Attacks on faith-based program reveal its flaws

No one should be surprised that President Obama's faith-based initiatives are drawing fire from liberals and conservatives.

After all, it is known that the program failed to increase churches' social services and some have advocated doing away with the program completely. Also, a broad coalition of organizations jointly said the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was meant to protect religious liberty not lead to discrimination.

So folks like Barry Lynn, head of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and former Southern Baptist Convention president Frank Page, still take issue with the program.

David Waters, who edits an online discussion about faith for the Post and Newsweek and blogs about religion, concludes that the faith-based initiative remains a "fundamentally flawed concept."

"The federal government and U.S. religious groups serve two different masters. The government serves taxpayers, religious groups serve God. When it comes to distributing and overseeing the use of federal tax dollars, government overrules God."

Churches and other faith-based groups that take government funding, should follow the rules, Waters said.

"If not, they can decide to help people the old-fashioned way -- because God calls them to, not because government pays them to."

Well said.

Abusing Native American religious rites to deadly effect

James Arthur Ray ran high-end "Spiritual Warrior" retreats which desecreated Sioux sweat-lodge rituals. Until an Oct. 8, 2009, incident in Sedona, Arizona, which resulted in three deaths and 20 other hospitalizations. On Feb. 3, 2010, the Yavapai County Arizona Sheriff's Dept. arrested Ray, charging him with three counts of manslaughter

Those three were simply the most recent deaths resulting from the "commodification" of American Indian cultural and religious practices, observed Judith Weisenfeld, Princeton University professor of religion and associate faculty in the Center for African American Studies.

Native Americans have not responded passively to the desecration of their traditions. The Lakota Nation has filed a lawsuit under the Sioux treaty of 1868.

Wikipedia says, in summary:

The Lakota Nation holds that James Arthur Ray and the Angel Valley Retreat Center have “violated the peace between the United States and the Lakota Nation” and have caused the “desecration of our Sacred Oinikiga (purification ceremony) by causing the death of Liz Neuman, Kirby Brown and James Shore”. As well, the Lakota claim that James Arthur Ray and the Angel Valley Retreat Center fraudulently impersonated Indians and must be held responsible for causing the deaths and injuries, and for evidence destruction through dismantling of the sweat lodge. The lawsuit seeks to have the treaty enforced and does not seek monetary compensation.

The Lakota have also published a "Declaration of War Against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality," which does a great deal to clarify the cultural/religious issues involved.

The tony, $9,000 a head retreats are regarded by Native Americans as altogether corrupt. There is, explains Chief Arvol Looking Horse, "19th Generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe Bundle," no for-pay Lakota/Dakota/Nakota Oyate spiritual rite [.pdf]:

When you do ceremony, you can not have money on your mind. We deal with the pure sincere energy to create healing that comes from everyone in that circle of ceremony. The heart and mind must be connected. When you involve money, it changes the energy of healing. The person wants to get what they paid for; the Spirit Grandfather will not be there, our way of life is now being exploited! You do more damage than good. No mention of monetary energy should exist in healing, not even with a can of love donations. When that energy exists, they will not even come.

The issues here are clearly more complex than "buyer beware," although a visit to New Age Frauds & Plastic Shamans is a good place to begin is you are considering the purchase of such services.

Bottom line? That path is not for sale, either.

[H/T Judith Weisenfeld]

Using a killer's words to blame the victim

Abused by Baylor University when she had to courage to report being assaulted by "murdering minister" Matt Baker when he was a student there, Lora Wilson is still a target of reflexive abuse.

Blame the victim is a hideous American practice, not exclusively a Southern Baptist sin -- one at which Christa Brown fired back when Lora Wilson was maligned with Baker's words in a recent blog comment.

The smear continues in part because the Southern Baptist institutions which are at fault have failed to acknowledge their responsibility. Christa writes:

To this day, no Baylor official has made any public expression of remorse. No one at First Baptist of Waco, a church that had two reports of Baker’s abuse, has expressed any sorrow about letting the man move on without consequence. No one at the Baptist General Convention of Texas has offered any explanation for how someone with so many abuse and assault reports could move so easily through its affiliated churches and organizations. And no one in Baptistland has made even the feeblest of effort to reach out to the many more who were likely wounded by “murdering minister” Matt Baker -- the many who are probably still silent.

Change a mind ...

Beyond hype, hope for spirit-minded sports

Nothing demonstrates the outrageous devotion of sports fans like the overwhelming hype of Super Bowl week.

This year's version has a particularly religious flavor with Focus on Family buying some of the famously expensive commercial time with an anti-abortion ad featuring University of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow. And just a little more than a week before the big game, Phoenix Cardinal quarterback Kurt Warner announced his retirement by thanking God for the opportunity to play.

But amid the hoopla, Shirl James Hoffman, emeritus professor of kinesiology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, encourages a different approach to sports. His article in Christianity Today, is called "Sports Fanatics: How Christians have succumbed to the sports culture — and what might be done about it."

Hoffman has spent 40 years in sports as an athlete, an official, a coach, a professor and an administrator. He sees an evangelistic fascination with sports like the call, "Onward Christian Athletes," and the seemingly omnipresent "skin-deep evangelism."

Christian evangelicals, he says, "have been quick to harness sports to personal and institutional agendas," but also points out that organized sports too often bring out the worst in people. He believes that Christians have a "duty to seek the redemption of sports, and to point society toward a better way of playing."

Hoffman cites numerous difficulties, including that the "big-time sports culture lifts up values in sharp contrast with what Christians for centuries have understood as the embodiment of the gospel." Nonetheless he calls for a Christian view "that sports are derivatives of the God-given play impulse—intended less to test our spiritual limits than as times and places to recover our spiritual centers of gravity and to rehearse spiritual truths, dim images of the real game that will begin when we leave this world behind."

The piece is well worth the read for sports-minded Christians and spirit-minded sports fans.

Farewell NAMB/IMB merger

Merger of the big, troubled North American Mission Board (NAMB) with the big, troubled International Mission Board (IMB) is apparently off the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) drawing boards.

Thus spake the Great Commission Resurgence Task Force (GCRTF) Chairman Ronnie Floyd in a speech Monday at a Florida pastor's conference. Although SBC President Johnny Hunt once called stories reporting the possibility of such a merger "ludicrous," Floyd confessed:

There was great, great, great discussion studying, planning and even to the point of having strategic formation of the possibility of the other. But we just really sensed in our heart that wasn’t right at this time.

"Sensed" presumably means heard the uproar set off by the GCRTF's fog-enshrouded considerations of merger and objection by SBC elder statesman Duke K. McCall and others to the further concentration of SBC executive authority such a merger would entail.

'GetReligion' nails the Haggard book event

Steve Rabey writing about coverage of Gayle Haggard's promotion of her new book about life with Ted:

The Haggard story has now evolved into the type of media events Neal Gabler called “lifies,” which are celebrity-driven, media-friendly stories about failure and redemption that serve up big, gooey life lessons for viewers.