Pat Robertson Takes an Odd Break from The Crazy

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Is this whole Christian leaders not judging people becoming a trend? I don't know. Maybe.

The 83-year-old televangelist [Pat Robertson] sat down on Sunday for the "Bring It Online" advice portion of his Christian Broadcasting Network show, "The 700 Club." A viewer named David wrote in asking how he should refer to two transgender females who work in his office and have legally changed their genders. Instead of criticizing the trans individuals, Robertson approached the situation in a seemingly level-headed manner.

"I think there are men who are in a woman's body," he said. "It's very rare. But it's true -- or women that are in men's bodies -- and that they want a sex change. That is a very permanent thing, believe me, when you have certain body parts amputated and when you have shot up with various kinds of hormones. It's a radical procedure. I don't think there's any sin associated with that. I don't condemn somebody for doing that."

. . .

When his co-host said the viewer doesn't know the intentions or medical history of his co-workers, Robertson rebutted, "It's not for you to decide or to judge."

It seems a strange exception to his usual judge, condemn, and blame everybody rule.

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Biblical Scholars Shred 1 Man, 1 Woman Argument

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

I've been saying for some time -- notably here, here, and here -- that the Biblical case against gay marriage isn't very strong. The case for polygamy and female slavery is much stronger and to say otherwise is to really cherry-pick the good book. But I'm not a religious scholar. These three men are and they've taken their case to Des Moines Register.

The debate about marriage equality often centers, however discretely, on an appeal to the Bible. Unfortunately, such appeals often reflect a lack of biblical literacy on the part of those who use that complex collection of texts as an authority to enact modern social policy.

As academic biblical scholars, we wish to clarify that the biblical texts do not support the frequent claim that marriage between one man and one woman is the only type of marriage deemed acceptable by the Bible’s authors.

. . .

In fact, there were a variety of unions and family configurations that were permissible in the cultures that produced the Bible, and these ranged from monogamy (Titus 1:6) to those where rape victims were forced to marry their rapist (Deuteronomy 22:28-29) and to those Levirate marriage commands obligating a man to marry his brother’s widow regardless of the living brother’s marital status (Deuteronomy 25:5-10; Genesis 38; Ruth 2-4). Others insisted that celibacy was the preferred option (1 Corinthians 7:8; 28).

All three, Hector Avalos, Robert R. Cargill and Kenneth Atkinson, are  professors at prominent Iowa universities, but that hasn't insulated them from hostile reactions.

He explained that it is obvious to scholars (and some religious leaders) that the Bible endorses a wide range of relationships. But he noted, however, that professors are "terrified" of the potential backlash that might result from opening a dialogue about these relationships. Cargill also noted that the initial response to the Register column has included its fair share of vitriol.

Ultimately, said Cargill, a Biblical "argument against same-sex marriage is wholly unsustainable. We all know this, but very few scholars are talking about it, because they don't want to take the heat."
He suggested that academics who continue to be cowed by a strident opposition do a disservice to their communities.

. . .

Anyone who argues that "the Bible speaks plainly on one issue, especially something as complicated as marriage ... haven't take the time to read all of it," he added.

I have wondered many times if the people who quote the Bible as the definitive source on a range of hot-button issues have actually read it. I don't think it means what they think it means.

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Score One for Religious Tolerance

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Hat-tip to George Takei for digging this gem out of Jezebel's archive. It all started when Reddit user european_douchebag tried to make a little hay out of the unusual appearance of a Sikh woman.

Writes Jezebel:

The mind of european_douchebag was SO INCREDIBLY BLOWN by the fact that women have hair on their bodies—and, yes, faces—and that some women are bold, self-assured, and pious enough not to cave to western beauty standards (and gender expectations), there was nothing for him to do but post her photo online and wait for the abuse to flood in.

When I was in beauty school -- yes I went to beauty school -- I read in my cosmetology textbook that 85% of women have "superfluous hair." (Subtext: There's big money in waxing and electrolysis.) Even at that tender, young age I thought, if 85% of women have it, how is it superfluous? Isn't it the other 15% of us who have a hair deficiency? But I digress.

The woman in the photo learned that she and her facial hair were being featured on Reddit, so she responded with such grace, humility, and self-possession, that it would be hard not to completely adore her.

Hey, guys. This is Balpreet Kaur, the girl from the picture. I actually didn't know about this until one of my friends told on facebook. If the OP wanted a picture, they could have just asked and I could have smiled :) However, I'm not embarrased or even humiliated by the attention [negative and positve] that this picture is getting because, it's who I am. Yes, I'm a baptized Sikh woman with facial hair. Yes, I realize that my gender is often confused and I look different than most women. However, baptized Sikhs believe in the sacredness of this body - it is a gift that has been given to us by the Divine Being [which is genderless, actually] and, must keep it intact as a submission to the divine will. Just as a child doesn't reject the gift of his/her parents, Sikhs do not reject the body that has been given to us. By crying 'mine, mine' and changing this body-tool, we are essentially living in ego and creating a seperateness between ourselves and the divinity within us. By transcending societal views of beauty, I believe that I can focus more on my actions. My attitude and thoughts and actions have more value in them than my body because I recognize that this body is just going to become ash in the end, so why fuss about it? When I die, no one is going to remember what I looked like, heck, my kids will forget my voice, and slowly, all physical memory will fade away. However, my impact and legacy will remain: and, by not focusing on the physical beauty, I have time to cultivate those inner virtues and hopefully, focus my life on creating change and progress for this world in any way I can. So, to me, my face isn't important but the smile and the happiness that lie behind the face are. :-) So, if anyone sees me at OSU, please come up and say hello. I appreciate all of the comments here, both positive and less positive because I've gotten a better understanding of myself and others from this. Also, the yoga pants are quite comfortable and the Better Together tshirt is actually from Interfaith Youth Core, an organization that focuses on storytelling and engagement between different faiths. :) I hope this explains everything a bit more, and I apologize for causing such confusion and uttering anything that hurt anyone.

And, indeed, even the photographer went from having his mind blown to having it expanded.

I know that this post ISN'T a funny post but I felt the need to apologize to the Sikhs, Balpreet, and anyone else I offended when I posted that picture. Put simply it was stupid. Making fun of people is funny to some but incredibly degrading to the people you're making fun of. It was an incredibly rude, judgmental, and ignorant thing to post.

/r/Funny wasn't the proper place to post this. Maybe /r/racism or /r/douchebagsofreddit or /r/intolerance would have been more appropriate. Reddit shouldn't be about putting people down, but a group of people sending cool, interesting, or funny things. Reddit's been in the news alot lately about a lot of cool things we've done, like a freaking AMA by the president. I'm sorry for being the part of reddit that is intolerant and douchebaggy. This isn't 4chan, or 9gag, or some other stupid website where people post things like I did. It's fucking reddit. Where some pretty amazing stuff has happened.

I've read more about the Sikh faith and it was actually really interesting. It makes a whole lot of sense to work on having a legacy and not worrying about what you look like. I made that post for stupid internet points and I was ignorant.

So reddit I'm sorry for being an asshole and for giving you negative publicity.
Balpreet, I'm sorry for being a closed minded individual. You are a much better person than I am
Sikhs, I'm sorry for insulting your culture and way of life.
Balpreet's faith in what she believes is astounding.

'Nuff said.

