philly

Silver Ring Thing May Lose Federal Funding

I first heard of Silver Ring Thing back in May on a 60 Minutes piece called Taking the Pledge. I wrote a post on it as well.

And I just saw this article in the WaPo announcing that the Department of Health and Human Services has held off on giving the group $75,000 in grant money because they believe the group is using tax money for religious purposes/activities.

The action comes three months after the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against HHS, accusing the administration of using tax dollars to promote Christianity. In documents filed in federal court in Boston, the ACLU alleged that the activities, brochures and Web site of Silver Ring Thing were "permeated with religion" and use "taxpayer dollars to promote religious content, instruction and indoctrination."

Teenage graduates of the program sign a covenant "before God Almighty" to remain virgins and earn a silver ring inscribed with a Bible passage reminding them to "keep clear of sexual sin." Many of its events are held at churches.

In filings with the Internal Revenue Service, the organization describes its mission as "evangelist.

You can't have it both ways Church groups. You can't have a tax exempt status and recieve tax monies. That's just a nono.

Let's see if Silver Ring Thing can somehow weasel their way out of this and come up with some loophole reasoning to get their $75K, if they try, the ACLU will be all over them like white on rice.

Saving Indonesians

Listening to NPR on the way to work [for the last time, the car goes back to CT tomorrow morning] I heard a short piece on volunteers from America over in the tsunami ravaged countries of SE Asia. The piece focused mainly on voluntourists, those spending a short period of time there, helping out and having a pseudo-vacation on the cheap. And they ended the piece talking about a Christian group who went there to build houses... and spread the gospel.

This group of high schoolers from the U.S. [I can't remember their name] is over there to build a house for an Indonesian Christian man. After they're done they said they were going to talk to a group of Buddhists. A high school girl was interviewed and she said [paraphrased]:

The people of Indonesia have lived their lives believing in spirits, asking spirits to protect their people and their land and now, the spirits they prayed to have let them down. We're here to show them how Jesus Christ will look after them and that he will not let them down.

I just wanted to get on a plane over to Indonesia to find this girl and scream into her face "Are you fucking crazy?!" And with Chris Rock's permission, shake the shit out of her. What kind of ignorant bullshit is that? What is she learning in this group of hers? Does she not forget the millions upon millions of Christians who have died during the last two millenia since Christianity was founded? Buddhism has a longer history than Christianity. And as far as I can recall, Buddhists don't wage war against each other with both sides claiming that God is on their side.

Maybe groups like these should concentrate on saving themselves.

Both Apocalyptic and Hopeful

Is it just me or was the caption of this NY Times article on Rev. Billy Graham's crusade in Queens this past weekend a little weird.

The Rev. Billy Graham, global ambassador for Christ and the most prominent American evangelist of the past century, concluded what might be his final American crusade yesterday with a sermon both apocalyptic and hopeful before a joyously polyglot throng in a New York City park.

Does the juxtaposition of the words "apocalyptic" and "hopeful" trouble anyone else out there?

Graham preached on how the end is near.

He simply cited a few national headlines - the disappearance of an 18-year-old Alabama girl in Aruba, the three children in New Jersey found dead in a car trunk last week - as evidence that end times are near.

"I believe today God is warning us," he said.

And fortunate for him, he's both very old and has the ear of a man with an itchy trigger finger who believes in the Rapture. And that trigger finger hovers above the button that travels with him at all times in a briefcase called "The Football" - kinda freaky.

With solid facts and examples like the Aruba girl and the three children found in the NJ car trunk, I'd say that the end of the world has been a long time coming. How many times has it been predicted that the world as we know it would end? Lots. All wrong. We will be long gone from this planet and solar system before all is over. We're just a blip on the screen in the big scheme of things no matter what religion you follow or don't follow.

Larry King Talks Politics?

Holy crap, I can't believe what I'm seeing/hearing right now. Bill Clinton is on Larry King. Larry King has a guest on that is not some stupid sensational "news" story. Larry asked one question that got a very good answer out of the calm Clinton. He asked whether or not he was scared by the power that the religous Right now has. Clinton responded by saying that they are the ones who should be scared. He explained that the religious Right are now getting too involved into politics and that people who think that they know exactly what God wants in control of the government is a bad thing. He clearly understands the whole separation of secular and spiritual.

Clinton looked good. He's recovering very well, as is to be expected for a very, very, rich person who just happens to be the former two-time Prez.

NYT Magazine: Santorum

I gagged when I clicked over to the NYT magazine just now. The cover story is of Repug Rick Santorum.

Rick Santorum's conservative Catholicism informs his life, his politics and the policies he promotes. Has he found a way to turn blue states red?

Fuck that shit. I haven't read the article just yet, it's 2.13a and I'll probably get too riled up to sleep. I'll be sure to read it later on.

Photo: David Burnett/Contact, for The New York Times

A Pentecostal Wedding

This weekend I'll be going to a Pentecostal wedding up in CT. Lady's cousin is getting married. She's 19. Good grief that's young.

This particular family does not allow their children to watch TV nor can the women cut their hair aside from a little trimming of frayed hair at the ends. They don't drink either.

It's a strange world for me to be going into. I'll surely be the only Asian there, perhaps the only non-white person. I'll be bringing my D70 there and I'll be snapping away, perhaps swiping some souls. It should be interesting.

