Katherine's story: more on the Problem of Pain and how faith has buoyed a family and thousands of friends

I thought about mentioning a personal story Monday when I talked about the Problem of Pain, It was a recent event, with ongoing recovery, that has both shaken my wife and I emotionally and encouraged us spiritually.

Last month, one of the leaders of the Young Marrieds group at Bel Air Presbyterian that we've been involved with suffered a brain hemorrhage. Katherine Wolf is my age, and my wife had just seen her two days before at a baby shower. Beautiful mother of an adorable six-month-old son, husband weeks away from finishing law school -- prime of her life in every cliché sense. So young, and yet there she was at death's door.

The emails for prayer went out immediately: "Important -- prayers needed immediately" was the first subject line I saw. And after an unbelievable 13-hour surgery that doctors at UCLA weren't optimistic about her chances to come out of, Katherine was stable. Very sick, but stable:

My beautiful girl was fairly unrecognizable until she opened her eyes and a shot of that unique aqua blue flashed out. She had a huge ventilator tube twisting her swollen, torn lips to one side and a feeding tube distorting her nose. Since we’ve switched to a tracheotomy and feeding tube in the stomach, she looks more like Katherine, although her face and neck are still swollen. Her head has been shaved in patches. It looks like an unlovely patchwork quilt. There is a square on the right front part of her head with several angry-looking holes, one of which has a tube coming out of it. There is a large shaved area across the back, where the main vertical incision was. But she still wears the matted ponytail of what’s left on top, darkened by crusty dried blood. Clear tape covers much of the whole mess. There are ‘boo-boos’ all over her body from one ghastly life-saving procedure after another. Tiny machines are attached to tubes entering her arms, hands, abdomen, thighs...which are hooked up to big scary-looking machines crowded around the bed.

Her mom went on in this April 29 account; you can read it here.

Katherine continues to make progress, chronicled at this blog and on this Facebook page, which are followed closely by her friends, who pretty much haven't left the lobby of the UCLA Medical Center since April 21. (My wife and I slept there one night last week.) There is no sugarcoating, only the portrayal of profound faith and an awareness of the steep hill Katherine will climb before she leaves the hospital.

Katherine had a steady day yesterday. Our medical friends continue the attempt to open her natural brain drains by increasing the cranial pressure. The process slows Katherine’s responsiveness but is showing some results. However, her friend, Whitney, brought a “People” magazine and it received 2 “thumbs up” from Katherine! The medical team is fabulous and they are offering superlative care.

Katherine’s heart rate was high and she spiked a fever so they are backing off a bit on her breathing and physical therapy efforts. This is a huge battle. God encouraged Joshua as His people moved to new territory, “Be stong and courageous. Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:)

Katherine's husband, Jay -- I previously admired him for sporting a beard -- has shown a spiritual maturity that has left me in awe. In his shoes, I fear I'd be very angry with God. Healthy angry, hopefully. But angry nonetheless. Jay, however, has been a warrior with immeasurable wisdom.

To me, the most amazing story here has been the outpouring of love and support from Katherine and Jay's friends, particularly those at Bel Air Pres, which became their home after they relocated here from the South. "This is the body of Christ," a pastor said at a special service the Sunday after the next step in Katherine's life began, referring to the way the community had rallied, the way people had forgone work and sleep to comfort and counsel. Katherine's friends also started a little movement to memorize Romans 8, a portion of Paul's letter that reminds us we are "more than conquerers through him who loved us."

At the prayer service, Katherine's mom, Kim Arnold, joked that her daughter had always wanted to be famous; her story now has been told on news programs in Jay's native Montgomery, Ala., where his father is a Baptist pastor, and last night on Fox 11 in L.A. Here is the link to the Fox report and the transcription of a bit that discusses how faith has buoyed the Wolfs, Arnolds and their church family:

Fox: Prayer is what this family knows and does best.

Jay: God has given us everything, in saving her life and in healing her in miraculous ways everyday.

Fox: Still in intensive care, Katherine is showing signs of recovery -- the answers, say the Wolfs, to their prayers.

Pastor Wolf: I believe I am sitting on the frontrow of a miracle, and God is showing up and showing off.

NY Jews protest attack on teen

New York Chasids responded with a lot more anger and outrage to the assault and robbery of a Jewish teen early Friday morning than Jews in Pico-Roberston did this time last year, when a spate of Shabbat muggings had the community on edge, or the attack last fall on the prominent rabbi of Young Israel of Century City. The difference seems to be that the L.A. attacks were crimes of opportunities while NY authorities are looking into Friday's incident as a possible hate crime.

Evangelical leaders: global warming 'uncertain'

Oy vey. It's statements like these that convince atheists good evangelicals have no brains:

WASHINGTON – While it may seem like everyone believes in global warming and the impending catastrophe it will bring, a group of conservative Christians countered that message Thursday by launching a national campaign to gather one million signatures for a statement that says Christians must not believe in all the hype about global warming.

The “We Get It!” declaration, which currently has nearly 100 signers, is backed by prominent Christians including Tony Perkins of Family Research Council, Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, award-winning radio host Janet Parshall, and U.S. Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma.

What supporters of the statement seek is to inform Christians about the biblical perspective on the environment and the poor, and to encourage them to look at the hard evidence, which they say does not support the devastating degree of climate change claimed by mainstream society.

“How can you create policies on uncertain science?” asked Dr. Barrett Duke, vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

“How can you say what it is that needs to be done when you don’t really know and you don’t really have real consensus on the state of the problem or what is causing the problem?”

