Category: Speech & Press

Pulpit Provocation Sunday

Today is “Pulpit Provocation Freedom Sunday,” which vies powerfully for “most annoying idea ADF ever came up with.”

Here’s the deal. ADF, a public interest law firm with which I have been affiliated and still support sporadically (if you think that’s hypocritical, ask a conscientious liberal if he’s even had to suppress a gag reflex to support the ACLU) is inciting pastors to preen and preach about politicians today.

“Pastors should decide what they preach from the pulpit, not the IRS,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Erik Stanley, who heads the Pulpit Freedom Sunday event. “Churches should be allowed to decide for themselves what they want to talk about ….”

To the list of people who shouldn’t decide what pastors preach, I would add public interest law firms trolling for a test case on the odious Johnson Amendment.screenshot

I’m with ADF on the Johnson Amendment, but concertedly preaching politics on a particular day sends a powerful message that the Church is something infinitely inferior to what the Church really is.

My concern is only heightened by the realization, acquired over the last 17 years or so, that pastors really shouldn’t be deciding in a vacuum, or according to what “God laid on muh heart” (a cue that a hobby horse is about to be mounted again), what to preach. They should feel powerfully constrained to preach the whole counsel of God by following traditional lectionaries. The alternative is a theoretical superiority of the Scriptures over all human opinion coupled with a very real shrinkage of the canon to a few of Pastor Billy Bob’s favorites (Daniel chapter 7, Revelation 21 and a few others, for instance).

But I’ll give ADF credit for one thing. It’s working against an extremely lawless, arrogant administration, with a cribbed view of religious liberty and paranoia against the Bill of Rights, that just might take the bait.

If it does, I know who I’ll be rooting for: the schismatic religiopreneurs who never thought their show of bravado would actually land them in hot water.

UPDATE/BACKDATE: When sharing this through Hootlet, I was auto-reminded of similar posts in the past. It gratifyingly appears that my response to this irritant has been fairly consistent over the past 16 months.

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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.

Friday, 9/26/14

  1. Free speech at Berkley 50 years later
  2. Neologism alert
  3. One cheer for Ted Cruz
  4. Channeling a demeaning caricature of Reagan
  5. Christian Philosemitism in action is sectarian
  6. Karen Armstrong calls “Bullshit!”
  7. Politician Serenity Prayer
  8. Banned in Boston (and Bangor, and Kennebunk and …)

Continue reading “Friday, 9/26/14” →

Wednesday, 7/30/14

  1. You touch our nonviolence and we blow your heads off!
  2. New Urbs
  3. Short Stories
  4. GOP to POTUS: We’ll see your passivity and raise you a compulsive interentionism
  5. UCSB Feminazi Cops a Plea
  6. A Religious Freedom Claim that Deserved to Lose
  7. The (Spiritual/Cosmic) Butterfly Effect

Continue reading “Wednesday, 7/30/14” →

Heckler’s veto in disguise?

It’s only a Federal Magistrate’s recommendation, but I really dislike the reasoning:

Plaintiff maintains that according to School District policy, practice, or custom (“the policy”), School District teachers, faculty and administrators are permitted to display in their classrooms and offices various personal messages. Plaintiff has interpreted the policy as permitting the display in her classroom of several quotations from the Bible, as well as several other statements containing the word “God,” and a picture of three crosses on a hill [among many non-religious items].

…

By letter to CCSD Superintendent of Schools Dennis Kane (“Kane”), dated June 7, 2012, one Rebecca S. Markert (“Markert”), Staff Attorney with the Freedom from Religion Foundation (“FFRF”), advised it was in receipt of a complaint from a High School student (“complainant”), regarding Plaintiff’s posting of a Bible verse, and a drawing of three crosses on the wall near the complainant’s desk.

…

Kane directed Plaintiff to immediately remove the religious materials identified by Kane.

…

[B]ecause the School District “has a strong, perhaps compelling interest, in avoiding Establishment Clause violations, it may proscribe” conduct that risks giving the impression the School District endorses religion. … “A school risks violation of the Establishment Clause if any of its teachers’ activities gives the impression that the school endorses religion.”

What I dislike about this, which I don’t think I’ve misrpresented by truncation, is that it gives extremists like the Freedom From Religion Foundation a heckler’s veto. If they got “the impression that the school endorses religion” from this teacher’s action, the school can, and perhaps must, shut the teacher down.

By the way: the school freely allows gay pride displays.

(H/T Religion Clause)

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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.