Miscellanea Agnostica

It really shouldn’t surprise me — knowing as much as I do about Christianity — but now and again I nevertheless find myself amazed by a story of Christians brazenly and unapologetically refusing to live up to the dictates of their own religion, as its founder taught them to follow it. The latest example is reported by WLBT-TV (via WBRC-TV), and involves white congregants at a Baptist church in Crystal Springs, MS who refused to allow a black couple to be married there (WebCite cached article):

It was to be their big day, but a Jackson couple says the church where they were planning to wed turned them away because of their race.

Now, the couple wants answers, and the church’s pastor is questioning the mindset of some of members of his congregation who caused the problem in the first place.

They had set the date and printed and mailed out all the invitations, but the day before wedding bells were to ring for Charles and Te’Andrea Wilson, they say they got some bad news from the pastor.

“The church congregation had decided no black could be married at that church, and that if he went on to marry her, then they would vote him out the church,” said Charles Wilson.

That pastor claims to have been on the couple’s side, yet he ended up giving in to his bigoted congregants by sidestepping the matter:

The church’s pastor, Dr. Stan Weatherford, says he was taken by surprise by what he calls a small minority against the black marriage at the church.

“This had never been done before here, so it was setting a new precedent, and there are those who reacted to that because of that,” said Weatherford.

Weatherford went on and performed the wedding at a nearby church.

That’s Christian courage for you. Faced with what he calls a small group of congregants who didn’t like what he’d planned to do, he scooted off and ended up doing it somewhere else. Nice work, Pastor. What a marvelous job of triangulation you’ve done!

Residents of Crystal Springs don’t seem to be too pleased about this turn of events, as WBLT further reports (cached) … but so far as I can see, no one has yet confronted the bigots in question and corrected them. So whatever kind of upset has been churned up, hasn’t really produced anything meaningful. Like Pastor Weatherford, the people of Crystal Springs are more or less just triangulating … claiming to be upset by the bigotry, yet unwilling, themselves, to do anything about it. Again, well done, Christians. Well done! Your Jesus must be so proud!

OK, I was being sarcastic in that last sentence. The truth about Jesus is that, according to the gospels, he associated with undesirables, outsiders and outcasts, and he was vocal about doing so. For Christians to make others into outcasts … no matter the reason they might have to do it (whether it’s occupation, skin color, whatever) … is decidedly and certainly un-Christian. Period. They need to fucking stop this kind of bullshit already and start living according to Jesus’ own teachings as he supposedly delivered them.

Hat tip: CNN Belief blog.

Photo credit: WBLT-TV.

Tags: charles & te' andrea wilson, charles wilson, christian, Christianity, christians, crystal springs MS, dr stan weatherford, first baptist church, jackson MS, racism, religion of love, religious racism, stan weatherford, te' andrea wilson

The killing of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, FL is another of those stories I’d assumed I’d never mention on this blog. But it turns out I was wrong about that (as was the case with a few other major stories I hadn’t thought could end up having a religious angle). But people’s desire and ability to shoehorn religiosity into just about anything is boundless, so it’s going to happen from time to time.

CNN’s Belief blog reports on the latest example of someone using religion to defend the indefensible (WebCite cached article):

It was “God’s plan” that brought together George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin in a fatal confrontation in February, Zimmerman told Fox News host Sean Hannity Wednesday in his first television interview. …

Zimmerman, who said he routinely carried a gun except when he was at work, told Hannity he didn’t regret deciding to follow Martin that night, after deciding the teen was acting suspiciously, and he didn’t regret having a gun.

“Do you feel you wouldn’t be here for this interview if you didn’t have that gun?” Hannity asked.

“No, sir,” Zimmerman responded.

“You feel you would not be here?” Hannity pressed.

“I feel it was all God’s plan and for me to second guess it or judge it…” Zimmerman said, pursing his lips and shaking his head.

