With Spearfish electing a Christian fundamentalist mayor, with Rapid City and Meade County insisting on unconstitutional public prayers on the taxpayers' dime, and with Rapid City school superintendent threatening to take Rev. Hickey up on his invitation to teach Bible classes in public schools, I gotta thank the Higgs boson that I still have the liberal media to fight for us secular humanists—

What's that, Wolf?

Speaking live to a survivor of the deadly tornado in Moore, Okla., [CNN anchor Wolf] Blitzer declared the woman “blessed,” her husband “blessed,” and her son “blessed.” He then asked, “You’ve gotta thank the Lord, right? Do you thank the Lord for that split-second decision?”

Oh no.

But as she held her 18-month-old son, Rebecca Vitsmun politely replied, “I’m actually an atheist.” A flummoxed Blitzer quickly lobbed back, “You are. All right. But you made the right call,” and Vitsmun graciously offered him a lifeline. “We are here,” she said, “and I don’t blame anyone for thanking the Lord.” Nicely done, Rebecca Vitsmun [Mary Elizabeth Williams, "Tornado survivor to Wolf Blitzer: Sorry, I’m an atheist. I don’t have to thank the Lord," Salon.com, 2013.05.22].

Oh yes!

I just got invited to join a Facebook group of atheists, agnostics, and other freethinkers. (It's a closed, secret group, so we can hide from the FSB our plot to break Pussy Riot out of Putin's gulag and bring them here for a concert at Our Lady of Perpetual Help.) I worry about hanging without atheists, since I know they can be a cranky lot. But it's nice to hear a fellow non-believer, standing amidst the horrific wreckage of her community, able to keep her calm in the face of the thoughtless prejudice of a newsman and a nation. The lucky Ms. Vitsmun is a model of how to politely but firmly state our differences.

The good folks of Chamberlain held their high school graduation ceremony yesterday. Students sat through the standard White/Western formalities organized by the majority culture inside the high school. After that ceremony, students received a second ceremonial recognition from members of the minority culture. Members of the Crow Creek and Lower Brule tribes, who said they were forbidden from assembling on school grounds, stood across the street from Chamberlain High School and drummed out their Lakota honor song, not just for the one third of the graduating seniors who are Indian, but for all of Chamberlain's graduates.

Maybe I'm just a colonialist poser, but the sound of Lakota voices raised in sincere, passionate, and defiant song stirs me more than any mechanical, occasionally flat rendition of Edward Algar's orchestral work. It's more authentic and dignified than marching students out to a recording of the Black Eyed Peas. (Such were the processional and recessional music choices here at Spearfish Sunday.) The Lakota honor song is music from the land we inhabit/occupy. It is a powerful reminder to the graduates of the challenges their home state faces and the reconciliation they must work to forge as they join us as full adult members of South Dakota society.

Meanwhile, Spearfish graduates, teachers, family, and friends, were treated to a different show of majority culture arrogance. There was no controversy leading up to the Spearfish graduation. Salutatorian Samantha Sleep came to the podium to make a speech with fellow salutatorian Elise Reid. After thanking Mr. Pat Gainey for his excellent Constitutional Government class, Miss Sleep called on everyone in the public school gymnasium to bow his or her head in prayer with her. With her father, school board member Jeff Sleep, duly bowed in his seat behind her at the podium, Samantha invoked the Heavenly Father (just one, just male). She quoted Jeremiah from the Christian Bible. She thanked that Heavenly Father for "granting us life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," thus conflating the Bible and the Declaration of Independence.

Most of the audience applauded this public display of majority piety, giving Miss Sleep that collective, smug, winking pat on the back that says, "Boy, you showed them!"... where the only them being showed is decent folks who recognize the wisdom of the Founding Fathers in protecting the integrity of both church and state by keeping them separate.

The Lakota honor song can include all students. The tribal members who offered their voices in praise of Chamberlain's graduates could have broken the rules, brought it inside, and interrupted the graduation ceremony with an act of civil disobedience. Instead, they respected the stated policy of their school board and offered their song afterward, off school grounds.

A Christian prayer excludes some students. The graduate who snuck her prayer (and she had to sneak it through, without school review, for it to have a chance of being legal) into the ceremony took advantage of public resources to engage in the sort of subtle psychological coercion that, if conducted by school officials like her dad at the very same microphone would have violated the Constitution.

