Where have you been?

Sorry! Been plugging away at work, which has involved a consuming piece about Bible translation and an interview with a septuagenarian astronaut. But stay tuned...

First Came Love...

This weekend I took a much-needed trip upstate, to the mountains, and in the process somehow ended up in the front row of a budding romance between two good friends. I know you've been there - potentially great, potentially awkward, right? What am I gonna do.

Complicating matters a little, one of them is a Muslim and the other one is a Mormon. At least, they were born into those clothes. Their respective lives as urban professionals, have sort of softened the edges I think. Still, cause for some 'splainin.

Summertime in the Catskills. Barbecues and trips to Woodstock. But for me, one of the highlights of the weekend happened on the porch - an all-out discussion of polygamy. Both of my friends had relatives in the not so distant past with plural marriages or multiple wives. And I wondered aloud how long it would be before we saw polygamy was having its moment of cultural acceptance.

I mean, why not? It's a heck of a lot more scriptural than gay marriage, and most of the objections to gay marriage seem to be based in scripture. The polygamous marriages among the jewish patriarchs - Abraham, Moses and David - seem to do OK, and polygamy is not illegal in Israel. Though I don't know a ton about the history among Christians, Wikipedia cheekily says that Martin Luther was a proponent.

Islam, of course, allows a man to take up to four wives, if he can provide for them materially and emotionally. Mormons officially only embraced polygamy between 1852 and 1890, but the practice lingers on, according to an article in the Salt Lake Tribune yesterday:

It only takes Sunday brunch to see this is a different kind of family. Four waffle makers work nonstop. Three dozen eggs are whipped and scrambled. Places are set for 25 — for “Gary,” his three wives and their 21 children....

Gary, 38, traces his polygamous heritage on one side in an unbroken chain back to Joseph Smith’s era. All of his wives grew up in plural families — and loved it.

“We were never alone or lonely,” said Valerie, who has 40 full and half siblings. “I didn’t even understand what that meant.”

They attended public schools, were doted on by their multiple mothers and grew up with the freedom to decide whether to embrace plural marriage.

Gary is the only one of his 18 siblings to do so. In Kaye’s family, three of 31 children entered plural marriages. About half of Vicki and Valerie’s siblings are in polygamous relationships.

As teenagers, they all dated in and outside their culture. Gary was 18 when he realized “I wasn’t going to be fulfilled [in monogamy]. There was more for me, not in terms of women, but what I wanted out of life.”

Gary even switched his college major from history to business, a more lucrative career for someone with plans for a big family.

The women describe a similar path to plural marriage, one that came after a “bunch of fun” dating but also serious reflection and prayer.

The tone the writer takes is easy and earnest. Oh, the joys and tribulations! They're just like us, except for the $1000 dollar grocery bill and a footlong "honey-do" list!

It reminds me of a piece that Time just ran about the accelerated pace of the acceptance of homosexuality - how the gay rights movement has covered ground faster because of the racial struggles of the Civil rights movement. There's a template in place. Friendly images in the media, and appeal to American equality. Wonder if polygamy will cover this ground?

And Once Again: The Virtual Church

In case you missed it:

"In Second Life, the online virtual universe that is attracting 3.7 million users, you can light virtual candles for Shabbat, teleport to a Buddhist temple or consult the oracle for some divine guidance.

Second Life is a three-dimensional, online game produced by San Francisco-based Linden Lab in which participants create a virtual world, buy and sell land and products and interact in all the usual ways.

Now religion has a growing presence there, too, users say, and religious diversity and participation have skyrocketed since last June, when basic membership to Second Life became free."

Thus begins the feature story in the Washington Post about Second life, and the role that religion plays therein.

It's a good story. Does it sound familiar? It might. Cathy Grossman over at USA today wrote an awesome version of the same story back in April. Then Stephanie Simon wrote an eerily similar piece in the LA Times. Now the Post is running the same story, courtesy of Shona Crabtree at Religion News Service. Yeah, Second Life is interesting, and a few tech-savvy people of faith are making a mark. But I mean, c'mon. Three times in two months?

And Cathy Grossman, who in my opinion does the most justice to the story, gives us this reason to scratch our heads:

"Statistically, denominational religion is still a speck in Second Life. In a typical week in late March, 451,000 avatars, nearly 9% of all registered users, visited Second Life. Leaders of Christian, Jewish and Muslim sites estimate about 1,000 avatars teleport into churches, synagogues or mosques on a regular basis. Hundreds more list themselves with Buddhist, pagan, Wiccan and other groups."

A thousand people get this kind of coverage? They must feel like the New Hampshire farmers under the old primary system.

What's so irresistible about writing this story?

There's the sexy technology angle - whenever old traditions venture into new media, that's a slam-dunk. There are the crazy outliers - the Second Life church of Elvis, the Church of Burgertime, etcetera - which are good for color. And the counter-story is going to write itself - in the end, just find a pastor or a convenient academic to say, "This is all interesting, but it's just a passing fad."

But there are interesting aspects to the story. And if - Elvis forbid - there's one more colorful feature about Second Life and religion in our future, I hope it addresses them.

America is a culture of increasingly private spirituality. The "unchurched," the "spiritual but not religious," are the fastest growing religious demographic in the country. People are finding their religious information and identies outside of the traditional church/community cultures.

As I blogged about a few months ago, a Danish researcher found that internet hits for "God" are outstripping internet searches for "sex." A tantalizing combination of these facts is this: Americans are turning away from churches and towards... the internet. I think this is one of the stories of the decade that isn't really being written. The Gutenberg Bible brought a democracy of information that shook the religious order of its day to its foundations. Is the same thing happening with the Web?

That might be a story worth reading three times.

Sex and the Modern Muslim

One of the few positive upshots of the President's clash with the Muslim world has been the education of the west about Islam. What do they believe? What is the Hajj? What is the difference between Sunni and Shiite? Why the hijab?

The Muslim education of America broke fresh ground this week. Yes, read further for the breaking news about sex and the the world's second-largest religion.

First off, Salon.com ran a massive piece about an Egyptian sex advisor. Here are some highlights:

[Dr. Heba] Kotb [pictured], the first licensed sexologist in Egypt, believes that sex is a gift Allah intended for humans; her divine mission is to make sure that they're enjoying it. Every week, viewers throughout the Muslim world flood her station with calls, hoping to have their most embarrassing and intimate questions answered on-air. All sorts of sexual queries are allowed, with one snag: Sexual relations outside of marriage are haram (prohibited by Islam) and not open to discussion. In fact, Kotb, a wife and mother of three, draws her sex advice directly from the Quran. According to hertextual analysis, the Prophet Mohammed encouraged frequent sex and foreplay and decreed that female pleasure is, um, actually kind of important.

And from the Q&A with Kotb. Both surprising...

Q:Is the Quran concerned with female pleasure?
A:Yes, it is. The biggest chapter of the Quran is called "The Cow." There is a verse talking about the woman's rising pleasure. It's an order to the man to give the woman the right to have pleasure -- it orders the man to give the woman foreplay and also to get the wife to have sex repeatedly and to not wait for the woman to ask because sometimes she's too shy to ask.

Q:Why is sex such a controversial topic in the Muslim world?
A:It's culture -- it's not Islam, whatsoever. Islam is a very liberal and progressive religion. It invites people to have sex, of course within the marital frame. Prophet Mohammed never showed any offense to anyone asking about sexuality. On the contrary, he responded to every single question. The thing is, the culture overwhelms this.

..and not so surprising...

Q:You have encouraged women to explore their bodies -- does that include masturbation?
A:The woman, by means of instinct, does not need masturbation. She's not like the man
whatsoever. It's not a call of nature for her. So that's why I'm not very sympathetic with young women and girls choosing to masturbate. They're ruining their sexual future -- a woman has to remain blank until she gets married and by masturbating she's forming her sexuality.

