First up from the God machine this week is an unusual religion problem in a religious Texas town. Apparently, it has too many churches.
They are not the words one expects to hear from a politician or a Southerner, and Leonard Scarcella is both: “Our city has an excessive number of churches.”
Scarcella is mayor of this Houston-area community, which has 51 churches and other religious institutions packed into its 7 square miles.
With some 300 undeveloped, potentially revenue-producing acres left in Stafford, officials are scrambling to find a legal way to keep more tax-exempt churches from building here.
“With federal laws, you can’t just say, ‘We’re not going to have any more churches,’ ” Scarcella said. “We respect the Constitution, but 51 of anything is too much.”
Tell that to Starbucks in any downtown in the country.
Stafford has no property taxes, and relies on sales taxes and business fees for revenue — which would work fine in the small town if there weren’t so many churches that pay neither. “It’s thrown everything out of balance, plus providing zero revenue. Somebody’s got to pay for police, fire and schools,” City Councilman Cecil Willis said.
The LA Times reported that the council’s attorneys are “researching ways to stop church growth.” We should know more in about six weeks.
Next up is an update about the least-educational “museum” in the country.
Like most natural history museums, this one has exhibits showing dinosaurs roaming the Earth. Except here, the giant reptiles share the forest with Adam and Eve.
That, of course, is contradicted by science, but that is the point of the $25 million Creation Museum rising fast in rural Kentucky.
Its inspiration is the Bible — the literal interpretation that contends God created the heavens, the Earth and everything in them just a few thousand years ago.
“If the Bible is the word of God and its history really is true, that’s our presupposition or axiom, and we are starting there,” museum founder Ken Ham said during a tour of the sleek and modern facility, which is scheduled to open next year.
Visitors to the museum, a few miles from Cincinnati, will be able to watch the story of creation unfold in a 180-seat special-effects theater, see a 40-foot-tall re-creation of a section of Noah’s Ark and stare into the jaws of robotic dinosaurs.
The Washington Times quoted John Morris, president of the Institute for Creation Research in San Diego, saying that the museum will help further undermine modern science (which he sees as a good thing). “Americans just aren’t gullible enough to believe that they came from a fish,” he said.
Putting aside the notion of common ancestry, are people gullible enough to believe that the earth is 6,000 years old? We’ll know more when the “Creation Museum” opens early next year.
And, finally, James Dobson’s Focus on the Family is none-too-pleased that the Air Force — not exactly known for its tolerance for religious diversity — quietly rewrote an unofficial flag-folding script for military funerals after complaints from non-believers.
Though most people are familiar with the flag-folding ceremony at military funerals, the script that is read as the 12 folds are made is not widely known.
The old, unofficial one began: “The first fold of our flag is a symbol of life. The second fold is a symbol of our belief in the eternal life.” Folds 11 and 12 are the ones that led the atheists to challenge.
“The eleventh fold, in the eyes of a Hebrew citizen, represents the lower portion of the seal of King David and King Solomon, and glorifies, in their eyes, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The twelfth fold, in the eyes of a Christian citizen, represents an emblem of eternity and glorifies, in their eyes, God the Father, the Son, and Holy Ghost.”
But the Air Force has replaced that unofficial script with an official one that contains no religious references.
Matt Zimmerman, who directs the military Chaplains Commission for the National Association of Evangelicals, said the change has gone by largely unnoticed, and there’s been no outcry from anyone. “I don’t think it’s on anybody’s radar,” he said.
Focus hopes to change that by starting a letter-writing campaign to elected officials.
