Larry, why didn’t you start a thread railing against Promise Keepers, since that’s your real beef here? Why try to make some lame and feeble connection between PS and a guy who murdered his family?
yosemitebabe–
I don’t know that it’s a lame and feeble connection. Tenuous, perhaps. And, to be clear, it is a thread about Promise Keepers. Seeing a news item about a Promise Keeper who killed his wife and family brought the organization to mind. I admit that it’s entirely possible that any significance that I see in his connection with Promise Keepers is a manifestation of the sort of prejudice that leads some people to insist that there must be some connection between John Allen Muhammad’s conversion to Islam and his violent crimes. From observing that sort of prejudice from the outside, I know that it can be totally unreasoning, and that the people who hold such prejudices think that their conclusions are not only reasonable, but obvious.
While it’s pointless to speculate about Morris’s motivations until he is apprehended and interviewed, speculation is what folks do.
Looking at the articles that have come down the wire in the last few hours gives us little to pick apart, but this article provides some commentary from family. I would assume that most criminalists would consider his recent bankruptcy a probable trigger.
At the same time, Morris’ father says something that I find interesting:
Since this is plainly contrary to the ideology of the Promise Keepers, I don’t feel terribly guilty about speculating that their might be a source of conflict there.
I made the OP within minutes of hearing about the sticker on his van. Since his connection to PK had not been mentioned in any the articles I’d read so far, my immediate thought was “This may be significant-- why hasn’t it been mentioned at all?”
The hours since then have made it clear that it wasn’t mentioned simply because it wasn’t known to the press. There are plenty of articles mentioning the connection coming down the wire now, the most recent of which takes care to point out that murder is not condoned by Promise Keepers.
Indeed, the majority of McCarthy’s short “4th and Goal” speeches that I’ve read are totally uncontroversial paens to basic family values. Their content is so platitudinous and unremarkable that you’d have to wonder what the hubbub was about, if that’s all Promise Keepers is about. I wonder if Ms. Levine’s study of Promise Keepers went beyond looking at what is floating around in the public domain, or if she took time to interview members. Since women are not permitted to attend PK events, she might not experienced the cognitive dissonance that comes of trying to reconcile the Seven Promises with the flavour of the vaguely misogynist PK pep rallies.
That being said, I recognize that there’s a certain irony in that the very same news broadcast which contained the Morris story which made me think “This may be significant-- why hasn’t it been mentioned at all?” also contained several stories about recent shootings in Vancouver which caused me to complain about the constancy of their mentioning the ethnicity of the perpetrators and victims, in the absence of any significance that race might have – perhaps providence is calling my attention to a proverbial beam-in-the-eye.
Looking back and trying to parse that whopper of a run-on-sentence, I think I ought to try to get some sleep, now.
See y’all tomorrow.
I had to walk away from this thread for obvious reasons, given Larry’s talk of sad view of humanity.
I am sorry but the first few words in his last post made me sick.
I have no choice but to take a step back and be thinking what a fucking loser someone is, and it aint anyone but Larry Mudd is.
Good God the words I could use here…
You disgust me, uttterly and frustratinginly.
Good GOD, could you be a worse human? I could puke.
Most people I can forgive, this person doesn’t deserve it nor does he deserve a quick brush off.’
I am appalled (sp).
Larry Mudd,
From what I have read, you still haven’t proven to me or anyone else that Promise Keepers is “responsible” for this death…
BULLSHIT, complete and utter bullshit.
Guess my brothers and my dad are an engima within the “Promise Keepers” movement to murder and kill all women and children.
Guess your theory was WRONG. VERY WRONG. Of all the men that are members of “Promise Keepers,” please murder your family now, we need to know that Larry is right.
Dad, brother, brother, please kill us all, now to prove Larry correct.
I am awaiting the evil that is that of “Promise Keepers.”
Dad, please sadly, slash me to pieces. Brother, please, take your love for me and your Lord and sample what it’s like to kill a human.
Good God. They are both Promise Keepers as is my other brother.
You are sadly mistaken and I am not even a CHRISTIAN…I am a plain jane woman with a little bit of reality…people like you make me fucking sick.
No where to go with that…fucking a…fucking lame, big time.
Hmmm. I could have sworn we’d had a thread on the topic of the Promise Keepers, but I couldn’t find anything other than a few incidental remarks when I ran a search. Maybe it’s a good topic for GD sometime.
Look, techchick68, there are things about Promise Keepers which make me uncomfortable because I tend to be an outspoken, independent Christian woman. I wouldn’t be entirely happy if my husband were a member of the group, but I assume that any fellow I’d marry either wouldn’t be interested in it, or would enjoy discussing it. I also used to go to church with men who were members of the Promise Keepers and were perfectly nice people. One of them is the father of one of the nicest guys I knew in high school.
Anyway, that’s my two cents, if it’s worth that much. A GD thread could be interesting, though. Among other things, it might help some of us work out why we’re uneasy with the group or uneasy with people who are uneasy with the group.
CJ
I’m thinking we should keep a close eye on them Jews.
I mean did you see what Rabbi Fred Neulander did?
