TruthBook Religious News Blog

RACHEL ZOLL
September 10, 2009

NEW YORK (AP) — There is the dread of leaving the house that morning. People might stare, or worse, yell insults.

Prayers are more intense, visits with family longer. Mosques become a refuge.

Eight years after 9/11, many U.S. Muslims still struggle through the anniversary of the attacks. Yes, the sting has lessened. For the younger generation of Muslims, the tragedy can even seem like a distant memory. "Time marches on," said Souha Azmeh Al-Samkari, a 22-year-old student at the University of Dayton in Ohio.

Yet, many American Muslims say Sept. 11 will never be routine, no matter how many anniversaries have passed.

"I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach every year," said Nancy Rokayak of Charlotte, N.C., who covers her hair in public. "I feel on 9/11 others look at me and blame me for the events that took place."

Rokayak, a U.S.-born convert, has four children with her husband, who is from Egypt, and works as an ultrasound technologist. She makes sure she is wearing a red, white and blue flag pin every Sept. 11 and feels safer staying close to home.

Sarah Sayeed, who lives in the Bronx, said that for a long time, she hesitated before going out on the anniversary. The morning the World Trade Center crumbled, she rushed to her son's Islamic day school so they could both return home. The other women there warned that she should take off her headscarf, or hijab, for her own safety. She now attends an interfaith prayer event each Sept. 11, keeping her hair covered as always.

"There's still a sense of 'Should I go anywhere? Should I say anything?' There's kind of that anxiety," said Sayeed, who was born in India and came to the U.S. at age 8. "I force myself to go out."

The anniversary brings a mix of emotions: sorrow over the huge loss of life, anguish over the wars that followed, but also resentment over how the hijackings so completely transformed the place of Muslims in the U.S. and beyond.

A poll released this week by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that 38 percent of Americans believe Islam is more likely than other faiths to encourage violence. That is down from 45 percent two years earlier.

Please click on "external source" for the complete article

Labels: 9/11, emotion, fear, interfaith, Islam, Muslims, Pew forum on Religion, Rachel Zoll

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Saturday, August 29, 2009

How do people view religions other than their own?

By JULIA CORBETT-HEMEYER •
August 27, 2009

The United States is a land of stunning and vibrant religious diversity. All of humankind's religious and spiritual traditions can be found somewhere within our borders. For some people, and I count myself among them, this diversity is an excellent thing. For others, it's threatening.

The 2007 U.S. Religious Landscape Survey conducted by the Pew Forum (www.pewforum.org) found that most Americans say that their religion is not the only way to salvation. On the other hand, there are also those who very firmly believe that their way is the only way and all others are simply wrong. How we regard religious and spiritual paths other than our own becomes very important with religious diversity, because it influences how we interact with the people who follow them. We can identify five points of view.

"My religion is the only one that's true." This reassures those who hold this view that they are in the right. To many people, it seems appropriate in light of many religions' claim to absolute truth. However, it also harshly excludes all others and sets up an us/them mentality in which dialogue and understanding are difficult, although not impossible.

To see the remainder on the five points of view, please click on "external source."

And for comparison, here's what The Urantia Book has to say about religions:

134.4.4 Religious peace — brotherhood — can never exist unless all religions are willing to completely divest themselves of all ecclesiastical authority and fully surrender all concept of spiritual sovereignty. God alone is spirit sovereign.

92:7.3 The many religions of Urantia are all good to the extent that they bring man to God and bring the realization of the Father to man. It is a fallacy for any group of religionists to conceive of their creed as The Truth; such attitudes bespeak more of theological arrogance than of certainty of faith. There is not a Urantia religion that could not profitably study and assimilate the best of the truths contained in every other faith, for all contain truth. Religionists would do better to borrow the best in their neighbors' living spiritual faith rather than to denounce the worst in their lingering superstitions and outworn rituals.

Labels: diversity, Julia Corbett-Hemeyer, Pew forum on Religion, religion, The Urantia Book

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Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Time-crunched believers find ways to squeeze in God

Jan. 7, 2009
Los Angeles Times

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

When do you ever find time for God?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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