This article makes me ill. Some excerpts:

A former high-school biology teacher, Ham travels the nation training children as young as 5 to challenge science orthodoxy. He doesn’t engage in the political and legal fights that have erupted over the teaching of evolution. His strategy is more subtle: He aims to give people who trust the biblical account of creation the confidence to defend their views — aggressively.
He urges students to offer creationist critiques of their textbooks, parents to take on science museum docents, professionals to raise the subject with colleagues. If Ham has done his job well, his acolytes will ask enough pointed questions — and set forth enough persuasive arguments — to shake the doctrine of Darwin.
“We’re going to arm you with Christian Patriot missiles,” Ham, 54, recently told the 1,200 adults gathered at Calvary Temple here in northern New Jersey. It was a Friday night, the kickoff of a heavily advertised weekend conference sponsored by Ham’s ministry, Answers in Genesis.

In two 90-minute workshops for children, Ham adopted a much lighter tone, mocking scientists who think birds evolved from dinosaurs (“if that were true, I’d be worried about my Thanksgiving turkey!”).
In a bit that brought the house down, Ham flashed a picture of a chimpanzee. “Did your grandfather look like this?” he demanded.
“Noooooo!” the children called.
“And did your grandmother look like that?” Ham displayed a photo of the same chimp wearing lipstick. The children erupted in giggles. “Noooooo!”
“We are not just an animal,” Ham said. He had the children repeat that, their small voices rising in unison: “We are not just an animal. We are made in the image of God.”

Can’t we be animals and made in the image of God?

I did my graudate education in literary/cultural theory in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which means I was thoroughly immersed in deconstruction and post-structuralism: truth is relative, our thinking and reality are limited by language, human relations are all about power, etc. I was hit with Derrida in my first semester of grad school and the theories of Michel Foucault figured prominently in my dissertation.
Some would find it odd, then, that I became a Christian in the midst of this education, what with faith’s appeal to universal truth and the institutional nature of Christianity. I find deconstruction and post-structural theories interesting, useful and basically sound, but in retrospect, I think my embrace of faith represented an ultimate rejection of those theories. If you completely embrace those theories, the end result is hopelessness: we are each stuck in our own little reality–which itself might be an illusion–unable to genuinely communicate with others.
I guess I refused to go that far. I wanted and want to believe that there is some meaning to life. I’m not even sure that it’s God, but in a community of faith, I found a group of people who also want to believe that it’s possible to connect with others in a meaningful way (whatever that means).
Oh, I feel great ambivalence about the institutional nature of the church. And it’s damn hard to cut through all the crap that constitutes our daily lives to get to know others intimately, but at least the members of a faith community profess to believe it’s possible to do so. It’s that belief–that faith–that counts. And occasionally, I actually glimpse that connection.

I’ve forwarded the link to The Clergy Letter Project on to my pastors and other liberal Christian friends. From the project’s home page:

For too long, the misperception that science and religion are inevitably in conflict has created unnecessary division and confusion, especially concerning the teaching of evolution. I wanted to let the public know that numerous clergy from most denominations have tremendous respect for evolutionary theory and have embraced it as a core component of human knowledge, fully harmonious with religious faith.
In the fall of 2004, I worked with clergy throughout Wisconsin to prepare a statement in support of teaching evolution. We were called to action by a series of anti-evolution policies passed by the school board in Grantsburg, WI. The response was overwhelming. In a few weeks, nearly 200 clergy signed the statement, which we sent to the Grantsburg school board on December 16, 2004. Additionally, groups of educators and scientists sent letters to the Grantsburg School Board and to the Superintendent of Schools protesting these policies. In response to all of this attention, as well as the efforts of others, the Grantsburg School Board retracted their policies.
The outpouring of support from clergy around the country encouraged me to make this a nationwide project. If you want to read more about it or join us in sharing this important perspective, click here. Encourage your clergy to consider signing the statement and please feel free to link to these webpages. And, while the current focus is on Christian clergy, please let me know if you are willing to write and/or host a statement from other religions.
Sincerely,
Michael Zimmerman
Dean
College of Letters and Sciences
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh

As a side note, I notice that University United Methodist Church in Austin is already signed up to celebrate Evolution Sunday. Makes me wish I were still a member there.

We are a group of evangelical pastors, academics and mission executives who have been disturbed by the growing influence of Christian Zionism on the political scene in America recognizing this ideology to be a major factor in the stalled peace process in Israel / Palestine. We hope to offer an alternative biblical view, one that reflects the true nature of God as a God of compassion and justice. Christian Zionism and the dispensationalism which undergirds it distorts this.

Challenging Christian Zionism offers a lot of resources to fight the right-wing Christian theology and political agenda.
NOTE: If you don’t know what Christian Zionism is, check out this article. It’s a little wordy, but not too long.

