Benton said that under provisions of the Science Education Act enacted last year by the Louisiana Legislature, schools can present what she termed “critical thinking and creationism” in science classes.

Board Member David Tate quickly responded: “We let them teach evolution to our children, but I think all of us sitting up here on this School Board believe in creationism. Why can’t we get someone with religious beliefs to teach creationism?”

Fellow board member Clint Mitchell responded, “I agree … you don’t have to be afraid to point out some of the fallacies with the theory of evolution. Teachers should have the freedom to look at creationism and find a way to get it into the classroom.”

Even though creationism in the minds of these school board members may not be the same thing as intelligent design, a Federal court already weighed in on this with a resounding verdict on the side of science, which in that instance fell on the side of evolution.

From The New York Times (Dec. 20, 2005):

A federal judge ruled today that a Pennsylvania school board’s policy of teaching intelligent design in high school biology class is unconstitutional because intelligent design is clearly a religious idea that advances “a particular version of Christianity.”

In the nation’s first case to test the legal merits of intelligent design, Judge John E. Jones III dealt a stinging rebuke to advocates of teaching intelligent design as a scientific alternative to evolution in public schools.

The judge found that intelligent design is not science, and that the only way its proponents can claim it is, is by changing the very definition of science to include supernatural explanations.

On p. 64 of the Court’s decision (pdf), the Court held that Intelligent Design (ID) was not science:

We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science. They are: (1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; (2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980′s; and (3) ID’s negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community. As we will discuss in more detail below, it is
additionally important to note that ID has failed to gain acceptance in the scientific community, it has not generated peer-reviewed publications, nor has it been the
subject of testing and research.

It also seem apparent that the Livingston School Board has not passed the “Lemon” test. (No. Not that kind of “Lemon Law”.) Quoting again from the Dover case:

As articulated by the Supreme Court, under the Lemon test, a government-sponsored message violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment if: (1) it does not have a secular purpose; (2) its principal or primary effect advances or inhibits religion; or (3) it creates an excessive entanglement of the government with religion. Lemon, 403 U.S. at 612-13. As the Lemon test is disjunctive, either an improper purpose or an improper effect renders the ID Policy invalid under the Establishment Clause.

The bigger catch here is that the there is something governmental that “inhibits” religion, namely, the First Amendment and the court cases that restrict religious education in public schools. But it’s not much of a snag. If the schools in question are parochial schools there’d be no issue at all. The smaller catch might be that if the school board does not encourage the teaching of other “scientific” views, they are harming their students. This is a clear secular purpose. But one would think the Dover case closed that avenue.

Doesn’t Louisiana have enough on its plate?

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But women clergy? Especially women bishops? I never imagined “the end” of the worldwide Anglican communion would come over that issue. (Yes, this clearly shows what a sheltered life I’ve led I’m afraid.) Apparently a third of the clergy in the UK are women. I’m sure it’s much, much higher in the US. But the Anglican communion is comprised of more than dear old “Britain”. The ultra-conservative Southern hemisphere is an increasingly powerful force and they don’t mind throwing their weight around. The combined forces of the traditionalist “South” and “West” are formidable indeed.

The NY Times reports that the compromise on women bishops Archbishop Williams offered the conservative wing, in part, was this:

But the votes on Saturday appeared to have blocked, perhaps conclusively, a settlement under which hard-line traditionalists might have accepted the appointment of women bishops. The proposals would have provided for a “complementary” male bishop with independent powers, working alongside a woman bishop, to minister to traditionalists unwilling to accept a woman as the head of their diocese.

Talk about “separate but unequal”. Yikes.

There is an inherent freedom one feels when writing on one’s own blog. I feel it now. It’s an immense privilege and it comes with an equal responsibility. That’s how I feel about it, anyway. I’m sure lots of other bloggers give not a nanosecond of thought about being restrained and toning down the hyperbole.

OK. Nanosecond’s up.

