Jesus "boyfriend" music

[Image, "Jesus Love," from Lost Seed]

I was reading one of my favorite blogs, An Apostate's Chapel, yesterday and came across the following, which is part of a longer article describing the kind of weird sexuality expressed in many of the old fundamentalist hymns.

The article references Fanny Crosby, for example, a 19th century hymnist,, who wrote innumerable love songs to Jesus, one of which contained these lines:

Safe in the arms of Jesus,
Safe on His gentle breast,
There by His love o-ershadowed,
Sweetly my soul shall rest.

And then there's Charles Wesley, the founder of Methodism, who penned this kind of stuff:

Jesus, lover of my soul,
Let me to Thy bosom fly.

But this song really brought back memories, for I recall singing this many times in my youth, never thinking about how truly sick the lyrics were. It was written by C. Austin Miles, also in the 19th century (Could it be the 19th century was sexually repressive?):

I come to the garden alone,
While the dew is still on the roses;
And the voice I hear falling on my ear,
The Son of God discloses.

And He walks with me, and he talks with me,
And he tells me I am His own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.

He speaks and the sound of His voice
Is so sweet the birds hush their singing,
And the melody that He gave to me
Within my heart is ringing.


Yikes! An Apostate's Chapel reponds:

"How romantic! A garden, evening dew, walking and talking together, enjoying an exclusive relationship - and a prefiguring of Burt Bacharach:

"Why do birds suddenly appear
Every time you are near?
Just like me, they long to be
Close to you."


If you came out of an "evangelical/fundamentalist" background, you will no doubt appreciate this more than one without that background...

And you can read the entire article here.

Easter & the magical bunny rabbit

Thanks to Dan Florien at Unreasonable Faith.

If Christians can divorce for abuse, why can't they respect gays?

[Image by Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times]

According to Barbara Roberts in her book, Not Under Bondage: Biblical Divorce for Abuse, Adultery and Desertion, Christians may divorce and remarry if adultery, desertion or domestic abuse is involved.

Ms. Roberts is challenging the accepted wisdom of the fundamentalist christianist community. For example, Rick Warren's Saddleback Church, holds to the notion the Bible does not provide an exemption from the prohibition of divorce for domestic abuse.

I haven't read Ms. Roberts' book and do not intend to for the simple reason I have no confidence that most biblical admonitions have validity in the 21st century, especially those relating to marriage and divorce.

But, if she indeed argues that the Bible allows divorce in cases of domestic abuse, she is most certainly "rewriting" scripture; or at least the New Testament in which Jesus makes clear that divorce is only allowed for "adultery," and he isn't even happy about that.

[Actually, in first century Palestine, divorce was the prerogative of the husband. A Jewish woman could not divorce her husband under any circumstances, although it appears there may have been cases where the wife initiated the divorce followed by her husband then giving her the divorce papers.]

Here are the plain teachings of Jesus:

Matthew 5:32 and Matthew 19:9 - Jesus says clearly one may divorce only in cases of adultery.

Luke 16:18: Jesus says "A man who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery" and vice versa (the writer of Luke was not up on Jewish law). But notice, no way out there!

Mark 10:2-12: Jesus says the same thing. No divorce and remarriage except for adultery.

We must conclude, for christianists who stress literalism and inerrancy, domestic abuse is not a legitimate reason to divorce, according to the Bible.


Except that Ms. Roberts, a survivor of domestic abuse, has done an intense study of all the Biblical passages that deal with divorce and decided that "the Bible sets victims of abuse free from bondage and guilt."

She claims the Bible makes a distinction between "treacherous divorce," and "disciplinary divorce." And disciplinary divorce, which has to do with abuse, adultery and/or desertion, is allowed in the Bible.

Like I've said before, you can make the Bible say pretty much anything you want it to.

I find this all quite amusing. To be so chained to a faith position and a magical book that one has to go through all sorts of theological and biblical hoops in order to determine that a victim of domestic abuse is "allowed" to divorce, is just sad. To look to this ancient collection of "wisdom," written by persons unknown with no knowledge of science or psychology or how the world actually works, in order to get "permission" to do what any sane person knows is the right thing to do, is a waste of time and energy.

