"In a striking move that ends a nearly four-decades-old relationship between the federal government and the Episcopal Church..."

"... the denomination announced on Monday that it is terminating its partnership with the government to resettle refugees, citing moral opposition to resettling white Afrikaners from South Africa who have been classified as refugees by President Trump's administration...."

NPR reports.

"Weird Christianity is equal parts traditionalism and, well, punk: Christianity as transgressive alternative to contemporary secular capitalist culture."

"Like punk, Weird Christianity has its own, clearly defined aesthetic. Many Weird Christians across the denominational and political spectrum express fondness for older, more liturgically elaborate practices — like the Episcopal Rite I, a form of worship that draws on Elizabethan-era language, say, or the Latin Mass, or the wearing of veils to church.... One Weird Christian is Ben Crosby... a student at Yale Divinity School.... Raised Lutheran, he was unprepared for what he found as a first-year undergraduate at Yale in 2009 when he attended an Anglo-Catholic parish. 'I walked into a service and it’s a big, beautiful, 19th-century neo-Gothic nave, clouds of incense wafting up toward the ceiling, candles everywhere,' Mr. Crosby told me. 'It was like nothing I’d experienced before.' Likewise for Rod Dreher, a senior editor and blogger for The American Conservative magazine.... [W]hen he was 17, he told me, he visited Chartres Cathedral while on a group tour of France and he found himself moved by the majesty of the Gothic architecture. 'I think this is why a certain kind of person really is drawn to the older, ritualistic, aesthetic forms of Christian worship,' he said. 'It speaks to something deep inside us, and, I think, it is a kind of rebellion against the ugliness and barrenness of modernity.'... This sense of rebellion — of consciously being at variance with modernity — permeates Weird Christian politics no less than its aesthetics.... [F]or plenty of Weird Christians, their faith is a call to a far more progressive politics. Like their reactionary counterparts, they see Christianity as a bulwark against the worst of modernity, but they are more likely to associate modernity’s ills with the excesses of capitalism or with a transactional culture that reduces human beings to budget line items, or anonymous figures on a dating app.... Weird Christianity represents an alternative to 'both more liberal and conservative forms of American Christianity,' said Mr. Crosby.... In the age of lockdown, when so much of life exists in a nebulous digital space, a return to the Christianity of the Middle Ages — albeit one mediated through our screens — feels welcome.... Like the hipster obsession with 'authenticity' that marked the mid-2010s, the rise of Weird Christianity reflects America’s unfulfilled desire for, well, something real...."

From "Christianity Gets Weird/Modern life is ugly, brutal and barren. Maybe you should try a Latin Mass" by Tara Isabella Burton (NYT).

I'm not getting the use of the word "weird" here. Burton makes it sound like she's involved in coining (and promoting) the term: "Many of us call ourselves 'Weird Christians,' albeit partly in jest." But she seems to be calling Episcopalians weird. Maybe I'm a little too close to the experience, but to me, Episcopalian is the least weird religion. Yes, the aesthetics are good, and high-quality aesthetics are appealing. But what's weird? You could find all religion weird, but I don't think "the older, ritualistic, aesthetic forms of Christian worship" are particularly weird. In fact, the purported "weirdness" of the aesthetically appealing form of worship is a shield from the real weirdness in religion: true belief.

It's funny. I'm reading (rereading) a novel that has a character whose problems are initially revealed in terms of an inability to say that anything is "bad." She "would only say that this was very 'weird.'"

... Patty was incapable of going past “weird”... the worst she would say aloud... was that [something] was very weird....

The reliance on "weird" is a tell.

Here's the place in the post where I look up the key word in the Oxford English Dictionary. It's the older, ritualistic, aesthetic side of me. "Weird" originally meant:

Having the power to control the fate or destiny of human beings, etc.; later, claiming the supernatural power of dealing with fate or destiny.

Later, in the 1800s, there was:

Partaking of or suggestive of the supernatural; of a mysterious or unearthly character; unaccountably or uncomfortably strange; uncanny.

It seems that religion is inherently weird. It's weird to think you're saying something special by calling your little corner of religiosity weird. What is the motivation to call your religion "weird"... and then back off and say that's "partly in jest"? People who call themselves weird... what's up with them? Especially, when all they're doing is Episcopal Rite I. Are they doing it partly in jest? Is it "weird" because they fear it's only cushioning from "the ugliness and barrenness of modernity"? Or is it weird because they find they truly believe?

"Zeus and Achilles were 'almost a religion' to him; how could the 'insipid blackness of the Episcopalian Church'—the faith of fashionable Boston—compete with the 'whoring of Zeus and the savagery of the heroes?'"