Q:What are your feelings on homosexuality?
A:[Laughs] Well, I have a very famous opinion about homosexuality. I'm totally against
homosexuality being considered a gene or natural. It's a sin -- they're just like the alcoholics and the drug-takers. I'm also the reason for a lot of patients to have been cured -- so, no, I can't believe that it is natural.

Also on the Muslim battle of the sexes, the NY Times ran an article by Michael Slackman yesterday about the proliferation of fatwas in Egypt. What's a fatwa?

...fatwas, or religious edicts, are the bridge between the principles of their faith and modern life. They are supposed to be issued by religious scholars who look to the Koran and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad for guidance. While the more sensational pronouncements grab attention, the bulk of the fatwas involve the routine of daily life. In Egypt alone, thousands are issued every month....

Technically, the fatwa is nonbinding and recipients are free to look elsewhere for a better ruling. In a faith with no central doctrinal authority, there has been an explosion of places offering fatwas, from Web sites that respond to written queries, to satellite television shows that take phone calls, to radical and terrorist organizations that set up their own fatwa committees.

And what are the topics up for discussion? According to one sheik in the business...

...the vast majority of the visitors have asked [him] for help with their marriages.

“The greatest ill in society I observe is the lack of trust and knowledge between husband and wife,” he said. “A man will think masculinity is being a dictator.”

At 11:30 one recent morning, a young woman entered and sat in the chair opposite him. She held her son, about 4, on her knee as she explained that her husband had married another woman (four wives are allowed in Islam) and that the new wife was only 18. “He said he would spend five nights with her and one with me,” the woman complained. “Can I ask for a divorce?”

Under Islam, the sheik advised, all wives must be treated equally. So if she could not work the matter out “peacefully, then yes, she could ask for a divorce.”

That was her fatwa.

The fatwa that made it into the lede was one that has caused recent embarrasment in Egypt - one scholar wrote that because "there had been instances in the time of the prophet when adult women breast-fed adult men in order to avoid the need for women to wear a veil in front of them. 'Breast-feeding an adult puts an end to the problem of the private meeting, and does not ban marriage,' wrote the scholar, Izat Atiyah. 'A woman at work can take off the veil or reveal her hair in front of someone whom she breast-fed.'

And, reaching a little farther into the archives, there was a great piece last October in Der Spigel about sex and Islam. One of the most interesting bits was how the Web is changing a world that had erected strict taboos around sex.

The Internet is a refuge for hidden desires, even though it offers only virtual relief. Google Trends, a new service offered by the search engine, provides a way to demonstrate how difficult it is to banish forbidden yearnings from the heads of Muslims. By entering the term "sex" into Google Trends, one obtains a ranked list of cities, countries and languages in which the term was entered most frequently. According to Google Trends, the Pakistanis search for "sex" most often, followed by the Egyptians. Iran and Morocco are in fourth and fifth, Indonesia is in seventh and Saudi Arabia in eighth place. The top city for "sex" searches is Cairo. When the terms "boy sex" or "man boy sex" are entered (many Internet filters catch the word "gay"), Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are the first four countries listed.

All grist for international understanding and diplomacy. Maybe America has more in common with the Muslim world than we thought.

God's Green Earth

Please forgive the lapse - been getting dental work done and haven't felt up to snuff.

While I was getting my mouth renovated, the Vatican was also having a little bit of construction. Maybe you caught this AP story on Tuesday:

Some of the Holy See buildings will start using solar energy, reflecting Pope Benedict XVI's worry about squandering the Earth's resources, a Vatican engineer said Tuesday.

The roof of the Paul VI auditorum will be redone next year, with its cement panels replaced with photovoltaic cells to convert sunlight into electricity, engineer Pier Carlo Cuscianna said.

Holy greenhouse gasses! It seems like a pretty bold statement by Rome, when other Christians - especially our homegrown evangelicals - are deeply divided on what exactly God wants us to do with the planet. Later in the article, it seems that Pope Benedict XVI was working to phrase environmental stewardship as a poverty issue:

A feasibility study for the planned conversion, published recently in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, found the conversion made economic sense. It quoted from Benedict's speeches defending the environment and noted that his predecessor, the late John Paul II, also championed the safeguarding of natural resources.

Cuscianna recalled a speech in which Benedict lamented "the unbalanced use of energy" in the world.

Last summer, Benedict called on Christians to unite to take "care of creation without squandering its resources and sharing them in a convivial manner." He said lifestyle choices were damaging the environment and making "the lives of poor people on Earth especially unbearable."

And what's going on here at home with Christians and the environment? Heck if I know. As you may know, the evangelical bloc is becoming somewhat divided on this issue. But how divided? At the passing of Jerry Falwell last month, all sorts of stories came out which seemed to imply that Falwell's "old guard" with its solidly right-wing issues was passing into the sunset, and an openness to traditionally lefty topics like poverty and the environment was again on the table.

Quoting at length from the NY Times article on the subject from May 21:

The evangelical movement, however, is clearly evolving. Members of the baby boomer generation are taking over the reins, said D. G. Hart, a historian of religion. The boomers, he said, are markedly different in style and temperament from their predecessors and much more animated by social justice and humanitarianism. Most of them are pastors, as opposed to the heads of advocacy groups, making them more reluctant to plunge into politics to avoid alienating diverse congregations.

"I just don't see in the next generation of so-called evangelical leaders anyone as politically activist-minded" as Mr. Falwell, the Rev. Pat Robertson or James C. Dobson, he said....

Mr. [Rick] Warren, along with Mr. [Bill] Hybels, 55, and several dozen other evangelical leaders, signed a call to action last year on climate change. The initiative brought together more mainstream conservative Christian leaders with prominent liberal evangelicals, such as the Rev. Jim Wallis of Sojourners and the Rev. Ronald J. Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action, who have long championed progressive causes. Notably absent from the list of signatories were several old lions of the Christian right, some of whom were openly critical of the effort: Mr. Falwell; Mr. Robertson, 77; and Mr. Dobson, 71, founder of Focus on the Family.

Another evangelical standard-bearer who did not sign the statement was Charles W. Colson, 75, founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries, who said in an interview that there were many environmental groups behind the statement that were hostile to evangelical causes.

So - there you have the issues in a nutshell. New evangelical leaders are pastors of growing congregations and may want to avoid divisive issues. There is concern about who you're in bed with if you vote green, and how likely they are to vote along with other core issues. And not mentioned here, the confusing matter of the apocalypse - some believe that God would not allow the earth to be destroyed before it's time, and that global warming is a red herring issue.

For more resources, here are websites of the two major contenders:

The Evangelical Environmental Network, who have been actively trying to promote saving the environment and "creation care.

The Interfaith Stewardship Alliance, supported by James Dobson and others, who think the current thinking of environmental activists is misleading to Christians, and that "dominion" takes place over "stewardship."

Makes my head spin a little. For some more passionate, in-depth coverage of this complicated issue, catch the daily wisdom of this blogger: The Evangelical Ecologist.

MUNGIKI UPDATE

An unfortunate update in the Mungiki story in Kenya. From the BBC:

Police in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, have shot and killed 21 people in a gun battle with suspected members of the banned Mungiki sect.

Police say their officers engaged "a gang of thugs" resisting an operation to recover firearms stolen from three policemen who were killed on Monday.

Several weapons are said to have been recovered and some policemen injured.

Last week, the president warned Mungiki activities would no longer be tolerated and ordered a shoot-to-kill policy.

The security forces in Kenya have spent the past three months trying to crack down on criminal elements in the Mungiki - a sect which it is claimed runs an extensive extortion operation and is reported to have connections high up in Kenya politics.

Stay Tuned.

