In Your Faith

O, Nuwaubia!

2009-12-30T13:48:00.000-08:00

Check out this piece about the Nuwaubians, an African-American sect that sprouted right here in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

Basically, these cats have been led by the charismatic Malachi York since the 1970's. They started off as a sort of Nation of Islam spinoff, then became Black Hebrews, had an extra-terrestrial phase, became the Yamasee Nation of Native Americans and now are claiming a diplomatic immunity for their leader, saying he's a Liberian diplomat.

(Oh, yeah - York was imprisoned for about 130 years on child molestation charges in 2004.)

Followers of convicted child molester and sect leader Dwight "Malachi" York - some from Clarke County - are bombarding officials at a federal maximum security lock-up with fake documents that seek to free him from a 135-year prison term.

The documents, some stamped by Athens-Clarke notaries, claim York has been falsely imprisoned since 2004 and should be released because he is an African diplomat, officials said.

....

"I've never been able to rationalize how seemingly intelligent people would follow a man who started off saying he was an extraterrestrial, then changed to being a reincarnated pharaoh, then an American Indian chief, then head of all Shriners or Masons in the world," [Putnam County Sherriff Howard] Sills said. "He also claimed at one time to be a rabbi but was an Islamic imam to start with, then after the trial he ended up being a diplomat.

"You can rationalize how someone follows a charismatic leader if they maintain a consistent philosophy, but how to you go from being an Islamic imam to a rabbi?" he said. "First he came here on a space ship, and years later he came here from Liberia on a diplomatic passport."

I tried to do an in-depth story about them in 2004, following the conviction, but it was a disaster. True, the older cops had fantastic stories - how Nuwaubians "owned" about 6 square blocks of Bushwick and no one entered or left without their say so. Also, how the members ran these incredible criminal scams, and one of their premier cat burglars enjoyed a popular moment in the papers for his rooftop, "spider-man" escapes.

But no one else was very forthcoming. The neighbors still lived in fear, even though the bulk of the group had moved to Georgia in the 1990's. The one "expert" was jealously guarding her research, and tried to have me canned for publishing a piece on the web. The few Nuwaubians who stayed in Brooklyn weren't talking. I thought then that their "white man is the devil" tradition, but now I think it was a lazy lack of persistence.

A damn shame, because there's nothing I dig like new religions.

Religious splinters and new religions stem from serious dissatisfaction. They show fissures in the current paradigms. Nuwaubians are a case in point. It's a trope that the church anchors the African American community, but back in the 1960's and 70's, there was a serious rethinking of Christianity - which, let's face it, was a wholesale legacy of the African enslavement. You found the Nation of Islam, the Black Hebrews, (who still fight for their civil rights from their base in Dimona, Israel), a number of African-Americans who fled to Islam, or Baha'i traditions, or New Age practice. A blossoming of spiritual searching, probing questions, a taking of nothing for granted. Those moments are tough and gorgeous.

Then you found the innovators, who tried to integrate a history of rage and disempowerment into wholesale new cloth. Like Malachi York. Results may vary.

I keep waiting for the gay community to go through a similar moment. Of course, there's a huge gay presence in the New Age / New Thought world, in Kabbalah (tm), in Eastern traditions done western-style. And of course I'm a huge fan of the Radical Faeries. But the gays have yet to hit their stride as religion makers, I'm convinced. What will we see from a nation of spectacle makers, musicians, orgiasts and two-spirits?

The Gods of Gamblers

2009-12-23T21:34:00.000-08:00

Check out this recent piece about a poker-playing priest:

The Rev. Andrew Trapp said he entered the PokerStars.net Million Dollar Challenge in hopes of putting St. Michael Catholic Church "super close" to its $5.5 million fundraising goal to build a new facility. He also wanted to strike a public relations blow for priests.
"At the very least, even if I didn't win any prize money, I was hoping it would help people to see that priests can have fun and be normal people and hopefully get a little bit of a fun twist on the image of the priesthood," the assistant pastor said Tuesday.

So the guy won $100,000 for the church building fund. Just ask comedian Steve Harvey to parse what a building fund is.

Why do I love this? The God and gambling nexus is totally gripping. If you ask me, Einstein was out of his gourd when he said that God does not play dice.

Personal bias - in my family's genetic tangle of the sublime and the ridiculous, both god and games play a huge role. My mother's two uncles helped build Las Vegas and were once, respectively, a pit boss at the Golden Nugget and a craps dealer at Binion's Horseshoe. My father was raised in a monastery by his uncle, a holy man named Parthenios (The Virgin). My mother's grandpa came to California to run an offshore gambling boat. My father's aunt was a prioress in a convent.

I could never choose sides. For about a year, I was simultaneously the (ghost) editor of America's oldest Christian magazine, and also one of the country's largest gambling magazines. Tough? Not as much as you'd think. The first month saw the crowning of Jerry Yang - the unlikeliest poker genius to ever win a WSOP bracelet and baffle Christians and gamblers alike.

Yang is a Hmong Laotian who started to teach himself poker near my hometown in California. He's a devoted Christian, prays before matches, and in two years, went from an online dabbler to the king of the green felt. When he sat at the World Series of Poker Final Table, he clearly had God on his side: In the final round, he pushed his chips all in on a pair of 8's, was quickly outmatched, then won by drawing an inside straight on the river, to win a pot worth $8.25 million. A feat of Biblical proportions. What did he do with it? He tithed to kids organizations.

Strangely, neither the Christians or the gamblers made him their poster boy. Go figure.

Kind of a shame. Gambling and prayer aren't as different as you might think. Lord knows, no one prays like a gambler with everything riding. Or as Dostoyevsky (a gambler, penitent and writer in that order) more delicately put it, "Can one even as much as touch a gambling table without immediately becoming infected with superstition?"

There is a good reason for these two activities are so closely tied, I like to think. There's a neat theory put forth by an old Oxford don and Hellenist, Gilbert Murray: Religion is how we think about what we don't know. When we find ourselves on the brink of the unknown - whether through joy, a personal crisis or any other mystical experience - we cast about for some way to understand what can't be understood. That language becomes religion.

Our drive to play games is willfully putting ourselves in that same brink: standing over the abyss, and, like Jerry Yang, letting it all ride. Mystics and gamblers share an adrenaline rush of looking out over the unknown, letting one foot hover over. It's the same rush.

And maybe Yang brought a closer synthesis from his homeland. There seems to be a much nearer nexus between the two in Asia. China, for instance, boasts Buddhism, Taoism and a baroque system of influencing luck at its spiritual center. Go to a Cantonese wedding, and the vows are barely finished before the gaming tables are brought out. Sic Bo and Bacarrat are national passtimes. A precursor of Keno helped build the wall of China.

And - to clarify the lead image above - there's a hugely popular Chinese movie genre which can be summed up as kung fu gambling. Spiritual adepts take their mastery to the gaming tables, and influence the fall of dice and the lay of cards through their spiritual perfection. A cool background here.

More and more American casinos, catering to the enormous Asian market, will hire Feng Shui experts. Entrances face east, walls are built with the soil layering practice of han-chiku and I Ching symbols abound. There's a buddhist shrine at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. A shrine. In a casino. No problem.

Which brings it back to us, I guess - Americans, and what we find holy. I've always been a fan of Vegas, ever since I moved there at 21 and worked the Strip while trying to find my own soul. Chuck Palahnuik wrote, "Las Vegas looks the way you'd imagine heaven must look at night." I agree. Built in 1946 by a nation wracked by Depression and Another Great War, the place remains, for better or worse, an American temple of the first order. Where there was a desert, we created a spring. Where there was scarcity, we created the groaning table of the casino buffet, presided over by the opulent fertility of the showgirl.

So what if these were vegas, or mirages. America has embraced this mirage as its own: that anyone can win, that anyone can be treated like royalty, that the next big hit has your name on it. It's our religion - the faith we hold when we look out into the unknown.

Catholic Girls Gone Bad

2009-12-21T10:18:00.000-08:00

Two women on the road to sainthood and the future of the church.

Back in 2005 I was up for a Vatican gig, and I became a passionate Pope-watcher. It amazed me how many intrigues and internecine squabbles still gripped the Little City. Very interesting stuff. There is a Gossip Girls-type spinoff to be set there. Or maybe the last gasp of the reality show moment. Tons of bitchy dudes in skirts - what's not to love?

In any case, this week was a good week to speculate what's going on behind the gilt gates.

To catch you up: The numbers of Catholics are flagging, clearly, even dramatically in the western and developed world. The developing world are increasingly comprising an important faction, but are underrepresented in the halls of power. In the West, which Rome would like to keep, the church is facing a radical shortage of clergy, and the perennial issue of admitting women and married men has been on the front burner.

You can often trend-watch Catholicism by watching the saint machine (or the Offices of the Sacred Congregation for the Causes of Saints). The two big names to come out in the heart of Advent this year seem to say a lot about Rome's evolving relationship with women... and troublemakers.

Mary Ward was a Yorkshire nun who founded what became the Congregation of Jesus and Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a radically liberated order for Catholic women for the 17th century. They attempted to buck the traditions of enclosure and cumbersome habits, wanted to educate young women, and in short tried to follow the extremely successful model of the Jesuits on the other side of the gender aisle. She was brought up for charges of heresy during her lifetime, and her order wasn't given the full go-ahead for a few hundred years.

Mary MacKillop followed a similar path in 19th century Australia, founding the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart. She was actually full-on excommunicated, owing to the rule of life she devised for her order. (The excommunication was later lifted.)

Both women just had miracles approved in the past few days (#1 Ward and #2 for MacKillop). This paves the road for Ward to be beatified and MacKillop to become a saint - the first who was ever excommunicated during her lifetime.

Is the Holy See signaling a climate change for women in the church? Or is this a bone for restless nuns under the papacy of the conservative Pope Benedict XVI? Tune in next week.

Also - some of you know I'm working on a project about miracles. (A puppet show about miracles to be specific.) As I've mentioned to some of you, the Catholic Church maintains that we continue to live in a miraculous age. This was some of the reason behind JPII ramping up the saint machine to unprecedented levels - to say that we live in a time of holy people and miraculous acts.

For those of you curious about what these miracles entail nowadays, they're not all grilled-cheese Jesuses. Both Ward and MacKillop were credited with medical miracles (healing tumors and the like), far and away the most common kind to pass the rigorous testing of the Vatican's miracle office.

Re: the time lag. Sorry for the hiatus, readers. When I first started this blog, I was trying to pitch it to Time Inc, who was losing the religion blog war to the vastly superior Newsweek/WaPo "On Faith" nexus. Now, alas, souped up religion coverage seems a relic of the early post-9/11 years. So, I decided to revive this as a more personal forum. Hope you enjoy.

Where have you been?

2007-07-10T10:51:00.000-07:00

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...

2007-07-02T10:09:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-18T11:27:00.000-07:00

Sex and the Modern Muslim

2007-06-13T07:52:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-07T12:52:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-05T06:05:00.000-07:00

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

2007-06-04T11:13:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-31T09:41:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-31T08:41:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-29T10:33:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-26T16:40:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-26T16:00:00.000-07:00

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)

2007-05-23T10:10:00.001-07:00

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

2007-05-21T12:31:00.001-07:00

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

2007-05-18T11:44:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-16T12:42:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-14T14:00:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-14T13:37:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-09T15:04:00.000-07:00

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

2007-05-08T10:14:00.000-07:00

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

2007-04-30T21:49:00.000-07:00

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.

Question Three

2007-04-19T08:01:00.000-07:00

Who's Driving? Me. Who's that? I'm trying to answer that here. Why? Well...

Here's the next question:

What church do you call home?

This one may take a bit. Bear with me.

I don't have a church. I have churches that I like. I have synagogues I feel comfortable in, places that fill me with peace. There are communities I commune with. But I don't have a fixed home.

That's unfortunate, right?

I've mentioned a few surveys about the "unchurched." There is the particular flavor that made headlines a couple of years ago - depending on the source, anywhere from 20-30% of Americans think of themselves as "spiritual but not religious." Barna just released a survey a few months ago which said that 33% of Americans - which includes mostly self-identified Christians - don't have a place where they hang their hat, spiritually. Whatever you call us - the unchurched, the spiritually homeless - we're the fastest growing religious group in America.

A damn shame.

A shame, because religion is something you are supposed to DO with other people. It's having a "community of meaning" - people who see the world tied together in the same way you do. They are not just there for the weddings and blessings, but for times of crisis: funerals, sickness, catastrophe. Ironically, when you turn to God is when you also turn to other people.

Even on the most deeply personal level, the level of searching for truth, we need a spiritual community. The Buddha said that enlightenment - the bullseye of psychological release from all your hang-ups in this world - was something that was almost entirely the child of the Sangha: the organization, the community around you. American philosopher (and devout Christian) Josiah Royce went so far as to say that the very kingdom of heaven promised by Jesus is no more than the community created in his wake.

The psychological consequences of this isolating trend seem dire to me. Unchurching seems like the newest form of Bowling Alone, that particularly American vice. It says: communities are tough. Easier to choose a gated community of one.

I clearly disagree. So why don't I have a home?

It took a few days of digging around this question to come up with anything really satisfying. On the one hand, there's that journalistic mindset, everything I learned at Columbia: keep your judgment open to all good arguments, and never join one side. I've also told you about my folks, both of whom hold deep ambivalence about institutions. I was raised to think of religion as personal, not public.

And it's not as if you can suddenly "church" yourself. In fact, having to choose a "home" is kind of awful. For one thing, there is an unreasonableness to a deeper faith that rarely makes sense from the outside. Faith is what we achieve without reason. An example: the current Harper's magazine lists the beliefs among the Mandaeans, an ancient gnostic-type sect being decimated in Iraq. They believe that the alphabet was once at war with itself, and that children born on the sixteenth of the month will suffer from constipation. Sounds kooky, no? But to the utterly unchurched, the idea of the Virgin Birth, the night ride and the burning bush seem equally fantastic.

And the smorgasboard is vast - especially here in America. We invented it, we feed it, we revel in it. Church marketing has a history older than Saul/Paul, but you have to feel that the megachurch moment and the New Age have brought things to a new level. Snack bars in church? Astrology at the check-out? Venerable religion sociologist Peter Berger has a few great comments on the long-standing "pluralist" state of American religion at a recent Pew Forum talk. In our religious lives, as in everything else, we live in an age of agonizing choices.

Choosing a tradition is also fraught with ethical choices. As a child of my age, I have strong beliefs about the equality of women, the place for science, the equality of gay men and women. Most of our heritage around religious practice in the west stem from an ancient Middle east where these ideas are tenuous, at best.

I marveled at the pronouncement from the Archbishop of Canterbury the other day. He was trying to say that the anti-gay voices in the Anglican Communion were misreading the Bible. He quoted the passage from Romans, "Men committed indecent acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion," trying to defend the modern western view of homosexuality, saying that the passage was actually a warning against self-righteousness. Come again?

As someone at least culturally Christian, I am particularly fascinated by the spectacle of Christianity and homosexuality in the arena. Surveys show show that our ideas about homosexuality are only going to become more tolerant as the current generation grows up. The Bible is unambiguous about the sin of gay men and lesbians. Who - or what - will emerge from this clash of absolutes?

History is full of these cultural battlefields. Norms change, wills bend... eventually. But where is home in the meanwhile?

Ahem. What church do you call home?

You may have noticed that I sign my posts "ttaylor," though my name is Jason Anthony. Thomas Taylor is a hero of mine. He was one of the original Seekers. I think they have something to teach us - and, for what it's worth, can offer a home for people like me.

The Seekers? I'm not talking about modern "seeker churches" - Christian churches that bring in wavering souls through savvy outreach. No, the Seekers I'm talking about have them by almost 400 years.

Taylor's "Seekers" were the product of the religious chaos that followed the Anglican break from the Catholic church. Throwing off the traditions of 1,000 years must have been psychologically overwhelming. If you know your English history, there were upheavals and religious wars for the next century. Scores of new groups were formed, including the Quakers, our forebears the Puritans, and other less well known groups like the Levellers, the Diggers... and the Seekers.

These guys weren't very explicit about their beliefs. Their organizational was shambolic (I'll save you a trek to the dictionary - "utterly disorganized"). A few landed in jail, and they didn't last too long. Their great contribution was to recognize that they were not content with the options that they saw in the torn-apart world they lived in - and that, not being content, they would wait.

So they waited together. When Seekers met, they met in silence. You can see remnants of this observation today among the Quakers, who absorbed most of the Seekers by the 1640's. Many considered themselves Christians. Some did not. Some sources indicate that their ambivalence even embraced possible truths in "Heresy, Blasphemy, Catholicism, non-Christian religions, and even Atheism."

It's not the only time in history when people have studiously honored a kind of holy expectancy about the bigger mysteries of life. When Paul preaches at Mars Hill in the Acts of the Apostles, he points to the altar devoted "to gods unknown." I get a shiver of recognition when I read that verse. I could see a Hellenic version of myself taking a look at that altar when I passed, always somehow throwing a few drachma to the priest. Then, as now, I see myself thinking - who can be sure of the answers? Mysteries are too big for names.

The Seekers were the reemergence of this idea in the modern world. Like unstable isotopes, this kind of uncertainty doesn't last long.

