A few years back, when I was told by the Standards & Practices Department of Turner Networks that I could no longer use the affectionate term “lesbo” on television, I started using the term “lesbyterian,” unaware at the time of how theologically prescient I was, since the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) would spend much of the past decade adjudicating the rightness or wrongness, legality or illegality, of lesbian coupling within the church. The centerpiece of this battle was one Jane Spahr, an ordained Presbyterian minister who is also a practicing lesbian in Marin County, California, and who had performed quite a few gay marriage ceremonies over the years, until she was put on trial in March 2006–not a real trial, one of those ecclesiastical play-trials–at the Church of the Roses in Santa Rosa, where she was formally charged with violating church rules by marrying two lesbian couples, including one happy pair who had traveled all the way from Rochester, New York, for the occasion. After two days of testimony, the court found her innocent, but the local Presbytery (not to be confused with the local Lesbytery) appealed to a regional body (apparently in church play-court, the prosecution can appeal even when the verdict is not guilty), and the regional court voted to censure Spahr–to, in essence, give her the lightest possible punishment, but to make it clear that gay marriage was verboten. Then Spahr appealed to the national ultimate Presbyterian Lesbyterian High-Hat Court of the Last Resort, which only meets once a year in Louisville, Kentucky–the real name of it is the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission–and that august body of clerics decided that Spahr was innocent of charges that she performed same-sex marriages, because if the people are of the same sex, it could not be a marriage. Since no marriage occurred, Spahr didn’t officiate at a marriage. This is really what they decided. I’m not making it up. I think they had a party in Marin County, but at some point during the party they probably went “Huh? We should celebrate, right? Read that again.”

Then Again, Pharaoh Doesn’t Care What the Jews Think, Does He?

Was anybody listening to Jeremiah Wright’s actual speeches during that weekend when he pulled off the Trifecta of appearing on Bill Moyers’ show, keynoting the NAACP convention, and appearing at the National Press Club? He took every opportunity to point out that his theology was not Black Liberation Theology. And yet here we have a massive New York Times piece by Michael Powell describing Wright as a disciple of James H. Cone, the professor at Union Theological Seminary who did invent Black Liberation Theology in the sixties. When Wright describes his church tradition at all, he calls it “prophetic,” and by that he means the Old Testament call away from the world’s ways, away from complacency, away from comfort, and he adds to that that we must harken to the poor. The poor will lead us out of Egypt. And in order to get that message across, the preacher occasionally has to identify Egypt. And when he identifies Egypt, it turns up on YouTube.

The Sisters Looked Like Ballot Stuffers

There’s nothing like turning away 12 nuns from the polls in Indiana, telling them they can’t vote because they don’t have proper ID (in fact, some of them may never vote again because they’re too elderly to go to the motor vehicle office) to make the recent Supreme Court decision look especially ugly and unnecessary. Remind me again: why did we do this?

L’Chaim

Last week the Central Synagogue in New York rededicated a Torah that had been buried at Auschwitz for more than 60 years before being found with a metal detector in 2004. The four Torah panels that were actually used for services inside the concentration camp had to then be retrieved from a Catholic priest who had been keeping them all these years, unaware of where the rest of the Torah was. The whole remarkable story is told by James Barron in the New York Times, but apparently the name of the sexton who placed the Torah in a metal box and buried it three days before the Germans marched into the Polish city of Oswiecim (later renamed Auschwitz) is lost to history. Whoever he was, he did such a good job of hiding the Torah from the Nazis that it took four years of efforts by Rabbi Menachem Youlus of Wheaton, Maryland, before he finally unearthed the lost Torah. I’m not a superstitious man, but there’s something about these Found Torah stories that, every time I hear them, make me think something powerful and restorative has been released into the world.

Denise Grollmus, the reporter for the alternative weekly Cleveland Scene who did the ultimate Rex Humbard obituary, found a couple of teenage Amish party girls exploring alcohol and rock-and-roll at Twister’s Bar in Middlefield, Ohio, during their rumspringa years, and the result is “Amish Girls Gone Wild,” which details the perils of buggy-driving while drunk, not to mention what happens when your mother catches you wearing jeans and hiding a cell phone in your purse. Fortunately the parents never hear the Eminem lyrics the girls know by heart.

Don’t Call Him the Voodoo Pope

We’re not supposed to refer to Max G. Beauvoir as the Voodoo Pope, even though who can resist that title now that the voodooists of Haiti have finally organized and elected Beauvoir as their “supreme master”? Among Beauvoir’s skills, practiced at his Peristyle de Mariani Temple of Yehwe on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, are goat sacrifice, totem-dancing, spirit-summoning, casting of spells, healing, herbal remedies, and biochemistry (thanks to his degrees from the Sorbonne and City College of New York). And zombies, of course. Beauvoir is the source for much of the research conducted by Harvard anthropologist Wade Davis for his book The Serpent and the Rainbow, best known in its movie form as rendered by Wes Craven, who took a Hollywood crew to Haiti and barely escaped with his life after a riot, a sit-in, a siege, and evil spells resulting in the sickness of crew members. (Those last scenes are actually filmed in the Dominican Republic. The entire crew fled Haiti in the dead of night.) At any rate, Beauvoir says he’s determined to clean up the image of voodoo, and that its reputation for secrecy, sinister motives, spirit possession, violent ritual and animal mutilation is an invention of Hollywood and the media, and that anyone who takes a good hard look at the houngans and mambos who practice the religion day by day will be able to see that voodoo is a great benefit to Haiti and to mankind, and if you don’t believe that, then you’ll probably have a rat’s eye placed under your pillow tonight and it will cause you to dream of your intestines being devoured by jaguars.

34 Years Is All You Can Do? Jesus Says You’re So Fired

Kent Gramm, a popular English professor at Wheaton College for 20 years, just got fired because he and his wife of 34 years are divorcing, which is against Wheaton rules, unless you have a “Biblical reason.” Gramm decided he didn’t want to give the reason, so university officials cited Matthew 19 and the letters of Paul (without stating which one) as they gave him the heave ho, because, as we all know, the New Testament is a list of rules to hit people over the head with when they screw up.

Yeah, Like That Verse About Free Enterprise

A Vatican poll recently found that the United States was the “most Bible-literate” nation, but as soon as you read into the fine print, you see that a) they only conducted the poll in nine countries, all of them in Europe, and b) they weren’t sophisticated enough to realize that most people who claim to be recalling something from the Bible are actually recalling something from Ben Franklin (“Cleanliness is next to godliness”) or their crotchety grandfather (“Charity begins at home”).The crime is not that people don’t know what’s in the Bible, it’s that they load it up with new stuff. It’s already long enough, people.

Dude Rabbis Battling for Surf Rights

All right, how can there be two surfing rabbis? No sooner had I sung the praises of Yom Tov Glaser, the singing skateboarding surfing rabbi from Jerusalem who recites the Kabbalah while playing Bob Marley covers, than a rabbi named Nachum Shifren turns up in Los Angeles, also billing himself as the surfing rabbi as he promotes his new book, Kill Your Teacher: Corruption and Racism in Los Angeles City Schools. It’s a narrative of his 18 years as a secondary school teacher in the barrio, an experience that included the day when he showed up at Dorsey High School to find his classroom burned to the ground. Shifren claims he was eventually run out of the school system by youth gangs who resented his authoritarian ways and a series of administrators who pled with him to relax standards so students would “like him” more. The “Surfing Rabbi” tag came from his days as a professional surfer–same as Yom Tov Glaser, the Hasidic Party Rabbi–but his book sounds like a totally bogus, if not meshugenah, slacker wave to me.

Chinese to Tibet Supporters:WTF?

So, class, what have we learned? Don’t be seen on YouTube abusing a wheelchair athlete. That’s the image that enraged the Chinese after the Olympic torch was besieged by protesters in Paris, one of whom was fended off by a brave Chinese wheelchair athlete who is now a national hero for protecting the torch from froth-mouth western Lama-lovers. The benefit for the U.S. is that the Chinese are now focused almost exclusively on boycotting French products, especially the Carrefour supermarket chain, to the point that President Sarkozy had to send a special envoy to apologize to the Politburo. McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken and CNN are also on their radar, however. And once again the question must be asked: why are so many people in the west so anxious to demand independence for a people who say they don’t want independence? At least the two sides are talking, although at this point it amounts to little more than “You’re violent!” “No, you’re violent!” Can’t the Buddhists and the Communists settle this in a Christian manner?

