TruthBook Religious News Blog

A new study has affirmed the biblical declaration that a house divided cannot stand.

Sociologists with the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR), based at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, recently found that religiously involved American families of youth ages 12 to 14 get along better than families that are not religiously active.

Christian Smith, principal investigator of the study, said youth from families who attend church, pray or read Scriptures together are more likely to admire and enjoy their parents more, and get praise from their parents. Additionally, the teens' parents know more about their friends and social contacts, and their families tend to share meals more often and teens are less likely to run away from home.

In contrast, youth whose families do not engage in religious activities throughout the week tend to have weaker relationships with their mothers and fathers, are less likely to participate in family activities such as eating dinner together and to not run away from home, said Smith, a professor and associate chair of sociology at UNC.

A four-year research project funded by Lilly Endowment Inc., the NSYR began in August 2001 and will continue until August 2005. Smith said the survey is the most extensive and detailed study of U.S. parent-teen relationships that has been conducted on the subject of religion and spirituality.

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Wednesday, July 30, 2003

German teens split on God, astrology

More than half of German teenagers put their faith in astrology - almost the same percentage as who believe in God, according to a news survey Wednesday.

The survey of 12- to 16-year-olds by Iconkids & Youth Institute showed 54 percent believe in horoscopes. Similarly, 58 percent of them believe in God.

Those findings applied only to western Germany, the pollsters pointed out. Interestingly, belief in astrology as well as in God was only about 36 percent among teens in eastern Germany, the survey showed.

Faith in the stars was even higher among girls, with 63 percent nationwide saying they believed in horoscopes, compared to only 38 percent of boys.

"Astrology has lost any hint of stigma among teenagers, both east and west," said Barlovic.

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Monday, July 28, 2003

Czechs tend to view religion with suspicion

"There's a hostility toward what religion did to them in the past," said Lawrence Cada, a Marianist brother from Cleveland who is on a scouting mission to determine whether the Catholic order should expand here. "The Czechs say they're the most atheist country in Europe, and they say it with some pride . . . This is how Western civilization may look in 50 years, because people here believe they live a full life without any religion."

A poll done by the European Values Study, a Netherlands-based organization that tracks religious and moral attitudes, found that fewer Czechs claim allegiance to organized religion than any other people in Europe, except Estonians, who are still trying to move beyond their Soviet past. Only 33.6 percent of Czechs belong to a religious denomination and only 11.7 percent attend services once a month or more.

"The churches don't know how to get closer to the daily lives of the people," said Monsignor Daniel Herman, spokesman for the nation's Catholic Bishops' Conference. "After so long of being separated from the people, the church became a kind of ghetto. After the persecution and brainwashing of Communism they live a horizontal life. There's no vertical dimension of spirituality."

"Society has gotten to the point where it believes in nothing," said Siklova. "The Czechs even stopped identifying with their government and their army. The invisible hand of the capitalist market has taken over. There's an aggressive drive for the accumulation of capital and not a lot of ethics."

More than most Czechs, Kopecka-Valeska is troubled by the spiritual state of things.

"What's lacking here is the aura of Christian morals," she said, waiting out a rainstorm in a cafe. "People have forgotten that right and wrong stem from Christianity. These days, if you're caught being naughty, there's no one to answer to. People cheat on their employers. They cheat on each other. The egoism is unbelievable. It's me, me, me."

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Friday, July 25, 2003

Altruism shines through in survey of good deeds

On average, Americans do at least 109 good deeds every year, according to the results of a new study to be released today by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.

The study, called "Altruism in Contemporary America," which surveyed 1,366 people in person across the nation over the last two years, also found that whether you are a man or a woman, rich or poor, a city dweller or a country bumpkin, liberal or conservative, black, white, or brown, it seems to have little or no bearing on how altruistic you are.

What does matter, surveyors found, is how religious you consider yourself to be, how often you go to church, synagogue, mosque or temple, and how often you pray.

Surveyors defined altruism as behavior "motivated mainly out of a consideration for another's needs rather than one's own'' and asked people if they had done any of 15 specific good deeds.

It certainly doesn't take faith to be altruistic, but apparently it helps.

While people who never attend church said they performed, on average, 96 acts of kindness annually, people who attend church at least weekly if not more often report 128 good deeds every year, the study found.

People who pray at least once a week reported they performed nearly twice as many altruistic acts as those who said they never pray. And those who said they pray multiple times a day also did three times as many acts of kindness as those who don't pray, ever.

