So I’m working my way through the Book of Mormon at the moment. I don’t know how far along I will make it until I need a break. I find the style of it to be a little aggravating (it uses the phrase “and so it came to pass” the same way a hyperstereotypical valley girl says the word “like”). The story itself is slow-going, interrupted frequently with religious lectures. Which is good, because that’s partly why I am listening and have already discovered something pretty big that I did not know, but a fair amount of repetition. I am finishing up the second book of Nephi, the closing of which mostly seems to be a rehash of Isaiah. I might should have gone with the comic book, but I decided to go with the source material.

By way of bizarre coincidence, some missionaries stopped by today. I said, with a voice serious enough that they didn’t see an opening, “I am not interested.” They gave me a card and went their merry way.

For those of you that weren’t HC readers, I had to deal with missionaries when I was living in Deseret. I made the mistake of being a little too nice on the upfront, at which point they were hard to get rid of. Nice guys, to be sure, but I wasn’t really interested in being sold. I still have the Book of Mormon they gave me, though, with the underlined portions they told me to read.

I actually wouldn’t have minded talking to them about what I’d read, but I didn’t want to run into the same problem I had last time. Though I don’t doubt that they might be interested in telling me about this or that, I would be wasting their time since I am not a convert and I felt that by merely talking to them about it I might be giving them the wrong impression (even if I say, as I did last time, that I am not interested in conversion). It’s sort of like continuing to hang out with that girl that you’ve told you’re not looking for a relationship that she says she understands but quite frankly you know you should not believe her.

ThinkProgress cites a study that points out that Evangelical kids have premarital sex in similar numbers to everybody else: 80% for Evangelicals, 88% for heathens.

Both ED Kain and Russell Saunders, along with TP itself, cite the study as a case against Abstinence-Only education (AOE). As a practical matter, I am not a big fan of AOE. My wife Clancy and I do not intend to go that route and if our local school does, we will fill in the gaps ourselves. The only real area of disagreement between us, really, is how in depth we want to get (do we stop at the mot proven methods, or do we go over everything?). The clinical stuff will be hers; the psychological stuff will be mine.

Having said all of this, I don’t see this report as necessarily being more than just a poke in the eye of the self-righteous. There is also the assumption among many that we can count on the religious folks to forgo contraception either due to (a) lack of sex-ed and (b) the religious implications. It’s an assumption that is not foreign to me. Putting my mind in that of a religious person (I am a half-lapsed Episcopalian, a weak version of weak sauce), I can easily imagine an aversion to bringing a condom along or taking contraception because that makes the sex worse than just sex, it makes it premeditated sex. It might be easier to ask God for forgiveness for the heat of the moment, but might be harder to explain to God why you were so prepared for it. Also, Catholics and contraception (though the more Catholics I get to know, the less I find that this is really an issue - even among the devout).

However, the data doesn’t necessarily support that conclusion. According to the Add Health Study, very religious teens are within 10% of being as likely as the irreligious when it comes to using contraception (58% to 65%). If we consider the 8% difference between those who have sex and do not have sex to be on the irrelevant side of things, we have to view the 7% differential on contraception in the same light. The difference between those who use contraception the first time is only 1% different.

Now, the Add Health numbers and the numbers in the original article are not exactly measuring the same thing. For one thing, Add Health is looking at religiosity more than what the brand of religion is. So a self-described Evangelical who only attends church once a week would count as irreligious but a Unitarian who attends every week would be considered very religious. From the perspective of what we’re looking at, though, neither source is much more valuable than the other. Anybody can call themselves an Evangelical. The numbers for self-described Evangelicals is not necessarily indicative of the devout ones that keep their children sheltered. The TNC numbers are also looking at young adults while the Add Health numbers are looking at teenagers. If the discussion is sex ed, I think the latter numbers (which show a 15% differential in sex among whites) are probably more valuable.

However, even if we assume that there is relative parity between the religious freaks and the heathens, whether sex has occurred is really only part of the story. When did it occur? With what frequency? It’s entirely possible (and reasonable to believe, given the two sets of numbers we’re looking at) that the religious folks are starting later. It’s also not necessarily unreasonable to believe that they might have fewer partners are fewer instances, which can have other benefits down the line.

Sex is not necessarily a switch that one turns on, inviting a torrent of potential negative repercussions all at once once flipped. Just as contraception reduces the risk of pregnancy, so do partner reduction and instance reduction. Now, maybe this reduction is not occurring at all. Maybe they’re just a bunch of hypocrites. But the TNC numbers do not shed might light on this. Instead, we (and my initial response was no different) look at the numbers and assume a sort of boolean variable with all other things being equal (except contraception, which we assume is not equal because we know how those religious freaks are about contraception).

None of this is to say that Abstinence-Only education is a good idea. I am rather skeptical of the notion that a middle-aged teacher putting a condom on a banana is going to make teenagers all hot and bothered (I actually question the degree to which kids would listen in any event, because they are much more savvy than we, the ones who “just don’t get it”). I do think that an opt-out is reasonable, and I think the resistance to Abstinence-Plus is based more on philosophical tribalism rather than real pragmatism.

