Category Archives: Religion in America

What should Roman Catholics do?

Posted on by
3

A Roman Catholic couple, visiting Madison for the weekend, came to services at Grace yesterday. They were talking to parishioners and to Deacon Carol after the rest of the congregation had made its way through the line. By the time I got to them, their hands were full with brochures explaining the Episcopal Church, our welcome bags, etc. They shared their experience of growing frustration, even alienation from the Roman Catholic Church. The parish where they had been members for decades was no longer comfortable. They struggle with some of the statements by the RC bishops, and with “politics from the pulpit.” They also struggle with the role of women in the Church and were thrilled to see Deacon Carol and other women serving at the altar.

I struggle with my pastoral response to people. They’re not the first who have sought us out in recent months. There’s a wedge being driven in the Roman Catholic church that is forcing many to rethink their place in it. As Episcopalians, we can welcome them in, invite them to explore whether we offer a suitable home for them. We can also pray for them and show compassion. I know all to well how difficult it is to leave the religious tradition of one’s childhood and family. I know too that many who make that break may never again feel like they are at home in the world spiritually. My heart aches for people like that. It aches as well that people are forced to such points, often against their will. The Roman Catholic Church of today is not the Vatican II church which many welcomed and loved.

James Martin, SJ, offers a prayer for frustrated Catholics (it works as well for others who are frustrated with the institutional church in which they find themselves).

Here’s what Bill Kellerthinks:

Much as I wish I could encourage the discontented, the Catholics of open minds and open hearts, to stay put and fight the good fight, this is a lost cause. Donohue is right. Summon your fortitude, and just go. If you are not getting the spiritual sustenance you need, if you are uneasy being part of an institution out of step with your conscience — then go. The restive nuns who are planning a field trip to Rome for a bit of dialogue? Be assured, unless you plan to grovel, no one will be listening. Sisters, just go. Bill Donohue will hold the door for you.

And one who’s going the other way (from atheist to Catholic)

I’ve not posted about the conflict between the Vatican and the American nuns; I’m a spectator there. But the German magazine Der Spiegel published an article in English on Pope Benedict XVI that deserves reading. Without a word about the American Church–the article is focused on Vatican machinations amid the ongoing scandal, and the jockeying for position with the 85-year old pope’s health beginning to fail.

Speaking of Vatican II, America links to an article written by Martin Marty in 1968, reflecting on the end of the council and its significance. It, too, makes for interesting reading.

It’s not just the mainline: Decline in the Southern Baptist Convention

Posted on by
2

For the fifth straight year, total membership in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) declined. Membership fell nearly one percentage point to just less than 16 million members. Baptisms and the number of churches rose slightly—by 0.70 percent and 0.08 percent, respectively. Baptisms hit a 60-year low for the denomination, though still totaled more than 330,000. The denomination planted almost 1,000 new churches, of which 50 percent were non-Anglo; however, the net gain of 37 churches was one of the lowest totals in 40 years.

These trends are not new but should refute the claim that mainline decline is due to liberal theology and progressive social stances. Read the article here.

The analogy between bookstores and the church

Posted on by
1

David Lose, whom I respect immensely, wrote recently on the parallel decline of bookstores and institutional Christianity:

This means things may – actually, strike that, things will  – look different. But it may also lead to a renewed sense of the nature and purpose of our congregations.  After all, there are a lot fewer book publishers and bookstores than there were a decade ago. At the same time, more people are reading – print books, ebooks, blogs, webzines, etc. – than ever before. The question isn’t whether people will keep reading, but who will help them do it.

The same is true, I think, of congregations. This present generation reports a greater interest in mystery, the divine, and spirituality than has any generation in a century. So the question isn’t whether people will seek God, but rather who will help them find God

Then I came across this. In 1931,

“In the entire country, there were only some four thousand places where a book could be purchased, and most of these were gift shops and stationary stores that carried only a few popular novels,” Davis writes. “In reality, there were but five hundred or so legitimate bookstores that warranted regular visits from publishers’ salesmen (and in 1931 they were all men). Of these five hundred, most were refined, old-fashioned ‘carriage trade’ stores catering to an elite clientele in the nation’s twelve largest cities.”

Read the whole article.

The rise of book publishing, “the paperback generation,” perfectly mirrors the growth in institutional Christianity in the twentieth century. The decline in “bricks and mortar” retailing, perfectly mirrors the decline in institutional Christianity.

What should we conclude? Lose is right: “The question isn’t whether people will seek God, but rather who will help them find God.”

The Myth of America’s Christian Heritage

Posted on by
Reply

David Barton is at it again. He has a new book, The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson. Here’s a review from The Wall Street Journal:

Jefferson’s religious beliefs are central to Mr. Barton’s thesis, in the service of which straw men are consumed in bonfires. No Jefferson scholar to my knowledge has ever concluded that Jefferson was an “atheist,” as Mr. Barton suggests. That Jefferson might have been what we would think of as a deist or even a Unitarian, as many historians believe, Mr. Barton also disputes. Jefferson was “pro-Christian and pro-Jesus,” he says, although he concedes that the president did have a few qualms about “specific Christian doctrines.” The doctrines Jefferson rejected—the divinity of Christ, the Resurrection, the Trinity—are what place him in the camp of the deists and Unitarians in the first place.