But in honor of Taylor and his ilk, I've convened my own Seeker church, in its way. Every month, I lead a group of New Yorkers to different temple, synagogue, or church in the City. We've spent Cheesefare Sunday praying with the Greek Orthodox in Grammercy. We've heard the Hebrew school singing cowboy songs in Central Synagogue. We've sat with urban Buddhists in Chelsea, learning about the mind.

And afterwards, we sit and have coffee. Some people already have a faith they cling to, and they refute. Other times, we'll just sit and question. If we're lucky, someone from the church will tag along with us to share a view from the inside. It's our own way to pray and ponder, as best we can, until the dust settles.

This, I guess, is my home. If you're interested, come along for the ride.

Stay tuned.

PS - Thanks for your patience as I s l o w l y churn these out. It's obviously taking a lot longer than expected - partly because of my everyday workload, partly because, well, these are tough questions. Right now, I'm planning on posing five questions in all, finished this week. Cross your fingers.

UPDATE - There are also lots of statistics showing restlessness even among the "churched." Accordingt o the 2001 ARIS survey, 1 in 7 Americans change their religious affiliation - that is to say, leaves "home" and goes shopping. I''ve seen other studies up that number to 25%. In USA Today this morning, a study sponsored by the Southern Baptist Convention about those people. It's here.

Question Two

2007-04-18T10:47:00.000-07:00

Again - I'm interrupting the news coverage to ask and answer a few questions about myself. Self-indulgent? Maybe. The goal is full disclosure. The roundup will return in about a week.

Here's the question for the day:

Where do you come from?

Is this really a "query" - a good question to come back to more than once?

Yes and no. Of course, there are all the hard facts about how I came to be here. Immigrant father, American mother. Raised in conservative corners of wacky California. Years of living abroad, school, then traveling and working in the US. Those don't change.

But I'm beginning to realize that the story of your life and your family grows up as you do - develops interesting twists seen from the distance of years. Especially the question of parents, once such reliably fixed figures, who become more and more enigmatic as you unbelievably reach the same age they were when they reared you. Who are they? For this reason, I think "Where do I come from?" is a touchstone.

Especially from the standpoint of what I take for granted about faith.

My mother was the one focused on getting us "churched," which here meant dragging my brother and I to a Methodist service near the public library for the big holy days. I think it was architecture that got us there more than anything else - the place had a stony, rough-hewn look that appealed to a Californian's fetish for history, real or imagined.

As a kid, mom had been in charge of her own religious schooling. Her parents were two wild, hard-working children of the post-war years: her dad managed a Sears store, his wife kept the house. They were probably Christians if you pressed them - I don't know if anyone did. Cocktails with friends and bridge were more of a religion than anything else - Sundays were devoted to quiet hangovers by the pool.

My mother took herself to church as a young girl - the closest one she could walk to in her nice clothes was a Baptist church. She says she fell in love with the singing and the vibrant voices. She went regularly. The services also kept her out of the house during morning hours when making much noise was flirting with disaster.

The sermons perplexed her though - all of the rules for clean living, and the hell and brimstone for unbelievers. When her father died young, and she heard her preacher's take on the fate of drinkers and bon-vivants, she flat-out stopped being a Baptist. She became her own breed of Christian and didn't really return to church until we were old enough to need some God in our lives.

Some Sundays that effort would get a little more exotic - my family would pack up and head south to the nearest Greek Orthodox church. It took about an hour. We did this maybe a dozen or so times growing up. We'd arrive hours after the orthos had begun, which always seemed embarassing to me, though very common (we weren't raised Greek - arriving late wasn't second nature to us). We also didn't speak Greek, so the divine liturgy went on and on mysteriously for hours, eis tous aionas ton aionon, steeped in incense, with aerobic stretches of standing, kneeling, and intoning prayers. Still, as a kid, I preferred this to the Methodists - the jeweled robes, the ceiling painted sky-blue and filled with saints, and a big chunk of leavened bread with wine as your reward.

He never insisted on going regularly - my dad isn't that type. He also wasn't hungry for the fellowship of the other Greeks, a big reason to go to church in immigrant communities. He came over to America as a refugee at age 18, married an American, and rarely looked back.

His religious upbringing was... unusual.

My grandfather was executed during WWII by the Germans while my dad was just a child. In the hard years that followed the war, when Greece was torn apart by a communist uprising, his mother was faced with keeping four children safe while running a small farm in the hills of the Peloponnese. She took an extraordinary step, taken so often by parents in areas of poverty and unrest - she sent her sons away.

They were very young. There was a high-school in Tripolis, the regional capitol, but she had no way to pay for their room and board. So one day she marched them up the mountain to a remote monastery, where her husband's oldest brother had taken orders as a monk. He was called "Parthenios," the Virgin. "These are your nephews," she said to him, holding my father and uncle by their scrawny arms. "You sit up here on the mountain while people are starving below. I want you to take them in and help them go to school. A Christian would help me care for them."

The monastery had a small community house in Tripolis, and she wanted the boys to live there while they went to high school. In return, they would work at the monastery, keeping the stables and cleaning, running errands for the bishop. She would look after their clothes and washing and bring what she could from the farm. In addition, my grandmother said, Parthenios could leave the mountain and perform weddings and funerals in the surrounding villages, which paid in cash and barter. A deal was struck.

My father is enigmatic about those years. Growing up among the monks gave him an eyeful, that's for sure - priests who accepted the last lamb or sheaf of grain from a poor widow who wanted a blessing. Bishops who proscribed fasting but ate well behind closed doors. Sexual goings-on in the ranks. He chuckles and shakes his head when he talks about them.

But his eyes light up when he talks about Parthenios. "He was a holy man," my father says, gravely. "The other monks made fun of him - he would just laugh. Winter and summer, he would wear a simple monk's robe. He loved God. And his passion was music."

Parthenios composed Byzantine chants, an ancient tradition in the eastern church. "Come and give me your young ear," he would say, and sing a phrase in the old scale: Pa, Ni, Pa, Vu. True to his word, Parthenios shuffled away from the cell where he spent all of his time and made the rounds of the villages, blessing weddings and the bereaved.

After high school my father was finally sponsored to come to Boston, as a refugee. When he came, the Greeks in America were still torn by the ideas that had laid waste to Greece - forward to a socialist atheism, or back into the grips of a powerful church? Although he had spent years as the personal secretary to the bishop, he had no firm answers to these questions.

To this day, he is humble when he talks about right and wrong. Like my mother, he is content to believe in God, without being firm on the specifics. But I gave him a tape of Byzantine chants a few years ago, and he'll play it in the truck as he heads to work. He says it makes him happy.

My parents met and raised their kids in California. For a taste of what that's like, check out The Visionary State, a photo book from last year which rounds up images from the temples, cathedrals and retreats that show up the largest diversity and tolerance of the religious mind in the west. It suited them.

Though they were technically an interfaith marriage, I think they still have more in common about what they believe than otherwise. They'll still make it to a service or two. Our town is conservative and devout; Sunday traffic is impossible in the mornings, and every new flavor of "contemporary worship" gets its premier there. But their faith is based on something more fixed and personal, I'm coming to believe. Both of them are drawn to God, but skeptical of his franchises on earth.

They were a little relieved when my brother and I started to explore in our teens - I sniffed around eastern religions, and my brother began to embrace a scientific rationalism. Better to ask, better to seek. Despite all of the gaps in our formal religious education, they taught my brother and I the importance of being, first and foremost good people - and that this, somehow, what being a Christian means to them.

My mother gets flack at her office for being one of Barna's 33% of the "unchurched." "God knows my heart," my mother will say - end of the discussion.

That's where I'm from.

Tune in tomorrow.

Question One

2007-04-17T14:43:00.000-07:00

For those just tuning in, I'm spending a few days away from the regular religion news roundup. Instead, my goal is to "come clean" to my sea of readers about my personal faith. It's something I always wish I had at hand when I'm reading religion coverage.

As I've said, I'm framing the entries in terms of questions I return to, inspired by a Quaker tradition of "queries" - spiritual questions worth pondering, which rarely have permanent answers.

Ready for Question One? Fundamental, but fruitful.

Why aren't you an atheist?

There are many, many atheists in my world. A love of my life was one of the first card-carrying "brights" (click here if you missed the euphemism moment of the "brights" and the "supers"). My brother is a personal hero, and a brilliant research chemist - last I heard he and his colleagues worship at the altar of the flying spaghetti monster. And the whole journalism world is rife. When I was covering the Billy Graham crusade in 2005, an author who was also sitting in the press box leaned over to me and said, "Doesn't it feel like you're sitting in the atheist's section of the church?"

I mean, my hometown paper used to be the Jyllands Post, home of atheist Flemming Rose and the Mohammed cartoon fiasco. It's not like the road to atheism hasn't been an option.

Not to imply that all atheists are dear to my heart. The pundits making the news rounds and the stories that quote them are making THAT one a little hard. Now, I respect Dawkins, Dennett or Harris - these guys are continuing dialogue with an antique history. But I don't think I can listen to another interview where one of them is quoted in vaguely condescending soundbytes, which seem always to bring out the worst in whomever they're talking to. If you caught the tete-a-tete between Sam Harris and Rick Warren in Newsweek, you know what I mean:

INTERVIEWER: Sam, is Rick intellectually dishonest?

HARRIS: I wouldn't put it in such an invidious way, but—

INTERVIEWER: Let's say Rick's not here and we're just hanging out in his office.

HARRIS: It is intellectually dishonest, frankly, to say that you are sure that Jesus was born of a virgin.

WARREN: I say I accept that by faith. And I think it's intellectually dishonest for you to say you have proof that it didn't happen. Here's the difference between you and me. I am open to the possibility that I am wrong in certain areas, and you are not.

For, what... 10 pages?

Soon to join the circuit: Christopher Hitchens and "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" to look forward to next month (the answer to: what is your follow-up act to bashing Mother Theresa, posthoumously, at the Vatican?). I can't wait.

There was (finally) a more even-handed treatment of atheism in the AP (courtesy of RNB). A great story, though the focus is primarily on Europe. They give mercifully meager ink to Dawkins and Harris, and instead talk about "Christian" atheists and "Muslim" atheists - and on the way, reference Karen Armstrong, Pope Benedict XVI, Thomas Hobbes and Socrates.

Both atheists and their foes agree on one thing: God — declared dead over a century ago by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche — is making a comeback, at least as a focus of controversy....

Secular Europeans voice dismay at American religiosity and worry that faith-based reasoning is spreading in Europe, too. Many Britons, for example, believe the Christian faith of Prime Minister Tony Blair helped lead him to entangle Britain in America’s war in Iraq.

There is also deep suspicion of Poland, a devoutly Catholic new member of the European Union. Its deputy education minister late last year urged the teaching of creationism, the Bible-inspired alternative to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

God has made a comeback even in secular Europe, and around the developed world, the battle lines are being drawn. Now more than ever, it's worth asking the question - which side?

Deeply, deeply personal, and hard to articulate. I can talk about how an atheist worldview seems flat to me: how art and music seem unhinged from their source; how virtue in a closed room seems pointless; levels of interaction with the world around me go missing. Yet I'm sure there is a kinder, gentler atheism, one full of aesthetic and imagination.

The turning point for me, critically, is that life loses a central narrative. As a writer and as a person, that idea of the Greater Story is something I can't live without. And there's something even more fundamental in my rejection of atheism. And for that, I'm going to quote a VERY out of date source.

One of my favorite olde-tyme scholars, Gilbert Murray, was a writer and a scholar of ancient Greek. When writing about religion, he had to wrestle to find a definition of the subject that could encompass 1,000 years of the most varied spiritual practice in history: fertility cults to the aesthetic flights of Homer; Delphi to the rationalist schools of Epicurus and Diogenes. If these are all religion, he asked, what in the world IS religion?

His answer thrills me. In his sober don's voice, he writes, "Religion, like poetry and most other living things, cannot be defined..." but promptly plunks down his definition. "Religion essentially deals with the uncharted region of human experience." It is, he says, how we know what we don't know. This is true for him of all the world's religions, from Christianity to cargo cults.

"It is obvious that most, if analyzed into intellectual beliefs, are false... Yet the fact remains that man must have some relation towards the uncharted, the mysterious tracts of life which surround him on every side. And for my own part I am content to say that his method must be to a large extent very much what St. Paul calls pistis, or faith: that is, some attitde not of the conscious intellect but of the whole being, using all of its powers of sensitiveness, all its feeblest and most inarticulate feelers and tentacles in an effort to somehow touch with these what cannot be grasped by the definite senses or be analyzed by the conscious reason. What we gain this is an insecure but a precious posession. We gain no dogma, at least no safe dogma, but we gain much more. We gain something hard to define, which lies at the heart not only of religion, but of art and poetry and all the higher strivings of human emotion."

That's an answer I can sign on to. A search for a more complete truth is important to me, a search that reaches out not only with the tools of science and intellect but also of faith. And that is why I'm not an atheist.

Tune in tomorrow.

UPDATE: I just found THIS posted on the blog of Ruth Gledhill, the religion correspondent for the Times. Same idea, same day, more elegantly written. Somehow I don't mind getting scooped. She devotes some elegant ink to stating why she is a believer. Stated simply, it is "fundamentally about turning to life." Give it a read.

Pause to Reflect.

2007-04-12T13:17:00.000-07:00

I'm learning a lot about blogging, here at In Your Faith.

I've become a voracious reader of other religion blogs - some great, some not-so-great. The big appeal for me is the fact that a blogs is almost certainly up front about its bias.

Sometimes it's obvious from just a quick read, like the lean left with The Revealer or the lean right with Get Religion. But more often, religion bloggers will somewhere or other just tell you straight out about their religious beliefs and backgrounds, which we rarely get to read about in paper pages. And I trust that. I like to know what the writer believes, so I can read in the right spirit.

So, I've decided to devote the next few entries here to doing that - coming clean about my take, what I believe, what intrigues me, and why I write about religion. I'll link these entries to my home page for future readers.

That said, the task has been hard - hence the week or so that has gone by since my last post. My religious affiliation has never been as easy as "I'm a conservative Christian" or "born-again urban Buddhist." I find myself sitting once again across from the vexing question: what do I call myself? For a man who spends a disproportionate amount of time in pews and cushions, the census takers would have to lump me with the "unchurched" - the 33% of Americans who don't have a place of worship to call home.

When I think of the constants in my worldview, they are all persistent questions. And that makes sense. There's a practice among certain Quakers for writing their community guidelines. In the book of their beliefs and practices, they'll offer the flock "queries" in place of laying down rules (God keep the Quakers from rules). In essence, queries are a set of questions that believers can return to, time and again, to challenge, to ponder, to beat against and to refresh themselves.

Starting Monday of next week, I'll try to ask one good question a day, and tie it into how I read the news. I hope you'll be patient with me. In the end, I think it will make for a better blog.

Have a great weekend. See you on Monday.

Bibles in Schools... Redux

2007-04-05T10:07:00.000-07:00

This just in, courtesy of Worldwide Religious News: Bulgaria wants religion in the schools.

More than 85% of the students and 70% of the adults interviewed by pollster Alfa Research said they wanted such a class. Three quarters of the interviewees said it should focus on informing about religions, while half of the respondents said it should be optional.

The wide majority of interviewees also believe the class should be taught by qualified teachers, rather than clergymen. Such a class could help check juvenile delinquency, aggression and drug use, according to the survey's respondents.

Me, I think the timing is fishy. I think the Bulgarians are just looking to exporti last years exam questions to Georgia High School students - a time-honored cottage industry.

Missionaries of Charity

2007-04-05T09:27:00.000-07:00

I spent Palm Sunday in the South Bronx with the Missionaries of Charity - this is the order founded by Mother Theresa in 1950. They serve the very poorest of the poor, running soup kitchens and the like. I attended an early morning mass, then spent a few hours in the kitchen chopping lettuce and cutting the hot cross buns into pieces, so there would be enough to go around. We ended up with a lot of hot dashes.

I am still processing the experience. I puzzle over the place for the conservative Catholic movement in the modern world, but watching this group of barefoot women taking care of my city's homeless population - which the city does a very bad job at - affected me very deeply.

I didn't know that Mother Theresa was born in Albania - or that Albania was the first officially atheist country in the world. These facts and more from a story in today's Washington Post, about the floodgates being opened for religious freedom there, and the huge response of evangelists from around the world - Mormons, Greek Orhtodox, Muslims, Hare Krishna.

The Catholic cathedral that communists turned into a basketball arena for two decades is now busier than ever, drawing more than 2,000 people to a single Sunday Mass. An ornate Albanian Orthodox church with three grand, peach-colored domes is readying for Easter celebrations and popular midnight candlelit processions. And a few days ago, the latest of more than 50 mosques in the area opened with fanfare and a call to prayer.

There are also Bektashis, "a distinctive Sufi Muslim sect that maintains its world headquarters here."

Little Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu - aka Mother Theresa - should be proud.

ABBA meets INFERNO

2007-04-04T14:57:00.000-07:00

Having a crisis with that "easy to assemble" IKEA bookshelf? Can't stand the taste of lingonberry? I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I'm afraid the URL godhatessweden.com has just gone off the market.

Yup the tedious Phelps family is moving online with their public war against the socialist scandinavian country. God's elect are warned to "leave Sweden now" (you know who you are).

