More than a misunderstanding about Haitian 'orphans' [Addendum]

It is not clear that this is a case in which good intentions, uninterrupted, would have had no adverse consequences. A great deal was at stake for the children in the arrest of 10 Southern Baptists as they attempted to take 33 Haitian children to the Dominican Republic on a bus, Friday.

Those children were subsequently taken to an orphanage run by Austrian-based SOS Children's Villages, where spokesman George Willeit said:

One (8-year-old) girl was crying, and saying, 'I am not an orphan. I still have my parents.' And she thought she was going on a summer camp or a boarding school or something like that.

He also said the children, ages 2 months to 12 years-old, were "very hungry, very thirsty."

A 2- to 3-month old baby was dehydrated and had to be hospitalized, he said.

Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told ABC News that some of the children were not orphans and were asking about their parents.

Monday, Derrick Henry of the New York Times wrote:

"The instinct to swoop in and rescue children may be a natural impulse but it cannot be the solution for the tens of thousands of children left vulnerable by the Haiti earthquake," Deb Barry, a protection expert at Save the Children, told The Associated Press on Sunday. Her group wants a moratorium on new adoptions. "The possibility of a child being scooped up and mistakenly labeled an orphan in the chaotic aftermath of the disaster is incredibly high."

Statements by the arrested group's spokesman suggest that allegations that the group was "falsely arrested" were misguided. Specifically, according to the Associated Press, speaking for those arrested in Haiti Friday, Laura Silsby "admitted she had not obtained the proper Haitian documents for the children, whose names were written on pink tape on their shirts."

Haiti declared last week that no new adoptions could take place without the Prime Minister's express permission. “The government has given very clear instructions for everything concerning adoptions of children,” said public security secretary Amarick Louis in an interview with Canada's Globe and Mail. “Everything must be done in a formal manner, following the norms that have been established.”

Five of the 10 Americans arrested were reportedly members of the Central Valley Baptist Church at 600 N. Ten Mile Rd., Meridian, ID, which posted on its Web site a "News Update" which said:

A ten member church team traveled to Haiti to help rescue children from one or more orphanages that had been devastated in the earthquake on January 12. The children were being taken to an orphanage in the Dominican Republic where they could be cared for and have their medical and emotional needs attended to. Our team was falsely arrested today and we are doing everything we can from this end to clear up the misunderstanding that has occurred in Port au Prince.

Senior Pastor Clint Henry of Central Valley Baptist Church said:

They've been charged with child trafficking. You need to understand that obviously those are serious charges, but they're in a nation where this has been a practice, a wicked and evil practice.

Central Valley is affiliated with the Utah/Idaho Southern Baptist Convention [.pdf], which is headquartered in Draper, UT.

The Twin Falls [Idaho] Times-News reported that Eastside Baptist Church Pastor Paul Thompson was also among those jailed in Port-au-Prince Friday night.

The case is to go before a judge on Monday.

The reasons for action are clear. The U.S. State Department issued a cautionary statement on Jan. 26 which addresses the general issue:

In the aftermath of a crisis such as the Haiti earthquake, children are especially vulnerable; and there is increased potential for abuse of, and trafficking in, children. The United States remains committed to working with the Government of Haiti to implement safeguards to protect children and their families in Haiti.

UNICEF is taking the most constructive approach. In a January 19 statement, UNICEF Executive Director Ann M. Veneman said, about unaccompanied (not necessarily orphaned) children in Haiti: "Every effort will be made to reunite children with their families. Only if that proves impossible, and after proper screening has been carried out, should permanent alternatives like adoption be considered by the relevant authorities. Screening for international adoption for some Haitian children had been completed prior to the earthquake. Where this is the case, there are clear benefits to speeding up their travel to their new homes."

That approach keeps families together when that is possible, reduces the likelihood of inadvertent harm and helps make it more difficult for child traffickers to take advantage of a natural catastrophe to prey on children.

Addendum

From Montreal, Canada, television:

Plan Canada President and CEO Rosemary McCarney says she's not sure if the accused were attempting to engage in child trafficking. But even if they weren't, just by taking the children away, they could do them more harm than good.

"Whether this is trafficking or not, it puts children at risk," McCarney told Canada AM from Toronto. "Because even well-intentioned people who remove children from their communities and their country, by crossing borders, it makes it almost impossible for us to track them and find their parents and extended families and caring adults who could take care of these children."

The social justice imperative

Skye Jethani, writing at Out of Ur, raises — then dashes — hopes for the end of a 100-year-old conflict within Christianity:

The impact of the Modernist-Fundamentalist controversy shaped the direction of the American church for most of the 20th century by creating an 'either/or' scenario. Either a church cared about social justice or it focused on saving souls.

In "The Battle Lines Over Justice," Jethani cites findings by LifeWay Research that younger evangelicals are increasingly likely to regard social justice as a "gospel imperative." The post considers whether the trend indicates the closing stages of a century-old division between Christians who emphasize social issues and those who stress repentance and salvation.

Hopes that "both/and" thinking might replace the "either/or" conflict, are dim. While some think fundamentalism is on life support, the heated debate cited by Jethani and further articulated in user comments shows that last rites for the either/or are premature.

Certainly this isn't the first time evangelicals have shown an interest in social action movements.

Sojourners, a group that seeks to "articulate the biblical call to social justice, inspiring hope and building a movement to transform individuals, communities, the church, and the world" formed in 1971.

In 1973, a group of evangelicals released the Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern, which led to the formation of Evangelicals for Social Action. And a second Chicago statement was issued 20 years later. (Both statements are available here.)

A 1979 article in Christian Century outlined "A Fundamentalist Social Gospel," tracing the rise of social action in the 1970s to the "neoevangelical" movement in the 1940s.

The highly publicized controversy within the Southern Baptist Convention that started in 1979 was a reaction to a perceived rise in the liberalism in SBC seminaries.

The recent Out of Ur article shows that similar perceptions are alive and well. It first references an article by J. Mack Stiles, a former InterVarsity Christian Fellowship staff worker. Stiles fears InterVarsity is "slipping into the errors of liberal theology" due to the elevation of justice issues by the ministry and says the pursuit of justice is a gospel implication not a gospel imperative.

On the other side is Richard Stearns, president of World Vision, who says, "Proclaiming the whole gospel, then, means much more than evangelism in the hopes that people will hear and respond to the good news of salvation by faith in Christ."

Commenters on the post stake out both positions, with few taking a conciliatory approach.

In 2000, Richard Mouw called for "Reclaiming Evangelicalism" from the Religious Right in a column on BeliefNet:

I wish that we evangelicals could work together to promote a third way -- a middle course between withdrawal from politics and campaigns that give the impression that we are attempting to impose a full range of moral and religious specifics on our fellow citizens.

That "third way" can only be found by a broad cross-section of Christian believers who respect and work with each other. And Jethani at Out of Ur sees an unresolved dichotomy:

One side is vowing to guard the gospel against neo-liberalism; the other side is hoping to restore the gospel to its fullest expression by reconciling proclamation and demonstration.