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The Beautiful Church is Empty

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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Religion is on the decline, and "nones" are on the rise. People with no religious affiliation, here in the United States is now at 20 percent -- double what it was two decades ago.

Even as the election of a new Pope in Rome dominated the day's news, researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and Duke University reported that Americans are increasingly "parting ways" with religion.

In 2012, one in five people surveyed claimed no religious preference -- that's double the number who said that as recently as 1990. And religious affiliation in the United States is at its lowest point since researchers began tracking it in the 1930s.

Not religious is not the same as atheist, however. Atheists are currently at 3 percent, according to the survey data. People are abandoning organized religion, not spiritual belief. As discussed, the number of those who define as spiritual but not religious is on the rise.

People are separating from religious institutions for a range of reasons, from their misalignment with changing social values, to hypocrisy about their own.

Jerome Baggett, a professor at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, said changes on three levels -- individual, institutional, and societal -- have contributed to declining American membership in organized religion.

. . .

Religious institutions themselves have lost their legitimacy in the eyes of many Americans due to sexual and financial scandals, or political overreaching "by the so-called Christian right," said Baggett. "Americans have a wariness to institutions in general, but a particular wariness to religious institutions," he said.

In other words, there are people who probably would be religious but have become disaffected. I know a lot of those.

I know, for example, a lot people who loved the Catholic Church but have lost patience with its intolerance for homosexuality, birth control, premarital sex, and other matters of personal morality -- even as it thoroughly bungles the problem of sexual abusive priests in its employ. It's a deeper irony than many people can stand to see in their religious leaders.

So I found this commentary from Bill Donohue's Catholic League particularly risible. Faced with polling that showed more than half of Catholics, 54 percent, now support gay marriage, Donohue pulled a Dick Morris and  attempted to unskew the poll. As per Donohue, Quinnipiac's mistake was in counting Catholics who don't go to church every Sunday.

This takes on added significance when we consider that 4 in 10 of the Catholics sampled do not practice their religion (28 percent go to church “a few times a year” and 11 percent say they “never” attend). That these nominal Catholics are precisely the biggest fans of gay marriage is a sure bet, though the poll fails to disclose the results.

The Quinnipiac Polling Institute has some explaining to do.

The weak impression of Ricky Ricardo aside, Donohue is articulating something very important about the Catholic mindset, which increasingly has more to do with purity tests from the hierarchy and a less to do -- okay, nothing to do -- with responding to the people who make up the Church. Who knows how many of these "nominal Catholics" could be brought back into the fold, if they felt like the Church wasn't totally out of step with the modern world.

As per Donohue, under journalistic scrutiny, Quinnipiac fessed up. If you only count those real Catholics, the numbers are about reversed.

After our news release was distributed, reporters from CNSNews.com contacted Quinnipiac. What they admitted totally alters the outcome: 55 percent of Catholics who are regular church-goers are opposed to gay marriage, and only 38 percent favor it. This is important because Quinnipiac’s Peter A. Brown was cited all over for claiming that “Catholic voters are leading American voters toward support for same-sex marriage.” Nonsense.

What I find kind of funny about all that is that 38 percent is still a pretty healthy chunk of the regular church-goers Donohue thinks of as legitimate. Anyone paying attention to the overall trend might be very concerned about the growing disconnect between the Church and even its most ardent followers. But people like Donohue, and it would appear the Catholic hierarchy, seem to be digging their heels in. As a simple matter of organizational theory, this seems short-sighted.

In the 1950s, a lot of companies had the same organizational structure as the Catholic church. You reported up the hierarchy, and you did what the leaders told you to do. And then, in 1961, a surprising study discovered that innovative companies were just the opposite:

They are adapted to unstable conditions....Interaction runs laterally as much as vertically. Communication between people of different ranks tends to resemble lateral consultation, rather than vertical command.

. . .

Maybe the Catholic church doesn't need to be innovative. After all, if you're following the word of God, if you have knowledge of the absolute truth, then perhaps you'd never need to change. And that's often the sort of statement that comes out of Rome. After all, the church is growing (although the new members come from developing countries), so the leadership can argue that it's been successful by sticking to an organizational structure that was invented a few thousand years ago, in the age of monarchy and serfdom--three or four major economic and societal transformations ago.

It's hard to miss that even in its election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio to the papacy -- a departure for the Church in many ways -- they're still hewing strongly to the very regressive policies that are disenfranchising so many Catholics. Pope Francis may be a breath of fresh air when it comes to respect for the poor, but when it comes to gay people, he's a fire-breathing hater. Frankly, it seems sort of incongruous to me. In so many ways, he seems like such a sweet man. Then he says things like this:

In 2010, as Argentina debated a marriage equality bill, Bergoglio called on Catholics to oppose the move, calling it the devil's handiwork.

“Let's not be naïve, we're not talking about a simple political battle; it is a destructive pretension against the plan of God,” Bergoglio wrote in a letter calling on followers to join a protest rally in Buenos Aires.

“We are not talking about a mere bill, but rather a move by the Father of Lies which aims to confuse and deceive the children of God.”

Bergoglio went on to say that gay adoption is discriminatory to children: “At stake are the lives of many children who'll be discriminated against in being deprived of the human growth that God wanted to be given through a father and a mother.”

Agrentina went on to ratify gay marriage, which underscores just how out of step the Church is on this issue. President President Cristina Fernandez de Kircher called his statements a "throwback to the Inquisition."

Pope Francis is also stridently opposed to birth control and abortion rights. I doubt that anyone could have been elected pope who wasn't completely regressive on these issues of sexual morality. That seems to be the litmus test of. And the farther behind that puts them with new generations, the more rigid and unyielding the Church becomes. This, according to Joan Chittister of the National Catholic Reporter has made Catholics weary.

The problem is that weariness is far worse than anger. Far more stultifying than mere indifference. Weariness comes from a soul whose hope has been disappointed one time too many. To be weary is not a condition of the body -- that's tiredness. No, weariness is a condition of the heart that has lost the energy to care anymore.

People are weary of hearing more about the laws of the church than the love of Jesus.

People are weary of seeing whole classes of people -- women, gays and even other faith communities again -- rejected, labeled, seen as "deficient," crossed off the list of the acceptable.

They are weary of asking questions that get no answers, no attention whatsoever, except derision.

They suffer from the lassitude that sets in waiting for apologies that do not come.

There's an ennui that sets in when people get nothing but old answers to new questions.

So, yeah... I know a lot of lapsed Catholics.

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Robert Jeffress Questions Tim Tebow's Manhood

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

It's getting ugly between Robert Jeffress and Tim Tebow. Well, Robert Jeffress is getting ugly. Tim Tebow seems like a decent enough guy. But he bowed out of a scheduled appearance at the First Baptist Church in Dallas, when Jeffress's record was made clear to him. And Jeffress, who made a series of more politic statements in the immediate aftermath, seems to have finally snapped. Some of the statements in the sermon posted above seemed to be aimed a bit south of the belt-line.

Jeffress is no stranger to controversy. During the Republican primary, for instance, his anti-Mormon views created a little trouble for his good friend Rick Perry. But his belief that Mormonism is a cult wasn't as controversial as his belief that Catholicism is "a Babylonian mystery religion that spread like a cult," which demonstrates "the genius of Satan."

