Hemant Mehta's Blog, page 1999

#TakeDownThatPost: The Case for Reparations

The Leadership Journal‘s post is down, as Hemant discussed last night.

I applaud the editorial team’s response, particularly this portion:

There is no way to remove the piece altogether from the Internet, and we do not want to make it seem that we are trying to make it disappear. That is not journalistically honest. The fact that we published it; its deficiencies; and the way its deficiencies illuminate our own lack of insight and foresight, is a matter of record at The Internet Archive (https://web.archive.org/web/20140613190102/http://christianitytoday.com/le/2014/june-online-only/my-easy-trip-from-youth-minister-to-felon.html).

Any advertising revenues derived from hits to this post will be donated to Christian organizations that work with survivors of sexual abuse. We will be working to regain our readers’ trust and to give greater voice to victims of abuse.

It’s unusual for a Christian organization to even consider journalistic integrity in their actions, and to try to make amends with those they’ve hurt by allocating revenue to appropriate charity groups — see, for example, the World Vision gay employee policy reversal fiasco earlier this year, which left approximately 2,000 kids without sponsors. So I’m excited that they’re not completely trying to whitewash this.

But it’s not good enough. This is not restitution, this is a bare-minimum sort of response. (And as an aside: what charities are they giving to? Can we see numbers on this?)

I think they should have left the post up, because while the Internet is forever, the post is representative of their bad decision, and it is only right that you should own your words and your mistakes on the Internet. Taking it down was, I know, something a lot of my peers in the blogging world begged for, but that’s not a real solution.

A better solution would be this: run a full issue dedicated to telling the stories of victims of pastoral abuse, in their own words. Include articles from Elizabeth Esther, G.R.A.C.E. staff members, Recovering Grace representatives, Kathryn Joyce, and lawyers involved in representing victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests. You want a cautionary tale for pastors? Don’t go to a man who ended up in jail for raping a minor in his youth group. The way to go about it is to talk to those involved in seeking justice for the victims of sexually predatory spiritual leaders.

#TakeDownThatPost is a short-term, band-aid fix. If Christianity Today and Leadership Journal are truly invested in helping raise awareness about the problem of sexual predators and the abuse of power in the American evangelical church, then they will have to go farther than just hitting “delete.”

Delete doesn’t fix anything.

Oak Hill (TN) Commissioner Candidate Who Was Victim of Anti-Atheist Smear Campaign Gets Elected

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about the anti-atheist smear campaign against Heidi Campbell (Pflaum), a candidate to become a city commissioner in Oak Hill, Tennessee.

An anonymous mailer had been sent to residents in Oak Hill warning them that Campbell is (*gasp*) a Secular Humanist because she had liked a Secular Humanist group on Facebook:

(Mailer image via Nashville Scene)

The mailer also said that Campbell would want to “eliminate faith-based churches and schools,” which wasn’t even close to the truth.

Earlier this week, Campbell took second in the election — enough to earn a seat on the board and by a *ton* of votes over the third place finisher — and she’s now trying to get to the bottom of who sent that mailer. Jonathan Romeo of the Brentwood Home Page has the story:

Campbell filed a Davidson County General Sessions Court complaint against a “John Doe” for false light invasion of privacy, libel and defamation of character as a result of the anonymous attacks. That case has been referred to a Circuit Court.

As a part of the complaint, she subpoenaed current Mayor Austin McMullen and his wife, Kelly; former Mayor Tom Alsup Jr. and his father, Tom Alsup Sr.; current City Judge Tom Lawless; and records from internet services Google and its subsidiary Blogspot, Facebook, and Microsoft Outlook. She also subpoenaed an unidentified private citizen from whose Facebook account a screenshot was taken.

“I’m positive we’ll find the source — they left a digital footprint,” said Campbell, who doesn’t believe Mayor McMullen is behind the attacks, but thinks he knows who is.

