A Governor, a Cardinal and the Death Penalty -- Sightings

The Death Penalty remains a controversial subject in American life.  A large majority of Americans support it either on the basis of its alleged deterrant effects or on the basis of justice.  This view is held in spite of the fact that it runs counter to Roman Catholic teachings and that of many Protestants as well.  Although capital punishment remains popular there are signs of change -- in part because people in leadership are paying attention to their own faith traditions.  In today's Sighting's posting, Martin Marty interacts with the recent signing of a bill to end capital punishment in Illinois by the Governor, who cites the influence of words written by the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin.  I invite you to consider these thoughts and add your own.  For my own perspective (I'm a strong opponent of the death penalty), click here.   

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Sightings 3/28/2011

A Governor, a Cardinal and the Death Penalty

-- Martin Marty

“On that decisive morning of March 9, [Governor Pat Quinn of Illinois] laid aside the secular factors and opened his Bible to a passage in II Corinthians about human imperfection,” Samuel G. Freedman wrote in the New York Times. “He prayed. And when he signed the bill striking down the death penalty, he cited one influence by name,” the late Cardinal of Chicago. It was a shock to be reminded that Joseph Bernardin passed away almost fifteen years ago, since he remains such a presence to so many of us and such an irritant to others, including many Catholics who never took to his example and writings on life, peace, and reconciliation.

Freedman, who wrote of this praying and signing, listed as “the several secular factors” some arguments from prosecutors who spoke of the death penalty’s deterrent effect, which is a secular factor, and also of “the grieving relatives of murder victims who saw in it fierce justice,” which Quinn took seriously, aware of their grief and himself a former proponent of capital punishment as “fierce justice.” He knew that three-fourths of polled Americans still favor the death penalty. They lost one favorer, however, after Quinn’s prayer and his reading of Bernardin. Some of us would like to think that his signing is part of a slow but epochal shift away from executing horribly guilty and sometimes utterly innocent Americans.

Empathizing with and supporting Democrat Quinn is not a signal of a partisan commitment. His predecessor twice removed, former Governor George H. Ryan, a Republican now in prison, also made strenuous moves against capital punishment. In an autobiographical address to the Pew Forum at the University of Chicago Divinity School in 2002, Ryan told how as a legislator he had voted for the death penalty but as governor, who quite literally had the power to have over 150 convicts killed, he changed. Religion played a large role in his decision. Be it noted that religion also plays a part in the decision of some civil leaders who continue to support capital punishment.

Where does this leave us? Those of us who observe and comment on our sightings of explicit religion in public life, including in its focused political forms, have to know that there is no neat line to draw as to what is acceptable in a republic which distinguishes between religion and civil authority and what is not. A teachable moment, one of millions since, occurred when President Reagan, televised before the presidential seal, named 1983 “The Year of the Bible” for Americans. Some days later I was one of four guests on a now-forgotten television show hosted by now-forgotten Phil Donahue. We disoriented Mr. Donahue and perhaps some viewers. He had invited an ACLU critic of the President, expecting him to represent hard-line secularist opposition to such blurring of lines—only to find that the guest was a Southern Baptist minister.

I think I was expected to speak against the President, but chose, on James Madisonian grounds, to defend the President’s right, arguing that one does not and cannot and should not leave behind the religious bases of one’s ethics. Next, I got to say, had the Congress voted, as some saw it poised to do, to make that designation legal, hosts of us would have stepped up to oppose it. So now with Governors Ryan and Quinn, influenced by scriptures, church teachings, and in this case by Cardinal Bernardin, they acted out of informed conscience—risking their action in politics. Still and always: handle with care!

References

Samuel G. Freedman, “Faith Was on the Governor’s Shoulder,” New York Times, March 26, 2011.


“Governor George Ryan: An Address on the Death Penalty,” The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, June 3, 2002.

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at http://www.illuminos.com/.

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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

In God We Trust -- a Lenten Devotion

Matthew 5:38-48;

Micah 7:5-7

In God We Trust

I was invited to write a reflection on something that’s on my heart and that I want to share with the congregation. I thought about writing on how Jesus’ call to love our enemies should help define how we understand the nature of God. I’ve chosen a text to include in the day's reading that reflects that concern, but the issue that grabs my attention here is the matter of Trust

It is increasingly clear that there is a crisis of trust that is affecting families, churches, and communities large and small. Although there is a need for healthy skepticism and even suspicion – don’t believe everything you hear or read, especially if it comes by way of an email, but without a certain degree of trust society can’t sustain itself.

The prophet Micah, who declares so beautifully what God desires from us (Mic. 6:8), also writes: “Put no trust in a friend, have no confidence in a loved one; guard the doors of your mouth from her who lies in your embrace; . . .” (Mic. 7:5). Yes, the prophet says – your enemies are in your household, which means the only one you can trust is God (7:6-7).

I recently had the opportunity to be with Martin Marty at the Academy of Parish Clergy, and Marty spoke to the issue that he deals with in his powerful new book Building Cultures of Trust. In reflecting on the biblical perspective concerning trust, he writes: “We cannot build cultures of trust on the basis of faith in the natural trustworthiness of humans” (p. 61). That said, Marty believes, and I agree, that the church, the people of God, are called to build cultures of trust in the midst of so much distrust.

We start with the recognition that in recent years scandal and disappointment have damaged our trust in the political, the corporate, and even the religious realms. There is much reason for being distrustful, but if we distrust our neighbor, then our tendency is to withdraw inwardly and cease to engage in relationships with others. We become fearful of the other, and can become self-centered and unconcerned about the needs of others. We take down the welcome sign and build barriers that we believe will protect us from the other. With that the concern for the common good begins to die.

As we take this Lenten journey together, I’m hopeful that we might hear the call to put our trust in God, and with this trust our own distrust can be transformed into a movement of reconciliation and healing. Micah says to us – trust in God. In Romans 4, Paul points us to Abraham and Sarah, who trusted God and God reckoned this trust as righteousness (Rom. 4:20-22). Their trust led to the creation of a family and a nation – that was called upon to be a blessing to all nations (Genesis 12:1-3).

With our trust placed in God, who calls on us to love our enemies and do good to those who persecute us, perhaps we can make a difference in the world. With God’s wisdom and guidance, we can join together in building this culture of trust. And trust will allow us to continue our journey into the future with hope and not fear as our companion, committed to what Marty calls “trustworthy systems” (pp. 183-184).

Reposted from the Central Woodward Christian Church 2011 Lenten Devotional -- edited by John McCauslin.

 

Jerusalem, Jerusalem -- Sightings

Jerusalem has, like Babylon and Rome and other cities of the ancient world, has long been a metaphor as well as a place in time and space.  Martin Marty shares his response to a new book by James Carroll, author of Constantine's Sword, that wrestles with Jerusalem the city and Jerusalem the metaphor, bringing into the conversation Rene Girard's scape-goating theory, in which it is suggested that violence is sometimes tamed by violence -- a perspective that has been used to understand the cross by some theologians.  I invite you to consider Marty's reflections, even as we watch news of military attempts to tame the violence of a petty dictator.  

