I'd like to borrow John Cole's reaction to a Michael Gerson column in consideration of this piece from the New York Times Sunday magazine titled "Can Leah Daughtry Bring Faith To The Democrats? (This despite religious believers making up some 80% of the party.)

Cole says of Gerson's take on environmentalism:

Got it? Environmental activists are to blame for not working enough with the people who oppose them, denounce them, mock them, work openly to sabotage their efforts, and have created a cottage industry creating and spreading pseudo-scientific babble.

What twisted bastard at the Washington Post reviews these op-eds and thinks they are worth printing? What kind of jackass believes the real problem regarding the environment is the environmental movement, and not James Inhofe. This is like blaming doctors for not being willing enough to work with the tobacco industry to prevent cancer.

Now, this is far from an exact parallel. Evangelicals are not the enemy of the Democratic party. And while it's idiotic beyond belief that the Democratic party's faith outreach team has three Evangelical members, a Catholic, a Jew, and a Muslim but no mainline Protestants, everything I've heard about Leah Daughtry says that she is a thoughtful and effective political operative.

But for crying out loud, can the religious concern trolls please stop kicking the party in the nuts?

The aim, realistically, has been not to win endorsements but to alter thinking, both immediately and over the long term. During the 2004 campaign, by contrast, Terry McAuliffe, was introduced to Warren, whose congregation numbers more than 20,000 and whose books have sold millions. According to “The Party Faithful,” a book by Amy Sullivan, a Time magazine editor, McAuliffe put out his hand and said, with a blank gaze: “Nice to meet you, Rick. And what do you do?”

The fact of the matter is that the Republican party has invested millions, if not billions, or dollars and decades of effort in order to separate conservative Evangelicals from the Democratic party. They have made vilification and downright demonization of Democrats their stock in trade, routinely making the case that they hate faith, people of faith, God, and God's puppy. Yet for all we hear, it's Democrats fault because Terry McAuliffe blew a single conversation four years ago.

Maybe if we work harder all those conservative Evangelicals will fall into our laps!

Richard Land, who has long been the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, the public-policy arm of the nation’s largest evangelical denomination, with 16 million members, credits the Democratic Party for reaching out respectfully to the born-again. “It’s certainly a better approach than that of the recent past,” he told me. But the idea that evangelicals, even young evangelicals, are going to subordinate their commitment to protecting life from the point of conception is, he argued, a notion born of Democratic blindness. “I don’t think the pro-choice community has ever really conceived of the anguish and moral outrage experienced by pro-life people over the issue,” he said, then referred to a poll showing that 18-to-29-year-old born-again Christians are more conservative on abortion than their elders. The young, he insisted, may be demanding “an expansion of the agenda” to include peace, poverty and the environment, but they do not want “an exchange of agendas” that would diminish the absolute priority of defending fetal life.

Or maybe they won't.

And please, pretty please with sugar on top, can we have an article on Democrats and religion that doesn't involve a retelling of Mara Vanderslice's life story? I've got nothing against her personally, but surely there is more to the story than the minor career deflation of a single 33-year-old woman.

There is a serious point to be made about the gun giveaway mentioned below. This is really a case of "folk religion" more than Christianity. Which is to say, this isn't so much a church as a Christian-flavored social club with a chaplain meant to bless the local folk ways, which in this case happen to include big-ass guns.

It's very difficult to tell apart from authentic religion, but it's how we get crap like this or the military processions into the sanctuary praising God for the Clash of Civilizations.

I'm not usually one for apocalyptic statements or for judging other people's faiths. But it certainly seems possible to describe the current state of American religious affairs as a battle between the patriotic folk religion or its commercial, prosperity-gospel variant and more authentic brands of faith. Much of the mischief stems from this conflict, anyway.

Authentic in this case means something like "allowing one's faith to challenge one's values and practices." That's obviously imperfect in that none of us are able to fully know God's mind or walk his ways. But there are some communities that take that seriously, and some who can't quite see the obvious contradictions between proclaiming the Prince of Peace and giving away an assault rifle.

So to an extent the task for progressive (Christian) faith in this nation is to work toward better faith, that is, toward a faith that is better aligned with the traditional teachings of the church. It's important to remember in that regard that most of the adherents of folk Christianity are well-intentioned if misguided people looking for a little help to get through life. The best strategy then is often not to confront but to invite them to a deeper, down-armored faith.

Look, I think the Squid Doctor is a dick. Problem is, Bill Donohue is an asshole, and a malicious one at that:

So far today, I have received 39 pieces of personal hate mail of varying degrees of literacy, all because I was rude to a cracker. Four of them have included death threats, a personal one day record. Thirty-four of them have demanded that I be fired. Twenty-five of them have told me to desecrate a copy of the Koran, instead, or in some similar way offend Muslims, because — in a multiplicity of ironic cluelessness — apparently only some religious icons must be protected, and I would only offend Catholics because they are all so nice that none of them would wish me harm. I even have one email that says I should be fired, that the author would like to kill me, and that I only criticize because Catholics are so gentle and kind.

