TruthBook Religious News Blog

The mayor of this crime-ridden Chicago suburb says the town needs help that conventional forces cannot render. So he has turned to six Christian ministers, one for each ward.

In a move that worries civil libertarians, Mayor Eric Kellogg has appointed the volunteer chaplains to comfort crime victims and promote neighborhood activism in the poverty-stricken town of 30,000.

The American Civil Liberties Union worries that a line has nonetheless been crossed. "When you have a tragedy, there are many people who would turn to their faith. The question is whether government should be sending someone out there to promote their particular faith."

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Thursday, May 29, 2003

Interior Allows Grants to Churches

In a policy shift on the line between church and state, Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton said today that federal preservation grants may be awarded to historic properties used for religious purposes.

The decision reverses a 1995 opinion by the Justice Department that barred active houses of worship from receiving historic preservation grants. It is one of a series of steps the Bush administration is taking on its own to carry out the president's promise to help religious groups compete for federal funds, despite the stalling of legislation to promote his "faith-based initiative."

Norton said the change "ends a double standard" and opens the way for churches, synagogues, mosques and other religious institutions to apply for funds under the Save America's Treasures program.

Save America's Treasures was established in 1998 as a public-private partnership between the Interior Department's National Park Service, which provides the funding, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which helps evaluate applications. Each year, it provides about $10 million for an average of 60 preservation projects, the most famous of which was the Smithsonian's repair of the Star-Spangled Banner.

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said it is inappropriate for a church with an active congregation to "pass the collection plate" to taxpayers. "In the long run this will become the excuse for repair and construction grants to a wide variety of churches of far less historical significance."

H. James Towey, director of the White House's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, said that religious applicants must meet the same criteria as secular groups, including showing that their facility is nationally significant, urgently needs repair, has educational value and confers a public benefit.

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Global Prayer Effort for Iraq Launched

Leaders of national Christian evangelical organizations launched a global prayer initiative for the Iraqi people on May 27. The initiative provides an opportunity for Christians worldwide to join as "prayer partners" in helping Iraqis rebuild their country. The Internet-based effort--supported by the World Prayer Team, the Presidential Prayer Team, World Relief and the Christian Emergency Network--provides a specific avenue for Christians "to encourage and bless the Iraqis" through the power of prayer and through the "adoption" of a specific Iraqi city to lift up in prayer

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Wednesday, May 28, 2003

German churches go big in bid to win back faithful

A religious event set to draw up to 300,000 Christiansto Berlin over the next five days could prove a turning point in reviving the flagging fortunes of the church in Germany, according to the event's organisers.

The religious extravaganza, organised jointly at a cost of €18m ($21.4m, £13m) by the lay associations in the German Catholic and Protestant churches, comprises over 3,200 individual events, starting with an open-air service at Berlin's landmark Brandenburg gate.

Some 190,000 five-day tickets have been sold, costing €79 each, and an extra 30,000 daily visitors are expected. Up to 300,000 are likely to attend Sunday's final open-air service in front of the historic federal parliament building.

A total of 5,000 foreign visitors have registered, including many Jews, Muslims and representatives of other faiths. The Dalai Lama is due to speak in a huge open-air arena.

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Tuesday, May 27, 2003

Faith-Based Charities May Not Be Better, Study Indicates

The assumption behind President Bush's faith-based initiative is that religious charities can do a better job, at a lower cost, than secular organizations in providing many social services, from drug treatment to employment training. But an Indiana study suggests it isn't necessarily so.

The study by researchers at Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis is among the first attempts to compare the effectiveness of faith-based and secular organizations using objective data.

The researchers looked at 2,830 people who went through job training programs run by 27 government-funded organizations in two Indiana counties. They found no difference between secular and religious programs in job placement rates or starting wages. But clients of faith-based groups worked fewer hours, on average, and were less likely to receive health insurance.

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Religion still sets Scot on Scot

Sectarianism is still endemic in Scotland, according to a survey by System Three which found that 13% of Scots had experienced some form of religious bigotry.

The poll, commissioned by the BBC, found the problem was worst in the west and that Catholics were nearly four times as likely as Protestants to be victims of sectarianism. Just under two-thirds of those polled did not think it was possible to end sectarianism.

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Saturday, May 24, 2003

Poll finds that faith and happiness go hand in hand

Despite increased tensions on the world stage and a faltering U.S. economy, nine of 10 Americans are happy with their lives and say their religious faith has a lot to do with it, according to a Barna Research poll.

But George Barna, who directed the study and provided an analysis, pointed out that many of the happy respondents also are the most affluent and that happiness doesn't mean that religion is being practiced properly, especially a Christian faith that puts service to God before material comforts.

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Centre for Faith and the Media releases national survey

The Ipsos-Reid poll, conducted for the Calgary-based Centre for Faith and the Media indicates Canadians strongly believe media can contribute to religious tolerance, but it suggests there is a need for wider mainstream media coverage of spirituality.