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Sightings 3/21/2011

Jerusalem, Jerusalem

-- Martin E. Marty

Jerusalem, Jerusalem is not about Jerusalem the city. Guidebooks abound and histories are plentiful. What author James Carroll was moved to write is a reflection that deals with Jerusalem both as real and as metaphor. He does not exactly do justice to or make much of his subtitle: How the Ancient City Ignited Our Modern World, but his reflections will ignite at least sparks in the minds of readers who want to ponder with him the question: what is it about religion, with all the solace-bringing good its various forms can bring, that also prompts and promotes violence of most barbaric sorts?

I was one of a half dozen respondents to the book at a program at Brandeis University in Boston last Monday. Our panel featured the requisite Jewish, Muslim, and Christian participants—two of each—who could have finished off the guidebook/history approach quite easily. Dealing with Carroll’s chosen plot, however, was demanding. Those of us who count the author a friend, interact with him on occasion—as I do at programs of the Kaufman Interfaith Institute in Grand Rapids—or argued with him over details of his earlier and provocative Constantine’s Sword expect more of him than one more guidebook or history. While his early reviews tend to be positive, some have criticized him for his choice of approach. Thus Damon Linker in the New York Times chides him for using Jersualem in ways which Linker calls “messy.”

Carroll does not pretend to be objective or dispassionate, though he does not side with Christians or Jews or Muslims in the many forms with which they have dispensed violence or told stories about it. So depressing are many of the expressions of Jerusalemitis, that puzzling, disorienting, and often apocalyptic fever which afflicts or is emitted by so many Jerusalemites through the ages, that some of us panelists pondered: what hope is there in dealings with militant people who successively or, worse, concurrently inhabit the sacred and bloody hills. Carroll, metaphorically taking off from Jerusalem’s mountains (as Jesus and Muhammad “really” did, in some cherished texts), was apocalyptic as he envisioned where sacred violence might lead, but let a glimmer of hope shine on the city. People work at peacemaking, he implied, because despite all the warring and bloodshed, “people” overall would prefer peace and more quiet lives.

That kind of warning and dreaming will get you quite far. Carroll is inspired by René Girard’s influential “scapegoat” theory. It suggests, as Linker summarizes, “that human society and culture are shot through with bloodshed that can be tamed only by further acts of bloodshed. The pre-eminent example of violence taming violence, he says, is religion, which arose out of the practice of human sacrifice—a ritual that enabled a community to channel and purge its primitive impulses in a single cathartic act of collective bloodletting.” One need not buy into all details of the Girard speculations to follow Carroll’s theories, which at times sound like cautions against religion and at others as advertisements for some of its forms.

Unfortunately for his own peace and quiet, Carroll writes a weekly column in the Boston Globe. He said something critical of Israel’s recent treatment of Palestinian families on disputed property in eastern Jerusalem. The response from several Israeli voices was instant, vehement, and verbally violent. Whatever else such columns do, they show that violence is still at hand and poised. Monsieur Girard: after the escalations of violence, is there a scapegoat?

References

Damon Linker, “Grappling with Religion and Violence,” New York Times, March 20, 2011.

“Speaking of Faith: Inter-Religious Dialogue in the 21st Century,” Kaufman Interfaith Institute, Grand Valley State University.

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at http://www.illuminos.com/.

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This month’s Religion and Culture Web Forum is written by D. Max Moerman and entitled “The Death of the Dharma: Buddhist Sutra Burials in Early Medieval Japan.” In eleventh-century Japan, Buddhists fearing the arrival of the "Final Dharma"--an age of religious decline--began to bury sutras in sometimes-elaborate reliquaries. Why entomb a text, making it impossible for anyone to see or read it? And what do such practices teach us about the meaning and purpose of texts in Buddhism and other religions? Max Moerman of Barnard College takes up these questions with responses from Jeff Wilson (Renison University College), James W. Watts (Syracuse University) and Vincent Wimbush (Claremont Graduate University).

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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

What is your Calling?

What is your calling?  How did you receive your calling?  If you look in the Hebrew Bible, more often than not, when God called, the people at first said -- send someone else.  Moses said -- I can't speak well, so God said -- take along Aaron, he can talk for you.  Jonah receives the call and runs the other way.  Jeremiah said -- I'm but a boy.  In every case God seems to have an answer to the attempt to put off the call.

But how does a call come?  I didn't hear an audible voice, but I think I knew from early on a direction (though I framed it differently than time would reveal).  I can say with some surety that when I decided to pursue the M.Div. and ordination I didn't have parish ministry in mind.  I was going to be a theological educator.  That was my calling!  And yet, here I am, in my 26th year of ordination and in my 13th year as pastor of a congregation. 

All of this leads to my sharing of a video of Martin Marty sharing his sense of what it means to receive a call to ministry in the Christian community.  He notes that traditionally it has been assumed that God calls through the community (the church), but in his conversations with people entering ministry, it would be better to say that God calls "through billions of particulars."  I think he may be right.  I invite you to watch, consider, and add your own sense of what it means to be called.  The video comes from the What's Your Calling? -- a movement/organization inspired by a PBS miniseries -- The Calling. 

Hell's Bell -- Sightings

For the past week or so we've been talking a lot about hell and Rob Bell's still unrevealed views on the subject.  There are many assumptions and presumptions, but until the book arrives in our hands, we'll not know for sure!  What we can comment on is the conversation that has been engendered by the publicity releases for the book.  In yesterday's Sightings post, which I'm posting today, so I could post Bruce Epperly's piece yesterday, Martin Marty takes a look at the gap that is emerging within evangelicalism between those who feel it incumbent upon them to preach hell while a growing number of others simply don't find it compelling any longer.  I'll invite your reading and further comments.

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Sightings 3/7/2011

Hell’s Bell

-- Martin E. Marty

Americans may have thought that cracks in the façade and framework of evangelicalism would show up most visibly when serious evangelicals argued whether Sarah Palin or Mike Huckabee would be the better presidential candidate. But now we have a chance to see that other divisive issues among evangelicals beg for attention. When one of these, a theological argument, no less, makes its way to the New York Times and other papers plus many blogs, it’s time to pay attention. Bystanders who think they have nothing at stake in the non-political arguments, and who have never heard of Pastor Rob Bell of Grand Rapids, Michigan, or his critic, neo-Calvinist John Piper, may stand by in fascination, but they are likely to be reached this time. The topic? Hell, and a punishing God’s use thereof.

Bell, featured in the Times story, is a star of the emergent middle among evangelicals. He is seen by his enemies as baiting those to his right by writing too kindly about God and the many mortals destined for hell, and they insist that softness has to stop. Pastor Bell is soon to publish Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. His publisher and others have tantalized the public with clips from the book, but the critics did not need to have read it and do not need to know more than that Bell is not so sure that a God of love will condemn those billions who never heard of Jesus Christ, or those millions who have heard but did not recognize him as their Savior, in order for them to fire up their own condemnations of Bell.

The Michigan pastor-author is not alone; Bell’s hell is paralleled in treatments of a whole wing of evangelicals. Some of this group "out” themselves, while others are in a kind of purgatory of inference that they are not quite orthodox on the subject. What this second wing keeps pondering and sometimes proclaiming is that there are ways to witness to the fact that God is holy and just, other than saying that he takes delight in punishing those ignorant of the stakes or those who are players of other salvation games. It is one thing to agree with sophisticated evangelical theologians and their artful articulators who semi-dodge the issue by saying that no one is ever sent to hell and suggesting that she or he chooses to go there.