He says things like that but somehow he always manages to look completely mystified when he gets push-back. In the video above, for instance, he explains that he just doesn't understand why anyone thinks he's antisemitic simply because he believes that all Jews will go to hell unless they accept Jesus. It's not like he's singling Jews out. He believes Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, atheists... they're all going to hell, too. He's not antisemitic. He's anti-everything that isn't Christianity, because it's all evil and hellbound. What's wrong with that? And he doesn't know why people think he's anti-gay just because he says that sex should only be between a man and a woman.

You see? It's so crazy the way people take the things he says out of context like that.



This little dust-up is further evidence of a growing divide in the evangelical community that is, at least partly, defined along generational lines. As I wrote here, young evangelicals are not so much about the social issues that defined the rise of the Christian right. That's puts someone like Jeffress at odds with a growing segment of what he fully expects to still be his base.

Tim Tebow is well-known for his Christian views and it's a little unclear where he stands on all the various issues that were cited after he agreed to appear at the dedication ceremony for Jeffress's new church in April. But something in Jeffress's documented history of hate speech pushed him too far and he canceled his scheduled appearance in a series of tweets.

While I was looking forward to sharing a message of hope and Christ's unconditional love with the faithful members of the historic...
— Tim Tebow (@TimTebow) February 21, 2013

... First Baptist Church of Dallas in April, due to new information that has been brought to my attention, I have decided to cancel my...
— Tim Tebow (@TimTebow) February 21, 2013

...upcoming appearance. I will continue to use the platform God has blessed me with to bring Faith, Hope and Love to all those...
— Tim Tebow (@TimTebow) February 21, 2013

...needing a brighter day. Thank you for all of your love and support. God Bless!
— Tim Tebow (@TimTebow) February 21, 2013

At around the 7:00min mark in the video, Jeffress takes on Tebow's namby-pamby, lovey-dovey faith for the wimpianity it is. Oh, he doesn't mention him by name. He doesn't need to. He makes it abundantly clear what a "real man" of God is.

"I am grateful for men of God like these who are willing to stand up and act like men rather than wimping out when it gets a little controversial and an inconvenient thing to stand for the truth," said Jeffress, who received a standing ovation before he spoke. "God bless men like that."

. . .

"There are some people who would say,'God's given me a different ministry. God has called me to go preach about the love of God. I'm not called to preach about sin and controversial things. I've been called to preach about the love of God.' And they're sincere when they say that. But they are sincerely wrong. The fact is you cannot talk about the love of God. The love of God has no meaning whatsoever unless you understand the judgment of God that all of us deserve."

Is it terribly wrong of me to think that deep down this is about this guy making Robert Jeffress feel like about a half a man?

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Fox's War on Paganism

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

The news network that every, bleedin' year goes on and on about the "war on Christmas" has never had much interest in the religious holidays of other, non-Christian faiths. As Jon Stewart famously said to Bill O'Reilly, "If you think Christmas isn't celebrated in this country, walk a mile in Hanukkah's shoes."

Fox did, however, go out of its way to marginalize Wiccan and Pagan holidays. In fact, they were outright derisive.

The trouble started last year when the University of Missouri added the eight sabbats of the Pagan year to the university's holiday guide. Graduate student Christopher White was not amused by the move towards inclusiveness and took to The College Fix to complain

The Wiccan and pagan festivals are listed right alongside major religious holidays such as Easter, Christmas, Ramadan, and several other Jewish and Buddhist observances.

Their inclusion in the religion guide may be considered an indication by some of the mainstreaming of Wiccan and pagan beliefs in America.

. . .

While the percentages of Mainline American Christians have declined over the past twenty years, from 86.2 percent in 1990 to 76 percent in 2008, they still, in terms of percentage, dwarf the 1.2 percent of American Wiccans and Pagans, according to the American Religious Identification Survey of 2008. These statistics beg the question: why put both Christianity and Wiccans in equipollency?

Not only does the, ahem, graduate student misuse the phrase "begs the question," he apparently doesn't understand that here, in these United States, our rights aren't contingent on majority status. And even if they were, one wonders why Jews at 2.1% of the population deserve to be in the university guide, but Pagans at 1.2% don't. Yes, Judaism comes in at a very distant second to Christianity. Wicca, by the way, is the fifth largest religion, putting it ahead of Buddhism, which White also considers legitimate enough to be in the holiday guide. So I don't know what Mr. White is studying there at the University of Missouri but one assumes it's requires no working knowledge of Constitutional law, logic, or statistics.

Fox News, which has apparently given up fact-checking entirely, took the ignorance wide. They erroneously deduced that this meant that these would all be vacation days and students would no longer need to "cram for exams" on Pagan holidays, prompting a stern correction from the university. From there it was pretty much open season on the "fringe belief systems" that those kooks in Missouri strangely consider legitimate enough to be in a calendar.

Tammy Bruce described the decision as "beyond political correctness; it's almost like an excuse to do nothing. It's like social nihilism, where nothing matters."

Honoring Pagan holidays, according to Bruce is "less about elevating other religions and other individuals and more about diluting the dynamic about what's important in people's lives," which I think is her way of saying that including Pagan holidays is all part of the "war on Christmas."

If you can suffer through the video above, you'll hear Bruce explain that respecting Pagan holidays is exploitative... of Pagans. Pagans and Wiccans "should be very angry at how they're being used by the establishment," says Bruce, "to downgrade what's important to the majority of Americans."

Dizzy yet?

Tucker Carlson seemed to find the whole thing too trivial and geeky to be threatening.

"Any religion whose most sacred day is Halloween, I just can't take seriously," Carlson said on the Feb. 17 broadcast of "Fox and Friends" weekend show that touched off the controversy. "I mean, call me a bigot."

"Every Wiccan I've ever known is either a compulsive deep Dungeons and Dragons player or is a middle-aged, twice-divorced older woman living in a rural area who works as a midwife," he said.

Two petitions totaling more than 40,000 signatures, a Facebook page demanding an apology, and outrage on the Missouri campus later, Carlson apologized... twice.

Once on Twitter:

Two days after the Feb. 17 show, Carlson apologized on Twitter: "To Wiccans and pagans: Sorry for my pointlessly nasty remarks. Your holidays still confuse me, but you seem like nice people."

And later, on the show:

"Comments in the story offended a number of people -- that was never my intention," Carlson said on the show Saturday (Feb 23). "I also violated one of my basic life rules, which is live and let live. The Wiccans have never bothered me or tried to control my life. I should have left them alone. Sorry about that."

To my knowledge, no one else from Fox News has apologized.

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Spiritual But Not Religious

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience." ~ Teilhard de Chardin

If it were up to me, I'd retire the phrase "spiritual but not religious." I consider it effectively meaningless. To my way of thinking, we can't not be spiritual. We are spirit. But I'm not being fair to the idiomatic meaning of that phrase, which could be more fairly stated as, "searching for meaning beyond the confines of organized religion."

However problematic the phrase, it is a growing trend. This seems to rankle a number of religious authorities. A quick search through the Huffington Post religion section brings up a fair sampling of disdainful diatribes against all these dilettantes who think they can have God without the hard work of religious practice in like-minded community. I read a number of these posts when they came out, sighed, and moved on.

There's Pastor Lillian Daniel who is sick and tired of hearing from anonymous strangers on planes,  that God can be found in sunsets. She just wishes the nonreligious would stop boring her with their irrelevant observations. And, no, I'm not overstating her tone. "Please stop boring me," is her subtitle.

