Sacred Torah Now in White House and Pentagon

September 30, 2005
by Rabbi Lev Baruch, Military Chaplain

For the man who sponsored the first Torah for the Pentagon, it was a way to say thanks to this country.

“There is no better way for Jews to express their gratitude to America than to place a Torah in the Pentagon, which has preserved our freedom,” said Hank Sopher, a prominent New York real estate magnate and owner of Quik Park garages.

Sopher sponsored the writing of the Pentagon Torah, a first for the home of the U.S. military establishment.

Sholom Lipskar, a Lubavitch rabbi from Bal Harbour, Fla., and founding chairman of the Aleph Institute, presided over Monday’s Torah dedication in the Pentagon chapel. The scroll was placed in an ornate Israeli-built ark whose steel door is secured by a safe lock.

The ark rests in the spot where the 9-11 terrorists crashed the plane. A similar Torah is also in the White House, next to the Oval Office in a special prayer room dedicated by President George W. Bush.

“Torah is perceived as a source of power and strength,” Rabbi Lipskar said. “We bring the Torah to this chapel, a holy place in the Pentagon, itself a center of power.”

Dozens of personnel from all branches of the military watched in fascination as the scribe, Rabbi Shmuel Wolfman of Jerusalem, completed the last letters of the scroll.

“The Torah is the source of all monotheistic faiths,” said Dov Zakheim, former undersecretary of Defense.

“That’s where we all began.”

Rabbi Jacob Goldstein, the New York chaplain of the Secret Service, also attended the celebration. He had returned the day before from hurricane-stricken New Orleans, where he served for three weeks in a tent city at the airport.

In the past two years, Sopher has sponsored two other Torahs, also written by Rabbi Wolfman. One was for The Shul of Bal Harbour, Fla., the other for the Chasam Sopher Synagogue on Clinton Street on the Lower East Side.

Comment: It is interesting to note that the Federal judiciary has ruled that it was unlawful to display the Ten Commandments in a public place and yet have said nothing about the display of the Torah in the Pentagon and White House! Ed.

Evangelical Hypocrisy

October 8, 2005
by Neil McKenzie Cameron

Christian Culture warriors like James Dobson and Al Mohler are well regarded amongst American Evangelical Christians. They speak up for they believe and, importantly, they bring the Bible to bear on important social issues.

But sometimes it's not what they say that is important, but what they don't say. And sometimes what they don't say speaks volumes for their potential hypocrisy.

What two issues are Christian culture warriors known for jumping on? Homosexuality and Abortion. Both Dobson and Mohler have spent considerable time arguing that "activist judges" have hijacked the US constitution and passed laws that go against God's will. In this, the Roe vs Wade decision is an important point. As a result, they have both given relatively unqualified support for the nomination of Harriet Miers to the bench of the Supreme Court - based on their belief that Miers as an evangelical Christian will uphold Christian values as one of the nation's most important judges.

I would like to know, however, what Dobson and Mohler have said about the instances of torture inflicted upon prisoners-of-war by US troops during the war on Terrorism. I would like to know their thoughts on the imprisonment without trial of those "illegal combatants" in Guantanamo Bay.

Americans generally have very diverse thoughts on these two subjects - but for an Evangelical the issue is a no brainer. A person who loves God and who adheres to Sola scriptura cannot, in good conscience, support an administration that encourages the torture of prisoners of war - they can't. Moreover, Evangelical Christians have a great love of justice - so why is it that these Evangelical leaders have not spoken out against the detention without trial of these suspects in Cuba?

The reason is simple - their goals are not biblical nor god-honouring, but essentially political.

There is every reason to criticise the Evangelical George Bush for misleading the world about Iraq, and for his administration's abysmal stance on prisoner abuse. As an evangelical myself, I cannot fathom how a person regenerate of the Holy Spirit can order the invasion of a foreign nation - with all the suffering that it has caused to millions of people - without any real plan on how to bring that nation to peace and prosperity. I certainly can't fathom how a born-again Christian can defend the use of torture.

But Dobson, Mohler and others are conveniently silent about this. For them, it's all about defeating the godless liberals and bringing America back under God's rule. It's all about mom and apple pie. It's not about Iraqi children being blown apart by cluster bombs.

This selective stance overtly favours the incumbent party and the Bush administration. Because the GOP is the party of the godly, criticism - especially from the culture warriors from Colarado Springs - is not helpful. Loyalty to the party line is, in the practice of these evangelical leaders, more important than loyalty to the Bible.

And that, essentially, disqualifies them from being true evangelicals.

So while Dobson and Mohler speak loudly about the decline in moral values in American society, is it any wonder that they are increasingly seen as simplistic party hacks, drinking the Republican Kool-Aid and telling people to stop thinking and trust that the President is doing the right thing?

True evangelicals will speak out about sin - but they will do so without fear or favour for any party or, for that matter, any president who claims to be an evangelical. They must be seen to be fair in their assertions and loving in their engagement with the world. They must engender respect from their opponents for their honesty and their courage, refusing to use the tools of the enemy.

Who are these true evangelical leaders? No one that I know of.

Far-Right Politicians Give Christians a Bad Name

October 9, 2005
by Joel McNally
Madison Capital Times (Wisconsin)

I would like to say something on behalf of Christians.

Whenever someone asks me about religion, my usual response is that I am a fallen Unitarian, which is about as low as you can go.