Mungiki Rising

It's no news that Americans have a blind spot just about the size of Africa. I'm as guilty as anyone else. But I've started to follow the political situation in Kenya, and the inextricable part the Mungiki sect are playing in it.

Over the weekend, members of the sect allegedly killed - make that allegedly beheaded - a bus driver and conductor in the Murang'a district of Nairobi. More from Reuters:

Members of Kenya's outlawed Mungiki gang beheaded two more people on Saturday, local media said, a day after the president vowed to crack down on those behind a wave of violence in the volatile run-up to elections...

On Friday, President Mwai Kibaki pledged to hunt down Mungiki members just hours after five earlier murders rocked central Kenya, including one in his own constituency. The gang was also blamed for the murders of six people found decapitated last month.

Who are the Mungiki? A gang? A religious group? An insurgency? For the answer, you have to go back to colonial Africa, when Kenya was under British rule. A predominant tribe in the region - the Kikuyu - were responsible for the Mau Mau uprising, which lasted from 1952 to 1960. While it did not overthrow British rule, it paved the way for Kenyan independence in 1963.

The origins of the Mungiki movement are shrouded in secrecy, but tied to the mythos of the Mau Mau uprising, and the Kikuyu people. There's a good sum-up on BBC News:

One theory has it that Mungiki was formed in 1988 with the aim of toppling the government of former President Daniel arap Moi. The sect was, at one time, associated with Mwakenya, an underground movement formed in 1979 to challenge the former Kanu regime.

Other reports say Mungiki was founded in 1987 by some young students in central Kenya to reclaim political power and wealth which its members claim was stolen from the Kikuyu.

Its leadership claims to have two million members around the country and to have infiltrated government offices, factories, schools and the armed forces - members who would not necessarily sport [identifying] dreadlocks but support and finance the sect behind the scenes.

The group has been blamed for racketeering and intimidation. There's basis for calling this a political opposition group. But is it a religion? Here are some of their reported beliefs (again, hats off to BBC):

They pray as they face Mount Kenya, which they believe to be the home of their God, known as Ngai.

And their name means "a united people".

Their holy communion is tobacco-sniffing, their hairstyle that of the Mau Mau dreadlocks.

They are also carrying on the Mau Mau tradition of opposition to any Western influence in Kenya and have conservative attitudes towards womens' dress, and are advocates of forced female circumcision, according to some reports. Although the sect was outlawed in 2002, the size of the group today is most often cited to be in the millions.

The reasons for the recent violence are complicated, and include a hostility to the President Kibaki's current government, which has been rife with crime and corruption. Kibaki, who faces an uphill battle towards reelection this year, has tried to make the Mungiki the target of a "cleanup" effort - but with their underground practices, and popular support, they are turning this on its head, creating a shadow uprising of untold numbers.

It is a volatile situation, where religion and underground politics are threatening the stability of the country. Keep an eye out for Mungiki stories in the coming weeks - if you can find them.

Nuance from Brownback

Anyone catch this Op-Ed in the NY Times from Sam Brownback about evolution? Whether I disagree with it or not, I found it well-written and... strangely sweet.

"IN our sound-bite political culture, it is unrealistic to expect that every complicated issue will be addressed with the nuance or subtlety it deserves. So I suppose I should not have been surprised earlier this month when, during the first Republican presidential debate, the candidates on stage were asked to raise their hands if they did not “believe” in evolution. As one of those who raised his hand, I think it would be helpful to discuss the issue in a bit more detail and with the seriousness it demands..."

"The heart of the issue is that we cannot drive a wedge between faith and reason. I believe wholeheartedly that there cannot be any contradiction between the two. The scientific method, based on reason, seeks to discover truths about the nature of the created order and how it operates, whereas faith deals with spiritual truths. The truths of science and faith are complementary: they deal with very different questions, but they do not contradict each other because the spiritual order and the material order were created by the same God."

"People of faith should be rational, using the gift of reason that God has given us. At the same time, reason itself cannot answer every question. Faith seeks to purify reason so that we might be able to see more clearly, not less. Faith supplements the scientific method by providing an understanding of values, meaning and purpose. More than that, faith — not science — can help us understand the breadth of human suffering or the depth of human love. Faith and science should go together, not be driven apart."

Brownback goes on to explain his view more in depth: that episodes of evolution - "microevolution - may well have occurred, but that while he respects the progress of science he is unshaken in his belief of a "divine causality."

Brownback's views are of interest because he converted from evangelical protestant to Catholic in 2002. They reflect the current nuance in the Catholic church, which does not take a hard stand against evolution, and defers to scientists on things like the age of the earth and the fossil record (Cardinal Paul Poupard talks about the "permanent lesson" learned from bucking Galileo back in the 1600's). Very different from the six 24-hour day creationism proposed by those who see all Scripture as inerrant.

It would have been a blast to hear a full-blown theological argument up on the podium, but alas, we'll have to read about it in the papers.

UPDATE: The Onion just weighed in on where to draw the line between divine causality and microevolution - the Triassic period. I don't think this is going to help the Vatican but check it out for a chortle.

New from Pew: Israel in our Sights

In keeping with Tuesday's post, here's another breaking report from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Senior Editor Robert Ruby anticipates the 40-year anniversary of the six-day war next week with forty years of statistics about Israel.

Or at least, America's opinions about Israel. Not surprisingly, Americans have consistently supported Israelis over the Palestinians, with minor fluctuations, for as long as the organization has been keeping statistics. Here's a sweet graphic for you:



Notice that it starts in 1967 with 4 percent of Americans supporting the Palestinians and 45 percent supporting Israel. The only time the opinion field comes close to evening out is in 1982 with the invasion of Lebanon.

America is nearly alone in this unwavering support, according to the report. In Europe, only Germany comes close to the same enthusiasm, and in some European countries (Great Britain, Spain) sympathy falls squarely with the Palestinians (in France the vote was tied).

Why? Of course America is home to the largest population of Jewish people outside of Israel. But Ruby doesn't see that as significant - only 2% of Americans identify as Jewish. However,

... support for Israel is especially high among white evangelical Protestants. They are also more likely than other Americans to identify their religious beliefs as the single largest influence in their support. In addition, substantial majorities of white evangelicals believe that Israel was given by God to the Jews (69%) and that Israel helps fulfill the New Testament prophecy of the second coming (59%). That greater support for Israel is also true of Hispanic evangelicals, compared with Hispanic Catholics and secular Hispanics.

Ah, the complicated alliance between evangelicals and the state of Israel.

In case you missed it, the NY Times did a piece last November following this complicated pas de deux during the last invasion of Lebanon (Israel 52%, Palestine 11%). "Many conservative Christians say they believe that the president’s support for Israel fulfills a biblical injunction to protect the Jewish state, which some of them think will play a pivotal role in the second coming."

For more on the endtimes prophecies, Timothy Weber wrote a book in 2004 called On the Road to Armageddon. Take a look at his story in Beliefnet for the highlights.

Allah in America

I finally got to look at the Pew Forum survey of American Muslims that came out last week. The picture it painted was a community "largely assimilated, happy with their lives, and moderate."

The blog Get Religion bemoaned the PC treatment of the survey received. But the stories I remember reading, like the one in the San Francisco Chronicle last Wednesday, stressed the one most disturbing finding:

About 1 in 4 young adult American Muslims says suicide bombings against civilian targets "to defend Islam" can be justified rarely, sometimes or often, according to a new Pew Research Center poll -- a finding that disturbed American Muslim leaders and thinkers across the country.

"It's something that the Muslim community should be aware of -- it's a phenomenon we should be concerned about," said Farid Senzai, a Fremont resident and director of research for the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, which helped shape the questions on the survey. "It is very troubling."

