TruthBook Religious News Blog

By Electa Draper
The Denver Post
Posted: 08/09/2009 01:00:00 AM MDT

What in the recent past seemed exotic and foreign is now almost routinely folded into "the fold."

Buddhism is not only accepted as a mainstream American religion, it is a path increasingly trod by faithful Christians and Jews who infuse Eastern spiritual insights and practices such as meditation into their own religions.

When John Weber became a Buddhist at age 19, his devout Methodist parents were not particularly pleased.

In recent years, however, they've invited their son, a religious studies expert with Boulder's Naropa University, to speak at their church about Buddhism.

"That never would have happened before," Weber said. "They would have been embarrassed."

The Pew Forum's Religious Landscape Survey in 2007 found that seven in 10 Americans who have a religion believe there is more than one path to salvation. A growing number of people are contemplating more than one each.

And they are contemplating contemplation itself.

There are Jubus — Jews who bring Buddhism into their practice of Judaism — and Bujus, who are Buddhists with Jewish parents. Then there are UUbus, or Unitarian Universalist Buddhists, and Ebus, or Episcopalian Buddhists. There are Zen Catholics.

"There is a definite trend and movement that will not be reversed," said Ruben Habito, a laicized Jesuit priest, Zen master and professor of world religions at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. "We are in a new spiritual age, an inter-religious age."

Search can lead back home

People are hungry for a deeper spiritual experience — meditation, mindfulness, personal transformation, deep insight, union with God or the universe.

Habito, who calls himself a Zen Catholic, is one of the experts who say the search is a little like Dorothy and her ruby slippers. The quest for meaning ultimately leads some, like Dorothy, to their own backyards.

Judaism, Catholicism and Islam have rich traditions in contemplative practices, yet these had all but disappeared from everyday congregational life.

For many Christians cut off from the past, or alienated from the faith of their upbringing, Buddhism has served as the bridge to ancient wisdom.

"The problem is the contemplative tradition in the Christian Church has had its ups and downs over the centuries," said Father Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk and leader in the Centering Prayer movement, a modern revival of Christian contemplative practice.

"We sensed that the Eastern religions, with their highly developed spirituality, had something we didn't have," Keating said. "In the last generation, 10 to 20 years, some didn't even think there was a Christian spirituality, just rules — do's and don'ts and dogma they didn't find spiritually nourishing. It's important to recover the mystical aspects of the gospel."

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Labels: Buddhism, Christian, Electa Draper, God, interfaith, meditation, religion, spirituality

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Friday, July 31, 2009

Survey: Faith of Blacks Grows Stronger, More Orthodox

By Audrey Barrick
Christian Post Reporter
Sat, Jul. 25 2009

Blacks remain the most religious ethnic group in America, a new study shows.

And over the last 15 years, African Americans have grown even more religious and orthodox in their Christian beliefs, according to The Barna Group.

Findings from surveys that included 1,272 African American respondents reveal that blacks today are more likely than they were in the early 1990s to believe that the principles taught in the Bible are totally accurate; to say that their religious faith is very important in their life; to have a biblically orthodox understanding of the nature of God; and to be born again.

African Americans were found to be the most likely ethnic group to consider themselves Christian with 92 percent saying so. Nationally, 85 percent of Americans in general consider themselves Christian. Blacks were also the most likely to be born again Christians (59 percent vs. 46 percent nationally).

Moreover, blacks had the lowest population of unchurched adults and were least likely to be Catholic.

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Labels: Audrey Barrick, Barna Group, Bible, Christian, church, faith, religion

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Friday, July 24, 2009

The new Christian bridge builders

A new crop of Christian leaders, such as Rick Warren, are demonstrating a willingness to reach out to Muslims in spite of the "Islam is evil" message delivered by many of their counterparts. Are American Muslims ready or able to reciprocate beyond dialogue?

By Junaid M. Afeef,
July 20, 2009

Rick Warren, the founder and senior pastor of Saddleback Church, spoke recently at the 2009 ISNA Convention in Washington, DC. He arrived at the convention center and made his way across the registration and information booths, up two flights of escalators and then again across the numerous exhibitors’ booths just outside of the auditorium where he was to speak. Several ISNA executives were with him, but he was able to pass by most convention attendees without any fanfare.

Given that the ISNA convention is a racially diverse gathering the sight of a white man in a summer suit was hardly noteworthy on its face, but given what his presence at ISNA means, perhaps a little more fanfare was in order. Rick Warren’s willingness to reach out to Muslims is a bold step towards greater inter-religious dialogue in the United States. Warren’s gesture at ISNA, as with the MPAC convention last year, represents a marked departure from the "Islam is evil" message delivered by other Evangelical Christian leaders like Franklin Graham.

After all, several reputable national studies after 9/11 have shown that Evangelical Christians hold very unfavorable opinions of Islam and of Muslims. Right after 9/11 a Pew poll found that 62 percent of Evangelical Christians believe that their faith is very different from Islam and a 2003 Beliefnet/Ethics and Public Policy survey found that 77 percent of Evangelical Christian leaders had an unfavorable view of Islam.

Warren is obviously part of that very small minority of Evangelical Christian leaders who does not have an unfavorable view of Islam and who does not think his faith is that much different from Islam. That is why he is willing and able to come to speak sincerely to large Muslim audiences. It is good for American religious pluralism that Rick Warren and the national American-Muslim leadership have found one another.

This relationship and the ensuing dialogue are important because they help pave the way for grassroots dialogue between their faith communities. The grassroots inter-religious dialogue is where great gains in understanding and bridge-building can be made. Understanding and relationships between American-Muslims and Christians are vital to sustaining America’s tradition of religious pluralism.

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Labels: Christian, evangelicals, interfaith, Islam, ISNA, Junaid M. Afeef, Muslims, pluralism, Rick Warren

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Friday, June 26, 2009

Mix and match: A faith of one's own

Posted by Michael Paulson June 20, 2009

There's been a lot of talk in the religion world about Americans' increasing habit of choosing their own religious affiliation -- survey research by Pew, in particular, has shown that half of all Americans have changed denomination during their lifetime. But there's been less attention to the ways in which Americans also have a tendency to make faith their own, accepting those beliefs and rituals that they like, and rejecting those they don't, within or outside their denominations.

I was thinking about this this morning, when I attended the funeral for a co-worker, Sarah Snyder, who died June 11 at the age of 51. Sarah was a gutsy and funny woman, and a talented journalist, who was felled much too soon by cancer. She was also, like so many folks in eastern Massachusetts (although she was not from these parts), a cradle Catholic who struggled with, but did not completely reject, her faith.

Her funeral took place at a Unitarian Universalist meetinghouse, First Parish in Milton, that is simultaneously non-creedal but, visually, quite explicitly Christian...

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Labels: Christian, church, faith, Michael Paulson, religion, Unitarianism

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Friday, June 19, 2009

Christian Soldiers

The growing controversy over military chaplains using the armed forces to spread the Word.
By Kathryn Joyce | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Jun 19, 2009

Ever since former president George W. Bush referred to the war on terror as a “crusade” in the days after the September 11 attacks, many have charged that the United States was conducting a holy war, pitting a Christian America against the Muslim world. That perception grew as prominent military leaders such as Lt. Gen. William Boykin described the wars in evangelical terms, casting the U.S. military as the "army of God." Although President Obama addressed the Muslim world this month in an attempt to undo the Bush administration's legacy of militant Christian rhetoric that often antagonized Muslim countries, several recent stories have framed the issue as a wider problem of an evangelical military culture that sees spreading Christianity as part of its mission.

A May article in Harper’s by Jeff Sharlet illustrated a military engaged in an internal battle over religious practice. Then came news about former Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s Scripture-themed briefings to President Bush that paired war scenes with Bible verses. (In an e-mail published on Politico, Rumsfeld aide Keith Urbahn denied that the former Defense secretary had created or even seen many of the briefings.) Later in May, Al-Jazeera broadcast clips filmed in 2008 showing stacks of Bibles translated into Pashto and Dari at the U.S. air base in Bagram and featuring the chief of U.S. military chaplains in Afghanistan, Lt. Col. Gary Hensley, telling soldiers to “hunt people for Jesus.”

In the aftermath of that report, the Pentagon responded that it had confiscated and destroyed the Bibles and said there was no effort to convert Afghans. But while the military dismissed the Bagram Bibles as an isolated incident, a civil-rights watchdog group, Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), says this is not the case. According to the group's president, Mikey Weinstein, a cadre of 40 U.S. chaplains took part in a 2003 project to distribute 2.4 million Arabic-language Bibles in Iraq. This would be a serious violation of U.S. military Central Command's General Order Number One forbidding active-duty troops from trying to convert people to any religion. A Defense Department spokeswoman, in an e-mail to NEWSWEEK, denies any knowledge of this project.

The Bible initiative was handled by former Army chaplain Jim Ammerman, the 83-year-old founder of the Chaplaincy of Full Gospel Churches (CFGC), an organization in charge of endorsing 270 chaplains and chaplain candidates for the armed services. Ammerman worked with an evangelical group based in Arkansas, the International Missions Network Center, to distribute the Bibles through the efforts of his 40 active-duty chaplains in Iraq. A 2003 newsletter for the group said of the effort, "The goal is to establish a wedge for the kingdom of God in the Middle East, directly affecting the Islamic world."

J. E. Wadkins, vice president of student life at Ecclesia College who oversees the International Missions Network Center, says they have worked with Ammerman for 20 years and reached out to him as part of their "Bibles for the Nations" mission. He estimates that in the end, between 100,000 and 500,000 Arabic Bibles were distributed in under one year, beginning not long after Saddam Hussein's ouster. "It was a really early effort there," says Wadkins, "when things first opened up."

The effort is an example of what critics call a growing culture of militarized Christianity in the armed forces. It is influenced in part by changes in outlook among the various branches' 2,900 chaplains, who are sworn to serve all soldiers, regardless of religion, with a respectful, religiously pluralistic approach. However, with an estimated two thirds of all current chaplains affiliated with evangelical and Pentecostal denominations, which often prioritize conversion and evangelizing, and a marked decline in chaplains from Catholic and mainstream Protestant churches, this ideal is suffering. Historian Anne C. Loveland attributes the shift to the Vietnam War, when many liberal churches opposed to the war supplied fewer chaplains, creating a vacuum filled by conservative churches. This imbalance was exacerbated by regulation revisions in the 1980s that helped create hundreds of new "endorsing agencies" that brought a flood of evangelical chaplains into the military and by the simple fact that evangelical and Pentecostal churches are the fastest-growing in the U.S.

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Labels: Bible, CFGC, chaplains, Christian, Kathryn Joyce, Muslims, US Army

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Friday, April 10, 2009

Christians' Views on the Return of Christ

April 9, 2009

For many Christians, Easter is the most important religious holiday of the year — a time to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and look forward to the Second Coming. According to a 2006 survey by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, fully 79% of Christians in the U.S. say they believe that Christ will return to Earth someday. There is less agreement among Christians, however, over the timing and circumstances of his return.

Please click on "external source" to access the chart which displays the findings of this survey.

Labels: Christian, Jesus, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, resurrection

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Sunday, April 05, 2009

Smorgasbord religion on the grow throughout United States

Smorgasbord religion on the grow throughout United States E-mail
By Daniel Burke, Religion News Service
Published: April 03, 2009

WASHINGTON (RNS)—Friday afternoons find Ann Holmes Redding at the Al-Islam Center in Seattle, reciting Muslim prayers. Come Sunday, she heads about two miles south to kneel in the pews of St. Clement’s of Rome Episcopal Church.

“My experience and my call is to continue to follow Jesus,” said Redding, an Episcopal priest for the past 25 years, “even as I practice Islam.”

Redding insists she is both Christian and Muslim, fully following both faiths.

And for that, Redding expects to be defrocked by the Episcopal Church, which has warned the 57-year-old to renounce Islam or leave the priesthood.

Some Episcopalians are urging the church to take a similar stand against Kevin Thew Forrester, who was elected bishop of the sparsely populated Diocese of Northern Michigan in February. The only candidate on the ballot, Thew Forrester, 51, has practiced Zen meditation for a decade and received lay ordination from a Buddhist community.

Conservatives are outraged at the election of this “openly Buddhist bishop,” as they call him, charging him with syncretism—blending two faiths and dishonoring both.

The bishop-elect and the Lake Superior Zendo that ordained him say the angst is misplaced. The ordination simply honors his commitment to Zen meditation, they say. He took no Buddhist vows and professed no beliefs that contradict Christianity.

While people like Redding, who claim membership in two religions, are quite rare, scholars say the number of Americans who borrow bits from various traditions is multiplying.

Current sociological surveys, with their one-size-fits-all categories, don’t tell us exactly how many Americans hybridize their spiritual lives.

Sociologist Barry Kosmin, co-author of the recent, massive American Religious Identification Survey, said “the tendency of academics and everyone else is to try to disabuse them of this syncretism.”

For sure, “syncretism” is a dirty word to many Western monotheists; in Asia, “multiple religious belonging,” as scholars call it, is common.

Kendall Harmon, an Episcopal theologian from South Carolina, argues that Thew Forrester is a greater threat to his church than the openly gay bishop whose 2003 election has led four dioceses to secede.

The store, in this metaphor, is that big ice-cream parlor in the sky.

Fewer than three in 10 Americans claim their religion is “the one, true faith leading to eternal life,” according to data from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, and 44 percent say they’ve switched religious affiliations since childhood.

At the same time, traditional religious boundaries are falling and interfaith marriages are rising, meaning Americans increasingly are likely to attend a grandmother’s church funeral and a cousin’s bar mitzvah.

It’s little surprise then, that people who pledge allegiance to two traditions are proliferating.

John Berthrong, a Boston University scholar whose book, The Divine Deli, explores multiple religious belonging, said: “While churches are still having formal discussions about religious pluralism, the laity has bolted down the street to a Buddhist temple where they’re learning meditation.”

Sometimes those temples house Catholic nuns like Sister Rose Mary Dougherty, who leads a multifaith group of Zen students in Silver Spring, Md.

A nun for 50 years, Dougherty also is a sensei in the White Plum Lineage of Zen Buddhism, meaning she is entrusted to teach meditation to others.

Like many Christians who practice Zen, she uses its meditation techniques to clear the mind and focus on the present moment, but she doesn’t consider herself a Buddhist.