The degree of Zimmerman’s culpability for Martin’s death has yet to be assessed by Florida courts. That will be decided only after months of legal wrangling and what’s sure to be a senationalized trial (assuming Zimmerman doesn’t plead guilty before then). But what’s incontrovertible is that his encounter with Martin ended in Martin’s death. For Zimmerman to blithely wave this away as “God’s plan,” and to say therefore that he has no regrets, is bone-chilling. The obvious logical ramification of the idea that “God’s plan” is for terrible things to happen to people, is that believers ought to just sit back and allow all manner of terrible things to happen to people — otherwise they might be thwarting “God’s will.” Despite this (and I do realize that most of them don’t think that way), most Christians … and people of other faiths, too … frequently use the “it must have been ‘God’s plan’” mantra to comfort themselves when something awful happens.

It’s natural Zimmerman would use an appeal to religion as a way of defending himself. The Right in the US has been on his side since the story of Martin’s death broke nationally. Their support for him accelerated after Leftsists they despise — such as Al Sharpton — condemned Zimmerman, and President Obama mentioned that, if he’d had a son, he might have looked like Martin. But it’s been a while since then; now that he’s has resumed trolling for donations for his defense, Zimmerman needed to curry the Right’s favor once more — and there’s no better way of getting the legions of the Right to do whatever one wants them to, than by appealing to their religiosity. (Hey, it worked for the shamed-out-of-office convicted-felon ex-governor of Connecticut John Rowland, didn’t it?)

As I’ve noted previously, it’s not to any religion’s credit that it can be used to justify something that’s otherwise indefensible. The cold fact here is that, one evening this past February, Zimmerman and Martin ran into each other, and the result was that one of them died. No one who adheres to the supposed “religion of love” could reasonably fail to regret that having happened.

Photo credit: Demotivators (defunct).

Tags: george zimmerman, god's will, indefensible, race, race relations, racism, rationale, rationales, rationalize, rationalizing, Religion, right, sanford FL, sean hannity, trayvon martin, trayvon martin shooting

By now you’ve probably heard that the US Supreme Court has decided that the Westboro Baptist Church … which is, essentially, just the family of ordained Baptist preacher Fred Phelps … can protest at military funerals. CNN reported on this decision in Snyder v. Phelps (WebCite cached article):

A Kansas church that attracted nationwide attention for its angry, anti-gay protests at the funerals of U.S. military members has won its appeal at the Supreme Court, an issue testing the competing constitutional rights of free speech and privacy.

The justices, by an 8-1 vote, said Wednesday that members of Westboro Baptist Church had a right to promote what they call a broad-based message on public matters such as wars. The father of a fallen Marine had sued the small church, saying those protests amounted to targeted harassment and an intentional infliction of emotional distress.

While I’m not in favor of hyperreligious lunatics broadcasting hatred wherever they can, I can’t disagree that the Phelps clan has the right to say what it wants to, in a public place.

The real issue here … which is (conveniently) being dodged by a lot of folks, is: What is it about religion that gives sanctuary to hateful people like the Phelpses, so that they can justify their horrific “message”?

Don’t make the mistake of thinking this is just about the Phelpses. Religiously-inspired bigotry and hate is nothing new. Through most of its history, Christianity has worked to foster a certain amount of anti-Semitism; even now, hatred of Jews still exists among Christians, and is even more pronounced in the Islamic world. White supremacy also has a Christian orientation.

I understand most Christians are not hateful pricks like Fred Phelps, Hutton Gibson, and Wesley Swift, to name just a few. I get that. The problem is, if Christianity means something … and if that meaning is both plain and not the hateful one that people like the Westboro Baptists claim … then it should not be possible for anyone to use Christianity as a “safe harbor” to justify their hatred. That Christianity — or any other religion — can be used as a rationale for hatred, is not to its credit.

It means its message is — by definition — less than clear, and easily muddled by external considerations. It means that religion can be twisted into something it had never been intended to be, and say things it had never been intended to say. It means that, in the name of doing good, people of that religion can — ironically — promote a lot of evil.

