Eric, at Classical Values, highlights Vanity Fair’s The Green Issue‘s carefully crafted packaging of environmentalist agitprop with fashion.

Highpoints include a typically fair-minded assessment of Rush Limbaugh by leftist windbag James Wolcott:

Global warming’s most popular denialist, talk radio’s most imitated showman, conservatism’s minister of disinformation, he has injected millions of semi-vacant American skulls with a cream filling of complacency that has helped thrust this country into the forefront of backward leadership. He has given Republican lawmakers the rhetorical cover fire to do nothing but snicker as the crisis emerged and impressed itself on the rest of the world. He conscripted concern for nature as just another weapon in the Culture Wars. May the grasses of his favorite golf courses go forever yellow and dust storms whip from the sand traps.

Fawning profiles of celebrity activists Robert Redford and Leonardo DiCaprio, and a Greenie version of Dante’s Inferno, with Bush, Cheney, and Senator James Inhofe at the very bottom in the mouths of Satan, and, slightly above them, a headless Michael Crichton trudging around a circle whose label I cannot read, but which must be the equivalent of the “Sowers of Discord” bolgia where Dante placed Mohammed.

The Anchoress has written a moving tribute to President Bush, titled The President of All the People, which views his failures to respond more vigorously and effectively to his opponents as explicable in religious terms.

Who knows? Maybe she’s more correct than most of the rest of us as to what really makes George W. Bush tick.

Don Surber shows a wonderful picture of President Bush, helping Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd walk as they gather to confer a congressional Gold Medal to the Tuskegee airmen who served in World War II.

Sen. Robert Byrd is, of course, … as partisan a Democrat as one may find. In the picture, Bush holds Byrd’s hand with great gentleness and compassion, in no way demeaning Bryd or taking away his dignity. But you can see that he is firmly grasping the old man’s hand; Bush is concentrating entirely on serving him safely to his seat.

Surber says that the picture didn’t get picked up by many papers and suggests that it’s because the press is reluctant to remind people that President Bush is an utterly decent, humane and gentlemanly man. Nothing good is permitted to be shown of President Bush, these days. Doesn’t fit the “Bush is evil and moronic” template. I more than suspect that Surber is correct.

It’s been that way for a while, actually. I recall that a year after 9/11, President Bush’s poll numbers were still in the stratosphere; they were very high heading into Iraq. They were still pretty high during the “cedar revolutions” and the “orange revolutions” – the so-called “Arab Springtime” during which time Democracy seemed to be threatening to break out all over the world. It was all happening under Bush’s watch, and Bush was dancing with these folks as they demonstrated their hopefulness.

That was only in two years ago, in May, 2005. Feels like half an age, doesn’t it? …

President Bush drives us crazy. We want him to fight back. He won’t. We want him to “save” himself. He won’t. He won’t “save” his presidency, either. He won’t “save” his party. He won’t “save” his legacy.

President Bush is doing what is unthinkable – he is staying true to the task laid out before him, to serve all the people. He is remaining faithful to that and he is counting on his God to do the rest, as his God has promised.

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to Terrye.

WorldNetDaily publishes things I quote myself. Imagine my embarassment at running into today’s column direct from the fever swamps.

Jim Rutz, who seems to be not only a whackjob, but a snake-oil-selling evangelist and author of a number of The-End-of-the-World-Is-Right-Around-The-Corner books, thinks that soy beans make you queer.

Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That’s why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today’s rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products. (Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!) Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because “I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t homosexual.” No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can’t remember a time when excess estrogen wasn’t influencing them.

I eat edamame all the time at sushi restaurants myself without observable effect.

WorldNetDaily, please clean up your act, and get rid of these kinds of clowns.

Kevin D. Denee, of the Restored Church of God, lays down the law… on that church’s blog.

So what have we learned? Recall that a blog provider stated, with blogs “there are no rules.” This is obviously not true with God. He does have rules and guidelines, but not everything is spelled out in the Bible. We must take principles and consider the overall big picture.