Wrote 19-year-old Robert Lowell to 51-year-old Ezra Pound in 1936, according to this New Yorker review of a book about Lowell. Lowell was trying to ingratiate himself to Pound, trying to convince the old poet to let him "come to Italy and work under you and forge my way into reality." What on earth would you say to try to seem like a poet worthy of an internship with another poet? Lowell also said:

I had violent passions for various pursuits usually taking the form of collecting: tools; names of birds; marbles; catching butterflies, snakes, turtles etc; buying books on Napoleon... I caught over thirty turtles and put them in a well where they died of insufficient feeding....

I was looking for that passage — having heard it yesterday on the audio version of The New Yorker — and I happened to run into this other article which has some similar material: "The Sage of Yale Law School." The "sage" is Anthony Kronman, who's got a new book, "an eleven-hundred-page exploration of his personal theology, called 'Confessions of a Born-Again Pagan'":

Kronman’s book... explains the Greek view of life, as it was expressed by Aristotle; then he describes the Judeo-Christian view, as espoused by Augustine and Aquinas; finally, he explores atheism. In each case, he shows why the best possible version of each world view is unsatisfying. He concludes that “born-again paganism”—a theology of his own invention, holding that God and the world are the same—is the only truly convincing way to understand our place in the universe....

Kronman sees born-again paganism as inherently democratic. It “divinizes the distinctiveness of every individual,” he writes.... His ideas about divinity seem, at times, more poetic than religious; toward the end of the book, he devotes many pages to Walt Whitman and Wallace Stevens....

Poets... but what about Robert Lowell and Ezra Pound? Neither are mentioned in "Confessions," and though I haven't scanned the 1100 pages — I've only used the "search inside this book" function at Amazon — I take it that Kronman's "paganism" has nothing to do with the whoring of Zeus and the savagery of the heroes. He also doesn't mention Episcopalians and their — as Lowell would have it — "insipid blackness."

Another hate crime turns out to be self-generated — another "victim" threatened herself.

"The University of Wyoming Police Department issued a citation Monday afternoon in Albany County Circuit Court for Meg Lanker-Simons, a woman allegedly threatened last week in a social media post authorities now contend was a hoax.... 'Subject admitted to making a controversial post on UW Crushes webpage and then lied about not doing it,' according to the citation."

The post was made to the UW Crushes page April 24 on Facebook and described Lanker-Simons as "that chick that runs her liberal mouth all the time and doesn't care who knows it."

The post also referenced a graphic, sexual act against Lanker-Simons. "One night with me and shes gonna be a good Republican (expletive)," the post read. The post created a stir on social media and at the university, with school officials issuing statements denouncing the post against Lanker-Simons and campus police opening an investigation....

"This episode has sparked an important discussion reaffirming that the UW community has no tolerance for sexual violence or violence of any type," UW spokesman Chad Baldwin said. "The fact that the Facebook post apparently was a fabrication does not change the necessity for continued vigilance in reassuring that we have a campus where everyone feels safe."

While you're continuing all the vigilance, how about a little vigilance about self-dramatizing fraud? People need better bullshit detectors! Arm the students for real life in every possible way.

I love the contradictory notions of vigilance and feeling safe, especially in the context where a fake threat supposedly made people feel unsafe, and the university spokesman wants to concentrate attention on the importance of eradicating all feelings of unsafeness without condemning the phony stirring up of such feelings.

I say let's be vigilant about everything: vigilant about the possibility that some other human beings might want to have sex with you, vigilant about the way a few of them might use inappropriate or ever violent methods to fulfill this desire, vigilant about how anyone might lie or manipulate you to get things they want, including sex but not just sex. There are people who want to control and dominate the culture, to scare and repress and make life bland and boring and conventional — in old-fashioned "traditional" terms and in relatively recent "feminist" terms. Watch out for all of this! Vigilance!

Feeling safe? You want to feel safe? You need to be vigilant about the people who manipulate you with the idea of your feelings of safety, especially when they cite this aspect of your feelings to keep you from becoming vigilant about those who are scaring you with a photoshopped picture of what's really dangerous in this world. You should want to be safe, not just feel safe. Don't have tunnel vision on one danger that other people are telling you is The Danger that you need to feel safe from. You need to do your own vigilance, not outsource it to the authorities who assure you of their caretaking prowess. Protect yourself, even from these caretakers.

Pamela Kandt, co-convener of the Episcopal Women's Caucus and a Casper activist, came to Lanker-Simons' defense Tuesday. Last week, after the controversial post went public, Kandt lobbied university officials for a "swift response to this outrage."

"I will tell you, I believe Meg is innocent of this outrage," said Kandt, adding she believes the citation issued by police is a "classic case of blaming the victim."... UW Police, Kandt said, "have bullied her and they have pulled a bluff. This is the worst episode of 'Law & Order' you can imagine... I mean, my God, who would do this to herself?"

Do your own vigilance. Anyone might be lying. The student feminist on Facebook. The police. The Episcopalians.  

