{"id":839,"date":"2015-04-24T06:06:06","date_gmt":"2015-04-24T10:06:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=839"},"modified":"2015-04-24T13:53:22","modified_gmt":"2015-04-24T17:53:22","slug":"holding-the-bible-to-account","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=839","title":{"rendered":"Holding the Bible to account"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This year&#8217;s winner of the Pulitzer Prize for public service journalism links South Carolina&#8217;s high incidence of domestic abuse to the Bible &#8212; and the Southern Baptists are not happy about that.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bpnews.net\/44613\" target=\"_blank\">Pulitzer winners tie domestic abuse to Christianity<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The South Carolina newspaper that won this year&#8217;s Pulitzer Prize for public service journalism has drawn criticism for linking the Palmetto state&#8217;s domestic violence problems with its residents&#8217; belief in the Bible&#8217;s teaching about gender.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Just because the Bible describes [gender] roles is not any excuse for any type of abuse,&#8221; Mike Hamlet, pastor of First Baptist Church North Spartanburg in Spartanburg, S.C., told Baptist Press. &#8220;To suggest something otherwise is to misinterpret or deliberately misuse the Scripture. I think that&#8217;s what [the Pulitzer winners] have done.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Sorry, but the link holds.  Consult any survey of family and social pathologies and, invariably, they are most intense where the churches are strongest: drug abuse, venereal disease, domestic abuse, divorce &#8230; on and on.<\/p>\n<p>Christianity&#8217;s indispensable claim is that <i>you&#8217;re no damn good<\/i>, and so self-annihilation should be your goal &#8212; the absolute elimination of your self-interest and self-direction, because your <i>self<\/i> is innately evil and depraved.  Why should anybody be surprised that, in a culture where this degrading nonsense is taken seriously, the subterranean struggle against it takes unwholesome and destructive directions?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This year&#8217;s winner of the Pulitzer Prize for public service journalism links South Carolina&#8217;s high incidence of domestic abuse to the Bible &#8212; and the Southern Baptists are not happy about that. Pulitzer winners tie domestic abuse to Christianity The &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/?p=839\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=839"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":852,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839\/revisions\/852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bobfelton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}