TruthBook Religious News Blog

November 24, 2009
by Joe Palca

One hundred fifty years ago, a book appeared in England that changed the world.

Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species has been called the most important book ever written. Introducing the theory of evolution by natural selection, Darwin's book fundamentally altered how scientists look at the natural world, and continues to frame biological research today.

Since the day it appeared, the book has been controversial. But surprisingly, it may be more controversial today than when it first appeared. That's because by 1859, there had been several books on evolution published in Britain.
'On the Origin of Species' by Charles Darwin
Enlarge Courtesy of Huntington Library

The revolutionary scientific work On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin was published in 1859.
'On the Origin of Species' by Charles Darwin
Courtesy of Huntington Library

The revolutionary scientific work On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin was published in 1859.

"The most famous example being a book that came out in Victorian Britain in 1844 — an anonymous best-seller," says Jim Endersby. "It was called The Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation."

Endersby is a professor of the history of science at the University of Sussex and the author of an introduction to a commemorative edition of On the Origins of Species published by Cambridge University.

He says The Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation may have captured the popular imagination, but it was lambasted by scientists for its multiple factual errors, and by the clergy for its affront to religious dogma. Darwin's book got a much more positive reception.

"What really impressed people with Darwin's work was not so much the idea itself, but the book," says Endersby. "It was the fact that there was so much detail, so much evidence."
Of Butterflies And Mockingbirds

Watch a video of how Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace developed the theory of evolution from separate corners of the globe.(Kathleen Masterson/Joe Palca / NPR)

Reviewed By Church Of England

And it wasn't just scientists who liked the new theory. Popular history holds that the church's condemnation of Darwin was immediate and universal. Endersby says it's not that simple. For example, Endersby says Darwin sent a copy of his book to one of the leading members of the Church of England, the Rev. Charles Kingsley.

Kingsley wrote back to Darwin: "It's just as noble a conception of God to think that he created animals and plants that then evolved, that were capable of self-development, as it is to think that God has to constantly create new forms and fill in the gaps that he's left in his own creation." Clearly pleased with this comment, Darwin included it in future editions of On the Origins of Species.

Please click on "external source." This is an article that can be listened to, and there are links and videos that will also interest you.

Labels: Charles Darwin, evolution, history, Joe Palca, NPR radio

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Thursday, October 02, 2008

How religion got deep into politics

How religion got deep into politics

By John Shulson | The Virginia Gazette
October 1, 2008

WILLIAMSBURG -- Bruton Parish Episcopal Church recently launched its fall series, “The Influence of Religion on Presidential Politics,” with an overflow crowd in Lewis Hall to hear Dan Roberts speak on “America’s Vacant Public Square.”

Roberts, a true Renaissance man, is a professor of history at the University of Richmond. He’s also a Presbyterian minister, a Bronze Star Medal recipient and a jazz pianist. Roberts created the syndicated Public Radio series, “A Moment in Time,” which plays to 2 million listeners eager to resist “this growing epidemic of ignorance about the [historical] past.”

The radio program was inspired by a survey in which 78% of college seniors from 55 top universities could identify Bevis and Butthead, while only 33% could connect the dots between George Washington and Yorktown. Roberts set about to make history relevant in short radio bursts.

His thoughts concerning religion and politics date back to the founding days of our country and its disenchantment with the Church of England.

Assuredly, “Church and state were tightly locked,” he told his Bruton Parish audience, “but distrust also existed.” He recalled that the Founding Fathers rejected sectarian religion in government. “The state would not be the people’s moral salvation, and it wouldn’t seek to manage people’s lives.”

Instead, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution addressed religion in non-specific terms. “We could have created a Christian republic, but we looked west toward something new,” he said.

However, the seeds of a growing religious movement within the state were sown when the Constitution was ratified. “Evangelicals said they wanted a Bill of Rights and freedom of religion and bartered with James Madison to achieve this.”

As America began to grow into a diverse republic, the Great Awakening saw a growth in evangelical churches. Later, the immigration of many Catholics and Jews tended to undermine Protestant dominations, he said.

Roberts said presidential candidates realize “it’s dangerous to play the religious card. Candidates try to avoid making it an issue... in order not to offendcategories of people.”

Since candidates need to be careful not to make overt appeals, Roberts said, politicians resort to code language such as “family values.” He explained that “family values” can mean one thing to a couple with a child in Virginia and quite another to two men who adopt a child in Chicago.

Of the need to tread lightly in the use of religion, Roberts illustrated three candidates who traversed political minefields: Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Richard Nixon.

