TruthBook Religious News Blog

WASHINGTON, Jan. 30 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- On the eve of Black History Month, the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life released a new analysis (http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=389) that paints a detailed religious portrait of African-Americans. The analysis finds that African-Americans are markedly more religious than the U.S. population as a whole on a variety of measures, including reporting a religious affiliation, attendance at religious services, frequency of prayer and the importance of religion in people's lives.

Compared with other racial and ethnic groups, African-Americans are among the most likely to report a formal religious affiliation, with fully 87% of African-Americans describing themselves as belonging to one religious group or another. The analysis also finds that nearly eight-in-ten African-Americans (79%) say religion is very important in their lives, compared with 56% among all U.S. adults.

These are among many findings of the new Pew Forum analysis detailing the unique nature of religion in the African-American community. Other highlights include:

* A large majority of African-Americans who are unaffiliated with any particular faith (72%) say religion plays at least a somewhat important role in their lives; nearly half (45%) of unaffiliated African-Americans say religion is very important in their lives, roughly three times the percentage who says this among the religiously unaffiliated population overall (16%).

* African-Americans express a high degree of comfort with religion's role in politics, with roughly six-in-ten saying that houses of worship should express their views on social and political topics and roughly half saying that there has been too little expression of faith and prayer by political leaders. At the same time, most African-Americans support certain restrictions on the mingling of politics and religious institutions, with nearly six-in-ten (58%) saying that churches and other houses of worship should refrain from endorsing political candidates.

* The link between religion and some social and political attitudes in the African-American community is similar to that seen among the population overall. For instance, just as in the general public, African-Americans who are more religiously observant are more likely to oppose abortion and homosexuality and more likely to report higher levels of conservative ideology.

* On a variety of other questions, including political party identification and opinions about the proper role of government in providing services to the citizenry and assistance to the poor, there are few differences in the views of African-Americans across religious groups. Perhaps most strikingly, the partisan leanings of African-Americans from every religious background tilt heavily in the Democratic direction.

The analysis is based on the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, conducted by the Pew Forum in 2007 and released in 2008, as well as other Pew Research Center surveys.

The report is for immediate release and is available online at http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=389.

The Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life delivers timely, impartial information on issues at the intersection of religion and public affairs. The Pew Forum is a nonpartisan, nonadvocacy organization and does not take positions on policy debates. Based in Washington, D.C., the Pew Forum is a project of the Pew Research Center, which is funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Labels: African-Americans, faith, government, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, politics, religious belief

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Transformations in spiritual health through trials

January 28, 3:51 AM
by Thomas Hartmann, Philadelphia Health Examiner

This articles is the first page of a three page series of articles dealing with using spirituality to transform difficult problems of the material world. Please click on "external source" at the bottom of this article to continue...

President Obama could not have been elected without the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, was the pivotal moment of this historic shift in American society. Earlier this month America honored Dr. King with a national holiday.

How did Dr. King manage to successfully lead the civil rights movement, and what does his leadership have to do with health? After all, he was surrounded by a loving family and in good physical condition. This article concerns the maturation of King’s spiritual health as a result of the crushing pressure the leadership place upon him.

For a time during the height of the boycott, his household received death threats via mail and telephone, messages which had to be fielded by him or his wife in case the call was from a supporter.

The tension took an immense toll, particularly after a middle-of-the-night bomb threat. He became concerned not only for his safety but also for that of his family, and considered giving up leadership of the movement. This sort of pressure may be familiar to anyone who has faced immense fear or hatred, whether as a result of war, prejudice, physical, or mental difficulties.

In short, King was not able to sleep, and went downstairs to the kitchen to fix a pot of coffee. There, he prayed aloud for guidance, acknowledging his utter inadequacy to cope.

Upcoming: The remarkable changes in spiritual health that are sometimes brought about through difficult trials.

Labels: health, leadership, Martin Luther King Jr., President Obama, tension

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Testing the Limits of What I Know and Feel

by John Updike

John Updike won two Pulitzer Prizes for his series of novels chronicling the life and death of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom. He is also a noted poet and essayist, as well as a critic of literature and fine art.

John Updike died this past week...

All Things Considered, April 18, 2005 · A person believes various things at various times, even on the same day. At the age of 73, I seem most instinctively to believe in the human value of creative writing, whether in the form of verse or fiction, as a mode of truth-telling, self-expression and homage to the twin miracles of creation and consciousness. The special value of these indirect methods of communication — as opposed to the value of factual reporting and analysis — is one of precision. Oddly enough, the story or poem brings us closer to the actual texture and intricacy of experience.

In fiction, imaginary people become realer to us than any named celebrity glimpsed in a series of rumored events, whose causes and subtler ramifications must remain in the dark. An invented figure like Anna Karenina or Emma Bovary emerges fully into the light of understanding, which brings with it identification, sympathy and pity. I find in my own writing that only fiction — and rarely, a poem — fully tests me to the kind of limits of what I know and what I feel. In composing even such a frank and simple account as this profession of belief, I must fight against the sensation that I am simplifying and exploiting my own voice.

I also believe, instinctively, if not very cogently, in the American political experiment, which I take to be, at bottom, a matter of trusting the citizens to know their own minds and best interests. "To govern with the consent of the governed": this spells the ideal. And though the implementation will inevitably be approximate and debatable, and though totalitarianism or technocratic government can obtain some swift successes, in the end, only a democracy can enlist a people's energies on a sustained and renewable basis. To guarantee the individual maximum freedom within a social frame of minimal laws ensures — if not happiness — its hopeful pursuit.

Cosmically, I seem to be of two minds. The power of materialist science to explain everything — from the behavior of the galaxies to that of molecules, atoms and their sub-microscopic components — seems to be inarguable and the principal glory of the modern mind. On the other hand, the reality of subjective sensations, desires and — may we even say — illusions, composes the basic substance of our existence, and religion alone, in its many forms, attempts to address, organize and placate these. I believe, then, that religious faith will continue to be an essential part of being human, as it has been for me.

Labels: creative writing, freedom, John Updike, materialism, politics, religion

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Role Of Denominations Change In Modern Church

By The Associated Press, Associated Press (AP)
CLAYTON, N.C. -

If American religion is a spiritual shopping center, denominations that once dominated the market are in danger of being boarded up.

A major survey of 35,000 Americans released this week by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life confirms the long-held belief that denominational loyalty is fraying - and those with much at stake include both mainline Protestant and evangelical churches.

Sociologists point to many factors in the erosion of denominational loyalty, including a transient population less anchored to one city or job and the rise of individualized faith, including people who borrow from many traditions.

The Pew survey found many Americans don't want to be associated with denominations, even when they belong to one. People who call themselves "just a Protestant" account for 5 percent of the adult U.S. population.

Even when given the chance to choose from specific denominations, many people said, "I'm just a Baptist," for instance - even though the Baptist family ranges from strongly conservative to smaller liberal traditions.

About 16 percent of Americans are unaffiliated with any religious tradition - an increase from earlier surveys - although many of those say faith is important to them. Nearly half of American adults have left behind the faith tradition of their upbringing.

One key finding of the Pew survey: Nondenominational Protestants are growing in number, and tend to be younger. About three-quarters of nondenominational Protestants fall under the evangelical tradition, said Greg Smith, a research associate with the Pew Forum. But in a conclusion that might surprise some, Pew researchers also identified 20 percent of nondenominational churchgoers as mainline Protestants.

Smith said the mainline tag was applied to people who attended nondenominational churches but did not identify themselves as born-again or evangelical Christians, and to those who said they attended "liberal nondenominational" or "emergent" churches.

Many emergent churches borrow the worship and liturgical styles of mainline Protestant churches but hew to a conservative evangelical theology.

The decline of mainline Protestant denominations and rise of evangelical churches in the 20th century is well documented, with many contributing factors: mainline Protestant churches are aging faster, recording lower birth rates, attracting fewer immigrants and embroiled in divisive battles over sexuality and the Bible.

The Rev. Lovett H. Weems, Jr., director of the Lewis Center for Church Leadership at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, a United Methodist Church seminary, said growing churches have both a clear sense of identity and meet people's needs in a changing culture.

"They're not just setting up shop and saying, 'This is who we are, these are our beliefs and we will be here if anyone wants it,'" he said.

Whether because of tradition or bureaucracy, mainline Protestant churches have been slow to adapt, but Weems senses that is changing. In Virginia, the United Methodist Church is aiming to develop 250 "new faith communities" in the next 30 years.

The choice of that term instead of "churches" is telling. Rather than traditional congregations, those communities might be one church with several campuses, ethnic churches or congregations that meet in people's homes, Weems said.

The nation's largest Protestant church body, the 16.3 million-member Southern Baptist Convention, is aware of the sentiment. The proportion of young adult lay people and pastors who serve as "messengers," or delegates, to the convention's annual meeting has been dropping since the 1980s and declined sharply since 2004.

After growing steadily from 1950 to the mid-1990s, the conservative-dominated Southern Baptists have experienced relatively flat growth, causing alarm.

In another sign of the times, more than half of new Southern Baptist churches don't use the word "Baptist" in their name, recent church research found. One older example is blockbuster author Rick Warren's Saddleback Church in Southern California.

Labels: faith, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, protestants, religious denominations

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Sufi rising

January 25, 2009

For years, the Islamic revival has seemed to be a story of ever-growing fundamentalism and political extremism, but around the world, Sufi orders are rapidly gaining strength -- in Turkey and Syria, Uzbekistan and Indonesia. Sufism is also growing quickly in Iran, as younger Muslims seek a liberal and liberating kind of spirituality utterly different from anything the ayatollahs can provide. In 1979, Iran had 100,000 Sufis; today, there may be 5 million.

Globally, the movement represents a close parallel to the explosive worldwide growth of charismatic and Pentecostal styles within Christianity. Both practice a passionate style of religion, and both have demography on their side. The Sufi revival is most obvious in the African and Asian lands that have some of the world's highest birth rates. Although the Sufi revival has its impact in many Muslim countries, the North African story is particularly important for Europe and the West because of the influence of migrants. As Morocco and Senegal spawn new forms of Sufi devotion, for example, these spread to African communities in Europe, and find expression in youth culture and hip hop, even in Sufi rap.

Always, these movements speak the language of peace, hope, and reconciliation, and condemn extremism. These are the Muslim voices that can compete with the calls to jihad and terror.

Labels: charismatics, Christianity, Iran, Muslims, passion, religion, Sufism

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This Land Is My Land

Nica Lalli

President Obama acknowledged me in his first speech as president. He looked up from the podium on the steps of the capitol of this country and he seemed to look right at me, in my living room hundreds of miles and thousands of feet of television cable away. In one phrase he included me and made me feel part of the country I live in, the country I was born in, my country: The United States of America.

"For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness," Obama said. "We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and non-believers." Including the words non-believers was a first. Never before has a president recognized people like me in the many others, sub-groups or factions that they might mention so as to be inclusive of all who call this country home. Never.

So January 20 was a big day. Not only did I watch as our first ever black president sworn in, not only did I feel immense happiness that the guy I voted for made it all the way, but on top of all that I, a non-believer, was welcomed in a whole new way.

During the inaugural events preceding the speech I was beginning to feel a little outside of some of the goings on. I am not hostile toward religion, and in fact I help out at my local church and volunteer at a soup kitchen in my neighborhood run by some very wonderful nuns. I knew that there would be prayers offered during the ceremony, and I knew that the oath would include the phrase "so help me God" and would be part of the swearing-in of the 44th President even though it is not mandated in the Constitution. Oh, sure, part of me was hoping that Mr. Obama would leave that part out, but most of me knew he wouldn't dare. I know that the president has to be religious. I know he has to go to church and close his eyes during prayers and talk about his relationship to Christ, and assure us all that he is not a Muslim even if his middle name is Hussein and his forefathers followed the word of the prophet Muhammed. I may not be religious, but I know I live in a country where a large majority of the population is Christian.

The part of the morning that made me feel most left out was when Pastor Rick Warren got up to deliver the invocation. Again, I was not surprised by his words but I did hope for a little more inclusiveness. Pastor Warren did not speak to me, or to anyone who differs with his views. Many other religious leaders manage to do both, stay true to their beliefs and open themselves up in a way that can allow for other ideas to be included - or at least acknowledged.

It is as simple as somehow stating that they understand the fact that in a crowd of 2 million there would be (statistically speaking) about 280,000 people who would fall into the non-belief category. That is 14 percent of the general population which, according to the 2001 American Religious Identification Survey, is the percent of the American population that has no religion or does not believe in God. Never mind figuring out how to acknowledge all the other religions that would also be represented, all the non-Christians who live in this country and vote and are as American as Mr. Warren. It has become too easy for people like Pastor Warren to think that this is a Christian nation. And during the last eight years it felt as if it was leaning heavily in that direction.

It took our newly minted President to remind us that indeed it is not. Our country has no religion embedded within its government and thanks to the Constitution it never will. It took a man who is part black, part white and whose extended family truly represents the new American family in all it's mixed up crazy diversity to remind us that the patchwork that is America is what makes this country so special and so great. I am honored to be part of that patchwork. And I thank my new President for thinking to include me, and the 42 million other Americans like me, in it as we face forward and work together to fix problems, celebrate greatness and overcome divisiveness.