Oh, and of course, the university president's office has also received lots of mail demanding my immediate ouster (keep in mind, though…Catholics are no threat to anyone at all.) I don't know how much, but since Donohue published the president's email address and not mine, I imagine it's much greater than what I've seen. Those lovely Dark Age fanatics at the Catholic League have started a write-in campaign to start up an inquisition.

Jesse Taylor at Pandagon takes  the right stance here:

The problem that I have with the Catholic League isn’t that they’re offended.  To people who believe in the transubstantion of the Eucharist, declaring it “just a cracker” is offensive.  But the majority of the world thinks that the Eucharist is just a cracker.  If that belief, no matter how strongly worded, is worthy of a jihad against someone’s livelihood and even their life,

Tristero says basically the same thing at Hullabaloo, even better:

BTW, some of you may not like what PZ said; I didn't, either, but that is totally besides the point. PZ's remarks were made in direct response to, and within, a poisonous, fearful atmosphere of murderous threat. PZ's post was written in deeply appropriate anger that a bunch of crazy people were manufacturing a totally idiotic fake controversy over respect for the Eucharist, one which escalated into wildly wrong responses by a college that should have known better, and climaxed, at least so far, in the dangerous insanity of a death threat.

And PZ is absolutely right about this: there is much that is downright offensive, if not hypocritically blasphemous, for people who call themselves Catholics to threaten someone with death because they didn't treat the Eucharist in a proper fashion.

...

It is high time for the mainstream not to take the fake controversies over religion ginned up by the right seriously. PZ's college should entirely ignore Donohue. And it is high time that genuinely responsible religious leaders declare as one, clearly and unequivocally, that threatening others with death is an egregious moral outrage that has nothing to do with being a practicing Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, or Jew. Indeed, no great religion, or true religious leader, in the 21st century has the right to call for its followers to threaten those who don't believe with murder.

Indeed, true believers are left with the paradox of proving the legitimacy of their belief by defending somebody who wouldn't validate it on a bet or a dare. The alternative, of course, is to allow religious discourse to sink into straightforward tribal barbarism, where the strong dominate the weak for no better reason than that they can.

Eff that. Follow the Pharyngula link above and find out how you can send a letter of support to Prof. Myers' boss. As Tristero says, it's the Christian (Muslim, Jewish...) thing to do.

And for the record, here's how a real Catholic acts. Christianity - true Christianity - is a religion of the strong standing with the weak, even at great cost to themselves. Bully boys and bashers need not apply.

Update: my letter below the fold.

Promoted by PD, who's foursquare behind the idea.


Street Prophets is an awesome blog. It's great to see so many religious progressives getting together to talk about issues of religion and politics, organize around them and most importantly, build community.

This community building is at the heart of what Living Liberally does. We believe that our political identity should be part of our regular lives. Too often politics is restricted to one day every four years, or to long, uninviting meetings in fluorescent-lit, linoleum-floored rooms.

Through our social networks and events, we promote this kind of social/political engagement. These networks include over 260 Drinking Liberally, Laughing Liberally, Screening Liberally, Reading Liberally, and Eating Liberally chapters in all 50 states.

Through these happy hours, comedy shows, film screenings, book clubs and meals, we fulfill our key mission of bringing politics into places where we gather, socialize, learn, love and live. One of these places to which we have yet to reach out is the liberal religious community, one that, unfortunately, has found few spaces to gather and organize in person, in public, loud and proud.

Hi friends, I'm writing to let you know that I'm stepping down from the Religion and Politics News Roundup, which I've been writing on Thursdays. It's been a great experience; I've enjoyed searching for and writing about the stories, and reading your responses. Thanks for all the encouraging and thoughtful comments. Have a wonderful summer!

Full disclosure: today I posted this on the Daily Kos, and one of the commenters there suggested I crosspost it here. I haven't posted here in a long time, but it seemed relevant, so here it is.

Over on the Daily Kos, Devilstower recently posted an interesting article about the decline in membership of the Southern Baptist Convention (God of War Losing Popularity). It is, on the whole, a useful article to read, but it is also, on the whole, a complete misunderstanding of what the Southern Baptist Convention is, what it does, and what it represents. It is also a misunderstanding that plays right into their hands -- it is an understanding the reflects the perception they want everyone to have.

As a Southern Baptist, I would like to take this opportunity to clear up some things you really need to know about the Southern Baptist Convention.