What a revelation it would be if the mayor was found to be tied to the mailings…

After Promoting Christian Prayers at School, Missouri District Agrees to Pay Humanist Lawyers $41,000 in Settlement

Last year, we learned of a constitutional violation at Fayette High School in Missouri. Gwen Pope, a math teacher at the school, was leading Christian devotional prayers in her classroom every Friday morning. That alone might have been okay since she was the faculty sponsor for a Christian club, but announcements about those prayers were made over the school’s loudspeakers while other student groups didn’t get the same privilege.

Gwen Pope

It wasn’t just that: Pope’s husband Michael (who didn’t work at the school) would attend the meetings. Pope was quoted as telling her math students that “God will punish them if they are not good.” She had Christian books on her desk. She put up color flyers on her door for the meetings (another privilege no other student group at the school had). And the school allowed all of this to happen.

The American Humanist Association ended up filing a lawsuit against the district and one of its plaintiffs was a junior at the school, Gavin Hunt:

After all this time, there’s finally some resolution in the case.

While the district denies most of the accusations made by the AHA, they know they can’t avoid the fact that special announcements for the prayer sessions were made in the morning.

So the district will take responsibility for that without technically admitting guilt. In a consent decree made public yesterday, the district says it will amend its handbook to allow for other groups to have announcements made in the morning. Furthermore,

If the announcement is for an extracurricular student group that may be conducting a religious activity at its meeting… the announcement cannot identify the religious activity that will take place, and must only include the name of the organization, the time the organization will be meeting, and the location of the meeting…

The handbook will also forbid district employees from participating in any religious activities (which seems to go too far in my opinion) and from placing personal religious items “where students are likely to see” them (though, again, they’re not admitting that happened in this case).

The district also agreed to pay the AHA’s attorneys $41,000 in legal fees.

Despite that, the superintendent claims the district is almost entirely innocent:

“After months of investigation and interviews the district determined that virtually every allegation made by the plaintiffs was false, misleading or taken out of context,” Superintendent Tamara Kimball said in a statement issued in response to questions about the settlement. “As a result, the district agreed that the one allegation we did confirm as accurate, the content of the morning announcement, would be a simple concession to make so we could put this lawsuit behind us and continue our mission of educating students.”

$41,000 to make this all go away is hardly a simple concession…

Gwen Pope, by the way, retired at the end of the school year, so she won’t be back next year.

I asked Gavin Hunt how he felt now that all of this was over and he sent me this surprising statement:

I’m no longer attending the school as a result of the harassment and I’m positive this [new] school will provide a more appropriate environment. I cannot adequately express the importance of keeping religion out of schools. I will continue advocating for a secular government and the advancement of humanity in any way that I possibly can.

I wish him the best as he goes into his senior year.

(Thanks to Brian for the link)

This is Why Atheists Can’t Be Republicans

We know Republican atheists exist.

Sure, we’ll roll our eyes at their affiliation and say to ourselves that they support the GOP only for fiscal reasons, but we’re really wondering how they deal with all the cognitive dissonance that has to be going on in their heads. How could any atheist support a party that focuses way too damn much on guns, God, and gays?

CJ Werleman has a simple answer to that question and it’s the title of his latest book: Atheists Can’t Be Republicans: If Facts and Evidence Matter

In the excerpt below, Werleman summarizes his case:

You’re an atheist for one reason and one reason only: you’re not an idiot!

Actually, that’s what I once thought. I don’t think that anymore, for I have come in contact with as many idiot atheists as I have with idiot Christians, Jews, and Muslims. For instance, Penn Jillette happens to be an atheist, but he’s also a clown. A professional clown whose libertarian beliefs make him an idiot. CNN’s S.E. Cupp is also an atheist and libertarian. Yes, the Cupp is half empty, for she is also a clown, but unlike Jillette, she is actually paid to be taken seriously. Over a stellar lifetime career of accurate and insightful geopolitical commentating, Christopher Hitchens was rarely proven wrong, but on the rare occasion he was, it was when he hitched his wagon to the Republican Party. Remember Iraq?

