Rev. Madison Shockley - Jesus and the 99 Percent

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/jesus_and_the_99_percent_20111202/

Posted on Dec 2, 2011

By The Rev. Madison Shockley

Many have asked whether the Occupy Wall Street Movement has a coherent message. It really seems pretty clear to anyone who is listening at all. Because of the greed of the 1 percent, the other 99 percent of the population has been reduced to working for lower wages (or not working), to trying to survive (unemployment insurance, welfare and family handouts), to renting or homelessness, to suffering environmental degradation with sickness but without health insurance, and to paying higher prices for food and education while getting lower returns on savings and investments. The unchecked greed of these capitalist elite (symbolized by the banks) impoverishes the majority of people and undermines our democracy. This much was obvious in just the first five minutes of OWS.

We in the Christian community are also asking how the movement’s message coheres with our theological precepts. Should the church be for or against OWS? Should the church offer spiritual support? Should the church lend physical and material support to movement members? As I write from here at Union Theological Seminaryin New York City (my alma mater where I’m currently on sabbatical), I have observed and participated with OWS at Zuccotti Park and its Oct. 15 action in Times Square. Union Theological is the seminary of choice for progressive Christian clergy in the United States, so it is no surprise that it has spawned what are known as “Protest Chaplains”: seminary students who participate in OWS as spiritual support and presence. I have attended meetings and worship services conducted by local clergy Occupy Faith NYCwho felt drawn to be involved, even before all the questions listed above have been answered.

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HealthDay News - Being 'Born-Again' Linked to More Brain Atrophy: Study

WEDNESDAY, May 25 (HealthDay News) -- Older adults who say they've had a life-changing religious experience are more likely to have a greater decrease in size of the hippocampus, the part of the brain critical to learning and memory, new research finds.

According to the study, people who said they were a "born-again" Protestant or Catholic, or conversely, those who had no religious affiliation, had more hippocampal shrinkage (or "atrophy") compared to people who identified themselves as Protestants, but not born-again.

The study is published online in PLoS ONE.

As people age, a certain amount of brain atrophy is expected. Shrinkage of the hippocampus is also associated with depression, dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

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Michael Beckel - Religious Lobby on the Rise

Published on Monday, November 21, 2011 by OpenSecrets Blog

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/11/21-4

by Michael Beckel

The religious lobby is on the rise, according to a new study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

The number of religious organizations playing the influence game in Washington has swelled since 1970, according to the Pew study. In 1970, less than 40 groups were involved with lobbying or advocacy efforts. Now, that number has risen to more than 200.

The Pew report notes that lobbying for the faithful is often a multi-million-dollar prerogative.

Pew estimated that more than 200 groups currently spend a combined nearly $400 million a year on lobbying and advocacy work.

As OpenSecrets Blog has previously noted, only some of this is directly disclosed to Congress in the form of regular lobbying reports.

When Congress passed the Lobbying Disclosure Act in 1995, it provided for a few exceptions to disclosure rules, including lobbying communications made by a “church, its integrated auxiliary or a convention or association of churches that is exempt from filing a federal income tax return," as well as a "religious order."

The only instances in which a church must disclose its lobbying is if it spends a “substantial” amount of money on lobbying, if more than 20 percent of its lobbyist’s income is from direct lobbying on behalf of the church or if it hires an outside lobbying firm.

Then, the hired firm is required to disclose that it has lobbied on behalf of a religious institution.

The “substantial” test is a murky one, with little enforcement of it, and as is the 20 percent rule, unless attention is drawn to the organization.

Nevertheless, research by the Center for Responsive Politics shows that lobbying by religious organizations frequently exceeds $1 million a year.

In 2007, the highest year on record, 34 religious groups spent a combined $3.7 million on lobbying and hired 108 lobbyists, according to the Center's research.

During the first three quarters of this year, 23 religious groups spent a combined $1.7 million on lobbying and hired 68 lobbyists, according to the Center's research.

