Pat Robertson's mean Haiti parlor trick [Updated]

Christian Right/Republican leading light Pat Robertson resurrected a simple, ugly myth which if believed erases any need to understand the Enriquilla-Plantain Garden geological fault slip which devastated Haiti and numbs natural human sympathy toward the victims.

Robertson blamed the suffering Haitians, accusing their ancestors of making a pact with the devil by which current Haitians are cursed. On Christian Broadcasting Network's "The 700 Club," he said:

Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heal [heel] of the French. You know, Napoleon the third, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you will get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it's a deal.

True? Not to Haitian Christians like Jean R. Gelin. About 95% of the country "claims Christian beliefs," and about 85% or those are Catholic. And given to greeting crisis with devotional song and prayer, not devil worship.

Nor to careful scholars of the role of Vodou leaders in the successful slave uprising. The cultural role of Vodou in the revolution against French Catholic slave masters is quite clear, but translating that into a generation-spanning pact with the devil is a mean parlor trick for building audience and raising money.

Like the long parade of Robertson New Year's prophecies, it is a shamelessly successful attempt to command the attention of various audiences.

Updates

Dan finds theological self-contradiction in Robertson's argument:

Aside from being absurd on its face, Robertson's claim doesn't square with his own theology. Haiti has been "cursed" by, among other things, invasion, occupation, isolation and oppression at the hands of Western powers such as France and the US. So by Robertson's logic, the US has been used as the devil's tool. Hardly squares with his "Christian nation" theology. Furthermore, I'd like to share with Robertson a quick history lesson on "pacts with the devil" in Haiti -- the French colonial rulers of Haiti found it more cost-effective to work African slaves to death than to provide them with even the barest necessities, all the while claiming Christian missionary motives for slavery (for example, Baptism was compulsory). Think for a second how that flouts the teachings of Jesus. And just to add another bit of foundational blasphemy, this oppressive regime was started under the rule of Louis XIV, who claimed to rule by divine right.

Matt Yglesias wonders if Robertson has disinterred the French slave master point of view:

If you were a white, Catholic French person or Haitian plantation owner, I can see why you would characterize this as a prayer offered “to the devil.” The black Haitians are postulating the existence of two Gods, one for the whites and one for the blacks. The whites regard the God they pray to as the one true God. So if the blacks are praying to some second god, and doing it with a Vodou ceremony, it stands to reason that they’re engaged in a satanic ritual of some sort.

Rice University sociologist Michael Lindsay interviewed Robertson for Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite. Lindsay said:

“Pat Robertson continues to distinguish himself as American evangelicalism’s most flamboyant spokesperson. When tragedies strike, people naturally ask questions about why bad things happen to the innocent, and millions of Americans see the hand of God or the devil at work in natural calamities,” Lindsay said. “But few religious leaders today draw the kinds of explicit connection as Pat Robertson has done with the Haitian earthquake. Robertson’s comments reflect as much his rhetorical flourish and skill as a ratings booster as they do his theology.”

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President AL Mohler tweeted that Robertson's remarks are "Theological arrogance matched to ignorance."

Middle East Evangelical Churches call for ordination of women

Delegates to the 6th General Assembly of the Fellowship of the Middle East Evangelical Churches (FMEEC) voted unanimously on Jan. 12 in support of the ordination of women.

The associated statement was written in Arabic. An English translation says:

The Sixth General Assembly supports the ordination of the women in our churches in the position of ordained pastor and her partnership with men as an equal partner in decision making. Therefore we call on member churches to take leading steps in this concern.

The statement was drafted and adopted in response to a report by the fellowship's theology committee, which found no biblical or theological reasons to oppose the ordination of women, said the Rev. Munib A. Younan, bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land (ELCJHL), president of FMEEC.

The action means member churches are urged to open the doors to women's ordained ministry, said Younan.

Several U.S. denominations allow the ordination of women. Among them are the Episcopal Church, which has a woman as its presiding bishop, the United Methodist Church, the Disciples of Christ, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and others. Several denominations deny ordination to women, most notably Southern Baptist Convention and the Roman Catholic Church. All subject to recent controversy in some regard.

According to the FMEEC Web site, there are 23 member churches/organizations spread across the middle east and near east.