Actually, I’ve given it several minutes of thought. Here goes.

In my view, the Archbishop’s proposal itself undermines the dignity of women. It exemplifies the continued subjugation of women that occurs worldwide. I couldn’t help but link this proposal and its rejection to the adultery case in Iran. She still is under the threat of being stoned to death. Or the South African soccer player who happened to be a lesbian who was brutally murdered simply for being gay.

Remember “driving while black” or “walking while gay”? Now it’s “breathing while being a woman”.

It may seem extreme to compare the Church of England’s internal squabbles to the above cases. That might be true if it were not the case that as a religious institution the Church has an obligation to be a sign of God’s grace and love in the world. The Church’s “compromise” is just that: a compromise made on the backs of women. In this instance these women represent the least of these, they are the oppressed, on the one hand (see Isaiah 58), and on the other hand are some of the last in a long line of followers of Jesus who have been belittled and worse (see Matthew 25). Thus, they are the very ones who deserve more, not less, justice. And yes, I’m very much aware that it is precisely because it is a religious institution we’re dealing with that discrimination and ignorance tend to be intractable and therefore tend to reign supreme. But one can dream, can’t one?

In a way it is quite painful to see that the conservatives wouldn’t even go along with the ridiculous compromise. What are these people? The Taliban of the Thames? But let’s be realistic. They are hardliners and, hey, that’s just how they roll. However, I mostly believe the conservatives have given the rest of us a great gift by rejecting the compromise. They have helped a draw nice, broad, neon line that articulates the positions of the two sides. Take your pick of metaphors, my friends. The fissures are increasing. I think it’s about time to say “hasta la bye-bye” to this communion.

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Where are the King’s? The Gandhi’s? The St. Francis’? St. Francis? Yes. I haven’t read the book yet, but it’s on my list, Paul Moses’ book, The Saint and the Sultan: The Crusades, Islam, and Francis of Assisi’s Mission of Peace. In his article on CNN, Paul Moses discusses how St. Francis “engaged Christendom’s enemy, Egypt’s Sultan Malik al-Kamil, by approaching him unarmed in the midst of the Fifth Crusade in 1219.” The encounter was interesting, to say the least, and a powerful witness to the tradition of compassion and respect in both religions.

[Francis'] goal was to convert Sultan al-Kamil to Christianity through peaceful persuasion. He didn’t succeed in that, but, amazingly, the two men found common ground and appear to have genuinely appreciated each other.

The sultan, who no doubt viewed Francis in light of an ancient Muslim tradition of reverence for holy Christian monks, permitted him to stay in his camp for several days, preaching the enemy’s faith in the midst of the Crusade.

The short article is well worth reading. I especially was intrigued by an new organization, Charter for Compassion. Moses explains the group’s purpose. He even bring Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize into the discussion and the criticism Obama has faced from some US evangelicals on his peaceful overtures to Muslim nations.

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I’ve found recently that when I get worked up over an issue, it’s best to “write it out” rather than attempt to “sleep on it” since I just wind up tossing and turning anyway. So welcome to my “nightmare”.

I haven’t taught our World Religions survey course in many years. I honestly can say that I don’t miss it. I much prefer the Philosophy of Religion course and the Nature of Religious Experience course just because they lend themselves to more philosophical content. However, I did feel that I was doing a service to my country (and to God, frankly) when I taught the World Religions course. I fought back bigotry (yes! at SF State). The ignorance busting was not a happy chore, but someone had to do it.

Things somewhat devolved into only teaching the most basic elements of the religions. I only had time to do “The Big 5″ – Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Predictably, a few Christian students would have the view that the history of Christianity went something like this:

God–>Adam–>David–>Jesus–>Pastor Bob’s teachers in seminary–>Pastor Bob

Some students failed to grasp the fact that Martin Luther had anything to do with “Protestantism”. But I digress.

