Category Archives: Religion in America

Islamophobia

Posted on by
Reply

The full report can be found through links here. But the summary itself is chilling.

The report’s authors write:

This report shines a light on the Islamophobia network of so-called experts, academics, institutions, grassroots organizations, media outlets, and donors who manufacture, produce, distribute, and mainstream an irrational fear of Islam and Muslims. Let us learn the proper lesson from the past, and rise above fear-mongering to public awareness, acceptance, and respect for our fellow Americans. In doing so, let us prevent hatred from infecting and endangering our country again.

The defend their use of the term Islamophobia in this way:

We define it as an exaggerated fear, hatred, and hostility toward Islam and Muslims that is perpetuated by negative stereotypes resulting in bias, discrimination, and the marginalization and exclusion of Muslims from America’s social, political, and civic life.

They conclude:

It is our view that in order to safeguard our national security and uphold America’s core values, we must return to a fact-based civil discourse regarding the challenges we face as a nation and world. This discourse must be frank and honest, but also consistent with American values of religious liberty, equal justice under the law, and respect for pluralism.

Well put!

Other perspectives at Religion Dispatches.

Help! The internet is killing Christianity!

Posted on by
Reply

According to Josh McDowell, who in case you’ve never heard the name, is a Christian apologist guru, especially popular (or used to be) among young evangelicals. I would occasionally have students bring his books to my office hours in their attempt to defend themselves from my apostasy.

In any case, McDowell sees the Internet’s growth and egalitarianism as undermining authority and orthodoxy. Apparently McDowell gave a talk to that effect:

His talk, titled “Unshakeable Truth, Relevant Faith,” had detailed a certain uncomfortable fact in anticipation of the question: that young Christians in America are rejecting Christian fundamentalism—and doctrinaire concepts such as absolute truth and biblical infallibility—in droves. Why is faith in God being supplanted, earlier and earlier, by relativism, secularism and skepticism? McDowell’s answer was simple: the Internet.

So the Internet joins that long list of other cultural innovations (the printing press, dancing, the automobile, movies, radio, television) that will destroy the faith of our youth.

It’s not just conservative Protestants who are attuned to epochal changes in attitudes toward religion. In fact, McDowell is behind the curve. In fact, it’s not the internet that’s the problem anymore. It’s the iphone:

Anyone who today works with or near young people cannot fail to see this: for members of the present generation, the smartphone has become an amulet. It is a sacred object to be held and caressed and constantly attended to. Previous generations fell in love with their cars or became addicted to TV, but this one elevates devotion to material objects to an altogether different level. In the guise of exercising freedom, its members engage in a form of idolatry. Small wonder that aficionados of Apple’s iPhone call it the Jesus Phone.

 

Secularism and its Discontents

Posted on by
Reply

James Wood on George Levine’s volume, The Joys of Secularism

Mark Oppenheimer on Charles Taylor: He points out the importance for Taylor of the quest for authenticity in the modern world, both for individuals and for cultures, and the possibility that we might create political forms or governments that enable human flourishing.

Taylor is a difficult but rewarding read, an insightful perspective on religion in contemporary Western culture.

Part of Charles Taylor’s first chapter in the collection Rethinking Secularism, is now available on the web. Taylor writes:

And so the history of this term “secular” in the West is complex and ambiguous. It starts off as one term in a dyad that distinguishes two dimensions of existence, identifying them by the particular type of time that is essential to each. But from the foundation of this clear distinction between the immanent and the transcendent, there develops another dyad, in which “secular” refers to what pertains to a self-sufficient, immanent sphere and is contrasted with what relates to the transcendent realm (often identified as “religious”). This binary can then undergo a further mutation, via a denial of the transcendent level, into a dyad in which one term refers to the real (“secular”), and the other refers to what is merely invented (“religious”); or where “secular” refers to the institutions we really require to live in “this world,” and “religious” or “ecclesial” refers to optional accessories, which often disturb the course of this-worldly life.

Through this double mutation, the dyad itself is profoundly transformed; in the first case, both sides are real and indispensable dimensions of life and society. The dyad is thus “internal,” in the sense that each term is impossible without the other, like right and left or up and down. After the mutations, the dyad becomes “external”; secular and religious are opposed as true and false or necessary and superfluous. The goal of policy becomes, in many cases, to abolish one while conserving the other.

The significance of this lies primarily in the question whether Islamic (or other societies) can “secularize.” If secularization is uniquely bound to its historic context in western Christendom, then the answer to that question is not obvious. Still, Taylor argues”

Either we stumble through tangles of cross-purposes, or else a rather minimal awareness of significant differences can lead us to draw far-reaching conclusions that are very far from the realities we seek to describe. Such is the case, for instance, when people argue that since the “secular” is an old category of Christian culture and since Islam doesn’t seem to have a corresponding category, therefore Islamic societies cannot adopt secular regimes. Obviously, they would not be just like those in Christendom, but maybe the idea, rather than being locally restricted, can travel across borders in an inventive and imaginative way.

