Genesis as Myth Lawsuit in Iowa

I found the following in the Chronicle for Higher Education News Blogs--something I found scary. An intro to Western Civ instructor from an Iowa community college was fired for teaching that the story of Adam and Eve was a myth rather than something that was literally true. It seems this has been something followed for a while now, but this is the first I have heard about this incident.

When you get down to it, how else can you really teach many of the predeluvian stories in Genesis? This is something we run up against all the time in religious studies and biblical studies. At my orientation meeting for Literature of the Humanities, in which we will be reading Genesis, some preceptors from other departments were a bit worried about how to approach biblical materials. It is always important to define your terms: myth, from the Greek, Mythos, means "story." In terms of religious studies, it does not mean what it has come to mean in modern society--something that is false. So, with Genesis, we are going to tell a story that has some "truth" to some people, but may not actually be "factual." In a sense, all "myths" try to articulate some sort of "truth" (something highly ironic in the modern sense of "myth"). We have this strange tendency in modern times, or at least since the 19th century, to equate truth with facts, when factual truth is one of many types of truth. This is a mistake made by people who seek the literal truth of the Bible and the people who reject the Bible for the same reason--both are reading things too literally, in ways that probably would not make sense in antiquity. As such, when teaching texts like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, one should be careful to define one's terms. Moreover, in a class like mine or perhaps an intro to Western Civ, one should emphasize that the text is a piece of great literature that can be appreciated as such by people who are believers and by people who are not. Draw out its literary qualities, compare and contrast it with Genesis 1:1-2:3 (which, interestingly enough, is a later composition), and compare and contrast it with other related texts in antiquity (Enuma Elish, Gilgamesh, and Atrahasis). Appreciation of the Bible need not stand upon literal truth, but upon literary truth.

July 14, 2008

College Settles With Instructor Fired for Teaching Adam and Eve as Myth

Southwestern Community College in Iowa has agreed to pay an undisclosed amount of money to settle a wrongful-termination lawsuit filed by an instructor who said he was fired last fall for teaching the biblical story of Adam and Eve as a myth, rather than as a story to be taken literally.

The instructor, Steve Bitterman, taught Western civilization but said the college had sided with students who complained about the content of his course.

A lawyer for the college, in Creston, Iowa, told The Des Moines Register that Mr. Bitterman was no longer on the college’s faculty and that the settlement would be made final this week.

Mr. Bitterman has taught this summer aboard the U.S.S. Dwight D. Eisenhower, an aircraft carrier berthed in Norfolk, Va., through a program for sailors run by Central Texas College, the Register reported. He said he had used the same textbook from his Iowa class. —Andrew Mytelka

Quote of the Day: Epic of Gilgamesh

While I am reading on some Ancient Near Eastern relationships with some of the texts for my dissertation, I have reread the Epic of Gilgamesh, which, as it turns out, I will probably be teaching this fall as well--it is nice when teaching and research can overlap! Anyway, here is the quote of the day:

"How, O how could I stay silent, how, O how could I keep quiet?
My friend whom I love has turned to clay:
Enkidu my friend whom I love has turned to clay.
Am I not like him? Must I lie down too, never to rise again?"

Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet X, column V.

This passage indicates the intense friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu. Enkidu has now died, gone down to the underworld ruled by goddess Ereshkigal. The souls, shades, or whatever, of the deceased are usually depicted as birds in Mesopotamian literature, so, Enkidu's shade has flown below, and his body has returned to clay (much like the biblical phrasing of "dust to dust"). It is a place from where no one could return--there is no resurrection here as indicated by the last line. In a way, one could see the whole story of Gilgamesh as a failed search for immortality. Only one human ever achieved it--Utnapishtim, the Babylonian counterpart to Noah--who was granted immortality after surviving the Flood, and even he seems to be the exception that proves the rule. After Enkidu's death, Gilgamesh laments greatly, forcing his city (Uruk) to mourn Enkidu's death with him for six days and seven nights. Gilgamesh also erects a statue in honor of his friend.

This is a famous example of intensive friendship in the ancient world. In fact, the story says that Gilgamesh loved Enkidu as he would his wife, that he would dote on him as he would a wife! Hint of homoeroticism? Similar legendary friendships include Achilles and Patroclus from the Iliad, and David and Jonathan from Kings in the Bible. Each of these stories have had speculation of homoerotic possibilities, but speculation it must remain.

Obama, Islam, the New Yorker, and the Politics of Fear

On the cover of the latest New Yorker magazine, there is a sketch of Barack Obama dressed in a turban and Muslim garb, giving a fist pump to his wife, who is holding an AK-47. They are in the Oval Office, with an American Flag burning in the fireplace, and a portrait of Osama bin Laden on the wall.

The New Yorker claims that this is just satire, and it is part of its article on the politics of fear, meant to mock the portrait that Obama's right-wing critics have painted of him. But Obama isn't laughing. For others, it seems, the satire just falls into the right-wing critics hands, playing into their imagery (or the New Yorker is not implicated in what they critique).