This Twitter poll has a lot of people answering “other Christian” 12%. Protestants are 5%, Catholics are 13% and Orthodox are 1%. I immediately flashed back to the bigot who said that Catholics weren’t Christians. (sigh) Maybe the high percentage of “others” were “Evangelicals”. Since many aren’t credal or in any other respect denominational, I imagine they think they aren’t Protestants. But then I calmed down a bit and realized that some of the “others” might be Mormons.

I think I would actually break down into a puddle of tears if after inviting me to speak to their college group’s Bible study, this hypothetical student would go on to declare adamantly that she was not a Protestant. (Catholics don’t have this problem that I’m aware of. They seem very clear that they’re Catholic and not “other”!) Again, I think the difficulty is that they have little knowledge of Christian history. That, or simply a pernicious, deliberate, anti-intellectualism. For my part, I’m confident that either Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, or the Wesley brothers’ tag team, could smack down a thousand Pastor Bob’s with no problem.  (It wouldn’t be a fair fight, of course. Not very charitable of me, I grant you. But I calls them as I sees them.)

So as not to be guilty of the same kind of deliberate ignorance, I invite any reader to engage with me on this issue of Christian identity with respect to one’s identifying (or not) as a Protestant. I really want to understand this phenomenon.

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There were protests in Malaysia yesterday and four arson attacks on Christian churches, apparently provoked by a court decision to allow Christians to use the word Allah.

[Photo from afp]

Police at Kuala Lumpur church torched in arson attack

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The parable went like this. “Two people return to their long neglected garden and find, among the weeds, that a few of the old plants are surprisingly vigorous. One says to the other, ‘It must be that a gardener has been coming and doing something about these weeds.’ The other disagrees…They pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. The believer wonders if there is an invisible gardener, so they patrol with bloodhounds but the bloodhounds never give a cry. Yet the believer…insists that the gardener is invisible, has no scent and gives no sound. The sceptic doesn’t agree, and asks how a so-called invisible, intangible, elusive gardener differs from an imaginary gardener, or even no gardener at all.”

Gottleib does a smashing job surveying the battleground: we’ve got the “New Atheists”, e.g., Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, on one side and the “New Apologists” (my term, not his), e.g., Karen Armstrong, on the other. Where’s Wittgenstein’s philosopher of religion who relates what he sees but leaves things as they are? Or do we throw our hands up in the air and give up? Maybe Gottlieb takes up the latter as the last sentence below suggests to me anyway.

One trenchant critic of the New Atheists is Terry Eagleton, a leading literary critic (and Catholic), who defines God as “what sustains all things in being by his love, and…is the reason why there is something instead of nothing, the condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever.” Some find it comforting or inspiring to utter such statements. But unless they can explain what those ideas mean and how one might tell whether they are right (which Eagleton never does), this is a self-deluding comfort. A wiser response to the apparent inexpressibility of statements about God may be simply not to express them, and just get on with the gardening.

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“That date has not one stitch of biblical authority,” Camping says from the Oakland office where he runs Family Radio, an evangelical station that reaches listeners around the world. “It’s like a fairy tale.”

The real date for the end of times, he says, is in 2011.

The math is (apparently) clear:

The number 5, Camping concluded, equals “atonement.” Ten is “completeness.” Seventeen means “heaven.” Camping patiently explained how he reached his conclusion for May 21, 2011.

“Christ hung on the cross April 1, 33 A.D.,” he began. “Now go to April 1 of 2011 A.D., and that’s 1,978 years.”

Camping then multiplied 1,978 by 365.2422 days – the number of days in each solar year, not to be confused with a calendar year.

Next, Camping noted that April 1 to May 21 encompasses 51 days. Add 51 to the sum of previous multiplication total, and it equals 722,500.

Camping realized that (5 x 10 x 17) x (5 x 10 x 17) = 722,500.

Or put into words: (Atonement x Completeness x Heaven), squared.

