As heard (and reported) by Tony Marr. Thanks to Jim the church geek for the pointer.

My favorite:

7. “How dare you try and bully my daughter. We have be preparing and planning her future for years and I am not going to let you persuade her away from our plans. I could have you fired for this.”

Said to me by an elder at our church when I talked to his daughter about not going to a state university to study biology, but to go to a Christian college and be a missionary. She felt it was what God was calling her to do. Dad did not. Dad won.

Here is Kevin Drum’s Washington Monthly post today entitled “Secular Humanism“:

As we all know, our universities were long ago taken over by an elite cadre of latte-quaffing, postmodern, anti-American ultra-liberals. That’s what National Review says, anyway. But I’ve always wondered just what actual effect this has on America’s youth. Do kids become more liberal than they otherwise would when they attend these dens of radicalism? Or are our academic fifth columnists so incompetent that they have no influence at all?

Well, I’m still wondering.  But Inside Higher Ed reports today on a related question: do university faculties shot through with secular humanists make college kids less religious? The answer appears to be no. A study that tracked 10,000 subjects for seven years between adolescence and young adulthood found that among those who didn’t attend college, 76% reported a decline in church attendance. Conversely, college grads reported only a 59% drop. The study found similar results on two other measures of religious activity.

Needless to say, I’m bitterly disappointed. The shock troops of atheism are apparently falling down on the job. Better get cracking, folks.

Via Chad Orzel, who offers up some possible explanations for the results. I didn’t find any of them very persuasive, but your mileage may vary.

Amazon brought me some goodies today, including Rob Bell‘s newest book, Sex God: Exploring the Endless Connections between Sexuality and Spirituality. Since starting this blog almost a year ago, nothing has generated more links traffic here (besides my participation on the PCUSA Blog and BlogRing) than my posts on Bell’s Nooma series. I’m excited to read Sex God, having just finished Bell’s very good Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith.

Also part of this Amazon shipment: Mark Labberton’s The Dangerous Act of Worship: Living God’s Call to Justice (IVP), Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches: Five Perspectives (ed. Robert Webber, with contributions by Karen Ward, Doug Pagitt, Dan Kimball, John Burke, and Mark Driscoll) (Zondervan), Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch’s The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church (Harper), Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat’s Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire (IVP) and another Sacra Pagina commentary, this one Frank Matera’s Galatians.

Lots of good stuff to read soon…

Quietly, the Kansas Board of Education reversed itself on its science standards:

With little discussion, the Kansas Board of Education this afternoon repealed the controversial science standards that cast doubt on evolution.

The board voted 6-4 — along its moderate-conservative fault lines — to adopt new standards that eliminated most of the old standard’s criticism of evolution, which mainstream scientists said was unwarranted and unscientific.

Supporters of the change said they hope the board — and the state — can now move on to other issues.

“I think it’s a great day for Kansas,” said Mary Ralstin of Shawnee, a mother of four who came to watch the board meeting.

Critics of the way evolution is taught say the new standards leave out critical information necessary for students to make up their own minds. They say public schools too often indoctrinate students about evolution rather than making them critically analyze the theory.

“We are making this a political issue rather than a scientific issue,” said board member Kathy Martin.

Two years ago, any time the Kansas Board of Evolution brought up the word “evolution” you could expect standing-room-only crowds.

Yet today it was just another board meeting. The only reminder of the contention that’s marked the debate were television cameras from Kansas stations and a thick red rope erected to separate the board from any overzealous members of the public.

I was glad to see the rhetoric about an ostensible “war” on Christmas virtually gone this holiday cycle. Replacing it, however, seems to be an ostensible “war” on those who believe in the divinity of the Torah. Dennis Prager (my emphasis):

If you want to predict on which side an American will line up in the Culture War wracking America, virtually all you have to do is get an answer to this question: Does the person believe in the divinity and authority of the Five Books of Moses, the first five books of the Bible, known as the Torah? (“Divinity” does not necessarily mean “literalism.”)