Publics, including those serious about the Bible, doctrine, and church tradition, have not found ways to accept the teaching which they cannot square with witness to the God of love, so Bell and company would witness positively to them. Formal theologians in the evangelical camp are bemused by the consistent polls in which only a small percent of the clergy are ready to affirm and preach doctrines and threats of hell and the large percent of their followers who are not. They know of the gap, and feel they must close it. Otherwise orthodoxy will disappear and relativism or universalism will win. The evangelical parents whose teenage “good kid” son who has not made a formal profession of faith in Christ and thus will be condemned to hell if he dies, need better reasoning than the dogmatic professors of hell give them.

Otherwise this latest fissure in evangelicalism will grow, and arguments will distract preachers of hell from their tasks and opportunities to win people from its brink, thus swelling its population in the interest of saying the right thing about this form of a holy and just God’s mode of everlasting punishment. Why are they writing editorials and condemnations and attending conferences on hell when they could be out on the street corners, passing tracts and witnessing to hell—and divine love? Bell asks for answers.

References

Erik Eckholm, "Pastor Stirs Wrath With His Views on Old Question," New York Times, March 4, 2011.

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at http://www.illuminos.com/.

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This month’s Religion and Culture Web Forum is written by D. Max Moerman and entitled “The Death of the Dharma: Buddhist Sutra Burials in Early Medieval Japan.” In eleventh-century Japan, Buddhists fearing the arrival of the "Final Dharma"--an age of religious decline--began to bury sutras in sometimes-elaborate reliquaries. Why entomb a text, making it impossible for anyone to see or read it? And what do such practices teach us about the meaning and purpose of texts in Buddhism and other religions? Max Moerman of Barnard College takes up these questions with responses from Jeff Wilson (Renison University College), James W. Watts (Syracuse University) and Vincent Wimbush (Claremont Graduate University). Visit the RCWF at: http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/

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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Liberal Judaism in Decline -- Sightings (Martin Marty)

Today's report from Martin Marty on things religious concerns something we in the Christian Mainline know something about -- decline! In this case the community under consideration is liberal Judaism (Conservative and Reform branches), which are experiencing significant decline and wondering about their purpose as communities of faith. With anti-Semitism much less of an issue today (Putnam and Campbell in American Grace say that we like Jews better than any other faith community), so the question is -- what binds liberal Jews together? If you're not Jewish you may wonder why this matters. Marty suggests it matters to non-Jews because Reform and Conservative Jews are the most likely representatives of this community to engage in dialogue. Take a look and offer your thoughts.

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Sightings 2/28/2011

Liberal Judaism in Decline

-- Martin Marty

“Liberal Denominations Face Crisis as Rabbis Rebel, Numbers Shrink: Struggling for Relevance and Funding” headlined the prime story by Josh Nathan-Kazis, in the newspaper Forward. A prime column follows it a week later, as Dana Evan Kaplan writes on “The Theological Roots of Reform Judaism’s Woes.” Translation of Nathan-Kazis’s headline, for non-Jews: synagogue memberships in Conservative Judaism, a major liberal denomination, “are in free fall.” Since 2001 the decline was 14 percent, while in the Northeast, family memberships dropped by 30 percent. Meanwhile, we read, in the other large liberal group, Reform Judaism, highly-placed rabbis are working to shake things up, to reform Reform, which is also in crisis.

Sociologist Mark Chaves offers perspective but not policy help by reminding Jews that most Christian denominations are also in decline or even in travail, when local congregations progressively, or regressively, drag their feet, close their pocketbooks, and go their own way, often into decline. I could write of counter-signs of vitality in Jewish and Christian directions, but that would be a different topic for a different day. Not being a policy-maker but a reporter on varieties of perspectives, I am doing what I can to discern and describe the trends, observe the statistics and strategies—and hope. Why invest hope on the part of those of us who have no great stake in liberal Judaism?

Many of the reasons are obvious, among co-religionists who wish for the best for fellow citizens and the collegially-religious. Non-Jews who take note of religion-in-public have reasons to care because it is often liberal Jews, not the Orthodox or the non-affiliated or non-practicing, who are their natural partners in dialogue. Robert Putnam in American Grace found strong evidence that non-Jews feel “warmest” to Judaism, among the religious families in America today. (That finding itself may be a sign of the weakening bonds of liberal Judaism after the time when overt and consistent anti-Semitism helped foster cohesion and inspire energies among beleaguered Jews.)

If response to anti-Semitism is less of a binding and energizing force among Jews, many argue that the defense of Israel has its enormous part to play. But observe the polls or listen to reports of especially younger Jews, and you will hear concerns that this will not be enough to keep Judaism strong. Now for that column by Rabbi Dana Evan Kaplan, author of Contemporary American Judaism. He notices that “triumphalism,” bragging rights and expressions by Reform as “the biggest” no longer is in place. He argues that the current “organizational malaise” obscures the fact that “the problem facing liberal Judaism is theological.” The pluralism, virtually the “anything goes” approach to liberal belief has replaced classical Reform’s emphasis on “the clear theological formulations of ethical monotheism and the mission of Israel.”

Today as Reform stresses “religious autonomy and the importance of choosing what each person finds spiritually meaningful,” in the words of Kaplan, there are few grounds for forming community and finding commitment. “Benign neglect” of theology and of witness to “the authority of God” have weakened liberal Judaism. After writing this but before you read it, I will have strolled down the block to Chicago’s Sinai Temple to hear a Sunday Sinai Symposium on, you guessed it, “Does Reform Judaism Have a Future?” Five notable and concerned rabbis will provide their answers in the afternoon session. Their audience, including this columnist, will have good reasons to pay attention.

References

Josh Nathan-Kazis, “Liberal Denominations Face Crisis as Rabbis Rebel, Numbers Shrink, Struggling for Relevance and Funding,” Forward, February 18, 2011.

Dana Evan Kaplan, “The Theological Roots of Reform Judaism’s Woes,” Forward, February 16, 2011.

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com.

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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

A Bishop's Defense of Government -- Sightings

Is government the enemy?  In some places, like Libya it probably is, but can we honestly say that government is the enemy in the United States?  It may be inefficient and ineffective at times, but is government really the problem?  And as we answer that question it probably is good to remember that even in a representative democracy, ultimately "we the people" are the government. 

This is the question that Martin Marty raises in today's edition of Sightings.   He makes reference to a Lutheran Bishop in Minnesota who decided to stand up and defend the importance of government, including taxation, as an expression of our existence as a people in compact with each other.  I may not always agree with the government, but I'm not sure that anarchy is better.  I may not like every regulation or tax, but the FDA and EPA provide important services that enhance our lives.  But, I'd like to hear what you have to say in response to Marty's essay.

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Sightings 2/21/2011

A Bishop’s Defense of Government

-- Martin E. Marty

Belgian sociologist of religion Henri Desroche once observed three functions of religion in society. Religion normally attests a society when it is in the business of “affirming.” There and then it serves an integrating function. That’s normal: think “God bless America.” Next, in a society that is examining its own premises and reorganizing its constituencies, the function of religion is to be contending “within the limit of contesting the status quo.” Think Martin Luther King, Jr. “In a society that is denying, challenging and refusing its own right to exist, religion appears as a function of protesting, revolting and subverting,” writes Desroche. Think recent Egypt.