Writer Ali Eteraz had an interesting post about this in the Huffington Post, and wondered if this was because of how the question was phrased. Take a look. But he also wonders if there should be increased oversight in the Muslim community for information that enters mosques - where, bucking the demographic trends of the rest of America, young people are more likely to attend than their parents: "50% of those under 30 go to a mosque at least once a week (presumably the Friday prayer), while only 35% of those above 30 do so."

This alarming fact aside, the numbers show a Muslim population that is prosperous and comfortably American.

Prosperity. I often cynically wonder how long it will be until the deep schism that now exists between America and the Muslim world is smoothed over by global economics. I did a piece last winter about International Atomic Energy Association Mohamed ElBaradei, and the specter of the "Muslim bomb." Prosperity, he said, was the way forward on the dangerous road of a nuclear Middle East - Muslim terrorism is not theological but economic.

Whether that's true or not, I am more optimistic about our business progress than our diplomatic progress over there. Last Thursday, I had a friend camp out on my sofa. He was on a temporary furlough from the middle east paper where he has worked the business beat for the last year. He's spent time in UAE and Iran following the boom of the building and tech industries. We had dinner with another friend who just attended a bio-research conference, where investors from Dubai painted a very attractive picture for western projects.

There is a pro-business strain in Islam that is moving this along and which I would love to read more about. The prophet Muhammed was a successful businessman - he met his wife Khadija when she took him on as an agent. The Quran states that "God has made business lawful for you" and does not uphold the ideal of poverty taught in the Christian gospels, for example, but a fair economy in which alms are mandatory and merchants are the "trustees of God."

American as apple pie.

And in that spirit - check out this recent article in the Christian Science Monitor about Islamic investment funds.

Apocalypto

Did anyone catch the surreal moment where Castro called Bush "apocalyptic"?

Here's the scoop from the AP (courtesy of USA Today):

Fidel Castro called George W. Bush "an apocalyptic person" on Friday, hours after the U.S. president signed a bill that will pay for military operations in Iraq without setting a timetable for troop withdrawal.

In his latest comments as he convalesces from intestinal surgery, the 80-year-old Cuban leader accused Bush of "faking rationality" and manipulating U.S. public opinion.

OK - "faking rationality" is kind of clever. But "apocalyptic"? Isn't that imagery kind of... religious? Has Castro seen the light of the end days? I blogged here about the possibility of the new Latin American fusion of Catholicism and socialism, as championed by former altar-boy Hugo Chavez. Castro seems to have given Chavez his seal of approval - maybe Chavez has returned the favor with some Bible study?

Also on this subject - the Vatican responded to accusations this week from Chavez and others that the early days of Christianity in the New World weren't all wine and roses:

The pope did not apologize, as some indigenous and Latin American leaders have demanded. However, he did say that it was impossible to ignore the dark "shadows" and "unjustified crimes" that accompanied the evangelization of the New World by Roman Catholic priests in the 15th and 16th Centuries.

Chavez said in a televised statement, "How can he say that the evangelization wasn't imposed if they arrived here with arms and entered with blood, lead and fire?" The comments that incited the fierce opposition from Chavez:

Indigenous populations, [the pope] said at the time, welcomed their European colonizers because they were "secretly longing" for Christ "without realizing it." Conversion to Christianity "did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbus cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture," he added.

The pope made no mention of forced conversions, epidemic illnesses, massacres, enslavement and other abuses that most historians agree accompanied colonization.

The interesting thing here is that Chavez seems to be trying to bring along the Catholic Church in his view of the socialist future of Latin America (as opposed to Castro's more party-line atheism), but it looks like there are limits to his politicking there. Also interesting - maybe more so - that the Vatican responded to his critiques quickly and with surprising sensitivity to remarks by someone the rest of the world mostly sees as an enterprising demagogue.

A rocky beginning to a beautiful friendship?

Homegrown

This month saw the publication of a spiritual biography, not of a person, but of a place. That place is none other than Esalen, the uber-crunchy, hot-tub dippin' spiritual think tank of the '60's and '70's. Nestled in the highlands of Big Sur, the Esalen Institute - which was the birthplace and permanent sanctuary of the New Age - is arguably as responsible for a shift in how Americans think of religion as the Second Great Awakening of the 1800's.

Or so author Jeffrey Kripal would have you believe.

No one's going to argue that what went on in the 1960's changed the way we think about religion. The upheavals of the east-west, body-mind head trips of the time went so deep, that now almost a third of Americans now believe in astrology, and over a quarter believe in reincarnation (according to a Harris poll). But how much was due to Esalen?

I haven't read the book. NY Times reviewer Diane Johnson has this to say:

...this long book... advances its own theory that Esalen and New Age culture more generally are furthering the evolution of religion in America, and perhaps worldwide, toward “no religion,” by which he seems to mean not secularism so much as a sort of transcendent fusion of Eastern and other religions to the negation of all existing ones and a resolution of the Cartesian mind-body split. Despite some turgid sentences (“It is simply to locate their important critiques in a more nuanced social context and problematize their sometimes simplistic readings”), Kripal makes many sympathetic points about the present spiritual state of America, even if his argument gets somewhat lost in the more lurid details of suicides, strange deaths and amazing paths to enlightenment.

The book is most startling when describing Esalen’s connection to world events. According to Kripal’s sometimes rather infatuated account, it was Esalen that “enlisted the support of” Susan Sontag and Norman Mailer in helping to bring the Soviet Writers’ Union into International PEN. It was also of use to the C.I.A., which spent a lot of money looking into ESP, with experiments involving “the laser physicist turned C.I.A. psychic spy turned American mystic” Russell Targ, who gave parapsychology lectures at Esalen. (He would later give a demonstration to the Soviet Academy of Sciences as well.) Murphy’s wife, Dulce, Kripal claims, “was with” Jimmy Carter when he announced the boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics; and through their extensive involvement with American-Soviet citizen exchanges (an outgrowth of their interest in Russian mysticism), the Murphys became friends of Arthur Hartman, Reagan’s ambassador to Russia, whom they persuaded to try to “melt” cold war relations through some “hot-tub diplomacy.”

But there are also accusations that Esalen, which fostered the growth of spiritual trends like gestalt therapy and Rolfing, was a just playground for salacious intellectuals. Diplomats in the hot tub nonwithstanding.

Johnson doesn't help when she recalls her own visit to the research institute in the '70's:

This reviewer also spent a weekend at Esalen in the early 1970s... encounter groups and body work (mostly involving a sort of nude round-robin massage) stick in my memory, along with rather good food, emphasizing groats and the like. It was terrific fun, and it was there, clambering down the rickety wooden steps to the glorious beach below, that we surprised an elderly, naked Henry Miller, who modestly put his hat over his lap at the approach of two equally embarrassed ladies with beach bags and towels.

Kripal did an interview in the San Francisco Chronicle about the book. In response to the accusations of elightenment over tea leaf massages, he has this to say about Esalen's role in our larger American story:

When I look at American religious history, I see a long history of puritanism, of Christian fundamentalism. It's been there from Day One. But I also see what some historians would call American metaphysical religion. I see people who are not religiously intolerant, people who have very open worldviews and who are very interested in metaphysical dimensions but are not literal about it. It's the latter stream, the metaphysical stream that's open to other cultures, and particularly those of Asia, from all the way back to Emerson and Thoreau and further back.

I hope that when we think of America and define it, we don't forget about that metaphysical stream and we don't see it as just another form of fundamentalism or nationalism. But I'm not arguing that that's where we are at. Not at all. In some ways, the book for me was a cry of the heart over the state of our culture in our country. It's an attempted intervention. Maybe not a very effective one, but nevertheless an attempt.

You can find Kripal's book here.

What HE woulda done... (continued)

As I blogged on Monday, Kirk Cameron and his friends are all-out for saving souls, and they have staked the claim on their site that they "seek and save the lost the way Jesus did." I wondered what that meant, since there were no fish for the multitudes.