Jesus signed his name twice on a petition to get an anti-affirmative-action initiative on the ballot in Colorado. At least that’s what Michelle Dally, spokesperson for “Vote No on 46,” told the media when she announced a legal challenge of 65,000 signatures, more than half of the total submitted by Ward Connerly, the anti-affirmative-action crusader from California who files these propositions wherever he can. Aside from the question of whether Jesus would choose the state of Colorado as his permanent place of residence, the signer is obviously an imposter. Jesus would have to sign his name thrice.

This Can’t End Well

Paul Verhoeven, the Dutch director best known for Robocop and Basic Instinct, is apparently peeved that he can’t be as controversial as Geert Wilders in his own country, so he’s written a book called Jesus of Nazareth: A Realistic Portrait in which Jesus is portrayed as the bastard child of Mary, conceived after she’s raped by a Roman soldier. This is actually a famous second-century libel by the same anti-Christian forces who portrayed believers as cultists who ate the flesh of babies, so I’m surprised Verhoeven didn’t go for the more cinematic libel. But then again, he’s the driving force behind Showgirls, which set an all-time record, never to be equalled, for use of the f-word in a single script. Roman soldier to Mary: “You are a whore, darlin’.” Mary to Roman soldier: “I am not! I’m a dancer!” Roman soldier to Mary: “Why’d you stop hooking?” Mary to Roman soldier: “I’m a dancer, goddammit!”

Would a Padre Pio Bobble Head Doll Be in Bad Taste?

They really did dig up Padre Pio and put him on display at the Santa Maria delle Grazie Church in San Giovanni Rotondo, Italy, in order to revive tourism in the region. As previously reported in this space, Padre Pio died in 1968 and was known for 50 years for bearing the actual bleeding wounds of Christ on his hands, feet and side. Although we’re not sure how that worked as far as sanitation concerns might be involved, nevertheless he’s supposedly more venerated in Italy than even the Virgin Mary. He was looking pretty good when they unveiled his carcass in late April, but that was because they’d had a cosmetic surgeon, a biochemist and a wax museum work him over, especially his face, because putrefaction is just not sexy.

I Dare You Guys to Infiltrate a Madrassa

Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi joined John Hagee’s Cornerstone Church in San Antonio so he could study Christian Zionism from the inside out, but once he got immersed in the whole thing, he ended up going on one of those military-style Encounter Weekends, run by an ex-Green Beret paratrooper named Philip Fortenberry. Taibbi describes the whole thing in his article “Jesus Made Me Puke,” which is a reference to the final day of the three-day weekend when they have an extended casting-out-demons session that involves a lot of writhing around on the floor, speaking in tongues, and, yes, puking. Isn’t this about the fourth journalist this year to “go undercover” in some kind of Christian organization? This one is an excerpt from Taibbi’s book The Great Derangement, which comes out later this year and which, if this is any indication, will be heavy on snark.

Which One is the Blackmail Psalm?

At the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem, you’ve got to really know your cantoring to be chosen to cantor, and the King Cantor there for the past 27 years has been Naftali Herstik. Apparently anyone chosen to guest-cantor has to get past Herstik, and singing phenomenon Israel Rand, chief cantor at the Great Synagogue of Ramat Gan in Tel Aviv, was never able to break through the screening process for the most prestigious synagogue job in the world, even though Rand had his own music school, performed for symphonies (as did Herstik), and cantored at two big temples in New York, the New York Synagogue and the Hampton Synagogue. Rand apparently became bitter three years ago when he lost both his New York jobs and was replaced, not by Herstik, but by Herstik’s son, Netanel. Then, according to court documents, Rand concocted a scheme to sexually blackmail the elder Herstik, hiring a female private detective to pose as a “musicology student” and lure Herstik to a hotel room, hoping to get compromising pictures he could send to the Great Synagogue board. Herstik almost fell for it. He did show up at the hotel room, but saw the cameras and fled. He was briefly suspended by his synagogue, then reinstated, and now he’s suing Rand, not just for the blackmail scheme, but because–this is where it gets really complicated–he thinks Rand was in league with the chairman and the vice chairman of the Great Synagogue, who want to force him into retirement. Their motive? They have an interest in Rand’s singing school and want to promote it. Guys, please, all I can say is, make a joyful noise, okay?

The overwhelming success of the Benedict XVI papal visit was a personal victory for New York Cardinal Edward M. Egan, who invested more personal capital into that event than the Chinese government has invested into the Beijing Olympics. Before he became pope, Joseph Ratzinger had been actively booed and heckled by New Yorkers, especially Jews, but the reception in April bordered on universal adulation, without even the suggestion of any serious protest. And don’t think the Pope didn’t know who to thank for the sea change. That guy riding next to him in the Popemobile was Egan. The two of them are soulmates. If there’s such a thing as a more doctrinaire hardass than Joseph Ratzinger, it’s Edward Egan. The good news is that Egan wants to retire now. He put the Pope in Yankee Stadium during the Yankees season. Now we’ll have to call it The House That the Other Ruth Built. How could he ever top that?

Let My People Bray

The “I Believe” license plate, with a cross and a stained glass window on it, is being proposed by Christians in the Florida legislature, and opposed by the state’s Civil Liberties Union, but what was lost in the media’s “culture wars” coverage is that this would be only one of about 100 specialty plates that are already in existence. Most of them say stuff like “Gators Rule” and “Army Proud” and “Choose Life” and other equally annoying statements of egotistical brand identification, the purpose of which is to gain an additional $25 a year in revenue for the state. I strongly endorse the efforts of Christians—specifically Faith in Teaching, Inc., of Orlando, which came up with the design and got Representative Edward Bullard to propose it—to advertise their heartfelt pharisaism on the rear ends of their ozone-depleting automobiles like every other Floridian.

Church-State Fusion

When a priest was elected president of Paraguay last month, he was technically not a priest. Fernando Lugo resigned from the priesthood as well as his bishopric to get around the constitutional ban on church officials running for the office that held by the original Latin American strongman, Alfredo Stroessner, for 35 years, and more recently has been passed down to the legatees of Stroessner’s Colorado Party. Lugo is the kind of ruler likely to instill fear into both the defeated Coloradans and the Pope. Even though the Vatican has refused to accept Lugo’s resignation, he’s the kind of Liberation Theologian that the current Pope crusaded against and cited for heresy all through the 1980s, along with his designated Latin American hitman, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo of Colombia. Lugo, instead of being recruited by the Vatican like Trujillo, lived for 11 years among the peasants of San Pedro, the poorest region in the poorest South American country. He speaks Guarani, the most common indigenous language of Paraguay. He keeps a picture of Che Guevara in his office. When he makes speeches, he’s fond of bringing a white dove with him, and releasing it into the air. And he wears open-toed sandals. Memo to the State Department: don’t send Dick Cheney to any meetings with this guy.

Now We’re Leaking Faith Documents?

The Associated Press was reporting over the weekend that “conservative Christian leaders” will release a “manifesto” (strange choice of words for a faith document) on Wednesday that amounts to a mea culpa for getting too involved in culture-war politics. Somebody leaked a draft of it to the AP writers, who were sufficiently impressed by its source and called the document “starkly self-critical.” The best line in the draft: “Faith loses its independence when Christians become ‘useful idiots’ for one political party or another, and the Christian faith becomes an ideology.” Supposedly 80 evangelicals signed it, but a few quick phone calls revealed that the high-profile ones did not. Don’t look for Dobson or Land on the press release that will be handed out in Washington on the day after we know how much damage to Obama’s campaign was caused by press coverage of a liberal Christian leader. What am I missing here?

Chuck Norris is living in northeastern New Mexico and claiming to be the Messiah and, according to state officials, has been having sex with his followers who know him as Michael Travesser. Not really. That’s Wayne Bent, 66, pastor of Lord Our Righteousness Church of Strong City, New Mexico, anointed as Messiah in the year 2000, seen here in Delta Force 2—sorry, I mean, in his picture on the church web site, which, by the way, is one of the more entertaining Whack Job Prophecy sites I’ve ever come across.