You’re an atheist for one reason and one reason only: you see no evidence for the existence of gods. That’s it. The genesis of your atheism doesn’t need to be any more nuanced or sophisticated than that. You don’t believe in things that can’t be measured, tested, or proven. It’s why you most likely don’t believe in astrology, homeopathy, or scientology.

While atheism alone does not ensure a smarter-than-thou intellect, non-belief does have an intellectual advantage over theism. Hitchens wrote that the intellectual advantage of atheism is its ability to reject unprovable assertions on face value. It’s why we don’t believe in the supernatural. We demand facts and evidence, and equally, we reject mythical notions and ideologies on the basis that these ideas lack, well, facts and evidence.

You have as much in common with another atheist as you do with someone who doesn’t believe in unicorns. But you don’t get an interesting title for not believing in unicorns or fairies or zombies. It’s only when you don’t believe in a god that you get a name: atheist. It’s for this reason why atheists don’t necessarily have much in common politically. There are conservative atheists, libertarian atheists, and progressive atheists. There are atheists who are fiscally conservative and socially progressive.

If there’s a common political thread, it’s that all atheists are secularists. An atheist who doesn’t believe in the separation of church and state makes as much sense as a Klansman who doesn’t believe in white people. That atheists are secularists is one reason why atheists can’t be member of today’s Republican Party. More on that point later.

Atheists can’t be Republicans because the economic and social policies of the Republican Party have been proven abjectly false and dangerous. Much in the same way religion is false and dangerous. In other words, atheists who cling onto modern U.S. conservative ideology are hanging onto ideas that have either been proven mythical at worst or remain unproven at best. If atheists applied the same litmus test to their political ideology as they do to theology, then clearly an atheist cannot be a Republican.

The Grand Old Party (GOP) is not only a theocratic sponsor, it’s a party that has been proven wrong on just about everything in the past three decades or more: from evolution to climate change, trickle-down economics, that the Iraqis would greet us as liberators, that the Bush tax cuts would lead to jobs. It didn’t. It added $3 trillion to the debt. They were wrong when they said the stimulus would trigger inflation, that austerity stimulates an economy in recession and that universal healthcare is worse than slavery, and they continue to prescribe debunked policies. That is when they aren’t carrying out a reenactment of the American Civil War in the chambers of the U.S. Congress i.e. obstruction, nullification, and disruption.

Now, bear in mind this book is not an endorsement of the Democratic Party. For most of the past three decades, much of the Democratic Party bought into the myth of conservative economics. Partly due to political expediency — meaning the DNC has made itself dependent on Wall Street, although not to the same degree as the GOP, when it comes to campaign fundraising. I blame the Clintons for this. President Clinton believed that in order for Democrats to win, they needed to sound like Republicans. Political polling not only demonstrates his belief to be wrong, but it also sold out the progressive agenda. No doubt you have your own shit-list of examples where Democrats have fallen short of expectations. My list is longer than the menu of a popular Chinese restaurant. But surrendering your vote and activism, insofar as whining that both major political parties are rotten at the core, is an intellectually lazy cop out. Also, it’s exactly what the plutocratic pro-corporate elites and the Republican Party want of you. They want you disillusioned and disengaged. Low voter turnout and dissatisfaction with government is the ambition of those who wish to continue the exacerbation of America’s winner-takes-all society. So stop handing the Masters of the Universe a political gift.

Now, not only am I a professional political commentator, I’m also a confessed political junkie. It’s what I do. It’s what I love. But I get that 90 percent of the country doesn’t share my passion for following day-to-day machinations of Washington. Most tune in to politics only in the weeks leading into a general election. For those who do pay attention to every last bit of minutiae, however, it’s clear that one political party in this country has entirely given up on representing the interests of anyone outside of the top 1 percent of income earners — the Republican Party. And this is gradually and in many instances rapidly eradicating the middle class.

