News and commentary on Religion, especially Southern religion.

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Hunger Report contains seeds of hope

As expected, Bread for the World Institute’s 2009 Hunger Report reveals a deepening crisis around the globe. EthicsDaily reported in this Religion News Service article that the number of hungry people has increased by 75 million and the number in extreme poverty has increased by 100 million in the last two years. Such statistics are sobering and should not be ignored. But deserving of more attention is the report’s recommendations, especially those concerning U.S. foreign policy. Among the suggestions is a streamlined single agency to handle the government’s many assistance programs and closer coordination with international partners to reduce duplication of effort. We agree, but also wonder if the same idea might apply to private aid organizations. Perhaps it’s time to consider an umbrella organization under which help for the suffering could be consolidated. No question there is plenty of suffering to go around for the multiple organizations that exist, but we believe cooperation will only help the cause. Also included in the Hunger Report is a call to make global development and global poverty reduction specific goals in U.S. foreign policy. They should furthermore be distinguished from political, military and security goals, with distinct and secure funding, the report says. If these recommendations are carried out, the hope raised by the recent U.S. election might not end at its shores.

Religious Torture's Backlash

The Koran from the British Museum: (c)Lord Harris Some Rights Reserved

Use of the Qur'an as an instrument of torture is a Guantánamo mistake that may rebound on the United States for generations, warns Michael Peppard in the Catholic magazine Commonweal.

Peppard says:

Religious torture generates determined resistance and long-lasting resentments. What has been a mere footnote for us may be the main story for the Muslim world. The U.S. military knows that desecration of the Qur'an leads to hunger strikes and suicide attempts, that playing "The Star-Spangled Banner" over the call to prayer is demoralizing. But they seem not to have considered the long-term effects of such tactics.

Principal among those long-term effects is creation of a stream if new enemies, as a former Special Operations interrogator warns today in the Washington Post. President-elect Obama has promised to outlaw that torture and close Guantanamo.

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Terrorist attacks won't end spiritual quests

Among those killed in the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, were several who were openly seeking God in their lives and encouraging others to do so.

The Washington Post reported that Alan Scherr, a former art professor, was on a pilgrimage to India with his 13-year-old daughter, Naomi, when they were shot and killed while eating dinner at a hotel in Mumbai.

Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivka, died in the attack on the Nariman House, a Jewish outreach center in Mumbai, according to a report in the New York Times.

Scherr had spent 25 years studying Transcendental Meditation. He and his family were living at the Synchronicity Foundation, a complex in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia founded by a New Age follower of an Indian spiritual guru.

The Holtzbergs were part of the ultra-orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch Jewish movement in Brooklyn. They left New York in 2003 to run the center in Mumbai.

Their quests for meaning were along different paths, but the Scherrs and the Holtzbergs are now known for where their journeys ended. The terrorists clearly sought them out as targets. Instead their deaths join countless others whose sacrifices are well chronicled in the history of spiritual exploration.


Update

Obituary for Rabbi Gavriel Holzberg and his wife Rivkah Hotlzberg

Memorial for Alan and Naomi Scherr


Friday, November 28, 2008

Buy Nothing Day

Although Black Friday was never an exercise in spiritual enlightenment, the underfoot death of a Long Island Wal Mart employee should have been enough to give even rank materialists pause. And if that wasn't enough, perhaps the Toys_R_Us gun battle opened some closed eyes.

Perhaps wide enough to consider celebrating Buy Nothing Day, as the charming video below recommends:

Widespread observance of Buy Nothing Day would have produced no such tragedies, although it would have required merchants to adjust their annual business plans. There might be little hope for businesses that did not make a year in the black more of a year-round reality. Nor is there any place for an excessive prosperity gospel in the approach recommended by proponents of Buy Nothing day, as Frink explains->.


Thursday, November 27, 2008

Mumbai help/emergency information

Wikipedia up-to-the-moment Mumbia entry and an Annonated Map of the attacks.

