The ‘Hear our prayer …’ calumny

Searching twitter we find the blasphemously doctored version of the video below is still being promoted as somehow “true.” That despite having been addressed by Media Matters and a page-leading link at the conservative Catholic site PewSitter.com.

Mollie Wilson O’Reilly explains at dotCommonweal:

Did you hear the one about the “Religious Left praying to Obama”? I hope not. Here’s the embarrassing story: a video clip of a pro-universal-health-care prayer service, originally posted on the Gamaliel Foundation web site but appropriated, “captioned,” and distributed by the obviously trustworthy Naked Emperor News and on Breitbart.tv, caused a stir on right-wing blogs yesterday because it reportedly showed liberals chanting the petition, “Hear our cry, Obama.”

Here is the undoctored version:

Some who posted the doctored version did not make forthright corrections when the error was pointed out. For example, Crunchy Con (Rod Dreher) apologized but as O’Reilly observed, still mumbled “I’m pretty sure at least some of those people are saying ‘Obama.’”

Nope. All who believed the “Obama” version were had. When they realize that, they’ll almost inevitably consider the source.

Contentious, civil ‘Blasphemy Day’

Center for Free Inquiry Blasphemy Contest logo

Center for Inquiry founder Paul Kurtz’s dissent from the excesses of Blasphemy Day was unexpected and welcome. He wrote:

When we defended the right of a Danish newspaper to publish cartoons deploring the violence of Muslim suicide bombers, we were supporting freedom of the press. The right to publish dissenting critiques of religion should be accepted as basic to freedom of expression. But for CFI itself to sponsor the lampooning of Christianity by encouraging anti-Catholic, anti-Protestant, or any other anti-religious cartoons goes beyond the bounds of civilized discourse in pluralistic society. It is not dissimilar to the anti-semitic cartoons of the Nazi era. Yet there are some fundamentalist atheists who have resorted to such vulgar antics to gain press attention. In doing so they have dishonored the basic ethical principles of what the Center for Inquiry has resolutely stood for until now: the toleration of opposing viewpoints.

Catholic journalist Dave Gibson, from whom we learned of Kurtz’s dissent, writes that there is in it a resonance with Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Gibson observes that of “Blasphemy Day,” Mohler wrote:

The sheer foolishness of a blasphemy contest with t-shirts and mugs betrays the lunacy of it all. They can do no better than this? One testimony to the power of God is the fact that his self-declared enemies come off as so childish and manic.

Apparently lost amid the offensive silliness to which Kurtz and Mohler object is the animating purpose of this altogether unofficial ‘Blasphemy Day’:

Protesting U.N. Resolution 62/154 on “Combating defamation of religions,” which offends Mohler, Mainstream Baptist Bruce Prescott, atheist Peter Singer and a long list of others in otherwise unlikely, informal alliance in defense of free expression.

It is inescapable that calm, civil response to the Blasphemy Day silliness is an aspect of that free expression.

Drama and transition for Texas Baptists Committed

If you know about Southern Baptists in Texas you know that Texas Baptists Committed (TBC) was organzied to preclude the conservative takeover which racked every other state with a significant Southern Baptist presence, and that strategy is widely regarded to have worked.

From Spiritual Samurai we learned that TBC was going to ” Restructure, Relocate, and Refocus.” That plan included keeping David R. Currie on a director emeritus, with some unspecified authority and salary.

There was some astonishment and a subsequent story by the Texas Baptist Standard (TBS). Whereupon Samurai blogged his puzzlment over TBS’s withholding the story until he scooped them.

Widespread mourning may not have been the rule among blogging Texans. Ken Coffee wrote:

TBC has become what they profess to have hated in others. You have become manipulative control freaks. I would hope, for the sake of the Kingdom and the BGCT, that you would want to change that perception.

Dramatic tension was mantained by Samauri’s blog asking just what Currie’s “director emeritus” status would mean. Key questions were what authority and pay did the new status entail.

Whereupon Currie really resigned “Sept. 28, effective immediately,” as head of the “political organization two decades ago to resist a “fundamentalist takeover” of the Baptist General Convention of Texas.”

Lee at Deep In the Heart reviews the difficulties faced by narrowly focused organizations like TBC during times of transition. The issue about which he tactfully walks is whether, original purpose gone, they will survive. Or whether they should.