TruthBook Religious News Blog

Most Christian men in the USA rank family, money and health as more important than spirituality, according to a new study.

More than half of American Christian men questioned were also only marginally satisfied with their church experience, says a survey commissioned by Promise Keepers.

The survey, conducted by California based Barna Research Group also found that most men did not feel spiritually challenged.

The study surveyed 415 randomly selected men the majority of who were married, dads, white, and over 40. They were taken from six major cities, and said they considered themselves either committed "born again Christians" or "active church members."

When asked specifically about spiritual needs, the survey found many men could not think of any, or identified "superficial goals" says Promisekeepers.

The survey also showed that only four in ten men would turn to Christian friends during a time of crisis.

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Monday, April 26, 2004

Many Americans use prayer for health concerns

An estimated one-third of adults use prayer, in addition to conventional medical care and complementary and alternative therapies, for health concerns, according to an article in the April 26 issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

According to information in the article, many Americans believe in the healing power of prayer. While there is no proven therapeutic efficacy of prayer, associations between spirituality and better health outcomes have been described, the article states.

Anne M. McCaffrey, M.D., of Harvard Medical School, Boston, and colleagues investigated the prevalence and patterns of the use of prayer for health concerns.

The researchers found that 35 percent of respondents used prayer for health concerns, and that 75 percent of these people prayed for wellness, and 22 percent prayed for specific medical conditions. Of those praying for specific medical conditions, 69 percent found prayer very helpful. Participants who were older than 33 years, female, attained an education beyond high school, had depression, chronic headaches, back and/or neck pain, digestive problems or allergies were all more likely to use prayer.

"In summary, we found that prayer for health concerns is a highly prevalent practice," the authors write. "Prayer is most often directed toward wellness and used in conjunction with conventional medical care. People who use prayer for health concerns report high levels of perceived helpfulness but rarely discuss their use of prayer with their physicians. Physicians should consider exploring their patients' spiritual practice to enhance their understanding of their patients' response to illness and health."

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Friday, April 23, 2004

Monks have 'secret of life' lifestyle?

U.S. researchers said they think the true secret of living a long, healthy and satisfying life might be found at a nearby monastery.

"Through a systematic review of the scientific literature, we found that individuals who regularly participate in organized religious activities live longer and healthier lives on average," said Daniel Longo, professor of family and community medicine at the University of Missouri in Columbia. "This effect may be more significant among those who have made a life-long commitment to a religious lifestyle in an organized religious community."

For example, Longo said, Trappist and Benedictine monks between 1900 and 1994 experienced a 12 percent lower mortality rate than the general population.

The lifestyle simply includes moderation, obedience, humility and respect for others. It also focuses on balance, along with spirituality, both of which are attitudes conducive to good health, Longo said.

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Tuesday, April 20, 2004

64% of wired Americans have used the Internet for spiritual or religious purposes

Nearly two-thirds of the adults who use the Internet in the United States have used the Internet for faith-related matters. That represents nearly 82 million Americans. Among the most popular and important spiritually-related online activities:

- 38% of the 128 million Internet users have sent and received email with spiritual content.
- 35% have sent or received online greeting cards related to religious holidays.
- 32% have gone online to read news accounts of religious events and affairs.
- 21% have sought information about how to celebrate religious holidays.
- 17% have looked for information about where they could attend religious services.

Those who use the Internet for religious or spiritual purposes are more likely to be women, white, middle aged, college educated, and relatively well-to-do.

The online faithful are somewhat more active as Internet users than the rest of the Internet population. On a typical day, 63% of them are online. Some 56% of them have been online for six years or longer. And 60% have broadband connections somewhere in their life (at home or at work), compared to 54% of all Internet users.

- 55% of the online faithful are women, compared to the overall Internet population, which is 50-50 in its gender composition.
- 83% are white, compared to the overall Internet population, which is 75% white.
- 49% have college educations, compared to 36% of the entire Internet population.
- 47% are between the ages of 30 and 49. This is the same proportion of this age cohort as the overall Internet population.
- 31% live in households earning more than $75,000, compared to 26% of the overall Internet population.

The “online faithful” are devout and they use the Internet for personal spiritual matters more than for traditional religious functions or work related to their places of worship. But their faith-activity online seems to augment their already-strong commitments to their congregations.

As a group, these 82 million people are devout and more likely to be connected to religious institutions and practices than other Internet users. Half of the online faithful go to church at least once a week and many describe themselves as evangelicals.

Higher percentages of the online faithful report online activities related to personal spirituality and religiosity than activities more related to involvement in traditional religious functions or organizations. This is interesting because many analysts have assumed that the Internet would make it more likely for people to leave churches in favor of more flexible online options for religious or spiritual activity. Faith-related activity online is a supplement to, rather than a substitute for offline religious life.

This study found that the Internet does provide people with sources of information, symbolic resources, and opportunities for networking and interaction outside the boundaries of formal religious bodies or traditions. Yet it also found that the online faithful seem more interested in augmenting their traditional faith practices and experiences by personally expressing their own faith and spirituality, as opposed to seeking something new or different in the online environment.

Some 28% of the online faithful said they had used the Internet to seek or exchange information about their own religious faith or tradition with others, while 26% said they had used the Internet to seek or exchange information about the religious faiths or traditions of others.

In a follow up question about the motives of those who got information about others, 51% said they did this out of curiosity so as to find out about others’ beliefs, 13% said they did it for purposes of their own spiritual growth, and 31% said both those reasons were important to them.

There is a tendency for those who do describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious” to be among the heaviest Internet users. They also tend to be more likely to engage in personal spiritual and religious behaviors associated with online “seeking” than they are to engage in online activities related to religious congregations or organizations. However, those who describe themselves as “both spiritual and religious” report even higher levels of these personally-oriented activities and are actually the majority of the online faithful.

