The Religion Beat

The Bordeaux Statement & the G8: The Voice of Ecumenical Strength - By Lindsay Ann Cox

2011-07-07T08:32:00.007-04:00

Last June during the G8/G20 meetings, here in Toronto, everyone heard a ton about the preparations, the immense cost, the protestors, the reactions of the Toronto Police and, of course, a bit about what was actually discussed and decided upon (if anything). What people likely didn’t hear about this event was that just previous to it there was a pre-summit of the world’s religious leaders in Winnipeg at the Interfaith Leaders Summit. Held at the University of Winnipeg and hosted with the help of the Canadian Council of Churches, the Mennonite Church of Canada and the Salvation Army, this interfaith gathering insisted that the world’s leaders address the fact that, as of 2010, progress on achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were sadly lacking. Not only were (and are) the MDGs nowhere near completion, the G8 and G20 countries are severely behind even their own commitments. Winnipeg’s 2010 Interfaith Leaders Summit was necessary to insist that the progress of completing the MDGs must get back on track. The world’s religious leaders came together to speak with one, global voice about an issue the G8 and G20 countries needed to hear. (For more information on this event, please visit www.faithchallengeg8.com.)

This past May, just before the G8 Summit in Deauville, France, another religious summit happened in Bordeaux, France. Organized by His Eminence Metropolitan Emmanuel, representing the Ecumenical Patriarch at the European Union, Council of Churches of France and the Conference of European Churches, the Bordeaux Religious Leaders Summit was held May 23-24. During this time the participants engaged in a program of events, which encouraged them to dialogue contextually about the issues facing the G8/G20 world leaders in 2011. As in Winnipeg, the purpose of this focused engagement was to be able to present the G8 leaders in Deauville (and in November to the G20 leaders in Cannes) with a statement on an important issue religious people and their leaders felt should be immediately addressed in by geo-political heads of state. The result is the Bordeaux Statement, which is available on the website of the Canadian Council of Churches (CCC) in both English and French. A press release written by Religions for Peace is also available.

In discussing the development of the Bordeaux Statement, the interfaith engagement leading to its creation, and the need for the statement to be addressed by the G8 and G20 leaders, The Rev. Dr. Karen Hamilton, the CCC’s General Secretary of the CCC and an International Co-President of Religions for Peace, insisted that, “Collaboration among stakeholders is growing, but more is needed. Religious leaders are urging the G8 and G20 countries to strengthen and expand partnerships to include other countries and groups, including religious communities. This expanded cooperation should supplement rather than undermine UN processes.” Indeed.

Though it took three paragraphs to get here, this is what I want to talk about: “expanded cooperation” in the context of the public sphere for the sake of human life and dignity therein. Religious leaders, like world leaders, now know that working for change necessitates expanded cooperation. Whether through ecumenical councils, religious and denominational bureaucracies, grassroots initiatives, social networking sites, global conferences or any other means of cooperation, change will come when we work together in an issues-based format. What I mean is this: each geo-political leader comes to the G8/G20 with the values of his or her own context (personal, cultural, national, professional, etc.), which is then used to engage other world leaders on significant subjects which cannot be solved domestically, e.g., war, peace, famine, climate change and environmental issues, the financial markets, etc. Similarly, each religious leader comes to the Religious Leaders Summit representing their context, but instead of a nationalistic priority, theirs is religious. Interfaith gatherings have often been understood as one extreme or another: watered-down, fuzzy-love endeavours whether little is done or decided upon OR unproductive, defensive encounters arranged to argue things which cannot be proven, i.e., the specificities of belief, divine attributes, etc. Neither of these options is useful in a global context where so much needs to be done and people need to come together to make a difference.

I have spent my adult life studying and working in ecumenical environments on grassroots, national and international levels in the area of communications. The product of this decade of experience has been to realize, along with so many of my ecumenical colleagues, that people of diverse beliefs and backgrounds can and will work together productively in order to address a specific issue. The motivation for each person to engage in the process is different, but that is exactly the unintended grace of this situation: people from diverse contexts and belief systems coming together to try and solve an issue they all feel strongly about and, during the process of cooperating with one another, they not only learn from one another’s differences but the treatment of the issue itself is encouraged and enhanced by these diverse contributions. It is this kind of thinking which has led to gatherings like Winnipeg’s Interfaith Leaders Summit, the Bordeaux Religious Leaders Summit and those which preceded and will follow them. This is the voice of ecumenical strength.

A friend of mine, also involved in ecumenical ministry, often reminds me that, “God created imperative diversity.” What she means is that the diversity apparent in creation itself shows us, as creatures, that God purposed diversity and our faithful ability to negotiate it. Expanded cooperation means people working together to transcend all dividing lines for the sake of the care of creation. Acknowledging our diverse, however broken, reality and seeking to make changes with others, for others, is – I think – the essence of religion in the public sphere. With that said, I encourage you to read the Bordeaux Statement and think about ways in which you can activate and appreciate your role in the ‘expanded cooperation’ of honouring and caring for creation. Let's work together for productive and positive change!

Beyond Unrefined Frustrations, by Simon Appolloni

2011-06-27T09:27:00.004-04:00

Check out this graffiti . I spotted it not long ago on the side of a building flanking a seldom-used railroad track in Brampton while walking my dog. The quality is iffy – as I used my old cell phone – so I’ll repeat what it says:

Adore [with the o in the shape of a heart]

Religion is War.

Know God. No Peace.

No God. Know Peace.

The intent and message is clear: obviously someone is not keen on religion and sees its presence as a hindrance to achieving peace. But this is not what initially fascinated me – I mean, So what else is new?! Many are displeased with religion. What I found interesting is that someone – in Brampton no less – took the time and paint to create this, risking – admittedly the risk is low here – to make his/her point. Moreover, what is not evident by this photo is its size. If I were to stand in front of it, it would be a good foot taller.

I’m intrigued by its presence. On the one hand, I see youth (OK, a presumption, but a fair one I’d say) taking a political stance. The message is political and confrontational, two things we don’t see too often around this neck of the woods; such engagement excites me. On the other hand, the message makes broad assumptions and characterizes religion too superficially. Was it one person? Was it a daughter (I’m guessing female by the presence of a heart) of an immigrant Sikh? Christian? Hindu? Muslim? tired of following too rigid rules at home and using this as an avenue to get-back-at-parents? Or was it a disgruntled atheist trying to get the last word? The graffiti can’t be that old judging by the sheen of its paint (again not evident in this photo) as well as the lack of growth in front of it.

Ooooh, I so want to meet this person and buy her/him a coffee so that I can ask all sorts of questions. Maybe it’s a group? OK, coffee all around.

I’d ask them all what experiences led them to make such conclusions and make such a poignant statement about it. I’d want to know whether it was their experience with/of one particular religion or many religions that brought them to see things like this.

I’d also ask them if they have read David Loy’s “Religion of the Market,” a clever paper that suggests that as traditional religions wane in their authority in Western society, the Market system has replaced them as the most authoritative system to tell us who we are, why we are here, and how the world ‘ought to’ function. Its value system, also attractive, is consumerism. Its theology is economics, and its god, the Market!

I’d then want to know if they considered the $147 billion dollars spent in one year alone by the advertising industry in order to proselytize the religion’s mission as following under their understanding of ‘religion as war’? After all, in just the U.S., people will spend – and at Christmas time alone – half a trillion dollars and create five million tons of extra waste. Is this not a war on the poor, those who manufacture our goods in sweat shop conditions? And a war on the gullible, those millions in credit card debt purgatory? Not to mention a war on ecosystems, as there has never existed and never will exist a place ‘out there’ where we can safely dump our waste?

And then I’d ask them whether it was the God they were thinking of or the god of the Market who, according to the UN Development Report in 1996, arranged things so that the world’s 358 billionaires are wealthier than the combined annual income of countries with 45 percent of the world’s people, while a quarter million children die of malnutrition or infection every week, and while hundreds of millions more survive in limbo of hunger and deteriorating health?

Don’t get me wrong, I applaud these youth reaching out of their skins to deliberate and act upon issues bigger than the zits on their noses, and more passionate than the urges in their loins. But I also want them to engage in deeper and more reflective deliberations so that they can differentiate between sophisticated and simplistic statements. We need dialogue on such issues and I just hope that the societal avenues open to creating such dialogue remain amenable to fostering debate.

However, I’m not confident: our political institution does not seem up to it these days, and the economic system never was open to debate. The religious system seems more preoccupied with pronatalist and fundamental issues to discuss such things. Those of the religious realm who are open to debate find themselves, as Loy shows, increasingly less influential to take on the powerful Market religion. That leaves us with the educational system.

Can the education system from high schools to universities help youth to engage in deeper and more reflective deliberations? Or will youth simply turn to the vastness of the Internet or the convenience of railway corridors and graffiti to express unrefined frustrations?

David R. Loy. “The Religion of the Market.” In Worldviews, Religion, and the Environment: A Global Anthology, edited by Richard C. Foltz. Belmont, California: Thomson Wadsworth, 2003. 66-75.

Link roundup: 5 June - 13 June

2011-06-05T15:33:00.002-04:00

Indian police break up a guru's fast.
The Guardian publishes a philosophical critique of the new atheism.
Do alcoholics need god? The fight over a 'higher power' splits AA groups in Toronto.
The bible is one of the most routinely misquoted books in America.
How do Satanists view death?
Archaeologists discover a 300-year-old church in St. Augustine, Florida.
How will religion affect the evangelical vote in the next election?
A new book argues that General MacArthur sought to replace communism with religion in post-war Japan.
A U.S. appeals court lifts the ban on Christian prayer at a Texas high school graduation.
Thailand moves to ban tourists from getting Buddhist tattoos while on vacation in the country.
The NY Times looks at the closing of Catholic schools in many large American cities.
A Muslim weightlifter starts a new debate about proper clothing when practicing the sport.
A new letter from 1919 shows Hitler's first stance on Jewish removal.
A new study suggests that most Americans disagree with Church teachings on abortion and homosexuality.
The Dalai Lama considers himself a Marxist.

Radical Hospitality in the Public Sphere - By Lindsay Ann Cox

2011-06-04T11:26:00.011-04:00

* This blog entry is written in conjunction with Ms. Ana Kelsey-Powell - friend and inspiration! *

An Introduction to 'Alternative Ways'

There are only a couple relatively clear career paths for people interested in religion: become clergy or an academic. But sometimes those journeys are sidetracked or undesirable, for whatever reasons, and one must find alternative ways to live out their religion / faith in the public sphere. Options can include working for a NGO (charity, relief agency, etc.) or in religious bureaucracy (denominational organization, ecumenical council, religious publishing house, etc.) and others… perhaps less well known and seemingly less obvious. Today I am interested in writing about those ‘alternative ways’ because it is there where my good friend Ana is following a newly created path: radical hospitality in the form of nonprofit restaurants. She is not the first, I know, to want to explore the viability of these new kinds of eating establishments, but she is one of the few who explains her motivation in specifically religious terms as the praxis of biblical hospitality.

This is where Ana, however, should speak for herself, which she has, in an article she recently wrote and gave me permission to use in this context. Her voice is clear and true with a faithful and ethical purpose based in the biblical texts.

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Regardless of religious belief or affiliation, most people consider hospitality—the giving of oneself freely—to be a worthwhile virtue. Showing hospitality to friends and family is all but unconscious. However, showing hospitality to the stranger (gér) is far more difficult. Though the Hebrew Bible contains “no less than 36 commands to love the stranger” (Taylor, 37), a reasonable hesitation exists in an uncertain world. Opening a table in theory is vastly different from doing so in practice. Yet hospitality is a recurring biblical theme and cannot easily be dismissed. When the commands of the Hebrew Bible are considered in concert with Jesus’ message in the Gospels and the Epistles of the Early Church, an unmistakable mandate for hospitality emerges.

The Old Testament

Abraham in Genesis 18

All visitors were welcomed whole-heartedly as a matter of form. While not plainly written, it is clear that Abraham’s actions are an extravagant gift for his visitors. Inhospitality was, and is, a taboo among desert peoples, particularly in Bedouin enclaves. Sharing table or providing food, while only part of the hospitality requirement, is an important one and occurs in almost every biblical account. Yet the significance of hospitality in some biblical narratives is all but lost in a contemporary context.

Lot in Genesis 19

Lot invites strangers at the city gate to his home. In fact, Lot does more than invite, he “urged them strongly,” insisting they come with him. It is interesting to note that Lot seems to be the only person in Sodom to offer hospitality; a serious violation of the community ethic.

The Book of Job

All indications are that Job was a consummate host, was “blameless and upright” and abided by the holiness code and the laws of sacrifice (Job 1:1). He refused to curse God or claim sins not his own. Job’s sin is not inhospitality and his suffering is not self-inflicted; a fact found later in the book. However, the fact that inhospitality could be considered one of the few sins egregious enough to warrant continuous punishment, indicates the cultural veneration of hospitality.

The New Testament

Commensality - “the rules of tabling and eating as miniature models for the rules of association and socialization” - is practiced, even if unconsciously, by all people, every day (Crossan 68). Jesus was hyper-conscious of who was at table with him and practiced what Crossan calls “open commensality”; a deliberate disregard for table taboos (Crossan 66)… Jesus’ juxtaposition of himself as stranger/guest, along with his consistent socialization with unsuitable table companions, is the very heart of his message. It is rarely a matter of either-or but of both-and. Jesus is illustrating the insupportable dichotomy inherent to such cultural divisions.

Parable of the Banquet in Matthew 22 and Luke 14

Innocuous to the modern reader, those who received the story understood the revolutionary nature of the man’s actions. One cannot control who comes in off the street; there was sure to be an unholy mix of rich and poor, male and female, slave and free, clean and unclean. Jesus is further delegitimizing the commensality taboos of the culture, by word as well as deed.

Feeding of the 5000 in Matthew 14:13-21, Mark 6:30-44, Luke 9:10-17 & John 6:1-13

So significant was this miracle, that all four authors deemed it worthy of inclusion. Moreover, this story functions in the Gospel of John in much the same way the Last Supper does in the other three (Synoptic Gospels). From five loaves and two fish (consistent across all four gospels), Jesus managed to feed the entire crowd. This was the penultimate gesture of egalitarian hospitality. There was no knowing who was in the crowd (Matthew is the only Gospel to mention women and children, in addition to the 5,000 men), yet Jesus more than provides.

1 Corinthians 11

Paul is critical of the community because of the habit of wealthier members, those with presumed leisure, to arrive at feasts early and eat the bulk of the food. This was the antithesis of Paul’s understanding of community. It violated not only the law of hospitality but also the new sect’s culture of food. The point of the meal (the early church’s representation of the Eucharist) was not that everyone would leave full, but that everyone would leave having had something. Community - the spirit of hospitality - was the focus. Paul’s condemnation of the community’s abuse of the meal is a final sign of the biblical, née cultural, primacy of hospitality.

The Counter-Intuitive Conclusion

The practice of radical hospitality is seldom seen today. It is with surprise, and not a small amount of head shaking that society acknowledges those who open their homes to strangers in need. It is counter-intuitive in modern-day culture. Fear of the stranger, of injury, has “isolated people from those outside their circle of comfort” (Winzenburg 78). Yet, for those who take the scriptural text seriously (not to be confused with literally), the call for hospitality must be heeded. It is with this philosophy that many restaurants are beginning to use a model that integrates hospitality with dignity (ex: Soul Kitchen in NJ, Potter’s House in Washington, D.C. or St. Louis Bread Company in MO; please see below for more information).

Theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether calls hospitality “a work of justice-making, expressing love across human differences that have long been sources of injustice and oppression” (Ruether 39). Creating community around food is a tangible manifestation of our human nature. Creating community around the sanctity of hospitality, inclusion and dignity, is a tangible incarnation of the divine.

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Studies have shown that – for whatever reason – when you ask people to pay what they think something should be worth, they tend to pay more than what would have been charged. Something inside people seems to, for the most part, respond to the opportunity to decide for themselves what something is worth and do so generously. Perhaps it’s the very ability to make the decision instead of having the price forced upon them; perhaps it is the idea that when the motivation to provide a service and or product is not-for-profit people want to reward such an altruistic initiative. For Ana, it is the reason that she moved away from her previous career path to go back to school and attend a two-year culinary program in order train as a chef. In acquiring her chef’s certification and after an internship and the positions necessary to familiarize herself with her new industry, it is her hope to open her own nonprofit restaurant. To do so will be, for her, the way she would like to live out her faith in the public sphere. Living out her biblically based understanding of radical hospitality as an ethic of just love will be how she responds to her sense of the divine: creating community around the belief that there should be enough food for all and that all should be included with dignity.

Further Information on NonProfit Restaurants

Panera Cafe, Clayton, MO

"Pay What You Want" - Spring 2010

VIA HUFFINGTON POST

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/18/nonprofit-panera-restaura_n_580316.html

VIA MSNBC

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37213165/ns/business-consumer_news/

VIA COLUMBUS DISPATCH (= success!)

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/business/stories/2010/06/27/panera-to-open-more-nonprofit-restaurants.html?sid=101

Inspiration for Panera via One World Cafe, Salt Lake City

Denise Cerreta, 2003

http://www.oneworldeverybodyeats.com/saltlakecity.html

One World Movement - UPDATE ARTICLE

Published in Success Magazine 2011

http://www.successmagazine.com/a-progressive-model/PARAMS/article/1286/channel/22

Nonprofit Restaurant Business Plan, Specifically for the Training & Employment for Mentally Ill Persons, St Patrick's Centre, St Louis, MO

http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/business-plans/Business-Plans-Volume-01/Restaurant-Nonprofit.html

Natural Soul Good NonProfit Cafe, LA

http://ordernaturalsoulfoodla.com/food-delivery-TW/Natural-Soul-Food-Non-Profit-Cafe-Los-Angeles.2643.r?QueryStringValue=bb15kHzuQU8p7ywWGfH7Uw==

Covenant Cafe & Cafe Reconcile, New Orleans

Training & Employment for Youth at Risk & Economic Recovery Post-Katrina

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4200/is_20060828/ai_n16694917/

Works Cited

Crossan, John Dominic. Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography. San Francisco, CA: HarperOne, 1994. Print.

The New Interpreter’s Study Bible, New Revised Standard Version. Ed. Walter J. Harrison. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2003. Print

Ruether, Rosemary Radford. “Just Hospitality: God’s Welcome in a World of Difference.” Christian Century 126.16 (2009): 39. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 25 Oct. 2010.

Taylor, Barbara Brown. “Guest Appearance.” Christian Century 122.19 (2005): 37. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 25 Oct. 2010.

Winzenburg, Stephen. “Whatever Happened to Hospitality?” Christianity Today 44.6 (2000): 78. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 25 Oct. 2010.

Link roundup: 29 May - 31 May

2011-05-29T07:40:00.002-04:00

The Washington Post chronicles a Mormon church for singles.
A new piece from Stanley Fish in the New York Times, which considers the two faces of Judaism in American public discourse.
Thew New York Times also considers Oprah's theology of suffering.
A Philadelphia Imam helps his congregants fight back against crime.
An attempt by Veteran Affairs to stop a Christian prayer on Memorial Day has been blocked by the courts.
Got some spare cash? Consider buying the Crystal Cathedral.
The bible will become a Mark Burnett television series.
A church in Ottawa is planning a gasoline giveaway.
Malta, which is mostly Catholic, votes to allows divorce.
How is finance like religion?
A surprising group shows up to counter-protest the Westboro Baptist Church on Memorial Day.

'Eco'-Link roundup

2011-05-27T07:29:00.005-04:00

Thanks to the marvelous work of Nicholas Dion, you’ve seen religion in the news, but have you seen religion AND ecology in the news?

Due to the industrious work of the Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale University - which gathers emails sent out by UNEP, the United Nations Environment Program - news on religion and ecology is but a mere mouse click away (for an archival inventory of such articles visit FORE). Here are a few to whet your whistle:

April 18, 2011 - "EPA Launches Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships Initiative/EPA’s coordination with White House effort will support environmental education and healthier families." Visit Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships

April 13, 2011 - "Hindu Perspectives on the Environment: Interview with Pankaj Jain:" Paradise Parking Lot. Progressive Radio Network. To listen to this podcast, visit: Paradise Parking Lot

April 9, 2011 - "Green Passover: Taking Responsibility for People and Planet," by Rabbi Edward C. Bernstein. The Huffington Post. For full story, visit: Judaism and the Environment

April 2, 2011 - "Tibetan Glaciers Melting, Dalai Lama Claims." The Huffington Post: NEW DELHI -- The Dalai Lama said Saturday that India should be seriously concerned about the melting of glaciers in the Tibetan plateau as millions of Indians use water that comes from there. For full story, visit: Tibetan Glaciers Melting

March 1, 2011 - "Movement to save the Yamuna gains momentum," by Brij Khandelwal, Indian News Post: A movement launched by the ascetics and Sri Krishna devotees of the Braj Mandal to save the Yamuna river from pollution is now gaining momentum. For full story, visit: Ascetics to save the Yamuna river from pollution

February 20, 2011 - "Hindus back Catholic Bishops on Climate Change policy protecting world’s poor." Press Release, Merinews: Hindus have commended the Global Climate Change policy statement of United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) which says, “Policies addressing global climate change should enhance rather than diminish the economic situation of people in poverty”. For full story, visit: Hindus back Catholic Bishops

Link roundup: 20 May - 27 May

2011-05-20T19:37:00.002-04:00

In case you haven't heard, the Rapture begins tonight. Get your playlists ready!
If you have some spare time tomorrow evening, be sure to attend a Rapture party.
Turns out the same pastor who has predicted this apocalypse has done so before... and been wrong.
According to the US government and the CDC, the apocalypse is more likely to come in zombie form.
In other news, Romans are disappointed with a new statue of Pope John Paul II.
The head of the IMF's arrest this week is dashing the hopes of Jewish communities on both sides of the Atlantic.
A former boxer now fights for reproductive rights in the Filipino congress.
A Catholic church in Florida intends to pray for bin Laden on Sunday.
Is Apple a religion?
The Huffington Post has a piece about the wave of anti-Sharia sentiment sweeping US state legislatures.

