TruthBook Religious News Blog

By TERENCE CHEA (AP) – 3 days ago

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal appeals court upheld the use of the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and "In God We Trust" on U.S. currency, rejecting arguments Thursday that the phrases violate the separation of church and state.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel rejected two legal challenges by Sacramento atheist Michael Newdow, who said the references to God are unconstitutional and infringe on his religious beliefs.

The same appeals court caused a national uproar and prompted accusations of judicial activism when it decided in Newdow's favor in 2002, ruling that the pledge violated the First Amendment prohibition against government endorsement of religion.

President George W. Bush called the 2002 decision "ridiculous," senators passed a resolution condemning the ruling and Newdow received death threats.

That lawsuit reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 2004, but the high court said Newdow lacked the legal standing to file the suit because he didn't have custody of his daughter, on whose behalf he brought the case.

So Newdow filed an identical challenge on behalf of other parents who objected to the recitation of the pledge at school. In 2005, a federal judge in Sacramento decided in Newdow's favor, prompting the appeals court to take up the case again.

Judge Carlos Bea, who was appointed by Bush in 2003, wrote for the majority in Thursday's 2-1 ruling.

"The Pledge of Allegiance serves to unite our vast nation through the proud recitation of some of the ideals upon which our Republic was founded," he said.

***************

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

For your consideration, here is a Urantia Book quote which speaks of the separation of church and state as a "great peace move...":

70:1.14 7. Religion—the desire to make converts to the cult. The primitive religions all sanctioned war. Only in recent times has religion begun to frown upon war. The early priesthoods were, unfortunately, usually allied with the military power. One of the great peace moves of the ages has been the attempt to separate church and state.

Is our pledge's referral to God disregarding this attempt?

Does inclusion of God's name violate the separation of church and state?

Labels: church-state, God, Michael Newdow, pledge of allegiance, religion, Terence Chea

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Only Spirituality Can Solve The Problems Of The World

by Deepak Chopra
February 24, 2010 10:22 AM

Before addressing the importance of spirituality in modern times, we should first define it. Spirituality is the experience of that domain of awareness where we experience our universality. This domain of awareness is a core consciousness that is beyond our mind, intellect, and ego. In religious traditions this core consciousness is referred to as the soul which is part of a collective soul or collective consciousness, which in turn is part of a more universal domain of consciousness referred to in religions as God. When we have even a partial glimpse of this level of awareness we experience joy, insight, intuition, creativity, and freedom of choice. In addition, there is the awakening of love, kindness, compassion, happiness at the success of others, and equanimity. As the turbulence of our mind settles down, our body also begins to heal itself because it also quiets down. The body's self-repair mechanisms are activated when the mind is at peace because the mind and body are at the deepest level inseparably one.

All religions are founded on a deep spiritual experience of unity consciousness where there was complete union between the personal and universal. Unfortunately, many times the followers of religion, instead of understanding the religious experience and seeking it for themselves ended up merely worshiping the founder of the religion. It is more important to fully grasp the teaching of the religion and its basic tenets, that have come from a deeper experience of transcendence. Self-righteous morality is not a means for experiencing higher consciousness. Higher consciousness, spontaneously leads to moral and ethical behavior...

*******

Here is another of the Huffington Post's series on religion. You are invited on this blog to contribute what religion means to you. It might be a good forum to share some of our Urantia teachings with the larger community. This particular article seems pretty consistent with what TUB teaches...Please click on "External Source Article" below to access the entire article and the website...

Labels: Deepak Chopra, God, HuffPost Religion, religion, spirituality

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Announcing HuffPost Religion: Believers and Non-Believers Welcome

Arianna Huffington
February 24, 2010

I've always been fascinated by religion.

Some of my most vivid childhood memories are of my family's summer holidays on the island of Corfu. August 15 is when all of Greece pays homage to the Virgin Mary. I remember going to church on that day every year, and sitting quietly among widows in black kerchiefs and younger women smelling of summer wool and candle smoke. I would watch, enthralled, as deep faith and memories moved them to tears of grief and hope. And, in my childish way, I shared their love for her.

I believe that we are all hardwired for the sacred, that the instinct for spirituality is part of our collective DNA. I wrote about this instinct 15 years ago, and called it the fourth instinct, the one beyond survival, sex, and power. It propels us to find meaning and transcend our everyday preoccupations.

For some, it involves organized religion. For others, it's a personal spiritual quest. Seventy percent of Americans belong to a religious organization and 40 percent attend services once a week.

Yet, despite the central role religion plays in American life, all too often, when talking about it, we end up talking at each other instead of with each other. This is a shame -- especially at a time like this, when the economic struggle in so many people's lives has led to a deeper questioning of our values and priorities. Whether you are a believer or not, this is an essential conversation to have...which is why I'm delighted to announce that we are launching HuffPost Religion -- a section featuring a wide-ranging discussion about religion, spirituality, and the ways they influence our lives.

Like all our sections, HuffPost Religion will bring you the latest news -- in this case about all things religion-related -- served up in the HuffPost style. It will also be home to an open and fearless dialogue about all the ways religion affects both our personal and our public lives. And it will do so in a way that moves beyond the pigeonhole depictions of both the faithful and the agnostic we see so frequently -- and also beyond the tired assumption that God is a card-carrying member of one political party or another.

********

For your consideration: this looks like a good internet forum that Urantia Book reader/believers might find interesting. It could be a good service platform to carefully introduce some universal truths that we have learned and experienced from the Revelation for the edification of those who are truthseekers. To access the entire article, please click on "External Source Article" below...

Labels: Arianna Huffington, dialogue, HuffPost Religion, interfaith, religion, spirituality

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

The Great Recession: A Spiritual Crisis

Jim Wallis
Founder of Sojourners; speaker, author, activist
February 24, 2010

The Great Recession is not just an economic crisis, it is the result of a loss of values, a moral crisis. And to say that it is a moral crisis is also to say that it is a spiritual crisis. At the center of most religions is the question of who and what we worship? Where is our deepest allegiance?

So the Great Recession bears some "religious" reflection, as the market has gradually become all pervasive--a replacement for religion and even for God. It is the Market now that now seems to have all the godlike qualities--all-knowing, all-present, all-powerful, even eternal--unable to be resisted or even questioned. Performing necessary roles and providing important goods and services are not the same things as commanding ultimate allegiance. Idolatry means that something has taken the place of God. The market can be good thing and even necessary; but it now commands too much, claims ultimate significance, controls too much space in our lives, and has gone far beyond its proper limits.

Idolatry comes in a lot of different forms. Today, it is much more subtle than bowing down to a golden calf. It often takes the form of choosing the wrong priorities, trusting in the wrong things, and putting our confidence where it does not belong.

Today, instead of statues, we now have hedge funds, mortgage-backed securities, 401(k)s, and mutual funds and, for some, bonuses. We place blind faith in the hope that the stock indexes will just keep rising and real estate prices keep climbing. Market mechanisms were supposed to distribute risk so well that even those who were reckless would never see the consequences of their actions. Trust, security, and hope in the future were all as close to us as the nearest financial planner's office. Life and the world around us could all be explained with just the right market lens. These idols were supposed to make us happy and secure, and provide for all our needs. Those who manage them became the leaders, to whom we looked, not just for financial leadership, but direction for our entire lives. That is indeed idolatry.

Rich and poor alike were sucked into making heroes out of those who seemed to be able to turn everything they touched into gold. Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Elie Wiesel lost virtually all of his personal wealth and his foundation's, up to $37 million, to Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. "We gave him everything, we thought he was God, we trusted everything in his hands," Weisel said.

The market even has its priests, pastors, rabbis, imams, and shamans. These money and market commentators translate the often confusing signals of the Dow, international currency exchange rates, or futures indexes and tell us all what they mean and how they should act as a result...

This is one man's take on our present economic crisis. He lends a spiritual angle to it, and it is a thought-provoking opinion...Please click on "external source" below for the complete article.

Labels: God, idolatry, Jim Wallis, religion, the economy

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Religion rejuvenates environmentalism

By COURTNEY WOO

Evangelical pastor Ken Wilson's environmental conversion began a few years ago with goose bumps, watery eyes and an appeal for help.

"I heard Gus Speth, the dean of forestry at Yale, say to a group of religious leaders, 'I used to think the top environmental problems facing the world were global warming, environmental degradation and eco-system collapse, and that we scientists could fix those problems with enough science,' " Wilson recalls. " 'But I was wrong. The real problem is not those three items, but greed, selfishness and apathy. And for that we need a spiritual and cultural transformation. And we scientists don't know how to do that. We need your help.' "

Back home, Wilson thought more about passages in the Bible containing messages of stewardship for the Earth. He began preaching about a Christian duty to protect the environment, or "creation care," at the Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor, Mich., where he is senior pastor.
K

"It was like I was popping a cork," Wilson says. "People came up to me in the lobby after the lectures actually with tears in their eyes, saying thank you for speaking to this issue."

Wilson was surprised to see that many of those people were new to the church.

"There was a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology who came to the church for the very first time for the creation care series, and he said to me, 'Here's a church that is finally talking about science in a positive way and actually cares for the environment.' "

While only 21 percent of Americans report being active in the environmental movement, a 2008 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that nearly 90 percent of Americans described themselves as religious.

"Simply based on the numbers, the faith community could be critically important to the environmental dialogue," says Jerry Lawson, national manager of the Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star Small Business and Congregations Network, a division of EPA that helps congregations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Energy Star estimates that if each of the more than 300,000 houses of worship in the United States cut energy consumption by 10 percent, congregations would save $200 million and would eliminate greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 400,000 cars.

