Religion Today

The Best Training Ground for Democracy: A Business or a Church?

2012-01-25T11:09:00.000-07:00

Many successful businessmen and businesswomen in America run for public office thinking their business background is good preparation for a leadership position in government. This is especially true if they managed a company and guided it from humble beginnings to a multimillion-dollar organization.

But perhaps there is a better preparation for government leadership -- namely, being a successful pastor of a church.

Say what?

Put simply, a business aims to balance the conflicting interests of four groups: investors, managers, employees and customers. The investors paid to set up the company and want to make a profit on that investment by selling to the customers the goods or services produced by the employees. Investors want to sell the product at a price that ensures a profit, but not so high the customers won't buy it.

The employees constitute much of the cost. A company needs employees to produce the product or service and so must pay them. Of course, employees want high wages, while investors desire the opposite.

In a successful company, managers balance the competing goals of the other three groups: the customers who want to minimize the purchase price, the employees who want to maximize wages, and the owners who want to maximize profits from the price by minimizing wages and other costs.

In most churches, by contrast, the investors and customers comprise the same group of people: the congregation. Furthermore, apart from the minister herself or himself, most of the "employees" are actually volunteers from the congregation: Sunday school teachers, choir members, ushers and so on. (Of course there are a few other employees: the secretary, janitor, organist and choir director.) "Management" also is volunteer; apart from the pastor, most management tasks are undertaken by committees of congregants.

So rather than the separate, competing groups underpinning a business, a church consists of one group of people who move among roles comparable to a company's four constituencies. Management in a church is not about balancing competition between groups, but about balancing the different interests coming from the same group.

A church needs to maximize products and services to the parishioners as customers -- whether matters of worship, education, social interaction, comforting and counseling, or spiritual uplift and salvation. At the same time, the church's management tries keep down the costs so that the parishioners as investors do not complain about them.

Of course, a church's goal is not monetary profit, but lies in the intangible benefits which the congregation receives. In other words, the products and services themselves comprise the "profit."

A church's management challenge is to provide what the congregation as customers want, for the cost that the congregation as investors are willing to pay through their tithes and donations. If the management fails in this balance, they can be removed.

So, which position is better training for government leadership in a democracy -- management of a company or a church? The management of the organization a government is most like, namely, a church.

In a democracy like the United States, the customers and the investors are essentially the same people -- namely, the citizens. The government provides goods and services for the citizens as customers while the citizens as investors pay for them through their taxes. As investors, the citizens also vote to hire and fire the management from among themselves who, in turn, are responsible for hiring and firing employees from among the citizens.

Why does a church provide training for democratic leadership? Because the similarity in organization gives ministers experience in the same human dynamics the government encounters.

In a business, management can play off the interests of customers against those of investors against those of employees. And if managers fail, only the investors can fire them.

In a democratic government and a church, the customers and the investors are the same, and the managers and the employees are just a subset of them. On the one hand, if the customers-investors are unhappy about either products or cost, they can fire management.

On the other hand, significant changes in management and employees impacts the welfare of the customers-investors. A reduction in investment (taxes) means a reduction in the number of employees who can function as citizen investors. That, in turn, forces reductions in goods and services to the citizen consumers who need them, which makes them unhappy and desirous of voting out management.

In the end, good democratic management skills are not those that pit different groups against each other, but those which understand that there is only one group of people who exhibit those differing interests.

(The ideas in this column were inspired by Paul Krugman's Jan. 12 column in the New York Times, "America Isn't a Corporation.")

Seeking the Essence of Tim Tebow in the Midst of Controversy and Ridicule

2012-01-11T13:47:00.002-07:00

The Denver Broncos football team made the second round of the AFC playoffs, despite having only an even win-loss record during the regular season (8-8) and losing the season's last three games. This is thanks in large part to the Broncos' young quarterback, Tim Tebow.

Since Tebow rose to the Broncos' starting QB position in mid-season, he has become the most infuriating QB in the entire league. In most games he has played three quarters of middling-quality football only to pull out a win in the last quarter (or overtime) with a combination of spectacular plays and good luck.

But to judge by the reaction of football fans, the sports media and the Internet, the most infuriating aspect of Tebow is his religious beliefs and actions. Tebow often punctuates media remarks with thanks to his "Lord and Savior Jesus Christ," and will bless those with whom he talks. Sometimes he has written his favorite Bible verse, John 3:16, on the black patches under his eyes.

His most widely known religious act is that after each touchdown, Tim goes down on one knee in prayer. This move has become known as "Tebowing" and has spawned a range of YouTube videos of people Tebowing in front of famous world sites and local hotspots, and doing flash-mob Tebows.

Needless to say Tim Tebow has become a controversial figure, partly because of the way he plays football and partly because of his evangelical Christian persona. Many who weigh in on the debate think the two do not fit together. Why does he thank Jesus for the way he plays football when his play is clearly so mixed? Why does he so unabashedly and overtly act as an Evangelical when football is so tough, so seemingly against Christian values?

The answer lies in who Tim Tebow is, at the core of himself. Good athletes perform best when they are centered, when they have put all distractions out of their minds. Tebow lives, eats and breathes his religious beliefs -- not as a conscious act, but as part of his unconscious character. This character was developed over the course of his upbringing.

Tebow was born in the Philippines to Baptist missionary parents. His father is a pastor and his mother homeschooled him throughout primary and secondary school. He grew up almost solely within an Evangelical world, with little influence from non-Christian sources. High school football seems to have been the primary exception to this observation. But he did not attend the school he played for; before practice every day he attended his family's home school.

Tebow's religious personality and activities began to gain national attention when he was the quarterback for the University of Florida Gators. Even when he won the Heisman Trophy, as a sophomore, he was already gaining notoriety for the verse references on his eye black. This evangelizing action has been seen by many as a stunt.

But whereas many evangelicals secretly fear evangelizing (because they do not like to be embarrassed or ridiculed anymore than the rest of us), Tebow's upbringing made it an unquestioned part of his inner personality. He evangelizes when he is playing well. It is not a distraction that prevents him from getting in the zone and staying focused.

So how should we understand Tim's Tebowing? Most commentators, as well as the ridiculers, have seen it as part of his evangelizing. They understand it as part of his evangelical actions of trying to use public attention to win people to Christ.

I think it stems from the inner essence of his being. That is a fancy way of saying that Tebow has his moment of prayer because that is who he is. By pausing to connect with his God, Tebow recenters himself. In the midst of celebration and struggle, he takes a moment to connect with his core being, a being who believes unquestioningly that his first priority is his God, not his football. One does not have to have the same beliefs as Tebow to understand that he is sincere.

Speaking Internationally: The Languages of Joseph, Mary, and the Wise Men

2011-12-14T10:14:00.000-07:00

The stories of Jesus' birth are stories of travel. In the Gospel of Luke, Mary and Joseph travel through the national territory, from Nazareth in Jewish Galilee to Bethlehem in Jewish Judea.

In Matthew's Gospel, the travel is international. The tale begins with the wise men traveling from the "East." They visit King Herod to ask for directions and then bring gifts to Mary, Joseph and Jesus in Bethlehem. After they leave, an angel sends Joseph and his family to Egypt, where they live until Herod's death.

So with all this international travel, how did the travelers communicate? What languages did they speak at home and abroad? Our answer to this question lies in understanding the languages spoken in Palestine and the extent to which they would have been used in the East and in Egypt.

Linguistically, Palestine was a cosmopolitan region in the first centuries B.C. and A.D. As a strip of land less than 75 miles wide on the eastern Mediterranean shore, Palestine often found itself between empires or swallowed up by one. Whether it was Egypt or Mesopotamia, or Persia, Greece or Rome, these imperial powers moved across Palestine, warred on its territory, and often absorbed Palestine into their territories.

So although Hebrew was the Jews' native language, by the time of Jesus' birth, they had centuries of experience with both Aramaic and Greek. Babylonia and Persia had brought them Aramaic as early as the eighth century B.C. When Alexander the Great conquered Palestine in 332 B.C., Greek became the imperial language. When the Romans arrived in 63 B.C., Greek retained its dominant role.

Both Persia and Alexander conquered wide swaths of territory beyond Palestine, ranging from Egypt to modern day Iraq and Iran far to the east. So all the conversations in the nativity story should have happened in Greek, right? Greek was the most recent language, it was used in Palestine, Egypt and the "East," and had been around for several centuries. Seems obvious.

If only it were so simple.

In the highly stratified societies of the ancient world, language did not change at the same speed at all social levels. The elite and educated classes learned a new imperial language most quickly, because the conquerors, who were relatively few in number, used them to rule the conquered country. The next group to pick up a new language was the traders and other business people, while the last was the peasants. Their fixed tie to their farms usually required interaction with the rulers only at tax-collecting time, and then probably through their own countrymen.

This was the main pattern of language acquisition for both Aramaic and Greek in this region. But after Alexander, a new linguistic development took place. As the elites learned Greek, Aramaic became the language of resistance. Among the lower classes, Aramaic was already in the process of replacing their native languages and this process continued until it was the lingua franca not just of Palestine but of all the eastern Mediterranean countries.

Apparently the upper classes retained Aramaic as well, for the inscriptions and documents of private individuals or local communities unearthed by archaeologists in this region are in Aramaic more frequently than in Greek. The elite may have spoken Greek to their conquerors, but they spoke Aramaic at home.

So when the upper-class "wise men" talked with King Herod, presumably in his Jerusalem palace, they probably conversed in the official language of Greek.

But when they arrived in Bethlehem, they most likely spoke the same language that Joseph and Mary were using with the local villagers, namely, Aramaic. As a carpenter, Joseph belonged to the artisan classes rather than the peasants, but the nationalist character that Aramaic had taken on would have made this his primary language.

So what language did Joseph and Mary speak in Egypt? Probably Aramaic. For the same phenomenon of linguistic resistance among the lower classes took place in Egypt as well as Palestine. Joseph and his family would have lived among the lower classes while they were in Egypt, and so would not have had any connection to the elite circles where Greek would have been the language of conversation.

This fits with the gospel's portrayal of the adult Jesus. Although the gospels are written in Greek, the shared language of the eastern Mediterranean, when they depict Jesus speaking in his native language-as in his final words on the cross-he speaks Aramaic.

The History of Religion in Wyoming

2011-11-29T14:07:00.003-07:00

Over the past two centuries, Wyoming has undergone an enormous amount of religious change. From the religions of the many Native American tribes who lived in this land to Protestant and Catholic missionaries and settlers, to Mormons and to Chinese Buddhists and Daoists, the people living in Wyoming have adhered to and been influenced by many different religious views and practices.

A new book by long-time Wyoming resident and pastor Warren Murphy brings together into one narrative the stories of religious activity in Wyoming with the state's history for the first time. This work, "On Sacred Ground: A Religious and Spiritual History of Wyoming," is written for a popular audience and begins with the first endeavors of Christian missionaries and continues to current religious developments.

There are many stories here about many religions, religious organizations and their representatives, too many even to mention here. But I want to focus a single feature to which Murphy frequently returns, namely, the alternating fortunes of Protestantism and Catholicism in Wyoming.

Today, even the most casual tourist to Wyoming knows that Father Pierre Jean De Smet conducted the first Catholic Mass in 1840; it is carefully labeled on the state's official road map near Pinedale. It is less well-known that the first Protestant service took place nearby five years earlier in 1835. The Congregationalist minister Samuel Parker, along with his Presbyterian associate Dr. Marcus Whitman, preached to both the mountain men and the Indians gathered there at a rendezvous.

Why is De Smet's mass so well remembered and Parker's services not? Perhaps because Parker did not stay in Wyoming; at the end of that summer he continued on to present-day Washington state. Even though Whitman went back east to find more missionaries for the western frontier, when he returned with them in 1836, they too journeyed on to the Northwest. Other Protestant missionaries did the same in 1837 and 1838.

So when De Smet arrived in 1840, there were no Christian missionaries in Wyoming. De Smet by contrast remained in the area for more than a decade and led Catholics missions among the Indians. In fact, when the U.S. government called the tribes together for the Treaty of 1851, they requested De Smet's presence to help with the negotiations.

The years 1867-1869 caused a major change in Wyoming's character. The railroad was built across the southern part of the territory, the federal government officially designated Wyoming as a territory, and the reservation system was established for the Native Americans.

Now the tables shifted. In 1871, the Board of Indian Commissioners met to assign different denominations to supervise the reservations. Even though De Smet was assigned to the commission, the Catholic Church received responsibility for only four reservations while the Protestants acquired the other 38. The Episcopal Church alone received seven, including the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming.

The railroad brought many new settlers of European descent to Wyoming and the white population increased significantly. The missionary boards shifted their emphasis to this growing immigrant populace. Presbyterian minister Sheldon Jackson founded new churches in Cheyenne, Laramie and Rawlins in 1869. The Methodists, Baptists, Episcopalians and Congregationalists were also active. Cheyenne's St Mark's Episcopal Church, begun in 1869, became the first church building erected in Wyoming.

By 1890, 43 church buildings had been erected in Wyoming, most along the train line paralleling the state's southern border, but several were built in the state's northern areas. Even though most of these churches were Protestant, a census taken at the time indicates that the vast majority of declared church members identified themselves as Catholics, some 8,453 people, while second place went to the Methodists with just 1,322. The Episcopalians were third with a mere 467.

Despite this, the 13,000 church members made up only a fifth of Wyoming's population. Nearly 80 percent of Wyoming's citizens were unchurched.

By the 21st century, these figures have shifted somewhat. The recent American Religious Landscape survey indicates about 50 percent of Wyoming citizens follow Protestant beliefs, about 25 percent adhere to Catholic beliefs, and 5 percent to Mormon beliefs. But 20 percent of the state's citizens still indicate "none of the above" when asked about their religious orientation.

So the 20th century brought about a significant increase in Christian beliefs, both in real numbers and in percentage terms, a development described in Murphy's book. But Wyomingites still reveal a high percentage of people unassociated with formal religion.

Note: This column is indebted to Warren Murphy's book, "On Sacred Ground: A Religious and Spiritual History of Wyoming," 2011; available through Amazon.com and BN.com..

Sports, Religion and Child Rape

2011-11-17T14:12:00.000-07:00

by Paul V.M. Flesher

November 15, 2011 — President Ronald Reagan said it best, "Trust, but verify." He may have applied this old Russian proverb to United States' relations with the Soviet Union, but like any good proverb it fits many situations. It makes a good watch-word for parents in dealing with respected institutions, especially with regard to the possible sexual misbehavior of their representatives.

For the last two weeks, the news media have been filled with the discussion of Jerry Sandusky's use of Pennsylvania State University's football facilities for the alleged rape of young boys. The failure to stop this activity cost the university not only its legendary football coach Joe Paterno but more importantly its president, Graham Spanier, whose 15 years in that office helped build Penn State into an academic powerhouse.

Much of the media coverage has focused on Sandusky's alleged activities or on the failure of people in leadership within the university to stop Sandusky or to report him to the police. Editorials have ranged from shutting down Penn State's football program to the question of whether sexual crimes are simply part of big college sports.

Given the international attention paid to these illegal activities, I am sure that every coach, athletic director and university president, as well as high school principal, has wondered "could it happen here?" I am also certain that nearly every parent has asked themselves, "could this happen to my child?" and then, "how can I protect my child?"

The answer to this last question lies not in rejecting these institutions but in understanding the nature of institutions and applying Reagan's dictum, "Trust but verify."

Given Joe Paterno's adherence to Catholicism, the press analysis of this football story has frequently compared it to the scandal of sex abuse rocking the Catholic Church. The similarities of cover-up "to protect the reputation of the institution" are certainly strong. The parallel between the two is instructive.

In sociological terms, institutions have a two-fold character. On the one hand, an organization takes on a life of its own-to the point where the law has declared it a "person" with respect to many legal rights and responsibilities. On the other hand, institutions are simply organizations made up of people. An organization is no better or worse than the individuals who work in them.

The problem facing parents is the conflict between the identity and reputation of an institution (its "personhood") and the identity and reputation of the people in it.

This nation has many trusted and valued institutions: football, universities and churches are among them. Many parents and families belong to these organizations and volunteer their time to assist their activities. These institutions set, preach and teach high ideals-from good sportsmanship and fair play to the moral values of life. Parents expect these organizations to live up to their ideals.

At least 99.9 percent of the people involved in these institutions are good people of stellar character. But there are a tiny number of individuals in some of them whose character and intentions are immoral or even criminal. The trust which the institution's reputation instills in its members does not apply to them.

But how do you know who to avoid? You don't. So this is why Reagan's dictum is important, "Trust but verify." In other words, trust the institution. Trust its members as a whole. But verify the individuals who work with your children, in a thoughtful and sensible manner.

One final point. The rape of children is a crime. The legal term child "sexual abuse" makes it sound comparable to "alcohol abuse." You know, like the person who can't keep away from the bottle, so you send them to Alcoholics Anonymous for therapy. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The law distinguishes between "rape" and "abuse." The term "rape" connotes that the victim has the power of consent and refused to consent, while "abuse" connotes that the victim had no power to consent because they were a minor or were mentally handicapped. When this legal terminology is used in popular discourse, the terms' meaning changes. "Abuse" implies something less than "rape." This is incorrect; "abuse" is the term used for the rape of a child. So let's call it what it is, "child rape."

The Triumph of Abrahamic Monotheism

2011-11-10T19:46:00.001-07:00

November 2, 2011 — By Paul V.M. Flesher

The world's population has just reached seven billion through a centuries-long process of growth and migration. The same process formed the distribution of the world's religions as we now know them today. The current result of that process is somewhat surprising; more than half of the world's people follow one of just two religions: Christianity or Islam. These two monotheistic religions comprise the world's two largest religions.

Christianity and Islam both trace their origins back to the Jewish Patriarch Abraham. The biblical book of Genesis tells how, during the second millennium B.C., Abraham and his household of 80 people followed a god known as Yahweh. Abraham's family grew into the People of Israel who formed Judaism, the earliest monotheistic religion, and worshipped Yahweh only. Later, in the first millennium CE (Common Era, formerly A.D.), both Christianity and Islam drew upon Judaism to create new religions worshipping this same God.

Christianity migrated as it expanded. After it origins in the first century CE in Palestine, it became the religion of the Roman Empire. That established it in the lands around the Mediterranean Sea and then brought it into Europe. When the European nations began colonizing other continents in the mid-second millennium CE, they carried their religion with them, with the result that the population of three continents became almost entirely Christian: North America, South America and Australia. Christianity has also become the largest religion in the southern half of Africa.

After its origins near the coast of the Red Sea in the seventh century, Islam quickly moved into the Middle East and the northern half of Africa. From there it went east, colonizing the Indian sub-continent and moving further east into Malaysia and Indonesia, which today constitutes the most populous Muslim nation.

Today, Christianity comprises about a third of the world's population, around 2.3 billion. About a quarter of the world's population, roughly 1.8 billion, follow Islam.

If we look at a map of the world showing where members of these Abrahamic religions reside in comparison to those of eastern religions, the impact is even more striking. Christianity or Islam dominate every continent except Asia– -- and even there Russia and the Middle East belong to the Abrahamic side. About 13 percent of the world's land area is occupied by members of Eastern religions, while almost 87 percent is dominated by Christianity or Islam.

Of course, this land area view is somewhat misleading, because Asia is home to two of the world's most densely populated large countries, India and China. At more than 1.2 billion people each, these two countries contain more than a third of the world's population between them.

India is in fact home to the world's third largest religion, Hinduism, which counts about a billion adherents and roughly 14 percent of the world's population. Asia is home to most of the world's Buddhists, but guesses about their population are highly uncertain and range from 300-350 million.

This is where we reach the limits of our ability to count more precisely, however. Hinduism may be the third largest religion, but it is smaller than the number of people around the world who follow no religion at all. About 16 percent of the world's population does not attach to any religion. These range from committed atheists to agnostics and secularists to people who check "none of the above" on surveys of religious belonging.

We should not forget communism's work to stamp out religious belief in China, Russia and other countries, nor the rise of secular and scientific worldviews in Europe, the Americas and elsewhere. The ability to perform a more accurate count might lower each religion's population a few percentage points. But it would not in the end change the general picture.

Is this a triumph of monotheism? I would not characterize it as such because there is no unity. Islam and Christianity are highly suspicious of each other. Within each religion, large groups do not even recognize other groups as belonging under the same religious umbrella. Evangelical Christians do not recognize the Mormons as Christians even though they are called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Don't forget that Protestant Christianity was formed through the rejection of the validity of the Catholic Church. In Islam, there is ongoing Sunni questioning of Shiite and Sufi forms of the religion.

So rather than a single, large monotheistic religious umbrella, monotheism is simply a category that contains numerous, squabbling members. Indeed, the world's largest Christian nation, the United States, is also the home to the world's largest variety of Christianities, all of whom would rather remain separate than join together.

Note: Numbers in this essay are based on information found at Adherents.com and pewforum.org/Global-Muslim-Population.aspx. For a dynamic graphic illustrating the growth and movement of world religions, go to www.mapsofwar.com/ind/history-of-religion.html .

Flesher is director of UW's Religious Studies Program. Past columns and more information about the program can be found on the Web at www.uwyo.edu/relstds . To comment on this column, visit http://religion-today.blogspot.com .

Photo:
Members of the Abrahamic religions of Christianity and Islam together dominate more than 80 percent of the Earth's land area. ( Dbachmann, Wikimedia Commons)

The Triumph of Abrahamic Monotheism?

