Apparently Jack Waldvogel, treasurer of the Petoskey, Michigan, school board, was being “tongue-in-cheek” when he demanded in an e-mail sent to district staff and board members that the wording of the school calendar be changed from “Winter holiday break” to “Christmas break.” Yes, I suppose I can see the irony in the following passages:

We are, in spite of what the Obamessiah proclaims, STILL a Christian nation, founded on Judeo Christian principles.

Two choices here for our school district…either agree to change the “December vacation” back to “Christmas Break,” in ALL future publications (including the school calendar) voluntarily, or I will make such a stink, and bring out every redneck Christian Conservative north of Clare, to compel the District to do so. The press will love this one…

Our children need to know that we are a Christian nation and taking all reference to a higher being out of our educational vocabulary is wrong. Let the Ramadamians and the Kwanzanians bring their celebrations to school too…to share with our Christian children, but don’t cut God out of the school completely.

And possibly also when he wrote, “Don’t assume this is a joke…I’m being as serious as I possibly can here.” Only, I don’t think his irony was intentional–particularly because what’s ironic about all this is that his ranting e-mail proves why it’s important to keep  church and state separate: so the Waldvogels of the world can’t impose their radical religious (and historically inaccurate) ideas onto others.

Waldvogel refers to Muslims as “Ramadamians” and seems to have absolutely no understanding of or care about the Establishment Cllause. To borrow from the inimitable Barney Frank, trying to have a conversation with this guy would be like trying to argue with a dining room table (except that the dining room table would probably be far more stable). And I have no interest in doing it.

There’s an article in the New York Times this morning that serves as an appropriate followup to my post yesterday. Because this level of deception and fraud is so vast that it makes fortunetelling seem inconsequential (hat tip to Friendly Atheist):

FORT WORTH — Onstage before thousands of believers weighed down by debt and economic insecurity, Kenneth and Gloria Copeland and their all-star lineup of “prosperity gospel” preachers delighted the crowd with anecdotes about the luxurious lives they had attained by following the Word of God.

Private airplanes and boats. A motorcycle sent by an anonymous supporter. Vacations in Hawaii and cruises in Alaska. Designer handbags. A ring of emeralds and diamonds.

Because isn’t that what the Bible is all about?

But seriously, there really is no charitable interpretation of what the Copelands are doing: they are running an enormous scam that is preying on people that simply can’t afford it. They’re parading their own wealth in front of the very people that provided that wealth for them — in order to inspire them to make further donations. This is naked exploitation:

Many in this flock do not trust banks, the news media or Washington, where the Senate Finance Committee is investigating whether the Copelands and other prosperity evangelists used donations to enrich themselves and abused their tax-exempt status. But they trust the Copelands, the movement’s current patriarch and matriarch, who seem to embody prosperity with their robust health and abundance of children and grandchildren who have followed them into the ministry.

“If God did it for them, he will do it for us,” said Edwige Ndoudi, who traveled with her husband and three children from Canada for the Southwest Believers’ Convention this month, where the Copelands and three of their friends took turns preaching for five days, 10 hours a day at the Fort Worth Convention Center.

The Copelands certainly do embody personal prosperity: the New York Times reports that their Newark, TX based ministry has 481 employees and an annual budget around $100 million. They passed the collection buckets at least five times a day at the Fort Worth convention. Despite being under Senate investigation, they seem to be doing quite well!

But what about their followers? They’re not quite in as good a shape. The NYT reporter spoke to a few:

Stephen Biellier, a long-distance trucker from Mount Vernon, Mo., said he and his wife, Millie, came to the convention praying that this would be “the overcoming year.” They are $102,000 in debt, and the bank has cut off their credit line, Mrs. Biellier said.

And even though they are so deep in debt, it turns out that they have given thousands of dollars to the Copelands over the years:

The Bielliers were at the convention a few years ago when a supporter made a pitch for people to join an “Elite CX Team” to raise money to buy the ministry a Citation X airplane. (Mr. Copeland is an airplane aficionado who got his start in ministry as a pilot for Oral Roberts.) At that moment, Mrs. Biellier said she heard the voice of the Holy Spirit telling her, “You were born to support this man.”

She gave $2,000 for the plane, and recently sent $1,800 for the team’s latest project: buying high-definition television equipment to upgrade the ministry’s international broadcasts.