There is also India Broadcasting Network live, streaming coverage (avoid this if you suffer from PTSD), or for less superheated up-to-date coverage, visit The Lede at the New York Times.

We will add to and update this list as we discover additional resources.



Post-Marital ...

Walk a do-unto-others mile in Tom Ackerman’s shoes.

At religion dispatches he writes in A Marriage Manifesto... Of Sorts:

I no longer recognize marriage. It’s a new thing I’m trying.

Turns out it’s fun.

Yesterday I called a woman’s spouse her boyfriend.

She says, correcting me, “He’s my husband,”
“Oh,” I say, “I no longer recognize marriage.”

The impact is obvious. I tried it on a man who has been in a relationship for years,

“How’s your longtime companion, Jill?”
“She’s my wife!”
“Yeah, well, my beliefs don’t recognize marriage.”

Fun. And instant, eyebrow-raising recognition. Suddenly the majority gets to feel what the minority feels. In a moment they feel what it’s like to have their relationship downgraded, and to have a much taken-for-granted right called into question because of another’s beliefs.

Just replace the words husband, wife, spouse, or fiancé with boyfriend, girlfriend, special friend, or longtime companion. There is a reason we needed stronger words for more serious relationships. We know it; now they can see it.

Andrew Sullivan responds:

I don’t think any heterosexual in America has really ever questioned his or her right to marry - or the expectation of social status it brings with it. This thought experiment helps jolt the mind into seeing the world through the other’s eyes. Which is rarely a bad thing.

Are you ready for that? Don't we have to understand what we're doing unto others before we can see why we should stop?

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Pope downplays importance of interfaith dialogue, maybe

Batholics in Bohemia

"Batholics in Bohemia, or when your pastor enquires of you" is a Czeck cartoon which was inspired by Tony Cartledge's May 20, 2005, blog "Baptists or Batholics?"

I am informed that the caption translates, "Did you vote for Christian democratic party, Civic democratic party or social democrats? According to the new SBC instruction no. 214/09 we cannot accept liberal voters."

A few days after a Baptist minister called the Roman Catholic Church a cult comes word that the pope himself is sending mixed signals about the worth of interfaith dialogue.

Pope Benedict XVI wrote in a letter to an author that “an interreligious dialogue in the strict sense of the word is not possible” according to a report in the New York Times. In theological terms, the pope said, “a true dialogue is not possible without putting one’s faith in parentheses.”

The news comes after Jim Smyrl, the executive pastor of education at the First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, called the Catholic Church a "cult" in one of his church’s official blogs.

But it’s important to note that the pope also said “intercultural dialogue which deepens the cultural consequences of basic religious ideas” is important and called for confronting “in a public forum the cultural consequences of basic religious decisions.” A Vatican spokesman seemed to walk back the pope’s comments even further, saying the comments were not meant to cast doubt on the Vatican’s many continuing interreligious dialogues.

We expect some good would result if Jim Smyrl had an audience with the pope.

Pastor Smyrl is, after all, a Batholic, is he not?

Fair Trade for Christmas

Anne-Marie Berger of Living St. Louis examined Fair Trade and its increasing in popularity.

Fair trade is a means of providing adequate wages to the individuals that make many of the products that we all use everyday.

This video tells the story of Dr. Wilman Ortega, who is a third generation coffee farmer from Guatemala who founded Beans for Hope where a portion of coffee sales go to schools in his home country.


Coffee isn't the only seasonal, fair-trade foodstuff.

Nor is refusal to countenance slavery inevitably a part of choosing fair-trade products over others.

Import Peace is non-profit organization that sells high-quality, fair-trade, USDA organic olive oil produced in Palestine.

It was founded by a group of 100 Presbyterians in response to the frustration, pain and poverty of the people of the Palestinian Occupied Territories during a 2006 trip with the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program.

Read the entire article


Monday, November 24, 2008

The Roman Catholic Cult?

Southern Baptists are seldom shy about calling other religious groups cults. The Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board even has an apologetics and interfaith web site with a section devoted to “New Religions and Cults.”