Labels: inauguration, Nica Lalli, non-believer, President Obama, religion, Rick Warren

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Political, Spiritual Leaders, Educators Share Insight on Obama’s Historic Inauguration

Chico C. Norwood
STAFF WRITER

For many African Americans and individuals of African descent, the thought and reality that a black man is the most powerful individual in the free world sends chills through bodies.

What instances in American history contributed to this momentous, historical occasion? What advice would Martin Luther King Jr., who rose to similar heights and changed the face of the world, give to the new president? What sacred writings best define the new president?

The L.A. Watts Times asked these questions of educators, elected officials, community and spiritual leaders throughout the area.

What instances in American History do you think have most contributed to Barack Obama’s election as president?

“In terms of Barack Obama’s success in getting elected as the first African American president of the United States, he is the product of a long evolution fof Arican American culture, family values, political sophistication, and maturity and hope — out of African American culture, once we got it established about the middle of the 17th century in this country. African American culture, as opposed to African culture in America.

What we’re talking about here is something that became uniquely a creation of folk here after the second, third and fourth generation. …

One of the first principles was family is crucial — that we have to make sure that we get strength and (sustenance) from family… Another thing was education, that essentially what we have to do is find a way … reading, writing, arithmetic — because education was going to be our key to moving forward in the future… Another thing was to know that things would get better. Know that we could develop our artistic ability in terms of our ability to adjust and be resilient and to more than just survive but transcend — if all of us were not going to be able to make it, then enough of us had to be able to make it to pass the baton on to someone else and we keep on going.” — David Horne, associate professor of Pan African Studies at California State University, Northridge

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“The evolution of the hip-hop movement was a contributing factor to President Barack Obama’s election as president. Among the most vocal supporters of … Barack Obama’s presidential bid were hip-hop icons like Nas, ’Lil Wayne, Mos Def and Jay-Z. With celebrity endorsements like this, it was just a matter of time before Obama tapped into the psyche of the national black youth community, which then galvanized a movement around his candidacy. Pro-Obama recordings helped provide the soundtrack for the movement to those artistically inclined, while the more technologically savvy of the hip-hop generation organized via the Internet and mobile phones to throw their support — and money, of course — behind the candidate… The hip-hop generation employed its tenacity to politics, utilizing new communication avenues, from social networking and texting to rhymes, beats and blogs…

The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE), a nonpartisan research firm, commissioned a survey that found 66 percent of young people it polled voted for … Obama. …Obama won the White House having won the largest percentage of votes from the second biggest youth voter turnout in this country’s history.” — Karin L. Stanford, Ph.D., associate professor of Pan African Studies at CSU

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“What would Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. tell Barack Obama right now?”

“Like me, you are rooted in faith — faith expressed in your values and in your commitment to empower those who have been left behind in our society. You started out as a community organizer; now you are the leader of the most powerful nation on earth. Lead with your faith. Lead with your values. Keep working to involve and inspire the next generation so that they will be ready when it is their turn to carry the baton. Keep working to bring about the change we need.” — Assembly Speaker Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles)

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“Dr. King once said that ‘A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.’ After the historic election of our first African American president — a feat unimaginable for a generation of Americans struggling to achieve equality on the most fundamental level — it’s now time to shift gears and focus on Dr. King’s message of consensus and governance.

I believe Dr. King would be proud of President Obama’s genuine commitment to bring all Americans to the policy-making table. Dr. King would ask the president to uphold his vow of bipartisanship, while reminding him to stay true to his progressive roots and vision for a brighter tomorrow.” — Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa

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The “Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would tell President Barack Obama that though he was elected president of the richest nation in the world, many of God’s elect are still suffering from poverty… Martin Luther King would tell President Barack Obama how proud he is of this accomplishment, but his election is simply a weigh station on our nation’s journey to equality, freedom and dignity for all people. Until all of God’s children have the same opportunity to become president through a quality education, affordable health care and housing, and livable wage employment with benefits, the election of a black man without the lifting up of black people is nothing more than window dressing … changing the display while the contents of the store remain the same. Dr. King would tell Barack Obama to remain true to his message of change.” — Eric Lee, executive director Southern ChristianLeadership Conference-Los Angeles

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“I think he would remind President Obama of two important speeches that he gave: One entitled ‘I Have a Dream,’ and (the other) entitled ‘Why I Oppose the War in Vietnam.’ And I would think Dr. Martin Luther King would respectfully admonish President … Obama to take seriously the content of those two speeches and encourage him to do all that he could to make real the promises of democracy.” — Mark Ridley-Thomas, newly elected Los Angeles County Supervisor, Second District

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What Scripture comes to mind when you think of Barack Obama and why?

“They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up on wings as eagles. They shall run and not grow weary. They shall walk and not faint.” — Isaiah 40:31

To wait is not to sit idle, but to exhaust your energies to achieve your goals, and then to take a deep breath in “waiting” on the Lord. The timing is secondary. The assurance is primary. From day one in 1619, when the first African slave stepped off of the ship in Virginia, until Jan. 20 … we have “waited” upon the Lord.

“Romans 13:1 says ‘Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.’ ”Rev. Cecil L. “Chip” Murray

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“God clearly has not designated every person in every leadership position that has existed in the history of the world, but he has chosen the positions or offices. However, in some cases it is clear that God has selected the person, and in President Obama’s case I truly believe God has appointed the man named Barack for the office of president.” — Fred Price Jr., pastor, Crenshaw Christian Center.

Labels: Antonio Villaraigosa, Cecil L. Murray, Chico C. Norwood, David Horne, Eric Lee, Fred Price Jr, Karen Bass, Karin L. Stanford, Mark Ridley-Thomas, President Obama

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Groups unite for global celebration

‘For once, we’re all in the same room’
By JON TATTRIE
Sat. Jan 24 - 4:47 AM

Halifax joined the global celebration of World Religion Day on Sunday. A couple hundred people from at least 10 faith groups slipped through a snowstorm to gather at All Saints’ Cathedral in downtown Halifax.

Dozens of groups across Canada and thousands around the world united to celebrate what they say is the common heart of all religions. World Religion Day has been observed on the third Sunday of January annually since 1950, when it was initiated by the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha’is of the United States.

The Halifax event was organized by the Baha’i community.

"In the Baha’i writings, it talks about all religions being equal and that the purpose of religion should actually be to unite the human race," said Ariel Borden, a dancer in the Baha’i Army of Light Dance Troupe.

"I think that it’s been really inspirational, in the sense that in this day and age, a lot of us see religions as dividers of humanity."

Sunday was a sort of variety show from faith groups. The Baha’i started things off with the dance troupe’s stomping presentation of the words of Baha’u’llah, the Baha’i founder, who said that world peace was not only possible, but inevitable. Billy Lewis then led the Mi’kmaq Kitpu Youth Drummers and Dancers in a smudge ceremony. A youth group from Beechville Baptist Church presented the word of God through interpretive dance, the Vedenta Ashram Society read from the Hindu scriptures and Saint Matthew’s United Church acted out the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Halifax’s Buddhist community joined in with a series of contemplative songs and the Universalist Unitarian Church added some folksy music. Brahma Kumaris captured much of the sense of the meeting with Four Faces of the Soul, a dance/spoken word piece describing the journey of the soul.

It starts off in Innocence, free and unfrightened, but is soon "protected" by Tradition. It eventually rejects those trappings and the Modern incarnation goes into rebellion. In the end, the peaceful soul enters Shakti, the face of transformation.

Ursula Johnson and Billy Lewis of the Mi’kmaq group spoke about their participation after the event. Johnson said it was the group’s fifth year.

"We really enjoy the opportunity to come and share some practices and some music and forms of celebration of our spirituality from the aboriginal culture," she said.

Lewis, an elder, explained the meaning behind the smudge ceremony. Booming drums echoed through the vast church while the Kitpu group sang high-pitched chants as Lewis fanned the smoke from burning sweetgrass onto the gathering.

Attending World Religion Day was for Lewis a sign that at root, all spiritual values are shared.

Debbie Nicholson, the main organizer from the Baha’is, said they had more than 120 participants, from babies to seniors. She was especially pleased to have the Nova Gospel Ensemble for the first time.

"It really worked well," she said of the group’s rafter-raising performance. "It’s a part of our culture in Nova Scotia, that kind of gospel music, so it was nice to bring that element in."

She acknowledged that not all faiths were present, but said they extend the welcome as wide as they can and drew 10 different faith groups this year, plus the ensemble.

She’s got her eyes on groups like the Quakers for future years to expand the celebration.

"For once, we’re all in the same room," she said of the day.

Labels: Baha'i, Canada, interfaith, Jon Tattrie, World Religion Day

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Friday, January 23, 2009

Author Recommends 'Writing Down Your Soul'

Cheryl Bentley
January 23, 2009

Updated:

'I want you to find me." That was Janet Conner's message to God on New Year's Day 1996.

"Of course, I had every idea if God finds you, it was going to be pretty," Conner wryly notes.

It has become just that - after a lot of traumatic bumps down the spiritual path. She meets spirit daily through writing, Conner says.

Her book, "Writing Down Your Soul," recently published by Conari Press, describes a process Conner developed in which, she says, spirit can be accessed through writing. The practice is readily available to anyone with pen and paper.

Conner appears to be an atypical messenger for the divine. She is a bundle of nervous energy, with words coming out in dramatic torrents accompanied by self-deprecating humor and hands fluttering as busily as Tibetan prayer flags.

The Ozona home of this woman who was raised a Roman Catholic in Chicago sports a variety of items representing different spiritual traditions. They include an Islamic prayer rug, icons of the Christian archangels Michael and Gabriel and pictures of Native American animals.

In addition, a lily-themed painting by artist Linda Renc hangs on a wall. The work by Renc, co-owner of the Painted Fish Gallery, in Dunedin, was a 60th birthday present from friends, Conner explains.

At a time when finances were tight, Conner asked spirit, through her writing, how she could support herself. "Lilies," she found herself writing. She knew immediately she was being referred to the passage in the New Testament Gospel of Matthew advising trust and faith that begins, "Consider the lilies in the field and how they grow."

Still, coming into contact with the divine definitely had its rough side. Conner describes a painful divorce in the 1990s that involved possible physical danger for her and her son.

A former vice president and general manager of a division of the international staffing firm Robert Half International, Conner could no longer work because of the chaos in her life. To try to understand her pain, she began writing to God. Her first writing was mostly venting.

Her trauma over her marital difficulties caused her to employ some of the techniques that would later become important in what she terms soul writing. Conner wrote fast, asked plenty of questions and didn't edit her words. The fast writing seems to allow the writer to bypass the conscious mind, she explains.

The writing eventually led her to forgive her former husband. Unknown to her until his death, this man who had once hated her had made her the beneficiary of his life insurance.

In one of the many incidents Conner considers a gift from spirit, the money came at a time when she most needed it.

The writing also caused her to write her book. In 2006, at a time when she was involved in another project, the idea for the book came up while she was soul writing.

By that time, she had developed enough respect for the process not to ignore ideas that arose in her writing. Conner half-heartedly decided to contact a publisher, thinking her query would be rejected.

Even though Conner has developed trust in soul writing, she is the first to admit she is still left gasping at the sweetness of what she considers its results. Her latest miracle is a possible interview with National Public Radio her publisher has arranged.

While not the same blockbusters sales boost as becoming a selection of Oprah's Book Club, coverage on NPR does get an author's work before a major section of the book-buying public.

"I'm waiting for NPR to call," she says. "I've been writing for 11 years, and I'm still blown away."

Labels: Cheryl Bentley, God, soul, Writing Down Your Soul

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The greatest American innovation in religion is tolerance

Andrew Brown
Wednesday 21 January 2009

Watching Obama's inauguration with its repeated invocations of the deity, both formal and informal, it struck me how astonishingly prolific America has been in religious inventions. A short list of religious ideas invented in America would include at the very least religious toleration (from Rhode Island) from the 17th century, the open-air revival meeting (from the Great Awakening) from the 18th, Adventism, and Mormonism, from the 19th century and Pentecostalism and Alcoholics Anonymous from the 20th.

Then there are all the American innovations which are either questionably religious, like worshipping your own constitution or the "free market", or were in some sense pioneered in Europe, like theocratic model settlements. This last also falls into the third category: American religious innovations that were ultimately unsuccessful, along with Christian Science, utopian communes, and, let us hope, scientology.

But the successful American religious innovations have all spread round the world. They have not just become ideas, but transnational cultures bound up with ritual and strengthened by myths about their own history. There has been nothing at any other period of history like that fountain of social invention emerging from one country or civilisation.

Their success is often taken to be an endorsement of the free market in religions: more precisely, it is argued that this is the outcome of consumer choice, as opposed to some nationalised model of religious provision. But to see these belief systems as choices made by rational and autonomous adults is to misunderstand what made them successful and what distinguishes them from the failures.

In the shopping model of religion, nothing much hangs upon your choice. If it doesn't fit, you can give it back, or go to another church. And of course a lot of American religion runs like this, but when it does, it doesn't last. The ones which have lasted and spread are those whose adherents feel that they don't have a choice. They are not deciding what to believe. They are recognising what is true.

