TruthBook Religious News Blog

Mail Foreign Service
22nd June 2009

Nearly two-thirds of teenagers don't believe in God and think that reality television is far more important than religion, new research has revealed.

The survey showed that 66 per cent of teens do not believe a deity exists while 50 per cent have never prayed and 16 per cent have never been to church.

Teenagers rated family, friends, money, music and even reality TV shows above faith.
Children from a London school take part in a service at Westminster Abbey: The numbers of teenagers who believe in God has dwindled

Children from a London school take part in a service at Westminster Abbey: The numbers of teenagers who believe in God has dwindled

Other statistics which emerged from the report included:

* 59 per cent of children believed religion has had a negative influence on the world
* 60 per cent only go to church for a wedding or christening
* Only 30 per cent of teenagers think there is an afterlife...
* ... while 10 per cent believe in reincarnation
* 47 per cent said organised religion had no place in the world
* 60 per cent don't believe Religious Studies should be compulsory in schools
* However, 91 per cent agreed they should treat others the way they wished to be treated themselves

Please click on "external source" for the complete article...the one bright spot - the overwhelming percentage of these teens do believe in some form of the "Golden Rule..."

Labels: church, God, prayer, Reality TV, religion, teenagers

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Can Science and Religion Co-Exist in Harmony?

June 22, 2009

Some of the nation's leading journalists gathered in Key West, Fla., in May 2009 for the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life's Faith Angle Conference on religion, politics and public life.

Francis S. Collins, the former director of the Human Genome Project and an evangelical Christian, discussed why he believes religion and science are compatible and why the current conflict over evolution vs. faith, particularly in the evangelical community, is unnecessary.

Barbara Bradley Hagerty, the religion correspondent for National Public Radio, discussed how the brain reacts to spiritual experiences and her belief that people can look at scientific evidence and conclude that everything is explained by material means or look at the universe and see the hand of God.

Speaker: Francis S. Collins, Former Director, National Human Genome Research Institute

Respondent: Barbara Bradley Hagerty, Religion Correspondent, National Public Radio

Moderator: Michael Cromartie, Vice President, Ethics and Public Policy Center;

Senior Adviser, Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

In the following excerpt ellipses have been omitted to facilitate reading. Read the full transcript, including audience discussion at pewforum.org.

FRANCIS COLLINS: I'll spend most of the time [today] talking about the current conflict that appears, at least in this country, to be a rather unpleasant one, where the voices that are arguing that science and faith are incompatible are actually quite loud -- even shrill at times. I'll offer up from my own perspective why that conflict is an unnecessary one and provide some possibilities of how it might be resolved in a way that I think would be good for our future...

Please click on "external source" to read the entire article, and also, to access the full transcript of this most insightful and important discussion regarding the compatibility of science and religion.

Labels: Barbara Bradley Hagerty, faith, Francis Collins, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, religion, science

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

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...

Please click on "external source" for the complete article.

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

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, June 19, 2009

Brain waves or beatific vision?

Tue, Jun. 16, 2009

Mystical experiences under the microscope
By David O'Reilly

Inquirer Staff Writer

As mystical experiences go, Barbara Bradley Hagerty's transcendent moment was not the kind that launches a new world religion. Still, it changed her forever.

The day was June 10, 1995. Hagerty, religion reporter for National Public Radio, was interviewing a terminally ill melanoma patient, Kathy, whose sunny outlook and trust in Jesus seemed to have prolonged her life, inexplicably, for years.

Then, as they talked, "I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand on end," Hagerty writes in her new book, Fingerprints of God, a survey of modern scientific investigation into religious experience.

"The air grew warmer and heavier, as if someone had moved into the circle [of lamplight] and was breathing on us. I glanced at Kathy." She, too, felt something and had "fallen silent in mid-sentence."

"I felt an unseen caress, engulfed by a presence I could feel but not touch," Hagerty continues. "I was paralyzed. . . . After a minute, although it seemed longer, the presence melted away."

What was it she sensed? Jesus? An angelic being? Or, as one researcher later suggested, had the temporal lobe of her brain been briefly hyperstimulated? This, he told her, likely induced the illusion of an unseen presence.

Whatever it was, it proved the "continental divide in my life," Hagerty said during a recent interview. "I decided I should investigate, the way we journalists do."

Her investigation grew into Fingerprints of God, a lucid overview of an essential question: Is mystical experience truly a glimpse of the divine, the eternal, the absolute? Or are the seemingly transformative moments known variously as "enlightenment" or "beatific vision" or cosmic bliss merely swells and quells in brain activity, signifying nothing beyond ourselves?

Please click on "external source" for the complete article.

Labels: Barbara Bradley Hagerty, brain, David O'Reilly, God, religion, science, transcendence

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

This is your brain on religion - OpEd

Faith can bring out the best in people (love, generosity, compassion) — and the worst (fear, hatred, violence). Whether people are the former or the latter depends on how they view the God they worship.

By Andrew Newberg

When I was in high school, I dated a girl whose family regarded themselves as "born-again" Christians. It was my first encounter with devoutly religious people who strongly disagreed with my perspective on faith. They were always pleasant to me, but they were quite clear that in their view I had deeply sinned by not turning to Jesus. Oh, and because of this, I was going to hell.

It's tough enough being a teenager, but this was too much. The family's judgment disturbed me on two levels. First, I didn't like the thought of going to hell, but at the same time, their beliefs also challenged me to evaluate my own beliefs vigorously.

Distress and anxiety followed, and I realized that this was the first time that I had ever experienced such strong negative feelings about religion. And 30 years later, this episode still resonates as I conduct extensive research on religious practices and beliefs and their impact on the human person.

The research that I have come across, if not definitive, seems clear: Religion and spiritual practices generally have a positive effect on one's physical, emotional and neurological health. People who engage in religious activities tend to cope better with emotional problems, have fewer addictions and better overall health. They might even live longer than those who lead more secular lives. Indeed, many studies document that religious and spiritual individuals find more meaning in life.

Our studies at Penn's Center for Spirituality and the Mind (in conjunction with colleague Mark Waldman) of the effects of different spiritual practices, such as meditation and prayer, also reveal significant improvements in memory, cognition and compassion while simultaneously reducing anxiety, depression, irritability and stress (even when done in a non-theological context). One might come to the conclusion, then, that being religious or spiritual is a good thing. Perhaps God is great.

But not so fast. We also discovered that religion's influence on people depends very much on how they view their God.

Please click on "external source" for the complete article

Labels: Andrew Newberg, God, mind, religion, spirituality

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Are some churches going overboard in their attempts to package and market religion?

By JEFF STRICKLER, Star Tribune
June 13, 2009

A Church Is A Business

Eyes roll when Rabbi Hayim Herring tells his fellow clergy that they should spend an hour a day on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.

Listeners at his seminars exchange smirks when he says blogging should be considered mandatory. They look aghast when he recommends posting short video clips from their sermons on YouTube.

It's a lot better than the reaction he used to get.

"They used to look at me as if I'd just said a four-letter word," said Herring, the former senior rabbi at Beth El Synagogue in St. Louis Park and now the executive director of STAR (Synagogues: Transformation and Renewal). But in its seven years, the organization has seen more converts to what many call one of the dirtiest words in religion: marketing.

Please click on "external source for the complete article

Labels: Facebook, Jeff Strickler, marketing, MySpace, religion, Twitter, YouTube

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Saturday, June 13, 2009

OBITUARIES: Thomas Berry dies at 94; cultural historian became a leading thinker on religion and the environment

Thomas Berry saw Earth’s ecological crisis as essentially a crisis of the spirit.
Described as an 'eco-theologian,' he was an early advocate of the notion that Earth's ecological crisis was basically a crisis of the spirit.

By Jon Thurber
June 13, 2009

Thomas Berry, a cultural historian and specialist in Asian religions who in his later life became a leading thinker on religion and the environment, has died. He was 94.

Berry died June 1 at the Well-Spring Retirement Community in Greensboro, N.C., according to an announcement on his website. The cause of death was not reported, but Berry was known to have been in failing health in recent years after suffering two strokes.

Described by Newsweek magazine in the late 1980s as "the most provocative figure among the new breed of eco-theologians," Berry was an early advocate of the notion that Earth's ecological crisis was basically a crisis of the spirit.

"Thomas Berry contributed to the realization in our times that environmental issues are more than science or policy. They are also issues of the spirit," said Mary Evelyn Tucker, who with her husband, John Grim, heads the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology and directs the Thomas Berry Foundation. "How well we respond to the planetary challenges that face us now will be determined by our ability to form an Earth community with a common future for all species."

Calling the universe God's "primary revelation," Berry wrote in his book "The Dream of the Earth" that "the natural world is the larger sacred community to which we all belong." In his view, Earth's natural elements -- trees, forests, mountains -- had as much right to exist as humans. "We bear the universe in our being even as the universe bears us in its being."

Please click on "external source" for the complete article.

Labels: eco-theology, environmentalism, God, Jon Thurber, religion, the universe, Thomas Berry

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Citizen of the world: a brief survey of the life and times of Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

By Ann Talbot
8 June 2009

In the winter of 1788, a small team of men were building a bridge across the river Don in Rotherham. The fact that before Christmas a stream of distinguished visitors had been to see the construction was an indication that this was no ordinary bridge and its designer was no ordinary engineer. Leading the project was Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense and The American Crisis, which had been read to Washington’s soldiers before the Battle of Trenton on Christmas Day 1776.

"These are the times that try men’s souls," it began, "The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph." This was Tom Paine, the friend of Washington and Jefferson, Tom Paine, citizen of the world.

This is a rather lengthy article, worth a full reading. Towards the end, this paragraph caught my attention, and I know that Urantia Book reader/believers will find it most interesting - indeed, a man ahead of his time...:

"From the time I was capable of conceiving an idea," he writes, "and acting upon it by reflection, I either doubted the truth of the Christian system or thought it to be a strange affair; I scarcely knew which it was, but I well remember, when about seven or eight years of age, hearing a sermon read by a relation of mine, who was a great devotee of the Church, upon the subject of what is called redemption by the death of the Son of God. After the sermon was ended, I went into the garden, and as I was going down the garden steps (for I perfectly recollect the spot) I revolted at the recollection of what I had heard, and thought to myself that it was making God Almighty act like a passionate man, that killed his son when he could not revenge himself in any other way, and as I was sure a man would be hanged that did such a thing, I could not see for what purpose they preached such sermons. This was not one of that kind of thoughts that had anything in it of childish levity; it was to me a serious reflection, arising from the idea I had that God was too good to do such an action, and also too almighty to be under any necessity of doing it. I believe in the same manner at this moment; and I moreover believe, that any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system."

Please click on "external source" for the complete article

Labels: American revolution, Ann Talbot, Common Sense, religion, Thomas Paine

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Sunday, June 07, 2009

Obama's Challenge to the Muslim World

by Feisal Abdul Rauf

The historic significance of President Obama's speech to the Muslim world in Cairo cannot be overstated. Never before has an American president spoken to the global Muslim community. His speech marked a major shift in American foreign policy. Obama directly enlisted a religion to build global peace and to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, end nuclear proliferation and stop terrorism.

In just a few sentences he demolished the phony theory of the "Clash of Civilizations," which insists that Islam and the West must always be in conflict. Instead, he declared the United States is not at war with Islam and outlined a plan for how the conflict can be resolved.

Perhaps most important, he put religion at the core of the peacemaking process. For too long, Americans had come to fear Islam as an intolerant, violent religion. Obama cited examples from the Quran that belied those stereotypes. He emphasized the core similarities among Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

"Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism," he said. "It is an important part of promoting peace."

Please click on "external source" for the complete article

Labels: Feisal Abdul Rauf, Islam, Muslims, peacemaking, President Obama, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Americans shift spiritual playlists of soul

Trend reveals many crafting their own paths from range of religions

By Peter Smith

People are downloading various spiritual practices, without regard for the integrity of the whole, just as they download individual tunes rather than the whole CD.

That's according to a provocative recent essay by Clark Strand, a former Zen monk and Buddhist journalist.

I thought about this trend as I was preparing this week's article on the generational challenges to American Buddhism.

I reported on the little-recognized trend that for all the cachet Buddhism may have in popular culture, this religion has lost a higher percentage of its young than virtually any other religious category in America.

At the same time, most Buddhists are converts, so it's been welcoming droves of people through the front door even as it loses many kids through the back door.

In response, Buddhists have worked at cultivating youth involvement at events such as the recent celebration of the Buddha's birthday at Ten Thousand Buddhas Summit Monastery in Harrison County, Ind.

The larger influence of Buddhism on larger American society is clear. Many people practice meditation techniques that are at least partly derived from Buddhist practice, even if they don't formally convert.

And as often happens in America's competitive spiritual marketplace, the popularity of one spiritual practice is prompting other religions to get theirs in shape. The spread of Eastern-based meditation has prompted Christians and Jews to dust off their own neglected mystical practices, such as in the Benedictine and Kabalistic traditions.

This is only a portion of a two-page article. Please click on "external source" for the complete article.

Labels: Buddhism, Clark Strand, Peter Smith, religion, spiritual practices

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, June 05, 2009

A window into the faith of religion reporters

By Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY

Faith celebrated. Faith lost. Faith inspected and detected, from neurological research to relics of saints venerated in exotic shrines.

USA TODAY religion reporter Cathy Lynn Grossman talks to four journalists who, drawn to write about religion, make their explorations personal in their new books.

Please click on "external source" to read these interesting interviews with Barbara Bradley Hagerty, Peter Manseau, Cathleen Falsani, and William Lobdell, religion journalists.

Labels: Barbara Bradley Hagerty, Cathleen Falsani, Cathy Lynn Grossman, Peter Manseau, religion, William Lobdell

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Merciful storekeeper changes robber's mind, religion

From Kiran Khalid

NEW YORK (CNN) -- A potential victim became a compassionate counselor during a recent robbery attempt, changing the would-be criminal's mind -- and apparently his religion.

Storekeeper Mohammad Sohail was closing up his Long Island convenience store just after midnight on May 21 when -- as shown on the store's surveillance video -- a man came in wielding a baseball bat and demanding money.

"He said, 'Hurry up and give me the money, give me the money!' and I said, 'Hold on'," Sohail recalled in a phone interview with CNN on Tuesday, after the store video and his story was carried on local TV.

Sohail said he reached under the counter, grabbed his gun and told the robber to drop the bat and get down on his knees.

"He's crying like a baby," Sohail said. "He says, 'Don't call police, don't shoot me, I have no money, I have no food in my house.' "

Amidst the man's apologies and pleas, Sohail said he felt a surge of compassion.

He made the man promise never to rob anyone again and when he agreed, Sohail gave him $40 and a loaf of bread.

Labels: compassion, Kiran Khalid, religion, robbery

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Modern Religion’s Missing Ingredient

2 June 2009

With all that traditional religions have done over the centuries to build and mold societies and cultures, they find them self at an impasse. Their appeal to the masses must switch to the individual and they are lacking one key ingredient.

What could this one missing ingredient be? Urantia Book readers will relate to this article, and likely will agree that this missing ingredient will oneday transform our world, if achieved. Please click oin "external source for the complete article.

Labels: God consciousness, Pete Latona, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Monday, May 25, 2009

Spiritual Medicine: Bridging the Gap Between Religion and Psychology

By Gale Bataille and Bill Berkowitz
May 22, 2009

Activists and advocates have launched an initiative to further the understanding of the role of religion and spirituality in mental health. Conferences next month will bring clergy and mental health workers together to break new ground.
The wall at the Quaker-founded York Retreat, founded in 1796. Image courtesy imago

Historically, religion and mental health issues have had an uneasy relationship—and it goes both ways: people with mental illness have long faced stigma in religious communities, and mental health professionals have, for the most part, been suspicious of religion.

Mental health professionals are often trained to bracket out a patient’s religion in the name of professional boundaries, and have been encouraged to consider religion in the context of a medical model that can view spiritual beliefs as potential psychiatric symptoms. As psychologist David Lukoff explains:

This tendency, representing a form of cultural insensitivity, can be traced back to the roots of psychoanalysis as well as behaviorism and cognitive therapy. Freud saw religion as “a universal obsessional neurosis,” Skinner ignored religious experience, and Ellis viewed religion as equivalent to irrational thinking and emotional disturbance. Similarly, spiritual experiences have been viewed as evidence of psychopathology.

But the understanding of the role of religion and spirituality in mental health is changing. The California Mental Health and Spirituality Initiative (which grew out of a grassroots movement founded by activist and advocate Jay Mahler and other consumers, family members, and service providers) was established in June 2008 at the Center for Multicultural Development at the California Institute for Mental Health to advocate for the “inclusion of spirituality as a potential resource in mental health recovery and wellness.”

In advance of two upcoming California Conferences on Mental Health and Spirituality I had the opportunity to interview the initiative’s Director, the Rev. Laura Mancuso, along with Jay Mahler.

Please click on "external source" to read the entire interview.

Labels: Bill Berkowitz, Gale Bataille, Jay Mahler, mental health, religion, Rev. Laura Mancuso, spirituality

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, May 22, 2009

Book Review: " Fingerprints of God"

NPR reporter Barbara Bradley Hagerty uses journalism’s tools to explore the intersection of spirituality and science.
By Gregory M. Lamb | May 19, 2009 edition

Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality By Barbara Bradley Hagerty Riverheard Books 323 pp., $33.50

Using the reporting and explanatory skills of a talented veteran journalist, Barbara Bradley Hagerty has written a compelling account of her quest to answer an age-old question: Is this all there is?

The result is Fingerprints of God, a book that sails the roiling waters between religion and science and is unlikely to make quick friends among either evangelical Christians or those in the scientific community who conclude that God cannot exist. But for readers who consider themselves to be spiritual seekers, Hagerty treads some fascinating territory.

Rather than dismissing science as the enemy of spirituality, she engages with it, seeking out scientific pioneers, the outliers who are doing intriguing work on the nature of the brain and consciousness. She also talks with ordinary people who’ve had extraordinary personal encounters, such as near-death or out-of-body experiences, that have changed their views of themselves, reality, and on the existence of an afterlife.

Hagerty, the religion correspondent for National Public Radio, comes to a less-than-startling conclusion: Science can neither prove nor disprove these great questions. But she also sees hints of a “paradigm shift” in science now under way – akin, perhaps, to the early 20th century when the work of Einstein and others took a quantum leap away from a universe based solely on 18th-century Newtonian physics.

“Hard science does not mean petrified science,” Hagerty posits. “The paradigm to exclude a divine intelligence, or ‘Other,’ or ‘God,’ to reduce all things to matter, has reigned triumphant for some four hundred years, since the dawn of the Age of Reason,” she continues. “Today, a small yet growing number of scientists are trying to chip away at the paradigm, suspecting that its feet are made of clay.”

Please click on "external source" for complete article.

Labels: Barbara Bradley Hagerty, God, Gregory M. Lamb, religion, science, spirituality

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

'God Is Back' tracks a religious surge in an age of science

By Hanna Rosin

New York Times
Posted: 05/14/2009

Not that long ago, great minds predicted a future with little or no religion.

Science would make us highly skeptical of miracles. Psychiatry would direct all of our awe and wonder inward. Changing roles for women would weaken the patriarchal structure that props up clerics. Whatever script for modernity one followed, it had God playing a bit role.

It didn't happen that way. Modernity arrived and improvised new starring roles for God. The Americans led the way by becoming both "the quintessentially modern country" and a very devout one, write John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge in their new book, "God Is Back," and most of the world has followed that model.

In rich countries and poorer ones, democratic and undemocratic, primarily Islamic and primarily Christian — everywhere, basically, except Europe — devotion to God is robust.

This is a review of the book "God is Back." Please click on "external source" for the complete article.

Labels: Adrian Wooldridge, God, Hanna Rosin, John Micklethwait, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, May 08, 2009

New Web Site Aims to Change the Way Americans Talk about Religion and Spirituality

First-of-its-kind site Patheos.com launches today to provide an open forum to explore, experience and engage in religious and spiritual beliefs and discussion

DENVER, May 5 /PRNewswire/ -- A new Web site designed to meet the growing online demand for credible, engaging information on religion and spirituality will launch today. Patheos.com (www.Patheos.com) aims to be the premier online destination for engaging in the global dialogue about religion and spirituality, and to explore and experience the world's beliefs. According to the Pew Internet Project, nearly 82 million Americans use the Web for faith-related reasons, pointing to the need for a credible and comprehensive online religious and spiritual destination.

Husband-and-wife entrepreneurs, parents and 20-year Web technology veterans, Leo and Cathie Brunnick were inspired to develop Patheos in 2008 when they married and were unable to find a credible, comprehensive online resource to provide guidance when blending two families from different religious backgrounds.

"With the launch of Patheos, we hope to provide access to a resource unlike any other on the Web, dedicated to providing religious and spiritual information and most importantly, constructive and meaningful dialogue," said Leo Brunnick, Patheos co-founder and CEO. "We've seen too much disrespectful, unconstructive dialogue about a topic that's important to many Americans. It's time to change the way we talk about religion, and Patheos can be the catalyst to help create this positive change."

In addition to the Public Square, Patheos visitors will find a unique variety of resources and applications...

Patheos is open to all visitors and does not support, endorse or promote any one religion, but strives to engage those of all beliefs and elevate the level of dialogue in the U.S. around important spiritual and religious topics.

To find out much more about Patheos.com, its founders and its features, please click on "external source"

Labels: Patheos.com, religion, spirituality, websites

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Why so many Americans switch religions

A new Pew survey suggests that many Catholics leave their church because of doctrine, whereas Protestants tend to leave because of life changes such as marriage.

By Jane Lampman | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the April 27, 2009 edition

America is a country on the move in innumerable ways, and religion is no exception. Half of Americans have changed their religious denomination at least once in their lives – many several times – and 28 percent have switched faiths altogether (for example, from Christianity to Judaism). Amid this fluidity, the number of "unaffiliated" adults has grown to 16 percent of the population.

What is behind such extraordinary "churn" in US religious life? As a follow-up to its pathbreaking 2007 survey of the American religious landscape, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released a new survey Monday – "Faith in Flux" – that explores in depth the patterns and reasons for such remarkable change.

Most people who switch their allegiance during their lifetime, the survey finds, leave their childhood faith while they are still young, before the age of 24. Yet the opportunities for attracting them to another religion appear to continue for some time.

The reasons for leaving differ according to the origin and destination of the convert. Roman Catholics, for instance, tend to leave because they don't accept certain church teachings. Those Protestants who switch denominations do so more often in response to life changes such as relocation or marriage, or because of dislikes about institutions or practices.

While 56 percent of US adults remain in their childhood faith, 16 percent left, joined another house of worship at least once, and then returned to their original fold.

Of those raised Protestant, 80 percent remain so, with 52 percent still in their childhood denomination. Twenty-eight percent have moved to another Protestant following, 13 percent are now unaffiliated, 3 percent have become Catholic, and 4 percent joined other faiths.

Of those raised Catholic, 68 percent remain in the faith, 15 percent are now Protestant, 14 percent unaffiliated, and 3 percent in other faiths.

As several polls have shown, the "unaffiliated" is the fastest growing group in the past two decades. Yet the Pew survey shows this group to be very diverse, and often serving as a way station for many still seeking a religion.

While about 40 percent in this group say they don't believe in God, another 40 percent say religion is somewhat important in their lives, and roughly one-third say they just haven't found the right religion yet.

Please click on "external source" to access the complete article, which provides the survey results in more detail.

Labels: America, faith, Faith in Flux, Jane Lampman, Pew Religion and Public Life Survey, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Double Helix: Religion Requires Memory; Memory-Killing Drugs Inspire Big Questions

Double Helix: Religion Requires Memory; Memory-Killing Drugs Inspire Big Questions
By Arri Eisen
May 1, 2009

A host of experimental new drugs interfere with the process of creating memory, promising to help combat sufferers, addicts and others. But if memory is required for the creation of ethics (and religion) and indeed in the formation of who we are, what effect might these drugs have on our identities?
Magic bullet?

Surely you remember Total Recall, the hugely successful 1990 film starring California’s current governor and based on the great Philip K. Dick short story?

But what just happened when you tried to remember whether you remember it?

What if I could block that memory, or insert another one in its place (as happens in the story)?

Todd Sacktor at SUNY Downstate Medical Center is working on the most recent example of a drug that might have been plucked directly from science fiction. When he injects the drug into rats who have learned (that is, retained the memory) not to walk on a surface that gives them a mild shock, they turn right around and walk on it again.

Ethics=Memory?

I teach a class on bioethics to college students. We start the course with the simple question: What are we? Are we are genes? Our memories? A combination? It seems to me we are, in large part, our memories. Not just our individual memories, but also our cultural memories, and our species’ memories. In fact, one whole theory of the evolution of consciousness, by the engaging eccentric Julian Jaynes, posits memory as the initial font of consciousness and even of primitive religion.

Jaynes imagines a primitive tribe sitting around a fire. They have strong memories of warnings from their former leader, who recently died. It is dark, but the leader’s ideas—build a fire, stay together—still have power beyond his death. He is keeping them safe without his being present. Thus soweth the seeds of awareness and the power of things we cannot see or understand.

Whether you agree with Jaynes’ theories (which I’ve greatly simplified) or not, it’s clear that ethics—and its ritualized partner, religion—are significantly shaped and driven by memory: memories of how to do things, why we do or should do things, how those before us did them, how we felt when we did or did not do them.

This is a small excerpt from a longer article, which may be accessed by clicking on "external source."

Labels: ethics, Julian Jaynes, memories, religion, Todd Sacktor

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Young Americans Losing Their Religion

New Research Finds Number Who Claim No Church Has Risen Sharply
By DAN HARRIS
May 6, 2009

New research shows young Americans are dramatically less likely to go to church -- or to participate in any form of organized religion -- than their parents and grandparents.

"It's a huge change," says Harvard University professor Robert Putnam, who conducted the research.

Historically, the percentage of Americans who said they had no religious affiliation (pollsters refer to this group as the "nones") has been very small -- hovering between 5 percent and 10 percent. However, Putnam says the percentage of "nones" has now skyrocketed to between 30 percent and 40 percent among younger Americans.