Well... the Rapture didn't happen.
The Pope speaks to and blesses astronauts at the ISS.
A Saudi woman is campaigning for the right to drive.
Leonard Nimoy speaks about his Jewish roots.
The Pope has closed a monastery after unusual practices are discovered.
Is atheism a religion?
A psychologist argues that religion is not delusional.
Oprah owes her success to god.

Truth is the easy part- what kind of reconciliation?

2011-05-10T11:44:00.002-04:00

Dale Turner’s recent post on FEDCAN blog, “Aboriginal Relations in Canada: The Importance of Political Reconciliation” asks the question: What is the meaning of reconciliation? Turner suggests that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is about both the healing of estranged relationships as well as “an expression of Indigenous nationhood” and as such, it is political.

Why does Turner think this? According to Turner, section 35 (1) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (which reads: “The existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of Canada are hereby recognized and affirmed”) affirms individual rights, but only within Crown sovereignty. Meaning, Aboriginal laws, customs, and practices have to be “articulated in the language of the common law, as opposed to Aboriginal peoples looking to their spiritual practices and philosophical systems of though as logical sources of their rights” (Turner 2011). For Turner then, the concern for the TRC lies not in whether or not is a good idea to have the TRC, but the kind of reconciliation happening- one that seems to ignore the political dimension of this form of reconciliation. If reconciliation includes self-government, then the TRC needs to address constitutional and political problems for actually reaching this type of reconciliation. While Turner doesn’t want the TRC to turn into a reassessment of s. 35 (1), he does suggest that the Commissioners need to pay more attention to what Aboriginal people are saying about the past, and see that the vision for healing is an expression of Indigenous nationhood, and therefore political.

Turner is making an excellent point here- what *is* the model for the TRC? The TRC website seems to suggest there are many communities events in which survivors (direct experience or children of survivors) are able to tell their stories and discuss their experiences in residential schools. These statements are meant to provide an outlet for First Nations to express their experiences, but they are also taken in order to create a historical record or the residential school system. The TRC will also create a report including recommendations to the Government of Canada in regards to residential school history, purpose, operation, effect and consequences (intergenerational included) and the impact of the ongoing legacy of the schools.

While the TRC website seems to suggest that involvement with First Nations is paramount in the TRCs mandate, I understand what Turner is suggesting and it’s a valid point- isn’t all of this reconciliation sort of dancing around a much larger issue- land claims and treaty rights? Turner defines for us using the Oxford English Dictionary- 1. The action of restoring estrange people or parties to friendship; the result of this; the fact of being reconciled. 2. The action or an act of bringing a thing or things to agreement, concord, or harmony; the fact of being made consistent or compatible. I can understand that the TRC wasn’t created to directly deal with these sorts of issues, the mandate seems to put the first possible definition of “reconciliation” into action- reconciling estranged parties. But *how*? This seems to be the more pressing question. While I can’t argue against the inherent value of the telling of stories and the airing of grievances I can’t help but wonder about the actual practical outcomes of the TRC. Treaties and land claims are certainly the elephant in the room when it comes to First Nations rights and treatment. It will be very interesting to see what the government plans on doing after the TRC finishes. I suspect some of the “what happens next” may well be based upon the recommendations of the commission itself. Of course this kind of situation only reminds of the previous attempt at suggestions for improvement for First Nations. In 1996 the Royal Commission released a report that provided a detailed summary of the history of treatment of First Nations in Canada, as well as suggestions to renew relations between the government and First Nations. So, not to be too cynical here, but it seems to me the TRC report might end up in a similar situation- dying a few months after birth. Of course, I try to remain optimistic, and I suppose the answer to this will not be answered for some time, but I appreciate Turner’s reminder than no matter what the venue, politics is at play.

Read Turner’s article here: http://blog.fedcan.ca/2011/05/03/aboriginal-relations-in-canada-the-importance-of-political-reconciliation/#more-1483

Link roundup: 10 May - 19 May

2011-05-10T08:39:00.004-04:00

Quebec is becoming a leading producer of green (as in ecologically sound) communion wine.
Want to be a rock star? Go to Christian rock camp.
A California college offers a major in secularism.
A Jewish newspaper apologises for removing Hilary Clinton from a photograph.
Mitt Romney must be serious about his presidential big - he's now courting religious conservatives.
One of the Sudanese 'lost boys' is heading back home after having completed seminary in the US.
A progressive Christian group rejects a gay rights ad that uses the church setting.
In case you missed the news, the world will end on 21 May.
Is Vladimir Putin the new Paul?
Al Jazeera looks at how the government of Bahrain has persecuted its Shi'a minority.
According to a new book, half of the New Testament is forged.
A new cross-cultural study in evolutionary biology suggests that religion is part of human nature.
A piece looks at the portrayal of Norse mythology in the new movie 'Thor'.
A new bill in the US proposes that the State department make international freedom of religion rights a priority.
A group of Turkish creationists are touring France to denounce Darwin.
In a new interview published Monday, renowned physicist Stephen Hawking calls the notion of an afterlife 'a fairy-tale for those afraid of the dark'.
A proposed ban on circumcision in San Francisco will be voted on by city council in November.

The Federal Election, Godtalk and One’s Conscience - By Lindsay Ann Cox

2011-04-30T20:06:00.005-04:00

Introduction: Talking About All the Wrong Things

One of the things I love about this blog and about my area of scholarship in general is that we not only engage but revel in discussing and debating ‘all the wrong things.’ As a child growing up in a rather traditional English family not only was I meant to ‘restrict my comments to the weather or keep quiet’ when feeling dodgy, but also to ‘never speak about politics or religion in polite company.’ It is safe to say that, as a grown adult, if I have something negative to express I could care less about the subject of meteorology and my personality near forbids me to keep important issues of conveyance to myself. Furthermore, I have devoted my life to the interaction of religion and politics (in that order) and I, like others who contribute to and read this blog, am enthralled by the study and progression of such important matters as ‘religion in the public sphere.’ And so it is with this small preface that I am using my opportunity to blog to say something about the upcoming federal election. So here we go…

Scare Tactics as Undemocratic

As you might guess from the above subtitle, I am repulsed by any effort to scare people into voting for them. Every time I see that advert by the Conservatives with the woman sitting on her couch, bill in hand and coffee and calculator nearby, with the ominous voice-over insisting upon a Con-vote (pun intended) by talking to me like an idiot who cannot sort her own monthly bills, I have to change the channel or walk away. I am so enraged with scare tactics because they are an insult to my, and our, intelligence. Indeed, to believe such ridiculousness I must have had my eyes and ears closed for a good long time and refused to inform myself of the larger issues at play in this election. Am I – are we – so feeble and ignorant that we need to be threatened with fear mongering?

In the current issue of Now Magazine (April 28–May 4, 2011), there is an article entitled, “Harper’s Insult to our Body Politic,” by George Elliot Clarke. In this article, in the very first line, Mr. Clarke, himself, brings his own kind of Godtalk into our current political situation by stating that, “[i]n politics, sometimes nothing succeeds like deceit. Thus, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is again warning Canadians that if voters don’t give him a majority government on May 2, they can expect an undemocratic conclusion to his administration. That is, an unholy trinity of ‘socialists and separatists’ will oust him from office” (16). An unholy trinity of all that is non-Con? To Mr. Harper I respond: you’ve lead our country into the shit, been held in contempt of parliament, spent millions of our tax dollars on ad campaigns for programs that are over and lied to us time and again. And yet we should ignore all of this and vote strategically out of fear of a - here comes the word - coalition? Oh dear! God forbid people vote according to their conscience and not submit to the politics of fear?!

The Supposed Imperative of Strategic Voting

I wish that the politics of fear being levied against Canadians was solely a Con-M.O., but alas most of the other parties are ‘gettin’ down and dirty’ with the rest of them. What’s more, however, is that those positioned on the left side of this election are now going on about strategic voting in similar tones of fear. In the same issue of Now, Michael Hollett, in his article “Yes We Can – Take Back Canada,” betrays any sense of supposed journalistic objectivity when he writes that now is the “time for timid strategic vote peddlers and progressives to get behind the one party of renewal and vision – the NDP. This election, the wasted votes are for the Liberals and the Greens” (17). Mr. Hollett even goes so far as to insist that in order to beat out the Conservatives, all left-leaning voters need to get behind “the only truly progressive party, the New Democrats” (17). Really?! Is that kind of hyperbole useful in such a context: ‘only and truly’? Just because the media refuses to cover and include the Green Party does that mean its progressive platform and the party itself has ceased to exist?

Ms. Alice Klein, who has been a Now fav of mine for awhile, starts her article, “Don’t Waste NDP Surge Opportunity,” seemingly well, writing that the “strategic vote, from the point of view of defeating the Conservatives, does not favour the NDP, the Liberals or the Bloc or Greens. It varies on a riding-by-riding basis… [and so, i]n most cases, choosing the candidate you like best is perfect” (24). Finally, someone who thinks I might be able to inform myself and choose the person whom I feel represents my position best! Alas, no, for she continues on to say that, “[i]f you are an NDPer or Green swap your vote at pairvote.ca and keep the Cons at bay by voting for Liberal” (24). Ms. Klein even continues on by accusing those who do not relent and vote strategically of wearing “ideological blinders” that need to be removed so we can “embrace cooperation to create the Canada we communally envision” (24). So, now, if I don’t vote strategically for the Liberals I am uncooperative in a communal vision of Canada?!

Some of you reading this might be trying to guess the party for which I will be voting on Monday or perhaps it is already clear. I don’t know. I can tell you that I don’t like the queues on election day and so I voted over a week ago with a special ballot and so I write this knowing my contribution to our democracy. But the point of my little article is not to outline my affiliation, justify it and try and convince you to vote the same. Nor is my purpose to plug Now Magazine; I cite it only because it is a free source of news and political opinion and something I know lots of younger (and older) voters read on a weekly basis. My goal in writing this diatribe of sorts is to encourage people to vote as their conscience sees fit. I write to urge people to inform themselves and make decisions on what they believe is best not only for themselves but for our country, society and culture as a whole. I impel you to engage our democracy authentically.

Conclusion: The Translation Endeavour in the Public Sphere

In my spare time I volunteer as a pastoral care worker / assistant chaplain at a long-term care facility for elderly people in downtown Toronto. In my visits last week, some of the residents were inclined to discuss the upcoming federal election and, as you can likely imagine, some were more able to grasp the issues than others. One man, whose ability to communicate is severely limited at this point in his long life, could not contribute much to our conversation except to ask me one important question: “what would the world be if we didn’t follow our conscience?” In his soft, old and wise eyes was an understanding well beyond my years, but his question stayed with me all day and all week and it inspired me write this blog.

When we talk about ‘religion in the public sphere’ it is so very important to understand that for each faith to which a person may confess (including atheism and agnosticism), there is an opportunity to translate those faith claims into the public sphere. This process of translating religious beliefs and language thereof into the more generally accessible language of democracy and human rights is our right as citizens of a free and multicultural society, like Canada. Our democracy craves the honest engagement of citizens who follow their consciences in all their diversity; this is our Canadian mosaic.

So, on Monday May 2, please do what some people around the world are crying out for: uphold your democratic right and VOTE! But, please, ignore the fear mongers and strategists and vote according to your conscience!

* To read the articles I cited in this blog, please check out the issue of Now Magazine currently available or read it online at http://www.nowtoronto.com/.

Link roundup: 26 April - 7 May

2011-04-26T09:26:00.008-04:00

Scientists scan the brains of Buddhist monks.
CNN looks at the international reaction to the French ban on Muslim headdress.
New atheist billboards battle over judgement day.
The Washington Post has a series of articles that use the upcoming royal wedding to reflect on the place of religion in secular society.
Atheists seek chaplain roles in the US military.
Religious freedom is officially out in Egypt.
Religious groups fight over the possibility of budget cuts in the US.
John Paul II is beatified.
The Washington Post asks why Americans hate atheists.
The Peruvian prime minister calls the death of bin Laden a miracle from John Paul II.
A century-old church in Nova Scotia is being converted into a winery.
A Boston University undergrad and student of Stephen Prothero's makes no apologies for celebrating bin Laden's death. This piece is presumably a response to Prothero's editorial condemning such celebrations.
In related news, a majority of Americans polled agree than bin Laden is in hell.
Stephen Prothero turns to the power of the image in religions to wade into the debate surrounding pictures of bin Laden's death.
A new study suggests that 1 in 5 scientists who identify as atheists also identify as 'spiritual'.

Link roundup: 14 April - 21 April

2011-04-14T08:06:00.005-04:00

Kate Middleton had an emergency confirmation in a secret ceremony at an Anglican church ahead of her upcoming wedding.
Should we be praying for lower gas prices? One Georgia pastor thinks so.
A new letter reveals a rare glimpse at Abraham Lincoln's own brand of theism.
A first woman has been fined under France's new veil laws.
A television archaeologist claims to have found a nail used during the crucifixion. See also here.
'Soul Surfer', a movie based on a true story about a young woman who becomes a surfing star even after losing an arm in a shark attack, opens this weekend after long debates about how to represent the character's faith. The Huffington Post also reports.
Where have all the German gone? They sure aren't in the Catholic churches...
An Italian publisher pulls a book that (mistakenly) implied that the Catholic church supported condom use.
An interesting round-up of burqa laws from around Europe, in light of France's new law.
The religion of 'O'... (Oprah, that is).
The Washington Post interviews US Muslims who wear the full veil, to hear their experiences.
Some Christian organisations in Canada are complaining that advanced poling for the upcoming federal election is falling on Easter weekend.
Two words: Islamic MTV?
The Chronicle of Higher Education examines the Bible.
The Canada network looks at the link between the church of England and the royal line.
According to a Cambridge scholar, the Last Supper was on a Wednesday.
A church in Ohio will be raffling off a house during Easter service, in an attempt to attract more members.
The UK newspaper The Mirror asks if Madonna has ditched Kabbalah for Opus Dei.
Why will the Trump presidential bid fail? His lack of appeal to the religious base.
According to Reuters, 98% of sexually active Catholic women admit to using a form of birth control banned by the church.
'Fox News North' kicks off its first hour of programming by rebroadcasting cartoons of Muhammad.
The Pope argues that technology cannot replace god.
Homosexual students often have to fight for their rights at religious colleges.
The Chronicle of Higher Education once again takes on the question of New Atheism.
A new billboard in Montreal urges drivers to say their prayers.
A new book exposes the gay priest scene in Rome.
Al-Jazeera looks at the rise of Islamist politics in post-revolutionary Tunisia.

Link roundup: 30 March - 11 April

2011-03-30T06:43:00.009-04:00

A Catholic school board in the Toronto area has forbidden the creation of a gay-straight alliance in one of its high schools.
The legal battle over the right to pray before town council meetings continues in Quebec.
Jordan is fighting to reappropriate Christian relics taken from its land.
A Texas judge suggests Christian reading as a way to reform criminals.
The question of 'ministerial employees' is going before the courts in Michigan.
Stanley Fish looks at the European ruling to allow crosses in public schools.
A Muslim beauty pageant contestant is facing threats in the US.
Bron Taylor brings together dark green religion and Stephen Colbert.
NY Quakers contemplate cutting ties with their 225-year old seminary.
Islamic radicals turn to democracy in Egypt, but not in a good way.
Iowa works to revive the Religious Right.
The NY Times profiles an atheist group at a Florida high school.
Protests precede French President Sarkozy's planned debates on the role of Islam in a secular society.
The US courts have ruled that tax credits for donations to scholarship programs to faith-based private schools are constitutional. See the same story at the NY Times here.
Roger Cohen of the NY Times offers an op-ed piece on the Florida Qur'an burnings and the reaction to it.
A new book by an evangelical pastor in the US is stirring up controversy by questioning the traditional evangelical belief in heaven and hell.
Nationalism and the religio-politics of cricket.
A man who is subsisting on beer alone for Lent hits day 31.
The US ambassador to Malta is criticised for spending too much time on religion.
A look at 'The Borgias', a Showtime series about Pope Alexander VI's infamous reign in the late 15th century.
The French veil ban goes into effect in France.

Religion is going extinct! Save yourselves!

2011-03-27T16:37:00.002-04:00

This happens all the time: newspapers, magazines, and even scholarly work that claim the disappearance of religion is in our future. Freud hoped that with the rise of science religion would fall to the wayside; if we had science what higher law would we need? As much as I think Freud is pure genius, he was kind of wrong there. But he hasn’t been the only one. The BBC News ran the following headline last week: “Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study says.” I rolled my eyes, but decided that if religion was going to become extinct then I might have to make the change from “religious studies scholar” to “paleontologist” or something, so I read the article.

According to the researchers (who, I must tell you, are from the Department of Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics, the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the Department of Physics in various American universities) people who claim “no religious affiliation constitute the fastest growing religious minority in many countries throughout the world” (Abrams, Yaple, and Weiner, 1). Abrams et al. use a model of competition, suggesting that growth of religious non-affiliation occurs because social groups with more members are more attractive to join. “The model predicts that for societies in which the perceived utility of not adhering is greater than the utility of adhering, religion will be driven toward extinction” (1). Simply put, if your friends aren’t doing it, then neither will you. Fair enough, a bit cliché, but I can buy into peer pressure (or lack thereof) and want to be in a group that has members.

But let’s dig deeper. What I find fascinating about this study is the sheer ridiculousness of it. I’m sorry Abrams et al., but a purely mathematical formula to declare the disappearance (excuse me, extinction) of religion? Seriously? I don’t know much about Engineering and Math as a discipline, but this just seems to me to be poor research.

What countries are we talking about? It won’t come as a surprise when I list them: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland. Ah, I thought to myself when I read this - 'Western' countries. I don’t find this surprising, nor do I find it surprising that the United States didn’t hit up in the top countries considering its lack of separation of church and state. Yes, within those nine countries, there’s a lack of attendance to religious institutions (generally, though some countries have actually reported a rise in theism), but stats are showing that generally these places have a strong belief in God or at least some kind of “spirit or life force.” So, what are we talking about here? Just whether someone uses the title of “Christian”, “Jewish”, or “Muslim?”

Which leads me to my next beef - can we please define our terms? What does “non-affiliation” actually mean? What about “religion” (I heard you all groan, but seriously - how are we defining religion here?) When someone says they aren’t religious but they insist on getting married in a church, baptizing their first born children, and want their funeral to be held on the side of a mountain with a minister, I start to question who is checking the boxes off for “non-affiliation.” Sure, these are probably people who aren’t attending church or synagogue on the weekends, but do they believe in a god (see statement in previous paragraph)? How do we account for this? Are the authors merely suggesting that non-affiliation will rise (i.e., more people will check that box in a census, but does this mean religion itself will go extinct)? COME ON. This is just bad scholarly work as far as I’m concerned. I’m quite honestly disappointed in this work - a mathematical formal to *predict* the movement of a sociological phenomenon?

The “conclusion” of the paper really drives me wild: “For decades, authors have commented on the surprisingly rapid decline of organized religion in many regions of the world. The work we have presented does not exclude previous models, but provides a new framework for the understanding of different models of human behavior in majority/minority social systems in which groups compete for members” (4). Authors? Which authors? What kinds of comments? What about the enormous amount of scholarly debate about this - the whole phenomenon of secularization produces massive amounts of scholarship each year and these people couldn’t even drum up one footnote? If I was marking this paper there would be pink ink all over it (yes pink, I choose to mark with pink, or green, but lately it has been pink). Just the fact that such a scholarly debate exists and it is not even taken into consideration in this “formula” makes me cringe when I read this article. There are far too many variables, in my opinion, to just say, well, the math equation we used says people like big groups, the groups are on the decline, and so eventually they’ll just disappear. People have said this before and y’know what? Religion hasn’t disappeared. It may have changed, but it’s far from over, it’s far from gone. The fact that the countries listed all reside in the western hemisphere should be enough for the researchers to know they can’t make a blanket statement for all countries. I shake my head at this article and Cornell University for allowing it to be published.

Interested in the article? Read it yourself- enjoy the formulas!

Where Might Shintoism Come into Play with regard to Sustainability in Japan? (by Simon Appolloni)

2011-03-23T09:29:00.005-04:00

I recently came across an article and short documentary (just 11 minutes, see link below) by Anne McDonald on the ‘ama’ women of Japan. These women are the legendary free divers – in this case from the very small Hegura Island off the coast of Japan – who have been practicing sustainable fishing for hundreds of years. How have they been able to carry out this feat for such a long time?

According to McDonald, they set limits, enforce rules, and have long and lengthy discussions on whether or not to incorporate new tools or technology – whether to use diving goggles or wet suits, for instance. The decision not to allow oxygen tanks took five decades of communal discussion! In short, a communal reflective environment characterizes the ama fishing practices.

Sadly, the abalone shell fish population, a regular catch for these women, is declining. The sustainable lifestyle of the ama is in peril. The depletion of ocean resources is coming not only from commercial over fishing, as the author suggests: the changing ocean environment of warmer waters and pollution are also to blame.

It’s a small island, only five kilometers long. The island has only 2 cars; residents walk or ride bikes. Islanders live close to nature and demonstrate a sacred relationship with the sea.

If you are curious, as am I, what the ingredients to fostering a sustainable and self-limiting lifestyle are, McDonald suggests that the seven Shinto shrines – a lot considering the size of the island – and the many alters may have something to do with it. This is plausible. Shintoism, after all, recognizes the divine within nature.

