News Cut Category Archive: Religion

One-thousand words: The shrine

Posted at 10:08 AM on January 23, 2012 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

What do you suppose it was like the last time a long-time professor at Penn State died?

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Judge upholds the right to preach

Posted at 12:29 PM on December 20, 2011 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

About a month ago I asked whether a city -- in this case, Duluth -- can assign away First Amendment rights in a public space by renting it to a private organization which then seeks to ban certain expression. Now we know. It won't be able to this year.

The Star Tribune reports that Judge Michael Davis has barred officials -- at least temporarily -- from preventing street preachers at Duluth's Bentleyville Tour of Lights.

Steve Jankowski of Duluth and Peter Scott of Hibbing were kicked out of Duluth's Bayfront Festival Park last year -- a public park leased to a private organization -- for preaching. The city has given the festival organizers "exclusive rights" to the park and the city administrator says that gives the organization the right to ban the preachers.

"Bentleyville is not a public forum, and the nonprofit is not a state actor," Duluth City Attorney Gunnar Johnson said last week. "The plaintiffs do not have First Amendment rights in Bentleyville."

But a federal magistrate last week recommended a temporary restraining order against the city, a recommendation Judge Davis has apparently upheld.

The full suit will go to trial next year. Until then, this what the freedom of speech looks like:

This latest controversy follows one in Minneapolis in 2010 in which an evangelist from Wisconsin sought to distribute Bibles and discuss sin at the gay pride festival in Minneapolis. Organizers of the festival sought to bar Brian Johnson, but federal Judge John Tunheim ruled the exclusion would have violated Johnson's rights.

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Chanukah 101

Posted at 3:00 PM on December 14, 2011 by Molly Bloom (23 Comments)
Filed under: Life, Religion

Photo by Dominic Alves via Flickr

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Growing up Jewish in Minnesota, I knew I was in the minority, but I also knew a lot of Jews. Between Hebrew school, synagogue, and my family, there were plenty of bar and bat mitzvahs to attend, people to wish Happy New Year and those who understood that matzah is gross, but matzah balls are delicious.

So I always assumed that everyone else knew Jewish people, too. But I grew up, went out into the world and realized I was wrong. Jewish people make up about two percent of the Twin Cities population -- and a far smaller percentage of outstate Minnesota. I was surprised to find out that I had friends and co-workers who didn't know a single Jewish person growing up. So being one of the few -- or only -- Jewish people they know, I get questions. And since Chanukah is the most visible Jewish holiday, I get a lot of questions about Chanukah.

The following are all actual questions I've been asked by friends and co-workers over the past couple years.

What is Chanukah?
Chanukah is Hanukkah is Chanukkah is Channuka is Hanuka. Since Chanukah is a transliteration of a Hebrew word, there is no one correct way to spell it. The "CH" sound is not the same as the "CH" sound in "cheese" -- but rather is more of a throat-clearing sound. Hear the word pronounced here.

Does Chanukah start on Dec. 8?
Nope. Well, occasionally. Chanukah takes place on the same date every year on the Jewish calendar -- the 25th of Kislev. The Jewish calendar is lunar, meaning each new month starts at the new moon. Most years there are twelve months, but every few years an entire leap month is added to keep the calendar more aligned with the longer solar cycles. So Chanukah starts on a different secular date every year -- sometimes as early as late November. This year, the first night of Chanukah is on the 20th. Jewish holidays start at sundown, so if your calendar says Dec. 21 is the first day of Chanukah, that day started at sundown the night before.

What is Chanukah about?
Tablet explains succinctly: "Hebrew for "dedication," Hanukkah is an eight-day-long celebration commemorates just that: the purging and rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem in the 2nd century BCE after the Jews' successful uprising against the Greeks." In rededicating the temple they re-lit a flame that is meant to never go out, but only had enough oil for one night. Miraculously, the oil lasted for eight nights.

Is Chanukah a big deal?
In the scheme of Jewish holidays, no -- but due to its proximity to Christmas, it's become the most visible Jewish holiday. The most important Jewish holidays are the High Holidays (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur) that mark the new year and the days of atonement that follow. These take place in the fall.

What's a dreidel?
It's a four-sided top that is used to play a game that involves putting chocolate coins (or actual coins) into a pot, or taking them out, depending on which side the dreidel lands. There is a different Hebrew letter on each side...the first letters of each word in the phrase "Nes Gadol Hayah Sham," which means "a great miracle happened there." I've always thought this game is fairly boring and it doesn't really have a clear end. In my family, we stopped playing when we got bored (which meant after about five minutes).

Are there Chanukah songs beyond "I had a little dreidel?"
There are a few. "Maoz Tzur" (aka Rock of Ages) is often sung as is "Svivon," which is another song about a dreidel (except this time in Hebrew). My favorite is the Yiddish "Oy, Chanukah"....but I can't find it online, so this Woodie Guthrie Chanukah song will have to do:

Are there particular foods you eat at Chanukah?
It's traditional to eat foods fried in oil thanks to the whole oil miracle thing. Latkes are fried potato pancakes that are closer to hash browns than actual pancakes. Sufganiyot, another traditional food, are basically jelly donuts.

You really don't celebrate Christmas?
Nope. Growing up, we didn't celebrate Christmas since it's a Christian holiday and we aren't Christian. We did observe Christmas in our own way -- by going to eat Chinese food and going to see a movie. Now, like nearly half of Minnesota's Jews, I'm married to a nice goyishe (gentile) boy and attend his family's Christmas celebration.

Do you celebrate Thanksgiving?
Yep. That one's an American holiday and we're American, so we celebrate it. Though watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is close to a religious experience for me.

If you have any other questions that I didn't cover, please leave them in comments. I'm always happy to answer them. It's a good time of year to celebrate, keep traditions, make new ones and kibbitz. Happy holidays, Chanukah, Christmas, Solstice, New Year and whatever else you're celebrating this month. Hope it's a good one.

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An atheist faces eternity

Posted at 1:14 PM on December 14, 2011 by Eric Ringham (5 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

Maybe Andrew Sullivan knows something the rest of us don't about Christopher Hitchens, the enthusiastic atheist and author now undergoing cancer treatment in a Texas hospital. In his blog today, Sullivan asks his readers to pray for Hitch, "if you pray."

Sullivan, an outspoken and articulate Christian, calls Hitchens "the greatest advertisement for the existential courage of the atheist I have ever known." The two have a longstanding friendly rivalry, so it's probably OK with Hitchens that Sullivan would organize prayers on his behalf. (Though we can only imagine the flame Hitchens would throw at anyone who predicts a deathbed conversion.)

Sullivan also links to Hitchens' article in the current Vanity Fair, repudiating his own long-held view that whatever doesn't kill him makes him stronger. Quite to the contrary, Hitchens writes: "One finds that every passing day represents more and more relentlessly subtracted from less and less." It's a remarkable read - a thorough demolition of a sentiment, attributed to Nietzsche, that (when you think about it) makes about as much sense as "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." And it's all the more remarkable considering that the person writing it is suffering, and describing his suffering in real time:

I am typing this having just had an injection to try to reduce the pain in my arms, hands, and fingers. The chief side effect of this pain is numbness in the extremities, filling me with the not irrational fear that I shall lose the ability to write. Without that ability, I feel sure in advance, my "will to live" would be hugely attenuated. I often grandly say that writing is not just my living and my livelihood but my very life, and it's true. ...

To say that the rash hurt would be pointless. The struggle is to convey the way that it hurt on the inside. I lay for days on end, trying in vain to postpone the moment when I would have to swallow. ...

So far, I have decided to take whatever my disease can throw at me, and to stay combative even while taking the measure of my inevitable decline. I repeat, this is no more than what a healthy person has to do in slower motion. It is our common fate. In either case, though, one can dispense with facile maxims that don't live up to their apparent billing.

Photo by the|G|™ via Flickr

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Religion and the game of football

Posted at 12:28 PM on November 30, 2011 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)
Filed under: Religion, Sports

Tim Tebow, the Denver Broncos quarterback who'll play the Vikings this Sunday, turns a lot of people off with his high-profile prosthelytizing.

"If you're married, and you have a wife, and you really love your wife, is it good enough to only say to your wife 'I love her' the day you get married? Or should you tell her every single day when you wake up and every opportunity? And that's how I feel about my relationship with Jesus Christ is that it is the most important thing in my life," he said last week while rebutting criticism that he's more pastor than passer.

"There's no reason to be repulsed by it," Rabbi Brad Hirschfield said yesterday on his weekly video presentation for the Washington Post. "Unless and until it becomes not just an expression of faith but a demand that others share in that faith -- at that point we should not just be repulsed by it, we should actually stop it."

Even Kurt Warner, another quarterback who regularly mixes religion and football, has suggested Tebow tone it down.

"I know what he's going through, and I know what he wants to accomplish, but I don't want anybody to become calloused toward Tim because they don't understand him, or are not fully aware of who he is. And you're starting to see that a little bit."

You think?

While there are plenty of calls in the media for Tebow to tone it down, the headline writers aren't ready to disconnect Tebow from his religion.

Take the Star Tribune today:

Resurrected defense puts Tebow in position to succeed. Apparently it's a defense that might crucify the Vikings.

On Monday morning, after a prayerful Tebow watched a field goal win it for his team, the Star Tribune got a "two for" in the headline:

The Star Tribune, of course, isn't the only newspaper in the country linking Tebow's religion to his performance. The New York Post headline after the Broncos beat the Jets last week referred to him as "divine."

The Daily News ran this route:

The Denver victory could have been sweet retribution for Tebow for this game-preview cover on the Post:

The local scribes haven't yet played with the obvious headline for the upcoming Vikings-Tebow game. Perhaps they're saving that for Monday morning, after Tebow plays a team whose quarterback is named Christian.

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The death of 'Father Dollar'

Posted at 11:02 AM on November 22, 2011 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

For two decades, Father Maurice Chase has been giving out money on Los Angeles' "Skid Row." That's over. He died on Sunday.

Last Easter, for example, he handed out about $20,000, which he raised from the 1%.

He had a ready answer when quizzed once about whether it does any good to just give money to the down-and-out.

"I am doing something that I think is worthwhile and I don't care what you think about it," he told NPR in 2009. "There's greater joy in giving than receiving, and I'm just giving, giving, giving. I'm not bragging about it, I'm just telling you what makes me happier than any other priest in the United States."

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Redefining Hitler

Posted at 2:12 PM on October 4, 2011 by Bob Collins (7 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

If there's one thing Hank Williams Jr., did last night that's far more damaging than comparing a sitting president to Hitler, it's comparing Hitler to anybody, thus diminishing the shock value of the word, "Hitler."

Williams obviously isn't the first to travel down this road. If he had been, it'd be far more shocking than the general shoulder shrug a comparison to Hitler elicits these days. Godwin's Law -- as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1 -- recognizes the overuse of the comparison to "shock" someone involved in a discussion.

The irony is that in the constant comparison of Hitler to people who clearly aren't in his evil league, it is the Fuhrer who is being redefined.

The chances are that Hank Williams Jr., knows nothing of the 1919 Gemlich
letter, which Hitler wrote while a soldier. Let's just say it is nothing like playing a round of golf with a political opponent.

"What began as a private letter, one man's opinion, twenty-two years later became the 'Magna Carta' of an entire nation and led to the nearly total extinction of the Jewish people. This is an important lesson for future generations," said Rabbi Marvin Hier, Wiesenthal Center Dean and Founder. "Demagogues mean what they say and given the opportunity, carry out what they promise," he concluded.

