Reset - Doctor Who & Steven Moffat

Boy it has been a long time since I've blogged. I suppose I got caught up in trying to organize my different books, getting my life sorted & work, my energies went elsewhere. But I did miss it. So I am going to start of slow & focus on using the first few entries on my commentary on the new Doctor Who series.

But before I write about the 11th Hour, the new era of Doctor Who, I want to set some parameters. I'm thrilled that Russell T. Davies was able to retool Doctor Who but at the same time it hurt the show. Yes he is a fan but I felt he directed the show for himself, not the fans.

He seemed to try to out-do himself each season. More special effects and explosions. And the big bad threat to destroy reality or universe. It grew a little tiresome by the fourth season. I won't get into the brain rape he did to Donna. That is a separate and long blog to come.

I find his storytelling starts off strong but petters off at the end. A good example is The Next Doctor. Great story until the Cyber King rises out of the Thames. OMG! Special effects & explosions, once again. Let alone continuity issues. Victorian London is being blown up by a giant robot and it isn't part of human history? Hello!

But for me, and many other Whovians, each season was guaranteed a bright spot. Something from Steven Moffat. Off the bat, Season 1, The Empty Child & The Doctor Dances stood out. They blew me away. I was creeped out with the image of Jamie with the gas mask, plaintively asking "Are you my mommy?" It caused shivers. I wanted to jump behind the couch.

I was stunned by the happy ending with The Doctor Dances. For a moment, the new dark Doctor had a victory. My friend & fellow Whoian talked for a long time about the episodes and agreed here was a writer that knew, grokked Doctor Who.

When I heard Steven was penning an episode for Season 2, I was excited. And stunned when I watched it. I'm a sucker for good historical Doctor Who stories and this is a good example.

Lady in the Fireplace had creepy elements, especially when Rose finds the heart. And the Clockwork "people" made me jump. But it was the story of the Doctor and Reinette that captivated me. The emotion in the story was honest, real. I welled up at the end, when we see the funeral possession leaving Versailles.

What impressed me was Steven went off in a different direction with this episode. He didn't follow a formula. And he had the balls to give us, this time, a sad ending. Yet the loss is not because of a sacrifice but of circumstance. The Doctor had nothing to do with her death, he just came back too late.

Then came the penultimate episode in Season 3, Blink. We hit the ground running, wondering why Sally Sparrow is in the old mansion. As she rips away the wallpaper, revealing a message, I was totally entranced. Up to now, I have not been too thrilled by the Doctor lite episodes. But Steven pulled it off. This episode made me jump, laugh, cry out, well-up and bask in genius story-telling. This is an episode I bow down to him. Any ideas I've had for Doctor Who stories will now made me say "I'm not worthy!" Here is a story that does not rely on CGI, explosions and giant gizmos. Simple strobe-lighting and fibreglass constructs and I was hiding behind the couch.

Saying Blink is the penultimate episode does not take away from Season 4, Silence in the Library and the Forests of the Dead. Once again he takes something mundane and makes it scary. It was an amazing story that gripped me. And intrigued me. Finally we meet someone from the Doctor's future, who knows the Doctor. For me, River Song is a character I want to know more about and that is going to happen. Hurrah!

What impressed me is the range Steven Moffat has. As an aspiring writer, I'm inspired at what he has done. He does creepy, romantic, funny, biting commentary, usually packed into one episode. He takes ordinary things and makes them extraordinary. Mundane things become terrifying, silly or sad. I have learned a few things from him.

This babbling preamble is important to get an idea of the mindset I came into the new series. I am extremely happy that Russell T. Davies was able to bring back Doctor Who. But the strong hand Davies had gave us episodes that were amazing, at the beginning but ended up with a wet fart with chunks.

I am not putting down the great stories by Paul Cornell, Toby Whithouse or Gareth Roberts but you can see the tinkering hand of Davies in the final production.

From my point of view, Davies is a Doctor Who fan who put together a show he wanted to see. Then there is Steven Moffat, IMHO, wants to put together a show that the fans want to see. And his 4 year track record shows that.

That is why I was so excited when it was announced that Steven Moffat would be "in charge" of Doctor Who. I saw an evolution of the show from a big, funky special effects show to more story-telling and effective uses of special effects. A step back from the fancy CGI to "wow" the audience.

The four episodes Steven wrote, we have strong characters and compelling stories. We wouldn't have Captain Jack, Sally Sparrow or River Song now in the Whoverse. Let alone Dave and the other Dave, Kathy Nightingale or Larry.

I, like many Whovians, scoured the Internet to get details of the hand-over to Steven. Then came the announcement that Matt Smith would be the next Doctor. Up front, I was a little concerned because he was so young. And the BBC website didn't help with some articles that having a "younger" Doctor would help push Doctor Who merchandising. But the gay man I am, I did look and comment he is cute. The initial stills I saw intrigued me.

But when I saw his interview his fingers going all about and his honest humility about taking on such an iconic role, I said "yeah, I think he can do it." I was going to give him a chance.



So the parameters are set. You have an idea where I am coming from as I start to post my reviews of Moffat run of Doctor Who. There will be spoilers and biased. I am part of a small crowd that liked Adric and was shocked & pissed off when he died in Earthshock.

For me, Doctor Who is the story not the effects. It is the crack in Peter Davison's voice in Warriors of Deep, lamenting there should have been a better way or Sylvester McCoy tipping his hat during a sword fight in Battlefield. Or the quiet river-ride in Shada. Doctor Who was low budget so they had to focus on story and characters,

And yeah, not every episode was golden. No series is perfect. But Doctor Who provides a perfect spotlight on our lives, a commentary of who we are. A good example is The Happiness Patrol. Something I think Davies lost track of. He focused on the story arc and the grand finale. Bigger is better. Now we are in a new era. And over the next day or so, I will post a blow by blow review of the new Doctor.

The Illusion of Money (1)

Originally this post was going to be about the growing trend for businesses not accepting money any more. But it has moved about in different directions and I've settled on focusing on the idea of the illusion of money. And once again, this has grown into more than one post.

Much of the following is derived from an excellent book called The Secrets of the Temple, by William Greider, ISBN 0-671-47989-X It is quite an eye-opening book about the Federal Reserve in the US and the power invested in it. I believe it provides a better, more balanced exploration of the Fed than a documentary I saw last week called Freedom to Fascism.

The illusion of money is ancient and universal. It is present in every human transaction and absolutely necessary for each transaction. Money is worthless unless everyone believes in it. A buyer could not possibly offer a piece of paper in exchange for tangible goods if the seller did not also believe the paper had any value.

This shared illusion comes down the ages. It is old as stone coins and wampum. It is a power universally conferred by every society throughout history. Many different objects have been seen as money. For some, it was seashells, others dogs' teeth. Groups used tobacco, whiskey or cattle as money during transactions. And in time, shiny minerals like silver and gold were used. All evolving to paper and numbers in an account book. And now plastic.

