TruthBook Religious News Blog

Mark Morford
March 5, 2008

...God is mutating, becoming slightly less appealing as a dogmatic force of sit-down-and-shut-up paternal scowling and becoming perhaps more dynamic, unspecified, something you actually want to take into your heart and into your mouth and lick until you find the rich, creamy center and then define that taste for yourself, blissfully independent of what your parents or priest or president tells you, until you reach that point of deeper knowing where you can't help but go aha.

It's all part of that big study from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, released recently and ready to be spun a thousand different ways, the one that contains the whopper of a statistic that says 28 percent of Americans have abandoned the religion they grew up with and have taken up another one, or none at all, or maybe more than one because polytheism certainly sounds tasty and, you know, what the hell, right?

But it's always good to be reminded that 1) try as they might, no one system can ever have a lock on the divine experience, 2) more people are at play in the Wal-Mart of the lord than our leaders, preachers and godmongers might imagine, and 3) despite the disturbing number of evangelicals in America (26 percent), there might yet be hope for the nation to evolve and grow and bust out of the archaic straightjacket of religious authority once and for all.

Or maybe not.

Given the high rate of turnover, it's easy to see religious choice in America as essentially a dour marketplace, a consumer good, each system vying for your attention and your devotion and very much your dollar because, if you think it's all about deep personal enlightenment, I've got this noxious library of "Left Behind" books on tape to sell you, cheap. The pothole on the road of religiosity is obvious, and enormous. As the saying goes, most people use religion the way a drunkard uses a lamppost: as convenient support, not illumination.

Still Christian

Ah, but what of the big stunner of a number, the one that says 78 percent of Americans still identify as Christian, no matter if they actually pray or attend church or run for Congress or secretly snort meth and visit gay hookers as they run an evangelical megachurch in Colorado? It certainly seems like an impressive number - no matter how many new beliefs spring up, we are overwhelmingly, devoutly Jesus-happy.

I'm not buying it.

I suspect a huge chunk of respondents merely check the "Christian" box for lack of something else, because they felt they needed to choose something, even though they don't actually follow Scripture in the slightest, but since they're not technically atheists and they've never really ventured out on a unique spiritual quest of their own, they merely choose "Christian" as the default American position, the fallback, the safe bet, sort of like checking "average" on a customer satisfaction survey or saying "fine" when your barista asks you how you're doing today. Thoughtless, automatic, convenient.

Which brings us to perhaps the most interesting stat of all, wherein 16 percent of Americans (and 21 percent of godless, sinful, heathenistic Californians, both much larger percentages than perhaps anyone expected) don't hook into any religious affiliation whatsoever, thus making them/us the fourth largest "religious" group in America - and growing fast.

They are the unaffiliated, the wayward ones, not just agnostics and atheists but also the poets and the grazers and spiritualists, the mystics and the explorers and the cosmically, intellectually, divinely self-determined. (Or maybe they're all just actors and bass players and trust-funded art students. But let's try to be optimistic.)

A new secular age?

It's a heartening number, and it brings up a delicious question, pondered for ages and yet seemingly more pertinent than ever: Are we headed for a more secular age? Is dour organized religion finally losing its grip? Does it all point to something grander, perhaps more luminous for us as a society, as more people abandon religion's authoritarian hammers for spirituality's exquisite seeds?

And what of the other big question, the one no one really talks much about and certainly no one really teaches you? How does one actually abandon a religion? How do you dump your God and choose another, or none or the one deep inside yourself?

Tentative answer: Maybe you don't. Maybe it's not about abandoning God, and instead merely broadening your definition of the divine so as to encapsulate and swallow it all, every God, every dogma, every attempt to corner the market on belief and put it into cute little boxes and break us all up into angry tribes who stomp our feet and wave our little gilded books and launch wars over promised lands and chosen peoples and crucifixes and crusades and witches and pagans and gays.

In other words, maybe you abandon God by realizing it's all God, it's all divine, all hot, thrumming, vibrating connection in all places in all things at all times, and hence to try and parse it and restrict it and beat it into submission and claim it for one people, one history, one country or church or authoritarian body, is actually the highest form of divine insult.

Or, you know, grand cosmic joke.

Same thing, really.

Labels: Christian, God, Jesus, Mark Morford, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, religion, secular, unaffilIiated

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Friday, August 24, 2007

Secularists, what happened to the open mind?

