TruthBook Religious News Blog

from the February 06, 2007 edition

Spiritual systems based on an experience of 'mind' have long had a place in America's religious life.

By David Nartonis

A few years ago, the American press began reporting an explosive increase of books on spirituality. The explosion continues. As I write, Amazon.com lists 4,747 books on spirituality published in 2006, compared with 1,325 in 1996, and 303 in 1986.

This intense interest in spirituality is the final topic in A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion by religion scholar Catherine Albanese. Albanese shows that this interest has a history as old as America. She also demonstrates that many of the seekers who read and write these books, meditate in church, use psychic methods to aid the police, and employ alternative healers constitute an important "third stream" of American religion.

A more familiar stream consists of liturgical forms of American religion that, according to Albanese, turn "on communally organized ceremonial action." Think of the church on the town green with its fixed, orderly worship service.

Another more distinctively American brand of religion consists of the evangelical forms that favor "the cultivation of strong emotional experience that is felt as life-transforming." Think of the tent meeting in the woods with a revivalist preacher.

Harder to pin down and much less studied is the third or "metaphysical" approach, which "turns on an individual's experience of 'mind' [and has] privileged the mind in forms that include reason but move beyond it to intuition, clairvoyance ... 'revelation' and 'higher guidance.' "

In such systems, "the human world and mind replicate ... a larger, often more whole and integrated universe" within which metaphysicians "find a stream of energy flowing from above.... Moreover, the influx of energy ... that enlivens their world is a healing salve for all its ills and – in the strongest statement of their view – renders [metaphysicians] divine and limitless."

According to Albanese, elements of this third type of religion were already present among the American Indians and in the cultural luggage of both slaves and immigrants at the very beginning of American history.

Subsequently, various elements in this third religious stream combined, separated, and flowed together to appear in Royal Arch Masonry, Mormonism, Christian Science, Theosophy, Macrobiotics, American forms of Yoga and Qi, Positive Thinking, crystal power, spiritualism, the papers of Phineas P. Quimby, early systems of osteopathy and chiropractic, and, today, in yoga classes, quantum healing, and hypnotic therapy.

In tracing today's spiritual seekers all the way back to American Indian shamans and the Cunning Folk of the first New England settlements, Albanese builds on the work of religion scholars, including specialized studies of her own. In the process, she is careful not to overlook the sometimes vast differences between systems in this third stream but is at her best in showing how the same themes appear again and again, separately or in combination.

Anyone with an interest in American belief systems and contemporary trends will be well rewarded by reading Albanese's book. Those committed to any of the systems she surveys, however, may find that her scholarly approach focuses so much on externals that it misses the whole point of their religious conviction.

• David Nartonis is a writer and researcher in Boston.

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Who Qualifies as an Evangelical?

Survey Explores Seven Conditions

by Barna Group

(Ventura, CA) – The media and social commentators frequently refer to surveys that describe the opinions and behavior of “evangelicals.” However, those analyses are based on surveys that ask adults whether or not they consider themselves to be an evangelical. For two decades, The Barna Group has been measuring the social, political, religious and behavioral characteristics of evangelicals as well – but using a substantially different set of criteria. The Barna Group’s nine questions pertaining to the spiritual beliefs of people have reported on a very different – and much smaller – group of people. To distinguish them from the self-described evangelicals, Barna has named the segment based on its answers to nine theological factors the “9-point evangelicals.”

Asking people if they consider themselves to be evangelicals produces a comparatively large number: 38% of the population accepts that label.

The Barna Group has traditionally used nine questions to categorize people as evangelicals, whether they consider themselves accurately described by that label or not. Using the nine questions about their beliefs produces a much smaller figure: just 8% of the adult population in 2006 fit the criteria. In other words, the number of self-defined evangelicals outnumbers the 9-point evangelicals by a margin of nearly five-to-one. (The nine factors examined are listed in the Research Details section at the end of this report.)

When extrapolating these percentages across the entire adult population, the difference is staggering: 84 million adults based on self-report versus 18 million using the nine-point theological filter.

Also intriguing is the fact that 86% of the 9-point evangelicals also call themselves evangelicals. In stark contrast, just one out of every five self-proclaimed evangelicals (19%) meets the Barna Group’s nine-point definition.

Demographic Profiles Differ
Those who consider themselves to be evangelicals differ in their demographic background from those who meet the more stringent Barna Group definition. The self-proclaimed evangelicals are less likely to have graduated from college (29%, versus 39% among the 9-point evangelicals); less likely to be married (63%, versus 77% among the 9-point segment); less likely to be white (66% vs. 76%); and have much lower average household incomes ($40,250 for the self-reported evangelicals, compared to $49,194 among the 9-point evangelicals). On the other hand, self-defined evangelicals are more likely to emerge from the Northeast or West (35% of the self-defined groups is from those two regions combined versus 27% among the 9-point evangelicals residing in those two areas) and are more likely to be 60 or older (38% versus 31%).

There are huge gaps between the two groups in terms of political inclinations. For instance, those who are self-described evangelicals are much less likely to say they are mostly conservative on social and political matters (45%, compared to 65% among the 9-point evangelicals). They are also considerably more likely to be registered to vote as a Democrat (35%, compared to just 26% among the 9-point evangelicals) and less likely to be registered as a Republican (42%, compared to 51% among the 9-point evangelicals). Seen in a different light, there is only a seven percentage point difference in the number of Democrats and Republicans among the self-defined evangelicals, but a 25-point difference among those who are deemed evangelical by virtue of their beliefs.

Radical Differences in Beliefs
The most striking differences relate to the beliefs of each group. Compared to the 9-point evangelicals, those who say they are evangelicals are:

• 60% less likely to believe that Satan is real

• 53% less likely to believe that salvation is based on grace, not works

• 46% less likely to say they have a personal responsibility to share their religious beliefs with others

• 42% less likely to list their faith in God as the top priority in their life

• 38% less likely to believe that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth

• 27% less likely to contend that the Bible is totally accurate in all of its teachings

• 23% less likely to say that their life has been greatly transformed by their faith

In fact, the Barna research also noted that one out of every four adults (27%) who say they are evangelicals is not even born again, based upon their beliefs. (The Barna Group defines someone as born again if they say they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their life today and who also indicate that they believe when they die they will go to Heaven because they have confessed their sins and have accepted Jesus Christ as their savior. Respondents are not asked to describe themselves as “born again.”)

A Call for Clarity
George Barna, who has pioneered a number of the measurement standards used for examining people’s spiritual lives, called for the media to be more careful and thoughtful in their reporting of faith matters.

Barna suggested that those who describe themselves as evangelicals more closely resemble a segment that his company has labeled the “born again Christian” population – a group that displays an above-average interest and involvement in religious activity, but whose religious fervor and commitment is nowhere near that of true evangelicals. He stated that past research among the 9-point evangelicals showed that their voting patterns are radically different from those of born again and self-defined evangelicals; that they are much more conservative on a vast array of social and political issues, ranging from abortion and homosexual unions to the importance of family; that their use of media and their lifestyles are significantly different from those of the born again public; and that evangelicals donate significantly more money to non-profit organizations.

When asked about the origin of the nine-point evangelical criteria that his firm has used in surveys for nearly two decades, he cited the work of the National Association of Evangelicals. “Years ago, NAE labored long and hard to identify what an evangelical believes. Because the distinguishing attribute of an evangelical is what he or she believes, we drew criteria from the belief statement of the nation’s leading association evangelicals. We probably overestimate the number of evangelicals, since we do not take into account all of the beliefs that NAE says a true evangelicals holds. But our measurement approach incorporates the key elements from their statement of faith.”

He ended his remarks with a caution. “Keep in mind that only God knows a person’s heart. No scientific instrument is able to perfectly evaluate what a person believes, or how deeply they believe it. Research is just an approximation of what is happening in society. But America certainly deserves – and has access to – better measures than those that are often used in public discussions about the religious faith of people, and the implications of that alleged faith, especially in matters of politics and public policy.”

Research Details
The data in this report are drawn from four nationwide telephone surveys conducted by The Barna Group with random samples of adults, age 18 and older, conducted in January, April, August and October of 2006. In total, 4014 adults were interviewed. From those surveys, there were 763 adults who described themselves as “evangelical Christian” and 333 who met the 9-question Barna Group definition of an evangelical Christian. The maximum margin of sampling error associated with the self-defined sample of evangelicals is ±3.5 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. The maximum margin of sampling error associated with the 9-point evangelicals is ±5.5 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.

“Born again Christians” are defined as people who said they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their life today and who also indicated they believe that when they die they will go to Heaven because they had confessed their sins and had accepted Jesus Christ as their savior. Respondents are not asked to describe themselves as “born again.”

“Evangelicals” meet the born again criteria (described above) plus seven other conditions. Those include saying their faith is very important in their life today; believing they have a personal responsibility to share their religious beliefs about Christ with non-Christians; believing that Satan exists; believing that eternal salvation is possible only through grace, not works; believing that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth; asserting that the Bible is accurate in all that it teaches; and describing God as the all-knowing, all-powerful, perfect deity who created the universe and still rules it today. Being classified as an evangelical is not dependent upon church attendance or the denominational affiliation of the church attended. Respondents were not asked to describe themselves as “evangelical.”

The Barna Group, Ltd. (which includes its research division, The Barna Research Group) conducts primary research, produces media resources pertaining to spiritual development, and facilitates the healthy spiritual growth of leaders, children, families and Christian ministries. Located in Ventura, California, Barna has been conducting and analyzing primary research to understand cultural trends related to values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors since 1984. If you would like to receive free e-mail notification of the release of each new, bi-monthly update on the latest research findings from The Barna Group, you may subscribe to this free service at the Barna website (www.barna.org).

© The Barna Group, Ltd, 2007.

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Saturday, February 24, 2007

Night sky an antidote to despair

Feb 17, 2007 04:30 AM
Stephen Scharper

Can star gazing, and an appreciation of the vast mystery of cosmos be an antidote to the dehumanizing scourge of racism?

For a number of African-American scholars, artists, and activists, the answer is an emerging yes.

One of these path-finding voices is writer, educator and television producer Belvie Rooks, who I met a little while ago at a spirituality, justice and ecology gathering in California. Rooks, who served as director of the Urban Habitat Program, a U.S.-based environmental justice group, has been working for the past few years with at-risk African-American and Hispanic youth in central Los Angeles.

In a telephone interview, she described how exposure to both the awesome wonders of the universe and the intricacies of the Los Angeles bioregion have yielded hopeful results among these communities, which have been pockmarked by racism, poverty, murder, and despair.

For Rooks, a sense of hopelessness has scarred much of the landscape of U.S. youth. "This becomes really clear when I look at urban inner city African-American and Hispanic communities," she says. These communities are seared by gangland violence and drive-by shootings, "a willingness to kill and be killed over a few city blocks."

Building on the work of mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme, who speaks of the deep mysteries of the unfolding universe, Rooks observes that "awe and wonder are part of the antidote to despair."

Exposing these young people to the night sky and the luminous grandeur of the universe helps them put their own "turf" in the larger context of the universe, and helps engender a sense of belonging in the wider realm of creation.

For Rooks, this awareness leads to a deeper spirituality – which she defines as a "recognition of interconnection" of all life, and the embrace of that interconnection. While religions, she observes sadly, are often embroiled in turf battles, like the gangs of Los Angeles and most nation states of the world, a true spirituality rests on an acknowledgement of the deep connectedness of all races, peoples, and ecosystems.

This sense of interconnection is echoed in the writings and work of theologian Barbara Holmes.

In her book Race and the Cosmos: An Invitation to View the World Differently, Holmes suggests that the language of cosmology can supersede earlier ways of approaching race and ethnicity.

"Essentially here in the U.S.," she said, "we have thought of our attainment of liberation as a static goal; we would race toward the finish line, but there wasn't a finish line."

Holmes says she began to realize that "we don't want to be part of this melting pot," especially if consumerism were the ultimate goal of integration. Part of the problem, she says, is that "this enterprise has not been cosmologically grounded."

Homes, who is dean of Memphis Theological Seminary in Tennessee, says "if we believe that we are here for a purpose, and it is cosmologically grounded, then our agenda becomes different."

The notion of darkness, she observes, which is the touchstone of racism, becomes a source of mystery, energy and power in the context of the universe, where dark matter serves as a wellspring of generative energy.

Like Rooks, Holmes is interested in how to translate this larger universal context to the world of children. She says there is a "cry for us to look up at night to see that the little tiny block you live on is not your turf; the universe is your turf."

Holmes recounts how a group of poor, and in some cases, homeless children of colour was invited to view the night sky through the observatory at a local university.

They all were changed, they said, because they were able to put their lives in greater perspective. They were no longer poor, but rather saw themselves as "articulated stardust," and they began to sense the "power of the universe was in them."

Thanks to the hopeful work of people like Rooks and Holmes, reflecting on our place in the universe becomes not an elitist pastime, but a cogent, cosmic quest for both a society and a universe that bend toward justice.

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Conflict between science, religion receding

G.M. Corrigan, The Examiner

Faith and reason.

In this modern era of hypervigilance against mixing religion with the res publica, of the banning of creches and Ten Commandments tablets in public places, the dollar bill proclaims “In God We Trust” and features God’s providential eye.

It’s more convergence than conflict, some scientists now say — just pick up “The God Particle,” “The Tao of Physics,” “God: The Evidence,” or the Human Genome Project’s Francis Collins’ “The Language of God.” On the other hand, there is the putative pure rationalism of Darwin, Freud, and, more recently, Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion.”

“The [conflict between science and religion] is a myth that’s been circulating, perpetrated by those who had a vested interest in a ‘warfare model’ between science and religion,” said Randy Isaac, former IBM lead physicist and current director of the 2,000-member American Scientific Affiliation, a fellowship of Christians in science.

Turning to the current debate, Isaac noted the so-called anthropic principle, cosmology’s big-bang theory and the universe’s very comprehensibility suggest some guiding intent behind creation — but it is still a leap scientifically to call this intent God. That is where Isaac’s Christian faith comes in.

The “anthropic principle,” Isaac said, is the holding there is a host of “fundamental constants” in physics, such as the electron and other particles’ mass, that seem intricately — and inexplicably in terms of random generation — to have foreordained human life. As for widely accepted, explosive explanation for the universe’s beginning, this theory, Isaac stated, still cannot account for “the singularity” itself — the trigger for the primordial explosion, creating something from nothing.

But of all the touted scientific “proofs” for the existence of God, Isaac best likes one of Einstein’s: “The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.”

“Anybody who claims to be scientific without being religious is simply [faking it],” said Dwight Schwartz, Ph.D., a Baltimore City resident and former scientist with Montana State University, “assumptions that go beyond physics into metaphysics ... and are inherently religious in nature.”

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Friday, February 23, 2007

Raising spirits to combat alchoholism

By Tracey Logan

Problem drinkers attending the faith-based Alcoholics Anonymous groups are 30% more likely than others to remain sober for at least two years, according to research published this month.

The study, published in Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, found their treatment also costs 30% less than conventional cognitive behavioural therapy.

So why do AA members have a better chance than average?

Dr Humphreys told the BBC's Health Check programme that many AA members point to the spiritual component of their 12-step programme as crucial in fighting the urge to drink.

All faiths

Its non-doctrinal approach means people of all faiths - or no faith - can benefit.

Many people can't buy into AA's basic assumption that you're powerless and have to turn your individual decision making over to a 'higher power'

Dr Humphreys said: "It used to be accepted dogma that there would never be a 12-step group in an Islamic country.

"But today I would bet that it is Brazil and Iran where 12-step groups are growing the fastest."

Last year a group of Iraqi clerics visited Britain, where Professor Sadar Sadiq, the country's National Advisor on Mental Health works as a practicing psychiatrist, to study approaches to alcohol treatment at first hand.

Professor Alan Marlatt of the University of Washington's Addictive Behaviours Centre, in Seattle, said other spiritual approaches must be developed to help alcoholics.

"Many people can't buy into AA's basic assumption that you're powerless and have to turn your individual decision making over to a 'higher power'."

Meditation

An experiment in the benefits of Vipassana - or mindfulness - meditation at the nearby King County North Rehabilitation Facility offered the chance for Professor Marlatt to measure its effects among alcoholics and drug addicts.

The data suggests that there are some really important links between spirituality and health and wellbeing

The ten day programme required the prisoners to meditate silently for up to eleven hours a day.

Not only did the meditating prisoners drink and take drugs less after their release, they were also less likely to be depressed or to re-offended than others.

Mindfulness meditation is a spiritual approach that requires no religious faith, said Professor Marlatt.

So is it just as effective a drug as conventional belief?

Pain threshold

A painful experiment at Bowling Green State University in Ohio answered that question for psychology professor Kenneth Pargament.

He gave two groups of people two competing sets of mantras, one spiritual (ie: "God is love") and one secular ("grass is green") and timed how long each could keep their hands in a bowl of iced water.

His findings were published, in 2005, in the Journal of Behavioural Medicine.

"We found that spiritual meditators were able to tolerate the pain of the iced water for twice as long as the secular meditators. " he told Health Check.

"And we've replicated the study among people with migraine headaches, and people chanting the spiritual mantra experienced a much sharper decline in the number and severity of their headaches."

Similarly, ongoing research at the Oxford Centre for the Science of the Mind suggests religious people suffer less physical pain when focussing on religious images vs non-religious pictures.

Lack of definition

So what is stopping clinicians taking note? Partly the unscientific lack of definition of "spirituality".

A recent of 265 books and papers on the subject showed researchers can mean at least 15 different things by it.

And even if researchers did agree on what spirituality is, they don't yet know how it mediates its therapeutic effects in the brain.

In the past, the idea of a science of spirituality was a contradiction in terms and few would risk their reputations to study it.

But that is now changing - thanks in part to the example of recovering alcoholics of AA.

At a time of constrained health finances - especially in developing countries where alcoholism is rising fastest - an effective treatment programme that costs 30% less than usual is generating plenty of interest.

Professor Pargament said: "I think there are a number of scientists who have been sceptical but, like good scientists, have been persuaded by the data.

"And the data suggests that there are some really important links between spirituality and health and wellbeing."

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'Secret' society

Are we finally discovering the truth that's been hidden from us for centuries, or is this new phenomenon just taking advantage of us?

February 23, 2007

BY MAUREEN JENKINS Staff Reporter

Imagine this scenario: Your bills are all paid, with unexpected dollars showing up everywhere you turn. Your career is flying high, with accolades and promotions coming fast and furious. You're madly in love; your kids are wonderfully behaved and earning top grades. Your body's in great shape and now that you think of it, you've never felt better.

If only life were that easy.

But it should be, insists Rhonda Byrne, creator of the controversial yet top-selling The Secret.
She says it's all about harnessing the "laws of attraction," which through the power of positive thinking woo health, wealth, great relationships and other earthly joys into your life. She believes it's this law that governs the universe and everything in it -- and that you've got the innate power to imagine, and then create, the fabulous life you want. And the Universe longs to give it to you.

This 91-minute DVD (which came out last March) and the companion book (released in November) have grown into pop-culture phenomenons, spreading first through word-of-mouth and gathering steam thanks to appearances on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" and "Larry King Live" last fall and blowing up big time after being featured on "Oprah."

But just what nerve is The Secret touching in American culture right now? Why are folks hosting The Secret parties and passing the books and DVDs from friend to friend, encouraging each other to check out the wisdom spouted by Byrne and two dozen "Teachers"? And is this "law of attraction" talk really new, or a slick, mystically repackaged form of self-help?

New wisdom or smart marketing?

"This book and DVD is a little capsule of hope and enthusiasm," says Dr. Joe Siegler, a life and executive coach and president and founder of Chicago-based Full Life Centers. "This is another example of a cathartic weekend or a Sunday sermon. Even if you know 90 percent of it, it's good to hear it again."

While Siegler loves "The Secret's" emphasis on positive thinking's effect on feelings, he says the tenets of the book and DVD are nothing new. Religious books such as Rick Warren's best-selling The Purpose-Driven Life and fellow megachurch pastor Joel Osteen's Your Best Life Now -- as well as secular tomes such as Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People -- trade in everything from abundant life to reaching one's potential.

Still, people "need to be reprimed, like an espresso maker. If it's not fresh in your mind, you need a priming. We use television, we use books, we use Oprah, we use friends to inspire ourselves."

And besides, says Indiana State's Johnson, we're buying into the mystery behind this so-called hidden wisdom. In fact, he calls The Secret "sort of like The DaVinci Code meets The Power of Positive Thinking."

Byrne says she conceived the idea after being given and reading 1910's The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles. She felt she'd discovered wisdom that had been long-hidden from ordinary Joes and Janes, and translated that into the video "The Secret."

'Simple' philosophy too basic?

Most of the "secrets" in this book and DVD are common sense. You don't have to be a scientist to prove that if you're sick and focus solely on how badly you feel, you're likely to feel worse. If you're in debt and constantly obsess about it, you're likely to stay broke. In fact, "The Secret" includes a quantum physicist and doctor who share how thoughts affect our bodies' chemistry.
"It's a very simple philosophy, and for some people too simple, so they don't believe it," says Black. "It's basically a shift in perception, and it's not hard."

But sometimes it is hard, says Johnson. He fears that folks practicing "The Secret" may rely "too much on the law of attraction or giving off positive thoughts. If you're focusing all your attention on thinking about something, you may not get around to doing it."

He wishes the concept offered more concrete steps and strategies on changing one's life. "They tell you to act, but don't tell you how," he says. "What's being left out is the incremental work done over time and measuring outcomes."

'Universal values' without invoking religion

But what "The Secret" does well, says Siegler, is expressing the ubiquitous nature of humanity's hopes and dreams.

"My clients are longing for universal values. People see themselves as less different than others," he says.

Although Borders shelves "The Secret" DVD under "religious video," publisher Cynthia Black insists it takes a "nondenominational approach to spirituality." But some critics charge that "The Secret's" vagueness and constant references to "the Universe" goes against traditional beliefs held by Christians and some others.