My God, who would do this? I take it the Episcopalian is querying her God because she, herself, is innocent of the imagination needed to project herself into the brain of a hypothetical person who would demonize others by writing a threat that said all the things she'd need a threat to say for a threat to be useful in promoting her cause and making herself the center of attention. Will God answer the Episcopalian's question? Or is He thinking, Come on, Pamela. I gave you a brain. You're supposed to think for yourself!

(I arrived at that link via Robert Stacy McCain, via Instapundit.)

ADDED: I have some more thoughts here.

"What was worse — having to be heterosexual or being a politician?"

"One of the great moments" in Alexandra Pelosi's HBO documentary "Fall to Grace," according to Carl Swanson in New York Magazine. The documentarian daughter of Nancy Pelosi is interviewing disgraced former NJ Governor Jim McGreevey.

Pelosi tells me the lesson of the documentary is “Don’t let the worst thing you did define who you are now. Think of it as Tony Robbins for the HBO-documentary set.” I ask her if she worries that she is essentially enabling McGreevey’s need for attention, and she admits that the idea “does keep her up at nights.”

This is my second post of the day about McGreevey. The first was about a NYT article that was either atrocious or brilliant satire. I'm writing this one because I have now watched the "Fall to Grace," and I just want to say it's horrible. Pelosi didn't get much good footage, and we mostly see women in prison going through prison therapy, a topic that could be handled in many different ways by serious film documentarians but is here used to promote McGreevey, whom the women just adore, because he tells them they should not be defined by the worst things they've done.

Why is McGreevey doing therapy in women's prisons? Because he left the Catholic Church (because they won't let you feel good about being gay) and went to Episcopalian seminary (where it's apparently okay both to be gay and to have a gay sexual relationship), but the Episcopalians rejected him for the priesthood anyway. Is McGreevey angling to get back into politics? I bet he is, in which case Pelosi's puff piece is supposed to help. It shouldn't though, because it's so awful. Worst thing about it? The maudlin tinkling piano soundtrack that never shuts up.

"Most of his sexual interludes with men had been furtive; to him, gay culture meant Liberace and Paul Lynde."

One of many hard-to-believe sentences in this long NYT article about James McGreevey, the disgraced former governor of New Jersey. He's 55, not 75. He got into trouble putting his lover on the state payroll in 2004, not 1974. He's a big old fraud in my book, and his effort to cloak himself in "I am a gay American" sentimentality is disgusting.

Relentlessly excavating his heart and soul, he later went into psychotherapy and resurrected the calling he said he had felt since he was an altar boy in Carteret, N.J. Now an Episcopalian with a degree in divinity from the General Theological Seminary, he’s embracing the Lord’s work with the same fervor with which he once pursued politics. 

Look, I hope he's turned his life into service and good works, but this article is fawning — PR-style.

Until recently, Mr. McGreevey and his partner had kept their relationship private. This Thursday, however, is the debut of Alexandra Pelosi’s HBO documentary “Fall to Grace,” which explores his spiritual makeover, so he’s sharing the happily-ever-after. 

Sharing the happily-ever-after? Who talks like that?

Not, he stipulates, because he’s after another ego jolt like the sort he craved as a politico, but because he’s eager to focus attention on his work.

Oh, he stipulates? Sorry, this is just making me believe he’s after another ego jolt like the sort he craved as a politico. Did the NYT writer think that passing along this fawning PR was a joke — a nudge to make us think this is such bullshit? We're shown McGreevey's partner, an "Australian financier," 9 years his junior who — we're told is "[s]turdy and handsome in an unpolished way" and "with taste for modern art." The modern art taste is nowhere to be seen in the photograph of the pair in their "pistachio-walled conservatory with worn-leather sofas and ethnic touches that could have been conjured by Ralph Lauren."

With severely cropped hair, khakis and navy sweater pocked with moth holes (his uniform), the ex-governor has the look of a missionary. Upbeat and charismatic, he laughs easily and often exclaims, “God bless!” Mr. O’Donnell has a warier, more reserved air — at least, when he’s on the record. Wearing smart corduroys and a taupe cardigan, he keeps his phone in hand and peers at the screen through thick-rimmed glasses.

Smart corduroys? Cardigan?

ADDED: The cardigan is the main thing that pushed me over the line to finding this article bloggable, because I'd just read this question in the Gentleman Scholar advice column at Slate:

Out of nowhere, my husband of 21 years has started wearing cardigan sweaters. I can't tell you how much this turns me off—the soft, sloppy, indecisiveness of the garment, not jacket, but not fully committed to being a sweater, either. He will point to younger men wearing them and say, "See? I'm bringing them back." The thing is, I'm not going home with those younger men and I don't know why the younger men are wearing them, maybe it's ironic or something? I don't know. But when I see a man in a cardigan, all I can think is Mr. Rogers. My husband usually has excellent taste but every now and then he likes to rock something positively cringe-worthy. He doesn't like me to tell him what to wear. Do I just suck it up? Or do I draw a line in the sand? Thank you!

I mean, maybe that article was ironic or something... I don't know.