The problem is a matter of consistency. If one wants to do this type of satire, one should consistently do it; otherwise, it can be misinterpreted, as this particular cover was. For example, I think that Stephen Colbert, who engages in this type of satire very consistently, could more easily get away with it. Not that the New Yorker is not satirical, but it is usually satirical in small bits, with small cartoons inside that mock a point of view to a more limited degree. The fact that the satire here had to be explained by the New Yorker shows that it was not done well or that it was done to a further degree than usual.

The following is from the New York Times and includes the cover itself:

Political Satire, but Obama Isn’t Laughing

By Jeff Zeleny

Updated SAN DIEGO –- As he flies around the country, Senator Barack Obama has a fondness for magazines. The New Yorker is often among the titles at the front of his campaign plane.

The July 21 cover of The New Yorker.

The issue this week, though, is not likely to make its way on board.

The cover of the magazine depicts Mr. Obama wearing a turban, while he offers a fist bump to his gun-toting wife. An American flag singes behind them in the fireplace.

Asked about the drawing at a news conference here Sunday, Mr. Obama held his tongue, saying: “I have no response to that.” A campaign spokesman, though, was not so measured at a sketch that the magazine calls satirical.

“The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Senator Obama’s right-wing critics have tried to create,” the spokesman, Bill Burton, said in a statement. “But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive –- and we agree.”

The cover of the July 21 issue is entitled, “The Politics of Fear.” A news release to promote the magazine said artist Barry Blitt “satirizes the use of scare tactics and misinformation in the presidential election to derail Barack Obama’s campaign.”

Asked about the cover, Tucker Bounds, spokesman for Senator John McCain’s campaign, said: “We completely agree with the Obama campaign.”

David Remnick, the editor of the magazine, defended his choice of covers in an interview with the Huffington Post. He said, “Obviously I wouldn’t have run a cover just to get attention — I ran the cover because I thought it had something to say. What I think it does is hold up a mirror to the prejudice and dark imaginings about Barack Obama’s — both Obamas’ — past, and their politics.

“I can’t speak for anyone else’s interpretations, all I can say is that it combines a number of images that have been propagated, not by everyone on the right but by some, about Obama’s supposed “lack of patriotism” or his being “soft on terrorism” or the idiotic notion that somehow Michelle Obama is the second coming of the Weathermen or most violent Black Panthers. That somehow all this is going to come to the Oval Office.”

Happy Bastille Day!

Today is July 14th, and, for those who are French, happy Bastille Day! See some celebratory pictures of the Champs-Elysees here.

Many Concerts: Melissa Etheridge and Bon Jovi

Having not been to a concert for a long time (I actually just don't remember the last time I had been to a concert), I went to no less than TWO in just a few days time.

On Wednesday night, I went to see Melissa Etheridge in concert at the WaMu theater at Madison Square Garden. It was a blast. She has a lot of bluesy elements in her music, a dash of folksy, in an overarching framework of rock 'n roll. In the end, she puts on a really good show, and seems to connect well with her audience. One of the fringe benefits of being a male at her concert is that the line for the men's bathroom was nonexistent. Tons of middle-aged women there... And I had never been to the Garden before, so it was a new experience.

Then last night we happened into some tickets for the free Bon Jovi concert on the Great Lawn of Central Park--this concert was in conjunction with All Star week, since the All Star game is going to be played in Yankee Stadium this year. There were something like 50,000 people there! It was packed, but not really crazy. I knew more of his songs than at the other concert. And it was a perfect night for a concert. It wasn't too hot, low humidity, and a nice breeze. We got a good spot on the lawn (on the grass rather than the dirt, which was nice). Bon Jovi was just a little dot in our line of vision, but the multiple megatrons around the stage made this less of an issue.

It is weird to be a person who rarely ever goes to concerts and just happen to get tickets twice in the same week, but I'm not complaining! I had a good time at both! And I'm looking forward to the other opportunities that NYC offers in the summertime.

Mourning the Loss of Catherine Bell

I just learned from Jim Davila at Paleojudaica that Catherine Bell, one of the world's leading scholars in ritual studies and Chinese religions, died at the young age of 55 on May 23, 2008 after a long illness. I remember bumping into her at a party at the annual meeting of AAR/SBL in San Antonio a few years ago. She taught at Santa Clara and retired last year due to her illness. She is best known in religious studies for her 1992 book, "Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice," which in 1994 won the American Academy of Religion book award in History of Religions.

See a full obituary on the Santa Clara Religious Studies website here.

Quotes of the Day: Italo Calvino's "Why Read the Classics?"

I have been reading through more literary criticism as of late for teaching my class next year, Literature of the Humanities, and, while in an independent bookstore in St. Louis, I found a book of posthumously published essays by Italo Calvino, who wrote one of my favorite books, Invisible Cities. This book of essays is called, Why Read the Classics?, after its opening essay. I thought such a book would be very relevant for a class that is loaded with classic authors from Homer to Virginia Woolf. In this opening essay, he speaks of both "classics" and "your own classics," noting that classics are works that will shift over time, both in which works will be included as classics and in terms that our understanding of them will shift, not just as centuries pass, but even from our youth to our old-age. Classics are those works that we may read when young, forming us in some ways, and then revisit when older, never exhausting what it has to say to us. Each rereading renews the work as a classic and transforms to work in our own eyes--each rereading is a new, perhaps startling, discovery.