One cannot help but recognize, however, the ecological devastation of many other parts of Japan where Shintoism is also practiced. The impact of technological and economic change is well known. As author Rosemarie Bernard underlines, there are few green spaces in crowded Japanese urban centers and these are mainly the groves that surround Shinto shrines. Yet, the simple preservation of those shrine groves is a difficult task to achieve given “the pressures to make spatial concessions to further urban growth.” So how is Shintoism contributing to sustainable living on Hegura Island?

Two things Bernard mentions might shed light on this. She says we ought to understand Shinto beliefs as an amalgam of values that are entrenched in Japanese folk culture in general, which find expression in areas beyond religion, from sociopolitical organization to aesthetics. This leads to her second point, that nature in Japanese culture is valued not as “wild nature,” but instead as “humanized” or “culturalized” nature. Hence, there appears an inherent active human dimension to 'sustaining' nature.

If she is correct, then when the ama women and their fellow islanders of Hegura have their ‘long and lengthy discussions on whether or not to incorporate new tools or technology’, they are essentially continuing a Shinto practice. Might this communal reflective environment be the missing ingredient to sustainability that other communities of Japan are missing?

I think it is too simple an answer given the complexities involved in fostering sustainability in Japan, or anywhere for that matter. But it does shed light on what helps make a community sustainable. I think the islanders of Hegura have found the right balance of ingredients to foster sustainability, whatever the precise ingredients and proportions might be. It’s fair to say that Shintoism as a religion seems to be an important ingredient.

*“Japan’s ‘Ama’ Free Divers Keep their Traditions.” Found at http://ourworld.unu.edu/en/japans-ama-free-divers-keep-their-traditions/

*See Rosemarie Bernard’s short introduction on “Shinto and Ecology: Practice and Orientations to Nature” found at http://fore.research.yale.edu/religion/shinto/#end1

Link roundup: 22 March - 28 March

2011-03-22T08:32:00.007-04:00

A team of scientists predicts that religion will soon disappear in nine nations.
Another suggestion that the Japan disaster is a sign of the apocalypse.
A married priest is ordained in Wisconsin.
Sarah Palin visits Israel.
The Pope stays neutral on the allied operation in Libya.
A conservative Protestant pastor talks about the difficulties of finding a job for unmarried men of the cloth.
Pole dancing for Jesus, anyone?
CNN looks at the role of Japan's new religions in the disaster response process.
Evangelicals oppose Obama's childhood obesity program, a study finds.
Another study finds that Catholics are more supportive of gay and lesbian rights than other Christian denominations.
Jacques Berlinerblau compares the Tea Party to the New Atheists and discusses the differences between atheism and secularism.
PETA suggests that we stop using the pronoun 'it' to refer to animals in the bible.
The Huffington Post looks at the rising costs of Jewish religious schooling.
A Montreal cabbie wins his fight against a fine for keeping religious objects in his vehicle.
The makers of South Park launch their Broadway musical entitled 'The Book of Mormon'.
Young religious adults are more likely to be obese by middle age, according to a new study.
The Vatican launches a new series of public dialogue sessions with atheists.
The US Army has begun training chaplains for its new policy regarding homosexuals. The Huffington Post also reports.
Some Christians are complaining about the 'sports worship' that takes place during March Madness.
John Witte writes about the display of crosses in American public spaces.

Interview with James Crossley

2011-03-18T09:33:00.006-04:00

James G. Crossley is Senior Lecturer of New Testament studies at the University of Sheffield. He presently edits the BibleWorld series for Equinox Publishing, is on the editorial board of the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus. In the past few years he has published a considerable number of books, articles, and chapters about the politics of historical Jesus scholarship. But his 2008 book Jesus in an Age of Terror: Scholarly Projects for a New American Century (Canadian Amazon, American Amazon) made quite a splash in particular and warranted its own review section at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature.

He took some time to chat about the political subtexts of Jesus’ Judaism in recent scholarship, the pervasive denigration of Judaism in New Testament studies, and how the “we all have presuppositions” argument is a cop-out.

Faculty Web Site

Chris Zeichmann: What is Jesus in an Age of Terror about?

James G. Crossley: The book is about the ways in which dominant cultural, political or ideological (or whatever term you prefer) positions influence contemporary scholarship. In particular, it involves the ways in which influential Anglo-American attitudes towards and policies involving the Middle East, including Israel, over the past 40 or so years have affected scholarship on the historical Jesus and New Testament/Christian origins. And so there were chapters on the ways in which the Mediterranean and “the Arab world” are viewed in New Testament scholarship in terms of Orientalism “hideously emboldened” (to use Derek Gregory’s phrase) or on how the repeated, often duplicitous and regularly patronising emphasis on the Jewishness of Jesus is part of a broader discourse on the role of Jews and Judaism in relation to post-1967 Israel. The approach is based on an understanding of the ways in which the mainstream media and intellectuals, consciously or unconsciously, frame debates in favour of elite political opinion, hence I also included a chapter on biblioblogging as a way of making greater connections between the mainstream media and biblical scholarship.

CZ: For whatever reason, much ideology critique in New Testament comes off as rather toothless in its analysis. This certainly cannot be said of Jesus in an Age of Terror. What led you to write such a thoroughgoing examination of these issues?

JGC: Several reasons. First, I was about to start work on a broad, “big picture” historical explanation of Christian origins (in the tradition of, among others, Fernand Braudel). However, as I read certain related New Testament scholarship more and more it confirmed what I had suspected for some time, namely that there were some problematic categories which were a little too reminiscent of those critiqued by Edward Said some 30 plus years ago. I thus shifted the chronological focus to the present. Second, I had also been working on, or at least thinking about, issues surrounding the scholarly rhetoric of Jesus’ Jewishness and its relationship with contemporary debates about Judaism and Israel. Alongside this I had been long unimpressed by too many scholars emphasising how Jewish their Jesus in one sentence, before telling us how he was different from (their construction of) Judaism in the next. Third, blogging was developing throughout the past decade and I was seeing all sorts of political trends I had long been reading about in the mainstream media. Fourth, a lot of work was being done on scholarship in context but this was typically past scholarship and I didn’t think enough attention was being paid to the present. The more high profile scholarship on the present would typically function by telling us that the proponents of the Cynic-like hypothesis were liberal Americans/Californians (/or variants), as if that disproves that and proves some other position, or the stunningly banal observation in New Testament studies, and one too often treated and repeated as a profound philosophical insight, that ‘we all have presuppositions’ (no shit!). What I long felt needed to be done was to really show how political trends were affecting the present in the similar ways to that the scholarship that was increasingly shedding light on the links between historical and cultural context and the scholarship of generations gone by (esp. Nazi scholarship). You’re right, much of this sort of critique of the present is toothless, too vague and/or obscure. I felt it had to be done explicitly.

I was thinking about these things seemingly independently but I suspect a few things happened around 2005 which made me see how they could all be connected. In January 2005 I arrived at Sheffield which had a long history of politically interesting scholarship. I was particularly interested in the work of Keith Whitelam and Philip Davies long before I arrived and talking with them almost certainly indirectly helped me focus my ideas into a more coherent project. Bill Arnal’s Symbolic Jesus also came out around this time. Bill’s book convinced me not only that this sort of work could now be done but also that I may even have parroted some things about the Jewishness of Jesus which Bill nicely critiqued. I was also starting to go to Society of Biblical Literature annual meetings more regularly, where I met with similar-minded people. But I also saw how interest-groups were functioning and how ideology was keeping groups apart who were studying the same topic and that got me thinking on the cultural influences on scholarship.

Another key reason was the ways in which Middle Eastern political issues were increasingly higher profile by this time, most obviously the Iraq war and its aftermath. Some of the arguments used in favour of that war (as with Afghanistan) were really quite deceitful and, to my surprise, these were being repeated, alongside the dubious stereotyping of Muslims and Arabs (often indistinguishable in certain arguments), in contexts around the universities (as well as plenty of opposition too, I hasten to add).

And so on.

CZ: Jesus in an Age of Terror’s subtitle references the controversial think tank “Project for a New American Century,” yet you’re from Scotland (if I remember correctly) and teach in England. Why the interest in world politics?

JGC: North-west of England, not Scotland. Tut tut!

The kinds of politics discussed in Jesus in an Age of Terror are the sort of politics that have long interested me in some form or other, certainly since I was a teenager. And if you have any interest in national or global politics in the UK (and presumably many other places) then you can’t avoid the cultural and political influence of America. Moreover, every British government as I was growing up (effectively Thatcher onward) have gone out of their way to please the US and stress the so-called “special relationship” between the UK and the US. I can’t imagine high level American politicians really think like this, other than at the superficial level, and I always enjoy hearing stories of other countries professing a “special relationship” with the US. Blair really pushed for the close link with American foreign policy and, again, this was impossible to miss, especially after September 11.

CZ: A recurring theme throughout your work is the role political contexts play in the formulation of ostensibly “religious” discourse. Jesus in an Age of Terror focuses extensively on the role of the Six-Day War of 1967 in reframing Christian conceptions of Judaism and in Why Christianity Happened you argue that the historical Jesus’ interpretation of Torah should be understood as a reaction to Herodian exploitation of the peasantry. How does this relate to your interest in “secular” New Testament scholarship?

JGC: I’m getting ambivalent the term “secular,” largely for reasons that I think it can be used to put the blame on “religion” for political or economic problems and let people like Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens make arguments barely more advanced than “religion causes all wars,” etc. But part of me wants to keep “secular” because I like the idea of explaining humanity in the ways in which many historians, social scientists, etc. do. Theological explanation remains a, perhaps the, dominant explanatory discourse in our field, whether it is explanations of Christian origins or histories of scholarship. There is far much more to history than this and the theological dominance needs to be challenged in our field. Also, I think I implicitly want to challenge the not uncommon assumption that theology is somehow a more profound explanation of humanity in contrast to supposedly cold and barren materialistic explanations. I would prefer to think of theology in a different but still fairly traditional way, e.g. theological responses as human responses to circumstances (think of works from E. P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class to Pascal Boyer’s Religion Explained). By viewing theology as the most profound explanation would be news to plenty of people working in the humanities (though it would be nice if some people working in the humanities would recognise that “religion” continues to play an important part in understanding humanity).

CZ: You say little about the role scholarship plays in “the real world,” except that academics tend to have inflated self-conceptions of their importance. I feel the need to give this hilarious quotation: “To the best of my knowledge, [N. T.] Wright’s book on the historical Jesus has not yet had any impact on the Middle-East peace process or indeed any other conflict.” (179) Does the academic study of the New Testament have any implications beyond those who are already interested (professionally or otherwise) in it?

JGC: The Wright reference is bizarre and always worth repeating to show I wasn’t simply being catty: “If what I write could help in any way towards the establishment of justice and peace there, or indeed anywhere else, I would be deeply grateful.”

Your question is difficult to answer. I think intellectually the critical study of the New Testament is, in general terms, as important or unimportant as any other area of the humanities and social sciences. If big questions are your thing, then it does with the origins of Christianity, the historical Jesus, Paul and so on. We can add to this the reception of the New Testament (and the Bible as a whole) and its widespread use in a range of cultural contexts throughout history. We might even go further think of the ways in which the texts have shaped the way we think and act, for good or ill. Taking the rhetoric of the humanities on its own terms (and I stress this), then it is difficult to see how a comprehensive humanities faculty or university can do without the critical study of the Bible, even if not all students will undertake such study. So, when phrased in those terms, the academic study of the New Testament does have implications beyond those interested.

But I don’t think that is the gist of your question. The implications are difficult to measure, other than (say) some high-profile book suddenly changing the way we all think. Certainly, plenty of New Testament scholarship has bought into trends (unconsciously or otherwise) which I think are dangerous (those involving patronizing constructions of Jewish identity and the war on terror being obvious examples). The problem is that a lot of this is about perpetuating, maintaining, buying into etc ideology that has a greater underlying power. This is why it is important to challenge these ideological positions on our own turf where we have been trained and so on, just as scholars with specific expertise can challenge where it is most effective for them to do so. And of course, we can all be influencing other disciplines, as well as being influenced, as we do this.

CZ: You imply throughout your writings that the study of the New Testament often lacks ethical grounding. What would “proper” New Testament scholarship look like to you?

JGC: I think there does need to be more ethical awareness of the things we do beyond repeating “we all have presuppositions” (or the like) before just going ahead and behaving as we would have done anyway. I don’t have too many suggestions how to do this beyond challenging the morally dubious (no bad thing perhaps) but I think mainstream scholarship, e.g. historical Jesus scholarship, debates on Pauline theology, as well anything else, from reception history to literary criticism, need to take seriously ideological criticisms. It is unfortunate that the patronising rhetoric of Jewishness and relationship to the Other remains strong in (say) historical Jesus scholarship, despite the critiques made over the past ten years which are too often bypassed. But if what I write could help in any way towards the establishment of justice and peace in historical Jesus studies, or indeed anywhere else in New Testament scholarship, I would be deeply grateful.

CZ: You recently co-edited Jesus Beyond Nationalism (2009), which is a collection of essays about the complicity of New Testament scholarship in various nation-building projects. Can you tell us about what led to this book’s publication?

JGC: It is part of a larger research project (or, technically, a couple of research projects) on Jesus and cultural complexity headed by Halvor Moxnes at the University of Oslo. In this particular instance Halvor got a group of people with interests in how questions relating to nationalism have affected the ways in which Jesus has been understood. Ward Blanton and I have been involved closely with the ongoing Oslo projects ever since 2007 (when the papers were first given) and for me (and I suspect Ward too) it has been a particularly encouraging place to develop ideas not so typical in mainstream British New Testament studies. More publications are to follow as part of this project (including a recent edition of Biblical Interpretation [2010; vol. 18, pages 309–416], including a forthcoming edited volume most obviously related to Jesus beyond Nationalism, on the construction of “holy land,” “home land” and (largely) Jesus.

CZ: Your friend Michael Bird describes you as an agnostic with no particular religious convictions and a former electrician. This seems like an unlikely background for a rather prolific New Testament scholar.

JGC: Probably. It is no bad thing having people from more unconventional backgrounds. I can see, in part, how my background is reflected in my writing and research, and probably rhetoric too. But – bloody hell! – we all have presuppositions...

CZ: Finally, what projects are up next for you?

JGC: A number of things. The main thing is that I’ve finished working on a follow up to Jesus in an Age of Terror, focusing on the ways in which neoliberalism, multiculturalism, and liberal rhetoric have had an impact on scholarly and popular understandings of the historical Jesus. I’m also doing similar but smaller scale things with Pauline scholarship, particularly the rise of the New Perspective on Paul from the late 1970s onwards.

I’m working on broader projects too, such as a joint project with Journalism Studies on the understanding and construction of “religion,” as well as use of the Bible, in the British media. This project has been great, particularly working with people with new ideas (new to me, anyway). This project has masses of potential and could well turn into a longer term project

I’m doing various bits and pieces on reception history of the Bible and biblical texts in party politics and popular culture and I have vague plans about a bigger project in that direction but I’m working them out in my head at the moment.

I continue to do things on the Law and the Gospels and linguistic stuff.

Crosspost: 'Pissing on Walls and Feminine German Men'

2011-03-13T07:15:00.000-04:00

Our friends over at the Bulletin for the Study of Religion have recently published a piece by one of our contributors about... well... you'll have to see the video. Check it out here!

Link roundup: 13 March - 21 March

2011-03-13T07:12:00.008-04:00

The Pope gets a Facebook page.
In the wake of recent congressional hearings, some US Muslims are sick of defending themselves.
CNN profiles a priest who caters to bikers, and looks at the efforts to preserve the Jefferson bible.
An Iowa man has decided to live on beer alone for Lent.
CNN asks how Japan's religions confront tragedy.
Not only is the Pope getting a Facebook page, but so in John Paul II.
The governor of Tokyo has apologised for suggesting that last week's earthquake and tsunami were divine retribution for Japanese egoism.
A Malaysian Christian lawyer has been banned from practicing in the country's Shariah courts.
The art show 'Spirituality', which stirred up debate a few months ago by featuring ants crawling on a crucifix, has finally begun.
The state of California is being sued after it required a Sikh inmate to cut his beard.
The White House has a new plan to foster interfaith understanding, and it begins with universities.
Canada.com profiles 'The Borgias', an upcoming television series about Pope Alexander VI.
Has Israel become the new Iowa for Republican presidential hopefuls?
A House committee will vote today on reaffirming 'In God We Trust' as the national motto and on encouraging its display on government buildings.
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that it is legal for Italian schools to hang crucifixes.
Is Celine Dion the Messiah? Boy, I sure hope not...
Surveys shows that two-thirds of Britons are not religious.

David Sloan Wilson’s Evolutionary Theory of Religion: Summary and Critique

2011-03-07T09:22:00.000-05:00

Dr. David Sloan Wilson

This post only became possible thanks to a fortuitous occurrence. Back on 15 November, evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson, a SUNY Distinguished Professor in the anthropology and biology departments at Binghampton University in New York State, gave the Wiegand Memorial Lecture at the University of Toronto. I wasn’t able to attend at the time. I can’t remember why, but I do remember being disappointed about missing him. I had seen him speak twice before back in August at the International Association for the History of Religions (IAHR) World Congress in Toronto, where he gave one of the plenary lectures and participated in a discussion with Lee Kirkpatrick (which was really more about Kirkpatrick’s work in attachment theory than it was Wilson’s). Still, I missed my third chance to see him when he came to Toronto in November.

Until Saturday, that is. As I was flipping channels in the early evening, I stumbled upon TVO’s ‘Big Ideas’, a show which frequently re-broadcasts lectures given at Ontario universities. Sure enough, I caught Wilson’s talk just as it was beginning. If you weren’t as fortunate as I was, you can watch the entire lecture on the University of Toronto’s website. What I offer now are some brief comments on Wilson’s address.

Wilson is most interested in religion as a belief system that works to enhance group cohesion (note the ghost of Durkheim in the background here). Titled ‘Religion and Other Meaning Systems’, Wilson's lecture obviously does not place religion in a category of its own, but instead groups it together with political beliefs, ethics, and other such ideologies under the general category of ‘meaning systems’. Religious beliefs are most often of the counterfactual variety. That is, as Freud noted in 1927, religion asks us to believe things that are not empirically verifiable. The evolutionary question thus becomes, “Why do we humans believe things that are not true?” Importantly, this is not a question limited to the study of religion. We believe things that are not empirically verifiable all the time. Wilson points to Ayn Rand’s philosophy and to capitalist beliefs as example; ‘fundamentalism’ is not an exclusively religious phenomenon. Emphatically, then, religion is not a ‘special case’ but fits into a category than encompasses a wide range of human meaning systems.

As mentioned above, Darwin comes into the picture when we ask why some people believe counterfactual ideas while other do not. But, from an evolutionary perspective, Wilson is much less concerned with the beliefs themselves than he is with what those beliefs lead us to do. He is thus a functionalist in the purest sense of the term. Natural selection takes place through the actions that beliefs motivate, not through the beliefs themselves. So the truth content of a belief becomes irrelevant. Freud was thus asking the wrong question when he criticised religion as illusion. Rationality is not the gold standard of evolutionary theory. Freud was, however, in the right when he suggested that religion may never disappear insofar as ethical action, for a number of individuals, would never be possible without religious motivations. The focus is on the action, not the belief itself.

Wilson goes on to highlight once again the importance of meaning systems, which are highly symbolic in nature, in motivating human action. Again, he turns to Durkheim: social life is created primarily through common meaning systems, religious and otherwise. The truth of these systems is irrelevant. Or, rather, the mind has evolved to deal with both true and untrue belief systems. While there are times when truth is crucially important – when hunting, I really do need to know how far away my prey is – there are other times where beliefs are efficacious regardless of their truth - whether I actually burn in hell when I die or not, the belief itself will suffice to motivate ethical action, for example.

How, then, can we classify religious beliefs from an evolutionary perspective? Wilson demonstrates that there are actually a number of possibilities, each of which has its proponents within the scientific community. Religious beliefs may be adaptive insofar as they promote the survival of the group, as Wilson suggests (1). Conversely, religious beliefs may be good for the individual but bad for the group (2). As Dawkins argues, religious beliefs may be bad for both the group and the individual but may have persisted by virtue of their ‘parasitic’ effect, spreading because they are ‘catchy’ or ‘infective’ ideas (3) – what exactly makes an idea ‘catchy’ or ‘infective’ in this framework I must admit that I am not clear on. Religious beliefs may have been adaptive in the past (in small-scale societies, for example) and may simply have persisted in their now-outdated function (4). To illustrate this point, Wilson gives the example of human eating habits which, while well adapted to an environment of scarcity result in widespread obesity in a society of plenty (though there is also here a huge cultural component which Wilson does not explicitly acknowledge). Religious beliefs may constitute a ‘spandrel’, as Stephen Jay Gould has called it; they may be essentially functionless by-products of another evolutionary change (5). Or, finally, religious beliefs may be the relatively neutral results of ‘cultural drift’ (6). Here, Wilson emphasises that we must break religion down into its parts, and that different explanations will fit different parts. With his focus on religious beliefs, Wilson is a proponent of the first option – religious beliefs help groups survive by promoting group cohesion.

Now, as a scientist, Wilson emphasises that his ideas must be tested through the scientific method. To do so, he traded in ‘religion’ for ‘religions’. First, he obtained a random sample of religions – he doesn’t mention it in the lecture, but I seem to remember him saying at the IAHR that this literally involved opening the Encyclopedia of Religion at certain points and choosing religious traditions at random. The fact that they were all contained in the Encyclopedia seemed to suffice to assume some kind of ‘family resemblance’ between them. He then went on to study the random religions’ belief structures before asking how these beliefs helped promote group cohesion at specific historical moments and in particular cultural contexts. He emphasises that environment (here, historical period and geographical location, primarily) is a crucial factor to consider. Religions are only adaptive for a specific environment. This same method can be used, he argues, to demonstrate why particular innovations occurred at specific times, as well as why some traits survived and others died out. This is, of course, the ‘natural selection’ element of it all.

