Muttering into the void.
Some new evidence of progressivism as a puritanical religious movement:
When study participants were allowed to buy green products, they were more likely to cheat and lie in a subsequent task than those who chose among conventional products. (Apparently, it seems that they either consciously or unconsciously used the good deed to excuse for subsequent unethical behavior.)
Just as avoiding drinking, swearing and playing cards lets you ignore bigger sins like racism or sexism.
Via Christian Feminism (HT: Inhabitatio Dei) comes this excellent list of reasons:
10. A man’s place is in the army.
9. For men who have children, their duties might distract them from the responsibilities of being a parent.
8. Their physical build indicates that men are more suited to tasks such as chopping down trees and wrestling mountain lions. It would be “unnatural†for them to do other forms of work.
7. Man was created before woman. It is therefore obvious that man was a prototype. Thus, they represent an experiment, rather than the crowning achievement of creation.
6. Men are too emotional to be priests or pastors. This is easily demonstrated by their conduct at football games and watching basketball tournaments.
5. Some men are handsome; they will distract women worshipers.
4. To be ordained pastor is to nurture the congregation. But this is not a traditional male role. Rather, throughout history, women have been considered to be not only more skilled than men at nurturing, but also more frequently attracted to it. This makes them the obvious choice for ordination.
3. Men are overly prone to violence. No really manly man wants to settle disputes by any means other than by fighting about it. Thus, they would be poor role models, as well as being dangerously unstable in positions of leadership.
2. Men can still be involved in church activities, even without being ordained. They can sweep paths, repair the church roof, change the oil in the church vans, and maybe even lead the singing on Father’s Day. By confining themselves to such traditional male roles, they can still be vitally important in the life of the Church.
1. In the New Testament account, the person who betrayed Jesus was a man. Thus, his lack of faith and ensuing punishment stands as a symbol of the subordinated position that all men should take.
The federal Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (the body that decides the cases that the “Human Rights” Commission persues) has declared that Section 13 of the Human Rights code (the “pre-crime” section — it allows extra-legal persecution of speech that is “likely to expose someone to ridicule”) violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
This is great news in the fight against the wholly corrupt Canadian “Human Rights” commissions.
I’ve recently been reading about the secretive fundagelical political organization described in Jeff Sharlet’s disturbing book, The Family. Some further links are via Amicus Dei and Slacktivist.
While I have some minor quibbles with certain aspects of Sharlet’s interpretation, the evidence and conclusion are as compelling as they are depressing: the US government — of both parties — and financial elite are pervaded by a clandestine organization whose express goal is global theocracy, and whose members, lacking any moderation via the wider context of scripture or theology or the main stream of orthodoxy in the church, are, as C.S. Lewis warned, capable of blithely colluding in the worst kind of oppression and violence in the name of “the will of God”.