Folks who told surveyors that they considered their religiousness to be "strong" reported 128.6 altruistic acts annually. Those who said they had "no religion" reported 97.5 good deeds each year.

"The specific denomination or religion you follow doesn't make a difference" in terms of how altruistic you are, said Tom W. Smith, director of the General Social Survey of the research center.

"Among the central teachings of all the major religions are basically altruistic values. Giving alms to the poor is one of the five pillars of Islam. 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,' and other Christian precepts. The admonition to do good deeds is central to Judaism."

"It's apparent that those who are active in those faiths have heard the message," Smith said.

The kind of "altruistic deeds" surveyors asked people about were not the kind of things about which journalists write news stories. They're not a big deal. At least not on the surface. But they are the kinds of random acts of kindness that make the world more livable as people "pay it forward," if you will.

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Thursday, July 24, 2003

Texas Puts Gutenberg Bible on Internet

The University of Texas has put its entire two-volume Gutenberg Bible on the Internet, making it easier for scholars and the public to browse one of the world's most valuable books.

"Just as Johann Gutenberg made knowledge more accessible with the invention of the printing process, this digitization project continues that legacy," said Richard Oram, head librarian at the university's Harry Ransom Center, one of the world's top cultural archives.

According to the Ransom Center, only about 200 were produced and only 48 copies exist today, each one of them unique since local artisans were hired to illuminate the letters opening each book.

Needham said the online access, and the soon-to-be-developed high resolution CD-ROM, will be a boon to scholars who want to look at the Bible without traveling to Austin where it is enclosed in temperature-controlled glass and under the watch of 24-hour security.

Ransom Center staff began digitally scanning the Bible's linen pages in June 2002. The finished project gives Web viewers 7,000 images and special software was used to allow for full visibility of the text and illuminations.

You can view the Book at http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/permanent/gutenberg/

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Pray Often, Live Longer

A review showed that 20-year old Americans can expect to live 6.6 years longer if they attend religious services at least once a week. Now Harold G. Koenig, who teaches psychiatry at Duke University, reports that elderly people who are not disabled run a 47 percent greater risk of dying before long if they are not engaged in regular prayer, meditation or Bible study.

Koenig is the director of the Center for the Study of Religion, Spirituality and Health and editor-in-chief of Research News in Science and Theology. Discussing his long-term study with a sample group up 4,000 men and women above the age of 65, he related in an interview that praying and attending divine service regularly seem to result in a "40 percent reduction in the likelihood of high blood pressure."

Religiously active Americans of advanced age smoke and drink less than others, feel more at peace with themselves and--as Koenig phrased it -- "at least perceive to have more social support."

"When people pray, their fear of death goes down," Koenig went on. Equally important, active faith mitigates the grief over the death of a husband, wife, relative or friend. "The believer can cope better with a loss because he knows the loved one to be in God's good care."

Loneliness is perhaps the most horrible experience in old age. Here again, a life of worship helps, according to Koenig: "When you know that God is present you no longer feel that lonely." This corresponds to Luther's insight. He made it clear that he conversed with God as with a friend.

As Utsch, the German theologian, reminded Europeans recently, "Faith and prayer relativize the yardsticks of a society fixated on accomplishment and adventure. At the same time, faith and prayer can protect you from feeling inferior because of misfortune, sickness or the handicaps of old age."

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The workplace gets spiritual

Business is a worldly activity. Business leaders have tended to separate their higher selves from the cut-and-thrust of commercial life. Yet, the line between business and spiritual life is becoming increasingly blurred.

The Transformational Leadership programme includes 150 of the company’s top managers. They are exposed to some unusual teaching techniques. The initial four-day seminar includes sessions with a poet, an orchestra, a Jesuit priest and an ethicist to encourage executives to bring “one’s entire self to the workplace”.

Such ideas have been steadily gaining ground. The English-born poet, David Whyte, who teaches on the AstraZeneca programme, has been working with companies in the field of organisational development for more than a decade.

Whyte has an impressive client list that also includes advertising group WPP, aircraft manufacturer Boeing and the oil company Shell. His presentations are sprinkled with the poetry of Dante, Coleridge, Eliot and Blake as well as his own. “It is impossible to build a creative, vital, adaptable workforce unless every member of that team is asking germane questions about their own lives,” he says.

According to Sue Cheshire, managing director, Academy for Chief Executives, a mentoring network for senior managers, increasing chaos in the world is driving the need for a more spiritual understanding of work.

