News from the Doorkeeper

Just Don’t Hold Hands in Church, Okay?

John Bloom — Tue, 13 May 2008 22:30:39 -0500

More Episcopalian hijinks: Gene Robinson, who will spend the rest of his life with "first openly gay Bishop" prefixed to his name, is pumping up the volume this summer by getting married to his homosexual live-in partner, Mark Andrew, right before the Lambeth Conference in July. Questions from the cheap seats:

• Why doesn’t anyone ever interview Mark Andrew, the "wife" in this drama? He must have all kinds of stories at this point.

• Was he born with the name Mark Andrew, or did they specifically christen him with two apostle names for this epic union?

• Could this inspire a new History Channel special on Mark and Andrew–"Were They the Gay Apostles"?

• Since Mark was just a boy at the time of Christ, does that make Andrew a pedophile?

• Do we really have to read Gene Robinson’s new book, In the Eye of the Storm: Swept to the Center by God? Can someone just give us the Cliff’s Notes version?

How did this happen in New Hampshire? Isn’t that where the Manchester Union-Leader pops up every four years and tells us what "hearty stock" Americans are made of? I keep thinking it’s Vermont. Now that would make sense. Ben and Jerry may not be gay, but they would be gay-friendly. In New Hampshire, they still wear plaid shirts.

Gene, we love you. That’s the corporate metaphorical body-of-Christ "we," by the way.

You, too, Mark Andrew.

Soon They’ll Discover Elvis

Doddering vicars in the Anglican church, seeking relevance, have fastened on Doctor Who, the science fiction series beloved by Brits and tolerated by the rest of the world. Concerned about statistics showing that young people no longer find the church even remotely meaningful to their lives, church leaders showed clips from the series at a conference of ministers, encouraging them to "engage with popular culture" by, for example, understanding the episode in which Doctor Who saves a family of Pompeians as "a reference to Genesis and Abraham’s bargaining with God over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah." One thing you can always count on the English to do is march boldly into the future using references to the very latest 45-year-old tv series.

Mein Gefiltefish

Norman Lee Toler won a major victory in federal court, with Judge Jean C. Hamilton of St. Louis ruling that he was entitled to kosher meals while serving his ten-year sentence for statutory rape in the Northeast Correctional Center in Bowling Green, Missouri. State prison officials had challenged Toler’s request, saying that his 2002 conversion to Judaism was specious, that he had grown up in a Pentecostal home, that he has a jailhouse tattoo celebrating Hitler’s SS, and that he was caught with a cell full of white supremacist literature during a previous sentence for robbery. Here at the Door we believe it is not only humane, but essential, that every Jewish white-supremacist convicted rapist in this country be allowed to keep kosher.

Help from Unexpected Quarters

Just when I thought we were the only Christian publication supporting Jeremiah Wright forthrightly and without apology--his right to speak, his right to prophesy, his right to explain himself, and the nature of his Jesus-centric theology--along comes Jason Byassee with a spirited, reasoned and well-written reminder to evangelicals that Wright is family and we have to deal with him. There have been lots of "defenses" of Wright that implied "he’s a crazy man, but let’s give him a break," but Byassee is having none of that, just as we’ll have none of it. And Byassee has about 9,000 times more readers than we do because he’s an editor at Christianity Today. I guess we’re more mainstream than we realized.

Love the Sackcloth, Sweetheart, Very Outre

John Bloom — Mon, 12 May 2008 23:12:30 -0500

Don't you think it was about time the Catholic church cracked down on drag queens playing female saints in religious street processions? Apparently it's been going on for years in the Philippines, but we didn't find out until now, because the guy doing St. Helena this year failed to stuff his boobs properly. I mean, come on, people, it's not all about makeup! And while we're on the subject of critical Catholic doctrinal matters, let's get that potty-mouth Gordon Ramsay, of Hell's Kitchen reality show fame, banned from Australian television.

He Heard This One

My definition of "joy" is the kids in the Jewish Miami Boys Choir, in their red vests and white shirts, many of them sporting Coke-bottle glasses, standing on a hill overlooking Jerusalem, singing an upbeat version of "Hinei Ma Tov" while doing semi-awkward Phil Collins dance moves. It's in Hebrew, of course, but the lyrics, repeated endlessly, are: "Behold how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!" Near the end of the video, bursting in for harmonic counterpoint, is Yerachmiel Begun, founder of the troupe, which began in Miami in 1977 but has been Brooklyn-based for most of the past three decades, turning out Orthodox singing stars by the dozens, much like the two soloists in the video, who appear in the section right before the entire choir, in its inimitable over-the-top style, ascends into the clouds of heaven.

