America on the brink of theocracy

Weak, Rod. Very, very weak.

And still no post on a policy position explaining why you support Palin, other than her social conservatism.

Uh. Rod, really now. I've long respected the content and tone of this blog, as well as Andrew Sullivans, and I am starting to think you both are going straight over the edge, he with his "Christianists are taking over the country" and you with the "lock and load" culture wars.

You all are seeming to become a bit unhinged.

I want the thoughtful, rational, conservative in very different way bloggers back.

And I don't want to wait until Jan. for it either.

P.S. didn't Obama take flack for his church meetings and this prayer too?

Lord, use Sarah, and us, to see that your will expressed through Jesus is done.

May we see you as the heavenly Father of every human being, claiming them as beloved sisters and brothers.

May we, and Sarah, bless our enemies instead of curse them.

May we, and Sarah, convert weapons of war into farm machinery.

May we, and Sarah, ensure that everyone receives his/her daily bread, all that is needed for this life (food, clothing, housing, health care) regardless of educational, economic, religious or social status.

Use us, and Sarah, to care for your good creation which belongs to you and not to us.

Use us, and Sarah, to end the tribalism infecting our nation and planet. May we who are privileged repent, selling out for the sake of those who are being left behind.

Use us, and Sarah, to tell the truth, explaining the actions of others in the kindest way possible, refusing to gossip and slam others. We repent from the sin of spinning and twisting the words of others.

Lord Jesus, be with Sarah and with us, because it is so difficult to follow you. So often we seek to gain the whole world, winning elections, claiming power, while in the process we lose our souls. Right now, in this political season, I see Republicans and conservatives, Democrats and progressives, losing their souls. We assassinate our opponents' characters, believing that by accusing others (joining Satan the Accuser) we lift ourselves up. Lord, we are all guilty.

Yes, Lord, I do pray for Sarah, and for us, that those of us who claim to follow you would live in the way, the truth, and the life of sacrificial, suffering love.

Make Sarah an instrument of the Crucified and Risen Lord, using his means and seeking his goals. Amen.

Duh-sciple

Rob has is own issues with religion and deep down I think he can't stand that his old boarding school friends and folks like Andrew Sullivan don't respect his conservative religious beliefs and his desire to turn them into law. With Palin, he can't help himself.

You ought to be ashamed of yourself for quoting from a prayer that was intended to be private and using it to justify Palin's public prayer. Now I don't really see anything that unusual about the latter but it's not a comparable situation. And it's contemptible to quote from the illicitly obtained prayer.

Steve is right. I haven't seen any criticisms of Sarah Palin's faith from other than anonymous bloggers, and the mainstream media, of which Rod is a part, after all, could afford her the opportunity to give her testimony, as they say in the Protestant world, to all of us. As for the revelation of Obama's note left in the Western Wall, it makes me more inclined to vote for him, not less.

WWJD? He'd vote for Palin...er, I mean McCain/Palin.

Um... Jesus was a "community organizer."

"Um... Jesus was a "community organizer."

Not under the definition the Obama campaign came up with at 3 am, four hours after they'd been skewered over the vagueness of that title: "Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies." If you think that's what Jesus was doing, I think you're quite mistaken.

But it occurred to me this morning, as I chaired Day 2 of a Pregnancy Resource Center's annual Board retreat, that I fit the definition. Stalemated by the Supreme Court on legal change, dodged by politicians of both parties, we're delivering (and have been for 30 years) the kinds of help that make "choice" more than a cynical and cruel euphemism for "abort."

Huge, enormous difference between "Make me an instument of your will." and "I know God's will is to support this project of mine."

Huge.

Rod, you are losing it. It's sad really.

Um... Jesus was a "community organizer."

Don't tell me you've fallen for the Roman propaganda machine. Jesus clearly had executive experience with the small business of his (12 employees). That's more experience than Barack Hussein Obama and Joe Biden have put together.

