by Valerie Tarico

Why can’t GOP politicians trumpet their religious credentials without assaulting women? Because fundamentalist religion of all stripes has degradation of women at its core. Fundamentalist Christianity is no exception. Progressive Christians believe that the Bible is a human document, a record of humanity’s multi-millennial struggle to understand what is good and what is God and how to live in moral community with each other. But fundamentalists believe that the Bible is the literally perfect word of the Almighty, essentially dictated by God to the writers. To believe that the Bible is the literally perfect word of God is to believe that women are tainted seductresses who must be controlled by men.

Listen to early Church father Tertullian: “You [woman] are the devil’s gateway: you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree: you are the first deserter of the divine law: you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God’s image, man. On account of your desert—that is, death—even the Son of God had to die.”

Or take it from reformer John Calvin: “Woman is more guilty than man, because she was seduced by Satan, and so diverted her husband from obedience to God that she was an instrument of death leading to all perdition. It is necessary that woman recognize this, and that she learn to what she is subjected; and not only against her husband. This is reason enough why today she is placed below and that she bears within her ignominy and shame.”

Both Tertullian, a respected Catholic theologian, and Calvin, a leader of the Protestant Reformation, took their cues on this matter straight from the book of Genesis:

To the woman [God] said, I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you. -Genesis 3:16

No matter how outrageous Santorum and Gingrich may seem to secularists and moderate people of faith, they are right on target for an intended audience of Bible believing fundamentalists. If you have any doubt, check out these fifteen Bible passages.*

1. A wife is a man’s property: You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. Exodus 20:17
2. Daughters can be bought and sold: If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do. Exodus 21:7
3. A raped daughter can be sold to her rapist: ²⁸ If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, ²⁹ he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives. Deuteronomy 22:28-29
4. Collecting wives and sex slaves is a sign of status: He [Solomon] had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. 1 Kings 11:3
5. Used brides deserve death: If, however the charge is true and no proof of the girl’s virginity can be found, she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. Deuteronomy 22:20-21.
6. Women, but only virgins, are to be taken as spoils of war: Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, ¹⁸ but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man. Numbers 31:17-18
7. Menstruating women are spiritually unclean: ¹⁹ “‘When a woman has her regular flow of blood, the impurity of her monthly period will last seven days, and anyone who touches her will be unclean till evening. ²⁰ “‘Anything she lies on during her period will be unclean, and anything she sits on will be unclean. ²¹ Anyone who touches her bed will be unclean; they must wash their clothes and bathe with water, and they will be unclean till evening. ²² Anyone who touches anything she sits on will be unclean; they must wash their clothes and bathe with water, . . . ³⁰ The priest is to sacrifice one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering. In this way he will make atonement for her before the LORD for the uncleanness of her discharge. ³¹ “‘You must keep the Israelites separate from things that make them unclean, so they will not die in their uncleanness for defiling my dwelling place,^[a] which is among them.’” Leviticus 15: 19-31
8. A woman is twice as unclean after giving birth to girl as to a boy: A woman who becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son will be ceremonially unclean for seven days, just as she is unclean during her monthly period. ‘ 3 On the eighth day the boy is to be circumcised. 4 Then the woman must wait thirty-three days to be purified from her bleeding. She must not touch anything sacred or go to the sanctuary until the days of her purification are over. 5 If she gives birth to a daughter, for two weeks the woman will be unclean, as during her period. Then she must wait sixty-six days to be purified from her bleeding. 6 ” ‘When the days of her purification for a son or daughter are over, she is to bring to the priest at the entrance to the tent of meeting a year-old lamb for a burnt offering and a young pigeon or a dove for a sin offering. Leviticus 12: 1-8
9. A woman’s promise is binding only if her father or husband agrees: 2 When a man makes a vow to the LORD or takes an oath to obligate himself by a pledge, he must not break his word but must do everything he said. 3 “When a young woman still living in her father’s household makes a vow to the LORD or obligates herself by a pledge 4 and her father hears about her vow or pledge but says nothing to her, then all her vows and every pledge by which she obligated herself will stand. 5 But if her father forbids her when he hears about it, none of her vows or the pledges by which she obligated herself will stand; the LORD will release her because her father has forbidden her. . . . . A woman’s vow is meaningless unless approved by her husband or father. But if her husband nullifies them when he hears about them, then none of the vows or pledges that came from her lips will stand. Her husband has nullified them, and the LORD will release her. 13 Her husband may confirm or nullify any vow she makes or any sworn pledge to deny herself. Numbers 30:1-16
10. Women should be seen not heard: Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. 1 Corinthians 14:34
11. Wives should submit to their husband’s instructions and desires: Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Colossians 3:18
12. In case you missed that submission thing . . . : Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. ²³ For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. ²⁴ Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. Ephesians 5:22-24.
13. More submission – and childbearing as a form of atonement: A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. ¹² I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. ¹³ For Adam was formed first, then Eve. ¹⁴ And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. ¹⁵ But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety. 1 Timothy 2: 11-15
14. Women were created for men: For if a woman does not cover her head, she might as well have her hair cut off; but if it is a disgrace for a woman to have her hair cut off or her head shaved, then she should cover her head. ⁷ A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. ⁸ For man did not come from woman, but woman from man; ⁹ neither was man created for woman, but woman for man. 1 Corinthians 11:2-10
15. Sleeping with women is dirty: No one could learn the song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth. ⁴ These are those who did not defile themselves with women, for they remained virgins. They follow the Lamb wherever he goes. They were purchased from among mankind and offered as first-fruits to God and the Lamb. Revelation 14:3-4