Because of their large numbers, American evangelicals could be a critical component of the burgeoning eco-religious movement. About 59 million Americans identify as evangelical Protestants, according to the 2008 Pew study.

Evangelical attitudes toward environmentalism are complex. As early as 1970, the National Association of Evangelicals equated preservation of natural resources and ecological balance with preservation of God's creation.

But around that time, evangelicals began to clash ideologically with scientists and leaders of the early environmental movement over issues of population control and evolution, Wilson says. Environmentalists advocated abortion as a solution to population control, while evangelicals opposed abortion. Meanwhile, political conservatism began to dominate evangelical thought and environmentalists became associated with liberalism.

Executive Pastor Don Bromley of the Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor counts himself a former skeptic of the environmental movement.

"I used to believe stereotypes that environmentalists didn't care about human beings as much as they did the natural world," Bromley says. "They were anti-progress."

Today, those divisions still hold.

The evangelical-oriented Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation questions the science of catastrophic climate change. (Mainstream scientists have concluded that the evidence of warming is unequivocal.) The Alliance argues that mandated reductions of greenhouse gas emissions will cause more harm than good because raising energy prices and cutting consumption will retard the economic development of poor regions plagued by disease, premature death and short life expectancies.

Still, signs of conversion are emerging.

Tri Robinson, 61, is senior pastor of the Vineyard Boise church. Five years ago, he revisited the Bible when his two adult children questioned the absence of environmental messages in the church. Robinson says he, like Wilson, suddenly saw environmental messages everywhere.

"I realized that issues of the environment were killing the poor and were stimulating things like human trafficking," Robinson recalls. "I'd tapped a whole new world I'd never seen before."

Also like Wilson, Robinson preached this message to his congregation. Instead of getting "tarred and feathered," as he'd feared, he received a standing ovation - his first in 25 years.

"It was like he was filling a gap," says parishioner Jessie Nilo, who heard Robinson speak that day. "It strengthened my relationship with God, connecting me to his creation in a new way. It's very freeing to be able to embrace another part of who God is."

Robinson represents a growing number of Christian leaders who, in recent years, are engaging in dialogue at a national level through conferences and interfaith coalitions.

In 2006, 86 evangelical leaders, including Robinson and Wilson, signed the Evangelical Climate Initiative; two years later, 46 Southern Baptist leaders signed a declaration for action on climate change. The Southern Baptist Convention is the country's largest Protestant denomination, with more than 16 million members and 42,000 churches.

Religious leaders from other traditions are also witnessing transformations of attitude among their membership.

"When I first started talking about environmental issues 13 years ago, there were folks who got up and walked out," says the Rev. Sally Bingham, an Episcopal and founder of Interfaith Power and Light, a national interfaith organization promoting energy efficiency and conservation. "Today, these messages are bringing people into the church."

Membership in Interfaith Power and Light has exploded.

The organization has grown from 100 congregations in 2000 to more than 10,000 congregations in 29 states in 2008.

Please click on "external source" to read the rest of this lengthy and informative article.

Labels: church, Courtney Woo, creation Care, environmentalism, evangelicals, Interfaith Power and Light, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, February 05, 2010

How Does an Atheist Come to Believe in God?: An Interview with Jacob Needleman

By Lisa Webster
January 28, 2010

RD’s senior editor sits down with philosopher Jacob Needleman, whose autobiography What is God? describes his journey from young Ivy-educated professor and atheist, to talk about fundamentalism, atheism, separating the sacred from religion, and why listening is the first step of every ethics.

Sitting in Jacob Needleman’s living room in the Oakland hills, I fished in my bag for the tiny microphone I planned to use with my iPhone, to record our conversation. "Is that what you’re using?" he asked, with great interest. He held up his own phone. "I just got one of these. Will this really work?"

He sat next to me on the couch as I pointed him through the app store on his phone. "There it is," I said, pointing to iTalk. "That’s what I’m using."

He tapped the screen, but the app that came up for download was... iTalk to God.

"That can’t be it," he laughed. It wasn’t—but what a setup.

What is God? is an unlikely title for a book by a philosopher, unless the question is meant rhetorically, or as a starting-off point for a discourse on language, or on the foibles of the mind, perhaps. But Jacob Needleman asks the question in earnest, and then proceeds—in the course of this most personal of the dozen or so books he's written—to answer it.

What is God?, out last month from Tarcher/Penguin, is an intellectual autobiography—the story of Needleman's education and formation as a scholar and teacher—but it’s also a narrative of what might be called a conversion. A young Ivy-educated professor, "allergic" to religion, enthralled by science, finds himself obliged to teach a religious studies survey class; to his surprise, he discovers a world of rigor and inquiry in theological writing. The story he tells, of the intertwining of his intellectual and spiritual searches, has a real suspense to it: how does an atheist come to believe in God?

In a conversation earlier this month we discussed this question, the challenges of talking about religion in the contemporary cultural arena, fundamentalism and atheism, and the practice of real communication.

This is just the beginning of a 2-page article - an interesting interview with Jacob Needlemann and his conversion from atheist to a man who has experienced God. Please click on "external source" for the complete piece.

Labels: atheism, ethics, God, Jacob Needleman, Lisa Webster, listening, philosophy, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Health and Well-Being: Achieving spiritual growth starts from the inside

by Dr. Jim Manganiello

Many people are searching for depth and meaning in their lives, for refuge from the too-often soul-less life at the surface of things. And so spirituality is of great interest today.

But these days, what passes for spiritual growth opportunities often lead nowhere. Much new-age spirituality, however well-intended, provokes energy and interest, but it doesn't deliver anything of lasting value. And belief-based faith in an organized religion can grant many benefits, but typically authentic spiritual growth is not among them. Spiritual growth requires the right knowledge and tools and the commitment to use them, along with the support to use them effectively.

Consider that the foundation of deep spirituality is insight. Spiritual insight flows from experiential knowledge, not from ordinary thinking and feeling. And experiential knowledge is rooted in deep awareness.

All great religions were sourced from revelations that flowed from this deep and profound awareness. But in time, those who lack a real grasp of the profound experiential knowledge that gave birth to a religion inevitably bring a religion down. They bring it down into an affair of power, control, dogma, belief and even down into their wicked offspring: murder and mayhem.

The profound dictum "Do Unto Others ..." is perhaps the single most important "spiritual call" we'll ever hear. But as the evidence shows all too clearly, no one can do it who lacks spiritual awareness and insight.

So how do we develop our capacity for deep awareness, for experiential knowledge? Again, we need the right knowledge and tools. All religions have a spiritual inner core that contains such knowledge and tools, but they are often buried and even hidden. And they don't come with an up-to-date, clearly written user's manual.

A good and inspiring article, written by a clinical psychologist, which is quite in line with our Urantian beliefs. Please click on "external source" for the rest of the article.

Labels: health, insight, Jim Manganiello, meaning, religion, spirituality

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Is Progress Possible? The Legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Paul Raushenbush
January 18, 2010

Once a year our nation focuses on, well really just glances at, the life and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. We play recordings of his famous address in Washington, and school children draw pictures of what it means to have a dream. This is all for the good. It reminds us of the civil rights struggle of the past and hopefully brings us into the questions of continued racism in the present. For the more radical of us, remembering Martin includes his commitments against militarism and his opposition to the Vietnam war; and his deep questions about our nation's economy which leaves so many millions poor - questions that earned King the label of communists by some. But perhaps the greatest legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. is his profound religious belief that God's will on earth was one of justice for all people and peace among nations, and King's conviction that in doing's God will we can progress and that our world can become a better place.

Now this last statement will disturb two kinds of people. The first are those who wish to rid King of any annoying religious influence, and to sanitize the civil rights movement of God, Jesus or church. The second are those Christians who believe that social progress is not possible and not part of the mission of the church, but rather a distraction from saving souls. Both of these groups have a serious problem on Martin Luther King, Jr. day as they are at odds with understanding who King was and his message of hope today.

Celebrating MLK day without acknowledging religion is like admiring the exterior of the car without understanding the fuel and engine that makes it go. King was a Christian minister who had faith that God cared not only about the souls of the people but also cared about their bodies and the conditions in which they lived. King said: "The gospel at its best deals with the whole man. Not only his soul but his body, not only his spiritual well being but his material well-being. Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial."

Please click on "external source" for the complete article

Labels: God's will, justice, Martin Luther King Jr., Paul Raushenbush, peace, religion, social progress

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, January 15, 2010

This Emotional Life: Why Does Religion Make People Happier?

By Therese J. Borchard

25 tweets retweet

This Emotional Life: Why Does Religion Make People Happier?Harvard psychologist and bestselling author Daniel Gilbert has teamed up with Vulcan Productions and the NOVA/WGBH Science Unit to create a multimedia project called This Emotional Life .

This 3-part documentary ends tonight on PBS. Featured in the third episode is Dr. Edward Diener, who has studied happiness across cultures and has pinpointed some universal reasons that people are happier. One is religion. I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Diener.

Question: Why does religion seem to make people happier?

Dr. Diener: Many studies find that religious people on average are happier. But since not all religious people are happier, and not all religious beliefs seem to lead to happiness, we have to search for the “active ingredient” in what aspect of religion might increase feelings of well-being. In our book on happiness, my son and I argue that one key ingredient is positive spirituality, feeling emotions such as love, awe, wonder, respect, and gratitude that connect us to others and to things larger than ourselves. That is, spirituality can focus us on larger causes than our own personal welfare, and this can give us purpose and meaning. Also, this broader focus on others and purpose can help us quit worrying so much about ourselves. And it can help us connect to others.

