TruthBook Religious News Blog

By Elena Garcia
Christian Post Reporter
Fri, Feb. 27 2009

Although most parents say they are trying to improve their parenting skills, few look to the Bible or church for guidance, a new study shows.

A majority of parents (60 percent) heavily rely on their own experiences growing up for parenting guidance but only one-fifth say they receive a lot of guidance from sacred text such as the Bible or Koran, the latest study by LifeWay Research found. Even fewer parents (15 percent) look to church as a source of guidance for parenting.

The vast majority (96 percent) agree they consistently try to be better parents but more than 6 in 10 completely ignore parenting seminars and over half don't care for books by religious parenting experts, according to the study.

The study also found that few (14 percent) say they are familiar with biblical teaching on parenting. Among Christian parents, those with evangelical beliefs are more familiar than Protestant parents on the Bible's parenting advice, 52 to 27 percent. Only 7 percent of Catholic parents are very familiar on what the Holy Book says about parenting.

"Christians are routinely neglecting biblical guidance and encouragement in their parenting today, relying instead on their own personal experience," McConnell commented.

When it comes to the home environment, around 7 in 10 parents describe it as supporting, positive, encouraging and active. However, an estimated 6 in 10 do not find their home environment peaceful, nearly 5 in 10 do not describe it as relaxed, and around 4 in 10 do not say it is joyful.

They study also showed that although parents spend time with their families on a daily basis, many do not engage in spiritual activities.

A modest majority of parents (57 percent) usually eat dinner together with their families everyday and 45 percent indicate they watch television together each day.

Prayer is a more common family activity than religious study, with 53 percent of parents indicating they pray together at least once monthly compared to 31 percent saying they hold religious devotionals or studies together at least monthly.

Over 80 percent of parents say they have an excellent family life but 30 percent rate their family's spiritual life as only fair or poor.

Overall, 92 percent of parents say they need encouragement but not many receive it from the Bible or church, the study showed.

Approximately 38 percent of parents who attend religious worship services weekly say they do not receive any encouragement from reading the Bible and 24 percent report not being encouraged from church.

Among Christian parents, Catholics (85 percent) are more likely than Protestants (43 percent) to not find encouragement in the Bible. Catholic parents (71 percent) are also more likely than Protestant parents (39 percent) to say church is not a source of encouragement.

Lifeway Research findings are based on a national survey conducted among 1,200 parents with children under 18 at home.

Labels: Bible, children, Elena Garcia, LifeWay Research, parenthood, religious experience

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OPINION: Rick Warren's 10 Reasons Why We Need Spiritual Connections

By LifeWay Christian Resources , Biblical solutions for life -
February 26, 2009

LAKE FOREST, Calif. --- Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church led one of the general sessions during the Feb. 19-21 NEXT conference at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif.

Warren is author of the best-selling books, The Purpose Driven Church and The Purpose Driven Life. He is a self-proclaimed big believer in small groups and attributes much of Saddleback’s health, growth and development to small groups. He said the spiritual connections – vertical (believer to God) and horizontal (believer to believer) – lead to personal and church health and growth.

He outlined 10 reasons why people need to be spiritually connected to others.

1. Connections are the essence of life. Each person’s body has to connect muscle to bone to nerves for it to work.

2. We were created for connections. The pain of loneliness proves this. Love God and love each other – that’s the Cliffs Notes of the Bible.

3. Love is the ultimate connection. The No. 1 secret of church growth is not marketing or advertising, it’s love. If your church genuinely loves others, you’ll have to lock the doors to keep people out.

4. Connections help us understand life. The more you understand connections, how things fit together, the better you understand life.

5. Connections empower us. Power flows through connections.

6. Connections keep us growing. Knowing the right thing to do is rarely enough. To keep doing it over the long term you need partners.

7. Connections help us balance our lives. Memory is our connection to the past; awareness is our connection to the present.

8. Connections increase our confidence. We gain confidence knowing that others are going with us through this journey called life.

9. Connections make us more productive. The better connected we are to God and others, the greater the impact on our ministry.

10. Connections must be learned. Connecting is neither natural nor automatic. That’s why God sent Jesus.

Labels: God, Jesus, love, Rick Warren, spiritual connection, spiritual growth

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A Spiritual Guide for Economic Bailout

by Rabbi Michael Lerner

This is a very interesting and timely op-ed article concerning out present-day economic crisis - how it is different from any in the past, and how a different mind-set may be needed to solve it adequately.
Page 1 of 2 - Please click on "external source" for complete article.

White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel famously warned in November that "you never want a serious crisis to go to waste." But that is exactly what the White House and Congress have allowed to happen. Secular progressives are disappointed, but spiritual progressives are doubly so. This is a crisis that demands the deepest of revisions of our worldview and economics.

Certainly the Democrats have managed to do enough-in the way of restoring some of the programs cut by the Bush administration, helping the states deal with their own increasing budget deficits, and even initiating several new programs-for Congressional Democrats to feel they have prevailed. Next comes an even more massive bailout for the banks.

The underlying message of these measures is clear: to get out of a recession bordering on a multi-year depression, ordinary citizens must spend more money on consumer goods. This would generate jobs and help staunch a wave of massive layoffs that threaten to push official (and usually under-estimated) levels of unemployment up to 10 percent or more of the work force this year.

To progressives, this was a tremendously irresponsible misuse of the opportunity created by the crisis. The bank bailout was based on the old trickle-down economics that had been discredited by the years of Republican and neo-liberal policies that actually yielded the current meltdown. If you want to stimulate spending, progressives insist, give the money directly to those in need: Create a national bank to give loans to people who wish to buy homes or expand their businesses; provide funding to banks willing to forgive bad mortgages and renegotiate them to affordable levels; raise the minimum wage to a level that makes it a "living wage"; grant citizenship and rights to all the current illegal immigrants, making it easier for them too to spend more money on consumption; and fund a single-payer health care plan that would provide care for the 45 million-plus Americans currently uninsured (while simultaneously imposing strict cost controls on hospitals and other health-care providers).

Yet progressives too may be too limited in their thinking. The economic crisis is global and requires a global solution. Spiritual progressives insist that this is the moment for Americans to acknowledge to ourselves that our well-being depends on that of everyone else on the planet. Instead of each nation-state trying to develop policies meant to benefit only its own citizens, we need the world's major economic powers and representatives of the developing countries to cooperatively work out policies that dramatically reshape the way that we, the human race, produce and consume the resources of our planet.

A central part of such global thinking requires a new conception of efficiency, rationality and productivity. The old bottom line measured productivity and efficiency by how much money or material goods were produced. We need a "new bottom line" that evaluates corporations, government programs, laws, social policies, and even personal behavior by how much love and kindness, generosity and caring, ethical and ecological sensitivity, are produced and how much we are encouraged to respond to the universe with awe and wonder at the grandeur of all that is. Hundreds of years of capitalist excess made the old more narrow utilitarian attitude seem like "common sense," because it worked to generate an ever increasing accumulation of material goods.

But the societies that have bought into that old bottom line are now reeling from the economic collapse generated when tens of millions of people acted on the assumption that trumping all ethical and spiritual concerns was the obligation to maximize one's own material well-being regardless of environmental and human-relationship consequences.

Only a year ago it might have seemed "unrealistic" or "utopian" to imagine a new bottom line and a society reconstructed on that basis. But it is no longer so far-fetched when the government is spending trillions of dollars to repair a system that based itself on a fundamentalist belief that progress could be judged by how many things we accumulated. In my book The Left Hand of God (HarperSanFrancisco, 2006) I detail what this "new bottom line" might look like in our schools, corporations, health care, legal system and our approach to foreign policy.

Spiritual wisdom and daily spiritual practice may be needed by the entire human race in order of for us to develop the intellectual and psychological foundations for a green economy. There is a difficult balance to negotiate between improving the material well-being of the most oppressed and materially deprived citizens of the planet, while teaching the majority of citizens of the more advanced societies how to reduce their level of material needs. Many today feel deprived if they cannot get a new model car every few years or dramatic escalations in the capacities of their iphones and computers.

People have to get to the point where they no longer believe that their personal success is measured by how many new material gadgets, electronic devices, automobiles, apartments or houses, home furnishings, and exotic vacations they have.

Spiritual progressives believe it is time to bring into the democratic process a discussion of the kinds of consumption that are worth fostering and the kinds that actually contribute to the further erosion of our planet's life support system.

To some the conception of democratic control of an economy is going to be dismissed as nothing more than a slippery slope toward a "command economy" that failed when tried by the communists. Yet market fundamentalism is no longer an unchallengeable element of American faith, and the values of a New Bottom Line resonate not only with those of us whose spiritual consciousness already predisposes us to question the ultimacy of material accumulation but also to millions of Americans who can no longer believe that the planet can survive based on profligate consumption of its raw materials. Thinking through the details of building a society based on shared values and committed to treating the planet as more than a bottomless cookie jar-from which we can extract whatever we wish without fear of consequences-will not be easy, and will require the fostering of a new spiritual awareness. Too many liberals and progressives, lacking a spiritual and ethical foundation for making such choices, have simply embraced the notion that any kind of spending will get us out of the current crisis.

No wonder, then, that the Obama bailout seems so completely unfocused on achieving any particular social good (e.g. adequate health care, environmental repair, or elimination of domestic or global poverty). The Obama plan reflects the lack of direction or values orientation that bedevils most progressive thinking, and reminds us of the important role that spiritual progressives from Martin Luther King, Jr. to Mahatma Gandhi to Nelson Mandela have been able to play precisely because they have this other dimension in their thinking.

A spiritual progressive approach to bailout is badly needed for the U.S. This is the moment in which biblical ethics and the wisdom of spiritual traditions are actually more realistic than the plans of the capitalist economists. Ideas like the biblical prohibitions against waste; the command to be stewards of the planet; a legal system that obligates us to care for others (which thus transcends a system of rights based only on self-protection) -all these should no longer seem utopian, but instead recognized as matters of survival for the human race.

