It's Sunday, bring on the fundamentalists ...

(Above: oh it's Xmas time, Xmas time, thanks to Jon Stewart ...)


The pond has something of a blushing crush in relation to Mike Carlton. There's something about a man with a brain rather than the facile gimmickry of Tony Abbott lost in a truck in the Pacific Highway ...

Yes, the pond stole that line from Carlton's piece Exit westwards from sorry mess, in which he reminded the world that it was Graham 'Gra Gra' Richardson who gave Eddie Obeid rather than Graham Freudenberg to the world of NSW politics (and some people still listen to that merchant of 'whatever it takes' cynicism as a political pundit).

Then after ravaging the NSW Labor party, Carlton had some fun with a Muslim Family attending a Christmas singalong, made fun of the war on the Bankstown Christmas Tree, and then had a go at the Middle East. So let's steal that line too:

Speaking of the Middle East, the usual Israel lobbyists have been all over the media defending Bibi Netanyahu's decision to throw up more illegal settlements on the West Bank. While they're at it, I would be interested to hear their explanation of a recent remark from Israel's Interior Minister, Eli Yishai. 
''We must blow Gaza back to the Middle Ages, destroying all the infrastructure including roads and water,'' he said last month. Yishai is from the right-wing Shas party whose spiritual leader, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, is notorious for a sermon in 2010 proclaiming that ''the sole purpose of non-Jews is to serve Jews … that is why Gentiles were created''. Any takers?

We'd take you any day, Mr Carlton (blush and simper), but instead we'll just take that line as a grand opener to the pond's survey of fundamentalism this fine Sunday.

And since we've opened with the madness of fundamentalist Jews, why not balance it with a mention of the madness of fundamentalist Islamics, as outlined and explained in Day the music died: Islamist extremists steal the voice of Mali musicians.

Khaira Arby, one of Africa's most celebrated musicians, has performed all over the world, but there is one place she cannot visit: her native city of Timbuktu, a place steeped in history and culture but now ruled by religious extremists. 
One day, they broke into Arby's house and destroyed her instruments. Her voice was a threat to Islam, they said, even though one of her most popular songs praised Allah. 
''They told my neighbours that if they ever caught me, they would cut my tongue out,'' said Arby, sadness etched on her broad face. 
Northern Mali, one of the richest reservoirs of music on the continent, is now an artistic wasteland. Hundreds of musicians have fled south to Bamako, the capital, and to other towns and neighbouring countries, driven out by hardliners who have decreed any form of music - save for the tunes set to Koranic verses - as being against their religion.
The exiles describe a shattering of their culture, in which playing music brings lashes with whips, even prison time, and MP3 and cassette players are seized and destroyed. 

It took a long struggle to get rid of Christians doing the same things - the Catholic church's Index Librorum Prohibitorum only bit the dust in 1965. And Calvinist-leaning Protestants took a view on dancing, gambling, drinking, colourful clothing and sport.

It was Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans who actually waged the original war on Christmas (The Puritan Ban on Christmas).

The Puritans also had an attitude to theatre, and to secular music and naturally to women. Which is as good a way as any of throwing to our current crop of puritans, the angry Anglicans of Sydney, and see what they're up to on this day celebrating the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary (oops, wrong cult).

As usual, the always reliable Michael Jensen dishes up a doozy:

.. for all their unity, evangelicals can be good squabblers. I speak as an amillennial paedobaptist four-point Calvinist theistic-evolutionist episcopalian congregationalist non-charismatic moderate complementarian... being an evangelical can be a lonely thing sometimes. You can agree with someone on a list of, say, ninety doctrinal points, but split over the ninety-first, and that’s it… (here)

Oh dear, the lonely path of the splitter, but at least it makes for a great Monty Python sketch.

But when asked a question about the ministry of women, the meta-tagged Jensen blocked his ears, and danced off into the distance, singing a song of waffle:

I think these remain serious challenges because they are very difficult issues to resolve. It is very hard to live with both realities, and very easy to assume that the other is simply captive to a worldly agenda. 

 So that's what he meant when talking about common ground amongst evangelicals. Common waffle.

The pond recommends to Jensen Kelefa Sanneh's portrait of Rob Bell in The Hell-Raiser, for the New Yorker, sorry, behind the paywall, so he can check out how America's Elmer Gantries are doing these days. (Hint: Bell committed the worst evangelical crime of all, he went Californian).

And then the pond flicked over to Michael Kellahan talking about the Worst Christmas sermon. Ever.

It was a stinking hot Christmas Eve at Tammworth ...

Tammworth! Tammworth?! Did he mean Tamworth, heart of the nation?

If he did, why it's off to Dante's eighth ring of hell for him, the place assigned to bad spellers, alongside politicians, panderers, seducers, flatterers, false prophets and other mis-users of language (check out your preferred ring of hell here).

But the site did provide a link to some good news - Britain's Scouting movement is dropping any reference to god, and now dib-dobbers can tie their knots as atheists (here).

That said, the new format for the Anglican site is a bust. Clean, and bland, and still featuring Dr Mark Thompson's elevation at the top of the page (do Anglicans elevate?), it's as dull as evangelical dishwater and about as engaging as a wafer caught in the back teeth. At least when it had the rotating splash, it looked like it had life, even if it was an illusion or a delusion ...

Meanwhile the Victorian inquiry into the misdeeds of the Catholic church has headed off to Ballarat, epicentre of the plague (Vic abuse inquiry comes to Ballarat).