So Rod points out the similarities between Sarah Palin's prayer and Barack Obama's (which was about as private as Bill Clinton's 'cross at Normandy' photo op, btw), and all you can do is attack Rod personally?

Instructive.

Well, if he is, many of you are charging up the hill completely unarmed.

I loved this post, Rod. Just wanted to let you know...

I promised myself that I wouldn't post any more to blog threads that dealt with the religious views of government. I'm currently involved in exactly that, on a local scale, and I continue to make the effort to refrain because in the end, it is people with whom I and those involved must deal.

Real people, Rod, with lives, families, friends. Real people who are actually good at heart, rational of mind, honest in their good will to their neighbors.

People who are so vulnerable that they immediately feel fear when something out of the ordinary comes up, and they feel their fear because that is what their religion demands of them. Some of them even know that their fear is based on ignorance, but their religion forbids them from the simple action of walking a few hundred feet, knocking on their neighbor's door and asking him simple questions they have every right to ask.

And so, Rod, as a modern pagan who has come down a very long road of paranoia about theocracy, who has taken to heart the arguments against that paranoia, I have just two words for your post here: pure bullshit.

I apologize if that needs censoring. It is my sincere and honest reaction.

EddieInCA unburdened himself of the untutored opinion and proffered the astonishingly notional sciolism: "Um... Jesus was a "community organizer."

Please educate yourself and study with assiduity the more objective and historical views expressed by Erin Manning and me in the thread:

http://blog.beliefnet.com/crunchycon/2008/09/palin_yes_she_can_comments.html

Erudition is an ongoing process and I wish you success in your ascent from intellectual sopor to enlightenment.

Erin, your response is just as cutesy and disingenuous as Rod's original. Rod is of course demonstrating how they are the same. Both are prayers, both ask for God's help. But Palin's is not just a prayer, it's also a statement...a statement that she not only knows the will of God, but knows it precisely concerning a civic works project. Asking for God's aid, and stating publicly that God supports your gas pipeline, are obviously very different things. One was also made in private...between Obama and God. The other was a public proclamation, made from a podium, and clearly designed to influence not only the Almighty, but those watching as well. One was a personal act of humility...the other a public act of hubris.

And you of course know this, but, like Rod, have apparently become so enamored of having someone who looks and thinks more like you on the ticket that reason and clarity have become secondary concerns. In short, you're doing precisely what the people who FORCED this pick on John McCain want you to do.

Remember that: Palin was not McCain's first choice, nor his second. Nor does she even vaguely resemble those choices in ideology or history. She was forced upon him by powers that have a lot to do with his victory, and I don't mean the voters. I mean the conservative powerbrokers. Given that, take a deep breath and think about how much power this woman will actually have in his administration.

Truthfully, what if you were not someone's first choice of date to the prom, nor even their second, and looked NOTHING like those. Instead, you're the person his mom made him take to the prom. How far do you think that relationship is really going to go? And how would you expect to be treated in such a shotgun wedding?

You'll make your own choices, but if McCain does win, I think you're going to find you've got a president providing you more of all the things you didn't like about Bush...more Iraq, more Iran, more Russia, more debt, more bailouts, more torture, more secrecy, more global warming. And you'll have a VP who is utterly sidelined and ignored, other than to be trotted out here and there as a cheerleader for the pro-life, conservative religious side of the party.

Frankly, I think Palin, Rod, you, and other social conservatives deserve better. She, you, and Rod are all being used. And just as you discovered with Bush, your votes will continue to be the very instrument of our nation's continuing decline and disgrace, without saving one baby, or advancing your cause in any but the most superficial and condescending of ways.

Rod, as has been abundantly pointed out, they didn't do the same thing...not nearly.

And we will always have the culture wars with us while some men let fear rule reason, bias trump civility, and partisanship trump integrity, all the time gaining benefit from it in the public square.

BS again, Rod. JPL is right on the mark...