Even the amazing biblical view of a society-wide sabbatical takes on an attractive allure. Imagine an entire society that stops its production for a given year, and relies on the food, fuel and wealth that has been accumulated during the other six years and now gets redistributed equally to everyone for the sabbatical year, meanwhile freeing the entire population from work so that they can participate in everything from job retraining to get new skills to pure vacationing with the planet to democratic assemblies in which people collectively define their societal priorities for the coming six years. A sabbatical year for every person once in seven years is a practical work benefit that should be a right of all workers. But this takes on a whole different meaning and opens up amazing possibilities for everyone if everyone takes off the same year, creating a festival of freedom and creativity that would be experienced by many as a far greater reward than any material benefits that they were giving up because their society had taken itself off the productivity grid for a year. Yes, there could be enough food and fuel and health care-though this will take careful planning for many years before implementation. But the idea itself points us into unexplored terrain: what if we really didn't have to work all the time, what if the world and our own personal world could survive on less? If, instead of appearing to be a huge sacrifice, the reduction of consumption was experienced as part of an exciting spiritual journey, it might just be possible for us to get off the juggernaut of endless material "progress" before it destroys everything.

Don't we need to work to have enough money to buy food? Well, this begs the question. We have enough food for everyone on the planet. Money has become the distribution mechanism, making it possible for some people to have way more food than they need or is good for them, while others living only miles away, don't have enough money to buy the food they need. The same is true of health care, education, and even energy. By having a year in which these goods are distributed equally and for free may be the necessary first step toward making it possible for people on the planet to imagine a world in which money is no longer the arbiter of essential goods and services.

Labels: bailout, money, President Obama, Rabbi Michael Lerner, spirituality, the economy

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Christians’ actions driving people from church

Carolyn Harrison
Thursday, February 26, 2009

Communities with a shrinking and aging church demographic can look to the growing number of college students with negative perceptions of organized religion and faith. According to a national study, 40 percent of 16- to 29-year-olds have opted out of church — 20 percent of whom have been active Christians all their lives and grew up going to church. Contrary to what you might expect, however, the forces driving college students away from church have little to do with faith and theology.

These young people said they rejected Christianity because of the behaviors and hypocrisies of fellow Christians, not because of theological reasons.

The Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kan., just recently finished a sermon series called “When Christians Get it Wrong.” The series focused on major issues like the hypocrisy of Christians, religion vs. science and homosexuality.

“I think many young people are interested in Jesus and what he taught,” said senior pastor Adam Hamilton. “The perception of 85 percent of young adults who do not go to church is that Christians are hypocrites. By that they don’t mean that they take a sip of beer once in awhile. By this they mean that they don’t find them admirable, but off-putting. Some Christians they have known come across as self-righteous, acting judgmental and morally superior while oblivious to their own sins and failings.”

Hamilton’s statements seem to indicate that Christians themselves are often to blame for pushing people away from the church through their actions and words, but that’s not the end of the story. According to Hamilton, Christians do get it right a lot of the time. Organized religion is responsible for countless humanitarian services, including feeding and clothing the homeless and lending a helping hand to those in need.

But not all students drift away from their religious upbringings. About a third of K-State students are involved in more than 30 different religious organizations on campus and in the community.

There is a lesson to learn for everyone here. Christians and other organized religions need to understand that while the reasons for opting out of church and religion vary, the primary reason is not about theology or faith; it’s about the actions of people who represent the faith. On the other hand, those who have opted out of faith because of the poor behavior of a few individuals need to put this in perspective with all the good work attributed to Christians and organized religion. We all need to be less judgmental toward those with different beliefs.

Labels: Carolyn Harrison, Christian church, religion, youth

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Milk & Honey: Part II

Kosher and halal foods submit to nostalgia and reinvention

By: A Qasimi 02/25/2009

"Milk and Honey: Part I" is also available at this site - please click on "external source" to access this, and the first of the series.

“O, for a morsel of food free from wrongdoing [in the eyes of God] and from the favor of any creature!”—Sufi Imam Sari Al-Saqati (circa AD 850)

“Naturally the girls do not get any pork or shellfish,” begins Santa Fe Chef John Connell. Connell is on the board of directors for Creativity for Peace, a local program that brings young women from Palestine and Israel together at a summer camp in New Mexico to promote awareness, acceptance and reconciliation. Connell first became involved as the camp cook in 2003. “The first year I was involved, they requested lasagna often. They are not big on creamy dressings and Western cheese or milk products, but labne (kefir cheese) is a staple in the fridge.”

Childhood memories of visits to the US revolve around a trusty backbone of kosher products we were never without in our Muslim household: kosher hot dogs and Hydrox cookies instead of ballpark franks and Oreos (in the ’80s, the white fillings of the latter were still made with lard). My first Shabbat, observed in college, was a vegan meal cooked in earnest by an assortment of young hopefuls, all part of a burgeoning on-campus group called Jews in the Woods. I was charmed by their idealism and their folk music, but the gluten-free piroshkies? Not so much. I stopped for a cheeseburger and an ice-cream float on the way home.

Local chef, caterer and radio personality Stacy Pearl ...shares tales of a dynamic upbringing with resolute glee, saying, “My dad was raised strict Orthodox in a Hungarian Jewish family on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He remained kosher until his days in the Air Force during WWII; although the Army supplied kosher rations for all the Brooklyn Jewish boys, he discovered bacon, and the rest is history.”

Is there a Muslim cuisine? No, but unlike Jews, Muslims do not share the perception of a common culture forged by religion, and thus there has never been a distinct Islamic cuisine, per se. What Muslims do share is a common theme of etiquette and regard toward handling and consumption: always eating with the right hand, taking only from the circumference of the bowl and never blowing on hot food, for starters.

Santa Fe chef Joel Coleman, who claims he cannot live without pork, shares that his best memories are simple ones, and that they really started happening after he became a chef. “My favorite may have been a fresh loaf of challah made by my friend Matt. Another would be the best latkes ever, made by a chef in Vermont and served with beautiful lox and maple syrup crème fraîche.”

...the laws of Dhabiha halal and kashruth share a number of similarities. Though the methods and protocols for slaughter are similar, and both religions prohibit eating meat killed any other way, kosher laws are exhaustively specific beyond the scope of halal. And though halal-certified products are not considered kosher, the question of whether or not Muslims can use kashruth standards as a replacement for halal’s remains, like nearly everything when it comes to spirituality: entirely discretionary.

Labels: A Qasimi, cuisine, food, Jews, Muslims

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Thursday, February 26, 2009

Pew study looks at the religious landscape of African-Americans

by Helen Gray
Feb. 20, 2009

This is the first of a three-page article. Please click on "external source" for complete article.

Through slavery and segregation, the black church has provided hope, unity and sanctuary.

Today African-Americans are the nation’s most religious group. So says a recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

“While the U.S. is generally considered a highly religious nation, African-Americans are markedly more religious on a variety of measures than the U.S. population as whole,” says the study’s overview.

Compared to the rest of the population, more African-Americans have a religious affiliation, attend worship, pray frequently and place greater importance on religion in their lives.

The data come from Pew’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, collected in 2007 and released last summer. Pew recently came out with a new analysis of African-Americans.

“Given the inauguration of (Barack) Obama, (Martin Luther) King Day and Black History Month, we thought it would be a good time to look at this subgroup,” Pew researcher Greg Smith said. “This new analysis helps people understand religion in the African-American community, which is a large group.”

The study is in line with other studies that have had similar results, said Lawrence Mamiya, religion and Africana studies professor at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

Among the Pew findings:

•Eighty-seven percent of African-Americans say they belong to a particular religious group, compared to 83 percent among the total population.

•Seventy-nine percent say religion is “very important” in their lives, compared to 56 percent of the total population.

•Fifty-three percent say they attend religious services at least once a week, compared to 39 percent of the total population.

•Seventy-six percent say they pray at least on a daily basis, compared to 58 percent of the total population.

•Eighty-eight percent say they are absolutely certain that God exists, compared to 71 percent of the total population.

The religious portrait of African-Americans reveals that they are overwhelmingly Protestant (78 percent), with 59 percent belonging to historically black churches.

Only 12 percent of African-Americans are not affiliated with any particular religion; 5 percent are Catholic; 1 percent are Jehovah’s Witnesses; 1 percent are Muslim; 1 percent are atheist or agnostic; and small fractions are in other faiths.

“What I like about the study is that it indicates diversity in the African-American religious community,” said Anthony Pinn, humanities and religious studies professor at Rice University in Houston.

In reviewing the data for African-American women, Pew researchers concluded that “no group of men or women from any other racial or ethnic background exhibits comparably high levels of religious observance.”

According to the survey, 84 percent of African-American women say religion is very important to them, and 59 percent attend religious services at least once a week.

“Black women often say ‘my pastor’ or ‘my church,’ which denotes a sense of ownership and independence and trust, which they wouldn’t say about other institutions in American society, like they wouldn’t say ‘my Democratic party’ or even ‘my NAACP,’?” Mamiya said.

Additional findings:

•Religious beliefs: In addition to the high belief in God, 55 percent interpret Scripture as the literal word of God compared to 33 percent of the overall population; 83 percent believe in angels and demons compared to 68 percent of the overall population; 84 percent believe in miracles compared to 79 percent of the overall population; and 58 percent are absolutely convinced there is life after death compared to 50 percent of the overall population.

Labels: African-Americans, church, Helen Gray, Pew Religion and Public Life Survey, prayer, religion, worship

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Churches cope with recession

Local religious leaders brace for economic downturn
February 20, 2009 -
BY MATTHEW MCGOWAN

As the American Dream slips toward the shadow of the valley of death, perhaps the recession will place its steepest demands on the steeple.

According to a 2008 survey conducted by The Barna Group, a Christianity and spirituality strategy firm, 20 percent of the more than 1,200 respondents said they decreased their church donations last year as a result of the economic downturn.

In a statement accompanying the survey's results, which were released Dec. 1, the group's founder George Barna said American churches received between $3 billion and $5 billion less than expected during the fourth quarter of 2008. Most churches probably received between 4 percent and 6 percent less revenue than they would expect prior to the recession.

