The Observation Deck

This does bother me. If my children were young, I wouldn't let them go without adult supervision to keep them away from these individuals.

I am a big proponent of free speech and religious freedom. But is there any limits on people approaching children in a skatepark or playground or swimming pool? If skateboarding is evil, would a girl in a swimsuit be just as bad?

I guess on the upside, it might facilitate some interesting philosophical discussions in the homes of some of these children - if the parents know about it. Thanks for sharing.

Well, for once the myriad of permits at Lakewood City Hall might do some good in this situation. My understanding, and I am not a lawyer (as is often pointed out by my colleagues), is that you need a permit from the Director of Public Works to distribute "handbills" in any public park.

This is an interesting situation that one could not have expected to arise. Who'da thought that the most trouble we would have down there would be from bikers and evangelicals. I spent too much time trying to convince policymakers that the dysfunction would not be coming from the skaters, glad to know I was on the right page.

Does anyone know if the evangelists are going to make another appearance tonight?

Calling all drumers.

Tip O’Neil said it – “all politics is local.â€Â￾

Vince’s take on the drug rehab and religious conversion plays out in venues across the Empire.

Wayne Madsen provides broad historical context on the organizational nexus between drug rehab and religious conversion in “Where Those Who Now Run the U.S. Government Came From and Where They Are Taking Us.â€Â￾

“After drug rehab, Bush returned to Houston to perform prior court-arranged community service with Project P.U.L.L. (Professional United Leadership League), a Houston inner-city program to help troubled and mostly minority teens….. Willie Frazier, another former Houston Oiler and a P.U.L.L. volunteer in 1973, recalled to Knight-Ridder that the senior Bush impressed on White that an “arrangementâ€Â￾ had to be made for the Junior Bush. P.U.L.L. closed its doors in 1989, a year after White’s death but several P.U.L.L. associates remembered that unlike other volunteers, Junior Bush’s hours as a volunteer had to be accounted for because he was in some kind of “trouble.â€Â￾

Senior Bush had a few other chores to take care of. One was to thank Harris County District Attorney Carol Vance, a past president of the National District Attorneys’ Association, for helping to drop the drug charges against Junior and expunging the arrest record. According to close Bush associates, in appreciation, Mr. Vance was rewarded with a partnership at the prestigious Houston law firm of Bracewell & Patterson. First International Bank (later InterFirst Bank), on whose board Senior Bush served, was a major client of Bracewell & Patterson. InterFirst and its predecessor served as a primary money conduit for Saudi and other foreign money that was pumped into the business and political campaign coffers of both George Senior and Junior.

Vance also had links to the organization that would become Colson’s Prison Fellowship Ministries, an adjunct of the Fellowship. Vance, an evangelical Methodist, ministered to inmates in solitary confinement in Texas prisons. Later, Vance would team up with Colson in a variety of prison ministry projects in the United States and Brazil. Governor Ann Richards appointed Vance to the Texas Board of Criminal Justice, the entity that oversees the state’s Correction’s Department. Vance convinced newly-inaugurated Governor George W. Bush to establish faith-based prisons in Texas, a move that was endorsed by Colson. Bush also permitted ministers to act as detoxification counselors without professional training and certification. In addition, churches were allowed to operate day care centers without state accreditation. Vance became one of the leading advocates of evangelical-run prisons in the United States – something that Colson, Bush, Coe, and the Fellowship all advocated. Vance also saw Satan as being behind Ouija boards and the game Dungeons and Dragons – cultural smears that would be extended by his fellow evangelicals to other innocent children’s icons like Harry Potter, The Wizard of Oz’s Good Witch of the North and Wicked Witch of the West, the Vulcan Mr. Spock in Star Trek, and Jedi Knight Yoda in Star Wars, all accused of spreading Satanism and the Teletubbies character Tinky Winky, SpongeBob SquarePants, Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street, Buster Baxter the Bunny from Public Broadcasting’s Postcards from Buster, and Barney the Dinosaur, all charged with promoting homosexuality.