For all the Democratic Party’s shortfalls, they are the only party that is making fact based attempts to deal intelligently with the nation’s needs and ills. It’s the Democrats who are trying to reform the healthcare system, the immigration system, banking system, campaign finance system, and the tax code. It’s Democrats who are fighting to raise the minimum wage, strengthen public safety nets, implement green initiatives, protect LGBT Americans, and improve public infrastructure. It’s the Democrats who are making gradual steps to end the drug war and foreign wars. The Republican Party, on the other hand, has not a single coherent policy outside of tax cuts for the rich, deregulation, nullification, abortion, guns, god, repealing healthcare reform, Benghazi, and rejecting any attempt by Democrats to deal intelligently with the nation’s problems. America can’t become great again by making the rich richer and constantly repeating the word “no.”

The purpose of this book is to demonstrate the destructiveness that mythical conservative economic and social thinking has wrought on this country, and then, in turn, provide some kind of blueprint for restoring America’s greatness.

You cannot make America better by subsidizing already wealthy companies that pay low or no taxes thanks to a tax code that has been redesigned for their exclusive benefit; nor can you make America better by cutting investment in public infrastructure, and removing regulation that keeps our food, water, and skies safe. It serves no one’s interest outside of the very fortunate few to privatize and monopolize every touchstone of our lives. The strength of our democracy is weakened when we alienate segments of the population from the democratic process, as does denying equal rights to all on the basis of “religious freedom.” These are commonly accepted truisms, but far too many atheists continue to subscribe to a political party that advocates the opposite.

I am an atheist, but I have no real affinity to my atheism. To be honest, I don’t get the whole let’s get together and talk about the god we don’t believe in thing. Each to their own, of course, but that’s not me. What I’m more interested in is the potential political and civic power atheists (freethinkers) have as some kind of wishful monolithic voting bloc. Atheists are the fastest growing minority in the country. We now have the critical mass to shape elections and policy. Were atheists able to establish a monolithic political demographic, one that is based on proven economic and social policies, then our potential political power would translate into saving this country from the clutches of the American Taliban and Wall Street.

Atheists Can’t Be Republicans: If Facts and Evidence Matter is now available on Amazon. On a side note, I’m very amused by the fact that, despite this being Kindle-only, the cover image is still that of a physical book.

(Minor edits were made to the text.)

Ten Years Later, a Reflection on Michael Newdow’s Attempt to Remove “Under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance

Ten years ago today, the Supreme Court dismissed an atheist’s challenge that the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance were an endorsement of religion — without actually settling that question one way or the other. I figured it was as good a time as any to revisit that case and its implications.

Michael Newdow (above) filed the lawsuit against the Elk Grove Unified School District in March of 2000 on behalf of his daughter, who was in kindergarten at the time. Newdow argued that the daily recitation of the Pledge was an endorsement of religion by the district and he wanted the courts to rule that the inclusion of the words “Under God” violated the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.

In July, District Judge Peter Nowinski, not surprisingly, disagreed, maintaining that “the Pledge does not violate the Establishment Clause.”

So Newdow appealed. And that’s when all hell broke loose.

In a stunning reversal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decided in June of 2002 that Newdow was right (“Newdow I”). Not only did he have the right to represent his daughter in the case — the judges said he could challenge a ritual that “interfere[d] with his right to direct the religious education of his daughter” — they agreed that the addition of “Under God” violated the Establishment Clause.

A profession that we are a nation “under God” is identical, for Establishment Clause purposes, to a profession that we are a nation “under Jesus,” a nation “under Vishnu,” a nation “under Zeus,” or a nation “under no god,” because none of these professions can be neutral with respect to religion. The school district’s practice of teacher-led recitation of the Pledge aims to inculcate in students a respect for the ideals set forth in the Pledge, including the religious values it incorporates.