There's Alan Miller's lightning rod of a post bemoaning the religious illiteracy of a populace that can't name more than four of the ten commandments. He casts religion almost entirely in Judeo-Christian terms and dismisses all else as superstition. A good rebuttal can be found here.



Most recently, I read this jeremiad from Michael P. Murphy of Loyola University. Murphy bemoans a religiously untethered generation that has filled that void with technology and begun worshiping at the altar of Steve Jobs by default. I agree with Murphy that we seem to be wired to seek out both communion with other human beings and an experience of the transcendent. But his post is a muddle. And it reeks of contempt for people who think they can find something better than church.

As I paused to watch devotees of Apple products engaging in communion with the items of their religious practice, I was struck once more not only by how religion and spirituality have reached an almost comic level of topsey-turveyness, but also with the stark recognition that Marshall McCluhan's prophetic insight from 1964 is made manifest every minute of of every day in the digital age: the medium has indeed become the message.

Murphy clearly knows nothing of McLuhan's work... or the spelling of his name, apparently. His attempt to posthumously enlist him, of all people, in his war with modernity is risible. McLuhan's famous statement wasn't meant as prophecy. He didn't say, the medium will become the message. He said it is. It always has been. The medium to which McLuhan referred wasn't some future vision of high tech. It was any technology -- any extension of our human capacities -- going back to the stone age. McLuhan's point was that the way information is conveyed is more important than the information itself, because the means of conveyance shapes both psyche and society. As we moved from the printed word, for instance, to film and television, we stopped thinking so linearly and began to take in multiple messages/images simultaneously. These newer media force us to develop new ways to prioritize and cognize that information. Information influences what we think. The medium influences how we think.

Murphy continues.

The word "religion" finds its root in religio, which means "to bind." And herein lies the main point: we like being "spiritual" because the concept, as we perceive it, makes no claim upon us. It binds us to nothing -- or at least nothing communal, confessional or public. Of course, it is liberating to be masters of our own faith practices. To be both founders and adherents of a "Sheila-ism" or a "Murph-ism" -- that is, to participate in the postmodern practice of inventing and practicing one's own hodge-podge religion -- is a uniquely empowering proposition. The problem is that it is also an isolating, atomizing and ultimately inauthentic approach to spirituality.

In fact, the etymology of the word religion is a matter of some dispute. But this is a small point. More concerning is the paternalism. Murphy seems certain that those who do not seek God through the proper channels of an organized religion cannot possibly find connection or meaning.

An assumption spans these various writings that those who define as spiritual but not religious are isolated in their experience and have no sense of community with which to share their spiritual discovery. Leave say, I have not found this to be true.

To Miller, where organized religion is real and diligent, other spiritual practices are entirely ephemeral.

Back to the Spiritual But Not Religious-ers, they seem to have appropriated the worst of all worlds. They have retained the superstitious outlook and yet do not want to engage or present anything more broadly life affirming. Selecting a superficial mixture of "nice-feeling" items from Yoga to a slice of Zen and a moment of Tao is hardly progressive as far as options for humanity is concerned. They have jettisoned the hard work, diligence and observation of organized religion for a me-me-me what-ever kind of lifestyle.

Far be it from me to claim that there aren't a fair number of dabblers in the new age marketplace and among those who define as spiritual but not religious. But we're kidding ourselves if we pretend that churches aren't also packed with people who leave their faith at the church door after Sunday services, that there are no hypocrites who give the tenets of their religions lip-service, or worse, that there aren't those who cherry-pick and twist scripture to justify whatever abuses against humanity they indulge.

I can agree that some problems arise when we have no shared, clear cosmology. I can also agree that there is a downside to a pluralism that allows people to pick and choose nothing but appetizers and desserts from an a la carte menu of world religions. Spiritual expansion requires grounding in the deeper lessons and safeguards that come by way of well-worn tradition. Where I disagree is in the assumption that shallow practice is inevitable among the nonreligious or that a prescriptivist approach to spiritual practice is the only possible corrective.

Absent in all these posts is any sense of the responsibility organized religions might have for their dwindling numbers. This is particularly galling coming from Murphy -- a professor of  Catholic Studies. Conspicuous by its absence is any discussion of the abuse scandal that has left large numbers of practicing Catholics disillusioned and demoralized. He dismisses all of it as "the troubles and intrigues that the Catholic 'brand' has experienced." But the extent to which the Church has broken faith with its followers has caused even Catholics in Ireland to abandon organized religion in droves.

Disillusionment has always been a driver, not only of religious attrition, but also of religious innovation. But it is not just the disappointment with the flaws and limitations of religious institutions. It is the thirst for the divine that often goes unsatisfied in hidebound institutions.

In so many instances, what drives people from their churches to the spiritual path less traveled is the beginnings of spiritual awakening. Organized religion has historically been suspicious, even condemning, of mystical experiences other than those of their founders and prophets -- especially if those experiences challenge orthodox beliefs. This leaves people who have their own brushes with the numinous, experience moments of conscious oneness with the all, or in any way begin to pierce the veil, at odds with their religious institutions.

Historically these spiritual quests have resulted in sectarian conflicts, new religions -- Buddhism springs to mind -- and more than a few have led to war and wide-scale persecution. Such things still happen in much of the world. So, perhaps, it's petty of me to worry about the carping of a few religion writers.

Here, in the West, the spiritual but not religious trend is just the newest wrinkle in a consciousness expansion that began in earnest when psychedelics and Eastern thought exploded in the popular culture.

Astrologer Adam Elenbaas describes the complexity of the search for spiritual truth in a pluralistic society with an ever-expanding panoply of traditions. Spiritual but not religious has become a kind of shorthand for an experience that doesn't fit neatly into any category.

I'm an astrologer so I can't help but approach the questions I ask or the concepts I'm interested in through the lens of the system I study. From the astrological perspective I think most new agers, including astrologers like myself, struggle to define a coherent belief system for ourselves because of the times we are living through: moving now from the age of Pisces to Aquarius. Are we "believers" in astrology? Can I call myself a Buddhists even though I might be a raw foodist who practices yoga, urban tantra, and gnostic Christianity in between Christian Santo Daime works? Maybe it's just become easier to answer, "I'm spiritual not religious." Maybe it's just a shorter way of saying, "I'm looking for oneness; whatever you call it it's all the same to me. I yearn for mystical fusion. I yearn to get out of this mundane world and go home once and for all!"

Elenbaas places the debate over spiritual and religious definition in the context of the Piscean age giving way to the age of Aquarius, and our thirst to dissolve into the numinous as a Piscean (Neptune) drive.

For example, this past Friday night I went to a Dharma talk at a local Buddhist temple. The female priest giving the talk was speaking about the fundamental premises of Buddhism, and she spoke about the reality of suffering as the base condition that inspires our path toward nirvana. She talked about crossing the ocean of suffering with single pointed focus. When I left the dharma talk I felt an emotional connection to something outside of myself for sure -- at least for the rest of the evening. But it wasn't what she had to say about suffering, necessarily. It was the people in their robes, and it was the crystals glowing behind carefully arranged lamps. It was the images and icons, the quietness as she spoke to the few of us gathered together. It was the way in which the temple was filled some other-worldly magic, and how I could literally feel the presence of Neptune, like a golden trident poking through the fabric of the "Buddhist" reality. And THAT was surreal. That felt sacred to me.

It's not the words, the philosophy... it's the potency of symbols, the irrationality of myth, the sensory and intangible, that tips us toward transcendence. As per "freelance monotheist" Karen Bishop, that is the purpose of religion. And it is precisely the common lack of that which has led so many to instead be spiritual but not religious.