Today, the letter went on display for the first time at the Museum of Tolerance in California. It's considered the most significant document in the Simon Wiesenthal Center's history.

Continue reading "Redefining Hitler"

Church, state, and the political campaign

Posted at 1:35 PM on September 27, 2011 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Politics, Religion

Mac Hammond, the head of a megachurch in Brooklyn Park, has joined the campaign of Rep. Michele Bachmann, sending people scurrying for the Internal Revenue Service's statutes on churches and politics.

"She is a sister in the Lord that is as committed to his word as any of you in here are," he told his flock., while noting that it's a personal endorsement, not a marshaling of religious forces.

Churches -- and every other tax-exempt non-profit -- are barred from endorsing a particular candidate in exchange for the tax breaks the institutions enjoy. Several pastors in Minnesota have openly defied the ban with few apparent consequences.

It's a slippery slope for the IRS to monitor. On the Sunday before the 2004 presidential election, for example, the pastor of a California church delivered an anti-war, anti-poverty sermon (which was called, "If Jesus debated Senator Kerry and President Bush"), and complaints to the IRS led to a two-year probe into whether the church had, in effect, endorsed John Kerry for president. But it took no action against the church, saying it believed it was a "one-time occurrence."

Where did the ban on church politicking come from? Then-Sen. Lyndon Johnson in 1954, according to the IRS:

In 1954, Congress approved an amendment by Sen. Lyndon Johnson to prohibit 501(c)(3) organizations, which includes charities and churches, from engaging in any political campaign activity. To the extent Congress has revisited the ban over the years, it has in fact strengthened the ban. The most recent change came in 1987 when Congress amended the language to clarify that the prohibition also applies to statements opposing candidates.

There'll be another challenge to the no-politics-from-the-pulpit rule this Sunday. The Alliance Defense Fund, a group of conservative Christian preachers, is holding another Pulpit Freedom Sunday.

Speak Up Movement Promo from Josh Garlow on Vimeo.

A survey last year from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found about half of the public (52%) thinks churches should keep out of politics, "while 43% say churches and other houses of worship should express their views on social and political questions." That survey reversed the narrow majority in a similar polls from 1996 to 2006, that found people think churches belong in the political arena.

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Dead Sea scrolls online

Posted at 12:31 PM on September 26, 2011 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

The Dead Sea Scrolls are now available online. Google assisted the Israel Museum in digitizing what is widely believed to be the most significant archaeological find of the 20th century, the BBC reports.

Five scrolls have been captured, including the Temple Scroll and Great Isaiah Scroll.

Ardon Bar-Hama, a noted photographer of antiquities, used ultraviolet-protected flash tubes to light the scrolls for 1/4000th of a second. The exposure time - which is much shorter than a conventional camera flash - was designed to protect the scrolls from damage.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered between 1947 and 1956 inside 11 caves along the shore of the Dead Sea, East of Jerusalem.

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Should religion be part of the NYC 9/11 observance?

Posted at 12:17 PM on September 9, 2011 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

Should there be a religious element to New York City's 9/11 commemoration on Sunday?

There won't be, as Mayor Michael Bloomberg has ordered there be no clerics speaking at the event.

"It's a civil ceremony. There are plenty of opportunities for people to have their religious ceremonies," Bloomberg said on his weekly radio show. "Some people don't want to go to a religious ceremony with another religion. And the number of different religions in this city are really quite amazing."

"It isn't that you can't pick and choose, you shouldn't pick and choose," Bloomberg said. "If you want to have a service for your religion, you can have it in your church or in a field, or whatever."

Some people who want a religious overtone to the occasion say this iconic image of 9/11 alone justifies it:

It's the image of Father Mychal Judge, whose body was pulled from the wreckage and carried to an altar of a nearby church.

But opponents say injecting religion also brings in the theological riff-raff.

Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who prompted international outrage by threatening to burn copies of the Quran last Sept. 11, has said he plans to show up at Ground Zero on Sunday at the same time as the services there to address "issues concerning Islam," according to the Religion News Service.

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Theology and the weather above

Posted at 12:09 PM on August 29, 2011 by Bob Collins (8 Comments)
Filed under: Politics, Religion

"I don't know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians," she said. "We've had an earthquake; we've had a hurricane. He said, 'Are you going to start listening to me here?' Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we've got to rein in the spending."

As you may have heard, that's our congresswoman, Michele Bachmann, offering the theological interpretation of the weekend hurricane and its message that it -- and presumably the deaths of 15 people, including a young woman swept away by a raging river in Vermont -- was God's way of saying he supports Mrs. Bachmann's politics.

Maybe she was joking, but if she was, it was an odd time to make a funny.

Maybe she was serious, in which case she may be able to interpret Hurricane Gustav in 2008, which came ashore just as the Republican National Convention in St. Paul was getting underway.

It's been a fairly quiet hurricane since. Last year, Tropical Storm Nicole hit southern Florida and the Gulf in late September. It was about the same time Minnesota was experiencing extreme flooding. It was also the same day President Obama opened a new round of Middle East peace talks, the U.S. changed commanders in Iraq and the Minnesota tea party held a judicial candidate forum.

Some weeks earlier, Hurricane Earl threatened New England -- the first time New England had been threatened since Hurricane Bob in 2001 (New England has been very, very good up until recently, apparently) . But Earl veered away at the last minute. Why? Who knows, but the planned New York City mosque cleared a legal hurdle, nine people were killed in a Connecticut warehouse shooting, Alex Rodriguez hit his 600th homer (is God a Yankees fan?), and a judge overturned a gay marriage ban in California.

Of course, we've seen and heard this sort of stuff before. When a national convention of Lutherans was voting on whether to allow non-celibate gays in the pulpit in Minneapolis in 2009, lightning hit a nearby church. That, a non-Lutheran preacher said, was not a coincidence, although he didn't explain what the Electric Fetus record store did to deserve a tornado.

If lightning hitting a church is pretty powerful sign, there won't be much time for politicians to do anything other than explaining the deep meaning because it happens a lot (h/t: Michael Wells).

A Google search, for example, reveals that it happened Wednesday night in Cleveland, the same day the Indians put in a claim for Jim Thome of the Twins.

It happened in Rocky Mount, NC a week ago Sunday, when a Baptist Church was hit.

And in Limestone County, Alabama, a church burned after being hit by lightning. Unusual? Sure. About as unusual as the three other churches that burned after being struck by lightning in the last year in the same county.

By the way, yesterday was the four-month anniversary of the tornado outbreak in Alabama, which killed 247 people, including four in -- wait for it -- Limestone County.

"Obviously she was saying it in jest," Bachmann spokeswoman Alice Stewart said in a statement about the congresswoman's assessment of the weekend tragedy.

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Bachmann gay counseling story stirs NPR listeners

Posted at 2:59 PM on August 5, 2011 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Politics, Religion

NPR got itself in the middle of the storm when it focused on Marcus Bachmann's gay conversion therapy clinic last Monday (listen to the story here), the network's ombudsman says today.

Bachmann, the husband of presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, runs a mental health clinic that includes counseling for gay clients. ABC News produced this expose a few weeks ago.

In the NPR story, it was this quote that got the listeners calling and e-mailing:

"So these two men represent two sides of a debate that's been raging in psychological circles for more than a decade," said the reporter, Alix Spiegel. "One side feels that therapies which seek to make gay people straight are invariably harmful, the other, that those therapies can help gay people who are profoundly uncomfortable with their same-sex attraction."

That, the ombudsman said, created the appearance of two sides of a story deserving of equal balance -- or so those complaining said. Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos said the story deserved more depth, but he defended tackling the question of therapy designed to make gay people not gay.

All this suggests that what many people think of as "conversion" therapy is really not. The lines are blurry between conversion and identity therapy and between real and effective change in sexual orientation, identity and priority. A story that helps us understand the differences might uncover that in the public debate, many of us are talking past each other. I am curious, for example, to know what really it is that Bachman's husband practices, or what kind of therapy Wyler underwent.

Wyler himself says in the piece that while he didn't feel right living a gay life in Los Angeles, far from his family and church, he understood that it was right for others. I took that to mean that he didn't denounce being gay, or think it was wrong.

Gay rights advocates understandably demand that, rather than trying to change individuals, it is religion and society that must change, which indeed has been happening. But that doesn't help conflicted individuals who are in this world we live in now. To dismissively say that these individuals should just find another religion is to be discriminatory and ignores the profound importance of a given religion in many people's lives.

Here's the entire post.

There's another more common mistake in the story -- "Can Therapy Help Change Sexual Orientation?" It asked a question in the headline that it didn't answer in the story.

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Intelligent design and the graduating class

Posted at 11:37 AM on June 7, 2011 by Bob Collins (8 Comments)
Filed under: Religion, Schools

What's commencement season without the obligatory controversy over prayer, or -- in the case of Northfield High School -- one teacher's religious theories?

Northfield High School math department chair Doug Bengston was selected by the senior class to give the commencement address, which included:

I don't believe the earth, the planets, and the solar system just happened. I believe there is one overall. As you watch the miracle of a newborn baby, I don't believe it all just happens.

So I tried to gain that inner contentment that only comes from the one above. He designed me, my brain, my heart, and all that I am. And all he's looking for is love. I'd like to leave you with some verses from the good book that help explains my thoughts.

Bengston then read from the Bible. Griff Wigley, who writes Locally Grown Northfield, says he's heard no public reaction to the speech, the audio of which he's posted on his web site.

KYMN has the entire commencement posted here.

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How much Jesus is too much Jesus?

Posted at 3:33 PM on March 15, 2011 by Bob Collins (11 Comments)
Filed under: Politics, Religion

Sen. Terri Bonoff, who is Jewish, says the numerous mentions of Jesus and Christianity at the invocation of the Minnesota Senate floor session on Monday made her uncomfortable, the Associated Press says.

Here is the prayer from Pastor Dennis Campbell of Granite City Baptist Church in St. Cloud:

Pastor Campbell quoted John 3 14:16: "I am the way and the truth and the life." (No one comes to the Father except through me)." A non-Christian might disagree.

Sen. Bonoff said she wants Senate leaders to require prayers be non-denominational, but Sen. David Brown, R-Becker, says he believes chaplains who pray in the Senate should be allowed to say what they want.

Update 4:40 p.m. Here is the letter that is sent to invited pastors with the guidelines:

On the assigned day, come to the front of the Capitol, entering from Cedar Street on the east side. Pull up by the main steps (right below the golden horses) and tell the parking control person in one of the booths that you are the Senate Chaplain for the day. They will tell you where to park your car; there is no charge.

Go to the Senate chamber on the second floor, west wing, and introduce yourself to the Sergeant at Arms at the main door. He will direct you to the front of the chamber, where I will meet you. We will go over what you need to do at that time. Try to be at the Senate chamber 15 minutes before the start of session.

In preparing your prayer please keep in mind that there are women and men in the Senate. Also, in an effort to be respectful of the religious diversity of our membership (Christian, Jewish and possibly others among them), we request that your prayer be interfaith and nonsectarian, so it is inclusive of all Senators. Please keep your prayer brief, about a minute in length, and please refrain from addressing political issues before the legislature.

Note: Our commenting functions are not working. If you want to send yours, use this form and I'll paste them up here manually.

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In times of tragedy, a glimpse into our culture

Posted at 12:33 PM on January 21, 2011 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Media, Religion, Science

This was as close a look at Rep. Gabrielle Giffords as anybody got today when she was transferred from the University of Tucson Medical Center to a waiting aircraft for a trip to a Houston rehab center. But that didn't stop people from gathering along the route.