This is most obvious in the case of AA, where it is also explicit. The convert is told that unless they understand the world in a certain way, they will die; and so far as anyone can tell, that's actually true. But of course this isn't and doesn't have to be denominational. As it happens, the three AA members I know best are all Christians, but that, I think, is because they are all journalists more or less specialising in religious affairs. But they are none of them proselytisers and I know slightly a couple of alcoholics who were distressed to have to invoke a higher power to stay alive. It went against all their principles. I want to get some of them to write about this experience, but that's for later.

If you don't convert, as to Pentecostalism or AA, then the inevitable quality of the religion has to arise from childhood. I think this is much less effective than conversion as an adult. If it were really the case that childhood indoctrination is impossible to break, the Catholic church in Ireland would never have collapsed: what happened there was broadly speaking that an entire generation which had been brought up as Catholic children stopped as adults believing and performing the rituals of belief and then failed to pass on either to their children. If these ideas about indoctrination were true, this could not have happened at all. But it did happen, for reasons which aren't entirely clear, but which seem to go back to the generation before the one that lost its faith: it's not enough to bring children up in certain beliefs, or rituals. What's needed is that life should continue to reinforce the message that these rituals work, and that the beliefs are true even if you can't see why.

Incidentally, there is of course nothing uniquely religious about a belief that is true because it just is. I have absolutely no idea why Australians don't fall off the bottom of the planet. I know there is a force called gravity, and that it works and accelerates things at 32ft per second per second. But I have absolutely no idea why this should be the case; it's just a given fact about the universe. Actual religious faith can work that way too. It doesn't appear to the believer as a willed belief, but as a recognition of brute truth.

This is of course extremely frightening. It's not much fun from from the inside, but it's even worse from outside and that's why I think that the greatest American innovation is the first: religious tolerance. It demands the ability to marry an experience of inner compulsion with the terrifying understanding that other people may have inner compulsions which are just as real and compelling, but entirely different from yours. This is horribly unnerving when you understand it applies even to of members of your own tribe. But it now seems to most Americans a simple brute fact about human nature, which they understand their constitution to say with its talk about the separation of church and state. Of course, that means they can't understand people who don't think the American constitution is a vehicle of universal truths, but then no tolerance is perfect and this one has just been proved a little wider than anyone thought possible a year ago.

Labels: America, Andrew Brown, innovation, President Obama, religion, tolerance

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Inauguration prayers and sermons

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

The fact that religion played an important role in today’s inauguration received a lot of notice in the news. See here a Los Angeles Times article on how “Obama’s religion-studded inauguration joins a long history” of inaugurations. However, how much of that was coverage of substance with regard to the faith-issues?

Rachael Zoll of the Associated Press noted about a week ago that a Muslim woman and rabbis would be offering a prayer at the inauguration’s National Prayer Service. The article is a preview of sorts that announced that The Rev. Sharon Watkins would be delivering the service’s sermon. Watkins happens to be the first woman president of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and is based in Indianapolis.

Fortunately for religion readers in my neck of the woods, The Indianapolis Star’s Robert King picked up on this story, and my front page this morning had a nice religion-oriented feature tied nicely into the inauguration:

Watkins made history in 2005 when the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), whose general offices are in Indianapolis, made her the first woman to lead a mainline denomination. But this latest achievement is prompting a renewed round of congratulations from women who now look at her with the pride she felt that day at Yale.

“It seems to give a moment of hope and opening that the aspirations of girls and young women can be wide open,” she said.

Watkins, 54, met Obama last summer in Chicago when his campaign called together a diverse group of faith leaders to offer the candidate lessons about their concerns and pet issues.

“He was not reticent to come back with his own opinions,” she said. “There was some pretty good give and take.”

So much, in fact, that the meeting bordered on contentious. But Watkins offered a closing prayer that, she was told later, seemed to have a calming effect. She doesn’t know whether that landed her the sermon Wednesday. But she will take it.

Unfortunately, the article is not long enough to give the reporter the necessary room to expound upon any of the larger issues such as how this selection reflects Obama’s own faith and worldview and a deeper look into Walkins’s own religious views, but it is a start.

The key will be to see whether the media follows up on any of these prayers and sermons to give its readership an in-depth view of what was said and what those words meant.

As a quick but incomplete survey of what is out there, see Zoll’s report on the prayers here and Newsweek’s Lisa Miller here.

Labels: inauguration, prayer, President Obama

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Prayers for the president-elect

January 18, 2009

President-elect Barack Obama is one of a long line of leaders who has invited God to the inaugural ceremonies. Yet never in recent history has there been such a fuss. Setting the issue of public prayers aside, shouldn’t we all be ushering in a new era with a prayer or at least keep our fingers crossed—whether we’re religious or not?

Before public prayers during the inauguration became an issue, nearly 300 faithful organized to pray for Obama.

Members of the Obama Prayer Team have been gathering online, asking God to protect the president-elect and guide him through the next four years. On Sunday, some traveled to Washington on Sunday to attend a prayer service. Others set their clocks to pray at the same time, so God would hear their voices in one accord.

But the prayers didn’t stop with Obama’s victory on Election Day. Overman recalls standing in Grant Park that night, thanking God and shedding tears as the crowd recited the Pledge of Allegiance.

Even after the inauguration, members of the team will continue to keep the First Family and the Oval Office in their conversations with God.

"Oh, the battle has just begun," said Jordan, "We can’t just leave him stranded ... He needs all of us to help hold him up."

Labels: Barack Obama, God, inauguration, prayer

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Obama And the Rise of Secular Spirituality

Sunday January 18, 2009
Categories: Consciousness

By Deepak Chopra and Dave Stewart

It's rare enough for an incoming President to inspire such a flood of hope and optimism, or so much relief that our long imprisonment in the political doldrums should be ending. But Barack Obama has done more than that. He has become a symbol of the rise of secular spirituality in this country, a liberated set of values that exists largely outside organized religion. Perhaps he himself is unaware of secular spirituality by that name. In lockstep with all previous Presidents, Obama must be seen attending church regularly, and that church must be close to mainstream.

However, if you consider what he stands for, Obama's worldview is more congruent with alternative theology than it is with churchgoers, 70% of whom were supporters of George Bush in his two election victories. Where organized religion has opted to stand by the right wing, millions of Americans who consider themselves spiritual have longed for peace, unity, nonviolence, and freedom that isn't imposed by the force of arms. We think Obama stands for the same values. In that regard, he is taking up the mantle of Martin Luther King< jr., who should be honored as one of Obama's spiritual forebears as much as Lincoln.

One senses a blessed return to rationality and the end of intolerant dogma as Obama prepares to enter the White House, but secular spirituality has expanded since the days of Jefferson and Adams. It now includes the following principles that we urge the new President to espouse (several of them he already has):

-- A spiritual duty to be benign stewards of the Earth and to preserve the ecology.
-- A responsibility to revere Nature and to be humble before it.
-- A duty to further peace among nations.
-- A pledge of nonviolence that will lead finally to total nuclear disarmament in our lifetime.
-- A refusal to use America's super power for militaristic ends.
-- A sense of compassion for the poor and wretched beset by pandemic disease, lack of political influence, and denial of basic human rights.

If Obama can further any of these values, he will be leaping miles ahead of his predecessor. Nothing about secular spirituality is radical. Most of its principles are articles of belief for millions of average Americans who have largely been shut out of politics for eight years. Our hopes for the new President won't be fulfilled until he adopts all of them. If he truly wants to reform the ways of Washington, he must extend his vision to the Congress, which under Republican domination served basically to block anything good and progressive.

But secular spirituality isn't limited to the left or the progressive movement in general. It is a national phenomenon, one that will swell steadily in the coming years, particularly among the young. Born after the divisive culture wars that gave the right wing its main chance, the younger generations yearn for new values. Obama appeals to that yearning, and we hope he takes full advantage of it. It's not good enough that he becomes the first African-American President, the first green President, or the first digital President. Nothing less than spiritual renewal is needed across the board, and there is no one of equal stature to lead it.

Labels: Barack Obama, church, Dave Stewart, Deepak Chopra, secular spirituality, values

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What do we pray for?

BY DANA MASSING
dana.massing@timesnews.com [more details]

Published: January 17. 2009 12:01AM

Christians are praying for unity this week, but that's not the number one thing people ask God for.

Help is what most people pray for, said Carol Zaleski, co-author of "Prayer: A History."

"A request is often involved -- for divine protection, healing or special favors for oneself or for others," Zaleski said.

She said that prayer is, essentially, communication with God, or with spiritual beings.

More than half of Americans do it daily, according to survey results released in 2008.

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life's U.S. Religious Landscape Survey found that 58 percent of the national population prays once a day or more.

Percentages ranged from 5 percent of atheists to 89 percent of Jehovah's Witnesses and included 26 percent of Jews, 45 percent of Buddhists, 62 percent of Hindus, 71 percent of Muslims and 78 percent of evangelical Protestants, results showed.

"All religions involve prayer; and prayer goes on outside the boundaries of religion as well," said Zaleski, professor of world religions at Smith College in Northampton, Mass. "Prayer is the primary means of relationship to the divine. Without prayer there is no religion."

Prayer can be spoken or silent. It can include music, dance or visual expression, said Zaleski.

"There are many differences and distinctive notes between and among religions," she said. "Prayer may be addressed to an intercessor -- such as a saint, angel or deified ancestor; or it may be addressed directly to God without intermediary. Prayer includes forms of meditation, for instance, in Buddhism, that are not overtly theistic."

One distinctive practice is the Sufi dhikr, which can involve whirling in imitation of the heavenly spheres while remembering the name of God, she said. Sufism is an Islamic mystic tradition.

Mecca is the center of Islam, Zaleski said, and Muslims face it to pray for that reason.

Muslims are expected, if they are physically and financially able, to make a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once.

"When Muslims turn to face Mecca, they are, in a sense, virtual pilgrims, united in prayer," Zaleski said.

Some Christians, particularly Catholics, Orthodox and Eastern, make a cross sign when praying. Zaleski said it's "a way of identifying one's whole self with Christ."

And within Christianity, many people bow their heads and fold their hands while praying to express humility, gratitude and assent to God's will, she said.

"It is a joyful posture, not a groveling one; humans need to feel that they are in the presence of something truly higher," Zaleski said.

Labels: Americans, Carol Zaleski, Dana Massing, prayer, religion

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By PAUL ABELSKY BLOOMBERG
Jan. 16, 2009,

Across all age groups, the number of those inclined to believe in God has risen by 8 percentage points from four years ago, according to the poll by the All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion, or VTsIOM.

About 18 percent believe in “omens,” while 13 percent accept “retribution for sins.” Twenty-eight percent have “faith in destiny,” down from 42 percent two years ago.

Among those 18 to 24 years old, 22 percent do not believe in any supernatural force, the highest percentage of all age groups.

The survey of 1,600 Russians was conducted Nov. 15-16. The margin of error was 3.4 percentage points.

Labels: faith, God, Paul Abelsky Bloomberg, Russians

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John Piper: Economic Downturn Not Necessarily Bad for Souls

By Audrey Barrick
Christian Post Reporter
Fri, Jan. 16 2009

One of the most influential evangelical authors is encouraging Americans not to complain or get angry at God during these bleak economic times.

God may turn pain, job loss or vanishing retirement funds for our good, said John Piper, pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minn., in a video message posted this week.

First, the well-known author and preacher reminded Americans and those around the world that "God tests His people through hardship."

"And sometimes the darkest of days turn out to be the best of days because almost none of us learns the most and the deepest things about God in the rosiest of times but only in the worst of times," he said in the video featured on his Desiring God Ministries website, "and the knowledge of God is the most precious thing in the world."

"Therefore," he continued, "it's not obvious to me that an economic downturn is bad for our souls, maybe bad for our pocketbooks and bad for our stomachs and bad for our egos, but not necessarily bad for our souls."

Citing several verses from the New Testament book of Matthew, Piper says the passage is designed specifically for people who are on the brink of losing everything.

"Don't be anxious about what you should eat or what you should drink or what you should put on ... He says don't worry about these. I'm your father," he noted. "He means for that word to land on a suffering, laid-off family with tremendous peace."

"I (God) will take care of you. I will," Piper stressed.

While that biblical passage may provide comfort to Christians, the Minneapolis preacher also exhorted non-believers to turn to Jesus Christ and trust him.

And even as Christians, Scripture does not say there will be no trials or periods of suffering for believers, Piper indicated. But Piper assured that through hard times, God will meet every need – "real need, not just perceived need."

"Will our (Christians) faith rise or will we be as anxious as the world is and just look like the world in all of our scraping by, scraping to say 'I got to have' instead of 'He's my everything ... I will work and do everything I can to meet the needs of my family and myself but I am not going to lie awake at night and get angry at Him or bemoan my situation.'"

He ended his message on a challenging note: "Do all things without grumbling. Why? You have a sovereign God who is on your side, who works everything together for your good."

Labels: Audrey Barrick, Christian, economics, hardship, hope

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Programs Aim To Increase Study and Research on Faith and Globalization

Friday, January 16, 2009

New Haven, Conn. — In December, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced that he would expand the Tony Blair Faith Foundation (TBFF) and the Yale Initiative on Faith and Globalization over the next two years.

Future plans include:

• Basing the U.S. operations of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation at Yale University, employing a small team of staff to work across the range of the foundation’s programs and help extend its reach across North America.

• Building a global consortium of universities that will introduce courses on Faith & Globalization and join the conversation worldwide. Initially this will include major universities in Europe and Asia.