- 54% of the online faithful describe themselves as religious and spiritual.
- 33% describe themselves as spiritual but not religious.
- 6% describe themselves as religious but not spiritual.
- 4% describe themselves as not religious and not spiritual.

Online Evangelicals are a significant subgroup of the American religious landscape. This study found them to resemble other Protestants in terms of their Internet behaviors in some ways, but to be unique in other ways. They are slightly less experienced in Internet use than other categories of religious affiliation. Conversely, they are more likely than others to engage in all categories of online religious activity. For instance, 69% report going online for personal religious or spiritual purposes. They are also more likely than Protestants overall to seek out information about both their own religion (36% report doing so) and other religions (33% do).

April 7, 2004
By Stewart M. Hoover, Ph.D., University of Colorado
Lynn Schofield Clark, Ph.D, University of Colorado
Lee Rainie, Director, Pew Internet & American Life Project

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My God is better than your God

Although we are not necessarily aware of its influence on our daily life, religion is, in fact, a formidable force of identity. It develops in our personalities during childhood, quickly becoming second nature.

Religion can become a bridge of understanding among people or a wall of separation, depending on whether the guiding force in the faith is unconditional love or unconditional, literal dogma. Children learn fanaticism by imitating adults. When our son was seven, he asked me if Jesus was better than Muhammad. I froze, thought for a bit, and told him, "You know God through Christ and a Muslim child knows God through the Prophet Muhammad." He was satisfied.

All too often, though, due to ignorance, political insecurity, or the misinterpretation of scripture, children are taught that other people's beliefs are lies. Children who are thus indoctrinated build a mental wall around their community and start to think of people from other religions as dangerous.

This form of prejudice is quite common, even in societies where racism, sexism, and nationalistic chauvinism are generally rejected. When I worked for the World Council of Chuches, one theologian once shared a candid thought with me: "In a sense, literal religion can be fratricidal by structure." He meant that when dogma is taken too literally, it carries the seeds of violence, which are all too easily exploited by those in political power.

This is nowhere more apparent than in the Middle East. Centuries of political intimidation have convinced most Middle Easterners to avoid critical thinking in interpreting the sacred word. Religious authorities - Christian, Jewish, and Muslim - have too often used their power over their communities by discouraging genuine and full dialogue among communities of faith. Meanwhile, Israel's national and foreign policy is explicitly articulated around religious narratives.

Fanaticism made my family refugees in 1975, and still deters us from considering a return to resettle in Lebanon. Religious fanatism also explains why Palestinians and Jews do not live in one state, or even in two parallel states. Israel's so-called "security" wall might well be renamed the "insecurity" wall, as it is only the geographic dramatization of a psychological reality.

It was in Northern Ireland in 1983, where I lectured on Lebanon during an international seminar about non-violence, that I came across the expression "Religion is a badge of identity". But religious fanaticism is rampant in my adoptive country, the United States, too. The US, though proud of its open society, harbors a thriving televangelical industry which markets Jehovah like any other commodity, by brazenly comparing Him to the competition - Allah in particular.

Such fanaticism, in addition to being dangerous, defeats the very purpose of religion, which is to provide meaning to our lives. Children should be taught that the supreme being cannot be fully understood, much less claimed by any nation, race, geography, or culture.

To each his religion - and God help us explain it to our children.

I end with a relevant quote from a liberal Jewish writer, Alan Senauske: "Despite precepts, commandments, and wars, the basic fact is that human identity goes deeper than tribal or national identity. And that [human] identity as yet remains out of reach-for Israelis, Palestinians, for Americans, and several billion other beings. This is just where we should dig in and do the difficult work of peace".

By Ghassan Rubeiz | csmonitor.com

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Sunday, April 18, 2004

God, the universe and YOU

The Book of Genesis describes how God created man in his own image, made the stars and set them in "the firmament of the sky" to cast light on the Earth.

Humankind's exclusively cozy relationship with God is a hallmark of religions practiced by billions of people.

But what happens should one day science discover that life is not unique to Earth?

University of Arizona astronomer Christopher Impey beat out applicants at 200 other universities for a three-year $275,000 Templeton Foundation grant to host a dialogue in Tucson about how life elsewhere would challenge human spirituality on the third planet from the sun.

The lecture series, "Astrobiology and the Sacred: Implications of Life Beyond Earth," will include up to five keynote lectures by "Nobel-Prize-level" speakers and up to 10 other speakers.

No dates have been set, and Impey is working to secure lecturers.

The topic is intellectually fertile because scientific discovery and religious doctrine have clashed over subjects like evolution, a sun-centered solar system and the origins of the cosmos, Impey said.

"The discovery of life on a planet other than Earth will confront us dramatically because we will have to come to grips with the fact that we are not special," Impey said.

He predicts that within five to 10 years, proof of microbial life existing or having existed on other worlds will be discovered.

Extraterrestrial microbes would prove life is not exclusively earthbound. But the prospect of discovering complex or intelligent life in the heavens, although more remote, is loaded with ramifications humanity might find troubling, Impey said.

Christianity has unnecessarily tussled with science, said Roger Barrier, chief pastor at Casas Adobes Baptist Church.

"What I found fascinating is that the discovery of science seems to challenge a lot of believers," Barrier said. "When science doesn't fit the Bible, it blows the faith away."

Such a reaction is unnecessary, said Barrier, who himself believes "there's life all over the universe."

While religious leaders may have little trouble adapting to a universe where humankind is not alone, they may be called upon for some heavy-duty spiritual guidance to convince the rank and file, said Barrier.

He once thought of science as a threat to his faith but has come to see science as a way to describe how God works.