I happen to agree with Ms. Roberts' conclusions, so far as abuse and divorce go, but she doesn't go far enough. Marriage should never be treated lightly, but if a marriage is irretrievably broken, we should make it as easy as possible for the partners to divorce. We don't need to get "authority" from the Bible to do our humane duty.


But, let's look at what Ms. Roberts has done with Biblical "evidence," and apply it to homosexuality.

The great majority of scientists today are convinced that some human beings are born with a same-sex attraction. Homosexuality is not something that one chooses, anymore than is heterosexuality. Why would anyone choose to be part of a hated and persecuted minority?

If that's the case, then christianists should blame God for she created everything and everyone that exists.

Furthermore, we can do exactly the same thing with the homosexual issue that Ms. Roberts has done with regard to divorce - recast the biblical passages that deal with homosexuality so that our understanding is more in line with contemporary science and with a loving God.

The marriage of fundamentalist christianity with ancient taboos has led to torrents of abuse raining down upon our homosexual brothers and sisters.

Christians should do for homosexuals what Ms. Roberts has done for domestic abuse victims caught in horrific marital situations - give homosexual victims of christianist abuse a way out of their "bondage and guilt"! (I know, most homosexuals are not caught up in "bondage and guilt" anymore, but christianists could at least acknowledge their worth as human beings.) All the christianists need to do is interpret the Bible in the light of the knowledge and understandings of our time, which is exactly what Ms. Roberts has done in her book.

Come to think of, Lisa Miller already did that in a recent Newsweek article. Didn't work.

Nebraska moron gets his comeuppance by PhillyChief

First click here. You will find a blog by an ignoramus named Sam away out in Nebraska who is pissed off at atheists and other nogoodniks who are intolerant of his god and his desire to pray to Jesus in the public schools...He's also got things to say about "Darwinism," even though there is no such thing, and how atheistic folks are constantly making fun of his Bible and his beliefs, and how, in the end he doesn't mind, 'cause Jesus prophesied the mockery he's experiencing would come to all "true" believers.

Well, you oughta read the article.

PhillyChief's response:

Sam,

Freedom of opinion is a protected right in America, but in order to form the best possible opinions, you need to have accurate information to base those opinions on. You don't seem to have accurate information for your opinions so I'd like to offer that information to you.

"You atheists are rabid in your beliefs"

There's no belief system to atheism. Atheism is a response to a claim of deity existence. There's not even any rules for how to reach your conclusion. You can reach it through logic, through tea leaves, through a sixth sense, or reach it the way you (I assume) are an atheist when it comes to Thor and Vishnu, you just refuse to believe.

"You can preach your religion of Darwinism in our schools, but our Christian beliefs are forbidden."

Where do I begin? Ok first, NO religion is permitted to be preached in public schools due to the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment (each American should read and know their Constitution). You can teach religion, but you can't preach it.

Second, science is not a religion. Science is a process that has been successful for understanding our world and affording humanity great achievements (we are, after all, communicating right now due to science). Science's process requires hypotheses be testable and refutable. For instance, you can claim grass is purple, but such a claim is easily refuted. Now you can also claim that grass is green due to fairies, but such a claim is not scientific because it can't be tested. This is why ID was denied in the Dover case, because it's an untestable claim and thus, not science.

I wouldn't expect Shakespeare to be taught in science class, and I wouldn't expect Newton's laws to be taught in a religion class. It's just not where they belong, so aside from the unconstitutional aspect, religion simply doesn't belong in a science class.

"If you want to proclaim that we come from monkeys..."

No, chimps and humans have a common ancestor. That's different. What you're saying is like you came from your cousin, when actually you both share a grandparent. Capiche?

"Why are you afraid to let Christians give their point of view in Schools, Government, etc.?"

The Supreme Court has ruled that doing that in school is coercive. The idea is that if presented by the school, then the pov carries the weight of the school's support and by extension, the government's, when this is unconstitutional (remember that 1st Amendment?). Far from restricting you, it's actually there to protect you. In our nation's history, Catholics invoked the 1st Amendment to have their children protected from Protestant preaching in school, and various Protestants have used it to protect their children from other Protestant teachings they disagree with. I know you like the idea of debate, which is fine if everyone is on equal footing, but if the authorities are the ones who champion one pov, then that's not equal footing, is it? This is the whole point of the Establishment Clause. Again, I encourage you to read it.