Putnam calls this a "stunning development." He gave reporters a first glimpse of his data Tuesday at a conference on religion organized by the Pew Forum on Faith in Public Life.

The research will be included in a forthcoming book, called "American Grace."

This trend started in the 1990s and continues through today. It includes people in both Generation X and Y.

While these young "nones" may not belong to a church, they are not necessarily atheists.

"Many of them are people who would otherwise be in church," Putnam said. "They have the same attitidues and values as people who are in church, but they grew up in a period in which being religious meant being politically conservative, especially on social issues."

Putnam says that in the past two decades, many young people began to view organized religion as a source of "intolerance and rigidity and doctrinaire political views," and therefore stopped going to church.

This movement away from organized religion, says Putnam, may have enormous consequences for American culture and politics for years to come.

"That is the future of America," he says. "Their views and their habits religiously are going to persist and have a huge effect on the future."

This data is likely to reinvigorate an already heated debate about whether America is, or will continue to be, a "Christian nation." A recent Newsweek cover article, entitled "The End of Christian America" provoked responses from religious thinkers all over the spectrum.

This is the first of a two-page article. Click "external source" for complete article

Labels: Christianity, Dan Harris, religion, teenagers

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, May 01, 2009

Q & A: Francis Collins

The former director of the Human Genome Project hopes to show compatibility between Christianity and science.
By Daniel Burke, Religion News Service
4/30/2009

A year after stepping down as director of the Human Genome Project, Dr. Francis Collins is embarking on a new venture, one that may be even harder than deciphering DNA.

Collin's new BioLogos Foundation, which launched on April 28, aims to be a bridge in the debate over science and religion and provide some answers to life's most difficult questions.

Please click on "external source" to read the answers to the following questions asked of Dr Collins

What led you to this new project?

Where does the name BioLogos come from?

What kind of answers will the Web site give?

What's the goal for this Web site and foundation?

Can you give an example of the kinds of questions the Web site will be addressing?

Is your target audience fellow evangelicals?

Is the site interactive in the sense that people can pose questions that will be answered?

What about other BioLogos projects?

Labels: Daniel Burke, Francis Collins, religion, science

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Survey: Half of U.S. adults have switched religions

By Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY

About half of all Americans have switched religions at least once, according to the most in-depth survey on the topic, released Monday.

And that may still be "a conservative estimate," says Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Pew's new survey is based on re-contacting 2,800 people from its U.S. Religious Landscape Survey of 35,000 people, released last year. Pew estimated at the time that about 44% of Americans have changed religions. It now says between 47% and 59% have, if you count the millions who once switched but have returned to their childhood faith.

The Flux questionaire was conducted in English and Spanish between Oct. 3 and Nov 7. The findings are focused on Catholics, Protestants and the unaffiliated. There were too few converts to or from Mormonism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and other religions to analyze their views, researchers said.

Both the original Religious Landscape Survey, and the new survey are snapshots in time, so it's not possible to tell whether America has always been a bubbling chemistry lab of religious change. But this is the first to spell out the switches in such detail, establishing a baseline to measure future changes, and potential problems.

Please click on "external link" for the entire article. This is only a small snapshot of the information contained in it.

Labels: Cathy Lynn Grossman, Flux, Luis Lugo, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, pew Religious Landscape Survey, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Monday, April 27, 2009

Obama appoints The first Muslim American woman head of Gallup as advisor

Obama appoints The first Muslim American woman head of Gallup as advisor
Tuesday, 21 April 2009

The first Muslim woman appointed to a position in President Barack Obama’s administration met with lawmakers Monday and discussed her role on an interfaith advisory board the new administration hopes will broaden dialogue and understanding.

Dalia Mogahed’s dimpled smile shined from under her hijab, the Muslim headscarf, as she addressed senate staff and think tanks at a meeting organized by the Congressional Muslims Staffers Association to discuss American Muslim public opinion in the wake of a recent survey.

The Egyptian-born American who heads the Gallup American Center for Muslim Studies a non-governmental research center providing data-driven analysis on the views of Muslim populations around the world, became the first Muslim veiled woman to be appointed to a position in the White House.

"I am very honored to be given this opportunity to serve my country in this way," Mogahed, who will be Obama's window into the Muslim American community, told AlArabiya.net.

Last month, Obama signed an executive order setting up a new body at the White House called the “Office of Religious Partnerships” to support religious institutions and strengthen inter-faith dialogue and government ties. The advisory group, consisting of 25 religious and secular representatives, is to report to the president on the role religion can play in resolving social problems and addressing civil rights issues.

"The key idea of the council is to tap into the energy and wisdom of religious organisations and leaders who focus on faith groups to solve common problems," explained Mugahed.

Mogahed will brief Obama on what Muslims want from the U.S. in a bid to create channels of communication and correct erroneous image of Muslim Americans.

The advisory group will help define issues of concern to religious constituents including the effects of economic crisis on minority groups and the phenomenon of fatherless families. It will also seek to reduce the number of abortions and strengthen inter-faith relations between Muslims and Christians.

"The main premise behind the council is cooperation between faiths and helping them become a force that helps push society forward," said Mogahed. "These societal challenges are shared by all faith-based groups and it is our task to unite them against common challenges."

Mugahed will keep her full time job at Gallup while serving as an advisor.

Mogahed’s appointment comes at a critical time given the rising tide of Islamophobia in the media and within some academic circles.

Please click on "external source" to access the complete article

Labels: American Muslims, Dalia Mogahed, faith, Gallup American Center for Muslim Studies, interfaith, Office of Religious Partnerships, President Obama, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

The End of Christian America

The End of Christian America

The percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 points in the past two decades. How that statistic explains who we are now—and what, as a nation, we are about to become.

By Jon Meacham | NEWSWEEK
Published Apr 4, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Apr 13, 2009

It was a small detail, a point of comparison buried in the fifth paragraph on the 17th page of a 24-page summary of the 2009 American Religious Identification Survey. But as R. Albert Mohler Jr.—president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, one of the largest on earth—read over the document after its release in March, he was struck by a single sentence. For a believer like Mohler—a starched, unflinchingly conservative Christian, steeped in the theology of his particular province of the faith, devoted to producing ministers who will preach the inerrancy of the Bible and the Gospel of Jesus Christ as the only means to eternal life—the central news of the survey was troubling enough: the number of Americans who claim no religious affiliation has nearly doubled since 1990, rising from 8 to 15 percent. Then came the point he could not get out of his mind: while the unaffiliated have historically been concentrated in the Pacific Northwest, the report said, "this pattern has now changed, and the Northeast emerged in 2008 as the new stronghold of the religiously unidentified." As Mohler saw it, the historic foundation of America's religious culture was cracking.

"That really hit me hard," he told me last week. "The Northwest was never as religious, never as congregationalized, as the Northeast, which was the foundation, the home base, of American religion. To lose New England struck me as momentous." Turning the report over in his mind, Mohler posted a despairing online column on the eve of Holy Week lamenting the decline—and, by implication, the imminent fall—of an America shaped and suffused by Christianity. "A remarkable culture-shift has taken place around us," Mohler wrote. "The most basic contours of American culture have been radically altered. The so-called Judeo-Christian consensus of the last millennium has given way to a post-modern, post-Christian, post-Western cultural crisis which threatens the very heart of our culture." When Mohler and I spoke in the days after he wrote this, he had grown even gloomier. "Clearly, there is a new narrative, a post-Christian narrative, that is animating large portions of this society," he said from his office on campus in Louisville, Ky.

There it was, an old term with new urgency: post-Christian. This is not to say that the Christian God is dead, but that he is less of a force in American politics and culture than at any other time in recent memory. To the surprise of liberals who fear the advent of an evangelical theocracy and to the dismay of religious conservatives who long to see their faith more fully expressed in public life, Christians are now making up a declining percentage of the American population.

According to the American Religious Identification Survey that got Mohler's attention, the percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 percentage points since 1990, from 86 to 76 percent. The Jewish population is 1.2 percent; the Muslim, 0.6 percent. A separate Pew Forum poll echoed the ARIS finding, reporting that the percentage of people who say they are unaffiliated with any particular faith has doubled in recent years, to 16 percent; in terms of voting, this group grew from 5 percent in 1988 to 12 percent in 2008—roughly the same percentage of the electorate as African-Americans. (Seventy-five percent of unaffiliated voters chose Barack Obama, a Christian.) Meanwhile, the number of people willing to describe themselves as atheist or agnostic has increased about fourfold from 1990 to 2009, from 1 million to about 3.6 million. (That is about double the number of, say, Episcopalians in the United States.)

While we remain a nation decisively shaped by religious faith, our politics and our culture are, in the main, less influenced by movements and arguments of an explicitly Christian character than they were even five years ago. I think this is a good thing—good for our political culture, which, as the American Founders saw, is complex and charged enough without attempting to compel or coerce religious belief or observance. It is good for Christianity, too, in that many Christians are rediscovering the virtues of a separation of church and state that protects what Roger Williams, who founded Rhode Island as a haven for religious dissenters, called "the garden of the church" from "the wilderness of the world." As crucial as religion has been and is to the life of the nation, America's unifying force has never been a specific faith, but a commitment to freedom—not least freedom of conscience. At our best, we single religion out for neither particular help nor particular harm; we have historically treated faith-based arguments as one element among many in the republican sphere of debate and decision. The decline and fall of the modern religious right's notion of a Christian America creates a calmer political environment and, for many believers, may help open the way for a more theologically serious religious life.

NB: This is only a small excerpt of a four-page article which can be accessed by clicking on "external source" at the bottom of this snippet.

Labels: ARIS, Christianity, culture, Jon Meacham, Newsweek magazine, politics, post-Christian, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Book Review: Solution to "The God Wars" Found in Award-Winning Book

WEBWIRE – Saturday, April 18, 2009

RETURN TO MEANING: THE AMERICAN PSYCHE IN SEARCH OF ITS SOUL redefines religious meaning and its importance for a Scientific Age. (http://www.andrewcort.com)

"Renaissance man” Andrew Cort (science and mathematics teacher, attorney, and doctor of chiropractic), has written an inspirational and scholarly book that “rescues philosophy from the mathematicians, sex from the hedonists, religion from empty sanctimony, and science from barren materialism,” says George Gilder, noted social commentator.

If there is a God, and God is all-powerful and good, why would God create such a painful and difficult world? Does religion have a credible answer? Morality, as secularists know, does not require a deity. Blind faith, as atheists know, often leads to hatred and violence. Taking scriptural stories as literal accounts of history, as scientists know, borders on the nonsensical. There has to be more.

Please click on "external source" for complete article, and a link to the author's website.

Labels: Dr. Andrew Cort, God, philosophy, religion, science, soul

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Review: Teenagers more moral, less religious, says new survey

By Jim Coggins

This is the first of a two-page article. Please click on "external source" for complete article.

TEENAGERS are becoming more moral but less religious, according to a new study released by one of Canada's most respected sociologists.

The Emerging Millennials: How Canada's Newest Generation is Responding to Change & Choice is the title of the latest book by Reginald Bibby, a sociologist with the University of Lethbridge. It is based on a survey of 4,746 high school students aged 15 - 19 that he conducted in 2008.

Friendship and freedom

Asked what they found "very important," the Millennials -- as teenagers in this age bracket are called -- responded emphatically: friendship (86 percent) and freedom (85 percent). These values rated higher than a comfortable life (75 percent), a good education (73 percent), success (73 percent), family life (67 percent), money (44 percent), looks (40 percent) and popularity (16 percent). They also ranked much higher than did spirituality (27 percent) and involvement in a religious group (13 percent).

Along with these values, Millennials also demonstrated that they hold a number of "traditional" moral values. Eighty-four percent said trust is "very important," and 81 percent said honesty is. Millennials also value humour (75 percent), concern for others (65 percent), politeness (64 percent), forgiveness (60 percent) and working hard (55 percent).

Relativism rules

Nonetheless, almost two-thirds of Millennials said that "what's right or wrong is a matter of personal opinion." When asked what they based their own moral values on, 43 percent said "how I feel at the time," and seven percent said "a personal decision." Sixteen percent cited their parents' views, three percent said their friends, and only 10 percent based their moral decisions on "religion" -- slightly below the 12 percent who said their moral views were based on "nothing."

This, however, does not mean Millennials are not acting morally. From 2000 to 2008, the percentage of teens who drink alcohol declined from 78 percent to 71 percent, the percentage who smoke dropped from 37 percent to 22 percent, the percentage who use marijuana or hashish dropped from 37 percent to 31 percent, and the percentage who never have sex rose from 51 percent to 56 percent. In fact, the study claims, teens are having sex less frequently than seniors. The April 13 issue of Maclean's magazine responded to Bibby's findings by dubbing Millennials the "tame" generation.

Teens have not, however, fully embraced traditional values. Seventy-two percent of Millennials said they approved of sex before marriage "when people love each other"; but that is down from 82 percent in 2000 and 87 percent in 1992. Similarly, 44 percent approve of homosexual relations and accept them, and another 28 percent disapprove but accept them; however, that level is lower than the approval rate among Baby Boomers (people who were born between 1946 and 1965).

Who needs organized religion?

Millennials have inherited trends established by their grandparents and their parents -- particularly a trend away from organized religion.

In the 1950s, more than 60 percent of Canadians attended a Christian church weekly. In the 21st century, less than 30 percent do. Conservative Protestants (evangelicals, Baptists, Pentecostals, Mennonites, Christian Reformed, etc.) have held steady at about eight percent of the population; but there have been very significant declines among mainline Protestants (United, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Lutherans), and among Roman Catholics.

Labels: Canada, Jim Coggins, millennials, organized religion, Reginald Bibby, religion, teenagers

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

God and the Multiverse

April 14, 2009, 6:14 am
God and the Multiverse

Please click on "external source" to access the original article in "Seed" magazine. Interesting juxtaposition with Urantia Book revelation.

Today’s idea: Multiverse?theory —?the idea that many universes lie beyond what we can observe — doesn’t really undermine the argument for God as creator as some Christian thinkers contend, scientists and theologians say.

Science and Religion | New “multiverse” theories challenge both humanity’s uniqueness and our central place in the cosmos, Nathan Schneider writes in Seed magazine — so it looks like they could join evolution as another battleground in the culture wars. Christian thinkers have criticized such ideas as “motivated by a refusal to accept evidence of God’s handiwork in the cosmos.”

But among scientists and theologians focused on multiverse theory, many believe that it simply expands the job description for God.

Labels: God, multiverse, religion, science, Seed

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Broken connection

Broken connection
Growing number of Christians claim no church affiliation
BY PAM THARP
APRIL 12, 2009

This is the first of a three-page article which is well worth reading. Please click on "external source" to access the complete piece.

Natasha Allen does not have a church she calls home, but she prays every night.

Allen is among a growing number of Americans this Easter with no religious affiliation, a group that's almost doubled in size during the past 18 years, from 8 to 15 percent, according to the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) released last month. Fewer Americans also say they are Christians now than did in the 1990 survey.

And even though three-quarters of those polled still identify themselves as Christians, area pastors say the survey is an indicator of a church culture that's not fulfilling its God-given mission.

"Jesus gave us the blueprint and the church is not following it and the church is dying," said Pastor Ocie Poole of Mount Moriah Baptist Church in Richmond. "The imperative is to go and teach and the whole thing is driven by love, but too many believers won't do it and they're not concerned about the lost."

The church isn't reproducing itself because some Christian parents have failed to disciple their children in the faith, said Pastor Laura Altman of St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church in Richmond.

"Parents are letting children make their own decisions. Faith has to be taught," Altman said. "You don't get it by osmosis."

ARIS showed few gains in atheism, those who don't believe in God, said Liberty Church of Christ senior minister David Soper. It's the "nones," who have no connection to a church, that are most concerning, he said.

"The 'nones' are a growing trend," Soper said. "People know what the church is against and not what it's for. The church doesn't have good answers to people's problems and it's not addressing the problems they face.

"We've spent too much time in politics rather than living out our lives in Christ and in love. We need to focus on what the church was called to do: serve, love, teach and disciple. That's where the true influence lies."

Labels: ARIS, Christianity, church, Pam Tharp, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, April 17, 2009

Religion in America: A many splendored thing

By ARTURO MORA

Should America be guided by any specific religious viewpoint? You’d think the answer was obvious, considering the First Amendment.

Yet there are politicians and religious leaders who insist we are a Christian nation, and demand the majority religion should set the rules. They want it to dictate our laws, our education system, and even how we shop. (“There’s a “War on Christmas!” they complain.)

But are we a Christian nation?

The Pew survey also showed a lot of movement between religions. Americans are searching for meaning in their lives, and they care less about specific creeds or traditional faith lines.

For example, few in the survey said they were Buddhists. Yet mindfulness practice and meditation have grown beyond the fads they once were. Popular writers such as Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra and Thich Nhat Hanh mix Eastern and Western spiritual teachings. God, they say, is not Christian or Buddhist. God is just God.

So even if we were to agree Christianity should set the rules, whose Christianity would that be exactly?

Instead of claiming you’re oppressed, instead of yelling at one another, how about we talk to each other?

A relative of mine, a traditional Christian, called last year during a health crisis, and asked, “Have you thought that maybe the reason you got sick is you’re worshipping the wrong God?”

I explained the Buddha is not a God, and described what God meant to me. We talked for an hour about the role spirituality plays in our lives, and she directed me to a wonderful passage in Philippians (4:6-8), which helped me through my crisis. I go back to it often.

I’d love to have such discussions with many traditional Christians. If you see God and Jesus in a traditional way, or take the Bible as literal truth, I respect your beliefs.

Labels: America, Arturo Mora, Christianity, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, religion, spirituality

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Religion Spirituality Theology Books

WEBWIRE – Friday, April 10, 2009

Dr. Andrew Cort, D.C., J.D., has launched a website, http://www.andrewcort.com, providing information on books and seminars, with free excerpts, customer reviews, and related articles, on the topics of Religion, Spirituality, Education, Science, Holistic Healing, and contemporary American Culture.

Regarding his own major work, ‘Return to Meaning: The American Psyche in Search of its Soul’, Rev. Janet McKinstry has written, “Cort demonstrates that all religious traditions have the common aim of teaching a method for enlightening our souls. When this shared noble purpose is understood, a sense of sacred meaning is restored to our lives and there is no further need for religious hatred and bigotry. All of this is made clear in a book that is entertaining, inspiring, beautifully written, and filled with amazing insights into biblical passages that have perplexed generations of scholars (I was especially moved by Cort’s exploration of the Feminine aspect of creation). His real genius is that he takes complex theology and explains it for the everyday reader.”

Labels: Dr. Andrew Cort, Janet McKinstry, religion, spirituality

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, April 10, 2009

Youth Survey: Teens lose faith in droves

Youth Survey: Teens lose faith in droves

Islam and atheism are on the rise while Christianity fades

Teens lose faith in drovesEvery day, Mohamed Hadi wakes up before sunrise for morning prayer. The 19-year-old then boards a bus for the 90-minute ride from his home in Richmond, B.C., to the campus of Simon Fraser University, where he’s studying to become a physiotherapist. He’s involved in the Muslim Students’ Association, and with Rich in Faith, a Muslim youth group he founded that offers tutoring and mentoring services. Hadi’s a busy guy, yet he always finds time for his religion, including prayer five times a day. “It helps me stay composed,” he says, “and to maintain balance in my life.”

Such devotion is rare among teens these days—or at least, among those from Protestant and Catholic households. Just as the younger generation is abandoning the Christian faith, though, non-Western religions, such as Islam and Buddhism, are growing in Canada at a surprising speed. According to new data from Project Teen Canada, more teens now identify as Muslim than Anglican, United Church of Canada and Baptist combined. As a group, the percentage who adhere to so-called “other faiths”—including Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism—has grown fivefold since Project Teen began its surveys in 1984, while the percentage of teens who identify as Roman Catholic has declined by one third, and the percentage who identify as Protestant is down by almost two-thirds.

A side effect of this trend is a hollowing-out of the religious middle ground in Canada. Reginald Bibby, the University of Lethbridge sociologist who heads up Project Teen, says the grey zone of those who believe in God, but don’t regularly practise an established religion, is rapidly emptying out, leaving behind two distinct camps: teens who are very religious and actively practise their religion, and those who don’t believe in God at all. “For years I have been saying that, for all the problems of organized religion in Canada, God has continued to do well in the polls,” Bibby writes in The Emerging Millennials, a new book based on Project Teen’s latest findings. “That’s no longer the case.”

The growth in popularity of faiths such as Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism can largely be attributed to immigration, Bibby says. Indeed, there are more new Canadians than ever—immigrants made up 20 per cent of the population in 2006, according to Statistics Canada, up from 16 per cent in 1981. And the majority of new Canadians now hail from the Middle East and Asia, whereas most came from Europe a decade before.

Foreign-born teens are more likely to be religious when they arrive, but whether that faith will persist over the coming generations remains to be seen. “Because these faith groups are so small, they often can’t hang on to their kids,” Bibby explains. “They have this maddening tendency to socialize with Protestant, Catholic, and ‘no religion’ friends, and marry out of their parents’ groups.” But immigration will continue to supply fresh believers, so it’s likely that their community support will grow too. That’s been Hadi’s experience. Amongst his friends, many of whom are Muslim, “we all know when it’s time to pray. If we forget, we’ll remind each other,” he says. “Community is an integral part of the equation.”

For Canada’s Christian teens, meanwhile, the community is shrinking like never before. Since 1984, the percentage of teens who call themselves Christian has almost been cut in half while the number who call themselves atheist has grown to 16 per cent, up from just six per cent in the mid-1980s. Just as the boomers shifted toward agnosticism, teens are now going a step further and rejecting religion entirely. “Belief is learned, pretty much like the multiplication table,” Bibby writes. “So is non-belief.”

Labels: belief, Buddhism, Canada, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Project Teen, religion, teenagers

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

More Religious Countries, More Perceived Ethnic Intolerance

by Steve Crabtree and Brett Pelham

This is the second article in a two-part series on religiosity and community intolerance. The first article addressed religiosity and intolerance toward gays and lesbians.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Gallup Polls conducted in 139 countries between 2006 and 2008 reveal that in countries where a higher percentage of citizens say religion is important in their daily lives people are also more likely to say that their communities are not good places for ethnic or racial minorities to live. However, this trend is not linear. Countries with average levels of religiosity -- comparatively speaking -- report about as much intolerance as the world's most religious countries.

"Religious" people in this analysis are defined as those who report that religion is important in their daily lives. Using the percentage of "religious" people in a given country, all 139 countries are divided into five groups, ranging from least to most religious.

Comparing Different Religious Groups

Despite the history of caste systems in some predominantly Hindu cultures, the Hindu American Foundation states, "While tolerance and pluralism are valued by many religions, these concepts are the very essence of Hinduism," and Gallup's findings suggest Hindus are generally true to their creed. It is also important to note that many Hindus do not consider caste to have much to do with race or ethnicity.

After Hindus, Christians are the religious group that reports the lowest level of ethnic intolerance in their communities. In fact, Christians report only slightly more ethnic and racial intolerance than do secularists. In contrast, those in other major faith traditions -- Muslims, Buddhists, and Jews -- are substantially more likely than are secularists to say that the places where they live are not good places for ethnic and racial minorities. Jews are more than twice as likely as secularists to report that their communities are not good places for ethnic and racial minorities.

Local Frictions Have Big Effects

To a great degree, differences among different faith traditions may have more to do with culture than with faith. That is, these group differences may reflect historical and political factors, such as long-standing conflict over territory, rather than religious ideology per se. A case in point involves Jews and Muslims living inside and outside Israel. A majority of Jews and nearly half of Muslims living in Israel say their neighborhoods are not good places for ethnic and racial minorities. Outside of Israel, however, only about one in three Muslims and about one in five Jews say the same thing.

Ethnic and Racial Intolerance and Individual Levels of Religiosity

It is also informative to look within each major faith tradition to compare those who do and do not say that religion is important in their daily lives. In most faith traditions, religious and less religious people report similar levels of intolerance.

The largest gap, at 10 percentage points, is among Buddhists. However, this difference is driven predominantly by the reports of Buddhists in only a few countries, most notably Vietnam and South Korea. In Japan and Cambodia, for example, it is less religious Buddhists who report more community intolerance. In short, this small average difference, even for Buddhists, varies widely across countries.

Why, then, is there a persistent belief among many that religiosity is associated with ethnic intolerance? Perhaps it's partly because there are specific religious sects in which this is more likely to be the case. For example, Gallup Polls taken in 26 countries (mostly in Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union) asked respondents to say whether they thought of their religion as "the one true religion in the world," "one of a few true religions in the world," or "just one way, among many different religions." Among Christians and Muslims, those who say that their religion is the one true religion are the most likely to say their communities are not good for ethnic and racial minorities. In some cases then, exclusionary views of religion are accompanied by exclusionary views of race and ethnicity.

A Caveat: Individual Intolerance or Awareness of Discrimination?

It is a well-worn truism in research on discrimination and ethnic and racial intolerance that the answers one gets in a survey depend greatly on the precise questions one asks. This analysis focuses on a question that essentially asks people to serve as informants about their communities at large. Gallup might have observed different results if it had asked people, for instance, if they would prefer to have a member of a specific minority group as a neighbor.

A Glass of Intolerance: Mostly Empty?

Critics of religion have often noted that religion has historically played a major role in fueling and maintaining ethnic tensions. From the Crusades of the Middle Ages to the ancient tensions that flare daily in the Middle East, religion is certainly connected in some ways to ethnic tensions. This fact notwithstanding, the present findings suggest that most modern religious traditions seem to have made some progress, at least since the Middle Ages, in promoting ethnic understanding and cooperation. Although there are some connections between religiosity and ethnic and racial intolerance, these connections were generally small and inconsistent -- and certainly much smaller than the comparable effects that exist for religious intolerance of gays and lesbians.