2011-11-02T11:44:00.001-06:00

November 2, 2011 — By Paul V.M. Flesher

Today, Christianity comprises about a third of the world's population, around 2.3 billion. About a quarter of the world's population, roughly 1.8 billion, follow Islam.

Photo:
Members of the Abrahamic religions of Christianity and Islam together dominate more than 80 percent of the Earth's land area. ( Dbachmann, Wikimedia Commons)

Cults and Mormonism, Religion and American Society

2011-10-19T16:51:00.002-06:00

Although the news chatter may finally have died down, the comments the Rev. Robert Jeffress made about Mormonism following his introduction of Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry at the Values Voters conference earlier this month overshadowed not only his own introduction but Perry's speech as well. Jeffress stated quite baldly that Mormonism was a "cult" and that Perry's rival Mitt Romney, a prominent Mormon, "is not a Christian."

Although Jeffress was essentially saying what most Evangelical Christians believe, the news and the blogosphere went ballistic. Mainstream outlets treated the remarks with incredulity or scorn, while Christian news and opinion debated the accuracy of the remarks, with most of the Evangelical writers agreeing with Jeffress.

What is a "cult"? If you look up the word in a dictionary, you will find a list of eight to 12 different meanings. If you dig further, you will find that academic fields such as religious studies, anthropology and sociology each give the term several more meanings. The many definitions provided the impetus for the news stories. Which one did he mean, they often asked?

Back in the 1970s, Evangelical Christians were just beginning to become prominent in the Republican Party and faced their own accusations of "cult" behavior. At the time, Professor Jacob Neusner, an internationally known expert on world religions, observed that the accusation of being a cult conveys no real meaning. What is important was the rhetorical impact: It is an insult.

To call someone else's beliefs a cult is to say, in effect, "I belong to a real, valid religion; your beliefs are illegitimate and heretical." It comprises the religious equivalent of playground name calling.

Another answer to the question, "What is a cult?" is that a cult is a successful religion.

Religions aim to define not only the beliefs of their followers, but their entire world view and way of life. That is, religions provide a cohesive, unified way of understanding "life, the universe and everything" which puts everything in its place, gives a reason for why events happen, and, of course, places each believer in a privileged location within that scheme.

The problem for religions is that there are competing world views. We hear about them all the time. Not only are there other religions and other versions of one's own religion, but there is science, secularism, and even atheism. Science is a particularly powerful competitor, providing non-religious views of everything from creation and the formation of the natural world and its living creatures to human medicine, human sexuality and human psychology. Science's power comes from its evidence-based approach to understanding.

Most people today adhere to several world views at once, or at least parts of them. They may attend church and worship, but they may also follow secular practices at work, and undergo scientific medical practices when they get sick. From football and skiing to baseball and bass fishing, they often relax in non-religious ways. Their preacher may encourage them to read their Bible in their spare time, but instead they watch TV.

In other words, American culture consists of numerous world views, all competing for adherents. Religions are just competitors like all the others. When religious figures make statements about what members of their religion believe, their remarks are more an advertisement or an admonition calling on people to agree with them than a statement of fact. The frequent clarion calls about religious issues from contraception to gay marriage to abortion to stem cell research are as much intended to convince or remind the flock to follow the religious view as they are to persuade others.

In this context, a cult is a religion that managed to block out all competing world views. The cult determines all beliefs and activities for its members. Its adherents organize their daily behavior, their jobs, their family life and even their recreation according to the cult's world view. In other words, a cult is a religion that has successfully persuaded its followers that it is right about everything and that no other view is valid. The followers of Jim Jones in Guyana or David Koresh's Branch Davidians are good examples of these.

Of course, nearly all Americans look at these examples of cults and are repulsed. It looks like brain-washing. If this constitutes a successful religion, then we do not want it in our society.

American culture likes religions, often changing from one favorite to another, but religions should not be too successful. They should be part of the options available, but every person should mix and match what aspects of their lives they draw from religion(s) and what they take from the variety of competitors

Moral Challenges in Catholic Higher Education

2011-10-04T16:39:00.002-06:00

There are many ways to get a college education in the United States. You can attend a large public university or a small private college, or decide between a top-notch research institution or one emphasizing teaching and small classes.

You can choose a secular school or one shaped by the values of a particular religion. All feature quality education, but they differ in the social, religious and moral character of the student experience. High school graduates often pick a college by its social factors rather than its educational credentials.

Universities and colleges are generally free to shape their campus experience. At the University of Wyoming, for example, we emphasize our Rocky Mountain location, with outdoor science and recreational programs, including winter transportation to the local ski resort. As the "Cowboys," our sports program includes rodeo as well as football.

By contrast, the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., aims to provide a Catholic educational environment for its students. But as its new president John Garvey has worked to provide a Catholic campus experience, he has suddenly found himself with two major legal challenges.

The first challenge comes from his decision to change all freshman dormitories to single-sex housing this fall. While he clearly understands the change in terms of setting a Catholic tone to the campus, Garvey sees mixed-sex dorms fostering a culture of sexual activity that contributes to the struggles facing new college students as they strive for academic success. He cites several scientific studies indicating that heightened sexual activity among both men and women contributes to poor academic performance.

As a result, Catholic University is being sued by Professor John F. Banzhaf under Washington's strict anti-discrimination law. The restriction of freshman dorms to single-sex is criticized as sexual discrimination.

Although I do not know the details of the D.C. law, it seems to me that a university has the right to shape its campus culture according to its principles. Students are not required to attend Catholic University, but they go there because it promotes and teaches Catholic principles. Since Catholicism views sexual activity as proper only in the context of marriage, taking steps to reduce sexual activity is appropriate. It certainly does not need to make sexual activity easier by providing mixed dorms.

The second legal challenge facing President Garvey comes from the new health care law. Congress mandated that all medical insurance must support medical needs specific to women. Guidelines issued by the Department of Health and Human Services indicate these needs range from breastfeeding support and "well-women visits" to counseling on sexually transmitted diseases and domestic abuse. In a recent opinion piece in the Washington Post, Garvey pointed out that these regulations also require insurance that pays for contraception, sterilization and even so-called "morning-after pills," which he characterized in a Washington Post article as "pills that act after fertilization to induce abortions."

Garvey points out that this puts Catholic University in the position of providing the very services that the Church's moral teachings forbid. "If we comply ... we will be helping our students do things that we teach them, in our classes and in our sacraments, are sinful-sometimes gravely so." Moreover, the HHS regulation impacts not just students, but all university employees.

This is a moral conundrum. On the one hand, Garvey rightly emphasizes the inappropriateness of a religious institution known for its anti-contraception and anti-abortion beliefs providing contraception and abortion.

On the other hand, does such a large institution as the Catholic University have the right to decide access to health services for thousands of its employees and family members? Many if not most American Catholics disagree with their church's position on family planning and use contraceptives regularly. Furthermore, Catholic University employs many non-Catholics on its staff. Should the university force them to pay for contraceptive services when all other Americans can use them for free?

I juxtapose these two cases because they both pit the religious beliefs of the institution against the freedom of individuals to choose whether or not to practice those beliefs. Do the rights of a religious institution trump those of the individuals associated with it? Or should individual decision be the determining factor?

Palestinian Statehood and the Arab Spring

2011-09-20T17:44:00.000-06:00

In his September 2010 speech to the United Nations General Assembly, President Obama expressed the hope that, "When we come back here next year, we can have an agreement that can lead to a new member of the United Nations, an independent, sovereign state of Palestine living in peace with Israel."

This month, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority brings a proposal for Palestinian statehood to the U.N. The United States opposes it and may veto it. What is going on?

Since Israel gained control of the Palestinian territories from Jordan and Egypt during the 1967 Six-Day War, the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians has ricocheted between occupation and self-governance, between military operations and terrorist actions, between peace negotiations and the silence of rejection. All of this has played out against the backdrop of the two peoples' incompatible national aspirations.

Despite its small size, Israel has military superiority over not just the Palestinians but also its Arab neighbors. It has never lost a ground war. This is due to Israel's military readiness and the strategic abilities of its commanders and soldiers. It is also due to large amounts of American monetary assistance.

But there is a battlefield where Israel has rarely won a fight, even with American assistance. That is the United Nations. The Arab and other Third-World nations, sometimes with European countries, often mobilize to censure Israel's occupation and its excesses. The United States has regularly used its veto power to protect Israel from these condemnatory resolutions.

So in the United Nations as well as the Middle East, Israel's closest ally is the United States.

Obama's statement last year envisioned a peace settlement negotiated between Israel and the Palestinian Authority that would lead to recognition of Palestinian statehood. Those negotiations never got to first base. Blame adheres to both sides, but it is clear that Israel's refusal to stop building new Israeli housing on Palestinian territory caused Palestinians to leave the bargaining table.

In this context, American opposition to U.N. recognition of Palestinian statehood seems to be a ploy to push Palestinians back into peace negotiations, using statehood as a reward for successful talks.

The problem with this view can be expressed in two words, "Arab Spring." From Tunisia and Egypt to Libya, Syria and Yemen, Arab citizens have rebelled against their dictatorial and oppressive rulers. Countries such as Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Morocco have made limited political and/or economic changes to head off such protests.

Across the Middle East, then, Arabs have been struggling for and often gaining more rights and liberties--except in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel. The Palestinians have been quiet. Few noticeable protests have occurred. Although a couple of terrorist incidents resulted in deaths, they were minor compared to murderous events in Israel's neighbors of Syria and Egypt. You could even describe the Palestinians as "well behaved."

President Abbas has managed to keep control of his people in part because of his plan to request Palestinian statehood at the U.N. This proposal is his way of having the Palestinians participate in the Arab Spring. It is non-violent. It does not involve scenes of soldiers or thugs shooting at peaceful demonstrators. It is restrained and diplomatic.

What will the future be if the United States vetoes this Palestinian Arab Spring, its reach for statehood? Will this win the hearts and minds of the average citizen on the Arab street?

The obvious answer is no. This highly visible vote carries enormous symbolic weight. A negative vote will tarnish our reputation for decades. Sure, America can make up for it by supporting the governments of the newly emerging democracies. We can give them monetary support. (Can we really? In these difficult economic times?).

But supporting governments is largely invisible. It will do little for our street-credibility among the Middle East's residents. Around the world, we will be known as the tyrant who prevented Palestinian independence. Given Obama's address to the U.N. last year, we will even be seen as duplicitous (that's diplomatic-speak for lying).

President George W. Bush argued that America should encourage democracy in the Middle East and inspire its people to practice self-determination. Well, we did and they are. Will America now be seen as helping or hindering what we called for?

Perhaps America can best help Israel by promoting democracy and self-determination everywhere in the Middle East. Wouldn't that be the best road to a stable Middle East in which Israel and the Palestinians can participate as independent democratic nations?

Religious Pollution in China

2011-09-07T12:12:00.000-06:00

September 7, 2011 — "Religion Today" is contributed by the University of Wyoming's Religious Studies Program to examine and to promote discussion of religious issues.

Religious pollution is a common concept across the world's religions. It is sometimes referred to as impurity or uncleanness and other times as guilt or sin. A recent article in the Taipei Times of Taiwan revealed a different notion of religious pollution.

Looking forward to the Ghost Festival, a popular Chinese religious holiday, the paper reported that the Taiwanese Environmental Protection Agency was concerned about the air pollution caused by the ritual burning of approximately "280,000 tonnes (metric tons) of paper ghost money" nationwide.

The EPA asked people to bring the ghost money to one of the 18 incineration plants set up by local governments instead of burning it outdoors.

These practices stem from ancestor veneration, which has been part of Chinese religions for thousands of years. Quite early in their history, the Chinese developed an elaborate set of observances to show reverence to their dead ancestors, building on the respect people display to the living elders of their family. Ancestor worship later became part of Daoism and has been reinforced by Confucianism's emphasis on showing esteem to older family members.

When family elders pass away, they are represented with tablets placed into the family shrine. Offerings are set before the tablets to them in the belief that this would encourage the deceased to bring blessings to the family.

Frequently, these offerings consist of gifts of flowers, fruit or other food, as well as incense burning. Another common offering type is the burning of joss paper.

The most common type of joss paper is imaginary money printed on cheap paper designed solely for the purpose of burning to the ancestors. It is believed that the money's spirit will join with the deceased and they can spend it for goods or luxuries in the afterlife. It is also known as ghost money, spirit money or hell money.

Ghost money is often printed in large denominations, such as 100,000 or 10 billion dollars, and may bear the image of Daoism's heavenly "Jade Emperor."

Rather than send money to ancestors, one can send the luxury items themselves. It is not uncommon to burn "luxury goods" made from joss paper and cardboard or from paper-mache. These items can range from clothing and computers to cars, houses and even servants.

Annual festivals such as the Ghost Festival and the Qing-Ming Festival feature the ritual remembrance of the dead spirits, both one's own ancestors and the spirits of those with no living relatives and who may therefore wander the world causing trouble. It has become customary to purchase and burn joss paper money and goods for them at this time. Temples often conduct rituals where people bring joss paper items and incinerate them together in a great bonfire.

As the size and number of the burnings has increased, so too has the pollution they cause. As an analogy, imagine the amount of smoke that would be generated if American churches burnt Christmas trees as part of Christmas celebrations.

To make matters worse, Chinese funerals include the burning of joss paper and many businesses burn joss papers on auspicious days twice a month.

It is no wonder that in highly populated areas such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, government agencies, temple boards, religious leaders, research scientists and private firms are working together to reduce joss paper pollution.

When citizens complained about the amount of smoke from these fires, governments turned to scientists to analyze the problem. They found that in addition to large amounts of particulate matter, joss-paper smoke contained polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and benzene, a known carcinogen.

Sensitive to religious concerns, officials sought ways to reduce the pollution. In response, some private companies produced temple-sized joss paper burners with scrubbers to remove particles and chemicals from the smoke. Many temples have installed these burners, which replace the quaint traditional burner and turn their back courtyards into something resembling the piping and duct-work of a small oil refinery.

Daoist leaders also have emphasized flowers and fruits as traditional gifts for the dead.

Buddhism has taken a theological tack. Some attack worship of the dead as superstition. Tzu Chi, the leader of the Buddhist Compassion Relief Foundation, has argued that the belief in benefits from burning joss paper stem from false, concocted stories. Proponents of Pure Land Buddhism point out that the dead who inhabit Buddhism's heavenly "Pure Land" have everything supplied for them and thus need no money or goods from the living.

So while religious beliefs concerning joss-paper burning have led to the pollution problem, religious leaders and temple organizations are changing their rituals and challenging practices to remove the pollution.

What did a Synagogue of Jesus' Time Look Like?

2011-08-26T13:48:00.002-06:00

The New Testament gospels contain stories of Jesus visiting synagogues in Galilee. Sometimes he taught in them or read scripture during worship. Unfortunately, the gospels provide few details of what these synagogues looked like. Were they majestic buildings or small structures? How were they furnished? The gospels remain silent.

Indeed, the gospels contain so little description that some scholars have suggested synagogues were simply gatherings that took place outdoors or in people's houses or courtyards. After all, the Greek word "sunagogé" means "coming together," and could indicate a meeting rather than a building.

Against this perspective, the first-century historian Flavius Josephus and other early sources indicate that in the first century the term sunagogé referred to a building in the descriptions placed into his stories of his time in Galilee.

To find out what first century synagogues looked like, then, we have to turn to archaeology. Although archaeologists have found that no synagogue that Jesus could have visited remains, several excavated structures have been proposed as synagogues from Jesus' lifetime.

Some of these synagogues appear in famous places, such as the fortresses of Masada and Herodium, and comprise buildings quickly erected by an army during a time of war. Another structure identified as a synagogue appears at the Maccabean palace outside Jericho and was built a century or more before Jesus' birth.

These buildings do not help us describe synagogues Jesus would have known because they do not appear in a village. They are either in palaces or army camps.

In recent years, four buildings found in villages of Palestine have been preliminarily identified as synagogues and dated to the late first century B.C. or the early first century A.D. These are Gamla in the Golan Heights, Magdala in the Galilee, and Qiryat Sefer and Modiin in western Judea.

Three of these synagogues share common features: Gamla, Qiryat Sefer and Modiin. Each one comprises a large public building made of stone blocks and featuring a large central room whose roof was supported by columns, usually arranged in rows. Other than the columns, the room was open. In two of these buildings, stone benches were built into the walls around the room's outside edge.

These features add up to a rather plain, unadorned public building. There is so little decoration in these that the only thing that indicates its Jewish character is its location in a Jewish village.

Moreover, these structures display no religious markings. They are obviously public buildings, but archaeologists cannot tell if they were built for worship or other religious activities, or whether they basically constitute a town hall or a meeting place for the village governing council.

Literary sources from the time indicate that a variety of activities took place in synagogues, some religious and some secular. Synagogues are described as meeting places for worship services, schools, and councils of elders. They also served as banks, hostels for travelers, and large banqueting halls. So perhaps the image of the synagogue in Jesus' time was as a large, multi-purpose building whose religious function was just one of several roles it played in the community.

Of course, not all decoration is architectural. The plain architecture of these buildings may have been adorned with materials that did not survive the centuries. A hint of this appears in the Gamla and Qiryat Sefer buildings, where the central floors of the main rooms were dirt. This may be because it was covered with soft, decorative carpets and in turn suggests that people were required to remove their shoes and treat the interior with heightened respect, as we would expect for a synagogue.

A fourth public building has been discovered in Magdala, the town of Mary Magdalene. It is probably a synagogue, for it features a dressed stone with a carving of a menorah, a common Jewish symbol. Built with the same architectural features as the synagogues just mentioned, it also features a white mosaic floor and colored plaster walls.

The main question about this site is its dating. While its excavators claim evidence for the first century, the carving, the colored walls, and the mosaic are not otherwise known in synagogues earlier than the third or fourth century. Full publication of the excavation will certainly address this question in detail.

In the end, the best evidence for what synagogues were like in Jesus' day indicates they were large public buildings that were rather plain, although they could have contained different types of temporary decoration. These buildings probably served many functions other than worship, although it is possible that worship formed their primary purpose.

It's OK to Pray in Your School

2011-08-26T13:44:00.002-06:00

The school year is arriving again. This seems like a good moment to revisit that continually confused and confusing issue, prayer in schools. There is a great deal of misinformation and misunderstanding of what kind of prayer is permitted in the public schools of the United States of America. So let me take this column to review what is and what is not allowed with regard to prayer in public schools.

What kind of prayer is allowed in a public school?

Everyone and anyone who goes to a school may pray there. "Everyone," that means students, teachers, staff and administrators, may offer a private prayer to the divine at anytime they choose. "Anyone," that means any person of any religious faith, be they Methodist, Baptist, Catholic, or Mormon, or Native American. It also includes members of Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Wicca. Even Pagans and Neo-Pagans can pray, as can members of any religion or worshippers of any god or goddess I have not mentioned. Thus praying in the schools is permitted to everyone there, as long as it is private and personal, and does not interrupt legitimate school activities.

It is also OK for students of like beliefs to join together to pray, whether informally ("let's meet at the west door before the bell") or more formally in a religious club of voluntary membership. This club may meet on school property, such as in a classroom, at times when clubs are usually allowed to meet. The only exception to this is if the school has banned clubs altogether. The rule of thumb is that religious clubs must be treated the same as other clubs.

Similarly, it is permitted for teachers, staff, and even administrators to join together voluntarily to pray. Again, this may occur in formal or informal settings.

What kind of prayer is not allowed in a public school?

It is not OK to pray in a school in way that would knowingly or unknowingly coerce anyone of a different belief to join in. Thus teachers, principals and others in a position of authority should not use that position to persuade, require, expect, or intimidate students or others under their supervision to take part in prayer that they otherwise would not. Schools are inherently hierarchical and those who are higher in the hierarchy should do nothing that would seem to exercise that position to make those below them pray.

Similarly, prayer should not be part of public school functions. Although this rule can be a bit vague, the main principle is clear. A general prayer offered in a manner designed to be inclusive of all present, whatever religion they adhere to and articulating generally positive sentiments agreeable to them, is sometimes acceptable, if not done too frequently. Graduation ceremonies can usually include this kind of prayer. Prayers that adhere to a single doctrinal line or reflect a non-inclusive theology do not belong at school functions, even if said by a student. These general prayers should not be ended with a religion-specific phrase, such as, "In the name of Jesus Christ, amen."

In general, prayer should not be conducted in such a way to exclude or stigmatize those who do not participate in or follow a particular religion.

Finally, participation in prayer should not be used as a basis to reward or promote those who take part or to withhold such rewards from people who do not.

These rules, both positive and negative, are designed to ensure every individual's freedom to believe and worship as they choose, and to prevent the power of the state (as exercised by the school and its employees) from interfering with that right. Those who do not follow such rules may be exercising what they see as their own religious freedom, but they will be doing it at the expense of the religious freedom of others. It is this balance that the rules aim to maintain.

Is American Protestantism undergoing an Evangelical Transformation?

2011-07-28T07:10:00.000-06:00

In the 16th century, the Protestant Reformation created new ways of being Christian. From it arose the Lutherans, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Puritans, Quakers, and, later, Methodists and Baptists.

The area that would become the United States was settled by Protestants and remained almost exclusively under their sway until the 20th century when Catholic influence began increasing. Even as religious variety increased through the last century, the United States remained predominantly Protestant.