We don't need more prayers in school. We could use more Lakota honor songs.

Gordon Howie and his pal Mike from Breaking Bad call for government action against religious folks down in Custer County:

It's good to see that even Gordon Howie can recognize the danger religious fundamentalism can pose to civil order and human rights. If the ten-year-old Pringle compound of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints has been holding people captive, not filing birth and death certificates, and forcing women into polygamy, then there is most certainly good cause for state and local government action against these yahoos. It's just funny to hear anti-government theocrat Gordon Howie calling for such government action against true believers of a different stripe.

Why do I listen to Gordon Howie's horsehockey? I suppose because no one else provides me with such convenient practice at rooting out contradictions. Listen to Howie's pal Pastor Ron Burtz undermine some of the main arguments his theocratic friends make:

Note that Burtz opens with the vague attribution standard to most of Howie's blogganalia: "Recently I heard a discussion in which a prominent Republican leader made a rather startling statement...." That's code for "Gordon and Ed and I were sitting around trying to come up with content for our fantasy TV show, and Gordon said...."

Now let's get to the rotten meat of this theocratic whining. Gordon bases much of his propaganda on the Christian persecution complex, the desire to re-enact the somewhat mythy martyrdom of early Christians.

But in his eagerness to forge an analogy between false Republicans and false Christians (and yes, Gordon Howie and his chosen elite thinkers are the sole and final arbiters of purity in politics and religion), Burtz slips and admits Christians have an easy time in America. "The Christian Church has had it pretty easy for over 200 years in this country," says Burtz. "It's so easy to be Christian," says Burtz. "Even in the early days of the Church when it was more difficult and downright dangerous to be a Christian..." says Burtz.

Come on, Ron. You can't base your claim of a plague of fake Christians on the contention that Christians have it easy, then base your call to arms on the contention that Christians are under mortal attack. Pick one argument, or lose both.

Burtz goes on to call a good chunk of the nice people going to church "weeds among the wheat," further establishing the exclusionary nature of arch-Republican politics and religion. They really don't want most of us hanging around them. They want to be part of an elite, a chosen few who elect themselves to glory by their pious works.

And they want their Jesus to cast the unworthy aside. They want a Lord who will look at us weeds among the wheat and say, "I never knew you." But they love to cite Jeremiah 1:5 to say that since God knew everybody in the womb, the state should ban abortion. Make up your mind, Lord and Burtz! Do you know those people you crave to condemn or not?

Stunningly, Burtz then undermines Howie's entire raison de politique with a mote-plank warning against rooting out Christians in Name Only (CHRINOs):

...[I]t's probably best not to go on a CHRINO hunt and try to weed out those false brethren among us. The most important thing is to make sure that you yourself are not one of them. Are you familiar with and living according to the party platform that's found in this Book...? [Ron Burtz, "428-13 Revival Report #37," TheLibertyToday, 2013.05.11]

So if words mean anything (though in Howie's world, I worry they mean less than the urgency of churning out content for 24-hour Patriot Gospel Television!), the proper lesson for angry conservative activists in the GOP is to stop agitating and robocalling against the Republicans with whom they are so disappointed and concentrate on their own personal political purity. Your reward is not in November, Stace and Dan and Bill; it's in Heaven with Ronald Reagan.

Burtz says Paul (of Tarsus, not Ron or Rand) warned of "false teachers and false brethren." Burtz needs to look in the mirror.

My friend Kal Lis puts theocrat extremist Bob Ellis and Democrat activist Anna M. Madsen in the same category of unrealistic political purist.

Madsen's prose is far superior to Ellis's, and she supports her arguments with far more concrete detail than Ellis does, but both seem to be looking for impossible political purity. Bismarck's phrase may have become a cliche, but it remains true: politics is the art of the possible.

It's certainly imprudent for South Dakota to veer further to right. It may also be impossible for South Dakota Republicans to become more conservative with becoming pharisaical, akin to the money changers in the temple. Given South Dakota's political landscape, it's impossible for a true progressive in the mold of Lafollette, FDR, or George McGovern to win a statewide race [Kal Lis, "South Dakota Politics and the Art of the Possible," The Displaced Plainsman, 2013.05.07].

