First up from the God machine this week is a Baptist church that is filled with the Christian spirit — just as long as church officials approve of your racial background.
Fellowship Baptist Church in Saltillo, Mississippi, voted out a 12-year-old boy who “asked Jesus to live in his heart” at the church two weeks ago. Why the ban? Joe is biracial, and church members didn’t want the black side of his family attending with him.
They were “afraid Joe might come with his people and have blacks in the church,” church pastor John Stevens told the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal.
To his credit, Pastor Stevens resigned from the church the same day 12-year-old Joe was voted out of the church. Cliff Hardy, a local police officer, also resigned from the church. “My best friend is a black man,” he said. “I wouldn’t be comfortable going to a place where I couldn’t ask my best friend to go to church with me.”
The local paper contacted church members, but they refused comment. Go figure.
Next up is a heartfelt response to the old adage, “There are no atheists in foxholes.”
The line, attributed to a WWII chaplain, has since been uttered countless times by grunts, chaplains and news anchors. But an increasingly vocal group of activists and soldiers — atheist soldiers — disagrees. “It’s a denial of our contributions,” says Master Sgt. Kathleen Johnson, who founded the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers and who will be deployed to Iraq this fall. “A lot of people manage to serve without having to call on a higher power.”
It’s an ongoing battle. Just last month Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said, “Agnostics, atheists and bigots suddenly lose all that when their life is on the line.” Atheist groups reacted swiftly, releasing a statement that “Nonbelievers are serving, and have served, in our nation’s military with distinction!” The National Guard said it received about 20 letters objecting to Blum’s statement, and said his comments were “intended to clearly illustrate the positive spirit of camaraderie, human understanding and inclusion of our fine men and women in the National Guard.”
Non-believers in uniform have gotten better organized in recent years, presumably out of necessity. When Katie Couric, Tom Brokaw, and Bob Schieffer all used the “no atheists in foxholes” line on TV, atheists organized letter-writing campaigns, prompting Schieffer to apologize. The organizing seems to have paid off — the Pentagon officially considers atheism a creed like other faiths; recruits can choose ATHEIST, AGNOSTIC, or NO RELIGIOUS PREFERENCE for their dog-tags; and an atheist symbol, which resembles an atom, is among the dozens of “approved emblems of belief” that can appear on the headstones of fallen soldiers in military cemeteries.
And, finally, This Week in God would not be complete without showing readers this amazing picture, which I found by way of my friend Bill.
The set can by yours for $39.95. They’re not kidding.