Frank Schaeffer - The Shady World of Right-Wing 'Discipline' Guides

By Frank Schaeffer, AlterNet

Posted on November 8, 2011, Printed on November 9, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/153006/beating_babies_in_the_name_of_jesus_the_shady_world_of_right-wing_%27discipline%27_guides

There is a brutal movement in America that legitimizes child abuse in the name of God. Two stories recently converged to make us pay attention. Last week, a video went viral of a Texas judge brutally whipping his disabled daughter. And on Monday, the New York Times published a story about child deaths in homes that have embraced the teachings of To Train Up a Child, a book by Christian preacher Michael Pearl that advocates using a switch on children as young as six months old. 

What many people may not realize is that in the evangelical alternative universe of the home school movement, tightly knit church communities and the following of a number of big-time leaders and authors, physical punishment of children has been glorified for years.

As the Times illustrates -- "Preaching Virtue of Spanking, Even as Deaths Fuel Debate" -- the books of Michael Pearl and his wife Debi have been found in the homes where several children were killed. 

They're not the only right-wing Christians who advocate these methods. Some of the most respected evangelical discipline gurus have made beating children not just "respectable" in conservative religious circles, but even turned it into a godly activity.

In 1977 James Dobson founder of the "Focus on the Family" religious empire and radio program, wrote a book called Dare To Discipline, whose purpose was, essentially, to get parents to beat their children.

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"Tana Ganeva": 5 Signs That America Is Moving Away from Religion

In between bragging about the number of people they've killed and vilifying gay soldiers, the GOP presidential candidates have spent the primaries demonstrating how little they respect the separation of church and state. Michele Bachmann seems to think God is personally invested in her political career. Both she and Rick Perry have ties to Christian Dominionism, a theocratic philosophy that publicly calls for Christian takeover of America's political and civil institutions. (Even Ron Paul, glorified by civil libertarians for his only two good policy stances -- opposition to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and drug prohibition -- sputtered about churches when asked during a debate where he'd send a gravely ill man without health insurance.) GOP pandering to the Religious Right is just one of those facts of American political life, like climate change denial and Creationism in schools, that leave secular Americans lamenting the decline of the country, and of reason and logic. Organized religion's grasp on the politics and culture of much of Europe has been waning for decades -- why can't we do that here? But there are signs that American attitudes are changing in ways that may tame religion's power over political life in the future.

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"Wangari Maathai" - Spiritual Environmentalism: Healing Ourselves by Replenishing the Earth

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/26-16

Published on Monday, September 26, 2011 by YES! Magazine

by Wangari Maathai

YES! Magazine Editor's Note: Wangari Maathai, the Kenyan activist and 2004 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, passed away on September 25. In this essay from her book Replenishing the Earth: Spiritual Values for Healing Ourselves and the World, she describes what motivated her groundbreaking work.Wangari Maathai (1940-2011)

During my more than three decades as an environmentalist and campaigner for democratic rights, people have often asked me whether spirituality, different religious traditions, and the Bible in particular had inspired me, and influenced my activism and the work of the Green Belt Movement (GBM). Did I conceive conservation of the environment and empowerment of ordinary people as a kind of religious vocation? Were there spiritual lessons to be learned and applied to their own environmental efforts, or in their lives as a whole?

When I began this work in 1977, I wasn't motivated by my faith or by religion in general. Instead, I was thinking literally and practically about solving problems on the ground. I wanted to help rural populations, especially women, with the basic needs they described to me during seminars and workshops. They said that they needed clean drinking water, adequate and nutritious food, income, and energy for cooking and heating. So, when I was asked these questions during the early days, I'd answer that I didn't think digging holes and mobilizing communities to protect or restore the trees, forests, watersheds, soil, or habitats for wildlife that surrounded them was spiritual work.