Giffords' recovery from the tragic shooting that claimed six lives nearly two weeks ago is certainly heartwarming. It's a story that needs no embellishment, and yet it continues to get it.

"Why is so much of the expression around this so excessive?" Kerri Miller of MPR's Midmorning asked today. In particular, she focused on the assertion that Giffords' recovery is "a miracle."

"In part, it's because we are so disappointed, so taken aback by the horror of the events, that we want to have some kind of moral balance," ethicist Art Caplan said. "The flourishing the of the miracle language starts to be an antidote to the evil of the shooting. We want redemption. We want that event transformed into something positive, and one way to do it is to use religiously-tinged language about the recovery to get that redemption."

Caplan said the same word was used -- at least in the American press -- during the rescue of the miners in Chile. The European press, on the other hand, focused on the science of it. "I don't think it's an accident," Caplan said. "We tend to get religiously tinged language It's reaching out for that divine or religious theme as part of how we interpret and make sense of our world. It's just been the culture."

Deborah Tannen, the professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, says it's a glimpse into our culture..

"Anytime we confront a terrifying, unexpected death, in our daily life and public figures... what's overwhelming is the lack of control. Something happens suddenly that we have no control over, we couldn't foresee, and everything falls apart. We find ways to think about it that make sense," she said. "When people talk about how they met their spouse, they're horrified to think, 'Had I not gone to that party, my whole life would be different.' So they talk about it in terms of divine intervention."

Reader Jennifer Zick -- a scientist, she says -- responded to today's broadcast. "I agree with Art's comments about not wanting to take away people's hope in these situations, but I definitely think this language is overused. I, for one, do prefer to look at these situations as the result of determinism, because that is in fact the only explanation with any supporting evidence. It also avoids the trap of having to explain the counter situation -- if god is intervening in Giffords' care, why didn't he save the other victims?"

Listener Doug Bieniek of Duluth, however, says he could barely stand the show:

Forgive my impudence, but neither the host, nor the guests have the slightest understanding of the concepts involved with true believers operating in faith. For secular folks such as those on your show to try to discuss a miracle and discover meaning in such a concept is like asking a laborer in the fields to repair the damage Mrs. Giffords suffered. Frankly, it was abundantly clear you had no idea where to begin to talk about such a topic.
Folks are habituated to assigning religious terms to things they do not understand and often throw such terms around devoid the very high value our Creator and the faithful place upon them. They use them without the foundation necessary to grasp such concepts and more often than not misuse and abuse such terms, even going so far as to turn some of these sacred terms into cursing.

Let me explain, to breathe is a miracle. That I may grasp a pencil, or type this message and send it to you is no less a miracle. That Mrs. Giffords should recover from her wounds through the work of all those people around her is still, a miracle. The secular definition of a gift from a Creator God is ridiculous. If one can accept through faith where the power for such things comes from, it is an easy leap to the real truth of all things.

There are all kinds of rock stars in the bible. The difference, however, is those operating with a faithful understanding know where to point the adulation when it comes their way. One can look to science for the truth, but it only reflects the great power of the One God who created all things in the first place. To think differently, in my view, is arrogant and one dimensional. If you are not able to see past the science, which is a created thing, one can never hope to truly understand truth.

Of course, everyone processes events differently. Some people invoke a divine intervention, others sell their toys:

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Catholics and condoms

Posted at 1:20 PM on December 21, 2010 by Bob Collins (11 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

The Vatican has clarified Pope Benedict XVI 's comments on the use of condoms. His original comments -- reported on the MPR site and elsewhere, of course -- seemed to suggest that the Catholic Church was changing its position on the subject.

It's not, the statement makes clear.

Following the publication of the interview-book Light of the World by Benedict XVI, a number of erroneous interpretations have emerged which have caused confusion concerning the position of the Catholic Church regarding certain questions of sexual morality. The thought of the Pope has been repeatedly manipulated for ends and interests which are entirely foreign to the meaning of his words - a meaning which is evident to anyone who reads the entire chapters in which human sexuality is treated. The intention of the Holy Father is clear: to rediscover the beauty of the divine gift of human sexuality and, in this way, to avoid the cheapening of sexuality which is common today.

Some interpretations have presented the words of the Pope as a contradiction of the traditional moral teaching of the Church. This hypothesis has been welcomed by some as a positive change and lamented by others as a cause of concern - as if his statements represented a break with the doctrine concerning contraception and with the Church's stance in the fight against AIDS. In reality, the words of the Pope - which specifically concern a gravely disordered type of human behaviour, namely prostitution (cf. Light of the World, pp. 117-119) - do not signify a change in Catholic moral teaching or in the pastoral practice of the Church.

As is clear from an attentive reading of the pages in question, the Holy Father was talking neither about conjugal morality nor about the moral norm concerning contraception. This norm belongs to the tradition of the Church and was summarized succinctly by Pope Paul VI in paragraph 14 of his Encyclical Letter Humanae vitae, when he wrote that "also to be excluded is any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation--whether as an end or as a means." The idea that anyone could deduce from the words of Benedict XVI that it is somehow legitimate, in certain situations, to use condoms to avoid an unwanted pregnancy is completely arbitrary and is in no way justified either by his words or in his thought. On this issue the Pope proposes instead - and also calls the pastors of the Church to propose more often and more effectively (cf. Light of the World, p. 147) - humanly and ethically acceptable ways of behaving which respect the inseparable connection between the unitive and procreative meaning of every conjugal act, through the possible use of natural family planning in view of responsible procreation.

On the pages in question, the Holy Father refers to the completely different case of prostitution, a type of behaviour which Christian morality has always considered gravely immoral (cf. Vatican II, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes, n. 27; Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 2355). The response of the entire Christian tradition - and indeed not only of the Christian tradition - to the practice of prostitution can be summed up in the words of St. Paul: "Flee from fornication" (1 Cor 6:18). The practice of prostitution should be shunned, and it is the duty of the agencies of the Church, of civil society and of the State to do all they can to liberate those involved from this practice.

In this regard, it must be noted that the situation created by the spread of AIDS in many areas of the world has made the problem of prostitution even more serious. Those who know themselves to be infected with HIV and who therefore run the risk of infecting others, apart from committing a sin against the sixth commandment are also committing a sin against the fifth commandment - because they are consciously putting the lives of others at risk through behaviour which has repercussions on public health. In this situation, the Holy Father clearly affirms that the provision of condoms does not constitute "the real or moral solution" to the problem of AIDS and also that "the sheer fixation on the condom implies a banalization of sexuality" in that it refuses to address the mistaken human behaviour which is the root cause of the spread of the virus. In this context, however, it cannot be denied that anyone who uses a condom in order to diminish the risk posed to another person is intending to reduce the evil connected with his or her immoral activity. In this sense the Holy Father points out that the use of a condom "with the intention of reducing the risk of infection, can be a first step in a movement towards a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality." This affirmation is clearly compatible with the Holy Father's previous statement that this is "not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection."

Some commentators have interpreted the words of Benedict XVI according to the so-called theory of the "lesser evil". This theory is, however, susceptible to proportionalistic misinterpretation (cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Veritatis splendor, n. 75-77). An action which is objectively evil, even if a lesser evil, can never be licitly willed. The Holy Father did not say - as some people have claimed - that prostitution with the use of a condom can be chosen as a lesser evil. The Church teaches that prostitution is immoral and should be shunned. However, those involved in prostitution who are HIV positive and who seek to diminish the risk of contagion by the use of a condom may be taking the first step in respecting the life of another - even if the evil of prostitution remains in all its gravity. This understanding is in full conformity with the moral theological tradition of the Church.

In conclusion, in the battle against AIDS, the Catholic faithful and the agencies of the Catholic Church should be close to those affected, should care for the sick and should encourage all people to live abstinence before and fidelity within marriage. In this regard it is also important to condemn any behaviour which cheapens sexuality because, as the Pope says, such behaviour is the reason why so many people no longer see in sexuality an expression of their love: "This is why the fight against the banalization of sexuality is also part of the struggle to ensure that sexuality is treated as a positive value and to enable it to have a positive effect on the whole of man's being" (Light of the World, p. 119).

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One Picture: The pilgrimage

Posted at 12:01 PM on November 18, 2010 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

The only way to really come close to understanding the scale of the pilgrimage to Mecca is to click the image for a larger view. And even that doesn't do it justice.

This AP photo shows Muslim pilgrims on their way to throw cast stones at a pillar, symbolizing the stoning of Satan, in a ritual called "Jamarat," the last rite of the annual hajj, in Mina near the Saudi holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Thursday, Nov. 18, 2010.

The Boston Globe's The Big Picture has many more images, including one showing thousands of tents set up to handle some of the crowd. Each one has air conditioning.

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Religion's influence

Posted at 12:22 PM on September 15, 2010 by Bob Collins (15 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

More people are saying religion is losing its influence on American life. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

A bad thing, according to a survey from Pew released today.

What's odd about the survey is those groups that seem to be gaining political influence are the ones who say their religion has less influence than 2006.

Today, an overwhelming 82% of Republicans say religion is losing influence in American life; 61% said this four years ago. Independents are also more likely to say religion is losing influence in American life (65% now; 56% in 2006), while Democrats are less likely to say so, though, a majority still agrees (58% now; 60% in 2006). Majorities of Protestants (70%), Catholics (71%) and the religiously unaffiliated (62%) all agree that religion is losing influence on American life, with white evangelical Protestants (79%) the most likely to agree with the statement.

These things tend to shift. Shortly after 9/11, 78% of those surveyed said religion's influence on American life was increasing. But six months after the attacks, only 52% thought that.

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The other side of the story

Posted at 3:36 PM on September 10, 2010 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

With all the publicity some crackpots got this week, it seems only fair that the other 300+ million people get a little attention. Two Muslim men go on a car ride and find a welcoming nation. There's a special shout-out to you, North Dakota.

Their blog -- 30 Mosques, 30 States -- documents their road trip. Their Minneapolis stop is here.

Unfortunately -- for our image -- it didn't appear to be the highlight of the trip. A fight nearly broke out when some Somalis thought the two were FBI or government spies:

"Look, don't take offense." Eid says to me as we're driving. "Ever since people from our community left to fight in Somalia, the FBI and the media has been down our throats."

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You Are: The burning of the Quran

Posted at 1:35 PM on September 7, 2010 by Bob Collins (17 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

Time for another installment of "You Are."

Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of forces in Afghanistan, issued a statement today, urging a preacher in Florida not to carry out plans to burn the Quran to commemorate 9/11.

"Images of the burning of a Koran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan - and around the world - to inflame public opinion and incite violence," Petraeus said. "Such images could, in fact, be used as were the photos from [Abu Ghraib]. And this would, again, put our troopers and civilians in jeopardy and undermine our efforts to accomplish the critical mission here in Afghanistan."

Petraeus' statement has been characterized by news organizations as a message to pastor Terry Jones, but the wording also seems to carry a message to news organizations: Don't cover it. Without images and film of someone burning the Quran, the intended effect -- to inflame the Islamic word -- will be somewhat muted.

You are the editor of a major news organization. How do you cover the event if you cover it at all?

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'Islamophobia' emerging in debate

Posted at 4:04 PM on August 19, 2010 by Bob Collins (8 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

The debate over the community center/mosque in New York has often overshadowed the real issue for many people opposed to it -- are Muslims a threat to America?

National Public Radio this afternoon is looking at a different mosque, and finding the more naked sentiment.