Many of the leading voices among atheists and the ‘unreligious’ reveal a disdain for religion that can only damage today’s dialogue. Speaking with people of faith, instead of about them, would enrich both sides of this philosophical divide.

By Tom Krattenmaker

Critical thinking might be to secularism what faith is to devout religious believers. Thinking rationally, questioning assumptions, embracing complexity and eschewing the black-and-white — these habits of mind are, to the champions of non-belief, a keystone of the secular worldview and a crucial part of what separates them from religious people.

So why, when it comes to matters of religion, do secularists so frequently leave their critical thinking at the door?

As the atheist writer and religion scholar Jacques Berlinerblau recently put it, "Can an atheist or agnostic commentator discuss any aspect of religion for more than 30 seconds without referring to religious people as imbeciles, extremists, mental deficients, fascists, enemies of the common good ... conjure men (or) irrationalists?"

The behavior is unbecoming a school of thought that emphasizes rational complex thinking — and that has so much to offer if its practitioners can only live up to their own ideas about the value of an open mind.

The worst tendencies of atheists (who, by definition, believe God does not exist) and secularists (who are best described as "unreligious") were framed for me during a recent e-mail exchange I had with a staff member of a humanist organization.

Discussing the relationship between science and religion, I had expressed my view that religion should leave scientific research to the scientists and devote itself, along with the fields of ethics and philosophy, to the mighty issues of the human condition: good and evil, the meaning of life, the nature of love and so forth. To which my correspondent replied: Why would something as inherently foolish as religion deserve a place at the table for discussions of that magnitude?

As someone who has studied religion and attended progressive churches, I was aghast. I had expected an articulate and intelligent advocate for the non-religious worldview to display a more nuanced understanding of that which she stood against.

But, sadly, this is how the conversation often goes when secularists take up the issue of religion. The tendency has perhaps reached its crescendo — or low point — with the appearance and best-selling success of Christopher Hitchens' book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

Like earlier books by atheists Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, Hitchens holds up the worst tendencies and misdeeds of religious people like an ugly piñata, on which he then performs the predictable act. But his demolition of religion dishonors the tradition of critical thinking and intellectual seriousness that supposedly define secularism. Berlinerblau suggests that Hitchens and other in-your-face atheist authors are becoming the "soccer hooligans of reasoned public discourse."

Not that Hitchens and his like-minded fans don't have a point. They are correct in criticizing those who have used religion to create suffering in the world. And those acting in the name of their faiths have indeed furnished far too many case studies. Unfortunately, the forms of religion most often in the spotlight these days lend credence to the idea that religion is a dark-ages anachronism that must be eradicated if the human race is to advance.

Nevertheless, I find myself wanting to leap to religion's defense when I encounter broadsides against all religion. Yes, many religious people behave in foolish and obnoxious ways, and some do cause harm in the name of their belief system. Yet the same could be said of non-believers. When a Stalin, Pol Pot, or Hitler commits monstrous deeds in connection with an ideology opposed to religion, does that somehow prove the inherent delusion and danger of non-belief?

My point is not to demonize secularists or atheists. There is too much of that already. According to a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll conducted in February, fewer people would vote for a well-qualified atheist for president (45%) than an African-American (94%), a Jew (92%), a woman (88%), a Hispanic (87%), a Mormon (72%), a thrice-married person (67%) or a homosexual (55%).

It is unfair and just plain wrong to equate secularism with immorality or insufficient patriotism. Nevertheless, secularists would do well to listen to Berlinerblau, one of the few atheist voices calling for secular engagement with religious believers and more rigorous understanding of their religions.

Berlinerblau, a Georgetown University professor and author of The Secular Bible: Why Non-believers Must Take Religion Seriously, says he has made little headway in persuading his fellow atheists to try understanding religion in its full complexity and to make alliances with moderate religious believers around issues of mutual concern. Apparently, it's more satisfying and commercially advantageous to preach to the converted and launch one-sided diatribes against religion.

Yet both achieving a more constructive national dialogue and making progress on our most pressing problems depend on just the opposite happening. Neither the secular nor the religious camp is going to drive the other out of business. So how's this for an idea: Cooperate.