Well, weighing in on that exact question this week, a few words from mega-pastor Rick Warren, blockbuster author of the Purpose-Driven Life and leader of Saddleback Church in California. In talking about the huge success of his Saddleback empire, he wrote this weekend, "Jesus is our ultimate model for ministry," and offered a few tips on what that meant. I won't take it too much to task, since it was published in the Christian Post and is less a piece of journalism than a pep talk for pastors, but it is interesting to see what the newest perennial talking head says on how Jesus walked the evangelization walk.

Not surprisingly for the shrewd business mind of Lake Forest, he credits Jesus with what amounts to a Power Point presentation. The first five steps: Identification, Motivation, Dedication, Concentration, Delegation. Here's the more on the first step:

If we’re ever going to be effective in ministry for Jesus Christ, we must know who we are. That involves knowing our strengths and weaknesses – and knowing our limitations. Identify who you are – your S.H.A.P.E. (spiritual gifts, heart, abilities, personality, and experiences). That’s why we spend a lot of time talking about S.H.A.P.E. at Saddleback. (See C.L.A.S.S. 301 for more information.)

C.L.A.S.S., you see, stands for "Christian Life and Service Seminar." That's the four-tiered spiritual growth (tm) series. Cause you know, growth in the life of the spirit of God is like a... well, like a baseball diamond. Here's a graphic to clear things up:



The long and short of it: Jesus was big on acronyms, catchy graphics and four hour seminars (lunch included).

I read the Bible a few times a week. I personally love watching this rich material get updated, reinterpreted and shaped to fit Christians around the world. Jesus as CEO? Sure, why not. The material continues to inspire. It finds new life.

But claiming to be preaching in the style of Jesus has to, objectively, hold you up in some kind of spotlight, right? I mean, it's not hard to characterize the MO that's really at work in those pages. From his attacks on the moneychangers and the Pharisees, to his befriending the prostitutes and tax collectors, Jesus is the champion of humility. And he says that there are miracles possible for those who have faith.

And beyond that he spread the message in the same way that we spread the message today. To borrow a venerated phrase from the history of journalism - he comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable. Basta. Now, who's doing that?

The Way of the Master

How, oh, HOW can I have missed the boat on one of the stories of the decade - the online ministry of former Growing Pains star Kirk Cameron?

The organization he heads is called "The Way of the Master," which sounds kind of spacey New Age, but isn't. In fact, it's a pretty hard-core hell-and-repentance ministry with flashy videos and a kick-ass website. Think Chick publication gone hi-tech. Under their title are the words: "Seek and save the lost the way Jesus did."

Healing the sick and raising the dead? Challenging the pharisees of your day? No, Cameron and company lay a premium on making "the lost" realize that the God of Abraham is no pushover, and though you may feel like a good person, you'll probably be spending eternity in hell.

It's a message that the former child star delivers with his goofy yet earnest charm. His ministry partner Ray Comfort, though lacking the sass of Tracey Gold, makes up for it all with a blustery and knowing Aussie accent. Neither of the two have M Div's.

The videos made me uncomfortable. It wasn't the hard line message. I think they're in line with a strong Christian tradition there. It was the pretty awful reliance on logical argument when witnessing, the embarassing spectacle of their Christian apologetics. Watch this clip - Comfort explains intelligent design by showing how much more perfect a banana is than a can of Tab:

CLIP

I was almost convinced. Banana - three ridges. My grasp... wait, I count FIVE ridges. What? And what about mangoes? Much tastier, but clearly not kosher in the eyes of God. And pomegranites - forbidden fruit!

Anyways, isn't the image of a man holding a banana a really bad one for arguing against the spectre of evolution?

A little bit of internet research shows that the banana was probably domesticated by man in Papua New guinea 5,000 years ago, and further genetically modified in the modern age. But that's not really the point. I know there are some who disagree, but logic seems like an awkward road to faith. There is a temptation to fight the perceived threat of science with scientific language. It just doesn't end well - you can see it here. The "masters" are chock-a-block full of these startling mini-arguments. Great on the street, but you get a three card monte feel as they walk away and they fall apart.

In any case. The two were on Nightline a year ago. Catch up on their videos and website for a look at a new face of evangelical outreach.

UPDATE: Yahoo News published a piece about Cameron about a week after this post. Check it out here. Here's the kicker:

Cameron says he'd love to do non-religious films and TV again, but at times it's difficult to convince producers that while he has found Jesus, he hasn't lost his sense of humor.

The Shintonet

Check out this piece from UPI yesterday about the rise in practice of Shintoism in Japan.

"We see more people coming here," said a priest at the Meiji Shrine in the middle of Tokyo. "We see more weddings, more people bringing their babies for blessings, more requests for prayers to be rid of a curse or to prosper in business, more people taking part in festivals such as shichi-go-san," in which children of ages 7, 5 or 3 are feted.

There is some controversy over whether the rise of a modern, prosperous technological democracy sees a spike in secularization follow in its wake. Examples in favor: Europe and Australia. On the other hand: our great nation.

I know almost nothing about Japan's religious life in the 21st century. The article talks about how Shintoism, the ancient religion tied to the very land for millennia, is still recovering from the bad associations of World War II (the Allies mandated a break between church and state in 1945). But Shintoism is on the rise, and part of this is due to.. "a boost from the internet."

As a professor of mine used to say, "interesting if true." Me, I'm inclined to believe it. I've blogged about the popularity of the Hindu site Saranam.com, where you can order puja's from half a world away, and about pastors whose major outreach is through the 'net. In a story I wrote a few years ago, a source told me that the first dedicated discussion board on the proto-net - ever - was about religion (the religion was paganism).

As anyone of my generation will agree, there is nothing as gorgeously anarchistic, democratic or open market as the internet. It has been my particular fascination to watch how religion has fared here. The answer? Like a fish to water. As the piece on Saranam mentioned, there are now as many Google hits for "God" as there are for "sex."

Just as Gutenberg's Bible unleashed a terrifying but rejuvenating flood of information about religion into people' own hands, spawning heresies and revolts and interpretations galore, the internet is not quashing what people believe, but opening cracks that are letting it sprout in a million directions.

I am hugely optimistic about this. Call me crazy.

You can check out the site for Meiji shrine here.

The Shadow of Falwell

I have been resisting the urge to blog about Falwell. I have. I've resisted even though the reverend has been in my mind constantly since I read about his death yesterday at age 73. I've read a dozen stories about Falwell in the last 12 hours, from the secular and Christian media. Friends and foes. No one is short on opinions. Do you really need to hear mine?

The man is not getting an easy ride into the sunset of memory. I don't think I've read a story that didn't refer to his inflammatory preaching: that the Supreme Court was wrong to desegregate; that John Lennon's music was responsible for his death; that 9/11 was a punishment for feminism and homosexuality. Those statements of his - some repented, others not - will be his legacy, as much as the conservative political movement he delivered to the republicans, built out of pious Americans.

But journalists have been holding back on the "warts and all" treament. Here's an interesting piece by Brian Montopoli about covering controversial figures like Falwell. The kind - and most common - take on the story has been to say how Falwell's influence had waned; that even though he spread hatred, he wasn't nearly as influential as you might think. From Rachel Zoll at the AP:

Many had already been looking beyond Falwell and his allies for new leaders when the pastor died. A 2004 poll for PBS's "Religion & Ethics Newsweekly" found that U.S. evangelicals had a lower regard for Falwell than for Pope John Paul II. Falwell became such a polarizing figure that his role in the 2004 Republican National Convention was limited to appearing at a closed-door rally for religious activists.

Falwell's remaining clout was concentrated in the Lynchburg school he founded, Liberty University, where thousands of young conservative Christians are being educated.