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The school district’s policy here, like the school’s action in Lee, places students in the untenable position of choosing between participating in an exercise with religious content or protesting. The defendants argue that the religious content of “one nation under God” is minimal. To an atheist or a believer in non-Judeo-Christian religions or philosophies, however, this phrase may reasonably appear to be an attempt to enforce a “religious orthodoxy” of monotheism, and is therefore impermissible.

Things went a little haywire after that. 150 members of Congress stood on the steps of the Capitol to recite the Pledge with the “Under God” part. The Senate even passed a non-binding resolution by a vote of 99-0 to “reaffirm the reference to one Nation under God in the Pledge of Allegiance.”

More importantly, the mother of Newdow’s child, Sandra Banning, tried to dismiss the complaint on standing. She said that while they shared custody of their daughter, she had control over the daughter’s legal interests and educational decisions.

Banning further stated that her daughter is a Christian who believes in God and has no objection either to reciting or hearing others recite the Pledge of Allegiance, or to its reference to God… Banning expressed the belief that her daughter would be harmed if the litigation were permitted to proceed, because others might incorrectly perceive the child as sharing her father’s atheist views.

The California Superior Court stepped in at that point and said that Newdow could not represent his daughter as her “next friend.” Could he continue the lawsuit on his own? That was a question left for a federal court to decide.

With that in mind, the Ninth Circuit issued a second opinion (“Newdow II”). This time, they said Newdow could still proceed with the case even if he no longer represented his daughter. The matter affected his child, they said, and he had a right to challenge a supposed “injury” to his daughter:

We hold that a noncustodial parent, who retains some parental rights, may have standing to maintain a federal lawsuit to the extent that his assertion of retained parental rights under state law is not legally incompatible with the custodial parent’s assertion of rights. This holding assumes, of course, that the noncustodial parent can establish an injury in fact that is fairly traceable to the challenged action, and it is likely that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision.

The defendants requested a re-hearing of the case by the entire Ninth Circuit (an en banc review), but the judges denied that motion in February of 2003. That didn’t stop one of the judges who *really* wanted to rehear the case from issuing a stern dissent:

We should have reheard Newdow I en banc, not because it was controversial, but because it was wrong, very wrong — wrong because reciting the Pledge of Allegiance is simply not “a religious act” as the two-judge majority asserts, wrong as a matter of Supreme Court precedent properly understood, wrong because it set up a direct conflict with the law of another circuit, and wrong as a matter of common sense. We should have given 11 judges a chance to determine whether the two-judge majority opinion truly reflects the law of the Ninth Circuit. Reciting the Pledge of Allegiance cannot possibly be an “establishment of religion” under any reasonable interpretation of the Constitution.

The Ninth Circuit ended up issuing a final decision (“Newdow III”) that was similar to its first decision but didn’t go into the constitutionality of inserting “Under God” into the Pledge. This time, they focused on whether Newdow had proper standing and whether the school district’s policy of reciting the Pledge every day was constitutional.

The Supreme Court stepped in after that. The justices said they would hear the case to answer those two questions: 1) Did Newdow have standing as a non-custodial parent to challenge the district’s policy? And 2) If he did, did the policy violate the First Amendment?

We know by now how that played out.

Even though Justice Antonin Scalia recused himself from the case after making disparaging public remarks against the Ninth Circuit’s decision, five of the remaining justices decided that Newdow did not have proper standing to bring about the case in the first place. He didn’t have sole custody of his daughter at the time and he didn’t have standing to bring the case on his own:

What makes this case different is that Newdow’s standing derives entirely from his relationship with his daughter, but he lacks the right to litigate as her next friend…

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[Newdow] wishes to forestall his daughter’s exposure to religious ideas that her mother, who wields a form of veto power, endorses, and to use his parental status to challenge the influences to which his daughter may be exposed in school when he and Banning disagree. The California cases simply do not stand for the proposition that Newdow has a right to dictate to others what they may and may not say to his child respecting religion… A next friend surely could exercise such a right, but the Superior Court’s order has deprived Newdow of that status.