Let’s get this straight: They are now into six figure debt but still have given thousands to the ministry in recent years to buy a private plane and high definition broadcasting equipment!

That offends me to my very core as a human being. These people may be gullible, but that still doesn’t justify their exploitation by the Copelands. After all, faith is still very strongly built into American society. Even though the United States is now trending more secular than in the recent past, most people are still raised in households where they are taught that religious belief must ultimately hinge on faith rather than critical thinking. Indeed, I think that many believers and nonbelievers alike would agree that faith and critical thinking have many incompatibilities. The nature of God is supposed to be ineffable, right?

When you couple that with the fact that religions are interpreted here on earth by other human beings (emissaries direct from Heaven don’t actually show up at the Fort Worth Convention Center to preach, at least, as far as I know), then that is a recipe for exploitation by charismatic people acting with guile. Excessive credulity plus a pleasing message that simultaneously taps both people’s self interest and their desire to give and be charitable is toxic for the financial health of people like the Bielliers.

What’s the answer? As the NYT article mentions, the Copelands may be abusing their tax exempt status as a ministry, and if that is found to be true, then they need to be stopped. That is a short-term solution that may save some of their followers some money. But in the long term, we need to work hard to make critical thinking a centerpiece of education at all grade levels. A little healthy skepticism is the antidote to the prosperity gospel.

From today’s Washington Post comes the story of a “self described Gypsy” who is challenging a ban on fortunetelling businesses in Montgomery County, Maryland.

Nick Nefedro didn’t need to have his palm read or look to Tarot cards to know that his plan to work as a fortuneteller in Bethesda would fail. His fate was already written: Montgomery County says it is illegal to make money from forecasting the future.

But Nefedro, who says he is a Gypsy, is determined to change that. He has enlisted the American Civil Liberties Union in his year-long fight to overturn the law that calls his livelihood fraudulent. He argues that fortunetelling is part of his heritage and that prohibiting him from working as a fortuneteller amounts to discrimination.

Mr. Nefedro characterizes the Montgomery County ban as “persecution against Gypsies,” which he ties into the historic persecution that the people commonly called Gypsies (also known as the Romani) have suffered across Eastern and Central Europe. He points out that Romani were often regarded to be thieves and con artists wherever they traveled. And he argues that this ban inhibits his rights under the First Amendment.

Does the ban against fortunetelling businesses in Montgomery County inhibit Mr. Nefedro’s freedom of speech and religion? Or is this a different issue because he wants to make this practice into a business and charge people money for it? After all, it is not the fortunetelling itself but rather the practice of charging for it that is banned. Mr. Nefedro is fighting for his right to run a business rather than the basic right to practice his religious beliefs at all.

Indeed, it seems that, to a certain extent, his status as a religious practitioner is entirely wrapped up with his status as a business proprietor:

Like his father, who had been a fortuneteller in the District [of Columbia] in the 1980s, Nefedro turned the practice into a business. With family members, he has owned and operated a half-dozen fortunetelling businesses in the Los Angeles area and in Key West, Fla.

But he wanted to move closer to home. Born in the District, he spent much of his youth with friends and family in Bethesda.

It’s understandable that he wanted to return home and open a business. But, leaving aside the obviously cynical answer to this question for the moment, can a for-profit business be a protected religious practice as well? And should Montgomery County have the right to ban businesses of this nature if the goal is to protect consumers from fraud?

The ACLU of Maryland argues that prohibitions against fraud are enough, without the additional blanket prohibition against fortunetelling businesses, and that even if Mr. Nefedro’s speech is mainly commercial in nature, it should still be protected. From the ACLU of Maryland’s press release on the case, discussing their role in helping him appeal the original ruling against him by the circuit court:

Contrary to the ruling of the Circuit Court in this case, courts across the country have consistently held that fortunetelling is protected speech, and restrictions on it, like the Montgomery County law, are equivalent to absolute bans and therefore unconstitutional. In addition, the Supreme Court has held repeatedly that merely because speech is for profit does not reduce the level of protection it is due.

In defending the law in the Circuit Court, the County argued that it is a legitimate exercise of police power, aimed at preventing fraud. While the interest in preventing fraud is legitimate, the County already has a law accomplishing that goal. A separate provision of the County Code prohibits persons from intending to or engaging in fraud in any consumer transaction. Accordingly, the ban’s only effect is to prevent individuals from engaging in constitutionally protected activity.