The fag-hating clan from Topeka, Kansas is kind of making a cultural tour of Europe at the moment - I guess holding up those homemade "God Gates Fags" placards isn't getting them airplay at home anymore. What with their constant presence at gay pride marches, the funeral of Matthew Sheppard and of US Servicemen, it seems that Americans - at last - have exported his over-the-top evangelizing like so much Jerry Lewis slapstick.

Why Sweden, particularly? Take a look at this article from the Daily Telegraph, if you really want to know - a loose princess, an intolerance for homophobia. I don't know. Björn Ulvaeus wore tight gold pants?

Just the other day, ur-geek Louis Theroux had in interview in the BBC about a program he was filming with the Phelps clan - "The Most Hated Family in America." Should be a hoot, though don't expect any sophisticatied tackling of the American landscape of outspoken faith. Sez Theroux, "It shows you what strange avenues the religious impulse can take you down. I think another part of the answer is that parts of the Christian Bible are pretty weird."

Amish Aftermath

2007-04-03T09:48:00.000-07:00

A story in the Washington Post, courtesy of the AP, about the new schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. Nickel mines, as you remember, was the Amish community where a gunman killed 5 schoolgirls last October, and wounded 5 others.

The new schoolhouse has:

...a steel door that locks from the inside. It has no phone, but its location behind a row of non-Amish homes provides a way to quickly summon help in an emergency, [Bart Township zoning officer John] Coldiron said. During the rampage, a teacher had to run to a neighboring farm to call 911.

"For an Amish one-room schoolhouse, this one is spectacular," said Coldiron, who inspected it last week.

There are also skylights, sod lawns and a modern whiteboard. Over $4 million in donations were sent to the community, according to the article. I wonder how they spend that kind of money, deal with the logistics of it in a small, simple community?

We don't know. There is a lot of wondering with this story. The reclusiveness of the Lancaster Amish is legendary - reporters seldom spoke with anyone in the community during the entire ordeal of the murders, and then it was often members on the fringes. It has taken some deft journalism. In today's AP story, quotes from the zoning officer and a neighbor. Glimpses of the children walking with their lunch coolers, with state troopers guarding the one lane to the schoolhouse.

Were they guarding the children against another gunman? Probably not. Chances are that they were there to keep the journalists at bay.

How do you report a story like this? Late last year, Matthew Teague wrote a piece for Philadelphia Magazine that is thankfully still online. Check it out here. With only one Amish source - a reclusive man who deals with outsiders at the auction house - he weaves a story about Amish history, our fascination with tragedy, and, finally, the frustration of journalism. Gorgeous stuff.

Get Smart

2007-04-02T09:45:00.000-07:00

This is a little belated... but props to TIME for their cover story on teaching the Bible in schools. David Van Biema makes an unapologetic case for adding the Bible to school curricula. Forceful and poetic:

Without the Bible and a few imposing secular sources, we face a numbing horizontality in our culture--blogs, political announcements, ads. The world is flat, sure. But Scripture is among our few means to make it deep.

Van Biema states and anwers arguments across the spectrum. I note that The Revealer had some positive words to say today about the emphatic feel of the piece, rare in one of the glossy behemoths: "It's good stuff, wherever you stand -- it's not a declaration from Big Media, it's an argument -- so read and argue."

Van Biema mentions the recent decision in Georgia to add Bible courses at the high school level (as electives). He doesn't ask, however, a question I think is fruitful (and which I blogged about here): does a secular study of the Bible strengthen faith... or weaken it?

Well, I ran across an excellent article about just this... in the Biblical Archaeology Review. of all places.

It's called "Losing Faith," and it's worth a peruse.The author interviews four scholars to see whether a life spent studying the Bible hurts or helps your belief in God. Bart Ehrman and William G. Dever lost their faith. James F. Strange and Lawrence H. Schiffman kept theirs.Here are a few great quotes from both sides:

Strange: My faith is not based upon anything like a propositional argument. When I indulge myself in all this scientific research and explication, I’m not doing anything about faith.

Shanks: What is your faith based on?

Strange: I'm still a baptist minister... my faith is based on my own experience—a good old Protestant principle..... Based on my own experience with God. For a lot of people, this makes me sort of a mystic in a cave or something. But I think it’s eminently practical and out there....

Shanks: Does this God of yours have any attributes?

Strange: I suppose so, but I’m not really much interested. If I’m passionately in love, I hardly ever want to discuss the attributes of the person I’m in love with. Or if I do, I wind up saying superfluous things for everybody listening. “She’s wonderful.” “Can you give me some more information?” “Yeah, she’s really wonderful.” [Laughs] When you’re in this state, you don’t utter propositions.

and

Ehrman: ...faith is rooted in certain historical claims. As historical claims, they can be shown as either probable or improbable. And I got to a point where the historical claims about Jesus seemed implausible, especially the resurrection. Not the crucifixion—I think Jesus was crucified like a lot of other people were crucified, and I think that, like a lot of other people, he stayed dead. And so, for me, that had a damaging impact on my faith.

and

Schiffman: From a Jewish point of view, these kinds of problems aren’t problems. First of all, the Bible was never taken literally in Judaism. It doesn’t mean that it’s not historical, but it is not taken literally in the Protestant sense. It’s not an issue in Judaism. Admittedly there is a literalist strain in a minority of medieval Jewish thinkers and a minority—maybe a growing minority—in modern Judaism, but it’s not classical Judaism. The Talmud doesn’t take the Bible literally in the Protestant sense. Jim [Strang]'s approach of taking a kind of experiential approach to the whole thing is one that is much more primary in Judaism.

I get into debates about these historical types of issues all the time, especially within the Orthodox community. I don’t want to say they aren’t important—they are important. We sit around and debate these kinds of questions all day.

and

Dever: ...the call of Abraham, the Promise of the Land, the migration to Canaan, the descent into Egypt, the Exodus, Moses and monotheism, the Law at Sinai, divine kingship—archaeology throws all of these into great doubt. My long experience in Israel and my growing uncertainty about the historicity of the Bible meant that was the end for me.

Shanks: Well, then your scholarship did destroy your faith?

Dever: Absolutely. Next year will be the 50th anniversary of my first trip to Israel. I worked there for 49 years and let me tell you something: Seeing Judaism and Christianity and, God help us, Islam up close and personal does not help. Living in the Holy Land, I became extremely cynical about religion. I began to think, more or less, maybe like all of you, that I had no talent for religion, that faith might be a matter of temperament as well as training. I never had a pious bone in my body. And I realized I was never really a believer, but it just took me 40 years to figure out that it was no longer meaningful. That’s when I converted to Judaism. [Laughs] I did it precisely because you don’t have to be religious to be a Jew. And I’m perfectly comfortable where I am.

Good mindbending stuff. What's interesting to me is the fact that none of them give much credence to literalism, and that the archaeologists who continue in their faith practice it on a metaphorical level. If this is the outcome of more biblical scholarship, then bring it on - in the schools, on TV, on the web.

And on that Subject...

2007-03-30T10:31:00.000-07:00

... a rather distressed post on one of the Beliefnet pop culture blogs. Apparently a T-shirt company by the name of Holy Ghost Tees is promoting their shirts via MySpace. A hot, midriff-baring chick is wearing a tight shirt that reads "E-Cal-A-Ma-She." The shirt on the dusky dude holding her by the waist reads "A-Nin-Di-O-She." They're supposed to be phrases from Christians speaking in tongues.

Sez affronted blogger,

It's hard to tell whether these phrases are real or if they were made up in the mind of yet another mocker. What is most problematic--beyond the $37 price tag--is the fact that the words are printed on the shirt without explanation as to what they mean. These shirts defeat the purpose of opening eyes to the wondrous works of the Holy Spirit by belittling a profoundly deep experience and contributing to the compartmentalization of Christian spiritual gifts.

Are the entrepreneurs for real? Their MySpace blog says that they had a great time at the Greater Dimensions Christian Assembly Youth Conference in Jacksonville, Florida (they have pictures). "Not only was it a prime opportunity for HolyGhostTees.com to showcase our wonderful product amongst today's youth and Christian culture, exceeding our expectations selling out of t-shirts onsite within 2 days and generating additional sale orders more specifically, our pre-order limited edition "Tye-dyed On The Cross" HolyGhostTees. However, it allowed us to be in the presence of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit as souls were saved and a new commitment of faith was restored."

The shirts, according to the website, are 100% cotton, pre-shrunk and come with an "authenticity label." Presumably this is to say that the phrases on the shirt came from a REAL encounter with God. "Whether your style is Hip Hop, grunge, baby-tees or somewhere in-between, you gotta sport your HolyGhostTees and let the world know you caught the Spirit."

And hey - they might come in handy for the rest of us. I was recently on the website of Tom Brown, an El Paso preacher who has been internationally quoted on matters of modern exorcism and speaking in tongues He says that:

English comes from England. Spanish comes from Spain. Italian comes from Italy.. Well, where [do] tongues come from? ... It is what is spoken in heaven; the only difference is that the people in heaven understand what they are saying. Here on earth Paul says, "For anyone who speaks in tongues does not speak to men but to God. Indeed, no one understand him; he utters mysteries with his spirit" (v. 2).Jesus says that those who believe in Him will "speak in new tongues" (Mark 16:17)

Interestingly, both HolyGhostTees and Tom Brown rely on the internet for most of their traffic - Brown says that he has "half million visitors annually, with hundreds of testimonies." Odd, since there the web is, so far, a mute medium.

Our meetup group is heading to a Pentecostal group over the summer. Very much looking forward to it. Think I'll skip the Tee, though.

Get Thee Behind Me, Facebook!

2007-03-30T10:14:00.000-07:00

Bad graphics and endless smileys aren't the only sins committed in the name of social networking sites. At least, not according to CNN, who saw fit to publish a "1,2,trend" piece about people giving up MySpace and Facebook for Lent.

"It's a form of spiritual awareness that allows you to reconnect with God," said Jocelyn Chiu, an Emory University sophomore and active member of her Presbyterian church. "By giving up something that used up so much of my time, I realized that I had been leaving my spiritual life behind."

Chiu gave up Facebook for Lent in 2006 and went one step further this year -- vowing to avoid the Internet altogether. She has only allowed herself to check Emory's internal e-mail for school-related messages

Ouch. That would be hard. And interesting, in light of the statistic in the Washington Post the other day, saying that hits for "God" are rivaling the number of hits for "sex." What way do the numbers go this time of year, especially if Christian netizens like Chiu aren't holding up their end?

Me, I'm all over it. I think that a personal fast is one of the great spiritual practices that crosses traditions. And very timely for our age. As Solzhenitsyn said in his infamous Harvard address, America needs, more than anything, to learn the ability to say "no" to itself.

My Lent observance got really creative about five years ago, when a friend and I started giving up plastic bags. In New York, this is almost impossible, and leads to near-fistfights with take-out counters who want to swaddle your food in layers of cardboard, strings, paper and plasic. As for ordering in, one of those New York perks - forget it. Just try ordering the mu-shu pork, hold the environmental destruction, and see what comes to your door.

You Can't Go Home Again

2007-03-29T13:38:00.000-07:00

A depressing story from Ethiopia, courtesy of Reuters.

You've probably heard about the "law of return": all diaspora Jews are allowed to settle in Israel and eventually gain citizenship. Well, an ancient group of Jews, living on the margins of Ethiopian society, have been running into trouble. Thousands have been stranded for years in squalid refugee camps, and the Israeli government seems unwilling to let them return.

Israel -- a country built on immigration which says it houses about 110,000 Israelis of Ethiopian descent -- has finalized a list of the last to be brought in.

That would leave thousands -- estimates range from 8,000 to 16,000 -- in Gondar's sprawling, filthy camp and the surrounding villages.

Many people in the camps have been waiting for years in cramped mud shacks with no running water or basic sanitation, depending on food donations to survive. Families have been split up, only some of their number allowed into Israel.

The piece also hints at the double standard of emigration policies with Ethiopia and a more European country like Russia. Hundreds of thousands of Russians were allowed to return, often with little or no connection to the Jewish faith. I once spent a memorable afternoon in a park in Tel Aviv with a small group of these Russian Jews - who were devout Hare Krishnas.

There are claims that many Ethiopians are simply trying to leave their lives in Africa, taking advantage of the law. But they don't necessarily face a better life in Israel, where the Ethiopians who have already emigrated face dicrimination:

"It is not enough to airlift people in planes to Israel while those that have immigrated have not yet been absorbed," said Masala, referring to the hardships and social exclusion felt by many in the Ethiopian Jewish community in Israel.

Israel has officially finished its list of who is and who is not a Jew among the Ethiopians who are waiting. Thousands will be left behind, facing lives of ostracism, exclusion, and loneliness at home.

In the middle of this, somewhere, there lurks the issue of tikkun olam - the Jewish idea that the purpose of being a Jew is to help rebuild a broken world.

Update: SCOTUS

2007-03-29T13:20:00.000-07:00

As I opened my Inbox, I was pleased to get see some high-powered perspective on l'affaire Bong Hits, which I blogged about here.

No less an authority than David Masci, a senior research fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, has posted a legal analysis on how some Christian groups are finding themselves on the same side as Joseph Frederick, the teen who advocated "Bong Hits for Jesus" on a banner unfurled at a school event.

...more than a few eyebrows were raised when the likes of the American Center for Law and Justice, a Christian public interest law firm founded by Pat Robertson, submitted an amicus brief on behalf of Frederick. Yet ACLJ, as well as other similar organizations, see a clear parallel between Frederick's plight and that of many religious, especially Christian, students around the country. "School districts must not be entrusted with the authority to arbitrarily determine what student speech is offensive and off limits," the group said in a statement released on the day of the Supreme Court oral argument. "In the future, that could put all student speech at risk -- including speech that advocates Christian beliefs on any issue."

Aside from ACLJ, who else is on Frederick's side? The ACLU, of course. Opposed? The National School Boards, drug policy groups, and... the Bush administration!

Strange Bedfellows indeed. But as Masci points out,

If the Supreme Court decides in favor of Frederick and against the school district, it will almost certainly strengthen the right of students, including religious students, to express opinions that other students and school officials find objectionable. This time, it's "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" that raised a principal's ire. But the Christian public interest groups involved in the Frederick case believe that next time it might be an entirely different, more reverential invocation of Christ's name that lands a student in hot water.

Institutions

2007-03-28T12:51:00.000-07:00

Two articles from the beginning of this week, both from the LA Times, both good, both wrestling with the same idea. If you're a Catholic, what is your duty to powers other than the Church - especially that power is the U.S. Government?

It's been a thorny issue for Christians from the days of Jesus, who gave the equivocation "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s ."

The first one deals with the Catholic Worker, which helps the homeless in LA. The organization has never registered with the IRS as a non-profit, which ensures that the infrastructure for the group is off the books, and donations to them non-deductible. Why?

"We have this idea in the back of our head that money corrupts," said [Catherine] Morris, 72, a former nun who has a wide and tireless smile. She said the group collects about $200,000 a year. "It seems the first thing that money goes to is salaries, and we have no salaries."...

Her husband, Jeff Dietrich, agreed. "We don't want the federal government's permission to do this," said Dietrich, a 61-year-old with a robust mustache.

"Jesus really didn't have anything to do with the state, and he wanted people to take care of each other.

"

The organization runs a shelter and soup kitchen, and provides a dental and medical clinic for the city's poor. They rely on "no-strings-attached altruism" from its donors and volunteers to get things done. The Times gives a few lines to the history of the lefty Catholic Worker and founder Dorothy Day:

A writer, social activist and pacifist, Day embraced the radical politics of the Depression era — her brand has been described as "Christian anarchism" — along with more orthodox teachings of Roman Catholic morality, including an opposition to abortion.

Day, who died in 1980 and has been proposed for sainthood, maintained that charity should be a personal endeavor and that living among the poor is a virtue.

Score one for God over Caesar. Compare this to the story this one that ran the next day, about a little-known fact in the ongoing trials in the Catholic church over sex abuse. It starts this way:

An elderly nun, under questioning by a lawyer, recently said she could remember almost nothing about his client, a child who had been sexually molested by a Roman Catholic priest.

Lawyer Irwin Zalkin was puzzled because church records showed she had heard several complaints about the San Diego priest, and the file noted that she had reported them to higher authority.

Finally, Zalkin asked whether she was familiar with "mental reservation" — a 700-year-old doctrine by which clerics may avoid telling the truth to protect the Catholic Church.

"She explained in her own way that it is 'to protect the church from scandal.' She said she subscribed to the doctrine," Zalkin said.... "You put somebody under oath; you assume they understand that under civil law they would be committing perjury to lie. It complicates that process when there is a doctrine that allows for a lie to avoid scandal to the church."

The article goes on to describe "mental reservation," a Catholic tradition unsanctioned by canon law to keep the authority of the church intact under assault from civil law by stretching the truth. Clearly, since the first wave of pedophilia cases hit in 2002, this has been an issue, ith millions of dollars at stake. At least "half a dozen lawyers," according to the article, have run into the practice in the courtroom. When church officials were confronted about its use on the stand, they are advised to not answer the question by their lawyers.

Who has your loyalty - God or Caesar? A tough question, obviously. I mentioned the Mennonite s the other day, and in the course of their radical peace witness, one of their pastors was quoted as saying, "We have discovered some doubt as to what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God, and have decided to give the benefit of the doubt to God."

