Jeff Foxworthy, best known for his

You might be a redneck

schtick and creating the game show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” is bringing Americans another chance to test their ignorance on television with “The American Bible Challenge” which will pit teams of contestants representing

worthy faith-based organizations

against each other as they try to answers questions

designed to acknowledge and celebrate the Bible’s continuing importance in contemporary life and culture.

This descriptions raises more questions than it answers:

1) Who decides what are worthy faith-based organizations?
2) Will atheists and non-Christians be banned, even though they may have astounding Biblical knowledge?
3) What translation of the Bible will be used as the ultimate authority?
4) Will both Old and New Testament be used?
5) What about the Deuterocanonical texts which are accepted and included in their Bibles by Catholics, both Roman and Orthodox, but not by Protestants?
6) What about the Book of Mormon?
7) Will there be questions about Lot’s daughters, Noah’s sons, David and Bathsheba, how the serpent got around before God declared “upon thy belly shalt thou go” and other conundrums?
8) Did Jesus ride a dinosaur?
9) Who wrote the Bible?
10) And most importantly, will those who miss an answer be tossed into the fiery pit?

Considering that in the five years Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader has been on the air, only two people, Georgia Superintendent of Schools Kathy Cox and Nobel Prize in Physics laureate George Smoot, have answered the final question correctly, “The American Bible Challenge” has the potential to embarrass and humiliate so many self-righteous people.

As of late, Foxworthy has been palling around with Mitten$ Rmoney, joining him to campaign in Alabama and endorsing him on Twitter thusly:

Time for Republicans to unite behind Governor Romney, a great leader who can win the White House and rebuild our economy for all Americans.

Among the consulting producers on “The American Bible Challenge” is the non-profit Odyssey Networks which has a video exploring the theological divide between Mormons and Evangelicals, and raises a question that Foxworthy seems to be answering in the affirmative for his fans:

Is America ready for a Mormon President?

[HT: Washington Post]

Gods bless the churches in Alabama where leaders of Episcopal, Methodist and Roman Catholic churches, representing 338,000 Alabama residents, filed suit Monday to block enforcement of the state’s new immigration law, claiming it prevents free exercise of religion. The Southern Poverty Law Center has also filed a suit opposing the law.

The law, signed by Governor Robert Bentley on June 9 and set to go into effect September 1, broadens police powers, requiring local authorities to identify illegal immigrants. Alabama is the fifth state to enact legislation which

requires police officers to verify the immigration status of anyone they stop and suspect may be in the U.S. illegally. Businesses must use a federal database called E-Verify to determine whether job applicants are eligible to work. In addition, the measure makes it a crime to rent housing to illegal immigrants.

Bishop Robert J. Baker of the Birmingham Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church in Alabama said in a statement that the law:

interferes with the biblical imperative of hospitality which our churches have adopted and encoded in various documents of governance. It aims to shut the doors of our churches and social ministries, against our wills, to a whole class of people, denying them access to such basic human needs as food, clothing, shelter, and, most importantly, worship of God.

It was lack of hospitality which lead to the fall of Sodom and Gomorrah…

And in other religion news, lots of Americans are just ignorant, according a poll conducted by Public Religion Research Institute in partnership with Religion News Service.

Most Americans (56 percent) say it’s important for a candidate to have strong beliefs, even if those beliefs differ from their own…Yet the religious groups most firmly behind this point — white evangelicals (73 percent) and ethnic minority Christians (74 percent) — often falter when asked about politicians’ religions.

For instance, 44 percent of white evangelicals know that Romney is a Mormon. At the same time, more than eight in 10 evangelicals say Mormon religious beliefs greatly differ from their own.

And while only one in three Americans can identify President Obama’s sect of Christianity (oh come on that’s splitting hairs, since he is currently an “unaffiliated Christian” and a former member of the United Church of Christ; seriously, what sect did Reagan belong to? Bush 1? Ford?), 18% still think the President is a Muslim!

In other findings:

At a little more than 70 percent, Republicans and Tea Party members are significantly more likely than Democrats (51 percent) to say it’s important for a presidential candidate to have strong religious beliefs. Tea Party members (46 percent) are even more likely than Republicans as a whole (38 percent) to say it is “very” important for a candidate to have strong religious beliefs.

