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Friendly Atheist Podcast Episode 8: Peter Montgomery, RightWingWatch.org

***Update***: We have better sound quality! And music!

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Our latest podcast guest is Peter Montgomery, a senior fellow at People for the American Way, where he also contributes to their brilliant Right Wing Watch blog.

We spoke with Peter about how the team members at Right Wing Watch maintain their sanity while watching The 700 Club, who the most influential Christian Right leader is, and what Rick Santorum‘s new movie (yep) is like.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the podcast. If you have any suggestions for people we should chat with, please leave them in the comments, too.

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, get the MP3 directly, or just listen to the whole thing below.

And if you like what you’re hearing, please consider supporting this site on Patreon and leaving us a positive rating!

Did a Baptist Preacher’s Online Bullying Drive a Teenager to Suicide?

Ergun Caner is the alleged evangelical con man who pretended to be a defected ex-Muslim terrorist from Turkey and was the dean for Liberty University’s seminary until his actual past as a non-Muslim Swedish immigrant was exposed about a year ago. He continues to work as a Baptist minister and is currently the president of Brewton-Parker College in Georgia.

Criticism aside for a moment, his 15-year-old son Braxton reportedly committed suicide last week. Caner confirmed the death on Twitter, saying:

The exact motives for a suicide will always remain somewhat unclear to those surviving the victim, but there’s reason to think that the online bullying of Braxton by another Baptist minister may have driven the teenager to his desperate final act.

J.D. Hall is a minister in Montana who seems to have a particular obsession with Braxton Caner, following his social media and constantly blogging and tweeting in rebuttal to the kid’s posts, particularly ones where he was kissing his girlfriend. Hall seemed to think Ergun Caner should get his kid in line and keep Braxton from posting such things, because they’d be a bad testimony to the Christian missional agenda.

Hall is also a loud critic of Ergun Caner’s ministry and his career of deception, which is understandable. I’ve had my share of rage over the existence of Caner and his “ministry” in the Christian community.

But Hall has no compassion for victims or passion for healing driving his anger. In fact, he’s been (probably fairly) compared to Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church for his rhetorical tactics. And the fact that he went after a child’s Instagram posts.

Seriously, how is it Christian (in any sense of the word) to attack a child’s social media expressions of coming of age? I posit that Hall’s actions are more evil than Caner’s deception, though they’re guilty of the same sin. Both are misrepresentations of Christ, who didn’t play into temptations for power when offered to him, and who refused to condemn those with messy social effects of their sexual choices.

I’m all for calling out Caner on his lies, but thinking adults can see through his writing, not to mention his “ministry” is less personally destructive than someone bullying a teenager, possibly driving him to commit suicide. J.D. Hall should be ashamed.

It’s Still Hard to Be an Atheist in America, Says the BBC

When I was at the Secular Student Alliance conference in Ohio last month, a reporter from the BBC was there to speak with some of the students. The article is now out — and it’s riddled with mistakes, I have to point out — but this passage is indicative of just how hard it still is (in some places) to be an atheist:

At one of the biggest gatherings of atheist students in the country, in Columbus, Ohio, Jamila Bey from the Secular Student Alliance said there were many attendees who were nervous about being interviewed and had indicated so by what they were wearing around their neck.

“Red lanyards mean ‘You may not talk to me’,” says Bey. “A number of the students we have aren’t ‘out’. Their parents may not know that they are atheist or questioning their religion.”

She said many were worried about being ostracised or were even scared of violence if they revealed they did not believe in God.

I’m not sure how the miscommunication happened, but red lanyards don’t mean “don’t talk to me.” It means something far more depressing, as the conference policies spell out:

Wear your given nametags at all times during the conference. This enables us to know who you are, if you belong here, and if photographs of you can be publicly posted. Note that a red lanyard means that the person wearing them has asked that their pictures not be used or posted online. Please respect these people’s preferences and do not upload pictures of these individuals to the internet, Facebook, or other media.

Can you believe that? There are students who attend the conference who cannot have their pictures posted online out of fear that they’ll be unintentionally outed.

That shit doesn’t happen at Campus Crusade for Christ gatherings.

One of the students, who isn’t out to his father, explained why he didn’t want to tell him:

“I don’t want our relationship to be destroyed because of that,” he says. “You hear it all the time.”