But Protestant Christianity is not monolithic and unchanging. It has undergone an "Evangelical Transformation" in recent decades. This new American Christianity is largely non-denominational, even anti-denominational, in both its institutions and its theology. It is entrepreneurial, rewarding individual energy, but it also shares key theological principles across the many evangelical organizations.

The Evangelical Transformation began in independent churches and small leagues of associated churches. In recent decades, many of these independent churches have grown to become large mega-churches. The leaders of some of them have risen to national prominence, such as T.D. Jakes and Rick Warren. These have developed almost exclusively outside the mainline denominations mentioned above, with the sole exception of the Baptists.

Alongside this movement have arisen religious organizations that are not churches, but to which members of these churches belong. These include Christian groups on college campuses, such as Campus Crusade for Christ and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. They encompass men's groups such as Promise Keepers and women's groups, like RUTH. More formal institutions, such as Bible colleges and independent evangelical universities like Oral Roberts and Liberty, belong to the evangelical sphere.

We should not forget the radio, television and other non-denominational media ministries that have or have had a following. The most popular include Focus on the Family and the Christian Broadcasting Network, as well as Harold Camping's FamilyRadio.com. None are run by denominations.

The members of this increasing plethora of evangelical organizations share a common theology that consists of a few straightforward principles. While they may disagree over details, they are generally united in their primary beliefs. Some of the key ideas that distinguish them from the mainline denominations are:

First, true Christians are "born again." Each Christian has had a spiritual transformation in which they have recognized Jesus as their personal savior who has rescued them from their sinful life.

Second, they believe in the "literal" truth of the Bible. This means both that the Bible contains no errors of fact and that it should be understood literally. That is, evangelicals hold to what they consider to be the plain meaning of Scripture without any "interpretation" or resorting to metaphorical, symbolic or even historical explanations. Even though the theology of literalism denies biblical interpretation takes place, literalism actually constitutes an extensive set of rules about understanding the Bible which most evangelicals share.

Third, another common element is the belief that the Kingdom of God will arrive at the apocalyptic end of time. They believe that humanity is growing ever more evil and that the Kingdom will appear when humans are most depraved, probably quite soon. Most mainline denominations, by contrast, officially hold that God is gradually improving humanity as part of His salvific plan.

Of course, these three theological principles show up in mainline Protestant denominations, but Evangelicalism gives them a particular impetus. Biblical literalism enables evangelicals to accuse mainline churches of placing their distinctive theologies ahead of the Bible. In these denominations, they charge, the Bible no longer constitutes the sole source of authority. Instead, they are built on human ideas which the denomination cloaks as divine.

This has come to a head most clearly where science conflicts with a literal interpretation of the Bible. Evangelicals disagree with major conclusions of astronomy, geology and biology, especially human biology. Mainline denominations have often made theological innovations, by comparison, that enable them to accept the truths of science as well as Scripture.

Do these changes brought about by evangelicalism loom large enough to deserve a label such as "transformation?" Certainly. In the last 30 years, the mainline churches have lost their standing as the largest Christian movement in the United States to be replaced by the Evangelical movement. In the 1980s, the mainline churches were fully a third of the American populace, while the Evangelicals made up just 16 percent. By 2008, the Evangelicals had grown to 28 percent, while the mainline churches had fallen to 18 percent. Clearly, the Evangelical Transformation is already underway.

Note: The statistics used above come from the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey compiled in 2008 by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

A Buddhist Explanation of Extinction

2011-07-13T12:11:00.000-06:00

A few years ago, the Smithsonian Institution hosted a major conference on science and religion. One key topic was whether nature and the universe contained evidence of having been created by divine purpose. Irven DeVore of Harvard, a professor of biological anthropology, argued that since nearly all species that have ever lived on the Earth have become extinct, God's plan "isn't working very well."

Professor DeVore's comment makes clear the difficulties when representatives of science and religion have a dialogue. The problem is that however learned people may be in their own area of expertise, their knowledge of the "other side" is usually quite small and is often limited to caricature rather than understanding. This is usually obvious when theologians talk about science, but is less clear when scientists discuss theology. Professor DeVore's comment provides the opportunity to bring out this point.

The idea that God's plan is not working requires the presupposition that God had one and only one plan. The extinction of so many forms of life indicates that this "one plan" is failing. Thus, if there is a God who planned, He does not plan very well. Since the notion that God can fail so completely argues against the idea that God is "all powerful," this must mean that there is no God.

Traditional Christian theology, by contrast, would certainly disagree with the idea that God had just one plan. Most Christian churches posit at least two plans: one before the "fall" of humanity in Adam and Eve, and one afterwards. The failure of the first plan does not make God any less God than He was before.

Although this point overcomes DeVore's argument about "one plan," it does not eliminate the notion of failure. Instead, it argues that God is God even when He fails. But if we look at the extinctions in Buddhist terms rather than Christian terms, we can even get rid of the notion that the extinctions indicate failure.

In Buddhist teaching, life is represented as a journey across rivers, over mountains and through deserts. At each stage, one uses only the assistance they need for that stage. Thus a person crosses a river with a boat, but once across does not put the boat on his back and carry it into the mountains. One may need a warm coat for the high mountains, but does not then wear that coat into the desert.

Using this Buddhist analogy, the series of extinctions are not the failure of one plan, but the use of alternative means in succeeding situations. In the life of the planet, one group of species was needed at one stage, but these were then "left behind" (to become extinct) at the next stage because they were no longer needed. These responses to professor DeVore's comment suggest the discussion between religion and science will continue for a long time to come.

Imagine All the People

2011-06-30T08:55:00.005-06:00

I don't think that the former Beatle John Lennon had capitalism in mind when he wrote his famous song "Imagine" in 1971, but maybe the international capitalist system of trade has fulfilled the final sentiment of the song, "I hope . . . the world will live as one."

The human population has come closer together through the Internet, through easy communication via cell phone and through cheap and ready transportation via airplane. People on one part of the globe can access people on any other part. Through capitalist trade networks, we can purchase food grown by farmers halfway around the world and can buy products made by workers on the other side of the planet.

So maybe world-wide capitalism and its associated products have made the "world . . . live as one."

Not as Lennon envisioned it. Another verse suggests, "Imagine . . . a brotherhood of man. Imagine all the people sharing all the world." Capitalism's world is not one of sharing, but one of buying and selling, of making money. It is not a world of brotherhood, but a world of exchange and finance.

So what did Lennon convey about human brotherhood, about the unity of all people?

The song points to three features of human society that stand in the way of achieving this unity, suggesting that these are what divide us: Religion ("Imagine there's no heaven"), politics ("Imagine there's no countries"), and economics ("Imagine no possessions").

Capitalism applies to the last of these. It has eliminated barriers of trade, inspiring us to overcome separation deriving from geography, language and even nationality. It has brought us closer to each other, but it is based on having and acquiring possessions; it certainly does not eliminate them.

Of course Lennon's song is not admired because people want to get rid of their belongings. Its popularity comes from the opening line, "Imagine there's no heaven." It has been widely seen as anti-religion and has been used as a theme song by people questioning religions and their supernatural beliefs.

That's interesting, because in the capitalist push toward integration, the world's religions have proved most resistant to homogenization. While we all buy the same TVs and DVD players (e.g., Sony and Samsung), athletic shoes (e.g., Nike and Adidas), cars (e.g., Toyota and Ford), and cell phones (e.g., Nokia, Motorola, and Apple), few of us have changed our religion.

Despite population growth in recent decades, the percentage of members of the different religions remains more or less the same. There has been no big shift into or out of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism or Buddhism-to mention just the four largest religions.

So although the West has successfully peddled its products, its movies and entertainment, its clothing styles and its science and technology, it has failed to get others to accept its religion. While missionaries have been fruitful in pockets, these are the exception rather than the rule.

The imperviousness of the world's major religions to Christianity has stymied us. Despite the inner variety in each religion and the ongoing changes within each one, they seem an impenetrable wall to many of us, as something too massive to understand.

And since religions claim to define ultimate reality, that is bothersome. Being confronted with a strong religion whose adherents believe in an incompatible version of god (or gods) and the world beyond this one can be quite disconcerting. That confrontation causes doubt about one's own beliefs concerning the ultimate, which in turn causes shame and the denial of that doubt, and finally the rejection of the cause of the doubt.

Rather than naturally leading to tolerance of other religions, such religious differences bring unthinking rejection and even fear. We see this reaction to other religions, especially Islam, among many Americans today.

But the alternative of unthinking tolerance is only marginally better. Getting rid of rejection and fear as well as the hatred they engender is good, but tolerance without understanding requires the suspension of the faculties of evaluation and judgment we use daily. It returns us to an immature state of naiveté.

What we need is to understand other religions in greater detail. To engage them, we need to understand the varieties of belief, thought, and practice within them. We need to differentiate between the pronouncements of religious leaders, government representatives, demagogues and troublemakers, as we have finally learnt from the "Arab Spring" to understand the difference between rulers' claims and their people's desire for a good life. To translate Lennon's ideas, we have to listen to others and imagine their lives before we react to them.

Note: This column was inspired by the new play by Wyoming playwright William Missouri Downs, "Forgiving John Lennon."

The Oral Character of the Written King James Bible

2011-06-16T06:11:00.000-06:00

This year constitutes the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. Originally created by England’s Anglican Church, it became widely used by all Protestant denominations in America until the twentieth century, as both a pulpit and a personal Bible.

Despite the increasingly old-fashioned character of its language, it was not until the 1950s that a second translation, the Revised Standard Version, gained a foothold in American Protestantism.

Today, the King James Bible, or the KJV as it is often known (the “V” is for “Version”), still has a revered place among Evangelical Protestantism. The Scofield Reference Bible, widely used among Evangelicals, relies upon it. And although the New International Version has recently gained popularity as a personal Bible, the KJV remains the pulpit Bible for many churches.

Of course the Gideons continue to place a copy of the KJV in every hotel room in the United States. They believe that an individual alone can read the Bible and by themselve gain an understanding of God.

This attitude derives from the sixteenth-century declaration by the Reformer Martin Luther that the authority for true Christianity rested on “Scripture alone.” Since that time, Protestantism has envisioned each individual believer knowing the Bible. The ideal Christian became someone who read and studied their Bible extensively. Today, most devout Christians own a personal Bible, which they read regularly by themselves.

The achievement of this ideal within modern Evangelicalism has made us forget that for most of Christianity’s history, this ideal was impossible for all but a few. During 95% of its history, the overwhelming majority of Christians could not read.

Until the twentieth century, near universal literacy existed nowhere on earth. Only then, in Europe, did 90% of adults acquire the ability to read. In 1675, 64 years after the KJV’s publication, only about 45% of adult males in England could even sign their name at their marriage; for women the percentage was significantly lower. Even in 1850, the best estimates put adult literacy in Europe at no more than 50%. American literacy rates were similar.

During most of its history, then, the KJV functioned quite differently from the personal, private use so widespread today. When it was published, it was intended to be read aloud, and that was its primary use until the end of the nineteenth century.

People who can read the Bible gain a sense of its organization as a text and of its character as a physical object. They know how large it is, whether considered in number of words (lots), number of books (about 80), or just its size (fat). Those who become familiar with it learn the order of its books and develop a sense of the total amount of stories, moral tales, parables, law codes, admonitions and prophecies the book contains.

Those who only hear the Bible read and cannot read it for themselves learn about much of it contents, but they never gain a sense of the book as a written text. Because they always depend on a reader, they never acquire any direct access to the text itself.

They know its contents as the material is read to them over the years, in whatever order it is read and whatever passages are selected. They may develop a sense of organization from some of its longer stories, but most oral readings present shorter passages. Just reading a few chapters out loud can take nearly an hour. Hearers will not gain understanding of the Bible’s organization; it will seem an unorganized collection to them.

Moreover, hearers will rarely gain a sense that they know everything in the Bible. They can always be surprised by some passage they have not heard before. Although many churches have a liturgical calendar that guides regular scripture reading, such calendars present selected readings rather than the entire Bible.

Furthermore, liturgical calendars often feature different readings from different places in Scripture together. The Anglican approach for each Sunday includes an Old Testament passage, a reading from the New Testament letters, and a selection from the Gospels.

So until the twentieth century, the success of the King James Bible came much more from its use for oral presentation of Scripture, than from its use as a personal Bible. This is not surprising, for the poetic beauty of much of its language was intended to be heard. The oral hearing of the Bible gave Christians a different sense of Scripture than individual private reading. It is only by the mid-twentieth century, when most Christians can read the Bible by themselves, that a translation whose language is more up-to-date can make headway against the long-standing popularity of the KJV.

Harold Camping and William Miller: Soul Mates?

2011-06-01T14:12:00.000-06:00

As most people expected, Harold Camping's prediction of the Rapture did not come to pass on May 21. Based on his interpretation of the Bible, Camping had calculated that true Christians would be taken up to heaven on that date. When this did not happen, most of his followers were disappointed.

Camping himself found the failure of the predicted event surprising, to say the least. On May 22, Camping's wife let it be known that he was "confused," and Camping himself later confessed, "When May 21 came and went, it was a very difficult time for me, a very difficult time. I really, really was praying and praying and praying, ‘Oh Lord, what happened?'"

Since May 21, Camping has come out with a new interpretation. While May 21 was a key date, the events took place in a spiritual realm, not in the physical realm of this world. It was an "invisible judgment day," but not the Rapture. Instead, Camping now claims, God is saving the main event for Oct. 21, 2011. On that day, the entire Earth will be destroyed in a massive fireball.

History is repeating itself. More that 150 years ago, William Miller went through a similar set of predictions and disappointments which he handled in a similar way, namely by spiritualizing the events.

Miller began by predicting "Jesus Christ will come again to this Earth, to cleanse, purify, and take possession of the same, with all the saints, sometime between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844." When nothing happened on March 21, 1844, Miller's followers saw it as a mere miscalculation. A new predicted date was given: April 18. When this date passed without event, Millerites, as his followers were known, decided this was a spiritual "tarrying time" when Jesus "the bridegroom" delayed, as in the parable opening Matthew 25.

A couple months later, Samuel Snow, a staunch believer in Miller's prophecies, predicted that Christ would return for his believing saints on Oct. 22, 1844. (Is Camping's similar date just a coincidence? Probably.) When nothing took place on that day, the Millerites suffered their "Great Disappointment." Many people left the movement. Those who stayed believed that Jesus had come to the door of the world, where he was "tarrying" so that more people could believe and be saved before the "advent" of Jesus' appearance.

The general notion of Jesus' imminent arrival became so widespread among the Millerites, they became known as "Adventists." Of course, there were several different versions of this belief, which led to the formation of different groups.

Ellen White became a leader of the largest group of Adventists. She and her followers withdrew to Battle Creek, Mich., where in 1863 they formally organized the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. From there, successive generations of members have fanned out across the world to evangelize. In 2007, they were listed as the world's 12th largest religious organization, with 16 million members ( www.Adherents.com ).

Seventh-Day Adventists became interested in healthy living and emphasized vegetarianism. As an alternative to the breakfasts of bacon or sausage, then common in America, John Harvey Kellogg developed a grain-based breakfast cereal. His brother, W. K. Kellogg, in 1906 formed a company to market such foot. Its first product? Kellogg's corn flakes.

The activities surrounding Camping's predictions have similarities to Millerism beyond the spiritualization of failed prophecies. Both the Millerites and Camping promoted their beliefs widely. The Millerites used newspapers, beginning with established publications and moving on to their own broadsheets. Millions were published and distributed. Camping has used his radio network, the Internet and billboards.

Miller's followers came from a variety of Protestant denominations, or none at all. This is similar to Camping's followers. Neither man worked through an organized church structure. Most people could believe and follow their predictions without disruption to religious beliefs already held.

If the historical parallels between Camping's and Miller's followers continue, then we can expect a Great Disappointment among the "Campingites" after nothing happens on Oct. 21. Many people will abandon the belief, but some will retain it and give it a spiritual interpretation. In the following years, a new denomination will be organized that interweaves Camping's beliefs with elements of evangelical Protestantism.

Are We Still Here?

2011-05-18T18:03:00.001-06:00

Harold Camping has preached that May 21, 2011, would be the turning point of human history. This is the day that the radio broadcaster has predicted the Rapture takes place and "all the believers who have ever lived will be instantly transformed into glorified spiritual bodies to be forever with God."

At the same time, a massive earthquake will wreak havoc across the earth, followed by five months of tribulation. Then on Oct. 21, 2011, the world will end. Camping's organization "Family Radio" has been broadcasting warnings on the airwaves and the Internet, posting announcements on billboards around the country, and sending out believers in RVs to carry the message directly to people.

Camping's message is not new, only the specific dates he identifies. It is a form of Premillennial Dispensationalism (PD), a theology common among Evangelical Christians and developed in the early 1800s by John Darby, an Anglo-Irish Protestant. He popularized his views during several evangelizing tours in the United States in the 1860s and the 1870s.

Darby divided the history of the world (all 7,000 years!) into seven ages (dispensations). The theology arranges events and "prophecies" described in the Bible into these ages. Events and prophecies that do not fit into a theologian's knowledge of the past become the basis for predicting the future-a future that entails doom and destruction for the world. (Note: PD theologians are not known for their broad historical knowledge.)

Jesus' resurrection in 33 A.D. began the Church Age, the Sixth Age, in which Christianity proclaims God's salvation to all people and the number of believers will increase. At the end of the Church Age, according to PD, Jesus will briefly appear to take all believers to heaven in the Rapture, and the Seventh Age will begin, leading quickly to the end of the world.

Since Darby's time, followers of PD have taught that the Rapture could happen at any moment and that believers should remain ready. There is a caveat, however. Darby taught that the exact time was unknowable because biblical prophecies referred to the Jews and not to the Church.

Darby's caveat gave his views a big boost after 1844, when William Miller led a nationwide movement of hundreds of thousands of people to believe that what he called the "Second Advent" would happen on Oct. 22, 1844. It did not. In the wake of this failure, PD preachers and theologians emphasized Darby's caveat as indicating that biblical prophecies were not about the current Church Age.

Although a PD theologian, Camping has given a set of specific dates. This is because he believes that the Church Age has ended and we are in the last Age. The prophecies now apply to world events and can be used to calculate the events of the end times.

The problem with PD theology, which its proponents do not seem to have noticed, is that it assumes Christianity has failed in its mission of salvation. Camping's Family Radio is working hard to save a few more people-in the middle of one of the world's most Christian nations!

Premillennial Dispensationalism holds that the world has been going morally downhill. The Church Age, despite the Gospel's preaching, has been a time during which humanity has become more and more depraved, committing wickedness and evil on an ever-increasing scale. The Rapture will take place just before the most morally corrupt low-point ever. Does that indicate Christianity has had a positive influence?

Even in the countries where Christianity is strongest, most Premillennial Dispensationalists think that few people who call themselves Christians will be raptured. The rest delude themselves. So out of the 2.2 billion Christians, only a few million will be claimed. Can Christianity be called successful if so few reach the goal of salvation at the time of rapture?

And, according to this theology, just how successful has God been in bringing salvation to all humanity? Not very.

If May 21, 2011 is a day of Rapture, then it demonstrates the failure of God's all-encompassing plan for the salvation of humankind. It is a rescue mission for the few, not a graduation party for the many.

Osama bin Laden: The Failure of His Message

2011-05-04T19:56:00.000-06:00

Why do Americans think that Osama bin Laden was a Muslim leader? Because he styled himself as one and we took his word for it.

At a time when leadership in the Islamic world was largely defined by national or ethnic boundaries for both political and religious figures, bin Laden addressed himself to Muslims at large from a location that was both everywhere and nowhere. After 9/11, his organization, al-Qaeda, seemed able to appear at any place at anytime, while Osama himself could not be found. This provided him a trans-national stage no Muslim leader since Abdul Nasser had possessed. We thought people were listening.

Bin Laden considered his primary audience all Muslims, and in particular Muslims who found themselves living constrained lives. They were in economic straights, often jobless, and lived in countries where their freedoms were severely limited. They lacked freedom of expression and speech, and freedom of movement, and freedom to assemble -- to say nothing of freedom of the press. Their ability to carry out their lives was limited by fear of government reprisals if they (accidentally) stepped out of line. And of course, lack of jobs and opportunities led to widespread poverty.

The problem, according to bin Laden, was caused by Western imperial powers that had conquered most Muslim countries at some time during the past two centuries and then ruled them in a way that transferred the wealth of the vanquished to the conquerors. This characterization of the problem was not original; as the Muslim nations gained their independence during the 20th century, successive politicians in country-after-country used it to justify their policies and the exploitation of their own people.

But bin Laden's solution was original. He argued that if Muslims attacked and damaged Western powers at the heart of their economic strength, those powers would spend their economies dry trying to protect themselves. Muslims would then rise up en masse and throw off their chains. (American reaction to 9/11 has shown that the first part of Osama's assessment was surprisingly accurate. Since then our nation entered two wars that were paid for by increasing our debt and which helped lead to a world-wide recession).

Within the Islamic world itself, the response was much smaller. Most of the people motivated to join bin Laden's cause came from a single segment of society -- young unemployed men. Being unemployed, these men had the time to turn to religious education. This positioned them to hear Osama's message, which was delivered in religious terms. That was the only type of "free" speech allowed by the governments of these Muslim countries, since overtly political speech was suppressed. Because Osama's message was against the outside powers rather than national Muslim politicians, it was suppressed very little.
Across the world's 1.5 billion Muslims, bin Laden's religiously formulated message was accepted by surprisingly few. It may have resonated with long-standing frustrations in the Arab and Muslim world, but only a few thousand young men actually joined al-Qaeda.