The religious language "is enough that it could sort of remind you of your own faith traditions," says Johnson, "but not enough that it's going to pull you away from it. It also makes it hard to pin down."

But Lisa Nichols, a Redondo Beach, Calif.-based life coach who's a Teacher in "The Secret," disagrees.

Telling people they can create their own reality does not exclude God, says Nichols, a Chicken Soup for the African American Soul co-author whose teachings come out of a Christian context. Someteachers on the DVD practice New Thought-Ancient Wisdom; others embrace metaphysics.

Nichols says the Teachers didn't even discuss their various spiritual backgrounds with each other. "What I found in that project is no matter what language was used, God's agenda was on the forefront. We all were paying homage to a higher power," says Nichols, who has received 6,500 e-mails since appearing on "Oprah."

"We have been so programmed [to think] the solution is outside of us -- get a doctor, get a pill -- and when people go out to all those false solutions, they become hopeless," says Nichols. "The Secret" "gave people the knowledge that you are in the driver's seat."

It's all about positive focus

Just what is The Secret, anyway?

It's a book atop the major best-seller lists, and a DVD that got its initial fame from word-of-mouth marketing. Both contain tenets designed to "bring joy to every aspect of your life." It's all based on the "law of attraction," the notion that you bring into your life what you think about most, whether positive or negative.

Among some other main principles:

• Your current life is a reflection of your past thoughts. Thoughts become things.

• People don't possess what they want in life because they focus more on what they don't want rather than what they want to attract.

• Shift your own reality by mastering your mind and summoning what you want through persistent thoughts.

• Whatever your circumstances right now, that is only your current reality.

• Shift your attitude to one of gratitude, which then will attract more positive things to be grateful for.

• Create "pictures in your mind of yourself enjoying what you want. The law of attraction then returns that reality to you" as you imagined it.

• The "Creative Process," which Byrne says is drawn from the Bible's New Testament, requires three steps for fulfillment: Ask, Believe, Receive. Ask the Universe for what you want. Believe that you'll get it. Receive this positive thing through "inspired action," which is effortless because you are "acting to receive."

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Thursday, February 22, 2007

As Life Situations Change, So Too Do Values

Peter Hossli
Freelancer, New York

19.02.2007

That happiness does not lie in money alone is something that Professor Ronald Inglehart can prove scientifically. For 30 years, the American political scientist has been studying global value systems. What has emerged is a clear trend toward self-expression.

Ronald Inglehart instilled an important value in his children for their path through life: "Think about others." Of course, it was important for them to work hard at times and to brush their teeth every day. "But only those who take into account the concerns of others can become really happy." He should know. After all, no one knows more about values and their meaning than Ronald Inglehart. The American political scientist is virtually obsessed with asking people what they really want. "Values are about what motivates us, and what we would like to have," says Inglehart, an affable -looking fellow whose face is dominated by a friendly smile. In professorial fashion, he is sitting in front of a crammed set of bookshelves in his cramped, sunlit office at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, one hour from Detroit. It is from here that he runs the World Values Survey, a network of 180 social scientists conducting surveys in 95 countries.

Ronald Inglehart in brief:

Ronald Inglehart established his reputation in the 1970s with his Theory of Value Change. A political scientist at the University of Michigan since 1978, Inglehart has published more than 200 articles and books, most recently "Modernization, Cultural Change and Democracy" (2005) and "Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic and Political Change in 43 Societies" (1997).

"As a kid I always had this desire to slip into other people's bodies so that I could see what they saw." Now this childhood fantasy has been replaced by questionnaires. Every five years for the last three decades he has dispatched these around the world. This global and oft-repeated comparison highlights trends and changes. Universal values become apparent, such as a love of art or religious faith. "Everyone likes seeing beautiful things and listening to music," observes Inglehart. "Everyone wants to understand where they come from and where they are going."

When Inglehart compares countries and continents, what emerges is "an enormous bandwidth of values." For example, whereas the relationship between the richest US state of Connecticut and the poorest US state of Mississippi is 2 to 1 in terms of wealth, the difference between the richest and poorest countries of the world is 1 to 100. "People who are hungry develop an entirely different strategy and thus different values from those people who are well-fed." Those who are physically threatened by rebels see protection for themselves and their family as the most important value. People who can turn the heating on when it gets cold and turn on a lamp when night falls can afford to devote their time to other things than basic survival.

As life situations change, so too do values – this is the thesis that forms the very heart of Inglehart's research. What interests him is who sets what priorities where, and under what circumstances the order of desires can change.

Values Are Impacted by Financial Status

Two factors bring about change. On the one hand Inglehart cites economic and physical security. The person who has enough to eat and is not threatened can act in a far more independent way and can devote more time to self-expression. Values such as tolerance, democracy and environmental protection replace the values of survival. On the other hand, the type of work a person undertakes defines the nature of their values. People who cultivate the soil are at the mercy of the weather. Only the intervention of a higher power can affect the matter, which is why religious values play a key part in an agrarian society. When the conveyor belt replaces the plough, central planning takes on God's role. Industrialization displaces religion and values become more secular. Even more powerful are the marks left by the knowledge society, as Inglehart describes the countries of Western Europe, North America and Japan.

People in these countries are currently subject to a breakneck pace of change, and must continually adapt, which in turn demands innovation and creativity. Self-expression becomes an obligation. To break down the world's "complex and multifaceted" value systems, Inglehart has developed a simple model with two axes. On the one hand he measures the shift from traditional/religious values to secular values, while on the other he measures the change from survival values to self-expression. Wealthy nations without exception score high values on both axes.

International Survey Process

Each wave of surveys costs several million dollars to implement. Local opinion research institutions identify 1,500 people to act as a representative segment for each country. Each person surveyed answers between 300 and 400 questions. Inglehart personally travels to as many countries as possible to improve the way the results are classified. This long-term study is financed for the most part by a foundation set up by the Bank of Sweden, and the Dutch foreign ministry currently pays for a survey to be conducted in all African countries that have no opinion research institutions of their own. This year, Inglehart will survey people in Burkina Faso, Mali, Ethiopia, Zambia and Rwanda for the first time. Breaking new ground like this is something that pleases the 72-year-old researcher from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Asked what had surprised him most over the course of his 30-year project, Inglehart replies: "That religion has not died out, but has actually become more important worldwide." In the early 1970s, all social scientists believed the world was heading in a secular direction. "But we were wrong," confesses Inglehart. The birth rate of religious women was underestimated. On average, they have five or more children, while their secular counterparts average less than two. Not only is the proportion of "unbelievers" declining, it is also falling in real terms. It is true that industrialization strengthens the secular trend. This is again being slightly reinforced in knowledge societies. At the same time another form of religious drive is emerging in terms of individual search for meaning away from traditional churches.

Self-Expression Builds Tolerance

The most important value change of people who have achieved self-expression manifests itself in growing tolerance. Nowhere is this more evident than in the acceptance of homosexuality. Thirty years ago, more than half the people surveyed around the globe by Inglehart responded to the question as to whether gay and lesbian people would ever be accepted with a simple "No." A number of countries now recognize same-sex marriages. As Inglehart sees it, this underlines how changes in values can often lead to legislative change. "Those who feel secure open up, those who are afraid close themselves off " – this is how Inglehart explains the trend toward greater tolerance. He was not surprised to find out that Iraq was cited in a recently completed study as the most hostile country to foreigners. "Iraqis currently feel extremely insecure."

In addition to the increased acceptance of foreigners, gays, and lesbians, Inglehart discerns a growing equality of the sexes. "Men are no longer considered to be better leaders, and are no longer given priority when deciding to whom a job should be given." As he sees it, the more we move away from industrialized societies toward knowledge societies, the greater the influence of women. "Today, women think and vote more progressively than men," says Inglehart. "They are benefiting from change." As they have become more economically independent, they are finding self-expression.

Does economic security make you happy?

"Happiness is an interplay between what you desire and what you actually have, or between values and experience," says Inglehart. Here he contradicts those biologists who only consider the feeling of happiness in genetic terms. "Your life situation is what defines happiness," he continues. Particularly as the differences in the sensation of happiness are much greater between individual countries than they are within any one country. "Those who pursue the genetic argument assume that happy Danes are genetically different to unhappy Russians," says Inglehart. "It is more a case of Denmark being a free and tolerant society."

Money Can't Buy Happiness

It is true that people in rich countries are often happier than those in poor countries, but this is not exclusively the case. Rich people in rich countries are only marginally happier than those who are less rich. "A man who doubles his income does not double his happiness," points out Inglehart. "Bill Gates may have 10,000 times more money than I do, but he is at most 10 percent happier."

Increasingly it is friends and family, together with the individual's personal life, that dictate how content a person is. Only then do issues such as job and income come into play. The level of education and intelligence is particularly important in forming the values of people in wealthy knowledge societies.

To Inglehart, it was no coincidence that multi -billionaires like Bill Gates and Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have turned to philanthropy. "They are rich, their work has changed the world, and they are now trying to achieve something different in a new field that will make them happy." Inglehart warns that even billionaires are not totally happy. This is a good thing. "Evolution doesn't permit it – otherwise we would stagnate and soon die out."

Happiness Peaks and People Want More

As the marginal utility of newly acquired happiness wears off over time, people set continually higher goals. This drive is most apparent in the US, the richest but not the happiest country. The continual "pursuit of happiness" is even anchored in the wording of the American Declaration of Independence, the document that first established the US in 1776. "It is almost un-American not to continually strive for greater happiness," points out Inglehart. Yet the happiest people in the world live in Scandinavia and Latin America. Despite their unenviable climate, the people of the northernmost lands in Europe are extremely content. This Inglehart attributes to equitable government and well-functioning institutions. As he points out, the level of tolerance and responsibility toward one's fellow citizens is greater in these countries than elsewhere. He reaffirms that there is a connection between happiness and democracy. "But democracy does not automatically lead to happiness. In fact, those who are happy are more open to democratic values." Latin America is a conundrum. "All Latin-American countries and particularly those of the Caribbean are happier than their wealth would lead one to believe," says Inglehart. Certainly the weather has a role to play. But more importantly: "People have many more friends and spend a great deal more time with them."

At the bottom end of the happiness scale are the former communist countries, particularly Russia. The collapse of the Soviet Union exacerbated this trend. "With the end of communism the Russian value system fell apart, making people very insecure and unhappy," says Inglehart. In any case, catastrophes always leave their mark on values. For example, the terrorist attacks on the US on September 11, 2001, and the ensuing war on terror led to insecurity on a global scale. Islamic Isolation Apparent After 9/11 While the drive toward self-expression is increasing in most countries, Islam is stagnating. Neither democracy nor tolerance toward women and homosexuals is on the rise in Islamic countries, despite the fact that many of these countries are very rich. Inglehart explains the lack of progress in Islamic countries with the phrase " the curse of natural resources." "Anyone sitting on 50 percent of the world's oil reserves does not need to modernize." Society can remain trapped in the Middle Ages, as no strong middle class emerges that can urbanize a country and lead to a knowledge society. The data that Inglehart assesses in his Ann Arbor office gives organizations such as the World Bank and the United Nations good indications of how the world might develop. The professor is optimistic. "Apart from the negative trend of terrorism and the response to it, there is hope." As he sees it, people worldwide are becoming richer, more secure and happier. In countries where extreme poverty once prevailed, such as China and India, a middle class is emerging. Trade barriers are coming down and capital and technology are on the move, which creates new jobs everywhere. But are people becoming happier? In developed countries in particular, consumption of antidepressants is rising dramatically. Inglehart has no time for the argument that this is a sign of unhappiness, however. "We can afford the pills, so we take them."

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The Issue of Identity

February 20, 2007 12:05 PM

The survey of over 28,000 respondents across 27 countries conducted for the BBC by GlobeScan, a polling firm, and the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland is the most substantive study on grassroots opinion vis-à-vis the divide between the Muslim World and the West that has been conducted so far. The survey is very enlightening when looking at the detailed results in each and every country where the survey was conducted. It also does a good job at probing the reasons behind the divide in public opinion as well as whether it is seen to be bridgeable or doomed to end in a head-to-head clash. The results are of great scientific importance to those of us who are engaged in projects to bridge the divide, but the conclusions made by the survey are designed to show hope rather than promise the abyss and therefore are better suited for public consumption. A good example of this is how the conclusions drawn from the survey declare that “the global public believes that tensions between Islam and the West arise from conflicts over political power and interests and not from differences of religion and culture..” and “most people see the problems arising from intolerant minorities.”

The conclusion remarks continue to declare that “the idea that violent conflict is inevitable between Islam and the West is mainly rejected by Muslims, non-Muslims and Westerners alike. While more than a quarter of all respondents (28%) think that violent conflict is inevitable, twice as many (56%) believe that "common ground can be found."

There is no question that the majority of people on both sides of the divide still believe that common ground can be found, and would advocate finding it; what we didn’t know is how large the number is on the other side! The fact that almost a third of people surveyed think that “violent conflict is inevitable” is alarming because it is proof that the divide has grown wider. There was never any sign of it shrinking, but when a third of the World’s population expects doom, the threat is as serious as it can be.

...the Lebanese overwhelmingly (68%) believe common grounds can be found between the Muslim World and the West while only 54% of Egyptians and 49% of Turks do. Further away by around a 10-hours plane ride, the majority of Indonesians (51%) believe that violent conflict is inevitable. We have discovered through action on the divide that even in Europe, the divide between the British Muslim community and the rest of society there is very different from that in France, Germany or other countries. Europe’s divide in turn, is very different from that in the USA. What is common however, and which gives the impression that it is the same animal, is the umbrella they all exist under: Muslim vs. non-Muslim. This in turn bundles different groups under one “identity.”

When Samuel Huntington came out with his “Clash of Civilizations” theory in a paper published in Foreign Affairs, and later in 1996 in the form of a book, he wasn’t arguing that such a clash is inevitable. What Huntington was pushing for is simply that after the fall of the Soviet Union (therefore the fall of communism) differences among nations will be based on culture rather than ideology. So Chinese culture which is vastly different from that of the West will be competing with the West, and so would the Muslim World.

There is enough out there to argue for it or declare with alarm that this theory is too simplistic in nature. An example is during the Cold War, the Muslim World was divided (in line with the rest of the world) into three categories: Pro-West in the form of capitalist of sorts, Pro-Soviet Union in the form of socialist or communist and of-course the Non-Aligned; the latter described as a movement and therefore a third option which strived to dealing with both powers but they weren’t independent from such powers in practical terms.

The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is still around today after the fall of the Soviet Union. Why? What is the purpose of NATO? Is China communist today? If not, then what is it? Is Iran’s conflict with the USA due to religion or national interest and which factor is fueling the divide between the two countries? Before it was all about the two superpowers competing and therefore dividing the world into pro, anti, or middle-grounders. What is it about now? Today the game has changed and philosophers need to create new rules for competition, if not to help run the world, at least to create understanding of what is happening on the ground. Such understanding, however, will not only influence what will be, but will become the norm in the head of the grassroots worldwide and therefore the new reality we have to live with.

After the fall of the Soviet Union and the emergence of Islamism, including the radical forms as manifested by Al Qaeda, it is easy to divide the world based on religion. To argue against Huntington’s theory or that of the fundamentalist Islamists, the Muslim World is not united in culture by any means. It enjoys the basics of religion as a common ground. It would be ludicrous to suggest that Muslims whether they are Lebanese, Saudi, Pakistani or Indonesians have the same culture. They don’t. But that doesn’t mean that they couldn’t under the threat of danger or the power of ideology and new thought.

Similarly, the Western nations are collectively the “other” in the equation from a Muslim World’s perspective, even though they do not have the same culture despite the Christian majority in Western states. If the Muslim World is to unite against the “Western Evil” then the West will unite to defend itself. Religion based ideology has infiltrated and influenced culture to a degree that it is possible to forge a united power against the other and therefore walk towards a clash of civilizations; a violent one indeed. This is where the danger comes because this is what Al Qaeda and its type are pushing amongst Muslims, and the hard religious right is pushing in the West.

The point of this exercise is to emphasize what Huntington has always been rightfully focused on: Identity. Huntington followed his Clash of Civilizations book with another in May 2004: Who are we? The Challenges to America’s national identity. What Huntington is not right about is how adamant he is in his latest book on defining American culture as “Anglo-Protestant,” therefore pushing the principle that identity is “religion based.”

On the other side of the globe, the fundamentalist Islamists are pushing a unified identity of “the Umma” (the nation of Islam as a united identity despite race, culture and geography) to justify the principle of “us against them.” Yet, in a clear clash with that concept that is being pushed liberally in the Muslim World and the West alike, is the principle of National Interest; not in term of an “Umma” or “the Christian West” but in terms of the political state and the nation that belongs to its boundaries; whatever is the religion of the individual in that state. Those of us who want to ensure that no violent clash ever becomes a reality between the Muslim World and the West, do not want to see a religious identity develop further to exacerbate the divide and take us to the abyss. It all starts with answering the question: who am I? This also is the answer to the future of this world, and the survey proves that about the third of earth has fallen into the pit of “I am my religion.

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Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Science and religion unite on climate

Stephen H. Schneider, Sally G. Bingham
Tuesday, February 13, 2007

In the wake of the most significant scientific report to date on the potentially dire consequences of global warming, a ray of hope has emerged. Ironically, it emanates from the convergence of forces that have often been at odds. One force, the world of science, has long been on the forefront of the issue of climate change. Another equally powerful force, religion, has often remained on the sidelines -- until recently.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a body of more than 2,000 of the world's top scientists from more than 100 nations, stated in a Feb. 2 report that global warming is "unequivocal," that it is rapidly changing the nature of our planet and its ecosystems, and that it is "very likely" being caused by human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels.

In the course of the last decade, a significant movement within the faith community has been mobilizing around the call to care for God's creation, the web of life that sustains us all. This calling is the essence of religious life, and people of faith are beginning to hear it, even as scientists sound the alarm that we may be nearing a climactic tipping point.

Scientists have also provided us with insights that raise serious ethical challenges, particularly the issue of the choice between stewardship and fatalism -- the moral dilemma of our time. We can accept the challenge with hope or sit on our hands and do nothing. For people of faith, the moment of truth has come, and we must open our eyes to the knowledge that modern science is showing us. The choice offered us is to move beyond denial and doubt that global warming is caused by human activities to play an active part in a global effort to save this fragile creation or suffer the consequences.

The active involvement of religion is necessary for wide-scale social change. Social movements from the abolition of slavery to the civil rights movement have been led by the religious community. Some 64 percent of Americans belong to a church or synagogue, and nearly 50 percent attend a service every week, according to a 2005 Gallup poll. (By comparison, only 14 percent are active participants in environmental organizations.)

Evidence that religious people are making the choice in favor of environmental stewardship is coming in every day. This fall, more than 400,000 people in congregations across the country viewed Al Gore's global warming documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," in packed houses. Almost every major denomination has adopted statements of concern on global warming. Evangelicals, often skeptical of science, are breaking with the president to join the call for action on reductions in greenhouse gases.

Science and religion have proved to be capable of independently inspiring social change and reshaping global consciousness. Just imagine what these forces could do together, in a united effort to reverse the damage we have done to our planet.

Now, with religious institutions becoming engaged, will we, as a society, have the collective wisdom to break with our destructive behavior and choose another way? We have seen the religious community putting aside differences to solve a moral problem in the past with issues such as slavery and the civil-rights movement. We might also see differences put aside and rejoice in the marriage of religion and science. It is a pivotal moment, and the consequences of our choice will be felt for generations to come.

Stephen H. Schneider is a professor of biological science at Stanford University. He has been studying, writing and speaking about the issue of climate change for 30 years. The Rev. Sally Bingham is a priest in the Episcopal Diocese of California and a member of the board of Environmental Defense. She is the leader of a national campaign, Interfaith Power and Light, which is mobilizing the religious community in 22 states to become leaders in the fight against global warming. See www.InterfaithPowerandLight.org

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Giving to charity affects the brain, study finds

Posted on Mon, Feb. 19, 2007

By Robert Franklin
McClatchy Newspapers

MINNEAPOLIS - It's not just helping the poor, the arts or the church that makes giving to charity feel good. Giving affects the same part of the brain stimulated by sex, drugs and money, according to researchers at the National Institutes of Health.

Fundraisers have long invoked religion, volunteerism, family and cultural traditions, tax breaks, peer pressure and the desire to make a difference or leave a legacy as being big factors in charitable giving.

But NIH researchers used MRIs to monitor brain activity as 19 people made decisions to give - or not give - to a variety of causes. For charitable giving, their imaging study "strongly supports the existence of `warm glow' at a biological level," said Dr. Jorge Moll, the lead researcher. "It helps convince people that doing good can make them feel good; altruism therefore doesn't need to be ONLY sacrifice."

Charitable giving is big business. It totaled $4.9 billion in Minnesota in 2004, according to the latest available figures, the Minnesota Council on Foundations estimated last week. And fundraisers and researchers have long sought to analyze giving patterns.

Moll said he wanted to "tease apart" selfish and altruistic motivations, to explore economic and moral values.

His research team gave $128 each to the 19 people - a large enough sample for valid conclusions, he said. They were confronted with choices about whether to give money - or to oppose giving - to controversial charities linked to abortion, children's rights, the death penalty, euthanasia, gender equality, nuclear power and war. They gave an average of $51 from their $128 and pocketed the rest.

In a paper published last fall, researchers said they found that giving activated two areas of the brain: the part that is activated by reward reinforcement, which also is activated by sex, drugs and money, and the part that influences social attachments, trust and economic interactions.

The two areas work not in competition but together, which "enables us to make altruistic decisions," Moll said.

Opposition to a cause sets off the part of the brain that's linked to anger and moral disgust, the researchers found.

Sometimes donors despair about their money going elsewhere, perhaps to taxes. For instance, William McKnight, the 3M executive who started the McKnight Foundation, the state's largest, "would do whatever he could not to pay taxes," his daughter, the late Virginia Binger, once said.