Impey, a sworn agnostic with a photo in his office of himself meeting the pope, said "science and reason can co-exist."

But he warns the shock to human consciousness would likely depend on what kind of life is discovered, Impey said.

Human beings are a relatively new species and are brand new to technology. Intelligent life would almost certainly be more advanced than Homo sapiens, Impey said.

"The things we have declared different we have declared lesser," Impey said. "It's extremely unlikely that if we were to discover a civilization or entity that was not from this planet, that they would not be far beyond where we are technologically."

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Wednesday, April 14, 2004

Desmond Tutu's Recipe for Peace

A Beliefnet interview

Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu is one of the world's most beloved religious figures. A longtime foe of apartheid, he retired as Episcopal archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, and was then named chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the organization charged with bringing to light the atrocities committed during apartheid and achieving reconciliation with the former oppressors. Beliefnet conducted an email interview with him about his latest book, "God Has a Dream."

What is God’s dream, and how was it imparted to you?

God's dream is that you and I and all of us will realize that we are family, that we are made for togetherness, for goodness, and for compassion. In God’s family, there are no outsiders, no enemies. Black and white, rich and poor, gay and straight, Jew and Arab, Muslim and Christian, Hindu and Buddhist—all belong. When we start to live as brothers and sisters and to recognize our interdependence, we become fully human.

This dream can be found throughout the Bible and has been repeated by all of God's prophets right down to Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mahatma Gandhi.

Is it realistic to say there are no enemies when we are involved in a war?

God’s love is too great to be confined to any one side of a conflict or to any one religion. People are shocked when I say that George Bush and Saddam Hussein are brothers, that Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon are brothers, but God says, “All are my children.” It is shocking. It is radical. But it is true.

Aren’t some people simply beyond redemption?

We in South Africa had the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and we had the most devastating revelations of ghastly atrocities. We could describe them as monstrous, even demonic. But even these torturers remained children of God, with a possibility of being able to change. After all, a thief on the cross was able to repent and Jesus promised that thief, "You will be with me in paradise." Jesus didn't say, “Look at what kind of life you have led up to this point.” All of us have the capacity to change, even to become saints.

Is your book relevant to non-Christians or people with no religious faith?

I believe so very much. Because love is universal. I mean, you don't have to believe in God to know that loving is better than hating. We are trying to remind them that all of us are fundamentally good. The aberration is the bad person. God is not upset that Gandhi was not a Christian, because God is not a Christian! All of God's children and their different faiths help us to realize the immensity of God. No faith contains the whole truth about God. And certainly Christians don't have a corner on God. All of us belong to God. Even the nonbeliever is precious to God. And one simply tries to remind them that they are made for transcendence. They are made for goodness.

What compelled you to write this book now?

I think the fact that we are overwhelmed by so much conflict—or nearly overwhelmed. So many of us feel despair because of all the suffering in our world and in our lives. And one needed to say that God has not finished with God’s work. Creation is a work in progress. Evil is not going to have the last word. God has us as God’s collaborators, fellow-workers, and ultimately good—and those who strive for it—will prevail.

Even during the darkest days of apartheid, we kept saying, “They have already lost.” And they had—because immoral laws and rulers will always topple.

You say that this is a moral universe and that “God is a God who cares about right and wrong.” How do you explain suffering and injustice in the world?

The problem of evil and suffering is important and is not to be dealt with lightly. Our ability to do evil is intimately connected to our ability to do good. One is meaningless without the other. Empathy and compassion have no meaning unless they occur in a situation where one could be callous and indifferent to the suffering of others.

Suffering, it seems, is not optional. It is part and parcel of the human condition, but suffering can either embitter us or ennoble us. I hope that people will come to see that this suffering can become a spirituality of transformation when we find meaning in it.

Have you had any moments when you yourself doubted that God is just?

[During apartheid] I got angry, very angry with God, but never doubted that the issue would be resolved through the triumph of good. There were, of course, times in South Africa when you had to whistle in the dark to keep your morale up, and you wanted to whisper in God's ear, "God we know You are in charge, but can't You make it a little more obvious?" You see, we are free to be completely human and authentic with God. Jeremiah says, "God, you have deceived me." Sometimes I did get furious with God. I officiated at many funerals.

Of all the things you saw in South Africa, what was the greatest evidence of God's power and love?

During the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, when we witnessed the ability of victims to forgive their torturers—and of former torturers to transform their lives.

How would you apply the concept of reconciliation to the situation in the Middle East and the cycle of violence and retaliation? How can the two sides ever achieve peace?

One of the things we learned in South Africa is that there is no true security from the barrel of a gun. The conflict in the Holy Land is one powerful example. I am on the Board of the Shimon Peres Peace Center in Tel Aviv, and I understand the desire Israelis have to live in peace and safety. But as we saw in South Africa, there is no peace without justice, and safety only comes when desperation ends. Inevitably it is when people sit down and talk that desperation ends.

Negotiations happen not between friends but between enemies. And a surprising thing does seem to take place, at least it did in South Africa. Enemies begin to find that they can actually become friends, or at least collaborators for the common good. They come together and then actually they ask themselves, “Why did we take so long to get to this point? Why did so many people have to die?” Of course, you must have leaders who are willing to take risks and not just seek to satisfy the often-extreme feelings of their constituencies. They have to lead by leading and be ready to compromise, to accommodate, and not to be intransigent, not to assert that they have a bottom line. Intransigence and ultimatums only lead to more death.

You lived with constant death threats, yet managed to continue your work. What can you tell us about dealing with fear and anxiety?

