Aedificium

James Dobson!

What, maybe you were expecting Bill Clinton? That is so yesterday.

On his Tuesday radio program, Dobson took time out from his no doubt very busy schedule as a professional Child Psychologist, complete with Ph.D, to address the masses with a blistering attack on Barack Obama. The target of his ire? Obama’s Christianity. Unbelievable. Some gems from this diatribe:

Barack Obama “deliberately distorts the Bible…”

Obama is “…dragging biblical understanding through the gutter…”

… in order to “wilfully confuse people…”

and who has a “fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution.”

Ladies and Gentlemen, James Dobson, Biblical Scholar, Theologian, Lawyer, and Pontiff of American Evangelicalism!

In all seriousness, I suppose I should be grateful for the fact that I do not know by what authority Dobson believes he can go off like this. Certainly not on his authority as a child psychologist. He rightly claims he has no religious or theological credentials other than whe he himself believes. But the fact is that millions of Christians have listened to him promote his version of Christianity now for over 30 years. Among evangelicals, perhaps only Billy Graham has spent more time and exercised more evangelical influence in Washington than Dobson.

But Dobson is not a politician. Child psychologists, even if they exercise influence over a lot of people (primarily Boomers, from what I can tell… the largest voting bloc), don’t belong in partisan politics the way Dobson and so many other evangelicals with a little influence, a healthy dash of media savvy, and a lot of cash have done. Personally I don’t care what Dobson thinks politically. One of the great things about the US is exactly the freedom to disagree over politics, policy, religion, and so on, without fear of imperial repercussions. But I find it absolutely reprehensible that Dobson and others of his ilk attack Obama’s faith for what can only be interpreted as political dream of evangelical theocracy.

Dobson’s diatribe, in fact, says very little about Obama’s current campaign. Instead, Dobson and his henchman Tom Minnery go after Obama’s 2006 Call to Renewal Speech, which deserves to be in the canon of great American speeches. If Obama is distorting the Bible, as Dobson alleges (being the biblical expert and all that he seems to be), Dobson has distorted Obama’s Call to Renewal speech in such a way that strains credibility. (Maybe that will prove to be a good thing.)

And so it is with great disgust that I present the 2008 Just Shut Up! Award to Dr. James Dobson.

Good grief. I’d have to say that, after this article, I’m going to agree with the rabbi quoted at the end: “We have to fear not for the fate of the biblical Moses, but for the fate of science.” Indeed, if this is what scientists find to do with their time, then only God can save the planet after all.

I am a sports fan. Not simply a fan of my hometown Boston teams, which I am, but of the sports that these teams play. I love the games of baseball and football, and I’ve watched my fair share of the Celtics and Bruins in basketball and hockey while I was growing up. Sport inspires me, and occasionally you hear great stories of athletes who overcome incredible odds to do something they love. One of the most powerful moments for me last baseball season, for example, was the return of Jon Lester to the mound after beating cancer (at least for the time being). I remember Mario Lemieux’s triumphant return to the ice after his own battle with cancer. Josh Hamilton’s story is one of an all-world talent, drafted out of high school, who was led to the depths of potential suicide, only to make his major league debut on the baseball diamond for the Cincinnati Reds last season after battling demons of drugs and depression. This past football season, I watched on TV as Kevin Everett nearly lost his life on the football field and who was supposedly not ever going to be able to walk again, let alone play football. And it was only a few months later, in the same season, that Everett was able to walk onto the field at Giants Stadium, inspiring the Bills, the Gians, and football fans nationwide.