Labels: Barna Group, church, donations, Matthew McGowan, recession

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Survey: Few Evangelical Leaders Had Contact with Muslims

By Jennifer Riley
Christian Post Reporter
Thu, Feb. 19 2009

A surprisingly small portion of evangelical leaders in America have had contact with Muslims in the past year, a new survey revealed.

Only 33 percent of leaders on the board of the National Association of Evangelicals, the nation’s largest evangelical body, said they have had a serious conversation with a Muslim in the past year, according to the February issue of the NAE’s Evangelical Leaders Survey.

An even a smaller number, 27 percent, of the evangelical respondents said they live or work near a mosque.

The vast majority have had no close contact with an Islamic institution (73 percent) or individual Muslims (67 percent).

According to the CIA World Factbook, Muslims make up 0.6 percent of the U.S. population. In comparison, Protestant Christians account for 51.3 percent of the population in America.

Among those that reported having serious discussions with Muslims, some indicated that the talks were through formal interfaith dialogues, professional ministry or international travel rather than personal friendships.

Some evangelical leaders, however, reported positive personal interactions with their Muslim neighbors.

An evangelical leader from Minneapolis said he lives within blocks of two mosques. He shared that during Easter he had discussions with a “kind, hard working young [Muslim] family man” about the two religions’ beliefs concerning the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Another evangelical leader, from a Hispanic church in California, recalled that a Muslim meeting place in his neighborhood was vandalized last year. Members of his church had helped clean up the meeting place and had sent them an offering.

The NAE survey questioned 100 members of the NAE board of directors that includes heads of evangelical denominations with about 45,000 local churches, executives of para-church organizations and colleges. The NAE claims to represent over 50 denominations and about 30 million constituents.

Labels: evangelicals, interfaith, Jennifer Riley, Muslims

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2008 Election Poll is Worth the Wait

February 19, 2009 5:49PM

New analysis suggests that evangelicals remained unmoved in their support for Republicans, while a few other religious groups shifted.

Tobin Grant

Within minutes of the polls closing in November, journalists were reporting results from exit polls including analysis of how evangelicals and other religious groups voted. One of the findings from these polls was that evangelicals (that is, “born again” voters) voted three to one for McCain, with evangelicals in the South more likely to do so than evangelicals in the Midwest.

But exit polls are short, with too few questions on religion. For a clearer picture of religion’s role in the election, researchers use surveys that take more time to analyze. One of the best is The National Survey of Religion and Politics conducted by John Green (University of Akron and the Pew Forum).

In the March issue of First Things, Green presents a summary of how religious groups voted in November. The fact that this “summary” runs over 4,000 words speaks to the complexities and nuances of religion in American politics. Green uses a combination of information on religious affiliation, beliefs, behavior, race, and ethnicity to group Americans into no less than 15 different religious groups. He reports how each group voted in 2008 and compares this vote with results from 2004. The result is a clearer picture of how the more things change the more they stay the same in American religion and politics.

There were three groups that seem to have made sizeable shifts in their votes.

1. Black Protestants. In 2004, support for Kerry among those attending a Black Protestant church dropped to 83 percent. However, with Obama as candidate, this group returned to its high level of support for the Democrats. As Green notes, 95 percent of Black Protestants voted for Obama, meaning that one in five of Obama’s voters were Black Protestants.

2. Traditionalist Catholics. As with Mainline Protestants and Evangelical Protestants, Green differentiates Catholics by their support for traditional beliefs and practices. Traditionalist Catholics are those who hold more orthodox beliefs and are more active in their faith. In 2004, only one fifth of this group voted for Kerry. In 2008, support for the Democrat nearly doubled, with 39 percent supporting Obama. This is one group to watch over the next four years.

3. Ethnic Protestants. Green analyzes “Ethnic Protestants” as a separate religious group. This group is primarily Latino but it includes other non-white, non-Anglo Protestants. This group tends to hold conservative positions on social issues. They gave Bush their vote in 2004, with only 25 percent voting for Kerry. In 2008, Obama received just over half of this group’s vote. This is a group that has not solidified its voting. As of now, it is trending Democratic, but its votes are likely up for grabs for next few election cycles.

Tobin Grant is an associate professor of political science at Southern Illinois University — Carbondale.

Labels: 2008 election, evangelicals, religion, The Fifth National Survey of Religion and Politics: A Baseline for the 2008 Presidential Election, Tobin Grant

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Poll: Only 3 Percent of Teens See Clergy as Role Models

By Michelle A. Vu
Christian Post Reporter
Wed, Feb. 18 2009

Out of 100 American teens, only three are likely to say they see members of the clergy as role models, according to a survey on teens and ethical decision making.

Scarcely any teens (those under age 18) view their pastors, priests, rabbis or imams as role models. Instead, many reported seeing their parents as role models (54 percent), the survey conducted by Junior Achievement and Deloitte showed.

Friends (13 percent), teachers or coaches (6 percent), and siblings (5 percent) also beat out clergies as role model figures.

Just slightly more than one in ten (11 percent) say they don’t have any role models.

But the poll’s major finding is that although the overwhelming majority of teens (80 percent) believe they are ethically prepared to make moral business decisions, nearly 40 percent believe they need to “break the rules” in order to succeed.

More than one in four teenagers (27 percent) think behaving violently is sometimes, often or always acceptable, according to the poll. One in five teens (20 percent) reported to have personally behaved violently toward another person in the past year.

Furthermore, among those who say they are ethically prepared for business, nearly half (49 percent) say lying to parents and guardians is acceptable. More than three out of five teens (61 percent) say they have lied to their parents or guardian this past year.

As part of the solution to the problem, Junior Achievement and Deloitte developed “JA Business Ethics,” which provides hands-on classroom activities and real-life applications to foster ethical decision making before students enter the workforce. The students compare how their beliefs measure up to major ethics theories and learn the benefits of having a code of ethics.

The youth-oriented organization commented that the results also raise the question of why adults are not viewed as role models by more American teens and what can be done to change this.

Junior Achievement, the world’s largest organization working to prepare youths to succeed in the global market, conducted the survey on 750 teens across the United States on Oct. 9-12, 2008, with the help of Deloitte, an international network of consulting firm

Labels: business, clergy, Deloitte, Junior Achievement, role models, teenagers, violence

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Tuesday, February 17, 2009

New Video Blog Gives Homelessness a Face and Voice

By clicking on "external source," you can access this most interesting website devoted to making the problem of homelessness more visible.

Contact: Mark Horvath, 323-871-1519, mark@invisiblepeople.tv

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 16 /Christian Newswire/ -- Mark Horvath is somewhat of an authority on America's homeless population. That's because he once was part of it.

Fourteen years ago, Horvath was homeless.

He lived on the streets of Hollywood, Calif.

Today, Horvath is giving back to that community by breaking the mold and doing what, quite frankly, makes sense. Through invisiblepeople.tv, a new and dynamic video blog (vlog), he captures the stories of the homeless – one at a time.

Simply put, Horvath is breaking stereotypes.

Through his web site, he shares the stories of homeless people he meets on the streets. The site's segments are told by real people, in their own very real words. The innovative pieces, which began airing last November, are raw, uncensored and unedited – just like life on the streets.

There is meaning to the site's name.

According to Horvath, some homeless are passed on the street as if they don't exist. Others are ignored the way one would disregard a piece of trash on the sidewalk.

Horvath's goal? To make homeless visible to everyone else.

Horvath doesn't ask for money. The purpose of his vlog is to make the invisible visible. He doesn't want the world to look through or beyond the homeless anymore, but to be aware of them and their circumstances, and to let them not be forgotten.

The people and stories at invisiblepeople.tv are gripping. Some segments are, well, unsettling. Horvath wouldn't have it any other way. He wants to inspire; and wants you to act.

In Horvath, the homeless now have a face and voice. Thanks largely to invisiblepeople.tv, they are invisible no more. He wants you to remember that the homeless people ignored today were much like the rest of us not very long ago.

Labels: homelessness, Mark Horvath, websites

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Keeping (Or Finding) The Faith

Keeping (Or Finding) The Faith
Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009

Not all that long ago, you'd have had a hard time finding a research institute, an academic department or even a decent conference exploring the link between spirituality and health. And with good reason. Health is science, spirituality is something else entirely, and people who say otherwise clearly need to sit down with a medical journal or two.

But that's all changing. Everyone's got a stake in getting human health right--whether families and individuals simply trying to stay well or governments trying to build a functioning health-care system that doesn't break the bank. With so much on the line, no one can afford to take options off the table.

For that reason, investigators around the world backed by both public and private money are studying the faith factor in all manner of diseases and conditions. They have examined the spiritual-care needs of children with terminal illnesses and looked at how religion and superstition affect schizophrenia in China and how spirituality influences the well-being of college students in Malta and nuns in India. They have probed the links between religion and psychological woes too: neuroticism in Dutch twins, obsessive-compulsive symptoms in Italians, death anxiety among Egyptian nursing students and substance abuse in adolescents in Jerusalem. They have tried to measure the benefits of Bible therapy for patients with Alzheimer's disease, as well as the impact of religious guilt and congregational criticism on doubting members of the flock. They've looked at the health effects of psychoactive sacramentals (think peyote) and the spiritual preferences of neo-pagans (think Wiccans and druids).

The fact that what began as a trickle of studies has become a torrent doesn't mean that everyone is happy, and many scientists will continue to have nothing to do with what they see as fluff. Still, the movable feast of institutes, academic treatises, self-help books, websites, healing centers and luxury spas with a spiritual bent grows steadily larger. Here is just a sampling of what's available.

Please click on "external link" for the list of spiritually focused healing sites.

Labels: faith, health, science, spirituality, websites

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The Biology of Belief

The Biology of Belief
By JEFFREY KLUGER Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009

This is page one of a four-page article - well worth the read. Please click on "external source" to access the entire article

Most folks probably couldn't locate their parietal lobe with a map and a compass. For the record, it's at the top of your head — aft of the frontal lobe, fore of the occipital lobe, north of the temporal lobe. What makes the parietal lobe special is not where it lives but what it does — particularly concerning matters of faith.