Labels: Buddhism, Christian, Daniel Burke, Episcopalians, Islam, religion, syncretism

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Friday, January 23, 2009

John Piper: Economic Downturn Not Necessarily Bad for Souls

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Thursday, December 25, 2008

Survey says most Americans believe in multiple paths to salvation

By Bob Allen
Thursday, 18 December 2008

WASHINGTON (ABP) -- A majority of American Christians believe that at least some non-Christian faiths can lead to eternal life, says a new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Even among evangelicals, a branch of Protestant Christianity identified with the idea that an individual must be "born again" into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ in order to be saved, nearly as many Christians said many religions can lead to eternal life (47 percent) as those who believe theirs is the one true faith (49 percent).

The survey, released Dec. 18, followed up an earlier poll that found that seven Americans in 10 believe many religions can lead to salvation while less than one quarter say their faith is the only one that is true. Critics of that study questioned those findings, suggesting that for many Christians, "other religion" might have meant a different Christian denomination instead of a non-Christian faith.

The new study asks those who say many religions can lead to eternal life questions about specific faiths. Sixty-nine percent said Judaism can lead to eternal life, compared to 52 percent for Islam, 53 percent for Hinduism, 42 percent for atheists and 56 percent for people with no religious faith.

While white evangelicals are more exclusive in their beliefs about salvation than the general public, nearly two-thirds said it is possible for a Jewish person to go to heaven (64 percent) and a third said the same about Muslims (35 percent) and Hindus (33 percent). One in four evangelicals said atheists could attain eternal life (26 percent) and a third (35 percent) said it is possible for people with no religious faith.

Catholics (84 percent) and white mainline Protestants (82 percent) are most likely to say that many religions can lead to salvation. White evangelicals and black Protestants, meanwhile, have grown more strict on the question. Last year 37 percent of white evangelicals said theirs is the only true faith. This year that percentage rose 12 points to 49 percent.

Evangelicals who attend church at least once a week are twice as likely as those who attend less frequently to say their faith is the only path to heaven -- 60 percent to 30 percent.

About one third of Americans say one's beliefs determine who achieves eternal life, while an equal number say it depends on one's actions. A tenth of the population say it is a combination of belief and action. The rest say something else determines salvation, they don't believe in eternal life or they don't know.

The survey is based on results of telephone interviews of 2,905 adults conducted in July and August. The margin of error is plus or minus 2 percen

Labels: Bob Allen, Christian, faith, heaven, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, religion, salvation

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Thursday, December 18, 2008

Majority think heaven is open to other faiths

By Cathy Lynn Grossman • USA TODAY • December 18, 2008

Most American religious believers, including most Christians, say eternal life is not exclusively for those who accept Christ as their savior, a new survey has found.

And 80 percent of people with this open view of heaven's gates listed at least one non-Christian group — Jews, Muslims, Hindus, atheists — who may also be saved, according to the survey, released today by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

These views conflict with doctrines of many religions, particularly conservative denominations that view themselves as the "one, true faith."

Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., called the findings "a theological crisis for American evangelicals. They represent at best a misunderstanding of the Gospel and at worst a repudiation of the Gospel."

This survey is a follow-up to a controversial finding in Pew's religion survey of 35,000 U.S. adults earlier this year; critics argued that a question on access to eternal life, which 70 percent said was open to many faiths, was too vague. So Pew did a new, more specific survey.

Results reinforce the original finding that "Americans really are thinking quite broadly," Pew research fellow Greg Smith said.

Christians who listed at least one non-Christian faith that could lead to salvation included 34 percent of white evangelicals, even though evangelical doctrine stresses that salvation is possible only through Jesus.

Fifty-four percent of people who identified with a religion and who said they attend services weekly said many religions can lead to eternal life. This included 37 percent of white evangelicals, 75 percent of mainline Protestants and 85 percent of non-Hispanic white Catholics.

The number saying theirs is the only faith that can lead to eternal life increased from 24 percent to 29 percent between 2007 and 2008. The biggest increase was among white evangelicals — up from 37 percent to 49 percent.

Labels: Cathy Lynn Grossman, Christian, eternal life, heaven, non-Christian, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life

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Friday, May 16, 2008

Christians in Politics: Too Much or Too Little?

By Richard Land
Christian Post Guest Columnist

Over the past few weeks, a national polling firm for LifeWay Research and the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission conducted a survey asking Americans to respond to this statement: “I am concerned that at times Christians are too involved in politics.”

The results were quite informative. The majority of Americans (52%) either “strongly disagree” (32%) or “somewhat disagree” (20%) with the statement. Even larger majorities of faith-affiliated Americans disagreed with the statement. When researchers asked Americans who attended religious services of any faith at least once a week, disagreement with the statement was even higher, with 65% indicating they were comfortable with Christians being involved in politics, and only 21% expressing varying discomfort with Christians’ political activity.

Those who self-identify themselves as “born-again,” “evangelical,” or “fundamentalist” expressed the highest level of disagreement (72%) with the assertion that “at times Christians are too involved in politics” with only 27% telling pollsters they agreed (“strongly” or “somewhat”) with the statement.

These results do not surprise me at all. They underscore and reinforce the feedback I receive on a consistent basis from grassroots Christians of all perspectives, particularly conservative Christians – Catholic and Protestant.

These polling results suggest that those pundits, analysts, and religious leaders that tell us that people of faith are disillusioned with politics and public policy need to get out more and talk with the people who actually go to churches, mosques, synagogues, and temples. If they did, they would find that the people who most often attended religious services disagree with their assessment by an almost two to one margin, 65 percent to 31 percent. On a more personal note, among Southern Baptist pastors who were asked the question of whether “at times, Christians are too involved in politics”, two thirds of them either “strongly disagreed” (41%) or “somewhat disagreed” (26%).

When people of faith enter the political process they should always understand that their ultimate allegiance is to the Almighty, not any ideology or party. People of faith have an obligation to be involved as “salt” and “light” in the world, and that includes “politics.” They should be voting their values, beliefs, and convictions, based on their understanding of the imperatives of their faith.

This column originally published at Casting Stones, a blog hosted by Beliefnet.com.

Labels: Americans, Christian, LifeWay Research, politics

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Tuesday, March 11, 2008

American faith: A work in progress

American faith: A work in progress
Politics and a new view of morality have radically altered the religious landscape.

By Stephen Prothero

Numbers lie, but they also tell tales, untrustworthy and otherwise. So the key question stirring around the much discussed U.S. Religious Landscape Survey released in late February by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life is what tale does it tell about the religious state of the union.

For some, the story of this survey, based on interviews in multiple languages with more than 35,000 U.S. adults, is the strength of American religion.

Not too long ago, I wrote that American atheism was going the way of the freak show. As books by Christopher Hitchens and other "new atheists" climbed the best-seller lists, I caught a lot of flak for that prophecy. But atheists make up only 1.6% of respondents to this survey. And 82% of respondents report that religion is either somewhat or very important in their lives.

Others find in this new data a nation of religious shoppers: 44% of the Americans surveyed have traded in their original religious home for another. Apparently, the grass is also greener at the church, synagogue or mosque next door.

Still others, noting that only 51% of Americans describe themselves as Protestants, see Protestantism teetering on the verge of becoming a minority.

Catholicism is at least by some readers of the tea leaves in trouble, too, now that ex-Catholics constitute 10% of the population.

Diminished safeguards

The tale I take away from this study is that shifts in the political and moral winds are transforming American religion. Many believe that the Founders separated church and state in order to save the federal government from the interference of overzealous ministers. Not so. The purpose of the First Amendment's establishment clause — which prohibits the federal government from passing laws that favor any one religion (atheism included) — was to safeguard religion against the encroachment of politics. And this new survey suggests that those safeguards are, well, going the way of the freak show.

The key subplot here is the rise of "nones," a category growing faster than any other religious group. Of all adults in the USA, 16% say they are religiously unaffiliated, while 7% were raised that way. Moreover, 25% of younger Americans (ages 18-29) report no religious affiliation at all.

It is important to emphasize that this march of the "nones" is by no means beating the drums for the old secularization thesis, which posited that as societies embraced modernization they would shun God. This is because many "nones" are quite religious. In fact, many Americans refuse to affiliate with any religious organization not because they do not believe in God but because they believe in God so fervently that they cannot imagine any human institution capturing the mysteries of the divine. In this study, only about a quarter of all "nones" call themselves atheists or agnostics. In other surveys, about half the unaffiliated typically affirm the Christian God.

Two related factors seem to be at play in the rise of the "nones": a decline in the stigma of being a religious free agent, and an increase in the stigma of being a church member. According to Darren Sherkat, a professor of sociology at Southern Illinois University who has written widely on religious demographics, Americans have long "overconsumed religion because of social constraints." It used to be that you were considered a bad citizen, a bad marriage prospect and a bad employee if you didn't show a little faith in faith. And plainly it is still imperative for presidential candidates to pledge their allegiance to God as well as flag. But in recent years, the moral failings of Ted Haggard, John Geoghan and other men of the cloth have been broadcast from National Public Radio to YouTube. As the almighty have fallen, atheists have felt empowered to stand up and ask whether religion really is any sort of guarantor of moral behavior. What is so moral about affiliating with gay-bashing gay evangelists or pedophilic priests?

Plainly, the Republican Party gained ground over the past quarter-century by attaching itself to family, morality and God, even as the Democratic Party lost ground by focusing on such matters as rights and reason. In the process, the Republicans became the party of God and the Democrats the party of secularism — not a good strategy for the Democratic Party in a country where 96% of voters believe in God. So Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are both taking pains to pitch their party as a party of prayer and piety.

Even so, for much of the past generation, "Christian" and "conservative" have seemed to be interchangeable terms. It should not be surprising if at least some on the left who once upon a time might have described themselves as "Christians" have decided to jettison that affiliation for political reasons. Such reasons, it should be emphasized, are basically the same ones why so many Europeans have divorced themselves from their country's established churches: because the marriage of a given church with a particular political regime is never eternal, and when it ends it leaves a lot of angry children in its wake.

Customized religion

Another story buried in the data of this new survey is the power of evangelical Protestantism, and particularly non-denominational churches. Of those surveyed, 44% called themselves "born again" or "evangelical" Christians, and among religious options non-denominational Protestantism is one of the fastest growing.

The story behind the numbers of this latest survey is not that religion is in trouble. It is that religion is morphing into something new. Faith is becoming more political. But it is becoming more personal at the same time.

Stephen Prothero is the Chair of the Department of Religion at Boston University. He's also the author of Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know — And Doesn't.

Labels: Americans, Christian, evangelicals, faith, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Stephen Prothero, U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, unaffilIiated

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Monday, March 10, 2008

Expanding, not dumping, our definition of God

Mark Morford
March 5, 2008

...God is mutating, becoming slightly less appealing as a dogmatic force of sit-down-and-shut-up paternal scowling and becoming perhaps more dynamic, unspecified, something you actually want to take into your heart and into your mouth and lick until you find the rich, creamy center and then define that taste for yourself, blissfully independent of what your parents or priest or president tells you, until you reach that point of deeper knowing where you can't help but go aha.

It's all part of that big study from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, released recently and ready to be spun a thousand different ways, the one that contains the whopper of a statistic that says 28 percent of Americans have abandoned the religion they grew up with and have taken up another one, or none at all, or maybe more than one because polytheism certainly sounds tasty and, you know, what the hell, right?

But it's always good to be reminded that 1) try as they might, no one system can ever have a lock on the divine experience, 2) more people are at play in the Wal-Mart of the lord than our leaders, preachers and godmongers might imagine, and 3) despite the disturbing number of evangelicals in America (26 percent), there might yet be hope for the nation to evolve and grow and bust out of the archaic straightjacket of religious authority once and for all.

Or maybe not.

Given the high rate of turnover, it's easy to see religious choice in America as essentially a dour marketplace, a consumer good, each system vying for your attention and your devotion and very much your dollar because, if you think it's all about deep personal enlightenment, I've got this noxious library of "Left Behind" books on tape to sell you, cheap. The pothole on the road of religiosity is obvious, and enormous. As the saying goes, most people use religion the way a drunkard uses a lamppost: as convenient support, not illumination.

Still Christian

Ah, but what of the big stunner of a number, the one that says 78 percent of Americans still identify as Christian, no matter if they actually pray or attend church or run for Congress or secretly snort meth and visit gay hookers as they run an evangelical megachurch in Colorado? It certainly seems like an impressive number - no matter how many new beliefs spring up, we are overwhelmingly, devoutly Jesus-happy.

I'm not buying it.

I suspect a huge chunk of respondents merely check the "Christian" box for lack of something else, because they felt they needed to choose something, even though they don't actually follow Scripture in the slightest, but since they're not technically atheists and they've never really ventured out on a unique spiritual quest of their own, they merely choose "Christian" as the default American position, the fallback, the safe bet, sort of like checking "average" on a customer satisfaction survey or saying "fine" when your barista asks you how you're doing today. Thoughtless, automatic, convenient.

Which brings us to perhaps the most interesting stat of all, wherein 16 percent of Americans (and 21 percent of godless, sinful, heathenistic Californians, both much larger percentages than perhaps anyone expected) don't hook into any religious affiliation whatsoever, thus making them/us the fourth largest "religious" group in America - and growing fast.

They are the unaffiliated, the wayward ones, not just agnostics and atheists but also the poets and the grazers and spiritualists, the mystics and the explorers and the cosmically, intellectually, divinely self-determined. (Or maybe they're all just actors and bass players and trust-funded art students. But let's try to be optimistic.)

A new secular age?

It's a heartening number, and it brings up a delicious question, pondered for ages and yet seemingly more pertinent than ever: Are we headed for a more secular age? Is dour organized religion finally losing its grip? Does it all point to something grander, perhaps more luminous for us as a society, as more people abandon religion's authoritarian hammers for spirituality's exquisite seeds?

And what of the other big question, the one no one really talks much about and certainly no one really teaches you? How does one actually abandon a religion? How do you dump your God and choose another, or none or the one deep inside yourself?

Tentative answer: Maybe you don't. Maybe it's not about abandoning God, and instead merely broadening your definition of the divine so as to encapsulate and swallow it all, every God, every dogma, every attempt to corner the market on belief and put it into cute little boxes and break us all up into angry tribes who stomp our feet and wave our little gilded books and launch wars over promised lands and chosen peoples and crucifixes and crusades and witches and pagans and gays.