The kindest treatment I've seen so far was an odd piece at the Washington Post, a journalist's memory of meeting Falwell shortly after his famous 9/11 remarks. I'm quoting the piece at length - it's worth it. If Falwell had a mortal sin, it seems to me, that sin was arrogance. Imagine the reporter's surprise when he confronts Falwell about his remarks - and gets this response:

But as soon as I mentioned the issue -- I don't think I even managed to get a question out -- he fired back his answer:

"I misspoke."

Misspoke?

"I apologize for my September 13 comments because they were a complete misstatement of what I believe and what I've preached for nearly 50 years," he said. "Namely, I do not believe that any mortal knows when God is judging or not judging someone or a nation. . . . It was a pure misstatement, unintentional, and I apologize for it uncategorically."

Misstatement? I muttered. Wasn't it a rather lengthy thing to dismiss as a misstatement?

"About 35 seconds," he said. "I think somebody said it was 37 seconds."

I was stunned. Reporters dream of asking a question so good that some big shot is forced to admit that he's completely full of baloney, but it never actually happens. They always have an answer. But Falwell was capitulating, confessing. Somehow, though, I didn't feel triumphant. I felt as if he were Muhammad Ali and I were George Foreman and he was doing the verbal equivalent of the rope-a-dope on me.

I looked at my list of questions and asked: What does it mean to lift the curtain of protection?

"That was part of the misstatement," he said. "I have no way of knowing when or if God would lift the curtain of protection."

Did God lift the curtain around Pearl Harbor? I asked.

"My misstatement included assuming that I or any mortal would know when God is judging or not judging a nation," he said. "Therefore I don't know if God was judging America in 1941 or 1812 or on September 11, 2001."

I asked another of my questions and Falwell got peeved.

"I said I've misstated," he replied, "and all reasonable people have already accepted the apology and you're the first one that's challenged it."

By now, I was squirming. His abject surrender had made all my questions obsolete. I was on the verge of asking him, What's your favorite color? Instead, I managed to stammer out: Have you taken more heat on this than anything else in your career?

"Oh, no," he said. "As a matter of fact, most of the heat I've taken has not been because of the statement. It's from people who are upset that I apologized. Thousands of people of faith in America unfortunately agreed with the first statement. . . . They were incensed that I apologized."

He took a sip of diet cola and leaned back in his chair. He looked relaxed, maybe even a tad smug.

Humility to his Christian principles? Or political craftiness? That's the enigma of the man. If we're kind, we'll let the grace of that one moment - "I misspoke" - be his epitaph.

Rican Magnetism

Last week, a good article from David Van Biema in Time about upstart messiah Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda. Yup, the self-proclaimed "antichrist" from Puerto Rico who preaches a kind of apocaplyptic prosperity gospel (figure that one out), and whose followers sport "666" tattoos on their hands.

I blogged a few weeks ago about methodologies for separating the crackpots from the truly saved. An interesting stretch about this follows:

Thomas Tweed, Chair of the religion department at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and an expert in Miami's religious history, doubts, as do several other scholars, that de Jesus' renown will extend much beyond the Latino community unless he preaches more regularly in English or finds someone to do it for him. But then again, these days a phenomenon does not need to break out of the Latino world to be a force in the U.S. "The question people ask about new religions," he says, is 'is this just a silly group or is this a group we should be scared of?'"

He refuses to regard De Jesus as silly: Tweed is impressed with its use of Spanish language media and even YouTube. But at the same time, he thinks it is nothing to be afraid of. Technically, Tweed notes, Crecienda en Gracia is a cult, a small group in some tension with the world at large and organized around a single magnetic leader. But it is not a cult as understood in the popular sense: Jim Jones or the Branch Davidians, who in deep self-imposed isolation, honed a violent apocalyptic element that eventually led to murder or suicide. Those at last weekend's rally and throughout De Jesus' following, he says, do appear to believe we may be approaching the Millennium (or else why indulge in a Second Coming?), but they lack a fire-and-brimstone End Times scenario and their leader shows no appetite for isolation — or self-sacrifice, for that matter.

For Tweed, a cult is "a small group in some tension with the world at large and organized around a single magnetic leader," a definition broad enough to embrace Lubavich Hasids, early Christians and the Green Party. Or does Nader fall down on the "magnetic" front? But he seems to agree that by his definition, "cult" isn't really a "cult", not in the scary crackpot sense, anyway. Phew.

I like the mention of YouTube, and the place it has for disseminating the teachings of "marginal" figures - a personal fascination of mine. Just enter the word "sermon" for over 6,000 hits - from Palestinian to Presbyterian. You can catch some of the Latin Menace here (I can't embed - sorry):

CLIP ONE

CLIP TWO

Nothing in English yet, but I'll keep my eyes peeled for online transcripts. In the meanwhile, here is the (patchy) English portal page for Jesus Dos on the Web.

UPDATE: TURKEY

At the protests in Izmir, Turkey yesterday, citizens made the strongest outcry yet to keep the government secular. An estimated 1.5 MILLION people showed up - in trains, planes and automobiles:

Choking the highways and crammed onto ferries, hundreds of thousands of Turks streamed into this port city yesterday in an enormous show of opposition to the pro-Islamic ruling party, increasing pressure on the government ahead of early elections...."I am here to defend my country," said Yuksel Uysal, a teacher. "I am here to defend Ataturk's revolution.''

The elections are July 22. They are of monumental significance in measuring the viability of democratic and secular states in the Middle East - and in asking the question Ataturk tried to put to rest eighty years ago: can the church/state divide live in the Muslim World?

I have a friend at the AP desk in Istanbul. I also have a friend here in New York who leaves tomorrow on a missionary trip to Turkey with her Presbyterian church. Though neither of them are at these rallies, I keep thinking how they should be. We all should. A secular state is, as I've said, a tender thing.

Which raises the larger question - barring jumping on that ferry and holding up "Ataturk 4-Ever" signs, how does the West best support secular states abroad?

Elephant in the Room

Despite a pretty spectacular two weeks of protests and demonstrations - which involved chanting monks and live elephants - the new Thai government has made a move NOT to declare Buddhism the official state religion:

Police failed to persuade the monks, who were joined by hundreds of supporters, to leave the elephants at the city limits as they marched into the capital, leading to brief scuffles.

The march came a day after coup leader Gen. Sonthi Boonyaratglin backed the idea of recognizing Buddhism as the national religion, amid a worsening Islamic insurgency in the south.

The first draft of a new post-coup constitution, made public last week, retains the wording on the topic from Thailand's previous constitution, from 1997. It does not name Buddhism as the national religion, and says the state will protect all faiths.

The demonstrators had been plugging for official recognition, since they say Thailand's traditional faith is threatened by the growth of Islam in the region. A panel convened to discuss the endorsement today recommended against it (thanks WWRN). The country experienced a military coup on September 19 that ousted leader Thaksin Shinawatra, and the new government will put a revised constitution to public vote this fall.

By not declaring a state religion or state church, Thailand is joining the proud enlightenment tradition of "free market" religion, whose leading champion is of course... the Ukraine?

Well, that's according to Jose Casanova, who says that the Eastern European state has "the only European example of the denominational competitive market model developed in the U.S." The Ukraine accepts the competing presence of Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches, unlike the rest of the continent where one church is culturally dominant or faiths divide a country on geographic lines.

Who's Casanova? A sociologist who has written about the religious future of Europe for the European Commission and who uses words like "hegemonics" and "self-understandings." I ran across Casanova's ideas on ReligionWatch, which is worth a look if not the subscription fee (who pays for content anymore?).

Also making the church/state headlines, Turkish elections were canceled today , an upshot of the recent colossal hubbub about keeping the country secular. A week ago one million Turks, largely middle class, protested the candidacy of Abdullah Gul - who was suspected of having designs on the strong tradition of secularism in government the country has upheld since the 1920's.

