No more “shame parades”

The New York Times has a story today about so-called shame parades, where suspects — suspects, mind you, not convicted criminals — are walked through the streets, usually shackled, and generally shamed.

But the Ministry of Public Security recently ordered police departments to stop parading suspects like that.

Remember the public stocks? You can hardly go to any New England historical attraction and not find some remnant of our own public shaming methods. Sometimes? I miss those stocks.

Does a dog have a soul?

And if so, can a dog take communion? This Canadian dog did, much to the distress of some other church-goers.

I want to think that heaven is a place you go where all your dogs run to greet you, but I was raised to believe that animals don’t have souls (given the account of Noah and the ark, and the mention of only eight souls — and there were eight humans and who-knows-how-many-animals on the vessel).

I hope my Sunday school teachers were wrong. I’d really love to see Okie, Tinker, Guido, and Mac.

And thanks, Sis. Gina, for the link.

How do you know if you’re a Christian?

“Ma’am, I am tonight.” Love that line.

Sis. Sensible sends this, Jonathan Edwards’ (no, not that one, the other one, the holy one) guide to knowing if you’re a Christian and she noticed something I noticed, too: Where’s the line about serving others?

Sis. Sensible says:

Fundamentalist evangelical Protestant conservative Christians are so focused on their own holiness and on spreading “the good news” and on where everyone’s soul is going after death, but most aren’t focused at all on meeting the earthly needs of the souls who are still here on earth. Why is that??

I happen to be able to answer that, being all of the above. Or, at least, I can take a shot at answering that. I think there plenty of my tribe who actually are concerned with the physical well-being of people, but there are far more who fit Sis. Sensible’s description. If you are raised on the notion that earth is just a passing thing, and we’re only here for a gnat’s eye-lash bat, then you are going to be focused on the Hereafter, assuming that’s where you (and everyone else) will spent eternity. You’ve been taught that your life here doesn’t matter much and so you are to prepare for the life after death. And that’s where your focus is, often to the exclusion of some very real pain right in front of you. It’s a spiritual myopia that helps contribute to Christianity’s lousy reputation.

You have idiots like that guy in Florida spending calories to organize a woe-begotten “protest” to burn Islam’s holy book. And for what? For. What?

Imagine if that guy and his followers spent time feeding the hungry of Gainesville, and I meant really feeding them. Imagine if that faith group worked for affordable housing, or threw their weight behind a message of love and peace, a message that more closely mirrors the message they’d find in their Book, should they ever crack it open.

But no. Instead, they create a Satan here on earth to help give their shaky beliefs some legitimacy when in fact, they’re robbing themselves precisely of that, all under the pretense of “saving souls.”

Jesus spent a lot of time feeding people, comforting people, dealing with their physical ailments. He spent very little time dealing directly with souls. I think he was on to something, myself. It’s like a prison minister once told me: The Gospel goes down better when it’s wrapped in a peanut butter sandwich. If your message is eternal, that message will come through from your actions.

That’s it. Sermon’s over. Get back to your regularly scheduled program.

You do not have a right to child-free spaces

So says Maia at Feministe.

Bless your heart Sis. Maia. I like children as much as the next person, but do I want them hanging out in a bar with me? I do not, even if they’re shorter, cuter, and more honest than I am. Maybe particularly if they’re shorter, cuter, more honest than I am.

And maybe it’s just me, but when children are present, I tend to try to keep the conversation at a level they can understand and enjoy. And then there are times when I just really wanna cuss.

I understand that motherhood shouldn’t mean the end of a social life. Absolutely, it shouldn’t. And friends who are friends will be friends regardless of whether you come bearing children. But sometimes adults want to be adults, and we want to be adults outside the presence of the little ones.

Sometimes the remedy is worse than the disease

Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and others decided to try to push back the BP Gulf Coast oil disaster with an influx of fresh water from the Mississippi River.

But that destroyed fragile oyster beds, which take two to five years to rebuild.

And thanks, Sis. Gina, for the link. As she says: Don’t just do something. Stand there.

Is Facebook killing your friends?

Is Twitter?

Or do you not indulge in either?

See, this is interesting to me because I’ve come to look at spending time on this blog as spending time with my friends. That’s kind of weird, I guess, and I wouldn’t want it to take the place of face-to-face friends (all the more reason for a much-warned-about ROAD TRIP), but still.

Adjust your tin-foil cap, please.

Some organizers are planning a protest against a planned mosque in California. One news report said:

An e-mail alert sent to area newspapers last week announced that a one-hour “singing – praying – patriotic rally” will begin at 12:30 p.m. July 30 at the Islamic Center’s existing facility. The advisory – sent by a leader of a conservative coalition that has been active with Republican and Tea Party functions – recommended participants “bring your Bibles, flags, signs, dogs and singing voices.”

“We will not be submissive,” the notice proclaimed. “Our voices are going to be heard!” The alert went on to question what its authors described as Islamic beliefs. It suggested that participants sing during the rally because Muslim “women are forbidden to sing.” It suggested that rally participants bring dogs because Muslims “hate dogs.”

The advisory asked rally participants to “please bring a pooper scooper” if they are accompanied by a canine companion. The advisory said residents of an unspecified Tennessee community were able to halt the construction of a mosque in that state.

Whoo-boy. Ignit is as ignit does. Yuck it up, protesters, but seriously? Get a grip.

And thanks, Right Wing Watch, for the link.

Girls can be violent, too.

You probably already know that, but Courtney E. Martin at The American Prospect explores that further.

Some mid-day comfort

Sis. Cynical offers this, an edited version of a recent sermon by Robert Jensen. He said:

We are not special. We are an organism like all others, the product of an evolutionary process in a very big universe in which we are, as individuals, insignificant. But don’t fret about that; we are also insignificant as a species, and the collection of entities on Earth that we call “life” is insignificant, as is the planetary ecosystem in which we live and our solar system and our galaxy. We are, in the big picture, insignificant beings floating in insignificance in a universe that is vast beyond human comprehension.

If anyone is still wrestling with that one, still searching for some essential meaning to our existence, I have some simple advice: Get over it, and start pulling your weight in the meaning-making enterprise. If there’s meaning in any of this, we create it ourselves, and we need all hands on deck for that one.

And he said this:

We all need a philosophy, a theology, a worldview to deal with this. Call it radical humanism, as Abe did. Call it Christianity, as we do. Call it whatever you like, so long as you answer the call to live your own life in solidarity, as love in action. That task has never been easy for people, and it has never been harder than in the anguish of end times.

We cannot know what lies ahead, we can only love and act.

As a rule, I do not understand politicians

Sharia law in the United States?

(The fun starts at 3:08 on the video…) Tennessee’s lieutenant governor Ron Ramsey, we shall be praying for you. Bro. Ramsey says:

“You can even argue whether Islam is a religion, but at the same time, this is something we are going to have to face…”

Yes, but what does that mean?

And thanks, Bro. Lawrence, for the link.