IN THE COMMENTS: Palladian said: Oh my God. That piece has to be satire. Please tell me it's the smartest satire ever written. "

I just noticed the line — in the "smart corduroys" paragraph — "Mr. O’Donnell... at least, when he’s on the record."

AND: More from Palladian: "I'm still trying to imagine how they figured out how to make pistachios work as a load-bearing structural material." 

"I was Episcopalian, he was a Mormon," said Ann Romney, and Ross Douthat says that was "straining to make an affinity sound like an impediment."

Douthat lumps Episcopalians and Mormons together. He's got a big theory about it. Mormons are the WASPs of the West or something. Douthat isn't talking about the religious aspects of these religious groups but "a communitarian spirit and a flinty work ethic, and an attitude toward their own success that mixed self-effacement and noblesse oblige."

Her best line evoked generations of reticent, public-spirited Brahmins: “Mitt does not like to talk about how he has helped others because he sees it as a privilege, not a political talking point.” The same was true of her strongest passage:

No one will work harder. No one will care more. And no one will move heaven and earth like Mitt Romney to make this country a better place to live.

Which U.S. Presidents were atheists?

I'm assuming some were. Here's a summary of what we know about each of the Presidents. What do you think? Perhaps John Tyler:

There is not much evidence of Tyler's beliefs, though he's often listed as Episcopalian. Following his death a friend said, "He was a firm believer in the atonement of the son of God, and in the efficacy of his blood to wash away every stain of mortal sin. ... He was by faith and heirship a member of the Episcopal Church and never doubted divine revelation." However, no pastor came to his home to administer the last sacrament, and in her account of his last illness, Tyler's wife wrote nothing of faith, hope, Christ or eternity.

"The fervor of the sixties penetrated law schools quite passionately."

Strikingly sexual imagery from a 2005 article called "Introduction to Clinical Legal Education" (which I'm reading in connection with my law school's "self-study" of its clinical program). (PDF.) Here's the quote in context:

During the second wave of clinical legal education - a period spanning from the 1960's through the late 1990's - clinical legal education solidified and expanded its foothold in the academy. The factors that contributed to this transformation included demands for social relevance in law school, the development of clinical teaching methodology, the emergence of external funding to start and expand clinical programs, and an increase in the number of faculty capable of and interested in teaching clinical courses. Perhaps the most powerful of these factors was the zeitgeist of the 60's, which produced "student demands for relevance." In reflecting on the growth and direction of clinical legal education, Professor Dean Hill Rivkin has noted: "It was the societal legacy of the sixties . . . that most shaped clinical legal education. The fervor of the sixties penetrated law schools quite passionately."

ADDED: Speaking of passionate fervor, I love Wikipedia. It has an article titled "Relevance." Excerpt:

During the 1960s, relevance became a fashionable buzzword, meaning roughly 'relevance to social concerns', such as racial equality, poverty, social justice, world hunger, world economic development, and so on. The implication was that some subjects, e.g., the study of medieval poetry and the practice of corporate law, were not worthwhile because they did not address pressing social issues.^{[citation needed]}

Of course, that passage contains many links to other Wikipedia articles, including this one called "Social justice." Excerpt:

The term and modern concept of "social justice" was coined by the Jesuit Luigi Taparelli in 1840 based on the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas and given further exposure in 1848 by Antonio Rosmini-Serbati.... It is a part of Catholic social teaching, the Episcopalians' Social Gospel, and is one of the Four Pillars of the Green Party upheld by green parties worldwide. Social justice as a secular concept, distinct from religious teachings, emerged mainly in the late twentieth century, influenced primarily by philosopher John Rawls. Some tenets of social justice have been adopted by those on the left of the political spectrum....

Ah! Religious roots. I note the resonance with Rick Santorum's observation that President Obama believes in "some phony theology." Sorry. The 60s penetrated me too passionately, and I've still got the fervor for relevance.

Things you may have missed if you didn't hang out here over the weekend.

1. "Witch! Whore!... Nazi!" How evil is it for a candidate to play the role of a Nazi in war reenactments? How evil is it for a journalist to write about that and bury — in the 13th paragraph — the news that the same man — Rich Iott —  has also done reenactment as a Civil War Union infantryman, a World War I doughboy and a World War II American infantryman and paratrooper?

2. It's sexist to worry about calling Meg Whitman a whore. If women are going to join men in politics, they deserve to be called whores like the rest of them.  

3. Woeful/wilful metaphor deafness: Some people just don't/won't understand what it means to say "some people are just born to be slaves."

4. "Watch Russ Feingold confidently assert that he represents Tea Party values."

5. The story of a pregnant woman who had to pee invokes an old memory of the time I was persecuted by Episcopalians. 

A big religion-themed dorm for the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

It will be a private dorm, part of Pres House, which is affiliated with the Presbyterian Church, so we are not dealing with the constitutional problem of tax money flowing into a religious organization. Still, the Freedom From Religion Foundation — which is based here in Madison — expresses concern, through its president Annie Laurie Gaylor:

"It creates walls between students, this idea that they need to be protected from the real world and cocooned together... Is that really why you come to a university, to be with people like yourself?"