Should teenagers and others in the Church express themselves to the world through blogs? Because of the obvious dangers; the clear biblical principles that apply; the fact that it gives one a voice; that it is almost always idle words; that teens often do not think before they do; that it is acting out of boredom; and it is filled with appearances of evil—blogging is simply not to be done in the Church. It should be clear that it is unnecessary and in fact dangerous on many levels.

Let me emphasize that no one—including adults—should have a blog or personal website (unless it is for legitimate business purposes)…

Blogging has become a socially accepted practice—just as are dating seriously too young, underage drinking and general misbehaving. But just because someone else “jumps off the cliff” does not mean you should do the same.

Yes, that’s the kind of religion we all know and detest, alright.

Hat tip to fellow scoffer and mocker Mark Frauenfelder.

The Mail also reports on the overthrow by political correctness disease of the reasoning powers of the hierarchy of Church of England.

Church of England leaders warned yesterday that calling God ‘He’ encourages men to beat their wives.

They told churchgoers they must think twice before they refer to God as ‘He’ or ‘Lord’ because of the dangers that it will lead to domestic abuse.

In new guidelines for bishops and priests on such abuse, they blamed “uncritical use of masculine imagery” for encouraging men to behave violently towards women.

They also warned that clergy must reconsider the language they use in sermons and check the hymns they sing to remove signs of male oppression.

The recommendation – fully endorsed by Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams – puts a question mark over huge swathes of Christian teaching and practice.

It throws doubt on whether the principal Christian prayer should continue to be known as the Lord’s Prayer and begin ‘Our Father’.

It means well-loved hymns such as Fight the Good Fight and Onward Christian Soldiers may be headed for the dustbin.

The rules also throw into question the role of the Bible by calling for reinterpretations of stories in which God uses violence.

Visiting the University of Regensburg, where he used to teach from 1969 to 1977, Pope Benedict XVI gave a speech in which he reflected on the Christian tradition of rational theology, and the incompatibility of religious coercion with Reason.

The Pope’s quoting of a comment on Islam made by a 14th century Byzantine Emperor has, again, produced the (at-this-point only too familiar) world-wide temper tantrums on the part of the community of turban-wearers.

The BBC reports:

Pakistan summoned the Vatican’s ambassador to express regret over the remarks, as parliament passed a resolution condemning the comments

The head of the Muslim Brotherhood said the remarks “aroused the anger of the whole Islamic world”

In Iraq, the comments were condemned at Friday prayers by followers of radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr

The “hostile” remarks drew a demand for an apology from a top religious official in Turkey

The 57-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference also said it regretted the Pope’s remarks.

What the Pope actually said was:

It is a moving experience for me to be back again in the university and to be able once again to give a lecture at this podium…

..even in the face of such radical scepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question.

I was reminded of all this recently, when I read… of part of the dialogue carried on – perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara – by the erudite Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both.

In the seventh conversation…the emperor touches on the theme of the holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the “Book” and the “infidels”, he addresses his interlocutor with a startling brusqueness on the central question about the relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul. “God,” he says, “is not pleased by blood – and not acting reasonably is contrary to God’s nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats.”

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.

At this point, as far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we are faced with an unavoidable dilemma. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God’s nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true?

Full Text

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Apologize, my eye. What the Pope ought to do is what Pope Urban II did, and call upon the people of the West to defend Civilization against the insolent aggression of Islamic barbarism, instructing them that God wills its defense. Deus vult.

Simon Heffer, though not religious personally, is still capable of outrage at the multicultural impulses of the former Archbishop of Canterbury and the Prince of Wales.

former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey, made a predictable intervention in this debate (on Multiculturalism) from beyond the grave last weekend. He proclaimed that the coronation of our next monarch must be an “interfaith” event. The ceremony must, he added, have “very significant changes”, so that it is “inclusive” of other religions in Britain.