A minister at a prominent Southern Baptist church in Florida has taken the label to a new height, or perhaps we should say a new low in declaring the Catholic Church to be a cult. Jim Smyrl, the executive pastor of education at the First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, made the accusation on one the church’s official blogs.

Smyrl says he expects to be questioned about his stance, but that the Bible and history are on his side. He compares his position to strong stands made by John Wycliffe, Martin Luther and others.

Smyrl goes on to say he wants to “ultimately see a reformation of the Catholic Church that is not just a schism but a harvest of Catholics coming to Christ alone for salvation.”

In a way, Smyrl’s position might be seen as the next logical step for Southern Baptists.

For years, some Southern Baptists have given out tracts stressing the need for Catholics to be saved. And in a Baptist Press article about the similarities and differences between the two groups, a Southern Baptist “interfaith coordinator” tells how Baptists can “share the Gospel – as they know it” with Catholics.

Smyrl’s blog can also be seen as a departure from a Baptist willingness to dialogue with Catholics.

The Southern Baptist Convention and the Roman Catholic Church had 30 years of official doctrinal talks until the SBC broke them off in 2001. The Baptist World Alliance has continued discussions with the latest talks being in December of last year when a group of Baptists met the Pope.

It's our view that such civil discussions are more productive than name calling.

Unbiblical staff cuts?

Hard times have even come to right-wing evangelical organizations, and Focus on the Family is carrying out layoffs with all the cold-blooded business logic of a major secular corporation.

Veteran religion journalist Louis Moore writes:

The supposed family-oriented Focus on the Family ministry is going to lay off 149 workers (and rid itself of 53 vacant positions) to balance its books quickly while creating financial hardships for the 149 or so families impacted by the decision.

Was there a more Christian way?

Moore thinks there was.

LDS Prop. 8 activism may help & hurt Mitt Romney

LDS Political 'Death Star' image may help Romney, says The Salt Lake Tribune. Thomas Burr of the Tribune staff writes:

The LDS effort could give Romney a crucial boost among evangelicals who wield great power in choosing the Republican presidential nominee. But it might leave the former Massachusetts governor an even tougher slog among a broader electorate.

Read the rest of the story here.


Prop. 8 backers splinter over court fight

ProtectMarriage.com is now fighting its friends as well as its foes as the Proposition 8 battle in the California Supreme Court proceeds, says the San Francisco Chronicle, excluding some allies as too extreme and off-putting.

According to John Wildermuth of the Chronicle, general counsel for the "Yes on Prop. 8" campaign Andrew Pugno said:

We represent the people who got things done, who got Prop. 8 passed. An important part of defending Prop. 8 is eliminating arguments not helpful to our concerns.

Read the rest of the story here


Bailout for the religious right

Frank Schaeffer explains how to bail the religious right out of moral bankruptcy and help heal the country. He writes:

Having once told the truth about those with whom you disagree you evangelical right wingers, and all your fellow travelers, should concentrate on providing both the inspiration for, and the means for, positive change of heart. You could do this in a way that would actually advertise religious faith as an attractive alternative to secularism, rather than making it seem that you are the sort of ignorant rubes who are about to pull a hood over your heads and burn a cross on somebody's lawn.

Here

Religion reporting & feature writing decline

Professor of religious history at the University of Chicago Martin E. Marty's lamentations on the decline in Religion Reporting through "the cutting-back of newspaper news and the firing of first-rate religion reporters."

Religion news is not unique. The thinning scythe cuts through all news departments, and much more. But this is occurring ironically in religion departments, we at Sightings say, during the decade(s) in which secular news organizations are at last recognizing the role and power of religion.

Here.

Breaking slender threads to the SBC

“This church really is historically tied to the Southern Baptist Convention, but lately it’s only been tied by the slenderest of threads,” the Rev. Julie Pennington-Russell of First Baptist Church Decatur, Ga., told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

It was her first Sunday in the pulpit following the Georgia Baptist Convention's approval of a policy allowing it to refuse donations from churches which do not adhere to Southern Baptist Convention's statement of faith.