Now, there are a number of problems with this whole framework, and I will get to some of them shortly. First, though, let me mention a few factors that I agree with. I appreciate that Wilson offers a scientific approach to religion, one that contradicts the myth of religious ‘specialness’. I have nothing against reductive, functionalist, or materialist theories of religion; none of those are four-letter words in my book. There is something to be said, I think, for the notion that we all share a common brain structure – albeit one which is highly susceptible to influence from cultural factors – and that biological limits condition cultural expressions. In these ways, I actually sympathise with Wilson’s project and am ‘rooting for him’, as it were, to succeed. I also appreciate that Wilson helps us move beyond the question of the truth of religious beliefs which, while perhaps valuable in certain frameworks, needs an alternative. Finally, I appreciate that Wilson offers a scientific alternative to the disproportionately loud voice of the New Atheists, against which Wilson takes a strong stance. In denying empirical evidence that points to the fact that religions do not always function to the detriment of groups and/or individuals, the New Atheists, Wilson argues, demonstrate how atheism is in itself a ‘stealth religion’, that is, a meaning system. Of course, Wilson fails to take the extra step and identify how he too might be influenced by similar biases.

Now, a few objections. First of all, Darwinian theory was formulated to deal with the evolution of biological traits, not cultural ones. Wilson states during the question period that his investigation is founded upon the notion that society is a ‘superorganism’, so Darwin can be applied to societies as well. But why? How can we make the jump from biology to society/culture so easily? I understand that this has been a topic of much debate in evolutionary psychology during the last few decades and that it is one which is now often seen to have been resolved in favour of the superorganism theory. But I’m still not convinced.

My second objection involves the role that Wilson grants scholars of religion, which he seems to view as walking encyclopedias. Just as Darwin organised the data of the natural historians, Wilson wants scholars of religion to provide the historical and cultural data to which he can then apply his evolutionary theory. This is, in my eyes, a terribly arrogant position that completely denies the task of analysis that scholars of religion assign themselves. Scholars of religion do not only describe religion. They explain it as well. I’m not just collecting data; I’m analysing it too. I’d much rather find a way for my analyses and Wilson’s to work together in complementarity than I would efface myself behind someone else's theory. Scientific and sociocultural analyses, both asking different questions, need to work in unison. There is already a growing realisation in the field of evolutionary psychology that scientific explanations must make room for cultural variation. If we can get both social scientists and natural scientists to set their differences aside, then, there is a real possibility for productive dialogue here, I think.

As I mentioned, I’m rooting for this project to succeed, but I still have some theoretical reservations about it at this point, as well as some questions of method, which I haven’t touched upon today – how, for example, does Wilson explain the myriad of ways in which religious beliefs have resulted in quarrels over orthodoxy, holy wars, or other such fragmentations of group cohesion? But I also feel the need to emphasise that the evolutionary approach to religion is still very young; much progress have been made in the last twenty years, even though much may still remain.

A closing recommendation, for those interested in following developments in the field: check out Wilson’s website on ‘evolutionary religious studies’ (http://evolution.binghamton.edu/religion/), in which he gathers sources relevant to his studies. And if you’re in Toronto, come out to hear scholar of religion Matthew Day speak on Friday, 25 March. Though he will likely be speaking on a different topic – his talk is entitled ‘Vagrants, Criminals and Madmen: Medico-Theology and the Early Modern Politics of Naturalism’ – he has published eloquent and insightful critiques of these natural scientific approaches to religion in the past… and you never know how the topic might come up.

Link roundup: 7 March - 12 March

2011-03-07T08:52:00.005-05:00

CNN offers another profile of a Catholic exorcist.
American Muslims protest ahead of 'radicalisation hearings' in the US. Members of Congress disagree with the characterisation of the hearings. The White House similarly looks to reassure American Muslims.
The French ban on the burqa will go in effect at the beginning of next month.
The Catholic Church in Mexico is taking a closer look at its donors, after fears surface that it may be accepting money from drug traffickers.
A NY Times op-ed asks if 'Islam is the problem' in the Middle East.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy's plans for a French history museum stir up debates about religious and cultural identity.
The Pope is scheduled to respond to questions about his faith on television.
The Dalai Lama announces a plan to cede his political role to an elected figure.
The conclusion of a Canadian study on dating: sinners have more fun.
A Buddhist response to the Japanese disaster.

Link roundup: 27 February - 5 March

2011-02-27T08:36:00.008-05:00

After a short hiatus, link roundups now return...

Pagans and Druids in the UK are campaigning for their religion to be recognised in the country's census.
Necmettin Erbakan, the former leader of Turkey's Islamist Welfare Party, has died.
Glenn Beck is apologising for comparing rabbis to Islamist radicals.
A Christian website in the US suggests that its followers 'adopt a terrorist' for prayer.
The Pew Center lists the top 5 religion stories that spilled the most ink in the last year. Four of them involve Islam.
Mike Huckabee defends Obama as a Christian on family values issues.
The Huffington Post offers a piece on religion and politics in Egypt, another on St. Louis Cardinal's star Albert Pujols and evangelical Christianity, and a countdown of South Park's top religion-themed episodes.
Tahrir Square has become Egypt's newest tourist attraction.
The US House of Representatives will soon be holding hearings on the radicalisation of American Muslims.
Are hot dogs the key to interfaith dialogue?
CNN looks at the social construction of the Bible.
Ahead of the next budget, Americans are asked, "What would Jesus cut?"
Need health insurance? Ask your church.
The KJV turns 400.
An outspoken critic of Pakistan's blasphemy law has been murdered.
Students in West Virginia protest the removal of the 10 commandments from the walls of their school.
The Pope confirms in his not book that the Jews did not, in fact, kill Jesus.
The American Supreme Court rules that the Westboro Baptist Church can continue to protest at military funerals.
A group of Rastafarians in a Virginia jail are being transferred to high security in an attempt to get them to cut their hair, which runs against religious beliefs.
Nepal has banned marijuana during a Hindu festival in which it is frequently used.
An Anglican priest in British Columbia has earned his 'PhD in snowboarding' with a thesis that looks at the connection between the sport and spirituality.
An environmental project that aims at protecting the 'sacred turtles of Hanoi' goes on.
Jewish groups are fighting a proposed circumcision ban tabled in San Francisco.
A student athlete has been suspended at Brigham Young University for having pre-marital sex.

Black Swan. Or, What do Psychotic Ballerinas and Religion Have in Common?

2011-02-27T07:05:00.007-05:00

Tonight, in the land of movies, it’s Oscar night. I’m not a movie buff, and I don’t really honestly care all that much about the Oscars (or the Golden Globes, or any other award show for that matter), but I did recently see 'Black Swan', which is coincidentally nominated for various awards at the Oscars. If you haven’t seen the movie I’ll warn you in advance - there might be some spoilers here. Sorry!

You may be wondering, "What the heck do psychotic ballerinas and religion have in common?" As it turns out, quite a bit. 'Black Swan' is Darren Aronofsky’s (director of 'Requiem for a Dream' and 'The Wrestler') latest work. On the surface it’s a movie about a dancer in the New York City ballet, but you don’t have to scratch too hard (pun intended - you’ll get that if you’ve already seen the movie) to find out that it’s also about the physical demands of life as a ballerina, the emotional turmoil of aiming for perfection, psychological breakdown, and much more.

There are several things I found fascinating about this movie but one of them involves the casual display of the ascetic lifestyle Nina (Natalie Portman) is living. The movie opens with the camera showing us how Nina’s body cracks and snaps - her feet are disgustingly beat up, all due to her life as a ballerina. Not only do her feet look like they’ve been through a war, but we get a glimpse of her self discipline with food – we see her try to sound excited about half a pink grapefruit for breakfast, and salivate while she turns down a burger and fries for dinner.

Psychological breakdown and self-discipline come to a head when Nina’s frigid character manages to land the role of “Swan Queen” in the NYC production of Swan Lake.* The director (and Nina herself) has confidence in her ability to play the White Swan (perfect and innocent) but challenges her to access the other side of herself – the Black Swan (sexual and seductive). I won’t get too sidetracked with the fact that the movie cleverly (though obviously) has Nina in light colours for the majority of the film, while Lily (Mila Kunis) appears always in black and dark shades. The id to Nina’s seemingly super-ego character, Lily does what she wants (arriving late to practice, eating hamburgers, having casual sex, chomping on pills, and urging Nina to, shall we say, have a good time) when she wants, and still manages to appear effortlessly beautiful and naturally gifted with her dancing. It seems as if there are extremes in the movie - either black or white, but no middle path (pardon the Buddhist pun, but I think it works here) for the characters, though particularly for Nina.

Nina’s struggle is with both her mind and body – trying to attain perfection in dance while at the same time knowing that to reach this perfect performance she must let herself become the Black Swan. Perhaps a spin in Weberian understanding of otherworldly asceticism, she withdraws from the world into her mind to reach what she considers perfection. The search for perfection ultimately drives her mad and in the end the strange battle she believes she is having with Lily is really a battle with her self. At times it is hard to know what is considered real and what is really only happening in Nina’s mind.

Nina struggles to attain what she herself believes to be the perfect performance of Swan Lake, but to do this she must lose herself completely to the role - mentally and physically. I’ll draw some loose parallels to the struggle to attain perfection in Christianity, which can involve the purity of heart (in order to “perfectly” follow Jesus), and in many instances this can occur through self-discipline, labour, and suffering. I might be able to argue for a parallel here in reference to self-discipline, labour and suffering, but purity of heart might be stretching things a bit far, even for me. In any event - it is quite easy to draw some parallels between Nina’s struggle for perfection in the world of dance and her self-discipline (mentioned above), heavy labour (practicing for hours on end even after everyone else has left the building) and suffering (both physically and mentally). In the end Nina is either so mentally damaged or so disciplined (depending on how you want to view it) that the only way to fully devote herself to the role she is playing is to mirror the story of Swan Lake in her actual life - for the sake of not completely spoiling the movie I’ll leave that for you to discover.

There are many things one could discuss in reference to the psychological breakdown of Nina, and the relationships present within the film, but this too I leave for your discovery - and trust me, there’s a lot to uncover. Freud wrote the book(s) on this one. That said, overall the movie was fairly enjoyable in one of those slightly traumatizing, make-you-think kinds of ways. I suppose I recommend it if you haven’t already seen it, mainly because I’ve been thinking about it since I saw it and I think that’s probably a sign of a good movie.

*I don’t usually like to use the word 'frigid', but it works here on multiple levels.

Meet Me at the Barricades

2011-02-10T09:24:00.000-05:00

I assume that I’m not alone in following the political unrest in Egypt these days. While outcomes are difficult to predict, and there is a tendency to get caught up in the excitement of events, especially when they are taking place so far away and we can watch them with a sense of privileged detachment – here even the supposed space-time compression of globalisation seems to fail us – it does look like this could be a turning point of some kind in the politics of the region. Whether this change will occur for the better or for the worse remains to be seen.

So as I sorted through the news reports and political commentaries on the topic earlier this week, I stumbled on this one video from the Toronto Star’s website. Just over a minute long, it asks a simple question – where is Toronto’s Tahrir Square? If a revolution were to begin in the city, where would it take place? The reporter, Christopher Hume, offers three options.

The first and somewhat obvious suggestion is Yonge-Dundas Square (left). For those of you outside of Toronto, picture a wannabe version of Time Square in New York City – big and open, but littered with stores on its periphery and constantly crowded with people. While Yonge-Dundas Square is routinely used for free concerts, small festivals, and even small protests, Hume decides that it is better suited for looting than revolution.

His second option, Metro Square, is a less obvious choice. It is quickly eliminated as a revolution-worthy place because, quite honestly, most people wouldn’t even know where to find it. Why bother considering Metro Square then? I’m not clear myself, though I suspect it has something to do with the 27-storey glass building filled with municipal offices that overlooks the square.

The final choice, and the intuitive winner, is Nathan Phillips Square (right), just north of Toronto’s business sector and overlooked by City Hall. The site of numerous protests and of many a festival, it is, to quote the video “the only place that has enough significance to make actions meaningful?” Huh. Really? The only place? I certainly don’t think it’s the only place. I’m also unclear as to what we would be revolting against. If the point of revolution is to overthrow the power structure, then we would probably want to go where the power is. Nathan Phillips Square makes sense if we’re trying to overthrow the mayor of Toronto. Xenu knows we would have plenty of reasons to, but the Egyptians are aiming a bit higher than that. Queen’s Park – now that’s where I would go. The seat of the provincial legislature. If you want to send a message to the provincial and/or federal government, go to Queen’s Park.

Spaces function both retrospectively and prospectively. They look back to seize on a meaningful past just as they look forward to define a new future. Maybe we should go about this differently and ask, “Why Tahrir Square?” No doubt it is centrally located. It’s a major transportation hub, so it’s easy to find and get to. It’s also highly accessible, both by virtue of its location on the public transit grid, but also as a busy roundabout. Finally, it is near major Egyptian political and cultural institutions; the Egyptian Museum and the headquarters of the Arab League, for example, are nearby.

Consider the name – ‘Tahrir’ means ‘liberation’. Certainly seems fitting for a revolution. The Square unofficially took on that name after the revolution against British rule in 1919 but was only officially renamed ‘Tahrir’ after the 1952 revolution in which the military overthrew the monarchy. So protestors are seizing on both the history and symbolism of Tahrir to herald the next change in regime.

Let’s try the experiment in Toronto. Who was Nathan Phillips? Based on the paucity of (online, at least) information about him, he seems a less-than-exciting fellow, of the sort who seemed to (and perhaps continue to?) populate the Canadian political scene. Nathan Phillips was mayor of Toronto from 1955 to 1962. A true Ontarian, he grew up in Brockville, studied in Cornwall, and completed law school at Osgoode Hall in Toronto. Significantly, he was the first Jewish mayor of Toronto – so we can at least find a link to Toronto’s much flaunted and self-proclaimed cultural and religious openness. Known as the ‘mayor of the people’, he was particularly popular and is often credited with being the driving force behind the architectural redesign of the city, tearing down old buildings and decrepit neighbourhoods only to rebuild them in a modern style. The new City Hall building that sits in the square? That was him; he chose the design. Overall, Phillips’ tenure as mayor is often identified as a turning point in the history of the city, one it which it turned from its British and Protestant roots to open itself up to the world.

So that’s the problem: Toronto has no such history of revolution to seize upon. The geography of revolution needs instead to be constructed from the ground up. So here’s my contribution: I’ll stay away from Nathan Phillips Square. Unless Facebook tells me otherwise, the barricades are going up at Queen’s Park.

Link roundup: 10 February - 16 February

2011-02-10T08:59:00.006-05:00

A young woman who wears the hijab was fired from her job as an esthetician in a suburb of Toronto. She claims discrimination. The salon claims that her performance was lacking, but that it 'promotes hair'.
The provincial assembly in Quebec has voted to ban the kirpan within its doors. Sikhs are understandably disappointed by the decision.
Meanwhile, a Montreal taxi driver who is contesting a fine for having too many religious items on his dashboard will have to wait a bit longer before a decision is made.
Is the Justin Bieber movie a secret plot to turn the star into a teen evangelist?
The New York Times has an op-ed piece about the Catholic confession app controversy.
Is Obama pandering to the religious in hopes of reelection? A Washington Post op-ed suggests that he is.
After banning the kirpan in Parliament, a Quebec Conservative MP looks at banning voting while wearing the veil. The Federal immigration minister agrees that a vote on the subject would be 'reasonable'.
At the same time, the municipality of Saguenay in Quebec has been told by a Human Rights Tribunal to remove the cross from its city council chambers and to stop prayers before its meetings. Despite this, the provincial assembly has no plans of removing the crucifix from its chambers.
Again, Stephen Prothero suggests that the Egyptian revolution was 'more secular than Islamic'.
Kentucky has passed a bill to teach Bible classes in public school. Ontario is similarly questioning whether the Gideons should be allowed to distribute free bibles to fifth grade students.
The ketubah, a traditional Jewish marriage contract, is showing up in Christian ceremonies.

Interview with Craig Martin

2011-02-05T07:15:00.007-05:00

Craig Martin is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at St. Thomas Aquinas College. He recently published his first book, Masking Hegemony: A Genealogy of Liberalism, Religion, and the Private Sphere (US Amazon, Canadian Amazon) with Equinox Press. He is editor of the Bulletin for the Study of Religion and contributes at its blog. He took off some time for me to ask him a few questions related to Masking Hegemony, which was released at the close of 2010.

Equinox Author’s Page

Craig Martin’s personal web page

Chris Zeichmann: Can you summarize the argument of Masking Hegemony?

Craig Martin: I have a quasi-Marxist sociological theory of how society works; for instance, I’m a fan of people like Anthony Giddens and Pierre Bourdieu. According to such theorists, if you want to understand how things work in society, you probably need to start with a consideration of ideology and the institutions that socialize citizens (like families, churches, schools, etc.). They offer a bottom-up account of how power circulates. By contrast, liberal discourses—both popular and philosophical—tend to regard (religious) ideology and the work of families and churches as private matters that have (or should have) nothing to do with politics. The public/private distinction is supposed to secure a wall of separation preventing a bottom-up circulation of power.

That is a pretty serious difference: what critical sociologists think is most important is deemed irrelevant by liberal philosophers like John Locke. Supposedly, we can live together despite our religious differences because those differences don’t (or shouldn’t) really publicly matter. Since I side with the critical sociologists, when I read liberal theorists talking about religion like this, my “nonsense meter” goes into the red. I think we need to be much more careful about how the “religion is a private matter” rhetoric works, what it is supposed to do, what it actually does, and what it masks.

In the book I show how the “religion is private” rhetoric was designed in the first place to buttress arguments for religious tolerance following the Protestant Reformation. We can tolerate different religions because religion is a private matter that is inconsequential to the king, for instance. Later the rhetoric was turned toward new uses; at present it is usually enlisted by liberals who want to prevent, e.g., conservative Christians from imposing their values on state legislation regarding marriage.

In both cases the rhetoric secures the right for those institutions we identify as religious to socialize children and distribute ideology. For instance, if religion is a private matter, no one can interfere with how Christian parents raise their children or what church they attend weekly. However, there is probably nothing with more “public” consequences than the processes of socialization and the successful distribution of ideology. In the end, there’s nothing particularly “private” about those institutions we call “religious,” and repeating “religion is a private matter” over and over like a mantra is about as likely to be as effective as Frank Costanza’s repetition of “serenity now!” So I suggest that this liberal rhetoric can mask and thereby indirectly facilitate the processes by which religious institutions can build a hegemony—hence the title, Masking Hegemony.

CZ: One thing that I found particularly striking is how John Locke’s liberal configuration of religion and the state endures as the dominant conception with few substantial changes – you identify it as part of the American doxa. What is the appeal of the rhetoric of “privatized religion” in the 21st century?

CM: I don’t think discourses like this would persist unless they were useful, or perceived to be useful. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of vestigial “survivals” in our discourse, but I don’t think we have many “survivals.” Rhetoric “survives” because people continue to enlist it in support of their interests. I think that conservatives use the rhetoric because, as I noted above, it can be used to secure the right to religious freedom. On the other hand, I think liberals use it to attempt to secure the independence of the “public sphere” from religious institutions. “Religion is a private matter” can have the rhetorical force of “don’t tread on me.” For conservative religious practitioners, it means, e.g., “you can’t tell me how to raise my kids.” For liberals, it means, e.g., “what it says in your Bible about sex is irrelevant on the senate floor.”

CZ: You are highly critical of language of “the private sphere” and problematize it at length, while devoting comparatively little space to the secularization thesis. When reading Masking Hegemony, I could not help but think of how it runs in direct contrast to works such as José Casanova’s Public Religions in the Modern World that advocate a “social differentiation” version of the secularization thesis. Casanova defines this theory as “the conceptualization of the process of societal modernization as a process of functional differentiation and emancipation of the secular spheres – primarily the state, the economy, and science – from the religious sphere and the concomitant differentiation and specialization of religion within its own newly found religious sphere.” Do you think “secularization” retains any use as an analytic, or is it too embedded in the problems of “liberal religion”?

CM: This is a really important question, and I apologize if my answer is unreasonably long. This is something I’ve actually spent a lot of time thinking about recently!

One of my colleagues read a draft of the “Luther to Locke” chapter, and his initial response was something like this: “Sure, religion isn’t necessarily ‘private,’ but are you suggesting that the public/private rhetoric had no effect?” I spent a lot of time showing what the public/private rhetoric doesn’t do, but don’t really go into what it does do. I say at one point,

This does not mean that the discourse of religion as apolitical does no work other than to mask the political nature of religion. … I merely want to argue that there is not, in fact, a separation [of religion and politics], and I want to explain precisely how channels of power reach from so-called “private” institutions into “public” ones. (55)

All of that is to say that when half of the parents in the nation send their kids to Sunday school every week, there are inevitably “public” effects. Insofar as Casanova uses the language of “differentiation” and “spheres,” I cannot agree with him. We do not have differentiated spheres today. But this criticism tells us nothing about how those institutions we call religious are different today compared to, say, during the Middle Ages. For instance, Karen Armstrong’s religion is pretty far from fourteenth century “papism.” How do we account for this difference, and what vocabulary will help us put our finger on that difference?