Gary Scott Smith, an expert on presidential religions at Grove City College in Pennsylvania, told Religious News Service that white evangelicals

are going to be more likely to vote Republican, even if the party nominates someone who isn’t known for strong faith commitments. And if they don’t recognize that Romney’s a Mormon by now, then you wonder how attuned they are to politics anyway.

He added that

Americans have traditionally elected presidents who use religious language and seek divine guidance, especially when grappling with the moral conflicts of the day, provided that their beliefs are relatively mainstream and don’t conflict with national security.

And then there’s this–

—White evangelicals are the group most likely to say they don’t know what Bachmann’s beliefs are (51 percent), even though she attends a Baptist church, and only 35 percent say she has similar religious beliefs to them. [Thank gods on the latter!]

Rentboy.com, a NSFW site

(NB: Rentboy.com–a site favored by at least one Evangelical minister–is most definitely, incredibly NSFW!!!)

“Homo-hater exposed as hypocrite” has almost become a routine story–kinda like family-values politicians who get busted with some not-their-wife-type–but ooooh, it’s still such delish fun when an anti-gay Evangelist is caught red-handed with a rentboy from Rentboy.com!

And that’s what happened to the Rev. George Alan Rekers, Maimi-based Baptist minister, co-founder with James Dobson of  the virulently anti-gay, rightwing Family Research Council; a state’s witness in favor of Florida’s gay adoption ban; board member of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) a reparative therapy organization looking to turn gays straight; and author of such anti-gay screeds as Growing Up Straight: What Families Should Know About Homosexuality.

Seems Rekers met a blond twenty-something described on Rentboy.com as

sensual…wild..up for anything

with some rather nice sounding body parts. For rent.

And Rekers took this sexy chap to Europe to hold his bags. Yup, according to an interview with New Times– conducted after the couple was spotted and photographed at Miami International Airport returning from their foreign romp–Rekers hired the dishy young man because

I had surgery and I can’t lift luggage. That’s why I hired him.

Neither Rekers nor the foxy fellow deny meeting through Rentboy.com, which is clearly a site dedicated uniting men who are willing to pay for sex with  very fit, very naked men who would like to make some extra cash by having sex.

One would think if Rekers wanted his luggage carried–versus his sacks handled–he could have found the help he needed through an employment agency or a church group…

[HT New Times]

Full disclosure: I practice an African Diasporic religion, and after the Haitian earthquake, along with a donation to the Red Cross, I gave a small sum to help the voudou community. In other words, I have a religious opinion; and like Brit Hume, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, the right to express it in the media.

Tuesday, Evangelicals violently disrupted a traditional religious ceremony in the Cite Soleil slum, located just outside the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. According to AFP:

Police said a pastor urged followers to attack the ceremony, resulting in a crowd of people throwing rocks at the voodoo followers.

Throwing rocks? WTF?! Is this anyway for Christians to act? Are they all so sinless?

Today the Washington Post reported that a two-year study by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs shows

American foreign policy is handicapped by a narrow, ill-informed and “uncompromising Western secularism” that feeds religious extremism, threatens traditional cultures and fails to encourage religious groups that promote peace and human rights.

While our foreign policy at a governmental level may be “handicapped” by secularism, the private sector is screwing up by pushing their religious agendas, retarding efforts to actually do a greater good.

In the wake of January 12 earthquake, hundreds of religious groups headed to Haiti bringing food, water and aid, some including solar powered Protestant bibles and their own religious tracts in their care packages. Some called themselves “Volunteer Ministers” and interfered with medical personnel in attempts to recruit.  It’s a huge dog pile as minsters of God ply  Haitians with various versions of salvation.

Religious tensions have increased and accelerated. Dr. Christos Kioni, the Florida-based vodou expert profiled in Christine Wicker’s Not In Kansas Anymore wrote us:

The violence fundamentalists have engaged in upon the practitioners of Vodou in Haiti is fueled by a sectarian demon. It is the same spirit that spurs Muslim radicals to engage in terrorist activities in the Name of Allah, it is the same spirit that fanned the flames of the Inquisition and Crusades. Christians have long ago abandoned their faith in the authentic teachings of Christ that God is Love. They have also forgotten that Christ said to his disciples “Other sheep I have that are not of this fold.” These radical evangelicals show no religious tolerance nor the Fruit of the Spirit by their rhetoric and actions. Such acts of violence reveal just how far Christianity has backslidden.

