TruthBook Religious News Blog

Friday, November 21st, 2008
by Juliana Rincón Parra

This is a Video post. Please click on "external link" at the botom of the piece for the complete article, along with the videos. Well worth it...

As children we may all have heard the Golden Rule expressed in many different ways, but the basic idea is: Treat others as you would like to be treated. This is Karen Armstrong's TED wish, to create The Charter for Compassion, a platform in which the different Abrahamic faiths could focus on what was common to all, the moral backbone of all their faiths towards a greater unity and better communication among people of different faiths.

As children we may all have heard the Golden Rule expressed in many different ways, but the basic idea is: Treat others as you would like to be treated. This is Karen Armstrong's TED wish, to create a platform in which the different Abrahamic faiths could focus on what was common to all, the moral backbone of all their faiths towards a greater unity and better communication among people of different faiths. The Charter of Compassion is requesting stories of unity and compassion to be uploaded on their site, written or in video form, and that together, people may write this Charter of Compassion a document where this new image will be established, signed by sages and religious leaders. Different sections of the charter are opened on different dates, so feel free to stop by the site and write your perspective on the issue.

Karen Armstrong is a British born former Catholic nun who has written many books on Muslim faith and has taught in the Leo Baeck rabbinic college: this inter-faith knowledge led her on the path towards bringing this project into fruition. Her acceptance speech video is on YouTube, and in it she speaks about this desire of hers to work for the unity of the different faiths, to make religion work towards universal harmony:

The Charter for Compassion's YouTube channel already has some inspirational videos by people in Pakistan. Samia Shoaib shares her own personal compassion story of how we are all interconnected and what happens to our neighbor or someone down the street does concern us:

Arshad Mahmood also speaks from his Muslim faith, in how people should concern themselves about the fate of others, and how discrimination against those of a different faith should not take place:

The Charter for Compassion has opened the call for submissions where people can also tell their stories of compassion and change the image of religion as a harborer of intolerance, showing the world that compassion is and will be the cornerstone of religion, and the way towards change. You can participate by offering information in different languages so the message can get to more people, and by making a video with a story where compassion is featured, or writing your opinion or perspective on the Charter itself.

Labels: Charter for Compassion, Golden Rule, Juliana Rincón Parra, Karen Armstrong, video

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Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Faith, Golden Rule influence attitudes on torture, new poll shows

Thursday, Sep. 11, 2008
From staff reports

A new poll commissioned by Mercer University and Faith in Public Life shows the conflicted attitudes on torture among white evangelical Christians in the South.

Close to six in 10 white evangelicals in the South say that torture can often (20 percent) or sometimes (37 percent) be justified in order to gain important information, according to the survey, conducted by Public Religion Research. This compares to roughly half (48 percent) of the general public that believes torture can be justified, according to a Pew Research Center poll earlier this year.
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Despite high levels of religiosity, white evangelicals in the South are significantly more likely to rely on life experiences and common sense (44 percent) than Christian teachings or beliefs (28 percent) when thinking about the acceptability of torture. And only about one in 20 white evangelicals rely on the advice of government leaders when it comes to torture.

Among those influenced by Christian teachings, a majority (52 percent) of survey respondents oppose torture. In contrast, among those who rely most on life experiences and common sense, less than one-in-three (31 percent) oppose torture.

A majority (52 percent) agree with the Golden Rule argument against torture - that the U.S. government should not use methods against this country's enemies that we would not want used on American soldiers.

An appeal to the Golden Rule increases opposition to torture among every subgroup of white evangelicals. For example, only about one-third (34 percent) of white evangelicals who attend worship services more than once a week say torture is never or rarely justified, but a majority (50 percent) of this group was persuaded by the Golden Rule argument against torture. This represents a 16 point shift in opinion among the most frequent attending white evangelicals in the South.

A majority (53 percent) of white evangelicals in the South believe that the government uses torture as part of the campaign against terrorism, despite repeated claims made by government officials that the U.S. does not engage in torture. Only about one-third (32 percent) say that the U.S. does not use torture as a matter of policy.

This survey was based on telephone interviews conducted under the direction of Opinion Access Corp. among a sample of 600 white evangelical Christian adults, ages 18 years or older in the southeastern United States. The survey was fielded from Aug. 14-22.

Labels: Christianity, evangelicals, Golden Rule, religion, terrorism, torture

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Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Valley's religions seek 'common good'

By Jason Monaco, Robert B. Lennick and Sharon Joseph
July 25, 2008

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Every major religion in the world has this concept among its teachings. Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and other faiths share this imperative. At its heart, this teaching is about finding the common good.
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Working together for the common good promotes ethical, moral, and spiritual values into all areas of our common lives -- economics, commerce, trade, and international relations -- as well as personal virtues, to advance understanding and action on major local and global issues by civil society, private enterprise, the public sector, governments, and national and international institutions, leading to the promotion of collaborative policy solutions to the challenges posed at the present times to all of the humanity.

