Oh, the beauty of unintentional truths:

“Even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools?” Obama said. “Would we go with James Dobson’s or Al Sharpton’s?” referring to the civil rights leader.

Dobson took aim at examples Obama cited in asking which Biblical passages should guide public policy — chapters like Leviticus, which Obama said suggests slavery is OK and eating shellfish is an abomination, or Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, “a passage that is so radical that it’s doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application.”

“Folks haven’t been reading their Bibles,” Obama said.

Dobson and Minnery accused Obama of wrongly equating Old Testament texts and dietary codes that no longer apply to Jesus’ teachings in the New Testament.

“I think he’s deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology,” Dobson said.

“... He is dragging biblical understanding through the gutter.”

Dobson’s absolutely right here - Leviticus has virtually no bearing whatsoever on Jesus’ teachings in the New Testament.  That, in turn, makes it a real shame that he’s never followed his own interpretation of Leviticus.

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Oh man, this is so cool.  I did an image search for “rapture” and on the first page I saw the first picture I’d ever seen depicting it. (You can click it for a bigger version.) I picked it up while at youth group in high school and asked about it, and the leader answered my questions shortly, indicating, I think, that belief in this event was a sore spot between various parishioners at what was basically a mainline church.  I was already well on my road to an adulthood of grouchy atheism, and I think this image—-with its gloating cruelty that haunted me—-drove me further that way.  Christians say they believe in a Jesus of love and mercy, but then they have stuff like that just laying around.  (Not all, I realize, or even most.) 

I bring it up because I just finished what is probably the funniest book on the Rapture-obsessed evangelical Christian culture that I’ve ever read: Rapture Ready!: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture.  The book, as you can tell from the title, focuses on Christian pop culture, that weird, watered down imitation of real pop culture that’s sanitized of “dirtiness” and injected with Jeebus.  Christian bookstores, contemporary Christian music ranging from heavy metal to rap, Christian comedy, Christian wrestling, and of course the entire abstinence-only industry with its side industry of fetus trinkets.  For secular people, believers or not, this junk is embarrassing.  You pity the kids whose parents make them listen to Christian rock in lieu of real rock.  You wonder at people who can read a Christian horror novel with a straight face.

What Radosh found, though, surprised me.  And I think it surprised him, too.  The evangelical subculture has been around just long enough that changes are beginning to emerge, as the creators of it, being creative people, start agitating against the restraints that doom them to mediocrity.  Which isn’t to say that it’s not mediocre—-it is.  But a lot of it wasn’t as bad as you’d think.  And there’s signs of hope out there that the creative element in Christian pop culture could be exerting a positive influence on the evangelical community.  But don’t take my word for it—-Daniel has put up a really nice interactive site to go with the book, so you can sample a lot of the Christian pop culture yourself.  Warning: There’s an extreme hokey factor.  But there’s occasional gems, like Victoria Williams. 

Instead of doing the usual review, though, I thought we’d have some fun and post an interview with the author instead.  So, without further ado, here’s Daniel Radosh!  My questions are in bold.

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Matt “Bam Bam” Barber, one of the “like-minded men with Concerned Women for America,” has decided to leave one of the curiously estrogen-free posts at the organization,  policy director for cultural issues (homo-obsessive Bob Knight was the director of its Culture and Family Institute). The Advocate:

Barber is moving on to work with two strongly pro-family organizations in Virginia, the Liberty University School of Law and Liberty Counsel.

CWA founder and chairman Beverly LaHaye said, “Matt Barber has been a tremendous asset to CWA and leaves an indelible imprint on the organization; his intellect and passion about cultural and family issues are second to none. We will miss his very relevant and timely articles, as well as his influence on the broader conservative movement.

Mrs. LaHaye will certainly have a large pool of wingnuts to solicit resumes from. I wonder if Matt’s buddy The Peter will toss his name in for consideration.

More below the fold.

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Sorry, SC readers, but your state is two for two today on the wingnut scoreboard after the HS gay-straight alliance ban attempt story. How about a state-sanctioned religious license plate—no worries about church-state conflict in the Palmetto State:

South Carolina’s lieutenant governor announced Thursday that he is willing to put up $4,000 of his own money so his state can become the first in the nation to issue “I Believe” license plates with the image of a cross and a stained glass window.

...The bills mean South Carolinians attending local government meetings could soon see the Ten Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer posted on walls, pray without fear of being sued and drive home in cars with the “I Believe” plates.

Civil rights groups are considering lawsuits. An attorney for the New York-based American Jewish Congress, Mark Stern, said the bills are an obvious endorsement of religion by legislators in an election year. His group is looking to sue over the plates.

...”This is an example of the government’s underhanded attempts to endorse one particular religious viewpoint over all others under the guise of neutral education,” said T. Jeremy Gunn, director of the ACLU’s Program of Freedom of Religion and Belief. “Religion belongs where it prospers best: with individuals, families and religious communities.”

I was really hoping for SC to secede from the U.S. with the launch of the Christian Exodus movement, but that really never got off of the ground. The organizers decided to pack their bags and head out to Idaho, a less populous state to take over, and with perhaps more sympatico Aryan Nation residents.

Ah, campaign season brings all the freakshow fundies out of the woodwork. Today’s self-important member of the religious fringe is the “Dr. Phil of prayer,” St. Petersburg, Florida-based Bill Keller of Liveprayer.com. He bleats to the Wildmon “news” organ OneNewsNow that Obama is a faux Christian Trojan Horse.