If you've ever prayed so hard that you've lost all sense of a larger world outside yourself, that's your parietal lobe at work. If you've ever meditated so deeply that you'd swear the very boundaries of your body had dissolved, that's your parietal too. There are other regions responsible for making your brain the spiritual amusement park it can be: your thalamus plays a role, as do your frontal lobes. But it's your parietal lobe — a central mass of tissue that processes sensory input — that may have the most transporting effect. (Read "Top 10 Medical Breakthroughs".)

Needy creatures that we are, we put the brain's spiritual centers to use all the time. We pray for peace; we meditate for serenity; we chant for wealth. We travel to Lourdes in search of a miracle; we go to Mecca to show our devotion; we eat hallucinogenic mushrooms to attain transcendent vision and gather in church basements to achieve its sober opposite. But there is nothing we pray — or chant or meditate — for more than health.

Health, by definition, is the sine qua non of everything else. If you're dead, serenity is academic. So we convince ourselves that while our medicine is strong and our doctors are wise, our prayers may heal us too.

Here's what's surprising: a growing body of scientific evidence suggests that faith may indeed bring us health. People who attend religious services do have a lower risk of dying in any one year than people who don't attend. People who believe in a loving God fare better after a diagnosis of illness than people who believe in a punitive God. No less a killer than AIDS will back off at least a bit when it's hit with a double-barreled blast of belief. "Even accounting for medications," says Dr. Gail Ironson, a professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Miami who studies HIV and religious belief, "spirituality predicts for better disease control." (Read "Finding God on YouTube.")

It's hard not to be impressed by findings like that, but a skeptic will say there's nothing remarkable — much less spiritual — about them. You live longer if you go to church because you're there for the cholesterol-screening drive and the visiting-nurse service. Your viral load goes down when you include spirituality in your fight against HIV because your levels of cortisol — a stress hormone — go down first. "Science doesn't deal in supernatural explanations," says Richard Sloan, professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University Medical Center and author of Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine. "Religion and science address different concerns."

That's undeniably true — up to a point. But it's also true that our brains and bodies contain an awful lot of spiritual wiring. Even if there's a scientific explanation for every strand of it, that doesn't mean we can't put it to powerful use. And if one of those uses can make us well, shouldn't we take advantage of it? "A large body of science shows a positive impact of religion on health," says Dr. Andrew Newberg, a professor of radiology, psychology and religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania and co-founder of Penn's Center for Spirituality and the Mind. "The way the brain works is so compatible with religion and spirituality that we're going to be enmeshed in both for a long time."

It's All in Your Head
"enmeshed in the brain" is as good a way as any to describe Newberg's work of the past 15 years. The author of four books, including the soon-to-be-released How God Changes Your Brain, he has looked more closely than most at how our spiritual data-processing center works, conducting various types of brain scans on more than 100 people, all of them in different kinds of worshipful or contemplative states. Over time, Newberg and his team have come to recognize just which parts of the brain light up during just which experiences.

When people engage in prayer, it's the frontal lobes that take the lead, since they govern focus and concentration. During very deep prayer, the parietal lobe powers down, which is what allows us to experience that sense of having loosed our earthly moorings. The frontal lobes go quieter when worshippers are involved in the singular activity of speaking in tongues — which jibes nicely with the speakers' subjective experience that they are not in control of what they're saying.

Labels: Andrew Newberg, brain, faith, health, Jeffrey Kluger, medicine, parietal lobe, prayer, religion, science, spirituality

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Poll: One in Three Americans Unfamiliar with Charles Darwin

By Katherine T. Phan
Christian Post Reporter
Wed, Feb. 11 2009 08:52 AM EST

This is the first of a two-page article. Please click on "external source" for complete article.

Charles Darwin may be an influential name in the scientific community for the theory of evolution but a new Gallup poll shows that roughly one-third of Americans have no clue who he is or what he’s known for.

Ahead of his 200th birthday celebration on Feb. 12, a Gallup poll conducted over the weekend asked Americans the question: “For what scientific theory is Charles Darwin known?”

The Gallup weekly briefing on Tuesday showed that 55 percent of respondents correctly associated Darwin with the theory of evolution, theory of natural selection or his fundamental work Origin of Species. Another 10 percent gave incorrect answers while the other 34 percent said they didn’t know who Darwin was or what scientific theory he was known for.

“Whether that’s good or bad depends on your perspective,” Frank Newport, Editor-in-Chief of The Gallup Poll, told KETV Channel 7 in Omaha.

“I think most of us would assume that even if you disagree with it that a higher percentage of Americans might at least know who Charles Darwin was or at least if he was associated with the theory of evolution.”
Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin

Darwin, a 19th century British scientist, developed a theory of evolution occurring by the process of natural selection.

During his time, Darwin’s theory was controversial because it was perceived as contradicting the biblical teaching on creation. Nearly 150 years since the publication of his Origin of Species, it remains a highly divisive issue among Americans.

The Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life recently released a report showing the American public evenly divided on the question of whether or not evolution is the best explanation for life on earth, with 48 percent agreeing that it is and 45 percent rejecting the notion that evolution best explains the origins of human life.

The Pew Forum survey showed that the views on evolution differed widely across Christian communities. Evangelical Protestants were most likely to reject the idea of evolution (70 percent), according to the report originally released in 2008. Meanwhile, historically black Protestants were more likely than mainline Protestants to disagree that evolution best explains the origins of human life, 51 to 42 percent.

Roughly half of Orthodox Christians and Catholics, however, agreed that evolution best explains the development of life on earth.

As the Pew Forum pointed out, the Catholic Church’s acceptance of the theory comes with the understanding that natural selection is a God-directed mechanism of biological development and that man’s soul is the divine creation of God.

Some mainline churches have taken a similar stance, stating that evolution and creationism do not contradict each other.

While the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has not issued a definitive statement on evolution, it does contend that “God created the universe and all that is therein, only not necessarily in six 24-hour days, and that God actually may have used evolution in the process of creation,” as reported by the Pew Forum.

Another mainline denomination, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) affirms that evolution and the Bible do not contradict each other. But the Presbyterians are cautious and say it “should carefully refrain from either affirming or denying the theory of evolution.”

Rejecting the theory of evolution altogether is the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the country. Southern Baptists affirm their belief that creation science can be backed by scientific evidence “without any religious doctrines or concepts.”

Labels: Charles Darwin, church, evolution, Gallup Poll, Katherine T. Phan, Pew Forum, religion

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GEORGIA: FAITH IS THE FASHION, AS CHURCH INFLUENCE SOARS

Text by Molly Corso
2/11/09

Nearly two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Georgian Orthodox Church has become one of the most prominent actors in Georgia’s social and political life.

While the church is not recognized as an official state religion, it carries an increasingly powerful punch. This fact was underscored when Patriarch Ilia II served as intermediary between government and opposition during the tumult that followed Georgia’s disputed 2008 presidential elections. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Most recently, the 76-year-old church leader and his deputies have acted as de facto diplomatic go-betweens with Moscow.

The church’s rising influence is also reflected in polls. In 2003, 38.6 percent of 1,000 respondents in a survey conducted for Tbilisi’s International Center on Conflict and Resolution named the patriarchy as Georgia’s most trustworthy institution. By 2008, the number had jumped to 86.6 percent.

One of the oldest organized faiths in the world, Georgian Orthodoxy has endured through recurring invasions by Arabs, Turks, Mongols, Persians and Russians. To most Georgians, it has stood the test of time -- a key quality in a period when many sense that an outside power, Russia, again threatens Georgia’s statehood.

Church leaders now seem increasingly confident in speaking out on behalf of religion and the church itself. In January, for example, the Georgian Orthodox patriarchate issued a "request" to remove canonized saints from a competition broadcast on the Georgian Public Broadcasting channel that wanted viewers to vote for the 10 most influential figures in Georgian history.

A January 10 statement from the patriarchate that deemed competition between saints and secular figures "unacceptable" led to the program being taken temporarily off the air. (The 11th-12th century King David the Builder, a canonized saint, held first place at the time, leading former President Zviad Gamsakhurdia).

In public remarks, members of Georgian Public Broadcasting’s board of directors seemed torn between the church’s wishes and their responsibility to broadcast programs not influenced by any given interest group. "The opinion of the patriarch is more important for me than the law," board member Mikheil Chiaureli told reporters on January 16.

While all sides seem satisfied for now, questions linger over how powerful the patriarchate is -- and how it will wield its authority in the future. Patriarchate spokesperson Father Davit Sharashenidze maintains that the statement about the show was merely an "opinion" and was never intended to influence the television station.

In a January 22 statement, the patriarchate complained that "someone wants to portray the church as a censor, which is trying to restrict freedom of speech." The statement also suggested that such portrayals were intended to intimidate church leaders, including Patriarch Ilia II, into refraining from expressing their opinions. The controversy, the patriarchate added, is "artificial," according to an English translation posted on the news bulletin service Civil.ge.

But at least one Georgian Public Broadcasting board members, Irma Sokhadze, believes that if any individual or institution is trying to intimidate its opponents, it is the church. Sokhadze contended that the patriarchate’s criticism of the television show put the board in an "unbearable" situation. "Let’s say [it] openly: Today it is unthinkable to ignore a personal request from the patriarch, Ilia II, because his authority is tremendous."

Meanwhile, on the streets of Tbilisi, public expressions of faith are becoming ever more commonplace. Pedestrians and drivers alike routinely stop in front of churches -- or within sight of a church -- to cross themselves. Small shops selling icons and religious paraphernalia are multiplying rapidly. A clerk at one such shop in central Tbilisi estimated that some 100-150 customers now visit her store each day.

"To be faithful . . . has become fashionable," concluded sociologist Nijaradze. "It has become the social norm."

Labels: faith, Georgian Orthodox Church, Molly Corso, Patriarch Ilia II, Tbilisi

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Interfaith Couples More Common

02/11/2009

According to the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey from the Pew Forum, 27 percent of Americans are married or cohabitating with a spouse or partner who is of a different faith background.