I am not alone here, of course. Millions of sports fans worldwide likely feel the same way. But here in America, our passion for sport has created a monster of idolatrous proportions. Here, right in our midst, is our very own golden statue, one that Nebuchadnezzar himself would have been proud of. And the ramifications of that statue’s presence is on full display today on Capitol Hill. One of my childhood idols, Roger Clemens, will almost certainly face perjury charges for lying under oath in a Congressional hearing over his reported use of performance enhancing drugs. Not far from this, Sen. Arlen Specter is grilling the commissioner of the National Football League over its handling of the now-notorious “Spygate” incident that involves my hometown New England Patriots. All this while the same government is passing new surveillance laws, is unable to do anything about healthcare, and is unable or unwilling to stand up against the Iraq war. But against cheating in professional sports? Call in the bastards! This is America! There’s no cheating or blackmarking our great pasttimes! They’re not going to get away with this!

The golden statue of American Sport is casting a very, very long shadow. For years, I have looked forward to spring training. It is a sign of hope, of forgiveness of the past, of looking to the future. But I’m finding it awfully hard to embrace the upcoming season. I wish that Roger Clemens would have just come clean, as so many other athletes are doing when caught using PEDs. His career would still be over. His reputation would still have taken a massive hit. Now, however, Clemens is adding his own shadow to that of the Golden Statue. Between the two of them, its getting hard to see the light from a game that many of us have loved our whole lives. A GAME.

Jayson Stark of ESPN notes that he thinks this is bigger than Watergate, of Oliver North, even of McCarthy hearings. Over GAMES.

The darkest shadow of all is that he may very well be right.

… of Matthew 21.31-32. Dedicated to today’s whitened sepulchers.

“Look, I’m trying to set it straight with you guys. The abortionists and gays and the liberals! are gonna be in God’s world before most of you guys who think you’re in the Right. I mean, guys like John, King, and Wallis, and Edwards and Obama talked about hope and justice and you don’t give them the time of day, but “those other guys” do, and even after seeing what King did and Wallis is doing and what Edwards and Obama are fighting for, you still won’t change your minds and believe them!”

Ummm…whatever, man. You’ll need your speakers on.  Content not exactly endorsed by Aedificium, or Benedict either.

Thoughts prompted by today’s mail, for the perusal of whatever readers I have left after being such a slacker on my site (and on the other blogs I read) this summer…

A while back I commented on whether the Democratic presidential candidates have been “getting religion” in preparation for the 2008 Election, underscoring that I expect the 2008 vote to be historic in terms of reconfiguring the perception of the relationship between religion and the state. That hasn’t changed, as evidenced by candidates Clinton, Obama, and Edwards in numerous public speeches, and especially in their comments and discussions in this year’s Pentecost conference. Meanwhile, today I received in my mail a flyer encouraging me to vote for candidate Giuliani and his “Strong Leadership” and “Proven Results.” Nothing overtly “religious” or “Christian” or anything about the candidate’s religious stance or any other appeal to religious special interest groups. But, the flyer quotes Time Magazine’s recognition of Giuliani as the Person of the Year from Dec. 31, 2001:

“… for having more faith in us than we had in ourselves, for being brave when required and rude where appropriate and tender without being trite, for not sleeping and not quitting and not shrinking from the pain all around him, Rudy Giuliani, Mayor of the World…”

This kind of rhetoric isn’t anything new, but in an election where it looks like religion will be a factor in possibly more than any previous Presidential race, to cite this endorsement (or, perhaps better, this ordination) makes Giuliani look positively Messianic. Which is precisely the point. It’s interesting to me that there are dozens of parallels to this kind of messianic rhetoric from Roman Empire, where the ascension of Augustus occasioned the official sponsoring of the messianic imperial propaganda of the Emperor as “savior” and “ruler of the world” and so forth.

I guess Empire is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

I know this isn’t usually my normal blog material, but I absolutely can’t resist this. I check BostonDirtDogs.com pretty much every day, being the insane Red Sox fan that I am, and I come across this. The video is in shockwave format from the new FunnyOrDie.com video site. But I leave you with a picture to get a general idea…

ESPN featured the video on SportsCenter and PTI, and Michelle Bonner can’t even do the story, she’s laughing so hard. Must.See.TV.

Enjoy!