Putting any Democrat in the same category as Bob Ellis should cause all parties a nasty rash. In this case, it is also fundamentally wrong. In her latest Daily Kos entry, Madsen simply contends that there is a certain threshold of conservatism that a candidate may cross that makes it impossible to accurately call that candidate a Democrat. Madsen says Stephanie Herseth Sandlin's voting record on gay marriage, the Affordable Care Act, credit card reform, employment benefits, and en ergy policy shows she has crossed that threshold. Madsen contends that South Dakota Democrats could make a clear case for why the state and national Democratic platform better serves South Dakota interests "if we had a chance to offer them without the interference of the Powers That Be preventing healthy conversation about our state party’s identity and direction."

Madsen offers a reasonable and debatable political argument. The Ellis text the arouses Kal Lis's attention has Bob Ellis prooftexting the Bible to say God loves Bob's righteous hate and that everyone who disagrees with his radical right-wing politics worships Satan.

South Dakota Republicans really grate my cheese, but even I will grant that calling Stephanie Herseth Sandlin a Republican is a far cry from calling liberals and moderates Satanic evil.

The good news from Rapid City city councilman Ron Sasso: he's pushing repeal of Rapid City's bike registration laws. Rapid City Municipal Code Chapter 10.64 currently requires residents to pay a $1 fee to register every bicycle. Anyone selling a bicycle must report the name and address of the bicycle buyer to the city. Sasso wisely advocates repeal of this nefarious bicycle registry, lest the government use that registry to punish patriots who would pedal to the revolution.

Oops—sorry. I'm still suffering Tea Party withdrawal. Sasso just thinks the unenforced bike regulations serve no good and discourage bicycle riding.

The bad news from Ron Sasso: he's running for theocrat-in-chief with a Web video that opens with the word Faith and defends the government establishment of religion through official council prayers. Sasso contends that he has a First Amendment right to use the public dais to promote his religion.

Sasso fails to understand that the First Amendment grants him the freedom of speech and religion as an individual, not as an agent of the government elected by the people. He fails to recognize that the First Amendment, like all of the Bill of Rights, protects individuals from exactly the sort of government encroachment on their freedom of religion that Sasso wants to commit from the dais. And he fails to explain how his faith will fill any potholes or pay any police.

Bradley Estes is challenging Sasso for his Ward 5 council seat. His billboards tell me that Estes creates jobs. Estes tells RCJ that he's not a politician... even though by running for office and seeking to affect how we live together in the polis, he is a politician. No word (and apparently, no website) from Estes yet on where he stands on bikes or theocracy.

I mark the National Day of Prayer by not praying. Gordon Howie marks the coinciding National Day of Reason by blurting irrationality:

Committed Christians have become targets for media and leftist leaders in America.

Christian holidays are being reduced to shopping days, or eliminated entirely. The President of our nation, who “claims” to be a Christian obviously prefers Muslims and humanists over Christians. His recent cabinet appointment of Anthony Foxx is a clear demonstration that he does not value the Christian faith.

Former US Representative Allen West goes so far as to say “The Obama administration is indeed aiding, enabling, and abetting our enemy, radical Islamic jihadists” [Gordon Howie, "American Leaders Abandon Christianity," News in Faith, 2013.05.02].

Howie is so apoplectic over Mayor Foxx's National Day of Prayer proclamation, which Foxx issued alongside a National Day of Prayer proclamation, that he holds Republican Senator John Thune complicit in the decline and destruction of America for not immediately condemning Foxx's nomination. Howie calls for theocrats to make American "One Nation Under God" again, lest we all die.

I can't make this stuff up. I can only respond with reason:

1. President Barack Obama is Christian.
2. Mayor Anthony Foxx has attended Friendship Missionary Baptist Church for over 30 years. He says he would base the title of his memoirs on the declaration of the power of faith in Hebrews 11:32-34.
3. Senator John Thune is pretty Jesus-y, too.
4. "One Nation Under God" is 1950's anti-Communist propaganda. We've never been one nation under God.
5. Christians, humanists, and anyone else who stands for reason and a separation of church and state actually reinforce both church and state against the destructive power of radical religious fundamentalism.

Happy National Day of Reason, everyone!

I don't go to church often. But when I do, I expect quality preaching.