At the outset, her appointment as pastor in Decatur attracted comment from Al Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who defended the SBC position that only men may pastor churches.

Southern Baptist Convention leadership (dominated by men) may be divided from the women in Baptist pews and homes, suggests Susan Shaw, director of women’s studies at Oregon State University, in her book God Speaks to Us, Too: Southern Baptist Women on Church, Home & Society.

Breaking the threads connecting it to women in the pew would be the ultimate SBC divorce, would it not?


Friday, November 21, 2008

Free the GOP from fundamentalists

Suffering from "political Stockholm Syndrome," the GOP is hostage to the "oogedy-boogedy" social fundamentalists, write Christine Todd Whitman and Robert M. Bostock in the Washington Post today.

Give up the rabid identity politics of the culture wars? That's what they're saying.

Ex-Archbishop gives scandal details

Retired Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee gave a video deposition detailing the inner workings of a Catholic sex-abuse scandal and admitting that he transferred priests with a history of sexual misconduct back into churches without alerting parishioners.

The deposition is a rare window into how a top Catholic Church official handled allegations of sexual misconduct by priests during what became a multi-million dollar, national scandal with international aspects.

Peter Isely, a spokesman for the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

"I have never heard a bishop discuss openly the inner workings of this essentially secret handling of sex abuse cases. I haven't seen anything like this anywhere in the country."

Part one of four in the videotape deposition:

There are still broad, unresolved issues, illustrated by a recent demand by SNAP for the resignation of the head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops because they believe he continues to mishandle the problem.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Advocating women in priesthood

The Vatican is threatening to excommunicate Maryknoll Priest Roy Bourgeois for supporting ordination of women into priesthood and he's flying home to defend himself.

Bourgeois' interview with Amy Goodman is at Democracy Now. He begins:

Yes. Let me put it this way, Amy. For eighteen years, I have been speaking out against the injustice of the School of the Americas, and for many years I’ve been speaking out against the injustice of the war in Iraq. As a Catholic priest for thirty-six years, in conscience, I cannot remain silent about injustice in my Church. I and many have come to the conclusion that the exclusion of women in the Catholic Church is a grave injustice, and I simply must—I cannot, in conscience, accept the Vatican’s demand that I recant my belief and my public statements in support of women’s ordination. This is simply wrong.

Read the entire interview here.


Deadly ministerial advice

Frink warns:

Your pastor is a high-risk, even life-endangering choice for mental health advice, a recent Baylor University study found.

More than 32% of 293 previously diagnosed, "seriously mentally ill" church members reported that their pastor said they did not have a mental illness.

Misleading pastoral responses came most often from "conservative" or "charismatic" ministers, according to an account published in the Texas Baptist Standard. Matt Pene of Baylor University wrote:

... church members were told the cause of their problem was solely spiritual in nature, such as a personal sin, lack of faith or demonic involvement. Baylor researchers also found women were more likely than men to have their mental disorders dismissed by the church.

Please read the rest.

Christian Voice silences a poetry reading

Great Britain's Christian Voice proudly trumpets how its pressure silenced Patrick Jones' otherwise little-noticed reading from his book of poetry, Darkness is Where the Stars are.

Termed fundamentalist thugs by a member of the British Parliament, the group's web site reports:

A national bookstore chain have cancelled a reading of obscene and blasphemous poetry due to happen tonight after a 24-hour campaign by a Christian prayer and lobby group.

Waterstones were due to host Patrick Jones' poetry reading in their Cardiff store tonight, but less than 24 hours after Christian Voice members began contacting the store and Waterstones' top brass, the event has been pulled.

...

Just the knowledge that we were on our way has put the fear of God into the opposition.

Yes, the book's material is, in the author's words, harrowing, and the British, like most Americans, are confident adults can make their own decisions about whether or not to read it or hear it read. What they are refusing to tolerate, however, is the suppression of free speech embodied in cancellation under pressure of the Waterstones' reading.