Survey Methods

Results are based on telephone and face-to-face interviews conducted between 2006 and 2008 with about 1,000 adults in most countries (and a sample size range of 446 to 2,006). Confidence intervals vary widely based on the sample sizes of specific groups. However, for the results involving groups of countries that vary in religiosity level, confidence intervals were always less than +1 percentage points. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

Labels: Brett Pelham, ethnicity, Gallup Poll, religion, religiosity, religious intolerance, Steve Crabtree

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

New Television-Web Series "Global Spirit" Explores Spirituality, Religion and the Science of Belief as Practiced Worldwide, premiering April 12 on Lin

New Television-Web Series "Global Spirit" Explores Spirituality, Religion and the Science of Belief as Practiced Worldwide, premiering April 12 on Link TV

Link TV presents the premiere of "Global Spirit," a nationally broadcast, pan-cultural television and web series that explores spiritual, psychological and scientific belief systems from around the world. Episodes explore the relationships between mind and spirit, science and metaphysics, and mental and physical well-being as approached by the world's ancient wisdom traditions and by modern science. "Global Spirit" is a unique 'internal travel' series that brings to light spiritual, mental and physical practices that help us to define who we are as human beings, our relationships to others -- and to the world at large. From the ecstatic state of the Turkish Whirling Dervishes, to new scientific understandings of Oneness and the interconnectedness of the universe, to the personal journeys of American veterans who return to Vietnam in search of forgiveness, "Global Spirit" explores mankind's deepest existential questions, tracing the human quest for truth and wisdom. Watch online at LinkTV.org/GlobalSpirit.

New York, NY (Billboard Publicity Wire/PRWEB ) April 6, 2009 -- A rally cry for change has been heard from Americans and people around the globe. The intense environment of conflict, fear and cultural misunderstanding of recent years has generated a yearning for a more interconnected, just and compassionate way of co-existing with our global neighbors. At the same time, we are perhaps seeking a deeper understanding of ourselves -- both as individuals and as a nation. In the midst of this burgeoning, collective reassessment, Link TV presents "Global Spirit," a nationally broadcast, pan-cultural television and web series that explores spiritual, psychological and scientific belief systems from around the world.

"Global Spirit" premieres on Sunday, April 12 at 6:00pm PT/9:00pm ET with its first original program "The Spiritual Quest," featuring acclaimed comparative religion author Karen Armstrong and professor of Buddhist studies Dr. Robert Thurman. Each week through June 14, "Global Spirit" will present the U.S. television premiere of a new program probing the trans-cultural dynamics of human inquiry. Link TV is available on DIRECTV channel 375 and Dish Network channel 9410 and on select cable stations. Programs will also be streamed in their entirety at LinkTV.org/GlobalSpirit.

For full episode descriptions and air dates, please visit our website.

Episodes explore the relationships between mind and spirit, science and metaphysics, and mental and physical well-being as approached by the world's ancient wisdom traditions and by modern science. "Global Spirit" is a unique 'internal travel' series that brings to light spiritual, mental and physical practices that help us to define who we are as human beings, our relationships to others -- and to the world at large.

From the ecstatic state of the Turkish Whirling Dervishes, to new scientific understandings of Oneness and the interconnectedness of the universe, to the personal journeys of American veterans who return to Vietnam in search of forgiveness, "Global Spirit" explores mankind's deepest existential questions, tracing the human quest for truth and wisdom.

The belief systems of many of our global neighbors lie beyond the purview of formalized religion, yet they have guided mankind through many millennia with highly evolved principles and philosophies. In August of 2005, the cover of Newsweek magazine announced the rise of spirituality in America. The issue explores how and why many Americans choose to seek spiritual experiences outside the norms of traditional church, mosque or synagogue settings. A poll conducted by Newsweek and Beliefnet found that new forms of religious experience and expression attract many Americans each year. The poll also found that 79% of those polled described themselves as "spiritual," and 70% of those polled said it was very important to them to practice their religion in order to find happiness and peace of mind. "Global Spirit" explores the emerging longing in the American psyche to explore the depths of human consciousness and the many faces of spirituality.

Rather than approaching global traditions from a detached, voyeuristic perspective, "Global Spirit" invites the viewer to test and participate in traditions as practiced by a wide range of peoples and spiritual leaders. By connecting and cross-pollinating the core concepts from the world's wisdom traditions, "Global Spirit" offers the curious viewer an exploration of new and ancient approaches to healing, forgiveness and self-knowledge. From the mystical to the religious, and from the psychological to the spiritual, "Global Spirit" offers a rich and thoughtful exploration of the world's many approaches to personal and collective well-being.

Each "Global Spirit" episode offers compelling film segments with original, on-location footage shot by the "Global Spirit" crew, together with engaging, in-depth conversations between host Phil Cousineau and a diverse set of experts such as Karen Armstrong, Dr. Robert Thurman, Deepak Chopra, Sobonfu Somé, Chief Oren Lyons, Azim Khamisa, Rev. Alan Jones, Joanne Shenandoah, Lama Lhanang Rinpoche, Robert Bly, Hamza El Din and Jai Uttal. Each week, "Global Spirit" will present a spectrum of new insights for understanding ourselves, our families, our communities, our planet -- and ultimately our place in the Cosmos.

Support for this series has been generously provided by The Kalliopeia Foundation, The Fetzer Institute, The Attar Supporting Organization, The Compton Foundation and Dreamcatchers.

Journalists may screen programs in advance at this link, please email Julia Panely-Pacetti for login information: Link TV Press Screening Room.

To access full "Global Spirit" episode descriptions, air dates, photography and press materials visit the: Link TV Press Room.

ABOUT LINK TV

Link TV is the nation's largest independent broadcaster, devoted to providing diverse global perspectives on news, current events and world culture not typically available on other U.S. networks. Link TV regularly airs a robust selection of award-winning films and documentaries that explore the human condition from different multi-cultural perspectives. Through its "Cinemondo" series, Link supports the essential cultural role of world cinema by helping Americans better understand what is happening in the world.

A pioneer in news and current affairs programming, Link TV has been recognized domestically and internationally for its original news programs including the Peabody Award-winning daily broadcast "Mosaic: News from the Middle East," which monitors and airs unedited selections of news reports from more than 30 Middle-Eastern broadcasters, and "Global Pulse," which compares and contrasts news reports from around the world on critical issues. Link also offers its viewers original, innovative participatory programs promoting national and global citizen action. Most of Link's programs are available nowhere else on American television.

Link TV is a nationwide television network available in more than 31 million U.S. homes as a basic service on DIRECTV channel 375 and DISH Network channel 9410. Select programs are shown on more than 50 urban cable systems, including New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Link TV's original programs, music videos, documentary clips and artist interviews are streamed on the Internet at LinkTV.org.

For complete background information, program schedule, and internet streaming, go to LinkTV.org.

Labels: belief, Global Spirit, Kalliopeia Foundation, Karen Armstrong, Link TV, religion, spirituality, web TV

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Half of Americans lack understanding of Islam: survey

Press Trust of India / Washington April 06, 2009

More than half of Americans lack a basic understanding of Islam, while a sizable number hold negative views about the world's second-largest religion.

Most Americans think President Obama's pledge to "seek a new way forward" with the Muslim world is an important goal, even as good amount of number say that even mainstream adherents to the religion encourage violence against non-Muslims, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

The survey showed that 55 per cent of those polled said they are without a basic understanding of the teachings and beliefs of Islam, and most said they do not know anyone who is Muslim. While awareness has increased in recent years, underlying views have not improved.

About 48 per cent said they have an unfavourable view of Islam, the highest in polls since late 2001.

Nearly three in 10, or 29 per cent, said they see mainstream Islam as advocating violence against non-Muslims; although more, 58 per cent, said it is a peaceful religion.

Overall, nearly two-thirds said Obama will handle the diplomatic mission "about right". Nearly a quarter, though, said he will probably "go too far". Nine per cent said it is more likely he will not go far enough.

Republicans are also more apt than others to hold negative attitudes toward Islam, with six in 10 having unfavorable views, compared with about four in 10 for Democrats and independents.

Perceptions of Islam as a peaceful faith are the highest among non-religious Americans, with about two-thirds holding that view. Among Catholics, 60 per cent see mainstream Islam as a peaceful faith; it is 55 per cent among all Protestants, but drops to 48 per cent among white evangelical Protestants.

There are deep divisions in perceptions of Islam between younger and older Americans as well: More than six in 10 younger than 65 said Islam is a peaceful religion, but that drops to 39 per cent among seniors.

The Post-ABC poll was conducted by telephone March 26-29 among a national random sample of 1,000 adults. The results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

In his inaugural address, Obama extended an offer to leaders of unfriendly Muslim nations that the United States "will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist."

Labels: Americans, Islam, polling, President Obama, religion, understanding

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

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

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, March 27, 2009

Obama Walks Religious Tightrope Spanning Faithful, Nonbelievers

By LAURA MECKLER

WASHINGTON -- In the early days of his administration, President Barack Obama has developed an unusual pattern as he talks about religion: He regularly puts nonbelievers on the same footing as religious Americans.

It is a rare gesture for a U.S. political leader. But what makes Mr. Obama's outreach especially remarkable is that it is accompanied by public displays of faith that sometimes go beyond even those of his religiously oriented predecessor in the White House.

Mr. Obama speaks easily about his own faith. White House events, even those without a religious theme, often begin with a prayer. And the president said he would expand President George W. Bush's outreach to faith-based organizations.

At the same time, he has taken a series of policy steps that are troubling to religious conservatives, and pledged that decisions in his administration would be governed by science. He reversed Bush policies on funding for international family-planning groups and stem-cell research, and he has moved to rescind regulations that allow health-care workers to opt out of duties that offend their beliefs.

Mr. Obama acknowledged nonbelievers on the campaign trail last year, and, notably, in his inaugural address, where he said: "We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers."

While nonbelievers welcomed Mr. Obama's recognition, the move could make some people uneasy. Americans are less comfortable with atheists than they are with many other minority groups, according to a 2006 University of Minnesota study. Nearly half of those surveyed said they would disapprove if their child wanted to marry an atheist, versus a third who said the same of a Muslim. People were more accepting of homosexuals, conservative Christians, immigrants, Hispanics and Jews.

A 2008 American Religious Identification Survey, conducted by Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., found that 15% of Americans are unaffiliated with any religion, up from 8.2% in 1990. In 2008, only 0.7% identified themselves as atheists and 0.9% said they are agnostic.

Mr. Obama isn't the first president to acknowledge nonbelievers. When running for re-election, Bill Clinton spoke of the U.S. having more religious freedom than any other country in the world, "including the freedom not to believe." At the 2006 National Prayer Breakfast, George W. Bush recognized those with "no faith at all" among Americans of varying religions.

But Mr. Obama's frequent mentions of nonbelievers stand out, said Michael Lindsay, a Rice University sociologist who studies religion and culture. In some ways, says Mr. Lindsay, it represents the continuation of a pattern in American public discourse. "The last 50 years has been a gradual evolving notion of what constitutes religious diversity," he said. First, he said, Jews were included. Later, after immigration increased from Asia in the 1960s, politicians began mentioning Buddhism and Hinduism. But rarely have atheists been included, he said.

Part of the explanation for Mr. Obama's references also may lie with his own story. He wasn't raised religious and only became a Christian as an adult, when working with churches as an organizer in Chicago.

"I had a father who was born a Muslim but became an atheist; and grandparents who were nonpracticing Methodists and Baptists; and a mother who was skeptical of organized religion, even though she was the kindest, most spiritual person I've ever known," he said at National Prayer Breakfast in February. "She was the one who taught me as a child to love and to understand and to do unto others as I would want done."

Labels: faith, freedom, non-believer, President Obama, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Here's the steeple. Open the door. Where are all the people?

Elizabeth Scarinci
3/19/09

This page one of three. Please click on "external source" for complete article.

The steeple of the Congregational Church of Middlebury is the most defining characteristic of the town's skyline. But despite the steeples that dominate many Vermont towns, religion is a declining landmark of the state. The most recent American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), released March 9, showed that a record 34 percent of Vermonters claim no religious affiliation, making Vermont the most secular state in the country, followed by New Hampshire and Maine.

The Program on Public Values at Trinity College recently conducted the last of three surveys from 1990 to 2008. On a national level, Americans who claim no religion almost doubled from 1990 to 2008. In 1990, 8.2 percent claimed no religion, which spiked to 14.2 percent in 2001 and is now at 15 percent. The number of people answering "None" grew in every state.

Vermont's status as the leader of "Nones" is an issue that Vermonters themselves can unfurl. Professor Larry Yarbrough, chair of the Religion department at the College, speculates that part of the reason is that Vermonters are independent and freethinking.

"For the most part, they are not susceptible to be led one way or another, and that definitely comes in [to play]," Yarbrough said.

Anne Brown, communication director of the Episcopal Diocese of Vermont, said that religious institutions could be better communicating their missions and relating them better to Vermonters' lives.

"I think this is a response to the failure of the institutional religious bodies to respond in a creative and helpful way to the search for meaning," Brown said. "We have often been more focused on maintaining tradition than on meeting people where they are with something that works for them."

Yarbrough said he would be interested in a survey that asked the people who claim no religion if they were spiritual but just did not associate with an organized religion. He speculates that many Vermonters who find themselves spiritual would say that they can encounter God in nature.

Labels: ARIS, Elizabeth Scarinci, nature, religion, Vermont

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, March 20, 2009

Religion and economics during hard times

Mar 17, 2009

-- Martin E. Marty

Virtually every church newsletter, denominational website, religious periodical, or other medium, disseminated in print or electronically, makes some reference to the economic situation in which all classes of Americans find themselves today. Local congregations' offers of spiritual sustenance, community-sharing burdens, and hopes are still among the main and best things they do, as well as providing counseling, tips, and sometimes guidance to non-church organizations and experts who may be of help. These concern issues of joblessness, home foreclosures, and other devastating realities of 2009.

It is too soon to know how this recession-depression will work out for religious institutions and ideas. While watching and waiting, I decided to do what so many do: compare today to the Great Depression of the 1930s. I had explored religious roles and responses in my The Noise of Conflict: 1919-1941, the second volume in my Modern American Religion (University of Chicago, 1991). If we repeat in any way -- but who says we will, or must? -- what happened then, there is not a lot of cheer to be spread. I particularly relied on Samuel C. Kincheloe's 1937 Research Memorandum on Religion in the Depression, an extensive, judicious, realistic survey done for the Social Science Research Council by a Chicago Theological Seminary (then Congregational) professor. Like so many other secular and mainstream Protestant analysts, he did not pay much attention to what was prospering when nothing else was: fundamentalism.

Some leaders hoped and prayed for religious revivals, none of which erupted. "There has been much emphasis on the belief that what society needs is religion," Kincheloe reported, and I observed, "but society evidently did not think so." Money problems limited church efforts to serve the poor, whose numbers grew exponentially. At the same time, deep believers within all congregations and denominatins "did not fall away from faith merely because of economic trauma." The Christian Century editorialized, with a view on the past: "Did people not address this Depression religiously because for once they did not think it occurred under the providence of God?" The editorial conclusion: this may have been "the first time men have not blamed God for hard times." If that was true in 1935, it seems to be true today, too. There are accusers, accused, and commentators on all hands today, but one seldom hears that all the dealings, many of them now seen as greedy at best and criminal at worst, were anything but the results of individual and corporate folly and corruption. This time again, citizens can't blame God for getting them into this, and are trying to find God-ly ways to get out of it...together.

Labels: Great Depression, Martin Marty, recession, religion, the economy

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

French Physicist Wins Templeton Religion Prize

By Ethan Cole
Christian Post Reporter
Mon, Mar. 16 2009

A French physicist and philosopher of science is the winner of the 2009 Templeton Prize for religion, the largest annual religion prize given to an individual, the foundation announced on Monday.

Bernard d’Espagnat, 87, will receive the $1.42 million prize for his work in quantum physics that shows the limits of knowable science and affirms a reality that can be explained through spirituality and art, according to Reuters.

D’Espagnat said in prepared remarks that he is “convinced that those among our contemporaries who believe in a spiritual dimension of existence and live up to it are, when all is said, fully right,” according to The Associated Press.

The John Templeton Foundation announced the prize at a news conference held at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) headquarters in Paris.

“[D’Espagnat has] explored the unlimited, the openings that new scientific discoveries offer in pure knowledge and in questions that go to the very heart of our existence and humanity,” said John Templeton, Jr., president of the foundation, at the ceremony.

Through his work, the physicist counters classical physics pioneered by Isaac Newton that says the world can be explained through laws of nature. Quantum physics, he argues, shows that tiny particles defy the laws of physics and act in unpredictable ways.

"Materialists consider that we are explained entirely by combinations of small uninteresting things like atoms or quarks," said d'Espagnat, who was raised Roman Catholic but now considers himself instead a spiritualist, in an interview with Reuters on Friday.

"I believe we ultimately come from a superior entity to which awe and respect is due and which we shouldn't try to approach by trying to conceptualize too much," he said. "It's more a question of feeling."

D’Espagnat will receive the prize May 5 in a private ceremony at Buckingham Palace in London, according to AP.

Previous winners of the prize include American evangelist Billy Graham, Roman Catholic humanitarian Mother Teresa, and Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

The Templeton Prize was established in 1972 by global investor and philanthropist Sir John Templeton. The prize, given by Pennsylvanian-based Templeton Foundation, seeks to support scientific research that contributes to the “Big Questions” of science, religion, and human purposes. Each year, the Templeton Prize, which exceeds the monetary value of the Nobel Prizes, is presented in London.

Labels: Bernard d’Espagnat, Ethan Cole, quantum physics, religion, spirituality, Templeton Prize

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Worldly religions find their way to Franklin

By VICTORIA GRAY
Sunday, March 15, 2009

FRANKLIN — Those interested in learning about world religions don't need to go to Harvard Divinity School, or even a closer university or college. They only have to go as far as West Main Street, where a series of interfaith dialogues begins today at Franklin Congregational Christian Church.

Rev. Jeff Stevens, pastor, said as part of the church's adult education program he has invited speakers representing various religions and members of the public to participate in these discussions.

The first of these dialogues is today at the church hall at 1 p.m. and features Mohamed Ebrahim, PhD, an Imam and director of the Dover-based Islamic Society of the Seacoast Area, as the guest speaker.

The next discussion is scheduled for Thursday, March 19, when Manitonquat, an elder of the Assonet Band of the Wampanoag Nation, will speak about his culture's spiritual traditions.

Manitonquat, whose name translates to Medicine Story, is a counselor and lecturer with a Ph.D. in Religious Counseling. He is a retired ceremonial leader and is currently involved in a prison spirituality program in New England, including at the Concord State Prison for Men.

Manitonquat, who lives in Greenville, said he is looking foward to Thursday's discussion in Franklin.

"I'm always interested in interfaith dialogues," Manitonquat said. "It's very exciting for me to connect with people from various faiths and talk to them about Native American spiritual beliefs."

He added that Native American spiritual beliefs do not constitute a religion or religions and that there are many different traditions among the various tribal councils and nations in North America.

One universal belief is that of respect — that everything in creation, including every person, deserves respect.

He said that, in his prison programs, this concept resonates with inmates, many of whom have neither been given nor seen examples of respect in their lives before.

The next common belief is in "the primacy of the circle as the form in which people should gather together."

The circle, also an important symbol of the life and death cycle, symbolizes the equality of members in gatherings, as there is no head or end.

The third belief is one of continually thanking the spirit and natural world.

Manitonquat has written a book that is soon to be published, called "The Original Instructions," which he said is based "on a lifetime of listening to elders and trying to figure things out."

He said the title comes from a frequent answer elders gave when he asked, "What is wrong with human beings today?"

The answer he often got was "They have forgotten the original instructions."

Manitonquat says this means that the earliest inhabitants of world, including on the North American continent, lived more in harmony with the natural and spiritual world than people do today.

He said since Europeans settled the continent it has been their religions and spiritual traditions that have dominated and been propagated.

"No one really understands the wealth of spiritual understanding that existed here before," Manitonquat said.

Stevens said that, as the population in New Hampshire becomes more diverse, it is increasingly important that people learn about and respect each other's cultural, spiritual and ethnic backgrounds.

He added that there is a Buddhist population in the state and a growing number of Sikhs and members of the Bahá'í faith.

Sikhism is a religion that formed in India approximately 500 years ago. Followers believe in a single, formless God who can be known through deep meditation. They believe in samsara, karma and reincarnation as Hindus do, but reject the caste system.

Stevens has been pastor at the church since December 2007.

Originally from Williamstown in Western Massachusetts, Stevens received a master's degree from Harvard Divinity School and has always been interested in world religions.

He said one of the professors at the school, Diana Eck, started and still directs the "Pluralism Project," which began in 1991 to explore America's changing religious landscape. The project has recorded the growth of religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism and Zoroastrianism in the U.S. as a new wave of immigration that began 30 to 40 years ago continues.

"The Lakes Region is sort of on the edge of the movement toward more religious diversity, this wave of great change," Stevens said.

He said he is excited that the first speaker will be discussing Islam, as he worked with Muslim (followers of Islam) communities in the greater Boston area while at Harvard.

Stevens said despite the substantial Muslim population in the U.S., many people still know little about Islam, though the religion, along with Judaism, shares some of the same history as Christianity.

He noted that Thomas Aquinas, in the 1100s, wrote a letter to Christians, Jewish people and Muslims about the things their religions shared in common.

Islam began in the Middle East more than 1,400 years ago and is the second largest religion in the world with more than 1 billion followers. The word Islam means "submission to the will of God (Allah in Arabic)".

Muslims believe there is only one God and that God sent a number of prophets to humanity to teach them how to live, including Jesus, Moses and Abraham.

The final Prophet was Muhammad, who Muslims believe most perfectly delivered God's message, therefore they follow his example (called the Sunnah) and base their laws on the holy book, the Qur'an.

The five basic Pillars of Islam are a declaration of faith, praying, fasting, charity and undertaking a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once in one's lifetime.

The Islamic Society of the Seacoast Area is located in Dover and serves more than 300 Muslim families in coastal communities in New Hampshire and Southeastern Maine.

...Amala Dharmacharini, program director of the Aryaloka Buddhist Retreat Center, will lead a discussion on Buddhism.

Buddhism developed out of the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama who, in 535 BCE, reached enlightenment and assumed the title of Buddha.

He promoted 'The Middle Way' as the path to enlightenment rather than the extremes of mortification of the flesh or hedonism. Buddhists believe in reincarnation and that, after many lives, a person can attain nirvana by releasing their attachment to desire and the self.

Stevens said he also is working on booking a speaker from the Bahá'í Faith, a faith that arose from Islam in the 1800s. Bahá'í beliefs promote gender and race equality, freedom of expression and assembly, world peace and world government.

Other speakers may include representatives from neopagan traditions and from the Jainist religion.

Jainism is one of the oldest religions in India and its followers believe that the way to true bliss is through lives of harmlessness and renunciation. Followers believe every living thing in the universe is sacred and has a soul. Because of this, they follow a strict vegetarian diet and live in a way that minimizes their impact on the environment.

Labels: Bahá'í, Buddhism, Christianity, God, interfaith, Islam, Jainism, Native American Church, Pluralism Project, religion, Sikhism, Victoria Gray

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Religious Thoughts and Feelings Not Limited to One Part of Brain

By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: March 9, 2009

Brain researchers trying to understand the neural basis of religious belief have concluded that the brain has no special region or network for this task. Rather, it depends on general networks that exist for other purposes.

A team led by Dr. Jordan Grafman of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke questioned volunteers about their religious beliefs while monitoring the blood flow in their brains with a scanning machine. Extra blood flow is assumed to reflect the activity of neurons in a specific region of the brain.

Different networks of neurons sprang into action when subjects were asked their view of three sets of statements about the religious beliefs, Dr. Grafman and colleagues report in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In all three cases the neural activity in the subjects’ brains corresponded to brain networks known to have other, nonreligious functions. These include the theory of mind networks, used to predict other people’s intentions.

Dr. Andrew Newberg, director of the Center for Spirituality and the Mind at the University of Pennsylvania, said Dr. Grafman’s findings were in line with other research that has so far failed to find any specific structure in the brain that is dedicated to religious belief. “Religion has so many different aspects that it would be very unlikely to find one spot in the brain where religion and God reside,” Dr. Newberg said.

But he expressed doubt as to whether the biological correlates of religious belief, as visualized in brain scans like those taken by Dr. Grafman, in fact captured all of what religion is. “There may be other elements that science is not capable of measuring,” Dr. Newberg said.

In his own work Dr. Newberg looks at subjects undergoing religious experiences, like speaking in tongues or meditating. In “How God Changes Your Brain,” a book being published later this month, Dr. Newberg reports that certain regions of subjects’ brains have enlarged areas of neural activation after many months of intensive meditation.

He questioned whether asking subjects questions about religion when they were not in a religious frame of mind would capture much of interest about religious belief.

Dr. Grafman said that religious cohesion for a common purpose, and the ability to infer what others are thinking, would each have been favored by evolution, along with the theory of mind networks that serves both systems.

Labels: belief, brain, God, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Nicholas Wade, religion, science

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Most religious groups in USA have lost ground, survey finds

By Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY

When it comes to religion, the USA is now land of the freelancers.

The percentage. of people who call themselves in some way Christian has dropped more than 11% in a generation. The faithful have scattered out of their traditional bases: The Bible Belt is less Baptist. The Rust Belt is less Catholic. And everywhere, more people are exploring spiritual frontiers — or falling off the faith map completely.

These dramatic shifts in just 18 years are detailed in the new American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS), to be released today. It finds that, despite growth and immigration that has added nearly 50 million adults to the U.S. population, almost all religious denominations have lost ground since the first ARIS survey in 1990.

"More than ever before, people are just making up their own stories of who they are. They say, 'I'm everything. I'm nothing. I believe in myself,' " says Barry Kosmin, survey co-author.

This is a lengthy article, complete with inter-active graphics and charts - worthwhile exploring. In addition, the following topics are covered: "Religion as a hobby," Social mobility a factor," and "Religious movement in the USA"
Please click on "external source for complete access.