In other words, maybe you abandon God by realizing it's all God, it's all divine, all hot, thrumming, vibrating connection in all places in all things at all times, and hence to try and parse it and restrict it and beat it into submission and claim it for one people, one history, one country or church or authoritarian body, is actually the highest form of divine insult.

Or, you know, grand cosmic joke.

Same thing, really.

Labels: Christian, God, Jesus, Mark Morford, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, religion, secular, unaffilIiated

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Friday, February 08, 2008

Bishops Tell Christians to Give Up Some Carbon for Lent

By Alexis Madrigal February 07, 2008

Two Church of England Bishops want their followers to join them in a "Carbon Fast" for Lent, the 40 day period in which many Christians abstain from eating or imbibing some favored item.

But really the plan is closer to a carbon diet than a fast. According to the UK's Independent, those joining the fast will, among other carbon-cutting tips, "be asked to remove one lightbulb from a prominent place in the home and live without it for 40 days."

The bishops green stance is not about protecting the environment, per se, but rather a call to lessen global warming's impact on the residents of third-world nations.

"It is the poor who are already suffering the effects of climate change. To carry on regardless of their plight is to fly in the face of Christian teaching," James Jones and Dr. Richard Chartres, bishops of Liverpool and London, respectively, said in a statement. "There’s a moral imperative on those of us who emit more than our fair share of carbon to rein in our consumption."

Those words would be music to the ears of environmental folks here in the States who have long held skeptical hopes that Christians, particularly evangelicals led by Richard Cizik, would become a potent new constituency in an emerging climate change political coalition.

But pro-environmental evangelical “calls to action” in February 2006 and January 2007 haven't seemed to make much of an impact on the mass of US evangelicals, at least according to a 2007 survey released by the Christian consulting firm, The Barna Group.

One thousand random US adults were asked the question, “Think about how you would like the United States to change within the next 10 years…” and given a wide variety of areas of concern they’d like to improve including the reliability of news coverage, national security in the US, and the health of Christian churches. Among the total survey group, 60% of people felt that “investment in environmental protection” should be a top priority. But those meeting “born-again criteria” felt differently:

Evangelicals stood out regarding their views on the environment. Only 35% said that protecting the environment should be a top priority - the lowest score recorded among any of the 80 subgroups studied.

Even though the Barna survey's phrasing seems destined to draw negative reactions with the inclusion of the they’ll-raise-your-taxes codephrase “investment,” it still doesn't begin to explain evangelical distaste for environmental issues evidenced in the results.

It's clear that here in the States, we have a long way to go before mainstream Evangelicals are willing to do anything green, even if some other polls show less disheartening results (pdf).

Labels: Americans, Barna Group, carbon fast, Christian, evangelicals, global warming, Lent

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Monday, January 28, 2008

Chinese government rethinks religion

Jan. 25, 2008, 5:56PM

Communist party now believes faith can restore social harmony

By Edward Cody
Washington Post

BEIJING — There was Hu Jintao, head of the Chinese Communist Party, warmly shaking hands at a party-sponsored New Year's tea party with one of the country's main Christian leaders. To make sure the message got through to China's 68 million party faithful, a large photograph of the moment was splashed across the front page of the official party newspaper, People's Daily.

Hu's display of holiday courtesy to Liu Bainian, general secretary of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, was one in a series of recent signals that China's rulers, despite the party's official atheism, are seeking to get along better with the increasing numbers of Chinese who find solace and inspiration in religion. The shift in tactics does not mean the Politburo has embraced religion, specialists cautioned, but it indicates a desire to incorporate believers into the party's quest for continued economic progress and more social harmony.

The move away from traditional Marxist attitudes evolved from Hu's campaign for what he calls "a harmonious socialist society." The concept, in effect an appeal for good behavior, was designed to replace the moral void left when the party long ago jettisoned historical Chinese values and, more recently, loosened the zipped-tight social strictures of communism under Mao Zedong. Religion, the party has decided, can also be useful in encouraging social harmony because it urges its followers to hew to a moral code.

Hu presided over a special Politburo study session last month on the expanding role of religion in China. Two of the party's religion specialists were called in to explain the phenomenon to China's 25 most powerful men, most of whom grew up with the Marxist idea that religion is a hostile force and, in China, foreign infiltration with ties to the colonial past.

In a speech to the group, Hu seemed to break with that tradition, suggesting the moral force of religion can be harnessed for the good of the party. "We must strive to closely unite religious figures and believers among the masses around the party and government," he said, according to the official account, "and struggle together with them to build an all-around moderately prosperous society while quickening the pace toward the modernization of socialism."

Liu, the Christian leader shown in the photo with Hu, noted that the president also for the first time included discussion of religion in the party's 17th National Congress in October. Religion should no longer be considered sabotage of the party's economic and social plans, Hu told fellow party members, but rather a positive force that can be enlisted to help put the plans into effect.

The number of religious believers in China has long been difficult to determine. Faced with the party's traditional hostility, many believers have kept their faith hidden. But a government-sponsored survey last year found the number may reach 300 million, nearly a quarter of the population.

Most of those professing belief said they identified with China's traditional religions, such as Buddhism, Taoism and Islam. But those identifying themselves as Christians accounted for as many as 40 million, the survey found, most of them Protestants. Specialists have estimated the number of Catholics at 12 million, divided between those in Liu's government-sponsored Patriotic Catholic Association and those in informal churches who look on the pope as their leader.

Anthony Lam of the Holy Spirit Study Center in Hong Kong, who has studied the church in China for two decades, warned that the current warming is a tactic that could easily be reversed. "For me, it's a good thing, but it doesn't mean very much," he said.

Over the years, he added, the party's treatment of believers has varied, but its overall attitude is that religion, particularly Christianity and Islam, is a portal through which foreign ideas and loyalties can make their way into Chinese society.

In the same vein, Ren Yanli, a religion specialist at the government-sponsored Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, noted that the party's recent overtures were aimed at enlisting religious beliefs as a force for economic and social progress. Nowhere did the party acknowledge faith and religion as ideals to be pursued in their own right, he said.

Nonetheless, government controls over religious activity have loosened markedly in recent years. Political connotations, such as those attached to Buddhism in Tibet or Islam in the autonomous Xinjiang region of northwestern China, have become the major targets of police surveillance in most areas.

Despite the trend, China and the Vatican have been unable to renew diplomatic relations, with China holding firm to the power to name bishops. Hu himself led a special committee in 2005 to end the hostility; at that time, progress was so rapid that a bargain seemed within reach. Those hopes fell through, however, with the appointment of several bishops who did not have Vatican approval.

In recent months, the momentum toward friendly Vatican ties seems to have revived. Two bishops were ordained with papal approval last month, following the appointment of a Vatican-approved bishop for Beijing in September. Regular quiet contacts have been made between Vatican and Chinese diplomats.

But behind the scenes, Patriotic Catholic Association churches and local religious affairs bureaus have proved to be formidable obstacles, according to a knowledgeable religious source. Their positions — often including state salaries, apartments and prestige — would be endangered if the church fell under Rome's authority. Moreover, the source added, some local jurisdictions have been involved in land deals with compliant bishops in arrangements that might be disturbed by Rome.

Pope Benedict XVI displayed eagerness to mend the split soon after taking over the Vatican. But his zeal seems to have waned, Lam observed. Meanwhile, conservatives in the Chinese party leadership, backed by local bureaus, have prevented a final deal because they are hesitant to abandon the doctrine that the Vatican is a foreign power that should have no authority in China.

Only a strong Chinese leader willing to take a bold initiative could shake the situation loose, Lam predicted, and Hu has never been noted for that kind of leadership.

The handshake in the tea-party photo, he noted, was with a leader of the government-run patriotic church, not a Vatican-approved bishop.

Labels: Catholic, China, Christian, Edward Cody, Patriotic Catholic Association, religion, Vatican

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Saturday, January 12, 2008

Survey: 'Unchurched' Americans say church is 'full of hypocrites'

Compiled by Tribune wire services
Article Last Updated: 01/11/2008

Almost three-quarters of Americans who haven't darkened the door of a church in the past six months think it is ''full of hypocrites,'' and even more of them consider Christianity to be more about organized religion than about loving God and people, according to a new survey.

Almost half those surveyed - 44 percent - agreed that ''Christians get on my nerves.''

But the survey of ''unchurched'' Americans by LifeWay Research also found that some 78 percent said they would be willing to listen to someone who wanted to tell them about his or her Christian beliefs. Researchers, affiliated with the Southern Baptists' LifeWay Christian Resources, defined ''unchurched'' as Christians who haven't attended church in six months as well as non-Christians such as Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists.

The findings echoed a previous study by The Barna Group that found the vast majority of young non-Christians view Christianity as anti-gay, judgmental and hypocritical.

The study was based on an overall sample of 1,402 adults who were interviewed by phone in 2007, including 900 ages 18-29 and 502 age 30 and older. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

- Religion News Service

Labels: Buddhists, Christian, Hindus, hypocracy, Jews, LifeWay Research, Muslims, unchurched

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Sunday, December 30, 2007

`Gospel of wealth' facing scrutiny

By ERIC GORSKI

The message flickered into Cindy Fleenor's living room each night: Be faithful in how you live and how you give, the television preachers said, and God will shower you with material riches.

And so the 53-year-old accountant from the Tampa, Fla., area pledged $500 a year to Joyce Meyer, the evangelist whose frank talk about recovering from childhood sexual abuse was so inspirational. She wrote checks to flamboyant faith healer Benny Hinn and a local preacher-made-good, Paula White.

Only the blessings didn't come. Fleenor ended up borrowing money from friends and payday loan companies just to buy groceries. At first she believed the explanation given on television: Her faith wasn't strong enough.

All three of the groups Fleenor supported are among six major Christian television ministries under scrutiny by a senator who is asking questions about the evangelists' lavish spending and possible abuses of their tax-exempt status.

The probe by Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, has brought new scrutiny to the underlying belief that brings in millions of dollars and fills churches from Atlanta to Los Angeles — the "Gospel of Prosperity," or the notion that God wants to bless the faithful with earthly riches.

The modern-day prosperity movement can largely be traced back to evangelist Oral Roberts' teachings. Roberts' disciples have spread his theology and vocabulary (Roberts and other evangelists, such as Meyer, call their donors "partners.") And several popular prosperity preachers, including some now under investigation, have served on the Oral Roberts University board.

Most scholars trace the origins of prosperity theology to E.W. Kenyon, an evangelical pastor from the first half of the 20th century.

But it wasn't until the postwar era — and a pair of evangelists from Tulsa, Okla. — that "health and wealth" theology became a fixture in Pentecostal and charismatic churches.

Oral Roberts and Kenneth Hagin — and later, Kenneth Copeland — trained tens of thousands of evangelists with a message that resonated with an emerging middle class, said David Edwin Harrell Jr., a Roberts biographer. Copeland is among those now being investigated.

The teachings took on various names — "Name It and Claim It," "Word of Faith," the prosperity gospel.

Prosperity preachers say that it isn't all about money — that God's blessings extend to health, relationships and being well-off enough to help others.

They have Bible verses at the ready to make their case. One oft-cited verse, in Paul's Second Epistle to the Corinthians, reads: "Yet for your sakes he became poor, that you by his poverty might become rich."

One of the teaching's attractions is that it doesn't dwell on traditional Christian themes of heaven and hell but on answering pressing concerns of the here and now, said Brian McLaren, a liberal evangelical author and pastor.

The checks and balances central to Christian denominations are largely lacking in prosperity churches. One of the pastors in the Grassley probe, Bishop Eddie Long of suburban Atlanta, has written that God told him to get rid of the "ungodly governmental structure" of a deacon board.

Some ministers hold up their own wealth as evidence that the teaching works. Atlanta-area pastor Creflo Dollar, who is fighting Grassley's inquiry, owns a Rolls Royce and multimillion-dollar homes and travels in a church-owned Learjet.

In a letter to Grassley, Dollar's attorney calls the prosperity gospel a "deeply held religious belief" grounded in Scripture and therefore a protected religious freedom. Grassley has said his probe is not about theology.

But even some prosperity gospel critics — like the Rev. Adam Hamilton of 15,000-member United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in suburban Kansas City, Mo. — say that the investigation is entering a minefield.

"How do you determine how much money a minister like this is able to make when the basic theology is that wealth is OK?" said Hamilton, an Oral Roberts graduate who later left the charismatic movement. "That gets into theological questions."

There is evidence of change. Joyce Meyer Ministries, for one, enacted financial reforms in recent years, including making audited financial statements public.

Meyer, who has promised to cooperate fully with Grassley, issued a statement emphasizing that a prosperity gospel "that solely equates blessing with financial gain is out of balance and could damage a person's walk with God."

Labels: blessings, Christian, church, Eric Gorski, Gospel, money, prosperity

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Saturday, December 08, 2007

Britons who don't know where Jesus was born

By Jonathan Petre
08/12/2007

The extent of Britons' ignorance about the Christmas story is illustrated today in a new report which shows more than a quarter of adults do not know where Jesus was born.

A survey found 27 per cent of Britons aged 18 and over were unable to identify Bethlehem as Jesus's birth place, while the figure rose to 36 per cent of people aged between 18 and 24.

The poll also found that more than one in four people - 27 per cent - were unaware that an angel told Mary that she would give birth to a son, with some saying she was informed by the shepherds.

Most people surveyed believed that Joseph, Mary and Jesus fled to Nazareth rather than Egypt when they escaped from King Herod, and a few even said the holy family's destination was Rome.

Only 12 per cent of adults could answer all four questions about the Christmas story correctly.

The results of the survey, conducted among 1,015 adults last month, are likely to refuel the debate about the secularisation of Christmas.

The poll found that people's knowledge dips significantly with age, with only seven per cent of 18 to 24-year-olds able to answer all four questions correctly. Middle aged people, aged 55 to 64, knew the most, with 18 per cent getting all the questions right.

The findings followed research by the Sunday Telegraph last weekend showing that only one school in every five was planning to stage a traditional Nativity play this year.

Paul Woolley, the director of Theos, the theological think-tank which commissioned the survey, insisted the survey showed the Christmas story, in its classic formulation, was still "very much" in the "cultural bloodstream" of the nation.