But where does God lie? Where do you draw the battle lines? In turning away from government, to keep the spirit of altruism from becoming an institution? Or, in disregarding the law to preserve the institution you've set up, ostensibly, to help the poor in body and spirit? Beyond me.

Forgive these tardy posts, btw. The magazine has been in overdrive and I'm finding it hard to focus. All better soon.

Ask and Ye Shall Recieve

2007-03-26T13:51:00.000-07:00

The other day I asked where the smart stories were about American Islam as it is practiced in non-immigrant communities, especially among African-Americans. I mean, is it just me, or is it significant that the United States is embroiled in baiting the Islamic world abroad, while our own most historically fraught ethnic group at home - blacks - have been turning to Islam in greater numbers? Isn't this... news?

The AP came through with a few insights. The headlines read along the lines of, Black Conversions to Sunni Islam Rise Since Sept. 11 Attacks. There's a meaty story here.

Unfortunately this piece doesn't quite come through. But here's what's relevant:

Following what appears to be a trend in cities nationwide, religious leaders in Pittsburgh say there has been a rise in black conversions to Sunni Islam since the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

No national surveys have been taken to confirm the increase, but Islamic religious leaders in Chicago, Cleveland and Detroit have also reported growth, said Lawrence Mamiya, a professor of religion and Africana studies at New York’s Vassar College. Experts estimate that 30 percent of the 6 to 7 million Muslims in the U.S. are black, with only South Asians making up a larger number at 33 percent.

But... why? The story largely sidesteps any analysis in favor of focusing on the growth of black Islamic communities in Pittsburgh and New York. A few coy stabs, though, are telling:

A growing number of Muslims in America, especially blacks, are building mosques that offer a variety of community services, partly because the federal and state governments do not answer to many of their social needs, Islamic experts say.

These complexes take the religion back to its roots before the modern-day state began providing services to the population.

Sure - African-Americans feel ignored by the government. There's probably some truth there. But Islam doesn't have a corner on intra-community support. Plenty of Christian assistance programs in and out of the black community.

The last few grafs are, I think, what the story should have been about:

After the [9/11] attacks, [Muslim] immigrants — subject to FBI surveillance, police raids and other scrutiny — began to reach out to black Muslims in Pittsburgh, whose persecution they could suddenly relate to, said Sarah Jameela Martin, 64, an active member of the city’s black Muslim community....

Now, as immigrant and black Muslims in Pittsburgh try to improve the religion’s image and separate it from global terrorism, blacks are paving the way, Martin said.

Black women, for example, have long worn the traditional head-covering, or hijab, to work, while immigrants have been reluctant to do so, she said. Today, Muslims in Pittsburgh are far more visible, she said.

“Because of our social tag … we didn’t mind,” Byrdsong said, pointing to his dark skin as an explanation to why being openly Muslim has never been a problem for blacks in America. “We can’t hide it.”

A strange way to end the story, isn't it? “Because of our social tag … we didn’t mind.” What exactly does this mean??? We don't mind the stigmas of wearing the Islamic faith on our sleeve. We have had it tougher just wearing the colors of our race.

There are a lot of issues here. As the Church of England is discovering this week the horrible legacy of slavery is a moral blot on the history of the west that resists easy solutions - that religious body is looking at the financial ways it profited from the slave trade and what, if anything, can be done to come clean again.

That's the moral story of America, writ large. It's why the story of faith in our African-American communities is so important. The introduction of Christianity to Africa was wrapped up in the introduction of chains and slavery. Perhaps today - and I'm not the first one to say this - African-Americans are drawn to Islam in the wake of 9/11 BOTH because it is not Christianity AND because it is instead a faith that bears the burden of a misunderstood stigma, something that blacks can relate to?

I want more. This is the next chapter in a story that, in the end, is the most important story of our nation. Sin, repentance, the impossible hope of forgiveness.

Am I off base? The door is open to anyone with a keener analysis.

Synagogue

2007-03-23T08:28:00.000-07:00

As the sun sets tonight around the globe, millions of Jews will begin their observation of the Sabbath.

They will keep it in different ways. Some will go to their local shul and sing the Lecha Dodi Likrat. Others will repeat the kiddush over the wine and challah bread in their homes. More secular Jews may choose to enjoy a meal with their families, the beginning of a 24 hours set aside for enjoying life. America owes the idea of the "day of rest" to the Jews. For the Jews it is more than this. As the Zionist Ahad Ha'am noted, the practice has kept Jewish identity alive through a tumultuous history: "More than Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews."

The group that I lead went to Shabbat services at Central Synagogue last Friday, braving a March sleetstorm that turned midtown into an obstacle course of ice and slush.

The building is beautiful, with a vaulting cathedral-like ceiling and an attention to pattern and detail that is rich in carved wood and bright colors. When the synagogue was built in 1872, it was modeled on Moorish Mosques. Since the Jews really didn't have a tradition of big buildings since the fall of the Temple in 70AD, the larger, more affluent communities in Germany and Europe looked for architectural inspiration to the Golden Age, when 90% of the world's Jews lived relatively peacefully under Muslim rule in Spain. The building is enormous, and seats 1,500. Thanks to Amy Nyack for these insights.

The service itself was upbeat and progressive. Many men chose not to wear the kippa, or head covering. The two cantors were women - one played the guitar. There was a large contingent of Muslims visiting that night - their Imam from the Islamic Cultural Center as sitting next to the Rabbi as part of an interfaith exchange. There was a pastor there as well, the three joined in a benediction that was moving.

Also, lots of rosy-cheeked kids got up to sing, a Hebrew song punctuated with cowboy yelps of "Yeee-haw!" We were invited to sing along. I couldn't help but notice that some of the kids didn't look ethnically jewish at all - Chinese and African-American features punctuated the group, maybe through adoption or intermarriage or conversion.

Needless to say this is a Reform Jewish congregation. Reform Judaism was born in the mid-nineteenth century, and embraced a lot of enlightenment, progressive ideas about how strictly Jews should observe their traditions. Today, most Jews outside of Israel are part of this movement.

But inside Israel, the Orthodox Judaism rules. A piece from yesterday's Washington Post:

World leaders of Reform Judaism launched a new push Monday for greater support from Israelis despite what they called continuing discrimination at the hands of the Orthodox religious establishment in Israel.

Reform Judaism, a liberal, egalitarian movement, is the largest branch of American Judaism. But the movement has never caught on in large numbers in Israel, where the majority of religious Jews are Orthodox, and only a small minority Conservative or Reform.

In Israel, the Orthodox rabbinate has strenuously resisted inroads by the other streams, refusing to recognize their rulings or conversions as religiously valid.

The niceties of the struggles within Judaism are beyond my ken, but it was interesting to hear the reaction of the one Jewish guy in our group to the services at Central Synagogue. He is a freelancer for the NY Times, sniffing around to see if our travels are worth a story or not. He was raised in a Conservative Jewish community in New England, where there were no guitars or cowboy yelps. He hadn't stepped foot in shul for some fifteen years.

"I felt protective of my tradition," he said. "Religion is not supposed to be fun."

Glad he wasn't along when we saw the Hip-Hop Taoists.

Well, to everyone - "shabbat shalom." (good sabbath)

J K eLe Menno...

2007-03-22T08:01:00.000-07:00

I blogged yesterday about our American legacy of being settled by persecuted churches. One of these groups was the Mennonites (who take their name from the Dutch Catholic priest Menno Simons, pictured, occasioning the infantile pun above).

Mennonites are known for their belief in adult baptism (or "Believer's Baptism"), their pacifism, and their practice of a simple, often rural, way of life. Old Order Mennonites are often confused with the Amish (with whom they share a lot of history) because of their horse-and-buggy lifestyle on the fringes of society.

The Mennonites came to America fleeing persecution first in the Netherlands and Switzerland, then in England. They settled across the US in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Missouri. Now, after a few hundred years, the flight of persecution continues, according to this story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

...Mennonites are leaving Missouri as state officials enforce a 2004 law that requires all residents to have their pictures taken for drivers licenses -- a rule that conflicts with the Mennonites' belief in a Biblical prohibition against "graven images" that keep community members from having their picture taken.

Near Huntsville, community members say more than a dozen families in this central Missouri enclave are preparing to move south to Arkansas, where state law still offers a religious exemption to obtain driver's licenses without photos.

The Grand Inquisitors of the Missouri state DMV are citing the increased security since 9/11 for requiring these horse-and-buggy pacifists to carry their mugshots along with them as they drive their eggs to market. Arkansas, the new promised land, has decided to shoulder the risk.

The article doesn't mention what the Mennonites are doing with driver's licenses to begin with. As I understand it, modern technology has a place in "simple" and Old Order communities. The towns may decide on limited innovations - like a few cars for commercial use - if they can be of benefit to all without jeapordizing their belief in a meditative pace of life.

The Secret... ugh

2007-03-21T08:29:00.000-07:00

"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun."

Words of wisdom from the murky worldview of Ecclesiastes (1:9 KJV). I quote that author here, because he has the sole distinction of being the only historical figure not cited in the pages of Rhonda Byrne's book The Secret.

And no wonder. Life is tough and gather ye rosebuds are hardly the sentiments to sell books. You won't move nearly 2 million units with gems like "The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth."

Don't ask me to go into why I think The Secret is a yawner. I've already gone into my thoughts about the book, America's long-standing New Thought syncretism, and my own family's weird involvement with New Age gurus. But it's nice to see some thoughtful coverage, especially in the dailies. The Toronto Star gives some serious ink to The Secret and the mysteries and histories it is a part of. Great, great article, in which author Murray Whyte talks to happiness experts, ex-gurus, and Steve Salerno, the author of SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless.

After giving The Secret and its detractors their due, Whyte finishes the article by showing up at an event held by a publisher holding a Secret-related event. The interaction between the guru and the acolytes is priceless:

[Canadian publisher] Burman hosted [author Marie] Diamond at an event at Indigo Books on Bloor last weekend, where she took some questions from a packed audience. "I'm a really big believer in The Secret," said one, a young black woman. "But I also believe that discrimination and racism are real. How can you harmonize those things?"

Diamond, a middle-aged Belgian woman with a welcoming air, nodded knowingly. "You just said you believe in discrimination. You be-live it. I'm going to ask you to stop believing it, because if you focus on the negative, you project it yourself."

Another, from a young man. "I really love what you're doing," he says. "But how, for example, was 9/11 attracted to the people in those buildings? That's something I can't understand."

Another thoughtful pause. Diamond, in her madras blazer and jeans, furrows her brow and speaks softly, breathily. "Sometimes, we experience the law of attraction collectively," she says. "The U.S. maybe had a fear of being attacked. Those 3,000 people – they might have put out some kind of fear that attracted this to happen, fear of dying young, fear that something might happen that day. But sometimes, it is collective."

The only area I wish Whyte had explored was the extent that books like The Secret have influenced mainstream Christianity. Positive thinking has held a grip on congregations since Normal Vincent Peale, and megachurches and the explosion of Pentecostalism have, for the most part, strengthened the message of God-equals-prosperity-and-happiness. Gone are the scowls of our Puritan forefathers. Here to stay is the era of blind optimism - with it's adolescent obsession with stuff and the road to "happiness".

Whoa. Did I just use scare quotes on the word happiness?

All right, time to soft-pedal the cynicism. In my defense, I officially became a New Yorker last week by the seven-year rule. Time to grab a slice or a blintz and chill out with the Daily News. A time to weep, and a time to laugh - right?

The Great Pond Divide

2007-03-20T08:40:00.000-07:00

Two stories that should be read back to back.

First, the British government today decided that school administrators had the right to ban full-face veils, if they affected "safety, security or pupils' learning." The AP story, courtesy of CNN:

School administrators have the right to ban students from covering their faces under a new uniform policy, but educators should speak with parents before introducing such a ban, the Education Ministry said in a statement.

...

The issue of face-covering veils has sparked a debate over religious tolerance and cultural assimilation in Britain, which is home to 1.6 million Muslims.

The English ruling should be distinguished from l'affaire du voile across the channel. In France, any conspicuous outward sign of religious affiliation - cross, kippa or veil - is forbidden, on the grounds of keeping schools secular. In England, with its stress on the school's right to keep a dress code, the rallying cry seems to be more towards propriety than secularity. Vive la difference.

Compare both of these with what our Supreme Court was discussing yesterday: l'affaire "Bong Hits for Jesus."

Yup, for those of you cloistered on a grand jury somewhere, our highest court is seriously debating whether or not a school has the right to stop a student from carrying a banner advocating getting stoned for Jesus.

Some are asking - will the face veil ban ever cross the Atlantic? I say - are you kidding? We carry three centuries of heavy baggage as the religious refugees of Europe. As Christian as the nation is, it will be a cold day in hell before we forbid anyone the right to wear their colors of faith - no matter how out-of-step they may be.

Speaking of out-of-step. Lord love Miss Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

"If the design had been `Bong "Stinks" for Jesus,' would the reaction have been the same?" asked Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. "One could look at these words and say it's just nonsense . . . it isn't clear that this is `smoke pot.'"

According to the latest from the Chicago Tribune, the Bong Hits case looks like it will hinge on whether the student, who was on a field trip at the unfurling, is considered in school or out of school.

Buddhist Conscientious Objectors

2007-03-19T12:51:00.000-07:00

I blogged the other day about attending services in Daniel Seeger's church. His name doesn't exactly resonate through the ages. He was the defendant in a case that reached the Supreme Court, The United States of America vs. Daniel Seeger, which eventually allowed him to claim conscientious objector status due to his religion, even though he wasn't sure he believed in God. The court decided that his agnosticism was still "religious" in the eyes of the law. This kept him out of the Korean War.

Well, South Koreans are now mounting their legal front to keep from fighting in the same war - which is technically still being fought. This piece in the Korea Times says that military objectors of many stripes, including Buddhists and Jehovah's Witnesses, are bringing their claims to the United Nations.

The lengthy debate over the right of Korean citizens to refuse mandatory military service will now be heard at the United Nations (U.N.).

Oh Tae-yang, a 30-year-old who became a public figure in 2002 when he was indicted for refusing the draft citing his Buddhist beliefs, will join 10 other Koreans in submitting a complaint to the U.N.'s Human Rights Committee that deals with the Korean government's alleged discrimination against military objectors.

"Oh and the other military objectors will argue on the international stage that the Korean government's decision to punish them under criminal law violate their basic human rights to freedom of thought and religion that should be protected by law," said Choi Jung-min, secretary general of a coalition of 36 activist groups and religious organizations advocating the rights of military objectors.

The article goes on to say that of the 3,655 Koreans who have claimed objector status since 2001, more than 3,000 were sentenced to at least 18 months in prison. At least 900 are currently serving time for their beliefs.

The problem, of course - applying to the UN. What are they going to do? Pass a resolution? Look sternly across the room at the Korean delegate? Anyone who is savvy to the actual power of this organization in this case, please feel free to comment.

It's important to remember that the basis for military objection in this country is still religious, by law, Daniel Seeger nonwithstanding. Young objectors are required to show a substantial paper trail documenting their moral beliefs, which needs to add up to a "religious" conviction. Until Seeger, the US government asked the following questions of potential objectors:

Give the name and present address of the individual upon whom you rely most for religious guidance.

Are you a member of a religious sect or organization? Describe carefully the creed or official statements of said religious sect or organization as it relates to participation in war.

Describe the actions and behavior in your life which in your opinion most conspicuously demonstrate the consistency and depth of your religious convictions.

It's one of the instances where the US government can still pass judgment on the depths and reach of a citizen's religious belief. Unreal. Our best wishes to the Buddhists Over There.

Web of Worship

2007-03-16T06:41:00.000-07:00

Check out this piece from the Washington Post a few days ago - it's about how people can increasingly experience worship services over the internet. The piece focuses on a South Indian temple, and the website where you can order a personalized puja from anywhere in the world.

I must say the website is very cool - menus for different temples of Ganesh, Vishnu, Shiva and Navagraha, and the services you can request to have performed there. There's also information about Hinduism for the curious - who, according to the article, increasingly make up the traffic for the site.

But the real news, I think, is here:

For many cyber-worshipers, online religious life conducted at home or in an Internet cafe has replaced attendance at traditional churches, temples, mosques and synagogues. Some are coming to religion for the first time, in a setting they find as comfortable as their grandparents found a church pew, while millions of people reared on churchgoing are discovering new ways to worship.

“The first wave of religion online, in the 1990s, was mainly for nerds and young people and techies,” said Morten Hojsgaard, a Danish author who has written extensively about online religion. “But now it really is a mirror of society at large. This is providing a new forum for religious seekers.”

Hojsgaard said the number of Web pages dealing with God, religion and churches increased from 14 million in 1999 to 200 million in 2004. Religion now nearly rivals sex as a topic on the Internet: A search for “sex” on Google returns about 408 million hits, while a search for “God” yields 396 million.

In fact, I was told once that the first discussion board dedicated to one topic on the proto-internet was about paganism. And just last month, a guy from our meetup at a Greek Orhtodox church mentioned that he was becoming converted to a different shade of Judaism through a Rabbi's teachings on YouTube.

It feels right, that our fascination with God is exploding online. American religion, with its proliferation of denominations and flavors, has always incorporated the robust market mentality of this country. We are a nation of superstar preachers and new spiritual winds. According to the ACIS survey, 1 in 7 Americans ends up in a religion they weren't born into, I've wanted to see more articles like this, on the ways that Americans shop around for faith.