Jud Dayton, the new chairman of the One Percent Club, said he's not so sure about a "sex, drugs, rock `n' roll" connection to giving. But he added, "You're helping people, and that's got to feel good."
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GIVING AND THE BRAIN
Researchers led by Dr. Jorge Moll at the National Institutes of Health used functional MRI to examine brain activity of 19 people confronted with decisions about charitable giving.

Researchers found that donating affects two brain "reward" systems working together:

_The midbrain ventral tegmental area (VTA)-striatum mesolimbic network, which also is stimulated by food, sex, drugs and money.

_The subgenual area, which are related to humans viewing their babies and romantic partners and to other social attachments.

Researchers also found that:

_Rejecting certain causes stimulates the lateral orbitofrontal cortex (IOFC), which is linked to anger, moral disgust and other aversive traits.
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© 2007, Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

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Saturday, February 17, 2007

Chinese survey finds religion booming

Jonathan Watts in Beijing
Wednesday February 7, 2007

Guardian Unlimited

China has three times as many religious believers as previously thought, according to a new survey that suggests this nominally atheist nation has never been more open to the "opium of the masses".

Professors at East China Normal University estimated that about 300 million people - equivalent to more than 30% of the adult population - followed Buddhist, Taoist, Christian, Muslim or other beliefs.

The new figures cast doubt on official statistics, which claim China has only 100 million religious worshippers, as well as calling into question the government's assertion that superstitious beliefs will wither away under communist rule.

Many religions have flourished since the end of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, when temples, churches, mosques and shrines were desecrated.

"After drastic changes in the past half a century, we now see bewildering moral decline, apathy between people, estrangement. All these have driven people to find new spiritual sustenance," Liu Zhongyu, who headed the survey team, was quoted as saying.

According to the survey - which was published in the state-run China Daily - two-thirds of believers are Buddhist, Taoist or devotees of legendary figures such as the Dragon King and the God of Fortune.

The change is evident throughout the country. At St Francis cathedral in Xian the congregation for Sunday evening Mass is so large many must stand. Priests say contributions from local and overseas donors have doubled in five years, which has funded new schools, clinics and other social projects, including water treatment facilities.

At the Xian Great Mosque, mullahs say the number of worshippers has increased by 30% in the past five years and loval travel agents are doing a roaring trade in organising trips to Saudi Arabia for the hajj. In Qinhai, hawkers selling Tibetan buddhist beads, robes and incense say business is booming because so many new monastaries are opening.

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Religious identity not a given

Mobility and exposure to other faiths have had an impact on Americans' church habits.

By Andrea Useem, Religion News Service
Last update: February 16, 2007 – 6:14 PM

When Aurora Turk was growing up in Mexico City, being Catholic was a given. "It was taught to me by the nuns at school and my mother at home," she recalled. "My whole world was Catholic."

But Turk's adult life has been marked by religious exploration. Married to a Brooklyn-born Jew, the 38-year-old mother now follows the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda, an Indian spiritual teacher.

While Turk's story seems unique, her experience of switching religious identities is a common one for many Americans.

Sixteen percent of Americans have switched their religious identities at some point in their lives, according to the 2001 American Religious Identification Survey, one of the largest studies of its kind.

"People are making more choices in everything, from lifestyle to sexual identity. It's not surprising if they are making more choices in religion," said Peter Berger, professor of sociology and theology at Boston University.

Barry Kosmin, coauthor of a book based on the 2001 survey, said "more switching is to be expected."Family and ethnic loyalties -- the old glue that maintained intergenerational religious identification -- has weakened," he said. In addition to moving more frequently, Americans are also more likely to be "searching" for religious truth, often outside their own traditions, wrote Kosmin, who directs the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.

The 2001 study showed clear winners and losers in the competition for members: Twice as many Americans left Catholicism as joined the faith, while evangelical Christianity registered a net gain, with more than three times as many people joining than leaving.

The biggest change, however, was registered among Americans who said they had no religious identity at all, increasing from 8 percent of the U.S. population in 1990 to 14 percent in 2001.

The phenomenon can be unnerving for religious leaders, who are vying for "customers" ever more aware of new options, according to Kosmin. Megachurches are successful in part because they actively reach out to potential members, of which there are many in high-mobility suburbs and exurbs, Kosmin wrote in an e-mail interview.

But success in attracting new members doesn't necessarily translate into success at keeping them, according to Daniel Olson, a sociologist at Indiana University South Bend who studies religious competition.

"There is a strong relationship between rates of leaving and rates of joining, both for congregations and whole denominations," Olson wrote in an e-mail response to questions. The 2001 survey found, for example, that while the Mormons welcomed a relatively large number of converts, an equal number left the faith. Jehovah's Witnesses and Buddhists displayed similarly high levels of turnover.

Surprisingly, Olson noted, smaller religious groups are better at recruiting new members.

Carl Blizzard, pastor of the Abundant Life United Pentecostal Church in Albert Lea, Minn., said his church is small, with only 300 active members -- 90 percent of whom came to Pentecostalism from Lutheran, Catholic and even Muslim backgrounds.
"People usually come in first because they are invited by a family member. The church is growing because of personal testimony," said Blizzard, son of a Pentecostal preacher.

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Thursday, February 15, 2007

Catholic wrongly convicted seeks end to death penalty

By George P. Matysek Jr.
2/15/2007

CAMBRIDGE, Md. (The Catholic Review) -

If anyone has experienced sheer terror, it’s Kirk Bloodsworth.

Tried and found guilty of the brutal rape and murder of a 9-year-old Rosedale, Md., girl, the barrel-chested crabber from the Eastern Shore was sentenced to die in the gas chamber for his horrific crimes.

But Mr. Bloodsworth didn’t have anything to do with what he was accused of. A former Marine with no criminal record, he had been wrongly convicted and would later become the first American on death row to be exonerated by DNA testing.

Seated on the couch in the living room of his small home in Cambridge more than 20 years later, pain was still visible on Mr. Bloodsworth’s face as he recalled those long-ago events that forever changed his life. With his brow deeply furrowed, the plainspoken 46-year-old man said he believed hell is a place of torment and that his experiences must be similar to those in that place of misery.

“I remember that first night in my cell and the smell coming from this place,” he said, recounting how roaches frequently scurried along the walls of his small living quarters.

“Not only did it stink of every kind of excrement you could think of,” he said, “but you also could smell hatred - and it was all pointing at me.”

The threats that greeted him when he first entered the state penitentiary continued through the night and beyond, with inmates shouting through the air vents how they planned to torture him.

Despite the strong temptation to despair, Mr. Bloodsworth said he decided he would fight to prove his innocence. He believes God sustained him through nearly nine years of taxing prison life, sending him otherworldly consolations and leading him into the Catholic Church.

With the same steely determination that got him through his prison ordeal, Mr. Bloodsworth is now devoting the rest of his life to abolishing the death penalty and seeking reforms of what he calls a “broken” criminal justice system.

It’s a battle he is convinced he has been called to win.

Growing up in the Baptist and Methodist traditions, Mr. Bloodsworth had attended a small Christian high school and had counted himself a believer. His mother was a deeply devoted Christian who encouraged him to read the Bible - an assignment he took up in earnest in prison, reading through the Scriptures twice.

As a young man, Mr. Bloodsworth had worked for a funeral home where his only exposure to Catholics came during funeral liturgies. That’s where he first learned to genuflect and was impressed by the reverence Catholics showed in the practice of their faith.

While in custody with Baltimore County before going to death row, parishioners from the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Towson visited him and other prisoners during regular chapel services.

Encouraged by their visits, it was at the Maryland State Penitentiary where Mr. Bloodsworth began deep theological discussions with Deacon Al Rose, the Catholic prison chaplain there. The two would talk for two or three hours at a time. The more he learned, the more he wanted to convert.

At Easter time in 1989, Bishop John Ricard, Baltimore’s former urban vicar, visited Mr. Bloodsworth at Deacon Rose’s invitation. Mr. Bloodsworth had been studying his catechism for several months and was ready to be received into the church.

Deacon Rose remembered that a guard asked the bishop to leave Mr. Bloodsworth’s cell, requiring the urban vicar to administer the sacraments of confirmation and holy Eucharist through the bars of his closed cell door. Standing underneath the gas chamber where Mr. Bloodsworth’s life was to be ended, Bishop Ricard completed the solemn rites that initiated him into a new kind of life - a spiritual one Mr. Bloodsworth cherished.

Asked what it was like to receive Communion for the first time, Mr. Bloodsworth softened his serious countenance and smiled.

“Oh, it was an honor,” he said. “I felt clean. I felt accepted.”

The bond between Deacon Rose and Mr. Bloodsworth was one that strengthened over the years. The Catholic chaplain at the penitentiary for more than three years, Deacon Rose had heard plenty of inmates tell him they were innocent. But Mr. Bloodsworth was one of the few he believed.

Fighting for justice

Mr. Bloodsworth believes one of the main reasons he was arrested was the tremendous pressure Baltimore County police were under to find the person who had committed those heinous acts in the summer of 1984. Two young boys identified him as the person they saw near the crime scene and an anonymous caller said he had been seen with the girl earlier in the day.

Mr. Bloodsworth, who never met the murdered girl, had told an acquaintance he had done something “terrible” that day. He was referring to his failure to buy his wife dinner, but it was used against him in a different context.

Mr. Bloodsworth was the one who had first proposed the idea of DNA testing. An avid reader in prison who served as the librarian, he learned about the new technology in a book called “The Blooding.” Robert Morin, his attorney, was able to get his client tested.

It was exactly that post-conviction testing that proved Mr. Bloodsworth’s innocence in 1993. He was released and paid $300,000 in compensation - the accumulated salary the state said he would have earned as a waterman. Gov. William Donald Schaefer pardoned him that same year.

Mr. Bloodsworth said he had to endure the suspicions of many who believed he had gotten off on a technicality. It was difficult for him to maintain a job after his release because people thought he was a murderer. DNA testing later identified the real killer - Kimberly Shay Ruffner, a man who had been previously charged with sexually assaulting children. He pled guilty to the Dawn Hamilton murder and is now serving a life sentence.

Ironically, Ruffner had been serving time for another crime in the same prison as Mr. Bloodsworth. The two had lifted weights together.

“I tell you the difference between the day before they found who really did it and day after was like I had just won the World Series for the town of Cambridge,” said Mr. Bloodsworth, who annually throws a “freedom party” complete with steamed crabs and beer. “Everyone treated me completely different.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mr. Bloodsworth, now remarried, has become an outspoken advocate for the abolition of the death penalty, most recently speaking in Annapolis in support of a bill that would replace the death penalty with prison sentences of life without parole.

Working for The Justice Project, a Washington-based organization that pushes for criminal justice reform, Mr. Bloodsworth lobbied for the passage of a bill that provides funding for post-conviction DNA testing. President George W. Bush signed the Innocence Protection Act of 2003 on Oct. 30, a day before Mr. Bloodsworth’s birthday. The act established the Kirk Bloodsworth Post-Conviction DNA Testing Program.

“We need to do post-conviction testing to find out if there are other innocent people on death row before we start throwing switches,” said Mr. Bloodsworth, pointing out that since 1973, more than 150 people have been wrongfully convicted and later freed from prison based on DNA evidence.

“If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone,” he said.

Forgiveness and fate

Mr. Bloodsworth acknowledged that he might have good reason to be angry for all he’s been through. But he doesn’t hate the prosecutors who pursued him, the police officers who arrested him, members of the community who distrusted and harassed him, or the real killer who kept quiet all those years.

Returning to the importance of faith, Mr. Bloodsworth said his belief in God made him a survivor.

“We all go through these trials in life,” he said. “You just have to kind of accept what happens to you with some sort of grace.”

God never asks his people to have faith the size of a mountain, Mr. Bloodsworth said, he just asks to have faith the size of mustard seed to “move that mountain.”

“That’s what makes people achieve greatness,” he said. “It’s not necessarily themselves, it’s the electricity that drives them - it’s that lump of coal that’s burning bright in their own soul that gets them through it and for me that’s God, the Catholic Church and my mother and what she taught me.”

Does he see any divine plan in the course of his life?

“I don’t want to sound like I’m grandiose on my part, but it’s certainly something,” Mr. Bloodsworth responded. “In the bigger sense of it all, I think that maybe that was all meant to be. There is a bigger picture.”

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Carl Sagan, posthumously, rejoins debate on faith vs. science

By Dennis Overbye

Published: February 14, 2007

It's been 10 years since we've heard Carl Sagan beckoning us to consider the possibilities inherent in the "billions" of stars peppering the sky and in the "billions" of neuronal connections spiderwebbing our brains.

In his day, the Cornell astronomer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of books like "The Dragons of Eden," "Contact," "Pale Blue Dot" and "The Demon- Haunted World," and impresario of the PBS television program "Cosmos" was one of the world's most eloquent unbelievers, an apostle of cosmic wonder, critic of nuclear arms and a champion of science's duty to probe and question without limit, including the claims of religion. He died of pneumonia after a series of bone marrow transplants in December 1996.

Since his death, the public discourse on his favorite issues — the fate of the planet, the beauty and mystery of the cosmos — has not fared well. The teaching of evolution in public schools has become a bitter bone of contention; NASA tried to abandon the Hubble Space Telescope and censor talk of climate change; and religious fanatics crashed jetliners into the World Trade Center, which helped lead to a war in the Middle East that has awakened memories in some corners of the Crusades.

Now, however, Sagan has rejoined the debate with the publication last month of "The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God" (Penguin). The book is based on a series of lectures exploring the boundary between science and religion that Sagan gave in Glasgow in 1985; it was edited by Ann Druyan, his widow and collaborator.

"I would suggest that science is, at least in part, informed worship," he writes.

But Sagan acknowledges that religion can engender hope and speak truth to power, as in the civil rights movement in the United States, but that it rarely does.

It's curious, he says, that no allegedly Christian nation has adopted the Golden Rule as a basis for foreign policy. Rather, in the nuclear age, mutually assured destruction was the policy of choice. "Christianity says that you should love your enemy. It certainly doesn't say that you should vaporize his children."

When Saddam Hussein was hanged in December, those words had a haunting resonance.
It was Druyan's impatience with religious fundamentalism that led her to resurrect Sagan's lectures, which were part of the Gifford Lectures, a prestigious series about natural theology.

Druyan, who co-wrote "Cosmos" and produced the movie "Contact," based on her husband's novel, runs Cosmos Studio and was a leader in the aborted effort by the Planetary Society to launch a solar sail from a Russian submarine two years ago. Among her lesser-known achievements is a kiss on the cheek of the science writer Timothy Ferris, which was recorded and included on a record of the sounds of Earth that is part of the Voyager spacecraft now flying out of the solar system.

She and Sagan had planned to use his Gifford lectures as the basis for a new television show called "Ethos," a sequel to "Cosmos," about the spiritual implications of the scientific revolution.

But "Ethos" never happened, and the lectures disappeared.

In the wake of Sept. 11 and the attacks on the teaching of evolution in the United States, she said, a tacit truce between science and religion that has existed since the time of Galileo started breaking down.

Some of the books that resulted, such as Richard Dawkins's "The God Delusion," have been criticized as shrill, but Druyan said: "People like Carl and Dawkins are more serious about God than people who just go through the motions. They are real seekers."

About a year ago, Druyan went looking for Sagan's lectures, eventually finding them in his archive at Cornell. Rereading them, she said, "I couldn't believe how prophetic they were." It took about a day for her editor at Penguin to decide to publish them, she said.

Never afraid to venture into global politics, Sagan warns at one point of the danger that a leader under the sway of religious fundamentalism might not try too hard to avoid nuclear Armageddon, reasoning that it was God's plan.

Druyan, who co-wrote "Cosmos" and produced the movie "Contact," based on her husband's novel, runs Cosmos Studio and was a leader in the aborted effort by the Planetary Society to launch a solar sail from a Russian submarine two years ago.

Among her lesser-known achievements is a kiss on the cheek of the science writer Timothy Ferris, which was recorded and included on a record of the sounds of Earth that is part of the Voyager spacecraft now flying out of the solar system.

She retitled the book — Sagan had named his lectures "The Search for Who We Are" — as a nod to William James, whose Gifford lectures in 1901 and 1902 became the basis for his book "The Varieties of Religious Experience."

Near the end of his book, Sagan parses the difference between belief and science this way: "I think if we ever reach the point where we think we thoroughly understand who we are and where we came from, we will have failed."

The search for who we are does not lead to complacency or arrogance, he explains. "It goes with a courageous intent to greet the universe as it really is, not to foist our emotional predispositions on it but to courageously accept what our explorations tell us."

The last word may as well go to Dawkins, who in a 1996 book nominated Sagan as the ideal spokesman for Earth. In a blurb for the new book, Dawkins said that the astronomer was more than religious, having left behind the priests and mullahs.

"He left them behind, because he had so much more to be religious about," Dawkins wrote. "They have their Bronze Age myths, medieval superstitions and childish wishful thinking. He had the universe."

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Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Religion on march in China

Mary-Anne Toy, Beijing
February 9, 2007

CHINA'S dramatic turn towards religion has been officially acknowledged for the first time, with a poll showing that the number of Chinese who describe themselves as religious has tripled from the long-quoted figure of 100 million to 300 million.

The poll of about 4500 people, conducted by professors at Shanghai's East China Normal University from 2005 until this year, found that 31 per cent of Chinese aged over 16 are religious.

Most of the religious respondents, 67 per cent, were adherents of Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, Christianity or Islam.

The poll shows a striking revival in traditional Chinese religions, with about 200 million being Buddhists, Taoists or worshippers of legendary deities such as the Dragon King and the God of Fortune. Also significant is the big rise in Christianity, from an official figure of less than 10 million in the late 1990s to about 40 million now.

The other main trend is that it is the young who are turning to religion. More than 60 per cent of those who described themselves as religious were in the 16-39 age bracket. Only 9.6 per cent were 55 years or older.

Survey co-author Professor Liu Zhongyu said that in the 1950s Chinese were atheists. In the 1990s, there was a surge in religious belief among the middle-aged. But the poll shows that new believers are younger and not necessarily poor farmers seeking an opiate for poverty.

Nearly 30 per cent of the religious respondents said their faith "helps cure illness, avoid disasters and ensures that life is smooth", while 24 per cent said religion "shows the true path of life".

Liu Cuimin, a minister at one of Beijing's official churches, the Chongwenmen Christian Church, believes the number of religious Chinese is much higher than indicated by the poll, because it probably only took into account those registered at official churches. Ms Liu says many believers attend underground churches.

China has five officially sanctioned religions — Buddhism, Taoism, Islam and Catholic and Protestant Christianity — but the People's Republic bans party members from belonging to any religion, though this is frequently ignored.

Confronted with a grassroots surge in new temples, churches and mosques all over the country, Beijing has increasingly begun to harness religion in its campaign to build a "harmonious society" and maintain social stability. It has been reviving Confucian belief, with its emphasis on maintaining social order and obedience ahead of individual desires, through a series of Confucian institutes around the world.

And last year, China hosted the world's first Buddhism forum, in Hangzhou. But significantly, the world's most famous Buddhist, exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama, who is reviled by Beijing, was not invited.

China's refusal to allow Chinese Catholics to owe allegiance to the Pope and the continued suppression of Falun Gong show that there still remain firm limits on religious expression.

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Ten nonromantic love stories for Valentine's Day

February 10, 2007

For all the people who say that hearts, roses, candy and romance are the staples of any competent Valentine's Day, we say ... shut it.

If Valentine's Day is about anything, it's about love. All kinds of love. And while the most popular notion is that of straight-up romantic love, what about other kinds of love that regularly get shunned? Heartwarming, nonromantic loves like between parent and child, brother and sister, or a boy and his bike. Where are their Hallmark cards on Valentine's Day?

For those who don't have a romantic love in their lives, we've complied a list of movies that you can check out. Each of these is about true love, for sure, just not the cliché kind.

"Beaches"

When it comes to the love shared between girlfriends, "Beaches" can't be beat. Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey play the adult versions of CC and Hillary, two women who develop a deep friendship as kids after meeting under the boardwalk in Atlantic City. As life goes on, dreams, men and jealousy all come between the women, but their friendship remains strong. Depressingly sad but ultimately uplifting, the love shared between CC and Hillary is as strong as humanly possible.

"Citizen Kane"

Charles Foster Kane had it all: women, money and power. The one thing he didn't have, the one thing those virtues robbed of him, was his childhood. In his dying moments he utters the word "Rosebud," and Orson Welles' classic film fills its running time with the mystery of what "Rosebud" is. When, in the closing scene, it's finally revealed, the viewer realizes that Kane's love of this "Rosebud" is a symbol for his yearning to be innocent once again.

"Driving Miss Daisy"

This 1989 Best Picture Oscar winner tells the simple story of two of the most unlikely friends possible: a black chauffeur and his rich, elderly, white, female boss in the pre-civil rights South. Morgan Freeman is Hoke, the man hired to drive Miss Daisy (Jessica Tandy) around after she crashes her car. Driving around affords the duo time to share many conversations, and eventually they become best friends. "Driving Miss Daisy" is proof that respectful friendship is possible in even the most socially unacceptable of situations.

"Field of Dreams"

"If you build it, they will come." But if you build it, you'd better really, really love "it." That "it" is baseball, and Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) certainly loves America's game. He loves it so much, in fact, that he dumps his entire life savings into building a regulation baseball field on his Iowa farm. What initially might seem like a dumb idea eventually gives Ray something that he wasn't able to have as a child, a relationship with his father.

"Harold and Maude"

Wealth doesn't mean anything to Harold (Bud Cort), especially when his mother hardly notices his elaborate suicide attempts. It seems he's living a life without substance. That is, of course, until he meets Maude, an eccentric old lady who shares Harold's hobby of attending the funerals of strangers. As Harold and Maude hang out more and more it becomes obvious that, while Harold thinks he loves Maude, he really loves the way she lives life — doing whatever she wants whenever she wants.

"Lost in Translation"

The language barrier begets loneliness and isolation for an older movie star (Bill Murray) as he films a commercial in Japan. A recent college grad (Scarlett Johansson), whose husband is busy working and is thereby neglecting her, feels the same way. Romance isn't the point as the older man and younger woman simply enjoy each other's company and develop a respect and friendship that goes against every movie-clichéd notion of man-meets-woman. Companionship is what's important when you are feeling alone.

