fayfreethinkers.com

Time's Joe Klein Takes Obligatory, Inaccurate Cheap Shot At Nonbelievers

By Radley Balko Posted: 06/24/2013 1:01 pm EDT | Updated: 06/24/2013 7:22 pm EDT


"In his cover story for the current issue of Time, journalist Joe Klein takes a long look at the therapeutic value of public service. It's an interesting piece. Unfortunately, Klein also can't resist taking a swipe at nonbelievers. While discussing the aftermath of last month's tornadoes in Oklahoma, Klein writes:

"

Joe Klein's Obligatory, Inaccurate Cheap Shot wrote:But there was an occupying army of relief workers, led by local first responders, exhausted but still humping it a week after the storm, church groups from all over the country — funny how you don’t see organized groups of secular humanists giving out hot meals — and there in the middle of it all, with a purposeful military swagger, were the volunteers from Team Rubicon. They looked tough, megatatted, in camouflage pants, gray T-shirts and white hard hats. They moved with purpose and spirit and were equipped by Home Depot — which has done brilliant work locating and funding the very best veterans service groups — with an impressive array of chain saws, power tools, wheelbarrows, tarps and wood.

"Emphasis mine. It's too bad Klein couldn't help but succumb to the self-centered atheist cliche, here. It's also unfortunate that he couldn't do a bit of research before doing so. Because he's wrong."

How wrong? Find out! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/2 ... 1372093287

That's an awesome article! Thanks for posting a link. I'd seen the indiegogo campaign before, but I hadn't heard of all the other endeavors. Always encouraging to hear.

The last bit about the Freedom Assembly of God volunteers leaving a site after discovering they were working with atheists saddens me though. What in the world would lead someone to do that?

Indium Flappers wrote:What in the world would lead someone to do that?

Why, a loving, omnipotent God, of course.

Indium Flappers wrote:That's an awesome article! Thanks for posting a link. I'd seen the indiegogo campaign before, but I hadn't heard of all the other endeavors. Always encouraging to hear.

The last bit about the Freedom Assembly of God volunteers leaving a site after discovering they were working with atheists saddens me though. What in the world would lead someone to do that?

I was formerly married into the AG community, so I have a bit of personal insight: they believe strongly in spiritual warfare, so they think they can get religious cooties just from being around people who love Jesus even a bit less than they do. I was raised as a moderate Methodist, left of center politically, and always have been a bit of a skeptic, being scientifically literate and so-forth, which my ex-spouse knew about when we met, but after we married we started going to her local AG church (her one-sided decision), which fortunatly was much more moderate than the country-fried, BYOS (bring your own snake), full gospel AG church that her parents attended. When my ex-wife & I separated, I was forbidden to even set foot in my home in order to get my own personnel belongings and was threatened with physical violence if I did; which isn't legal, of course, but I didn't see the need to make a fuss over it. The unrighteous can taint a righteous home by their mere presence; they think even having objects in one's home that belongs to someone who is in league with demons can cause migraine headaches, illness, bad fortune and the like. As we stood outside, my mother-in-law had a church elder on the phone praying for her the whole time my parents & I were present and they refused to speak to us except for direct orders, refused conversation, praying softly in tongues the whole time. They had previously suspected I wasn't a true believer, you see, because I had some criticisms of their dogma, was politically liberal, I drank the occasional beer and, most critically, I never spoke in tongues myself (even though they had prayed for that to happen). So they wound up shunning me in exactly the same way they had previously said one should treat a person who is possessed by an evil demon (I'm not making that up). Before this, I had my (sometimes strong) criticisms of fundamentalist/evangelical Christianity, but not so much for theism in general; but soon after receiving such a full-on taste of crazy, I deconverted completely - ironically in part due to their fine example of shear religious insanity and bigotry, backed up by their church and my former church (prior to this, I used to lead Wednesday night church history classes at a lite beer version of an AG church).

I think part of what started the process of my in-laws & spouse eventually shunning me is I spoke favorably of same-sex marriage a few times during family conversation; I usually avoided intellectual or political conversation with them out of respect for their beliefs, but I did slip occasionally... At some point, unbeknownst to me, my black magic witchcraft had begun causing my now-ex spouse frequent migraine headaches and anxiety - never mind she had often suffered from both conditions going back to her teenage years; she had had a crippling round of migraines shortly before we had met. My sometimes vocal distain for Sarah Palin, though, apparently made it worse. I also found out after-the-fact that my presence in their home had been blamed as the true cause of a summer wildfire that had nearly burned down the in-laws chicken houses, never mind I had helped fight the fire; it was in the middle of a drought, was extremely hot and dry, and the local FD found plenty of cigarette butts along the road where the point of ignition occurred. But, in their mind, the real cause was spiritual warfare - and the source of that warfare was me.

