The act of an individual, not expressive of an entire faith

Assuming Nidal Hasan was driven by his religion to kill 13 and wound 31 at Fort Hood is akin to judging Christianity by the actions Timothy McVeigh, who was executed for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing which killed 168 people.
So argued Bruce Prescott, executive director of Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists on his Nov. 8 “Religious Talk [mp3]” radio program. He said:

The problem is with the individual. It’s not with the faith.

Prescott’s guest, Razi Hashmi, Executive Director of the Oklahoma Chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR-OK), said [mp3]:

This is really, really upsetting, because this reall violates the tenets and the principles of my faith, and I believe of Islam. And it is very unfortunate that this happened. But we shouldn’t use it as an issue of religion, and it shouldn’t be framed in that way. I think it concerns some greater issues, such as mental health and the harmful consequences of war. There are many Muslims that proudly and patriotically serve in the American military. About 20,000.

. . .

There’s a verse in the Quran that speaks to this, that if you kill one innocent human being, it’s as if you have killed all of humanity. Conversely, if you have saved one innocent life, it’s as if you have saved all of humanity. It shows the sanctity of human life in the Quran, and it mentions this many, many times.

Prescott and Hashmi touched on the “fear mongering” of the “extreme right wing” in response to the Texas tragedy.

The independent Associated Baptist Press both failed to report that in its mentioned a reference to Islamophobia in its account of the interview, and subsequently imported the rightist view from the blog of Bryan Fischer, director of issues analysis for the American Family Association. They quoted Fischer as writing, “This is not Islamophobia. It is Islamo-realism.”

Faith in Public Life’s Bold Faith Type blog published an inclusive survey of Muslim voices denouncing the Fort Hood shooting.

Our view of the incident is here.

CounterFactual Kelly Boggs [Addendum]

“President Obama recently expressed his concern over mercenary medical professionals,” editor Kelly Boggs wrote in a Sept. 3 Louisiana Baptist Message editorial.

Boggs’ logic moved quickly to judgment of the presidents July 22 news conference:

The President offered no evidence to support his claim that dollar-drunk docs are performing all manner of unnecessary medical procedures. There were no statistics supporting his claim that patients are mere prey for money-grubbing physicians; not even an anecdote was offered.

Thus Boggs implied that no such statistics and anecdotes were readily available.

Before implying that the president was misleading us, Boggs had a journalistic obligation to look for statistics and anecdotes. Failure to do so is, among professional journalists, a form of disregard for the truth.

Looking just a little would have showed Boggs that his argument was not exactly right.

The Congressional Budget office estimates 16% of the Gross Domestic Product — about $700 billion a year — “goes to healthcare spending that can’t be shown to improve health outcomes.”

One readily discovered anecdote is Consumer Reports’ account of Ron Spurgeon’s unnecessary cardiac bypass surgery at Redding Medical Center in northern California. Spurgeon “and 344 others sued the hospital and eight cardiologists and surgeons for performing unnecessary procedures. The defendants ultimately paid $442 million to settle the suit.”

Neither the CBO numberss nor the availability of anecdotes should surprise anyone.

The problem to which Obama alluded is so commonplace that CBS had on June 10 ran a consumer-information feature warning that as many as 40% of all medical procedures are unnecessary and explaining how consumers can protect themselves.

But Boggs was in a hurry. The reality or lack thereof of greedy doctors wasn’t his primary concern. Abortion was. Having castigated Obama for lack of statistics and anecdotes, Boggs wrote:

But let’s assume for the sake of argument the president is correct and mercenary medicine is indeed out of control in America. The one area he needs to set his sights on cleaning up first is those physicians who perform abortions.

Boggs argues that “85 to 90 percent, and more, of all abortions are carried out as a result of convenience” and fuel “a lucrative industry.” Apparently to illustrate how lucrative, he wrote:

Planned Parenthood, America’s largest abortion provider, rakes in more than a billion dollars every year. And while PP is the largest peddler of elective abortions, it is by no means the only one. Needless to say, there is a lot of money available to greedy doctors willing to perform an unnecessary medical procedure.

Not exactly.

It is true Planned Parenthood is a nonprofit corporation with a total budget of about $1 billion a year.

