Religion and Culture

Teaching Religion to Students of Faith

2006-12-21T10:19:00.000-05:00

An op-ed piece from this morning's NY Times . . .

The Devoted Student
By MARK C. TAYLOR

For years, I have begun my classes by telling students that if they are not more confused and uncertain at the end of the course than they were at the beginning, I will have failed. A growing number of religiously correct students consider this challenge a direct assault on their faith. Yet the task of thinking and teaching, especially in an age of emergent fundamentalisms, is to cultivate a faith in doubt that calls into question every certainty.

Indeed, it seems the more religious students become, the less willing they are to engage in critical reflection about faith.

It is also important to explore the similarities and differences between and among various religions. Religious traditions are not fixed and monolithic; they are networks of symbols, myths and rituals, which evolve over time by adapting to changing circumstances. If we fail to appreciate the complexity and diversity within, and among, religious traditions, we will overlook the fact that people from different traditions often share more with one another than they do with many members of their own tradition.

Until recently, many influential analysts argued that religion, a vestige of an earlier stage of human development, would wither away as people became more sophisticated and rational. Obviously, things have not turned out that way. Indeed, the 21st century will be dominated by religion in ways that were inconceivable just a few years ago. Religious conflict will be less a matter of struggles between belief and unbelief than of clashes between believers who make room for doubt and those who do not.

The warning signs are clear: unless we establish a genuine dialogue within and among all kinds of belief, ranging from religious fundamentalism to secular dogmatism, the conflicts of the future will probably be even more deadly.

Gay and Evangelical, Seeking Paths of Acceptance

2006-12-12T09:00:00.000-05:00

From this morning's NY Times article by Neela Banerjee:

Just as he is certain about the tenets of his faith, Mr. Lee also knows he is gay, that he did not choose it and cannot change it.

To many people, Mr. Lee is a walking contradiction, and most evangelicals and gay people alike consider Christians like him horribly deluded about their faith. “I’ve gotten hate mail from both sides,” said Mr. Lee, who runs gaychristian.net, a Web site with 4,700 registered users that mostly attracts gay evangelicals.

“Scripture clearly, pervasively, strongly, absolutely and counterculturally opposes all homosexual practice,” Dr. Gagnon said. “I trust that gay evangelicals would argue otherwise, but Christian proponents of homosexual practice have not made their case from Scripture.”

In fact, both sides look to Scripture. The debate is largely over seven passages in the Bible about same-sex couplings. Mr. Gagnon and other traditionalists say those passages unequivocally condemn same-sex couplings.

Those who advocate acceptance of gay people assert that the passages have to do with acts in the context of idolatry, prostitution or violence. The Bible, they argue, says nothing about homosexuality as it is largely understood today as an enduring orientation, or about committed long-term, same-sex relationships.

. . .

There is the 65-year-old minister who is a married father and gay. There are the teenagers considering suicide because they have been taught that gay people are an abomination. There are those who have tried the evangelical “ex-gay” therapies and never became straight.

Gay evangelicals seldom find churches that fit. Congregations and denominations that are open to gay people are often too liberal theologically for evangelicals. Yet those congregations whose preaching is familiar do not welcome gay members, those evangelicals said.

NYTimes

Evangelical Leader Accused of Paying for Sex

2006-11-02T23:40:00.000-05:00

Ted Haggard, leader of the National Association of Evangelicals (30 million members) and pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs, CO, has been accused of paying a man for sex.

From CNN.com:

Jones (the accuser) . . . went public with his story because of Haggard's support for Colorado's proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

"I cried many nights; I got sick tormenting myself about whether I should do this," he said. "I finally had to come to peace with myself. ... I had to do the moral thing."

Jones, who said he no longer worked as a prostitute, described himself as a Christian and said that although he was a registered Democrat he had voted for Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush for president.

Jones said he learned [Haggard's] identity when he saw him on television four months ago. Jones said he became upset when he learned that Haggard's church supported the proposed state constitutional amendment.

See
CNN

Salman Rushdie Joins Emory Faculty

2006-10-06T18:23:00.000-04:00

From an Associated Press story today:

ATLANTA - Salman Rushdie will join the Emory University faculty and donate his archive to the institution. The novelist's five-year appointment as a distinguished writer in residence in the English Department begins in the spring of 2007, Emory officials announced Friday.

"Salman Rushdie is not only one of the foremost writers of our generation, he is also a courageous champion of human rights and freedom," Emory President James Wagner said.

This will be Rushdie's first extended relationship with a university, university officials said.

Included in the archive are Rushdie's private journals detailing life under the fatwa, as well as personal correspondence, notebooks, photographs and manuscripts of all of his writings, including two early unpublished novels.

Evangelicals Fear the Loss of Their Teenagers

2006-10-06T18:02:00.000-04:00

From today's NY Times story by Laurie Goodstein:

When Eric Soto, 18, transferred from a small charter school to a large public high school in Chicago, he said he was disappointed to find that an extracurricular Bible study attracted only five to eight students. “When we brought food, we thought we could get a better turnout,” he said. They got 12.