Junior Bush’s time in San Diego at a Christian drug and alcohol rehabilitation center is where the future President of the United States would first be given large doses of Jesus indoctrination….

The Fellowship’s network of fundamentalists would never be as important as it was in the 2004 presidential election. With polls showing the race either tied or with Democratic candidate John Kerry ahead in key “swingâ€Â￾ states, the alert to very zealous Christian activist went out across the nation.

The prime target was Ohio, where the Fellowship and its fundamentalist allies had built up a vast network of operatives in state and local government, including state agencies and county election boards. But more importantly, the Fellowship had links to the election machine companies that would be crucial to fixing election results in Ohio, Florida, New Mexico, Nevada, and other states – ensuring that Fellowship core member George W. Bush had four more years to put a practically indelible fundamentalist stamp on the United States. The money invested over the years by Lennon, Armington, Lindner, and other right-wing Ohio captains of industry in fundamentalist Christian causes and think tanks like the Ashbrook Center finally paid off. The Ohio Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, who, copying Katherine Harris’s antics in Florida’s fraudulent 2000 election, used his government position and his co-chairmanship of Bush’s state election campaign to suppress the vote, especially in largely Democratic African-American districts.

Blackwell, who, as a former Deputy Undersecretary of HUD, was well versed in the art of distributing Bush political slush fund money and ensured that this was distributed far and wide in Ohio. This money is what Republican strategist Ed Rollins once called “walking around moneyâ€Â￾ – money used by Republicans in New Jersey’s elections to pay off African American preachers to turn out the vote for their candidates. In Ohio, this tactic paid off in polling places in churches. Instead of turning out the vote, some local preachers, white and black, aided and abetted in suppressing the vote. One of Blackwell’s closest friends is fundamentalist preacher Ron Parsley of World Harvest Church. At the New Life fundamentalist church in the Gahanna District of Columbus, machines tallied 4258 votes for Bush when only a total of 628 votes were cast. Similar chicanery and racketeering occurred throughout Ohio and in other states during the vote tabulation and recounting processes. Two of the voting machine companies contracted by Ohio are headed by people who are conservative Republican partisans – Walden O’Dell, the CEO of Diebold of Columbus and the Rapp family that runs Triad Government Systems of Xenia, Ohio. Both brand of machines caused election problems in Ohio and elsewhere.

For example, several churches in Mahoning County, Ohio were the scenes of voting irregularities. They include:

Price Memorial Zion Church, Precinct 2E, Youngstown (voters were given confusing information and many elderly voters were told their polling place had changed, also voters voting for Kerry had their votes switched to Bush).

Spanish Evangelical Church, Precinct 2A, Youngstown, machines inoperative and switched votes from Kerry to Bush.

Elizabeth Baptist Church, Precinct 2C, Youngstown, one voting machine failed to record votes properly.

Tabernacle Baptist Church, Precinct 3C, Youngstown, one machine failed to record votes.

Martin Luther Lutheran Church, Precinct 5F, Youngstown, one touch screen
machine broken the other erased votes.

St. John’s Greek Orthodox Church, Boardman, first two attempts to vote for Kerry go to Bush, third attempt records vote for Kerry. Poll worker brushes off complaints.

St. Nicholas Byzantine Church, Youngstown, machine records Kerry votes for Bush.

The skimming of votes in Mahoning County was replicated across the state. Ohio’s 20 electoral votes were delivered to George W. Bush just like manna from the heavens. For the fundamentalists who took part in the fraud, the “Christianâ€Â￾ ends were definitely justified by the Machiavellian ways.â€Â￾

For more see: http://www.insider-magazine.com/ChristianMafia.htm

Kenneth Warren

drums? How about baseball bats?

Freedom of speech often becomes freedom ro be rude.

Apparently we're not just talking about someone telling someone else about her faith. From the reports, it sounds like we have people telling children frightening things. Uncool.