In other words, since the county already bans fraud, then why ban fortunetelling? Any fraud that he may commit during the course of operating his business would already be illegal. But, the ACLU argues, a broad ban on fortunetelling only serves to prohibit government protected speech.

I’ve never gone to a fortuneteller, and I don’t think that I’m alone in my suspicion that many of them are trying to scam people. However, Mr. Nefedro insists that he can see the future, and he may very well believe that he truly can. There is no way to judge the sincerity of this belief; we’ll have to take it at face value. Rather, to me the appropriate questions to ask are: does he have a First Amendment right to operate a for-profit business based on his religious beliefs? And is for-profit fortunetelling a form of protected speech? Or should local governments be empowered to protect consumers against the fraud perceived to be inherent in such businesses?

What do you think?

If there is one common element to the many atheist billboards that have been put in recent months, it seems to be the universal reaction of condemnation from the religious community.  Slogans such as “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone,” and “You can be good without God” have been met with reactions that range from casual indifference, to mild offense, to outright hostility.

Most recently, in response to the potential bus ad in Iowa with the “Don’t believe in God?” message, Iowa Governor Chet Culver said, “I was disturbed, personally, by the advertisement and I can understand why other Iowans were also disturbed by the message that it sent.”  In reaction to the same message on a billboard in Florida, a woman who goes by the nickname “Big Mama” led a small protest (of children who undoubtedly did not know what they were protesting) against the ad, and said, “I don’t know the reason for putting this sign up. It says ‘Do not believe in God.’ How are we going to make it? Look at our schools, everyday. Everyday there’s something going on. Kids are out here killing each other, kids are here using drugs. Who else are they going to believe in?” For a truly bizarre reaction to an ad by the Indiana Atheist Bus Campaign that reads “You can be good without God,” watch this clip from the Fox News show “Fox and Friends.”

Let me first acknowledge that there are some atheist ads that can understandably be called offensive by religious people, just like there are some religious-themed ads that can be called offensive by…well, anyone with a conscience.  But to me, the statement “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone,” is little more than an objective fact. Essentially it says that some people do not believe in God, which, regardless of what you believe about anything, is objectively true. It is as true as a statement claiming that Christians exists. The same for the “You can be good without God;” you don’t have to be atheist to be good, but some people are. To me this seems as offensive as a hypothetical billboard that says “Don’t like Lobster? You are not alone.” It says nothing about the merits of eating lobster, or the taste, or really anything about lobster other than some people don’t like it.

I genuinely do not understand why this is offensive to anyone. This is about as uncontroversial as you can get. An ad that says “You are stupid and gullible for believing in God” is understandably offensive. This is not. The ads quoted previously are little more than objective statements of fact. That we are being offended by statements of fact is truly cause for concern.

Such reactions by these people suggest a deep insecurity about their belief in God, so much so that a mere mention of the word ‘God’ outside of the normal context in which God is praised in some way, immediately puts one on the defensive.  Are they in some way threatened by the mere presence of people who do not believe in God, or billboards that reflect this fact? Perhaps they didn’t even read the message correctly.  Just look at what Big Mama said: “I don’t know the reason for putting this sign up.” Don’t know the reason? Then why are you so angry? Big Mama claims that it says “Do not believe in God,” which, without the question mark, appears to be a command, equivalent to “Stop believing in God.” But it doesn’t say that, and anyone who takes 30 seconds to think about its meaning would see that.  Steve Doocy of Fox and Friends obsessed over a similar misinterpretation, asking why INABC used the word ‘God’ if they are atheist. Did he even bother reading the ad? His stunningly ignorant comments evoke the sort of jaw dropping bewilderment (rivaled only by Steve Harvey) that leaves me unable to even begin explaining what a ridiculous question that is.

If you think that one single comment is not an accurate representation of the way religious people have reacted, you have obviously not spent any time reading the “comment” section of any newspaper article that discusses this. This is truly an exercise in futility, so don’t bother.  Trust me that the comments there are far more hate-filled and vitriolic that Big Mama’s, but equally ignorant of the point.

If there is a lesson to be learned from this, it is that everyone needs to take a deep breath and try to understand each other a little better before we start shouting, lest we resort to some truly despicable behavior. Freedom of speech is good, but I would argue that the ability to comprehend what’s being said is even better. Once you have taken a moment to understand someone’s position, then you can start shouting.