The next morning, Mr. Luce led the crowd in an exercise in which they wrote on scraps of paper all the negative cultural influences, brand names, products and television shows that they planned to excise from their lives. Again they streamed down the aisles, this time to throw away the “cultural garbage.”

Trash cans filled with folded pieces of paper on which the teenagers had scribbled things like Ryan Seacrest, Louis Vuitton, “Gilmore Girls,” “Days of Our Lives,” Iron Maiden, Harry Potter, “need for a boyfriend” and “my perfect teeth obsession.” One had written in tiny letters: “fornication.”

Evangelical adults, like believers of every faith, fret about losing the next generation, said the Rev. David W. Key, director of Baptist Studies at the Candler School of Theology of Emory University, in Atlanta.

“The uniqueness of the evangelical situation is the fact that during the 80’s and 90’s you had the Reagan revolution that was growing the evangelical churches,” Mr. Key said.

The reality is, when it comes to organizing youth, evangelical Christians are the envy of Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants and Jews, said Christian Smith, a professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame, who specializes in the study of American evangelicals and surveyed teens for his book “Soul Searching: the Religious and Spiritual lives of American Teenagers” (Oxford, 2005).

“A lot of the goals I’m very supportive of,” Mr. Smith said of the new evangelical youth campaign, “but it just kills me that it’s framed in such apocalyptic terms that couldn’t possibly hold up under half a second of scrutiny. It’s just self-defeating.”

For the full story see (free registration required):

NYTimes

Falwell on Hillary Clinton

2006-09-28T09:21:00.000-04:00

"I certainly hope that Hillary is the candidate. She has $300 million so far. But I hope she's the candidate. Because nothing will energize my [constituency] like Hillary Clinton. If Lucifer ran, he wouldn't."
- Rev. Jerry Falwell

(Quote is courtesy of Sojourners)

Pope's Recent Comments on Islam

2006-09-24T00:27:00.000-04:00

The following text was sent to me by Jeffrey B. Russell, professor emeritus of medieval church history at U.C. Santa Barbara. It is the prepared text of Pope Benedict XVI's recent speech at the University of Regensburg (Sept 12).

Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a moving experience for me to stand and give a lecture at this university podium once again. I think back to those years when, after a pleasant period at the Freisinger Hochschule, I began teaching at the University of Bonn. This was in 1959, in the days of the old university made up of ordinary professors. The various chairs had neither assistants nor secretaries, but in recompense there was much direct contact with students and in particular among the professors themselves.

We would meet before and after lessons in the rooms of the teaching staff. There was a lively exchange with historians, philosophers, philologists and, naturally, between the two theological faculties. Once a semester there was a dies academicus, when professors from every faculty appeared before the students of the entire university, making possible a genuine experience of universitas: the reality that despite our specializations which at times make it difficult to communicate with each other, we made up a whole, working in everything on the basis of a single rationality with its various aspects and sharing responsibility for the right use of reason-- this reality became a lived experience.

The university was also very proud of its two theological faculties. It was clear that, by inquiring about the reasonableness of faith, they too carried out a work which is necessarily part of the whole of the universitas scientiarum, even if not everyone could share the faith which theologians seek to correlate with reason as a whole. This profound sense of coherence within the universe of reason was not troubled, even when it was once reported that a colleague had said there was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God. That even in the face of such radical skepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question.

I was reminded of all this recently, when I read the edition by Professor Theodore Khoury (M?) of part of the dialogue carried on-- perhaps in 1391 in the winter barracks near Ankara-- by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both. It was probably the emperor himself who set down this dialogue, during the siege of Constantinople between 1394 and 1402; and this would explain why his arguments are given in greater detail than the responses of the learned Persian.

The dialogue ranges widely over the structures of faith contained in the Bible and in the Qur'an, and deals especially with the image of God and of man, while necessarily returning repeatedly to the relationship of the three Laws: the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Qur'an. In this lecture I would like to discuss only one point-- itself rather marginal to the dialogue itself-- which, in the context of the issue of faith and reason, I found interesting and which can serve as the starting-point for my reflections on this issue.

In the seventh conversation edited by Professor Khoury, the emperor touches on the theme of the jihad (holy war). The emperor must have known that surah 2, 256 reads: There is no compulsion in religion. It is one of the suras of the early period, when Mohammed was still powerless and under threat.

But naturally the emperor also knew the instructions, developed later and recorded in the Qur?an, concerning holy war. Without descending to details, such as the difference in treatment accorded to those who have the ?Book? and the ?infidels,? he turns to his interlocutor somewhat brusquely with the central question on the relationship between religion and violence in general, in these words:

Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.

The emperor goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul.

God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death....

The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God's nature. The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: "For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality." Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazn went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God's will, we would even have to practice idolatry.

As far as understanding of God and thus the concrete practice of religion is concerned, we find ourselves faced with a dilemma which nowadays challenges us directly. Is the conviction that acting unreasonably contradicts God's nature merely a Greek idea, or is it always and intrinsically true? I believe that here we can see the profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the biblical understanding of faith in God. Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: In the beginning was the logos. This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts with logos.

Logos means both reason and word-- a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist.