Beyond these three functions of attesting, contending and protesting are chaotic movements like anarchism, or, closer to home in today’s America, simple “anti-government” actions, expressions, and tantrums. Think of Ayn Rand’s shrugs and the many current declarations in praise of the selfish individual. Now and then religious leaders, themselves aware of the attesting, protesting, and even, though too rarely, the contending functions of faiths, will examine and take on selfish declarations. One whose words reached publics in the Minneapolis StarTribune and subsequently, of course, on the internet, is Peter Rogness, a bishop within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and president of the Minnesota Council of Churches. He had the sense to speak of the obvious to multitudes and the courage to take on the anti-government folk, in a column entitled “Government is not the enemy.”

His question is clear: “Is government us or them?” a question which he follows up with the observation: “With no public announcement, we have changed from a people sharing a common life to several hundred million individuals who happen to live near one another, and we risk losing our soul in that change.” His “we” is “the people” who appear(ed) in so many of “our” founding and later public documents. He adds: “As people withdraw into greater concern for their private welfare, government as public enterprise fades; the ‘we’ becomes ‘they,’ common purpose becomes interference and the poor and vulnerable are left on the margins.”

Government, in our history and for Rogness, is not an “it” or a “them.” “Taxes aren’t theft; they’re the means by which we pool our resources, fairly and with order, to underwrite this common life.” Ready to take on an icon, he looks back to 1981 when an unnamed U.S. President announced, “Government is not a solution to our problem; government is the problem.” The bishop anticipates legitimate debate over his words “fairly and with order.” No party, no policy, has a monopoly on “fairness” and good “order.” Contesting policies and programs is a right and duty of “we the people.”

Rogness asks, “So why is a Lutheran bishop writing a social and historical critique?” He is not unique. Numbers of other bishops do so, among them Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. They do it because at stake are “values rooted in the faith traditions of the people who make up this state and nation.” And: “A budget is a moral document.” Let debating over budgets continue, something that can’t happen in an “anti-government” moment, which one hopes will not become an era of potential destruction. It would be caused by the “I’s” who, Rogness writes, take care of themselves and do not notice or who do disdain the “others.” These others, the vulnerable and marginal, are prime in the faith traditions of which the bishop speaks.

References

Henri Desroche, Jacob and the Angel: An Essay in Sociologies of Religion (University of Massachusetts, 1973).

Peter Rogness, “Government is not the Enemy,” StarTribune.com, February 6, 2011.

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com.

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In this month's Religion and Culture Web Forum, Jessica DeCou offers a comic interpretation of the theology of Karl Barth, bringing his work into a surprising and fruitful dialogue with the comedy of Craig Ferguson. Both men, she contends, “employ similar forms of humor in their efforts to unmask the absurdity and irrationality of our submission to arbitrary human powers.” The humor of Barth and Ferguson alike stresses human limitation against illusory deification. DeCou argues for understanding both the humor and the famous combativeness of Barth's theology as part of this single project, carried out against modern Neo-Protestant theology. The Religion and Culture Web Forum is at: http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/

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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Revolution -- Sightings (Martin Marty)

The Egyptian Revolution is in phase 2.  Phase 1 involved ridding itself of its out-of-touch dictator, now it must create a credible and free nation-state.  That will take time and a lot of hard work, and a great deal of sacrifice on the part of the Military, which has been the foundation of the existing system for nearly 6 decades.  We wonder what the future will look like -- will it be "secular"?  Martin Marty examines these questions, noting with irony that many of this calling for Egypt to be secular are the very ones working to impose their "religion" on the American system. 

Before you read Monday's post here on Wednesday, I want to announce that the Academy of Parish Clergy has officially named Marty's important book Building Cultures of Trust as its Book of the Year at our 2011 Annual Meeting where Marty is speaking to us.  So, yes, I've been in the company of Dr. Marty today.

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Sightings 2/14/2011

Revolution

-- Martin E. Marty

“C’est une révolte,” said King Louis XVI to his messenger about events on July 14, 1789. “Non, Sire, C’est une révolution,” the Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt corrected him. With this exchange Hannah Arendt pointed to a difference between a revolt—we have seen many of such—and a revolution, which we saw on television and kindred instruments last week in Egypt. The Wall Street Journal was listening, as weren’t we all, to the shouts of protesters in Cairo and elsewhere. “[I]t’s worth noting that the words heard most often . . . have been ‘dignity,’ ‘modernity,’ ‘freedom,’ ‘jobs.’” Words like these “appear to have displaced Allah as the galvanizing ideas for the young in Egypt and Tunisia.”

Add to their words one more, advanced by columnists left, right, and center: it was a “secular” revolution. And millions cheered. They keep hoping that in the chancy post-revolutionary days, Egypt will stay “secular.” Similarly, many have been watching Turkey, as it makes its way among polities and policies. They hope that, however much its people give voice to religious elements, it will also stay “secular.” In Egypt’s case, the hope of millions is that there will be no official religion or that no overwhelming religious voice--in this case the waiting-in-the-wings Muslim Brotherhood—will win at the expense of the religious and other freedoms of others.

One hears first from the talking-heads among some cable TV network commentators and their print-media colleagues, who in the Egyptian case hope for secular resolutions, and then to those same heads commenting on domestic polities where they do all they can to promote legal privileging of one particular religious ethos and framework: theirs. Each month religious newswriters receive dozens of notices that on local, state, and national levels in America there are school-board meetings, legislative proposals and court cases focused on attempts to privilege a particular “God” in salutes, pledges, and tax-supported expressions at the expense of others.

If Egypt succeeds in living with a novus ordo seclorum, that national slogan you can read on your dollar bills, a “new order of ages,” it will match what the American founders succeeded in doing through an article of the U. S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and with which most of us happily lived in less threatening times than our own. Time for a pause. Critics ask: What’s so good about “secular,” whether in Egypt and the Muslim world or in America and the Western-influenced Christian or “Judeo-Christian” world? Not everything by any means is “good.” The “secular” can turn ideological, as in “secularism.” It can represent a beliefless, soulless spiritual landscape that leaves whole publics in the shallows. The downsides are obvious, but . . .

If Europe and North America are turning ever more secular, it is not just because governments are not legally privileging religion. The zones of voluntary expression in life within these spheres are enormous, and the freedom to make use of religious symbols and arguments is almost limitless in those zones. “Secular” in the legal sphere can be liberating. The downgrading of the “religious” in the secular-turning orbits, be it noted, results chiefly from indifference, distraction, spiritual laziness, or godless free choice by citizens. Fearful as we are that Egypt in its post-revolution might turn officially “religious,” one hopes that it can become “secular,” in ways we were intended to be.


References

Hannah Arendt,On Revolution (Penguin Books, 1965).

"Egypt After Mubarak," Wall Street Journal, February 12, 2011.



Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at http://www.illuminos.com/.



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In this month's Religion and Culture Web Forum, Jessica DeCou offers a comic interpretation of the theology of Karl Barth, bringing his work into a surprising and fruitful dialogue with the comedy of Craig Ferguson. Both men, she contends, “employ similar forms of humor in their efforts to unmask the absurdity and irrationality of our submission to arbitrary human powers.” The humor of Barth and Ferguson alike stresses human limitation against illusory deification. DeCou argues for understanding both the humor and the famous combativeness of Barth's theology as part of this single project, carried out against modern Neo-Protestant theology. The Religion and Culture Web Forum is at: http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/


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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/

Christian Evolutions -- Sightings

Charles Darwin's birthday is on the near horizon, which means that this will be Evolution Weekend.  I'm of the opinion that one can be a good Christian and accept evolution as the scientific description of how things have come to be.  But, is this type of evolution the same thing as doctrinal development? 

