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religion
'Strong Message to Christian Nationalists': Judge Blocks Louisiana Ten Commandments Law
"Public schools are not Sunday schools," said one advocate, "and today's decision ensures that our clients' classrooms will remain spaces where all students, regardless of their faith, feel welcomed."
Nov 12, 2024
A federal judge on Tuesday blocked a Louisiana law requiring every public school classroom in the state to display, in large font, a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments—a mandate that the new ruling characterizes as plainly unconstitutional.
The decision by U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana Judge John deGravelles, an appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama, prohibits Louisiana's Republican-dominated government from enforcing the Ten Commandments requirement, which was set to take effect on January 1, 2025.
The judge wrote that the law—which President-elect Donald Trump endorsed earlier this year shortly before Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signed it—is "unconstitutional on its face and in all applications."
The injunction against H.B. 71 came in response to a lawsuit brought in June by a coalition of Louisiana parents who argued the mandate "substantially interferes with and burdens the right of parents to direct their children's religious education and upbringing."
Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill, a Republican, pledged to "immediately appeal" the decision.
Heather Weaver, senior staff attorney for the ACLU's Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, said in a statement Tuesday that "this ruling should serve as a reality check for Louisiana lawmakers who want to use public schools to convert children to their preferred brand of Christianity."
"Public schools are not Sunday schools, and today's decision ensures that our clients' classrooms will remain spaces where all students, regardless of their faith, feel welcomed," Weaver added.
Rev. Darcy Roake, a plaintiff in the case, called H.B. 71 "a direct infringement of our religious-freedom rights, and we're pleased and relieved that the court ruled in our favor."
"As an interfaith family," Roake added, "we expect our children to receive their secular education in public school and their religious education at home and within our faith communities, not from government officials."
H.B. 71 is the first state law to require public schools to display a government-approved version of the Ten Commandments since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a similar Kentucky mandate in 1980, calling it a violation of the First Amendment's establishment clause.
Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said Tuesday that "this ruling will ensure that Louisiana families—not politicians or public school officials—get to decide if, when, and how their children engage with religion."
"It should send a strong message to Christian nationalists across the country that they cannot impose their beliefs on our nation's public school children," said Laser. "Not on our watch."
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I Was Attacked by an Owl and This Is What I Learned
I projected my desires and perspectives onto the owl without endeavoring to understand the owl’s perspective, something all to common when we approach people with differing viewpoints from our own.
Oct 06, 2024
Last month I was walking through the woods by my house at sunset when a nearly fully grown juvenile barred owl swooped over my head and landed on a branch in front of me. I was awestruck by this gorgeous bird and began doing what I’ve always done with wild animals who do not flee from me: I talk to them. We looked at each other for a long time before I decided to move on. The last thing I said to the owl after a nearly 10-minute one-sided "conversation" was, “Good night. I love you.”
Moments later, I felt a blow to my head, after which the stealthy culprit swooped to another branch to stare intently at me once more. I crouched down to grab a stick to hold above me in case the owl came after me again and slowly backed up to return home, where my husband, a veterinarian, could tend to my bloody talon wounds.
I’d heard about barred owls attacking people, but I never imagined I would be a victim. After all, I’m an animal advocate and humane educator. But I had misread everything. I was chagrined to realize that I’d been under the illusion that we were enjoying each other’s company.
Dangerous Assumptions
Just as I had misread the owl, I sometimes misread people, mistakenly assuming we’re on the same page. I often think I’m being understood, and that I’m understanding, when I’m not. This is probably true for most people. After all, it’s hard to ignore the escalating and dysfunctional levels of polarizing discourse in our culture, where mistaken assumptions and miscommunication are ubiquitous, adversely impacting our ability to come together and effectively nurture a truly healthy, inclusive, collaborative society. As playwright George Bernard Shaw once said: “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
Every time we make assumptions, there’s a good chance we’ll be miscommunicating and misperceiving, limiting the opportunities for real communication.
There are so many assumptions that prevent effective communication. We may assume that someone is religious because we are believers (or vice versa). Or we may inquire about someone’s astrological sign because we think astrology is a legitimate science, foisting this belief system on others without a second thought. When we meet someone who grew up in the same neighborhood we did, we may ascribe similar values and political beliefs to them. And when we meet people from different backgrounds, we may assume their values differ from ours and treat them with less openness.
I have friends who, thinking they are being generous, believe that supporters of the presidential candidate they abhor are simply “duped.” Other, less generous, friends think such supporters are either “selfish” or “stupid.” Some of my Christian friends think nonbelievers like me are “going to hell.” Some of my atheist friends think those who believe in God have a “mental disorder.” These are the actual words and phrases some have used in my presence.
Such assumptions arise effortlessly as we project our thoughts, beliefs, and emotions onto others. Unfortunately, this habit narrows our perspective and limits our ability to truly understand the complexity of others’ lives and minds. Every time we make assumptions, there’s a good chance we’ll be miscommunicating and misperceiving, limiting the opportunities for real communication. When we jump to our inevitable conclusions, we trade the possibility of true understanding for a false sense that we have communicated effectively.