"Mary Poppins"

A magically inclined singing nanny is the cure for a family that doesn't really appreciate what it means to love one another. That's the premise for this Oscar-winning Disney musical featuring the classic songs "A Spoonful of Sugar," "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," and "Chim Chim Cher-ee." Julie Andrews plays the nanny who realizes that Jane and Michael Banks crave the love of their father. She helps him change his tune. The film ends as Mr. Banks finally becomes the loving, caring father the kids need.

"Pay It Forward"

While it wasn't as critically well-received as some of the other films on this list, "Pay It Forward" preaches such a strong message of selflessness that it's perfect for a nonromantic valentine. Haley Joel Osment is Trevor, a young boy who takes a social studies project to the next level by helping three people, and then asking them to help three people in return. He calls it "paying it forward," and before he knows it, Trevor's message of love has spread to his teacher, his mother, and across the nation.

"Pee wee's Big Adventure"

How far will you go for love? Will you travel to the ends of the Earth? How about to the Alamo? That's one of the stops that Pee Wee Herman makes after his most prized possession in the world, his bike, is stolen. Pee Wee's "big adventure" to get his bike back mirrors the type of journey that might happen in a typical romantic comedy. But through the twisted minds of star Paul Reubens, co-writer Phil Hartman and director Tim Burton, it's revealed that love, even for a bike, is a very powerful emotion.

"Rain Man"

Understanding the importance of family is easy when you have one. But when Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise) realizes he has an autistic brother named Raymond (Dustin Hoffman) whom he's never met, and who is set to inherit $3 million, it takes Charlie some time to understand that importance. Charlie kidnaps his brother and takes him on a cross-country trip to get custody of Ray (and his fortune). As the two spend time together, Charlie's anger slowly evolves into love. Finally, what was once about money becomes about loving and spending time with the brother he never knew.

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Monday, February 12, 2007

Traditions of love

To love is human, but it can also be divine, as these stories from different faiths show.

By HELEN T. GRAY
The Kansas City Star

Although Valentine’s Day generally is looked upon as the day for romantic lovers, it also can be a time to look at love in a broader way.

Therefore, included here is a sampling of love stories from a variety of faith traditions.

The Good Samaritan

This is one of the best-known parables of Jesus from the Christian tradition.

The story is told in Luke Chapter 10 of a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho who fell into the hands of robbers.

“They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead.”

Both a priest and another religious man saw the victim and passed by on the other side. Then a Samaritan came by and saw the man, who was a Jew, and took pity on him. It should be noted that Jews and Samaritans, whom Jews viewed as half-breeds, usually had nothing to do with each other.

But the Samaritan tended to the man’s wounds and took him to an inn. The next day he gave the innkeeper enough money to keep the man up to two months at the inn, with these instructions: “Look after him, and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.”

Jesus had told this story in answer to questions from an expert in the law, one of which was, “Who is my neighbor?” After finishing the story, Jesus asked the expert, “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

“The one who had mercy on him.”

“Go and do likewise,” Jesus said.

The message: “This is the story of the love response of one neighbor to another neighbor,” said Pastor Raymond Davis Jr. of Greater Corinthian Church of the Christ. “Love’s response does not factor in who one is to determine if he’s going to help him. But love says, ‘He is my neighbor, one neighbor to another.’?”

The elephant and his mother

From the Buddhist tradition comes a story of the Buddha from “Jataka Tales” of the Buddha’s past lives when he was born a beautiful white baby elephant.

His mother plucked the most tender leaves and the sweetest mangoes and gave them to him. “First you, then me,” she said. She filled her trunk with sparkling water and sprayed his head and back until he shone.

He grew until he was the tallest and strongest of the young elephants, while his mother grew older and in time became blind.

“The young elephant plucked the tenderest leaves and sweetest mangoes from the tall trees and gave them to his dear old blind mother. ‘First you, then me,’ he said,” and he sprayed her head and back until she shone.

Then one day a king captured the beautiful white elephant and put him in the royal stable. The king adorned him with silk, jewels and garlands of lotus flowers and gave him sweet grass and juicy plums and pure water.

But refusing to eat or drink, the young elephant wept and grew thinner each day. Finally the king asked what was wrong, and the elephant told him about his blind mother with no one to care for her.

Touched by the elephant’s love for his mother, the king released him. He found her lying in the mud by the lotus pool, too weak to move. Immediately he filled his trunk with water and sprayed her head and back until she shone.

“As he washed her eyes, a miracle happened. Her sight returned. ‘May the king rejoice today as I rejoice at seeing my son again,’?” she said.

“The young elephant then plucked the tenderest leaves and sweetest mangoes from a tree and gave them to her. ‘First you, then me.’?”

The message: “Because of our belief in karma and rebirth, we believe everybody was our mother in past lives, and, therefore, we should be kind to everyone, even our enemies,” said Lama Chuck Stanford of the Rime Buddhist Center & Monastery.

Protecting Prophet Muhammad

Various Islamic history books tell this story of the selfless, lifelong love that Abu Bakr had for Prophet Muhammad.

It was the year 622 when Muhammad was fleeing from the people of Mecca, who had been persecuting the Muslims and were trying to kill Muhammad because of the growing number of converts to Islam. He was to join other Muslims who already had left for Medina. The only person accompanying him was Abu Bakr.

The leaders of Mecca had set a huge bounty for Muhammad, and many people were looking to kill him. When Abu Bakr noticed that one rider was close, he became very concerned about Muhammad.

Prophet Muhammad said, “Do not fear; Allah is with us.”

As the man drew closer, Abu Bakr became extremely fearful for Muhammad and began to cry. Muhammad asked why he was crying.

He replied, “By Allah, I am not crying for myself, but I am crying for you.”

As it happened, when the man almost reached the pair, his horse’s front legs sank into the ground, and he was unable to proceed. He then gave up his hatred and promised to help them. Therefore, with the help of Allah, they were able to escape and arrived safely at Medina.

The message: “True love goes above and beyond the material aspects of life; even sacrificing one’s life to protect the beloved is not a great price to pay,” said Syed Hasan of the Islamic Research Foundation International. “The story has great significance in modern times as materialism is consuming the society where every action is judged on its monetary importance.”

How Rabbi Akiva became a scholar

A story from the Jewish tradition tells about Rachel, a beautiful and kindhearted daughter of a wealthy man in Jerusalem.

It is recounted in Ellen Frankel’s book The Classic Tales: 4,000 Years of Jewish Lore. Instead of marrying a wealthy young man, she chose a poor, uneducated shepherd named Akiva.

When her father discovered her secret betrothal, he disinherited her. The couple was poor but happy.

After they had been married a short while, Rachel urged Akiva to go study Torah. Having had no education, he had to start in kindergarten and then went on to the academy. Meanwhile, Rachel was living in poverty, supporting him and herself.

After 12 years, Akiva returned with 12,000 of his students.

“As he stood outside his house, he overheard a neighbor mocking his wife Rachel: ‘Some husband you have! He went off to study 12 years ago and has left you a widow!’

“?‘I would have him study another 12 years,’ replied Rachel, ‘as long as he doesn’t come back to me as ignorant as when he left.’?”

Akiva then left to study for another 12 years and returned with 24,000 students.

“Rachel came out to meet him, her hair white and her clothing in tatters. Akiva’s students tried to chase her away, but Akiva saw her and held them back.

“?‘Leave her alone!’ he cried. ‘All the Torah we have we owe to her!’?”

When Rachel’s father heard that a famous scholar was in town, he went to see him, not recognizing that this was the former shepherd. He told Akiva that he had made a vow to withhold all his wealth from his daughter because she married a man who was not worthy of her.

Akiva asked if he would have disinherited his daughter if she had married a scholar like him. The father said he would have given such a man half of his wealth.

“I am your daughter’s husband,” Akiva said, and the father gave him half his wealth.

When Akiva’s students complained that he was lavishing too much attention on his wife, he replied, “I have not shown her half the honor she showed me.”

The message: “The fidelity between Rabbi Akiva and his wife and their mutual dedication to the study of God’s word provide an inspiring example of love of God reflected in the love between a man and a woman,” said Rabbi Mark Levin of Congregation Beth Torah.

The legend of Krishna and Radha

A popular legend in the Hindu tradition is the story of Radha and Krishna. Many accounts exist of their relationship, which is a favorite subject in Indian painting, poetry and dance.

The god incarnate Krishna was born in human form into a royal household, but when a wicked king tried to kill him, he was smuggled into the country and brought up among cowherders, according to the Dictionary of Bible and Religion.

Radha, the loveliest of the cowgirls, and Krishna were close as they grew up together. Krishna is portrayed as irresistible to the young women, who would leave their families when they heard him play the flute and run to be with him. His favorite was Radha.

In time, he left to kill the wicked king and became king and also was worshipped as lord of the universe. Although he married and Radha was married, so great was her love for Krishna that she never gave up waiting for him to return.

From the hinduism.about.com Web site comes this interpretation: “Krishna’s youthful dalliances with the (cowherding women) are interpreted as symbolic of the loving interplay between God and the human soul. Radha’s utterly rapturous love for Krishna and their relationship is often interpreted as the quest for union with the divine … and is symbolically represented as the bond between the wife and husband or beloved and lover.”

The message: “The legend of Radha and Krishna, originally depicted in Hindu scripture, Bhagavata Purana, is the story of an ecstatic love of exceptional beauty which unfolds our whole heart to a supreme quality of divine love,” said Anand Bhattacharyya, an active member of the Hindu community.

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Let Valentine’s Day be a reminder

There is much legend and love around St. Valentine’s Day: as the Christianization of a Roman match-making festival or as a medieval belief of bird mating at this spring time of year.

And there is much legend and love around St. Valentine: as a martyred priest who defied an emperor and secretly married young lovers or as a martyred bishop.

Because there existed more legend and myth than historical record, St. Valentine’s Day was removed from the Catholic Church’s calendar about 30 years ago. Feb. 14 is calendared now as the memorial of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, whom Pope John Paul II acknowledged as a “spiritual bridge between Eastern and Western traditions.”

In our actions of love, however, and maybe this day will remind us, we ought to keep moving from cut-out hearts to hearts loving others as God loves.

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To reach Helen Gray, religion editor, call (816) 234-4446, or send e-mail to hgray@kcstar.com. The Rev. Ken Riley is pastor of St. Bernadette Catholic Church in Kansas City.

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Sunday, February 11, 2007

Veterans’ Love Story: Valentine’s Day, 2007

Saturday, 10 February 2007
by Shepherd Bliss

Ah, Valentine’s Day approaches again — a good time to review one’s love life. Memories long buried may emerge, if one goes deep enough.

Over 40 years ago I was commissioned an officer in the U.S. Army, following the tradition of the many fighting men of my family who went into the military. I did basic training at Ft. Riley, Kansas, home of the Big Red One, First Division. During those turbulent sixties I took an oath to defend my country and its Constitution. I have kept that oath.

I have a short story to tell. It’s a veterans’, plural, love story. It combines my experiences with those of various members of our Veterans’ Writing Group, lead by author Maxine Hong Kingston. I tell it partly to plead for forgiveness for myself and others caught in war and for the things we do. Our story begins as a nightmare. Please stay with it to the end, through the difficulties. Love can be difficult, yet eventually can triumph.

***************

“AT EASE!” the young lieutenant barks at our rifle squads, tired from a long march. We are outside Da Nang.

"Fall out, ten minute break," his voice softens. We step off the trail and draw candy bars and cigarettes from our packs.

“You, soldier!” he points in my face.

“Yes sir!” I stiffen to attention.

“See that cave?”

“Yes sir!”

“Charlie’s in there. He’s hiding. Hunt him down. Smoke him out!”

“Yes sir!”

The last cave we entered, looking for VC, flashes in my mind. I felt like a mole. Poisonous snakes might attack me. Trapped in a small space, unable to see very well, I didn’t want to go back into another putrid tunnel. What if the enemy set a trap?

This is not Ft. Riley, Kansas, but I’m still a teenager. These are no longer boys playing in the woods, which I enjoyed. No one told me that war would be like this. I had been in-country only a few weeks—this boy soldier.

“We know you’re in there,” we yelled at the entrance of the first cave. “Come on out,” we pleaded. We listened at the entrance of a simple hole in the ground. We waited. “Come on out,” we repeated. We waited for what seemed like a long time.

Hearing no sound, we assumed no one was inside. So we finally threw a few firecracker grenades in, counting them as they exploded—One, two, three…Yes! July 4th—explosions, a light show.

Expecting no one inside, we edged in…

Body parts everywhere.

We couldn’t look at each other, bowed our heads in shame, unable to say anything. At least one of us began to cry.

We needed a body count. We tallied parts of seven children’s bodies…and nine old, thin bodies of small-boned people. That was a tiny cave. The one I was just commanded to enter is huge.

Belly tightening and breath shallow, I take my flashlight and M16, now a seasoned veteran at the age of nineteen. I’m on a manhunt into a cave again, carrying small-boned people inside me.

Each family has staked out a little space in this dank dungeon. The stench hits me first—from holes in the ground for excrement. I gag, want to throw up. I’m trained, disciplined, hardened, but not for this.

Acrid smoke hits my eyes—small fires for light and cooking—blinding this mole even more. No wind, no ventilation, no water. This is surely hell. How blind we are.

I grope forward, try to avoid stepping on bodies. Hundreds are lying, sitting, crouching—children crying, old men and women coughing or moaning.

No men of fighting age, yet.

My head hits the cave’s ceiling and I fall to my knees. I throw out a hand, touching not the filthy floor, but the fingers and palm of a young woman’s hand. She steadies me. Our survivals are suddenly linked. Our eyes meet. She smiles. She’s beautiful. A rush enters my body.

Now what do I do?

I feel her grasp become a clasp—sensuous, even amorous, tracing the lifeline on my palm. She traces the lifeline on my palm. She seems to want something from me. Her touch is firm, yet gentle. A feeling of connection surges through me.

Is she the enemy?

Where am I?

What am I hunting?

Who is this woman?

Unable to surrender to her feelings and relate to her, I release my hand, mumble an apology, and bolt out of the cave. Outside, I hold my splitting head in my hands.

How could anyone experience desire in such a place?

*************

I’ve been a member of the Veterans’ Writing Group for the last decade. We tell, write, and listen to each other’s stories, sometimes of love and war. To tell, write, and listen to war stories can heal and connect us to each other, breaking a sense of isolation and shame. This story includes Michael’s story as a young officer in Vietnam, Glenn’s story from World War II and my father’s untold stories. It is a combined veterans’ story. I have carried it inside for decades and now need to tell it and write it down, even at the risk of breaking “Code Blue” silence and confidentiality.

I began writing this short story (which has had a long life inside me) as a poem in 200l. The United States had started to attack Afghanistan, using bombs to flush people out of caves. I was haunted by knowing that there were more than soldiers in those caves. Entire families were taking refuge in the ground, which has long provided some sanctuary from war-making; modern high-tech weapons can now even penetrate and destroy life underground.

A vivid memory I have from Iraq War 1 triggered this story. I was watching television news in New Mexico with my girlfriend Elena Avila, a Chicana whose father worked for many years at Ft. Bliss, Texas, named after one of my ancestors. Her son was in the military at the time. She shook her head and lamented something like, “Brown on brown, our boys killing their boys. It’s not right.“

After 9/11, I accepted a teaching position at the University of Hawai’i. Many dark-skinned people from Hawai’i and elsewhere are on the front lines of Iraq and Afghanistan. I am proud of Lt. Erin Watada, a Hawaiian, for having the courage to refuse deployment in the current Iraq War.

You may wonder why I call this a “love story” and tell it as we approach Valentine’s Day. Only a brief moment of desire is expressed at the end, to which the soldier does not fully surrender, though he did terminate his search and destroy mission. This climaxes the story; the Vietnamese woman’s ability to feel compassion for and connection to someone who might even kill her transforms the soldier and the story. Such a flash of love can shine brightly, change behavior, and be redemptive. A moment of deep love, especially under difficult circumstances, can change a life.

(Dr. Shepherd Bliss, sb3@pon.net, is a retired college teacher who now farms in Northern California. He has contributed to 19 books, most recently to “Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace,” www.vowvop.org. He is currently writing a book on “Sweet Darkness, Luscious Berries, and Endarkenment.”)

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American Lifestyles Mix Compassion and Self-Oriented Behavior. Do Your Actions Benefit Yourself or Others?

by Barna Group

(Ventura, CA) – How do the lifestyles of Americans define them – by their capacity to “do good” for others or by their willingness to indulge themselves?

A new nationwide survey from The Barna Group shows Americans exhibit both traits – willingness to sacrifice and impulses toward self-oriented behaviors.

Thinking of Others

Americans think of themselves as recyclers. The most commonly practiced of the 20 activities is recycling some used product or material. Three-quarters of Americans have done this in the past month (74%).

They also consider themselves to be engaged in helping their communities. Nearly half of Americans (48%) indicate that in the past month they have helped a poor or homeless person in their community in some other way than handing them money. In the past week, one-quarter of adults have volunteered some of their free time to help a church; and the same proportion have volunteered to help some other non-profit organization in the last seven days.

Americans also frequently engage others in conversations about faith and spirituality. More than two out of every five (44%) say they discussed a specific spiritual issue or belief in the last month with someone who belongs to a different faith.

Indulging Themselves

However, beyond community and faith engagement, Americans are carving out new lifestyles of self-oriented behavior, which affects their interpersonal relationships, their sexuality, their perspectives about property and finances, their abuse of substances, and their sense of spiritual guidance. The survey explored 15 areas of self-indulgent and morally questionable behavior.

• Relationships. One-third of adults say they have used profanity in public in the last month (33%). One-quarter claims to have said mean things to others about someone else when that person was not present (28%). One out of every eight Americans (13%) admits to having told someone something they knew was not true, while 10% of adults say they have gotten even for something someone did to hurt or offend them. Few Americans admit to fighting or abusing someone else (2%), but that proportion equates to nearly five million adults who have taken out their aggression on someone else in the past month.

• Sexuality One-quarter of adults say they have read a magazine or watched a movie or video that contained explicit sexual images in the past month (28%), while one out of every 10 Americans have visited a website that showed explicit or uncensored sexual content in that same span of time (10%). Moreover, more than one out of every seven adults (14%) admits to having had an intimate sexual encounter during the past 30 days with someone to whom they were not married.

• Property and finances. Just 4% of respondents which corresponds to nearly 9 million adults , say they took something that did not belong to them in the past month. Apparently music does not always factor into their concept of property, because a higher proportion of adults – 6%, which is about 13 million people – have inappropriately traded or downloaded music in the past month. Gambling is a frequent lifestyle choice of Americans. One-third say they have purchased a lottery ticket in the past month (31%), while nearly one-fifth indicate they have placed a bet or gambled in the same time frame (18%).

• Substance use. In total, 16% of adults – about 36 million people – have consumed enough alcohol to be intoxicated or considered legally drunk at least once during the last month. Those who admit to recent use of illegal, non-prescription drugs accounted for about 7 million adults (3%).

• Spirituality. The survey also found that one out of 20 adults – about 11 million Americans – has consulted a psychic or medium for spiritual guidance in the past month (5%).

The Role of Faith

In comparing the lifestyle choices of born again Christians to the national norms, there were more areas of similarity than distinction. (Note that in Barna surveys, the born again segment is not based upon whether a person uses that label, but based upon their profession of faith in Christ and confession of personal sin.) Born again Christians are more likely to volunteer for their church; however, they are no more likely than average to help the poor and homeless. Born again Christians were also among the least likely groups to recycle.

In evaluating 15 moral behaviors, born again Christians are statistically indistinguishable from non-born again adults on most of the behaviors studied. They are less likely to view sexually explicit movies and magazines, to use profanity in public, and to buy a lottery ticket. However, even in these cases, the gap between born agains and the norm is not wide – roughly one-third of the non-born again audience say they had engaged in the three activities compared to one-quarter of born again Christians.
The fourth area of difference is the lower rate of music piracy among born again Christians (2% versus 9% among non-born agains).

Other Factors

Adults under 40 – and especially those ages 18 to 22 – were more likely than average to engage in many of the morally questionable activities (the only clear exception was gambling, an activity in which younger adults are equal to that of older adults). The use of profanity is an example of shifting generational values: three out of ten Boomers had cursed in public during the past month compared to nearly half of the Buster generation and two-thirds of Mosaics. Busters and Mosaics exhibit lower than average levels of volunteerism, to churches and other non-profits – and are less likely to admit helping the poor. Defying their reputation as environmentally conscious, Mosaics are also the least likely generation to recycle.

Single adults who have never been married are also particularly likely to push moral boundaries, particularly sexually. Nearly half had consumed sexually explicit content in magazines or movies; one-fifth had done so online. And two out of five never-married adults say they had an intimate sexual encounter in the last month. Singles also were among the most likely groups to abuse drugs and alcohol, to use profanity, to take something that doesn’t belong to them, to illegally download music, and to get payback on someone.

Men were much more likely than women to view sexually explicit movies and magazines (35% to 19%) as well as use uncensored sexual-content websites (14% to 2%). The self-indulgence of men also surpassed that of women when it came to profanity, gambling, playing the lottery, lying, and illegal drug use. However, sexual encounters outside of marriage were admitted to in equal proportion by both genders.

Downscale adults were less likely than upscale individuals to recycle or engage in faith-related conversations. Confirming the notion that legalized gambling takes advantage of those with little means, half of downscale adults had purchased a lottery ticket and one-fifth had gambled in the past month – far more common than was true of upscale adults. Interestingly, upscale adults indulged gossip more often and were no more likely than downscale adults to help poor and homeless individuals.

Residents of the West and Northeast were much more active in recycling than were those living in the Midwest and the South. Northeastern residents were also more likely to use profanity, to illegally download music, and to watch sexually explicit movies, but they were less likely than average to have been drunk (those in the West held the distinction of being most likely to be intoxicated). Residents of the South were the least likely to gamble, while Midwesterners were most likely to do so.

