"I had one letter from a vicar in England -- this is the difference -- saying would I please not put Christmas trees at Hogwarts as it was clearly a pagan society. Meanwhile, I'm having death threats when I'm on tour in America."
- J.K. Rowling
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theferrett reviews webcomics on Fridays. Today's review is Jesus & Mo. Jesus & Mohammed, rooming together - but that's not the real blasphemy ... It's also fun when Moses comes to visit. Altho some of the puns are scary, the use of logic is superb. 
[W]hat was the sermon about?Without getting into the supreme illogic of military invasion == the Gospel, I will note that a post-Haggard follow-up visit revealed the fog machine has been retired. Temporarily, at least.
Let me make this short. It was political, nationalistic and ethnocentric. The Iraq War was mentioned as a fulfillment of Jesus's Great Commission. He said that, compared to the the loss of Hebrew soldiers in I Samuel 4, the US hasn't lost that many soldiers. Pastor Ted said that an evangelical's effectiveness can be measured by how the "enemy" sees us. Among the specific "enemies" he mentioned was the Citizen's Project, a group in Colorado Springs which promotes pluralism and religious liberty, and which is pro gay marriage.
Which part of the service was like being in heaven?
[...]
And which part was like being in... er... the other place?
The sermon. I suddenly felt unwelcome, not a part of the "club", an enemy, even. Enough said.
Hell exists. A place separate from God must exist for free will to mean anything, but the door is open and the exit sign is clearly marked. It is the church that has rebuilt the gates of Hell and found useful the scare tactic of inescapable torment.
“So you’re scared and you’re thinking/That maybe we ain’t that young anymore.” And then, being Springsteen, he immediately offers us a way out. “Show a little faith, there’s magic in the night.”Is it relevant that Bruce first released that song in 1975, when he was, um, about 26?
noelfigart. I'm tempted to blame it on growing up fundie, but really, it's due to the set of 6 paperbacks my uncle gave me as a child that summarized the Bible in black-and-white comic book form. Wow! You are awesome! You are a true Biblical scholar, not just a hearer but a personal reader! The books, the characters, the events, the verses - you know it all! You are fantastic!
Ultimate Bible Quiz
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What I like about this the honesty. Christmas is a vacation. Tree. Nog. Roast beast. Gifts. If anyone or anything is worshipped, it's Santa.
Xander: So, you doing anything special? Buffy: Tree. Nog. Roast beast. Just me and Mom and hopefully an excess of gifts. What are you doing for Christmas? Willow: Being Jewish. Remember, people? Not everybody worships Santa. Buffy: (smiles) I just meant for vacation. Willow: Mm. Nothing fun.
There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, and the other governed by the Church with rules enforced by her on her own members.Paul Campos' column in the Rocky Mountain News takes this a bit further:
Here's the plan: Civil marriage licenses would continue to be issued by the government [...] Religious marriages, however, would be a different matter.This is also similar to the idea of "Covenant Marriage" - but with the twist of permitting institutions other than the state to write the initial marriage contract. In Campos' example, the contract is written by the Catholic Church. But why not by a Wiccan coven, for a year and a day? Or (gasp) by the individuals involved? (Well, granted, I'm sure starry-eyed idiots would put in all sorts of stupid stuff, but ...)
Let us imagine that John and Jane decide to get married in the Roman Catholic Church. [...] As long as the Catholic Church said John and Jane were still married, they would be considered married by the government.
[...I]f John decided he would prefer to enter into a civil marriage with Jackie (or Jack) rather than remaining married to Jane, he would be allowed to do this only if the Catholic Church agreed to release him from his wedding vows. Until then, he would remain married to Jane, and would continue to bear all the legal obligations created by that marriage.
This might sound like a radical idea, but legally speaking, it is merely the standard way in which we treat most business contracts. ( [...When] )a business contract lays out a process for arbitrating disputes that arise about the contract's meaning or enforcement, that process must be honored by the courts. Why shouldn't marriage contracts be treated with as much respect?