I've never understood who the Tony Perkinses and James Dobsonses of the world speak for. It's certainly not me or a lot of other evangelicals like the NAE's Richard Cizik. Maybe the pope.

Sitting down with NY's most influential Muslim

Reuters religion editor and FaithWorld administrator, Tom Heneghan, recently interviewed Mohammad Shamsi Ali, New York's "most influential Islamic leader" and the Muslim emissary to local police and the mayor's. Here's what Ali had to say about being Muslim in America and dealing with radical Islamists:

“We feel at home here. To be honest with you, those people who are really sincere with their religion and understand the religion properly, they see many things Islamic in America, more Islamic than in many Muslim countries. First of all, freedom and Islam are like fish and water. Islam cannot live without freedom … Here in America we have freedom. You can express yourself freely. It is guaranteed by the Constitution. Then you have justice for all, equality. We have to say there are some interruptions because of the security. But it doesn’t at all change the real nature of America. For those Muslims who understand the teaching, this will make them feel that America really belongs to them and they belong to America.”

(skip)

“Some Muslims like the Islamic Thinkers Society are against Jews and against non-Muslims. I consider them ignorant and in need of an education. I feel a deep responsibility to bring them back to the right track. It makes me worry when I see what Imam Shamsi Ali, 23 April 2008/Tom Heneghanhappened in Britain, in London with Hizb ut Tahrir and Al Muhajiroun. They are very much fundamentalist radicals. I don’t think these will give any benefit to our community, nothing at all. Among the Jewish community there are also fairly radical people. It is the responsibility of us in the middle to strengthen our unity and come together and try to find solutions to problems that surround our communities. I say to non-Muslims: let us do the job but have confidence in us … In a meeting with the NYPD, I told them we acknowledge the presence of radicals in the Muslim community — but it doesn’t mean we support them. In fact, the radicals are marginalised in many ways right now … So I don’t feel we need aggressiveness. I feel we need to reach out … We need confidence in us (from non-Muslims) and we need support. Don’t put suspicions over us. We are not confident enough to do the job. All good Muslims must have good intentions for America because this is the country where we live and we consider this our own country. The opposite is true too — if you’re not good Muslims, you’re not good Americans.”

Hagee: Hitler God's chosen to get Jews to Palestine

The Revealer unearthed a scary recording from the Rev. John Hagee.

in which Hagee elaborates on his view that Hitler and the Nazis were divine agents, sent by God to (with gruesome inefficiency it would seem) chase Europe's Jews towards Palestine. In his 2006 book "Jerusalem Countdown", Hagee proposed that anti-Semitism, and thus the Holocaust, was the fault of Jews themselves - the result of an age old divine curse incurred by the ancient Hebrews through worshiping idols and passed, down the ages, to all Jews now alive. In the sermon Hagee also clarifies a point, on his theological views, that has long concerned me...[Note: excerpt from John Hagee sermon, given probably in the late 1990's - with its themes plied into the John Hagee books "Battle For Jerusalem" (2001, reprinted 2003) and "Jerusalem Countdown" (2006), begins 1:00 minute into the video]

Einstein's 'childish' letter sells for $400k

Albert Einstein's letter dismissing the Bible as "a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish" fetched a real adult price at auction. The collector signing the $400,000 check was not identified.

I cross-posted my earlier mention of this letter at Christianity Today' Liveblog. The comments turned into an interesting back and forth between evangelicals and atheists. Such as:

I dare say I could find many religious "zealots" who have a far higher intellectual capacity than yourselves and who certainly do not have primitive minds. You betray great intellectual insecurity yourselves by resorting to name-calling rather than actual debate.

Open thread on Palestinian awareness week

I returned to UC Irvine today for the final day of Palestinian awareness week. Amir Abdel Malik Ali, who, days after the terror attack on a Jerusalem yeshiva, stood in front of the Israeli consulate in L.A. and called Zionists the new Nazis, delivered a lunchtime tirade about America the imperialist, in bed with the Zionists, and the quick death that would soon befall one and then the other. I agree Rome is burning and worry about what that would mean for Israel, but I try not to undercut my argument by praising Hamas and Hezbollah as freedom fighters.

The scene at UC Irvine, however, was a lot tamer than in years past, and I'll be writing more about that later. For now, I just wanted to share one of the photos I snapped, this of a torn and bloodied Israeli flag.

The comment board is open.

The dangerous world of religion reporting

I've been there, attacked by fellow Christians for critical articles I've written about them.

Religion reporting has proven not only challenging but humorous for a Christian named Greenberg. Christians blame negative stories on my Jewish byline; Jews offer guilt-laden responses to articles that buck the corporate line (or what they wish were); and Muslims, I think, don't know what to expect.

Once considered a backwater of journalism, the God beat feels to me quite chosen, home to immensely important and interesting news. Religion, after all, is the rubric through which each person uniquely sees the world. Science, education, politics, entertainment -- it regularly serves as an undercurrent in these fields. (That was, in fact, part of my pitch at The Sun three years ago when they were looking for a reporter for the newly created position and I was eager to get out of Rialto.) The religion angle also is occasionally relevant when trying to understand peoples' beliefs in God, their perspectives on the life hereafter and that which gives every day meaning.

Think of the God beat as the Jerusalem of journalism. Seriously.

On this topic, Tim Townsend, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's excellent religion reporter, has an amazing piece in the current Columbia Journalism Review. He discusses the religious origins of the United States, the Dover monkey trial in 2005 and the challenges of sensitively reporting on other peoples' religious beliefs.

