I would like to state for the record that I'm a social justice loving Christian.

Obama = Kara Thrace

Harbinger of the Apocalypse and all that good stuff.

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As is usual when Tim LaHaye and the monstrous work of bad writing and worse theology known as Left Behind is brought up, the Metra is left to say: What, what now? Of course, Rachel Maddow said: What, what now? with far more style than I can muster.

Question, if the Anti-Christ will be a commie socialist, why was the early Christian community described in Acts functioning as a commune?

No, Georgia, just no....

And in yet another stunning display of anti-intellectualism, the GOP in Georgia attempts to ban classes (graduate-level classes!) on queer theory. (Via Feministing.)

Doubtlessly, they are aware of the academic throwdown between queer theory and gay and lesbian theory and are only doing this to help out the gays and lesbians.

I wonder how badly the field of queer theology would break them.... And I'm sorry folks, but your basic readings for queer theory....so less steamy than a good ol' time with Plato or even a decent chunk of Christian saints' lives.

"born?" oh, alternet....

By born, certainly you mean "is fondly rocking the cradle of its great, great, great grandbabies"....although, yes, the scale of organization is certainly growing.

There's absolutely nothing new about the evangelicals and fundies hard-selling "Biblical" submission as liberation for women. Nothing new. I swear I'm remembering a similar argument being made in the 1880-90s in the Gospel Advocate as regards first-wave feminists (who didn't really do much to challenge gender norms), but don't quote me there. It's been a few summers.

And, actually, Twisty Faster is definitely onto something with her "women hate you" label. The worst of the brainwashing is carried out by the older women. Or, as is frequently becoming the case, by only slightly older girls who are honored with the position of a young women's ministry -- where they can make the marry and submit model look oh-so-cool to the younger things. This is possibly because the menfolk don't see one or two nutty unwomen-in-training to be much of a real threat.

Good to know...

Mike Huckabee is not pro-sodomy. Just in case you were wondering.



File under, the hell?

h/t Box Turtle Bulletin

One of these days...

I will get back to rambling here...but until then...

Congrats to Barack Obama!

And shame upon a bit over half of California, Florida, Arizona, and Arkansas. Shame.

Mwahahahaha!

The Hegemony of Representation

Two semesters ago, whilst reading an article on unofficial Soviet art, I encountered the quite useful term -- a hegemony of representation. I can't remember the technical definition, so here's how I internalized the term: what you get when one ideology or model dominates discussion and dicourse to the point of excluding all other models. By creating and maintaining a hegemony of representation, one group within society can effectively oppressive minority groups whose lives and realities are not reflected by the dominant paradigm. Pretty much a common sensical no brainer. But a useful concept when you want to analyze political function.

A Swing...

...and a miss for Cindy McCain.



Are you serious, ma'am? Do you understand how flipping big Russia is? Is your entire understanding of foreign policy based on Risk where you can launch a nice attack on North America from Kamchatka?

Repeat after me: Putin is not an idiot. He will happily piss off America by expanding Russian Federation control over former Soviet republics. He will not attack America. Why? Because Vladimir Putin is not an idiot.

If John McCain were that great on foreign policy, you might think he might correct a misunderstanding on the part of his wife that's this glaring.

h/t to Pam's House Blend

As usual, Fox News Should Be Ashamed

The story is that Mary Winkler has been awarded full custody of her daughters, who will continue to have visits with their paternal grandparents.

Unfortunately, the media vilification of Ms. Winkler continues with Fox News in the lead. Their headline for the balanced AP article: "Killer Mom Gets Kids" with a blurb that only identifies Matthew Winkler as a preacher and Mary Winkler as the convicted killer. (The screencap below is of Fox's home page, which I frankly don't care to link to.





I've previously ranted about similar treatment of Ms. Winkler by the Memphis Commercial Appeal and CNN, but that biased coverage pales in comparison to this travesty of journalism.

Fair and balanced, Fox News? Yeah. Better word is hypocritical.

h/t to Fran

More on the Knoxville shooting

Two pieces of analysis from the writers at Alas, A Blog.

The Dangers of Demagoguery

My additional comment here is that Tennesseans have experienced not one, but two major incidents of demagoguery put into action this year. The first was the burning of the Islamic Center in Columbia, TN. And now this. Maybe Tennessee will manage to wake up at some point and recognize their political grandstanding does actually hurt people.

Also from Alas: Guns, Killing, and People

Knoxville Church Shooting

A gunman walked into a Knoxville area Unitarian-Universalist church yesterday and opened fire, killing two members and injuring others. His actions probably were influenced by the church putting up a sign declaring support for GLBT persons. The Knoxville police report that in a letter he wrote he claimed to target the church because of it's "liberal stance on things."

There's a number of blogposts following this with more info:
Box Turtle Bulletin: here, here, and here
Pam's House Blend
and
The Wild Hunt

Eye rolls of the Day

First and foremost -- Christians feel "offended" by English translations of the Koran being left on their doors. Read more at Barthlomew's Notes on Religion. (Via. The Wild Hunt and The Jaded Hippy.)

Now how many Gideon Bibles and Chick tracts have I scored lately? Hmm...

Second, via Ramblings a gay man is suing Zondervan and Thomas Nelson claiming that the references to homosexuality in the KJV and NKJV and probably NIV have violated his constitutional rights by causing him emotional suffering.

The intent of the publisher was to design a religious, sacred document to reflect an individual opinion or a group's conclusion to cause "me or anyone who is a homosexual to endure verbal abuse, discrimination, episodes of hate, and physical violence ... including murder," Fowler wrote.

