Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Progressive Christian
Happiness can’t see that love is sad

Happiness can’t see that love is sad

Last updated on: June 20, 2023 at 4:34 pm by Fred Clark

0 Comments

Happiness can’t see that love is sad 2023-06-20T16:34:57-04:00 Fred Clark

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

• This story is from this month — from the year 2023, not from 1955 or from 1965 or 1975. This is current events: “He became the first Black mayor of Newbern, Alabama. A white minority locked him out of town hall.”

• This one’s from last month: “Homeless men recruited for veteran hotel scam.”

This was a scam on so many levels that the woman who orchestrated it and the Fox “News” hosts who amplified it seemed to lose track of which marginal groups they were trying to direct their hatred at:

Seven homeless men have come forward to say they were part of a group of men recruited at a Poughkeepsie homeless shelter to act as veterans that had been displaced from a Newburgh hotel in order for a non-profit organization to perpetrate a fraud on the public.

People who say this despise homeless servicemen as much as they despise refugees.

The men told Mid-Hudson News on Thursday night that they were part of a group of 15 men that were supposed to pretend they were veterans that had been kicked out of the Crossroads Hotel in the Town of Newburgh last Friday, in advance of the arrival of migrants brought up from New York City.

No actual veterans were displaced from the hotel, which was also not housing any actual migrants. The homeless men recruited for the scam weren’t told what they would be doing, but exposed the scheme once they found out that the supposed “Veteran’s Charity” wasn’t interested in finding, let alone assisting, any actual veterans, and also wasn’t even going to pay any of them the $100 bucks they were promised.

Here, again, is proof that there has never, ever been a case where someone said, “Why are you helping those people over there when you could be helping homeless veterans here at home?” has ever had the slightest genuine concern for “homeless veterans here at home.” (See earlier: “Please don’t suddenly pretend you care about homeless veterans for just as long as it allows you to oppose helping refugees, because that’s hurting both veterans and refugees and it’s making you miserable.”)

• RNS: “Fewer evangelicals support public school childhood vaccine requirements, survey shows.”

The survey found that 40% of white evangelicals think vaccinating children against preventable disease ought to be optional — a big outlier among most religious groups. Because “pro-life,” I guess.

The Pew researchers who conducted the survey aren’t sure if this increase in vaccine denialism is due to something particular or distinctive about white evangelicalism or if it’s mostly a product of the vast increase in vaccine denialism among white Republicans in general. Because, you see, the very best Pew researchers are also no longer able to determine whether there is anything that is particular or distinctive about white evangelicalism or if the whole religious tradition exists now only as a product of white Republicanism in general.

I wonder if we might be able to make a more persuasive case for public health among white evangelicals if we reframed this in terms of “church growth strategy.” Talk about how Vacation Bible School attendance might be higher if we make sure the unchurcbed kids in the neighborhood aren’t dying of polio or the measles.

White evangelical/Republican anti-vaxx nuttery picked up steam during the pandemic, but it goes back years before that. Anti-vaxxer nonsense became a partisan issue during the Obama administration because, well, vaccines are health care, and if the Black President was for health care, then the White Party and White Church was obliged to be against it. (See this post from 2015: “Republicans divided on germ theory of disease and the monstrous legacy of Dr. Jonas Salk.”)

• American evangelicals love to follow archaeological news from “the Holy Land,” celebrating every dig or artifact that confirms the historical existence of anything mentioned in the Bible. There’s a whole cottage industry supporting this obsession, from journals like Biblical Archaeology Review to “ministries” and “mission trips” that conduct archaeological tourism throughout Israel, Palestine, and Jordan.

Everyone involved in that “biblical archaeology” movement has also gotten very good at ignoring stories like this one: “Hear a Recently-Discovered 12,000-Year-Old Flute That Musically Mimics the Sound of Raptor Calls.”

This “flute” might have been more of a hunting call — a bone instrument designed to let ancient hunters mimic the sound of kestrels or sparrowhawks:

“The instruments are among the oldest in the world and, according to the researchers, represent the first to be found in the Levant, the region that fostered the first stages of the Neolithic Revolution approximately 12,000 years ago,” writes Discover’s Sam Walters. They’re creations of the Natufian civilization, which “bridged the difference between the foraging of the Paleolithic period and the agriculture of the Neolithic,” and which was “the first to adopt a sedentary lifestyle in the Levant.”

“Natufian” is not a word you’re allowed to use in Biblical Archaeology Review. It’s a word — like “Sterkfontein” — that will get a tenured professor fired from Wheaton. The words “Paleolithic” and “Neolithic” will also get you in trouble.

The problem here isn’t just with the 20th-century folklore-turned-dogma of young-Earth creationism, although that’s part of it. Creationists insist that the universe is only about 7,000 years old, so a 12,000-year-old flute created by people who lived at that time is a Thing Forbidden To Be Acknowledged.

But it’s not just the Stone Age that poses a problem for the illiterate “literalists” employing the pretend-we-don’t-have-a-hermeneutic hermeneutics of white America. Anything pre-Bronze Age is bound to create troubling Scary Thoughts and must therefore be dismissed or denied. This flute isn’t so much a Genesis 1-3 problem as it is a Genesis 4 problem. That’s where we read about the children of Lamech:

Lamech married two women, one named Adah and the other Zillah. Adah gave birth to Jabal; he was the father of those who live in tents and raise livestock. His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all who play stringed instruments and pipes. Zillah also had a son, Tubal-Cain, who forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron.

This is sacred prehistory written in the fifth or sixth century BCE by people with no memory of and no access to any record of a time before people “forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron.” So they wrote their sacred prehistory to account for the invention of these things back at the very dawn of time, rather than fairly recent technological developments that preceded them by just a few centuries.

That’s not a big problem in the genre of sacred prehistory — in the kind of Just-So Stories that every literary cue tells you you’re reading in Genesis. But it would be a huge, shattering, insurmountable problem in the very recently invented and unsustainable genre of inerrant literal plenary-verbal history. So for people who insist — against all literary and archaeological evidence — that this genre is what they’re reading in Genesis, the story above about the 12,000-year-old flute recently discovered north of Galilee is terrifying rather than just really cool.

• Once again the tree service guys are working here on my block and so once again I’ve had this song stuck in my head all day (the lyrics to which supply the title of this post):

Uncategorized

Previous Post

June 19, 2023

Direct-mail fundraiser Pat Robertson is dead

Next Post

June 22, 2023 Smart people saying smart things (6.22.23)

Recent Comments

0 | Leave a Comment

"https://uploads.disquscdn.c... Yes. I bought all of them several years ago. They're up all over my ..."

Rick

The possibility of possibility

"DnD and theatre were the two places I first met trans and gay peoples."

Hawker40

The possibility of possibility

"Yes. Lemme 'splain.For a lot of kids (12+, chiefly), D&D is one of the first ..."

Jim Roberts

The possibility of possibility

"My favorite, being a New York City resident, is the way the wingnuts screeched "Liberals ..."

WeWantPie

The possibility of possibility

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category class warfare evangelicals Iraq Left Behind Mammon music Uncategorized

Select a Month November 2026 October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who was the Roman centurion who converted to Christianity in Acts 10?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Herod Felix Nicodemus Cornelius