TruthBook Religious News Blog

By Father Francis V. Tiso and Neil Sloan
7/27/2007
Catholic News Service (www.catholicnews.com)

In Islam: Past, Present, and Future, Father Hans Kung completes his trilogy on three world religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. A Swiss theologian and Catholic priest, Father Kung is known for his controversial approach to Christian theology and for his commitment to interreligious dialogue as the basis for world peace. ("No peace among the nations without peace among the religions; no peace among the religions without dialogue between the religions.")

Because of his third principle ("No dialogue between the religions without investigation of the foundations of the religions"), Father Kung takes a vigorously historical approach to Islam based on models or paradigms that summarize the world of beliefs, values, techniques and practices that are shared by believers.

In 662 pages of text, the author is able to cover far more ground than any other single recent publication in English on Islam. Other Catholic authors such as John Esposito, John Renard and Elias Mallon have written relatively slender introductions to Islam for the general reader. Father Kung takes up some of the topics that these authors do not address and he is self-confident enough to raise the difficult issues that often shape the kinds of questions that Americans and Europeans wish to ask about Islam.

He does this with extreme candor, with all rancor removed -- not an easy achievement. Father Kung clearly wishes to prepare the modern (or postmodern?) Christian for fruitful dialogue with Islam. This requires a survey of historical facts, reform movements, theological perspectives and political tendencies.

Father Kung never fails to assert his own interpretations of Christian theology and history in an effort to reorient the reader to these views, some of which he believes will make fruitful dialogue with Islam possible. In fact, it is clear that Islam is a source for some of the author's own convictions about Christianity, some of which Catholic readers will find troublesome.

Father Kung seems to believe that the authentic message of Jesus was best preserved by what he calls Jewish Christianity. He then proceeds to claim that, in some way, Islam arose in Arabia among the last remnants of Jewish Christianity.

This is the theological backbone of this book, and it leads him to deny key doctrines of Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Christianity. The Trinity, for example, goes by the board several times, most notably on page 509, and in the following pages there is the demolition of Chalcedonian Christology, all on the basis of Father Kung's distaste for Hellenistic thought.

The lack of evidence for the beliefs and even the existence of Jewish Christianity before the late second century makes it difficult to prove continuity with the mission of Jesus. Moreover, the claim that some form of Jewish Christianity is proto-Islamic is based more on conjecture than on accessible historical data.

Ultimately, the author's attempt to use Islam as evidence for an early Christianity opposed to Orthodox and Catholic belief is unpersuasive.

However, both Christians and Muslims have much to learn from his analysis of Islamic history. He has the facts right about Arabic Christianity before Islam, about possible sources of the contents of the Quran, about Mohammed as a prophet and leader, about Muslim religiosity, about Islamic law and its ongoing evolution, about the conflict between reason and revelation, about mysticism and mass movements, about the encounter with modernity and colonialism, and prospects for the future.

Without concealing the aggressive, deeply troubling political mores of Islamic empires down through the ages, Father Kung manages to give a balanced assessment of their contributions to the sciences, philosophy, architecture and spirituality. He discusses the issue of jihad with candor and in this, as in most other matters Islamic, he resists the temptation to find ideal types that manage to "explain" everything, or worse, to "predict" everything.

There is a savvy open-endedness to his assessments of modernity and postmodernity in Islam and in the world in dialogue with Muslims of our times. So, in spite of some extremely problematic interpretations of Christianity, this may be the best single volume introduction to Islam currently available in English.

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Father Tiso is associate director and Sloan is program assistant in the U.S. Catholic bishops' Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs.

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Islam: Past, Present, and Future, by Hans Kung. Translated by John Bowden. Oneworld Publications (Oxford, England, 2007). 767 pp. $39.95.

Labels: Christianity, Francis V. Tiso, Hans Kung, Islam, Jesus, Jewish Christianity, Muslims

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Religious Doctors No More Likely to Care for Underserved Patients

Newswise — Although most religious traditions call on the faithful to serve the poor, a large cross-sectional survey of U.S. physicians found that physicians who are more religious are slightly less likely to practice medicine among the underserved than physicians with no religious affiliation.

In the July/August issue of the Annals of Family Medicine, researchers from the University of Chicago and Yale New Haven Hospital report that 31 percent of physicians who were more religious—as measured by "intrinsic religiosity" as well as frequency of attendance at religious services—practiced among the underserved, compared to 35 percent of physicians who described their religion as atheist, agnostic or none.

Physicians have many compelling reasons to avoid spending the bulk of their time caring for the poor. It can mean forgoing professional prestige, free time and academic opportunities. It often comes with reduced salaries, decreased support staff and constant bureaucratic interference.

But physicians who care for the underserved receive intangible rewards in exchange, such as a sense that they make a difference in society, have a positive impact on the lives of large groups of patients and have aligned their jobs with their altruistic aspirations.

To find out which religious, spiritual and personal factors were most often present in doctors who care for the underserved, Curlin and colleagues surveyed 1,820 practicing physicians from all specialties; 1,144 (63%) responded.

The survey contained questions about what the researchers called intrinsic religiosity—the extent to which individuals embrace their religion as the "master motive that guides and gives meaning to their life." Physicians were asked if they agreed or disagreed with two statements: "I try hard to carry my religious beliefs over into all my other dealings in life," and "My whole approach to life is based on my religion." They were also asked how often they attended religious services.

The survey also included questions about whether the physicians considered medicine a calling, whether their religious beliefs influence their practice of medicine, and whether the family in which they were raised emphasized helping those with few resources.

The researchers found that 26 percent of physicians reported that their patient populations are considered underserved. These physicians tended to be younger and were more likely to report working in an academic health center and receiving loan repayment in exchange for working where they do. Physicians who receive educational loan repayment are often obliged to work in underserved communities.

Physicians who strongly agreed that their religious beliefs influence their practice of medicine were more likely to report practice among the underserved. However, physicians who were more religious in general (as measured by their intrinsic religiosity or their frequency of attending religious services) were not more likely to practice among the underserved. Even the more religious physicians who reported that their families emphasized service to the poor and that, for them, the practice of medicine was a calling, were no more likely to practice among the underserved.

Curlin and colleagues also noted that those who identified themselves as very spiritual, whether or not they were religious, were roughly twice as likely to care for the underserved as those who described their spirituality as low. "Part of this divergence between religion and spirituality can be traced to a rift between Christian denominations in the late-19th and early-20th centuries," explained Curlin, who describes himself as an orthodox Christian in the Protestant tradition.

About a hundred years ago, he said, many of the mainline and liberal Protestant churches began "to emphasize efforts to right social injustices, while the more conservative churches tended to stress doctrinal orthodoxy. Research indicates that those who consider themselves spiritual but not so religious are more likely to be formed in the more liberal denominations."

Policy makers and medical educators hoping to increase the physician supply for underserved populations should take these results into account cautiously, said the authors. "No one knows how to select medical students in a way that would actually increase the number of physicians eager to serve the underserved," Curlin said, "but our findings suggest that admissions officials should ignore both the general religiousness of candidates and their professed sense of calling to medicine."

The Greenwall Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program funded this study. Additional authors include John Lantos and Marshall Chin of the University of Chicago and Lydia Dugdale of Yale New Haven Hospital.

Labels: John Lantos, Lydia Dugdale, Marshall Chin, medicine, religion, religiosity, underserved

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Survey: Christians Worldwide Too Busy for God

By Audrey Barrick
Christian Post Reporter

Mon, Jul. 30 2007

Christians worldwide are simply becoming too busy for God, a newly released five-year study revealed.

In data collected from over 20,000 Christians with ages ranging from 15 to 88 across 139 countries, The Obstacles to Growth Survey found that on average, more than 4 in 10 Christians around the world say they "often" or "always" rush from task to task.

Busyness proved to be the greatest challenges in Japan, the Philippines, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Mexico and Indonesia. Christians in Uganda, Nigeria, Malaysia and Kenya were least likely to rush from task to task. But even in the less-hurried cultures, about one in three Christians report that they rush from task to task. In Japan, 57 percent agreed.

About 6 in 10 Christians say that it's "often" or "always" true that "the busyness of life gets in the way of developing my relationship with God." Christians most likely to agree were from North America, Africa and Europe. By country, Christians in South Africa, Nigeria, Canada, Singapore, Ireland, Philippines, the United States, and the United Kingdom, are more distracted from God, respectively, than those in other countries.

While across gender lines, busyness afflicts both men and women, the distraction from God was more likely to afflict men than women in every surveyed continent except North America, where 62 percent of women reported busyness interfering with their relationship with God compared to 61 percent of men.

By profession, pastors were most likely to say they rush from task to task (54 percent) which adversely also gets in the way of developing their relationship with God (65 percent).

"It's tragic. And ironic. The very people who could best help us escape the bondage of busyness are themselves in chains," said Dr. Michael Zigarelli, associate professor of Management at the Charleston Southern University School of Business who conducted the study.

Managers, business owners, teachers and salespeople were among Christians most likely to say they rush from task to task. And professionals whose busyness interferes with developing their relationship with God include lawyers (72 percent), managers (67 percent), nurses (66 percent), pastors (65 percent), teachers (64 percent), salespeople (61 percent), business owners (61 percent), and housewives (57 percent).

"The accelerated pace and activity level of the modern day distracts us from God and separates us from the abundant, joyful, victorious life He desires for us," said Zigarelli.

While the study does not explain why Christians are so busy and distracted, Zigarelli described the problem among Christians as "a vicious cycle" prompted by cultural conformity.

"[I]t may be the case that (1) Christians are assimilating to a culture of busyness, hurry and overload, which leads to (2) God becoming more marginalized in Christians’ lives, which leads to (3) a deteriorating relationship with God, which leads to (4) Christians becoming even more vulnerable to adopting secular assumptions about how to live, which leads to (5) more conformity to a culture of busyness, hurry and overload. And then the cycle begins again."

Zigarelli, who believes busyness and distraction may be a global pandemic, suggested breaking the cycle by "re-ordering our thinking," including "the way we think about who God is and how He wants us to live our lives."

The Obstacles to Growth Survey was conducted on 20,009 Christians – the majority of whom came from the United States, from December 2001 to June 2007. With small sample sizes (less than 30 people) used in Germany, Ireland, Mexico and Japan, Zigarelli urges caution when drawing conclusions about those countries.

Labels: Audrey Barrick, Christian, conformity, culture, God, Michael Zigarelli, Obstacles to Growth Survey

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Saturday, July 28, 2007

A Creator God

7/26/2007
The Catholic Register
(www.catholicregister.org)

Occasionally, the image of Canadians — as portrayed in popular media — runs headlong into the wall of Canadian reality. It happened in early July when a new opinion poll revealed that a majority of Canadians believe that God had a hand in making human beings who they are.

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The Canadian Press Decima Research poll, released July 3, showed that only 29 percent of those surveyed believed that God had no part in the creation or development of human beings. This statistic runs against the grain of common perception. Anyone could be forgiven for thinking Canadians were a race of atheists or agnostics if all they knew of the country came from the daily news.

Despite this ingrained perception, the polls consistently say otherwise. For instance, who knew 26 percent of Canadians are essentially creationists when it comes to evolution? Yet there are almost as many creationists as there are hardcore religious skeptics. Come on over Stockwell Day. It appears the former leader of the Alliance party, and current public-safety minister, has lots of company.

In fact, a plurality of Canadians – 34 percent – actually agree with the statement that “human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process.” Few Catholic theologians, including Pope Benedict XVI, would have any problem with this position from a doctrinal point of view. The Catholic Church has understood for some time that nothing in church teaching stood in the way of accepting evolution as the best available scientific theory for describing the biological roots of humanity, as long as this belief did not preclude the foundational role of God in the process.

There were also some interesting regional revelations in the survey. Belief in creationism was at its lowest in Quebec at 21 percent (not surprisingly), but second was Alberta (22 percent) and British Columbia (22 percent), both of which have reputations as diehard conservative neighborhoods, overrun with fundamentalist Christians. Also in once overwhelmingly Catholic Quebec, the greatest percentage of those surveyed (40 percent) felt God had no role in creating humans.

Another challenge to conventional wisdom can be found in the political preferences of those surveyed. More Conservatives (31 percent) than Liberals (29 percent) were likely to say God had no part in human development. What does this say about the influence of the religious right, except that it has been exaggerated? Or about the “godless” Liberals?

While it is always prudent to be careful how much to read into opinion polls, it could be reasonably concluded from this survey that Canadians are yet to jettison a belief in a creator as the source of life. While institutional religion may suffer from declining attendance and other related ills, Canadians, by and large, still remain believers. Whether those beliefs are more than skin deep is a question for another poll.

Labels: Canada, Christianity, creation, God

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Muslims tired of having their religion hijacked by terrorists

Wednesday, 25 July, 2007

Muslims around the world increasingly reject suicide bombings and other violence against civilians in defense of Islam, according to a new international poll dealing with how the world's population judges their lives, countries and national institutions.

A wide ranging survey of international attitudes in 47 countries by the Pew Research Center also reported that in many of the countries where support for suicide attacks has declined, there has also has been decreasing support for al-Qaida leader Osama bin-Laden.

The 95-page survey found that surging economic growth in many developing countries has encouraged people in these countries to express satisfaction with their personal lives, family income and national conditions, said Andrew Kohut, the center's director.

"It's a pro-globalization set of findings," Kohut said.

Most notably, the survey finds large and growing number of Muslims in the Middle East and elsewhere rejecting Islamic extremism. Ten mainly Muslim countries were surveyed along with the Palestinian territories, as well as five African nations with large Muslim populations.

For example, the percentage of Jordanian Muslims who have confidence in bin Laden as a world leader fell 36 percentage points to 20 percent since 2003 while the proportion who say suicide bombing is sometimes or always justified dropped 20 percent points to 23 percent. Other countries where support for bin Laden declined are Lebanon, Indonesia, Turkey, Pakistan and Kuwait.

The report said support for such bombings and terror tactics has dropped since 2002 in seven of the eight countries where data were available. In Lebanon, the proportion of Muslims who say suicide attacks are often or sometimes justified fell to 34 percent from 79 percent while just 9 percent of Pakistanis believe suicide bombings can be justified often or sometimes, down from 33 percent in 2002 and a high of 41 percent in 2004.

But support for suicide bombings is widespread among Palestinians, the report said, with 41 percent saying such attacks are often justified while another 29 percent say they can sometimes be justified. It found that only six percent of Palestinians - the smallest in any Muslim public surveyed - say such attacks are never justified.

Amid continuing sectarian violence in Iraq, the survey found there is broad concern among Muslims that tensions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims are not limited to that country and represent a growing problem for the Muslim world more generally.

Eighty-eight percent of Lebanese and 73 percent of Kuwaitis _ along with smaller majorities or pluralities of Muslims elsewhere in the Middle East _ said Sunni-Shiite tensions represent a growing problem for the Muslim world, the report said.

Globally, Pew's survey shows a clear linkage between economic conditions and views of national conditions.

This trend is particularly evident in Latin America and Eastern Europe, but China and India also stand out, the report said.

While Africans now express a greater sense of personal progress than in 2002, personal contentment remains low in all African countries relative to other parts of the world.

In Western Europe, Swedes and Spaniards express broad satisfaction with national conditions as well as with their governments and leaders.

"In contrast," the report said, "people in France and Italy, which have experienced little economic growth since 2002, are critical of their nation's course and their governments."

The French were polled before Nicolas Sarkozy replaced Jacques Chirac as president in May and gave jobs to several opposition Socialists in his Cabinet.

In China, where per capita gross domestic product, has increased 58 percent since 2002, its people expressed much more satisfaction than in 2002_ 83 percent now compared to 48 percent. The Chinese also give near universal support for the national government, 89 percent, and say the government has a very good or somewhat good influence on the way things are going.

But the pollsters in China were not able to ask respondents to express opinions about President Hu Jintao.

The polls _ with a sampling error of 2 to 4 percentage points, depending on the sampling size _ were taken in various countries from mid-April to the end of May, and involved about 1,000 samples in most countries. More interviews were conducted in India and China while fewer than 1,000 were carried out in European countries.

Source: Washington Post

Labels: Islamic, Muslims, Pew Research Center survey, religion, suicide bombings, terrorism

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Russia: Reading, Writing...And Religion?

In four regions, instruction in Orthodox Christianity will be mandatory

July 27, 2007

Russia is deep in the summer doldrums. But it's only a month until children return to school, and in some cases, to a new subject: "The Foundations of Orthodox Culture."

"I want to know about God," says Lyuda, a 6-year-old girl living in Kirov Oblast. "It's interesting for me."

"If someone has an interest, it should be allowed as an elective course," says 17-year-old Lera, another Kirov resident. "Otherwise, I don't think it's an important subject. It's more unnecessary work."

In Belgorod, Kaluga, Bryansk, and Smolensk oblasts, high-school instruction in Russian Orthodoxy has become mandatory. In more than 10 other regions, it will be offered as an optional course.