People often ask whether I was afraid. You bet. Especially for my family. All of us experience fear, but when we confront and acknowledge it, we are able to turn it into courage. Being courageous does not mean never being scared; it means acting as you know you must, even though you are undeniably afraid. Actually, courage has no meaning unless there are things that threaten, that make you feel scared. Whether we are afraid of physical harm or social shame and embarrassment, when we face our fear instead of denying it, we are able to avoid it paralyzing us.

What do you mean when you say that “God only has us”? Isn’t God all-powerful?

I mean that God works through us and through history to bring about God’s dream. God actually needs us. We are God’s partners. When there is someone who is hungry, God wants to perform the miracle of feeding that person, but it won’t any longer be through manna falling from heaven. Normally, God can do nothing until we provide God with the means, the bread and the fish, to feed the hungry. In so many ways, God uses each of us to realize God’s dream.

Many of us feel distant from God. How can we feel the kind of intimacy you obviously experience?

Frequently we assume that only a special few can hear the voice of God in their lives but I try to explain that people can “be still” and know that God is God in and through them. This is why prayer and meditation are so important. If I do not spend a reasonable amount of time in meditation early in the morning, then I feel physical discomfort—it is worse than having forgotten to brush my teeth!

You mention the African concept of ubuntu. What is it, and how does it relate to God’s dream for us?

Ubuntu is a concept that we have in our Bantu languages at home. Ubuntu is the essence of being a person. It means that we are people through other people. We cannot be fully human alone. We are made for interdependence, we are made for family. When you have ubuntu, you embrace others. You are generous, compassionate. If the world had more ubuntu, we would not have war. We would not have this huge gap between the rich and the poor. You are rich so that you can make up what is lacking for others. You are powerful so that you can help the weak, just as a mother or father helps their children. This is God's dream.

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Future Teachers Are People of Faith

Most of America's future teachers are people of faith, a groundbreaking national study of college students shows.

The survey, released by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA), also associates better-than-expected grades with higher levels of religious involvement.

Gerald R. McDermott, a professor at Roanoke College in Salem, Va., agreed, "It is our experience that students who are religiously active tend to get better grades. Their religious commitment is reflected in their academic commitment. They have meaning in their lives. It is easier to concentrate on your studies when you know what life is all about."

The UCLA study of 3,680 juniors at 46 colleges and universities defined religious involvement as reading sacred texts, going to church and engaging in religious singing or chanting.

Of juniors majoring in fine arts, 62 percent declared themselves religiously committed. Education and humanities majors showed similar levels of religiosity -- 59 percent and 57 percent, respectively.

"Where education is concerned, this makes sense," says theologian Robert Benne, author of a study of Christian colleges. According to Benne, "Kids who go into education are more at home at standard American culture, and with that goes religion. They are more mainstream than others. On the other hand, fine-arts majors tend to be less committed to institutional religion. They are more likely to be New Age."

Least engaged in spiritual quests are psychical science majors -- 19 percent. This result baffled prominent theologians engaged in the interface between science and theology. In the hard sciences, physicists are usually seen as the scholars most open to intelligent design or theistic evolution -- concepts that suggest the work of a creator.

"There is a lot of awesomeness in physics," explained theologian Philip Hefner, director emeritus of Chicago's Zygon Center for Religion and Science. "It is this awe by contemporary physicists that allows for theories and worldviews that do not conflict with theology."

Ted Peters, a professor at San Francisco's Graduate Theological Union, expressed surprise at the survey's finding that physics (and computer-science) majors experience the lowest levels of spiritual growth. "This does not square with my experiences. I find that lots of scientists have deep faith," he said. But then perhaps this aspect of the survey simply reflects an enormous intensity of study that does not allow for much religious reflection in the junior year.

Biology, on the other hand, is generally considered the one discipline most resistant to faith. The UCLA study confirms this: Biology majors, like students of history and political science, show low levels of religious commitment.

"Biologists are face-to-face with natural selection and the survival of the fittest. It is hard to reconcile these theories with God and the religious concern for love," said Hefner. "Biologists have to deal with the nitty-gritty of the biological process, not with awe-inspiring things like the Big Bang."

Thus, "biology instructors have a worldview that pretty much excludes a higher being," commented Harold G. Koenig, a professor of psychiatry at Duke University. Koenig bemoaned the "narrow academic environment that health-care professionals need to face." Hence it did not surprise him that students majoring in the health professions rank lowest in spiritual growth -- along with journalism and psychology majors.

Koenig, editor-in-chief of Science and Theology, a monthly publication, blamed the intensity of pre-med studies for this "tragic development."

"The curricula are so packed with nitty-gritty that the students find no time for ethics and philosophy," Koenig declared. In some cases, faith does indeed survive and will resurface when doctors or nurses go into clinical practice, he allowed. But in many cases "doctors numbed themselves to their patients' suffering as a survival mechanism," he said. "They treat people like organ systems; they don't get too close."

This is not to say that these same physicians do not go to church just as often as their patients. "Many doctors simply keep these issues [religion and professional care] separate," according to Koenig.

At first glance, the Spirituality in Higher Education Study seems contradictory. For example, while religiously committed students tend to get better grades, "students on a spiritual quest are more likely to show rising levels of psychological distress during college," the survey states.

McDermott proposed that there could be a simple explanation: "If you are seeking meaning in life, this quest could show up as psychological distress."

At any rate, whether on a spiritual quest or drinking beer, whether highly committed to their faith or not, an overwhelming 77 percent of the undergraduates surveyed agreed with UCLA's pollster's suggestion, "We are all spiritual beings." And just as many said they prayed.

By Uwe Siemon-Netto

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God talk is everywhere

Nearly 40 years after Time magazine posed the question "Is God Dead?" signs of His resurrection are everywhere: Mel Gibson's "The Passion" is on its way to becoming the highest-grossing independent film of all time, while the apocalyptic "Left Behind" novels, based on the Book of Revelations, have sold 58 million copies, a publishing jackpot.

