Given the opportunity to address U.S. military and other officials at a symposium on nuclear deterrence on Wednesday, Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien said Catholic teaching calls on policymakers to work toward ridding the world of nuclear weapons altogther.

"As the U.S. bishops wrote in 1983: 'Deterrence is not an adequate strategy as a long-term basis for peace; it is a transitional strategy justifiable only in conjunction with resolute determination to pursue arms control and disarmament,' O'Brien said at the symposium hosted by the U.S. Strategic Command in Omaha, Neb.

"In Catholic teaching, the task is not to make the world safer through the threat of nuclear weapons, but rather to make the world safer from nuclear weapons through mutual and verifiable nuclear disarmament."

A former chaplain at West Point and with the Army in Vietnam, O'Brien was the Catholic archbishop for the military services before coming to Baltimore. He spoke of his respect for the military and its institutions before discoursing on church teaching on just war and on nuclear weapons.

Becaue it's an area of Catholic teaching that's frequently cited but not widely understood, we'll quote at length:

It must be said at the outset that our Church supports building international agreements and structures that will make war ever less likely as a means of resolving disputes between nations and peoples. Ultimately we must work for a world without war. In the powerful and haunting words of Pope Paul VI to the United Nations that were repeated often by Pope John Paul II, 'No more war, war never again!' The international community must seek ways to make war a relic of humanity’s past if humanity is to have a future worthy of human dignity. As Pope Benedict XVI has taught: 'War always represents a failure for the international community and a grave loss for humanity.'

But in this fallen and often dangerous world, at this point in human history, the traditional principles that guide the just use of force can, and should, inform moral assessments of all aspects of war, especially policies on nuclear weapons and deterrence. Of the principles that apply to war of any kind, some that are most directly applicable to questions of nuclear policy are:

The use of force must be a last resort. We have a prior obligation to avoid war if at all possible.

The use of force must be discriminate. Civilians and civilian facilities may not be the object of direct, intentional attack and care must be taken to avoid and minimize indirect harm to civilians.

The use of force must be proportionate. The overall destruction must not outweigh the good to be achieved.

And there must be a probability of success.

Popes of the modern era have applied this moral tradition to nuclear weapons and deterrence policy for decades in formal teaching and in papal addresses to the United Nations. The Holy See, in its capacity as a Permanent Observer to the United Nations, has addressed these questions in a particular way through ratification of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and active participation in the Treaty’s review conferences over the past four decades.

For our part, the Catholic bishops of the United States have examined U.S. nuclear policy in light of our moral tradition, most notably in our pastoral letters of 1983, The Challenge of Peace, and 1993, The Harvest of Justice is Sown in Peace, as well as in numerous public statements and ongoing dialogue with public officials to this very day.

Nuclear war-fighting is rejected in Church teaching because it cannot ensure noncombatant immunity and the likely destruction and lingering radiation would violate the principle of proportionality. Even the limited use of so-called 'mini-nukes' would likely lower the barrier to future uses and could lead to indiscriminate and disproportionate harm. And there is the danger of escalation to nuclear exchanges of cataclysmic proportions.

As O'Brien noted, the call for a nuclear-free world is neither new nor unique to the Catholic Church.

"More than two decades ago," he said, "President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev called for abolishing all nuclear weapons. In the past two years Secretaries George Shultz, William Perry and Henry Kissinger and Senator Sam Nunn have promoted a nuclear-free world. Abolishing nuclear weapons is not a narrowly partisan or nationalistic issue; it is an issue of fundamental moral values that should unite people across national and ideological boundaries.

"It is worth noting that earlier this year President Barack Obama and President Dmitry Medvedev committed 'our two countries to achieving a nuclear free world.' And just this month they signed a Joint Understanding to guide negotiations on reducing strategic warheads and delivery vehicles and extending effective verification measures before the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) expires late this year. This is an important step down the road to nuclear disarmament."

The complete address is available at the Web site of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The Catholic Review has a story on it here. And thanks to former Sun religion writer John Rivera for calling our attention to this.

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The Rev. H. Gerard "Jerry" Knoche, bishop of the Delaware-Maryland Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America since 2000, is retiring in October, three years before his second term was to have expired.

I interviewed the bishop for my first story for The Baltimore Sun, four years ago next week, about the ELCA's grappling with same-sex marriage and ordaining gay men and women. We had lunch some time after that. Turned out to have been a college classmate of my father. Struck me as a genuine and decent fellow. I wish him and his family all the best.

Following is the announcement.

The Rev. H. Gerard "Jerry" Knoche, bishop of the Delaware-Maryland Synod ELCA, has announced his retirement for health reasons as of Oct. 31, 2009. Elected to his first six-year term as bishop at the Synod Assembly in June 2000, he was elected to a second term at the 2006 assembly, a term which would have run until 2012.

During his leadership of the 183 congregations comprising the synod, Bishop Knoche oversaw the development and implementation of the current Synod Vision Statement, the Strategic Plan for 2007-2012, and the tagline, "Sent To Share and Serve." Other hallmarks of his time as bishop have been the synod's commitment to anti-racism efforts, the ELCA Book of Faith Initiative, and the "Sowing for the Harvest" Capital Campaign undertaken jointly with Gettysburg Seminary and Mar-Lu-Ridge Camp and Retreat Center. Additionally, the synod's innovative Leadership Academy for rostered leaders was established. At his urging, the synod joined with other church-related entities to form the Lutheran Community Consortium which hired the synod's first Regional Gift Planner.

In Knoche's letter to the synod's pastors, rostered lay leaders, and congregation members, he expressed "mixed emotions" about his decision to retire after having committed himself to a second term as bishop. Due to several health concerns that have arisen in the past two years, however, along with the need for a double knee replacement set for January 2010, he said, he has concluded that "the synod needs a bishop who does not have to devote so much time to self-care when there is so much synodical work to be done."

The Synod Council, an elected group which oversees the synod's ministry between annual meetings of the Synod Assembly, received news of Knoche's retirement at their regularly scheduled July meeting. In her letter to congregations following the announcement, Synod Vice President Yolanda Tanner said, "I am confident that each of you joins with the Synod Council in celebrating the wonderful ministry of Bishop Jerry Knoche among us and in expressing sincere sadness that he must transition from this phase of his ministry. We respect and honor his decision to address his health concerns at this time."

It is now up to the Synod Council to determine the process and the timeline for electing a new bishop. Although a final decision has not been made, preliminary plans suggest that the council will call an interim bishop to serve from the time of Knoche's retirement until a new bishop can be elected and take office. A tentative date for a special meeting of the Synod Assembly for that election has been set for Friday and Saturday, Jan. 16-17, with a snow date of the following weekend, Jan. 23-24. A sub-committee of the group planning the 2010 assembly is charged with planning for the special assembly, which will have as its only task the election of a bishop. It is that group which will determine the location and schedule for the event.

The council identified two additional committees related to the transition. One will plan a retirement celebration for Knoche, set for Sunday, Nov. 8, 2009, at 4 p.m. at Christ Lutheran Church, 701 S. Charles St., Baltimore, consisting of a worship service and a gathering immediately following. The second committee will begin outlining an installation service, probably in April, for the new bishop after his or her election. As a bishop generally oversees planning for his or her own installation, the second committee's work will deal only with the basics until the new bishop is elected and can name a planning group.

The Delaware-Maryland Synod is one of 65 geographic sub-groups of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, a large mainline Protestant denomination covering the United States and the Caribbean. The synod is headquartered at The Lutheran Center in Baltimore's Inner Harbor area. It is comprised of 183 congregations serving about 88,000 people across the two-state area. Prior to being elected bishop, Knoche served New Hope Lutheran Church, Columbia, Md. after a career in campus ministry at several locations around the country.