This list is just a sampling of the Bible verses that either instruct or illustrate proper relationships between men and women. In context, they often are mixed among passages that teach proper relationships with children, slaves and foreigners. The Bible doesn’t forbid either contraception or abortion, but it is easy to see why Bible believing fundamentalists might have negative feelings about both.

As futurist Sara Robinson has pointed out, traditional rules that govern male-female relationships are grounded more in property rights than civil rights. Men essentially have ownership of women, whose lives are scripted to serve an end—bearing offspring. It is important to men that they know whose progeny they are raising, so sexual morality has focused primarily on controlling women’s sex activity and maintaining their “purity” and value as assets. Traditional gender roles and rules evolved on the presumption that women don’t have control over their fertility. In other words, modern contraception radically changed a social compact that had existed for literally thousands of years.

Some people don’t welcome change. Since the beginnings of the 20^th Century, fundamentalist Christians have been engaged in what they see as spiritual warfare against secularists and modernist Christians. Both of their foes have embraced discoveries in fields such as linguistics, archeology, psychology, biology and physics – all of which call into question the heart of conservative religion and culture. Biblical scholars now challenge such “fundamentals” as a historical Adam, the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection and the special status that Abraham’s God gave to straight males. Fundamentalists are fighting desperately to hang on to certainties and privileges they once saw as an Abrahamic birthright. If they can’t keep women in line; it’s all over. The future ends up in the hands of cultural creatives, scientists, artists, inquiring minds, and girls. It’s horrifying.

*All verses are quoted the New International Version of the Bible, a favorite of evangelicals. 

Source  ExChristian.net

Jesus Camp is a 2006 American documentary film directed by Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing about a charismatic Christian summer camp, where children spend their summers learning and practicing their prophetic gifts and being taught that they can “take back America for Christ.” According to the distributor, it “doesn’t come with any prepackaged point of view” and tries to be “an honest and impartial depiction of one faction of the evangelical Christian community”.

Jesus Camp debuted at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival, and was sold by A&E Indie Films to Magnolia Pictures. Nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 79th Academy Awards, the film was met with controversy that led to the closure of the camp.

Watch Jesus Camp.

In a new GQ profile, Rev. Ted Haggard addresses the continued assumptions that he’s gay, following revelations years ago that the prominent evangelical had a drug-fueled sexual relationship with a gay male former escort: “I think that probably, if I were 21 in this society, I would identify myself as a bisexual.”

But, he told GQ‘s Kevin Roose: “I’m 54, with children, with a belief system, and I can have enforced boundaries in my life. Just like you’re a heterosexual but you don’t have sex with every woman that you’re attracted to, so I can be who I am and exclusively have sex with my wife and be perfectly satisfied.”

The profile provides a few other tidbits about Haggard, who resigned from the New Life Church and from his position as president of the National Association of Evangelicals after he admitted to the affair with his male meth dealer, who was also a prostitute.