“Spirituality in the workplace starts with business leaders creating order within themselves,” she says. “This will have an impact on those around them, helping to foster a greater acceptance of values and responsibility as the natural qualifications for true leadership.”

Some commentators argue there is a scientific basis for a link between spirituality and business performance. Along with IQ and EQ (emotional intelligence), SQ, or spiritual quotient, has been identified as a third key area of human intelligence.

Among those championing the concept is the American business writer, Danah Zohar, author of SQ — Spiritual Intelligence, and Rewiring the Corporate Brain. SQ, she asserts, is the ultimate human intelligence and a necessary foundation for both IQ and EQ. “IQ is our rational, logical, linear intelligence,” she says. “It is the intelligence with which we solve problems and with which we manipulate and control our environment. SQ, our need for and access to deep meaning, purpose and values, is our transformative intelligence. SQ makes us ask fundamental questions, it rocks the boat and moves the boundaries.”

Anti-capitalist protestors are unlikely to be reassured by the thought that companies are bringing the spiritual world into work. Yet this may be just what is required to mitigate the worst excesses of market economies.

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Indians eat, read and sleep religion

Indians find it easier to reach god than have access to a school or hospital. India has more public places of worship - of its multiple faiths - than schools, colleges, hospitals and dispensaries put together.

And there is at least one place of religious worship at every kilometre of the country's road network of 2.4 million kilometres.

According to a wide-ranging survey by the Census of India, there are some 2.4 million places of worship in the country, as against 1.5 million schools and colleges and a mere 600,000 hospitals and dispensaries.

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Wednesday, July 23, 2003

Nuns given Mother Teresa copyright

An order of nuns has managed to secure copyright of Mother Teresa's name to prevent it being exploited by commercial interests.

The Missionaries of Charity, an order of nuns founded by Mother Teresa and based in the city of Calcutta, India, applied for copyright to her name and the name of the order last month.

It found that Mother Teresa's name and its own name were being used for banks, children's home and even a management institute.

The order also applied for protection to its logo, a rosary-encircled globe with a cross in the centre, reputedly designed by Mother Teresa herself.

"We are happy to know that Mother Teresa's name and the logo cannot be used or reproduced without the consent of Missionaries of Charity," Sister Christie from the order told French news agency AFP.

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Monday, July 21, 2003

TOP LEADERS

Who are some of the stand-out leaders of contemporary society?

Here are some people who, says James Donahue, president and professor of ethics at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, "have enormous insight into the human condition in ways that most people don't." None, however, is perfect, he adds.

• Desmond Tutu: South African archbishop and Nobel peace laureate; speaks about peace and reconciliation.

• The Dalai Lama: Tibetian Buddhism's exiled leader espouses peace and unity.

• Pope John Paul II: Travels internationally to try to reach out to other nations.

• Bill Moyers: Public TV's heralded broadcaster "has the ability to get at the big picture."

• Alice Walker: Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Color Purple." She "names truths that have transcended groups."

• Maya Angelou: Poet who, like Walker, has revealed "hidden voices from history."

• Robert Bly: Poet whose work with the men's movement tried "to give voice to a different portrait of manhood."

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Friday, July 18, 2003

Roman Catholic priest suspended for leading "open communion"

A Roman Catholic priest based in Germany was suspended Thursday for leading a high-profile open communion service at a Lutheran church in May in defiance of a papal admonition.

The bishop of Trier barred Gotthold Hasenhuettl, who is also a professor emeritus of theology at the University of Saarbruecken in western Germany, from celebrating the Eucharist and withdrew his church teaching permit.On May 29, around 2,000 people crowded into Berlin's Gethsemane Church as Hasenhuettl, distributed communion wafers among the worshippers - Roman Catholics and Lutherans alike. He celebrated a Roman Catholic Eucharist, but the service was advertised as an "open communion."

Pope John Paul II in April issued a reminder that services in Protestant churches cannot substitute for Sunday Mass. In an encyclical, he branded "unthinkable" the practice of substituting obligatory Sunday Mass with celebrations of prayer with other Christians or participation in their liturgical services.

Roman Catholics maintain that they receive the blood and body of Christ in communion, but many other Christians view communion as a symbolic re-creation of the Last Supper.

"Anyone who divides excludes himself," the Austrian-born Hasenhuettl, 69, said during the service, held on the sidelines of a major ecumenical conference.

Last month, another Roman Catholic priest was suspended for receiving communion at a Lutheran service held days later at the same church.