Baltimore Sun file photo 2000

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Categories: Lutheranism, People
        

We're just back from the Baltimore County Courthouse, where a cicruit court judge has rejected an effort that would have forced the Archdiocese of Baltimore to keep Towson Catholic High School open for another year.

Judge Ruth Jakubowski Friday denied a request of parents Lois Windsor and Judy Messina for a temporary restraining order after hearing arguments behind closed doors. Windsor and Messina filed a lawsuit last week seeking an injunction that would have required the Archdiocese of Baltimore to reopen the school next month, as originally scheduled.

The sides are due back in court on Aug. 5, when Jakubowski will hear arguments on a motion by the archdiocese to have the parents' lawsuit dismissed.

The surprise closing, which was announced earlier this month, has left families scrambling to make alternate plans for their children this fall.

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A Baltimore County judge is expected to rule Friday on an injunction that would force Towson Catholic High School to open in the fall.

Students, parents and alumni continue to protest the surprise closing of the school, which has left families scrambling to make alternate plans for their children. The request for an injunction comes from two families who filed a lawsuit last week in Baltimore County Circuit Court to block the closing.

Judge Ruth Jakubowski will hear arguments behind closed doors beginning at 2 p.m. Towson Catholic supporters were planning to rally outside the courthouse beginning at 1:30 p.m.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Catholicism, Education
        

Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien (left) will celebrate a Mass on Thursday to honor the 175th birthday of Cardinal James Gibbons, the ninth archbishop of Baltimore. The longest-serving archbishop of the nation’s first diocese, Gibbons was described by President Theodore Roosevelt as “the most respected and venerated and useful citizen of our country.”

The Mass is scheduled for 12:10 p.m. at the Baltimore Basilica.

Ordained in Baltimore on June 30, 1861, Gibbons was a chaplain at Fort McHenry during the Civil War and pastor of St. Brigid Catholic Church in Canton.

He served as archbishop from 1877 to 1921, a tenure during which he was “the unchallenged spokesman of the Catholic Church in the United States,” according to Thomas W. Spaulding, author of The Premier See. He would establish more than 30 parishes, and in 1884 presided over the council that led to the establishment of the Catholic school system in the United States.

Gibbons died in 1921. His remains are interred in the crypt under the basilica.

Baltimore Sun file photo 2007

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There are many things Evangelical Christians are good at, such as bake sales and talking to me on planes. They're less adept at other things, such as comedy and fighting lions. … So when Kevin Roose, author of the excellent new book The Unlikely Disciple, told me that Rick Warren's giant Saddleback Church has its own improv group, for the first time in my life, I felt my calling. I may not be the Woody Allen or Jon Stewart of the secular world, but in the land of the unfunny Christian, the one-joked Jew is king.

After performing with the five-member troupe (Here is what goes through your mind during 90 minutes of Christian improv: "No, no, can't say that, nope, maybe if ... no."), Stein asks Saddleback's director of creative arts the point of hosting a comedy show, or the church’s jazz and Shakespeare festivals.

"If you look back in history, most of the arts were done for the church,” Tony Guerrero tells Stein. “All the music of Bach and Mozart was written for the church. We'd like it to be a hub for the arts again."

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He was ordained bishop in 1968 and made the first Bishop of Orlando, Florida. The new diocese encompassed central Florida and included Cape Canaveral, from where, the following year, Apollo 11 launched, bound for the moon.

After that historic launch and lunar landing, with all the images of our astronauts walking, golfing, and planting the flag, Borders made an ad limina visit to Rome to meet with Paul VI. During their meeting, Borders rather nonchalantly observed, "You know, Holy Father, I am the bishop of the Moon."

Pope Paul looked at him rather perplexed - probably wondering where along the line this American prelate lost his mind. Borders then continued by explaining that by the existing (1917) Code of Canon Law, he was the de facto ordinary of this "newly discovered" territory.

(Former Sun religion writer John Rivera directed us to Rocco Palmo's Whispers in the Loggia post citing Murphy; thanks to all.)

Sun file photo, 1998

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With the sudden closure of Towson Catholic High School, families are scrambling to find schools that will take their students in the fall. Over the last few days, we have collected the stories of several.

Some of the 163 students will be heading to Baltimore Lutheran School, other Catholic schools and some public high schools. Others haven't figured it out yet. Jenavieve Kohler (right), 17, and her parents are considering homeschooling.

Another 17-year-old student, Carla Baressi, is scouting out schools now:

"Last week, I cried numerous times," the Parkville 17-year-old said. "I mean, it's really heartbreaking to know that my school is closing in the middle of the summer without any warning. But I've also realized I have to move on because right now Towson Catholic isn't reopening, but my future must still go on."

A member of the National Honor Society, Baressi has been accepted at Maryvale Preparatory School and is planning to attend an orientation there for Towson Catholic students on Monday. The girls' school was the first she contacted; she may also look at Catholic High School.

But she doesn't expect to be class president at Maryvale, which means losing a title she has held since her sophomore year.

"I'm not really concerned about that because I'm going to get involved in a variety of clubs there also," she said. "I mean, I'm concerned about it, but it's not one of my priorities right now."

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

Sun colleague Jill Rosen has written on her pets blog, Unleashed, about an unconventional solution to drops in church attendance:

When one pastor noticed church attendance dropping off, she came up with a creative, a touch Noah's Arc-ian solution: What if people could bring their pets? 

Rachel Bickford, pastor of the Pilgrim Congregational Church in North Weymouth, Mass., <a xhref="http://www.guideposts.com/story/bring-your-dog-church">writes about her experience leading a more-literal-than-usual flock</a> in Guideposts.com. 

Bickford writes about looking down from the pulpit and seeing Lucy, a terrier, Sam, a pug and Bernese mountain dog Chloe. She started services with animals last October. 

"Growing up, I’d wanted to be a vet, but in my twenties I felt called to seminary. After seven years at Pilgrim Congregational, I still loved coming to work," she writes. "But folks just weren’t coming to church as much anymore. Too many sporting events on Sundays and too little faith. I looked out at the half-empty sanctuary one Sunday and thought, Lord, what can I do to get people as excited as I am about coming to church?"

Would you bring your pets to church, or do you think they would interfere with the service?

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: Culture
        

Rabbi Yaakov Menken is the Director of Project Genesis, a Jewish cyber-outreach organization based in Baltimore.

“In the Mix” is the name of a monthly column by Julie Wiener, carried by The New York Jewish Week. Ms. Wiener, who is Jewish, describes herself as “married to a lapsed Catholic -- one who has encouraged me to become more involved in Jewish life.” But in her most recent column, she nonetheless grapples with her own discomfort at the thought of a rabbi entering into a relationship exactly like her own. As she puts it, “there’s something that feels, well, not kosher to me about intermarried rabbis.”

I am tempted to joke that I have been gifted with prophecy for the following prediction, but it is no laughing matter. I do predict that the Hebrew Union College, the rabbinical seminary of Reform Judaism, will be ordaining intermarried Rabbis within the next decade -- and my main concern, in terms of accuracy, is that I’m giving them too much time by half -- but that just stems from common sense and seeing the writing on the wall. To my knowledge, there has yet to be a deviance from Jewish law and tradition concerning which "a debate has swirled in progressive Jewish circles" which has not become normative "progressive" Judaism sooner or later, and usually sooner.

In most cases, the relevant conflict is between traditional Jewish values, and what today's Western society deems the morally superior position. Traditionally, men and women sit separately during prayers, men lead the service, men are rabbis, and homosexuality is prohibited.

In each of those cases, modern Western thought asserts that the contrary position is morally superior, and this becomes the position of liberal Judaism. To my understanding, similar conflicts -- and similar resolutions -- are found in the liberal wings of many other faith communities.

