Faith Behind Glass: Much has changed since the Reformation took hammers and whitewash to paintings and frescoes in Catholic churches, but some things remain the same. Secular modernity has found its own ways of stripping the altars. One of the most efficient is to turn objects of devotion into objets d’art. Art-gazing has become the devotional activity of our time, as the cult of genius supersedes the cult of the saints. [First Things]
Gods, princes and demons: Like Hinduism itself, the Ramayana epic is open to many interpretations. Herein lies its true beauty. [New Statesman]
How do the products of an interfaith marriage choose their identities?: At age thirteen, it never occurred to me that there was anything particularly striking about my bat mitzvah. Growing up in the secular humanist mecca of Cambridge, Massachusetts, I had little by way of comparison. But with nearly two decades of hindsight, it’s obvious that mine was not your typical Jewish American rite of passage. Here’s the dead giveaway: It took place in a church. [nextbook]
June 2nd, 2008 at 10:23 am
This article is filed under Blog, Religion.
Are the Quakers Going Pagan?: The liberal end of the Society of Friends has long had members who denied God’s existence or Jesus’ divinity. Now hundreds of pagans call Quakerism home. [Christianity Today]
The Neural Buddhists: Scientists have more respect for elevated spiritual states. Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania has shown that transcendent experiences can actually be identified and measured in the brain (people experience a decrease in activity in the parietal lobe, which orients us in space). The mind seems to have the ability to transcend itself and merge with a larger presence that feels more real. [NY Times]
Churchgoing on its knees as Christianity falls out of favour: Church attendance in Britain is declining so fast that the number of regular churchgoers will be fewer than those attending mosques within a generation, research published today suggests. The fall - from the four million people who attend church at least once a month today - means that the Church of England, Catholicism and other denominations will become financially unviable. [Times]
Priests-in-training are getting older: The Catholic Church priesthood shortage is being alleviated by men embarking on second careers, who bring special wisdom — and challenges. [LA Times]
May 13th, 2008 at 10:24 am
This article is filed under Blog, Religion.
An Iranian’s vision of Jesus’ life stirs debate: Nader Talebzadeh, began to speak, precisely, so as not to be misunderstood on a matter so sensitive. The Iranian director’s new film is based on the Islamic version of the life of Jesus, depicting the man Christians believe to be the messiah and son of God as a tormented Judean prophet foretelling the coming of Muhammad, the founder of the Muslim faith. [LA Times]
Ranks of Southern Baptists Are Still Growing Thinner: The number of people baptized in Southern Baptist churches fell last year for the third straight year to the lowest level since 1987. Total membership dropped by nearly 40,000. [NYT]
Generations of Seders: We are presently in the midst of the Jewish festival of Passover. Each year we commemorate the historical events of the Exodus from Egypt and the subsequent birth of the Jewish nation. The highpoint is the Seder meal, where we sit down with family and friends and recite the traditional centuries-old Haggadah text which takes us on a whirlwind journey of the senses through Jewish history. [New Statesman]
April 29th, 2008 at 9:46 am
This article is filed under Blog, Religion.
If God Is Dead, Who Gets His House?: Many atheist sects are experimenting with building new, human-centered quasi-religious organizations, much like Ethical Culture. They aim to remove God from the church, while leaving the church, at least large parts of it, standing. But this impulse is fueling a growing schism among atheists. Many of them see churches as part of the problem. They want to throw out the baby and the bathwater—or at least they don’t see the need for the bathwater once the baby is gone. [NY Mag]
Clerical errors in the name of God: News that an ageing cleric has issued a death fatwa against two Saudi intellectuals does not surprise me. The religious hierarchy in Saudi Arabia has no redeeming features. Its hallmarks are fanaticism, misogyny and xenophobia, with a strong accent on conformity and absolutism. Like the Inquisition, it moves rapidly to suppress any signs of dissent or independent thinking. [NewStatesman]
April 24th, 2008 at 9:47 am
This article is filed under Blog, Religion.
What the Passover Seder reveals about interfaith couples: The American Jewish community has been obsessed by the roots and implications of interfaith marriage—that is, a Jewish person with a non-Jewish spouse—for more than a decade and a half. About half of Jewish Americans choose to marry non-Jews, a reality that was seen, until recently, as devastating for the shrinking minority religion. Now, it is increasingly cause for debate between the “intermarriage optimists,” who think that the trend could help the Jewish community grow in numbers, and the “intermarriage pessimists,” who think that it will just lead to lowering the entry bar to Judaism, watering down the faith. [Slate]
The Pope who would rather think and write: Now 81, Joseph Ratzinger is a reluctant pope. He has often spoken of how he would prefer to spend his final years thinking and writing in Germany. Instead, his mission is to lead the Church through one of its most challenging periods, with falling numbers of priests and worshippers. Almost nothing is known about his private life, except that he loves to play the piano. [Telegraph]
No Time For Neutrality: America’s conversation about Israel has largely left out the voices of progressive Jews and often alienated them from their faith. It’s time for them to stop feeling marginalized and start speaking out about the difference between Zionism and Judaism. [American Prospect]
April 18th, 2008 at 9:54 am
This article is filed under Blog, Religion.