• Working with major polling partners to better understand the attitudes of people worldwide to religion and globalization; and develop an annual international student survey, building on the exploratory work done by the Global 21 student network this year.

• Expanding the website created in conjunction with Yale’s Faith and Globalization course to become the go-to site for the issues of faith and globalization. Drawing on the resource materials collected for the course, as well as interviews and comments by the lecturers and guest participants, the TBFF will produce materials for professors.

• Expanding research collaborations, which Blair describes as "one of the most exciting opportunities for our work with Yale" Toward this end, the Divinity School will co-sponsor several research projects involving the role of "spiritual capital" in global economy, notions of global common good, and Muslim and Christian relations.

• Producing a major book on faith and globalization, and exploring the creation of other publications that can bring these questions to a wider public audience.

• Establishing an international summer internship for students with exchanges between Yale and the TBFF’s offices in London, to engage in collaborative projects both intellectual and practical, which advance our joint agenda.

• Hosting a forum at Yale in 2010 and 2012 for Muslims and Christians, which will allow leaders of these two communities to build on and deepen the impact of the Common Word engagements begun at Yale in the summer of 2008. From 2010 onwards, the forum and dialogue will increase Jewish participation.

• Developing a set of seminars and workshops worldwide that will engage business and policy leaders during the next two years. This will include a high-level international conference of business leaders at Yale next fall that Blair will host with President Richard C. Levin.

• Organizing more joint-teaching sessions by video-conference (such as the one between Yale and the National University of Singapore, held in the fall) with other universities as they take up the Faith and Globalization course to bring a global perspective to the examination of these issues.

• Tackling new areas of research, such as religion, conflict and reconciliation; how religion adapts to globalization; and how globalization can be infused with a stronger sense of values.

• Building on the current collaboration between the Divinity School and the School of Management to increase the cross-disciplinary input to our work and bring expertise from other schools.

Labels: faith, globalization, religion, Tony Blair, Tony Blair Faith Foundation, Yale Initiative on Faith and Globalization

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Americans accept 'array of faiths,' abandon biblical teaching

Allie Martin 1/16/2009 6:30:00 AMBookmark and Share

A new survey finds Christianity is no longer the default faith of most Americans.

The survey was conducted by The Barna Group, which found that half of Americans believe Christianity is just one of many options for genuine faith. George Barna, the group's founder, believes the study confirms that more Americans are adopting a pluralistic mindset.

"Americans are increasingly very accepting of a diverse array of faiths," he notes. "They're less likely to think that Christianity is right or accurate in what it teaches."

According to Barna, the survey also finds that many Americans are adopting their own ideas about faith, apart from God's Holy Word.

George Barna"What we find is that people are deriving their biblical literacy and their views of spirituality from conversations that they have with friends, and they give that equal weight to things they might get in church or from other religious settings," he points out. "They'll get their faith views from their own personal reflections as well as from their personal experiences and observations."

The survey reveals that most Americans still call their faith an important source of personal and moral guidance.

Labels: Allie Martin, America, Barna Group, Bible, Christianity, faith

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Launch of New Church Promises to Change the Face of Religion

The Vibe in Fullerton, Ca announces the February 1st launch of an unorthodox church that chooses inclusion over religion in an attempt to reach those who find the traditional church irrelevant.

Fullerton, CA, January 15, 2009 --(PR.com)-- The Vibe announces the February 1st, 2009 launch of a church with a whole new groove.

Super Sunday, The Vibe’s launch day celebration, is designed to provide a non-threatening environment for people to test drive this new kind of church. This new church firmly believes that people really want to make meaningful contact with God but religion keeps getting in the way.

“Religion sucks”, said Steve Brown, The Vibe’s Lead Pastor, “it sucks the life right out of the most liberating lifestyle imaginable. Jesus didn’t come to this planet to enslave us with a bunch of rules. He came to free us. That’s our message.”

The Vibe presents those exploring faith with an alternative to religious rules, regulations and rituals. They believe that the perfect church is filled with imperfect people - a "sinners only club". They believe that the church was established to include everyone – a belief supported by their mantra: come as you are and bring your baggage with you.

The Vibe’s optimistic enthusiasm is well founded. They began with informal, open-air meetings at Lemon Park in Fullerton, California. From the onset they appealed to people that have been marginalized by traditional religious groups. The homeless, those suffering from addictions as well as the “tattooed and pierced crowd” are embraced as family right along with those from mainstream middleclass America.

However, Brown is quick to add that the ministries of The Vibe are not solely relational or spiritual but also practical. “Prayer is powerful”, Brown said, “but prayer supported by action changes lives.” The action Brown refers to comes in the form of feeding and clothing the homeless, the establishment and support of recovery programs, assistance in obtaining suitable living conditions for those without as well as financial and job placement assistance wherever practical or possible. To this Brown added, “We can’t do everything, but we have to do something.”

Brown himself is not what one would expect. He has two tattoos and can often be spotted with the cigarette-smoking crowd on Sunday mornings. With Brown as its Pastor, one is compelled to agree that a very different kind of church has been planted in this community.

Yet, this unlikely foundation seems to explain the down-to-Earth feel of this new church. According to Brown this traditionally unorthodox version of church makes it easier for people to “catch God” – The Vibe’s primary mission. Through their Super Sunday event, The Vibe hopes to show this community what a real connection to God looks and feels like.

“It is our sincerest hope that people will find a connection to God that they never dreamed possible”, said Brown. Then he commented on The Vibe’s dress code. “Just wear what you’ve got on. God isn’t impressed by what you wear.”

Labels: church, faith, God, Jesus, religion, Steve Brown, The Vibe

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God and Science: An Inner Conflict

By Robin Lloyd, LiveScience Senior Editor
15 January 2009

God and science are inherently at odds, or so goes the story with roots that reach back nearly 400 years to the Inquisition's trial of Galileo on suspicion of heresy.

The ongoing effort of U.S. creationists to inject doubt about evolution into science classrooms in public schools is an example of that conflict, not to mention the polarizing arguments over the decades offered by numerous members of the clergy, politicians, and some atheist scientists and scholars including Richard Dawkins.

Now a new study suggests our minds are conflicted, making it so we have trouble reconciling science and God because we unconsciously see these concepts as fundamentally opposed, at least when both are used to explain the beginning of life and the universe.

But what is the source of this seeming "irreconcilable difference" — are we hard-wired for it, or is it tenacious cultural baggage?

The experiments

Experiments headed up by psychologist Jesse Preston of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her colleague Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago provide some data to support the argument that the conflict is inherent, or hard-wired. They found that subjects apparently cannot easily give positive evaluations to both God and science as explanations for big questions, such as the origin of life and the universe, at the same time.

To see the rest of this very interesting article, please click on "external link" at the end of this edit.

Labels: evolution, God, Jesse Preston, Nicholas Epley, Robin Lloyd, science

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Searching for enlightenment

Is Google's 'school of personal growth' a spiritual boon or corporate fig leaf?

Business initiatives trumpeted as selfless efforts to boost human welfare understandably evoke cynicism. The conflict between the profit motive and talk of employee wellbeing seems too tense to be soothed by a few in-house yoga classes, the traditional giant cheques handed out at local schools, or office recycling schemes.

So no doubt the news that Google is offering training to foster employees' spiritual growth will be met with some disdain, especially as this could well be the first example of a major modern corporation taking staff development into the transpersonal arena.

The story has emerged from a presentation made by Chade-Meng Tan, a former software engineer who now heads up the company's "school of personal growth", one of four faculties operating as Google University in a street adjacent to the firm's main Silicon Valley base. Speaking at the "Happiness and its Causes" conference in San Francisco, Tan suggested that the school's ethos could be a blueprint for workplace education. "Google wants to help Googlers grow as human beings on all levels," he said, "emotional, mental, physical and 'beyond the self'."

It is the final ingredient in this formula which is striking – Tan is a Buddhist, and the idea of people growing "beyond the self" sounds like an allusion to the Buddhist notion of "interdependent arising" – characterised by the insight that what we experience as "me" is not a separate, solid, unchanging entity but a fluid, evolving process that is inextricably connected to and interacting with the whole web of existence. This appears to be reflected in the courses on offer at the school, which includes classes on "the neuroscience of empathy" led by Stanford psychologist Philippe Goldin, as well as instruction in mindfulness meditation from Zen teacher Norman Fischer, who has been dubbed "the abbot of Google".

The emphasis on evidence-based disciplines such as neuroscience and psychology suggests that the school's approach is based on the rigours of science rather than the superstition of church or crystal ball. At a time when many traditional religious institutional forms are associated with war, superstition, or scandal, or are failing to adapt to 21st-century life, it may be that our continued evolution is more likely to be spurred by organisations with a track record of cutting-edge services that improve the quality of lives and relationships.

It seems that in the west, it is mixing most creatively with the fields of science, technology and communications – another example of the commercial appropriation of "interdependent arising" being the recent Orange "I Am Everyone" adverts.

Whether the Google initiative leads to further innovation, greater wellbeing and continued success, or turns into a cloak for materialistic greed, will depend largely on the company's ability to sustain a skillful and compassionate modus operandi in the midst of a corporate world dominated by self-interest. Having made its fortune through improving networks, it might understand better than most firms the glaring implications of interdependence - that sustained abundance is only possible through willingness to share it with others.

As to its capacity for wisely acting on that understanding and resisting the allure of corporate egotism – the very antithesis of going "beyond the self" – that very much remains to be seen.

Labels: Buddhism, Chade-Meng Tan, Google, neuroscience, spiritual growth, transpersonal

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Randy Sheridan: American culture and religion: Is it on the rise or in decline?

January 14, 2009 06:10 pm

In the mid 1700s the Age of Enlightenment was sweeping across Europe like an Oklahoma grass fire.

The European culture’s love affair with liberation theology or better yet, no theology at all was in full bloom. Its theme is akin to the modern day slogan, “If it feels good, do it!”

Some progressive thinkers and prognosticators suggest that America has reached a similar point where religion is no longer a vital part of the fabric in our culture, and its time has come and gone.

Some recent studies might offer some validity to that observation.

A recent Harris Interactive poll suggests a decline of belief in key religious concepts. In 2003, upwards of 90 percent of the post 9-11 populace expressed their belief in God, while five years later that number dropped by 10 percent.

Such decline begs the question: Is the American culture prone to foxhole religion, or is it simply human nature to turn to God more readily during hard times, while holding loosely to our religion during periods of prosperity?

Sounds a bit “Old Covenant like” doesn’t it?

The poll shows even more disturbing trends as Americans continue to discount their belief in heaven, down from 82 percent to 73 percent in that same five-year period. Believing the devil is more mythical than real, a 9 percent drop to 59 percent. Bringing up the bottom, pun intended, the view of hell being real dropped from 69 percent to 62 percent.

What does all this mean? Does it have any bearings on our culture today? And how does this affect you, the average John and Jane Doe of America? Little or much, it all depends on your perspective.

An extensive new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life details statistics on religion in America and explores the shifts taking place in the U.S. religious landscape. Many of these new paradigms are the basis for greater spiritual interests.

Based on interviews with more than 35,000 Americans age 18 and older, the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey finds that religious affiliation in the U.S. is both very diverse and extremely fluid.

More than one-quarter of American adults, 28 percent, have left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion or no religion at all.

Just as it was during the Age of Enlightenment, a torrential uprising of spiritual fervor was sweeping across the European continent, so here in America there appears to be a sustaining devotion to all things spiritual in spite of the latest polls.

Simultaneous to Europe’s liberal utopia, America was experiencing the first Great Awakening. Department of Delaware historian Christine Heyrman writes of what historians call “the first Great Awakening” can best be described as a revitalization of religious piety that swept through the American colonies between the 1730s and the 1770s:

Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists and Methodists alike experienced an increase in seekers in unprecedented numbers. In emotionally charged sermons, all the more powerful because they were often delivered extemporaneously, preachers such as Jonathan Edwards, famously known for “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” evoked dramatic, terrifying images of the utter corruption of human nature and the terrors awaiting the unrepentant in hell.

Although our nation has sunk into a recession, is fighting two wars, and humanism is alive and well — you might be surprised to know that church attendance is holding steady and is even on the rise in many parts of our country. An average of 42 percent of adults in America, say they attend worship services weekly.

On the decline? Possibly, but American psyche has been so thoroughly “blood washed” for the last 300 years, I don’t think we are going away anytime soon!

Randy Sheridan of Burleson is a speaker, counselor and mediator. He can be reached at drsheridan@aol.com.

Labels: America, church, God, Harris Interactive, heaven, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Randy Sheridan, religion

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The Power of Nonviolence

The Power of Nonviolence

January 14, 2009

Last spring The Nation Institute sponsored a forum at the Society for Ethical Culture in New York City on "Gandhi, King and the Power of Nonviolence: Alternatives to Force in the 21st Century." The participants were Jonathan Schell, The Nation's Peace and Disarmament correspondent, author of The Fate of the Earth and most recently, The Seventh Decade: The New Shape of Nuclear Danger; and Taylor Branch, author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning three-volume history of the Martin Luther King era. The moderator was the writer Suzannah Lessard. What follows is an edited transcript of the discussion.

Please click on "external link" to access the entire discussion.