Yes, it is highly unlikely that non-believers will soon join hands with theologically conservative believers for a round of John Lennon's Imagine (which imagines a world with "no religion"). But couldn't they engage with religious moderates and progressives, who tend to approach their faith in non-literal ways that do not require the suspension of rational thought, and who frequently lean in the same political direction as secularists do on the big issues of the day? Do secularists really want to antagonize these potential allies by sneering at their faith?

I hope not. Secularism's clear thinking has much to offer a world riven by unthinking ideologies and hatreds. And even though it defines itself in opposition to religion, surely secularism is capable of understanding that religion is more — at least capable of more — than irrational indulgence in supernatural fantasies. Learning more about religion would be a good start.

Secularists put their "faith" not in a god, but in the finest capabilities of the human mind. It would be a shame if their defining faculties failed them now.

Tom Krattenmaker, who lives in Portland, Ore., specializes in religion in public life and is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors. He is working on a book about Christianity in professional sports.

Labels: atheism, cooperation, faith, reason, religion, science, secular, Tom Krattenmaker

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Sunday, August 19, 2007

Articles of Faith: Conflict between religion, science seems everlasting

Last updated August 17, 2007

By Anthony B. Robinson
GUEST COLUMNIST

Who would have thought that on a summer Saturday night in Seattle a professor of philosophy could pack the house?

Alvin Plantinga, a professor at Notre Dame, did just that for a talk on science and religion last weekend. The crowd turned up at Rainier Beach Presbyterian Church in southeast Seattle where Plantinga's daughter, Jane Pauw, is the pastor. The topic was, "Science and Religion: Why Does the Debate Continue?"

... the topic of science and religion remains a hot one. Moreover, Seattle audiences have been treated to a string of appearances by authors such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennettand Christopher Hitchens. All three represent the popular, if simplistic to the point of silly, viewpoint that religion is the source of the world's problems and getting rid of it is the path to salvation.

Religion and science are two different ways of knowing. Both have a place. Religion tends to deal in the "Why?" questions. Why is there a world? Religion answers, "God." No one has to accept that answer, but it is an answer that science can neither confirm nor deny. Science works on the "How?" questions. How have the world and its diverse life forms come to be? Science answers that the world has evolved slowly over time through the mechanism of natural selection. There's nothing about that answer that rules faith in a Creator out or in. After all, for believers, there's no reason that God can't make use of natural selection.

Plantinga argued that there is no intrinsic conflict between religion and science. Conflicts arise when spokespersons for one or the other make claims on behalf of science or religion that are exaggerated. For example, said the professor, it is perfectly appropriate that scientific work proceed without religious assumptions or references. Plantinga called that "secularism with respect to science."

But that's different than "scientific secularism," which argues that scientific method and knowledge are enough for all human understanding and that a secular approach to all of life is either satisfactory or required. In making the argument of "scientific secularism," that science is enough and that anything else is illegitimate, people go too far.

Turning to the hot button topic of evolution, Plantinga, who described himself as a "serious Christian," again saw no intrinsic conflict between religion and science. He argued that it is perfectly possible to credit Darwin's thesis of evolution through natural selection by genetic mutation and still hold to the Christian doctrine of creation, which believes that God created life and humans in God's image.

Plantinga said that scientists such as Dawkins who want to read religion out of the picture offer a faulty argument. In his book "The Blind Watchmaker," Dawkins argues that we know of no irrefutable objections to the possibility that all of life has come into being by way of unguided Darwinian process. But from this premise Dawkins jumps to an unwarranted conclusion, namely, "All of life has come to be by way of unguided Darwinian processes." Dawkins claims too much.

Some proponents of religion also claim too much. For example, they argue the Genesis story of creation over a seven-day period is a factual account of how the world came to be. Plantinga noted that a Christian as eminent and ancient as Augustine cautioned fellow believers not to treat the Genesis story of creation as a factual explanation or to waste their time developing calculations based on it.

So why does the conflict between religion and science rage on? Misunderstanding and exaggerated claims for either science or religion by their more zealous proponents is one explanation. Another is what's at the root of many, perhaps most, of our world's conflicts: fear and the lust for power. Religion has a word for that, "sin." And that is one religious doctrine, perhaps the only one, which is empirically, that is to say scientifically, verifiable.

Anthony Robinson's column appears Saturdays. He is a speaker, consultant and writer. His recent books include "Common Grace: How to be a Person and Other Spiritual Matters," and "Leadership for Vital Congregations."