Yet as Wikipedia makes clear, Planned Parenthood’s budget isn’t the result of “raking in” abortion profits:

In 2007, contraception constituted 36% of total services, STI/STD testing and treatment constituted 31%, cancer testing and screening constituted 17%; other women’s health services, including pregnancy, prenatal, midlife, and infertility were 11%, and approximately 3% of total services involved surgical and medical abortions.
. . .
Planned Parenthood receives about a third of its money in government grants and contracts ($349.6 million in FY 2008). In the 2007–08 Annual Report, clinic income totaled $374.7 million and miscellaneous operating revenues $68.9 million. Planned Parenthood is also heavily sponsored by private individuals, with over 700,000 active individual contributors [.pdf] Large donors such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation contribute a substantial part of the organization’s budget.

Undeterred by reality, Boggs charges on to his central point:

So, if President Obama is really serious about reforming health care by reducing the number of medically unnecessary procedures he will certainly call for the end of elective abortions, right?

That’s the first in a series of rhetorical questions with which Boggs hectors his readers. It’s rhetorical because Obama’s pro-choice views are well-known.

Boggs’ questions do bring us to his concluding erroneous argument — that health reform will use government funds to pay for abortion. His proof is an Aug. 5 news story:

In fact, the Associated Press recently reported, “Health care legislation before Congress would allow a new government-sponsored insurance plan to cover abortions…”

The ellipses are his, BTW, and the AP story is not exactly the final word .

On August 7 PolitiFact.com examined the same issue. It did so by way of evaluating a claim by Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) that “The Democrat-backed health care reform plan “will require (Americans) to subsidize abortion with their hard-earned tax dollars.”

After exploring the matter in detail, PolitiFact concluded that “things could change as the health reform package works its way through Congress, but for now, we don’t see anything to support Boehner’s claim that taxpayers would subsidize abortions. And so we rule his statement False.”

Also not exactly right is Boggs’ conclusion that “If the president has his way, not only will medically unnecessary, elective abortion on demand continue unabated in America, it will be underwritten by the government and will likely only increase.”

Obama’s campaign commitment was to abortion reduction, an issue covered in detail by in a Sept. 14 Associated Baptist Press article by David Gushee, Joel Hunter and Ronald Sider.

The three wrote in rebuttal to a Baptist Press article, which they argue misportrayed the recently introduced Preventing Unintended Pregnancies, Reducing the Need for Abortion, and Supporting Parents Act (H.R. 3312, referred to as the Ryan-DeLauro Bill).

Gushee, Hunter and Sider aren’t counterfactual. They don’t hector their readers with rhetorical questions. They do conclude:

Common-ground efforts to reduce abortion by addressing the circumstances that lead to it are consistent with the conviction that all life — the unborn, pregnant women, infants and children — is sacred. Honest dialogue about this innovative approach is imperative for those of us who aspire to protect life in concrete ways.

Plainly misrepresenting the content of the Ryan-DeLauro bill, and asserting in defiance of logic and evidence that it will increase rather than reduce abortion, does nothing to protect life. In fact, it does the opposite.

Likewise abortion reduction is President Obama’s clearly stated goal. Not exactly what Boggs says in his closing summary.

Addendum: Another anecdote

CounterFactual Boggs was so distressed at President Obama’s failure to offer anecdotes at his July 22 news conference that we’re adding another to the one already provided.

Adam Linker writes of a “physician who visited the emergency room when he came down with shingles. The doc, who teaches at Stony Brook University, got caught in a maze of over testing and ran up an unnecessary $9,000 bill.” The physician’s tale of expensive, time and money wasting, medically unproductive woe concludes:

One thing’s for sure: I’ve lost the smugness and condescension I often felt when listening to others’ stories about being trapped by the system and manipulated into excessively complex and specialized medical situations. Unlike most of my patients, I actually knew what my diagnosis was and what to do about it, but I learned how difficult it is to remain objective when you’re feeling very sick. Maybe I should have been more assertive. Instead, I wound up as a poster boy for excessive medicine. I understand now how all those people could have been so gullible, so easily manipulated by the system. Now that I’m one of them, that is.