In this case, though, I do not believe a case can be made that it is morally superior to marry someone of a different faith. Jewish discomfort with intermarriage is not a matter of ethnic bias -- it’s about preservation of our unique nation, and the values we wish to transmit to the next generation. Those fully committed to other religions share this position — even a devout Catholic and fundamentalist Protestant might find too many points of contention to truly provide their children with a single, clear message about religion.

Intermarriage is especially problematic to members of smaller religious groups, as it often leads directly to assimilation into the larger of the two groups of which the respective parents are members. Besides parents and teachers, the strongest influences in young adult life are his or her peers. Ms. Wiener acknowledges that in an intermarriage, "Judaism loses out as often, if not more often, than it wins." In fact, multiple surveys have proven that her assertion that it might be 50/50 is overly optimistic in a country where Jews constitute but 2% of the population.

The prospect of intermarried clergy is distressing, and not simply because a layperson such as Ms. Wiener wants “the ultimate representatives and teachers of Jewish tradition to be more respectful of Jewish law and more immersed in Judaism” than she is. It will further accelerate the process of assimilation, and grant it a greater presence within the synagogue itself.

It has been rumored that among Reform Temples, as many as half of the sisterhood presidents are not Jewish by any measure. If even the clergy are not committed to Jewish partners, the next, logical, inevitable step will be a majority non-Jewish laity. At what point will “progressive” Judaism cease to be a religion practiced, in the majority, by Jews? That turning point is probably far sooner than we think.

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It was the kind of story that cried out to be told. Or so Terry Mattingly thought.

It was 1982, and a little-known punk band from Ireland was touring U.S. colleges for the first time, rattling from town to town in an old panel truck.

Mattingly, then a music writer for a small Illinois paper, was intrigued by the chorus from a song on their new album. The lyrics were, of all things, in Latin -- gloria in te domine, gloria exultate - and appeared to have been taken from an ancient Mass.

In two days he spent with the band, Mattingly, a journalist who now lives in Glen Burnie, persuaded the lead singer to speak about his faith. It was the first time Paul David Hewson, better known today as Bono, went on the record about religion and the rise of U2.

The experience was telling, and not just because Mattingly learned Bono wrote "Gloria" in a "charismatic Pentecostalist frenzy," or that the band met frequently to discuss the Bible - the sort of nuggets that have made Mattingly, a columnist and blogger, one of America's most widely read religion writers.

No, when he pitched the article to Rolling Stone, the editors decided he must be making it up and took a pass. The piece ran only in the Champaign, Ill., News-Gazette and, later, in a Christian music magazine.

Religion, Mattingly says, "is the worst-covered major subject in American journalism," and he has built a uniquely robust career addressing that belief.

Read the rest of the story by Jonathan Pitts at baltimoresun.com.

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Categories: Culture
        

Sun colleague Jill Rosen has a story Friday about a dispute between a group of cat lovers and Northside Baptist Church over some 40 feral cats roaming the church's campus in Northeast Baltimore.

The church has forced Denise Farmer to dismantle a feeding station she had set up for the cats on church property; she has been protesting during services each Sunday since then, and is trying to organize a larger rally this Sunday.

The cats know her motor's rumble.

As Denise Farmer pulls her truck down the alley behind Northside Baptist Church in Northeast Baltimore, cats materialize from the scruffy woods, first a black one with a white ruff, then another, and suddenly there are five hovering by a feeding stand, waiting for kibble that Farmer has brought them every weekend for two years.

Church officials, however, wish Farmer and the others who feed the approximately 40 feral cats in the area would stop bringing food because, they say, the animals are out of hand, leaving droppings across the religious organization's expansive, grassy grounds and unnerving parishioners.

Two weeks ago, the church forced Farmer to dismantle a feeding station on its lot. Since then, Farmer, a chemical engineer from Parkville, has picketed the church during Sunday services, parading back and forth with one sign reading "Northside Baptist Denies Food to Animals," and another saying, "Practice What You Preach: Compassion for All God's Creatures."

This Sunday, she's hoping animal advocates from across the city will join her. Cat rescue groups have been spreading the word to hundreds of their followers on Facebook and through e-mail messages.

Since the church ordered the feeding station dismantled, Farmer isn't sure what has become of the cats. There is another feeding area nearby that belongs to another colony but, she says, that colony wouldn't welcome new cats. She fears "her children" are starving.

"It's heartbreaking," says Farmer, who has six cats of her own, tearing up while talking and leaning against her kibble-strewn SUV. "It's completely unbelievable how cruel these people are."

The Rev. Reginald Turner, Northside's pastor, disputes the cruelty tag. He says he tried for two years to work with Farmer's program, which aims to trap the cats, neuter them and then return them to their territory. But now, with cats "running rampant" across church property, he has lost patience.

"I've got members who are not cat fanciers, and we're trying to be as patient as possible," the pastor says. "Yet we're the bad guys in all this."

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

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In the week since the decision to close Towson Catholic High School was announced, students, parents and alumni have focused their anger on a single man.

Monsignor F. Dennis Tinder has been accused of planning to shut down the school since he came to Immaculate Conception Church nine years ago, of turning down fundraising ideas and of speaking insensitively in referring to the student body as "a whole different community."

Tinder, in his first interview since announcing the closing, described the anger directed at him as "poignant." If he had it to do over, he said Wednesday, he would have closed the financially troubled high school earlier, to give students and their families more time to make alternate plans for the fall.

"I think we probably erred on the side of trying to keep the school going," said Tinder, who is responsible for the church, the high school and Immaculate Conception School, which serves children from pre-kindergarten through eighth grade.

"If there's a regret, it is that we tried too hard to keep the school open and went too long," he said. "I think we would have faced the same difficulty had we done it earlier. But it is my regret that we waited as long as we did in a failed attempt to keep it open."

Facing the loss of several dozen students and a deficit of hundreds of thousands of dollars, Tinder announced plans last week to close the 87-year-old high school immediately. The decision had been recommended by the school's board and was supported by Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien, but it was Tinder's to make.

Tinder said he had no choice. School officials had seen enrollment decline from 240 to 163 for September, as deficit projections rose to $650,000.

"We realized that if we continued on and were not able to rectify these two elements, we would be opening a school where we couldn't pay the teachers and couldn't educate the children," he said. "At that juncture, we faced a real moral question. The determination to keep the school open has to be trumped by being concerned about teachers and students."

Algerina Perna / Baltimore Sun photo

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The fight over the fate of Towson Catholic High School escalated Tuesday when the alumni association filed suit against the school's parish and its pastor over the abrupt closing of the school, Baltimore Sun colleague Mary Gail Hare reports. The group is seeking an injunction to keep the school open at least another year.

"This closing is a slap in the face to the alumni and to anyone who ever loved this school. We were ready to remedy this through various options, but we could not get the archdiocese to the table," said alumni association president Paul Mecinski, who announced the lawsuit at a rally last night.

He added, "If students want to come here, we want to keep this place open."

The suit was filed Tuesday in Baltimore County Circuit Court by the alumni association's lawyer, Richard Grason VI of the law offices of T. Bruce Hanley. Attempts to reach Grason were unsuccessful last night.

Mecinski said the parish broke its contract with the students because parents had already paid tuition for the coming school year.

Sean Caine, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, said he had not seen the suit and only learned of it at the rally.

"Keeping this school open is not an option at all," he said. "Even if money is raised, that would not address the question of decreasing enrollment."

Mark Graber, professor of law and government at the University of Maryland School of Law, has said an injunction might be difficult but is possible, given that many parents had paid their deposits and begun making tuition payments for the new school year.