Religious Resurrection

It's a development that highlights the growing influence of the Russian Orthodox Church, which has come out from under 70 years of Soviet-era repression and ignominy to reclaim its former glory as the country's dominant religion

It also addresses the desire of many Russians to restore a lost sense of national identity and pride. Some -- but not all -- of Kirov's adult residents say the basics of Orthodox culture is a welcome addition to school curricula.

Academic Outcry

In other sectors of Russian society, however, the classes have set off distress signals.

This week, senior members of the Russian Academy of Sciences signed an open letter to President Vladimir Putin expressing concern that the separation between church and state was dissolving under the influence of the Russian Orthodox Church.

The letter, which was published in a handful of national newspapers, lamented the "growing role of clerics in Russian society" and "the church's penetration into all facets of social life."

The signatories included two Nobel laureates, physicists Vitaly Ginzburg and Zhores Alferov.

Ginzburg told RFE/RL that offering classes on Orthodox culture skews the learning process for young students, and insults followers of Russia's other religions, including as many as 20 million Muslims.

"When someone is 15 or 16, then she or he can be taught the history of religion. But why do they need it in elementary school?" Ginzburg asks.

"Russia is a multiethnic, multifaith country, is it not? But they're not taking steps to introduce the basics of Muslim morality; they care only about Orthodoxy. Ten to 20 percent of the pupils in schools may be Tatar. Should they study Orthodox culture too?"

Information, Not Indoctrination?

A number of schools have responded to such concerns by opting to offer an alternative course that examines "world religions," and not only Orthodoxy.

Defendants of the Orthodoxy classes also hasten to add that it is the religion's history and culture that is being offered to students -- not doctrine.

And many schools -- like those in Tver Oblast, which will initiate Orthodox culture classes this autumn -- are making the optional coursework be either the first or the last class of the day, in order to minimize inconvenience for those parents who opt to keep their children out of the course.

"Some people don't really have a proper understanding of what this subject will be about," says Lyudmila Gorbacheva, the deputy director of the oblast's Institute of Advanced Teacher Training, which has helped teachers prepare to instruct the Foundations of Orthodox Culture class and recommended study materials and textbooks.

Church And State...

But critics worry that even architecture and literature will open the door to creeping clericalization in Russia's schools.

They point to recent assertions by Patriarch Aleksy II, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, who said it was unacceptable to teach schoolchildren Darwin's theory of evolution.

This week's letter from the academicians also tacitly frowned on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s open religious devotion and strong support for the church as further blurring the division between church and state.

They also criticized the growing role of the church in the armed forces, and the growing trend in Orthodox christening of new ships, submarines, and buildings.

"The church wants to have state functions and, generally, to influence the development of society. Priests are in the armed forces now. When a new ship is launched, there's a priest christening it. When there's a new building, there's a priest christening it too.

...Theology And Science

Ginzburg and his fellow signatories also hotly dismissed a proposal that theology be recognized as a science. "One could wonder why on earth theology -- a set of religious dogmas -- should be regarded as a science," the letter read.

It's an argument that Deacon Andrei Kurayev, a professor at the Moscow Theological Academy and a well-known Orthodox theologian, rejects.

"All the universities of Western Europe have theological faculties," Kurayev says. "Theology isn't the study of dreams and apparitions. It's the study of texts. The methodology of theological research is the same as the methodology for any other kind of humanitarian study.

Members of a radical Orthodox movement quickly appealed to the Moscow Prosecutor's Office to open a criminal case against Ginzburg for making remarks that offend Orthodox sensibilities.

Other Orthodox believers, however, find some common cause with the Ginzburg group. "Of course, clericalization is very bad," says Yakov Krotov, an Orthodox priest and a commentator on religion for RFE/RL. "But I believe there is a broader context in which I strongly oppose this letter. The problem is not whether a nuclear submarine should be christened or not... The problem is that there shouldn't be a nuclear submarine at all."

"Our country is wildly militarized," Krotov adds. "The Academy of Sciences, our physics and chemists, 90 percent of all scientists, work for war, and they are only competing for state money so that [scientists], not the church, get that money. That is the root of the problem."

Young Consumers

Beneath the heated rhetoric of the country's academic and religious elite, there is a purely practical question: How will children as young as 6 years old take to lessons about Russian Orthodox history and culture?

Not well, says Krotov, who says the church should openly acknowledge the doctrinal nature of the class and call it "God's Law," the name given to pre-1917 Russian Orthodox religious school courses.

While Krotov sees the advantage of including religion as part of world culture and civilization classes, he says there's a limit to how much school children, especially young ones, can understand or appreciate.

"In elementary school, this should be meted out in minute doses," Krotov says. "Otherwise it will provoke a nauseated reaction and have the opposite effect."

Vladimir, a history graduate student living in Kirov, takes an even more extreme view.

"Children will skip this class, or they'll barely pass it, without understanding much of anything," he says. "If there's another mandatory course, especially such an ideological one, I think it will create a generation of revolutionaries like Stalin, who also studied 'God's Law.'"

(RFE/RL Russian Service correspondents Mikhail Salenkov and Lyubov Chizhov in Moscow, Yevgeny Novikov in Tver, and Yekaterina Luzhnikova in Kirov Oblast contributed to this report.)

Labels: Christianity, church, education, Lyubov Chizhov, Mikhail Salenkov, orthodoxy, religion, Russia, theology, Yekaterina Luzhnikova, Yevgeny Novikov

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Curious Obsessions - Book Review

Barney Zwartz, Reviewer
July 28, 2007

Exactly what constitutes Jewishness has been much debated, but most people would be surprised at the Semitic self-identification of a group of more than 80 New Zealand Maori (a Polynesian race).

Author: Rachel Kohn
GenreSociety/Politics, History, Spirituality/Religion
Publisher ABC Books RRP $32.95

Exactly what constitutes Jewishness has been much debated, but most people would be surprised at the Semitic self-identification of a group of more than 80 New Zealand Maori (a Polynesian race). In 1999 they planned to visit Israel to convince the Government to accept them as citizens under the law of return, saying they were descendants of Ephraim, one of the 10 lost tribes, which they argued made their way to the South Pacific nearly 3000 years ago.

Alas, this passing reference in Rachael Kohn's Curious Obsessions is the lot - we never learn whether they got there or what the rabbis decided.

But that is the especial pleasure of this broad and entertaining survey of oddities in the nexus between science and spirituality. She wanders down all sorts of historical byways that to their advocates at the time seemed like the highway.

The 10 lost tribes - removed in a typical Middle Eastern piece of ethnic cleansing by an Assyrian conqueror in the eighth century BC - don't get much attention today. But, Kohn points out, the New World fascinated the Europeans for centuries partly because they were convinced the natives were descended from the lost tribes. It was believed by linguists, historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and theologians, fuelled the exploration of North and South America and generated the religious movement we know as Mormonism.

Many of the obsessions Kohn investigates proved fruitful, others were blind alleys. But she has chosen her themes cleverly so that they have, as she says, a continuing and lively currency today, be it utopias, lost civilisations, or the secrets of health.

Feminism, we learn, got a big boost from an archaeological myth, that of the earth-mother fertility goddess - useful in the 1970s when women were searching for an alternative to God, the "Patriarchal Enemy". Ancient figures such as the 25,000-year-old Venus of Willendorf were taken to prove that gentler, nature-based matriarchal cultures existed. Not so, says Kohn: modern scholarship has dismissed the idealised view of goddess religion as pure invention.

One of the most interesting chapters, When Religion Became Science, discusses the rise of spiritual technology, an apparent contradiction in terms that has made many people lots of money. Mary Baker Eddy and Christian Science made salvation an empirically verifiable state - good health. Kohn also discusses theosophy, Steiner and Scientology.

She draws an interesting line between the biblical Nephilim, a lost race of giants (in fact a mistranslation of the Hebrew), and Hitler's obsession with the lost Aryans, arguing that "academic disciplines such as psychology, biology and philology conspired with religion and literature to invent a past and forge a people that would stop at nothing".

This book covers a wide terrain lightly; it cannot go under the surface. That's fair enough, but it's mildly irritating that we are frequently left tantalised. But perhaps it's no bad thing for an author to leave us pleading "tell me more".

Rachael Kohn is a guest at next month's Age Melbourne Writers' Festival. Barney Zwartz is The Age religion editor.

Labels: Barney Zwartz, Ephraim, lost tribes, Maori, Nephilim, Rachel Kohn, religion, science, spirituality

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Thursday, July 26, 2007

Religious concepts promote cooperation

Exposure to religious and civic concepts both make people more generous.

25 July 2007
Matt Kaplan

A belief in God may have promoted the evolution of cooperative behaviour, say Canadian psychologists. They found that priming people with religious concepts makes them more generous — regardless of whether they declare themselves to be believers.

Notions of civic responsibility also promote cooperation, suggesting that religion might encourage altruism by invoking an omniscient judge of behaviour

To investigate how belief in supernatural agents might influence cooperation, Shariff and his colleague Ara Norenzayan used a word game to stealthily introduce religious concepts to their subjects.

Participants had to unscramble five-word sentences, dropping an extraneous word from each to create a grammatical four-word sentence. For example, "felt she eradicate spirit the" would become "she felt the spirit," and "dessert divine was fork the" could become "the dessert was divine." A control group unscrambled sentences made up of non-spiritual words.

Share and share alike

After this exercise, the participants played an economic decision-making game. Each player was given $10 to share with an anonymous recipient.

Participants primed with religious concepts gave their partner an average of $4.22, compared with only $1.84 in the control group. But those who declared themselves religious before the study were no more generous than non-believers.

"The effect of the religious prime was both large and surprising, especially considering that during exit interviews the participants were unaware of having been religiously primed," says Shariff.

A second study introduced a third group, primed with words associated with civic responsibility such as "jury", contract", and "police." This group behaved almost identically to that primed with religious concepts.

Common functions

"This research is really ground-breaking," says social psychologist Adam Cohen at Arizona State University, Tempe. "The subtle prime of religion is one of the greatest strengths of this research because it does not tip people off to what the study is about."

But why such priming makes people more charitable is unclear. "The fact that primes to civic institutions also produced more charitable behaviour gives some clues," he says. "Perhaps religion and these civic institutions have certain functions or effects in common."

Whether religion and civic responsibilities are equally effective spurs to cooperation remains to be seen. "We can't compare the relative strengths of religion and civics, or draw tight analogies to real-world situations," says Shariff. "What we can do is identify that both concepts have substantial effects on prosocial behaviour."

Labels: cooperation, generosity, God, Matt Kaplan, religion

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Monday, July 23, 2007

In Europe, God Is (Not) Dead

Christian groups are growing, faith is more public.
Is supply-side economics the explanation?

By ANDREW HIGGINS
July 14, 2007

Stockholm

Late last year, a Swedish hotel guest named Stefan Jansson grew upset when he found a Bible in his room. He fired off an email to the hotel chain, saying the presence of the Christian scriptures was "boring and stupefying." This spring, the Scandic chain, Scandinavia's biggest, ordered the New Testaments removed

In a country where barely 3% of the population goes to church each week, the affair seemed just another step in Christian Europe's long march toward secularism. Then something odd happened: A national furor erupted. A conservative bishop announced a boycott. A leftist radical who became a devout Christian and talk-show host denounced the biblical purge in newspaper columns and on television. A young evangelical Christian organized an electronic letter-writing campaign, asking Scandic: Why are you removing Bibles but not pay-porn on your TVs?

Scandic, which had started keeping its Bibles behind the front desk, put the New Testament back in guest rooms.

After decades of secularization, religion in Europe has slowed its slide toward what had seemed inevitable oblivion. There are even nascent signs of a modest comeback. Most church pews are still empty. But belief in heaven, hell and concepts such as the soul has risen in parts of Europe, especially among the young, according to surveys. Religion, once a dead issue, now figures prominently in public discourse.

CHANGING OPINIONS

In Europe, the cradle of the Enlightenment and secularization, issues of religion have figured prominently in recent public discourse. Below, some examples.

* * *

Sinéad O'Connor, Irish singer, caused a stir in 1992 by ripping up a photograph of Pope John Paul II on "Saturday Night Live" and shouting "Fight the real enemy!" She's now released "Theology," a collection of Bible-based songs:

"I adore religion and love it. Obviously, like anything, it has all sorts of negatives sometimes, as we all do," she told Beliefnet, a Web site. She described the photo-tearing episode as "an act of love for God, actually. But, also an act of rattling the bars of something that I do love, but I don't love [the Catholic Church] as much as I love God."

* * *

Gérard Depardieu, French film star known for his chaotic personal life, met Pope John Paul II in 2000 and was urged to play Saint Augustine, a 4th-century North African bishop who, after a dissolute youth, became a pillar of faith and one of the church's pre-eminent philosophers. Depardieu read selections of Saint Augustine's "Confessions" in Paris' Notre Dame Cathedral in 2003.

"I was heavy with spirituality without knowing it. I was touched by the light of Saint Augustine," Depardieu told the French Catholic newspaper La Croix. "Saint Augustine's quest touched me personally because it reflected by own fragility."

* * *

Sting, British rock star, was raised a Catholic, turned away from organized religion but has often talked about faith. On "The Oprah Winfrey Show," he said:

"Religion is an interesting word. It comes from Latin; it means to reconnect, reconnect with the world of the spirit. There are many ways to reconnect with the world of the spirit, not just through going to church or praying, you can reconnect through music, through the woman or the man you love. These are my roots to the sacred."

* * *

Oriana Fallaci, combative Italian journalist and lifelong critic of religion, grew close to the Catholic Church toward the end of her life. She met Pope Benedict XVI and praised him as a bulwark against Islam. She died in 2006, leaving her book collection to a university run by the Vatican.

"I am an atheist, yes. An atheist-Christian," she said in New York in 2005.God's tentative return to Europe has scholars and theologians debating a hot question: Why? Part of the reason, pretty much everyone agrees, is an influx of devout immigrants. Christian and Muslim newcomers have revived questions relating to faith that Europe thought it had banished with the 18th-century Enlightenment. At the same time, anxiety over immigration, globalization and cutbacks to social-welfare systems has eroded people's contentment in the here-and-now, prodding some to seek firmer ground in the spiritual.

Some scholars and Christian activists, however, are pushing a more controversial explanation: the laws of economics. As centuries-old churches long favored by the state lose their monopoly grip, Europe's highly regulated market for religion is opening up to leaner, more-aggressive religious "firms." The result, they say, is a supply-side stimulus to faith.

"Monopoly churches get lazy," says Eva Hamberg, a professor at Lund University's Centre for Theology and Religious Studies and co-author of academic articles that, based on Swedish data, suggest a correlation between an increase in religious competition and a rise in church-going. Europeans are deserting established churches, she says, "but this does not mean they are not religious."

Upstarts are now plugging new spiritual services across Europe, from U.S.-influenced evangelical churches to a Christian sect that uses a hallucinogenic herbal brew as a stand-in for sacramental wine. Niklas Piensoho, chief preacher at Stockholm's biggest Pentecostal church, says even sometimes oddball, quasi-religious fads "tell me you can sell spirituality." His own career suggests that a free market in faith is taking root. He was poached by the Pentecostals late last year after he boosted church attendance for a rival Protestant congregation.

Most scholars used to believe that modernization would extinguish religion in the long run. But that view always had trouble explaining why America, a nation in the vanguard of modernity, is so religious. The God-is-finished thesis came under more strain in the 1980s and 1990s after Iran, a rapidly modernizing Muslim nation, exploded with fundamentalist fervor and other fast-advancing countries in Latin America and Asia showed scant sign of ditching religion.

Now even Europe, the heartland of secularization, is raising questions about whether God really is dead. The enemy of faith, say the supply-siders, is not modernity but state-regulated markets that shield big, established churches from competition. In America, where church and state stand apart, more than 50% of the population worships at least once a month. In Europe, where the state has often supported -- but also controlled -- the church with money and favors, the rate in many countries is 20% or less.

Consider the scene on a recent Sunday at Stockholm's Hedvig Eleonara Church, a parish of the Church of Sweden, a Lutheran institution that until 2000 was an official organ of the Swedish state. Fewer than 40 people, nearly all elderly, gathered in pews beneath a magnificent 18th-century dome. Seven were church employees. The church seats over 1,000.

Hedvig Eleonara has three full-time salaried priests and gets over $2 million each year though a state levy. Annika Sandström, head of its governing board, says she doesn't believe in God and took the post "on the one condition that no one expects me to go each Sunday." The church scrapped Sunday school last fall because only five children attended.

Just a few blocks away, Passion Church, an eight-month-old evangelical outfit, fizzed with fervor. Nearly 100 young Swedes rocked to a high-decibel band: "It's like adrenaline running through my blood," they sang in English. "We're talking about Jesus, Jesus, Jesus."

Passion, set up by Andreas Nielsen, a 32-year-old Swede who found God in Florida, gets no money from the state. It holds its service in a small, low-ceilinged hall rented from Stockholm's Casino Theatre, a drama company. Church, says Mr. Nielson, should be "the most kick-ass place in the world." Jesus was "king of the party."

