The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has become the latest Christian denomination to spawn a breakaway church over differing interpretations of homosexuality, the Associated Press is reporting.

Leaders of Lutheran CORE, which opposed the decision of the nation's largest Lutheran denomination in August to welcome gay clergy, told reporters on Wednesday that they planned form an alternate Lutheran church body.

Lutheran CORE members believe the Bible condemns homosexuality. Other Lutherans, and Christians in other denonimations, have called for what some describe as a more inclusive reading of scripture.

Lutheran CORE leaders said they had heard from like-minded Lutherans and congregations from around the country, the AP reports. They said they didn't know how many ELCA congregations might join the new denomination, which they hope to start by August 2010.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

The American public remains concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism in the United States and around the world, but a survey taken shortly after the shootings at Fort Hood shows only a modest increase in these concerns since 2007, according to the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Fifty-two percent of Americans say they are "very concerned" about the possible rise of Islamic extremism in the United States, according to a Pew survey of 1,003 adults conducted from Nov. 12 through 15.

That's up from 46 percent in April 2007. Meanwhile, the percentage who say they are "somewhat concerned" fell by a similar amount, from 32 percent in 2007 to 27 percent this month.

Forty-nine percent of Americans say they are "very concerned" about the possible rise of Islamic extremism around the world, up from 48 percent in 2007. The number who say they are "somewhat concerned" fell 33 pecent to 29 percent.

The survey began one week after the Nov. 5 shootings that left 13 dead an 30 wounded. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a Muslim of Palestinian heritage who is said to have been critical of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been charged with premeditated murder in the attacks.

Read the report at pewforum.org.

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Could the U.S. bishops rescind the right of the University of Notre Dame to call itself Catholic?

Months after the nation's flagship Catholic university ignited a firestorm within church circles by inviting President Barack Obama to give a commencement speech and receive in honorary degree, the nation's Catholic bishops met behind closed doors today to discuss increasing oversight of the nation's Catholic colleges and universities.

Obama supports abortion rights; the church opposes abortion. The bishops are holding their fall general assembly this week at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront.

Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, told the Associated Press that he had formed a task force charged with reviewing relations between the bishops and the nation's more than 200 Catholic colleges and universities.

In most cases, the bishops excercise no formal authority over the institutions, which, with few exceptions, operate independently of their local dioceses.

"Can bishops just pull the plug on us? It's not that simple," Richard Yanikoski, president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, told the AP.

"If those relationships — which don't mean control, they mean relationship — are now weakened, then we have to think of ways to enter discussion in order to strengthen them, and to redefine perhaps what are the criteria for a university or any other organization to consider itself Catholic," George told the AP.

Read the Associated Press story.

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The nation's Catholic bishops had a busy day Tuesday, approving a pastoral letter on marriage, a document on reproductive technologies and a revision to an existing document on healthcare for the dying and chronically ill.

The bishops are holding their fall general assembly at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront.

"Marriage: Love and Life in the Divine Plan" breaks no new ground, but bishops said it would provide a foundation for the church’s campaign to promote marriage as the union of one man and one woman going forward.

"Life-Giving Love in an Age of Technology" reiterates Catholic teaching against in vitro fertilization, egg, sperm and embryo donation, surrogates and cloning. For infertile couples, the church counsels hormonal treatment and other medications, surgery to repair reproductive organs, and other means.

The revision to “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services” underscores what the church says is the moral obligation to provide nutrition and hydration to patients in a persistent vegetative state.

The bishops also approved new English translations of the Roman Missal.

Read more at baltimoresun.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Well, this much seems to be clear: The Mayan Long Count Calendar does conclude a 5,125-year Great Cycle on or about the Winter Solstice in 2012. Whether that means the end is nigh is another question.

With the release of the film 2012, the doomsday chatter that has long festered on the Internet and late-night talk radio has come out into the open. While details vary, the general gist is that the ancient Maya predicted some sort of cataclysm on 12/21/12, with speculation now coalescing around the appearance of a rogue planet that could disrupt the earth's rotation, orbit and/or magnetic poles.

Scientists say that a planet approaching Earth could, indeed, wreak havoc. But if one were on its way, we'd have seen it by now.

The best comment I heard while reporting a story on the phenomenon for Friday's newspaper came from Ben Radford, managing editor of the Skeptical Inquirer: "I've got a calendar on my wall that ends on Dec. 31. I'm not particularly worried that there isn't going to be another one after it."