Changing the Conversation
There’s a way out of this failure to communicate. It starts with something so natural to humans, and so obvious, that it hardly seems worth mentioning except for our seeming unwillingness to embrace it widely. We must cultivate and act upon our innate curiosity and desire to learn. In so doing, we eclipse a darker human propensity for "us vs. them" thinking, which leads us to perceive "the other" as a threat.
To communicate effectively with people who have different perspectives and beliefs, we must be eager to learn about those perspectives and beliefs. That means asking questions with friendliness and a true desire to understand rather than debate. It means striving to understand why someone holds a belief or position. What fears, experiences, or values drive their thinking? It means that when we hear something that challenges our worldview, we resist the urge to argue or correct and instead lean in with curiosity. In this way, we become better able to cultivate empathy, a foundation for understanding. In an increasingly polarized world, understanding becomes not just a moral imperative, but a practical one. Without it, divisions are likely to grow.
One of the lovely side effects of bringing genuine curiosity and openness to others is that we are likely to discover points of agreement. As we find those places where we can agree, division dissipates and the ties that bind us strengthen so that we can find places to collaborate. Coalitions to solve problems are usually more successful when diverse groups of people come together across divides to achieve shared goals. Whenever we allow side-taking, rather than collaborative problem-solving, to be our endpoint, we miss the opportunity to make our communities, nation, and world better.
The Role of Fear
One of the obstacles to making curiosity our default mindset is fear: fear of animosity and violence; fear of what society would become if others’ perspectives took hold; and sometimes even fear that we might be persuaded by a different perspective, which could threaten our existing identity and relationships. These fears are readily fostered in our society and sometimes within our families and communities. They may also be reinforced by our experiences. Since my encounter with the owl, I now enter the woods at dusk with some trepidation. Gone is my unadulterated joy and openness in the presence of these birds. Yet, my new fear is also a reminder that curiosity is indeed the gateway to understanding.
How to Move Forward
Had I spent a little more time cultivating my curiosity to better understand barred owls, I would have learned about their territorial nature, a trait we humans share with owls. I would have known better than to talk at a bird who had just flown low over my head and was perched staring at me, less curious than baleful. I wouldn’t have made the bird feel threatened by my refusal to leave their territory. I would have understood and been able to put my empathy into action by quickly moving along.
What would putting empathy into action look like with our fellow humans? A good first step might be to stop fomenting hostility, derision, and insults, whether spoken aloud about "others" within our perceived in-groups or on our social media. Whenever we make fun of, express hatred toward, or trivialize the perspectives of others, we perpetuate polarization and reinforce divisive thinking. This is not to say that we should make nice when someone intentionally says or does sexist, racist, homophobic, xenophobic, antisemitic, Islamophobic, or bigoted things. What it means is that we demonstrate respect for others’ divergent perspectives that stem from different lived experiences, sources of information, and long-held values and beliefs.
One might think these commonsense suggestions would be widely welcomed and adopted, but we’ve become so habituated to polarization that we often unconsciously stoke it. It’s not as if most people want to offend and be subsequently attacked, but nonetheless we regularly project our beliefs onto others and fail to consider the impacts of doing so. I projected my desires and perspectives onto the owl without endeavoring to understand the owl’s perspective. Reflecting upon the experience has made me wiser about how I might show greater understanding not only in situations with wild animals but also with my own species. Perhaps we can all learn something from an owl attack.
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The Question Persists: Is Trump the Actual Antichrist or Just a Metaphorical One?
Will it all be revealed in tonight's debate?
Sep 10, 2024
A listener called into my program recently and asked, “Is Donald Trump the Antichrist and, if so, will he reveal himself at the debate?”
I passed on drawing a conclusion, but then the lines lit up with a steady stream of people over the next few hours offering their “proofs” that Trump was, in fact, the Evil One come to ravage the Earth. That he’s a literal and iniquitous thaumaturge. My first caller clearly hit a nerve.
It’s a fascinating question, though, whether put literally or metaphorically.
Asking the question literally requires a belief in the actual reality of a Son-of-God Christ figure and of an Antichrist opponent of nearly equal but opposite power. This sort of thing fills the Bible, and I’ll get to that in a moment.
But first consider the question from the secular perspective, which argues these two terms represent, at their core, metaphors for the embodiment of good and evil.
In this context, then, a more accurate question is: “Is Donald Trump evil, and thus an antichrist?”
In The Sermon on the Mount, Jesus spoke in the plural when he predicted “false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves.”
After warning that grifters and con artists (in secular terms) would try to exploit His followers, He said, “by their fruits ye shall know them.”
Trump’s “fruits” are pretty obvious:
- More than twenty women have accused him of rape and sexual assault.