If people of different Protestant denominations are included, such as a Lutheran married to a Methodist, the number swells to 37 percent.

Those most likely to marry or live with someone of a different belief are nonbelievers (65 percent) and Buddhists (55 percent). Those least likely are Hindus (10 percent), Mormons (17 percent) and Catholics (22 percent).

Labels: belief, faith, marriage, Pew survey, religion, spouse

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Do Christian Schools Make Students More Religious?

A new study says they might, but adds that parents and peers have more influence.
Tobin Grant | posted 2/11/2009 11:17AM

Parents deciding between religious and public schooling face many unknowns. One of the most important factors is how the schools might affect the faith of their children. Yet for all the debates over education, we know little about the effectiveness of Christian education on the spiritual lives of students. Students at religious schools are probably more religious than are public-school students. At issue, however, is why they are more religious. Is it just that they come from more religious families, or does the school itself directly affect the religiosity of teens?

A recent study by Jeremy Uecker, a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, provides a major step forward in answering this question. Uecker uses the National Survey of Youth and Religion (NSYR) — the best survey to date on adolescent religious life — to compare the religious lives of students in different types of schools: Catholic, Protestant (most of which are evangelical), public, home, and secular private schools. The NSYR includes a wide range of questions on the spiritual lives of over 3,200 adolescents, their parents, and their friends. The information on parents is critical because it allows Uecker to tease out the effect of schools while taking into account the religiosity of the family.

There are two major findings that parents — and prognosticators — should consider when evaluating school options.

1. Protestant schools affect the private religious practices of students, but have no impact on church-related activities.

2. Parents and peers have more shaping influence on the religious lives of teens than do schools.

The good news for parents is that while the choice of schooling is important, the most effective thing they can do to affect the religious life of their children is to take their own spiritual life seriously and to encourage their children to build friendships with peers who are also faithful Christians.

As with any study of this kind, it is important to remember that the differences that Uecker finds are average differences. Some students may become more religious in a secular, public educational system. Parents need to consider the unique characteristics of their children and the educational mission of their local Christian schools. This study should help parents as they make their evaluations. While there are still many questions that need to be studied, this is a long, first step toward understanding how different educational choices may affect the religious lives of adolescents.

Labels: adolescents, Christianity, Jeremy Uecker, National Survey of Youth and Religion, public school, religious education, schools, Tobin Grant

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What do Alabama, Iran, Zimbabwe share? Religion

What do Alabama, Iran, Zimbabwe share? Religion

Feb 10, 2009

WASHINGTON (AFP) —

Eighty-two percent of Alabamans say religion plays a key role in everyday life, or around the same percentage as in Iran (83 percent) and the southern African state of Zimbabwe (81 percent), a poll conducted by Gallup showed Monday.

That could be because "a population's religiosity level is strongly related to its average standard of living," Gallup analysts Steve Crabtree and Brett Pehlam said in a report summarizing the findings of the poll.

The poverty rate in Alabama was 17 percent in 2007, according to the US Census Bureau, while World Bank statistics show around 20 percent of Iranians live in poverty.

In Zimbabwe, a country where the economy has been plummeting for a decade and inflation is running at several billion percent annually, at least 80 percent of the population live below the poverty line.

Also giving weight to the analysts' theory is the fact that the most religious US state, Mississippi, is also the poorest.

Eighty-five percent of Mississippians say religion is a key part of daily life, according to the poll, for which 1,000 adults each were interviewed in 143 countries between 2006 and 2008.

One in five Mississippians live in poverty, US Census data shows.

Religion was a key part of daily life for 17 percent of Swedes and 25 percent of Japanese.

When all 143 countries surveyed are taken into account, the median percentage for religiosity was 82 percent. The median is value in a set, above and below which there are equal numbers of values.

Although several states were above the global median, the United States taken as a whole fell well below it.

Even though God is invoked when the US president is sworn in, mentioned on dollar bills and in the pledge of allegiance that American students say daily to the flag, just 65 percent of Americans said religion matters in their everyday lives, according to the survey.

That puts the United States about five percentage points behind countries like Armenia, Jamaica, Kosovo, Mexico and Greece on Gallup's religiosity scale.

But "Americans look extremely devout" compared to 27 other wealthy nations, where the median of people who said religion is important in their daily lives was 38 percent, the Gallup analysts said.

Labels: Alabama, Gallup Poll, Iran. Zimbabwe, poverty, religion

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The Cost of Unbelief

By: Simon Smart
Posted: Tuesday, 10 February 2009, 9:43 (EST)

This is the first of a three-page article - well worth reading. Just click on "external source" to access the entire article.

Australian atheists were recently prevented from running a series of ads on buses with the message, “There’s probably no God, so sleep in on Sundays.” It was a funny ad and should have been permitted, and if the Bureau of Statistics A Picture of a Nation report is anything to go by, there’s a generation of young people who don’t need convincing. According to the latest figures young Australians are increasingly secular with the proportion of people stating ‘no religion’ on their census form up from 6.7% in 1971 to 19% in 2006; the younger generation leading the charge to the beach on Sunday mornings (or perhaps staying under the doona). 23.5% of 15 – 34 year-olds did not specify a religion compared with 7.9% of Australians 65 and older.

No doubt this finding will be good news to those who believe religion has only paranoia, superstition, violence and hypocrisy to contribute to society, and there are plenty of them. Freud famously articulated the notion that religion is a neurosis. Likewise, Psychologist Albert Ellis saw only the pernicious effects of religion on individuals, claiming that ‘Religiosity … is in many respects equivalent to irrational thinking and emotional disturbance.’ (Ellis, 1980, 67)

But the latest scientific data on the effects of religiosity on health, might give us reason to pause. In 2001 Duke University researchers conducted a large survey of 100 evidence-based studies of the correlation between religion and well-being and found that 79 reported a positive correlation, 13 no correlation, 7 mixed correlation and 1 a negative correlation.1 The masses of research completed since then has largely pointed in the same direction.

This is a growing field. It reflects a more serious attempt to integrate ‘whole-person care’ in medical areas that previously gave little importance to the spiritual side of patient management. Of the 141 medical schools in the U.S. and Canada 70% now offer courses on religion, spirituality and medicine.

This is largely a response to the vast amount of data emerging over the last eight years that reveals positive correlations between commitment to religion and better outcomes for dealing with depression and anxiety, strength of immune systems, cardiovascular health and even longevity.

It is well accepted that stress and depression have serious adverse health impacts and studies that show religious coping improves outcomes in this area need to be taken seriously. It is the scientists who are telling us that religious involvement is associated with lower rates of a host of stress-related medical conditions including cardiovascular disease, stroke, immune and endocrine functioning, cancer—especially gastrointestinal, breast and oral—and better outcomes for cancer in general.

It is worth quoting some research to give a small taste of the sort of data being reported:

Labels: atheism, depression, mental health, religion, science, Simon Smart, spirituality

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Monday, February 09, 2009

Scientists and religious leaders call for end to fighting over Darwin's legacy

Prominent scientists and leading religious figures have joined forces to call for an end to the fighting over Charles Darwin's legacy.

By Martin Beckford, Religious Affairs Correspondent
09 Feb 2009

Ahead of the 200th anniversary of the pioneering naturalist's birth on Thursday, they warn that militant atheists are turning people away from evolution by using it as a weapon with which to attack religion.

However, in a letter published in The Daily Telegraph, they also urge believers in creationism to acknowledge the overwhelming body of evidence that now exists to back up Darwin's theory of how life on Earth has developed.

It comes after a survey of 2,000 people conducted by Theos, the religion think tank, found that half believe the theory of evolution cannot explain the complexity of the natural world. One in three said they thought God created the Earth within the past 10,000 years.

The influential signatories of the letter include two Church of England bishops, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain and a member of the Evangelical Alliance, as well as Professor Lord Winston, the fertility pioneer, and Professor Sir Martin Evans, winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine.

They write: "Evolution, we believe, has become caught in the crossfire of a religious battle in which Darwin himself had little personal interest.

"We respectfully encourage those who reject evolution to weigh the now overwhelming evidence, hugely strengthened by recent advances in genetics, which testifies to the theory's validity.

"At the same time, we respectfully ask those contemporary Darwinians who seem intent on using Darwin's theory as a vehicle for promoting an anti-theistic agenda to desist from doing so as they are, albeit unintentionally, turning people away from the theory.

"In this year of all years, we should be celebrating Darwin's great biological achievements and not fighting over his legacy as some kind of anti-theologian."

Labels: Charles Darwin, evolution, Martin Beckford, religion, science, Theos

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Darwin's 200th anniversary - Lessons still to be learned

The Daily Telegraph called him "the greatest naturalist of our time, perhaps all time". For the Morning Post he was "the first biologist of his day". The Times saluted the rapid victory of Charles Darwin's great idea and said that "the astonishing revelations of recent research in palaeontology have done still more to turn what 20 years ago was a brilliant speculation into an established and unquestionable truth". The Manchester Guardian said that "few original thinkers have lived to see more completely the triumph of what is essential in their doctrine". The St James's Gazette predicted that England's children would one day be taught to honour Darwin "as the greatest Englishman since Newton".

These responses appeared in print on 21 April 1882, after the news of Darwin's death at his home in Down, Kent. The writers were people who knew the Bible, and they addressed readers who had grown up in an overtly devout society. Many remembered the religious and scientific uproar following publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859. It argued, with detailed evidence, that life's extraordinary variety had stemmed, over an enormous period of time, from a common ancestry, and that the mechanism was the operation of natural selection upon tiny variations in heredity.

But Darwin's audience heard only part of the story. The clinching discovery of the biochemistry of genetic inheritance and therefore of random genetic mutation - the famous double helix of DNA - was not made until 1953. The mostly anonymous contributors who rushed to judgment that morning had before them only a fraction of the findings that now support the theory of evolution: a theory as confident as the predictions of Newtonian physics at speeds significantly lower than the velocity of light, as sure as the thesis that matter is composed of atoms. They could have been forgiven for their sometimes equivocal salutes.