Three of the justices — William Rehnquist, Clarence Thomas, and (perhaps surprisingly) Sandra Day O’Connor — said Newdow did have standing, and the Pledge did not violate the Constitution.

Had Newdow been granted standing, would he have won on the merits? (Does it even matter anymore?) Probably not. If Scalia was there, he surely would’ve ruled against Newdow. And at least one of the five justices who dismissed the case on standing would likely have ruled against him, too.

The only bright side was that the question of the constitutionality of the Pledge remained open for debate in the future. But it’s unlikely we’ll see a similar case work its way up to the Supreme Court anytime soon. Especially in the wake of Town of Greece v Galloway, it seems like ceremonial deism is here to stay.

I asked Newdow last week if he had any reflections on his case a decade later, but he did not respond to my email. Since his Supreme Court case, he has filed a number of lawsuits, including an unsuccessful bid to remove “In God We Trust” from our paper currency and another unsuccessful bid to stop President Obama from saying “So help me God” during his inauguration. (You can read all the documentation for those cases here and here)

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Lawyer David Niose recently attempted to stop the daily recitation of the Pledge in Massachusetts. Learning from Newdow’s failure, Niose didn’t argue that the Pledge violated the Establishment Clause. Instead, he argued on the grounds that the Pledge violated the Equal Protection part of the Constitution — in other words, forget the words “Under God.” Young atheists who didn’t recite the Pledge were being discriminated against and their patriotism was brought into question.

Unfortunately, the state’s Supreme Judicial Court ruled against Niose, saying that there was no evidence students who didn’t recite the Pledge were actually treated differently or badly by school officials.

I asked Niose if he had any thoughts about the Newdow case and he sent me this statement:

The most memorable aspect of the Newdow litigation is not the Supreme Court ruling in 2004, but the Ninth Circuit decision in 2002 that found “under God” to violate the Establishment Clause. It was a courageous legal opinion that honestly applied the law, and it caused quite an uproar. Members of Congress reacted to the decision by pandering to the religious public, marching out to the Capitol steps to stand and say the Pledge, with the “under God” language, in defiance of the court. The decision, and the subsequent reaction, showed very clearly how ugly the combination of religion and patriotism can be.

The fact that in 2004 the Supreme Court chose not to rule on the substantive legal issue (i.e., whether adding “under God” to the Pledge violates the Establishment Clause), but instead ruled against Newdow only on the technical issue of standing, is significant. As the Ninth Circuit showed, any honest application of the Lemon test (which is the legal test for analyzing Establishment Clause issues) would of course find that the “under God” wording is constitutionally offensive. The purpose of the “under God” language is religious, the language favors religion, and it entangles government with religion — failing any one of those three prongs would make “under God” a violation, and it fails all three!

So the fact that the Supreme Court decided to avoid the Lemon test by kicking out the case on standing is very significant, because it seems the justices felt that they couldn’t uphold the “under God” language under the Lemon test without blushing. Unfortunately, however, since 2004 the issue has been put before federal courts several times, and memories of the 2002 uproar have apparently influenced the judges deciding the case. We haven’t seen any more courageous, honest decisions like the 2002 Ninth Circuit ruling, but instead courts have gone out of their way to appease the religious public by upholding the language. It’s a shame.

Exploring the Right Wing’s Persecution Complex

Right Wing Watch just released a scathing report on the fictional narratives created by conservatives to bolster the ridiculous notion that Christianity is under attack:

None of these stories is true. But each has become a stock tale for Religious Right broadcasters, activists, and in some cases elected officials. These myths — which are becoming ever more pervasive in the right-wing media — serve to bolster a larger story, that of a majority religious group in American society becoming a persecuted minority, driven underground in its own country.

This narrative has become an important rallying cry for a movement that has found itself on the losing side of many of the so-called “culture wars.” By reframing political losses as religious oppression, the Right has attempted to build a justification for turning back advances in gay rights, reproductive rights and religious liberty for minority faiths.