Kelsey Wolff, a member of the student ministry at the Pres House, said it wasn't that simple. Wolff, who will be a senior this fall, said she had a hard time in the "party dorm" she was assigned as an underclassman and would have appreciated a faith-based option.

And Wolff said the idea of a separate dorm for students who wish to focus on religious issues didn't mean those students had to segregate themselves from campus life. Students in the new dorm, she said, will take classes, go to ball games, explore State Street and join campus organizations, just like any other student.

"They're still going to get all of that exposure, but at the end of the day they're going to be able to come home," she said. "They'll just have their space where they're away from that."

The university already has "specialized dorms or floors within dorms where like-minded students can live together, including those with a foreign language immersion or a math and science focus." Is there something wrong with these specialized dorms — or with some types of specialized dorms? Is it wrong for students to want a home base that's somewhat cocoony? But not all students who choose themed dorms are trying to replicate their childhood homes. Some seek the challenge of adapting to a new environment. Consider the foreign language dorms. Sometimes it's part of trying to excel in your studies: They want to be near people who are taking the same courses.

But the religious dorm creates the impression that the students are trying to live among less sinful people — or at least among people who will feel guilty about sinning. Is there something wrong with that? But is that what's going on with the new UW dorm?

Pres House board member Tom Schwei said the new dorm would be open to students from any and all faiths, not just Christian ones. Residents won't be required to take part in any of the planned programs -- such as informal discussions about religion, mission trips on academic breaks or weekly church services -- but they should expect to have them offered, Schwei said.

Well, then, what is it all about? The dorm is looks as though it will really nice, and the location is fabulous.  And what are Presbyterians going to do to you, anyway?

"It's not going to be a high pressure environment," he said. "But people shouldn't be too fooled. There is a Presbyterian church sitting right next door. They're going to hear some Presbyterian singing. We are going to continue to grow."

Ha ha. Presbyterian singing.  Look out. I remember it from my youth, when my family went to Presbyterian church. My father was a terrible singer — despite the fact that he looked like Frank Sinatra — and he sang very loud. I thought good singing was loud singing. Imagine how embarrassed I was when I found out that was not the case — and that I too was a bad singer!

Anyway, the Presbyterian days ended when I was about 10 years old, and we moved to a new neighborhood where there was a new church, an Episcopalian church, with a young vicar who befriended everyone including my parents. He was convivial, so we became Episcopalians.

Schwei said the "core" of the new dorm experience would be "personal discovery."

"Being in college is a period of self-exploration and learning and discovery," he said. "We would like to facilitate that for people who are really interested in doing that seriously."

That's awfully nice. I appreciate the super-nice religious sects. And I'm glad the students are getting a nice new option among all the many Madison options.

Paul Newman has died.

We knew he was dying, but it is sad to know he's gone. I'll have more in a few minutes, but here's a press report. Please talk about your favorite Paul Newman movies.

ADDED: To tell you the truth, Paul Newman is an actor whose movies I often avoided, for some reason. Even though I was a very frequent movie-goer during his heyday, I never saw "The Sting" or "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." I never saw "The Color of Money" or "The Hustler." Despite my law career, I never saw "The Verdict" or "Absence of Malice" or "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean." Reading over his list of movies, it seems as though I have been going out of my way to avoid Newman's movies. I don't know why. I thought he was an excellent actor, and he was certainly as good-looking as a human being can be. Perhaps it's that when I was quite young, I saw "Hud" and "Harper" and just didn't understand the point.

I've seen "Mr. and Mrs. Bridge," "Sweet Bird of Youth," "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," and "Cool Hand Luke." When I think of Paul Newman movies, that's the one I think of first, the emblematic Paul Newman movie, "Cool Hand Luke":



"I've got the words of Mary, assuring me that I won't go to Hell."

IN THE COMMENTS: Ruth Anne Adams asks: "Is your misquote an Episcopalian mondegreen?" Misquote? Oh, yes, it's "Virgin Mary," not "words of Mary." Episcopalian? More likely, Beatles.

What Joe Biden said about the public expression of religiosity.

So I'm looking back at all my old posts tagged "biden" to see how I've reacted to him over the last few years, and he comes out looking pretty good.

Now, I didn't like his voting against John Roberts and Samuel Alito, but I understand why he did it, and I didn't object to his questioning the hearings. Simulblogging the hearings, this is the worst thing I ever said about Biden:

Joe Biden is hamming it up big time, dramatizing the frustration of not getting Roberts to say how he'll decide specific cases. We've been through this so many times, but Biden seems to think that, if he just emotes more than the others, the American public will finally see the outrage of a judge not committing his vote before hearing the case. Yet every time Roberts explains why he won't answer, he sounds so eloquent and even inspiring about the role of the judge, that it ends up making the Senator look childish.