Temple Skirmishes

2007-03-15T13:06:00.000-07:00

From western India, the following report about skirmishes between two rival sects of the Swaminarayan branch of Hinduism:

Sadhus, who take a vow of non-violence and abstinence, shed their saffron robes to don violent garbs, aiming soda bottles and stones at each other and later attacking a police station. By the time peace prevailed, at least a dozen sadhus were in the Takhatsinhji Hospital in Bhavnagar. The town remained tense on the second consecutive day with the police deploying 200 personnel

The city of Gadhada is an important pilgrimage center for the Swaminarayan believers, and violence is erupting between the five sects about the rights to maintain lucrative temples and pilgrimage sites. The move to violence is a significant change, according to political commentator Dinesh Shukla. In the past, the sects confined themselves to slur campaigns - "sting operations revealing sex scandals and financial irregularities."

Apparently. The article ends with the following interesting (if grammatically questionable) note:

The tension was palpable when elections were held last October at Maninagar and Junagadh temples. And, the election results are usually followed by a sodomy or sex scandal, revealed to followers by either faction.

Sodomy scandals? Gosh. Sounds like home.

Speaking of Quakers

2007-03-15T12:16:00.000-07:00

Today charges were dropped against six Guilford College football players, who were accused of attacking and using racial epithets against three Palestinian students. From the News and Observer:

The Palestinian students, including an N.C. State University freshman, said they were called "terrorists" and taunted with racial slurs as they were beaten and kicked Jan. 20.

On Wednesday, Assistant District Attorney Howard Neumann said he dropped the charges after reviewing witness statements from nearly 30 people. All six players faced assault charges, and five of them were charged with ethnic intimidation.

The case was ugly enough to merit international attention - even Al Jazeera sent a film crew to Greensboro, NC, where the school is located.

All the more perplexing, as the News and Observer article points out, because Guilford is a school with a "rich heritage in the pacifist Quaker faith" - founded in 1837 by Friends and the only Quaker college in the Southeast.

"Any time a violent incident happens on a Quaker campus," [Nic Brown, assistant director of college relations at Guilford] said, "there's going to be intense scrutiny."

In both the News and Observer story and in a piece by the AP, the story raises the question of whether the players' apologies prompted the dismissal of the charges. The Palestinians' lawyer said "that if the players apologized, they would consider asking for the charges to be dropped." But:

[Guilford County Assistant District Attorney Howard] Neumann said he considered the apologies, ``but we're not setting a precedent in Guilford County that as long as you say you're sorry it's OK to break the law.''

But apologies can go a long way. There is an opportunity here to talk about how Quakers resolve conflict. The idea of "Gospel Order" is central to many Quaker communities. Part of it is summed up in Matthew 18:15-17:

If your brother sins against you, go and point out what was wrong. But do it in private, just between the two of you. If that person listens, you have won back a follower. But if that one refuses to listen, take along one or two others. The Scriptures teach that every complaint must be proven true by two or more witnesses. If the follower refuses to listen to them, report the matter to the church. Anyone who refuses to listen to the church must be treated like an unbeliever or a tax collector.

Conflicts are resolved close to home, with the courts of law only involved as a last resort. And Quakers are no stranger to conflict. The "peaceful" Friends have been on the front lines of most of the 20th century's social movements, which has brought them into conflict, both external and internal, with some regularity. Their historical mechanisms for consensus building and conflict resolution are pretty amazing - check out some here.

As Guilford tries to reconnect with it's Quaker past in the wake of the brawl, it will be an interesting to see if that message of brotherhood can extend these ideas to the modern clash between America and Islam.

Bush v. Chavez: UPDATE

2007-03-12T12:15:00.000-07:00

As I blogged the other day, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and our own George Bush are both using Christian language to sell their ideologies. But the face-off for the hearts of South Americans took an interesting turn today when Mayan Indian leaders in Guatemala resolved to begin purification rites at ancient places Bush visited to cleanse them of any "bad spirits." From CNN:

...many Mayans are angry that Bush is visiting Iximche, founded as the capital of the Kaqchiqueles kingdom before the Spanish conquest in 1524.
...
"That a person like (Bush) with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked is going to walk in our sacred lands is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture," Juan Tiney, director of a Mayan non-governmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders, told The Associated Press.

On the Road: Quakers

2007-03-12T06:05:00.000-07:00

As I've mentioned, I lead a group of New Yorkers of different faiths to services around the city. Afterwards, we talk about them. Feel free to join us.

Yesterday we sat with the Quakers of Fifteenth Street Meeting House. It was an "unstructured" meeting, which means that the Quakers sit in silence in a large open circle until someone feels moved to speak. No clergy, and the Bible preaching was all attenders quoting from memory. Mostly it was just quiet. New York had one of its early spring days - the clouds passed over the sun, and the plain white walls of the colonial-era building glowed in a slow rhythm.

The church has a fairly prominent history of social activism - Bayard Rustin and Daniel Seeger were both members - which continues to the present. Before the congregation was released to the coffee hour, a hefty sheaf of announcements was read out, including committees for the environment, the death penalty, the homeless, and a call to the fourth anniversary protests against the invasion of Iraq. Silence and speaking loudly, I guess.

Only one broad-brimmed hat, and no oatmeal.

On Friday, we attend services at Central Synagogue. Doing our part to make Stephen Prothero proud.

And Now Vietnam...

2007-03-12T05:50:00.000-07:00

Is communism good for Christianity? Recent posts have remarked on the explosion of faith in China and on Hugo Chavez' plans to make the church a partner in his quasi-socialist road plan for Latin America. Today, the AP carries a story about the thaw in relations between the Vatican and Vietnam where, despite being run by the Communist Party since 1975, the country has one of Asia's largest populations of Catholics.

It was the 15th time Vatican representatives have made an annual visit to Vietnam, but this year's meetings drew heightened attention because of the prospect the two sides might establish diplomatic relations.

They announced that possibility in January after Pope Benedict XVI received Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, the highest-level Vietnamese official to visit the Vatican.

UPDATE: All the gory details from Vietnamnet...

Bibles in Schools

2007-03-10T10:35:00.000-08:00

Buzz about plans to begin teaching the Bible in Georgia schools (AP via ABC).

On a list of classes approved Thursday by the Georgia Board of Education are Literature and History of the Old Testament Era, and Literature and History of the New Testament Era. The classes, approved last year by the Legislature, will not be required, and the state's 180 school systems can decide for themselves whether to offer them.

Apparently the classes are explicitly structured to not stray into preaching, as "the measure calls for the courses to be taught 'in an objective and nondevotional manner with no attempt made to indoctrinate students.'"

Every story I've read so far has featured opponents to the measure worring that these classes will, in fact, lead to spreading a Christian worldview. But is this true? If the classes are really "objective and nondevotional," exactly the opposite might happen.

Modern skepticism about Christianity was born out of the whole cloth of German philology, which approached the Bible as a historical text, not a sacred one. Historicizing the Bible tends to desacralize it, except in the hands of the most devout.

A few months ago I got to attend some Bible study sessions at the American Bible Society here in New York. A theology graduate student had us reading a lot of modern seminary papers, which used interdisciplinary ideas of post-structuralism and historicism for shedding light on the Bible. To a room full of preachers and scholars, the plucky seminarian pointed out the parallels and provenance of a wide range of beloved passages to contemporary historical documents to make the point, I think, that the Bible could be read as a coded literature of oppressed peoples.

Showing that the ideas of the Bible did not emerge out of a vacuum is a big deal. For those in the room who believed in a more literalist, received Word approach, the sessions got really uncomfortable.

As I blogged the other day, I'm all with Stephen Prothero for more religious education in the schools. It remains to be seen what the effects will really be.

Witch trial

2007-03-10T09:56:00.000-08:00

We throw around the term witch trial. Well, it's really happening in Central Islip, NY, according to this AP story (courtesy of CBS). A grade school teacher was allegedly fired for being thought to be a wiccan, by a devoutly Christian principal.

Or was she? As the 2001 incident goes to trial, weird allegations of severed fingers, plane crashes, Munchausen by proxy.

It is no everyday employment dispute. As defense attorney Steven Stern put it during opening statements, "It's been quite a long time since we've seen a witch trial in this country."

The picture shows the woman, Lauren Berrios, with suspiciously wicked eyebrows.

Culture War Skirmishes

2007-03-09T06:14:00.000-08:00

Alright, so it's the Christians versus the gays. Again. You were missing it, weren't you?

What's it been - a week? Two? I've just finished trying to understand the primates meeting in Tanzania, and what it means for gay American Episcopalians (I'm still a little baffled). Just in time for the next round of of the war.

And "war" its the word, according the NY Times piece about a 25,000 member Christian youth rally whose "rhetoric used onstage... is overtly antigay and subtly militaristic." Nothing new here, right? Oh yeah - the organizers set up their stage in San Francisco. Um... again.

It is not the first time that BattleCry has gotten the cold shoulder from San Franciscans. The group held a concert here last year, an event that was greeted by a resolution from the Board of Supervisors calling BattleCry a “right-wing Christian fundamentalist group” trying “to negatively influence the politics of America’s most tolerant and progressive city.”

BattleCry officials complain that the city has made their lives difficult by imposing noise restrictions on a planned Saturday-morning celebration. City officials said the restrictions came after numerous complaints about last year’s event.

The dispute may come to a head on Friday afternoon when hundreds of Christian teenagers are expected to congregate on the steps of City Hall to pray and “raise their voices on behalf of their generation,” organizers said. A group opposing BattleCry plans to protest alongside.

Something called BattleCry is "subtly" militaristic? Is that dry wit from the Old Grey Lady? The kids just want a place where "young Christians [can] speak out against what they view as destructive cultural elements, including sex on television, obscene music and violent video games." And apparently Topeka's after-hours scene was lame.

From Adelle Banks at Religion News Service, a great blog catch: A prominent Southern Baptist, Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr., says that homosexuality should be genetically nipped in the womb.

"If a biological basis is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use as we should unapologetically support the use of any appropriate means to avoid sexual temptation and the inevitable effects of sin," Mohler wrote in advice for Christians.

This will presumably forestall any Anglican-style clashes when the Southern Baptist Convention faces that issue sometime in the 23rd Century.

Big implications here, as Banks noted, since many Christians believe that homosexuality is a choice. If it is not, there are theological implications, aren't there? Help me understand. Is Andrew Sullivan in the house?

And lastly, from my old stomping grounds, the latest development in the Harper v. Poway case, which was seen by the Supreme Court this week. To catch you up, Tyler Chase Harper wore a shirt with the Bible verse Romans 1:27 and "Homosexuality is shameful" during his high school's "Day of Silence" bringing attention to gay and lesbian issues. The school told him to remove the shirt.

The Supreme Court, in a squirrely move, decided that Harper no longer had any standing to sue the school since he graduated (the incident was in 2004). The school's policy stands.

Which is kind of a shame - that the Supreme Court backed out, I mean. The Bible is pretty unequivocal about the sinfulness of same-sex love, while our culture, more and more, is trying on the idea that gay and lesbian people are entitled to equal rights and recognition under the law. There's a growing pain here. The language that this plays itself out in is, for the moment, religion. And some black-robed wisdom on the topic would have been welcome.

My thoughts? Equivocal. I'll defer to Lance Bass, the gay former boy band-it:

Q:Did your mom ask you if you would still go to church?

A:Yeah, definitely. And I still go to church. I'm still Christian. I was not raised in a Christian church to hate people. I was taught to love people and accept people. I know what I believe.

Women in Iran: Update

2007-03-09T05:36:00.000-08:00

I blogged about Shirin Ebadi's signature drive in Iran, for advancing the rights of women. In today's Christian Science Monitor, she is mentioned in an article about the arrests made in Iran. In case you haven't been following, 30 protesters for women's rights were arrested and the larger protests planned for International Women's Day have been called off. While 15 of the protesters have been released, "the remainder told family members they were on a hunger strike inside Tehran’s Evin Prison."

The piece by Scott Peterson gives an interesting take on how American "aid" is hurting the cause:

Activists charge that the pretext for the arrests is the government's suspicion that the women were receiving some of the $85 million earmarked by the US to undermine the government by funding antiregime and pro-democracy groups. Activists say they haven't received any of those funds.

...

The cash set aside by the US Congress to fund broadcasting into Iran and groups working against the Islamic Republic has complicated local efforts at political and social change – once the clarion call of Iran's reform movement.

The money "was the worst thing for all of the movements – women, students, and NGOs – they catch everyone, and say they are spies," says Mr. Saharkhiz. "We know that most of that money went to royalist groups and the Mujahideen-e Khalq," Iranian opposition that has several thousand militants under US guard in Iraq.

Stay tuned.

Is there an Imam in the house?

2007-03-08T07:50:00.000-08:00

A cool article in the Boston Globe today raises questions about the way institutions like hospitals and prisons hire and deploy chaplains - and how this creates problems for traditions, like Islam, that don't train clergy through graduate-type seminary programs.

The CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) certification is rare among Imams, says writer Vanessa Jones:

A look at the number of Muslim chaplains certified by the association at least offers a glimpse into the community. In 2000 the organization had 1,600 certified chaplains, only one of them Muslim. Last year, there were 2,000 certified chaplains, four of them Muslim.

Muslim chaplaincy is a particularly American creation. The role doesn't exist in predominantly Muslim countries, since Muslims there have a wide range of familial and spiritual support. No equivalent to the master's of divinity, which is a Judeo-Christian creation, exists in Islamic culture. Instead scholars pass down religious knowledge orally. Once the student gains enough knowledge, he or she becomes an imam.

So, according to the article, Muslim clergy are going back to school to serve the needs of their flocks in schools and hospitals.

"I can't imagine any non-Muslim chaplain talking about Ramadan , leading Friday prayer, and explaining Islamic dietary law," [program graduate Abdullah] Antepli says. "I can't imagine any non-Muslim chaplain, no matter how well-trained, responding to the unique identity crisis that Muslims are facing after Sept. 11. Islam is at the center of attention and there's so many negative messages conveyed to this society about this faith and faith tradition. You need a reliable source person on campus, at the hospital, in the prison system who understands the stereotypes and the scapegoating."

Great. And where is (according to the article) the "only degree program in the nation for Muslim chaplains"? That Qom of the west - Hartford, Connecticut.

Don't religions always change a little in transit? I've been reading about the Reform Judaism tradition lately, how the decision to "modernize" Jewish worship made it assume many of the shapes of the Protestant worship of its day - and what, in that, was lost and won. Will American Islam become more institutionalized? Our bias in the west is always towards scholarly religion. I'm thinking of the tendency, for example, to reduce the thousand faces of Hinduism to what can be studied in the scholarly Brahmanic traditions.

A quibble - I'm annoyed about the way Jones decided to end the article, with what comes across as a pretty serious dig...

Bilal Ansari, 35... began working as a Muslim prison chaplain 10 years ago and entered the Muslim chaplaincy program in the fall... Now he works two days a week -- nearly 27 hours total -- at a men's prison in Niantic, Conn. Ansari says he decided to enroll in the Muslim chaplaincy program because he realized "that there are areas where I struggled to reach the men sometimes."

One challenge? Tempering the form of Islam the prisoners practiced. Many members of the prison population receive religious materials that gave them an unorthodox, and sometimes incorrect, perspective about Islam, says Ansari. "They think they know what's right and that they have the authority to interpret the scriptures in this way." This mindset created a wedge between the prison staff and the incarcerated Muslims.

By taking the Islamic Law course taught by Ingrid Mattson , the director and founder of the Muslim chaplaincy program, Ansari learned how to give the prisoners a better understanding of the religion.

End of story. Without stating it, it seems pretty clear that Jones and Ansari are saying is that the "unorthodox, and sometimes incorrect" Islam MIGHT be the Nation of Islam, which has wide currency and practice in Africa-American communities, as opposed to the Islam as it is practiced nearer to Mecca.

Yeesh. Me - I think THAT is the underreported story of the year. Have we heard ANYTHING lately about American's homegrown Muslims? Not even Farrakhan's bad health and "final" speech during African-American History Month were enough to break the uneasy news silence about African Americans who practice Islam. In a time when both immigrant Muslims and our own minority cultures face an uneasy time in practicing and living their faith, I'd like to see something smart and well-researched about the living intersections between the two.

Anyone?

2007-03-07T11:35:00.000-08:00

That's Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Fidel Castro of Cuba.

The reason I attached this snugly moment is to highlight the ideological intimacy between Castro, the only living communist icon in the western hemisphere, and Chavez, the president of Venezuela, whose populist socialism is walking, at least to some, a parallel path of authoritarian government control and nationalization of resources.

The difference? Highlighted today in a great AP piece about Chavez's "reaching out" to clergy. While Castro kept his country officially "atheist" for most of his rule (with a notable thaw in the last 10 years) Chavez seems to be looking more towards a partnership with the church:

President Hugo Chavez calls Jesus a guiding light for his self-styled socialist revolution.

But his relationship with the Roman Catholic Church is complicated and sometimes strained. Even as the leftist leader has invited Catholic priests to share their ideas on transforming Venezuela into a socialist state, he has clashed with some priests who are critical of him...

...

The Venezuelan leader peppers his speeches with Bible verses and often describes his political movement as a struggle between good and evil, such as when he famously called U.S. President George W. Bush "the devil" in a speech to the United Nations last year.