There can be no such equivocation in the week of a survey which showed that only around half of all Britons accept that Darwin's theory of evolution is either true or probably true. In a democracy, citizens should respect each other's beliefs; and citizens have a right to express their beliefs. But in a democracy, a newspaper has an obligation to what is right. The truth is that Darwin's reasoning has in the last 150 years been supported overwhelmingly by discoveries in biology, geology, medicine and space science. The details will keep scientists arguing for another 200 years, but the big picture has not changed. All life is linked by common ancestry, including human life. The shameful lesson of this 200th anniversary of his birth is that Darwin's contemporaries understood more clearly than many modern Britons.

Two things distinguish a late-Victorian audience from a modern one. Educated Victorians knew much more about their own religion, and the problems of interpretation in sacred scripture. They understood that if the Bible was God's word then the world around them must also be an account of His handiwork, to be scrutinised, glossed and annotated by science. Second, they were prepared to follow and even join in scientific debate about those chapters of Earth history revealed in the rocks. Many of the tribute-payers of 21 April 1882 understood that evolution had not been, in 1859, a new or particularly shocking idea. Others had proposed it; they understood that Darwin had demonstrated it. They foresaw disturbing moral, political and intellectual implications. But they were ready to confront them.

If Darwin's doctrine be true, said the Morning Chronicle, "the result may be contemplated with composure, for the further we get from falsehood, the nearer we get to happiness". Science has advanced, but left a very large number of people behind. Unhappily, 200 years on from the birth of one of the world's greatest scientists, we are still not so far from falsehood.

Labels: Britain, Charles Darwin, DNA, evolution, science

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Origin of debate: On the bicentennial of his birth, confronting Darwin's theory and its impact on faith

Origin of debate: On the bicentennial of his birth, confronting Darwin's theory and its impact on faith
By Brett Buckner
Staff Writer
02-07-2009

This is a very good article - too lengthy to reproduce here, but just click on "external source" to access the complete article.

His name alone is inflammatory, sparking emotionally charged responses ranging from fury to enthusiasm. Its mere mention in public is liable to incite a heated debate the volume of which may rise above all surrounding conversations.

Charles Darwin.

Though none have ever met him and few have cracked the spine of any of his famous works — namely On the Origin of Species and Descent of Man — everyone has an opinion about where Darwin ranks among the iconoclasts of history.

To some he stands alongside great thinkers like Copernicus, Einstein, Socrates, Galileo and Freud. Others are less kind, labeling him a devil's advocate; a corrupting force whose ideas of evolution contradict tightly guarded biblical beliefs and challenge the very existence of God.

The truth, however, lies somewhere in between.

But whether demonized or deified, Charles Darwin is credited with having forever altered the way human beings perceive their place in the universe.

"If I were to give an award for the single best idea anyone ever had, I'd give it to Darwin," writes philosopher Daniel Dennett in his 1995 book Darwin's Dangerous Idea. "In a single stroke, the idea of evolution by natural selection unifies the realm of life, meaning and purpose with the realm of space and time, cause and effect, mechanism and physical law."

Feb. 12 is Darwin's 200th birthday and 2009 marks the 150th anniversary of his masterpiece, On the Origin of Species. But before the controversy, the legal wrangling, religious posturing and scientific bullying … there was a ship named the HMS Beagle...

Labels: Brett Buckner, Charles Darwin, Daniel Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, evolution

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Europe does religion without the politics, suggests research

By staff writers
6 Feb 2009

The Bertelsmann Stiftung International Religion Monitor study says its research shows that Christian faith still has a strong personal influence in Europe - but not so much on people's political outlook.

On average, nearly three-quarters (74%) of people surveyed in Germany, France, Austria, Poland, Switzerland and the UK think of themselves as religious or very religious.

Italy and Poland came top of the six countries, with 89% and 87% respectively of the population seeing themselves as religious. The United Kingdom (63%) and France (54%) were the lowest. Russia, which was not included as part of Europe in this study, came lower still with 51%.

Overall, 57% of respondents said they attend religious services and practiced their faith “more or less regularly”, and 61% pray.

Traditional Roman Catholic countries tend to have more highly religious adherents than Protestant countries – in Poland 40% of people class themselves as very religious, compared with only 19% of the British population. Poles also attend church more regularly than other Europeans – 64% reported a high level of public religious practice compared with 17% in Germany.

Young people are as likely as the older generation to believe in God or some idea of the divine and the afterlife, with 41% of young people holding strong religious beliefs compared to 42% of the population as a whole.

The secular online news source EU Observer recently reported on the study – one of the first pieces of comment by EUO on religious affairs. The article quotes the survey saying: "the role which [religion] plays in tying together the countries of the European Union should not be underestimated".

However the EU Observer suggests that religious belief influences the political views of only 27% of respondents (and only 29% in Poland), and comments that "Europeans remain strongly religious but like to keep faith out of politics".

Sociologists such as Professor Grace Davie at the University of Exeter have long argued that religion and spirituality are mutating rather than disappearing in Europe, even though that continent retains its exceptionalism for having secularised more than any other continent.

She suggests the changing patterns of believing and belonging, which defy the simple interpretations of both secularist and 'religious revivalist' advocates, are due the emergence of "multiple modernities" in the world today - whereas the old secularisation thesis was that 'modernisation' was always accompanied by the demise of religion.

The data now suggests otherwise.

Labels: Bertelsmann Stiftung International Religion Monitor, Christianity, Europe

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Just before Darwin day, Pew reviews faith and evolution in U.S.

February 5th, 2009
Tom Heneghan

Please see complete article for links to this study. Click on "external source" at the end of this article.

Just in time for Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday next week, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has posted an extensive research package examining the debate about evolution, Darwinism and religion in the United States. “The Debate over Evolution” is a treasure trove of information about the debate and especially useful for the lists breaking down views of the main religious groups and the political fight over Darwinism state by state.

Labels: Charles Darwin, evolution, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, religion, The Debate over Evolution, Tom Heneghan

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Study: Decline in Adolescent Religious Beliefs & Practices Over Time

Thursday, February 05, 2009

You can download the study by clicking on "external source, and go to the bottom of the article.

The National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) recently announced the release of a new report on adolescents in the United States based on the second wave of NSYR survey data.

In "Religion and Spirituality on the Path Through Adolescence," the authors examined religious and spiritual changes in the lives of adolescents in the United States across a three-year span. The comparison of NSYR survey responses from the same adolescents in 2002 and 2005 reveals relatively small but consistent decreases in conventional religious beliefs and practices. Although the majority of adolescents in this study remained stable in their religious beliefs, practices, and spirituality, a significant minority did experience slight shifts away from standard religious beliefs and decreases in religious practice. Overall, the dynamics in religiosity and spirituality among this nationally representative sample of adolescents reflect subtle changes--rather than large or dramatic shifts.

The report, is authored by Melinda Lundquist Denton, Co-Investigator with the NSYR and Assistant Professor of Sociology at Clemson University, Lisa Pearce, Co-Principle Investigator of the second wave of the NSYR and Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Christian Smith, Principal Investigator of the NSYR and Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame.

Labels: Jim Liebelt, religion, Religion and Spirituality on the Path Through Adolescence, teenagers

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Born-Again American: A Christian-Tinged Campaign From Norman Lear, a Religious-Right Foe

February 03, 2009 06:37 PM ET | Dan Gilgoff
By Dan Gilgoff,

The music video for Born Again American, TV producer and liberal activist Norman Lear's new campaign to promote service and volunteerism, might surprise you. The video, which features a new song that's also called "Born Again American," appropriates blatantly evangelical language: "I'm a Born Again American, conceived in Liberty/My Bible and the Bill of Rights, my creed's equality." How ironic, given that Lear has been battling the religious right—the evangelical right, really—for nearly three decades. Lear founded People for the American Way shortly after the Moral Majority had opened its doors.

Has Lear jumped on the bandwagon of progressives who've "gotten religion" in recent years?

Not exactly. I found a Washington Post article describing People for the American Way's 1980 founding, and it turns out that Lear has long used religion to battle the religious right:

Two organizations, one made up entirely of mainline religious leaders and the other with them predominating, have sprung up in recent weeks to fight the evangelists of the Christian right.

One group, People for the American Way, will be launched formally today by a coalition that includes television producer Norman Lear, former senator Harold Hughes (D-Iowa), the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh of Notre Dame, Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum of the American Jewish Committee and Dr. William Howard and Dr. William P. Thompson, the current and past presidents of the National Council of Churches.

Their plans call for distributing five 60-second TV spots, already produced by Lear, dealing with the Christian right. "We are trying to communicate to the American people that the Christian community understands that people must make up their own minds" about political issues, explained Thompson, who is the chief executive officer of the United Presbyterian Church.

"The church has the right to express its views," Thompson continued, "but it does not have the right to tell people how to vote."

A helpful reminder that liberals have been fighting religious conservatives with religion—and not just arguments for church/state separation—since way before the religious left's post-2004 revival.

Labels: Christianity, Dan Gilgoff, Norman Lear, People for the American Way, religious right, service, volunteering

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The Problem with Evolution Surveys

By Robert Roy Britt, Editorial Director
02 February 2009 04:14 pm ET

In a new survey, a quarter of Britons say they believe Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is "definitely true," with another quarter saying it is "probably true." That left half of the 2,060 people surveyed stating they were either strongly opposed to the theory or confused about it. That's how the survey was presented in The Guardian, with a headline claiming "half of Britons do not believe in evolution."

To those who know evolution to be a solid scientific theory, this poll might seem a glum assessment of public opinion. But let's break that latter half down, as the Guardian subsequently did:

About 10 percent of the survey respondents said they favor creationism, the idea that God created us and everything in seven days sometime roughly 6,000 years ago. Another 12 percent put their stock in intelligent design, an idea (not a theory) stating that life is too complex to not imagine something — presumably God — having a hand in it. "The remainder were unsure, often mixing evolution, intelligent design and creationism together," the Guardian article states.