Terry Sanderson of the Guardian writes:

Members of the Welsh Assembly have weighed in to condemn Waterstones, calling the cancellation a violation of the right to free speech. Now, Jones, will read his poems in a room at the Welsh Assembly on the invitation of Liberal Democrat assembly member Peter Black.

...

The whole ballyhoo has also brought an invitation for Patrick Jones to speak at the Hay literary festival next year. ...

Thuggery in this case gets its just deserts.

Westboro Baptist barred from Canada (again)

Cover of the play text

Because hate speech is illegal in Canada under section 319 of the Canadian Criminal Code, members of the fundamentalist Westboro Baptist Church are barred from entering to protest a Nov. 28 Vancouver performance of the play The Laramie Project.

The play is about Matthew Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming student who was murdered near Larami in 1998.

The Kansas church protests most productions of the play with signs that say "God Hates Fags." Well-known for those strategies, its members were barred from entering Canada in August, when they had planned to protest at the funeral of Tim McLean, a man who was beheaded on a Greyhound bus in July.

Westboro is an unaffiliated Baptish Church whose principal focus is rabid intolerance for gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual individuals. Its Web site has the words, “God hates fags” on the top of its home page.

Westboro's demonstrations don't meet, the least of these standard set forth in Matthew 25:34-40. Canadian law notwithstanding, they deserve protest themselves.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

'Twinning' Synagogues and Mosques

Matching a synagogue with a nearby mosque for interfaith outreach is called a twinning event.

According to the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, 50 mosques and 50 synagogues in the United States and Canada will hold joint activities Nov. 21-23 to "confront Islamophobia and anti-Semitism in their communities."

Ensoulment of machines?

HAL9000

Ray Kurzweil was asked in a silicon.com interview, will machines ever have souls?

He dismissed the soul as mere "consciousness," thus finessing the issue of ensoulment.

Even if you accept that theological illogic, there is more to consider.


'Oogedy-boogedy' is killing the GOP

Giving up on God is required to resurrect the Republican Party, argues columnist Kathleen Parker in the Washington Post. She says:

cross

To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn't soon cometh.

Absent such reform, she says, "the nation may need a new party."

Read it here.


Popular Baptist author blasts Calif. Prop. 8

Baptist Sociologist Tony Campolo raised a ruckus in Roanoke by telling the Baptist General Association of Virginia he opposed California’s Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage and believes its passage was counterproductive.

Compolo told 1,200 messengers that Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan requires them to welcome the poor, Muslims and gays as neighbors. He said "The Samaritans were those who were considered spiritually unclean, abominations in the eyes of God," and observed that today’s "Samaritans" include Muslims and gays.

According to the Associated Baptist Press, he explained:

"I believe that same-gender erotic behavior is contrary to the teaching of God," he went on to say. “You might ask, 'If you believe that way, didn’t people like you and me win [with Proposition 8]?' What did we win? ... We won tens of thousands of gays and lesbians parading up and down the streets of San Francisco and New York and L.A. screaming against the church, seeing the church as enemy."

Yet his role as an evangelical, Compolo asserted, is "to win them to Christ ... we’re not going to win them to Christ if we keep sending them bad messages, and we’ve sent them a bad message."


Compolo on Canadian Broadcasting's The Hour making similar points earlier this year:



How many authors wrote the Bible?

Writers of the Bible offers us evidence that the Good Book is, in the words of Michael Coogan, "an anthology of literature made over the course of many centuries by different people."

Coogan is a Professor of Religious Studies at Stonehill College and Director of Publications for the Harvard Semitic Museum. He goes on to say:

Think of an analogy: The Norton Anthology of English Literature, which covers over a thousand years, from Beowulf into the 20th century. The Bible covers a similar span. The earliest texts in the Bible likely date to before 1000 B.C., and the latest texts go at least to the 2nd century B.C., and for Christians, into the 2nd century A.D. So it is an anthology of the literature of ancient Israel and early Judaism, and for Christians, of earliest Christianity, as well.