[The question is] how far Christians, if they are voters or Members of Parliament, ought to try to force their views of marriage on the rest of the community by embodying them in the divorce laws. A great many people seem to think that if you are a Christian yourself you should try to make divorce difficult for every one. I do not think that. At least I know I should be very angry if the Mohammendans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine.(Andrew Sullivan discusses CS Lewis' take on church, state, and marriage here).
jw1776. dianthus.jw1776, skydancer, dianthus, and others who've listened to me kvetch about the knee. zoethe passed the bar exam. secanth is finally at home with falconcat. Congratulations! ( About the book _Up, Up, and Oy Vey!_ ) The volume, which has nearly sold out its first run of 5,000 copies, contends that writer-artists of the classic comics, many of them Jewish, were influenced by their religious heritage in devising characters and plots. ( ... )
In the early 60’s, when he developed the character known as the Thing as part of the Fantastic Four, Mr. Kirby gave the bricklike being a human past as Benjamin Jacob Grimm, using his and his father’s Jewish names, and a tough childhood on Yancy Street, a thinly veiled version of the real Delancey Street.
For his home, Mr. Kirby even made a drawing of the Thing wearing a yarmulke and a prayer shawl.
Along with those examples of Judaic influence, “Up, Up, and Oy Vey!” offers instances like the name of Superman’s father, Jor-El, with “el” being the suffix to many biblical names and the common use of masks and false identities, akin to the heroine Esther in the Purim story, who goes by an alias in Persian society.
Trying not to overreach, Rabbi Weinstein cut out a passage that likened Batman’s bat cave to the Machpelah, the so-called Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, where the Bible says Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca and Leah are buried.
“Simcha,” he says aloud to himself, “the night you wrote that, you had too much Starbucks.”
In the months since publication, the book has brought Rabbi Weinstein invitations to book fairs, Jewish events and comics conventions in places like San Diego and London.
And it has given him what all rabbis worry about and plan for at this time of year, a sermon topic for Yom Kippur. On the Day of Atonement, Rabbi Weinstein said, he will be preaching about the Thing.
Focus on the Family’s state affiliates plan to register voters and distribute voters’ guides in churches this year in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, New Jersey, Minnesota, Montana and Tennessee: all states where Republican candidates favored by religious conservatives are on the ballot. [...]
“We’re not doing candidates,” [said Jim Wallis of Sojourners]. He added: “The principle comes from Martin Luther King Jr., who never endorsed a candidate, not once. He made them endorse his agenda. We want to create an agenda with a social movement behind it that holds politicians accountable.”
Catholics United for the Common Good, which is affiliated with the Catholics in Alliance group, is compiling “candidate evaluations” for many of the senate races, using 25 criteria important to Catholic voters, said Chris Korzen, the group’s director. But they do not plan to distribute paper copies, only to post it on the Web.
Beam, a portly, silver-haired basso profundo dressed in khaki slacks, a sweater vest and brown tasseled loafers that make him look like a retired country-club golf pro, walks to the front of the room and proceeds to tell the men in the audience ( possibly not work safe ) Sweet stuff works, he says, which provides a built-in excuse because "then you can say, 'I'm eating this cake for you, baby!'"
It seems that our culture is taking a real turn towards being a culture of fear. If you listen to any media outlet you can quickly make a list of things that you are supposed to be afraid of, from dangerous bacteria that infest every corner of your house, to the threat a various forms of global annihilation. [...]There's a lot more, including how she flew into a war zone in a full plane with various families and found that sometimes the fearmongers are wrong.
Not that I am against practical safety. Airbags, Yeah! By all means change those batteries in your smoke detector, and please, do wash your hands when you leave the restroom. But the constant diet of fear and the persistent selling of products and behaviors to assuage the fears seems to have gotten all out of proportion.
[...] You know that something has become an idol when its very name becomes a magic incantation that stops questions and debates and induces unnatural obedience. [...] Now, in the United States, all you have to do is say, “This is for you safety, sir.” and people nod their heads, take off their shoes and stand in line. They throw their personal possessions into sacrificial barrels, and avert their eyes as the Middle Eastern fellow behind them gets pulled out for “extra screening.”
[...] Because faith in Safety focuses more on feeling safe than actually being safe, [a]s long as one person in the room still feels unsafe, we will all change our behavior until that person feels better. But having lowered the threshold, it will be only a matter of time before the unease grows in someone – who will raise again the cry “Unsafe!”
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timeasmymeasure