The poll of 1,000 Canadians, taken April 30 to May 3 and considered accurate within 3.1 percentage points, found:

- 32% of those polled felt matters of spirituality received too little media coverage, double the 16% who felt spirituality received too much coverage. Half of those polled believed the right level of coverage was provided.
- 63% of those who regularly attend religious services felt media did a poor job on spirituality coverage, while 50% felt there was too little such coverage.
- 74% felt media could encourage religious tolerance.
- 61% said religion plays an important role in their lives, while 21% said they attend religious services at least weekly.

Full results of the poll are available at: www.ipsos-reid.com/media.

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Friday, May 23, 2003

Evangelicals shift approach to Muslims

In the wake of international criticism of high-profile Christian preachers for their harsh depictions of Islam, evangelical leaders in America are striking out in a new direction. They have taken a stance against negative public rhetoric about Islam, and are encouraging widespread conversation with Muslims.

A set of guidelines for Christian-Muslim dialogue - which seeks increased mutual understanding but also calls for engaging over theological differences and other serious issues - is now circulating for comment among evangelical and other Christian denominations. The guidelines (www.ird-renew.org) were proposed earlier this month in a meeting sponsored by the National Association of Evangelicals and the conservative Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD).

‘This is very, very welcome. We've been waiting for this kind of approach for about a thousand years,’ says Sayyid Syeed, secretary general of the Islamic Society of North America. ‘The fact that hard-core evangelical Christian leaders are saying that we will talk to each other with respect, and have identified areas of common interest - this is a very auspicious development.’

Syeed is hopeful. ‘We pray that this works,’ he says. ‘They've had to struggle against an age-old negativity toward Islam, and if they have been able to overcome that, then this is a major change. It's good for Christians, for Muslims, for America, and for the world.’

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Thursday, May 22, 2003

Religious teaching on the rise?

Religious education appears to be on the rise in public school systems around the world and has become a key issue for education policy makers in many countries, according to the latest edition of Prospects*, UNESCO’s quarterly education review.

According to the preliminary analysis, carried out by UNESCO’s International Bureau of Education (IBE, Geneva, Switzerland)**, religious education appears as a compulsory subject in the timetables of 73 of the countries surveyed on at least one occasion during the first nine years of schooling.

In 54 of these countries, the time to be devoted to religious instruction during the first six years of education amounts to an average of 388.4 hours or approximately 8.1 percent of total intended teaching time.

The authors say this indicates a ‘visible increase’ in the proportion of time dedicated to this subject since previous research published a decade ago, and a reversal of the decline in religious teaching which that research showed had marked most of the past century.

In the new data set being assembled by the IBE, two countries stand out: Saudi Arabia and Yemen, where respectively 31 percent (1,458 hours) and 28.2 percent (1,104 hours) of total intended time for academic instruction during the first six years is given to religious instruction. This is, on average, three times more than the time allocated in other countries.

The debate within Europe over the way religion should be dealt with in education was relaunched after the attack on the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001, writes James Wimberley of the Council of Europe. That event, he says, was seen as ‘a wake-up call’ to tackle the ‘widespread and serious problem of poor community relations in Europe,’ where ‘mutual mistrust, intolerance, racist incidents, and discrimination mainly take an ethnic form, but sometimes a religious one.’ ‘Intercultural and interfaith dialogue’ it has been decided, will become one of the major axes of the Council’s development.

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Can Buddhists transcend mental reservations?

According to Professor Owen Flanagan, professor of philosophy at Duke University in North Carolina, Buddhists appear to be able to stimulate the left prefrontal lobe - an area just behind the forehead - which may be why they can generate positive emotions and a feeling of well being.

Professor Flanagan said the findings are ‘tantalising’ because the left prefrontal lobes of Buddhist practitioners appear to ‘light up’ consistently, rather than just during acts of meditation.

‘Buddhists are not born happy. It is not reasonable to suppose that Tibetan Buddhists are born with a 'happiness gene'. The most reasonable hypothesis is there is something about conscientious Buddhist practice that results in the kind of happiness we all seek,’ he writes.

Another study of Buddhists by scientists at the University of California has also found that meditation might tame the amygdala, the part of the brain involved with fear and anger.

Professor Flanagan writes: ‘Antidepressants are currently the favoured method for alleviating negative emotions, but no antidepressant makes a person happy. On the other hand, Buddhist meditation and mindfulness, which were developed 2,500 years before Prozac, can lead to profound happiness.’

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Parents fear perils of media, poll shows

An overwhelming majority of parents believe that unsuitable TV, movies, video games and contemporary music lead to violent, anti-social behavior and sex at younger ages, according to a national survey released Wednesday.

The survey of 1,000 parents by Common Sense Media, a new San Francisco group, also found that those parents want more information about what their kids are listening to and watching.

The survey coincided with the premiere of the group's Web site, called the 'Common Sense Media Guide' -- www.commonsensemedia.org/mediaguide. The site evaluates the kinds of films, TV shows and music a child is likely to encounter in the age of ubiquitous media. It makes recommendations and describes content but does not call for banning offensive material. The idea, the group says, is to let parents know what their kids are getting into.

