Now don’t get us wrong. We have a modicum of respect for Albert Brewer, especially since that dirty, racist 1970 George Wallace campaign against his run for governor was recently named Number One on the Most Negative Campaigns of All Time.

But Mr. Brewer’s recent decision to recruit and hire Andrew Westmoreland away from Ouachita Baptist University in Little Rock, Arkansas - even after he admitted lying about praying about taking the job - raises all kinds of questions about religion, ethics, politics and education.

Baptist Samford U. Hires President Who Admits Lying About Praying

Photo by Glynn Wilson

Speaking of connecting with nature, after a couple of springs of trying we now have blue birds breeding in the backyard. I managed to get a decent shot of one a couple of days ago after returning from the trek to New Orleans.

Meanwhile, the breaking news this morning that the wife of a charismatic Church of Christ minister slain in Tennessee was arrested and charged with the murder when she turned up in Orange Beach, Alabama, raises even more questions about what’s going on in the so-called “faith-based community.”

Slain Tennessee Minister’s Wife to Be Charged with Murder

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Can we please stop the religious crusades and jihads and get on with the business of saving the world and savoring life?

If you find yourself saying, “The world has gone crazy,” then think about this. You don’t hear a lot these days about pot smoking, beer drinking, nature loving hippies causing the world a lot of trouble.

What the world needs more of are canoes on top of vans and a reconnection with nature. Alabama native and Harvard scholar E.O. Wilson called it biophilia, and it may be more important to our mental health than any words that could ever be uttered from a pulpit.

So forget the preachers and the religious educators who lie about prayer. It’s beginning to look like a beautiful spring around here, even if it is still a bit cool. Get out of the house and try to enjoy the outdoors.

And if you really feel like you must, say a “thank you” to whichever god you worship. We tend to find more value in the Gia theory, and believe when the founding fathers of our country talked about “natural rights,” they were thinking more about the laws of nature than the laws of Judge Roy Moore’s Old Testament Ten Commandments.

Think about it…

Here’s one of the best political quips heard yet in the ongoing fight over the separation of church and state.

In a recent debate over a proposed Constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage before the Maryland Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, Sen. Nancy Jacobs, a Republican who represents Harford and Cecil counties, engaged in an impassioned debate with Jamie Raskin, a constitutional law professor from American University, over the influence of the Bible on modern law, according to the Baltimore Sun.

“As I read Biblical principles, marriage was intended, ordained and started by God - that is my belief,” Jacobs said. “For me, this is an issue solely based on religious principals.”

Raskin shot back that the Bible was also used to uphold now-outlawed statutes banning interracial marriage, and that the constitution should instead be lawmakers’ guiding principle.

“People place their hand on the Bible and swear to uphold the Constitution,” Raskin said. “They don’t put their hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible.”

Emotions Flare Over Same-Sex Marriage

Touche and hear, hear!

God is back at the top of the Alabama Legislature’s agenda for the upcoming 2006 session, according to the Associated Press.

Faith may move to the forefront during the 2006 session of the Alabama Legislature.

Not only will each day’s legislative session open with a word of prayer, lawmakers will return to Montgomery armed with a cache of bills aimed at giving God a higher profile in day-to-day life.

Religious issues may top legislative session agenda

Will the people of Alabama never learn that spending so much of the government’s time on this issue is not only a massive waste of everybody’s tax money - which might be better spent on things like science education - but is simply a way for politicians to manipulate the masses and distract them from the other very real social problems facing the state?

And why is it that the Montgomery bureau of AP always likes to focus on God and politics and Judge Roy Moore in a way that does not really point out why it is a problem?

Good news out of North Carolina this morning as the preacher quit who ousted congregants because they would not march in lockstep with President Bush.

The bad news is, thanks to one of them judges the GOP likes so much who only interpret the law and don’t make law, it looks like Vice President Dick Cheney will be able to keep his energy task force records secret afterall.

And, another one of them great Republican judges allowed United Airlines to drop retirees like a rock in what even the AP is calling the largest corporate-pension default in American History.

Also, this just in. The secret service in the former Soviet republic of Georgia says someone threw a hand-grenade near President Bush. The bad news is, it didn’t go off.

Just kidding of course, but hey, we understand the frustration.

The New York Times editorial page captures it pretty well on the issue of the Bush administration’s crass attempt to capitalize on the discovery of a live ivory-billed woodpecker in the Big Woods of Arkansas.

These people have absolutely no shame.