Boggs and others may read Linker’s entire post here.

Want to be used again?

Baptist writer Bruce Gourley traces the history of Southern reactionary conservatism back to Civil War opposition to the abolition of slavery, and finds those sentiments reignited in the opposition to health care reform:

The white anger over Obama’s presidency and health care reform, in the words of protesters, ultimately rests in claims that the federal government is plotting to take away their freedoms and liberties. Video clips of this month’s town hall meetings across the nation include angry senior citizens living on socialized medicine (Medicare) ranting against … socialized medicine. The video clips also reveal claims that the government “outlawed prayer and legalized abortion” and now wants to take away the right to decide one’s own health care, and “we’re not gonna take it anymore!”

The social engineers who are exploiting those old grievances know they’re trafficking in untruths.

Like Ralph Reed, who used Christian conservatives in his promotion of Indian gaming interests and other causes, these groups want to use Christian conservatives for their own purposes.

Reed was out beating the drum again last week, singing what for him is a lucrative old song.

How eager are you to be used, again?

God on our side, and health reform

British Baptist journalist Jonathan Langley writes for the Associated Baptist Press that:

… in a week when Americans opposed to a large role for government in health-care reform have been attacking the United Kingdom’s National Health Service, mistaking American rights for “Christian rights” highlights a tendency in some American Christian circles to mistake the United States for the Kingdom of God.

He goes from that right to the heart of the objection some have to health reform. We Americans tend to believe one and all that God is on our side. Thus anything we feel is somehow un-American must be evil:

This, I think, helps explain why there have been such vehement denunciations of the British health-care system in America in recent days. Socialism, to those still brainwashed by Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s legacy, is “un-American.” Why? Because, as an old colleague returning from a time in Chicago explained to me last week, the American dream is to work for yourself and your own betterment. And any attempt to make you pay even a little for someone else’s health care is a violation of that dream.

Yet as Christians, he writes, “Our duty is to remember that the God Jesus Christ proclaims requires his children to give freely, love selflessly and sacrifice readily for the well-being of others.”

Driven by that faith-based logic he concludes:

Let’s pray that our American brothers and sisters can free themselves of any heresies that would see them deny the less fortunate among them health care for the sake of any false dream.

DC Court of Appeals sets standards protecting anonymous online speech

The arbitrary disregard of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Department for Thomas A. Rich’s right to anonymity as the FBC Jax Watchdog blogger could not meet the standards set by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals last Thursday, or of other lower courts which have ruled on similar matters.

FBC Jax Watchdog’s anonymity was stripped away without prior notice in a still unsatisfactorily explained criminal investigation over which no charge was filed and which produced no court action. Although the DC case involved defamation[.pdf], the standards are nonetheless clear.

A subpoena associated with a well-pleaded claim and the opportunity to contest it are required to consider breach of online anonymity:

1. Ensure that the plaintiff has adequately pleaded the elements of a defamation claim.
2. Require reasonable efforts to notify the anonymous defendant that the complaint has been filed and the subpoena has been served.
3. Delay further action for a reasonable time to allow the defendant an opportunity to file a motion to quash.
4. Require the plaintiff to proffer evidence creating a genuine issue of material fact on each element of the claim that is within its control.
5. Determine that the information sought is important to enable the plaintiff to proceed with his/her lawsuit.

The consensus of the lower courts is that disclosure of an anonymous blogger’s identity requires painstaking court consideration. Lack of that is not excused by the dismissive statement[.pdf] of the Jacksonville, Fla., Sheriff John Rutherford.

Sam Bayard of the Citizen Media Law Project wrote:

The court also perceived the danger of relying on procedural labels like “prima facie” and “summary judgment” and distilled the most important common feature of the competing tests in this area — that a plaintiff must make at least a substantial legal and factual showing that his/her claim has merit before a court will unmask an anonymous or pseudonymous Internet speaker.

As The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press explained, the D.C. court “noted that states vary widely in what test a defamation plaintiff must meet before it can compel a third party to turn over the identity of an anonymous speaker. Virginia, for example, ‘requires only that the court be convinced that the party seeking the subpoena has a legitimate, good faith basis’ for its claims. But the D.C. court ruled that this lax test
‘may needlessly strip defendants of anonymity in situations where there is no substantial evidence of wrongdoing, effectively giving little or no First Amendment protection to that anonymity.’ “

When anyone’s First Amendment protection is trampled, we are all harmed.