"The fact that younger people are the least knowledgeable about the Christmas story may reflect a decline in the telling of Bible stories in schools and the popularity of Nativity plays," he said.

"No one seriously thinks that being a Christian or a member of the established Church is the same thing as being British today.

"But, at the same time, if we are serious about social cohesion we can't afford to ignore the stories that have bound us together as a culture for a thousand years.

"Any attempts to down-play the Christmas story in order to help social cohesion are likely to be counterproductive."

Unsurprisingly, Christian churchgoers knew the story best, with 36 per cent answering all questions correctly, compared with only five per cent of those describing themselves as atheists.

The questions

1. According to the story in the Christian Bible, where was Jesus born?

73 per cent correctly said Bethlehem. Of the 27 per cent who were wrong, 10 per cent said Nazareth and 9 per cent said Jerusalem.

2. Who told Mary that she would give birth to a son?

73 per cent correctly said an angel. Of the 27 per cent who were wrong, six per cent said the wise men, five per cent said the shepherds and four per cent said Joseph.

3. Who was Jesus' cousin?

48 per cent correctly said John the Baptist. Of the 52 per cent who were wrong, 12 per cent said Peter, six per cent said Luke and six per cent said James. 26 per cent said they did not know.

4. Where did Joseph, Mary and Jesus go to escape from King Herod when Jesus was a young child?

22 per cent correctly said Egypt. Of the 78 per cent who were wrong, 52 per cent said Nazareth, five per cent said Babylon and one per cent said Rome.

Labels: Britain, Christian, Christmas, Jesus, Jonathan Petre

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Thursday, December 06, 2007

'Compass' author's atheism stirs debate on film's message

by Duane Dudek
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
6 December 2007

Nina Hemmer is a reader. The 11-year-old Shorewood, Wis., girl is plowing through the Bible and hopes “to get to the part about Jesus’ birth by Christmas,” said her mother, Cathy Pinter.

But Nina has also read and is a fan of a series of books that some say challenges or at least questions scriptural dogma and even the very notion of God—a series of fantasy novels for young people under the umbrella title of “His Dark Materials.”

Philip Pullman, the author of the award-winning, critically acclaimed and commercially successful series, is an atheist who has said that the books—“The Golden Compass,” “The Subtle Knife” and “The Amber Spyglass”—are about “killing God,” and that he is trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief.

And some Christian groups are urging a boycott of the film “The Golden Compass,” starring Nicole Kidman, which will be released Friday.

Despite all this, Nina has escaped Pullman’s clutches unscathed and with her faith intact, said her mother, who was unaware of any controversy.

She is not alone in her enjoyment of the books, whose millions of readers include adults such as James B. South, chairman of the philosophy department at Marquette University.

South discovered that Pullman’s books bore a “striking similarity” to J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings,” in that they offered “a fully created world, a well-thought-out moral system, clearly delineated bad guys and an incredibly entertaining story.”

It could be argued that the Roman Catholic Tolkien, the Protestant C.S. Lewis, writer of “The Chronicles of Narnia” series, and Pullman—who all attended Oxford University—are using the fantasy genre to engage in a literary debate on faith and Christianity, with Pullman as the skeptic.

“The Golden Compass” is set in a world similar to ours but where people have animal alter egos, called daemons.

It is governed by a church-like body called the Magisterium, which has dismissed a metaphysical substance called Dust as the equivalent of original sin, but that others believe to be of divine origin and purpose. The Magisterium has also declared a belief in the existence of parallel worlds to be heresy.

Lyra has a compass called the alethiometer that only she can manipulate and that is perhaps powered by Dust. With the help of a polar bear, witches, angels, a nomadic race called Gyptians and a cowboy with a hot-air balloon, she uses it to save children from Magisterium experiments to sever their daemons. She follows the explorer Lord Asriel from the ends of her world into others, where his armies are gathering to battle a God-like figure called the Authority.

On the one hand, it is the stuff of fantasy and adventure with a loyal and brave central character, common to children’s literature.

But at a deeper level—with its references to “Paradise Lost” and the book of Genesis, words of Greek origin and the institutional tyranny of the Magisterium—it is the sort of dense allegory that is open to interpretation. So interpretations abound.

“Christians would (call a daemon) a guardian angel. It’s the element of ... divine breath that sustains us at all times.”

He called the alethiometer “a moral compass” and an “archetypical articulation of the subconscious.”

And Isbouts, who interviewed Pullman, called Dust “the matter that creates self-awareness. He told me that it’s a metaphor for human consciousness.”

After Pullman’s father died when he was 7, Pullman, now 61, spent his formative years with his grandfather, a clergyman, and “of course God existed—one didn’t even think of questioning it,” he said in an online interview at Surefish (snipurl.com/surefish ).

Pullman said he lost his faith as a teenager when “I began to look around and see how other people thought about things.”

“The Golden Compass,” was first published in 1995 in England as “Northern Lights.” Pullman was influenced by John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” and William Blake’s illustrations.

Isbouts believes the series retells the fall of Adam and Eve as “the pivotal moment in the evolution of mankind ... where we become cognitive.”

While such interpretations are fine for adults, some worry that the books and film could have a corrosive effect on the faith of youngsters.

“We live in a culture where kids are bombarded by ideas and images, many of which are contradictory to Christianity,” said Adam Holz, associate editor of Plugged In Magazine, a Focus on the Family publication. “We want people to know seeds are planted in the minds of kids you don’t want planted there.”

Pullman, he said, “is writing with an agenda. And anytime an author has a strong agenda, it’s good to know what that agenda is,” Holz said.

Father Peter Schuessler, associate director of spiritual and human formation at the Sacred Heart School of Theology in Hales Corners, Wis., believes the church Pullman is portraying in his books “is the medieval church” of the Crusades and Inquisition. Children are no more likely to be “led to believe that God is dead” by reading them, “any more than watching `Bambi’ is going to teach them that animals speak,” said Schuessler, who read the books with his fantasy book club.

In fact, Donna Freitas, an assistant professor of religion at Boston University, encourages parents to “give your kids the books, see what they say and sit down with them if they have questions.

Similarly, Pullman’s trilogy “is one of those works of literature you can enjoy as a child ... and come back to as a college student and study for literary references, and even as an adult reading it to a child as a parent.”

Many of the criticisms directed at Pullman, she said, are just “juicy sound bites” and are “taken out of context.” She said that the “thrust of the book is very Christian and theological” and deals with God, the soul, virtue and salvation.

The godlike Authority in the books is really a false God, who, Freitas said, “tricks everyone into believing he was the creator.” The death of the Authority “opens everyone’s ability to see what I look at as the true God, which is Dust.”

Nina Hemmer came up with a similar conclusion on her own.

“When I got to the part with the angels,” she said, “I thought, `This is kind of leading up to God.’”

___

Labels: C.S. Lewis, children, Christian, Duane Dudek, His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass, Tolkien

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Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Students find it's cool to be Christian on campus

Mon Nov 26, 2007 By Andrea Hopkins

Page one of three pages. Please link to "external source" for complete article
CINCINNATI (Reuters Life!) - The students piling into a house near the University of Cincinnati are laughing, sending text messages, and lining up for plates of pizza -- then they all bow their heads in prayer.

This weekly pizza lunch at Wesley House, a ministry of the United Methodist Church, is just one of a half-dozen Christian events Nick George, 19, will attend this week with friends from the Navigators, a thriving campus evangelical group.

For while public colleges in America were once considered hostile territory for religious students, a revival among both evangelical and traditional churches on campus has made it safe -- and even cool -- to be a college Christian.

"I'm absolutely more involved (in Christianity) than before I came to college," said George, an engineering student.

Most of his friends are fellow believers who, like thousands of young Christians, have eschewed private religious colleges in favor of large secular U.S. universities in a sign of a wider shift in the United States towards acceptance of religion in all areas of life.

Eight of 10 college students attend religious services, 80 percent discuss religion or spirituality with friends and 69 percent pray, according to a 2004 University of California, Los Angeles, survey of 112,232 freshmen at 236 universities.

"The American university system is not so aggressively asking kids to question their religion as it might have been in past years, in the 60s," said Mark Regnerus, a sociology professor at the University of Texas.

Labels: Andrea Hopkins, Christian, college, religion, spirituality, youth

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Survey: 7 of 10 Americans Prefer 'Merry Christmas' Over 'Happy Holidays'

By Lawrence Jones
Christian Post Reporter
Mon, Nov. 26 2007

When Americans go Christmas shopping, many prefer to see stores use the traditional phrase “Merry Christmas” in their seasonal advertising rather than “Happy Holidays,” a new poll found.

The survey released by Rasmussen Reports after the Thanksgiving holiday showed that 67 percent of Americans favor “Merry Christmas” while only 26 percent would choose “Happy Holidays.”

The poll results were the same for men and women and presented few demographic differences.

But a comparison between responses from Republicans and Democrats, however, revealed a sharp contrast.

While 88 percent of Republicans prefer “Merry Christmas,” just 57 percent of Democrats favor the greeting.

Meanwhile, 57 percent of Americans say they will attend a Christian service on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day this year, with women more likely to attend a Christmas service than men.

Nearly 30 percent of respondents say they won’t go to a special service.

In an attempt to encourage stores to retain references to the Dec. 25 holiday, a Christian legal group has released a “Naughty or Nice” list that advises Christians where to shop for Christmas.

Businesses and retailers are placed on the “Nice” list if they recognize Christmas and on the “Naughty” list if they censor such references.

The list was released as part of Fla.-based Liberty Counsel’s fifth annual Friend or Foe Christmas Campaign, in which the legal group is pledging to be a "Friend" to those entities which do not censor Christmas and a "Foe" to those that do.

The Rasmussen survey was based on a national telephone survey of 1,000 Adults, conducted from November 18-19, 2007. The margin of sampling error for the survey is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95 percent level of confidence.

Labels: Americans, Christian, Christmas, holidays, Lawrence Jones, Rasmussen Reports, shopping

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Thursday, November 22, 2007

Survey: Many Christian Parents Choose to Satisfy Children Over God

By Nathan Black
Christian Post Reporter
Nov. 20 2007

Despite concern over the negative influence of media on young people, Christian parents are likely to spend more than $1 billion on media products this Christmas season, a new survey showed.

Seventy-eight percent of Christian parents had purchased DVDs of movies and TV programs in the past year for their teenagers and 87 percent had purchased DVDs for their children under 13, the latest Barna Group study found. Yet 26 percent of them did not feel comfortable with the DVD products they purchased.

About six out of 10 parents bought music CDs for their teen children but one out of every three of them had concerns about the content. Also, slightly more than half of all Christian parents had purchased video games for their children yet nearly half (46 percent) of parents of teens admitted to concerns about the content of those games.

Christian parents who were generally the least comfortable with the content of the media products purchased were non-whites and parents involved in a house church, according to the survey, which was released Monday. Those most comfortable were single parents, mothers and parents least active in practicing their faith. Moreover, the study found that the more media consumed by the parent, the more comfortable they were with all forms of media they bought for their children.

The Parents Television Council (PTC), a non-profit organization that focuses on family-friendly television programming, reported earlier this year that television violence has increased 75 percent since 1998 and that the increase may pose a threat to children who may mimic what they see.

Among other media purchases that Christian parents had purchased for their children were magazines (51 percent), with 31 percent saying they were not very comfortable with the content. Thirty-nine percent bought their teens computer software although 24 percent were not comfortable with the software.

Researcher Barna noted that selecting appropriate Christmas gifts is "a microcosm of the spiritual tension millions of Christian adults wrestle with."

The Barna report is based on a nationwide survey on 601 Christian adults who were the parents of children between the ages of 2 and 18.

Labels: Barna Group, Christian, Christmas, Media, Nathan Black, parents, Parents Television Council, teenagers

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Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Pope lauds Christian presence in Saudi

Pope lauds Christian presence in Saudi
By VICTOR L. SIMPSON, Associated Press Writer
Tue Nov 6

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI lauded the contributions of Christians in Saudi Arabia — a kingdom that embraces a strict version of Islam, restricts worship by other faiths and bans Bibles and crucifixes — in the first meeting ever Tuesday between a pope and reigning Saudi king.

Benedict and the Vatican's No. 2 official raised their concerns during separate meetings with King Abdullah, the protector of Islam's holiest sites.

The Vatican counts 890,000 Catholics, mainly guest workers from the Philippines, among the estimated 1.5 million Christians in Saudi Arabia. Christians are barred from opening churches in the desert kingdom where Islam's holiest sites, Mecca and Medina, are located.

Benedict greeted the king warmly, grasping both his hands before heading into 30 minutes of private talks in his library.

At the end of the meeting, Abdullah presented Benedict with a traditional Middle Eastern gift — a golden sword studded with jewels — and a gold and silver statue of a palm tree and a man riding a camel. The pope admired the statue but merely touched the sword.

He gave Abdullah a 16th century print and a gold medal of his pontificate.

Islam is the official religion of Saudi Arabia, and the kingdom requires all Saudi citizens to be Muslims. Only Muslims can visit the cities of Mecca and Medina.

Under the authoritarian rule of the royal family, the kingdom enforces Sharia, or Islamic law. It follows a severe interpretation of Islam known as Wahhabism that rejects the possibility of diplomatic relations with a Christian entity. This interpretation would prohibit a Vatican embassy in Saudi Arabia on the grounds it is equivalent to raising the cross inside Islam's holiest places.

The Vatican maintains diplomatic relations with 176 states and institutions, including many in the Islamic world. Before the king's meeting with the pope, a Saudi official said the Vatican has not asked to have a diplomatic mission in the kingdom or to have diplomatic relations.

It is forbidden to practice Christianity publicly inside Saudi Arabia, and it is illegal to bring symbols from religions other than Islam into the country. Bibles and crosses are confiscated at the border.

Some Christian worship services are held secretly, but the government has been known to crack down on them, or deport Filipino workers if they hold even private services.

The Vatican has said it wants to pursue a dialogue with moderate Muslims after the pope angered the Muslim world in 2006 with a speech linking Islam to violence.

The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said the Vatican hoped the meeting with the Saudi king would produce a "sincere" dialogue on Christian worship in the country.