For contemporary people, they have some difficulty acknowledging that they share this linkage with the primitive past. Money is now deeply embedded in elaborate technology. Money is now ruled by electronic accounting and payment systems that are growing in speed and complexity. For many people, today's concept of money is real and not like quaint and amusing tokens used by ancient tribes. A dollar bill is rational; seashells are blind faith.

Of course, modern money requires a leap of faith. It requires the same social consent that primitive societies gave to their money. Yet in fact, modern money is even more distant from concrete reality.

Over the centuries, the evolution of money has been a long and halting progression. During this time, human societies hesitantly transferred their money faith from one object to another. At each step, the object of this faith moved farther away from real value and closer to pure abstraction.

A good example would be cattle used by some African tribes. Now, for the people in these tribes, the cattle is of value. If the money illusion were to collapse for some reason, the coins are still cattle. The seashells that became precious currency among aboriginal tribes in North America and other continents were desirable things. Pre-Revolutionary colonies like Virginia and the Carolinas used tobacco as currency, which was a valuable commodity in its own right. And even silver and gold were not entirely useless; they could be fashioned by an artist into beautiful items.

In that sense, modern money is utterly worthless. At the same time, it becomes more efficient because its value does not get confused with the value of real things. Therefore the money illusion is now refined to a new level of abstract faith. Which is only visible if one consciously pauses to consider how the money process has evolved. At each stage in history, one can see money retreating from concrete reality.

It is suggested that paper money originated with the goldsmiths of Europe. These goldsmiths held private gold hoards, deposited by wealthy citizens for safekeeping. The goldsmith would issue a receipt for the gold deposit. Over time, it became clear that the receipt for the gold deposit could be used in commerce since whoever owned that piece of paper could go to the goldsmith and claim the gold.

This provided two boons for the goldsmith: security and lending. For many of the wealthy citizens, it was dangerous to travel about Europe with gold. The receipt gave a level of security. If a merchant in Antwerp wanted to purchase something in Paris, there was no need to transport gold for the transaction, they just needed to send a receipt for the appropriate value. At the same time, groups like the Knights Templar innovated many of the financial techniques that can be considered the foundation of banking. Often it was these “warrior monks” that ran the banks and transported receipts from one place to another.

The other boon for the goldsmiths and groups like the Knights Templars was the discovery that they could safely write more receipts and lend them to people. This would exceed the total gold that was on hand but as long as the lender always kept a responsible minimum of gold in reserve to honour any withdrawals, no one would be the wiser.

This is the origin of fractional-reserve banking and the bank doing the lending would be created money. This private money system endured centuries and was inherited by the American Republic.

In the States, privately owned banks created money by issuing paper bank notes, paper that was backed by a promise that at any time, the notes could be redeemed for gold.

In the nineteenth century America, the money in use consisted mainly of these privately issued bank notes, backed by gold and silver guarantees. Yet the money's value was extremely dependant on the soundness and honesty of each bank that issued notes. Banking scandals were recurrent in the States, especially on the frontier. There ambitious bankers were eager to make loans for new enterprises, sometimes printing paper money that had no gold behind it. Be it in the States or elsewhere, governments had to impose regulations to keep banks honest, but the bankers were still free to create their own varieties of money. And all too often, if a bank failed, their money failed with them.

Over time, the money illusion was transferred to a new object: demand deposits or more commonly known as checking accounts. So instead of just being a substitute for gold, paper money now existed simply as an account in a bank's ledger and was redeemable by personal drafts or checks.

This shift took time. People were hesitant about the change. In the United States, the transition was inadvertently stimulated by government regulations. During the Civil War, the National Bank Act was enacted. This federal law established a system of national charters for banks. It encouraged development of a national currency based on bank holdings of U.S. Treasury securities. At the same time the law placed a heavy tax on new bank notes issued by state banks. So in order to avoid the tax, banks encouraged their customers to use demand deposits; encouraged them to write personal checks instead of drawing out their money in cash.

It took quite some time for the general public to overcome its natural distrust of checks. But by the turn of the century, 1900, most people were persuaded. Personal checks, written by the buyers themselves now were accepted as just as valuable as dollar bills.

Currency, obviously, remained in use but demand deposits became the bulk of the money supply. The nationalization of currency issuance, completed with the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913, simply continued this arrangement in the States. A new dimension of trust was added to the money illusion.

During the twentieth century, the last prop of the money illusion was removed: the gold standard. Demand deposits had been backed by the same promise that applied to currency, that is, any private citizen could, in theory, go to the bank and redeem their money in a quantity of gold.

Well that promise was extinguished by government edict, starting with the warring nations in Europe, during World War I. Belatedly the United States joined these countries in 1933. Without the gold standard, money became only money or “legal tender for all debts, public and private” as it is printed on each Federal Reserve Note. So now a citizen can still go to the bank and redeem the pieces of paper but their money will be redeemed only in new, identical Federal Reserve Notes.

Whereas most mainstream economists applauded the abandonment of the gold standard, the change was traumatic for some ordinary citizens. The main question was: what is money really worth? Still to this day some people yearn for a return to the old guarantee - “a dollar as good as gold”.

Of course main economists, like John Maynard Keynes believes that the transition from gold is a historic liberation of money. It was an enlightened step beyond the obsessive attachment to shiny metals. So “commodity money” was replaced by “representative money”.

Yet economists like Keynes did agree that without the gold standard, money has to be managed. Its true value would ultimately be determined by governments, by the judgements of fallible humans or, more specifically, by the monetary policies of central banks like the Federal Reserve or the Bank of Canada.

For many people, this is a deeply disturbing situation. They long for some system that would take money regulation out of human hands and return it to some sort of fixed set of values that is impersonal. Proposals have be suggested from the “invisible hand” of market forces to some sort of higher authority. In the meantime, for people in the United States, every coin and bill offers their citizens the reassuring motto: “In God We Trust”.

And tomorrow I will conclude this post with the current abstraction of money which troubles me: plastic.

In God’s Name (4)

So we are getting to the end of my discussion on the first of a series of articles in the New York Times about how religious groups in America are using special exemptions to get extra goodies. The last part continues from the previous post about zoning laws and how various religious organizations are trying to get around them.

As I presented in the previous post, there is a law from 2000 that various religious groups are using to contest zoning laws, and one specific case in Boulder County is being investigated.

There are many critics of this law. They argue that the First Amendment itself has long prohibited religious discrimination in zoning. Therefore the decisions being challenged would be just as successful in court if the law had never passed. The article presents one point here:

When Congress considered the law, “what was actually being discussed was ‘How do we make sure churches don’t get discriminated against,’ ” said Marci A. Hamilton, a law professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University in Manhattan and the author of “God vs. The Gavel: Religion and the Rule of Law” (Cambridge University Press, 2005), which calls for closer scrutiny of some religious exemptions, especially those affecting land use and family law.