Lord Carey clearly has in mind what Private Eye would term a “Rocky Horror” coronation service. Never mind your archbishops, or even your Christians, your imams, your rabbis, ayatollahs, your assorted holy men and other diverse priests, layers-on-of-hands and speakers-in-tongues: in accordance with the professions of religious belief on the 2001 census forms, I expect to see a few Jedi knights in the sanctuary, while devotees of Ras Tafari smoke ganja at the high altar. And, as one of the realm’s noisiest atheists, I hope for a part in the proceedings, too, that I might feel “included”.

Having long regarded the Church of England as many people regard EastEnders, I have steeled myself not to intrude in its private grief, but to lament the largely self-inflicted decline of this great institution. Though it has, to my great spiritual regret, nothing to offer me personally, I can appreciate not merely the potential it has to succour and strengthen millions of believers, but also its role in our culture, our constitution and our nation.

However, intrude into the Church’s grief we now must: for Lord Carey’s successor on the throne of St Augustine, Dr Rowan Williams, who in many regards seems even more to inhabit the wilder shores of theology than Lord Carey, is having none of this nonsense. He has picked up on a threat issued by our probable next monarch, the Prince of Wales, in 1994 about how (in that very “last century” spirit) the Prince wanted to be “Defender of Faiths” when and if he became King.

Dr Williams said of the Prince in 2003 that “unless something really radical happens with the constitution, he is, like it or not, Defender of the Faith and he has a relationship with the Christian Church of a kind that he does not have with other faith communities”. That is self-evidently the case. Of course, were our Queen to emulate her late mother (and I fervently hope she does), there will be no coronation for another 20 or so years. Perhaps the needless vandalism of our constitution will have been completed by then. Perhaps there will be a different heir to the throne. Perhaps the moon will be made of green cheese. Until such times as these things happen,

Dr Williams’s view must prevail, and his predecessor would be best advised to keep his bizarre views to himself…

That is what inclusiveness means: it is how countries as diverse as France and America both do things. It is about having a standard template of Frenchness or American-ness, and welcoming people into that civilisation and those humane values by asking them to participate in them. We still, despite the attempts of such vandals as Lord Carey, have a core culture in this country. Christianity and the expectation that Christianity will, for historic reasons, prevail and be accepted as prevalent, are central to that culture. And few events in the nation’s life symbolise such an understanding more than the traditional coronation service.

The next coronation will be a formal renewal of our way of life and our values. It will formally recognise not only the legitimacy of the monarch in the eyes of God and the British constitution, but also of the identification of the vast majority of his subjects with the process of doing so. For that reason above all others it must be clear, comprehensible and in keeping with public expectations of such an event.

We are not a multicultural society. We are a monocultural one tolerant of other cultures, and whose clear identity is understood by the people, if not by their leaders. We are an old country with a strong sense of continuity. And anyone who trifles with such manifestations of our antiquity and stability does so at his peril.

Tim Graham compares the MSM’s treatment of Ron Howard’s The DaVinci Code (2006) — and its treatment of the Danish cartoons– to its treatment of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004).

âu2013 The DaVinci Code received more of a publicity push from the networks than The Passion of the Christ. The number of segments devoted to the movies in the year before their cinematic release was 99 for The DaVinci Code to 66 for The Passion. Most of those came on morning shows. By far, the biggest Code promoter was NBC’s Today, which more provided more stories (38) than the other two network morning shows combined (29). By contrast, NBC was in third-place in Passion segments (11).

âu2013 The Passion of the Christ was treated as a social problem — the biggest TV anti-Semitism story of that year — while The DaVinci Code was presented more often as an “intriguing” theory rather than threatening or offensive to Christians. Nearly every one of the 66 network segments on The Passion on ABC, CBS, and NBC touched on those complaints. But only 27 of the 99 Code segments focused on Christian and Catholic protests.