Still work to be done.

Martin Amis goes 'Soylent Green'

Conservative Catholic site Pew Sitter warned, "UK Author Calls for 'euthanasia booths' on street corners." That author is Martin Amis, who is getting his nose bloodied primarily because the son of "the finest British comic novelist of the second half of the 20th century" showed his ageism.

Writer Joan Brady responded, when Amis called the elderly "an invasion of terrible immigrants, stinking out the restaurants and cafes and shops:"

That's what racists say about anybody with a different skin color or an alien headdress: "They stink."

Amis explains that his words had satiric intent, although that doesn't excuse him. Nor does it help that he confesses that he is soon to be old himself. But it is enlightening to know that he lost "his stepfather, Lord Kilmarnock, the former SDP peer and writer, in March aged 81, and his friend Dame Iris Murdoch," a novelist who died in 1999 at the aged of 79, two years after her husband revealed that she was suffering from Alzheimer's. His stepfather "died very horribly ... ”

Knowing those things, we can at least begin to understand why he told the Guardian:

What we need to recognize is that certain lives fall into the negative, where pain hugely dwarfs those remaining pleasures that you may be left with. Geriatric science has been allowed to take over and, really, decency roars for some sort of correction.

None of that will quiet the voices at Pew Sitter, who regard both both euthanasia and abortion as different forms of murder.

Amis is apparently one of those who seek no dialog on that:

I increasingly feel that religion is so deep in our constitution and in our minds and that is something we should just peel off. Of course euthanasia is open to abuse, in that the typical grey death will be that of an old relative whose family gets rid of for one reason or another, and they'll say 'he asked me to do it', or 'he wanted to die.' That's what we will have to look out for. Nonetheless, it is something we have to make some progress on.

His point of departure from conservative Roman Catholic, fundamentalist Southern Baptist and like views is a commonplace one:

Frankly, I can't think of any reason for prolonging life once the mind goes. You are without dignity then.

While that stand is logically arguable, his careless invocation of "euthanasia booths" burdens any rational debate with the unappetizing husk of "Soylent Green:"

Devilish comments unhelpful

Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov said yesterday that he would not allow a gay pride parade in the city, and repeated comments he made two years ago that such a march would be "Satanic."

Luzhkov is reportedly a "devoted Orthodox Christian believer."

That an Orthodox Christian would strongly oppose homosexuality is not surprising.

The Orthodox Church's teaching on homosexuality, however, focuses on ministering to homosexuals and separates what it considers to be sinful acts from concern for the people involved.

Labeling a gay-pride event "Satanic" hardly exhibits such concern. Mean-spirited rhetoric effectively reverses the ministry called for by Christian compassion.

In 2007, homosexuals who marched in spite of a ban were "beaten up by right-wing counter-demonstrators or detained by police," according to a BBC report. Last year, some activists were detained before the parade began.

More crackdowns can be expected this year, unless Luzhkov sets aside meanness for ministry.

Pope announces plan to build divinely inspired moon Vatican

[H/T: Thomas Peters]

U.S. religious prejudice unmeasured

Mark Silk gets it exactly right when he says:

If Gallup had wanted to do something more useful, it would have gotten responses for other faiths, and differentiated the Christian category.

Read the entire, concise, piece here.

Holocaust-denier Bishop Williamson returns with his verbal wrecking ball

The Vatican-SSPX talks are a “dialogue of the deaf,” Bishop Richard Williamson said in an interview with French anti-zionist Pierre Danet, posted at DailyMotion Tuesday.

Stepping on the pope's toes, already aching after a tense peacemaking visit to Rome's main synagogue last week, Williamson broke his months of silence by saying of the talks:

I think it will finish by becoming a dialogue of the deaf, because of two things. One: The two positions in themselves are irreconcilable. For example 2+2=4 and 2+2=5 it’s irreconcilable. Therefore of three things, one: either they say 2+2=4 , enounce reality and say 2+2=5 –that is to say the Fraternity would abandon the truth that God forbids us to do or that those who say that 2+2=5 convert and return to the truth or the two come half-way, that means everyone decides that 2+2=4 ½ . It’s wrong. Therefore, either the Fraternity betrays itself or Rome converts, or it is a dialogue of the deaf.

[Full translation of the interview here.]

The pope set off a firestorm of criticism by lifting the excommunication from four Society of St Pius X bishops last January, among them holocaust-denier Williamson. The pope eventually admitted his handling of the matter was a mistake. Yet controversy over the attempt to reconcile with the historically anti-Semitic SSPX continues to simmer.

In his most recent interview Williamson skates past his Holocaust denial, still without apologizing. Yet his interview is still rich in points of controversy. For example, he does say Christians have been "chased out" of the Holy Land and he defies mainstream Catholicism with the claim that Jews who don't accept Jesus are no longer the "chosen people."

Williamson's comments probably do harm by giving resounding affirmation to negative views of the Vatican's attempt to reconcile with SSPX. Yet he is not a spokesman for SSPX. Williamson is, in effect, speaking out of turn. His Holocaust denial caused such an uproar early last year that the head of the SSPX, Bishop Bernard Fellay, issued a gag order and Williamson was removed as head of the SSPX seminary in Argentina. Now at home in Britain, he lives in an SSPX home in the Wimbledon section of London in what he called "an unexpected but quite agreeable sabbatical year.”

Do you not wonder if Bishop Fellay will now further define for Williamson the restrictions of that sabbatical?

[H/T: Cathy Lynn Grossman ]

A predator parsed in the Matt Baker murder trial testimony

More

• SBC predator database needed
• Profile & techniques of clerical predators
• Why predatory clergy flourish
• Clerical sexual abuse of adults is commonplace
• Religious sex offenders are the worst

Christa Brown parsed the verbal signatures of a clerical sexual predator from the testimony about Southern Baptist pastor Matt Baker in his Waco, Texas, murder trial.

Excerpting from Erin Quinn's trial blog, Brown creates a hair-raising dictionary of sexually predatory grooming and controlling intimidation by a pastor who is systematically misusing his occupational authority. For example, Baker's former mistress, Vanessa Bulls, testified that:

• He told her to “just date your pastor.” [isolation]
• Matt Baker took the divorce counseling to a new level. He started saying she was beautiful and asked her to come over. [abuse of a dual, pastor/counselor role]
• He told her “that God is such a forgiving God. I don’t think that God believes that a person can be with just one person for the rest of their life.”
• He told her that no one would believe her if she told anyone what he did because he was a preacher. [use of pastor role to intimidate | the jury believed her]
• Bulls told Baker to turn himself in [for murdering his wife Kari] and he told her “God has forgiven me.”

She was testifying to events in a world where clerical predators flourish because in well-documented ways, they are allowed to flourish. Baylor University’s Diana R. Garland and Christen Argueta have documented the psychological profile and techniques of sexually abusive pastors. The common themes of the church environment which allows clerical predators to flourish and as Brown says, "church-hop through Baptistland," have also been well-explained.