I liked the following statement:

"Reading a classic must also surprise us, when we compare it to the image we previously had of it. That is why we can never recommend enough a first-hand reading of the text itself, avoiding as far as possible secondary bibliography, commentaries, and other interpretations. Schools and universities should hammer home the idea that no book which discusses another book can ever say more than the original book under discussion; yet they actually do everything to make students believe the opposite. there is a reversal of values here which is very widespread, which means that the introduction, critical apparatus, and bibliography are used like a smokescreen to conceal what the text has tot say and what it can only say if it is left to speak without intermediaries who claim to know more than the text itself."

I think in light of the content of this particular quotation, I should refrain from commentary! Nonetheless, as a startling, surprising work that will never exhaust its meaning with each rereading, we must contextualize ourselves. It is because we are in an ever-new situation in our lives and in our contemporary reading tastes and habits, that the classics can maintain their freshness, as we will continually see them differently:

"In order to read the classics, you have to establish where exactly you are reading them 'from', otherwise both the reader and the text tend to drift in a timeless haze. So what we can say is that the person who derives maximum benefit from a reading of the classics is the one who skilfully alternates classic readings with calibrated doses of contemporary material."

Italo Calvino, "Why Read the Classics," 1981.

Quotes of the Day: Chuck Palahniuk's "Rant"

I have been reading Chuck Palahniuk's Rant lately. And it is a wild ride of a read, playing with and twisting concepts of genetics, pathogens, societal constructs (from the Easter Bunny to traffic rules to religion), and time--pushing everything to the edge through creative interrelationships between them. In the middle of it, he employs Victor Turner's concept of Liminality, even folding Turner into the prose in a way few others than Palahniuk could. So, here are a few morsels that might be of interest to a religionist:

On Liminality: "Common to almost all spiritual beliefs is the idea of Lim[i]nal Time. To ascetics, it can be the moment of greatest suffering. To ascetics, it can be the moment of greatest suffering. To Catholics, it's the moment the Communion wafer is presented to the congregation. The moment is different for each religion or spiritual practice, but Liminal Time itself represents a moment in which time stops passing. The actual definition is a moment 'outside of time.'

"That moment becomes the eternity of Heaven or Hell, and achieving even an instant of Liminal Time is the goal of most religious rituals. In that moment, one is completely present and awake and aware--of all creation. In Liminal Time, time stops. A person is beyond time.

"Being involved in an automobile accident has brought me closer to that enlightenment than any religious ritual or ceremony in which I've ever participated." (pp. 213-4)

And a bit later: "...What if reality is nothing but some disease?" (p. 215)

On God as pedophile: "Nobody wants to go there, but...wasn't the Virgin Mary, wasn't she God's child? And back in biblical times, wasn't she, like, thirteen years old?" (p. 260)

On Time Travel and Imagination: "The chief argument against the possibility of time travel is what theorists refer to as the 'Grandfather Paradox'; this is the idea that if one could travel backward in time one could kill one's ancestor, eliminating the possibility said time traveler would ever be born--and thus could never have lived to travel back and commit the murder.

"In a world where billions believe their deity conceived a mortal child with a virgin human, it's stunning how little imagination most people display."

"One theory of time travel resolves the Grandfather Paradox by speculating that, at the moment one changes history, that change splinters the single flow of reality into parallel branches. For example, after you've killed your ancestor, reality would fork into two parallel paths: one reality in which you continued to be born and your ancestor did not die, and one branch in which your ancestor died and you would never be conceived. Each revision one made in the past, the subsequent new reality it created, theorists refer to as a 'bifurcation.'"

"Within Eastern or Asian spirituality exists the concept that only an individual's ego ties him tot he temporal world, wherein we experience physical reality and time. Within this concept, enlightened beings recognize this self-imposed limitation and attachment to the immediate world, and can choose to free their consciousness and travel to any place or period of history. With apologies to Mr. H. G. Wells, one requires no time machine. Anyone can relocate throughout history or space simply by relaxing his grip on his current reality through meditation and spiritual growth."

"A third possibility does exist, although it's never been widely discussed. Aside from bifurcation and time travel via a freed consciousness, this third option also resolves the Grandfather Paradox and places the traveler in Liminal Time, suspended outside of the linear movement of time which human beings experience. Simply stated, Liminal Time has no beginning and no end. Nothing is subject to the natural processes of decay and replacement. In Liminal Time, nothing is born and nothing dies.

"Quite understandably, only deities have ever existed in this immortality.