"Matter is spirit moving slowly enough to be seen." ~ Teilhard de Chardin

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If I'm Not Free to Control You...

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

"Religion is a FREEDOM. Let's keep it that way." No duh, huh?

My mother was fond of saying, "Your freedom stops where the next person's begins." It was her paraphrase of an aphorism of uncertain origin. It always stuck with me as a statement of one of the most obvious elements of a free society. So, I have been brought up short by the roiling debate over freedom of religion in this country. Last year Catholic Bishops threw down the gauntlet over President Obama's access to birth control mandate, taking the position that anything that infringes on their right to impose their beliefs on people who do not share them is a violation of the First Amendment. It is a thoroughly nonsensical position.

Now comes survey data that shows that evangelical Christians, in large numbers, view any erosion of Judeo-Christian dominance of the country as a threat to religious freedom. (???) Oh... and it's all because of "the gays."

While these Christians are particularly concerned that religious freedoms are being eroded in this country, "they also want Judeo-Christians to dominate the culture," said Kinnamon.

"They cannot have it both ways," he said. "This does not mean putting Judeo-Christian values aside, but it will require a renegotiation of those values in the public square as America increasingly becomes a multi-faith nation."

. . .

Asked for their opinion as to why religious freedom is threatened, 97 percent of evangelicals agreed that "some groups have actively tried to move society away from traditional Christian values."

And 72 percent of evangelicals also agreed that gays and lesbians were the group "most active in trying to remove Christian values from the country." That compares to 31 percent of all adults who held this belief.

The whole thing just makes my brain hurt.

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The Changing Face of Christian Evangelism

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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Tammy Faye was a woman ahead of her time. May she rest in peace. As discussed here, her son Jay Bakker has been on the vanguard of a movement towards a far more tolerant evangelical Christianity. In fact, his name was floated recently, by a GLAAD spokesman, as a reasonable replacement for Rev. Louie Giglio to perform the Inaugural Benediction. Giglio was pushed out when his homophobic record came to light.

There are more and more indicators that the sexual politics traditionally associated with the evangelical movement are falling out of favor. Not just with the Presidential Inaugural Committee, or with the military (the Marine Corps in particular), or with the society at large, but with the evangelical community itself. While evangelical Christianity has attracted youth in large numbers, younger evangelicals are not rallying around the sexual morés of the old guard. Even those who accept those values on a personal level, don't want to their social agenda to be defined by them. From Buzzfeed:

Ricky, a 21-year-old evangelical Christian college student, isn't necessarily committed to abstinence before marriage: "If two people are in love and are willing to take the next step, I believe God would approve." He respects both sides of the abortion debate, but thinks churches shouldn't have a say in the matter. And he's an enthusiastic supporter of gay marriage; he thinks Christian opposition to it will be "a black eye on our religion for decades."

He may be progressive, but Ricky isn't alone. A variety of experts say young evangelicals care less and less about the issues of sexual politics — abstinence, abortion, and same-sex marriage — that their forebears brought to the center of the political conversation. And churches that keep focusing on these issues may risk becoming obsolete.

A study released in December by the National Association of Evangelicals found that 44% of unmarried 18-29-year-old evangelicals had been sexually active — but the study defined "evangelical" as someone who attends church at least monthly, believes Jesus Christ is the only path to salvation, and believes the Bible "is accurate in all that it teaches," requirements that may leave out some who still consider themselves part of the group. Another study puts the figure at 80 percent. And a recent poll found that 44% of 18-29-year-old evangelicals favor same-sex marriage, lower than the national figure but much higher than their elders.

An accurate statistical representation of this very broad movement seems to be lacking, and much of the reporting is anecdotal, but there is a pronounced feeling on both sides of the cultural divide that evangelism is going to have to shift its messaging in order to stay relevant in the coming years. Younger evangelicals want to talk about the environment, poverty, war, and stopping sexual trafficking. In other words, they seem much more interested in helping people who are hurting than preventing people from doing the things that make them happy. What's evolving looks more like a compassion agenda.

The Giglio incident has sadly been very polarizing, pitting evangelism, once again, against the prevailing cultural climate. It has sparked outrage amongst the usual suspects about the perceived marginalization of Christians.

Over at Lifeway Research, Ed Stetzer pens a blog on the topic. "This Louie Giglio moment, and the Chick-Fil-A moment that preceded it, and the Rick Warren moment which preceded that, raise the question: Where do people of faith with long-standing traditional religious/scriptural convictions go from here?," he writes.

 And Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council opines:

This is another example of intolerance from the Obama administration toward those who hold to biblical views on sexuality. Why is the president surprised that an evangelical pastor would teach from Scripture on homosexuality? One would be hard pressed to find an Evangelical pastor who hasn't preached on what the Bible teaches about human sexuality.

But Perkins is mistaken. There are a number of evangelical ministers who don't share Perkins's cherry-picked and blinkered interpretation of the Bible. There's the aforementioned Jay Bakker and others recommended by GLAAD's Ross Murray. There's Jim Swilley, the now openly gay megachurch pastor. The evangelical community is changing all around Tony Perkins. He just hasn't noticed.

Meanwhile, the cultural conservatives are starting to age out of the system. Jerry Falwell, who once upon a time led the charge of the culture warriors, has gone to his reward. And some who are still with us seem to be in the horrible grip of senility -- which is my backhanded way of saying that I'm really starting to worry about Pat Robertson.

I recently wrote about Robertson's jaw-dropping comments on General Petraeus's adultery, which basically amounted to, come on, the chick was hot.

Now comes a diatribe from the ever-moralizing 700 Club preacher on the marriage killing powers of unattractive women. Asked to respond to the Maxim letter of a 17 year old boy who was concerned for his lonely mother, due to his father's immersion into online gaming, Robertson offered this penetrating insight: It's probably your mother's fault, kiddo.

“You know, it may be your mom isn’t as sweet as you think she is; she may be kind of hard-nosed. And so, you say, it’s my father, he’s not paying attention to mom, but you know mom …” he trails off and offers a spiteful little chuckle.

. . .

He launches into another story: “A woman came to a preacher I know — it’s so funny. She was awful looking. Her hair was all torn up, she was overweight and looked terrible …”

So far, this story sounds hilarious Pat, Please continue.

“And she said, ‘Oh, Reverend, what can I do? My husband has started to drink.’”

The hateful punchline is coming. I can feel it. I’m on the edge of my seat.

“And the preacher looked at her and he said, ‘Madam, if I were married to you, I’d start to drink too.’”

Methinks the reverend's Freudian slip is showing. Anyone who was paying attention to Robertson's agenda over the years had to know that underneath it all was simple misogyny. But if you had any doubt, now would be the time to the let that go. (Who is it who's always telling women to stay sweet? Oh. Right.)

Anyway, I think the one-time presidential candidate is losing control of his mouth. It's a hard call, given his long-time propensity for saying incredibly offensive things. But it looks like now he's even offending his sidekicks. It's time for him to retire before he ruins his own dubious legacy.

Many of the stalwarts of the Christian Right are not aging too well. But the evangelical movement seems to be maturing.

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A Tale of Two Anglican Churches

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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Here in the US Capitol...

The Washington National Cathedral had been ready to embrace same-sex marriage for some time, though it took a series of recent events and a new leader for the prominent, 106-year-old church to announce Wednesday that it would begin hosting such nuptials.

