All the hotel rooms in Princeton are booked up for the big Envision ‘08 conference [1] next week, right? DARN! I guess we can’t go. Shoot, how did we forget to register? How often do you have in one place every Emergent Church guy with fuzz under his lower lip and a Jossey-Bass book contract generating pop-up ads on his website, plus the holy hipsters of the Ivy League tossing off witty exegetical bon mots? What? It didn’t fill up? You’re kidding me! They’re offering lower and lower prices [2] as the event approaches? Unbelievable! What happened to the enormous uprising against the Religious Right? Later this month, the Sojourners-sponsored Pentecost 2008 [3] is similarly anemic in pre-registration. What’s going on here? Last year we had every Democratic candidate and a couple of Republicans begging Jim Wallis for a microphone at that convocation. Envision ‘08 shouldn’t be tanking two months after Jeremiah Wright, one month after John Hagee, and one week after Rod Parsley! Maybe it was the Omen-inspired brochure [4] featuring what appears to be three Peruvian sheepherders in Raccoon Lodge hats contemplating suicide. Maybe it was the early rumors that Bono would be showing up, rumors that fizzled just as the weather forecasters predicted balmy skies that weekend at the Jersey Shore. Attendees will have to settle instead for Doug “I Don’t Believe in Christianity Anymore” [5] Pagitt, who, incidentally, will be joining Tony Jones, still hoping that his voice will change [6] before his hairline fully recedes, on an RV evangelism tour [7] this summer that promises to set new standards in the sweepstakes of affected attempts to be cool and relevant. Bowie Snodgrass, of the “Transmissioning” community in New York City, will also be in Princeton, bearing tales of her recent wedding in India [8], no doubt releasing all kinds of New Age evangelical energy into the ozone. (Inspired by a visit to the site where St. Thomas landed in India in 52 AD, she recently preached on “not knowing the way.” [9]) Also parachuting in from the Apple will be Lisa Sharon Harper, currently ending poverty [10] as head of New York Faith & Justice, and she’ll be explaining how we have to keep religion and politics separate, the way she does on her Faithful Democrats blog [11]. Whoops! Lisa actually wrote a book called Evangelical Does Not Equal Republican or Democrat [12] but must have started shortening the title by two words for rhetorical purposes. Notably absent from the lineup, though, is Marc Driscoll, who was too busy preaching on masturbation [13] and, besides, Marc thinks Doug Pagitt is a jerk now. Marc has moved beyond Emergent, he’s Post-Emergent, if not Divergent (and certainly Masturbergent). I’m really sorry we didn’t get that hotel room. Gosh, I guess we could go down there and bask in non-Christian Christianity, but, you know, there’s that New Jersey Transit train fare. And I think the trains might be all booked up.

It’s Not a Library, IT’S A THINK TANK!

A few dead-enders in the Methodist Church are still trying to stop the building of the George W. Bush Presidential Library on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, and I feel like I’d be doing less than my journalistic duty if I didn’t point out the arguments of the Rev. Andrew Weaver of Brooklyn, who’s leading the opposition [14], and who besieged me with information the last time I wrote about this. Weaver says the problem with the project is not the library but the think tank that goes with the library. That think tank would promote the policies of the Bush administration, and many of those policies are unChristian and, more to the point, unMethodist. He’s particularly exercised about the torture issue. But since Webber has only raised $10,000 at this point to fight a decision that the church and the university say is irreversible, it would probably be a better use of resources to focus on making sure the think tank is intellectually honest and hires genuine scholars. Hint: Don’t give Doug Wead [15] a job.

He Just Keeps Coming Back

An army of private security guards descended on Woodstock, New York, last week when Trinley Thaye Dorje, the 17th reincarnation of the Karmapa [16], visited the Tibetan Buddhist monastery there. (The official name of the place is the Karma Triyana Dharmachakra Center [17], best known for being used as the set in the Martin Scorsese movie Kundun.) The Karmapa was born in 1110 and then reborn for the 16th time in 1983, so why does he need security? You have to assume that, if assassinated, he’d pop right back up in a heartbeat. The Karmapa became a Buddhist rock star in 1999 when, at the age of 14, he slipped out of the Tsurphu Monastery in Tibet in the middle of the night, donned civilian garb and took a few attendants with him as he traveled for seven days by car, foot, horseback, helicopter, train and taxi, crossing the Himalayas to seek asylum in India [18], where it was possible to formally receive the “transmissions” that go with his position as leader of the Kagyu, or Black Hat, sect. Ever since then the Chinese authorities have regarded him as one more Tibetan troublemaker [19] to deal with. The Karmapa seems blissed out in his pictures, but his biggest problem these days is a Fake Karmapa who’s been gathering devotees in Europe. It’s hard to fake being 898 years old, though. Nobody likes a lame lama..

Which C-word Do You Mean?

A 15-year-old boy in London is being hauled into court for calling Scientology a cult [20]. Police on the scene during a demonstration at the $45.4 million Scientology Center on Queen Victoria Street first gave the kid a warning about his placard, which read, “Scientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous cult.” He was told that the word “cult” was not allowed under section five of the Public Order Act, which forbids words on signs that are “threatening, abusive or insulting.” When he refused to stand down, the sign was seized and he was issued a summons for criminal prosecution. Since the Church of Scientology has been known to grease the palms of City of London police, the protesters were outraged for more than one reason and have continued to bash the authorities on various Internet sites. This controversy, by the way, should not be confused with the other controversy in which another Christian publicly used a four-letter word [21] beginning in “c” and ending in “t.”