Deal W. Hudson

Don't Miss Sister Marie Simon-Pierre

Marjorie Campbell, marjorie@marjoriecampbell.com

Don't miss the travels to the Vatican of Sister Marie Simon-Pierre who went public yesterday with her cure from Parkinson's disease two months after the death of John Paul II.  As we commemorate his death, Sister is celebrating her "second birth" by offering her story publicly - and the cameras and mass media are on the scent.

Why has this quiet, baby-loving nun decided to brave the world's scrutiny?  Sister again credits John Paul II for her courage.  "He never shied away from the cameras," she said. "And I believe today he gives me necessary strength, and I think that today he is with me."  She will need our prayers!

Bill Donohue Saves the Day...Again

Craig Richardson

Once again, Bill Donohue of the Catholic League has used his media savvy and determination to halt another attack on our Lord and by extension, all Christians.  This time the culprit was an art gallery housed in a New York hotel.  The gallery was planning on launching an exhibition titled, My Sweet Lord, featuring "a nude, anatomically correct" life-size figure of Jesus made out of chocolate, according to the Associated Press.

When I first looked at the story this morning before 9:00 a.m., Bill was calling for the show to be shutdown and asked people to boycott the hotel where it was housed.  He said, "This is one of the worst assaults on Christian sensibilities ever...It's not just the ugliness of the portrayal, but the timing — to choose Holy Week is astounding." 

I am happy to report that while having lunch, my Blackberry went off with a Fox News alert that declared: CONTROVERSIAL 'CHOCOLATE JESUS' EXHIBIT CANCELLED, FOX NEWS LEARNS.  Wow, I thought, way to go Bill, it only took you a few hours to get them to pull this blasphemy!

Compassionate Comprehensive Immigration Reform

Dr. Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Church, seems to be leaning toward support for comprehensive immigration reform. The comprehensive part is important because it would put Dr. Land on a similar footing on this issue as the Catholic Bishops. This makes me happy. However, I also note that the president is now looking to take a more restrictionist approach toward immigration than he has in the past.

Dobson Conclusion

Dr. James Dobson has offered a clarification.

Putting The Bible Back In Public

Marjorie Campbell, marjorie@marjoriecampbell.com

As Europe continues sliding adrift of its Christian history, could secular America learn the lesson and steer a course that both honors and preserves our Christian foundation?   David Van Biema, a religion writer for TIME magazine, seems to think so - by teaching Bible-literacy in public schools.

"SIMPLY PUT, THE BIBLE IS THE MOST influential book ever written. Not only is the Bible the best-selling book of all time, it is the best-selling book of the year every year. In a 1992 survey of English teachers to determine the top-10 required "book-length works" in high school English classes, plays by Shakespeare occupied three spots and the Bible none."  Read more.

This, Mr. Van Biema urges, can be remedied by teaching the Bible, not as God-given word, but as great literature that did, does and will deeply influence the culture that offers all this choice and freedom we so eagerly expect.  Bible-literacy - TIME magazine tells us - just might be good for everyone:  you . . . need the Bible to make sense of the ideas and rhetoric that have helped drive U.S. history. 

Neither the First Amendment nor the religiosity of the Bible worry Mr. Van Biema, as he explains: But in the end, what is required in teaching about the Bible in our public schools is patriotism: a belief that we live in a nation that understands the wisdom of its Constitution clearly enough to allow the most important book in its history to remain vibrantly accessible for everyone.

Now, there's something we can all agree upon, right? 

Dobson's Intentions

Deal Hudson

Patrick, if all Dr. Dobson was trying to say was, "I don't think Fred Thompson is an Evangelical Christian," then that's entirely fair.  Dobson is as good a man as any to make the judgement and pronounce it publicly. 

No one would argue with his credentials on the issue of what makes an Evangelical Evangelical. (I still, however, think there is a place under the tent for a quiet Evangelical :).)

And we all know how the secular media loves to twist words just enough to grab a headline.  It's happened to me and to you. 

Thanks for the clarification.

In Defense of Dr. Dobson (Kind of)

Deal, I quite agree that Dr. Dobson’s remark about former Sen. Fred Thompson was a bit too much to take. It is odd that he would single Sen. Thompson out for scrutiny when the prospective field of presidential candidates includes people like Newt Gingrich, whom Dr. Dobson has praised, and who I am sure is a committed Christian but who nevertheless rarely peppers his public speeches with personal testimony.

However, we may be dealing with a classic case of a mainstream secular journalist printing Dr. Dobson’s remarks out of context. I do not here accuse Dan Gilgoff, the reporter, of malice but, perhaps, ignorance. Consider the follow up remarks of Gary Schneeberger from Focus on the Family, which have been widely viewed as “back peddling”:

Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Thompson, took issue with Dobson's characterization of the former Tennessee senator. "Thompson is indeed a Christian," he said. "He was baptized into the Church of Christ."

In a follow-up phone conversation, Focus on the Family spokesman Gary Schneeberger stood by Dobson's claim. He said that, while Dobson didn't believe Thompson to be a member of a non-Christian faith, Dobson nevertheless "has never known Thompson to be a committed Christian—someone who talks openly about his faith."

"We use that word—Christian—to refer to people who are evangelical Christians," Schneeberger added. "Dr. Dobson wasn't expressing a personal opinion about his reaction to a Thompson candidacy; he was trying to 'read the tea leaves' about such a possibility."