If there are any Christians out there who truly think their religion has a definite meaning which is not what the disgusting Phelps clan trumpets all over the place, I must ask you: What are you doing about them? How, exactly, do you plan to prevent them from absconding with your religion? If you aren’t willing to do anything, then how is any objective, outside observer of Christianity supposed to know that Christianity’s message is not what the Phelpses say it is?

Think about the message you send to others, about your own religion, in your dealings with Fred Phelps and his clan.

Tags: bigot, bigotry, bigots, christian, christian identity, Christianity, christians, fred phelps, fred phelps sr, gay, gays, hate, hate speech, hateful, hatred, homosexual, homosexuality, homosexuals, phelps, racism, scotus, snyder v. phelps, supreme court, supreme court of the united states, united states supreme court, us supreme court, westboro baptist church, westboro baptists, white supremacy

I blogged about Patty Robertson’s insane and insulting drivel about the earthquake in Haiti last night, but now I find that another Rightist figure has found yet another insulting and horrible way to comment on that same disaster. Rush Limbaugh has managed to say not one, but two, despicable — and in the case of the latter, possibly racist — things about it.

His first gem: “We’ve already donated to Haiti, it’s called the US income tax.” Here’s a Mediaite recording:

Limbaugh implies that no American need donate anything to Haitian relief, since it’s already been done by the federal government. Gosh, what a wonderfully charitable sentiment!

Then, he said: “[The Obama White House will] use this to burnish their, shall we say, credibility with the black community, in the light-skinned and black-skinned community in this country.” Here, again, is a Mediate recording:

Limbaugh is correct in suggesting that politicians “use” disaster responses to promote themselves politically. This is old news. It’s also something all political parties do and it’s something they’ve long been criticized for (e.g. George W. Bush, who was accused of this back in 2004 (cached article) when he was running for re-election). The remarks about light-skinned and black-skinned and appealing just to “the black community,” though, are ridiculous, and reveal Limbaugh’s own racist thinking rather than saying anything about the Obama administration. If he thinks politicians like Obama only care about how “the black community” sees them, then he’s an idiot … politicians such as him typically want to look good to as many different kinds of people as possible, not just to a subset of the population!

So far this has only been reported by the usual partisan-political outlets, such as Huff and Media Matters, not by the mass media. They’re likely not aware of it yet. (It’s always partisans who first pick these things up, since they’re the ones with banks of monitors listening to and transcribing the comments of people like Robertson and Limbaugh. The mass media don’t have the personnel to devote to that.)

It’s absolutely unbelievable that people like Robertson and Limbaugh manage to get away with this. Once again I must ask a similar question to the one that ended my blog entry on Robertson’s latest spew, which is, “When are conservatives going to figure out that Rush Limbaugh no longer possesses the moral foundation to be their spokesman any more?” At what point have they had enough?

Update: Limbaugh is now saying (WebCite cached article) that his racist or near-racist remarks were merely his way of pointing out that Senate majority leader Harry Reid hasn’t taken any heat for his own quasi-racist comments during the 2008 presidential campaign (as reported in a recent book). There are two problems with this, however. First, Limbaugh is incorrect in insisting that Reid hasn’t been criticized for his comments. Reid has been criticized (cached); he has apologized (cached) for those remarks; and the apology was accepted (cached). Second, this is two wrongs make a right thinking, which is both fallacious and immoral. That someone else did something wrong, is not license for anyone to misbehave. Not to mention that Limbaugh’s claim that Reid hasn’t been criticized is … as noted already … factually incorrect. Thus he compounds the immorality of using another’s wrong to justify his own, with the immorality of deceit.

Nice. For that the man gets paid millions of dollars a year.

At that rate of pay, he can afford to hire a nanny who can make him grow up, for the first time in his life.

Tags: conservative, conservatives, earthquake, fallacy, haiti, haiti earthquake, haitian, haitian earthquake, haitians, immoral, morality, racism, racist, relative morality, right, rush limbaugh, two wrongs make a right