Over at Hot Air’s Vent, Michelle Malkin looks further into the hypocrisy of NBC as it relates to the scrubbing of religion from Veggie Tales. The same network that fought so hard to use the F-word in primetime now has “standards” that include not offending people. Malkin has examples of these wonderful “standards”.

(See also Sanitizing the Veggies from earlier this week.)

Technorati Tags: NBC, Veggie Tales, religion, media, Phil Vischer

It might be OK to show Madonna hanging on a mirrored cross, but don’t dare let Bob and Larry tell kids that God loves them.

The wildly popular VeggieTales kids videos about vegetables who talk and sing and act out Bible stories are being edited for their run on NBC’s Saturday morning educational program time, and the network says it’s because of time limits.

But the creator says that’s not exactly the case, and viewers will have to decide for themselves whether the result is good or bad.

…

“VeggieTales was originally created for home video and, in most cases, each episode is over 30 minutes long. As it appears …. VeggieTales has been edited down for broadcast without losing any of its core messages about positive values,” the network said.

Phil Vischer, the co-creator of the characters, said that comment was “interesting.”

“As a guy deeply involved with the project, I know that statement is false,” Vischer wrote on his own weblog. “We sent them our first episode for TV, which was already edited to EXACTLY the right length, and they rejected it because, at the end, Bob the Tomato said, ‘Remember kids, God made you special and he loves you very much.’ They demanded we remove that line. The show wasn’t too long, it was too religious.”

He said the second also was sent edited for perfect timing. The response from NBC was an e-mail with a list of lines that needed to be removed, “each of them containing either the word ‘God’ or ‘Bible,'” Vischer wrote.

My first reaction was to wonder why NBC felt it needed to lie to the public about what it was doing. Vischer himself had no problem with meeting the standards, as long as NBC was being honest about it. Apparently, now they are. Vischer wrote:

So they’re being clear now, which is good. Whether or not you agree with their standards or the other shows they air is really a separate issue. They obviously have the right to set their own standards and apply them however they choose. I just wanted to make sure everyone was being upfront about the situation, because, well, I like it when we’re all being upfront.

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Joe Carter, in a recycled post at the the Evangelical Outpost which is just as relevant now as when he first posted it, deconstructs the idea that Christians somehow want to establish a theocracy in the United States.

When those of us on the “religious right” hear such paranoid ranting it naturally elicits a chuckle. After all, more than half of American evangelicals are either Baptists or non-denominational. We don’t even want a centralized church government much less a central government controlled by the church.

But since, as Joe notes, “even the most pernicious lie…contains some grain of truth”, he looks into the history of the idea and what folks typically mean by it today.

Technorati Tags: theocracy, evangelical outpost, christians

When a Christian prays “in Jesus name”, he’s just practicing his faith. When an Army Chaplain does it, at what he considers a religious event, he gets fined.

A jury of U.S. Naval officers has recommended a reprimand and a $250 fine per month for a year for a Christian chaplain who was convicted of disobeying an order not to wear his military uniform for media appearances.

Fortunately, this may not be enforced.

However, the jury also recommended the fine be suspended.

But apparently the jury wanted to send a chilling message about religious speech in the military. Is this a shot across the bow?

UPDATE:  See the comment section for this post on Stones Cry Out, where this was cross-posted, for a lot more information about this, including from someone who says they’re close to the case.  This case may not be as much a freedom of religion question as it has been painted by some (including me).
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With the return of Fox News reporter Steve Centanni and cameraman Olaf Wiig, there was a tale of a forced “conversion” to Islam. There are those, as the Captain notes, who condemn these men for doing so. I agree with Captain Ed, that we’re really in no position to pass judgement on them. Never mind that we don’t know what, if any, religion they do adhere to, I have to ask myself how I would react in the same situation. I would sincerely hope that I would have the guts and the faith to refuse, knowing that perhaps it may lead to a rather gruesome and painful death. Would my faith be enough to overcome the very present fear? I hope it would. I hope, but I don’t know. I’ve never been in a situation remotely similar to the one those two men were in. I can say what a Christian should do, but I won’t speak ill of someone who has the same human frailties and weaknesses I do.

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More religious openness in China? Could be happening.

A Christian author has been permitted to sign his books at a press conference at the Beijing International Book Fair, a first, according to Chinese officials.

“This is the first time in the history of China that an international religious leader has been permitted to sign copies of his book in a large public secular venue,” said Shen Weiping of the China Association for International Friendly Contact.

The signing was by evangelist Luis Palau, whose book, “Riverside Talks: A Friendly Dialogue Between an Atheist and a Christian,” was released Wednesday at a Beijing news conference cut short when the crowd of journalists, photographers and television crews rushed the stage to get autographed copies and interview the authors.

It’s the first time such a book has been issued in China, according to Craig Chastain of the Luis Palau Association, because it has a clear statement of the beliefs of Christianity and a description of how to become a Christian.

There were 500 copies of the book prepared for the book fair, but they were snatched up immediately.

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Technorati Tags: China, Luis Palau, Christian

A very interesting article by Cathleen Falsani of the Chicago Sun-Times on how religion, specifically Protestant Christianity, and more specifically the typical social events, is making folks fat. I can attest to the fact that much of the article’s observations are right on, and it’s something really worth thinking about.

Technorati Tags: religion, fat