"We're Christians and this religion represents people that are against Christians. That's something we need to look at, you know, because you're going to have a lot of trouble down the line," Fletcher says.

He says he does not know exactly what trouble looks like, but he and others worry about terrorist links and Muslims wanting to impose Sharia law.

Saleh Sbenaty, an engineering professor from Syria and a leader of the growing Muslim congregation, has lived in Tennessee for three decades, but he says he's never seen this level of Islamaphobia.

"All of the sudden now...there is a movement against Islam and Muslims," Sbenaty says. "We did not see that immediately after 9/11. And all of the sudden now it is part of politics and it is like...'I can get more votes if I can bash Islam more, Muslim[s] more.'"

Clearly, for many people there's more involved here than "sensitivity" to the victims of 9/11. A new poll from The Economist makes it difficult to reach any other conclusion.

In the same poll, only 50.2% of those surveyed believe there is a Constitutional right for a Muslim organization to build a mosque/community center two blocks from the World Trade Center. Not surprisingly, the less education the respondent had, the more likely they were to hold that opinion. The Midwest and South was also more likely to have the opinion than the rest of the nation. And only 50.2% of Democrats held the view that there is a constitutional guarantee of religious freedom. (topline data)

Coincidentally -- or perhaps not -- forty-three percent of those surveyed said they know "little" or "nothing at all" about Islam.

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The circle of the 9/11 memorials controversy

Posted at 2:13 PM on August 18, 2010 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

The controversy over the proposed mosque near the World Trade Center has been years in the making.

It's a short -- too short -- story from the Associated Press today which provides a comparison between two cities that were targets of terrorists on 9/11:

Muslims pray daily at Pentagon's 9/11 crash site.

A chapel was built at the Pentagon in 2002 to host prayer services by a number of different religions, Muslim included, according to the AP, which reports that "nobody has ever protested."

The story seems to originate from a fairly smarmy Salon.com blog post a few weeks ago that appears to have gone largely unnoticed.

Yes, Muslims have infiltrated the Pentagon for their nefarious, prayerful purposes -- daring to practice their religion inside the building where 184 people died on Sept. 11, 2001. They haven't even had the sensitivity to move two blocks, let alone a mile, away from that sacred site.

The "desecration" began shockingly soon after the attacks.

This week, FactCheck.org addressed the question of whether an actual mosque existed at the Pentagon.

The truth is that there is no "mosque" in the Pentagon, according to Army spokesman George Wright. There is a chapel inside the Pentagon where Muslim employees can go to pray, as ABC News recently reported. It's just not exclusive to followers of Islam.

The Pentagon's non-denominational chapel was built and dedicated in 2002 in honor of Pentagon employees and passengers of American Airlines Flight 77 who died in the terrorist attack on the building on Sept. 11, 2001.

So, in New York the issue is an actual mosque/community center. In Washington, there's less of a controversy because other faiths are involved. And unmentioned in all of this is Shanksville, Pennsylvania, which started the controversy over the inclusion of an Islamic symbol with a 9/11 memorial years ago when the parents of Thomas Burnett Jr., of Bloomington, said they didn't want their son's name on the memorial as long as a design (above) included a crescent, the symbol of Islam.

About two weeks ago, the Flight 93 Memorial Task Force disbanded after an agreement was reached on the memorial's construction. Burnett's name will appear on it (Update: See comments).

The memorial site is being called Sacred Ground.

Meanwhile, back near the World Trade Center, the controversy continues. Today, President Obama said he has "no regrets" about defending religious freedom in the controversy about whether a mosque planned near the WTC site is "disrespectful."

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A walk around the mosque's neighborhood

Posted at 1:48 PM on August 16, 2010 by Bob Collins (8 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

The Web site, History Eraser, is being passed around today, purporting to show that the "sacred ground" around the World Trade Center where a mosque/community center is planned is already littered with the likes of chain stores and strip joints. Of course, it is New York.

It's a compelling series of images. It's also a little misleading.

Many of the photographs don't appear to be in the immediate neighborhood where the mosque/community center is planned.

Let's use the incredible power of Google. Here's Park Place, ground zero for the controversy. 51 Park Place is down near the closed Burlington Coat Factory.

If we were to walk a street over to the next block, there are some closed stores an an OTB (off-track betting) parlor.

But turning right onto Church Street instead, we head toward the World Trade Center.

Church Street is so named, apparently, because of St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church. This is the intersection of Church and Barclay.

You may remember the significance of the church on 9/11 when firefighters carried the body of a firefighter-chaplain to its altar. A landing gear from one of the jets ended up on its roof.

The building on the right is a federal building.

Continue walking down Church Street to the corner of Vesey Street. There are a few typical New York shops and the Stage Door Deli, across from St. Paul's Chapel.

But turn around and there it is, or -- sadly -- isn't.

We've walked two blocks. Now let's cross the street and walk up Vesey. This street parallels Park Place, where the mosque/community center is planned. We can't, of course, because it's closed. But if we could, we'd walk a block, turn right on W. Broadway, and glance back over our shoulder.

And again as we reach the intersection of W. Broadway and Barclay.

A look to our right as we cross Barclay (the road that runs parallel between the mosque's street and the WTC) shows nothing that screams irreverent.

And we continue walking up W. Broadway.

And here we are back at the Amish Market at the corner of W. Broadway and Park Place. Take a right to get back to the mosque/community center site.

Where's the strip joint? It's a block over, away from the World Trade Center site. To be clear, many of the photos on the History Eraser site are within a few blocks of the WTC site.

Opponents of the mosque claim it doesn't belong on 'sacred ground.' History Eraser attempts to rebut the argument by showing that it's not.

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Obama and the mosque

Posted at 10:14 AM on August 14, 2010 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

Last night, President Obama waded into the controversy over whether Muslims should be allowed to attend a mosque of their choosing, where its builders choose to build it. In this case, the mosque is planned in the shadows of the World Trade Center, if the towers still stood.

There's another presidential speech that comes to mind in the context of this argument that appears to define support for terrorists by religion. It's the one President Bush gave to a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001:

Continue reading "Obama and the mosque"

Gays in the Presbyterian Church

Posted at 4:00 PM on July 7, 2010 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

The nation's Presbyterians are meeting in Minneapolis this week and just as the nation's Lutherans did here last summer, they're wrestling with the question of the role of gays in the clergy. But they're getting far less local attention even though the Presbyterians would be the largest denomination in the nation to allow same-sex marriage.

A committee has approved changing the definition of marriage in the Directory for Worship from "a woman and a man" to "two people."

According to a release from the conference:

Advocating for changing the church's language of who may marry, Laura Marsh, an elder from East Iowa Presbytery, said her church, First Presbyterian of Iowa City, decided that "until we are allowed to marry everybody, we aren't going to marry anybody. Is everybody happy? No. But there's been no mass exodus, and we didn't implode. But we're urgently asking you to act."

Committee member the Rev. Marion Haynes-Weller of Donegal Presbytery called herself "a pastor of one of those small rural congregations we seem to be worried about. We are in a very conservative community but it's a congregation committed to welcoming (gay) members who are impatient with our lack of solidarity in standing with them."

Current church rules state that "church officers must be faithful in marriage between a man and a woman or chaste in singleness." But new wording, approved by a committee this week removes references of sexual ethics and instead requires church governing bodies to judge candidates for the clergy based on "calling, gifts, preparation and suitability."

You can watch the debate live here.

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Arizona law finds little favor with conservative evangelical leaders

Posted at 2:08 PM on May 12, 2010 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Politics, Religion

A group of conservative evangelical leaders today called for a "ratcheting down" of the rhetoric surrounding the immigration issue in the wake of the passage of the Arizona crackdown on illegal immigration.

"In 2010, people are willing to look the other way while other citizens are racially profiled," Rev. Samuel Rodriguez of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference said. "Is the conservative movement exclusively for white people? Latinos are more socially conservative than white evangelicals," he said warning politicians by name, including Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, to "remember Reagan and remember Lincoln, and simultaneously eliminate threats of xenophobia from the conservative movement."

Pawlenty's pastor, Rev. Leith Anderson of Edina's Wooddale Church, said the group will take out a full-page ad in tomorrow's Roll Call newspaper that will call for "dignity for each person, unity of families, respect of the rule of law, secure borders, and the establishment of a path to legal status for those who wish to become legal residents." That's the part that appears to divide conservatives.

Anderson, who is also president of the National Association of Evangelicals, said the Arizona law is "not pro family and we're interested in what we can do to have intact and healthy families."

The Arizona law found little favor in the group. "This is not an issue that can be dealt with by one state," said Dr. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Conference, who criticized some opponents of immigration reform who refer to pathways to citizenship as amnesty. " To say a person willing to pay a fine, learn English, take a civics course ... to say that's giving them amnesty, they need a course in remedial English. Amnesty is what Jimmy Carter gave the draft dodgers... this is not amnesty."

He took aim at conservative commentators who use the term. "They may be conservatives, they may be social conservatives, but they're not evangelicals," he said.

The pastors appeared to embrace the idea of a multiple approach in immigration reform that starts with securing borders, but also provides pathways to citizenship for illegal immigrants. They rejected mass deportations.

"The reality is that just doing one piece of solving a problem is going to unbalance the issue," Rev. Anderson said. "What we have already is a number of people whose families are divided who need to be reunited. We typically don't deal with other issues incrementally. What we need is Republicans and Democrats to come together and address the issue and not just shout opinions to a broader audience."

There may be little political payoff for many politicians to follow that advice. A poll out today shows most Americans favor the Arizona approach.

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Live-blogging: Are Muslims unfairly criticized?

Posted at 12:10 PM on April 22, 2010 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

A radical Muslim group has allegedly threatened violence against the creators of South Park because of an episode that insulted the prophet Muhammad.

In the episode, the children meet Tom Cruise at a chocolate factory where he is packing bundles of fudge into boxes. They ask him why he's "packing fudge", which angers Cruise and leads him to bring a lawsuit against South Park. The only way that Cruise will drop the suit is if the town brings the Prophet Muhammad to South Park.

The whole point of the show is to lampoon the double standards applied to Islam and other religions in the media. There is a scene involving the "Super Best Friends", that features every religious figure acting as super heroes, including Buddha, who does lines of cocaine on a table as Jesus is speaking. For the scenes of Muhammad, the image is blacked out by a large "censored" graphic.

Eventually, Muhammad agrees to appear in South Park in a bear mascot costume so as not to offend Muslims.

The episode has been removed from YouTube, apparently because of copyright violations.

Closer to home, a Muslim civil rights group has criticized schools in the St. Cloud area for not reacting to racism there.

The BBC's World Have Your Say program has dedicated its international call-in program today to the question of whether Muslims are "always being attacked."

Here's an example of what people are saying:

Bahrain : Like Japanese in World War II, Muslims are being branded as a target. We are not attributed for any kind of innovation or forward thinking. When people criticize us, we have no rebuttal.

Texas: It's hard to hear what people are saying about us, it's free speech. It's not something Muslims are used to but Muslims in the West are getting more comfortable with it.

Oregon: Trying to secularize Muslims won't help them.

Ohio: I used to be a critic of the faith, now I just don't care.

Trinidad: I'm not so concerned. One feels they are trying to set the agenda for liberal societies in which they live, which is something they wouldn't be able to do in any Mideast country.

Nigeria: There seems to be a general impression that there is a certain propensity for violence and the threat of it when it comes to that particular faith. Consider the flurry over the Catholic Church. No one has heard of threats against the parish priest. We take it for granted that we can say anything we want to about the Catholic faith. In the media there is self-censorship when it comes to Islam.