"If they have put down money, the parents have fulfilled their part of the contract with the school, in the understanding that there is going to be a school," Graber said.

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

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Students, parents and alumni at Towson Catholic have taken their campaign to save the school online.

Their new Web site went live at noon on Tuesday. The introduction:

The "Save Towson Catholic" campaign is gaining momentum!

With the intentions of addressing the $650,000 budget shortfall that the Church of the Immaculate Conception is claiming as the key issue in the decision to close Towson Catholic High School, a grass roots pledge drive began over the weekend to help close the gap. This drive was pulled together on Saturday night by a single TC alum, and was pushed forward in its first day as a simple pen and clipboard campaign.

Despite the campaign's early lack of resources, publicity, or manpower, more than $15,000 was pledged within the first 24 hours.

As this pledge drive gains momentum and publicity through media outlets and the internet, as well as with help collecting pledged donations by Towson Catholic students, parents, and alumni, we expect those pledge totals to increase at an accelerated pace.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The decision to close Towson Catholic High School and the resulting outcry from students, parents and alumni has revealed a long-brewing disconnect between the school and the parish that has been its home since 1922.

Only 17 of the 163 students who were enrolled for the fall are parishioners at Immaculate Conception Church; 86 percent live outside Towson. With the school facing a $650,000 deficit that included $160,000 in unpaid tuition from last year, parish officials announced last week that they would close what some described as a money-losing ministry that they could no longer afford to subsidize.

"It was an outreach ministry into the city that brought many kids ... from the northern part of Baltimore City, and they came out to Towson and got a great education by all accounts," said Dan Cahill, a member of the parish council who reviews Immaculate's finances quarterly. "But we didn't see long-term those kids coming out of the school and then becoming active alumni and giving back."

Vocal parents and alumni are continuing their opposition to the closing with a 7 p.m. rally at the school Tuesday, the third such event in less than a week. The protest will occur as parents attend a school fair inside the building with representatives from 15 area parochial schools in hopes of finding a place for their children in September.

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

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Harry Potter, long the bane of fundamentalist Christians, has won a rave review from the Vatican.

L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, has given the new film “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” four stars for promoting “friendship, altruism, loyalty and self-giving,” Catholic News Service reoprts.

The review in Tuesday’s edition marks an about-face for the newspaper, which 18 months ago called the boy wizard “the wrong model of a hero,” and charged author J.K. Rowling with transmitting “a vision of the world and the human being full of deep mistakes and dangerous suggestions, even more seductive since it is mixed with half-truths and compelling storytelling.”

Pope Benedict XVI himself, when he was Cardinal Ratzinger, warned of Potter’s “subtle seductions,” which he said “deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly.

But the Vatican found much to appreciate in the sixth film in the series, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” which is due to open worldwide on Wednesday. (Translation from the Italian courtesy of the Catholic News Service)

"Certainly, Rowling's vision lacks a reference to transcendence, to a providential design in which people live their personal histories and history itself takes shape," the paper said. Still, the film and the books make clear "the line of demarcation between one who does good and one who does evil, and it is not difficult for the reader or the viewer to identify with the first.

"This is particularly true in the latest film. They know that doing good is the right thing to do. And they also understand that sometimes this involves hard work and sacrifice."

L'Osservatore said the film is the best in the series yet.

"As the characters – now adolescents on the threshold of adulthood – have grown, the tone of the story has as well and the film benefits," it said.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Sunday saw the first services by Bethel A.M.E. Church at Temple Oheb Shalom. Baltimore Sun colleague Stephanie Desmon had a nice story in Monday's paper:

On a typical summer Sunday, the doors of Temple Oheb Shalom are locked tight. With observances of the Jewish Sabbath taking place on Friday night and Saturday and religious school out until fall, the Park Heights Avenue building sits empty.

Not yesterday. Hundreds of congregants of a different faith poured into the sanctuary, bringing along their love of God, their upbeat music and their fervent prayer to the otherwise quiet house of worship. A fire July 1 damaged the historic Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Upton and left its flock with no place to come together. But an offer from the synagogue's leaders gave them temporary refuge as their landmark building is repaired.

"The church may have been hit by lightning," the Rev. Frank M. Reid III told church members, "but the work of the church continues in Jesus' name."

Later in his sermon, Reid continued: "We discover how our faith helps us face the fires."

If not for the symbols of Judaism - the Holy Ark storing the Torahs, the Hebrew letters on the wall - it would have been hard to tell the Bethel congregants were anywhere but home.

"It solidifies what I've always believed," said Joshua Lawton, 23, of Towson, a relatively new member of the church. "It doesn't matter what religion you are - it's all about God. Period. End of story. Everything else is just about details."

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

There was a coffeehouse vibe in the basement of a Bolton Hill brownstone where 20 or so men and women gathered on a recent evening.

Mostly in their 20s and 30s, they had hugged hello as they filed into the brightly painted former architecture studio. They had poured the free-trade French roast and unpacked the cupcakes. They had broken into small groups for an icebreaker - name the three people you would take to a desert island - and laughed when it turned out that several had come up with MacGyver, the resourceful secret agent from the 1980s television show.

Finally, it was time for Joel Kurz to get to the point.

"We're asking you to join us in planting a church," the 28-year-old pastor of the Garden Community said. "We're asking you to reconcile Baltimore to God's kingdom."

One of more than a dozen such startups in the area, the Garden Community is at the vanguard of a push by the Southern Baptist Convention into Baltimore, targeted as a "strategic focus city" by its North American Mission Board. Eleven churches have begun to hold worship services here in the last two years, two others are set to open in September, and organizers see as many as half a dozen more forming by the end of the year.

The new congregations are as varied as the neighborhoods in which they've settled. New Hope Community Church, which meets in a Curtis Bay recreation center flanked by bars on all four corners, serves breakfast before Sunday services and sends worshipers home with sandwiches afterward. The Light Church in Mount Vernon boasts a coffeehouse and art gallery. The Gallery Church in Charles Village holds a Saturday discussion group in an Irish bar.

The effort comes as the nation's largest Protestant body struggles to reverse a historic decline in membership. If current trends hold, President Johnny Hunt warned members at the annual convention last month, its numbers could fall from the current 16.2 million to 8.7 million by 2050.

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

For the last decade, leaders of the traditionally rural denomination have been trying to reach beyond its Bible Belt stronghold and into the urban areas of the Northeast, Midwest and West - regions where it may be better known for its socially conservative positions on abortion and homosexuality than for its spiritual beliefs, worship practices or good works.

The Baltimore Baptist Association invited the North American Mission Board to set up Embrace Baltimore in 2007. The move brought experienced managers to the city to help bolster the 72 mostly small Southern Baptist Convention churches already in the area and the new ones to come.

Here, as in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and other cities on which the denomination has concentrated its efforts, the focus has been less on political activism than on community service.

"We didn't want to be known strictly for what we were against, but we wanted to be known for helping people in need," said Rich Carney, a strategy coordinator for the mission board. "It's one of those situations where, as followers of Christ, we need to put hands and feet on what we say."

So New Hope Community Church has given away furniture and sent volunteers to a local soup kitchen. Infinity Church, which is due to hold its first Sunday service on Sept. 13 in Northeast Baltimore, has held sports camps for local youth.

"It's just kind of getting out to meet the neighbors, casting vision, sharing with them what we're trying to do, loving on the community," Infinity pastor Aaron Pankey said.

In May, members of the Garden Community walked what they called the Trail of Tears, visiting the sites of the five most recent murders in the neighborhood and stopping at each to lay a rose and pray for peace in the city. The church, which bills itself as a "creative community of Jesus followers," is gearing up to paint a local elementary school, mentor students and help their parents complete high school diplomas.

