Secular Values, not guns, create criminals: Morality in Media

Morality in Media President, Bob Peters, reacts to the wave of gun-related murders this past week (reproduced in full):

"Having lived in New York City for more than 30 years, I am all too aware of the harm that firearms in the hands of criminals can cause. Having grown up in a small town in Illinois, where citizens owned guns without misusing them, I am also aware that guns aren't the underlying problem. I am not an opponent of gun regulation; I am an opponent of making guns the scapegoat for mass murder.

"The underlying problem is that increasingly we live in a 'post-Christian' society, where Judeo-Christian faith and values have less and less influence. Among other things, Judaism and Christianity taught that murder was wrong and that included murder motivated by anger, hatred and revenge. Both religions also taught that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves and to forgive others.

"For many citizens, what has replaced Judeo-Christian faith and values is the secular value system that is reflected in films, rap/music lyrics, and videogames and on TV and now the Internet, where the taking of human life for just about any reason is commonplace and is often portrayed in an appealing manner and in realistic detail. Murder motivated by hatred and revenge is also justified.

"This secular value system is also reflected in the 'sexual revolution,' which is the driving force behind the push for 'gay marriage;' and the Iowa Supreme Court decision is another indication that despite all the damage this revolution has caused to children, adults, family life and society (think abortion, divorce, pornography, rape, sexual abuse of children, sexually transmitted diseases, trafficking in women and children, unwed teen mothers and more), it continues to advance relentlessly.

"It most certainly is not my intention to blame the epidemic of mass murders on the gay rights movement! It is my intention to point out that the success of the sexual revolution is inversely proportional to the decline in morality; and it is the decline of morality (and the faith that so often under girds it) that is the underlying cause of our modern day epidemic of mass murders.

"I would add that if conservative media's irresponsible talk of revolution can 'poison weak minds,' the liberal entertainment media's irresponsible portrayal of mayhem can also poison weak minds."

Jesus and Muhammad against the Man, and for homosexuality

“When people quote the passages in Leviticus condemning homosexuality, I say to them — if you read the whole of the Old Testament and took everything that was there in a literal way, as being what God and religion is about, you’d have some pretty tough policies across the whole of the piece. What people often forget about, for example, Jesus or, indeed, the Prophet Muhammad, is that their whole raison d’être was to change the way that people thought traditionally.”
- Tony Blair on why the Pope should consider the Catholic Church's stand on homosexuality.

More:
“I think there is a generational shift that is happening. If you talk to the older generation, yes, you will still get a lot of pushback, and parts of the Bible quoted, and so on. But if you look at the younger generation of evangelicals, this is increasingly for them something that they wish to be out of — at least in terms of having their position confined to being anti-gay.”

More "people who agree with me have morals, people who don't, don't" from our political leaders

"Homosexuality will always be a sexual perversion. And you say that around here now and everybody goes nuts. But I don't care. They're mean. They want to talk about being nice. They're the meanest buggers I have ever seen. It's just like the Muslims. Muslims are good people and their religion is anti-war. But it’s been taken over by the radical side. What is the morals of a gay person? You can't answer that because anything goes. They're probably the greatest threat to America going down I know of."
- Utah state Sen. Chris Buttars (R), speaking in the documentary, 8 - The Mormon Proposition.

Hat tip: Joe my God

Can the Bible help "Love Win Out" when it comes to the anti-gay movement?

Can Bible-bending be a force for good? Should we use the Bible to change the way the Bible is used--finding other passages in the Bible to cool down the heated ones?

Take homosexuality, for instance. According to a Barna survey, "While six in 10 young Americans said the homosexual lifestyle is a problem facing America, just 1 percent said they pray for those who identify as homosexual." Citizen Link and I disagree which portion of the survey is the most disturbing but it is a good sign to see Christians being more introspected on this issue.

"It's appropriate to be anti-homosexuality," David Kinnaman, President of Barna group and co-author of unChristian, told Family News in Focus. "It's not appropriate, for us as Christian believers, to be anti-homosexual, to be anti-sinner, to be against these people. And that really is the perception, that Christians have lost the ability to love and to deal with and to have meaningful friendships with these individuals." So Family News in Focus has encouraged anti-homosexuality Christians to listen.

This positive note came after the Love Won Out conference held in Indianapolis this weekend. "We are proponents of loving men and women who are gay-identified," said Melissa Fryrear, director of the gender issues department at Focus on the Family and former lesbian, "with the hope that we can witness Jesus Christ, and that those persons will come to know Christ personally, and then be open one day, ideally, to God radically transforming their lives and helping them to overcome homosexuality.

"Our message is twofold: It is standing for biblical truth, and also complementing that truth with much love, with much grace and compassion."