Apparently Pat Robertson is a mite jealous over Chuck’s receipt of the JSU! Award; not to be outdone, we get this brilliant piece from the founder of the Christian Broadcasting Network and host of The 700 Club on Monday night’s show:

There you have it. “Islam is not a religion. It is a worldwide political movement meant (sic) on domination of the world. And it is meant to subjugate all people under Islamic law.”

Yikes. Not only do we need to present Pat with his own JSU! Award, but we may have to institute the F-Bomb Award for Religious Ignorance (see here, here, and here, all on Aedificium) as well.

There are something like 2.3 million or so Muslims in the US alone. That means that we Christians are more likely to bump into Muslims in the grocery store than we are to bump into Episcopalians. Pat’s, and Chuck’s, comments ought to be as unwelcome to those of us who are Christians as they are to our Muslim friends and neighbors. Neither of these guys speaks for the majority of Christians, but they’re the ones getting the airtime.

It’s not like we can get Pat off the air, I guess, but those of us in the rank-and-file of American Christians can still be active in denouncing this kind of extremism through our relationships with our Muslim friends, neighbors, colleagues, co-workers, and so forth, in pretty much the same way that American Muslims denounce terrorism and extremism. We can blog, we can call in to radio shows, we can write op-ed pieces, and engage in other creative ways of rejecting this kind of influence.

Upshot: Islam is a religion. And it’s a sibling of Christianity and Judaism. Spread the word.

ESPN’s “Mike and Mike” show has a weekly segment on Tuesdays called “Just Shut Up!” Being Tuesday and being in the mood to blog, I’m making a nomination here for the first ever recipient of the undoubtedly soon-to-be-coveted Just Shut Up! Award of the Aedificium. After reading this piece in the online edition of Sunday’s Washington Post, the Aedificium has awarded the Just Shut Up! Certificate to Chuck Colson. Congratulations on your well-deserved accomplishment.

The WP headlines the short note containing Colson’s comments as follows: “Baptists Warned About Islam, Atheism,” and observes that Colson’s address to the pre-conference gathering of Southern Baptist pastors was a call to Christians to “do a better job of explaining their religion’s worldview.” He then singles out Islam as “vicious” and “evil,” noting that the merger of Islam with fascism results in an ideology that is “evil incarnate.” Colson also apparently dismissed the emergent movement as an irrelevant aberration in the church that is “abandoning the search for truth” in favor of “conversations in coffee shops,” and juxtaposes emergent with the “pure orthodox truth” of Third World Churches.

Colson has done some great work in his career, but his brand of evangelicalism makes me want to just secede and give it up completely. We simply don’t need a Christian denomination of nearly 16.5 million members to be taught that every Muslim (and, in fact, Colson can’t even bring himself to use that word, but calls Muslims “Islamists”), every one of the 1.3 billion or so who live on Late Great Planet Earth, is an evil fascist who could, and who would be perfectly willing to, blow himself or herself up just to kill off Christians. This, of course, is totally different from Christian behavior, who would never do anything of the sort. For the love of God and all that is holy, how can we get the word out that this is just simply, patently, and devastatingly untrue and that this kind of hateful, propagandistic drivel is exactly what the extremists want to hear?

The post and ensuing discussion from a few weeks back on the idea of Christian worldviews holds here too. Colson believes that if Christians do a better job of explaining “their religion’s worldview” that the evil of Islam and atheism can be defeated and the emergent movement shown for the fraud he thinks it is. This is hopelessly misguided, not only because there is not and has never really been a single Christian worldview, but because Colson has sold himself to the stereotypes of Islam and of emergent at the expense of actually knowing much of anything about them that is anything other than destructive and divisive. How about constructive and uniting? And how about considering the possibility that Muslims, “emergents,” and the Brights of Dawkins’ and Harris’ brand of faith are engaged in the “search for truth” every bit as much as Colson is? Or, that this search might entail other elements besides regurgitating outdated propositional expressions or coming up with new propositions to add to the outdated ones? To dismiss the emergent church as an abandoning of truth in favor of coffeehousing relativism is as irresponsible as it is ridiculous.