I love the last part. As President Bush readies himself to tour Latin America this week, he should take note - his arch-nemesis can chapter and verse as well.

But wait - doesn't the capitalist democratic leader automatically win the award for Most Christian? I mean, this is America we're talking about. And what do socialists know about the Bible?

"Christianity is essentially socialist, so no one - no Christian, no Catholic - should be alarmed," said Chavez, who was once an altar boy and says his brand of socialism will not copy Soviet or Cuban communism despite his close friendship with Fidel Castro.

Chavez says if he had not entered politics, he would have loved to be a priest. He calls Jesus an exemplary revolutionary and often recalls the Bible passage that declares it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.

It reminds me of the futuristic novels of
Ira Levin and Aldous Huxley that pondered future dystopias based on the marriage of Marxism and Christianity. I mean - I guess the parallels are there.

But, of course, not everyone is buying the demagogue's bid for sanctity.

Monsignor Roberto Luckert... has warned that Venezuela is headed for communism and that the shift could infringe on freedoms. In a January speech, Chavez accused Luckert, the archbishop of Coro, of telling lies and living an ungodly privileged life.

Chavez said the priest is doomed to go to hell - to which Luckert responded: "It seems he's going to hell, too.

...

At home, Luckert has been one of the most outspoken critics of Chavez. The archbishop recently told Venezuela's Union Radio that, while Chavez gives sermon-like speeches, his government is spending money lavishly. Just as Chavez urged him to live more humbly,Luckert replied that "I invite him to take a dugout canoe (instead of the presidential jet) and go to Nicaragua."

When's the last time a Monsignor told you to take a dugout canoe to Nicaragua? Me neither. We must be doing something right.

2007-03-06T09:37:00.000-08:00

I refrained from blogging about the James Cameron Jesus "documentary." I mean, really - who can top John Stewart's analysis?

For the record, I haven't heard any convincing arguments that the flick was anything more than elaborate marketing of some dubious speculation on biblical archaeology - a field that has faced more that its share of dubious discoveries in the last few years (Wait! I heard they found Jesus' brother! Uh, wait... maybe
not.) There was a smart piece in TIME this week about the erosion of academic standards in the age of blockbuster religion scholarship:

[Professor and best-selling author Bart] Ehrman, 51, says the dynamic of the academy has changed. "The generation that trained us would spend many years honing their discipline until they felt they could write their seminal work, maybe in their 50s," he says. "This generation is different. You publish as quickly as possible, create a sensation and get known [academically] that way." (Ehrman himself waited 10 years.)

Then there is what Publishers Weekly senior religion editor Lynn Garrett calls the Da Vinci Code effect. "Speculative histories were out there before Dan Brown wrote," says Garrett. "But they didn't make the best-seller lists and their authors didn't go on The Daily Show." Or receive a million-dollar paycheck, as was rumored in a recent case.

And by adopting a more journalistic standards, they have towed the journalists along in their wake - every badly-substantiated claim gets the double press treatment - breaking story and academic refutation. Ugh.

Rather than participate in it, I thought it might be fun to go spend the next evening with the gentlemen over at Opus Dei, where I was pretty sure what kind of reaction I'd hear. Opus Dei? You may remember them as the bad guys in the last kerfuffle about the family of Jesus. In the last year I've had the pleasure of crossing paths with their head of PR here in New York who, I think it's safe to say, had one of the worst American jobs of 2006.

He invited me to a worship service at the Opus Dei headquarters last night (in the sacred precinct of Murray Hill) and, heck, I went. I'm not a Catholic, and didn't quite know what to expect. Secret passages? Monks and lashings?

I must say, it was solemn and pretty tame. The evening was part of a monthly "retreat" that they give, which includes meditations, a recollection, and a speech from a (clearly nervous) lay member about spiritual responsibilities in daily life. There were no women (I understand that their "retreat" happens around the corner), and the men who filled the room in suits and cologne reminded me of nothing so much as the Kiwanis group my dad belongs to.

The oratory is pretty striking, about 12 pews that face a mural of the Marriage at Cana. Looks like maybe it's done by popular Christian painter Ron DiCianni? Anyway, during the service I tried to keep up with the Our Fathers and Hail Maries, but foolishly forgot my copy of How to Be a Perfect Stranger. You can imagine my delight when the men finally lit into something I knew - the Pange, Lingua of Thomas Aquinas. (I learned it a few years ago from a Jewish devotee of G.I.Gurdjieff - long story). Then I, uh, forgot how high it went and promptly embarrassed myself. God forgives all sins, no?

Anyway - over beer and peanuts, I finally got to mix a little with the Opus "guys". Reaction to the Cameron Jesus flick were predictably swift and critical. Garbage. Unbalanced. Not worth the time toTiVo it. Was I expecting anything else? Not really.

Well... I guess I was KIND of hoping to overhear the secret plot to slip strychnine in Cameron's martini. Maybe that save that for your second visit.

2007-03-05T09:24:00.000-08:00

Do you know an Anglican from a Zoroastrian?

Yeah, probably. But a Unitarian from a Universalist? What are the five pillars of Islam? Unless you're a religion geek - don't look at me like that - the answers are hazy. And why shouldn't they be? Religion seems to be the one information sphere in this hyper-glutted age where less is more. If you're a believer, sniffing around in other traditions seems kind of... blasphemous. Right?

Author Stephen Prothero - chair of the religion department at Boston University - disagrees. In his new book Religious Literacy, Prothero says that what America needs most is a healthy dose of what many think we've got too much of already - religious schooling. From a book review in the Washington Post...

Americans are also the most religiously ignorant people in the Western world. Fewer than half of us can identify Genesis as the first book of the Bible, and only one third know that Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount.

That's not me, right? Take this quiz from Prothero and find out.

Newsweek is also giving ink to the book. Here's a clip:

Americans are selling themselves short by remaining ignorant about basic religious history and texts, by not knowing the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite or the name of Mormonism's holy book. "Given a political environment where religion is increasingly important, it's increasingly important to know something about religion," he says. "The payoff is a more involved [political] conversation."

The book proposes a solution that is at once controversial and familiar: teach religion in public schools.

I always felt like a lone voice position during the evolution-vs.-creationism debate. Of course we should teach creationism in the schools. Tell them about the Glittering World and the magic reed of the Dine. About Eros born from the egg of the Night in Homeric traditions. About the dreaming of sleeping Vishnu. And of course, about the Semitic traditions that shape Western civilization. American kids know so little of the world around them, and this is especially true of religion.

But somehow, as Susan Jacoby points out in her Post review,

a curriculum that would meet with the approval of Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Protestant and nonreligious parents would probably be a worthless set of platitudes.

I'm a little more optimistic. A little knowledge is a wonderful thing.

2007-03-02T07:28:00.000-08:00

So much for my rant on Ayahuasca. Why bother with an obscure south American drug when you can build your church around weed?

That's the question being decided in LA, after the cops busted Temple 420, a church that claims cannabis as its central sacrament. Well... really? According to the LA Daily News...

"They were trying to set it up under the guise of a religious right and then be able to sidestep marijuana laws," [LAPD spokesperson Kevin] Maiberger said. "The deal was for a $100 initiation fee and $100 annual fee, you could buy all the pot you wanted for quote-unquote `religious purpose.'That's bull----."

Rubin, however, continues to distribute marijuana six days a week to the temple's members - there are more than 400 who have paid the initiation and annual dues - for a "requested donation" of $60 for an eighth of an ounce.

He continues to burn marijuana as a sacrament at Friday night services and preaches on the weekends - Old Testament on Saturdays, New Testament on Sundays, always at 4:20.

Sounds fishy, no? But the Rev. Craig X Rubin is making a case in court that his beliefs are protected, the same way that peyote cults and OCentro (which sacralizes Ahayuasca) are protected.

While undergoing a family crisis three years ago, Rubin began studying the Bible and, he claims, God revealed to him cannabis' status as the tree of life.

Last year, after the Supreme Court ruled on O Centro, Rubin reasoned he could openly practice his new beliefs, which he describes as "Judeo-Christian" and "Bible based."

In August, Scott Linden, a Pasadena attorney who has helped open several medical-marijuana dispensaries in the San Fernando Valley, filed paperwork with the Secretary of State's Office that registered Temple 420 as a religious corporation.

Sound far fetched? Maybe. Maybe not.

Last year, the Jewish Press published a piece by Rabbi Michael Paley, a acquaintance of mine and an executive director of the UJA-Federation of New York. He had this to say on the subject of marijuana:

One further note, perhaps best left for the linguists: Among the ingredients of the anointing oil found in Exodus (30: 23) is one called k’nei-bosem, usually translated as “sweet calamus.” Calamus is an aromatic plant, which Rashi translates literally as a “reed of spice.” Take away the final mem, run the two words together, and you’ve got something that sounds like “cannabis.” Coincidence?

A new frontier for medical marijuana??

America's New Thought Obsession

2007-02-26T08:21:00.000-08:00

I blogged the other day about Phineas Quimby and the attraction of "New Thought" in the American religious landscape. It's not at all surprising. Here we are, a prosperous and peaceful nation (on our turf, at least), who define ourselves largely as Christians - a religion that prizes renunciation, poverty and the millennialist vision of a better world.

The message of New Thought - that being close to God brings you all the bourgeois comforts right here and now - has been working its way into American churches consistently since its introduction in the 1850's. It's had enormous appeal throughout American Christianity, from Christian Science, to Norman Vincent Peale, to certain traditions within Pentecostalism. The megachurches often flirt with the same ideas - of course being closer to God means material wealth. It's our own most significant syncretism, I think.

I often think about the twin implications of this: Those who have success and material comforts are somehow closer to God. And those who are hurt, broken and poor are far from God, and just need to pray a little harder, and think positive.

Having come clean about my personal misgivings, I must say Newsweek tickled me a little with their review of The Secret, a blockbuster new New Thought sensation. The book - which has been a favorite of Oprah's - seems to be a stew of badly understood quantum physics, historical revisionism straight out of the Da Vinci Code and the same saws we see in Richard Bach, Neale Donald Walsch and countless others.

A bit from the Newsweek piece:

You'd think the last thing Americans need is more excuses for self-absorption and acquisitiveness. But our inexhaustible appetite for "affirmation" and "inspiration" and "motivation" has finally outstripped the combined efforts of Wayne Dyer, Anthony Robbins, Dr. Phil and Mitch Albom . We have actually begun importing self-help—and from Australia, of all places, that citadel of tough-minded individualism, where just a couple of years ago [Rhonda]Byrne was a divorced mother in her 50s who had hit a rocky patch in her business and personal lives. It was in that moment of despair, when she "wept and wept and wept" (as she recounted to Oprah on the first of two broadcasts devoted to her work), that she discovered a long-neglected book dating from 1910 called "The Science of Getting Rich." In it she found how to let your thoughts and feelings get you everything you want, and determined to share it with the world. She called it "The Secret."

If you're familiar at all with the literature of New Thought, this storyline should be achingly familiar (Celestine Prophecy, anyone?). I lead a group to different church services in Manhattan, and last month we ended up at the Sacred Center for Spiritual Living, a huge New Thought church in Chelsea. During the service, the pastor quoted a book about a magical prayer box, wherein a man, brought to the depths of despair , discovered a "secret book" in his attic that outlined the same well-circulated secrets: thoughts are things, prayers are answered, and all you need to be wealthy and fat is a positive outlook.

I grew up in California, where New Thought is practically the state religion. My aunt worked for a prominent New Thought TV preacher for years, and my time with her was filled with mantras that were supposed to help us get parts in school plays and find parking spaces. It made sense somehow. In a cushy suburban nation, these are often the only things that pass for crises. And it is crisis that we reach for God - right?

About year ago, I was helping out in a Quaker homeless shelter. After dinner, the clients were settling into bed, and a woman named Charlotte - who spent her days in libraries and her nights in shelters like this one - was reading a book by Richard Bach, an earlier incarnation of the "positive thinking" genre. Charlotte believed it wholeheartedly. She spent every day, from shelter breakfast to shelter bed, trying to keep her head up, practicing the forgiveness that was supposed to unblock the energy of prosperity that would float her out of her dire straits.

Will it work? Who knows. In the meanwhile, the old-fashioned ethic of compassion is keeping Charlotte from the cold and want of the streets. And one thing's for sure - "Secret" author Rhonda Byrne is seeing the fruits of her positive thinking. And that's something, right?

2007-02-24T08:36:00.000-08:00

Allahu Akbar!

Ok - the rumor is almost officially true. Michael Jackson is converting to Islam. The AP ran the following statements from brother Jermaine yesterday:

"I think it is most probable that Michael will convert to Islam," Jackson said.

Jermaine, 52, converted to Islam in 1989 and now lives in Bahrain, where Michael has also recently taken up residence.

"When I came back from Mecca I got him a lot of books and he asked me lots of things about my religion and I told him that it's peaceful and beautiful," he said.

"He read everything and he was proud of me that I found something that would give me inner strength and peace."

And today, the San Francisco Chronicle ran the following lede:

Pop superstar Michael Jackson has confirmed his conversion to Islam, according to reports in the Middle East.

The Arab-Israeli newspaper Panorama claims Jackson has announced the move and revealed plans to move to Bahrain, where he has purchased property.

You know where my mind went first? Awesome. This solves everything! In my split-second view of the future, Jackson moves to Bahrain. He is received with great joy, ululations in the street (or is that just for mourning?). With his uncanny and unfathomable popularity, he moderates anti-American feeling. Jackson, the anti-Bush in pretty much every respect, undoes everything that Bush has done and builds a bridge between Americans and the Muslim world. By extension, the gloved one prevents the next terrorist attack, becomes a key figure in future hostage negotiations...

I can dream.

While looking into this tantalizing and earthshaking story, I found the welcome news that this is no mere spiritual dalliance for Michael Jackson. His interest in Islam goes at least back to December 17, 2003 - the night before he had child molestation charges filed against him. The New York Post reported then that this was the day he joined the Nation of Islam, and brought Leonard F. Muhammad, Louis Farrakhan's chief of staff, into his employ.

By the way - for those of you paying attention, we have finally seen the stories about Farrakhan that I was wondering about. Details about his state of health and "final" speech can be found here.

The question on everybody's mind - will Jackson make a good Muslim? One of the five pillars of the faith is Zakat, or charity. Oddly enough, this story also comes out today in the LA Daily News:

The family of a woman who died two years ago is suing Michael Jackson and a hospital, claiming the gravely ill patient was moved to make room for the pop star when he arrived with flu symptoms.

...

The family had previously complained publicly that Ruiz, who had suffered a heart attack and was on life support, was suddenly moved to make way for Jackson, whose Feb. 15, 2005, admission caused cancellation of a court session in his child-molestation trial. The pop star was later acquitted.

Ruiz's family says she was moved from her two-bed trauma unit to another room. She suffered a second heart attack and died later that day.

He can always take a go at Kabbalah.

2007-02-23T08:45:00.000-08:00

Prosperity Dharma?

One of the great contradictions in our country's religious life is how a get-up-and-go culture like America so wholeheartedly embraces a give-it-all-up faith like Christianity. We're steeped in the teachings of humility and voluntary poverty found in the Bible - yet we're the richest and most powerful culture in the world.

There are a lot of explanations for why this happened historically - see Max Weber's theory of the "Protestant Work ethic", where Calvinists and others made hard work - and not necessarily gain - part of the road to salvation.

But there have been many other attempts to more nakedly rewrite the poverty message of Bible. They go loosely under the name of "Prosperity Gospel," and in many ways try to make this claim: the closer you are to God, the better you'll do in this world, in health, wealth and happiness.

Even a cursory reading of the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament makes this a little hard to swallow. Those closest to God tended to end up exiled, stripped of their posessions or painfully tortured to death. But this hasn't stopped generations of pulpit preachers and theologians (most notably in America the enviably named watchmaker Phinneas Quimby) from claiming that the wealthy and powerful are beloved in the sight of God - and that, if we behave ourselves, we too can have an easy, fat life.

So much for beholding the lily. The REAL cultures of renunciation - Buddhists, who see this whole world as Mara, illusion - must be laughing up their non-existent sleeves, right? Wrong. Leave it to an American Buddhist to write a best-selling book about the material benefits of renunciation.

Not so with Nichiren Buddhism. Says author Woody Hochswender in USA Today,

"...you'll see immediate benefits, produced by you, proof in your own life now. Buddhism doesn't ask you to believe in God. Buddhism asks you to believe in yourself."

Practitioners include actor Orlando Bloom, musician Herbie Hancock, singer Tina Turner and U.S. Rep. Henry "Hank" Johnson Jr., D-Ga. In the biopic What's Love Got to Do With It, Turner is shown learning to chant, and she gains the strength to flee her abusive husband.

Expounding on his book in a cavernous Manhattan cafe, Hochswender's ice-blue eyes are aglow, and he sounds like a health-and-wealth televangelist, in tone if not message. "You can realize your enlightened self almost from the first day. And you can become enlightened exactly as you are.

"No matter what your goal is in chanting, at the very least you will become a more disciplined person," he says. "All of us want to be more disciplined."

The article uses the phrase "prosperity dharma." I love it. Lemme run this one the Tibetan monks. I'll get back to you.