Moving Forward

The respect, patience, and kindness of born again Christians should astound people, but the lifestyles and relationships of born again believers are not much different than others. As people become more interested in the latest diversion and more tuned into personal satisfaction, their capacity and energy for connecting with others – or understanding themselves – will diminish.”

Research Details

The data in this report are from a national survey conducted by The Barna Group with a random sample of adults, age 18 and older, conducted in October 2006. In total, 1003 adults were interviewed. The data related to volunteering in the past week is drawn from a separate random sample of 1003 adults, conducted in January 2006. The same sampling error rates apply. The maximum margin of sampling error associated with each sample is ±3.2 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. Statistical weighting was used to calibrate the sample to known population percentages in relation to demographic variables.

“Born again Christians” are defined as people who said they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their life today and who also indicated they believe that when they die they will go to Heaven because they had confessed their sins and had accepted Jesus Christ as their savior. Respondents are not asked to describe themselves as “born again.”

“Boomers” are individuals born from 1946 through 1964 (currently ages 42-60). “Busters” are those born between the years of 1965 and 1983 (ages 23 through 41). “Mosaics” are those born from 1984 through 2002 (the leading edge of this generation are adults, ages 18 to 22).

“Upscale” adults are those who have a college degree and whose household earnings are at least $70,000. “Downscale” adults are those with no college experience and earn $20,000 or less.

The Barna Group, Ltd. (which includes its research division, The Barna Research Group) conducts primary research, produces media resources pertaining to spiritual development, and facilitates the healthy spiritual growth of leaders, children, families and Christian ministries. Located in Ventura, California, Barna has been conducting and analyzing primary research to understand cultural trends related to values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors since 1984. If you would like to receive free e-mail notification of the release of each new, bi-monthly update on the latest research findings from The Barna Group, you may subscribe to this free service at the Barna website (www.barna.org).

© The Barna Group, Ltd, 2007.

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Cancer Patients' Spiritual Needs Unmet, Study Says

Nearly three-quarters of patients with advanced cancer felt their spiritual needs were not met by the medical system, including chaplains, a survey by Harvard researchers shows. Nearly half of the patients thought their religious communities gave them little or no support.

People who had spiritual support tended to have better quality of life, according to the Coping With Cancer study, based at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. And people who described themselves as religious were twice as likely to want more aggressive treatment to extend their lives, it said. The survey of 230 patients is reported in Saturday's Journal of Clinical Oncology.

"These findings provide further evidence that oncology practitioners really should include a spiritual history as part of a patient's history of social support and culture," Dr. Tracy A. Balboni said in an interview today. She is a senior resident in the Harvard Radiation Oncology Program and the paper's lead author. "It allows the practitioner to know whether something's important to the patient and also makes the statement, 'We understand this might be an important part of dealing with your illness.' "

Most of the people in the study (88 percent) said religion was at least somewhat important to them. More African Americans (89 percent) and Hispanics (79 percent) than whites (59 percent) said it was very important.

As people got sicker, they were less able to attend religious services. Just over half (52 percent) reported getting visits from chaplains or other clergy members.
Most patients (72 percent) said the medical system offered little spiritual support, and 47 percent said the same about their religious community.

Physicians may be leery of overstepping their bounds by asking their patients about religion, the authors wrote. In an accompanying editorial, Betty Ferrell, a research scientist in the City of Hope Cancer Center's department of nursing research and education, urges doctors to take a different approach.

"This report is a strong statement of a seriously unmet need in the vast majority of patients in our care," she wrote. "The oncologist who dares to ask about spirituality imparts a vital message to patients that they are being cared for by someone who has not forgotten that a broken patient remains a whole person, and that healing transcends survival."

Posted by Elizabeth Cooney at 06:00 PM

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Friday, February 09, 2007

Faith's War against Worldliness

by Wayne Dunn (February 3, 2007)

"The Muslim loves death and martyrdom, just as you love life. There is a great difference between he who loves the Hereafter and he who loves this world. The Muslim loves death and seeks Martyrdom."

So declared an Islamic clergyman in Jerusalem just months before September 11. No one now doubts the sincerity of those who subscribe to such an ideology.

But perhaps equaling as disturbing as the terrorism he encouraged is the familiarity of the concepts he touted. Minus praising martyrdom, his sentiment is not unlike what Christian leaders typically express: rebuke the earth, yearn for life's end, sacrifice self, be anti-material, and follow faith.

In fact, when stripped of details, Christianity and Islam are identical in essentials. But if that's true, why then do Islamic extremists traffic in barbarism while their philosophic cousins seem relatively docile?

History provides the answer.

There was a time when Christians took faith as seriously as Mid-Eastern Muslims currently do: the Medieval Era.

Man's mind is impotent, said early Christian fathers, and his proper course is to renounce "this world" for an alternate, supernatural world accessible only by death.

People complied. For over a thousand years they adhered to a faith so stringent as to make today's most devout bishop look like the Antichrist.

Then in the 13th century, Church scholar Thomas Aquinas - strongly influenced by an ancient Greek philosopher, the father of logic, Aristotle - departed from the accepted idea that Christian dogma is a province exclusively of faith. He attempted to demonstrate that the unaided intellect could logically validate religious teachings. That created, however, an unintended consequence: if Christian tenets are subject to purportedly logical arguments, men questioned, mustn't those arguments consistently withstand the scrutiny of reason, which all humans possess? Then: if man's reasoning mind is qualified to untangle "spiritual" matters, why not explore earthly ones as well?

The Age of Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, individual rights, the Industrial Revolution, America, capitalism and undreamed of prosperity came in due course. Crusades, inquisitions and witch burnings were replaced by science, medicine and shuttle launches.

Medieval Christians lived in hovels, mortified the flesh, rebuked wealth, obeyed authority and died in their twenties. Modern-day Western "Christians" reside in brick houses, eat in restaurants, buy stocks, govern themselves and live to be 80. The religion to which they pay lip service is a thin, watered-down version their distant predecessors would denounce as wicked.

The Islamic Faith, by contrast, never had an Aquinas and thus never experienced a renaissance; it was never neutered. Today's Middle-Eastern Muslims are as superstitious, pro-death, anti-material and faith-filled as European Christians were a millennium ago. Whether in 21st-century Iraq or 11th-century England, focusing on the "next world" means abandoning this one, with ignorance, poverty, famine, disease¾ and constant fighting¾ the predictable and inevitable results.

When a man puts faith above reason, he cannot complain when people then behave unreasonably. It's important to realize that the Muslim terrorists, and those who openly or secretly cheer them, hate the U.S. not because of its association with Christianity, but for its embrace of secularism. Reason, freedom, self-interest, individualism, happiness, science - mastery of material production and production of material wealth - are the West's core values, values disparaged by both Bible and Koran.

We are at war with consistent advocates of faith and self-sacrifice. We cannot defeat them by "getting back to God," as many advise. Instead, we must selfishly, unequivocally and proudly stand for the same worldly values that ended the dark and doleful night of Christian rule and ushered in the prosperous way of life Westerners enjoy today.

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Spirituality is today's big story

By THE REV. MATT IDOM
Special to the Eagle

In 1990, I attended a once-a-decade convention of professional communicators in Nashville, Tenn.

The keynote speaker was Bill Moyers, the broadcast journalist who is famous for his probing investigations and work over the last three decades.

Haunting words

I remember one provocative sentence he spoke that continues to haunt me. Standing at 1990, looking at the approach of the 21st Century, he said, "The most important and powerful news story of the 21st century will be spirituality."

When I heard him say that, my thinking was too parochial. I privately doubted that spirituality would be the big news story. I thought maybe science or, as always, political challenges. But not spirituality.

Seventeen years later, I see just how prophetic and accurate Moyers was.

Look at the Middle East, where struggles involve the ancient issues of sects and religion: Branches of the Muslim faith are warring, Palestine and Israel are fighting, and the entire world is being sucked into the vortex of these conflicts. The violence opens the historic wounds that have never healed in that region.

Yes, there are new players in the form of Western democracy and capitalistic ambitions, but it is fundamentally a spiritual war, a religious war. The clash of ideologies and creeds cannot be dismissed. The value of human life, human rights, and dignity stand at the foreground as governments cling to the moral underpinnings of their religious roots and traditions.

In America, the frenzied debate for and against the war in Iraq throws out the language of money, lives lost, national security, and the nobility of a cause for peace. On the one hand, we are fighting to preserve democracy. On the other hand, there is the accusation that it is all about oil revenues.

But primarily, at our core, it is a question of spirituality that drives us to one side or other of the debate. Each opinion, each ambition, is measured by the individual's sense of morality, with our response ushering from that deep reservoir of our conscience.

From President Bush to Joe Blow on the street, from a soldier in a Humvee to the strident war protester holding a sign, our positions and opinions come from within us, from our souls. It is a war of spirituality.

And at home ...

Our own domestic challenges of health care, immigration, national security, commerce and education have at their foundation the question of the quality of life in our nation, in our world. When we open the door to that question, the question of the quality of life, we take the express lane to spirituality as the underpinning of each action by Congress, each ruling by our courts, each decision by our president.

As we debate the rights of homosexuals, the painful drama of abortion, and the value of a human life versus the rights of victims come time for capital punishment, we are gouging into the sacred core of spirituality, hoping to dig out the right answer.

But because of our diversity and religious differences, we most often reach a compromise that's unsatisfying to many.

When we stick the key in the ignition each morning and spew our way to work, when we turn up the thermostat or cover our lawns with pesticide, we are making spiritual decisions about the world that, in my opinion, God has given us. Our incessant expectation of food products from across the globe, flown to our local market, overshadows our conscience. That thick rib-eye celebrated with a fine Australian wine seldom pricks our faith, and we fail to make the connection with the lesson from Sunday School that very morning on being good stewards of God's creation or of the lingering challenge of the Christ, "When were you hungry that we fed you?"

Reminder

Fundamentally, we are spiritual people, regardless of the fact that many never give it that name or practice faith in anything resembling religious discipline. Fundamentally, we are all created with a soul, and whether we give it the name of faith or not, it is the care of our individual souls that consumes each of us. From the homeless seeking a meal to the millionaire asking privately if there is more to life, it is the news story of not only this century, but of the history of all time.

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Presidential faith and foreign policy

There is a tendency to want to separate politics and religion, the two topics that everyone says we should avoid at family get-togethers if there are any meaningful disagreements.

Friday, January 19, 2007By Elizabeth Edwards Spalding, Ph.D.

RYAN MESSMORE: An important issue for us in the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society is helping to improve religious discourse in the political arena. One component of this discourse centers upon the role of personal faith in public office-the degree to which religion shapes the political beliefs, rhetoric, and policy decisions of the president, members of Congress, and other elected officials.

President Bush has openly acknowledged that his religious worldview influences his presidency, especially regarding foreign policy. In particular, he has framed his understanding of the war on terrorism as a battle between good and evil, and speaks passionately about America's purpose in the larger world and the divine gift and calling of freedom. A question arises as to whether Bush's religiously informed approach to foreign policy is consistent with the larger American political tradition, or does he represent an historical aberration?

Dr. Elizabeth Spalding brings helpful clarity and insight to this question. In a recent article for the Wilson Quarterly, she compares and contrasts Methodist George W. Bush with Presbyterian Woodrow Wilson during World War I and Baptist Harry Truman during the start of the Cold War, drawing important parallels with the foreign policy challenges facing America today.

Dr. Spalding is Assistant Professor of Government and Director of the Washington Program at Claremont McKenna College, where she teaches U.S. foreign policy and American government. The author of The First Cold Warrior: Harry Truman, Containment, and the Remaking of Liberal Internationalism, she has contributed to several volumes on the presidency and U.S. foreign policy and written for the Wilson Quarterly, Comparative Political Studies, Presidential Studies Quarterly, The Claremont Review of Books, and The Weekly Standard. Her Ph.D. in government and foreign affairs is from the University of Virginia.

Ryan Messmore is William E. Simon Fellow in Religion and a Free Society in the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation.

ELIZABETH EDWARDS SPALDING: There is a tendency to want to separate politics and religion, the two topics that everyone says we should avoid at family get-togethers if there are any meaningful disagreements. In America, we have separation of church and state-and, of course, an ongoing debate about what that separation entails. But as Harry Truman is reputed to have said, there are no atheists in foxholes or the Oval Office. When circumstances are pressing, and decisions have to be made about life and death, every president has turned to God. They have done so in different ways, and some have been quieter than others about it, but all have prayed and trusted in God's guidance and providence. Nowhere is this clearer than in American foreign policy, where often the most urgent and threatening circumstances are found.

A lot has been said over the years about George W. Bush and how his Christian-specifically Methodist-faith influences his politics. Here I will use key historical examples to show that Bush is not alone in having his faith influence his foreign policy. While his religion is not determinative of every presidential action he takes, it is essential to understanding what he says and does.

Truman and the Great Commandment

By way of comparison with Bush, consider Harry Truman-a man of a different time, political party, and religious denomination. This is not the only presidential comparison we could make, but it is perhaps the most striking.

Truman's touchstone was Jesus' life, example, and teachings. Truman frequently referred to the Beatitudes and the whole of the Sermon on the Mount. He traced the biblical connections between the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount, with special attention to Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Micah, and Joel. All of this led to Truman's conclusion that we should live by and carry out the Great Commandment as imparted by Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. "If you will read this tenth chapter of Luke," he said, "you will find out exactly what a good neighbor means. It means to treat your neighbor as you yourself would like to be treated. Makes no difference whether he is of another race or another creed or another color. He is still your neighbor." Truman thought the restatement of the Great Commandment to love God and your neighbor as yourself and Jesus' story of the Good Samaritan applied to both domestic and foreign policy. Does this sound familiar?

A committed Baptist, Harry Truman was also ecumenical. While fighting in World War I and commanding the predominantly Catholic Battery D, he wrote to his future wife that "all churches, even the Roman Catholic can do a man a lot of good. I had a Presbyterian bringing up, a Baptist education, and Episcopal leanings, so I reckon I ought to get to heaven somehow, don't you think so?"

President Truman linked his politics and his faith, and nowhere is this clearer than in the Cold War. In order to fight the East-West conflict, he oversaw a revolution in American foreign policy- characterized by policies and institutions such as the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, NATO, and the Berlin airlift-that redefined liberal internationalism and involved the United States in the world as never before. At the same time, Truman also tried to unite the world's religions in a spiritual crusade against Communism; he received strong support from Catholics and overwhelming resistance from fellow Protestants, and his effort to formalize a faith-driven international campaign failed. In 1950, NSC 68-a National Security Council report that is arguably the most complete statement of America's understanding of and goals in the Cold War-and the Korean War confirmed for Truman that, in the end, the East-West struggle would be won or lost on moral grounds. Again, he endeavored to take the moral high ground in the Cold War, this time in what he called the Campaign of Truth: a two-pronged political strategy involving the mass media and the world's major religions that also coupled the governmental and private sectors. Once more, he met fierce resistance from Protestants, and so, with regret, he scaled back his ultimate goal, while continuing to work with the Catholic Church and expanding institutions of public diplomacy such as the Voice of America and the new freedom radios (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty).

Truman turned to the prophets to illustrate his understanding of peace. He cited where Isaiah explained that God would judge among the nations and rebuke many people, and they would beat their swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. But then he quoted the prophet Joel, who seems to make the opposite point. Truman noted that in Joel, the prophet proclaimed, "Beat your ploughshares into swords and your pruning hooks into spears. Let the weak say: I am strong." Truman maintained that the passages were not contradictory: "Which one do you want? It depends on what the condition is." Joel, Truman explained, was trying to teach the people that they had to protect their regime if they "expected ever to have a free government." Different circumstances demanded different actions, and the prudent leader must determine whether the time demands plowshares or swords.

Truman also turned to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. In one of his earliest foreign policy speeches as president, Truman argued that the Golden Rule should direct international affairs. As he wrote in 1952, "Confusius [sic], Buddah [sic], Moses, our own Jesus Christ, Mohomet [sic], all preached 'Do as you'd be done by.' Treat others as you'd be treated." In post-presidential comments, he emphasized the fifth chapter of St. Matthew and the Beatitudes and quoted: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God." Here, he believed, was the universal wish of all people of goodwill: "That is exactly what we all want to be. We want to be peacemakers. Not just individually, but internationally."

But the Cold War both modified and moderated Truman's optimism about the possibilities of global peace. On the one hand, he rejected the idealism of those who ignored reality-he may have preferred plowshares, but he understood the need for swords. Truman also rejected, on the other hand, that narrow realism which failed to recognize the moral challenge of Communism. Freedom, justice, and order emerged in his writings and speeches as the principles that created the circumstances under which a real and durable peace might be possible. And of those principles, freedom had to take root first-and had to be defended first.

Freedom: Basic and Essential

There is a lot of talk now about how George W. Bush throws around the word freedom. Critics have accused him of embarking on a crusade for an ill-defined concept. For Bush, as we have seen for Truman, freedom is political, but it cannot be separated from faith. Freedom is central, because along with equality it is an inalienable right. But for Bush, as for Truman, freedom is also central because it is the necessary precondition for any ethical action and for any real peace.

So freedom is more than a slogan; it is basic and essential, and it is important to both individuals and nation-states. When Bush and Truman based their epic struggles on freedom, they did so deliberately. This may be clearer with Truman, because of the nature of Communist totalitarianism and its location in a dominant regime. But for Bush, too, we can understand his invocation of freedom if we understand that he takes the extremists of his time-the jihadis-as seriously as Truman took the Communists, the extremists of his time.

In this view, the jihadist terrorists act from their religious beliefs. These beliefs have twisted Islam, as Bush is always quick to point out. But he does not dispute that the extremists hold their beliefs- much as Truman did not dispute that Communists strongly held their beliefs. Also like Truman with respect to the Cold War, Bush is able to see that he can adhere to his beliefs, and the extremists to theirs, without making a moral equivalence between his deeply held beliefs and the jihadis' deeply held beliefs.

This view runs counter to many in the United States and elsewhere in the West. There are, of course, many in America who take religion seriously. But the secular view-which is prevalent among academics and the mass media-is either to discount or diminish the religious element in the war on terrorism.

Does Bush discount or diminish political, economic, cultural, strategic, and other factors? Absolutely not. But in the radical Islamic world, this means seeing that religion shapes or influences all the other factors. Can a jihadist terrorist be pragmatic? Sure. But he will be pragmatic within his religious context. Bush has identified and described this religious base for the terrorists' motivations, statements, and actions ever since 9/11.

In this way, circumstances and tactics on the part of the terrorists may change in the ongoing war on terrorism, but the primary motivation on the part of the terrorists will not. Osama Bin Laden and those he has inspired believe in their jihad.

In ways that may not be immediately obvious, religion was also at the heart of the Cold War. The Soviets totally denied and negated God. The materialist atheism at the center of Communism stood in adamant opposition to the Christian worldview of the West. Truman's take on the East-West conflict grew from his joint religious and political understanding that the free world was engaged in a total battle on all levels-spiritual, political, military, economic, and geographic-with a totalitarian enemy. Bush sees jihadism as a total perversion of Islam. Like Truman with respect to the Cold War, he frames the war on terrorism as an epic struggle between good and evil, in which our enemies are, literally, evildoers.

If Bush and Truman had been presidents at other times in American history, would this understanding of the nature of good and evil have been as important? Maybe, maybe not. The point is that they were presidents at their particular times- through, dare we say, the hand of Providence? The demands of the presidency called something out of each man. Out of Truman, and I would argue provisionally out of Bush, those demands called much out of them.

If the fact that Bush expresses and lives by his Christian faith bothers the hell out of his critics- and it does-they say that he is twice as guilty because of the sins of hubris, arrogance, and hypocrisy. By his critics, including many in his own party, Truman was considered a bulldog upstart who dared try to replace Franklin Roosevelt. Truman was aware of this criticism, and it was part of the reason he asked for people's prayers when he became president after FDR's death. But he also asked for their prayers because he believed. We have archival access to Truman's daily prayer, which he said from high school on, and what's striking about it is his entreaties for humility, understanding, and wisdom. While we don't know what Bush's daily prayer might be, he has given us plenty of clues as to what is at the core of his Christian heart: Love your neighbor as yourself. This approach is in tune with Truman. Does this disposition make Bush and Truman soft and mushy? No, both have understood that we might have to beat plowshares into swords, even though our preference would be to beat swords into plowshares. A president has to apply his principles in the circumstances he finds himself and he contributes to. In the case of both men, this means acting according to political principles that are influenced by their Christian faith.

Wilson the Chosen Instrument

Against our comparison of Bush and Truman, we must take a moment to look at the president who cast his shadow over the entire 20th century and whose influence remains ever-strong in this new 21st century. Woodrow Wilson is sui generis in terms of having a foreign policy approach named after him: Wilsonianism. We can use the words "Trumanesque" or "Reaganesque"-and some do-but Trumanism and Reaganism don't carry the punch of Wilsonianism. Many are familiar with the political content of Wilsonianism, but we need to consider the religious influences. Through his writings and presidency, Wilson constructed a detailed theology of politics, in which the individual, the church, society, and the nations of the world were all properly placed in a progressive global order. The Christian doctrine for that theology inhered in the Presbyterian covenantal religious tradition, which Wilson first learned from his father, a prominent Presbyterian minister. As a result, Wilson's Christianity is far different from Truman's or Bush's biblical evangelicalism, in which God is loving and can certainly be providential, but in which men must still exercise their free will with the hope-not the guarantee-that they do His will. Wilson's sense of religious predestination shaped his politics.

Wilson's worldview stressed the primacy of peace as the fulfillment of progressive history. During World War I, he once expressed "the confidence I feel that the world is even now upon the eve of a great consummation," which would result not only in some sort of international security organization but also in coercion being put only "to the service of a common order, a common justice, and a common peace." Wilson based these comments on the proposition that "[t]he interests of all nations are our own also." As he famously said in 1917, "There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace." Wilson knew that he was advocating a different way of engaging in world politics, but submitted its principles were both American and "forward looking," "modern," and "enlightened." By American standards, he was indeed correct to repudiate realism in international affairs; but his proposed replacement misread both the principled American alternative to power politics as well as the emerging political and economic trends during and after World War I.