Professor Hamilton is advising Boulder County in this case. She adds:

Unfortunately, the answer was to give such an expansive remedy that not only are they not getting discriminated against, but they are now capable of discriminating against all other landowners.

Whether it is the Rocky Mountain Christian Church or other growing churches, the financial stakes a high. In Boulder, under the 2000 law, if the county loses, it will have to pay not only its own legal bills but also those of the church.

If the church loses, it will sacrifice the money it spent on not just legal fees. Money was spent on architectural and public relation fees (of course). What is interesting is that unlike the county, the church could have taken free legal help from various religious advocacy groups. But it has not done so yet.

Yet the stakes is not just about money. If the county wins, this may provide a template for other local governments to use when defending against similar challenges. But if the county loses, then some lawyers fear then most other local governments will also fail. The key element here is that Boulder County has a long history of careful land-use planning and its voters are environmentally demanding. If Boulder loses then successfully arguing that preserving open spaces is a “compelling public interest” may not work elsewhere.

The deputy county attorney David Evan Hughes is quoted as asserting in the county’s filings:

Religious institutions have realized that land-use authorities are vulnerable to the threat of litigation.

Greater clarity from the courts is necessary else the new law’s reach:

will expand to the point where religious institutions are effectively dictating their own land-use regulations.

The article ends with something that echoes the posts I did on the paradox of America and being a Christian nation. In Boulder County, several church members say they cherish the open spaces preserved by the county’s past land-use decisions. But, of course, they think the county is wrong in rejecting the church’s proposal.

The article turns to Lanny Pinchuk, a church member who had formerly served on the county planning board. Whereas he praises all of what the county has done to preserve the environment, when it comes to the church’s plan, he is quoted as saying:

But you can’t keep people from coming to the religious institution of their choice.

Then he adds:

I feel that is just, well, un-American.

Now the church leaders and members have said that their current proposal is the “forever plan”. This would be the last expansion the church would make on this site.

Yet it is important to remember that over its 33 year period, the church has expanded the original building 5 times. And I don’t see this megaplex church being any different that others. Especially since Pastor Ahlgrim is eying the expanding subdivisions from other counties.

It is simple to say “this is it” but in reality, who is to say? Can they really guarantee that in a few years they won’t need more room for other facilities, parking spaces and a large worship area. What happens when this “forever” building if full.

The article ends with Gerry Witt, a founding church member. He is quoted as saying:

At some point, we’re going to have to say we can’t accommodate any more; I mean, we’re not going to have a 100-story building over there

The article ends with:

“So is there any limit?” He thought a moment, then answered his question. “Yes,” he said. “There’s God’s limit. When he says, ‘You’re at your limit,’ that’s when we will stop.”

But what is interesting, he and his wife have put their house on the market so they can more to a less-populated place in the area.

We have more posts on how religious organizations are using loop-holes, the courts and other legal aspects to get advantages others can’t. But I will spend a little time ending these four posts. Which will be echoed in the next series of posts.

For me, it is critical that there is a separation of church and state. A theocracy is dangerous for the average person. It is no different that having a dictatorship. It is important for those of a smaller faith to have protection against a large, dominant one.

Yet the conservative Christians in America has come to dominate various levels of the American governing system. More and more they are dictating American policy. And it threatens groups be it Muslims, Sikhs or Wiccans.

American was founded on Christian values, since the majority of the settlers were Christian. But the Founding Fathers knew that all the sects that came over to America had to be protected. And as America grew, it had to be extended to the faiths of those who immigrated there.

That is why I am spending time on all of this. More and more, America is starting to sound like a theocracy. Conservative Christians get up in arms when a non-Christian takes offence to the Christian language found in secular, government areas. They see it as an attack on their religion.

But for a Muslim or Jew, the signs and details of Christianity in court houses or schools echoes a long history of how Christianity tried to remove them from the world. Be it the pogroms of Europe to the Crusades, Christianity has a long history of trying to get rid of non-Christians. And for a Jewish child standing in a class, having to listen to other children recite the Lord’s Prayer, it reinforces this attempt to destroy or convert.

The other point I am getting from these series is the idea of being a good citizen, be it corporate or private. The government is designed for the whole population, not just a small group. The laws are supposed to be for all.

But when a religious faith, not just Christianity, wants to place itself above the laws, it worries me. In the New Testament, the words of Jesus does not tell followers to go against the government.

Christians are supposed to be good citizens. They are supposed to pay taxes. There are aspects like serving in an army which is not a problem. Even atheists have the right to be an objector and not serve.

But I worry when any faith, be it Christian, Muslim or Jewish, try to separate themselves from society. There are rituals and aspects of each faith that cannot be denied. But they are still members of the society at large, and should appropriately remember that. Not everyone follows the same faith.

With this article and subsequent ones, it strikes me is the selective gleaning of the Bible by many of the Christians out there. They want their cake and eat it too, damn the other people around them.

Yet we have just begun. There will be more posts on this. But for the next couple of days, I am going to take a break so I and you gentle reader can read about something else.

In God’s Name (3)

Now we turn to an area of growing contention between church and state: zoning laws. The article I am using as a base turns to Boulder Colorado. The article quotes Ben Pearlman, a young lawyer:

When you fly in to Denver at night, you can always pick out Boulder. It’s the only one with big patches of darkness around it.

Ben Pearlman is one of the three governing commissioners. He talks about protecting the county’s spectacular beauty as if it is a sacred trust.

Back in 1978, the county limited intensive development to already urbanized areas, buffered by the large swaths of prairie and farmland. As Pearlman pointed out, the landscape stands in a stark contrast to the growing carpet of subdivisions, office parks and malls in neighbouring counties.

Yet, in contrast, there stands Alan Ahlrgim. He is the preacher who founded the Rocky Mountain Christian Church in eastern Boulder County in 1984. He sees the encroaching subdivisions as spiritual vineyards. They are full of families ready to be transformed. The article presents him with:

“The church has never grown fast enough to suit me,” Pastor Ahlgrim said with a grin that showed he was almost, but not quite, serious.

His church is one of more than 200 in the county. Over the past 22 years it has grown from three dozen families in 1984 to more than 2,200 people today. Over these years, the church had five expansions from its original building, approved by the county.

This growing congregation has a 106,000 square-foot home, which sits on 55 acres in an agricultural buffer zone around the small town of Niwot. And it is too small for the current size.

The church has to hold multiple services to handle the overflowing congregation. Its Sunday school is so full, some classes are spilling out into hallways and temporary buildings set in the parking lot.

This has created a dilemma for the Rocky Mountain Christian Church. Are they to just turn newcomers away? Put a ‘no vacancy’ sign up? That doesn’t make sense for a faith that is always trying to reach out to people and have them learn about God and Jesus.

What the church wants to do is renovate. They want to almost double the size of the facilities so they can accommodate up to 4,500 people. But it doesn’t stop there.

The expansion is not just for the church itself. They want to provide a new children’s wing, more rooms for adult classes and a gymnasium with room for two basketball court or hold potluck suppers for 1,000.

