unnerving experiences of my life.”

Yes, thats right folks, God himself booted her out of the Church (something that I assume has been fixed by her conversion). But, as the article tells you, these violent episodes are a positive sign that they aren’t beyond saving!

Sharpe said some of the witches and pagans that attend services try to go unnoticed, showing no problem talking about Christ and reading a Bible. Those individuals, according to another former occultist known simply as Lottie, are strong-willed and are not seeking Christ.

See, if you are a pagan and can attend church and hold a Bible without getting the spiritual whammie then you must be too “strong-willed” in your adherance to devilish arts to see the truth. What amazing logic!

Best of The Pagan Web

Some stuff that has caught my attention.

Chas Clifton examines the claim that modern paganism is the fastest growing religion.

MacRaven has been pointing out several reasons why you should vote against the Christian Right.

The Pagan Prattle has the story about a man who is denied bail for being Wiccan!

The Green Man has a nice essay about the Autumnal Equinox.

Second Quote of the Day

“Brown’s book is an amalgam of one part gnosticism, one part paganism and one part Christianity, and it doesn’t do justice to any of them,” Witherington said. “It’s a smorgasbord that gives anyone who has an understanding of the history of Christianity indigestion.” – Ben Witherington III on “The DaVinci Code”

Quote of the Day

“Somehow, this melding of Judaism with Twelve Stepping struck me as even less probable than the notion of Jewish addicts. I think this had something to do with my sense that the Twelve Steps are, like Wicca ? goyish.” – Rabbi Mark Borovitz

Endo-cannibalism

Crooked Timber has discovered an interesting article published in Mortality a journal promoting the interdisciplinary study of death and dying.

“This paper discusses these events as ?the making of an ancestor?, and explores wider contexts in which they might be understood. These include Druidic involvement in the revival of cremation, Amazonian bone-ash endo-cannibalism, and popular means of speaking of and to dead relatives.” – Graham Harvey

Faith Under Fire?

I’m trying not to be skeptical but this show looks to be a step backward for religious dialogue not a step forward. The show Faith Under Fire is hosted by Lee Strobel (a former Atheist, now a born-again Christian) and promises a “Crossfire but with religion” type atmosphere. Here is a blurb from the website.

Whether it?s a discussion involving Islam, atheism, Buddhism, Christianity, humanism, or Wicca, Faith Under Fire draws guests and fire from the worlds of current events, pop culture, academia, and the arts and sciences.

Now, normally I would be thrilled by such a show if I thought it would be fair and balanced, but if you look at the clip provided on the website you can see a variety of guests all trying to debate with a rather shrill and blunt born-again.

clip from the show



I’m quite afraid that this will be a series of straw-men set up for the former skeptic and his Evangelical pals to throw down on everything from Judiasm to Catholicism to Wicca.

But I guess we’ll have to wait and see, sadly I don’t have the PAX network in my area, so hopefully someone will fill me in when it airs.

Why Posting Has Been Light

This past week has been a bit light in the posting department due to some outside activities I have been pursuing. The most important would be the fact that I just applied for admission to the University of Illinois in their religious studies program. If all goes well and they are dazzled by my entrance essay I will be starting in the Summer of 2005. I feel this is the next step in my journey. Wish me luck!