“A lot of the things that he is saying really call into question whether he really is a Christian,” says Keller, offering up as an example Obama’s statement that there are many roads that lead to God. “He has consistently been on record that he’s willing to give away part of the land that God himself gave to the children of Israel directly to their enemies,” he adds.

A campaign brochure titled “Faith. Hope. Change.” describes Senator Obama as a “committed Christian” who visited a local church one Sunday, “felt a beckoning of the spirit and accepted Jesus Christ into his life.” But Keller says Obama has views on social issues that most evangelicals regard as unbiblical.

“He has consistently voted to uphold a woman’s right to kill babies,” Keller points out. “He has consistently voted to support the gay agenda, gay ‘marriage,’ gay adoption, special rights for gays.” Keller says while obviously only God can judge a man’s heart, he does not think Senator Obama can call himself a Christian yet deny the basic tenets of the faith and rewrite them to suit his own purposes.

I guess John McCain’s wiping sweat off his brow for not sidling up to this character. Keller laughably goes on to say that he has requested a formal sit-down with Obama to answer questions about his Christian faith.

As if

, Bill. Like he should give you the time of day.

For extra batsh*ttery points, check out the OneNewsNow forum for the reader comments on the article. They are truly disturbing.

Who is Bill Keller, you might ask? What a shady background this character is; I first blogged about him back in April 2006 when he was profiled at Creative Loafing/The Weekly Planet. Read on below the fold.

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Imagine being a devoted churchgoer and being told that you cannot marry in the church because you’re impotent because of a car accident.

An Italian bishop has reportedly told a young paraplegic he cannot have a church wedding because he is impotent, despite his fiancee being aware of the problem.

Salvatore de Ciuco, spokesman for Bishop Lorenzo Chiarinelli of Viterbo in central Italy, told SkyTG24 television: “No bishop, no priest can celebrate a wedding when he knows of admitted impotence as it is a motive for annulment” of the marriage.

Has God in the church’s eyes, forsaken all those couples who cannot consummate their marriage in the old penis-in-vagina manner? This is unimaginably cruel.

I recently attended a wedding (w/Roman Catholic Mass), and while the whole event was joyous, it was difficult to sit there and listen to a homily rife with heterosupremacy and mandated procreation. It really brings it home that for many sitting there listening, the message of invalidation of same-sex unions (and relationships like the one above), is something they simply don’t think about. That they pray to what is interpreted as a discriminating God is not something they can see, when it’s beautifully wrapped up and tied with a bow. It also underscores the reasons why the word “marriage” is so loaded for people who have been raised in faiths that see a couple’s love and commitment to one another in very narrow terms. It’s not only a matter of separating the civil and religious, but undoing the social invalidation that is produced by a worldview that may not openly demonize gay couples, but makes it clear our relationships simply don’t exist, and if even if they did, they don’t qualify for any recognition as a social bond.

Many schools have adopted the requirement that any potentially inflammatory presentation or material will be given the yay or nay for each student through their parents’ permission.  The wisdom of this is arguable, especially as the potential realm of “objectionable” grows to the point where asking students to put down their pencils becomes a controversial form of sex education.

Anyway, a school in Texas forgot to ask for permission to have a presentation on Islam - not a service, not a trip to a mosque, not even an endorsement of Islam - simply a couple of speakers coming in to talk about what Islam is and how it’s practiced.  Their lapse was a violation of school policy:

School district spokeswoman Karolyn Gephart said principal Robin Lowe had “best intentions,” but Gephart acknowledged not informing parents beforehand was a mistake.

District policy states parents are to be informed about the purpose and content of presentations so that they can keep their children out if they think the material might be offensive or inappropriate.

How does one parent feel about this lapse?  Well…

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It was simply time to cut his ties to the Trinity United Church of Christ. (AP):

Barack Obama has resigned his 20 year membership in the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago in the aftermath of inflammatory remarks by his longtime pastor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and more recent fiery remarks at the church by another minister.

Obama campaign communications director Robert Gibbs said Obama had submitted a letter of resignation to the church and would discuss his decision in a session with reporters later Saturday.

It happened “over the last few days,” Gibbs said. Messages left for a church spokeswoman in Chicago were not immediately returned Saturday afternoon.

...On Thursday, Obama was again forced to reject another man of the cloth, this time Pfleger, who made racially charged comments mocking Clinton in a guest sermon at Trinity United Church of Christ, Obama’s church.

Obama made it clear he wasn’t happy with the comments — in which Pfleger pretended he was Clinton crying over “a black man stealing my show” — and said he was “deeply disappointed in Father Pfleger’s divisive, backward-looking rhetoric, which doesn’t reflect the country I see or the desire of people across America to come together in common cause.”

It’s an abject lesson that mixing church and politics can inevitably get any pol in an endless amount of trouble. From McCain sidling up to Hagee/Parsley or Obama and the latest remarks by Father Michael Pfleger, it’s a crap shoot to inject your faith into “your game” of political ambition.

In Obama’s case, and for the Democratic party generally, the courting of the faith based vote has been purposeful—to make inroads into these communities and voters. Wearing faith on one’s sleeve was thought to be the best way to counter the belief that the Democratic party is a bunch of heathens, atheists, paganists, Satanists, you name it - all trying to persecute “Christians.”

However, pastors aren’t beholden to any focus group or poll; they don’t have to guard what they say—it’s inevitable that blowback, explanations and apologies can’t outweigh the endless MSM bleating about all of it.

Quite frankly, with the economy crumbling, an endless military action, and corruption at the highest levels of government, focusing on religious clerics and their misguided, inflammatory remarks is a waste of air time.