One of the reasons I do think that AOE is a losing battle, though, is because whether sex is in the classroom or not, it’s virtually everywhere else in as public a spectacle as the FCC will allow. This is one of the reasons that devout Christians often try to pull a curtain to the rest of the world. When I lived in Mormonland, I sort of rolled my eyes at the cottage industry of avoid-secular-society movies and entertainment that they lined up for their kids. But really, that has as much to do with my religious inclinations than good parenting or bad. Evangelicals and Mormons have a sub-culture to retreat to. We don’t. If we did, it might not be all that unattractive an option.

Zoey {Lapsed Catholic}: What are you, Will?

Trumwill {Episcopalian}: Episcopalian.

Zoey: Oh! Catholic but with gay priests!

Hiram {Catholic}: No, no, Catholic with openly gay priests. We have our fair share…

Zoey: True.

Hiram: And with Jim McGreevey.

Trumwill: Not a priest!

Hiram Jr. {Catholic?}: Yet!

Trumwill: No, he was denied! Even we have our standards.

Hiram: Anyway, so Catholicism with divorce, openly gay preachers, and a disregard for tradition.

Trumwill: Tradition tempered by reason. We like to say that God gave us the ability to reason for a reason.

Betsy {Baptist}: So you can ignore what the Bible actually says?

Trumwill: Scripture also tempered by reason.

Hiram: You’re a very tempered bunch.

Trumwill: It’s our trademark.

Humor that nobody will get. And those who get it might be offended.

I was reading an article about how the LDS church has its own online bookstore app. I actually chuckled at one of the comments:

They have also announced an app that will automatically transfer the money in your savings account to the most charismatic person in your ward. This will save you the time of listening to his get-rich-quick sale while he slaps you on the back and calls you brother.

They, in turn, will have an app that will text their heartfelt apology to the judge (also in their ward) who will sentence him to 24 months, translating into wages of roughly 1.5 million per year.

I love technology.

Get-rich-quick schemes in Deseret were allegedly so common that wards stopped passing out phone directories for their church because they were being used in various money-making schemes. Indeed, there were three major employers in the town where I worked. A federal government installation, my employer (tangentially involved in a lot of people trying to get rich quick), and an Amway sort of company that sells snake oil. Edgar, a guy who was let go from my employer, got a multilayer marketing job afterwards and hit us all up for a chance to get rich quick, too. That these sorts of things appeal to Mormons speaks to their industriousness, though it certainly has its downsides.

Mitt Earnesty

In a thread over in TLoOG, I realized something noteworthy: I would actually be shocked if it came out that Mitt Romney cheated on his wife. I really would. Some of it has to do with the fact that he’s as stiff as a sitcom starched shirt, but there’s also the Mormon thing. I hadn’t though about it too much, but I really do have a greater expectation on the practice-preach. Particularly the ones, like Romney, who are somewhat understated about it.

I can’t say that I was surprised about Gingrich. I’d be surprised to find out that Huckabee cheated, but not shocked.

It could be related to the fact that, until Huckabee entered the race last time around, the Mormon was the only major candidate to have only married one woman. Giuliani and McCain had five between them. Fred Thompson would later enter with two, though he wasn’t a major candidate.

The Catholic Church has approved an iPhone app that helps guide worshippers through confession:

The Confession program has gone on sale through iTunes for £1.19 ($1.99).

Described as “the perfect aid for every penitent”, it offers users tips and guidelines to help them with the sacrament.

Now senior church officials in both the UK and US have given it their seal of approval, in what is thought to be a first.

The app takes users through the sacrament - in which Catholics admit their wrongdoings - and allows them to keep track of their sins.

It also allows them to examine their conscience based on personalised factors such as age, sex and marital status - but it is not intended to replace traditional confession entirely.

Instead, it encourages users to understand their actions and then visit their priest for absolution.

This is treated as a “news of the weird” sort of thing, but it sounds like a neat app. What kind of surprises me is that they’re charging for it. They being the developers, not the church. This strikes me as one of those things that you do for God or the Church or something.

{Editor’s warning: the topic of discussion here is in regard to the “third rail” and the popularity, and possible implications thereof, for Joel Osteen and other new-agey type preachers. Despite the particular rail in question being homosexuality, in keeping with Hit Coffee’s continuing guidelines, please do not feel this is an excuse to write anything that is heavily derogatory towards homosexuals, heterosexuals, or persons on either side of the argument concerning the moral or ethical status thereof.

Our friend Wesley occasionally sends in some tip stories; today’s brings up a nationally famous pastor whose congregation lives in his city, a televangelist-type by the name of Joel Osteen. The last time he made big national news, his wife was having a few issues regarding her enormous ego.

Part of the discussion of what makes Osteen so popular is that, until this point, he’s basically stayed well under the radar when it comes to anything controversial. Rather than being a hellfire-and-brimstone hardcore Baptist-type, a “follow the rules” Catholic type, Osteen is very much a new-agey, “do what feels good”, “peace love dope=god”, welcome to the Bible TV Hour type pastor, the kind of man who wouldn’t be out of place making a cameo on quite possibly the worst TV show that has ever been made.

That being said, apparently Osteen has had a change of heart, or else he’s decided he has a big enough flock to take the risk of going into some third-rail topics, and so he is openly switching away from his previous “I don’t talk about sin” stance into beginning to say, on the air, that certain things are in fact sinful. On the other hand, apparently this stems at least partially from a lower-profile altercation back in November in which Osteen got into it with Joy Behar; then again, Behar seems to have an ongoing need to generate “controversy” to keep View viewership up, and she definitely isn’t above engineering a segment where she’s trying to put words in someone’s mouth while not letting them get in a word of their own edgewise.

