Chuck Colson on losing rights

Chuck Colson has a column at townhall.com in which he explains why, in his opinion, the religious right is losing the right to speak out against the things they don’t believe in. It’s more honest than he intends.

David Woodward is a political science professor at Clemson University—one who has first-hand experience on how dangerous it can be to speak out in favor of traditional values: He almost lost his job over it.

In 1993, Woodward was asked to testify about the political power of homosexual groups in American life. He agreed to serve as an expert witness for the state of Colorado, which was fighting to defend the recently passed Amendment Two, which made it illegal to give protected status based on sexual orientation.

There, in a nutshell, is the heart of the problem: Christians are not just speaking their minds, they’re using their voice to try and pass legislation that goes beyond mere speech to actual, legalized oppression of those they disagree with.

Letter to a secular nation

Writing for Townhall.com, Mike Adams makes one of the sillier arguments I’ve seen in a while, in attempted rebuttal of Sam Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation. In particular, Adams seems offended by Harris’s remarks about the hate mail he got after writing The End of Faith.

[Harris] has this to say about the worst of it:

The most hostile of these communications have come from Christians. This is ironic, as Christians generally imagine that no faith imparts the virtues of love and forgiveness more effectively than their own. The truth is that many who claim to be transformed by Christ’s love are deeply, even murderously, intolerant of criticism.

Such a statement would be alarming to Christians were there not a fundamental logical error involved. One way to grasp that error is to imagine me starting a book with the following:

The most hostile of my communications have come from homosexuals. This is ironic, as homosexuals generally imagine that no lifestyle imparts the virtues of love and tolerance more effectively than their own. The truth is that many who claim to be liberated by alternative lifestyles are deeply, even murderously, intolerant of criticism.

Sharia envy?

Chuck Colson weighs in on the Archbishop of Canterbury and his proposal that British law cede some of its jurisdiction to Islamic courts based on sharia law.

At first I thought the Archbishop misspoke.But it turns out, no. He calls this “supplementary jurisdiction” unavoidable. He compared it to accommodating Christians in areas like abortion or gay adoption.

With all due respect to the Archbishop, there is no such parallel. The only thing that is unavoidable here is his failure to see sharia as it is practiced in the real world, as opposed to in seminars.

In a way, Colson is right. Muslims are only asking for Islamic principles to be applied to other Muslims, whereas conservative Christians are trying to get their sectarian principles imposed on everyone regardless of religion. But there are parallels, even if Colson can’t see them.

Bush foreign policy “a bomb”: Chuck Colson

George W. Bush, America’s born-again Christian president, with God’s help and conservative Christian support, is pursuing a foreign policy that has even staunch conservatives like Chuck Colson dismayed and alarmed:

Last month, the president announced his intention to sell Saudi Arabia some of our most sophisticated weapons. This is a bad idea, and you should let your representative know it right away…

[T]he Saudis do not need this kind of “persuasion.” They already have a good reason: Their oil is controlled by a Shiite minority that Iran, also Shiite, could exploit.

Then there is the nature and actions of the Saudi regime. Defense expert Frank Gaffney, Jr. reminded Washington Times readers this week of what the deal’s proponents hope they will forget: The Saudis are not a “reliable ally” of the United States.

The Saudi government funds and operates “mosques, madrassas, and Islamic centers” in the United States and elsewhere. These institutions spread the Salafist, or Wahabi, version of Islam practiced in the kingdom—the same kind that prohibits the practice of Christianity, that lets girls burn to death rather than letting them exit a burning building in their pajamas.

What’s more, it is the version of Islam that inspires bin Laden and other extremists and seeks to dominate other, more moderate, versions of Islam and destroy non-Muslim nations like ours. Without Saudi petro-dollars, Salafism would be confined to the Arabian peninsula.

We ought to recall also that Saudi Arabia has never recognized Israel’s right to exist. While it is difficult to imagine what good JDAMs would do against al Qaeda or the kingdom’s restive Shiites, it is easy to imagine how they could be used against Israel.

Or us, for that matter. It is common knowledge that Saudi security and intelligence forces contain al Qaeda sympathizers. Saudi intelligence files were found on al Qaeda computers in Afghanistan. It is not a stretch to imagine some of these weapons finding their way into terrorists’ hands and not unreasonable to fear that these weapons might one day be used against us.

But what’s a little terrorism between oil buddies like Bush and the Saudis, eh?