Rope Them Sinners

Cowboy Lee's Cowboy Adventure Camp is an intensive dude ranch with equally intensive Bible study based in the unlikely city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, where the 71-year-old S. Lee Homoki--the Cowboy Lee of the title, who grew up on the Navajo reservation in Arizona but has been in Grand Rapids since 1981, ever since a controversy over dispensationalism at Gospel Lighthouse Church of Tipp City, Ohio, caused him to resign as pastor and saddle up--holds forth on the literal promises to Israel, the literal authority of scripture, and the literal difficulties of trick roping during exotic trail rides all over the country. But before you sign up for bullwhip artistry in the tradition of Cowboy Camp graduate and world champion trick roper Andy Rotz, you might want to check out Cowboy Lee's bimonthly Truth Aflame magazine, which is billed as "unashamedly dispensational." We're not sure what that means, but we would imagine it's the circa 1840 version. Do not hold fast to the saddlehorn in case of the Rapture. Yeehaw Yahweh.

Did You Hear the One About the Imam and the Penguin?

The Archbishop of Canterbury went to the Vatican to talk to the Pope about the Muslims. Both men are experienced at making speeches about Islam which create international chaos, so they spent the first 20 minutes comparing jihad puns.

High Colonics for the Soul

Hay House, the New Age publishing empire established by the 81-year-old Louise Hay two decades ago, earned $8 million last year on revenues of $100 million, with sales of 6.3 million products, including books by Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, the psychic Sylvia Browne, "angel therapist" Doreen Virtue, and personal finance guru Suze Orman. Of course, that's not surprising, since, if you think it, you can do it. If you see it, you can realize it. If you give it power, it will give you power. If you write it, they will buy it. Free your mind and Oprah will follow.

Some People Do Worship the O.C.

The irony of Spiritual Water, the bottled water sold by Sunrise, Florida, distributor Elicko Taieb as a way to get closer to God, is that it's all about the packaging. You can choose from 11 different bottles, featuring Jesus, St. Michael, or the Virgin Mary on one side, and various prayers on the other (Fatima prayer, Serenity prayer, Guardian Angel prayer, Apostles Creed), in either English or Spanish, and meanwhile that 16.9 ounces of liquid refreshment comes from "a municipal source in Santa Ana, California." Since there's only one municipal source of water in Santa Ana, California, that means you're drinking Orange County tap water. Couldn't they at least have gone up to Lake Arrowhead and tried to make it sound like water that's not sucked out from under an asphalt parking lot?

God Banned from Car Asses

The Florida Legislature put the kibosh on the "I Believe" personalized license plate, failing to include it in the final bill reported out of committee. Opponents and proponents both made a lot of noise about church-state issues, to the point that, if I lived in Florida, I would have asked for an "I Heave" license plate.

Let's Go Ahead and Put Them Asunder

John Bloom — Sun, 11 May 2008 23:41:18 -0500

"She Wanted to Be Oprah At Any Cost" is the most entertaining chapter title among many candidates in What Love Taught Me, the new book by Thomas Weeks III giving his version of the tabloid marital breakup of Atlanta's favorite televangelist couple. His soon-to-be-ex Juanita Bynum was bored with preaching, looking for a secular career, and constantly goading him into altercations so that she could become a poster child for domestic violence and go on to greater fame, according to the book. In the infamous hotel-parking-lot altercation for which Weeks was sentenced to three years probation, he says she swung at his head with a cell phone and he shoved her to avoid the blow, then immediately regretted it because "I have never pushed her that hard." (Ouch!) If you look back over the publishing history of this couple in just this one decade, it started with Bynum's No More Sheets: The Truth About Sex, which details her victory over promiscuity, then--after their televised 2002 wedding--a joint effort called Teach Me How to Love You: The Beginnings, and now Weeks' ironic solo riff on that same theme, What Love Taught Me. Bynum hasn't released her own book yet--she been too busy with her appearances on Divorce Court--but a suggested title would be What's Love Got to Do With It?

