We love the Mute

Our recently departed-to-Beirut brother Mutimer reported some shocking news on his blog yesterday (which we are pleased to see he is updating regularly--keep it up!)

I got to admit yesterday was a little creepy. In the middle of the afternoon horns blaring multiple cars began flying down the streets. Men in 20's were hanging out their windows yelling arabic words (which I have yet to come to learn) and waving their green party flag. Knowing that politcal happenings had been occuring within the Lebanense parliament throughout the day, several of us thought it was an advancing official. But instead we quickly learned that the flag we saw was that of Hezzbollah (please mind my spelling) I have to admit I was a little nervous, it wasn't until they passed that I recaught my breath. My reaction was normal but it was not well placed. Hezbollah made popular by the bombing in 1983 of the marine base in Beirut has not taken part in active violenc since. They are now a striving political party with what some might call radical views. It's interesting to read about those who I am now in the midst with. I'll continue to keep you posted.

I have to say I was a little skeptical, but Chris is there and I am here, so hey, what do I know? But then I read this:

Hezbollah Claims Attacks on Israeli Troops

Wednesday June 29, 2005 3:31 PM

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) - Hezbollah guerrillas attacked Israeli troops in a disputed part of the south Lebanon border Wednesday, according to Lebanese security officials and Hezbollah's Al Manar TV channel.

The guerrillas attacked three Israeli positions in Chebaa Farms, an area where the borders of Lebanon, Syria and Israel meet, the TV and Lebanese officials said.

Israeli forces responded by shelling suspected guerrilla hideouts near the town of Kfar Chouba in the vicinity of Chebaa Farms, Al Manar reported.

In Jerusalem, the Israeli Defense Force declined to comment.

Chebaa Farms has become the focus of Hezbollah attacks on Israeli forces since the Jewish state withdrew its troops from southern Lebanon in 2000. Lebanon and Syria say Chebaa Farms is Lebanese territory, but U.N. cartographers who surveyed the border after the Israeli withdrawal in 2000 said it belongs to that part of Syria which Israel has occupied since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

I was more than a little confused. So I did a little more digging and came up with this quote, which is found in a Foreign Affairs piece on Hezbollah.

"[Hezbollah] may be the 'A-team' [of terrorists] while al-Qaida may be actually the 'B-team.'" - (Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage during a press conference at the American Embassy in Brussels, September 5, 2002, and as quoted before the US Congress on September 18, 2002)

Yikes! Chris, what gives?

For an in depth report on Hezbollah by the Anti-Defamation League, click here.

Mohler on Sharlett

Al Mohler has a nice analysis of Sharlett's piece in Rolling Stone about virgins.

The most interesting part of the Rolling Stone article is the reporter's fundamental assumption that the real agenda behind the campaign for sexual abstinence must be political. Early in the article, Sharlet makes this claim: "Chastity is a new organizing principle of the Christian right, built on the notion that virgins are among God's last loyal defenders, knights and ladies of a forgotten kingdom." When Dunbar describes sexual abstinence as a form of rebellion, Sharlet jumps to the political sphere. As he sees it, conservative Christians are now pushing the issue of sexual abstinence in order to make "every young man and woman part of an elite virgin corps."

...The Rolling Stone article on "the young and the sexless" comes packaged in a magazine that features a sexually-explicit photograph of actress Jessica Alba on its cover. Within the article, Alba explains that she uses her physical attractiveness as a way of sending unambiguous sexual signals. "Men are about the physical," she explains, and a smart girl is one who knows how to use the physical to get ahead.

That is the kind of sexual morality that represents what Rolling Stone magazine is all about. The magazine's article about young Christians committed to sexual abstinence appears as something of an eccentricity--like the report of an expedition into alien territory. Nevertheless, by the time the article draws to a close, it is clear that from the vantage point of the dominant sexual culture, the movement for sexual abstinence appears as something a bit more than odd. In fact, this movement represents nothing less than a threat to a society infatuated with sexual permissiveness. That's what makes this article not only interesting, but important.

Those Quirky Christians

It is 2030 in New York City. A new zoo is opening near Central Park. It is called "The American Open Center's Institute for the Study of Fundamentalist Christians."