By my calculation, that means only 22 percent reject evolution outright. That's significantly different than the newspaper's headline. It's also quite different from frequently cited surveys in the United States that apparently have found more than half the population doesn't believe in evolution. Those surveys are typically flawed, too, however, or their results are discussed way out of context. Here's why:

The confluence of evolution and religion is a very tricky topic for pollsters to get at, because many people hold multiple views. Among them:

* Some people agree that evolution is at work in the animal kingdom but don't see it having a role in humans.
* Others are comfortable with the notion that humans have evolved but figure God either set it all in motion or actually keeps a hand in the process all along, with the assumption (by some in this group) that scientists are pretty darn clueless.
* Still others see the theory of evolution as a scientific concept, whereas God is a spiritual concept, and the two have nothing to do with each other.
* At either end of the spectrum, of course, are those who reject evolution and those who reject God.

There's another huge problem that suggests surveys of this nature typically don't delve deeply enough into what people really think: Some people simply know very little about what evolution theory is, and in fact very little about the scientific concepts that underpin the theory, including modern genetics. Their answers to out-of-the-blue questions from a telephone pollster may come with little thought, perhaps rooted in emotion or, in some cases, even wishful thinking. And if they do think, many people may not really know what they think about all this because unlike scientists, educators, activists and LiveScience readers, they don't sit around pondering all this too much.

As an illustration of how little Americans know about basic science, The FASEB study also analyzed the results from a 10-country survey in which adults were tested with 10 true or false statements about basic concepts from genetics. One of the statements was "All plants and animals have DNA." (The correct answer is "yes.") Americans had a median score of 4.

Imagine framing a poll question this way: "When over a few generations a virus mutates to resist the effects of an antibiotic, thereby becoming deadly to humans, that's an example of evolution. Do you believe in evolution?"

All this matters because the theory of evolution is one of the most well-supported theories of science, and scientists and most science teachers think it should be taught in science class without religious ideas such as creationism and intelligent design. (Intelligent design purports to simply offer an alternative way of looking at the theory of evolution, but in reality it is a sneaky means by its promoters to bring creationism into science classrooms, critics say.)

Footnote: You're going to be hearing a lot about Charles Darwin this year, because the father of the theory of evolution would be 200 years old. There will be worthwhile discoveries regarding evolution that happen to coincide with the hoopla, and then there will be feature stories written to sell newspapers and drive web traffic, many of them rooted in well-meaning efforts by scientific organizations and institutions aiming to battle those who would tear evolution down. Thought you ought to know.

Labels: Britain, creationism, evolution, intelligent design, Robert Roy Britt, surveys

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A spiritual approach to money

One group’s formula for trying times: Live gratefully, spend less, buy justly, give more.

By Jane Lampman| Staff writer/
February 1, 2009 edition

In turbulent economic times, the watchwords are usually: Cut back. Live frugally. Hunker down and put money in safe places!

But here in Boston, small groups of churchgoers have been applying a different message to money management. During the past two years, they have studied what the Bible teaches about money and wealth, discussed their personal budgets, and taken concrete steps aimed at four commitments: “Living gratefully, spending less, buying justly, and giving more.”

With gratitude as a foundational principle, the study groups follow a 12-session curriculum called “Lazarus at the Gate,” referring to the challenging gospel story about a rich man who persistently ignored a beggar named Lazarus at his gate (Luke 16). They discuss passages from the Old or New Testaments that consider wealth as a blessing, a potential idol, a resource for meeting needs, and to be justly distributed.

Many participants say the experience has been eye-opening and life-changing, as they explore the meaning of economic discipleship.

Each individual decides on ways to live more simply, such as not buying sodas or snacks during the week or selling a car and taking public transportation instead. At the final session, they commit some of the resources saved from new spending habits to charitable organizations they’ve researched and prioritized.

The first group to follow the Lazarus program met once a month for 12 months in 2007.

“It was a fantastic experience. The group of 14 people wound up giving $40,000 to five organizations dealing with poverty around the world,” says Mako Nagasawa, of InterVarsity Campus Ministry. He and Gary Vanderpol, a Boston pastor, initiated the program, and worked with BFJN to offer it to churches in the area.

For Jo Hunter Adams and her husband, Eugene, the small-group experience brought remarkable results in their own lives along with an increased capacity to give.

“Creating our first budget and sharing it with the group really helped us. We didn’t buy anything we didn’t need, and we didn’t eat out,” says Ms. Adams, a public health worker. “We stayed away from ‘lifestyle inflation.’ ”

Instead of moving into a larger apartment as they had planned, Adams and her husband remained where they were.

As a result, the couple managed over the year to reduce the $50,000 they had in student loans to only $3,000. “It was miraculous!” she says.

A step in the process that really opened her eyes, she adds, was checking their financial position in the global economy on the website, globalrichlist.com. After entering their annual income, she learned that they were among the top 0.7 percent in the world. While she had always thought she could give time and energy to good causes but not much money, “now I see I can give a lot of money, actually,” she says.

What she most appreciates, however, is being able to live her Christian values more consistently. “I tended to think that being saved was the most important thing. Now I’m more interested in reflecting God’s love as much as possible,” she says. “And God wants us to be involved in dealing with poverty and justice.”

Along with Bible study, the Lazarus curriculum guides groups through research on global poverty and development. Participants educate each other about specific organizations active in development, microfinance, and fair trade.

Many involved speak of the way the Lazarus process builds community, enabling each group member to accomplish more than he or she would on their own. For instance, Letizia was giving away 1 or 2 percent of her yearly income though she had thought about giving more.

“Doing it in community lends a different joy and excitement,” she says. “This year is the first time I’ve been able to give 10 percent, and it comes from doing it with others.”

The question for many is whether they can sustain the lifestyle changes and commitments – or build on them. Some groups decide to continue meeting weekly or monthly. A few participants are leading new groups to spread the message. So far, 18 groups have completed the Lazarus program in Boston, and 15 more are getting under way this spring.

The curriculum is available on the Web (click here) to encourage churches in other parts of the country to sponsor groups.

It’s now being used in La Jolla, Calif., and Colorado Springs, Colo., and perhaps soon in New York, Mr. Nagasawa says. He’s also created an eight-week version for use by college students. The Lazarus program is part of a broader BFJN initiative to encourage people to consider what it might look like to have a “gratitude economy.”

Labels: frugality, generosity, gratitude, Jane Lampman, Lazarus at the Gate, the economy

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How Ancient Greeks Chose Temple Locations

By Graciela Flores, Natural History Magazine
31 January 2009 01:04 pm ET

To honor their gods and goddesses, ancient Greeks often poured blood or wine on the ground as offerings. Now a new study suggests that the soil itself might have had a prominent role in Greek worship, strongly influencing which deities were venerated where.

In a survey of eighty-four Greek temples of the Classical period (480 to 338 B.C.), Gregory J. Retallack of the University of Oregon in Eugene studied the local geology, topography, soil, and vegetation — as well as historical accounts by the likes of Herodotus, Homer, and Plato — in an attempt to answer a seemingly simple question: why are the temples where they are?

No clear pattern emerged until he turned to the gods and goddesses. It was then that he discovered a robust link between the soil on which a temple stood and the deity worshiped there.

For example, Demeter, the goddess of grain and fertility, and Dionysos, the god of wine, both were venerated on fertile, well-structured soils called Xerolls, which are ideal for grain cultivation.

Artemis, the virgin huntress, and her brother Apollo, the god of light and the Sun, were worshiped in rocky Orthent and Xerept soils suitable only for nomadic herding.

And maritime deities, such as Aphrodite, the goddess of love, and Poseidon, the sea god, were revered on Calcid soils on coastal terraces too dry for agriculture.

The pattern suggests that the deities' cults were based on livelihood as much as on religion. And, says Retallack, temple builders may have chosen sites to make the deities feel at home.

The findings were detailed in the journal Antiquity.

Labels: godesses, gods, Graciela Flores, Greeks, Gregory J. Retallack, soil, temples

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Half of Britons do not believe in evolution, survey finds

More than one-fifth prefer creationism or intelligent design, while many others are confused about Darwin's theory

Half of British adults do not believe in evolution, with at least 22% preferring the theories of creationism or intelligent design to explain how the world came about, according to a survey.

The poll found that 25% of Britons believe Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is "definitely true", with another quarter saying it is "probably true". Half of the 2,060 people questioned were either strongly opposed to the theory or confused about it.

The Rescuing Darwin survey, published to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, found that around 10% of people chose young Earth creationism – the belief that God created the world some time in the last 10,000 years – over evolution.

About 12% preferred intelligent design, the idea that evolution alone is not enough to explain the structures of living organisms. The remainder were unsure, often mixing evolution, intelligent design and creationism together. The survey was conducted by the polling agency ComRes on behalf of the Theos thinktank.

James Williams, a lecturer at Sussex University, said: "Creationists ask if people believe in evolution. Evolution is a theory and a fact. You accept it because of the evidence. What the creationists have done is put a cloak of pseudo-science to wrap up their religious belief."

Later this month scientists and academics from across Europe will meet in Dortmund, Germany, to discuss evolution and creationism. It will be the first European conference of its kind to deal with different aspects of attitudes and knowledge related to evolution. They will discuss specific difficulties regarding the acceptance of evolution theory in their home countries.

Williams, who will give a paper presenting a British perspective on evolution and creationism in school science, said: "Evolution is very badly taught in schools so the results of the survey don't surprise me. On the other hand, creationism has traditionally been an issue in North America and there is a big problem in Australia and Turkey. It matters if people don't understand how science works."

Labels: Britain, Charles Darwin, creationism, evolution, intelligent design, Rescuing Darwin

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Friday, February 06, 2009

New Congress more religiously diverse

Provides accurate representation of nation's people
By Kaellen Hessel

Page 1 of 2. Please click on "external source" for Page 2.

* The 111th Congress is more religiously diverse than previous Congresses

* Members of Congress are more likely to claim a religious denomination than the public

* Congressmen don't think religion matters to voters

* Catholics, Jews and Mormons overrepresented in Congress

With the inauguration of a new president comes a new session of Congress.