Since the start of 2011, there have been uprisings in many Arab nations, from Tunisia and Egypt to Libya, Yemen and the Persian Gulf states. Millions of people, male and female, young and old, have protested against their governments and some cases overthrown them. But these protests have nothing to do bin Laden or al-Qaeda. They stem from the failure of each country's strong-man leadership to deliver what the people needed: Jobs, civil rights and freedoms, freedom from fear of their own government, etc.

Bin Laden's attempt to blame the United States failed. The Muslim people could see that the roots of their problems lay much closer to home. Indeed, the responsibility was within their own country, not some far-away power. In the end, it is concern over jobs, personal security and freedom that is bringing positive political change to the Muslim world.

So, bin Laden may have presented himself as a leader and a voice for the Islamic people, but few listened. The Western press paid more attention to him than the Muslim people did. The recent revolutions have come from within each country and community. They are spontaneous, rather than theorized and planned.
And most importantly, they result from the people attempting to win better conditions for themselves through peaceful means, rather than through violence and mass murder.

The Bone Box of James the Brother of Jesus: Ten Years On

2011-04-25T18:42:00.002-06:00

After six years of testimony and two years of deliberation in the court case concerning the coffin of James the brother of Jesus, the judge will soon issue his ruling. Already the two sides are lining up, trying to sway public opinion. This activity appears in articles recently posted on the Bible and Interpretation website, a semi-popular, semi-scholarly web magazine for people interested in the Bible and the ancient Near East.

It began with Dr. Gideon Avni, director of excavations for the Israel Antiquities Authority, the government body that brought the case that the inscription on the coffin, known more accurately as an ossuary or "bone box," was a modern forgery by its owner. His article reiterated the argument that the ossuary was a forgery and would "probably be recorded as an insignificant footnote in the history of the archaeological research of the Holy Land."

This was soon followed by a long essay by the ossuary's owner, Mr. Oded Golan, who defends his position that the ossuary's inscription constitutes authentic writing from the ancient world.

In a reasoned yet emotion-laden essay, Golan provides perhaps the most extensive single piece of reporting in English concerning the trial, citing the statements of more than a dozen expert witnesses and providing copies of several photos and graphs used in the trial. The article is clearly self-serving, citing only witnesses who support Golan's position, but it provides a window into the trial that has been sadly lacking attention in the English-speaking world.

The ossuary in question was purchased by Mr. Golan in the 1970s and sat on his family's patio for many years. In 2002, he announced that he had suddenly noticed it had an inscription which read in Aramaic, "Jacob son of Joseph, brother of Jesus. "Jacob" is the Hebrew and Aramaic equivalent of the Greek name, "James."

The claim by Golan and his supporters, including several academic experts, is that the James referred to here is the brother of Jesus mentioned in the gospels and the leader of Christianity's central institution, the Jerusalem Church. This would make it the only non-literary evidence for Jesus and the earliest Christians.

The sensationalism with which the find was announced attracted media attention around the world. When it went on display in Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum in 2002, tens of thousands of people viewed it.

But from the beginning charges of forgery swirled around the ossuary. Although the ossuary itself seemed real, the inscription was suspected of being fake. How could Golan not have noticed if the ossuary had sat around in plain view for years? Israeli authorities raided his apartment and found a "laboratory" (a toilet actually) with tools and chemicals that could have been used to create a fake inscription.

In 2004, the Israel Antiquities Authority brought charges against Golan for forging antiquities. But all did not go as planned. Some expert witnesses changed their evaluations, and others could say little more than they could not make a determination. The trial dragged on for years: 138 witnesses testified, with 52 of them being experts in some area of antiquity or archaeology. The trial ended and the judge has been considering his ruling ever since. Indications are that he will announce a verdict soon.

If the judge determines Golan is not guilty of forging the inscription, does that mean the inscription refers to James the head of the Jerusalem church? Not necessarily. Not only must the inscription be proven forged "beyond a reasonable doubt," but the charge is only that the forgery is modern. The inscription as a whole or the part of it saying "brother of Jesus" could have been added in antiquity, perhaps after Emperor Constantine and his successors transformed Palestine into the "Holy Land" after 324.

It is even probable that the Jacob/James mentioned in the inscription is not James the brother of Jesus. Jacob, Joseph and Yeshua (short for Joshua) were common Jewish names at the time.

Given the nature of belief, however, a verdict against forgery will strengthen many Christians' belief that the ossuary links to Jesus through his brother and thus "proves" the Bible. Indeed, many people will continue to believe in the inscription's authenticity even if it is declared a forgery.

The articles mentioned above appear at Bible and Interpretation: http://bibleinterp.com . Articles from the initial debate over the ossuary, including several by the author, appear at:http://bibleinterp.com/articles/James_Ossuary_essays.shtml .

The Future of Quran Burning

2011-04-12T11:43:00.002-06:00

Pastor Terry Jones finally did it. His Florida church burned a copy of the Quran in March and led to riots in Afghanistan where 12 people died, mostly United Nations peacekeepers. He and his church members had the legal right to do it, but since last August, when they threatened to burn 200 copies of the Quran on Sept. 11, officials at the highest levels told Jones what the ramifications of this action would be. Even Defense Secretary Robert Gates explained to him over the phone that such an action would endanger U.S. soldiers there. Well the incited mob could not find any U.S. soldiers or other Americans, so they attacked the United Nations instead.

Now that one Quran burning has taken place, others will follow. Then, just like the riots that engulfed the Muslim world following the anti-Muhammad cartoons in 2006, more unrest will occur and more westerners will be killed. Is there anything we can do to prevent this? Maybe. Here are some possible actions:

First, we could arrest Terry Jones and the members of his congregation. Well, no we can't. In the United States, our two centuries of practicing the separation of church and state means that there are no laws against religious hatred or intolerance and no laws about religious desecration, insult or blasphemy. Any individual or any religious group has the right to the free practice of their beliefs as long as they are not harming other people.

Second, maybe our vaunted freedom of religion is too much for this age of the Internet, where someone with a cell phone can video any activity and post it on the web for anyone, anywhere to see. Since the video of the Quran burning "went viral" in Afghanistan and Pakistan, it is not surprising that there was a lot of anger there.

Professor Dena Davis of the Cleveland-Marshall School of Law gives some insight from teaching in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country. She states that in countries where religious dominance is protected by law, our concept of individual religious freedom is incomprehensible. Concerning her Indonesian students, an observation applicable to Afghanistan as well, she writes, "To them, if a man gives plenty of warning that he is going to commit a [religious] outrage, and is not stopped, then the regime in power must be tacitly supporting him."

So maybe we should follow the lead of the Irish government last year. In the wake of the revealing by a national commission of widespread abuse of children by priests and employees of the Catholic Church, they passed an anti-defamation law. The reason was laudable, namely, to prevent the anger over a comparatively few evil doers from spilling over into public denigration of priests in general and the church at large. But it is a significant limitation of the freedom of speech.

That would never work in America. Our belief in the freedom of speech and religion is just too strong. Just witness the recent Supreme Court ruling allowing hate-filled protests at military burials.

Third, how about a different approach? Americans could burn Bibles to show that we are not prejudiced about the Quran. There could be a big bonfire into which we could throw all the different Bible translations, just for emphasis.

Or, as long as we are at it, we could burn some Buddhist Sutras, copies of the Hindu Mahabharata, and the Jewish Talmud. That would be extreme, and extremely disrespectful. But it would make the point that it is the words, the ideas and the beliefs which these books contain that are holy and important, not physical copies of the books themselves.

This approach would be legal, but I don't think it would actually convey the message. Many people, in this country and abroad, would simply interpret it as an anti-religious, atheistic act. And that interpretation would lead to reprisals of some sort. It certainly would inflame our own cultural debates here in America.

In the end, we need to remember that in many religions, the holy book itself is a sacred object and all copies of scripture are sacred. Believers in many religions have died to protect their sacred writings during times of attack and conflict. There is simply no way to avoid the reality that burning a sacred text is insulting and provocative. The term "sacred" itself indicates that, for it signifies a status higher than "important" and even higher than "revered."

Perhaps our only hope to prevent future conflagrations is to remember, paraphrasing a certain webslinger, "With great freedom comes great responsibility"- responsibility for the welfare of ourselves and others.

Flesher is director of UW's Religious Studies Program. Past columns and more information about the program can be found on the Web at www.uwyo.edu/RelStds .

Calamity and the Nature of Evil

2011-03-22T10:53:00.000-06:00

Like the old Chinese curse, we live in interesting times. The Japanese earthquake and tsunami has caused thousands of deaths, a humanitarian crisis and a nuclear emergency. Grass-roots protests in the Arab world have caused a change of government in two countries, shootings of protestors in several more, and a civil war in Libya that has dragged world powers into military action.

While Americans are only indirectly affected by these events, the people living in these countries are suffering. Many have had their lives and their livelihoods disrupted, lost loved ones, been injured, been fired upon and lost homes and possessions.

In Christianity and many world religions, human suffering is caused by evil. Can we identify a source of evil in these events?

In Japan, the disaster was caused by natural forces. Pressure built up at the meeting place of two tectonic plates and they shifted, which then caused an earthquake, the flooding of the tsunami and massive death and destruction. There was no mind, no consciousness, no thought to cause suffering; it just happened. Can something be evil if there is no intention? If so, does that mean that nature is inherently evil? Hmmm.

Maybe this is the way to conceive it: The events of the earthquake and tsunami are evil. Their impact on humans is evil. But their cause (i.e., nature) is not evil, at least not inherently. If so, then that also means that something that can cause evil can also bring about benefits. Tectonic plate movement and its associated volcanic activity (Japan has lots of volcanoes) created the Japanese islands in the first place. That's beneficial. So a natural force, such as nature, can cause both good and evil events, but is not inherently good or evil in itself.

The damaged nuclear reactor in Japan has caused a lot of suffering. Is technology evil? Again, I think technology, whether modern or ancient technology such as an ax, is neither good nor evil in itself. Technology can bring about benefits, such as electricity or piles of wood, or it can cause evil, such as radiation poisoning or injury.

What about human causes of evil? In the Middle East, people are rebelling against their governments, trying to bring them down. Why? Have not these governments done good things like building schools, picking up the trash, and maintaining law and order? Perhaps. But these benefits are outweighed by the bad things they have done: Restriction of individual rights and freedoms, theft and bribery, and unjust arrest and abuse. The list goes on.

But in Tunisia and Egypt, for example, the people found that their governments' bad actions dwarfed the good ones. So they decided the governments in power were evil and needed to be removed. In each country, the citizens intend to establish a new, democratic government more responsive to their needs and hopes. So governments, as forms of organization, are not inherently evil. They may carry out both beneficial and evil actions. But if they carry out too many harmful acts, then any benefits they may convey come at too high a cost.

Are individual humans necessarily evil? Are people who cause harm and suffering evil by nature? On a day-to-day basis, the actions of most people average out on the good side. They love their families and look after them; they do their jobs and try to help their employers be successful; they have friends whom they help in times of need.

But what about a soldier who shoots into a crowd and kills or injures people? Or the officer or the political leader who orders the soldier to shoot? Do they not go home at night to their loving family? Do they not have friends? Do they not do good as well? At some point, whatever their intentions and other actions, do they not harm enough people and cause enough suffering that even if they are not inherently evil, they should be treated as such?

We live a world that produces few people or things that are evil by nature. Most are neutral and capable of producing both beneficial and evil actions, events or results. The world is not black and white, where we can get rid of the black and keep only the white. It is gray, and capable of producing both. We should enjoy the white but guard against the black.

Is Christianity Successful?

2011-03-08T14:38:00.000-07:00

The question of question whether or not Christianity is successful depends on how success is measured. Why not treat the question as a horse race and ask "what is the biggest religion?"

By this approach, Christianity is way out in front. General consensus among the bean counters is that Christianity has approximately 2.1 billion members while the next largest world religion, Islam, comes in at just 1.5 billion. At 900 million, Hinduism forms the third largest religion. Estimating the number of adherents on a world scale is quite difficult, but these are fairly reliable numbers, give or take a couple hundred million.

At about a third of the world's population, Christianity constitutes the world's largest religion. That means it is the most successful, right?

Well, it depends on the definition of Christian. To arrive at 2.1 billion, the experts included every person or group of people who self-identify as Christian. They did not make judgments beyond that about who is or who is not a Christian. So if you believe that some people who call themselves Christians are not, that they do not count (pun intended), then the number of Christians in the world will be significantly smaller.

Christianity has a history of not being inclusive. In the first few centuries, Christians created a variety of beliefs about the nature of God and Jesus. When Christianity began its official organization under Emperor Constantine and his successors in the fourth century, it began by formalizing doctrine, that is, beliefs to which members had to assent, and then declaring other beliefs to be heresies.

For example, the Council of Chalcedon in the fifth century agreed that God was Three-in-One: the Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Those who did not agree were deemed heretics and excluded from the Christian Church. This led to the formation of churches such as the Armenian Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox and Coptic Orthodox churches. These churches continue today and are included in the population count just mentioned.

Conversely, Protestant Christianity began as a rejection of Catholicism and many Protestants today still do not consider Catholics to be Christians. By this standard, then, Christianity is actually smaller than Catholicism, for if the 1.1 billion Catholics are not counted, then there are only one billion Christians left. That is also significantly fewer members than Islam, which would suggest that Christianity is not so successful.

Of the one billion non-Catholic Christians, only 600 to 700 million are Protestants. Out of these, 75 million belong to the Anglican Church, the largest organized Protestant denomination. Liberal Protestants make up about 150 million, while conservative Protestants are approximately 200 million, along with about 105 million Pentecostalists. If these last two groups make up the classification known as Evangelical Protestants, then there are just slightly more that 300 million of them, which is about 15 percent of the 2.1 billion Christians worldwide.

The following branches of Christianity make up the bulk of the remaining 300 to 400 million Christians: 110 million members of indigenous Christian churches in Africa, 90 million Russian Orthodox, 20 million Greek Orthodox, 12 million Mormons, about a million and a half members of "New Thought" churches such as Unitarianism and Christian Science, and roughly 300,000 Quakers. While Greek and Russian Orthodox adhere to Christianity's most traditional beliefs, other groups such as Quakers, Mormons and the African churches have reformulated those beliefs in various ways.

The point is this: Christianity can be considered a success at bringing souls to Christ only if an extremely broad definition of Christianity is used. Otherwise, the best that can be said is that only a bit more than half of those considered Christians by this count (i.e., Catholics) have gained salvation. The debate over who is really a Christian has a key impact on the success of God's plan for the salvation of humanity is understood. The narrower the definition of "Christian," the less successful God's plan has been.

Note: The population figures in today's column come from Adherents.com.

Arab Freedom and Attitudes toward Israel

2011-02-22T16:19:00.000-07:00

The events over the last two months in Tunisia and Egypt, and now in Arab countries stretching from Bahrain to Libya, have reminded us that these nations were/are ruled by dictators at odds with the people. These strong men used a variety of techniques to keep citizens under control, from brutal police tactics and suppression of free speech and the media to providing cheap gasoline and sometimes even free food.

Propaganda has played an important role in diverting the Arab populace's attention from their circumstances. Perhaps the most successful and widespread propaganda ploy has been to cite what the Muslim world sees as the unjust Israeli occupation of Palestine. The decades-old struggle between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs over the control of the same land has usually been a surefire way to align the people with their government, at least on this one topic.

As part of this, conspiracy theories involving Israeli spies and agitators are widespread and the mythology of Israel's power and abilities holds so strong that even the most ludicrous rumors gain currency. The repeated blame placed on "foreign activists" (i.e., Israel) by the Arab governments whose people are protesting their rule is just one example of the ease for which the Jewish nation can be blamed for any problem.

Government oppression is just one of many causes of the rebellions in Tunisia and Egypt. Another was the large number of young people for whom there were no jobs. The governments attempted to blame both of these serious, systemic problems on Israel. It is to the protestors' credit that they saw this propaganda for what it was, i.e., empty propaganda, and went ahead to hold their governments responsible for the situation.

So does this newfound perspective mean that there will be less anti-Israel rhetoric in these newly liberated Arab countries? Probably not. What will change is the reason for that rhetoric. Instead of governments attacking Israel to shift attention from themselves, it will be different groups of people using anti-Israel slogans to bring followers to their own positions.

Let me put it this way. If dictatorships stifle debate and promote only their own position, then democracies encourage debate and invite everyone to let their views be heard. If there is too much debate, then there is no national unity and chaos ensues.

This is where political and religious parties get involved. They work to persuade people that their platform is correct and that people should join and promote their party. If lots of people join a party, then a unified position arises and the cacophony of too many voices begins to subside. Ultimately, the chaos of everyone having their own views transforms into most people following a limited number of party positions.

How does a party, whether religious or political, persuade people to join? Perhaps the ideal is that everyone takes a rational approach to determining their position, thinking through each party's platform and then making a reasoned choice. The reality is quite different. Parties use any strategy that works to bring in members. In the United States, one political ploy accuses the nation's Christian president of being a Muslim, that is, of belonging to a "foreign" religion. About a quarter of Americans think this is true, according to a recent poll. If the rhetoric works, use it! Even in a seasoned democracy like our own, that is an example of political debate.

So in new democracies such as Tunisia and Egypt, you can be sure that anti-Israel rhetoric will still be widely used, because it works. It will be put to the purpose of attracting people to political parties rather than distracting them from the lack of jobs or from state oppression, but it will still be there. To follow the democratic developments in these nations, we need to understand why it is used, rather than stop at noticing that it is used.

Are we ready to meet an Alien Culture?

2011-02-08T11:07:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month, NASA announced that it had discovered 54 Earth-like planets orbiting other stars in the Milky Way. These exoplanets, as they are called, were discovered by the Kepler Satellite and are approximately the size of Earth. More importantly, they orbit their sun at a distance where the temperatures are moderate enough for liquid water. Water, of course, is a key building-block of life.

No, we have not discovered aliens. But, if there are any, scientists have just found where they might be hanging out. In the inimitable fashion of American journalism, many news outlets suggested this brought us a step closer to finding alien life forms. (A step closer to something we don't even know exists!).

One of the most interesting of these solar systems, called KOI 157, contains not just one but five planets in its habitable zone. This increases the odds that life might be found there.

KOI 157 is also 2,000 light years away. There is lots of time to prepare for making contact with the aliens. That's good, because we are not ready.

In our public imagination, we tend to see aliens in the singular. That makes it easy to identify their intentions. In "E.T.," we met a little nice guy who threatened no one and just wanted to go home. In "Men in Black," we met individual aliens, all of whom had criminal tendencies; the only question lay in when they would break a law, or eat someone.

American film and television frequently depict hordes of aliens, but interestingly, most hordes come in the singular. The classic "War of the Worlds" told the story of an invading alien army. There was just one army, carrying out its one goal of invasion. Films as different as "Independence Day" and "Cocoon" simply repeat the theme of one set of aliens with only one purpose. And don't forget "Star Trek," which gave us the Borg, many beings controlled by one mind, or the one goal of the Daleks from the British "Dr. Who" (Exterminate! Exterminate!).

"Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" brought some complexity to the portrayal of aliens. Not only did it follow the earlier "Star Trek" with multiple species such as Klingons, Vulcans, and Romulans, but its ongoing interaction with them revealed elements of alien social structure, governance and individual personality quirks.

But there is a difference between calmly watching a fictional TV show about aliens and meeting and interacting with an actual alien society. The latter would not be viewed calmly or rationally but through the lens of jangling emotions. Those emotions would quickly reduce the alien society's complexity to something singular, simple, and probably misleading. One quick way that would take place is through our attitudes toward their religion, whatever that might be.

To illustrate my point, think about how America views foreign societies, which are human, not alien. The American media began reporting the Egyptian revolution by emphasizing the variety of people involved: young and old, poor and middle class, educated and non-educated, etc. Then the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamicist organization, became involved. Suddenly, the story became Mubarak the dictator vs. the religious fanatics. The people's will and actions suddenly were seen as misguided, for as pundits argued, it would only lead to a religious dictatorship worse than Mubarak's.

If we are going to be ready to meet alien cultures, then we must become consistently more sophisticated about how we understand human ones. We must attempt to understand their complexity and not grow fearful when religious organizations get involved and attempt to improve their own society.

God’s Slaves or God’s Butlers?

2011-02-02T16:17:00.002-07:00

In February, NewSouth Editions will release a new version of Mark Twain’s classic book “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” In it, the editor Alan Gribben changed the word “nigger” to the term “slave” every time it appeared (more than 200 occurrences). As someone who regularly teaches this book, he was tired have having the presence of this objectionable word interfere with students’ trying to understand the book’s literary character and social critiques.

Not surprisingly, this bowdlerized edition has already angered literature teachers, alarmed historians, and even excited legislators who treasure the book. Professor Gribben has been accused of changing the past and of altering the words of a master writer like Twain. It is true that the N-word has resulted in the banning of “Huckleberry Finn” from many school and town libraries, and that the word’s removal comprises an attempt to get this important work back into those public collections, but changing words has struck many as violating the integrity of Twain’s literary creation.

Sanitizing books is nothing new; people have done it for centuries. In fact, the term “bowdlerize” comes from Thomas Bowdler who took out the racy bits from Shakespeare more than 200 years ago.