I do not ask this about “the Bible” as a whole because the one book that is regarded as having divine authority by believing Jews, Catholics, Protestants and Mormons, among others, is not the entire Bible, but the Torah. Religious Jews do not believe in the New Testament and generally confine divine revelation even within the Old Testament to the Torah and to verses where God is cited by the prophets, for example. But “Bible-believing” Christians and Jews do believe in the divinity of the Torah.

And they line up together on virtually every major social/moral issue.
…
Very often the dividing line in America is portrayed as between those who believe in God and those who don’t. But the vast majority of Americans believe in God, and belief in God alone rarely affects people’s values. Many liberals believe in God; many conservatives do. What matters is not whether people believe in God but what text, if any, they believe to be divine. Those who believe that He has spoken through a given text will generally think differently from those who believe that no text is divine. Such people will usually get their
values from other texts, or more likely from their conscience and heart.

That a belief or lack of belief in the divinity of a book dating back over 2,500 years is at the center of the Culture War in America and between religious America and secular Europe is almost unbelievable. But it not only explains these divisions; it also explains the hatred that much of the Left has for Jewish, Protestant, Catholic and Mormon Bible-believers.

…
This divide explains why the wrath of the Left has fallen on those of us who lament the exclusion of the Bible at a ceremonial swearing-in of an American congressman. The Left wants to see that book dethroned. And that, in a nutshell, is what the present civil war is about.

What’s this all about? Muslim congressman-elect Keith Ellison’s plans to re-take his oath of office with a hand on the Quran. (Yes, all congress members are sworn in through a general oath, not related to any hand on any holy book; many congress members choose to have additional ceremonies with their hands on the bible, or the TaNak, or the Book of Mormon, or the like… Check out that very good NPR report…) Prager and some others (like congressman Virgil Goode) are apoplectic about this…a good example of Christian Fusspots.

And what exactly is the divinity of the Torah, specifically, or scripture generally, in Christian thought? Scripture may be considered “god-breathed,” or divinely-inspired, by most Christians. But divine? No. Thinking God speaks through a text (a medium) is not the same thing as regarding that medium, that revelation, as itself divine. Thinking that a text points uniquely, authoritatively, to the experience of human beings with a loving, covenantal God throughout human history is not the same thing as to deify the account of that experience. We worship Christ the Word made Flesh as one person of the trinity, of the one triune God. We don’t worship the text. It is not divine. And its authority isn’t, repeat, isn’t something that just conservatives subscribe to.

I don’t know what’s worse: calling the bible itself divine or saying that only my way of reading  it is the only way to believe in its “authority.” Both smack of idolatry and hubris to me.

This is not even to get into the crap Prager deals about liberals and conservatives in that piece (and note earlier posts on this board about conservative Judaism ordaining gays and lesbians, for example; so much for that theory that “bible-believing” folk line up on every major social issue…)….

This is not to get into Prager’s isolation of the Torah within the Christian canon, or the elision of major interpretive, theological, and yes axiological differences we have with other “people of the book”.

And this is not even trying to parse out exactly what Prager means when he says his complaint about “divinity” does not “necessarily” mean something with regards to “literalism.”

Regardless of all this, this choosing which holy-book congress members are permitted to chose when taking their unofficial oaths business is loony. But then again, loony seems to sell, which is the sad thing to me.

(h/t Joshua Micah Marshall)

… guest blogger Steve Benen also has comments over at The Washington Monthly.

From Beau Weston, the gruntled centrist, you find this:

I want sensible religious leaders of other faiths to condemn the violent, radical, and just extreme actions and pronouncements of their fringe elements. This entails that I do the same thing with the Christian extremists. Which brings us to Don Wildmon, head of the American Family Association, and his latest silliness about television.
…
I am not saying that Don Wildmon and the American Family Association represent violent, extreme, or even very radical Christianity. I think Wildmon represents fusspot Christianity. And representing Christ, Christians, and Christmas as fusspots truly invites mockery.

The rest of his post is available over at Beau’s blog.

I’d commend E. J. Dionne Jr.’s piece in the Washington Post today. An excerpt:

American politics took an important turn last week at a church in the foothills of Southern California’s Santa Ana Mountains.