In addition to key religious and philosophical differences between Wilson, on the one hand, and Truman and Bush, on the other, there are important dissimilarities in terms of personality. A politician has to be confident. He has to have a thick skin. Truman and Bush possess these qualities. Wilson, by contrast, went beyond confidence. His pride and ambition flowed from his conviction that he, and he alone, was the chosen instrument to do God's will in the world.

Different Presidents, Common Christianity

A former presidential speechwriter once said, "If you want to know what [he] really thinks, look at what he says. He believes in a personal God who answers prayers. He believes that truth is found in all religions and that all people who pray pray to the same God. He believes that prayer and faith can allow one to improve one's own life and save one, not just in the theological sense but in this world. And he's told us that he does not ask God to tell him what to do, but asks God for wisdom and judgment and calm." This speechwriter could have been talking about Harry Truman or George W. Bush, but not Woodrow Wilson. It is almost incidental that the speechwriter was speaking of Bush.

None of this is to say that either Truman or Bush is perfect. And each would be the first to admit that he was a work in progress and in need of God's grace. But both are Christian-and a similar type of Christian. In addition to what has already been discussed, we should point to the basic sense of equality in both men. Unlike Wilson's belief that divine destiny made him superior to others, Truman and Bush have never lost sight of their equality to their fellow men-whether the neighbor is next door, down the road, or across an ocean. Their common kind of Christianity unites them, despite their differences in religious denomination, political party, and historical era.

Several times I've referred to how much of Western society, especially intellectuals and the mass media, has either diminished or discounted the role of religion in our epic struggles of foreign policy. The good news is that some are seeing the light. The editors of the granddaddy of all U.S. journals on world politics-Foreign Affairs-must have been chagrined when the relative newcomer journal, the American Interest, outdid them in competing fall issues. Foreign Affairs published one very important article on religion and U.S. foreign policy. The American Interest, though, ran an entire section on the topic, including articles on religion's influence on U.S. foreign policy and on our jihadist foes. This is the kind of pack intellectual journalism I would like to see more of-with the mass media, mainstream policy experts, and many more academics soon taking Bush and the jihadis as seriously as they take each other.

Elizabeth Edwards Spalding, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Government and Director of the Washington Program at Claremont McKenna College.

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When opium can be benign

Feb 1st 2007 | BEIJING , DONGLU AND HONGLIUTAN
>From The Economist print edition

China's Communist Party, reconsidering Marx's words, is starting to wonder whether there might not be a use for religion after all

James Miles

“DEVELOP the dragon spirit; establish a dragon culture,” urge large green characters at the high school in Hongliutan, a poor village at the foot of a range of bleak loess hills. Though dragon can be a synonym for China , it is a god known as the Black Dragon that is being invoked here. Without funds from the Black Dragon's hillside temple, in a gully behind the village, the school would not exist. Nor, most likely, would the adjacent primary school and the irrigation system that brings water from the nearby Wuding River to the village's maize and cabbage fields.

Many local governments in rural China are mired in debt. Recent central government efforts to keep peasants happy by abolishing centuries-old taxes have not made life any easier for these bureaucracies. With their revenues cut, rural authorities have found it ever more difficult to scrape together money for health care and education. So they are only too happy to allow others to share the burden of providing these services—even the Black Dragon, whose 500-year-old temple was demolished by Maoist radicals during the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. Now officials in Yulin, the prefecture to which Hongliutan belongs, give the temple their blessing.

The revival of the Black Dragon Temple 's fortunes is part of a resurgence of religious or quasi-religious activity across China that—notwithstanding occasional crackdowns—is transforming the social and political landscape of many parts of the countryside. Religion is also attracting many people in the cities, where the party's atheist ideology has traditionally held stronger sway.

The resurgence encompasses ancient folk religions and ancestor worship, along with the organised religions of Buddhism, Taoism, Islam (among ethnic minorities) and, most strikingly, given its foreign origins and relatively short history in China , Christianity. In the face of this onslaught, the party is beginning to rethink its approach to religion. It now acknowledges that it may even have its uses.

In Hongliutan the party appears in retreat. It is not the party secretary Zhang Tieniu who holds sway. Mr Zhang was the youngest party chief in the prefecture when he was appointed last year at the age of 32. But in a culture that reveres age, some villagers refer to him dismissively as a “lad”. The man in charge in Hongliutan is 64-year-old Wang Kehua. Mr Wang happens to belong to the village's main clan. He is also the village's elected chief (a post which in most villages is subordinate to that of party secretary). More to the point, he controls the temple and its money.

It was Mr Wang's idea to rebuild the temple in 1986, a decade after Mao's death. Mr Wang, who had become one of the village's wealthiest men by wheeling and dealing elsewhere, donated some of his own money and organised villagers to add theirs. It was a promising venture. Historically, the Black Dragon Temple had a reputation extending far beyond the village. The dragon was renowned in the parched semi-desert of the north of Shaanxi Province , 600 kilometres (370 miles) west of Beijing , as a bringer of rain. If the temple was rebuilt, people would come, pray to the dragon—and spend money.

The temple has no clergy. Visitors are mainly drawn by their belief in the dragon's power to tell the future. Many want to know whether business ventures or marriages will succeed. Mr Wang asked the Black Dragon whether the divinity approved his appointment as temple chief. It did. The dragon's responses are given in the form of obscurely worded classical poems written on pieces of paper issued by a 70-year-old villager, Chen Yushan, clad in his blue padded Mao suit. Mr Chen offers his interpretation of what these poems mean. An entrepreneur who is told his business will be successful, and who then enjoys financial success, is quite likely to make a big donation to the temple.

Turning a blind eye

Officially, the party regards folk religion as superstition, the public practice of which is illegal. But in many rural areas officials now bend the rules. In Yulin prefecture, with 3.4m people, there are 106 officially registered places of worship and many more that are not officially sanctioned. Most are not part of the five mainstream religions ( China regards the two Christian traditions, Catholicism and Protestantism, as separate) that the party recognises. But Yulin has allowed the Black Dragon Temple to affiliate itself with the government-sponsored Taoist Association. This gives it a cloak of legitimacy. So too does an arboretum that Mr Wang has planted with temple funds (at the dragon's request, he says, but it also helps him show officials how the village is contributing to government efforts to stop the desert encroaching).

Local officials themselves benefit from the greater tolerance. For all the party's dictatorial ways, government officers are often fearful of triggering unrest by enforcing unpopular policies that are not all that vital to the party's interests (hence the increasingly patchy implementation of population control). Demonstrations in an official's jurisdiction can do far more damage to his career than turning a blind eye to popular religion—so long as such activity does not directly challenge the party.

There are also more tangible rewards. In his book “Miraculous Response”, Adam Yuet Chau of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London says that temples applying for official registration typically have to treat local officials to banquets. Officials, he adds, support temples that pay them respect and tribute. They also gain financially from taxes levied on merchants who do business at temple fairs. Policemen invited to maintain order at these occasions are paid with cash, good food and liquor.

Evidence of China's religious revival can be seen throughout the countryside in the form of lavish new temples, halls for ancestor worship, churches and mosques (except in the far western province of Xinjiang, where the government worries that Islam is intertwined with ethnic separatism and keeps tighter rein). Officially there are more than 100m religious believers in China (see table), or about 10% of the population. But experts say the real number is very much higher.

This does not mean that China has embraced religious freedom. Some religions—Tibetan Buddhism, Islam as practised in Xinjiang, Catholicism and “house church” Protestantism, which involves informal gatherings of believers outside registered churches—are still subject to tight controls because of the party's fears that their followers might have an anti-government bent. A seven-year-old crackdown on Falun Gong, a quasi-Buddhist sect that flourished in the 1990s, is still being pursued with ruthless intensity. Many Falun Gong practitioners, as well as lesser numbers of followers of other faiths who refuse to accept state attempts to regulate their religions, are imprisoned in labour camps.

Within the party, however, debate is growing about whether it should take a different approach to religion. This does not mean being more liberal towards what it regards as anti-government activities. But it could mean toning down the party's atheist rhetoric and showing stronger support for faiths that have deep historical roots among the ethnic Han majority. The party is acutely aware that its own ideology holds little attraction for most ordinary people. Given that many are drawn to other beliefs, it might do better to try to win over public opinion by actively supporting these beliefs rather than grudgingly tolerating them or cracking down.

Pan Yue, then a senior official dealing with economic reforms and now deputy director of the State Environmental Protection Administration, argued in an article published in 2001 that the party's traditional view of religion was wrong. Marx, he said, did not mean to imply that religion was a bad thing when he referred to it as the opium of the people. Religion, he said, could just as easily exist in socialist societies as it does in capitalist ones. He also singled out Buddhism and Taoism for having helped to bolster social stability through successive Chinese dynasties. Stability being of paramount concern to the party today, Mr Pan's message was clear.

In praise of harmony

His article angered party conservatives at the time: the party's official stance is that religion will die out under socialism. But more recently the party itself has begun to put a more positive spin on the role of religion. Last April China organised a meeting of Buddhist leaders from around the world in the coastal province of Zhejiang (it did not, however, invite the Dalai Lama, Tibet 's exiled spiritual leader). The event was given considerable prominence in the official media. The theme, “A harmonious world begins in the mind”, echoed the party's recent propaganda drive concerning the need for a “harmonious society”. It implied just what Mr Pan had suggested— that the opium Marx was talking about should be seen as a benign spiritual salve. In October the party's Central Committee issued a document on how to build a harmonious society, arguing that religion could play a “positive role”.

The party's change of tone coincides with its recent efforts to revive traditional culture as a way of giving China , in its state of rapid economic and social flux, a bit more cohesion. The term “harmonious society”, which in recent months has become a party mantra, sounds in Chinese (hexie shehui) like an allusion to classical notions of social order in which people do not challenge their role in life and treat each other kindly. It is, in effect, a rejection of the Marxist notion of class struggle.

Officials are now encouraging a revival of the study of Confucianism, a philosophy condemned by Mao as “feudal” and which can be quasi-religious. Since 2004 China has sponsored dozens of “Confucius Institutes” around the world, including America and Europe , to promote the study of Chinese language and culture.

In the countryside the revival of traditional values has needed little encouragement. Clan shrines, where ancestors are worshipped, have sprung up in many rural areas, particularly in prosperous coastal and southern regions. The revival of clan identity (in many villages a substantial minority, if not a majority, of inhabitants have the same surname, which they trace back to a common ancestor) has had a profound impact on village politics. Those elected as village leader often owe much of their authority to a senior position in the clan hierarchy. Control of the ancestral shrine confers enormous power. It is often clan chiefs, rather than party officials, who mediate disputes. The shrine will lend money for business ventures—so long as the recipient has the right name.

Where Christianity is a feminist issue

Ironically, the growth of clan power has helped to fuel the growth of Christianity in some parts of the countryside. In a village in the eastern province of Shandong , the wife of a former party secretary was a Protestant who attended prayer meetings with her female friends. Their religious enthusiasm was apparently fuelled by the subordinate role of women in the clan. A married woman is expected to revere only her husband's ancestors but is excluded from his clan hierarchy. The fast growing house-church communities often disapprove of ancestor worship, thus attracting women who feel fettered by clan strictures.

The parlous state of China 's health-care system has also given a powerful boost to religion. Falun Gong owed much of its success in the 1990s to claims that it could heal without the need for medicine (cash-strapped state-run hospitals usually sell medicines to patients at inflated prices in order to boost their revenues). In the village of Donglu in Hebei Province, about 140km south of Beijing, Catholic nuns have set up a three-storey clinic where they offer ophthalmic, dental and pediatric services for what they say is a fifth of the price of government-run clinics or private ones run for profit. A picture of Jesus is pasted to the wall in the operating theatre.

Chinese officials are even urging religious organisations to learn from Hong Kong , where religious groups run many schools and hospitals. In late November, Ye Xiaowen, the head of the State Administration of Religious Affairs which oversees the five officially recognised religions, said that religious groups had helped reinforce social stability in the former British colony with their contribution to public services. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who visited China in October, wrote afterwards in the Times that there was now a sense in China that civil society needed religion, with its motivated volunteers. During his trip he remarked on an “astonishing and quite unpredictable explosion” in Christian numbers in China in recent years.

The party still mouths its alarmist rhetoric about what it says are foreign efforts to use religion as a means of undermining the party's grip on power. Yet the appointment of Pope Benedict XVI, following the death in 2005 of John Paul II who was seen by China as a more die-hard anti-communist, has encouraged tentative efforts by China to restore the ties with the Vatican that were severed in 1951.

Last month the Vatican decided to appoint a commission to handle Chinese relations. But progress has been far from smooth. On November 30th, much to the Vatican 's annoyance, China 's state-backed Catholic church appointed a bishop without the Vatican 's prior approval for the third time that year. Since 2000 China had done so only with the Vatican 's tacit assent. In August, however, China released a bishop loyal to the underground church, An Shuxin, who had been arrested a decade earlier after leading celebrations of the feast of Mary in Donglu.

Worshipping behind a shield of incense

An even more tentative rapprochement is under way with the Dalai Lama. Since 2002, China has held five rounds of talks with his representatives, most recently last February. But China retains profound fears that the Dalai Lama's real intention is to separate Tibet , and adjoining areas, from China (see article). Notwithstanding the government's suspicions, Tibetan Buddhism has acquired a certain chic in Chinese cities in recent years, with some urbanites regarding it as spiritually more pure than Chinese-style Buddhism, which has strong links to the government.

Within its own ranks, the party knows that some members practise religion even though this is against the party's rules. Falun Gong claimed many adherents among party members in the 1990s. In the countryside, party secretaries routinely take part in religious ceremonies. Mr Wang at the Black Dragon is not a party member, but in other villages in the region temple chiefs double up as village party bosses. If the party is still trying to keep its members atheist, it is fighting a losing battle.

One result of allowing religion to play a bigger role in providing education could be that the party finds its efforts to inculcate its ideology among the nation's youth becoming ever more frustrated. In Hongliutan, the temple-sponsored middle school attracts many boarders from the town—a reversal of the normal flow of village pupils to the towns. Thanks to the temple's sponsorship, the middle school's fees are half of what they would be at a government school, teachers say. With this sort of discount, the popularity and influence of the Black Dragon, and other such spiritual beasts, seems certain to spread.

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Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Professor says evolution, creationism not scientific debate

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Professor says evolution, creationism not scientific debate

Jenny Colton
Senior Staff Writer

The battle of evolution and creation in America is a debate of culture, not science, said one of the leading authorities on the history and philosophy of Darwinism evolutionary theory.

Michael Ruse, a philosophy professor at Florida State University examined the history of the American evolution-creation debate Tuesday in his lecture titled “The Evolution-Creation Controversy: A Very American Story.”

Ruse said a division exists in American society between two groups of theorists: evolutionists, also called the “Brights,” and Intelligent Design Theorists.

Both of these groups think that to accept one belief, they must reject the other, Ruse said.

For example, evolutionists think that to believe in evolution, they must reject religion, and vise versa.

“What makes this discussion very interesting is that we’ve got thinking people on both sides,” Ruse said.

The question then is why people have this debate between the two sides, Ruse said.

To explain the origins of the debate, Ruse gave a history of the evolution-creation debate, starting with the early years of Christianity.

Ruse continued with a history of the life of Charles Darwin and the development of his theory of evolution, which led to his publishing of “The Origin of Species” in 1859.

Several other events led to the religious battle that began in America about Darwin’s theories, he said.

Ruse said one of these events was a movement started by Thomas Henry Huxley, a professor from London. Huxley started summer schools in the 19th century for teachers and instructed them in new disciplines of science, including evolution. Huxley promoted evolution as the new religion of the time, pushing it against Christianity, Ruse said.

“This sort of thing is the kind of way evolution got hijacked, if you like, in the 19th century,” Ruse said. “I don’t think it was hijacked for bad reasons. I don’t think Huxley was an evil person; I’m not saying that. I’m saying, though, that he got an agenda and evolution was being used in this agenda, not as a regular science, but as a kind of metaphysic kind of ideology.”

Other occurrences in America caused the creation-evolution battle to grow, including the Second Great Awakening, which caused people to read and interpret the Bible literally, and the split of the North and South after the Civil War, which caused the people of the South to use the issue of evolution as part of their reasoning to hate the people of the North.

Ruse said evolution wasn’t and isn’t now, a scientific theory, and people are not worrying about the scientific issues of it like fossil records.

“What they’re seeing is evolution is half of a particular ideology that one half wants to endorse and the other half loathes,” he said.

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Couples reveal reasons for happy marriage

They view their faith as an important factor in building lasting relationships
Cathy Peterson

THE-BEE
Wednesday, February 07th

About 1,800 years ago in Rome, a man named Valentine was sent to prison because he was a Christian. While in prison, he sent letters to his friends encouraging them not do lose faith and these letters bearing his signature became the first Valentines.

Even though it may not be mentioned much today as people prepare to celebrate the day named in honor of Valentine, the importance of their faith was mentioned during every one of the interviews I did with couples who have been happily married for many years.

Albert and Neadria Dering

This is the third consecutive year that Albert and Neadria Dering are assisting other members of the First Baptist Church, Prentice, with a special Valentine banquet open to all area couples. Both of them were enthused about this year’s event on Feb. 10 and anticipate the turnout will exceed that of previous years.

Albert, who was born and raised in Prentice, met Neadria, who grew up in Tripoli on a blind date. At that time, she was working in Milwaukee but came home to visit her sister who had arranged the blind date for the couple.

When they met, both of them had the feeling that ‘this was the one,” the Derings agreed. They were married five months later, and lived in Milwaukee for three years before moving back to Prentice where they raised their four children.

The couple, who have 10 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren, were avid sportsmen, enjoyed traveling and have visited every state in the nation and several countries overseas. Twelve years ago, they moved to a new house within the village of Prentice but still on County Road C.

“”I suppose our next move might be to the cemetery, but we have had a wonderful life and have been so blessed,” Albert said.

The Derings, who have been married for nearly 64 years, noted that whenever they disagreed about something, they would drop that subject and talk about another topic.

“No person is right 100 percent of the time,” they said. “We made it a point to agree on disciplining our children and never to get angry or go off in a huff.”

Ed and Hazel Schleife

Ed Schleife, a native of Phillips, and his wife, Hazel, who grew up in Fort Atkinson, have been married for nearly 61 years. They met while both were working at an Allis Chambers factory in southeastern Wisconsin.

The couple said putting the other one first was one of the reasons their marriage has endured. So is their willingness to make the effort to resolve any difficulties.

“When there is a problem, you need to face it head on and not ignore it,” Hazel said. “If you have faith and get through the bad times, you can get through anything.”

Lloyd and Gladys Ruka

Lloyd and Gladys Ruka, who have been been married for 65 years, met at a dance. He was teaching school in the Phillips area and she was helping her parents on their farm near Ogema, the community in which the dance was held.

“It was love at first sight and I wrote in my diary that I had met the man for me,” Gladys said.

He felt the same way, Lloyd noted, so he asked her to go out on a date the following week. For three years, the couple continued going together.

While the Rukas were raising their family, Gladys worked at a number of jobs but the couple always made sure that one of them was at home with their four children. They now have seven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

Last Aug. 18, on their 65th anniversary, the couple moved from Prentice to Duroy Terrrace in Phillips. They credit much of the success of their marriage and being able to accept the changes in their lives to their Christian faith and their trust in the Lord.

Richard and Virginia Kramer

Born and raised in the Kennan area, Richard Kramer met Virginia Meives when both attended a dance at the Wigwam in her hometown of Phillips. At the time he was farming and working as a milk hauler and she was teaching in an elementary school in Fredonia.

“It was pretty much love at first sight so I drove home on weekends so we could be together,” she said.

Father John Regh, then the pastor of the Catholic churches in Kennan and Catawba, helped Richard order an engagement ring which he planned to present to Virginia at Christmas. However, the ring did not arrive in time, so the couple became engaged a week later on New Year’s Day.

The Kramers lived on the farm for while before putting it up for sale and during that time Virginia taught school in Hawkins. When they sold the farm, the couple moved to the Portage area where Richard worked for various employers and Virginia taught elementary school students for 34 years.

The Kramers said keeping busy and ‘not getting in each others hair” has contributed to the success of their marriage. They noted that due to their work schedules, they sometimes had to communicate though “notes left on the kitchen table.”

Some of the reasons they get along so well, the couple said, are the good examples of their own parents, their belief in the importance of family and their faith. They noted that their religion and the advice of parish priests have helped then through some of the rough spots that occur in most every marriage.

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A nun's crusade on corporate America

Sister Patricia Daly is a nun with a fund, a thorn in the side of corner cutters, child exploiters and polluters

By Richard Wray

THE GUARDIAN, LONDON
Wednesday, Feb 07, 2007, Page 9

All campaigners claim to have right on their side, but one New Jersey-based adversary of corporate America can go one better: God's in her corner. Sister Patricia Daly, a Dominican nun, has made it her near-30-year mission to persuade, cajole and sometimes threaten US businesses into doing the right thing.

But this is no one-nun campaign. She is merely the most visible face of a network of faith-based organizations that have pooled US$110 billion of funds and flexed their financial muscles by investing in companies and then tabling resolutions to push their case at annual shareholder meetings.

Sister Patricia, a feisty Brooklyn-born New Yorker with a penchant for comfy cardigans, is the executive director of the Tri-State Coalition for Responsible Investment, which brings together Catholic institutions from across the New York metropolitan area.

The coalition is in turn part of the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), which includes Jewish and Protestant bodies among 275 faith-based institutional investors. The investors have a combined portfolio that dwarfs those of many a European fund manager.

Recently ICCR scored a victory that has been a long time coming, as many of the US' largest carmakers -- including Ford and GM -- finally agreed to exert pressure on their suppliers to improve working conditions. The move was the result of years of lobbying by sister Patricia and her colleagues.