Dan Brown's "The DaVinci Code," a theological whodunit with a new spin on Jesus and Mary Magdalene, leads the fiction bestseller list, and Rick Warren's "The Purpose Driven Life," a 40-day spiritual workout, is outselling "The South Beach Diet."

The nation's born-again president pronounces Jesus his "favorite philosopher" and trumpets America's mission to battle evil in the world. And faith avowals are all but requisite on the campaign trail - with hell to pay for anyone who demonstrates biblical illiteracy, as did Vermont Gov. Howard Dean when he described Job as his favorite book of the New Testament and was promptly pronounced a heathen.

"God talk is ubiquitous today. You might even say we're drowning in it," said Phyllis Tickle, author of more than a dozen books about religion in America and contributing editor in religion for Publishers Weekly.

Even prime-time television, which once steered clear of overtly religious themes, suddenly has characters who converse directly with a higher power, from Joan of Arcadia to Jaye on the recently canceled "Wonderfalls." And network news divisions are churning out religious-themed specials like so many chocolate Easter eggs - from Dateline NBC's "The Last Days of Jesus" to ABC News' ambitious three- hour special on Jesus and Paul.

"There's just been a sea change in how religion is lived in this country," said the Rev. Margaret Peckham Clark of Trinity Church in Roslyn, who reports that hundreds of people have attended forums at her church on "The Passion" and "The DaVinci Code."

"You have many people who have drifted away from the tradition they grew up in, are disillusioned with it or have never been a part of it," Clark said. "And that creates a climate, particularly after Sept. 11, where people are groping for ways to understand what is at the core of what they believe."

All of this is occurring against a backdrop of growing tension between Islam and the West, and increasingly rancorous debate in this country about issues of morality, biblical authority and separation of church and state - from gay marriage to the deletion of "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance to the struggle over a Ten Commandments monument in an Alabama courthouse.

Is America experiencing a religious revival? Is all this ferment a result of post-Sept. 11 anxiety? Or has spirituality become just another commodity in a world where consumerism has become the ultimate value?

"I think every major sociologist would agree that we're in a time of religious awakening," said Rabbi Irwin Kula, president of CLAL, the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership in Manhattan. "But it's an awakening in which existing institutions like churches and synagogues are no longer mediating the sacred."

If you walk around America, Kula said, you see a booming spiritual marketplace with all sorts of small communities flourishing below the radar screen of institutional religion, from 12-step programs to yoga, meditation and Kabbalah centers, to Bible study groups of every possible stripe.

A new religious awakening?

But some evangelical Christians are equally certain they are seeing the stirrings of a more traditional revival.

"We are witnessing a religious awakening not just here, but all over the world," said the Rev. Ted Haggard, president of the National Association of Evangelicals and pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs. "In the East, poverty and tyranny are drawing people to Islamic fundamentalism. And in the West, people feel as if something is missing in their lives. It's a reaction to excessive abundance, and to divorce and empty relationships."

"And so people are reaching out. There are more churches than ever before, more Bibles being sold than ever before, and more people listening to Christian radio than ever before."

The evidence, however, is contradictory.

"The desire for spiritual moorings has been building since the mid-1980s," said veteran pollster George Gallup Jr., chairman of the George H. Gallup International Institute and executive director of the Princeton Religion Research Center.

On the other hand, church attendance has been static, save for a short-lived uptick immediately after Sept. 11, 2001, he said. Slightly fewer than four in 10 Americans said they went to church in the past week during 2003 - a level that has been constant for many years.

And despite the overwhelming majority of Americans who count themselves believers, 58 percent cannot name five of the Ten Commandments, less than half know that Genesis is the first book of the Bible and 10 percent say that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife, according to surveys.

Many who believe in God also believe in witches, haunted houses and extra-terrestrials, to name just a few, Gallup said. "Somebody once said that it's not that Americans don't believe in anything. It's that they believe in everything," he said.

"A great awakening? I don't think so," said Tom Lydon of Middle Village, a born-again Christian who works as an administrator for a human services agency in New York. "You walk through New York City, and there are still homeless people on the streets. There are still children starving. There are still abortions being done. I think we're a post-Christian country in a lot of ways. After 9/11, I think a lot of people looked at their mortality and said, 'Is this it? Is this life? Is this why we're here?' Any time a nation is in crisis, more people will be asking those questions."

American spiritual search

Those who track religion and popular culture suggest that what we are seeing is a peculiarly American way of spiritual seeking - one that is deeply individualistic, experiential and mediated by popular culture and the media. The Internet has also been key: A survey last week by the Pew Research Center found that 64 percent of the nation's 128 million Internet users say they've used it for religious or spiritual purposes.

"I think that what has happened is that as organized religion has become less important, or more in flux, people are cobbling together their own personalized spiritual plans, rather than relying on clergy," said Steven Waldman, founder and editor of Beliefnet.com, a multifaith Web site that reaches 4 million people a day.

"They're acting as consumers in a spiritual marketplace. And so they are choosing from a whole array of options: They read books about religion and spirituality, they watch TV, they see movies. Popular culture is providing a lot of the spiritual information that used to be gotten through houses of worship."

Tom Beaudoin, a Gen X theologian and author of "Consuming Faith," contends that many people now go to movies, pick up books and participate in thousands of religious chat rooms to work on their spiritual lives.

"I think we are well past the day when the majority of American Christians have their religious identity formed in church," Beaudoin said. "And so that allows for these searches and spiritual journeys that are highly personal and that are mediated by products."

But do these "products" - from "The Passion" to "The Purpose Driven Life" - move people deeply enough to inspire life-altering decisions?