Let’s have all of the FBC Jax Watchdog facts

FBC Jax Watchdog’s anonymity was silently demolished by an unsatisfactorily explained and, from the point of view of the blogger, secret criminal investigation.

Anonymous blogs permit the relatively powerless to speak what they believe is truth, to power. Sometimes the power is a church, as we see in the confrontation between First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, Fla. and FBC Jax Watchdog, and risk still attends attempting to say to power things it would prefer not to hear.

The unmasking of Thomas A. Rich as Watchdog, detailed in Florida Times-Union, closely resembles the July attempt by the Bronx (N.Y.) District Attorney to use a grand jury subpoena to unmask and silence critical anonymous bloggers and commenters on the NYC political blog site called Room 8. With the help of Public Citizen, Room 8 successfully resisted disclosure.

We do not know how Google responded to the subpoena it received. Not only does Google have an official policy of not commenting on subpoenas or other legal processes, but also, subpoenas associated with criminal investigations are typically attended by gag orders (Room 8 responded by threatening the Bronx DA’s office with a countersuit). Nor has Watchdog thus far been able to obtain a copy of a subpoena he believes Comcast honored.

We do know that no wrongdoing was found, yet the investigating Jacksonville Sheriff’s Department officer apparently chose to breach the blogger’s anonymity by disclosing his identity to FBC Jax. We also know that Thomas A. Rich’s life was disrupted as a result. He was denied access to his (now) former church, publicly excoriated in an official church action and this week was described as a “sociopath” by the pastor who has been the principal subject of his blogging.

We don’t know in persuasive detail what criminal allegations were believed to justify that intrusion of police power into Rich’s life and the lives of two other bloggers. As a result, whether those allegations can withstand the light of day is an open question. Serious issues of conflict of interest (the investigating officer is an FBC Jacksonville member and apparently among those who provide security there) and as a result abuse of power, have been raised by the association of the detective’s investigation with attempts to silence the then anonymous blogger.

Such issues are typically best resolved by full disclosure, for this has become in considerable part a debate over public policy, and specifically over whether the force of law was properly applied. Given the issue’s visibility, the local and state public officials involved must tell truth and trust the people, or absent a thoroughly compelling explanation for silence, find themselves indicted by the appearance of concealment.

If the purpose of the investigation and disclosure was to end Watchdog’s commentary on matters of general interest to his audience, it failed and those who applied the pressure have put themselves in the fire.

Related:

Ethical/legal standards not followed by law enforcement in FBC Jax case

[Updated] Baptist newspaper closes & death stalks the rest

Which Baptist state newspaper will follow the Utah-Idaho Southern Baptist Witness into oblivion?

The Utah/Idaho Southern Baptist Convention announced in February that the tabloid-sized paper would end publication. There was mention of looking “at alternative ways to communicate the stories of our churches and associations and state convention,” but as of this writing the Utah-Idaho Southern Baptist Witness has not been replaced with a Web news or other service.

It published 10 issues a year for perhaps 1,300 subscribers: not a viable market. The announcement said, “There have been numerous approaches to try to increase the number of subscriptions and make it cost-effective over the years.”

All of those efforts failed, as have the circulation-building efforts of Baptist state publications as a group. The arc of Baptist state association newspaper publication circulation decline is inexorable.

Falling revenue has, as with other recession-plagued religious organizations — whether ministries, seminaries or nondenominational enterprises — forced staff and other cutbacks on the ecclesiastical press.

Lacking the heavy marketplace pressure which has driven mainstream publications, the ecclesiastical press has on the whole adapted even less well to the rise of the Web than its for-profit kinfolk. The Christian Science Monitor’s shift from print to a Web-based strategy, with a high-quality Web product to support it, is the shining exception.

Among the less well-known, some which were once technological leaders have reversed field to give up, for example, an early adopter advantage in social-networking distribution via twitter. Similarly, the Texas Baptist Standard recently announced an online subscription strategy — paid access to a visual analog of the print newspaper, with online bells and whistles. Yet online experiments with paid subscriptions have produced no general information winners.