If “secularization” implies a public sphere somehow free from, separated from, or differentiated from civil institutions—including religious institutions—then I don’t think the language of secularization will work. In an essay I was recently working on, I tried to use Bruce Lincoln’s minimalism/maximalism distinction to bring into relief the differences between medieval and modern social orders:

Bruce Lincoln’s maximalist/minimalist distinction is … useful for understanding some of the changes that came about in the Western world during the modern period. In Europe prior to this period, Christianity was the “central domain of culture.” The social order was ordered, legitimated, sustained, and contested through the use of Christian vocabulary, Christian stories, Christian institutions, and so on. Lincoln uses the term “maximalist” to identify this state of affairs—during this period religion had a “maximal” relation to social order.

By contrast, Lincoln suggests that after the rise of capitalism the economy becomes the “central domain of culture.” The world at large becomes ordered, legitimated, sustained, and contested by economic rationalities, discourses, and practices. When this happens, economics in a sense becomes “maximalist,” while religion is moved to a “minimalist” position.

For Lincoln, when religion is in the “maximalist” position, “cultural preferences [are] constituted largely as morality and stabilized by religion”; in addition, religious minimalism is “experienced as powerful and intrusive; a serious temptation for would-be elites and a dangerous threat to all.” When religious minimalism is hegemonic, however, “cultural preferences [are] constituted largely as fashion and open to market fluctuations”; in addition, religious maximalism is “experienced in two ways: a quaint, seductive diversion for some, and as a resentful atavism, capable of reactionary counterattacks.” By this I take Lincoln to mean, for instance, that for people who adopt religious minimalism, those who do not—like the American Amish or al Qaeda—are taken to be either “quaint” (interesting for sightseers) or dangerous.

I am somewhat uncomfortable with Lincoln’s distinction between religion and economics; while I would not say they are identical, I’m not sure it makes sense to register an ontological distinction between them (and perhaps Lincoln would not). Why not just say that Christianity went from being a maximalist discourse and set of practices to a minimalist position, but capitalism then replaced Christianity as the maximalist discourse and set of practices? Doing so would not result in positing some sort of fundamental distinction between “religion” and other forms of culture.

What do we gain by replacing the public/private dichotomy with the maximalist/minimalist one? We can recognize that those institutions we colloquially call religions have clearly taken a subordinate role to modern Western capitalism: for most of us in the modern western world, our lives are ordered more by our jobs, our taxes, our 401k retirement accounts, our mortgages, our car payments, and our credit card debts—all in pursuit of social distinction that bears a capitalist flavor, if Bourdieu is to be believed—than we are by the moral norms of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. However, this need not imply that there is something “private” about Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. For instance, evangelical Christians are highly active politically—to call their form of Christianity a “private matter” is to say something relatively nonsensical and vacuous of critical import (although not devoid of significance—arguments about the essentially private nature of religion advance social agendas even when they are not strictly true).
As capitalism becomes the dominant discourse and set of practices that order modern western life, minimalist forms of previously maximalist traditions emerge. We see the development of forms of liberal Christianity, for instance, that make fewer and fewer demands on the lives of its practitioners. Despite contemporary Evangelicals’ insistence that one should not be a Christian only on Sunday morning, most Christians are, in a manner of speaking. Groups like the Amish, whose members’ lives are dominantly ordered, legitimated, and maintained through their form of Christianity, are a rarity today. Subjects whose lives are ordered by capitalism think such groups quaint or extremist, as Lincoln rightly suggests. Any group that would demand that adherents actually adhere to habitus at odds with western consumerism is almost by definition “fanatical” (if one’s religious tradition requires one to move into shared living space, it’s probably a “cult”). By contrast, religious groups that make few if any demands on members’ lives—or at least demands that might conflict or chafe against late capitalism and its consumer culture—have grown in popularity. According to Terry Eagleton—in a discussion of the rise of the popularity of atheism—more and more people are paying attention to religion, “even in England, where religion is in general a rather moderate, discrete, slightly shamefaced affair—and … where people are likely to believe that when religion starts interfering with your everyday life that it’s time to give it up. In that sense it resembles alcohol, I suppose.” As long as one can hold a job and remain a consumer—thereby responsibly contributing to the economy—religion and alcohol are acceptable; once they begin interrupting one’s responsible contributions to the economy, that is when people start to raise eyebrows.[“The God Debate,” part of the Gifford Lecture series at the University of Edinburgh] As capitalism has replaced Christianity’s hegemonic position, most contemporary American Christians spend more time in shopping malls than in church, more time watching commercials than reading the Bible.

However, in the end I even abandoned this set of concepts. Ironically, the same colleague who suggested that I’d underestimated the effect of the public/private rhetorical also got me to see that I’d overestimated the minimalist/maximalist rhetoric. So I ended the essay on religious minimalism like this:

The minimalist/maximalist distinction ultimately breaks down for two interrelated reasons. First, it can implicitly carry a judgment of orthodoxy: it tends to imply that maximalist Christianity, for instance, is true Christianity, and that minimalist Christianity is an inauthentic deviation. The claim that minimalist Christians do not allow Christianity to make demands on their life only makes sense if we assume in advance that Christianity is a tradition that places demands on individuals that fundamentally conflict with capitalism or consumerism. However, if what I have called minimalist Christianity is not an illegitimate or inauthentic form of Christianity, then minimalist Christians may very well accept the demands made on them by minimalist Christianity.

Second, and more importantly, up to now I have suggested that Christian maximalism (i.e., in the European middle ages) has been replaced by capitalist maximalism today: capitalism orders the lives of minimalist Christians more than Christianity does. But insofar as minimalist Christianity has been domesticated by capitalism, this version of Christianity is maximalist: minimalist Christianity is ultimately maximalist because it does order the lives of minimalist Christians. To put it otherwise, minimalist Christianity is implicitly capitalist Christianity, and those I’ve been calling minimalist Christians may very well have their entire lives organized in ways that are complicit with capitalist Christianity. ... The idea of “minimalist religion” is subtly seductive—like the discourse of individualism, it organizes the social sphere as a whole while pretending to organize only a part of it. It prevents us from thinking about how “minimalist religion” has social effects far beyond the so-called “religious sphere.”

For these reasons I think the minimalist/maximalist distinction has a temporary heuristic value, but should be abandoned for more sophisticated terminology, although I am as yet uncertain what might provide us with more analytical precision.

CZ: It’s also interesting that, despite the effect moving from inter-Christian ecumenism to multi-faith plurality, the liberal language of “private religion” has failed to seriously interrogate the matters that it claims to be contesting. Unitarians, atheists, Christians of various sorts, and others employ it under certain (mis)conceptions about what this rhetoric accomplishes. Which groups – religious or otherwise – do you think gain and lose the most from arguments that religion is an entirely private enterprise?

CM: That’s really tough to answer. In the book I emphasize that the use of the public/private rhetoric by those on the left is often counterproductive; it seems to me to the interest of those on the right more than those on the left. But who knows? Feminists got an awful lot of mileage out of the public/private rhetoric in the last century (as in, “keep your hands off my body” and related slogans that imply the state should stay out of private affairs). Perhaps the public/private rhetoric has scored more gains than I give it credit for?

On a related point, I suspect that the gains for LGBT rights in the US are more the result of exposure of openly gay men and women than the result of separation of church and state rhetoric. I’m exaggerating here, but polls show that just about everyone under 30 thinks the debate over gay marriage is silly—why wouldn’t we allow gays to marry? Is that because people younger than 30 believe more strongly in separation of church and state or because they’re more likely than our grandparents to grow up with openly gay friends? My guess is the latter.

And, in addition, this could account for why attitudes on abortion are not moving like attitudes on gay rights (that is, people tend to be 50/50 on abortion rights, whether they’re 25 or 75 years old): I have lots of openly gay friends, students, family members, etc., but if anyone I know has had an abortion, I wouldn’t know. Similarly, gays and lesbians have experienced a great deal of high-profile exposure on TV and in movies, whereas people who have had an abortion have not. Can I name lesbian actresses? Sure. Can I name an actress who has had an abortion? No.

To me, this is evidence that the shift in public attitudes is the result of the so-called “gay agenda”—gays and lesbians are out there hard at work distributing a pro-LGBT ideology, whereas the same is not true for feminists who support abortion rights. If we’ll see more liberal laws on gay rights or abortion in the future, I think it will be due to a new hegemonic ideology rather than to greater strictures against “religion” influencing “politics.”

In addition, as I argue in the last chapter of the book, I really think that the “to each his own” attitude makes it difficult to challenge those ideologies labeled “religious,” and as such makes it difficult to advance a contrary agenda. How can I stand against Catholic doctrines on abortion if I insist that Catholics are right to hold an anti-abortion stance?

Looking back, this answer is somewhat rambling and perhaps only tertiarily related to your question. Sorry!

CZ: Though you identify your dissertation as the genesis of Masking Hegemony, in many ways it lacks the obscurantism typical of published dissertations in religion. I am thinking especially of Ch. 5: “To Each His Own,” which assesses the logic of popular left-leaning arguments in favor of same-sex marriage and legalized abortion, but comes out very critical of them. Was that a self-conscious choice or a natural outgrowth of the project’s topic?

CM: That’s a really interesting question. One thing that might help account for this is the fact that my dissertation committee was complaining at one point that I sounded like a conservative ideologue when I was criticizing liberal theorists. My attempt to expose “to each his own” rhetoric as designed to advance partisan norms by making them look “neutral” probably looked awful similar to some things Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck have said. I think this really frustrated my advisor at one point during the writing process, and I responded by attempting to foreground my own normative stance in order to distance myself from such conservative rhetoric. So I suppose I really allowed my passion for the subject matter to poke through in that last chapter. In fact, I think I dropped quite a few non-academic “should” statements there.

CZ: You mentioned Bourdieu and Giddens as individuals that ask questions similar to your own, but express some ambivalence about social constructionism in your book. Who are your theoretical discussions most indebted to?

CM: I should make clear that I do identify as a social constructionist. My ambivalence was not toward social constructionism itself so much as a few errors I sometimes see social constructionists make. (For the record, I have a great deal of respect for the ones I criticized in the book, such as Tim Fitzgerald and Richard King—I think their work on “religion” has been groundbreaking.)

But as for whom I’m indebted to with regard to social constructionism (and how language works in general), there’s a long list! I’ll try to put them roughly in chronological order and to say something brief about each. In addition to Giddens and Bourdieu, I’d suggest the following:

• John Dewey, The Quest for Certainty—This book is extremely dated, but I think the basic argument for nominalism is both brilliant and clearly argued.

• Martin Heidegger, Being and Time—Heidegger convinced me that how we use words is intrinsically related to what we want to accomplish in the world.

• Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations—This one is a no-brainer; everyone thinking about how language works need to read this one.

• Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality—Berger and Luckmann’s book is probably the clearest entry into thinking about how language is constitutive of social order.

• Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology—I hardly ever explicitly refer to Derrida in my work, but the argument against essentialism in this book informs everything I do.

• Anything by Michel Foucault in the 1970s (i.e., from Discipline and Punish through the biopolitics lectures)—Some have argued that Foucault’s insights are not all that groundbreaking, that is, that his work advances claims that the field of sociology has been touting for decades. There’s something to this critique, I think, but that just makes reading his work all the more worthwhile. I studied Foucault when I was in coursework in graduate school, but it wasn’t until I was working on my dissertation that I read “Society Must Be Defended.” It was when I read that one that Foucault sort of “sunk in,” and the insights from that book—particularly about legal and liberal discourses—informed the rest of my dissertation writing.

• Ian Hacking, The Social Construction of What?—This is hands-down the best book on social constructionism I’ve read. I think everybody should read it.

• Hilary Putnam, “A Defense of Conceptual Relativity,” in Ethics without Ontology—This short little chapter clearly explains better than anything else I’ve read what is wrong with the idea that objects simply exist in the world.

• Edward Schiappa, Defining Reality—Hardly anyone I know has read this, but it’s a great little book that shows how the way in which we define words is intrinsically linked to individual or group interests.

• When it comes to the social construction of religion, I’ll name the usual suspects: Russell McCutcheon, Tim Murphy, Richard King, Tomoko Masuzawa, and Tim Fitzgerald.

I could add a lot more, but I’ll resist the temptation.

CZ: On a similar note, you published this in the McCutcheon-edited series Religion in Culture: Studies in Social Contest and Construction. How did you first become interested in theories that identify religion as an eminently social phenomenon with its attendant interests located in that realm of human activity? It seems that many people studying religion start off with one set of academic questions and by the end of their degree are interested in entirely different ones.

CM: When I was working on my dissertation Russell McCutcheon came to Syracuse University to give a guest lecture and do a meet-and-greet with graduate students. I had never heard of him before that, but I was intrigued by what he had to say and we hit it off. I picked up and read a couple of his books and started a correspondence with him. It was then that I started thinking critically about the social construction of “religion.”

At some point in our correspondence he suggested Bruce Lincoln’s Discourse and the Construction of Society (or maybe I saw it listed as a course textbook on his faculty page). I ordered a copy and consumed it with great interest. I think that single book marked the turning point—when I read Discourse I shed the remaining specters of a theological approach and started thinking about those cultural institutions we call religions like a sociologist or anthropologist. From that point I went back and revisited some of the classics I had previously been exposed to (such as Durkheim) and read them with renewed interest, and then started filling in the gaps. Discourse started me on a journey that led me to Mary Douglas, Peter Berger, Rodney Needham, Erving Goffman, David Kertzer, Anthony Cohen, Anthony Giddens, Pierre Bourdieu, Marshall Sahlins, James Scott, Raymond Williams, and others. I’ve basically become a functionalist about what we call religion, although without the essentialism.

CZ: Finally, you currently edit the Bulletin for the Study of Religion, but what other projects do you have coming up?

CM: I’m co-editing a book with Russell McCutcheon on the concept of “religious experience.” It will appear in Equinox’s Critical Categories in the Study of Religion series. I’m contributing to the volume an essay on William James’ experience/institution distinction—that’s the essay I shared a few paragraphs from above (on minimalism and maximalism). I’m also trying to finish up an introduction to religion, titled A Critical Introduction to the Study of Religion. Past that, I’m not sure what will be next. When I’m dreaming about what is down the line, I usually dream about the relationship between contemporary religious discourses and capitalism, but we’ll see …

[See author link for Equinox at the top of the page for more information about these forthcoming publications]

“Are You Temporally Contextualized?”: A Review of John Schellenberg's University of Toronto Address at Victoria College (by Simon Appolloni)

2011-02-03T11:31:00.004-05:00

“Are you temporally contextualized?” John Schellenberg half jokes in answering questions, in the manner an Evangelical might ask, “Are you born again?” But evangelization is not his aim. Instead, Schellenberg, Professor of Philosophy at Mount Saint Vincent University, points out what we might do in order to rise above the thorny religion-science debate that is seemingly marred in gridlock between traditional theism and scientific naturalism.

At a recent colloquium at Victoria College, sponsored by the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at University of Toronto, Schellenberg presented his paper entitled, “Time Out of Mind: Remembering the Future in the Debate Over Science and Religion.” It is a refreshing take on the search for reconciliation between science and religion by locating the debate within the broader perspective of deep evolutionary time, only the emphasis here – unlike with some deep-time perspectives – is on the future.

The argument is quite straightforward and logical, actually; it’s getting our head around its implications that’s the trick.

If we take a look at our development as a species, going back to earlier manifestations of our hominin ancestry, some 800,000 years ago, or even further back to five million years ago when apes came into being, then plot a line to the future of the human species on Earth, roughly a billion years from now when the planet itself becomes consumed by the Sun’s heat – and barring any apocalyptic scenarios like global warming or bioterrorism in the meantime – then we have to conclude, from a scientific point of view, that we are pretty primitive as a species.

Primitive is a relative term, to be sure, but Schellenberg asks us to imagine how much farther intelligence might go in the millions of centuries to come. He cites the work of biologist and Nobel Prize winner Christian de Duve who underlines that the difference between our brain and the brain of ‘Lucy’ (the well-known 3.6 million year-old Australopithecus afarensis fossil discovered in the 70s) is a three-fold increase in complexity. Our great-ancestors could not have made sense of the Sistine Chapel or the theory of relativity de Duve concludes. With paleontologists like Simon Conway Morris suggesting our brain could arrive at a further three-fold level of complexity in the millions of years to come, then we ought to conclude, just like the case with Lucy before us, that we are simply unable to imagine the mental experiences to come.

This is the temporal contextualization Schellenberg suggests we embrace: “…the Great Disparity between how far our intelligence has come on our planet and how much farther it may yet have to go.” Schellenberg admits it’s getting it ‘into the gut’ that is the difficulty, as future deep-time is hard to conceive. Nevertheless, it is within this deep-time future perspective that the science-religion debate ought to be conceived, a diachronic framework, as he puts it. It sensitizes us to, “the possibility of a hugely extended future, with vast eons left for human beings and other Earthly beings to think, perhaps much more fruitfully, about ultimate things.”

So what does this mean in terms of the science-religion debate? Well, Schellenberg suggests that because we are so vastly immature (in the evolutionary scheme of things) belief, whether traditional naturalistic or traditional religious, is premature. He says, “If we may be only at the beginning of some difficult inquiry, one that could well involve the efforts of many better-equipped inquirers who come after us, perhaps over thousands of even millions of years, then it is inappropriate for us to believe that some proposition available in the present represents the proper outcome of inquiry on that topic.”

Schellenberg gave an outline of various components of this evolutionary religion and suggested that a new research program is needed to further explore them: being sensitive to change unfolding over vast periods of time (religious diachronism), being cognitively modest (evolutionary skepticism), being patient (spiritual developmentalism), being attentive to evolutionary benefits (religious pragmatism), and being willing to adapt (argumentative adaptism).

He concludes his talk by suggesting that in order to move in this direction, we need to shift from detailed religious ‘isms’ and focus on ultimism, the “ultimate good springing from something ultimate in reality and value,” as well a move from belief-based religious faith to one that is imagination-based.

I say Schellenberg’s argument is refreshing because it reframes the science-religion debate within a broader and far more extensive framework. It beckons participants to re-think what exactly it is they are purporting to be the truth, yet compels the same participants to come (back?) to the table of discussion with a certain hermeneutic of humility.

A number of participants at the colloquium asked pertinent questions, such as what his definition of religion might be, what ultimism might mean for both science and religion, whether his notion of the future was too optimistic and whether he had given thought to the role of technology in the evolution of the human species. I can’t go into detail here, other than to say Schellenberg addressed the questions adeptly, acknowledging his ideas are new and warrant much more research.

I have some of my own questions: what is it about some religious believers that requires the security of answers to life’s vexing questions right now, which an evolutionary religion might undervalue with its call for patience and willingness to adapt? Who might get left behind if, as Liberation Theologians have convincingly argued is true now, always was and always will be – that preference ought to be given to the poor and excluded – if it becomes ‘inappropriate for us to believe that this proposition available in the present represents the proper outcome of inquiry on that topic’? What might this same evolutionary religion look like if we extend the past and future time-scale to include not just our planetary existence, but the history and future of the entire cosmos, which stands now at some 14 billion years, showing no signs of imploding in the next many billion years to come?

Schellenberg is right to say we will find it hard to get future deep-time into our gut; there’s much at stake here. Not doing so, however, presents us with a less tenable option: a seemingly never-ending pugnacious squabble over whether this way or that way of knowing our world is the way that matters. In a sense, when he half jokes in asking whether we are ‘temporally contextualized’, he’s not too off the mark; for, just as an Evangelical is concerned with individual salvation, is not our whole species ‘saved’ or ‘doomed’ by the stories it tells? And if the story it is telling begins and ends on page seventy-nine of a hundred-thousand-page epic, then how good can that story be?

Link roundup: 1 February - 9 February

2011-02-01T08:56:00.007-05:00

As the Super Bowl approaches, the Huffington Post asks the important question: will god get credit for winning the game?
Another look at the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
A church plans to use the Super Bowl to get pastors talking about pornography.
Stephen Prothero argues that 'Egypt 2011 is not Iran 1979', distinguishing the role that Islam played in each situation.
Israel, however, may disagree.
Muslims are looking to be portrayed differently by Hollywood.
First Angela Merkel, now British PM David Cameron suggests that multiculturalism has failed in his country.
The White House has a faith advisory council?
Chick-Fil-A: your conservative Christian chicken spot.
The Huffington Post writes about the 'Catholic celibacy crisis'. And this as German theologians call for an end to the practice.
What does the debate over health care tell us about American religion?
The Pope is not allowed to donate his organs.
As the Cuban economy struggles, evangelicals prosper.
The Catholic Church in the US approves a confessional iPhone app. The Vatican later banned the practice.
Tony Blair cautions against the Muslim Brotherhood.
With the Chick-fil-A uproar in the US, CNN lists a number of other companies with strong confessional ties.
CNN looks back at 'faithy moments' at the Super Bowl.
The Catholic Church in the UK warns against the dangers of witchcraft.
A Washington Post editorial looks at Islam in Morocco.
The political debate over the Kirpan in Canada seems to be just starting up.

Link roundup: 25 January - 31 January

2011-01-25T06:28:00.007-05:00

The Pope warns that 'virtual friends can't replace real ones.'
A priest speaks out against celibacy in the priesthood.
Want a front seat to the end of days? Just buy a graphic novel!
CNN has a piece about Muslim immigration to Thailand.
The Huffington Post asks why university scientists don't discuss religion.
A Jewish hockey player in suing the Anaheim Ducks hockey club for allegedly subjecting him to years of anti-semitic comments.
The Pew Center projects that the world's Muslim population will increase drastically by 2030.
Many South Sudanese believe that their independence was ordained in the bible, according to the Washington Post.
The Huffington Post has an article about the kirpan in the public sphere.
Rabbis petition the Fox Network and its president Rupert Murdoch to tone down its use of Holocaust language.
A new Islamic school in Calgary is proving to be quite popular.
Why is an evangelical minister addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos?
The New York Times looks at the place of religious groups in the Egyptian protests. CNN considers a similar topic and provides a profile of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Vatican is planning on reaching out to atheists.
Priests in Green Bay, Wisconsin, reschedule mass around the local football team's playoff schedule.
The Huffington Post uses the link between religion and economic development to explain why Americans are more religious than Europeans.
Are the Egyptian protests the sign of an Islamist revolution? The Huffington Post argues not.
The Huffington Post writes about the 'vanishing American religious male'.