How would people feel if a bunch of Ku Klux Klan members or neo-Nazis walked around our public parks telling black people and Jews like me that we're going to hell? I don't think people would be referring to freedom of speech quite the same way. I personally don't think our forefathers and foremothers intended for freedom of speech to become a tool to diminish others' freedom of religion. Adults using psychologically abusive methods of persuasion against children is not freedom of speech in my book.

Vince is right. For now, the best the kids can do is ignore the evangelists. We adults should look for ways to stop them. Thanks, Councilman Demro, for looking into this. Please let us know how we can help.

"By their fruit you will know them..."

Not all evangelicals are dominionists. Jesus said, "The Kingdom of Heaven is within you." Jim - the Armageddon comment was unfair to the millions of Christians worldwide who don't blog and spew fringe rantings on the internet. An interesting book I'm trying to make my way through this summer is "The Next Christendom" by Philip Jenkins:

"Jenkins...marshals the evidence that today's largest religion, Christianity, will grow exponentially...but the Christianity of 2050 will be very different from that molded by the 1,300 years during which Christianity was the faith of a rapidly developing Europe. The new Christianity will be liturgically anarchistic compared with the staid services of white, upper-middle-class people today. It will be overwhelmingly the faith of poor nonwhites living south of Europe, the U.S., and present-day Russia, and it won't reflect the values of the wealthy global north. It will revive Christianity's root emphases on healing and prophecy because its adherents will resemble the poor and oppressed who first embraced the redemption, the healing, and the blessing that Jesus promised. As he makes his case, Jenkins dispels some fashionable myths about historic Christianity; about historic Christian-Islamic relations; and about the nature of presumably pacific Hinduism when it is politicized. He also speculates trenchantly on how the problems of the Islamic and Christian global south will affect the global north, requiring genuine charity of the rich and genuine discernment of their leaders. A book everyone concerned about humanity's immediate future ought to read."

After reading all of the latest posts here, I realize that there is perhaps a disconnect between what actually is going on at the skatepark and what is being reported here. I think a little philosophical/religious/spiritual dialogue amoung young people at the skate park could be a healthy thing. Talk about it at home, talk about it out in the park. We all might learn something from each other, and connect in a way that would stop the narrow-minded, knee-jerk reactions.

I know Pastor Mike Bartalone. We worked together through a couple of interchurch efforts years ago. He has encouraged me personally through some very difficult times. I often listen to him on the radio at 9 a.m. on 1220 AM. One important thing about pentacostal, evangelicalism that might be helpful to keep in mind is its strong underlying non-conformist mindset. It is such a diverse movement. It defies catagorization.

An LO story about Religion in Lakewood or at least the idea of Lakewood as a "City of Churches" would take a whole team of reporters, and an ongoing series of articles.

Where do we begin?

Ellen, what does your book excerpt about the rise of a new Christianity have to do with the skate park incident? Additionally...

Ellen Malonis wrote:I realize that there is perhaps a disconnect between what actually is going on at the skatepark and what is being reported here.

Ellen, how do you know what was going on at the skatepark? You weren't there. The people who were there have told us via this site and through other communications.

Ellen Malonis wrote:I think a little philosophical/religious/spiritual dialogue amoung young people at the skate park could be a healthy thing.

Telling children that their dead parents are going to hell isn't "a little philosophical/religious/spiritual dialogue." It's arrogant, rude, and unkind. Not something Jesus would have approved of, as far as my understanding goes.

Ellen Malonis wrote:We all might learn something from each other, and connect in a way that would stop the narrow-minded, knee-jerk reactions.

"Narrow-minded"? Huh.


Proselytizing with strangers is rude and arrogant, as far as I'm concerned. This is not to say I'm anti-Christian by any stretch. What I am against is people telling other people that they're wrong about their faith. Faith is a highly personal thing. How dare anyone confront an absolute stranger and tell that stranger that s/he's on the wrong path?

