God's Boot Camp

"It hurts to be beautiful." Now there's a gospel message! Plus it's bad advertising. We'll leave aside the obvious problem that I, just for example, could work out four hours a day and never be mistaken for Brad Pitt (or, to be more age appropriate, Sean Connery). The larger issue has to do with our culture's prevailing value, which is avoiding pain at almost all costs. Relatively few of us will actually pay to suffer.

But is it better than saying that weight loss and fitness are effortless? Maybe. Still, I'd prefer the double meaning of a middle-ground message: "Being beautiful is easier than you think." So it is, when, as a matter of rigorous (and popularly priced) spiritual exercise, you begin to see yourself as God does. Besides, even Marine recruiters minimize the pain of basic training until they actually get you inside the gates of Camp Lejeune.

Christian Heroes

Muslims offer themselves as human shields for Coptic Christians attending Christmas worship in Egypt.

Hat tip to Maarja Krusten

Church Rites And Civil Rights

Reflecting on her Jan. 1 marriage to a female colleague in the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, the Very Rev. Katherine Ragsdale, dean of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, writes:

The fact that the State authorizes a marriage in no way compels any Church to perform or recognize it. As priests, we are entitled to refuse to perform any marriage for any reason. Roman Catholics routinely demonstrate this liberty when they refuse to perform marriages of divorced persons, even though the State allows them to do so. Similarly, they refuse to recognize marriages of non-Roman Catholics even though the State has issued a license. Political arguments against states allowing same-sex marriages and the federal government recognizing these marriages that claim it would violate the “sanctity” of marriage and force churches to do something contrary to their teaching or their conscience, are blatantly misleading and dishonest. Marriage equality merely guarantees equality under the law to all citizens; it does not compel churches to do anything.

"Dishonest" sounds too harsh. Proponents of marriage equality make the classic civil rights argument that government shouldn't prohibit a class of people from enjoying a contract that confers financial and other benefits. Once the state acts to end a discriminatory practice, the reaction throughout society is resounding, and appropriately so. Have you heard much about racist priests or pastors refusing to marry an interracial or African-American couple? It's a horrifying that anyone could think that way, but if they did, you can bet they would probably keep it to themselves. If a couple had such an experience at a church, one can easily imagine their arguing that no pastor or institution engaged in such practices should enjoy any advantages under federal and state tax codes. (My February 2009 rumination on the same subject is here.)

For the same reason, in marriage equality states, it's easy to anticipate lawsuits against pastors who won't do same-gender marriages. A 2008 ruling in New Jersey suggests that churches that make their facilities available to the general public for weddings or other events might be vulnerable to legal action by same-gender couples. That wouldn't be true for the other categories Ragsdale mentions: Divorced persons or members of couples dissed by the Roman Catholic Church. They would have no leverage over the church because they haven't organized themselves as a class to seek protection of their civil rights under federal law. Besides, it's a lot easier to find a more friendly church, which is also, I'm sure, what most same-gender couples will do. Who wants to force a pastor to marry you?

And yet all it takes is one person who wants to use the courts to make a larger point. Perhaps a constitutional expert will set me straight about whether that person would make any progress. Our society extends broad protections to many varieties of religious expression, unless you're a moderate Muslim who wants to build a cultural center in lower Manhattan. (For my warning that Newt Gingrich and other opponents of Cordoba House have sanctified political pressure on people of faith, go here and here.) But from a strictly moral perspective, it's hard to accept the idea that a non-profit organization or church engaged in openly racist practices should get any public benefits, including tax-deductible status for its members' donations or income tax advantages for its pastor. I'll just bet I could find a federal judge or two who'd agree with me.

I'm not ready to say that churches that refuse to do same-sex marriages deserve to be punished. If proponents of same-gender marriage feel they should be, I doubt they would say so now. They may even take the view that civil marriage equality will run into less resistance from the religious community if its more conservative denizens are reassured that faith institutions won't be punished for refusing to go along. But it's hardly dishonest to recognize that the barrier between civil and sacramental marriage may not be as impervious as Dean Ragsdale says.