Baptist state convention newspapers in general may have a very limited future. The big Texas Baptist Standard, for example, persuades the average visitor to spend barely enough time on the site (just over a minute and half per visitor) to peruse the index page or perhaps read part of an online story. Repackaging or more heavily promoting content whose Web traffic already demonstrates little marketplace appeal may not be a path to survival, no matter what kind of digital presentation is used.

Update re Baptist Standard

The Texas Baptist Standard’s paid-subscription, page-flipping, “enhanced Web edition” is built on zmags .pdf to Flash conversion software.

Although significantly more is involved than a simple conversion, even with bells and whistles added, it is still a page-flipping solution behind a pay wall.

A low pay wall of merely $8 per year, BTW.

Unfortunately, the Web already has plenty of small-payment publication solutions that failed.

Finland still refusing to extradite Baptist minister accused of genocide

The case of a Rwandan Baptist minister accused of genocide took a disturbing turn today when his defense argued that police tortured witnesses to extract evidence against him.

According to YLE:

The 57-year-old suspect sought political asylum in Finland in 2003. The man was arrested in 2007 on suspicion of planning, leading and implementing massacres. Suspicions were aroused in connection with a background study during the consideration of his asylum application.

Finland stands by its refusal to extradite the individual to Rwanda. He is in custody, however. Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation expects to have its inquiry completed by summer. An extension of tomorrow’s deadline for filing charges has been requested.

Stifle dissent = lose power

History’s lesson about stifling dissent, from John Adams’ loss of the presidency amid backlash from his Alien and Sedition Acts to current ecclesiastical conflicts, is the same writes Wade Burleson:

One of these days men and women with power, whether it be ecclesiastical, political or corporate will learn that attempts to stifle dissent and criticism will only ultimately result in the people you lead turning against you.

In the comments, First Baptist Church, Jacksonville, Fla., Watchdog compares the “sedition” part Adams’ Alien and Sedition Acts to a passage from the FBC Jax deacon’s resolution, which was directed at him in a “public flogging of a former member.”

You may recall that Watchdog aggressively blogged FBC Jax’s policies and repressive governance, especially the pastor’s accumulation of power. After a period of self-muzzled silence, Thursday brought new Watchdog coverage of the drive to strip him of his anonymity and silence him.

We look to Adams’ extinct Federalist Party for the price of repressive governance. The Federalists did much good but embodied sweeping distrust of and intolerance for dissenting views.

Rick Warren and the Pope differ over condoms

From Steve Waldman we learned that the Saddleback Church Web site says, “We can’t prevent many other diseases that plague mankind, but we know how abstinence, monogamy, and condoms can go a long way toward stopping HIV in its tracks.”

Pope Benedict XVI and Saddleback Pastor Rick Warren agree that AIDS requires abstinence, but Warren adds S.L.O.W.:

Supply condoms and eventually microbicides for everyone. The correct and consistent use of condoms may prevent HIV infection. But condoms will never stop the pandemic. In many places, getting condoms is nearly impossible. And even when a person has a condom and uses it properly, there still is a chance the condom will fail. Likewise, microbicides – which researchers hope will enable women to protect themselves – will only reduce risk, not eliminate it; the development of effective microbicides is still years away.

Limit the number of partners. The fewer sexual partners someone has, the less chance there is that a person will contract HIV. But limiting the number of partners will never stop the spread of HIV.

Offer needle exchange. Some people believe that giving new, clean needles to intravenous drug users reduces their risk of contracting HIV from a needle shared by someone who is HIV positive. While clean needles may reduce the risk of transmitting HIV, the resulting impaired judgment can enable other high risk sexual behavior thus exposing the individual to HIV.

Wait for sexual debut. The longer a person waits to become sexually active, the longer he or she will stay free from the risk of contracting a sexually transmitted disease.

Saddleback doesn’t propose that S.L.O.W. will bring the AIDS epidemic to a full halt.

“If AIDS can be stopped,” strenuous efforts by and the full moral authority of the church will be required as well.