Super Tuesday in Colorado!

Are you a Coloradan? Have you been registered as a Democrat or a Republican since at least December 5, 2007? If so, today’s your day, dammit!

Colorado political parties hold their caucuses tonight. This our only shot at voicing preferences in the presidential race, so don’t miss out. If you don’t know where your local caucus is being held, there’s a locator here courtesy of the Obama campaign.

I look forward to seeing all y’all Broomfield County Democrats at Legacy High School come 6:30 p.m. Driving in the greater Denver metro area blows syphilitic donkeys today thanks to the snow, so please make sure to leave yourself plenty of time.

Honest Christian Spotted

I spend a lot of time blabbering about the misrepresentations, dissemblings, half-truths and outright lies advanced by evangelical Christians in support of their political ends. In the interest of equal time, this entry is about motive honesty exhibited by a Christian living right here in dear ol’ Broomfield, Colorado.

Not long ago our local rag reported on Kohl Elementary School Principal Cindy Kaier’s decision not to have the usual Halloween party at the school. Not long thereafter, on October 17, the paper published a LTTE from some nutburger that leads off with:

Prayer is gone from the classroom, “under God” is out of the Pledge of Allegiance and now the ghosts and goblins are leaving the building. That is if the Kohl Elementary principal has her way.

My, oh my, what a mess. First of all, the notion that prayer is “gone from the classroom” is idiotic beyond description. No less an authority than the U.S. Department of Education actually offers Guidance on Constitutionally Protected Prayer in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools. Prayer certainly should be gone from the classroom, IMO, but it’ll never happen.

Congress, swept up in the prevailing kneejerk anti-commie hysteria of the day, added the words “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954. From that day to this the words in question have never, ever been “removed.” Nor will they be. The letter’s author can find endless solace by checking 4 U.S.C. 4 on a daily basis.

Even more ridiculous is the author’s suggestion that Principal Kaier’s decision was somehow anti-religion. One of her stated reasons for canceling the party was that some families “don’t celebrate Halloween.” Having followed religion-government separation issues for some time, statements such as that reek of biblical literalist Christianity to me. In other words, people who spend disturbing amounts of time literally gibbering (speaking in tongues) and rolling on the floor (slain in the spirit) consider Halloween evil and anti-Jesus. Unfortunately, such people procreate, send their snot miners to public schools and spin themselves into a state of raging apoplexy when the school does something contrary to the Bible (as authoritatively interpreted by James Dobson, of course).

In accordance with the maxim that even a blind squirrel finds a nut on occasion, an October 21 LTTE suggests that I might have been correct. The author gets major honesty points for writing:

When my children began school, I was one of “those” moms who talked to the principal and teachers, explaining we were Christians and didn’t celebrate Halloween. I asked for alternative assignments for my children during October, as many assignments were Halloween based. On Halloween, I kept my kids home from school. They felt isolated sitting in the hall doing alternative assignments. I still couldn’t compromise, knowing the truth about Halloween.

She then engages in an irrelevant and largely inaccurate discussion of Druids, tossing in terms like “demonic” and “Satanic” for good measure. But also to her credit, she acknowledges that “Schools are not allowed to celebrate religious holidays.”

Whether she considers that rule applicable to Christmas — yet another pirated pagan holiday — remains to be seen. For present purposes, the candor of the October 21 letter is strangely refreshing. All too often accomodationists bent on purging public schools of anything they consider unchristian are less than candid about their aims.

Biblical Literalist Slap Fight

Broomfield, Colorado — north of Denver and southeast of Boulder — has a population of just over 45,000. That relatively small band of residents is served by close to fifty churches. If those numbers show nothing else, they show that folks ’round these here parts take their Christianity pretty goddamn seriously.

The Broomfield Enterprise is a free newspaper that gets delivered to every residence in town whether we want it or not. Not surprisingly, the local rag includes a weekly faith column. Equally unsurprisingly, the column focuses pretty much exclusively on Christianity. Christians are rather fond of talking about our “Judeo-Christian” heritage, but the “Judeo” part gets lost in the shuffle pretty quickly when push comes to shove.

A week ago the Enterprise ran a column in which regular contributor Bob Rudland had the temerity to say Jesus never claimed to be the Messiah. Bad move, Bob.

Yesterday the Enterprise publishes two rather scathing rebukes in its LTTE section. Greg Smith of Christ Community Church (we’re not told whether Mr. Smith is the pastor or just a church member) accused Ruland of “sophomoric biblical illiteracy” regarding the “historical Jesus.”

That’s right, folks; the New Testament is a work of history, despite all the known errors the total absence of corroboration from any contemporaneous source. Ya heard it here first.

The author also trots out that hoary old chestnut, C.S. Lewis’ Liar/Lunatic/Lord false trilemma. A group of godless heathen savages have fun with that bit of nonsense here.

The second letter writer, one Charles P. Woodruff, is fond of rhetorical excess. According to him, Mr. Rudland’s faith column “immerses the reader in new age and Marxist thought” and “regularly tortures scripture to conform to his world view.” Mr. Woodruff suggests that we embrace an “objective starting point” in our search for the truth:

“For God so loved the world, that he sent his one and only son, so that whoever believes in him would not perish but have eternal life.” — John 3:16

Apparently, appearance in print is Mr. Woodruff’s pole star for objectivity. Trouble is, the quoted statement has no more claim to “objective truth” by virtue of appearing in a venerated text than a statement from the Bhagavad Gita or — horror of horrors — the Koran.

But hey, if that’s the test, allow me to propose an alternative starting point in our search for “objective” truth:

“He sure knew how to drive his hog.” — Tom Clancy, The Hunt for Red October

At the end of his vitriol laden screed Mr. Woodruff advises, “Please don’t take this too seriously[.]” No problem, Chuck. I haven’t taken religion seriously since age ten or so.

In any event, it’s quite clear that we have a schism under way in our sleepy little town and that at least one recent contributor to the local paper is a heretic. I suggest a three-way, winner-take-all cage match to the death involving Messrs. Rudland, Smith and Woodruff. The winner is obviously favored of God and gets to dictate the One True Faith, at least within the bounds of the City and County of Broomfield.