21 Comments

1. POSTED BY J Perlstein  |  February 21, 2009 @ 10:41 am

   I think this idea of religion imploring us to be stewards of the earth is a new spin to keep membership up in liberal towns.
   This reminds me of those crunchy granola rabbis back in the 70′s who would show up in synagogue with a folk guitar to (unsuccessfully) attract the youth who were bored by windbag cantors and arthritic choirs, let alone basic ritual.
   The few times I attended Protestant services or Catholic mass, I never heard the environment discussed at all.
2. POSTED BY meridotz  |  February 21, 2009 @ 2:00 pm

   Wow, way to suck the positive message out of that post, Perlstein.
   Would you prefer that religion not evolve? Perhaps this event is an effort on the part of a religious community to encourage their congregation to do something other than pass moral judgement. I think it’s refreshing when I see rabbis, priests, pastors or otherwise making an attempt to reach out and embrace ideals that are not unique to one particular religion. Isn’t it a good thing if people’s faith can drive them to support other worthy causes aside from religion?
3. POSTED BY Sandy  |  February 21, 2009 @ 2:37 pm

   Me thinks that Perlstein has a Jewish name, but isn’t.
   The only somewhat (cloudy or fuzzy) take ya pick….. sorta kinda anti-Jewish comments I have ever heard on here, oddly have come from Perlstein.
   I see nothing wrong with mixing social issues of today within a Religious building.
   I am not gonna drive a flex-fuel FOREGN car, but, I do conserve energy, recycle, and do alot of other good for the earth & enviornment ways & means. As a religous person, of the Jewish faith, I find his post most offensive, as well as the writer!
   Windbag Rabbis?
   Imagine if I wrote Windbag Priests !!!!!
   Get a grip, Perlboy
4. POSTED BY nance  |  February 21, 2009 @ 2:51 pm

   I’m not Jewish but have been to many B’nai Keshet activities which hope to raise the collective consciousness. Never once was I solicitated to come to their services.
   You are either open minded or you are not.
   Perlstein – time to crawl out of your oyster dude. Green is all around you. It’s the way of the future and rightly so. B’nai Keshet is just spreading the word. There are green events all over by many groups, not just religious groups.
   Polish your pearl and reflect back the positive energy being reflected to you.
   Green is good for you.
   Didn’t your mother tell you to eat green?
5. POSTED BY J Perlstein  |  February 21, 2009 @ 3:02 pm

   Sandy, your response was pathetic. Perlboy indeed. Did your rabbi teach you that? Nice.
   Nance, I am pro-green thinking, very much so. I just don’t like organized religion.
   Meridotz, your point was well taken,I could have been less negative.
6. POSTED BY whatsupwiththat  |  February 21, 2009 @ 8:10 pm

   Puleeze, the manmade global warming carbon footprint doodah marchers already have more than a whiff of religious zealotry. It doesn’t need augmentation. What a madness-of-crowds farce. Go Gaea go!
7. POSTED BY parliamentfunkadelic  |  February 21, 2009 @ 10:53 pm

   I know quite a few people that do not recycle or practice “green” behavior, but they are mighty religious and would probably change their ways if their church did something like this. I think this is a great idea, as it affects believers and non-believers (like myself) alike.
8. POSTED BY Harry  |  February 22, 2009 @ 8:18 am

   Having lived in Utah and Texas for many years (no doubt as a result of severe karmic disruptions in former lives), I experience this religio-green development among the various believers as a leap in the right direction! I hope the tendency catches on in Utah and Texas where religio-political oppression targets various groups for state-sanctioned suffering.
9. POSTED BY Iceman  |  February 22, 2009 @ 12:37 pm

   What could possibly be wrong with local churches taking an active role in the total community? Why ae so many liberals scared of religion?
10. POSTED BY J Perlstein  |  February 22, 2009 @ 2:42 pm

    Iceman, to suggest that liberals are scared of religion is silly. You are confusing fear with antipathy. Then again, plenty of liberals are affiliated with religion. Does that surprise you? Check out all the Obama bumper stickers next time you drive by a synagogue or church parking lot while worship is taking place.
    Back to your theory–
    Remember that old GOP trick during the campaign where they talked all about Obama at the Madrasa, Obama is a Moslem, etc, etc? Who was scared then? Not liberals.
11. POSTED BY walleroo  |  February 22, 2009 @ 2:57 pm

