ReligionDispatches.org

While I don’t expect hard-hitting news on an early morning news show that’s designed to perk people up, I would expect them to at least separate the fluff from the facts.

On Wednesday morning The Today Show ran a piece celebrating the work of Scientology’s Volunteer Ministers without addressing the concerns raised this organization’s “services,” which are designed by science fiction writer, L. Ron Hubbard. This story mentions that these counselors are providing “touch assists” without bothering to bring in a representative from the National Mental Health Association (NMHA) to debunk this pseudoscience.

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“John Travolta to airlift desperately needed e-meters to People of Haiti,” reports Gawker. Even though relief organizations like Doctors without Borders face difficulties landing their planes, Travolta has apparently “arranged for a plane to take down some volunteer ministers and some supplies and some medics.”

Travolta is not the only Scientologist who is clear about the need to provide services to Haiti. According to a press release issued by the Church of Scientology, “Teams of Scientology Volunteer Ministers from throughout the U.S., Mexico, Europe and elsewhere will provide administrative and organizational support to the medical teams, distribute supplies, and provide trauma relief and grief counseling to the victims and their families.”

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When I received a press release from the People for the American Way (PFAW) titled, “PFAW Condemns Robertson’s Comments on Haiti Earthquake,” I wondered to myself why any leader who claimed to be a Christian would say that the nation of Haiti has been cursed ever since it “swore a pact to the Devil.”

In my book Red and Blue God, Black and Blue Church: Eyewitness Accounts of How American Churches are Hijacking Jesus, Bagging the Beatitudes, and Worshipping the Almighty Dollar, I cited how the words of the Greatest Commandment have been repeated ad nauseam to the point where the radical message of Christ has been lost in our “yeah, right” cynical culture. Sometimes this cynicism is warranted.

For instance, let’s take a look at the pronouncements of televangelist Pat Robertson. In his teaching on the Greatest Commandment, Robertson proclaims that “a person must dedicate the totality of his being to a self-giving love for God. Every aspect of his nature must focus on loving God.” Say what? I mean, is this the same Pat Robertson who in August 2005 issued a Christian fatwa against a democratically elected world leader? I would challenge anyone to tell me what is “loving” about declaring to a worldwide televised audience that “if [Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez] thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think we really ought to go ahead and do it.” Robertson later apologized, but halfheartedly. He tried to weasel out of it by claiming that he didn’t really say we should assassinate him but that our “special forces should take him out.” Millions of viewers who saw the show or a tape of that segment know exactly what he said—that it would be cheaper to assassinate Chavez than to wage a costly war against him. But no matter how you slice this baloney, God makes it pretty clear that vengeance is his business and not ours. (See Romans 12:19–21). In a few brief moments, Robertson managed to flush over two thousand years of Judeo-Christian teachings down the toilet.

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The decision to prosecute the masterminds behind the September 11th attacks in a New York City civil court instead of a military tribunal has Americans once again playing this geopolitical linguistic game where the words “Muslim” and “terrorist” become interchangeable synonyms.

While select individuals, who commit horrific acts, should be held accountable for their crimes, the global media focus on terrorist acts, attributed to radical Muslim groups, seems to suggest that anyone that utters the name Allah is by default an evil infidel chanting “Death to America.”

In an effort to explore the beliefs held by the world’s one billion Muslims, the Gallup Organization conducted the largest worldwide study of Muslim populations. Shortly after their results were published in Who Speaks for Islam? What a Billion Muslims Really Think, their findings were translated into a film of the same name by Unity Productions Foundation (UPF).

I caught a screening and panel discussion of this film in November 2009. Here’s a broad overview of the survey’s findings as illustrated in the film:

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In my recent post “Will New York Mega-Church Pastor Tim Keller Redeem Publishing?,” my suggestions for potential books from the new Redeemer imprint elicited this response: “Why is there a book called, No Patience with Frank Schaeffer?” To which I responded, “Frank S. has been very critical of religious moderates who sat by and let the right wing take over the party.”

My answer was based on my reading of Frank’s books Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back and Patience with God: Faith for People Who Dont Like Religion (or Atheism). In the Huffington Post Frank sums up his feelings towards those who claim to be “moderates” seeking “common ground” in an “Open Letter to the ‘Respectable’ Evangelical/Republican Party Leadership”:

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As reported in Publishers Weekly, Dutton and Riverhead are launching a new imprint that will be solely devoted to books from evangelical Christian preacher Timothy Keller and his Redeemer Presbyterian Church.

In light of Sarah Posner’s analysis of Keller’s Manhattan-based mega-church on Killing the Buddha, here are some suggested book titles we might see from the Redeemer line:

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During the recent New York Film Festival, I had the pleasure of sitting through a cornucopia of films. Here are just a few that caught my eye.

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When the stories about the nightclubbing Episcopal priest from Pennsylvania first hit my inbox, I was reminded of the sex scandals involving a range of Reverends including Jimmy Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, and Ted Haggard as well as self-professed “Christian” political leaders like Gov. Mark Sanford; former Rep. Chip Pickering (R-Miss.) and Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.)

All too often, the media focuses on the more salacious sexual aspect to these stories, ignoring the other more substantive issues that accompany such acting out behavior. For example, no one seemed to report on the Family’s range of questionable activities until Sanford, Pickering and Ensign were shown to be connected to the Family-owned C Street townhouse. In Salon this summer, Jeff Sharlet, author of the New York Times bestseller The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, wrote that these scandals aren’t simply a case of family values politicians getting caught with their pants down:

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In the March/April 2007 issue of The Wittenburg Door, I reported that the National Council of Churches had died on September 12th, 2005 in a beige colored conference room. While the specific cause of death was unknown, the NCCUSA had been in declining health for more than thirty years.

This progressive posse, which emerged as a promising pacifist figure during the 1950s, led the liberal Protestant churches through the civil-rights struggles of the 1960s, anti-Vietnam War movement of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, and the battles for women’s rights and gay rights in the ‘70s and ‘80s. However, they lost many of their foot soldiers during the Clinton era, when they went into hibernation inside a non-descript office building titled “the God Box” (because of all the religious organizations housed therein). While hunkered down in this Ivory Towered enclave, they began issuing proclamation after proclamation that were full of sound and fury but in the end, signified nothing. I concluded this obituary by noting that a proposed memorial service was cancelled due to lack of ecumenical enthusiasm and that fact that no one has yet noticed that the organization has folded, now two more years after its demise.

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On April 25, 2009, Joel and Victoria Osteen brought their motivational message to the Big Apple. Approximately 40,000 people showed up at the brand new 1.5 billion dollar Yankee Stadium to attend A Night of Hope with Joel & Victoria. When asked at the pre-show press conference what he wanted to say to New Yorkers regarding the current financial crisis, Joel replied:

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