The encounter between the Biblical message and Greek thought did not happen by chance. The vision of Saint Paul, who saw the roads to Asia barred and in a dream saw a Macedonian man plead with him: Come over to Macedonia and help us! (cf. Acts 16:6-10)-- this vision can be interpreted as a distillation of the intrinsic necessity of a rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek inquiry.

In point of fact, this rapprochement had been going on for some time. The mysterious name of God, revealed from the burning bush, a name which separates this God from all other divinities with their many names and declares simply that he is, is already presents a challenge to the notion of myth, to which Socrates's attempt to vanquish and transcend myth stands in close analogy. Within the Old Testament, the process which started at the burning bush came to new maturity at the time of the Exile, when the God of Israel, an Israel now deprived of its land and worship, was proclaimed as the God of heaven and earth and described in a simple formula which echoes the words uttered at the burning bush: I am.

This new understanding of God is accompanied by a kind of enlightenment, which finds stark expression in the mockery of gods who are merely the work of human hands (cf. Ps 115). Thus, despite the bitter conflict with those Hellenistic rulers who sought to accommodate it forcibly to the customs and idolatrous cult of the Greeks, biblical faith, in the Hellenistic period, encountered the best of Greek thought at a deep level, resulting in a mutual enrichment evident especially in the later wisdom literature.

Today we know that the Greek translation of the Old Testament produced at Alexandria-- the Septuagint-- is more than a simple (and in that sense perhaps less than satisfactory) translation of the Hebrew text: it is an independent textual witness and a distinct and important step in the history of revelation, one which brought about this encounter in a way that was decisive for the birth and spread of Christianity. A profound encounter of faith and reason is taking place here, an encounter between genuine enlightenment and religion. From the very heart of Christian faith and, at the same time, the heart of Greek thought now joined to faith, Manuel II was able to say: Not to act ?with logos? is contrary to God's nature.

In all honesty, one must observe that in the late Middle Ages we find trends in theology which would sunder this synthesis between the Greek spirit and the Christian spirit. In contrast with the so-called intellectualism of Augustine and Thomas, there arose with Duns Scotus a voluntarism which ultimately led to the claim that we can only know God's voluntas ordinata. Beyond this is the realm of God's freedom, in virtue of which he could have done the opposite of everything he has actually done. This gives rise to positions which clearly approach those of Ibn Hazn and might even lead to the image of a capricious God, who is not even bound to truth and goodness. God's transcendence and otherness are so exalted that our reason, our sense of the true and good, are no longer an authentic mirror of God, whose deepest possibilities remain eternally unattainable and hidden behind his actual decisions.

As opposed to this, the faith of the Church has always insisted that between God and us, between his eternal Creator Spirit and our created reason there exists a real analogy, in which unlikeness remains infinitely greater than likeness, yet not to the point of abolishing analogy and its language (cf. Lateran IV). God does not become more divine when we push him away from us in a sheer, impenetrable voluntarism; rather, the truly divine God is the God who has revealed himself as logos and, as logos, has acted and continues to act lovingly on our behalf. Certainly, love transcends knowledge and is thereby capable of perceiving more than thought alone (cf. Eph 3:19); nonetheless it continues to be love of the God who is logos. Consequently, Christian worship is worship in harmony with the eternal Word and with our reason (cf. Rom 12:1).

This inner rapprochement between Biblical faith and Greek philosophical inquiry was an event of decisive importance not only from the standpoint of the history of religions, but also from that of world history-? it is an event which concerns us even today. Given this convergence, it is not surprising that Christianity, despite its origins and some significant developments in the East, finally took on its historically decisive character in Europe. We can also express this the other way around: this convergence, with the subsequent addition of the Roman heritage, created Europe and remains the foundation of what can rightly be called Europe.

The thesis that the critically purified Greek heritage forms an integral part of Christian faith has been countered by the call for a dehellenization of Christianity-? a call which has more and more dominated theological discussions since the beginning of the modern age. Viewed more closely, three stages can be observed in the program of dehellenization: although interconnected, they are clearly distinct from one another in their motivations and objectives.

Dehellenization first emerges in connection with the fundamental postulates of the Reformation in the 16th century. Looking at the tradition of scholastic theology, the Reformers thought they were confronted with a faith system totally conditioned by philosophy, that is to say an articulation of the faith based on an alien system of thought. As a result, faith no longer appeared as a living historical Word but as one element of an overarching philosophical system. The principle of sola scriptura, on the other hand, sought faith in its pure, primordial form, as originally found in the biblical Word. Metaphysics appeared as a premise derived from another source, from which faith had to be liberated in order to become once more fully itself. When Kant stated that he needed to set thinking aside in order to make room for faith, he carried this program forward with a radicalism that the Reformers could never have foreseen. He thus anchored faith exclusively in practical reason, denying it access to reality as a whole.