Popularity is a hard thing to follow. Someone can be very popular, and then do something incredibly stupid, and turn most of their fanbase against them in one fell swoop. Osteen’s carefully crafted public image is about avoiding that if at all possible; certainly, he tried to sweep his wife’s temper tantrum under the rug, and he’s been very circumspect about discussing other “third rail” issues - divorce (then again his own father had been divorced, politics, or many other controversial topics. Even in the Behar transcript, he seems to be trying to get to a “well we believe homosexuality is a sin but we don’t condemn people for it or kick them out of church for it” stance, while Behar’s very hung up on berating him for using “homosexuality” and “sin” in the same sentence.

At the end of the day, it’s going to be interesting to see where this one goes. Osteen may very well go quickly into the new-agey, self-help-book writing, “Stuart Smalley“-style preacher he’s been to this point, or maybe he’ll start getting a little more into “well this is what the book says, we would love to help you stop sinning” territory. Only time will tell.

Rotten.com has an amazingly harsh article on Mother Theresa. There are two main things it focuses on. The one it spends the most time on is their perception that she was willing to overlook certain abuses from people who treated her well - Indira Gandhi’s imposition of martial law in India in 1975, the son Sanjay’s program of sterilization for the poor, and the Haitian Duvalier regime given as examples. I’m sure there are other details involved, and I’m sure that she (like many people at the time, and similar to the way in which Castro and Chavez routinely have managed to pull the wool over idiotic hollyweird celebrities with more teeth than brain cells) was duped and would probably have said differently had she not been on the wrong side of the dog-and-pony show.

The second point on which it attacks her is the fact that, following the 1971 war which created Bangladesh, she called out for thousands of raped women not to abort the resulting fetuses. This is one of the ongoing items which tends to be a very hard question to answer: should abortion be allowed/encouraged for a woman impregnated as the result of rape?

The question itself lends a hint as to why it is so hard to answer. The circumstances - the rape, the condition of the mother following rape, the fact that the pregnancy will inevitably remind the woman of what happened in a very obvious way - are nothing but grotesque. Depending on one’s beliefs, the options are no less vile.

On the one hand, you might believe (as do most religions) that “human life begins at conception.” In this case, there are a few very ugly points to consider:
1 - Having to carry to term (or even just long enough for a caesarean or induced labor) means the constant reminder of what happened, which may drive the mother to self-destructive acts, possibly up to suicide.
2 - On the belief that the fetus deserves the full rights of any human being, and as a baby is innocent of the circumstances of its conception, ending its life is at worst outright murder and at best the killing of one innocent to try to save the life of another victim.
The question from this perspective then becomes: what is the risk to the mother, and what are the chances the fetus/baby can be carried to term and then given some form of a life (foster/adoption care, etc) to live?

On the other hand, you might believe (as a sizable portion of the population does) that human life begins at some arbitrary point; when the heart first beats, brainwaves first appear, “when it could survive outside the womb” (which keeps getting earlier and earlier as medical technology advances, and may eventually reach the point where an “artificial womb” could raise a human from zygote to birth without the need of a mother at all), or so on. In that case, the calculation inevitably turns to “get rid of it before it reaches that point, since it was forced into the mother against her will.”

To my perspective, none of the options are (at present time) particularly appealing. Bad choices tend to stem from bad circumstances, and these being particularly bad circumstances, I’m not sure that an agreement could ever be fully reached on the “right” thing to do in general. I don’t necessarily think that her calling out to try to prevent the abortions was either evil, or unjustified (especially by the teachings of her church). Neither am I fully convinced that removing the option entirely, especially for those who might be driven to desperate measures, is necessarily the wisest course.

My former boss Willard passed along this on Facebook:

My name is Michael Otterson. I am here representing the leadership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to address the matter of the petition presented today by the Human Rights Campaign.

While we disagree with the Human Rights Campaign on many fundamentals, we also share some common ground. This past week we have all witnessed tragic deaths across the country as a result of bullying or intimidation of gay young men. We join our voice with others in unreserved condemnation of acts of cruelty or attempts to belittle or mock any group or individual that is different – whether those differences arise from race, religion, mental challenges, social status, sexual orientation or for any other reason. Such actions simply have no place in our society.

This Church has felt the bitter sting of persecution and marginalization early in our history, when we were too few in numbers to adequately protect ourselves and when society’s leaders often seemed disinclined to help. Our parents, young adults, teens and children should therefore, of all people, be especially sensitive to the vulnerable in society and be willing to speak out against bullying or intimidation whenever it occurs, including unkindness toward those who are attracted to others of the same sex. This is particularly so in our own Latter-day Saint congregations. Each Latter-day Saint family and individual should carefully consider whether their attitudes and actions toward others properly reflect Jesus Christ’s second great commandment - to love one another.

I find it important that they do not just reject violence towards homosexuality, but also non-violent bullying as well. From the same source, I was quite surprise and happy to read this:

The Church said the Salt Lake City Council’s new nondiscrimination ordinance “is fair and reasonable” and balances fair housing and employment rights with the religious rights of the community.