Martin Marty takes a look at a debate going on within evangelicalism that involves Brian McLaren.  Marty thinks that McLaren may be unhelpfully mixing the two categories.  Both might be true, but can we merge them into a common framework?  Take a look at what Marty suggests and then offer your thoughts, especially if you're familiar with this conversation.

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Sightings 2/7/2011

Christian Evolutions

-- Martin E. Marty

Ever since 1859 anyone could start fights by breathing a single word: “evolution,” on which Charles Darwin held the patent. The conflicts were billed as “science vs. religion,” but it has been clear for 152 years that some schools of scientists opposed other schools in science and some schools of religion opposed others in religion. The “moderns” advocated syntheses of “science” and “religion,” while conservatives, some of them fundamentalist, opposed them. New controversies keep developing.

If I read the reports accurately, there is one brewing within the ranks of Christians often tabbed as evangelicals. For example, witness a project that brings together leaders in various camps under the rubric “The Advent of Evolutionary Christianity.” As Katherine T. Phan reports in the Christian Post, these leaders are trying to change the rules of the game and the contending expectations as to how it is played and who wins.

All this could be easily overlooked or bypassed did it not create shock waves within evangelicalism in the United States and Canada and also did it not involve Brian McLaren. Never heard of him? You had if you tracked trends in the Christian avant-garde; he was named one of the “25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America” by Time magazine in 2005. McLaren’s mark has been in what he and colleagues call “The Emergent Church,” a hard-to-define, dynamic, fluid movement. McLaren now stepped into it, as they used to say down on the farm, by connecting Darwinian scientific evolution with evolution-as-development in many forms barely related to scientific issues.

McLaren: “Evolutionary Christianity is a fact of history about which a lot of Christians are in deep denial.” He included Darwinian evolution under the Evolutionary Christianity tent, and thus roused suspicion and attracted attacks from anti-Darwinian Protestant conservatives. He described his perspective, which blends two categories of evolution as being a liberator for Christian thought and church forms. Brought up a conservative evangelical, he has now broken from that past. One might ask: could there be a problem here that can fancily be described as ignoratio elenchi, a category error?

When McLaren describes the values in his “Evolutionary Christianity” he is often talking about doctrinal “development,” which he finds even in Catholicism (as did John Henry Newman in the nineteenth century). But the issues raised in the “evolution” in doctrine or in church forms prompts quite different, or wholly different, questions than does standard-brand scientific evolution. His critics think that McLaren has gone over the hill or slid down the slippery slope of “development” into relativism and the abyss of heresy. If he and other panelists on TV and in conferences on Evolutionary Christianity would disentangle one kind of evolution from another, or regard the crossovers as metaphoric, matters would become more clear. He can continue his fight over whether church doctrine and practice have developed in one set of categories, while his openness to scientific, as in biological, evolution could make it easier for others to participate in ways that could be helpful in the academy, the church, and the larger culture.

Otherwise or until then, he’ll be a poster-boy for the heirs of old-school anti-evolutionism to banish. Their heritage dates from 1859 and they now offer little new. The Christian Post is reporting on a conflict whose emergent outlines and battle lines are fuzzy, and often have no use for or bearing on scientific evolutionary thought.

References

R. Albert Mohler, Jr, “Why the Creation-Evolution Debate is So Important,” Southern Seminary Magazine, January 4, 2011.

Katherine T. Phan, “Brian McLaren: Christians in Denial Over Evolution of Faith,” Christian Post, January 27, 2011.

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com.

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In this month's Religion and Culture Web Forum, Jessica DeCou offers a comic interpretation of the theology of Karl Barth, bringing his work into a surprising and fruitful dialogue with the comedy of Craig Ferguson. Both men, she contends, “employ similar forms of humor in their efforts to unmask the absurdity and irrationality of our submission to arbitrary human powers.” The humor of Barth and Ferguson alike stresses human limitation against illusory deification. DeCou argues for understanding both the humor and the famous combativeness of Barth's theology as part of this single project, carried out against modern Neo-Protestant theology. The Religion and Culture Web Forum is at: http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/

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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Church Mortgages and Foreclosure -- Sightings

The recent period of financial distress, which has led to increased unemployment and home-foreclosures.  People lost jobs and couldn't pay mortgages on homes, they probably couldn't afford in the first place, which led to an ongoing cycle of woe.  Well, it appears that churches have been caught up in the cycle -- many of these churches, both large and small, bit off more than they could chew and now can't pay the bills.  Is the end near?  We live by faith, but Jesus also reminds us that a builder will count the cost first.  We passed our budget yesterday, knowing that we'll have to tap our nest egg.  We're fortunate -- no mortgage and a nice cushion -- but for many this is not true.  Martin Marty speaks to this crisis in his own inimitable way!!

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Sightings 1/31/2011

Church Mortgages and Foreclosures

-- Martin E. Marty

“Churches Find End Is Nigh” is the kind of headline which should produce ennui. One expects to read under it of the 1900th annual prediction of the end of the world. But, read on: the subhead portends an article on “Ends” which are current and real: “The Number of Religious Facilities Unable to Pay Their Mortgage is Surging.” A visit to Google will turn up scores of church foreclosure stories which deserve attention.

Attention is what churches get when their stories deal not with Incarnation, Trinity, Resurrection, or Atonement, but with Finances or Sex. Sightings notices what we call “public religion” or “religion-in-public,” often beyond the sanctuary. But in matters of money, the sanctuary and the public world meet. A Chicago Tribune article spoke of faith and the “mountain of bills,” as John Keilman circled and then zeroed in on the Lighthouse Community Church in Elgin, Illinois, which the Reverend Steve Robledo invented and now sees falling. The church “can’t afford to pay the $3,100 rent or fix maintenance problems” in the former Grace United Methodist Church which Rev. Robledo bought with two businessmen after he had a vision that God wanted him to start a church in it.

Keilman writes, “Reuters found that church foreclosures have tripled since the recession began in 2007.” In the Elgin story we learn that Robledo’s “nondenominational congregation is a fraction of its 200-member peak, diminished by the recession” and, no surprise, stressed as it is by “an internal schism.” A 200-peak? The megachurches could house such a gathering in a broom closet, were their finance people not busy scouring their own closets for overlooked funds as “a mountain of bills” piles up for them and, for some, “the end is nigh.”

All this is public because the public can understand mortgage foreclosures better than they can “get” Transubstantiation. Sneerers enjoy Schadenfreude, rejoicing in others’ misfortunes. Empathic humans, in churches or not, look deeper and find reason to mourn. Financial counselors at the big places run for cover after their counsel led congregations to overreach and under-support. Reformers use the moment to urge caution, reappraisal, more careful planning, and, in some cases, less hubris. Let’s admit it, folks, some of the mega-building is ego-driven and not only Spirit-inspired.

One reads of little Lighthouse buildings or Crystal Cathedrals, which share the experience of bankruptcy. Shelly Banjo reports in the Wall Street Journal that since 2008 about 200 religious facilities had been foreclosed, “up from eight during the previous two years and virtually none in the decade before that.” As for the future, expert Jesse L. Jackson, Sr., of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, says “Churches are the next wave in this economic crisis.” PUSH signals work with African-American churches, many of which are over-committed, under-funded, and seeing that “the End is Nigh.”