The comparison is apt, according to an anthropologist who studies the ancient peoples of Mesoamerica.

Continue reading "The end of the world as we know it?" »

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We had a story in the newspaper Thursday about a project to digitze the Islamic manuscript collection at the Walters Art Museum and upload it to the World Wide Web, where documents dating back to the ninth century may be seen free of charge by anyone with an Internet connection.

Art historians at the Smithsonian and the British Museum praised the project, which they say puts the Walters at the forefront of a movement to increase online access to such holdings. they are hoping for an explosion in scholarship, as professionals, amateurs and students pore over the richly illuminated Qurans and lavishly illustrated volumes of poetry and history.

Read the story at baltimoresun.com.

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We have been thinking of reading “Life After Death: The Evidence,” the new book by conservative pundit-turned-Christian apologist Dinesh D’Souza, which hit our desk last week. Now we come across Jerry Adler’s heartbreaking essay in the current issue of Newsweek, which may be summed up as: Don’t bother.

Adler opens with a scene from last spring, when he opened the front door of his Brooklyn home to find an Eastern tiger swallowtail butterfly on the steps. It was three months after the death of his son.

The butterfly, with its otherworldly beauty and silence, is, of course, a common metaphor for the soul. Its emergence from entombment as a chrysalis may have inspired ideas about human resurrection. In the newsletter of the Compassionate Friends, a support group for bereaved parents, the sudden appearance of butterflies (and birds, cloud formations, and particular songs on the radio) is sometimes cited as evidence of communication from beyond the grave. So let me be clear about where I stand: not only do I not believe it, but I can't understand why anyone would take comfort from it. I would hate to think of Max, with his fierce intelligence and tenacity, reduced to sending mute signals by way of insects.

Adler groups D’Souza’s book with mathematician David Berlinski's "The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions," physicist Frank J. Tripler's "The Physics of Christianity," and National Institutes of Health Director Francis S. Collins' "The Language of God" as constituting an attempt by believeers to confront the new atherism of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens et al "on its own intellectual turf, without benefit of scripture or revelation."

In the case of D'Souza, at least, Adler is skeptical of the result.

The "evidence," of necessity, is indirect: D'Souza doesn't claim to have communicated with anyone who has died, and he doesn't expect to. Instead, he looks to the human heart, and finds therein a universal moral code underlying acts of self-sacrifice and charity that appear to run counter to the Darwinian imperative to outcompete thy neighbor. This is a time-honored argument for the existence of a God who created human beings in his image and imbued them with a moral sense, as well as the free will to follow, or ignore, it. Berlinski uses the argument in his book, and Collins credits it with turning him from atheism to evangelical Christianity. (D'Souza acknowledges that the prominent atheist Richard Dawkins has offered an evolutionary explanation for human goodness, but he doesn't buy it.) In a Jesuitical display that does credit to his reputation as "an Indian William F. Buckley Jr.," D'Souza turns to his advantage one of the atheists' favorite arguments, God's apparent tolerance for human suffering. Precisely because evil so often goes unpunished in this world, he asserts, the moral code must reflect another reality, in which souls are judged, punished, or rewarded after death. "The postulate of an afterlife enables us to make sense of this life," he writes. It worked for Dante, didn't it?

Continue reading "D'Souza argues for evidence of afterlife" »

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A devastating newspaper series based on the allegations of former high-ranking church officials. A fraud conviction and prison sentences in Europe. The resignation of perhaps the church’s most prestigious celebrity, who writes a letter confirming practices that the church has denied.

“The Church of Scientology,” Associated Press religion reporter Eric Gorski writes, “is going through a difficult season.”

Gorski has produced a useful summary of the events and developments that have rocked the embattled church founded by the science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard.

Church spokesman Tommy Davis tells Gorski that Scientology is flourishing, with assets and property holdings doubling over the past five years, membership growing in the United States and “absolutely in the millions” worldwide.

"From our perspective, things are going pretty great," Davis says. "In fact, that's downplaying it. Actually, what's happening with the church right now is frankly spectacular. To the degree there are these various things happening, it really is a lot of noise."

But Gorski finds a different picture in the American Religious Identification Survey, which showed that the estimated number of Americans identifying Scientologists rose from 45,000 in 1990 to 55,000 in 2001, then plummeted to 25,000 in 2008, according to the American Religion Identification Survey.

