More Episcopalian hijinks: Gene Robinson, who will spend the rest of his life with "first openly gay Bishop" prefixed to his name, is pumping up the volume this summer by getting married to his homosexual live-in partner [1], Mark Andrew, right before the Lambeth Conference in July. Questions from the cheap seats:
• Why doesn’t anyone ever interview Mark Andrew, the "wife" in this drama? He must have all kinds of stories at this point.
• Was he born with the name Mark Andrew, or did they specifically christen him with two apostle names for this epic union?
• Could this inspire a new History Channel special on Mark and Andrew–"Were They the Gay Apostles"?
• Since Mark was just a boy at the time of Christ, does that make Andrew a pedophile?
• Do we really have to read Gene Robinson’s new book, In the Eye of the Storm: Swept to the Center by God? Can someone just give us the Cliff’s Notes version?
How did this happen in New Hampshire? Isn’t that where the Manchester Union-Leader pops up every four years and tells us what "hearty stock" Americans are made of? I keep thinking it’s Vermont. Now that would make sense. Ben and Jerry may not be gay, but they would be gay-friendly. In New Hampshire, they still wear plaid shirts.
Gene, we love you. That’s the corporate metaphorical body-of-Christ "we," by the way.
You, too, Mark Andrew.
Soon They’ll Discover Elvis
Doddering vicars in the Anglican church, seeking relevance, have fastened on Doctor Who, the science fiction series beloved by Brits and tolerated by the rest of the world. Concerned about statistics showing that young people no longer find the church even remotely meaningful to their lives, church leaders showed clips from the series [2] at a conference of ministers, encouraging them to "engage with popular culture" by, for example, understanding the episode in which Doctor Who saves a family of Pompeians as "a reference to Genesis and Abraham’s bargaining with God over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah." One thing you can always count on the English to do is march boldly into the future using references to the very latest 45-year-old tv series.
Mein Gefiltefish
Norman Lee Toler won a major victory [3] in federal court, with Judge Jean C. Hamilton of St. Louis ruling that he was entitled to kosher meals while serving his ten-year sentence for statutory rape in the Northeast Correctional Center in Bowling Green, Missouri. State prison officials had challenged Toler’s request, saying that his 2002 conversion to Judaism was specious, that he had grown up in a Pentecostal home, that he has a jailhouse tattoo celebrating Hitler’s SS, and that he was caught with a cell full of white supremacist literature during a previous sentence for robbery. Here at the Door we believe it is not only humane, but essential, that every Jewish white-supremacist convicted rapist in this country be allowed to keep kosher.
Help from Unexpected Quarters
Just when I thought we were the only Christian publication supporting Jeremiah Wright forthrightly and without apology--his right to speak, his right to prophesy, his right to explain himself, and the nature of his Jesus-centric theology--along comes Jason Byassee with a spirited, reasoned and well-written reminder to evangelicals that Wright is family and we have to deal with him. There have been lots of "defenses" of Wright that implied "he’s a crazy man, but let’s give him a break," but Byassee is having none of that, just as we’ll have none of it. And Byassee has about 9,000 times more readers than we do because he’s an editor at Christianity Today [4]. I guess we’re more mainstream than we realized.