The Bible has not escaped such tampering. Nearly every translation over the centuries—from the earliest Greek, Latin and Aramaic renderings to the most recent translations—have altered something their translators’ found offensive.

In light of the changes to “Huckleberry Finn,” it is interesting to note that one word that English Bible translations have always had trouble with is “slave.” Since the King James translation appeared in 1611, it has been common practice to replace “slave” with “servant.” Nearly every occurrence of “servant” in Old Testament translations and most appearances of it in the New Testament are rendering the Hebrew or Greek word for “slave.”

The defense of this approach is like that just mentioned, namely, the use of “slave” jars with our modern sensibilities. Here are some examples:

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are all called “slaves of God.” For Moses, it becomes a common epithet, “Moses, the slave of God.” The same applies to King David, who both refers to himself as a slave before the Lord and after his death is referred to as “David, the slave of God.” In the New Testament, both the Apostle Paul and Titus both refer to themselves as a “slave of God.”

To be sure, the word “slave” in these expressions is jarring. That is why English translations render all of these as “servant of God.” Rather than being God’s slave, then, the notion is more like being God’s “butler.”

When the underlying Hebrew or Greek is not the actual word for slave, it is usually a related term, “boy!” Language that infantilizes slaves is common in most slave-holding societies. Masters think nothing of using it to address a 60-year-old male slave.

Even before Jesus’ birth, the ancient Greek translation known as the Septuagint was already uncomfortable with the Bible’s frequent use of “slave.” Rather than call David and Moses slaves, it drew upon the child terminology. This resulted in phrases like, “David, boy of God” and “Moses, God’s boy.”

Of course, these biblical passages use slave language in a metaphorical sense. The aim is to show Abraham’s or Jacob’s close relationship with God, not to say that they are property. For Moses and David in particular, the phrase “slave of God” forms an honorific, a title that signifies their special relationship to God; it was a relationship that few other people could claim.

So what do you think? Have the English translators of the Bible done modern Christianity a favor by rendering “slave” as “servant” Or should they have translated the word exactly? Is it easier to explain Moses as a servant of God, or to first explain what it means to be a slave and then to explain how the metaphor of being God’s slave is actually an honorable position?

God and the Declaration of Independence

2011-01-24T14:37:00.002-07:00

The second sentence of the Declaration of Independence may be the most well-known quotation in America. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” When Americans want to talk about personal freedom and liberty, especially about “unalienable Rights” that everyone deserves without question, they quote this sentence.

At a moment when America’s politicians are looking back at this country’s origins by public reading of a foundational document like the Constitution, it is worth taking a look at this sentence in the Declaration of Independence and thinking about its meaning. Sentence two comprises not just a claim about freedom but also a theological statement about God and the nature of humanity.

The Declaration is an interesting document. It was drafted by Thomas Jefferson, an adherent of the Enlightenment and a Deist. But the text was debated, altered, approved and finally signed by the members of the Continental Congress in 1776. The delegates to the Congress came from a wide variety of Christian backgrounds, although nearly all belonged to one Protestant church or another.

In this light, it is important to note that in sentence two God is designated the “Creator.” At first this just seems like nice “neutral” language, designed to avoid offending religious sensibilities. But the choice of wording is specifically not Christian. The text does not say “God the Father” or “Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” There is nothing to reflect Christianity directly. It is the language of Deism. Furthermore, the wording is also acceptable to Judaism, to Islam, and to many other religions, including Hinduism.

That observation does not mean the wording is anti-Christian. It is not. If it had been, Congress’s delegates would not have signed it. “God the Father” is routinely considered the Creator in Christianity and the opening sentences of John’s gospel identify Jesus as participating in creation as well.

Even though Thomas Jefferson was a slave-holder, nearly a quarter of his draft of the Declaration comprised a tirade against the slave trade. That was deleted to persuade the southern states to vote for the document. However, the Declaration retained the important claim “that all men are created equal.” This sentence should be seen as referring to slavery, and in a rather mathematical sense. When the Constitution was adopted it referred to slaves as being worth just “three fifths” of a person. This was later changed by the Thirteenth Amendment.

Today of course we understand “men” to include all humans of both sexes. Furthermore, it is important to understand that “all” are created equal. Not just believers in a particular religion. Not just members of one racial, national, or ethnic heritage. And, in light of our current social debates, not just people of one sexual orientation.

Finally, note that the Bible is never mentioned. Humanity’s rights are “self-evident,” not Scriptural. Authority for them does not come from revelation, whether Christian or otherwise. Instead, as the Declaration’s first sentence states, these rights are self evident to all because Nature makes them clear. Humans have a right to an “equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God entitle them.”

The Declaration is thus based on the Enlightenment concept of Natural Law, not on a Christian view of the world. Although the wording of this claim is not inimical to Christianity, which accounts for its adoption, it certainly did not come from Christian theology.

The freedom and rights identified by the Declaration of Independence are thus based on Enlightenment principles, not on Christian beliefs. This approach to religion was carried into later decades and in the end gave rise to another of the rights for which our country is most famous, namely, the freedom of all people to worship (or not) according to their own beliefs. It is an irony of history that the Enlightenment’s move away from religious authority enabled America to become a bastion of religious freedom.

Banned Christmas

2010-12-07T06:55:00.002-07:00

One Christmas day in America: Crowds of Americans rioting in the streets. Two opposing groups shout loudly, vying to have their messages heard and heeded. The groups meet. Confrontation ensues. Fistfights break out. Church windows are smashed. What are these rioters fighting about? Christmas. One group favors celebrating Christmas, the other opposes all Christmas observances. This isn't an imaginary event, it is history. It happened in Boston on Christmas day in 1706.

In America's increasing love-affair with Christmas (both the Christian and commercial versions), we have forgotten that there was a time when much of European and American Christianity thought that Christmas should not be celebrated. In the riot described previously, the anti-Christmas group consisted largely of Congregationalists (Puritan descendants), Baptists, and Presbyterians, while the pro-Christmas group comprised mostly Anglicans (Episcopalians). The notion that Christians of any stripe should not want to celebrate Christmas is so foreign to our present concept of the holiday, that we need to review some history to understand it.

Prior to the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s, Roman Catholicism celebrated the "Christ Mass." It was one of many special masses and feasts of the Catholic Church celebrating key events in Jesus' life or the birthdays of saints. The three main Protestant movements that ultimately came to America had three different reactions to this situation.

First, although the Anglican Church developed a Protestant theology, it kept much of Catholic liturgy, including festivals celebrating aspects of Christ's life and the feast days of many saints. It gave special emphasis to the celebration of Christmas.

Second, after Martin Luther nailed his "95 Theses" to the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral in 1517, special liturgical observances began to be frowned upon. The Lutherans thought that the celebrations of saints' days were too much and so cancelled them. But they still emphasized observing events in Jesus' life, and so continued with joyous Christmas festivities.

Third, the Calvinists in Switzerland banned all Christian holy days not mentioned in Scripture. That approach meant that the Sabbath was acceptable, but nothing else. Christmas, Easter, Pentecost and other celebrations were to be treated as normal days with nothing special about them.

The Calvinist position came to be quite influential in Great Britain, even though it never altered the position of the Anglican Church. John Knox brought Calvinism to Scotland as Presbyterianism where Christmas was banned in 1583, while the Puritans brought Calvinism into England, where it became influential in circles both within and outside of the Anglican Church. During the Civil War in 1647, Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan followers outlawed Christmas observance. It was brought back in 1660 at the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II.

From England, both sides brought their Christmas beliefs to America. The Puritans (later becoming the Congregationalists) were joined by Presbyterians, Quakers, Methodists (despite their founders' pro-Christmas predilections), and Baptists on the anti-Christmas side, while the Anglicans dominated the pro-Christmas side, and were later joined by the Lutherans and the Dutch Reformed.

In Boston, the Puritans outlawed Christmas in 1659. Although the ban was lifted in 1681 when the British government took control of the colony, an armed guard had to protect the governor on his way to church on Christmas of 1686. When the colony reverted to local control in 1689, Christmas again fell out of favor.

The objection to Christmas by Americans was two-fold. First, for Calvinist theology, it reflected what they saw as the “pagan” character of Catholic worship. Christmas was not a biblical holiday and had not even become a Christian festival before the late 300s; it was a creation of the church, not of Christ. Second, the holiday was accompanied by extensive reveling. Celebrations were not primarily worshipful, but involved feasting, game playing, heavy drinking, shooting, and gambling. For the over-indulgers, it brought out the worst of their excesses. Since the holiday celebrated the Savior's birth, such immoral behavior was seen as sacrilegious.

During the 18th century, Christmas observance began to be more accepted. Church-goers turned their attention to purifying the holiday of its excesses, rather than rejecting it altogether. By the 1750s, even New England hymn books contained Christmas carols. By the early 1800s, Christmas was observed with an emphasis on family and children.

In 1836, Alabama became the first state to make Christmas a legal holiday. Other states followed suit; even Massachusetts legalized Christmas in 1856, almost 200 years after its ban. But the last state, Oklahoma, did not join in until 1907.

How Chocolate Pioneered Suburbia

2010-11-23T13:36:00.000-07:00

From Thanksgiving to Christmas, America embarks on a month-long obsession with food. And not just any food, but the food of feasting, of special times. One of those foods is chocolate.

In my youth, chocolate-covered cherries and chocolate Santas were the rule, but now European chocolate has become popular. Terry's Chocolate Oranges, Toblerone and Ferrero Roche are now common. My favorites come from the English firm of Cadbury's, whether it is bars of Bourneville and Dairy Milk or gooey Cream Eggs. And it was the two Cadbury brothers who took over their father's failing cocoa factory in 1860 and pioneered a new way of living for factory workers, away from city slums.

Richard and George Cadbury were Quakers. In fact, the three leading makers of English drinking chocolate in the 19th century were Quaker families: Cadbury, Rowntree and Fry. This was not unusual, for at the time, 10 percent of England were practicing Quakers, and Quaker religious discipline carried over into good business practices. Indeed, many Quakers were trusted bankers, founding institutions such as Barclays and Lloyds banks.

In 1860, the cocoa bean was difficult to work with. Manufacturers had not yet learned how to separate out the bean's oil in the manufacturing process, so the resulting drink had an unpleasant scum and it was cut with additives to absorb it. In the search for an enjoyable drink, many mixtures were tried, including tapioca, lichen, and brick dust.

By 1867, the Cadbury brothers became the first English chocolate makers to perfect a procedure for removing the oil and thus were the first to sell pure, unadulterated cocoa. This product turned around the company's fortunes and demand skyrocketed.

As Quakers, Richard and George were quite concerned about the rapid increase of urban poor during the industrial age. Most of their workers lived near their Birmingham factory in rather squalid conditions. Families with several children occupied apartments of just one or two rooms, with no private toilets or water. There was no schooling, health care or recreational facilities.

Quaker beliefs emphasized two key points. First, believers should have a personal relationship with God; they should listen to the "still, small voice" of the Spirit guiding them. To hear that voice, their worship services were often silent. Second, they should make this relationship known through their good works, their actions to help their fellow human beings. At different times, this has led Quakers into anti-slavery movements, anti-poverty work, and pacifism.

So when the Cadburys needed to build a new factory in the 1870s, they did not build it in the city. Instead, they located a rural site about five miles outside Birmingham. The brothers believed that factories did not have to be dark and cramped to be profitable. This went against current business practices and was widely expected to fail. But instead it helped spur the chocolateers' success.

As the factory's staff grew, the two brothers decided to build a model town to house them. This would be a village, not a city, with wide streets, tasteful and affordable houses on lots large enough to have a garden, accompanied by schools and playgrounds, trees and parks. As the new town of Bourneville grew, they added recreational grounds which included a cricket pitch, formal gardens, and even a swimming pool. Eventually, the Cadburys created the Bourneville Trust to allow the townsfolk to control the town's common property and got out of "real estate development."

Nearly all of Bourneville's tenants were former slum and city dwellers now working at the Cadbury factory. The success and profits from their cocoa company enabled George and Richard Cadbury to follow their Quaker ideals to establish this model community. This was imitated by other successful British business people, both Quakers and non-Quakers.

In America, even the chocolateer Milton Hershey followed suit. The ideas put into practice in these model factories and towns showed that humans could be happy and productive at the same time; they did not need to be subjected to ill-treatment and poverty wages for a business to be profitable. The suburbs of the 20th century drew heavily on their pioneering efforts.

Note: In case you are wondering, it was not until the early 20th century that the solid chocolate bar, so familiar today, was perfected. This column is based on the book by Deborah Cadbury, Chocolate Wars . New York, 2010.

The Greatest Threat to Religious Freedom

2010-11-10T10:24:00.000-07:00

What is the biggest threat to religious freedom around the world? Perhaps restrictions on religious dress, such as the banning or requiring of full Islamic dress for women. Or maybe religious hatred, like that which inspires religious riots in India between Hindus and Muslims. Or perhaps it is political, such as the Chinese communist invasion of Tibet and the restrictions they placed on Buddhism.

Before President Obama traveled to India, Indonesia and other Asian countries last week, he received a letter of advice suggesting issues of religious freedom he should raise with those countries' leaders. The letter came from the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), a little-known commission established by Congress in 1998 to monitor religious freedom around the world and to advise U.S. leaders. What did they identify as threats to religious freedom?

In Indonesia, the USCIRF flagged cross-religious violence and worried that lack of justice against the perpetrators of such violence would lead to further incidents, since the villains would think they could act with impunity. It applauded court sentences against Christian and Muslim perpetrators as a positive step to prevent this. It also flagged a discriminatory law against the Ahmadiyya branch of Islam that banned worship outside of private homes.

For India, the USCIRF noted the country's multi-religious mix (a Hindu majority, with a large Muslim minority, as well as Sikhs and Christians) and the national government's attempt at religious peace. But the commission also noted the continued occasional cross-religious violence that was often poorly contained by local or regional governments.

The USCIRF thus emphasized the problem of religiously motivated violence and the need to develop institutions of civil society to create and maintain conditions for peaceful coexistence.

OK. But what does "institutions of civil society" mean in reality? To over-simplify: The difference between personal belief and religious belief is numbers; an individual's belief is personal while a group of individuals is required to hold a religious belief. And when many people believe the same, they usually want to assemble and express that belief together. That means they need a place to meet, whether it is called a church, a mosque, a synagogue or a temple.

And where in a community would these buildings be built? That is up to that most boring of civil institutions, the planning commission. These commissions -- whether they are called planning commissions, zoning boards, construction permission committees or whatever -- are local committees that determine the location of buildings of public worship, retail shops, industrial factories and so on. They can prevent the free exercise of religion by preventing the erection of a place of worship -- often at great expense to the body of believers involved.

The USCIRF has begun to flag this as a concern. While its publications emphasize violent incidents, they also identify governmental restrictions placed on buildings of worship -- usually carried out by the local equivalent of the planning commission. It is here that questions about sitting, local suitability and congestion are played out.

The convenient point about planning commissions is that religious prejudice can be transformed into debates over traffic, noise and impact on property values. In one small English town, the Christian council members repeatedly refused planning permission to a mosque on the basis of an inadequate exit from the parking lot.

The planning commission is not just a threat abroad, it also plays a role in religious discrimination in the United States. Recently, in Bentonville, Tenn., a mosque was refused permission to build because of the need for a left-turn traffic light.

At least that was the official reason. The real reason is that the 40 families of the congregation were overwhelmed at the hearing by hundreds of boisterous Christians who claimed they did not want Muslims worshipping near them -- even though the mosque was in a rural area. It is not clear how many of the protestors were local residents.

In the end, the planning commission has become a battleground where the members of majority religions try to prevent the building of houses of worship representing minority religions. In Bentonville, it was a mosque. But the same strategy is regularly used to disallow the building of churches of small Christian denominations. Indeed, new church buildings comprise the vast majority of rejected religious buildings. Today, the planning commission may perhaps be the most effective threat to freedom of worship.

'Tis the Season for Prophecy

2010-10-26T11:42:00.001-06:00

Election time is filled with prophecy. Voters try to predict what the candidates will do if elected. Candidates predict the dastardly things their opponents will do if elected. Pundits "read the tea leaves" to predict who will get elected and what the parties will do if the balance of power shifts or does not shift. Pollsters talk to thousands of people to predict what will happen.

Ironically, while candidates and supporters work long and hard to impact the future, the media seem more obsessed with prophesying it. They want to predict the future, to tell us what will happen. It almost seems that reporting on the present (or heaven forbid, the past) is worthwhile only if it enables one to foretell the future.

But isn't there a difference between prophecy and prediction? Well, perhaps. Prophecy rightly speaking is the delivery of messages between a god and human beings; most prominently from God to humans. Prediction, by contrast, is simply people saying things about the future, perhaps basing it on actions in the past or just wishful thinking. Besides, many people would say, prophecy took place when God was looking after the people Israel in the Old Testament; it does not take place today.

But take a look at 1 Kings 22, where the king of Israel works to persuade the king of Judah, Jehoshaphat, to take part in a war against Syria. To make his decision, the Judean king consults a prophet, Micaiah, who tells him not to go to war.

To put it another way, Micaiah takes a position on a current issue -- whether or not to join in the war. The prophecy takes the form of predicting the outcome based on one of the two choices. If we focus on Micaiah as a speaker rather than the source of his message, he clearly sounds like a TV pundit predicting the outcome of a politician's decision. (To finish the story, Jehoshaphat ignores the prophet's message and is killed in battle.)

Like Micaiah, the famous prophets Elijah and Elisha focus their messages on current, local events. Indeed, whenever we know the circumstances in which an Old Testament prophecy is delivered, the prophecy focuses on the local and the immediate, not on some "far in the future" outcome.

So while pollsters and pundits do not (usually) claim to speak for God, they follow the same interest of the ancient Israelite prophets. That is, they predict the here and now, or rather the here and immediate future. They are concerned with the same kind of content as prophecy, if not the same source.

And of course many Americans watch the pundits on TV, listen to them on the radio, and read them in the papers. If that isn't enough, some of us even search the bloggers to find one whose predictions we appreciate.

Indeed, in terms of who we vote for, too many of us base our decisions more on predictions of the future rather than on past and present facts and actions.

Americans have become fascinated with prophecies of the future. This is worrisome, for as we frequently experience, our experts cannot predict the weather with high degrees of accuracy yet, despite the decades of scientific study that has been put in (although forecasts are improving). If we cannot prophesy the weather with a high degree of accuracy, how can we prophesy our human future any better?

What remains unclear is which kind of prophecy has the most impact in voting. Is it prophecies of a future that is scary, and so people vote against it? Or is it prophecies of a future people find attractive and so they vote for it? I guess we will know on Nov. 3.

In Religious Knowledge, Education Trumps All

2010-10-12T13:39:00.002-06:00

The most important factor in Americans' knowledge of religions, whether their own or someone else's, is education.

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life surveyed more than 3,400 people, asking them 32 questions about the Bible, Christianity and world religions in their recent "U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey." They found that the more educated you are, the more likely you are to be able to answer more questions correctly.

On average, then, education trumps religious upbringing, personal commitment to religion, belief in God or the Bible as God's word, as well as age, political party or philosophy, and region of the country in which you live as a predictor of how well people do on the survey.

The average number of correct answers for all the respondents was 16, whereas college graduates generally answered 20.6 questions accurately. The score of people who had taken at least one religion course in college went up to 22.1.

Let's take a closer look at some of the other results to put this into perspective.

By and large, it is clear that Americans do not have a lot of general knowledge about religion. The plurality of people scored a point or two from the average of 16 right answers. The plurality of scores were below 18 but above 15. If this were a test, the grade would be around 50 percent, an "F."

Of course, this was not a test; it was a sudden phone call (probably around dinner time) in which the pollster asked questions without any warning or warm up.

Still, it is interesting to realize that the cluster of scores in the middle range largely came from white Christians, both Catholics and Protestants, mainstream and evangelical. By comparison, the only religious groups whose average reached above 20 correct answers were Atheists, Jews and Mormons. This is explained in part by the emphasis on education, especially on religious matters, among these groups. Still it is disconcerting to realize that the most generally reliable person to ask about religious matters is an Atheist, someone who does NOT believe in religion.

The religion questions themselves focused on Bible, Christianity, Religion in public life, and world religions. Each of the top three groups were high scorers in two or three of these four areas. Jews and Atheists did best in the latter two, while Mormons and Atheists were at the top of the areas of Bible and Christianity.

The only areas where a middle group did well was Christianity and the Bible. On Christianity, Mormons answered correctly for 7.9 of the 12 questions, while Evangelical white Protestants were accurate for 7.3 of them. Jews' general knowledge of Christianity (6.3 correct), by the way, is higher than any other Christian groups' understanding of their own religion. The only group scoring higher was the Atheists, with 6.7 questions right.

In Bible knowledge, Evangelical white Protestants came second only to Mormons in their Scripture knowledge, averaging 5.1 correction responses (out of 7) to the Mormons' 5.7 right answers. Those who read their Bible weekly gained one correct answer over those who did not-another education-related result.

The most disappointing scores concerned knowledge of world religions, with only Jews knowing enough to break into the "C" range, 72 percent, with Atheists three percentage points below. Mormons managed on average to answer just over half correctly, while Catholics and Protestants were lower. Given the increasing contact our nation has with the world and its religions through the Internet, travel and trade, that is saddening. We are not ready to deal with people who are different from ourselves.

The best predictor of this lack of knowledge of world religions has nothing to do with it. Those who believe that the Bible is God's word and must be taken literally score almost four correct questions below those who believe the Bible was written by human beings. The low average score associated with that belief (14.5) indicates that people with this belief did well on the Bible and Christianity-oriented questions, but knew little about world religions.

