Clash Of Civilizations? What Civilization?

Huffington Post headline: "Taliban Insurgents Behead 17 Afghans As Punishment For Attending Party, Dancing"

The Remembrance Of Them Is Grievous Unto Us

The Huffington Post (which has the best and most coverage of spirituality and religion of any mainstream publication) on the 350th anniversary of the Book of Common Prayer, which was yesterday. They used to say a properly educated newspaperman knew Greek mythology, Shakespeare, and the King James Bible. My newspaperwoman mother would add the prayer book, which she said taught her the glorious cadences of the English language (making May 2 the birthday of her composition professor). This bit of the General Confession is from the 1928 edition, which she gave me when I was confirmed on April 30, 1967 at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Detroit.

Turin Jesus On His Face

Historian Thomas de Wesselow says that the Shroud of Turin (thought by many to be a medieval forgery) actually was Jesus's burial cloth and that its ghostly imprint tricked the disciples into thinking he'd been raised from the dead. At least in the Huffington Post article, de Wesselow doesn't say why the shroud's Jesus, who may well have had Semitic features and was probably in his early thirties when he died, looks like the English knight who guards the Holy Grail in "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade."

The article concludes with a predictable question:

What remains to be seen is how Christians around the world, who are about to celebrate Holy Week and Easter, will respond to de Wesselow's assertion that the bodily resurrection never happened.

Same way we do every year: Proclaim "He is Risen!" and go forth in the name of the risen Christ.

Being Excluded Because Of Who You Are

Writing at Huffington Post, my LA clergy bud the Rev. Susan Russell on the legacy of Rowan Williams:

[T]he truth is that the sacrifice that will hold the Anglican Communion together is not the sacrifice of the gay and lesbian baptized but the sacrifice of a false unity based in dishonesty. It is nothing less than rank hypocrisy that the Archbishop of Canterbury was willing to lay at the feet of Canadian and American Anglicans the blame for divisions in the Communion when the only difference between what's happening in our churches and in his is that we're telling the truth about it.

Because the truth is there is an ontological difference between feeling excluded because you're disagreed with and being excluded because of who you are. Brother and sister Anglicans walking away from the table because they've been disagreed with is a painful thing. The church walking away from the gay and lesbian baptized is a sinful thing.

Things That Were Said Back In Those Days

In response to questions from Paul Brandeis Raushenbush at the Huffington Post about the Bible's teachings on gender and sexual orientation, Sunday school teacher and former President Jimmy Carter gives us some of that old-time historical and cultural criticism:

I separated from the Southern Baptists when they adopted the discriminatory attitude towards women, because I believe what Paul taught in Galatians that there is no distinction in God’s eyes between men and women, slaves and masters, Jews and non-Jews -– everybody is created equally in the eyes of God.

There are some things that were said back in those days –- Paul also said that women should not be adorned, fix up their hair, put on cosmetics, and that every woman who goes in a place of worship should have her head covered. Paul also said that men should not cut their beards and advocated against people getting married, except if they couldn’t control their sexual urges. Those kinds of things applied to the customs of those days. Every worshipper has to decide if and when they want those particular passages to apply to them and their lives....

Homosexuality was well known in the ancient world, well before Christ was born and Jesus never said a word about homosexuality. In all of his teachings about multiple things -– he never said that gay people should be condemned. I personally think it is very fine for gay people to be married in civil ceremonies.

I draw the line, maybe arbitrarily, in requiring by law that churches must marry people. I’m a Baptist, and I believe that each congregation is autonomous and can govern its own affairs. So if a local Baptist church wants to accept gay members on an equal basis, which my church does by the way, then that is fine. If a church decides not to, then government laws shouldn’t require them to.

Also The Right To Ice Cream

My wife, Kathy, and I were talking and wondering yesterday about how atheists grieve. We'd just seen "The Descendants," which, while a beautiful movie, was relentless about avoiding any reference to spirituality. It's hard to believe that none of Matt King's (George Clooney) 50 friends and relatives would've said, "God bless you" or "we're praying for you" in connection with his stricken wife. When he and and his daughters poured Elizabeth's ashes overboard, he said, "I guess that's it." That's a scary thought, and the one that prompted our conversation.

The characters weren't so much explicit atheists as Stepford secularists to whom the concept of God had never occurred or been mentioned. At the end of the movie they're huddled on a sofa under a blanket, self-medicating with ice cream and a documentary. I'd like to send them the post I just read about Rebecca Hensler, whose infant son died in 2009, and her dedication to helping her fellow nonbelievers get through tragedy. Her Facebook page, according to Huffington Post, is called "Grief Beyond Belief":

A 43-year-old school counselor, Hensler tries to post something every day -- a link, a picture, a question, a thought. Recent topics include a discussion of travel as a balm for pain, a look at how agnostics grieve, and a link to a "Bill of Rights for the Grieving." Right No. 7: "You have the right not to be grateful, reasonable, inspired or inspiring."

300 Children An Hour Dying Of Hunger

Here's an actual presidential issue, gentlemen. This is credited to the AP and Huffington Post:

Nearly half a billion children are at risk of "devastating and irreversible" damage from malnutrition, including stunted growth and undeveloped brains, according to a new report released by Save the Children. This "hidden crisis" kills more than 300 children every hour of every day and affects one in four children worldwide, according to the report.

Chronic childhood malnutrition has been called a "silent killer," as it is often not listed as a cause of death and does not benefit from as much attention as high-profile campaigns targeting malaria or HIV/AIDS.