"Are we going to end up with anyone who's committed to living out their beliefs, or will people just be consumers buying Christian music and Christian books, and listening to a Christian radio station?" wonders Goodhue, of the Long Island Council of Churches.

The jury is still out on that. An online poll on Beliefnet.com, answered by about 12,000 people, found that 62 percent were reading the Bible more often after seeing "The Passion." The poll also found that 41 percent had a more positive view of the Bible after the movie, while 53 percent said their view was unchanged.

"For those of us who take these subjects seriously, we should seize this moment," said Deirdre Good, a professor of New Testament at the General Theological Seminary in Manhattan, who has been pleasantly surprised to find herself speaking to standing-room- only crowds recently.

BY CAROL EISENBERG

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Tuesday, April 13, 2004

Spirituality Helps Older Adults Cope with Illness

Perhaps faith is outside the realm of science, but new research indicates older adults who are religious or spiritual tend to fare better when they're hospitalized with an illness.

U.S. researchers found that hospitalized adults aged 50 or older who belonged to an organized religion tended to have better health and were better able to perform day-to-day activities like getting around and doing household chores.

Daily functioning was also better in older adults who said they were spiritual, but did not participate in an organized group.

In addition, people who were religious or spiritual tended to have better social support, showed fewer symptoms of depression, and had better mental functioning.

"I think religion is a powerful factor in helping people to cope with stress, and in particular with health-related stress," study author Dr. Harold G. Koenig said.

Specifically, faith may help people make sense of why they are sick, giving a sense of meaning to their suffering, Koenig said. The extra support from other members of their spiritual community also likely helps, and having faith may often deter them from taking on unhealthy behaviors that people turn to when stressed, such as drinking and smoking, the Duke University Medical Center researcher added.

As part of the study, Koenig and his colleagues interviewed 838 hospitalized adults who were 50 or older about their religious beliefs and practices. Most of the patients had some form of cardiovascular disease.

The researchers also found that older adults who said they were neither religious nor spiritual tended to have worse overall health and more additional illnesses.

In an interview with Reuters Health, Koenig said that doctors often ignore a patient's religious beliefs except when they interfere with treatment, such as when a person refuses a blood transfusion or other medical procedure because of their faith.

Based on these findings, Koenig recommended that health staff ask patients about their beliefs, and acknowledge and support them as part of their care.

That said, Koenig stressed that doctors should not encourage religion in patients who are neither religious nor spiritual, as that is a private decision and one that should not be made solely for health reasons.

"Doctors should not prescribe religion to non-religious patients," he said.

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Monday, April 12, 2004

Employers attempt to balance work and religion

Complaints alleging religious discrimination have risen 75 percent in the past decade.

The employee's religion-versus-work dilemma highlights a growing challenge in the American workplace. Disputes over providing religious accommodations at work have increased - not only for Christians but also for America's increasingly diverse religious adherents. And the burden falls hardest on small businesses.

"It's a common situation, regardless of the size of the business or type of business, and regardless of whether it's 24/7 or 9-to-5," says Jeanne Goldberg, senior attorney adviser for the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The EEOC in fiscal year 2003 received 2,532 charges alleging religious discrimination - a 75 percent jump over the 1,449 complaints filed in 1993. By contrast, race-based charges, while more numerous, have declined somewhat over the 10-year period, with 28,526 charges filed in 2003 compared with 31,695 in 1993.

A typical religious accommodation charge involves an employee seeking to swap shifts with another employee to attend a Sabbath observance, explains Ms. Goldberg. "They've arranged the accommodation on their own, but the employer will not permit that voluntary swap," she says. "It's a very common type of claim."

Making accommodations

Federal law requires employers to make reasonable accommodations for workers' religious needs, unless it imposes an undue hardship on the company. Most cases that end up in court involve disputes over what constitutes an undue hardship, Goldberg says.

As a whole, employers do a good job of making accommodations for once-a-year events, says Lorraine Mixon-Page, former chairwoman of the workplace diversity committee at the Society for Human Resource Management in Alexandria, Va.

At the same time, employers are naturally cautious about making an exception for one individual. "We look at what the possible ramifications are for the whole workforce," says Ms. Mixon-Page, who is now manager of human resources for Missouri Consolidated Healthcare Plan in Jefferson, Mo. "You have to be careful about setting precedents."

Large employers usually have enough staff to make accommodations, she says. But for the small employer, it's a different story. "If everyone has a different religious affiliation, and each one comes with his own set of observances, then, from a staffing prospective, you could be in for a difficult time," she says.

Religious diversity trend

Some experts predict that workforce conflicts over religion will grow. "This is a problem that is going to get bigger and bigger because it's demographically driven," says Georgette Bennett, president of the New York-based Tanenbaum Center, which advises workplaces on religious diversity issues.

Changing immigration patterns are boosting the number of people from parts of the world with less familiar religious beliefs and practices, she says. For example, immigration from Asia represented 26 percent of the total in 2002 compared with just 9 percent in 1970. European immigration, meanwhile, dropped to 14 percent in 2002 from 62 percent in 1970. The workforce also is aging, she adds. The older people get, the more important religion becomes to them, Ms. Bennett says, citing research by national polling companies.

Another factor, she adds, is political: "With religion having been thrust into the public arena in a way that it hadn't been before, that is emboldening people to assert their religious rights in a way they might not have done if religion had not been so politicized."

Despite these factors, only about 4 percent of firms have policies that specifically deal with religious accommodations, according to a recent Tanenbaum survey of human resource professionals.

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Sunday, April 11, 2004

Two-Thirds of Web Surfers Looking for Religion

Nearly two-thirds of American adults with Internet access have used it for spiritual or faith-related reasons, according to a recent study released Wednesday by the Pew Internet and American Life project.

