Land Watch

Bruce Prescott has given us additional insight into the ethics?/theology? of Richard Land at
Richard Land -- Court Priest for a War Denomination
He cites an article at EthicsDaily.com, "Southern Baptist Leader Terms Premature Troop Withdrawal Immoral", which reports Land's statements on a PBS broadcast. As he has done in the past, Land twists Just War theory to make it fit his ideas. If you read the article and wonder about Robert Parham's statement, "Having demanded a wedding ring from the Republican Party, Richard is now so wed to the president's failed war than he is a court priest for a pro-war denomination." He is referring to the following statement Land made in 1999 when meeting with a group of conservative religious leaders about their strategy for the up-coming election. He said, “The go-along, get-along strategy is dead. No more engagement. We want a wedding ring, we want a ceremony, we want a consummation of the marriage.”

True Lies Redux

It seems that the producers of the Jesus Tomb left out one little step in their research process, peer review. Of course all scholars know that if they want to get published they have to submit to peer review, or submitting their work to experts in the field for their evaluation. If that had been done then they might have avoided the embarrassment of having a scholar blow them out of the water. See Stephen J. Pfann's article MARY MAGDALENE IS NOW MISSING: A CORRECTED READING OF RAHMANI OSSUARY 701. Pfann's analysis is so detailed that no one should ever again think that Mary Magdalene is buried in that tomb. Which obviously destroys the very thesis that the production was based on.

As Pfann said in an AP article, "James Cameron is a great guru of science fiction, and he's taking it to a new level with Simcha Jacobovici. You take a little bit of science, spin a good yarn out of it and you get another 'Terminator' or 'Life of Brian.'"

Unfortunately, I don't think Cameron and Jacobovici will take the advice of another blogger in his 12 Lessons from the Jesus Tomb Saga, when he said

5. Don’t be tempted to “follow the money”; follow the evidence instead. Be on a quest for truth, not fame or fortune.

Are you crazy, this is show business.

The Wrong Richard--"he regularly speaks without authorization"

While scanning an article from ABP, the following statement caught my attention.

"While many of us consider Richard to be a friend, he regularly speaks without authorization for the entire organization and puts forward his own political opinions as scientific fact,"

My first thought was why are they talking about Richard Land in this article. Then I realized that they were talking about Richard Cizik, NAE's vice president for governmental affairs. He is in trouble with some of the high-powered fundies for talking too much about global warming. And while I really can't understand the fundies objections to global warming initiatives (unless they are so closely tied to conservative politics that they have lost all discernment), that is not my main concern here.

It seems to me that the "he regularly speaks without authorization for the entire organization" statement is applicable to Richard Land. I realize that he is the head of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission and as such is tasked to educate and to provide resources to SBC churches and agencies on moral and ethical issues. As such the head of this commission will obviously make some public statements, but did anyone in the SBC vote to make him "spokesman on Capitol Hill for the largest non-Catholic denomination in the country" or ask him to represent "Southern Baptists’ interests in the halls of Congress, before U.S. Presidents, and in the major media"? He has turned his position into the cult of Richard Land. Look at the general publications of the ERLC, the most prominent thing in them is Richard Land. Look at the ERLC website, the first item on the menu is Richard Land. I searched the site using their own search engine with the following results:

Ethics 1730 hits
Religious Liberty 1840 hits
Abortion 1080 hits
Richard Land 2408 hits

And the winner is . . .!!!

I don't know about you but I am a member of a southern baptist church and he does not now nor ever has been a spokesman for me.

Thoughts on not having more than one wife

I'm going to have to find something more productive to do besides sitting through the Sunday sermons at my church. I still attend this particular church for several reasons, some probably more valid than others. Some of them are, in no particular order,

Tradition--I have attended here off and on for more than 40 years. My wife's parents helped start the church. We were married here. Some of our children were baptized here and married here (not that we are in any way sacremental).

Fellowship--I have Christian friends here. Some of my closest friends have left and I have trouble finding new ones that I can talk seriously with.

Ministry--while it is definitely a minority of the members who are involved, the church does sponsor an active ministry to meeting the basic human needs of the poor and gives me opportunities to be a doer of the word.

But the Sunday morning sermons are just bad. Yesterday he was talking about God's plan for the family (no not submission but he did throw in an anti-gay marriage comment) and he at least acknowledged that there were some in the OT who did not live up to God's plan for the family. Some of them had more than one wife and some had concubines. He then gave us examples to show us why this is not a good idea.

The examples he used:

Abraham, of course only had one wife, and his wife was the one who had him sleep with Hagar and if only he hadn't done that we would not have an Arab/Israeli problem today.

Lot--as far as we know only had one wife, but have she turned into salt, his daughters got him drunk, had sex with him, and became the mothers of the Moabites and the Ammonites. Then he gave us serveral examples of how that was a bad think for Israel, especially the Moabites. The OT is just full of examples of how they did the Isrealites wrong. So Lot could have avoided all that if he had just kept it in his pants.

David--He really didn't talk about David or his wives just the trouble that came up between the half-brothers and half-sisters.

Solomon--No real discussion was needed here, because everyone knows that the wisest man in history allowed his foreign wives to lead him astray. What I really wanted to know was how Solomon managed to make it with all those wives and concubines. How did he even keep track of who he had slept with and who he hadn't without a computer.