The message has lured some unlikely converts, including a heavily tattooed, self-described former mobster. "I've gone soft," says Daniel Webb, the son of an English father and Swedish mother, who spent five years in jail for illegal arms possession and assault. He was baptized, like most Swedes, in the Church of Sweden but never prayed. He went to church for the funerals of fellow hoods but scoffed at Christian sympathy for the meek.

Europe's upstart churches aren't yet attracting anywhere near enough customers to offset a post-World War II decline. But they are shaking up and in some places reviving the market for religion, argues Rodney Stark, a pioneer of religious supply-side theory at Baylor University in Texas.

Mr. Stark first developed the notion of a "religious market" in the 1980s as a way to explain America's persistent faith. It posits that people are naturally religious but that their religiosity varies depending on the vigor of what he calls religious suppliers. "Wherever churches are a little more energetic and competitive, you've got more people going to church," he says.

The notion that Adam Smith's invisible hand reaches into the spiritual realm has many detractors. Steve Bruce, a professor of sociology at Aberdeen University in Scotland, says market theory "works for cars and soap powder but it does not work for religion." Christianity in Europe, he says, has reached the point of no return, like a dying language doomed because too few people transmit its vocabulary to their children.

The Church of Sweden is also skeptical of the supply-side view. "We don't sell a product," says archbishop Anders Wejryd. With 1,800 congregations, he says, his church must cater to a spectrum of views. He says the Church of Sweden's more dynamic parishes, some of which mimic evangelicals' methods, are thriving.

Predictions that Christianity is doomed in Europe date back centuries. Writing in the early 1700s, Thomas Woolston, an Englishman, estimated it would die out by 1900. A century later, France's Auguste Comte proclaimed the end of mankind's "theological stage." Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels viewed religion as a symptom of capitalist ills that would be cured by socialism. More recently, the demise of Christianity in Europe has led to warnings that the continent risks becoming "Eurabia," a land dominated by Islam.

Conservative U.S. preachers and politicians curse European nonbelief and trumpet the religious values of America's pilgrim fathers. But Mr. Stark, the supply-side theorist, says America's religiosity is relatively recent. In 1776, he says, around 17% of Americans belonged to churches. That is about the same as the current proportion of the population in Belgium, France, Germany and the U.K. that worships at least once a month, according to 2004's European Union-funded European Social Survey.

In the U.S., the American Revolution ended ecclesiastical hegemony in the 11 colonies that had an established church and unleashed a raucous tide of religious competition. As Methodists, Baptists, Shakers and other churches proliferated, church-going rose, reaching around 50% in the early part of the 20th century, he says.

Europe never developed such a religious bazaar. The Church of Sweden, the Church of England, the Catholic Church in Italy and France, state-funded churches in Germany and others lost their de-facto "monopoly" status to other denominations over a century ago. But they retained their ties to the state and economic privileges.

Grace Davie, professor of sociology at Britain's Exeter University, compares them to "public utilities" -- institutions that people look to for basic services such as weddings and funerals but that don't demand day-to-day involvement. The Church of Sweden, for example, has a near-monopoly on death. Its broad property holdings, gathered since the 16th century, include most of Sweden's graveyards. The state still pays it to oversee funerals, even those involving Muslim rites.

Around 75% of Sweden's nine million people are nominally members of the "state church" -- though few ever worship and around 10% are avowed atheists, says Jonas Bromander of the Church's research unit. Sweden's evangelical churches, by contrast, have only 31,000 members, but they worship regularly and are growing, slowly, in number.

Tension between the Church of Sweden and would-be competitors goes back to the early 19th century, when early evangelicals were banished into exile. So-called free churches were later permitted but they remained in the shadow of the state-coddled Church of Sweden.

After World War II, the Church of Sweden followed the leftward direction of Swedish political life. The Ecclesiastical Department, the ministry that supervised the church, was headed for years by a prominent atheist. Liberal theology triumphed. Church attendance plummeted.

In the early 1980s, Ulf Ekman, a Church of Sweden priest, set up Livets Ord, or the Word of Life, an American-style congregation in Uppsala. His strict Bible-based message and charismatic preaching style attracted a flood of worshippers, and also controversy. The Church of Sweden stripped Mr. Ekman of his status as a preacher. The media denounced him as a cult leader bankrolled by America. The government investigated. Today, his church has around 3,000 active members.

A big impetus to the return of faith is fear of the future, says Elisabeth Sandlund, editor of Sweden's main Christian newspaper, Dagen. In Sweden and across Europe, old moorings are coming loose as cradle-to-grave welfare systems buckle. "People want something solid to hold on to," says Ms Sandlund. While working as a financial journalist, she started sneaking off to church and in 1999 eventually told her husband she believed in God. "He was not happy," she says.

Whether competition for believers actually boosts belief stirs bitter academic discussion. Measuring religiosity is difficult and each side cites different statistics. The latest data from a major research project that tracks churchgoing and belief in concepts such as God and soul, the European Values Survey, were compiled between 1981 and 1999. (They show a decline in faith in the 1980s followed by a leveling off and, for some indicators, a slight bump in the 1990s.)

To try to refute the supply-siders, Aberdeen University's Mr. Bruce points to Poland and Ireland, highly religious countries each dominated by a Catholic "monopoly church." Mr. Stark and those in his camp counter that market mechanisms in Poland and Ireland were trumped by the church's role as a vehicle for nationalism. More revealing, they say, is America's boisterous religious market and its high levels of religiosity.

One factor now spurring religious competition in Europe is the availability of state money that traditionally flowed almost entirely to established churches. It still does, but the process is more open.

In Italy, the state used to pay the salaries of Catholic priests, but in 1984 it began letting taxpayers choose which religious groups get financial support. The proceeds of a new "religious tax" of 0.8% are now divided, according to taxpayer preference, among the Catholic Church, four non-Catholic churches, the Jewish community and a state religious and humanitarian fund.

The result is an annual beauty contest ahead of a June income-tax deadline, as churches try to lure taxpayer money with advertising campaigns. Catholics get the lion's share -- 87% of nearly $1.2 billion in 2004, the last year for which figures are available. But according to a 2005 study by Italian lawyer Massimo Introvigne and Mr. Stark, the system "reminds Italians every year that there is a religious economy."

Sweden has also overhauled church financing. In 2000, the government gave up formal control of the Church of Sweden. With great fanfare it replaced what had been a church "tax" with an annual "fee," still collected by tax authorities, levied on Church of Sweden members.

For the first time, taxpayers were told what they owed in cash -- instead of being given just a percentage figure, which is typically under 1% of household income. Church of Sweden membership dropped abruptly, and the church launched a publicity drive pitching religion. Membership stabilized, though church-going continued to decline. Still, the established church last year received around $1.6 billion in membership fees via state tax collectors. The church also brings in some $460 million in funeral-and-graveyard administration taxes.

A government-run commission provides money to 28 registered religious groups outside the Church of Sweden, but these funds totaled only $7 million last year. Passion Church and other such ventures rely mostly on voluntary donations by their worshippers. This, says Kjell-Axel Johanson, an evangelical priest, keeps upstarts more in tune with their flock. He recently set up a new church that, unable to afford a permanent home, rents a bar for a few hours. "God doesn't care about packaging," he says.

Hotel chain Scandic, meanwhile, has reversed course. Before Christians mobilized, it planned to keep a few copies of the New Testament at the front desk, along with the Quran and Hebrew Bible. With the hotel under new ownership since April, Bibles are back in rooms. The Swedish arm of Gideons, a Bible distribution group, recently gave the chain 10,000 New Testaments in Swedish and English.

Write to Andrew Higgins at andrew.higgins@wsj.com

Labels: Andrew Higgins, Christian, church, Europe, evangelicals, faith, God, money, secular, supply-side economics, Sweden

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America Goes Kosher

Madonna drinks Canaan wine, Paris Hilton orders kosher steaks, Bono eats sushi under the supervision of the Beth Din, Donald Trump holds his meetings at one of Manhattan’s kosher restaurants – and everyone burns calories to the tunes of Sarit Haddad and Eyal Golan. Kosher is trendy in the USA

Yaniv Halili Published:
07.06.07

This latest American trend has celebrities enquiring about the coveted kashrut seal before letting a morsel of food touch their mouths. Apart from Madonna (who has a private room at the Prime Grill), many others are rushing around in search of steaks from cows that were slaughtered under the supervision of a rabbi.

A not very trendy 3300 years late, Americans are discovering that kosher food is both healthy and spiritual. The subject is complex, but it is encouraging to realize that we were right all these years and that it was worth insisting on manna in the desert. New kosher restaurants are opening all the time in big cities throughout the United States, offering dishes that have not been boiled to death. Kosher products are finding themselves on supermarket shelves and major producers in the dairy industry are strict about having the kosher stamp on their product labels, knowing that the “gentiles” want kosher products too. Even Hollywood is slowly turning kosher: the current most popular restaurant is a kosher meat and sushi bar where paparazzi photographers have a permanent place at the entrance.

Kosher Buddhism

Until recently, the words “kosher food” would have the average person running away rather than meet the dubious culinary experience. These days the two words mean prosperity. In Manhattan, kosher Chinese, French, Japanese, Indian and Iranian restaurants have opened. There is even a kosher Buddhist restaurant - indeed, Buddha spent his youth in a yeshiva.

In the last decade, kosher food sales in American supermarkets have reached a growth rate of 15 percent as opposed to a four percent growth rate for food that is not kosher. Eleven million Americans buy kosher food, and they are responsible for a yearly turnover of $9 billion. What’s interesting in all this data is that there are only just over six million Jews in America and even fewer keep kosher. Slowly but surely the kosher food market is being taken over by non-Jewish Americans who are on the lookout for kosher food that is not just gefilte fish and matza.

So, have the gentiles finally realized that Judaism is cool? Not necessarily so. In a recent survey carried out by Mintel International, 55 percent of kosher food consumers do so because they believe that kosher food is healthier, not due to religious reasons. The health merits attached to the kashrut seal are welcomed by mouths wide open: this last year Americans have had to swallow avian flu, mass poisoning and E.Coli bacteria.

The American Health Department’s statistics are scary: 76 million people - one in four Americans - suffer each year from diseases caused by spoiled food. As the numbers of diseases rise, so does people’s awareness and conscious consumers are on the look out for alternatives.

Kosher food is popular mostly amongst health food fans and strict vegetarians who can eat at a dairy restaurant and be sure that no suspicious pieces of meat will find their way into their plates and that they won't meet chunks of smoked bacon in their salads.

Americans like the fact that kosher food is prepared under the watchful eyes of supervisors, often more than one, and kosher restaurants in Manhattan are proud to announce that “all the food here is prepared under strict supervision”. This impresses the customers, even if the watchful eyes are those of a kashrut supervisor who is only making sure that the dairy and meat utensils stay separate from each other.

A survey published just before Independence Day shows that Hebrew National sausages made of 100 percent beef is the highest selling brand in America. Muslims and Christians too are among Americans who eat kosher food. Certain Christian groups follow a diet that is prepared “in the spirit of the Bible.”

And for dessert Eyal Golan

The kosher trend in New York got a big push last year when Madonna arrived in the city for her Confessions tour. After each show, she packed up her dancers and musicians and took them all to the Prime Grill for a steak. These intimate gatherings got a lot of coverage by the local press and the fashion police raised an eyebrow at the relatively unknown establishment that Madonna chose to eat and party at. Madonna doesn’t come to this restaurant only for its food; the owners play Israeli music and are sure that the songs of Sarit Haddad will make the desserts taste even sweeter. Madonna finds it hard to contain her excitement.

Madonna is a sure bet for kosher food, but a rather more unexpected personality who has found her happiness in kosher land is Paris Hilton. The idea that the young heiress finds solace in something that is not studded with diamonds has young Hollywood girls rushing to the Prime Grill in Beverly Hills. The tabloids and entertainment TV shows were amazed when Hilton chose to celebrate her birthday at the kosher sushi and meat bar. She invited 40 of her closest friends, but 200 guests showed up. “She loves our sushi”, admits the owner. “Before her birthday she asked us to prepare a lot of sushi, but she was most concerned about us baking a cake for her.”

Even now, from the heights of the garbage dumps she’s in, Hilton doesn’t forget where she came from and who fed her. Although her plea to bring kosher catering to her jail cell didn’t come through, two weeks ago during the embarrassing fiasco when she was under house arrest, she celebrated her temporary freedom feasting on kosher catering.

But even the huge amounts of kosher food that are going into Hilton’s mouth still don’t qualify it as trendy. So Sasha Baron-Cohen (“Borat”) steps in to help. The English star probably leaves half his monthly salary at the Prime Grill. Baron-Cohen is seen so often at the Hollywood branch of the Prime Grill that the sight of a fork is rarer.

“Sasha eats only kosher food, so he has no choice”, says the owner. “He loves steaks and eats a lot, often complementing his meals with expensive, kosher Israeli wine. He celebrated his Oscar nomination here with his fiancée and a few friends. But for Sasha, a meal is not a meal if it doesn’t have Eyal Golan, Kobi Peretz or Shlomi Shabbat singing in the background. He says these songs remind him of Tel Aviv.”

Signing deals over steaks

The celebrity-watch website TMZ.com reported that Donald Trump has connected to his lost roots, and not the roots of his hair: Trump has turned the Manhattan kosher restaurant Solo into his boardroom. Bono also pops in from time to time, and when he’s not snacking on flies in Africa, he keeps to his ideals and eats only kosher or organic. When he dines at Solo he insists on ordering the salmon in miso and at the Prime Rib he eats kosher sushi.

But, in spite of the star dust being sprinkled over kosher foods, some claim that making kosher trendy is not a kosher thing to do. Most in the Jewish community are not swayed by star dust and are against turning Judaism into “a modern, trendy cult,” says one of the heads of the rabbinical committee in America, who choose to ignore the phenomenon. “This is just a fashion that will soon disappear”, he says. “Everything Jewish is suddenly popular, but after the noise has quietened down and the storm has passed, only the core will remain, but anyway, the core is what’s important in Judaism.”

There are also some who understand that the phenomenon is typical of the American society, which adopts a new ritual every 15 minutes, heralds it as the new king and discards it when the next trend starts to bloom. “Obviously Madonna has played her part in making kosher trendy, but there is a wider issue of self-searching at hand,” says David Deutsch. “After Scientology and Buddhism, it’s now Judaism’s turn. Judaism has been around for a long time and that makes people ask how it’s managed to last so long and wonder what its secret can be. It’s like a closed family where people want to peep inside and see the beauty.”

But why kosher food now?

“The kosher trend fits in with modern life. Like the Kabbalah, it combines the old with the new. Kosher food meets spirituality and health in one plate, and that’s what people are looking or today: a little spirituality with an everyday practicality. Add to that the celeb quality and the fact that Hollywood has many famous Jews that people want to imitate. It’s very easy being Jewish in America today.”

Labels: America, food, health, Judaism, kashrut seal, kosher, Madonna, Paris Hilton, spirituality, Yaniv Halili

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Different Varieties of Experience

20 Jul, 2007
Mukul Sharma, TNN

Pioneering psychologist and philosopher, William James, delivered his Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh in 1901 and 1902 which became the basis for his highly influential and much quoted book, The Varieties of Religious Experience.

Being disdainful of organised religion, James felt that religious experience should be the primary topic in the study of religion, rather than its institutions.

By contrast, astronomer and science writer Carl Sagan delivered his Gifford Lectures in natural theology in 1985, which later formed the basis of the book The Varieties of Scientific Experience as a nod to William James. It’s a study in which he elaborated his views on divinity in the natural world.

In it Sagan wonders why the God portrayed by several religions of the world seems not to possess any knowledge about the universe beyond what was known at the time the scriptures were written. Why not a commandment, for instance, saying that thou shalt not exceed the speed of light?

After all if he, she or it created that limiting speed and knew that Einstein would discover it one day wouldn’t one expect a reference made to it perhaps at some point?

Interestingly, towards the end of the book Sagan actually answers the question himself when he says: “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.”

Although both men were coming from the same place — namely, scientific pragmatism (though not necessarily total unbelief) — James didn’t have such a deterministic viewpoint. For it was said commendably of Sagan that the scientist was more than religious as he had left the priests and mullahs behind. What kind of unbelief, or belief, is that?

James had an elegant answer to that one: inexperience. But he didn’t go overboard in either direction and managed to remain philosophically afloat. After experimenting with such consciousness altering substances as were available in his time he concluded that while the revelations of the mystic hold true, they hold true only for the mystic.

For others, they are certainly ideas to be considered, but can hold no claim to truth without personal experience of such. In his world view there was no requirement for any god that might exist to expound creation individually.

This is the reason that James’ view on the psychology of religion is still considered one of the defining moments of human understanding of what many consider the divine.