The murder of Kari Baker and surrounding human devastation showed with startling drama how tragically lives spin out as a result of Baptistland's refusal to impose well-known remedies to clerical predation. Investigators found evidence that Matt Baker had for years led “a secret life as a sexual predator.” Brown wrote:

Prosecutors said that he had made advances and assaults on at least 13 young women, including 4 minors. Yet, despite multiple reports of sexual abuse and sexual assault, Matt Baker was always able to continue his career through churches, schools, and organizations affiliated with the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

When a Waco, Texas, jury found Matt Baker guilty Wednesday, it by implication indicted Southern Baptist failure to act forcefully to stop clerical predators in its midst.

Torture talk from a serial commuter

Past Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee, whose many prison pardons and commutations while governor of Arkansas are well documented, showed his national security credentials by talking tough about how Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab should be treated.

Huckabee, a former Southern Baptist pastor who now has a Fox News talk show, suggested on a recent show that Abdulmutallab be tortured. Specifically, Huckabee mentioned putting the explosives back into Abdulmutallab's underwear, where he reportedly had them on an airline flight when he was captured, and detonated if that was required to make him talk.

Huckabee later said he was being facetious. Someone should tell him that sadistic levity about a deadly serious topic hardly befits a president, a presidential candidate, a former presidential hopeful or even a television talk show host who may or may not seek his party's nomination for the office again. For that matter, neither is blaming others for gubernatorial pardon and commutation mistakes.

[H/T: Ambassador Gwen]

Haiti, a week after the earthquake

Nicholas Laughlin at Global Voices writes:

Relief efforts are under way in southern Haiti, exactly a week after the country was devastated by a 7.0-magnitude earthquake. As many desperate Haitians flee the capital, Port-au-Prince, for what they hope will be relative safety in other towns and rural areas, and as growing numbers of relief aid workers and foreign troops arrive, bloggers and Twitter users continue to report on local developments, make pleas for emergency assistance, and comment on the government and international response to the crisis.

He recommends:

• Musician and hotelier Richard Morse, tweeting as @RAMhaiti:

  A 6 or 7 story hospital building collapsed and fell over on the Dessalines School. No chance 4 the children.Search&Rescue headed 2 St Gerard

• Radio and TV journalist @carelpedre:

  I love haiti! I see hope and smile on so many faces today:

• Photographer Frederic Dupoux tweetingh as @fredodupoux:

  Just spoke to a 5 y-o girl a block fell on her head its an open wound and there's no help around. People around just gave her amoxiciline.

• Troy Livesay in Port Au Prince tweeting as @troylivesay:

  Our clinic turned into a hospital,and our sewing room into a surgical ward,and an arm was amputated with a reciprocating saw.

Laughlin also pointed us to Konbit Pou Ayiti where melindayiti wrote:

This afternoon, feeling helpless, we decided to take a van down to Champs Mars (the area around the palace) to look for people needing medical care to bring to Matthew 25, the guesthouse where we are staying which has been transformed into a field hospital.

Since we arrived in Port au Prince everyone has told us that you cannot go into the area around the palace because of violence and insecurity. I was in awe as we walked into downtown, among the flattened buildings , in the shadow of the fallen palace, amongst the swarms of displaced people there was calm and solidarity. We wound our way through the camp asking for injured people who needed to get to the hospital.

Despite everyone telling us that as soon as we did this we would be mobbed by people, I was amazed as we approached each tent people gently pointed us towards their neighbors, guiding us to those who were suffering the most.

We picked up 5 badly injured people and drove towards an area where Ellie and Berto had passed a woman earlier.

Gwenn Mangine at The Life and Times of the Mangine Many in Jacmel wrote:

Mad props to my kids and staff. I miss being around them. Except Hugues, cause he's there working alongside of us. Really hard-- just as hard as we are, no, actually probably harder. Tonight he was just toast after another long day of carrying boxes virtually all day long. I told him that since tomorrow is his day off he should just take it easy and not worry about coming to the airport-- we'd find someone to do his work. He refused. He said he wants to be there as long as we're there. I tried to talk him out of it, but he says his country needs him now. I really, really love the spirit of Haitian people-- love it, love it, love it.

Pat Robertson's growth toward secular humanism

Watching serious theologians' tangle with televangelical self-promotionist Pat Robertson's assertion of a Haitian pact with the devil was a humorless exercise until we stumbled across Martin E. Marty's Jan. 18 Sightings.

Marty, a University of Chicago professor emeritus of the History of Modern Christianity, was the first we've come across who explained that Robert's "pact with the devil" is rooted in secular humanist literature and nowhere in the Bible.

Marty wrote:

You won’t find “pact with the devil” in your biblical concordance, as the phrase did not enter our culture from the Bible.

Mention a “pact with the devil” and you will immediately be dredging up the explicit language of the Faust legend, whether from Marlowe or Goethe or Thomas Mann, who told classic versions of Dr. Faust’s famed contract.

Search the literature and you will find secular humanists touting the greatest, Goethe’s Faust, as a “secular humanist manifesto.”

Something good to say about Robertson, then? Yes: We like to document popular evangelicalism’s enlarging scope; here is an instance. Could Robertson have been courting secular humanists with this turn to non-Biblical sources?

Really: Pat Robertson, fumbling toward late-life intellectual growth? Almost gives renewed meaning to "all things in good time."

Evangelism through the eye of a needle

Christians who use the "Camel Method" in an attempt to evangelize Muslims refer to God as Allah, a practice that has caused a great deal of controversy, but that's not the only reason some oppose it.

The strategy, in which a Christian uses the Quran to talk to a Muslim about Jesus, was highlighted in a June 2007 article in the Christian Index, the state Baptist newspaper in Georgia. Jerry Rankin, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board, talked about the Camel Method, which his organization promotes.

The Index article mentions several objections to the method, including Christians using the name Allah for God. Some think that using that term means that missionaries are affirming the Muslim view of Allah, according to the article.

Rankin calls that notion preposterous.

"In a cross-cultural witness you use the language of the people and you use whatever terminology they have for God."

Some Muslims take great offense at Christians using Allah to refer to God. Violence broke out in Malaysia when a judge ruled that Christians there could continue the practice.

Another criticism of the Camel Method is that it does not require Muslims who become Christians to renounce their Muslim identity, suggesting that they continue to view God and Christ through a Muslim worldview.

“The Camel Method does not advocate that, but advocates being Christian while retaining your ethnic identity in that Muslim culture,” Rankin said.

The Index article prompted a letter from David Mills, assistant professor of evangelism and associate dean for applied ministries at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.

Mills compared the Camel Method to how he said Mormons use the Bible when talking with their neighbors.

"The Mormon does not believe it, but he knows the neighbor does, so he portrays himself as a Bible believer."

Mills encouraged missionaries to forgo the Camel Method and instead "use some of the superior methods of Muslim evangelism our seminaries offer."

Mills' letter led to a "clarification" from IMB executive vice president Clyde Meador.