Link roundup: 17 January - 24 January

2011-01-17T06:51:00.008-05:00

On the National Day of Religious Freedom, the Huffington Post suggests that American religious freedom is a myth.
Can we speak about original sin in evolutionary terms?
A British study has identified a 'believer gene'.
Ricky Gervais thanked god for making him an atheist at Sunday's Golden Globe Awards.
Christian B&B owners in the UK who banned a gay couple from their institution have been found guilty of discrimination.
Stanley Fish looks at the religious roots of American exceptionalism in Sarah Palin's discourse.
A Pew Forum report confirms that there are no atheists in the new American congress. Jacques Berlinerblau analyses the situation.
A vial of John Paul II's blood will be kept as a relic in a Polish church.
A group of Sikhs that came to address the Quebec legislature have been denied entry after refusing to remove their kirpans.
The governor of Alabama opened his new terms with come controversial comments about non-Christians. The Washington Post also reports here. He later apologised for his comments.
A court has rejected a DC pastor's grass-roots initiative to overturn gay marriage in the district.
A conservative party member in the UK discusses Islamophobia in the country.
The Washington Post looks at recent clashes between Catholic bishops and American health care institutions.
The debate about whether the kirpan should be allowed in parliament continues, as various politicians begin to weight in.
CNN looks at the afterlife incentives promised to jihadist suicide bombers and the way they have changed over time.
'Jesus Hates Obama's Superbowl ad has been rejected.
Qur'an-burning pastor Terry Jones has been banned from the UK.
A county in Georgia has voted to hold all public school graduations in churches.
Ricky Gervais defends atheism, after his comments at the Golden Globes.
A Chinese man has been denied asylum in the US after he was unable to answer some basic questions about Christianity.
Cash-strapped American cities look at taxing churches.
Is China in the middle of a religious revival?
The Chronicle of Higher Education has a piece criticising the New Atheists.

Guilt, Fiction and Douglas Coupland

2011-01-16T10:42:00.003-05:00

I have a ritual for every New Year: I read a piece of fiction without feeling guilty. Before I started on the road of the academic I read a lot of fiction. In fact, I read only fiction unless I had to write a paper for school. I could routinely be found walking down the sidewalk reading a book. I don’t recommend you do that if you live in the city, but if you live on quiet suburban streets you can get away with it. During the recent years I’ve read less and less fiction and more and more non-fiction, but I always long for good fiction. It’s not that I don’t read any fiction throughout the year or that I couldn’t make time for more fiction, it’s that I feel guilty about reading fiction because I always think to myself, “I’m reading, I should be reading something related to my work…” and then the pleasure of reading a great novel is poisoned by the thought of what I “ought” to be doing. BUT every January I give myself a pass on that - I sometimes end up with a great piece of fiction as a gift from someone for Christmas or Hanukkah (although recently the books I’ve been requesting have been non-fiction, but non-fiction for pleasure, rather than non-fiction for work) and I devour it like a pack of hungry wolves, and it feels great. This year I didn’t end up with a piece of fiction (though I happily gobbled up ChiRunning), BUT I did get a gift card to select my own book. My first instinct was to order a book related to my thesis, but I gave that a hard shove to the side and I threw the words “Douglas Coupland” into a search engine. In my opinion it was about time he had a new book out - and what did I find out? Coupland did 2010’s CBC Massey Lectures. What? Where was I while this was happening? Oh right, too busy under non-fiction to have noticed.

The CBC Massey Lectures have a history of inviting scholars to present lectures on original research within their field. It’s considered a prestigious invitation and has been offered to many great thinkers, including Stephen Lewis, Margaret Sommerville, Thomas King, Noam Chomsky and Ursula Franklin. But this was the first time since the lectures began in 1961 that someone has presented a work of fiction. It would be easy to shove it off as just fiction, but with Coupland, we receive something that is considered fiction while at the same time being a commentary about the state of our world today and where we could be headed.

I consider myself a pretty big fan of Coupland. I’ve been reading him since my high school days; I read everything of his I can lay my hands on, never waning when some of his endeavours end up being less successful than others. Hey - you can’t write gold all the time. Once a friend of mine bought me a ticket to see him give a reading at the National Library in Ottawa, probably one of the best gifts ever. But I digress.

I picked up 'Player One: What is to Become of Us', and I devoured it. I knew while I was reading it that it would become the subject for this blog entry. Many critics consider Coupland to be a guru of popular culture and I couldn't agree more. But there’s a reason why Coupland is a guru of popular culture, you see, one of the things Coupland does so brilliantly is that he manages to write the things you’re always thinking, but never saying and weaves them into a story that references things happening in your real life, in our world, right now. In 'Player One' Coupland’s characters are just ordinary misfits trying to understand their place in a screwed-up world. These characters are a reflection of us, as much as the “us” refers to those living in the western world. In these lectures Coupland depicts a bit of an apocalypse - these misfits are pushed together during the present day, 2010, when the price of oil suddenly becomes so high that anything that runs on gas would cost you more money than you could ever imagine. Planes are grounded (a seemingly big problem for those in the story because they are at an airport) and chaos breaks out - the five characters remain trapped in a hotel bar, trying to wait for the chaos to settle down. In that time they contemplate life, death, and the point of all of this, this life, this world.

Although all of the characters contemplate the meaning of life, an on-the-run pastor, Luke, presents an interesting perspective. Luke has arrived at the hotel bar because he fled his town after stealing the construction fund from the Church he ministered to. Luke doesn’t believe in God anymore - he’s fallen out of belief, but he still contemplates eternity, life, and death. As a pastor Luke makes for a particularly interesting character because he has moment where he evaluates his “flock” and the sins they bring to him for help with. For Luke, the Seven Deadly Sins are out of touch with the twenty-first century. “Luke thinks sins badly need updating, he keeps a running list in his head of contemporary sins that religions might well consider: the willingness to tolerate information overload; the neglect of maintenance of democracy; the deliberate ignorance of history; the equating of shopping with creativity; the rejection of reflective thinking; the belief that spectacle is reality; vicarious living through celebrities. And more, so much more” (112).

Coupland’s work touches on other themes of religion, including the false prophet, ordinary struggle with loneliness, the afterlife, the question of whether God exists or not, how or why does one believe in God, or suddenly lose belief in God. Coupland paints an interesting depiction of what would happen in a post-oil economy, and the immediate chaos that would occur with a sudden spike in oil prices. I highly recommend this read to anyone, but particularly to those in the religious studies discipline, not only because the themes run so strongly through the novel, but because the commentary on real life is so poignant. What is it that makes us human? What does technology do for us in our lives? How do we negotiate our beliefs when the world suddenly changes? Even though the characters are fictional, this piece has much to offer to us as scholars of religion, asking questions about faith and disbelief in the modern world. You should read it - without any guilt at all.

Link roundup: 12 January - 16 January

2011-01-12T06:45:00.004-05:00

A new poll shows that French Muslims are torn between tradition and modernity when it comes to marriage and relationships.
The controversy continues over Pakistan's blasphemy laws, as two more are arrested and sentenced to jail time.
CNN profiles an evangelical conference for college students, which attracted 22000 in Georgia.
The Westboro Baptist Church plans to picket the funerals of the Arizona shooting victims.
A new report suggests that Muslim-majority nations are more likely to deny religious freedoms to their citizens.
Interestingly, the Huffington Post asks why atheists read the religion section.
Israel's newest tourism trip invites Christians to visit sites related to the Virgin Mary.
Monks have made and donated a casket for the youngest victim of the Arizona shooting.
Stephen Prothero takes Sarah Palin to task for her 'blood libel' comments. See also here and here.
Pope John Paul II will be beatified on 1 May, 2011.
A small religious school in Wisconsin has discovered a 340 year-old bible in its collection.
The Huffington Post looks at the demographic challenges that Orthodox Jews pose in Israel.
Churches in rural parts of the Canadian Maritime provinces are selling for low prices rather than be demolished.

Theological Appeal by Means of Rhetoric (By: Julie Reich)

2011-01-11T19:36:00.006-05:00

On pages 214-215 of “The Appeal of Form: Ritual, Rhetoric, and Televisual Framing”, the form of Jimmy Swaggart’s crusade and Pat Robertson’s talk show are polarized to signify the coexistence of a separatist perspective versus an assimilative perspective within evangelicalism. In particular, Jimmy Swaggart and Pat Robertson’s respective theological appeals embody dichotomous forms by means of rhetoric. Examples from the documentary film, Jesus Camp will be used to demonstrate manifestations of the interrelationship between these polar styles of rhetoric.

One such style of rhetoric discussed in the article is that of consolation. Specifically, the article suggests that the form of Swaggart’s theology embraces rhetoric of consolation, which is founded upon transcendence of the ordinary world and a longing for unification with the sacred. Essentially, Swaggart’s rhetoric of consolation iterates ‘traditional themes of personal piety, individual redemption, and asceticism’. According to the author, ‘style, mode of address and the setting of his speech’ must assist ‘the journey’ in order to generate communion. Effectively, embodiment of an identity resembling a prophet and utilization of a ‘grand-style rhetoric’ instigates ‘the passions’ and prompts emotional and physical responses ‘of his listeners’. To exemplify, Becky Fischer, the founder and leader of the summer camp in the documentary film mentioned above, implements a similar style of rhetoric in an attempt to promote to parents and persuade their children to attend her summer camp, a setting for performance of faith, when she speaks at Triumphant Church in Lee's Summit, Missouri. For instance, Fischer pronounces,

"...Okay listen, moms and dads...another thing I wanted to announce is our camp coming up in august, yeah, and it's just gonna be an incredible time, we've got brochures on the camp sitting in the bookstore...begin praying whether or not you can get there this year...How many of you think God can do anything? ...God can do anything...how many of you have thought, God, this is a sick old world...kids you've gotta change things...we've got too many Christian kids out there who are fat and lazy..."

Ultimately, Fischer's grand-style rhetoric prompts emotional and physical reactions at various points in the film and appeal to authority is sanctified as a result of providing a site for a religious ritual.

Alternatively, Robertson’s theology is suggested to support rhetoric of compensation. Overall, his theology is preoccupied with the everyday world and concurrent modern values emphasizing importance of material accumulation, with an overt concern with the self. For instance, Becky Fischer also employs this form when speaking in front of the congregation of children at her summer camp. She initiates her speech asking the listeners “How do you like the hair? Fingernails? Eyebrows? And the rest of me?” Ultimately, she alludes to the social importance placed on ascetic appeal and a concern with appearance and the self. Furthermore, Robertson’s rhetoric of compensation is based on gain rather than loss, employing a simple or ‘plain-style’ rhetoric comparable to teachers, politicians, experts, and television commentators. For instance, during her introductory speech at the camp, Becky Fischer discusses sin in terms of benefits of early ‘indoctrination’ and draws comparisons using visual stimuli that the children relate to (stuffed animals and toys). In this case, her plain-style or simple rhetoric is easy to understand and allows quick delivery of messages. Moreover, Becky Fischer employs Robertson’s theology in terms of reinforcing worldly elements as a divine right. For example, during her first sermon at the camp, Fischer elicits emotional and physical reactions from her listeners, distinctive to the rhetoric of consolation style; however, she also implements the rhetoric of compensation. Specifically, during a sermon, the camera identifies one of her listeners, a young boy, drinking a Pepsi. At first glance, this minor detail may seem insignificant, but allowing the integration of material consumerism into a place of ritual may hold subtle yet noteworthy implications regarding acceptance of worldly elements as a divine right.

Ultimately, Becky Fischer reinforces the structure of appeal successful for rhetoric of consolation and for the rhetoric of compensation despite their dichotomous relationship under the evangelical umbrella. However, Becky Fischer’s rhetoric and theology complicate the dichotomy since her methods are not strictly confined to either realm. Despite the implementation of various rhetoric styles and the extent they are effective persuasive tools, in extreme circumstances such as demonstrated in Jesus Camp, who has ultimate authority to decide what information children are or are not exposed to? In other words, when it comes to children, does the use of techniques that ‘indoctrinate’ young, impressionable minds via figures of authority, to the extreme extent demonstrated in the film, represent an example of a rigid partition between the influence of nature versus nurture in terms of development of the self, or is it child abuse? Ultimately, what are the potential implications of theological appeal by means of rhetoric via figures of authority in extreme circumstances, such as demonstrated in the documentary film, Jesus Camp?

Link roundup: 7 January - 11 January

2011-01-07T11:54:00.006-05:00

A prominent Saudi cleric has spoken out against attacks on Coptic Christians. Egyptian Muslims have shown similar support.
The Canadian Prime Minister has criticised Ottawa police for apologising to terrorism suspects arrested during Ramadan.
Stephen Prothero argues that the US is indeed a Christian nation.
We've all heard by now about Ted Williams, the American panhandler with the golden voice. But what role did faith play in the reporter's decision to stop and interview him? CNN investigates.
We spoke earlier this week about the US Army's 'spiritual fitness' test. Media investigation has raised further questions.
Two lesbian priests of the American Episcopal Church married on New Year's Eve.
A judge has ruled that crosses lining a Utah highway in honour of fallen soldiers do not need to be removed... yet.
An Islamic group has banned mixed-sex handshakes in the districts of Somalia that it controls.
The Huffington Post asks if the treatment of women in Muslim countries is a cultural or a religious dimension of social life.
Stephen Colbert discusses Bill O'Reilly's theology.
A 40% abortion rate in New York City has prompted an interfaith meeting of the city's clergy.
In case any of you were concerned, Kirk Cameron has confirmed that the rash of dead birds appearing around the world are not a sign of the apocalypse.
American Jews scored highest on a Gallup 'well-being' survey.
An art installation video that depicts ants crawling over a crucifix, which drew the ire of U.S. Catholics, will be screened at an Ottawa gallery.
Happy 400th birthday to the King James Version of the bible.
An Indian shaman who forced villagers to drink a poisonous potion to prove that they weren't witches has been arrested.
A Pakistani doctor has written a sex education book for Muslims.
The provincial court in Saskatchewan has ruled that civil officials cannot refuse to perform gay marriages on religion grounds.
The Pope has criticised Christian parents for following celebrities instead of the bible when naming their children.

Link roundup: 1 January - 6 January

2011-01-01T08:16:00.009-05:00

More Americans plan to pray than to party on New Year's Eve.
A birthday sign for Jesus on an American lawn is stirring up controversy.
The Huffington Post looks at the link between religion and happiness among (American) football players.
A Huffington Post editorial considers the conflict between Islamic creationism and science in the classroom.
Did Einstein prove the existence of god? One scientist suggest that he did.
According to a new U.S. Army survey, atheists and non-Christians can be considered 'spiritually unfit' to serve.
CNN profiles a rabbi who converted two skinheads into Orthodox Jews.
The BBC looks at white British women who have converted to Islam.
Everyone gets angry at god... even atheists. An a rabbi argues that this is a good thing.
Santeria priests in Cuba have offered their predictions for 2011.
Protests have met a Republican staff member who has refused to grant his wife a divorce under Orthodox Jewish law.
Do religious practices change the brain?
Will 2011 be the year in which atheists come out of the closet?
A cross erected on federal land in La Jolla, California, has been deemed unconstitutional.
The leader of a Mexican cult/church popular among drug traffickers has been arrested.
The Discovery Channel will be working with the Vatican to prepare a new series on exorcisms.
Is environmentalism a religion?
The Huffington Post looks at the religious makeup of the new congress.
American Conservatives are building a Noah's Ark theme park.
Posters suggesting that 'God raped Mary' starting showing up in Winnipeg over the holiday season.
The Pope acknowledges the Big Bang, but argues that god was behind it.

Displaying Belief: The Battle of the Billboards

2010-12-31T11:58:00.006-05:00

Those of you who regularly read through our link roundup posts will have noticed that the ‘battle of the billboards’, which began (in Canada, at least) with last year’s atheist bus ads exhorting us to ‘enjoy life since there probably is no god’, has picked up steam with the holiday season. In late November, a billboard showed up outside the Lincoln Tunnel in New Jersey, asking drivers to acknowledge the myth behind the Christmas season and celebrate reason instead. Shortly thereafter, the Catholic League funded its own billboard, opposite the atheist one, which promoted the truth of Jesus and his role in Christmas – a ‘put the Christ back in Christmas’ message. At roughly the same time, across the country, atheist bus ads began running in Fort Worth, Texas, explaining the possibility of ‘being good without god’. After numerous complaints, the Fort Worth transit commission banned all faith-based advertising on its property. Finally, after its run on 21 December, the Lincoln Tunnel billboard was replace with a new one promoting the Abrahamic notion of god. And the debate will likely continue to intensify – the Toronto Transit Commission is set to run a new series of atheist bus ads early in the new year.

American Atheists, the group that sponsored the New Jersey billboard, claims that its ad was meant to encourage atheists to come out of the closet and stop being silent about their beliefs. At the same time, on a somewhat opposite note, the group also expresses its hope that the billboard will bring everyone to reflect on their beliefs and lead to conversation and dialogue between competing ideas. If we take this statement at face value, the American Atheist billboard is a rather heavy-handed and tactless attempt at dialogue. Similarly, the group behind the Fort Worth bus ads claims that it wanted atheists to know that they are not alone, even in the heart of Christian Texas. In their mind, the ads were not meant to insult Christians but rather to console atheists.

What can we make of this new billboard phenomenon? On the one hand, the location of these ads is interesting. I trust that the difference in religious make-up between multicultural, big-city New York and deeply Christian, sometime-evangelical Texas is not lost on anyone. The New York billboards obviously garnered more national press, due largely, I presume, to their geographical location, and this even though the location of the Fort Worth bus ads is the more surprising of the two. And indeed, while the New York ads were met with as much defense from atheist editorials as they were with opposition, the brief glimpse that we have into the reception of the Fort Worth ads demonstrates greater support from religious groups, of the ‘they have their beliefs and an equal right to express them’ sort. Of course, the Fort Worth ads may be judged to be less incendiary in their intent.

At the same time, the fact that these are billboards is important – these are advertisements. For atheism? For Christianity? Perhaps in part. But ultimately, these are ads for particular organisations. Some editorials have presented the billboards as part of a scramble for power and popular support among atheist lobby groups. Belief systems are treated as commodities put forth and defended by specific groups, capitalist to the core. And there is indeed money to be made in the business of lobbying. The very fact that American Atheists had the money to purchase the billboard – about $20 000 US for its month-long run – demonstrates its financial power, one acquired at the expense of other atheist groups. Further still, in the battle between accommodationism or confrontationalism – should we make friends with the Christians or challenge their beliefs head on? – the American Atheist billboard defends yet another specific position.

The most disturbing element in this whole discussion, however, comes not from the atheist message itself but from religious groups who suggest that the billboards are inappropriate because they are offensive, failing to pay proper respect to ideas that are central to individuals’ lives. Religion is thus placed behind a protective shield, immune from critique. As someone engaged in the study of religion, the notion that religion is something so special and important (a flawed idea in itself) that it cannot be criticised is both dangerous and misleading. This is not to say that one must set out with the specific intent to offend, nor do I think that the atheists share my understanding of what religion is. In many ways, the religious and atheists groups involved in this debate fail to notice how much they actually have in common. But both sets of ideas must remain open to critique and change. Nothing is so sacred that it cannot be torn to shreds.

Chronology of the discussion:

A billboard appears outside the Lincoln Tunnel in New Jersey calling Christmas a myth.

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/11/26/atheist-billboard-christmas-is-a-myth/

A pro-Christmas billboard, sponsored by the Catholic League, appears across the street.

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/11/30/dueling-billboards-face-off-in-christmas-controversy/

Atheist bus ads appear in Fort Worth, Texas, proclaiming the possibility of being ‘good’ without god.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/14/us/14atheist.html?_r=2&bl

Shortly thereafter, the city of Fort Worth bans all faith-based advertising on buses.

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/12/21/fort-worth-transit-agency-bans-faith-based-ads/

A pro-Christian billboard replaces the Lincoln Tunnel atheist billboard once its run is complete, shortly before Christmas.

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/12/23/god-is-billboard-replaces-controversial-lincoln-tunnel-atheist-billboard/

Allah and Christ are set alongside UFOs and Bigfoot in new atheist bus ads set to hit the streets of Toronto in January.

http://www.canada.com/life/Christ+meets+Bigfoot+more+irreverent+atheist+Canadian+cities/3913741/story.html

For an intelligent analysis of the billboards, including some ideas referenced here, see Susan Jacoby’s editorial at the Washington Post at http://onfaith.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/spirited_atheist/2010/11/selling_atheism_with_billboards.html

Link roundup: 24 December - 31 December

2010-12-24T06:54:00.007-05:00

The new topic of Christmas discussion this year: is it appropriate for atheists to celebrate Christmas?
The Pope have his Christmas address to the United Kingdom.
Voodoo priests in Haiti are being lynched and blamed for the cholera outbreak.
The controversial atheist billboard in New Jersey has been replaced with a pro-Christian one.
Christmas is catching on in China.
Jerry Stiller, formerly of 'Seinfeld', discusses the legacy of Festivus.
The Canada Network has another piece about how Jews deal with the Christmas season.
Plans to built a Christian church in the birthplace of Confucius in China are being met with opposition.
The Chronicle of Higher Education discusses how monotheism can be considered an advance of civilization, if at all.
CNN looks at a new book by a Yale professor who argues, against conservative Christian opinion, that Harry Potter was a good Christian model.
The Huffington Post looks at the relationship between science and faith in Islam.
The Huffington Post also profiles Cadets for Christ, an evangelical ministry operating within the American Air Force.
The New York Times writes about the increased profile of Muslim women in the US.
On a similar note, the Washington Post presents American Muslims as a new consumer niche for advertisers and marketing groups.
Finally, the Washington Post presents its 'Secular Top 10', ten victories of secularism in American politics from the last year.
A Hindu cadet reflects on multiculturalism at the US Air Force Academy.
The Huffington Post's religion page names its top 10 most influential people of the past year.
The New York Times looks at the clash between two immigrant Christian communities sharing a church in Brooklyn.
Some Israelis are questioning the social benefits (like welfare pay for full-time Torah study) granted to ultra Orthodox Jews.
The Huffington Post lists their top 10 religion and politics statistical findings of the last year, including the fact that 47% of Tea Party voters identify with the Christian Right.