Even though Jefferson was accused of being a deist and the father of a child born to a slave, he refused to respond to allegations and chose to ignore the subject of religion. He decided instead to hit hard on John Adams’ position on war.

Lincoln didn’t conform to orthodox religious folks. He reacted against sectarian rivalry and even used reason and ridicule to counter aspects of the Bible. However, Lincoln eventually grew into a form of Unitarian religion, using it not in debates but in other ways. He used biblical language in fighting slavery. He could speak the religious language of the voters he needed. The result was that his humor and his personal demeanor propelled him to office even though the people didn’t share his religious beliefs.

It was Nixon, Roberts said, who started “pious presidential pandering” to play to the religious. He explained that Nixon, a Quaker, occasionally went to church, preferring to hold Sunday services in the White House. However, Nixon tended to stay away from the subject of religion.

Instead, he used overt religiosity as a code.

“Nixon’s strategy was to win the Southern white vote. Many in the South were racists and religious. He realized a direct racist appeal couldn’t be done. But he did appeal to them through the use of code phrases familiar to Southern whites such as ‘states’ rights’ and ‘law and order.’”

In drawing his extensively prepared comments to a close, Roberts returned to his theme of a town square.

“The vacant public square is under attack. Many voters calculate to use religion to determine who they’ll vote for. It’s now factored into the strategy. The fate of the public square hangs in the balance.”

Labels: Abraham Lincoln, America, church-state, Dan Roberts, history, John Shulson, politics, religion, Richard Nixon, Thomas Jefferson

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Saturday, April 19, 2008

Pope Benedict : A view from within

Published April 19, 2008 12:35 am -
By James F. Drane

An informative, interesting article. Click on "external source" to view it in its entirety.

All the attention being given to Benedict XVI in the media during his visit here provides an opportunity for Americans to learn something about the Papacy — an office that has had enormous influence, both good and bad, on Western history. Most people know who the pope is and his leadership role in the Catholic Church. But not many know much about the history of his office or its evolution over almost two millennia.

Some of the more than 200 popes who preceded Benedict in the office are remembered for their saintliness and their model leadership skills. Others are remembered for their sins and for the harms which they inflicted on the church world-wide. The enduring and scandalous fragmentation of the Christian community into Protestants and Catholics can be understood in different ways, but no historian would deny that the sins of some Renaissance popes had a powerfully destructive influence on church unity. Most 16th century Protestant reformers focused attention on examples of papal debauchery. Some fundamentalist Protestant ministers continue to tag all popes and the papal office with the adjective “satanic.” In fact, however, there were both saints and sinners among the hundreds of popes. Those who use terms like satanic to describe all holders of the papal office say more about themselves, their bigotry and prejudice than they do about the papacy.

Hope, the pope argues, is important at different stages of life. Young people need hope to be able to commit themselves to a career or to a relationship. Then at midlife, hope is needed again to be able to keep going after failures, disappointments and declining capabilities. Finally, as physical beings, we must die and leave behind anything and everything we have accomplished. Without hope in something more, human life would be defined by loss, despair and depression. With hope believers can anticipate being united with God and life eternal. Hope is the only cure for the inevitable suffering at the end of life. Societies which do not help members to handle suffering at the end are defined as cruel and inhumane. The injustices of history, the pope insists, cannot be the final word or the defining reality.

One issue which the pope refers to over and over is the necessary relationship between faith and reason, religion and science. One without the other, he argues, becomes a distortion and leads to destruction. For him, the fundamental error of our contemporary age is secularization; the attempt to replace religion and faith with salvation through science and material progress. He traces this error to the beginning of modern science (Francis Bacon) and sees Karl Marx and 20th century communism as prime examples of this error.

Unlike popes during the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries who took a negative and combative stance against the modern Enlightenment culture, Benedict cites Enlightenment heroes to make his point on the need for religion and science to remain in relationship. He cites Albert Einstein for example, who warned that “if technical progress is not matched by corresponding progress in ethical formation, then it is not progress at all but a threat.” Without religion, science is a threat. Without science and reason, religion is a threat. Benedict also cites Immanuel Kant to make the same point. Throughout the document, he cites Adorno, Bacon, Dostoevsky and Plato.

Drane is the Russell D. Roth Professor of Bioethics at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. Drane said he and Ratzinger “crossed paths” while they both studied in Rome in the late 1940s and early ’50s. A decade later, Ratzinger worked with German bishops, while Drane, a former Catholic priest, was working with Jesuit scholars who took part in creating the Second Vatican Council documents of the 1960s.