At the meeting in the brownstone, Kurz opened the New Testament to the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans and spoke of the sacrifices made by the early Christians living in a hostile empire.

"We live in an empire as well," he said. "It's an empire of consumerism and I would say it's an empire of individualism. And the thing is that we end up giving in to the lie of the empire without even realizing it.

"Money, cash, becomes our god. Climbing the corporate ladder becomes our ministry. Wal-Mart is our worship center. It's OK to try to get all that we can for ourselves and walk over those who don't have anything and not reach out to help."

He asked attendees to stick with the church, to worship with it and join in its community service. "We are asking you to sacrifice what you like, sacrifice things that you like, in order to discover a life that you'll love."

Kiki White, visiting the Garden Community for the first time, was impressed.

"I'm excited to know that things like this are happening," said the 22-year-old single mother, a certified nursing assistant looking for work. "I can see me getting more involved."

The men and women who formed the new congregation described a variety of church backgrounds, from those who had grown up without faith to those who were lifelong churchgoers. Laura Arvizu was raised Catholic in her native Mexico. She has been coming to the Garden Community for six months.

"One of the things that I like is that they don't only worship God," the 38-year-old homemaker said. "They're hands-on. That to me is very real."

Bob Mackey, the executive director of Embrace Baltimore, described it as "demonstrating the compassion of Christ in real time."

"When I talk about representing Christ in practical ways, it certainly includes sharing the message of Christ and his story of forgiveness," he said. "But in the long run, credibility to tell that story is typically earned, not given. And we're OK with that.

"The people who live in Baltimore City and Baltimore County, should they ever bump up against one of these churches, we hope it's a positive experience and they'll wonder about, you know, maybe there is something to this Jesus. Maybe he can make a difference.

"And then it's their choice."

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 8:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Towson Catholic High School alumni are vowing to fight the abrupt closing of their alma mater with rallies, an awareness campaign and even a possible lawsuit, Baltimore Sun colleague Mary Gail Hare reports in Friday's newspaper.

Organizers are planning a peaceful demonstration at 8:30 a.m. Sunday at Immaculate Conception Church. Alumni, parents and students are also being urged to gather at the school at 7 p.m. Tuesday for the third demonstration since the closing was announced this week.

"At first, we called it a vigil to say goodbye and show our lasting love for the school, but it has become a rally to show support," said Mike Boehm, a 1997 graduate. "We are not letting this school close without trying to do something."

Wendy Gelhaus, Class of 2007, has started a "Revive TC" blog campaign that seeks signatures for a petition to stop the closing of the school and is also meeting with area businesses to ask for their support. She and her grandmother, Joan Slater, who recently celebrated her 50th TC reunion, plan to attend the vigil Tuesday.

Gelhaus said she has found an attorney willing to file an injunction blocking the closing.

"It is an uphill battle, but he sees the passion we have," she said.

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
        

When President Barack Obama meets on Friday with Pope Benedict XVI, he’ll present the pontiff with a gift that has a Baltimore connection.

The Redemptorists have given Obama a stole that was used to dress the body of St. John Neumann. The 19th-century priest was pastor of Baltimore's St. Alphonsus Church from 1849 to 1852.

It was during his time in the city that the Bohemia-born Neumann was naturalized a U.S. citizen. He would leave Baltimore to serve as bishop of Philadelphia, a position he held until his death in 1860. He is a patron saint of immigrants and sick children.

“It’s a delight that something of one of our Redemptorist saints would be given to our Holy Father,” the Rev. Patrick Woods, provincial of the Baltimore Province, said in a statement. “We’re delighted as Americans that our president is visiting the Holy Father, and delighted that something belonging to our province would be given to him.”

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

In the days since the death of Michael Jackson, commentators have attempted to make sense of his apparently peripatetic faith journey. We know that he was raised a Jehovah’s Witness, and was associated as an adult with Scientology and Islam.

Beyond that, details become hazy. In a typical assessment, Kathryn Lofton, an assistant professor of American studies and religious studies at Yale, reviewed the record last week and concluded: “Michael Jackson was not, in the end, a terribly thick subject for religious consideration: he dallied and discoed on the smooth tip of substance. Someone named ‘God’ did, as he testified, inspire nearly every lyric. Pressed on the point, he mostly repeated himself, or offered vague dismissals of patriarchic doctrine.”

Enter beliefnet, which has unearthed a 2000 essay by Jackson himself. In it, the former child star describes the obviously powerful experience of his church as the one oasis of normality in his young life.

More than anything, I wished to be a normal little boy. I wanted to build tree houses and go to roller-skating parties. But very early on, this became impossible. I had to accept that my childhood would be different than most others. …

There was one day a week, however, that I was able to escape the stages of Hollywood and the crowds of the concert hall. That day was the Sabbath. …

Church was a treat in its own right. … The church elders treated me the same as they treated everyone else. And they never became annoyed on the days that the back of the church filled with reporters who had discovered my whereabouts. They tried to welcome them in. After all, even reporters are the children of God.

Even reporters, Michael? But I digress. Jackson wrote fondly of “pioneering,” the term used by Jehovah’s Witnesses to describe the missionary work of knocking on doors and distributing literature about the faith.

(Photo by Kevin Mazur/AEG via Getty Images)

“Up to 1991, the time of my Dangerous tour, I would don my disguise of fat suit, wig, beard, and glasses and head off to live in the land of everyday America, visiting shopping plazas and tract homes in the suburbs," he wrote. "I loved to set foot in all those houses and catch sight of the shag rugs and La-Z-Boy armchairs with kids playing Monopoly and grandmas baby-sitting and all those wonderfully ordinary and, to me, magical scenes of life. Many, I know, would argue that these things seem like no big deal. But to me they were positively fascinating."

Jackson described his childhood Sundays as sacred not only because it was the day when he attended church, but also because it was the day he “spent rehearsing the hardest.”

“This may seem against the idea of 'rest on the Sabbath,' " he wrote, "but it was the most sacred way I could spend my time: developing the talents that God gave me. The best way I can imagine to show my thanks is to make the very most of the gift that God gave me.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Culture
        

Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien has issued a statement on the decision to close Towson Catholic High School. At least 100 students and parents rallied at the school Wednesday, a day after they were notified of the closure.

O'Brien's statement:

I am deeply saddened by the closure of Towson Catholic and troubled by the circumstances that seemed to have left the parish and school board with no other choice. The closing of this beloved institution is a source of pain for students, teachers, alumni and the parish. Every effort is being made to ensure the smoothest transition possible for our students and faculty and several representatives of the Archdiocese are working day and night with the parish and school toward that end. My heart goes out especially to those seniors who were preparing to begin their final year at TC and we are exploring every available option to provide for their unique and special circumstance.

Equally deserving of our support is the pastor, [Monsignor F. Dennis] Tinder, as well as the board and administration of the school. They expended great energy and countless hours to save the school from this fate. I am grateful for their commitment to Towson Catholic and to the students and faculty.

Unfortunately, their best efforts, among them the hiring of a strategic consultant earlier this year to help reposition the school in an effort to increase enrollment, were not enough to avoid the impact of the financial crisis which forced so many of our families to make the painful decision not to enroll their children for the coming school year.

My prayers are with the Towson Catholic family today and will be for the days ahead, and I offer my assurance that everything possible will be done to meet the needs of every student, teacher and staff member impacted by this painful but necessary decision.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

At least 100 parents and students of Towson Catholic High School attended a rally Wednesday morning protesting the closure of the 86-year-old school in the fall.

Mary Gail Hare has the story for The Baltimore Sun.

Faced with rapidly declining enrollment and mounting debt, the co-educational school notified parents and its 20-member faculty by letter and e-mail on Tuesday that it will not open for classes in September. It becomes the archdiocese's first high school to close in many years.

