slacktivist

“You shall not spread a false report. You shall not join hands with the wicked to act as a malicious witness.”

“Elective abortions are not associated with an increased risk of breast cancer.”

“The truth is that spending, taxes and the deficit are all lower today than when President Obama took office.”

“For the first time in my lifetime, a house of government has dictated what is acceptable theology and has banned sacraments from its properties that do not meet the religious beliefs of legislators.”

“Evangelical churches are usually refuge houses for certain kinds of sinners — the loveless, the self-righteous, those apathetic toward the poor and unconcerned with issues of justice and race, the greedy, the gluttons, and so on.”

“Why do homosexuals bother you so much?”

“There’s that fine line between what I call a confident optimism and arrogance. And I think people who think like the old Hemingway line — ‘The world is worth fighting for‘ — are appealing.”

“If the United States Congress is serious about cutting costs, it may eventually have to stand up to thirsty car-culture lobbies and back infrastructure that pays durable dividends.”

“Dressed in the clothing of consumer protection, the bill strips away Pennsylvania’s long-held and strongly enforced protections against predatory short-term loans.”

“Welcome to the Vatican death panels.”

“I am far more worried about my church joining the war against the poor than their war against the nuns. After all, we have each other and we have work to do.”

“You know, 94 percent of the quotes of the Founding Fathers contemporaneous to our nation’s founding either came directly or indirectly from the Bible.”

“How do you pronounce ‘Faneuil?’”

Point. Counterpoint.

I enjoyed this trippy, riffing and rambling reflection from John Van Sloten at Think Christian: “Spiritual perception and the science of color.” It’s half sermon illustration, half stoner epiphany.

I probably enjoyed the stoner-ish aspects more, but Von Slaten’s sermon ain’t bad either. He writes:

Dogs are bi-chromates, meaning their eyes have two cones enabling them to see blue/yellow and black/white, while most humans are tri-chromates, enabling us to see many more colors. Some butterflies have five cones and can see an even broader range. The mantis shrimp, amazingly, has sixteen cones! If all these different species might be looking at the same thing, some would see more colors than others, who, “though seeing, they do not see.”

We can’t perceive the colors that a mantis shrimp can perceive. And thus we find it impossible to conceive of them either. Those colors are, to us, like up and down are to a Flatlander.

As Keanu would say, “Whoa.”

She sees colors that you can't even imagine.

I like where Van Sloten wants to go with this as a theological analogy. Theology, like cosmology, requires us to think about things we’re not quite capable of thinking about — ideas that confront us with the tri-chromate, Flatlander limitations of our kind (“infinity,” for example). When it comes to understanding God, he writes, “we’re a few cones short of full perceptive capacity” and “we must be missing most of what’s really going on.”

The playwright of Job would certainly agree with that.

I do want to quibble, though, with Von Slaten’s suggestion that this lack of “full perceptive capacity” is “because of sin.”

We humans have all sorts of shortcomings that have nothing to do with sin or sinfulness. Sin and sinfulness may be part of the human condition, and they can certainly cloud our perception, but we shouldn’t confuse sin with finitude and fallibility. Nor should we mistakenly think of finitude and fallibility as being sinful.

This is kind of important. If we believe that human misperceptions and misconceptions and incomplete (and thus inaccurate) comprehensions are mainly due to sin, then we’re tempted to conclude that anyone who is fallible is therefore evil. But if we believe that misperceptions, misconceptions and incomplete comprehensions are an unavoidable aspect of the human condition, then we’re encouraged to regard others with more empathy, and to realize that we need each other to improve our own, finite and fallible perspectives.

An emphasis on human sinfulness leads us to avoid the wicked temptation of engaging diverse perspectives. An emphasis on fallibility and finitude leads us to seek out and value diverse perspectives as a necessary corrective of our own blind-men-and-the-elephant limitations. I prefer the latter.

In Bangladesh, apparently, the sexual harassment of women is called “Eve teasing.”

This social problem exists everywhere be it in rural or in urban areas. One of the main reasons of girls being married off at an early age or them dropping out of school is “eve teasing.” Many times these incidents lead to violence and even deaths.

Just look at that term — “Eve teasing” — and ponder its biblical roots.

The etymology of this term is an accusing finger pointing directly at the patriarchal religion that men use to justify this debasing, predatory behavior. That term is a powerful indictment of this patriarchal religion — a reminder that it is directly linked to daily, relentless abuse, harassment, “violence and even deaths.”

* * * * * * * * *

At Jesus Radicals, Andy Alexis-Baker wrestles with what it means for the legacy of John Howard Yoder that the great Mennonite theologian was also a horrific Eve-teaser.

For Jesus Radicals like Alexis-Baker, Yoder is a big name — a man whose books shaped the thinking of a generation. I’m part of that generation, and I understand Alexis-Baker’s anguished disappointment here.