Steyer says Common Sense Media was created as a forum to evaluate movies, television programs, video games and music 'without a political or religious viewpoint.'

A survey asked 1,000 parents how they feel about the effect of the media on their children:

89%: believe sexual content in the media encourages children to become sexually active at younger ages.

81%: are concerned that the media teaches violent, anti-social behavior to children.

21%: say they 'completely trust' the ratings system for movies.

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Canada's religious profile becoming more diverse

THE 2001 census on religions in Canada, recently released by Statistics Canada, highlights the growing religious diversification of Canada. With the exception of Christian Protestants, all major faiths in Canada recorded a growth in the number of their members, with the number of Muslims leading the way with a growth of 128.9 percent, from 253,265 members in 1991 to 579,640 in 2001. Muslims now make up two percent of Canada's population.

Other faiths that grew substantially were Buddhist (83.8 percent growth), Hindu (89.3 percent growth), and Sikh (88.8 percent growth). About one percent of Canada's population falls into each of the three religions.

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Wednesday, May 21, 2003

Being stingy with God

One of the most ancient religious practices -- giving one tenth of one's income to God -- has suffered a severe setback in the U.S. last year, a study of the California-based Barna Research Group shows.

Tithing, as commanded in the Old Testament, has dropped by 62 percent in 2002. Only three percent of America's adults followed the law given by Moses, "And all the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land, or of the fruit of the tree, is the Lord's: It is holy unto the Lord" (Leviticus 27:10).

In 2001, eight percent still tithed.

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Monday, May 19, 2003

Christians 'greedy and bored'

MEMBERS of the Western Church exhibit boredom, greed and indifference, according to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Dr Rowan William says that too many people are 'hereditary' Christians who have inherited their belief from their forebears as if it were 'something obvious'.

Western Christians must recapture a sense of joy and wonder in the nature of God and to learn from countries where faith is newer and more vibrant to recapture the 'expectant joy of Christ', he says.

'Inheriting Christian belief as if it were something obvious is one recipe for losing the edge of surprise and shock about being wanted,' he writes. 'Part of the history of the Church, not just in these islands but of the Church in many other parts of the world, is the creeping sense that it is not at all surprising that God should want us. God after all has excellent taste! Why should God not want us?' When the sense of being astonished by God has fallen away, he continues, 'we look at one another with boredom and anxiety rather than with the expectant joy of Christ'.

'And we look, of course, at the world around us with boredom, greed, indifference, exploitation or whatever, and we don't look at it first and foremost as the Earth God wanted.'

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Sunday, May 18, 2003

A divide between pew and pulpit

The war in Iraq exposed many continuing fissures in U.S. society, but none more evident than the divide between the clerical establishment and the laity. Clergy tend to embrace the forgiving, loving "God of Peace," but parishioners favor the stern notion of a "God of Justice." That difference in theology helps to explain why clergy and laity disagreed on the Iraq war.

Mainstream clergy generally view Christ as pacifist, loving, meek and forgiving. Although this conception is a powerful component of Christian divinity, it is not universally held. There is also the confrontational Christ, one who stands in strict judgment of evil and sees the full embrace of faith as the road to salvation. This Christ is often ignored by mainstream clergy but accepted by many Americans, including President Bush.

The image of Christ as warrior and judge, some scholars agree, appeals to the moral concerns of many parents, who feel that religion must and should play a central role in setting their children's values. Liberal clergy's more forgiving and inclusive attitude toward drug users and homosexuality, for example, disturbs people who regard religion as a bulwark against deviation from traditional norms.

Over time, the changes in religious values and the split between a liberally trained clergy and increasingly conservative laity are likely to accelerate religious fragmentation at the expense of mainstream denominations. There also has been an upsurge in what Roof calls "experimental" religions, including New Age variants of Christianity.

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Saturday, May 17, 2003

Poll: Catholic approval for bishops drops

Approval ratings for America's Roman Catholic bishops have declined over the past 18 months, likely over how they handled priests who sexually abused children, a new survey has found. Nearly all of the respondents to the survey - conducted by Le Moyne College, a Jesuit school in Syracuse, N.Y., and the research firm Zogby International - wanted Pope John Paul II to discipline bishops who failed to remove offenders from church work.

The poll of 1,500 American Catholics was conducted April 23 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.6 percent.

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Friday, May 16, 2003

Has the United States Become Judeo-Christian-Islamic?

Leading Muslim organizations say it's time for Americans to stop using the phrase "Judeo-Christian" when describing the values and character that define the United States.

Better choices, they say, are "Judeo-Christian-Islamic" or "Abrahamic," referring to Abraham, the patriarch held in common by the monotheistic big three religions.

"`Judeo-Christian,' which in 1952 looked like an incredibly inclusive term, doesn't look very inclusive now," said Silk, now director of the Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College, in Hartford. Conn., in an interview. "So we probably need a new term."