I was pretty nice to Biden over the "clean and articulate" gaffe, and basically, I can see that I haven't disliked Joe Biden .

But there's one thing that really stood out in all those posts, and that was his discussion of religion at the debate that took place September 27, 2007. From my live-blogging:

What is your favorite Bible verse? Obama says Sermon on the Mount, but then blabs generically. Hillary Clinton says "The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Which is not exactly a Bible verse, but okay. Why should the candidates be ready to recite Bible verses? Kucinich holds up a card with a prayer from St. Francis, which fits his theme (peace) but, again, isn't a Bible verse. Edwards is impressive with "What you do unto the least of those, you do unto me." This resonates with his poverty theme, and I like the way he doesn't point out that it does. Richardson says the Sermon on the Mount. Yeah, well, Obama already said that so it's boring. You had time to think of a specific verse in the Sermon to distinguish yourself. "Blessed are the peacemakers" would have been so easy. Gravel: Love! Dodd cites the Good Samaritan. Biden: "Christ's warning of the Pharisees." Which is a clever answer to the question, essentially critiquing the question. The idea is: Don't parade your religion in public.

The next day, I reflected on that:

Last night at the big debate, Tim Russert asked each of the Democratic candidates to recite their favorite Bible verse. They all made a stab at the assigned task. No one rebelled against the assignment. Who would dare to use the occasion to do a little lecture on the importance of the separation of church and state? It worked for Bush, back in 2000, to sidetrack a question about philosophy into religion and say that Jesus was his favorite philosopher, so who will be bold enough to veer away from an invitation to display religiosity?

Joe Biden came the closest, when he said "Christ's warning of the Pharisees." If you understand the reference, it actually is a subtle way to imply that religion should not be used publicly for the purpose of achieving worldly goals. It's good to remind religious people -- especially religious people who crave more religion in their politics -- that Jesus set his religion apart from politics and gives Christians a religious basis for the separation of church and state.

Here is video of the debate. If you start at 6:04, you'll have a little laugh before the relevant material begins and you can hear what all the candidates say about their favorite Bible verse. To hear just Biden, begin at 8:01:



Now, I'm especially interested in what Biden said there because I was just talking to Bob Wright about the candidates and religion, and he was knocking John McCain for failing to take more opportunities to "witness" to his Christianity, and my immediate response to that was Christ's warning of the Pharisees:



I discussed this a couple days ago, and I was guessing that maybe Bob was reflecting his Baptist background, and I my Episcopalian background, while McCain was had a basically Episcopalian orientation, but had, more recently switched to Baptist, and perhaps this could help us understand McCain's varying levels of expressed religiosity. And now, here is Biden showing what I'd theorized was the Episcopalian style. Biden is Catholic.

Episcopalian, Catholic, whatever... I like this modesty about religion in public life.

If the "cross in the dirt" story were true, wouldn't a good Christian have "witnessed" to it early on?

In this Bloggingheads clip, Bob Wright and I refer to different aspects of Christianity (and talk about this Andrew Sullivan post). (At the end, I ask who's more religious, McCain or Obama, and propose a bet that might shock you.)



Watching this now and comparing Bob's take on Christianity to mine, I have a theory about why McCain shifted from not talking about the cross to talking about it.

McCain was initially an Episcopalian, and only fairly recently identified himself as a Baptist. My Christian upbringing was Episcopalian, and Bob Wright was raised as a Southern Baptist. Bob thought of Christianity as something to witness at every opportunity, and I thought Jesus's admonition to keep one's religion private (which comes in Matthew 6, just before he gives the words for the Lord's Prayer):

Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.

Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Could it be that McCain, as an Episcopalian, thought more like I did, and then later, after becoming a Baptist, saw the matter more the way Bob did?

ADDED: I tweak the eminently tweakable Episcopalians:

McCain ad labels him — literally — Episcopal.

With all this trouble Barack Obama has been having with his connection or seeming connection to religion that either is or seems extremist, wouldn't this be a good time to remind folks that John McCain's religion is the most mild-mannered Christianity: Episcopalian?

But we can't just get in people's faces proclaiming the man's Episcopalianism. We need a way to say it absolutely clearly — kind of without even saying it at all....

Aha!



That's a frame from John McCain's new ad. In other ways, the ad distinguishes John McCain's religion from Obama's. You never hear religion spoken of directly. The theme is "heroes" — and at first you think John McCain is going to be called a hero, but that's for you to think, not for them to say. We hear about a hero teacher who influenced John McCain:

For John McCain, one of his heroes was in the front of his high school classroom.

William B. Ravenel was that hero.

He was the English teacher and football coach who inspired students to live the honor code.

"I shall not lie

I shall not cheat

I shall not steal

And I shall turn in the student who does."