Allison K. Schmitt, communication assistant with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, explains:

FMEEC was formed in 1974, the result of a long history of ecumenism among member churches. FMEEC's purpose is to strengthen the mission and ministry of its member churches through training and formation of leadership and laity, both women and men, and promoting unity through joint work and education.

The organization's history says:

The motivation for unity was always rooted in the faith and life of the Evangelical churches in the Middle East. The ecumenical movement in the Middle East sprang up from within the evangelical church, which through its biblical concepts and spirituality, yearns for unity. This motivation brought the Evangelical churches of the Middle East together. "The United Missionary Council in Jerusalem" (1924) was the first step, followed by the "Council of West Asia and North Africa" held at Helwan, Egypt in 1927, and its two peers, "The Missionary Conference of Syria and Palestine" held in the north, and "The Missionary Conference of all Egypt" held in the south. Later all these assemblies joined under one nomenclature, "The Near East Christian Council". Thirty-five years later, in 1964 in Egypt, the Syrian Orthodox Church joined the council, whose name changed to "The Near East Council of Churches". Then, in 1974, in order to encourage other churches in the Middle East to join the ecumenical movement, the Evangelical churches initiated the idea of playing a lesser role in administration and direct responsibility, in order that the other churches in the Middle East might join. As a result "The Middle East Council of Churches" came into existence on the basis of Orthodox, Oriental and Evangelical church families.

The yearning for unity does not mean that the member churches within the Fellowship of the Middle East Evangelical Churches are fully united. Theological questions related to eucharist and ministry are still unresolved, therefore the quest for unity is still a top priority for the FMEEC, which believes that unity amongst its members will foster the unity with the other families within the MECC. In 1997 the Fellowship formulated a "Proposal for the Unity of the Evangelical Churches in the Middle East", which however was not accepted by all its members. In 2005 a new proposal was launched, aiming at a formal agreement between the churches of the Reformed and Lutheran traditions in the Fellowship. This agreement of full communion was reached in January 2006 at a meeting in Amman and is called The Amman Declaration of Lutheran and Reformed Churches in the Middle East and North Africa. It establishes the mutual recognition of baptism, eucharist, ministry and ordination. The churches that are signatories to the Declaration commit themselves to close cooperation and common witness.

Google does good

The combination of China's demand that Google censor search results, and a Chinese attempt to hack into the gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, has led Google to a sweeping reassessment of its business relationship with China.

Google's new, ethics-driven approach to China was announced on its official blog

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered--combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web--have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

Rebecca MacKinnon details the reaction in China.

Google is pushing back against evil, and we applaud.

Largest earthquake in more than 200 years strikes Haiti [Updated]

To help

CBS News "How you can help" list.

National Public Radio "some ways to help" list.

SFGate earthquake donation list

Or donate $10 to the American Red Cross via text message.

As many as three million people may be homeless, according to International Red Cross spokesman Paul Conneally. The Haitian prime minister said several hundred thousand people may have been killed in the quake, which destroyed most of Port-au-Prince.

"It's going to be a real killer," said earthquake expert Tom Jordan at the University of Southern California. "Whenever something like this happens, you just hope for the best."

The U.S. Agency for International Development has responded. An "aggressive, coordinated" U.S. effort is being mounted, according to the Washington Post.

Troy Livesay tweeted from Port Au Prince about 3 a.m., Wednesday:

Church groups are singing throughout the city all through the night in prayer. It is a beautiful sound in the middle of a horrible tragedy.

Livesay's blog here.

This twitpic account has images of the devastation.

You may view photos of the devastation here.

Follow the CNN Haiti twitter list at http://twitter.com/CNN/haiti.

Follow the NPR News twitter earthquake list at http://is.gd/6a7zR.

Follow the Los Angeles Times Haiti twitter list at http://twitter.com/latimes/haiti-quake.

Follow the New York Times Haiti twitter list at http://twitter.com/nytimes/haiti-earthquake.

Baptists are responding with aid. Initial efforts are led by Florida Baptists, "who have had ministry relationships in Haiti for more than 20 years and currently have six staff members who live and work in the country, said Jim Brown, U.S. director for Baptist Global Response. The Southern Baptist International Mission Board does not have long-term personnel stationed in the country."

