Howie Luvzus

I saw this banner at one of my favorite sites: Unreasonable Faith. My son introduced me to this blog and I’ve really grown to enjoy it. Here’s Daniel’s response to the banner:

Is it really surprising there is a market for this kind of book, since unanswered prayers are the only kind that exist?

I feel sad for people who are stuck thinking their prayers are unanswered because their technique is bad or because they don’t know “God’s secrets” to prayer.

By the way, since I’ve stopped praying, I’ve noticed I still get the things I want… about 50% of the time. Same as before. And think of all the time I’ve saved!

The other day, there was also this interesting quote on the site:

24,000 children died today from starvation. What makes you think God will answer your prayers?

—Atheist bumper sticker (via William Lobdell)

Daniel raises some tough questions for Christians. I welcome his perspective. The above quote has changed my prayer life quite a bit!

I read a good Baptist Joke from Bill Moyers today:

James Dunn and Bill Leonard are Baptists. What kind of Baptist matters. At last count there were more than two dozen varieties of Baptists in America. Bill Clinton is a Baptist. So is Pat Robertson. Jesse Jackson is a Baptist. So is Jesse Helms. Al Gore is a Baptist. So is Jerry Falwell. No wonder Baptists have been compared to jalapeno peppers: one or two make for a tasty dish, but a whole bunch together will bring tears to your eyes.

Not only is the joke good, his article is excellent as well.

America is no longer working for all Americans.

How did this happen? By design. For a quarter of a century now a ferocious campaign has been conducted to dismantle the political institutions, the legal and statutory canons, and the intellectual, cultural, and religious frameworks that sustained America’s social contract. The corporate, political, and religious right converged in a movement that for a long time only they understood because they are its advocates, its architects, and its beneficiaries.

Their economic strategy was to cut workforces and wages, scour the globe for even cheaper labor, and relieve investors of any responsibility for the cost of society. On the weekend before President Bush’s second inauguration, The New York Times described how his first round of tax cuts had already brought our tax code closer to a system under which income on wealth would not be taxed at all and public expenditures would be raised exclusively from salaries and wages.

Their political strategy was to neutralize the independent media, create their own propaganda machine with a partisan press, and flood their coffers with rivers of money from those who stand to benefit from the transfer of public resources to elite control. Along the way they would burden the nation with structural deficits that will last until our children’s children are ready to retire, systematically stripping government of its capacity, over time, to do little more than wage war and reward privilege.

Their religious strategy was to fuse ideology and theology into a worldview freed of the impurities of compromise, claim for America the status of God’s favored among nations (and therefore beyond political critique or challenge), and demonize their opponents as ungodly and immoral.

At the intersection of these three strategies was money: Big Money.

They found a deep flaw in our political system and zeroed in on it.

More really good stuff:

The number of lobbyists registered to do business in Washington has more than doubled in the last five years. That’s 16,342 lobbyists in 2000 to 34,785 last year. Sixty-five lobbyists for every member of Congress.

The total spent per month by special interests wining, dining, and seducing federal officials is now nearly $200 million. Per month.

But it’s a small investment on the return. Just look at the most important legislation passed by Congress in the last decade.

There was the energy bill that gave oil companies huge tax breaks at the same time that Exxon Mobil just posted $36 billion in profits in 2005, while our gasoline and home heating bills are at an all-time high.

There was the bankruptcy “reform” bill written by credit card companies to make it harder for poor debtors to escape the burdens of divorce or medical catastrophe.

There was the deregulation of the banking, securities, and insurance sectors, which led to rampant corporate malfeasance and greed and the destruction of the retirement plans of millions of small investors.

There was the deregulation of the telecommunications sector which led to cable industry price-gouging and the abandonment of news coverage by the big media companies.

There was the blocking of even the mildest attempt to prevent American corporations from dodging an estimated $50 billion in annual taxes by opening a P.O. box in an off-shore tax haven like Bermuda or the Cayman Islands.

In every case these results were driven by the demands of Big Money in the form of campaign contributions and the cost of lobbying.

And in every case, the religious right was cheering for the winners.

The following quotes are from a blog I found today. Check it out!

Among the most ignominious characteristics of the modern conservative evangelical church is its tendency to reject or ignore the voices of those who might have much to say and teach but who have nevertheless been typecast as being incompatible with evangelical thought and therefore unimportant or even dangerous to “true Biblical faith.”

The primary pronoun of the Christian experience is “we”, not “I”.

The word “just” (i.e., “just a symbol,” “just bread,” “just wine/juice”) should be stricken from all discourse concerning Holy Communion, for it is reductionist and minimalistic and hence unworthy of the grand and central act of remembrance that Christ has bequeathed His Church.

Great stuff Wyman!