Link roundup: 17 December - 23 December

2010-12-17T07:41:00.006-05:00

NPR has a discussion about a new academic text on the neurological study of religion.
CNN profiles another book written by two professors who argue that religion is ultimately good for America.
Mormons are looking for a way around Switzerland's new immigration laws, so that they can continue sending missionaries.
Women are slowly being allowed to join the order of Sufi Whirling Dervishes.
Taking a page from our own Barbara Greenberg, the Huffington Post has a piece about 'A Jew at Christmas.'
Christians and atheists are engaged in an online bidding war, to see who can raise the most money for charity.
The Huffington Post asks how we can find meaning in life without god.
Quebec has decided to end religious instruction in its public day cares.
This year, learn about the meaning of the holidays through social media.
In honour of the release of the new Narnia film, CNN has a piece about C.S. Lewis and his own brand of covert Christianity. The Huffington Post has a piece about the religious/spiritual lessons that can be drawn from the latest Narnia film.
The Huffington Post has a piece about the challenges of raising Jewish children over the holidays and the temptation to celebrate Christmas.
The Religious Right has called environmentalism 'deadly', 'destructive', and one of the great threats of our age.
The Huffington Post has a piece about the use of icons and images in Hinduism.
After 'vampire theology', CNN now considers the theological roots of zombies.
The Huffington Post writes about Jesus from a Hindu perspective.
An astronomer in Kentucky is alleging that he was kept from a prestigious position because of his religious beliefs and his evolutionary skepticism.
Sudan is turning to Islamic law.
The Huffington Post looks at the links between faith and obesity.
40% of Americans still believe in creationism.
A new PBS series follows clergy through the training process.
The Washington Post report on the Islamic revival among young Russians.
From the point of view of university curricula, is science a religion?
The transit agency in Fort Worth, Texas, has banned all faith-based advertising on its buses in the wake of recent atheists bus ads.
CNN looks at how atheists see the month of December and how they deal with Christmas.
The United Nations has passed a motion, supported largely by Islamic countries, against the defamation of religions.
A Catholic hospital in Phoenix that terminated the pregnancy of a fatally ill woman has lost its Catholic status.

Link roundup: 14 December - 16 December

2010-12-14T06:46:00.006-05:00

The Chronicle of Higher Education looks at the study of evangelical Christians in the US, and recommends more of it.
A French court has found against a Muslim daycare worker who was reprimanded for wearing her hijab to work.
All dogs go to heaven? CNN asks where dogs go when they die.
The Huffington Post has a piece about religious identification among South Asian minorities in North American.
Another piece from HP about the 'Christmas Wars' (i.e., the dueling billboards).
Another piece about an English gay couple who were turned away from an inn by its owners for religious reasons.
How do we draw the legal divide between religious inspiration and insanity?
American Jews and Evangelicals are coming to Israel's relief in the wake of recent forest fires.
George Bush is talking about religion again in his recent interview.
How does Alcoholics Anonymous qualify as a religious experience?
Turns out the Vatican is dealing with its own Wikileaks problems too...
In light of continued polls that suggest many Americans still think Obama is a Muslim, the president takes advantage of the Christmas season to sound more Christian.
The 'battle of the billboards' has spread from New Jersey to Texas, where atheist and Christian bus ads have started showing up in Fort Worth.
The US Federal government is suing a Chicago school board that refused to give a Muslim teacher unpaid leave to make the hajj.
Festivus is recognised as a holiday in American jails?!
CNN introduces us to 'Hookers for Jesus', an Amerian ministry to sex workers, and a 'spiritual' Mexican drug lord.
The New York Times writes about the decline of traditional marriage in France and the rise in civil unions.
A letter sold at auction this week shows Einstein calling religion childish and denying that Jews are the chosen people.

Questions I Have for Evolutionary Christians (by Simon Appolloni)

2010-12-13T17:43:00.007-05:00

I’m following a web-cast series entitled “The Advent of Evolutionary Christianity: Conversations at the Leading Edge of Faith.” It’s hosted by Michael Dowd (an American evangelist minister - see adjoining picture - self-proclaimed evolutionary theologian, and author of Thank God for Evolution), and runs just about every night for roughly two months (Advent through to Epiphany).

The series comprises hour-long interviews with Christian thinkers and theologians and culminates with panel discussions (with live Q&A) the last half of January. One can find out more and even download the conversations at http://evolutionarychristianity.com/blog/general/welcome/.

Thus far, the speakers have been Ian Barbour, Bruce Sanguin, Denis Lamoureux, Ross Hostetter, Karl Giberson, John Cobb, and Charles Townes. Some heavy hitters in the field of religion and evolution are yet to come: Richard Rohr, John Haught, Matthew Fox, Diarmuid O’Murchu, John Polkinghorne.

Though a disparate group, all the guests appear to have one thing in common: an embrace of evolution as a viable scientific paradigm for understanding and, indeed, reveling in their faith.

Although it’s too early to make sense of what’s at play, a number of questions come to my mind which I hope to answer by the end of the series. If you happen to listen to any part of this series, I’d be interested in your thoughts (just email me at simon.appolloni@utoronto.ca):

1. Evolution is spoken about as a ‘new reformation’ or ‘Christian revival’. Given that the theory has been around for a rather long time, why are these Christian thinkers embracing evolution only now? What’s so special about this point in time?

2. The host Michael Dowd speaks of ‘millions of Christians in the middle' [somewhere between creationists or atheists, I presume] that already embrace evolution alongside their faith; are they a minority? If so, are they marginalized or simply overlooked?

3. The vast majority of guests are men. Why? Is this a factor of religion, evolutionary thinking, both or something else?

4. A few prominent Christian thinkers who also embrace an evolutionary understanding of their faith, as well as a liberation stance on justice, are missing from the guest list. Why is this so?

5. Many of the guests so far have spoken about the epistemological limitations of both science and religion. What is the dynamic of influence (perhaps there are many) that science plays on religion and, according to these thinkers, is the sway mutual? Along this same line of reasoning, within this new reformation, where does science begin and religion stop and vice-versa?

Link roundup: 10 December - 13 December

2010-12-10T07:33:00.004-05:00

There is talk about disbanding the Canadian Jewish Congress and replacing it with a new umbrella organisation.
As if Haitians hadn't suffered enough, Sarah Palin is heading to the impoverished country with an evangelical relief group.
Conservative Christians are asking Apple to reinstate an app, banned last week, which discourages abortion and gay marriage.
And the debate returns: a Texas pastor has started a website denouncing stores that replace 'Merry Christmas' with 'Happy holidays.'
A Lutheran theologian has published a new book exploring the religious origins of Christmas.
Only half of Americans surveyed rate clergy members as 'honest and ethical', well below other professions.
The Huffington Post looks at religiously-oriented iPhone apps, listing a number of them.
A nun who acted as VP finance for Catholic Iona College is accused of stealing $1.2 million from the university over ten years.
Celebrities are gently mocking Jews to raise money for charity.
A new study has shown that eating disorders are particularly prominent among Orthodox Jewish women.
In light of recent criticism about India's caste system, the Washington Post publishes a piece arguing that the caste system is not intrinsic to Hinduism.
A new leaked cable shows that Ireland offended the Vatican in its dealing with clergy abuse cases.
The UK is considering banning the Amerian pastor who threatened to burn the Koran from entering the country.
The Huffington Post: "This Christmas, give the gift of knowledge about Islam."
The Huffington Post also writes about the 'Hajj apartheid', the luxury afforded to Muslims from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States which is denied to Muslims coming from elsewhere.
The town of Sidney Center, NY, is thrust into the national spotlight following a controversy concerning the use of its cemetery by Sufi Muslims.
Poland, traditionally a bastion of Catholicism, is seeing a rise in secularism.
A new tape reveals that then-President Richard Nixon called Jews 'deserters' for fleeing to Canada during conscription for the Vietnam War.
The Huffington Post argues that consumerism is a religion.

Link roundup: 6 December - 9 December

2010-12-06T06:34:00.005-05:00

A study finds that most Canadians lie and exaggerate the frequency of their church attendance.
In the continued debate over polygamy in BC: After last week's testimony from an academic suggesting that the women in the community of Bountiful, BC, were healthy and well-adjusted, a psychologist from Utah presents the other side of the coin.
Stephen Prothero mourns the death of feminist theology.
Military chaplains in the US are discussing how to adapt to 'don't ask don't tell' and its possible repeal.
The Huffington Post discusses the effect of apocalyptic beliefs on morality.
Can intelligent design thrive now that conservative Catholics are criticising it?
Who won this year's dreidel spinning competition in Brooklyn? Let's find out!
Qatar beats out the United States for the 2022 World Cup of Football/Soccer, and Islamic clerics rejoice.
The Washington Post has an op-ed about Christopher Hitchens and his new autobiography.
A conservative Catholic group in the US has sent nativity scenes to all fifty state governors.
Time magazine asks if environmentalism has lost its spiritual core.
The NY Times has a piece about Iran's rising divorce rate, the increase in divorce initiated by women, and how (religious) law is dealing with it.
China has announced that it will choose the heads of the Catholic church in its country, denying the Vatican its traditional right to do so.
It's official: the Maccabeat's Hanukkah tune 'Candlelight' is an internet hit.
A church in rural Quebec was deconsecrated Tuesday... due to excessive ghost hunting.
The Toronto Star cites a report about rising extremism among Muslim youth in Toronto.
A sociological journal suggests that the friendship built in congregations helps religions contribute to the happiness of its believers. CNN reports on the same journal article.
Some conservative rabbis in Israel are encouraging Jews not to sell property to non-Jews.
An Indian MP is lobbying to install mandatory yoga sessions in the country's schools.
Germany and Austria experiment with state training for Imams.

'The Blair Up There': A Report on the Blair-Hitchens debate

2010-12-01T14:47:00.009-05:00

Last Friday, I had the privilege of attending a sold out debate between former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and renowned New Atheist Christopher Hitchens at Toronto's Roy Thompson Hall. One of several such debates organised across North America in the last few weeks by Blair's Faith Foundation - his post-retirement project - the evening promised to be a rollicking good time and a chance to observe how we can think about religion outside the university. So after fighting my way through a few dozen protesters with their chants of 'Tony Blair, war criminal' and passing the metal detection test - security was steeper than I had expected! - I settled in to my seat.

The motion for the debate read as follows: "Religion is a force for good in the world." Each presenter was given time for opening statements, which were followed by two rounds of rebuttals and finally questions from the audience of about 2700. I had missed this on my way in, but participants had a chance to vote on the motion before the debate, so that the organisers could track how the arguments changed audience opinion. While I was expecting to be in a largely Blair-sympathetic audience, I was quickly proven wrong. Initial numbers showed that 22% of people agreed that religion was a force for good in the world, 57% disagreed, and 21% were undecided. 75% of those polled also suggested that their opinions could be influenced by the debate.

Arguments on both sides were fairly predictable, as Hitchens kept hammering at examples of religious groups doing wrong - terrorist attacks, evangelical intolerance, genocide, and so on - while Blair presented opposing cases of religious groups doing good. The two categories of 'good' and 'bad' were used uncritically, as was the label of religion. In a way, both participants agreed on much - that neither one of their positions was absolute, for example. Even they had to recognise, albeit implicitly, that the proposal up for debate was deeply flawed; the obvious answer was "sometimes religion works for good, and sometimes it's a source for terrible evil." Both presenters agreed on this, I think. So while Hitchens pointed to the immorality of religious beliefs, which discriminate and 'other' along imaginary lines, which denigrate women and homosexuals, he did not want to suggest that religion would die out; he knew that it wouldn't, arguing instead that 'more secularism would simply be a good thing' and that religions need to give up their claims to supernatural authority and enter debate with alternative positions on proper terms. The obvious reply from Blair: 'If we can agree that religion isn't going to die out, why not work on reforming it, by encouraging the good in religion?' How one would do so, however, is unclear.

Blair came closest to thinking critically about the category of religion when he pointed out that none of the things that Hitchens criticised about religion were unique to it. Don't some political beliefs make 'good people do bad things' just like religious beliefs do? But instead of following this road, Blair fell back on an essentialisation of religion, suggesting that 'real religion' is a force for good in a person's life, thereby implying that those religious actions that Hitchens named were some kind of 'false' religion, making a messy picture all too clean. Blair did thank Hitchens for his positions, and described the value that challenges to one's faith can have. Faith should always be reflexive faith, then.

What can I say in terms of my general impressions? I've already mentioned that the motion itself was deeply flawed. I was deeply impressed with Hitchens, who quickly won the audience's affection. If a debate is won by the charisma and humour of a given presenter moreso than by his arguments - and I have no doubt that it is - Hitchens was the clear winner. I had heard terrible things about Hitchens 'the man' going into the debate: that he was an ogre, every bit as closed minded and belligerent as the worst of religious fundamentalists. I was thus pleasantly surprised; he was funny, entertaining and respectful, all the while defending his positions, as the debate would have him do. He garnered audience applause on several occasions. Those of us who follow politics knew what to expect of Blair, and he was every bit the diplomat in his statements.

One closing remark: in a city as multicultural as Toronto, it was all the more surprising to see an overwhelmingly Caucasian audience. I have a number of hunches about this, but none that I'd venture yet as explanations. Interpret it as you will.

The final result? Hitchens 68%, Blair 32%, with no undecided option provided. The two, then, essentially split the undecided voters from the opening vote. For those interested, I voted for Hitchens, simply because he put on the better show, though my own opinions lie closer to his than Blair's regardless. Rest assured though - my vote was quickly counterbalanced by my colleague, also in attendance, who couldn't believe that I would encourage Hitchens in any way.

Link roundup: 29 November - 3 December

2010-11-30T06:45:00.002-05:00

The Guardian has an editorial critiquing the increase in young Muslim women wearing the veil.
The legal case for sharia law in Oklahoma continues...
The majority of religious groups in the United States, excluding Evangelicals, support homosexuals serving openly in the American military.
A Buffalo Bills wide receiver blames god for his dropping a game-winning touchdown pass. No word on whether he also blames god for another horrendous Bills' season. Or did he? He retracted his statement a day later.
In other news, a college player is complaining about a misconduct penalty incurred for thanking god in a touchdown celebration.
German Jews have elected for the first time a leader born after the Holocaust.
Carla Bruni is pleased with the Pope's new position on condoms. In other news, an Australian theologian teaching at Georgetown explains the change of mind.
A Human Rights Watch report has called some Indonesian sharia laws abusive to women.
The New Jersey atheist billboard now faces a dissenting voice.
Even atheists are complaining that the billboard reduces their beliefs to a slogan.
The Pentagon's recent support for the repealing of 'don't ask don't tell' weighed religious concerns too, according to CNN.
The Huffington Post has an analysis of the place of religion in Sarah Palin's new book.
The Mormon handbook, a two-volume set of instructions and religious positions for faith leaders, has been made public.
Catholic Church leaders are looking how to stop declining Catholic school enrollment in the US.
The Smithsonian has removed a controversial art installation involving a video of Jesus covered in ants after Catholic groups complain.
A McGill law professor who has done research in the polygamous community of Bountiful, B.C., is testifying in favour of the women's health and happiness.
A Canadian atheist group is rolling out new bus ads attacking religious beliefs.
Looking for a new Hanukkah song? Try this one.
Apple has nixed an app from a Conservative Christian group which discourages abortion and homosexuality.

Christmas, in the Public Sphere. Or, How I Learned to Cope with Christmas.*

2010-11-28T12:50:00.004-05:00

Even before Halloween was happening I started to see commercials on television advertising Christmas shopping, I was bitter. “It’s not even Halloween!” I yelled at the television. Really, I did, you can ask Patrick, he saw me do it and raised his eyebrow at me, probably wondering if I was already starting to put on my bitter face for Christmas. You see, I’m Jewish - a label I’ve used my whole life, and it’s true, born to a Jewish mother, a Jewish father, both of whom have Jewish mothers, who also have Jewish parents, and so on and so on. I come from a long line of Jews - of course what this means to me is incredibly different to what it probably meant to my grandmother, or to my grandmother’s next-door neighbour who lived out her final years in downtown Toronto, but wore a daily reminder of the Holocaust tattooed on her arm - lucky to survive, but forever branded with a number.

For me being Jewish makes Christmas time a strange time of year. As a child my parents used to give my sister and I Hanukkah presents on Christmas day. We woke up to a big pile of presents wrapped in Christmas paper, which we happily opened, and then ate breakfast while watching the Disney Christmas Parade on television, and had leftover Chinese for dinner from the night before. Not to give into stereotypes too much, but every year my family goes to a Chinese food restaurant for dinner on the 24^th of December for my Mother’s birthday. As if it’s not hard enough to have your birthday the day before one of the most popular guys in all of the world - but there’s nothing open, so every year, Chinese food. When I was older I learned that my parents gave my sister and I our presents on Christmas day so we wouldn’t feel left out from all the fun our friends had. This was true - there’s nothing more depressing as a child than calling your friend Christmas afternoon and hearing about all the cool stuff they got - when you’re little there’s no connection between the birth of Jesus and getting presents from a fat guy in a red suit - you just want some presents too. It’s all you’ve heard about for a whole month! You sang Christmas Carols in school, you did the Christmas pageant, you saw all the lights, heard all the excitement of your friends counting down until Christmas. So, why wouldn’t I be getting presents? Oh yeah - because I don’t celebrate Christmas - not technically anyway.

For many years this is how it went down - I can remember the first time I helped my friend Kara and her family decorate their Christmas tree. I remember it being kind of fun, and thinking the ornaments were pretty. I also remember when Kara dropped a box of Christmas balls and cried when she got in trouble for breaking them. I think they were her grandmother’s, which meant her mother was not pleased. I also remember going away to university and asking my parents to send me a Menorah so I could light candles in my dorm room for Hanukkah. We never really did this as a family, but for some reason I felt like doing it, and my Mom happily obliged, sending me my grandmother’s Menorah, the one that used to sit in the windowsill of their house. I still have it, and every year I light the candles, sometimes I miss a day, sometimes they don’t get lit when they’re supposed to, but I do it, not because I believe in anything in particular, or really celebrate any religious holidays, but because I know my grandmother would have done it, and she’d probably like that I was still using the old Menorah. There’s no connection for to “religion” per se, but with my family. While millions of other people are putting up trees and taking their children to sit on Santa’s knee I’d light a candle for my grandparents- and why not? It’s probably the most “religious” thing I do all year.

My experience with Christmas has changed over the last ten years, but bitterness over the endless rounds of Christmas music and the empty wallet that comes every December sometimes rears its head. I can probably blame some of this on having worked in retail for many years - you’ve never really experienced the commercialism of Christmas if you haven’t worked a retail job for the month of December. Wow - you’ve never seen so many people buying so much stuff just to try and show someone they love them. But it’s not just that - it’s to buy presents for people because you think you have to, and there’s the buying of presents for people they don’t even like, and there’s even buying of presents for themselves (come on, you’ve heard someone say “I bought it as a Christmas present to myself”). It’s not an easy time of the year to be stuck behind a cash register, no matter what religious category you fall under - but yeah, I would have been the cashier that gave you a funny look if you said you to me “Why didn’t you wish me a Merry Christmas?!” This happened to me once, and I actually replied to a customer “Because I’m JEWISH.” I also refused to wear reindeer antlers at my job, and when my boss asked “Why?!” I replied “Because I’m JEWISH.” Thankfully this was enough in a work environment to be let off the hook - really the reason was a mixture of the whole Jew-thing and the fact that I think they’re ridiculous (sorry, but I do). The result of all of this? My bitterness towards Christmas mounted, getting larger with ever retail year. I sometimes had a hard time “getting it” - this whole Santa thing, and how it got wrapped up (no pun intended) with the whole Jesus thing. I’ve seen those “put the Christ back in Christmas” signs, and wondered how things got so seemingly disjointed from the birth of “the saviour.” Wasn’t this supposed to be about the manger, Joseph and Mary, those three wise men, that bright star, and some kind of life lesson about helping those in need? It seemed to me that it had more to do with buying stuff and lots of it.

Now, let me say that I’ve come to realize something that I think is important - beyond the exchange of gifts. I learned this lesson from Patrick and his family. Having spent ten Christmases with them they’ve helped to wear away at the bitter edges, and I see things differently than I used to. Take, for example, their Christmas tree. I’ve always kind of liked the whole tree thing, but I find their family tree particularly lovely because of the sentimental value behind their ornaments. Many of them are connected to family members, some of whom aren’t with us anymore, and decorating the tree is always bitter sweet. Then there’s the usual family debate between Patrick and his brother over tinsel on the tree – is it tacky, is it tasteful? Then there’s the delicious turkey dinner - and a traditional snap shot of everyone at the dinner table, as well as Patrick’s Mom usually forgetting to serve the stuffing inside the turkey (though I think last year she remembered, but it’s hit and miss). Now, there is an exchange of presents, and I have heard Patrick say that he loved when he was a kid and “the tree would be bursting with presents!” But it’s hardly as gluttonous as I would imagine the television ads are hoping for and quite honestly it’s more about the family gathering than anything else. In a sense it ends up being more like the Menorah, less about discussion of “religion” in the sense of being saved, or the divine, and more about the family connection and thankfulness for being happy and healthy. In the end it ends up being a lot like my experience of Jewish holiday’s than I would have thought. This is what I like, you can’t help but let some of the commercial bitterness go when you’re beside the twinkling Christmas lights on the tree while it snows buckets down in Ottawa and you watch your best friend spend time with his family.