Otterson told city council members: “The issue before you tonight is the right of people to have a roof over their heads and the right to work without being discriminated against. But, importantly, the ordinances also attempts to balance vital issues of religious freedom. In essence, the Church agrees with the approach which Mayor Becker is taking on this matter.”

I disagree pretty strongly with the Church on gay marriage, though I know many of you agree with it. Regardless, the position on housing and jobs is a position that the Church did not have to take. Kudos to them for doing so.

According to once source, Mormons have higher-than-average IQs (and this remains true even if you’re looking only at non-Hispanic whites). Considerably higher, as far as averages go. Of course, the even juicier part for me is that Episcopalians are even higher. Higher than smug agnostics and atheists, even. So now I have a response next time some atheist talks about atheist IQ’s. And I myself can be smug against those people that are spiritual-but-not-religious, who are a few pegs further down than Episcopalians or Atheists. The Jewish are, of course, higher than everybody else.

It’s interesting to contemplate what makes some religions do better than others on these sorts of tests. That’s in large part because there are two ways that religions gain followers. They are born or they are made. So for instance, it could be true that Baptists have lower IQs in the aggregate because it is a theology that is most attractive to people with lower IQs. Or it could be that they have lower IQs because of the population of people born into the faith. The possibility, involving the other two, is that smart Baptists leave the faith. My impression of Baptists is that a disproportionate number of them are made and not born. On the other hand, I know comparatively few former Baptists, so it’s less like say the Church of Christ (The ICC, not the Congregationalists) which by virtue of its inflexibility seems to hemorrhage people that can’t buy into it full freight. While Baptists are often known for being liberal, liberals like my former roommate can still find a place within the church and still be Baptist. The numbers don’t reflect any distinction between the conservative Southern Baptists and the mainline American Baptists. Because of this and its non-centralized leadership, it’s less either-or than say the LDS or Catholic churches. So my former roommate Hubert can still be a Baptist while still being a socially liberal Democrat.

My own Episcopal Church definitely falls into the category of one you are born into. The only converts we really get are disaffected liberal Catholics and they can be really hard to pry loose from that church even if it’s driving them crazy. Meanwhile, Episcopalians are constantly leaving the church for either Catholicism or conservative protestantism depending on whether they are High Church or Low Church sorts of folks. So when it comes to Episcopalians, it comes down to who is left. Apparently it’s a disproportionate number of the smart people that end up hanging around. My guess is that, despite the fact I’m not myself a very good Episcopalian, I am representative of a fair selection of its membership. TEC is liberal enough that it’s almost not worth leaving whatever our theological uncertainties. A lot of those that leave for more conservative protestant churches are often those whose minds cannot handle infirm theology and want to go somewhere where they are simply told how it is. The same is probably true, to a lesser extent, of those that leave for Catholicism. Meanwhile, those that stay behind are disproportionately likely to have the intelligence to contemplate the vagueries of the church and can handle the contradictory views within the church. And given Episcopalianism’s and Anglicanism’s well-heeled history, they were probably starting from a relatively high set-point anyway.

Catholicism, which is relatively middling, is another interesting case. It’s definitely something that most adherents are born into. Those born into the faith include a lot of Italians and Irish who are not known for being particularly intelligent (in the non-Hispanic white population) and those that came here back in the day were not (as far as I know) likely to come from the higher classes out there. I don’t think that former Catholics are as likely to be disproportionately from the more intelligent or less intelligent sectors of the rank and file. They do seem to be getting a lot of high-profile conversions among intelligent conservatives that want religion but don’t want low-brow protestantism, though I do not know how significant it is to the population at large. I know at least one protestant-raised guy that converted to Catholicism and he’s pretty smart. I know a number of Catholic-raised folks that left the church and they’re pretty smart, too. Then again, I think it’s safe to say that I know a disproportionate number of smart people.

I’ve got no good reason for the Mormons to do as well as they do. They don’t have an especially well-heeled history. Theirs is a church that’s hard to leave but also hard for someone with any serious theological doubts to stay into. The former Mormons I know are disproportionately really intelligent. Maybe it goes back to the polygamy wherein men of limited intelligence were simply excluded from breeding. The church I suppose is large enough that inbreeding was not as big an issue as I would expect in the FLDS. Then again, is the LDS church of old that much bigger than the FLDS church of today?

Or maybe the numbers are just goofy and flawed. They’re taken from something called the NLY97 test. It’s possible that for Catholics, for instance, a disproportionate number of test-takers came from superior Catholic schools and so they ended up higher than they should have. Ditto for Episcopalians. So these numbers could all be useless. But what fun would posting on that be?

Spiritual women are more promiscuous than are non-spiritual women. The study differentiated between “spiritual” and “religious” and though the article focuses on spirituality, the pecking order seems to be spiritual over non-spiritual, irreligious over religious. Their theory:

“Believing one is intimately tied to other human beings and that interconnectedness and harmony are indispensible may lead one to believe sexual intimacy possesses a divine or transcendent quality in itself,” Burris writes. “In fact, ascribing sacred qualities to sex has been positively associated with positive affective reactions to sex, frequency of sex, and number of sexual partners among university students.”

Sounds blissful.

I have an alternative theory.