The liberal theology of the 19th and 20th centuries ushered in a second stage in the process of dehellenization, with Adolf von Harnack as its outstanding representative. When I was a student, and in the early years of my teaching, this program was highly influential in Catholic theology too. It took as its point of departure Pascal?s distinction between the God of the philosophers and the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

In my inaugural lecture at Bonn in 1959, I tried to address the issue. I will not repeat here what I said on that occasion, but I would like to describe at least briefly what was new about this second stage of dehellenization. Harnack?s central idea was to return simply to the man Jesus and to his simple message, underneath the accretions of theology and indeed of hellenization: this simple message was seen as the culmination of the religious development of humanity. Jesus was said to have put an end to worship in favor of morality. In the end he was presented as the father of a humanitarian moral message. The fundamental goal was to bring Christianity back into harmony with modern reason, liberating it, that is to say, from seemingly philosophical and theological elements, such as faith in Christ?s divinity and the triune God.

In this sense, historical-critical exegesis of the New Testament restored to theology its place within the university: theology, for Harnack, is something essentially historical and therefore strictly scientific. What it is able to say critically about Jesus is, so to speak, an expression of practical reason and consequently it can take its rightful place within the university. Behind this thinking lies the modern self-limitation of reason, classically expressed in Kant?s ?Critiques?, but in the meantime further radicalized by the impact of the natural sciences. This modern concept of reason is based, to put it briefly, on a synthesis between Platonism (Cartesianism) and empiricism, a synthesis confirmed by the success of technology. On the one hand it presupposes the mathematical structure of matter, its intrinsic rationality, which makes it possible to understand how matter works and use it efficiently: this basic premise is, so to speak, the Platonic element in the modern understanding of nature. On the other hand, there is nature?s capacity to be exploited for our purposes, and here only the possibility of verification or falsification through experimentation can yield ultimate certainty. The weight between the two poles can, depending on the circumstances, shift from one side to the other. As strongly positivistic a thinker as J. Monod has declared himself a convinced Platonist/Cartesian.

This gives rise to two principles which are crucial for the issue we have raised. First, only the kind of certainty resulting from the interplay of mathematical and empirical elements can be considered scientific. Anything that would claim to be science must be measured against this criterion. Hence the human sciences, such as history, psychology, sociology, and philosophy, attempt to conform themselves to this canon of scientificity. A second point, which is important for our reflections, is that by its very nature this method excludes the question of God, making it appear an unscientific or pre-scientific question. Consequently, we are faced with a reduction of the radius of science and reason, one which needs to be questioned.

We shall return to this problem later. In the meantime, it must be observed that from this standpoint any attempt to maintain theology?s claim to be ?scientific? would end up reducing Christianity to a mere fragment of its former self. But we must say more: it is man himself who ends up being reduced, for the specifically human questions about our origin and destiny, the questions raised by religion and ethics, then have no place within the purview of collective reason as defined by ?science? and must thus be relegated to the realm of the subjective. The subject then decides, on the basis of his experiences, what he considers tenable in matters of religion, and the subjective ?conscience? becomes the sole arbiter of what is ethical. In this way, though, ethics and religion lose their power to create a community and become a completely personal matter.

This is a dangerous state of affairs for humanity, as we see from the disturbing pathologies of religion and reason which necessarily erupt when reason is so reduced that questions of religion and ethics no longer concern it. Attempts to construct an ethic from the rules of evolution or from psychology and sociology, end up being simply inadequate.

Before I draw the conclusions to which all this has been leading, I must briefly refer to the third stage of dehellenization, which is now in progress. In the light of our experience with cultural pluralism, it is often said nowadays that the synthesis with Hellenism achieved in the early Church was a preliminary inculturation which ought not to be binding on other cultures. The latter are said to have the right to return to the simple message of the New Testament prior to that inculturation, in order to inculturate it anew in their own particular milieux. This thesis is not only false; it is coarse and lacking in precision. The New Testament was written in Greek and bears the imprint of the Greek spirit, which had already come to maturity as the Old Testament developed. True, there are elements in the evolution of the early Church which do not have to be integrated into all cultures. Nonetheless, the fundamental decisions made about the relationship between faith and the use of human reason are part of the faith itself; they are developments consonant with the nature of faith itself.

And so I come to my conclusion. This attempt, painted with broad strokes, at a critique of modern reason from within has nothing to do with putting the clock back to the time before the Enlightenment and rejecting the insights of the modern age. The positive aspects of modernity are to be acknowledged unreservedly: we are all grateful for the marvelous possibilities that it has opened up for mankind and for the progress in humanity that has been granted to us. The scientific ethos, moreover, is the will to be obedient to the truth, and, as such, it embodies an attitude which reflects one of the basic tenets of Christianity. The intention here is not one of retrenchment or negative criticism, but of broadening our concept of reason and its application.

While we rejoice in the new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. We will succeed in doing so only if reason and faith come together in a new way, if we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons. In this sense theology rightly belongs in the university and within the wide-ranging dialogue of sciences, not merely as a historical discipline and one of the human sciences, but precisely as theology, as inquiry into the rationality of faith.

Only thus do we become capable of that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today. In the Western world it is widely held that only positivistic reason and the forms of philosophy based on it are universally valid. Yet the world?s profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion of the divine from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions. A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures. At the same time, as I have attempted to show, modern scientific reason with its intrinsically Platonic element bears within itself a question which points beyond itself and beyond the possibilities of its methodology.