"Until now." (pp. 263, 264, 265)

The Revelation of Gabriel in the Times

The New York Times is running an article on the "Revelation of Gabriel," a Dead Sea find that is a rare example of ink on stone. The controversy is that it supposedly speaks of a Messiah who will die and rise after three days (and not Jesus). Jim Davila at Paleojudaica also has a series of posts on this document--see here.

By ETHAN BRONNER

Published: July 6, 2008

JERUSALEM — A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.

If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.

The tablet, probably found near the Dead Sea in Jordan according to some scholars who have studied it, is a rare example of a stone with ink writings from that era — in essence, a Dead Sea Scroll on stone.

It is written, not engraved, across two neat columns, similar to columns in a Torah. But the stone is broken, and some of the text is faded, meaning that much of what it says is open to debate.

Still, its authenticity has so far faced no challenge, so its role in helping to understand the roots of Christianity in the devastating political crisis faced by the Jews of the time seems likely to increase.

The stone itself predates Jesus by about a century, but, as is often the case, the all important lines are reconstructions; thus, it needs more scholarly attention to determine whether or not it says what people have reconstructed it as saying. Famous Hebrew University scholar, Israel Knohl has a Journal of Religion article on it:

In Mr. Knohl’s interpretation, the specific messianic figure embodied on the stone could be a man named Simon who was slain by a commander in the Herodian army, according to the first-century historian Josephus. The writers of the stone’s passages were probably Simon’s followers, Mr. Knohl contends.

The slaying of Simon, or any case of the suffering messiah, is seen as a necessary step toward national salvation, he says, pointing to lines 19 through 21 of the tablet — “In three days you will know that evil will be defeated by justice” — and other lines that speak of blood and slaughter as pathways to justice.

To make his case about the importance of the stone, Mr. Knohl focuses especially on line 80, which begins clearly with the words “L’shloshet yamin,” meaning “in three days.” The next word of the line was deemed partially illegible by Ms. Yardeni and Mr. Elitzur, but Mr. Knohl, who is an expert on the language of the Bible and Talmud, says the word is “hayeh,” or “live” in the imperative. It has an unusual spelling, but it is one in keeping with the era.

Two more hard-to-read words come later, and Mr. Knohl said he believed that he had deciphered them as well, so that the line reads, “In three days you shall live, I, Gabriel, command you.”

To whom is the archangel speaking? The next line says “Sar hasarin,” or prince of princes. Since the Book of Daniel, one of the primary sources for the Gabriel text, speaks of Gabriel and of “a prince of princes,” Mr. Knohl contends that the stone’s writings are about the death of a leader of the Jews who will be resurrected in three days.

He says further that such a suffering messiah is very different from the traditional Jewish image of the messiah as a triumphal, powerful descendant of King David.

“This should shake our basic view of Christianity,” he said as he sat in his office of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem where he is a senior fellow in addition to being the Yehezkel Kaufman Professor of Biblical Studies at Hebrew University. “Resurrection after three days becomes a motif developed before Jesus, which runs contrary to nearly all scholarship. What happens in the New Testament was adopted by Jesus and his followers based on an earlier messiah story.”

Ms. Yardeni said she was impressed with the reading and considered it indeed likely that the key illegible word was “hayeh,” or “live.” Whether that means Simon is the messiah under discussion, she is less sure.

Moshe Bar-Asher, president of the Israeli Academy of Hebrew Language and emeritus professor of Hebrew and Aramaic at the Hebrew University, said he spent a long time studying the text and considered it authentic, dating from no later than the first century B.C. His 25-page paper on the stone will be published in the coming months.

Regarding Mr. Knohl’s thesis, Mr. Bar-Asher is also respectful but cautious. “There is one problem,” he said. “In crucial places of the text there is lack of text. I understand Knohl’s tendency to find there keys to the pre-Christian period, but in two to three crucial lines of text there are a lot of missing words.”

Moshe Idel, a professor of Jewish thought at Hebrew University, said that given the way every tiny fragment from that era yielded scores of articles and books, “Gabriel’s Revelation” and Mr. Knohl’s analysis deserved serious attention. “Here we have a real stone with a real text,” he said. “This is truly significant.”

Mr. Knohl said that it was less important whether Simon was the messiah of the stone than the fact that it strongly suggested that a savior who died and rose after three days was an established concept at the time of Jesus. He notes that in the Gospels, Jesus makes numerous predictions of his suffering and New Testament scholars say such predictions must have been written in by later followers because there was no such idea present in his day.

But there was, he said, and “Gabriel’s Revelation” shows it.

“His mission is that he has to be put to death by the Romans to suffer so his blood will be the sign for redemption to come,” Mr. Knohl said. “This is the sign of the son of Joseph. This is the conscious view of Jesus himself. This gives the Last Supper an absolutely different meaning. To shed blood is not for the sins of people but to bring redemption to Israel.”