Jonathan Schell and Taylor Branch in conversation about Mohandas K. Gandhi, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the transformative power of nonviolence.
*
An Inauguration for the Ages

The spirits of the civil rights movement--and movements for social justice everywhere--were with Obama on this historic Inauguration Day.

Labels: civil rights, discussions, Gandhi, Jonathan Schell, Martin Luther King Jr., Nation Institute, non-violence, Suzannah Lessard, Taylor Branch

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Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Elder speaks softly with drum

Wednesday, January 14, 2009
By DANA DUGAN
Express Staff Writer

A tribal elder is more than just another aging person. To be called an elder is a sign of respect for someone who has had a lifetime of lessons, who is committed to preserving tradition through language, song and ritual, and who has the desire to pass it on to younger generations.

Horace Axtell, 84, is a Nez Perce elder who was born in Ferdinand, Idaho in 1924. His family had been baptized but still held the Nez Perce ways close. Axtell spent his youth absorbing traditional ways of the tribal elders, some of whom were survivors of the 1877 Big Hole (or Bear Paw) War when Chief Joseph led his people north. On their trail were cadres of soldiers, who under President Ulysses Grant's orders attempted to clear the Nez Perce homeland.

His father eventually left the family, and his grandmother, mother and an aunt raised him. At his birth he was named Isluumc, but also given an English name, as was custom.

"To show respect some people will call me Isluumc," he said. "That is an honor to be called by your Indian name. We had discipline in them days. Everything was taught and told to us in our language. When I grew up I spoke our language first. I'm real happy I was raised that way. Not to many left that speak it anymore—when I grew up everyone did."

He is a veteran of World War II, and was among one of the first expeditionary forces to witness the haunting devastation in Nagasaki after the atomic bomb was dropped in 1945. That same year his mother died and their family home burned down. Upon his return he moved to Lewiston. For 36 years he toiled at the Potlatch mill, retiring in 1986.

"That's how I got my home," he said from his home in Lewiston. "I earned this place."

He and his wife had eight children and 27 grandchildren who all live nearby on the reservation.

Axtell is now a spiritual leader of the Seven Drum religion, a traditional religion of the tribes of the plateau that requires practitioners to memorize songs and accompany them on handmade, hand-held drums. Until arthritis set in, Axtell constructed the drums in the old way, curing the hides and stretching them over wooden frames.

"To sing and play the drum, it's our spirituality," he said. "Most of our songs that we sing are prayers. We use the drum and the bell. It's kind of a director. It makes the song come out stronger. The songs are about life, everyday life, children, relatives, friends and special days. Each song has a special meaning. All handed down. Comes out of your heart. Not written down. We don't record our songs. That's not the way we learned them. We learned them from the heart."

In 1992, Axtell was the subject of a documentary, "Nee-mee-poo: The Power of Our Dance." He made national news again in 1997 when he blessed the newly recovered ancestral lands of the Nez Perce in Willowa County, Ore., where the battles of 1877 were held.

His memoir, "A Little Bit of Wisdom: Conversations With a Nez Perce Elder," co-written with Margo Aragon, was published in 1997. It was the first printed memoir of a Nez Perce elder in more than 50 years.

For nearly nine years, Axtell taught the traditional language of the Nez Perce at Lewis and Clark College in Lewiston.

"I was strict on pronunciation. Non-Indian doesn't have the right pronunciation. I worked with a guy at the college. It got to the point that I corrected him on pronunciation," he said, chuckling. "It didn't go over very well. Now they have a linguist. Not an Indian. It don't go over like when I was teaching it. I had 35 or 40 students all the time. I had a good class. We have some young people stepping up. I helped them. A few come and ask me question and how to spell words. I'm always happy to help them."

For his work in late 2008, Axtell was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts' National Heritage Fellowship.

"I spent four days in Washington, D.C., for that," he said. "It was good, exciting. I met more people and the others who got the award when I did. We got acquainted."

His efforts have also been recognized with the Washington State Historical Society Peace and Friendship Award, an honorary doctorate from Lewis-Clark State College, and the President's Medallion from the University of Idaho.

A few years before his father's death, Axtell found him at long last.

"From him I learned about his family. His grandfather was a warrior, killed at the last battle of Bear Paw (in 1877). I didn't know these things."

Axtell still owns the land where he was born.

"I rent it out for a pastureland," he said. "That's what I like about it. We had horses there and I used to ride around it. I rode horses until about two years ago. But I had two knee replacements and a hip. But I go there and drive around sometimes. It's my home."

Labels: Dana Dugan, Horace Axtell, Nez Perce, Seven Drum, spirituality

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The pulpit and the presidency

Rick Warren has the power to broaden the evangelical agenda
By Electa Draper
The Denver Post
Posted: 01/13/2009

Rick Warren, the chubby, denim-clad, goateed 54-year-old Southern Baptist now hailed as America's pastor, was the heir apparent to 90-year-old Billy Graham long before President-elect Barack Obama asked him to give the inaugural invocation.

Warren rose to the occasion in 28 years, under circumstances very different from Graham's.

Long before the Saddleback Civil Forum last August, where Warren moderated a values-focused Q&A session with presidential candidates Obama and John McCain, the media represented Warren as the authoritative spokesman for a new generation of evangelical Christians.

"Nobody takes a vote on this kind of thing . . . but I can't imagine any other religious leader who could have pulled off (the candidate forum) the way he did," said Michael Cromartie of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

"Rick Warren has become America's pastor, replacing Billy Graham in that role," Cromartie says without qualification.

People are looking for a Graham successor and anointed spokesman for evangelical Christians because they constitute a powerful bloc politically, commercially and culturally.

Nearly eight in 10 Americans say they are Christians. Evangelical Christians
Time and Newsweek both named Warren to their lists of top American and world leaders.

Warren, who started out in 1980 with a few people in Bible study in his home, now leads more than 20,000 members at his Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif. He doesn't take a salary from the church and practices a reverse tithe when it comes to his considerable income as an author, keeping 10 percent and donating 90 percent.

Warren is known as the pastors' pastor. His first book, "The Purpose Driven Church," started a small revolution among clergy in 1995. His worldwide pastor-training network has half a million alumni.

Warren heads innovative global missions, such as The Peace Plan, and is widely credited with broadening the evangelical agenda beyond abortion and gay marriage to confront poverty, disease, climate change and genocide.

Franklin Graham predicts Warren will have Obama's ear on important issues, while his father will not be a spiritual adviser to the new president. He recently told Christianity Today magazine that his father is "just happy to get up in the morning."

Billy Graham has been the confidante of 11 presidents, every one since Harry Truman. He led prayers at four inaugural ceremonies. He participated in inauguration-related events for every president since John F. Kennedy, until Obama.

Warren disavows any role for himself as cultural warrior, yet, unlike the elder Graham, whom Warren has called one of his important role models, he has been a lightning rod for people on both the left and right of the social divide.

The selection of Warren to pray at the inauguration Jan. 20 elicited sharp criticism from gay rights advocates angered by his belief — the traditional evangelical Christian view — that homosexuality is a sin.

The 2008 Religious Landscape Survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life reported that 64 percent of members of evangelical churches believe homosexuality should be discouraged; while only 34 percent of mainline Protestants believe the same.

Labels: Barack Obama, Billy Graham, evangelicals, inauguration, presidency, pulpit, Rick Warren

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Study: Americans 'Customize' Their Religion

CBNNews.com
January 14, 2009

CBNNews.com - A new nationwide study says a majority of Americans pick and choose their religious beliefs, effectively customizing their religion rather than adopting beliefs taught by a church.

The survey conducted by The Barna Group, claims that 71 percent of Americans say they are more likely to develop their own set of religious beliefs. Young people under the age of 25 led this particular 'a la carte' group.

The survey, released on Monday, also shows that among those people who describe themselves as being a Christian:

-Almost half believe that Satan does not exist.

-One-third say that Jesus sinned when he was on earth.

-Two-thirds say they do not have a responsibility to share the Gospel with others.

-One-quarter dismiss the idea that the Bible is accurate in all of its teachings.

George Barna, founder of the Christian survey group, said the findings show that a growing number of people are serving as their own "theologian-in-residence." This results in Americans embracing an "unpredictable and contradictory body of beliefs."

Those claiming to be "born-again" Christians indicated they would be least likely to a adopt an a la carte approach to their religious beliefs. But according to the survey, 61 percent say they also have mixed their set of beliefs.

The Christian Post noted the survey findings show Americans are now combining their beliefs from different denominations and even religions, instead of following the theological teachings of a denomination or church.

A Christian Nation?

The survey also revealed that Christianity is no longer viewed as the default religion of America. More than 50 percent of the respondents said that Christianity is no longer considered to be the automatic religious choice for Americans. Previous studies indicated a basic assumption among responders that if one was born in America, that person would automatically be affiliated with the Christian faith.

Despite the changes in religious beliefs, a majority of Americans still look to their religious faith as an important source for moral guidance. Nearly three out of four Americans said their faith influences their moral judgments.

The study's results are based on telephone interviews conducted by The Barna Group with a random sample of 1,004 adults selected from across the United States, ages 18 and older, during August of last year.

Sources: The Barna Group, The Christian Post

Labels: America, Barna Group, religious belief

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Gallup: Americans see religious influence waning

12/31/2008 8:03 PM |
By Adelle M. Banks, Religion News Service

Two-thirds of Americans think religion is losing its influence on U.S. life, a sharp jump from just three years ago when Americans were nearly evenly split on the question, according to a new Gallup Poll.

Sixty-seven percent of Americans think religious influence is waning while just 27% say it is increasing. That perspective demonstrates a continuing downward trend, Gallup said.

Those who regularly attend worship services are more likely to say religion is losing its influence; three out of four weekly attenders (74 percent) said religious influence is falling, compared to 24% who thought its influence is on the rise.

The latest poll also finds that the percentage of Americans believing that religion "can answer all or most of today's problems" has reached an all-time low. Slightly more than half of those surveyed — 53% — held that view, while 28% say it is "largely old-fashioned and out of date."

The poll results are based on telephone interviews conducted Dec. 4-7 with 1,009 adults; the poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Labels: Adelle M. Banks, church, Gallup Poll, influence, religion

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No surveys? That would be heavenly!

January 10, 2009

You can make them say almost anything you want. They can leave you not knowing much more than you did before you either took them or studied the results.

It's like listening to a politician making a speech. When finished, you'd swear the candidate had said something -- you just can't quite recall what it was.

Anyhow, a couple of recent surveys add more patches to America's crazy quilt of faith.

A Gallup Poll shows two-thirds of Americans think religion is losing its influence in the nation's life. That's down from about a 50-50 split three years ago.

Ironically, among those who worship regularly, 74% believe religious influence is waning, compared with 24% who say it is growing.

Another survey, this one by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, shows U.S. Christians apparently are a pretty open-minded bunch. Fifty-two percent believe at least one non-Christian religion will give you an eternal Get-Out-of-Hell-Free card.

Among those Christians who believe their faith tradition isn't the only way into heaven, 80% can cite at least one non-Christian faith able to do the job.

It gets even more interesting. Among white evangelical Protestants and black Protestants, there are sizeable numbers who say there's more than one way to heaven. About 47% of white evangelicals and 49% of black Protestants say theirs is not necessarily the one true faith. Among white evangelicals who say many roads lead to heaven, 72% can name at least one non-Christian religion that will get you there. Among black Protestants, the number is 85%.

So how do we to get into heaven? The Pew survey showed a third of Americans think religious beliefs are the key, while 29% believe actions determine who gets in. Another 10% said God will consider a combination of beliefs and actions. The rest aren't sure.

Labels: Gallup Poll, Jim Ketchum, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, surveys

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Symposium: A Discussion on Faith

By Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, January 09, 2009

Please click on "external Link" to access this very interesting and illuminating discussion on atheism.

In this special edition of Frontpage Symposium, we have assembled a distinguished panel to discuss the “new atheism” and the role of religion in political life. Our guests are:

Rabbi David J. Wolpe, the rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles and a teacher of modern Jewish religious thought at UCLA. He has been named the #1 Pulpit Rabbi in America (as reported in Newsweek). Rabbi Wolpe writes for many publications, including The Jewish Week, Jerusalem Post, and Beliefnet.com. He has appeared as a commentator on CNN and CBS This Morning and has been featured on the History Channel's Mysteries of the Bible. He is the author of the national bestseller Making Loss Matter: Creating Meaning in Difficult Times. His new book is Why Faith Matters.

Bruce Chilton, the Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson and Rector at the Church of St. John in Barrytown, New York. He is the author of many scholarly articles and books, including the acclaimed Rabbi Jesus and Mary Magdalene. He is the author of the new book, Abraham's Curse: The Roots of Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Raheel Raza, a leading Muslim reformer, award winning writer, professional speaker, diversity consultant, documentary film maker and interfaith advocate. She is the author of Their Jihad . . . Not My Jihad. Visit her site at RaheelRaza.com.

Fr. Maurice Guimond, a Trappist monk at Our Lady of Calvary Abbey, in Rogersville, New Brunswick, Canada. He was superior of his community for ten years.

Michael Novak, an American Catholic philosopher, journalist, novelist, and diplomat. The author of more than twenty-five books on the philosophy and theology of culture, Novak is most widely known for his book, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism (1982). In 1994 he was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, which included a million-dollar purse awarded at Buckingham Palace.