The portion I found most fascinating, however, was the ugly description of what happened when Townsend wrote an article that was considered too favorable to CAIR and got on the bad side of the Little Green Footballs blog community. Here it is (and was):

Just a few weeks ago, in late February, I got an e-mail from the Council on American-Islamic Relations. This was not unusual. Like most beat reporters, I get hundreds of press releases a day. Some I look at, some I don’t. From CAIR alone, I typically receive from one to three e-mails every day, and I had never acted on one before. But this one was different. It involved a mosque I cover in south St. Louis. The CAIR press release said that the FBI had been asked to investigate several comments on two blogs, which threatened a minaret being built outside the mosque.

I had covered the groundbreaking of the minaret—the first to be built in St. Louis. The mayor had been there to praise pluralism and throw a little dirt around for the cameras. In Muslim countries, the minaret is the tower from which the muezzin chants the call to prayer. But as I noted in the original story, this particular 107-foot minaret was symbolic, not functional.

Now I wrote a second story, which was maybe twelve column-inches long and ran the next day on the bottom of B2. It was workmanlike—it did what it had to do for our readers—and nothing more. I wrote that the author of a local blog, Gateway Pundit: Observations of the World from the Heart of Jesusland, had posted some photos of the minaret covered in scaffolding. One of the photo captions read, “Those calls to prayers ought to go over really well with the people of this South St. Louis neighborhood.”

I quoted the imam, who confirmed what I’d already written—that the minaret had no sound system or speakers and would not be used to call Muslims to prayer. I also quoted an FBI spokesman as well as a CAIR spokesman, and then detailed some of the comments that had alarmed Muslims and caused them to inform the FBI.

For example, one visitor to Gateway Pundit had written: “It is really hard on us white, nonMuslims to have to live with these folks taking over our neighborhood and community. Our government helping these people relocate into America’s heartland is like inviting the enemy into your camp. It’s totally disgusting.” On another blog, Little Green Footballs, a visitor named “Amer1can” upped the ante: “Would be a shame if it were to be vandalized or destroyed. Just a shame I tell you….wink wink STL youth.” Another visitor to the same blog added: “I suppose dynamite would be considered an extreme response.”

That was it. Twelve inches. Bottom of B2.

But of course, B2 doesn’t really exist anymore. Not on the Internet. The next morning, the e-mails started coming in at around nine. Many of them complained that I had written a story “planted” by CAIR, which was, I was told over and over again, a front for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, and a fundraising arm for other Islamist terrorist organizations. But it was only after my testy e-mail exchange with Charles Johnson, the proprietor of Little Green Footballs, that the real fun began—especially after Johnson posted our correspondence on the blog.

Over the next two days, I received more than one hundred e-mails from Little Green Footballs readers. One suggested I should look into a job at Taco Bell, since I was obviously going to be fired for messing with Johnson. (Little Green Footballs fans credit Johnson with taking down Dan Rather after his 60 Minutes story on George W. Bush’s National Guard service.) Another called me “a self-righteous numskull with the literary prowess of a dodo bird. A dodo bird that dropped out of college and is on drugs.” Still another suggested that there was “no way you could possibly be any more of a dick.”

In two related threads on Johnson’s blog, which ran to nearly 1,500 comments, my photo, bio, and home address were all posted. Someone ran my name through an anagram site and listed the results (Demon Shitty Town, Howdy Mitten Snot, Hindmost Yet Wont). Another participant wrote a song, to be sung to the “Toys ‘R’ Us” theme: “I don’t want to be a St. Louis Post-Dispatch journalist, because if I was. There wouldn’t be heaven after death.” And let’s not forget the haiku:

Tim shills for haters While wearing moderate robes He does not fool us

Besides being called ignorant, arrogant, balding, stupid, rude, fat (my new nickname was Burger Boy), lazy, and incompetent, I was depicted as a Satanic baby. My mother was insulted. I was accused of lying about my academic degrees, having a comb-over, being a paid agent of the Saudi government, and acquiring “numerous social diseases.” I was, apparently, a plagiarist and a terrorist. Someone did a search to see if I was a pedophile. Others stuck with more generalized invective:

Tim Townsend—you’re a smarmy little f---, aren’t you? [my editing]

Townsend really should have checked on Dan Rather’s career before he messed with Charles.

What a chickenshit little cocksucker. Another journalouse prick with a face for radio.

Finally, there were suggestions that I should be murdered. To his credit, Johnson deleted the death threats and the comments with my address. Blessed are the peacemakers.

Bush to Israel: 'Masada will not fall again'

Speaking today to Israel's parliament, the Knesset, President Bush said the bond between the United States and Israel was unbreakable and promised that "Masada will not fall again."

"Some people suggest that if the United States would just break ties with Israel, all our problems in the Middle East would go away," Bush said in his prepared address.

"This is a tired argument that buys into the propaganda of our enemies, and America rejects it utterly. Israel's population may be just over 7 million. But when you confront terror and evil, you are 307 million strong, because America stands with you."

Masada is the desert fortress near the Dead Sea where, after the destruction of the Second Temple, 960 Jewish zealots committed suicide rather than surrender to the Romans.

GodTube likes big bucks

I've never used GodTube, the evangelical equivalent of YouTube, but apparently enough people have that a London hedge fund thought the company deserved a $30 million investment. The NY Times explains:

When it was formally introduced last August, GodTube was the fastest-growing Web site, as rated by comScore, attracting 1.7 million unique visitors for the month. The traffic remains about the same today. “People thirst for more than just a once-a-week relationship with the Lord and Savior,” said Jason Illian, Big Jump Media’s chief strategy officer. “They desire something that they can live out 24/7.”