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Many Presbyterians reject the idea that only followers of Christ will be saved

A survey of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) found most of its members believe Jesus is ``the only absolute truth,'' but many also reject the idea that only followers of Christ will be saved.

The findings are from a survey the Presbyterians' research division conducted of about 3,500 lay people and clergy between October of last year and January.

About 70 percent of congregants and pastors surveyed said that Christ was ``the only absolute truth,'' while just above 40 percent believed that Jesus was the single path to salvation.

The study, released last month, also found that women comprise 61 percent of the 2.5 million-member denomination, while most of the clergy are men.

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Thursday, July 17, 2003

Church sued for 'hell prediction'

A New Mexico family is suing its local Catholic church over a funeral Mass at which the priest allegedly said their relative was going straight to hell.

The family of Ben Martinez, 80, allege that Reverend Scott Mansfield said he was "living in sin," "lukewarm in his faith" and that "the Lord vomited people like Ben out of his mouth to hell".

"These people are profoundly hurt," said lawyer Kathleen Kentish-Lucero, representing the Martinez family.

"If you are Catholic and a representative of your church says your father is going to hell, that's perhaps the most devastating thing someone can say to you."

One of the plaintiffs allegedly said people in the town "are staring at her, thinking her father is in hell."

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Tuesday, July 15, 2003

Burning the dead: Hindu ritual poses environmental crisis

''Unless the body is burned on a wood pyre, the soul does not get salvation. When the flames leap up to heaven, then you get the satisfaction the soul is set free.''

Nearly 20,000 Hindus die each day in this nation of 1 billion people. Each cremation requires an average of 650 pounds of wood. The result is denuded forests, rivers clogging up with human ashes — or even body parts — and a wood trade said to be rife with corruption.

In the 1980s the government turned to electric furnaces, building scores of them in cities and towns along the Ganges River, whose waters are believed by Hindus to wash away sin and release the soul for its journey toward heaven.

But few Hindus have made the changes, and many of the electric crematoriums have fallen into disrepair.

Some officials say wood traders collude with operators of the electric crematoriums to ensure that the furnaces malfunction or run short of diesel for their generators.

''They deliberately don't let the crematoriums function so that hapless people are forced to buy wood from them at exorbitant prices,'' said B. Sengupta, of the government's Central Pollution Control Board.

Varanasi, the holy city on the Ganges 395 miles southeast of New Delhi, attracts hundreds of thousands of people who cremate their dead and pour the ashes into the river to ensure ''moksha,'' the final liberation of the soul from the endless cycle of reincarnation.

The ashes of millions of dead have helped turn the water into a stinking, polluted swirl. Worse, since wood is scarce and expensive, bodies sometimes are thrown into the river half-burned.

''Apart from the ashes, this is an even bigger environmental hazard for the Ganges River,'' said Sunita Narain, an activist with the Center for Science and Environment in New Delhi.

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Majority In Survey Back Moore's Stand On Ten Commandments

A majority of Alabamians in a survey say they back Chief Justice Roy Moore's legal battle to keep his Ten Commandments monument in the state judicial building.

Results of the Mobile Register-University of South Alabama poll, published Sunday, showed 77 percent of the 438 people surveyed either "strongly approve" or "approve" of the monument and agreed that Moore should appeal the order to remove it to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"This is not about polls; it's not about politics; it's not about religion," Moore stated. "It is about the acknowledgment of God as the foundation of our moral law, under both the United States Constitution and the Constitution of Alabama, and the truth stated in the Preamble of our Alabama Constitution that, in order to establish justice, we must invoke the favor and guidance of Almighty God. A federal court has no jurisdiction to tell us that we cannot acknowledge God."

Despite exhibiting support for the chief justice, more than half of the respondents said they would disapprove of public money being used to pay attorneys' fees in Moore's case.

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Sunday, July 13, 2003

Churches go high-tech for busy worshipers

The high-tech era has made life easier for many religious people across the country -- from special timing devices that turn lights on and off on the Sabbath for Orthodox Jews to church Web sites that offer sermon notes and interactive Bible studies for those too busy to go to services.

High-tech worship is spreading nationwide. One online outfit, PalTalk, says group prayers on its videoconferences have tripled since 2000; the Hartford Institute for Religion Research says the percentage of churches with Web sites has risen to 55 percent from 18 percent in five years.

Shandon Baptist Church in Forest Acres, which has more than 3,000 members, offers audio versions of sermons by its pastor, the Rev. Dick Lincoln, on its Web site. Within a month, the church also will offer streaming video of the sermons .