Paul Harvey, in Religious Dispatches, argues that challenging Barton’s version of American history is futile:

It’s a case study, in some ways, of recent depictions of the neuroscience of political differences, and in particular the way “righteous minds” conceive of the world. And it’s a perfect example of the thesis that Randall Stephens and Karl Giberson have outlined in The Anointed—the ways in which evangelical experts have created alternate intellectual universes that provide large audiences with a complete explanation of the world. In this case, Barton is the go-to historian with an explanation of America’s founding as a Christian nation and its providentialist mission in the world. There’s a pseudo-historian like that in every generation, from Parson Weems to David Barton.

Contra Paul Harvey, Kerry Walters debunks the myth again.

What never occurs to the Christian Right is that if the founders in fact had beenChristians intending to create a commonwealth faithful to Jesus’s teachings, the United States today would be a nation quite different from what evangelicals think it should be. There would be no standing army, no divide between rich and poor, no ethnic hatred or closed borders, no persecution of religious dissent, no national chauvinism, a lot less holier-than-thou finger-pointing, and a lot more forgiveness and compassion.

Now, that would be a shining city built on a hill.

Andrew Sullivan asks: “Did Jesus foresee the US Constitution?” He’s writing about the Mormon understanding of US History, not Barton’s.

And then there’s this from Barton.

Gen-Xers less religious

Posted on by
Reply

and less Republican.

A new study offers insight into cultural change taking place in our society. We tend to focus on Baby Boomers and on millennials, but change of great significance is occurring among other generational cohorts.

A new study reveals that Gen-Xers (those born between 1965 and 1972) identify themselves as less Christian than they did when they were in college (75% identify as Christian today, 85% did in 1990).

Behind the numbers, 700,000 fewer Catholics among this age group than in 1990, from 33% to 26%, and a growth in those who self-identify as non-religious (up from 11% to 16%).

It’s hard to know what to make of this data, but it does challenge one standard assumption about religious behavior: that there’s a predictable fall-off during college and young adulthood, with a return to the church when older.

 

Crash Helmets and Snake Handling

Posted on by
Reply

In my sermon for Pentecost, I quoted Annie Dillard on mainline worship. At Pentecostal churches, people still expect amazing things to happen. On the fringes of Pentecostalism, there is snake handling. Reports came out yesterday of the death of Mack Wolford, a leader among snake-handling Christian groups in Appalachia. He died after being bitten by a rattlesnake. His father had also died of a rattler bite. More here and here. A profile of Wolford, written by Julia Duin, that appeared last year in the Washington Post, is available here.

I had thought about using snake-handling as an example in my sermon, but then thought better of it, because I had preached about snake stories only a couple of months ago, during Lent.

A worthy read about the practice, and about the subculture in which it survives is Salvation on Sand Mountain, by Dennis Covington. Covington got interested in it while reporting on an attempted manslaughter trial in which a snake-handling pastor was accused of forcing his wife, whom he thought was having an affair, to put her hand into a cage of rattlers. Covington followed various snake handlers around for quite some time, and finally handled himself during a service before extricating himself from the movement.

His experience, and his writing about it, became the focus of an interesting debate between Stephen Prothero and Robert Orsi over the scholar’s role in studying religion, especially to what extent the scholar should engage his or her own beliefs and practices while studying another’s. Orsi applauded Covington’s engagement with snake-handling;  Prothero was critical. The exchange appeared in Harvard Divinity Bulletin, but seems no longer available online, although the original essay by Orsi to which Prothero was responding appeared as a chapter in Orsi’s Between Heaven and Earth.
When I taught Theory and Method in the Study of Religion, I used Orsi’s book, and Prothero’s critique of his position as a central element in helping students understand how to negotiate the complexities of the discipline of Religious Studies.

Ralph W. Hood, professor of psychology at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, has also studied the phenomenon quite intensely for decades. He has collected a marvelous archive of videos detailing the practice

The Great Disappointment

Posted on by
Reply

Remember how we all laughed at Harold Camping and his followers, who believed the world was going to end on May 21, 2011? What happened to the true believers? Where are they now? Most are disillusioned.

Tom Bartlett follows up with some of them, wondering where they are now:

I was struck by how some believers edited the past in order to avoid acknowledging that they had been mistaken. The engineer in his mid-twenties, the one who told me this was a prophecy rather than a prediction, maintained that he had never claimed to be certain about May 21. When I read him the transcript of our previous interview, he seemed genuinely surprised that those words had come out of his mouth. It was as if we were discussing a dream he couldn’t quite remember.

And:

Among those I came to know and like was a gifted young musician. Because he was convinced the world was ending, he had abandoned music, quit his job, and essentially put his life on hold for four years. It had cost him friends and created a rift between some members of his family. He couldn’t have been more committed.

In a recent email, he wrote that he had “definitely lost an incredible amount of faith” and hadn’t touched his Bible in months. These days he’s not sure what or whether to believe. “It makes me wonder just how malleable our minds can be. It all seemed so real, like it made so much sense, but it wasn’t right,” he wrote. “It leaves a lot to think about.”