Most everything else you wrote is simply opinion. I don't agree with your opinions, but so be it, but the quoted bits above were simply based on either incorrect or insufficient knowledge. I will answer a question of yours...

"What are you atheists so afraid of? Why do you get so angry?"

I would say frustrated more than angry. Frustrated by opinions based clearly on a lack of knowledge and/or understanding and frustrated by what we see as continued attacks upon the Constitution. I would say angry at decisions made which are detrimental to society which were made based on religion like Abstinence only sex ed and no distribution of contraceptives (everywhere this occurred, there was a significant rise in teen pregnancies and STDs), blocking equal rights for all Americans, blocking scientific research, and of course eroding the value of an education attainable in public schools.

Btw, the things I mentioned which inspire anger and frustration don't just affect atheists. There are many Christian groups who feel the same way, as do Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and various other groups because the sentiments don't rise from a disagreement over a religion, but rather what's done in its name. I truly wish the whole argument were simply over whether or not there were any gods. If that was all there was to argue, then there'd be little point getting angry.

-- Posted by PhillyChief on Sat, Jan 17, 2009, at 10:36 AM


Check it out at PhillyChief's blog here.

Finding Jesus in a toilet

[Photo from Daniel Kurtzman at Political Humor]

Rob Schenck, the wacko fundamentalist christianist who thinks he is called to "save" our nation from whatever evil lurks, especially in Washington, D.C., and who joined with two other wackos to "anoint" the doorposts through which Obama will walk to his inauguration, tells a "wonderful" tale about hearing a Xmas carol in a "thruway men's room."

It "really made an impression," says Schenck.

The carol was "O Holy Night."

Schenck writes "That's a lot of religion for a public toilet, but it really fits." (Methinks he doth not know how true that is!) But he goes on to mention that "Jesus was not born in a palace or a resort. The Savior made His debut in a pretty earthy setting. A stall for farm animals is generally marked by a distinctive odor, not different from a roadside john."

Heh, heh.

Yup, Jesus can be found in the most unlikely places, and Schenck fully expects to hear a "tear-jerking testimony about a toilet-stall conversion" before he get swooped up to heaven.


Schenck has inadvertently answered one of those most pressing questions that has bothered so many people for so long: What was Larry Craig doing in that men's room at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport?

He was looking for Jesus!


The wacko's Website is here.

If Jesus ran for president

This is a provocative little video...a conversation starter, perhaps...

Thanks 1 2 3 Religious Comics.

God's plan and purpose for sports heroes

Fundamentalist Christianity, has had, for as long as I can remember, a deeply-felt inferiority complex. It's as if, no matter how much the fundys insist that only they have god's Truth, they're still afraid someone might prove them wrong.

You can check this out yourself. If you're confronted by one of these deluded individuals, force-feed them facts about the bible, its history, its meaning, its contradictions, the craziness of their theology ... often they'll slip away into the night mumbling about how hot you will find it in hell!

Cradled as I was, in the arms of the fundys, I caught on to their tactics at an early age. One of the most humorous and most obvious attempts to counter their deeply felt inferiority, was to glom on to some sports star who had found Jesus, and parade him around the tent or chancel at revival meetings. I thought that was pretty stupid from the get-go. What did a super sports hero have to do with me? And why would his religious experience be any more meaningful that Joe the Plumber's. (I'm sorry, I couldn't stop myself!)

This charade continues. Charisma magazine, whose editor hails from the same religious holy roller hocus-pocus as does Sarah Palin, reports that "Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite, affectionately known around the world as 'Kaka,' recently shared his faith with millions of prime time TV viewers in Brazil."

To be truthful, I've never heard of Kaka, not that it matters. Obviously a lot of other people have and "adore" him. What's important is that he was paraded in front of whole bunches of people at the beginning of "My Hope Brazil -- a three-night, TV-based outreach sponsored by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) and reportedly one of the largest evangelistic crusades ever."

Kaka did good, too! "I truly cannot imagine my life without Christ," he said. "Everything I've accomplished, everything that God has done in my life ... was because God has a plan and purpose for my life. The Bible says that he will do more than we ever thought or imagined, and this is truly how it has been. If God wasn't in my life, then my life certainly would not be like this."

Kaka can believe anything he so desires, of course. And that's fine. But his story is a crock! Why would anyone believe that? Did god seek him out and give him a special plan and special gifts so he could be a soccer star? What kind of god is imagined here?