So, the actual reading is contested or contestable, and in the most interesting spot--as is oddly so typical (although, I have a feeling that our imaginations fill in the spaces with more interesting things than were originally there). Knohl's early work primarily is about the Pentateuch. I just finished his book, The Sanctuary of Silence, in which he argued against scholarly consensus that "H" or the Holiness School (HS) was lated than "P" or the Priestly Source of the Pentateuch and actually is P's editor. He managed to convince the giant on Leviticus studies, Jacob Milgrom. His second book is also about the Pentateuch. This earlier work is definitely creative and original (although he has not convinced everyone), but I cannot comment on his later work. And I have yet to read the article in Journal of Religion--Knohl has posted it for free here. But, others will have to confirm if this stone says what he says it says. Or, at least, if this is the most plausible reading.

Freudian Slippers

So, one of my new favorite websites is the Unemployed Philosopher's Guild, newly added to my "oft-visited" sites, where you can buy, among many other fascinating items, these "Freudian Slippers." If you go to the cups and mug section, I have the "Jesus Saves" / "Jesus Shaves" mug. It is a great mug. Firstly, it says "Jesus saves," while Jesus holds a pair of scissors and coupons. But when you pour hot liquid into the mug, the scissors and coupons disappear along with Jesus' beard! Where the coupons previously were, you see a razor. And the "Jesus Saves" turns into "Jesus Shaves." For a demonstration, see here.

I think I could go broke by buying the mugs on this site. I like the Descartes one as well. Descartes is sitting at his desk, and says his famous line, "I think therefore I am" (cogito ergo sum). You pour in hot liquid, and the saying switched to "I think not," and Descartes disappears! The Shakespearean insults mug looks tempting as well. And, well, I usually do not wear slippers, but for the Freudian Slip/pers, I would make an exception!

A Special July 4th Quote of the Day: Voltaire

My quote of the day for July 4th will come from Francois-Marie Arouet, known to most of us by his most popular pseudonym, Voltaire. By the way, he had 174 pseudonyms. Why would an 18th-century Frenchman be an appropriate quote of the day for the Fourth, you may ask?

July 4th in the U.S. is a day of extraordinary expressions of patriotism mixed with a lot of explosives (fireworks--invented by the Chinese). This, moreover, is often mixed with religious sentiments. "God bless America" is only the most quotidian of these. Often these are mixed with hyper-religiosity, and, at times, religion and patriotism mix so inextricably that in some quarters showing lagging patriotism apparently indicates religious doubt or backsliding. How dare one say that the "founding fathers" were not dedicated Christians of the same ilk of evangelical Christianity today? So, the mixture of patriotism and religion follows a wide range of sentiment from almost innocuous to ridiculous. Yes, many of the founders were Christians, but sometimes in almost the widest usage of the term. Many of the "big names" were Deists--those who believed that God, as the great "watchmaker," basically created the world (the intricate watch), whose ticking followed the rules laid down by God--the laws of Nature (yes, with a capital "N"). Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin--Deists. George Washington, too, never really spoke of a personal God either, but preferred to speak of "Providence."

These people, and subsequent generations of U.S. citizens, have fought, some living and others dying, for "liberty." "Give me liberty or give me death," right? They fought against "tyranny." But who gives "liberty" and who is the "tyrant" is a matter of point of view. Ironically, many of the things we associate with "freedom," such as eradication of the tyranny of slavery, occurred in England before the U.S. after the U.S. broke away from England. Today, who is the tyrant and who is free? Who has freedom? When the Patriot Act chips away at the Bill of Rights, it appears to mock so much of what we are celebrating. In 1776, we declared Independence from a Christian Empire (the British Empire) only to create one ourselves--the "wall of separation" between Church and State that Jefferson wrote about has been difficult to maintain--it crumbles sometimes, and sometimes is patched back up. It was in part the mixture of religion and politics, the state-sponsored religiosity that many tried to escape in the New World.

It was against such things, the tyranny of the inextricable links between government and the church, laws in the church's interest or more in accordance with church doctrine than legal principles derived from a conception of a just society as imagined by the philosophes of the 18th century (those such as Rousseau, Locke, Jefferson, and their most famous exemplar, Voltaire) that Voltaire, with whom Ben Franklin shared a mutual admiration, proclaimed a clarion call:

"Ecrasez l'infame"

"Ecrasez l'infame" resounded throughout the 18th century and perhaps inspired the "founding fathers." But when spoken today, who represents "l'infame"? It is no longer George III... At least those who a couple centuries ago attempted "to erase infamy" gave us the tools, the checks and balances, to work through our own "l'infame," but we must choose to use them and in our erasing not end up erasing those tools instead of the infamy.

Catholic Aid for an Abortion?

From the New York Times:

By IAN URBINA
Published: July 3, 2008

The Roman Catholic bishop of Richmond, Va., apologized this week after workers from a Catholic organization helped a teenager in its care have an abortion.

“I join my sadness to yours at the loss of the life of an unborn child whose teenage mother was in the foster care of Commonwealth Catholic Charities,” said Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo in a letter published on Monday in The Catholic Virginian. “Obviously, respect for the life of the unborn is a basic tenet of our Catholic faith and morality.”

“I express my profound apology for the loss of the life of one of the most vulnerable among us,” the bishop added.