____________________
FP: Bruce Chilton, Rabbi David J. Wolpe, Raheel Raza, Fr. Maurice Guimond and Michael Novak, welcome to Frontpage Symposium.

Rabbi Wolpe, could you start the discussion for us by touching on the "new atheism"?

Labels: atheism, Bruce Chilton, David J. Wolpe, Jamie Glazov, Maurice Guimond, Michael Novak, Raheel Raza, symposium

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Spirituality, Not Religion, Makes Kids Happy

The link between spirituality and happiness is pretty well-established for teens and adults. More spirituality brings more happiness. Now a study has reached into the younger set, finding the same link in "tweens" and in kids in middle childhood.

Specifically, the study shows that children who feel that their lives have meaning and value and who develop deep, quality relationships — both measures of spirituality, the researchers claim — are happier.

Personal aspects of spirituality (meaning and value in one's own life) and communal aspects (quality and depth of inter-personal relationships) were both strong predictors of children's happiness, said study leader Mark Holder from the University of British Columbia in Canada and his colleagues Ben Coleman and Judi Wallace.

However, religious practices were found to have little effect on children's happiness, Holder said.

Religion is just one institutionalized venue for the practice of or experience of spirituality, and some people say they are spiritual but are less enthusiastic about the concept of God.

Other research has shown a connection between well-adjusted and well-behaved children and religion, but that is not the same, necessarily, as happiness.

Spirituality trumps temperament

In an effort to identify strategies to increase children's happiness, Holder and colleagues set out to better understand the nature of the relationship between spirituality, religiousness and happiness in children aged 8 to 12 years.

A total of 320 children, from four public schools and two faith-based schools, completed six different questionnaires to rate their happiness, their spirituality, their religiousness and their temperament. Parents were also asked to rate their child's happiness and temperament.

A child's temperament was also an important predictor of happiness. In particular, happier children were more sociable and less shy. The relationship between spirituality and happiness remained strong, even when the authors took temperament into account.

However, counterintuitively, religious practices — including attending church, praying and meditating — had little effect on a child's happiness.

And therein may lie some useful information for parents.

More on teens and spirituality

Another research project recently added weight to previously known links between spirituality and happiness among teens.

This researchers compared teenagers with the inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) with their healthy peers. The analysis showed that while spirituality helped all the kids cope, it was especially helpful for the ones with IBD (which causes abdominal pain and other nasty symptoms, as well as higher risk for psychosocial difficulties and mental health problems; it is more serious than and not the same as IBS or spastic colon). The exact cause of IBD is not known, and there is no cure.

The researchers, Dr. Michael Yi and Sian Cotton at the University of Cincinnati, defined spirituality as one's sense of meaning or purpose in life or one's sense of connectedness to the sacred or divine. Again, they weren't talking about religion, church, temple or mosque.

Teams led by Yi and Cotton collected data on socio-demographics, functional health status and psychosocial characteristics as well as spiritual well-being for 67 patients with IBD and 88 healthy adolescents between the ages of 11 and 19.

One of the most important predictors of poorer overall quality of life for both the healthy and the sick teens was having a poorer sense of spiritual well-being, Yi said, although personal characteristics such as self esteem, family functioning and social support were similar between adolescents with IBD and their healthy peers.

Less depression, more well-being

Cotton's analysis of the same 155 adolescents found that higher levels of spiritual well-being were associated with fewer depressive symptoms and better emotional well-being.

The results were detailed in recent online versions of the Journal of Pediatrics and the Journal of Adolescent Health. Yi's and Cotton's research was funded by career development awards by the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, part of the National Institutes of Health.

Labels: children, Dr. Michael Yi, happiness, relationship, religion, Sian Cotton, spirituality

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Pew poll follows up on controversial one

Jan 8, 2009 | by Staff

WASHINGTON (BP)--A new poll by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life finds that a significant minority of self-identified evangelicals believe that many religions can lead to salvation, even though some of those evangelicals apparently are confused over what the term "religion" means.

The poll seeks to bring clarity to a much-criticized poll by Pew in June that found 70 percent of Americans, including 56 percent of white evangelicals, believe that "many religions can lead to eternal life." Several Christian commentators criticized that first survey's general wording, saying that Christians often refer to their denomination as their religion. In other words, those critics wondered: Were the evangelicals who were polled saying they believe people within multiple Christian denominations can obtain eternal life, or were they saying that Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus also have a path to salvation?

The new poll asked follow-up questions, and its findings do -- as least partially -- support the claims of those critics. Nevertheless, the poll contains very little good news for the evangelical church.

In the new survey, 47 percent of professing evangelicals said they believe "many religions can lead to eternal life," a decline of nine points from the earlier poll. Pew then asked that same group how many non-Christian religions they believe can lead to eternal life. More than one-fourth (28 percent) said "none," giving credence to the theory that some evangelicals confused "denominations" with "religions." Still, 72 percent of those who said "many religions can lead to eternal life" cited at least one other non-Christian religion.

Among the general population, 65 percent of Americans -- a drop from 70 percent in the earlier poll -- said there are many paths to salvation.

The newest Pew survey found that church attendance made a difference in one's beliefs. It also discovered a striking gap in beliefs between evangelical Protestants and mainline Protestants. Among white evangelical Protestants who attend church weekly, 37 percent -- a drop in 10 points from the earlier stat -- said "many religions can lead to eternal life." But among white mainline Protestants who attend church weekly, 75 percent believe there are multiple paths to salvation, and among white Catholics who attend church weekly, 85 percent hold to that view.

The latest Pew poll surveyed 2,905 adults July 31-Aug. 10.
--30--
Compiled by Michael Foust, assistant editor of Baptist Press.

Labels: church, eternal life, evangelicals, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, religion

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A vaccine against terrorism - inter-faith harmony (Comment)

By M. Rajaque Rahman

One thing for which the world would like to forget 2008 is the rise of fanaticism and religious terrorism. Though the world has lived with terror for years, it became more pronounced in 2008 with acts of terror linked to religion or belief system. The perpetrators of the Mumbai carnage targeted Jews for their faith.

It's a tragedy that religion, which has been the source of superior virtues such as honesty, love, compassion, justice and peace, is being used as a motivation to spread terror and kill innocents. Though motives and reasons vary from attack to attack, religious terrorism runs on the fuel derived from a misplaced belief that "my way is the only way" and it's God's ordained duty to take up arms against those who have gone astray.

What can prevent fanaticism and religious terrorism in the New Year? Fortunately, there is light at the end of the tunnel as religious leaders are coming out against terrorism and pushing for inter-faith harmony.

In November, over 6,000 Muslim clerics gathered in Hyderabad to denounce religious terrorism and tell the world that there is no place for extremism in Islam. Earlier, the orthodox Islamic seminary Darul Uloom at Deoband issued a fatwa against terrorism. More importantly, leaders from other religions were roped in for the Hyderabad meeting of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind. A positive signal to unitedly fight terrorism is being sent to the larger community.

Taking the call for inter-faith harmony a step further, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar of Art of Living, who was chief guest at the gathering of the most influential body of Muslim clerics in India, offered to work with them to isolate fanatical elements abetting terrorism.

A month later, over 500 imams and rabbis gathered in far away Paris for the 3rd World Congress of Imams and Rabbis for Peace where they searched for ways to resolve differences between Islam and Judaism, the main cause of violence and conflict in the Middle East.

These events may not immediately make religious fanatics desist from doing what they are doing in the name of religion. Yet they represent a serious attempt to find an alternative solution to religious terrorism.

While religion seeks to bring uniformity in a multi-faceted world, the goal of spirituality is to celebrate the diversity. To save the world from this pitfall of religion, the time has come to spiritualise religion.

One of the most notable aspects of contemporary spirituality has been its accent on educating people to a proper understanding of religion.

This is vital as the wrong understanding of the verses of scripture has caused upheaval and is used to justify narrow-mindedness. Religious terror arises when someone reduces his or her identity to a single affiliation based on a religion and a sense of victimisation.

The events of the last few years have shown that stringent laws and rules of society can go only so far in containing fanaticism in a society that loses spiritual values. The approach of offering spirituality as the only sensible response to terrorism addresses the problem at its roots.

Terrorism stems from wrong ideas and the struggle against it should be fought on the level of ideas. It's essential that people's consciences against terror are enlisted as a vital arsenal in the fight against it. For this, a mass spiritual awakening is imperative.

Spirituality nourishes the human values of compassion, love, caring, sharing and acceptance and honours the values found in all religions. This explains why spiritually-evolved people have never been at odds.

The time has come for people of all faiths to unite against terror and educate people against misinterpretation and misuse of religion. This can happen only when people are made to realise that God loves variety and diversity and that many different schools of thought exist in this world. This can happen only when people remember that truth is multi-dimensional.

Labels: interfaith, M. Rajaque Rahman, Muslims, religion, terrorism

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Time-crunched believers find ways to squeeze in God

Jan. 7, 2009
Los Angeles Times

So you're racing through another jam-packed day, late picking up the kids from basketball practice because you got stuck at the office. Then you pay the bills, walk the dog and perhaps grab cold pizza before collapsing into bed.

When do you ever find time for God?

One publisher has the answer: The One-Minute Bible, Day by Day, whose brief readings promise to inspire your "daily walk with the Lord."

Or check out 5 Minute Theologian: Maximum Truth in Minimum Time.

Because man does not live by bread alone - and might be tempted to eat on the run - there's Aunt Susie's 10-Minute Bible Dinners: Bringing God into Your Life One Dish at a Time.

The American style of worship, like everything else in overloaded lives, is speeding up. Call it God on the go.

This hurried search for the Almighty partly explains the rise of a niche industry of books, DVDs, podcasts, text messages and e-mail blasts that distill the essentials of faith.

The materials offer bite-size spiritual morsels that can be digested in minutes, or even seconds, on the daily commute, aboard airplanes or at the dinner table. As 7 Minutes With God promises, "Learn how to plan a daily quiet time that takes just 7 minutes." And what about your over-programmed 10-year-old? Again, religious publishers have an answer: The Kid Who Would Be King: One Minute Bible Stories About Kids.

Publishers aren't the only ones adjusting to the time pressures on modern religious life. Rabbis and ministers, aware that worship is just another weekend option for many parishioners, are shortening their sermons and taking other steps to entice worshipers

Traditionalists say that quick-hit spirituality can be useful but that it's no substitute for true learning or involvement in a religious community. Even some of the die-hard faithful, however, see the prophetic writing on the wall.

The Rev. Leith Anderson leads a 2,900-member church in suburban Minneapolis and is president of the National Association of Evangelicals. He also produces a daily radio segment - FaithMinute - that is heard throughout the Midwest.

"It's preaching to people who have never been in the choir," Anderson said.

Even as traditional worship attendance languishes, an appetite for spirituality has created new opportunities for alternative forms of religious communication, publishers say. Podcasts and other electronic adaptations are leading the way.

Only about one-quarter of Americans attend weekly religious services, a figure that has remained relatively steady over most of the past century, according to sociologists who study religion. Yet many Americans feel a need to connect regularly with a supreme being.

A recent national survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that 71 percent of people were absolutely certain about their belief in God and that 58 percent said they prayed daily outside of religious services.

Labels: church, God, Pew forum on Religion, religion, spirituality

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Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Happiness is ...

Published: January 07, 2009
By Jeff Mullin, Commentary

According to the Web site usa.gov, the most popular New Year’s resolutions are to lose weight, manage debt, save money, get a better job, get fit, eat right, get a better education, drink less alcohol, quit smoking, reduce stress overall, reduce stress at work, take a trip and volunteer to help others.

One that is glaringly absent from that list is a simple one, to be happy.

That, of course, begs the question, what makes you happy?

There were, as of Tuesday morning, 6,752,062,211 people on this planet, give or take three or four. Ask each one their definition of happiness and you would likely get 6.7 billion different answers.

Some people say being rich would make them happy, or being thin. But what about all those skinny millionaires on anti-depressants?

One thing happy people don’t do, according to researchers, is watch television.

John Robinson, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, has authored a study that says unhappy people watch more television than happy folks do.

2008 was not a happy year for many Americans, it seems. A group called Precision Opinion polled 1,385 Americans just before the end of the year and found 32 percent of respondents said their personal level of happiness dropped during the year.

That might relate back to watching television. The average American, according to Nielsen Media Research, watches 142 hours of television a month. That’s eight hours and 18 minutes per day, up an hour a day from a decade ago.

In the Precision Opinion poll, men were found to be less happy than women, Democrats (despite the results of November’s election) were unhappier than Republicans and those older than 51 were unhappier than younger people.

Of course, this was a telephone survey, so perhaps these people were simply unhappy about being called away from doing something that makes them happy, like watching TV.

On a side note, it is not really correct to say you are feeling blue if you are especially unhappy, since the color blue, according to a study by English scientists, makes us happy.

Happiness, no matter the color, is apparently contagious. Another recent study has found we can catch happiness from others. On average, according to the study co-authored by researchers from the University of California, San Diego, and Harvard, every happy person in your social network increases your own chance of being happy by 9 percent. And the happiness bug is hard to kill, it seems. The researchers say the effects of catching happiness from someone else can last up to one year.

Even being around a happy stranger can do more to lift one’s spirits, according to this study, than receiving a $5,000 raise. I am perfectly willing to accept a $5,000 raise simply to test this theory, in case my bosses are reading this.