Being an atheist is undemanding but also unpopular and for a lot of people unfulfilling. Being a member of an organized religious provides you with a packaged set of beliefs but comes with a bunch of rules you have to follow. Call yourself “spiritual” and not “religious” and you can do whatever the heck you want with less in the way of social consequences and you can find meaning in whatever the heck you want to find meaning in. So if it feels good you can make it not about feeling good but about connectedness and all that jazz. The rules are typically more generous when you make them up as you go along. You get gratification from all ends.

That these people would correlate highly with people that engage in promiscuous, unprotected sex is hardly a surprise.

A bit of religious inclusivity argumentation in Denver makes for an interesting discussion.

On the one side, we have a little girl. Probably too little to understand much of what’s going on, but not too young to be used as a pawn by the cynical.

On another side, we have the parents of the little girl - in this case, biological mom and lesbian partner. Who, reading through the lines of the various news stories, probably (a) lied on their initial application to the school, (b) were pushing to tell other kids about how it was “not wrong” to be gay, and (c) did enough that the school administration’s attention was called to the situation.

On another side, we have other kids in the class. Who probably are too young to care, but again were probably turned into pawns being made to discuss the “two mommies” situation.

On another side, we have the other kids’ parents. At least a few of who, sending their kids to a private, religiously based school, were (at least statistically speaking) likely to have a problem having to have the “well this is why Daisy having two mommies is not a good situation” discussion with their 4- or 5-year-olds.

On another side, we have the school administration, likely caught between church doctrine, the lesbians, the other parents, and trying to work things out so as not to cause untold misery to a 4 year old girl. More on that in a minute.

On the final side, we have… well, I personally would have stronger words regarding them, but let’s just call them “the usual round of outspoken, opinionated advocate groups who happen to have a deep-seated and preexisting hatred for the Catholic church.” The ones who the lesbians enlisted for an attack.

The school came to a decision, one which I believe was probably the best they could come up with. It’s obvious that the “two mommies” were pretty outspoken about their lifestyle choice. Whether you consider it moral or immoral, the Catholic Church believes it is immoral, and it was obviously causing enough consternation at some level or other that they believed having the kid exist in the school long-term would be seen as a “signal” that they were condoning the behavior in question. On the other hand (and having been through it myself, I can say from experience that it does indeed suck), uprooting a kid in the middle of semester causes hell. Social cliques are formed, and the kid gets hit with the “oh that’s the interloper” stigma. Bring a kid in at the beginning of a new school year, along with the usual classroom shuffling, and there is much less in the way of social integration trouble. So the school made what I consider a generous offer: the kid could stay through the end of school year, giving the lesbian moms >6 months to study and investigate and apply to new schools and be all prepared for next fall.

The response from the lesbians was to enlist the usual hate groups. I consider this saddening, and not a little indicative of ulterior motives on their side.

As far as churches go, Will’s spoken of his friend being kicked out of one for being in an unmarried, cohabiting relationship. Some new-age-ey churches say “gay, straight, bi, poly, whatever the hell you want.” Some protestant churches are openly dealing with schisms surrounding their ordination of openly gay individuals. Some churches struggle with the married-vs-unmarried priesthood concept. Some churches are dealing with the whether-or-nots of ordaining women. Chances are if you look hard enough, you can find a church that doesn’t care on your “particular” issue of choice.

Generally, however, a church or church-based entity is going to be subject to different rules than society. There are things society condones/tolerates/”puts up with” that they may say are immoral. They may ask you not to bring these up within their doors. They may pull you aside and say “for the good of your soul, you really shouldn’t be doing that.” Occasionally, if someone is really, really insistent on making a public jerk of themselves about some point or other, they may ask them not to attend church services. If you are working for them or applying for a job with them, and it comes out that you are consistently doing something they consider seriously immoral and are unrepentant about it, they may refuse to hire you or even let you go.

In the case of a 4 year old girl in Denver, her “two mommies” apparently made the situation untenable enough that the school/church’s response was, “please find another school for your child.” The sad side of me says it sucks to be the little girl. The cynical side of me says, given what’s being “left unsaid” by both sides, that most likely the little girl is an unwitting pawn in a very, very cynical ploy by the “two mommies.”

In truth, I really don’t know whether God exists or not. For a variety of reasons, I have an operational assumption that He does, but the more I really try to pin it down, the more agnostic I become. A lot of agnostics and atheists say that they wish that they were religious, but often do so in a tone dripping with condescension: “I wish I could be such a simpleton as to believe in something that obviously gives your simple little mind happiness.” But it’s true, for me, that I wish that I were more religious than I am. Not so much because it would make things simpler to have all the answers, but because the times when a sort of semblance of faith has touched my life, it has helped me tremendously.

One of the things that I really appreciate about country music is the way that it is able to weave religion and God into its content in a way that is accessible to people like me. Songs purely about loving God or praising Him are about as interesting to me as songs about being soooo in love with some chick or some dude. It has to be done really well to avoid being insufferably dull. So it becomes one of those things where artists that have to write for people that don’t experience God in quite the same way that they do have to go the extra mile in making a song original, interesting, or relatable.