(A guest responded that that was an "attack." "You've used the term 'attack,' the gentleman in Nigeria responded. It's not an 'attack,' it's a 'criticism.' I'm not attacking anybody.)

Another guest says "there are two thugs in New York who put a statement about South Park up, and people think they speak for all Muslims. Muslims have spoken about this by not speaking about this (South Park) for the last 14 years."

Canada: Is the problem here South Park, or a culture that responds with death threats whenever there's something they disagree with?

(Guest: "If there's 100 Muslims and 99 of them love South Park, you're not going to hear from any of the 99. Our crazies get more attention.")

Jamaica: If there's any faith that's always being ridiculed, it's Christianity.

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Gov. Pawlenty, Mike Huckabee, and religion

Posted at 2:12 PM on April 19, 2010 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Politics, Religion

Two months ago, Gov. Tim Pawlenty held the door wide open for reporters to examine his religious views and the extent to which they influence his decisions on state policy, such as his plan to cut health care for the poor and mentally ill.

He did so by declaring to a conservative convention in Washington, "God's in charge. There are some people who say 'Pawlenty, don't bring that up. Its politically incorrect.' Hogwash! ...I say to those naysayers that try to crowd out God from the discussion, if it's good enough for the founding fathers it's good enough for us."

At the time, I wrote that reporters should use the opportunity to quiz Pawlenty about his religion. His spokesman later wrote on Twitter that none did, then turned aside my request to ask the questions of the governor.

From the sound of a piece in the National Journal today, others aren't having any better luck at getting the gov to open up about his religion. A post -- "Evangelicals for T-Paw?" tries to make a case that presidential candidate Pawlenty could be the next Mike Huckabee, but it falls woefully short. The article notes only that Pawlenty is an evangelical Christian by marriage, but does nothing to indicate what that means to the governor or what principles he brings to the "discussion."

Until he sits for a discussion on religion, there'll always be a difference on the question of evangelical Christianity between Tim Pawlenty and Mike Huckabee.

(h/t: Hart Van Denburg, City Pages)

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National Day of Prayer overturned

Posted at 2:55 PM on April 15, 2010 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Crime and Justice, Religion

The National Day of Prayer is history.

A federal judge in Madison today declared the annual day of prayer to be unconstitutional, the Associated Press reports. The day is the first Thursday in May.

Proponents of the National Day of Prayer said those objecting to it had no standing to bring a case because they were not required to "come into contact" with religious observances.

"This is simply wrong," Judge Barbara Crabb wrote when she refused to throw the case out last month (see decision). "Although the court of appeals has noted in some opinions that plaintiffs were fulfilling a legal obligation when they encountered religious speech, the court has never limited standing to those cases. For example, one of the injuries in Books I, 235 F.3d at 297, was viewing a religious monument on the way to a public library. The injuries included viewing a display before picking up a map in a public building. Further, most of the establishment clause challenges before the Supreme Court did not involve plaintiffs performing "civic duties."

"The injury caused by religious conduct of the government is largely expressive,
meaning that the harm is caused by receiving a message from the government that his or her views on religion are disfavored," she wrote.

She said that if the litmus test of the statute's unconstitutionality were that people had to be forced to come into contact with a religious observance, "the federal government could declare the 'National Day of Anti- Semitism' or even declare Christianity the official religion of the United States, but no one'would have standing to sue because no one would have to 'pass by' those declarations. "

Coincidentally, an anti-Obama mailer is making its round on the Internet today that President Obama canceled the National Day of Prayer. The Obama administration was actually the defendant in this case. But he canceled the White House ceremony last year.

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After ELCA

Posted at 12:48 PM on February 24, 2010 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

Twin Cities Associated Press writer Patrick Condon is taking a look at the effects of last summer's vote by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to allow non-celibate gay pastors. It's ugly.

Last week, a conservative Lutheran group announced its plans to establish the North American Lutheran Church, a new denomination that will recruit dissident congregations. Rather than setting up a clear-cut choice, though, even some critics of the ELCA's new policy say the move could further confuse already splintered Lutherans at a time when Protestantism in general seems to be moving away from a denominational model.

"It just feels like we're stepping off a sinking ship, and I'm not inclined to get on another boat," said the Rev. Bill Bohline, lead pastor at Hosanna! in Lakeville, Minn., which had been the state's second largest ELCA church until its members voted overwhelmingly in January to sever ties with the denomination. "That's not where the spirit is moving."

At some Lutheran congregations in southeast Minnesota, the reaction appears to be far more muted, an article today in the Zumbrota News-Record says, mostly because people aren't talking about it publicly.

The Rev. Paul Thompson, who's been serving part-time at Union Prairie Lutheran Church for five years and additionally at Henrytown Lutheran Church since October - both ELCA congregations - said, "I'm not sure people may like it too much, but they don't pay much attention to it. They are focused on the ministry, preaching the gospel, taking care of members and outreach. Political issues just aren't that important to us as what God gives us to do."

But the paper says an assembly of the Root River conference was held 10-days ago, and a resolution to rescind the social statement was defeated in a typically close vote -- 34 -to-31.

It's not all about homosexual clergy members, however. MPR's Jessica Mador reported last fall that many of the churches splitting from ELCA, have long-standing grievances over the direction of the Lutheran church.

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Gospel of the gunsight

Posted at 3:10 PM on January 19, 2010 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

In the movie, Saving Private Ryan, the company sniper -- Private Daniel Jackson -- recites Biblical passages as he blew away Nazis. He searches for equal parts strength and forgiveness.

Now, it turns out that the company that manufacturers gunsights for U.S. and British soldiers has inscribed Biblical citations on them.

The Defense Department denies it knew of the markings, but some soldiers interviewed said they knew of -- and were confused by -- the 2COR4:6" and "JN8:12" inscriptions.

Second Corinthians is Paul's letter, which says:

The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness,"[a]made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

And John 8: 12 says:

"Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."

Neither is the quote you want being tossed around when you're trying to convince people that you're waging a war against terrorism, not religion.

The gunsight maker, Trijicon told ABC News said the inscriptions "have always been there" and said there was nothing wrong or illegal with adding them. Company spokesman Tom Munson said the issue was being raised by a group that is "not Christian."

For the record, Pvt. Jackson does not cite either of these passages in the movie. Instead, he goes with Psalm 144:

Praise be to the Lord my Rock,
who trains my hands for war,
my fingers for battle.

He is my loving God and my fortress,
my stronghold and my deliverer,
my shield, in whom I take refuge,
who subdues peoples under me.

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Raising Hell House

Posted at 2:44 PM on October 21, 2009 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

When it first started 19 years ago, Hell House, a "haunted house" put on by a church in Texas was nothing if not shocking. Tour guides take visitors through rooms depicting botched abortions, or a mom who left her family for someone she met on the Internet (apparently, it happened to a church member).

Now? Less shocking, less sermon, more theatrical:

About seven years ago, a documentary about the church's Halloween effort was released. Here's NPR's Steve Inskeep's interview with the director:

"Despite our guffawing," he says, "these are very nice people. The people at this church needed this church, and they needed this community. If they were in New York, they would need therapy. But they don't have therapy."

Ira Glass also picks up the story as part of This American Life's theme on Saturday -- Devil on My Shoulder.

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Lutherans step back from the edge

Posted at 3:10 PM on September 26, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

We got a fair amount of e-mail on Friday from Lutherans who weren't happy that we characterized a threatened split in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America as a "backlash" against last month's vote at its convention in Minneapolis to allow non-celibate homosexuals to serve as clergy. Many of the letter writers described widespread acceptance of gays in their church and the relatively few people -- 1,200 -- who were to gather on Saturday to decide whether to sever ties with the church.

They did meet today and decided to give it a year.

It would be impossible to have attended last month's sessions at the Minneapolis Convention Center and still not realize that a split in the church -- any kind of split in the church -- worried most delegates on both sides of the issue.

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What in creation?

Posted at 4:26 PM on September 22, 2009 by Bob Collins (7 Comments)
Filed under: Religion, Science

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The right way to pray?

Posted at 1:35 PM on September 16, 2009 by Bob Collins (11 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

If you pay a computer to say your prayers for you, are you still praying?

The question came up earlier this year when a company started a Web site in which a computer would -- using a synthesized speech system -- say three prayers a day for anyone willing to pay the $4.95 monthly fee. The price, however, depends on the length of the prayer.

If the computer is our vehicle of prayer, it might give new meaning to the dreaded "blue screen of death."

Is prayer by computer still prayer? And, if not, does that mean there's a right way to pray?

The New York Times (online) Magazine takes up that topic today.

"Prayer is like other activities," the Rev. Daniel Henderson said. "You learn from people who are already good at it." Henderson is the former senior pastor at Grace Church in Eden Prairie, one of several mega-churches in the Twin Cities. He's one of several members of the clergy who talked to writer Zev Chafets.

Chafets doesn't answer his own question, but the anecdotes are priceless:

Evangelical Christians, Pentecostals, they go to church to pray," (Rabbi Marc) Gellman went on to say. "Why else would they be there? But Jews are different. People come to temple to identify with other Jews, or socialize. The writer Harry Golden once asked his father, who was an atheist, why he went to services every Saturday. The old man told him, 'My friend Garfinkle goes to talk to God, and I go to talk to Garfinkle.' There's a lot of that."

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The God-tornado storm

Posted at 1:01 PM on August 20, 2009 by Bob Collins (38 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

A Baptist preacher in Minneapolis is causing a stir today by claiming the tornado that took part of a steeple off a Lutheran church near the Minneapolis Convention Center (near where the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America was holdings its Assembly) was God's message to the Lutherans who were about to take up the issue of gays in the pulpit.

Said John Piper:

The tornado in Minneapolis was a gentle but firm warning to the ELCA and all of us: Turn from the approval of sin. Turn from the promotion of behaviors that lead to destruction. Reaffirm the great Lutheran heritage of allegiance to the truth and authority of Scripture. Turn back from distorting the grace of God into sensuality. Rejoice in the pardon of the cross of Christ and its power to transform left and right wing sinners.

As part of his proof, Piper noted the significance of the occurrence...

On a day when no severe weather was predicted or expected...a tornado forms, baffling the weather experts--most saying they've never seen anything like it.

True, perhaps, that there was no expectation that a tornado -- a pretty darned small one -- would hit Minneapolis, but severe weather was not surprising. Here's Paul Huttner's note from his Updraft blog on Wednesday morning:

The overnight rain was just round one of a slow-moving weather system that will bring waves of showers and thunderstorms through Thursday. The system will set up shop over the state, bringing more rainfall to some of the drought parched areas. It will not rain all the time, but expect periods of rain into Friday morning before the system pulls out.

That said, I'm not qualified to say what God's message is based on the weather provided on the day such an issue is discussed. When the Northwest Minnesota Synod discussed this last spring, the weather was clear and seasonable, high of 68. Low of 34.

Pastor Piper pointed out that the tornado struck as the Assembly began discussions on the issue, according to its published agenda. But, technically, they hadn't started yet and one attendee "tweeted" that the biggest groan at the Convention Center came when it was announced the tornado had forced the closure of the pub.

But Piper wasn't the first to tie the two events together. Lutherans were.

"We trust that the weather is not a commentary on our work," said Steven Loy, chairman of the committee overseeing the pastoral statement being considered.

Some thought it was, according to Christianity Today:

But WordAlone, a renewal group within the ELCA, reported that both sides sought to find commentary in the weather: "A supporter of the social statement typified the storm as a mighty wind of the Holy Spirit and as a positive message. Some WordAlone Network members heard a different message, a warning of God's anger at the ELCA in the wind."