Labels: Carl Sagan, Gifford Lectures, God, Mukul Sharma, religion, religious experience, scientific experience, William James

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Science and Reason Provide Good Answers To "How"

Science and reason provide good answers
By Sheri Glowinski Matamoros

I grew up in a Catholic family. Although I tried hard to be a good Catholic, I knew early on that Catholicism, despite its many beautiful rituals that still to this day influence me, wasn't what rang true for me.

I've explored many different "brands" of religion along the way. Although many parts of many religions appealed to me, I felt frustrated with feeling that I had confined myself to any one particular "whole" of a religious doctrine that didn't resonate completely with me. I could never understand how there could be so many different belief systems - most exclusively claiming to be the one true answer - and only one of those really be the correct "answer."

How could so many people worldwide who gently believe so deeply and honestly in their religion - be it Christianity, Buddhism, Islam - be wrong? If there really is one true answer, isn't it possible that there are many different, yet equal, paths to that answer?

These questions give sustenance to my own spiritual quest. I personally look to many sources to explore life's transcending mystery of which I am a part.

I believe that science and reason are appropriate conduits to answer the essential "hows" of life and it is exciting to me to explore these types of questions in a scientific, systematic manner.

I also feel that to have science without a sense of spirituality, or vice versa, is to have tunnel vision.

A system of "checks and balances" is needed to provide depth of vision. And so I also find truth in the rhythms of the natural world. In this realm, I feel the pulsing of life, a connection to everyone and everything on some level.

We all share the same atoms, after all, albeit in beautiful unique combinations. Here I find retreat and replenishment for my occasionally weary soul. Here I find soothing when I need reminding that death, in all its forms, is a natural part of the rhythm of life.

It is also here that I am constantly reminded that I am not separate, either from the earth upon which I depend or from my neighbor. Indeed I am responsible for every step that I take, whether that step be toward something productive or something harmful, to myself or to others.

What I do here on Earth matters, and I try to live my life with this as my guiding principle.

And so, in summary, this is what I've come to believe in my search for truth: There is one underlying source of life that makes itself known differently to different people and that ultimately, it's not so much in what (or who) a person believes, it's what that person does with her beliefs that really matters.

Labels: Catholic, reason, religion, science, Sheri Glowinski Matamoros, spirituality

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A Teacher With Faith And Reason

By Jeff Jacoby,
Globe Columnist
July 22, 2007

DID YOU hear about the religious fundamentalist who wanted to teach physics at Cambridge University? This would-be instructor wasn't simply a Christian; he was so preoccupied with biblical prophecy that he wrote a book titled "Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John." Based on his reading of Daniel, in fact, he forecast the date of the Apocalypse: no earlier than 2060. He also calculated the year the world was created. When Genesis 1:1 says "In the beginning," he determined, it means 3988 BC.

Not many modern universities are prepared to employ a science professor who espouses not merely "intelligent design" but out-and-out divine creation. This applicant's writings on astronomy, for example, include these thoughts on the solar system: "This most beautiful system of sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and domination of an intelligent and powerful Being . . . He governs all things, and knows all things that are or can be done."

Hire somebody with such views to teach physics? At a Baptist junior college deep in the Bible Belt, maybe, but the faculty would erupt if you tried it just about anywhere else.

...the National Science Education Standards issued by the National Academy of Sciences in 1995 classified religion with "myths," "mystical inspiration," and "superstition" -- all of them quite incompatible with scientific study. Michael Dini, a biologist at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, made headlines in 2003 over his policy of denying letters of recommendation for any graduate student who could not "truthfully and forthrightly affirm a scientific answer" to the question of mankind's origin. Science and religion, he said in an interview at the time, "shouldn't overlap."

But such considerations didn't keep Cambridge from hiring the theology- and Bible-drenched individual described above. Indeed, it named him to the prestigious Lucasian Chair of Mathematics -- in 1668. A good thing too, since Isaac Newton -- notwithstanding his religious fervor and intense interest in Biblical interpretation -- went on to become the most renowned scientist of his age, and arguably the most influential in history.

Newton's consuming interest in theology, eschatology, and the secrets of the Bible is the subject of a new exhibit at Hebrew University in Jerusalem (online at jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/mss/Newton). His vast religious output -- an estimated 3 million words -- ranged from the dimensions of Solomon's Temple to a method of reckoning the date of Easter to the elucidation of Biblical symbols. "Newton was one of the last great Renaissance men," the curators observe, "a thinker who worked in mathematics, physics, optics, alchemy, history, theology, and the interpretation of prophecy and saw connections between them all." The 21st-century prejudice that religion invariably "subverts science" is refuted by the extraordinary figure who managed to discover the composition of light, deduce the laws of motion, invent calculus, compute the speed of sound, and define universal gravitation, all while believing deeply in the "domination of an intelligent and powerful Being." Far from subverting his scientific integrity, the exhibition notes, "Newton's piety served as one of his inspirations to study nature and what we today call science."

For Newton, it was axiomatic that religious inquiry and scientific investigation complemented each other. There were truths to be found in both of the "books" authored by God, the Book of Scripture and the Book of Nature -- or as Francis Bacon called them, the "book of God's word" and the "book of God's works." To study the world empirically did not mean abandoning religious faith. On the contrary: The more deeply the workings of Creation were understood, the closer one might come to the Creator. In the language of the 19th Psalm, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork."

To be sure, religious dogma can be a blindfold, blocking truths from those who refuse to see them. Scientific dogma can have the same effect. Neither faith nor reason can answer every question. As Newton knew, the surer path to wisdom is the one that has room for both.

Jeff Jacoby's e-mail address is jacoby@globe.com.

Labels: Cambridge University, Isaac Newton, Jeff Jacoby, religion, science

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Science And Politics Can Mean Nothing Without Faith

The Times
July 21, 2007

Geoffrey Rowell

As Bishop for the Church of England in Europe I am privileged to visit many significant places. Last month I found myself in what were at first sight two very contrasting contexts. Early in June I was in Geneva and was taken to visit CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory, where a huge accelerator is under construction that will enable experiments to be conducted into fundamental particles, the sub-atomic world of energy at the heart of seemingly solid matter, and which can also provide us with understanding of the origins of the Universe. The great accelerator is being assembled from parts made across the world with a precision that enables them to fit perfectly and completely together – an image of human communion and cooperation that is startling in a world which is so often divided. When lowered, again with wonderful precision, into the circular tunnel, several kilometres in diameter, this extraordinary machine will enable physicists to search for the Higgs particle – a particle believed to exist but which has not yet definitively been shown to exist. So from beginning to end this experiment, and the huge cost of the equipment needed for it, is a work of faith.

It was Michael Polanyi, the philosopher of science, who recognised that for a scientist to test a new hypothesis they had to have faith in that hypothesis. Faith seeking understanding was as true of science as of religion, though a faith that was indeed a reasonable faith shaped by compelling evidence. Belief, he argued, was the source of all knowledge. “Tacit assent and intellectual passions, the sharing of an idiom and of a cultural heritage, affiliation to a like-minded community: such are the impulses which shape our vision of the nature of things on which we rely for our mastery of things.” We need what he called “a fiduciary framework” if we are to have any knowledge. Without it, knowledge is impossible. As St Augustine said: “I believe in order that I may understand.”

A few weeks later I spent some time in Romania, an Orthodox country, which suffered much under the communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu. As with Russia, there has been a renaissance of religion after the fall of communism. Orthodoxy is deeply rooted in the identity of that country; it is a significant example of what Newman said about living religion – it is “a mould in which nations have been cast”. What gives a country identity is an overarching story with a transcendent reference that explicitly and implicitly binds people together. “Religion”, after all, means that which binds. When that “overarching story” becomes merely a matter of opinion, societies dissolve. In the Book of Proverbs we read that “where there is no vision the people perish” –or, as the Hebrew more precisely means, “the people unravel”. Without a shared faith and a shared vision springing from an understanding of human nature and human flourishing that encompasses life and death, sin and redemption, we are reduced to merely political arrangements.

We have to live by faith, for we can live in no other way. The question is, in what shall we put our faith? The seductive attractions of advertisers, the many gods and lords of fashion, of possessions that possess us, the addictions that undermine our human integrity, all compete for our allegiance. In the end, the Christian gospel teaches us that the God who is love, and who comes down to the lowest part of our need, is the God who made us for Himself. “You are made to love, as the sun is to shine,” said that sunniest of poet-priests, Thomas Traherne. When my niece says in her wedding today the simple words “I will” to her husband, and two young people give themselves to each other “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death is do part” they will witness to their faith in the God of love made known in Jesus Christ and an openness to the reality of His transforming grace. When the distraught and weeping Mary Magdalen, whom the Church commemorates tomorrow, heard in the garden on the first Easter Day her name called by the Risen Christ, her life was turned around. She was caught up into the life of the new creation of the God who is the conqueror of sin and death, and was told to share the good news of that new creation. It was that faith and that good news that shaped England and Europe, and has shaped countless lives and still has power to do so today.

The Right Rev Dr Geoffrey Rowell is the Bishop of Gibraltar in Europe

Labels: European Particle Physics Laboratory, faith, Geoffrey Rowell, God, Higgs particle, hypotheses, Jesus, religion, Romania, science

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Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Faith and Health

Doctors incorporating spirituality into their medical practice

By MELISSA McEVER
The Brownsville Herald
July 15, 2007

Dr. Bruce Leibert makes no apologies for who he is: a devout, outspoken Christian doctor who asks to pray with patients and asks them about their spiritual beliefs. And many of his patients like him that way.

Leibert, program director of Valley Baptist Family Residency in Harlingen, openly incorporates spirituality into his practice because he believes it makes a difference in patients’ physical and mental health, he said.

“A lot of studies talk about this … how important this part of health is to people, and how often doctors ignore it,” Leibert said. “Health must address not only body, not only the mind, but the undying soul … If I can’t minister to the soul, then I can’t do medicine.”

In the past, a clear boundary has existed between religion and medicine: chaplains and pastors visited hospitals to attend to patients’ spiritual needs, while doctors and providers were expected to solely treat the physical. That line between faith and science is starting to blur, though, as more health providers and hospitals are incorporating spirituality into patient care. From Bible studies for health-care workers to prayer time with patients to meditation classes at hospitals, faith is playing a more prominent role in the health-care setting, and for a good reason, experts say.

“Science is telling us clearly that when you activate your spirituality, various things happen in the body that help you heal better in times of disease and distress,” said Dr. R. Murali Krishna, president of the James L. Hall Center for Mind, Body and Spirit in Oklahoma City. Krishna and others founded the center 10 years ago, hoping to increase patient awareness about the mind-body connection, he said.

“We don’t really talk about one particular religion or dogma — what we talk about is spirituality, connecting with a higher power,” Krishna said of the center’s focus. The center offers seminars on meditation, guided imagery and relaxation, in part to help people achieve that connection, he said.

“It helps you access the healing power within yourself,” Krishna said.

Connecting mind, body and spirit.

Researchers have actively studied the mind-body connection since the 1960s, according to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, part of the National Institutes of Health. Studies have suggested that mind-calming practices like meditation, yoga and visualization can help reduce chronic pain, improve immunity, speed wound healing and reduce stress, which in turn improves health.

More researchers are now looking into whether similar results come from prayer, church attendance or strong belief in a religion. Some studies have indicated that spiritual beliefs and practices can improve the mental and physical health of the chronically ill and sick elderly, improve patients’ ability to cope with pain and distress and protect against depression.

Patients seem to want to talk about spirituality and faith with their doctors, according to a 2004 survey that appeared in the Annals of Family Medicine. The survey found that 83 percent of respondents wanted their doctors to ask about their spiritual beliefs, and a majority wanted those beliefs to be considered when planning treatment.

Some local doctors routinely take a “spiritual history” of their patients. Leibert, of Family Practice Residency, often asks questions like “Do you go to church regularly?” and “Do you pray?”

A spiritual history can help doctors tailor treatment to the individual patient, said Dr. Linda Villarreal, an Edinburg internist. If a patient is suffering from symptoms related to stress, for example, she’ll suggest prayer or meditation depending on what the patient believes, she said.

Leibert said his patients rarely turn down the chance to pray with him, when asked. He’s prayed with people of all faiths and doesn’t try to change their beliefs, he said.

“I don’t go into the office to change them — I just go to love and care for patients,” Leibert said.

Separation of church and medicine?

Some experts, however, are concerned about doctors bringing religion into office visits and the possible ethical implications.

When questions about religion turn into evangelism, or when a patient feels pressured to pray or conform to the doctor’s beliefs, that’s when the inquiries cross the line, said Richard P. Sloan, psychiatry professor at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital at Columbia University Medical Center in New York. Sloan is the author of “Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine.”

Sloan said that questions about religion can invade patients’ privacy and also cause feelings of guilt and remorse — hardly a burden a sick person needs, he said.

“There are substantial ethical concerns in trying to link religion to medicine,” Sloan said. “Nobody, least of all I, want to dispute that religion brings comfort in times of difficulty. But that doesn’t justify bringing religious practices into medicine. The best solution is for (doctors) to allow people to express their religion without interference.”

Krishna, of the Hall Center for Mind, Body and Spirit, said he thinks prayer in the doctor’s office is a good idea only if the patient’s beliefs are consistent with that practice.

Doctors should inquire about patients’ spiritual beliefs, whatever they are, Krishna said. Having that information can help doctors offer better advice and help establish a connection with the patient, he said.

Sloan agreed that there is a place for faith in the health-care setting — but it isn’t the doctor’s office, he said. Chaplains should be the ones to discuss spiritual issues with patients, he said.

Villarreal, the Edinburg doctor, agreed that when doctors bring religion into their office, “there’s a line you could potentially cross.” That’s why she makes a point of asking patients about their beliefs, and not discussing religion or spirituality with them unless they’re comfortable with that terminology.

Properly used, spirituality is a valuable tool in health care that could improve outcomes for many people, Krishna said.

“It has enormous healing potential,” he said. “It’s a complement for modern medicine, not a replacement.”

Labels: Christian, Dr. Bruce Leibert, Dr. Linda Villarreal, Dr. R. Murali Krishna, ethics, medicine, Melissa McEver, mind-body connection, religion, Richard P. Sloan, spirituality

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Educated marry science, belief

Published: 07.17.2007
Diane Glass
Tucson Citizen

Science and religion may be mutually exclusive, but they can, and do, live happily married in the human spirit.

Most of the time. The rest of the time, there's a lot of bickering. Science demands proof, and literalist fundamentalism demands wholesale belief.

Not surprisingly, fundamentalists are increasing in number.

Wouldn't it be nice to wake up and know that the milk you drink is good for you and not a cancerous time bomb? And wouldn't it be nice to know that if you didn't accept Jesus as your savior, you wouldn't be sent to hell?

It would, but I'm not sure anyone will ever know the answers to those questions.
That's why you'll find a lot of families at church who don't share all the views of the church they attend.

The data show that the more educated the individual, the more he or she shies away from literalism. But in Volume 26 of the "Review of Religious Research," the data also show a positive correlation between a parishioner's educational level and church attendance.

It's possible to participate in the social aspects of religion without buying the horse and the cart.

There are sources of truth not found behind a priest's confessional door. And there is still room for magical thinking in a rational world.

But fundamentalism demands a moral imperialism that is unyielding to outside interpretation. It insists that those of us who cannot accept a single belief when interpreting the mysteries in life will miss the beauty of taking that giant leap.
I'd argue that literalists are the ones missing out. They miss out on the wonder of accepting the multiple truths that enrich our lives.

Someone who can embrace the unknown and science is someone who thinks independently, is more tolerant and more open and feels comfortable with real mystery.

Labels: Diane Glass, education, fundamentalism, religion, science

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Is the United States really becoming a Christian nation?

By: Joe Morehart
Issue date: 7/18/07

Both the Christian cross and the American flag are often shown together in this country, and many preach patriotism as they say, "This is a Christian nation." To say this means to say that each individual inside the U.S. borders would agree with Jesus Christ, which is simply not true in a nation that depends largely on diversity of beliefs. It also means to say that Christ would agree with both the Christian church and with this nation's policies, which is highly unlikely, but impossible to know for sure.

"In God We Trust" was added to currency after the Civil War and "under God" was included in the Pledge of Allegiance after it was added by Congress in 1954. Is this the direction the Founding Fathers would have encouraged? This is impossible to know for sure.

History's truth has been spun and rewritten to serve the interpretations of different beliefs so much so, that some say our Founding Fathers were mostly deist, while others claim that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were based on the Ten Commandments.

Which is true? How much religion actually filters into governmental policies, and how realistic is the promise of a separation between church and state?

"[No elected official should be] limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual or obligation," John F. Kennedy said. Many polls, however, show that Kennedy's opinion is not entirely shared.

In a survey conducted in 2003 by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 52 percent said they would be reluctant to vote for an atheist and 38 percent said they would be reluctant to vote for a Muslim.

"I would suspect the real numbers are much higher," said Jeff Peake, political science professor at the University, said. "In those surveys, people tend to go for the more politically correct answer."

A favorable appearance for the candidate during the primaries is one of the most important reasons that they are elected. How much does religion affect the appearance of the candidate?