Labels: Alvin Plantinga, Anthony B. Robinson, evolution, God, religion, science, secular

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Monday, July 23, 2007

In Europe, God Is (Not) Dead

Christian groups are growing, faith is more public.
Is supply-side economics the explanation?

By ANDREW HIGGINS
July 14, 2007

Stockholm

Late last year, a Swedish hotel guest named Stefan Jansson grew upset when he found a Bible in his room. He fired off an email to the hotel chain, saying the presence of the Christian scriptures was "boring and stupefying." This spring, the Scandic chain, Scandinavia's biggest, ordered the New Testaments removed

In a country where barely 3% of the population goes to church each week, the affair seemed just another step in Christian Europe's long march toward secularism. Then something odd happened: A national furor erupted. A conservative bishop announced a boycott. A leftist radical who became a devout Christian and talk-show host denounced the biblical purge in newspaper columns and on television. A young evangelical Christian organized an electronic letter-writing campaign, asking Scandic: Why are you removing Bibles but not pay-porn on your TVs?

Scandic, which had started keeping its Bibles behind the front desk, put the New Testament back in guest rooms.

After decades of secularization, religion in Europe has slowed its slide toward what had seemed inevitable oblivion. There are even nascent signs of a modest comeback. Most church pews are still empty. But belief in heaven, hell and concepts such as the soul has risen in parts of Europe, especially among the young, according to surveys. Religion, once a dead issue, now figures prominently in public discourse.

CHANGING OPINIONS

In Europe, the cradle of the Enlightenment and secularization, issues of religion have figured prominently in recent public discourse. Below, some examples.

* * *

Sinéad O'Connor, Irish singer, caused a stir in 1992 by ripping up a photograph of Pope John Paul II on "Saturday Night Live" and shouting "Fight the real enemy!" She's now released "Theology," a collection of Bible-based songs:

"I adore religion and love it. Obviously, like anything, it has all sorts of negatives sometimes, as we all do," she told Beliefnet, a Web site. She described the photo-tearing episode as "an act of love for God, actually. But, also an act of rattling the bars of something that I do love, but I don't love [the Catholic Church] as much as I love God."

* * *

Gérard Depardieu, French film star known for his chaotic personal life, met Pope John Paul II in 2000 and was urged to play Saint Augustine, a 4th-century North African bishop who, after a dissolute youth, became a pillar of faith and one of the church's pre-eminent philosophers. Depardieu read selections of Saint Augustine's "Confessions" in Paris' Notre Dame Cathedral in 2003.

"I was heavy with spirituality without knowing it. I was touched by the light of Saint Augustine," Depardieu told the French Catholic newspaper La Croix. "Saint Augustine's quest touched me personally because it reflected by own fragility."

* * *

Sting, British rock star, was raised a Catholic, turned away from organized religion but has often talked about faith. On "The Oprah Winfrey Show," he said:

"Religion is an interesting word. It comes from Latin; it means to reconnect, reconnect with the world of the spirit. There are many ways to reconnect with the world of the spirit, not just through going to church or praying, you can reconnect through music, through the woman or the man you love. These are my roots to the sacred."

* * *

Oriana Fallaci, combative Italian journalist and lifelong critic of religion, grew close to the Catholic Church toward the end of her life. She met Pope Benedict XVI and praised him as a bulwark against Islam. She died in 2006, leaving her book collection to a university run by the Vatican.

"I am an atheist, yes. An atheist-Christian," she said in New York in 2005.God's tentative return to Europe has scholars and theologians debating a hot question: Why? Part of the reason, pretty much everyone agrees, is an influx of devout immigrants. Christian and Muslim newcomers have revived questions relating to faith that Europe thought it had banished with the 18th-century Enlightenment. At the same time, anxiety over immigration, globalization and cutbacks to social-welfare systems has eroded people's contentment in the here-and-now, prodding some to seek firmer ground in the spiritual.

Some scholars and Christian activists, however, are pushing a more controversial explanation: the laws of economics. As centuries-old churches long favored by the state lose their monopoly grip, Europe's highly regulated market for religion is opening up to leaner, more-aggressive religious "firms." The result, they say, is a supply-side stimulus to faith.

"Monopoly churches get lazy," says Eva Hamberg, a professor at Lund University's Centre for Theology and Religious Studies and co-author of academic articles that, based on Swedish data, suggest a correlation between an increase in religious competition and a rise in church-going. Europeans are deserting established churches, she says, "but this does not mean they are not religious."