âu2013 While the faith of millions of Americans, Christianity, is singled out for criticism, with one “fascinating” fictional detail after another, the networks either refused to air or barely aired mild Mohammed cartoons out of great sensitivity to American Muslims. At the same time that Christianity is questioned as a false religion in The DaVinci Code, the networks demonstrated an exquisite sensitivity to American Muslims on the sensitive subject of threatened violence against mostly mild Danish cartoons mocking the prophet Muhammad. ABC aired a glance at one cartoon on two programs. CBS and NBC declared they would censor the images.

âu2013 In their push to promote The DaVinci Code, the networks routinely failed to address how the book most offended Christian sensitivities: that Christianity itself is a lie. The networks showed their lack of belief or interest in religion as they almost always failed to examine Brown’s most contentious charge: that Jesus was not the Son of God. While many noted the scandalous claim of a sexual relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, only six stories explained the Code’s denial of the divinity of Jesus.

âu2013 While Mel Gibson was attacked and even psychoanalyzed for his religious beliefs, DaVinci Code author Dan Brown and filmmakers Ron Howard and Brian Grazer were never personally examined or challenged about their personal religious beliefs, their willingness to milk controversy, play fast and loose with facts, and offend Christians for personal gain. Whenever the networks decided to address fact and fiction in The DaVinci Code, they almost always found it was stuffed with falsehoods. But they never focused on the idea that Brown, Grazer, or Howard should be criticized for being too casual with the truth.

âu2013 The networks also bought into the DaVinci Code craze by picking up and publicizing other Code-related books attacking Christianity and the Catholic Church, but their standard of evidence was hardly an example of what a skeptical journalist would apply. Authors of new books like The Jesus Papers and The Jesus Dynasty were offered publicity forums, even though the network journalists pronounced the evidence behind the claims was flimsy, even non-existent. So why did the networks promote them?

A comedic spectacle worthy of the old-time confrontations between the Communist mayor Peppone and Catholic priest Don Camillo in the novels of Guiseppi Guareschi will soon be playing out in an Italian courtroom:

An Italian court is tackling Jesus — and whether the Roman Catholic Church may be breaking the law by teaching that he existed 2,000 years ago.

The case pits against each other two men in their 70s, who are from the same central Italian town and even went to the same seminary school in their teenage years.

The defendant, Enrico Righi, went on to become a priest writing for the parish newspaper. The plaintiff, Luigi Cascioli, became a vocal atheist who, after years of legal wrangling, is set to get his day in court later this month.

“I started this lawsuit because I wanted to deal the final blow against the Church, the bearer of obscurantism and regression,” Cascioli told Reuters.

Cascioli says Righi, and by extension the whole Church, broke two Italian laws. The first is “Abuso di Credulita Popolare” (Abuse of Popular Belief) meant to protect people against being swindled or conned. The second crime, he says, is “Sostituzione di Persona,” or impersonation.

“The Church constructed Christ upon the personality of John of Gamala,” Cascioli claimed, referring to the 1st century Jew who fought against the Roman army.

“In my book, ‘The Fable of Christ,’ I present proof Jesus did not exist as a historic figure. He must now refute this by showing proof of Christ’s existence,” Cascioli said.

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Signore Cascioli is evidently unacquainted with Flavius Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews (William Whiston, translation) 63:

Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.

The true resting place of the Lost Ark?

The Telegraph reports:

If Indiana Jones had done his homework, he would have found the Ark of the Covenant by raiding a church in the barren mountains of northern Ethiopia.

Many Ethiopians believe that the Ark, containing the stone tablets inscribed with God’s Ten Commandments, rests in the church of St Mary of Zion, at the town of Axum, and some western scholars have endorsed this national myth as true.

The story underpins the country’s sense of identity. Ethiopia believes itself to be a unique nation with an ancient Christian tradition. This fervent patriotism has led Ethiopia into a perilous military confrontation with neighbouring Eritrea.

Axum