Lakewood as a "City of Churches" would take a whole team of reporters, and an ongoing series of articles.
quote]

How about "Lakewood, A City of Churches that pay Property Taxes"? Sounds good to me.

After reading all of the latest posts here, I realize that there is perhaps a disconnect between what actually is going on at the skatepark and what is being reported here.

From what we have gathered, people are at the skatepark to practice skateboarding. Some other people are charging this as a sin. Start your explanation of the disconnect with the basis of that argument and please illuminate or invite these people into a discussion in a time and manner that is constructive.

I think a little philosophical/religious/spiritual dialogue amoung young people at the skate park could be a healthy thing. Talk about it at home, talk about it out in the park. We all might learn something from each other, and connect in a way that would stop the narrow-minded, knee-jerk reactions.

Umm.. last I checked you can find skaters, tennis players, basketball players, golfers, and even kids on swingsets already involved in their church of choice and I am sure healthy dialogues abound. As an adult skater that has tempered his relationship with my younger, more impressionable colleagues, I take offense from these cultish tactics that are the complete antithesis of dialogue. It is storm trooper evangilism that is designed more to keep control over the troops than to advance any meaningful dialogue. Save to be saved - at all costs.

I stand by my assertion that real dialogue occurs when both parties are engaged - not offended. I defend this group's right to preach or chant or whatever - but don't confuse this with healthy dialogue.

How about this? Come down and skate with the kids. Go help clean the park. Do something - ANYTHING - constructive. But telling a 8 year old that he is going to hell for riding a skateboard smacks of ignorance on par with racism.

The interplay between skateboarders doing their thing and persons oriented to a religious calling doing their thing reveals a rich set of phenomena and raises a number of interesting issues.

If there are also problems inherent in this interplay, I wonder how they might be accurately defined? One of the challenges of doing this 'research' is that the phenomena, issues, problems, are not unencumbered by the prejudices of a given researcher, i.e. all the yous and me.

For example, if a stranger were to provide a message about the applicability of their own belief system to a teenage child of my own, I might debrief, and explain to my child what the concepts of operant conditioning, reinforcement and aversion are, and what I feel are the psychodynamic motives underlying the urge of some adult people to "lay mind trips" on young adult people. I'd at least provide the latter POV!

In other words, I would psychologize the interaction under discussion. My biased view is that religion is largely psychosocial. I'm the parent, the mind trip to be laid on my own kid is my own, not some stranger's. (I don't have any kids.) So it is that any research I might do could not be unencumbered, relieved of my own biases.

***

One 'story' is how kids and young adults navigate in the ocean of grown-up and societal beliefs, superstitions, sciences, values, perspectives, interests, and wishes, etc.

If I have a problem with the clash of adult and young adult at the skateboard park it's mostly concerned with the intervention made by adult strangers in the life of minor children who are someone's else children.

Religious reasons behind this intervention have no traction at all from my point of view.

Steve

If I have a problem with the clash of adult and young adult at the skateboard park it's mostly concerned with the intervention made by strangers in the life of minor children who are someone's else children.

Religious reasons behind this intervention have no traction at all from my point of view.

You've nailed the underlying common elements that allow the "this is wrong" reaction to survive across many people whose beliefs already vary wildly. No one is asserting their religious view - just the "something is wrong with this" reaction. What is viewed as wrong is: A.) the notion that one set of adults can manipulate one set of kids to preach to another set of kids. And that the evangelical kids are being taught to confront "sinners" as a path to heaven.

And B.) that skateboarding is a sin and worthy of discussion - just like cigarettes and beer.

Standing on a street corner, a downtown plaza, a mall, or any place where you can speak to the public seems like a worthy place to send your little disciples out to earn their spritiual merit badges.

But something seems wrong with sending them into playgrounds, day cares, basketball courts and putt-putt courses to stop the corruption found within.

