This Week in God

March 24, 2007

First up from the God Machine this week is a federal court ruling on the president’s faith-based initiative that appears to be something of a Pyrrhic victory for the religious right.

A religious group called the Northwest Marriage Institute, which was created to provide Bible-based premarital and marriage counseling, has received public funds in the form of faith-based grants. My friends at Americans United for Separation of Church and State (my former employer) filed suit, challenging the constitutionality of the funding.

The bad news is, Americans United lost. The good news is, the larger church-state principle won anyway.

U.S. District Court Judge Franklin Burgess ruled that that Northwest Marriage Institute has sufficiently stripped its program of religious content, and could therefore receive public funding. Burgess said he would have had “no difficulty” striking down funding for the original NMI program, but the group “shifted its mission from providing Bible-based marriage workshops and counseling to providing marriage workshops without religious references.” Indeed, the change was “prompted by a desire to qualify for operational funding from the federal government.”

For some reason, religious conservatives were thrilled. The Alliance Defense Fund boasted, “Christian groups are not second-class citizens that have to give up their religious identity to receive federal funds.” The Family Research Council offered a similar take, hailing the ruling for saying that “religious groups…that provide valuable social services cannot be treated like ‘second-class citizens.'”

As is often the case, the religious right is confused. When the lawsuit was filed, NMI was still “Bible-based.” Its founder, Dr. Bob Whiddon, was a former Church of Christ minister who stated publicly that “whatever is done in counseling…must rest upon the Bible.” At another point, he explained, “If it is not founded on the Bible it will not work.” Whiddon added, “I use the Bible as my counseling manual.”

Realizing that such a program would not withstand legal scrutiny, Whiddon quickly and completely dropped the religion in order to keep the money.

Why the religious right sees this as a “victory” is unclear.

As a friend of mine wrote:

So, in effect, Whiddon and the ADF won the case by dropping all religious components from the NMI program. It turns out, contrary to Whiddon’s previous professions, marital counseling can be done without reference to the Bible — if there’s a federal grant at stake. […]

[I]sn’t it odd that the ADF and the FRC — two militantly evangelical Christian organizations – see the outcome as a victory? Is denying Christ in exchange for Caesar’s coin now an objective of the ADF? Is tossing the Bible in the trash can to cash in on federal funds a good thing in Tony Perkins’ view? Who was it who said, “For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” (Hint: check Matthew 16:26.)

Do the ADF and the FRC know what “Pyrrhic victory” means? If not, they might want to look it up.

Next up from the God Machine is an odd perspective from everyone’s favorite leg-pressing TV preacher.

TV preacher Pat Robertson is worried about a Muslim takeover of the United States. Such a thing would seem remote, at best. While hard numbers are difficult to come by, most demographers say there are about 3 million Muslims in America. In a country of 300 million, they haven’t made a huge dent.

But last year, the first Muslim was elected to Congress, and Muslims have been elected to a few state and local offices as well. Recently, a Muslim group announced plans to register more Muslims to vote and encourage civic activity. All of this has Robertson worried.

“Well, ladies and gentlemen, there you’ve got it,” Robertson said on his “700 Club” today. “It’s interesting, isn’t it? You know, the Protestant churches, there’s no doctrine of faith that I know in any Protestant denomination that calls for the takeover of the government and making other people second-class citizens. I don’t know of one denomination, Protestant or Catholic, that has that agenda. But yet, Islam has just that agenda, that they want to take over the government and that everybody else is a second-class citizen. That is the primary doctrine of Islam.”

Now, as I recall, Robertson has been calling for a fundamentalist Christian takeover of the government for a couple of decades now. He loves theocracy, just so long as it’s his religion and not someone else’s.

And a few This Week in God quick-hits:

* Prayer still doesn’t appear to affect medical outcomes.

* A sensible priest in Bavaria isn’t falling for a crying-statue trick.

* A school board in Oregon clearly did the right thing firing a high school biology teacher who included Biblical references in material he provided to students and gave a PowerPoint presentation that made links between evolution, Nazi Germany, and Planned Parenthood. “I think his performance was not just a little bit over the line,” board member Jeff Smith said.

* And the “Left Behind” video game apparently didn’t go over very well among consumers.

If only the books had done as poorly.

It’s easy to buy into that faith through fear of punishment crap when you see how much money is involved. Salvation is easily bought. Take the money away and it collapses.

  • Pat “High Priest of the Chickenhawks” Robertson sez:
    “You know, the Protestant churches, there’s no doctrine of faith that I know in any Protestant denomination that calls for the takeover of the government and making other people second-class citizens. I don’t know of one denomination, Protestant or Catholic, that has that agenda.”

    What about his fellow loon, Kennedy of the Coral Temple? I’ve watched the tail end of his show while waiting for the Three Stooges and he’s all about Dominionism of the White fundie over all of us.

  • You know, the Protestant churches, there’s no doctrine of faith that I know in any Protestant denomination that calls for the takeover of the government and making other people second-class citizens.

    Yes, because according to Splat Robertson gays, women and people who don’t share his beliefs aren’t people. They’re mobile targets.

    Only a true Talevangical fuckwit could maintain he’s being persectuted while treading on other peoples’ skulls. Is it nice to wish someone a painful, embarrasing death? Of course not. But in Splat’s case I don’t care. I hope the coroner finds an electric eel in his rectum.

  • I hope the two assholes who wrote the Left Behind series were major investors in their “kill-an-unbeliever-for-fun” video game, and are now holding basketfuls of stock certificates now worth 18 cents.