Larry, you’re not usually this clueless:
Got a cite for that remarkable, over-simplified, and categorical statement? I know plenty of guys who are in Promise Keepers, and this in no way expresses the group’s slant. Especially the “quasi-militaristic” part. You make it sound like storm front dot org. If you’ve already got a heavy bias against the group, then I guess your statement is understandable, but otherwise, sheesh.
Here’s their home page
http://www.promisekeepers.org/
Be so kind as to point out to me the “quasi-militaristic” parts, and also exactly which “underlying ideology” is “pathological and profoundly dangerous.”
Larry… in all seriousness you are just crapping your pants in this thread and some people are on the verge of losing respect for your judgment and critical reasoning abilities. I am an atheist and I know several men who are members of the Promise Keepers organization. They are to a man, devout Christians and have seemingly stable, loving families in the group social interactions we have engaged in. While I may not agree with some of their theological or philosophical perspectives if I had to make a decision where I could or should place a homeless child for a month or so, their families would be at the top of the list, and I know a lot of people.
From what I have seen Promise Keepers does a hell of a lot more good than harm in forcing men, who otherwise might not be focused on, or attentive to, their familial relationships and responsibilities to pay attention to their family duties. I don’t think you will find many bigger cheerleaders of the organization than the wives of the Promise Keeper members, some of who credit Promise Keepers with bringing their marriages back from the brink of divorce. Just based on demographic odds I am sure Promise Keepers has it’s fair share of psychologically unstable people just like the ACLU, the US Congress and the SDMB do, but to tar the entire organization or group based on one nut job is both cheap and unworthy of you.
In any case, if you want to beat on Promise Keepers it would be best to do so in a GD or separate Pit thread. Your continued attempts to make some “tenuous” causal linkage between the influence of his Promise Keepers affiliation and this tragedy are intellectually insupportable given the information at hand and look like a puerile vendetta on your part against this organization.
I’m no fan of PK myself, but in no way do I see them as being inherently violent. I was living in Boulder when Bill McCartney was getting the whole thing started, so I got plenty of exposure to them. Their philosophy of the man being the boss of the family certainly makes me squirm, but that does not automatically mean that they encourage violence against women. Yes, some men who are predisposed to violence will be attracted to the organization. However, condemning the entire group makes as much sense as demonizing all cops because a few power-hungry assholes are attracted to police work. It’s the individuals that are to blame, not the group.
At the website Techchick gave, this is one of their “Seven Promises”:
Doesn’t sound murderous or militant to me.
Unless, of course, by “biblical values” they mean:
“And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die” (Deuteronomy 21:20-21).
“For Moses said, Honour thy father and thy mother; and, Whoso curseth father or mother, let him die the death” (Mark 7:10).
“And he that smiteth his father, or his mother, shall be surely put to death” (Exodus 21:15).
“And he that curseth his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death (Exodus 21:17).”
But hey, maybe they pick and choose, eh? :eek:
The say they chose this one:
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.
Ephesians 5:25-28
Damn good thing they did, too. I mean, had they chosen this one:
“And when the people complained, it displeased the Lord: and the Lord heard it; and his anger was kindled; and the fire of the Lord burnt among them, and consumed them that were in the uttermost parts of the camp” (Numbers 11:1).
Or this one:
“But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me” (Luke 19:27).
Then they probably would have less and less people come back each year. On account of most of 'em being dead and all. 
I’d like to call attention to some parts of Larry Mudd’s last post that may have been missed by other readers of this thread.
and later in the same post he said
It seems to me that Larry Mudd already recognizes that he has a problem. How about helping him work it out instead of jumping on him with cleats?
I don’t think it’s such a feeble connection. Family authoritarianism, and especially the dogmatic teaching that men should hold absolute power and authority in the family by divine right, contributes to domestic violence. PK teaching doesn’t cause domestic violence, but it certainly increases its risk in situations where the risk factors were preexisting. And I think that PK targets men who are already at risk to be family abusers.
Are they all rapists, too, Kelly?
It’s called assassination by innuendo.
Any cite at all…or is this just baseless speculation?
**
Cite?
Do you apply the same type of correlation (or even causation) reasoning to the “nature” of Islam and middle eastern violence?
They make me squirm too. Great posts SkipMagic.
#7:
A Great Commission?
Also thought some of the news items were interesting. Selected bits from the PK Items of interest of the Christian Community:
On Trent Lott: “While the value and context of those comments is questionable, Planned Parenthood is not particularly the appropriate group to be issuing criticism, said officials for STOPP International, a project of the American Life League. Spokesman Ed Szymkowiak says that’s because Planned Parenthood’s own founder established and pursued a program “to exterminate the Negro population.”
On Islam: “What has raised the ire of the CWFA and other Christian groups is that the new project on Islam allows only one perspective on the religion – that of Muslims. The project “completely” ignores modern critics of the Prophet Muhammad and dismisses historical evidence that refutes the peaceful image of Islam that PBS has chosen to show.”
What better way to promote the Religious Right agenda than by holding Jesus pep rallies for men only. It’s brilliant.