The 82 million Americans who use the Internet for religious activities represent 64 percent of all wired adults in the United States.

The study found that one-third of U.S. Internet users have sent or received e-mail with religious content or spiritual greeting cards, or go online to read current religion news. Others look for information about religious services and holidays. The trend is about the same across different denominations, pollsters said.

"These practices are appealing to people across all of our categories of religion and spirituality, and across all levels of Internet use," the report said.

Half of the online faithful said they attend church at least once a week and 33 percent describe themselves as evangelicals. Most--69 percent--said they use the Internet for personal spiritual growth, not for work related to their places of worship. Only 14 percent said they use the Internet to plan church-related meetings, which the report called surprising.

"The online faithful seem more interested in augmenting their traditional faith practices and experiences by personally expressing their own faith and spirituality, as opposed to seeking something new or different in the online environment," the report said. "This is interesting, because many analysts have assumed that the Internet would make it more likely for people to leave churches in favor of more flexible options."

Half of those who use the Internet for spiritual purposes are women, 83 percent are white and half are college-educated. They are also likely to be wealthy and between 30 and 49 years old.

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Friday, April 09, 2004

Doctor prescribes 8 rules for living well

"The Fountain of Youth is not rocket science. It's more complicated than that," Dr. Edward Creagan says. "It's on the sidewalks and bikeways of our country. It consists of physical activity, trying to maintain an ideal body weight, having positive and nurturing relationships, challenges to your sense of inner being and a sense of humor.

"You need someone to love (even a pet), something to get you up in the morning, in other words, something to do that gives your life meaning, and something to look forward to."

Seems simple enough, but most Americans follow few if any of his eight commandments. Here they are:

Form stable long-term relationships. Friends, families, colleagues, even pets, are clearly a buffer against stress. Rarely does the isolated, marginalized person go the distance.

Maintain ideal body weight. Many of us struggle with obesity, and the health fallout is significant in terms of high blood pressure, diabetes, arthritis, and stroke. Ideal body weight doesn't mean starving yourself to be something out of hard-body magazines, but it means eating sensibly considering your height, heredity and lifestyle.

Eat a plant-based diet with an emphasis on green leafy vegetables, four to six servings of fruit each day, fish and poultry rather than red meat (in moderation, if you must), and pay attention to unsaturated fats such as olive and canola oil. You don't have to be a brown rice and tofu vegetarian. Again, sensible makes sense here.

Engage in regular physical activity. Let the experts debate about whether 30 minutes is best or 60 minutes is better. Just get active doing what you do every day and throw in a walk four or five times a week.

Longevity does not allow for smoking. Enough said.

Use alcohol in moderation, if at all. Although there is some evidence that a glass of red wine may be protective against certain types of heart disease, alcohol consumption can be harmful to many other conditions.

Foster a sense of spirituality, a sense of connectedness to nature or your higher power or some force or factor over and above yourself.

Find meaning and purpose in life. This is your reason to push on even in the face of adversity.

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Thursday, April 08, 2004

Many faithful turning to Web

Almost 82 million Americans use the Internet for religious or spiritual purposes.

That's 64 percent of the 128 million Internet users in the United States, according to a survey released Wednesday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a Washington, D.C., think tank that studies the social impact of the Internet.

``The Internet and religion are contradictory,'' said Stewart Hoover, a journalism professor at the University of Colorado and co-author of the survey. ``The Internet is technical, commercial, rational, demands conscious attention and its entertainments are thought to be violent and materialistic. Religion is thought to be the opposite: emotional, spiritual, authentic, deeply meaningful, steeped in values.

``Religious use of the Internet, such as we've seen here, crosses such boundaries.''

The Pew survey found that:

• 38 percent have sent and received e-mail with spiritual content.

• 35 percent have sent or received online greeting cards related to religious holidays.

• 17 percent have looked for information about where to attend religious services.

• 11 percent have downloaded or listened to religious music online.

The popularity of these types of activities means that people are using the Internet for ``personal religious'' activities, Hoover says, which could change the nature of institutional American religion.

In what Hoover describes as a sort of religious survival of the fittest, denominations that take advantage of the Internet may benefit through online recruiting and evangelism.

The survey also found that religious Internet users are more interested in supplementing their traditional faith than seeking a completely new spiritual realm online.

``The early expectation was that the Internet would be used in anti-institutional ways,'' said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Project. ``While there's some of that going on, it's much more the case that devout people who are happy with the traditional church experience are using the Internet to augment it.''

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Wednesday, April 07, 2004

Cosmo adds spirituality to sex and shoes

Is this a sign of the times or what? Cosmopolitan, the glossy bible of sex and shopping for the single girl, has launched a new monthly column on spirituality.

"I've come to the painful realisation that men and shoes are not enough to make me happy," Hannah Borno, the magazine's new Spirituality Editor, wrote in the March edition. "The key to true contentment lies elsewhere."

God and guidance would hardly seem to suit the "Cosmo girl." Media have mocked the magazine for asking what happens now after years of breathless stories about dressing sexy, finding men and having multiple orgasms.

Borno, 32, says reader feedback has convinced Cosmo that many young women long for something more than the materialist life.

"Lots of women say 'I have a great job, I have a great relationship, so why am I unhappy?'," she told Reuters.

"We have been covering everything else. We already cover the mind and the body but we needed the spirit as well."

Nina Ahmad, acting editor of the British Cosmopolitan, said the magazine had a million readers in Britain and did not want them to "feel alone on their spiritual journey."

"We want women to be the best they can, in every respect of their lives," she said.

In the United States, where the higher profile of religion means Cosmopolitan's main American edition has not copied the British example, the editor of a leading website on faith and spirituality was not surprised by Borno's new job.