In the end, this essay begins where it started, namely, emphasizing the importance of education as the key to the best knowledge about religions and their place in our ever-shrinking world.

Note: To read the survey results in their entirety, go to: http://www.pewforum.org.

Programming Note: If you want to increase your knowledge of religions, online courses in Religious Studies are available every semester from the University of Wyoming.

Or visit the following web sites sponsored by the Religious Studies Program.

Exploring Religions http://www.uwyo.edu/religionet/er

Religion Today Blog http://religion-today.blogspot.com

Bible and Interpretation http://www.bibleinterp.com

Religion and Biology

2010-09-28T13:26:00.000-06:00

The University of Wyoming had a distinguished visitor last week, biologist E. O. Wilson.

Wilson has the usual kinds of academic achievements and awards, only more of them: More books, more articles, more speaking engagements, more honorary degrees. He has won many scientific prizes and awards, and research institutes and ships are named after him. Wilson is the person who coined the term, "biodiversity."

Edward Wilson also founded a field called sociobiology. It has become a major force in the study of living organisms, but has also brought him much opposition and criticism. Prominent scientists have written entire books arguing against his approach and research, and although his writings sell widely (even earning him Pulitzer Prizes!), it is often easier to find negative reviews of them than positive ones.

The primary reason for Wilson's UW visit was to give a talk about the need for people of all walks of life to join together to save the planet's biodiversity. He had two main points. First, it is the biodiversity that is being threatened, not just habitat. Humanity needs to work to preserve the many different species found in an area. While this will necessarily require the preservation of habitat, it is the variety of species that is important.

Second, Wilson recognizes that religion and science will never agree on questions such as creation, the origin of human beings, and the beginnings of the universe and our world. However, he argues, we all have a stake in preserving it. If we believe it is God's handiwork, then we should be working to honor and continue it. If we believe it is the result of evolution but necessary to sustaining human life, then we should be working to preserve it as well.

This second point has become a key message for Wilson in recent years: That we need to work together for the sake of humanity, despite our differences. There is much that biology and religion do not agree upon, and Wilson himself has been keen to point that out during his career. Indeed, more than a few of his writings evidence a scientific triumphalism at the expense of the belief and faith of religion. But if truth be told, it is also at the expense of humanism, the humanities, the fine arts and the social sciences.

The science of sociobiology, Wilson is not shy about pointing out, will transform the study of the human organism. Evolution was the mode of biological explanation of the 20th century. Sociobiology will take our understanding of life far beyond that.

Sociobiology has the capacity to transform the rather vague guidelines of biological evolution, even as applied to humans, into detailed specifics about human emotions, values and motivations that are transmitted from generation to generation through human genes. That means that aspects of the way we shape our societies, our beliefs, are impacted by our genetic makeup.

Under evolution, a common example of biological development was humans' acquisition of an opposable thumb. This enabled us to grasp and hold a variety of objects and to develop not only tool-using but tool-making. Sociobiology takes that kind of evolutionary thinking into human personal and social behavior. For example, you know the common evangelistic phrase, "we all have a god-shaped hole in our hearts which we seek to fill"? Well, sociobiology would put it this way: "The predisposition to religious belief is an ineradicable part of human behavior." (Quote from Michael McGoodwin.)

In other words, humans have evolved a tendency toward religious beliefs and practices. Religious behavior, sociobiology argues, is part of our biological human nature, not just part of our social organization or personal behavior and belief.

And that is sociobiology's challenge to the social sciences and the humanities, to theology and religion. It is redefining the biological definition of human nature, and in detailed specifics. That new understanding of humanity's biological character will bring on shifts in our notions of human nature, and that change will not come without serious debate and disagreement. We are in for a ride.

Religion is Irrational. So what?

2010-09-27T08:26:00.000-06:00

A common charge leveled against religion is that it is irrational. Although this charge has been around for centuries, it has recently gained new currency through proponents such as Ayn Rand, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins -- and now apparently Stephen Hawking.

What does it mean to say, "religion is not rational?" That's a good question, because rationality itself has many different definitions. They range from notions so vague that every thought not markedly insane is rational to formulations so strict that no idea is rational unless it meets several philosophical tests.

The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences gives its initial characterization of rationality as requiring "justified beliefs and sensible goals as well as judicious decisions." The three criteria here suggest an answer to our question. Since most religions and religious people are capable of formulating sensible goals and making judicious decisions, it must be the justified beliefs where the problem lies.

The Enlightenment of the 18th century attacked religion - Christianity in particular - for having "beliefs" that could not be justified or proven, such as the belief in a god, which it labeled as a superstitious fantasy.

On the one hand, this intellectual movement was highly successful, for it became the basis for the scientific and technological revolution that shaped and continues to shape our modern world. On the other hand, although the Enlightenment demonstrated that there was no rational proof for a god's existence, it failed to prove there was no god or gods. It ran into the problem that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. The Enlightenment showed by its criteria that religion was irrational, but it did not demonstrate that religion was wrong.

So religion is irrational. So what? Do human beings live such rational lives that religion should be seen as a detriment?

Of course not. Humans base surprising few of their decisions and actions on rationality.

What is your favorite color or ice cream flavor? Which sports team do you root for, or do you detest sports?

If you are married, did you pick your spouse on a rational basis or did you fall in love? Was it "love at first sight"? That's not rational!

What about your friends? Did you rationally choose them out of a list ranking their best qualities, or are they just people you happened to meet and hang out with?

What do you do as a hobby or when you are relaxing? What are your favorite TV shows? Are these rational choices or just what you enjoy?

You know you should loose weight, but just one more cookie . . . .

Guys, what about your preference in cars? Or is it trucks or motorcycles? Do you lust after a Lexis or a Mercedes, or would you rather have a Ferrari or a Jag? Sure, you can debate their strengths and weaknesses, but (imagine a low, slow whisper here) what do you really want?

Think about the process of buying a vehicle. We select a few choices (rationally, of course!) and test drive them. We then pick the one we "like" or the one that feels "comfortable." Hardly a rational decision!

Gals, what about your look? You know, the style of clothes you choose to wear, the way you put on your make-up (or not), your hair style? Are these simply rational decisions devoid of feeling and emotion or do they result from aesthetic choices? To put it more simply, do you wear what "looks good" on you?

These observations are offered tongue-in-cheek, but they aim to make a simple point. Humans do not really lead rational lives. Many of our everyday thoughts, decisions and activities have little to do with rationality. Indeed, the real surprise is that we manage to think and act rationally as much as we do. So the accusation that religion is irrational simply means that it is like most of the way we live our lives.

The First Amendment is not Optional

2010-09-09T14:53:00.000-06:00

In the political fuss over the New York Islamic community center (with a prayer room) a couple blocks from “Ground Zero,” the Constitution’s First Amendment supporting religious freedom has become a casualty. Some critics have argued that it does not apply, while others have used it as a tool of discrimination giving them the right not to have a particular religion in this place.

Neither is the case. The First Amendment was designed exactly for this situation and it stands solidly on the side of the Muslim association planning to build the center. That judgment may be politically controversial, and many do not agree with it, but it stands squarely in the middle of United States’ law governing treatment of religious groups. The legal position is straightforward.

First Amendment laws prevent the interference of government entities in religious matters and ensure our country’s widely respected freedom of religion. It has been regularly used to uphold the rights of religious minorities against opposition by the majority. Historically, these minorities have included Quakers, Native Americans, Catholics, and most recently, evangelical Christians. Ironically, evangelical Christians, who are generally opposed to the Islamic center’s construction, have in recent decades been highly active in the courts expanding our country’s First Amendment rights of worship and assembly.

The most puzzling aspect of this controversy is the willingness to ignore or reject the Constitution’s First Amendment as if it were optional. Optional! How can such an idea even arise?

The idea comes from viewing the Constitution like another important document, namely, the Bible. In the generalized, Protestant-derived worldview common in many segments of American society, the Bible is viewed as the founding work of the Christian religion, revealed by God through Moses and Jesus, prophets and disciples.

Similarly, the Constitution forms our nation’s founding document. There is a strong tendency to view the founding fathers who composed it as superior to normal men, possessing a prophetic vision that enabled them to shape this work to last. Although these men were not divine, there has recently been a movement to Christianize them and to downplay their deist and secular beliefs.

Both documents guide the communities for which they constitute the foundation. The United States looks to the Constitution and Christianity looks to the Bible as the ultimate authority. However, both works require ongoing interpretation to remain relevant and applicable to changes in society, technology, and communal growth.

It is the differing character of that interpretation which explains the notion that the First Amendment is optional.

In law, interpretation takes place through court decisions (the application of the law) and legislation (the writing of new laws). Specific interpretation can be challenged, usually through more court cases, but once the interpretations are made, they form part of the law. They become potentially applicable to any and all situations within the country. However individual authorities may treat a particular law, laws are legally not optional and the state provides enforcement means to ensure they are followed.

In religion, interpretation takes place differently. Individuals and organizations (e.g., churches and denominations) can interpret. Sometimes religious organizations have the means to enforce their interpretations of belief and practice (e.g. the Inquisition, pledges of belief), sometimes they do not.

Protestantism began as a rebellion (initially by individuals) against the interpretation of the Bible propounded by (the organization of) the Catholic Church. Protestants also rejected a number of books in that Bible (books now called the Apocrypha). In other words, Protestantism not only discarded centuries of interpretation of the founding Scripture, it changed the contents of that Scripture. Even as these radical changes took place, however, Protestants elevated the Bible as a whole, claiming that they were being more true to that sacred text.

That legacy leads many Americans whose worldview is informed by Protestantism to view the Constitution in the same way. The First Amendment and its history of legal interpretation can be rejected because they believe it is not “true” to the intentions of the Founding Fathers.

It is the intellectual equating of the Constitution with the Bible, and seeing the Constitution within the Protestants’ interpretive history of Scripture, that enables the notion that the First Amendment and its guarantee of religious freedom can be discarded. But since the Constitution is a legal document rather than a theological one, that position is false.

Note: I wrote a different column on the NYC Islamic Center near Ground Zero earlier this summer, before it was made into a political issue. Most of my followers missed it. It can be found below.

It’s OK to Pray in Your School

2010-09-09T14:51:00.000-06:00

What kind of prayer is allowed in a public school?

Everyone and anyone who goes to a school may pray there. "Everyone," that means students, teachers, staff and administrators, may offer a private prayer to the divine at anytime they choose. "Anyone," that means any person of any religious faith, be they Methodist, Baptist, Catholic, or Mormon, or Native American, Jewish, Moslem, Hindu, or Wiccan. Thus praying in the schools is permitted to everyone there, as long as it is private and personal, and does not interrupt legitimate school activities.

Similarly, it is permitted for teachers, staff, and even administrators to join together voluntarily to pray. Again, this may occur in formal or informal settings.

What kind of prayer is not allowed in a public school?

In general, prayer should not be conducted in such a way to exclude or stigmatize those who do not participate in or follow a particular religion.

Finally, participation in prayer should not be used as a basis to reward or promote those who take part or to withhold such rewards from people who do not.

Ban the Burka?

2010-09-09T14:47:00.000-06:00

Governments in the European countries of France, Spain and Belgium are trying to persuade their parliaments to ban the public wearing of the burqa, the veil which some Muslim women wear over their face. In the Middle East, the governments of Egypt, Jordan and Syria have banned burqa-wearing in the universities.

The French government argues for its ban on the basis of respect for the dignity of women. The Jordanian administration focuses on security, showing criminals using the burqa as a disguise when robbing banks. Indeed, many countries seem to be worried about security, since the bulky robes usually worn with a burqa can easily hide explosives or weapons.

What unites these actions is the emphasis on a woman NOT wearing the burqa. That makes sense to most of us in the first world, where we do not have a tradition of female covering. Our secularizing goal is to liberate women from having to wear this outfit. But many Muslim women prefer to wear the burqa or other covering clothing; many consider it traditional. Others find that it enables them to work with male co-workers and be taken as an equal rather than as a sex object. Preventing women from wearing a burqa thus becomes a form of social engineering, of forced behavior, rather than of religious liberty.

So how should a society balance legitimate interests of security or education with each individual’s right to religious freedom?

Religions themselves suggest an answer. Most religions have a concept of sacred space, an area where their god is especially present. Although diluted in modern times, the concept of special places, buildings, cities or even mountains set aside for religious or divine purposes appears in most world religions.

Ancient Judaism believed its Jerusalem Temple was holy because God “dwelled” there. In Islam, the mosque containing the Kaaba in Mecca is sacred. In Christianity, the places where Jesus performed miracles are deemed holy.

Places such as these, as well as lesser religious sites, have rules about preparations or clothing needed for entering them. Muslims should wash before entering a mosque to pray. One should don a yarmulke in a synagogue and in some a prayer shawl as well. Catholic priests wear liturgical vestments when leading worship at the altar. Similarly, Hindu priests must dress in a particular way when worshipping their god or goddess. Women and men are expected to cover their shoulders and knees at Christian religious sites such as the Vatican or monasteries.

In an analogue to the notion of sacred space, non-religious institutions like governments should have secular sites that are special to it. Like sacred sites under religious control, which promulgate their own rules about dress, these special secular sites government control could have their own dress codes. In many places, such as airports, this already takes place.

Governmental institutions could designate places such police stations or universities as having this status. To enhance security, for instance, they could ban any clothing that hides the body’s appearance, whether worn on the head or face, the torso, or the legs. This would effectively exclude the burqa at a place where that exclusion makes sense. Modern airports already practice something like this during their security checks on passengers.

My point is that the banning of the burqa and the trampling on religious freedom should not be arbitrary. It should apply to only to places where that ban makes sense. All space not designated as special to a government or a religion (or a private home, of course) would thus be public space and people could wear whatever they wanted, whether revealing, modest, or covering clothing. There would only be a few limited places where normal expectations freedom of (religious) dress would not apply.

This would balance each individual’s right to freedom of religious or secular expression (with regard to dress) with the right of a few institutions, secular and religious, to determine the kind of clothing worn on their premises. The banning of the burqa in Syrian and Egyptian universities would fit into these guidelines, but France’s banning of the burqa on city streets would be too intrusive into the lives of private individuals.

Is Religious Studies a Zoo?

2010-07-28T19:29:00.001-06:00

As a field of study, Religious Studies aims to teach about different world religions. This can be Western religions such as Judaism or Christianity, or Eastern religions such as Buddhism and Jainism. It can teach about large religions, Christianity, Islam and Hinduism, or small ones, like Zorastrianism and Santaria.

    As a professor of religious studies, I have taught most of these religions plus many others over the years. While I could not be a member of more than one of these religions, I enjoy teaching them all. I try to present each religion in an objective yet sympathetic fashion so that students can understand how the religions work and why people find membership in them attractive, comforting and "the right thing to do," at least for those who belong to them.

    Students who come to Religious Studies courses for the first time often arrive with a quite different perspective. Many come from a strong background in one particular religion. They grew up in and were surrounded by family, friends and community members who belonged to that religion. And they led their lives and viewed the people and world around them through that religion. This description applies to many students, whether Catholic, Baptist or Methodist, whether Christian, Hindu or Moslem.

    Such students also grew up with the experience that the experts in their religion were members of that same religion. So when they come to the university, they bring with them an expectation that their religion class teachers, as "experts," will also belong to the religion being taught. The teacher of Introduction to Judaism will be Jewish, they assume, and the teacher of History of Islam will be Muslim. Not to put too fine a point on it, they assume that Religious Studies is like a zoo, and that the teachers represent the religions they teach. Just as in a zoo, the signs say, "This is a bear," or "This is a moose," there is an implicit assumption that Religious Studies will display members of religions, "This is a Jew," "This is a Christian," and "This is a Hindu." This is simply not the case.

    Students have a range of responses when they discover their professor does not belong to the religion being taught in the course.

First, if the course is about a religion to which the students do not belong, the response is an intellectual one. "Oh. OK. Uh, how did you learn so much about it?" is a typical comment.

   Second, if the course is about a religion to which a student belongs and the professor belongs to a different religion, the initial response is one of doubt. The teachers need to prove themselves in order to gain the student's acceptance. This is a common process in Religious Studies courses and usually takes the first few weeks.

    Third, it sometimes happens that a course about a student's religion is taught by a teacher who belongs to a religion that the student views with hostility. A course on American Christianity might be taught by a Mormon, a course on Paganism might be taught by a committed Christian, a course on Christianity or the New Testament might be taught by a Jew, and so on. How do students react then?

    Students who have taken a Religious Studies course before usually will give the teachers a chance to demonstrate their knowledge. If this is the students' first Religious Studies course, they may drop out before they discover that their teacher brings objectivity and fairness to the class, along with great deal of knowledge. This is disappointing. When this tendency can be overcome and the students are persuaded to give the course a chance, they often become highly interested and involved in the course.

Some faculty attempt to avoid these problems by not divulging their religious identity. I have settled into this strategy over the years. Student reaction to this approach is often to engage in extensive speculation about my religious background. Over the years of my teaching, students have suggested that I might belong to three different religions, several types of Christianity, and might even be an atheist. If nothing else, this shows that the "zoo" model of Religious Studies does not work. If the students cannot identify my own religious background, then they must take me as the teacher I am, namely, a teacher of different world religions.

Immigration, Religion and the Supreme Court

2010-07-08T20:35:00.000-06:00

July fourth provides a moment when Americans consider our nation's founding as well as how our ancestors came to this country, that is, about our personal "founding" as Americans. We celebrate our forebears' search for a better life, how they worked long hours to overcome hardships, and how they and their children became Americans.

That storyline often overlooks the fact that immigrants were usually unwelcome. Even when government policies invited people to come to America, migrants were frequently treated as outsiders. Newspapers, politicians and even average citizens often railed against large groups of newcomers who threatened the American way of life.

At different times, these negative attitudes have been directed at people of various nationalities: the Irish, Italians and Poles, the Scots and the Chinese, the Japanese and the Germans, and more recently the Hmong, the Hispanics and peoples from the Arab and Muslim world.

In the end, this unwelcoming attitude formed another difficulty to overcome. And for those whose families have been here several generations, their triumph over that particular adversity belongs to their July fourth story. This holiday, more than any other, celebrates our identity as Americans; it comprises a moment when we set apart our differences and celebrate "our" country, those who founded it, and those who have protected it.

The problem of immigration is not solely one of nationality and of the transition from belonging to the country of one's origins to membership in the new country. It is also one of religion. Immigrants often came with their own religious beliefs and practices. And unlike their national loyalties, immigrants and their children usually kept their religion rather than change it.

America's freedom of religion helped with that in the legal area, but not elsewhere. This country's discrimination against immigrants and their offspring makes that clear, especially following the waves of immigration before 1930. If we could not keep them out of our country, then the response was often that we could keep them out of our other institutions.

Religion made that exclusion possible. At the start of the 20th century, Catholic children were effectively excluded from public schools by Protestant insistence on using the King James Bible in them, which Catholics viewed as anti-Catholic. Major educational institutions, such as Yale and Princeton universities, enforced restrictions against admitting Jews into the 1950s and the 1960s. And many men's clubs, some even into the 1980s, did not allow Catholic or Jewish members.

These attitudes have changed over recent decades, and those changes have finally reached the Supreme Court, which for most of this nation's history was exclusively Protestant. If Elena Kagan is confirmed as a justice, as expected, then there will be no Protestants on the court. Instead, there will be six Catholics and three Jews.

There does not appear to be any major objection to this outcome. Instead, many editorial essays note this lack of controversy and see it as a sign of our nation's maturity. I agree in part.

There is another explanation. The Protestant political coalition has fallen apart. One side predominantly consists of evangelicals (and conservatives) while the other side stems from the mainline churches (and liberals). The split has largely come over social issues, especially abortion and homosexuality.

Instead of working together to bring in Protestant candidates, they can only agree on non-Protestant candidates, and for different reasons. To lay this out in over-simplified terms: Catholics are acceptable to the evangelical side because Catholicism in general holds similar social views. Catholics are OK for the mainline side because that side is more welcoming of differing views.

Similarly, the stereotype of Jews' politics is that they hold liberal views (even though many do not) which makes them acceptable on the mainline side. Jews tend to be less acceptable to the evangelical wing, but that faction's strong support of Israel usually mitigates that opposition.

Thus immigrants and their descendants move from being defined in terms of nationality to being defined in terms of religion. That redefinition may permit discrimination, but also provides a fit into our country's freedom of religion, which leads to greater acceptance. In the end, ultimate acceptance may come through political maneuvering.

The "Mosque" near Ground Zero: Thinking it Through

2010-06-22T20:13:00.003-06:00

The Pilgrims came to America so they could worship and practice their religion freely. Roger Williams believed this principle applied to everyone when he founded the colony of Rhode Island. The ideal that all people should be free to worship and practice their religion as they chose became a foundation stone of American civil liberties, enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution United States of America, and part of the "beacon of liberty" which this country has proudly shone to the world.

In this light, we should be careful about how we think about the small but vocal opposition to the proposed Islamic community center near the former World Trade Center.

The proposed Islamic center will be called Cordoba House, and will occupy a 13-story building near Ground Zero. The building will house a theater, a swimming pool, meeting rooms and a mosque. The Cordoba Institute will be the community center's sponsor and the goal is to create a vibrant cultural, artistic and intellectual institution on the model of New York's famous "92nd Street Y."