The situation involved a 16-year-old Guatemalan, who church officials said already had one child and wanted to end her pregnancy, said Stephen S. Neill, a spokesman for the bishop.
The girl was being cared for by a program that helps illegal immigrant children in the country without guardians obtain foster care, Mr. Neill said. She received the abortion in January after a staff member of Commonwealth Catholic Charities signed a consent form and after a volunteer drove her to the facility, he said.

Four staff members were fired in March in connection with the case, Mr. Neill said.
Joanne D. Nattrass, executive director of Commonwealth Catholic Charities, said in a statement on Tuesday that she had been told on the afternoon of Jan. 17 that the girl was scheduled to have an abortion the next morning. Ms. Nattrass said that she had notified Bishop DiLorenzo that day and that he had said, “I forbid this to happen.” Based on incorrect information provided to Ms. Nattrass, the bishop was told that the abortion could not be stopped, the statement said.

“That information included that there was nothing Catholic Charities and the Catholic Diocese of Richmond could do to affect the outcome,” Paula Ritter, a spokeswoman for Ms. Nattrass, said in an e-mail message.

Neither agency nor diocesan money was used to pay for the abortion, Mr. Neill said.
A spokesman for the United States Department of Health and Human Services said that in April the department asked its inspector general to investigate whether the charity or the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops had violated state and federal laws. The conference receives $7.6 million a year in federal money, and Commonwealth Catholic Charities is a subcontractor of the bishops’ conference, the spokesman said.

Federal law forbids the use of federal money to pay for abortions, with exceptions for rape, incest or threats to the life of the pregnant woman. Virginia law requires parental consent for an abortion for a girl under 18.

Mr. Neill said neither the bishop nor Ms. Nattrass had been contacted directly by federal officials.



This is a difficult case. It seems odd that a Bishop would "forbid" something to happen, as if it were any of his business? I would grate if an institution, like a church, forbade me to do something rather than just offering advice for something in which the ultimate decision is mine. But this is more complicated. Firstly, the church, in general, seems to be doing a beneficial thing by having this foster service to begin with, giving these minors a place to go. And if the "church" as an institution is technically the foster parent of this 16-year-old, and the law states that a parental guardian must give permission for an abortion for children under 18, then this creates an odd situation. The institution seems more worried about whether or not any federal laws were broken rather than the well-being of their ward. I do wonder if they could circumvent this by giving permission, but using private money from those who work for the foster service, to pay for the procedure. It that case, it is merely (yes, just "merely") the Catholic Church's general position on abortion that would stand in the way. Yet, in the end, was there in this case "Catholic Aid for an Abortion" as the NYTimes headline runs, or just a few people who belong to a Catholic organization individually (and not in their Catholicness, but in the interests of their ward) provide aid for this child? But, in keeping with my previous post, the real question is, WWFSMD?

WWFSMD?

How did I not know about this website for the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

http://www.venganza.org/

Have a look...their merchandise and their gospel can be bought on Amazon.

Another Quote from "The English Patient": On the Nation-State

"We were German, English, Hungarian, African--all of us insignificant to them. Gradually we became nationless. I came to hate nations. We are deformed by nation-states."

Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient, 138.

Speaking of which, has anyone read Spivak and Butler's co-written book, Who Sings the Nation-State? If so, how is it?

Quote of the Day: A Reading Lesson from "The English Patient"

The book, The English Patient, is interesting for someone in my position if, for nothing else, its emphatically explicit interrelationships Herodotus' Histories. While reading through it, in a section about Rudyard Kipling, one reads a lesson on reading, or the art of reading, a lesson I need to recall from time to time and hopefully will convey to my students next year:

"Read him slowly, dear girl, you must read Kipling slowly. Watch carefully where the commas fall so you can discover the natural pauses. He is a writer who used pen and ink. He looked up from the page a lot, I believe, stared through his window and listened to birds, as most writers who are alone do. Some do not know the names of birds, though he did. Your eye is too quick and North American. Think about the speed of his pen. What an appalling, barnacled old first paragraph it is otherwise."

Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient, 94.

May your own readings dwell on the pauses, fully inhabiting the text so you can hear the chirping birds the author listened to when applying ink to paper.

Obama Courting Evangelicals with "Faith-Based" Initiatives

As the general election begins in earnest, Obama appears to be moving to the center...or further... I am almost convinced that due to courting swing voters, the parties will eventually trade sides on a lot of issues...

So, in a recent AP article, Obama says that he had been "tagged" as being on the left, but these positions that he is now revealing to the public have been long-held. What are these positions? They have to do with guns (n.b. the recent Supreme Court decision on the 2nd Amendment), government surveillance, and capital punishment. If he was "tagged" as a liberal before and he is trying to move to the center, you can just guess what he is saying about these issues. Evidently, he's also taken to quoting Reagan. These are all "centrist" positions...or, perhaps, conservative, but what will help him with Evangelicals is that he is saying that he supports faith-based initiatives, taking a page out of G. W. Bush's playbook. Forgive me for quoting the article at length:

"On Tuesday, touring Presbyterian Church-based social services facility, the Democratic senator said he would get religious charities more involved in government anti-poverty efforts if elected.
"We need an all-hands-on-deck approach," he said at Eastside Community Ministry.