Random links on Young adults and Christianity

Posted on by
Reply

From Amy Thompson Sevili who is ordained in the ELCA and serves as Assistant to the Bishop in the Metropolitan DC Synod:

Many young adults I encounter have some childhood connection with church, are open and curious about religion, and even profess to “believe” in God. They visit congregations in an effort to satiate their spiritual appetites. But they report that the food the church provides doesn’t nourish them, and the church seems fairly unwilling to change its menu.

So they try other options. Yoga centers, “spiritual” retreats, “spiritual” books, long conversations at Starbucks — anything they think will satiate them spiritually. More often, however, they just remain famished and empty. I met recently with a woman who said she had tons of questions but no one to talk to about them. Most of the people she knew were either “totally religious” and believed themselves to have all the answers, or they were “totally unreligious” and thought people who asked such questions were stupid. She confessed she “believed in God” and that she had even attended many churches in the area, but nothing clicked. Over and over again this D.C. young professional, who was otherwise upbeat and doing well in the world described herself as spiritually alone.

This doesn’t seem quite right. Young adults are out there asking questions, professing belief in God, and seeking some kind of spiritual community — and church pews are empty.

 

Meghan O’Gieblyn writes abut her experience with the Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) culture, growing up conservative Christian in the 90s:

Despite all the affected teenage rebellion, I continued to call myself a Christian into my early twenties. When I finally stopped, it wasn’t because being a believer made me uncool or outdated or freakish. It was because being a Christian no longer meant anything. It was a label to slap on my Facebook page, next to my music preferences. The gospel became just another product someone was trying to sell me, and a paltry one at that because the church isn’t Viacom: it doesn’t have a Department of Brand Strategy and Planning. Staying relevant in late consumer capitalism requires highly sophisticated resources and the willingness to tailor your values to whatever your audience wants. In trying to compete in this market, the church has forfeited the one advantage it had in the game to attract disillusioned youth: authenticity. When it comes to intransigent values, the profit-driven world has zilch to offer. If Christian leaders weren’t so ashamed of those unvarnished values, they might have something more attractive than anything on today’s bleak moral market. In the meantime, they’ve lost one more kid to the competition.

The end of denominations?

Posted on by
Reply

Fred Schmidt wrote a provocative essay entitled “The Baby and the Denominational Bathwater” in which he explored the important sociological reality that denominations are becoming less important while arguing that each denomination offers a unique tradition and context that might retain significance. He writes:

But here’s the problem: If denominations are dispensable, then why not disband them entirely and create a pan-Protestant reality like the one the early architects of the ecumenical movement envisioned? Or, better yet, if the Protestant confessions of faith mean that little, then why not simply return to the Catholic Church? After all, Benedict is waiting . . .

The answer, I think, is that we can’t and shouldn’t because there is a baby in the bureaucratic bathwater. That baby is the tradition, beliefs, and experiences that gave our respective denominations birth in the first place. Other than a distaste for yet more hierarchy, an all-male priesthood, and a doctrinal position or two, there really isn’t a reason not to go back to the Catholic Church—unless those confessions of faith really matter.

His words are important to remember even in this time of ecumenism and might help us understand the sorts of conflicts that can break out, even here in Madison. Episcopalians and Lutherans, in spite of “Called to Common Mission” have very different histories and traditions, and for all that we share, there is a great deal we don’t understand about each other (or if we understand, we disagree sharply with the direction the other tradition has developed).

At times, such differences among denominations may seem as little more than quaint artifacts, but often such impressions change when conflicts arise.

We might even be bemused by denominational differences, as an essayist at Killing the Buddha was when his college-bound daughter received the religious affiliation survey from the university she will be attending this fall. Among the options one might check: Catholic/Episcopalian, or Lutheran/Episcopalian. She comments:

I have so many questions about this list, but the first that springs to mind is, “How can one person be a Catholic and an Episcopalian at the same time? That’s like Coke and Pepsi being in the same can, but distinctly separate. Unless, of course, you are part of the Anglican migration and attending an Anglican-rite Roman church, but somehow that’s not what I think they had in mind.” And I wonder what I’d check off if I had to fill it out for myself—I don’t think they have the right category for me, which is frequently a problem I encounter and no big surprise. I showed this to my daughter, whom I thought still identified as a Catholic/Buddhist. Nope: she’s joined the great Non-Denominational movement. They grow up so fast. Sigh.

 I remember when I arrived at Harvard Divinity School and had to fill out a similar survey and discovered, after four years at a Mennonite College, and in spite of the presence of Mennonites among both faculty and students, that Mennonite wasn’t an option. Since then, I’ve swum the Thames and as a priest deal with people almost every day who are seeking a church home or may have found one in the Episcopal Church decades ago, but have no interest in the larger institutional connection. Still, they find our particular form of faith and worship of great meaning to them, at least at this point in their spiritual journeys. My role is not to try to sell the denomination to them; rather, it is to help them find life in our life, our mission, and in our tradition. And that is the bathwater about which Fr. Schmidt is speaking. When our tradition is no longer lifegiving, then it, along with all of our denominational structures, deserve to die.

 

Politics and Religion, Nutty edition

Posted on by
Reply

In this case, I’m not sure who’s nuttier, the politician or the author of the article.