2007-02-22T19:02:00.000-08:00

Lent - continued

I missed the memo. There is some kind of "Get the Lent Out..." going on this year in the churches 'round the globe. Suddenly the season of fasting is a springboard for pet issues. A scorecard:

Irish bishops are calling for a season of temperence. Yup, put down that Jameson, because:

The bishops are trying to tackle what they see as an out-of-control binge-drinking culture that has seen the alcohol intake in the Emerald Isle soar by 40 per cent in under a decade - 10 years in which economic wealth has soared.

They have been planning for some time to "encourage a society-wide debate" on the mounting problems of alcohol abuse and saw Lent as the ideal moment to address the public.

They will make their plea in a letter to be read at every Mass in the country this Sunday, which they have designated a "day of prayer and temperance".

Not to be outdone, the priests of my SoCal homeland are calling for Lent to be a season of... immigration reform. Yup:

In Orange County, the church asked people to fast — consuming liquids only — for one day between March 26 and 30 as an appeal for citizenship opportunities for undocumented immigrants and reductions in visa application backlogs for the families of immigrants.

The church also called for a temporary worker program.

In Los Angeles, before 3,000 people at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony said his focus for Lent would be the children of immigrants.

"They are innocents impacted by an unjust system that has failed and will continue to fail them and our society until true comprehensive reform is passed by Congress and the president," he said.

This in addition to more traditional projects, such as donating the money saved by eating simple Leten meals towards alleviating:

During Lent, Operation Rice Bowl participants pledge to pray, fast in solidarity with those who hunger, learn about the global community and the challenges of poverty overseas, and give sacrificial contributions to those in need.

And the Episcopalians? Fasting for clarity about "the gay thing."

Great. I'm all for temperance. Social action? Go team.

But isn't this a heavy load for a season of sobriety and private reflection? I'm not one to chapter and verse, but I seem to remember a passage in the Book of Matthew -

"When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. (Matthew 6:16-18 NIV)

Fasting for a cause seems like fasting loudly to me. But who am I to judge? Just a religion hack intoxicated by the fishwich season.

2007-02-21T08:51:00.000-08:00

Lent starts today. Me, I've observed a strict Lenten fast for the last 13 years. I can't tell you with any great precision what my religion is, has been or will be, but I can say this for sure - next year will also find me gearing up in the late winter for seven weeks of veganism, moderation and reflection.

It just makes sense to me. Periods of fasting in the early spring have been a part of so many traditions, and I can't deny that, whatever you believe in the seasons of your life, the simple act of saying "no" to yourself, once in a while, does wonders for your body and soul.

One of the time-honored ways that we do this, of course, is through diet. And if there's one thing to look forward to in this season of fasting and repentance - it's the Fillet-O-Fish. Yup, this delicious Tartar-smeared McDonald's favorite was invented for Lent.

And, not to be outdone, this year KFC is petitioning the Vatican for approval on it's delicious new fish sandwich. According to an AP report,

For years, anything produced by KFC had to meet the standards of Colonel Harlan Sanders.

For its new product, the fried chicken chain is seeking a higher endorsement. KFC has asked Pope Benedict XVI to bless the Fish Snacker Sandwich, a Lenten addition to the chain's Snacker sandwich line.

KFC sent the Pope a letter earlier this month, asking him to bestow a blessing on the sandwich. While the sandwich is being marketed generally, John O'Reilly, chief marketing officer for KFC, said the sandwich should prove especially popular on Friday's, when Catholics traditionally don't eat meat in the 40 days leading up to Easter Sunday.

Prayer, solitude aqnd a fishwich. I'm starting my own monastic order.

2007-02-19T13:39:00.000-08:00

Don't you love the new, interactive world of the newspaper?

I mean, as a journalist, you used to never really know how your work hit the reader. On a good day you imagine some impartial, professor-type smoking his pipe and thoughtfully poring over page E6, where your latest genius offering awaits. More often, you guess, with some accuracy, that your life's work has been lining birdcages.

The internet smashes all illusions.

Honestly, the best thing about the new two-way street is that sometimes, what comes back around is better than what went out in the first place. Check out the comments section for this AP story in the Rapid City Journal.

OK, Rapid City. That's not being totally fair. And the story is a little hokey, about an inmate who is making demands on the prison authorities so he can practice Asatru. For those just tuning in, Asartu is a modern take on Norse paganism, which, by all evidence in the AP story, was big on tchotckes:

Hoadley’s lawsuit asks for 23 ritual items, 10 reference materials and other requests, including visits from people who also practice the religion.

Many of the items already are included in a Corrections Department list of property that inmates may have in their cell or in the religious storage area.

Among those items: Rune cards and tiles, altar and cloth, wooden wand, ritual drinking horn, apple juice, blessing bowl, candles and holders, feather fan, wooden hammer, drum, abalone shell, evergreen twig and dragon’s blood resin, a type of incense.

Other requests include an outside area with a tree and a sauna, special foods and privileges for religious holidays and a time once a week for studies, in addition to the one already allowed for rituals.

“This is no different than any of the various Bible studies, Hebrew lessons, Arabic lessons, etc., that have been or are approved,” Hoadley wrote.

First, the story. I know the prison systems in our country are brutal. I've made a good friend who is serving time (his father is a brimstone Baptist preacher down Kentucky way), and changing his religion is one of the only things he has freedom over anymore. Some of the only rights that remain to convicts are religion-related. (He was a Hare Krishna for a while. Then he decided he wanted to get away from the normal prison slop and onto the "Old Testament" diet, which is slightly higher in daily nutrients and fresh foods. So he recently became a Seventh-Day Adventist. Score one for cynicism here.)

But what's amazing is how clearly the article is fishing for outrage - and how balanced the debate is in the comments. A sampling:

Whether or not he practices True Asatru or Odinism is debatable but the issue is allowing him the items he has asked for to practice his version of it. No one is ever denied a bible crackers, grape juice and a cup. Why should he be denied his horn, apple juice, and plastic toy sword. Last time I checked my daughter could hurt anyone with hers, short of making her own eye water when she hit her self in that face flipping it around.

I am not one of those people who thinks that people who "find God" should be spared. But when someone starts claiming an arcane religious affiliation to get extra privledges, I draw the line.

I guess I'm amazed at how many religions and traditions there are out there. I guess I either nuts or very sheltered in my thinking about how simple religous practice should be

And on and on - for FIVE PAGES or so.

When they ask - where's the religious dialogue in this country? we can proudly say, ignore the journalists. Read the citizen commentary.

2007-02-15T08:58:00.000-08:00

Another good day for odd religion news.

Every hear of the Cargo Cults?

I hadn't. They happened mostly in New Guinea and Melanesia. As I understand it, when a remote culture runs into Western technology for the first time, the encounter often figures into the local mythos (think The God's Must Be Crazy). The Westerners seem to have special "powers," and when they leave, natives try to replicate the magic they've seen through mimicry and ritual. Cargo cults have built straw airplanes and radios out of coconuts, trying to coax the gods to deliver them "cargo" and salvation.

Hey - worked for Gilligan.

Wikipedia has more.

One of the last of these cults is celebrating the 50 year anniversary, on Tanna Island in Vanuatu. The BBC has the story. Today, February 15th, is the date they believe that their messianic leader, a (potentially real historical) black American will return one year to free the islands of white influence and provide them with material wealth. Here's more from the BBC:

The John Frum Movement worships a mysterious spirit that urged them to reject the teachings of the Church and maintain their traditional customs.

...

Devotees say that an apparition of John Frum first appeared before tribal elders in the 1930s.

He urged them to rebel against the aggressive teachings of Christian missionaries and instead said they should put their faith in their own customs.

World War II and the arrival of American troops on Vanuatu was a turning point for the John Frum Movement.

Villagers believe that their messiah was responsible for sending the generous US military and its cargo to them.

Speaking in local pidgin, the movement's head, Chief Isaac Wan, said that John Frum was a god who would one day return. He's "our God, our Jesus," he said.

Islanders are convinced that John Frum was an American. Every year they parade in home-made US army uniforms beneath the Stars and Stripes.

They hope one day to entice another delivery of cargo.

As a side note: I love the name, living as I do in the shadow of the Williamsburg bridge here in New York. "Frum" in yiddish means observant, a good Orthodox Jew. It's generally take to mean someone who honors the Sabbath, eats kosher and observes the niddah, or sexual rules. You can see the good "frummers" heading past my house every Friday near sunset, walking either towards the Williamsburg bridge to reach the large Hassidic community there, or just down my block, to observe Friday prayers at the Orthodox Syagogue.

Thanks for the Vanuatu story goes to my friends over at Religion News Blog. If you haven't seen their site, you should check it out. It's run by Christian apologists and cult watchers in Holland, and they routinely pick up really interesting stories about smaller, offshoot and offbeat religious groups.

2007-02-14T10:15:00.000-08:00

Saint Valentine was beaten and beheaded in Rome in 269. Where's my candy?

A couple stories floating around the web about the Catholic Church leaning towards St. Rafael on this holy day of macking out. St. Rafael is the "little-known patron saint of 'happy meetings', according to the London Telegraph story, who arranged the biblical marriage between Tobias and Sarah (who had, shall we say, had been having a bad run - see Tobias 3:7-17 in the Apocrypha).

According to Rome, you pray for nine consecutive days to St. Rafael and there may be a heavenly intercession in your love life.

Neil Hughes, a 24-year-old physics graduate, has been single for a year and welcomes the Church's offer of help.

"It might sound like a crazy idea, but I believe that prayer is an important way of seeking guidance in life," he said.

"I'll be praying to St Raphael. It definitely beats trying to find your partner by getting drunk in a nightclub."

But nightclubs have their uses too, it seems:

Bishop Griffiths, who is also chairman of Catholic Youth Services, warned people against praying to St Raphael in search of sexual gratification.

"Prayer should not be used as a tool for people to find someone to jump into bed with. True love is much deeper than that."

Religion News Service has also sent out a version of the story out today.

I see that my hometown paper ran the AP story about X-rated animal sex tours on Valentine's day, which take place at progressive zoos.

Not surprising the story ran there. A weird place to grow up. We were home to a breeding program for rare animals at the Wild Animal Park division of the San Diego Zoo. And this strange guy created a sperm bank for Nobel Laurates, which inspired a book last year. My dad once invited the guy to talk at his Kiwanis breakfast. As a whole, North County San Diego has a disproportionate interest in male effluvia.

My favorite take on the pagan antecedents of V-Day comes from Brooklyn Blogger ZeFrank, a genius, who reminds us that during the Roman holiday of Lupercalia, boys used to run around slapping women with strips of raw meat.

Where is the romance anymore?

2007-02-13T10:48:00.000-08:00

Those of you who read Canada's National Post may have run across this gem of a story called "The Green Fervour: Is Environmentalism the New Religion?"

Oh, how I love this angle - even though its politics, in keeping with the Post, are nakedly conservative. It's pretty much a rant against global warming science, but there are a few points about the religious idion of the environmental movement that strike home. Being, myself, a refugee from the environmentalist meccas of the west, I appreciate how the author pegs the righteous "fervour" of the modern enviros:

It can be felt in the frisson of piety that comes with lighting an energy-saving light bulb, a modern votive candle.

and

Adherents make arduous pilgrimages and call them ecotourism. Newspapers publish the iconography of polar bears. The IPCC reports carry the weight of scripture.

John Kay of the Financial Times wrote last month, about future climate chaos: “Christians look to the Second Coming, Marxists look to the collapse of capitalism, with the same mixture of fear and longing ... The discovery of global warming filled a gap in the canon ... [and] provides justification for the link between the sins of our past and the catastrophe of our future.

and

What was once called salvation — a nebulous state of grace — is now known as sustainability, a word that is equally resistant to precise definition. There is even a hymn, When the North Pole Melts, by James G. Titus, a scientist with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which is not exactly How Great Thou Art, but serves a similar purpose.

Environmentalism even has its persecutors, embodied in the Bush White House attack dogs who have conducted no less than an Inquisition against climate scientists, which failed to bring them to heel but instead inspired potential martyrs. Of course, as religions tend to do, environmentalists commit persecution of their own, which has created heretics out of mere skeptics.

Apart from these canny observations, the article is mostly a rant against recent findings on global warming. It is a 1,000 word detour on review of Apollo's Arrow, a new book by mathematician David Orrell about the statistical difficulty of predicting... anything.

For a more liberal take on the same subject - and a much more comprehensive list of the similarities between environmentalism and religion - do yourself a favor and read Jack Hitt's "A Gospel According to the Earth", which appeared in the July 2003 issue of Harper's Magazine. My favorite comparison is between the early Christian ascetics and the tree sitters of the Earth First! movement. Uncanny.

2007-02-12T11:54:00.000-08:00

It's Black History Month and there's plenty about African Americans in religious life. A few favorites:

Check out this story by Adelle Banks of Religion News Service about the roles of pastor's wives in black churches.

Pastor June Robinson wears several hats -- and not the big fancy ones you might expect for a pastor's wife...

As you may already be tired of hearing, the faith magnifying glass is scrutinizing the presidential hopefuls. After lots of speculation about Mitt Romney, and Newsweek's article on Hillary Clinton, it's Obama's turn. The AP story has him talking about his Muslim-exposed childhood, his United Church of Christ church, and most alarmingly, about quitting smoking:

At the house party in Iowa Falls, Obama said, "I'm going to have to be run through the paces, people are going to have to lift up the hood, kick the tires and be clear that I have a grasp of the issues that are of utmost importance in people's lives."

In that vein, Obama said he has quit his cigarette habit and now chews nonprescription Nicorette gum all day.

Better now than when he's in office with his twitchy finger on the button, I guess. We're gonna see what the man's really made of.

Missing? Any news about Louis Farrakhan, who was recently released from five weeks in the hospital following surgery. I'm guessing that the big outlets are polishing off his obituary packages though there hasn't been any dire news yet (Farrakhan is scheduled to speak at the Nation of Islam's "Saviour's Day" events at the end of the month). Speaking of which, I haven't seen many Nation of Islam stories AT ALL in the recent obsession with world Islam. Anyone?

And a plug: for great stories on faith and black history month, check out my friend Joe Orso, who writes about religion for a local paper in Wisconsin. Joe is one of those committed religion journalists who puts his heart and soul in the pews, across denominations and traditions. His Ramadan blog from last fall followed him as he fasted with a small Muslim community in the midwest. Beautiful stuff - go, Joe.

2007-02-10T09:41:00.000-08:00

Inspired by yesterday's Iraq rant, and the future of their church-state relations, I got an email from the folks at First Freedom First about a little known anniversary.

Sixty years ago today, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Everson v Board of Education, a landmark case about the separation fo church and state.

The decision itself is a little confusing - it's about a state's right to use money for busses that go to Catholic schools - but it was important in defining the "establishment clause". How much can the government participate in religion? All nine judges agreed:

Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force nor influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or non-attendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of separation between Church and State.

- Justice Hugo Black

If you haven't heard of it, you must not be watching 700 club with Pat Robertson (I haven't). He has repeated bashed the decision on his show.

Polls show that, while Americans have strong religious feelings, they have a healthy respect for the seperation of church and state. So, put a candle in cupcake and celebrate.

2007-02-10T09:05:00.000-08:00

Last week I posted some of my misgivings about the Soldiers of Heaven story coming out of Iraq (Did anyone see the coverline on Newsweek? "Shite Death Cult" Sexy, huh!). The Soldiers of Heaven were a "millenialist" group planning attacks of Shite leaders during the holiday of Ashoura, a delicate time for Sunni-Shiite relations. They were anhiliated Waco-style by Iraqi and American forces.

Though the response was quick and brutal, the information - even to American troops - was scarce. I asked if it wasn't an awkward time to talk about the future of religious tolerance in Iraq, and the future of minority religious viewpoints.

Well the AP sent out a story two days ago about the Mandaeans in Iraq. They are an ancient sect of quasi-Christians in Iraq.

Scholars who study the Mandaean religion and culture say its extinction would be a great loss, the end of an ancient religious movement. Dating to the time of the Roman Empire, it survived primarily in what is today Iraq and Iran, a branch of the Gnostic movement that borrowed elements of Christianity.

Mandaeans view John the Baptist as a great teacher, and engage in baptisms to come in closer contact with a "world of light" that is better than the material world on Earth.

"It represents a slice of the culture of the Middle East before the rise of Islam. It's a view to a former world. And frankly, we don't know very much about it," said Charles G. Haberl, an instructor in Middle Eastern studies at Rutgers University."

There's a lot of interest right now in gnostic Christianity across the board. Think the Da Vinci Code, the Gospel of Judas. It seems like a living, gnostic-influenced community would be a really invaluable asset to learning about early Christian thought, right? But of the 60,000 Mandeans in Iraq, 5,000 remain. Why?

... the few thousand Mandaeans still living in Iraq are finding their lives increasingly in danger, targeted by extremists of every political stripe and religious faith.

Nashi said a cousin on his father's side, Suhail Jani Sahar, was killed by Shiite fighters in November. A more distant cousin on his mother's side, Yahya Al-Chuhaily, was killed by Sunnis in June.

"Where there are areas where the Shia are the majority, they'll kill the Mandaeans and the Christians along with the Sunnis. Where there are areas where the Sunni are the majority, they'll kill the Mandaeans and the Christians along with the Shia," Nashi said.

Both Nashi and Aldulaimi are convinced that there will soon be no Mandaeans left in Iraq.