Earlier this month, as reported in the New York Daily News Max Beauvoir, vodou’s supreme leader

believes Christians in Haiti are taking food and supplies, and not allowing them to reach needy people outside Port-au-Prince.

“They take everything they get to their own people,” he said, “and that’s a shame.”

The Chicago Council on Global Affairs recommended:

Empowering government departments and agencies to engage local and regional religious communities where they are central players in the promotion of human rights and peace, as well as the delivery of health care and other forms of assistance.

Local and regional should mean traditional and indigenous, not just the missionary groups and those they convert.

Catholicism and vodou are the Haiti’s traditional religions.  Vodou, more commonly spelled as voudou or voodoo, is a syncretic faith combining various West African religions carried by slaves with the colonizing French’s Catholicism and aspects of the Northern European folk faiths. A voudou ceremony held by escaped slave and hougan (voudou priest) Dutty Boukman was the catalyst for Haiti’s 1791  slave rebellion that led to the island’s freedom.

Pat Robertson–who later backpedaled after a public outcry–had harsh words about Haiti’s history and blamed the country’s troubles on their faith:

They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon the third, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you will get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it’s a deal.

That sort of intolerant thinking is what leads to actions like Tuesday’s stoning in Jesus’ name. AFP reported:

Rosemond Aristide, police inspector in Cite Soleil, said he has since spoken with the pastor, who agreed to allow voodoo ceremonies to take place there. However, Aristide could not explain why no arrests were made nor provide further details.

Beauvoir claimed hundreds of Protestant Evangelicals along with other people they hired attacked the ceremony, causing a number of injuries.

KWTX reports that the attackers were Haitian Christians.

Praying and singing, the group was trying to conjure spirits to guide lost souls when a crowd of evangelicals started shouting. Some threw rocks while others urinated on Voodoo symbols.When police left, the crowd destroyed the altars and Voodoo offerings of food and rum.

Christians supposedly follow the Prince of Peace; unfortunately, their hostile behavior could lead to some repercussions. Max Beauvoir  told AFP:

It will be war — open war. It’s unfortunate that at this moment where everybody’s suffering that they have to go into war. But if that is what they need, I think that is what they’ll get.

Dr. Kioni added in email:

I agree with my friend and colleague, The Supreme Servitor of Vodou, Ati Max Beauvoir, that this attack by the evangelicals is a declaration of war. These Bible Thumpers have no idea how powerful Vodou is nor how lethal it can be.

We are mobilizing our forces to meet this demonic spirit head on; bullets nor pious, hypocritical prayers have no power where Vodou is concerned. Vodou will be recognized and accepted as a valid and legitimate system of spirituality just as the Wiccan and Pagans have been accepted. Freedom of Religion is a right and no man nor religious organization has a corner on God nor salvation. There is only ONE God and His Universal Name is Yawe.

The Chicago Council’s Richard Cizik (from the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, who ought to be taking those rock tossers to task!) said:

Some parts of the world — the Middle East, China, Russia and India, for example — are particularly sensitive to the U.S. government’s emphasis on religious freedom and see it as a form of imperialism.

It’s also a form of  imperialism to proselytize and try to convert people during a disaster when they are at their most vulnerable. Note that the pastor who incited the stoning “agreed to allow” traditional religious ceremonies on native soil. WTF? Talk about imperialism.

I deplore the actions of those Evangelicals in Cite Soliel–all thinking and all loving people do–and pray that the Haitian people will not return ignorance and violence with more violence.

As an American, I ask my fellow Americans, whatever faith they may be, to act with grace and dignity, respecting the religious traditions of those to whom they bring aid.

Oh ministers and pastors and your flocks, do unto others as you would have them do unto you–and really, in a disaster aid situation, would you want someone trying convert you to say Islam or some arm of Christianity that doesn’t jive with yours? May peace prevail in Haiti.