Exihibit A. An article entitled “Michele Bachmann’s Church says the Pope is the Antichrist,” citing this from the Wisconsin Synod Lutheran doctrinal statement:

Since Scripture teaches that the Antichrist would be revealed and gives the marks by which the Antichrist is to be recognized, and since this prophecy has been clearly fulfilled in the history and development of the Roman Papacy, it is Scripture which reveals that the Papacy is the Antichrist.

Somewhat less inflammatory, the article points out that Martin Luther was convinced the Pope was the Antichrist, and that such statements are enshrined in sixteenth-century doctrinal formulations.

Perhaps the headline writer didn’t read far enough into the article to notice that:

Hochmuth also revealed that Bachmann is no longer a member of the WELS congregation. “I do know that she has requested a release of her membership,” he said, adding that she took the unusual step of formally requesting that release in writing. “She has not been an active member of our fellowship during the last year.”

Exhibit B. An article describing the links between the Religion of the Lost Cause, Christian Reconstructionism, and neo-Confederate groups like the League of the South. Texas Governor Rick Perry is implicated because his candidacy for Lieutenant Governor was endorsed by the League of the South, he once advocated Texas’ secession from the Union,  and this:

Perry is hosting a prayer rally because “a historic crisis facing our nation and threatening our future demands a historic response from the church.” Does he see himself as a general of sorts in the neo-Confederate theological war?

More on the links between Perry and neo-confederates here. I don’t think a photo op of a Southern governor with members of the Sons of the Confederate Veterans constitutes a smoking gun.

My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant

Posted on by
Reply

This story, by Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist is gripping and should be read by everyone. He came to the US from the Philippines on a fake passport as a twelve-year old; discovered his status when he tried to get a driver’s license at age 16. He’s been living a double life ever since. He’s also gay, and came out as gay long before he came out as illegal; but being gay, the easiest avenue to legal status, marriage, wasn’t a possibility.  Jose’s website is here: http://defineamerican.com/

Here’s the take from the right–David Foster.

Here’s pushback on Foster’s arguments.

On the question whether Vargas will be deported.

Ezra Klein comments.

And a whiny blogpost from one of his employers. Pathetic.

The Southern Baptist Convention published a statement about illegal immigration last week. It’s received considerable criticism. Here’s a reasonable op-ed piece in support.

The Internet is my Religion

Posted on by
Reply

This is a fascinating video from Jim Gilliam who was raised among fundamentalists, home-schooled, is a graduate of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, and has had quite a spiritual journey. He reflects on that journey, and on the important role the Internet has played both in that journey and in his struggle with cancer here:

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry has this to say:

Perhaps the best and most significant part of the talk is this quote: “God is just what happens when humanity is connected.” And indeed the unique feature of Christianity is that it is based on a personal relationship with God—indeed, a god who is both fully human and fully divine. I do believe that God “happens” when humanity is connected. I also believe that God is more and not “just” that, but I also think it’s as important to get the first part as it is to get the second part.

Read all of his reflections here.

 

My Alma Mater, back in the news

Posted on by
Reply

I am a graduate of Goshen College. It has recently returned to the news. In 2010, the college’s president, James Brenneman, announced that for the first time in the school’s history, the National Anthem (an instrumental version, without words) would be played at athletic events. This decision aroused controversy among students, faculty, alumni, as well as within the Mennonite Church. I blogged about it here and here.

This week I received a communication from Goshen College announcing the results of the lengthy review of that earlier decision. The upshot:

Following months of prayerful consideration, the Board, in consultation with President Brenneman, has asked the President to find an alternative to playing the National Anthem that fits with sports tradition, that honors country and that resonates with Goshen College’s core values and respects the views of diverse constituencies.

The full text of the decision is here: anthem-decision-statement-1.

Apparently, the media is spinning this rather differently: it was banned, it is said, because the lyrics are too violent.

We live in a culture in which patriotism and Christianity are easily conflated, “God bless America” rolls unthinkingly off the lips of politicians, and most people assume that to be a faithful Christian means being a good American, and vice versa. A healthy love of country is no bad thing, but there should always be a tension between one’s love of country and commitment to membership in the Body of Christ.

For Mennonites, whose citizenship was for centuries shaped by their commitment to Jesus’ teachings of non-resistance to evil, love of enemy, and turning the other cheek, flying the American flag or singing the National Anthem was problematic when the memories of those who suffered because of their commitment to follow Jesus Christ came into conflct with their country’s demand that they take up arms in its defense.

The Episcopal Church has not had the same set of conflicts. Traditionally, we were in some sense the nation’s church. Our members served as presidents, beginning with George Washington, and served in the military as well. That includes figures like Leonidas Polk, Bishop of Alabama, who was also a General in the Confederate Army.

Christians of every political persuasion need to remember that one of our great threats to our faithfulness is idolatry, to worship things lesser than God including nation, in place of God. It was one of the great sins of Israel in the Hebrew Bible and has continued to afflict nations throughout history down to the present. Goshen College’s struggle with the National Anthem is a stark reminder of the importance of remaining vigilant against the threat of idolatry.