Shandon also offers members the ability to pay tithes or other church-related fees online and has a four-minute CD-ROM to hand out to new members and visitors. The CD-ROM offers a quick overview of Shandon, a virtual church tour and information about special church ministries.

Web sites can help attract new members, Wheeler said. They also allow members who are overseas with the military to keep in touch with their home church, he added.

San Francisco's Grace Cathedral, for instance, started an audio Web cast a year ago, and it draws 1,500 worshipers, almost twice as many as fill the Sunday pews.

This fall Jenn-Air will premiere an oven with an automatic Sabbath mode for observant Jews. AutoTime, based in Baltimore, sells a computer program that allows Jews to preset their Sabbath lighting, oven and air-conditioner settings for 50 years.

Things have gotten so sophisticated, you can even log on to Islamicity.com and watch live the Hajj, Muslims' annual pilgrimage to Mecca.

In Baltimore, Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg says he's noticed a drop-off in attendance since he started sending his sermons via e-mail to more than 2,000 subscribers each week. That's better than nothing at all, he says, though "seeing them in person is better."

ATMs also are showing up in church lobbies, a move that's becoming more common as churches struggle with the economy. In Baton Rouge, La., the Catholic Diocese is considering putting up informational kiosks that take credit cards in some of its parishes.

Some leaders worry the developments are making religion too easy and encouraging the faithful to be lazy. Critics worry worshipers will get too comfortable praying from home. Johnson of San Francisco's Grace Cathedral says, "There is a concern that people will isolate themselves."

But one online devotional tool, the Virtual Rosary, received an endorsement from an official with the Diocese of Charleston.

The Virtual Rosary, first developed by a New Orleans Catholic in 1997, offers free software downloads of a virtual Rosary that offers onscreen prayers and specific devotions, giving believers the chance to pray the Rosary on their personal digital assistant if they want.

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Friday, July 11, 2003

Youth: 56% go to Church but only 10% have a Biblical Worldview

Less than ten percent of America's teenagers have a biblical worldview, according to a new survey of the California-based Barna Research Institute.

The Barna findings show up what seems like a strange inconsistency: Most of a sample group of teens - 56 percent -- said they attended church-related activities at least twice per month in their childhood.

Yet although 26 percent stated they received some general information about God or the life and teachings of Christ, "we find that most of them have neither accepted Christ as their savior nor altered the basis on which they make their moral and ethical decisions in life," pollster George Barna reported.

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Wednesday, July 09, 2003

'Intelligent design' adherents use science to question evolution

As summer activities chase flagella and mitochondria from the minds of Texas schoolchildren, parents and interest groups are preparing to battle over biology textbooks.

Today brings the State Board of Education's first public hearing on the new books, continuing a decades-long battle over how Texas public school children are taught about the science of life on Earth.

As traditional creationism has lost political ground in Texas, a national movement that embraces the concept known as "intelligent design" has gained influence by using science rather than religion to battle evolution. Intelligent designers believe certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained as the product of intelligent action, not an undirected process such as natural selection.

John West, assistant director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute, said the institute's intelligent design theories are not related to its position on evolution. West says evolution should be taught, but its discussion should include disagreements among biologists about aspects of the theory.

"If you are going to cover it, you need to cover it correctly," West said.

The institute has tried hard to publicly extricate itself from creationists and social conservatives who have besieged textbook hearings since the 1980s, most of whom believe that evolution is incompatible with a literal reading of the Book of Genesis in the Bible and that Earth is no more than 10,000 years old.

West dismisses attacks on the institute for its motives. "Everyone has motives for everything. Science is about the evidence," West said.

But Eugenie Scott, Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education, says scientists such as William Dembski, Michael Behe and Jonathan Wells, all senior fellows at the institute, are not taken seriously by mainstream scientists. Scott and Maguire say work on intelligent design is not published in scientific, peer-reviewed journals.

Though intelligent design theorists and creationists may be a minority in the scientific community, the most recent Gallup poll shows that nearly half the American public leans more toward creationism than evolution.

Intelligent design

What is it?

Popularized in the early 1990s, the intelligent design movement claims that the development of life can't be explained by natural selection. Though intelligent designers disagree among themselves about the history of life on Earth, most agree that life suggests the hand of some creator, rather than a series of developments governed only by the laws of nature.

Where is it based?

Center for Science and Culture, part of the Discovery Institute in Seattle.

On what grounds do proponents dispute evolution?