Far above my pay grade is the answer to another question: Why do we think God speaks only through the weather?

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The church dilemma

Posted at 5:51 PM on August 18, 2009 by Bob Collins (15 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

Budde: Change rarely happens in any societal organization through intellectual argument. Change happens... kind of from the ground up, and it's very rare that those who have an established world view based on argument, change their mind on intellect alone. It's lived practice that changes hearts that ultimately lends itself to a new interpretation of what God is doing in the world.

It seems to me a very naive understanding of how change really does occur to say that we all need to get together in a room and argue this out because it's by lived experience and seeing how people that we thought are very different from us just as the early Christians who were Jewish tried to grabbed reality that Gentiles were being accepted into the communion called the church. That didn't happen because they thought it out; it happened because they saw lives transformed and people that they thought so different from them coming to know Christ in the same way that they did...

Harmon: Let me say this: First of all she's very gutsy to call into the program given the position she occupies so good for her; I sense some courage there. I don't disagree. I'm one of the so-called traditionalists who agrees that this is an important question that has to be wrestled with and I certainly agree that it's a theological question that has to be wrestled through in people's own lives and people's own experiences.

But I don't want the experience to drive the theology in such a way that the primary sources and their meaning is compromised.

Buddie: I'm not disagreeing with that, either, except that I think it is very dangerous to take our understanding of marriage and fidelity in relationships and try to imagine that even what Jesus was saying when he spoke the words that you quoted earlier because understandings of marriage in that time and that eras is very different from how people may experience marriage today. And to imagine that Jesus was speaking to the kind of realities that we are addressing now in same-gender, lifelong, committed relationships is just a huge distortion of the Palestinian world view that he was addressing.

He was addressing property issues. He was addressing men treating women like property and disposing of them at will and calling for a more egalitarian and respectful way that -- and loving way -- that men and women were to deal with one another. This is a time when women were treated like chattel and to have that idea of marriage held up to the standard that God calls us to now is, I think, is trying to take any view of order which was true in the Biblical era and make that standard for us now. It flies in the face of everything we know about now about how the Holy Spirit moves and works with us over time.

Harmon: This is exactly the kind of argument I think we need to have, by the way. The difficult here is the context that becomes the trump card, notice in her remarks, is the modern context. And so the Biblical context in the ancient world gets derated and we somehow suddenly know better how the Holy Spirit works in this modern era.

What's so crucial to point out is there is such a thing as the history of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit works through the church, especially the church globally and the church historically through time. And the church historically through time that has always understood that this kind of behavior is out of bounds and marriage is the context and what's the height of the arrogance is that you impose this new understanding on the shoulders of the all the Christians we now understand, all the Christians around the world who haven't been persuaded by these arguments.

Buddie: We don't have to persuade every one... this is not an argument to have everyone see the world as we see it, or everyone to practice the faith as we practice it. To allow for a way of inclusion and a way for those people in our communities and in our churches who hunger for Christian community. Who hunger to live out their life-long vows to each other in the context of the church, and not prohibit them from doing that when they feel deep in their bones that this is who God has created them to be, and it just seems to me you can allow for that kind of generosity of spirit, which is exactly what the General Convention asks for -- generosity of spirit, and to let the Holy Spirit sort this out. If it's of God, it will thrive. If it's not, it will die away, but to undercut that process and deny so many people to live as Christians, seems to me an unnecessarily restrictive and cruel thing to do.

Harmon: It's amazing how the desires that people have seem to trump things. And the problem is Christianity is about taking desires -- some of which are good but some of which are really out of whack because we're created in God's image, but we're fallen -- and channeling them in the right way. See, that's the question: Is this the proper place for these desires to be channeled or not, and historically and globally the church has said "no" and the church in America unilaterally and the church in Canada to a lesser extent, is simply imposing the practice of this theology without making the case for it.

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Religious life in the Obama era

Posted at 7:49 PM on May 20, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

Joshua DuBois, President Obama's "pastor-in-chief" (he was director of religious affairs for the campaign) and Speaking of Faith host Krista Tippett held a discussion at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul on Wednesday evening about religious life in the Obama era.

Julia Duin, religious editor of the Washington Times, complained a couple of weeks ago that she was having a hard time getting an interview with DuBois. But, then again, she's not Krista Tippett.

6:58 p.m. - The Fitz is pulling in a pretty hefty audience for a sweltering May evening. We're almost ready to go.

7:03 p.m. - It'll be interesting to see to what extent discussion of inclusivity when it comes to right and left religious entities comes up this evening. DuBois was the one who pushed for Rick Warren to be invited to be part of the Inauguration. He also set up a meeting in the White House early on with religious leaders who the left does not consider acceptable. It's hard to bring warring groups together.

7:12 p.m. - We're underway. Speaking of Faith managing editor/producer Kate Moos (my first boss when I moved to Minnesota) is noting the show is trying to engage the online audience tonight. Tweeting is being done via @softweets. It will be interesting to see how many people nationally are tuning in this evening. They're taking online questions via the Twitter side of things, though it still makes me chuckle when people giggle whenever the word "twitter" is uttered in public.

Here on News Cut, it's just you and me.

7:17 p.m. - Krista: The campaign brought faith out of the closet in the Democratic Party.

7:21 p.m. - DuBois says he found his religious life about the same time he found his political life. An extensive bio is here.

7:23 p.m. - Asked by Krista, DuBois says he's reached the first level of ordination. How he became aware of Obama: He was wrapping up grad school and was trying to figure out how to combine faith and public policy. He was at a restaurant and looked up and saw Obama at the Democratic National Convention (I assume this in the '04 convention in Boston). He tried to join the campaign and got a rejection letter.

7:27 p.m. - Talking about the 2006 Obama speech on religion. "He wasn't trying to chart a new course," DuBois says, "but he was trying to be true to who he was ... rather than trying to change the conversation in the party."

7:28 p.m. - On his role and message in the campaign as director of religious affairs. He organized community faith forums. "We had some in Manchester, New Hampshire that were some secular humanists and some evangelicals. South Carolina was a little difference. It was striking to see the difference in the conversations you see on television on religion and the ones we were having. On TV, you'd think we can't stand each other."

7:30 p.m. - What he learned about religion and politics. "We're all told our differences are so broad and wide, there's no bridge than can span them. But churches in Montana and temples in New York, there's so many things we agree upon. I was expecting more pushback."

7:32 p.m. - Interesting point on how people get along. "It's easy to disagree with people on issues, but it's hard to disagree with someone's story," DuBois said. Is that a problem in discourse these days, not only in politics and religion, and everything. Are we not listening to people's stories?

7:33 p.m. - We're onto the speech in Philadelphia. Yeah, you know the one:

7:35 p.m. -- and the Saddleback Forum, when Obama was asked by Rick Warren about abortion and he said "it's above my pay grade." "We live in a news cycle that demands winners and losers," DuBois said, saying the short sound bite did not capture the nuance of his message on abortion. This blog didn't think so.

This (and by the way, this is Bob talking now) was a tremendous issue in the campaign -- religion and politics -- probably more so than ever got covered in the mainstream media, at least meaningfully. At the Democratic National Convention, I wrote a bit about it in a post called The Jesus Factor. It was -- and is -- tremendously divisive within the Catholic Church (as we saw in the Notre Dame speech). I'm not sure that's going to get addressed significantly tonight. We'll see.

7:42 p.m. - Discussing the office of faith-based initiatives: Reducing need for abortion, reducing teen pregnancy, recovering from the poor economy, renewed focus on outreach to different religious and non-religious backgrounds. The council has secular organization represented, too. Insists that Obama has said that prostheletyzing is not the mission.

7:45 p.m. - From the vantage point of the balcony, I can see people on the floor playing on their iPhones and cellphones. They're either tweeting, submitting questions to the chat, or checking the Twins score. Prayer may be involved in the latter activity.

7:47 p.m. - Should faith-based groups that get government money be allowed to only hire people of their own faith? "We'll explore these issues on a case-by-case issue," DuBois says.

"How's that changed from the Bush administration," Tippett asks.

"It increases the profile of that exploratory process," DuBois says. "The president believes we need to understand the legal terrain and environment before making a decision." That doesn't answer the question which, to me, is the gorilla in the room -- if Obama talks faith, do people react differently than when Bush talked faith, and why?

7:55 p.m. - "Fighting can leave one tired," DuBois says of the culture wars. "Not among the pundits for whom these battles are a living, but people are tired of hearing people yell at one another. Folks don't want to fight anymore; they want to find some common purpose."

Nice joke by DuBois. He tells people to raise both hands, then move them. "Thank-you, I promised the president I'd shake every hand in St. Paul tonight."

(Musical interlude precedes questions from the audience)

QUESTIONS FROM THE AUDIENCE

Nice to see Larry Jacobs getting some exposure for a change. He's moderating the Q&A session.

Q: Where is Scripture in the president's talk of faith?

A: He's never been afraid to talk about faith. But he thinks because we're a pluralistic society, people have to know they have a place in his work. It's a balance. He's been outfront on what faith means to him.

Q: Colin Powell said there's nothing wrong with being a Muslim in America, what initiatives can your office take?

A: The president has sent phenomenal signals with his Inaugural speech and his speech in Turkey. It's an ongoing process. (Not too impressed with answers so far. Very Washingtonian.)

Q: How can we balance the issue, making sure children have a religious life with no religion in public schools?

A: Families are balancing those challenges every day. It's up to parents to strike that balance.

Q: The Pew Forum released a report showing 50% of Americans have become unaffiliated because they think of them as being "hypocritical." Why do you think people feel this way about unaffiliated people?

A: I'm not sure. The president is speaking for all Americans. (Bob: Here's the survey. The question could have and should have been asked in a less-Minnesotan way. Like "do you believe religious people are hypocrites?")

Q: What was behind the Notre Dame speech? How did it happen?

A: There wasn't much evolution. The president thinks when there's a challenging issue, it's best to confront it head on. (applause). Americans can handle it. There's going to be points of disagreement.

Q: Have you been surprised by the level of scrutiny and criticism by the faith-based initiative?

A: There will be bumps in the road. In the 24-hour news cycle, any time there's a conflict it will be scrutinized.

Q: When it comes to Washington, the president has made efforts to reach out to Republicans, is there a same dynamic to break down barriers of faith?

A: There can always be one point of concurrence with people. We have conservatives and Evangelicals who are engaging with us, who disagree with us 60 percent of the time.

Q: In his inaugural address, President Obama said: "We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth." But how do you meet the challenge of bringing them all together?

A: Cancer does not recognize a belief. We have common areas of agreement. We can connect people across those lines. But we're not asking people to check their religion at the door.

//End//

Continue reading "Religious life in the Obama era"

Gays in the pulpit

Posted at 3:23 PM on May 18, 2009 by Bob Collins (6 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America does not appear to be moving toward endorsing the role of homosexuals in relationships as pastors. Under the current rules, homosexuals can be ministers in the church if they promise to be celibate.

In August, ELCA's national convention in Minneapolis will consider whether to leave that up to each of the 65 synods nationwide.

On Sunday, the Northwest Minnesota Synod approved a resolution rejecting a proposal that non-celibate gays be allowed to serve as clergy members. The resolution rejecting the proposal passed by just two votes (See resolution).

"I'm not surprised that it was close," Bishop Larry Wohlrabe told the Worthington Daily News (registration required). "I'm a little amazed that it was that close."