The Cordoba Institute is an established American Muslim organization dedicated to working out the place of Islam in America. They represent the "moderate Muslims" which the U.S. media and public so frequently call upon to step up and be counted.

So what's the problem?

Patrick Bahnken, head of the paramedics union says in the New York Daily News, "How will it look to have this in your face?" Well it won't be in anybody's face. The building is two blocks away in the middle of the block. In city terms, that's a long way away. It cannot be seen from Ground Zero and won't be seen by visitors unless they look for it.

Rosemary Cain expressed her thoughts this way (also in the Daily News), "I think it's despicable. That's sacred ground." Sacred to whom? Presumably, Ms. Cain means it is sacred to the families whose loved ones died there. If so, then all families who lost people there should be able to commemorate the disaster. That means not just the families of Christians and Jews, but also of Muslims, for Muslims too were among the Trade Center employees and among the rescue workers who died.

Mr. Bahnken went on to say that a Muslim center would be "a constant reminder of what they did to us on 9/11." By "they," does Mr. Bahnken refer to the one-billion Muslims around the world and blame all of them for the actions of fewer than 20? That would be like blaming all Catholics for the bombing in Oklahoma City by Irish Catholic Timothy McVeigh, as an op-ed piece in the Daily News recently observed.

Who would make the decision to stop Cordoba House? The decision would have to be taken by some wing of the government, probably a bureaucratic department.

What would this mean for religious freedom in America? It would set a precedent that a religious organization can be denied the free exercise of its beliefs, even when everything they are doing is legal. That is, a religious group could be denied free exercise of their religion just because some people object to it and are supported by a government body.

Given that our country's legal system is based on the idea that all people should be treated equally and fairly, then if one religious group can be denied free exercise of religion, all religious organizations can be denied the right to believe and practice as they choose. To prevent a branch of this nation's second largest religion, Islam, from building a religious and community center in a legal location could thus seriously damage the America we most value, and that terrorists most seek to destroy.

One of the lessons of 9/11 is we Americans are all in this together. To deny the free exercise of religion to some is ultimately to deny it to all.

The New York Daily News has covered this story extensively (http://www.nydailynews.com). For more information about Cordoba House, see http://www.cordobainitiative.org/.

Why does the State of Israel exist?

2010-06-11T10:45:00.001-06:00

Sometimes the difficulties between Israel and the Palestinians seem never ending. During the 1990s great diplomatic strides were made to resolve their difference, but since then the situation has deteriorated. The recent Israeli attack on ships trying to break the Gaza blockade has raised international emotions, but those emotions comprise short-term reactions to events rather than long-term attempts at solutions.

Helen Thomas's recent remarks that the Jews should leave Palestine provide an example of the outrage many have felt, but it is an outrage that fails to realize leaving is not an option.

So why are Jews in Palestine, a.k.a. the Land of Israel, anyway?

Jews were living in the Land of Israel, as far as historians can determine, by about 1250 B.C. But then in 70 A.D. and then again in 135 A.D., some 1,385 years later, the Roman Empire banned Jews from living in Jerusalem and its surrounding province. (1,385 years is a long time; longer than there has been an English language.) Some Jews continued to live elsewhere in the land, but over the centuries, they disappeared from the area under pressure from Christian and Muslim immigrants, invaders and conquerors.

So from about 70 A.D., most Jews have lived outside their homeland without self-governance. In other words, they have lived in someone else's country being ruled by a government in which they had no say. These countries were dominated by members of a single religion, usually Christianity or Islam.

In these circumstances, Jews were sometimes allowed to live more or less in peace and sometimes not. Sometimes they were subject to discrimination, other times they were the object of pogroms, riots, lynchings and burnings. Many countries kicked them out: England did so in 1290 and Spain followed suit in 1492.

Not until the 18th century did any country give Jews even the right to vote, although discrimination continued. In the United States, Jews were refused housing, jobs and admittance to education and universities simply on the basis of being Jewish.

As the 20th century approached, many Jews found this situation intolerable and a mass movement arose that believed Jews should return to their original land, from which they had been banished nearly two millennia earlier. This movement, called Zionism, inspired many hundreds of thousands of Jews to emigrate to the territory then known as Palestine.

Then came World War II and the mass killing of Jews by the German Nazis. In less than a decade, more than six million Jews were murdered; they were simply rounded up, herded into pens (called "camps") and then killed.

The Zionist response to this was three-fold. First, they declared an independent Jewish state named Israel. Second, they called on all Jews to leave the (untrustworthy) countries in which they lived and "return" to Israel where they would be safe from predation. Third, they declared "never again." Although originally meant as a comment about the Holocaust, this watchword became the symbol of Israeli toughness. The country would never back down in the face of aggression again. Jews would not depend on the charity of others for protection, but would protect themselves.

The Zionist pioneers who emigrated to Israel in the early 20th century were in many ways like the Pilgrims. They were escaping religious persecution by fleeing to another land. In both cases, the problem was that the land was not empty; people already lived there. In America, the pioneers pushed the native tribes further into the interior, spread fatal diseases to them, or simply killed them. Over time, the natives disappeared from the daily consciousness of America's European immigrants and their descendants.

In Israel, the Palestinians have not disappeared. As Jewish pioneers arrived in the new state, various attempts were made to partition the Israelis from the Palestinians, usually behind borders drawn by military force. This notion of partition, promoted by the United Nations in the 1940s, failed during the 1967 Six-Day War when Israel conquered the Palestinian side of the partition.

That set up the present situation. Palestinians of course want independence and self-governance, but often at the expense of the Israeli state-as the hard-line rhetoric of "drive Israel into the sea" indicates. But the ancestors of the Israeli Jews lived outside the land for nearly 2,000 years. They know from experience it is not safe for them out there. So they stay and fight, continuing to struggle with the Palestinians. "Never again," they believe, will Jews be without protection.

Respecting Religious Differences: True Tolerance

2010-06-11T10:44:00.000-06:00

During the 20th century, many eruptions of violent international friction were rooted in secular problems. The two World Wars, the Korean War and the Vietnam War were founded on political and national differences.

Since the 1970s, however, international violence often seems rooted in religious differences, in attempts by members of one religion to control or get back at members of another. While these broad generalizations have multiple exceptions, many people now see religion as the primary source of conflict; with John Lennon, they want to imagine a world in which religions do not provide humanity with a heaven and a hell (or anything else) to fight for.

Is it possible to get rid of religions? No, not really. Centuries after the intellectual Enlightenment pushed religion off its throne by elevating human reason above divine revelation and creating the sciences, religion is still around. Many had hoped and even predicted that religion would disappear. Religion was likened to a mental illness, and, in line with Sigmund Freud's "talking cure," once patients recognized it, they would be healed of the affliction. That has not happened, obviously.

So, if we want to live in a world where religious beliefs do not spark conflicts, what approach should we take? In an recent op-ed piece in the New York Times, "Many Faiths, One Truth," the Dalai Lama argues that the world's people need to practice tolerance of other people's religions. After admitting that every religion has its core, unique elements, the Dalai Lama argues that the key theme of compassion runs through all religions. Tolerance, he implies, is the emphasis of similarities, and learning from each religion in the area(s) where they are similar.

Certainly the Dalai Lama is correct in identifying compassion for others-in both suffering and their joy-as a concern shared by many, if not all, religions. Indeed, one could generalize that most religions share their central moral values. They all possess a version of the Golden Rule; they are concerned about families and the interrelationships of their members; they are against murder and theft, promote equal justice for all, and so on.
Shared moral values might serve as a basis for the peaceful interaction of members of different religions around the world, if it were not for one thing. In each religion, those values are supported and legitimized by what is distinctive to that religion.

In 1997, I created a Web site called Exploring Religions which looked at five world religions. In it, I put forward the idea that each religion identified a core problem with humanity's existence. The religion then laid out a process for individuals that would resolve this human problem, a process that usually involved divine help. In Christianity, the problem was sin; in Buddhism, the human problem was suffering; in Islam, the problem was "forgetfulness" of God (Allah). Each religion shaped its theology and its central practices to help people overcome the human problem and achieve humanity's ultimate goal.

For each religion, the human problem and its solution is the religion's central feature. As Shrek's Donkey might say, it is the innermost core of the onion when all the layers are removed. Moral values form one of the layers, and thus belong to the religion, but they do not comprise its core.
If tolerance among religions is ever going to come about, it will only be when it understands and accepts the differences between the religions. While the Dalai Lama wants to emphasize the similarities-human compassion and other moral values-it is the acceptance of and respect for religious differences that constitutes true tolerance. As Boston University religion professor Stephen Prothero recently observed, "One of the common misconceptions about the world's religions is that they plumb the same depths, ask the same questions. They do not." Accepting that and still getting along is where true tolerance lies.

Note: The Exploring Religions Web site can be found at: http://uwacadweb.uwyo.edu/religionet/er/. The discussion of the Human Problem appears on the pages titled "Cosmos." Stephen Prothero's discussion of religious differences appeared in the May 17 Christian Science Monitor at: http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2010/0517/Questions-about-God-Don-t-assume-all-religions-offer-similar-answers. The Dalai Lama's editorial essay appeared in the May 24 New York Times at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/opinion/25gyatso.html?src=me&ref=homepage.
Flesher is director of UW's Religious Studies Program. Past columns and more information about the program can be found on the Web at www.uwyo.edu/RelStds. To comment on this column, visit http://religion-today.blogspot.com.

The Monarchy of the Catholic Church

2010-04-14T20:47:00.000-06:00

The child abuse scandal in the Catholic Church has heated up again, with calls for massive reforms, repeal of celibacy, marriage for priests and resignations of bishops and even the Pope.

These angry proposals won't help solve the problem, even if they play to many people's sense of justice, for they show little actual understanding of how the Church works. The Vatican is the world's oldest government and at different times the Church has withstood military conquest, hatred by the world's most powerful leaders, Nazism and Communism -- much worse than angry editorials in the newspapers.

There are no magic bullets that will end the scandal or stop the sinful and criminal acts against children that is causing it. It is a complex issue than needs thoughtful consideration, carefully crafted proposals, and follow through. The proposals, whatever they are, need to take into account the nature of Catholicism and its organization, for that nature provides the context in which the problem arose.

The Catholic Church is governed by the world's oldest, continuous monarchy. Officially founded by Emperor Constantine in 325 A.D., its roots reach back into the first century, to Jesus and Peter as well as the other apostles. As Rome, along with its bishop and its adherents in the western Roman Empire, became more independent of the eastern Empire, it took on even more monarchical characteristics, lacking perhaps only official heredity.

For more than a millennium, this monarchy existed in a world of monarchies. Over this time, a succession of these monarchies supported and were allied with the Church. This is not surprising, since one of the explanatory rules of religious studies is that successful religious organizations (from Christianity and Judaism to Zoroastrianism and Hinduism) tend to be supported by the dominant political and economic power(s) of a society.

The support which these monarchies gave the Catholic Church was perceived as reciprocal. If a king upheld the Church in its interests, the king also expected the Church to support his concerns and priorities.

This interchange of course takes place in a delicate dance between the powers; history shows the balance between the two was sometimes violated and could result in friction, violence, murder or war. But in general, religious and civil reciprocity took place often.

In the modern period, since the 16th century, the character of most Christian societies has changed. Political and economic power shifted from monarchies to the middle class. Countries where a king or queen ruled their subjects became nations where the citizens elected their governments and often got rid of monarchs altogether.

In many regions and countries, Christianity followed suit. Take the Anglican Church, for instance. In most countries, bishops are now elected by the laity, including the Presiding Bishop. In many Baptist churches, the lay members of each church constitute its governing council, with the power to do everything from cutting the heating budget to firing the minister.

Since the power of these churches now resides in the laity, the "middle class," it is not surprising that the ministers, priests, and hierarchy have learned to be responsive to them. This responsiveness occurs not in the area of theology or doctrine so much as in matters of administration. The churches' members made it clear they wanted the ministerial class to look after them.

The world's largest religious organization, the Catholic Church, did not make this change. Despite increasing adherence to democracy in politics, the parishioners continued to believe that the priests and the bishops would look after their interests. In most cases this belief has been correct. But the actions taken by bishops that have allowed predatory priests to prey again and again on the people in the pews and their children has caused many to realize that in this case the leaders they trusted to look after them did not. The representatives of the monarchy failed the middle class.

What will happen now? I do not know. It is up to the Catholic Church, the hierarchy and the laity, to work that out. What is at stake, however, is nothing less than the Church's future.

The Rites of Liberty

2010-03-31T13:25:00.003-06:00

"Religion Today" is contributed by the University of Wyoming's Religious Studies Program to examine and to promote discussion of religious issues.

"Liberty" is the watch-word this week for two of America's major religions. The Jewish Passover began on Tuesday, which celebrates Moses' liberation of the Israelites from slavery in ancient Egypt more than three millennia ago. On Easter, Christians observe Easter, which features the Christian belief of Christ's liberation of humans from death and sin.

Although observed in religious terms, Passover is really a celebration of nationhood, for it commemorates God's actions in freeing a group of slaves from Egypt and then forming them into an independent people under Moses' political and religious leadership.

Even as it tells the story of the Israelites leaving Egypt, Exodus 12 interrupts the tale to describe how the Passover should be celebrated, namely, with a family-based, evening meal with the two main dishes of unleavened bread (matzah) and a lamb that was specially slaughtered that afternoon. In the Exodus story itself, the blood of the slain lamb, placed on the door frame of each house, saves the first-born Israelites from the angel of death who is punishing the Egyptians.

Christianity took the Passover rite and transformed it for its own purposes, making the remembrance of a people's national formation into the unification ritual of a new religion.

According to Matthew 26, Mark 14 and Luke 22, Jesus' Last Supper is a Passover meal. It takes place on the evening following the Passover lamb's slaughter, and these gospels make a point of indicating that the disciples took special steps to prepare for the Passover meal earlier that day.

In this story, the bread which Jesus takes, breaks and gives thanks over is the unleavened bread of the Passover meal. Interestingly, Jesus indicates that the bread "is" his own body. Whether this is understood literally or symbolically, the bread points to Jesus' sacrifice of himself which is about to take place. Note it is the bread, and not the sacrificial lamb, with which Jesus identifies.

Jesus also takes the cup of wine and identifies it as his blood. In the Passover meal, blood refers to the blood of the slaughtered lamb that saved the Israelites from death. So even though there is no explicit reference to the sacrificial lamb in the Last Supper, Jesus uses the elements of the Passover rite to identify himself as the future sacrifice. In doing so, the story becomes the basis for the central identification ritual of Christianity, known as Holy Communion or the Eucharist. Jesus transforms Judaism's central formation rite into Christianity's main membership ritual.

John's Gospel tells a different story. According to its time frame, the Last Supper takes place the night before the Passover celebration. Now some modern Christians see this as a contradiction and go to great lengths to argue (unsuccessfully) that the two stories actually take place on the same night. But this exercise hides John's point, for he has a different message about Jesus and the Passover.

John's story portrays Jesus as the actual Passover sacrifice. It is only in John 19 that a soldier pierces Jesus' side to ensure he is dead rather than breaking his legs as he had done to the other victims. John says in verse 36 that this was done to fulfill the Scripture passage, "None of his bones shall be broken." This passage cites Exodus 12:46, where it is not a prophecy about Jesus but instructions about how to eat the Passover lamb.

Identifying Jesus as the Passover Sacrifice is not unfamiliar in the early church. First Corinthians 5:7 portrays Jesus as the Passover lamb and concludes "Therefore, let us celebrate the festival [of Passover]." The Passover ceremony recalling the Jews' past liberation from slavery thus becomes Christianity's present liberation from sin.

Counting Christians

2010-03-16T22:03:00.000-06:00

"Religion Today" is contributed by the University of Wyoming's Religious Studies Program to examine and to promote discussion of religious issues.

When the Pew Research Center released its study last October of the world's Muslim population, most American newspapers treated the news calmly, essentially reiterating points from the report.

CNN.com's Oct. 12 story was typical. Leading with the headline, "Nearly 1 in 4 People worldwide is Muslim, report says," the report emphasized that most Muslims live in Asia (60 percent), that the Hindu country of India has more Muslims than all but two countries in the world, and that China has more Muslims than Middle Eastern countries such as Syria.

One point that appeared in many newspaper and online reports but did not appear in the Pew study was the number of Christians in the world. They indicated the world's 1.57 billion Muslims may constitute 23 percent of its population, but that the 2.33 billion Christians make up 33 percent of the population.

This information seems to have been included to reassure Christians that they need not be alarmed because "our religion" is biggest.

Why would Christianity's first place in the "size sweepstakes" be comforting? Is it just a matter of: Our side is biggest, so our side is best? Should we cheer for Christianity "winning" in the same way we cheer for our favorite sports team?

Or perhaps this information should be viewed in deeper, more theological terms. For some, Christianity's top rank indicates God's plan of providing all humanity with Christ's salvation is doing well. Its large size indicates the plan is making real progress; Christianity is the biggest and therefore the best game in town, so to speak.

But before anybody cheers for Christianity as the top-ranked theological squad, they should hesitate. Many Christians do not consider all branches of Christianity valid. Many Christians only view only their own brand of Christianity as acceptable. Some accept one or two of the other branches, but not all of them. They see the others as incapable of offering salvation.

These Christians cannot take all 2.33 billion Christians as a good thing, for they do not count them as Christians. So here are the numbers of the different branches of Christianity. These are the best numbers currently available and I offer only the five largest.

Roman Catholicism is the largest at 1 billion members; in fact it is the world's largest religious organization of any kind. Taken together, Conservative Protestants, Evangelicals and Pentecostalists come in second at 305 million. The Eastern Orthodox churches (including Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Egyptian Copts and even the various Monophysite churches) are third at 240 million. The so-called Mainstream Protestant churches (including Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists, and Presbyterians) follow closely with 233 million. Finally, the fifth largest branch of Christianity is one most Americans have not even heard of, the 110 million members of the African Indigenous churches.

None of these branches of Christianity by itself is larger than Islam, or even larger than Sunni Islam. This observation has theological implications, as well as demographic ones.

On the one hand, if a Christian believes that only their branch of Christianity provides salvation, then God's plan is doing poorly, not even bringing in as many members as its closest rival religion, and less than half of all people who call themselves Christians.

On the other hand, if a Christian is ecumenical, as many are, and believes that other branches of Christianity lead to salvation, then that is a recognition that much of that branch's specific theological beliefs are unnecessary for salvation. The beliefs focus on matters of this world, but not the heavenly one. They form a way of organizing believers into a social body and guiding their way of life (e.g., morality, worship, aspects of daily life), but are not needed to determine one's state in the afterlife.

So the way Christians react to simple demographic information reveals something about their view of the success of God's plan of salvation.

A New Kind of Worship

2010-03-03T11:09:00.000-07:00

UW Religion Today Column for Week of March 7-13:

"Religion Today" is contributed by the University of Wyoming's Religious Studies Program to examine and to promote discussion of religious issues.

It's 9:30 on a sunny Sunday morning. As I enter the church -- a huge converted warehouse in the suburbs of Houston -- my head begins to throb. As my eyes adjust to the dimmer light of the entry hall, I realize that the throbbing is the band going through its warm-up routine. The bass player certainly plays in a hard-driving style.

I step into the sanctuary for the full effect. The cavernous room is dark, lit by too-few spotlights moving slowly around the room. I find my seat, a fancy folding chair in the middle of the hall, about 10 rows back from the stage. Glancing around, I realize that there must be more than 300 people here, but the room is only about three-quarters full. I nod a greeting to the people next to me; the guitars are too loud for speech.

The room suddenly goes silent. The stage lights up and a youngish man in jeans and T-shirt bounds into view; apparently, he is the pastor. With a patter belonging more to a rock concert than a church, he introduces the band to the congregation's (crowd's?) loud cheers.

As the players launch into the first number, everyone stands. Four songs later we are still standing. Most of us are swaying or dancing to the music. The lyrics are generally Christian: One song was about Jesus, another the ups and downs of the Christian life, a third about prayer. But this is no namby-pamby music. These Christian rock-and-rollers are hard driving and don't turn down the volume.

After the fifth song, the T-shirted man reappears. He leads cheers and applause for the band, followed by a prayer. The congregation respectfully listens and concludes with a group Amen.

As we sit down, he begins speaking informally about how humans are created in God's image. (After 10 minutes, I realize this is the sermon.) He makes two points. The first explores how Christians should live their lives "in God's image." Since this is the first Sunday after the earthquake in Haiti, the second point discusses how Christians should protect and support the Haitians in their time of need; after all, the Haitians are also created in the image of God.

When he finishes the band fires up again. As they play their final number, lights appear over the heads of the standing crowd; these are not cigarette lighters but the "Candle app" on people's iPhones.

When I leave the building at 10:30 blinking in the morning sunlight, I feel as if I have just spent an evening at a rock concert. Do I feel as if I have been at a worship service? I'm not sure. But the twenty-something and thirty-something people around me certainly act that way. Some chat in small groups, while others visit tables set up to inform congregants about church activities. The kids make a beeline for the cookies and punch. It could easily be the informal "coffee hour" at any church.

This rock-and-roll church, known as the Loft Church, is an outreach of the more staid mega-church around the corner. The idea is to reach out to younger, un-churched families by creating a worship style more familiar to them. The hope is that after staying with the Loft Church for a while, they will transition to the more typical worship style of the main church.