The new wings would be linked to the existing building by spacious galleries and be surrounded by more than 1,200 landscaped parking spaces.

Up front, I will admit that I understand the problem they are facing. When you have a thriving and growing congregation, you need to expand. It is difficult for the pastoral staff to deal with multiple masses. And you need facilities for the many different functions the church is running.

I can see that at VCC. When I was involved with Alpha, there were times we had a hard to time organize space for meetings and functions because the basement was already booked and there was no other room.

But I wonder if the plans for the expansions are being done because of necessity or because they can do it. There was one thing about the expansion which was spacious galleries for linking the wings to the existing building. It that really necessary?

I look at some of the megaplex churches I’ve seen. The main one I know is the Crystal Cathedral run by the Schullers. The whole complex looks amazing but they really did not need all of what was built. The cathedral did not need the massive vaulted ceiling of crystal or the landscaped land around it.

I look at cathedrals of old, the amazing Gothic structures I’ve seen in Europe. They were awe-inspiring. But as I would walk around, I would see that much of them were not functional. There was no need for such a massive and ornate structure. Yet it could be done, so it was done. Also, be it then or now, there is a drive to build something more impressive compared to what already exists. Something the Catholics know all too well and the Protestants are now starting to emulate.

So I wonder how much of the expansion is necessary and how much is just for show. This is because the county’s land-use plan and zoning rules for the agricultural buffer zone where the church sits is going to limit construction. And the church cannot build without the approval of the Boulder county commissioners.

So you can imagine what happened when the commission met to discuss the expansion back in February. The article mentions that it was an emotional public hearing which was attended by more than a thousand people. And in the end, the commission said no.

Ben Pearlman is quoted as saying:

People are always trying to develop their properties to the limits of the law and sometimes beyond.

As the article points out that the worst suburban sprawl is the consequence of:

lots of little decisions that have this cumulative effect. We’re trying to resist this death by a thousand cuts, and preserve the land where we can.

Pearlman said. And I can see his point. One small thing leads to another and it can start to snowball. And once that happens there is no going back. And this goes for the growing church. How much of the expansion is really necessary and how much is for show? There has to be a balance between the need of the county and the need of the church.

And this is a problem all of the large, fast-growing megaplex church are confronting. The zoning laws are restricting their expansion plans. Of course, Pastor Ahlgrim is unhappy. He felt the decision:

is severely restrictive to our mission,” he said.

Again I see his point. An important aspect of the Christian life is things like worshipping, teaching and gathering for fellowship. The practice is sharing within and outside the community. And for many Christian churches it is important to allow certain outside groups to use the church when it is available. As Pastor Ahlgrim continues to say:

vital to our mission. When one of your core values is generosity and you are restricted from sharing what you want to share — what God has provided — we consider that to be a severe limitation.

So the church felt it had no choice but to go to court. The church sued the county under a federal land-use law enacted by Congress and signed by Bill Clinton back in 2000. This law was to protect religious organizations from capricious or discriminatory zoning restrictions by local governments. And it is important to note that this law came after a decade-long bipartisan tug-of-war between Congress and the Supreme Court.

It seems that before 1990, the Supreme Court generally held that any government restriction on religion must serve a compelling public interest in the least burdensome way.

This standard was known as the “strict scrutiny” test. One example the article gives is based on an Oregon case dealing with two Native Americans. For them, the use of peyote was of sacramental use. Which as we all know is an illegal drug. The majority of the court concluded that there was nothing unconstitutional about states expecting citizens to comply with valid, neutral and generally applicable laws. In this case, like those criminalizing peyote. Even if compliance conflicted with religious beliefs.

This “Smith decision” from Employment Division v. Smith provoke a fierce reaction which energized the drive for more legislative protections for religion ever since.

As the article points out:

In 1993, under pressure from a broad coalition whose members ranged from the Anti-Defamation League to the Southern Baptist Convention to the American Humanist Association, Congress adopted the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which restored the “strict scrutiny” test to any federal, state or local government action affecting religious practice. A new tool had been added to the First Amendment emergency kit, although no one was quite sure how to use it.

In 1997, the Supreme Court tugged back. It ruled that the religious freedom act could not be applied to the states. This generated a reaction from the states so 13 have subsequently adopted similar actions of their own.

Thing is, though, Congress thought the decision left room for it to address zoning restrictions. And in a separate mann, religious restrictions imposed on prisoners.

So in 2000 there came the act, adopted by Congress and signed by Bill Clinton. It restored the “strict scrutiny” test to local zoning decisions.

This made it easier for churches to challenge decisions they did not like. At the same time, the act also made it easier for prisoners to challenge restrictions on their religious practices.

So far, the Supreme Court has upheld the provision that apply to prisoners but as of yet has not ruled on the land-use provisions. So groups like the Rocky Mountain Christian Church can go ahead in the court system and contest the decision of the Boulder county commission.

What is interesting is one of the church’s allies is the Justice Department’s civil rights division, which is defending the law’s constitutionality in cases around the country.

The article points out something interesting about all of this:

Defenders of the law say that some cases invoking its protections have addressed actions by local governments that seem to reflect blatant religious bias. For example, Rabbi Joseph Konikov of Orlando, Fla., successfully sued his local government under the law in 2002 after county officials repeatedly cited and fined him for holding small worship services in his suburban home, in violation of a zoning provision later found to be an unconstitutional burden on religious freedom.

Of course part of me is going “huh?” I can’t see what happened with Rabbi Konikov is of relevance to the expanding of a megaplex church. Other zoning challenges, all invoking the 2000 law include:

• a Sikh society that wants to build a temple in a low-density residential area of Yuba City, Calif.
• a Hindu congregation seeking permission to expand its temple and cultural centre on a busy highway in Bridgewater, N.J.;
• a Muslim organization that has been trying for years to build a mosque on land that the local government in Wayne Township, N.J., now wants to buy for open space.

But of course law is based on precedent and lawyers are good at putting square pegs into round holes. Yet I look at the decision with the Rabbi and see it make sense. He was holding worship services in his home. He was not expanding his home beyond the zoned areas. Whereas the megaplex churches want to expand into areas that are zoned for things like agriculture or public parks.

Well, tomorrow I am going to conclude this train of thought because I don’t want this post to become too long and dense as some readers have commented. And then I’ll wrap all of this first article before heading into the next ones.

In God’s Name (2)

And now I continue focusing on a recent series of articles in the New York Times about how religious organizations are getting benefits from the government.

Thing is, religious organizations are not just getting regulatory and tax exemptions, some which have been in place for decades. Recently they have become eligible for an increasing flow of federal grants and contracts issued from the state and federal governments.

This did not happen on George Bush’s watch. This started back in 1996 with Bill Clinton. What George did was give it greater force, which the administration call the Faith Based Initiative.

What is interesting is how this increasing weave of regulatory and tax exemptions has gone largely unnoticed. Over the past while, religious leaders and politicians are focused and focusing the press on other issues like the public display of religious icons. A good example is showing the Ten Commandments.