"Helping a Muslim to see that his own book tells him that he should be interested in Christ is often an effective way of opening the door to a gospel witness. It is a proven method that has opened the door to Truth to untold numbers of Muslims in many parts of the world, and continues to do so today."

Mike Morris, a Baptist blogger in Tennessee, used the Camel Method in a conversation with a Muslim imam, who is an Islamic leader. The imam, who obviously knew his religion, didn't respond as literature for the evangelism strategy suggested a Muslim might.

For example, the Camel Method suggests talking about a Muslim festival Korbani Eid, which includes a sacrifice as a way of beginning a conversation about the New Testament concept of salvation. The imam said, however, that the festival was about obedience rather than a transfer of guilt.

"For solid, well-trained Muslims such as the imam, the festival cannot be utilized as a bridge to the Christian understanding of the atoning sacrifice of Jesus on the cross," Morris said.

Bart Barber, another Baptist blogger, has written a number of posts that deal with the Camel Method. (A list can be found here.) Barber believes the strategy violates the IMB's own guidelines.

In the Christian Index article, Rankin reveals the Camel Method's origin.

“This is not a method of witness that we have contrived in order to reach Muslims. It is something that Muslim-background believers were using effectively to share their faith within their Muslim communities."

But a strategy that works well for former Muslims with an established level of trust can seem downright deceitful when practiced by Christians without that background.

The Camel Method's web site has four endorsements of the strategy, including one from David Garrison, who edited a workshop based on the method:

Every great work of God provokes a predictable backlash from Satan, as his domain is threatened. The Camel method has been no exception.

Neither the Camel Method's supporters nor its detractors have acted in a manner that indicates they're in league with the devil. But the method itself is the wrong way to accomplish what well-meaning people believe is the right thing.

Help now, debate later

Fourteen groups associated with atheism have joined together to provide relief for earthquake victims in Haiti through "Non-Believers Giving Aid."

An announcement about the effort on Richard Dawkins' web site says that in addition to helping the Haitians, people who donate will be "helping to counter the scandalous myth that only the religious care about their fellow-humans."

An article in the Christian Post presents a Christian view of the atheists' program.

Such debate is better left for another day. Meanwhile, an atheist's dollar will provide just as much relief as a religious one.

Pope Benedict provokes protest in Belgium

Showing again that he is as conservative as he seems when not calming the waters after a controversial action, Pope Benedict has appointed André-Mutien Léonard archbishop of Brussels.

Léonard is sometimes called “the Belgian Ratzinger” for his conservative views. According to Reuters:

Léonard has beene a controversial figure in Belgium for his critical stands on homosexuality, same-sex marriage and condom use. He has been an outspoken opponent of abortion and euthanasia, both of which are legal in Belgium, and criticised the Catholic universities of Leuven and Louvain for their research into assisted reproduction and embryonic stem cells.

CNA reports that in July, his statements in an interview that homosexuals were “abnormal” led Belgian homosexual activists to pursue (unsuccessfully) charges against him for homophobia -- "a criminal offense in Belgium since the passage of the Anti-Discrimination Act of 2003."

Public officials protested the appointment as disruptive. According to Reuters, most outspoken was Deputy Prime Minister Laurette Onkelinx, who is the country’s health minister. In a radio interview, Onkelinx said:

Church and State are separate in Belgium, but when there are problems in our society, all the social partners sit down around a table, including representatives of secularism and of religion. Cardinal Danneels was a man of openness, of tolerance and was able to fit in there. Archbishop Léonard has already regularly challenged decisions made by our parliament.

. . .

Concerning AIDS, he’s against the use of condoms even while people are dying from it every day. He is against abortion and euthanasia [legal in Belgium] … The pope’s choice could undermine the compromise that allows us to live together with respect for everyone.

Although the controversy is not as intense as over the eventually withdrawn appointment of pastor Gerhard Maria Wagner in Austria last year, Pope Benedict used the same selection process. He ignored the local Catholic hierarchy and chose someone he was confident would be loyal to him.

The editor of the Belgian Catholic weekly KERK&leven (Church and Life), said the choice of Léonard “is clearly a conscious choice for a totally different style and approach: for more radical decisiveness rather than quiet diplomacy, for more confrontation with the secular society instead of dialogue ... .”

Disruptive, pushing toward the political right, as Beligian public officials suggested. And look for more of that.

Satan to Robertson: 'Great work, Pat' [Update]

Via adroit wordsmith Lily Coyle in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune Letter of the day column, Satan says:

Dear Pat Robertson, I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I'm all over that action. But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating.

You have of course heard that Robertson blamed both the earthquake and Haiti's long-standing poverty on a pact with the devil, ignoring both the Enriquilla-Plantain Garden geological fault rupture and the determining impact of history since Haiti's slaves rose up and threw off their chains.

Ms. Coyle, with whom we are not acquainted, understood immediately how contrary Haiti's predicament is to popular legend. Thus Ms. Coyle's Satan protests:

If I had a thing going with Haiti, there'd be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Botox -- that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style. Nothing against it -- I'm just saying: Not how I roll.

She closes on a satisfying series of zingers, you can read here.

Update

Ms. Coyle's Satan did not address himself to Southern Baptist pastor and birther Wiley Drake, who half-joined the Robertson chorus, according to The Orange County [Calif.] Register:

“I don’t know that God brought that earthquake or not,” Drake said. However, the misfortunes of the country - including its extreme poverty, ongoing political turmoil and frequent natural disasters - could be repercussions of the alleged deal with Satan, he said.

Update: ‘Irish anti-clericalism’ arson ruled out

The London Telegraph's Will Heaven was apparently first among the bloggers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) to react to the St Mel’s Cathedral fire with lurid fantasies of “Irish anti-clericalism” gone to arson. And as lurid fantasies often do, it is coming to nothing that one has come to notning:

Longford Gardai have confirmed that they are no longer treating the fire at St Mel's Cathedral as arson.

Chief investigation officer Inspector Joe McLoughlin told www.longfordleader.ie that the Garda Technical team completed the technical examination of the Cathedral today.

"We are no longer treating the fire as suspicious," Inspector McLoughlin stated. However he added that Gardai were not in a position to confirm what caused the fire which destroyed the Cathedral on Christmas morning but the Garda Forensic Team is expected to furnish a report on the fire soon.

Yet insinuations of arson were directed on the day after Christmas at the victims of abuse. For example, Heaven wrote:

Given the recent resignation of a second Irish bishop after a report revealed the cover-up of child sex abuse in the Dublin Archdiocese, it could be that this was a deliberate attack on the Irish Catholic Church. If so, it marks a new chapter of anti-clericalism in Ireland.

There was no supporting rich history of the victims of clerical sex abuse torching church facilities.

Thus the cry of "deliberate attack on the Irish Catholic Church" was a groundless allegation which tended to tar the victims of other crimes.

It was despicable and now that it is proven false, corrections and apologies are owed by all who made the claim.

Will Dobson drive his former self out of business?