Labels: America, Cathy Lynn Grossman, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

New Study Reveals Sources of Resilience and Strength for Black Girls in New York City

March 7, 2009

New Study Reveals Sources of Resilience and Strength for Black Girls in New York City

Black Girls Face Hardships and Challenges

A new and unique report, Black Girls in New York City: Untold Strength and Resilience, was released by the Black Women for Black Girls Giving Circle (BWBG), a funding initiative of The Twenty-First Century Foundation, and the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR). A key finding in the report is that the impact of poverty is especially acute in the lives of Black girls. Approximately three-quarters of the girls in the study live in low-income communities and households. Importantly, the report also explores the positive influences in Black girls' lives. It finds that girls who highly valued spirituality also tended to have an excellent relationship with their primary caretaker. Likewise, those who possessed a strong sense of racial identity were more likely than other girls to be happy on typical day, to receive better grades, to want a college education and believe in their ability to reach their goals.

New York, NY (PRWEB) March 7, 2009 -- A new and unique report, Black Girls in New York City: Untold Strength and Resilience, was released by the Black Women for Black Girls Giving Circle (BWBG), a funding initiative of The Twenty-First Century Foundation, and the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR). The report, commissioned by BWBG from IWPR pairs analysis of original data collected through written surveys and focus groups with a review of existing literature to provide an in-depth examination into the lives of Black girls living within the city of New York.

The report finds that the impact of poverty is especially acute in the lives of Black girls. Approximately three-quarters of the girls in the study live in low-income communities and households.

"Like all Black children, Black girls are at increased risk of living a life of poverty. But poverty plays out in the lives of Black girls in very distinct ways," remarked report author, Dr. Avis Jones-DeWeever, affiliate scholar of IWPR and Director of the Research, Public Policy and Information Center for African American Women at the National Council of Negro Women.

"Our surveys and conversations with adolescent Black girls in New York City show that many of the girls are at an increased risk of violence because of the economic situation of their families and economic conditions of their communities," emphasized Dr. Jones-DeWeever. "For far too many of the girls in our study, poverty truncates their childhood experience."

Most survey respondents indicated that they worry about their personal safety. Among those who feel unsafe at home, most attribute their uneasiness to drug activity in their community as well as the prevalence of violent crime, fights, and gang activity. Black girls most often indicated that they felt unsafe due to frequent fights at school.

The study also examines issues of self-esteem for Black girls, a group often considered immune to the impacts of mainstream culture on body image and self-confidence. While most of the Black girls in this study seemed largely satisfied with themselves, one-fifth indicated, that if given the opportunity, they would change their bodies in some way. A few expressed keen sensitivity to issues of skin tone. Some were teased harshly for being "too Black." Others even expressed a desire for skin bleaching; and in at least one instance, that ultimate desire was not just to become lighter, but instead, to become white.

Importantly, the report also explores the positive influences in Black girls' lives. It finds that girls who highly valued spirituality also tended to have an excellent relationship with their primary caretaker. Likewise, those who possessed a strong sense of racial identity were more likely than other girls to be happy on typical day, to receive better grades, to want a college education and believe in their ability to reach their goals, and when involved in intimate relationships, to engage in self-protective behavior by insisting upon condom usage.

Please click on "external source" to access the entire article, and the study.

Labels: African-Americans, BWBG, girls, IWPR, poverty, religion, spirituality

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Religion Reduces Anxiety—A Matter of Faith or Fact?

March 06, 2009
by Rachel Balik

This article reference a number of studies, and provides links for further exploration of this most interesting topic.

Two studies show that the brains of religious people have less intense responses to error, suggesting that faith in God can reduce anxiety.

God on the Brain

Many previous studies have tried to determine whether religion has a positive effect on mental health. In February 2008, the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion and the Centre for Anthropology and Mind at Oxford began a three-year study to develop a scientific understanding of why humans believe in God. Researchers will look for evidence that faith in God is a desirable evolutionary trait, and attempt to discover what aspects of religion can be attributed to nature, and which must be taught.

Psychologists compared a group of students trained for a month in mindfulness meditation with another that was taught somatic relaxation. Both techniques reduced stress, but meditation was more effective at reducing “distractive and ruminative thoughts and behaviors,” indicating that it offered a “unique” method for minimizing distress.

Mindful meditation has also been found to alter the structure and functioning of monks’ brains, The Wall Street Journal reported in 2004. Five neuroscientists visited the Dalai Lama to explore neuroplasticity (the brain’s ability to rewire itself) and its relation to meditation. The brains of novice and experienced monks were scanned as they meditated; the experienced monks showed a significantly higher level of gamma waves, a type of brain activity that plays a key role in consciousness.

Religion’s effect on the brain has yet to be fully assessed. However, research suggests that incorporating spirituality into children’s lives can help them navigate the difficult choices of adolescence. Several studies have shown that children raised with a spiritual or religious tradition are less likely to make poor choices about drugs and alcohol.

And in hard times, many find comfort in religion. In September, as the foundation of Wall Street began to crumble, many financiers turned to God and organized religion for support. Churches and synagogues throughout New York City reported a higher number of congregants in business suits.

Labels: believers, God, meditation, mental health, Rachel Balik, religion, science, Stroop

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Coaches walk fine line on praying with students

Published on Friday, March 06, 2009
By Jesse J. Holland
The Associated Press
ADVERTISEMENT

WASHINGTON — Coach Marcus Borden used to bow his head and drop to one knee when his football team prayed. But the Supreme Court on Monday ended the practice when it refused to hear the high school coach’s appeal of a school district ban on employees joining a student-led prayer.

“We’ve become so politically correct in terms of how we deal with religion that it’s being pretty severely limited in schools right now, and individuals suffer,” said John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties organization that focuses on First Amendment and religious freedom issues.

But Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said some parents had complained about Borden leading prayers before the East Brunswick, N.J., school district ordered him to stop and banned all staff members from joining in student-led prayer.

“The bottom line is people in positions of authority, like a coach, have to be extremely careful about trying to promote their ideas, or implying that if you don’t pray, you may not play,” Lynn said.

The high court without comment refused to reconsider the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision upholding the ban.

The district established the ban in 2005 after parents complained about Borden, coach at East Brunswick High School since 1983, sometimes leading prayers at the Friday afternoon team pasta dinner or in the locker room before games.

Judge D. Michael Fisher, writing for the Philadelphia appeals court, said Borden’s past action of leading the prayers made his head-bowing seem inappropriate. “A reasonable observer would conclude that he is continuing to endorse religion when he bows his head during the pre-meal grace and takes a knee with his team in the locker room while they pray,” Fisher said.

School employees should avoid looking like they’re endorsing religion in any way, said Lynn, whose group represented the school district.

The Supreme Court ended school-sponsored prayer in 1962 when it said that directing that a prayer be said at the beginning of each school day was a violation of the First Amendment. The justices reaffirmed the decision in 2000 by saying a Texas school district was giving the impression of prayer sponsorship by letting students use loudspeakers under the direction of a faculty member for prayers before sporting events.

Labels: Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Jesse J. Holland, prayer, religion, sports, supreme court

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, March 06, 2009

How Science Fiction Found Religion

Benjamin A. Plotinsky

Once overtly political, the genre increasingly employs Christian allegory.

There is a young man, different from other young men. Ancient prophecies foretell his coming, and he performs miraculous feats. Eventually, confronted by his enemies, he must sacrifice his own life—an act that saves mankind from calamity—but in a mystery as great as that of his origin, he is reborn, to preside in glory over a world redeemed. Tell this story to one of the world’s 2 billion Christians, and he’ll recognize it instantly. Tell it to a science-fiction and fantasy fan, and he’ll ask why you’re making minor alterations to the plot of The Matrix or Superman Returns. For reasons that have as much to do with global politics as with our cultural moment, some of this generation’s most successful sci-fi and fantasy movie franchises follow an essentially Christian plotline.

Hallelujah!” cries a minor character early in The Matrix, the 1999 cyberpunk flick, directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski, that took the nation by storm and, together with its two sequels, raked in about $600 million domestically. “You’re my savior, man, my own personal Jesus Christ.” The character is addressing Thomas Anderson, a restless computer hacker, played by Keanu Reeves, who goes by the handle “Neo” and has sold him some precious illegal software. It’s just one of the movie’s many references to its central inspiration. Neo, we learn eventually, is in fact a nearly divine savior, the Jesus Christ of the bizarre world in which he lives.

Anderson doesn’t realize it yet, however. First, a mysterious man named Morpheus must contact him, conveying a shocking truth: the universe isn’t real but is actually a “Matrix”—a “neural interactive simulation,” a “computer-generated dreamworld”—and the year isn’t 1999 but something like 2199. Early in the twenty-first century, Morpheus explains, human beings and intelligent machines went to war against one another. The machines, seeking a constant source of bioelectrical energy, started to breed people and use them as human generators, keeping them in little cells but convincing them, through illusion-conveying cables attached to their brains, that they still lived in an ordinary world. “You are a slave, Neo,” Morpheus says. “Like everyone else, you were born into bondage.”

Yet escape from bondage is possible. “When the Matrix was first built, there was a man born inside who had the ability to change whatever he wanted, to remake the Matrix as he saw fit,” Morpheus tells Neo. “It was he who freed the first of us, taught us the truth. . . . After he died, the Oracle prophesied his return—that his coming would hail the destruction of the Matrix, end the war, bring freedom to our people.” Is Neo this reincarnated savior—the “One” whom Morpheus and his fellow rebels await? We don’t know until near the movie’s end, when a comrade-in-arms betrays Neo and Morpheus. Neo chooses to save Morpheus’s life by surrendering his own. The machines kill him—but then he mysteriously returns to life and obliterates his enemies, to the grand accompaniment of trumpets and a choir. He is indeed the One.

It takes no great perception to recognize how closely this plot tracks the basic Christian narrative, though it conflates the Passion with the End Days, adding the betrayal of a Judas to a messianic Second Coming. Neo’s very name isn’t just an anagram of “One” but also a prefix meaning “new,” a word with important Christian overtones: Jesus is a “new man,” we read in Ephesians 2:15, who says that he brings a new testament.

This is just the beginning of a very interesting and readable article about science fiction and religious influence. Cited are "Superman," and "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," among others...Please click on "external source" for complete article.

Labels: Benjamin A. Plotinsky, religion, science fiction

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Religion may keep believers from losing their cool: study

'Opiate of the masses?'

Charles Lewis, National Post
Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Religion may or may not be the opiate of the masses but a new study says it may keep believers from losing their cool when things go wrong.

"These results suggest that religious conviction provides a framework for understanding and acting within one's environment, thereby acting as a buffer against anxiety and minimizing the experience of error," said the study published in the journal Psychological Science.

Led by Michael Inzlicht, a University of Toronto psychology professor, researchers measured activity in the part of the brain - the anterior cingulate cortex - that is important for self control and acts as a warning signal that a mistake is being made.

"It acts as a cortical alarm bell," said Prof. Inzlicht. "And the finding is that the more people believe in God the less the cortical alarm bell rings."

Those with the deepest religious belief were more likely to let mistakes roll off their backs, while those who tend toward atheism were more likely to suffer stress and anxiety after committing an error.

To test stress levels, he and his co-researchers used a "Stroop task." In it, subjects have a series words flashed in front of them. But they are told not to read the word but the colour of the word. For example, the word might be "blue" but if coloured red, the correct answer is red.

"It's difficult to do when the word and colour mismatch," said Prof. Inzlicht.

He said it is possible that a lack of anxiety may not be a good thing, as it may cause a more lackadaisical attitude.

"Anxiety can be beneficial," he said. "It gets you motivated, activated to perform at your best level. But if you're too anxious, your performance is going suffer. You're going to over analyze and think too much. What may be happening is that people with religion have a more optimal level of anxiety."

The study was not meant to argue for or against the existence of a higher being, Prof. Inzlicht said.

"Whether God is real or not is irrelevant to this study."

He called the study "statistically significant," meaning that the results should be repeatable in similar experiments and could act as a predictor to how people might react to real-world stress situations, such as today's crumbling stock markets. Prof. Inzlicht also said that no atheist in the study showed low anxiety and no religious person showed high anxiety.

Two separate studies were done and both showed the same results.

He said initially they were simply trying to understand what factors would activate these brain waves, not investigate religious belief.

At first, they asked people to describe themselves as being liberal or conservative. Then they asked others to describe their level of self-esteem. Neither of those parameters helped predict brain wave activity. It was only when they started asking about a belief in God and religiosity that a pattern developed.

Labels: anxiety, Charles Lewis, Psychological Science, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Questions Raised Anew About Religion in Military

By ERIC LICHTBLAU
Published: February 28, 2009

Page one of a two-page article. Please click on "external source" for complete article

WASHINGTON — Terry Bradshaw stared intently into the camera, his eyes moist, as the interviewer asked him if his faith in God had helped him through his bouts with depression.

“Oh, yeah,” answered Mr. Bradshaw, the Hall of Fame quarterback. “Well, I’m a Christian for one thing so, yeah, I’d been praying.”

The viewers of this video were military personnel who were watching an official military production dealing with depression, suicide and “the importance of faith.”

The screening of the suicide-prevention video and other recent incidents are reviving questions that the Pentagon had hoped to put behind it years ago: what the proper role of religion should be in the military and whether a pro-Christian culture permeates the armed forces.

Military officials have worked to enforce tougher restrictions on proselytizing and religious bias since a flare-up over religious discrimination in 2005 at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, where the football coach posted a locker room banner for “Team Jesus.” Officials said they had made great strides in the last few years, with training for officers and a concerted effort at the inclusion of all faiths.

“I’d be wrong to state that every chaplain does it right 100 percent of the time, but we work very hard at it,” said Carleton Birch of the Army’s Chief of Chaplains Office. “Chaplains ascribe to pluralism. We represent our own faith while respecting other faith groups.”

Signs of continued friction over the issue still abound, however. In a memorandum distributed last month at the Air Force Academy in response to several recent complaints about religious bias, base leaders reminded faculty members that “the Air Force is ‘officially neutral’ when it comes to belief systems.” The memorandum said cadets should not be made to feel that they would get better jobs by going to optional Bible study sessions.

Still, some military personnel and activists opposed to what they see as “forced religion” in the military said they believed the problem had continued largely unabated, and they said private groups like the Officers’ Christian Fellowship and the Campus Crusade for Christ’s Military Ministry maintained an outsized influence on many bases.

“The Army enforces policies against racism and sexism, but doesn’t bat an eye at these kinds of religious discrimination,” said Specialist Dustin Chalker, an Army medic based at Fort Detrick, in Maryland, who was raised in a Christian home but is now an atheist. “Why is it acceptable that soldiers are unable to serve this nation without attending state-led religious practices they find offensive and false?”

Specialist Chalker is now a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit that accuses the military of ignoring laws and policies banning mandatory religious practices. Specialist Chalker, who earned a Purple Heart in Iraq, remembers returning from the war in 2007 and attending a mandatory ceremony that began and ended with a Christian prayer. The experience, Specialist Chalker said, was “humiliating and dehumanizing.”

Leaders of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit group that brought the lawsuit against the Pentagon, point to episodes that they said represented a pattern of improper religious influence: official military retreats at off-base churches, the appearance of uniformed officers at religious events, displays of crucifixes at military chapels in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the practice of “dipping” the American flag at the altar of the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., among others.

The foundation says the Terry Bradshaw video represents only the latest example of what it considers an improper blurring of secular and religious issues.

Mr. Bradshaw appears in a half-hour interview to discuss his experience with depression, with outtakes appearing in a six-minute video that includes a segment called “the importance of faith.” A suicide-prevention manual, training Army leaders in using the Bradshaw video, includes a “talking point” saying, “Spirituality is an invaluable ingredient in his battle with this disease.”

Chaplain Birch said testimonials like those from Mr. Bradshaw helped soldiers deal with depression. “No one’s trying to force religion on anyone,” he said of the video. “But someone’s personal faith testimony is part of their story, and we’re not going to go around and censor it.”

Labels: Eric Lichtblau, Military Religious Freedom Foundation, Pentagon, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

ASKING THE CLERGY: Is there a relationship between art and religion?

February 28, 2009

Rabbi Johanan Bickhardt, Congregation Beth Sholom, Long Beach:

Without question, there is a powerful relationship between art and religion. Scripture tell us in Genesis 28:2: "You shall make Holy Vestments ... for honor and splendor." The direct commandment to create vestments that are enticing and aesthetically pleasing were to provide splendor into the holy service and bring honor to the office to those who held it. Houses of worship through the centuries always have had an eye for adornment and to create an atmosphere that was spiritually uplifting... In the words of the great 20th century writer Franz Werfel (1890-1945); "Religion is the everlasting dialogue between humanity and God. Art is its soliloquy."

Pastor James Lupis, Grace and Truth Church, Coram:

Since the beginning of time, there has always been a relationship between art and religion. Before the written word, man communicated what he felt and believed by art. I believe that in this world today, which has become mostly visual, art can be a great way to communicate our belief in God...Jesus painted pictures in the minds of men and women in the form of parables. The relationship of art and religion has never been stronger or more important than the time in which we are living. I believe that men and women and especially children can effectively communicate and minister their personal belief in God through art, and more importantly, glorify him in the process.

Pastor Joseph Costa, Blessed Hope Baptist Church, Coram:

...Art, as well as other forms of creativity, such as music or writing, can be a great way to connect with faith. I also am aware that art does not necessarily have to express anything other than that which its author intended. Some art has certain appeal to some, while it may actually be viewed as offensive to others. My church has sponsored a cable show the past seven years, called "Drawing Men to Christ," where a gospel preacher draws as he preaches. It has proved to be successful in that he keeps the attention of his audience by his artwork while at the same time his message of either salvation or sanctification settles into the soul of the listener.

The Rev. Richard Lehman, director of pastoral care, Long Island Council of Churches, Hempstead and Riverhead:

Art is often expressed in religious ideas and symbols...I think it is great to have art in the church. Art is an expression of a person's creativity. The church should always encourage creativity. I'm a musician, which is another creative expression. Some of the greatest music there is was written for the church. Christmas without "The Messiah" would be a distinct loss. The church would be very much at a loss without music and art.

Labels: art, church, clergy, music, Rabbi Johanan Bickhardt, religion, worship

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Women More Religious Than Men

By Robert Roy Britt, Editorial Director
28 February 2009

A new analysis of survey data finds women pray more often then men, are more likely to believe in God, and are more religious than men in a variety of other ways.

The latest findings, released Friday, are no surprise, only confirming what other studies have found for decades. Still, the new numbers illustrate interesting and stark differences. They come from a fresh review of data that was collected in a 2007 survey and initially released last year by the Pew Research Center. The percent of women (and then men) who:

* Are affiliated with a religion: 86 (79).
* Have absolutely certain belief in a God or universal spirit: 77 (65).
* Pray at least daily: 66 (49).
* Have absolutely certain belief in a personal God: 58 (45).

The survey involved interviews with more than 35,000 U.S. adults by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

George H. Gallup, Jr., in an analysis for the Gallup polling organization back in 2002, wrote that the differences in religiosity between men and women have been shown consistently across the previous seven decades of polls.

Among the reasons women tend to be more religious:

* Mothers have tended to spend more time raising children, which often means overseeing their involvement in church activities.
* Though two-income households are more common today, in the past women often had more flexible daily schedules, permitting more church involvement during the week.
* Women tend to be more open about sharing personal problems and are more relational than men. Other Gallup research shows a higher proportion of women than men say they have a "best friend" in their congregation, he wrote.

Lastly, Gallup argued, "More so than men, women lean toward an empirical [depending on experience or observation] rather than a rational basis for faith."

There may be another reason. Rodney Stark, a professor of sociology and comparative religion at the University of Washington, flips the question around: Why are men less religious?

"Studies of biochemistry imply that both male irreligiousness and male lawlessness are rooted in the fact that far more males than females have an underdeveloped ability to inhibit their impulses, especially those involving immediate gratification and thrills," Stark argued in a 2002 paper in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.

The upshot is that some men are shortsighted and don't think ahead, Stark said, and so "going to prison or going to hell just doesn't matter to these men."

Stark may have purposely overstated the case, but you get the point. My wife suggested another reason: Life is simply harder for women. While I can't argue with that, I also can't find any research connecting that to prayer or church attendance.

Labels: faith, George Gallup, God, Pew Research Center survey, prayer, religion, Robert Roy Britt, spirituality, women

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, February 27, 2009

Christians’ actions driving people from church

Carolyn Harrison
Thursday, February 26, 2009

Communities with a shrinking and aging church demographic can look to the growing number of college students with negative perceptions of organized religion and faith. According to a national study, 40 percent of 16- to 29-year-olds have opted out of church — 20 percent of whom have been active Christians all their lives and grew up going to church. Contrary to what you might expect, however, the forces driving college students away from church have little to do with faith and theology.

These young people said they rejected Christianity because of the behaviors and hypocrisies of fellow Christians, not because of theological reasons.

The Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kan., just recently finished a sermon series called “When Christians Get it Wrong.” The series focused on major issues like the hypocrisy of Christians, religion vs. science and homosexuality.

“I think many young people are interested in Jesus and what he taught,” said senior pastor Adam Hamilton. “The perception of 85 percent of young adults who do not go to church is that Christians are hypocrites. By that they don’t mean that they take a sip of beer once in awhile. By this they mean that they don’t find them admirable, but off-putting. Some Christians they have known come across as self-righteous, acting judgmental and morally superior while oblivious to their own sins and failings.”

Hamilton’s statements seem to indicate that Christians themselves are often to blame for pushing people away from the church through their actions and words, but that’s not the end of the story. According to Hamilton, Christians do get it right a lot of the time. Organized religion is responsible for countless humanitarian services, including feeding and clothing the homeless and lending a helping hand to those in need.

But not all students drift away from their religious upbringings. About a third of K-State students are involved in more than 30 different religious organizations on campus and in the community.

There is a lesson to learn for everyone here. Christians and other organized religions need to understand that while the reasons for opting out of church and religion vary, the primary reason is not about theology or faith; it’s about the actions of people who represent the faith. On the other hand, those who have opted out of faith because of the poor behavior of a few individuals need to put this in perspective with all the good work attributed to Christians and organized religion. We all need to be less judgmental toward those with different beliefs.

Labels: Carolyn Harrison, Christian church, religion, youth

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Pew study looks at the religious landscape of African-Americans

by Helen Gray
Feb. 20, 2009

This is the first of a three-page article. Please click on "external source" for complete article.

Through slavery and segregation, the black church has provided hope, unity and sanctuary.

Today African-Americans are the nation’s most religious group. So says a recent study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

“While the U.S. is generally considered a highly religious nation, African-Americans are markedly more religious on a variety of measures than the U.S. population as whole,” says the study’s overview.

Compared to the rest of the population, more African-Americans have a religious affiliation, attend worship, pray frequently and place greater importance on religion in their lives.

The data come from Pew’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, collected in 2007 and released last summer. Pew recently came out with a new analysis of African-Americans.

“Given the inauguration of (Barack) Obama, (Martin Luther) King Day and Black History Month, we thought it would be a good time to look at this subgroup,” Pew researcher Greg Smith said. “This new analysis helps people understand religion in the African-American community, which is a large group.”

The study is in line with other studies that have had similar results, said Lawrence Mamiya, religion and Africana studies professor at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

Among the Pew findings:

•Eighty-seven percent of African-Americans say they belong to a particular religious group, compared to 83 percent among the total population.

•Seventy-nine percent say religion is “very important” in their lives, compared to 56 percent of the total population.

•Fifty-three percent say they attend religious services at least once a week, compared to 39 percent of the total population.

•Seventy-six percent say they pray at least on a daily basis, compared to 58 percent of the total population.

•Eighty-eight percent say they are absolutely certain that God exists, compared to 71 percent of the total population.

The religious portrait of African-Americans reveals that they are overwhelmingly Protestant (78 percent), with 59 percent belonging to historically black churches.

Only 12 percent of African-Americans are not affiliated with any particular religion; 5 percent are Catholic; 1 percent are Jehovah’s Witnesses; 1 percent are Muslim; 1 percent are atheist or agnostic; and small fractions are in other faiths.

“What I like about the study is that it indicates diversity in the African-American religious community,” said Anthony Pinn, humanities and religious studies professor at Rice University in Houston.

In reviewing the data for African-American women, Pew researchers concluded that “no group of men or women from any other racial or ethnic background exhibits comparably high levels of religious observance.”

According to the survey, 84 percent of African-American women say religion is very important to them, and 59 percent attend religious services at least once a week.

“Black women often say ‘my pastor’ or ‘my church,’ which denotes a sense of ownership and independence and trust, which they wouldn’t say about other institutions in American society, like they wouldn’t say ‘my Democratic party’ or even ‘my NAACP,’?” Mamiya said.

Additional findings:

•Religious beliefs: In addition to the high belief in God, 55 percent interpret Scripture as the literal word of God compared to 33 percent of the overall population; 83 percent believe in angels and demons compared to 68 percent of the overall population; 84 percent believe in miracles compared to 79 percent of the overall population; and 58 percent are absolutely convinced there is life after death compared to 50 percent of the overall population.

Labels: African-Americans, church, Helen Gray, Pew Religion and Public Life Survey, prayer, religion, worship

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

2008 Election Poll is Worth the Wait

February 19, 2009 5:49PM

New analysis suggests that evangelicals remained unmoved in their support for Republicans, while a few other religious groups shifted.

Tobin Grant

Within minutes of the polls closing in November, journalists were reporting results from exit polls including analysis of how evangelicals and other religious groups voted. One of the findings from these polls was that evangelicals (that is, “born again” voters) voted three to one for McCain, with evangelicals in the South more likely to do so than evangelicals in the Midwest.

But exit polls are short, with too few questions on religion. For a clearer picture of religion’s role in the election, researchers use surveys that take more time to analyze. One of the best is The National Survey of Religion and Politics conducted by John Green (University of Akron and the Pew Forum).

In the March issue of First Things, Green presents a summary of how religious groups voted in November. The fact that this “summary” runs over 4,000 words speaks to the complexities and nuances of religion in American politics. Green uses a combination of information on religious affiliation, beliefs, behavior, race, and ethnicity to group Americans into no less than 15 different religious groups. He reports how each group voted in 2008 and compares this vote with results from 2004. The result is a clearer picture of how the more things change the more they stay the same in American religion and politics.