Religious songs in country music are hit and miss, but some of them, when they hit, had a pretty profound effect on me. One such artist made a point of having at least one religious song on each CD that he put out there. In between songs about getting drunk and misbehaving, there would be some of the most interesting songs that were sort of a follow-up for the toll that it is taking not just on his life, but on his soul. The first such song uses great imagery of a bible sitting on his dresser and a woman’s clothes tossed around his floor and between the stained glass on a chapel and neon signs in bars.

In the outset of a bootleg version of the song, he describes it as such: “It’s about being a sinner. And knowin’ it.” That’s also a theme of his follow-up to it, which is about his inability to figure out why, exactly, God would love him.

I mention those songs even though there are others requesting that God give the singer the strength to go on, requesting that Satan kiss the singer’s posterior, or the Devil being challenged to some competition involving classic automobiles. But it’s the songs about being a sinner and knowing it that I think of most because, at that point in my life, that was a message that resonated with me greatly.

When I was listening to these songs, I was doing things that I was not proud of. I was doing things that I simply did not consider to be me, yet there I was doing them. The notion of there being a God that loves me anyway was really appealing on that basis. Not because it allowed me to screw up as much as I wanted, but rather because it challenged me to be worthy of that love.

And in some ways it could be said that it was not even about God at all. It was about having parents that loved me, friends that prayed for me, and so on. It was about having been given all of this, screwing it up, and yet having a sense that things did not have to be this way and that I was not beyond redemption.

It would have been really easy for me to leave it at that. But I didn’t.

Instead, there were moments when I really, truly felt something like what I’m told God’s presence feels like. Like He was there. It was enough to get me going to church again and trying to rap my head around the concept of God as more than just a concept and of Jesus and Jesus’ message of being more than just words in a book.

But, as is often the case when I try to think about God logically, when I would look for Him, He wouldn’t be there. It was light a shadow or a phantom in the corner of my eye. I turn my eyes and suddenly He was gone. Only to creep back in when I was thinking not of Him, but of the subjects that seemed to pique His interest in me.

Maybe it was just an imaginary physical manifestation of the desire on my part to be a better person. But it got me through some pretty hard times when it seemed that very little in my life was going right in regards to what I was doing but also (perhaps mostly) in regards to what was going on around me. And His intrusion wasn’t even particularly welcome. My preferred relationship with God is less intimate and in times when I feel like I have a better handle on things. I don’t like being that guy who only comes to God (or wants God to come to him) when he wants something.

But it was what it was, or wasn’t what it wasn’t, depending. Unwelcome, but ultimately helpful. A helpful delusion, or a momentary glimpse of and connection with a typically elusive deity. The more I try to look at it, the less tangible it all becomes. Not unlike the musical distinction between the off-putting songs trying to convince me to believe in God and the songs in which God is part of a backdrop of a grander narrative.

Though I’m not a hugely religious person, I’ve always had an appreciation for music which manages to incorporate religion in a way that I find palatable. This song relies heavily on finding grace through God, but ultimately I consider it about “rising above” and turning away from self-destructive sin.

This video gets the spotlight this weekend not entirely because of the lyrical content of the song, but also because it represents everything a music video should be. It outlines and reinforces the message of the song without simply being a literal representation of it.

Clancy and I did laundry on Sunday. I hadn’t realized that Clancy needed to use my phone to call her mother (who is about to leave the country), so when she told me to bring something to do at the laundromat, I figured my phone would be sufficient. When she went outside to make her call, I had nothing to do. Fortunately, though, there was a WATCHTOWER in on a table. On the cover was a picture of flames with the test “SHOULD YOU BE AFRAID OF HELL?”

The answer, it turned out, was “No.”

I never had any idea what the Jehova’s Witness folks (who make the Watchtower) thought about Hell, but there’s no way I would have guessed that judging by the cover.

Chris Dierkes, a former Jesuit seminary student turned Anglican, has a host of interesting observations about sexuality in the Catholic and Anglo-Catholic priesthoods:

I’ve spent some portion of time in Latin America (Mexico, Peru, and Nicaragua to be precise) and how many times did I meet a local parish priest who had a live-in nanny or church secretary or housecleaning lady or whatever they called her along with the priest’s “nephew” or “niece”? Answer: more than once.

Why don’t we just call it what it is? She’s not the cleaning lady; she’s his wife. He’s her husband. That’s their child. They’re a family. The family is a good, even naturally beautiful thing. What’s unnatural is to be unable to call this what it is.

Just so with gay clergy. Their offering is a very holy one, but the gift becomes marred when locked into this tortured game of doing everything possible–inevitably ending in ironic tragic-comedy as I said–to not admit what is totally obvious and staring you in the face. When freed from this hypocritical charade, their lives become become a symbol both of a desire for and expression of a redeemed humanity, a redeemed creaturely existence. (Or so I believe anyway).

The reasons why homosexuals may be disproportionately represented in the Catholic priesthood seems obvious: if one is uncomfortable with one’s sexuality, choosing a path where one is denied the their sexuality is highly logical. That there seems to be portions of this in the Anglican Communion strikes me as bizarre. Perhaps relating to my own difficulties with faith and how I am an Episcopalian by genealogy and default as much as sturdy conviction, my thought is that if you’re a homosexual that cannot embrace your homosexuality, and you’re a High Church, Anglo-Catholic conservative type… why not just cross the dang pond? To be a conservative Anglo-Catholic of the sort that the Pope is reaching out to is to reject a good portion of what makes the Anglican Church distinct from the Catholic Church. These days, even the conservatism is somewhat optional in the Catholic ministry.