After reading all of the latest posts here, I realize that there is perhaps a disconnect between what actually is going on at the skatepark and what is being reported here.

Ellen, I want you to know that you have no idea what happened at the park. You were not there, I was. It was my nine year old that they called a sinner for skateboarding with his dad. The majority of the people that use the skate park are minors and as a parent I am quite peeved that someone thinks that it is appropriate to evangalize to my children or any children that are not there own. These kids go there to skate, not to be preached at or anything else. The park is the only legal place in Lakewood to skate and they need to be left alone. I am glad they didn't show last night and quite frankly I hope they never come again.

I do agree that a healthy dialogue about religion and philosophy is totally appropriate, but that is my call as a parent. I love Lakewood because it is such a diverse city. I make sure to talk about my kids about different faiths and different cultures. I think it is important, but once again that is my call as a parent. I am so sick of people thinking that freedom of speech means you can stuff your views down my children's throats. And yes that is what happened. My kids were very upset, the other kids there were upset. 40 people invading a skatepark, playing loud music, standing on ramps, calling homosexuals and skateboarders sinners, telling kids there dead parents are going to hell, preaching loudly, etc. is shoving there religion down the throats of the minors in the skatepark. A bit of advice, if you want someone to join you trying using peace, charity and love as Jesus did.

How would people feel if a bunch of Ku Klux Klan members or neo-Nazis walked around our public parks telling black people and Jews like me that we're going to hell? I don't think people would be referring to freedom of speech quite the same way.

Shelly is right that if this was the KKK no one would be defending them. All I want is for my husband, my kids and all the other skaters to be able to use Lakewood skatepark without having to worry about people coming in with there own agendas. Please just let the people skate!

Vince, could you unpack this a bit for me? As a parent, how would you view this situation?

In the incident spoken about here, were their any evangelizing adults at the skateboard park interacting with the non-adult skateboarders and onlookers?

The original report:

There was a large (30-40 people) christian group inside the skate park this evening. They were preaching ...

Suggestion here: this makes a difference.

Noting the intervention itself, (basically a modality,) is the larger problem than is the content of the message, then the common element has as much to do with the issue of who is an allowable influencer of (my) children and via what modalities influence is deemed okay.

And that the evangelical kids are being taught to confront "sinners" as a path to heaven.

And B.) that skateboarding is a sin and worthy of discussion - just like cigarettes and beer.

Whereas these are 'content' constructs. Differences in what is thought to be sinful are interesting to those for which sin is an important concept. If sin is thought by someone to be an absolute a priori concept then it follows that this same person may well see "sin" and sinners and sinfulness everywhere.

Sin may be worthy of discussion. Even if one's personal view is completely potted, it may be entered into a discussion.

The question aside from content is: what modality is endorsed by a given parent(s) as an appropriate vehicle for discussions with their children, between children, between adults and children, about particular subject matter?

The school room is appropriate but, at the same time, there is 'content' that parents would not endorse being taught in a school room because: the content itself is forbidden to be discussed there; or, the school room isn't the 'best' place. Of course, parents would want to know when teachers cross certain lines.

(Reminding me of the move in Ohio to turn biology classes into biology + religion classes.)

***

of course, as adults talking about it, there is lots of room for projecting onto the situ.

I'd really like to know what the skateboarders experienced and thought and how they navigated the situ.

Shelly -

The reason I mentioned the book was to put a more global face on the term Evangelical Christian than what was mentioned in the posts by Mr. Warren about dominionists, and Jim's comment "While many religions work for peace, the evangelical movement works towards Armageddon, for strictly personal reasons." I know all of that could be construed as (and actually was) off topic from the skateboard park incident.

You are right, I was not there. I was not trying to imply that what Danielle discribed did not happen. By "disconnect", I meant that the topic turned quickly to "christians" taking over the government. That to me is different from a church group's rude and misguided proselytizing.

Like I said, this stuff makes me cringe - thank you Danielle for letting us know what has been going on.