The teacher who believed in exoneration and redemption.

When one of John McCain's classmates violated the rules and admitted to the infraction.

It was John McCain who declared that forgiveness was the best remedy.

Mr. Ravenel was the teacher who helped John McCain understand honor and redemption.

Here's a fuller explanation of that honor code story, in McCain's own words:

In the fall of my senior year, a member of the junior varsity football team had broken training and faced expulsion from the team. Mr. Ravenel called a team meeting during which players argued that the accused be dropped from the team and referred to the honor council. I didn't think that was fair. Since the student in question had, unlike the rest of us, chosen at the start of the year not to sign a pledge promising to abide by the training rules faithfully, I argued in favor of a less severe punishment.

Most of my teammates wanted to hang the guy. But I argued that since he had not been caught breaking training but instead had confessed the offense and expressed his remorse freely, his behavior was no less honorable than that of a student who signed the pledge and adhered to its provisions. My defense swayed the people in the room, about twenty or thirty guys. Mr. Ravenel closed the discussion by voicing support for my judgment.

After the meeting broke up, Mr. Ravenel approached me and shook my hand. With relief evident in his voice, he told me we had done the right thing, and thanked me for my efforts. He allowed that before the meeting he had been anxious about its outcome. He had hoped the matter would be resolved as it had been, but was uncertain it would. Still, he had not wanted to be the one who argued for exoneration; he wanted the decision to be ours and not his. He said he was proud of me. That was very important to me.

Whether you know the whole story or not, the ad sends the message that John McCain values forgiveness — Christian love and forgiveness. Think how deeply that contrasts to what we've been hearing lately from Obama's pastor Jeremiah Wright.

The new McCain ad does many things, but one thing it does is engage subtly and forcefully in the debate over religious values.

ADDED: This post is not intended to take a position on the question whether John McCain is a Baptist or an Episcopalian.

IN THE COMMENTS: Daryl raises 3 questions:

I also thought it was a none-too-subtle reminder that Sen. Obama has admitted to using cocaine and marijuana. Not that I care, but I guess a lot of voters do.

Bonus question: Don't Americans hate to elect preppies? George W. Bush lost his first election because his opponent portrayed him as an out-of-touch Yalie. Playing the "dumb cowboy" is the secret to his electoral success after that.

Double Bonus Question: The ad also emphasizes that McCain was supposed to narc on his fellow classmates. Is that really what his campaign wants us to think about? That "honor" really means betraying your friends, and every time McCain or his campaign uses that word, we think about a high school geek tattling to his teacher?

In answer to your last question, I thought there might be some connection to McCain's maverick role in Washington. The "friends" politicians have are other politicians and various insiders. Don't we want a politician who didn't cater to and cover up for friends like these?

Catholics are "easily the most positive of Christian denominations" when it comes to gay marriage.

Asserts Andrew Sullivan (a Catholic).

42 percent in favor, 48 percent against in the new Pew poll (compared with 14 percent in favor and 81 percent against among white evangelicals). While that cannot please the Vatican, it reflects my own experience of tolerance, acceptance and a commitment to social justice in the pews.

But click over to the survey he cites. There aren't even any results for Protestant denominations! Protestants are just divided into "evangelicals" and "mainline." I'll wager that Episcopalians -- who are a denomination -- are more pro gay marriage than Catholics. But even if you count "mainline" as a denomination, look at the numbers. The mainliners are more in favor of gay marriage than Catholics. Sullivan's bias is really showing here.

Sullivan is also writing about that brain science article we've been talking about here today. He's not at all critical of the study's methodology or conclusions. It's just a springboard for congratulating himself again:

[R]espondents who had described themselves as liberals showed "significantly greater conflict-related neural activity" when the hypothetical situation called for an unscheduled break in routine.

Conservatives, however, were less flexible, refusing to deviate from old habits "despite signals that this ... should be changed."

And smart conservatives, recognizing their own flaws, can learn from liberal adaptivity.

Maybe he's not referring to himself there.... but it sure sounds like it to me. [ADDED FOR CLARITY: That is, he is the "smart conservative" who has learned from liberals.] Anyway, why not say that smart liberals can recognize their flaws and learn from conservatives? [ADDED: That is, there are problems with both the tendency to bend and the tendency not to bend, and whichever tendency you have, you would do well to become aware of and smart about.] And why doesn't Sullivan notice that his penchant for asserting that his side is best evinces the very flaw he ought to be correcting for if he thinks he's smart (and I think we know he does)?

"It wasn't that God didn't bless the union. To put if off on God I didn't feel was valid."

The Vatican has reversed the annulment of the marriage of Sheila Rauch Kennedy and Joseph P. Kennedy (the oldest son of Bobby Kennedy):

"When you try to defend your marriage, the army that comes after you is pretty brutal," Rauch Kennedy said yesterday from her Cambridge home. "You're accused of being a vindictive ex-wife, an alcoholic bigot, an idiot."