Yearning For Sanity Ranch

Now that we know the raid on the Yearning For Zion Ranch near Eldorado, Texas, was caused by a false allegation made by a person who lied about who she was and what she knew, aren’t there civil liberties protections that should kick in for members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints whose families have been torn apart? At the very least, if they want to do further criminal investigations, the children should be returned to their parents until charges are filed. It seems incredible that anyone should have to make this point, but the police are not allowed to seize 436 people without charges in order to make a case against one parent who, it turns out, is probably falsely accused. And the taking of DNA samples used to be dependent on a person’s consent. Apparently that protection has also flown out the window in this case of excessive Old West justice, even by West Texas standards. It doesn’t help that officials of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services continue to make inflammatory claims such as “evidence of abuse” without producing a shred of evidence or submitting the findings to a court. Why aren’t more people bothered by the lack of judicial review? A court is the only place where the state would have to prove its right to snatch children and teenagers. A great deal is being made out of the issue of underage pregnancy, even though underage pregnancy has not been, up till now, grounds for removing a girl from her family. Pretty soon now, if we don’t adjudicate this, someone is going to start using the phrase “McMartin Day Care,” and that someone is likely to be me.

And God Created Brigitte

More evidence that we’ll never figure out the French: on June 3rd, Brigitte Bardot is expected to be found guilty for the fifth time of inciting racial hatred against Muslims, which is a crime in France. Things that we would just call nutty protected speech France gets all legalistic about, even though this is the same country that doesn’t think Christians (or any other religion) should be allowed to proselytize in the public square. Brigitte’s latest offense is a letter she sent to President Sarkozy accusing the Muslims of destroying France. We can’t let that kind of thing go unpunished or this headstrong 73-year-old might start dancing barefoot in the basement of a jazz club like she did in And God Created Woman. Does anyone think it’s ironic that the French feel the need to punish people for being rude and insulting?

Mumbledymouth Jesus

The Passion of the Christ, you may recall, was performed in Latin and Hebrew, but mainly in Aramaic, because Jesus and the disciples spoke Aramaic and those were the three languages spoken in Israel at the time of Christ. Since the town of Malula in Syria is one of the last remaining Aramaic-speaking enclaves anywhere in the world, the movie was shown there recently—and nobody could understand it! Partly this is because there were so many different dialects used in the movie, but mostly it was just because the pronunciation of the actors sucked.

He Should Have Made It Clear That He Intended to Shoot Non-Russians

This doesn’t make a lick of sense. Phillip H. Miles, pastor of Christ Community Church in Conway, South Carolina, is doing three years in a Moscow prison for bringing a single box of ammo for a deer rifle into Russia. It was a gift for a fellow pastor in Perm, in the Ural Mountains, where hunting is not only common but you can pretty much shoot anything, up to and including Chechens and Jews.

Who can resist Richard Dawkins in his underwear, rapping about atheism? Certainly not me.

That’s What I Call a Wedding

Just when you think the Chinese have become irredeemably hard-hearted about religion, they surprise you. The Ohel Rachel synagogue in Shanghai celebrated its first wedding in 60 years last month after intense negotiations between the government and Pan Guang, dean of the Center of Jewish Studies in that city. Even though Judaism is not recognized as a legal religion in China, the opening of trade, especially in Shanghai, has resulted in several thousand Jews being “stranded” there without any way to worship except in homes. As recently as 2004, Ohel Rachel was on the list of the 100 most endangered sites in the world, and it only survived at all after 1949 because it was useful for storage and as an auditorium. It’s still not clear whether the government will allow actual services there, but I like the Hebrew sign that Associated Press reporter Cara Anna found inside, one of the few vestiges of the original decoration still in place. “Be aware,” the sign reads, “in front of whom you’re standing.” If I were a Communist bureaucrat, that would scare the crap out of me.

Yes, It’s the First Televangelist Thriller!

Sometimes the news release is so good, I can’t really improve on it. From the official description of the new Christian thriller Forsaken by James David Jordan: “A unique love story wrapped in an action thriller, Forsaken is the first of a two-book series featuring Taylor Pasbury, a beautiful but troubled former Secret Service agent hired by the world’s most famous televangelist after he receives terrorist threats. Even as a high school kid, Taylor Pasbury knew that she was not like most other girls. Raised by a father who was a retired Special Forces officer, she grew up knowing how to camp, fish, shoot, and most of all, take care of herself. As a young adult she opens her own security agency following a controversial stint as the nation’s most celebrated Secret Service agent. When Simon Mason, the best known Christian on the planet, receives threats from Muslim terrorists, he hires Taylor to take charge of his security. Though Taylor is thrilled to receive the high-profile assignment, she has no idea that Simon already knows more about her than she could possibly imagine. Before Taylor’s first day on the job is over, the terrorists strike, making a nightmarish demand that requires Simon to choose between the two most important things in his life. Drawing on all of her hard-knock toughness and training, Taylor must face deadly extremists and a dark past as she fights to save Simon and his daughter. Along the way, she discovers that she is not the only one who has done things she would like to forget—and she is not the only one who understands that some things are more important than living.” I’ll bet the sex scenes are amazing.

Philatelist Licked

Our church-treasurer- of-the-week is Derek Klein, who embezzled $140,000 from St. Peter’s Church in Ridlington and St. Andrew’s Church in Bacton, both in Norfolk, England, then spent the money on gambling and—this is a new one for us—stamp collecting. He has a stamp collection weighing three tons that was seized by Judge Peter Jacobs of Norwich Crown Court during the 16 months Klein was serving in prison. Now that he’s free, he claims he can pay back all the money by selling his stamp collection—which includes a first day cover marking the silver jubilee of George V—in lots on Ebay. At first Judge Jacobs was skeptical and wanted to just seize the whole collection, especially since Klein had proven himself to be a liar of remarkable agility, but then he decided to give the guy five months to try, warning him that if he attempts to hide any of the proceeds, he’ll return to the pokey for a long long time. We ask again: what is it about church treasury money that proves so irresistible to nerds?

Pity the Animals

If we can believe our colleagues at the Moriel Ministries, the Justice Department was scrambling around prior to the Pope’s visit to make sure the pontiff didn’t get served with any legal summonses while he was here. (He has diplomatic immunity as a head of state.) Obviously there are a lot of victims of abuse who would like to haul his holy ass into court. Oh wait, you probably think we’re talking about the church scandals of the past six years. We were talking about the documentation proving “that no fewer than three popes knew of both widespread pedophilia and sex with animals by members of its clergy as early as 1960, and allowed it to continue, instructing the Roman Catholic hierarchy to protect sex criminal nuns and priests.” How do we get on these press-release lists in the first place? Actually this sounds like one for PETA.

An entire website devoted to fending off the Grassley Six subpoenas from the Senate Finance Committee? Who else but Kenneth Copeland himself could be behind Believers Stand United, which presents itself as a bastion of First Amendment principle in the face of a government assault on religious freedom? This thing is gonna be fun. The site is so slick you can style your hair with it, and the blog is written by Doug Wead, the official White House Pentecostal for both Bushes until he was asked to leave because he made secret recordings of his conversations with Bush fils. He’s sneaky, and we like that, because we are, too.

Now Who’s Being Bombastic?

Apparently Barack Obama didn’t hear the same speeches by Jeremiah Wright Jr. that I heard over the weekend. Campaigning in North Carolina, he called them “divisive and destructive,” said he was “outraged” and “saddened” by Wright’s “spectacle,” said he heard “a bunch of rants that aren’t grounded in truth,” and seemed especially upset by Wright’s comment that politicians will say anything, and will even disguise their real views, in order to get elected. This is such a commonplace idea about politicians that probably 99 percent of the public agrees with it, so Obama seemed to be saying he’s the only politician who does not hedge his bets. In other words, Wright is being thrown overboard, as he continues to be pummeled by the media for daring to defend himself. But he explained at the outset why he’s doing it: “Because on November 5th, no matter who wins the election, I’ll still be a pastor, and on January 22nd, no matter who becomes president, I’ll still be a pastor.” If the media is so outraged, why don’t they turn off his microphone? They could, you know. But they can’t, because the public wouldn’t have it.