Modern scientific reason quite simply has to accept the rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our spirit and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a given, on which its methodology has to be based. Yet the question why this has to be so is a real question, and one which has to be remanded by the natural sciences to other modes and planes of thought: to philosophy and theology.

For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding. Here I am reminded of something Socrates said to Phaedo. In their earlier conversations, many false philosophical opinions had been raised, and so Socrates says: ?It would be easily understandable if someone became so annoyed at all these false notions that for the rest of his life he despised and mocked all talk about being - but in this way he would be deprived of the truth of existence and would suffer a great loss?.

The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby. The courage to engage the whole breadth of reason, and not the denial of its grandeur ? this is the program with which a theology grounded in Biblical faith enters into the debates of our time. ?Not to act reasonably (with logos) is contrary to the nature of God?, said Manuel II, according to his Christian understanding of God, in response to his Persian interlocutor. It is to this great logos, to this breadth of reason, that we invite our partners in the dialogue of cultures. To rediscover it constantly is the great task of the university.

Does God Want You to Be Rich?

2006-09-10T14:46:00.000-04:00

Is the title of the cover story from the latest issue of Time Magazine.

"Known (or vilified) under a variety of names -- Word of Faith, Health and Wealth, Name It and Claim It, Prosperity Theology -- its emphasis is on God's promised generosity in this life. In a nutshell, it suggests that a God who loves you does not want you to be broke.

Its signature verse could be John 10:10: "I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly." In a Time poll, 17 percent of Christians surveyed said they considered themselves part of such a movement, while a full 61 percent believed that God wants people to be prosperous."

See Time

Women Preachers and the Stained Glass Ceiling

2006-08-26T10:30:00.000-04:00

From a NY Times story this morning:

Women now make up 51 percent of the students in divinity school. But in the mainline Protestant churches that have been ordaining women for decades, women account for only a small percentage — about 3 percent, according to one survey by a professor at Duke University — of pastors who lead large congregations, those with average Sunday attendance over 350. In evangelical churches, most of which do not ordain women, some women opt to leave for other denominations that will accept them as ministers. Women from historically black churches who want to ascend to the pulpit often start their own congregations.

This year, women were elected to lead the Episcopal Church, the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. But such success has not filtered down to the congregational level, said the Rev. Dr. Catherine Stonehouse, dean of the school of practical theology at the Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Ky.

“It’s a combination of age-old customs and democratic myopia: that in the marketplace of ideas and values, men matter most and that by definition, women have to take a back seat,” said Dr. Alton B. Pollard III, director of black church studies and associate professor of religion and culture at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University.

For the full story:

Times

It is of course easy to fault the church for such gender disparity in the pulpit. To what degree, however, is such gender inequity rooted not in the church (where sexist attitudes certainly do not help) but in U.S. culture? In other words, what percent of Fortune 500 CEO's are women?

A Favorite Quote

2006-08-19T15:38:00.000-04:00

"The terrible threat is that we might die before we really do die, before death has become a natural necessity. The real horror lies in just such a premature death, a death after which we go on living for many years."
--Vitezslav Gardavsky

Whose Image?

2006-07-27T00:41:00.000-04:00

"God created us in his image and we decided to return the favor."

--George Bernard Shaw

The Religious Left and Upcoming Elections

2006-07-25T23:37:00.000-04:00

Some excerpts from the following Retuers piece by Thomas Ferraro:

"I join the ranks of those who are angry because I have watched as the faith I love has been taken over by fundamentalists who claim to speak for Jesus but whose actions are anything but Christian," declared [Rev. Robin] Meyers, who has written a new book, "Why the Christian Right is Wrong."

According to scholars, the religious left has become its most active since the 1960s when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and other clergy -- black and white -- were key figures in the civil-rights and anti-Vietnam war movements.

"The call of the gospel is to help the poor," Meyers said. "The strong ought to help the weak, instead of the strong helping the strong get stronger, which the Bush administration is all about."

Those on the right say they are not worried by the left's activism. Richard Land, president of the conservative Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission in Nashville, said, "The religious left is a shadow of what it was in the '60s."

Baptist Colleges Are Cutting Ties with Church

2006-07-22T09:17:00.000-04:00

A few of the places where I teach (Emory, Candler, Mercer) are mentioned in the following NY Times article . . .

NYTimes

David W. Key, director of Baptist Studies at the Candler School of Theology at Emory, put it more starkly. “The real underlying issue is that fundamentalism in the Southern Baptist form is incompatible with higher education,’’ Professor Key said. “In fundamentalism, you have all the truths. In education, you’re searching for truths.’’

Isaac Asimov on God

2006-07-13T12:38:00.000-04:00

"If I were not an atheist, I would believe in a God who would choose to save people on the basis of the totality of their lives and not the pattern of their words. I think he would prefer an honest and righteous atheist to a TV preacher whose every word is God, God, God, and whose every deed is foul, foul, foul."
--Isaac Asimov

Chuck Palahniuk - New Religious Spaces

2006-07-07T09:53:00.000-04:00

Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club and several other best-selling books, writes the following in his (appropriately titled non-fiction work) Non-Fiction:

"In so many ways, these places -- support groups, twelve-step recovery groups, demolition derbies -- they've come to serve the role that organized religion used to. We used to go to church to reveal the worst aspects of ourselves, our sins. To tell our stories. To be recognized. To be forgiven. And to be redeemed, accepted back into our community. This ritual was our way to stay connected to people, and to resolve our anxiety before it could take us so far from humanity that we would be lost.
In these places I found the truest stories. In support groups. In hospitals. Anywhere people had nothing left to lose, that's where they told the most truth."