The key development came last July when the Episcopal Church approved a ceremony for same-sex unions at its General Convention in Indianapolis, followed by the legalization of gay marriage in Maryland, which joined the District of Columbia. The national church made a special allowance for marriage ceremonies in states where gay marriage is legal.

Longtime same-sex marriage advocate the Very Rev. Gary Hall took over as the cathedral's dean in October. Conversations began even before he arrived to clear the way for the ceremonies at the church that so often serves as a symbolic house of prayer for national celebrations and tragedies.

The Episcopal bishop of Washington, the Rt. Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, authorized use of the new marriage rite in December for 89 congregations in D.C. and Maryland. Each priest then decides whether to marry same-sex couples.

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Meanwhile, back in Merry Old England...

The Church of England on Friday (Jan. 4) confirmed that it has dropped its prohibition on gay clergy in civil partnerships becoming bishops -- but only if they agree to remain celibate.

Speaking on behalf of the Church's House of Bishops, Bishop of Norwich Graham Jones said in a statement: "The House of Bishops has confirmed that clergy in civil partnerships, and living in accordance with the teaching of the Church on human sexuality, can be considered as candidates for the episcopate. There had been a moratorium on such candidates for the past year and a half while the working party completed its task."

Jones added that the bishops agreed it would be "unjust" to exclude gay men from becoming bishops if they were otherwise "seeking to live fully in conformity with the Church's teaching on sexual ethics or other areas of personal life and discipline."

Ah, well. Baby steps, baby steps.

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Ad Campaign Reclaims "Jihad"

#MyJihad is to learn a little more about the very misunderstood religion of Islam.

A new series of ads from the Council on American-Islamic Relations' spinoff group My Jihad promote an awareness campaign directed at redefining the widespread conception of the meaning of the controversial word. The advertisements are slated to run on 35 city buses throughout the month of January,

"The intention of the campaign is to educate our fellow Americans on what the word 'jihad' means," Zhara Billoo, the executive director of CAIR's Bay Area chapter, told ABC 7 News. "A common misconception of the world 'jihad' is that it means armed struggle or holy war...The proper meaning of jihad, as many of us frequently describe it, is 'to struggle' and that's it...For many that means building relationships with their neighbors to making it to work on time or doing better on their diets."

Billoo explained to The Huffington Post that her organization has seen an rise in anti-Muslim attitudes across the country in the past few years and this campaign is an effort to counter that. "We're troubled by how the word 'jihad' has been hijacked by people who...have made careers out of pushing anti-Muslim sentiment," she said. "For too long people outside the Muslim community have been telling us what our religion really teaches."

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Putting the Hate Back in Christmas

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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Pope Benedict has a heartwarming message this holiday season. Let's put a stop to the gay... or words to that effect. In his annual State of the Church speech before the Curia yesterday, his holiness made clear that the top priority of the Vatican is to stop the march toward modernity that has already displayed itself in numerous countries and a growing number of states in the US.

Gay marriage is a threat to "traditional marriage" says the Celibate in Chief.

Benedict XVI made the comments in his annual Christmas address to the Vatican bureaucracy, one of his most important speeches of the year. He dedicated it this year to promoting traditional family values in the face of gains by same-sex marriage proponents in the U.S. and Europe and efforts to legalize gay marriage in places like France and Britain.

In his remarks, Benedict quoted the chief rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, in saying the campaign for granting gays the right to marry and adopt children was an "attack" on the traditional family made up of a father, mother and children.

Well. At least it was ecumenical. But I can't help wondering what these Jewish-Christian allies in leadership are basing their ideas of "tradition" upon. Not their holy books, certainly, wherein those "mothers" are little more than transferred property and often consigned to large harems.



Mostly, His Holiness seems to be distressed by the all the gender-bending that goes on.

In his speech, the pope cited Bernheim as lamenting how a new philosophy of sexuality has taken hold, whereby sex and gender are "no longer a given element of nature that man has to accept and personally make sense of: it is a social role that we choose for ourselves, while in the past it was chosen for us by society."

He said God had created man and woman as a specific "duality" – "an essential aspect of what being human is all about."

This follows his "peace message" of a week ago, in which he cited gay marriage as a key threat to world peace. Nothing like a demonstration of love and compassion as the Church prepares to celebrate the birth of Christ.

The pontiff did, however, grant an act of kindness to his former butler, whose Christmas-time pardon was widely anticipated. He will also secure housing and employment for this fallen angel somewhere safely away from Vatican property.

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Putting the Ass Back in Christmas

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Speaking of the War on Christmas, here is Jon Stewart's hilarious take. This is not the first time Stewart has gone head to head with Bill O'Reilly on this issue. Notably in his recent debate with the Fox pundit, he delivered this pithy assessment:

If you think Christmas isn’t celebrated in this country, walk a mile in Hanukkah’s shoes.

But nothing ever seems to pierce O'Reilly's bubble of narcissistic myopia.

Even Fox's Catholic priest on call, Father Jonathan Morris, thinks their obsession with this imaginary war is over the top. His reasoning still manages to drip with the requisite victimhood.

The reason I’m not angry is that, yes, I think it’s silly, it’s out of place for people to dedicate so much energy to try to get rid of Christmas scenes like this. The good news is when Christianity has been persecuted, when it has been outlawed, when people have died for their faith, it hasn’t gone away. Everybody has an opportunity to make sure their faith does not go away in this Christmas season to live that faith as a family, as a community. What should we do about these, I think very small percentage of people who are working to try to get rid of these public expressions of faith? I think we should speak up. That’s why I am doing it. That’s why I think it’s important we have these stories to show what they are trying to do — without losing the peace. If our Christmas is going to be all about getting a upset at people trying to take away Christmas, isn’t that silly too?

So that's about as clear as mud. Christians have always been persecuted, outlawed, and killed, but we don't need to get all het up about it.

O'Reilly, though, is taking a very different tack. This has nothing to do with religious persecution because Christianity isn't a religion. It's a philosophy. And Christmas trees are secular symbols. Yes. You heard me. They're secular. And somehow the fact that they are secular is the reason you have to call them Christmas trees -- not holiday trees. Get it? Because they're secular symbols they can't have a secular name.

Oh, and we can all go to work, if we want, on the secular, federal holiday that is Christmas, even though our offices are closed.

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Missouri Preacher's Speech Against Gay Rights

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

Wow.

At first, this Missouri pastor's anti-gay speech seems akin to those delivered by a number of conservative preachers and other right-wing pundits nationwide over the past year.

. . .

But, as video of his speech reveals, the pastor has a few surprises up his sleeve.

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How To Kill Your Rebellious Child

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

It's become quite fashionable to compare the "clobber verses" in the Bible condemning homosexuality to scripture no one in the modern world would endorse. I, myself, have written extensively on the hypocrisy of shrimp munching, polyester blend wearing, homophobes. An increasing number of gay-positive, evangelical Christians have likewise taken to pointing out the socially unacceptable passages that are avoided by the vast majority of fundamentalists. But every so often some Biblical purist calls our bluff.

Deuteronomy 21:18-21 is one of those scriptural passages no modern Christian could love.

18 If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them: 19 Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place; 20 And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. 21 And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear. ~ Deuteronomy 21:18-21

Yup. If your son is worthless lay-about, have him put to death.