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"Chip Berlet"- Inside the Christian Right Dominionist Movement That's Undermining Democracy

By Chip Berlet, Public Eye
Posted on September 1, 2011, Printed on September 5, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152271/inside_the_christian_right_dominionist_movement_that%27s_undermining_democracy

Dominionists want to impose a form of Christian nationalism on the United States, a concept that was dismissed as eroding freedom and democracy by the founders of our country. Dominionism has become a major influence on the right-wing populist Tea Parties as Christian Right activists have flooded into the movement at the grassroots. At the same time, legitimate questions have been raised about whether or not potential Republican presidential nominees Rick Perry, Michelle Bachmann, or Sarah Palin have moved from a generic form of Christian Right Dominionism toward the more totalitarian form know as Dominion Theology.

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"Adele M. Stan" - Why the Mainstream Media Are Clueless About the Religious Right

By Adele M. Stan, AlterNet
Posted on August 16, 2011, Printed on August 18, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/152053/why_the_mainstream_media_are_clueless_about_the_religious_right

Every four years, just as a presidential campaign kicks up, legions of media types who make their living outside the right-wing echo chamber emerge as a militia of Margaret Meads, descending on flyover country, trying to make sense of that exotic phenomenon, the religious right. In the end, those who actually get it are few.

From the attitudes shown by media toward the religious right, you'd never know that more than one-quarter of the U.S. population identify as evangelicals, according to a 2007 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, and among white self-identified evangelicals, 62 percent told Pew in 2006 that they believe the Bible to be the literal word of God.

These, by and large, are the people who determine the outcome of the Republican presidential primary, thanks to the early stacking of states heavily populated by evangelicals, and the propensity of most evangelicals to align with the Republican Party. And yet, we who cover these races often know very little about the voters whose person-on-the-street interviews they're recording, except to know that these people are very different from us in their view of the world. So as everyday doctrines come to light in one or another campaign incident, the media either find themselves aghast at the implications, or simply choose to ignore them.

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"Frank Schaeffer" - Michele Bachmann Was Inspired By My Dad and His Christian Reconstructionist Friends -- Here's Why That's Terrifying

By Frank Schaeffer, AlterNet
Posted on August 9, 2011, Printed on August 10, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/151960/michele_bachmann_was_inspired_by_my_dad_and_his_christian_reconstructionist_friends_--_here%27s_why_that%27s_terrifying

As presidential candidate Michele Bachmann chews up scenery in the GOP primaries, the mainstream media is finally digging into her extremist beliefs in a serious way. In a profile published earlier this week, the New Yorker's Ryan Lizza talked about Bachmann's radical right-wing influences, which include the most extremist figures in the history of the religious right movement.

One of these was my evangelical leader father, Francis Schaeffer. Bachmann says in the New Yorker article that she got into politics because she watched a film series I directed called “How Should We Then Live,” written by and featuring my dad. 

What the New Yorker article doesn’t do is explain why people like Bachmann, Sarah Palin, et al. turned to the hard reactionary anti-government right. I explain this in my book Sex, Mom and God. I think it’s important to understand this. So let me add what the New Yorker left out.

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Chris Hedges: Fundamentalism Kills

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/fundamentalism_kills_20110726/

Posted on Jul 26, 2011

By Chris Hedges

The gravest threat we face from terrorism, as the killings in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik underscore, comes not from the Islamic world but the radical Christian right and the secular fundamentalists who propagate the bigoted, hateful caricatures of observant Muslims and those defined as our internal enemies. The caricature and fear are spread as diligently by the Christian right as they are by atheists such as Sam Harrisand Christopher Hitchens. Our religious and secular fundamentalists all peddle the same racist filth and intolerance that infected Breivik. This filth has poisoned and degraded our civil discourse. The looming economic and environmental collapse will provide sparks and tinder to transform this coarse language of fundamentalist hatred into, I fear, the murderous rampages experienced by Norway. I worry more about the Anders Breiviks than the Mohammed Attas.

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