Soaring food prices have left children particularly vulnerable. According to the Press Association, one-third of parents reported that their children did not have enough to eat, and one-sixth said that their children skipped school in favor of work. Chief executive of Save the Children Justin Forsyth outlined the gravity of the situation:

"Every hour of every day, 300 children die because of malnutrition, often simply because they don't have access to the basic, nutritious foods that we take for granted in rich countries," he said.

Overdue Explanation

Turns out the most eloquent defense of Komen's grants to Planned Parenthood can be found in the 2010 memoir of its founder, Nancy Brinker. Huffington Post's crack investigative team uncovered it at the public library (that building downtown with the weird return bin in front; I think they have free WiFi).

Cry Baby Watch

Newt Gingrich, after crowds in old South Carolina roared their approval of his attacks on Juan Williams and the elite media and after NBC's Brian Williams, in the next debate, cautioned the crowd to be less raucous:

We're going to serve notice on future debates. We're just not going to allow that to happen. That’s wrong. The media doesn’t control free speech. People ought to be allowed to applaud if they want to.

The Gingrich campaign, after crowds in Jacksonville roared their approval of Mitt Romney's attacks on Gingrich:

Members of Newt Gingrich's campaign accused Mitt Romney's campaign of packing the audience for the Republican presidential candidate debate on Thursday night in Jacksonville, Fla., with its own supporters to ensure that the dynamics would be favorable to Romney.

All thanks to HuffPo.

Palestinians Dash Hope For Progress At Talks

Lowering expectations is one thing; prohibiting them is another.

Trump Brand Just Devalued By 50%

If Donald Trump really runs for president, he'll experience a different kind of journalism than he's used to as a daily reader of New York City's tabloids. Here's an example, which includes an answer from a recent deposition in which he admits, well, lying (which is just what he's been accusing the president of doing):

Asked in the deposition about his statements in 2007 that his net worth was $8 billion, Trump conceded: "I don't know. I don't think so. Well, maybe I'm adding 4 or 5 billion dollars worth, 3 billion, for the value of a brand. But I don't know."

The Obama Freedom Agenda

From "HuffoPo"'s daily congressional affairs e-mail:

The White House press office this morning sent around a readout of the President's call with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip. These emails are usually pretty perfunctory, relaying how the president hopes to continue the two countries' ongoing efforts to promote economic growth and monitor some issue of regional importance (in this case Libya). However: "They underscored their shared commitment to the goal of helping provide the Libyan people an opportunity to transform their country, by installing a democratic system that respects the people's will," it reads. Democracy through military action? Didn't the president sort of campaign against that? Somewhere George W. Bush is wearing sweatpants, watching The Sandlot, eating Bugles and chuckling to himself.

Pray, Help, And Pray

Photo from "HuffPo." The work in Japan of Episcopal Relief and Development is described here.

You Stay Classy, Rush

HuffPo:

Rush Limbaugh called Michelle Obama a hypocrite on his Monday show, saying that, while the First Lady advocates healthy eating, she "doesn't look like [she] follows her own...dietary advice" and would never be put on the cover of Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue.

Justinifying

Huffington Post celebrates a 16-year-old singer's enlightened views on Canada's health care system and laboriously explains his views on abortion.

Takes One To Know One

Sarah Palin in her new book, as reported by "Huffington Post":

"There is a narcissism in our leaders in Washington today," Palin writes.

Matt Labash in the "Weekly Standard":

It’s hard to tell sometimes where Sarah ends and Alaska begins. The Last Frontier of Alaska is as wild and untamed as Sarah Palin’s ambitions. So it makes sense that Sarah loves Alaska, because loving Alaska is like loving herself. And that’s what Sarah Palin’s Alaska is really about: self-love.

Keith Olbermann, Muslim Reformer

Summarizing Olbermann's deft argument that the lower Manhattan mosque isn't at Ground Zero (it's two blocks away), the "Huffington Post" reveals that the MSNBC muckraker and other unnamed bigmouths have an ambitious liturgical and theological agenda:

[The controversy has] inspired people like Olbermann and others who hope to encourage religious worship that doesn't resemble the extremism behind al Qaeda.

Holy Family First

Writing last month at the "Huffington Post," Robert Ross, president and CEO of the California Endowment, praised LA's Episcopal bishop (and our St. John's rector), Jon Bruno, for having the moxie to form a partnership with Holy Family Services, a venerable local adoption agency, after it refused to buckle to the demands of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles that it not place children with same-gender couples.

St. John's is proud to be a Holy Family "parish partner." In June, we celebrated Holy Family Sunday, welcoming Mary Bruno (left), who has devoted countless volunteer hours to the agency as a board member and advisor, and its executive director, Debra Richardson. With Mary is my wife, Kathy O'Connor, recently named to the agency's board. Thanks to the leadership of a dedicated, media-savvy layperson, Dot Leach, we're studying all the ways we can support and supplement the agency's mission of encouraging adoption and protecting children and mothers at risk.

Mass Appeal

Entertaining debate tonight between Fox's Sean Hannity and director Michael Moore. We don't see this often enough: Two evenly matched, articulate zealots going at it hammer and tong for half an hour and doing so respectfully and with good humor and even flashes of grudging affection.

Reviewing the clash, the "Huffington Post" demonstrates its own profound unfamiliarity with liturgical worship by speculating that Hannity was lying just because he said that he went to mass Saturday night and yet couldn't remember what the sermon was about. It would've been a little bizarre if he had.

When Hannity visited the Nixon Library several years ago on Ash Wednesday to launch a book, he was concerned enough about not getting to church that he asked an Episcopalian, namely me, to conduct a brief service for him and his staff. I had to rush over to the parish I was then serving to get some ashes and actually talked myself out of a speeding ticket by saying I had to impose them on Sean Hannity.

Frankensense

Hat tip to "Huffington Post"