The new James Dobson on the Family will compete head-to-head with the "Focus on the Family" Dobson built and from which, after 30 years, he is retiring.
His reasons for going into competition with his business offspring, rather than hanging up his bullhorn, are fairly clear.
Just take him at his word.
He's starting the new enterprise, Dobson explains, “because I have felt since the turn of the century that I needed to begin passing along the leadership of the ministry to a younger generation.”
That "younger generation" has a Castle Rock Radio talk show called KOR Kast, and is the elder Dobson's son Ryan. The show is named for Ryan's ministry, KOR, about which he blogs. Moreover, son Ryan's social and theological views are a close match with his father's. If you doubt that last, read Ryan's right-in-your-face book, “Be Intolerant: Because Some Things are Just Stupid.”
It's a sweet father-to-son handoff, perhaps creating a family tradition. But son Ryan apparently could not be brought on board at "Focus on the Family." As Barry Noreen of the Colorado Springs Gazette summarized:

Dobson wants to pass the torch to his son, Ryan, and couldn’t do it at Focus because Ryan Dobson went through a divorce in 2001. Ryan Dobson, 39, is reputed to be quite a skateboarder and surfer, with tattoos from here to there — not the sort of fellow who normally ascends the organizational chart at Focus on the Family.

Father Dobson & son are scheduled to launch their new/old enterprise together in March. Meanwhile, father Dobson is avidly promoting his son via Facebook and so suggesting to us one broadcast-audience question, now that the familial goal of their joint enterprise seems clear:
Will the son also rise?

Interrogation at Guantanamo

Three of four prisoners died at Guantanamo Bay detention camp during or after interrogation on the night of June 9, 2006. Although they were officially declared "suicides." And this was generally accepted until Joe Hickman, who was a sergeant and on duty at the time, stepped forward.

This we learn from Scott Horton's Harper's Magazine Jan. 18 account of events leading to the death of the three.

A fourth survived. He was, Horton wrote, "a forty-two-year-old Saudi Arabian named Shaker Aamer" who "is married to a British woman and was in the process of becoming a British subject when he was captured in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, in 2001:

United States authorities insist that he carried a gun and served Osama bin Laden as an interpreter. Aamer denies this. At Guantánamo, Aamer’s fluency in English soon allowed him to play an important role in camp politics. According to both Aamer’s attorney and press accounts furnished by Army Colonel Michael Bumgarner, the Camp America commander, Aamer cooperated closely with Bumgarner in efforts to bring a 2005 hunger strike to an end. He persuaded several prisoners to break their strike for a while, but the settlement collapsed and soon afterward Aamer was sent to solitary confinement. Then, on the night of June 9, 2006, Aamer says he was the victim of an act of striking brutality.

Amer described it all to his lawyer, Zachary Katznelson, some weeks later. Katznelson "filed an affidavit with the federal district court in Washington, setting it out:"

On June 9th, 2006, [Aamer] was beaten for two and a half hours straight. Seven naval military police participated in his beating. Mr. Aamer stated he had refused to provide a retina scan and fingerprints. He reported to me that he was strapped to a chair, fully restrained at the head, arms and legs. The MPs inflicted so much pain, Mr. Aamer said he thought he was going to die. The MPs pressed on pressure points all over his body: his temples, just under his jawline, in the hollow beneath his ears. They choked him. They bent his nose repeatedly so hard to the side he thought it would break. They pinched his thighs and feet constantly. They gouged his eyes. They held his eyes open and shined a mag-lite in them for minutes on end, generating intense heat. They bent his fingers until he screamed. When he screamed, they cut off his airway, then put a mask on him so he could not cry out.

Horton goes on to explain:

The treatment Aamer describes is noteworthy because it produces excruciating pain without leaving lasting marks. Still, the fact that Aamer had his airway cut off and a mask put over his face “so he could not cry out” is an alarming fact. This is the same technique that appears to have been used on the three deceased prisoners.

The possibility of this kind of action is part of what Evangelicals for Human Rights and other people of faith called out against during the Bush administration. And have since asked to have thoroughly investigated. With good cause, it seems.

[H/T: The Daily Dish]

In honor of the man and an unfinished task

Today as we have since 1986 we honor the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luthern King Jr.

In 1969, on the day before his assassination he said:

Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation.

Haiti outside Port-au-Prince

Repeating Islands, called to out attention by Janine Mendes-Franco, followed the Miami Heraled team to the town of Carrefore:

This town, which on Tuesday was the epicenter of the earthquake, is living in the epicenter of oblivion.

Gwenn Magine wrote:

Out today from the UN in Jacmel-- statistics ON Jacmel, which is a city of 34,ooo...

* 1,785 homes completely destroyed
* 4410 homes partially destroyed
* 87 commercial businesses destroyed
* 54 schools destroyed
* 24 hotels destroyed
* 26 churches destroyed
* 5730 families displaced
* Death count approaching 3,000 (nearly 10%)

Report from student: Fritzner Simeus from Jacmel from Ciné Institute on Vimeo.

Pwoje Espwa - Hope In Haiti, wrote from les Cayes:

Food prices are skyrocketing, as predicted. There has been discussion of moving children form PAP to Espwa, and we are willing to take them; transportation is being worked out, and it is not known how many will come or when. Two orphanages have asked for help so we are working on the logistics of this now. We will need lots of money to do this work. Cash is still what we need the most.

Trying to get word out about their community, Logou Corner wrote:

Our work in Haiti focuses on long-term sustainable development. But with a crisis as deep and broad as a crushing and devastating earthquake, any organization, groups of individuals, and individuals themselves would be in a rescue mode utilizing whatever resources they would have at their disposal to help people out. As hurting Haitians continue to stream back to their towns and villages, we know that the earthquake fallout even after the immediate initial relief will be felt and endured all over Haiti for many years.

These blogs and others like them don't give us Pat Robertson's accursed land, but one rich in people somehow coping with the insurmountable and who need our help to continue.

The Global Voices Haiti Earthquake 2010 page is rich in additional resources about this complex nation where rescuers struggle to relieve widespread agony.

Israel seeks Vatican archive answers about Pope Pius XII during WWII

Open the Vatican's WWII archives so that questions about the WW II papacy of Pius XII can be answered and Catholic/Jewish tension reduced, was Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom's request to Pope Benedict on Sunday.

This shortly after the pope's visit to the main Jewish synagogue in Rome, Italy, where by way of welcome the president of Rome's Jewish community, Riccardo Pacifici, told him "the silence of Pius XII before the Shoah [Holocaust], still hurts because something should have been done.

"Maybe it would not have stopped the death trains, but it would have sent a signal, a word of extreme comfort, of human solidarity, towards those brothers of ours transported to the ovens of Auschwitz," Pacifici said.

The pope replied that the Vatican helped Jews and "provided assistance, often in a hidden and discreet way." He also asked forgiveness for the church's contribution to anti-Semitism and urged Jews and Christians “to come together to strengthen the bonds which unite us and to continue to travel together along the path of reconciliation and fraternity."