D’Souza on Bush’s “honesty”

Actually Bush Didn’t Lie, or so claims right-wing spinmeister Dinesh D’Souza.

Two leftist organizations have released a study that claims that the Bush administration lied about Iraq. Somehow I think we’ve heard that one before.

And of course, if people have known since 2002 that Bush was not telling the truth about Saddam’s alleged “weapons of mass destruction,” why, that must mean we’ve already debunked the people who were saying so. Yeah, that’s it, we’ve heard this one before, so it’s OK to ignore. We’ll just assume that it’s been dealt with.

Zinger of the day

Ed Brayton, at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, quotes a Messianic Jewish leader as claiming that unless Dubya gives up his attempts to set up a Palestinian state (and incidentally bringing badly needed peace to the region), God will punish America by handing us over to a series of bad presidents. Ed sums up the situation pretty succinctly:

So let’s get this straight: If we don’t do what God says, God’s going to punish us by giving us bad leaders. How exactly will we tell?

Good question.

Bullies, toadies, and Faith In America

I like slacktivist’s take on Romney’s infamous “Faith” speech.

Here’s why Mitt Romney’s “Faith in America” speech is backfiring: Bullies don’t respect their toadies.The speech includes some decent stretches, but it was not, primarily, a courageous plea for religious tolerance and mutual respect. It was, instead, primarily an obsequious bit of sucking up by an outsider hoping to curry favor with the in crowd by parroting their condemnation of other outsiders.

He has some interesting things to say about the fruit Romney is likely to reap from what he is sowing here, especially as a Mormon. Recommended Reading.

Conceit by proxy

This morning I thought I’d take some time to look at the phenomenon of conceit by proxy, one of the major “benefits” with which religions reward their followers. Lo and behold, as if in anticipation of my topic, the always-reliable Chuck Colson has already posted a very nice example of this process in action.

Conceit by proxy is a simple 1-2-3 process. First, you take your own values, beliefs, and agenda, and ascribe them to someone else. God works best for this purpose, both because of His assumed authority and because He never spoils things for you by showing up in real life to express an independent opinion.

Second, you swap roles: instead of admitting that you are ascribing your worldview to God, you claim that you are merely obtaining it from God. Finally, you praise God for having such a really, really swell worldview. Of course, this implies that people (such as yourself) who share this worldview are also really really great, BUT you’re not bragging. Oh no, you’re humbly submitting yourself to God and giving God the glory. So even though you’re really bragging about your own values, beliefs and agenda, you’re doing it in a way that allows you to pose as being humbly submissive.

Prison Fellowship blows cover

World Net Daily is reporting a big victory for Chuck Colson’s Prison Fellowship ministry in the 8th Circuit Court.

A federal appeals court has ruled that a voluntary faith-based prison program that has proven effective in reducing recidivism by half can move forward at an Iowa prison…

The ruling, by former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Judges Roger Wollman and Duane Benton sitting as a panel for the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, reversed major parts of a district judge’s earlier ruling.

Meanwhile, at Dispatches from the Culture Wars, Ed Brayton has what Paul Harvey calls “the rest of the story,” including a revelation that substantiates my earlier remarks about prison ministries: if they work, it’s because of the people, not because of God.

Inflicting sexual pain on children

Massachusetts wants to ban the practice of inflicting sexual pain on children as a form of punishment, but a conservative “pro-family” group is against the ban.

A proposal in the Massachusetts House of Representatives to ban “corporal punishment” would turn good parents into criminals, according to a family advocacy group leader who battled the same idea earlier this year in California.

“This bill equates loving, corrective discipline with hateful, harmful abuse,” said Randy Thomasson, the president of the Campaign for Children and Families. “Just as California’s proposed spanking ban was stopped cold, [Rep. Jay] Kaufman’s bill should be rejected by lawmakers who respect the sanctity of the home.

Now, let’s be clear first of all that spanking is a form of sexual pain. The buttocks are a secondary erogenous zone, a sexual part of the body. If you saw two little league coaches, and one of them had a habit of squeezing the boy’s shoulders while coaching, and the other had a habit of squeezing the boys’ butts while coaching, which one would raise your suspicions? Why is spanking a prominent theme in many pornographic stories and films? Why is a pat on the backside considered anything from flirtatious to sexual harassment? Why do we have so many euphemisms for the bottom/butt/behind/derrière/etc? Because it’s a sexual zone!