Please see "external source" for the complete interview

Labels: Daniel Gilbert, happiness, religion, Therese J. Borchard

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Sunday, January 03, 2010

6,000 reasons why religion still has a prayer in 2010

Jan 2 2010
by Robin Turner, Western Mail

FOR the best part of two centuries, scientists and philosophers have predicted the decline of religion in the modern world.

Indeed, falling church attendance figures in most of Europe seem to bear that prediction out.

But a Welsh university is now challenging the “secularisation theory” of social theorists such as Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Max Weber and Émile Durkheim – by collecting 6,000 reasons why religion exists.

Researchers at the University of Wales in Lampeter have collected thousands of “religious experiences” that can used as a resource for students taking theology-related degrees.

And the research, particularly in places like China, is mounting a challenge to the theory that the modernisation of society would include a decline in levels of religiosity.

“Religious experience still happens and can still change lives,” said Paul Badham, the director of the university’s religious experience research centre, which marked its 40th anniversary in November. .

Prof Badham said: “Indeed, in some ways, with the decline in institutional religion, people seem more likely to have these experiences.”

Since 1969, more than 6,000 accounts have been added to the centre’s database.

The religious experience has been defined as coming from those who report “a presence or power different from everyday life, regardless of whether or not they attribute the phenomena to God”.

Please click on "external source" for this very interesting article

Labels: religion, religious experience, Robin Turner, secularization theory

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Barna's year-end wrap: Relativism on the upswing

Allie Martin
12/31/2009

Throughout the past year, the Barna Group has interviewed thousands of pastors on a variety of topics. Now the research group has released a survey focusing on the top themes regarding religion in 2009 and revealing the most prevalent finding: Americans are more interested in faith and spirituality than they are in Christianity.

Another trend the research group discovered through the study is that Americans increasingly want to shape their own faith experience -- what he calls "concoct[ing] a uniquely personal brand of faith."

The study further revealed that only one-third of Americans believe in absolute moral truth. "Pragmatism and relativism, rather than any sort of absolutism, has gained momentum," he concludes.

Please click on "external source," where you can access the entire survey - very interesting.

Labels: Barna Group, faith, relativism, religion, spirituality

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Sunday, December 20, 2009

More people seek out mix of religions

By Kelly Jasper| Staff Writer
Saturday, December 19, 2009

Claude Tate grew up Baptist. A move to Atlanta changed his mind.
Sign up to get local news by e-mail

"I started questioning the things I believed," Mr. Tate said. He had already tried Methodist churches and Apostolic churches and had gone back to Baptist churches before deciding none was for him.

His spirituality now includes meditation, music and a Zen rock garden. The Augusta native attends Unitarian Universalist Church of Augusta, where he is studying pan-indigenous religions.

Americans are mixing Eastern practices, among other things, into their religion, according to a recent poll from the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion and Public Life.

The survey found that the religious beliefs and practices of Americans no longer fit into conventional categories.

Though Americans overwhelmingly identify themselves as Christian, the poll says, they are customizing their beliefs by combining the traditions of various faiths and spiritual paths. A "sizeable minority" blends Eastern beliefs such as reincarnation or New Age ideas such as astrology in with traditional Christianity.

Sixty percent of adults say they have experienced supernatural phenomena such as communicating with the dead. With the exception of white evangelicals, supernatural beliefs are consistent across all religious groups in the United States, although older people expressed less acceptance of these beliefs than younger people.

Not just beliefs are shifting. Worship habits are, too, according to the Pew study, which found that nearly a quarter of Americans participate in services outside their faith.

In all, more Americans say they have had religious or mystical experiences.

A 1962 Gallup poll found that 22 percent of Americans had such an experience. Now, nearly half -- 49 percent -- say they've had a "moment of sudden religious insight or awakening."

Please click on "external source" to see the complete article, including a chart of survey highlights

Labels: Americans, Kelly Jasper, New Age, religion, religious belief, worship

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Tuesday, December 08, 2009

Obama administration has religion on its side

The current White House is viewed as more friendly toward religion than the overall Democratic Party, a Pew poll finds.

By Andrew Malcolm and Kate Linthicum

December 6, 2009

President Obama's administration is seen as more friendly toward religion than the Democratic Party as a whole, a new Pew poll has found.

Thirty-seven percent of Americans polled said they view Obama as religion-friendly, and only 29% said they see the Democratic Party that way, according to the poll.

The findings aren't surprising. During his campaign for the presidency, Obama courted religious voters more aggressively than most recent Democratic presidential candidates by putting faith front and center.

In July 2008, during the height of the presidential race, then-Sen. Obama pledged to expand a controversial White House program that gives federal grants to churches and small community groups.

Later that summer, during a forum at evangelical Pastor Rick Warren's Saddleback Church in Orange County, Obama, a Christian, spoke of "walking humbly with our God" and quoted from the Gospel of Matthew.

It paid off.

Forty-three percent of voters who said they attend church weekly chose Obama over Republican John McCain, according to the National Election Pool exit survey, a change from recent election trends, in which religious voters overwhelmingly chose Republican candidates. Among occasional worshipers, Obama won 57% of the vote.

The Pew poll found that the Republican Party is still seen as friendlier toward religion than either Obama or Democrats. Forty-eight percent of those polled viewed the GOP as friendly toward religion.

The poll, which was conducted in August by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, also asked people about their views of the news media, scientists and Hollywood related to religion.

Fourteen percent of voters said they view the news media as friendly toward religion, and 12% said they view scientists that way. Only 11% said they see Hollywood as friendly toward religion.

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

Labels: Democratic Party, President Obama, religion, White House

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Thursday, December 03, 2009

How Best To Teach Children About Religion?

Nov 2, 2009
By Amelia Santaniello and Frank Vascellaro
EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. (WCCO) ?

According to a survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, 92 percent of Americans believe in God. It's a smaller number -- 54 percent -- who attend services regularly.

It shouldn't have come as a surprise when WCCO-TV asked first-graders at the International School of Minnesota if they regularly attend religious services, about half the children raised their hands. Then we asked them if they believe in God. The answer: a loud and collective, "Yes." The children don't just believe. They like God.

Six-year-old Evan said, "God is kind and nice because he brings people happiness." Seven-year-old Jerod said, "I really like God 'cause he made our whole world." Their classmate Anna said simply, "I love God."

If they could ask God anything, what would it be?

Trudie, the class clown, wants to ask God "to give me $1,000." More seriously, Apurva would ask God to "help other people who don't have money, give them more money."

Then there are the big questions.

From Will, "How did you create people?" Victor one-upped that one with, "How did you create everything in the whole entire universe?"

"Some of those are the earliest questions, why and where and how," said Carol Dittberner. "And of course the big question, 'Who made God?'"

Dittberner is the director of religious education at St. Frances Cabrini Catholic Church in Minneapolis. For 27 years, she's been teaching children about Catholicism using Maria Montessori's hands-on approach.

What does she think is the best way to teach children about God and religion?

"By example," answered Dittberner. "The best thing is to always include your children when you go to worship, when you go to church, when you say your prayers."

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

Labels: Amelia Santaniello, children, Frank Vascellaro, God, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

TEXAS FAITH: How can we have a real interfaith dialogue?

Tue, Nov 03, 2009
William McKenzie/Editorial Columnist

We had a meeting of Texas Faith panelists last week, and the discussion was so good that some of us stayed around for an extra hour. The after-conversation that Joe Clifford, Lillian Pinkus, Amy Martin, Ric Dexter and I had led to this topic for the week:

In a world filled with too much religious tension, we often hear calls for more interfaith dialogue. Unfortunately, such discussions can lead to people suggesting that all religions are the same, which they are not. Or they can lead to one group shouting down the other. Neither is satisfactory nor gets us very far.

So, here's the question for this week:
How can we have an interfaith dialogue without it diluting the essentials of each faith and without it ending up in a Dallas Cowboys/Washington Redskins-type standoff?

Please click on "external source" to access this interesting compilation of views on interfaith dialogue.

Labels: interfaith, religion, Texas Faith, William McKenzie

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, November 20, 2009

Oh My God: Peter Rodger Talks Religion

Oh My God: Peter Rodger Talks Religion

by Tom Allen | Published November 13, 2009

There is one universal question that never fails to stir up passion, curiosity, self-reflection and often wild controversy: “What is God?” Peter Rodger’s film, Oh My God, opening in a dozen cities nationwide this month, asks the question in 23 countries around the world and in the process weaves a tapestry that is both breathtaking and hopeful.

By every measure a skeptical Hollywood artist, Rodger sets out to confirm his suspicion that the world’s intractable conflicts are caused by religion and religious people. He poses the question “What is God?” with a bluntness that steels some viewers for a Religulous-type neo-atheist assault. But as the film unspools we are disarmed by Rodger’s intellectual honesty. He confounds expectations by allowing the warmth of his interviews with people of faith to emerge without the derision that we’ve come to expect in an age of mocking skepticism (with one or two entertaining exceptions). The result is a non-fiction feature that affirms faith despite the moviemaker’s lingering ambivalence, and offers the best Hollywood-driven opportunity for fruitful dialogue about transcendent issues in recent memory.

With wars indeed raging over religious differences, and evil and extremism garnering all the media’s attention, it is fair game to wonder whether the religious are causing much of the world’s strife. But to push beyond that toward reconciliation after discovering that people of faith are just like everybody else, well, that requires courage, especially in Hollywood. This is the landscape Oh My God navigates.

