What do people outside of our comfortable Christian circles think? How do they perceive us? Are we doing a good job of with God’s message of love and reconciliation? What are people saying abroad? The Hall of Shame will attempt to collect stories and articles which show how much better we could be doing. Also included are stories from within Christian circles.
Red states love the crap entertainment corporations dish out just as much as the blue ones
Robert Scheer, robertscheer.com (also ran in the Los Angeles Times). Excerpt:
...The bottom line of capitalism is that if somebody will buy it, somebody will make it. Yet instead of insisting that cultural consumers take personal responsibility for the choices they make or, better yet, providing new resources for public education and nonprofit media the professional tsk-tskers feign outrage at the sullying of televised football with Janet Jackson’s breast or a naked Desperate Housewife jumping into the arms of an NFL player.
Worse, these national moralists— dominated these days by evangelical Christians—politicize the issue by blaming “liberal Hollywood” for what deregulation and the free market have wrought. Never mind that Arnold Schwarzenegger made all those violent movies, it is the Democrats and their ilk who are corrupting youth by promulgating our “relativistic” morality. But that’s just bunk. The real engine at work here, for better or worse, is the profit motive. If this patently obvious point is absent from the complaints of social conservatives, it is because the truth of the matter is inconvenient to their agenda.
It’s much easier for them to politicize the moral decay of our culture than to admit that its wellspring is the domination of media corporations, along with the rampant consumerism that has led us deep into personal debt. Let’s face it: There's not much money to be made off children’s piano recitals, songs sung around the campfire or performances by your local orchestra, but the choice to consume such fare is always there.
So if you’re upset with what’s on the boob tube tonight, just ask yourself: What would Jesus watch?
My guess is PBS.
David Brooks, New York Times (log-in required)
Exceprt below:
Tim Russert is a great journalist, but he made a mistake last weekend. He included Jerry Falwell and Al Sharpton in a discussion on religion and public life. Inviting these two bozos onto “Meet the Press” to discuss that issue is like inviting Britney Spears and Larry Flynt to discuss D. H. Lawrence. Naturally, they got into a demeaning food fight that would have lowered the intellectual discourse of your average nursery school.
This is why so many people are so misinformed about evangelical Christians. There is a world of difference between real-life people of faith and the made-for-TV, Elmer Gantry-style blowhards who are selected to represent them. Falwell and Pat Robertson are held up as spokesmen for evangelicals, which is ridiculous. Meanwhile people like John Stott, who are actually important, get ignored...
Barb Ickes, Quad City Times
A pastor in LeClaire, Iowa, harassed two elderly church members for being John Kerry supporters. When they went to the police, they were forced to leave the church! Excerpt:
LeCLAIRE, Iowa — The pastor who got the attention of his community and the police when he posted a graphic anti-abortion sign in his yard now faces harassment complaints from two church members who say he hounded them for supporting a presidential candidate different than his.
The women accuse the Rev. Tim Groves, pastor of New Life Community Church in LeClaire, of repeatedly harassing them by telephone and in visits to their homes because they supported John Kerry and say they are distraught over feeling forced to leave the church they love.
“I pounded a nail in the first church here in town,” Helen Talbot, 80, said Tuesday as she sat surrounded by portraits of Jesus on her living room wall. “I was 6 years old and my uncle held me up on the scaffold so I could pound a nail.
“I read my Bible every day,” she said. “Now my pastor has called me a liar for telling what he did...”
Frank Rich, The Philadelphia Inquirer. From the article:
...Thomas Frank—author of the year's most prescient political book, What’s the Matter With Kansas?— writes, “Values always take a backseat to the needs of money once the elections are won.” Under this perennial “trick,” as he calls it, Republican politicians promise to stop abortion and force the culture industry “to clean up its act”— until the votes are counted. Then they return to their higher priorities, like cutting capital gains and estate taxes. (Fox CEO Ruport) Murdoch and his fellow cultural barons—from Sumner Redstone, the Bush-endorsing CEO of Viacom, to Richard Parsons, the Republican CEO of Time Warner, to Jeffrey Immelt, the Bush-contributing CEO of GE (NBC Universal) —are about to be rewarded not just with more tax breaks but also with deregulatory goodies increasing their power to market salacious entertainment. It’s they, not Susan Sarandon and Bruce Springsteen, who set the cultural agenda that Gary Bauer et al. say they despise.
