Ministerial misadvice on mental health

Frink warns:

Your pastor is a high-risk, even life-endangering choice for mental health advice, a recent Baylor University study found.

More than 32% of 293 previously diagnosed, “seriously mentally ill” church members reported that their pastor said they did not have a mental illness.

Misleading pastoral responses came most often from “conservative” or “charismatic” ministers, according to an account published in the Texas Baptist Standard. Matt Pene of Baylor University wrote:

… church members were told the cause of their problem was solely spiritual in nature, such as a personal sin, lack of faith or demonic involvement. Baylor researchers also found women were more likely than men to have their mental disorders dismissed by the church.

Read the rest.

Westboro barred from Canada (again)

Cover of the play text

Because hate speech is illegal in Canada under section 319 of the Canadian Criminal Code, members of the fundamentalist Westboro Baptist Church are barred from entering to protest a Nov. 28 Vancouver performance of the play The Laramie Project.

The play is about Matthew Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming student who was murdered near Larami in 1998.

The Kansas church protests most productions of the play with signs that say “God Hates Fags.” Well-known for those strategies, its members were barred from entering Canada in August, when they had planned to protest at the funeral of Tim McLean, a man who was beheaded on a Greyhound bus in July.

Westboro is an unaffiliated Baptish Church whose principal focus is rabid intolerance for gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual individuals. Its Web site has the words, “God hates fags” on the top of its home page.

Westboro’s demonstrations don’t meet, the least of these standard set forth in Matthew 25:34-40. Canadian law notwithstanding, they deserve protest themselves.

Making Christians voiceless?

Great Britain’s Christian Voice proudly trumpets how its pressure silenced Patrick Jones’ otherwise little-noticed reading from his book of poetry, Darkness is Where the Stars are.

Termed fundamentalist thugs by a member of the British Parliament, the group’s web site reports:

A national bookstore chain have cancelled a reading of obscene and blasphemous poetry due to happen tonight after a 24-hour campaign by a Christian prayer and lobby group.

Waterstones were due to host Patrick Jones’ poetry reading in their Cardiff store tonight, but less than 24 hours after Christian Voice members began contacting the store and Waterstones’ top brass, the event has been pulled.

…

Just the knowledge that we were on our way has put the fear of God into the opposition.

Yes, the book’s material is, in the author’s words, harrowing, and the British, like most Americans, are confident adults can make their own decisions about whether or not to read it or hear it read. What they are refusing to tolerate, however, is the suppression of free speech embodied in cancellation under pressure of the Waterstones’ reading.

Terry Sanderson of the Guardian writes:

Members of the Welsh Assembly have weighed in to condemn Waterstones, calling the cancellation a violation of the right to free speech. Now, Jones, will read his poems in a room at the Welsh Assembly on the invitation of Liberal Democrat assembly member Peter Black.

…

The whole ballyhoo has also brought an invitation for Patrick Jones to speak at the Hay literary festival next year. …

Thuggery in this case gets its just deserts.

The Bible in the wild?

Writers of the Bible offers us evidence that the Good Book is, in the words of Michael Coogan, “an anthology of literature made over the course of many centuries by different people.”

Coogan is a Professor of Religious Studies at Stonehill College and Director of Publications for the Harvard Semitic Museum. He goes on to say:

Think of an analogy: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, which covers over a thousand years, from Beowulf into the 20th century. The Bible covers a similar span. The earliest texts in the Bible likely date to before 1000 B.C., and the latest texts go at least to the 2nd century B.C., and for Christians, into the 2nd century A.D. So it is an anthology of the literature of ancient Israel and early Judaism, and for Christians, of earliest Christianity, as well.

Like any anthology, it’s selective. There were many other texts that the ancient Israelites and early Christians produced that we no longer have. We have reference in the Book of Numbers, for instance, to the Book of the Wars of Yahweh. Yahweh was the name of the God of Israel. And it must have been a wonderful book, but all we have is a kind of learned footnote.

It is one episode in Nova’s “archeological detective story,” The Bible’s Buried Secrets.

The entire show is available online.