Before passing the resolution, however, delegates struck a provision that declared "a majority of ELCA members and most Christian churches -- including most in the Lutheran World Federation -- believe that marriage is a lifelong covenant between one man and one woman."

At the same time, the synod voted against a resolution that would have rejected ELCA's social statement, "Human Sexuality Gift and Trust. " (See report), which says after "many years of study and conversation, this church does not have consensus regarding loving and committed same-gender relationships." But the draft says the church "supports legislation and policies to protect civil rights and to prohibit discrimination in housing, employment and public services. It has called upon congregations and members to welcome, care for, and support same-gender couples and their families, and to advocate for their legal protection."

The ELCA social statement rejected by the synod was drafted by a task force headed by Rev. Peter Strommen, of Shepherd of the Lake Lutheran Church in Prior Lake.

By way of background, City Pages profiled four people last summer who have a particular interest in the question.

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Should priests be celibate?

Posted at 10:00 AM on May 11, 2009 by Bob Collins (7 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

What should the Church do now with Padre Alberto, dubbed "Pastor Oprah," in his role as a TV priest. He was "caught" by photographers with a woman on a beach, and says he should -- and all priests should -- be allowed to marry.

"There are plenty of good, practical and faithful reasons why the Church asks its priests to remain celibate: the priest is married to the church; priests have lifestyles that are incompatible with family life; priests (who also take poverty vows) don't make enough money to allow them to support families; celibacy frees them to focus on their priestly duties," writes the Washington Post's On Faith blog, while pointing out that Protestant pastors who are married and convert to Catholicism are allowed to stay married. So if some priests can be married and married to the church, why can't others?

In 2004, a Minnesota Franciscan sister surveyed seminaries about celibacy and found "that some seminary faculty members lack confidence to make appropriate interventions and recommendations, and some are uncertain how to deal with 'cross-cultural dynamics relative to sexuality' -- especially when dealing with formation of the foreign-born seminarians who now make up about one-fourth of the theology-level students in U.S. seminaries."

One presumes it's coming up in discussions today.

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On Muslim integration

Posted at 12:43 PM on May 8, 2009 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

Two unrelated items on a related subject: How we get along with different religious cultures.

Item #1: Eboo Patel, founder and executive director of the Interfaith Youth Core, spoke yesterday in Minneapolis at the Westminster Town Hall Forum. On the rebroadcast today on MPR's Midday (or you can hear the uninterrupted version here), he told the story of Jersey City, NJ, which has a large Egyptian community. For years the Christian and Muslim members of the community got along, until an Egyptian Christian family was killed execution style.

"As a result of this, these two communities split apart," he said, noting that the value of diversity isn't in the number of people who are different, but in the positive relations they have with each other.

He contends it's not "natural" for two different communities to split apart when a moment of crisis occurs; it takes some person or force. In this case, he says, it took a gentleman who said on "the footsteps of his church, 'this looks like something Muslims would do.'"

"The first person who defined reality... chose to portray Christians and Muslims in inherent conflict. What if a different kind of leader emerged in that situation?" he said, giving us something to think about today. "What if someone stood up and said, 'we in Jersey City stand together tall and proud as a community of pluralism against whatever extremists might violate that ethic'?"

Item #2: A study of 30,000 people in 27 countries released today by Gallup, shows that joblessness and poverty are a more potent source of tension between Muslims and wider European and U.S. society than religious differences. It's portrayed as the one of the first major studies of Muslim integration since Sept. 11.

The AP reports...

These Muslims are more patriotic, more tolerant and more likely to reject violence than the rest of Western society believes they are, the study claims. It suggests most European Muslims, for example, are as happy as other Europeans to live alongside people of other faiths and ethnic backgrounds, and share broadly similar views with their neighbors.

The findings appear to contradict the impression created by angry protests across Europe following the 2005 publication in Denmark of 12 cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, and recent rallies in which small groups of British Muslims have disrupted homecoming parades for soldiers returning from Iraq.

It's an interesting study that focuses mostly on Europeans. Does the conclusion really translate to the United States? Writing on Huffington Post, author Kamran Pasha has his doubts:

As an American Muslim, one of the greatest things I treasure about the United States is that economic opportunity is largely available to everyone, regardless of race or religion. The kind of overt class system that appears to still be very much in place in Britain is anathema to American notions of entrepreneurialism and social mobility.

Most Muslims I know are quite well educated and prosperous, with the usual joke being that American Muslims won't settle for anything less than high-paying jobs as doctors, engineers and lawyers. I myself am a former attorney with three graduate degrees and have become a Hollywood screenwriter and producer for networks such as NBC and Showtime. Being a Muslim does not automatically create a glass ceiling in this society, and it is for that reason that most American Muslims are much better integrated than their European counterparts.

I'm hoping this comes up to some degree later this month when Speaking of Faith's Krista Tippett hosts a session with Joshua DuBois, on religious life in the Obama administration.

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Religious landscape survey

Posted at 2:49 PM on April 8, 2009 by Bob Collins (8 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

Can you believe in Christ and not believe in God? The Pew Research Center is out with a survey that says 5 percent of Americans do not believe in God, but only 24 percent of those people call themselves atheists.

Fourteen percent of those who say they do not believe in the existence of God identify themselves as Christians, the survey said.

For the most part, Minnesotans responding to the survey tracked along the same lines as the national results. One of the exceptions was "frequency of answers to prayers." Thirty-one percent of Americans surveyed say they pray and receive answer to those prayers. But in Minnesota, that percentage is only 23 percent.

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Live-blogging: 'The God Delusion"

Posted at 8:58 AM on March 4, 2009 by Bob Collins (133 Comments)
Filed under: Religion, Science

Richard Dawkins, author of "The God Delusion," is on Midmorning this morning. I'm thinking people are going to need an outlet to react to what he has to say, so News Cut will step into the line of fire. Dawkins says atheists should be just as forthright in their views as those who believe God is real.

I'm not in the studio so please don't use the blog to get questions to Dawkins. Use the comments section to discuss his assertions.

9:08 a.m. - Dawkins and Miller mix it up over her assertion that he's recruiting people to become atheists. "In the preface I was stating my wildest dreams, but I hadn't realized the extent to which atheists are in the closet waiting to be called out." By the way, here's his Web site.

9:11 a.m. - "Why is it so important?" Miller asks. "Truth matters," Dawkins says, which brings up a constant struggle for me in matters of religion. Both sides of this equation say it's "the truth." But how we do know?

9:12 - Why does Dawkins choose to describe God as people's "imaginary friend?" He says the claim of a universal power "who put things in motion" is an impingement on science.

Miller says the description of "imaginary friend" makes it sound "infantile." Dawkins says it should.

9:17 a.m. "It's not up to me to provide the evidence," Dawkins says.
He says the idea that Jesus died for our sins is "obvious nonsense." OK, where does this conversation go after that?

9:22 a.m. - Dawkins says believers mix doubt and belief inconsistently. "You have just suggested that somebody who begins by saying 'I don't know,' then says 'and I know Jesus was raised by the dead and born to a version.... It's the Christians who say 'beyond a doubt...'"

9:25 a.m. - "Why do you bother to call yourself a Christian instead of saying you believe in a higher power. He suggests it's more intellectually honest to say one believes in a higher power but can't be sure," he says to a caller.

9:27 a.m. - A caller rejects the notion that beautiful things are a sign of God. "Why can't they just be beautiful in and of themselves?" she says.

9:29 a.m. - There is growing evidence for a kind of universal morality which transcends different religious traditions.Things like The Golden Rule, are -- if not universal -- extremely widespread. There's increasing evidence they're part of our brain heritage.

9:30 a.m. - Caller: "We don't all believe that there was a virgin birth etc., but those things aren't required to believe in the message. You can't lump all believers of God into the Christian fundamentalist camp."

Dawkins, however, says mystery is something to be solved, not something to revel in.

9:33 a.m. - Says some mysteries will never be solved. Pressed on the question of what is "truth," he says he's criticizing the attitude that "I love mystery. You're spoiling it for us."

"Might it be an insolvable mystery?" Kerri asks.

9:35 a.m. -"I believe it's worth working on," he says. He says the answers may come from neuroscience and computers. "Computers are capable of feats of mimicry of mental process. We will have man-made computers that are conscious in the same way we are."

9:41 a.m. Caller: "I'm sick of this nonsense called religion." But says people who declare "God doesn't exist" are as arrogant as those who say "God exists."

"I am not certain there is no God," Dawkins replies. "No scientist should say categorically, 'there is no anything.' You have to doubt everything and be open to evidence. There could be a supernatural being -- I bet there is a superhuman being somewhere in the universe."

9:46 a.m. Relays the story of the night P.Z. Myers got expelled from the Minneapolis screening of Expelled, a film about Creationism.

Here's the NY Times version.

9:49 a.m. - Caller: What came before the Big Bang. Also relays a story about a near-death experience by a relative.

"I'm not a physicist so I can't answer the question," he said about the Big Bang. He says whatever came before is a big mystery and it's not going to be helped "by postulating divine intelligence."

9:51 a.m. - Kerri asks if Dawkins believes his convictions will be as strong on the day he dies?

I'm not convinced of anything. I can't say categorically that there is no life after death. It seems implausible. Brains don't survive death and they evolve over millions of years. He says it is implausible to say that when your brain dies, your spirit goes on.

Dawkins is speaking tonight at Northrup Auditorium at the University of Minnesota.

Audio of today's interview will be available shortly.

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The mysterious disappearance of V. Gene Robinson

Posted at 10:22 AM on January 19, 2009 by Bob Collins (7 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

A controversy is brewing over HBO's decision not to air the invocation by Bishop V. Gene Robinson at Sunday's big concert at the Lincoln Memorial. The openly gay bishop called on God to "bless us with anger - at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people," the Boston Globe's religion blog reported.

Media critic Aaron Barnhart says the apparent snub of Robinson appears more widespread than HBO:

Nor did Robinson's picture find its way into NPR's gallery of images from the concert. Admittedly, the news division did not cover the event -- NPR Music did -- but the website certainly is the domain of NPR News. A search of Getty Images, NYTimes.com and WaPo slide shows turned up nothing. In short, I found no visual evidence that an invocation was ever said.

Suddenly, Barack Obama's minister friends aren't news?

Robinson, a supporter of Obama, was given the concert role after criticism mounted against Obama's choice of pastor Rick Warren to give the invocation at the inauguration on Tuesday. The two will never be confused for one another.

A "technical glitch," is reponsible, according to Religious Intelligence, which doesn't appear to buy the explanation:

Concert-goers reported that while Bishop Robinson could be seen on the "Jumbotron" viewer, he could not be heard by the crowd --- estimated at 750,000 by organizers. One person present told ReligiousIntelligence.com that the HBO logo did not appear on the jumbotron until after Bishop Robinson's prayer was concluded --- apparently indicating the prayer as a pre-concert event. Those close to the front of the podium, including a reporter for Christianity Today, reported the sound system was working around the stage --- and privately recorded videos of the invocation were taken, showing that Bishop Robinson did indeed appear that day.

Messages to NPR's ombudsman have not yet been returned. NPR.org, coincidentally, is currently featuring a profile of Rick Warren.

Update: Robinson was on NPR's Talk of the Nation on Monday.

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The church and tough times

Posted at 9:14 PM on December 13, 2008 by Bob Collins (5 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

Do me a favor, will you? When you head to church on Sunday, check to see if there are more people there than usual.

The New York Times has a story that says the bad times are good ... for evangelical churches.