There were three groups that seem to have made sizeable shifts in their votes.

1. Black Protestants. In 2004, support for Kerry among those attending a Black Protestant church dropped to 83 percent. However, with Obama as candidate, this group returned to its high level of support for the Democrats. As Green notes, 95 percent of Black Protestants voted for Obama, meaning that one in five of Obama’s voters were Black Protestants.

2. Traditionalist Catholics. As with Mainline Protestants and Evangelical Protestants, Green differentiates Catholics by their support for traditional beliefs and practices. Traditionalist Catholics are those who hold more orthodox beliefs and are more active in their faith. In 2004, only one fifth of this group voted for Kerry. In 2008, support for the Democrat nearly doubled, with 39 percent supporting Obama. This is one group to watch over the next four years.

3. Ethnic Protestants. Green analyzes “Ethnic Protestants” as a separate religious group. This group is primarily Latino but it includes other non-white, non-Anglo Protestants. This group tends to hold conservative positions on social issues. They gave Bush their vote in 2004, with only 25 percent voting for Kerry. In 2008, Obama received just over half of this group’s vote. This is a group that has not solidified its voting. As of now, it is trending Democratic, but its votes are likely up for grabs for next few election cycles.

Tobin Grant is an associate professor of political science at Southern Illinois University — Carbondale.

Labels: 2008 election, evangelicals, religion, The Fifth National Survey of Religion and Politics: A Baseline for the 2008 Presidential Election, Tobin Grant

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

The Biology of Belief

The Biology of Belief
By JEFFREY KLUGER Thursday, Feb. 12, 2009

This is page one of a four-page article - well worth the read. Please click on "external source" to access the entire article

Most folks probably couldn't locate their parietal lobe with a map and a compass. For the record, it's at the top of your head — aft of the frontal lobe, fore of the occipital lobe, north of the temporal lobe. What makes the parietal lobe special is not where it lives but what it does — particularly concerning matters of faith.

If you've ever prayed so hard that you've lost all sense of a larger world outside yourself, that's your parietal lobe at work. If you've ever meditated so deeply that you'd swear the very boundaries of your body had dissolved, that's your parietal too. There are other regions responsible for making your brain the spiritual amusement park it can be: your thalamus plays a role, as do your frontal lobes. But it's your parietal lobe — a central mass of tissue that processes sensory input — that may have the most transporting effect. (Read "Top 10 Medical Breakthroughs".)

Needy creatures that we are, we put the brain's spiritual centers to use all the time. We pray for peace; we meditate for serenity; we chant for wealth. We travel to Lourdes in search of a miracle; we go to Mecca to show our devotion; we eat hallucinogenic mushrooms to attain transcendent vision and gather in church basements to achieve its sober opposite. But there is nothing we pray — or chant or meditate — for more than health.

Health, by definition, is the sine qua non of everything else. If you're dead, serenity is academic. So we convince ourselves that while our medicine is strong and our doctors are wise, our prayers may heal us too.

Here's what's surprising: a growing body of scientific evidence suggests that faith may indeed bring us health. People who attend religious services do have a lower risk of dying in any one year than people who don't attend. People who believe in a loving God fare better after a diagnosis of illness than people who believe in a punitive God. No less a killer than AIDS will back off at least a bit when it's hit with a double-barreled blast of belief. "Even accounting for medications," says Dr. Gail Ironson, a professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Miami who studies HIV and religious belief, "spirituality predicts for better disease control." (Read "Finding God on YouTube.")

It's hard not to be impressed by findings like that, but a skeptic will say there's nothing remarkable — much less spiritual — about them. You live longer if you go to church because you're there for the cholesterol-screening drive and the visiting-nurse service. Your viral load goes down when you include spirituality in your fight against HIV because your levels of cortisol — a stress hormone — go down first. "Science doesn't deal in supernatural explanations," says Richard Sloan, professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University Medical Center and author of Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine. "Religion and science address different concerns."

That's undeniably true — up to a point. But it's also true that our brains and bodies contain an awful lot of spiritual wiring. Even if there's a scientific explanation for every strand of it, that doesn't mean we can't put it to powerful use. And if one of those uses can make us well, shouldn't we take advantage of it? "A large body of science shows a positive impact of religion on health," says Dr. Andrew Newberg, a professor of radiology, psychology and religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania and co-founder of Penn's Center for Spirituality and the Mind. "The way the brain works is so compatible with religion and spirituality that we're going to be enmeshed in both for a long time."

It's All in Your Head
"enmeshed in the brain" is as good a way as any to describe Newberg's work of the past 15 years. The author of four books, including the soon-to-be-released How God Changes Your Brain, he has looked more closely than most at how our spiritual data-processing center works, conducting various types of brain scans on more than 100 people, all of them in different kinds of worshipful or contemplative states. Over time, Newberg and his team have come to recognize just which parts of the brain light up during just which experiences.

When people engage in prayer, it's the frontal lobes that take the lead, since they govern focus and concentration. During very deep prayer, the parietal lobe powers down, which is what allows us to experience that sense of having loosed our earthly moorings. The frontal lobes go quieter when worshippers are involved in the singular activity of speaking in tongues — which jibes nicely with the speakers' subjective experience that they are not in control of what they're saying.

Labels: Andrew Newberg, brain, faith, health, Jeffrey Kluger, medicine, parietal lobe, prayer, religion, science, spirituality

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Poll: One in Three Americans Unfamiliar with Charles Darwin

By Katherine T. Phan
Christian Post Reporter
Wed, Feb. 11 2009 08:52 AM EST

This is the first of a two-page article. Please click on "external source" for complete article.

Charles Darwin may be an influential name in the scientific community for the theory of evolution but a new Gallup poll shows that roughly one-third of Americans have no clue who he is or what he’s known for.

Ahead of his 200th birthday celebration on Feb. 12, a Gallup poll conducted over the weekend asked Americans the question: “For what scientific theory is Charles Darwin known?”

The Gallup weekly briefing on Tuesday showed that 55 percent of respondents correctly associated Darwin with the theory of evolution, theory of natural selection or his fundamental work Origin of Species. Another 10 percent gave incorrect answers while the other 34 percent said they didn’t know who Darwin was or what scientific theory he was known for.

“Whether that’s good or bad depends on your perspective,” Frank Newport, Editor-in-Chief of The Gallup Poll, told KETV Channel 7 in Omaha.

“I think most of us would assume that even if you disagree with it that a higher percentage of Americans might at least know who Charles Darwin was or at least if he was associated with the theory of evolution.”
Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin

Darwin, a 19th century British scientist, developed a theory of evolution occurring by the process of natural selection.

During his time, Darwin’s theory was controversial because it was perceived as contradicting the biblical teaching on creation. Nearly 150 years since the publication of his Origin of Species, it remains a highly divisive issue among Americans.

The Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life recently released a report showing the American public evenly divided on the question of whether or not evolution is the best explanation for life on earth, with 48 percent agreeing that it is and 45 percent rejecting the notion that evolution best explains the origins of human life.

The Pew Forum survey showed that the views on evolution differed widely across Christian communities. Evangelical Protestants were most likely to reject the idea of evolution (70 percent), according to the report originally released in 2008. Meanwhile, historically black Protestants were more likely than mainline Protestants to disagree that evolution best explains the origins of human life, 51 to 42 percent.

Roughly half of Orthodox Christians and Catholics, however, agreed that evolution best explains the development of life on earth.

As the Pew Forum pointed out, the Catholic Church’s acceptance of the theory comes with the understanding that natural selection is a God-directed mechanism of biological development and that man’s soul is the divine creation of God.

Some mainline churches have taken a similar stance, stating that evolution and creationism do not contradict each other.

While the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has not issued a definitive statement on evolution, it does contend that “God created the universe and all that is therein, only not necessarily in six 24-hour days, and that God actually may have used evolution in the process of creation,” as reported by the Pew Forum.

Another mainline denomination, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) affirms that evolution and the Bible do not contradict each other. But the Presbyterians are cautious and say it “should carefully refrain from either affirming or denying the theory of evolution.”

Rejecting the theory of evolution altogether is the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the country. Southern Baptists affirm their belief that creation science can be backed by scientific evidence “without any religious doctrines or concepts.”

Labels: Charles Darwin, church, evolution, Gallup Poll, Katherine T. Phan, Pew Forum, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Interfaith Couples More Common

02/11/2009

According to the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey from the Pew Forum, 27 percent of Americans are married or cohabitating with a spouse or partner who is of a different faith background.

If people of different Protestant denominations are included, such as a Lutheran married to a Methodist, the number swells to 37 percent.

Those most likely to marry or live with someone of a different belief are nonbelievers (65 percent) and Buddhists (55 percent). Those least likely are Hindus (10 percent), Mormons (17 percent) and Catholics (22 percent).

Labels: belief, faith, marriage, Pew survey, religion, spouse

Permalink |

What do Alabama, Iran, Zimbabwe share? Religion

What do Alabama, Iran, Zimbabwe share? Religion

Feb 10, 2009

WASHINGTON (AFP) —

Eighty-two percent of Alabamans say religion plays a key role in everyday life, or around the same percentage as in Iran (83 percent) and the southern African state of Zimbabwe (81 percent), a poll conducted by Gallup showed Monday.

That could be because "a population's religiosity level is strongly related to its average standard of living," Gallup analysts Steve Crabtree and Brett Pehlam said in a report summarizing the findings of the poll.

The poverty rate in Alabama was 17 percent in 2007, according to the US Census Bureau, while World Bank statistics show around 20 percent of Iranians live in poverty.

In Zimbabwe, a country where the economy has been plummeting for a decade and inflation is running at several billion percent annually, at least 80 percent of the population live below the poverty line.

Also giving weight to the analysts' theory is the fact that the most religious US state, Mississippi, is also the poorest.

Eighty-five percent of Mississippians say religion is a key part of daily life, according to the poll, for which 1,000 adults each were interviewed in 143 countries between 2006 and 2008.

One in five Mississippians live in poverty, US Census data shows.

Religion was a key part of daily life for 17 percent of Swedes and 25 percent of Japanese.

When all 143 countries surveyed are taken into account, the median percentage for religiosity was 82 percent. The median is value in a set, above and below which there are equal numbers of values.

Although several states were above the global median, the United States taken as a whole fell well below it.

Even though God is invoked when the US president is sworn in, mentioned on dollar bills and in the pledge of allegiance that American students say daily to the flag, just 65 percent of Americans said religion matters in their everyday lives, according to the survey.

That puts the United States about five percentage points behind countries like Armenia, Jamaica, Kosovo, Mexico and Greece on Gallup's religiosity scale.

But "Americans look extremely devout" compared to 27 other wealthy nations, where the median of people who said religion is important in their daily lives was 38 percent, the Gallup analysts said.

Labels: Alabama, Gallup Poll, Iran. Zimbabwe, poverty, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

The Cost of Unbelief

By: Simon Smart
Posted: Tuesday, 10 February 2009, 9:43 (EST)

This is the first of a three-page article - well worth reading. Just click on "external source" to access the entire article.

Australian atheists were recently prevented from running a series of ads on buses with the message, “There’s probably no God, so sleep in on Sundays.” It was a funny ad and should have been permitted, and if the Bureau of Statistics A Picture of a Nation report is anything to go by, there’s a generation of young people who don’t need convincing. According to the latest figures young Australians are increasingly secular with the proportion of people stating ‘no religion’ on their census form up from 6.7% in 1971 to 19% in 2006; the younger generation leading the charge to the beach on Sunday mornings (or perhaps staying under the doona). 23.5% of 15 – 34 year-olds did not specify a religion compared with 7.9% of Australians 65 and older.

No doubt this finding will be good news to those who believe religion has only paranoia, superstition, violence and hypocrisy to contribute to society, and there are plenty of them. Freud famously articulated the notion that religion is a neurosis. Likewise, Psychologist Albert Ellis saw only the pernicious effects of religion on individuals, claiming that ‘Religiosity … is in many respects equivalent to irrational thinking and emotional disturbance.’ (Ellis, 1980, 67)

But the latest scientific data on the effects of religiosity on health, might give us reason to pause. In 2001 Duke University researchers conducted a large survey of 100 evidence-based studies of the correlation between religion and well-being and found that 79 reported a positive correlation, 13 no correlation, 7 mixed correlation and 1 a negative correlation.1 The masses of research completed since then has largely pointed in the same direction.

This is a growing field. It reflects a more serious attempt to integrate ‘whole-person care’ in medical areas that previously gave little importance to the spiritual side of patient management. Of the 141 medical schools in the U.S. and Canada 70% now offer courses on religion, spirituality and medicine.

This is largely a response to the vast amount of data emerging over the last eight years that reveals positive correlations between commitment to religion and better outcomes for dealing with depression and anxiety, strength of immune systems, cardiovascular health and even longevity.

It is well accepted that stress and depression have serious adverse health impacts and studies that show religious coping improves outcomes in this area need to be taken seriously. It is the scientists who are telling us that religious involvement is associated with lower rates of a host of stress-related medical conditions including cardiovascular disease, stroke, immune and endocrine functioning, cancer—especially gastrointestinal, breast and oral—and better outcomes for cancer in general.

It is worth quoting some research to give a small taste of the sort of data being reported:

Labels: atheism, depression, mental health, religion, science, Simon Smart, spirituality

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Monday, February 09, 2009

Scientists and religious leaders call for end to fighting over Darwin's legacy

Prominent scientists and leading religious figures have joined forces to call for an end to the fighting over Charles Darwin's legacy.

By Martin Beckford, Religious Affairs Correspondent
09 Feb 2009

Ahead of the 200th anniversary of the pioneering naturalist's birth on Thursday, they warn that militant atheists are turning people away from evolution by using it as a weapon with which to attack religion.

However, in a letter published in The Daily Telegraph, they also urge believers in creationism to acknowledge the overwhelming body of evidence that now exists to back up Darwin's theory of how life on Earth has developed.

It comes after a survey of 2,000 people conducted by Theos, the religion think tank, found that half believe the theory of evolution cannot explain the complexity of the natural world. One in three said they thought God created the Earth within the past 10,000 years.

The influential signatories of the letter include two Church of England bishops, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain and a member of the Evangelical Alliance, as well as Professor Lord Winston, the fertility pioneer, and Professor Sir Martin Evans, winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine.

They write: "Evolution, we believe, has become caught in the crossfire of a religious battle in which Darwin himself had little personal interest.

"We respectfully encourage those who reject evolution to weigh the now overwhelming evidence, hugely strengthened by recent advances in genetics, which testifies to the theory's validity.

"At the same time, we respectfully ask those contemporary Darwinians who seem intent on using Darwin's theory as a vehicle for promoting an anti-theistic agenda to desist from doing so as they are, albeit unintentionally, turning people away from the theory.

"In this year of all years, we should be celebrating Darwin's great biological achievements and not fighting over his legacy as some kind of anti-theologian."

Labels: Charles Darwin, evolution, Martin Beckford, religion, science, Theos

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Just before Darwin day, Pew reviews faith and evolution in U.S.

February 5th, 2009
Tom Heneghan

Please see complete article for links to this study. Click on "external source" at the end of this article.

Just in time for Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday next week, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has posted an extensive research package examining the debate about evolution, Darwinism and religion in the United States. “The Debate over Evolution” is a treasure trove of information about the debate and especially useful for the lists breaking down views of the main religious groups and the political fight over Darwinism state by state.

Labels: Charles Darwin, evolution, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, religion, The Debate over Evolution, Tom Heneghan

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Study: Decline in Adolescent Religious Beliefs & Practices Over Time

Thursday, February 05, 2009

You can download the study by clicking on "external source, and go to the bottom of the article.

The National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) recently announced the release of a new report on adolescents in the United States based on the second wave of NSYR survey data.

In "Religion and Spirituality on the Path Through Adolescence," the authors examined religious and spiritual changes in the lives of adolescents in the United States across a three-year span. The comparison of NSYR survey responses from the same adolescents in 2002 and 2005 reveals relatively small but consistent decreases in conventional religious beliefs and practices. Although the majority of adolescents in this study remained stable in their religious beliefs, practices, and spirituality, a significant minority did experience slight shifts away from standard religious beliefs and decreases in religious practice. Overall, the dynamics in religiosity and spirituality among this nationally representative sample of adolescents reflect subtle changes--rather than large or dramatic shifts.

The report, is authored by Melinda Lundquist Denton, Co-Investigator with the NSYR and Assistant Professor of Sociology at Clemson University, Lisa Pearce, Co-Principle Investigator of the second wave of the NSYR and Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Christian Smith, Principal Investigator of the NSYR and Professor of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame.

Labels: Jim Liebelt, religion, Religion and Spirituality on the Path Through Adolescence, teenagers

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, February 06, 2009

New Congress more religiously diverse

Provides accurate representation of nation's people
By Kaellen Hessel

Page 1 of 2. Please click on "external source" for Page 2.

* The 111th Congress is more religiously diverse than previous Congresses

* Members of Congress are more likely to claim a religious denomination than the public

* Congressmen don't think religion matters to voters

* Catholics, Jews and Mormons overrepresented in Congress

With the inauguration of a new president comes a new session of Congress.

This newly elected Congress is more religiously diverse than previous Congresses and more representative of the nation, according to a report put out by the nonpartisan Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

By comparing the religious affiliations of the new Congress with the religious demography of 35,000 American adults, the Pew Forum discovered members of Congress are more likely to affiliate themselves with a religion than the public. This discrepancy leads some religious groups, such as Mormons, Jews and Catholics, to be overrepresented in Congress.

According to the Pew Forum's report, 30 percent of Congress is Catholic compared to one fourth of American adults. David Masci, a senior research fellow at the Pew Forum, said this is a change from when Catholic politicians lost their races because of their religious beliefs. The Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, is a Catholic, Masci said.

Jews make up 8.4 percent of Congress and only 1.7 percent of American adults, according to the report. Three of Wisconsin's representatives in Congress, including both Senators, are Jewish, according to the Pew Forum's U.S. Religious Landscape Survey. Less than 0.5 percent of Wisconsin's population is Jewish.

David Masci said that although the Pew Forum doesn't know why members of Congress are more likely to claim a religious affiliation, they "can say it's in someone's benefit to belong." Masci cited Pete Stark (D-Calif.) as an example. Stark is a pronounced atheist and a member of the Unitarian Church, says Masci.

Masci said Americans like leaders to be religious because the majority believe people of faith are more moral.

Labels: Congress, faith, Kaellen Hessel, Pew Forum, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Religion now more divisive than race, says public

AT least four out of 10 Muslims do not believe that communities should be forced to integrate in Britain, according to a new poll.

It also found that religion has become a more divisive issue than race.

The survey for the Government's Equalities and Human Rights Commission revealed that more than half of the public believe it is likely that the UK will have a non-white prime minister within 20 years.

However, the black and Afro-Caribbean community, 56 per cent of which believe that the failings of the 1999 police inquiry into the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence in south-east London in 1993 would still be repeated today, retain some reservations about progress in race relations.

But a greater number of people in all communities apart from Muslims believe that Britain has become more racially tolerant.

Commission chairman Trevor Phillips said: "It is heartening to recognise that here in Britain we have a sophisticated sense of our own identity and an appreciation and interest in difference.

"But we can't be complacent. The survey points to emerging religious divisions.

"And as we mark a darker moment in our own history, the 10th anniversary of the inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, it is clear the police still have work to do to convince our ethnic-minority communities they deserve their trust."

Labels: Britain, Equalities and Human Rights Commission, Muslims, race, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Obama Family Values

Joel Kotkin, 01.20.09, 12:01 AM EST
A model of proper parenting and spirituality for the next generation.

The new president's focus on family reflects an increasing emphasis among African-American leaders on the importance of parental values. Many prominent black activists initially scorned Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan's 1965 report linking poverty among African-Americans to the decline of intact family units. But today, when roughly half of all black children live with single mothers, it is widely accepted that strong families represent the most effective way to reduce "the racial gap" in incomes.

Surveys reveal that people born between 1968 and 1979 place a considerably higher value on family, and a lower value on work, than their baby-boomer counterparts. Women in the former age cohort are actually having more children than their predecessors and, particularly among the college-educated, they appear to be working somewhat less.

And this family-friendly shift is likely to continue throughout the next wave of child-rearers. As Morley Winograd and Michael Hais suggest in their book, Millennial Makeover, the Millennial generation, born after 1983 and twice as numerous as Generation X, also enthusiastically embraces the notion of a strong family.

Indeed, three-fourths of 13- to 24-year-olds, according to one 2007 survey, consider time spent with family the most important factor in their own happiness, rating it even higher than time spent with friends or a significant other. More than 80% thought getting married would make them happy. Some 77% said they definitely or probably would want children, while less than 12% said they likely wouldn't.

What's more, the current state of the economy is likely to strengthen ties among family members. One-fourth of Generation X-ers, for example, still receive financial help from their parents, as do nearly one-third of Millennials. As many as 40% of Americans between ages 20 and 34 now live at least part-time with their parents, an option that will only become more commonplace in areas where home prices are particularly high and employment opportunities are sharply limited.

Yet even if family values are in ascendance, how they are expressed sharply diverges from the norms and attitudes typically associated with the Religious Right. In fact, on a host of issues--including gay rights, interracial dating and stem cell research--millennials trend more toward liberal views than earlier generations, Winograd says.

Attitudes concerning religion--the other critical part of the "values" issue--reveal a similar fusion of conventionality and pragmatism. Like other Americans, Millennials are far more religiously oriented than their counterparts in other advanced countries. Fully one-fourth of Americans in their 20s and 30s, observes Princeton sociologist Robert Wurthnow, consider themselves "very spiritual," even if they rarely attend church. A 2003 UCLA study found roughly three out of four college students deem their spiritual or religious views important, but most see their (older) professors as largely indifferent to such concerns.

Yet this spiritual orientation does not imply a shift toward any retrograde "moral majority" conservatism. Upward mobility among evangelicals and fundamentalists, as well as the increased racial integration within churches, has lessened the once-glaring gaps between conservative Protestants, particularly in the South, and the rest of American society. This liberalization is particularly acute when it comes to issues like homosexuality and censorship, but also extends to the role of women and the teaching of religion in public schools.

Labels: family, family values, Gen X, Joel Kotkin, Millennial Makeover, President Obama, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Study: Service Attendance, Not Spirituality, May Decrease Suicide Risk

By Aaron J. Leichman
Christian Post Reporter
Tue, Jan. 20 2009 11:20 AM EST

Religious individuals have a significantly lower chance of committing suicide, according to the results of a recent study in Canada.

Individuals identifying themselves simply as “spiritual” but not religious, however, are not much less likely to commit suicide than anyone else.

Conducted using data drawn from the Canadian Community Health Survey on almost 37,000 Canadians across the country, the latest study by a team of psychiatric researchers based at the University of Manitoba was the first to use national data to look at the relationship between spirituality, religious worship and suicidal behavior in the general population and people with a history of a mental disorder.

However, what was more interesting was the differences between people who call themselves “spiritual” and those who also regularly attend religious services.

According to the data, the former category did not show a decreased inclination to take their lives, suggesting something more was involved that was related to the actual attendance at a religious event occurring in a church, mosque, temple or other spiritual gathering.

Furthermore, among people with a history of mental illness – those at the highest risk of suicide –religious attendance appeared to be associated with a decrease in suicide attempts while simply being “spiritual” was not significant enough to reduce the effect.

Despite the findings, Rasic cautioned against tying the decrease in suicide attempts directly to religious worship.

For most studies dealing with spirituality and religiousness, spirituality is considered as referring to an inner belief system that a person relies on for strength and comfort whereas religiousness refers to institutional religious rituals, practices, and beliefs.

For the recent Canadian study, religiousness was based on a person’s attendance at a religious worship service.

The research results have been published in the Journal of Affective Disorders.

Labels: Aaron J. Leichman, Canada, Canadian Community Health Survey, church, religion, spirituality, suicide

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, January 30, 2009

Testing the Limits of What I Know and Feel

by John Updike

John Updike won two Pulitzer Prizes for his series of novels chronicling the life and death of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom. He is also a noted poet and essayist, as well as a critic of literature and fine art.

John Updike died this past week...

All Things Considered, April 18, 2005 · A person believes various things at various times, even on the same day. At the age of 73, I seem most instinctively to believe in the human value of creative writing, whether in the form of verse or fiction, as a mode of truth-telling, self-expression and homage to the twin miracles of creation and consciousness. The special value of these indirect methods of communication — as opposed to the value of factual reporting and analysis — is one of precision. Oddly enough, the story or poem brings us closer to the actual texture and intricacy of experience.

In fiction, imaginary people become realer to us than any named celebrity glimpsed in a series of rumored events, whose causes and subtler ramifications must remain in the dark. An invented figure like Anna Karenina or Emma Bovary emerges fully into the light of understanding, which brings with it identification, sympathy and pity. I find in my own writing that only fiction — and rarely, a poem — fully tests me to the kind of limits of what I know and what I feel. In composing even such a frank and simple account as this profession of belief, I must fight against the sensation that I am simplifying and exploiting my own voice.

I also believe, instinctively, if not very cogently, in the American political experiment, which I take to be, at bottom, a matter of trusting the citizens to know their own minds and best interests. "To govern with the consent of the governed": this spells the ideal. And though the implementation will inevitably be approximate and debatable, and though totalitarianism or technocratic government can obtain some swift successes, in the end, only a democracy can enlist a people's energies on a sustained and renewable basis. To guarantee the individual maximum freedom within a social frame of minimal laws ensures — if not happiness — its hopeful pursuit.

Cosmically, I seem to be of two minds. The power of materialist science to explain everything — from the behavior of the galaxies to that of molecules, atoms and their sub-microscopic components — seems to be inarguable and the principal glory of the modern mind. On the other hand, the reality of subjective sensations, desires and — may we even say — illusions, composes the basic substance of our existence, and religion alone, in its many forms, attempts to address, organize and placate these. I believe, then, that religious faith will continue to be an essential part of being human, as it has been for me.