...and more important for our purposes, politics. From the press release:

Politics and religion in the United States are intertwined, and religion is highly relevant to understanding politics in the U.S. Yet while the diversity of religious affiliation, belief and practice translates into important differences on many social and political issues, differences on other issues are less pronounced.

Religion is closely linked to political ideology. The survey shows that Mormons are among the most politically conservative groups in the population. Jews, Buddhists and Hindus, by contrast, are among the most likely to describe their ideology as liberal.

People who regularly attend worship services and say religion is important in their lives are much more likely to identify as conservative, and this pattern extends to many religious traditions. For example, within the evangelical, mainline Protestant, historically black Protestant, Catholic, Mormon and Orthodox Christian traditions, those who attend church weekly are significantly more likely than those who attend less often to describe themselves as political conservatives.  And among Jews, those who say religion is very important to them or pray every day are more likely than others to be politically conservative.

The connection between religious engagement and political attitudes appears to be especially strong when it comes to hot button social issues such as abortion or homosexuality. For instance, about six-in-ten Americans who attend religious services at least once a week say abortion should be illegal in most or all cases, while only three-in-ten who attend less often share this view. This pattern holds across several religious traditions.

On other topics covered in the survey, such as views on the role and size of government and foreign policy attitudes, the role of religion is less clear and there appears to be greater consensus across and within religious traditions. For instance, a majority of nearly every religious group supports stricter environmental regulations and believes the government should do more to help Americans in need. Similarly, most Americans, including majorities of most faiths, say it is more important to focus on problems here at home than to be active in world affairs.

This is the main reason President Bush led our country to war. I'm guessing it's also a major reason that John McCain wants American troops to stay there indefinitely.

From the New York Times:

Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power.

Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat...

(Continued below the fold)

From The 77% Weekly
The 40 Out Of 52 Weeks A Year Newsletter
of Rabbi Brian & Religion-Outside-The-Box

Paradoxicality

By Rabbi Brian Zachary Mayer

(This article is scheduled to be printed in Presence Journal this winter.)

Introduction, etymology, and some history

Paradoxicality. Chances are you aren't familiar with that spiritual-religious word. And that's understandable, given that it isn't used often. In fact, most dictionaries don't even provide a definition for it. Nonetheless, paradoxicality is one of the greatest tools for having an adult understanding of religion, the Bible and God.

Today's topics:

The Washington Post and the New York Times ran articles contrasting America's approach to the regulation of hazardous chemicals and to free speech respectively, with other countries.

McCain says it's "not too important" when American troops come home from Iraq, so long as casualties are reduced.

Barack Obama is dominating the news coverage of the presidential election. He also met earlier this week with T.D. Jakes, Franklin Graham and other religious figures.

The Christian Science Monitor has a video and article based on their meeting with Howard Dean this week (in case you're wondering what the DNC talking points are these days); he says it's better that Democrats be nervous about the election than complacent.

From The 77% Weekly
The 40 Out Of 52 Weeks A Year Newsletter
of Rabbi Brian & Religion-Outside-The-Box

Perspective: Baking Bread

My friend Nagy is a Zen priest who volunteers in correctional facilities.

He told me about something he does that I want to share with you.

I will ask an inmate, "What's your job here?"

Let's say they answer me, "I bake bread."

I tell them, "No, that is not what you do."

When they look up at me for clarification, I explain, "You don't bake bread, you provide nourishment for the community."

It's not usually worth scolding local columnists, but this just seems too damn convenient for words:

After a 25-year love affair between religion and politics, who would've thought it would come to this? In Election 2008, to the surprise of many pundits, religious leaders and politicians appear to be going their separate ways.


Frankly, it's about time. America has too many brands of spiritual beliefs for religion to play a leading role in its politics.


This intertwining of the two was never a match made in heaven. As marriages of convenience go, however, it was a beauty.


From Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush, religious conservatives have been able to influence national elections in their and the Republicans' favor, while at the same time forcing the Democratic Party to reassess its core values and change the way it attracts voters.

...

I say good riddance to this failing marriage and also to pastors who preach hatred and bigotry, whether it's the Rev. Jeremiah Wright invoking God's damnation on America or the Rev. John Hagee dredging up the old "whore of Babylon" moniker for the Catholic Church.

Isn't that nice? Digby likes to talk about how once Democrats take full control of the government, we'll hear a sudden rush of calls for "civility" and "putting all that nasty partisanship behind us." I'm inclined to think this is thread from the same reel. We're going to be treated to eight years of sanctimonious lectures about the evils of mixing faith and politics, and never you mind the differences between a hateful toad like John Hagee and a tough, occasionally over-the-top advocate for justice like Jeremiah Wright.

To which somebody will no doubt respond in the comments, "But there is no difference!"

And to which I will respond, "People, please! Do the analysis of the power differential before you make half-assed statements!"

Goes for local columnists, too.