An Atheist in the Pulpit: James McAllister, a 56-year-old Lutheran minister in the midwest, was working on his sunday sermon one Thursday afternoon last summer. It wasn’t going well. The reverend wasn’t suffering from writer’s block—in fact, he was crafting quite an elegant parable about “the importance of making our whole lives a prayer.” No, the problem was bigger than that. The sermon skated around a private truth that McAllister could no longer deny. [Psychology Today]
Spiritual revolution of Hindu women: In Hinduism, women are considered a form of energy and are given due importance at every stage of life - as a daughter, as a daughter-in-law and as a mother. Out of these roles some come out as women gurus. [New Statesman]
The rebirth of religion and enchanting materialism: Europe is the exception to the global de-secularization of politics; at the same time, theoretical interest in theological issues has been rising in Europe over the past fifteen years. Placing Habermas’s “soft naturalism” against the “militant atheism” of Michel Onfray and Richard Dawkins, and borrowing Diderot’s concept of matérialisme enchanté, Sven-Eric Liedman warns against trivializing life’s wonders, be they of a technical nature or beyond our present conception. [Eurozine]
Fundamental change: Both politically and theologically, conservative Christianity is now a militant and rapidly growing force, in Britain and globally. [New Statesman]
April 10th, 2008 at 9:43 am
This article is filed under Blog, Religion.
Being one of the first British female rabbis: When I was ordained in July 1989, the Leo Baeck College graduating class of five ordinands included two women: the ninth and tenth female rabbis in Britain. [New Statesman]
Jihad, Jew-Hatred, and Evangelicals and Jews Together: The debate is not over whether contemporary Islamism is vehemently anti-Jewish but over the historical roots of that Jew-hatred. Küntzel locates the current rabid Jew-hatred specifically in the influence of Nazi ideology. Bostom, alternatively, insists that the legacy of Islamic Jew-hatred is far more ancient and deeply rooted in classical Islam. [First Things]
I am not superhuman: If you have learned about Opus Dei from the media and Da Vinci Code, it is easy to believe that it is a shadowy sect, governed by some sinister Dr No type figure, high on power and attempting world domination. I am a member of Opus Dei. [New Statesman]
April 1st, 2008 at 11:17 am
This article is filed under Blog, Religion.
Dalai Lama’s threat shakes Buddhism: If he quit as political leader but still headed the faith, it would go against his religion’s centuries-old tenet of church-state unity. [LA Times]
Ancient Humor: Raunch, Riddles and Religion: Polimeni theorizes that humor and spirituality emerged together, perhaps as ways for humans to relieve stress, communicate and make social connections in lieu of grooming, roughhousing and other, more direct means used by our primate ancestors. [Discovery]
St Peter was not the first Pope and never went to Rome, claims Channel 4: St Peter’s journey to Rome led to the spread of Christianity in the West and the foundation of Roman Catholicism, so the Church has always taught. But a new documentary will challenge the link as nothing more than a “conspiracy of faith”. [Telegraph]
March 26th, 2008 at 11:24 am
This article is filed under Blog, Religion.
How Religion Became a Wedge Issue: Religious conviction is less widespread, especially less widespread among the rich and powerful who tend to formulate and finance political platforms, and therefore it becomes more controversial. It is now a wedge issue rather than part of our common culture. [First Things]
Why Easter stubbornly resists the commercialism that swallowed Christmas: Unlike Christmas, whose deeper spiritual meaning has been all but buried under an annual avalanche of commercialism, Easter has retained a stubborn hold on its identity as a religious holiday. [Slate]
Vatican says pollution is also a sin: It tells Catholics that harming the environment is a modern-day transgression requiring urgent attention. [LA Times]
March 24th, 2008 at 11:59 am
This article is filed under Blog, Religion.
The seven deadly personality disorders: With lust relabelled ‘sex addiction’ and gluttony turned into an ‘eating disorder’, it’s no wonder Catholics are unsure about the seven deadly sins. [Spiked]
Rush hour of the gods: Today’s generation of middle class Indians are discarding the secular-humanist version of Hinduism that appealed to an earlier generation of elites and opting for a more overt religiosity. Meera Nanda asks what lies behind the Hinduisation of the Indian public sphere. [Eurozine]
John Hagee’s Controversial Gospel: An excerpt from Sarah Posner’s new book, God’s Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters. [American Prospect]
March 13th, 2008 at 9:00 am
This article is filed under Blog, Religion.