The Vatican said the talks were "warm" and allowed a wide discussion on the need for inter-religious and intercultural dialogue among Christians, Muslims and Jews "for the promotion of peace, justice and spiritual and moral values, especially in support of the family," a statement said.

Benedict has said he wants to reach out to all countries that still do not have diplomatic relations with the Vatican. Those countries include Saudi Arabia and China.

Abdullah had visited the Vatican twice before, as crown prince and deputy prime minister.

Labels: Catholic, Christian, diplomacy, Islam, King Abdullah, Pope Benedict, Saudi Arabia, Sharia, Vatican, Victor L. Simpson, Wahhabism

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Friday, November 02, 2007

ASU students amid 21-day prayer marathon

No agenda, just 'people hungry for God'

John Faherty
The Arizona Republic
Nov. 1, 2007

In the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, in the middle of the Arizona State University campus, it is easy to miss the students sitting with their heads down and their hands together.

They are part of a group of Christian students on the Tempe campus who are praying 24 hours a day for 21 days.

All through the day and night, they pray outside the Danforth Meditation Chapel, their stillness and quiet in marked contrast to the nearly constant rush of the 51,000 students on the campus.

Many students on campuses nationwide are speaking to God, or, at the very least, hope to.

A survey of more than 112,000 incoming college students in 2004, today's seniors, by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA revealed that a significant number of them describe themselves as spiritual.

• 80 percent have an interest in spirituality.

• 76 percent are searching for meaning/purpose in life.

• 80 percent attended a religious service in the past year.

Jennifer Lindholm is the project director for the study and knows that college students are often portrayed as being focused entirely on getting a job or having a good time.

Lindholm's study further indicated that students have no intention of putting issues of faith or spirituality aside during their college years.

Reasons to pray

The patch of lawn next to the Danforth Meditation Chapel has informal stations where poster board and pens allow students to write down what they are praying for, or who they are forgiving, or Bible verses that have resonance for them.

There is no particular agenda. It is, instead, prayer for the sake of prayer.

The people who come are absolutely college students. They sometimes stop in midprayer and text-message or shout a hello to a passing friend.

Some arrive on skateboards, others have tattoos and piercings.

They know their public act of faith may result in people looking at them as different, but they are fine with that.

Mostly they sit quietly with their heads down and their hands together. Others pray out loud in groups of two or three or more.

They ask for peace and wisdom and forgiveness.

When students on the busy campus notice the praying, most walk past, looking surprised or confused.

An important value

They started praying on Oct. 8, and will continue to do so through Monday.

So far, more than 200 students have signed up to cover shifts, and countless others have simply stopped by to join them.

The UCLA study indicated that more than two-thirds of college students pray and four in 10 consider it "very important" that they follow their religious teachings.

So far, there has been no controversy regarding prayer at a public university.

Yuhchang Hwang, faculty adviser for a Christian Students club on campus, said the rights of students to express themselves are paramount.

"The campus promotes free speech," Hwang said. "All voices should be heard, including believers."

One night on campus, Jacqi Nicholson did not stop to pray, but she was glad students have the option.

Labels: Arizona State University, Christian, college, Higher Education Research Institute, John Faherty, prayer, spirituality, students

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Friday, October 26, 2007

Christian right causing rest of us to lose faith

Oct. 25, 2007

I believe it was Gandhi that once said, "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

Then when I read a survey by the Barna Group, a Christian research organization, my worst suspicions were confirmed.

The survey was about how young people view Christianity, and it showed that among 16-29-year-olds, young people have never been more critical and skeptical of Christianity.

The survey cited feelings of disengagement and disillusionment among young people as a primary reason for this.

Whereas a decade ago, the majority of non-Christians had a favorable view of Christians, that rate now sits at 16 percent.

Which group draws most of the ire from non-Christians?

Just consider this: Half of young Christians themselves echoed the same sentiments --that they "perceive Christianity to be judgmental, hypocritical and too political."

I often find myself within this camp.

Simply put, I think the church as an institution, our leaders -- perhaps even some of our parents -- have failed us.

Over the past few decades, while mainline Protestantism was growing out of touch with modernity, evangelicals became too radicalized and began to turn many people off. Suddenly, seeking people were forced to choose. Well, many young people have chosen now, and they choose neither.

Respondents to this poll gave deeply intimate stories of experiences that have turned them off to Christianity -- not broad, sweeping generalizations. Finally, there is statistical evidence for what we have already known all along but were just afraid to admit to ourselves.

But supposing you are a Christian, the fact of the matter is that what's being done in our name (particularly by the Christian far right) is killing Christianity. Since they are often the people who hijack the dialogue and speak loudest, they are the ones the public most often sees.

Consider this a plea to those so-called Christians. The next time you malevolently condemn homosexuals, try to get creationism into classrooms or join the cries for war, just remember: The rest of us are watching.

For the rest of us, we should make it a fundamental aspect of our faith to oppose these markedly un-Christian actions that turn people off to Christianity.

It's good to know the observations of someone outside the faith. We must always be looking for the plank in our own eye, before we look for the splinter in others.

It helps us to take inventory of ourselves and learn what we can be doing better to let the world know what we are really about.

Gandhi also said that what passes as Christianity these days is a negation of the Sermon on the Mount.

I think he was right.

Labels: Barna Group, Christian, evangelicals, Gandhi, youth

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Wednesday, October 10, 2007

The Fatherless Child

It is a unique cultural moment for the church to act like a family.

A Christianity Today editorial.
posted 10/09/2007 08:37AM

It's not remarkable to say our culture is confused when it comes to family. But the results of the recent Pew Research Center study on marriage and children are remarkable nonetheless.

The survey confirms that Christian notions about marriage and family are still an American ideal. The growth in births to unwed mothers is a "big problem," say 71 percent of Americans. They agree (69 percent) that children need both a mother and a father. Even as rates of births to unwed mothers have skyrocketed, this strong disapproval has held steady.

But the survey also notes that Americans are less able to live up to their ideals: Roughly 37 percent of births are to unwed mothers, and nearly half (47 percent) of adults have lived in cohabitating relationships.

"Marriage exerts less influence over how adults organize their lives and how children are born and raised than at any time in the nation's history," the survey says. Between 1960 and 2005, the rate of unwed childbearing increased sevenfold, from 5.3 percent of all births to 36.8 percent. The survey finds that the average unwed mother "is more likely to be white than black, and more likely to be an adult than a teenager. …" The survey attributes this "sharp increase in non-marital births" to "an ever greater percentage of women in the 20s, 30s, and older … delaying or forgoing marriage but having children."

For years, we have been preaching the supremacy of the two-parent family, offering classes and seminars for young couples and families. But the church is also caught up in an individualistic, ambitious culture, and we find it difficult to carve out time to offer ongoing, concrete help to single-parent families. We pray for them. We urge the parent to find a mate. But, to take the case above, it's hard to find a church that intentionally helps men of the church connect regularly with the children of single mothers. Would a "father program," on the order of Big Brothers and Sisters, be something the "family of God" might institute?

A single mother at Christianity Today International adopted two African American boys. Though she's given them extraordinary care and discipline, she has long felt that they desperately needed adult males in their lives. She says plainly that her church let her and her boys down in this regard. Only after one of the boys ended up in prison did the church's men rally around and enter this young man's life.

A dramatic example, but boys without father figures and girls without mother figures have a strike against them. The latest national study shows that more children than ever are entering the world with such strikes. It's an unprecedented cultural moment for Christians, to see if we can act less like individual consumers of spirituality and more like the family of God.

Labels: Christian, family, fathers, marriage, Pew Research Center survey, unwed mothers

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Thursday, October 04, 2007

Fear Of Religious Litmus Test Rising

McCain’s ‘Christian nation’ comments spark new concern about growing role of religion in the ’08 campaign.

James D. Besser - Washington Correspondent

The prospects for deep religious polarization in the 2008 election took a quantum leap this week in the wake of comments by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) that the Constitution created America as a “Christian” nation — and the rousing defense of his comments by some Christian groups.

McCain’s comments, which produced sharp rebukes from several major Jewish groups, echoed views expressed in a recent survey conducted by the First Amendment Center, in which 65 percent of respondents said the nation’s founders intended the U.S. to be a Christian nation — and 55 percent said that view was enshrined in the Constitution.

The upping of the religious ante in the 2008 campaign also includes a growing rebellion by prominent Christian conservatives against GOP frontrunner Rudolph Giuliani and their threat to back a third-party candidate who meets their religious standards.

And it comes amid continuing questions about whether former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith will be a deal-breaker with many Evangelical voters, and as questions persist about the “Christian nation” views of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, the emerging dark horse in the Republican ranks. It also comes as anxious Democrats ramp up their own religious campaigns, with more detailed discussions of the role of faith in their own lives.

All of that, some Jewish leaders worry, is pushing the nation toward the de facto establishment of a religious test for high office.

Earlier in the interview, he stressed his view that the “No. 1 issue people should make [in selecting a president] is, ‘will this person carry on in the Judeo-Christian principled tradition that has made this nation the greatest experiment in the history of mankind?’”

But his unambiguous agreement that the Constitution established a Christian nation stirred the most debate.

But some Christian groups praised McCain’s original comments – and said they could help in a presidential campaign that has been met with skepticism by evangelical voters and leaders.

But a leading Jewish Republican and McCain supporter said it was all a matter of interpretation.

The Republican Jewish Coalition offered only the faintest criticism of McCain’s comments.

Political analysts were divided on whether McCain’s comments were a verbal misfire or part of a conscious political strategy meant to revive his once-front running campaign. But many speculated that the upcoming South Carolina primary has a lot to do with it.

The 2008 presidential race took on even more of a religious charge this week with reports that leading Christian conservatives, including Focus on the Family leader James Dobson, met over the weekend and discussed the possibility of supporting a third-party candidacy because of their dissatisfaction with the current GOP field, and Giuliani in particular.

But Giuliani, according to recent polls, is running strongly among Evangelical voters despite his three marriages and his relatively moderate positions on gay rights and abortion — a trend political experts attribute to his strong image on terrorism and security.

The likeliest recipients of support from the angry Evangelical leaders, he said, is Huckabee, a Southern Baptist preacher, or Romney, who continues to work to combat the view among many Evangelicals that his Mormonism is a dangerous sect.

Labels: Christian, First Amendment Center, James D. Besser, Jewish, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Mormonism, religion, Rudolph Giuliani

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Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Are college freshmen losing their religion?

UL campus ministers committed to reaching out, reversing trend; survey says higher-education students more likely to stray from Christianity

Trevis R. Badeaux

Chances are good your Christian teen will walk away from his or her faith within the college freshman year.

A recent LifeWay Research survey indicates 70 percent of church-attending Christian teens fit the bill; that's about 1.2 million a year. Most are in their latter teens, ages 17, 18 and 19.

Surprised? UL campus ministers aren't. What's missing, they say, is a sense of community. Churches have a strong focus on young children and families. Teens and those in their early 20s are left to fall through the cracks.

That's not to say that churches aren't doing their part to reach out. Many have outreach ministries on college campuses that throw a lifeline to those drifting away from beliefs and practices established in their younger years.

The Roman Catholic LIFETEEN initiative and others like it have a record number of teens attending evening services geared toward enhancing their faith and their relationship with God.

So, what's the problem? Why are so many college freshmen and other teens and young adults walking away from their faith?

Community. It's the answer that comes up time and again from anyone in the age category asked these same questions. Teens and young adults lack a sense of connection, a relationship with others in their religions.

There is no way to force anyone to believe in Christ or become an active participant in their faith. However, there are ways campus ministries are reaching out to reverse the trend.

Most facilitate small groups that meet across campus. Students gather to share their beliefs, struggles, ways they can live out their faith and encourage others to join in. Some, like Chi Alpha, host a weekly free lunch with a scripture message or community events that attract teens and young adults.

Labels: Christian, college, faith, religion, Trevis R. Badeaux, youth

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Survey: More Americans Familiar with Big Mac Ingredients than 10 Commandments

A study done in conjunction with the release of a film reports that more Americans know the ingredients of the Big Mac than what the Ten Commandments are.

By Katherine T. Phan
Christian Post Reporter

Wed, Oct. 03 2007 03:23 PM ET
Think most Americans know the Ten Commandments?

Think again.

Despite living in a country with a rich and still prevalent Christian heritage – as evident from the Pledge of Allegiance to the nation’s motto, “In God We Trust” – Americans were found to be more familiar with the ingredients of the McDonald’s Big Mac hamburger than some of the Ten Commandments.

In a new study conducted by Kelton research in conjunction with the upcoming release of the animated feature film, The Ten Commandments, 80 percent of respondents knew "two all beef patties" were among the ingredients of the Big Mac but only six out of ten could identify "Thou shalt not kill” as one of the Ten Commandments. Also, while 43 percent of respondents – including those who regularly attend worship – could recall Bobby and Peter, two of the least-recalled names from the Brady Bunch, they were less familiar with two of the least recalled commandments – "Remember the Sabbath" (34 percent) and "Do not make any false idols" (29 percent).

“This gradual erosion of our knowledge of the Ten Commandments is a pretty serious issue,” said Paul Lauer, founder and president of Motive Entertainment, the group marketing the Ten Commandments film. He adds that he was shocked because these were statistics coming from a country that is known as “a Christian nation.”

Lauer, along with makers of the Ten Commandments movie, say they hope the film will inspire Americans to improve their literacy of the Ten Commandments and the Bible. The film, produced by Promenade Pictures, is slated to hit theaters Oct. 19.

The family-friendly film tells the story of Moses, the reluctant prophet of God, who leads the enslaved Chosen People from Egypt to the Promised Land. During the journey, Moses, who is also accompanied by his brother Aaron and sister Miriam, delivers the Ten Commandments given to him by God to the people.

The film is unlike other movies carrying the Ten Commandments theme not only because it works more from actual scripture but also because it traces the development of Moses as he gets more comfortable, more assertive, and more connected with his calling ...

The upcoming Ten Commandments film is the first installment of a 12-part series called "Epic Stories of the Bible" from Promenade Pictures. The second release in the series will be Noah's Ark: The New Beginning. Other installments will feature the story of David and Goliath, the battle of Jericho, and possibly Daniel and the lions and Genesis.

As part of a grassroots campaign for the movie, Motive Entertainment has launched the “Ten Commandments Challenge,” available on the movie’s website, that will enable participants to test their knowledge about the Ten Commandments and see how well they stack up to the national average in their age bracket.