And what I find curious is the rhetoric that is coming out from these leaders. All too often they say that religious groups in America are targets of antagonism, not favouritism. One example is from the House Speaker J. Denis Hastert from Illinois. When introducing a legislative agenda in July, he said:

Radical courts have attempted to gut our religious freedom and redefine the value system on which America was built.

Then there was a conference called The War on Christians and the Values Voter in 2006 in Washington in March. There Tom DeLay is quoted telling the crowd that society:

treats Christianity like a second-class superstition. Seen from that perspective, of course there is a war on religion.

Now back to Alabama for a moment. When the argument that religious groups are victims of discrimination, Ms. White sighed. Thing is, she is finding it harder to compete with unlicensed faith-based centres that don’t have to comply with expensive licensing requirements and regulations.

Lets jump to the other side of the point, to the Harvest Temple Church of God. Paston Fuson says that the busy church-based centre, next to the sanctuary covers its costs and helps support the work of the church. He is quoted as saying:

We have talked about getting licensed before in the past, but it would cost us quite a bit of money.

He points out that the staff would be probably large enough to meet state standard but the centre would need costly renovations to upgrade the facility.

That made me stop and go “Huh?” Be it here or in the States, the requirements for day care centres are strict. They have to comply to everything, including the specific toys required for each age group. And there is a reason for these regulations: the security of young lives. But if it would be too costly to renovate the facility, what does that say?

The main problem is broached by Ms. White. The state funds day care centres and the resources are limited. So it seems unfair that subsidies are available to unlicensed centres as well as the licensed ones. Shouldn’t the financing and licensing be universal? We are talking about the safety of children here.

But in Alabama, some churches have voluntarily obtained licenses. In Huntsville, the First Christian Church has a fully licensed day care centre. The pastor of the church, Paul B. Koch Jr thinks it is appropriate and raises the quality of care. But he also says:

But the Christian Coalition is still strong in Alabama and this is an issue for them.

Of course, we need the Christian Coalition to jump in here. John W. Giles, the president of Alabama’s “chapter” confirmed that his organization supported the exemption. He noted that state oversight would be intrusive and was unnecessary because:

because the pastors and congregations are your quality control.

When I read this I just flipped. You don’t need quality control because the pastor and congregation are your quality control??? What planet does this man come from?

I think back to the scandal with the Catholic church and the young people who were abused by the priests. Here in Canada we have also had problems with institutes run by the Church.

One of the major incidents was the Mount Cashel Orphanage in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Yet there were many other reports of other Church run facilities. Here is part of a report:

I saw many young children beaten up and strapped. I saw Brother --- wake up young children and take them to a room to sexually assault them. I saw children handcuffed to a pillar in the basement. They would be pushed and kicked. I saw Brother --- use a pool table stick to hit children if they would not have anal sex with him. Children were given cold showers then strapped. If I told any Brothers that another Brother tried to have sex with me, I would be strapped." [From a report on abuse at St. Joseph's and St. John's Training School for Boys]

The society had put their trust in these institutions. The people believed that they were doing God’s work and no quality control was necessary. And look at what happened.

Now, I am not saying this is happening in places in Huntsville or at the Harvest Temple, but the idea that these unlicensed centres have the appropriate quality control because of the people and the pastors is just inane.

Although many of the unlicensed centres are run by Protestant churches, the exemption covers all faiths, from an Islamic preschool program in Huntsville to a Catholic parish centre in Tuscaloosa. Each faith brings in different rules to the centres. Some strict faiths may institute “spare the rod, spoil the child” as an appropriate method of disciplining the children. And because they are not covered by a general, universal set of criterion, who can stop them? Certainly not the government.

Many of these centres are regulated internally. A good example is in Texas. In 1997, Governor George Bush pushed through legislation that exempted faith-based day care centres and addiction treatment programs from state licensing. He allowed them to be monitored instead by private associations controlled by pastors, program directors and other private citizens.

But who are these associations answerable to? I understand the government can be a pain to work with, and things can fall through the cracks, but people can work through the system to find someone who is answerable. A nebulous association does not have to answer to anyone.
What is interesting is that George enacted other laws steering more state financing to these “alternately accredited” institutions. Yet:

Fewer than a dozen child care centres and about 130 addiction treatment programs took advantage of this new alternative, according to subsequent studies. But several of these later became the focus of state investigations into complaints of physical abuse. A study by the Texas Freedom Network Education Fund, a nonprofit research organization that opposed the faith-based initiatives, found that “the rate of confirmed cases of abuse and neglect at alternatively accredited facilities in Texas is more than 10 times that of state-licensed facilities.”

So the self-policing by the private associations does not seem to work, in Texas that is. Again, we should not paint the whole situation with a wide brush but it has to make people stop and think.

The New York Times asked two leading First Amendment scholars, about faith-based day care licensing exemptions like these. Both were unfamiliar with the practice but though it sounded legally dubious.

Ira C. Lupu, a law professor at George Washington University and the co-director of legal research for the Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy, an independent project of the Rockefeller Institute of Government said:

I think what you describe is unconstitutional.

Professor Witte, the director of Emory University’s Center for the Study of Law and Religion, responded in an email and said that he:

would frankly be surprised to find even this Supreme Court going that far.

But the courts are going that far. When a group of licensed day care centres challenged the Alabama law in a federal court in mid-2001, guess what? They lost. They argued that the law deprived them of their constitutional right to equal protection before the law.

Well, Judge Myron H. Thompson of United States District Court, who ruled on the case, did not see it that way. He

said the state could have adopted the arrangement to avoid church-state entanglements or simply to accommodate the free exercise of religion. Indeed, he cited four other federal cases, all decided since 1988, that had upheld similar exemptions for day care centers in other states.

And the New York Times concludes this section of the article with:

In Judge Thompson’s view, it is “well settled” constitutional law that “the possible economic inequalities that might result from religious exemptions such as day care licensing exemptions” are not a violation of anyone’s equal-protection rights.

That is it for today. Tomorrow we get into aspects like exemptions from zoning rules.

In God’s Name (1)

What started the previous series of posts was the article I wrote about and a series that is going on in the New York Times entitled:

In God’ Name

by Diana B. Henriques. This lengthy series is giving me more on this subject to continue on. So here goes another series of posts, especially with this tag line about:

how American religious organizations benefit from an increasingly accommodating government.

The reason I am following up the previous post right away is because of they are linked. As you will see this presents the ever increasing blur occurring between the Christian ethos in America and secular institutions, especially the courts and the IRS. It also looks into the important issue of the separation of church and state and abuses that are arising from it.

The article in the series is called:

As Exemptions Grow, Religion Outweighs Regulation

The article starts with two different child care centres in Auburn Alabama. The first is run by Ethel White. At any time, state inspectors can come in, unannounced to make sure her centres meet state requirements. Which makes sense because the law is intended to ensure the children are safe.