“And you hear about people being kicked out, and sent to bible camps where they’re forced to be religious. I don’t want to lose my father to that.”

This is a way to change that and it’s not news to anyone who’s read this site for a while. We just need to become more visible. Those of us who have nothing to lose by coming out as atheists have an obligation to do so.

No one should have to wear one of those red lanyards.

(Image from the SSA’s 2012 conference program)

If Only We Could All Live Like These Catholic Archbishops

Daniel Burke of CNN and research librarian Lindsey Knight went through publicly available state and local government tax records, confirmed their findings with Catholic Church officials, and are reporting that “10 of the 34 active archbishops in the United States live in buildings worth more than $1 million.”

Check out the digs for New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan:

That place is worth more than $30,000,000, according to one appraisal company.

And Dolan doesn’t even have a wife or kids.

That’s not to say these Church officials live alone. Many of the Archbishops’ homes come with live-in assistants, cooks, and housekeepers.

Church officials argue that many of these homes (which they own) are historical sites (read: not very easy to sell) that also double as offices and spaces for fundraising events. But even many college presidents, who have similar duties in that regard, live right on their campuses in more modest homes.

Given that Pope Francis lives in a modest Vatican-owned guesthouse, and the Church has been blasted for its priorities, wouldn’t it more sense for the Church to at least try to practice what it preaches?

Joanne McPortland, a Catholic blogger on Patheos, tries to defend the practice, even though she seems to understand this looks *really* bad:

Every archbishop on this list — every bishop in the world except, ironically, the Bishop of Rome, who has others to worry about this — sits in those meetings and thinks about [where they live]. And thinks about what you will think about it. And takes advice, and prays, and discerns, and chooses…

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There is no best place, no best way for a bishop to live…

It’s hard to believe these archbishops pray to God, and God says back to them, “You should live in the multi-million dollar mansion.” (Funny, God told me the same thing!)

No one’s asking these Catholic leaders to live in a cardboard box. But how about using some moderation? How about living within their means? How about setting an example for people who are less fortunate than you and don’t have all this money at their disposal?

You may recall that one German Church official — dubbed the “Bishop of Bling” — was suspended last year after it was discovered that he spent $42,000,000 to renovate his home. Earlier this year, the head of the Newark Archdiocese was also blasted for using Diocese money to turn his home into a man cave.

It’s not just Catholics, either. Evangelical megachurch pastors like Steven Furtick have been in the news for similar reasons. In Furtick’s case, his secret salary and shady church dealings allowed him to buy a home worth nearly $2,000,000 which he claimed wasn’t even “that great of a house.” You can judge for yourself:

In the case of the Catholic Church, with the hundreds of millions of dollars required to atone for priests’ sexual abuse scandals, maybe they won’t even have the option of keeping all these opulent mansions.

But it would be nice if these archbishops at least pretended like they weren’t interested in the money.

(Thanks to Greg for the link)

How to Deal with Preaching Coworkers

The video below, part of The Atheist Voice series, discusses how to deal with preaching coworkers:

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the project — more videos will be posted soon — and we’d also appreciate your suggestions as to which questions we ought to tackle next!

And if you like what you’re seeing, please consider supporting this site on Patreon.

Jenny Lewis’ Beautiful Homage to the Voyager Spacecraft

I’ve been listening to the new Jenny Lewis album non-stop since it came out, and the title track “The Voyager” ostensibly pays homage to the famous space program that includes the probe which took a picture of the “pale blue dot” that Carl Sagan later made famous:

There’s no video for the song yet, but you can listen to it here:

With lyrics like this, the reference seems clear:

Nothin’ lasts forever when you travel time
I’ve been sippin’ that Kool-Aid of the cosmos

I love the track. I love the album. There’s not a single bad song on it. Hope you like it, too.

This is What Sex-Positive Parenting Looks Like; It’s Much Better Than Christian Shame

After growing up with some seriously heavy shame-based teachings on sex and sexuality, I get really excited when I see parents teaching their little ones about their bodies without guilt and in accurate and articulate ways. Huffington Post ran a piece this week by a mom who responded to her little daughter learning to masturbate in a shame-free way, and I think it’s pretty fantastic.