Jack Chick Skewers the Atheists

The 84-year-old Jack Chick can never be accused of not being up on the latest breaking heresy, so of course he had to take on Richard Dawkins and the Darwinists in his brand new Chick Tract, "Moving On Up," the story of a confirmed Darwinian named Tyler who becomes god-like and ends up being cast into . . . well, I don't wanna give away the ending.

The Prosperity Gospel Is Not for Amateurs

Let us count the ways that the latest fleece-the-flock scam should have been detected by its smell: 1. Jon G. Irvin of Mission Viejo, California, architect of the Safevest LLC Christian investment scheme, was paying a 10 percent "referral fee" to anyone who brought friends into the investment, at minimum levels of $5,000 for pastors and $25,000 for laymen. Classic pyramid stuff. 2. The whole thing was based on commodity futures day trading, which is the riskiest kind of market play you can make. It's unclear why he cited this market instead of something safer, since he didn't intend to invest a single dollar in commodities futures anyway. 3. The only way you could check returns is by going to Irvin's own password-protected website. 4. Irvin guaranteed a 1 percent per day return, which would be 200 percent per year, which would be better than any investment in the world with the possible exceptions of African dictators stealing diamonds. At any rate, the guy doesn't sound that sharp. Today Irvin sits in a federal jail on wire-fraud charges, investors are out $25 million, and he apparently spent most of the money on trips, expensive restaurants, shopping, golf and an SUV. Can anyone say "redneck"? Once again, brethren, remember the first postmodern commandment: Never trust anybody with a fish on his business card.

All Hail the Garbage People

When I first saw what has come to be known as the Garbage People Video, I honestly thought it was a Monty Pythonesque mockumentary. (Part of the reason is that, working at The Door, almost nothing you receive on video is for real.) But it turns out that the producers, Media Village Productions of Cape Town, South Africa, are deadly serious in telling the story of the Garbage People who live in Garbage City and have to be coaxed out of their Garbage Lives by a Christian holy man, with white beard and sandals, who walks with a shepherd's staff. The arch-Brit narrator relates it much more dramatically than I can, with the kind of elevated faux-poetic script favored by Las Vegas "international co-productions." (Lines like "One step follows another, and each step leads us into the future" have absolutely no meaning, *unless* spoken by a velvet-throated British announcer.) But the gist of the video it is that there's this filthy mountainous area outside Cairo, called Garbage City, and every morning at dawn 7,000 "rubbish collectors" leave for Cairo on horse carts, where they collect 13,000 tons of garbage from 17 million residents, then return to Garbage City, "bringing the refuse into their homes." (Yes, that's what I said.) Once they get it inside, they sort it into organic and inorganic piles and use some of it to raise pigs, who also live in their homes. Wading into Garbage City in the early nineties was Father Samaan, who tells the story of going into a slum of tin huts with cardboard floors, devoid of roads, electricity and running water, the whole of it engulfed in "stench from the dead animals," and the people "hiding in the pig sties" because they didn't want to talk to him. He was determined, however, to "wade through pigpens and pull them through the muck and mire and present them with God's love," so he learned that his two greatest evangelistic tools were a good sturdy pair of hip boots and a flashlight. (He tells this with intense seriousness.) Once he got into the pig stys, he would kiss the people and give them shoes to convert them. Fast-forward ten years and Garbage City suddenly has clinics, recycling centers, schools where young boys are taught to build coffins, and, most important, a 20,000-seat church dynamited out of a stone quarry. Father Samaan is regularly carrying out miracles and healings, and the 7,000 rubbish collectors still go into Cairo every morning and collect the garbage, but now they're evangelists for Jesus, hoping they'll find million-dollar diamond necklaces in the garbage so they can take the diamonds back to the owner and tell them that Jesus made them be honest. The stench today is worse, by the way, because in addition to garbage and dead animals and pig pens, they now have "the strong stench of burning plastic" from the recycling center. Meanwhile, the children of Garbage City continue to frolic and play amid piles of jagged, rusty, foul, stinking trash, and Jesus hasn't yet seen fit to send money for Latex gloves or protective facegear, so the garbage is still collected, sorted and processed with bare hands. Father Samaan has more important things to look after, however, as he's looking to build a new church, this time with only 5,000 seats, for the Zaballeen, or Garbage People. Cue the mystical Egyptian desert music. "It has been said that life is a journey . . ." I pronounce The Garbage People Video a post-modern classic.

