The Holy Eggplant of Boothwyn

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If Pastor Drake’s curses are fizzling, I know exactly what he needs: a blessed medallion made from an eggplant to potentiate his jebus-power. It’s true: this miracle occurred spontaneously, and is exactly the holy artifact any righteous smiter would want on his side.

I will also call your attention to an important and obvious fact: this eggplant did not say “Gott” or “Dieu” or “Dios” or “Бог” or “Deus” or “Dio” or “神” or “الله” — no, it says “God”. Therefore, God chooses to speak in English.

Either that, or it’s the natural language of eggplants.

Lightning bolts? Boils? Sour beer? We must know the details!

Uh-oh. Americans United for Separation of Church and State is in trouble now: some wrathful priest is cursing them in the name of God and has used the power of imprecatory prayer to ask the Lord to smite them.

Oooooh. There hasn’t been any detectable lordly smiting in millennia, or even longer. This could be impressive. You can catch Pastor Wiley Drake on streaming Christian radio tomorrow morning at 9am PST — I’m sure he’ll be calling down hellfire in a most entertaining way. I’ll be traveling, unfortunately, so someone will have to tune in and report back.

Heh. “Imprecatory prayer.” These guys are so old-school medieval, aren’t they?

I need one of these

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Some outfit called the Christian Outdoorsman is selling bibles with camouflaged covers, which seems so appropriate — after all, when you’re sneaking up on the Christ you wouldn’t want to alarm him.

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And why, you might ask, should we sneak up on the Messiah? The clue is in the company’s logo. You want to line him up in your sights. This is brilliant — we don’t do crucifixions anymore, but if we take out Jesus II with a sniper rifle, the Vatican won’t have to change the monograms on their towels.

(via SEB)

Keep doing this!

I am so pleased to learn that Focus on the Family is freaking out a little bit.

The trend is known as the “Great Evacuation,” and the statistics are startling to youth ministers.

Studies have shown at least 50 percent — and possibly as much as 85 percent — of kids involved in church groups will abandon their faith during their first year in college.

The best part of this statistic is that college professors and administrators don’t even try to divorce students from religion — despite my evil reputation, I don’t say a word about religion in any of my classes. All we do is open students’ eyes and expose them to a world of the mind where they are free to question and doubt … and presto, many of them suddenly realize that they can disagree with those obnoxious religious authorities back home.

Well, and to be perfectly fair, they also discover friends and parties and beer and sex. Those are pretty persuasive, too. It’s not an entirely intellectual voyage of discovery.

In an attempt to reverse those numbers, Focus on the Family on Saturday hosted “The Big Dig,” a conference aimed at teens and youth leaders. The goal was not just to celebrate participants’ Christian faith but also to give them the tools to defend their beliefs against questions they will face.

Such apologetics conferences fly in the face of a long-held belief that the way to minister to teens is to wow them with hipness, said Alex McFarland, organizer of the event. But, as 1,600 kids and leaders from as far as Jamaica learned historical evidence of Jesus and defense of the Bible, he said this more academic method seemed to be working.

This is absolutely wonderful. Teach them to value academic methods, and I suspect they’ll be even more vulnerable to academic criticism when they get into college. FoF isn’t inoculating these students against argument, they’re punching little holes in their close-mindedness.

It’s about the principle

Christian charity and love has clear limits.

A megachurch canceled a memorial service for a Navy veteran 24 hours before it was to start because the deceased was gay.

Officials at the nondenominational High Point Church knew that Cecil Howard Sinclair was gay when they offered to host his service, said his sister, Kathleen Wright. But after his obituary listed his life partner as one of his survivors, she said, it was called off.

Yeah, a 5,000 member megachurch spurned a dead man because they didn’t care for who he chose to love. The pastor’s excuse is terrific:

“We did decline to host the service — not based on hatred, not based on discrimination, but based on principle,” Simons told The Associated Press. “Had we known it on the day they first spoke about it — yes, we would have declined then. It’s not that we didn’t love the family.”

Part of that is wrong: it’s based on hatred of gays and on discrimination against gay people. Part is right: that is clearly the basic operating principle of this church.

People of Arlington, Texas, Rejoice! This church has exposed its hateful foundations, and you can now boycott it in good conscience … on principle.

The apologists will now explain to us that these people don’t actually exist

The wingnuts are still outraged that there is a Muslim in congress and that a Hindu delivered an opening prayer (which was pretty dang lame, anyway). Now look at this silly little man (R-Idaho) ranting about the death of America:

Last month, the U.S. Senate was opened for the first time ever with a Hindu prayer. Although the event generated little outrage on Capitol Hill, Representative Bill Sali (R-Idaho) is one member of Congress who believes the prayer should have never been allowed.

“We have not only a Hindu prayer being offered in the Senate, we have a Muslim member of the House of Representatives now, Keith Ellison from Minnesota. Those are changes — and they are not what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers,” asserts Sali.

Sali says America was built on Christian principles that were derived from scripture. He also says the only way the United States has been allowed to exist in a world that is so hostile to Christian principles is through “the protective hand of God.”

“You know, the Lord can cause the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike,” says the Idaho Republican.

According to Congressman Sali, the only way the U.S. can continue to survive is under that protective hand of God. He states when a Hindu prayer is offered, “that’s a different god” and that it “creates problems for the longevity of this country.”

We’ve been having a little discussion in the comments here about the insensibility of satire and parody in this age of Christian lunacy. Take a look at the comments on that article — they are almost all effusive in their praise for Sali and are howling about how America must be ruled by the One True God™. These recent parodies of various Republican presidential candidates are amusing, but there’s a reality out there that’s far crazier and far scarier.

But these people don’t exist, I have often been told. The religious are thoughtful, progressive, inoffensive types.

Those poor damned kids

Pity the children at Castle Hills First Baptist School. It is a truly god-soaked institution, where everything is distorted to fit a fundagelical vision. I’ve heard of inserting God into biology, obviously, but the description of godly calculus has got to be seen to be believed. And history is apparently the study of the nature of god as revealed by social studies, while Jesus’ preferred economic model is capitalism.

It’s in Texas, of course.

I wonder if it is the perfect model of what McLeroy wants done with the public school system?

Do you want people who respect Stephen Baldwin to run your army?

I mentioned the growing entanglement of fundamentalist religion in the military the other day, and here’s another example: proselytization in the military by evangelical freaks like Stephen Baldwin.

Baldwin became a right-wing, born-again Christian after the 9/11 attacks, and now is the star of Operation Straight Up (OSU), an evangelical entertainment troupe that actively proselytizes among
active-duty members of the US military. As an official
arm of the Defense Department’s America Supports You program, OSU plans to mail copies of the controversial apocalyptic video game, Left Behind: Eternal Forces to soldiers serving in Iraq. OSU is also scheduled to embark on a “Military Crusade in Iraq” in the near future.

Hang on there … maybe we shouldn’t worry too much. If the evangelical arsenal consists of the dumbest of the Baldwin brothers and an exceptionally lame video game, all it’s going to succeed in doing is recruiting the dregs and dullards…

…who will then be lofted into positions of leadership in the most powerful military force in the world.

Hmmm. Maybe we should be concerned.

I get email

Here’s an odd correlation for you: whenever I take a swipe at the foolishness of Scott Adams, I get a major uptick in the usual trickle of Christian email. I don’t quite see Adams as a friend to Christianity, although he does seem to foster the kind of shallow thinking on which religiosity thrives. Anyway, for your delectation, I’ve put a couple of samples below.

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