Bloggence, Cunning, Exile

Unbelievable Biblical Madness

Counter-jeremiad radio:

At a time when House Majority Leader Tom Delay calls for enacting a "Biblical worldview" in government, when Christians are asserting their ideals in the selection of judges, in public school science classes and elsewhere, This American Life spends an hour trying to remember why anyone liked the separation of church and state in the first place. Julia Sweeney, among others, gives a full-throated defense of godlessness. Julia's faith began to crack after reading Biblical passages like the one pictured here, of Abraham about to cut the throat of his beloved son, Isaac.
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The problem is that many Americans today say they are quite willing to kill their children if the voice of "God" tells them to do so. After all, it's in the Bible. God sometimes asks strange and disgusting things of us. But as Gershwin wrote in those immortal lyrics:

. . .
Oh Jonah he lived in de whale
For he made his home in dat fish's abdomen
Oh Jonah he lived in de whale
. . .
It ain't necessarily so
De things dat yo' liable to read in de Bible
It ain't necessarily so

C.B. tells me that he was glued to the seat of his car by this "wonderful monologue about the craziness of The Bible and Julia Sweeney's 'de-conversion.' Her spiel was so right on and funny at the same time that after I found a spot to leave my car I was compelled to sit there and listen for the remaining twenty minutes for her to finish. It was well worth it: the funniest, most profound iconoclastic bit I’ve ever heard on radio."

You can listen to it online here:
http://thislife.org/ra/290.ram

posted by E. Heroux @ 9:00 AM