I’m what some people call “sex-positive.” That doesn’t mean I talk with my 4-year-olds about how great sex is and how good it feels. It means I don’t pretend it’s something other than it is.

As parents, we lie all the time. About the Easter Bunny or Santa or the Tooth Fairy, about how long 10 minutes is, about whether or not we remembered they wanted to have grilled cheese for dinner again… We lie a lot. But one thing I never lie about is sex.

The mom, to my utter delight, uses medically accurate terms for her daughter’s anatomy and sets the stage for good conversations about sexuality later in her daughter’s life. If she is open and honest about the facts of life, her daughter will want to come to her to talk about her sexual awakening, rather than trying to hide it in shame.

What a contrast to the way I was taught in church!

This is from a post I wrote last year about my Christian guilt over masturbation as a teenager:

I [thought I] was the messed up one, the girl who wished she could attend the men’s retreat session on lust and pornography. The girl who was afraid to date someone because what might happen if I “woke love” and my desires increased more than they are now?! I was embarrassed because I liked my body, and all my friends hated theirs and dieted and binged and cut and hid theirs under frumpy clothes. I did, too, for fear of boys looking at me, but secretly I dreamed that someone might notice me beyond my frumpy clothes and see that I could pretty and desirable if I got a chance to try being so. And they all chattered on about what the most romantic proposal might be and who’d end up having the first baby, while I wondered what it might be like to be kissed and wondered if I was the only one among us who felt this way.

Christian parents could learn a thing or two about talking about sex from this mom — if they want to keep their kids from experimenting behind their backs, her approach is a better way to ensure that.

(Image via Shutterstock)

What’s with the Atheist TV Hate?

I seriously don’t understand it. Vice‘s Dave Schilling attended the Atheist TV launch party and slammed it for being a channel for those who “love hearing the sound of their own voice.”

As if Christian televangelists and political pundits everywhere do it purely for the benefit of the audience…

His whole piece was like that — a vessel for snark with very little substance.

Schilling blasted American Atheists for including its polarizing founder Madalyn Murray O’Hair in their programming, despite the fact that the 1990 speech she gave (which Atheist TV aired in its first few minutes) was an excellent primer for why atheism matters.

Schilling went after a technical glitch, the kind that unfortunately happens even at much larger events, as a sign that the whole organization was run by old people with no tech savvy whatsoever.

He was upset that AA distributed pro-atheist literature and flyers “as though they were holy text,” even though this was a publicity event for the organization.

And he really went after the kind of content airing on the channel, which he says consists entirely of the “archives of the Richard Dawkins Institute” (which isn’t true and doesn’t exist, but, you know, it’s Vice).

That’s really the biggest criticism I’ve heard so far: Why isn’t the programming more diverse and original? There’s a simple answer to that: Because there’s not a lot of content to choose from. American Atheists has its own material, like the Reason Rally footage, speeches from old conferences, and its own public access show. Then you have the material provided to AA free of charge, like YouTube videos (hi) and The Atheist Experience episodes.

That’s pretty much it. So of course the content is thin. It’s not like AA has a massive budget for this project. The point of launching a TV channel (even on Roku where pretty much anyone can start one) wasn’t that it was supposed to rival mainstream channels, but that it offered an alternative perspective on a new medium. That’s it. And good for them for giving it a shot.

If you have suggestions for free programming, want to create your own and submit it, or want to donate money so AA can create more original content, go for it. You have my non-religious blessings. But it pisses me off when people criticize groups that are trying to do something unique, even though they have nothing to offer themselves. It’s not like the armchair activists are about to create a 24-hour stream of atheist content from scratch, but it’s all too easy to criticize others who are making it happen. Believe me, I would love to see this channel grow and expand — it’s not a channel that’s part of my daily rotation yet — but it’s completely unfair, I think, to be mad that it didn’t live up to your unrealistic expectations in the first week. (I’ve seen the same kind of criticism directed at conference organizers by people who have never tried to plan anything at that scale.)

That’s not to say all criticism should be silenced. People can (and should) criticize Atheist TV if, for example, they feel the content does a disservice to atheists or would turn off potential viewers. But I would take that criticism much more seriously if it included alternatives that AA could actually use. Saying “you shouldn’t air this” doesn’t help unless you also add, “you should replace it with this.”