There are other arguments for change, among them these:

-- Numbers. The U.S. Muslim population is growing. Estimates are disputed but range as high as 7 million. This compares to an estimated 5 million Jews.

"Muslims are here, and there are 7 million of them, even though they're largely invisible to most Americans," said Saeed. "This necessitates some discussion about language."

-- Commonality. Even though many people emphasize the differences, Islam has similarities with Christianity and Judaism.

Osama Siblani, an influential voice among American Muslims and publisher of the Arab-American News in Dearborn, Mich., takes an even broader view. "I believe we should call this the United States of America, made up of Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Muslims, Christians, Jews and others," said Siblani. "This stuff about language has to stop. We are all just Americans."

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Thursday, May 15, 2003

Lack of women in Baptist leadership?

International Baptist leaders at the Summit on Baptist Mission in the 21st Century, sponsored by the Baptist World Alliance May 5-9 in Swanwick, England, released a statement that noted the "inadequate representation" of women leaders at the gathering. "Their absence we interpret as indicative of the lack of recognition and affirmation of the role of women in all aspects of the church's mission," they said. "We are immeasurably poorer because of this, and will remain so until this fundamental imbalance is addressed."

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Wednesday, May 14, 2003

Canadians losing their religion

A growing number of Canadians are losing their religion.

In fact, 4.8 million Canadians, 16 per cent of the population, declared themselves as having no religion, Statistics Canada reported Tuesday in the latest and final report to come from the 2001 census.

A decade ago only 12 per cent of Canadians said they had no religion. The increase represents a staggering 44 per cent jump.

Almost 40 per cent of those with no religion were aged 24 and under, Statistics Canada reported.

Father Pat O'Dea, executive director and pastor at the Newman Centre Catholic Mission at the University of Toronto, said that many young people take time off from organized religion. "It's often a time when people need to search. Young people are often looking for meaning," said O'Dea, "It's not only a time when people want to know 'what is God', they also want answers to 'who am I?' "

O'Dea thinks society should look at such searches as evidence of courage and that they should be supported, not negated.

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Abstinence message, religion shape teen behavior

Two recent studies have bolstered conservatives' claims about abstinence and teenage substance abuse.

A study published in the latest edition of the journal Adolescent & Family Health found that 67 percent of the drop in the single teen pregnancy rate from 1991-95 was due to abstinence, not birth control. This counters a study released by the Alan Guttmacher Institute in 1999 saying that contraception was the major factor in the drop.

Meanwhile, another study at Yeshiva University in New York has shown the positive impact religion can have on a teen's life. According to the study -- published in the March issue of the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviors -- teens who consider religion important in their lives are half as likely as other teens to drink heavily or smoke marijuana and cigarettes.

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Saudis top religious violators

Saudi Arabia was cited as the top violator yesterday in an annual report issued by the U.S. Commission on Religious Freedom on the status of religious liberties worldwide.

Freedom of religion does not exist in Saudi Arabia, the commission's report said, except for those practicing an extreme form of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism.

The commission also took the country to task for "offensive and discriminatory language" disparaging Jews, Christians and non-Wahhabi Muslims found in government-sponsored school textbooks, in Friday sermons preached in prominent mosques, and in state-controlled Saudi newspapers.

As recently as March, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell failed to designate Saudi Arabia as a "country of particular concern (CPC)," the diplomatic term for the most severe violators of human rights.

"We don't understand how one could not name Saudi Arabia as a CPC," Mr. Young said. "Saudi Arabia has been explicitly left out of any [State Department] citations."

Also at fault, he added are unnamed U.S. businesses in Saudi Arabia that aid the government in cracking down on religious dissent.

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Monday, May 12, 2003

Survey: Parents Should Teach Kids About Faith but Often Don't

Eighty-five percent of parents surveyed believe they are most responsible for teaching their children about religious matters, but a majority of them do not spend any time in a typical week discussing such topics with them.

Barna Research Group reports that 85 percent of parents of children younger than 13 believe they are primarily responsible for teaching their children about spiritual matters, while 11 percent say their church has top responsibility and 1 percent say their child's school is most responsible.

The majority of parents do not spend any time in a typical week studying religious materials or talking about religious matters with their children. Researchers found that parents generally have no plan for their children's spiritual development and have little or no training on nurturing their child's faith.

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Saturday, May 10, 2003

Protection Against End-Of-Life Despair

Having a sense of spiritual well-being -- or an understanding of the meaning and purpose of life, regardless of religion -- appears to help terminally ill people avoid spending their last months of life in despair. The findings appear in the May 10th issue of the journal The Lancet.

Among people with less than three months to live, U.S. investigators found that those with a strong sense of spiritual well-being were less likely than others to feel hopeless, want to die or consider suicide.

The current findings suggest that providing patients with a strong sense of spiritual well-being may enable them to avoid spending their last days in despair, according to the authors.