As Episcopalianism is one of the periodic topics of Hit Coffee, I’d been intending to remark on His Holiness’s recent entreaty with conservative High Church Episcopalians to (re-)join the fold, but I haven’t had enough time to develop a concrete thesis.

A few months ago, I had never heard of Alberto Cutie. He is apparently a popular Spanish-speaking Catholic priest in Miami that was caught necking with a woman. Interestingly, he refused to become the Poster Boy for the celibacy requirement of Roman Catholic priests. Less surprisingly, he has since left the Roman Catholic Church to become an Episcopalian pastor. Despite his desire not to become a living, breathing reason to question the Catholic requirement, the departure of a popular priest who had the misfortune to fall in love becomes just that. Of course, those most likely to consider his relevance are those that already don’t agree with the celibacy requirement.

I am generally loathe to make declarations about what groups that I do not belong to ought to do. It becomes sort of like when Republicans used to give “advice” to the Democrats about how to reverse their fortunes. The same sort of advice (from the other direction) that Democrats are giving Republicans now. The problem with such advice is that it ranges from biased to disingenuous. People that lecture a group about what it should be with no real intention of joining said group simply don’t have the standing to have their advice received. Having no vested interest in the success of the group and therefore being immune to the negative repercussions of their advice (if followed), in addition to being biased and disingenuous the advice is simply bad. The churches that do everything the non-churchgoing, irreligious people say that churches should do to grow and stay relevant instead shrink and become less relevant. So I take the point of view that the discussion of matters such as priestly celibacy is the church’s to have.

All of that being said, what point is a blog if not for saying pointless things that you don’t have the standing to say? I’m partially kidding. Though my thoughts are unlikely to be received by anyone that matters, I think that it is interesting to investigate the effect that such requirements have on a pool of candidates.

It seems to me that these requirements would broadly produce candidates that fall into one of two categories: People willing to give themselves over completely to God despite the onerous requirements and people for whom the requirement is, for one reason or another, not much of a sacrifice. The first group are often precisely the people you want as priests. The second group includes others that you might want, too. People that are naturally asexual, homosexual disinclined to act on it, and widowers. The latter group also includes people that you really, really don’t want. I don’t think that there is much need to elaborate on that.

But as important as the quality of candidates is the quantity. The shortage of priests in the United States is well-known. I’ve read statistics suggesting 1 in 4 American parishes do not have priests, a statistic that seems awfully high but even if it is it is a problem that’s getting worse. But I’ve read that despite its dwindling membership that The Episcopal Church has a shortage of its own. And some are arguing that the problem is one of distribution rather than numbers:

In fact, says Fr. Paul Sullins, the level of lay involvement, combined with increased use of deacons and falling rates of church participation among the nation’s 66.4 million Catholics, makes the whole question of a priest shortage not a crisis, but a manageable problem.

“It’s not a national shortage,” said Sullins, a married former Episcopal priest and father of three who was ordained into the Catholic church in May 2002. Rather, “it’s a shortage in certain dioceses” resulting from a “poor distribution of priests.”

“If the priests were evenly distributed among the country there would be at least one … per parish. The number of parishioners has grown a lot in the past 40 years, but the number of parishes has not grown as much.”

So it’s possible that even with the requirement they can pick up the slack with deacons and better distributions. Or by consolidating parishes. Or a bunch of other ways. The celibacy requirement seems to have become part of the character of the church and I could definitely see how it would be unwise to uproot that out of short-term utilitarianism when there are always going to be ways to compensate for it.

Religious traditions are traditions and our perceptions of normalcy are often simply the product of the environment in which we were raised. The reason that I remain a member of my church (albeit a… relaxed one…) is because it is what is normal to me. If I go to a charismatic protestant service, the jumping up and down and clapping and all that comes across to me as a bit of a spectacle. I’ve always felt more at home in Catholic services due in large part to their similarities to Episcopalian. But what I see as the idiosyncrasies of the Catholic Church are… well… precisely involving the areas in which it differs from my own.

So with that in mind I can respect the differences between the Catholic and Episcopalian churches and the value they put on the differences. But I nonetheless do want to advocate one major point that, even if there weren’t a question of shortages or a sex abuse scandal or anything like that, makes me appreciate the protestant way of doing things. I like the fact that the pastors in my church are, to some extent, one of us. I think that it helps them relate to the lives of the parishioners that they have imperfect marriages and children just like we do (or will). While I can appreciate the appeal of priests that are above (or apart from) that sort of thing, I think that there is value in a priests ability to better relate to the people that he is preaching to. In the Mormon church (as well as many protestant denominations), they go a step further and don’t have professional clergy and instead have members of the congregation appointed to the position and so they not only have the wife and kids but also the job and mortgage (Episcopal pastors have their housing taken care of).

In that vein, I found the aforelinked Slate piece by Michael Sean Winters to be puzzling in one respect:

In fact, ending celibacy would bring on a different set of problems and issues. Priests earn very little money, making supporting a family, let alone sending a child to college, seem impossible. Would salaries go up, and are the people in the pews willing to pay for that? The first time a priest abandons his wife and children, people would be clamoring for the good old days when priests did not marry.