Religious investing is a growing industry in the US, packed as it is with evangelical churches. Money managers such as the Timothy Fund and Pro Vita Advisers engage in what has become known as morally responsible investing, basing investment decisions on right-wing fundamentalist tenets.

Sister Patricia and her network, in contrast, are engaged in socially responsible investing, which owes its origins more to socially aware college campuses of the 1960s and 1970s than to the sort of "charismatic" hellfire and damnation preaching spawned by the 1980s tele-evangelist movement.

"I see myself as being faithful to the gospel and the gospel needs to be preached in the context of the economic and political environment of today, not just in families, local neighborhoods and communities," she said.

At Catholic school in the politically charged 1960s and early 1970s there was much debate about how religion related to the outside world.

`Context of religion'

"Our religion class was the primary place where we dealt with issues like the Vietnam war, poverty in the world and violence in the city -- it was really in the context of religion that we had most of those discussions," she said.

After study at Connecticut's Sacred Heart University she joined the sisters of Saint Dominic of Caldwell, New Jersey, in 1976.

The following year she heard a talk given by a visiting priest who was involved in the one-year-old Tri-state coalition.

Her congregation joined up and with no previous training or interest in business she started filing shareholder resolutions about South Africa and labor issues while teaching at local high schools.

After time in the 1980s working with the Christian Brothers Investment Services, a Catholic-based socially responsible investor representing everything from dioceses to hospitals, she joined the Tri-state coalition.

Better rights

Whereas others in the religious investment community may lobby against rights for homosexuals, Sister Patricia has been demanding better rights for all workers. She has challenged top executives to explain how they will meet the threat posed by global warming. ICCR members sponsor more than 100 shareholder resolutions on social and environmental issues each year.

The list of corporations on the receiving end of 50-year-old Sister Patricia's crusading zeal reads like a Who's Who of the Fortune 500 and includes General Motors, Ford, ExxonMobil and General Electric (GE).

She does not demand executives change their ways lest they be doomed to eternal damnation, nor says a particular course of action is what Jesus would do.

Instead the network's campaigns have been based on the realization that doing the right thing tends to pay better financial returns than doing the wrong thing.

Her network has, however, strayed into areas that secular investors may consider "moral" campaigning, for instance against the militarization of society through violent video games. Sister Patricia is adamant that faith-based groups are not arguing for a ban on games, but only that the ratings system be properly policed by US retailers.

"It is not censorship," she said. "These video games are rated but too many kids can go into stores and buy them."

Boycotting companies

But what about boycotting companies that, say, make contraceptives? Sister Patricia believes there are enough issues to tackle without entering into these sorts of areas.

"Obviously we have had a long history of trying to figure out what we are going to campaign on. We agree to work on what we can work on as an interfaith community. Those are all legitimate concerns for people -- they are just not going to be part of our agenda," she said.

"Today we are dealing with the continuing untruths, the new heresies of our day," she said, such as companies that still do not believe in global warming or mistreat their workers. "We were founded to preach the truth and we will."

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Monday, February 05, 2007

These Christians Radically Rethink What a Church Is

In the emerging movement, small is beautiful and creativity in worship is key

By Connie Kang, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

The 1-year-old church in Orange County has no name, no building and no set time to meet.

For its members, church can be spending an afternoon at a Costa Mesa park, where they share lunch and conversation with the down and out.

Sometimes, church for them entails an excursion to Los Angeles, where the mostly white group worships at an African American church. And, sometimes, they visit a Buddhist gathering in Fountain Valley and talk and write about the experience afterward.

They're part of a new phenomenon — "emerging churches" — growing out of evangelical Christianity.

The movement was started over the last six years or so by Christian leaders disillusioned with churches that they complained were run like big corporations, stressing celebrity preachers, glitzy services and huge budgets. The movement aims to bring churches closer to people, with small communities of prayer and learning — mostly fewer than 50 people.

Although varying widely in membership and practices, emerging churches shun hierarchy, emphasize outreach to the poor and worship creatively.

On a recent Sunday, the group spread out chicken, salad and fruit on picnic tables at Lions Park in Costa Mesa and invited everyone there to join them. More than 30 did. They also gave out small cardboard cameras, with self-addressed envelopes, and invited people to take "pictures in celebration of life," then mail them to Burke's 700-square-foot Huntington Beach "shack," his garage that serves as the church's office.

At its next meeting in the park, church will be an "art gallery" with easels and exhibited photos, said Burke, author of 2003's "Making Sense of Church: Eavesdropping on Emerging Conversations About God, Community and Culture."

Six years after leaving his well-paid job at a mega-church, disillusioned at "contemporary Christianity as an institution," Burke said he now finds church "an adventure every week."

Like many leaders of emerging churches, he receives no pay. The son of the late state Assemblyman Robert Burke (R-Huntington Beach), he said he and his wife manage on her salary in public relations and money from his writing and speaking. The couple have two young children.

The Rev. Eddie Gibbs, professor of church growth at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, says Burke is an "influential thinker" in the emerging-church movement.

Burke's influence stems in part from his website, TheOoze, which discusses issues facing the church today, said Gibbs, who, with another Fuller theologian, Ryan Bolger, is writing a book on emerging churches.

In an emerging church, everyone, including pastors, is on a first-name basis. Dress is casual. And words such as "community," "authenticity" and "experiential" crop up often.

Robert Dugan, a former deacon at a large Baptist church who joined the group last year with his wife, says he prefers the no-name church because of its size, collaborative approach and creativity. "There is no 'in group' here," he said. "Everyone is a leader in their own right."

Between get-togethers, members keep in touch by phone and e-mail. Though most heard of the church by word of mouth, Dugan learned of it on the Web.

The group is one of more than 100 emerging churches in the country, experts say.

Emerging-church leaders such as Burke believe the institutional church is no longer relevant to the younger generation.

Kimball's group has grown to 400. Members are organized into small groups called "home communities" to maintain a sense of family, he said.

Vintage Faith rents space from its sister church, the Santa Cruz Bible Church. Prayer books and meditation are important parts of worship, held at 6 p.m. Sundays. Music is contemporary, and sometimes artists paint during the service to express their spiritual experience.

Bolger, who teaches at Fuller about the church in contemporary culture, sees the movement positively. "They are new missionaries to their own culture," he said. "These are communities that are looking to express the way of Jesus in our culture in noninstitutional forms…. They are willing to deeply interact with other faiths in a way that's not dogmatic."

A recent study found that weekly church attendance remained steady over the last decade, at about 40% of Americans. But another survey showed that Bible reading outside church within the previous week climbed to 44% of adults from 37% in 1994. Among Protestants the rise was greater, from 47% in 1994 to 59% this year. And the increase was most striking on the West Coast, where Bible reading outside church among residents rose from 29% in 1994 to 44%. Both studies were by Barna Research Group of Ventura.

President George Barna said the findings reflect people "piecing together the different activities that are important to them in ways that fit their unique needs, as opposed to fitting into the schedules of religious institutions."

He predicts that "within the next 20 to 25 years, there is going to be a significant decrease in the number and influence of the congregational churches and a substantial rise of and influence of the new model churches."

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Hundreds gather for Southern Calif. street baptism by fire hose

Posted on Mon, Feb. 05, 2007

Associated Press

LOS ANGELES - Hundreds of worshippers lifted their heads and raised their hands as water blasted down from fire hoses during a symbolic street baptism in South Los Angeles.

The mass baptism on Sunday was organized by the United House of Prayer for All People, one of the nation's largest black denominations, as part of its 80th annual Holy Convocation.

The 3-million-member organization has held outdoor baptisms with fire hoses in Eastern cities such as New York and Philadelphia, but this was the first street baptism for California, according to church officials.

All members of the local organization were encouraged to take part, even those who had already been baptized. Community members also were invited, as were members from congregations around the country.

Worshippers, mostly dressed in white, came from places including San Francisco, Georgia, North Carolina and Washington, D.C.

The fire hoses, held by church elders, were turned on at about noon. Brass bands played as men, women and children danced, exulted and sobbed in the middle of Vernon Ave outside the church, where less than half a block away last week a young man was shot to death.

"Father, we ask you to drive away the violence," called Apostle C.M. Gibbs, who came from Baltimore. "This city needs healing."

The hoses were turned off after about 10 minutes, and the street was reopened to traffic.

The United House of Prayer was founded in 1919 in Wareham, Mass., by Bishop Charles M. "Sweet Daddy" Grace and incorporated in 1927. The organization is known for its brass bands, ecstatic worship and exultation of its bishops.

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‘The Missing Piece’

Lee Ezell’s Story of Tragedy to Triumph

ORANGE COUNTY, CA — In his latest feature, Dan Wooding interviews Lee Ezell who, after suffering a brutal rape, discovered she was pregnant. She chose to give up her child for adoption and, twenty years later, she received an unexpected phone call that brought Lee and her daughter Julie together again for a remarkable friendship that was bonded together by their faith in Jesus Christ. Lee Ezell is a remarkable woman who has turned her pain into victory. But it has been quite a struggle for her, even from her early days. “The inner-city area of Philadelphia in which I was raised had many challenges,” she said in an interview. “Both my mother and father were alcoholics, and I was born as one of their five daughters. I imagine I was a great disappointment to my dad as he looked forward to Lee, his son, and let me know I was an unwanted child. My father lived mostly in the basement of our home (which was plastered with pornographic pictures), and he would emerge in great fits of anger. We were battered and abused, and domestic violence calls were the norm.”

Lee explained that there was no religious influence in her early days. “We practiced no religion in my family, really, and the whole religion thing was confusing to me anyway,” she said. “But one night, I noticed an ad for a Billy Graham Crusade at the convention center in downtown Philly ; I thought this would surely be good for a few laughs. And because we did not have a fourth for pinochle (honestly), three of us went to the meeting to check it out. Sitting way up in the peanut gallery, I thought the best thing was hearing that grand old Gospel singer Ethel Waters as she belted out a new song (to me) entitled ’His Eye is On the Sparrow’. My heart began to soften.

“But conditions at my abusive home had not changed. I was beginning to learn that God is not a fairy godfather in the sky who waves his magic wand and makes everything right for his children. No rose garden is promised. So as I graduated from high school at age 17, I took a bus to the West Coast ’cause all those beautiful California people I’d seen on TV looked so wonderful (from a distance !)”.

Lee found an apartment in San Francisco with her mother and two little sisters, and started in on her first job nearby as a typist.

That Fateful Night

“I was faithfully filling out my ’follow-up’ Bible studies from the Graham organization, and was finally becoming familiar with God through His Word,” she said. “I couldn’t figure out which kind of a church was in line with what I was learning, so I just stuck with my Graham studies ; I felt like a whole new life was opening up for me — until that fateful night I was raped. “I had met this salesman at work in the morning, and he would rape me that night. A large and overpowering man, at least 20 years my senior, I was in shock. Only others who have been victims of sexual assault can relate to the shock and trauma I experienced. But as I escaped that night I promised myself I’d go to my grave with this secret. I couldn’t let anyone know that I was a loser. Typically, this victim felt guilty.

“I returned to work the next morning, never to see the man again. I began my process of pretending that everything was OK, although I was dying inside. I felt so sick emotionally and physically that I finally wound up at the doctor for a flu shot. When he told me I was pregnant, I resisted and argued. I had been a virgin teenager, and at 18 could not imagine being an unwanted child now pregnant with an unwanted child. This was inconceivable. How could God let this happen to me ?

“When I mustered the courage to tell my mother I was pregnant, she could not handle it, and told me to leave and just come back when it was all ’over.’

“So with $50 in my pocket, I began driving my green VW down the West Coast toward Los Angeles, not being sure where I’d wind up. “During those tearful travel days I felt so confused. Each night I’d drop by a broken down motel, and would desperately flip through the pages of the Gideon Bible that would always be in some drawer (thank God !) Happening upon King David’s shocking words in Psalm 139 (vs. 13-16) made an impact on me. If the Bible was true (and I was hanging my life on it), then apparently I was not an unwanted child, as my father told me. I was just an unplanned pregnancy.

So Lee decided to move to Los Angeles. “I knew some shirttail relatives in Los Angeles, and was hoping for some support system from them, which never materialized,” she went on. “So I began searching for a church in the yellow pages and found one in the beach area south of Los Angeles. When I saw the church advertising ’a commitment to Christ and the Word of God’ I knew that lined up with Dr. Graham’s thinking, and started attending there. I swallowed my pride (though it looked like I’d swallowed a watermelon) and became active in the singles group. One Sun. AM a sweet couple from the south who were greeters in the lobby took me aside. They said, ’We’ve been watchin’ you, Lee, darlin’, and we’re fixin’ to ask on y’all to come move in with us. I’ll bet you could use a square meal and a decent place to stay.’ Mom and Dad Croft had never been the type to just say ’be warmed and be filled’ when they observed a need, but they were a practical, compassionate Christian couple. What a joy to spend the last of my pregnancy in their warm company and counsel.

“Like any birthmother, the bonding was taking place, and I wanted the best for my child. I hope any adopted child will one day come to realize that their birthmother did not reject them — or she would have taken ’the easy way out’ (as the pro choice folks call abortion). No, out of love she gave life. (Adoptees ? remember you are not illegitimate — you were loved !) I decided the best thing I could do for my child would be to have it adopted out at birth, and signed up with Los Angeles County Adoptions to relinquish my child. This baby girl would be born in an L. A. County Hospital on February 11, 1964, although I never got to see or hold her. I was simply told I’d given birth to a healthy baby girl ; sign here. How could I have ever imagined she would be the only child I would ever give birth to ? I would always think of her as the ’missing piece’ of my life.”

Eventually Lee met Hal Ezell, who was to become her husband. “Because I was distrustful of men in general, I waited until I was 29 to marry,” she explained. “I met Hal Ezell at a Bible Conference, and it was love at first sight. Ironically Hal had two daughters, and yes, I would wind up in a L.A. County Adoptions court adopting them-Pam (14) and Sandi (10). Strangely enough I would be Hal’s third wife, though he had never been divorced. Both his former wives died with cancer.”

Lee soon found life become electrifying when Hal was appointed the Western Regional Director for the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). “We had some exciting years together as a family, especially after my husband was appointed by the Reagan Administration as Regional Commissioner for Immigration (INS),” she said. “We had years filled with controversy and challenge, as Hal actively took his stand against illegal immigration. His profile was high in the media, and our home and office were occasionally picketed-even including a bomb threat by extremist pro-illegal immigrant groups. My husband Hal considered it his military service, and even hazardous duty !”

The Fateful Phone Call

In the midst of all this public exposure, Lee received an unexpected phone call from the dear elderly couple who took her in when she was pregnant, the Crofts. “They told me they’d received a phone call and a letter ’from your baby, honey-and she’s lookin’ for y’all.’ As I dialed the phone number they gave me, what a shock it was to hear the voice of ’the missing piece’ of the puzzle of my own life. This gal, Julie Makimaa, living in Michigan, methodically told me she had two motivations for trying to seek me out and find me. One was to let me know I was a grandmother ! And her second motivation was even sweeter than the first to me : she tried to lead me to Christ over the phone. I was riveted to my seat. (But I must admit I just let her go on to see if she knew what she was doing !) What a thrill it was to tell her that she had already led me to walk with Christ many years ago, as I discovered that although life is not fair, God is just.

“I was determined that Julie would not find out about her conception through rape. But it was so important to my husband that Julie understood this that he privately chatted on the phone with Julie’s husband Bob, telling him the circumstances surrounding her conception. Bob’s reaction was simply : ’Wow...to think that is what happened more than 20 years ago just to give me Julie !’

“The first time we got a glimpse at each other, I know we were both so nervous. Would she like me ? What would she look like ? And typically, adoptees are risking being rejected again. But as she walked through the door, a mirrored image of myself, we were in awe. The first words she said, as she passed me a baby, was ’now go to your grandma’. Her husband Bob Makimaa waited his turn and then stretched out his long arm to say ’I want to shake your hand, Lee : thank you for not aborting Julie. I can’t imagine what my life would be like without Julie and children.’ At that first reunion, Julie would urge me to write our story, to encourage any others who have unanswered questions in life. The title of this book is ’The Missing Piece’ (Servant Press), which is now in 14 different languages. There is also a video - distributed by Vision Video — of the same title and both the book and video are available at Christian bookstores.

Today, Lee is in close contact with Julie and her two teenage grandchildren. “Julie and Bob, and children Casey and Herb, still live in Michigan. Julie has become a frequent speaker at pro life and pro family events around the country. (But our very favorite thing is to share our story in tandem !) Our experiences in the lion’s den-on many of the national TV talk shows — (Geraldo, Sally, etc.) — have made us seasoned veterans in answering the hard questions. Julie will readily admit, ’Yes, I am the result of rape, but I am so glad I did not get the death penalty for the crime of my father ! After all, it doesn’t matter how you begin in life, but what you become.’“

Hal Ezell passed away suddenly in 1998 from cancer and a moving memorial service was held for him at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California, which received wide media coverage. “A few days before he died, he secretly made me a videotape. (What a treasure for me !) On it he left me a legacy, blessed my ministry, prayed for me, and encouraged me to keep on telling the story of my reunion with Julie to exhibit God’s faithfulness in the worst of situations.

“He said ’tell the folks God can take the worst thing that has happened to you in your life, and turn it into the best thing that’s ever happened to you in your life.’ I am so grateful to have learned this lesson, as shortly after Hal’s death I would be fighting my own battle with cancer (as a widow now), and am finally on the other side of this struggle.’“ (Lee’s latest book entitled, “Finding God When Life’s Not Fair ?” (Revell) deals with such unanswered questions).

Lee is still busy speaking all over the world and continues to write books. “Writing is tough for me ; it’s a discipline I am learning, but the encouragement I receive to continue writing and speaking comes from the testimonies of lives changed by the honest ramblings of a fellow struggler who is seeking to interpret God in the midst of difficulties,” she said.

These published titles include : The Missing Piece, The Cinderella Syndrome, Will the Real Me Please Stand Up, Pills for Parents in Pain (Longwood Comm.), Porcupine People, and Iron Jane.

I concluded by asking Lee what her message was to girls today who are pregnant and who are contemplating abortion ?

“For anyone who may be facing a crisis pregnancy today, I would encourage you to seek full disclosure on your situation,” she said. “This information is not disseminated in the ’pro choice’ clinics ; you are offered no choice. Thank God for the network of Crisis Pregnancy Centers around the country who are working in the trenches to make the truth of the sanctity of life known. These dedicated warriors not only save the lives of many unborn babies, but also provide extensively for the care and nurturing of the birthmother, whether she keeps or relinquishes the baby for adoption.

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Next Time We March--Dance!

Next Time We March--Dance!
by Peter Michaelson

This week archeologists working near Stonehenge in England reported finding the ruins of Neolithic homes and evidence that the former residents enjoyed festivals of raucous dance and wild partying. The party didn't last, however. Over the centuries the authorities clamped down on public rituals of collective joy and stole from the people the ancient source of human solidarity.

That's Barbara Ehrenreich's sobering new perspective on political history, delivered in her new book, Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy (Metropolitan Books, 320 pages). Ehrenreich, a heroine of the left, describes in enlightening detail the history of the governing elite's suppression of people-power as expressed in ecstatic dance, common rituals, festivals, music and rhythms, carnivals, and organized and spontaneous gatherings.

The suppression of festivities and ecstatic rituals was the conscious work of authorities "who saw in them a real and urgent threat," she writes. "When one class, or ethnic group or gender, rules over a population of subordinates, it comes to fear the empowering rituals of the subordinates as a threat to civil order." Europeans in America certainly knew that feeling when, huddled in fear, they listened to the war drums of dancing Native Americans.

Religion has paraded through the breach of this emotional emptiness, making zealots and fundamentalists of lost souls. Religion can bind us to the wheel of fate. In the author's words, the "cold and Calvinist business" of religion tells us, for the good of our soul, "Curb your drinking, learn to rise before the sun, work until dark, and be grateful for whatever you're paid." Meanwhile, carnival has reappeared somewhat lamely as sports experiences, this weekend's Super Bowl being the communal highlight of the year, our commercialized bonding through the tedium of television.

The suppression of communal spirit may have spawned another dire effect. At some point in the 1600s, "in town after town throughout the northern Christian world, the music stops," Ehrenreich writes. "Carnival costumes are put away or sold, dramas that once engaged a town's entire population are canceled; festive rituals are forgotten or preserved only in tame and truncated form." The ecstatic possibility . . . "is now harried from the streets and public squares." The author wonders whether the still-ongoing worldwide epidemic of depression and anxiety, which most noticeably appeared in Europe at this same period of the 1600s, is due to the suppression of the traditional festivities of human history and the lost opportunity they offered for collective joy. She traces the occurrence of this wave of melancholy through medical reports of the time, as well as through the writings and histories of John Bunyan, Oliver Cromwell, Thomas Gray, John Donne, Samuel Johnson, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Charles Baudelaire, and James Boswell.

Ehrenreich references Sigmund Freud on occasion but neglects to mention that the superego (Freud's term for self-aggression) is an inner killjoy that contributes to anxiety and depression. Psychoanalysis has concerned itself with the question of how the superego enlists the precepts of the Protestant ethic to torment modern humans for failing to measure up to the expectations of religion and capitalism. The loss of collective joy appears to have made us more vulnerable in our lonely inner stand against the superego.

The author observes that both religion and capitalism have been blamed for the crackdown on the people's pleasure. She attributes the true source, however, to the existence of a social hierarchy and its hostility to festivals and ecstatic rituals that goes back "at least to the city-states of ancient Greece." As she says, the people's communal exuberance was known to be empowering and was therefore considered a challenge to the rule of the elite.

Yes, the elite fears civil disorder. But is there not the possibility of a deeper fear that the author might have considered, a profound fear of truth itself? This possibility can be perceived through modern-day elitist behaviors. Members of our American political and economic elite are keepers of secrets, cover-uppers of incompetence, "pluggers" of leaks, obstructionists of truth, and hoarders of classified documents. Their specialty is lying, spinning, manipulating, denying, and propagandizing. Applying simple logic, we can deduce that their compulsive distortions of reality would indeed appear to spring from a fear of truth.