For Ms. White, this means continual training for the staff, and details like having two sinks, one exclusively for food prep. And important things like all cabinets require safety locks, and things like medications are kept under lock and key.

Then there is a day care centre run by the Harvest Temple Church of God with the Reverend Ray Fuson. Alabama exempts church day care programs from state licensing requirements.

It is important to note that recently, the requirements were tightened after almost a dozen children died in both licensed and unlicensed day care centres in two years.

As the article continues, the differences do not end there. As an employer, Ms. White must comply with the civil rights laws. Therefore if employees feel mistreated, they have a recourse in the courts. Yet:

Religious organizations, including Pastor Fuson’s, are protected by the courts from almost all lawsuits filed by their ministers or other religious staff members, no matter how unfairly those employees think they have been treated.

And another telling difference has to do with financial statements. Anyone can see how Ms. White’s nonprofit centre uses its public grants and donations because she has to file her financial statements each year with the IRS. But there are no IRS reports from Harvest Temple; federal law does not require churches to file them.

Because of the separation of state and church, religious organizations are enjoying an abundance of exemptions from regulations and taxes. And the number in the States is increasing rapidly.

Yet it is important to point out, this is not just for the mainline Christian megaplex churches. Mosques, synagogues to Hindu temples also enjoy the growing area of exemptions.

Some of these exemptions have existed for much of America’s history. Originally they were devised for Christian churches but as the nation became more religiously diverse, it expanded to other faiths.

What is curious is that many of them have been granted only within the last 15 years. And often, it seems, they have been added to legislation anonymously and with little attention. As the article suggests:

An analysis by The New York Times of laws passed since 1989 shows that more than 200 special arrangements, protections or exemptions for religious groups or their adherents were tucked into Congressional legislation, covering topics ranging from pensions to immigration to land use. New breaks have also been provided by a host of pivotal court decisions at the state and federal level, and by numerous rule changes in almost every department and agency of the executive branch.

The article quotes Professor John Witte Jr. the director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at the Emory University Law School. He say that the special breaks amount to a sort of religious affirmative action program. And then he says:

Separation of church and state was certainly part of American law when many of today’s public opinion makers were in school. But separation of church and state is no longer the law of the land.

The obvious reason for the changes is the growing political influence religious groups are having, especially conservative Christians. This influence is not just in the political arena like Congress but there is a growing presence of conservatives in the courts and regulatory agencies.

I can see some people jumping up and down complaining about people like the Republicans, but it is important to realize that these tax and regulatory breaks have been endorsed by politicians from both parties, by judges across the country and at all levels of the government.

As Richard R. Hammar, the editor of Church Law & Tax Report and an accountant with law and divinity degrees from Harvard is quoted saying:

The religious community has a lot of pull, and senators are very deferential to this kind of legislation.

The end result is that religious organizations of all faiths are in a position that American businesses and all non-religious nonprofit groups can only envy. What is telling is that the new breaks these organizations are getting is at a time that they are expanding into activities like day care centres, fitness clubs, books and broadcasting. They are coming into the market place and competing with others that do not have the benefit of these exemptions.

Thing is religious organizations are exempt from many federal, state and local laws. One area of growing contention is that federal law gives religious congregations unique tools to challenge government restrictions on how they use their land. The result is things like land-use restrictions that are a result of a long standing public demands like open space or historical preservation can be superseded by a religious congregations’s construction plans. More on this later.

As mentioned before, another area is the civil rights laws. Exemptions protect religious employers from all legal complaints about things like faith-based preferences in hiring. And the courts have shielded religious employers from different complaints on other forms of discrimination such as race, nationality, age, gender, etc. What surprised me the most is that most religious organizations have been exempted from federal laws meant to protect pensions and to provide unemployment benefits. More on this later.

The one area which is guaranteed to raise an eyebrow has to do with taxes. Congress has imposed limits on the IRS’s ability to audit churches, synagogues and other religious congregations. Which has allowed more vague religious groups like the Church of Scientology some great exemptions. At the same time, at the local level, houses of worship have long been exempt from local property taxes in every state.

If we were just talking about a local church and the pastor, I don’t see a problem. But religious activities, especially in the States are expanding far beyond the weekly worship and the running of a soup kitchen.

In Minnesota, you can find a church-run fitness centre with tanning beds and a video arcade. In Florida, there is an biblical theme park. These are just two examples of the expanded activities which are getting tax breaks. And if the local officials don’t want to give the breaks, the courts or state legislators step in.

So these organizations are exempt from the local taxes. Yet they still rely on public services. They still want police and fire protection. They need street lights and storm drains. The roads need to be maintained. But these exemptions shift the cost of providing the local benefits onto other citizens. The tax burden is placed on the ordinary Joe in the town or city. And the resulting cost is unknown because no one keeps track.

Now it is important to go back a few hundred years. One of the brilliant aspects of the framers of the Constitution was the insight they brought to the Constitution and Bill of Rights. One area, from the onset, was they wanted to protect religious liberty. There were two clear goals in mind, as constitutional scholars point out.

• The framers wanted to assure that everyone, even members of a small and possibly unpopular sects could practice their faith without the fear of persecution. All too often many came to America because a dominant religion was allied with the state, as it was in England, and persecuted smaller sects.
• The framers wanted to make sure that the government would not become captive to a particular religion or set of beliefs at the expense of people with other faiths.

Many scholars say that this tradition of religious freedom and tolerance helped America avoid sectarian violence that erupted in places like Ireland and attracted immigrants, bringing talents from around the world.

For some legal scholars and judges, they see the special breaks for religious groups as a way to prevent the government from infringing on religious freedoms. As Douglas Laycock, a law professor at the University of Michigan who has written and testified in support of greater legislative protection for religious liberty is quoted as saying:

Never forget that the exercise of religion is a constitutionally protected activity. Regulation imposes burdens on the free exercise of religion. Exemptions lift those burdens.

He adds:

That is constitutionally a good thing.

Yet he is talking about the exercise of religious freedom here, not running a day care centre. We are now entering murky waters that the Founding Fathers could not have envisioned. Until recently, churches, mosques or synagogues were a local matter. And whatever exemptions they received were not far-reaching. Yet as some of these churches grow into megaplexes and other just jump on the bandwagon, these special interests start to collide with other values important in the country. For example:

like extending the protections of government to all citizens and sharing the responsibilities of society fairly.

Of course, religious organizations defend the exemptions as a way to recognize the benefits these groups are providing. From early on, religious organizations operated things like schools, orphanages, hospitals, etc. long before social welfare and education were seen as a responsibility of the government.

Yet the question arises about fairness. These ministries benefit from exemptions with things like soup kitchens and homeless shelters but the nonprofit organizations that provide the same services get nothing. It would make sense to have any and all breaks available to any charitable organization.