It seems to me that Mr. Corallo and Dr. Dobson/Mr. Schneeberger are suffering a communications breakdown of sorts and the conduit is Mr. Gilgoff. I don’t believe that Dr. Dobson meant to suggest that Sen. Thompson is a Muslim or an atheist, but clearly that is the putative charge against which Mr. Corallo pushed back.

But I think Dr. Dobson is saying that Sen. Thompson has never shown any interest in the role the evangelical Christian community plays in public life. In doing so, he may have conflated the word “Christian” with the idea of politically active evangelicals, which is a conflation he can make when speaking to his audience, but not one he can make when speaking to the mainstream secular media if he wants to be understood.

Under this interpretation of the dustup, it is possible that someone can have been baptized in the Church of Christ (and even affirm the Nicene Creed, for that matter) and still not be a Christian in Dr. Dobson’s usage of the word in this particular instance. I am willing to allow that Dr. Dobson was—inartfully—trying to say something like this: Sen. Thompson is well-known to be a conservative. But in my experience, he has no history of being active in our causes, which will pose an obstacle to him in the primary should he decide to run.

I have offered a charitable interpretation here. This is because I have a great deal of respect for Dr. James Dobson and I find Sen. Fred Thompson to be an intriguing guy (of course, I work for Sen. John McCain) and I am eager to throw cold water on this controversy. But I also think I have a high degree of understanding of how evangelicals speak to one another. So, while charitable, I feel my interpretation is also probable.

In his U.S. News piece, Mr. Gilgoff drops in this one-sentence paragraph:

Dobson's comments yesterday about the 2008 presidential race appear to be his first to a secular news organization in months.

Frankly, I don’t blame Dr. Dobson for distancing himself from the secular media.

D'Souza's Thesis

Deal Hudson

Patrick,  I share your skepticism about the D'Souza thesis. I also agree that when a book causes so much tearing out of hair on the left I am moved to reevaluate my assumption.  Maybe he's on to something.  But, again, it may be that D'Souza is wrong, and his critics are merely reacting in a knee-jerk way to his criticism of secular fundamentalism. 

I told Brian St. Paul, editor of Crisis, that his interview with Dinesh was something I did not agree with. I've talked to Muslims in the Holy Land on several occasions and the issue of American decadence has never come up. Perhaps I am with the wrong Muslims!

I will be with faculty and students at Bethlehem University next Wednesday. I will bring it up there to see if it rings true with them. 

My sense of the matter is that Muslim hatred is generated by the presence of Israel in their midst and by the self-understanding of the mission of Islam held by many Muslims.  In other words, it's hard for me to imagine 9/11 occurring if the U.S. had not been the major power providing funding and security for Israel. (I am NOT saying that was the wrong thing to do.) 

Imagine a scenario where Great Britain, for example, played the US role in Israel, such as they did in the days of the British Mandate. Would the US have been attacked -- I don't think so.  Would the US have been attacked merely on the basis of its cultural decadence? Especially when the decadence of Europe is no much greater?  If decadence is the cause then why not hate Italy, or France, or, say, St. Moritz? 

When the billionaire Saudi princes regularly check into the most lavish hotels around the world, spend millions of dollars on luxury items, etc. it's a little hard to take the decadence argument seriously. 

One final story: a friend of mine who has visited among the military leaders in Muslim countries noticed that invariably there were signs of pornography everywhere.  One general was clicking through Internet pornography sites while he chatted, looking up from time to time to carry on the conversation. 

They probably think we are decadent, but I hardly think it is the main reason many of them hate us.  They hate our power, a power that represents support for Israel, a power that represents the remains of the Christian West, which is their historic foe.

I am leaving for the Holy Land in a few hours.  I will be meeting with Fatah cabinet members of the Palestinian Authority, the president of a Palestinian University in Jerusalem, and perhaps members of the law faculty of a Palestinian university in Ramalla,  among other leaders, including Israelis. 

I will pray our intentions.

Disappointed with Dobson

Deal Hudson

I am disappointed that James Dobson would publicly state that Fred Thompson is "not a Christian." 

It was only a short time ago that Dobson gave Newt Gingrich the opportunity to make a public confession of his extra-marital affair.  That gesture seemed generous -- this unsolicited comment about Thompson is not. 

One of Dobson's lieutenants at the Family Research Council defended the comment by saying that Dobson's view of a Christian is "evangelical," meaning someone who "talks publicly" about his faith.

Is there no room in the Christian community for one who quietly lives the life of a Christian without calling any attention to oneself?

An evangelical, in my opinion, is someone who does more than talk. This person is someone who never thinks his primary Christian obligation is to just talk.

Declaration of War on the Religious Right

Deal Hudson

The new push to get the ERA passed and ratified under the name "Woman's Equality Amendment" is politically and culturally an event of great signficance. 

The fight against the ERA in the early 1970s launched the movement now called the "Religious Right."  (I tell the whole story in my forthcoming book, Onward Christian Soldiers,  please pardon the second mention in a week.)

The victory over ERA proved to social-conservatives that they could have political clout. It also opened the door to the GOP when leadership realized they were on the wrong side of the cultural fence when it came to issues like marriage, raising children, and abortion. 

The introduction of the renamed ERA in the House is nothing less than an open declaration of war on religious conservatives in general and the Religious Right in particular. 

The message here is: "Prove you still have the stuff to defeat this!" 

It looks like Phyllis Schlafly will have to go on the road all over again.  I wish her well. I know for certain she has plenty of fight left. Plenty!