Banned From Their Church

After posting on the East Waynesville Baptist Church that excommunicated nine of its members [and its pastor now says it was all a big misunderstanding], I received an email from Barry and Jennifer Pendergast of BleatingLambs.org. They were also kicked out of their church in South Calgary. Here's their story:

Barry & Jennifer Pendergast belonged to South Calgary Community Church for 9 years and invested willingly and lovingly in many ministry areas. Barry & Jennifer were delighted to initiate the first Alpha Marriage Course at the church especially when a marriage retreat in March 2003 identified so many couples in medium to serious difficulties. It pained them greatly to see little being done to assist the couples. When after 9 years they lovingly questioned the unethical behavior of elders, pastors, and a pastor's wife on issues relating to the Marriage Course they were treated cruelly, threatened, excommunicated and banned from all church buildings and activities; the first time in October 2003. Despite repeated requests, the Pendergasts were unable to have the proof of the mass accusations leveled in the elder's letter of 22nd September 2003. Nor would Kevin Phillips, Chairman of the Elders, and the elders agree to outside assistance to help resolve the conflict. Both Kevin Phillips and Senior Pstor Jim Wallace refused to heed the Executive Director of North American Baptist Conference Ron Berg's insistance that a third party be called in. It would take almost a year for the Kevin Phillips to admit, infront of the mediator, the decision to discipline was based on a single confidential email sent to a Denise Chaulk, friend & spiritual advisor to the Pendergast and elder. A friend who herself and her husband had voiced open concerns about the senior pastor's controlling attitude.

I wonder how many cases like these there are out there.

The Church and AIDS

After reading Howard's post on the U.S. and its AIDS funding in Brazil, I came across Nicholas Kristof's latest column on how The Church has taken on the AIDS fight. Based on their actions, you could say that they've ignored it.

Let's hope that Pope Benedict XVI quickly realizes that the worst sex scandal in the Catholic Church doesn't involve predatory priests. Rather, it involves the Vatican's hostility to condoms, which is creating more AIDS orphans every day.

Nobody does nobler work throughout the developing world than the Catholic Church. You find priests and nuns in the most remote spots of Latin America and Africa, curing the sick and feeding the hungry, and Catholic Relief Services is a model of compassion.

The Church is officially against the use of condoms. And as a result

"The Catholic Church helps increase AIDS in the world," said Roseli Tardelli, a Catholic who is editor of the AIDS News Agency in Brazil.

By being such a huge organization with over a billion people around the world, with the most newcomers coming from poorer countries, what they say has quite a bit of power. Granted, not all Catholics follow every edict, but many do.

Kristof quotes the worldwide deaths attributed to AIDS at 20 million and reminds us that that is more than three times greater than those killed in the Holocaust.

But there may be some hope within the walls of the Vatican

Even some senior Vatican officials are catching up with reality. One step came when Cardinal Javier Lozano Barrágan, the Vatican's top health official, said last year that condoms might be permissible if a husband had H.I.V. and his wife did not.

That's a start.

But who is a single person to go against the will of the Church? But isn't the relationship with God a personal one? Between a wo/man and God and not through the middleman that is the Church? So people can ask themselves What Would Jesus Do? One person answers:

"What would Jesus do?" said Didier Francisco Pelaez, a seminarian in São Paulo. "He would save lives. If condoms will save lives, then he would encourage their use."

I think that's the right attitude.

Church and State

Saw it first here on Susie's new home. And here's the dKos diary with tons of info.

For those that thought that there has not been a full scale war lanched against liberals; for those who didn't take the radical right's promise to "eradicate liberals" seriously, I present to you, Exhibit A: East Waynesville Baptist Church has just kicked out all its Democratic members.

Yes. You read that right. If you didn't vote for Bush, you had to "repent your sin". And finally, they figured why deal with the liberal sinners at all..

And the local paper there is the Citizen-Times.

Uniters not dividers?

***UPDATE*** 5.6.05
And here's a link with a 52 second video clip of the news broadcast. If the link is killed or their servers overloaded, lemme know and I can email you the file [1.4MB .wmv] or post a link for you to download the file.

And here's the story from the Citizen-Times.

The New Pope's Inagural Mass

Tomorrow is the new Pope's inagural mass. I think that it will be like a U.S. president's first official speech to the nation where he outlines policy and what he wants to accomplish in the coming years. That is just what I would think be logical. I wasn't born yet when JPII gave his inagural mass and I am almost completely in the dark on religious matters.

I went to a presbyterian church as a child, but by the third grade, I became pretty good at soccer and played on a travel team and had games on Sundays so I stopped going to church. I probably know more about Juddaism than Christianity after growing up in a predominantly Jewish town for twenty years or so. I went to hundreds of Bar/Bat Mitzvahs. Never been to a communion, baptism or any other ceremony related to the Christian or Catholic faiths. But I'm up to learn. 1.1 Billion people in this world are Catholics and there's quite a range of faith within each one of them so they are a worldwide force like it or not.

But what can be expected to come out of Benedict's mouth? It's not like he's all of a sudden going to say that women can be priests, gays are okay and John Kerry can now accept communion is he? He's the Pope! And he has certain rules of his faith that he will follow. Does the Pope have much leeway in the rules? Like can he suggest changes like a King or Parliment? I know that the Church can correct itself like saying the world is round, but could it allow women to be priests and okay gay marriage? What would/does it take to do something like that?