Unlike its secular cousin, YouTube, GodTube is proudly filtered: all content must gain approval from the site’s headquarters in Plano, Tex. Vulgar and overtly sexual material isn’t allowed. Neither are videos promoting other religions — for that, there are JewTube.com and IslamicTube.net. (Appropriately enough, the domain name SatanTube.com is for sale.)

Mocking Christianity is definitely not allowed. James O’Malley, a 20-year-old from Leicestershire, in Britain, posted a series of videos last year that jeered at evangelical theology. During a videotaped walking tour of the Natural History Museum in London, he referred to a plesiosaur fossil as a “liar-saur” and noted that volcanoes tended to erupt in non-Christian countries.

“The first couple of videos, where I spoke about Biblical infallibility and homosexuality, remained on GodTube and were treated like any other video,” Mr. O’Malley said. “It was only when I posted a third video suggesting that the earth was flat and that astronauts were part of the ‘round earth’ conspiracy that they finally cottoned on to the fact it was a hoax, and I was banned.”

More in line with GodTube’s spirit is “Baby Got Book,” a satire of the rapper Sir Mix-A-Lot’s ode to the full-size derrière, “Baby Got Back.” In it, Dan Smith, a 34-year-old minister at a church near Cleveland, simultaneously praises godly women and pokes fun at aspects of Christian culture. He dances around with a gold neck medallion reading KJV (for King James Version) and tweaks Sir Mix-A-Lot’s lyrics so that “butt” becomes “Bible” and “she looks like a total prostitute” turns into “looks like Mother Teresa.”

The video has logged more views on GodTube than it has on YouTube. Mr. Smith says he appreciates the exposure, though he prefers promoting his music in places where he can reach nonbelievers, like call-in radio shows. “I just know there aren’t a lot of unchurched or de-churched people going to GodTube,” he said.

I just watched "Baby Got Book" while typing this, and it was worth a few good laughs. Not $30 million, but at least $5. I'm interested to see how GodTube makes money off its popularity.

More Ruth Wisse, Jews and Power

Nextbook's second annual "festival of ideas" will be held Sunday in New York. This year's theme is "Jews and Power" and it will feature thinkers like J.J. Goldberg and Ruth Wisse. In preparation, Wisse, who recently wrote a book bearing the same name as the conference, penned a piece for The Forward that argues how the world would have changed if the Jews had remained the masters of their own universe.

Had Jews always remained a self-governing people in their land, there would have been no Crusader wars over Jerusalem, no Spanish Inquisition and no Holocaust. Karl Marx would not have concluded that “the bill of exchange is the Jew’s actual god” and Stalin would not have mounted a lethal campaign against Jewish “rootless cosmopolitans.” Host nations would not have wreaked upon Jews some of the most terrible evils in the history of humankind. The Jewish contribution to the welfare of the world would have been all the greater had the Jews managed to secure for themselves their aboriginal land.

She talks about how Jews saw their exile as punishment for poor Torah observance and the challenges of Jewish self-governance in Europe, which usually ended in expulsion, and then concludes:

Today’s Jews rightfully resent the assaults against them, wishing that they could be allowed to live in peace. New generations of Israelis dislike having to soldier; American Jewish students dislike having to defend Israel on campus. But paradoxically, Jews cannot achieve peace for themselves, never mind for the rest of the world, unless they convince their enemies they are unbeatable and home for good. Jews can only help to “repair the world” by insisting that their assailants begin to repair themselves.

College administrator fired over 'anti-gay' column

You can say a lot of things as a tenured faculty member that you could not say as a service worker or administrator -- positions that are not tenured. Case in point: Crystal Dixon was fired as the associate vp of human resources at the University of Toledo after she wrote a column criticizing comparisons between the drive for legalizing same-sex unions and the civil rights movement.

I cannot wake up tomorrow and not be a Black woman. I am genetically and biologically a Black woman and very pleased to be so as my Creator intended. Daily, thousands of homosexuals make a life decision to leave the gay lifestyle evidenced by the growing population of PFOX (Parents and Friends of Ex Gays) and Exodus International just to name a few. Frequently, the individuals report that the impetus to their change of heart and lifestyle was a transformative experience with God; a realization that their choice of same-sex practices wreaked havoc in their psychological and physical lives.

Dixon has sought the help of the conservative ACLU, the Thomas More Law Center.

Creator's note: I've been trying to publish this post and another on "Jews and Power" all day. However, I have been unable due to some irregular blogging issues that should be resolved soon.

Inside the wacky world of Christian pop culture

At my high school graduation party, a friend who was not a Christian walked up and commented on the music playing over the outdoor speakers at my parents' house.

"Why is it," he asked, "that Christian bands always have the best musicians?"

I was a bit perplexed: The tunes he was hearing belonged to Midtown, a pop-punk quartet whose members, as far as I knew, were not Christian.

I also disagreed with my friend's assessment. I mean, I was a big fan of MxPx and Slick Shoes ... but the best musicians? Hardly. (For evidence, listen to"Rappin for Jesus" by Stephen Wiley.)

Until a few years ago, Christian bands occasionally would have a radio hit or two -- dc Talk and Jars of Clay had their moment, as did Sixpence None the Richer -- and then disappear back into oblivion.

Switchfoot, whose CD a friend of mine picked up in a South Dakota pawn shop during our 2001 road trip around the country (that's a different, longer story), seems to have bucked that trend. Being heard on TV promos and Star 98.7, or whatever the pop rock station is in your town, for years to follow, Switchfoot has been one of the lucky few who have broken through without significantly changing their message, though I would argue they too have watered it down and published one really bad album.

