Today’s example is Beliefnet’s “Crashing God’s State Dinner,” which uses the antics of the party-crashing Salahis to reinforce standard dogma about Jesus:

Thank God the King of the Universe doesn’t have such boundaries around him. The Bible says that God has an open air policy in the “Oval Office” of heaven. Once we’re given a pass – the Bible says that coming to God in “Jesus’ Name” gives us that access – we can waltz in like we own the place. We’re children of the King after all. We do “own the place” so to speak. We can come to God in prayer like party crashers approaching God as if we’re “old buddies.”

As a public service to any religion writers who might read my blog, here are some equally topical column suggestions:

Hacking into God’s Climate Data Server:

Thank God the King of the Universe doesn’t try to subvert the peer review process.

A 31-Month Affair With God’s Cocktail Waitress:

The Bible says that God has an “open bedroom” policy in the “cocktail lounge” of heaven.

Obama to Send 30,000 More Troops to God’s Afghanistan:

Once we’re given a pass – the Bible says that coming to God in “Jesus’ Name” gives us that access – we can waltz in like we own the place. We’re children of the King after all. We do “own the place” so to speak.

Meredith Baxter, Mom on “Family Ties,” is God’s Lesbian:

We can come to God in prayer like former sitcom stars approaching God as if we’re “old lesbians.”

Hopefully this advice is useful and can help a few religion columnists survive the next round or two of layoffs.

• carbon dioxide
• third-world “kleptocrats” trying to usher in a “New International Economic Order”
• cow farts
• Marxism
• meat-eating
• Swiss prayers
• sunspots
• the earth’s increasingly-hot molten core
• nothing
• the Industrial Revolution
• government funding for studying global warming
• power-driven financiers and profit-driven corporations and their cartels backed by military might, looking to disguise their influence

And now, noted climatologist Benedict XVI has proposed a new theory: religious disbelief:

In fact, “when ‘human ecology’ is respected in society, environmental ecology also benefits.” Is it not true that inconsiderate use of creation begins where God is marginalized or also where is existence is denied? If the human creature’s relationship with the Creator weakens, matter is reduced to egoistic possession, man becomes the “final authority,” and the objective of existence is reduced to a feverish race to possess the most possible.

Of course, this theory is as nonsensical as all the previous ones. If anything, the non-religious are more environmentally responsible, because they don’t have to participate in earth-destroying religious rituals!

How many greenhouse gases do traditional open-air Hindu funeral pyres emit? Where is Greenpeace standing up against ritual animal sacrifice? Why haven’t Catholics retooled the sacrament of Anointing in order to lessen our dependence on oil? How many resources could be saved if the Hajj was held via teleconference? What about Zoroastrian Fire Temples? All the trees that are chopped down to make Shinto Ema? The precious fertile topsoil eaten by Juche practitioners. The paper wasted by Scientologists to artificially keep Dianetics on the bestseller list?

Not to mention the filthy polluting smoke used as part of every papal election? If that’s not an “inconsiderate use of creation,” I don’t know what is!

It turns out, though, there’s a simpler explanation for the quiet seas: Yahweh:

[Florida Governor] Crist said he isn’t trying to take credit, but he told a group of real estate agents Friday that he’s had prayer notes placed in the Western Wall in Jerusalem each year and no major storms have hit Florida.

Although few are willing to openly talk about it, it turns out that Crist is not the only one placing notes in the “Wailing Wall” as a gubernatorial aid. Through careful research, I’ve found the following examples.

Gray Davis

“Dear god, I’m so sick of this crap job, please get me out!”

Mark Sanford

“God, I’ve always wanted to make it with a wise Latina! Can you help?”

Bobby Jindal

“Please, god, make me a decent public speaker!”

Jim McGreevey

“God, if you can just make Golan return my affections, I promise that I’ll become a priest after I get kicked out of politics!”

Rod Blagojevich

“God, you fucker, I know you’re interested in this fucking Senate seat, but you’re not willing to give me anything but appreciation? Well, fuck you!”

Obviously, the results are somewhat iffy.

That explains why a surprising number of college students are looking for (government / religious) jobs. Applications to graduate programs in (“public policy” / religion) are up substantially over previous years:

Though Attridge identified declining job prospects as a potential motivator for students to continue their education, he pointed to a crop of contemporary moral and (political / religious) issues as a key influence on students seeking [to] study (public policy / religion).

Among those relatively new issues are global climate change and “gross immorality in the financial sector,” Attridge said, which may have inspired students to take a more (command-and-control / command-and-control) approach toward community service.

“There are questions about whether the fundamental moral fiber of the country is corroded,” Attridge said.

The explanation resonates strongly with Stephen Blackmer, who will begin studying for a master of (public policy / divinity) at [Yale] this fall. Blackmer, 53, had worked in conservation and sustainable development for nearly 30 years before answering a call to join the (government / ministry).

Blackmer said his experience has taught him that the main obstacle to slowing climate change is not technological or economic, but (political / spiritual).

“Climate change is in effect a (political / spiritual) problem, because we’ve developed the technologies to protect the world from climate change, but not the (authority / wisdom) to use them,” he said.

Blackmer, who said he hopes to join an “environmental (lobby / ministry)” after graduating, said the slumping economy made his decision to attend (policy / divinity) school easier.

In fact, people like Blackmer are overwhelming graduate programs, who are seeing record numbers of applicants. Probably, though, there’s nothing to worry about:

Attridge and Aleshire take a positive outlook to the future of (political / theological) education, and both said they expect the applications to continue to rise.

“We’re at a cultural moment when there’s a lot of concern about the common good,” Aleshire said. “(Politics / Religion) is a social force.”

And if you are a scholar of religion like I am, you probably ran to their website so you could download the data and play with it in Excel. You probably also hunted down some UCR data on crime. You probably started searching for correlations. And you were probably surprised to discover that higher Baptism rates mean higher murder rates!

Now, whenever we discover a relationship like this, we need to be careful. In general, correlation does not imply causation. There are certainly other options available for explaining this relationship:

1. Reverse Causation

If you flip the graph, you could construct the alternative hypothesis “murder causes baptism”. However, dead people cannot be baptised (unless you are a Mormon, which most Southern Baptists are not). QED.

2. Third factor causes both

Maybe Global Warming is responsible. After all, when it’s hotter, the blood gets angry. And also when it’s hotter, the cool dip of a baptism seems more appealing. Some NASA data should clear things up:

Looks like that doesn’t work either.

3. Coincidence

If this weren’t a religious phenomenon, we could chalk it up to “coincidence”. However, as everyone knows, a coincidence is just “god’s way of remaining anonymous” (as opposed to everything else he does to remain anonymous, like being invisible and silent and imaginary). In the land of religion, there are no coincidences!

4. Both cause each other

Maybe there’s some sort of physical law linking both, like “Joel’s Law of Murder and Baptism”: M = sB + G, where s represents sunspots, and G represents god’s wrath. If this were the case, increasing the murder rate would necessarily increase baptisms too.

Clearly there is room for further research here. Nonetheless, my preliminary Sunday-morning social science makes one thing clear: Baptism kills!