Labels: creative writing, freedom, John Updike, materialism, politics, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Sufi rising

January 25, 2009

For years, the Islamic revival has seemed to be a story of ever-growing fundamentalism and political extremism, but around the world, Sufi orders are rapidly gaining strength -- in Turkey and Syria, Uzbekistan and Indonesia. Sufism is also growing quickly in Iran, as younger Muslims seek a liberal and liberating kind of spirituality utterly different from anything the ayatollahs can provide. In 1979, Iran had 100,000 Sufis; today, there may be 5 million.

Globally, the movement represents a close parallel to the explosive worldwide growth of charismatic and Pentecostal styles within Christianity. Both practice a passionate style of religion, and both have demography on their side. The Sufi revival is most obvious in the African and Asian lands that have some of the world's highest birth rates. Although the Sufi revival has its impact in many Muslim countries, the North African story is particularly important for Europe and the West because of the influence of migrants. As Morocco and Senegal spawn new forms of Sufi devotion, for example, these spread to African communities in Europe, and find expression in youth culture and hip hop, even in Sufi rap.

Always, these movements speak the language of peace, hope, and reconciliation, and condemn extremism. These are the Muslim voices that can compete with the calls to jihad and terror.

Labels: charismatics, Christianity, Iran, Muslims, passion, religion, Sufism

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

This Land Is My Land

Nica Lalli

President Obama acknowledged me in his first speech as president. He looked up from the podium on the steps of the capitol of this country and he seemed to look right at me, in my living room hundreds of miles and thousands of feet of television cable away. In one phrase he included me and made me feel part of the country I live in, the country I was born in, my country: The United States of America.

"For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness," Obama said. "We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and non-believers." Including the words non-believers was a first. Never before has a president recognized people like me in the many others, sub-groups or factions that they might mention so as to be inclusive of all who call this country home. Never.

So January 20 was a big day. Not only did I watch as our first ever black president sworn in, not only did I feel immense happiness that the guy I voted for made it all the way, but on top of all that I, a non-believer, was welcomed in a whole new way.

During the inaugural events preceding the speech I was beginning to feel a little outside of some of the goings on. I am not hostile toward religion, and in fact I help out at my local church and volunteer at a soup kitchen in my neighborhood run by some very wonderful nuns. I knew that there would be prayers offered during the ceremony, and I knew that the oath would include the phrase "so help me God" and would be part of the swearing-in of the 44th President even though it is not mandated in the Constitution. Oh, sure, part of me was hoping that Mr. Obama would leave that part out, but most of me knew he wouldn't dare. I know that the president has to be religious. I know he has to go to church and close his eyes during prayers and talk about his relationship to Christ, and assure us all that he is not a Muslim even if his middle name is Hussein and his forefathers followed the word of the prophet Muhammed. I may not be religious, but I know I live in a country where a large majority of the population is Christian.

The part of the morning that made me feel most left out was when Pastor Rick Warren got up to deliver the invocation. Again, I was not surprised by his words but I did hope for a little more inclusiveness. Pastor Warren did not speak to me, or to anyone who differs with his views. Many other religious leaders manage to do both, stay true to their beliefs and open themselves up in a way that can allow for other ideas to be included - or at least acknowledged.

It is as simple as somehow stating that they understand the fact that in a crowd of 2 million there would be (statistically speaking) about 280,000 people who would fall into the non-belief category. That is 14 percent of the general population which, according to the 2001 American Religious Identification Survey, is the percent of the American population that has no religion or does not believe in God. Never mind figuring out how to acknowledge all the other religions that would also be represented, all the non-Christians who live in this country and vote and are as American as Mr. Warren. It has become too easy for people like Pastor Warren to think that this is a Christian nation. And during the last eight years it felt as if it was leaning heavily in that direction.

It took our newly minted President to remind us that indeed it is not. Our country has no religion embedded within its government and thanks to the Constitution it never will. It took a man who is part black, part white and whose extended family truly represents the new American family in all it's mixed up crazy diversity to remind us that the patchwork that is America is what makes this country so special and so great. I am honored to be part of that patchwork. And I thank my new President for thinking to include me, and the 42 million other Americans like me, in it as we face forward and work together to fix problems, celebrate greatness and overcome divisiveness.

Labels: inauguration, Nica Lalli, non-believer, President Obama, religion, Rick Warren

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, January 23, 2009

The greatest American innovation in religion is tolerance

Andrew Brown
Wednesday 21 January 2009

Watching Obama's inauguration with its repeated invocations of the deity, both formal and informal, it struck me how astonishingly prolific America has been in religious inventions. A short list of religious ideas invented in America would include at the very least religious toleration (from Rhode Island) from the 17th century, the open-air revival meeting (from the Great Awakening) from the 18th, Adventism, and Mormonism, from the 19th century and Pentecostalism and Alcoholics Anonymous from the 20th.

Then there are all the American innovations which are either questionably religious, like worshipping your own constitution or the "free market", or were in some sense pioneered in Europe, like theocratic model settlements. This last also falls into the third category: American religious innovations that were ultimately unsuccessful, along with Christian Science, utopian communes, and, let us hope, scientology.

But the successful American religious innovations have all spread round the world. They have not just become ideas, but transnational cultures bound up with ritual and strengthened by myths about their own history. There has been nothing at any other period of history like that fountain of social invention emerging from one country or civilisation.

Their success is often taken to be an endorsement of the free market in religions: more precisely, it is argued that this is the outcome of consumer choice, as opposed to some nationalised model of religious provision. But to see these belief systems as choices made by rational and autonomous adults is to misunderstand what made them successful and what distinguishes them from the failures.

In the shopping model of religion, nothing much hangs upon your choice. If it doesn't fit, you can give it back, or go to another church. And of course a lot of American religion runs like this, but when it does, it doesn't last. The ones which have lasted and spread are those whose adherents feel that they don't have a choice. They are not deciding what to believe. They are recognising what is true.

This is most obvious in the case of AA, where it is also explicit. The convert is told that unless they understand the world in a certain way, they will die; and so far as anyone can tell, that's actually true. But of course this isn't and doesn't have to be denominational. As it happens, the three AA members I know best are all Christians, but that, I think, is because they are all journalists more or less specialising in religious affairs. But they are none of them proselytisers and I know slightly a couple of alcoholics who were distressed to have to invoke a higher power to stay alive. It went against all their principles. I want to get some of them to write about this experience, but that's for later.

If you don't convert, as to Pentecostalism or AA, then the inevitable quality of the religion has to arise from childhood. I think this is much less effective than conversion as an adult. If it were really the case that childhood indoctrination is impossible to break, the Catholic church in Ireland would never have collapsed: what happened there was broadly speaking that an entire generation which had been brought up as Catholic children stopped as adults believing and performing the rituals of belief and then failed to pass on either to their children. If these ideas about indoctrination were true, this could not have happened at all. But it did happen, for reasons which aren't entirely clear, but which seem to go back to the generation before the one that lost its faith: it's not enough to bring children up in certain beliefs, or rituals. What's needed is that life should continue to reinforce the message that these rituals work, and that the beliefs are true even if you can't see why.

Incidentally, there is of course nothing uniquely religious about a belief that is true because it just is. I have absolutely no idea why Australians don't fall off the bottom of the planet. I know there is a force called gravity, and that it works and accelerates things at 32ft per second per second. But I have absolutely no idea why this should be the case; it's just a given fact about the universe. Actual religious faith can work that way too. It doesn't appear to the believer as a willed belief, but as a recognition of brute truth.

This is of course extremely frightening. It's not much fun from from the inside, but it's even worse from outside and that's why I think that the greatest American innovation is the first: religious tolerance. It demands the ability to marry an experience of inner compulsion with the terrifying understanding that other people may have inner compulsions which are just as real and compelling, but entirely different from yours. This is horribly unnerving when you understand it applies even to of members of your own tribe. But it now seems to most Americans a simple brute fact about human nature, which they understand their constitution to say with its talk about the separation of church and state. Of course, that means they can't understand people who don't think the American constitution is a vehicle of universal truths, but then no tolerance is perfect and this one has just been proved a little wider than anyone thought possible a year ago.

Labels: America, Andrew Brown, innovation, President Obama, religion, tolerance

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

What do we pray for?

BY DANA MASSING
dana.massing@timesnews.com [more details]

Published: January 17. 2009 12:01AM

Christians are praying for unity this week, but that's not the number one thing people ask God for.

Help is what most people pray for, said Carol Zaleski, co-author of "Prayer: A History."

"A request is often involved -- for divine protection, healing or special favors for oneself or for others," Zaleski said.

She said that prayer is, essentially, communication with God, or with spiritual beings.

More than half of Americans do it daily, according to survey results released in 2008.

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life's U.S. Religious Landscape Survey found that 58 percent of the national population prays once a day or more.

Percentages ranged from 5 percent of atheists to 89 percent of Jehovah's Witnesses and included 26 percent of Jews, 45 percent of Buddhists, 62 percent of Hindus, 71 percent of Muslims and 78 percent of evangelical Protestants, results showed.

"All religions involve prayer; and prayer goes on outside the boundaries of religion as well," said Zaleski, professor of world religions at Smith College in Northampton, Mass. "Prayer is the primary means of relationship to the divine. Without prayer there is no religion."

Prayer can be spoken or silent. It can include music, dance or visual expression, said Zaleski.

"There are many differences and distinctive notes between and among religions," she said. "Prayer may be addressed to an intercessor -- such as a saint, angel or deified ancestor; or it may be addressed directly to God without intermediary. Prayer includes forms of meditation, for instance, in Buddhism, that are not overtly theistic."

One distinctive practice is the Sufi dhikr, which can involve whirling in imitation of the heavenly spheres while remembering the name of God, she said. Sufism is an Islamic mystic tradition.

Mecca is the center of Islam, Zaleski said, and Muslims face it to pray for that reason.

Muslims are expected, if they are physically and financially able, to make a pilgrimage to Mecca at least once.

"When Muslims turn to face Mecca, they are, in a sense, virtual pilgrims, united in prayer," Zaleski said.

Some Christians, particularly Catholics, Orthodox and Eastern, make a cross sign when praying. Zaleski said it's "a way of identifying one's whole self with Christ."

And within Christianity, many people bow their heads and fold their hands while praying to express humility, gratitude and assent to God's will, she said.

"It is a joyful posture, not a groveling one; humans need to feel that they are in the presence of something truly higher," Zaleski said.

Labels: Americans, Carol Zaleski, Dana Massing, prayer, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Programs Aim To Increase Study and Research on Faith and Globalization

Friday, January 16, 2009

New Haven, Conn. — In December, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced that he would expand the Tony Blair Faith Foundation (TBFF) and the Yale Initiative on Faith and Globalization over the next two years.

Future plans include:

• Basing the U.S. operations of the Tony Blair Faith Foundation at Yale University, employing a small team of staff to work across the range of the foundation’s programs and help extend its reach across North America.

• Building a global consortium of universities that will introduce courses on Faith & Globalization and join the conversation worldwide. Initially this will include major universities in Europe and Asia.

• Working with major polling partners to better understand the attitudes of people worldwide to religion and globalization; and develop an annual international student survey, building on the exploratory work done by the Global 21 student network this year.

• Expanding the website created in conjunction with Yale’s Faith and Globalization course to become the go-to site for the issues of faith and globalization. Drawing on the resource materials collected for the course, as well as interviews and comments by the lecturers and guest participants, the TBFF will produce materials for professors.

• Expanding research collaborations, which Blair describes as "one of the most exciting opportunities for our work with Yale" Toward this end, the Divinity School will co-sponsor several research projects involving the role of "spiritual capital" in global economy, notions of global common good, and Muslim and Christian relations.

• Producing a major book on faith and globalization, and exploring the creation of other publications that can bring these questions to a wider public audience.

• Establishing an international summer internship for students with exchanges between Yale and the TBFF’s offices in London, to engage in collaborative projects both intellectual and practical, which advance our joint agenda.

• Hosting a forum at Yale in 2010 and 2012 for Muslims and Christians, which will allow leaders of these two communities to build on and deepen the impact of the Common Word engagements begun at Yale in the summer of 2008. From 2010 onwards, the forum and dialogue will increase Jewish participation.

• Developing a set of seminars and workshops worldwide that will engage business and policy leaders during the next two years. This will include a high-level international conference of business leaders at Yale next fall that Blair will host with President Richard C. Levin.

• Organizing more joint-teaching sessions by video-conference (such as the one between Yale and the National University of Singapore, held in the fall) with other universities as they take up the Faith and Globalization course to bring a global perspective to the examination of these issues.

• Tackling new areas of research, such as religion, conflict and reconciliation; how religion adapts to globalization; and how globalization can be infused with a stronger sense of values.

• Building on the current collaboration between the Divinity School and the School of Management to increase the cross-disciplinary input to our work and bring expertise from other schools.

Labels: faith, globalization, religion, Tony Blair, Tony Blair Faith Foundation, Yale Initiative on Faith and Globalization

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Launch of New Church Promises to Change the Face of Religion

The Vibe in Fullerton, Ca announces the February 1st launch of an unorthodox church that chooses inclusion over religion in an attempt to reach those who find the traditional church irrelevant.

Fullerton, CA, January 15, 2009 --(PR.com)-- The Vibe announces the February 1st, 2009 launch of a church with a whole new groove.

Super Sunday, The Vibe’s launch day celebration, is designed to provide a non-threatening environment for people to test drive this new kind of church. This new church firmly believes that people really want to make meaningful contact with God but religion keeps getting in the way.

“Religion sucks”, said Steve Brown, The Vibe’s Lead Pastor, “it sucks the life right out of the most liberating lifestyle imaginable. Jesus didn’t come to this planet to enslave us with a bunch of rules. He came to free us. That’s our message.”

The Vibe presents those exploring faith with an alternative to religious rules, regulations and rituals. They believe that the perfect church is filled with imperfect people - a "sinners only club". They believe that the church was established to include everyone – a belief supported by their mantra: come as you are and bring your baggage with you.

The Vibe’s optimistic enthusiasm is well founded. They began with informal, open-air meetings at Lemon Park in Fullerton, California. From the onset they appealed to people that have been marginalized by traditional religious groups. The homeless, those suffering from addictions as well as the “tattooed and pierced crowd” are embraced as family right along with those from mainstream middleclass America.

However, Brown is quick to add that the ministries of The Vibe are not solely relational or spiritual but also practical. “Prayer is powerful”, Brown said, “but prayer supported by action changes lives.” The action Brown refers to comes in the form of feeding and clothing the homeless, the establishment and support of recovery programs, assistance in obtaining suitable living conditions for those without as well as financial and job placement assistance wherever practical or possible. To this Brown added, “We can’t do everything, but we have to do something.”

Brown himself is not what one would expect. He has two tattoos and can often be spotted with the cigarette-smoking crowd on Sunday mornings. With Brown as its Pastor, one is compelled to agree that a very different kind of church has been planted in this community.

Yet, this unlikely foundation seems to explain the down-to-Earth feel of this new church. According to Brown this traditionally unorthodox version of church makes it easier for people to “catch God” – The Vibe’s primary mission. Through their Super Sunday event, The Vibe hopes to show this community what a real connection to God looks and feels like.

“It is our sincerest hope that people will find a connection to God that they never dreamed possible”, said Brown. Then he commented on The Vibe’s dress code. “Just wear what you’ve got on. God isn’t impressed by what you wear.”

Labels: church, faith, God, Jesus, religion, Steve Brown, The Vibe

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Randy Sheridan: American culture and religion: Is it on the rise or in decline?

January 14, 2009 06:10 pm

In the mid 1700s the Age of Enlightenment was sweeping across Europe like an Oklahoma grass fire.

The European culture’s love affair with liberation theology or better yet, no theology at all was in full bloom. Its theme is akin to the modern day slogan, “If it feels good, do it!”

Some progressive thinkers and prognosticators suggest that America has reached a similar point where religion is no longer a vital part of the fabric in our culture, and its time has come and gone.

Some recent studies might offer some validity to that observation.

A recent Harris Interactive poll suggests a decline of belief in key religious concepts. In 2003, upwards of 90 percent of the post 9-11 populace expressed their belief in God, while five years later that number dropped by 10 percent.

Such decline begs the question: Is the American culture prone to foxhole religion, or is it simply human nature to turn to God more readily during hard times, while holding loosely to our religion during periods of prosperity?

Sounds a bit “Old Covenant like” doesn’t it?

The poll shows even more disturbing trends as Americans continue to discount their belief in heaven, down from 82 percent to 73 percent in that same five-year period. Believing the devil is more mythical than real, a 9 percent drop to 59 percent. Bringing up the bottom, pun intended, the view of hell being real dropped from 69 percent to 62 percent.

What does all this mean? Does it have any bearings on our culture today? And how does this affect you, the average John and Jane Doe of America? Little or much, it all depends on your perspective.

An extensive new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life details statistics on religion in America and explores the shifts taking place in the U.S. religious landscape. Many of these new paradigms are the basis for greater spiritual interests.

Based on interviews with more than 35,000 Americans age 18 and older, the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey finds that religious affiliation in the U.S. is both very diverse and extremely fluid.

More than one-quarter of American adults, 28 percent, have left the faith in which they were raised in favor of another religion or no religion at all.

Just as it was during the Age of Enlightenment, a torrential uprising of spiritual fervor was sweeping across the European continent, so here in America there appears to be a sustaining devotion to all things spiritual in spite of the latest polls.

Simultaneous to Europe’s liberal utopia, America was experiencing the first Great Awakening. Department of Delaware historian Christine Heyrman writes of what historians call “the first Great Awakening” can best be described as a revitalization of religious piety that swept through the American colonies between the 1730s and the 1770s:

Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists and Methodists alike experienced an increase in seekers in unprecedented numbers. In emotionally charged sermons, all the more powerful because they were often delivered extemporaneously, preachers such as Jonathan Edwards, famously known for “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” evoked dramatic, terrifying images of the utter corruption of human nature and the terrors awaiting the unrepentant in hell.

Although our nation has sunk into a recession, is fighting two wars, and humanism is alive and well — you might be surprised to know that church attendance is holding steady and is even on the rise in many parts of our country. An average of 42 percent of adults in America, say they attend worship services weekly.

On the decline? Possibly, but American psyche has been so thoroughly “blood washed” for the last 300 years, I don’t think we are going away anytime soon!

Randy Sheridan of Burleson is a speaker, counselor and mediator. He can be reached at drsheridan@aol.com.

Labels: America, church, God, Harris Interactive, heaven, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Randy Sheridan, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Gallup: Americans see religious influence waning

12/31/2008 8:03 PM |
By Adelle M. Banks, Religion News Service

Two-thirds of Americans think religion is losing its influence on U.S. life, a sharp jump from just three years ago when Americans were nearly evenly split on the question, according to a new Gallup Poll.

Sixty-seven percent of Americans think religious influence is waning while just 27% say it is increasing. That perspective demonstrates a continuing downward trend, Gallup said.

Those who regularly attend worship services are more likely to say religion is losing its influence; three out of four weekly attenders (74 percent) said religious influence is falling, compared to 24% who thought its influence is on the rise.

The latest poll also finds that the percentage of Americans believing that religion "can answer all or most of today's problems" has reached an all-time low. Slightly more than half of those surveyed — 53% — held that view, while 28% say it is "largely old-fashioned and out of date."

The poll results are based on telephone interviews conducted Dec. 4-7 with 1,009 adults; the poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Labels: Adelle M. Banks, church, Gallup Poll, influence, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Spirituality, Not Religion, Makes Kids Happy

The link between spirituality and happiness is pretty well-established for teens and adults. More spirituality brings more happiness. Now a study has reached into the younger set, finding the same link in "tweens" and in kids in middle childhood.

Specifically, the study shows that children who feel that their lives have meaning and value and who develop deep, quality relationships — both measures of spirituality, the researchers claim — are happier.

Personal aspects of spirituality (meaning and value in one's own life) and communal aspects (quality and depth of inter-personal relationships) were both strong predictors of children's happiness, said study leader Mark Holder from the University of British Columbia in Canada and his colleagues Ben Coleman and Judi Wallace.

However, religious practices were found to have little effect on children's happiness, Holder said.

Religion is just one institutionalized venue for the practice of or experience of spirituality, and some people say they are spiritual but are less enthusiastic about the concept of God.

Other research has shown a connection between well-adjusted and well-behaved children and religion, but that is not the same, necessarily, as happiness.

Spirituality trumps temperament

In an effort to identify strategies to increase children's happiness, Holder and colleagues set out to better understand the nature of the relationship between spirituality, religiousness and happiness in children aged 8 to 12 years.

A total of 320 children, from four public schools and two faith-based schools, completed six different questionnaires to rate their happiness, their spirituality, their religiousness and their temperament. Parents were also asked to rate their child's happiness and temperament.

A child's temperament was also an important predictor of happiness. In particular, happier children were more sociable and less shy. The relationship between spirituality and happiness remained strong, even when the authors took temperament into account.

However, counterintuitively, religious practices — including attending church, praying and meditating — had little effect on a child's happiness.

And therein may lie some useful information for parents.

More on teens and spirituality

Another research project recently added weight to previously known links between spirituality and happiness among teens.

This researchers compared teenagers with the inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) with their healthy peers. The analysis showed that while spirituality helped all the kids cope, it was especially helpful for the ones with IBD (which causes abdominal pain and other nasty symptoms, as well as higher risk for psychosocial difficulties and mental health problems; it is more serious than and not the same as IBS or spastic colon). The exact cause of IBD is not known, and there is no cure.

The researchers, Dr. Michael Yi and Sian Cotton at the University of Cincinnati, defined spirituality as one's sense of meaning or purpose in life or one's sense of connectedness to the sacred or divine. Again, they weren't talking about religion, church, temple or mosque.

Teams led by Yi and Cotton collected data on socio-demographics, functional health status and psychosocial characteristics as well as spiritual well-being for 67 patients with IBD and 88 healthy adolescents between the ages of 11 and 19.

One of the most important predictors of poorer overall quality of life for both the healthy and the sick teens was having a poorer sense of spiritual well-being, Yi said, although personal characteristics such as self esteem, family functioning and social support were similar between adolescents with IBD and their healthy peers.

Less depression, more well-being

Cotton's analysis of the same 155 adolescents found that higher levels of spiritual well-being were associated with fewer depressive symptoms and better emotional well-being.

The results were detailed in recent online versions of the Journal of Pediatrics and the Journal of Adolescent Health. Yi's and Cotton's research was funded by career development awards by the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development, part of the National Institutes of Health.

Labels: children, Dr. Michael Yi, happiness, relationship, religion, Sian Cotton, spirituality

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Pew poll follows up on controversial one

Jan 8, 2009 | by Staff

WASHINGTON (BP)--A new poll by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life finds that a significant minority of self-identified evangelicals believe that many religions can lead to salvation, even though some of those evangelicals apparently are confused over what the term "religion" means.

The poll seeks to bring clarity to a much-criticized poll by Pew in June that found 70 percent of Americans, including 56 percent of white evangelicals, believe that "many religions can lead to eternal life." Several Christian commentators criticized that first survey's general wording, saying that Christians often refer to their denomination as their religion. In other words, those critics wondered: Were the evangelicals who were polled saying they believe people within multiple Christian denominations can obtain eternal life, or were they saying that Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus also have a path to salvation?

The new poll asked follow-up questions, and its findings do -- as least partially -- support the claims of those critics. Nevertheless, the poll contains very little good news for the evangelical church.

In the new survey, 47 percent of professing evangelicals said they believe "many religions can lead to eternal life," a decline of nine points from the earlier poll. Pew then asked that same group how many non-Christian religions they believe can lead to eternal life. More than one-fourth (28 percent) said "none," giving credence to the theory that some evangelicals confused "denominations" with "religions." Still, 72 percent of those who said "many religions can lead to eternal life" cited at least one other non-Christian religion.

Among the general population, 65 percent of Americans -- a drop from 70 percent in the earlier poll -- said there are many paths to salvation.

The newest Pew survey found that church attendance made a difference in one's beliefs. It also discovered a striking gap in beliefs between evangelical Protestants and mainline Protestants. Among white evangelical Protestants who attend church weekly, 37 percent -- a drop in 10 points from the earlier stat -- said "many religions can lead to eternal life." But among white mainline Protestants who attend church weekly, 75 percent believe there are multiple paths to salvation, and among white Catholics who attend church weekly, 85 percent hold to that view.

The latest Pew poll surveyed 2,905 adults July 31-Aug. 10.
--30--
Compiled by Michael Foust, assistant editor of Baptist Press.

Labels: church, eternal life, evangelicals, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

A vaccine against terrorism - inter-faith harmony (Comment)

By M. Rajaque Rahman

One thing for which the world would like to forget 2008 is the rise of fanaticism and religious terrorism. Though the world has lived with terror for years, it became more pronounced in 2008 with acts of terror linked to religion or belief system. The perpetrators of the Mumbai carnage targeted Jews for their faith.

It's a tragedy that religion, which has been the source of superior virtues such as honesty, love, compassion, justice and peace, is being used as a motivation to spread terror and kill innocents. Though motives and reasons vary from attack to attack, religious terrorism runs on the fuel derived from a misplaced belief that "my way is the only way" and it's God's ordained duty to take up arms against those who have gone astray.

What can prevent fanaticism and religious terrorism in the New Year? Fortunately, there is light at the end of the tunnel as religious leaders are coming out against terrorism and pushing for inter-faith harmony.

In November, over 6,000 Muslim clerics gathered in Hyderabad to denounce religious terrorism and tell the world that there is no place for extremism in Islam. Earlier, the orthodox Islamic seminary Darul Uloom at Deoband issued a fatwa against terrorism. More importantly, leaders from other religions were roped in for the Hyderabad meeting of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind. A positive signal to unitedly fight terrorism is being sent to the larger community.

Taking the call for inter-faith harmony a step further, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar of Art of Living, who was chief guest at the gathering of the most influential body of Muslim clerics in India, offered to work with them to isolate fanatical elements abetting terrorism.

