With Soap, Baptism Is a Good Thing

I recently read an article on the Denver Post with the headline: "Springs church, school clash over proselytizing." Apparently, representatives of the Cornerstone Baptist Church in Colorado Springs tried to lure a seventh grader into a van. This church has previously been charged with baptizing children without permission. Students at other nearby schools have also been approached by church members and other members have been preaching the Bible on school grounds.

After this incident, the school district sent home letters to all the parents and met with the church's leaders to complain about church members coming all school grounds, but all this did was force them onto the sidewalk. Once they are off school grounds, it is up to the parents to take legal action against them.

Part of this church's doctrinal statement is "We believe the church is a local, separated body of believers who are sent forth into the world to get people saved, baptized and added to the church." Obviously, they believe so strongly that they are willing to risk kidnapping and other felonies (it is my understanding that Baptists use the full immersion technique) to deliver the first sacrament.

I am very tolerant of and curious about religion (just ask the Mormons who had to describe their church in detail for almost two hours when they knocked at my door - I wonder why they never came back after they said they would?), but this is going way too far. They should hold a mixer or do philanthropy in the community in order to attract new members, not frighten children and dunk them unwillingly.

Religion is slowly but surely fading away in America. The latest survey by The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life indicates that 16.1% of Americans are unaffiliated with any particular faith. Among Americans 18-29 years of age, the number is 31%. This makes for a smaller pool for churches to recruit from and a very competitive marketplace. Moreover, church doctrine is losing hold over its congregation. For example, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, slightly more Catholics favor legalized abortion in most or all cases than do not, despite the firm belief of the Catholic church that abortion is a grave evil. Pope Benedict himself said "The so-called traditional churches look like they are dying."

Eventually the religious unaffiliated will become a force in American social life and politics (if they haven't already). At 16.1%, this group represents a larger portion of the population than Latinos (14%), African-Americans (13%), and Asians (5%) and is the second largest religious group to Catholics (23%). Maybe the Cornerstone Baptist Church sees the writing on the wall and is trying to keep themselves relevant. Unfortunately for them, the Pew survey also shows that 44% reject the religion placed on them in childhood.

Title quote comes from Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899)

Facts Are Stupid Things

I was recently driving back to Colorado from Iowa when somewhere west of North Platte, Nebraska, I exhausted my musical choices and could no longer stand to listen to the incessant hum of dialogue and action seeping from the movies my son was enjoying in the backseat. I searched in vain for an FM radio station that was not playing both kinds of music - country and western - but I was unsuccessful, so I switched to AM. And there in crystal clear signal was the grating voice of Rush Limbaugh. I needed a good laugh, so I kept listening.

He lectured his audience on history that only happens in his mind, claimed he knew where his private jet was at all times, bragged about burning as much jet fuel as possible on Earth Day and beat an inappropriate joke into the ground when a female caller made a slip while trying to say she was going to pop the cork on some champagne because Senator Arlen Specter had left the Republican party.

What he said after that truly frightened me. He said that he was glad Arlen Specter had left because the Republicans needed to get all of the liberal Republicans out of the party. He went on to say, "If this is to be the order of the day, next to go could be Senator McCain and his daughter, Meghan. Get them officially moved over and it just facilitates reality."

In his reality, the conservative ideology is infallible. Moreover, someone cannot be fiscally conservative and socially liberal because then they are betraying the ideology. Just today, there was a story written about how Jeb Bush thinks that Republican party needs to begin looking forward and stop waxing nostalgic about Reagan. Limbaugh, commenting about this story, said "[W]hen you see anybody...when somebody says you gotta leave Reagan behind, the era of Reagan is over, however it's said, it is said by Republican politicians who don't believe in conservatism, pure and simple. They don't believe in conservatism, they believe in something else. They can't explain what they believe in, but they believe in something else."

This disconnect with reality is what scares me. Reagan may have believed in conservatism, but he didn't practice it at all. He raised taxes every year he was in office (13 total take hikes) except his first and last year and he tripled our debt. Moreover, he may have prolonged the Cold War by arming our country to the teeth when it was obvious that the Soviet Union was teetering, he was responsible for selling arms to South American guerrilla fighters and supplying weapons to both sides of the Iran-Iraq War, he ignored the AIDS crisis, he stiffened laws on minor drug offenses that has overpopulated and bankrupt our prison system, and he did nothing on the energy front despite the tell-tale signs that burning fossil fuels was damaging to the environment and that our oil addiction made us vulnerable.

Despite the evidence, Reagan is celebrated by the Republicans. The celebration of his presidency relies on one solitary fact: he cut income taxes on the top earners from 70% to 28%. In Rush's reality, this is the only thing that matters. You can add on the pro-life sentiment, the right to have a gun, etc., but it's all dollars and sense - his dollars and his followers' lack of sense.

The title quote come from the

40th President of the United States of America.