    First you go sucking the positive message out of religion and now you’re sucking on green religion. If I didn’t know better, Perlstein, I’d say you were an atheistic close-minded earth-hating bastard. You’d better get with the program or before long there’ll be dead fish on your doorstep.
12. POSTED BY cathar  |  February 22, 2009 @ 3:06 pm

    Many liberals, Perlstein, are really only alright with religion when it suits their narrow political purposes. Peacenik Episcopalians are fine, for example, but conservative Episcopalians who don’t want openly gay clergy (and will affiliate with conservative African and Caribbean bishoprics to make their point) not so much. Ditto for vaguely Deist at best Congregationalists and Unitarians as opposed to anti-abortion, culturally conservative and fundamentalist Southern Baptists. Even in Judaism there are political rifts: reform Jews, oft including those not necesssarily the staunchest friends of the right of the nation of Israel to exist, vs. the Conservative and Orthodox factions who fiercely beg to differ.
    Nancy Pelosi gives out that she an “ardent” (her actual word, as if she’s suddenly channeling John Henry Cardinal Newman’s usage of the term)) Catholic, but somehow finds it inconvenient to agree with Church teachings in so many areas. Similarly, the sort of Catholic liberals would feel most comfortable with is the Martin Sheen variety, not the L. Brent Bozell type. The umbrella turns out not to be so grand and wide when it comes to doctrinal and political divagations.
    In our Father’s house there are supposedly many mansions. The problem is often getting liberals to admit that there is such a thing as structural variety there.
    And on Baristanet itself, it seems very few ever admit to adherence as an adult to a creed and its accompanying public devotions. It seems most posters are more enamored of those ceremony-holding semi-hucksters who were recently mentioned in a post here than of genuinely ordained clergy in any faith.
    Indeed, it almost seems a badge of honor for posters to thrust forward their LACK of formal religious affiliation. These are indeed the sort of people who would happily check, were they going on matchmaking web sites, the “Spiritual but not religious” box on questionnaires. (And whatever such an foggily formulated assertion actually means.)
13. POSTED BY J Perlstein  |  February 22, 2009 @ 5:11 pm

    Cmon Walleroo, you probably know by now that that I’m hardly the demon you suggest I am. Your dead fish illustration got me thinking of my Carroll Gardens days when I saw a dead canary in front of a notorious restaurant, and many are certain of what that means. Death to a “singer”, followed by a nice funeral, holy priest attending.
    All I suggested (albeit strongly) was that religion is suspect when it tries trendy stuff. If any religion (you pick one) was ultimate truth, like it pretended it was, this need to green-up would be an unneccesary move.
    Nevertheless, I’m glad that Tikkun Olam (repair or perfection of the world) and the parallel concept in Christianity has been expanded to suggest environmental efforts. What’s the Moslem term, by the way?
    Perhaps solar panels, composting toilets and green roofs on the Vatican is in the near future, who knows?
    Presently in the Mideast, Israel finished bombing Gaza. Self-defense against crude rockets aside, I suspect all that bombing generated black smoke and phosphorous gas that did little to ease global warming. That was one hell of a carbon footprint.
    By the same token, I doubt all the Jewish blood shed in the progroms did little good when it came to recharging the subterranean aquifers in Eastern Europe.
    And let’s not forget those pious Moslems who did their noble work on 9/11. The air quality has never been the same since.
    By the way cathar, we agree on only certain things, but I thank you for your considered response.
14. POSTED BY dannyboo  |  February 23, 2009 @ 8:08 am

    “Would you prefer that religion not evolve?”
    haha! good one!
15. POSTED BY Sandy  |  February 23, 2009 @ 5:41 pm