And what about all those people -- many with lesser abilities than Kaka -- that have accomplished a lot of stuff, in and out of a sporting arena, without knowing about god's plan for their lives?

More importantly, what about all those people who have struggled their entire lives just to earn a decent living but never quite made it? What about our veterans sleeping on the streets? What about the single mom who's trying to put food on the table? What about the elderly couple that has to choose between breakfast and medicine? What about the eight-year old girl dying of cancer? What about all the millions of people dying at this moment from disease, famine, or war? What's god's "plan" for their lives?

Or does god care mostly about soccer stars, and football players, and hockey moms who would be prezident?

Please! This kind of theology stinks. And to hold up someone like Kaka as if to say, "Look what god did for him and he can do that for you, too" also stinks because it is phony and false and is nothing more than a play for the pocketbook of the religiously gullible and theologically naive.

I wonder if Pele wore a T-shirt that said, "I Belong to Jesus." Wasn't Pele sorta successful?

The moral issues

In previous posts, we have discussed the "moral" issues deemed most important by the christianists on the right.

Almost without exception, for right wing christianists, the term "moral issues" refers to abortion and homosexuality. Once in awhile, "socialism" is also thrown into the mix, but for the most part moral issues are the holy duo of abortion and homosexuality.

We've mentioned that this is an unholy disregard for other, more significant moral issues, such as preemptive war, stealing from the poor to enrich the rich, denying people their rights under the Constitution, health care, education, poverty, global warming, the environment, etc.


But from our inception as a nation, the major moral issue has revolved around our treatment of minorities. Genocide was our national policy for years as we systematically killed the natives whose land we wanted for our own. Slavery, from the beginning, has hung like a dead weight around our collective necks. And as various immigrant groups found their way to our shores, they were routinely derided, defamed and made to bear the burden of hate.

All of this is racism, which in its multitudinous forms, continues to be a moral issue in this country. That's why the election of Barack Obama, a "mutt," as he called himself today in his first press conference -- half white, half black -- is such a milestone and why it should be a cause for celebration for all Americans. It was a giant step up from the mire of racial hatred.

Anna Quindlen, writing in this week's issue of Newsweek, referred to a speech given by President-elect Obama some months ago. Obama spoke of the problem of race, and about people living with "systemic poverty, bad schools and broken families. Obama said that "Many of the disparities that exist in the African-American community today can be directly traced to inequalities passed on from an earlier generation that suffered under the brutal legacy of slavery and Jim Crow."

No one with a modicum of knowledge about our history would disagree. And as we noted in a previous post, slavery "by another name," which involved the selling of blacks - arrested on bogus charges - to plantation owners and steel mills to be worked until they dropped or died in their shackles, existed in the South until the 1940's.

Quindlen continues: "But Obama said something else in that speech, something both simpler and more profound that has special resonance now that his improbable candidacy has prevailed. He made the political spiritual.

"'In the end, then,' he said, 'what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand--that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us.' He asked the American people to be fair and just, to be kind and generous, to put prejudice behind them and be one people because that is, not a legal or social imperative, but a moral one."


It would be nice to hear something from the christianists on the right about the moral issue of racism in our midst, and it would be nice if they could admit that Obama was speaking the truth and praise him for it.

But they're too busy preaching God is exclusive, not inclusive. They're too busy spreading their hate for those who believe differently about abortion -- and many of them lie about Obama's position on abortion, claiming he wants to kill babies born alive after botched abortions! The christianists on the right are too busy spreading their prejudice against gays and lesbians, picking and choosing a couple of bible verses to bolster their animosity.

[As regards socialism, the Book of Acts in the New Testament would seem to support a socialistic system, for it describes the early followers of Jesus as living in a community where all shared what they had with each other. Sounds like socialism, albeit primitive, to me!]


One cannot find any justification in the life or teachings of Jesus as he is presented in the gospels for the hatred expressed by christianists on the right for those we describe today as pro-choice or people born homosexual. In fact, just the opposite is true. The gospel writers are one in their portrayal of Jesus as being especially accepting of those society has cast aside.

The people Jesus really had problems with were the pompous, pious, pretenders to righteousness who failed to see they shared a common humanity with all people, and failed to realize that god's love was unconditional.

If the shoe fits...