Please Come to LA, She Said Yes; Or, Looking for Love in Some of the Wrong Places

Paul Harvey

Via Ralph Luker, I forward a little fun and interesting reading for Sunday evening: Maggie Flynn, "An Agnostic Looking for Love in the Bible Belt," about one doubting skeptic's dating experiences in Nashville, and how after moving to LA "I feel like I've been saved, even if I haven't." I can't say it squares with my very long-ago dating experiences in Nashville, but then my general impoverishment and appalling disregard for personal appearance/hygiene probably explained a lot about my social life, or lack thereof, during the Reagan era.

An unbeliever's country song seems the right tune for this piece; where are the Dixie Chicks nowadays anyway? Their songs needed more cowbell, but otherwise seem apt here.

Glenn Beck and Paul Revere: The Two Horsemen of the Apocalypse Retire

Paul Harvey

I know many of you were SO excited last Friday when you saw that Glenn Beck had signed up to be a contributing editor here. Well, a lot has changed in the last week. As you doubtless know, Beck's show on Fox is coming to an end a bit later this year. But much more importantly than that, he is resigning from being a contributor to RiAH. So sad, but we'll wish him all the best. He sent along this explanation for both actions to the Wall Street Journal (sorry, not sure if this is a free link or behind a paywall, but here's the money quote):

Beck said he took a job at Fox News two years ago because he felt “if I could prove my case that something wicked this way was coming, something in America was wrong, America would listen, and they have.”

Beck said that Paul Revere “got off the horse point at some point and fought in the revolution and then he went back to silversmithing.” “I believe we’re heading into deep and treacherous waters,” Beck said about America”s future. He said he is developing other content for Fox for TV and other media. “I will continue to tell the story and I’m going to be showing you other ways for us to connect. But I have other things to do.

"Fox is one of the only places you'll find the truth. Spread the word," he said in concluding his remarks announcing the end of his show and the end of his RiAH contributions. Unlike Paul Revere and his Raiders, Beck is not actually returning either to silversmithing or to producing classic early 70s AM hits such as "Cherokee Nation," but reportedly back to other television shows, probably through his own network.

For a full-length analysis of this new development in religion, consumerism, and the media, I have only one question: Where have you gone, Kathryn Lofton, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you (and more seriously just for a second, the link takes you to a wonderful observer-participant reflection posted at Immanent Frame on K. Lofton's Oprah: Gospel of an Icon, by Daphne Brooks of Princeton University).

But back to our story, here is the video announcing Beck's change of plans:



For those who want a reprise of pretty much all of the major themes that Beck has followed in his pursuit of truth, you can find them here, channeled through Jon Stewart (ht John Fea):

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Religion and Humor

BY MICHAEL PASQUIER

Josh Paddison, American Council of Learned Societies New Faculty Fellow at Indiana University, is an historian of religion in the American West. His manuscript, "American Heathens: Religion, Race, and Reconstruction in California," will be published by the University of California Press in the not-too-distant future. He is also the editor of A World Transformed: Firsthand Accounts of California before the Gold Rush (1999).

Like all scholars (I hope), Paddison does more than read, write, and teach. He also draws comics, in this case for the blog Occasional Religion, which serves as a kind of forum for "scholars and artists engaging the world." Paddison's latest installment in the series "Moments in U.S. Religious History" recounts a play performed by three Chinese immigrants at the Methodist Mission in San Francisco. You can see/read it here. In an earlier comic strip, Paddison portrays an 1859 interview between Horace Greeley and Brigham Young.

Good stuff! Thanks Josh!

Who's Next?

Paul Harvey

It's Friday and I'm loopy exhausted, so I'm stealing this from Christopher Jones, who got it from someone else I think -- a photo that at first reassured me since I thought I had escaped hellfire, until I saw "drunks." Busted! Who's next -- is there anyone left? How about "CPac attendees" since they let in GOProud? and heard from 2 Mormon speakers? Just saying.