None of the stories are news to regular readers of this site, but when they’re all together in one document like this, you get a sense of the extent people like Todd Starnes disproportionally stretch the truth to advance their agenda.

Christian Publication Apologizes for Posting Pedophile’s Essay, but Wrongly Removes Piece from Website

On Thursday, Hännah wrote about an appalling essay posted in Christianity Today‘s imprint publication, Leadership Journal.

The piece, written by an anonymous sex offender who was also a former pastor, neglected to share the fact that his victim was a child until close to the end of the piece. It was also implied that their “relationship” was consensual and that what the rapist did was a result of “sin” and not his own actions. A member of the editorial team even defended the post online as merely a “cautionary tale.”

The first attempt at fixing the mistake was just appending an editor’s note to the beginning of the piece and changing words in the article. Libby Anne, who does a nice job of highlighting the problems with that here, wrote, “Editing some of the language rather than removing the piece is like putting a bandaid over a gushing wound.”

Late Friday night, unable to contain the firestorm, Marshall Shelley (editor of Leadership Journal) and Harold B. Smith (president and CEO of Christianity Today International) issued an apology for publishing the piece. They took down the article (more on that in a moment) and pledged to do better in the future:

We should not have published this post, and we deeply regret the decision to do so.

The post, told from the perspective of a sex offender, withheld from readers until the very end a crucial piece of information: that the sexual misconduct being described involved a minor under the youth pastor’s care. Among other failings, this post used language that implied consent and mutuality when in fact there can be no quesiton [sic] that in situations of such disproportionate power there is no such thing as consent or mutuality.

The post, intended to dissuade future perpetrators, dwelt at length on the losses this criminal sin caused the author, while displaying little or no empathic engagement with the far greater losses caused to the victim of the crime and the wider community around the author. The post adopted a tone that was not appropriate given its failure to document complete repentance and restoration.

There is no way to remove the piece altogether from the Internet, and we do not want to make it seem that we are trying to make it disappear. That is not journalistically honest. The fact that we published it; its deficiencies; and the way its deficiencies illuminate our own lack of insight and foresight, is a matter of record at The Internet Archive (https://web.archive.org/web/201406131...).

Any advertising revenues derived from hits to this post will be donated to Christian organizations that work with survivors of sexual abuse. We will be working to regain our readers’ trust and to give greater voice to victims of abuse.

We apologize unreservedly for the hurt we clearly have caused.

As far as apologies go, that seems pretty genuine and heartfelt… even if they had no choice but to write it. Giving the ad revenue to groups that work with abuse victims is the right thing to do.

My only problem is that they took down the piece.

I know critics were using the Twitter hashtag #TakeDownThatPost, but I don’t believe that removing the piece from their site, as if it never happened, was the right call. They should’ve left it up in full as a perpetual reminder of their awful decision.

By the way, the Internet Archive link the publishers mention only contains the first page of the piece, not the entire thing. (Did they know that or were they hoping no one would check?)

And why is it the Internet Archive’s responsibility to document Christianity Today‘s mistake, anyway?

When the sports website Grantland was called out for publishing a transphobic piece earlier this year, they left it up on the site but included a brief message right up front that linked to a guest post detailing all the problems with the article as well as a lengthy apology from site founder Bill Simmons that included this line:

We’re never taking the Dr. V piece down from Grantland partly because we want people to learn from our experience. We weren’t educated, we failed to ask the right questions, we made mistakes, and we’re going to learn from them.

That, I believe, was the right decision.

Again, the Christian publishers’ apology is a good start. But not giving future readers a chance to see for themselves what the article said, what the problems with it were, and how the editorial team decided to handle it, takes away a major educational opportunity for everybody.

Even though I know a lot of sexual abuse survivors themselves called for the essay to be taken down, scrubbing the piece from the site benefits Christianity Today more than anyone else.

If anyone has a PDF of the original article, please let me know.

