Holy Cow

My God, Your God ... Oh, Dear God
©2011 Ross Williams

Headline: Kentucky Church Bans Interracial Couples

Article Synopsis: The Gulnare Free Will Baptist church took a vote after service on Sunday at the prompting of member and former pastor Melvin Thompson; of the “35 to 40” people attending the service, 15 stayed to vote, and by a 9-6 margin voted to prevent interracial couples from becoming members or to participate in the service. The Free Will Baptist governing council said the Gulnare church acted on its own and hopes that “it is corrected quickly.” Both factions have appealed to the governing council to resolve the issue. Thompson claims to not be racist.

Free Will Mustn’t be Free: The resolution was drafted after the daughter of the church Secretary attended service over the summer with her African boyfriend – now her fiancé – and sang a song for the congregation. Thompson objected to this, and informed Dean Harville, the girl’s father and church Secretary, that it should not happen again. If people in Kentucky’s Appalachia are like people everywhere else, words were undoubtedly exchanged, and when the girl and her *>gasp!!<* black African boyfriend, apparently home from college for Thanksgiving, attended the Free Will church yet again, Thompson presented his motion to the congregation, some of whom didn’t stay to hear it, and others of whom couldn’t bring themselves to vote.

Harville and Thompson – inferring from their separate quotes in the article – would appear not to see eye to eye on many subjects, and it is not surprising to me to read that Thompson had “stepped down” as the church’s pastor earlier in the year. I can imagine why he did so, and I also imagine that the phrase “stepped down” is the polite description for the political maneuverings that occur in every church everywhere.

It would seem to boil down to whose Will is allowed to be Free in this church: the ex-pastor's or the parishioners'.

For her part, the girl was shocked and puzzled.

Conclusion: There are movies on the SyFy and other horror channels dealing with this theme: a small community back in the hills stuck in a time warp where the calendar simply refuses to turn the page. And just like the plot of these movies, it’s the outsiders – college kids, in the boilerplate scripts – who have to rescue The Town That Time Forgot. I’d advise the actors to break from tradition as this story plays itself out, though: it’s one thing when the black guy dies in the movie ... it’s a “plot device”, however trite and hackneyed. In Kentucky it’s a crime.


Headline: School Apologizes for Christmas Message

Article Synopsis: An elementary school in North Carolina is among the 60,000 “community groups” to participate in a donation program called Operation Christmas Child, which collects shoe boxes of items to be donated to underprivileged children in a hundred countries. Part of the collection process is a questionnaire for the donor to fill out describing why the donor loves Jesus. The faculty sponsor of the program apologized for not being “neutral”.

You’re a Mean One, Mr Grinch: The issue – such as it is – came to light when a part-time tutor, looking through the empty shoebox to be filled, saw the questionnaire and the word ‘Jesus’ on it, and decided that [she] couldn’t ignore the questionnaire, nor could [she] throw it away, [she] had to complain. This prompted the school to spend undisclosed amounts of time, effort and money to install an automated phone message system that would call the parents of the school’s children to apologize and “explain” the event, and to write, copy and send notes home with every student to do the same.

The Air Force Academy in Colorado also recently apologized for doing the charitable thing through this program run by the son of Billy Graham; the Academy was accused of “religious intolerance” by someone[s] obviously clueless as to what intolerance is marked by. A religion attempting to help the less fortunate is not intolerant if it does so as a religious act; a person who objects to a religion doing religious acts is the intolerant one.

Once again we see self-righteous imbeciles under the grand delusion that freedom of religion is indifferentiable from freedom from religion. It is not. ...unless it is. And if it is, then freedom of speech is the same as freedom from speech, and the ability of complainers to complain about matters so trivial as to be undetectable to the naked eye are not Constitutionally protectable concerns.

Conclusion: We are sorry, starving Third World children, but we can’t bring ourselves to give you food, clothing or basic necessities because we are too busy squabbling about whether we have to love Jesus, ... and how, ... and why, ... and when, ... and where, ... to bother with you. Priorities are priorites.


Headline: Islamists See Major Win in Egypt

Article Synopsis: Muslim Brotherhood, which has rebranded itself as the “Freedom and Justice Party”, is expecting to get 40-45% of the open party seats in parliament in the first round of Egypt’s elections. The “students” whose revolt toppled Mubarak are not concerned about the self-avowed islamist group gaining control and turning Egypt into an islamist nation. Qatar’s Prime Minister feels the same. FJP’s “youth movement” director claims that only a “mad group” would attempt to ban alcohol or force women into hajibs. A second islamist party, of the Salafi school of islamism, is expected to claim nearly 20% of the seats. The various “liberal” parties of the “students” are also expected to hold 20%.

When Up is Down and Black is White: It is quite apparent that not only are Egypt’s “students” concerned about the results of the elections their actions spawned, but so are Arab-bloc heads of state. The same people who, just days ago, were expressing “concern” that islamists would actually win in yet another “democratic” election because of what islamists have done everywhere else they’ve gained control are now claiming that Egypt’s islamists are nothing to worry about and, really, aren’t islamists at all.

Muslim Brotherhood has existed for over 80 years and has created and/or funded several groups of pan-islamist yahoos, including Islamic Jihad and Hamas. It actively supports al Qaida and Hezbollah. It has overthrown the government of Egypt once itself, it attempted to assassinate Nasser for overthrowing it, it was implicated in the assassination of Sadat, it has been periodically banned as an organization and, even when allowed to exist, its members were not allowed to run for parliament as a member of the group. Even so, as of 2005 their members – all running as “independents” – comprised 20% of Egypt’s parliament. They are in line to take 40-45%.

Al-Nour didn’t even exist as a political party until days after the deposition of Mubarak – they were banned altogether as a group of islamists even more islamist than Muslim Brotherhood, theologically aligned with the Wahabi. They are in position to collect 20% of the seats in the new parliament. This would make 60-65% of the Egyptian government islamist between just these two parties. There are several other islamist political parties.

Muslim Brotherhood officially supports Sharia Law, and opposes women and Coptic candidates for public office.

Egypt is currently a sexy subject for neophyte Americans to discuss with the wisdom gained from earning a C in their one class of PoliSci. But tomorrow, when the Egyptian election is over and Egyptian women are not being stoned for knowing how to read, and Copts are not lined up and shot in front of their self-dug trench graves, these neophytes will sneer at everyone who knows better than they do and then will forget the whole subject.

And in five years, ten years, twenty years, when the Muslim Brotherhood and its more strident allies erase, one by one, the relative western liberalism that had been ham-handedly fostered under nominal dictatorships, the neophytes will be completely and utterly shocked at how it could have happened. For points of reference, see Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, ... and watch Libya, Morocco, Tunisia ...

Neophytes can only see that a dictatorship is gone and don’t consider what will replace it, nor whether it will be progress or regress, as valid or pertinent questions.

Conclusion: Because Muslim Brotherhood has helped build hospitals and schools, American geo-political neophytes are going to line up to claim – as they have for years – that Muslim Brotherhood is a secular, pacifist group completely divorced from islamism, despite their name including the word “muslim”. These are the same people, by and large, who see the word ‘Jesus’ on a slip of paper in a charity donation box as a stamp of religious intolerance.