Like any anthology, it's selective. There were many other texts that the ancient Israelites and early Christians produced that we no longer have. We have reference in the Book of Numbers, for instance, to the Book of the Wars of Yahweh. Yahweh was the name of the God of Israel. And it must have been a wonderful book, but all we have is a kind of learned footnote.

It is one episode in Nova's "archeological detective story," The Bible's Buried Secrets.

The entire show will be available online, today.


Update

The program is online in 13 chapters, each available in both Quicktime and Windows Media Player format.


Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Reconciling Darwinism and Faith

Francisco J. Ayala is a professor of biology, ecology, evolutionary biology and philosophy at the University of California, Irvine.

Sally Lehrman writes in the Scientific American:

A geneticist ordained as a Dominican priest, Francisco J. Ayala sees no conflict between Darwinism and faith. Convincing most of the American public of that remains the challenge. Ayala straddles science and religion by speaking both languages extremely well (and with a Castilian accent).

The article is well worth reading.

Pro-Choice Catholic Maria Shriver

California first lady Maria Shriver's Washington Post Divine Impulses interview on what it means to be a pro-choice, Catholic woman.

Fire over California's Prop. 8

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is under external fire for heavily promotinng the campaign for California's Proposition 8, which is intended to overturn a state Supreme Court ruling that permits gay marriage.

There is also fire within as some Mormon families to leave. ABC affiliate News10 in Sacramento, California reports:

SALT LAKE CITY, UT - There's backlash against the LDS church over Proposition 8. LDS members in Utah, even some entire families are leaving the church because of its opposition to gay marriage.

Division within the church began well before the Nov. 4 vote in California, according to the Salt Lake Tribune and others.

Dissent has reached so high into the church's hierarchy of members that in at least one case, that of Nebraska's Andrew Callahan, steps toward excommunication are being taken.

Callahan, who describes himself as a "high priest in good standing" in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, has apologize for and explained his stand in a letter.

At the letter's conclusion he asks several questions:

When gay marriages began to be performed in Massachusetts and later California, did it cause you to want to leave your wife? Did it cause you to become gay or want to become gay? Did it cause your you or your wife to abandon or want to abandon your children? Did it cause you to fall into a life of debauchery and sin? Did it cause you to change your life in any way for the worse? If none of these things happened to you, was that because you are superior to others, or because there is no real harm to come from gay marriage? If you didn’t experience these terrible things and I didn’t, and President Monson didn’t, and I can find no one else who did, then what harm is there to the family? Please, tell me what catastrophes or terrible outcomes await us if gay marriages continue as opposed to if they are stopped? Would not the precedent of a religious minority able to codify its own morality offer a greater risk to Mormonism and to society than gay marriage? Is going down the slippery slope of taking rights away from minorities really a good idea?

If only it were merely an internal church argument now.

Intensity of the rhetoric appears to be escalating.

Anti-gay violence has been linked to the matter.

Catholic Church and Mormon involvement have built, largely because of questions about nonprofit church involvement in electoral affairs, a terrible fire.

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Southern Batholic Convention of North Carolina

Batholics in Bohemia

"Batholics in Bohemia, ...or when your pastor enquires of you" is a Czeck cartoon which was inspired by Tony Cartledge's May 20, 2005, blog "Baptists or Batholics?"

The caption translates, "Did you vote for Christian democratic party, Civic democratic party or social democrats? According to the new SBC instruction no. 214/09 we cannot accept liberal voters."

Frink wrote about it here.


Batholics and Cathists rise again more fully explores the origin and use of the words.

Abandoning the culture wars

Frink writes that "Values voters" ditch the culture wars. He says:

The culture wars lost the election, post-election polling tells us; the politics of the common good won.

Less than 20% of the "values voters" support the culture war's narrow, anti-abortion/anti-gay agenda, according to a Nov. 5-7 poll by Public Religion Research.

Instead a majority of both evangelicals and Catholics support a broad public-interest agenda which includes "fighting poverty, protecting the environment and ending the war in Iraq."

Read the rest here.

Tuesday, November 11, 2008