'Spiritual well-being is a really crucial, central aspect of how you cope with death,' study author Dr. Barry Rosenfeld of Fordham University in New York told Reuters Health.

In an interview, Rosenfeld said he would like to see health workers incorporate more psychological and spiritual elements into palliative care, which originally concentrated only on physical comfort during the last days of life.

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84 percent of American adults believe in sin

A recent Gallup telephone poll of 1,007 American adults found that 84 percent believe in sin, while 14 percent do not. That number is down from 1995, when 90 percent attested to believing in sin. The 14 percent who said they do not believe in sin is the highest total in 22 years, according to Gallup.

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Friday, May 09, 2003

Beliefs ebb and flow

A study that involved 129 adults age 65 or older was done by Dr. Berit Ingersoll-Dayton and associates of the University of Michigan. The participants averaged 74.4 years old, were 67 percent female and 33 percent male, and were living independently in their communities. To be included in the study they had to be Christian, and had to consider religious faith to be at least somewhat important in their lives.

Four different patterns of change in religiosity over the years were identified by the researchers ? increasing religiosity, stable religiosity, decreasing religiosity, and curvilinear (cyclic) patterns.

Increasing religiosity was usually associated with the loss of important relationships, such as the deathof a family member or other adverse life events, the need to encourage religious beliefs of their children and awareness of approaching the end of life.

Stable religiosity was prevalent either for those with great faith that never wavered or for those who always had a low level of religious beliefs.

Decreasing religiosity was often brought about by poor health or by changes in church doctrines over the year.

Curvilinear changes mean that religiosity ebbed and flowed over the years as family values and practices changed.

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US eases rules for faith-based groups

The Bush administration has quietly altered regulations for the nation's leading job training program to allow faith-based organizations to use ''sacred literature,'' such as Bibles, in their federally funded programs. Civil liberties activists say the new rules blur the line between religion and government.

The change, made by the US Labor Department last month, could allow faith-based groups to use religious books as historical texts or as inspirational stories for job seekers, as long as organizations do not proselytize or conduct prayer sessions.

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Pennsylvania teacher's aide suspended for cross

A federal discrimination lawsuit was filed Tuesday on behalf of Brenda Nichol against Armstrong-Indiana Intermediate Unit 28, a government agency in western Pennsylvania that provides educational services. Mrs. Nichol has been employed by the agency for eight years.

Mrs. Nichol said she was notified April 4 that a 1¼-inch-long cross pendant she was wearing on a chain around her neck would have to be concealed by clothing or removed when she worked at Penns Manor Area Elementary School in Clymer.

Armstrong-Indiana officials say the Christian symbol violates the unit's policy, as well as the Pennsylvania Public School Code's prohibition against school employees wearing religious garb and insignia. The law dates to 1895.

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Thursday, May 08, 2003

The True Clash of Civilizations

According to a new survey, Muslims and their Western counterparts want democracy, yet they are worlds apart when it comes to attitudes toward divorce, abortion, gender equality, and gay rights-which may not bode well for democracy's future in the Middle East.

According to the latest Freedom House rankings, almost two thirds of the 192 countries around the world are now electoral democracies. But among the 47 countries with a Muslim majority, only one fourth are electoral democracies-and none of the core Arabic-speaking societies falls into this category.

The cumulative results of the two most recent waves of the World Values Survey (WVS), conducted in 1995?96 and 2000-2002, provide an extensive body of relevant evidence. Based on questionnaires that explore values and beliefs in more than 70 countries, the WVS is an investigation of sociocultural and political change that encompasses over 80 percent of the world's population.

A comparison of the data yielded by these surveys in Muslim and non-Muslim societies around the globe confirms the first claim in Huntington's thesis: Culture does matter-indeed, it matters a lot. Historical religious traditions have left an enduring imprint on contemporary values. However, Huntington is mistaken in assuming that the core clash between the West and Islam is over political values. At this point in history, societies throughout the world (Muslim and Judeo-Christian alike) see democracy as the best form of government. Instead, the real fault line between the West and Islam concerns gender equality and sexual liberalization. In other words, the values separating the two cultures have much more to do with eros than demos. As younger generations in the West have gradually become more liberal on these issues, Muslim nations have remained the most traditional societies in the world.

Commenting on the disenfranchisement of women throughout the Middle East, the United Nations Development Programme observed last summer that 'no society can achieve the desired state of well-being and human development, or compete in a globalizing world, if half its people remain marginalized and disempowered.' But this 'sexual clash of civilizations' taps into far deeper issues than how Muslim countries treat women. A society's commitment to gender equality and sexual liberalization proves time and again to be the most reliable indicator of how strongly that society supports principles of tolerance and egalitarianism. Thus, the people of the Muslim world overwhelmingly want democracy, but democracy may not be sustainable in their societies.

When it comes to attitudes toward gender equality and sexual liberalization, the cultural gap between Islam and the West widens into a chasm. On the matter of equal rights and opportunities for women-measured by such questions as whether men make better political leaders than women or whether university education is more important for boys than for girls-Western and Muslim countries score 82 percent and 55 percent, respectively. Muslim societies are also distinctively less permissive toward homosexuality, abortion, and divorce.