"Both are prayers, both ask for God's help. But Palin's is not just a prayer, it's also a statement...a statement that she not only knows the will of God, but knows it precisely concerning a civic works project. Asking for God's aid, and stating publicly that God supports your gas pipeline, are obviously very different things. One was also made in private...between Obama and God. The other was a public proclamation, made from a podium, and clearly designed to influence not only the Almighty, but those watching as well. One was a personal act of humility...the other a public act of hubris."

"But her candidacy has been rather useful for the reaction it's caused, and what it reveals about the kind of country we live in." Useful to who? To McCain to get elected? Just like it was for GWB to get elected and look how that advanced the lives of all the middle class religious conservative voters who voted for him. The powers that be in the Republican party are going to keep going to the well until it runs dry. Frankly, I think you're just as bad as them. For the last week you've been doing your best to whip up moral outrage who you know nothing about.

Roland, you're not being honest. The concept of Taqqiya, or secrecy, is only accepted by a few fringe Muslim sects, and is solely designed to prevent persecution, primarily by other Muslim sects. It wouldn't apply to a man seeking the presidency.

There isn't even the tiniest shred of evidence that Obama is Muslim. And you can't have it both ways. You can't claim that his attendance at his "radical" church for 20 years proves he's influenced by the thinking there, but then claim he's not Christian at all.

You're far to intelligent and well-read to be taken in by such lowly rumormongering. It's the equivalent of some of the ridiculous Palin rumors.

If you really think Obama is a Muslim, hiding his faith, then I've very disappointed in you. You seem much smarter than that.

They weren't doing the same thing. And in your attempt to prove they were, you made use of someone's desecration of the Wailing Wall. It's equivalent to republishing someone's tapping of the confession booth.

You know, sj, that's an interesting point. If someone tried to tape Joe Biden in the confessional, for instance, I'd think it would be pretty difficult, because the Secret Service wouldn't let anyone get close enough to record him...which of course raises the question as to how Obama's Secret Service detail could have been so remiss as to allow the unknown, unnamed Jewish seminary student who reportedly stole the prayer to be standing close enough to Obama to see in exactly which niche in the wall the prayer was placed.

Maybe the Secret Service had been wisely advised to avoid doing anything to disrupt or desecrate the activities going on in that sacred place?

Not a tinfoil hat moment; just recollection of the conflicting stories the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv released just after the incident. First, they claimed that the Obama campaign had given them an advance copy of the prayer; then, when the campaign denied it and the Israeli public in general was outraged they retracted that and said that an anonymous Jewish student had given them the prayer, apparently pilfering it shortly after 5 a.m., since Obama's visit was made early so as not to interfere with the usual crowds that assemble for morning prayer. But the other Israeli papers continued to say that Ma'ariv had assured them they had been given a "for publication" copy, which is why they picked up the story, too.

Now, my only point from my initial post is that it was a bit dangerous for the Secret Service to let someone slip behind Obama as he turned to greet the crowd and then stand at the Wall long enough to locate the correct prayer and remove it. It's possible that the unknown student waited until the crowd had left, though; I've never been to Israel or the Wailing Wall, and don't know how noticeable it would be for someone to remove prayers, open and read them, and then steal the one he was hoping to find--perhaps in the gap of time between Obama's visit and the arrival of the usual morning crowds the student would have been mostly alone, and had the leisure to make this search unimpeded.

Interesting as it is to speculate on these matters, the thing that's important here is that the prayer has already been made public--it's all over the Internet in Obama's handwriting. So it's not a dirty trick for Rod to compare his prayer to Palin's--hers may have been in front of a congregation, but I highly doubt that when she prayed that prayer she had any more intention than Obama did for the prayer to be discussed and analyzed by the public at large.

She was a public elected official, not in a pew, but in a pulpit and vocally praying in front of the congregation about an issue that was up for public debate and vote.