    Cather, with all due respect to you … you really do not believe this statement that you penned…
    “reform Jews, oft including those not necesssarily the staunchest friends of the right of the nation of Israel to exist….”
    I have been a member of two different Reform Synagogues over the past 22 years, and I can say without a doubt that I have yet to meet even one Reform member who did not fervently defend the Right of Israel to exist under it’s own rule.
    Reconsider that thought.
    When I was in St. Barnabas Hospital, a Priest walked into my room, looking for the man who had been in there (but he had been discharged)- so he met me. We became good friends as well as my Rabbi who visited too. The Priest & I had a couple of deep conversations. He stated that Israel and especially the Jewish people are our Brothers and in saving & keeping Israel, they are also saving & keeping Jesus birthplace, surely to be gone if the enemy conquers.
16. POSTED BY J Perlstein  |  February 23, 2009 @ 7:03 pm

    The Reform movement did not start out Zionist, Sandy. They moved in that direction when it was convenient to them, especially when membership began to slip away.
    In fact, back in their German cradle, Reform Jews didn’t even want to pray on Saturday, or in Hebrew. Prayers were conducted in German and on Sunday.
17. POSTED BY Mrs. Martta  |  February 23, 2009 @ 7:49 pm

    “Spiritual but not religious>”
    A perfectly fine definition, Cathar. Basically, it means someone who does not choose to belong to a particular organized religion but recognizes that there is something out there that’s humbling, mysterious, beautiful, and more powerful than man.
18. POSTED BY cathar  |  February 23, 2009 @ 8:19 pm

    Mrs. Martta, I will respectfully reply that “spiritual but not religious” is hardly a perfectly fine definition. It is basically New Age kultursmog (sorry, can’t type the right accents or typeface) and means essentially nothing. It is like reducing the Sufis, Lao Tse, Gerard Manley Hopkins, St. John of the Cross and Hildegarde of Bingen down to the level of syndicated advice columnists (kind of like Steve Adubato, but in flowing, monastic robes).
    And having had much experience several years ago with several demoiselles who used exactly that phrase to describe themselves, no, it usually does not mean folks who recognize “that there is something….” Not at bloody all. That you yourself may hold such a position is all to your credit, but usually the stance of “spiritual but not…” is just a convenient copout.
    To be “religious,” after all, is not necessarily to be tied to a specific denomination or creed. Dabblers in New Age philosophies, Theosophy, yoga and related matters often term themselves “sbnr,” but to even attempt a coherent discussion with most of them about, say, Francis of Assisi or John Wesley is well-nigh impossible for many reasons.
    Sandy, your experience with Reform Jews is not my general one, there we just differ. But certainly we should be able to agree that many of Jewish heritage, but not current Jewish practice in any of its 3 great branches, frequently constitute loyal troopers in the Israel-is-evil-and-has-no-intrinsic-right-to-exist legion. Indeed, such folks regularly trot themselves out both here and in Israel itself by way of making their pro-Palestinian political points. As for the priest you met, yes, there are often such who feel as he said to you (as do conservative, evangelical Christians, which you also should realize). But you should be glad you didn’t run into Catholic clergy more from the “Berrigan wing,” their views on Israel are generally quite different. And quite common in Europe on the political left.
19. POSTED BY Mrs. Martta  |  February 23, 2009 @ 8:25 pm

    “…in the Israel-is-evil-and-has-no-intrinsic-right-to-exist legion.”
    The only Jews I’ve met who hold this view are from ultra-Orthodox sects who don’t believe the State of Israel should exist before the arrival of the Messiah.
20. POSTED BY Sandy  |  February 23, 2009 @ 8:25 pm

    The Reform movement did not start out Zionist, Sandy. They moved in that direction when it was convenient to them, especially when membership began to slip away.
    In fact, back in their German cradle, Reform Jews didn’t even want to pray on Saturday, or in Hebrew. Prayers were conducted in German and on Sunday.
    AGREED !!!!!
21. POSTED BY cathar  |  February 23, 2009 @ 8:38 pm

    Mrs. Martta, I realize that surnames are never absolute proof of anything (a black soldier in my platoon in Nam was named DiPasquale and came from New Orleans), but when I read the list of those signees of angry, Israel-out-of-Gaza-immediately! type ads in “The Nation” and on frothing left-liberal web sites like Huffpo, they sound as much like members of the Zionist World Congress as they do any other conceivable affiliation. (Well, they never sound like members of either the Ancient Order of Hibernians or the Sons of Italy, but that’s another story entirely….)

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.