"There is clearly a huge number of people who are either disassociated with or disgusted with organised religion but are seeking spirituality by other means," said Steven Waldman, editor-in-chief of Beliefnet in New York.

"They are cutting out the middleman," he said. "It's in the nature of modern society that people are spiritual free agents now."

"Institutions are no longer imposing a message on the faithful," wrote Frederic Lenoir, a French sociologist of religion. "Individuals are freely taking what suits them from various traditions," he added, referring to what is sometimes derided as supermarket spirituality.

As in many other European countries, this new search for spirituality has nothing to do with established religions, which these days attract only a small fraction of the population.

"We're looking at spirituality rather than organised religion, because that's where there seems to be a demand from our readers," Borno explained.

"They want something a bit more alternative."

The trend towards "supermarket spirituality" has unnerved some traditional churches.

The Vatican (news - web sites) issued a long study last year arguing that the spread of "New Age" spirituality was an alarm bell for the Roman Catholic Church.

"The success of New Age offers the Church a challenge," it said. "People feel the Christian religion no longer offers them -- or perhaps never gave them -- something they really need."

The biggest spiritual leader in the United States, Beliefnet's Waldman said, was not any of the well-known preachers but television talk show host Oprah Winfrey. Her popular website has its own "Spirit and Self" section.

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Marked Increase In Television News Coverage Of Religion

TV news coverage of religious issues has risen sharply in the United States compared to a decade ago, according to a study released Monday.

The ABC, CBS and NBC networks' evening newscasts did 303 stories on religion during the 12 months that ended March 1, compared with 121 stories during a one-year period in 1993, the Media Research Center said.

Coverage also increased on the morning news shows (197 in 1993, 331 the past year) and on newsmagazines and Sunday morning interview shows, the media watchdog group said. "I think the uptick is notable," said Tim Graham, the study's author. "I would not predict that it will remain."

The increase was attributable to Mel Gibson's box-office smash "The Passion of the Christ" and the 25th anniversary of Pope John Paul II's reign as well as coverage of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, the struggle over a Ten Commandments monument in an Alabama courthouse and controversies over gay ministers, the report said.

NBC News executives have taken note of surveys that show substantial public interest in religious issues, said Bill Wheatley, NBC News vice president. Besides the interest generated by "The Passion," viewers want to know more about Islam in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and war in Iraq, he said.

Still, none of the three major broadcast networks employ full-time religion correspondents - and virtually never have. "I think sometimes we're a little late on major religious stories, or as angles in stories that have a religious component," said Paul Slavin, ABC News senior vice president. "But we certainly make it clear that it's important to the news organization."

The success of "The Passion of the Christ" and the Passover and Easter holidays has led to a flurry of religious-oriented programming generated by both the networks' news and entertainment divisions.

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Saturday, April 03, 2004

Religion shown to be a healthy tonic for teenagers

Late last year, a commission convened by Dartmouth Medical School, among others, studied years of research on kids, including brain-imaging studies, and concluded that young people who are religious are better off in significant ways than their secular peers. They are less likely than nonbelievers to smoke and drink and more likely to eat well; less likely to commit crimes and more likely to wear seat belts; less likely to be depressed and more likely to be satisfied with their families and school.

"Religion has a unique net effect on adolescents above and beyond factors such as race, parental education and family income," says Brad Wilcox, a University of Virginia sociologist and panel member. Poor children who are religious will do better than poor children who are not religious, he adds - and in some cases better than nonreligious middle-class children.

Meanwhile, a social groundswell may be under way as a larger proportion of teenagers than a decade ago say religion is important. In 2001, about three out of five teenagers said religion was "pretty important" or "very important" to them - a significant increase, according to Child Trends, a research organization that analyzes federal data. The biggest jump occurred not among poor and unambitious teenagers - the stereotyped believers - but among young achievers who anticipated finishing four years of college.

Such teenagers have helped make a hit out of "Joan of Arcadia," a CBS show about a 15-year-old who talks to God; it has been renewed for a second season. They've sustained a decade-long growth in the number of high school Bible clubs to about 15,000. They are swelling the enrollment at Christian colleges at three times the rate of other degree-granting schools. Religion is getting bigger in teenagers' lives, and the Dartmouth panel's findings may suggest to some that it should.

Though one of its sponsors, the Institute for American Values, publishes a good bit about God and faith, the commission was no conclave of religious conservatives. It included professors and researchers at the medical schools of Harvard and UCLA as well as longtime experts on child-rearing practice including T. Berry Brazelton, Robert Coles, Peter Benson and Michael Resnick.

The commission members said that religious congregations benefit teenagers by affirming who they are, expecting a lot from them and giving them opportunities to show what they can do. These are not exactly earthshaking observations; as the panel noted, the same could be said of clubs, sports teams and other youth organizations (such as the YMCA, which helped fund the study). What sets religious groups apart, however - and makes a surprisingly big difference to kids, according to the panel - is that they promote a "direct personal relationship with the Divine."

Adolescents, said the Dartmouth group, are "hard-wired to connect" to people and God.

Panels of academics and medical practitioners don't usually refer to "the Divine." But these experts couldn't ignore what the data suggested, in particular two things: Religion or spirituality may influence young people's brain circuits, reducing their levels of the stress hormone cortisol, and personal devotion is twice as likely to protect them from risky behavior as it would adults.

"Their brains are changing, their relations with family, friends and the opposite sex are changing, and they're beginning to figure out what their purpose in the world will be," says Wilcox. "We know that people often turn to God in the midst of momentous changes. Adolescents are no different."

Kimbrey Pierce, a Columbia, Md., high school senior, puts it more simply. "God isn't just a part of my life; he's the whole thing," she says. "I like knowing he is making the best decisions for me. That way I don't worry too much."