But anyone who has any familiarity with progressive politics is surrounded by Christians and deeply religious people all the time.

Whenever I go on a peace march, I am surrounded by Christians.

Once a month, I attend community brainstorming in Milwaukee where African-American leaders and ordinary folk get together to talk about serious social issues. It's in a church basement, and a whole lot of the people there are really devout Christians.

My wife and I went on a journey earlier this year to some of the most notorious civil rights crime scenes in this country - places like Selma, Ala., Birmingham, Philadelphia, Miss., Meridian, Miss. People we met who risked their lives fighting for American values during dangerous times were Christians in the very best sense in the word.

But there's one thing about all those Christians I just mentioned. They bear absolutely no resemblance to the Christians I read about in the media who are the apparent interest group behind narrow-minded, mean-spirited legislation introduced by Republican legislators.

The Christians I know do not promote hatred against other people. They don't oppose medical research that could save millions of lives. They don't want ignorance taught in our schools.

They still believe Christianity has something to do with loving your neighbor, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and caring for the least among us.

So I think the media and politicians should stop giving Christianity a bad name.

Jim Wallis, the evangelical Christian who wrote "God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It," likes to point out that one out of every 10 verses in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke refer to economic injustice.

Yet politicians ignore the huge forest of biblical teachings to concentrate on a few tortured twigs they somehow twist into justification for virulent opposition to abortion or gay marriage. (The conservative religious position on gay marriage should be to insist upon it.)

Kurt Vonnegut, in his new book of essays "A Man Without a Country," wonders why the publicly pious are so enamored of the Ten Commandments instead of Jesus' beautiful Sermon on the Mount in which he blessed the merciful and the peacemakers.

"Often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings," Vonnegut wrote. "I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere. 'Blessed are the merciful' in a courtroom? 'Blessed are the peacemakers' in the Pentagon? Give me a break!"

It's been said that those who use the Bible as an excuse to pass laws against private sexual conduct that's none of their business should read the entire book instead of just the dirty parts.

Of course, reading the Bible doesn't do any good if people can misinterpret poetic language that encourages love and compassion for one another as somehow advocating the exact opposite - hatred and intolerance.

It is an injustice to good-hearted Christians everywhere that politicians today define moral issues in the most small-minded, divisive ways imaginable.

Instead of focusing on the major moral issues of the day - oh, little things like reducing the growing chasm between bloated have-it-alls and desperate have-nots - politicians play Sneetch politics.

"The Sneetches" was the Dr. Seuss book in which Star-Belly Sneetches whose bellies had stars considered themselves morally superior to Plain-Belly Sneetches who had none upon theirs.

In bill after bill, Republican legislators attempt to chip away at a woman's right to decide whether to have a child if she becomes pregnant or to torpedo the pioneering stem cell research at the University of Wisconsin that could revolutionize medical treatment forever.

Instead of looking out for the long-term health and welfare of Sneetches everywhere, politicians seek short-term advantage from intentionally inflaming petty differences between Star-Belly Sneetches and Plain-Belly Sneetches.

Wisconsin has just become the national repository for all approved stem cell research lines. All the other states spending millions to attract such research would kill for the distinction. Legislators here are still trying to sabotage stem cell research.

State Senate Republicans just passed a ban on human cloning, something that isn't going on in Wisconsin anyway. But hidden in the bill was a ban on therapeutic cloning, which could be used to extend stem cell lines for medical research.

Stem cell lines in a Petri dish are not human life. They will never become human life. On behalf of the most virulent religious extremists, politicians are still trying to shut down this life-saving research.

The majority of Christians who really care about human life should demand politicians stop taking their name in vain.

Pat Robertson: Poster Boy for Alzheimer’s

US televangelist says Venezuela threatens US with nuke!

October  9, 2005
AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP)- Prominent US televangelist Pat Robertson on Sunday accused Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez of giving Osama bin Laden 1.2 million dollars in cash after the September 11 attacks and of trying to obtain nuclear material from Iran.

Robertson caused an uproar in August when he called during his televised religious program for the US government to assassinate Chavez. He later was forced to apologize to the leftist leader.

But the conservative preacher issued a new denunciation of Chavez Sunday.

"The truth is, this man is setting up a Marxist-type dictatorship in Venezuela, he's trying to spread Marxism throughout South America, he's negotiating with the Iranians to get nuclear material and he also sent 1.2 million dollars in cash to Osama bin Laden right after 9/11," Robertson told

"I apologized and I said I will be praying for him, but one day we will be staring nuclear weapons and it won't be (Hurricane) Katrina facing New Orleans, it's going to be a Venezuelan nuke," Robertson said.

"So my suggestion was, isn't it a lot cheaper sometimes to deal with these problems before you have to have a big war," he added.

Asked how he had obtained information on Chavez giving money to bin Laden, Robertson said: "Sources that came to me. That's what I was told." (God talks to Pat in the loo. Ed)

"And I know he sent a warm congratulatory letter to Carlos the Jackal, he's a friend of (Libyan leader) Moamer Kadhafi," he said. "He's made common cause with these people that are considered terrorists."

Comment: The Long Day’s Journey Into Night is almost over for Brother Pat. He and Brother Billy Graham are tottering down the slippery slope to the Celestial Garbage Dump, hand in shaking hand, mumbling mindlessly  to no one in particular and scaring small children. They often speak to God, but God does not answer.  Ed