Burn a Little Incense for Sister Krister

Krister Stendahl, who died on income tax day, was just about the most liberal theologian who ever lived, past or present. If it weren’t so unChristian to do so, Paige Patterson would be dancing up and down the steps of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in the knowledge that Stendahl is now safely in hell. As dean of the Harvard Divinity School in the sixties and seventies, and as one of the high brahmins in the World Council of Churches, this guy was so ecumenical that he probably would have found a place for Transgendered Ethical Satanists at that giant dinner table where God welcomes all his chosen (whoops! nobody is “chosen” anymore) people (whoops! “people” would leave out the animals and plants)—all his indiscriminately worthy-from-birth nature beings. Technically Stendahl was a Lutheran, but he was a Swedish Lutheran, which is like saying you’re an agnostic Unitarian. One of his principal achievements in life, in fact, was the disestablishment of the national Church of Sweden. At Harvard he was in favor of all the things you would expect—ordination of gays, non-gender-specific language in the scriptures, multiculturalism, feminism to the point of being called “Sister Krister” by his students, openness to the idea of intelligence on other planets, skepticism about the Catholic belief in resurrection of the body—and his scholarship was centered around creating a kinder, gentler Saint Paul. I hope they said a Viking prayer for him back in Stockholm. I guess an actual funeral pyre would be too much to hope for.

Nobody Is Listening

If the Dalai Lama is so non-violent, why isn’t the Tibetan resistance assuming a Gandhi-like aspect? In fact the opposite is occurring, with rabblerousers on both sides trying to spin history, stifle speech and, of course, disrupt the torch relay. (Edward Rothstein recently pointed out, by the way, that the torch relay began in 1936 at the behest of Leni Riefenstahl, the official Nazi film historian, as a way to establish a connection between ancient Athens and modern Germany for her 1938 film Olympia. Apparently China is comfortable with that tradition.) It seems like the sort of classic disconnect that leads to war. On one side China doesn’t understand that a little autonomy would probably satisfy everyone. Instead, their constant vilification of Tibetan motives is reaching into the very corporate boardrooms that they need if they’re going to maintain credibility this summer. On the other hand, supporters of the Lama think he’s a political leader (he’s not) who wants to lead a revolution (he doesn’t). I don’t think anybody realized how serious the Tibetophiles were until they showed off their recently acquired rappelling skills at the Golden Gate Bridge, apparently part of a coordinated strategy that’s been more than a year in the planning stages. If this goes much farther, we’ll be studying it in university classes as “the early causes of the Tibetan war.” That would be the one where the Tibetans get squashed like gnats. Europe continues to be much more aggressive than the U.S., with everybody now vowing to avoid the opening ceremonies, much to the disgust of teenaged children of dignitaries around the world.

After being defeated but claiming victory anyway in his anemic two-year boycott of Ford, Donny Wildmon of Tupelo is now leading his American Family Association into a new crusade against Marriott hotels, hoping he can pressure the Mormon board into eliminating pay-per-view adult movies from its 3,000 properties in 68 countries. Good luck, Donny. The Mormons have never had any problem with other people’s sin, they were the original Las Vegas land barons.

Would It Be a Hate Crime to Shoot This Guy?

Of all the people who make their living by being Biblically-based crackpots for the media, the Reverend Ted Pike of Clackamas, Oregon, occupies a special place as the proponent of the idea that the government is trying to make Christianity a hate crime. (Yes, that’s what I said.) He’s been riding this holy horse for about four years now, and here’s how the argument goes: The “evil Jews” who run the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Brith have succeeded in getting anti-Semitism classified as a hate crime in 45 states and have tried four times to get federal hate-crimes laws passed. (Pike takes credit for defeating them all four times.) As a result, any Christian who believes Christ was crucified by Jews can be imprisoned for stating that belief. In fact, according to a recent report by the “Office of Global Anti-Semitism” of the U.S. State Department, saying Jews are responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus is “classical anti-Semitism” (which has been defined by the courts as a crime), which means the U.S. government is trying to make being Christian a crime. There are so many things wrong with this idea—the basis of Pike’s books, videos, website, radio shows, and God only knows what other money-making ventures—that I think it’s hardly necessary to point them all out, but I’ll just note that there is no “Office of Global Anti-Semitism.” What Pike is referring to is a report on anti-semitism around the world that was requested by Congress and for which the State Department has a special envoy, also required by Congress. The envoy is solely concerned with anti-semitism in other countries! Why? Because we have Jewish Americans traveling abroad! I should also note that all hate-crimes laws involve the commission of an actual crime, not just saying “I hate you.” Even if Pike’s fairy tale were true, and stating that Jews killed Jesus was considered anti-semitic, you would need to be stabbing the person you were speaking to before it would become a crime. Finally, the current special envoy, Gregg Rickman, was appointed by Condoleezza Rice at the behest of that Jesus freak, George Bush.

Robin Hood Had Cooler Threads, Too

Catholic priest Robert Ascolese, better known as “Father Bob,” was rigging the fund-raising raffles at St. Joseph’s Church in Washington, New Jersey, so that all the “winners” were always out-of-towners like “Ezekiel Fleming” and “Arlene Bishop” and eventually a cool million dollars was embezzled from the scam. His parishioners are all defending him, though, because he was not enriching himself, but putting the money back into the church and school, like Robin Hood. The problem is, the tickets in his “Powerball” raffles went for a hundred bucks each. Now somebody might donate twenty bucks at a time to the church and the school, but the number of Ben Franklins you’re willing to peel off to support the church is probably enhanced quite a bit by the knowledge that you could possibly win some five-figure jackpots if you’re lucky. The Warren County prosecutor is inclined to be lenient with Father Bob, who is not remorseful at all. A local TV reporter reminded him of the commandment “Thou shalt not steal.” Father Bob shot back, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone!” Yeah, Bob, okay, I think Jesus is supposed to decide when to say that.

Jews Too Hip To Be Jewish?

I’ve never understood Kabbalah, and after reading Daphne Merkin’s 18-month odyssey through the intricacies of the new Madonna-approved version as taught at the Kabbalah Center in Los Angeles, I still don’t. But I did learn a few things, like the fact that the American movement was started by Philip and Karen Berg of Queens in the early nineties, that they deny any association with Judaism even though they have private meetings to parse ancient rabbinical texts, that they teach a form of prosperity gospel in the sense that they try to get members to constantly “give till it hurts,” that they don’t reveal how much money they take in or what they do with it, that there is an inner circle of initiates (about 200 people) who make most of the rules, that Madonna is indeed their number-one benefactor, that they believe in reincarnation and astrology, and that they probably have very little relation to the followers of the ancient Zohar, their master text. Madonna’s teacher, by the way, is Eitan Yardeni, the spiritual director of the London Kabbalah Center, whose previous career was teaching Israeli airmen how to launch Hawk missiles. “We’re much bigger than Jewish,” he told Merkin. “We’re here to touch souls all over the world, to give people universal tools to access the practical.” Okay, well, stop firing those Hawk missiles, that’s not a universal tool, is it?

When a tourist organization announced plans for the Alabama Wine Trail, connoisseurs all over the world started making reservations, because who can resist a fruity Tuscaloosa muscadine or a Rosa Parks Merlot, with that hint of Greyhound seat-cover aroma? Actually there are only eight wineries in Alabama, but that’s eight too many for the Baptist churches, who vow to fight the Wine Trail and defend the Bible, which states clearly that Jesus turned water into Welch’s Grape Juice, and that stuff he drank at the Last Supper was Grape Nehi. All of this drama is taking place, by the way, in northern Alabama, the setting of that great southern classic The Klansman, starring O.J. Simpson as the black liberation terrorist who takes Richard Burton and Lola Falana hostage (in a white Bronco!), much to the consternation of corrupt sheriff Lee Marvin and local Klan leader Cameron Mitchell, who think Richard Burton is too liberal and so he probably helped O.J. escape, even though Burton is supposedly fifth-generation northern Alabama gentry. Burton made the movie toward the end of his career, when the errors of his youth were starting to take a toll on his face and his ability to enunciate, but one thing is very clear from this performance, the only time Burton worked in northern Alabama: he would be in favor of the Wine Trail.