Lesbyterianism Almost Legal

John Bloom — Thu, 8 May 2008 10:20:24 -0500

A few years back, when I was told by the Standards & Practices Department of Turner Networks that I could no longer use the affectionate term “lesbo” on television, I started using the term “lesbyterian,” unaware at the time of how theologically prescient I was, since the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) would spend much of the past decade adjudicating the rightness or wrongness, legality or illegality, of lesbian coupling within the church. The centerpiece of this battle was one Jane Spahr, an ordained Presbyterian minister who is also a practicing lesbian in Marin County, California, and who had performed quite a few gay marriage ceremonies over the years, until she was put on trial in March 2006–not a real trial, one of those ecclesiastical play-trials–at the Church of the Roses in Santa Rosa, where she was formally charged with violating church rules by marrying two lesbian couples, including one happy pair who had traveled all the way from Rochester, New York, for the occasion. After two days of testimony, the court found her innocent, but the local Presbytery (not to be confused with the local Lesbytery) appealed to a regional body (apparently in church play-court, the prosecution can appeal even when the verdict is not guilty), and the regional court voted to censure Spahr–to, in essence, give her the lightest possible punishment, but to make it clear that gay marriage was verboten. Then Spahr appealed to the national ultimate Presbyterian Lesbyterian High-Hat Court of the Last Resort, which only meets once a year in Louisville, Kentucky–the real name of it is the General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission–and that august body of clerics decided that Spahr was innocent of charges that she performed same-sex marriages, because if the people are of the same sex, it could not be a marriage. Since no marriage occurred, Spahr didn’t officiate at a marriage. This is really what they decided. I’m not making it up. I think they had a party in Marin County, but at some point during the party they probably went “Huh? We should celebrate, right? Read that again.”

Then Again, Pharaoh Doesn’t Care What the Jews Think, Does He?

Was anybody listening to Jeremiah Wright’s actual speeches during that weekend when he pulled off the Trifecta of appearing on Bill Moyers’ show, keynoting the NAACP convention, and appearing at the National Press Club? He took every opportunity to point out that his theology was not Black Liberation Theology. And yet here we have a massive New York Times piece by Michael Powell describing Wright as a disciple of James H. Cone, the professor at Union Theological Seminary who did invent Black Liberation Theology in the sixties. When Wright describes his church tradition at all, he calls it “prophetic,” and by that he means the Old Testament call away from the world’s ways, away from complacency, away from comfort, and he adds to that that we must harken to the poor. The poor will lead us out of Egypt. And in order to get that message across, the preacher occasionally has to identify Egypt. And when he identifies Egypt, it turns up on YouTube.

The Sisters Looked Like Ballot Stuffers

There’s nothing like turning away 12 nuns from the polls in Indiana, telling them they can’t vote because they don’t have proper ID (in fact, some of them may never vote again because they’re too elderly to go to the motor vehicle office) to make the recent Supreme Court decision look especially ugly and unnecessary. Remind me again: why did we do this?

L’Chaim

Last week the Central Synagogue in New York rededicated a Torah that had been buried at Auschwitz for more than 60 years before being found with a metal detector in 2004. The four Torah panels that were actually used for services inside the concentration camp had to then be retrieved from a Catholic priest who had been keeping them all these years, unaware of where the rest of the Torah was. The whole remarkable story is told by James Barron in the New York Times, but apparently the name of the sexton who placed the Torah in a metal box and buried it three days before the Germans marched into the Polish city of Oswiecim (later renamed Auschwitz) is lost to history. Whoever he was, he did such a good job of hiding the Torah from the Nazis that it took four years of efforts by Rabbi Menachem Youlus of Wheaton, Maryland, before he finally unearthed the lost Torah. I’m not a superstitious man, but there’s something about these Found Torah stories that, every time I hear them, make me think something powerful and restorative has been released into the world.

Hot Amish Babes

John Bloom — Tue, 6 May 2008 22:11:39 -0500

Denise Grollmus, the reporter for the alternative weekly Cleveland Scene who did the ultimate Rex Humbard obituary, found a couple of teenage Amish party girls exploring alcohol and rock-and-roll at Twister’s Bar in Middlefield, Ohio, during their rumspringa years, and the result is “Amish Girls Gone Wild,” which details the perils of buggy-driving while drunk, not to mention what happens when your mother catches you wearing jeans and hiding a cell phone in your purse. Fortunately the parents never hear the Eminem lyrics the girls know by heart.