* In 1953, two scientists set out to show how life evolved by sending an electric current through a mixture of primordial gases and growing organic material. Later, it was discovered that the gases used in the experiment weren't the gases that composed Earth's early atmosphere. Based on the new findings, the scientists tried the experiment again, and it did not work. (Other scientists say similar experiments have succeeded, and there are other theories for origin as well, including hydrothermal vents and meteorites.)

* Fossils show a huge burst of life during the Cambrian era (about 500 million years ago), posing a challenge to evolutionary theory, which says that life forms developed over time. (The National Center for Science Education says the Cambrian era lasted millions of years and that intermediate life forms are detectable in fossil record.)

* A classic example of natural selection shows light-colored moths disappearing during the English Industrial Revolution because of pollution-blackened trees.Black moths, which were better camouflaged, survived. After the pollution was cleaned up, the example showed light-colored moths returning. Photos of moths on trees were later found to be staged.

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Tuesday, July 08, 2003

Jolene LeRoy uses faith to help improve health

Jolene LeRoy is a registered nurse. But she doesn't work at a medical center or in a doctor's office. Her church is her hospital.

LeRoy is a parish nurse, a professional who tries to bridge health and religion. As part of a pastoral team, she works closely with the parish staff to meet the health and spiritual needs of her congregation and the community at large. The program is affiliated with Provena Mercy Center in Aurora.

"Integrating faith and healing is my primary focus as a parish nurse," said LeRoy, an Aurora resident. "Parish nursing is a way of integrating the mind, body and spirit to create wholeness, health and a sense of well being, even when curing cannot occur."

LeRoy frequently ends her sessions with people by praying with them.

"Various studies have been done that show the healing power of faith, prayer and forgiveness," she said.

LeRoy cautions against the danger of being too task oriented.

"As nurses, we want to fix things," she said. "But parish nursing isn't just about doing something. It's a ministry of presence, of journeying with people in their life's search."

The parish nurse movement started in 1984 at Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge through the efforts of the Rev. Granger E. Westberg and six area congregations. As a hospital chaplain, Westberg wanted to promote healing and wellness by integrating nurses into a church setting. There are now 7,000 parish nurses in the United States, and the interfaith program has spread throughout the world.

"Parish nursing is growing phenomenon that's needed more than ever," said Deborah Patterson, executive director of the International Parish Nurse Resource Center in St. Louis. "Our health care system is broken, and parish nurses can help people navigate through the system."

Parish nurses also can encourage healthier lifestyles through prevention and better eating. Patterson cited a recent survey by Webster University in which 49 percent of the participants said they had their blood pressure checked more frequently and that 32 percent started to exercise regularly because of the efforts of a parish nurse.

"I see myself as a healing presence in today's world," LeRoy said. "I feel blessed to witness people's faith and to help them along life's journey so that they feel God is with them."

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Clergymen in Uganda are politically the most highly rated people

Clergymen in Uganda are politically the most highly rated people, according to a study commissioned by the US-based International Republican Institute (IRI).

Conducted by the Nairobi-based Strategic Public Relations and Research Limited between May 21 and June 13, the research shows that 62 percent of the 3,000 respondents across a wide political, social and economic spectrum, trust religious leaders on political matters.

Civil society is second with a 57 percent rating. Museveni follows with 54 percent and parliament, 51 percent.

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Monday, July 07, 2003

Christians ghettoizing Themselves?

Ann Kuschel works out four days a week at the Lord's Gym, pumping iron, pounding a treadmill and performing aerobics to the beat of Christian rock music. The way she sees it, even when she's sweating, she's serving the Lord.

For devout Christians like Kuschel at the Lord's Gym, the world can seem an ungodly place. Public schools forbid prayer. Popular culture is rife with sex and violence. Even Disney may be viewed with disapproval for racy movies and practices perceived as gay-friendly.

Increasingly, many are choosing to pursue a path apart from the American mainstream. From education, to music and entertainment, even to the theme park they'll visit in Orlando, religious conservatives are flocking to Christian-themed options such as the Lord's Gym here in South Florida.

'It can ghettoize Christians'

About 46% of Americans describe themselves as "born again" or "evangelical" Christians, up from 41% a decade ago, according to the Gallup Poll. There are no statistics on how many have completely abandoned popular culture to seek a holier course. But millions of conservative Christians now sample a range of Christian-themed activities that is growing.

"Many of the things modern culture provides now have Christian versions," says John Green, a University of Akron political scientist who has studied religious conservatives since 1980. "There's an attempt to separate themselves from the world."