The Ten Commandments will be distributed in 150 markets and shown on 700 screens.

Labels: Christian, filmmakers, Katherine T. Phan, Ten Commandments

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Saturday, September 29, 2007

‘In God We Trust’ Motto Still Mints Controversy

By Adelle Banks
Religion News Service

WASHINGTON—Fifty years after “In God We Trust” first appeared on U.S. paper currency, those four little words have proven to be the source of big debate in the courts.

Michael Newdow, the California atheist known for trying to strip “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance, has asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to declare “In God We Trust” an unconstitutional mingling of church and state. In Indiana, the American Civil Liberties Union has gone to district court, arguing it’s unfair for the state not to charge administrative fees for “In God We Trust” license plates when a plate advocating for the environment carries extra fees.

Why, decades after the words were made the nation’s official motto and printed on our dollar bills, do they still inspire ire?

Long before the words were printed on paper money, they first appeared on coins after a Pennsylvania minister wrote to the secretary of the treasury in 1861, suggesting God’s name should be featured on U.S. coins.

“This would relieve us from the ignominy of heathenism,” M.R. Watkinson wrote to Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase in 1861, according to the website of the U.S. Treasury Department. Three years later, U.S. coins began to bear the words “In God We Trust.”

It wasn’t until 1956 that Congress declared those words to be the national motto. On Oct. 1, 1957, they began appearing on the back of dollar bills under the words “The United States of America.”

Newdow, whose case was dismissed by a lower federal court last year, said the words referring to a deity divide society by making non-believers “second-class citizens.”

Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the conservative American Center for Law and Justice, has filed a brief opposing Newdow on behalf of dozens of members of Congress.

“It reflects the heritage of the country,” he said of the debated motto. “It’s something the founding fathers recognized, that our rights and liberties were endowed by a creator. You recognize the source of these rights.”

A 2003 Gallup Poll found 90 percent of Americans approve of the inscription “In God We Trust” on U.S. coins. A survey released earlier this month by the First Amendment Center found 65 percent of Americans think the nation’s founders intended the country to be a Christian nation, and 55 percent think the U.S. Constitution establishes it as a Christian country.

About a dozen states have passed laws declaring public schools can post the motto. Five years ago, the American Family Association was involved in a campaign that shipped hundreds of thousands of posters to supporters so they could send them to local schools.

“I think we need to be constantly reminded and, although I don’t look at my coins and my paper money day by day, there is a great satisfaction knowing that it’s there and knowing that our government still recognizes God,” said Randy Sharp, director of special projects for the American Family Association, based in Tupelo, Miss.

Labels: "In God We Trust", ACLU, Adelle Banks, American Center for Law and Justice, Christian, God

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Thursday, September 27, 2007

Survey: U.S. to be 'Christian nation'

USNewswire

A recent survey found that 65 percent of Americans believe that the nation's founders intended the U.S. to be a Christian nation and 55 percent believe that the Constitution establishes a Christian nation, according to the "State of the First Amendment 2007" national survey released this month by the First Amendment Center.

The 11th annual survey also found:

Ninety-seven percent deemed the right to practice one's own religion essential or important.

Ninety-eight percent deemed the right "to speak freely about whatever you want" essential or important.

Seventy-four percent of Republicans endorse the notion of a constitutional provision for a Christian nation; 50 percent of Democrats and 47 percent of independent voters agree.

Fifty-eight percent of respondents support teacher-led prayers.

Fifty percent would allow schools to teach the Bible as a factual text in a history class.

The telephone survey of 1,003 respondents was conducted between Aug. 16 and 26. Sampling error is plus-or-minus 3.2 percent.

Labels: Bible, Christian, First Amendment Center, prayer, religion, survey

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Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Christians Believe it is Sinful to Gamble

MEDIA ADVISORY, Sept. 18 /Christian Newswire/ --

ChristiaNet.com, the world's largest Christian portal with twelve million monthly page loads, recently asked, "Is it a sin for Christians to play the lottery?" ChristiaNet's president, Bill Cooper commented, "Any action that causes Christians to be poor financial stewards should be avoided."

Out of 1,800 Christians surveyed, 43% believed that playing the lottery was a sin. Many responded with statements like, "Playing the lottery is gambling and gambling is a sin." Others said, "It is a game of chance and the Bible tells us we are to be good stewards with the money He has given us." The most common response to the question centered on the central belief that Christians are to rely on God for their material needs. One survey taker wrote, "Gambling away God's money shows a lack of faith in His Holy Word and His promises."

Thirty one percent of those that took the survey were unsure. This group responded with, "I can't find in the Bible where gambling is a sin," and "I don't think God cares as long as it's in moderation." Many felt that God was in control of whether the gambler lost or won, "The Lord is in control, so it doesn't matter." Some believed that if the winnings were given to a charitable organization or a needy individual, sin wasn't an issue. Comments like, "As long as you use the money for good, it doesn't matter" confirm this opinion.

Twenty six percent felt that it was not a sin. The most popular reason for this answer was that Christians should not live in bondage and are free to spend their money how they see fit. Their perception was that the lottery system was developed to help the state in some way. For example: some states use the proceeds for education, senior affairs and for public transportation. "It's all going for a good cause," and "Christ released my shackles when he died on the cross" were some statements made by survey takers in support. The remaining pollers did not feel that playing the lottery was gambling, "Gambling is when no one benefits but the casino owners."

To help educate Christians about financial situations, ChristiaNet has just released a Free Financial Quiz. Using the latest interactive technology, one can test their Biblical knowledge on issues facing the Christian Community.

Labels: Bill Cooper, Christian, ChristiaNet.com, gambling, sin

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Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Survey Reveals Biggest Spiritual Challenges for Christian Parents

by Audrey Barrick, Christian Today Correspondant
Wednesday, August 15, 2007, 8:33

The biggest spiritual challenges Christian parents identified are related to the spiritual development of their children, a new survey found.

Only four out of every 10 Christian parents of children between the ages of 3 and 18 said they do not face any spiritual challenges in their life, according to The Barna Group. Among those who do, 14 percent said the biggest personal challenge related to faith is raising moral children with a strong faith, which was the most common response.

Ten percent identified the need to personally invest more time in religious activities, such as reading the Bible or praying, as their greatest faith challenge.

When asked to rate the significance of eight specific challenges related to their faith, most do not perceive themselves to face major spiritual challenges.

Only 34 percent said having enough time to devote to their faith was a major challenge; and 30 percent said helping their children to become more spiritual was a major challenge.

"Our studies show that the faith principles and practices that a child absorbs by age thirteen boldly shapes their spirituality for the duration of their life,” said George Barna, who directed the survey. “Parents have a greater impact on that process than anyone else.

"This was a study exclusively of Christian parents with young children in their household. Given companion surveys showing that such parents often convey dismay over the eroding cultural environment for raising children, and how difficult parenting is these days, we anticipated a broader emphasis upon the challenges related to bringing up spiritually whole and healthy children.”

Evangelical Christian parents were three times more likely than other Christian segments to identify responding to the declining morals and values of society as a major challenge. They were also more likely than other Christian parents to feel they failed to devote enough time to their faith.

Among other challenges identified, 23 percent overall said enabling their spouse to be more spiritual; 21 percent said growing spiritually, personally; 20 percent identified understanding what's in the Bible; 19 percent named finding a church or faith community that's right for them; 18 percent said getting a sense of direction from God; and 18 percent identified practicing the faith principles they had learned.

Hispanics were the most likely ethnic group to identify challenges related to parenting and family matters with one out of every three Hispanic parents listing the challenge. Meanwhile, only one out of six white parents and one out of eight black parents listed the same challenge.

Black parents were much more likely than others to name faith-driven behavioral challenges. And white parents were much more likely than others to list participating in more religious activity as their major spiritual challenge. At the same time, white parents were substantially less likely than parents of other ethnic groups to indicate that growing spiritually and understanding the Bible were major challenges.

Other findings showed that notional Christians – those who are not born again but consider themselves to be Christian – were twice as likely as born-again parents to list attending church more often as a major challenge.

Regionally, Christian parents in the Northeast were the least likely to feel challenged to have enough time to devote to their faith and to feel that growing spiritually was a major personal challenge.

Those most likely to identify helping their children grow spiritually as a major challenge were parents in the South. Meanwhile, parents in the western states were among the least likely to feel that growing spiritually and finding a viable church or faith community were major challenges.

Christian parents in the Midwest were the least likely to feel that helping children grow spiritually was a major challenge; least likely to identify exhibiting spiritual-driven behavior as an issue; and least likely to say they had no faith-related or spiritual issues facing them.

"Americans focus on what they consider to be the most important matters; faith maturity is not one of them. The dominant spiritual change that we have seen – Americans becoming less engaged in matters of faith – helps to explain the surging secularization of our culture.”

The survey was conducted in October and November 2006 among 601 adults who described themselves as Christian.

Labels: Audrey Barrick, Barna Group, children, Christian, faith, morality, parents, spirituality

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Friday, August 24, 2007

Poll: For Christians' identity, it's faith first, U.S. second

Editor's note: This is part of a series of reports CNN.com is featuring for "God's Warriors," a documentary hosted by CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour.

(CNN) -- Most Christians are more likely to describe themselves as Christian first and American second, according to a new CNN poll examining religious views in the United States.

A new poll finds that Christian respondents would describe themselves as "Christian" before "American."

The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll found that of the 750 Christians in the survey, 59 percent identify themselves first by their faith, then as Americans, while 36 percent described themselves in the reverse.

CNN's findings are not that different from those in a recent Pew Research Center poll on Muslim-American attitudes. In that poll, 47 percent of Muslims in America say they are Muslim first, American second. Younger Muslims were especially likely to feel that way: 60 percent of them responded they were Muslim first.

CNN's research also found that Americans are now less likely to see the possibility for peace between Islam and Christianity. Of the total 1,029 adult Americans polled, 53 percent say conflict is inevitable between the two religions, up from 45 percent in 2003. Explore Americans' views on religions »

Those polled also said Islam was the religion most likely to use violence. Sixty-eight percent believe Islam is the religion most likely to have followers who would use violence to spread their religion, compared to 11 percent for Christianity and 4 percent for Judaism.

When asked about religion-related violence in the United States, about nine in 10 said they personally would not be willing to kill another person to uphold a religious belief or advance a religious cause. But asked how many other Americans would do so, more than a third responded "many" and "some;" a third said "few" and a quarter said "almost no Americans."

The CNN poll also found that 62 percent say that American society has strayed too far from its religious foundation in the past 50 years, while answers were split almost evenly on religion as a factor in government policy. Forty-five percent said religion should have no influence on government decisions, while 36 percent say it should have some influence, but not the major factor.

When it comes to the Bible, CNN's poll found that 57 percent say they believe the Book of Revelations' description of the violent end of the world, where all but Christians perish. Nearly one in five believes it will happen in their lifetime.

But of the 750 Christians in the poll, nearly eight in 10 said that people of other beliefs could get into heaven, while only 17 percent believe that only Christians can.

The poll was conducted between June 22-24, 2007, with a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Labels: Americans, Christian, CNN, Islam, Judaism, Muslims, Pew Research Center survey

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Sunday, August 19, 2007

Olympic City in Midst of Revival?

By George Thomas
CBN News
August 18, 2007

CBNNews.com - BEIJING - Seven days a week, the machines at the Nanjing Amity Printing Company churn out copies of what some claim is one of China's best-selling books - the Bible.

Forty-three million Bibles have been printed legally in Communist China since 1987. Once a banned book, today some 3 million copies are printed and distributed each year across the country.

And this year, Chinese Christian leaders are hoping to print a special edition of the Bible to make available to the hundreds of thousands of athletes and visitors expected to attend next year's Olympic Games.

Dr. Cao Shengjie of China Christian council oversees the printing of Bibles in China. He said, "And so for this very important occasion, we hope we can print a special edition, maybe the four Gospels in English and Chinese, bilingual."

Lui Bainian, a top leader of China's officially sanctioned Catholic organization, wants to take it a step further and place these Bibles in some of the major hotels in Beijing.

"I want our visitors to know that we have religious freedom here and this is a small step to meet their religious needs during the Olympic," Bainian said.

The Chinese capital has hundreds of hotels. One of the biggest in town, the Minzu hotel, is entertaining the idea of making the Bibles available to Olympic guests.

"We are doing our preparations and once we know where our guests are coming from, we will be ready to meet their spiritual needs," Minzu Hotel General Manager Chen Guoyao said.

The Beijing Olympic Committee is also getting religious. It plans to provide Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim services.

CHINA CONNECTION:
China's Great Bible Debate

"I think the needs of various religious groups will be taken into consideration and as a matter of fact, for example, inside the Olympic Village, we are going to set up a religious service center," Sun Weide, deputy director of communications for the Beijing Olympic committee said.

Shengjie says it is important for people outside of China, especially Christians, to know the real situation of Christianity in China.

And what they will see is a China that's experiencing unprecedented religious fervor. When athletes and visitors arrive in Beijing next year for the Olympic Games, they will find a city and a nation in the middle of what some are calling a spiritual awakening.

Despite the government's official doctrine of atheism, millions of Chinese are turning to religion.

"People now feel more freer, more open to express their religious convictions," said Tong Shijun, professor of philosophy at East China Normal University.

Tong Shijun teaches at a prominent university in Shanghai. He's just completed the first major survey on religious beliefs in China. And according to his findings, 31.4 percent of those surveyed said they were religious - putting the number of believers in China at about 300 million.

Christianity is also growing fast. Twelve percent, or 40 million people, described themselves in the poll as followers of Christianity, much higher than official figures given by the Chinese government.

What is fueling these conversions? Chinese experts say that a growing number of people are turning to religion to better cope with the country's rapid social and economic changes.

He Hong is an economics student in Shanghai who recently spent an afternoon at a local Christian bookstore.

"Today in our country, more and more people, especially the young people have a yearning for spirituality" Hong, a Shanghai university student, explained. "So many of my friends feel empty in their hearts. We feel so much pressure to get a job, have a better education."

According to Shengjie, so many of them are turning up at church looking for answers.

"People can easily think that to have a better living and to earn more money is the goal of life but the church, we will tell people that the man does not live by bread alone, we need the Word of God," Shengjie said.