A NYU student named Jeffina, who was born a girl to lesbian mother(s) inseminated by a homosexual man, but who decided she was really a boy at age 13 and had an operation to remove her breasts at 15, will visit. He (she) will bring his (her) partner, Laurhew, a boy by birth who has had an operation to add breasts, but retains her (his) original plumbing down low.

They will stop at the hall on Christian sexuality. Before walking through the exhibits of real, living fundamentalists in their cages, they will read copies of the 2005 Rolling Stone article by Jeff Sharlet on twenty-something Christians who are virgins.


"When they have sex with one another, they have their own kinds of orgies, because there aren't other humans there, but they are imagining Jesus is there, so it is an orgy in one sense," Laurhew will tell Jeffina, after reading Sharlet's words:

"Sex that is just two bodies in motion strikes them as empty, even if love is involved. Every encounter must be a kind of threesome: man, wife and the Lord. Without that, it's just f------."

Then Joe Trippi, the political genius who managed much of Howard Dean's groundbreaking internet support and fundraising campaign in 2004, will stop by to see the spectacle.

Thinking back to the rise of evangelical political involvement during the second term of President George W. Bush, Trippi will be reminded of the country's mood in 2005, when Hannah Rosin's New Yorker piece on Patrick Henry College captured the left's growing dread over the prospect of a theocracy.

Patrick Henry is trying a complicated experiment: taking young evangelicals who have been raised in rarefied, controlled atmospheres and training them to become political leaders without somehow being corrupted by the secular world’s demands—or, for that matter, moving to the middle. There are already young, ambitious politicians who talk openly about their relationship with Jesus and still get ahead.

"Thank God those days are over," Trippi will say.

Jeffina, passing by at that moment, will whisper to Laurhew, "I think he just gave thanks to God," and alert zoo security. NYPD will arrive within minutes, and Trippi will be taken downtown for questioning.

Tom Cruise on the Today Show

Matt Lauer asked Tom Cruise about his criticism of Brooke Shields taking antidepressants. Cruise took Lauer to task. Read the whole interview here. It's fascinating.

I've enjoyed watching the press excoriate Cruise for his Scientology and weird antics on Oprah and with Katie Holmes. But I think Cruise is doing a valuable thing here by questioning our society's increasing dependance on medication. Good for him.

TOM CRUISE: But what happens, the antidepressant, all it does is mask the problem. There's ways of vitamins and through exercise and various things. I'm not saying that that isn't real. That's not what I'm saying. That's an alteration of what-- what I'm saying. I'm saying that drugs aren't the answer, these drugs are very dangerous. They're mind-altering, anti-psychotic drugs. And there are ways of doing it without that so that we don't end up in a brave new world. // the thing that I'm saying about Brooke is that there's misinformation, okay. And she doesn't understand the history of psychiatry. She-- she doesn't understand in the same way that you don't understand it, Matt.

// MATT LAUER: But a little bit what you're saying Tom is, you say you want people to do well. But you want them do to well by taking the road that you approve of, as opposed to a road that may work for them.

TOM CRUISE: No, no, I'm not.

MATT LAUER: Well, if antidepressants work for Brooke Shields, why isn't that okay?

TOM CRUISE: I-- I disagree with it. And I think that there's a higher and better quality of life. And I think that promoting for me personally, see, you're saying what, I can't discuss what I wanna discuss?

MATT LAUER: No. You absolutely can.

TOM CRUISE: I know. But-- but Matt, you're going in and saying that-- that I can't discuss this.

MATT LAUER: I'm only asking, isn't there a possibility that-- do-- do you examine the possibility that these things do work for some people? That yes, there are abuses. And yes, maybe they've gone too far in certain areas. Maybe there are too many kids on Ritalin. Maybe electric shock--

TOM CRUISE: Too many kids on Ritalin? Matt.

MATT LAUER: I'm just saying. But-- but aren't there--

TOM CRUISE: Matt.

MATT LAUER: --examples where it works?

TOM CRUISE: Matt. Matt, Matt, you don't even-- you're glib. You don't even know what Ritalin is.// //if you start talking about chemical imbalance, you have to evaluate and read the research papers on how they came up with these theories, Matt, okay. That's what I've done. Then you go and you say where's-- where's the medical test? Where's the blood test that says how much Ritalin you're supposed to get?