Keeping in mind that I go to the church of rich people, is this really an issue? Episcopal pastors support families including a wife who rarely ever works (my own church growing up had one pastor whose wife worked… it caused problems). Divorce rates amongst clergy are generally pretty low, particularly in conservative denominations where losing your family can mean losing your jobs. This isn’t exactly uncharted territory. But I guess it would be for Catholics, and that is not unimportant. Amongst the laypeople, Catholics are not much less likely to divorce than average. That could be said to say that they would get over the first priestly divorce… or to say (as Winters does) that celibacy is a way to shield their pastors from such common human failings.

Faith Fighter

Mohammad is one bad mofo. Invisibility is a hard power to fight against. I want to play this game some more, but I don’t want to screw up my laptop keyboard. I’ll have to remember this for later.

Per 2 Blowhards I found a familiar religious quiz. I take this quiz every few years and the results are generally pretty constant despite whatever it is I believe that I believe at any given point. Bahai is always at top. The Judaisms are usually not far behind (though Liberal Quaker used to be right there with them). It used to be that Unitarianism was higher up there. I’m not sure where Sikhism or Islam came from.

Anyway, it’s kind of a silly quiz, but a fun enough way to pass the time.

1. Baha’i Faith (100%)
2. Reform Judaism (100%)
3. Orthodox Judaism (98%)
4. Sikhism (96%)
5. Islam (94%)
6. Liberal Quakers (79%)
7. Jainism (79%)
8. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (75%)
9. Unitarian Universalism (75%)
10. Hinduism (60%)
11. Mahayana Buddhism (60%)
12. Neo-Pagan (54%)
13. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (52%)
14. New Age (51%)
15. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (51%)
16. Orthodox Quaker (50%)
17. Theravada Buddhism (50%)
18. New Thought (49%)
19. Eastern Orthodox (48%)
20. Roman Catholic (48%)
21. Seventh Day Adventist (44%)
22. Scientology (43%)
23. Secular Humanism (41%)
24. Jehovah’s Witness (40%)
25. Taoism (40%)
26. Nontheist (36%)
27. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (33%)

Transplanted Lawyer (self-declared atheist) brings up the story of the American Atheists trying to stop the Utah Highway Patrol’s desire to put up a white cross next to places where officers have been killed. He doesn’t think that it’s a good idea because it’s something that does not elicit an iota of general public support. And it risks backlash of the sort where the court can declare a cross a “secular symbol”… which is what the courts actually did. TL isn’t pleased by that result:

There you go — a ruling that the cross is now a secular symbol of death and mourning. Which means that not only can it go up on roadside memorials, it can go up on the walls of courtrooms, city halls, and the Utah Legislature because it can be called a “memorial” to fallen soldiers, 9/11 victims, or anyone else that no one with the remotest bit of political sense would dare attack. Good job protecting the wall of separation of church and state there, American Atheists!

There are two great ironies here:

1. The white crosses in the state of Utah are almost certainly secular in nature.
2. The Utah Legislature would have almost certainly no desire to put the cross everywhere, even if they could.

If a state in the south were to argue that the white cross is a secular symbol, I would probably scoff. Actually, not just the south. Almost any state. Any state except Utah, that is. And maybe Idaho. Why? Because Utah happens to be the only state in the continental United States that I am aware of where the dominant religion (or denomination, depending on how you look at it) does not recognize the cross as a holy symbol. Utah is, of course, predominantly Mormon. Mormons are particularly active in positions of authority such as police departments and government because they are united and civilly active. So it stands to reason that most of the people behind the push for the white cross are Mormons. And Mormons do not recognize the cross as a holy symbol.

Their churches do not have crosses. Their temples do not have crosses. Necklaces around their neck do not contain crosses. In short, Mormons don’t do crosses. So if Mormons (or Utahns) want crosses on the side of the road, it is almost certainly secular in nature.

What’s bizarre is that someone in the American Atheists must know this. Or if they didn’t know if off the bat, the Utah branch of the ACLU might have given their erstwhile allies a heads up. I had to check, but there is an ACLU in Utah, though I couldn’t find anything on American Atheists of Utah. Somebody, somewhere must have told them that this was not the fight to pick. Even if knowing that crosses are not a Mormon thing and that the crosses are religious in content if not in intent, surely someone, somewhere must have looked at this case and known that it was a fool’s quest. Right? Or are these people so insulated that they don’t know any Mormons to inform them of the whole cross thing or that suing cops wanting to honor their fallen brethren is a bad idea?

In short, to the extent that this case drew my attention, it actually convinced me that white crosses are a secular symbol. Had this taken place in South Carolina, I would have doubted it very strongly. And if you would have told me that someone was suing the state of Utah because of some improprieties involving Church and State, I would almost certainly give the plaintiffs the benefit of the doubt. This is the case that convinces me that Utah isn’t always wrong on Church/State issues and that the cross is indeed a secular symbol, at least in it’s white-by-the-road form.

I don’t think that’s what the American Atheists were going for…

I stumbled across this video, which is a Christian explanation of the Greek town of Colossae, from which (indirectly) my hometown has been pseudonamed:

No particular point in posting this except for the connection between the city’s name and a religion I’ve done more reading up on than many.