From the American Civil Liberties Union web site:

When the angry phone calls and emails started arriving at the office, I knew the holiday season was upon us. A typical message shouted that we at the American Civil Liberties Union are “horrible” and “we should be ashamed of ourselves,” and then concluded with an incongruous and agitated “Merry Christmas.”
We get this type of correspondence a lot, mostly in reaction to a well-organized attempt by extremist groups to demonize the ACLU, crush religious diversity, and make a few bucks in the process. Sadly, this self-interested effort is being promoted in the guise of defending Christmas.
…
In truth, it is these website Christians who are taking the Christ out of the season. Nowhere in the Sermon on the Mount did Jesus Christ ask that we celebrate His birth with narrow-mindedness and intolerance, especially for those who are already marginalized and persecuted. Instead, the New Testament—like the Torah and the Koran and countless other sacred texts—commands us to love our neighbor, and to comfort the sick and the imprisoned.
That’s what the ACLU does. We live in a country filled with people who are sick and disabled, people who are imprisoned, and people who hunger and thirst for justice. Those people come to our Indiana offices for help, at a rate of several hundred a week, usually because they have nowhere else to turn. The least of our brothers and sisters sure aren’t getting any help from the Alliance Defense Fund or WorldNet Daily. So, as often as we can, ACLU secures justice for those folks who Jesus worried for the most.
As part of our justice mission, we work hard to protect the rights of free religious expression for all people, including Christians. For example, we recently defended the First Amendment rights of a Baptist minister to preach his message on public streets in southern Indiana. The ACLU intervened on behalf of a Christian valedictorian in a Michigan high school, which agreed to stop censoring religious yearbook entries, and supported the rights of Iowa students to distribute Christian literature at their school.

Happy Holidays to all!

A U.S. District Judge ruled today that the Dover, Pennsylvania school board can’t force the teaching of intelligent design. That is welcome news in and of itself, but as an extra bonus, the judge’s finding is very strongly worded (emphasis added):

The proper application of both the endorsement and Lemon tests to the facts of this case makes it abundantly clear that the Board’s ID Policy violates the Establishment Clause. In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether ID is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that ID cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.
Both Defendants and many of the leading proponents of ID make a bedrock assumption which is utterly false. Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general. Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs’ scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator.
To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions. The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.
With that said, we do not question that many of the leading advocates of ID have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors. Nor do we controvert that ID should continue to be studied, debated, and discussed. As stated, our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach ID as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.
Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.

You go, Judge Jones!
UPDATE: It appears that Judge Jones was appointed by George W. Bush. Clearly one of those pesky liberal activist judges. Awesome.

Gordon Atkinson recently posted to his blog If We Could Do Church, in which he tries to imagine what a Christian community would look like if it were free of most of the institutional baggage of contemporary churches.
(The comments to Gordon’s post are also interesting: Gordon clarifies some of his thoughts and several commenters refer to existing Christian communities that exemplify many of the characteristics that Gordon imagines.)
I’m always ambivalent about the church as institution, but I’ve been feeling more negative about it than usual lately, so Gordon’s post hit a nerve. I’m willing to admit that there’s always going to be some administrative overhead in maintaining any group of humans (even in Gordon’s conception of a church community), but I think it’s a constant struggle to weigh the amount of time, money and effort we put into the institution itself vs. the amount of those resources that are absolutely necessary for the group to use the remaining resources to help others. Many churches, it seems, get more caught up in maintaining the institution itself than I think they should.
I think the key difference comes down to size. Gordon says that his conceptualized congregation would be small enogh “to meet comfortably in a living room.” The larger the group of people, the more organization overhead you incur.
Another possible solution to this dilemma may lie in our Methodist circuit rider roots. In thoe circuit rider days, Methodist churches were small groups of individuals who managed themselves, and a circuit rider pastor only showed up from time to time to provide a minimal amount of professional guidance.

Yesterday, Texans approved Propsition 2. Unfortunately, that’s no surprise to me. What troubles me, though, is the direct participation of Christian congregations and pastors in the political process: many congregations and pastors publicly endorsed prop 2, and the election-night gathering for supporters in the Austin area was held at Great Hills Baptist Church.
This direct endorsement of political candidates and initiatives contradicts my beliefs. I used to be a member of a United Methodist congregation that is widely recognized as one of the most liberal in Texas, with one of the most politically outspoken pastors. The pastor frequently spoke about issues that were hotly debated politically, but even in that environment it was taboo for the pastor to come out for or against candidates or specific political solutions. Instead, his task was to help his congregants decide what is right and just, but he left it up to them to decide how to act on those decisions in the realm of politics.
I prefer to think globally, but act locally. I’m always inspired by my Christian friend in Germany who was staunchly against abortion. I don’t necessarily agree with her, but I’m inspired by her actions. She believed that the best way to avoid abortion is to avoid unwanted pregnancy, and that she could have a direct impact on this issue. Instead of getting involved in political debate about abortion (granted, the political situation is different in Germany than in the US), she would spend her Saturday afternoons handing out information on birth control in the main square. I remember with a chuckle her explanations of her and her husband trying out each new birth control method so that she would be able to offer experienced advice.

Yesterday, Michael Behe admitted in court that the standard scientific definition of ‘theory’ was too narrow to include Intelligent Design. John Scalzi makes this awesome comment about this development:

The only value to this whole thing so far is that it got Behe to admit that in order to get ID to work, you have to cheat — you have to make words mean different things than what they mean. You know, the science community already has a word for the new, more lax definition of “theory” Behe wishes to promote: it’s called a hypothesis. Should Behe manage to get his way and change the definition of “theory,” what becomes of the word “hypothesis”? Is it demoted? Discarded? Given a nice gold watch for its years of service to the scientific community and then taken behind the barn to be plugged with a shotgun? And if is merely demoted, then what will become of the phrase “drunken paranoid ramblings?” That phrase has nowhere else to go.

And you read this entry because you thought I was writing my own drunken paranoid ramblings, didn’t you?

Today is the Feast of St. Francis, my favorite Christian saint. The Prayer of St. Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
when there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
Grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand,
to be loved as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.