Below is a repost of an entry on my blog, returngood.com, which focuses on Christian nonviolence. I also posted over at Street Prophets. Feel free to stop in.

Everyone knows that war in general and the Iraq war specifically has meant big money for defense contractors, but a new congressional report puts it in stark relief:

The standard analysis says McCain was direct and on strictly on message, while Obama was nuanced and reflective.  Generally most people think McCain performed better, and I think he might have looked better, but I suspect the impact of this event will be minimal, and will benefit Obama if anyone, because he had almost nothing to lose.  Read on to see why...

Having turned off last night’s debate to stifle a growing nausea, I can only sit and reflect in silence at the amazing growth of fundamentalist and evangelical Christianity in America.  Growing up in fundamentalist and racist Mississippi, I thought that both traits were two sides of the same coin, the Southern Baptist denomination itself being a suppurating pimple of bad religion, a "faith" that arose largely out of a determination to use the Bible as a sanction for slavery.  

But as I grew up Americans’ faith in mystery and magic did not recede.  The "booboisie" that Mencken scorned--the country bumpkins and fulminating preachers at the Scopes trial--are back in force.  They are living the purpose-driven life, and half of them are dreaming of the apocalypse and the groovy things that will follow therefrom.  I may be sliding out of the American mainstream, but I still take cold comfort in Mark Twain’s words to the gentlemen who was trying to convert him:

"You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?"

Below is a re-post of an entry I posted on my blog, returngood.com regarding the escalating conflict between Georgia and Russia.

"I am the way, the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father but by me" (John 14:6).  How many times have I heard that these words of Jesus exclude people?  Many churches believe that Jesus was saying that only Christians can be saved.  However, Christians tend to read the Bible through what author Philip Yancey calls the "refractive lens" of church doctrine.  While a refractive lens can correct distorted vision, it distorts correct vision.  

Literature teachers tell us to consider all elements of a story, including setting and context, to analyze the author's theme.  A major theme of John's Gospel is that Jesus is God.  The other three gospels plant the story of Jesus in his Jewishness: his Jewish lineage, his birth as fulfillment of Jewish prophecy, his ceremonial circumcision on the eighth day, his visit to the temple, and so on.

John begins his gospel with the declaration that Jesus is God, and then skips his birth and childhood altogether.  According to the first words of John’s gospel, Jesus is the Word made flesh.  Jesus appears on the scene and immediately proceeds to push the envelope of Jewish belief and practice.  

Cross-posted on my own mental jail cell, No Latitude.

In Conservapedia's news today, there was a posting trying to solicit the services of their home schooling American History course. Since Conservapedia is wrong in so many ways on a variety of subjects, it's difficult to think that they would get American History right.

We were all taught it, but it's just another false liberal myth: that the non-Christian Vikings (Leif Ericson) reached North America before the devoutly Christian Christopher Columbus did. This is yet another attempt to deny and downplay Christian achievement by distorting history. See American History Lecture One, which will teach students what is true and false about American history.

Kant's Categorical Imperative provides a framework to discuss morality in humanistic terms -- any morals must be universally applicable. I also stated here that we live in a web of interdependence because of the mystery that shrouds our existence. The two principles that I believe to be universally applicable are love and justice. Now, we will elaborate more on the God problem.

Nietzsche was to Christianity as Marx was to capitalism. He was one of the fiercest critics of Christian fundamentalism as Marx was to capitalism. His problem was that far from creating a better world, Christianity created a state of slavery where doctrinal conformity was strictly enforced and entire cultures and religions were stamped out.

Islam was a reaction to this sterile conformity. Rather than the One Emperor, One Church, One State motif of the Byzantines, Islam presented itself as a religion of peace, where Muslim, Christian, and Judaism could live side by side. It sought to settle the quarrel between Christian and Jew by proclaiming that it didn't matter whether Jesus died on the cross; the only thing that mattered was submission to God.

Continuing our full-fledged assault on Christian Fundamentalism (by which I mean the right-wing orthodoxy that has permeated the world), we make forays into some more of Nietzsche's work. First of all, we discuss his work, "Beyond Good and Evil."

Fundamentalism has codes of conduct that have served humanity for the last two centuries. But the problem is that in more cases than not, it has served as a restriction as to what we can and can't do and has prevented us from reaching our potential.