A month later, over 500 imams and rabbis gathered in far away Paris for the 3rd World Congress of Imams and Rabbis for Peace where they searched for ways to resolve differences between Islam and Judaism, the main cause of violence and conflict in the Middle East.

These events may not immediately make religious fanatics desist from doing what they are doing in the name of religion. Yet they represent a serious attempt to find an alternative solution to religious terrorism.

While religion seeks to bring uniformity in a multi-faceted world, the goal of spirituality is to celebrate the diversity. To save the world from this pitfall of religion, the time has come to spiritualise religion.

One of the most notable aspects of contemporary spirituality has been its accent on educating people to a proper understanding of religion.

This is vital as the wrong understanding of the verses of scripture has caused upheaval and is used to justify narrow-mindedness. Religious terror arises when someone reduces his or her identity to a single affiliation based on a religion and a sense of victimisation.

The events of the last few years have shown that stringent laws and rules of society can go only so far in containing fanaticism in a society that loses spiritual values. The approach of offering spirituality as the only sensible response to terrorism addresses the problem at its roots.

Terrorism stems from wrong ideas and the struggle against it should be fought on the level of ideas. It's essential that people's consciences against terror are enlisted as a vital arsenal in the fight against it. For this, a mass spiritual awakening is imperative.

Spirituality nourishes the human values of compassion, love, caring, sharing and acceptance and honours the values found in all religions. This explains why spiritually-evolved people have never been at odds.

The time has come for people of all faiths to unite against terror and educate people against misinterpretation and misuse of religion. This can happen only when people are made to realise that God loves variety and diversity and that many different schools of thought exist in this world. This can happen only when people remember that truth is multi-dimensional.

Labels: interfaith, M. Rajaque Rahman, Muslims, religion, terrorism

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

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

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Piety on Capitol Hill?

Originally posted: January 6, 2009

Former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris was refused a seat in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday by an increasingly pious and perhaps self-righteous legislature.

According to a recent survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, today’s congressmen are much more likely to boast a religious affiliation than ordinary American citizens—even though the U.S. Constitution has stated from the beginning that religion is irrelevant when it comes to holding public office.

Out of 534 congressmen surveyed, only five kept their religious affiliation close to the vest. That's compared to 16 percent of ordinary Americans surveyed last year by Pew. Meanwhile, the congressmen who did declare their faith revealed tremendous diversity on Capitol Hill, as well as another intriguing insight.

Roman Catholics, Jews and Mormons are better represented in Congress than they are in the population as a whole, said David Masci, a senior research fellow and co-author of the Pew report. Yet other religious minorities – notably Buddhists, Muslims and Hindus –are underrepresented relative to their share of the U.S. population.

But even if God isn't in the equation, a religious label seems to be...even Pete Stark, the California congressman who disclosed he was an atheist last year, affiliates with the Unitarian Church.

The cornucopia of religious principles on the congressional floor also might explain why legislators are taking moral stands on issues, enforcing ethics and weeding out bad apples.

That brings us back to Burris. Senators didn't want Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s selection seated on Tuesday because they believe his appointment is “tainted.” What do you think? Are senators being self-righteous or right on?

Labels: religion, Roland Burris, US congressmen

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Does religion provide an evolutionary advantage?

5 January 2009
by Kate Melville

Religious people have more self-control than their less religious counterparts, leading to lower rates of substance abuse, better school achievement, better health behaviors, less depression, and longer lives, says University of Miami professor of Psychology, Michael McCullough.

McCullough's new meta-study, appearing in the journal Psychological Bulletin, posits that self-control is critical for success in life, and religious people have more self-control than do their less religious counterparts. Thus, religious people may be better at pursuing and achieving long-term goals that are important to them.

To arrive at his controversial conclusion, McCullough evaluated eight decades of research that was conducted in diverse samples of people from around the world. He found persuasive evidence from a variety of domains - including neuroscience, economics, psychology and sociology - that religious beliefs and religious behaviors are capable of encouraging people to exercise self-control and to more effectively regulate their emotions and behaviors, so that they can pursue valued goals.

Some of the more intriguing conclusions that McCullough drew were:

* Religious rituals such as prayer and meditation affect the parts of the human brain that are most important for self-regulation and self-control.

* When people view their goals as "sacred," they put more energy and effort into pursuing those goals, and therefore, are probably more effective at attaining them.

* Religious lifestyles may contribute to self-control by providing people with clear standards for their behavior, by causing people to monitor their own behavior more closely, and by giving people the sense that God is watching their behavior.

* The fact that religious people tend to be higher in self-control helps explain why religious people are less likely to misuse drugs and alcohol and experience problems with crime and delinquency.

Labels: Kate Melville, Michael McCullough, Psychological Bulletin, religion, self-control

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

What's the Status of Religion and Politics Post-Obama?

Published Jan 1, 2009, by Carol Forsloff

It seems that many Americans have had their fill of churches being involved in politics George Bush in 2001 ushered in a period where the religious right was particularly active in governmental affairs.

In 2001 the airwaves were filled with ministers praising the election of Bush as president. His leadership was treated as something that had been divinely ordained. The Post at the time talked about the number of religious leaders who met with Bush during the first year of his Presidency who testified in their faith in Bush and his ability to lead the country as God-ordained. Web sites encouraged people to pray for the President, to recognize his position as both government leader and spiritual model, virtually a Messiah for the government at the time.

According to the Pew Forum things have changed from 2000 and the election of George Bush and the election of Obama in 2008. A survey finds a small majority of the public now declares religion and politics shouldn’t mix, and ministers and religious leaders should not express their opinions on daily activities or political matters. This change follows ten years when most Americans supported religious involvement in government with Christian leaders able to express their views on political matters.

Pew Research Center research reveals that most conservatives have reexamined their position regarding the involvement of religion in politics, and now only 50% of them express support of it. Four years ago 70% believed that churches should involve themselves in governmental affairs. So there has been a sizable shift in public opinion during the last years of the Bush Presidency. Four years ago, just 30% of conservatives believed that churches and other houses of worship should stay out of politics. Today, 50% of conservatives express this view. This is likely why it was said that there was only “soft support” among religious conservatives for John McCain.

Despite the fact that Congress is accused of not representing fully the religious views of the rest of the country, the fact is that Pew reports that the composition of the new Congress is similar to that of the population of the United States, although somewhat less diverse in its representation of minority religious groups. The largest main group in the Congress is Protestant, but if the denominations are considered separately the majority group is Catholic. One unique distinction between Congress and the general population is the fact that fewer political leaders claim no religious affiliation (about 1%) than the rest of the United States (16%)

It seems, however, with the public shift towards less involvement of religion in politics, politicians may not longer have to protest their specific religious views in order to be elected. Or the pendulum may swing again, depending upon future issues because that has been the pattern of American history. The country has struggled with the issue of religion and politics since the beginning of the government, with the battle never being fully won on either side. This newest finding just measures citizen opinion at this point in time.

Labels: Barack Obama, Carol Forsloff, church-state, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, politics, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, January 02, 2009

Religion may have evolved because of its ability to help people exercise self-control

Public release date: 30-Dec-2008
Marie Guma-Diaz

A study by a University of Miami psychologist reveals that religion facilitates the exercise of self-control and attainment of long-term goals

CORAL GABLES, FL (December 30, 2008)—Self-control is critical for success in life, and a new study by University of Miami professor of Psychology Michael McCullough finds that religious people have more self-control than do their less religious counterparts. These findings imply that religious people may be better at pursuing and achieving long-term goals that are important to them and their religious groups. This, in turn, might help explain why religious people tend to have lower rates of substance abuse, better school achievement, less delinquency, better health behaviors, less depression, and longer lives.

In this research project, McCullough evaluated 8 decades worth of research on religion, which has been conducted in diverse samples of people from around the world. He found persuasive evidence from a variety of domains within the social sciences, including neuroscience, economics, psychology, and sociology, that religious beliefs and religious behaviors are capable of encouraging people to exercise self-control and to more effectively regulate their emotions and behaviors, so that they can pursue valued goals. The research paper, which summarizes the results of their review of the existing science, will be published in the January 2009 issue of Psychological Bulletin.

Among the most interesting conclusions that the research team drew were the following:

* Religious rituals such as prayer and meditation affect the parts of the human brain that are most important for self-regulation and self-control;
* When people view their goals as "sacred," they put more energy and effort into pursuing those goals, and therefore, are probably more effective at attaining them;
* Religious lifestyles may contribute to self-control by providing people with clear standards for their behavior, by causing people to monitor their own behavior more closely, and by giving people the sense that God is watching their behavior;
* The fact that religious people tend to be higher in self-control helps explain why religious people are less likely to misuse drugs and alcohol and experience problems with crime and delinquency.

Among the study's more practical implications is that religious people may have at their disposal a set of unique psychological resources for adhering to their New Year's Resolutions in the year to come.

Labels: Marie Guma-Diaz, Michael McCullough, religion, religious evolution, self-control, success

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

The Year in Religion 2008: Faith's role in election dominates religion news

12/27/2008

WESTERVILLE, Ohio - The U.S. presidential election was the impetus for the nation's top religion stories of 2008, according to a survey of more than 100 religion journalists.

The top story was the controversy surrounding the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, with Democratic outreach to faith communities and GOP vice presidential running mate Sarah Palin's selection as the second and third top stories, respectively.

Controversial sermons by Wright surfaced early this year, resulting in pressure on Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, who eventually withdrew his membership in his church, Trinity United Church of Christ, Chicago.

Obama was named the top religion newsmaker of 2008.

An online poll of religion reporters was conducted Dec. 8 to 10.

The Religion Newswriters Association has conducted the poll since the 1970s.

The list of suggested top religion stories was compiled for the RNA with help from John W. Smith, religion columnist and retired religion editor of the Reading Eagle.

The other top 10 stories are:

4. The California Supreme Court rules gay marriage is legal.

5. Pope Benedict XVI makes his first U.S. visit

6. U.S. conservatives alienated from the Episcopal Church say they will ask Anglican Communion leaders for permission to create the Anglican Church in North America.

7. Terrorism believed motivated in part by religious fervor results in deaths of almost 200 people in a three-day siege in Mumbai, India.

8. China cracks down on Buddhists seeking Tibetan independence in a prelude to producing a peaceful Olympic games.

9. The crumbling economy and subsequent drop in contributions force many faith-based organizations to cut back on expenses.

10. Violence continues in Iraq as Sunnis and Shiites attack each other, and Christians also are targeted.

Labels: 2008 top stories, Barack Obama, China, gay marriage, Pope Benedict XVI, religion, Religion Newswriters Association, terrorism, the economy

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Is anyone watching you?

Religion's link to altruism grows from a believer's desire to look good in God's eyes, a new study finds
By J. Peder Zane - Staff Writer
Published: Thu, Dec. 25, 2008

After analyzing three decades of research, Canadian scholars have concluded that religion can make people more honest while inspiring them to help people they don't know, even when that exacts a personal cost.

While most people are willing to put themselves out for their families, their friends and even their country, religion makes them more likely to make sacrifices for strangers, to engage in what the authors call "prosocial" behaviors.

"Experimentally induced religious thoughts reduce rates of cheating and increase altruistic behavior among anonymous strangers," University of British Columbia social psychologists Ara Norenzayan and Azim F. Shariff report in the journal Science. "Experiments demonstrate an association between apparent profession of religion and greater trust."

It is not empathy or compassion that makes the religious more likely to do unto others, the authors conclude, but a heightened concern about their own reputation. It is this "egoistic" desire to look good in the eyes of others or to avoid feelings of guilt that drives their admirable conduct.

To illustrate this, they cite a classic good Samaritan study. In this experiment, a lone subject lay on the ground in obvious need of attention. As prescreened people passed by on their way to participate in another study, researchers noted who stopped to lend a hand.

"Recorded offers of help," the authors write, "showed no relation with religiosity in this anonymous context."

On the other hand, in experiments where people's actions were not anonymous, where they were seen and judged by others, the religious were more likely to do the right thing. This helps explain studies that have found that believers tend to be more charitable than atheists -- more likely, for example, to donate blood or give money to the homeless.

The definition of ethicseth

The key dynamic in play here is the age-old definition of ethics: It's not what you do when everybody is watching but how you act when nobody is.

The religious, the authors contend, are more likely to be good in certain situations because they believe they are being watched by an omnipresent eye in the sky.

"The cognitive awareness of gods is likely to heighten prosocial reputation concerns among believers," they write. Even when no people are around, they want to look good in the eyes of God.

The Science paper also reports that the mention of religious ideas encourages truthfulness. When students were asked to unscramble faith-based words before taking a test, they were less likely to cheat. They were also more generous when religious ideas were invoked before experiments involving money.

Labels: altruism, Ara Norenzayan, Azim Shariff, ethics, God, J. Peder Zane, prosocial behavior, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Thursday, December 25, 2008

Brain Activity Altered during Religious Experience

December 24, 2008 in Mind & Brain

A study in Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science finds that religious experience is associated with decreased activity in the brain's right parietal lobe. Cynthia Graber reports

[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.] Please click on "exteranl link to access the entire podcast.

In America there’s a feeling of Christmas. But that’s not the only winter holiday going on. Jews are lighting Hanukkah candles, Muslims recently feasted on Eid al-Adha, and pagans celebrated the solstice. So it’s a good time for researchers to consider spirituality—from a scientific point of view.

One experience central to major religions around the world is that of transcendence, the idea of almost losing a sense of self to the feeling that there’s something bigger out there. Now scientists at the University of Missouri say they’ve located that experience in our brains. All the people studied, from Buddhist monks in meditation to Francescan nuns in prayer, experience this transcendence. And they all have decreased activity in the right parietal lobe of the brain. That area has to do with senses such as orienting yourself in the space around you. The study was published in Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science.

Interestingly, people with injuries to the right parietal lobe report increased levels of spiritual experiences. The researchers are quick to say that this connection doesn’t minimize the role of religion, and that religious or spiritual experiences might decrease activity in that region and thus increase that special feeling of transcendence. Just in time for the holidays.

Labels: brain, Cynthia Graber, religion, science, spiritual experience, transcendence, Zygon

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Religion in presidential race tops ranking of ABP stories in 2008

By Bob Allen
Friday, 19 December 2008

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (ABP) -- Baptist journalists and observers ranked religion in the 2008 presidential election the year's biggest story for Baptists. Faith in politics played a major role in the year's news cycle, according to an annual ranking of top stories compiled by Associated Baptist Press.
Barack Obama's 2007 address to the United Church of Christ General Synod drew IRS scrutiny over whether it blurred the line between church and state. (UCC)

Religion stories ranged from the surprising emergence of Southern Baptist preacher Mike Huckabee as a contender for the GOP nomination, to questions about whether Mitt Romney's Mormon faith would be a turnoff to evangelical voters, to problems for John McCain over comments by his supporter John Hagee and to the Jeremiah Wright controversy that prompted President-elect Barack Obama to divorce himself from both his former pastor and home church.

Respondents to an annual informal survey by the independent news service based in Jacksonville, Fla., ranked religion in the 2008 presidential election the year's top story.

The rest of the rankings were as follows:

2. The New Baptist Covenant Celebration.

3. Election of African-American president suggests shift in religious voters.

4. Saddleback civil forum features presidential candidates.

5. The economy.

6. Baylor removes president for failure to unite campus.

7. Georgia Baptists reject church with woman pastor.

8. North Carolina Baptists nix plan that forwarded funds to CBF.

9. 'Evangelical center' forming in U.S. politics.

10. Violence targets Christians in India.

Labels: 2008 top stories, Baptist, Bob Allen, faith, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

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

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Trends From National Congregations Study: Drums, Diversity, Technology and Aging Clergy

Wed Dec 17 11:55:19 2008 Pacific Time

DURHAM, N.C., Dec. 17 (AScribe Newswire) -- A second snapshot of U.S. religious congregations reveals four trends in American worship: a growing informality in worship practices, a graying of congregations and clergy (on average), churches becoming less white and more ethnically diverse, and an ever-increasing use of technology. The second National Congregations Study (NCS Wave II), conducted in 2006-07, encompasses information from 1,506 congregations across many religious traditions. Informants participated in a 45-minute interview designed to collect facts and opinions about congregations' social composition, structure, activities and programming. The first NCS survey was conducted in 1998.

"This is the first study that has tracked change over time in a nationally representative sample of congregations," said Mark Chaves, professor of sociology, religion and divinity at Duke University and lead researcher on the project. "We've never been able to do that before. This research tells us what is changing and what is staying the same."

Chaves said the biggest change in American churches since 1998 is the use of computer technology. His initial analysis of the survey, co-authored with Shawna Anderson, a research associate at Duke and a graduate student at the University of Arizona, will be published online this week in the Winter 2008 edition of the journal Sociology of Religion.

The number of church websites increased from 17 percent of all congregations in 1998 to 44 percent in 2006-07, an average of 10,000 new church websites each year since 1998, Chaves said.

E-mail communication is becoming ubiquitous as well, with 59 percent of all congregations communicating electronically now. In 1998, the number was a mere 21 percent. Also, the use of visual projectors during a worship service is now commonplace in 27 percent of congregations, up from 12 percent in 1998.

The study also reveals a move toward more informality and participation in the practice of worship. More church services now incorporate drums, jumping and shouting or dancing, raising hands in praise, calling out "amen" and applause.

Some of these changes are more pronounced among some groups than among others, but overall the use of drums increased from 20 percent of congregations in 1998 to 34 percent in 2006-07; people now raise their hands in praise in 57 percent of congregations, compared with 45 percent in 1998; and applause occurred in 61 percent in 2006-07, compared with 55 percent in 1998.

According to the NCS Wave II data, the head clergyperson of a church is older than in the previous study -- with an average age of 53 compared to 48 in 1998. Only 39 percent of churches are led by someone under the age of 50 these days, down from 48 percent in 1998. The "graying clergy" phenomenon is happening across denominations, although faster for Catholic and liberal/mainline congregations than others.

The fourth major trend is a marked increase in both the age and ethnic diversity of American congregations. Thirty percent of people in the average congregation are 60 years and older -- up from 25 percent in 1998. In short, church populations -- in step with their clergy -- are aging somewhat faster than society as a whole, Chaves said.

Predominantly white congregations are now more ethnically diverse. Only 14 percent of all churchgoers attend a church that is all white and non-Hispanic, a drop from 20 percent of churchgoers in 1998.

The number of people in congregations with no Latino members has dropped from 43 percent in 1998 to 36 percent in 2006-07. The number attending churches with no Asian members also has decreased -- from 59 percent in 1998 to 50 percent in 2006-07. This shift reflects recent immigration trends, according to Chaves.

"Perhaps the biggest surprise is that some things clearly are changing, even over just an eight-year period, which is not a long time when it comes to religion," Chaves said. "I would not have been surprised if we had observed complete stability over such a short time span. Religious traditions and organizations, after all, are widely considered to be remarkably resistant to change."

Initial data from the survey, including an interactive data analysis tool, is available at the National Congregations Study website, http://www.soc.duke.edu/natcong/ . The complete data set will be available in the summer of 2009 from The Association of Religion Data Archives, http://www.thearda.com/ .

The NCS Second Wave was funded by a major grant from the Lilly Endowment, and by additional grants from the National Science Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation, and the Louisville Institute. The survey was conducted by the National Opinion Research Center.

Labels: ageing, church, computer technology, congregations, email, National Congregations Study, religion, trends

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Not Much Behavior Change during Christmas, Survey Finds

By Jennifer Riley
Christian Post Reporter
Mon, Dec. 15 2008

Unlike what most people expect, most Americans do not dramatically change their lifestyle during the Christmas season, according to a survey that examined five seasonal behaviors.

In terms of church attendance for Christmas, there is an expected increase in the number of attendees, but not from the expected crowd, according to the survey. While people may expect a large turnout of CEOs – Christmas and Easter Only attendees – the Barna study found that most of the increase in attendance is expected from regular churchgoers.

One out of five adults say they will attend more religious services at a church, synagogue or other place of worship during the holiday season than they normally would. But the group that was most likely to say that was regular attendees (27 percent) rather than those who don’t normally attend service (4 percent), the study found.

In other findings, one out of five adults (18 percent), said they would definitely donate more money to their religious center during the holidays than at other times of the year. Evangelicals are the most likely group to donate (30 percent), followed by African Americans (29 percent) and Catholics (24 percent).

Out of the five behaviors explored in the latest Barna Group survey, the only one that a majority of people said they change during the holidays is listening to Christmas carols in their home.

Six out of ten American adults (59 percent) said they will definitely listen to carols this holiday season, with evangelicals being most likely to do so (82 percent).

Among the non-born again population, 50 percent said they will play carols at home, including one-third (34 percent) of atheists and agnostics.

Interestingly, there was a racial correlation for Christmas carols: 63 percent of whites, 55 percent of African Americans, and 48 percent of Hispanics and of Asians said they would listen to carols at home.

But the holiday is not a joyful time for everyone, with a small but significant percentage of Americans saying they would struggle with loneliness or depression during this season.

The group that was most likely to suffer with loneliness or depression was downscale adults, or individuals whose annual income is less than $20,000 and those who did not attend college. More than one out of ten (11 percent) said they would definitely face depression or loneliness during the Christmas season, according to the Barna study.

Evangelicals and atheists were among the people least likely to have these emotions and experiences, with less than one percent of each group saying they would struggle with these unwanted emotions.

The study also found that some Americans expect to drink more alcohol during the holidays. Those most likely to drink are people under 25 years old (12 percent), atheists and agnostics (11 percent), and liberals (11 percent).

The survey is based on telephone interviews with a random sample of 1,203 adults across the United States from November 1 to 5, 2008.

Labels: atheists, Barna Group, carols, Christmas, church, depression, evangelicals, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, December 12, 2008

God and man at Yale

Eboo Patel

Chicago, Illinois - The Commons at Yale University looked like a cross between Hogwarts and Medina. Over 500 students, staff and faculty had gathered for a university-wide iftar, the meal where Muslims break their dawn-to-dusk fast during the month of Ramadan. Linda Lorimer, Yale’s Vice President, gave an opening talk, expressing the University’s commitment to religious inclusivity and interfaith activity.

Omar Bajwa, the University’s recently-hired Coordinator of Muslim Life, thanked Yale for its efforts to accommodate the unique dietary and prayer needs of Muslim students.

And when the Muslims left the dining area for the evening prayer, most of the seats were still occupied. Hundreds of Jews, Sikhs, Christians, Hindus, agnostics, Unitarian Universalists and others had come to support their fellow Muslim students, partake in some excellent South Asian food and celebrate the religious devotion and diversity that are increasingly a part of campus life at Yale.

It is a remarkable shift from when I was a student 15 years ago. Identity politics were all the rage then, but they were almost always about race, class, gender and sexuality. Academic departments, leadership programmes and residence halls – prompted by the Los Angeles riots [sparked by the acquittal of police offers charged with beating African American motorist Rodney King] – put on hundreds of diversity programmes every year intended to create a more inclusive campus environment.

Faith might play a role in some people’s private lives, we figured, but it barely registered in our campus discourse. Even as newspapers told of strife in the Balkans, Northern Ireland, South Asia, the Middle East, West Africa, the multicultural movement hardly turned its head. As Harvard professor Diana Eck wrote in Encountering God, “Religion (was) the missing ‘r’ word in the diversity discussion” at universities.”

This is the result of what I call secularisation theory hangover, a condition that afflicted universities long after the rest of society recovered. Secularisation theory emerged from lecture halls in the 1960s, advanced by scholars like Peter Berger and Harvey Cox who stated that as societies modernised they would necessarily secularise.

But an important segment of student life on college campuses was actually heading in the opposite direction. Groups like InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and Campus Crusade for Christ continued to grow, bolstered by a powerful Evangelical movement in the broader society.

Finally, the past two decades have seen the American-born children of the 1965-era immigrants arrive on campus in significant numbers and bring their Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist faiths with them. Sharon Kugler, the Chaplain at Yale, told me that the number of religious organisations at her previous post, Johns Hopkins, skyrocketed from eight to 27 during her 14 years there.

This combination of devotion and diversity occurred on campus just as religion emerged as a central force in the broader culture. 9/11 has done to religion what Rodney King did to race – put it front and centre on the campus agenda.

One way that universities are responding is by hiring leaders like Sharon Kugler – the first lay, Catholic woman in her position at Yale – to transform their historically liberal protestant chaplaincies into fully-fledged multi-faith programs. This means working with the existing Jewish, Catholic and Protestant (both evangelical and mainline) ministries, hiring new staff to work with Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu students, and organising interfaith service projects and multi-faith student councils.

We live in a society starkly polarised around religion. A 2007 Pew Survey found that twice the number of respondents had a negative view of Muslims than a positive view. If the colour line was the problem of the 20th century, as W.E.B. DuBois famously observed, it appears that the faith line will be the challenge of the 21st. And just as decades of campus activism on the issue of the colour line has helped to produce a more racially inclusive society, so will initiatives like Yale’s Ramadan Banquet ultimately produce one characterised by religious pluralism.

Labels: college, diversity, Eboo Patel, God, interfaith, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Obama's faith policy and our nation's future

Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Cassie Olson

In the United States, 83.9 percent of adults affiliate themselves with a religion and 78.4 percent say they are Christians, according to the Pew Forum U.S. Religious Landscape Survey conducted in 2007. Believers and nonbelievers alike wonder how Obama's faith will affect policies of the United States.

According to his campaign, Obama hopes to mend the nation's religious divide by forging common ground between the polarities, while also diverging from some of President Bush's policy.

Despite rumors spread across the country, Obama says he deeply believes in the precepts of Jesus Christ.

"I am a Christian. I have been sworn in with a Bible. I pledge allegiance and lead the Pledge of Allegiance sometimes in the U.S. Senate, when I'm presiding," Obama said in response to e-mail allegations mentioned during the 2008 Democratic debate in Las Vegas.

Obama explained his perspective on faith and politics in an acclaimed "Call for Renewal" speech in June 2006. He acknowledged religion couldn't be ignored in a country of religious people. However, Obama said church and state should remain separate.

Because the religious and the secularists are both important in solving the nation's problems, Obama said nonbelievers must realize faith is part of the solution.

