TruthBook Religious News Blog

by Paul Sunstone
Sunday, July 05, 2009

Lately, I’ve been wondering whether some religions — some forms of Christianity in particular — retard people’s moral growth.

Of course, it would be ironic if it turned out Christianity retarded people’s moral growth since many Christians seem to believe they have a monopoly on morals. But nonsense like that one aside, I’ve been wondering if some religions don’t for the most part do exactly the opposite of what they boast of doing. That is, instead of promoting our moral growth, they actually discourage it.

I have a little story that might illustrate the point. Some long time ago when I was attending university, I had a three or four male friends from the Middle East. Nothing in their own countries had prepared them for the sight of “half-naked” American women. My friends would ask me how I and other American males managed to contain ourselves with so many of our American women walking around “half-naked”.

I was sympathetic to their problem. It seemed to me the ordeal they were describing was something I myself had gone through. But not, like them, at 19 and 20. Instead, I had gone through much the same thing at puberty — that time in the life of males when everything female turns electric.

Yet, there was a difference between myself and my friends. I had gone through puberty in a culture that told me girls have a right to go around “half-naked”, and that, if there was a problem with it, it was my problem. My culture forced me to psychologically adapt to the sight of female thighs and cleavage. And, before I was 19, I was reasonably well adapted.

This is an opinion piece with some thoughtful ideas. Please click on "external source" for the complete article.

Labels: culture, men, morality, Paul Sunstone, religion

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Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Happiness is ...

Published: January 07, 2009
By Jeff Mullin, Commentary

According to the Web site usa.gov, the most popular New Year’s resolutions are to lose weight, manage debt, save money, get a better job, get fit, eat right, get a better education, drink less alcohol, quit smoking, reduce stress overall, reduce stress at work, take a trip and volunteer to help others.

One that is glaringly absent from that list is a simple one, to be happy.

That, of course, begs the question, what makes you happy?

There were, as of Tuesday morning, 6,752,062,211 people on this planet, give or take three or four. Ask each one their definition of happiness and you would likely get 6.7 billion different answers.

Some people say being rich would make them happy, or being thin. But what about all those skinny millionaires on anti-depressants?

One thing happy people don’t do, according to researchers, is watch television.

John Robinson, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, has authored a study that says unhappy people watch more television than happy folks do.

2008 was not a happy year for many Americans, it seems. A group called Precision Opinion polled 1,385 Americans just before the end of the year and found 32 percent of respondents said their personal level of happiness dropped during the year.

That might relate back to watching television. The average American, according to Nielsen Media Research, watches 142 hours of television a month. That’s eight hours and 18 minutes per day, up an hour a day from a decade ago.

In the Precision Opinion poll, men were found to be less happy than women, Democrats (despite the results of November’s election) were unhappier than Republicans and those older than 51 were unhappier than younger people.

Of course, this was a telephone survey, so perhaps these people were simply unhappy about being called away from doing something that makes them happy, like watching TV.

On a side note, it is not really correct to say you are feeling blue if you are especially unhappy, since the color blue, according to a study by English scientists, makes us happy.

Happiness, no matter the color, is apparently contagious. Another recent study has found we can catch happiness from others. On average, according to the study co-authored by researchers from the University of California, San Diego, and Harvard, every happy person in your social network increases your own chance of being happy by 9 percent. And the happiness bug is hard to kill, it seems. The researchers say the effects of catching happiness from someone else can last up to one year.

Even being around a happy stranger can do more to lift one’s spirits, according to this study, than receiving a $5,000 raise. I am perfectly willing to accept a $5,000 raise simply to test this theory, in case my bosses are reading this.

How do you define happiness? The author of “Human Happiness — Its Nature and its Attainment,” Michael Fordyce, lists these traits of happy people.

Happy people, he says, are social and productive. Happy people have a healthy self-image and have flexible goals. Happy people are optimistic, but also realistic. Happy people are motivated, focused and socially adept. Happy people are content with their successes. Happy people were raised in positive, nurturing and safe environments.

In a poll of British women, those who said they were happiest were those who wore a size 14. A poll of Russians found happiness one of the prime wishes for the new year, along with finding a new job and staying healthy.

Americans used to be urged to “Be Like Mike,” while in India people want to be like Sachin Tendulkar. Tendulkar, a cricket star, was voted India’s No. 1 role model of health and happiness in a nationwide survey.

In the aforementioned Precision Opinion survey, 64 percent of Americans surveyed were happy to see 2009 come, convinced the new year would be a happy one for them. I hope they are right.