Rodger’s quest serves as both travelogue and mini-course in world religions, spanning the United States, Africa, the Middle East and Far East and covering a stunning array of human faith expressions. Through his revealing lens we meet everyday people, spiritual leaders and celebrities, believers, fanatics and atheists. In this personal, visceral and brutally honest non-fiction feature, Rodger—and the rest of us—are moved by the light and the truths his subjects reveal. We are invited closer and come away changed, enriched, and better for the experience.

Tom Allen (MM): What was your inspiration for making your epic documentary film, Oh My God?

Peter Rodger (PR): I was frustrated with the childish schoolyard mentality that permeates this world—I call it the “My God Is Greater Than Your God” syndrome—where you have grown men flying airplanes into buildings shouting “God is Great"—where you have the leader of the free world telling the BBC in 2003 that he invaded Iraq because God told him to—where you have the constitution of a country (Iran) that dictates that its supreme leader is God’s representative on earth—where you have young men and women blowing themselves up (and innocent others) to buy a place into heaven. None of these concepts made any sense to me. Does it matter what I believe? Does it matter what you believe? And what is this entity that goes by the name of God, which seems to bring about so much friction, hurt and pain? I decided to go around the world and ask people what they think.

MM: Why did you ask, ‘What is God?’ versus ‘Who is God?,’ since most of us personalize God in some form or another?

PR: I wanted to look at God as a concept and be as objective as possible. Referring to God as “who” is already putting the concept into the image of Man and therefore the objectivity becomes lost. I wanted to get as far away from preconceived ideas as possible to see what I would find. I felt that phrasing the question as “what is...” instead of “who is...” would make the interviewee immediately look at God from the outside-in rather than the inside-out, and thereby help quench preconceptions. I wanted the film to have a wide application and ultimately get to the question, “Did God create man, or did man create God?”

PR: MM: Did you set out with a goal in mind? Did you find a common theme in the answers you received?

PR: My goal was to find out what “God” means to people, and to determine whether religion and religious people were causing all the world’s problems. There was such commonality in all the responses that at one point I didn’t even think I had a film. It was frustrating because all the answers seemed to be the same from all over the world. “God is everything...” “God is the creator...” “God is in the birds and the bees in the trees...” “God is the energy that binds us all together....” etc., etc. And then it occurred to me that if there are all these placid descriptions, why is there so much turmoil, upheaval and war in the name of God? I realized that the problem in the world may be what Man does with “God”—how he uses it to control other men, how he twists the preaching of its prophets to create politicized clubs that serve his narrow ends. When I realized that it was Man creating God in his own image, I knew I had a film.

PR: MM: What criterion were set in place for which countries you visited and interviewees you sought? Did you try to interview leaders such as the Dalai Lama or the Pope?

PR: I had to have representation from as many diverse places as possible in order to capture as wide a spectrum of faith expressions as possible. You can’t, of course, make a film about who or what people think God is without going to the Holy Land. Indigenous cultures are also important, so Australia, the United States and Tribal Africa were a must. I wanted celebrities in the film to help navigate us through, so their geographical locations and schedules became a factor. Then Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Muslims had to be represented somewhere, so that dictated India, Bali, Rome, Mexico, Morocco, Turkey, the Palestinian Territories, UK. I wanted the Mayans in there too, so Guatemala… Put all of that in a melting pot and I passed the buck over to American Express Platinum Travel and that’s how we made the schedule!

Most religious leaders turned us down—and I am very thankful that they did, because they are all “professional God people,” so all I would have gotten was politicized rhetoric and theology. The film is not about religion and its leaders. The film is about who or what people think God is. If I had the Dalai Lama in the film, I would’ve had to have the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and then Ali Khamenei and other religious people and my film would be really, really boring.?

MM: Is that why you decided to include so many everyday people and ‘man on the street’ insights?

PR: Yes, that is precisely the intent of the film—to find out what God means to the common man—not just professional God people, politicians and celebrities, but “normal” people.

MM: How were you able to capture such personal insights about God and religion from so many notable celebrities?

PR: I asked them one simple question: “What is God?” They did the rest. Then, based upon their answers, I would take it to the next level until we were yapping away. All of them were colorful and gracious and I am very grateful for the time and effort they contributed to the film.

MM: Is it true you that encountered some difficulties when you first set out to make this film and almost gave it up?

PR: My first trip in 2006 was to Morocco and I chose the same day to fly that the British terrorist plot to blow up planes with liquid explosives was foiled by Scotland Yard. I was flying out of LAX to Tangiers via Heathrow with all my camera equipment. Normally you take the important stuff as hand luggage—phone, camera, notes, lenses, computer, stock, etc., but this was the first day in aviation history that hand luggage was completely banned. We had to check everything into the hold and needless to say, I never saw my equipment, notes, or toothbrush again. Because of the delay, however, I hit on a succession of events in which I was in the right place at the right time, something that would never have happened if I had started shooting two months earlier. In over 227 shooting days, I didn’t have a single weather problem. So I’ve come to believe that out of every negative there is a positive of exactly the same magnitude—maybe not exactly at the same time, but there always is one.

MM: What moved or surprised you the most on your moviemaking journey?

PR: How very small the world is. How similar all of us are and how blind most of us are to that fact. The similarities in belief-systems transcend time and geographical boundaries and this was the case long before the birth of the telephone, the airplane and the internet. I was also moved by the enormous desire for peace on the part of both the Palestinians and the Israelis. It is very clear to me that it is the politicians who are messing that situation up. It doesn’t seem to be a conflict of religion at all. It is a conflict of land, politics and emotion.?

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

Labels: God, movies, Peter Rodger, religion, Tom Allen

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Sunday, September 27, 2009

American's losing their religion & Catholics are moving

September 24,
by Vanessa Barnes

According to a study entitled "American Nones: The Profile of the No Religion Population," released Tuesday, September 22, 2009, 15% of Americans do not associate with a religious denomination.

The study was conducted by lead researcher Barry Kosmin and professor Ariela Keysar of Trinity College of Hartford and assisted by Professor Ryan Cragun of the University of Tampa and Juhem Navarro-Rivera of the University of Connecticut.

Researchers studied the results of the 2008 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) which questioned 54,461 adults in English or Spanish.

The category of "NONES", those who answered "None" when asked their religious identity, grew greatly in the 1990's according to the study. The NONES were the only group to have increased in every state and region of the country during the past 18 years.

About 59% is agnostic or deist, while a small minority is atheist. About 27% profess belief in a personal God. Some in the survey participate occasionally in religious rituals, whiles others say they never would.

Please click on "external source" for the complete article, including an informative video.

Labels: ARIS, Nones, religion, Vanessa Barnes, video

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

New Poll Shows Religious Right and Left Look Very Different

By Daniel Schultz
September 15, 2009

Those on the religious right and left not only diverge wildly on everything from abortion to torture, but in their composition and distribution as well.
A graph showing the opinions of progressives on raising their profile.

It should be said at the outset that the new poll released today by the Bliss Institute and Public Religion Research concerning religious activists (on both the left and the right) contains very little that will surprise anyone who has studied religion and politics in recent years.

That should not be taken to mean that there is nothing of worth in the poll results. Far from it. It confirms, for example, much that observers have had to intuit or scratch out from other data. The religious right—pardon me, conservative religious activists—is mostly evangelical (54%), with lesser contingents of Catholics and mainline Protestants. If you’re not standard-grade Christian, however, you’re probably not a part of the demographic: only 1% were Mormon, Orthodox, or Jehovah’s Witnesses, and less than 1% were non-Christians.

Progressive believers were a much more diverse group, which is also not a surprise: 44% mainliners, 17% Catholics, 12% Unitarians/mixed faith, and so on down the line. Only 10% claimed to be evangelicals, a point we’ll come back to in a moment.

More not-shockers: conservative activists are focused like laser beams on abortion and homosexuality, while progressives are interested in poverty, health care, the environment, the economy in general, and ending the war in Iraq. Conservatives love them some individualistic ethics and free-market economics, progressives want to see structural reform. Cons are for torture and progs are against it (if that makes any sense). And the two sides have very different views about church-state relations, though interestingly enough, they both agree that faith should play a role in the public square in roughly equal numbers. [For an in-depth analysis of progressive attitudes on church-state issues see Rebuilding the Wall of Separation: A Progressive Discussion on Church & State—Ed.]

One last result that should not come as a surprise if you stop to think about it: conservatives report attending church far more frequently than their liberal counterparts. 52% of conservatives are in the pews more than once a week, compared to 25% of progressives. Once-a-week numbers are a little more balanced: 37-36. Does this mean that conservatives are more religious than progressives, or that there’s something about church that makes one a conservative? Nope: evangelical and Catholic churches typically offer more than one service a week. Mainline congregations, which tend to be smaller, are open for business only on Sundays.

Labels: Bliss Institute, Conservative, Daniel Schultz, politics, religion, religious left, religious right

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Religion in America in Decline

09/11/09

Religion in America is on the decline and has been dropping since the turn of the century. That's not an atheist's happy dream. It's the conclusion of researchers at Faith Communities Today (FACT), the multi-year study of American religion quarterbacked by the Hartford Seminary's Hartford Institute for Religion Research.

The group released a preliminary look this week at results from a major survey done last year. For the bottom line, I really can't improve on their wording:

"The clear and consistent short-term direction is negative -- including worship attendance growth, spiritual vitality and sense of mission and purpose. And as suggested by the eight-year decline in financial health. . . . it is likely that the broader erosion of vitality dates to at least 2000. What makes this even more sobering is the fact that this pattern of decline, here shown for American congregations as a whole, also holds within each of FACT's four primary faith families -- old-line Protestantism, Evangelical Protestantism, Catholic and Orthodox, and Other World Religions with few exceptions."