You don't see any difference between that and a private scrap of paper slipped into a crack in a wall?

And yes, it isn't that hard to note the general area and go back after he leaves. He went there in early morning. If you stand close (and that's what people do), it is as easy to pull a piece of paper out as it is to put a piece of paper in, since that IS what people do there. If you're not a public figure, I doubt most people are staring at you.

It was a rare enough act that I doubt people guard the wall, watching for people to pilfer prayers. It doesn't seem to happen all that often.

Would you object to someone making such a characterization of YOUR candidate (or your candidate's running mate, that is), based on such a situation? That it was a public prayer because, of course he should've expected someone to steal it?

Not really.

Obama ASKED that he BECOME an instrument of God's will.

He didn't say he already was one. He didn't mention any policies or goals or agenda that WAS God's will that he wanted some help on.

Asking that he be an instrument of God's will is different from saying you already ARE one.

The real difference is taking specific policies up for vote or funding, and bringing it up in a church setting and asking your fellow parishioners to pray that it be God's will that this happen.

In other words, her direct quote was..

""I can do my part in doing things like working really, really hard to get a natural gas pipeline, a $30 billion dollar project that's going to create a lot of jobs for people in Alaska, and we're going to have a lot of energy flowing through here -- and pray about that also -- I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built"

God's will has to be done to get that gas line built.

That gas line IS God's will, and it has to be done. THAT is what people are objecting to.

If you are against that gas line, and were lobbying to prevent it, or to lower the funding, are you therefore someone working against the will of God? If you think that isn't something people should be praying about, the gas line, not God's will, does the lack of success mean, as she stated later on, 'But really, all that stuff doesn't do any good if the people of Alaska's heart isn't right with God.'?

God's will HAS TO BE DONE. (followed by what that will is, the building of that gas line).

Not, 'I want to be an instrument OF God's will', not that she know what God's will is. Not that 'this thing is happening, and I hope that it is in Your Will, God'. And using it as a means to lobby her constituents on the issue.

THAT, not how conservative or liberal her religion is the problem.

JPL: your original post seemed to clearly insinuate that Obama might well be Muslim

I am not insinuating that Obama is a Mohammedan. I don't know whether he considers himself a Mohammedan or not, or more importantly whether Mohammedans consider him a Mohammedan.

you certainly know that Mohammedan is an offensive term to Muslims

Why should it be offensive to Mohammedans to be called Mohammedans? They follow the teachings of Mohammed. Christians follow the teachings of Christ. Buddhists follow the teachings of Buddha. Zoroastrians follow the teachings of Zoroaster. "Christian" was originally a pejorative term; "Mohammedan" never was and to my knowledge is not so.

using it [taqqiya] to dishonestly attain high office in a country would be immoral.

Taqqiya is, in the narrow sense, a Shiite defense against Sunni persecution. In the wider sense, it is any act of dissimulation meant to advance the Islamic agenda in a hostile and infidel environment.

And parenthetically may I remark that I am hard pressed to understand the appositeness of the term "immoral" in respect of Mohammedan doctrine. If dissimulation is "immoral" in advancing one's career, what then is to be said of murder, rape, plunder and pillage? What of the rakish and unbridled lust of an incontinent wanton from which one's own daughter-in-law knew no respite? And what of a god who posthaste dispatches a messenger to legitimate the consequent divorce and adultery and bestow his imprimatur on the rake's manifesto? What of a creed that makes of immortality a bawdyhouse exceeding even the exorbitances of the seraglio?

Define "immoral" and then we may adjudicate the sin of dissimulation.

Reverse the names, Rod. Put Palin at the Wall and Obama at a pulpit in front of people and cameras. My posts would look exactly the same except for those names.

