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.