  • The religious Fascists like this victory,it works for them like this… because their lack of principles will have them forcing bible theory down these clients throats anyway, it will take a series of complaints, and then lenghty investigations, before they are forced to stop.
    Meanwhile, the check has cleared, the money is spent, and Christian BS spread. Mission accomplished. That is how Fascists play nowadays. Even a temporary victory furthers their cause.
    Pure fucking Evil.

  • I gotta take a second to appreciate TAIO’s “Talevangical” in # 4. Televangelist+Taliban? Cool.

    I like Al B Tross’ point that Fascists now take their incremental gains while the system grinds along to finally stop them. They’re like the lawyer yelling out stuff to the jury that the judge tells them to disregard.

  • I alerted CB to an article last week that, while not currently political, will become so in the near future (10 to 20 years based on the pace of current advancements, by my estimates). It was more to point out another instance of the hyprocisy of the fundies regarding the whole “every sperm is sacred” and embryo sanctity currently in vogue. They (the religious “right”) appear to have no compunction in maintaining their stance when it turns out that the embryo in question has the so-called “gay gene”.

    Furor Over Baptist’s Gay-Baby Article

    From the article:

    Proof of a biological basis would challenge the belief of many conservative Christians that homosexuality – which they view as sinful – is a matter of choice that can be overcome through prayer and counseling.

    However, Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., was assailed even more harshly by gay-rights supporters. They were upset by his assertion that homosexuality would remain a sin even if it were biologically based, and by his support for possible medical treatment that could switch an unborn gay baby’s sexual orientation to heterosexual.

    “He’s willing to play God,” said Harry Knox, a spokesman on religious issues for the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay-rights group. “He’s more than willing to let homophobia take over and be the determinant of how he responds to this issue, in spite of everything else he believes about not tinkering with the unborn.”

    This was addressed in the movie The Twilight of the Golds (which I haven’t seen yet), but the political and social ramifications are certainly something which will need to be addressed eventually. The xtian fundamentalists, apparently, see nothing wrong in playing god in this particular instance. But then again, it supports their twisted and evil theology, so it must be all right.

  • They (the religious “right”) appear to have no compunction in maintaining their stance when it turns out that the embryo in question has the so-called “gay gene”.

    Uh-huh. See their stance on people with the “Any genes that aren’t like ours” gene. But radicals do tend to love the idea of eugenics because there’s nothing like the thought of determining who gets born and how they’re born to pump up an already oversized ego. Too bad there’s nothing an ethical person can do about embryos with the Authoritarian Arsehole gene.

  • Ya gotta love the sensationalistic headline “Biology Teacher Fired for Referring to Bible.” Uhh, no, he was fired for linking evolution, Planned Parenthood and Nazis and teaching evolution (somehow) with repeated references to the Bible.

    Damn liberal media…

  • Here’s my thought/question:

    Those on the right who insist that Islam, and therefore the Muslims who folow it, is and are a militant violent religion… why do they assume every single Muslim follows Islam to the letter of the law?

    Does every single Christian follow the Bible to the letter of the law? Of course not. And yet Muslims, even American Muslims, committed to following the secular laws of the United States, are somehow one step away from killing us all in the name of Allah?

    Critical Thought does so get in the way of richeous indignation…

  • If only the books had done as poorly.

    But the books are so – funny-

    Tho admittedly I havent bothered buying any of them, just reading Slacktivist’s takedown of them has kept me laughing every Friday.

  • This topic goes back to the issue of the Separation of Church and State. But,
    who created the concept of the separation of Church and State? It wasn’t the ACLU, the Supreme Court, or Thomas Jefferson. It was Jesus.

    Many Christians today believe that Church and State separation is a founding Christian principle. For example, Jesus was born into an almost totally theocratic society. Jesus and his apostles and disciples could have easily incorporated much or most of the theocratic elements of Judaism into Christianity, but they did not, as is clearly evidenced from the New Testament scriptures and the known history of the first two hundred years of Christianity. Thus, separation of church and state can be said to be one of Christianity’s founding principles.

    When Christianity became the semi-official religion of the Roman Empire in the early 300’s, it marked the beginning of the persecution of Christians by other Christians. Christians in Europe and Asia called Novations and also Donatists who lived in North Africa were the first victims of a Christian –State union. These early Christians were persecuted over the issue of church governance. The victims of the persecution believed this new Church-State union or rapprochement was intended to serve the interests of the state and a few ambitious churchmen, not God.

    As a result of a continuing series of abuses carried out by various Church-State unions in Europe, in 1457 the Moravians in Bohemia denounced all unions of church and state.

    In the year 1524, Anabaptists in Zurich advocated the practice of the separation of church and state.

    In 1631 in America, Roger Williams advocated that the Puritans “separate church from state in their colony.”

    Until only recently, the separation of church and state was considered a vital and non-negotiable principle of the Baptist denomination, which traces their roots back to the apostolic age. According to the Southern Baptist Statement of Faith which can be found on their website, “Church and State should be separate.”

    The Bible is the constitution of Christianity. It is illogical when political conservatives who believe in a “strict constructionalist” interpretation of the U.S. Constitution fail to employ that same principle in religion, and neglect or ignore the beliefs and principles of the founders of Christianity as revealed in the Bible.

    These are only a few of many examples of the practice of the concept of the separation of church and state predating Jefferson, the Founding Fathers and the Constitution. Email jmcmeans@negia.net if you wish to read a copy of a longer article on the subject with more historical examples of Christians who believed the separation of church and state was one of the founding principles of Christianity.

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