Labels: happiness, Jeff Mullin, men, Precision Opinion, Sachin Tendulkar, women

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Friday, August 15, 2008

Faith leaders reach out to get men in the pews

Faith leaders reach out to get men in the pews
By Teri Greene

Women are the majority in 21 of 25 Christian denominations, according to the recent U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, and some local pastors say they see those statistics reflected in their own churches. And while it affects the congregation, it hits families especially hard.

Some area churches are doing everything they can to encourage the presence of men in the sanctuary and in the community as outreach volunteers.
A new approach

Nationwide, many churches are brainstorming new ways to bring in the men.

One simple difference

A basic difference in the way men and women see themselves, as people and as members of the faith community, could be the factor behind the under-represented male population in many churches, some pastors say.

Many pastors acknowledge this difference between the genders when it comes to religion.

Sixty-two percent of those who attend church regularly as adults say that as children they went to church with both parents, according to a new survey of 1,007 adults by Ellison Research, a market research firm in Phoenix. If only one parent went to church -- usually the mom -- the likelihood of the adult regularly attending dropped to 50 percent. If neither parent took them to church, 33 percent now attend.

Women can have a key role in turning the negative trend around - or at least finding ways to compensate for it -- said Katrina Todd, public relations director at Pilgrim Rest. As a woman whose husband often has to work Sundays, Todd sees how problems can easily arise.

"I think sometimes our roles get reversed, because the men are taking on more hours at work and the women pick up the slack and do what's needed," she said.
Finding 'home'

But sometimes, it's more complicated, Todd said.

"I have spoken with some female friends and sometimes it's an issue of, they can't come to a common ground of the denomination, so the mom just decides, 'I'm going to go on with this denomination,'" taking the children with her and leaving dad at home.

Hoomes said it may just be a matter of whether the man is receptive to the church his wife and family are attending.

"My experience has been that churches appeal to individuals based on their own preference and past experiences," said Hoomes, adding that men of all ages serve in leadership positions at First Baptist. "Our pastor, Dr. Jay Wolf, describes worship styles like restaurants, different choices to meet different needs."

Todd's advice for women facing this dilemma: "Just encourage your husband and decide you will go to church wherever you feel the spirit together," she said. "Say, 'Let's make this decision as a family. What's going to be the best church to fulfill our needs? What has the best ministries - for youth or marriage, or whatever we need? Let's go out and research together and find out what's going to work for the family.'"

The way the church sees men is an important factor, said Gilbert, who acknowledges that the number of men in his congregation has begun to grow.

"We're not focusing on how bad they are," Gilbert said of church members in men's ministries. "We're saying, 'What can we do to better equip you to deal with the pressures of being a father or husband?'"

He said increasingly popular culture is bashing men, and that needs to be reversed.

"Men are saying, 'At what point do I feel welcome?' Here, we have somebody helping men to improve," Gilbert said. "Women have led us, carrying the household, doing more than they were called to do. Men need to go further, to step back and take their rightful place, becoming leaders in their households."

Labels: Christianity, church, men, religion, U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, women

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Friday, January 04, 2008

Women and religion

By BONNIE ERBE

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

It is easy to see why women suffer less anxiety when they are active in religious organizations. Women most often make up the backbones of their churches/temples/mosques, even though most major religions exclude them from leadership. Clearly women derive much from their participation or they would not take part. What is harder to understand is why men do not enjoy similar benefits from these affiliations or why there's such a marked gender difference on this issue.

A new study produced by Temple University's Joanna Maselko, Sc.D., and published in Science Daily magazine and sciencedaily.com, revealed the following results. Women who were active in organized religious communities (churches, synagogues, mosques, etc.) and who later became disengaged were more than three times more likely to suffer generalized anxiety and alcohol abuse/dependence than women who reported "always having been active."

"Conversely, men who stopped being religiously active were less likely to suffer major depression when compared to men who had always been religiously active."

Gender differences in medicine are now widely proven. Women get certain diseases more or less frequently than men, have different reactions to drugs, fare better with certain types of surgery and (of course) have different hormones than do men. It's no mystery that a whole field of medicine has arisen during the past two decades to study and treat men and women differently.

It's less apparent why religious affiliation would impact men and women so differently. I'm a big believer in mind over matter. We've all heard about cancer patients who outlived doctors' expectations by a matter of years. We all know terrific "fighters" who braved the odds and took on their illnesses, while others succumbed quickly to them. But victors and the vanquished are represented in both genders.