Israel's answer, then, is something like "Good. Prove it." And a review of Reuter's timeline of Vatican-Jewish relations shows how the rising Catholic/Jewish tension of the Joseph Ratzinger papacy led to Israel's request and provoked some (notably Rabbi Giuseppe Laras, president of Italy’s rabbinical assembly) to boycott the pope's visit to the Rome synagogue. They were aware that the pope had been unilaterally invited, but would not accept his "clarification" of the decision to recognize the "heroic virtues" of Pius XII.

Tension over the matter can also be seen in B'nai B'rith Europe's online petition opposing beatification of Pius XII.

The issue also provoked a request in 2005 by Jewish leaders to open the Vatican's WW II archives when Pope Benedict visited the Cologne synagogue.

One need not be Jewish to wonder why the archives would not be opened now when it is clear that there is not only no resolution like well-verified truth, but also no likely resolution to this matter but a public review of those archival materials.

Catholic/Baptist anti-abortion convergence

Somehow, not mysteriously, the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) chose the days preceding the Southern Baptist Convention "Sanctity of Human Life Sunday" [today] to renew their anti-choice attack on health care reform.
No overt Batholic/Catholic coordination was required, although there is convergence.

The SBC officially celebrates Sanctity of Human Life Sunday every year at Roe v. Wade anniversary time, and again this year, those promoting it mirror the USCCB arguments, saying, for example, that health reform would set off a "surge in taxpayer funded abortions in this country."
In some regards, this celebration tends to make over the issue a delusion.
Among Southern Baptists, however, it is most visibly Richard Land, the SBC ethics chief, who raises the rhetorical stakes beyond the possibility of reasoning together to argue that the entire nation is "offering up its unborn children in a kind of pagan sacrifice."
Land offers up those who argue a pro-choice position as worshippers of Molech:

I can still remember as a young boy having a Sunday School lesson about how the children of God had become so paganized that they sacrificed their little children to the pagan god Molech. I could never have imagined then that I would live to see my country offering up its unborn children as a type of pagan sacrifice.

Louisiana Baptist Message pay-to-read Web launched (skids)

The Louisiana Baptist Message's new pay-to-read Web site apparently skidded on launch. They have rolled out a lurid red, top-heavy, new Web design which combines mostly subscriber-only content, some of which is free elsewhere, with incomplete sections (Plan of Salvation, Focus, Image Archive, Links of Interest).

A Southern Baptist official state newspaper with an empty Salvation section?

It is too early to draw lasting conclusions, but the early returns are not encouraging.

We greeted as suicidal their announcement last year of pay-wall plans. And they're not disappointing us. The Missouri Word & Way saw a slight decline (-8.18%) in Web traffic while the North Carolina Biblical Recorder saw a sharp increase (+160.7%) during the period of sharp Louisiana Baptist Message decline(-55.9%). The yearly change percentages are +428.77% for Word & Way, +105.84% for the Biblical Recorder and -19.02% for the Baptist Message.

The Baptist Message changes also disrupted existing links to its earlier content. For example, their redesign broke the links to a Louisiana Baptist Messenger Editor Kelly Boggs editorial in CounterFactual Kelly Boggs.

The combined effects of putting up a pay wall, redesign/launch errors and uninspiring content are likely to keep the Baptist Message in the Web readership basement. Or below.
Should they be nominated for Web Pages That Suck?
We will follow their experiment with flagging interest.

Religious Freedom Day

January 16 is Religious Freedom Day, commemorating the Virginia General Assembly's adoption of Thomas Jefferson's landmark Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom on January 16, 1786. In his proclamation | [.pdf] this year, President Barack Obama writes:

The Virginia Statute was more than a law. It was a statement of principle, declaring freedom of religion as the natural right of all humanity -- not a privilege for any government to give or take away. Penned by Thomas Jefferson and championed in the Virginia legislature by James Madison, it barred compulsory support of any church and ensured the freedom of all people to profess their faith openly, without fear of persecution. Five years later, the First Amendment of our Bill of Rights followed the Virginia Statute's model, stating, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . .".

This is a good time to review both the frequently misstated history of religious freedom in the United States, and the frequently misdescribed current law: Religious Expression in American Life: A Joint Statement of Current Law.

The struggle to variously redefine the former and rewrite the latter is ongoing.

'A Once-Catholic Episcopalian Looks at Benedict’s Offer'

When the pope defended his outreach to Anglicans as ecumenism, Pulitzer Prize winning author Jack Miles explored the impact of a reverse offer.

In the Catholic magazine Commonweal, Miles wrote:

If the Episcopal Church were in a tit-for-tat mood, it could issue its own marching orders. Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, who occupies the same position within her church that Rowan Williams occupies within his (and who happens to be the daughter of Catholic converts to Episcopalianism), might issue an open invitation to the member groups of the Roman Catholic Leadership Conference of Women Religious to disaffiliate from Rome and reaffiliate — as religious congregations, not individual women — with a church where they would be welcomed for their often superior education as well as their selfless charity, rather than suspected of...well, whatever it is that the Vatican suspects them of.

While that idea has a touch of enlightening humor about it, the point is painfully clear and becomes more so when he turns to the Eucharist. About Holy Communion he writes:

The Rev. Canon Colville Smythe, a retired priest who generously volunteers his services at St. Edmund’s, spoke wisely, I thought, in a sermon on the Feast of Christ the King, when he said that Holy Communion, rather than Baptism, is the sacrament that nowadays typically begins a seeker’s journey toward sacramental Christianity. Baptism, in our time, typically comes later. In Smythe’s view, we should thus welcome all visitors—not just visiting baptized Christians—to receive the sacrament. As it happened, his sermon was delivered on the day when the New York Times reported that Catholic Bishop Thomas J. Tobin of Rhode Island had asked Representative Patrick J. Kennedy not to receive Communion because of his position on abortion. Not long before this, Archbishop Raymond Burke, who in 2004 took a cue from then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and led the way in denying Communion to presidential candidate John Kerry, had denounced Boston’s Cardinal Séan O’Malley for allowing the late Ted Kennedy to receive a Catholic funeral.

In that context, you may indeed wonder with Miles what peace conservative Episcopalians will find if they accept Pope Benedict's offer to swim the Tiber.

We believe Miles' piece, "Trading Places," is well worth your time, here.

Manhattan Declaration online petition pitch: Fail

Not quite two months after the Manhattan Declaration was unveiled they have less than half the 1 million signatures they intended to have by Dec. 1. Thus having failed, they emailed all of the signers this week, pitching efforts to date as a success and calling for a push on to the million.

Depressingly manipulative, the pitch dwells on rumors of success and outlines a special effort by four Catholic archbishops:

Just ten days ago, Cardinal Rigali of Philadelphia, Archbishop Wuerl of Washington, DC, Archbishop Dolan of New York and Archbishop Kurtz of Louisville reached out to all of their brother Catholic bishops asking them to spread this document throughout their dioceses and encourage their clergy and faithful to study it and join as signatories.