I saw that when I was living on the streets. Nonprofit shelters like the Old Brewery Mission were run down compared to those run by the Salvation Army or other religious organizations. What kept some people away from the religious shelters was the dollop of religion that would be forced upon them be it like during meals. While others took it in stride because the food was a little better, as was the bedding. Even back then I wondered about the fairness that the religious run shelters had more than the non-religious ones.

But now, religious nonprofit groups are expanding vigorously into other areas. These groups do things run nationwide broadcasting networks or generate best-selling publications and take full advantage of exemptions that are not available to secular nonprofit groups that are engaged in similar activities.

Of course one of the key elements is the First Amendment and the command that:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

As I said before, the Founding Fathers did not envision churches moving into endeavours like publishing books or running fitness centres. And what they are doing, does it really have to do with exercising their religious faith.

As the article states:

For most of the past half-century, courts interpreted the first part of that clause as a barrier to government action that seemed to treat religious groups more favorably than secular ones, legal scholars said. But today, many lawyers agree, courts are taking a more accommodating view of government actions that benefit religious groups.

But it seems the change started to change under the influence of William H. Rehnquist when he was the chief justice of the Supreme court. This is suggested by Derek H. Davis, until recently the director of the J. M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies at Baylor University in Waco, Tex. Additionally, he feels:

Clearly, we’re going to be in this accommodative mode for some time.

This is because Mr. Davis sees Chief Justice Rehnquist’s successor, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. to continue to follow in his footsteps with respect to cases affecting religious groups.

The issue here, for people like the Supreme Court is to protect the free exercise of religion but also assure that religion is not being favoured by the government. Yet all too often the two efforts collide and become messy court cases.

In the next post we look into more about exemptions including how religious organizations are now eligible for things like federal grants and continue this exploration.

Yet There is Hope

I am going to follow-up the last three posts with something I read recently in the New York Times. The title of the piece was:

Disowning Conservative Politics, Evangelical Pastor Rattles Flock

In Maplewood, Minnesota, there is megaplex church called Woodland Hills in suburban St. Paul. The pastor, Gregory A. Boyd is leading this thriving evangelical megaplex. And he is frequently asked to give his and the church’s blessing to conservative political candidates and causes like many other pastors of the megaplex churches.

These requests came from church members and visitors alike. Some of them mentioned in the article were:

• Would he please announce a rally against gay marriage during services?
• Would he introduce a politician from the pulpit?
• Could members set up a table in the lobby promoting their anti-abortion work?
• Would the church distribute “voters’ guides” that all but endorsed Republican candidates?
• And with the country at war, please couldn’t the church hang an American flag in the sanctuary?

To my surprise, Pastor Boyd refused each time. And he finally became fed up. Even more surprising, Pastor Boyd, before the last presidential election preached six sermons called The Cross and the Sword in which he said that the church should steer clear of politics, give up moralizing on sexual issues, stop claiming that the United States was a “Christian nation” and stop glorifying American military campaigns.

I read this and went whoa! And even better was a quote from him:

When the church wins the culture wars, it inevitably loses. When it conquers the world, it becomes the world. When you put your trust in the sword, you lose the cross.

It is important to point out that Pastor Boyd is not a liberal. He opposes abortion and believes that homosexuality is not God’s ideal. So we are not dealing with a liberal megaplex church that is conducting gay marriages and gives abortion as an option during counselling for someone who has an unwanted pregnancy.

Yet it is the response from his congregation that is telling and ties in with the previous posts I have put together. Keep in mind that Pastor Boyd’s congregation is packed mostly with politically and theologically conservative, middle-class “Christians”.

The response from his sermons was passionate. Some members walked out and never returned. By the time the dust settled, Woodland Hills, which Pastor Boyd founded in 1992 had lost about 1,000 of its 5,000 members.

Yet there were congregants who thanked him, telling Boyd that they were moved to tears to hear him voice concerns that they had but were too afraid to share. Sharon Staiger, a church member and psychotherapist is quoted as saying:

Most of my friends are believers and they think if you’re a believer, you’ll vote for Bush. And it’s scary to go against that.

What is interesting is that Pastor Boyd’s sermons is starting to reflect a common concern that the Christian message is being compromised by the tendency to tie evangelical Christianity to the Republican Part and American nationalism, especially through the war in Iraq.

And grass-roots churches, even the megaplex ones are starting to question this. And it isn’t easy when you have the airwaves filled with people like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson whose words are dire and threatening. Or the feel good theology of people like Joyce Meyers. And it doesn’t help when you have moronic pitbulls like Ann Coulter who spew invectives laced with religious wordings. Just look at the title of her last book: Godless: The Church of Liberalism.

Yet amongst these strident voices, some others are trying to counter the movement. As the Times points out, at the time of the article, at least six books had been published on the Christian message being compromised. Pastor Boyd published The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power is Destroying the Church, based on his sermons.

Randall Balmer, a religion professor at Barnard College and an evangelical, has written Thy Kingdom Come: How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America — an Evangelical’s Lament.

The article turned to Brian D. McLaren, the founding pastor at Cedar Community Church in Gaithersburg, Md and a leader in the evangelical movement known as the “emerging church”. This movement is at the forefront of challenging the more politicized evangelical establishment. He is quoted as saying:

There is a lot of discontent brewing. More and more people are saying this has gone too far — the dominance of the evangelical identity by the religious right. You cannot say the word ‘Jesus’ in 2006 without having an awful lot of baggage going along with it. You can’t say the word ‘Christian,’ and you certainly can’t say the word ‘evangelical’ without it now raising connotations and a certain cringe factor in people.
Because people think, ‘Oh no, what is going to come next is homosexual bashing, or pro-war rhetoric, or complaining about ‘activist judges.’

But let us go back to Pastor Boyd because the more I read the more his church is an interesting case study which reflects on my previous posts.

Pastor Boyd said he had cleared his sermons with the church’s board. Yet his words left some in his congregation completely stunned. Some felt he was disrespectful of the President and the military. Some felt he was soft on abortion. Some felt he was telling them not to voice. A telling quote comes from William Berggren, a lawyer who had joined the church with his wife six years ago. He is quoted as saying:

When we joined years ago, Greg was a conservative speaker. But we totally disagreed with him on this. You can’t be a Christian and ignore actions that you feel are wrong. A case in point is the abortion issue. If the church were awake when abortion was passed in the 70’s, it wouldn’t have happened. But the church was asleep.

The article continues to give a little history and detail about the church. It seems that Pastor Boyd, who is 49, preaches in blue jeans and rumpled plaid shirts. The church is in a squat block-long building that was once a home improvement chain store.

The church started with 40 members about 12 years ago. The article says that the church’s growth was because Boyd is not just because he is an electrifying preacher. He has degrees from Yale Divinity School and Princeton Theological Seminary. And taught theology at Bethel College in St. Paul.

It was at Bethel that Boyd created some controversy a few years ago by questioning whether God fully knew the future. Some pastors in his own denomination, the Bapist General Conference, mounted an effort to evict Pastor Boyd from the denomination and his teaching post but in the end, he won.

