Thursday, November 30, 2006

Christian Coalition base

Just when I was afraid the Christian Coalition might become relevent ...

The Rev. Joel Hunter, pastor of a nondenominational megachurch in Longwood, Fla., said he resigned as the coalition's incoming president because its board of directors disagreed with his plan to broaden the organization's agenda. In addition to opposing abortion and same-sex marriage, Hunter, 58, wanted to take on such issues as poverty, global warming and HIV/AIDS.

"My position is, unless we are caring as much for the vulnerable outside the womb as inside the womb, we're not carrying out the full message of Jesus," he said in a telephone interview yesterday. "They began to think this might threaten their base or evaporate some of their support, and they said they just couldn't go there." (Washington Post)

Hey CC, listen to the man. You have the chance to put "the full message of Jesus" into your agenda (which is, funny, what I thought Christians would want). If all your "base" is concerned with is abortion and gay marriage (oh, and capital gains tax cuts), you will become even more irrelevant than you already are. Young evangelicals are waking up to the idea that there's more to the Christian life than protecting your stock gains and harping on other's sex lives (much as the latter may need harping on).

Monday, November 13, 2006

Subsidizing billionaires

Kudos to the city of Seattle, which recently voted to discontinue subsidizing billionaire sports team owners and their millionaire players. Because it decided that schools, transportation projects and healthcare are better uses for its money, Seattle will probably lose its basketball team, the Sonics, in 2010. Big deal. It's not like the team has a lot of love for the city, demanding $200 million "or else". Good riddance.

Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Aryan race

The NY Times has an article about a Nazi breeding program to "propagate Aryan traits". One of the products of the program, Gisela Heidenreich

argues that the program, sinister as it was, has echoes in today’s world. With advances in genetics, she notes, discriminating parents will soon be able to select traits in their unborn children.

Given that possibility, she said, the evils of the Nazi era must not be allowed to recede into the history books. “If we start engineering blond-haired, blue-eyed babies, can we blame just Hitler?” she said.