"If you are not Catholic or Protestant, religion is going to be the story," Peake said. "Just look at [Republican presidential hopeful and member of a Mormon church] Mitt Romney."

The media is quick to find the religious labels, which then become important, for one reason or another, to the candidates' identities. Is it more important what Romney thinks about health care or that he is a Mormon? Was it more important what Kennedy thought about civil rights or that he was Roman-Catholic?

Once in office, do the newly-elected officials govern based on what is best for the country or do they govern based on their religious beliefs?

The Pew Research Center, in the same survey attributed above, said that religion plays a role in the everyday life of 67 percent of those surveyed. Is this not the same for politicians whose "everyday life" consists of making and enforcing laws that the entire nation must obey?

Republicans have to appear more religious during their campaign to appease conservative voters, then once in office, they must compromise this religious appearance with the moderates and liberals in order to get their policy through, Peake said. To the Democrats, religion is less of an issue during their campaign so there is less of this compromise needed after being elected.

Gay marriage, stem-cell research, abortion, censorship, intelligent design versus evolution in schools and many other issues of today's world bleed over from religion to politics and are disputed on a daily basis. The separation of church and state as defined in the Constitution by America's founding fathers leaves the door open for different interpretations of what exactly that means. In the end, who has the authority to say that their beliefs are right?

Labels: America, Christian, Joe Morehart, Pew Research Center survey, politics, religion, separation of church and state

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Monday, July 16, 2007

Weaving a thread of tradition

Navajo class bands heritage and skills

By Arin Gencer
Sun Reporter

July 15, 2007

Deb May leaned back to survey her work, a neat row of orange and brown wool tightly wrapped around a piece of wood.

Did it look right? Would there be enough to make a knot and then warp the other side of the loom?

"You have to just trust," said one of her classmates in the Navajo -- or Diné -- weaving class at Common Ground on the Hill.

An experienced weaver, May's uncertainty came from tackling a loom unlike her own -- and an equally unfamiliar technique.

Some trust, and a healthy helping of patience, seemed to go along with learning the art of Navajo weaving, a long-standing tradition that has served as a spiritual and financial aid to Native Americans.

At McDaniel College last week, a handful of intrepid individuals, hailing from various parts of Maryland and beyond, perched on stools before vertical wood looms and sought to create their own woven patterns using wool from the sheep raised by their instructor, Roy Kady, a Navajo master male weaver.

Navajo creation stories say Spider Man taught Spider Woman how to weave, then instructed her to share the techniques with the rest of the world, Kady said.

The master weaver, who lives in Arizona, has been weaving since childhood, guided and inspired in the making of traditional dresses, horse cinches and saddle blankets by his mother and grandparents.

Now Kady creates commissioned pieces, such as contemporary wall hangings, while also raising his own Navajo-Churro sheep, which provide wool that he can dye using such natural elements as plants, roots or indigo. He looks to the creation stories, his surroundings, and even travel for inspiration in his designs.

And when he can, Kady said, he brings the sacred art of his people to others, in part because many from the younger generations are disconnected from the lessons of Spider Man in today's MTV culture.

Practically every facet of the weaving process reflects Navajo cultural beliefs, Kady said, with its creation stories woven into the rows, the warp and weft.

The wood comb used to firmly pack each newly woven line of wool evokes the sound of falling rain, a soothing rhythm, Kady said.

The bottom wooden beams of the loom represent Mother Earth; the upper ones, Father Sky. And Spider Man is believed to have taken the horizon from all four directions to make the main posts of the loom's frame, he said.

"There's life in these," Kady said. "They're not just tools."

The traditional meanings and references have drawn students such as Mary Bare, of Westminster, to the art. Bare brought in a project she had begun at last year's Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, but which had been stored in her basement since then.

"There's the spirituality and the story of creation and the teachings," Bare said. "That's what makes it different from other weaving."

Kady's class wasn't a first for Reyne Salacain, of Virginia, either. Salacain said she had tried the Navajo technique on a floor loom. Now in her fourth class using the Navajo vertical loom, Salacain said, she was working on a modified, smaller version of a rug she'd like to weave for her parents' home.

Kady said he hopes his class will teach students to "learn and connect with their inner soul."

"A lot of them are in tune with the time

Labels: Arin Gencer, creation, Navajo, spirituality, weaving

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Sunday, July 15, 2007

MINDSET: What is spirituality?

15 Jul 2007, 0304 hrs IST

Spirituality takes us beyond our ego-centred lives by expanding our hearts with compassion towards all, says Alan Shelton.

Spirituality lies beyond the material world of proof, beyond what can be measured or counted. It is made up of the inner life, the realm of belief, mystery, and faith. And yet for all the mystery that surrounds it, spirituality is vital to our well-being. It is the foundation of our most closely held values, the seat of our trust and hope.

Spirituality brings purpose and meaning to life, and as we develop it we grow in wisdom and love.

We begin to experience a sense of awe, a sense of connection to all of life, and a deep reverence for the
Divine. We find ourselves moved to prayers of gratitude and moments of spontaneous worship. Spirituality calls a human being to a life of trust and service.

When our spirituality is nurtured and vibrant, we're connected. This connection is both a sense of relationship to the Creator, Great Spirit, or God, as well as a relationship to all people and to Mother Earth. Spirituality takes us beyond our ego-centred lives by expanding our hearts with compassion towards all.

As a doctor, I have observed that spirituality forms the framework of many of my patients' orientation to life; it does not dwell in a realm apart. It is not an extracurricular activity. Spirituality involves a reverent attitude towards all things because it awakens us to a divine presence in all things. In this way of seeing and being, all things and persons are interconnected and interdependent. In the Sioux native language, the word for the Great Spirit is Wakan, which means 'the great mystery.' Yet this spirit, full of mystery, is every bit as real as the visible, tangible world.

It is important to differentiate spirituality from religion. Some people have rejected religion in order to escape what they consider to be oppressive rules and regulations. In the process, however, many lose the great gifts of joy and compassion that spirituality brings. Religion and spirituality are related and intertwined, but they are not the same. A person may experience spirituality without being a member of any specific religious affiliation, and even the most religious person may feel spiritually bereft.

The true purpose of religion is to enhance spirituality through ritual and practice. This is accomplished when a person approaches his or her religion as a way to enter the great mystery, to become aware of the sacredness of all life. Religion can become a barrier to spirituality when it insists on narrow, judgmental dogma, and estranges its followers from a sense of connection with the Divine.

Religion serves us best as a vehicle to nourish and develop our spirituality. It is possible, however, to get too caught up in the vehicle, the religious practice, while losing sight of the destination, spirituality, which is communion with the Divine and compassion for all.

For modern, academically oriented professionals, like physicians and health care workers, spirituality is often a difficult subject. Our training is framed by science. In Western culture especially, we depend on logical, analytical, and rational approaches, and for good reason.

These approaches have successfully ushered in a host of life-changing improvements in health care and technology.

While honouring science and the mind, our cultural tendency urges us to devalue belief and mystery, but the result is costly: We're left spiritually starved and out of balance. Some of life's most difficult questions are the spiritual ones. What is the purpose of life? Where does real meaning come from? What is of real value in our lives? If there truly is a God who loves us, how could there be so much suffering and unfairness in the world?

Part of our addiction to the busyness of life is an attempt to prevent ourselves from thinking about our mortality, the inevitable fact of our own death. But when we keep ourselves too busy to consider the purpose of our existence, our lives cease to have meaning.

Strangely, it is only when we fully accept the reality of our mortality that we truly begin to live. This is the point at which we begin to enter into and learn about the spiritual dimension of our humanity. As French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin remarked, "We are not physical beings having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a physical experience." Our spirituality is our true essence. It is that part of our life which relates to our soul, which from a spiritual perspective is connected to the Divine.

Labels: Alan Shelton, God, mortality, religion, spirituality

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Our civil religion defines us

By Lloyd Omdahl,
Published Saturday, July 14, 2007

The issue of separation of church and state reared its divisive head in Fargo when the City Commission voted to move a monument proclaiming the Ten Commandments off of city property. Defenders immediately circulated petitions to initiate an ordinance that would prohibit removal of any monument that had been on city property over 40 years.

The 40-year provision will not save the monument. Court rulings have been fairly clear on the issue, requiring the inclusion of artifacts and sacred objects of other religions to demonstrate the neutrality of government toward all religions. In other words, the Ten Commandments must be secularized.

Centuries of experience with oppression arising out of an unholy integration of government and religion provide plenty of arguments for defending separation of church and state. Nevertheless, we have seen a growing affinity for integrating religion and government.

It isn’t that the merging of religion and government is something new in America. Over the past four centuries, Christian denominations have left their mark on the public square in a wide variety of ways. As a consequence, the idea of a Christian nation (perhaps an oxymoron) has grown into a civil religion.

In his recent book, Who Are We?, Prof. Samuel Huntington, a highly respected Harvard political science professor, discusses civil religion and explains that “civil religion enables Americans to bring together their secular politics and their religious society, to marry God and country, so as to give religious sanction to their patriotism…”

He saw four manifestations of civil religion in the United States.

1 The belief that the American system of governments rests on a religious base. This view is common coin among religious leaders looking for a rationale to justify a greater integration of church and state.

2 The belief that Americans are God’s chosen people. Emanating from the Old Testament, this myth has been used to justify several wars and genocide in the name of “Manifest Destiny.” (Example: Within 15 years of establishing their Godly “city on the hill” at Plymouth, the Christian colonists slaughtered the neighboring Pequot tribe for its land and praised God for delivering the Indians into their hands.)

3 Religious allusions and symbols in rituals and ceremonies are commonplace. On the political scene today, we see numerous references to God, faith and prayer, invoked to meet political and religious expectations.

4 Public ceremonies take on a religious flavor. The best examples of this characteristic are the presidential inaugurations featuring prominent religious figures invited to bless these secular events.

According to Huntington, America’s civil religion is a nondenominational, national religion that is not expressly a Christian religion, even though it is Christian in its origin. Then he offers his most compelling observation. Two words do not appear in civil religion statements and ceremonies, he says. Those two words are “Jesus Christ.”

“While the American Creed is Protestantism without God, the American civil religion is Christianity without Christ,” he concludes.

The addition of religious symbols and rituals to the public square, such as monuments of the Ten Commandments, gives strength and legitimacy to a national civil religion that becomes a substitute for personal faith. In the final analysis, all of the meaningless religious rhetoric and trappings in the public square are alien to the teachings of the New Testament.

Omdahl is former N.D. lieutenant governor and retired University of North Dakota political science teacher.

Labels: Christianity, civil religion, Jesus, Lloyd Omdahl, Samuel Huntington, separation of church and state, Unites States

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Friday, July 13, 2007

Doing Small Things With Great Love

This short clip of Mother Theresa speaking contains her now-famous advice to do small things, but do them with great love. An inspirational treat!

Labels: love, Mother Theresa, service

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The Early Science of Altruism

By Brandon Keim
July 12, 2007

Treat others as you'd like to be treated: that's the Golden Rule, present in some variation in just about every major culture and religion -- and, perhaps, coded into the structure of our brains.

The biological aspects of altruism are a new and exciting field of scientific research. Perhaps the insights gained in these early days will someday help us understand our own virtues and vices, and illuminate some way of nourishing a healthier, happier society -- or, from another perspective, a healthier, happier superorganism.

That, at least, is the hope -- and Jordan Grafman, chief of cognitive neuroscience at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, was kind enough to talk with me about research into human altruism and what it all might mean for our future....

Traditionally, with language, object, and face recognition, we know a fair amount about those. But it’s more challenging and difficult to investigate altruism or attitudes or moral cognition.... But scientists have pressed forwards, and it’s a burgeoning literature now.

On animal studies into altruism, Grafman cautions that they involve behaviors more limited than our own: when animals help each other out -- when, for example, one bird combs another for parasites -- the reward, such as a reciprocated grooming, is almost immediate. Altruism in humans is more far-sighted, and may not involve any reward at all.

Studies have shown that altruistic behavior activates the pleasure centers that reward our most basic, immediate urges for food and sex -- something that has helped to preserve these tendencies, said Grafman, but not enough to explain the complexities of our selflessness.

It feels good, for lack of a better way to say it, so you’re more likely to do that again. But that isn’t selective *for* altruistic behavior. It gets fired off in response to lots of activities.... It's not unique to altruism. There must be other brain areas that the system partners with, leading to human behaviors in particular.

That’s likely to be an area in the prefrontal cortex. Certainly in the frontal lobes we seem to have structures activated when people feel more bonding to another person or entity. That area is also activated during altruistic behavior.... That area is very important for altruistic behavior, particularly when you have to overcome constraint -- for example, you want to give, but it’s going to cost you something. The anteriopolar prefrontal cortex is one of the most evolved areas of the brain, and it’s just a very very important part for overcoming primitive responses -- [i.e.,] I’m going to do something for that person and get something immediately back....

No animal gives to an institution, whereas we’re willing to donate to United Way, which will distribute money in the future, in a way you’re not aware, to other entities, and you won’t get anything directly back.... So that, in some sense, is an internalized agreement. You give, and you'll be rewarded because you have a belief system that says it’s good. That’s human. That is human.

There’s another approach that has forced this into the open: neuroeconomic research. It's an area that’s taken classic economic experiments and put people in a brain scanner while doing these kinds of tasks. It's pushing this whole literature about higher-level human behavior. Much of economics is concerned with human economic behaviors in societies -- that's a social behavior.... Another component to this is evolutionary psychology, biology. It’s a good thing, but challenging and frightening -- the more we make this mundane, it takes the magical aspects out of that, in terms of why people give.... It’s big for day to day life.

A lot of our mores -- from religions, for example, ethics, principles -- were first put into the bibles of different religions: the Koran, New Testament, a variety of other documents serve as foundations for religious, general cultural practices. Many ethical principles, people believe to some degree, were handed down by higher authority; if that’s the case, we’re making an argument, that the brain developing in such a way that it enacts these behaviors partly because of the way that the biology of the brain is designed. It forces people to think about the issue in a more experimental way -- a testable way, rather than a more mystical one. And a lot of people live lives based on mystical ideas.

This will cause people to debate and think, and that’s good. We’ve always done that, without biology, as new ideas come. Now biology is going to put in its two cents. That alone makes it provocative. Then there are other issues that come up. In a sense, also provocative: the more we know, the more we can record information related to these kinds of behaviors, the better we can assess or predict them in others, without people telling us what they're going to do.

Labels: altruism, biology, brain, Brandon Keim, Golden Rule, Jordan Grafman, neuroeconomic research, principles, reward

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Thursday, July 12, 2007

The Bliss We Can't Buy

By Robert J. Samuelson
Wednesday, July 11, 2007; Page A15

Ponder now the happiness gap.

In 1974, economist Richard Easterlin pointed out that beyond a certain point -- presumably when people's basic needs for food, shelter, public order and work are met -- greater wealth does not generate more national happiness. The America of 2007 is far richer than the America of 1977. Life expectancy is 78 years, up from 74 years. Our homes are bigger and crammed with more paraphernalia (microwave ovens, personal computers, flat-panel TVs). But happiness is stuck.

In 1977, 35.7 percent of Americans rated themselves "very happy," 53.2 percent "pretty happy" and 11 percent "not too happy," reports the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. In 2006, the figures are similar: 32.4 percent "very happy," 55.9 percent "pretty happy" and 11.7 percent "not too happy." Likewise, in most advanced countries, self-reported happiness has been flat for decades.

Hordes of scholars are asking why. Consider Cornell University economist Robert Frank's new book, "Falling Behind." He argues that rising affluence condemns us to self-defeating consumption contests. People want ever-bigger homes, because their friends have ever-bigger homes. But the extra pleasure of owning these grander homes is muted, because (yes) all our friends have them, too. Meanwhile, the added debt to buy the house may make us more anxious; and we may regret sacrificing some leisure -- working harder to buy the bigger home.

Greater individual wealth does not bring greater collective welfare. Moving farther out into suburbia for a bigger home increases traffic congestion and our commutes. Roads grow more clogged, pollution worsens. We engage in "behaviors that are smart for one, dumb for all," Frank writes.

Superficially, Frank seems convincing. The trouble is that he ignores history. The behavior he describes isn't new. A mobile society such as ours is inherently stressful. People rise and fall.

Americans have always been acquisitive and rank-conscious. In "Democracy in America" (1840), Alexis de Tocqueville observed: "Besides the good things which he possesses, [the American] every instant fancies a thousand others. . . . This thought fills him with anxiety, fear, and regret."

The psychology of prosperity -- striving, taking risks -- feeds on ambition and insecurity. Our system often seems an insane rat race. But over time, it has created huge gains in material well-being. Air conditioning may not have made people in the South and elsewhere happier. But it surely has made them more comfortable.

True, there's an economic disconnect today. Despite obvious prosperity, including 8 million new jobs since mid-2003, consumer confidence is subdued. But the explanation, I think, lies neither in Frank's elaborate theory nor in several popular culprits -- higher gasoline prices and the housing slump. Instead, I'd cite two underlying causes.