Roland de Chanson: “Why should it be offensive to Mohammedans to be called Mohammedans? “

Roland, JPL hasn't stepped in and enough time has elapsed that I thought I would answer your question. I read a book by Bernard Lewis about Islam after 9/11 because I realized I didn't know that much about the religion. He discussed that the term Mohammedan was considered offensive and here's a really rough paraphrase:

Christianity and Buddhism have founders who are considered more than human. So followers of those religions don't mind the implication that the naming of their religions implies worship of the founder. Islam was founded by Mohamed, but he is a prophet and not the object of worship. So the name Mohammedan implies worship of him which is considered forbidden.

However, Muslims seem to act as if he is an object of veneration. But consistency is not a strong point of humanity.

Actually, Rod...

First, I recall one editorial claiming the prayer was 'all about him'. As if 'help me be a better person, make my family safe, and help me to do your will' is selfish because the words 'I' and 'me' are being used in it.

Secondly.. above. There's the claim that the prayer was fake. That he put it there KNOWING it would be stolen, and that makes it public property.

I'd say that's a pretty big impugning of a person's character on absolutely no evidence.

Third, if it was wrong to take it, it is wrong to use it. Rather like gaining benefit from stolen property. It justifies the theft. After all, if when he took it, nobody would let him use it.. if nobody would publish it, nobody would willing read it (once they knew), nobody commented on it at all, and the whole point was to get some press, then he likely wouldn't do it again. There'd be no profit in it.

I'm not saying that everyone would do that, but I'm saying that people SHOULD have done that. By not doing so, for this rather new offense (the Wailing Wall, of all places, had been a sort of sacred neutral zone for such things, but I have a feeling that may not be the case here on out, because of this), it does nothing but encourage a generation that has been raised on anything at all is worth doing, if it gets you in front of a camera, or cited on the internet.

Oh, and meant Lutherans, not Mormon (well, unless one goes farther back for a founder than I intended..)

Alright, Rod. Deep breath here...

The meta-discussion is about justification. Was the media and Obama's political opponents justified in putting the Wright idiocy on endless loop? Is the media and her opponents justified in digging in the muck of the past to find anything to cast Palin in a bad light? At what point do we stop and say out loud: is this an example of the ends justify the means?

Is repetition the only form of logic left in American political debate?

It's out there, so oh well others are going to bash so-and-so so I may as well. In the meantime, some of us would like to stop needing to scour away the muck being raked and see actual people, saying actual things, without their needing to scramble daily because passels of lies -- from both sides, aimed at both sides -- are the first things out of people's mouths and the first things other people hear and read.

I'll concede that this particular blog topic pushed my hot button hard, and it stuck for a while. I engaged in a practice for which I routinely chastise others -- calling you out on what you aren't writing in a particular thread -- and I apologize for that.

I also insist that it is past time to examine the justification game, from both sides.

I'm cooking tonight. Stir-fried basa and fresh vegetables. See ya later.

But Rod and defenders, I still think Karen's and JPL's primary point stands without any real challenge from you: Namely, there is a big difference between a prayer to God asking that I do his will, vs. a public speech where I represent an initiative I feel strongly about as being God's will.

Obama's was the prayer of Solomon; Palin's was not a prayer, it was an assertion of knowing God's will on an extremely secular matter.

Perhaps it is a matter of temperament. I know the rationalizations that, to my shame, I used in a previous period of my life to justify behavior that I now repent, and I remember what it felt like to see that artifice come tumbling down. I've seen far too many people make the same rationalizations. And many have used God and "God's will" as a prop.

Are you not capable of seeing what harm can be done when certainty about God's will is injected into secular political issues like a gas pipeline? Are the people who might oppose the pipeline on ecological principals not doing God's will?

Do you really want to have a democracy where God and God's will is being used to justify every policy of either party? Is the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac bailout God's will? Is the war in Iraq God's will? Would you feel comfortable where every action of the USA must have been God's will because enough people went along with it?

My asserting I know God's will in a matter where you and I disagree shows no respect at all for your good will, and even less circumspection about my own limitations, blind spots and failures as a human being.