Judy Messina, vice president of the PTA and the mother of a rising senior who attended the rally, said, "We're still in shock. If they knew this was coming, why did they wait until six weeks before the new school year [to announce the closure]?"

Many families have already given their deposits and started making their tuition payments.

Messina said she is very disappointed in the pastor, Monsignor F. Dennis Tinder. "He has never been available to any of us. Not the faculty, not the children. We just never see him."

The rally was attended by students who were wearing their uniforms and carrying signs. Alumni returned to their alma mater wearing their senior year T-shirts.

(Photograph by The Baltimore Sun)

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

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Members of Bethel A.M.E. Church, forced out of their landmark Baltimore building, will take temporary refuge at Temple Oheb Shalom, the spiritual leaders of the two congregations said Wednesday.

A week after lightning struck the steeple of the church on Druid Hill Avenue, the Rev. Frank M. Reid III and Rabbi Steven M. Fink announced that the Christian congregation would hold Sunday services at the Reform Jewish synagogue in Park Heights through Labor Day.

Fink called Reid after learning of the July 1 fire to offer Oheb Shalom’s 900-seat sanctuary to the church. The two congregations have long worked together, holding joint services in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., maintaining a community garden and engaging in the Black and Jewish Forum of Baltimore.

“We thought, in light of the hate crime that took place recently over in Washington at the Holocaust museum, with the ethnic violence going on in China at this time, that this partnership between the Jewish faith community and the Christian faith community, this partnership between the Jewish community and the black community, reestablishes a bridge that has existed between our two communities for hundreds of years,” Reid said.

“Our congregation and Bethel A.M.E. are family,” Fink said. “Our officers and board of directors decided immediately upon learning of this event to offer our facility to Bethel A.M.E.”

While the church has a membership of 17,500, Reid said Oheb Shalom will be large enough to accommodate the number likely to attend Sunday worship. At Oheb Shalom, the church is planning to hold a single service at 9:30 a.m. beginning this Sunday.

Oheb Shalom is located at 7310 Park Heights Avenue.

The synagogue offered similar assistance to members of First Mount Olive Freewill Baptist Church two years ago after their building was destroyed by a lightning strike and fire. That congregation now worships across Park Heights Avenue from Oheb Shalom at Baltimore Hebrew Congregation.

One reason Christian and Jewish congregations can share worship space is because their schedules don’t generally conflict. The Jewish sabbath runs from sundown Friday through sundown Saturday. Most Christians observe their sabbath on Sunday.

Another reason Bethel and Oheb Shalom make a good fit: the synagogue is part of a group of Reform Jewish congregations that hold joint services during the summer. This summer, those services are being held at Har Sinai, so the Oheb Shalom sanctuary is going unused.

Bethel A.M.E. held its first service after the fire last Sunday at Pier Six Pavilion in the Inner Harbor. Members will participate in an ecumenical prayer service at Union Baptist Church on Wednesday “to strengthen our faith in the face of the fire.” That event begins at 7 p.m. at the church at 1219 Druid Hill Avenue.

Reid said it was not yet clear how long it would take to repair the fire damage at Bethel or how much it would cost.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Rabbi Yaakov Menken is the Director of Project Genesis, a Jewish cyber-outreach organization based in Baltimore.

Yesterday found me at the District Court of Maryland, Traffic Division, to fight a parking ticket. We had received a "Warning Notice" for failure to respond to a citation that we had never received, for our van being parked in a Transit Zone, in one of those neighborhoods in which you might be ill-advised to park in the most legal of spaces -- especially after dark, which, according to the time on the notice, it was. Mistakes happen, and the most likely explanation is that the wrong license plate number was transcribed from the citation onto the notice. Besides a compliment from the judge for having a "mean" hat (like many Orthodox Jewish men, I wear a black fedora, which he didn't want me to forget on the bench), he also gave me the Not Guilty verdict I was looking for (benefit of the doubt).

The experience was notable for a few reasons. First and foremost, the judge was (as the previous comments might indicate), very friendly and down to earth, very unpretentious. He was handling "non-incarcerable offenses" (his translation: "the only way you can go to jail is by doing something really dumb in this courtroom"), and was happy to show the friendlier side of the court system. Everyone appealing a ticket seemed to have some justification, and he was happy to give a Not Guilty to, for example, the obviously handicapped woman who was driving the wrong car on the day she was ticketed for using a handicapped spot. "Justice, justice shall you pursue..." but tempered with mercy. I was impressed.

He also told the following story, which happened to take place in the same neighborhood in which we were charged with parking illegally. He walks, he says, through all of Baltimore's neighborhoods, and on a Sunday morning a young man approached him on the otherwise-deserted street corner. "Hey man," he said, "want some weed?"

The judge responded by reaching into his pocket, and pulling out his badge indicating that he is a judge. The young man looked at him, looked at his badge, back to him, back to the badge, and finally back to him. And then he said, "so does this mean you don't want any, or you can't have any?"

Of course, the story had to be shared simply because it's very funny. But I also wonder what it says when a young drug dealer is so unaware of the law and its possible consequences ... or so brazen as to imagine the judge would have no thought of having him arrested.

Religion teaches us about the need to control our baser instincts, to respect a Higher Authority. And, thinking pragmatically, a Jewish teacher of millenia past blessed his students that they should fear G-d as much as they fear other people (they were taken aback, but he pointed out that many will do in private, i.e., in G-d's Presence, what they would never do in public). What does it say about society when even an earthly higher authority is given so little recognition?

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

Shaukat Malik is a Muslim-American Certified Public Accountant from Potomac. He left his native Pakistan in 1972 and has been living in the United States since 1980.

At last, the people of Pakistan are convinced that the Taliban are traitors and must be eliminated. Now Pakistan’s elected National Assembly must validate the military action by the Pakistan Army in support of U.S. action. Unless and until the voters' representatives are seen and heard condemning the Taliban by passing a resolution, all action against the Taliban will be seen by many Pakistanis as America's war against terror.

Many lawmakers, especially those from the religious parties and the right, are sitting on the fence when it comes to openly condemning the mad Taliban. They see the National Assembly as a rubber-stamp body that is under the president, a legacy of the dictatorship of Pervez Musharraf.

Powers usurped by military dictators must be restored to the "people's house" to win confidence of Pakistani voters. A bill should be passed in the elected National Assembly authorizing the monitoring of all Madrassas and the conversion of all Madrassas to regular schools with the help of regional school boards in Pakistan using U.S. aid dollars.

Madrassas should no longer be allowed to become recruiting grounds for suicide bombers, Taliban and murderers hiding behind the “Burqa” of Sharia.

As a matter of fact, the names of these institutions should end in “school,” thereby killing any hope of a fascist mullah trying to use it as his private military academy. They should teach music and social sciences to broaden the thought processes of students presently focused and stuck on hate.

Having laws like Pakistan's Hadood ordinance that restrict personal freedoms for women present an opportunity for usurpers like the Taliban and others to condemn large populations to petty disputes, for example, between Shia and Sunni, and also result in an extraordinary focus on the moral behavior of women.

Pakistan’s Supreme Court must look at the Hadood ordinance and Sharia-based laws to establish whether they are just and fair, especially in the context of today’s Pakistan.
This process of studying and analyzing Sharia laws, through a process of Ijtehad – reasoning – is already being employed in Turkey, as part of that country’s exercise in making its laws more compatible with its European neighbors. Turkey is doing this to join the European Union, but the beneficiaries will be Turkey's Muslim population. Pakistan should do the same by studying what Turkey has done and incorporating it into Pakistan’s legal system. This will have the powerful effect of neutralizing the extremist element in Pakistan.