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Rome is saying to individuals, and perhaps to entire parishes and even dioceses: “Come on over.” It is trolling with rules, recently written, that will enable Anglicans-become-Catholics to retain some of their liturgy. The church will accept some already married priests, and perhaps married seminarians, but not bishops.

Certainly, the Anglicans crossing the Tiber are a more conservative bunch than their sisters and brothers left behind in the pews. This influx of more conservative minded folks may continue to make the Catholic church more conservative. But it may have the unintended consequence of bringing more independent thinking into the Church than Benedict XVI would want. One American Catholic priest and scholar, Thomas Reese, S.J., thinks this may happen:

Some Catholics, [Reese] notes, will experience the fact, and many more will contemplate the idea, of married priests administering the sacraments. This, Reese thinks, may remind Catholics that for its first thousand or so years, the church had married priests and bishops. A celibate priesthood, he says, is a product of church law, which can be changed.

Change? In church law? Hmm. Be careful for what you wish for. As Will writes:

But with the Latin Mass restored and Anglicans being courted with liturgical concessions, will the Catholic Church have three liturgies? Who are the latitudinarians now?

Latitudinarians formed a 17th-18th century school of thought that supported key principles of Christian theology but were very tolerant of different religious practices and views.

I think the American Roman Catholic church ought to be more latitudinarian. I’ve argued for a decade now that what America needs is an American Roman Catholic church. Just as we have a distinctively American Anglican church, light years removed from the “mother” church in terms of its views on the gender and sexual orientation of its clergy, for instance. I think it American Catholics also ought to form their own distinctive expression of Catholicism.

Most US Catholics I’ve mentioned this to have recoiled. But they recoil, I think, not so much from genuine disagreement as from sheer incomprehension. It just doesn’t “compute” to have an American Roman Catholic church. It makes no sense, as it were. While Episcopalians are (or were) in fundamental union with the Anglican See, we still did our own thing. As far as I know, we had female priests long before the rest of the Anglican Communion. We were in communion, but independent.

Now what part of “independent” ought to flummox an American?

Yes, there is an awful rift now between the Episcopal church and the Anglican communion. Maybe it will never be repaired. But I don’t mourn this. It’s unfortunate, yes. It’s painful, yes. But give me a break! Hello?! We’re “protest”-ants. We live to split up and divide over theological and (not so theological) issues. We’d rather switch than fight to stay (to borrow and convolute an old advertising slogan). Better to remain true to one’s perspectives as to what’s right than to “go along to get along”.

So the recent Anglican converts to Catholicism just may, just may, be poised to “think differently” once in Rome, and infect others with this dreaded (just kidding, kind of) Protestant tendency to fuss and sputter and um…”protest”.

And here is where George Will and I would probably agree. That stubborn, protesting streak the newly received former Anglican have isn’t likely to go away. There are differences, some of the deep, between even “old school”, ultra-conservative, Anglo-Catholics and the plain ol’, ordinary conservative Roman Catholics inhabiting the Vatican. Sure, those Anglicans are a lot closer to Rome than they are to Canterbury or San Francisco, but Will’s warning is worth heeding:

Benedict XVI’s 2010 visit to Britain, where the Archbishop of Canterbury cannot be amused by Vatican poaching, may be awkward, but the most disconcerting consequences of what the Vatican began in 2009 might eventually be felt by conservative keepers of Catholic tradition. Popes have mighty powers, but the law of unintended consequences contains no exemptions for the merely infallible.

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We do have a Gator connection, though. Years ago the house that’s across the street from campus (on 19th and Holloway) was called the “Ec House”, which was short for “Ecumenical House”. There was a small cafe downstairs and faculty and students would often meet there. It was especially handy because the old Humanities building was where HSS is now. So it was a quick dash across the street. The manager of the cafe was, if I recall correctly, a Mennonite.

The segment highlights the plight (or perhaps they might say “opportunity”) facing the Mennonites of Chihuahua, Mexico. Listen to the podcast here.

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