Don't expect things to get better.

2007-02-08T14:38:00.000-08:00

You've got to love a religion survey - especially when it comes from China.

A whole flurry of interest today in the recent poll showing an upsurge of believers in modern China. Here are two in the NY Times and the Washington Post.

Post quotes the researchers at length, who have a sober and socialist take on the revivalist spirit:

More Chinese feel unstable and harassed by the rootless lives they lead now," Liu Zhongyu, a philosophy professor who helped organize the survey, said in a telephone interview.

"The standards of morality are declining," Liu told Oriental Outlook magazine, which reported the survey results. "People don't trust each other anymore. They are looking for something to anchor their lives in.

And the official response from the government:

President Hu Jintao, reacting to such sentiments, repeatedly has cited a need to reemphasize human values in China, suggesting they should be part of the "socialism with Chinese characteristics" that is the ruling Communist Party's official dogma. He has made creation of "a socialist harmonious society" a watchword of his administration. Last year, he issued a list of eight virtues and eight vices as guidance for officials and ordinary people as they go about their business in this fast-changing country.

I love this. You can definitely see the masses swaying - ancient wisdom traditions, with holidays, cosmologies, communities? Or a government-issued list of virtues you can clip and save in your new velcro wallet. Ermmm... no contest, Bob. Secularism takes a hit.

There's a great argument to be made here, if anyone is brave enough to make it. Both China and Russia, the Communist giants, experinced the same thing when the freedom of religion was revived. There was a huge resurgence back to the church. The numbers in Russia are similarly striking - generations raised without any spiritual beliefs return by droves, not just to the traditional church but to mystical, evangelical and fringe religions.

But was it an innate craving for religion, or the result of economics? Compare this to Europe, where a milder form of socialism and steady economic growth have seen the standard of living grow and religious observance fall over the last few decades. If China wants a secular nation, I say they try France's 30 hour workweek.

As far as the Christian numbers here - double what they were expecting, at 40 million - the marked uptick in conversions should come as no surprise. Western missionaries are still illegal in China, but there has been a constant flow of support for China's Christians flowing from west to east. A number of new Bible translations, a focus on China's overlooked minority groups, like the Black Yi and the Flowery Miao, and a steady supply of Chinese Bibles have made a big dent in Soviet objectivism.

As the sleeping giant stirs in the next century, I wonder if the growth of western religion will be a good thing or a bad thing. Will China become another battlefield of Islam and Christianity? Whose side will China finally be on?

And where are the numbers for the Falun Gong? I'll bet if you marked that oval, you got to meet the pollsters personally...

2007-02-07T11:32:00.000-08:00

I was covering the Parliament of the World's Religions a few years ago. I spent long hours in the makeshift press room of Montserrat, a medieval monastery outside Barcelona. Part of my internment in that stuffy room was technical - I brought the first Macintosh the monks had ever seen, and it was an exercise of divine patience to get it networked.

During one of those late nights, the organizers of the event took over the room for a beef session. They seemed unaware that a journalist was lurking - or were just too tired from wrangling hundreds of holy people to care. The Dalai Lama had cancelled at the last minute, citing health reasons, though they grumbled that there were probably political pressures. A Sikh leader needed a delicate intervention for his oversized entourage. And don't even mention the keynote speaker. "I don't care if she did win the Nobel Peace Prize," said a prominent clergyman who will remain unnamed. "That woman is a ****."

The woman he was talking about was Shirin Ibadi, an Iranian lawyer and a force for human rights in the Muslim world. In an opinion piece today over at the NY Times, Maura Casey begins her article about Ibadi with the bumper-sticker wisdom, "Well behaved women rarely make history." Read the rest of the (very good) piece here.

Ibadi is undertaking the task of gathering a million Iranian signatures in support of women's rights. She probably won't succeed. She doesn't have to. She has comfortably settled into gadfly status, protected by her international reputation, free to hold up the standard of the western humanist tradition in the world of Sharia. There's little doubt that she is unpopular in Qom. But how popular is she in the rest of the country - especially the educated, growing middle-class?

There is little question that Iran is poised to become a major player in the new middle East, especially with the rise of Shiite power in Iraq and Lebanon (there is a good piece in the Christian Science Monitor today exploring the regional power struggle between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran). So the question becomes important: Who are the major players in Iran? The move towards the moderates, which flickered less than five years ago, seems to have died. But people like Ibadi are pressing against a lockdown on human rights, keeping the Iranian debate alive on tolerance and democracy.

Ibadi reminds me of another ill-behaved woman. Mad, bad, and dangerous to know...

2007-02-06T12:02:00.000-08:00

GREAT story about the ancient Cambodian temples in The Washington Post today. Read it here. The background is nice:

Without doubt, Angkor has had its share of good times and bad. The great King Jayavarman II began erecting his capital city here in A.D. 802, founding the Khmer Empire that held sway over what is now Cambodia, as well as much of Thailand, Vietnam and Laos, from the 9th century to the 12th.

At its peak, the city boasted a population of more than 1 million, with part of its cultural importance stemming from a mixed religious influence that resulted in a magnificent diversity of stunningly intricate reliefs. Starting as a Hindu city, Angkor turned to Buddhism in later centuries. Its religious life always included a strong dose of animism as well.

Hindu, Buddhist, Animist. What they DON'T mention is how important the buildings are to Christian anti-evolutionists. Say what? Bear with me a moment.

A literal reading of the Bible says that the earth can only be around 6,000 years old - biblical scholars arrive at this figure by adding up the biblical lineage from Adam to historical times. Scientists take issue with 6,000 years, of course; cosmology and geology to show the earth is significantly older than that. It is one of the more empassioned clashes between belief and science today.

One of the most striking, in your face contradictions to the biblical account are the fossils of dinosaurs, who clearly roamed the earth for thousands of years but make no appearance in the Bible or in human history. But if you join the hordes of tourists on Angkor Wat, you will notice a strange, almost inexplicable carving...

Is that a stegasauros?? Scores of Christian scholars would like for you to believe it is. If the Cambodians were alive and building their temples when the dinosaurs roamed the earth, it goes a long way in telescoping the millenia of the fossil record into the 6,000 years that the Bible accounts for.

Of course, the arguments about this image range far and wide. Opponents say that this was clearly a local beast or a mythical interpretation, and that the stegasauros fossils have never been found in the area. Champions of the Cambodian Barney say that the carving appears on the temple with other normally depicted local animals.

The Post article goes on to say that temples were almost lost for centuries. Since the fall of the Khmer Rouge and the rise of modern Cambodia, the country has been assiduously restoring them. Today, archaeologists from 12 countries are involved in the effort. But the temple which was originally a place where only " the king and a few of his monks would come to worship," according to John H. Stubbs of the World Monuments Fund. Massive waves of tourism are causing irremediable damage.

It wouldn't surprise me if some of those busloads at the Buddhist temples were coming from American megachurches.

2007-02-05T12:19:00.000-08:00

They say that you become a New Yorker when you live here for seven years. That's next month for me. Sigh.

Don't get me wrong. I love New York - it's fast-paced, full of smart people. I like not having a car (both for environmental reasons and because I have bad mechanic car-ma). There is instant access to culture. People are good at living in groups; they growl and then they grin, like dogs yipping at each other then playing seconds later. And Thai delivery in the snow. What's not to love?

But... I miss California sometimes.

Why? Read this story from the LA Times. It's about the Universal Life Church, famous for ordaining people online. They claim about 20 million ministers, including friends of mine. The article is skillfully done, against a backdrop of an annual "gathering" that now gathers only a few hard-core members.

The ULC is minting about 10,000 ministers a month, double the volume of just a few years ago, according to Hensley. They're ordained so they can become jail pastors, visit hospice patients or gain credibility for their own religious groups. The overwhelming majority—at least 90%, by Hensley's guess—sign up just for the perk of having the legal authority to officiate at a wedding.

These days, interfaith marriages are commonplace, as are second marriages. Many couples don't belong to any formal religious institution. And many want a ceremony tailored to their tastes and personalities. So it's no surprise that the number of nondenominational officiants, both hired professionals and volunteer amateurs, is booming.

By the end of the weekend, only the Hensley family remain, the descendants of the man who, 50 years ago, decided to found a church with no set beliefs or requirements for ordination. His grandson has this to say:

...it was just family left. Kalena shared a smoke with her girlfriend on the church's back steps. Her brother, Josh, arrived with his daughter Delaney to pick up his wife.

"I don't believe in God or any higher power," Josh was pleased to tell me. "But I'm a member of this church. I'm even ordained. For me, a good church isn't about worshipping whoever—it's about the community to which you belong. The fact that I can have no religion whatsoever and be totally welcome here is fantastic."

I've been reading a lot of Josiah Royce lately, this Harvard philosopher of religion. He was a hard-line Christian in an age of increasing secularization. In trying to reimagine the church, Royce makes the claim that what Jesus promised as the Kingdom of Heaven was, in fact, a community of believers on earth.

Royce seems to say that the most Christian virtue is not love, but loyalty. Love is for one person - loyalty is a love of the group. Join your community and give them your heart. Give up stubbornness and pride and, more important than belief, stand by your people.

For better or worse, Californains are my people.

Another California book came out a few weeks ago - The Visionary State by Erik Davis. He covers everything from the Self-Realization temple to the Haight. I met a friend of Erik's here in the city, who writes a Hinduism blog called Souljerky. Check it out.

2007-02-02T12:49:00.000-08:00

I was having dinner with my uncle the other night. All right, "uncle" is not quite right - I think technically he's my father second cousin - but in the Greek world these things get really muddy. In any case, we were sitting down with a few of his friends, and talk turned to religion.

"What's the deal with the Jehovah's Witnesses," one couple asks. They recently bought a loft in the trendy Dumbo area of Brooklyn, and just realized that the neighborhood was home to the headquarters for the Watchtower magazine.

What's the deal with the Jehovah's Witnesses? A lot of people have been asking that question in the last week - especially friends north of the border who have been following the sextuplets that were born to a Jehovah's Witness couple in British Columbia. The Toronoto Star has some good coverage. The babies were born four months premature, and the standard procedure involved supplying blood transfusions. Blood transfusions are considered ungodly by Jehovah's Witnesses, so the parents refused. Two children died. The state decided to intervene, and as of today, still maintains they have the right to intervene.

So - what IS the deal with the Jehovah's Witnesses? What's the blood thing about? I asked a friend who was raised an the faith, and he pointed me to the Acts of the Apostles, where Chrsitians are enjoined to "abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well." Here's the beginning of the christians distancing themselves from the sacrifice cultures of their era (see my post from yesterday). Also - note that fornication places a distant fourth!

I'm not sure if this reference is the only justification. Like all religious groups, the Jehovah's witness cannot be summed up in a few sentences. Some of the other practices that define them include a history of spotty millenialism (the end of the world has come and gone a few times), the use of Jehovah - the "covenant" name of God, and the non-observance of most traditional Christian holidays.

Want to know more? Do what I told the couple. Head to Dumbo and knock on the big doors. Or better yet - wait until someone knocks on yours.

2007-02-01T20:29:00.000-08:00

I am a little jealous of a little piece in this week's Newsweek, in their welcome and regular BeliefWatch column. Lisa Miller takes on sacrifice, following the story of a group of Texans who practice chicken sacrifice as part of their Santeria faith, and the town set against it.

This story was originally broken in the wonderful (and now defunct) religion section of the Dallas Morning News. The longer treatment nicely handled the range of the issues it presented - animal rights, religious intolerance, and my favorite, history.

• The Old Testament is rife with references to the sacrifice of rams. Jews abandoned the ritual after the temple where sacrifices were performed was destroyed. The Torah commands that sacrifices must be done in a place commanded by God, and no sacrifice can take place until a new one is designated.

• Many Muslims commemorate the end of the Hajj by sacrificing a sheep in honor of Abraham's willingness to slay his son at God's commandment and God's providing of a ram instead. The holiday, known as Eid al-Adha, was celebrated last week.

• In Christianity, the crucifixion of Jesus replaced animal sacrifice under the belief that Jesus was the Lamb of God and his ultimate sacrifice redeemed the world of its sins. This sacrifice is commemorated in Mass with the sacrament of the wafer and wine.

I am just working through Walter Burkert's wonderful history of Greek Religion. He a couple of really interesting views on the power of the experience. He says that for the Greeks it was "the essence of the sacred act," the central most powerful metophors of ceremonies which experienced death as necessary for the coninuing of life.

It was far from a cold-blodded act. In fact, he says, the empathy for the animal is essential. A "domestic animal, a posession and a companion, must nevertheless be slaughtered and eaten," which creates "more conflicts and anxieties
which are resolved inthe ritual."These conflicts were mirrors of larger societal anxieties: that for a wommunity, life depends on death for food and space - after communially witnessing the animal's slaughtered, the community celebrated new life.

The tradition was of course widespread in the ancient world, practiced mong the Hittiites and of course the Semites (though it is an interesting difference that the greek gods left the best meat to mankind but semites preferred the charred "burnt offerings" which could not be eaten).

Muslims still celebrate this act and the Jews, should the Temple ever be rebuilt, will also need to sacrifice to be observant. Sacrifice is the central metaphor of Christianity. So who's worried about a few families in Texas?

2007-01-31T08:52:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, you may have read about a group called the Soldiers of Heaven - an fringe religious group in Iraq who were annihilated on Monday by Iraqi, U.S. and British forces. They were heavily armed and, according to Iraqi intelligence, had been planning to disrupt the commemoration of Ashoura - a holy day particularly celebrated by Shi'a Muslims near the holy city of Najaf. It seemed like a cut and dried story of some maniacs who needed to be put down, Waco-style, and that's how the story first RAN. more than 300 militants were killed and about 650 captured.

Well.. with a few days hindsight, the Washington Post is raising some good QUESTIONS.

Virtually all the information about the cult has come from Iraqi officials, who have released incomplete and sometimes contradictory accounts... The Shiite-dominated government maintains the cult had links to al-Qaida in Iraq, which seems unusual considering the Sunni group's hatred of Shiites as heretics and collaborators with the U.S.

There seems to be no question that the group was armed, and prepared to fight - and there's evidence that group believed that it was guided by the "Hidden Imam", a messianic figure in Shi'a Islam.

It seems most likely that this was Shiite-on-Shiite violence, with millenarian cultists making an attempt to march on Najaf during the chaos of the ritual season," Juan Cole, a Shiite scholar at the University of Michigan, said on his Web site. "The dangers of Shiite-on-Shiite violence in Iraq are substantial, as this episode demonstrated.

So... uh... is this the worst possible time to bring up religious tolerance in the Muslim world?

Of course, violent sects are not the best example. But it IS interesting that the kicker quote in the Post comes from Juan Cole, a noted middle east expert at the University of Michigan and ALSO a longstanding (and controversial) member in the Baha'i faith. If anyone has words to say about minority religions under Shi'a rule, it's the Baha'i, who have had to endure generations of minority status, sub-standard schooling and daily repression under Shiite rule for their religious beliefs. The Baha'i profess such radical beliefs as the unity of the worlds religions, the equality of men and women and the harmony of religion and science. Their founder, Bahaullah, came out of a period of renewed messianic interest in the 19th century.

There's a lot of talk about the challenge of planting democracy. Planting religious tolerance, I think, will be an even thornier battle.

2006-09-08T13:20:00.000-07:00

As the cash from the first "Survivor" series rolled in, you could almost hear the screech of the studio wheels churning out what would become forst "Big Brother" and "The Bachellor," then "Joe Millionaire" and "Temptation Island" and all the lesser bandwagons that follow a Hollywood success.

So it's no surprise. The hands that milked Mel Gibson's Passion are reaching for fresh udders, and films about God and the godless abound this fall - from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Personally, I'm excited about Jesus Camp, a documentary from the makers of The Boys of Baraka about a Christian summer camp in North Dakota which debuted at the Tribeca film festival and won the Special Documentary Jury Prize. The filmmakers call their approach "balanced," and distribtors at Magnolia pictures are at pains to say the documentary about home-schooled Christian kids should appeal to people "on all sides of the issue." But the sight of kids speaking in tongues and a focus on activist politics - abortion in particular - should stir up a ruckus in the aisles.

Also coming soon is Darshan the Embrace, a doc about Amma, the "hugging saint" of India, the woman who has given over 25 million embraces, according to her press releases. Be warned, though, that advance word says that this is more of a love letter than an objective look.

It bears noting that the Hollywood bandwagon is filling up with more homespun California wisdom. Movies based on the New Age classics are coming faster than you can swat 'em, with The Celestine Prophecy, Conversations with God destined soon to fill the same two-week run just vacated by Peaceful Warrior - the last directed by Victor Salva, of Jeepers Creepers fame (is it a matter of time before we get the oeuvres of Carlos Castaneda and Richard Bach - directed by Wes Craven?).

And in the God and Mammon category - check out the Spiritual Film festival in Sun Valley, starting today. Yes, 32 films about spiritual poverty shown in one of the wealthiest zip codes in the nation. The idea was sparked last year by the visit of HH the Dalai Lama, who visit with local schoolkids is featured in one of the shorts ("Mommy, who will they be getting next year?"). Although the press packet for this event featured a journalist-friendly pie chart of the faiths represented - a 13% slice for Islam, a juicy 23% for Christianity, etc. - I somehow slipped up and missed an offer to attend.

There's always next year.