You know, I'm sure that the translations in question have caused him pain and contribute to the anti-gay bigotry of evangelical Christian culture. I'm inclined to think that the verses implied are, in fact, mistranslated. (Of course, I also think that to a great extent they are untranslatable.) And as for Zondervan's study materials, I don't think too highly of them. But, seriously, is this the best way to go about educating people as to the problems with those translations and study materials? And to paraphrase answers to one family of anti-porn arguments, the Bible doesn't kill people, violent bigots kill people.

In defense of the rest of us on the super-progressive side of world, this is not how we generally operate. I shall now return to reading subversively. ;)

Michelle Obama

Frankly, folks, I kinda wish she were running for president. It's high time some leader in the country stopped pandering nationalistic bullshit and did something to fix the problems that can be fixed and improve what demands to be improved. It's all relative, darlings. I doubt the British papers painted Jefferson, Madison, Washington, et al. as "patriots."

It's also high time that the supposedly fair and balanced Fox news network quite using fearmongering and smear campaigns to up their ratings.

And all the Whos of Whoville

Go read this article: "Horton Hears a Religious Left."

And I agree, what's up with this misinformation that the Founding Fathers were all about the "sanctity of life" and "preserving marriage?" I can buy the interested in religious freedom bit -- but for some reason, I suspect that the FFs had a somewhat different conception -- if indeed, we can even treat the FFs as a monolith who all agreed with each other. (p.3)

So I'm a bit late...

but can we get a AMEN!

California Supreme Court Affirms Equal Marriage Rights for Gays and Lesbians!

Good news -- I like it!

Are You Going to be a Missionary?

I was just chatting last night about how a lot of people from the church I was raised in assumed that since I'm (was? -- oh god, just finished the last undergrad class!) double majoring in Russian Studies and Religious Studies that I'm going to go out and convert the heathen masses of Russia.

Yeah, I don't want to make Putin that mad. (And there's that whole opinion I have that Orthodoxy, while not perfect, is far superior to the Evangelical groups who tend to be running missions in Russia.)

There are huge problems with the way that the Orthodox Church in Russia has been caught up in a nationalist movement. There are issues of freedom of religion. (However, we Americans should be careful to not read our experiences with certain religion dominating government policy into the situation with Russia.) Obviously, Orthodox bishops dubbing Protestants "Christ-killers" is a problem. But the article would have you believe that the Russian Orthodox are all hateful barbarians and that the Protestants are squeaky-clean.

I really feel like this article didn't do justice to the colonizing element of Protestant missions in Russia. Many people involved with these missions seem to not even recognize Orthodoxy as Christianity. I have heard comments that dehumanize and defame Russians. (Most famously: "They just don't know how to love each other.") It's difficult to sort these colonial attitudes out from some genuinely good impulses that are also present in mission work, but the colonial attitude can't be ignored. That is -- the poor, persecuted Protestants aren't necessarily as innocent as this article would have you believe.

Scary, but charismatic...

So, I'm a bit behind times, but have you seen this video of Putin's latest take down of Bush?



Not that I'm interested in having Russian style democracy in the U.S. (Although, with the Real ID, that lovely document carrying at all times portion of the Russian experience might be coming to a state near you!), but stuff like this is why I just can't bring myself to completely dislike Putin. He's got guts. He's intelligent. Witty. And he calls Bush for what he is to his face.

Oh, and yes -- if push comes to shove, I'd rather be living under a Russian style democracy than the mess that's passing under that name in Iraq right now. I think the survival rates in Russia are a bit better for the average person on the street.

Du-buh?

Questions that have run through my mind recently:

Just what is Bill O'Reilly referring to when the words "the far left" leave his mouth? Does he realize that the "far" left actually isn't that excited about Barack Obama? I suspect the far left is too terrifying for the BOR to even imagine.

Disregarding other things Rev. Wright may have said (my gut feeling is that, for the most part, he's being unfairly taken out of context), how on earth is the statement, "America is run by rich, white people," incendiary? It just seems to be factual. Angry, yes. Offensive, no.

Why is this book in existence? Seriously, I kinda want to get my hands on it for laughs. I love the scrambling to shore up the hegemony of representation. And my two cents on the matter: Eastern Orthodoxy is very much Christian.

Why does much of Christianity purport to conform to Chalcedon and yet completely ignore the FULL HUMANITY of Jesus Christ?

How did I manage to miss the word theosis until today? How sad for me. Much easier to say than bogochelovechstvo.

How can it be so difficult to find a picture of two broken pots on the interwebs?

Now leaving my brainspace...

On another note -- to anyone and everyone celebrating the Resurrection today -- Happy Easter!

Pipe dreams of the Kingdom of the God

Check out this article from Alternet on the New Atheists.

I've only read a few pages of Sam Harris, but something struck me -- just within those few pages as he denigrated the idea of nonviolence and the work of Gandhi -- that something was very wrong with his argument. The more I heard arguments borrowed from Harris and company, the more it appeared that something was very wrong. Something was very wrong in the way the authors were defining religion, and something else was wrong there, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

I think this article gets at a lot of what I was feeling to be wrong with Harris's arguments. And has some good points on its own. My one caveat is that I'm not certain the degree to which I want to endorse the rejection of the idea of progressing towards a better future. There's plenty of reason to be skeptical about the idea (as any Russian Studies major can tell you). I'm more inclined to caution against thinking that progress as a society is inevitable -- it must be worked for and carefully guarded through vigilance -- and to firmly reject any utopian ideas that deny the value (and the rights) of the individual. Further, it is an imperative to understand that movement (forwards, backwards, or sideways) creates a shift in perspective, which changes the very vision of the end, the utopia, the kingdom of God. One can have a sense of what utopia should be -- a construction, if you will -- which allows one to analyze and critique the present, but one must not confuse that construction with reality.