Alas, that attention is more the attention of the theater director, the speech coach, and the social critic, not the eager seeker of cosmic truth. I feel pretty settled in my worldview. My secular humanism functions pretty well. My worldview helps me make practical sense of the world, provides a reasonable basis for my dad and teacher actions, and keeps me from setting off bombs in large crowds. So when a wedding (this weekend's rainy-snowy roadtrip) or funeral or pastor's installation draws me into a house of worship, I observe from outside the event, present but not politely participating, listening for good and bad theology, and noting performance elements that make the service more or less effective.

(Performance note on Saturday's wedding: the pastor spoke too extemporaneously, too quickly, and with sloppy enunciation. If in the beginning there was the Word, pastors need to take time to plan and pronounce every word crisply and clearly. John capitalizes that W for a reason.)

But there was a youthfully earnest time (the 1990s) when I would occasionally visit a church service and think, "Maybe it'll hit me!" You know: It. The Jesus whammy.

I paid one such visit to Praise Fellowship church here in Spearfish back in the late 1990s. That church has since renamed itself The Summit. Spearfish's new mayor, Dana Boke, goes there. Her husband is VP on The Summit's corporate filing.

A friend of mine went to Praise Fellowship. She spoke of speaking in tongues and other manifestations of the Holy Spirit. Frankly, all the shibboleths and mysticism my friend spouted had me worried. But I was also curious: if the supernatural was at work in that building in downtown Spearfish, maybe it would work on me. Maybe if I stepped up to where the fire burned brightest, maybe that warmth would finally sink into my cold, cold heart. (I think that's the bit of my friend in my heart talking, not me.)

So on a nice Sunday morning when I could have biked Spearfish Canyon, I went to a Foursquare (my friend told me that's the affiliation Praise Fellowship claimed) church. And I stayed cold. I didn't see any pillars of fire or speaking in tongues or quaking and shaking and rending of the veil. I saw a two-hour emotional make-out session.

Think about your last really good make-out session. You put on some romantic music—today, you can put on a long, uninterrupted iPod playlist, but in the old days, you had to find a really long album, or hope KELO-AM would play .38 Special and that you'd be into each other enough to ignore the commercial messages and the weather update. You know you're headed toward some objective, but you don't follow a strict structure. You close your eyes, you do some physical stuff, you throw in the occasional exclamation, and you tire yourself out. In your sweaty and earnest exertions, you chase that rapturous feeling around in your own misty depths, projecting it out onto the person you're with and the car and the slough and the moon above until you convince yourself that this isn't just your own RNA hoping to propagate; this is cosmic!

That's what church at Praise Fellowship felt like. Emotional manipulation replaced liturgy and rational theology. For two hours, everybody stood, often with arms raised, a good way to increase physical exertion, to make people a little more tired and more open to suggestion. The music played non-stop, one gooey contemporary praise song merging into the next in airy, ecstatic transitions while the pastor (I can't recall if the man  was current CEO Dennis Allender) urged the faithful on in their emotional communion. The pastor offered no organized sermon. He just talked about opening hearts and feeling the Lord. He peppered his prayers with the predictable just—Dear Lord, we just want to thank You—that little faux-humble tag that you will hear multiple times any time a fundagelical talks to God. The pastor's purpose in the service was not to speak the Word or teach the flock, but to keep them flowing down a river of emotion, to make the service an emotional experience.

If I want an emotional experience, I can listen to Snow Patrol in the Epic trailer (or, more appropriately to the time I visited Praise Fellowship, play Fumbling Toward Ecstasy really loud). If I want to learn how the universe works and what a certain really old Book has to say about it, I need an educated, organized, and articulate preacher to lead me through the theological weeds and engage my brain along with my heart, not to put me through emotional calisthenics for a couple hours.

Before my visit to Praise Fellowship, I had trouble taking seriously churches that pick these cutesy marketing names instead of straight-up denominational names that tell us who they are and which theology they throw in with. Since that church service, I view such names as emblematic of a deep problem. A church that changes its name for popular appeal may do the same with its services, striving more for an emotional experience than rigorous theology.

I'm not shopping around for a conversion experience. My current worldview shovels the snow (what, again? It's April 22! Jesus H—oops, sorry!) well enough. But if there's conversion to be had, I'll find it in honest conversation and preaching, not the Sunday morning make-out I witnessed at a Spearfish church one long-ago Sunday.