Magnolia and Exodus

2006-07-04T15:39:00.000-04:00

I gave a paper this morning in Scotland on Magnolia and Exodus.

'The book says, 'we might be through with the past but the past ain't through with us.'

Obama Chastises Dems on Faith Issue

2006-06-28T17:26:00.000-04:00

From a story on cnn.com earlier today . . .

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sen. Barack Obama chastised fellow Democrats Wednesday for failing to "acknowledge the power of faith in the lives of the American people" and said the party must compete for the support of evangelicals and other churchgoing Americans.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/06/28/obama.ap/index.html

Kurt Vonnegut and the Ten Commandments

2006-06-16T14:02:00.000-04:00

"For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the beatitudes, be posted anywhere."

--Kurt Vonnegut

West Wing: An Alternative Christianity

2006-06-09T22:44:00.000-04:00

Part II of a two part piece I wrote on West Wing is posted today on the main page at HollywoodJesus.com.

Part I focused on biblical interpretation in the West Wing and Part II looks at more general theological motifs in the show.

The final episode of West Wing aired on May 14 - I consider the show to be one of the most substantive portrayals of Christian faith/religion on T.V. - thanks largely to the character of President Josiah "Jed" Bartlet, created by Aaron Sorkin and played by Martin Sheen.

Carnage as a Means to Peace

2006-05-13T11:05:00.000-04:00

"What does it matter to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?"
- Mohandas K. Gandhi

Crusade, Genocide, and Jihad

2006-05-11T00:17:00.000-04:00

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
--Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)

Marlon Brando on The Godfather

2006-05-09T22:51:00.000-04:00

"I don't think the film is about the Mafia at all. I think it is about the corporate mind. In a way, the Mafia is the best example of capitalists we have."

--Marlon Brando, referring to the film The Godfather, in an interview with Newsweek.

"Family-Safe" Films

2006-05-06T00:16:00.000-04:00

An article by Peter Biggs describes a Canadian business run by Rob Anderson (FamilySafeMovies) that provides DVD's whose "objectionable" content is edited for those who don't want to be exposed to "graphic violence, sex scenes, nudity or profanity."

The following are some excerpts from Biggs's article:

Rob Anderson: "We don't edit every movie. Some movies, like Brokeback Mountain, are too much to edit; we just don't carry movies like that. . ."

Edmonton Alliance church youth pastor Kirsten Glidden: "I am not a conservative . . . but even many Disney movies that are G rated have questionable content."

Asked to cite an example, Glidden said: "Sleeping Beauty because of how evil and cruel the queen is. Also, Ice Age 2 has a lot of sexual innuendo. I don't like how there is an absence of definition as to who the movie is for. We live in an R-rated world -- and as a church, we should look different, have a higher standard." She summarized her support of FamilySafe: "I'm a parent. We've got one shot to protect kids from things that could destroy their lives."

Kevin Miller (a Canadian scriptwriter and writer for Hollywood Jesus, a Christian web site that engages issues of spirituality in the movies): "As for physically altering someone else's artwork to make it more palatable, forget it . . . What are these people going to do when confronted by Michelangelo's David? Quickly chisel a pair of pants for him?"

He added: "I'm not saying I like watching sex, violence, and foul language in films. However, I would never avoid a film because it contains such elements. To me, they are incidental to what is really going on in any particular film. I'm much more interested in the artistic/political/social/religious statement in a film. Sometimes a film needs to use graphic elements to make that statement clearly."

*Kristyn Komarnicki, editor of Prism, alerted me to this article.

canadianchristianity.com/cgi-bin/na.cgi?nationalupdates/060420films

United 93 and Films About 9-11

2006-04-30T16:35:00.000-04:00

In his op-ed piece from this morning's NY Times (Films of Infamy), John Thompson addresses the debate regarding whether American audiences are "ready" for United 93, a film about Sept. 11th.

Two excerpts:

"More recently, Steven Spielberg's Munich is a brave, if troubled, attempt to look at both sides of a fraught conflict. But I can imagine a film other than Munich or United 93, a greater film, a film about different kinds of courage. In this film, the courage of the passengers would be shown and honored, but there would be an equal effort to show the courage of the terrorists (without calling them simply "evil" or "insane"). You can feel already, I know, that that film is less likely. It has a kind of moral ambivalence not settled by giving 5 percent of the proceeds to families of the lost."

"The really difficult film to make or offer in America will be the one that says no, the world did not alter its nature on 9/11, even if the worst politicians used that event to switch their reality. But on 9/11, we faced the first need to ask ourselves how other people — evil, alien, insane — could be so brave. The history of terrorism — and it includes the independence of this country — is that in the end you have to understand the grievance of the aggrieved, whether you agree with it or not. That film has still to come."

