Freethinker Sermonettes
revere | December 3, 2006The Soldiers of God are on the warpath. The initial forays of the godless insurgents Dawkins, Dennett and Harris have provoked the predictable counterattack. The homosexual agenda and Islamic extremism are being displaced by insidious atheist subversion:
The Rev Campbell Paget, vicar of All Saints' Church, Brenchley, for the past eight years, believes that influential atheists in the media, commerce and politics are eroding the population's freedom by clamping down on displays of religious devotion and promoting their own politically correct agenda.
Former infantry officer Mr Paget, 52, said…
revere | November 19, 2006I remember a joke that went something like, "What do you get when you cross a Jehovah's Witness with a Unitarian? Someone who knocks on your door for no apparent reason." I was reminded of this from an article in the Greensboro, NC News-Record, "Unitarian church extends welcome to nonbelievers."
It seems that it is quite common for people who identify themselves as atheists to come to Unitarian services in that North Carolina town:
This is Sunday morning service at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Greensboro, where even if the day's message wasn't "Embracing Atheism," the people here have…
revere | November 5, 2006Sunday and the day before the US midterm elections. Pundits are speculating on the role religious conservatives will play. We are now so inured to politicians invoking their faith it sounds strange to think it has been any other way. But it has been, and within my voting lifetime. Over a year ago in one of my first Sermonettes in this space I recalled those days. It seems appropriate to do it again.
On Monday, September 12, 1960, Democratic Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy faced the Southern Baptists at the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on the subject of religion in American…
revere | October 29, 2006Atheism is certainly a phenomenon in the book market. I can't remember when books about godlessness made so much news and sold so well, although of course I wasn't around when The Great Agnostic Robert Green Ingersoll lectured to huge audiences in the late nineteenth century. Whatever. I'm happy to have the likes of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett making strong intellectual arguments for atheism.
The popularity of these books is sometimes ascribed to a backlash against the forced intrusion of religion into American political life in the regime of George Bush. Whatever the…
revere | October 22, 2006I have a lot of hope for the new generation. My students are wonderful, smart, committed, politically savvy. Much better than the two generations that preceded them, the dead period between the sixties and now (don't take offense; I know a lot of you are, and were, smart, committed and politically savvy during that time, but, let's face it, most of your colleagues were a bit, shall we say, self absorbed?).
An article in the New York Times gives me further cause for optimism. The evangelical movement is losing the youngsters:
Despite their packed megachurches, their political clout and their…
revere | October 15, 2006Here it's Sunday and you are sinning! At least according to Kevin D. Denee of the Restored Church of God's Ambassador Youth magazine (h/t Cruel Site of the Day). God hates blogs:
In the last five years, a new phenomenon has developed. The Internet has given birth to a world within a world. Now millions around the globe have their own websites, where they detail their lives, interests, opinions, random thoughts, and much more.
[snip]
Should teenagers and others in the Church express themselves to the world through blogs? Because of the obvious dangers; the clear biblical principles that apply…
revere | October 8, 2006It is now a week since the terrible happenings in the Amish community in Pennsylvania. That community's desire for privacy has spared us the usual voyeuristic and intrusive media frenzy. Not even photos of the dead little ones. The depth and privacy of their mourning is theirs alone and I for one am glad. At the same time few of us remained untouched by this, especially those of us with little girls of our own (even though mine isn't little any more, she remains my little girl). I don't romanticize the Amish. They are a closed community that has set themselves apart and can be guilty of…
revere | October 1, 2006I wasn't going to read Sam Harris's new book, Letter to a Christian Nation because I thought I wouldn't learn anything and it wouldn't change my mind. I've got a huge stack of books to read. This wouldn't be at the top. But I picked it up idly at the bookstore this afternoon and was hooked from the first paragraph:
Since the publication of my first book, The End of Faith, thousands of people have written to tell me that I am wrong not to believe in God. The most hostile of these communications have come from Christians. This is ironic, as Christians generally imagine that no faith imparts the…
revere | September 24, 2006Muslims have shown their displeasure with what Pope Ratzinger (professional name, Benedict XVI) said about Islam, but not many people have noticed what he said about atheists. I guess there are more Muslims than atheists. Too bad. The world would be a lot better off with more atheists and fewer Muslims, Jews and Christians. At least atheists don't fight each other over whose God is the right one. But never mind.
Earlier the same day as the speech that drew the ire of Muslims, this supposedly nuanced and brilliant theologian gave his diagnosis for the cause of atheism:
The [infamous…
revere | September 17, 2006The Pope is embroiled in a nasty mess over remarks he made in Regensburg, Germany, containing a quote from fifteenth century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus, made to a Persian (Muslim) emissary. It concerned violence as a way to spread one's faith:
"Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."