Yoder was the equivalent, for Christian progressives and peacemakers, of those un-named “big names” whom Ericka M. Johnson discusses at Friendly Atheist in a post titled “It’s Almost Time to Start Naming Names.”

“Private conversations with these people have to come first,” Johnson writes. “These are our allies and we have to give them a chance to make amends. But if none of those efforts work, then we have to start naming names. Not to shame them but to protect women in our community.”

I appreciate the painful difficulty here, but whether the Eve-teaser in question is a revered theologian or a revered non-theist, I think Johnson has steps 1 and 2 backwards. Protect the vulnerable first and foremost. Then — and only then — can you start to worry about protecting the reputation of any person, institution or affiliated movement.

* * * * * * * * *

Roman Catholic priest Jonathan Morris says the Department of Health and Human Service’s regulations requiring equal health insurance coverage for women entails “the obvious raping of our First Amendment rights.”

This is appalling for at least three reasons:

1) No one should be using rape metaphors.

2) No one should be using rape metaphors to argue against equal health coverage for women.

3) No one should be using rape metaphors to argue against equal health coverage for women when he belongs to a hierarchy that has been committing, facilitating and defending actual rape for decades and is now, at this moment, fighting to prevent changes to statutes of limitations that would ensure rapists can be brought to justice.

* * * * * * * * *

This post by David French exemplifies how the politics of abortion is used to define the boundaries of the evangelical tribe.

This is one of the main functions of the politics of abortion in American evangelicalism. It’s not about being “pro-life.” It’s about ensuring that you can’t be accused of not being sufficiently “pro-life.” It’s about keeping people in line, keeping them obedient and voting as they are told. It’s about control of women, yes, but it’s also about control of everyone who wishes to be allowed to remain in the community.

French sees Millennials and younger evangelicals losing their taste for the culture wars of their elders and he’s terrified that this will mean that the Republican Party will lose their votes. So he plays the only card he’s got left: the baby-killer card.

Do as you’re told, young people. Repeat the required phrases or you’re not really Christians. Do as you’re told or you’re no longer welcome in the tribe. Do as you’re told or we will question the firmness of your “pro-life” stance and thereby cast you into the outer darkness with the Satanic baby-killers and the evolutionists and the homosexuals, where there is weeping, wailing, gnashing of teeth, and fabulous gay weddings.

Do as you’re told. Or else. That’s what being “pro-life” is all about in American evangelicalism.

* * * * * * * * *

Now go read this: “I Am (Not) That Mom: Raising a Kid with Cardiomyopathy,” by Laura Fitch.

And if you’re one who prays, say a prayer for every name in that story.

Fundamentalism thrives on isolation from and opposition to the world — isolation from and opposition to the rest of society, to other people, to The Other, to everyone else.

The despicable Charles Worley and his Providence Road Baptist Church in North Carolina illustrates this opposition. But the fact that we know about Worley, that we’ve heard his vile words through a viral video that has been viewed by more than half a million people, shows that isolation is becoming increasingly difficult even for the most rabid fundies.

And just to be clear, that’s what we’re dealing with here. Warren Throckmorton traced the affiliations of Worley’s congregation — it’s an independent, KJV-only church connected with something called “The Only Hope” network. Not Southern Baptist, then, but nondenominational fundamentalist (think Bob Jones University, Bill Gothard, etc.). I’ve never heard of this “Only Hope” group — they seem to be hard-core fundie and desperately in need of a Web designer.

These small, nondenominational, KJV-only fundamentalist churches endure, in part, by keeping their members in the dark. Like all abusers, they need to keep their families dependent on them — ensuring that they’re the sole source of authority by ensuring that they’re the sole source of information. That’s getting harder to do in a world shaped by the subversive possibility of Google. Such churches have a long history of keeping their members out of the library, but now they have to keep them off of the Web as well.

And just as the Web undermines these churches’ ability to control the information their members can access, it also undermines these churches’ ability to keep their own shameful secrets. Worley’s “sermon” was an effective bit of propaganda within the closed-off world of his own sanctuary, but outside of that controlled environment it is quickly exposed as shameful, hateful ignorance of the very worst kind. When the rest of the world — the rest of America, the rest of the church — hears such things, the rest of the world responds and people like Worley can’t wholly prevent their followers from hearing that response.

He can inoculate them against it — misquoting Matthew 5:11-12 and 1 Corinthians 1:27 and John 15:18 to reassure them that any and all criticism amounts to “persecution” and therefore confirms the rightness and righteousness of his lies. You’ll see that argument parroted by drive-by trolls in the comments of sites like Stuff Fundies Like, often in ALL CAPS. But I often get the sense that these folks are shouting so loudly just to try to drown out the questions they’re desperate not to answer.