Labels: history, hope, James F. Drane, Papacy, Pope Benedict XVI, religion

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Monday, February 04, 2008

Christianity: whence and whither

BOOK REVIEW

WAYNE A. HOLST
February 2, 2008

THE CHRISTIAN WORLD

A Global History

By Martin Marty

Random House, 262 pages, $28

The Christian World: A Global History, by veteran, much-feted University of Chicago church historian Martin Marty, tackles a formidable challenge. The author sets out to present the vast Christian story, covering key themes from 2,000 years, in a rich, multilayered narrative.

This is not a typical church history in terms of perspective. Marty weaves strategic narratives from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Oceania with the "classic Christian story" written from Europe and North America. The result is a different kind of "global history" and to accomplish this in 250 pages is a real achievement. He saves the reader much time and effort having to sift through many volumes in order to gain the same results.

Neither is this primarily a book about the development of Christian thought. It focuses more on Christian deeds. Marty begins with Jesus and shows how, from the beginning, his followers sought to reflect and extend his work. Jesus, and the Christian faith that resulted from him, were formed in a Jewish ethos. Because of the unique, messianic "Jesus is Lord" confessions of his first followers, Jewish-Christian tensions quickly developed. Those stresses wax and wane over time, but they have persisted.

Christianity was born in the biblical lands of the ancient Near East and soon spread widely through Asia. Because Christianity emerged at a crossroads of humanity, its followers quickly dispersed into a variety of African and European cultures, living and sharing their faith in a great variety of ways.

Variety was both a blessing and a curse. It eventually became necessary to define clearly Christian understandings amid a confusion of interpretations. Creeds such as the Nicene (325 AD) were formulated. To identify and organize believers, ecclesiastical forms (often following familiar Roman and Greek political patterns) were created. Within three centuries, the faith had evolved from a minority Jewish sect into a growing religion on three continents.

From the start, Africa had an important influence on what constituted Christian belief. Many early challenges to the developing "orthodox" faith (like Gnosticism) were first engaged here. Then, after the seventh century, African Christianity was forced to yield much of its pride of place to Islam, an upstart rival religion. Isolated pockets of Ethiopian and Coptic believers survived as vestiges of a once more powerful Christianity. Africa was without significant Christian influence for more 1,000 years, until the arrival of colonialism and the missionaries.

Rome became the first major Christian power centre in Europe, and a rise of papal influence coincided with the decline of the Roman Empire. Soon Christianity expanded beyond that empire. In spite of its strength in Western Europe, the Roman form of the faith had grudgingly to cope with the existence of other Christian expressions, such as Orthodoxy in the east and Celtic Christianity on its western fringes.

North American Christianity was born in diversity, with mainly European roots, and it also treated its native peoples badly. Blacks, who came to North America as slaves, adopted the faith as their own and reframed it into a powerful message of liberation.

In recent times, Africa has re-emerged as a new heartland of Christianity and an important place to study its global future. The standard denominations thrive there, but a haunting question continues to be asked: "Why is Christianity better than what we had?"

Modern Asian Christianity remains a minority voice among older, revitalized eastern religions. Asian Christianity is gradually finding a natural home in the East and some of it offers the wider Christian world tested models for interfaith dialogue and peaceful co-existence with other faiths.

U.S. evangelicalism notwithstanding, stagnations characterize two-thirds of North American Christianity.

This is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that old Christianities appear to be losing ground while Christian populations explode in new places. The faith has an intriguing habit of going into decline, then surging unexpectedly. China is a contemporary example of this.

Conversely, Christian ascendancy should not be assumed as if by right. Africa and Latin America provide examples of early growth followed by subsequent decline and later recovery.

Marty ends his historical survey with a brief reflection on the future and poses the query: "Now what?"

Many modern devotees seek a humbler, more peaceful and inclusive faith than in the past. They see this as reflecting the spirit of its founder.

Christian numbers have remained steady at about one-third of humanity for more than a century. "Irrepressible" is a good, descriptive term, Marty says as he looks for signs of hope.

Christianity, with all its frustrating contradictions and splendid diversity, has existed for two millennia. It is not going away. More than two billion people claim this faith today. Among them is evidence that the appealing spirit of Jesus lives on.

Wayne A. Holst teaches at the University of Calgary and at St. David's United Church in that city.

Labels: book review, Christianity, history, Martin Marty, Wayne A. Holst