Satan Is One Thing, But Really

People with way too much time on their hands are alarmed that “under God” might be removed from the Pledge of Allegiance, thanks to the exertions of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (chief agent of Satan: Michael Newdow). Fortunately we have the American Center for Law & Justice (chief agent of godliness: Jay Sekulow), which is determined to out-lawyer the infidel opposition. These are the same people who spend years of their lives fighting the completely insane battle to restore school prayer. After at least six months of trying, they have about 7,600 names on their Internet petition to support the Committee to Protect “Under God.,” which is about 220,000 less than the number of names on the petition to stop Uwe Boll from making any more films.

Even Oprah Will Probably Take a Pass

All together now:
Thank God I was raped!
Thank God I have cancer!
Thank God my family was dysfunctional!
Thank God I have an eating disorder!
Thank God my child died!
Thank God my husband was an alcoholic!
Yes, these are real titles of real chapters in a real book, compiled by the annoyingly self-important John Castagnini—the first sentence on his homepage biography compares him to Leonardo da Vinci-- for what he’s certain will be the next best-seller, Thank God I, which he compares to Chicken Soup for the Soul. (I think not.) He even envisions Thank God I as not just one but a series of books, as “thousands of writers will reveal gut-wrenching accounts of how they transformed perceived crisis into blessings.” The only ones he names in his press release, however, are John Demartini, one of the “experts” in The Secret, and Janet Atwood, author of a book called The Passion Test. (Don’t ask.) The beauty of this concept is that, whereas most self-help get-rich schemes eventually peter out when after a period of time, the person doesn’t get help and doesn’t get rich, this one can be reinvigorated forever, because the opportunity to get rich and healthy is embedded in cancer, rape, death and drunkenness! Yes, you ended up in the gutter! Now you can thank God for that opportunity and blessing! The apostle Paul had an inkling that this would turn up when he wrote, “Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?” To which Castagnini and all other New Agers of his ilk say, “Yes, yes we should!” To which Paul said, “God forbid.”

Wow

Is there something we don’t understand about being a church bookkeeper? Here’s the latest case of embezzlement of mind-boggling proportions: Cheryl Lean Granger is accused of taking $320,000 out of the till of Newport Harbor Lutheran Church in Newport Beach, California, over a four-year period by simply writing checks (170 of them!) to her husband, a professor at the University of California-Irvine. Once they had enough money, the couple moved to New Hampshire, where she was eventually run to ground by the Orange County District Attorney’s office, working with John Embree, pastor of the 200-member congregation. This is about the 19th case like this so far this year. Churches have a worse track record in this area than casinos!

Ike and Tina Turn— … uh … I mean, Thomas Weeks and Juanita Bynum, the love/hate evangelist couple out of Atlanta, have both been ratcheting up the “ewwwww” factor as Bynum appeared on Divorce Court yesterday and Weeks returned to the pulpit and pimped his book, What Love Taught Me, which reportedly has details of her drinking and drug use. The couple were married in 2002 in one of the most lavish televised weddings since Princess Di’s, but have been lashing out at each other, then forgiving each other, ever since Weeks beat her up in a hotel parking lot last August. Divorce Court Judge Lynn Toler admitted she hadn’t heard of Bynum until producers, seeking ratings gold, suggested her as a guest on the show. They tried to get Weeks as well, but he declined, and added a few vague threats through his lawyer. Despite previous reports that she was on the verge of forgiving him again and seeking reconciliation, the former flight attendant and hairdresser told Toler the marriage is “done.” The Maury Povich Moment came when Bynum described her decision to leave: “I said to myself, ‘I love him, but I love me more.’” I think that’s just the way Jesus wrote it down, too.

Copeland Continues to Beg IRS for Briar Patch

The Grassley Six televangelists keep making this distinction between a) turning over documents to the Senate Finance Committee, as requested, and b) turning information over to the Internal Revenue Service instead. In several speeches, they’ve made the point that the IRS does have the right to audit them but that Congress does not, because of “our First Amendment rights,” in the words of John Copeland of Kenneth Copeland Ministries. I can’t imagine why anyone would go around daring the IRS to do an audit—has anyone noticed the dogged determination of, for example, the IRS agent who went after Barry Bonds?—but the distinction is specious anyway, because the Senate Finance Committee has oversight of the IRS. That’s their job, to check up on the IRS and make sure everyone who should be audited is being audited. Of the six ministries, it’s only Copeland and Creflo Dollar who have refused to cooperate. (Copeland answered 17 of 42 questions. Dollar answered zero.) Dollar was howling last week about “rendering unto Caesar” and suggesting that Grassley is on a witch hunt against “Word Faith” teaching, better known as prosperity gospel, better known as “Jesus wants us all to be rich.” The more likely reason Copeland Ministries doesn’t want to cooperate is that they believe an IRS audit will be secret—unlike anything they send to Congress—so they alerted the media on April 7th as they marched to the downtown Dallas federal courthouse, home of the IRS regional office, carrying a letter requesting an audit. (They apparently trust the IRS more than they trust the United States Postal Service.) Even the Dallas Morning News, not known for its consumer activism, said that enough is enough, and that Grassley should “lean even harder” on the ministries that resist.

Ben Stein Gets a B-Plus

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, the Ben Stein documentary on the Intelligent Design movement and the Darwinists who supposedly don’t play fair, grossed $3.2 million on 1,052 screens its opening weekend. Compared to a Hollywood blockbuster, this is nothing. Compared to a Michael Moore documentary, it’s respectable. Compared to a heavily promoted documentary like March of the Penguins, it sucks. Compared to what they spent on it, it’s a home run. That’s because Ben Stein, among many other things, is an economist and an investment advisor.

Communion Will Be Delayed in Southern Brazil

A Catholic priest attempting to set the world record for the longest party-balloon flight so he could make money to be used for a spiritual truck stop was missing off the southern coast of Brazil less than a day after taking off, even though his party balloons were found by rescuers, who assumed the priest would be able to stay alive because he was a trained survivalist with a GPS tracking device and a “buoyant chair.” Now. If you read that opening sentence again, you may understand why three people had to send this item to me before I stopped mistaking it for either a) a belated April Fool’s submission, b) a parody of Liberation Theology written by one of our satirists, or c) a fake email from any of the 30 or so people who just like to mess with me. It is, in fact, true. The Reverend Adelir Antonio di Carli had already done this once before, on January 13th, when he party-ballooned for four hours at 17,000 feet, but this time he wanted to go for 19 hours at 20,000 feet so that he could raise money for a “spiritual rest stop for truckers” in Paranagua, Brazil’s largest grain port. I’m not sure how extreme-sport party-ballooning translates into reals for church projects, but let’s hope the padre is okay because whatever priest might have to officiate at his funeral would be constantly flashing on the “Chuckles the Clown” episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

“Oh, what gallant men did we lose
Who never came back to get their shoes!”

Unfortunately, that’s only one of the groaning couplets in the children’s book called The Little Chapel That Stood, on sale even as we speak in the gift shop of St. Paul’s Chapel in Lower Manhattan. Yes, the Anglican church where George Washington once worshiped, and where Alexander Hamilton is buried, has joined the market for schlocky Ground Zero tourist souvenirs, of which this may be the worst, if for no other reason than they’re selling it in a city of writers. My favorite passage—and I promise this will be the last—runs as follows:

“But doom, doom was coming all the time;
Doom, doom, to a city fair and fine;
Doom, doom, was in the planes that climbed;
Doom, doom, and then the sirens whined.”

Okay, I’ll stop.

We Stop for Accidents

While reporting on the maniacal Internet ravings of Tom Cruise, we were directing people to the wrong Cruise parody. (Gawker.com, by the way, which has the original Cruise video, is still being threatened by Scientology lawyers.) The winner of the Cruise Scientology Parody Sweepstakes is a Dallas actor named Miles Fisher who either made himself look exactly like Cruise, or who does look exactly like Cruise, and Defamer.com has the entire outtake of the version he did for Superhero Movie. Fisher’s father, by the way, is the president of the Dallas Federal Reserve. That could have the Conspiracy Department at Scientology headquarters working overtime for weeks.