Hat tip to Susan Russell

7.7% Of Congress Won't Sit In Front Row

"Episcopal Cafe":

According to a Pew Forum survey, Anglicans/Episcopalians are the most overrepresented denomination in the 112th Congress: They hold 7.7% of the seats yet are 1.5% of the adult population. No other Christian denomination is close in terms of over representation although Presbyterians are also heavily over represented.

Anglicans/Episcopalians have 41 of the 535 seats. Although Baptists have more than 50% percent more seats than Anglicans/ Episcopalians, Baptists are 17.2% of the adult population.

16.1% of American adults say they are unaffiliated. No members of the House or Senate are unaffiliated.

Islamist Egypt

The murder of 21 Christians in Egypt in an al-Qaeda-style operation exposes a frightening political reality, Michael Slackman writes:

“If [President Hosni] Mubarak disappears tomorrow, you will have the Islamists as the strongest political force in the country,” said Mohammed Salmawy, head of the Arab Writers Union. “The political parties, even lumped together, do not have the power to take over, and you have the army, which will not allow the country to go into chaos. Worse yet, you might have military Islamic rule because there is no reason to suppose the army is any different than society.”

Guilt Assanged

The U.S. says Wikileaks has put lives at risk.

Meet The New Boss

Beginning in 1991, Richard Nixon made four annual trips to Moscow with his colleague Dimitri Simes, who later became president of the Nixon Center in Washington. I was along on the first and the last, which Nixon completed a few weeks before his death in 1994.

I took this photo of Nixon and Simes in Moscow in April 1991, the year Nixon decided to throw his not-inconsiderable influence as a foreign policy authority behind Boris Yeltsin, who had emerged as a rival to western media darling Mikhail Gorbachev and later became the first president of the Russian Federation. Miffed that Nixon was seeing Yeltsin at all, Gorbachev, then general secretary of the Communist Party, delayed confirming his own meeting with Nixon until virtually the last minute.

Gorbachev had good reason to watch his flanks. During Nixon's meeting with KGB head Vladimir Kryuchkov, we were startled when he sneered openly at Gorbachev's celebrated reforms. "We have had as much glasnost and perestroika as we can stomach," he said. A Kryuchkov aide later hinted to Simes that he and other hardliners were planning a coup. Nixon hurried to Washington to warn President George H. W. Bush. He also turned up his opposition to a Bush administration aid and trade package for Russia that might have shored up Gorbachev's position. The move against him came in August. Gorbachev rebuffed it, but it left him even weaker. The communist regime he led died on the last day of 1991.

It was a triumphant moment for Nixon, who had been inveighing against Soviet communism for his entire public career. Among the leaders he met on his post-1991 trips was Boris Nemtsov, a deputy prime minister under Yeltsin and today a leader in opposition to the regime of president-turned-PM-waxing-president-again Vladimir Putin. Nixon's meetings with Nemtsov and other young reformers had encouraged him to believe that political pluralism might someday take root in the former Leninist paradise.

Alas, the temperamental and undisciplined Yeltsin gave way to the all-too-disciplined Putin. It would've discouraged Nixon to no end to learn about what happened when Nemtsov had the temerity to criticize as "shameful" last month's trumped up verdict against oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky:

[Nemtsov] pointed out that the decision to sentence the former oil tycoon to the maximum 14-year term on Dec. 30 “had nothing to do with the rule of law” and predicted it would “have very negative consequences."

Mr Nemtsov did not have to wait long to be proved right. The next day, after speaking in a rally supporting freedom of assembly, he was arrested and sent to jail for the maximum 15-day sentence.

Off to jail in Moscow for speaking your mind. Sounds familiar. We won the Cold War for this?

"Home," Jorge and Alexa Narvaez

"Home is wherever I'm with you." A single father and his daughter cover the song by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes.

Hat tip to The Daily Dish

Why Was That Man Laughing?

Convicted of jury-tampering two years ago, former Orange County sheriff Mike Carona was jubilant about being acquitted on the other counts of his indictment. But one count was plenty, as Chuck Colson will tell you. In April 2009, U.S. District Court judge (and my St. John's Church friend) Andy Guilford gave him five and a half years. Today, the news comes that he's lost his appeal.

Apple's Y2.011K Bug

So this is why I didn't wake up until 6:40 a.m. last Sunday and was slightly out of breath at the beginning of the 8 a.m. service.