That signature shortfall they've achieved but failed to confess is unexpected. After all, the signatures are unverified.

If the petition gatherer does not somehow verify that there is one, unique, living human being who has associated himself or herself with each signature (and not the same human being behind more than one signature), such petitions are open to padding.

The Manhattan Declaration's signature-collection process does filter for robots. But apparently does no other identity verification. Not even a verification email to the address signers give them.

Our testing suggests that it just bumps the counter.

Which means people can sign several times under bogus names, and that a suitably unethical person can sign for you.

Yes. That million-signature petition, assuming they eventually get their million signatures -- it's_a_joke.

One Haitian quietly informs, struggling at the end

Quietly moving interview with Haitian @cat_laine by @XeniJardin of @BoingBoing:

Interview transcript here.

[H/T: @Maddow]

Scientology sues Sandy Springs: Member is sued in N.J.

Sandy Springs, Ga., slowed the Church of Scientology's dramatic 2009 growth by denying a rezoning required to expand a former office building into their Georgia headquarters.

Ever aggressive, Scientology filed two lawsuits on Wednesday, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported:

The church filed religious discrimination complaints in U.S. District Court on Wednesday and Fulton County Superior Court on Thursday.

Both suits contend that the city infringed on the church’s religious rights in the City Council's vote Dec. 15 that approved the rezoning of the building at Roswell Road and Glenridge Drive but denied the church’s request to add a fourth floor by enclosing a basement parking garage, saying there wasn’t enough parking.

The pre-lawsuit Scientology vs. Sandy Springs story was blogged in detail by xenubarb at Daily Kos.

Conflict and Scientology go hand-in-hand. Remember last year's dramatic exits, legal reversals, impending movie, investigations and media takedowns?

Ed Brayton at ScienceBlogs writes about another Scientology lawsuit.

In this one, a politically active New Jersey a businessman is being sued for allegedly attempting to force Scientology upon his employees.

Michael Deak of My CentralJersey.com writes:

Calling a lawsuit brought against his business as "replete with misrepresentations and outright lies,'' a new member of the Borough Council is denying the charges, including one that an employee was fired for not becoming a member of the Church of Scientology.

John Buckley, who on New Year's Day was sworn into a three-year term as a councilman after winning a seat in the November election, said he and his company, Open House Direct "will vigorously defend against these unfounded claims and to also demonstrate that this is nothing but an attempt to harass us and to hurt our ability to do business.''

Three former employees — Maurice Grays, John Knapp and Larry Kolakowski — last month filed suit in Superior Court seeking legal relief, claiming they were victims of a hostile work environment and retaliation at the company on Hamilton Street.

Add to these the threatened Scientology suit in France against the Daughters of Saint Paul [which we blogged about earlier this month] and you have the makings of another fascinating year of watching Scientology-in-action.

Disabled still struggle to attend church?

Physical barriers to church attendance are still a problem writes Dionne Walker in a story published by USA Today:

Years after federal law required accommodations for the disabled, separation of church and state means houses of worship remain largely beyond the law's reach. State laws and denominational measures meant to take up the slack are tricky to enforce and face resistance from churches who call them both costly and impractical.

The issue is gaining new attention as the disabled community expands, fed by aging baby boomers and a growing number of people with intellectual disabilities who are demanding a more prominent place in the pews.A Centers for Disease Control report released in April found that an estimated 1 in 5 U.S. adults _47.5 million people — reported a disability. The National Organization on Disability estimates less than half of disabled Americans attend services at least once a month compared to 57% without disabilities.

Read the rest here.

The Episcopal Disability Network suggests more than 50 ways to make your parish more accessible.

[H/T: Episcopal Cafe]

'Global Voices' Haiti earthquake site

Global Voices, a globe-spanning blog community that was born at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, has created a resource-rich Haiti Earthquake 2010 aggregation.

There a Puerto Rican blogger writes of Haiti's regional significance:

I have an old debt with Haiti. We all have. Haiti is the first womb, the place where the Caribbean was born, it’s the Africa from within, the unnamable pain, the scar. It was the first country in America where a black person dared think of himself as free, to think of himself as a leader of the people (Toussaint L’ouverture).

Haiti has paid heavily for this impertinence.

They are still paying.

The Old Empire that harbored a revolution (Liberté, Fraternité, Egalité) for the West has not forgiven them. Even they have not forgiven themselves, like those who have made a parody of the initial dreams of liberty, fraternity and equality (Henry Christophe, Duvalier, Aristide). And now this. Haiti under rubbles.

What sort of ancestral crime we have not finished paying for?

Why does the earth hate us so much (Le Damnées de la Terre, always, les damnées de la terre)?

How do we get up now?

Because the Caribbean cannot walk without Haiti.

It stumbles, it hits the dust.

It cannot keep on dreaming the dream that gave birth to it. It cannot keep on trying (egalité, fraternité, liberté) to make it a reality.

Haiti is falling again. And we are also falling.

We cannot keep on walking.

Not without Haiti.

Without Haiti we all fall.

There is so much more.

'Onward Christian Athletes' isn't about Brit Hume

Tom Krattenmaker says the takeaway from his book is:

Pro sports fans see a lot of religious expression in pro sports—players pointing up to God after a touchdown or home run, for example, or thanking and praising Jesus in post-game interviews—and that was my starting point for the research. As I began to dig into it I was struck by how much organization and strategy exists behind and under all of this. Not to say it’s secret or sinister or anything, because it’s not, but fans don’t realize how much work goes on behind the scenes by the Christian organizations that minister to athletes and leverage sports to reach the public with their evangelistic message.

Brit Hume merely called oblique attention to the issue, as Krattenmaker explains in a discussion of his book, Onward Christian Athletes: Turning Ballparks into Pulpits and Players into Preachers, at Religion Dispatches:

To get us started on the new decade, we had Fox News commentator Brit Hume reminding us of the other primarily objective of the faith-in-sports movement: to use athletes as poster men for the virtues of faith and as carriers of the evangelistic message. Recall what Hume said in his now-famous (infamous?) over-the-air faith pitch to Tiger. Not only would a full Christian conversion bring the fallen golf hero forgiveness and redemption, Hume said. It would make him “a great example” to the world.

Clearly, Krattenmaker's isn't another "how to evangelize" manual.

Interesting stuff, if a little convoluted. Read on.

Ugandan president to block gay genocide bill [Updates]

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni told members of the National Resistance Movement’s (NRM) legislative caucus on Jan 13 that he was going to block the bill. George Conger of Religious Intelligencer wrote:

"I [Museveni] told them that this bill was brought up by a private member and I have not even had time to discuss it with him. It is neither the government nor the NRM Party’s” bill, he told legislators, according to Ugandan press reports.

"This is a foreign policy issue and we have to discuss it in a manner that does not compromise our principles but also takes care of our foreign policy interests,” the president said.

Xan Rice of the Guardian reported today:

Uganda has indicated it will bow to international pressure and amend draconian anti-homosexual legislation that includes the death penalty for HIV-positive people convicted of having gay sex.