The Catholic Relief Service reports that the building opposite CRS Port-au-Pr office has collapsed. According to CNS, those reported dead include Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot of Port-au-Prince and Zilda Arns Neumann, a pediatrician who founded the Brazilian bishops' children's commission and sister of Brazilian Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns, retired archbishop of Sao Paulo. The Vatican missionary news agency, Fides, reports that 100 priests and seminarians also were killed. The clergy, members of the Montfort order, were in Port-au-Prince on retreat.

The Episcopal Diocese of Haiti is numerically the largest of the Episcopal Church. The Episcopal Cafe blog is monitoring developments.

United Methodist Church volunteers in Haiti who can be reached thus far are reported safe.

CNN reported:

Haiti's infrastructure was among the world's worst even in the best of times, the country's ambassador to the United States said Tuesday.

"It was a catastrophe waiting to happen," Raymond Alcide Joseph told CNN from Washington shortly after a 7.0 earthquake leveled parts of his home country, cutting power and phone lines in the capital city of Port-au-Prince. "Sadly, it has happened."

Does gay marriage raise divorce or species-extinction rates?

A tentative "no" to the first, says Nate Silver, after an analysis using CDC data.

Specifically:

Overall, the states which had enacted a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage as of 1/1/08 saw their divorce rates rise by 0.9 percent over the five-year interval. States which had not adopted a constitutional ban, on the other hand, experienced an 8.0 percent decline, on average, in their divorce rates. Eleven of the 24 states (46 percent) to have altered their constitutions by 1/1/08 to ban gay marriage experienced an overall decline in their divorce rates, but 13 of the 19 which hadn't did (68 percent).

There is a lot more, none of which implies that states which permit gay marriage pay a consequent divorce-rate penalty.

Regarding gay marriage and environmental issues, Eduardo Peñalver reports that the pope, as a part of his disappointment over failure to reach a climate change agreement in Copenhagen, said:

Creatures differ from one another and can be protected, or endangered, in different ways, as we know from daily experience. One such attack comes from laws or proposals which, in the name of fighting discrimination, strike at the biological basis of the difference between the sexes.

Peñalver reasons his way through the associated papal moral logic, concluding:

There seems to me to be a consistent failure here to acknowledge the existence of a point of view that largely accepts the Pope’s suspicion of liberal rights and autonomy talk, but that nonetheless supports gay marriage (and contraception) on grounds rooted in the same traditional beliefs in duty, the family and public morality on which the Pope relies. I don’t support gay marriage because of a radical conception of individual autonomy, but because I don’t think homosexuality is immoral. And, because I don’t think it is immoral, I think the law should encourage and assist gay couples, as it does for heterosexual couples, to root their sexual lives in the stability of legally sanctioned marriage.

Very different paths through altogether different thickets to very similar conclusions.

Current law on freedom of religion [Updated]

From Wake Forest University Center for Religion and Public Affairs: Download the landmark Religious Expression in American Public Life: A Joint Statement of Current Law [.pdf]

Drafting the document included those associated with faith-based groups as diverse as the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, the Islamic Networks Group, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, the Queens Federation of Churches, the American Jewish Committee, the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists and the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. Thus the panel included representatives from Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Sikh faith traditions.

The document begins:

The place of religion in American public life is a subject of widespread interest and intense debate.

Part of that debate concerns the law that applies to these issues.

The drafters of this document often disagree about how the law should address issues regarding the intersection of religion and government. For example, some of us are actively urging the Supreme Court of the United States to reverse certain decisions in this area, while others of us are vigorously opposing such efforts.

Nevertheless, we have come together to provide a summary of how the law currently answers some basic questions regarding religious expression and practice in public life. However much we differ about what the law should be, we agree in many cases on what the law is today.

Download the 34-page document here [.pdf].

God by any other name

A judge's ruling in Malaysia that Christians there can use "Allah" to refer to God set off violence against churches with several being fire-bombed or vandalized.

Christian leaders in Malaysia are calling for calm and unity, but some Christian groups there say they will continue to use Allah for God.

Coverage of the attacks focused on Muslim anger over the decision, but some Christians also oppose using Allah to refer to God.