Buddhism, Taoism, and other religions are also experiencing growth. Shijun believes that the government is starting to recognize the role religion could play in society.

"In the last couple of decades the situation is that religious life is recognized to have a positive role in society, generally speaking, as long as these religious groups abide by the national and local laws," he said.

Strict limitations on religion remain, however. For example, China only recognizes government registered churches and considers unregistered house churches illegal.

Still Chinese Christian leaders hope next year's Olympic Games will be an opportunity to showcase China's diverse and growing religious tapestry.

"Our expectation is to have more friendship and fellowship," Shengjie said.

Labels: Bible, China, Christian, George Thomas, Olympic Games, religion, Tong Shijun

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Friday, August 17, 2007

Three surveys & some good news

The “whoosh” you hear is another crop of young adults leaving church. Many of them won’t be back.

Their departure has been documented by a disturbing—but not surprising—national survey. The LifeWay Research study revealed:

• More than two-thirds of young adults stop attending U.S. Protestant churches for at least a year from age 18 to 22.

• Seventy percent of 23- to 30-year-olds drop out of church.

• Eighty percent of the dropouts didn’t plan to quit attending; they just quit.

• Of the dropouts, only about 35 percent return and attend church regularly, defined as at least twice a month.

The departed blamed their absence on several reasons: 26 percent cited hypocrisy or judgmentalism in the church, 25 percent quit when they moved to college, 22 percent moved “too far away” from their home church and didn’t find one closer and 20 percent said they no longer feel “connected” to their church.

Meanwhile, another national poll helps explain why children who grow up in Christian homes reach adulthood without a sustaining faith foundation. The Barna Group surveyed Christian parents of children between the ages of 3 and 18. What those parents said is both disturbing and surprising.

When asked to list their “spiritual challenges”—the tasks they see as sacred duties—only one out of every seven Christian parents (14 percent) mentioned raising moral children with a strong faith. If guiding their children to faith in Christ and building a strong moral foundation is not Christian parents’ No. 1 task, what is?

About twice as many parents could pick that duty out of a lineup, but that’s small comfort. When given a list of six parental duties, 30 percent of Christian parents said helping their children “become more spiritual” was a major task. Researcher George Barna said the gap between the two items is significant. A gap occurs when people are not conscious of such parental challenges and consequently are not seriously engaged in addressing them.

So, only one in seven American Christian parents regularly considers spiritual formation of children a parent’s job. Worse, even when prompted, fewer than one in three of those parents owns up to the task. Small wonder the kids skip out of church as soon as they get the chance. If they never see that a relationship with Christ is important to Mom and Dad—except, possibly, as a cosmic Genie when things go wrong—why should faith abide and sustain them?

Fortunately, a third study reveals a postive way forward. The Baylor University School of Social Work conducted a nationwide survey of U.S. teenagers from various Protestant denominations. The results are both logical and encouraging.

The Baylor research shows teenagers who express their faith through ministry in their communities are significantly more mature in their faith and more involved in daily faith practices than their uninvolved counterparts. The teens who showed the most mature and vibrant faith regularly participated directly in ministry that meets human needs, received opportunities to reflect upon their faith in the context of serving others, and worked alongside adults who explain their ministry involvement as an expression of their faith.

An obvious corollary to the study speaks to the two dispiriting surveys: Meaningful hands-on ministry to human need translates into strong faith, which in turn will strengthen and sustain teenagers when they become young adults.

And this life-transforming opportunity is available to every church. Notes Diana Garland, dean of the Baylor School of Social Work: “The opportunities to help our youth grow in their faith literally are as close as the neighborhoods outside the church’s door.”

Marv Knox is editor of the Baptist Standard.

Labels: Barna Group, Baylor University School of Social Work, Christian, church, LifeWay Research, Marv Knox, parents, spirituality, teenagers

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Tuesday, August 07, 2007

Survey Reveals Biggest Spiritual Challenges for Christian Parents

By Audrey Barrick
Christian Post Reporter
Sun, Aug. 05 2007

The biggest spiritual challenges Christian parents identified are related to the spiritual development of their children, a new survey found.

Only four out of every 10 Christian parents of children between the ages of 3 and 18 said they do not face any spiritual challenges in their life, according to The Barna Group. Among those who do, 14 percent said the biggest personal challenge related to faith is raising moral children with a strong faith, which was the most common response.

Ten percent identified the need to personally invest more time in religious activities, such as reading the Bible or praying, as their greatest faith challenge.

When asked to rate the significance of eight specific challenges related to their faith, most do not perceive themselves to face major spiritual challenges.

Only 34 percent said having enough time to devote to their faith was a major challenge; and 30 percent said helping their children to become more spiritual was a major challenge.

"Our studies show that the faith principles and practices that a child absorbs by age thirteen boldly shapes their spirituality for the duration of their life,” said George Barna, who directed the survey. “Parents have a greater impact on that process than anyone else.

"This was a study exclusively of Christian parents with young children in their household. Given companion surveys showing that such parents often convey dismay over the eroding cultural environment for raising children, and how difficult parenting is these days, we anticipated a broader emphasis upon the challenges related to bringing up spiritually whole and healthy children.”

Evangelical Christian parents were three times more likely than other Christian segments to identify responding to the declining morals and values of society as a major challenge. They were also more likely than other Christian parents to feel they failed to devote enough time to their faith.

Among other challenges identified, 23 percent overall said enabling their spouse to be more spiritual; 21 percent said growing spiritually, personally; 20 percent identified understanding what's in the Bible; 19 percent named finding a church or faith community that's right for them; 18 percent said getting a sense of direction from God; and 18 percent identified practicing the faith principles they had learned.

"In addition to making parenting a 24/7 priority, we found that parents must have an authentic and vibrant faith in order to provide meaningful spiritual guidance to their children," said Barna. "Children rarely embrace spiritual principles and practices that their parents fail to demonstrate in their lifestyle.”

Hispanics were the most likely ethnic group to identify challenges related to parenting and family matters with one out of every three Hispanic parents listing the challenge. Meanwhile, only one out of six white parents and one out of eight black parents listed the same challenge.

Black parents were much more likely than others to name faith-driven behavioral challenges. And white parents were much more likely than others to list participating in more religious activity as their major spiritual challenge. At the same time, white parents were substantially less likely than parents of other ethnic groups to indicate that growing spiritually and understanding the Bible were major challenges.

Other findings showed that notional Christians – those who are not born again but consider themselves to be Christian – were twice as likely as born-again parents to list attending church more often as a major challenge.

Regionally, Christian parents in the Northeast were the least likely to feel challenged to have enough time to devote to their faith and to feel that growing spiritually was a major personal challenge.

Those most likely to identify helping their children grow spiritually as a major challenge were parents in the South. Meanwhile, parents in the western states were among the least likely to feel that growing spiritually and finding a viable church or faith community were major challenges.

Christian parents in the Midwest were the least likely to feel that helping children grow spiritually was a major challenge; least likely to identify exhibiting spiritual-driven behavior as an issue; and least likely to say they had no faith-related or spiritual issues facing them.

“Many of the same people who claim that their faith is very important to them and that they are absolutely committed to Christianity also say that they face no spiritual challenges in life," Barna noted. "Many other adults are only vaguely aware of such challenges, and do not put much energy into addressing them.

"Americans focus on what they consider to be the most important matters; faith maturity is not one of them. The dominant spiritual change that we have seen – Americans becoming less engaged in matters of faith – helps to explain the surging secularization of our culture.”

The survey was conducted in October and November 2006 among 601 adults who described themselves as Christian.

Labels: Audrey Barrick, Barna Group, children, Christian, faith, family, parents, spirituality

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Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Survey: Christians Worldwide Too Busy for God

By Audrey Barrick
Christian Post Reporter

Mon, Jul. 30 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Monday, July 23, 2007

In Europe, God Is (Not) Dead

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

By ANDREW HIGGINS
July 14, 2007

Stockholm

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

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

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

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

CHANGING OPINIONS

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

* * *

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

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

* * *

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

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

* * *

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Faith and Health

Doctors incorporating spirituality into their medical practice

By MELISSA McEVER
The Brownsville Herald
July 15, 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Connecting mind, body and spirit.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Separation of church and medicine?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Is the United States really becoming a Christian nation?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Thursday, July 12, 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Friday, July 06, 2007

Reason, sympathy and human relations

Posted Jul 6, 2007
By Ishtiaq Ahmed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Thursday, June 21, 2007

Church-state disputes as human dramas

By CHRISTOPHER SULLIVAN,
Associated Press Writer
Wed Jun 20, 12:54 PM ET

"God on Trial: Dispatches From America's Religious Battlefields" (Viking, 362 pages, $26.95) — Peter Irons: Combining legal analysis with good storytelling, a lawyer-professor explores church-state disputes.

Nobody talks about how it feels to be right in the middle of an ACLU lawsuit in a small, fundamentalist town. But in a new book, a Texas woman who filed such a suit does exactly that. Surprisingly, her words might even make you laugh.

"I got the word out, very loudly in the community, if they burn a cross in my yard, I'm inviting everybody over for hot dogs and marshmallows," she tells author Peter Irons. "And that stopped them. Because they want you to be scared, they thrive on that."

One of the best elements of Irons' book, "God on Trial: Dispatches From America's Religious Battlefields," is a series of extended first-person statements like this, allowing real people involved in these disputes to explain themselves.

An atheist in one of these soliloquies, traces his nonbelief in part to a slap he received from a clergyman after asking an unwelcome question as a boy; and, in another personal narrative, a defender of a Christian religious display, who turns out to be Jewish, recalls his Holocaust-survivor parents' words about the danger of suppressing religious symbols.

"God on Trial" is a highly readable exploration of several church-state separation disputes that combines thoughtful analysis of the law with journalistic storytelling about the personalities and personal stakes on both sides.

Although Irons clearly has a viewpoint — he represented plaintiffs in one case he details, the longest-running church-state struggle ever, about a giant cross in a hilltop park in San Diego — he does not shortchange the positions of those who support prayer in school or Nativity scenes on the courthouse lawn.

He takes on the usual sound-bite views, for example, the notion that church-state separation is a "myth" without basis in U.S. history. In response, he notes that way back in 1785 the issue was real enough that a ban on religious taxation was taken up by Virginia's legislature.

And what about the idea that the United States is "a Christian nation"? Irons doesn't buy it, but in any event: Which Christians? He details intolerance and power-grabbing, pitting Christian sects against each other, from colonial Massachusetts to contemporary Texas.

Irons, a lawyer and emeritus political science professor, occasionally overdoes the legal detail. More often, his writing is lively, engaging and sometimes amusing. In one case where tempers are rising, a colorful judge roars: "Anyone who violates these orders, no kidding, is going to wish that he or she had died as a child."

In the end, "God on Trial" illuminates our never-ending religious battles. It shows that these cases are not all the same, that some are harder calls than others. And it suggests that if we recognize that the antagonists aren't two-dimensional, maybe we can make some progress.

Labels: ACLU, Christian, church-state, Peter Irons, religion

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Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Religious leaders urge action on warming

Mon May 21, 5:02 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -

Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders are urging President George W. Bush and Congress to take action against global warming, declaring that the changing climate is a "moral and spiritual issue."

In an open letter to be published on Tuesday, more than 20 religious groups urged U.S. leaders to limit greenhouse gas emissions and invest in renewable energy sources.

"Global warming is real, it is human-induced and we have the responsibility to act," says the letter, which will run in Roll Call and the Politico, two Capitol Hill newspapers.

"We are mobilizing a religious force that will persuade our legislators to take immediate action to curb greenhouse gases," it says.

The letter is signed by top officials of the National Council of Churches, the Islamic Society of North America and the political arm of the Reform branch of Judaism.

Top officials from several mainline Christian denominations, including the Episcopal Church, United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church, African Methodist Episcopal Church and Alliance of Baptists also signed the letter, along with leaders of regional organizations and individual churches.

Rev. Joel Hunter, a board member of the National Association of Evangelicals, also signed the letter, though that group has not officially taken a stance on global warming due to opposition from some of its more conservative members.

Labels: Christian, church, global warming, Islamic, Jewish, responsibility

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S Koreans go online for divine

Mon May 28,
SEOUL (AFP) -

Online worship is thriving among South Koreans who are too busy to attend churches or temples, or who simply want to browse their preferred sermon, a news report said Monday.

Chosun Ilbo newspaper said some 135,000 people a day heard sermons on the website of
South Korea's largest church, the Yoido Full Gospel Church, compared to 40,000 or 50,000 who attended its Sunday services.

It said the number of religious websites on the country's largest Internet portal Naver was rising, with non-Catholic Christian churches accounting for 5,394, Catholicism 815 and Buddhism 1,439.

"It saves time and also allows me to pick whatever sermon I like," artist Lee Seong-Su, 32, who logs on to a church website at home on Sundays, told the paper.

In lieu of a collection plate, he makes an online donation.

Some believers in Won Buddhism, a religion indigenous to South Korea, observed Buddha's birthday last week only through the Internet, Chosun added.

It said priests were divided over the trend.

"The reality is that people are getting too busy to gather at a church service or Sunday mass," one told Chosun, describing the Internet as an effective evangelical tool.

But another priest hit back, saying: "A crucial part of religious activities is to meet with people. Salvation is in the temple, not on the Internet."

About 70 percent of South Koreans have access to broadband. The country also has East Asia's largest Christian population, after the Philippines.

Labels: Buddhism, Christian, church, Korea, online

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Tuesday, June 12, 2007

A pious nation?

Though the United States is considered a deeply religious country, a glance at America today reveals a society divided by wealth and poverty, tainted by violence and often oblivious to the common good. A country of believers? Perhaps. But saying is one thing, doing quite another.

By Tom Krattenmaker

There can be no doubting the piety of American society in this, the first decade of the 21st century. It's old news by now: The powerful influence of conservative Christians on culture and politics. An outwardly Christian president in the White House. Survey data showing the vast majority of Americans pray, believe in God and consider religion important in their lives.

"Pious," however, means something different than "religious." While both convey devotion to God and ultimate truth, "pious" also suggests showiness, sanctimony, even hypocrisy — a gap between words and action. Such a gap, unfortunately, seems glaringly on display when we survey the social landscape around us. If one is to judge by our care for the common good, American society today is more pious than consistently and truly religious.

