Jan. 12th, 2010 at 7:37 AM
I'm not the biggest fan of the political Christian far right. Have no issues with Jesus the historical figure and some of his level-headed adherents, just with his demented far right American fanatical followers, who I've generally found to be vicious, virulent, illogical and ... well, downright stupid, most of the time. I figure if he had any brains to speak of, Jesus would be pretty embarrassed by them, as well - hell, who wouldn't be? Aristotle, encountering these dunderheads, would have despaired of logic gaining any foothold at all within human civilization and grabbed for an entire casket of hemlock - forget the single malt whiskey glass of it - and downed the whole thing in despair, while PRAYING to escape the rise of the Christian right. I have yet to meet a single one of them who is capable of employing logic in any debate or discussion - most of them just make me want to clutch my head and start screaming.
Anyway, last night I fell asleep with the TV on ... courtesy of the dumb broad - see last entry - who coughed and sneezed all over me last week and made me so sick I had to sleep sitting up to breathe. Woke up squinting at the TV groggily, trying to figure out what I was inadvertently watching. At first I thought it was some infomercial ... then maybe a PBS "Learn Greek in 3 Easy Lessons" televised learning annex course ... and then, after further squinting and head tilting and coughing, gasping and wheezing, finally met the (I assume) somewhat renowned Pastor Melissa Scott. Had never seen her before, although she seemed to have a fairly large audience in the TV studio church hanging on her every word, so I assume there were people SOMEWHERE who had heard of her, even if I'd missed the boat.
Christian or not, I liked her right off the bat - very earnest, obviously learned in a smattering of ancient languages - scribbling incoherently on a white board behind her the various Greek and Aramaic words that made up whatever new Testament text she was teaching at the time, and defining them as she went along. Couldn't tell you if she was correct or not, but she certainly sounded learned. She made me feel like I was back in a University of Michigan lecture hall and ought to have been taking notes if I wanted to pass the final exam. That alone says something for the woman, as my typical reaction to waking up listening to a televangelist is a grumpy, "Oh, shut the &*^& up." She lacked the smarmy, snake-oil tone of voice most televangelists employ, and that was a relief. When I was finally awake and coherent, I went and looked her up online. Listened to her teaching on "Women in the Church", on her website.
No, I wasn't about to convert, but I did have two thoughts: (1) "Finally! A preacher who actually did what women in the early christian era DID do - teach!" and (2) hey, let me go look up that Bible she's using. Well, okay, a smaller version of it. The one she was toting around was huge and looked painfully heavy, and I have no idea how the woman could tote it around, open, balancing it in one hand while she waved a white board marker with the other. But she manages to do it with even a certain amount of grace. But that fascinated I wasn't - I thought there had to be a smaller, lighter version of that annotated Bible somewhere. I looked at the annotated versions of the earliest Bibles she was selling on her website. $15???? I don't think so. Still curious, I went and looked them up elsewhere. And that's another story for another day. I did find another recently published book in the religion section though - one that made me start laughing out loud.
"Former Congressman and Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations, Mark D. Siljander takes us on an eye-opening journey of personal, religious, and political discovery. In the 1980s, Siljander was a newly minted Reagan Republican from Michigan who joined Congress in the same generation as Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay, ready to remake the world. A staunch member of the Religious Right, he once walked out of the National Prayer Breakfast when a speaker quoted from the Qur'an.
But after losing reelection, Siljander dove into the Bible to look for the passage in which the Bible says it is our job as Christians to convert others in order to save them from eternal damnation. He couldn't find it; in fact, he couldn't even find a passage saying that Jesus set out to form a new religion."
Not in there, eh? Oh, to wave that right under all the noses of all the nutballs who consider it their duty to convert everyone else by force!
So, in other words, in an attempt to apologize for this gaffe, Siljander wrote, "Deadly Misunderstanding: A Congressman's Quest to Bridge the Muslim-Christian Divide" in 2008. Was thinking that he might have wanted to start that fence-mending a little bit closer to home, as in perhaps writing "Deadly Misunderstanding: One Misguided and Uneducated Congressman's Quest to Apologize to the Rest of the Country. You Know, Those People We Called All Sorts of Names and Tried to Steal the Country From Under False Pretenses by Telling Them They Were Evil and Needed to be Converted By Us by Force", by Mark D. Siljander.
No such luck, eh? Maybe he should start listening to Pastor Melissa Scott.
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