When Pigs Fry.

I had just had a huge helping of hogmeat at Duke's Barbeque Friday night after watching Tyler's North Walterboro Christian Academy Warriors basketball team lose a close game to Hardeeville's Abundant Life Academy Cougars, when, in my nightly Bible reading I read this from Isaiah_66:17: “Those who consecrate and purify themselves to go into the gardens, following the one in the midst of those who eat the flesh of pigs and rats and other abominable things—they will meet their end together,” declares the Lord" That seems pretty immutable, doesn't it? Probably they should have put a warning outside the shop that "eating pork barbeque may cause hypertension, diabetes, and eternal damnation". Nah. Jesus seems to have given us a loophole, here, when he tossed out a bevy of dietary prohibitions by proclaiming it wasn't what went into a person's mouth that made him unclean in Matthew, but the unkind or nasty stuff that came out of his mouth. I was breathing a sigh of relieve, hoping that Jesus had changed all this "eating pork is an abomination" talk, when I caught a litany of death penalty-punishable sins recounted in an ad in Walterboro's Press and Standard newspaper by self-described "evangelist Walt". Homosexuals topped the list, but adulterers, blasphemers, witches, and those folks who cursed their fathers or mothers are all supposed to die (interestingly, but scripturally accurately, murderers and those causing accidental death don't have to die if they can slip off to a city of refuge). He left out working on the Sabbath; and the verse I'd encountered in Isaiah didn't make the list, which I'm sure is a great relief to the pork purveyors at Duke's, but was still intent that a large group of miscreants ought to be killed. But, wait... Didn't Jesus toss out the death penalty for a lot of the rules that he didn't get rid of altogether, when told the folks about to stone an adultress to death that they'd better be without sin themselves before they pick up those big rocks? My point is that we can all be kind of particular about what stuff emphasize in the Bible, and what stuff we can just sort of passover (pun intended). For example, I don't see where Jesus specifically abolished the prohibition of wearing clothes made of more than one fabric contained in Leviticus 19:19; so, should I be feeling a little hot under the collar in my cotton/poly blend shirt, or did Jesus implicitly get rid of ALL the "uncleanness" laws? I like Garry Wills' take on the "Unclean" in What Jesus Meant. When you've got a choice between the dietary and uncleanness laws- including laws governing sex- and Jesus' law of love, go with the law of love: Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Rick Santorum, and Mary I, of England, Walk into a Bar...

My wise grandmother, Gina, told me more than a few times never to discuss sex, politics and religion in public because everyone had an opinion which you were unlikely to change, and that you'd probably just make people angry. I know this to be true, but I just can't help myself sometimes. It's primary season in U.S. politics, which means we get exposed to lots of allegations of "bad" sex and lots of questions about candidates' religious proclivities. The "bad" sex allegations have pretty much been all aimed at Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich. The allegations are well-worn, and I'm frankly a little bored by them. Religion, on the other hand, gets my heart racing. One of my favorite people on the planet recently forwarded along to me an e-mail exhorting me to carefully watch the candidates for there religious stances because of the importance of these practices and views to the proper governance of the Country. So I did. Here's my primer:

Newt was raised Lutheran, became a Baptist, and converted to Catholicism. This combo played pretty well in the Palmetto State, which has been Newt's only primary victory so far.

Mitt Romney is, of coure, a Mormon, and he appears to be a very_active member of the Church of Latter Day Saints . The Latter Day Saints Church shares many characteristics of the Christian Church as described in the early Christian Creeds, but also varies_from_it_in_significant_ways, including its rejection of the Holy Trinity.

Ron_Paul was raised Lutheran, became a Baptist, and had his children baptised as Episcopalians. That's a pretty good smorgasbord of Protestantism, but as far as I can tell, Ron is not trying to convert anyone to any particular religious ideology.