Some of the problems are the result of Fate—the financial crisis—and others of Folly. But let’s grant the point that many are inspired by Faith, which is now being tested. In the Gospel of Luke (read 14:28-30, which is as current as the WSJ), Jesus warns of builders who do not “count the cost,” who fail, and get ridiculed. For some of the sign-carrying “End is Nigh” people, there is another admonition: “Repent: There Still is Time.” Maybe.

References


Shelly Banjo, “Churches Find End Is Nigh: The Number of Religious Facilities Unable to Pay Their Mortgage is Surging,” Wall Street Journal, January 25, 2011.

John Keilman, “In God he trusts, but pastor needs cash for church,” Chicago Tribune, January 23, 2011.

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at http://www.illuminos.com/.

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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Memphis Church Preservation -- Sighings

As a historian I hate to see the loss of historic buildings, because they offer insight into periods of time (though there are periods of architectural style that might benefit from being forgotten -- i.e. the 1970s).  As a pastor I recognize the importance of making sure that scarce dollars go to ministry and not preserving aesthetics, for the sake of preserving them.  In recent years churches have gotten caught in a bind as they no longer have the funds to keep up properties, but are prevented from demolishing them or selling them because of historic landmark status or community heritage groups.  So, what to do?  Martin Marty helps us wrestle with the problem in today's issue of Sightings. 

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Sightings 1/24/2011

Memphis Church Preservation

- Martin E. Marty

This season it’s Memphis. Last season it was in some city near you. Next season it will be a challenge in your city, or, if you “have” one, in your denomination. “It” refers to what in my eyes is one of the sad insolubles on the “public religion” front. Making sense of these “its” and “insolubles” elicits a story. This time it is in the Wall Street Journal, where Timothy W. Martin tells of conflict over a church building that, in the eyes of its last few surviving members, cannot survive, and Memphis Heritage, an organization which seeks to prevent destruction of historic and aesthetic properties.

In this case, Union Avenue Methodist Church is featured. The roof and walls of the building are falling and failing. Only forty church members are left in this congregation after most Union Avenue members moved to the suburbs decades ago, and they cannot begin to fund restoration and preservation, to say nothing of other needs which make strong demands on them and their church's mission. To the rescue came CVS Caremark Corporation, which is paying, or ready to pay, good money to raze the building and put the space to new CVS purposes. Memphis Heritage stepped in to prevent the changes, but now tempers, legal fees, and civic controversy rise. No surprise there.

What to do? From this distance, neither church, corporation, nor preservationists are natural villains. They are all caught between forces they cannot control. The building does not display aesthetic merit—pardon me, good Union Avenue folk—with its boxy look and plastered-on flat pillars. But removing it would disrupt preservation efforts for those who are working to restore the neighborhood. Can the locals profit from the experience which has analogues in countless urban (and sometimes rural) settings? We have known and cheered groups like Inspired Partnerships in Chicago, and Partners for Sacred Places nationally, and we have seen them put energy into addressing the issue.

From where might funds come? Weekly you will read of debates as to whether tax money can be used. Mention that and you get into church-state issues and citizen concern over taxes for anything. What about the host denomination? Not much luck: if it is doing any fair part of its mission, it’s broke. What about non-denominations? Too dispersed, not focused, not obligated, distracted by their own legitimate agendas. Former members? They are long gone over the hills of Tennessee to greener pastures for church life. Present members? Pastor Mark Matheny knows that most of the forty are aged or aging, without great financial means, and they, too, support living missions rather than vestiges of earlier ones. Matheny complains that Memphis Heritage came along with too little, too late. Philanthropists who care about the appearance of a city? Groups like Inspired Partnerships and Partners for Sacred Places scare up some dollars from some of them, but too little.

Tour Europe, including the English and French countrysides and you can see hundreds, perhaps thousands, of empty churches of dead congregations, buildings whose aesthetic and historic value exceeds that of the church in Memphis. No CVS is on hand to rescue them. They fall into the ground, through the centuries. Anyone who has a way out of these preservation plights: speak up, and pay up. Pastor Matheny has his own perspective, which he sees as biblical: “If you look through the New Testament, it says next to nothing abut the preservation of buildings.” It says nothing. Still, if we have cared about sacred places and spaces and memory and hope, we can regret, and we can shed a tear.

References

Timothy W. Martin, "From Pews to Prescriptions: Fight Over Fading Church's Sale to CVS Reflects Woes of Urban Congregations," Wall Street Journal, January 19, 2011.

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at http://www.illuminos.com/.

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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Religion In News Clips -- Sightings

Martin Marty notes the thesis -- Religion is in decline in the Secular West.  He suggests that the news may suggest otherwise.  I'll leave you to Marty's hands!

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Sightings 1/17/2011

Religion in News Clips

- Martin E. Marty

Thesis: Religion is on the ropes in our modern secular world. Still, look at the stealth news about religion in one week. (Harriet Marty breakfasted Saturday with what looks like confetti left over after I have clipped religion-relevant stories from our four dailies.) It may be hard to process this mosaic jumble, but at least return for the punch-line ending.

Documents: Suburban DuPage County leaders are having fits about plans to build a mosque near a Macedonian Orthodox Church and a Dharma Meditation Center. Complaint: “Present application increases in what is my opinion a saturation of religious institutions into this specific area. . . .”

Also local: A federal court lifted an injunction against a moment-of-silence school law “that critics claim is essentially state-sponsored prayer.”

A miracle: a long letter to an editor lauds the educational influence of the nuns. Nuns usually get blasted on- and off-Broadway and on all channels. Speaking of miracles: another nun was miraculously cured of TB when she prayed to Pope John Paul II. Rome seeks a second miracle to help launch the late pontiff from beatific to sainthood status. Still speaking of miracles: if you want more than two, read of the life of Bishop Charles Little, pastor of God’s House for All Nations, a Chicago influential who prayed for dozens of healings every Sunday. Many were healed. Sainthood for Little?

Martin Luther King, Jr., observances recalled other dimensions of the black religious experience.

Headline for a dance review: “Warring Relatives and Joking Rabbis.” Another: “Matters of Faith, Prayer and Physical Exertion,” has Jesus, Mary, Adam and Eve and “the Spirit of Religion” soaring. Shirley Caesar, 72-year-old performer, moving aisle to aisle in a New York theater sang: “Jesus, how I love calling your name; every day your name is the same.” She says, “Nobody can tell me that God isn’t real.” Another review: “A POW’s Awe-Inspiring Act of Faith” about a “masterwork” of chamber music composed by Olivier Messiaen and played in a German POW camp.”

Aspiring presidential candidate ex-Governor Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota publicly refers to his wife Mary as “my red-hot smokin’ wife,” who turns out to be a district judge “who can always supply an appropriate Bible passage in times of crisis.”

In Lebanon there’s a “fault line in the confrontation between Lebanon’s Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims. . . ‘the battle lines are clear. . . ’” Nigeria’s ruling party is torn over conflict between contenders in the Muslim North and the Christian South.

Loosening restrictions on travel to Cuba provide “broad opportunities for travel to Cuba by academic, religious and cultural groups.”

Christopher Hitchens writes about Mumtaz Qadri, who, “as a slave of the Prophet Muhammad . . . had the natural right to murder” a Pakistani governor.