Unfortunately, a Taliban running from U.S. action on the Afghan border can quickly disappear into the frontier wilderness. All he has to do is shave his beard and change the color of his Turban and he will look like any local resident. Most of these fugitives will find safe houses in Pakistan’s Madrassas unless the Madrassas and other extremist schools are strictly monitored.

The U.S. government must help the Pakistan government to monitor every Madrassa by offering technical assistance. We should also request Pakistan government to start the monitoring and conversion process immediately.

These actions are a prerequisite for a Taliban-free Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
        

The world's oldest Christian Bible has been digitized and uploaded to the web, where it may be searched by scholars and the curious alike.

The Codex Sinaiticus, handwritten in Greek 1,600 years ago on 400 pages of prepared animal skin, contains a complete New Testament and portions of the Old Testament and the Apocrypha, with handwritten corrections added during the ensuing centuries.

It was discovered in the mid-19th century at the Monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai but soon was divided among collections in Britian, Germany, Russia and Egypt.

Now the known pieces have been reunited online by the Codex Sinaiticus Project, a consortium including the British Library, Leipzig University Library in Germany, the Monastery of St. Catherine in Sinai and the National Library of Russia in St. Petersburg. with funding and experitse from those countries, the United States and others. The extant text became available on the web on Monday.

"It's such an important book -- that's why it should be accessible," project manager Juan Garces told the Associated Press. "If you would have liked to see it before you would have had to travel to four countries in two continents. If you want to see the manuscript right now all you have to do is go online and experience it for yourself."

Photo by the Associated Press

Codex Sinaiticus is one of the most important witnesses to the Greek text of the Septuagint (the Old Testament in the version that was adopted by early Greek-speaking Christians) and the Christian New Testament. No other early manuscript of the Christian Bible has been so extensively corrected.

A glance at the transcription will show just how common these corrections are. They are especially frequent in the Septuagint portion. They range in date from those made by the original scribes in the fourth century to ones made in the twelfth century. They range from the alteration of a single letter to the insertion of whole sentences.

One important goal of the Codex Sinaiticus Project is to provide a better understanding of the text of the Codex and of the subsequent corrections to it. This will not only help us to understand this manuscript better, but will also give us insights into the way the texts of the Bible were copied, read and used.

By the middle of the fourth century there was wide but not complete agreement on which books should be considered authoritative for Christian communities. Codex Sinaiticus, one of the two earliest collections of such books, is essential for an understanding of the content and the arrangement of the Bible, as well as the uses made of it.

The Greek Septuagint in the Codex includes books not found in the Hebrew Bible and regarded in the Protestant tradition as apocryphal, such as 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, 1 & 4 Maccabees, Wisdom and Sirach. Appended to the New Testament are the Epistle of Barnabas and 'The Shepherd' of Hermas.

The idiosyncratic sequence of books is also remarkable: within the New Testament the Letter to the Hebrews is placed after Paul's Second Letter to the Thessalonians, and the Acts of the Apostles between the Pastoral and Catholic Epistles. The content and arrangement of the books in Codex Sinaiticus shed light on the history of the construction of the Christian Bible.

The ability to place these 'canonical books' in a single codex itself influenced the way Christians thought about their books, and this is directly dependent upon the technological advances seen in Codex Sinaiticus. The quality of its parchment and the advanced binding structure that would have been needed to support over 730 large-format leaves, which make Codex Sinaiticus such an outstanding example of book manufacture, also made possible the concept of a 'Bible'. The careful planning, skilful writing and editorial control needed for such an ambitious project gives us an invaluable insight into early Christian book production.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Christianity, Culture
        

Add Seth Stevenson to the list of observers questioning whether the new advertising campaign run by the Church of Scientology will do much to burnish its increasingly negative public image.

Stevenson, who writes the Ad Report Card column in Slate, offers a nice historical overview of religious advertising during the television area, from the brief morality plays aired by the Mormons in the 1970s to the quirky spots marketing the Northern Virginia-based New Life Christian Church as “a place for random people,” before focusing on the Scientology campaign:

The three new spots from the Church of Scientology don't traffic in humor or upbeat mini-fables. Their mood is dark. Their tone is dramatic. Their scope is epic.

The Scientology ads employ a time-honored Madison Avenue tactic: Show the problem. In a classic show-the-problem ad, you might first zoom in on those grass stains that have been ground into little Billy's trousers. You'd then reveal, in a lingering product shot, the new and improved detergent that will save the day.

Here, the problem is slightly more abstract than ground-in grass stains. The problem is spiritual emptiness. "We're all looking for it," intones the announcer in one of the Scientology spots. "Some of us have been looking our whole lives. Some think they can buy it. … Some travel the world in search of it. Most don't even know what they're looking for. But we all feel it. That aching desire." The final reveal suggests that Scientology, much like a powerful laundry detergent, will provide a solution.

Stevenson asks whether the ads are effective.

They're certainly professional. You've got to be impressed with the cinematography and editing. The high-budget gloss alone will likely sway a few viewers to visit Scientology's content-rich Web site.

But Scientology's marketing challenges are different from those faced by religions with more established bona fides. By now—especially in the wake of the Tom Cruise couch-jumping incident, and the subsequent snarky national conversation—I think there are a fair number of people out there who have a nascent, inchoate sense that Scientology is weird. They're looking for reassurances that this is a faith for everyday people, not just eccentric celebrities. They're wondering whether Scientology's worship services will be something they're comfortable with. These grandiose yet stubbornly vague ads, with their intimations that Scientology holds the answers to all life's riddles, don't bother to address any of those less lofty concerns.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 2:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (44)
Categories: Culture, Scientology
        

In an appearanced criticized by some of his fellow conservative Christians, megachurch Pastor Rick Warren told several thousand American Muslims over the weekend that "the two largest faiths on the planet" must work together to combat stereotypes and solve global problems, the Associated Press is reporting.

"Some problems are so big you have to team tackle them," Warren, author of The Purpose-Driven Life, told the annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America. He said Muslims and Christians should be partners in working to end what he calls "the five global giants" of war, poverty, corruption, disease and illiteracy.

The Christian Post quoted Warren, the founder of Saddelback Church in Orange County, Calif., as saying he was "not interested in interfaith dialogue.

"I am interested in interfaith project. There is a big difference,” he said.

“Talk is very cheap. You can talk and talk and talk and never get anything done. Love is something you do,” Warren maintained. “It is something we do together.”

The Associated Press called Warren's willingness to show support for U.S. Muslims, under intense scrutiny since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, "a huge gain for the community."

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)
Categories: Christianity, Evangelicalsm, Interfaith, Islam
        

The Rev. Jason Poling is pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville.

Unless there’s an onion involved, I don’t cry easily. But there I was, driving down the Beltway on the 4th in the family minivan, tears streaming down my cheeks as I told my kids about Independence Day.

You might attribute the tears to the frustrations involved in getting a couple of toddlers to understand anything about Independence Day beyond fireworks. Certainly I was wrapped up emotionally in the recent departure of one of our congregants for his first of two tours with the Marines in Iraq.

But I must have drunk the Kool-Aid back in civics class, because when I think about freedom, liberty, just government and all that good stuff, my thoughts fly to the Declaration of Independence. “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” Jefferson wrote, “that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” I still get a chill when I read those words.

Later on, studying theology in seminary, I came to realize that this notion has much deeper roots than the American founding and the Enlightenment that gave birth to it. In Genesis, we read that God created humanity in his own image; as image-bearers, we have agency, responsibility, will, choice — the things Jefferson (and Madison, and Locke, and so on) knew we have whether any particular government respects the fact or not. I realized that our word dignity, which encompasses so much of what’s at stake, ultimately traces back to the Greek theos: our dignity is our quality of bearing God’s image.