When Rick Warren, one of the nation’s most popular evangelical pastors, faced down right-wing pressure and invited Sen. Barack Obama to speak at a gathering at his Saddleback Valley Community Church about the AIDS crisis, he sent a signal: A significant group of theologically conservative Christians no longer wants to be treated as a cog in the Republican political machine.

…

And thus it came to pass that when Warren called a conference at his church last Friday on World AIDS Day, among those he invited were two potential presidential candidates. It was unsurprising that one of them was Sen. Sam Brownback, the Kansas Republican and a loyal social conservative who has taken up the AIDS issue with passion and commitment.

But when the other invitee turned out to be Obama, parts of the old evangelical political apparatus went after Warren as a heretic. Rob Schenck, president of the National Clergy Council, declared that Obama’s views on abortion — Obama is pro-choice — represented “the antithesis of biblical ethics and morality” and insisted that Warren had no business inviting him to Saddleback.

Warren’s church issued a statement reaffirming its strong opposition to abortion, but Warren did not back down. Indeed, he seemed to revel in rejecting the old evangelical political model. “I’m a pastor, not a politician,” Warren told ABC News. “People always say, ‘Rick, are you right wing or left wing?’ I say ‘I’m for the whole bird.’ “

When it came his turn to speak, Obama took on the moral message of evangelical AIDS activists — and then challenged them.

“Let me say this and let me say this loud and clear: I don’t think that we can deny that there is a moral and spiritual component to prevention,”he declared. “In too many places . . . the relationship between men and women, between sexuality and spirituality, has broken down and needs to be repaired.”

Then Obama got to what “may be the difficult part for some,” as he put it, that “abstinence and fidelity, although the ideal, may not always be the reality.”

“We’re dealing with flesh-and-blood men and women, and not abstractions,” Obama said, and “if condoms and potentially things like microbicides can prevent millions of deaths, then they should be made more widely available. . . . I don’t accept the notion that those who make mistakes in their lives should be given an effective death sentence.”

That Obama received a standing ovation suggests that Warren is right to sense that growing numbers of Christians are tired of narrowly partisan politics and share his interest in “the whole bird.” In their different spheres, Warren and Obama are both in the business of retailing hope.

Great ending paragraph, too:

One more thing: If you read Obama’s speech, you’ll realize he demonstrates a much truer Christian spirit than the GOP masterminds who have recently tried to push people away from Obama by pointing out that his middle name is Hussein.

If you’re curious about that last reference, you can find more info, among other places, at Joshua Micah Marshall’s TPM Cafe.

Interesting news piece out of the Chicago Tribune’s Lisa Anderson on Wallis and company’s efforts to increase the voice of Christian moderates and progressives: Christian Middle Seeking a Turn at Bully Pulpit. (free subscription may be required.)

The lede to the article:

Determined to break the links binding partisan politics and faith, growing numbers of religious moderates are uniting and organizing in an unprecedented bid to challenge the Christian right and broaden the values agenda beyond the issues of abortion and same-sex marriage.

The November midterm elections serve as a kind of dress rehearsal for the more prominent role that these moderates, many without any political party alignment, hope to play in the 2008 presidential election and other political contests.

This new coalition of moderate and self-identified progressive Christians underscored its intentions with a flurry of activity this week, just as prominent conservative Christian leaders and politicians prepared to attend the Family Research Council’s first Values Voter Summit that opens in Washington on Friday.

“God is not a Republican or Democrat. That must be obvious, but it must be said,” said Jim Wallis, a leading evangelical and founder and president of Sojourners/Call to Renewal, a progressive faith-based movement concerned with poverty and the intersection of faith and
politics. “There has been this hijacking or takeover of the Republican Party by its right wing and hijacking of religion by the religious right.”

On Monday, Wallis, author of “God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It,” launched Red Letter Christians, an effort that takes its name from the red ink some Bibles use to highlight the words of Jesus Christ. A non-partisan faith-based campaign, it will open field offices in key battleground states and provide voter guides, speakers and information on such issues as poverty, social justice, education and the environment, but it will not endorse candidates.