African-American pastor Suzan Johnson Cook, who presides over the 7,500 minister members of a black pastoral group was appointed as an ambassador for “international religious liberty,” but she was blind-sided by Senator James DeMint, so her welcome services will not be welcomed. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, in the news over plans for a Muslim Center not far from the World Trade Center was also blind-sided, damned with faint praise by Muslim rivals, and pushed into the background.

Astrologers and their clients, who live at the edges of conventional religion, find out that the Zodiac boundaries on which they counted were not accurate.

Have you noticed that the interpretations and commemorations of the “Tucson Incident” were drenched in religious symbols, acts, and sayings?

Enough: does the thesis of line one hold: that religion is on the ropes in our secular world?

 

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at http://www.illuminos.com/.

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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Martyrdom and Acquiesence -- Sightings

Religiously inspired violence -- whether deemed necessary to "protect" one's faith or to expand it, has been with us from perhaps the beginning of time.  Religion has almost always been deeply linked to culture and thus to the basic institutions of society, and that has often led to violence.  The years after the Reformation saw Europe torn apart by wars that at least in part were religiously motivated.  In the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, as Christianity has expanded and Western power has exerted itself, we have seen not only an expansion of the church, but also persecution of Christians -- especially in Muslim dominated lands.  There is a large Chaldean Christian population in South East Michigan, refugees of an ancient Christian community in Iraq, a community that has seen its presence in Iraq shrink markedly in the past 20 years.  Martin Marty raises the question in yesterday's Sightings piece about Christian martyrdom, dealing with the charge that we too often downplay this persecution so as not to face the charge of Islamophobia.  I have my own thoughts on this topic, but I'd like to let Professor Marty offer his thoughts.

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Sightings 1/10/2011

Martyrdom and Acquiescence

- Martin E. Marty

“Iran Targets Christians with a Wave of Arrests,” “Egyptian Copts Mark Christmas Cautiously,” and “Anti-Christian Crimes Downplayed,” were all Friday headlines that set the tone for weekend coverage of bad news. Google some words like “Christian Martyrs” and scroll down from early Christian accounts to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. You will find claims that hundreds of millions of Christians died for their faith in the twentieth century and that several hundred thousand still do each year of the still new twenty-first century. I’ve often questioned the methodology, definition, or mathematics of the tabulators, but when all is done and said, it’s in place to say: “No matter. Even a single death for this cause is one too many.”

The stories are played because there is such terrible news daily, but Chicago Sun-Times columnist Steve Huntley also wrote that these “crimes”--and they are that--are “downplayed.” There is no reason to disagree with his reporting of the crimes, but it is in place to ask what is at issue in the charge that they are “downplayed.” A reader has to ask who is doing the downplaying, for which readership, and for what reason.

Huntley has a mission; look him up and you will see that he is regularly pursuing those he regards as soft on Islam. His charges begin: American media talk too much about Islamophobia, but not enough about “the bloody persecution of Christians in parts of the Muslim world.” That the persecution goes on is unquestionably true. Whether it receives too little media space or time is harder to assess. Huntley continues his mission: merely report an Islamist threat, he complains, and you will be subjected to charges of bigotry. But most pressing on Huntley’s mind is the fact that too much of “Islamist terrorism,” backed by “radical theology,” bad clerics and bad governments is “enabled” also by “too much silence, or worse, acquiescence in the Muslim world.” I think that all these charges by Huntley are grounded, but columns like his prompt further questions which need to be faced.

What is to be the end result of such pleading for “playing up” the stories and their meanings? Should America undertake armed intervention in the “top 10 countries that are most dangerous for Christians to practice their religion in?” (Eight of these are Muslim, according to some assessments). First, America is deeply involved already. Second, should Americans find more ways to protect endangered Christians in Muslim societies? Yes. Exactly how that is to be done is hard to say. Will whatever “we” do be better received if we play up instead of merely play or certainly downplay the crimes? The history of hysteria in wartime suggests that the loss of perspective is costly, and it often issues in atrocity or blunderbuss actions. We obviously need accurate reporting and mature interpretation, and the media at their best can promote both.

On a different track we note that many reports chide Christians in America for “downplaying” or at least for not being sufficiently agitated and counter-aggressive when their brothers and sisters in those eight Islamic nations suffer. In my sightings, I do see and agree that many of them do not put as high a priority on playing up and calling for responses to Islamic (or other) persecutions of Christians. One hears fewer reports of Christian identification with Christian sufferers as Christian than, say, of Jewish identification with and support for beleaguered Jews in distant lands. Yet Christians are urged first to be “working for the good of all” and then, especially, for “those of the family of faith.” The two objects of their concern are not mutually exclusive.

Resources

Farnaz Fassihi and Matt Bradley, "Iran Targets Christians with a Wave of Arrests," Wall Street Journal, January 7, 2011.

Amro Hassan, "Egyptian Christians' Christmas Celebration Clouded by New," Chicago Tribune, January 7, 2011.

Steve Huntley, "Anti-Christian Crimes Downplayed," Chicago Sun-Times, January 7, 2011.

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com.

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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.



The Value of Trust

Trust is an important value.  Without trust society can't function well, and over the past forty to fifty years the trust that people put in their institutions has continued to diminish.  First it was the Vietnam War and then Watergate.  More recently we saw the US enter a war in Iraq based either on faulty or falsified evidence.  Catholic priests and bishops were exposed as either participating in or covering up sexual abuse of minors.  So, perhaps it's not surprising that opponents of a property tax assessment (called a millage here in Michigan) to protect the local library had to deal with, unfortunately unsuccessfully, a campaign that was based almost entirely in falsehoods, and yet it won.  Of course there are the reports that nearly half of Republicans believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim and increasing numbers reject the idea of global warming, because  . . . And on and on.  This is a serious problem that we're facing in our country.   

Martin Marty has written an essential book on this topic, one of my Top 10 books of 2010 -- Building Cultures of Trust.  Marty writes this of a culture of trust:

We may speak of a culture of trust when there is evidence that through internal or external means the religious, political, economic, artistic, scientific, technological, educational, and linguistic expressions of a group lead participants to count on each other and keep commitments.  (Marty, p. 15). 

Since I've been working through American Grace, I should probably not that trust is one of the issues dealt with in the book.  From their studies, they have discerned that trust is a central issue of faith.  What is interesting is that it would appear that while religious people are more trusting than seculars, the more conservative your theology the less trusting you become.   But, when comparing two fundamentalists, the more you attend church, the more trusting you become.  Again, social networks have influence.  But, so does your view of God -- the more you see God as judge, the less trusting.  The more you see God as a loving parent, the more trusting. 

But, the authors don't want to go too far outside their expertise and make theological judgments, but it is interesting data!  And so, they conclude:

We seem to have found consistent expectations about other people's behavior and God's behavior.  If God loves us, then we love and trust others, but if God sternly judges us, then we sternly judge and distrust others.  Social relations in America may be eased by the fact that most Americans find God more likely to comfort than afflict . . . Such a comforting, avuncular God encourages social comity and confidence (American Grace, pp. 468-471).

It could be that the authors of American Grace are overly optimistic about the American people.  Perhaps the angry groups of people that have propelled the Tea Party represent the majority.  I don't think so, but we do have a problem and that problem is a serious decline in trust.  And as Martin Marty reminds us -- that can be dangerous.  Further, that means that religious liberals/progressives have something important to bring to the table. 