How do you define happiness? The author of “Human Happiness — Its Nature and its Attainment,” Michael Fordyce, lists these traits of happy people.

Happy people, he says, are social and productive. Happy people have a healthy self-image and have flexible goals. Happy people are optimistic, but also realistic. Happy people are motivated, focused and socially adept. Happy people are content with their successes. Happy people were raised in positive, nurturing and safe environments.

In a poll of British women, those who said they were happiest were those who wore a size 14. A poll of Russians found happiness one of the prime wishes for the new year, along with finding a new job and staying healthy.

Americans used to be urged to “Be Like Mike,” while in India people want to be like Sachin Tendulkar. Tendulkar, a cricket star, was voted India’s No. 1 role model of health and happiness in a nationwide survey.

In the aforementioned Precision Opinion survey, 64 percent of Americans surveyed were happy to see 2009 come, convinced the new year would be a happy one for them. I hope they are right.

Labels: happiness, Jeff Mullin, men, Precision Opinion, Sachin Tendulkar, women

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Piety on Capitol Hill?

Originally posted: January 6, 2009

Former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris was refused a seat in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday by an increasingly pious and perhaps self-righteous legislature.

According to a recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, today’s congressmen are much more likely to boast a religious affiliation than ordinary American citizens—even though the U.S. Constitution has stated from the beginning that religion is irrelevant when it comes to holding public office.

Out of 534 congressmen surveyed, only five kept their religious affiliation close to the vest. That's compared to 16 percent of ordinary Americans surveyed last year by Pew. Meanwhile, the congressmen who did declare their faith revealed tremendous diversity on Capitol Hill, as well as another intriguing insight.

Roman Catholics, Jews and Mormons are better represented in Congress than they are in the population as a whole, said David Masci, a senior research fellow and co-author of the Pew report. Yet other religious minorities – notably Buddhists, Muslims and Hindus –are underrepresented relative to their share of the U.S. population.

But even if God isn't in the equation, a religious label seems to be...even Pete Stark, the California congressman who disclosed he was an atheist last year, affiliates with the Unitarian Church.

The cornucopia of religious principles on the congressional floor also might explain why legislators are taking moral stands on issues, enforcing ethics and weeding out bad apples.

That brings us back to Burris. Senators didn't want Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s selection seated on Tuesday because they believe his appointment is “tainted.” What do you think? Are senators being self-righteous or right on?

Labels: religion, Roland Burris, US congressmen

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Does religion provide an evolutionary advantage?

5 January 2009
by Kate Melville

Religious people have more self-control than their less religious counterparts, leading to lower rates of substance abuse, better school achievement, better health behaviors, less depression, and longer lives, says University of Miami professor of Psychology, Michael McCullough.

McCullough's new meta-study, appearing in the journal Psychological Bulletin, posits that self-control is critical for success in life, and religious people have more self-control than do their less religious counterparts. Thus, religious people may be better at pursuing and achieving long-term goals that are important to them.

To arrive at his controversial conclusion, McCullough evaluated eight decades of research that was conducted in diverse samples of people from around the world. He found persuasive evidence from a variety of domains - including neuroscience, economics, psychology and sociology - that religious beliefs and religious behaviors are capable of encouraging people to exercise self-control and to more effectively regulate their emotions and behaviors, so that they can pursue valued goals.

Some of the more intriguing conclusions that McCullough drew were:

* Religious rituals such as prayer and meditation affect the parts of the human brain that are most important for self-regulation and self-control.

* When people view their goals as "sacred," they put more energy and effort into pursuing those goals, and therefore, are probably more effective at attaining them.

* Religious lifestyles may contribute to self-control by providing people with clear standards for their behavior, by causing people to monitor their own behavior more closely, and by giving people the sense that God is watching their behavior.

* The fact that religious people tend to be higher in self-control helps explain why religious people are less likely to misuse drugs and alcohol and experience problems with crime and delinquency.

Labels: Kate Melville, Michael McCullough, Psychological Bulletin, religion, self-control

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Girls Need a Dad and Boys Need a Mom

January 03, 2009
By Janice Shaw Crouse

The latest issue of The Journal of Communication and Religion (November 2008, Volume 31, Number 2) contains an excellent analysis of the importance of opposite-sex parent relationships. The common sense conclusion is backed up with social science data and affirmed by a peer-reviewed scholarly article: girls need a dad, and boys need a mom.

The authors, G.L. Forward, Alison Sansom-Livolsi, and Jordanna McGovern, stress the fact that a family is more than merely a group of individuals who live under the same roof. They cite numerous studies indicating that parents play a crucial role in a child's personal and social development. In fact, a child's relationship with his or her parents is the single most important factor in predicting that child's long-term happiness, adjustment, development, educational attainment, and success. Beyond that general information, studies indicate that girls get better support from the family than do boys. Girls feel closer to their parents, perhaps because parents converse with and express emotion more readily with daughters than with sons. In general, mothers spend far more time with daughters than with sons. Likewise, fathers spend more time with sons than with their daughters. Yet, father-daughter and mother-son relationships tend to have greater impact on a child's future intimate relationships than their relationship with the same-sex parent.

The survey, given to students at two private, church-related universities in Southern California, asked students to evaluate their family's relationship satisfaction, religiosity, and communication behaviors with the opposite-sex parent. Specifically, the study looked at the openness, assurance, dependency, and religiosity between the student and his or her mother or father.

Dependency - The authors define dependency as the attachment and emotional bonding that provides security that continues throughout a child's lifetime. Healthy dependence is essential for autonomy. Ironically, parent-child dependency provides the foundation that enables the child to separate from the parents as he or she matures and becomes an adult. Social and emotional growth stems from a secure attachment - having a safe haven with parents enables a child to move away from their secure base to explore autonomy and independence as an adolescent and emerging adult. In other words, the more secure the base, the easier it is for a child to leave the nest; they know that the parents are there and feel secure enough to transition into a confident adulthood.

Openness - When parents and children openly and comfortably share their thoughts and emotions, the transition into healthy adulthood is easier. Further, such openness assists the child in decision-making. Greater interaction leads to fewer family problems. Parents who express love, offer frequent praise, and encourage give-and-take produce adolescents who are less likely to engage in dangerous behaviors when alone or with friends.

Assurance - A child's self-esteem is strongly linked to parental assurance of worth. A vote of confidence from parents is particularly significant to adolescents. In fact, the ability to communicate assurance to a child is identified as a key to parental success. Successful parents give a child a sense of worth and lovability; coercive parents imply untrustworthiness and incompetence. These communication patterns especially affect girls; a father's open encouragement and supportive attitude makes a daughter feel confident and creates a greater sense of personal worth.

Religiosity - The authors cited numerous studies that link religious beliefs and practices to a strong family unit and noted the fact that the most noticeable impact of religiosity is during adolescence. The majority of studies found an inverse relationship between religiosity and high-risk adolescent behaviors (drinking, drug use, sexual activity, depression, etc.). Other studies indicate a strong relationship between the family's religious belief and practice and a teen's emotional health and family well-being. This is especially true of teenage boys.

Labels: boys, fathers, girls, identity, Janice Shaw Crouse, mothers, parents, The Journal of Communication and Religion

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What's the Status of Religion and Politics Post-Obama?

Published Jan 1, 2009, by Carol Forsloff

It seems that many Americans have had their fill of churches being involved in politics George Bush in 2001 ushered in a period where the religious right was particularly active in governmental affairs.

In 2001 the airwaves were filled with ministers praising the election of Bush as president. His leadership was treated as something that had been divinely ordained. The Post at the time talked about the number of religious leaders who met with Bush during the first year of his Presidency who testified in their faith in Bush and his ability to lead the country as God-ordained. Web sites encouraged people to pray for the President, to recognize his position as both government leader and spiritual model, virtually a Messiah for the government at the time.

According to the Pew Forum things have changed from 2000 and the election of George Bush and the election of Obama in 2008. A survey finds a small majority of the public now declares religion and politics shouldn’t mix, and ministers and religious leaders should not express their opinions on daily activities or political matters. This change follows ten years when most Americans supported religious involvement in government with Christian leaders able to express their views on political matters.

Pew Research Center research reveals that most conservatives have reexamined their position regarding the involvement of religion in politics, and now only 50% of them express support of it. Four years ago 70% believed that churches should involve themselves in governmental affairs. So there has been a sizable shift in public opinion during the last years of the Bush Presidency. Four years ago, just 30% of conservatives believed that churches and other houses of worship should stay out of politics. Today, 50% of conservatives express this view. This is likely why it was said that there was only “soft support” among religious conservatives for John McCain.

Despite the fact that Congress is accused of not representing fully the religious views of the rest of the country, the fact is that Pew reports that the composition of the new Congress is similar to that of the population of the United States, although somewhat less diverse in its representation of minority religious groups. The largest main group in the Congress is Protestant, but if the denominations are considered separately the majority group is Catholic. One unique distinction between Congress and the general population is the fact that fewer political leaders claim no religious affiliation (about 1%) than the rest of the United States (16%)

It seems, however, with the public shift towards less involvement of religion in politics, politicians may not longer have to protest their specific religious views in order to be elected. Or the pendulum may swing again, depending upon future issues because that has been the pattern of American history. The country has struggled with the issue of religion and politics since the beginning of the government, with the battle never being fully won on either side. This newest finding just measures citizen opinion at this point in time.

Labels: Barack Obama, Carol Forsloff, church-state, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, politics, religion

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Survey: Americans believe religious values are ‘under attack’

59 percent say Hollywood does not share their moral values

Christian Examiner staff report

LOS ANGELES, Calif. — A majority of Americans believe that religious values are “under attack,” and that Hollywood insiders do not share the religious and moral values of most Americans, according to a survey from the Anti-Defamation League.

The ADL-commissioned poll found that 61 percent of the American people continue to believe that religious values in this country are “under attack,” while 59 percent of Americans agree that “the people who run the TV networks and the major movie studios do not share the religious and moral values of most Americans.”

The national poll, “American Attitudes on Religion, Moral Values and Hollywood,” was released Nov. 14 during the League’s 2008 Annual Meeting in Los Angeles. Conducted by The Marttila Communications Group, it surveyed 1,000 American adults in October.

Other findings of the ADL survey, included:

• Forty-three percent hold the view that Hollywood and the national media are waging an organized campaign to “weaken the influence of religious values in this country.”

• Significantly fewer Americans believe today that Jews control the TV and film industries. The survey showed that 63 percent disagree with the notion that “the movie and television industries are pretty much run by Jews,” while only 22 percent agree. When ADL conducted its first survey on anti-Semitic attitudes in 1964, nearly half of all Americans believed that the television and film industries were run by Jews.

• There is surprising support for censorship. Nearly 40 percent of the American people support the notion that “dangerous ideas should be banned from public school libraries,” and nearly the same number of Americans disagree with the statement that “censoring books is an old-fashioned idea.”

• Nearly half of those surveyed—49 percent—believe that the United States is becoming “too tolerant in its acceptance of different ideas and lifestyles;” 47 percent disagreed with that statement.

“It is troubling that so many Americans feel as if the output of Hollywood is part of an organized campaign to undermine religious values in this country and believe that censorship is acceptable,” Foxman said.

The survey was conducted by the Marttila Communications Group, a Boston-based public opinion research firm that has conducted numerous national surveys for ADL, measuring American attitudes on a wide range of domestic and foreign policy issues.

The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world’s leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.

Published, January 2009

Labels: America, Anti-Defamation League, censorship, Hollywood, Marttila Communications Group, religious values

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Friday, January 02, 2009

One year in 40 seconds

Take a break...relax for 40 seconds, and enjoy this popular video...it'll help put things into perspective as we strive for peace in the world.

From the author: Images snapped at the same spot through one year. Showing the seasons change. For more information on how the video was made visit my web site. The audio is actual recordings from the same spot. The images are from Oslo, Norway 2008.

Labels: Oslo, peace, seasons, time-lapse photography, video

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Economy takes a toll on mental health

Edward Guthmann, Chronicle Staff Writer
(01-01) 17:17 PST --

In October, the American Psychological Survey reported that 83 percent of American women and 78 percent of American men were experiencing heightened stress over job stability, housing costs and the loss of retirement savings.

Women, the study said, are today more concerned with money issues than their personal health. Women of the Baby Boomer generation are especially distressed: Worries about the economy rose from 18 percent in April, to 92 percent in September.

Coping with crisis

For anyone touched by the economic crisis - and very few aren't - the escalating levels of stress and anxiety require tools that weren't needed in less troubled times. Bay Area psychotherapists suggest these coping mechanisms:

-- Exercise, rest, eat healthful foods.

-- Talk to people. Don't hold worries and anxiety inside. Not talking about fear and stress only reinforces those feelings.

-- Volunteer - be of service to others.

-- Look for positive distraction. Start a new hobby; watch a favorite movie.

-- Get some support. Seek professional help, or go to one or two friends who are good listeners and won't judge you.

-- Socialize. Get out of bed, out of the house. See family members and friends on a regular and frequent basis.

-- Meditate. Take long, deep breaths. Getting oxygen to the brain gives your body the message that you're not in danger.

-- Talk with your kids. Give them a context for understanding the economic crisis and your own anxiety. "Fear is the No. 1 threat to our collective mental health right now," says Mill Valley psychotherapist Jan Edl. "I believe the best antidote is to support a cultivation of staying awake and present. It's a good time to have an inner life or spiritual practice."