"The event was part of a series leading into Friday's Fourth of July holiday aimed at reassuring skeptical voters and shifting away from being stamped as part of the Democratic Party's most liberal wing.

"He said the connection of religion and public service was nothing new in his personal life.
Obama showed he was comfortable using the kind of language that is familiar in evangelical churches and Bible studies by calling his faith "a personal commitment to Christ." He said that his time as a community organizer in decimated Chicago neighborhoods, supported in part by a Catholic group, brought him to a deeper faith and also convinced him that faith is useless without works.

""While I could sit in church and pray all I want, I wouldn't be fulfilling God's will unless I went out and did the Lord's work," he declared.

"His talk on faith in the battleground state of Ohio came a day after a speech on patriotism in Missouri, another November election battleground. Wednesday, he travels to Colorado Springs, Colo., a hub of conservative Christian organizations, for a speech focused on service."

The rest of the article goes on to things I've already posted about: problems with his former pastor, his relationship to Islam, issues he supports that Evangelicals find hard to swallow (being pro-life and supporting gay marriage), but how environmental evangelicals may support him, etc. And then stating the obvious--by moving to center (on the aforementioned issues of gun control, capital punishment, government surveillance, and faith-based initiatives), he will upset much of his base. Nonetheless, I highly doubt they will abandon him for McCain--for Obama's sake, let's just hope a third-party candidate from the Green party doesn't move in. But, I think the U.S. electorate has learned its lesson on third-party spoilers.

Trivial Pursuit after Trivial Pursuit, part II

A while back, I posted on a fruitless journey throughout NYC, seeking a non-children's version of Trivial Pursuit.

Since then, after noting how much they are worth on eBay and Amazon (quite a bit), my mother has been searching for them at garage sales. Growing up, we've always had one (sometimes two) garage sales a year, and then we would go to a few occasionally, but lately it has become my mom's hobby. She gets the paper on Thursday when they are being advertised for the weekend, finds the ones she wants to go to, then goes online to find where they are all located, and maps the route. This may be more than a hobby, perhaps a passion, but not yet an addiction--she claims she can stop at any time! In any case, this almost addiction is working out for me. She found a 1981 Genus edition for $2. Playing it is an interesting exercise for a historian, since a lot of the answers are out of date. But trying to settle into a 1981 mentality, trying to think about what was only knowable at the time, and trying to answer accordingly, despite your knowledge of the intervening two and a half decades, is a challenging and, I think, a fun exercise. In a way, this is what I try to do when studying antiquity. So, I found the exercise fun, even though I lost. My brother-in-law ended up winning when we played.

Last weekend, I decided to would go with my mom on her garage sale run, and I, too, was lucky enough to find a Trivial Pursuit for $2, this one being a 2002 20-year anniversary edition. This originally baffled me, because if I had the 1981 copyrighted edition, how could the one from 2002 be the 20-year anniversary? They are 21 years apart! But I discovered that the original version was not released to stores until 1982. I actually thought the game was much older than this, but considering that it has been around nearly my entire life it is easy to think it is timeless. The questions were much more up-to-date, but I oddly found them a bit more difficult than the original edition.

And then today I was in a Target store in Illinois, and there before my eyes was a 2007 edition of Trivial Pursuit. It is sort of a greatest hits edition, containing a set of questions from the 80's edition, the 90's edition, and Pop Culture 2 edition. You get two dice, one tells how far to move, and the other indicates from which edition your question card will be drawn. And it was about $25, which, actually, is not bad. Original editions, like the 2-dollar one my mom found on a garage sale are going for much more! I considered buying it, but then I thought I am already lugging a Trivial Pursuit box back to NYC with me, and I found this at Target! We had looked in a Target during our original pursuit a couple weeks ago! There were many gaps in the board game section, however, and one of them probably was where this three-way Trivial Pursuit was. So, I decided that we just went to the wrong Target, and if we really want to find it, we can find it at another Target in NYC.

Obama Seeking Evangelical Votes

The NYTimes, once again, has an article on Barack Obama seeking Evangelical votes that during the last two elections went to Bush--according to this article's estimation, they made up about 25% of Bush's support.

Obama is relying upon the shifting ground of Evangelical positions on issues such as the environment, poverty, AIDS, and genocide. See my previous posting on Evangelicals for Obama from May 11, and my general posting on Religion, especially Evangelicals, and the Democratic Party, from last summer.

How will he do this? The Article says:

"Between now and November, the Obama forces are planning as many as 1,000 house parties and dozens of Christian rock concerts, gatherings of religious leaders, campus visits and telephone conference calls to bring together voters of all ages motivated by their faith to engage in politics. It is the most intensive effort yet by a Democratic candidate to reach out to self-identified evangelical or born-again Christians and to try to pry them away from their historical attachment to the Republican Party."