In Islam, you can find volumes upon volumes of practices, laws and recommendations, the application of which perpetuate and enhance the common good of all, as is commanded by Allah (God) in verse 104 of chapter 3 of Holy Quran: ''Let there be among you a community who enjoin good and forbid evil; it is they that shall be successful.'' That is further emphasized by the Prophet Mohammad in a narration reported by Jabir bin Abdullah in Sahih Bukhari: ''Enjoining all that is good is charity.''

Among Christian teachers, perhaps it was the great St. Paul who best described the common good. In his letter to a young church in Corinth, he talked about working together as different parts of the body -- each part being important, each part having a job to do, each job essential to the body working as a finely tuned instrument. And, he reminds us that no one is left out: ''To each is given a gift of the spirit for the common good.''

In Judaism, we find a living ethic of social justice where the verse, ''Remember the heart of the stranger,'' is repeated no less than 36 times in the Torah. The common good begins with empathy for others and a recognition that unless each individual internalizes the challenges of others we become a collection of private experiences, rather than a caring and committed community.

We must step outside of our comfort zone. We must join hands with others and develop systems that ease the pain and suffering of those facing hardships. What purpose does religion serve if it does not awaken an individual's concern for all human life; for the ''common good?''

God is the author of creation. In this life, all human beings face difficulties and hardships. We must look at the difficulties of this life as an opportunity to become better human beings; to become closer to the Creator of the heavens and the earth. We must cultivate our hearts, and by serving others, we can strive toward this end.

Jason Abdullah Monaco of Allentown is outreach coordinator for the Muslim Association of the Lehigh Valley. The Rev. Sharon Solt Joseph is pastor of Church of the Manger UCC Church in Bethlehem. Robert B. Lennick is rabbi at Congregation Keneseth Israel in Allentown.

Labels: Christianity, God, Golden Rule, interfaith, Islam, Jason Monaco, Judaism, religion, Robert B. Lennick, Sharon Joseph

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Friday, May 23, 2008

The Golden Rule is meant to be shared

May 16, 2008 - 1:50PM
Lawn Griffiths, Tribune

Cover the religious landscape for any time and it’s obvious that belief runs too deeply to suggest one group of believers found and embraced the real truth, while the rest are just lost souls, floundering in falsehood.

Lawn Griffiths on Spiritual Life

That’s why I find real hope in the ecumenical and interfaith efforts — those of faith with courage to learn from each other without any obligation or intention to abandon their own core beliefs. They welcome chances to discover the beauty and integrity of other faith systems. They find awe in the common ground. They celebrate that some from other faiths truly seek to live out their beliefs authentically no matter how radically they may differ from their own. They don’t judge, and they don’t feel that consorting with other kinds of seekers will dishonor their own religions. In their own ways, they strive to understand the mysteries of God. They balance teachings of their formal traditions with their own line of reasoning and free agency. It’s called a “faith journey.” They work cooperatively to share their best for peace and understanding.

Clearly some religions encourage open-mindedness and stretching so that a follower truly owns and embraces what unfolds and evolves in their own distinct experiences.

Other faiths, however, are far more strict and legalistic, insisting that adherents absorb their solid, historic teachings and not stray. They are warned of the dangers of what might seep into their minds from the “outside.” Orthodoxy now, orthodoxy forever.

I value people having transforming experiences that impel them to abandon bad habits, destructive behavior, self-centeredness, greed, hostility ... In truly loving Jesus, for example, they can honestly say they are new people, a new creation. I distrust, however, those so mesmerized by charismatic teachings that they cede away critical thinking.

So much of the whole discussion falls into just two areas — 1) escaping the pain and struggles of life on earth for life everlasting salvation; or 2) the social gospel that calls on the believer to love, to work for justice and to bring comfort to the poor and disenfranchised. All week, the words of theologian Brian McLaren, as expressed May 10 in this Spiritual Life section, have resonated with me. He talked about the difference between mercy and justice. We can strive to provide relief from the pain of the moment or we can make systemic changes to end injustice so that changes made for good actually last. McLaren said unjust systems keep throwing people into misery, and “mercy brings us to relieve some of their misery, but until we confront the unjust systems by doing justice we’re never going to make a change ... I think what churches in America, especially evangelical churches, are just waking up to is the way we have to deal with systemic injustice, not just charitable giving to people in misery.”

Three weeks ago, I was among 10 people and some organizations that the Arizona InterFaith Movement honored at Phoenix Convention Center with Golden Rule Awards. (www.interfaitharizona.com). The fourth annual award recipients included Arizona Cardinal Kurt Warner and his wife, Brenda (Courage in Sports award); the dean of Valley rabbis, Rabbi Albert Plotkin (religion award); and Rep. Mark Anderson, R-Mesa (government award). I won in the media category. More than 900 folks, representing a wide range of faiths, turned out. It was fascinating to watch six-minute videos on the recipients and see authentic ways people have devoted their lives trying to bring light to the darkness.