This music is part of the bigger, "parallel universe of Christian pop culture," as Daniel Radosh dubs the industry in his new book "Rapture Ready!" (Radosh's list of the top 10 Christian songs begins with Larry Norman's "Why Don't You Look Into Jesus?")

"Rapture Ready!" details the exploits of a secular New York Jew on a quest to the center of evangelical culture. Radosh visits the International Christian Retail Show, the Holy Land Experience and Stephen Baldwin World; serves as part of the mob calling for Christ's crucifixion in Arkansas' Great Passion Play; and goes backstage with Bibleman, AKA "Batman for Jesus." I'll forgive Radosh for avoiding VeggieTales night at a minor league baseball stadium and the giants who break burning stacks of bricks in Jesus' name.

Radosh intersperses Christian camp with more sober accounts of economics and theology. Chapter 4 focuses on the Bible-publishing business and originally appeared in The New Yorker, and Chapter 5, which, believe it or not, appeared in Playboy, is about pre-millenialism and the "Left Behind" phenomenon.

"In the end," Brian McLaren, author of "A New Kind of Christian," proclaims on the book jacket, "he offers evaluations and insights that might be considered downright prophetic, and compassionate too. No evangelical insider could have done as good a job as Daniel Radosh."

He's definitely more sensitive to things he finds strange than Matt Taibbi. The book has been well-reviewed by Relevant magazine and The Forward, among others. I read through a chunk of it last night and, for some reason, found the style quite similar to A.J. Jacobs' in "The Year of Living Biblically." (Jacobs, possibly not by coincidence, also wrote a review for the book jacket.)

In the intro, Radosh explains that Christian culture is no laughing matter, at least not from a business perspective: It is a $7 billion a year industry.

"At some point," Hanna Rosin wrote for Slate.com, "Radosh asks the obvious question":

Didn't Jesus chase the money changers out of the temple? In other words, isn't there something wrong with so thoroughly commercializing all aspects of faith? For this, the Christian pop-culture industry has a ready answer. Evangelizing and commercializing have much in common. In the "spiritual marketplace" (as it's called), Christianity is a brand that seeks to dominate. Like Coke, it wants to hold onto its followers and also win over new converts. As with advertisers, the most important audience is young people and teenagers, who are generally brand loyalists. Hence, Bibleman and Christian rock are the spiritual equivalent of New Coke. Christian trinkets—a WWJD bracelet, a "God is my DJ" T-shirt—function more like Coca-Cola T-shirts or those cute stuffed polar bears. They telegraph to the community that the wearer is a proud Christian and that this is a cool thing to be—which should, in theory, invite eager curiosity.

This is significant because, according to research by The Barna Group, 61 percent of twentysomethings were "spiritually active" teens but have since lost their religion. Christians leaders see culture as the new channel through which to reach the lost and distracted. Radosh writes:

A less reliable statistic -- but one that has galvanized pastors who believe it reflects what they see in the pews -- is that if current trends continue, only 4 percent of today's Christian teens will be "Bible-believing Christians" as adults.

"Less reliable" is far too generous. That factoid is pure fiction. But, nonetheless, Christian culture can increase the fervency of the faithful, something I saw countless times as a teen at P.O.D. and Dogwood concerts (the latter for which I actually skipped my senior prom). They may not be the best musicians, but their message often carries more weight than typical Christian influencers.

As Radosh relays in the first few words of the book when describing a concert on a rural Kansas airfield:

A lanky teenager made his way out of the crow and ran to where his friends were waiting on the periphery, sweat smearing his thick black eyeliner. "Awesome performance." He grinned broadly. "They prayed like three times in a twenty-minute set."

Does all God's creation include aliens?

This news from the Vatican's chief astronomer probably caught the pope's attention, and that is one boss I would not want to irritate.

The Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, says that the vastness of the universe means it is possible there could be other forms of life outside Earth, even intelligent ones.

In an interview published Tuesday by Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, Funes says that such a notion “doesn’t contradict our faith” because aliens would still be God’s creatures.

The interview was headlined “The extraterrestrial is my brother.” Funes said that ruling out the existence of aliens would be like “putting limits” on God’s creative freedom.

I've written before about whether God could have created aliens and, if so, what it would mean to a handful of religions. Raelians would be stoked and I imagine Scientologists would say they knew it all along.

As a Christian, I have no problem with this, though I struggle to understand whether these other beings could also be saved by a messiah -- little "m" because it couldn't possibly by the same Messiah. Could it?

'Zionist bigots like you, Mr. Greenberg'

Most of the e-mail I have received about my profile of Kevin MacDonald, the Cal State Long Beach professor whose books on Jews have been compared to 'Mein Kampf," has been tame and complimentary, most of all from MacDonald, who wrote me Thursday night:

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised. I was really worried about a hatchet job and this definitely was not that. There were a few things that I would rephrase or provide a somewhat different context, but I suppose that's what all interviewees say.

His chief adversary, Jeff Blutinger, told me the response has been "overwhelmingly positive."

Thanks for making his gobbledy gook intelligible through your use of clear language.

But Anti-Zionist Wayne, similar to this "analysis" by John de Nugent, shared a different perspective in an e-mail I just received. He begins by thanking me for notifying him about MacDonald, whose books he now intends to buy. Wayne then lambastes me for my alleged desire to curb freedom of speech (nowhere in the article did I suggest this) and informs me that "this IS AMERICA . . . IT'S NOT FACIST ISRAEL (a nation OF Jews, BY Jews, FOR Jews) !"