I know that "Christian rock" may sound like an oxymoron, but nevertheless they are well-attended events. Reading on...

"On Tuesday, Mr. Obama is scheduled to deliver a speech about faith in Zanesville, Ohio, in a battleground section of a battleground state, one where Mr. Bush relied heavily on evangelical voters to provide his narrow margin of victory in 2004. Mr. Obama’s speech will follow by two days a trip by his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain, to visit the evangelist Billy Graham and his son the Rev. Franklin Graham, part of an effort by Mr. McCain to shore up his standing with religious conservatives."

As discussed previously, McCain has had a difficult time courting Evangelicals--see here. Getting the support of the evangelist giant, Billy Graham, who is widely respected among Evangelicals, could be a major boost for him. Again, back to the article:

"Mr. Obama is building his appeal in part on calls to heal political rifts and address human suffering. He is also drawing on his own characteristics and story, including his embrace of Christianity as an adult, a facility with biblical language and imagery and comfort in talking about how his religious beliefs animate his approach to public life.

"But the subject of religion has become entangled in the false rumor that he is a Muslim. And it has been complicated by the effects of his association with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., whose brand of black liberation theology brought religion, race and patriotism into the campaign in ways not helpful to Mr. Obama. He also faces significant hurdles in appealing to religious voters because of his tolerance for abortion and same-sex marriage."

On Obama and Islam, see here. I hear liberation theology all the time, so I guess I find it less shocking to hear than the average U.S. citizen. Of course, I basically reside at the place where it began--Union Theological Seminary, where famous liberation theologian, James Cohn, still teaches.

Basically, the question boils down to whether Obama can get the Evangelicals who appear to be shifting in their positions on the environment, poverty, etc., to not get tripped up on the perennial voting issue (and the issue that no President has touched once elected) of abortion. But abortion, it seems, does not rally the conservative electorate as much as it used to, and its void is being filled by same-sex marriage. It has been a galvanizing issue for about a decade (if not longer), but recent decisions, especially in California, and the decision in my own state (NY) to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states (although not yet allowing same-sex marriages to be performed in NY itself), brings the issue into focus in a way that abortion has not been in focus for decades. Will same-sex marriage rally the conservative Evangelical base the same way abortion used to? Or will Evangelicals vote based upon a variety of factors, muddying the waters a little on assumed or expected party loyalty--by the way, even if they do not vote based only on these last two issues and vote on multiple platforms (Iraq war, environment, international relations, etc.), this does not mean that they will necessarily vote for Obama rather than McCain. But Obama does better at speaking about religion than McCain. His former pastor has made things more difficult, but it sounds much more strained when McCain speaks about faith.

Despite their intense dislike of McCain, some on the religious right have been firing at Obama lately. See here. On the other hand, Obama's director of religious affairs, is Joshua DuBois, a former pastor in the Assemblies of God, which is a major Pentecostal denomination.

“We’re not going to convince everybody,” said Mr. DuBois. “The most committed pro-lifers probably won’t vote for him. But others will be open to him because they see he’s a man of integrity, a person of faith who listens to and understands people of all religious backgrounds.”

According to the article, "The Obama campaign does not need to convince everybody in order to have an effect on the voting outcome in key states, only a relatively narrow slice of the religiously motivated voters who supported Mr. Bush by substantial margins in 2000 and 2004. And polls indicate that evangelicals and other religious voters are already migrating away from their overwhelming support of the Republicans, some because of disillusionment about the war, others because of concern about global warming, still others because of uncertainty about the economy."

These are all things we all already knew, but I found the following very interesting: "Mr. Obama won one important vote from the evangelical community when he received the endorsement of the Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, leader of a Methodist megachurch in Houston, who has long been close to Mr. Bush and who officiated at Jenna Bush’s wedding in May in Crawford, Tex. Mr. Caldwell denounced Mr. Dobson for his critique of Mr. Obama’s faith and has assembled a group of religious leaders to defend Mr. Obama."

And later on: "Mark DeMoss, a public relations executive who represents Franklin Graham and other church leaders and conservative religious organizations, said recently that Mr. Obama could conceivably win as much as 40 percent of the evangelical vote."

This seems rather high, but given that McCain will never garner as much support as Bush did, and Obama is actively seeking Evangelicals, it is perhaps possible, albeit remotely possible.

"Mr. DeMoss cited the meeting two weeks ago in Chicago in which Mr. Obama met privately with 30 religious leaders from many traditions and political persuasions, including several, like Mr. Graham, who were never likely to support him.

"Mr. Obama won praise for his openness to those who disagreed with him, Mr. DeMoss said, but he stood firm in his support for abortion rights and cemented opposition from those for whom that is a bedrock issue.

"Mr. Obama is also reaching out to young evangelicals, the so-called Joshua generation, a group that would seem to be a fertile ground for recruitment."

What is the "Joshua generation"? Other than the generation after Moses, does anyone know?

In sum, more than the past two elections, the Evangelical vote is up for grabs.