Whether religion is a private or a public function, and whether or not that function should be enshrined by law, is a sore spot pretty much everywhere. That's the debate raging through these headlines. Does America have a state religion? Really good question to ask - and definitely the elephant in the room.

Question Five

At last, drawing this little interlude to a close. Thanks for your patience as I agonize over articulating where I'm coming from - and why that matters.

I toyed around with a lot of questions to finish up with: What gives me hope? How do I pray? What's the worst sin I can think of? What's happening to the world? All good - but as I thought about what I'd like to know about religion journalists I read, one question kept coming to mind.

Who asked you?

I mean, seriously - who asked you?

There are just pitfalls in talking about religion, for anybody. It's awkward. The subject is personal, charged, emotional. Hardly anyone agrees on the details. Quickest way to kill a conversation, alienate friends, start a fight. Whether you believe or don't believe, chances are the only folks you really feel comfortable in your skin talking about it with are the people who sit in your own brand of pew. Often, not even them.

And a magazine or newspaper is hardly the place for that kind of sensitive talk. I remember a speech once by Rev. Johnny Ray Youngblood, who broached the dislike that churches often harbor for journalists (he had just subjected himself to a year with Samuel Freedman). Churches give you the good news, he said, and then newspapers turn around and give you the bad news. They're working different sides of the war.

I often feel ambivalent about journalism. One of the first exercises in grad school left a powerful taste in my mouth when we were asked to write one another's obituaries. The exercise took about twenty minutes from interview to edit desk (generous for a daily). And in that, the sum of your life.

You can guess it was pretty awful. Coming up with the newsworthy details never seemed like the whole story. No one was happy. For one, names got misspelled. Sequences got jangled, places transposed. Even when the specifics were right, what obituary really captures something as important as your own life? I remember how that afternoon showed up, for us, what journalists did; and what the stakes were on the other side of the pad.

Religion is especially at risk for being lost in that kind of translation. On a good day, a church might be happy with the publicity a piece generates, or the nice things the journalist has to say. But no one is ever going to say that a story really captures very much about faith. What does it mean to sit in a church, year after year? Study, pray? Hear the voice that finally answers you in a dark hour? None of that comes across in 800 words, or 8,000. Can't be captured.

As much as I love stories of how people dance with their own faith, I sometimes feel that writers from outside are better off sticking to deaths and births, scandals and deals. Take a tip from Sammy Kershaw: "Let's talk about anything in this world/ but politics, religion and her."

Talking about my religion is uncomfortable, it's inflammatory, it's pompous. Talking about yours is worse. And, who asked you?

No one.

So why do it?

This last week was pretty gruesome in the religion headlines. It made me want to get back to blogging. On one day, there was...

... a Presbyterian congregation jailed in Eritrea (who jails Presbyterians??).

... the Falun Gong on the receiving end of more threats from the Chinese government.

... Malaysia authorizing exorcisms on those following "deviant" Islam.

... a report on the strongarm practices of the Vietnamese government towards Buddhists and Protestants.

... and from the same report, depressing news about religious oppression in Turkey, Russia and Iraq (this before the Bible publishers in Malatya were tortured and killed at a Bible Study).

... here in the west, tales of institutionalized religious bigotry: a Canadian Sikh denied entry to a restaurant and Muslim women unveiled by Scottish bus companies.

...and on it goes.

The idea of real religious freedom is a logistical headache. And a rare bird in the history of the world. I'm not surprised. Faith lives in a vulnerable, uncertain place. It's far easier to have a culture where everyone to be in agreement, coerced if necessary, with one or two flavors of faith or unfaith that everyone around you agrees to respect. Then you don't have to talk about religion - at all.

We didn't make that choice in America. I'm not saying that this kind of disturbing intolerance doesn't happen here. Our system is rocky and contentious, and you can always find someone who'll tell you that the balance is out of whack. But we are the descendents of religious refugees - and more importantly, a people who believed in an ideal of personal liberty, the right for anyone to have a fair hearing and a clear conscience. We are that experiment.

Some days it's easy to think it's going well. I live in New York's Lower East Side. Within one block of my front door, there are two Orthodox synagogues, two pentecostal churches, a New Age bookstore and the home base for the city's anarchists. Go another few blocks and you get the first Buddhist churches in Chinatown, and a stretch of sidewalk where Friday prayers are observed by the more devout neighborhood Muslims. From where I'm sitting, everyone gets along. And that feels deeply right.

But I have to be careful not to let what happens in my neighborhood lull me.

I was working in downtown Manhattan in the year 2001. I was supposed to meet up with a team preparing a big downtown food tasting, taking place at the World Trade Center. It was the day before their big event, and the group was still prepping in the central courtyard of that mammoth eyesore with banners and grills. I was running late, and rushing to find the coordinator. By the time I got out of the subway, an airplane had hit the North Tower. I remember watching it burn, while standing next to guy I bought fruit from almost every day. On his cart, he had a glittery bumper sticker that read "I (heart) Allah," which was shimmering in the morning light.

The next few hours affected me deeply. I watched the towers fall and I collapsed while trying to escape the oncoming debris. A group of us were trapped in a building blocks away from the ruins, for hours. When I finally found a space clear of dust, it was the bathroom of a bank whose windows had been blown out. In the same small bathroom with me: a latino teenager, an older orthodox Jew, and a middle-aged asian man - all thinking the big thoughts in our own words, having to confront our own mortality, and the world we thought we lived in.

I remember the coming weeks, the outpourings of support. Everyone wanted to do something: give blood, trek bottled water and aspirin to the workers. Prayer teams, too, came from all over America to offer what comfort they could. A news report from Seattle said that the parks in that city were empty - but here in the city, the parks were full of people coming together. The Brooklyn Botanical Garden and other public spaces threw open their doors and waived admission. We don't understand what happened, everyone seemed to say, but we know what we can do.

Me, I didn't know what to do. So in the end, I think I'm trying to understand what happened.

That's why I write about religion. It's not about bearing a grudge - far from it. I chose to become a journalist who covers religion because there is something very powerful that was under attack that day, which was not crushed. It was the sticker on the fruit cart and the synagogue down the street. It was the prayer teams and the businessmen who stopped or who walked by grumbling. We get it: the secret of a global world where the rich inner life of the individual is allowed to thrive. We know that a life of faith is a basic right and carries a basic responsibility. And that basic fact fills me with incredible hope.

The good news and the bad news - where do they come together? They dovetail in a document that holds a place next to Scripture in our culture. Our Bill of Rights, which starts with these words: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..."

The answer to the question? No one asked me. But the country that my immigrant father landed in has set itself the perplexing task of enshrining both religious freedom and the freedom to ask why. And living both of those ideals is not just a privilege - it's a duty, a duty to listen for Truth, and a duty to speak it.

Thanks to everyone for your patience. It's been harder than pulling teeth to get these out. I'll be editing these five entries, and maybe coming up with more. If anyone else has the sadistic impulse to do a similar exercise - spell out what they believe - I would l love to read the results. Send me a link and I'll post.

In the meanwhile - back to the religion roundup. And thanks for coming along on the detour.

Question Four

Nearing the finish line. Trying to call out my own bias in religion writing. Thanks for your patience.

Here's question four:

Who are the crackpots?

Definition according to Merriam-Webster: "one given to eccentric or lunatic notions." I like this query. It's fruitful right off the bat - really fruitful.

Go ahead, ask yourself - which religious figures or groups have it all wrong? "Antichrist" Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda, maybe? The Scientologists? The Vatican? American Buddhists? Talk-show atheists? Wiccans? Televangelists? New Agers? Biblical literalists? Biblical non-literalists? Who do you throw out of the temple?