Openly gay megachurch pastor Jim Swilley likes to point that one out as an example of the outrageous scriptural obscurities that no one would endorse today. But the Pastor Swilleys of the world are just not prepared for Charlie Fuqua, GOP candidate for the Arkansas legislature. Fuqua thinks a death penalty for rebellious youth is an idea whose time has come.



Via the Arkansas Times, here is passage from Fuqua's book God's Law.

The maintenance of civil order in society rests on the foundation of family discipline. Therefore, a child who disrespects his parents must be permanently removed from society in a way that gives an example to all other children of the importance of respect for parents. The death penalty for rebellioius children is not something to be taken lightly. The guidelines for administering the death penalty to rebellious children are given in Deut 21:18-21:

…

This passage does not give parents blanket authority to kill their children. They must follow the proper procedure in order to have the death penalty executed against their children. I cannot think of one instance in the Scripture where parents had their child put to death. Why is this so? Other than the love Christ has for us, there is no greater love then [sic] that of a parent for their child. The last people who would want to see a child put to death would be the parents of the child. Even so, the Scrpture provides a safe guard to protect children from parents who would wrongly exercise the death penalty against them. Parents are required to bring their children to the gate of the city. The gate of the city was the place where the elders of the city met and made judicial pronouncements. In other words, the parents were required to take their children to a court of law and lay out their case before the proper judicial authority, and let the judicial authority determine if the child should be put to death. I know of many cases of rebellious children, however, I cannot think of one case where I believe that a parent had given up on their child to the point that they would have taken their child to a court of law and asked the court to rule that the child be put to death. Even though this procedure would rarely be used, if it were the law of land, it would give parents authority. Children would know that their parents had authority and it would be a tremendous incentive for children to give proper respect to their parents.

Fuqua has also advocated expelling Muslims from the United States, as a way to cure the "Muslim problem." But I'd be willing to bet that it's not because of extremist Muslim practices like honor killings of adulteresses and rape victims. He seems mystified at the idea that this view might place him outside the mainstream.

Fuqua said Saturday that he hadn't realized he'd become a target within his own party, which he said surprised him.

"I think my views are fairly well-accepted by most people," Fuqua said before hanging up, saying he was busy knocking on voters' doors. The attorney is running against incumbent Democratic Rep. James McLean in House District 63.

I don't know. Maybe there's something in the water in Arkansas. Two Republican pols in that great state have come out swinging for slavery. And at least one of them has turned to the holy scriptures to defend it.

In two letters, [State Rep. Loy] Mauch wrote about the Bible and slavery. The Arkansas Times quotes from a letter Mauch wrote in 2009:

If slavery were so God-awful, why didn’t Jesus or Paul condemn it, why was it in the Constitution and why wasn’t there a war before 1861?

Goodness knows he could have dug deeper. You just have to flip around the Old Testament a little. The book of Exodus is a particularly rich source of wisdom on how to properly keep, beat (21:20-21), and breed (21:2-6) your slaves. I've long said that I could make a better Biblical argument for slavery than against homosexuality. But maybe I shouldn't risk giving lawmakers like Mauch and Fuqua any more ideas.

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Colbert on Dough-Faced Homunculus

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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Stephen Colbert names Cecilia Giménez, the self-appointed art restorer discussed here, "Alpha Dog of the Week." Hilarious... and tragic.

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Volunteer Art Destroyer Seeks Payment

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Surely the eighty year old Cecilia Giménez meant well when she took it upon herself to restore a church fresco that had fallen into disrepair. But after being lambasted by local officials and family members of the late artist, and threatened with legal action, I guess she's feeling a little unappreciated. So now she'd like to be paid for her trouble. She'll settle for a cut of the church's proceeds now that her masterpiece has put the little town of Borja on the map.

The before and after pictures went viral across the globe and tourists began arriving in droves -- but very few were leaving donations according to Ars Technica. The sanctuary's owners, the Santi Spiritus Hospital Foundation, reportedly made $2,600 in four days from visitors wanting to see "Ecce Mono," or "Behold the Monkey" as it's now called, Ars Technica reported.

Both sides have retained counsel, with the Santuario de Misericordia church scrambling to protect its assets. They will need whatever they've been able to take in to pay a real art restorer. That is, if they can find one capable of undoing the damage from Giménez's act of artistic largesse. The jury is still out as to whether or not it can be restored to its original state.

That said, 18,000 people have signed a petition to leave the Giménez version as it is. Said one woman, "The previous painting was also very pretty, but I really like this one."



Perhaps they see something in Giménez's work that others don't. Art-Eater.com posits that the octogenarian's work is a rich commentary on the inner conflicts of faith in a modern world.

By creating the work as what some might call an act of vandalism, Gimenez combines the subversive spirit of graffiti street-culture with the reverence of religious tradition, reminding us of the revolutionary nature of Christianity, a faith that was outlawed in its early days.

The unconventional nature of the restored painting tells a story. The fringes of the painting are very faithful to the original, particularly in the cloth.  However, the painting becomes looser, more expressionistic as we move to the center.  This is reflective of how modern people have grown comfortable with the superficial window dressings of Christianity, yet tensions secretly boil at the core.  The original painting depicts Christ’s moment of doubt on the cross, as described in PSalm 22, where he wonders “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

. . .

By depicting Christ with simian features, the piece smolders with the passion and agony of contemporary man, struggling to reconcile religion and science. Are we the divine children of god or the discordant descendants of apes? The lingering power of this question has lead contemporary worshipers to redub the fresco “Ecce Mono” or “Behold The Monkey.”

The painting daringly trails off at the mouth of Christ, left unfinished, imploring us to come to our own conclusion. Though the words of the bible are to be venerated as the word of God, the final sermon has yet to be delivered. Though icons are beautiful expressions of faith, the real substance of Christianity is found in a personal communion with God, a cornerstone of Catholicism.

They've also posted some pretty pictures of her future restorations.

Other critics have not been as kind.

Giménez's efforts have been variously been dubbed "the worst restoration in history", "a botched job", and "a crayon sketch of a very hairy monkey in an ill-fitting tunic".

What no critic seems to have noticed is the elements of self portraiture.

Ecce Homo
Elías García Martínez

Ecce Mono
Cecilia Giménez

Ecce Giméno
God

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Mrs. Jesus?

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

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A tiny fragment of papyrus may upend centuries of Christian dogma. Dr. Karen L. King, a professor at Harvard's Divinity School has in her possession the first documentary proof that Jesus may have had a wife -- or at least, that an early Christian sect believed he did. Thus far, the scrap has withstood multiple authentication tests and appears to be genuine.

The discovery reopens ancient debates about marriage and sexuality in a Christian context. It also calls into question much about the role and rights of women in the church.

Dr. King is a fairly impressive woman, herself. She's the first woman to hold the oldest endowed chair in the United States. She is an expert on early Coptic texts and Gnosticism and has written a number of books on newly discovered Gnostic texts such as The Gospel of Mary Magdala and Reading Judas.

A historian of early Christianity at Harvard Divinity School has identified a scrap of papyrus that she says was written in Coptic in the fourth century and contains a phrase never seen in any piece of Scripture: “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife …'”

The faded papyrus fragment is smaller than a business card, with eight lines on one side, in black ink legible under a magnifying glass. Just below the line about Jesus having a wife, the papyrus includes a second provocative clause that purportedly says, “she will be able to be my disciple.”

. . .