Thing is, Pastor Boyd said that he never intended his sermons to be taken as merely a critique of the Republican Party to the religious right. He will not share his party affiliation, if he has one. He believes there are Christians on both the left and the right. And both have turned politics and patriotism into “idolatry”.

In an interview, Pastor Boyd explains where this is all coming from. It seems that he first became alarmed years ago visiting another megaplex church during a worship services on July 4th. The service ended with the choir singing “God Bless America” and a video of fighter jets flying over a hill silhouetted with crosses. He says in the interview:

I thought to myself, ‘What just happened? Fighter jets mixed up with the cross?’

As was pointed out in the previous posts, politics and evangelical Christianity have become fused. Patriotic displays are mainstays in some churches. Across town from Pastor Boyd’s church, the sanctuary of North Heights Lutheran Church was draped in bunting on the Sunday before the Fourth of July for a “freedom celebration”. Military veterans and flag twirlers paraded into the sanctuary. An enormous American flag slowly rose behind the stage. And a Marine major, who had served in Afghanistan preached that the military was spending the parishioners hard-earned money on good causes.

What impresses me about Pastor Boyd is that in his six sermons he lays out a broad argument that the role of Christians is not to seek “power over” others. That is by controlling governments, passing legislation or fighting wars. He feels that Christians should, instead, seek to have “power under” others. That is “winning people’s hearts” by sacrificing for those in need, as Jesus did. He says:

“America wasn’t founded as a theocracy. America was founded by people trying to escape theocracies. Never in history have we had a Christian theocracy where it wasn’t bloody and barbaric. That’s why our Constitution wisely put in a separation of church and state.
“I am sorry to tell you that America is not the light of the world and the hope of the world. The light of the world and the hope of the world is Jesus Christ.

As if this wasn’t enough for me, Pastor Boyd lambasts the sheer hypocrisy and pettiness of Christians who focus on sexual issues such as homosexuality and abortion. And lest we forget Janet Jackson’s little breast-revealing performance. He points out that Christians these days are constantly outraged about sex and perceived violations of their rights to display their faith in public. He says:

Those are the two buttons to push if you want to get Christians to act. And those are the two buttons Jesus never pushed.

What is interesting, as the article continues, is that some of his parishioners applauded the sermons because they had resolved their conflicted feelings. The article focuses on one person, David Churchill who is a truck driver for UPS and has been a Teamster for 26 years. He said he was raised in a religious-right home but was torn between the Republican expectations of faith and family and the Democratic expectations of his union. Yet when Pastor Boyd preached his sermons, Churchill said:

it was liberating to me

What is fascinating and a telling aspect of the “Christian” nation of America is that Pastor Boyd gave his six sermons while his church was in the midst of a $7 million fund-raising campaign. In the end, only $4 million came in. Which meant some staff members had be to laid off. But it doesn’t stop there.

The family pastor, Mary Van Sickle said she lost 20 volunteers who had been the backbone of the church’s Sunday school. She says, of the volunteers who quit:

“They said, ‘You’re not doing what the church is supposed to be doing, which is supporting the Republican way.’

It is too bad that the article never interviewed some of the 20 odd twits that quit. I would love to see them justify Biblical how it is the church’s job to support a political idealogy, let alone one that embraces bring violence and chaos to other countries.

I thoroughly adored a quote the article brings up from Reverend Paul Eddy, a theology professor at Bethel College and teaching pastor at Woodland Hills:

Greg is an anomaly in the megachurch world. He didn’t give a whit about church leadership, never read a book about church growth. His biggest fear is that people will think that all church is is a weekend carnival, with people liking the worship, the music, his speaking, and that’s it.

The sad fact, the article continues, is that those who left tended to be white, middle-class suburbanites. Yet in their place, the church added more members who live in the surrounding communities which include African-Americans, Hispanics and Hmong immigrants from Laos.

What I applaud is that this suits Pastor Boyd. His vision for his church is an ethnically and economically diverse congregation. A congregation that exemplifies Jesus’ teachings by its members’ actions. And he now, about the upheaval his church had, he says:

I don’t regret any aspect of it at all. It was a defining moment for us. We let go of something we were never called to be. We just didn’t know the price we were going to pay for doing it.

Obviously the older members of his congregation needed time to digest his message. When Pastor Boyd organized his book, based on his sermons, he arranged a forum to allow members to sound off. The reception was warm but many of the 56 questions submitted in writing were pointed. They included.

• Isn’t abortion an evil that Christians should prevent?
• Are you saying Christians should not join the military?
• How can Christians possibly have “power under” Osama bin Laden?
• Didn’t the church play an enormously positive role in the civil rights movement?

During that forum, one woman asked:

So why NOT us? If we contain the wisdom and grace and love and creativity of Jesus, why shouldn’t we be the ones involved in politics and setting laws?

Pastor Boyd responded:

I don’t think there’s a particular angle we have on society that others lack. All good, decent people want good and order and justice. Just don’t slap the label ‘Christian’ on it.

For me, all of this is refreshing, yet not new. The church I occasion, VCC, I’ve seen Pastor Billy stand up and say things that makes the congregation uncomfortable. He tries to remind people what the Bible really says, not what people want to hear.

And after spending some time with the previous posts, I am glad I can present an exception to the rule. Yet the problem is that for one or two of Pastor Boyd, we have ten like Joel Osteen.

And someone like Boyd has the power to change things locally. The problem with the feel-good theologians is that be in their megaplex churches or massive services, they focus on the self not God.

The shows these pastors have are really just infomercials. They interview an author about his/her brilliant book about how God has a miracle for you today and then at the end of the show, offer it free for a one-time gift of $24.95. If you go, for example, Joyce Meyer’s website, with the blah-blah about her sermons and missions, there are ads for books like The Confident Woman and Look Great, Feel Great.

So people like Boyd have a long way to go if they are to impinging on the end time or self-obsessed creed of Americas. Yet at least there are some out there that are trying and not just small pastors for a congregation of 200. There is hope, albeit a small one.

With all of this said and done, I would like Pastor Boyd to have the last word. On his church’s website, speaking about the books that came from his sermons, it comes down to the following:

Sadly, many people today claim that if you’re really a Christian, you’ll vote a certain way, support a certain candidate or take a particular stand on a particular issue. But most political issues are ambiguous enough that sincere, intelligent and Bible-believing people can and do strongly disagree about them!
However, nowhere in the New Testament do Jesus or any of his followers weigh in on any of the many divisive political issues of their day. This doesn’t mean that they didn’t have political opinions. They did – and they were very different from each other! Matthew (a tax collector) and Simon (a Zealot) were much farther apart in their views about political issues than (say) a Liberal Democrat and a Conservative Republican would be today. Yet, we never read a word about which view was “better” in the Gospels. And the reason is that our widely different political views are insignificant next to the one thing we are called to do as followers of Jesus: express God’s love for others the sacrificial way God expressed his love for all of us!