Like evangelical churches around the country, the three churches have enjoyed steady growth over the last decade. But since September, pastors nationwide say they have seen such a burst of new interest that they find themselves contending with powerful conflicting emotions -- deep empathy and quiet excitement -- as they re-encounter an old piece of religious lore:

Bad times are good for evangelical churches.

"It's a wonderful time, a great evangelistic opportunity for us," said the Rev. A. R. Bernard, founder and senior pastor of the Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn, New York's largest evangelical congregation, where regulars are arriving earlier to get a seat. "When people are shaken to the core, it can open doors."

The story says attendance is also up at some of the mainstream churches, but nowhere near what it is at evangelical churches. Some studies suggest evangelical churches always find an upsurge during recessions.

The "why" of that is puzzling.

Msgr. Thomas McSweeney, who writes columns for Catholic publications and appears on MSNBC as a religion consultant, said the growth is fed by evangelicals' flexibility: "Their tradition allows them to do things from the pulpit we don't do -- like 'Hey! I need somebody to take Mrs. McSweeney to the doctor on Tuesday,' or 'We need volunteers at the soup kitchen tomorrow.' "

I come from a mainstream religion. We never had a problem hollering for help for the Mrs. McSweeneys. The trouble with my old-time church was that there was nobody but Mrs. McSweeneys in the pews, which were mostly empty. The church in which my wife and I were married some 26 years ago, closed its doors for good a few weeks ago.

Church is one of the few places I can still go, and have people tell me it's nice to see me, because it's "good to see young people in the church." I'm 54.

We'll see if things are different tomorrow.

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Spraycan religion

Posted at 3:30 PM on October 22, 2008 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

The assaults on the Washington delegation to Congress overnight all looked pretty much like that on the garage of Sen. Norm Coleman.

The reference to Psalm 2 is perplexing:

1 Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? 2 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, 3 Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. 4 He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the LORD shall have them in derision. 5 Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. 6 Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. 7 I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee. 8 Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. 9 Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. 10 Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth. 11 Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling. 12 Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.

Fox 9 quotes the University of St. Thomas' Theology Department:

... the university says there are many parts that can easily be taken out of context. The most likely in this instance would be the rulers, or politicians in the vandalism cases, trying to go above their "pay grade," so to speak.

There are few examples of the passage being quoted in other quasi-political ways.

A cartoonist in the Christian Post referred to it in an editorial cartoon to prove that God believes marriage is between one man and one woman. Another site . But various discussions online about the Psalm focus on whether it refers to Jesus, or King David.

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Should pastors be allowed to preach politics?

Posted at 12:22 PM on September 29, 2008 by Bob Collins (22 Comments)
Filed under: Politics, Religion

Some preachers around the country spent yesterday endorsing John McCain for president, apparently in violation of IRS rules that do not allow non-profit organizations who have a tax-exempt status from actively engaging in campaigning for an individual candidate.

Pastor Gus Booth of Warroad Community Church was one of them. So was George Marin at Grace Christian Church in Albert Lea.

"I'd like to see that the IRS is not in the business of prohibiting religious speech, that's for sure," Booth told me this afternoon. "They have made a statute that is in competition with the Constitution. I feel like the Constitution has given me a First Amendment right to say what I want to say and I don't lose that when I step behind my pulpit."Listen

This isn't the first time Booth has challenged the law. In May he delivered a sermon about the Democratic candidates for president.

"If you are a Christian, you cannot support Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama....Both Hillary and Barack favor the shedding of innocent blood (abortion) and the legalization of the abomination of homosexual marriage."

Has he heard anything from the IRS yet?

"That's the only question I cannot answer, because of my attorney's advice," Booth said.

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director, called Booth's actions last May "a flagrant violation of federal tax law."

"Booth is free to endorse anyone he wants to as a private citizen," Lynn said in a press release announcing the filing of a complaint with the IRS. "But when he is standing in his tax-exempt pulpit as the top official of a tax-exempt religious organization, he must lay partisanship aside. The IRS needs to look into this apparent violation of federal tax law."

"I don't have to pay for free speech. We're a non-profit organization and we're by nature not even taxable. So we don't even have to be a 501-C3 to not pay taxes. We're not taxable. We're non profit so you can't tax us," Booth says.

He won't be preaching politics again anytime soon. "I've already done it twice, so I doubt that I'm going to preach again this election year on it simply because when you preach on the same subject over and over again, you're not being a good pastor... it's irrelevant after a few Sundays." Listen

Booth says his congregation has been supportive of his challenge to the law. But he also acknowledges he hasn't seen any cars in the church's parking lot sporting Barack Obama bumper stickers.

Religious scholar Martin Marty, sees no legitimate debate about religious freedom in the "Pulpit Freedom Sunday" protest...

No doubt myriad violations occur in pulpits and church bulletins, but most of them tend to be casual or subtle or only semi-substantial. The Pulpit Freedom Sunday of the Alliance Defense Fund does not want to be casual or subtle or less than substantially substantial. The preachers it backs and propels want to make this a law-defying act of "freedom." We can be sure that opponents of this generally right-wing political cause will be provoked into counter-testing, asking the IRS and the feds to insist on support of law. Is this a real "pulpit freedom" issue? Some want to compare it to Martin Luther King and conscientious objectors and any who appeal to a "higher law." But King and the objectors know that they are vulnerable to arrest or penalties, and have often paid them by sitting in jails. The Pulpit Freedom advocates appeal to no "higher law;" they simply want the freedom to break existing laws.

A call to Americans United for the Separation of Church and State has not been returned.

Booth is appearing appeared on the second hour of NPR's Talk of the Nation.

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The Jesus factor

Posted at 8:12 PM on August 28, 2008 by Bob Collins (14 Comments)
Filed under: Religion, The political conventions

Away from the glitter and goofy hats of a political convention, you can usually catch a whiff of the things that keep Democrat insiders up at night.

In Denver on Thursday, the "faith caucus" held its first meeting ever, an attempt to bridge a divide within the party over abortion, and prepare for a Republican strategy that markets faith as a GOP virtue.

"It's hard for people to talk about religion," Party Chair Howard Dean told a three-quarters-empty Denver Convention Center ballroom. "We've been people of faith for a long time. We just don't like to talk about it. It matters how you live your values, not what you say on Sunday."

That shot at Republicans was the easy part. When Dean left, the rift within the party over abortion was more apparent.

"I'm a pro-life Democrat and I like to think I'm in a party that has room for me," said Rev. Dr. Barbara Williams-Skinner, former director of the Congressional Black Caucus. "Nobody should be left outside a party that's called a Democratic Party. I'm proud to stand beside a pro-choice Democrat, but I want you to hear what I have to say. It's saying 'my values matter and you have room for my values that my Bible tells me about.'"

The issue has driven millions of Catholics into the arms of the Republican Party. "The Catholic vote is an important vote," said Dr. Douglas Kmiec of Pepperdine University, a Catholic legal scholar who wrote a Slate Magazine article claiming Obama is a natural choice for Catholics. "It's 25% of the electorate. Catholics have voted for the winning candidate in the last nine presidential elections. They know how to pick a winner."

Kmiec told a Catholic newspaper earlier this week that Barack Obama's position on abortion is "morally unacceptable." But he's still voting for him. "I, too, am pro-life, but that label ... has to be a commitment to all of life, from the moment of conception to the moment of death," he said. His church responded by denying him communion.

Wooing conservative Catholics to the Democratic Party may be a tough sell. It's no coincidence that Obama picked a Catholic -- Joe Biden -- as a running mate. Biden, however, supports legalized abortion in defiance of his church.

An even tougher sell for a party trying to learn how to talk religion is evangelical Christians, a solid Republican voting bloc.

"Younger evangelicals are morally conservative but more socially compassionate than previous generations of evangelicals," according to Cameron Strang, of Relevant Magazine. "They're very pro-life, but this generation has a more holistic view of what it means -- the defense of innocent lives. Not just the unborn, but it includes genocide, unnecessary war, slavery, and abortion."

Strang identified some common ground on the issue of abortion -- adoption reform. "If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, what happens to all of these unwanted children?" he asked. "It costs $25,000 for an adoption. It costs $500 for an abortion. That's messed up."

But Strang this week showed why it will be difficult for Democrats to stand side-by-side with evangelicals. He was to give the benediction at the convention on Monday, but pulled out, citing fears his bridge-building gesture would be misinterpreted.

Little known to outsiders, the Strang name carries weight with evangelicals, especially in the fast-growing charismatic and Pentecostal branches, according to the Chicago Tribune.

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Theology vs. trivia

Posted at 9:29 AM on April 17, 2008 by Bob Collins (8 Comments)
Filed under: Religion

Pope Benedict XVI is celebrating mass in Washington today and a nation that walks a fine line between Saturday night and Sunday morning, as the Rev. Jimmy Buffet once said, is struggling when it comes to discussions about the visit.

Last night, for example, the pontiff told bishops, the Boston Globe said, "to do better communicating with the public, connecting with priests, and educating children; he also exhorted them to demonstrate unfettered support for immigrants. And he offered an analysis of the role of religion in America, suggesting that the freedom here has at the same time allowed faith to flourish but also can 'subtly reduce religious belief to a lowest common denominator.'"

OK, let's talk about that.

"The pontiff doesn't like to drink wine with dinner, and at dinner last night he was seen with a can of orange Fanta, and some Cracker Jack was also seen," the commentator on CNN noted during live coverage of the mass this morning. That was a few minutes after noted theologian Mike Piazza, who conducted services for years behind the plate at Shea Stadium, described the differences between Pope Benedict and his predecessors.

So what are viewers left with? Here's a review of the coverage so far from Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times:

Cable news channels and the networks interrupted their regular programming to provide live coverage of the pope at the White House as he read his speech precisely and evenly in a slight German accent. He graciously shook hands with cabinet members and elected officials (Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, kissed his ring). The pope, who turned 81 on Wednesday, smiled winningly when the crowd broke out in a ragged version of "Happy Birthday." He looked pleased -- he smiled and stretched out his arms to well-wishers -- when the soprano Kathleen Battle led a more expert rendition of the song. But it provided, at best, a fleeting look at the pope. TV commentators tried to compensate, extolling the excitement of the crowds and the geniality of the guest of honor. One anchor declared that the pope looked "thoroughly overjoyed."

The challenge in covering a papal visit, then, is fairly enormous: don't make it an infomercial for the Vatican, explore the issues -- good and bad -- that have challenged the church and its followers, and don't come off looking anti-Catholic.

Consider this letter today in the Star Tribune:

The Star Tribune covers it by running an Associated Press article with 35 column inches of written copy (plus some pictures). The first 28 of those 35 inches deal with sexual abuse by Catholic clergy over the past half-century. Only the last 7 inches refer to other aspects of the pope's visit.

Some Americans feel the media are anti-Catholic. Where in the world might they ever get such an idea?

Peter Steinfels, a religion columnist for the Times and professor at Fordham University provided one of the more insightful comments on the visit last night on... of all places ... The Daily Show (Video here):

"I think he'll probably deliver messages that are complicated and deserve analysis and parsing, but he'll leave the country and we'll never pay any attention again to those complicated messages," he said

So maybe the visit is about us. Steinfels says we only discuss religion when it intersects with the culture wars. "We have a hard time dealing with genuine, religious, profound messages, and I think that this pope really does think that religion is not a set of propositions that you believe in some fundamental orientation toward the universe which he thinks is love, and we've got to find a political thing on page 82 when he writes an encyclical."

If you'd like to discuss the papal visit, be sure to listen to Midday today at 11.

(Photo: Mandal Ngan, AFP/Getty Images)

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