Upstarts are now plugging new spiritual services across Europe, from U.S.-influenced evangelical churches to a Christian sect that uses a hallucinogenic herbal brew as a stand-in for sacramental wine. Niklas Piensoho, chief preacher at Stockholm's biggest Pentecostal church, says even sometimes oddball, quasi-religious fads "tell me you can sell spirituality." His own career suggests that a free market in faith is taking root. He was poached by the Pentecostals late last year after he boosted church attendance for a rival Protestant congregation.

Most scholars used to believe that modernization would extinguish religion in the long run. But that view always had trouble explaining why America, a nation in the vanguard of modernity, is so religious. The God-is-finished thesis came under more strain in the 1980s and 1990s after Iran, a rapidly modernizing Muslim nation, exploded with fundamentalist fervor and other fast-advancing countries in Latin America and Asia showed scant sign of ditching religion.

Now even Europe, the heartland of secularization, is raising questions about whether God really is dead. The enemy of faith, say the supply-siders, is not modernity but state-regulated markets that shield big, established churches from competition. In America, where church and state stand apart, more than 50% of the population worships at least once a month. In Europe, where the state has often supported -- but also controlled -- the church with money and favors, the rate in many countries is 20% or less.

Consider the scene on a recent Sunday at Stockholm's Hedvig Eleonara Church, a parish of the Church of Sweden, a Lutheran institution that until 2000 was an official organ of the Swedish state. Fewer than 40 people, nearly all elderly, gathered in pews beneath a magnificent 18th-century dome. Seven were church employees. The church seats over 1,000.

Hedvig Eleonara has three full-time salaried priests and gets over $2 million each year though a state levy. Annika Sandström, head of its governing board, says she doesn't believe in God and took the post "on the one condition that no one expects me to go each Sunday." The church scrapped Sunday school last fall because only five children attended.

Just a few blocks away, Passion Church, an eight-month-old evangelical outfit, fizzed with fervor. Nearly 100 young Swedes rocked to a high-decibel band: "It's like adrenaline running through my blood," they sang in English. "We're talking about Jesus, Jesus, Jesus."

Passion, set up by Andreas Nielsen, a 32-year-old Swede who found God in Florida, gets no money from the state. It holds its service in a small, low-ceilinged hall rented from Stockholm's Casino Theatre, a drama company. Church, says Mr. Nielson, should be "the most kick-ass place in the world." Jesus was "king of the party."

The message has lured some unlikely converts, including a heavily tattooed, self-described former mobster. "I've gone soft," says Daniel Webb, the son of an English father and Swedish mother, who spent five years in jail for illegal arms possession and assault. He was baptized, like most Swedes, in the Church of Sweden but never prayed. He went to church for the funerals of fellow hoods but scoffed at Christian sympathy for the meek.

Europe's upstart churches aren't yet attracting anywhere near enough customers to offset a post-World War II decline. But they are shaking up and in some places reviving the market for religion, argues Rodney Stark, a pioneer of religious supply-side theory at Baylor University in Texas.

Mr. Stark first developed the notion of a "religious market" in the 1980s as a way to explain America's persistent faith. It posits that people are naturally religious but that their religiosity varies depending on the vigor of what he calls religious suppliers. "Wherever churches are a little more energetic and competitive, you've got more people going to church," he says.

The notion that Adam Smith's invisible hand reaches into the spiritual realm has many detractors. Steve Bruce, a professor of sociology at Aberdeen University in Scotland, says market theory "works for cars and soap powder but it does not work for religion." Christianity in Europe, he says, has reached the point of no return, like a dying language doomed because too few people transmit its vocabulary to their children.

The Church of Sweden is also skeptical of the supply-side view. "We don't sell a product," says archbishop Anders Wejryd. With 1,800 congregations, he says, his church must cater to a spectrum of views. He says the Church of Sweden's more dynamic parishes, some of which mimic evangelicals' methods, are thriving.

Predictions that Christianity is doomed in Europe date back centuries. Writing in the early 1700s, Thomas Woolston, an Englishman, estimated it would die out by 1900. A century later, France's Auguste Comte proclaimed the end of mankind's "theological stage." Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels viewed religion as a symptom of capitalist ills that would be cured by socialism. More recently, the demise of Christianity in Europe has led to warnings that the continent risks becoming "Eurabia," a land dominated by Islam.