MATT LAUER: You're-- you're-- it's very impressive to listen to you. Because clearly, you've done the homework. And-- and you know the subject.

TOM CRUISE: And you should.

MATT LAUER: And-- and--

TOM CRUISE: And you should do that also.

He's off to beirut

Mutimer, originally uploaded by Stan_Wastren.

One of our group is off to Beirut for two months. We hope he lives through it and manages to learn some Arabic.

God bless you Mutimer!

Baptists consider opposing public education

Here is an amazing piece by Al Mohler on the Baptist Convention's debate over whether public education has become too closely linked with pro-homosexuality indoctrination, and whether the church should officially endorse taking kids out of public schools.

Dick Durbin

Wow. In case you've missed it, and you probably have because most of the MSM (mainstream media) have ignored it, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the number 2 Dem in the Senate, right under Harry Reid, has created a firestorm, and may soon come under pressure to resign.

You're not hearing about it yet, but the blogs are ablaze on this one, and this may be another story that doesn't go away because the blogs won't let it.

On Tuesday, Durbin stepped to the floor of the US Senate and read an email from an FBI agent who is part of an ongoing investigation into the actions of interrogators at Guantanomo Bay, Cuba, where the U.S. Army has detained over 500 enemy combatants in the war on terror.

Durbin said the following:

If I read this to you, and didn't tell you that it was an FBI agent, describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have happened by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime, Pol Pot or others, that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that's not the case. This was the action of Americans in treatment of their own prisoners.

The Washington Times wrote about this yesterday, and then wrote today about reaction from the Senate, which is intriguing. Specifically, Hillary Clinton declined to make any comment, and the Times quoted Sen. John Warner, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, as saying the email is unsubstantiated.

Radioblogger posts here a transcript of Durbin's attempt to wriggle out of what he said.

And Radioblogger also has a must read transcript of a radio interview that Hugh Hewitt did with two law professors, one of whom represents at least one detainee in Gitmo. Reading this will help you get past all the spin and rhetoric and help you get a start on the substance of this debate.

At the end, Radioblogger wraps up the transcript with a few of his own thought-provoking comments:

m my recollection, the Jews in Nazi Germany were not at war with Hitler or the German government when the concentration camps started. The people killed in the Soviet gulags were not suicide-bombing insurgents. Pol Pot's palaces of the skulls were not built with the skeletal remains of armed militias within his country. In northern Iraq, I don't believe that the Kurds were even throwing rocks at Saddam Hussein's military when they got gassed with chemical weapons.

These were all instances of genocide, where the leaders of each country mass murdered their own citizenry, sometimes in graphically cruel ways.

At Gitmo, with one or two exceptions of an American citizen renouncing their citizenship and going on the battlefield to fight against us, every detainee there is a foreign national, who was an armed enemy combatant, that was caught in the process of either shooting against our troops, or plotting to kill Americans here. So before you even get to what the proper definition of the treatment being applied at Guantanamo, the comparison of Durbin is sickingly inappropriate, and is rather disqualifying for a United States Senator, especially one in a position of party leadership that Durbin enjoys.

Now, regarding the treatment, being that these combatants were not caught in the United States, but rather on the battlefield, and being that they are not United States citizens, they do not enjoy the Constitutional rights that our citizens enjoy. There is international law to follow, and from what I've been able to discern, our conduct at Guantanamo, by and large, has stayed well within those limits. If a detainee is brought in, that is believed to be high up in the Al Qaeda heirarchy, that may have information as to how to locate Osama and shorten the duration of the war, I just don't have a problem with a broken toe here, or a few nights of 30 minutes of sleep, followed by three hours of Barry Manilow records at 130 decibles, complete with strobe lights.

Not an ideology

Ralph Hallow, a great political journalist for many years at the Washington Times, writes a profile of Paul Weyrich, one of the founders of the modern conservative movement who liberals love to hate.