President_Obama's_description of his faith is that he was raised by non-religious parents (his father was an atheist who'd been raised Muslim, and his mother was a lapsed Methodist), but was Baptised in the Trinity Church of Christ in Chicago as an adult. Of his faith, he says "I'm a Christian by choice. My family didn't—frankly, they weren't folks who went to church every week. And my mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew, but she didn't raise me in the church. So I came to my Christian faith later in life, and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead—being my brothers' and sisters' keeper, treating others as they would treat me" (I've heard people say that they don't believe that President Obama is actually Christian. I guess you could say that about any of the candidates if you wanted to. Like I heard in church camp many moons ago: If you were on trial as a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? Depends on the standard you use, I guess. I'll take Paul's (the Apostle Paul, not Ron Paul) in Romans_10:9-13. 'Course, trying anyone for being a Christian has been done to death, hasn't it?).

If you want a candidate whose politics match his religion, then Catholic Rick Santorum is your best choice. Rick has apparently said something to the effect that separation of Church and State has caused great harm in America. Give him credit: he's not flip-flopping on his religion. But is bringing the pulpit or altar to the White House a good thing?

The Founding Fathers, most of whom were Christian, made sure to include certain Amendments to the U.S. Constitution to protect the rights of individuals against the awesome power of Government. Their first amendment?

Amendment I. Religion and Expression "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances".

Why would the Founding Fathers want to guarantee that individuals could worship as they please, but deny them the power to have an official American religion? Maybe they remembered Henry VIII's daughter, Mary I of England, a/k/a Bloody_Mary who had a lot of English folks burned at the stake for the crime of not being Catholic.

But that couldn't happen in the age after the Age of Enlightenment, could it? Sure it could. In fact, it happened in post-Wiemar Republic Germany.In a wonderful biography I've just finished on Dietrich_Bonhoeffer, the author, Eric Metaxas, points out that when Adolf Hitler wanted to mold popular opinion to accept genocide, he created an official German Church in order to get rid of the pesky pro-Jewish sentiments that seemed to permeate the Bible (BTW, Metaxas' book is a great read).

So, what's best? Beats me. But I'm always wary of anyone tells me he knows God better than the next guy...

A Real Writer.

It's somewhat inaccurate to say that I read the newspaper religiously. It's unfair both to my Church, and to the newspaper; as I take my Church more seriously, but I read the paper more regularly. If you're reading this, then you already know that I like to write. In fact, I've always been jealous of "real writers": writers that perform their craft well, and are paid to do it. I was delighted to spend a few minutes with a real writer yesterday. Charleston "Post and Courier" newspaper columnist Ken Burger was at Downtown Books and Espresso in the Boro signing his new book, "Sister Santee", and I stopped in to buy his first book, "Swallow Savannah" and get a cup of Joe. He told me that he was originally from the small, poor, rural county of Allendale. Mr. Burger is recognized across the State, and has been writing interesting things well for many years, and I'd mentioned I'd already known he was from Allendale. When I meekly offered that I'd written a few sports articles for the paper in the small, poor, rural county where I'd lived a few years ago, I kind of expected him to turn on his heel and walk off; instead, he said he knew the paper. Thanks, Ken, for grinding out good work and providing a regular dose of good prose. Thanks, especially, for making me feel, if briefly, like I might be a real writer, too.

Culture Club.

I'm not in any book clubs; Lady Di is in one, though, and I get to feed on the crumbs under their table. She buys the books from Walterboro's Downtown Books, reads 'em (mostly), and discusses them over coffee or wine. When she's done with the selections, I get my grubby little mitts on 'em. Lately they've been on a curious cultures kick: Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin; The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larson; The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, and Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian are all good glances into different ways of life.