He concludes with this thoughtful observation:

The truth is that the greatest danger that rascist Jews (i.e, Zionists) fear is NOT the anti-semitic terrorism from non-Jews, but the assimilation ("self-destruction") of the Diaspora Jews into "other" (impure) multi-ethnic cultures, LIKE IN MELTING POT AMERICA!!!!

The Aryan Neo-Nazis fear and hate MELTING POT America!
The WASPs (David Dukes) fear and hate MELTING POT America!
The Louis Farahkan Blacks fear and hate MELTING POT America!
The Zionist Jews fear and hate MELTING POT America!

I believe that ALL ethnic groups are possessed with RACIST factions that want to preserve their pedigree clan! If we must NEVER FORGET the evils and horrors of bigotry and racism, then we have to learn the attributes (psychological markers) of these bigoted factions, no matter what ethnic group they belong to!!

Louis Farrakhan can NOT use the horrors of the history of SLAVERY as an excuse, or justification, for tolerating Black bigotry! Neither can Zionist Jews be permitted to use the HOLOCAUST as an excuse or justification for tolerating Zionist (Israeli) bigotry!!

I suspect that that's the message Professor Kevin MacDonald wants to teach his students!

But I'm quite sure that he'll learn that you CAN NOT criticize the Jewish Community, by documenting its flaws, without facing professional assassination by Zionist bigots . . .umm, like you Mr Greenberg!!!

Coincidentally, this rant was sent to thecreator@thegodblog.org, the account I use for this blog, on which it is very apparent that I'm a practicing Christian who believes in Zionism, though not without criticism, and has a Jewish last name.

An old colleague of mine had a hilarious template letter for replying to such e-mails. It began "Dear Sir and/or Madam," thanked the author for "using fairly grammatically correct language and removing most of the typos" and offered to do better in the future "so you'll be able to spend your days contributing productively to society, rather than devoting time and effort to reminding me of what a miserable excuse for a person I am." Other parts of the letter, which was never sent out but was always good for a laugh, are not repeatable here.

But back to Wayne's e-mail: Notice the difference his insights into my flaws and those shared with me after I wrote an article about Islamopobia for the LA Daily News last year. (Hint: that guy told me I was a sucker for Islamofascists and said, "While you're waiting in line with your prayer rug on the way to the ovens, I'll continue to shine a light on the hate speech that Imams are spewing in Mosque's.")

American Jews and Israelis: brothers from different mothers

Kvetching in PresenTense about being a "single, twenty-something Jewish coquette" expected to marry a nice Jewish boy, my friend Rachel Axelbank explains why she finds herself much more attracted to Israelis. As a point of reference, she mentions the guards who issued our security clearance before we met last summer with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert -- they apparently shot her glances that I, fortunately, didn't receive -- and quotes Jon Stewart on the differences between our Jews and theirs:

“You have American Jews, who are the ‘let me help you with your tax return’ Jews,” he said. “And you have Israeli Jews, who are the ‘hold my machine gun while I take a leak’ Jews.”

Anyone want to argue with that wisdom?

Rev. Hagee apologizes to Catholic League

Yawn.

'God' speaks about wanting a new name

When I wrote last week about Steve Kreuscher, the man from Zion who wants to legally change his name to "In God We Trust," I cross-posted the article at the CT Liveblog. I was just checking comments there, and I saw that awaiting approval was one from Kreuscher.

The following is the whole reasoning behind me wanting to change my name to "In God We Trust; So that You know the whole truth about why I am doing it and see that I am more down to earth, then you probably thought at first.

"I have been a very creative artist since 1967. I have been searching for a new powerful and meaningful signature for my artwork, for the last 10 years. I was looking for a signature, which would best express my charactor of "Trust In God", my life of "Trust In God" and most of my artworks, which faithfully express my "Trust In God" also.

"Being born and raised in Zion Illinois, the city which the world renown faith healer, Dr. John Alexander Dowie, founded in 1900, I had a stong "Trust In God" since childhood. But then at 23 years old, I had a very dramatic spiritual experience and full whole hearted conversion to Christ, in October 1973, which is also the title of one of my very important works; "October 1973, My Conversion". Most of my artworks since my conversion, are very deeply religious. Being very religious, those artworks faithfully express my "Trust In God". Also many of those artworks express powerful stories about many tribulations that I went through in my life and how God used those trials to develope and increase that "Trust In Him" to where it is today.

"Therefore, changing my name to "In God We Trust" is my newest creative artwork; painted not with paint, but instead with those beautiful, powerful and meaningful words, on the canvas of my life. Those words "In God We Trust" most truely and most faithfully express me and who I am, in a beautiful creative word painting, a million times better, than the name Steve Kreuscher does.

"Those beautiful words are now the person, who God has made me into, by "the free riches of His power and His grace, In Christ Jesus" , my Lord and Savior

"And finally, by taking those precious words as my new name, I am joining those beautiful words, which are so dear to me, in a permanent way, to myself, preserving them for myself as part of me for ever."

Needless to say, My four children, my five grandchildren and myself need all the prayers and support that you can give us, for God's Divine protection, wisdom, strength and any thing else that God knows we will need through this all, and especially on Friday the 13th of June. I would love to see June 13th to be made into the offical "In God We Trust" day here in America. And last of all, my hopes and prayers are that Christians, all over America and all over the world, on that day figure out some creative, loving, peaceful way to take there own little personal stand for "In God We Trust" on that day.

All my love "In Christ Jesus, our Lord and Savior"; Steve Kreuscher ( In God We Trust )

Kreuscher had me for a minute. Sort of. And then he mentioned Friday the 13th.