The court decision in Malaysia was the result of a lawsuit filed two years ago by The Herald, a Catholic newspaper. The suit asked the court to set aside a government regulation that only Muslims could refer to the deity as Allah. Enforcement of the ruling is delayed while the Malaysian government appeals.

The Herald's editor told the London Times that his paper's references to Allah are not an effort to convert Muslims to Christianity. Other uses of the term, however, clearly aim to evangelize Muslims. One such effort, based on the book "The Camel — How Muslims are Coming to Faith in Christ," is promoted by the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board.

Wade Burleson, a former trustee of the IMB, wrote about discussion of the method while he was on the board in July 2007. He said the book teaches a "unique method of sharing the gospel to Muslims" using parts of the Quran to convince them that the "true" Allah can only be known through his son, Jesus Christ.

Kevin Greeson, the author of The Camel, told the Texas Baptist Standard that the name of the book comes from an Arabic says that every good Muslim knows 99 names for Allah, but only the camel knows the 100th name.

“We tell them we know the 100th name. It’s Jesus,” Greeson said.

Burleson said that during the 2007 IMB meeting Gordon Fort, vice-president of overseas operations for the IMB, talked about why it was essential that the name "Allah" be used for "God" when speaking to Arabic speaking people in their native tongue. Gordon said there is no Arabic equivalent to convey the idea of a Supreme Being other than "Allah" and when missionaries use the word "Allah" for God, they tell the listeners that the only way to know the one true "Allah" is to come to faith in Jesus Christ.

Winston Curtis, another trustee, followed Fort's remarks by saying that only "Bible" names like Yahweh, Elohim, and El-Shaddai should be used by Christians when referring to God.

Burleson said Curtis used the word "God" 35 times during his remarks, in effect using the English word "God" the way Arabs would use the Arabic word "Allah." Burleson further pointed out that missionaries who use the word "Allah" for God "are only doing what the Apostle Paul did on Mars Hill — starting at the very place the people who need Christ are — and taking them to where they need to go — to repentance from their sin and faith in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior."

But Bart Barber, a Southern Baptist pastor and blogger, said Paul's evangelistic efforts at Mars Hill included confrontation.

"Greeson's book very delicately avoids confrontation with Islam," Barber said. "Indeed, the fundamental distinctive of The Camel seems to be its way of trying to present Christianity without confronting Islam."

Others in the SBC have debated the wisdom of using "Allah" to refer to God.

Fred Smith, a professor at Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote an article for the blog SBCToday taking issue with a post on the blog SBCImpact written by an anonymous writer identified as "From the Middle East." The writer's use of Allah for God was among Smith's issues.

Smith said that Allah in the Quran is remote from creation, promotes salvation by works, and “begets not, nor is he begotten.”

"This is a completely different person from the God of the Bible who is deeply involved with His people, who calls us to repentance and faith, and who 'sent His only begotten Son' that we might be saved. These two beings are not the same god and cannot be!"

In a separate post, the anonymous blogger defends his use of the term, saying that the word was used by Christians before Islam existed and pointing out that Arabic translations of the Bible refer to God as Allah.

Emir Caner, a former Muslim who was then dean of the College at Southwestern in Texas but is now president of Truett-McConnell College in Georgia, wrote a column for Baptist Press in 2007 saying "the god of Muhammad is not the Father of Jesus."

"The subject in its essence is not a linguistic issue, but a theological matter with eternal ramifications. To say that since Allah is Arabic for God and YHWH is Hebrew for God, Christians and Muslims worship the same God is beyond naive –- it is blasphemous."

Former SBC president Jerry Vines got national attention in 2002 when he called Mohammed "a demon-possessed pedophile" at an SBC Pastors' Conference.

"Allah is not Jehovah, either. Jehovah is not going to turn anyone into a terrorist that will try to bomb people and take the lives of thousands and thousands of people."

But one can refer to God as Allah without equating the Muslim deity with the Christian supreme being. The larger issue is whether missionaries and Christians in general are being completely honest when they use the term in their discussions with Muslims.

If you have to ask if the end justifies the means, the answer is almost always no.

Christians are used to asking "What would Jesus do?" Ruth Gledhill, the religion correspondent for the London Times, asks her readers a similar question in a column about the upheaval in Malaysia.

"What would Allah say?"

Unfortunately many Christians will be too offended by the question to even consider it.