I didn't want to read "Three Cups of Tea". Pakistan and Afghanistan are really a long way away, and they're filled with Muslims, for cryin' out loud! But the book is really good. American Greg Mortenson started out as a mountain climber, but his failed mission to scale the second tallest mountain in the world, K2, in Western Himalayan range in Northern Pakistan changed his life. The book, well told by David Oliver Relin, is part biography, part adventure story, part sociology treatise, and part travelogue, seasoned with a pinch of philosophy and great deal of human compassion. It turns out that girls, even Muslim girls, are treasures, and deserve a basic education. It turns out that a lot of villages in Pakistan and Afghanistan don't have even basic buildings for schools and no money to pay teachers. Mortenson makes a compelling case that private, moderate, people (whether Muslim, Christian, Jewish, or whatever) had better build and support schools, or folks with more extremist views will. It also turns out that Mortenson is a pretty amazing guy.


The plots in Stieg Larson's "Girl" series, feature lots of suspense and action, and conspiracies and subplots galore. Kind of like a Swedish John Grisham, but with less smart-ass dialogue. It makes the "different cultures" list because the sensibility in many of the Swedish relationships in those novels just feel different from American ones: John McEnroe's American hot-tempered tennis star versus the cool resolve of Bjorn Borg.


Sherman Alexie's "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" (with art by Ellen Forney) was an insightful, personal, and very readable novel about Arnold "Junior" Spirit. Arnold is a kid raised in a loving, but highly dysfunctional, home on Wellpinit, an Indian Reservation in Washington state. He struggles in that community, and in Reardan, the nearby white community where he ultimately attends school, but that the struggle is what molds us. As Arnold observes:

"(My friend Gordy) tutored me and challenged me, but he made me realize that hard work- that the act of finishing, of completing, of accomplishing a task- is joyous.

In Wellpinit, I was a freak because I loved books.

In Reardan, I was a joyous freak."

It's a novel, but it feels true. Was it Chief Seattle who said, "I don't know if it happened or not, but I know it's true"?


When Lady Di suggested I read "The Help", I'd categorized it as "chick-lit", and only reluctantly cracked the cover. Author Kathryn Stockett presents the stories from the viewpoints of several different protagonists in pre-Civil Rights Act Mississippi: Aibileen and Minnie are African-American maids- "The Help"- to aspiring writer, "Miss Skeeter", and mean-spirited Hilly, and Skeeter's other white bridge-club friends. I was just born the year this novel is set. The schools my brother and I attended in Florida were segregated until about sixth grade (fifth grade for my brother), though our pee-wee football teams were not. I remember Rosa, my grandmother's maid, and Kathleen, my mom's maid, as people that cared about me and my brother. It never occurred to me to wonder what their lives were like. In spite of myself, I came to care about the characters in "The Help", and felt a modicum of satisfaction at the emotional payoff at the end of the book.

Wodehouse Blues.

When it comes to my literary tastes, I'll admit to being an Anglophile. I've mentioned before that my favorite author is C.S. Lewis because of his clarity of thought, his wit, and, of course, his defense of Christianity. On the other hand, I also admire Douglas Adams ("Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe") and Christopher Hitchens ("God is Not Great"), who were fine writers, but definitely not Christian apologists. I was discussing these authors one day at the local coffee shop (Downtown Books and Espresso) with my buddy, J.D., and he recommended I check out P.G.Wodehouse, who is another dead English writer (as opposed, I suppose, to an Old English writer). "You've never read Wodehouse?", he asked. "No", I said, "But I did watch the movie with Patwick Swayze" (he and I both made the mistake of pronouncing the name as it is spelled, with a long "O". Apparently, Wodehouse pronounced his name like "woodhouse". It was his name, and I guess he can have pronounced it any way he chose; but the joke doesn't work very well that way. Anyway, J.D. was right: Wodehouse rocks!

Don't think you know his works? Maybe. Maybe not. You've heard of the T.V. show "House", right? Well, before Hugh Laurie was Dr. House, he played Bertram Wooster- a Wodehouse creation- in the British series "Jeeves and Wooster". I've only ever seen the YouTube clips of the show, but it looks like a pretty good adaption of the books. I tried to embed a clip, but all were disabled; however, you can click on the link below to get a sampling.