In every stable democracy, a majority of the public disagrees with the statement that 'men make better political leaders than women.'

Economic development generates changed attitudes in virtually any society. In particular, modernization compels systematic, predictable changes in gender roles: Industrialization brings women into the paid work force and dramatically reduces fertility rates. Women become literate and begin to participate in representative government but still have far less power than men. Then, the postindustrial phase brings a shift toward greater gender equality as women move into higher-status economic roles in management and gain political influence within elected and appointed bodies.

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Wednesday, May 07, 2003

Religious-hiring bill faces debate

Liberal interest groups and some Democrats are outraged over the proposed change in the reauthorization of the Workforce Investment Act, calling the measure a repeal of civil-rights protections.

"The clear intent of [this] change in the civil-rights provision in the [bill] is to encourage certain providers receiving federal funds to discriminate based on religion," said Laura W. Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union, in a letter to Congress urging defeat of the bill. "Although religious employers have the right to apply religious tests to employees, the Constitution requires that direct receipt and administration of federal funds removes that exemption."

The bill covers federally funded "one-stop career centers" that provide job training, basic education, and counseling for the unemployed.

Rep. John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican and chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, said faith-based groups need the protection of this bill to "sustain their religious missions" and still provide these job-training services to their communities.

K. Hollyn Hollman of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs disagrees. Mrs. Hollman said when the job-training law was first proposed in the early 1980s ? by Republican Sen. Dan Quayle of Indiana and Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts ? and signed by President Reagan, it was not intended to allow religious groups to discriminate against those who don't share their theology.

"This bill takes out a nondiscrimination provision that has been in place for 20 years," Mrs. Hollman said. "It's ironic that you would run a program that is supposed to train people to get jobs, yet you won't let people have a job with you if they don't share your religion."

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Monday, May 05, 2003

Love your enemy or kill him? Christians disagree

A Gallup Poll in October showed that practicing Christians are more likely than their nonpracticing counterparts to favor the invasion of Iraq. Nationally, 60 percent of those who reported that "religion is very important" to them, support the war. Support for going to war increased to 64 percent among "born again" or evangelical Christians and increased to 70 percent for those who consider themselves part of the "religious right," about 18 percent of the population.

In contrast, only 49 percent of those who say religion is "not very important," some 17 percent of the population, support invading Iraq. Those who never go to church, 13 percent of Americans, similarly showed less support for the invasion. The poll concluded that "those who are most religious generally tend to be above average in their support for military action, while those who are less religious tend to be less in favor."

"What a paradox," says Gregg Carter, a sociologist at Bryant College in Smithfield, R.I. "Christ's central messages on how we should come to terms with our enemies-through love and charity-are ignored, overlooked, and disregarded by a nation and a majority of its people who claim to be the heirs of these messages and of their author."

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Who Wants to Be a Martyr?

One given in the war against terrorism seems to be that suicide attackers are evil, deluded or homicidal misfits who thrive in poverty, ignorance and anarchy.

As logical as the poverty-breeds-terrorism argument may seem, study after study shows that suicide attackers and their supporters are rarely ignorant or impoverished. Nor are they crazed, cowardly, apathetic or asocial. If terrorist groups relied on such maladjusted people, "they couldn't produce effective and reliable killers," according to Todd Stewart, a retired Air Force general who directs the Ohio State University program in international and domestic security.

The Princeton economist Alan Krueger and others released a study in 2002 comparing Lebanese Hezbollah militants who died in violent action to other Lebanese of the same age group. He found that the Hezbollah members were less likely to come from poor homes and more likely to have a secondary school education.

Nasra Hassan, a Pakistani relief worker, interviewed nearly 250 aspiring Palestinian suicide bombers and their recruiters. "None were uneducated, desperately poor, simple-minded or depressed," she reported in 2001. "They all seemed to be entirely normal members of their families."

A 2001 poll by the nonprofit Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research indicated that Palestinian adults with 12 years or more of education are far more likely to support bomb attacks than those who cannot read.

The body of research shows that over all, suicide terrorists tend not to have the attributes of the socially dysfunctional (fatherless, friendless, jobless). They don't vent fear of enemies or express hopelessness or a sense of "nothing to lose" because of lack of a career or social mobility as would be consistent with economic theories of criminal behavior. Suicide attackers don't opt for paradise out of despair. If they did, say Muslim clerics who countenance martyrdom for Allah but not personal suicide, their actions would be criminal and blasphemous.

It's the particular genius of the institutions like Al Qaeda, Hamas or Hezbollah that they are able to make otherwise well-adjusted people into human bombs. Intense indoctrination, often lasting 18 months or more, causes recruits to identify emotionally with their terrorist cell, viewing it as a family for whom they are as willing to die as a mother for her child or a soldier for his buddies. Consider the oath taken by members of Harkat al Ansar, a Pakistan-based ally of Al Qaeda: "Each martyr has a special place ? among them are brothers, just as there are sons and those even more dear."