Episcopalians Gone Wild

We just can’t get enough of those wacky Episcopalians. The latest diocese to go up in flames is Pennsylvania, where Bishop Charles Bennison already had to deal with one of his priests turning into a Druid and then realizing the error of his ways—at Stonehenge perhaps?—and coming back to the Anglican communion. (Yes, we occasionally make things up, but that one is true.) Now they’re ready to lynch Bennison himself because 35 years ago he kept silent while his brother, a youth minister, carried on an affair with a 14-year-old girl in their California church. Meanwhile, bad news for the Archbishop of Canterbury from George Washington’s church in Virginia: the first group of Anglican churches to break away and join up with the Nigerians— because they disagree with the American ordination of a homosexual bishop in New Hampshire in 2003—got a favorable ruling from Fairfax County Circuit Judge Randy Bellows, indicating the breakaways are going to have a fair claim on taking all the buildings and property with them. They should really move now to commission an HBO reality series.

I Got Your Jesus Right Here, Dude

Ho hum, another Catholic art debate, this time in Vienna, where the Cathedral Museum across the street from venerable St. Stephan’s Cathedral sponsored an exhibition by Alfred Hrdlicka, the most revered artist in Austria. Hrdlicka, an avowed atheist, played some games with the Last Supper, doing a homosexual version of Leonardo’s famous painting, and offered up some crucifixion images that were less than orthodox, like the one in which a Roman soldier simultaneously beats Christ and squeezes his genitals. The excited media is calling this Catholicism’s version of the Muhammad cartoons controversy, but there are a couple of major differences. One is that nobody will riot or die as a result of this one. The second is that, if the same museum were to sponsor a piece of art showing someone squeezing Muhammad’s genitals, every government in the European Union would probably intervene to stop it. Islam, which sometimes tries to be fearsome, is fearsome these days. Catholicism, which was fearsome 600 years ago, is not.

Christian vegetarians—this is already funny, isn’t it?—Christian vegetarians are invoking scripture to prove that no one can believe in Christ and eat meat. The Garden of Eden was vegetarian, Isaiah said the new Israel would be vegetarian, but most importantly, “Jesus’ message is one of love and compassion, yet there is nothing loving or compassionate about factory farms and slaughterhouses, where billions of animals live miserable lives and die violent, bloody deaths”—all this so that we can “indulge our acquired taste for their flesh.” Of course, there’s that little problem of the Passover meal, which is lamb, and the fact that the Last Supper itself was a Passover meal, and then there’s the fact of the Temple sacrifices, which involved the “violent, bloody deaths” of quite a few rams, bullocks, goats and sheep. (They have answers for my objections on their website, including the contention that “there were many vegetarian Jews in Jesus’ day” and, as for animal sacrifice, “people today are not in a similar situation.” Obviously they’ve had quite a few arguments with observant Christians and Jews, since their FAQ is groaning under the weight of a thousand ripostes.) I would also point out that for the last 30 years the death of a cow in a slaughterhouse hasn’t been very violent or bloody—the executioner uses a staple-gun device that shoots a bolt into the base of the brain so that death is instantaneous because, among other things, that reduces adrenaline, which is not good for the meat. And just as a practical matter, many of us will give up many things for Jesus, but we won’t give up Whataburger. (For those of you living in states that don’t have Whataburger, you might as well become vegetarians anyway.)

These UCC Guys Are Hard to Figure Out

I’ve taken a couple of previous cracks at trying to figure out what the theological bottom line is for the United Church of Christ, the Cleveland-based denomination recently thrust into the limelight because of its largest congregation, Trinity United Church of Christ of Chicago, and its recently retired pastor Jeremiah Wright. Their lineage goes back to the Puritans, New England Congregationalism, both Great Awakenings, immigrant churches which were very anti-Catholic, various Civil War movements including abolitionism, and the Japanese Christians persecuted in the World War II internment camps, but when they defend themselves, they don’t call on these traditions very often, and they especially soft-pedal the Puritan angle. They’re more likely to tell you about “black liberation theology” as espoused in the 1970s by James H. Cone at Union Theological Seminary, or some sort of watered-down modern social gospel. But I’m such an outsider I still don’t know why the entire black clergy has taken such offense at the criticism of Wright—they’re still sneering from the pulpits about his “persecution”—and so sometimes I overlook the obvious. Maybe this is just one of those late-19th-century conglomerations of liberal theology that somehow survived Karl Barth and is kept barely alive by attaching itself to various social causes. The only reason I’m thinking this way is that I received this report, via email, from a recent graduate of an East Coast seminary who wishes to remain anonymous:

“In our school we referred to the UCC as ‘Unitarians Considering Christ.’ From what I could see the primary criteria to become a minister was to find a church that would support you and then find a church that would hire you. A number of students who were deemed ‘unordainable’ by other denominations would look for a field placement with a UCC church in the hopes that the church would eventually sponsor them for ordination. I met a few people who were truly gifted and denied ordination on the basis of their sexual orientation. They still felt called to ministry so they would often find a home with either UCC or MCC (Metropolitan Community Church). But most of the people who went this route have no business working with people, let alone preaching from the pulpit. In fact, the UCC won't even intervene when common sense dictates that an intervention is necessary. For example, a very disturbed woman on my dorm floor was being sponsored for ordination by her field placement (who was going to hire her). A number of us tried to intervene but were unsuccessful. This is a woman who would fake illnesses to get attention, not a personality trait you can have in someone who is going to be in charge of the spiritual health of others. The last I heard, her church imploded, she was fired and in an in-patient psych ward—that was about 10 years ago. So for the UCC headquarters to defend any UCC clergy member makes no sense.”

And that’s the other question I’ve had. Does the UCC believe in Baptist-style local church autonomy? If so, they should shut up about other Christians who criticize Wright.

It’s Pronounced “Gawd”

The Harvard University students who are bitching about the occasional Muslim call to prayer on campus and the segregation of sexes in the school gym to accommodate observant women are suggesting that the school should be secularized after the French model. To them I ask the questions: Was John Harvard or was he not an observant minister? Did not the nine graduates in the class of 1640 all become preachers of the gospel? Did the university not have as its original purpose the training of pastors? John Harvard would also be opposed to accommodating Muslims on campus, but rather less so than this shallow generation.

Don’t Tell Bob Larson

Sculptress Ariel Safdie says she created her Flying Spaghetti Monster deity and pressed the officials of Cumberland County, Tennessee, to allow her to put it up on the courthouse square to make a point about all those Ten Commandments controversies. We hear two cults are forming already—one to worship the monster, and one to cast out the demons in the monster-worshippers.

Highlights from the Pope’s visit:

When he arrived at Andrews Air Force Base, he said he recognized Jenna Bush from the YouTube video on underage drinking.

By Wednesday morning he was so impressed by the “cool secular vibe” on the White House South Lawn that he asked if he could drive the Popemobile to an area strip club that night for his 81st birthday.

In a speech to American bishops, he said condoms were okay but no “party packs.”

In a private meeting, the Pope and the President discussed the Palestinian situation and decided to “let ‘em just fight it out.”

At an evening prayer service at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the Pope addressed the American sex abuse scandal among priests and bishops, saying that he could understand how the first 3,000 cases happened but really, people, “we should have noticed after that.”

After his first full day in the country, the Pope said the only American celebrity he really wanted to meet was Kathie Lee Gifford.

There were still some of those victims of pedophile priests hanging around on Thursday, so he laid hands on them. Not really.

The Pope’s speech to the presidents of Catholic colleges and universities brought out the only truly angry moment of the week when he seemed to sum up the woes of Catholic education, thundering, “How does Notre Dame go three and nine?”

Arriving in New York on Friday, the Pope finally changed some Euros into dollars because he knew people would expect tips.

Some Muslim school children were gathered along the parade route, so to reassure them that he doesn’t hate Islam, he asked them to spell “neocatechumenal” and then passed out free Doritos in the shape of his hat.

He expressed regret that he didn’t have time to run by the Church of the Ascension on the Upper West Side so he could hang with the laypeople running the gay and lesbian ministry and then close the sucker down.

Before flying home Sunday night, the Pope had 200 boxes of Krispy Kremes packed into a special container filled with dry ice and loaded by an Alitalia ground crew into a temperature-controlled compartment of the Popejet. You can’t get those in Rome.