He's surprised the Muslim world is upset? Mrs. R., who is Catholic (lapsed, I'm happy to say), said her jaw dropped. OK, Pope Benedict XVI (neé Ratizinger) complains his…
revere | September 10, 2006The soul might not be immortal but the canard there are no atheists in foxholes seems unkillable. This particular piece of mythology goes back to a statement by U.S. Army Chaplain William Thomas Cummings just before the Battle of Bataan in 1942. If the Bataan Death March convinced anyone on it to believe in God who didn't already believe, well, God Bless Them.
In any event, the notion that when you are scared shitless you turn to God (not very complimentary to the newly converted, I'd say) raised its cartoonish head again at the 31st annual Armed Services and Veterans Affairs Awards of the…
revere | September 3, 2006Sunday of Labor Day weekend. The Reveres are wending their way (separately) back to their home bases after a month on vacation (Mrs. R.:"Vacation? So how come you were blogging every day!"). Soon we'll be in the heaven of broadband after a month of dial-up. This heaven is here on earth, however, fiber optically speaking. Which brings us to our Sunday Sermonette, text by Joe Hill.
Joe Hill (born Joel Emmanuel Haggland in Sweden) is one of the U.S.'s most famous labor activists and songwriters. An organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, "the Wobblies") he wrote many songs, among…
revere | August 27, 2006Nothing offends like the truth. From The Onion:
War-Torn Middle East Seeks Solace In Religion
August 23, 2006 | Issue 42â¢34
JERUSALEM--As an uneasy truce between Israel and Hezbollah continues, millions of average men and women in the Holy Land are turning to the one simple comfort that has always seen them through the darkest days of their troubled history: the steadfast guidance of their religious faith.
"I take solace in knowing that my faith is a sanctuary, an escape from the bloodshed and turmoil," said Haifa resident Yigal Taheri, who last week lost his wife and newborn daughter when a…
revere | August 13, 2006From war hero to atheist pariah.
Pat Tillman was a pro football player who gave up his career to enlist in the Army after 9/11. He went to Afghanistan and was killed in combat, his death an icon for the patriotic fervor that served the neocon debacle perfectly. But Pat Tillman turned out to be an embarrassing disappointment for the flag wavers. For one thing, we now know that after he got there he came to the conclusion the war was "fucking illegal." Then we found out he had been killed by American bullets.
Not that we'd know any of this from Pentagon sources. It's his family that has pushed…
revere | August 6, 2006Sunday in the US. Since Australia is an 18 hour time difference I'm not exactly sure what day it is down there. But it doesn't make much difference because whatever day it is, the young folks are probably not in church.
Or so says a new study, The Spirit of Generation Y (Gen Y are those born between 1976 and 1990). The survey was a joint project of Monash University, the Australian Catholic University and the Christian Research Association.
Yes, there's hope yet for the younger generation, at least in Australia. Less than half believe in a god, with 20% outright atheists and another 32%…
revere | July 30, 2006Sunday is a quiet time to relax, read the papers, listen to music on the radio. If you live in Fresno, try KFYE-FM. Not interested, because last time you listed to it there was nothing but Christian music, sermons and Bible stories? Tune in again. As of last week it's now Porn Radio: "all sex radio, all the time" (AP).
Yes, indeed. You can now listen safely without worrying your neurons will initiate a programmed cell death routine. No more anti-gay songs and sermons. Now it's Marvin Gaye's, Sexual Healing (one of our favorites, this being a public health blog and all).
Continuous one hour…
revere | July 23, 2006Last week's Sermonette was about the joy of the apocalyptics that the Middle East conflagration signaled the End Times. This week we turn to Robert Frost's version, and address it with all due respect to our fellow human beings in Israel and Palestine:
Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Robert Frost (1874-1963). From Harper's magazine, December 1920
revere | July 16, 2006Maybe you think a bird flu pandemic will be a world destroying event and maybe you don't think so. Most people who read this site, however, fear a pandemic. There are others, though, for whom a really bad pandemic is just the ticket. They are the "End Times" religious groups, and all of the Big Three western superstitions have them. More (if you can handle it), below the fold.
. . . mega-church pastors recently met in Inglewood to polish strategies for using global communications and aircraft to transport missionaries to fulfill the Great Commission: to make every person on Earth aware of…
revere | July 9, 2006The White House heaved a sigh of relief a few weeks ago upon being told it wouldn't undergo a lobotomy by having Bush's Brain indicted, although we still don't know if Karl Rove struck a deal with the prosecutor to send his former pal, Scooter, Down the River.
Not as big a story, however, is that Bush is going to get his voicebox replaced. The news of the laryngectomy came last week with the resignation of longtime speechwriter and evangelical wingnut, Michael Gerson.
The effect of Gerson's departure could be monumental not only in light of the comparison between Bush's scripted and…