One thing I am sick and tired of is men like Mitch McConnell lecturing us on morals, and Christian values. Who is Mitch McConnell to lecture me on Chirst and his teachings? What makes him think he has earned such a holier-than-thou attitude about anything? I am Christian and a sinner, but Mitch McConnell's actions run contrary to all Christ stood for.

This is what I'm waiting for.  The "I'm not a Muslim, but so what if I was?" speech.  We have examined race, now it's time to defuse the rumors and celebrate the faith.  This is an opportunity to remove the elitist stink from the sanctimonious suggestion of "Christianity" as the only acceptable faith tradition for our leaders.  It is time to end the disenfranchisement of Muslim-Americans, who are by all accounts http://pewforum.org/...), as productive, educated, and "...are decidely American in their outlook, values, and attitudes" as the rest of us.

What makes Obama tick? This seems to be the most pressing question of the day because, as David Broder insists we "don't elect enigmas to the oval office."

The challenge is that Obama is unique in American politics. He's trying to pull off something that doesn't fit preexisting models, and all the political experts out there (of which there's no shortage), who take great pride in knowing "the rules" of politics, are determined to explain Obama in the facile language of an old paradigm. Now that his shine has worn a little thin, now that we've grown accustomed to the idea of this "new kind of politician" who seemed to come out of nowhere, the debate has devolved into overly simplistic dichotomies like whether or not Obama is centrist or Machiavellian. There's far too little appetite for actually trying to better understand the guy on his own terms.

Obama's recent push toward the Christian community, especially as it comes to a White House connection to something resembling Bush's policies, has me a little edgy. The recent poll revelation that roughly 92% of Americans are believers in some form of religion (with Christians by far in the lead) puts me in a shaky 8% that misses the true separation of church and state that Jefferson enjoyed.

While riding in to work this morning and listening to public radio do a story on the Middle East, they gave up the statistic that over 80% of Arabs are convinced that the US's position in the Iraqi and Afghanistani campaigns is to replace Islam with Christianity, therefor giving Al Quaeda it's strongest recruiting message.

Welcome to Morris, Oklahoma, population 1,319, most of whom live in the same square mile. It's the kind of town where the locals tell highway travelers, "Don't blink -- you'll miss it."

You can be forgiven for having never heard of this place, as even most Oklahomans haven't heard of it. It's what I call a "tornado radar town" because it's one of those towns I only see on the Doppler radar broadcasts during a tornado watch.

As you drive through this town along highway 62 -- possibly on the way from Okmulgee to Muskogee --  you pull your car to a stop the town's only traffic light, which hangs from a wire at the intersection of the other highway that makes up Morris' "main drag."

The only evidence of the presence of government that you can see is the public school and the post office. There's a bank too, with an ATM whose installation warranted a story in the town newsletter. And there are seemingly dozens of churches.

This will be a shorty.  It will garner few to zero recommends.  And the point I will be making will be as passing as I suppose those views of the people about which I am making it.

Alas, on this day in 363, Julian the Apostate was killed.  Ruling the Roman Empire from 361 to 363, Julian was the last pagan emperor and the first management consultant.

Since 312, the Empire had been operating on a new managerial system called Christianity. The prototype of Total Quality Management, Christianity provided the benefits of monotheism without circumcision. It also offered eternal retirement benefits, which proved very popular among the meek. Constantine imagined that Christianity would be a cohesive and subservient force for the government. Instead, the Christian sects were fighting each other when they weren't persecuting everyone else.

This week, right-wing pundit and leader of the 'beat your children' movement, Dr. James Dobson, accused Sen. Barack Obama of committing violence against Biblical teachings.    

Despite Dobson being a best-selling self-help guru famous for advising parents to whip their children with sticks, every  mainstream media outlet somehow managed to overlook this fact.  Instead, media coverage of Dobson's remarks stripped him any and all potential controversy with respect to his views on parenting and child beating, describing him instead with the vague and anodyne term 'Evangelical.'    

True--Dobson is a leading voice of sorts amongst some Evangelical Christians.  Still, the question the media should be posing to the public is not about his religion, but about his violent views of parenting:

Should a man who pushes parents to use pain to train their children have a prominent place in the 2008 President election or American politics at all?

Once upon a time, there was a book called The Bible...