Waterboarding Tastes Like Chicken

The Door is 100 percent opposed to waterboarding. We tried it one Sunday afternoon when we were bored, and Ole Anthony was the only guy who enjoyed the sensation of his own drowning. But we don’t understand all these students and professors at Boston College who invoke the tradition of the Jesuits as they try to get Attorney General Michael Mukasey disinvited as this year’s commencement speaker because he made some mealy-mouthed statements about possibly supporting waterboarding if he understood it correctly. If waterboarding is anti-Catholic, then quite a few Popes have some serious explaining to do in the afterlife. To be perfectly honest, we didn’t even know Boston College was Catholic, but we should have, because it was BC quarterback Doug Flutie who, on November 23, 1984, threw the ultimate Hail Mary pass.

Armenians Get Medieval on a Lone Greek Dropping In at the Tomb

Just when we thought the holiday season was going to pass without any fisticuffs between Armenians and Greeks at the Jerusalem holy sites, a riot of palm-frond-pummeling broke out over the weekend, with the Armenians claiming that a Greek priest invaded their turf just as they were entering the tomb of Christ for Orthodox Palm Sunday, so they had to dogpile him, push him to the ground, kick him, and then hold off police with their fronds. As previously reported, we’ve had inter-denominational smackdowns at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher every year since 2002, when the Greeks told the Armenians they couldn’t come into the tomb for the “sacred fire” miracle at Easter, even though the original 1852 agreement giving Greeks control of the tomb on that day had been relaxed through custom. This year the sacred fire was removed without incident, mainly because the Jerusalem Police showed up in force and made it clear that anybody roughhousing in a cassock would be arrested and the whole ceremony closed to the public. The police must have let down their guard a little bit, thinking the worst was over, and that’s when the lone wolf Greek priest—was he one man acting alone, or was it a conspiracy by Theofilos III, Greek Orthodox Patriarch in the Holy Land?—entered the Edicule, or tomb area, at the time guaranteed to annoy the aggressive Armenian clergy, who reacted with Old Testament wrath, generously applied.

Turkey Is Bipolar

One day the Turks are fighting over the right of Muslim women to wear the head scarf, the next the Supreme Court is hearing cases that would ban the ruling party forever because it’s “not secular enough.” So here’s an interesting question for the European Union: You told Turkey to get rid of its Islamic-influenced laws if they expect EU membership—what would you tell them if they make it illegal for anyone who believes in God to hold office? That position might be a little much even for Robespierre.

When they raided the West Texas retreat of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, wasn’t it more than a little strange that the buses used to remove more than 400 children living there were owned by the First Baptist Church of Eldorado, Texas? That’s a good way to start a mass police action orchestrated by the state ranked 47th in the nation in child-welfare spending: put children who have never been exposed to the outside world in buses marked with the names of their historical oppressors. There were obviously no Baptists stepping up to support the supposedly bedrock principle of the absolute autonomy of the local church. They obviously believe that there are situations when it’s perfectly proper for state authorities to stop what the church is doing, and one of those situations is polygamy, and another is arranged marriages of under-age girls. Warren Jeffs, leader of the sect, currently awaiting trial in Kingman, Arizona, is not doing anything that the Mormon leaders of the 19th century didn’t do, and those leaders are now regarded as saints because they were persecuted by a) police, and b) other churches. Ironic? If so, the irony went unnoticed by the swarming hordes of law enforcement officials who have yet to explain why they took so many people out of the compound: are they claiming that all 416 were being abused, that it was a virtual white slavery operation? If you get a report of abuse at Fort Hood, you don’t evacuate 30,000 people on the grounds that they all live at the same place. You do an investigation and you limit your extractions to the single housing unit involved. The cops ratcheted up the tension from the very first day, when they told the media “We’re preparing for the worst” after church leaders tried to discourage them from entering the church sanctuary. And yet all indications were that everyone was peaceful. What were they implying when they said they were guarding against a “Jonestown-type situation”? Whatever it was, I don’t think it’s in the police manual under “defusing the situation.” Meanwhile, they’ve established a refugee camp in San Angelo where you would assume that state welfare workers would show their long-standing preference for keeping children with their mothers and not handing them over to the thousands who are already asking if they can adopt. But you would assume wrong—as soon as the mothers started complaining about the treatment of their children, the mothers were kicked out and their cell phones were confiscated (so they couldn’t communicate with their children), then 27 of the teenage boys were shipped 400 miles to Cal Farley’s Boys Ranch, which is a reform school for troubled kids, even though there was no sign of these boys being troubled. There was even some trickery involved, according to one of the women who gave an interview to The Deseret News: the child welfare officials told the women “It’ll just be a few minutes, then you can come back,” as they separated the children from the moms. Then “when the door shut, oh, probably 50 policemen came out from behind and stood there all around us. And a lady read a court order and said: ‘You are to leave this building. Your children are ours.’ I said, ‘Can’t I even tell them goodbye?’” And, of course, the answer was, No, you can’t. Wouldn’t most child psychologists agree that going to the home of very sheltered children, snatching them away from their parents, loading them onto buses, and taking them to the place they’ve been warned about their entire lives (“the outside world”) is going to do more harm than good? More importantly, whatever happened to the presumption of innocence? One way to avoid having problems like “how to accommodate 350 lawyers at a single hearing” is to not arrest an entire village. Where’s the ACLU? Surely someone will come to the defense of people who have no advocates.

The Aga Khan Goes for the Lamborghini of Divorce Lawyers

Fiona Shackleton, the divorce lawyer who did such a good job for Paul McCartney that Heather Mills poured a pitcher of water over her head, has an even bigger client than the former Beatle—the Aga Khan, a man so rich he receives a tithe from every Ismaili Muslim in the world, now going through his second divorce after six years with a German princess named Begum. Since Shackleton’s fee for the McCartney divorce was $6 million, and since the Aga Khan is conservatively 20 times wealthier than McCartney, this could be the largest fee of any divorce case in history. Shackleton is unlikely to be impressed, however, since she has previously represented Prince Charles (against Princess Di), Prince Andrew, Princes William and Harry (unmarried, but still in need of a solicitor at times), and she also lives in a mansion behind Buckingham Palace, where her teenage daughters are so bored with their environment that they’ve been known to answer the phone at home and, if it happens to be the Prince of Wales, tell him to please call back later because they don’t have time to take a message. As to her own marriage, to retired army major Ian Shackleton, she says she works on it devotedly because “divorce is miserable” and “a courtroom is a barbaric venue in which to pick over the carcass of a failed marriage.”

Somebody Stop Ted Before It’s Too Late, His Testimony Could Take Days

Ted Turner, famous for his atheism and his own revised do-gooder version of the Ten Commandments, is teaming up with Lutherans (!) to fight malaria in Africa through Turner’s United Nations Foundation. It appears that, when it came right down to it, he needed some boots on the ground over there, and they have these species of humans called “missionaries” that are available for the grubby day-to-day. Turner’s ex-wife Jane Fonda converted to Christianity two years ago, and that didn’t turn out too well. The less said about Jane’s quotations from the apocryphal gospel of Thomas, and her description of Christ as “the first feminist,” the better. So let’s not encourage Ted, who claims he’s mellowed, too much.

God Is Great, God Is Good

Four months ago, when Mitt Romney made his “Don’t Fear the Mormon” speech, I thought we’d all agreed to delete religion from the presidential agenda. But there they were earlier this week, Hillary and Barack mouthing spiritual platitudes at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania, while Jim Wallis, Jon Meacham and Campbell Brown lobbed softball questions about the Big Guy. The real highlight wasn’t Hillary’s teary-eyed moment, as she waxed ecstatic over her saintly days in Methodist Youth Fellowship, nor was it Barack’s 97th defense of Jeremiah Wright Jr. as his pastor but not his guru. The real highlight came from John McCain: he didn’t show up.

Now that Muslim home-schooling is taking off, not to mention local cooperatives that sponsor private madrassas for Islamic studies, we’ll soon have at least six separate school systems in each district: public schools, Catholic schools, private “Christian” (Protestant) schools, Jewish schools, madrassas, and plain old home-schoolers, who are increasingly becoming a force in organized athletics. With this much balkanization, it’s gonna be tough fielding a football team, but dividing our youth into religiously-labeled gangs will make for some great basketball games. Unfortunately, the Jews won’t be able to sell t-shirts with divisive “insider” slogans on them, because of another new trend: Torah-based high schools that don’t allow “gossip.”