You want numbers?

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

Labels: America, Hartford Institute for Religion Research, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Thursday, September 10, 2009

White House Iftar

White House Iftar

Tuesday night's White House Iftar had both a courtly feel and a common touch. Servers circled the ornate reception rooms of the White House with glasses of juice and bowls of dates at fast-breaking time. Prayers were led by a Muslim chaplain in the U.S. military.

Dinner attendees included Congressmen (Andre Carson, Keith Ellison, John Conyers, Rush Holt, Richard Lugar) and Cabinet Secretaries (Bob Gates, Eric Holder, Kathleen Sebelius), but the loudest applause was reserved for the guest of honor -- an American Muslim girl wearing a headscarf who broke Massachusetts state records in high school basketball. She was seated at the head table, to the President's left.

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

Labels: Iftar, Islam, Muslims, religion, White House

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Thursday, September 03, 2009

Outside faith, a rising tide of 'nones'

Outside faith, a rising tide of 'nones'
by Jay Tokasz
NEWS STAFF REPORTER
Updated: September 03, 2009

A few years ago, Tyler Manley would have considered himself a Presbyterian.

If asked about his religion today, he will confess he doesn't have one. Nor does he believe in God.

The United States remains one of the most religious countries in the world, but Manley is part of one of the steadiest trends in the national landscape of faith … the growing number of Americans who profess no religious affiliation.

Social scientists often call them the "nones" … a broad category that includes atheists and agnostics, as well as those who believe in a higher power but don't cite a particular faith.

Studies indicate they make up as much as 16 percent of the U.S. population, and researchers expect that the numbers will continue to grow.

"You're just getting a lot of people drifting away," said Barry A. Kosmin, research professor in the Public Policy & Law Program at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.

For Manley, who studies philosophy at the University at Buffalo, the drifting was the result of understanding that "human conscience comes before religion."

"It's important that you critically examine your own beliefs," he said.

Kosmin's latest American Religious Identification Survey, published in March, estimated the population of U.S. "nones" at 34 million … roughly 15 percent of the total … up from 29 million in 2001 and 14 million in 1990.

"It was quite amazing. It went up in every state," Kosmin said. Fourteen percent of New Yorkers did not associate with a religion, up from 7 percent in 1990.

A survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that 16 percent of U.S. adults had no religious affiliation. Data from the General Social Surveys indicates that 16.4 percent of Americans are nonreligious, up from 5.1 percent in 1972.

Researchers once observed a familiar pattern of religious disaffiliation among young adults, who then would reaffiliate later on, said Darren E. Sherkat, a sociologist at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.

But that pattern is breaking down, said Sherkat, who analyzes data from the General Social Surveys.

"We're seeing greater stability of non-affiliation, and we're also seeing greater numbers of parents raising their children without affiliation, which was really quite rare in earlier generations," he said.

Please click on "external source" for the complete article

Labels: agnostic, belief, God, Jay Tokasz, Nones, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Religion & Ethics Newsweekly Returns For Its Thirteenth Season

Wed Sep 2, 2009

Acclaimed PBS Series Offers One-of-a-Kind Television News Coverage of Religion

As today`s top headlines reveal, dealing with faith, religion and ethics has
never been more important to communities across the U.S. and worldwide. But
network news offers only limited coverage of such issues. For more than a
decade, RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, anchored by veteran journalist Bob
Abernethy, has been providing distinctive, exhaustive, one-of-a-kind coverage of
religion`s role in American life, international news, and major ethical issues.
September fourth marks the start of the thirteenth season of this half-hour
weekly program.

Religion & Ethics Newsweekly is a production of WNET.ORG - one of America`s most
prolific and respected public media providers.

Since 1997, an award-winning team of correspondents, including Lucky Severson,
Fred de Sam Lazaro, Saul Gonzalez, Tim O`Brien, Deborah Potter, Betty Rollin,
and Mary Alice Williams, along with host Bob Abernethy and managing editor Kim
Lawton, have traveled around the country and the globe to cover stories on such
topics such as Middle East peace prospects, the ethics of privatized genetic
testing, the split in the Episcopal church over homosexuality, religion`s role
in American politics and in helping people cope with the recession. Studio
discussions featuring newsmakers, scholars and policy analysts have also offered
insightful perspectives on subjects ranging from bioethics to Vatican policies
to Wall Street and faith.

For more information, and to see the rest of the article, please click on "external source."

Labels: ethics, faith, PBS, religion, Religion and Ethics Newsweekly

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Seeing the Future: Can Religion Evolve and Survive in a Changing World?

By Peter Savastano
September 2, 2009

Since the fall of Secularization Theory, which claimed that belief in God would slowly recede in the face of science and technology, we still must ask: Is there a future for formal, organized, institutionalized religion as we presently recognize it in rapidly globalizing, postindustrial and postmodern world? Here’s what religion will have to do for humans to survive and flourish.

One of the last books the Catholic mystic, social activist, poet, and Trappist monk Thomas Merton read just before his tragic death in Bangkok, Thailand on December 10, 1968, was Final Integration in the Adult Personality (1965, E.J. Brill). Written by the Iranian-born psychologist A. Reza Arasteh, the central premise of the book is that in order for a person to reach final integration of the adult personality, she or he must grow beyond their native culture and religious tradition.

In a subsequent book published twelve years after Merton’s death, Growth to Selfhood (1980, Routledge), Arasteh further develops this central idea making the paradoxical argument: that the means by which one outgrows or moves beyond the limiting worldview of one’s native religious tradition is through the practice of the religious tradition itself.

Two questions I have spent a lot of time thinking about over the last number of years is what form, structure, and expression the phenomenon we call "religion" will take in the future (that is, if "religion" is then still labeled as such); or, conversely, is there a future for religion (specifically formal, organized, institutionalized religion as we presently recognize it) in a rapidly globalizing, postindustrial and postmodern world?

Back in the 1960s, sociologists predicted that the advancement of science and technology would usher in a secular worldview and that religion would eventually fade into the past. Or if it did manage to survive, they imagined, religion would become the purview of a small segment of the population that, kicking and screaming, has refused to enter into the contemporary world.

Of course, we now know that the sociologists were wrong. Religion, it seems, is here to stay. Rather than fade into oblivion or become a private matter, religion is front and center in the new millennium, especially since the tragic events of September 11, 2001.

Still, while it isn’t going away any time soon, it is also true that if we humans are going to collectively survive and flourish living in the information age of a globalized world, our understanding and practice of religion will have to change. While we can’t know for certain what shape or form religion will take in the future, I am willing to speculate. Fortunately, there are some trends and patterns that support my speculations so they are not simply spun out of thin air.

If the recent surveys, Faith in Flux: Changes in Religious Affiliation in the U.S." (2009), and the "2008 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS)," are any indication, the process Arasteh described in his two books may be an experience common to a growing number of Americans. As the surveys suggest, this process of growing beyond one’s inherited religious tradition has become far more prevalent, sometimes spanning generations. Referred to as the Nones," these are people who identify themselves as unaffiliated with any kind of organized religion and are happy to be so. However, this does not mean that Nones have no interest in spirituality, prayer, meditation, or ritual; all areas traditionally associated with "religion."

This is just a small portion of a two-page article exploring the subject of the future of "religion." Please click on "external source" to access the entire article.

Labels: A. Reza Arasteh, ARIS, faith, God, Peter Savastano, religion, sociology

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Martin lifts voice for science and religion

Former N.C. governor tells church the two need not be in conflict.
By Tim Funk
Monday, Aug. 31, 2009

For centuries, they waged war. It was religion vs. science.

Their battles ranged from 17th-century Italy, when the Catholic Church sentenced Galileo to house-arrest-for-life for saying the earth orbits the sun, to the Bible Belt in the 1920s, when Tennessee science teacher John Scopes was prosecuted for teaching evolution.

Militants on both sides are still shouting away, but another, more nuanced voice can also be heard today: that of the scientist who believes in God.

On Sunday, former N.C. Gov. Jim Martin – son of a Presbyterian minister and a longtime chemistry professor – argued that science and religion are compatible, not contradictory, and that faith must evolve along with our understanding of nature.

"I believe the God of Abraham and Moses… was the creator of the universe and all forms of life," Republican Martin told about 230 people at Charlotte's Covenant Presbyterian, his church for 16 years. "I do not believe it was done in six days."

Six periods of time is more like it, Martin said, starting 4.5 billion years ago. And though one-time seminary student Charles Darwin's theory of evolution continues to be dismissed by many evangelical Christians, Martin called it "the best understanding we have available. You can't be a biologist unless you subscribe to that."

A thoughtful article - please click on "external source" to see the whole thing...

Labels: evolution, faith, Jim Martin, religion, science, Tim Funk

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Saturday, August 29, 2009

How do people view religions other than their own?

By JULIA CORBETT-HEMEYER •
August 27, 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, August 21, 2009

Religion for a Galactic Civilization 2.0

William Sims Bainbridge
Ethical Technology
Posted: Aug 20, 2009

Progress in spaceflight technology has halted at a level that is insufficient for colonization of the solar system, let alone for voyages to the stars. That grim fact was not obvious to me when I wrote the original version of this essay thirty years ago (Bainbridge 1982), but it is apparent now.

The plans to return to the moon will employ the same general principles as the first expeditions over forty years ago, and no new technology is currently under serious development. I recently re-examined the classic motivations for spaceflight, and found that most of them had lost persuasiveness (Bainbridge 2009). Indeed, despite the optimistic tone in much science journalism, it may be the case that stasis has set in across many fields of science and technology, and the motivations needed to break out of this prison seem to be lacking (Horgan 1996). Thus we need a new definition of spaceflight that will energize investment and innovation. I suggest a return to the traditional view: The heavens are a sacred realm, that we should enter in order to transcend death.