. . .

,p>The proposed law, which has been pushed by local evangelical preachers and vocally supported by senior government officials, also threatens life imprisonment for anyone convicted of gay sex.

While broadly supported domestically, the legislation has caused a storm of protest abroad and consternation from western donors who fund a large chunk of Uganda's budget.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni told members of the National Resistance Movement’s (NRM) legislative caucus on Jan 13 that he was going to block the gay genocide bill. George Conger of Religious Intelligencer wrote:

"I [Museveni] told them that this bill was brought up by a private member and I have not even had time to discuss it with him. It is neither the government nor the NRM Party’s” bill, he told legislators, according to Ugandan press reports.

"This is a foreign policy issue and we have to discuss it in a manner that does not compromise our principles but also takes care of our foreign policy interests,” the president said.

Xan Rice of the Guardian reported today:

Uganda has indicated it will bow to international pressure and amend draconian anti-homosexual legislation that includes the death penalty for HIV-positive people convicted of having gay sex.

. . .

,p>The proposed law, which has been pushed by local evangelical preachers and vocally supported by senior government officials, also threatens life imprisonment for anyone convicted of gay sex.

While broadly supported domestically, the legislation has caused a storm of protest abroad and consternation from western donors who fund a large chunk of Uganda's budget.

Updates

VOA says nothing has changed:

The Ugandan foreign minister denies the government is backing away from proposed anti-gay legislation because of foreign policy implications, saying the government is still discussing its position on the issue. Gay rights activists express caution over reports the president has backed away from the bill.

Jim Burroway foresees a move toward compromise legislation.

Haiti's ambassador hits Robertson smear

Haiti's Ambassador to the U.S. Raymond Joseph seized the initiative in a Rachel Maddow interview last night to rebuke Pat Robertson for his "pact with the devil" smear:

Robertson's use of neo-Pentecostal vulnerability to the bizarre claims is well-explored by Richard Bartholomew.

Haitian pastor Jean R. Gelin, whom we mentioned earlier, sees the myth as historically false and has a well-considered view of the myth's origin. For example:

It’s hard to know where the idea of a divine curse on Haiti following the purported satanic pact actually originated, whether from foreign missionaries or from local church leaders.

In his book Ripe Now - A Haitian congregation responds to the Great Commission, Haitian pastor Frantz Lacombe identified a ‘dependence mentality’ in the leadership of the Haitian church, which resulted from the way the Christian faith was brought to the country, historically and through various denominations. Apparently, this unfortunate manner of thinking, which tends to emulate the worldview and culture of North American and European Christian missionaries, has permeated the general philosophy of the Haitian church on many levels, including church planting, church management, music and even missionary activities.

In that context, I would not be surprised if the satanic pact idea (followed by the divine curse message) was put together first by foreign missionaries and later on picked up by local leaders. On the other hand, it is equally possible that some Haitian church leaders developed the idea on their own using a theological framework borrowed from those same missionaries who subsequently propagated the message around the world. Either way, because of this message, Haiti has been portrayed as the country born out of Satan’s benevolence and goodwill toward mankind. Shouldn’t such a fantastic idea be tested for its historic validity and theological soundness? I invite you to take with me a closer and possibly different look at the available records.

Rather than attempt to blame the victims of a catastrophe for the nightmare which has befallen them.

Batholic 'scandal' over Toy [Addendum]

Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, lit out after Tony Cartledge in a recent blog, for having suggested that Crawford Howell Toy was a "hero."

Mohler argues that Toy was a "heretic" because after being, driven from Southern, Toy moved on to teach at Harvard, where he left the Baptist church to worship with the Unitarians. Baptists regard Unitarian theology as heretical. Thus, Mohler says, Cartledge's characterization was both "tragic and scandalous."

What Cartledge actually wrote of Toy is:

Increasingly, I have also come to admire Crawford Toy, who was no less devoted to Christ, and who was willing to suffer rejection by Southern Baptists rather than surrender to the narrow-minded demand that he forgo scholarship and limit his teaching to popularly accepted notions.

There's more than one way to be a hero.

Bruce Prescott, a thoughtful critic of Southern Baptist conservatives, concisely argues at Mainstream Baptist that Mohler is in no position to know the late Crawford Toy's heart and calls Mohler to account for presuming to pass judgment (Matt 7:1) on Toy (and by implication, on Cartledge). Prescott continues:

For the record, I would not hesitate to call Toy a Baptist hero. Baptists began as defenders of "soul liberty" and "liberty of conscience." Considering the way, in Toy's experience, Baptists had abandoned that belief, it is not hard to comprehend what made Unitarianism appealing to him. Unitarians are unashamed and unflinching in their defense of "liberty of conscience."

Liberty of conscience is indeed at the heart of this. Cartledge, an Associate Professor of Old Testament at Campbell University Divinity School and former editor of the Biblical Recorder, has long been a thorn in the side of doctrinaire and increasingly doctrine-bound Southern Baptists like Mohler.

Years ago when Cartledge was given to expressing greater hope for the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), he wrote well about the dangers of the SBC conservatives' drift into Batholicism and Cathist thinking.

Now comes Mohler, using a variant of that often Roman Catholic term "scandal" and applying the heretic brand.

Addendum

Cartledge in that same blog deals with a bid by Southwestern Theological Seminary head Paige Patterson to appropriate the Lottie Moon heritage.

In a comment, Biblical Recorder Editor Norman Jameson points to a similar effort by Patterson and his allies to appropriate credit for Southeastern Theological Seminary.

In an Oct. 15, 2008, blog touching on Southeastern President Danny Akin's introduction of Patterson for a chapel message at Southeastern, Jameson wrote:

“If it were not for Paige Patterson I would not be standing here today,” Akin said, acknowledging the mentor relationship. “And none of you would be here because you would not have wanted to attend a Southeastern Seminary the way it was,” before the changes wrought by Lewis Drummond and Patterson.

I did not attend Southeastern Seminary so I was not insulted for myself at that comment, but I felt slapped on behalf of many godly Christian men and women who attended and taught at Southeastern “the way it was” before Patterson. The list in North Carolina alone is huge.

Akin followed his comment with a short litany of the doldrums Southeastern endured before Patterson began his tenure. Enrollment had dropped to 580 students, he said, and it now serves 2,500, including a new Southeastern College. That is impressive growth.

With its clear focus, engaging leadership and development muscle some say Southeastern Seminary is becoming the epicenter of theological education among Southern Baptist Seminaries. Akin said “all the good things happening at Southeastern today are traced right back to (Patterson).”

Maybe it’s just my lens coloring it for me, but the statement about the low point and its context implied that Southeastern pre-Patterson was in the doldrums for some reason other than the convulsions of a Southern Baptist Convention adjusting to change and because trustees were undermining the leadership of Randall Lolley, president from 1974-87.

Southeastern’s own website credits significant growth during the Lolley years.

In his comment, Jameson suggested that those "notes of triumphalism have such a harsh clang they do not attract anyone to a continuing cause." An understatement.