If You’re Gonna Be Scary, At Least Be Funny

Few preachers are more mesmerizing, in a sort of “Did he just say what I think he said?” way, than the Reverend James D. Manning of ATLAH World Missionary Church in Harlem. We first noticed Reverend Manning after his famous “Creflo Dollar Is a Times Square Pimp” sermon last fall, but he’s topping himself every week now, most recently with the sermon that’s come to be known by many names, but primarily either “Obama Is a Mack Daddy” or “54 Double D,” which refers to the bra size of the women Barack Obama supposedly hires to wear his T-shirts. Even though 1.6 million people have seen the sermon, most people don’t watch all the way to the end, when Manning tells his all-black audience what traitors they are for abandoning the Clintons, then thunders, “I’m your last hope! Farrakhan didn’t get it for you and Obama is an emissary of the devil. I’m your last hope!” Manning is a burglar and armed robber who became a Christian in prison in the seventies, then graduated from Union Theological Seminary in 1985 and turned Old Testament prophet: his current crusade is to encourage people in Harlem not to pay their rent so that the white developers will leave the neighborhood. He makes Jeremiah Wright look like a middle-class Swede.

The Dalai Lama Infected My Brain

China seems determined to press these conspiracy theories about the Dalai Lama, going so far as to manufacture fake confessions that even the editor of your local elementary school newspaper could see through. (Or maybe you believe that those shady Tibetans really will be sending Buddhist suicide squads to Beijing this summer.) The conspiracy charges—complete with allegations of finding virtual nuclear arsenals inside Tibetan monasteries—will all be played out in the quickie show trials this month and next, presumably so that they finish up long before the Olympics. They’re not fooling anyone, though, and they apparently don’t realize that, every time they issue a press release or imprison an activist, the anti-Olympics sentiment gets stronger and the protesters in other countries get bolder. The latest fad among troublemakers is to incorporate the five Olympic rings into your placard, transforming them into handcuffs, skulls, hangman’s nooses, peace signs—the permutations are endless and, let’s face it, everyone has PhotoShop. The very words “Beijing Olympics” have now become an all-purpose catch-phrase for any cause you might have—witness the Topeka, Kansas, activist who is holding a rally today that involves the Olympics, the Dalai Lama, Darfur, oil companies, corporate America, the Confucius Institute at Kansas University, police brutality, and Juneteenth, the holiday celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation, all in “the name of Christ.” So wouldn’t it be better for China if they just withdrew for a while and let the Lama get back into the Lotus position and satisfy all his speaking obligations in Marin County? The European press has been even harder on China than our own. They don’t even give the Chinese government the courtesy of printing their claims—reporters assume the government is lying when it says things like “our soldiers acted only in self-defense and only four people were wounded” and instead they spend their time documenting atrocities and identifying the Communist Party bureaucrats who are responsible for the ethnic repression going on in Tibet and, increasingly, all of western China. It doesn’t help that the Chinese were apparently caught by surprise by the initial uprising, causing them to overreact later as they attempted to stuff the cat back in the bag and the monk back in his monastery. Meanwhile, the silence from Washington is deafening, and why would anyone expect it to be any different? We’re the country that let China classify the Uighur Muslims, on China’s border with Pakistan, as international terrorists, so that the authorities could manage them more easily. This constant media focus, for both the Uighurs and the Tibetans, means that life will probably just get worse and worse for the ordinary person, as even many Tibetans now realize. The Dalai Lama claims that he’s never sought independence for Tibet, merely a form of regional autonomy, which is at odds with what true-believers in the United States are now saying. What did China expect, though, when they insisted on going through with the Olympic torch relay in Tibet itself, not to mention San Francisco? Since there was only that one chance for Americans to snatch the torch, human rights activists decided, “Hey, why don’t we just run our own torch?”, so now there will be an endless series of demonstrations unaffected by the athletes’ “loyalty oaths” requiring them to refrain from political display. It may have started with Tibet, but now it involves every human rights organization, every Uighur liberation group, and even those familiar crazies-without-portfolio, the Falun Gong. Are the Chinese masochists, or just that out of touch?

Thanks But No Thanks, Bob

Anglican vicar Robert Harrison of St. John’s Church in northwest London is worried that modern man is forgetting his traditional Bible stories—there’s actually a poll showing that only 12 percent of Brits know details of the Bethlehem narrative—so to help us out he’s written a book called The Must Know Stories in which Adam is obsessed with Eve’s nakedness, Goliath is an alcoholic, and Joseph has an aunt who’s constantly haranguing him about not being married to Mary. This trend has lasted about 50 years now—the practice of “spicing up” the Bible—and I think that, if we didn’t have proof before, we do now: time to retire it.

I was about to log onto the Internet to put in my regular weekly order for Fatima water, which is holy water from the place in Portugal where the Virgin Mary appeared to three shepherd children in 1917 and made the sun twirl in the sky and predicted the entire future history of the world, but I had this sudden thought that had never occurred to me before: how do they get the Fatima water from Fatima to Buffalo, which is the place that offers the free Fatima water? I’m now stricken with religious doubt, wondering whether, by traversing the vast ocean between Fatima and upstate New York, there’s the possibility that some of the Fatima water’s magical properties might be diluted. I’m not saying this is the case, but I would like some pastoral guidance on the subject.

How Now, Brown Bureaucrat?

I don’t believe that “unlawfully trespassing on the life of a cow” is an actual crime in the United Kingdom, but that’s one reason six Hindu monks gave for their protest march on the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which they claim illegally entered the Bhaktivedanta Manor temple in Hertfordshire and slaughtered a 13-year-old bovine known as “Mother Gangotri” in contravention of Hindi ritual and practice. At the time of Mother Gangotri’s murder, the monks were already outraged about the death of Shambo, a bull in West Wales that was put to death by the RSPCA after it was diagnosed with bovine tuberculosis. RSPCA officials, not accustomed to being besieged at their headquarters in Horsham, bristled at the idea that they had acted improperly, using the term “mercy killing” several times, probably to their disadvantage in any future dialogue with Hindus, who believe there can be no such thing as euthanasia where cows are concerned.

The Real Question Is: Does Buddha Surf?

Buddha lives in both Pasadena and Oakland at the same time. I’m talking, of course, about H.H. Master Wan Ko Yee, who is the actual reincarnation of Buddha. I got the press release the other day, and so my question was, yeah, I can see how Buddha would dig Pasadena, but what’s up with Oakland? Is there, like, a hip hop Buddha that we should know about? Since this is only the second time in 2,500 years that Buddha has manifested himself in human form (“according to leaders from all major sects of Buddhism worldwide”), he would be the most enlightened person we’ll ever meet in our lifetimes, right? And so, besides reading his book, which he was pimping at the Library of Congress, or looking at his sculpture, art, poetry, calligraphy or painting, or being healed by him (he does that, too), how can we get a clue as to what Oakland neighborhood to settle in where we can both a) be safe, and b) get karma-lized.? We would ask him directly, but he’s currently working on world peace.

North Korea Has the Bomb, South Korea Has the Gospel of Greed

The Korean church “miracle” is still a mystery to most people in the west. Yes, we understand that there’s a single Korean church with a membership of 500,000—well, no, we don’t, a half million people is so far beyond megachurch that it seems a new category. And yes, we understand that there’s a new Korean church in our own neighborhood—well, no, we don’t, because it’s 100 percent Korean, the services are conducted in Korean, we’ve never been inside, and now that we think of it, there are two Korean churches in our neighborhood, they’re sprouting every time a mainstream congregation abandons its building. And yes, we understand that most of these new Korean churches are pentecostal—well, no, we don’t, because it’s not any kind of pentecostalism that we’ve seen in America. One thing that’s a little scary about the Korean explosion, though, is that apparently the super-pastors at the super-churches have started discovering the prosperity gospel, along with all its attendant ills, such as tax evasion, concentrated wealth that can’t be traced, and autocratic behavior, lording it over widows and orphans who are compelled to tithe at every occasion. Pretty soon they’ll be able to pronounce the word “Gulfstream.”

Heather Veitch is a blonde ex-stripper who’s started a topless bar ministry in Las Vegas: she and her three-girl posse go to strip clubs and pay for lap dances