Don’t Call Him the Voodoo Pope

We’re not supposed to refer to Max G. Beauvoir as the Voodoo Pope, even though who can resist that title now that the voodooists of Haiti have finally organized and elected Beauvoir as their “supreme master”? Among Beauvoir’s skills, practiced at his Peristyle de Mariani Temple of Yehwe on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, are goat sacrifice, totem-dancing, spirit-summoning, casting of spells, healing, herbal remedies, and biochemistry (thanks to his degrees from the Sorbonne and City College of New York). And zombies, of course. Beauvoir is the source for much of the research conducted by Harvard anthropologist Wade Davis for his book The Serpent and the Rainbow, best known in its movie form as rendered by Wes Craven, who took a Hollywood crew to Haiti and barely escaped with his life after a riot, a sit-in, a siege, and evil spells resulting in the sickness of crew members. (Those last scenes are actually filmed in the Dominican Republic. The entire crew fled Haiti in the dead of night.) At any rate, Beauvoir says he’s determined to clean up the image of voodoo, and that its reputation for secrecy, sinister motives, spirit possession, violent ritual and animal mutilation is an invention of Hollywood and the media, and that anyone who takes a good hard look at the houngans and mambos who practice the religion day by day will be able to see that voodoo is a great benefit to Haiti and to mankind, and if you don’t believe that, then you’ll probably have a rat’s eye placed under your pillow tonight and it will cause you to dream of your intestines being devoured by jaguars.

34 Years Is All You Can Do? Jesus Says You’re So Fired

Kent Gramm, a popular English professor at Wheaton College for 20 years, just got fired because he and his wife of 34 years are divorcing, which is against Wheaton rules, unless you have a “Biblical reason.” Gramm decided he didn’t want to give the reason, so university officials cited Matthew 19 and the letters of Paul (without stating which one) as they gave him the heave ho, because, as we all know, the New Testament is a list of rules to hit people over the head with when they screw up.

Yeah, Like That Verse About Free Enterprise

A Vatican poll recently found that the United States was the “most Bible-literate” nation, but as soon as you read into the fine print, you see that a) they only conducted the poll in nine countries, all of them in Europe, and b) they weren’t sophisticated enough to realize that most people who claim to be recalling something from the Bible are actually recalling something from Ben Franklin (“Cleanliness is next to godliness”) or their crotchety grandfather (“Charity begins at home”).The crime is not that people don’t know what’s in the Bible, it’s that they load it up with new stuff. It’s already long enough, people.

Dude Rabbis Battling for Surf Rights

All right, how can there be two surfing rabbis? No sooner had I sung the praises of Yom Tov Glaser, the singing skateboarding surfing rabbi from Jerusalem who recites the Kabbalah while playing Bob Marley covers, than a rabbi named Nachum Shifren turns up in Los Angeles, also billing himself as the surfing rabbi as he promotes his new book, Kill Your Teacher: Corruption and Racism in Los Angeles City Schools. It’s a narrative of his 18 years as a secondary school teacher in the barrio, an experience that included the day when he showed up at Dorsey High School to find his classroom burned to the ground. Shifren claims he was eventually run out of the school system by youth gangs who resented his authoritarian ways and a series of administrators who pled with him to relax standards so students would “like him” more. The “Surfing Rabbi” tag came from his days as a professional surfer–same as Yom Tov Glaser, the Hasidic Party Rabbi–but his book sounds like a totally bogus, if not meshugenah, slacker wave to me.

Chinese to Tibet Supporters:WTF?

So, class, what have we learned? Don’t be seen on YouTube abusing a wheelchair athlete. That’s the image that enraged the Chinese after the Olympic torch was besieged by protesters in Paris, one of whom was fended off by a brave Chinese wheelchair athlete who is now a national hero for protecting the torch from froth-mouth western Lama-lovers. The benefit for the U.S. is that the Chinese are now focused almost exclusively on boycotting French products, especially the Carrefour supermarket chain, to the point that President Sarkozy had to send a special envoy to apologize to the Politburo. McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken and CNN are also on their radar, however. And once again the question must be asked: why are so many people in the west so anxious to demand independence for a people who say they don’t want independence? At least the two sides are talking, although at this point it amounts to little more than “You’re violent!” “No, you’re violent!” Can’t the Buddhists and the Communists settle this in a Christian manner?