Not even conservative Christians agree about how much separation is good. Some say isolation from the mainstream threatens the evangelical Christian belief that faith in Jesus Christ as savior is meant to be shared with non-believers. Signing on for a Christian cruise or joining rock-climbers for Christ may mean those intent on saving souls are preaching to an already-committed choir.

"It can ghettoize Christians from the rest of the world," Mark Galli, managing editor of Christianity Today, says of the evangelical subculture. "There are pluses and minuses."

Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, which was among those filing lawsuits against the first generation of Christian Yellow Pages, says the current crop doesn't seem as exclusionary. Foxman says it's natural for people of similar faiths and backgrounds to want to congregate together. Problems arise when fellowship turns to discrimination.

"The moment one crosses the line — to exclude everyone else, to say, 'We're better than everyone else' — then it becomes contrary to the spirit of America. And it could be illegal," Foxman says.

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Saturday, July 05, 2003

Is there a U.S. 'epidemic of lying'?

San Francisco Chronicle culture critic Steven Winn offered a pessimistic view of the state of the union on truthfulness.

The Jayson Blair (New York Times reporter) affair exposed "an open secret: America's epidemic of lying," Winn asserted.

If so, there's a second national epidemic of schizophrenia, since Americans continually demand public shrines to exalt the Ten Commandments and one of those laws commands:

"You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor" (Exodus 20:16).

Conservative Judaism's official Bible commentary says in the original context, "false witness" referred to judicial proceedings. If so, that one commandment seems apt for a courthouse, if not necessarily those about worshipping only the one God or keeping the Sabbath.

Almost everyone agrees that "false witness" extends well beyond courtroom perjury, however, and covers all forms of deceit.

A standard Orthodox Jewish commentary, by Britain's one-time Chief Rabbi J.H. Hertz, says that God's law forbids "all forms of slander, defamation and misrepresentation, whether of an individual, a group, a people, a race or a faith."

Similarly, the 1992 "Catechism of the Catholic Church" extends the commandment to duplicity, dissimulation, hypocrisy, boasting, bragging, calumny and even falsehood in art.

But the heart of the matter is simple lying. The catechism says this means "misrepresenting the truth in our relations with others" or making a public "statement contrary to the truth." It also cites St. Augustine's ancient definition, "speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving."

The catechism explains that such actions are forbidden as a sin against the God who is truth and a sin against neighbors and society that depend upon veracity. As many have observed, civilization cannot exist unless most peoples' word can be trusted most of the time.

Which makes Winn's claims sobering.

Winn is not alone in his worries. The temperature-taking folks at the Gallup Poll say 77 percent of Americans rate the "overall state of moral values in the United States today" as "poor" or "only fair," while 22 percent respond with "good" or "excellent."

Moreover, 67 percent think the nation's morality is getting worse while only 24 percent think it's getting better. Those numbers were similar a year ago.

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Amazing Grace: More teens are going to church than adults

American teenagers continue to be more faithful as churchgoers than their parents, according to recent Gallup poll data. Some 43 percent of 13 to 17-year-olds worship weekly compared with 38 percent of adults — a disparity that has persisted for the last 25 years. So it's unlikely that the typical American teen is just being dragged to church by his or her parents.

Perhaps because churches offer opportunities to be involved in charity and social service, 41 percent of churchgoing adolescents volunteer their time regularly to good causes, compared with just one in four of their non-churchgoing peers. Predictably, churchgoing teens tend to be politically conservative. Linda Lyons notes that "57 percent of teens who plan to vote Republican when they are old enough to vote say they attended services in the last week, compared to 35 percent of future Democrats and 37 percent of future independents."

Teens' church attendance appears to be positively related to how well they are doing academically, while those "below average" are less likely to be regular churchgoers. The education of parents is also a factor. Close to half of American teenagers both of whose parents were college-educated are faithful churchgoers, compared with 40 percent of teens with just one or no college-educated parent. Overall, the girls beat the boys in regular church attendance by a 46 percent to 40 percent margin.

This news might warm the hearts of the nation's religious leaders were it not for their awareness that the church attendance of 18-to-29-year-olds is the poorest of any age group in America. Fully two-thirds of Baby Boomers dropped out of religious observance in early adulthood, and only half returned after settling into marriage and becoming responsible for families. The Boomers' successors, the so-called "Generation X," dropped out at an increasing rate. By the year 2000 nearly one of five college freshmen expressed no religious preference.