Religion shapes science and technology, and is shaped by them in return. It has become fashionable to assume that religion and science simply are opposed, and that science has been winning the battle over the past century. But much historical evidence indicates that religion of a certain kind was instrumental in the rise of science and modern technology (Weber 1958; Ben-David 1971; Merton 1970; Westfall 1973). Religion will continue to influence the course of progress, and creation of a galactic civilization may depend upon the emergence of a galactic religion capable of motivating society for the centuries required to accomplish that great project. This religion would be a very demanding social movement, and will require extreme discipline from its members, so for purposes of this essay I will call it The Cosmic Order.

Despite competition from science, religion has a future. All human societies have possessed religion, because it serves universal human needs (Parsons 1964). People want to feel that life is meaningful and that there is hope for future rewards even as the end of life draws near. The most recent theories in social science argue that religion will arise in all intelligent species possessing society—a structure of social relations among individuals—and which are gripped by strong desires which the current level of technology cannot satisfy (Stark and Bainbridge 1987). Cognitive science theories suggest that religion is wired into our brains as the result of the early course of human evolution, and could not be abandoned without major transformation of human nature (Boyer 2001; Atran 2002; Barrett 2004; Bloom 2004).

Modern industrial society has been marked by secularization, an historical trend in which traditional religious organizations lose influence. This is caused by three main factors. First, the development of science has discredited some traditional beliefs to the general discredit of traditional systems of faith. Second, the development of political radicalism has offered deprived members of society the hope of triumph and glory here on earth, rather than in the supernatural Heaven where they previously sought it. Third, the geographical mobility which many persons experience in modern society tears them away from the congregation in which they were raised, without automatically affiliating them with a particular congregation near their new home.

These factors undercut traditional religion but open the way for novel cults, some of which will become the established denominations of the future. Contrary to what one might think, persons without current religious affiliation are not typically atheistic, secular rationalists. In fact, compared to other groups they are more open to deviant supernatural beliefs, and thus are potential recruits for novel cults. Secularization does not mean a decline in the need for religion, but only a loss of power by traditional denominations. Studies of the geography of religion show that where the churches become weak, cults and occultism will explode to fill the spiritual vacuum (Stark and Bainbridge 1985).

Very recently, throughout the industrialized nations, we have seen a loss of faith in the promises of radical politics, although there is no abating of revolutionary pressures in developing nations. The progressive collapse of utopian politics will remove a major competitor and permit religious revival. While old religions may be at odds with modern science, some of the most recent cults are cloaked in the garb of science. And the most successful new religions have learned to use geographic mobility to their advantage, recruiting aggressively among those individuals who are temporarily adrift in society without an anchor in the community.

Most novel religions are likely to retard rather than promote space exploration, because they focus on "inner space" and mystical experiences rather than on "outer space" and practical action. An extreme example is the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, the Hare Krishna cult, which expressed itself on the subject of spaceflight in a book, Easy Journey to Other Planets. The cover illustration shows drab Apollo vehicles approaching the moon through a bleak and inhuman space environment, contrasted with a Hare Krishna dancer blissfully floating upward through bright celestial bubbles, reaching out his arms to his Lord. In the introduction, cult founder A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami (1970: preface) argues for spiritual rather than technical ascendancy:

The latest desire man has developed is the desire to travel to other planets. This is also quite natural, because he has the constitutional right to go to any part of the material or spiritual skies. Such travel is very tempting and exciting because these skies are full of unlimited globes of varying qualities, and they are occupied by all types of living entities. The desire to travel there can be fulfilled by the process of yoga, which serves as a means by which one can transfer himself to whatever planet he likes—possibly to planets where life is not only eternal and blissful, but where there are multiple varieties of enjoyable energies. Anyone who can attain the freedom of the spiritual planets need never return to this miserable land of birth, old age, disease and death.

Thus, we are urged to reach the stars by chanting "Hare Krishna," rather than by building crass, material spaceships. Since we are going to have religion, whether we want it or not, we’d best have religions which promote scientific discovery and space progress rather than retrograde faiths which oppose them and might even lead to a new Dark Age. Indeed, I suggest that societies will not develop interplanetary civilizations without the transcendent motivations and perspectives which religion can best provide. Quite aware that I enter the arena of wild speculation, I shall sketch briefly the outlines of an argument stating that science and technology naturally contain the seeds of their own destruction, unless controlled by a firm, transcendent rudder like religion.

This is quite an interesting - and lengthy - article. This excerpt is but a small portion, so click on "external source" to access, and enjoy this thoughtful article.

Labels: cosmic citizenship, faith, religion, science, spaceflight

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Poll: Religious funerals not for everyone

Published: Aug. 20, 2009

HARTFORD, Conn., Aug. 20 (UPI) -- More than one-quarter of all Americans do not expect to have religious services as part of their own funerals, poll results indicate.

Researchers at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., said their national survey of 6,000 U.S. residents found 27 percent expressed doubts their funerals would include some form of religious service, USA Today reported Thursday.

The 2008 American Religious Identification survey, conducted by researchers at the college's Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture, resulted in 15 percent of respondents identifying their religion as "none."

Labels: ARIS, funerals, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Free-flow spirituality

R Jagannathan
Wednesday, August 19, 2009

You may have read a story in DNA suggesting that as many as 65 per cent of Americans subscribe to the Hindu way of thinking about god -- which is that there are several paths to the ultimate. Among other things, the report says that 30 per cent of Americans think of themselves as spiritual, but not necessarily religious, and a quarter believe in reincarnation.

The report, based on a Pew survey of 2008 and a Newsweek poll of 2009, does not come as a surprise. Reason: as societies become richer and are freed from basic material cravings, they will seek higher forms of self-realisation. Organised religion, with its focus on dogma and scripture, is incapable of catering to the needs of evolved minds.

Abraham Maslow, a pioneer in defining the human hierarchy of needs, built a pyramid of five levels. At the basic level, every individual has physiological needs (like food, sleep, sex). Next comes safety, followed by social needs (love and belongingness). At the fourth level, there is the need for esteem, and, finally, self-actualisation. The last could mean seeking a higher purpose in life, a spirituality that transcends self.

Society's hierarchy of needs mirror those of the individual, though no society is a homogeneous mass. It has several strata. Even in the rich west, there will be poor people with basic physiological and safety needs; even in poverty-ridden India, there will be a sprinkling of classes at the top with evolved self-actualisation needs.

That said, one can still make a few generalisations: the developed nations, which have fewer numbers of the absolutely poor and destitute, will have more people seeking higher levels of spirituality. Conversely, the poor will see better alternatives in organised religious structures, of the kind offered by traditional Christianity and Islam. In India, Hindu fears about conversions stem principally from this belief that the church and the mosque may be better positioned in terms of their social philosophies to meet the needs of the poor. Upper-end Hindu or Buddhist spiritualism appears more elitist.

Two caveats are in order here. First, by Hindu one is not merely referring to a specific religion called Hinduism, but a set of broad cultural beliefs about life, god and spirituality. You can be a Hindu by believing in any kind of god, or even no god. You accept that others may have different ideas about god. You can move far away from the base-camp of religion to find your own spiritual altitude, and you will still be reckoned as a Hindu. On the other hand, you cannot be a Christian or Muslim by accepting any other god or spiritual goal as true. Acceptance of these two faiths means implicit denial of other faiths. Which, for the spiritually evolved, can be a limiting factor...

Please click on "external source" for the complete article.
And on the subject of "self-realization," here is a Urantia Book quote which may illuminate why Hindusim may be an attractive religion for some truth-seekers...

Religious experience is markedly influenced by physical health, inherited temperament, and social environment. But these temporal conditions do not inhibit inner spiritual progress by a soul dedicated to the doing of the will of the Father in heaven. There are present in all normal mortals certain innate drives toward growth and self-realization which function if they are not specifically inhibited. The certain technique of fostering this constitutive endowment of the potential of spiritual growth is to maintain an attitude of wholehearted devotion to supreme values. 100:1.6

Labels: America, Hinduism, R Jagannathan, religion, self-realization, spirituality

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Survey Profiles Nonreligious Americans

By Audrey Barrick
Christian Post Reporter
Fri, Aug. 14 2009

A recent survey took a close look at the "nonreligious" population, offering a picture of what they are really like and determining whether stereotypes of nonbelievers are accurate.

Until now, little information has been gathered regarding nonbelievers' social relationships and mental well-being as well as their philosophical shadings, says Luke W. Galen, associate professor of Psychology at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Mich.

But considering their growing numbers and increasing visibility in the public square, Galen sought out to determine who precisely constitutes the nonreligious group.

The Non-Religious Identification Survey, completed by more than 5,000 nonreligious individuals, is said to be the first study of its type with a full range of questions directed to the "nones," or nonreligious population, who make up around 16 percent of Americans.

The survey found the population to be less homogeneous than previous studies have typically portrayed them to be. Forty-eight percent described themselves as atheist, 12 percent identified themselves as agnostic, 22 percent chose the label humanist, 7 percent called themselves spiritual, and 5 percent chose other.

When given the option to choose multiple terms to describe themselves, 77 percent checked "atheist," 63 percent marked "humanist," 29 percent reported "agnostic," and 3 percent checked "spiritual." But when forced to choose only one label among the four, far fewer individuals identified themselves as humanist (24 percent). Meanwhile, 57 percent preferred the label "atheist."