But the discovery is exciting, Dr. King said, because it is the first known statement from antiquity that refers to Jesus speaking of a wife. It provides further evidence that there was an active discussion among early Christians about whether Jesus was celibate or married, and which path his followers should choose.

“This fragment suggests that some early Christians had a tradition that Jesus was married,” Dr. King said. “There was, we already know, a controversy in the second century over whether Jesus was married, caught up with a debate about whether Christians should marry and have sex.”

Dr. King argues that none of this should be taken as evidence that the historical Jesus was married pointing to the total absence of any discussion of the topic in first century texts. There is no known documentary proof of either his being married or unmarried from his own era. Rather, discussion and speculation about his marital status began to emerge during the second century as early Christians struggled to reconcile their spiritual calling and their sexuality. So the only valid discussion is over whether or not there was a religious tradition in which he was seen as married and this scrap, if authentic, is the first piece of empirical evidence of such a tradition.

Dr. King speculates that the text from which the fragment was taken was likely translated from a  Greek original, like many Coptic texts. She also sees a strong basis of comparison with The Gospels of Mary, Thomas, and the Egyptians and posits that the original from which this was copied also dates to the latter second century. This, historically, was when there was a great deal of speculation about Jesus's marital status.

In her paper, which can be downloaded here, Dr. King places the remnant in context with other writings of early Christianity. She categorizes this fragment as a piece of a gospel because it shows a dialogue between Jesus and his disciples. It is also reminiscent of a number of gospels, both Biblical and Gnostic, in its discussion of discipleship. She assigns it the working title of The Gospel of Jesus's Wife.

While Dr. King disavows any connection to the theories put forth in The Da Vinci Code, saying, “At least, don’t say this proves Dan Brown was right,” she also comes to the conclusion that the wife referred to is most likely Mary Magdelene. To do so, she attempts to discern whether the Mary named in the fragmentary text is his mother or the mysterious wife. She also dispenses, once again, with the canard that Magdelene was a prostitute.

The second issue is to identify Mary: Is she Jesus’s mother (→1) or his wife (→3)? Scholars have long noted “the confusion of Marys” in early Christianity, due not least to the ubiquity of this name (Maria, Mariam, Mariamme⁵⁹) for Jewish women in the period.⁶⁰    One of the most influential confusions has been the identification of Mary of Magdala with three other figures: Mary of Bethany (John 11:1-2; 12:1-3), the woman caught in adultery (John 8:3-11), and the sinner woman (Luke 7:37-38), resulting in the erroneous portrait of Mary Magdalene as a repentant prostitute.⁶¹    Another is the confusion of Jesus’s mother with Mary of Magdala, and even the substitution of the mother for her, for example as the first witness to the resurrected Jesus in John 20:11- 17.⁶²    These confusions make one cautious in identifying to whom “Mary” refers here.

. . .


The tradition of Mary of Magdala as an honored disciple of Jesus is well attested from the first century gospels, and is emphasized even more strongly in a variety of literature from the second and third centuries, notably The Gospel of Mary, The Dialogue of the Savior, The Gospel of Philip, and Pistis Sophia.⁶⁴    It was not until relatively late that Mary of Magdala was misidentified as a (repentant) prostitute, most clearly by Pope Gregory in the late sixth century.⁶⁵    Prior to the fourth century, she appears as a follower of Jesus during his ministry, was present at his crucifixion and burial, and, in the Gospel of John, is the first witness to the resurrection.⁶⁶    Yet in a number of these texts Mary’s status as a leader or disciple is directly challenged, notably by Peter.⁶⁷    GosThom 114, for example,states:...  (“Simon Peter said to them, ‘Let Mary leave us for women are not worthy of life’.”)⁶⁸    Here Peter’s rejection of Mary provides the opportunity for Jesus to refute the radical exclusion of all women from salvation (a position otherwise completely unattested in Christian literature).

. . .


These two cases from the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Mary identify Mary as the disciple whose status was being challenged, and in both cases her worthiness is defended by appeal to Jesus, the Savior. So, too, in GosJesWife →5, Jesus declares that “she is able to be/come my disciple”. This statement immediately follows Jesus’s reference to “my wife” in →4, indicating his affirmation that the ability to become his disciple concerns his wife, not his mother. This line of interpretation, then, suggests that it is the worthiness of Jesus’s wife, not his mother, which is being discussed. If so, then Jesus’s wife is named “Mary” here and can presumably be identified with Mary Magdalene. It is she who he declares is able to be his disciple.

Almost more interesting than the tantalizing notion that Jesus was married, or thought to be married, is Dr. King's discussion of marriage as an expression of a mystery tradition. Here she turns to The Gospel of Philip.

“The Lord did everything in a mysterious mode: a baptism and a chrism and a eucharist and a redemption and a bridal chamber” 67:27-30

She considers it likely that this was all part of a single ritual of unification.

According to the Gospel of Philip, death came into existence because Eve separated from Adam (GosPhil 68:22-26; 70:9-17101). The ritual of the bridal chamber effects the spiritual transformation of the initiand [sic] by uniting male and female (GosPhil 70:17-20), represented as the (present attainment of the) eschatological union of the redeemed person’s true light-self with his or her heavenly twin (σύζυγος) or angel (GosPhil 58:10- 14; 67:26-27). The ritual of the bridal chamber is thus necessary for salvation (GosPhil 86:4-8).¹⁰²

So Philip's gospel would seem to equate separation from God with the division into polarity and implies that this was the fall that cast us out of the Garden of Eden. What remains somewhat unclear is whether this marriage ritual is entirely metaphorical or if it depicts marriage in the earthly realm as a symbolic expression of reunification with God.

What comes to mind is The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, as discussed here. This is especially interesting if we consider Hancock and Bauval's proposition that the ideas in Western Alchemy can be traced to early Gnostic teachings.

Dr. King concludes, though, that what is suggested by this piece of text is a literal marriage between  Jesus and, most likely, Mary Magdelene. This marriage may or may not have been actual and historical, and there is no evidence either way. But it was a very real part of a larger Gnostic narrative that has been hinted at in other extant writings of the time. It also speaks to Jesus's revolutionary teachings about women as, at least, near equals in the early church. It is unlikely that the Vatican will take this any more seriously than it has other Gnostic texts which stand so completely at odds with its rigidly patriarchal doctrines. Michael D'Antonio in the Huffington Post explains:

The implications of professor King's discovery are profound. If Jesus was married, the main spiritual argument for male-only clergy and the celibacy of Roman Catholic priests falls into question. (Priests wouldn't need to abandon sex in order to imitate him.) But more importantly, if Jesus was a family man, then the claim to special status made by Catholic clergy, who regard themselves as supernaturally closer to God, loses much of its power.

Beyond internal Catholic Church politics, a married Jesus invites a reconsideration of orthodox teachings about gender and sex. If Jesus had a wife, then there is nothing extra Christian about male privilege, nothing spiritually dangerous about the sexuality of women, and no reason for anyone to deny himself or herself a sexual identity. In fact, one could argue that in their obsessive self denial -- of sexual pleasure, intimate relationships, and family - celibates reject the fullness of Jesus' example.

What this discovery could prove is that there was, in antiquity, a Christian tradition that didn't vilify women or their sexuality, or consider it a mark of piety to eschew them as ungodly temptresses. It might even make us get honest about the thinly veiled preoccupation with Jesus as a sex symbol. Because, you know, he was hot.

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