Today only three in 10 American teens know why Easter is celebrated. Just four in 10 Americans know that Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount. Only three in 10 look to Scripture for truth, and two-thirds of Americans believe there are few, if any, absolute truths to guide human behavior.

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Thursday, July 03, 2003

Divine Intervention

Tony Blair and U.S. President George W. Bush are not the only ones whose religion informs their policy preferences. A forthcoming working paper by economists Joseph Daniels and Marc von der Ruhr reveals how an American’s religion is likely to affect his or her views on a range of foreign policy questions. The polling data shows that Baptists, Jews, and pre–Vatican II Catholics are more likely than believers from other religious denominations to favor unilateral action by the United States.

However, Daniels cautions against using the results to predict the American public’s attitude toward the Iraq crisis and the Bush doctrine, noting that he and von der Ruhr conducted the survey both before the conflict and before “unilateral” became almost synonymous with military force. Daniels plans to analyze new data later this year to assess how religious affiliation influences U.S. attitudes toward unilateral military action.

Scott Appleby, a religious historian at the University of Notre Dame, observes that the support of the aforementioned groups for U.S. unilateralism may well stem from their “teleological view of history,” in which God drives events toward a certain end—what he calls a “theological version of Manifest Destiny.” Appleby stresses that politics also plays a key role, however, especially for Jews who recognize that the state of Israel is supported by U.S. unilateralism.

Daniels argues that “religious groups are pushing American foreign policy,” citing the example of the debt relief campaign Jubilee 2000, which received support from a wide range of religious organizations in the United States due to its Old Testament origins. As “Old Europe” continues to secularize, Daniels sees the United States’ growing religiosity pushing U.S. foreign policy in an increasingly unilateralist direction.

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Wednesday, July 02, 2003

A Bible-based tax policy?

What does the Bible have to do with tax policy? For Alabama Gov. Bob Riley, a lot.

Alabama's conservative Republican governor has created a new convergence of faith and politics. Citing his Christian faith, he's calling for a $1.2 billion tax hike, largely on the backs of wealthier taxpayers, for the benefit of the poor.

It's all adding up to the largest increase in the state's history, and perhaps the first based on the Bible.

"Alabamians are a faithful people who believe that creating a better world for our children and helping our neighbors are both sacred duties," Riley wrote in explaining his tax plan.

"Jesus says one of our missions is to take care of the least among us," the governor told the Birmingham News after announcing his plan. "We've got to take care of the poor."

The state's voters will decide the plan's fate at the ballot box in September. So far it appears too close to predict, but Riley's religion-driven proposal has already stirred controversy among the faithful in Alabama and elsewhere. Should the Bible influence tax policy and government decisions, and if so, what does the Christian holy book tell governments to do in a land where the separation of church and state is the law?

A 2000 Pew poll reported that 70 percent of Americans thought it was important to have a strongly religious president, and last year, a survey by the same group found that almost 50 percent of respondents felt churches and other religious groups should express their views on social and political subjects.

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Tuesday, July 01, 2003

Why Americans fold the flag

At an American military funeral the honor guard pays meticulous attention to correctly folding the American flag 13 times.

1/ The first fold of the flag is a symbol of life.
2/ The second fold is a symbol of a belief in eternal life.
3/ The third fold is made in honor and remembrance of the veterans departing our ranks who gave a portion of their lives for the defense of our country to attain peace throughout the world.
4/ The fourth fold represents our weaker nature, for as American citizens trusting in God, it is to Him we turn in times of peace as well as in time of war for His divine guidance.
5/ The fifth fold is a tribute to our country.
6/ The sixth fold is for where our hearts lie. It is with our heart that we "pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
7/ The seventh fold is a tribute to our armed forces, for it is through the armed forces that we protect our country and our flag against all her enemies, whether they are found within or without the boundaries of our republic.
8/ The eighth fold is a tribute to the one who entered into the valley of the shadow of death, that we might see the light of day.
9/ The ninth fold is a tribute to womanhood, and mothers. For it has been through their faith, their love, loyalty and devotion that the character of the men and women who have made this country great has been molded.
10/ The 10th fold is a tribute to the father, for he, too, has given his sons and daughters for the defense of our country since they were first born.
11/ The 11th fold represents the lower portion of the seal of King David and King Solomon and glorifies in the Hebrews' eyes, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
12/ The 12th fold represents an emblem of eternity and glorifies, in Christians' eyes, God the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit.
12/ The 13th fold, or when the flag is completely folded, the stars are uppermost reminding us of our nation's motto, "In God We Trust."