More than three in four nonbelievers said they were somewhat, mostly or absolutely certain that God does not exist. Meanwhile, 15 percent reported they weren't sure and 8 percent said they were at least somewhat certain of God's existence.

Labels: atheists, Audrey Barrick, non-believer, Non-Religious Identification Survey, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, August 14, 2009

We believe in evolution — and God

Nearly half of Americans still dispute the indisputable: that humans evolved to our current form over millions of years. We’re scientists and Christians. Our message to the faithful: Fear not.

By Karl Giberson and Darrel Falk

The "conflict" between science and religion in America today is not only unfortunate, but unnecessary.

We are scientists, grateful for the freedom to earn Ph.D.s and become members of the scientific community. And we are religious believers, grateful for the freedom to celebrate our religion, without censorship. Like most scientists who believe in God, we find no contradiction between the scientific understanding of the world, and the belief that God created that world. And that includes Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

Many of our fellow Americans, however, don't quite see it this way, and this is where the real conflict seems to rest.

Almost everyone in the scientific community, including its many religious believers, now accepts that life has evolved over the past 4 billion years. The concept unifies the entire science of biology. Evolution is as well-established within biology as heliocentricity is established within astronomy. So you would think that everyone would accept it. Alas, a 2008 Gallup Poll showed that 44% of Americans reject evolution, believing instead that "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years."

The "science" undergirding this "young earth creationism" comes from a narrow, literalistic and relatively recent interpretation of Genesis, the first book in the Bible. This "science" is on display in the Creation Museum in Kentucky, where friendly dinosaurs — one with a saddle! — cavort with humans in the Garden of Eden. Every week these ideas spread from pulpits and Sunday School classrooms across America. On weekdays, creationism is taught in fundamentalist Christian high schools and colleges. Science faculty at schools such as Bryan College in Tennessee and Liberty University in Virginia work on "models" to shoehorn the 15 billion year history of the universe into the past 10,000 years.

Evolution continues to disturb, threatening the faith of many in a deeply religious America, especially those who read the Bible as a scientific text. But it does not have to be this way.

Paradoxical challenges

Such challenges to evolutionary science are paradoxical. Challenging accepted ideas is how America churns out Nobel Prize-winning science and patents that will drive tomorrow's technology. But challenging authority can also undermine this country's leadership in science, when citizens reject it.

Darwin proposed the theory of evolution in 1859 in On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. This controversial text presented evidence that present-day life forms have descended from common ancestors via natural selection. Organisms better adapted to their environments had more offspring, and these fitness adaptations accumulated across the millennia. And this is how new species arose.

In 1859 the evidence convinced many people, but not without challenges. Paleontology, the study of fossils, was new; no reliable way existed to determine the age of the Earth, and the physicists said it was too young to accommodate evolution; and Darwin knew nothing of genes, so the mechanism of inheritance — central to his theory — was shrouded in mystery.

But the biggest problem was dismay that humans were related to primates: "Descended from the apes? Dear me, let us hope it is not true," allegedly exclaimed the wife of a 19th-century English bishop upon hearing of Darwin's new theory. "But if it is true, let us hope it does not become widely known."

This is an interesting op-ed piece regarding a belief in evolution and a belief in God being able to co-exist - it is written by two scientists who also happen to be "religious believers." Please click on "external source" for the complete article.

Labels: Charles Darwin, conflict, Darrel Falk, evolution, faith, Karl Giberson, religion, science

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Buddhism strengthens ties to church

By Electa Draper
The Denver Post
Posted: 08/09/2009 01:00:00 AM MDT

What in the recent past seemed exotic and foreign is now almost routinely folded into "the fold."

Buddhism is not only accepted as a mainstream American religion, it is a path increasingly trod by faithful Christians and Jews who infuse Eastern spiritual insights and practices such as meditation into their own religions.

When John Weber became a Buddhist at age 19, his devout Methodist parents were not particularly pleased.

In recent years, however, they've invited their son, a religious studies expert with Boulder's Naropa University, to speak at their church about Buddhism.

"That never would have happened before," Weber said. "They would have been embarrassed."

The Pew Forum's Religious Landscape Survey in 2007 found that seven in 10 Americans who have a religion believe there is more than one path to salvation. A growing number of people are contemplating more than one each.

And they are contemplating contemplation itself.

There are Jubus — Jews who bring Buddhism into their practice of Judaism — and Bujus, who are Buddhists with Jewish parents. Then there are UUbus, or Unitarian Universalist Buddhists, and Ebus, or Episcopalian Buddhists. There are Zen Catholics.

"There is a definite trend and movement that will not be reversed," said Ruben Habito, a laicized Jesuit priest, Zen master and professor of world religions at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. "We are in a new spiritual age, an inter-religious age."

Search can lead back home

People are hungry for a deeper spiritual experience — meditation, mindfulness, personal transformation, deep insight, union with God or the universe.

Habito, who calls himself a Zen Catholic, is one of the experts who say the search is a little like Dorothy and her ruby slippers. The quest for meaning ultimately leads some, like Dorothy, to their own backyards.

Judaism, Catholicism and Islam have rich traditions in contemplative practices, yet these had all but disappeared from everyday congregational life.

For many Christians cut off from the past, or alienated from the faith of their upbringing, Buddhism has served as the bridge to ancient wisdom.

"The problem is the contemplative tradition in the Christian Church has had its ups and downs over the centuries," said Father Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk and leader in the Centering Prayer movement, a modern revival of Christian contemplative practice.

"We sensed that the Eastern religions, with their highly developed spirituality, had something we didn't have," Keating said. "In the last generation, 10 to 20 years, some didn't even think there was a Christian spirituality, just rules — do's and don'ts and dogma they didn't find spiritually nourishing. It's important to recover the mystical aspects of the gospel."

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

Labels: Buddhism, Christian, Electa Draper, God, interfaith, meditation, religion, spirituality

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Global survey: Kids doubt God but still put trust in parents

By James D. Davis
August 9, 2009

More teens in Malawi believe in ghosts than God.

Many youths in India make more money than their parents.

Nearly half of young Russians say they've tried to commit suicide.

These are just a few of the startling insights turned up by OneHope, a mission support organization in Pompano Beach. The organization, which distributes Bible portions to children, is conducting a massive survey of beliefs and behaviors of the world's 2 billion children younger than 18.

The survey results are on a new website, spiritualstateofthechildren.com, set up in observance of International Youth Day on Wednesday. Taking in 22 nations — from Armenia to Mexico to Uganda — the website includes photos, videos and documents. OneHope plans to add 38 more nations by 2011.

The goal of the study is simple, according to Chad Causey, OneHope's vice president for global ministry: Get adults to hear the young.

"You see a lot of demographic research on them, but when do you hear from them?" Causey says. "We want to make sure society, and especially the church within society, hears them."

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

Labels: belief, Chad Causey, children, church, James D. Davis, OneHope, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, August 07, 2009

God on the brain at Penn’s Neuroscience Boot Camp

August 5th, 2009
Tom Heneghan

Neurotheology - the study of the link between belief and the brain - is a topic I’ve hesitated to write about for several years. There are all kinds of theories out there about how progress in neuroscience is changing our understanding of religion, spirituality and mystical experience. Some say the research proves religion is a natural product of the way the brain works, others that God made the brain that way to help us believe. I knew so little about the science behind these ideas that I felt I had to learn more about the brain first before I could comment.

If that was an excuse for procrastination, I don’t have it anymore. For all this week and half the next, I’m attending a "Neuroscience Boot Camp" at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. This innovative program, run by Penn’s Center for Cognitive Neuroscience Director Martha Farah (photo below), aims to explain the latest research in neuroscience to 34 non-experts from fields such as law, business, philosophy and religious studies (as well as to a few journalists). The focus is not only on religion, but faith and issues related to it are certainly part of the discussion.

After only two of 8-1/2 days of lectures, one takeaway message is already clear. You can forget about the "God spot" that headline writers love to highlight (as in "'God spot' is found in Brain" or "Scientists Locate 'God Spot' in Human Brain"). There is no one place in the brain responsible for religion, just as there is no single location in the brain for love or language or identity. Most popular articles these days actually say that, but the headline writers continue to speak of a single spot.

"There isn’t a separate religious area of the brain, from what we can tell from the data," said Dr. Andrew Newberg, an associate professor of radiology and psychiatry at the Penn university hospital and author of several books on neuroscience and religion. "It’s not like there’s a little spiritual spot that lights up every time somebody thinks of God. When you look at religious and spiritual experiences, they are incredibly rich and diverse. Sometimes people find them on the emotional level, sometimes on an ideological level, sometimes they perceive a oneness, sometimes they perceive a person. It depends a lot on what the actual experience is."

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

Labels: belief, brain, God, neuroscience, neurotheology, religion, spirituality, Tom Heneghan

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

One Young World Unveils Findings of Global Survey of 20-Somethings and Launches YouTube Contest to Identify Future Leaders to be Delegates at Inaugura

Global Nonprofit Calls 20-Somethings Worldwide to Participate in Phase III
Online Survey

Inaugural Summit in 2010 to Feature Counsellors Kofi Annan, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Bob Geldof, Professor Nick Haysom, EMI Music Chief Executive Elio Leoni Sceti and Oscar Morales

LONDON, Aug. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- One Young World, the global nonprofit
organization that serves as a platform to raise the voice of the next
generation of world leaders on global issues, has unveiled the findings of
a global survey of mid-20-somethings addressing the topics of Environment,
Business, Politics, Media and Religion. Co-founders David Jones and Kate
Robertson presented the findings in London on Friday, alongside Carole
Stone, Managing Director of YouGovStone, just-announced Counsellor Oscar
Morales and philanthropist Bill Liao.