Stick Your Beer in the Snow: The Theology of the Frozen Tundra

Paul Harvey

I wasn't going to clutter this blog with exultation in the victory of the only Socialist/Communitarian Franchise in professional sports, the Green Bay Packers (whom I have loved since the 1967 Ice Bowl, my young Baptist self not realizing then that Vince Lombardi -- subject of a recent Broadway show -- was a Jesuit-trained coach at Fordham before being brought in to rescue the hapless Packers), but I have to quote just one gem from this piece of seasonal theology, from someone interviewed at the team's victory celebration at Lambeau Field today, where below-zero wind chills. hardly deterred the faithful:

The weather's fine. I can barely feel it," Ken Hampp, 23, of Appleton, said in the Lambeau parking lot as he sipped a Budweiser, before it froze. "That's my favorite thing about winter. You can just stick your beer in the snow.

Word.

Oh, and congratulations to the biggest Cheesehead friend of this blog, Kip Kosek, author of the memorable article "Brett Favre, Catholic Hero" (from 2008, in case you are wondering, before the more recent ugly Favre revelations). Actually the final sentences of the piece are even more appropriate given those revelations: "For every choice, there's a consequence. Wisconsin's Catholics understand this, and weep."

Battle Hymn of the Palin

Paul Harvey

Ok, enough already with the Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother; this one is more interesting. I normally leave this kind of stuff to Randall, our resident analyst of Christian kitsch, but it's mid-week in January, all of my teams are out of the playoffs, and I needed some cheering up. Also, the male singer here has a very nice, resonant George Jones-quality to his voice, and there's no bigger fan of George Jones than me (listen to the second line, "ingrained with common sense"; that's some pure Jones musical intonation there). As for the lyrics, well, this is not Stephen Sondheim, but what can you do?

Runnin' Down the Dream

Paul Harvey

Glenn Beck is restoring honor: that is, restoring Martin Luther King's movement back to its true conservative, white roots. Stephen Colbert explains (starting at 2:53 below -- although earlier in the segment the Vatican endorsement of the Blues Brothers as a good film for Catholics is worth watching for sure). As Colbert explains, the date (August 28 -- the anniversary of King's speech) is divinely inspired because "whenever I tell people what he's doing, they always say, 'holy sh##t!'" As Jake and Elwood would say, he's on a mission from God. Actually, this Blues Brothers dialogue is more appropriate for pretty much any Beck-related post:

Jake: You lied to me.

Elwood: Wasn't lies, it was just... bullshit.

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Yahweh Or No Way - The Blues Brothers & Glenn Beck
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Stephen vs. Stephen

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Stephen Prothero
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Nightmare on Born-Again Street

Randall Stephens

Christian Nightmares is a blog for those with a dark, maybe even grotesque, sense of humor. It's not for everyone. I imagine that those who dig the comedy of Mr Show, Tim and Eric Awesome Show (Great Job), The Sarah Silverman Show, The Onion, The Wittenburg Door, etc, would be the target audience. So, a lot of seminary students, I think, would find it hilarious.

Christian Nightmares is edited by a friend of mine who resides in that cesspool of meta irony and biting wittsters, New York City. The idea is to collect all on-line fundie and evangelical detritus-- bizarre, disturbing, unwittingly tasteless, lunatic--on one blog. With little comment, the editor posts videos of ventriloquist dummy clowns witnessing to children, stories about Bodybuilding ministers accused of beating church kids, the worst of Christian rap, cornball album art, soul-winning gimmicks galore, huckster prophets, and on and on and on . . . I couldn't decide whether to cry or laugh hysterically when I first perused the site.

Of course, video blogs like the obscenely funny Everything is Terrible have been around for a long time. But they only occasionally feature super-heated evangelical kitsch. Christian Nightmares is your one-stop shop for a garbage barge load of cringe-inducing, pathetic content.