What makes the probability of seeing such a film brought to the screen is the absence of a mature empathy, the ability to get outside of one's own skin and see from the perspective of the "other."

Jimmy Carter and America's Eroding Values

2006-04-28T17:04:00.000-04:00

“I worship the Prince of Peace,” Carter said, “not the Prince of Pre-emptive War.”

Last Wednesday former President Carter gave a lecture at Emory on what he considers to be the eroding political and religious values in America.

For the full story . . .

Carter says U.S. values eroding, endangered

Modern Day Emmitt Till

2006-04-27T13:18:00.000-04:00

White teens accused of brutal racist attack
Hispanic boy left for dead

Thursday, April 27, 2006; Posted: 12:38 p.m. EDT (16:38 GMT)

SPRING, Texas (AP) -- Two white teenagers severely beat and sodomized a 16-year-old Hispanic boy who they believed had tried to kiss a 12-year-old white girl at a party, authorities said.

For the whole story:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/04/27/texas.attack.ap/index.html

Favorite "Jesus" Film?

2006-04-24T21:53:00.000-04:00

Mine is Jesus of Montreal.

Conservative Religion as the New Rebellion

2006-04-21T01:01:00.000-04:00

"Myfanwy Franks, an author who has interviewed many British converts to Islam and Christianity, notes that 'more and more it seems that becoming highly religious is the ultimate form of rebellion, because secularity is really our society’s main religion now. A lot of people utterly despise religion, don’t they? To convert to Islam or Christianity is really the punk rock of the modern age' ”.

"If you have liberal parents, getting religion is the only way to go . . ."

The entire article:

Times.com

GA Governor Signs Immigration Bill

2006-04-18T10:21:00.000-04:00

The crowd waved American flags and cheered as state Rep. Melvin Everson, one of the Georgia House's two black Republicans, denounced illegal immigration as a cancer and proclaimed: "The last time I checked, America was the land of English — not Spanish."

ATLANTA - Georgia's governor signed a sweeping immigration bill Monday that supporters and critics say gives the state some of the toughest measures against illegal immigrants in the nation.

The law requires verification that adults seeking many state-administered benefits are in the country legally. It sanctions employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants and mandates that companies with state contracts check the immigration status of employees.

"I want to make this clear: we are not, Georgia's government is not, and this bill is not, anti-immigrant," Gov. Sunny Perdue said at the signing.

For the full story, see: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/immigration

Good Night and Good Luck

2006-04-16T00:21:00.000-04:00

I saw this film tonight. Hats off to George Clooney and, more deservedly, to Edward R. Murrow. Murrow reminds me of Malcolm Muggeridge, a British journalist known for his wit and for directing it primarily at the powerful. Muggeridge converted to Christianity as an adult, after doing a story on Mother Teresa.

Here are a few quotes from Edward R. Murrow:

"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it."

"If we were to do the Second Coming of Christ in color for a full hour, there would be a considerable number of stations which would decline to carry it on the grounds that a Western or a quiz show would be more profitable."

"Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them."

"Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts. "

Source of Murrow quotes: www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/edward_r_murrow.html

"Christian" University Expels Student for Being Gay

2006-04-11T16:33:00.000-04:00

Does persecution continue to thrive under the guise of religion?

The following is from a news story on Yahoo.com:

The University of the Cumberlands in Williamsburg, Ky., has kicked out a sophomore because he revealed he was gay on his MySpace.com page, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported.

Jason Johnson, 20, was expelled last week from the Baptist school, according to Larry Cockrum, the school's director of media relations. Johnson was majoring in theater arts.

"Everybody on campus is extremely upset about this," Jennifer Roberts, a Cumberlands senior, told the newspaper. Roberts, who told the paper she is a close friend of Johnson, described him as honest and trustworthy. "I would consider Jason a Christian because so many of his values are Christian," she said. "He embodies everything a friend should be. A lot of people are suffering because he is not here."

The university has a policy that says, "Any student who engages in or promotes sexual behavior not consistent with Christian principles (including sex outside marriage and homosexuality) may be suspended or asked to withdraw from the University of the Cumberlands." "We are different by design, and are nonapologetic about our Christian beliefs," said university president Jim Taylor in a written statement.

Jacob Reitan, the co-director of the Soulforce Equality Ride, which is touring universities and colleges that have anti-LGBT policies, took issue with the school's claim that it was enforcing its Christian beliefs. "I don't think this is Christian to do this," Reitan said. "Jesus fought continually to get to know those people others would not. He was always about expanding the kingdom."

Yahoo

Gospel According to Judas II

2006-04-08T14:21:00.000-04:00

Elaine Pagels, New Testament prof at Princeton, has an article in today's NY Times on the Judas manuscript.

NYTimes

101 Greatest Screenplays

2006-04-07T23:18:00.000-04:00

The Writer's Guild of America has released their top 101 Screenplays.