"The way to create a better future is to listen to and empower the
leaders of the future. The digital revolution has not only given this
generation of young people access to knowledge and information on an
unprecedented scale but it has also given them massive influence. We've
founded One Young World to help empower the leaders of tomorrow to shape a
better future."

-David Jones

The event also marked the launch of two initiatives aimed at gathering
input from the world's 20-somethings on critical issues:

-- YouTube contest: People born between 1984 and 1986 from around the world
can go to http://www.youtube.com/OneYoungWorld upload their video submissions
on YouTube's One Young World Channel, to be voted on by the YouTube
community. Those with the most votes will be invited to be Delegates at
the 2010 Inaugural Summit in London.

-- Phase III Survey: People born between 1984 and 1986 can log on to
http://oneyoungworld.com/global-consultation/index.html to participate
in the next phase of survey research, by completing an online survey
about today's key issues.

"The global consultation process is vital to engendering a productive
dialogue at the One Young World Inaugural Summit in February, which is why
we are launching Phase III through social networking and online
communities," said Robertson, who also serves as Group Chairman of Euro
RSCG UK.

Survey findings will be used to shape the program at the One Young
World Inaugural Summit on 8-10 February, 2010, which will be attended by
designated One Young World Counsellors, including Kofi Annan, Archbishop
Desmond Tutu, Bob Geldof, Professor Nick Haysom, EMI Music Chief Executive
Elio Leoni Sceti and Oscar Morales. The One Young World Annual Summit will
be a yearly global gathering of future leaders that is truly representative
of the world's population -- weighted for the first time ever to reflect
the most populated regions and countries, and not necessarily the richest
or most politically influential.

"I hope that the delegates of One Young World, the ones who will
inherit this planet, will join us as partners in the Global Alliance for
Climate Justice."

-Kofi Annan

This is an inspiring article for young people especially. Please click on "external source" to access it in its entirety.

Labels: One Young World, religion, YouTube

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

PBS to air three religious documentaries in 2010

August 03, 2009

PBS will air three detailed documentaries on religion in 2010, two of which will deal directly with Christianity.

"God in America" will air in fall 2010. It will be a six-hour documentary done by the same team which produces PBS’ "Frontline" and "American Experience" news magazines. The series will start with Christopher Columbus’ voyages and go through the 2008 presidential election, showing the links between democracy and religion, exploring religious liberty and examining the role of religion in social reforms.

"The Calling" will air at a yet undetermined time in 2010. It is a four-hour documentary following eight people transitioning into the clergy in Catholicism, Evangelical Christianity, Judaism and Islam. It will follow them through seminaries and religious instruction and explore their faith journeys.

"The Buddha" is a two-hour documentary slated for spring 2010 which will chronicle the history of Buddhism and it growing popularity in the United States.

Please click on "external source" to access the complete article, including a link to the PBS website for even more information.

Labels: 2010, Buddhism, faith, God, PBS, religion, television

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Book Review: Medicine, Religion, and Health: Where Science and Spirituality Meet

CYNTHIA GEPPERT, M.D., Ph.D., M.P.H.
Albuquerque, N.Mex.

The historically recent antipathy between religion and psychiatry stemming from Freud, Ellis, and other secular intellects has been gradually reversed through the influence of the wider movement over the last several decades to reintegrate spirituality into health care. Ironically, many of the leaders of this effort have been psychiatrists, among whom none is more prolific than Harold Koenig, M.D., the author of over 40 books on the topic, several of them dealing specifically with religion and mental health. His latest work, Medicine, Religion, and Health: Where Science and Spirituality Meet, is a concise yet substantive tour of the burgeoning research base examining the relationship between religion and health. The book, which is directed toward the educated generalist, has chapters covering studies of religion and health, involving the cardiovascular and immune/endocrine systems, longevity, and disability. Mental health professionals will be particularly interested in the chapters on mind-body interactions, mental health, and diseases related to stress and behavior, as well as the final chapter on clinical applications of the research. Psychiatrists will be conversant and likely comfortable with Koenig’s overarching thesis:

It appears that psychological and social factors influence the physiological systems of the body that are directly responsible for good health and the ability to fight disease. Therefore if religious/spiritual involvement can be shown to enhance psychological health and social interactions, it is reasonable to hypothesize that religious factors may improve physical health as well, doing so by reducing psychological stress, increasing social support, and encouraging positive health behaviors. (p. 53)

Medicine, Religion, and Health: Where Science and Spirituality Meet
by Harold G. Koenig, M.D. West Conshohocken, Pa., Templeton Press, 2008, 240 pp., $14.95.

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

Labels: Cynthia Geppert, Harold Koenig, health, psychiatry, Psychiatry Online, religion, spirituality

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, July 31, 2009

God and Majors

July 28, 2009

Some parents of faith have long worried about the possible impact of (secular) colleges on the religious observances of their children.

A new national study that looks at trends between study of certain subjects and religious observance provides some evidence to back up those worries, but also may surprise members of some disciplines and some faiths. And the research also finds that religious students are more likely than others to attend college. The study is by four scholars at the University of Michigan and was released Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research (abstract and ordering information available here).

Among the findings:

Please click on "external source" for the complete study results

Labels: children, college, faith, National Bureau of Economic Research, parents, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Survey: Faith of Blacks Grows Stronger, More Orthodox

By Audrey Barrick
Christian Post Reporter
Sat, Jul. 25 2009

Blacks remain the most religious ethnic group in America, a new study shows.

And over the last 15 years, African Americans have grown even more religious and orthodox in their Christian beliefs, according to The Barna Group.

Findings from surveys that included 1,272 African American respondents reveal that blacks today are more likely than they were in the early 1990s to believe that the principles taught in the Bible are totally accurate; to say that their religious faith is very important in their life; to have a biblically orthodox understanding of the nature of God; and to be born again.

African Americans were found to be the most likely ethnic group to consider themselves Christian with 92 percent saying so. Nationally, 85 percent of Americans in general consider themselves Christian. Blacks were also the most likely to be born again Christians (59 percent vs. 46 percent nationally).

Moreover, blacks had the lowest population of unchurched adults and were least likely to be Catholic.

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

Labels: Audrey Barrick, Barna Group, Bible, Christian, church, faith, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

A Portrait of Mormons in the U.S.

July 24, 2009

In Utah, July 24 is Pioneer Day, a state holiday commemorating the day in 1847 when the first Mormon settlers, led by Brigham Young, entered the Salt Lake Valley. Today, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and other Mormon groups make up 58% of Utah's population and 1.7% of the total U.S. adult population, according to the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, conducted by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life in 2007. The religious tradition, founded in the United States in 1830, has come under increased public scrutiny in recent years as a result of prominent Mormons in the news, such as Mitt Romney, a 2008 Republican presidential primary candidate and former governor of Massachusetts, and Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the majority leader in the U.S. Senate, as well as the involvement of the LDS church in political issues, such as the recent debate over gay marriage in California.

A new analysis of the Landscape Survey data reveals that as a group Mormons are among the most devout and conservative religious people in the country. The Mormon community is also internally diverse, with differences according to levels of religious commitment and educational attainment, regions of the country where Mormons live, and between lifelong Mormons and those who have converted to the faith. This report explores Mormons' unique place in the American religious landscape and is divided into three parts: demographic characteristics, religious beliefs and practices, and social and political views.

Please click on "external source" for the complete article, along with breakdowns of the survey.

Labels: Church of Latter Day Saints, demographics. politics, Mormonism, pew Religious Landscape Survey, religion

Permalink | Link to External Source Article

Friday, July 24, 2009

Jimmy Carter confronts 'religious prejudice' against women

By: Eric Young
Christian Post
Thursday, 23 July 2009

Former president Jimmy Carter and The Elders group of global leaders are calling for a change to "the harmful and discriminatory practices against women and girls and give their full support to the equality of all”.

"Religion and tradition are a great force for peace and progress around the world," said The Elders, a group of global leaders brought together by Nelson Mandela, in statement to mark the launch of their latest initiative.

"However, as Elders, we believe that the justification of discrimination against women and girls on grounds of religion or tradition, as if it were prescribed by a higher authority, is unacceptable," added the 12-person organisation brought together by former South African president Nelson Mandela.

In an effort to bring change to and end religious and traditional practices that discriminate against women and girls, The Elders are using their latest initiative to reveal how the "deep-rooted belief that women are worth less than men has infected every aspect of our societies."

They say such beliefs have led to brutal violence and mistreatment against women and have denied girls and women fair access to education, health, employment, property and influence within their own communities.

"It is not just women who are paying an enormous price for this cultural and religious prejudice. We all suffer when women and girls are abused and their needs are neglected. By denying them security and opportunity, we embed unfairness in our societies and fail to make the most of the talents of half the population," The Elders state.

Last week, former President Carter attempted to draw greater attention to The Elders’ gender equality initiative by submitting an op-ed to newspapers including The Observer.

In his piece, Carter recalled his "painful and difficult" decision to sever ties with the Southern Baptist Convention in 2000 after having been a part of the denomination for six decades.

The decision, he said, was "unavoidable ... when the convention’s leaders, quoting a few carefully selected Bible verses and claiming that Eve was created second to Adam and was responsible for original sin, ordained that women must be ‘subservient’ to their husbands and prohibited from serving as deacons, pastors or chaplains in the military...

Please click on "external source" for the complete article

Labels: discrimination, equality, Eric Young, Jimmy Carter, Nelson Mandela, religion, The Elders