Labels: coping mechanisms, Edward Guthmann, mental health, the economy, women

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The American Dream is now simpler

There are two distinct groups of American Dreamers: Traditional Materialist and Secular Spiritualists. A poll shows 37% are the latter, and growing. More Americans are moving away from personal fulfillment at shopping malls.

Tuesday, December 30, 2008
by John Zogby

The New Year is typically a time to look ahead and hope that this will be the year to lose weight, get a promotion, to improve our lives in some significant way. But for many Americans, 2009 is shaping up to be the year they hope to be able to put enough food on the table and still afford health care for their families, to have enough money to cover the mortgage and the car payments, and to hold on to the job they have. Nevertheless, the American Dream is very much alive.

We at Zogby International have been tracking beliefs and attitudes about the American Dream since 1998, wondering if the American Dream is considered to be mainly about achieving material goods or more about finding spiritual happiness. Even in these uncertain economic times, my polling shows the American Dream is still alive and well, but is undergoing an historic transformation.

The Secular Spiritualist view of the American Dream has been adopted by Americans across the nation, in all walks of life. They are Americans who are becoming more satisfied with fewer material assets and less wealth, even as the nation's harsh economic climate has made living with less a reality for many.

Who are these Secular Spiritualists? It comes as no surprise that people who attend religious services at least weekly are more likely to share this life goal. However, these frequent service-goers who make up 44% of Secular Spiritualists are just one component of this group - 33% of Secular Spiritualists rarely or never attend services, demonstrating this is a philosophy about far more than religious faith alone.

The growth of Secular Spiritualism is not simply the result of making do with new personal and national economic realities. I believe it is something more: A growing rejection of a lifestyle obsessed with consumption and too often devoid of deeper meaning.

As more Americans make the conscious choice to move away from materialism to seek the kind of personal fulfillment that can't be found at a mall, business will need to adapt to target these shifting values. Understand that for many with a shrinking dollar, as well as for those who want to leave the rat-race behind and simplify their lives, products still reflect a mix of values - from wanting to express our uniqueness to feeling a sense of community. These consumers don't need or want to feel more macho, glamorous or cool.

Older values like patriotism, sexual prowess, avarice, and social status are far less effective than ethical practices, social responsibility and just plain utilitarianism. And above all else, authenticity works.

Labels: John Zogby, materialism, spiritual happiness, The American Dream, Zogby International

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Religion may have evolved because of its ability to help people exercise self-control

Public release date: 30-Dec-2008
Marie Guma-Diaz

A study by a University of Miami psychologist reveals that religion facilitates the exercise of self-control and attainment of long-term goals

CORAL GABLES, FL (December 30, 2008)—Self-control is critical for success in life, and a new study by University of Miami professor of Psychology Michael McCullough finds that religious people have more self-control than do their less religious counterparts. These findings imply that religious people may be better at pursuing and achieving long-term goals that are important to them and their religious groups. This, in turn, might help explain why religious people tend to have lower rates of substance abuse, better school achievement, less delinquency, better health behaviors, less depression, and longer lives.

In this research project, McCullough evaluated 8 decades worth of research on religion, which has been conducted in diverse samples of people from around the world. He found persuasive evidence from a variety of domains within the social sciences, including neuroscience, economics, psychology, and sociology, that religious beliefs and religious behaviors are capable of encouraging people to exercise self-control and to more effectively regulate their emotions and behaviors, so that they can pursue valued goals. The research paper, which summarizes the results of their review of the existing science, will be published in the January 2009 issue of Psychological Bulletin.

Among the most interesting conclusions that the research team drew were the following:

* Religious rituals such as prayer and meditation affect the parts of the human brain that are most important for self-regulation and self-control;
* When people view their goals as "sacred," they put more energy and effort into pursuing those goals, and therefore, are probably more effective at attaining them;
* Religious lifestyles may contribute to self-control by providing people with clear standards for their behavior, by causing people to monitor their own behavior more closely, and by giving people the sense that God is watching their behavior;
* The fact that religious people tend to be higher in self-control helps explain why religious people are less likely to misuse drugs and alcohol and experience problems with crime and delinquency.

Among the study's more practical implications is that religious people may have at their disposal a set of unique psychological resources for adhering to their New Year's Resolutions in the year to come.

Labels: Marie Guma-Diaz, Michael McCullough, religion, religious evolution, self-control, success

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Wealth advisers filling a new counseling role in tough times

The erosion of personal wealth, along with local and national stories about massive financial fraud, are causing people to re-examine everything from their grocery bills to how they valuate themselves as human beings. And that creates some intense and revealing conversations with the ones who know them as intimately as anyone: their financial advisers.

“Instead of a five- to 10-minute talk about the markets, we’re talking about faith and values, and right and wrong,” said Suzann Brown, a partner with Virchow Krause & Co. Wealth Management in Minneapolis. “The big question is, ‘How did we get here?’ and it’s a much more emotional conversation. And you have to be willing to have the conversation. That’s how we can create calm and peace of mind without being able to fix what’s happening on CNBC.”

Besides fear and grief, the intense introspection that follows a dramatic drop in personal wealth can unearth a sense of guilt in some people, said Kathy Kuehl, a principal with Minneapolis wealth-management firm Lowry Hill. Kuehl recently had a meeting with a client who had given some money to her grandchildren and then watched as their accounts shriveled because of the recent market turmoil.

While the questions Kuehl has been asking her clients have become more introspective and abstract in the wake of recent financial fraud cases, her clients also are asking some fundamental questions about the role of trust in the adviser-client relationship.

“If you look at everything that’s happened with [disgraced Wall Street financier Bernie] Madoff, people are re-evaluating their relationships with their advisers,” Kuehl said. “Who can I trust? Am I getting good advice? Am I not getting taken? No matter how much money you have, everybody has to be cautious about their adviser relationship.”

That kind of conversation can ultimately lead to a deeper, more intimate relationship, said Brown, who recounted a recent conversation she’d had with a widowed client in her 70s. The woman asked Brown if she was going to be OK, and Brown reassured her that, with some lifestyle adjustments, she would be OK. Brown, who had never talked about spiritual matters with a client, even after 9/11, recommended that the client turn her television off and reflect on the things in her life for which she was grateful.

“Once we get into this conversation about hopefulness and gratitude, that’s where the spirituality of the conversation takes on a little meaning.”

Labels: faith, fear, financial advisors, grief, the economy, values

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Study: Family behavior key to health of gay youth

By LISA LEFF – 4 days ago

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Young gay people whose parents or guardians responded negatively when they revealed their sexual orientation were more likely to attempt suicide, experience severe depression and use drugs than those whose families accepted the news, according to a new study.

The way in which parents or guardians respond to a youth's sexual orientation profoundly influences the child's mental health as an adult, say researchers at San Francisco State University, whose findings appear in Monday's journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Among other findings, the study showed that teens who experienced negative feedback were more than eight times as likely to have attempted suicide, nearly six times as vulnerable to severe depression and more than three times at risk of drug use.

One of the most startling findings was that being forbidden to associate with gay peers was as damaging as being physically beaten or verbally abused by their parents in terms of negative feedback ...

Please click on "external link" for the complete article.

Labels: American Academy of Pediatrics, family, gay youth, Lisa Leff, mental health

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The Year in Religion 2008: Faith's role in election dominates religion news

12/27/2008

WESTERVILLE, Ohio - The U.S. presidential election was the impetus for the nation's top religion stories of 2008, according to a survey of more than 100 religion journalists.

The top story was the controversy surrounding the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, with Democratic outreach to faith communities and GOP vice presidential running mate Sarah Palin's selection as the second and third top stories, respectively.

Controversial sermons by Wright surfaced early this year, resulting in pressure on Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, who eventually withdrew his membership in his church, Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago.

Obama was named the top religion newsmaker of 2008.

An online poll of religion reporters was conducted Dec. 8 to 10.

The Religion Newswriters Association has conducted the poll since the 1970s.

The list of suggested top religion stories was compiled for the RNA with help from John W. Smith, religion columnist and retired religion editor of the Reading Eagle.

The other top 10 stories are:

4. The California Supreme Court rules gay marriage is legal.

5. Pope Benedict XVI makes his first U.S. visit

6. U.S. conservatives alienated from the Episcopal Church say they will ask Anglican Communion leaders for permission to create the Anglican Church in North America.

7. Terrorism believed motivated in part by religious fervor results in deaths of almost 200 people in a three-day siege in Mumbai, India.

8. China cracks down on Buddhists seeking Tibetan independence in a prelude to producing a peaceful Olympic games.

9. The crumbling economy and subsequent drop in contributions force many faith-based organizations to cut back on expenses.

10. Violence continues in Iraq as Sunnis and Shiites attack each other, and Christians also are targeted.

Labels: 2008 top stories, Barack Obama, China, gay marriage, Pope Benedict XVI, religion, Religion Newswriters Association, terrorism, the economy

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Is anyone watching you?

Religion's link to altruism grows from a believer's desire to look good in God's eyes, a new study finds
By J. Peder Zane - Staff Writer
Published: Thu, Dec. 25, 2008

After analyzing three decades of research, Canadian scholars have concluded that religion can make people more honest while inspiring them to help people they don't know, even when that exacts a personal cost.

While most people are willing to put themselves out for their families, their friends and even their country, religion makes them more likely to make sacrifices for strangers, to engage in what the authors call "prosocial" behaviors.

"Experimentally induced religious thoughts reduce rates of cheating and increase altruistic behavior among anonymous strangers," University of British Columbia social psychologists Ara Norenzayan and Azim F. Shariff report in the journal Science. "Experiments demonstrate an association between apparent profession of religion and greater trust."

It is not empathy or compassion that makes the religious more likely to do unto others, the authors conclude, but a heightened concern about their own reputation. It is this "egoistic" desire to look good in the eyes of others or to avoid feelings of guilt that drives their admirable conduct.

To illustrate this, they cite a classic good Samaritan study. In this experiment, a lone subject lay on the ground in obvious need of attention. As prescreened people passed by on their way to participate in another study, researchers noted who stopped to lend a hand.

"Recorded offers of help," the authors write, "showed no relation with religiosity in this anonymous context."

On the other hand, in experiments where people's actions were not anonymous, where they were seen and judged by others, the religious were more likely to do the right thing. This helps explain studies that have found that believers tend to be more charitable than atheists -- more likely, for example, to donate blood or give money to the homeless.

The definition of ethicseth

The key dynamic in play here is the age-old definition of ethics: It's not what you do when everybody is watching but how you act when nobody is.

The religious, the authors contend, are more likely to be good in certain situations because they believe they are being watched by an omnipresent eye in the sky.

"The cognitive awareness of gods is likely to heighten prosocial reputation concerns among believers," they write. Even when no people are around, they want to look good in the eyes of God.

The Science paper also reports that the mention of religious ideas encourages truthfulness. When students were asked to unscramble faith-based words before taking a test, they were less likely to cheat. They were also more generous when religious ideas were invoked before experiments involving money.

Labels: altruism, Ara Norenzayan, Azim Shariff, ethics, God, J. Peder Zane, prosocial behavior, religion

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Spirituality spot found in brain

2008-12-25 10:28

What makes us feel spiritual? It could be the quieting of a small area in our brains, a new study suggests.

The area in question - the right parietal lobe - is responsible for defining "Me," said researcher Brick Johnstone of Missouri University. It generates self-criticism, he said, and guides us through physical and social terrains by constantly updating our self-knowledge: my hand, my cocktail, my witty conversation skills, my new love interest ...

People with less active Me-Definers are more likely to lead spiritual lives, reports the study in the current issue of the journal Zygon.

Most previous research on neuro-spirituality has been based on brain scans of actively practicing adherents (i.e. meditating monks, praying nuns) and has resulted in broad and inconclusive findings. (Is the brain area lighting up in response to verse or spiritual experience?)

So Johnstone and colleague Bret Glass turned to the tried-and-true techniques of neuroscience's early days - studying brain-injured patients. The researchers tested brain regions implicated in the previous imaging studies with exams tailored to each area's expertise - similar to studying the prowess of an ear with a hearing test. They then looked for correlations between brain region performance and the subjects' self-reported spirituality.

Among the more spiritual of the 26 subjects, the researchers pinpointed a less functional right parietal lobe, a physical state which may translate psychologically as decreased self-awareness and self-focus.

The finding suggests that one core tenant of spiritual experience is selflessness, said Johnstone, adding that he hopes the study "will help people think about spirituality in more specific ways."

Spiritual outlooks have long been associated with better mental and physical health. These benefits, Johnstone speculated, may stem from being focused less on one's self and more on others - a natural consequence of turning down the volume on the Me-Definer.

In addition to religious practices, other behaviors and experiences are known to hush the Definer of Me. Appreciation of art or nature can quiet it, Johnstone said, pointing out that people talk of "losing themselves" in a particularly beautiful song. Love, and even charity work, can also soften the boundaries of "Me," he said.

The greatest silencing of the Me-Definer likely happens in the deepest states of meditation or prayer, said Johnstone, when practitioners describe feeling seamless with the entire universe. That is, the highest point of spiritual experience occurs when "Me" completely loses its definition.

Labels: brain, neuro-spirituality, selflessness, spirituality, Zygon

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