Conservative U.S. preachers and politicians curse European nonbelief and trumpet the religious values of America's pilgrim fathers. But Mr. Stark, the supply-side theorist, says America's religiosity is relatively recent. In 1776, he says, around 17% of Americans belonged to churches. That is about the same as the current proportion of the population in Belgium, France, Germany and the U.K. that worships at least once a month, according to 2004's European Union-funded European Social Survey.

In the U.S., the American Revolution ended ecclesiastical hegemony in the 11 colonies that had an established church and unleashed a raucous tide of religious competition. As Methodists, Baptists, Shakers and other churches proliferated, church-going rose, reaching around 50% in the early part of the 20th century, he says.

Europe never developed such a religious bazaar. The Church of Sweden, the Church of England, the Catholic Church in Italy and France, state-funded churches in Germany and others lost their de-facto "monopoly" status to other denominations over a century ago. But they retained their ties to the state and economic privileges.

Grace Davie, professor of sociology at Britain's Exeter University, compares them to "public utilities" -- institutions that people look to for basic services such as weddings and funerals but that don't demand day-to-day involvement. The Church of Sweden, for example, has a near-monopoly on death. Its broad property holdings, gathered since the 16th century, include most of Sweden's graveyards. The state still pays it to oversee funerals, even those involving Muslim rites.

Around 75% of Sweden's nine million people are nominally members of the "state church" -- though few ever worship and around 10% are avowed atheists, says Jonas Bromander of the Church's research unit. Sweden's evangelical churches, by contrast, have only 31,000 members, but they worship regularly and are growing, slowly, in number.

Tension between the Church of Sweden and would-be competitors goes back to the early 19th century, when early evangelicals were banished into exile. So-called free churches were later permitted but they remained in the shadow of the state-coddled Church of Sweden.

After World War II, the Church of Sweden followed the leftward direction of Swedish political life. The Ecclesiastical Department, the ministry that supervised the church, was headed for years by a prominent atheist. Liberal theology triumphed. Church attendance plummeted.

In the early 1980s, Ulf Ekman, a Church of Sweden priest, set up Livets Ord, or the Word of Life, an American-style congregation in Uppsala. His strict Bible-based message and charismatic preaching style attracted a flood of worshippers, and also controversy. The Church of Sweden stripped Mr. Ekman of his status as a preacher. The media denounced him as a cult leader bankrolled by America. The government investigated. Today, his church has around 3,000 active members.

A big impetus to the return of faith is fear of the future, says Elisabeth Sandlund, editor of Sweden's main Christian newspaper, Dagen. In Sweden and across Europe, old moorings are coming loose as cradle-to-grave welfare systems buckle. "People want something solid to hold on to," says Ms Sandlund. While working as a financial journalist, she started sneaking off to church and in 1999 eventually told her husband she believed in God. "He was not happy," she says.

Whether competition for believers actually boosts belief stirs bitter academic discussion. Measuring religiosity is difficult and each side cites different statistics. The latest data from a major research project that tracks churchgoing and belief in concepts such as God and soul, the European Values Survey, were compiled between 1981 and 1999. (They show a decline in faith in the 1980s followed by a leveling off and, for some indicators, a slight bump in the 1990s.)

To try to refute the supply-siders, Aberdeen University's Mr. Bruce points to Poland and Ireland, highly religious countries each dominated by a Catholic "monopoly church." Mr. Stark and those in his camp counter that market mechanisms in Poland and Ireland were trumped by the church's role as a vehicle for nationalism. More revealing, they say, is America's boisterous religious market and its high levels of religiosity.

One factor now spurring religious competition in Europe is the availability of state money that traditionally flowed almost entirely to established churches. It still does, but the process is more open.

In Italy, the state used to pay the salaries of Catholic priests, but in 1984 it began letting taxpayers choose which religious groups get financial support. The proceeds of a new "religious tax" of 0.8% are now divided, according to taxpayer preference, among the Catholic Church, four non-Catholic churches, the Jewish community and a state religious and humanitarian fund.

The result is an annual beauty contest ahead of a June income-tax deadline, as churches try to lure taxpayer money with advertising campaigns. Catholics get the lion's share -- 87% of nearly $1.2 billion in 2004, the last year for which figures are available. But according to a 2005 study by Italian lawyer Massimo Introvigne and Mr. Stark, the system "reminds Italians every year that there is a religious economy."