I’m not really hearing much constructive criticism right now. I mostly hear about how this channel isn’t up to par with a big-budget one.

For what it’s worth, AA announced at the launch that they want original content and are working with a professional to make that happen:

Among the people helping to bring that about, the channel has announced, will be the producer Liz Bronstein, whose credits include reality shows like “Whale Wars,” on Animal Planet, which is part of Discovery Communications — a company that [American Atheists President Dave] Silverman slammed hard on Tuesday night [at the Atheist TV launch party].

Bronstein is simply a consultant whose exact role is still in flux — original programming isn’t even an option without more funding — but it’s a sign that AA is at least thinking beyond the launch party, which I appreciate.

As someone who has created a lot of online content (including this site, a YouTube channel, and a podcast), I’m well aware of how imperfect those things are when they launch and how much they improve over time.

The hardest thing to do is taking that first step. There’s never a shortage of critics with strong opinions. What we don’t have are enough people with the vision and willingness to actually get things done. I love that AA took this chance, even if everything isn’t perfect.

Diocese of Lafayette (Louisiana) Says There’s “No Purpose” in Releasing Names of Priests Who Molested Children

Ten years ago, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Lafayette (Louisiana) paid out approximately $26,000,000 to 123 victims of sexual abuse by priests who served there over the span of more than 50 years. (They’re lucky they had insurance for that sort of thing.)

There’s an obvious question to ask: Which priests molested children?

The Daily Advertiser requested the names of the abusive priests from the diocese and

Feminism Remains Controversial At Wheaton College, but These Women Are Trying to Change That

A group at Wheaton College, that conservative Christian bastion that has produced so very many missionaries (including the famous Jim and Elisabeth Elliot), is giving feminism a voice on campus, according to MSNBC:

“I wanted to bring my different background, experience, and opinions, and blend them with the larger Christian community,” said [Krista] Pedersen, 20, who is studying political science and history.

“I came into Wheaton very much a feminist, and also knowing that my surroundings weren’t going to be exactly in line with my beliefs,” said [Jordan-Ashley] Barney, who is studying communications and pursuing a newly-created certificate in gender studies. “It’s been rough in some ways.”

But she and Pedersen aren’t entirely alone: About thirty people, out of 2,400 undergraduates, show up to the Christian Feminist Cabinet’s bi-weekly meetings. Last spring, they were among a handful of students who peacefully demonstrated in response to an “ex-gay” speaker on campus.

Barney opposes the university’s contraception lawsuit, but worries that galvanizing broader pushback on campus will be tougher than it was for the “ex-gay” speaker.

So, pushing for women’s rights on campus at Wheaton is officially more controversial than pushing for gay rights at Wheaton. It’s coming to this: the Christian community is going to accept LGBTQ marriage before they are comfortable fully integrating equality for woman into their theology. Why is that?

I think the Christian community will be more open to talking about consent without the issue of reproduction than they will be comfortable making strides on giving women agency over their reproductive systems. The Christian patriarchy isn’t threatened by non-reproductive sexual relationships. It’s only truly threatened when the ability to control the narrative of women in their relationships to men is approached with a red pen by Christian feminists. If LGBTQ couples don’t have kids and are socially palatable and kind and generous members of a church community, the leadership will eventually get used to looking the other way.

The Christian Feminist Cabinet has yet to tackle so controversial a topic [as the Affordable Care Act as a means to prevent abortion]. “We end up talking about women in ministry most of the time,” Barney said. She also wants to have a conversation about transgender women, and about sex and consent. “I don’t know how they’d censor me,” she said of Wheaton, “but they’d find a way.”

There is a sexual education seminar at Wheaton, Barney said, but admission is limited to students who are engaged to be married.

They will spin their wheels out on theology, because that’s a big area where men in the church can keep women stuck in a corner with centuries of conversation from which they’ve been excluded. It will be in the best interest of the patriarchy to keep distracting the feminists with theological grey area issues and away from the hard-hitting immediacy of birth control use on campus.

I laud their efforts, and I hope that Wheaton does not find a way to shut them down, even if they find themselves censored.

(Image via Shutterstock)