First, economic insecurity has increased. Companies are quicker to fire. Median job tenure for men age 45 to 54 dropped from about 13 years in 1983 to eight years in 2006, reports economist Rob Valletta of the San Francisco Fed. People have more cause to worry -- and they do.

Second, Americans compare the present with the immediate past. The economic boom of the late 1990s conditioned people to expect a blissful future. Clearly, that hasn't arrived. People are disappointed because reality doesn't match the promise.

Still, even the 1990s economic boom didn't produce a happiness boom; the survey figures barely budged. Nor has the growing income inequality since the 1970s produced an unhappiness boom. Between the richest and poorest Americans, happiness gaps have always been large. But income differences in the middle class involve modest or nonexistent differences in happiness. The old adage is true: Money can't buy happiness.

We ultimately get satisfaction from our relations with family and friends, the love we give or receive, the meaning we find in work, service, religion or hobbies. The strongest survey finding is that married people are happier than singles, particularly widowers and divorcees, says Tom Smith of the National Opinion Research Center. An estimated 42.5 percent of married couples say they are "very happy," compared with 18 percent of the divorced.

The popularity of happiness research suggests that economists and other social scientists think they can devise public policies to elevate the nation's feel-good quotient. This is an illusion. Happiness depends heavily on individual character and national culture. Some people will complain no matter how great their fortune; others will smile through the worst of times. In international comparisons, the United States ranks lower in happiness than some smaller nations (Denmark, Ireland, Sweden) but much higher than many large countries with paternalistic welfare states (France, Germany, Italy). Governments can provide health care. But they cannot outlaw despair or mandate euphoria.

It is novelists and philosophers, not social scientists, who provide a deeper understanding of happiness. For better or worse, there are limits to reengineering the human spirit.

Labels: family, happiness, love, National Opinion Research Center, prosperity, religion, Robert Frank, Robert J. Samuelson, wealth

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'Christian' Nations Dominate World’s Best Religious Freedom Spots

By
Michelle Vu
Christian Post Reporter
Tue, Jul. 10 2007 08:39 AM ET

WASHINGTON – Countries with Christian backgrounds have the best religious freedom record, according to the initial findings of an extensive report on the status of religious freedom in the world on Monday.

A glimpse into the findings of Religious Freedom in the World 2007, the upcoming book to be released next year, showed that countries with a Christian background were ranked highest for level of religious freedom observed in the country. The four countries given the highest religious freedom rating of one are Hungary, Ireland, Estonia, and the United States.

On the other hand, countries run by atheist government such as communist China, Vietnam, and North Korea were ranked in the bottom two tiers (ratings of six and seven).

Officially atheist countries were joined at the bottom of the religious freedom pole by countries with Islam background such as Pakistan, Palestinian areas, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Turkmenistan.

“In general, either extreme religious or extreme secular state together comprise most of the world’s religiously restricted parties,” commented Paul Marshall, general editor of Religious Freedom in the World 2007, during a press conference Monday.

Marshall is the senior fellow at the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom. He is also the author of over 20 books on religion and politics, especially religious freedom.

“In the Muslim majority world, one faces continuing problems in religious freedom,” Marshall noted. However, he pointed out that “one needs to be careful not to overdo this.”

The survey analyzing over 100 countries and territories found anomalies in the correlation between religious freedom and a country’s religious background.

For example, the African nations of Mali and Senegal – both having an Islamic background – ranked higher in terms of religious freedom than countries with Christian background such as Germany, France, Greece, Kenya, and the Philippines.

Yet Mali and Senegal were the rare exceptions; almost all the countries listed in the top three tiers for religious freedom were Christian nations and the countries with the worst religious freedom were Muslim-dominated countries or Buddhist-dominated ones headed by secular governments.

In addition, the survey also details strong linkage between levels of religious freedom and degree of economic freedom and enterprise.

Survey findings discovered a correlation between a country’s low religious freedom status and low economic freedom. In other words, a country with religious freedom violation tended to also have restricted economic freedom.

Other findings in the survey include: violations of religious freedom worldwide are massive, widespread, and, in many parts of the world, intensifying; radical Islam is the largest growing threat to religious freedom; and events in the past year in Iraq caused the country to rank among those with the worst religious freedom records for the first time since the era of Saddam Hussein.

Nina Shea, the director of the Center for Religious Freedom and a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, believes using political leverage to press a country to honor the basic right of religious freedom is more effective than inter-religious dialogue.

Shea explained to The Christian Post that many times religious dialogue occurs with the wrong people who have no control over sectarian violence. Moreover, the government of religious freedom violating states often feign to be interested in negotiating to “buy time” to consolidate its power rather than having genuine interest to change, Shea pointed out.

The Hudson Institute’s The Center for Religious Freedom is the sponsor of the upcoming book Religious Freedom in the World 2007 to be release next year. Seventy-nine religious freedom experts and scholars contributed to the compilation of essays and analyses of 102 countries and territories.

Additional comments during the presentation of the survey’s initial findings were provided by Brian Grim, senior research fellow in Religion and World Affairs at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life; Theodore Malloch, founder and chairman of Spiritual Enterprise Institute; Zainab Al-Suwaij, co-founder and executive director of the American Islamic Congress; and Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.

Labels: atheism, Christian, economic freedom, Michelle Vu, religious freedom

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Survey: Muslim Americans, White Evangelicals Similar in Religious Fervor

By
Jennifer Riley
Christian Post Reporter
Tue, Jul. 10 2007 04:37 PM ET

The religious intensity of Muslim Americans is most similar to white evangelicals and black Protestants, according to a recent analysis of a landmark survey.

Although believers of Islam and Christianity are often portrayed as polar opposites or even antagonists, the new study on how Muslims compare to mainstream Americans showed that in many aspects Muslims and white evangelicals in America share many commonalities.

The Pew Research Center found that 72 percent of Muslim Americans, 80 percent of white evangelicals, and 87 percent of black Protestants say religion is “very important” in their lives.
These high percentages stand in contrasts to Catholics, only 49 percent of which said religion was “very important” in their life, and white mainline Protestants, only 36 percent of which responded likewise.

Moreover, Muslim Americans are similar to white evangelicals and black Protestants in their tendency to personally identify themselves first by their religion before their nationality.

Sixty-two percent of evangelicals, 55 percent of black Protestants and 47 percent of Muslims think of themselves first as a follower of their religion before describing themselves as an American.

In comparison, only 31 percent of Catholics and 22 percent of white mainline Protestants said they foremost consider themselves Christian before an American.

Religious holy books are also regarded highly by Muslims and the two Christian groups. They are more likely to regard their holy book as the word of God to be taken literally, word-for-word than Catholics and white mainline Protestants.

The majority of white evangelicals (66 percent) and black Protestants (68 percent) said they take a literal view of the Bible, while half of Muslim Americans consider the Koran as the literal word of God.

The percentage of those believing the Bible should be taken literally as the Word of God dropped under 30 percent for both Catholics and white mainline Protestants.

“None of this is to suggest that Muslims and Christians do not have distinctly different religious beliefs and practices,” commented the analysis’ authors Robert Ruby and Greg Smith.

“Nevertheless, the resemblance in religious intensity of Muslims to many groups that might think of themselves as wholly unlike Muslims is striking.”

However, Muslims and white evangelicals are markedly different when it comes to their political orientation. Muslim Americas are more politically liberal than evangelicals and are similar to black Protestants, secular Americans and white mainline Protestants.

Only 11 percent of Muslims say they are Republicans or lean Republican - a figure similar to black Protestants (10 percent). In contrast, 57 percent of white evangelicals responded that they are Republicans or lean politically right.

Muslim American’s left-leaning political stance was displayed during the 2004 presidential election where eight of ten Muslim voters (85 percent) supported John Kerry – a value similar to black Protestants (86 percent) and secular voters (67 percent).

Yet on the issue of homosexuality, Muslims take a similar position to white evangelicals with 61 percent saying the lifestyle should be discouraged by society. Similarly, 63 percent of white evangelical are oppose to homosexuality, according to Pew Forum.

“In many ways, Muslim Americans seem like a mosaic of many other American groups, sharing certain traits with these other groups while not being identical to any of them,” concluded the study’s authors. “They are anything but wholly apart; indeed, in important respects, Muslim Americans reflect the religious and political values held by most other Americans.”

Labels: Americans, evangelicals, God, Jennifer Riley, Muslims, Pew Research Center survey, protestants, religion

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Most see God-creation link: Poll

Jul 03, 2007 01:58 PM

Canadian Press
OTTAWA —

Canadians may not be as religious as Americans, but a new poll suggests they are not prepared to rule out God’s essential role in creation.

The Canadian Press-Decima Research survey suggests that 60 per cent of Canadians believe God had either a direct or indirect role in creating mankind, shattering the myth that Canadians had long ago put their faith strictly behind the scientific explanation for creation.

The poll suggests Canadians divide in essentially three groups on the issue of creation: 34 per cent of those polled said humans developed over millions of years under a process guided by God; 26 per cent said God created humans alone within the last 10,000 years or so; and 29 per cent said they believe evolution occurred with no help from God.

“These results reflect an essential Canadian tendency,” said pollster Bruce Anderson. “We are pretty secular, but pretty hesitant to embrace atheism.”

The belief that God had a direct or indirect role in creation was widespread among the 1,000 respondents questioned between June 21 and 24. A majority of those polled held this view in every region of the country, in rural and urban areas, and regardless of education.

And there were a few surprises: Conservatives were more likely than Liberals to say that God had no part in the process, and Alberta, regarded as the birthplace of social conservatism, had one of the lowest levels of beliefs for strict creationism at 22 per cent.

But in this controversial area, the devil is in the breakdown of the numbers.

For instance, while Liberal party voters were more likely than Conservatives to credit God with some contribution to creation, Conservative voters were less likely to write God out altogether. Only 22 per cent of Tory respondents said God had no role, as opposed to 31 per cent of Liberals.

Liberal respondents were far more likely to be what could be termed “soft evolutionists” or “soft creationists,” with 41 per cent saying God guided the process of human development, as opposed to 34 per cent of Conservatives seeing creation in those terms.

Regionally, Quebec respondents were by far the most likely to say God’s role in creation was a delusion, with 40 per cent saying the evolutionary process had no interference from an intelligent designer.

British Columbia respondents were the next sub-group who could be termed strict evolutionists, with 31 per cent saying God was not involved. Least likely to hold this view were respondents in the Prairie provinces — 21 per cent.

The findings suggest the least educated were most likely to be creationists, as were respondents living in rural Canada.

Among respondents without a high-school diploma, 37 per cent said they believed God alone created humans less than 10,000 years ago, whereas only 15 per cent of university-educated respondents were strict creationists.

Rural respondents also had a plurality who believed in strict creationism at 34 per cent, whereas only 22 per cent of urban dwellers said they believed God alone created humans.
Anderson said the findings suggest Canadians lack consensus on creation, but also don’t view the issue as polarizing.

“It’s more as though for many, these feelings are unresolved,” he said. “We believe in a higher being, we know what we don’t know, are comfortable not knowing, and choose not to press our views upon one another.”

That is not the case in the United States, where similar polls have suggested Americans are more polarized on the subject. In a recent U.S. poll, 45 per cent said God created humans, and 40 per cent said evolution was God guided. Only 15 per cent said God played no part in creation.

The Canadian Press-Decima Research survey is considered accurate within 3.1 percentage points, 19 times in 20.

Labels: Canada, Conservative, creation, God, Liberal

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The possibility of God

Religious studies is enjoying a boom. But in a multicultural society, what is it now for?
Victoria Neumark reports
Tuesday July 10, 2007
The Guardian

Niqabs in the classroom, creationism knocking at the door of the science lab, the threat of suicide bombers: big challenges face religious education (RE) in UK classrooms. A critical report by Ofsted last month demanded that RE "contributes strongly to pupils' understanding of the changing role of religion, diversity and community cohesion". It said children should be taught more about religion's role in a modern world under the threat of terrorism - and that they should learn that religion is not always a force for good.

How timely, then, that Oxford University has appointed its first professor of religious education for 27 years. Neither a woolly-jumpered vicar nor a wild-eyed evangelist, Terence Copley is an enthusiast for the very virtues of tolerance and reasoned discussion that Ofsted advocates. "We shouldn't run away from difference in a false and superficial attempt to create multicultural harmony," he says.

Copley has been a Quaker for decades, "though I am very happy to site myself in my family's Methodist tradition". He taught for 15 years in schools in the Midlands and north and ran a world-beating department of religious education at Exeter University from 1997. He believes in God -and in opening minds.

"I've learned a lot from going to other faiths' places of worship. I've not just looked on, but felt the ripples of experience," he says. "That's more challenging; it's real. But as a Christian I can worship with Jews, Muslim, Hindus, Sikhs very happily. At the same time, it's important not to pretend that big differences don't exist." As Ofsted acknowledges, the political and social significance of religion is changing. Is RE's potential to help build a more cohesive society being realised?

Copley is optimistic. The UK's multicultural society is a wonderful resource. He says RE teachers have to get stuck into teaching religion as the ways in which humanity searches for truth. "We've got to teach the possibility of God, and it's up to children to accept or reject it."

Sticking point

Copley says he is unapologetic about "the three-letter word": God. For non-believers - whose children still have to take RE until they are 16 - this is the obvious sticking point. "In all my years of teaching, I always made sure God was in there and talked about. People might find it embarrassing, but it is the key to engagement."

Ofsted criticised the twin aims prescribed by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, which straitjacket RE in schools: learning about religion and learning from religion. Copley would replace them with "engaging with religion and other life stances". RE lessons could feature science teachers talking about Darwin or the local imam explaining what the experience of Allah means to Muslims. "You should never directly attack or dissolve any child's views in the classroom," he says. Or, as Miriam Rosen, Ofsted's director of education, said: "More needs to be done if the subject is to develop in students a more profound understanding of the significance of religious commitment and diversity and its impact on society."

Copley's recent book, Indoctrination, Education and God: The Struggle for the Mind, looks at how indoctrination, secular or religious, stops education, stops questioning and stops thinking. "RE should introduce children to a big human debate. What children don't like is having answers rammed down their throats."

Young people nowadays are fascinated by religion and moral issues. Ofsted reports RE booming after decades of indifference. Secondary schools hunt RE teachers; primaries are crying out for in-service training. Oxford, boasting the country's largest theology department, has started a new PGCE in RE. Though student interest is at a peak, to some RE remains halfway between a hot potato and a big yawn. Copley is determined to challenge that. "Who wants to have on their tombstone the worthy but dull words: 'He or she was a useful RE teacher'?" he asks. "But we can't treat RE as so potentially divisive that we dare not discuss anything, either." He agrees with Ofsted that RE teacher training is due an intellectual upgrade. Terrorism, creationism, the veil in Islam and global warming should all be grist to the RE classroom mill. "You need a pinboard or whiteboard, with The Good, The Bad and The Dotty items from religion in the news up on it each day."

The practice of palming off RE on the sports teacher who goes to church must end. "In Britain, we tend to see religion as a hobby and God like a fire extinguisher, there for the last resort. But most of the world is not like that. How can we expect people to understand that some will die for religion if we portray it as so bland?"

Climate change

All in all, he says, "I've had a great time". With more than 40 books under his belt, including guides to teaching biblical narrative, biographies of Thomas Arnold of Rugby and Simon Wiesenthal, and a series of mystery quest novels for children, he is now working on Inventing an RE for the 22nd Century. This will focus on the spiritual and social results of climate change.

"We'll need to change, to be more aware of locality, to abandon our feelings of mastery, which are based on living inside 90% of the time and controlling our environment; we need to become more accustomed to living in the weather ... What is our place in the universe as a whole?"

As for contention over the veil, Copley says: "It's clear that within a global religion like Islam, practice varies and culture plays an important part ... The majority of British Muslim women don't find it necessary to cover their face ... This is a debate within Islam as well as the wider UK. RE should note the different Muslim views involved and the legitimate concerns of non-Muslim members of our society. But the central aim in teaching Islam in RE shouldn't get lost in veils. It should be to get children to explore Islam's experience of the centrality of God. British culture does not take God very seriously, but Islam does."

It's all in the great liberal tradition. But still, there is one sticking point. Respecting difference, demanding equality, Copley, along with Ofsted, firmly espouses compulsory RE. "There is no legal, moral, educational right to exclude RE from children's school experience. I'm passionate that RE should not have a withdrawal clause. If it is education not indoctrination, there should be no right of withdrawal. The withdrawal clause should be removed from RE or, logically, extended to embrace all subjects."

Spirit of the times

1944: The Education Act legislates for "religious instruction" (the classroom subject plus school worship). Parents are allowed to withdraw children. An 1870 clause prohibiting denominational teaching except in denominational schools was retained.