Isn't there some reason to see it as vindictive, though?

"In the eyes of the Catholic Church [Kennedy and Rauch Kennedy] are still married and therefore he cannot remarry and maintain good status as a Catholic," said Michelle Dillon, a University of New Hampshire professor who has written extensively about Catholicism. "It means he's stigmatized. . . . But he's not alone. Like the other divorced people in the pews or the people who use contraception or are same-sex couples, he's in a state of sin."

Rauch Kennedy, who is Episcopalian but took required classes with Kennedy to be married in a Catholic church, said she fought the annulment "almost entirely because we had two children."

If you yourself believe divorce is acceptable and the other person needs an annulment in order to go on in life without being in what his religion counts as a state of sin, wouldn't it be better to be generous about it? Wouldn't that be more Episcopalian?

Kurt Vonnegut.

R.I.P.

His novels — 14 in all — were alternate universes, filled with topsy-turvy images and populated by races of his own creation, like the Tralfamadorians and the Mercurian Harmoniums. He invented phenomena like chrono-synclastic infundibula (places in the universe where all truths fit neatly together) as well as religions, like the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent and Bokononism (based on the books of a black British Episcopalian from Tobago “filled with bittersweet lies,” a narrator says).

What Kurt Vonnegut book meant the most to you? To me it's "Cat's Cradle," which is the book they had us all read before we showed up as freshman at the Residential College (at the University of Michigan) in 1969. When we got there, we sat on the floor and talked about it, and, on the instruction of our professors, tried to Boku-Maru.

I wrote a post about him, back in '04, when he was ranting about a lot of things, including his own will to live:

But, when you stop to think about it, only a nut case would want to be a human being, if he or she had a choice. Such treacherous, untrustworthy, lying and greedy animals we are.

I said:

I sometimes like to think that we were given a choice whether to be born, that there was a beforelife (we like to think there's an afterlife) in which the range of possibilities in a human life were fully explained and we could say yes or no, just like you can look at a rollercoaster and decide if you want to take the ride. So all of us here are the ones who decided to take the ride. I like to speculate about what percentage of beforelife dwellers decide to say yes. I imagine Vonnegut's suggestion is correct: the percentage would be small. The downside risks are too horrible. But we're the brave souls--we're Vonnegut's nuts--who once found the idea of being human so appealing.

Vonnegut had quoted Camus--“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide”--and said: "All great literature is about what a bummer it is to be a human being," and "I am of course notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me."

Was he sorry to still be alive when he said that? I couldn't believe it, maybe only because I wasn't sorry he was alive.

"If people shine light on our religion, they will find some strange things, they will find some unsavory things..."

"... and they will find some wonderful things."

Mormons contemplate the scrutiny and criticism they will face if Mitt Romney runs for President. When Romney ran for the Senate in 1994, he faced "almost daily to potshots that his religion was racist, then sexist, then backward, then clannish with designs on ruling the U.S. if not the world." Nowadays, the church is "more proactive":

[LDS President Gordon B.] Hinckley has also downplayed the more unusual elements of the faith. He has dismissed the pre-1978 ban on blacks becoming priests and the practice of polygamy, which ended officially in 1890, as "in the past." He has written inspirational books without using any Mormon language. He welcomed the world to Utah for the 2002 Winter Olympics.

All of these efforts may help Romney, who could hardly look more All-American. His answer to questions about underwear could be an ad he once ran that showed him bare-chested on a beach.

"If you listen to Mitt and [President Hinckley] long enough," says [journalist Ron] Scott, "you might conclude that Mormons are really just Episcopalians who wear funny underwear."

But some members are wary that in an effort to explain the LDS faith to a critical audience, officials may end up watering it down.

"Downplaying temple garments? What else do we want to demystify and de-weird for the sake of gains in popular opinion?" asks Steve Evans, a Seattle attorney who helps run the Mormon blog bycommonconsent.com. "I'm all in favor of clarifying misconceptions, but eventually I am worried that we lose something vital."

Aren't all religions mysterious if you look closely? Normally, in politics, we just hold religion at a distance. We expect the candidates to have some religion but refrain from talking much about how the religion's beliefs interweave with the candidate's political thinking. But there is a move that can be made against a candidate that drags religion into the campaign and tries to stir up prejudice:

Romney got a taste of it in his 1994 attempt to unseat Edward Kennedy in the Senate.

Despite his brother's famous speech saying that a person's religion should be off-limits, Kennedy "played the Mormon card so relentlessly and cynically that even the leader of Boston Catholics, Cardinal Bernard Law, indignantly wrote that the lessons John Kennedy taught the country about a man's religion have 'been lost on President Kennedy's youngest brother, but salvaged by Mister Romney,' ''

Of course, President Kennedy said what he said because he was the one who was being attacked. He doesn't deserve special credit for taking the high road. The high road was best for him, and he might have taken the low road if it was better. But it was the high road.