When Haggard resigned, Roose reports, he signed a separation agreement, drafted by a board of overseers appointed by the church, which “required him to cut off all contact with members of the church, stay away from the media, perform no ministry-related work, and move his family out of Colorado.” Haggard says he now finds the agreement “excessively harsh,” and still has a score of bitterness toward the megachurch he founded, referring to it as the “old Soviet Union”: “I used to think the church was the light of the world. But I’ve completely lost my faith in it.”

“You’ve got to understand, Kevin, people are, at their cores, hateful,” he told Roose. “I don’t want to believe that, but the facts have prevailed over my idealism.”

About former meth dealer and escort Mike Jones, Haggard says: “We never had sex sex. I bought drugs and a massage from him, and he masturbated me at the end of it. That’s it.”

He admitted to buying drugs “five or six times” from Jones, but adds: “Sometimes I’d throw it away. Other times, I’d go someplace and masturbate and use it. But it was for masturbation. And that’s one of the reasons why I haven’t been real clear. I don’t want to stand up publicly and say, ‘Hey, I’m a masturbation guy!”

“You know, that’s really the core issue here,” he added. “I bought the drugs to enhance masturbation. Because what crystal meth does–Mike taught me this–crystal meth makes it so you don’t ejaculate soon. So you can watch porn and masturbate for a long time.”

But there have been other allegations of misconduct:

Two years ago, a New Life volunteer named Grant Haas revealed that Ted had masturbated in front of him and offered him drugs on a church trip in 2006, when he was 22, and that New Life subsequently paid him $179,000 to keep quiet. New Life later confirmed having paid Haas but insisted that it wasn’t meant as hush money. (Ted denies the drug offer but admits that he masturbated in the room they shared. “I thought he was asleep,” he says.)

Haggard said in response: “And that’s exactly why I haven’t done youth programs at St. James,” he said, referring to the new church he recently founded, “because here I was trying to help these guys, and now I’ve got people calling me a pedophile.”

“Grant Haas will end up publicly repenting, Mike Jones will end up publicly repenting, and the overseers will end up publicly repenting, just like I did,” Haggard says.

Back in June, Haggard gave a press conference with his family outside his Colorado Springs home, and announced that he was moving on and founding a new church, called St. James, which he said will welcome everyone, “gay, straight, bi, tall, short, whether you’re an addict, a recovering addict, or you have an addict in your family.” But, he added, no gay marriages will be performed at this new church.

Earlier this month he starred in a TLC special, showing him setting up the church: “Showing the world the new chapter of our lives will hopefully inspire others to find their own path to overcome their struggles and embrace the power of acceptance.”

Read the full story at:  GQ

The deaths of thousands of blackbirds in Arkansas may have been caused by the recent repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” according to a self-described “prophet” who once claimed the ability to banish “gay demons.”

Evangelist Cindy Jacobs said on a video posted over the weekend that the strange phenomenon, that has now occurred in various places across the world, was an “answer” from God for violating his principles concerning homosexuality.

“According to biblical principles, marriage is between a man and a woman, so we have to say ‘what happens when a nation makes a decision that’s against God’s principles?’” she said. “Well, often what happens is that nature itself will begin to talk to us – for instance, violent storms, flooding.”

Jacobs founded Generals International (GI), an international evangelical Christian group, along with her husband in 1985. She is also a member of the Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders, a group of prophets who claim to have foreseen Islamic terrorism in 1999.

During an evangelical conference in 2008, Jacobs conducted a mass exorcism of the audience to cast out the spirits of pornography, addiction, lust, bisexuality, homosexuality, and perversion. In another event in Texas in November, she claimed that if Latinos voted for candidates who opposed gay marriage, then God would reward them with immigration reform.

“Let’s talk about this Arkansas pattern and say, could it be a pattern?” Jacobs continued. “But the blackbirds fell to the ground in Beebe, Arkansas. Well the Governor of Arkansas’ name is Beebe. And also, there was something put out of Arkansas called ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ by a former Governor, this was proposed, Bill Clinton.”

“As so, could there be a connection between this passage [Hosea 4] and now that we’ve had the repeal of the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ where people now legally in the United States have broken restraints with the Scripture because the Scripture says in Romans 1 that homosexuality is not allowed.”

Nearly 500 dead birds were discovered in Louisiana and 5,000 in Arkansas last week. About 100 dead birds were also found in Sweden. This week, another 100 dead birds were found along Highway 101 in California. There was no sign that the mass deaths were related to the bird flu.