So in light of those stories having more than one wife if not a good idea. But then he really muddied the waters by telling us about Ruth and Boaz (not because of polygamy, he had moved on to another point in his outline). Just after I had written a note to my wife that Ruth was a Moabitess, he said she was a Moabitess but never dealt with the obvious problem that raises. If Lot had not had sex with his daughter resulting in the birth of Moab, then Ruth would never have been born and since she was the grandmother of David, does that mean David would not have been born and since Jesus had to be of the house of David, then Jesus would not have been born and God's plan would have been all messed up. So obviously it was God's will for Lot to drunk and have sex with his daughter.

Oh well, back to reading the Apocrypha.

It's such a myth . . .

"It's such a myth that somehow Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell represent religious Americans. Most religious Americans care about poverty, about health care, about fighting global AIDS." Mara Vanderslice of Common Good Strategies made this comment to Stephen Colbert.

Situation Ethics at the ERLC

I seldom give Richard Land credit for anything, but I will give him credit for consistency in his condemnation of Rudolph Giuliani. Of course, I do wonder if he would be quite as concerned about the divorces if Giuliani were more conservative politically. Especially, in light of his comment, "I think that's going to be an awfully hard sell, even if he weren't pro-choice and pro-gun control."

Oops

I spoke to soon. Read the rest of the statement. Although McCain has been married twice, Land said, the senator's other credentials and history of conservatism earn him more respect than Giuliani. Land said. "When you're a war hero [like McCain], you have less to prove on the character front."

So being a war hero excuses you from the moral absolutes that Land and his ilk are so fond of slapping us in the face with. I really do find it interesting that a man who claims to be a spokesperson for a large group that follow the "Prince of Peace" sees being a warrior as somehow justifying other moral failures.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing either McCain or Giuliani for their divorces, I'm just trying to figure out what kind of situation ethicist Richard Land is.

...not about charity, it's about justice....

I am grateful to Christopher at Dance with God for this video.

Are You Going To Be Next?

First, they went after the moderates. Then they went after the non-signers of BFM2000. Then they went after the tongue-speakers. Then they went after the scripturally baptized. Then they went after the women. Now they are going after the Blacks (see the Dallas Morning News article). Are you going to be next?

More True Lies

I was actually amazed out how appropriate the "True Lies" label was for the "Lost Tomb of Jesus" pseudo-documentary. I will not try to do a point by point analysis of the film, if you want that go to Jay Cost's article, "Examining the Jesus' Tomb Evidence." I tried to call into NPR this morning when they had author/director Simcha Jacobovici on with two archeologists, but couldn't get through. I wanted to ask him what he considers himself to be because both in the film and in the followup discussions he says of himself, "I am not a scientist or theologian or bible scholar." But does claim to be a journalist, an investigative reporter, and a film-maker. That he is a film-maker is self-evident, that he did some investigation I will acknowledge, but his claims of being a journalist are questionable. He reminds me a lot of the whole Fox News enterprise, "We report, you decide." Which we all know really means, "We decide, we report, you accept." While he continually insists that he is just reporting the facts, the film is filled from beginning to end with a few facts wrapped around a multitude of theories, suppositions, speculations, etc.

Every one of the experts he used, except the guy from NC, has objected to the way he used their opinions. I thought the best comment about the film came from one of the archeologists who was on afterward with Ted Koppel. Using a links of a chain analogy, he suggested that when true academic investigation was applied to the theories the links would all be weak. In other words if a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, Jacobovici's chain is made up of only weak links. He did not make a determinative argument for any factor, he merely left them hanging unresolved and moved on to the next link. I did think the "archeoporn" comment was kind of a low blow, funny yes, but still a low blow.

True Lies

I find it ironically appropriate that James Cameron, famous as the producer of Titanic, but also holding credits for such well-known documentaries as The Terminator (1&2) and True Lies, is the producer of a new film on some old digs.

The new documentary, "The Lost Tomb of Christ," which the Discovery Channel will run on March 4, argues that 10 ancient ossuaries — small caskets used to store bones — discovered in a suburb of Jerusalem in 1980 may have contained the bones of Jesus and his family.

This is not a new discovery, just a new way to make money off of an old discovery. As one archeologist said, "They just want to get money for it." That statement comes from Amos Kloner, the first archaeologist to examine the site, which he discovered more than 20 years ago. He also said the idea fails to hold up by archaeological standards but makes for profitable television.

An AP article quotes Stephen Pfann, a biblical scholar at the University of the Holy Land as saying the film's hypothesis holds little weight.
Pfann said, "But skeptics, in general, would like to see something that pokes holes into the story that so many people hold dear."
"How possible is it?" Pfann said. "On a scale of one through 10 — 10 being completely possible — it's probably a one, maybe a one and a half."
Pfann is even unsure that the name "Jesus" on the caskets was read correctly. He thinks it's more likely the name "Hanun." Ancient Semitic script is notoriously difficult to decipher.
Kloner also said the filmmakers' assertions are false.
"It was an ordinary middle-class Jerusalem burial cave," Kloner said. "The names on the caskets are the most common names found among Jews at the time."

Pfann's view that there is about a 15% chance of it actually being the bones of Jesus' family contradicts Cameron's claim that a statistician told him it was a million to one in favor of it being them.

One of the clearest statements comes from Simcha Jacobovici, who wrote a companion book, The Jesus Family Tomb. “They are common names, these were archaeologists. They never went to statisticians. We're just reporting the news. We're not statisticians. We're not theologians . . . ." "We're just trying to make some money." The last statement is my paraphrase of Jacobovici's claim.