Yes, I’m ticked off, because, damn it, I’m a Baptist, I’m extremely sympathetic to the emergent movement and consider myself part of it, and I have numerous Muslim friends and acquaintances who condemn acts of terrorism and Islamic extremism and all forms of governmental fascism every bit as much as other people of faith do.

Colson is committed to his own ideology and is blind to everything that doesn’t fit; he’s made the world in his own image. Not even God had the audacity to do that.

Just when you think you’ve seen everything, stuff like this reminds you of what Bruce Cockburn says: You’ve Never Seen Everything. For which, I guess, we can only be thankful. But here’s a new one, at least to me: Virtue Perfume, a new beauty product that the creators say was inspired by biblical ingredients and which is geared toward assisting the wearer, or the lover, as the case may be, towards spiritual attainment. $80 bucks gets you a chance to be biblical, spiritual, and sexy all at the same time.

Obviously this kind of materialist marketing, capitalizing on obscure content from the text of the Bible, is nothing new. Pop-culture pragmatic evangelical products have been around for at least 30 or so years and include everything from rock music to visual art of biblical scenes and characters, Christian Tee-shirts that parody popular consumerist products and ideology, to Christian horror flicks. The Christian retail industry hit something like $4 billion dollars in sales three years ago, and this figure doesn’t even include sales of Catholic bookshops and gift stores that marked incense, images, and other such sensory aids to worship. So I suppose that the surprising thing is that it took so long for a Christian perfume to appear at all.

Now, while I find the consumer-capitalist junk products of Tee-shirts and other Christiany knick-knacks highly problematic, especially for the purpose of evangelism, I can definitely appreciate sensory, physical, and material elements in the practice of faith. The natural, physical world exists to be experienced through the senses, which can deepen faith for those who have it and can inspire mystical ecstasy even among those who profess no faith or who cannot intellectually assent to the Divine. There is nothing that inspires my experience of God so much as things that allow me to participate in the physical, sensory world of the Creation. So much that I find sensorily beautiful move me to tears and to stronger faith. And smells are one of these; food, for example, is a spiritual experience for me from time to time, as it engages sight, smell, and taste. The human body is also an inspiration to beauty that engages the senses. I love good perfumes on my woman. So the concept of something like Virtue Perfume as an aid to experiencing the sacred isn’t particularly foreign or offensive to me.

What I find ridiculous is the need to justify the spiritual value of sensory and bodily beauty to certain Christian groups by marketing the stuff as a religious product and, especially, by making it “biblical.” As if to say that smelling good and feeling sensual or sexy is sinf, unchristian, and unbiblical unless it can be shown that smelling good, feeling sensual, or being sexy is OK’ed by Scripture. The way Virtue tries to pull this off is by listing its ingredients as “biblical.” And so they are. But so what? In fact, the website even notes that one of these biblical ingredients, Apricot, was probably the original forbidden fruit. This would have been news to medieval theologians like Bernard, no stranger to sensual spirituality himself, who thought of the fruit as the apple, and of modern scholars who find it much more likely that the forbidden fruit was the pomegranate. But in any case, it is highly ironic that an ap-peal to the forbidden fruit in this very biblical list would be used as an aid to experiencing God.

The thinking is that “Christians won’t buy perfumes if they psychologically associate them with negative stereotypes of sexuality that most perfumes perpetuate.” And that’s probably the case. Why feed into the sex industry even more by buying products that perpetuate sexual imagery that is damaging and destructive? It is tough, I suppose, to avoid thinking of having wild sex on the beach if your schnozz picks up a whiff Nautica or whatever. Having a marketing image that provides an alternative to ads like Nautica’s or Calvin Klein’s is commendable, but to actually say it’s “biblical” goes a bit over the top. Some things can be good, and sensual, without having to justify it as being biblical.

Plus, its $80.00 bucks.