Sweden has also overhauled church financing. In 2000, the government gave up formal control of the Church of Sweden. With great fanfare it replaced what had been a church "tax" with an annual "fee," still collected by tax authorities, levied on Church of Sweden members.

For the first time, taxpayers were told what they owed in cash -- instead of being given just a percentage figure, which is typically under 1% of household income. Church of Sweden membership dropped abruptly, and the church launched a publicity drive pitching religion. Membership stabilized, though church-going continued to decline. Still, the established church last year received around $1.6 billion in membership fees via state tax collectors. The church also brings in some $460 million in funeral-and-graveyard administration taxes.

A government-run commission provides money to 28 registered religious groups outside the Church of Sweden, but these funds totaled only $7 million last year. Passion Church and other such ventures rely mostly on voluntary donations by their worshippers. This, says Kjell-Axel Johanson, an evangelical priest, keeps upstarts more in tune with their flock. He recently set up a new church that, unable to afford a permanent home, rents a bar for a few hours. "God doesn't care about packaging," he says.

Hotel chain Scandic, meanwhile, has reversed course. Before Christians mobilized, it planned to keep a few copies of the New Testament at the front desk, along with the Quran and Hebrew Bible. With the hotel under new ownership since April, Bibles are back in rooms. The Swedish arm of Gideons, a Bible distribution group, recently gave the chain 10,000 New Testaments in Swedish and English.

Write to Andrew Higgins at andrew.higgins@wsj.com

Labels: Andrew Higgins, Christian, church, Europe, evangelicals, faith, God, money, secular, supply-side economics, Sweden

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Thursday, July 12, 2007

Discussing faith in Istanbul

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

ANDREA GIAMBARTOLOMEI
ISTANBUL

- Turkish Daily NewsThe organizers of the International Summer school on Religion and Public Life (ISSRPL) believe there is no better place than Turkey to talk about religion, its politics and its characteristics.

For this very reason the ISSRPL chose Istanbul as the place to bring together over 20 fellows from around the world to talk about faith and public life this month. The summer school was organized by the American Jewish Committee, with the support of the united States Agency for International Development (USAID) and Bilgi University, where the summer school is being hosted from July 2-13.

“The ISSRPL is a five-year-old project that each year takes place in a different country exploring the main differences in the relations between these elements,” Ari Gordon, assistant director of inter-religious affairs at the American Jewish Committee told the Turkish Daily News.

As its name suggests, this summer school is international in nature, bringing together teachers and fellows from Bosnia, Pakistan, Israel, Palestine, Nigeria and, of course, Turkey. Each one brings different experiences and values. But the education they receive during the summer school is not merely theoretical. “One category is context-related, so we can see how state, ethos and religion come together; then there is the practical field composed of discussions, religious services, visits; and then there are the informal moments, when everybody can apply what they learn,” said Gordon. According to the organizers, this last part is important for the process of building relationships that transcend the limits imposed by religious and ethnic identities.

Adam Seligman, professor in the Department of Religion at Boston University told the TDN that the aim of the ISSRPL is three-fold: To develop mutual understanding, to teach how to communicate with other cultures without being offensive and finally to help participants understand more about their own backgrounds.

“The fellows not only learn something about others but also about themselves and their way of acting with others,” he said. Seligman was one of the instructors during the summer school in Istanbul.

This year's summer school theme examined the comparative perspective on State, Ethnos and Religion, devoting particular attention to the different historical and social features. The theme is very coherent to the local context, Turkey, where secularism is a fundamental principle of the modern republic. Selma ?evkli, a Turkish fellow at the summer school and student in Bilgi University pointed to the characteristic of Turkish secularism.

“It happens that sometimes the State and secularism encroach upon private life and personal beliefs. Often in Turkey to separate religion and politics is not enough by itself, some kinds of people hate all forms of religious expression,” she said.

Professor Seligman underlined that “there is no a necessary connection between secularism and a state that limits personal freedom. There is a different way to apply secularism and we are looking to find a good way that respects everybody,” he said.

Participants reflected on the fact that respect comes through mutual understanding and recognition of others identities and faiths. R?zaY?ld?r?m, a Ph.D. student in the History Department of Ankara's Bilkent University, told the TDN about issues the Alevi community faces in Turkey. "Even if the Alevis in Turkey are 15 million people, their are not recognized as a religion," said Y?ld?r?m.