Mr. Weyrich, the founder and chairman of the Free Congress Foundation, said conservatism, though built on ideas, is not an ideology.
    "It's anti-ideology, a way of looking at the world, a way of life," he explained.
    What's more, "conservatism gets off course when it becomes an ideology," he said, shifting his weight in the wheelchair that has been getting him around town since a fall in 2001 exacerbated a 1996 spinal injury.
    He doesn't complain. Not about that. What rankles him is the tendency of some conservatives to make the movement a mirror image of the left."When conservatism becomes an ideology, then, like the liberal ideology, reality has to fit into the ideology," he said. "So you can't have any deviation from the ideology. Orthodoxy demands that you take this position, and that has never been the hallmark of conservatism."

Roberts on "Christers" - Part III

Mark D. Roberts continues his examination of Doug Ireland's LA Weekly piece on "Christers" today.

It would seem, therefore, that Ireland has missed the point of the Great Commission and its impact. He claims that "fundamentalist interpretations of [the Great Commission and other texts] . . . have incredible motivating power for the religious right, and help explain the vehemence of the Christers' intolerance of the freedom of others to think or act differently." I would agree that the Great Commission has incredible motivating power for many Christians, including fundamentalists, evangelicals, and many from mainline denominations as well. But this has very little to do with the social activism of some conservative Christians, like the American Family Association, which is the primary force behind many of the boycotts or threatened boycotts. It's a mistake, theologically, sociologically, and psychologically, to explain the zeal of some "Christers" for social activism by pointing to the Great Commission.

Ireland's only response to date on his blog has been to show some hate mail he got from some kook, laugh at Rober's analysis, and then talk about how he is the intellectual descendant of Tom Paine and Jean Meslier.

The contrast between the two is stunning.

Roberts: calm, rational, reasoned, deliberate, humble, cautious in his conclusions, open to being wrong.

Ireland: irritable, high-strung, uses hyperbole, which does not help move a rational debate forward, angry, accusatory, negative, sarcastic, makes broad assumptions about large groups based on emails from a couple individuals, and makes regular use of nasty labels.

Christers

Hugh Hewitt exposes another example of bigotry against Christians. In his Weekly Standard piece, he includes the full text of a speech by an American Catholic Bishop in Europe, who spoke out recently against this bigotry as a "dangerous trend...where public expressions of religious faith often seem to be ridiculed as fundamentalism.

Spurred on by Hewitt's original post, evangelical pastor and blogger Mark D. Roberts, a serious scholar, has begun an online examination of the LA Weekly piece by Doug Ireland called, "The New Blacklist: Corporate America is bowing to anti-gay Christian groups' boycott demands."

Robert's will write a third post on Ireland's piece tomorrow, but he has already been contacted by Ireland in an email, and included some of what Ireland wrote. Amazing how the blogosphere works. Truly amazing.

Reaping the 60's

We read about Stanley Kurtz's essay "Culture and Values in the 1960's" at our May meeting. Al Mohler wrote a review of the essay, in which he wrote that "today's culture wars can be directly traced to the cultural transformations of the 1960's."

Kurtz's point is that for many people, the liberalism of the 60's has become its own sort of religion.

Here is the entire essay.

Colson Nails It

Chuck Colson wrote a critique of the religious left in February, and specifically mentioned Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourner Ministries. Wallis responded in an open letter, and in early March, Colson wrote an open letter back.

I will post the links to the letters below, but I wanted to point out something Colson wrote near the end of his response to Wallis. In it, Colson sums up why our political, social and cultural discourse has become so unproductive and, unfortunately, dangerous.

I think the blue/red division in America is a tragedy. Because we have lost an overarching sense of truth and moral authority in culture, the curse of post-modernism, we have no basis for judging the common good. Therefore our debates deteriorate. Instead of being able to argue great issues, we huddle with our ideological kinsmen in our own little battle camps. Ideology has replaced revealed truth as the way we decide issues in American life.

That is exactly right. Ideology has replaced revealed truth as the way we decide issues in American life.

I would add that I think television has contributed a great deal to a decline in the general intelligence of our populace, especially when it comes to reflective and thoughtful intelligence, by creating an entertainment culture. Neil Postman explained this in one of the most necessary books written in the last 50 years, "Amusing Ourselves to Death."

But Colson goes on with the solution.