Providence Road Baptist Church requires isolation to function — isolation to keep its members ignorant and to keep its shameful secrets from being exposed to a wider world in which they cannot be defended. The good news this week is that it has lost that isolation.

Below the jump, a sampling of others’ insights, rants, lamentations and jeremiads w/r/t Worley and his awful church.

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OK, it’s getting late in the day and my plan of cooling down to a calm, rational tone to discuss this still isn’t working.

So let’s discuss the Rev. Charles L. Worley of Providence Road Baptist Church in Maiden, N.C.

Actually, let’s just make that Charles L. Worley — there’s nothing “reverend” about this bastard, regardless of what the clueless, hateful club-members of this local congregation try to say. He’s not “pastor” Worley. Pastor means shepherd, and Worley’s not shepherding a flock, just fleecing a bunch of rubes — the kind of easy marks who beg for a second shot at the offering plate after hearing their bigoted leader endorse concentration camps.

Yes, concentration camps. Which is why this subject comes pre-Godwined.

No matter how they play dress up, Worley ain’t a pastor and Providence Road ain’t a church. As Ramona writes: “If you could turn off the sound and watch this man Worley as he clutches his bible and moves around his pulpit, you might be lulled into thinking you were watching a man of God preaching in God’s house. No such thing exists in that building posing as a church.”

Here’s what Worley had to say this month in the “sermon” at his “church”:

If you can’t watch that video, here’s a transcript of the lowlights:

I figured a way to get rid of all the lesbians and queers, but I couldn’t get it past the Congress. Build a great, big, large fence — 150 or 100 mile long — put all the lesbians in there, fly over and drop some food. Do the same thing with the queers and the homosexuals and have that fence electrified ’til they can’t get out. … And you know what? In a few years, they’ll die out.

Let’s be clear: This is eliminationist talk. Worley is advocating rounding people up and putting them in camps until they die off. This is something that has been done in the past and Worley is suggesting doing it again.

I’m sure Worley will try to say he was only “joking” — that he wasn’t seriously suggesting rounding up millions of Americans and locking them away until they die. But he isn’t joking in that video. The only playfulness in his comments is the smirking “I couldn’t get it past the Congress,” and that, for Worley, is the joke here — that concentration camps are what we ought to do, if only, alas, we could.

CNN reports today that Worley’s rant is getting “mixed reactions” around Maiden, N.C. — meaning others are appalled, but the members of his congregation support their “pastor.” These people are ignorant Bible-carriers who don’t show the slightest hint of ever having cracked the spines of those books:

“He said he would feed them!” some church members told CNN, referring to Worley’s idea for rounding up gays.

Worley “takes a real firm stand on the Bible and what it says about different things,” said church member Joe Heffner. “Whether I like it or not or whether anybody else likes it.”

Another church member, who declined to give his name, said that “Being gay and lesbian or homosexual is wrong according to the Bible… it’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.”

(Rule No. 17: Anyone who says “… not Adam and Steve” imagining that they are either being clever or invoking the meaning of the Bible is thereby proved to be someone who is utterly incapable of either being clever or invoking the meaning of the Bible.)

The local NBC affiliate reports that “Members stand behind pastor’s anti-gay sermon“:

Geneva Sims said she’s been listening to Worley preach the Gospel since the 1970s.  She wasn’t surprised by the 71-year-old pastor’s now infamous sermon.  In fact, she supports him and his message.

“He had every right to say what he said about putting them in a pen and giving them food,” said Sims.  “The Bible says they are worthy of death. He is preaching God’s word.”

So Sims was probably present back in 1978 when Worley preached a “sermon” in which he spoke longingly of the good old days in which “homosexuals … lesbians and all the rest of it” would have “hung and blessed God from a White Oak Tree.”

Geneva Sims has spent four decades of spiritual and moral formation sitting at the feet of Charles Worley. This is why Geneva Sims is a horrible person.

Attending a so-called church filled with horrible people and led by a horrible so-called pastor will do that to you.

I’ll come back to this to round up some of the wiser, more temperate responses to Worley from around the Intertubes, but let me close here by highlighting one excellent response (via The New Civil Rights Movement), from the North Carolina group Catawba Valley Citizens Against Hate. They’re organizing a peaceful protest this Sunday, May 27, beginning at 10 a.m.

We are organizing a PEACEFUL protest against Pastor Worley’s bigoted and hate filled rhetoric. Regardless if you are gay or straight, Christian or not… this rhetoric is dangerous and harmful. Taking a peaceful stand for our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is paramount.

This event is a peaceful protest organized in the ideals of Dr. Martin Luther King and Gandhi. All participants of this direct action must vow to remain peaceful and non-violent. We will not scream, shout or taunt Pastor Worley or his church’s members. We will not vandalize, threaten or injury property or persons. We will allow law enforcement to handle harassment and disputes that may arise. Protest Peace Keepers will be in charge and will provide instructions.