"The problems of poverty and racism, the uninsured and the unemployed, are not simply technical problems in search of the perfect 10-point plan," Obama said. "They are rooted in both societal indifference and individual callousness -- in the imperfections of man. Solving these problems will require changes in government policy, but it will also require changes in hearts and a change in minds."

He encouraged nonbelievers to stop forcing the religious to leave their beliefs out of public debate. He brought to mind the countless reformers -- Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr. -- who used their religion to foster change.

At the same time, believers need to maintain an open discussion.

"Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion- specific, values," Obama said. "It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason."

Obama also wants believers to ensure their policy does not exclude any one American. He reminded believers they can recognize public policy without it dictating church practices, and he reminded Americans not every mention of God is a breach in the separation of church and state.

Obama's faith will provide a moral base for his decisions, but will not dictate his policy. While campaigning in Ohio during July 2008, Obama said he hopes to reform and expand Bush's faith-based programs. However, Obama supports keeping abortions legal and promotes embryonic stem cell research.

Although some might disagree with his policy, Obama hopes Americans can join forces to prevent the nearly 1 million abortions that have occurred in the United States each year from 1975 to 2003, as reported by the Center for Disease and Control. Obama also believes United States citizens can cross party lines to eliminate the poverty 37.3 million Americans were living in during 2007, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Americans can be thankful Obama is neither forcing beliefs on anyone nor opposing or excluding either side from the debate or the solution. The years following 2008 are a new dawn, but Obama will only succeed in mending the country and bringing the right change if Americans are willing to lay down their pride, work past their apathetic resentment and take action -- together -- for the common good.

Labels: Barack Obama, Cassie Olson, Christianity, faith, politics, religion, United States

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

The History of Religion

The History of Religion, from 3000 BC to 200 AD, in about 2 minutes. Taken from mapsofwar.com

Labels: Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, maps, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

For Nanotechnology, Religion In U.S. Dictates A Wary View

ScienceDaily (Dec. 9, 2008) —

When it comes to the world of the very, very small — nanotechnology — Americans have a big problem: Nano and its capacity to alter the fundamentals of nature, it seems, are failing the moral litmus test of religion.

In a report published Dec. 7 in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, survey results from the United States and Europe reveal a sharp contrast in the perception that nanotechnology is morally acceptable. Those views, according to the report, correlate directly with aggregate levels of religious views in each country surveyed.

In the United States and a few European countries where religion plays a larger role in everyday life, notably Italy, Austria and Ireland, nanotechnology and its potential to alter living organisms or even inspire synthetic life is perceived as less morally acceptable. In more secular European societies, such as those in France and Germany, individuals are much less likely to view nanotechnology through the prism of religion and find it ethically suspect.

"The level of 'religiosity' in a particular country is one of the strongest predictors of whether or not people see nanotechnology as morally acceptable," says Dietram Scheufele, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of life sciences communication and the lead author of the new study. "Religion was the strongest influence over everything."

The study compared answers to identical questions posed by the 2006 Eurobarometer public opinion survey and a 2007 poll by the University of Wisconsin Survey Center conducted under the auspices of the National Science Foundation-funded Center for Nanotechnology and Society at Arizona State University. The survey was led by Scheufele and Elizabeth Corley, an associate professor in the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University.

The survey findings, says Scheufele, are important not only because they reveal the paradox of citizens of one of the world's elite technological societies taking a dim view of the implications of a particular technology, but also because they begin to expose broader negative public attitudes toward science when people filter their views through religion.

"What we captured is nanospecific, but it is also representative of a larger attitude toward science and technology," Scheufele says. "It raises a big question: What's really going on in our public discourse where science and religion often clash?"

For the United States, the findings are particularly surprising, Scheufele notes, as the country is without question a highly technological society and many of the discoveries that underpin nanotechnology emanated from American universities and companies. The technology is also becoming more pervasive, with more than 1,000 products ranging from more efficient solar panels and scratch-resistant automobile paint to souped-up golf clubs already on the market.

"It's estimated that nanotechnology will be a $3.1 trillion global industry by 2015," Scheufele says. "Nanotechnology is one of those areas that is starting to touch nearly every part of our lives."

To be sure that religion was such a dominant influence on perceptions of nanotechnology, the group controlled for such things as science literacy, educational performance, and levels of research productivity and funding directed to science and technology by different countries.

The findings from the 2007 U.S. survey, adds Scheufele, also suggest that in the United States the public's knowledge of nanotechnology has been static since a similar 2004 survey. Scheufele points to a paucity of news media interest and the notion that people who already hold strong views on the technology are not necessarily seeking factual information about it.

Labels: Eurobarometer, nanotechnology, religion, religiosity, science, synthetic life, technology

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Thursday, November 27, 2008

Book shows Latter-day Saints have an image problem

November 19th, 2008
By Carole Mikita

A new book shows Mormons have a problem: an image problem. Dr. Gary Lawrence -- who is a Latter-day Saint, a political pollster and market researcher based in California -- says recent news events are not the problem. Rather, it's the way Latter-day Saints talk about their faith.

Mitt Romney's run for the Presidency, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints case in Texas, the protest after California's Proposition 8 vote: All of these news stories put Latter-day Saints and their church in the national spotlight.

But Lawrence says those stories are not the problem when it comes to the faith's image. He conducted a national survey that's the basis for a new book he is now promoting.

"The No. 1 thing that came out, of course, is that our image is upside down. Thirty-seven percent have a favorable impression of us and 49 percent have an unfavorable impression, and those are lousy scores," Lawrence said.

It's even worse when compared with how Americans view other religions. The ratio for people who view those of the Jewish faith in a positive light is nearly 3.5-to-1; the same for Baptists. Catholics' enjoy a positive ratio of nearly 2-to-1; Mormons, less than 1-to-1.

Lawrence says his findings point to a fear factor in most Americans about Latter-day Saints and what are perceived as weird beliefs and secretiveness.

One of the biggest gaps he found in his poll: 84 percent said they have seen Church ads, talked with missionaries or received literature; but only 14 percent know what Mormons believe.

Labels: Carole Mikita, Church of Latter Day Saints, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, November 21, 2008

Survey: Most Youth Worldwide Spiritual, Say Religion is Good

By Michelle A. Vu
Christian Post Reporter
Mon, Nov. 17 2008

Page one of a two-page article. Please click on "external link" at the bottom to access entire article

The majority of youths in the world say they are spiritual and think religion and spirituality are both positive, according to an extensive, first-of-its-kind survey.

Fifty-seven percent of young people (ages 12-25) see themselves as being spiritual, reported the survey by Search Institute’s Center for Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence that was sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation.

The research surveyed more than 7,000 young people from a wide range of cultural and religious backgrounds, spanning 17 countries and six continents. It took two years to complete the study that offers one of the first snapshots of spiritual development across multiple countries and traditions.

“We have spent two years listening to youth ages 12 to 25 from many countries and traditions talk about spiritual development and its role in their lives,” reflected Eugene C. Roehlkepartain, co-director of the Center for Spiritual Development, in a statement. “Many young people are keenly interested in these issues, but relatively few have opportunities to talk with others about the things that really matter to them.”

The survey found that about one in three youths consider themselves “very” or “pretty” spiritual, but this varied vastly across countries. The high was in the United States where 52 percent of the youth self-described themselves as “very” or “pretty” spiritual, and in Thailand where 50 percent gave this same response.

In contrast, Australia had the low of 23 percent youth who said they were highly spiritual. Almost half of the youth surveyed in Australia (47 percent) indicated that they are not spiritual, compared to only 12 percent in Thailand and about 20 percent in Canada, India, Ukraine, and the United States.

Religion and being spiritual are related but different, according to the world’s youth. Respondents are still most likely to say they are both spiritual and religious (34 percent). Nearly a quarter (23 percent) say they are spiritual, but not religious.

One in five of the youths indicated they don’t know.

American youths’ response was slightly different. They were more likely to say they are both spiritual and religious (43 percent) than the world’s youth in general (34 percent). A comparable number to international youths said they are just spiritual (27 percent).

Being spiritual, for this young generation, most often is associated with believing in God (36 percent), followed by believing there is a purpose to life (32 percent), and then being true to one’s inner self (26 percent).

But the most popular definition for being spiritual differed across countries and culture.

Indian youths were more likely to say being true to one’s inner self (38 percent) is being spiritual more so than believing in God (33 percent).

Whereas in Canada, the youths said being spiritual is believing in God (52 percent) and then believing there is a purpose to life (48 percent). Also, more than a quarter of the participants from Canada (28 percent) said spirituality involves having a deep sense of inner peace or happiness, which was unique to Canadian youths.

Meanwhile young people in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States all defined spirituality first and foremost as believing there is a purpose to life. Believing in God was ranked second at 33 percent for youths in the United States.

Labels: Michelle A. Vu, religion, spirituality, youth

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Trying to measure faith, health link

Some scientific studies show religion and spirituality offers benefits

By JANUARY W. PAYNE
THE WASHINGTON POST

Published: Saturday, November 15, 2008

An integral part of many people's lives, religion defines patterns of worship and socialization, but its impact, if any, on health is unclear. Some studies show a benefit to religious practice, while others -- including much of the research into prayer -- fail to prove its health value.

The question of the role something as unquantifiable as religious belief might play in health troubles some scientists in an age when mainstream medicine is turning ever more toward epidemiological science to define research protocols and to determine the validity of treatments.

That said, it's not hard to understand why being religious might be good for the body, experts say. Religious people often attend regular services; this puts them in a socially supportive environment, which has widely acknowledged health advantages. And some religions promote healthful diets and discourage unhealthy behaviors such as drinking alcohol and smoking

Among that research is some evidence that religion and spirituality offer health benefits and even longer life spans. A national survey conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ...found that people who did not attend religious services were 1.87 times more likely to have died during an eight-year period than those who attended services more than weekly.

The life expectancy for infrequent attendees was age 75, and it was 83 for those who attended frequently.

A 1996 study looked at the association of Jewish religious observance with mortality by comparing secular and religious kibbutzim in Israel. Belonging to a religious group appeared to prolong life, and the lower mortality rates seen in the religious group were consistent for all causes of death, the authors wrote. And a 2003 study published in Psychosomatic Medicine found that meditation might alter brain and immune function in positive ways, an effect similarly seen in research involving Buddhist monks.

It's hard to show conclusively whether or how a belief system affects one's health; other life experiences might provide benefits to health so similar to religion and spirituality that it's hard to differentiate.

Despite the lack of scientific evidence, some common religious practices are widely thought to enhance health.

Power of prayer

It's not unusual for people to pray for their own health and for that of others. In a 2004 survey of more than 31,000 people, 45 percent said they'd prayed for health reasons, 43 percent prayed for their own health, and 25 percent reported that others had prayed for them. About 10 percent said they'd participated in a prayer group for their health, according to the results, released by the National Center for Health Statistics and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

But science says that prayer might not help a person who is ill. A 2003 update to an earlier systemic review of clinical trials on distant healing found that intercessory prayer, which involves someone praying for the healing of a person located elsewhere, with or without that person's knowledge, probably doesn't offer specific therapeutic healing effects.

Any benefit seen from prayer might come from the fact that "knowing that your friends and family are praying for you is part of social support, ... and (that is) probably really helpful to people, independent of if there is a higher being that answers those prayers," said David Schlundt, an associate professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University, who has researched the connection between faith and health.

Although religion might provide social support, purpose, a belief system, a moral code -- and even happiness -- these benefits can also come from other sources, notes a 2007 study by Eckersley published in the Medical Journal of Australia. Future examination of the health benefits of religion and spirituality should be done in a broader context, he said, especially with regard to how cultural influences affect faith and health.

Cultural context

That cultural context could be key to understanding how people's beliefs factor into their health outcomes, experts note, because religion and spirituality don't seem to produce a uniform effect on everyone. Differences are apparent between groups of varying socioeconomic and racial and ethnic backgrounds.

A dangerous aspect of the purported faith-health connection is fatalism, the belief that health is predetermined and is not within a person's control. Research shows that people who hold such beliefs are less likely than others to participate in health promotion programs and to seek health care.

Research shows that African Americans are more likely to endorse fatalism than whites. A 2007 study published in the American Journal of Health Behavior reported that such beliefs could be a reaction to chronic illness or poor health rather than something that inhibits beneficial health behavior from the outset.

FAITH HEALING

Research suggests that religion offers health benefits, including longer life spans. Is that because of the healing benefits of prayer or because people of faith enjoy supportive, healthful lifestyles? Some statistics:

83: The life expectancy of people who frequently attended religious services; for infrequent attendees, the estimate was 75.

70 percent: The percentage of churches that provide health-care services to their communities, according to a survey of 6,000 congregations.

40 to 60 percent: The percentage of hospital patients who want their doctors to pray with them. But fewer than 5 percent of doctors say they do so.

2,500: Number of Maryland kindergartners exempted from vaccine mandates on religious grounds, up from 1,300 in 2004.

Labels: belief, Buddhists, culture, faith healing, health, January W. Payne, Jewish, prayer, religion, spirituality

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, November 14, 2008

Survey: Americans Believe Religious Values Are 'Under Attack'

Los Angeles, CA, November 14, 2008 …

A majority of the American people believes that religious values are "under attack," and that the people who run the television networks and major movie studios do not share the religious and moral values of most Americans, according to a survey from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) issued today.

American Attitudes on Religion, Moral Values and Hollywood, a national poll of 1,000 American adults conducted in October 2008 by The Marttila Communications Group, found that 61% of the American people continue to believe that religious values in this country are "under attack." The poll also found that 59% of Americans agree that "the people who run the TV networks and the major movie studios do not share the religious and moral values of most Americans."

The poll was released during the League's 2008 Annual Meeting in Los Angeles.

"These findings point to the challenges that we face in dealing with issues of religion in society," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. "The belief that religion is under attack underlies the drive to incorporate more religion into American public life. Disturbingly, 43% of Americans believe there is an organized campaign by Hollywood and the national media to weaken the influence of religious values in this country."

Among the main findings of the ADL survey, American Attitudes on Religion, Moral Values and Hollywood:

• 61% of Americans say they believe that "Religious values are under attack in this country," while 36% disagree with that statement (graph). 59% agree that "the people who run the TV networks and the major movie studios do not share the religious and moral values of most Americans." And 43% hold the view that Hollywood and the national media are waging an organized campaign to "weaken the influence of religious values in this country." (graph)

• Significantly fewer Americans believe today that Jews control the TV and film industries. The survey showed that 63% disagree with the notion that "the movie and television industries are pretty much run by Jews," while only 22% agree. When ADL conducted its first survey on anti-Semitic attitudes in 1964, nearly half of all Americans believed that the television and film industries were run by Jews. (graph)

• There is surprising support for censorship. Nearly 40% of the American people support the notion that "dangerous ideas should be banned from public school libraries," and nearly the same number of Americans disagree with the statement that "censoring books is an old-fashioned idea." (graph)

• Nearly half of those surveyed – 49 percent – believe that the United States is becoming "too tolerant in its acceptance of different ideas and lifestyles;" 47 percent disagreed with that statement. (graph)

"It is troubling that so many Americans feel as if the output of Hollywood is part of an organized campaign to undermine religious values in this country and believe that censorship is acceptable," said Mr. Foxman. "It shows that in this age of pervasive media and the widening availability of the Internet, many Americans still maintain a very parochial view toward the information age, and even believe in censorship to 'protect morality.' If anything, it points to the need for a greater awareness of the fundamental role that the First Amendment has played in helping religious freedom in America to be sustained, and indeed, to flourish."

The survey was conducted by the Marttila Communications Group, a Boston-based public opinion research firm that has conducted numerous national surveys for ADL measuring American attitudes on a wide range of domestic and foreign policy issues. The survey has a margin of error of +/-3.09 percent. For many questions, the survey used the technique of split sampling," a process in which the 1,000 sample was split into two demographically representative national samples of 500 respondents each. The margin of error for questions answered by 500 respondents is +/- 4.38 percent.

The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is the world's leading organization fighting anti-Semitism through programs and services that counteract hatred, prejudice and bigotry.

Labels: American Attitudes on Religion, Americans, Anti-Defamation League, censorship, Marttila Communications Group, Moral Values and Hollywood, religion, religious values, TV

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Poll: Economy not getting faithful down

Published: Nov. 11, 2008

WASHINGTON, Nov. 11 (UPI) -- A survey shows religious Americans are less worried about the economy than they are about a "spiritual recession."

The Faithbook on Facebook poll released Tuesday found nearly 72 percent of respondents said such a spiritual recession was more of a concern to them than a downturn in the spiritual arena.

In a similar vein, more than 80 percent see the developing tough times as an opportunity to revitalize the nation's level of spirituality, Faithbook said in a written statement.

"The Faithbook poll seems to confirm that the economic downturn has reached the heart of religious life," said Simon Cohen, managing director of Global Tolerance, which runs Faithbook. "It is heartening that for many people, as long as our basic human needs are met, they see the financial watershed as pregnant with hope and opportunity."

The online survey of 150 respondents also found that more than 27 percent of them said they had actually been praying more ever since the economy went south.

Labels: Americans, economics, Faithbook, religion, spiritual recession, spirituality

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Religious voters helped Obama to victory

His focused effort to target a group that had heavily favored Republicans paid off, an exit poll shows.

By Cathleen Decker
November 9, 2008

As he vaulted into national acclaim with his 2004 Democratic convention speech, Barack Obama directly took on the assumption that his party should cede religious voters to the Republicans.

Exit polls showed the dramatic effect: Obama won 43% of voters who said they attend church weekly, eight percentage points higher than 2004 Democratic nominee John F. Kerry. Among occasional worshipers, Obama won 57%, 11 percentage points higher than Kerry, according to the National Election Pool exit survey.

When looking at how members of different faiths voted, the movement among Catholics is striking. They sided 52% to 47% with President Bush in 2004. But this year, they went 54% to 45% for Obama. That means Obama had more support among Catholics than did Kerry, himself a Catholic, by seven percentage points.

"Obama did better than Kerry among pretty much every religious group," said Greg Smith, a research fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life who analyzed the poll results.

Even among voters who describe themselves as born-again Christians or evangelicals, a group that tends to vote Republican, Obama improved on Kerry's standing -- although he came in a distant second to GOP nominee John McCain. Kerry had won 21% of evangelical voters; Obama won 26%.

Nearly two years ago, when voters knew little about him, the Illinois senator stood alongside nationally known author and Pastor Rick Warren at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest for a televised AIDS conference. Earlier, Obama had asked Warren to review a chapter of his book "The Audacity of Hope."

Obama again gained the attention of Christian voters in July when he pledged to expand a controversial White House program to give federal grants to churches and small community groups. The proposal, which would build on efforts by the Bush administration to direct government money to church groups, was announced in Zanesville, Ohio, a hotly contested state that Obama won on election day.

And at the Democratic National Convention in August, which held its first-ever interfaith prayer gathering, the party platform endorsed by Obama -- while not backing away from its support for abortion rights -- emphatically reached out to women with children who rely on programs meant to ease their struggle.

Obama's ease in talking about his religion also helped him win over religious voters. During a presidential forum held in August at Saddleback Church, where he and McCain were interviewed separately by church leader Warren, Obama spoke about "walking humbly with our God" and quoted from the Gospel of Matthew. His acceptance speech Tuesday night echoed in parts the church-inspired speeches of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Religion, for a time, became a thorn for Obama during the presidential race. He was harshly criticized for his association with the now-retired Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., whose incendiary sermons about white America caused an uproar and led Obama to part ways with his longtime pastor, and endured a viral e-mail campaign falsely asserting that he is Muslim.

The election results returned Catholics to their historical Democratic moorings, which many had fled for the GOP during the Reagan years.

Labels: Barack Obama, Cathleen Decker, faith, religion, voters

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, November 07, 2008

The (step by step) path to worship

Classes, support groups educate, guide new believers

Friday, November 7, 2008
By Meredith Heagney
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Inside a meeting room at the mosque, the converts stood shoulder to shoulder, foot to foot, right hands folded over left.

Now bend at the waist, the instructor told them. Make your back as flat as you can. It is said that the Prophet Muhammad's back was so flat when he prayed that you could steady a glass of water on it.

Newly converted Muslim Vanessa Cross followed along, paying close attention. A few minutes before, she had listened to a lesson in how to perform the nine steps of wudu, the ritualistic washing Muslims complete before prayer.

Cross, 31, of the Northeast Side, attends the New Muslim Support Group at the Noor Islamic Cultural Center in Dublin.

It is one of many classes where new believers are welcomed and instructed on their religion.

Such classes, offered in many faiths, explain basic beliefs, scripture and worship practices while giving new believers a chance to connect. Instructors give tours of the building and pass out educational literature.

Conversion isn't a unique experience among the American faithful. Twenty-eight percent of Americans have left the faith of their childhood for another religion, or for no religion at all, according to a survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. In some faiths, the classes are mandatory for new members.

Religious leaders want to help new people feel comfortable and committed as they navigate a new faith, which can be daunting. Some people are coming back to religion after a bad experience in another faith or denomination.

Cross told a group of women that she needed help putting on her hijab, the headscarf many Muslim women wear. When she would bend to pray, it would start falling off, she said.

New Christians get lots of help, too.

Evangelical megachurches such as Grove City Church of the Nazarene and Vineyard Church of Columbus offer seminars that teach about Jesus, reading the Bible and communicating with God.

After deciding to accept Jesus Christ as their savior, people often don't know what to do next, said the Rev. Brady Wisehart, an associate pastor at Grove City Church of the Nazarene.

In the Roman Catholic Church, those wishing to convert undergo the nine-month Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults.

It's a time for people to decide whether Catholicism is right for them. That's why the program takes several months and provides a thorough study, said Deacon Tom Berg Jr., vice chancellor of the Columbus Diocese.

A class gathered at St. Brigid of Kildare Catholic Church in Dublin recently to get a tour of the church from Monsignor Joseph Hendricks, the pastor.

During the tour, Hendricks explained the significance of the cross and the baptismal font, and gleefully pointed out the fact that from his vantage point at the pulpit, he can see people come late and leave early.

He cleared up misconceptions. Some Protestants think Catholics worship Mary, but they don't, he explained. They simply pray to her for intercession and honor her as the mother of Christ.

For Dan VandenBosch, every bit of information is helpful. The 29-year-old plans to convert to Catholicism from the Christian Reformed Church.

His wife of 10 months, Shannon, 29, is Catholic and will serve as his sponsor. Their first child is due in January.

"This is answering a lot of questions," Mr. VandenBosch said.

Labels: Americans, conversion, faith, Meredith Heagney, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Monthly Archives - Previous Articles
03/01/2003 - 04/01/2003 04/01/2003 - 05/01/2003 05/01/2003 - 06/01/2003 06/01/2003 - 07/01/2003 07/01/2003 - 08/01/2003 08/01/2003 - 09/01/2003 09/01/2003 - 10/01/2003 10/01/2003 - 11/01/2003 11/01/2003 - 12/01/2003 12/01/2003 - 01/01/2004 01/01/2004 - 02/01/2004 02/01/2004 - 03/01/2004 03/01/2004 - 04/01/2004 04/01/2004 - 05/01/2004 05/01/2004 - 06/01/2004 06/01/2004 - 07/01/2004 07/01/2004 - 08/01/2004 08/01/2004 - 09/01/2004 09/01/2004 - 10/01/2004 10/01/2004 - 11/01/2004 11/01/2004 - 12/01/2004 12/01/2004 - 01/01/2005 01/01/2005 - 02/01/2005 02/01/2005 - 03/01/2005 03/01/2005 - 04/01/2005 04/01/2005 - 05/01/2005 05/01/2005 - 06/01/2005 06/01/2005 - 07/01/2005 07/01/2005 - 08/01/2005 08/01/2005 - 09/01/2005 09/01/2005 - 10/01/2005 10/01/2005 - 11/01/2005 11/01/2005 - 12/01/2005 12/01/2005 - 01/01/2006 01/01/2006 - 02/01/2006 02/01/2006 - 03/01/2006 03/01/2006 - 04/01/2006 04/01/2006 - 05/01/2006 05/01/2006 - 06/01/2006 06/01/2006 - 07/01/2006 07/01/2006 - 08/01/2006 08/01/2006 - 09/01/2006 09/01/2006 - 10/01/2006 10/01/2006 - 11/01/2006 11/01/2006 - 12/01/2006 12/01/2006 - 01/01/2007 01/01/2007 - 02/01/2007 02/01/2007 - 03/01/2007 03/01/2007 - 04/01/2007 04/01/2007 - 05/01/2007 05/01/2007 - 06/01/2007 06/01/2007 - 07/01/2007 07/01/2007 - 08/01/2007 08/01/2007 - 09/01/2007 09/01/2007 - 10/01/2007 10/01/2007 - 11/01/2007 11/01/2007 - 12/01/2007 12/01/2007 - 01/01/2008 01/01/2008 - 02/01/2008 02/01/2008 - 03/01/2008 03/01/2008 - 04/01/2008 04/01/2008 - 05/01/2008 05/01/2008 - 06/01/2008 06/01/2008 - 07/01/2008 07/01/2008 - 08/01/2008 08/01/2008 - 09/01/2008 09/01/2008 - 10/01/2008 10/01/2008 - 11/01/2008 11/01/2008 - 12/01/2008 12/01/2008 - 01/01/2009 01/01/2009 - 02/01/2009 02/01/2009 - 03/01/2009 03/01/2009 - 04/01/2009 04/01/2009 - 05/01/2009 05/01/2009 - 06/01/2009 06/01/2009 - 07/01/2009

News Archives Predating March 2003

RSS Feed

Blogroll Me!

Blogarama
The Urantia Book : Pictures of Jesus : Angel Pictures: Inspirational Quotes : Life After Death : Story of Jesus : A new picture of Jesus : Urantia : The Urantia Book

EXPLORE TRUTHBOOK

The Urantia Book

Jesus in the Urantia Book

Quote of the Day

Urantia Book Video

Urantia Book Audio

Discussion Forum

Art Gallery

Heartwarming Stories

Humorous Stories

Life's Toughest Questions

FAQ

Spiritual Studies

About Us

News and Blogs