- Hundreds of contractors, customers and employees have accused him of stealing from them or refusing to pay them (or both), as have members of his own family
- Throughout his presidency, he lied over 30,000 times and continues to lie daily
- He pits Americans against each other by race, religion, and region in an effort to tear our country apart and thus weaken opposition to his authoritarian rule
- He openly encouraged violence against unarmed people at multiple rallies and encouraged state violence at a speech to chiefs of police; most recently he encouraged an assault on members of the press
- He tried to overthrow and end our democracy
- He embraced depraved, ungodly murderers, kleptocrats, and “strongman” rulers while ridiculing western democracies and their elected leaders
- He tried to damage or dismantle political and military systems designed to keep peace in the world, including the UN, NATO, and the Iran JCPOA
- He reaches out to Jesus’s followers and then directs them toward bigotry, violence, and hatred
- As an object of admiration and a role model, he’s replaced Jesus in many white evangelical congregations
- He delighted in tearing children from their parents and putting them in cages
- He tried to end Americans’ access to lifesaving medical care by killing Obamacare and privatizing Medicare
- He watched on TV, like a delighted child, as his followers killed three police officers, sent 140 others to the hospital, and tried to murder the Vice President and Speaker of the House
- He lied about Covid (after disclosing the truth to Bob Woodward), causing more disease and deaths in America than any other nation in the world except Peru
The main reason many Christians freak out about an antichrist is that following him will get you banned from heaven or even cast into hell.
But what did Jesus — the guy Trump’s white evangelical followers claim as their savior — say was necessary to get into heaven?
Back in 1998 I had a private audience with Pope John Paul II at his invitation; one of his personal secretaries had read one of my books. He gave Louise and me a private tour of many non-public parts of the Vatican and, the next day, we sat through an open-air concert with Pope John Paul II and about 30 VIPs, including the leader of Germany’s Bundestag, for more than an hour, surrounded by the splendor of Castel Gandolfo, the Pope’s summer palace on the rim of an extinct volcano overlooking lake Albano.
When we spoke privately after the concert, His Holiness’s forceful comments about the work we all must do reminded me of Jesus’ words in Matthew 25. It’s an amazing 2,000 year-old story that tells us everything we need to know about today’s “Christian” politics:
Jesus’ disciples had gathered around him in a private and intimate setting.
Finally, they thought, they could ask him, straight up, the question that had been haunting them, particularly now that the Roman authorities were starting to talk about punishing or even executing them: How they could be sure to hang out with Him in the afterlife?
Jesus told them that at the end of days He’d be sitting on His throne separating the sheep from the goats “as a shepherd divideth.”
The nations of “sheep” would go with Him to heaven, the “goats” to hell.
“For I was an hungred, and ye gave me food,” he told his disciples he would say to the sheep. “I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.”
At this point, His disciples — who had never, ever seen Jesus hungry, thirsty, homeless, sick, or naked — freaked out. Whoa! they shouted. We’re screwed!
“When saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee?” they asked, panicked. “Or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? Or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?”
“Verily I say unto you,” Jesus replied, reassuring them, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
This is the only place in the Bible where Jesus explicitly tells His disciples what acts they must perform, in their entirety, to get into heaven.
Feed the hungry, care for refugees, house and clothe the homeless, heal the sick, have compassion on those in prison.
That’s it.
And it’s a list that is quite literally the opposite of everything that Donald Trump advocates, stands for, and has done in his careers, both business and political.
While biblical scholars are split about who the actual “Beast” was that John referenced in his Revelation, many consider it to have been a then-politically-necessary cloaking of the identity of Roman Emperor Nero.
It was clearly a political figure, who represented the antithesis of the values and works Jesus laid out in the Sermon on the Mount and in Matthew 25.
A leader whose actions unleashed “a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.”
Caller after caller to my program offered their own proofs of Trump being the Beast or the Antichrist:
- “MAGA” means “magic” or “sorcerer” in Latin and multiple other languages
- His grandfather’s name when he emigrated to America to start a whorehouse in the Pacific Northwest was “Drumpf,” which he changed to Trump. John in German is “Johann.” Therefore, his “actual” name is Donald Johann Drumpf — each name having six letters. (Weirdly, the same is true of Ronald Wilson Reagan, the guy who laid the foundation for MAGA.)
- He illegally armed the Saudis for their merciless bombing war against Yemen which had five million people facing famine as the Saudi military blocked food arrivals.
- His family owns 666 Fifth Avenue.
- He fooled millions of evangelical followers of Jesus, just as the Beast is supposed to do.
- He put his own red-hat MAGA mark on their foreheads.
- He consorts with “whores” and “criminals.”
It was an interesting exercise and conversation, and I was surprised by how many people are actually religiously freaked out about Trump.
But for me, all the proof I need that Trump, if not the biblical Antichrist, is at least a political one, is what he says and does. And I’ll bet that tonight he will reveal himself, both as a disciple of the “Father of Lies,” and through his anti-Christ-type policies.
As Pope Francis today tells us, a man’s “fruits” show us all we need to know about who he really is.
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