In a Country Where Atheism is Equated with Terrorism, the Godless Are Growing in Number

In a country where a blogger was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes (on top of a more than quarter-million-dollar fine) for “insulting Islam” and the government equates atheism with terrorism, godlessness is actually growing incredibly fast in Saudi Arabia.

It’s in part due to a growing bitterness with the country’s theocracy, but the atheists dare not declare their beliefs publicly for obvious reasons:

But the greater willingness to privately admit to being atheist reflects a general disillusionment with religion and what one Saudi called “a growing notion” that religion is being misused by authorities to control the population. This disillusionment is seen in a number of ways, ranging from ignoring clerical pronouncements to challenging and even mocking religious leaders on social media.

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Together, the appearance of atheists, a growing wariness of religious controls on society, as well as the continuing lure of jihad and ultraconservatism signal a breakdown in the conformity and consensus that has marked the Saudi religious field in the recent past. It is becoming a more heterogenous and polarized faith scene.

Indeed, if you look at the 2012 poll by WIN/Gallup International, 5% of Saudis polled were atheists — a percentage that was higher than the United States. (In our country, the demographic shifts favor the “Nones,” not atheists specifically.)

But with no safe way to express their views publicly, the underground atheists have no choice but to criticize faith and dogmatic thinking privately. The harder the government clamps down on the few who speak out, the more atheists they create.

(Thanks to Richard for the link)

Tecumseh School Board Debates Having Prayers at Meetings; Member Suggests Atheists Would Be Fine with Them

If you want to see ignorance at work, check out the conversation that took place between Tecumseh (Michigan) School Board members earlier this week when the idea of having religious prayers at meetings came up:

“You know when I was first on the board umpteen years ago we did have a clergy come in,” said [Board President Edward] Tritt. “I don’t know why we stopped. It would be a way — besides the concept of prayer — of including another part of our community. It doesn’t sound like a bad idea if there is an interest out there with the clergy to come in and do it.”

…

“You can make an argument for it that it’s part of our culture, that it’s part of what the United States has always been even though we came across here mostly as Christian and for partly we came over here because of wanting religious freedom,” said [Board Member Jim] Rice. “And even as an atheist you can still respect the concept that the whole is greater than the one. And if a prayer reflects that, I don’t see anything wrong with that.”

“That’s because you’re not an atheist,” said [Board Member Stanley] Ames.

Well, at least one of them gets it. No vote took place this week; they tabled the discussion to a future board meeting.

But since the board members cited Town of Greece v. Galloway, then they should realize that if they open the door to religious prayers at meetings, they must also allow atheists to deliver those invocations.

So here’s what needs to happen: Atheists who live in the area should contact the school board members — their email addresses can be found here — and express your interest in leading non-religious invocations as soon as the board approves them.

I’m sure they’ll love hearing from you.

If you do deliver an invocation, may I suggest encouraging the board members to get to work and do what’s in the best interest of students instead of waste time trying to please an imaginary friend?

(Thanks to @Anthony_Alaniz for the link)

A New Museum Devoted to Creationism Will Open Tomorrow in Idaho

I first heard about the Northwest “Science” “Museum” in 2011, but tomorrow, after several years in the works, its Vision Center will open up its doors to the public in Boise, Idaho.

As you can see from the promotional video below, the museum will show how “evolution is absurd” and explain the “catastrophic consequences of Darwinism. For example, Hitler and his Nazi regime could never have done what they did without the foundation of Darwinian evolution”:

The Museum’s Statement of Faith gets right to the heart of why it doesn’t actually promote science:

No apparent, perceived, or claimed interpretation of evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the Scriptural record.

For them, the evidence doesn’t matter if it poses a challenge to their faith.

That’s not how science works.

With science, you go where the evidence leads you. You don’t get to shoehorn science into the narrow confines of a holy book.

So, like I said, the Brainwashing Compound opens up tomorrow in Idaho. It’ll compete with Ken Ham’s Kentucky-based Creation Museum in a race to warp the minds of little kids and gullible adults everywhere.