1988: Education Reform Act now uses "religious education" to refer to classroom subject only. World religions must be taught. RE required "to take into account that the religious traditions of the UK are in the main Christian". Withdrawal clause retained. RE is outside the national curriculum, with locally determined syllabuses, but must be taught to all children in state schools from entry to 16.

1997: Introduction of short-course GCSE

2004: Qualifications and Curriculum Authority national framework for RE published 2006: QCA publishes schemes of work for ages 5-14.

2005-06: Entries to short-course RE GCSE: 239,000; GCSE: 145,200 (more than music, equal to PE); A-level: 14,900

Labels: children, God, morality, religion, religious education, Terence Copley, Victoria Neumark

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Discussing faith in Istanbul

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

ANDREA GIAMBARTOLOMEI
ISTANBUL

- Turkish Daily NewsThe organizers of the International Summer school on Religion and Public Life (ISSRPL) believe there is no better place than Turkey to talk about religion, its politics and its characteristics.

For this very reason the ISSRPL chose Istanbul as the place to bring together over 20 fellows from around the world to talk about faith and public life this month. The summer school was organized by the American Jewish Committee, with the support of the united States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Bilgi University, where the summer school is being hosted from July 2-13.

“The ISSRPL is a five-year-old project that each year takes place in a different country exploring the main differences in the relations between these elements,” Ari Gordon, assistant director of inter-religious affairs at the American Jewish Committee told the Turkish Daily News.

As its name suggests, this summer school is international in nature, bringing together teachers and fellows from Bosnia, Pakistan, Israel, Palestine, Nigeria and, of course, Turkey. Each one brings different experiences and values. But the education they receive during the summer school is not merely theoretical. “One category is context-related, so we can see how state, ethos and religion come together; then there is the practical field composed of discussions, religious services, visits; and then there are the informal moments, when everybody can apply what they learn,” said Gordon. According to the organizers, this last part is important for the process of building relationships that transcend the limits imposed by religious and ethnic identities.

Adam Seligman, professor in the Department of Religion at Boston University told the TDN that the aim of the ISSRPL is three-fold: To develop mutual understanding, to teach how to communicate with other cultures without being offensive and finally to help participants understand more about their own backgrounds.

“The fellows not only learn something about others but also about themselves and their way of acting with others,” he said. Seligman was one of the instructors during the summer school in Istanbul.

This year's summer school theme examined the comparative perspective on State, Ethnos and Religion, devoting particular attention to the different historical and social features. The theme is very coherent to the local context, Turkey, where secularism is a fundamental principle of the modern republic. Selma ?evkli, a Turkish fellow at the summer school and student in Bilgi University pointed to the characteristic of Turkish secularism.

“It happens that sometimes the State and secularism encroach upon private life and personal beliefs. Often in Turkey to separate religion and politics is not enough by itself, some kinds of people hate all forms of religious expression,” she said.

Professor Seligman underlined that “there is no a necessary connection between secularism and a state that limits personal freedom. There is a different way to apply secularism and we are looking to find a good way that respects everybody,” he said.

Participants reflected on the fact that respect comes through mutual understanding and recognition of others identities and faiths. R?zaY?ld?r?m, a Ph.D. student in the History Department of Ankara's Bilkent University, told the TDN about issues the Alevi community faces in Turkey. "Even if the Alevis in Turkey are 15 million people, their are not recognized as a religion," said Y?ld?r?m.

A recent poll conducted by European Values Survey showed that Turkish people are still uneasy about freedom of religion, one of most important democratic principles. Only 16 percent of Turkish people interviewed agree to that value.

“We need to find a way of living together,” said ?evkli.

Andrea Giambartolomei is interning at the Turkish Daily News within the framework of Forum of European Journalist Students (FEJS) exchange program.

Labels: Andrea Giambartolomei, Internation Summer School on Religion and Public Life, Istanbul, religion, religious freedom, secular, teachers, Turkey

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Monday, July 09, 2007

First Freedom

Preying on prayer.
By Paul Marshall

In his recent speech at the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C., President George W. Bush once again stressed the fundamental importance of religious freedom. It is “the very first protection offered in America’s Bill of Rights. It is a precious freedom. It is a basic compact under which people of faith agree not to impose their spiritual vision on others, and in return to practice their own beliefs as they see fit.”

Unfortunately, despite the presidential emphasis, these fine words seldom shape the foreign-policy bureaucracy. Promoting religious freedom is too often reduced to the noble task of helping those in prison, or occasionally treated as a sop to the president’s religious constituents.

It is seldom treated as an integral part of foreign affairs: Instead we find what Tom Farr calls in his forthcoming World of Faith and Freedom “a strong diplomatic distaste for understanding religion as a policy matter.” Yet there is a reason America’s Founding Fathers placed religious freedom as the very first freedom in the First Amendment: They viewed it as central, as a key to other rights. The Hudson Institute’s just-completed international survey of religious freedom shows they were right.

The president correctly tied religious freedom to the threat of radical Islam, to helping “the forces of moderation win the great struggle against extremism that is now playing out across the broader Middle East. We’ve seen the expansion of the concept of religious freedom and individual rights in every region of the world — except one.”

Our survey shows that the Muslim world, especially the greater Middle East, is the most religiously repressive region, and that that repression is expanding. One of the greatest barriers in this great struggle is that many Muslims who advocate interpretations of Islam that favor human freedom are silenced by threats from extremists, or charged by governments, with heresy, apostasy, or insulting Islam.

Nor is religious freedom merely a Western preoccupation: It is not confined to any area or continent. Despite the problems in the Islamic world, there are free Muslim countries such as Mali or Senegal. They, together with Japan, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa score better in this survey than do Belgium, France, Germany, or Greece. The most egregious persecuting states tend to be either Communist, such as North Korea and China, nationalist, such as Burma and Eritrea, or radical Islamist, such as Iran and Saudi Arabia. They also tend to be those that act against U.S. interests. Conversely, those with good records are likely to be good U.S. allies.

While Western Europe is still one of the freest regions of the world, the situation is worsening and most countries score worse on religious freedom than they do for civil liberties in general. The reasons for this — continuing religious discrimination, increasingly aggressive secular ideologies, and an increase in religiously demarcated violence — illustrate and exacerbate the continent’s increasing tensions.

Religious freedom also correlates highly with other human rights, such as Freedom House’s civil-liberty index (.862) and political-liberties index (.822), and with Reporters without Borders press-freedom index (.804). Countries with good religious records also have comparatively little social conflict, remain democratic, and are unlikely to become failed states.

There is strong relation with economic wellbeing; both of men and women, and religiously based social restrictions on women are one of the major determinants of their economic status. One major reason for this is the strong linkage with economic freedom: Our religious-freedom scores have a correlation of .743 with the Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal economic-freedom index. This is more than a finding that rich countries tend to have other good things as well.

Religious freedom not only correlates well with positive economic outcomes but also actually contributes toward them since it promotes the accumulation of social and spiritual capital. Good religious policies, good economic policies, and good economic outcomes go together.

Our modern world is becoming increasingly religious, religion shapes countries, and political and economic freedoms require religious freedom. Realistic foreign policy requires that action on the first freedom be moved from the fringes of diplomacy and given a centrality that reflects its growing importance.

— Paul Marshall is senior fellow at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom and the editor of the forthcoming book Religious Freedom in the World 2007 .

Labels: economics, first amendment, foreign policy, George Bush, Muslim world, Paul Marshall, radical Islam, religious freedom

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Sunday, July 08, 2007

God in Hollywood’s rear-view mirror

Posted by dpulliam

For some solid reading on what is bound to be a couple of slow days after the 4th of July celebration, head over to this fun Los Angeles Times piece on how God has been portrayed on the big screen. Reporter Paul Cullum covers the historical spectrum of the various times God has been played or portrayed by Hollywood.

Cullum’s news hook is the recent release of Evan Almighty and the portrayal of the Almighty by Morgan Freeman. It’s interesting to note that Freeman refuses to do interviews on this or participate in publicity efforts because, according to the film’s director Tom Shadyac, he would not know how to answer the questions. If that’s truly the case, it’s a refreshing answer.

The piece contains a fair amount of snark, some of it deserved since this is Hollywood, but also some insightful comparisons of the various ways God has been portrayed by filmmakers over the years:

In his current turn as God, Freeman displays a fashionably New Testament demeanor, eschewing a white suit and tie for beige sweaters and breathable fabrics, in keeping with the film’s benignly ecological message. (God apparently shops at Banana Republic.) Shadyac says it’s the actor’s confidence and rich vein of humor that make him a casting agent’s, well, godsend, and allow him to embody “the full rainbow spectrum of humanity.” This God is part Zen master, part Yoda (and so far he’s been unable to work box-office miracles for “Evan”).

For as much as Freeman in the role of God may seem like typecasting, he is actually the culmination of a couple of long-standing traditions of how the Almighty has been depicted on-screen. In the beginning, there was the all-powerful God, usually manifested as a deep, resonant, disembodied voice. As religion gave way to a less rigorous spirituality, God returned as a more irreverent, comical figure, often cast for maximum irony — in this case, the notion of a Black God, which dates at least as far back as “The Green Pastures” in 1936 and its character of “De Lawd.” The modern turning point was George Burns in “Oh, God!” in 1977, which recast the ancient God of Jehovah as a vaudeville wiseacre.

There is also some interesting commentary on the ways the devil and the Prophet Mohammed have been portrayed (or not portrayed at all in this case), along with the various ways God has been portrayed with simply a loud voice. At times the piece reads like a listing from IMDB, but the thoroughness isn’t all that bad. I had to keep fighting off urges to add movies to our Netflex queue.

Labels: filmmakers, God, Los Angeles Times, Paul Cullum

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5Q+1 exclusive: Mother Teresa has been ‘beautified’

Thursday, July 5, 2007

Posted by Douglas LeBlanc

Kim Lawton is managing editor and correspondent for Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly on PBS, where she has worked since 1997. She began her career as a religion writer by covering the fall of PTL’s Jim Bakker in the late 1980s. She has written for United Press International, Religion News Service, News Network International, Christianity Today and International Media Service.

She answered GetReligion’s 5Q+1 with characteristic self-effacing humor.

(1) Where do you get your news about religion?

I monitor AP and Religion News Service every day, along with skimming the highlights from the major papers. (I unabashedly steal news ideas from my fellow members of the Religion Newswriters Association-in the most ethical way, of course.) And I get deluged with news releases and “pitch calls” from religious folks all the time. Many of our viewers offer story suggestions on our website.

I also try to read the news services and publications tied to religious denominations and movements: Catholic News Service, National Catholic Reporter, Christianity Today, Charisma, Christian Century, the Forward, Jewish Weekly, Tricycle, Episcopal News Service, Ecumenical News International, just to name a few. I make an effort to glance at the what-seems-like billions of religion-oriented blogs, but that quickly gets exhausting. The very best way I get news is by keeping plugged into a wide network of people who are plugged into what’s going on in the world of religion. (And sorry, I’m not going to divulge who all is part of that!)

(2) What is the most important religion story right now that you think the mainstream media just do not get?

Sadly, there are many. I don’t think a lot of the reporters covering the conflicts in Iraq and the Middle East fully understand all the religious factors at play there. I also think much of the reporting about faith and politics here in the U.S. is too simplistic. So many political stories just don’t convey the complexity and nuances of the religious dimensions.

(3) What is the story that you will be watching carefully in the next year or two?

I’m watching the seemingly-growing acceptance of religion and religious expression in public life. One of the most interesting manifestations of that right now is the 2008 presidential election season (see answer #2). Then, there’s also the seemingly-growing atheist-secular backlash!

(4) Why is it important for journalists to understand the role of religion in our world today?

Faith has an impact on virtually every area of life. As a religion reporter, I have covered institutional religion, spirituality and worship, but I’ve also covered wars and politics, natural disasters, human rights, philanthropy, music, pop culture, travel, business, and yes, even fashion and sports! If you don’t “get religion,” you don’t fully get virtually all of the best, most compelling stories of our times.

(5) What is the funniest, most ironic twist that you have seen in a religion news story lately?

Funny? It’s not exactly lately, but one of my all time favorites: In reporting on the Vatican beatification ceremony for Mother Teresa, a local news anchor said that she was being “beautified.” It made me want to check the tape for telltale Botox marks.

Ironic? A couple of weeks ago, a coalition of moderate and progressive religious groups held a Washington news conference to release a new poll saying that the mainstream media don’t cover their leaders as much as they cover religious conservatives. (Of course, my program had covered every event and person they cited as examples of how they are ignored. But that’s not my major point of irony.) Two days later, one of the groups wouldn’t let me bring a TV camera into a major event they were sponsoring because they had promised an exclusive to CNN!

And it’s not just the liberals. The following week, I had to push to be allowed to bring a TV camera into the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting . . . even though the meeting was theoretically “open” to the media. And I wasn’t allowed to have a camera in a lunch meeting with Republican candidate Mike Huckabee, even though print reporters were allowed to be there. It’s a two-way street, people. If you want the media to do a good job covering you, you have to let us in to do our jobs!

Bonus: Do you have anything else you want to tell us about religion coverage in the mainstream news media?

Although the basic journalistic principles remain the same, expanding technologies are changing the way we cover religion. Visuals and audio are becoming more important, even in traditional text media. This is actually a strength for coverage of religion.

Bonus Bonus

This is the most fascinating, and at the same time, the most challenging beat in the world (see answer #4)!

Labels: Douglas LeBlanc, journalists, Kim Lawton, Mother Theresa, PBS, religion, world events

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God Is In The Details

The Washington Post summarized a new Pew Research Center survey that shows there are significant foundational shifts in Americans’ understanding of what constitutes marital happiness and success.

In a front-page story on Sunday, reporter Donna St. George looked at the most substantial attitudinal change over previous years:

Children rank as the highest source of personal fulfillment for their parents but have dropped to one of the least-cited factors in a successful marriage, according to a national survey to be released today.

In a study that shows how separately marriage and children are viewed, Americans expressed great passion for their sons and daughters but clearly did not see them as the glue of their adult relationships.

On a list of nine contributors to success in marriage, children were trumped by faithfulness, a happy sexual relationship, household chore-sharing, economic factors such as adequate income and good housing, common religious beliefs, and shared tastes and interests, the nonprofit Pew Research Center found.

The article is very interesting and shows just how rapidly Americans are separating sex, marriage and children. As you might expect — along with a reader who passed along the story — there are some dramatic religious ghosts lurking inbetween the paragraphs of this story.

You’re probably not as nerdy as I am, by which I mean I like to read every survey, Supreme Court opinion and piece of legislation I can get my hands on. So you may not want to read the 91-page report [PDF] on which St. George wrote her story. But if you did, you would find that religious differences correlate with major differences of opinion recorded in the survey.

White evangelical Protestants and people of all faiths who attend religious services at least weekly hold more conservative viewpoints on pretty much the whole gamut of questions asked on the Pew survey. This is true across all age groups. For example, white evangelical Protestants are more likely than other religious groups to consider premarital sex morally wrong.

They are more likely to consider the rise in unmarried childbearing and cohabitation bad for society and more likely to agree that a child needs both a mother and father to be happy. They also are more likely to say legal marriage is very important when a couple plans to have children together or plans to spend the rest of their lives together. Further, white evangelical Protestants are more likely than white mainline Protestants to say that divorce should be avoided except in extreme circumstances and to consider it better for the children when parents remain married, though very unhappy with each other. In sum, white evangelical Protestants have a strong belief in the importance of marriage and strong moral prescriptions against premarital sex and childbearing outside of marriage.

The pattern is the same among those of any faith who attend religious services more frequently, compared with less frequent attendees.

Another interesting division in the survey was between white evangelicals and white mainline Protestants. Seventy-three percent of evangelicals consider it important for couples to legally marry compared with only 35 percent of white mainline Protestants, 43 percent of Roman Catholics and 20 percent of seculars. Of those who attend church more regularly, 69 percent say marriage is very important compared with 36 percent of the less religious and 27 percent of those who never or almost never attend church services.

The Pew report tried to paint a picture of people with traditional marriage views and, again not surprisingly, the religious angle appears:

Compared with other parents, they’re more likely to be white, well-educated and well-off economically. They also have a distinctive religious profile. They are more likely to be Catholic (32% vs. 21%) than other parents. They also are more observant; some 47% attend church weekly or more often compared with 38% of other parents. Politically, they’re more inclined to be Republican than other parents, and, ideologically, they’re more inclined to be conservative.
A majority are happy with their lives — some 55% report being “very satisfied” with their lives overall, compared with just 40% of the rest of the population.

That last sentence is interesting. The headline for the Washington Post story is “To Be Happy In Marriage, Baby Carriage Not Required.” That headline may be eyecatching for the aging baby boomers who make up the paper’s audience, but I’m not sure it’s quite right.

Stories about surveys tend to have a very short shelf life, but perhaps other reports will look into some of the religious ghosts.

Labels: children, Donna St. George, evangelicals, happiness, marriage, Pew Research Center survey, protestants

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Friday, July 06, 2007

Reason, sympathy and human relations

Posted Jul 6, 2007
By Ishtiaq Ahmed

Can one agree on a principle that can serve as the basis for the establishment of genuine peace and harmony in the world? Some people think that if the whole world became good Muslims or good Christians it would create true brotherhood and sisterhood.