Coincidentally Cardinal George Pell was born in that fine city, and did his schooling at Loreto Convent and St. Patrick's college.

Which is as good a way as any throwing to the week-old thoughts of the Cardinal for the Sunday Terror, and lordy, lordy, wouldn't you know it, he's gone Chance the Gardener (that's Chauncey Gardiner to you):

Even at the end of November some of the jacarandas are still in bloom. After the bare months of winter, we have rebirth, beautiful flowers for a brief season. (Eternal Life)

Uh huh. As long as the roots are not severed, all will be well in the garden, and there will be growth, and first comes spring and summer, but then we have fall and winter, and then spring and summer again, and there will be growth in the spring!

Such a refreshing and optimistic statement, and it must cheer all those abused at the hands of the servants of the church (who are inter alia not employed by the church, and the church is in no way responsible for their actions).

But Pell does raise a deep and thorny theological issue:

In my debate with the atheist Richard Dawkins I claimed that atheists and agnostics can go to heaven, because every movement towards truth and goodness is de facto a move towards God. 
Quite a number of letters of protest came in, most of them from Protestants, pointing out that faith in Jesus was necessary for salvation.

Yes, yes, but what happens to Indians who were brought up as Hindus, simply because Jesus didn't have enough frequent flyer points, and never made it to that part of the world, or Chinese who turned into Confucians because he refused to fly China Air, or the Japanese who turned into Samurai because he thought the language was too hard to master?

How about the Indians butchered in North America before they got to hear the message? What about the Indians butchered by Catholic Spaniards in South America? How about the aborigines butchered in Australia while talking of the dreaming? What about babies? What about Jews who didn't get the message? What about Jon Stewart, who knows he's fucked? Where does the bible mention limbo? Why did Jesus over-look these obvious questions?

Why didn't god buy a platinum-club membership for Jesus so he could travel the globe and make sure everyone had a chance to hear his message before carking it and heading off to hell through ignorance?  Why did She wait thousands of years, offering only Jewish salvation to a few middle eastern types, while lost souls were despatched to Hell?

Was She too stingy? As well as being a homicidal, pathological, vengeful, angry, genocidal type not above wiping out the planet save for Noah and his kin ...

Pell never quite gets around to answering, instead doing a mini-Jensen dance on the head of a pin:

Is faith in God and his only Son, Jesus Christ, vitally necessary, or quite useful or simply a bonus for those so inclined? 
We all agree that God is merciful and just, not cruel and cranky. 

Except of course in matters of genocide, just wars, rape, slavery, acquisition of goods from heathens, the eating of shellfish, the mixing of fabrics, the treatment of women and gays, and such like matters.

Does he require us to be good? Is entry to heaven a universal human right?  Could some people miss the cut, be lost because of bad example or lack of teaching? 
Jesus' teaching does not endorse easy options. The gateway to life is narrow, the path hard and few find it, whereas the gate is wide and the easy way to destruction is taken by many. (Mt. 7:13-14). 

That seems to imply that Pell was in the grip of heresy when he debated with Dawkins. But never mind, all will be well, at least if you're one of the chosen:

Our choices bring us closer to life or death long before our last moments, but we have no right to turn Jesus' teaching upside down, reversing the few and the many.

Tough luck atheists and agnostics and random folk who never got the message from Christ through geography, circumstance, the times they lived in, bad luck or transport issues (try getting to a church in Sydney using Barry O'Farrell's public transport system).

It seems, if you follow the revisionist Pellists, there's simply no excuse. Or alternatively, the pond has just emerged from purest waffle, tough questions ducked, and isn't it just as well that the church have decided to hide Pell droning away in a closet as the inquiries grind on, revealing heart-rending tales of abuse (just one sample here).

But that's a bit of a downer as an ending.

So let's revert to the war on Christmas.

And gird your loins for the comedy stylings of Bill O'Reilly and sundry others, as they get to harping yet again about the war on Christmas ...

Bill O'Reilly Blames Gays For The 'War On Christmas' ...

Truly amazing.

Perhaps you've have already seen Jon Stewart at war with the war on Xmas - at least if you can spoof the online delivery, and understand why we can't provide direct links, and instead have to settle for Jon Stewart Rips Fox News' Annual 'War on Christmas' Coverage Once Again ....

It's as thought the 'War on Christmas' has become a rote observance, devoid of all its original spiritual meaning ... Even its most ardent proponents have seen doubt creep in .

Stewart was in fine form - sorry Mike, but if it comes to a choice Jon must win - celebrating the Xmas nuts on Fox, reminding them that Christmas - even in secular Jewish New York now started on black Thursday and ran well into January - and that the town for the period looked like Santa's balls had burst, and then spent a little time patiently explaining to the klutz O'Reilly that Christianity was indeed a religion, not a philosophy, by the simple expedient of comparing and contrasting Socrates and Jesus.

It was great fun, and it reminded the pond why the angry Fox hacks, Bill Orally, Jews, Muslims, Anglicans, and even Catholics in their lighter Chauncey Gardiner moments must continue to exist.

Xmas can be a harrowing time, and we need them for the laughter and the joy they bring, and if only so Jon Stewart can send them up silly for the barking maddies they are ...

(Below: yes, you can watch a pre-historic cartoon celebrate Xmas thousands of years before Christ was born, gaze on a couple of genuine Fox nuts with awe, and rumble in the jungle with Socrates v. Jesus, as a reminder that Bill O'Reilly long ago reserved the penthouse on loon pond).