Jeeves and Wooster.

Roadtrip: Myrtle Beach '09, Part I

Fiance Diane and I journeyed from the Boro on Sunday afternoon to Myrtle Beach, for the South Carolina Public Defenders' annual convention.



Robert checks us in to the Beach Cove Resort on Sunday Afternoon. He promised us "endless fun".






See? It's right there on his sleeve.










...and on the shampoo and soap. They better not let that stuff run out.







Endless fun? That's a lot of pressure. I guess we'd better get started. Mostly, we were hungry. Weren't sure what we wanted, so we settled for Mexican. That ought to be fun.




Our only standard for the evening libations, was that our drinks be at least the size of our heads. It wasn't easy, but we drained out tankards.













The view from my room on Monday morning was gorgeous.









Limping into the convention center, I craved a cup of Java. What? No coffee? Geez, Louise. What kind of seminar is this?


I've been to, like, a bazillion criminal defense, trial attorney, and government C.L.E. (continuing legal education) classes. Not a lot of surprises.

The keynote speaker, Sister Helen Prejean, at least, was quite good. She wrote "Dead Man Walking", about an inmate on death row. The book was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and was adapted into a movie starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn. I told her that, because of her speech, I'd do a better job on my death penalty case. She seemed pleased. I neglected to mention that my mom was also a nun. 'Course, she's a Catholic nun and mom was an Episcopal nun.

Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking and our keynote speaker, signs my copy of her newest book, Death of Innocents. She was awesome.


Part II, to follow.

The Nine.

Okay, I'm reading this book. It's about the Supreme Court. It's pretty good. That's not what this is about, though. It's the number of miles I ran today. Boo-yah!

You Got to Stand For Something.

I love to read. I don't get to do as much of it as I'd like, but I do love it. Though I have a disdain for fundamentalists of any stripe (folks who can't change their minds and won't change the subject), I love my faith (such as it is), and my Church (such as it is). I also like exploring different points of view, to the extent I am able. That mishmash of competing instincts led me to Christopher Hitchens' anti-religion diatribe "God is Not Great".



He trots out a variety of arguments for the proposition that "religion poisons everything" from Islamic and Christian Holy Wars to ad hominem attacks on defenders of religion (calling C.S. Lewis "dreary and absurd". I love Lewis. Read "The Screwtape Letters", if you get the chance). Some of his arguments- for example: that the rituals and particulars of religions, and the writings of those religions are composed by fallible people and not by any deity- have traction; some of them- for example: that Christians' failure to stand up to German fascism was somehow the same thing as killing millions of Jews- do not. He trashes the teachings of Jesus as derivative and the Ten Commandments as more conducive to creating "sin" than effectively helping people. He says that we need a new Enlightenment emphasizing, as many have done for at least hundreds of years, that the proper study for humans is humanity.

While he quotes liberally from both the Pentateuch and the New Testament, Hitchens seems to miss the point: Religions, at least the ones I understand best, are all about relationships between people. You wanna love God? Love his people and treat them the way you want to be treated. The Golden Rule is in both Leviticus (not my favorite chapter, but I liked this verse, anyway) and Matthew (Matthew's account here is very active and specific). Hitchens is a clever fellow, and an atheist since his childhood, but by adopting an "anti" philosophy he's painted himself in a corner. He admits that the pervasiveness of religion strikes at some basic need humans have (citing Freud's "Future of an Illusion"), and his own struggle to find truth included embracing- then rejecting- Marxism. He takes glee in his attempt to knock down religious faith, but he offers no answers other than the "Care-Bear" weight argument lifted from Animal House's Faber College that "Knowledge is Good". Come to think of it, Hitchens isn't that different from his early hero: Karl Marx did a pretty good job trashing capitalism, but in the end, he offered no plausible alternative to it. History judged Marx wrong; I can't imagine Hitchens will do much better.