When AFM’s executive director, the Rev. Paul Eppinger, notified me of the award in February, my immediate reaction was one of unworthiness and a realization that we media types have a too-easy opportunity to be Golden Rule-esque in simply showcasing the great good. And I realized Arizona has a shortage of media people focused on spirituality and faith and the honor may have come my way because of the small pool of media folks dealing with faith.

Then I quickly remembered the late Darl Andersen, the Mesa man who worked tirelessly to promote living the Golden Rule, giving away bumper stickers touting it and seeking religious understanding. He belonged to several interfaith groups and was famous for taking clergy of many faiths to lunch to help them understand his faith, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He’d invite his dinner companions to educate him on theirs.

I wrote several features on Andersen, including one when he died in 2000. Andersen and I talked over lunch four or five times across a dozen years, and the one-time Mesa Unified School District governing board president was always effective in making his point and just being a smiling bundle of love made flesh.

He never lived to see the annual Golden Rule banquet with more than 900 attendees from dozens of diverse religions, nor the new Golden Rule specialized Arizona license plate, nor Arizona being declared, in 2003, the nation’s first “Golden Rule State” with a program through the Secretary of State’s office to recognize people for “good deeds and acts of kindness.”

It is appropriate that one of the awards given was the Darl Andersen Award, presented by his son Wilfred Andersen, one-time Arizona spokesman for the LDS Church. This year, it went to Dennis Barney, who combined charity and civic and church duty with successful development work and family life.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It’s so simple. It’s a universal message that is said many ways in all the languages and religious creeds. If we would really live it and believe in it, justice and peace could follow.

Labels: Golden Rule, interfaith, Lawn Griffiths, religion, spirituality

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Friday, March 28, 2008

Karen Armstrong - Charter for Compassion

As she accepts her 2008 TED Prize, author and scholar Karen Armstrong talks about how the Abrahamic religions -- Islam, Judaism, Christianity -- have been diverted from the moral purpose they share to foster compassion. But Armstrong has seen a yearning to change this fact. People want to be religious, she says; we should act to help make religion a force for harmony. She asks the TED community to help her build a Charter for Compassion -- to help restore the Golden Rule as the central global religious doctrine.

Labels: Christianity, compassion, God, Golden Rule, Islam, Judaism, Karen Armstrong, religion, video

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Monday, March 24, 2008

Brains Are Hardwired To Act According To The Golden Rule

ScienceDaily (Mar. 23, 2008)

— Wesley Autrey, a black construction worker, a Navy veteran and 55-year-old father of two, didn’t know the young man standing beside him. But when he had a seizure on the subway platform and toppled onto the tracks, Autrey jumped down after him and shielded him with his body as a train bore down on them. Autrey could have died, so why did he put his life on the line — literally — to save this complete stranger?

Donald Pfaff, the author of the new book The Neuroscience of Fair Play: Why We (Usually) Follow the Golden Rule, thinks he has the answer. Our brains, he says, are hardwired to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Individual acts of aggression and evil occur when this circuitry jams.

“If it’s really true that all religions have this ethical principle, across continents and across centuries, then it is more likely to have a hardwired scientific basis than if it was just a neighborhood custom,” says Pfaff, whose laboratory at Rockefeller University studies various hormones and brain signals that influence positive social behavior.

In his book, Pfaff proposes a theory that explains, in a parsimonious way, how people manage to behave well when they do, and under what conditions they deviate from good behavior. He describes how memories of fear, as well as various brain hormones, can play a vital role in whether people choose to act ethically or violently toward others. One’s behavior is a balance, he says, between “prosocial” and “antisocial” traits — a balance shaped by early life experiences.

“You have some people who are prosocial, who face the world with a smile and are uniformly nice to other people,” says Pfaff. “Others face the world with a snarl and are routinely aggressive and thoughtless. Most of us are a balance — we are able to treat each other almost all the time in a civil and thoughtful way.” But nobody’s perfect, he adds. “Even those in the prosocial group have cheated on their taxes.”

Donald W. Pfaff, Ph.D., is professor and head of the Laboratory of Neurobiology and Behavior at The Rockefeller University, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. At Rockefeller, where he has studied the brain and behavior for more than 30 years, he discovered the brain-cell targets for steroid hormones and proved that these chemicals, among others, could elicit specific behaviors when reaching the right brain areas.

Labels: brain, Donald Pfaff, Golden Rule, neuroscience, social behavior

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Friday, July 13, 2007

The Early Science of Altruism

By Brandon Keim
July 12, 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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