This newly elected Congress is more religiously diverse than previous Congresses and more representative of the nation, according to a report put out by the nonpartisan Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

By comparing the religious affiliations of the new Congress with the religious demography of 35,000 American adults, the Pew Forum discovered members of Congress are more likely to affiliate themselves with a religion than the public. This discrepancy leads some religious groups, such as Mormons, Jews and Catholics, to be overrepresented in Congress.

According to the Pew Forum's report, 30 percent of Congress is Catholic compared to one fourth of American adults. David Masci, a senior research fellow at the Pew Forum, said this is a change from when Catholic politicians lost their races because of their religious beliefs. The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, is a Catholic, Masci said.

Jews make up 8.4 percent of Congress and only 1.7 percent of American adults, according to the report. Three of Wisconsin's representatives in Congress, including both Senators, are Jewish, according to the Pew Forum's U.S. Religious Landscape Survey. Less than 0.5 percent of Wisconsin's population is Jewish.

David Masci said that although the Pew Forum doesn't know why members of Congress are more likely to claim a religious affiliation, they "can say it's in someone's benefit to belong." Masci cited Pete Stark (D-Calif.) as an example. Stark is a pronounced atheist and a member of the Unitarian Church, says Masci.

Masci said Americans like leaders to be religious because the majority believe people of faith are more moral.

Labels: Congress, faith, Kaellen Hessel, Pew Forum, religion

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Religion now more divisive than race, says public

AT least four out of 10 Muslims do not believe that communities should be forced to integrate in Britain, according to a new poll.

It also found that religion has become a more divisive issue than race.

The survey for the Government's Equalities and Human Rights Commission revealed that more than half of the public believe it is likely that the UK will have a non-white prime minister within 20 years.

However, the black and Afro-Caribbean community, 56 per cent of which believe that the failings of the 1999 police inquiry into the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence in south-east London in 1993 would still be repeated today, retain some reservations about progress in race relations.

But a greater number of people in all communities apart from Muslims believe that Britain has become more racially tolerant.

Commission chairman Trevor Phillips said: "It is heartening to recognise that here in Britain we have a sophisticated sense of our own identity and an appreciation and interest in difference.

"But we can't be complacent. The survey points to emerging religious divisions.

"And as we mark a darker moment in our own history, the 10th anniversary of the inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, it is clear the police still have work to do to convince our ethnic-minority communities they deserve their trust."

Labels: Britain, Equalities and Human Rights Commission, Muslims, race, religion

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Obama Family Values

Joel Kotkin, 01.20.09, 12:01 AM EST
A model of proper parenting and spirituality for the next generation.

The new president's focus on family reflects an increasing emphasis among African-American leaders on the importance of parental values. Many prominent black activists initially scorned Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan's 1965 report linking poverty among African-Americans to the decline of intact family units. But today, when roughly half of all black children live with single mothers, it is widely accepted that strong families represent the most effective way to reduce "the racial gap" in incomes.

Surveys reveal that people born between 1968 and 1979 place a considerably higher value on family, and a lower value on work, than their baby-boomer counterparts. Women in the former age cohort are actually having more children than their predecessors and, particularly among the college-educated, they appear to be working somewhat less.

And this family-friendly shift is likely to continue throughout the next wave of child-rearers. As Morley Winograd and Michael Hais suggest in their book, Millennial Makeover, the Millennial generation, born after 1983 and twice as numerous as Generation X, also enthusiastically embraces the notion of a strong family.

Indeed, three-fourths of 13- to 24-year-olds, according to one 2007 survey, consider time spent with family the most important factor in their own happiness, rating it even higher than time spent with friends or a significant other. More than 80% thought getting married would make them happy. Some 77% said they definitely or probably would want children, while less than 12% said they likely wouldn't.

What's more, the current state of the economy is likely to strengthen ties among family members. One-fourth of Generation X-ers, for example, still receive financial help from their parents, as do nearly one-third of Millennials. As many as 40% of Americans between ages 20 and 34 now live at least part-time with their parents, an option that will only become more commonplace in areas where home prices are particularly high and employment opportunities are sharply limited.

Yet even if family values are in ascendance, how they are expressed sharply diverges from the norms and attitudes typically associated with the Religious Right. In fact, on a host of issues--including gay rights, interracial dating and stem cell research--millennials trend more toward liberal views than earlier generations, Winograd says.

Attitudes concerning religion--the other critical part of the "values" issue--reveal a similar fusion of conventionality and pragmatism. Like other Americans, Millennials are far more religiously oriented than their counterparts in other advanced countries. Fully one-fourth of Americans in their 20s and 30s, observes Princeton sociologist Robert Wurthnow, consider themselves "very spiritual," even if they rarely attend church. A 2003 UCLA study found roughly three out of four college students deem their spiritual or religious views important, but most see their (older) professors as largely indifferent to such concerns.

Yet this spiritual orientation does not imply a shift toward any retrograde "moral majority" conservatism. Upward mobility among evangelicals and fundamentalists, as well as the increased racial integration within churches, has lessened the once-glaring gaps between conservative Protestants, particularly in the South, and the rest of American society. This liberalization is particularly acute when it comes to issues like homosexuality and censorship, but also extends to the role of women and the teaching of religion in public schools.

Labels: family, family values, Gen X, Joel Kotkin, Millennial Makeover, President Obama, religion

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Study: Service Attendance, Not Spirituality, May Decrease Suicide Risk

By Aaron J. Leichman
Christian Post Reporter
Tue, Jan. 20 2009 11:20 AM EST

Religious individuals have a significantly lower chance of committing suicide, according to the results of a recent study in Canada.

Individuals identifying themselves simply as “spiritual” but not religious, however, are not much less likely to commit suicide than anyone else.

Conducted using data drawn from the Canadian Community Health Survey on almost 37,000 Canadians across the country, the latest study by a team of psychiatric researchers based at the University of Manitoba was the first to use national data to look at the relationship between spirituality, religious worship and suicidal behavior in the general population and people with a history of a mental disorder.

However, what was more interesting was the differences between people who call themselves “spiritual” and those who also regularly attend religious services.

According to the data, the former category did not show a decreased inclination to take their lives, suggesting something more was involved that was related to the actual attendance at a religious event occurring in a church, mosque, temple or other spiritual gathering.

Furthermore, among people with a history of mental illness – those at the highest risk of suicide –religious attendance appeared to be associated with a decrease in suicide attempts while simply being “spiritual” was not significant enough to reduce the effect.

Despite the findings, Rasic cautioned against tying the decrease in suicide attempts directly to religious worship.

For most studies dealing with spirituality and religiousness, spirituality is considered as referring to an inner belief system that a person relies on for strength and comfort whereas religiousness refers to institutional religious rituals, practices, and beliefs.

For the recent Canadian study, religiousness was based on a person’s attendance at a religious worship service.

The research results have been published in the Journal of Affective Disorders.

Labels: Aaron J. Leichman, Canada, Canadian Community Health Survey, church, religion, spirituality, suicide

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Thursday, February 05, 2009

How pastors are soothing congregants in recessionary times

They search for the right words to express from the pulpit – a balance between compassion and urging worshipers to find deeper meanings.

By G. Jeffrey MacDonald | Correspondent / February 3, 2009 edition

RAYMOND, N.H.
When the Rev. Kevin McBride opens his office door on a snowy Sunday morning, he’s ready to preach a good word for tough times. He walks straight into an anxious crowd of cookie-eating people who could really use some deeper sustenance.

Pastor McBride of the Raymond Baptist Church couldn’t be calmer. A narrow-framed man with a mustache and canary-yellow dress shirt, he smiles and jokes easily. Later, at the lectern, he explains why he’s so relaxed: Even when the economy crumbles, God is in control.

For preachers, the so-called Great Recession is doing more than boosting church attendance. It’s challenging clergy to find fitting words for a rare, tender moment when nearly everyone – including preachers – is hurting in a personal, all-too-concrete way. Most sermonizers seem to be making a stab at it, but the tactics and themes in use vary widely.

Some are urging confidence. The Rev. Amandus Derr, senior pastor of St. Peter’s Church in midtown Manhattan, ministers among towering symbols of the financial crisis, such as the neighboring Citigroup building and the office of alleged fraudster Bernard Madoff.

Lately he’s seen a lot of worried faces pressed against his 54th Street office window as hurting people seek help. He gave out $10,000 in emergency aid during the last two weeks of December, up from $2,000 during the same period a year earlier. Attendance at the church’s weekly breakfast for the homeless is up 30 percent, to about 150, since September.

In this economic environment, Pastor Derr has preached one message every week for six months: Be not afraid. “What I worry about most is that people who feel powerless … will find somebody else to blame,” Derr says. “And when you start to blame people, all kinds of things happen from that. It could be anti-Jewish, anti-Arab, anti-elite – a whole list.”

Guidance means a lot now because these are tricky waters for preachers. If they hurl too much fire, they risk being seen as uncompassionate. If they go too soft, they may miss what Larson regards as a precious, crisis-induced window – maybe three or four months – when attentive people are ready to experience a life change, much as they were right after 9/11. Moreover, to call for unwavering generosity and more giving in a time of need could seem self-serving, since a slice of the offering usually goes toward the preacher’s salary.

To make matters even tougher, pastors may already be out of touch with the economic lives of their congregants. A study released in January by LifeWay Research, an arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, concluded a “serious disconnect” exists among preachers over the realities of American life. The survey of 3,500 Southern Baptist pastors found that only 25 percent thought their congregants carried a “significant amount of personal debt.”

Still, preachers want to be sure their ministries don’t go the way of Bear Sterns or Lehman Brothers. That sometimes means keeping the pressure on the congregation at pledge time.

To help get the message right, preachers are listening to the Bible. Church consultants say Old Testament prophets are favorites once again. That means many a sermon these days is quoting such venerable figures as Isaiah, who warned of the costs of greed: “Many houses shall be desolate, large and beautiful houses, without inhabitant.”

As pastors find their way in this environment, they seem to agree on at least one point: Now is a moment of extraordinary preaching opportunity. The hard part may be figuring out what to do with it

Labels: Amandus Derr, church, economics, G. Jeffrey MacDonald, Kevin McBride, pastors

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