Public Religion Trends in 2010 -- Sightings

As we enter the final week of 2010, Martin Marty comments on the top 20 public religion trends as laid out by the Religion Newswriters Association.  Islam makes itself felt, as does homosexuality.  Anyway, I'll just let you read and comment.

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Sightings 12/27/2010

Public Religion Trends in 2010

--Martin Marty

The end-of-year summaries of “public religion” draw frequently on the most extensive press survey each December, from the Religion Newswriters Association, made up of reporters and columnists in the secular media. (A ringer in the Association, I was one of some 300 respondents to a poll by Debra Mason, RNA Executive Director.) It is hard to find trends this time. Muslims and Islam do show up in four of the twenty trends on which Mason reports. First, to no one’s surprise, was the ruckus stirred up by the announcement of plans for an Islamic community center not far from Ground Zero. Feisal Abdul Rauf, who seemed to fit the bill of the often-sought “Muslim Moderate,” ironically, was attacked immoderately for his effort. The event suggested how motivated by fear, defensiveness, and exploitation of sentiment many in the United States are.

Way down the list were the other Muslim/Islam sightings: #14, the Oklahoma Constitutional Amendment, again ironic, in that it ruled out the possibility of making judicial decisions based on the Qur’an in a state with very few Muslims. William Franklin Graham made news by being disinvited from a Pentagon National Day of Prayer observance, given his anti-Muslim rhetoric and record. The President visited Indonesia, and so made the list with some references to Islam. The only other non-Christian faith, way down the list, was Hinduism, at #20, because of flaps over yoga practices and the novel Eat, Pray, Love.

The Pope was often in the headlines, but only twice did events involving him make the top twenty. One dealt with his dealings in the priestly sexual-abuse scandals, while his notable visit to the United Kingdom with his critiques of European secularism was down at #16. The Catholic bishops were part of #5, the signing of the health-care reform bill, which the American bishops had criticized because they feared it would involve tax-funds in funding abortions.

Mainline Protestantism was mentioned (#6) for its non-presence in the current US Supreme Court and for Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Episcopal denominational infighting, chiefly over homosexuality issues, which made a presence also in #8, on religion and the bullying of homosexuals.

Religion in action showed up properly in #2, on churchly response to the catastrophes in Haiti, the murders of faith-based aid workers in Pakistan and Afghanistan, while Christians continue to flee Iraq (#11). “Faith-based environment groups” also made their mark after the BP oil spill (#12). The political Right was evidently less prominent or less religious, since it showed up mainly with Glenn Beck’s presence in Tea Party stories (#4). Southern Baptist leader Richard Land pushed faith-based groups to put more energy into immigration issues.

Cross-denominational stories also included #7, on the severe effects of the economic crisis on publishing, pension plans, and the Crystal Cathedral’s economic bankruptcy. Supreme Court decisions were not as prominent and revelatory of trends as in many years. More dramatic decisions are ahead. Non-denominational news told (#9) of the Pew Forum on U.S. Religious Knowledge which showed that agnostics, Jews, and Mormons knew most about the faiths. The RNA folks, often the only religious educators of the public, have their work cut out for them, again, ironically, at a time when print media, their natural abode, are also threatened in the digital age.

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com.

 

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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Andrew Greeley’s Chicago Catholics -- Sightings

The Roman Catholic Church in America is an interesting institution.  It seems to be getting more and more conservative, especially as seen in pronouncements of its bishops on issues such as abortion.  It is also getting more ethnically diverse.  Even as White Catholics seem to be exiting, their ranks are being taken more and more by Latinos.  Consider this statistic from Putnam and Campbell's American Grace -- 58% of Catholics between the ages 18 and 34 are Latino.  If it weren't for Hispanic immigration, the Roman Catholic Church would be in a position similar to Mainline Protestantism (American Grace, pp. 300ff).   One of the most interesting interpreters of Roman Catholicism over the years has been Andrew Greeley, a Catholic priest, sociologist, professor, and author of rather racy novels.  His final book takes up the Catholic situation in Chicago, and in today's edition of Sightings Greeley's colleague at the University of Chicago and long-time friend Martin Marty takes up the issues raised by this locally focused book, which suggests that there is good news for Catholics, but maybe not for the bishops!

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Sightings 12/20/2010

Andrew Greeley’s Chicago Catholics

- Martin E. Marty

Father Andrew Greeley, friend, neighbor, sociologist, novelist, youngster—we were born on the same day, but he arrived three hours later—has published over 150 works of fiction and non-fiction. Chicago Catholics and the Struggles within Their Church is his final book. Final, that is, because two years ago he suffered a brain injury, after the manuscript was well along. Colleagues brought the materials together, but insist that it is “Andy’s book,” and anyone who has read him and reads this will recognize the stamp: he honors some friends, picks some fights with others, and loves to present data which many will find provocative, controversial, and slanted counter-intuitively.

While the Pope and the bishops, with most of whom he is out of patience, make global news, Greeley has engaged in survey work which assures that he has his feet on the ground. His regard for the Catholic people—whom he thinks the hierarchs overlook—is evident. His writing occupies only sixty-five pages; the rest of the book is made up of appendixes: the Survey Questionnaires, revealing “Interviews in Depth,” and “Transcripts.” If that sounds boring, his opening but summary statements startle.

Yes, he insists, 25 percent of the people in the sample have left the Church, but not for the reasons mass media give. The Church neglects the young, but they are more attached to it than were those in the past (I keep my fingers crossed on that one). “Four-fifths of Chicago Catholics approve of the pope, the Cardinal, and their pastor.” Note that bishops are not included in that list. The lay people make up their own minds about the Church: “With astonishing ease, Chicago Catholics have separated what God demands of them and what the Church expects of them.” After the papal encyclical banning birth control back in 1968, Greeley first foresaw them heading for the exit doors in disappointment and disgust. Many did. Most do not argue about the teachings which do not square with their experience, their life in community, and what they consider to be the Catholic story. They simply ignore what the bishops declare, and bond with each other, enjoying what appeals to them in Catholicism.

Not that all is well with Chicago Catholics. “Very few young people plan to be a priest or a nun. Cafeteria Catholicism divides the Catholic population into two groups. Catholic schools are closing. Many dispense themselves from Sunday Mass because they get nothing out of it, because it is dull, tedious, and BORING!”

It wouldn’t be part of Greeley’s testament if it did not include his prediction about the reception of his survey findings and conclusions: “Both the left, which thinks Chicago Catholics should be more resentful of their leadership, and the right, which thinks that Catholics are more orthodox—or should be—on sexual issues, will try to cast doubts on the study.” He defends the survey methods and justifies the choice of Chicago, with which he has a love affair, for his sampling. And it wouldn’t be Greeley if it did not include lines like this: “The current bench of bishops is terrified of research which, because the men sitting on the bench (most of whom should have been left back in the locker room) have learned to expect nothing but bad news from research. . . It does not matter that much of the research reports good news.” The bad news of the last two years is Greeley’s debilitating injury. The good news appears along with mixed data in what he found and for what he argues in this book and, better yet, that the book could appear at all.

References:

Andrew Greeley, Chicago Catholics and the Struggles within Their Church (New Jersey: Transaction, 2010).

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com.

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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.