They fear truth on all levels, but on the deepest level they fear exposure of what might be the greatest truth-that humanity is an interdependent collective on a destiny-or-bust, everybody-or-nobody, cosmic ride across the millennia to the heaven or hell of our own making. Such fundamental commonality strips the rich and powerful--those diverters from destiny--of all pretence. For them, to be one with us is to be nothing--meaningless non-entities perishing in the void. No terrorist can frighten them like the prospect of that feeling.

The dance, meanwhile, tells us that nobody is better than us. Through the dance we feel this truth. Our greatest pleasure is the happiness we share together, even with strangers. We celebrate our oneness when we dance in the streets.

Peter Michaelson is a psychotherapist and author in Pasadena, CA. He is author of Democracy's Little Self-Help Book, and can be reached at www.PeterMichaelson.com

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Saturday, February 03, 2007

A test of faith

Atlantan Joe Kissack felt he must tell the tale of Mexican fisherman lost at sea

By PHIL KLOER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Published on: 01/21/07

Nothing was going according to plan for Joe Kissack. But then again, he didn't really have a plan.

He'd come here chasing a story about some Mexican fishermen who allegedly had survived for nine months drifting more than 5,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean in a tiny boat. He was planning to buy their rights and try to sell the story to a publisher and a movie studio. Though he'd been a successful TV ad executive, he was out of his element assembling this kind of deal.

Kissack had heard this story of the fishermen from a friend in Atlanta:

Five fishermen had left the little Mexican village of San Blas on the Pacific coast in October 2005 in a 27-foot fishing boat. They'd gone too far out, run out of gas and begun to drift westward. As they drifted, they caught and ate sea turtles, fish and birds, read a Bible and prayed. Two of the men died, but the three survivors were rescued near the coast of Australia on Aug. 9, 2006.

Kissack instantly saw the saga of the fishermen as a parable of faith. Three years ago, Kissack felt God enter his life as he battled his way through an intense period of depression. So, fueled by newfound spirituality, he felt called to do something.
"It must have really looked like God had abandoned them," he says. "Thirst, fear, hunger and death surrounded them. [But] this is about guys who put their trust in God, and God came through for them. Without that faith, they don't survive."

That's how Kissack had framed the story in his mind, without knowing many details.

Waiting in his hotel room in Mexico City before a flight to San Blas on Aug. 23, he heard a report on Mexican TV. The fishermen were being accused of cannibalism, of eating the two who had died.

Wow, I am so stupid! he thought. Such an idiot! What do I do now?

He was supposed to fly to San Blas that afternoon. But as he left his hotel and climbed into a cab for the airport, he thought maybe he should bail on the whole crazy idea and fly back home.

"And I open the door to the cab," he recalls, "and I hear this song playing on the radio: 'You gotta have faith, faith, faith.' "

When he got to the airport, he took the flight to San Blas. He had come to believe that God had spoken to him through the old George Michael pop song "Faith," telling him to continue.

Jesus, Savior and Light

When Kissack arrived in San Blas, the fishermen were still an entire ocean away, in the Marshall Islands, near where they had been rescued.

Doubts surfaced, and rumors sprang up: They had killed and eaten their two boat mates; they'd been involved in cocaine smuggling. Charges they all deny, vehemently.

The survivors are Jesus Vidana, 27; Salvador Ordonez, 37; and Lucio Rendon, 27. Translated into English, their first names mean Jesus, Savior and Light.

Another sign, Kissack thought..

When the fishermen flew back to Mexico City, they were greeted with a chaotic press conference. Then they split up and went to their separate villages. Kissack schmoozed some family members, but finally decided to return to Atlanta without having met any of the men he came to meet.

Overcoming depression

Kissack sees himself not so much in terms of what he's done for a living, more in terms of what he's lived through: He battled depression for years, what he calls his "brokenness," and his faith, which healed that brokenness.

In February 2004, he was scheduled to start an intensive 30-day session at Ridgeview Institute, a mental health facility in Smyrna. Right before he went in, he met a good friend, Joshua McClymont, at the Loop, a Sandy Springs pizza place. They talked for two hours about Kissack's depression and Christianity and God.

"There was a lot of crying and pouring out of hearts on both our parts," says McClymont, a drama teacher at Holy Innocents' Episcopal School. "I told him, 'If you want to see real change in your life, the real change and peace and joy is gonna be a relationship with Jesus.' "

That night Kissack woke up suddenly, drenched in perspiration. "The most incredible sense of peace and calm and joy and serenity filled me. I woke up Carmen, and I said, 'I think God just entered my life. I know that everything is gonna be OK.' "

That feeling, which he sometimes calls his "spiritual awakening," sometimes his "conversion," has stayed with him almost three years, and his depression has stayed away.

"He was a different person afterward," says McClymont. Kissack tried several churches, and settled on Buckhead Church. He took up yoga, and went to work as an unsalaried partner at August House after they agreed to publish some biblical stories. A friend at August House told him about the Mexican fishermen, and he became convinced he had to tell their story.

Still, when he told Carmen he had to fly to Mexico, his past was there in the living room as they discussed it. She'd played the role of anchor before.

Bible evokes the sea

On Sept. 9, Kissack flew back to Mexico. This time he met with each of the Tres Pescadores, as he dubbed them, and saw how different they were.

Ordonez, who is called Chava, is the oldest, and the leader. He's tough and wise, Kissack says, but with a quiet sadness that's hard to pin down. He's short, just over 5 feet, and very quick: He told Kissack he was able to grab a live bird that landed on the boat. He led the others in prayer, and it was his Bible they read from.

Vidana is "like a stand-up comedian — really funny, laughing, gregarious, but he's got a temper, he's passionate."

Rendon's whole family, going back generations, are fishermen. He has "the intense features of a Mayan warrior, but without the aggression or anger," Kissack says.

He told the men he was there to serve them, that he'd tell their story the way they wanted it told, and not sensationalize it. They all signed a final contract Sept. 23.
And if, after all this faith and effort, it turns out that the fishermen are not telling the truth in some way?

Kissack won't go there. "I don't really believe in hypotheticals. Five years ago, if you had asked me, hypothetically, 'What if someone told you there were three Mexican fishermen that needed to have a story about God and faith told, and that you needed to drop everything and go help them and it would change your life and who you are?' I might have said, 'Please get away from me before I punch you in the face.' "

Two weeks ago, he hosted Alejandro Springall, an independent Mexican producer-director, at his home. Springall, who says he hopes to be involved in developing a feature film, is another believer in the story; he says he sees poetry in the survival saga of men vs. nature.

During their visit, Kissack got out his prize possession — Ordonez's Bible. He asked if he could borrow it for a while to show, as a talisman, to the movie and publishing executives to whom he pitches.

It's still wrapped in the yellow towel the fisherman used to protect it, and Kissack handles it like a religious relic.

The cover is gone, as is most of Genesis and all of Revelations. It's been badly waterlogged and dried out, over and over, and is about the most beaten-up Bible you can imagine.

Springall carefully opened it, and leaned into it — putting his nose right down into the frayed binding, touching the pages. "It smells like the middle of the Pacific Ocean," he said.

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Minding the spirit

Center uses brain imaging to examine how spiritual, secular beliefs affect health, behavior

Posted on Sat, Feb. 03, 2007

By Joann Loviglio
ASSOCIATED PRESS

PHILADELPHIA - Religion and science can combine to create some thorny questions: Does God exist outside the human mind, or is God a creation of our brains? Why do we have faith in things that we cannot prove, whether it's an afterlife or UFOs?

The new Center for Spirituality and the Mind at the University of Pennsylvania is using brain-imaging technology to examine such questions, and to investigate how spiritual and secular beliefs affect our health and behavior.

"Very few are looking at spirituality from a neurological side, from the brain-mind side," said Dr. Andrew Newberg, director of the center.

The center is a multidisciplinary team of Penn researchers exploring the relationship between the brain and spirituality from biological, psychological, social and ideological viewpoints. It was founded last April and is bringing together some 20 experts from fields including medicine, pastoral care, religious studies, social work and bioethics.

Spirituality and belief don't have to equate to religious faith, Newberg said. The feelings of enlightenment and well-being some derive from religion can come to others through from artistic expression, non-religious meditation, watching a beautiful sunset or listening to stirring music.

In one study, Newberg and colleagues used imaging technology to look at the brains of Pentecostal Christians speaking in tongues -- known scientifically as glossolalia -- then looked at their brains when they were singing gospel music. They found that those practicing glossolalia showed decreased activity in the brain's language center, compared with the singing group.

Other recent studies looked at the brains of Tibetan Buddhists in meditation and Franciscan nuns in prayer, then compared the results to their baseline brain activity levels.

Both groups showed decreased activity in the parts of the brain that have to do with sense of self and spatial orientation -- which suggests the description of transcendence or oneness with God.

Prayer and meditation also increase levels of dopamine, often referred to as the brain's pleasure hormone.

"The mind and the body are the flip side of the same coin," said Dr. Daniel Monti, head of Thomas Jefferson University Hospital's integrated medicine center. "Now we know some of the mechanisms by which that occurs, and it's becoming better and better understood."

"Now there's the recognition that a truly effective treatment plan is not just giving a pill," he said. "We need to look at how to help a person adjust to a different lifestyle in addition to taking a pill."

Not many imaging studies have yet been done that look at changes in the brain's blood flow because technology has only within the past decade become sophisticated enough to study the brain in this way, Newberg said. An increase in blood flow to certain parts of the brain means increased activity in those areas.

Newberg is currently studying how the brains of novice yoga practitioners change as they become more adept, and whether meditation can reduce cognitive impairment in those with mild dementia or early Alzheimer's disease.

"The sky's the limit as far as the things we can study," he said.

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Thursday, February 01, 2007

Look Who's Talking to God

According to our new survey, just about everyone talks to God--and gets a response. But it rarely happens at church.

By Kimberly Winston

How shocking is it that people who visit a spirituality-and-religion website like Beliefnet say they talk to God? Not very. But perhaps it's more surprising that those same people say they talk to God almost everywhere but in a house of worship.

Even more remarkably, God seems to be talking back. In fact, God is quite the chatterbox, gabbing away with people in almost every place and every way imaginable--in traffic, at work, on the beach, in the woods, in their own thoughts, in the words of others, and in the words of scriptures.

These are among the most eyebrow-raising results of a survey conducted by Beliefnet and Spiritual Cinema Circle. With the upcoming release of the movie "Conversations with God"--produced by Spiritual Cinema Circle and inspired by the bestselling book of the same name--the survey asked Beliefnet users about their own dialogues with the divine, and 9,866 people offered their thoughts.

Their response? Almost everybody--97 percent--talks to God. About three-fourths of those say they do it everyday. But almost none of them--only 1.5 percent--say they do it in a house of worship. And more than 90 percent say that God speaks to them in some form or another.

"These percentages are extraordinary," says Neale Donald Walsch, author of "Conversations with God" and its sequels. "Not only am I surprised, but I am also inspired.... We search for what we intuitively know must be true--that we are part of something larger, that we are not alone, that there has got to be something else."

Like Walsch, who began talking to God in a homeless encampment, most of the survey-takers don't do their talking to God inside a church, synagogue, mosque, or temple. Only 2.5 percent say they think God is "more accessible" in a house of worship, while less than one percent feel that clergy have "better access" to God than anyone else. A large chunk--42.3 percent--feel God is most accessible in their daily lives.

Chatterbox God

Of those who talk to God, the majority say they do it "through my internal thoughts." Three-fourths say they speak through prayer, and almost 60 percent say they "talk out loud" to God. Others speak to God through meditation, dance, music, art, journaling, yoga, gardening, dreams, and a range of divination tools, such as tarot cards and the pendulum.

"All of the above," one person wrote. "God is not limited."

Nor are there limits, apparently, in how God speaks back. Asked how God communicates with them--and allowed to list as many answers as they like--people say they hear from God through the sound of their own thoughts (more than 75 percent), through music and art (almost 40 percent), visitations of angels (27 percent), and through other people (61.5 percent). Twenty percent say God's voice sounds different every time they hear it--kind of a "Joan of Arcadia" experience.

God speaks "through miracles that happen to me everyday," one respondent wrote, "but seem too small to be noticed by anyone else around me. It happens between me and God!" Another said God sounds like "the voice of truth, a recognition beyond the every day chatter."

These conversations take place in almost as many places as there were people who took the survey--in cars, on walks, at work, even in the bedroom, before sleeping and after waking up.

Most religion scholars and spiritual leaders contacted for reaction to the survey were not surprised that people were talking to God, or even that God was talking back. But they were downright cheered by the depth and the range of the conversations the respondents described.

But there was also a note of alarm. The Rev. Guy Sayles, senior pastor at First Baptist Church in Asheville, N.C. says he, too, was heartened that so many people talk to God, but that so few do it in a house of worship is "sobering" and "a call for reflection" to leaders of traditional congregations.

"I am still pondering what it means," Sayles says. "It really is a challenge if people are saying we believe we hear from and speak with God but it is least likely to happen in a place that is dedicated to that experience. I think it requires those of us who lead congregations to ask, Are the experiences people have inside our walls nurturing their ability to hear God, or are they distractions from such an experience?"

What's The Buzz?

What's all the talking about? Sixty-four percent say they talk to God about their personal lives as well as societal issues--and a majority--57.9 percent--say they have argued with God.

But the fact that three-quarters of the respondents say God speaks through their own internal thoughts is cause for both approbation and apprehension. If God sounds like us, how can we discern between reinforcing our own desires and the more objective "voice" of God?

"That people think God sounds like them is quite beautiful," Hirschfield says. "But if you hear God and he is always telling you what you want to hear, you should be honest and say you are not listening to God but, to yourself. Part of listening to God should be to occasionally be surprised or unnerved. There should be moments of sacred surprise and growing that comes from the discomfort of not always hearing what you want to hear."

An American God?

While the news that people gab with God everywhere but a house of worship had some people concerned, others say such freedom reflects a very American ideal of the way religion works.

To Galli, the Christianity Today editor, it is the nature of the American character to define oneself outside the structure of institutions, including organized religion.

But the Rev. Thomas Reese, a Jesuit priest and former editor of America magazine, is alarmed that so many people seemed to commune with God only in solitude. "God," he says, "does not call us as individual atoms."

"Religion should not be a me-and-God reality," he says. "Prayer can be a richer experience when people do it together."

Final Answer?

The survey takers were also asked: If you could ask God one question, what would it be? To many people, it would be some version of the really big spiritual questions: Why is there death and evil, and why do bad things happen, especially to good people and the innocent?

"Why all the bad stuff," one person wrote, "hatred, wars, murder, etc . . . why does He allow it?" "How can you love such a perverse world," another wanted to know, "including me." And one person put it simply, "WHY??????"

And if God were going to say one thing to humanity, what would that be? There were more than 7,000 individual responses. If Beliefnet can take a little literary license and create a composite paragraph based on some of the answers of what God might say, it would be this:

"Listen. Stop complaining and just listen to me. Love one another. Love unconditionally. Don't worry, I will always be with you. Trust me. Be patient. I am not finished with you yet. Be at peace."

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Journey of forgiveness isn’t taken alone

Her father’s revelation of a long-held secret led Carrah Bechtel of Kansas City to turn her family’s story into a film.

By STEVE PAUL
The Kansas City Star

Carrah Bechtel poured milk into a cup of coffee as her father summoned a family gathering in the living room. She remembers the milk swirling in the coffee and turning it all white.

She sat on the sofa facing her father, as he began to reveal a secret he had kept for decades.

“In 1955,” Bob Bechtel said, “I killed a boy in school in an act of gun violence.”

Carrah Bechtel remembers how that statement just hung in the air and seemed to bounce all around her in slow motion, like the milk coloring the coffee.

Her father’s announcement eventually would launch her into a painful journey of discovery. She would struggle with matters of truth and justice, with guilt and forgiveness, with fate, fortune and the hurt that can hide in family secrets.

But in that swirling, upending moment, Carrah Bechtel looked at her father, the loving, brilliant and utterly normal man she and everyone else knew him to be, and had to ask: “Are you a murderer?”

She was in graduate school at the Union Theological Seminary in New York, and one day she invited a documentary filmmaker to lunch.

“I have a story I think you might be interested in,” she told Macky Alston, and he agreed to hear what she had to say.

Amid the lunchtime clatter of a New York bistro, Carrah Bechtel told Alston about what she learned when she was 19: In 1955, her father had gone on a rampage in his dormitory at Swarthmore, a small Pennsylvania college, where he was a junior studying for the ministry. He also was the dormitory proctor.

Bob Bechtel complained he had been victimized by pranks — his bed thrown out the window, firecracker bursts, name-calling. In fact, he said later, he had been subjected to bullying since childhood.

Bechtel had identified four or five perpetrators among the 25 students under his charge in the Swarthmore dorm. He fired seven shots from his .22-caliber rifle, and in the end, one young schoolmate, 19-year-old Francis Holmes Strozier, lay dead where he slept.

Between bites of her grilled vegetable sandwich, Carrah Bechtel told Alston how her father surrendered to police, was ruled mentally incompetent to stand trial and then was committed to a state hospital for the criminally insane.

Nearly five years after he was committed, Bob Bechtel was let out of the state hospital. He had run the print shop and had taken the initiative to teach fellow patients how to read and write. If he had been mentally ill, officials concluded, he was in some kind of remission.

Returned to the county jail, Bechtel spent a day on trial and heard a judge direct a verdict in his case: not guilty by reason of insanity. Bechtel was released into the custody of his grandfather.

Essentially a free man given a new life, he went on to complete his bachelor’s degree at another Pennsylvania school, then headed west for the University of Kansas. In Lawrence, he earned master’s and doctorate degrees. He participated in pioneering work in the field of environmental psychology.

To this day, Bob Bechtel is not sure whether Strozier participated in the dormitory pranks. (“He was an innocent victim,” Bob Bechtel acknowledges.)

But Strozier was still dead, and here she was in the flesh, Carrah Bechtel told Alston. If her father had been executed, as seemed possible in her view, she would never have been born. “You cannot look at me,” she told Alston, “and be for the death penalty.”

Carrah Bechtel believes her father owes his fate to Strozier’s family. Strozier’s mother, she said, wrote a sympathetic letter to Bob Bechtel’s mother and also to the judge in his case. One of those letters was read at trial, and Carrah Bechtel believes that without it, her father just as easily could have been convicted and executed.

This has become the crux of Carrah Bechtel’s story. She told Alston: “You need to make a movie about forgiveness.”

Alston, who had made two personal movies about race and spirituality, was spellbound — and convinced he should make the film.

A week after their lunch, Alston, by coincidence, had planned to be in Tucson on another matter. So he and a camera crew met with Bob and Beverly Bechtel and started filming the family’s story.

Now 32, Carrah is compassionate and intense. When she starts talking about Buddhism or music or baking or the long, sad history of school shootings in American culture, her voice cranks into a turbo-speed staccato.

In October, after a school shooting in Lancaster County, Pa., she seemed to be crawling out of her skin. One night at work, waiting tables at Aixois, a French bistro south of the Plaza, she wondered whether the thing she had to do right that minute was to head to Pennsylvania and console the Amish families of the murdered children and honor the way they responded — with a public expression of forgiveness of the shooter.

Something had long nagged at Carrah Bechtel ever since that day her father told his story to her and her sister. Irrational as it might seem, she felt guilty about his act. She couldn’t get past the hurt he had inflicted and the compassion she felt for Strozier and his family.

“I got it in my head I did not have a right to life,” she says now, “if somebody else had been taken from the earth in such a horrible way.”

At the seminary in New York, Carrah Bechtel saw that her path toward religion was an excuse, a kind of mask for the guilt she felt. She had tried acting and creative writing. She was thinking of becoming a prison chaplain. But it wasn’t really her, she decided. One night she had an emotional breakdown, which her father, 2,500 miles away in Tucson, helped talk her through on the phone.

An administrator at her school, a woman who happened to be Korean, also talked to her about “second-generation trauma.” Some children of Holocaust survivors experience it, and perhaps Carrah had internalized the trauma of her father’s experience — the bullying; his absent father; the experience of being a misfit, intellectual kid; the rampage.

“She looked at me, straight in the eye,” Carrah Bechtel says of the woman, “and said, ‘You need to recognize that you didn’t kill anybody.’?”

Alston decided to use Carrah as the inquisitor in his movie, to shape the documentary about Bob Bechtel around his daughter’s search for truth and understanding.

“I didn’t necessarily want to expose my father’s story,” Carrah says. “But I wanted in some way to express to the world what it’s like to heal from trauma, what it’s like to experience trauma, what it does to you and how it affects you. I also wanted someone to go with me to search for truth, to get to the truth about my father. Who was he? What happened? I had his point of view. I wanted to get to the other side, the full scope, even if it hurt, even if it was hard.

Alston spent more than two years filming “The Killer Within.” He shot scenes of Bob Bechtel at the former Farview State Hospital and interviewed longtime friends and in-laws and cousins who knew nothing of the family secret.

On May 22, 2005, Alston and the production crew traveled with Carrah Bechtel to Akron, Ohio, to film what was expected to be the closing shot, a moment she had thought about for years.

“I’m only going to do one take,” Carrah told the filmmakers.

They were in a cemetery. She walked up a grassy rise, found the Strozier family plot and knelt down before the grave of Francis Holmes Strozier.

“I just wanted to introduce myself,” she said. “My name is Carrah Bechtel. My father killed you.”

She put her hands on the stone.

Carrah says she felt something powerful in that moment — “God’s presence,” perhaps.

Then she laid down on the ground by Strozier’s grave and she sobbed.

Alston’s movie, “The Killer Within,” had three screenings in September at the Toronto Film Festival, where it earned considerable buzz. The Los Angeles Times called it “riveting.” A Canadian critic saw in it “a deep mining of the human condition.”

The production company, Discovery Films, plans to release “The Killer Within” in theaters later this year and show it on the Discovery Channel, though no dates have been announced.