Brian Barber, a psychologist at the University of Tennessee, has interviewed some 900 young adults from Gaza and a comparison group of Bosnian Muslims who had also suffered through violence but had not become a source of suicide bombers. The Bosnians had markedly weaker expressions of self-esteem and less hope for the future. Faith was the largest difference: the Palestinians routinely invoked religion to invest personal trauma with social meaning, whereas the Bosnians did not consider religion significant to their life.

This overall pattern was also captured in a white paper by the Parliament of Singapore concerning captured operatives from Jemaah Islamiyah, a militant group allied with Al Qaeda: "These men were not ignorant, destitute or disenfranchised. Like many of their counterparts in militant Islamic organizations in the region, they held normal, respectable jobs. As a group, most of the detainees regarded religion as their most important personal value."

Like the best Madison Avenue advertisers, but to ghastlier effect, the charismatic leaders of terrorist groups turn ordinary desires for family and religion into cravings for what they're pitching.

How do we combat these masters of manipulation? Shows of military strength don't seem to dissuade terrorists: witness the failure of Israel's coercive efforts to end the string of Palestinian suicide bombings. Rather, we need to show the Muslim world the side of our culture that they most respect. Our engagement needs to involve interfaith initiatives, not ethnic profiling.

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Sunday, May 04, 2003

Spot the Christian

The 120-member Christian fellowship at Yale is 85 percent Asian, while the Buddhist meditation meetings at Yale are almost entirely white.

Yale is hardly the only university where this is occurring. Asian Americans are rapidly becoming the face of Christianity on many college campuses across the country, joining evangelical clubs in large numbers and, in some cases, starting their own Christian organizations. The trend is most pronounced at elite private universities, where Asian American enrollment is high, but it also has been evident at public colleges, including the University of Maryland and the University of Virginia. Meanwhile, in smaller numbers, white students are increasingly gravitating toward Buddhism, Taoism and other Eastern religions.

At many colleges, the influx of Asian American students has given Christian organizations a much bigger presence on campus. Even at liberal schools such as Stanford, Harvard and the University of Chicago, better known as vanguards for gay studies and deconstructionism than for evangelical crusades, weekly meetings of Christian fellowships are drawing hundreds of Asian students.

"Even Asians are surprised at how many Asians there are in Christian circles," said Chin-ho Chang, a senior at Columbia University and a leader of its chapter of Campus Crusade for Christ, one of several large fellowships on the campus. A dozen years ago, the Columbia chapter drew about 15 students, most of them white. Now it has 130 students who have split into two groups -- a branch that is entirely Korean American and a multiracial branch that is 85 percent Asian, Chang said.

Because of this phenomenon, the professional world soon will be absorbing waves of highly educated Asian Americans who are evangelical and poised to exert influence in their fields, researchers say.

InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, one of several national evangelical groups, has chapters at 560 colleges. In the last two decades, the number of Asian Americans in the group has increased by nearly 500 percent, from 693 to 4,101.

Both white and Asian students are breaking long-held stereotypes about race and religion, says Warner, the sociology professor. "It'll come to the point where Buddhism won't be an Asian thing anymore and Christianity won't be a white thing," he said. "You will look at somebody and you won't be able to tell what religion they belong to."

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Southerners give more to Charity

There are many words to describe New Englanders. ''Generous,'' it would seem, isn't one of them. A new study by the Chronicle of Philanthropy shows that when it comes to giving charity, taxpayers in the six New England states are some of the stingiest people in America. It isn't a new indictment. In a 1998 survey, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island were among the five least charitable states in the nation -- despite being among the wealthiest. In 2000, the Urban Institute's ''Generosity Index'' put Massachusetts dead last, with most of its neighbors clustered nearby. On this page in 1997, I wrote about what were then the latest tax statistics on charitable giving: ''When the IRS numbers are ranked by state, New England is invariably at the bottom.'' At the top, then as now, were Utah, Wyoming, and much of the Deep South.

In only one of the Bay State's 14 counties do taxpayers give more than 6.5 percent of their discretionary income to charity. In only two of Mississippi's 81 counties do they give less. Residents of Lee County, Miss. -- county seat: Tupelo -- donate an average of $9,126 to charity on discretionary income of $61,421. But in Boston and Suffolk County, Mass., where discretionary income is nearly $79,000, the average amount given to charity is only $6,654.

Among the nation's 50 largest cities, Boston (the only one in New England) ranks fifth in income. In charitable giving it ranks 19th. Widen the lens angle, and the results are even uglier. Of the 50 largest metropolitan areas, the three located in New England -- Boston/Worcester/ Lawrence, Providence/Fall River, and Hartford -- were ranked, respectively, 48th, 49th, and 50th in the percentage of discretionary income given to charity.

Many Americans give till it hurts. For far too many New Englanders, it apparently hurts to give. Why?