What’s the point? Where did this even come from? I found myself in everyone’s favourite Dufferin Mall the other day and hear a ringing bell and someone yelling “Ho! Ho Ho! Merry Christmas!” That “someone” was a Santa wishing everyone a Merry Christmas. “It’s still NOVEMBER!” was my initial reaction and I felt my body tense up as I saw a guy dressed in a red Santa suit smiling. Then I pictured Patrick’s family tree, and thought about my own family and their “Christmas” tradition. It helped block out the commercial signs advertising expensive gift exchange and I think I felt my body relax- even if it was for a moment.

*Yes. I swear I wrote this- if you know me at all you might be wondering who this sap is, but it’s me. It probably won’t ever happen again, so take it while you can.

Link roundup: 24 November - 28 November

2010-11-25T09:22:00.003-05:00

CNN debates whether Jesus was a capitalist or a communist. The suggestion that both options are completely ridiculous isn't on the table...
A professor of philosophy takes on the question of religious exclusiveness.
The Dalai Lama is giving up his ceremonial duties as the head of the Tibetan state in exile.
After Sarah Palin declared in her new book that most university professors do not believe in god, the Chronicle of Higher Education set out to prove her wrong.
The Canada Network has a preview of 'The Borgias', a new cable series coming in Winter that will chronicle the life and sexcapades of Pope Alexander VI at the end of the 15th century.
CNN newest piece in their 'sacred space' series looks at the Washington National Cathedral.
The argument between China and the Vatican over control of the Catholic Church in China continues.
The Vatican's new position on condoms has irked conservative Catholics.
The popular vote gave the win to Christopher Hitchens in his debate with Tony Blair in Toronto on Friday evening.
In related news, atheist billboards are now taking on Christmas and denouncing it as a myth.
One of the former members of music group ABBA has lost a legal attempt to reclaim money she claims she lent to her Buddhism teacher and his temple.

What is the Message? (By: Julie Reich)

2010-11-22T13:46:00.012-05:00

While picking up a coffee and a BLT bagel in the local Tim Horton’s over the weekend, I came across a free brochure entitled,“The Bible: What is its Message?” After having siphoned through the fine print several times, it eventually registered that the brochure was a widely distributed monthly magazine via a Jehovah’s Witnesses publication, incorporated under The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York. After having conferred with a few friends, I learned that The Watchtower is more widely recognized than originally suspected and in effect, I was ‘out of the loop’. Of course, there may have been opportunities for exposure to such mediums throughout my undergraduate career. After all, one undergraduate person cannot be expected to know everything encompassed within a sub-discipline unless they are an expert, something I don’t claim to be. Regardless of any reasonable justification for my having been 'out of the loop', I was plagued by the fact my friends had more 'common knowledge' than myself, someone who minored in the study of Religion. I wonder, should I have been able to recognize a Jehovah's Witnesses publication?

In preparation for a paper or an article, I am accustomed to speculate potential arguments and premises within any preliminary rough draft. However, my initial reaction to the recognition of being completely oblivious to varying current socio-religious manifestations in the ‘real world’, seemed to dominate.

It occurred to me that the instinct to dissect and critically assess the content in the brochure, assert some kind of persuasive argument and present the case accordingly, is a habitual post-secondary response. However, now that I am no longer a student (at least for now), and consequently, I am no longer expected to pursue the study of Religion within Academia, a personal confrontation with religion in the public sphere seems like a salient topic of discussion. Essentially, the confrontation itself is what is of interest to me, in that it was not confounded by any bias acquired from previous academic exposure. In other words, my initial curiosity toward the Jehovah's Witnesses pamphlet in Tim Horton's was not blurred by an academic lens. As a result, any support I hold in regards to the conviction that a disparity exists between knowledge acquired as a result of post-secondary education and knowledge acquired from ‘real-world’ experience, is now reinforced. Ultimately, despite any dissonance between sources and/or institutions that may be outlets for practical edification and/or preparation for life, I have shifted from a position that critically observes the world to a position that critically observes my place in the world. Hence, in my opinion, the difference between acquisition of theoretical knowledge (and the skills, such as the particular language determined by the discipline from which different theories are discussed) versus acquisition of knowledge via experience in the ‘real world’, parallels the communication gap between post-secondary academia and the rest of society. Why does this matter? Well, if the medium is the message and a communication gap exists between experts, including those from varying disciplines within academia itself, the means for transmitting information is self-defeating and the the message is therefore irrelevant. In other words, if the medium interferes with the message and it prevents dialogue between disparate groups within the public sphere, it is more harmful than anything else. I wonder, what does the lack of a common language convey in regards to any solution-oriented attempts to bridge communication gaps within the public sphere? Essentially, if such a disparity is reinforced within the status quo, then is the gap between finding a common language between diverse groups within the public sphere also reified?

Since I am no longer a student perhaps the ‘real world’ will teach me about occurrences of religion in the public sphere in a different way than did academia, and despite existence of any potential communication gap between groups in the public sphere, I now have the opportunity to explore the other side. At least now my eyes are more open. I wonder, if the medium is the message, and this particular medium (the one I came across over the weekend) required a familiar interaction, one of turning pages, reading brief summaries, perusing subtitles and chapters and use of recognizable imagery, why was the message so exotic? Or rather, if the medium is the message, who is the messenger?

Link roundup: 21 November - 23 November

2010-11-21T09:10:00.004-05:00

The Toronto Star, the Canada network, the BBC, CNN, the Huffington Post, and the New York Times all report on the Pope's decision to endorse condoms in certain (very rare) circumstances.
Turns out the pastor who suggested last week that Facebook leads to adultery may have been speaking from experience.
China has sparked the ire of the Vatican by ordaining bishops despite the latter's objections.
The Kansas City Star has a piece about the role of Christianity in vampire-related popular culture.
Canada's polygamy law is being challenged in the British Columbia Superior Court by a group of Mormons. Crown lawyers are, not surprisingly, opposing legalization, arguing exploitation.
Turns out the Pope's partial about-face on condom use is too confusing for some.
On the other hand, the Pope's praise of former Pope Pius II in a new book is being greeted with dismay from Holocaust survivors.
Lawmakers in Texas are lobbying to make it legal for school teachers to prominently display the 10 commandments in their classrooms.
If you're so inclined, you can now study for your Bar Mitzvah online.
The next version of the NIV bible will drop the inclusive language, according to a preview obtained by the Toronto Star.
CNN has a video about (American) football and religious faith.
Oklahoma's recent ban on Islamic law in courts is being challenged.
The Huffington Post discusses the Pope's new book, beyond the condom flip-flop.
It also has a piece about the relationship between Evangelicals and Jews.
An excerpt from a Harvard report discusses al-Qaeda's religious justification for the use of nuclear weapons.
The New York Times has a piece about Jews in Indonesia, traditionally a Christian and Muslim stronghold.
A sociologist asks whether religious people make easier targets for scams and Ponzi schemes.
Finally, a psychologist publishes an extract from his book, Supernatural Selection, at the Huffington Post and looks at the psychological origins of religious belief.

Link roundup: 18 November - 20 November

2010-11-20T11:52:00.001-05:00

Spiritual students do better in university, according to a study cited by the Chronicle of Higher Education.
In a recent poll, a majority of Americans say that Obama's religious beliefs differ from their own.
China needs more religious freedom, according to a recent American report.
Obama has signed an order clarifying the church-state relationship. See another report here.
America's best church choir is from Compton, California, according to a recent contest.
CNN has two pieces about Facebook. The first looks at 'the theology of Facebook', while the second quotes a pastor who argues that Facebook encourages adultery (the Washington Post disagrees).
The Toronto Star has an article about a (very entertaining) Fox news interview with a 4 year-old boy who claims to have gone to heaven while under anesthesia.
Evangelical Christians in Brazil have banned the use of USB connections, calling the technology the mark of devil worshippers.
Macleans Magazine talks about Tony Blair's recent tour discussing religion and politics, focusing on his recent stop at McGill University in Montreal.
The Free Church of Scotland has voted to allow the singing of hymns in its services, after over a century without them.
The iPhone bible app is turning out to be very popular.
The Pope has said that the use of condoms is acceptable in certain cases.

Link roundup: 15 November - 17 November

2010-11-17T06:41:00.000-05:00

Canada.com follows the hajj up Mt. Ararat.
CNN also has a number of articles about Mecca, looking at its past through photographs, its construction boom, and the $4.5 million spent on the Kiswa, the cloth covering the Kabaa.
Archaeologists have issued a warning about the loss of Afgan Buddhist relics.
BBC News writes about the continued struggle between Muslims and Hindus over the Ayodhya holy site.
CNN unintentionally confirms everything attachment theory has said about relationships with the divine.
The Huffington Post asks if Abraham was misogynistic. I won't spoil the surprise...
Actress Hillary Swank is encouraging faith groups to reach out to prison inmates.
The CBC has a two-part interview with ex-PM Tony Blair, who talks about the role of religion in the Afghanistan War. (part one, part two)
CNN has a piece about Islam and environmentalism.
According to the Pope, doping in sports runs counter to Christian values.
Islamic countries have brought forth a UN resolution against the defamation of religions.
The New York Times has a lengthy treatment of women in evangelical Christianity.
After complaints about new screening methods being used at American airports, the Transportation Safety Authority has said that no allowances will be made based on religious beliefs.

Religions and Animals - by Simon Appolloni

2010-11-12T10:42:00.003-05:00

“The Lives of Animals” by Stacey Gibson is a feature article from UofT Magazine (August 2010) that merits a read by us all. The deplorable and inhumane treatment of animals for our food consumption can no longer be a topic we politely sweep under the carpet.

Most animals raised for food in Canada live on industrial sites where they never go outdoors. Under our laws, this is perfectly legal, but is it ethical? And it isn’t just our inhumanity to fellow animals to consider. Estimates show that approximately 18% of greenhouse gases originate from these factory farms throughout the world.

It’s curious how some followers of religion are responding to these facts. Many are turning to vegetarianism. We can see, for instance, the anthropocentric mantra of Christianity – that all creation is ultimately of instrumental value to human ends – slowly being eroded in various circles, as the web sites below attest. It’s not just Christianity either.

Give these sites a look. More importantly, let’s all take a cue from these religious troublemakers and go to the next local MEA meeting (Meat-Eaters Anonymous)... “Hi. My name is Simon Appolloni, and I am a vegetarian (or trying very hard to be!)”

“The Lives of Animals”

http://www.magazine.utoronto.ca/feature/ethics-of-raising-livetock-industrial-agriculture-animal-rights-u-of-t/

Religion and Animals Institute

http://www.religionandanimals.org/resources.html

The Faith Outreach program of The Humane Society of the United States

http://www.humanesociety.org/about/departments/faith/

Link roundup: 10 November - 12 November

2010-11-12T09:41:00.001-05:00

Humanists in the US are launching an advertising campaign against blind and literal readings if holy texts.
The Huffington Post has a piece about the place of faith in former American president George Bush's recently published memoirs.
It also has a piece looking at Christian Zionism.
The Toronto Star cites a member of the US House of Representatives who has suggested that god will save the Earth from climate change.
Elizabeth Smart's accused abductor is using religion to defend his actions.
A Sikh soldier in the US military has been allowed to complete basic training while wearing his turban and traditional beard. While Sikh military doctors have been allowed such rights in the past, soldiers have not.
Rapper Shyne is out of prison and into Orthodox Judaism.
The Washington Post has a piece about the controversy surrounding a conservative bishop in Belgium who has said that AIDS is 'justice for homosexuals' and that pedophilic priests should go unpunished.
A Muslim civil rights group in the US is concerned that the government is delaying the issuing and shipment of passports for those heading to Mecca.
An American evangelical group will be holding an event challenging homosexuality, according to CNN.
A Christian woman in Pakistan is being accused of blasphemy after insulting Mohammed and calling the Koran a fake.
The Huffington Post has a piece on Catholic exorcisms in the US, in light of a conference on the topic in Baltimore this weekend.
The Pope has responded to Ahmedinejad's letter from last week...

Link roundup: 6 November - 9 November

2010-11-09T06:25:00.000-05:00

A group of American nuns have sold a baseball card that they inherited from the family of a dead sister for a very large sum of money.
The Pope warns against secularism in Spain. The CBC reports that this same papal visit was met with gay protesters.
CNN asks if megachurches are going out of fashion.
The Huffington Post has a piece about finding religion in the Shanghai National Exposition.
The BBC reports that Iraqi Christians are being urged to leave the country, fearing attacks.
A Michigan woman who advertised her search for a 'Christian roommate' was ruled to not be in violation of discrimination laws by the courts.
Sikhs decry security screenings at airports and complain of racial profiling, according to the NY Times.
The Washington Post turns to Lao-Tzu's political writings for some post-election wisdom.
The Washington Post also takes the disappearance of abortion as an election issue as a sign of the 'maturing conscience of American Catholics'.
Roman Catholic monks in Switzerland have taken to posting newspaper ads in a bid for new recruits, according to the BBC.
The world's tallest Jesus statue has just been completed in Poland.
The 'Islam Channel' in the UK is being investigated by broadcasting authorities for condoning marital rape and violence towards women, among other things.
Finally, an Israeli scholar has completed a new translation of the Talmud.

'Easy A' and the End of Christendom

2010-11-07T01:44:00.006-04:00

In the aftermath of the recent midterm elections in the United States, I suppose the film Easy A is not the most significant thing I could write about concerning religion in the public sphere. Nonetheless, I think it is relevant. Hear me out.

I went to see this movie because I was in the mood for a chick-flick/high-school-coming-of-age-comedy-type movie (not that I feel the need to justify it). What I was struck by was the Christian antagonist Marianne, played by Amanda Bynes. Though her performance lacked the nuance of, say, Mandy Moore in Saved, I was struck by the fact that I so readily had another film character to even compare her to. Like Saved, Easy A uses a foil character that defines their public identity as a Christian to signify historically rooted conformity and moralism from which to rebel. This signification relies upon the audience’s memory of the high school movie in which the unspoken norms of Christendom reigned and adults were the ultimate authority, as well as familiarity with the identity politics that followed Christendom’s fading and were a reality in many areas of life for several decades before eventually being reflected in this genre. Marianne’s type of Christian identity can only exist in a post-Christendom plurality, where she represents a historical establishment, though one that has lost its monopoly on a culture rife with dissent.

Easy A is, in a nutshell, the story of Olive (played by Emma Stone), who pretends promiscuity, originally with a gay friend to protect him from bullying, but eventually in exchange for gifts from social outcasts at her high school. The story is juxtaposed with her English class’s study of The Scarlet Letter. (Here I would like to point out that the main character in Easy A did not do the things her small rumor-ravaged school believes, thus carefully dodging a host of moral and ethical issues.) Within the context of the Scarlet Letter juxtaposition, Marianne’s condemnation and resulting campaign to save Olive’s soul and/or drive her from the school is supposed to be a sort of statement about how women’s sexuality is still judged by Puritanical standards—or at least this is how I read the main message.

What interests me more than the message is that a Christian prayer group is so readily incorporated into the landscape of a cinematic high school. Throughout the film, there are repeated self-conscious references to John Hughes movies, seemingly to acknowledge the movie’s place within/in opposition to the genre. What stood out to me in opposition to 1980s high school movies was that proselytizing Christians were an acknowledged social group.

In a movie like The Breakfast Club, the social strata of high school consist of the popular “good” girl, jock, weirdo artist type, nerd, and damaged “bad” boy. None of these characters are put in the context of a church, religion, or relationship with any deity. Even with the groups left out of that particular movie, I don’t think the absence of stated religious context for characters is limited to this one movie or even that decade. Even in the mid-1990s (Clueless comes to mind) characters’ religious backgrounds are generally not mentioned.

I think it is significant that nationally released mainstream movies have characters that are defined as individuals within a group identified as Christian. In the case of Marianne, she is portrayed as mean-spirited in her zealotry, but also naïve and earnest, surrounded by hypocrites and Christians of convenience. Her most notable identifier is Christian. It is as though groups of characters self-identifying as Christian has come to have a place with the jocks and stoners in the cinematic landscape of the American imagination, another clique in which to belong.

Like any teenage movie clique, Christian groups are of course stylized artistic representations designed to resonate with an audience who can understand what they are meant to represent. To be a social group or a plot foil in a genre like the high school movie, the audience must be able to read the shorthand for the motivations, beliefs, and stances of the characters and their group. While evangelical Christianities were moving further into the public sphere as a mainstream media presence in the 1990s, it took until the turn of the millennium for Christian youth movements to be widespread and media-represented enough to be usable as a plot device in teenage movies.

What surprises me is that it took the film industry so long to catch up. Obviously, the presence and relevance of Christian youth communities varies from school to school and area to area in the United States, but to some degree Christian youth groups and movements have been present and relevant since the outbreak of HIV in the U.S. was acknowledged as a threat to teenage health.

Condoms and “safe sex” have been an expected part of the high school movie climate for some time (American Pie, for instance). As reactions to the impact on youth of the HIV epidemic and the growing discussion of STDs, the part played by Christian youth in these discussions quickly made it onto MTV (google “Christine O’Donnell” and “masturbation”) but not into the fictional stories we tell ourselves on the silver screen.

At one point, Olive goes to several religious institutions for guidance about her recent lying, which is a search notably to no avail (it is on this journey that Olive and the audience find out that Marianne’s father is a minister). The film is clear in its emphasis on the shakiness of the ground from which the school’s Christian group casts judgment, but the hypocrisy of some adult authority figures is also exposed along the way.

I have encountered in academic circles a lot of talk about the “end of Christendom.” In traditional outlets of popular culture it plays out in subtle but noteworthy ways. In the past, one could argue for an assumed Christian context for all high school movies, with examples like Molly Ringwald’s character’s sister getting married in church in Sixteen Candles, or her character in The Breakfast Club being established as a “good” girl because she is a virgin. The possibility that Christendom has recently come to an end can be seen in the reflection of several decades of U.S. identity politics finally showing up in the new high school movie. Rather than most characters being assumed Christian by default, it is now a declared position within a plurality that does not uncritically accept being judged by one group’s “Christian” standards of morality.

Despite the presence of plurality, in an echo of the larger U.S. public sphere, confessing Christians in high school movies are not just one group on an equal footing with all others. In Easy A, the movie has it both ways. Marianne’s group is disliked by adult authority figures in the school whose reactions to the promiscuity rumors include insisting Olive take a handful of condoms. However, Marianne is also the movie’s antagonist because as the daughter of a minister and in her connection to Christianity and the Christian church, she represents the establishment—if not the school establishment, a larger cultural establishment going back to the time of The Scarlet Letter.

What I am uncomfortable in calling “the culture war” is nonetheless a very real phenomenon and is being played out in more areas of the public sphere than just Fox News in order to become an assumed part of our fictional landscape. In Easy A, the Christians are the foil because movies with teenagers are always about rebellion. While the presence of plurality is a sign that Christendom has come to an end, the usefulness of Christianity/Christians in signifying rebellion betrays the depth of Christendom’s mark on the cultural landscape.

Link roundup: 4 November - 5 November

2010-11-05T09:01:00.001-04:00

Cuba will be opening its first new Catholic seminary since the revolution.
CNN chronicles the high turnout of Christian Right voters in Tuesday's midterm elections.
The Huffington Post also has a piece about Democrats' inability to attract the religious vote.
The Catholic Church is bringing out a new translation of the Roman Mass, soon to be used in religious services around the world.
The Huffington Post has an article on Bill Maher's comments about Islam on his HBO show last week.
The Supreme Court is being asked to rule on the legality of scholarship programs that only allow the winners to attend religious schools.
Turns out Obama isn't so popular in the Muslim world anymore either...
Faith groups are pressing Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to help those who houses are being foreclosed.
The Huffington Post has a piece by Ravi Shankar on the Hindu festival of Diwali.
Israel has legalised civil marriages for those who have no official religious affiliation.
The Pope takes the fifth spot on Forbes' list of most influential people.
The great mosque-cathedral in Cordoba is petitioning the UN to have the 'mosque' dropped from its official heritage name.
The first female rabbi has been ordained in Germany since the end of the Second World War.

Link roundup: 1 November - 3 November

2010-11-03T07:10:00.000-04:00

A South African pastor's sermon about Jesus having HIV is sparking outrage in his home country.
Saudi clerics have endorsed a ban on female cashiers, suggesting that it violates the segregation of the sexes.
Parent central has a piece about Islamic rituals involved in the birth of a child.
Neighbours are asking that a statue of the Virgin Mary in Windsor, Ontario, that is said to be weeping be removed, because the pilgrims are increasing the traffic in their neighbourhood.
As part of a series on sacred spaces, CNN looks at a Buddhist fire ceremony performed for the first time in a California temple.
A British Christian couple is suing after they are denied permission to be foster parents because they claim that their beliefs prevent them from accepting homosexuality.
The Huffington Post asks if the world is ready for a female Dalai Lama.
Former US President Jimmy Carter warns that religion and politics are getting too close to each other in contemporary politics.
Stanley Fish responds to criticism of his earlier column on religion and the liberal state in the New York Times.
An American church plans an oversized Jesus statue after the previous one burns to the ground after being struck by lightning.
Stephen Prothero mourns the death of feminism and feminist theology in his latest contribution to CNN.
The Huffington Post has a commentary about the role of evangelical Christians in yesterday's American midterm elections.