Obama's Jewish campaign

The New York Times this morning recycles a lot of news you've seen here in the past few weeks. The story is about Barack Obama's push to attract Jewish voters and alleviate their fears; it mentions his interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic and his congratulations to Israel on turning 60.

Nothing new, except for a reference to an op-ed Obama wrote for the Sunday edition of Israel's largest paper, Yedioth Ahronoth. I, however, can find no trace of this online.

Einstein found the Bible 'primitive, childish'

As a teen, I was told several times by fellow Christians that Charles Darwin recanted his theory of evolution on his deathbed. This 125-year-old legendwas believable because it played into the idea that no matter how wicked a life someone had led -- and we believed Darwin to be a vile man -- God would welcome them back, even in their final moments.

For Albert Einstein, who I will admit is one of my heroes, nearing the end did not make him a more religious man. His vague language on God had long been interpreted by the faithful that Einstein was a fellow believer. But, in a letter being auctioned in England, Einstein was quite critical of religion and the Jewish people, of which he was a proud member. From The Guardian:

Einstein penned the letter on January 3 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind who had sent him a copy of his book Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt. The letter went on public sale a year later and has remained in private hands ever since.

In the letter, he states: "The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."

Einstein, who was Jewish and who declined an offer to be the state of Israel's second president, also rejected the idea that the Jews are God's favoured people.

"For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."

Avoiding Einstein's frank review of his people, I disagree with his interpretation of the Bible. Yes, Jesus spoke highly of a childlike faith, but does that mean the Bible's stories are "primitive" and "childish?"

Hardly. Even if you don't believe its accounts of Jewish history, the Gospels and the epistles, the complete book, covering 4,000 years from the Beginning to the End, is the greatest literary work ever.

It's more enjoyable, though, if you believe it.

The new Muslim smear for Obama

I made a mistake Monday morning. I should have read that Edward Luttwak op-ed on Barack Obama the Muslim apostate that I linked to here but didn't discuss. As the day dragged on, my Google Reader filled up with a few RSS feeds attacking the bankruptcy of Luttwak's argument that Obama, as an apostate who purportedly was born a Muslim and converted out to Christianity, could not be tolerated by other Muslims and might even be killed for it.

Here is what Luttwak wrote:

As the son of the Muslim father, Senator Obama was born a Muslim under Muslim law as it is universally understood. It makes no difference that, as Senator Obama has written, his father said he renounced his religion. Likewise, under Muslim law based on the Koran his mother’s Christian background is irrelevant.

Of course, as most Americans understand it, Senator Obama is not a Muslim. He chose to become a Christian, and indeed has written convincingly to explain how he arrived at his choice and how important his Christian faith is to him.

His conversion, however, was a crime in Muslim eyes; it is “irtidad” or “ridda,” usually translated from the Arabic as “apostasy,” but with connotations of rebellion and treason. Indeed, it is the worst of all crimes that a Muslim can commit, worse than murder (which the victim’s family may choose to forgive).

With few exceptions, the jurists of all Sunni and Shiite schools prescribe execution for all adults who leave the faith not under duress; the recommended punishment is beheading at the hands of a cleric, although in recent years there have been both stonings and hangings.

Obama, in fact, is not the son of a Muslim father. This belief comes from that rumor that he's a closet Muslim. Secondly, Luttwak's argument is not original, having first been made last summer in FrontPage magazine, courtesy of the man leading a battle against peaceful Islam, Daniel Pipes.

"This is an example of editorial lunacy," Richard Silverstein responded to Luttwak's column. "Why would you take a trashy rumor published in a David Horowitz shmate and transfer it to the N.Y. Times? I feel dirty just reading it there."

At Huffington Post, Ali Eteraz breaks down the fallacies inherent in Luttwak's piece, beginning "with his facile understanding of Sharia."

Luttwack and the other fake experts promoting this new smear do not understand Islam. Religion is not hereditary as it is in Judaism. Islam is not a race. Just because a child has a Muslim father -- which, again, Obama didn't -- doesn't mean anything unless the child is being raised as a Muslim. At the time of birth, Muslims engage in a symbolic act -- of saying the Call to Prayer in the child's ear -- that renders a child Muslim. If Obama's father was agnostic/atheist, then he wouldn't have done such a thing.

No call to prayer in the ear, not raised as a Muslim, born to an atheist father, and then abandoned to a Christian mother both by father and his family, equals not Muslim. Obama is right to say he had no religion until he became a Christian.

Also in the Obama files, Republicans politicians and the Republican Jewish Coalition respond to the Illinois senator's interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, in which they spoke at length about Israel. Here's a compilation.

The pink gorilla and me

It's difficult to explain to a big pink gorilla why as a journalist you don't want to mug for the camera, so I indulged Zack Sher last week at UC Irvine. He and his fellow Anteaters for Israel were celebrating the Jewish State's 60th anniversary with iFest, a week long festival that preceded and partially overlapped Palestinian awareness week, for which I'll be heading down south again this week.

The lost members of the tribe in Cuba

I think there are less Jews in Cuba than at Langer's at any given time, but this small community (it's actually numbers about 1,500) has spent the past decade on the rebound. Here's what led to the decline in numbers so small that the synagogue, which still has no rabbi, couldn't form a minyan, courtesy of Cox News Service:

when Castro's government adopted communist ideals and began confiscating private businesses and properties, most Jews fled, many to the U.S.