Sad? Yes. According to a recent study, Exodus can describe 38 percent of its programs' participants as successes: changing to either a "meaningful but complicated" heterosexuality (15 percent) or a stable chastity (23 percent). (Results that Christianity Today says are the fruits of a 30-year-old program!)
Self-righteous? Definitely.
Better than the approach of that these sorry-excuses for human beings are taking? Absolutely.

While "forgiveness" is on the surface a positive application of the Bible (and feels like being attacked by a pack of puppies when set to music and images), the question "what is there to forgive?" becomes more divisive than Hilary Clinton. This past year the film Because the Bible Tells Me So has tackled the issue of negotiating a bellicose memorandum on homosexuality and the message of love and acceptance. While fighting Bible with Bible is only destined to repeat itself ad infinitum, I cannot fault efforts like those of Kinnaman to nudge what it means to be Christian in a more open minded direction. Perhaps it will also encourage the secularist among us to re-think the sense of superiority.

On the Campaign Trail

Yesterday, Salon published an interview with Elizabeth Edwards, wife of presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards. She discussed her choice to confront Ann Coulter on Hardball, why poverty is a central theme in the Edwards campaign, why John is a better advocate for women's rights than Hillary, and her support of gay marriage--a position that differs from that of her husband's.

The difference, she implies, is in how they read the Bible:

Salon: But your husband feels differently; he's a civil unions guy.

Elizabeth: Well, I think it's a struggle for him, having grown up in a Southern Baptist church where it was pounded into him. I was raised a Methodist in military churches. Poverty was talked about; I don't remember homosexuality ever being mentioned. And I don't think that Christians who aren't engaged in a political campaign ever talk about it. They talk about poverty and other issues talked about in the Bible. But in churches, in political season, there's plenty of ginning up this issue.

Notes from the Bible Bending Diaspora

SCOTLAND: Scottish youth need a little more Bible in their lives. At least that is the thoughts of Scotland Bible Society who have recently appointed a youth development minister. "Living with the iPod generation means the Bible is increasingly faced with the 'boring and irrelevant' label." Nothing new here. So what does it mean that the Scotsman is reporting this as news?

TEXAS: A Texas' court rejected the claim filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the People for the American Way that it is unconstitutional for a school district to offer a Bible class. The lawsuit is, as the Christian Post puts it: "on going."

AUSTRALIA: Paul Kelly reveals his appreciation for the Bible in his new album. As an atheist, Kelly utilizes the Bible as his artistic muse. "It's just always been a part of my diet, I guess. Little bits of Shakespeare tend to crop up a lot, too. If I only had two books, Shakespeare and the Bible would probably keep me pretty well occupied."

But despite enjoying the benefits of the Bible, Kelly will not read it to his children. He tells the Australian newspaper The Age, "[...] if you've gone back to read it as an adult, it's just full of . . . I mean, the Old Testament is appalling! The chosen people just slaughtered all the other tribes. (There's) Lot's daughters sleeping with him; there's Noah, drunk, lying naked on his bunk - there's another rhyme."

BULGARIA: Lottery fans who believe in the biblical significance of lucky number seven have caused the jackpot to rise. Only tomorrow will tell who is the luckiest of them all.

ENGLAND: The Gay and Lesbian Humanist Alliance (GALHA) responded to the Bishop of Carlisle's remarks that the recent floods in Britain are a response to pro-gay laws. Bishop Graham Dow commented last week that, “In the Bible, institutional power is referred to as 'the beast', which sets itself up to control people and their morals. Our government has been playing the role of God in saying that people are free to act as they want."

The GALHA chairman Jim Herrick had this insight: "People like Graham Dow [Bishop of Carlise] bring religion into even more disrepute with such fatuous comments. No wonder people are abandoning the Church of England in such huge numbers when it is led by silly people like him."

OREGON: A doctor published an article highlighting what he believes is evidence that the Bible condones marijuana for medicinal purposes. If I were to reduce this man's logic to an SAT analogy equation, it would look like this:
Kaneh bosum : biblical medicine :: marijuana : modern medicine
See? aren't you convinced?

Wrong by Association

Another variation of the "Dr. Laura Letter" appeared today, this time directed at Anglicans who refuse to accept homosexual persons into their congregations.

Here is more "X is wrong because X comes from source Y that also contains Z, and everyone knows Z is wrong":

"The Lord does indeed tell Moses that homosexual acts are wrong. He also warns the prophet not to mar the corners of his beard, not to round the corners of his head, not to have sex with a menstruating woman, not to wear a garment woven with two kinds of thread, not to have carnal relations with certain kinds of female slave, and so on.

Either you follow these instructions literally, or else you temper them with your own knowledge and understanding of life. You take large chunks of the Bible with a grain of salt, and you ignore other parts entirely. You opt for compassion instead of righteous vengeance. You don't pour scorn on love.

That had always – or so I hoped – been the Anglican way. I don't know many Anglicans who obey the Lord's command to hold lobsters in abomination."