And so, Jefferson goes on to note, “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men.” It is the role of government, Jefferson notes, to ensure that these natural rights — these rights that are ours simply by virtue of being human — are protected. (Again, nothing new here; Augustine had much to say about these matters in his City of God, as I learned later on in seminary when I studied church history.)

But even before these soaring words, Jefferson notes that it is right and necessary for nations “to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.” Thus, as he concludes, “as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.” Much as individual people have natural rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of property, so nations have natural rights to do the things that nations do.

Yet again, it’s a familiar tune: beyond establishing regulations in Torah for how biblical Israel was to operate as a unique theocratic nation-state, God declared through his prophets that he would hold all peoples accountable for their conduct, that he would not overlook injustice or oppression or violence even when cloaked in the garb of national interest.

My younger daughter inherited her father’s clumsiness, and will carry forever a tiny scar next to her left eye in memory of an unpleasant encounter with the edge of a toy chest. That scar would scarcely be noticeable on me but on her beautiful face it can’t be missed. In the same way, evils that would scarcely raise an eyebrow across much of the world appear starkly against the backdrop of our national ideals.

Ours is a flawed nation, an imperfect creation of imperfect people sustained by the imperfect work of generations of their imperfect descendants, both born and naturalized. In our nation’s history we find plenty of examples of grave injustice, from slavery to the treatment of Native Americans to the internment of Japanese-Americans to Abu Ghraib.

So when we get rotten tomatoes thrown at us as we stand on the world stage, we would do well to remember that the bulk of our own Declaration of Independence consists of our complaints against the Crown, and our lament that our “Brittish brethren … have been deaf to the voice of justice.” It’s not easy to have our flaws pointed out to us, especially by other nations. Yet as the writer of Proverbs reminds us, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.”

Every independent nation is ultimately dependent on others to tell the truths we might prefer to avoid. The work of mature citizenship is to recognize our errors, to rectify them as we’re able to, and to continue holding ourselves up to the standards we still know to be self-evident.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Guest Posts
        

Rabbi Yaakov Menken is the Director of Project Genesis, a Jewish cyber-outreach organization based in Baltimore.

No, it's not what you think. I am not referring to a healthy (and Biblically-mandated) fear of G-d and his Ineffable Name, but an aversion to mentioning G-d as a motivating force in our lives. Joel Alperson, a past national campaign chair for United Jewish Communities, wrote about this in a recent op-ed entitled "Don’t fear ‘G-d,’ ‘Torah’ and ‘Judaism’ " published by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He writes:

I’ve collected the mission statements of the largest 17 Jewish federations in North America, and not one mentions “G-d,” “Torah” or “Judaism.” Nor do the mission statements of the B’nai B’rith Youth Organization, Hillel, the National Council of Jewish Women, The Wexner Heritage Foundation, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, Hadassah and the Jewish National Fund. Of all the organizations I looked into, only United Jewish Communities mentions but one of the three words, Torah, in its mission statement.

Mr. Alperson's theory is that these terms are avoided because they are "more particularistic. Tzedakah [Charity], tikkun olam [Repairing the World] and klal yisroel [the People of Israel] are considered universal and inclusive terms." He bemoans this phenomenon, and considers this problem to be one with a uniquely Jewish angle. He believes that the reason these terms induce such discomfort is because communal organizations, aiming to serve the breadth of the entire Jewish community, are afraid of any mention of a term that might highlight our numerous and profound internal divisions.

He may be right. But at the same time, I am reminded of an article written over 20 years ago by Daniel Polisar, today the director of the Shalem Center, and at that time a fellow student at Princeton University. He described an experience in a class in Philosophy and ethics, in which the students were asked to respond sequentially to a classic question of moral and ethical behavior: when confronted by an assailant who orders you to murder another, on threat of your own life, what are you supposed to do?

Now as it happens, Jewish ethics offers clear and unambiguous guidance on this matter: "who says your blood is redder?" Thus the Talmud prohibits murdering another person, even in order to save your own life. And this is what Dan, when asked, proceeded to tell the class: that Judaism teaches us that G-d Commanded us to react this way.

It so happens that Mr. Polisar was somewhere in the middle of the group of students. At the end of the class, he realized that he had triggered a sea change in the way the class answered the question: not one of the students asked before him had mentioned G-d in his or her response... and all, or practically all, of the students responding after him also mentioned G-d.

This encounter, along with numerous others, led him to argue in The Princeton Tory that G-d has been exiled from the college campus -- that students are inculcated to regard belief in G-d as anti-intellectual, the realm of irrational fundamentalists rather than the enlightened students of the Ivory Towers. And thus, while the vast majority of students clearly regarded G-d as a force in their lives (based upon the answers following his), no one wanted to be the first to admit that he or she sought the guidance of a higher power.

The directors of our communal organizations are generally well-educated, and if there is considerable truth to Mr. Polisar's argument -- and I believe there is -- this offers an alternate and more inward-directed reason why the mission statements of Jewish organizations might be averse to mentioning the Jewish religion. It is not that the writers fear highlighting our divisions, but that they do not want to highlight terms with which they themselves are uncomfortable.

At the same time, this is not necessarily the (only) reason why the students were reluctant to use G-d in their answers in that classroom. While in retrospect it may seem almost instinctive to call upon G-d's Name in a discussion of ethics, it is also fair to say that most people could not be nearly so unequivocal about what G-d would want them to do. Most religions, including the modern Jewish movements that do not regard the Talmud as an authoritative source, do not state an absolute, required answer to that precise question.

It could similarly be argued that many in the Jewish community feel this sort of ambiguity about their religion overall. How should they observe, or not? What should they, or shouldn't they, believe? Having departed from the moorings of Jewish tradition, they aren't quite sure which way to point themselves when the waves start crashing around them.

In the end, I think all three of these factors -- a reluctance to highlight divisions, ambiguity about religion, and a reluctance of the educated class to express religious feelings -- combine to explain why Jews outside the Orthodox community are apt to avoid mention of G-d, His Word, and our religion.

Where Joel Alperson and I certainly agree is regarding the consequences of that silence.

We must be the only people on the planet who believe we can transmit a message to future generations without saying specifically what that message is. Is it any wonder that most Jews cannot articulate Jewish purpose beyond some catch phrases or beyond merely expressing a desire that we survive as a people?

As with so many areas in life, religion is about making choices. We cannot be all things to all people, and we serve no one if we try to pretend otherwise.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 4:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

While philanthropies everywhere struggle to pry dollars loose from communities reeling from the recession, Baltimore's Jewish federation is celebrating what in these times qualifies as an outstanding result: simply raising as much money as it did the year before.

The annual campaign of the Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore hit the mark Tuesday, the last day of the fiscal year, organization officials said. The $30.8 million they raised means they will be able to fund all of the Associated's local educational, cultural and assistance programs at the same levels this year as last.

"What's at play here is provision of service," Associated President Marc B. Terrill said Tuesday. "We have to be the mouthpiece for the people that can't speak for themselves. So we went in with an attitude essentially that failure is not an option."

His organization's feat comes in a bleak environment for philanthropy both locally and nationwide. U.S. charitable giving fell 2 percent in 2008, according to a report released last month by the Giving USA Foundation. More than 80 percent of the nonprofit organizations surveyed by the Center for Civil Society Studies at the Johns Hopkins University early this year reported experiencing some level of fiscal stress, and close to 40 percent described the stress as "severe" or "very severe."

Among 157 Jewish federations in the United States and Canada, the pace of giving is off 13 percent this year, according to a spokesman for United Jewish Communities/Jewish Federations of North America. As a result, spokesman Joe Berkowfsky said, some federations are extending their annual campaigns beyond the June 30 close of the fiscal year.

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)