The mass death of wildlife is a fairly common occurrence, according to the US Geological Survey (USGC) scientists. The agency said the deaths were probably caused by loud noises, such as fireworks, that startled the birds and caused them to fly into objects such as houses or trees during the night.

“Although wildlife die-offs always pose a concern, they are not all that unusual,” Jonathan Sleeman, director of the USGS in Madison, said. “It’s important to study and understand what happened in order to determine if we can prevent mortality events from happening again.”

According to USGS records, there has been 188 reported mass death of birds across the country during the past 10 years.

The King James Bible, which most conservatives cite in pursuing policies that discriminate against homosexuals, also bans wearing gold, getting tattoos, trimming beards, divorcing your spouse, eating shellfish and wearing mixed material fabrics, among other things.

Last year Jacobs participated in an event called “Awakening 2010,” where she shared a stage with Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.

Gay revelations were a disaster for a hero of US evangelicals. Now he has launched a new church in his garden.

Ted Haggard is back and about to start preaching again. Haggard, once America’s leading evangelical pastor, who was brought down and removed from his own mega-church after admitting to a gay sex scandal, has set up a new ministry and will hold the first service in his new church today.

His wife, Gayle, who has stood by him throughout his troubles, will be the church’s co-pastor.

“We realised that I am a sinner and she is a saint, but that way we do have a very broad appeal,” he joked in an interview from his home in Colorado Springs, a city that has been described as the Vatican of America’s evangelical movement. “I feel we have moved past the scandal. We have forgiveness. It is a second chance,” he said.

For Haggard, the formation of a new church – to be called St James – marks the beginning of a remarkable comeback and the latest stage of a rollercoaster ride through evangelical power.

Haggard first arrived in Colorado Springs in 1984, after he said he had received a vision from God that he had to form a church in the heartland of American evangelism.

That church, which began in the basement of his house with 22 people, eventually grew into New Life Church, one of the largest mega-churches in America. It had a congregation of more than 14,000 and Haggard became so prominent that he paid several visits to the White House of President George W Bush. He also became president of the National Association of Evangelicals.

But that all ended in 2006, when a gay prostitute said Haggard had paid him for sex. The revelations destroyed Haggard’s career almost overnight. He lost his position at New Life and had to leave Colorado. He ended up in Arizona and started a new job selling insurance. He also received controversial religious counselling about his sexuality. Haggard now says he is heterosexual, but had gay urges because he was molested by a man when he was a child.

Now Haggard says he wants gays and bisexuals to come to his new church, whose first few meetings will be held in the garden of his suburban home. “St James church is for anyone, and I do mean anyone… If you are straight, gay or bisexual, I want to walk through the scriptures with you,” Haggard told a press conference last week to announce his church.

Haggard’s view of homosexuality – and his own actions – appear bound to annoy almost everybody. Many gay rights activists are offended by his view that his actions were caused by child abuse and that it is possible to receive counselling for having same-sex sexual feelings. On the other hand, many evangelicals are still outraged at his past conduct, and will be equally furious at his openly reaching out to gays, whom they believe are sinning with their sexuality.

Haggard seems to be trying to span the two poles of opinion. When asked what he would tell a gay person who came to St James, he said: “I would tell them to study the scriptures. I would tell them to explore that with God. It is an individual walk for them.”

But he denied that he thought homosexuality was forbidden in the Bible, a common belief among many conservative Christians. “I would not say that. I would say that all of us need God’s grace,” he said.

Haggard talked openly about what he calls “my scandal”, but also clearly felt that it left him an undeserving sinner. “I feel that I need forgiveness. But I do not feel that I deserve forgiveness,” he said.

But there is no doubt that Haggard is trying to move on and start to rebuild his life and old career. He said the reaction to his announcement of a new church had been huge and overwhelmingly positive: “It made me feel elated. Forgiven. Loved.” One man had heard about it in Germany and immediately flew to Colorado to meet him. “He just got on a plane in Frankfurt,” Haggard said.

Haggard talked quickly and frequently cracked jokes and burst into laughter as he confessed he had no idea how big St James could eventually be. “I have no future plans for that. I am going to accept every blessing and see how it goes. We have got 200 chairs for our first service and maybe in a few weeks we will need 2,000. Or maybe we won’t,” he said.

Haggard said the scandal that wiped out his first career as a pastor had given him a strong insight into suffering and that made him a better counsellor for others who were under stress. It had also shown him the power and importance of unconditional love, especially for those who were in trouble or who had sinned.