In any case, that's how they think they should act around unbelievers - never be alone, don't engage in conversation, etc - unbelievers and non-true believers can glamour the righteous just like the vampires on True Blood, apparently. Their worldview cannot handle the thought that atheists (or secularists or more moderate theists, etc) can be very good, ethical, helpful decent, kind people - to them, we are little better than would-be murderers and rapists, and the mere fact that we aren't causes them cognitive dissonance, which is highly uncomfortable for them to be around. For me it all worked out for the best - today I'm very happily married to a highly intelligent, kind and beautiful fellow freethinker. One could even say that I've been blessed, in a totally non-religious, freethinker sort of way.

In any case, I’m not too surprised by their attitude here – fortunately, the AG’s represent an extreme, if outspoken, outlier among American Christian churches. There are plenty of moderate Christian churches out there; for instance, I could never imagine the Methodists at my parent’s congregation doing something like this. But as Shelby Spong says in regards to Christianity, most of the noise comes from the shallow end of the pool.

I forgot to mention earlier, I had a small bust of Apollo (a copy of an well-know classical period Greek original), a small authentic mesoamerican quatzequatel statuette and a very modern, abstract silver-colored Ibex statue from Pier 1 Imports (I guess it looked a bit too much like a golden calf), which my ex in-laws were quite convinced where -literally - my pagan idols. They evicted these from the house the same week we seperated and then they had several church members show up afterwards, sprinkling annointing oil and praying to drive out any lingering demonic influence. They also thought my dog Max was my demonic familiar and kicked him out of the house too. In any case, AG's, especially the deep country variety, are crazy - it's not enough to keep one's beliefs private (or try to) and respect theirs. Anyone too different from themselves is liable to wind up labeled a witch, a warlock or the demon possessed - or in the original example of AG spiritual warfare, merely shunned by nonparticipation when the AGs find out they are working alongside atheists, etc.

O_O

Wow.

I was raised in the First Assembly of God myself before deconverting after getting out of high school. (I should have had the courage to "deconvert" earlier, but that's a story I won't go into right now.) I saw some pretty far out stuff, but nothing as bad as the story you just told.

Is there some secular news network anyone can point me to where they actual talk about stuff like this whenever it happens? I was discussing the story about Christians leaving a volunteer site after finding out they were working alongside atheists with a Christian I know, and I don't think they believed me. (They asked if the Christians had said they were leaving because of that or if they'd just left to go work somewhere else.) It seems like it'd be good to try and make people aware of these things when they happen. Maybe better news coverage could help take away the shroud of legitimacy that religion undeservedly has?

In any case, it's definitely good to hear things worked out for you, Cherryj, and that your story seems to have a "happy ending" so to speak!

(Also, guess I should check this forum more frequently so I don't end up replying to things a month late. Oops!)

Indium Flappers wrote:O_O

Wow.

I was raised in the First Assembly of God myself before deconverting after getting out of high school. (I should have had the courage to "deconvert" earlier, but that's a story I won't go into right now.) I saw some pretty far out stuff, but nothing as bad as the story you just told.

Is there some secular news network anyone can point me to where they actual talk about stuff like this whenever it happens? I was discussing the story about Christians leaving a volunteer site after finding out they were working alongside atheists with a Christian I know, and I don't think they believed me. (They asked if the Christians had said they were leaving because of that or if they'd just left to go work somewhere else.) It seems like it'd be good to try and make people aware of these things when they happen. Maybe better news coverage could help take away the shroud of legitimacy that religion undeservedly has?

In any case, it's definitely good to hear things worked out for you, Cherryj, and that your story seems to have a "happy ending" so to speak!

(Also, guess I should check this forum more frequently so I don't end up replying to things a month late. Oops!)

Thanks Indium! Regarding news, I recommend the atheist channel on Patheos - Hemant Mehta, the Friendly Atheist, often has posts on news related to atheist run-ins with theists. For example, he had a series of posts regarding the atheist monument that recently went up in FL, prompting Eric Hovind and the like to demonstrate in favor of their one-sided views on our Constitutional freedom of religion.

AGs seem to come in lots of different flavors - locally in Fayetteville, they basically seem like conservative Methodists; I attended there for about a year and seldom, if ever, heard tongues or any reference to spiritual warfare. Ditto for Christian Life Cathedral, founded as a splinter off of the AG church, toned down to reach a wider audience. In the more rustic areas, however - such as the AG church in Paris, AR - AGs are pretty nuts. They once were in revival daily for over a month; most of the sermons were on spiritual warefare, lots of talking in toungues, Jesus is coming soon, etc (I got dragged to about a week's worth of it). My guess is, it was one of these later types of AGs who refused to work alongside atheists. Had they been Methodists, in my experience, they would have wanted to go out for beer afterwords with the atheists.

http://www.patheos.com/Atheist.html

Thanks! (Instant bookmark.)

I'd say the AG church I was raised in was the revival/spiritual-warfare/tongues type. It didn't seem like they would be bad enough to socially ostracize non-believers though, much less threaten violence against them for trying to reclaim personal belongings after a separation.