"But they didn't leave because of anti-Semitism," [Adela] Dworin said. "In Cuba the behavior of the people toward the Jews was always very nice. There was never any persecution. I decided to stay because I always felt like a Cuban, proud of being born here, very Cuban and very Jewish."

The long years that followed were difficult, but Dworin remained optimistic. When Castro met with religious leaders in the 1990s and reversed the state's discouragement of organized religion, Dworin and others, including Dr. Jose Miller, began seeking out Cubans with Jewish roots.

Most of the island's Jews by then had married outside the faith, stopped attending services and lost touch with Jewish traditions. With the help of American and international Jewish support groups, the small number of faithful in Cuba began rebuilding their membership and refurbishing their facilities.

"I cried a lot when we re-opened the big sanctuary in 2000," Dworin said, noting that the extensive remodeling job was supported by American Jewish groups. "For so long we used the small chapel, but we grew so much we no longer had enough room for services there."

The Forward originally did this article last September, which is where Cox seemingly found Dworin. Here too is a Web site dedicated to Cuba's Jews.

Pope urges Israel to help Christians in Mideast

Pope Benedict XVI on Monday asked Israel to ease travel restrictions for Mideast Christians, who in Gaza and the West Bank and places like Lebanon have been under attack.

Benedict has made concern over the future of Middle East Christians a
priority. Economic problems as well as violence in the Holy Land and Iraq have led Christians to emigrate from the region.

"I pray that, in consequence of the growing friendship between Israel and the Holy See, ways will be found of reassuring the Christian community that they
have a secure future in the region," Benedict said.

He said problems facing Christians are related to Israel-Palestinian tensions.

The Holy See recognizes Israel's legitimate need for security and self-defense and strongly condemns all forms of anti-Semitism, the pope said.

At the same time, he urged Israel to alleviate travel restrictions causing hardships for Palestinians.

The ambassador, in his remarks released by the Vatican, said Israel would do its utmost to help strengthen the Christian communities in Israel as their essential presence in the Holy Land is deeply rooted and historically self-understood.

This is a bit of a different tone from the Holy See than when the Vatican's former ambassador to Israel said, "relations between the Catholic Church and the state of Israel were better when there were no diplomatic relations."

Muslim creationist gets three years prison time

Harun Yahya is the best-known creationist in the Muslim world. Author of the 12-pound, 800-page anti-evolution tome, "Atlas of Creation," Yahya, AKA Adnan Oktar, has also been dogged by legal problems, which culminated Friday in a three-year prison sentence in Turkey "for creating an illegal organization for personal gain."

Oktar had been tried with 17 other defendants in an Istanbul court. The verdict and sentence came after a previous trial that began in 2000 after Oktar, along with 50 members of his foundation, was arrested in 1999.

In that court case, Oktar had been charged with using threats for personal benefit and creating an organization with the intent to commit a crime. The charges were dropped but another court picked them up resulting in the latest case.

Oktar planned to appeal the sentence, a BAV spokeswoman said. No further details were immediately available.

(Hat tip: Science and Religion News)

Obama on 'the kishke question'

Jeffrey Goldberg, who made an appearance here last week, spent part of his weekend asking Barack Obama about being endorsed by Hamas (he didn't care for it), Jimmy Carter's portrait of Israel as an apartheid state ("I strongly reject that characterization"), whether Israel hurts the U.S. image abroad ("no, no, no") and the lingering feeling among many Jews that he can't be trusted.

Here is Obama's response to "the kishke question":

I think the idea of Israel and the reality of Israel is one that I find important to me personally. Because it speaks to my history of being uprooted, it speaks to the African-American story of exodus, it describes the history of overcoming great odds and a courage and a commitment to carving out a democracy and prosperity in the midst of hardscrabble land. One of the things I loved about Israel when I went there is that the land itself is a metaphor for rebirth, for what’s been accomplished. What I also love about Israel is the fact that people argue about these issues, and that they’re asking themselves moral questions.

Sometimes I’m attacked in the press for maybe being too deliberative. My staff teases me sometimes about anguishing over moral questions. I think I learned that partly from Jewish thought, that your actions have consequences and that they matter and that we have moral imperatives. The point is, if you look at my writings and my history, my commitment to Israel and the Jewish people is more than skin-deep and it’s more than political expediency. When it comes to the gut issue, I have such ardent defenders among my Jewish friends in Chicago. I don’t think people have noticed how fiercely they defend me, and how central they are to my success, because they’ve interacted with me long enough to know that I've got it in my gut. During the Wright episode, they didn’t flinch for a minute, because they know me and trust me, and they’ve seen me operate in difficult political situations.

The other irony in this whole process is that in my early political life in Chicago, one of the raps against me in the black community is that I was too close to the Jews. When I ran against Bobby Rush [for Congress], the perception was that I was Hyde Park, I’m University of Chicago, I’ve got all these Jewish friends. When I started organizing, the two fellow organizers in Chicago were Jews, and I was attacked for associating with them. So I’ve been in the foxhole with my Jewish friends, so when I find on the national level my commitment being questioned, it’s curious.

In other Obama news (analysis), the Crunchy Con discusses the passages he found most interesting from the New York Times' lengthy profile of Obama's rise and on the op-ed page, Edward N. Luttwak argues that Obama is not going to be the miraculous American emissary to the Muslim world that some hope.

A world of hurt

If God is good, why does He let bad things occur? I know we try to answer that question, but some days it just seems so difficult. Today is one of those days.

I opened my computer this morning and the first headline I saw screamed, "Thousands Feared Dead in China Quake." At first I thought the copy editors had made a mistake. That disaster was in Myanmar, and,