But it’s not only the GOP’s fealty to its financial backers that is predictive of how little cultural bang the “values” voters will get for their Bush-Cheney votes. At 78 percent, the nonvalues voters have far more votes than they do, and both parties will cater to that overwhelming majority’s blue tastes first and last. Their mandate is clear: The same poll that clocked “moral values” partisans at 22 percent of the electorate found that nearly three times as many Americans approve of some form of legal status for gay couples, whether civil unions (35 percent) or marriage (27 percent).
by Jill Rachel Jacobs, from Common Dreams (excerpt)
...But it seems to me that many of your disciples may be employing a looser interpretation of your admonition not to snuff the life out of their fellow human beings. And it’s my humble observation that your message of love is seriously being trumped by the strong message of hate that many seem to be promoting under the guise of freedom, religion and pseudo-security. While some of those in charge profess to follow the Good Book, I find myself wondering if they only read the cliff notes, because it doesn’t appear that they are getting the full gist of your message.
If it’s not too much to ask, I could also use a little explanation on some other key issues, like when are we supposed to employ “An eye for an eye versus “Turn the other cheek?” That’s always been a confusing one for me and I suspect a lot of other people find this bewildering based on the behaviors they often exhibit.
Well, I guess that’s all for now. I’ll look for some sign that you got my message. Don’t worry if you can’t respond right away. I'll understand. I know we’re keeping you pretty busy.
From a website that has photographs of personal apologies to the world.
London Daily Mirror
Alright, so the London Daily Mirror is a rag. Just because the paper’s credibility is somewhere between the New York Post and the National Enquirer doesn’t mean we shouldn’t listen to their opinions, after all, Americans listen to Fox News and—incredible as it may seem—actually think Fox News is doing some real honest-to-goodness reporting.
THEY say that in life you get what you deserve. Well, today America has deservedly got a lawless cowboy to lead them further into carnage and isolation and the unreserved contempt of most of the rest of the world...
They had somehow managed to re-elect the most devious, blinkered and reckless leader ever put before them. The Yellow Rogue of Texas...
...America chose a man without morals or vision. An economic incompetent who inherited a $2 billion surplus from Clinton, gave it in tax cuts to the rich and turned the US into the world’s largest debtor nation.
A man who sneers at the rights of other nations. Who has withdrawn from international treaties on the environment and chemical weapons.
A man who flattens sovereign states then hands the rebuilding contracts to his own billionaire party backers...
Yanks had the chance to show the world a better way this week, instead they made a thuggish cowboy ride off into the sunset bathed in glory.
And in doing so it brought Armageddon that little bit closer and re-christened their beloved nation The Home Of The Knave and the Land Of The Freak.
This is an unedited posting from www.dailykos.com. How dare we call ourselves “pro-life” if this is the best that the allegedly “pro-life” church can do for this woman and her unborn baby.
I work at a domestic violence shelter in a rural conservative district in Mich. that is has had its economy gutted by NAFTA and where Christianity dominates the culture. Yesterday while reflecting about 4 more years of Bush I was talking with a woman staying in the shelter. I will give her a fake name, lets call her Laura B. Laura is 28, pregnant, (never considered an abortion). She finished high school and did a year of college before dropping out to have a couple of kids with her military husband. Living in Virginia on base with her autocratic mate (he doesn’t allow the boys 3 and 4 to say “yeap” they have to answer “yes sir”) drove her crazy and she was hospitalized for suicidal thoughts. Military dude divorced her and has custody. She came home to Mom in Mich and ended up at our shelter to try and sort out her life. (Mom has no money either and her own problems.) We, like all secular agencies, have seen a steady erosion of funds.
Laura B. has found a job working in the kitchen at a local faith based Christian College. She makes $6/hour. She drives a dying Ford Escort wagon pays $2.15/gallon for gas. Her latest crisis is her insurance expired on Oct. 9 (her ex-partner cancelled policy). She needs to come up with $211 to get insurance for one month or face a $1,000 fine if she gets caught driving with no insurance. We have some public transportation, Dial-a Ride, minibus runs between 7 am and 6 p.m., M-F $1.50 one-way. She has to be at work at 6am.
She has been walking to work lately but it is about 2 miles she is 5 months pregnant, it is dark at 5 am, and winter is coming. Solution? Go begging at the churches who seem to have money for these things. They will give her the money if she attends Bible school. So last night she was at Bible school until 9 p.m.
She has never attended our domestic violence support groups as she is too tired at night and goes to bed early but the bible study was not optional.
She was excited about “God’s message” when she came back.
This week she moves into low income subsidized housing. Her newest crisis is she has found out when the college is closed for the Christmas holiday (one month) she has no employment. She is hoping to find temporary employment as a seasonal retail worker if the Christmas sales are brisk to tide her over. She doesn’t know what she will do when the baby is born, hopes she can work up till the last week (she is on her feet all day with this job). She will be eligible for subsidized daycare.
She voted for Bush because of his “family values.”
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