Now, considering that both groups comprise more than a billion each (Islam in its various sectarian forms is given as 1.3 billion and Christianity 1.9 billion) converting one to the other may take a very long time.

Also, we would still have 650 million Confucians (mainly Chinese), 700 million Hindus (including the upper castes, the other backward castes and the scheduled castes and tribes), 400 million Buddhists, 20 million Sikhs, 13 million Jews and then smaller groups such as the Bahais, Ahmadis, Jains, animists (if any have been allowed to survive) and others who have no specific religious affiliation or who choose to denounce their religious beliefs. To make humanity as a whole adhere to one comprehensive religious faith with its doctrines and dogmas is impossible.

One need not be very clever to realise that we will have to find a principle that does not require total conversion of people to a particular belief or detailed code of conduct in order to establish mutually respectful relations among all groups and individuals within them.

We very often tend to believe that within groups strong emotional bonds and ties of solidarity exist. This is a myth and has always been a myth. Except for very small communities comprising a few households close contact between people does not take place and when it does it is not always friendly and deeply loyal. We therefore need a principle which is simple and practical and one that everyone can accept as fair on the basis of which the foundations of mutual respect and peace can be laid.

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) proposed the ‘Categorical Imperative’ as the overarching principle that can serve such a purpose. The categorical imperative says that one should act only on those rules of action that one wants to be made universal laws. It would declare as immoral a rule of conduct that implies that one person may do something but another, in similar circumstances, may not. In other words, it demands consistency. In other words, what’s alright for me is alright for you if our relevant circumstances are similar.

Therefore, one cannot legitimately demand a ban on one religion without demanding the same for other religions, but one is perfectly justified in demanding that human rights violations should not occur in the name of religion and that should apply to all religions. Similarly if I can occupy someone’s home then it is alright for the other bloke to try to do the same. But of course I would not want him to do that, so it would be wrong for me to do the same.

The categorical imperative also states that one should treat humanity or rational beings as an end and never as a means only. Human beings are uniquely capable of reasoning about their choices and therefore are inherently valuable and worthy of respect for this reason. For human beings to realise their inner worth it is important that they enjoy meaningful autonomy vis-à-vis state and society. Autonomy makes it possible for us to make rationally and morally correct choices, which according to Kant is all about protection of our basic interests.

If such a principle were to be made not only on the basis of conduct between human beings but also states then the occupation of Iraq by President Bush and his allies would not take place. On the other hand, it would be perfectly correct to wage war on those who are responsible for 9/11.

But others argue against rationality alone as the basis for claiming and enjoying rights on grounds that there are human beings who are not able to reason in accordance with a conventional understanding of rationality. These include children and those suffering from impairment of their reasoning abilities. Also, not very long ago women, working people, and some ethnic and racial groups were also considered incapable of acting like rational human beings.

The emphasis on rationality is, therefore, not the true basis of rights. It can confine the right to enjoy rights arbitrarily to some groups or class of people. Therefore, it is asserted, that the true basis of peace among human beings has to be human sympathy and solidarity, or in other words, the human conscience.

Proceeding along such lines some argue that the right to rights should not be confined to the Homo sapiens: animals and nature should also be embraced because specie-ism (that is privileging one’s own species) is irrational and immoral. Moreover, it is argued, from a practical point of view that humankind’s supremacy over other forms of nature is untenable in the long run. We have to learn to live as part of nature and in communion with it.

Some people go further and urge that we have to start working on this principle now. Global warming is the wakeup call we must heed and change our lifestyles to recognise that human beings, animals and nature in general have to live in communion and harmony with each other.

Thus, the age of rights has to be re-defined in the light of the objective reality around us.
The philosophers are extending the theoretical horizons and frontiers of discussion on rights in directions which are as yet unclear, but I would argue that concern for the rights of human beings and the organisations and institutions that represent their interests should remain of paramount concern because even if a paradigmatic shift from the rights of human beings to the all-inclusive idea of the rights of different forms of nature may be on the way, it need not be seen as a mutually exclusive arrangement.

Whatever we think about who should and who should not have rights is after all dependent on the human conscience because neither animals nor other forms of nature are burdened with the problem of being at ease with one’s conscience. It is a human predicament and not a predicament of all living things or for that matter of nature.

The writer is professor of political science at the University of Stockholm, Sweden. Email: Ishtiaq.Ahmed-@statsvet.su.se

Labels: categorical imperative, Christian, harmony, human rights, humanity, Immanuel Kant, Ishtiaq Ahmed, Islamic, peace, principles, religion

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Wednesday, July 04, 2007

America free from religion? We all need its foundation

Saturday, June 30, 2007

The Supreme Court this week dismissed a lawsuit from the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation charging that President Bush's "faith-based initiative" program is an unconstitutional promotion of religion.

Good.

There are dangers in excessive government entanglement with religion, but there also are benefits in supporting proven, grass-roots programs that deliver needed services in an efficient manner. Reason, common sense and goodwill can help us build a consensus on how to protect religious freedom while providing public services such as drug counseling, soup kitchens and homeless shelters.

In an era when anti- religion polemicists gather attention with books, such as Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion," Chris topher Hitchens' "God Is Not Great: How Re ligion Poisons Every thing" and Sam Harris' "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason," it would be wise to pause to consider what an America -- and a Northeast Ohio -- would be like free from religion.

Take away groups such as Catholic Charities, the Interfaith Hospitality Network and the City Mission, which meet the basic needs of thousands of the region's neediest, and Cleveland would be a tinderbox of frustration and injustice. As important as the services religious charities provide is their witness that those suffering are not alone, that many of their neighbors in the region believe poverty and homelessness are crimes against humanity that cry out for a response.

The ability to give hope amid even the most overwhelming crises was evident at the recent conference, "Leveraging Change: The Politics and Economics of Global Poverty and Health Care" at Hiram College.

In one session, leaders of Northeast Ohio organizations discussed how their groups are changing lives throughout the world despite crushing poverty, disease and economic injustice.

Joseph Cistone, executive director of the Cleveland Heights-based International Partners in Mission, spoke of his group's work in a Nairobi slum where women are sexually exploited and children suffer from malnutrition and malaria.

Catherine Monnin, director of Worldview International, a Christian group based in Olmsted Falls, spoke of her group's efforts to promote literacy programs and health clinics in Africa.
How to build on such efforts to create support for health care as a basic human right is a more formidable task.

In a separate session, Nicholas King, assistant professor of bioethics at Case Western Reserve University, discussed why people who are well-off should care about the health of the poor. Can or should a case be made on the basis of self-interest?

The idea I came away with was that utilitarian arguments -- caring for the poor can prevent epidemics and reduce public health expenditures -- may be one way to build support for efforts to provide universal health care. We should, however, be grateful for all the people whose ethics mandate a humanitarian response irrespective of personal gain.

In America, faith contributes to the ethical foundation of a majority of its citizens.

More than ever, in a nation where politicians from both parties have abandoned the poor to the baser instincts of Americans, we need the positive values of religion. Lower taxes and a balanced budget -- not self-sacrifice for the greater good -- are the mantra of today's politicians.
We should welcome to the public policy table individuals and groups who uphold self-sacrificial love of neighbor as the ideal of living in community.

There is reason for hope when broad-based religious coalitions join with citizens groups to work for social justice. Last November, religious groups helped overcome powerful political and business interests in successful campaigns to raise the state's minimum wage and defeat slot machines and casino gambling.

An America free from religion?

No thanks.

To reach David Briggs:
dbriggs@plaind.com, 216-999-4812

Labels: America, charities, David Briggs, faith-based initiative, public service, religion, the poor

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Founders and religion: Is this what they had in mind?

Wednesday, July 4, 2007

The strength of any nation is found in its heritage. America is fast becoming a nation without a heritage.

According to Donald Lutz in "The Origins of American Constitutionalism," during the two decades of our nation's founding, there was one book quoted by our founders more than any other. This book states a very important principle: "Do not remove the ancient landmark which your fathers have set."

The book is the Bible, and the quote is Proverbs 22:28.

America has been working overtime this last half century to expunge from the public sphere as many of the ancient landmarks it can get its hands on, i.e., our country's Christian heritage.

See if you can answer the following questions.

1. Shortly after signing the Declaration of Independence, which committee member proposed that the official seal of our brand-new nation should be a depiction of the children of Israel in the wilderness, led by a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night?

2. Which president, acting as chairman of the school board, authored the first plan of education adopted by the city of Washington, D.C., which used the Bible and Isaac Watts' "Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs" as the primary books for teaching reading?

3. Which of our Founding Fathers, who also became a president, said, "Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern, which have come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus"?

Answers: If you answered Thomas Jefferson to any of the above questions, you are correct in every instance. I asked questions about Jefferson because he is often considered the least religious of all our Founding Fathers.

The debate as to whether Jefferson was a Christian, deist, or atheist misses the point that Jefferson, in his own writings and official acts as president, supported the teachings of the Bible.

Why are these facts about Jefferson and similar facts about other Founding Fathers no longer taught in public schools? Is it because we are kowtowing to Big Brother? In the public school district where I teach second grade, my students often tattle on one another by saying, "So-and-so said the s' word"— the "s" word being "stupid."

Sadly, as a teacher, I feel I should always be looking over my shoulder for tattlers before I say the "g" word in class. The "g" word is God.

It wasn't always this way in America. It wasn't until 1962 that our Supreme Court decided voluntary student participation in reciting a school-board-sponsored prayer was "unconstitutional." A little arithmetic tells us that for nearly the first 200 years of our nation's history, neither most people nor the Supreme Court saw conflict between our nation's Christian heritage and our Constitution.

Remember, the same man who penned the phrase "wall of separation between Church and State" in a personal letter to reassure a group of Baptists that its religious liberties would not be trampled upon by the Congress, is the same man who, while president, installed the Bible and a book of Psalms and hymns to teach reading in a public school system.

Could it be that Jefferson never intended his phrase to be used as a substitute for the First Amendment, which does not contain the words "wall," "church," "separation" or "state"? In speaking of the Supreme Court, Jefferson wrote to William Jarvis in 1820, "The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots."

Our country's roots are seeped in the Christian religion. To erase this fact from our nation's heritage is to erase the very character of our nation itself. And a nation without a heritage, without a genuine history, is a faceless nation, a weak nation, a nation that places itself in grave danger of losing the very freedoms and liberties our Founding Fathers fought for.

It is further a nation that can only lose in confrontations with other nations and peoples who cling tenaciously to their own heritage, whatever it may be.

— Christina Wilson lives in Westlake Village.

Labels: Americans, Christianity, Christina Wilson, God, heritage, public school, Thomas Jefferson

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What's the most dangerous idea in religion?

By JOHN BLAKE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 06/30/07

Religion is one of the most potent forces in human affairs. It has inspired some of history's most sublime moments, but also some of its most barbaric.

The Inquisition, the bombings of abortion clinics, suicide bombings in Iraq – all have their roots in some form of religious ideology.

With that in mind, five leading religious thinkers from varying faiths were asked the same question: What is the most dangerous idea in religion today? Their comments were edited for brevity and clarity.

Violence in the name of God

— Richard Land
"I would agree with Pope John Paul II who said that there is a sacred sanctuary of the soul for each man and woman. No other human being has the right to coercively interfere with that sacred sanctuary of the soul. The most dangerous idea in religion is the idea that violent, coercive force is permissible in the name of God — any God.

"You see this with radical Islam. Notice that I said radical Islam, not Islam.

"More people will die if this idea spreads. It will help poison the well of debate and discussion about issues that people disagree on. It's corrosive to public discourse to say if you disagree with me, I'm going to kill you. It erodes freedom of speech, assembly and worship."

Richard Land is the president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. He was selected by Time Magazine in 2005 as one of the 25 most influential evangelicals in America.

Follow our rules or else

— Wayne Dyer
"Carl Jung [the author and psychiatrist] had a line. The paraphrase is this: The No. 1 problem with organized religion is that the purpose of organized religion is to prevent people from having a direct experience of God. Religion is organized around the principle that religion will provide the direct experience of God for you as long as you become a member, follow our rules and contribute to us financially.

"The most important thing a human being can recognize is that they are already connected to God and to maintain that connection is not something you can turn over to another person or organization. One of the truths of the physical world is that you must be like what you came from. If you have an apple pie and you ask what the apple pie is like, it's like [the apple] where it came from."

Wayne Dyer is one of the most popular self-help speakers in the nation. He's the best-selling author of 29 books and has been featured frequently on Public Broadcasting Service specials.
My religion is right

— Rabbi Harold Kushner
"There's a sense that in order for me to be right, everyone who disagrees with me is wrong. It makes religious interfaith cooperation more difficult. If I believe that, I have to believe that other people's religions are worthless, invalid.

"You have to understand that religion is not about getting information about God. Religion is about community. The primary purpose is not to get us to heaven but to put us in touch with other people. I can have fierce loyalty to my family without denigrating other people's family. I can have fierce loyalty to my own religion without denigrating other people's religion. In the same way, my neighbor can say, 'My wife is the most wonderful woman in the world.' I can take that as a statement of love, not fact."

Rabbi Harold Kushner is one of the most famous Jewish thinkers in the nation. He is best-known for his best-selling book, "When Bad Things Happen to Good People" (Anchor, $21).
Converting others to your religion

— Dr. Abdullahi cq Ahmed An-Na'im
"I wouldn't believe in a religion if I didn't believe it to be better than other religions. The notion of superiority and exclusivity is inherent to religious beliefs. It can be dangerous and not be dangerous.

"The whole idea of missionary work is a very loaded and dangerous idea because it's often presented as simply presenting beliefs for someone to accept or reject. It's always embedded in power. Those who have the ability to proselytize to others are more powerful than others. They have the resources to establish schools, hospitals. Missionary work is not neutral. It is embedded in power. You don't find Muslims coming to proselytize in the United States. But you find Americans going to all sorts of Muslim countries."

Dr. Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im is an internationally recognized scholar of Islam and human rights. He is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law at Emory University.

A tribal view of God

— Deepak Chopra
"The most dangerous idea is my God is the only true God and my religion is the only true religion. It leads to quarrels, divisiveness, terrorism, prejudice, racism and bloodshed. We see it in the world right now

"All religious ideas are programmed into our consciousness at a very early age. We hold them to be true. It's very difficult to step out of that condition even in the face of good intellectual reasoning because of emotional bondage to our condition. We bristle with emotions when our beliefs are threatened.

"We are at a very critical stage in our evolution. We're beginning to become aware. We know a lot about nature. We have a pretty good idea about the beginning of the universe. We understand to a great extent the law of physics, chemistry and biology. And yet for the vast majority of us, – though we have cell phones and can make nuclear bombs, – our psychological and spiritual evolution is frozen to a level that is very tribal."

Deepak Chopra is chairman and co-founder of the Chopra Center for Well Being in Carlsbad, Calif. He is a best-selling author and popular lecturer best-known for integrating Western medicine with the natural healing traditions of the East.

Labels: Abdullahi cq Ahmed An-Naim, community, Deepak Chopra, God, ideology, missionary, Rabbi Harold Kushner, religion, Richard Land, tribal, violence, Wayne Dyer

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Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Study: Upbringing Why Most Scientists Not Religious

2007-07-02 19:02:58

BEIJING, July 2 (Xinhuanet) --

A new study suggests household upbringing -- not the study of science or academic pressure -- is most often the determining factor when it comes to whether or not a scientist is religious.

"Our study data do not strongly support the idea that scientists simply drop their religious identities upon professional training, due to an inherent conflict between science and faith, or to institutional pressure to conform," said Elaine Howard Ecklund, a sociologist at the University at Buffalo and co-author of the study.

"It is important to understand this, because we face religious-scientific controversies over stem-cell research and evolution," Ecklund said Friday.

Detailed in the latest issue of the journal Social Problems, the study is based on a survey of 1,646 scientists at 21 elite research universities and in-depth interviews with 271 of the scientists. The survey contacted researchers specializing in physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, economics, political science, psychology and other fields.

Ecklund used data from the 1998 and 2004 General Social Survey (GSS), a national survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, for general population information. Ecklund then compared the data to the scientists’set, which was modeled after the GSS.

The data revealed 52 percent of scientists surveyed had no religious affiliation, compared with only 14 percent of the general population. Of the religious scientists, however, 15 percent identified themselves as Jewish compared to 2 percent of the religious general population.

And 14 percent of the general population described themselves as "evangelical" or "fundamentalist." Less than 2 percent of scientists, however, identified themselves as either of these. Younger scientists were more likely to believe in God and attend religious services than older scientists.

If these young and religious scientists continue to stay religious, Ecklund said, "it could indicate an overall shift in attitudes toward religion among those in the academy."

Labels: Elaine Howard Ecklund, General Social Survey, National Opinion Research Center, religion, scientists, upbringing

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