I refuse to fall into this trap. Ideology is the enemy of the Gospel and the enemy of historic conservatism which is governed by revealed truth in nature, beauty, the law inscribed on our hearts, and of course supremely in biblical revelation. I think the right and the left today, Democrats and Republicans, are largely fighting over ideological issues. From my perspective, when they do this it’s a plague on both houses. My view of life is shaped by a biblical worldview and one that has been informed by conservative tradition. What that means to me is a respect for order out of which freedom flows, a healthy respect for the wisdom of the past, and religious convictions.

I prefer not to take part in ideological combat. I have always counseled Christians not to embrace one partisan agenda over another, but rather go where the Bible leads. If we both do that, we’ll in due course end up in the same place.

I love how Colson ends his letter. "I do respect and appreciate you Jim," he says.

To read Colson's commentary that started it all, click here.
To read Wallis' response, click here.
To read Colson's response to Wallis, click here.

Why Didn't I Think of That?

Howard Dean was on the hot seat yesterday, during a chaotic press availability after his meeting with Senate minority leader Harry Reid. The best question? From Fox News' Brian Wilson (makes me think of the Barenaked Ladies, not the Beach Boy).

The press chorus then devolved into a cacophony of competing screams. (And Dean knows screams!) After several seconds, a booming voice cut through the noise. It belonged to Brian Wilson, a Fox News correspondent who was standing in the middle of the crowd. He asked Dean "if people are focused on the other things that you've said about hating Republicans, about Republicans being dishonest and then this latest comment about the Republican Party is full of white Christians. You say you hate Republicans -- does that mean you also'' hate white Christians?

Dean didn't respond and Reid talked about having a "positive agenda." Wilson was so insistent that at one point, Durbin asked, "Does he run the press conference?"

Yes, Mr. Durbin, he does run the press conference. I will tell you why. Because he asked the best question, because he's not afraid of your name-calling in an attempt to make him back down, because he's got something to talk about, because he believes in something rather than just attacking his opponents. Mr. Wilson's control of the press availability is a microcosm for the Republicans' control of politics right now--they have something to say. Meanwhile, Democrats like Dean and Durbin and Reid say nasty, irresponsible things and then complain of a "media circus" when they are held accountable.
This can't be good for Dean, that this was reported in the Washington Post Style section.
I wonder if Dean had made the connection between his "hate" comment and his "Christian" comment when Wilson asked the question. If he hadn't, I would have loved to see the look on his face when the question came.

People with beards

I haven't blogged about Iraq much, but this is a must read piece on how many of the insurgents in Iraq have come from Syria and Saudia Arabia over the Syrian border to fight in a jihad based on belief on "salafism, or 'following the pious forefathers'...a fundamentalist, sometimes militant strain of the faith grounded in turning back the clock to the time of the prophet Muhammad."

The article is based on interviews with a man who claims he has been one of the leaders of the smuggling operation.

Since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, the notion of jihad has "had a galvanizing impact on the imagination and reflexes" of many young Muslim men, especially those with the means and resources to travel, according to a recent report by the International Crisis Group, based in Brussels.

"They think jihad will stop if they kill hundreds of us in Iraq," Abu Ibrahim said with a note of defiance. "They don't know what they are facing. Every day, more and more young men from around the Muslim world are awaking and coming to the jihad principle.

"Now the Americans are facing thousands, but one day soon they will have to face whole nations."

A Demanding God

Two great columns by a guy named Dave Shiflett, who has written a book about why people are leaving the mainline denominations in America, which have gone very liberal, and joining more traditional, stricter churches like the Catholic church, evangelical churches, etc.

From yesterday, "Don't Be Too Scared."

And from today, "God-lite doesn't cut it."

I will try to parse out some highlights from both, but I wanted to at least place these here for now. They are must reading.

I wanted to feel something

Laurie Petrone is a 21-year old college senior who is in the process of "coming out" as a "transgendered person."

Her girlfriend, who asked not to be named,"sees Petrone as a man and considers herself straight."

"Laurie sees herself as a male and I respect that. I believe you fall in love with people and the person they are," said the Mary Baldwin junior.

Laurie has tried to kill herself a few times. Her explanation?

"I was numb and wanted to feel something."

Read the whole story here.