It is clear that the plan's first stage is successful. People are attending the church and the evangelistic activities of the ministerial staff is bringing people in. The alternate form of worship keeps them coming back. But the jury is still out on whether these new members will decide that they would be more comfortable in a more traditional worship service.

The excitement generated by rock-concert worship does not necessarily lead to toward the calmness of sitting in pews and listening to more talking and less music. It certainly does not ready them for placidly singing centuries-old hymns instead of rocking in the aisles.

But can a rock-and-roll church be a long-term commitment? Will people who joined it in their 30s still find it appealing in their 50s and 60s? We will have to wait and see.

For more information about the Loft Church, go to www.loftchurch.com.

Flesher is director of UW's Religious Studies Program. Past columns and more information about the program can be found on the Web at www.uwyo.edu/RelStds. To comment on this column, visit http://religion-today.blogspot.com.

Penitents Compete and the Future of Turkish Secularism

2010-02-18T09:52:00.000-07:00

[This week's column is written by a guest author, Joseph Laycock. The column appears courtesy of Sightings at the University of Chicago.]

Recently, Turkish television station Kanal T announced a new game show in which representatives from four different world religions will try to convert atheists. The show's title "Tövbekarlar Yarisiyor," translates roughly as Penitents Compete.

Each episode features 10 atheists who have been screened to ensure they are not secretly faithful. Audiences can then watch a Muslim imam, a Jewish rabbi, a Greek Orthodox priest and a Buddhist monk attempt to bring them into the respective fold. Any atheist who experiences a conversion wins an all-expense-paid pilgrimage to a holy site of the newfound faith: Mecca, Jerusalem, or Tibet. (Producers follow new converts to ensure the pilgrimage does not become a free holiday.)

Penitents Compete is the brainchild of Seyhan Soylu, a transsexual pop figure who goes by the nickname "Sisi." Soylu has said of the show, "We are giving the biggest prize in the world, the gift of belief in God."

Needless to say, Penitents Compete has aroused ire as well as curiosity from both atheists and believers around the world. Many see the show as disrespectful to religion while others see it as an indictment of atheism. However, the motivation for Penitents Compete may simply be a curiosity about religion, conversion, and pluralism.

While 99 percent of Turkey's population identifies as Muslim, the government is highly secular. Religion is carefully regulated by the state: Religious affiliation must be listed on national identity cards and places of worship are designated by the state.

For more than 50 years there has been a ban on religious head coverings in universities or by civil servants in public buildings. Religious proselytizing in particular is regarded with suspicion. Police frequently charge proselytizers with disturbing the peace or similar charges that are eventually dismissed in court. However, some Turks believe that proselytizing itself is illegal.

If not illegal, many Turks regard the show as inappropriate.

Hamza Aktan, the chairman of Turkey's High Board of Religious Affairs, has called the show a ratings ploy that is disrespectful to all religions. He added, "Religion should not be a subject for entertainment programs." But in a society where so much of religious life is at the discretion of the state, is it reasonable to expect a popular consensus about what constitutes a "respectful" attitude towards religion?

Critics in the West have raised a different concern about Penitents Compete. While the premise of the show seems to embrace religious pluralism, it frames atheism as an unacceptable, even a tragic, philosophy.

Although producers recognize that many atheists will not convert, there is no prize offered for retaining one's philosophical convictions. Politically, the show frames four religious traditions as a "belief constituency" in opposition to atheism. This discourse ties into an ongoing culture war in Turkey that parallels battles in the United States and other Western nations.

In 2006, copies of a book titled "Atlas of Creation" by Harun Yahya were sent unsolicited to schools throughout Turkey. Yahya's book claimed that, "The root of the terrorism that plagues our planet is not any of the divine religions, but atheism and the expression of atheism in our times (is) Darwinism and materialism." While Soylu is far less polemical, she commented, "We don't approve of anyone being an atheist. God is great and it doesn't matter which religion you believe in. The important thing is to believe."

Nilüfer Narli, a sociologist from Istanbul Bahçesehir University, commented that Turkey has experienced rising "curiosity" about religion for the last 10 years. While Penitents Compete may strike some as gauche, it appears to be an honest exploration, if perhaps a naive one, of topics that have traditionally been mysterious and taboo.

And in a culture where religion has been a controversial subject, Penitents Compete may be the beginning of an important public conversation about pluralism. The format of an unscripted reality show has the potential to challenge assumptions about other religions.

For example, the producers do not seem to have considered that Buddhism may be far more palatable to atheists than the Abrahamic religions.

Similarly, by putting a human face on Turkey's atheists, Penitents Compete may ultimately lead towards extending tolerance to non-religious philosophies. If the open discussion of religion remains civil (unlike most American reality shows), the show could even tip the scales in Turkey's ongoing political battles over head coverings and other forms of religious expression.

Laycock is a PhD student in religion and society at Boston University and is the author of "Vampires Today: The Truth About Modern Vampires."

George Tiller's Murder and the Question of Certainty

2010-02-03T20:32:00.002-07:00

In just 37 minutes of deliberation on Jan. 29, a Kansas jury convicted Scott Roeder of first-degree murder for his public, point-blank killing of George Tiller, a Wichita doctor who performed abortions. Roeder's legal team argued that his crime belonged under Kansas' voluntary manslaughter law and thus was not murder per se. Manslaughter usually turns on the question of pre-meditation; if the perpetrator has time to premeditate the crime, then it is murder. But the Kansas law allows premeditation in manslaughter "upon an unreasonable but honest belief that circumstances existed that justified deadly force."

In the end, the judge ruled that the voluntary manslaughter statute did not apply, holding that the crime did not fit its defined circumstances. This disappointed many radical anti-abortion advocates who thought Roeder's "unreasonable but honest belief" should have been seen as a mitigating circumstance and gained him some leniency.

But what is an "honest belief"? In this kind of situation, it refers to a strongly held thought which a person believes to be correct-indeed they are certain it is correct. The thought in question is often a moral one; it is not just correct but ethically "right." The certainty of that thought's rightness motivates action(s).

How do people attain certainty of an idea's or ethical belief's correctness? Perhaps the certainty comes from external sources. A person may be convinced by someone they respect as authoritative in these matters, like a minister or a doctor, or by someone they wish to please, such as a spouse or friend. In some cases, they may have been persuaded by a debate or rational argument, or even worked out a case through their own analysis and thought.

Dr. Robert A. Burton holds that a factor internal to each person must be considered as well -- it trumps external factors. His neurological analysis of certainty, which he calls the "feeling of knowing," indicates that this feeling constitutes an emotion. It is a primal emotion, or sensation as Burton prefers to call it, such as states of anger or hatred. It arises inside human beings involuntarily, with or without rational motivation or supporting evidence.

Certainty often motivates people to action or influences their decisions. This guidance may be rather innocuous, as Burton indicates in his 2008 book "On Being Certain," like the "gut feeling" that a gambler follows when he puts his money on a particular horse to win the big race. Certainty can also become a driving force, and impel a person into an obsession leading to carrying out a particular act.
It is here where Burton's study provides some insight into the case of Scott Roeder the murderer. Roeder's feeling of certainty that abortion constituted murder led him to shoot Tiller. In a statement filled with anti-abortion rhetoric, he said, "If I didn't do it, the babies were going to die the next day."

The problem with certainty, Burton points out, is not only that it can be wrong, but that in fact it often is.

It turns out that the feeling of certainty actually has no bearing on whether a thought or belief is actually correct. It is not only independent of accuracy, but often can come before a thought is formulated. It is an emotional response rather than one produced by rational consideration. Indeed, rational consideration, even correct rational consideration, often fails to produce a feeling of certainty.

The idea that the primal emotion of certainty, the Kansas law's "honest belief," should be a factor in a criminal trial is a frightening thing. Like other foundational emotions, this feeling should not be an acceptable mitigating factor in murder or any other crime. It is not an acceptable defense to argue, "I was angry, so I shot him." So why should it be O.K. to say, "I was certain (he was wrong), so I shot him?"

The characterization of certainty in this article is drawn from the work of the neurologist Robert A. Burton, "On being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You're Not," New York: St. Martins Griffin, 2008.

Redemption, Desire, and the Wayward Golfer: Tiger Woods and Brit Hume

2010-01-13T06:16:00.002-07:00

It began with Tiger Woods’ late-night automobile encounter with a tree and the subsequent exposure of his philandering habits. Just when that story was winding down, Brit Hume gave it new life by injecting religion. In an editorial on Fox News, Hume called on Tiger, who was raised a Buddhist, to convert to Christianity saying, “I don't think that faith [i.e., Buddhism] offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So my message to Tiger would be, ‘Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery.’”

You can imagine how the Buddhists felt at this nation-wide denigration of their religion. But that was nothing compared to the commentators’ anger at Brit Hume for airing religious views and advice in such a public manner. Punditry ran the gamut of everything from “how insensitive to Buddhism!” to “what about the separation of church and state?”

Well, the last time I checked, Fox News was not a wing of the government. The notion that religion should not be intertwined in government does not prevent religion from being present in the public sphere or interfere with religious people from expressing their opinions. Like everyone else, they have the right to speak.

In retrospect, few commentators aimed to give Buddhism equal time; they were more interested in bashing Hume for his “religious insensitivity.” So Buddhist responses to Hume’s remarks received little play in the media. The rest of this column aims to help remedy that lack.

One way of expressing the difference between religions is that religions identify a problem faced by humankind and then provide a solution. Christianity defines the human problem as peoples’ sinful nature that separates them from God. It’s proffered solution is the “forgiveness and redemption,” to use Hume’s terminology, that comes from Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Buddhism defines the human problem completely differently. According to the Four Noble Truths, which form the Buddha’s fundamental teaching, life is filled with suffering (not sin). Suffering comes from desire. Since desires cannot be fulfilled, except momentarily, and the ongoing search for permanent fulfillment brings on suffering.

In Tiger’s case, his attempts to fulfill sexual desires have led not only to the inability to hold onto their fulfillment, but to the suffering of himself and his wife in their marriage, of his children, of the “other” women, and of himself on the public stage. Perhaps his golfing ability will suffer, just as the desire for female attention hindered R. Juna in the Hindu-oriented golf film, “The Legend of Bagger Vance” (starring Will Smith).

Having identified the human problem, Buddhism offers its solution, namely, the elimination of desire. It makes sense actually; if desire causes suffering, then humans can stop their suffering by stopping their feelings of desire. This can be accomplished by following the Eight-Fold Path, a prescription of the steps towards Enlightenment.

A look at the eight steps shows that Tiger’s infidelities indicate that he is still near the beginning of the path. Step Two is called “Right Intention,” and a typical explanation of it indicates that the key point is to work against the tug of desire. A person should labor to change his or her motivations to lead away from desires rather than towards them.

The fourth step is known as “Right Action” and its explanation includes explicit warnings against the actions of sexual infidelity. Indeed, the pursuit of sexual desires outside of marriage is explicitly forbidden by Buddhism’s five “commandments.”

In Buddhist terms, then, the prescription for Tiger is not “redemption,” but a commitment to follow the Eight-Fold Path away from the suffering caused by the tyranny of desire.

Both the Christian and the Buddhist definitions of and the solutions to the human problem are framed in terms of the individual; the individual sins or suffers. In both religions, however, it should be recognized that successful pursuit of the solutions usually take place in a religious community, like a church, a monastery or a temple, not by oneself.

Blasphemy in the British Isles

2010-01-06T19:09:00.001-07:00

 Last July, Ireland's Parliament passed a law against religious blasphemy by a single vote. Widely criticized within the country at the time, it came under international criticism as it took effect on Jan. 1, 2010. Much of the criticism has had the tone of "I can't believe that such a medieval (read "inquisitorial") law has been passed in the 21st century!"


 Such a response is not quite fair, since the law was written quite broadly. The 1937 Irish Constitution forbids blasphemy and despite the country's close historical ties to the Roman Catholic Church, the law was crafted to prohibit public blasphemy against all religions. Indeed, the Church was not even consulted, as became clear during last summer's parliamentary debates.


 If I were an Irish bishop, I would be worried about the bill and its impact, for the law ignores blasphemy's character as a theological category and fails to give authority to any religious body to identify blasphemous statements or actions. The law holds that blasphemy is "matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion."


 The only authority in determining blasphemy given by the law is thus "a substantial number of the adherents." This is not blasphemy as theology but blasphemy by popular acclamation.


 Blasphemy is typically decided by an authoritative religious body and given theological definitions. In post-Reformation England, Common Law defined blasphemy in several ways, all theological. Blasphemies included: Denying God's divine character, casting aspersions on Jesus and his character, ridiculing the Holy Scriptures, and even, at times, disparaging the sacrament of Holy Communion.


 The advantage of these theological specifications is that they are clear. A person knows ahead of time what is (and thus what is not) blasphemy. The dictates are authoritative and not arbitrary.


 The new Irish law is quite vague by comparison. No specification of what constitutes blasphemy is available before someone speaks about a religion. Instead, it is only after there is a public reaction (or not) that someone can know whether they have violated the statute.


 Of course, the other frequent criticism is that the new Irish law curtails free speech, despite exceptions for artistic, academic and other purposes. Critics hold up England's Parliament, by comparison, which just a year earlier had eliminated blasphemy as a crime ("finally!").


 But this change took place only after England in 2006 instituted the Racial and Religious Hatred Act. Rather than pursue blasphemy, English law now outlaws "religious hatred," by which it means, "hatred against a group of persons defined by reference to religious belief." Attempts to incite hatred against these groups for the purpose of harming them or infringing their legal rights are thus crimes.


 There has been an important shift here in the legal approach to protect the right to one's own religious belief and practice. Rather than protecting the religion, the law now protects a religion's adherents. In some ways, it is similar to an anti-discrimination law on the one hand, and to an anti-incitement law on the other.


 Purposely or not, Britain has brought itself into line with Article 20 of the United Nations' 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. This puts it in agreement with the Catholic Church's official position on religious rights, which is to endorse the U.N.'s International Covenant, according to the Vatican's permanent observer to the U.N.


 English law and the U.N. Covenant aim to prevent people from acting on any negative feelings they hold toward another religion. The Irish law, by contrast, is a law aimed to enable prosecution. Although it forbids insults and abuse concerning sacred religious matters, it does nothing to prevent them prior to their occurrence. Thus, while English law attempts to prevent the incitement of hatred against a religious group, Irish law says: If a religious group indicates it has been harmed by a provocative act of hatred, then the provocation constitutes blasphemy.

Why Did Joseph Live in Galilee?

2009-12-16T21:02:00.004-07:00

   When Caesar Augustus decided a census of the Roman Empire should be conducted, he did not send interviewers door-to-door to count each village's residents, as is the practice in the United States' census taking. Instead he required each man to return "to his own city." In Luke's gospel, chapter two, this accounts for why Joseph leaves his northern home in Galilee and undertakes a week-long journey with his wife to the town of Bethlehem, which is in southern Judea.

    But why is Joseph in Galilee in the first place? If his ties to Judea are so strong that he must return there for the census, what could have motivated him to ever leave it? Although we cannot give a definite answer, there is a sequence of historical events that may indicate why Joseph, a descendant of David's royal house, a house identified with Bethlehem of Judea, lived in Galilee. In short, the answer is that a century or less earlier, Joseph's ancestors took part in a mass migration of Judeans to settle in Galilee.

    The story actually begins in 732-722 B.C., when the Assyrian Empire conquered the northern Israelite kingdom of Israel, which included the regions of Galilee and Samaria. The book of Second Kings relates in chapter 17 how the inhabitants were carried off to Assyria in exile. A few years later, residents of other regions of the empire were brought to Samaria and settled there.

    Galilee's situation after the conquest has long been unclear. Was it treated like Samaria, which 2 Kings specifically mentions, or was it treated differently?

    Archaeologist Zvi Gal has recently discovered that Galilee was emptied of population by the Assyrian conquest and essentially remained desolate until the beginning of the first century B.C. His on-the-ground examinations of the occupation history of 80 different Galilean sites showed a six-century break in habitation. Other archaeological investigations confirm this conclusion.

    So where did the Galileans of Jesus' day come from?

    The ancient historian Josephus indicates that in 104-103 B.C., the Hasmonean king of Judea, Aristobolus, took control of Galilee on his way north to conquer the Itureans who lived west of Mt. Hermon. His successor, Alexander Janneaus, sent thousands of Judeans north to settle Galilee and farm its rich agricultural land during his 25-year reign. Not only did this give Judeans access to an increased amount of agricultural products, it also solved an apparent crisis of over-population in Judea.

    Archaeological evidence also makes it clear that these new inhabitants were from Judea, for the excavated finds from the first centuries B.C. and A.D. follow the same characteristics as those of Judea. In particular, Galilean finds reveal the same concern for ritual purity with regard to the Jerusalem Temple typical of Judea. The finds characteristic of Judea and Galilee that differ from the surrounding regions include: Immersion pools for purification baths, stone drinking vessels which protect from impurity, the practice of ossuary burial, and an absence of pig bones in the waste heaps.

    If Joseph's family came to Galilee by this scenario, then it is quite possible that it was his grandfather who migrated from Judea to Galilee in the early decades of the first century B.C. Or, it could have been his great-grandfather. In addition, the same scenario may apply to Mary, but her engagement to Joseph caused the gospels to record only his family lineage, and leave hers out.

    The implications of this repopulation of Galilee during the first century B.C. are quite significant, for it indicates that the people called Galileans had lived in that area for less than a century at the time of Jesus' birth; they did not represent a centuries-old population of that area. Their identity was still primarily Judean and had not yet been transformed into a Galilean distinctiveness.

Update on Stonehenge

2009-12-03T11:39:00.004-07:00

On the Salisbury Plain in southwest England stands a circular structure of large sandstone rocks known as Stonehenge. The monument has altered little in recent centuries, apart from a few fallen or removed stones.

Despite this changelessness, Stonehenge has recently been a happening place, with archaeological excavations providing extensive new information to help us understand its original character.

Since the 1960s, Stonehenge and the surrounding plain have attracted repeated archaeological explorations. These have revealed the history of Stonehenge itself and its place in the settlements and structures nearby. Discoveries have occurred at a rapid pace, with the Stonehenge Riverside Project announcing in October that they discovered a 33-foot diameter "mini-Stonehenge" less than two miles to the northeast. This find is the most dramatic evidence, although not the first, indicating how Stonehenge was connected to its environs.

Archaeologists now know Stonehenge was constructed in three phases over a period of 1,500 years, from approximately 3000 B.C.-1500 B.C. In Phase I, a large henge (330 feet in diameter) was dug. A "henge" is a circular trench with a raised bank outside it built from the excavated earth.

Phase II, from approximately 2900-2500 B.C., wooden structures within the henge were built on large tree trunks sunk into the ground. These may have been buildings or arrangements of posts in significant patterns. Unfortunately, not enough of the post-holes have been identified to be able to determine their specific use.

During both phases, the henge site was used as a burial ground rather than daily living. Several dozen buried cremations have been found, but remains from residential life are almost non-existent.

Phase III of Stonehenge lasted roughly from 2500-1500 B.C. At this time, stone circles replaced the wooden structures. The massive stones were arranged and rearranged until they took the pattern represented today. There were two circular structures of large Sarsen sandstone rocks with raised lintel stones on top of them separated by a ring of smaller, Welsh Bluestone boulders. Burials of cremated corpses continued during this period.

It was also at this time that Stonehenge's builders connected the shrine to the surrounding countryside by building a wide avenue, about 1.75 miles long, to the nearby Avon River. The recently discovered mini-Stonehenge stands on the Avon's banks where the road meets the river.

The Stonehenge road's first straight stretch is oriented with the rising sun on Midsummer's day and the setting sun on Midwinter's day. Stonehenge is built at the exact latitude where these points stand 180 degrees opposite each other.

Less than three miles north on the Avon River lies the Durrington Walls site, the largest henge in England. Unlike Stonehenge, this is a residential site where migratory peoples lived during the winter months. It was occupied primarily during Stonehenge's third phase. If estimations prove correct, it is the biggest Neolithic village in Britain identified to date.

Durrington Walls' inhabitants connected the village to the river by a short avenue, built in a manner similar to Stonehenge's road. This straight avenue runs in the direction of the sunrise on Midwinter's day.

Professor Michael Parker Pearson of Sheffield University, one of the leaders of the Stonehenge Riverside Project, hypothesizes that the three sites were connected by an annual burial ritual. At dawn on Midwinter's morning, he suggests, the corpse of a high-status person would be carried in procession down the avenue from the Durrington Walls settlement towards the river. Symbolically, it would be carried toward the rising sun.

The corpse would then be placed on a boat and ferried south to "mini-Stonehenge." Here, the corpse would be cremated during the day.

Toward dusk, the ashes would be gathered and another procession would bear them to Stonehenge itself. As the sun began to set, the parade would proceed directly toward it, symbolizing the final presence of the dead individual on Earth. As the light faded, the ashes would be buried. The day's procession symbolized the deceased's movement from the land of the living to the realm of the dead.

Thanks to the ongoing archaeological excavations, our understanding of Stonehenge and its surroundings is beginning to move from baseless speculation to explanations founded on solid information concerning its own time. In coming years, the newly discovered and analyzed data will lead to further knowledge of this important, ancient site.

Note: The discovery of "mini-Stonehenge" was announced by National Geographic News at: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/091005-mini-stonehenge-bluestonehenge-bluehenge.html. Other useful information appears at: http://www.shef.ac.uk/archaeology/research/stonehenge/intro.html and http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A9568128.