A recent poll conducted by European Values Survey showed that Turkish people are still uneasy about freedom of religion, one of most important democratic principles. Only 16 percent of Turkish people interviewed agree to that value.

“We need to find a way of living together,” said ?evkli.

Andrea Giambartolomei is interning at the Turkish Daily News within the framework of Forum of European Journalist Students (FEJS) exchange program.

Labels: Andrea Giambartolomei, Internation Summer School on Religion and Public Life, Istanbul, religion, religious freedom, secular, teachers, Turkey

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Wednesday, May 16, 2007

New Book Provides Unprecedented Look At Role Of Religion Over A Lifetime

Newswise — A new book by University of New Hampshire Professor Michele Dillon provides an unprecedented portrait of the dynamic role religion plays in the everyday experiences of Americans over the course of their lifetime.

“In the Course of a Lifetime” (University of California Press) relies on a unique 60-year study of close to 200 mostly Protestant and Catholic men and women born in the 1920s. The participants were interviewed first in adolescence and then again in the 1950s, 1970s, 1980s and late 1990s. Drawing on these extensive first-person interviews, the researchers paint a picture of the place of religion in people’s lives and how it intertwines with their everyday experiences over time as well as with broader cultural changes, aging, and transitions in the life course.

Most longitudinal studies compare the responses of different groups people interviewed at different times about the same topics. The two studies used by Dillon and co-author Paul Wink of Wellesley College -- the Berkeley Guidance and Oakland Growth studies established by the Institute of Human Development at UC Berkeley -- provide rare, detailed data from interviews with the same group of people over their lifetime.

In looking at the ebb and flow of religiousness over a lifetime, Dillon and Wink found that adolescence is a high point of religiousness for most people. This discovery was exciting considering only a few studies worldwide have the necessary survey data to trace religious change from adolescence to late adulthood.

Religiousness dips slightly but remains high through early adulthood (people in their thirties) but then drops through middle adulthood (forties). It plateaus between middle and late-middle adulthood (people in their mid-fifties and early sixties) and then increases as people move into late adulthood (people in their late sixties and seventies).

Adolescents were attracted to church for many reasons, including the social network it provided. Many reported switching churches – and even denominations – because of a particularly endearing pastor, exciting social activities and friendship opportunities. They all also were part of the pre-World War II civic generation of Americans who were highly involved in community activities.

The researchers attribute the drop-off in religiousness in middle-adulthood to parents feeling less pressure to socialize their growing children in religious circles as well as parents encountering increase career responsibilities.

Throughout their lives, women consistently were more religious than men. And conservative Protestants (evangelicals) had the highest levels of religiousness when compared to mainline Protestants and Catholics.

One of the most interesting discoveries of Dillon and Wink’s research is a more in-depth understanding of spiritual-seeking Americans, those who do not participate in regular traditional religious services but who would be incorrectly labeled as secular. The majority of surveys about religious behavior rely on the frequency of church attendance as a measure of a person’s level of religiousness. Those who do not attend church frequently or at all usually are considered to be less religious or not religious at all. These types of results are partially responsible for the debate about whether Americans are becoming more secular.

What Dillon and Wink found is that the vast majority of those interviewed were either religious or spiritual seeking. Instead of relying on traditional measure such as church attendance, the researchers took cues from those interviewed about how they lived their lives and whether they engaged in regular spiritual seeking behaviors, such as meditation. Simply saying they were interested in spiritual endeavors was not enough to be classified as a spiritual seeking person.

Discovering and measuring this spiritual seeking behavior was important, as Dillon and Wink found that people who were spiritual were just as concerned about the well-being of others as more religious people. “Our study suggests that there is more than one pathway to the development of an ethic of care for others,” they said.

And as people age, those who were highly religious fared much better than most. The authors found that people in the twilight years who were dealing with physical ailments but who had high levels of religiousness did not experience the same levels of depression as their less religious peers.

In particular, among those who were in poor health, religiousness emerged as a strong buffer against depression and the loss of life satisfaction and personal control,” the authors said. “These findings strongly support the common assumption that religious involvement helps individuals cope with adversity.”

Labels: Americans, lifetime study, religion, secular, spiritual seeking