One part of the answer is that charity begins with religion, and New England is no longer very religious. To be sure, it isn't necessary to go to church, read the Bible, or believe in God to give generously and selflessly to charity. But the data speak for themselves. Americans who live where the influence of religion is strong -- in heavily Mormon Utah, for example, or the Southern Bible Belt, or Brooklyn -- tend to share much more of their wealth with others. Where the culture is more secular and the churches command less respect, charitable giving dries up.

Today, by contrast, this part of the country is far better known for its liberal politics and big-government activism. And it is probably no coincidence that volunteerism and charity have declined as the public sector has swelled.

After all, if it's the government's job to take care of the hungry, why give money to a soup kitchen or homeless shelter? If it's up to the state to cure every social ill, who needs good Samaritans or private philanthropy? By taking responsibility ''for the supply of others' necessities,'' government accustoms ordinary citizens to the idea that their charity and help are unnecessary. Perhaps it is political culture as much as religious conviction that explains why Mississippi gives and Massachusetts doesn't.

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Quality of Life Better After HIV Diagnosis for Some

AIDS researchers are finding that many people infected with HIV report that "life is better" after they receive their diagnosis.

"We don't know for sure why this is," lead investigator Dr. Joel Tsevat of the Veterans Healthcare System in Cincinnati, Ohio, told Reuters Health in an interview Thursday after he presented survey findings at the annual meeting of the Society of General Internal Medicine in Vancouver.

Participants were asked to compare their quality of life before and after receiving the news that they were HIV-positive. About a third (32%) of patients reported that their life was better after diagnosis, Tsevat reported, while 29% said that their life was worse and 26% said that their life was "about the same."

Patients were more likely to participate in non-organized religious activities after receiving their diagnosis, such as prayer, meditation and Bible study, Tsevat said. With the increase in spirituality, patients expressed feelings such as they "were here for a reason, or that they had a purpose in life," Tsevat explained.

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Saturday, May 03, 2003

Missionaries bring aid, controversy to Kashmir

For a decade now, Christian missionary groups have been flocking to the conflicted province of Kashmir, bringing medicine, school books, and self-help programs.

But some observers worry that the influx of Christian evangelists may be exacerbating a volatile situation in India's northernmost state, where up to 50,000 people have died in sectarian violence.

Local Christians like Pastor Leslie Richards are also increasingly agitated by the presence of the new evangelists, who they believe are more interested in conversions than social work. Mr. Richards says local Muslims receive cash if they agree to convert. "The conversions they are doing are Biblically wrong ... this is not good for the local Christians, who for centuries have shared cordial relations with the local Muslims here," Richards told the Indian Express newspaper.

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More Black Youth Go to Church

Religion is more likely to play a greater role in the lives of black youth than their white counterparts, according to a new study in the Sacramento Observer.

Some 57 percent of black high school seniors surveyed said religion was a ?very important? part of their lives compared with 27 percent of whites, according to a Child Trends study. Almost half of the black 12th graders - 45 percent - said they attended church at least once a week, while the percentage of white churchgoers was 31 percent.

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Friday, May 02, 2003

Day of Prayer celebrations draw debate

When Congress, at the behest of Harry Truman, approved a National Day of Prayer, the intent was to be inclusive of all religious beliefs. But some critics contend the event, which marks its 52nd year today, has become co-opted in recent years by evangelical Christians, who have transformed the national day into an event meant to further a socially conservative agenda.

Two recent polls suggest that between 36 to 46 percent of people in the nation consider themselves evangelical Christians. A Pew Research Center poll found that 82 percent of Americans associate themselves with the Christian faith. Of that group, the poll found that 43 percent do not consider themselves evangelical; 36 percent do.

Mark Fried, a task force spokesman, estimates there will be 30,000 National Day of Prayer events this year. The task force, which is made up of 7,500 volunteers, offers assistance and suggestions for organizations.

Dave Sammons, president of the Interfaith Council of Contra Costa County, believes that given current events, it's essential to gain greater insight into other religions.

"I just get very moved by listening to one of my Muslim colleagues chant one of his prayers," he said. "I can't be a Muslim, but I can be with a Muslim in prayer."

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Thursday, May 01, 2003

Christian TV, radio outdraw churches

"A greater number of adults experience the Christian faith through the Christian media, such as radio, television or books, than attend Christian services," the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) announced this week.

132 million adults attended church last month while 141 million used some form of Christian media.

According to the NRB, 52 percent of the nation's adults listened to Christian music or other programming on the radio, while 43 percent watched Christian TV programming. Among evangelical Christians, 96 percent counted themselves in the regular Christian TV or radio audience. The survey also found that 25 percent of people who describe themselves as atheists, agnostic or non-Christians "had some degree of exposure to Christianity through the media." The survey of 1,010 adults was conducted by the California-based Barna Research Group in mid-April.

Ninety-one percent supported efforts to persuade advertisers and TV networks to clean up "trash TV" and offer more family-friendly programming.