What makes religion so much more of an antidepressant and anti-anxiety agent for women? Are women better, more fervent believers than men? According to legendary stereotype, men are more practical, less emotional and more realistic than women. (I'm not saying I buy into these stereotypes -- I merely raise them as common assumptions.) Do these putative attributes make women less susceptible to religion, less religious than men?

It was after all a man (Karl Marx) who, however discredited he may have been on other fronts, wrote, "Religion is the opium of the people."

The study's author offers an entirely different potential explanation for these gender differences. Dr. Maselko is quoted as saying, "Women are simply more integrated into the social networks of their religious communities. When they stop attending religious services, they lose access to that network and all its potential benefits. Men may not be as integrated into the religious community in the first place and so may not suffer the negative consequences of leaving."

While she may be right, her explanation makes two assumptions, one of which may be wrong and the other of which is controversial. The first, that when women stop going to church they lose touch with the social networks they formed while going, may be wrong. The second, more controversial, is that the "social networking" women take part in at church, rather than their actual belief in God, that decreases their anxiety and depression levels and improves their health. It would be far less controversial to presume most religious women would attribute their improved mental health to their belief system and to their faith, rather than to their church-based support networks.

It is also counterintuitive on at least one level to believe that men derive less from church-going than do women. Men occupy the loftiest positions in church hierarchy, decide church doctrine and interpret religious law. More importantly most believers see God as a male form.

Wouldn't men then also get more out of church-going than women?

And yet experts say no. Clearly we're from different planets.

(Bonnie Erbe is a TV host and writes this column for Scripps Howard News Service. E-mail bonnieerbe(at)CompuServe.com.)

Labels: anxiety, Bonnie Erbe, men, religion, Science Daily, Temple University, women

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Wednesday, October 24, 2007

UF study: Men more traditional than women about marriage, children

October 24, 2007.
GAINESVILLE, Fla.

Women view childlessness much more favorably than men do, likely because parenting places greater demands on mothers, especially those juggling work and family responsibilities, a new University of Florida study finds.

Parenthood has very different consequences for women compared with men, said Tanya Koropeckyj-Cox, a UF sociologist whose study is published in the November issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family.

The study also found women to be less optimistic about the benefits and permanence of marriage. Women were more likely than men to disagree or give neutral responses to such statements as “it is better to marry than to remain single” and “marriage is for life.”

“The results suggest that women regard both childbearing and marriage as being less central and more optional in women’s lives,” Koropeckyj-Cox said. “Because opportunities for women have changed more rapidly than they have for men over the last 30 years, and with it women’s lives, their attitudes may have also changed in ways that reflect new options and challenges. Women may be asking more questions about whether everyone needs to follow the same path.”

The study of 11,043 adults 25 and older uses data from the 1980s and mid-1990s that were part of two large-scale surveys, the National Survey of Families and Households and the General Social Survey. It assessed attitudes about childlessness by asking such questions as whether “it is better to have a child than to remain childless” and whether “the main purpose of marriage these days is to have children.”

The study found that white women were most accepting of childlessness, followed by black women. Men, regardless of race, were least accepting. Among whites, women were twice as likely as men to have favorable impressions.

The gap in attitudes was particularly wide between college-educated men and women of childbearing age, Koropeckyj-Cox said. Men in this group were the least accepting of childlessness of any group in the study, she said.

Positive attitudes toward childlessness also were greater among young and middle-aged adults. Within this age group, women were nearly 80 percent more likely than men to report favorable attitudes toward childlessness, the study found.

Among religious groups, the study found that Baptists and Jews were least likely to support childlessness, while fundamentalist Protestants and Catholics were not significantly different from other Protestants or those reporting no religion.

Receptiveness to childlessness has increased since the 1970s, with Americans waiting longer to become parents, Koropeckyj-Cox said. The average age of first-time mothers is now over 25, and more than a quarter of adults remain childless into their 30s, she said.

Kathleen Gerson, a sociology professor at New York University and author of the book “Hard Choices: How Women Decide About Work, Career and Motherhood,” said Koropeckyj-Cox’s “important findings make it clear that changes in women’s lives are here to stay. While it may seem surprising that women view childlessness more favorably than men, her study should prompt us to jettison our lingering stereotypes and focus instead on helping contemporary women — and men — blend work with parenting.”

Labels: children, Journal of Marriage and Family, marriage, men, Tanya Koropeckyj-Cox, University of Florida, women