The Future of America? The Future of the Church? George Scialabba on Morris Berman

Posted on by
Reply

George Scialabba writes a moving essay detailing Morris Berman’s view on the decline of American civilization:

As a former medievalist, Berman finds contemporary parallels to the fall of Rome compelling. By the end of the empire, he points out, economic inequality was drastic and increasing, the legitimacy and efficacy of the state was waning, popular culture was debased, civic virtue among elites was practically nonexistent, and imperial military commitments were hopelessly unsustainable. As these volumes abundantly illustrate, this is 21st century America in a nutshell.

But is there hope? Yes:

Berman offers little comfort, but he does note a possible role for those who perceive the inevitability of our civilization’s decline. He calls it the “monastic option.” Our eclipse may, after all, not be permanent; and meanwhile individuals and small groups may preserve the best of our culture by living against the grain, within the interstices, by “creating ‘zones of intelligence’ in a private, local way, and then deliberately keeping them out of the public eye.” Even if one’s ideals ultimately perish, this may be the best way to live while they are dying.

Sounds like the Early (now “Late”) Church to me. More food for thought as we think about mission and restructuring.

Quitting Church, coming back, and staying

Posted on by
Reply

Andrea Palpan Dilley on her journey away from and back to church. Her suggestions of 6 things to do to help young adults explore their faith and doubts

E.J. Dionne’s response to the Freedom from Religion ad.

My, my. Putting aside the group’s love for unnecessary quotation marks, it was shocking to learn that I’m an “enabler” doing “bad” to women’s rights. But Catholic liberals get used to these kinds of things. Secularists, who never liked Catholicism in the first place, want us to leave the church, but so do Catholic conservatives who want the church all to themselves.

I’m sorry to inform the FFRF that I am declining its invitation to quit. It may not see the Gospel as a liberating document, but I do, and I can’t ignore the good done in the name of Christ by the sisters, priests, brothers and lay people who have devoted their lives to the poor and the marginalized.

And his response to the comments his article generated.

James Martin, SJ on those who, like Dionne, stay in church:

The church is the place into which we were born and out of which we will leave this life. We are called through baptism into a distinctive place in the church. That means that we are called not only to enjoy its fruits, but to labor in its vineyards, even when that vineyard is filled with thorns, the day is late, we are exhausted, the fruit seems scarce, and the sun is beating down on us, seemingly without mercy. It is in our church that we will work out, difficult as it may be, impossible as it may seem at times, our salvation, alongside other sinners—sinners just like us.

“To whom shall we go?” said Peter. The church is not Jesus, but it is his visible body on the earth.  And, like his body after the Resurrection, it has wounds.  So you could also ask: “Where else shall we go?”

And remember that it’s your church, too. God called you into it, by name, on the day of your baptism.  Never forget that Jesus called each of the disciples for a particular reason.  They each had different gifts and talents, and were able to help build the Kingdom of God in different ways.  As Mother Teresa said, “You can do something I cannot do. I can do something you cannot do.  Together let us do something beautiful for God.”  Though the disciples often quarrelled with one another, Jesus wanted them all to be there.  When you’re tempted to leave, or when others say that they don’t want you around, remember who called you.

Ministering among those “crushed” by the Church

Where is religion discussed intelligently on TV? The Daily Show

Posted on by
Reply

Mark Oppenheimer writes about religion and Jon Stewart:

Stewart and his writers have realized that good theology — getting people’s beliefs right — happens to make for good humor. Consider a bit that aired last October, in which Stewart interviewed cast members Samantha Bee and Wyatt Cenac on the differences between Mormonism and traditional Christianity. Bee, a fair-complected Canadian, was playing a Mormon, wearing a shirt that said “Team Mormon”; and Cenac, a black man of Haitian ancestry, was wearing a shirt that said “Team Normal.” Bee began by complaining about the tee shirts they were made to wear: “Why is Wyatt ‘Team Normal’? That implies that Mormons aren’t normal … We are not a cult. Mormonism is a proud religion founded by a great man who was guided by the Angel Moroni to golden plates buried in upstate New York that he placed in the bottom of a hat where he read them using a seer stone.” Matters devolved from there. Team Mormon and Team Normal began arguing about which group is crazier: the one that believes Jesus was born of a virgin and the Holy Ghost, and that he rose from the dead and ascended to Heaven, or the one that believes all that plus the story that he then returned to Missouri.

It gets better from there.

One of Oppenheimer’s insights:

the point is that Stewart and his writers convey more specifics about religious practice in less than four minutes than any documentary or nightly-news segment I’ve ever seen.

And the implicit message is one that religion scholars are always trying to convey: all religions have beliefs that seem bizarre to outsiders, and “cult” is often just a word to describe the other guy’s religion. The Daily Show approaches American religion in the spirit of tolerance, but not with the wimpy, eager-to-please hand-wringing that characterizes so much liberal dialogue in this country. Rather, religions are shown to be strange and possibly cringe-inducing: our job is to take an honest look, then tolerate them anyway. It’s a call to rigorous citizenship.