Rounding out the top five:

1. Casablanca; 2. The Godfather (I); 3. Chinatown; 4. Citizen Kane; 5. All About Eve.

Other films that made the list: The Graduate (13); Pulp Fiction (16); The Shawshank Redemption (22); Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (24); Groundhog Day (27); Fargo (32); The Usual Suspects (35); Midnight Cowboy (36); American Beauty (38); Crimes and Misdemeanors (57); Ordinary People (58); Thelma and Louise (72); Amadeus (73); The Princess Bride (84); Field of Dreams (88); Forest Gump (89); Sideways (90); Do The Right Thing (93); Memento (100).

What films should have made the list? Magnolia, Donnie Darko.

For the complete list, see Screenplays

Did Jesus Ask Judas to Betray him?

2006-04-06T11:37:00.000-04:00

So suggests a 3rd/4th c. Coptic manuscript that, although found in the 1970's, apparently wasn't translated until recently. I assume this manuscript is part of the Nag Hammadi collection (which also included the Gospel of Thomas and a number of other non-canonical gospels).

CNN

Correction: A fellow NT colleague here at Emory, Eric Barreto, told me the Judas manuscript (although it was found in Egypt) was not part of the Nag Hammadi collection. He also alerted me to the following NY Times article that appeared today:

NYTimes

No Holiday for Malcolm X

2006-04-05T00:10:00.000-04:00

Why don't we have a federal holiday for Malcolm X?

Because American civil religion has found it impossible to reconcile Malcolm's perspective with its own. In arguing that the Constitution and Declaration of Independence were never intended to include black America, Malcolm critiqued the sacred texts that are at the heart of America's civil religious system.

We give Martin Luther King a holiday and integrate him within America's civil religion but only by eviscerating his message. And that is what we do by remembering King only as one who fought for equal rights between blacks and whites. King's anti-war, anti-violence and anti-poverty stances are forgotten or (at best) muted. We remember King like we remember Jesus (or any hero) which is to say that we appropriate from them only those aspects that are palatable to our nation's conscience and leave the rest behind. We then proceed to construct a caricature of the hero out of what few non-threatening qualities remain. This is the process by which prophets become heroes. The pinprick of the social conscience becomes a salve. King (or Jesus) becomes a Mr. Rogers. It is the only way we can honor those whom we once rejected. After crucifying their bodies we emasculate their message.

We don't honor King on his holiday by merely remembering those values with which we now agree (how radical is the notion that blacks and whites should be able to sit together at a lunch counter?). At least the (albeit unfortunate) disdain for Malcolm reflects an honest recognition of who he was and the radical content of his message.

Don't Remain Silent

2006-04-03T23:27:00.000-04:00

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
--Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

What outraged and disappointed King (more than the violent racism of extremists) was what he called the "appalling silence" of the good people.

About what are you too silent?

Kierkegaard on "Evil"

2006-04-01T16:10:00.000-05:00

Re: the post below ("C. S. Lewis on Evil") . . .

Kierkegaard writes, "Nothing, nothing, nothing, no error, no crime is so absolutely repugnant to God as everything which is official; and why? because the official is impersonal and therefore the deepest insult which can be offered to a personality."

Bread, Hunger, God

2006-04-01T00:18:00.000-05:00

"One does not live on bread alone but one needs at least bread to live."
--Anonymous

"Father, give us today our daily bread . . . the bread that yesterday you withheld from us."
--A Latin American prayer

"There are some people in the world who are so hungry that God can only appear to them in the form of bread."
--Gandhi

C. S. Lewis on Evil

2006-03-30T22:45:00.000-05:00

From his preface to The Screwtape Letters (1960), C. S. Lewis writes:

"The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid 'dens of crime' that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern."

What would it look like if we (as individuals, churches, governments) gave attention to the type of evil Lewis describes? Do we?

Fight Club and Bonhoeffer

2006-03-27T23:03:00.000-05:00

In Fight Club Tyler Durden says, “Our fathers were our models for God. If our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God? You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you, he never wanted you, in all probability he hates you . . .We are God's unwanted children - so be it.”

Tyler's rant reminds me (in addition to Job and Jesus' last cry from the cross in Matthew and Mark) of the following quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Protestant pastor/professor exectued by the Nazis for participating in a plot to assassinate Hitler. In July 1944 (nine months before he was killed) Bonhoeffer wrote:

"And we cannot be honest unless we recognize that we have to live in the world etsi deus non daretur (even if there were no God). And this is just what we do recognize – before God! God himself compels us to recognize it. So our coming of age leads us to a true recognition of our situation before God. God would have us know that we must live as men [and women] who manage our lives without him. The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15:34). The God who lets us live in the world without the working hypothesis of God is the God before whom we stand continually. Before God and with God we live without God. God lets himself be pushed out of the world on to the cross. He is weak and powerless in the world, and that is precisely the way, the only way, in which he is with us and helps us. Matthew 8:17 makes it quite clear that Christ helps us, not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering.

Here is the decisive difference between Christianity and all religions. Man’s religiosity makes him look in his distress to the power of God in the world: God is the deus ex machina. The Bible directs man to God’s powerlessness and suffering; only the suffering God can help. To that extent we may say that the development towards the world’s coming of age outlined above, which has done away with a false conception of God, opens up a way of seeing the God of the Bible, who wins power and space in the world by his weakness. This will probably be the starting-point for our ‘secular interpretation.’"