“Our aim with St James is a love reformation,” he said with another laugh. “After what I have been through, I see people differently now. Sometimes I just watch the news and cry because my heart is so tender and passionate and filled with love,” he said.

The same, however, cannot be said for all members of the Colorado Springs evangelical community. Though many, including some prominent columnists in the local newspaper, have welcomed Haggard and his new church, some have not.

Haggard said he had wanted to do a TV interview about his church using a studio belonging to a powerful local religious group, but they had refused to have anything to do with him and he had been forced to drive to Denver to use a different studio there. “It made me feel that we all need to keep reading our Bible, including some of our evangelical leaders,” Haggard said.

Source: The Guardian

Many Evangelicals, especially in the United States, hold the return of Christ to be in two stages. 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 is seen to be a preliminary event to the return described in Matthew 24:29-31. Although both describe a return of Jesus in the clouds with angelic activity, trumpets, heavenly signs, and a gathering of the saints, these are seen to be two separate events. The first event is to be unseen, the rapture proper, when the saved are prophesied to be ‘caught up,’ from whence the term rapture is taken. The ‘second coming’ is the public event when Christ’s presence is prophesied to be clearly seen as he returns to end Armageddon.

Popularized by the Left Behind series of 16 best-selling novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, the Rapture is on the minds of millions of gullible readers.

Watch Prank 3:16

Kent Hovind’s doctoral thesis for Patriot University, a diploma mill, has been leaked. And it is everything you would expect to come out of a genius of his magnitude. It is full of references to the bible and attacks on evolution. Basically, if you could summarize all the content from his presentations (i.e. the ones on youtube) you would get the same thing. It is creationist drivel at its best.

Seriously, if he can call himself “Dr.” from the basis of this dissertation, anyone past elementary school deserves a PhD. You only need to look at the introduction to see the level of “scholarship” of it.

His dissertation begins with, “Hello, my name is Kent Hovind”. Was that not evidently clear from the cover page? And then he goes on about God giving him the opportunity to preach and the evils of Satan. I’m sorry Kent, but preaching doesn’t count as scholarship.

Read Kent Hovind’s Phd Dissertation
Paul Chartley Dissassembles “Dr.” Hovind’s Dissertation

The founder of Seattle’s Mars Hill Church told his congregation last Sunday that the highest grossing movie of all time is “the most demonic, satanic film I’ve ever seen.”

If you follow local theological circles, you know Driscoll is something of a superstar among national evangelical leaders. Or at least, he’s someone to watch.

Driscoll helped build the popular Mars Hill Church into one of the most talked about evangelical mega-churches in the country, despite its home at the heart of a secular stronghold. That distinction, combined with his church’s culturally savvy but socially and theologically conservative views, gives him significant weight in religious debate.

Mark Driscoll on Avatar (mp3)

‘Avatar’ is the most satanic film Mark Driscoll has ever seen (SeattlePI.com)

The attack on Tuesday in the capital’s sprawling Cite Soleil slum came with religious tensions rising, as Protestant Evangelicals and other denominations recruit in the wake of the earthquake that killed more than 200,000.

“It will be war — open war,” Max Beauvoir, supreme head of Haitian voodoo, told AFP in an interview at his home and temple outside the capital.

“It’s unfortunate that at this moment where everybody’s suffering that they have to go into war. But if that is what they need, I think that is what they’ll get.”

The quake also left more than a million homeless and left much of the capital and surrounding areas, in this Caribbean nation of more than nine million, in ruins.

Police said a pastor urged followers to attack the ceremony, resulting in a crowd of people throwing rocks at the voodoo followers.

Rosemond Aristide, police inspector in Cite Soleil, said he has since spoken with the pastor, who agreed to allow voodoo ceremonies to take place there.

However, Aristide could not explain why no arrests were made nor provide further details.

Beauvoir claimed hundreds of Protestant Evangelicals along with other people they hired attacked the ceremony, causing a number of injuries.

About half of Haiti’s population is believed to practice voodoo in some form, though many are thought to also follow other religious beliefs at the same time.

The religion — whose practitioners often use the vodou spelling as opposed to the Westernized version — is deeply rooted in Haitian culture.

A voodoo priest named Boukman has been credited with setting off the country’s slave rebellion in the late 18th century.

Source: AFP