The suspects come to mind quickly, don't they? More quickly, I'd guess, than a list of folks who share your same rock-solid beliefs.

Why is that? Does embracing your faith (or non-faith) mean that you find the others absurd? I just read the interview with Bill Moyers in Christian Century (reprinted here - read it!). He drops this:

The religion of one seems madness to another. [Superstar scholar of early Christianity] Elaine Pagels said to me in an interview that she doesn't know a single religion that affirms the other's choice.

Madness? I bristled a little at this. (Maybe you do, too.)

But you know, I can't come up with good counter-examples. There are the more open-armed religions of modern times: the Baha'i, the Ramakrishna order, the Unitarians to name a few, who do take that high road to accepting everyone's path. But do they really "affirm the other's choice" - that is to say, affirm the truth of what someone else believes? I would argue no, since the vast majority of the world's faithful belief that only the narrow path of their faith leads to salvation, and that all others are out of luck. Hardly something the ecumenists "affirm."

Which is why, parenthetically, I'm seldom impressed with interfaith events. You never get the hard-liners in the room.

So. Is Pagels right? Do we mostly think that that others are wrong in what they believe about God? I think the evidence points strongly in this direction. And that should be no surprise.

But as Americans, we have built a tolerance into this deadlock, and that should never be underrated. We are unique like that, as we see Europe torn over the face veil and the Islamic world acting abominably towards the practice of other faiths in their lands. As decendants of religious refugees, we have a cultural legacy of showing at least a leeway of civility towards many other faiths. American employers respect many holidays, we publicly show deference to many leaders, and in general, Americans go out of our way not to publicly offend people of a religious faith that doesn't match our own.

That is, to a point.

And beyond that point lie the crackpots. And I think it's worthwhile to know where you draw that line.

Back in grad school, my advisor had - as far as I could tell - a simple chronological take on the question. I finally realized I could go up to religions started around the mid 18th century - Mormons and Baha'i, roughly - before stories got put in the "wacky" pile.

This is pretty widespread in religion coverage (said advisor is a very respected veteran of a very respected paper). You can still write about new religions, but "wacky" calls for a whole different set of tools. A quick primer:

a "religion" story focuses on newsworthy events, quotes church authorities, and steers clear of discussions on belief systems;

a "cult" story uses the group - not the news tie-in - as the main story, quotes ex-members and outside authorities, and there's an open season on describing beliefs and practices - which let's face it, in most religions, don't translate well to outsiders.

It's a shame, because it's worth being cautious when talking about newer religions. There's a constant ebb and flow in world history as the crackpots gain respectability and power. It's interesting to watch something get pulled over the crackpot divide in public consciousness (I just finished the first episode of the PBS special on Mormons, which makes this point nicely. Right Mitt?).

A great example of a religion losing some of its crackpot status hit a new chapter last week. The Department of Veteran's Affairs was forced to add a new symbol to their roster of 38 "approved" religious symbols that could be displayed on a vet's tombstone (here's the list of the 38). It was the Wiccan pentacle. Dead soldiers, Goddess worship... and the story just got juicier after allegations surfaced that the DVA was holding back official recognition of the religion due to comments from George Bush:

"This is a complete capitulation by the administration," said Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which filed suit last year on behalf of Wiccan veterans. The settlement stipulates, however, that the plaintiffs must not keep or disclose any documents handed over by the government during the discovery phase of the lawsuit.

Lawyers familiar with the case said that some documents suggested the VA had political motives for rejecting the pentacle. During his first campaign for president, then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush told ABC's "Good Morning America" in 1999 that he was opposed to Wiccan soldiers practicing their faith at Fort Hood, Tex.

"I don't think witchcraft is a religion, and I wish the military would take another look at this and decide against it," he said. Lynn, of Americans United, said references to Bush's remarks appeared in memos and e-mails within the VA.

Some liveliest debates on the story were on Get Religion (look here and here), which (predictably) wasn't content with the political angle that most reporters took and dared to hint at the "uncomfortable question" of whether or not Wicca was a religion. This led to a great link in the comments section, a legal round up of all the definitions the government has tried to give to religion, including those from the military (which I blogged about here) and the IRS.

This list of criteria is an interesting look at when the government, at least, will take you seriously. As far as I can tell it boils down to this: you're not crackpots if you can afford good lawyers.

But, Jason. Who are the crackpots?

Here I am tempted to quote one of my favorite books, the Damnation of Theron Ware. It was one of America's hottest bestsellers (of 1896). The story follows a Methodist preacher who loses his way while pastoring in a small town of Octavius, as he toys with Catholicism and atheism and paganism. A couple of Methodist revivalists named the Soulsbys drop in to save the church and Theron's soul (they fail).

Mrs. Soulsby is a charming rogue and an ex-showgirl and one of the canniest theologians in American literature. At the end of about ten pages of taking apart Americans and their faiths, she says this:

"I've got a religion of my own, and it's got just one plank in it, and that is that the time to separate the sheep from the goats is on Judgment Day, and that it can't be done a minute before."

There are crackpots, but only God knows who they are. I like that.

But I'm not that enlightened.

So who do I think are the crackpots? As you can probably tell, I don't hold with the old vs. new divide (many practitioners of new religions seem like crackpots to me, but more on that later). There are two reasons for this.

First - it seems that religion can be new in the world, but old in a life. If someone is born into a religion, and lives it their whole life in that faith, it's hard for me to discount the richness of meaning that a belief acquires, as it is worn with births and deaths, marriage and crisis over decades, just because they are the first generation to practice it. Don't the early Christians hold our highest respect? And is it necessarily less profound to spend your life in such a new religion than to have a midlife conversion to the ancient practice of Kabbalah (tm)? I can't say - so I won't.

The second reason I often give new religions the benefit of the doubt - and bear with me - is that religion always seems to be, in some sense, new. Religions change drastically with the times. We see it in American Christianity. Look at megachurches, the renewalist and New Age influences on the modern Christian church. How different they are from the same pulpits that once held the stern views of old Europe for example - denouncing women's rights, endorsing slavery. Changes are slow and subtle, but they are always there - thank goodness.

To think that modern Judaism, for example, is the same as the polygamous, animal sacrificing faith of Biblical times is naive. There is constantly invention and reinvention, and religions move with the times. So if we are to hold to only old religions, they are hard to find.

But I come up with my list of religious crackpots, just as quickly as anyone else. My line is fairly defined, since there are two things that make me quickly throw someone's claim to religious respect in the crackpot pile.

They are Cruelty and Faking it.

Pretty simple, but a simple definition serves me pretty well. A person or an institution that cites piety to inflict pain, or one who talks one path and walks another, loses the right to my wide American legacy of tolerance. Pretty clear to me that it's not religion anymore, but a self-serving veneer for human frailty.

Not a high bar, but you'd be surprised how many stories every day end up in my crackpot pile.

I don't think definitions should be gone into too much. I know them when I see them. I've started a list of stories of people I'd give the crackpot treatment. I'll be adding to this list of shame. These are stories which I feel don't deserve the kid-glove treatment religion journalists usually show the devout, but instead should prompt outrage and intolerance - and, as Get Religion puts it, raise the "uncomfortable question" of what is religion.

Because what these guys are practicing is just their own lunacy.

The Cruel...

The Muslim man who raped a woman for reading the Bible, in the name of Islam...

The African Christian charismatic who kills his followers...

A church that advocates corporal punishment of children, to the point of death...

Priests who preach kindness but who inflict pain on the innocent...

The Fakers...

Monks who abuse kids and fake miracles...

Controlled substance beliefs that are a little too convenient, economically and legally...

Evangelists whose care for their poor followers is travestied by financial fraud...

...home or abroad...



Thems my crackpots. Who are yours?

I'll finish up this belief series in the next post. Thanks again for your patience.