Let's start with violence, a phenomenon hard to square with New Testament teachings about living in peace and Old Testament commandments not to kill one another.

The massacre at Virginia Tech this spring might seem an extreme case. Defenders of gun rights warn against overreaction, claiming that mass shootings, however horrific, are quite rare. In truth, Virginia Tech-style massacres happen every day, albeit in less dramatic form. Statistics show that gun violence kills close to 30,000 people a year in America, or about 80 a day — more than double the number slain in Blacksburg, Va. Is this what one should expect of a country guided by Jesus, the "Prince of Peace"?

Then there is the violence projected by our government. Here, too, it is impossible to claim that America is a peaceful nation in the image of Christ. Under the Bush administration, the United States has pursued an aggressive foreign policy and a war in Iraq that theologians struggle to justify with Christian doctrines about morally defensible war. Certainly, the case can be made that dangerous forces left our government with no choice but to fight. But the question must be raised again: Is our behavior as a nation consistent with our ostensibly Christian character?

'Do unto others'

Although debates have raged for centuries over the essential meaning of Christianity and other religions, few would argue against the central importance of the Golden Rule. This is not merely the bias of a liberal writer. Asked by CNN recently to define Christianity, Richard Land, leader of the theologically conservative Southern Baptist movement, said, "It means to do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

How as a society are we living up to this religious imperative? We could do better. There is something deeply irreligious about the growing gap between our wealthiest and poorest citizens.

Surely, conservative-minded believers will respond that charity and philanthropy flourish today, that Christian compassion is best expressed through means other than government. They're partly right. Americans, religious and secular alike, have reached out impressively to Gulf Coast flood victims. We have donated billions of dollars to charities, churches and educational institutions. Americans shovel snow from neighbors' driveways, volunteer at soup kitchens and shell out for more expensive energy-saving light bulbs to curb our impact on global warming. On the national policy level, President Bush has on occasion lived up to his creed of "compassionate conservatism," especially with his efforts to combat AIDS and poverty in Africa.

But stories of individual big-heartedness cannot forgive a general direction in our politics that leaves shocking numbers of children without health insurance and decent educations.

The Bible has been playing a prominent role in the intensifying debate over immigration. Until very recently, the most outwardly religious people took what can be argued is the irreligious stance. According to 2006 polling data, white evangelicals — a group characterized by its taking the Bible very seriously — favored a more conservative (read: inhospitable) policy toward immigrants than other U.S. citizens. This, in spite of numerous passages in the Bible that emphasize hospitality to strangers and compassion for all God's people.

Compassion and faith

As is happening on this and other issues, the myth of the evangelical monolith is being exposed. More evangelicals are publicly embracing care for the earth and service to the poor, broadening an agenda that seemed stuck on hot-button social issues. And groups from across the Christian spectrum have been speaking up for immigrants. May these compassionate stands of religious America become ever more the norm.

For now, we have what we have: A society of decent individuals who usually do the right thing — but a culture nonetheless marred by violence, greed and politics that often display a hard-heartedness unbecoming a country like ours. We may disagree about the manifestations of our social morality deficit — conservatives will emphasize abortion and sexual immorality; liberals, economic injustice — but we can surely agree that we're capable of something finer.

Given that many social ills have grown worse during a time of Christian revival in the public arena, it's tempting to blame religion. Tempting, and also wrong. It's increasingly obvious that those who led us to our current state have heeded political ambition and expediency — citing faith when it's helpful, jettisoning it when it's inconvenient.

And on goes the pointless argument about whether America is a "Christian nation." Whether this country is Christian depends entirely on how we define the terms, of course. Our Constitution: secular. Our history and culture: religious.

And what do we mean by "religious"? If we're talking about rhetoric, volume and public display, it has been a very religious time indeed. If we mean behavior that creates peace, extends compassion to the less fortunate and reaches out to strangers outside our borders, we have a way to go. If we are a Christian nation, shouldn't we more consistently behave like one?

Tom Krattenmaker, who lives in Portland, Ore., specializes in religion in public life and is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.

Labels: Bible, charity, Christian, compassion, faith, God, Golden Rule, government, Jesus, piety, politics, religion, Unites States, violence

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Thursday, May 03, 2007

Religion gets an 'A' at U.S. colleges

Nearly half of the freshmen said they were seeking opportunities to grow spiritually, according to the survey by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Compared with 10 or 15 years ago, "There is a greater interest in religion on campus, both intellectually and spiritually," said Charles Cohen, a professor of history and religious studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who for a number of years ran an interdisciplinary major in religious studies. The program was created seven years ago and has 70 to 75 majors each year.

University officials explained the surge of interest in religion as partly a result of the rise of the religious right in politics, which they said has made questions of faith more talked about generally. In addition, they said, the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, by Islamic zealots underscored for many the influence of religion on world affairs.

And an influx of evangelical students at secular universities, along with an increasing number of international students, has meant that students arrive with a broader array of religious experiences.

At Berkeley, a vast number of undergraduates are Asian-American, with many coming from observant Christian homes, said the Reverend Randy Bare, the Presbyterian campus pastor.

There are 50 to 60 Christian groups on campus, and student attendance at Roman Catholic and Presbyterian churches near campus has picked up significantly, he said. On many other campuses, though, the renewed interest in faith and spirituality has not necessarily translated into increased attendance at religious services.

The Reverend Lloyd Steffen, the chaplain at Lehigh University, is among those who think the war in Iraq has contributed to the interest in religion among students. "I suspect a lot of that has to do with uncertainty over the war," Steffen said. "My theory is that the baby boomers decided they weren't going to impose their religious life on their children the way their parents imposed it on them," Steffen continued. "The idea was to let them come to it themselves.

Increased participation in community service may also reflect spiritual yearning of students.

"We don't use that kind of spiritual language anymore," said Rebecca Chopp, the Colgate president. "But if you look at the students, they do."

Some sociologists who study religion are skeptical that students' attitudes have changed significantly, citing a lack of data to compare current students with those of previous generations. But even some of those concerned about the data say something has shifted.

"All I hear from everybody is yes, there is growing interest in religion and spirituality and an openness on college campuses," said Christian Smith, a professor of sociology at Notre Dame. "Everybody who is talking about it says something seems to be going on."

David Burhans, who retired after 33 years as chaplain at the University of Richmond, said many students "are really exploring, they are really interested in trying things out, in attending one another's services."

Lesleigh Cushing, an assistant professor of religion and Jewish studies at Colgate, said: "I can fill basically any class on the Bible. I wasn't expecting that."

When Benjamin Wright, chairman of the department of religion studies at Lehigh, arrived 17 years ago, two students chose to major in religion. This year there are 18 religion majors and there were 30 two and three years ago.

Presbyterian ministries at Berkeley and Wisconsin have built dormitories to offer spiritual services to students and encourage discussion among different faiths. The seven-story building on the Wisconsin campus, which will house 280 students, is to open in August.

The number of student religious organizations at Colgate has grown to 11 from 5 in recent years. The university's Catholic, Protestant and Jewish chaplains oversee an array of programs and events. Many involve providing food to students, a phenomenon that the university chaplain, Mark Shiner, jokingly calls "gastro-evangelism."

Among the new clubs is one established last year to encourage students to hold wide-ranging dialogues about spirituality and faith. Meeting over lunch on Thursdays, the students talk about what happens after life or the nature of Catholic spirituality.

Gabe Conant, a junior, said he wanted to contemplate personal questions about his own faith. He described them this way: "What are these things I was raised in and do I want to keep them?"

Labels: Christian, college, Higher Education Research Institute, Iraq, politics, religion, spirituality, UCLA

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Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Religion Can Be Used As A Force For Peace

by Eliza Carney

Many of the worldwide celebrations of Easter reported in the Coloradoan focused on bringing peace and a better future for this fractured world. But many see religion itself as a primary cause of the fracturing. And this is unfortunately true in many places.

But there are other instances where people of faith do try to be true to the ideals of justice and peace of their founders. This is true of the U.S. Christian leaders' mission (United Methodist, Episcopal, Catholic, Baptist, Evangelical, Quaker, Mennonite, National Council of Churches and others) to Tehran several weeks ago, an event little-reported in the media. Their objective was "to meet with religious and political leaders in Iran to help diffuse tensions and explore ways to forge peace between Iran and the U.S."

Here are excerpts from the U.S. religious delegation's wrap-up statement on the Tehran mission, words we hope will be echoed in faith communities across the land:

"As Christian leaders from the United States, we went to Iran at this time of increased tension believing that it is possible to build bridges of understanding between our two countries. We believe military action is not the answer, and that God calls us to just and peaceful relationships within the global community.

"We were warmly welcomed by the Iranian people, and our time in Iran convinced us that religious leaders from both countries can help pave the way for mutual respect and peaceful relations between our nations.

"During our visit, we met with Muslim and Christian leaders, government officials, and other Iranian people. Our final day included a meeting with former President Khatami and current President Ahmadinejad. The meeting with President Ahmadinejad was the first time an American delegation had met with a sitting Iranian President in Iran since the Islamic revolution in 1979. The meeting lasted 2.5 hours and covered a range of topics including the role of religion in transforming conflict, Iraq, nuclear proliferation, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"What the delegation found most encouraging from the meeting with President Ahmadinejad was a clear declaration from him of no intention to acquire or use nuclear weapons, as well as a statement that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can only be solved through political not military means. Finally, he said, 'I have no reservation about conducting talks with American officials if we see some good will.'

"We believe it is possible for further dialogue and that there can be a new day in U.S.-Iranian relations. The Iranian government has already built a bridge toward the American people by inviting our delegation to come to Iran. We ask the U.S. government to welcome a similar delegation of Iranian religious leaders to the United States.

"As additional steps in building bridges between our nations, we call upon both the United States and Iranian governments to:

Immediately engage in direct face-to-face talks;

Cease using language that defines the other using "enemy" images;

Promote more people-to-people exchanges including religious leaders, members of Parliament/ Congress, and civil society.

"As people of faith, we are committed to working toward these and other confidence-building measures, which we hope will move our two nations from the precipice of war toward a more just and peaceful settlement."

Peace between the United States and Iran is both possible and essential. People of faith in both nations can help make it happen.

Will we?

Eliza Carney is a member of the Peace and Justice Committee at the Fort Collins Mennonite Fellowship.

Labels: Christian, Eliza Carney, God, Iran, peace, President Ahmadinejad, religion, Tehran

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Monday, March 12, 2007

Hollywood choosing more themes of redemption

Sunday, March 11, 2007
By Tory Anderson Los Angeles Daily News

LOS ANGELES— Long considered the modern-day equivalent of Sodom and Gomorrah, Hollywood is increasingly showing its family-friendly side, churning out an unprecedented number of films and television shows with uplifting, redemptive themes.

In the three years since Mel Gibson released “The Passion of the Christ,” hundreds of films with Judeo-Christian, spiritual and family-friendly themes have hit the screen — from “The Nativity Story” to “Amazing Grace.”

Last year alone, nearly 50 films featured positive Judeo-Christian content that producers hoped would appeal to the estimated 110 million Americans who attend church every week, according to Camarillo-based Movieguide.

The films raked in an average $39 million, according to Movieguide. All five of the major Hollywood studios have created marketing departments to target the growing demand for faith-based and family fare.

“People are gravitating to anything that gives them hope, inspiration, motivation or a sense of something light,” said Mark Clayman, executive producer of “The Pursuit of Happyness.”

“People want good stories. They want to be entertained, but they also want something they can bring their kids to and enjoy as a family. Look at our world. There is so much war and junk and disease. I think people are just hungry for the other side.”

To meet the demand, 20th Century Fox recently launched Fox Faith Movies, which plans to release a dozen faith-based films a year. Last fall, the Walt Disney Co. also announced it would focus more on family-oriented and faith-based movies.

Movieguide publisher Ted Baehr, who is also chairman of the Christian Film & Television Commission, said Hollywood executives realize that the public wants more uplifting and spiritual fare.

“There is competition for the Christian audience now that there hasn’t been before,” Baehr said. “I thought at some point it would level off, but so far it’s getting bigger and bigger.

Stephen Kendrick, executive producer of “Facing the Giants” and an associate pastor at Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Ga., said the film has received broad praise since its release last year.

The drama chronicles a Christian high school football coach who uses faith to battle overwhelming fear and failure.

Kendrick said he and his brother, Alex — also a pastor at the church and executive producer of the movie — got more than 5,000 e-mails from people who said the movie has changed their lives.

“We think more movies like this are going to be rising up,” Kendrick said. “I know there is a huge wave of people — thanks to the digitalization of media and the lowering of costs to be able to produce films — who are now beginning to study and learn how to make films. A feature film is one of the most influential things in our culture.”

The brothers decided to make movies after reading about a 2002 poll by The Barna Group that found church was not considered among the top 10 influences in American culture.

“Movies and music are in the top three,” Kendrick said. “So instead of cursing the darkness, we thought, ‘We have the best message in the world that is still transforming people’s lives and giving them hope, forgiveness and peace.’ And so we want to take that message to them, using the most influential means possible. And that’s why we chose to go into feature films.”

Last month, 57 teams of Christian filmmakers from around the world participated in the Burbank-based 168-Hour Film Project.

Part of a “speed filmmaking” phenomenon, teams were given a week to write a short script based on a randomly assigned Scripture verse, and another week to film and edit a five- to 10-minute movie.

The films will be screened March 23 at the Stars Art Theater and March 24 at the Alex Theatre, both in Glendale. Trinity Broadcast Network will air films chosen as the best.

“It’s our biggest year ever,” said John David Ware, founder and executive director of the project.

“We’ve had many people who are first-time filmmakers go on to produce many other films. The teams are expanding their short films into feature-length films and trying to sell them. Many of the films have won awards at other film festivals.”

Dean Batali, former executive producer of “That ’70s Show,” who now writes TV scripts with faith-based themes, said the move marks a significant shift.

“This is a diverse nation, and for the past decades, Christians have shunned Hollywood. All we are saying is: ‘Why shun Hollywood? Let’s go to Hollywood and take a seat at the table.’ ”

But Batali said it’s not always easy.

“I live in both worlds.” Batali said. “The people I go to church with tend not to understand the people I work with in Hollywood, and the people in Hollywood tend to be really fearful of the people I go to church with.”

Labels: Christian, entertainment, Hollywood, movies, Tory Anderson