Perhaps the biggest problem facing the church is the allegations raised by four former high-ranking church officials, who told the St. Petersburg Times that they witnessed church leader David Miscavige beating church staff members.

Continue reading "Scientology's 'difficult season'" »

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When I was living in London 20 years ago, I was touched one Halloween when a British friend surprised me with a card to mark the holiday.

It was the first and only Halloween card I've ever received. Obviously, I didn't tell her that. She thought she was helping me to feel at home in her country by remembering a tradition from mine; why tell her that it isn't really a holiday for exchanging cards?

Since then, however, Europeans have become more familiar with Halloween. Which is why the Vatican has grown more vocal in its condemnation of the annual observance.

In an article in L'Osservatore Romano, the Holy See says Halloween is a pagan celebration of "terror, fear and death." The official Vatican paper warns parents against allowing children to dress up as ghosts and ghouls.

(We're getting this from British newspapers, because we haven't been able to find the original story at the L'Osservatore Romano Web site.)

The article, headlined “The Dangerous Messages of Halloween,” quotes liturgical expert Joan Maria Canals as saying 'Halloween has an undercurrent of occultism and is absolutely anti-Christian” and urging parents “'to be aware of this and try to direct the meaning of the feast towards wholesomeness and beauty rather than terror, fear and death.'

Continue reading "Vatican condemns Halloween" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (24)
Categories: Catholicism, Culture, Holidays, International, Wicca
        

We noted yesterday that the Council on American-Islamic Relations was condemning a shooting at an Orthodox Jewish synagogue in Los Angeles. Now the most vocal of the Muslim advocacy groups is demanding that HBO apologize for an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” in which the main character inadvertently splatters urine on a painting of Jesus.

That puts CAIR in the unusual position of seconding Bill Donohue’s Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, which condemned the episode earlier in the week. Muslims believe Jesus was a prophet, but do not believe, as Christians do, that he was the incarnation of God.

“It is beyond tasteless to insult the religious sensibilities of billions of people in America and around the world with such a cheap and vulgar publicity stunt,” CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad wrote in a letter to HBO CEO Bill Nelson. “Jesus, peace be upon him, is loved and revered by both Christians and Muslims. Muslims view him as one of God's greatest messengers to mankind.

“The Quran, Islam’s revealed text, states: ‘Behold! The angels said: ‘O Mary! God gives you glad tidings of a Word from Him. His name will be Jesus Christ, the son of Mary, held in honor in this world and the Hereafter and in (the company of) those nearest to God.’’ (The Holy Quran, 3:45)

“The Prophet Muhammad said: ‘Both in this world and in the hereafter, I am the nearest of all people to Jesus, the son of Mary. The prophets are paternal brothers; their mothers are different, but their religion is one.’

Continue reading "CAIR now siding with Catholic League" »

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Over at Religion News Service, Greg Warner has an interesting story on the rare but real problem of clergy suicide.

According to Warner, the September death of the Rev. David Treadway, pastor of Sandy Ridge Baptist Church in Hickory, N.C., was at least the fourth suicide among clergy in the Carolinas in the last four years. He writes:

Those who counsel pastors say Christian culture, especially Southern evangelicalism, creates the perfect environment for depression. Pastors suffer in silence, unwilling or unable to seek help or even talk about it. Sometimes they leave the ministry. Occasionally the result is the unthinkable. ...

Being a pastor—a high-profile, high-stress job with nearly impossible expectations for success—can send one down the road to depression, according to pastoral counselors.

“We set the bar so high that most pastors can’t achieve that,” said H.B. London, vice president for pastoral ministries at Focus on the Family, based in Colorado Springs, Colo. “And because most pastors are people-pleasers, they get frustrated and feel they can’t live up to that.”

When pastors fail to live up to demands imposed by themselves or others they often “turn their frustration back on themselves,” leading to self-doubt and to feelings of failure and hopelessness, said Fred Smoot, executive director of Emory Clergy Care in Duluth, Ga., which provides pastoral care to 1,200 United Methodist ministers in Georgia.

Warner quotes Matthew Stanford, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor, as saying it's likely that a quarter of all pastors are depressed.

Read the rest of the story at religionnews.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
        

Online retailer eBay said Tuesday that it will block an auction planned to raise money for the man charged with killing Kansas abortion provider George Tiller, the Associated Press is reporting.

Supporters of Scott Roeder wanted to raise money for his defense by auctioning off items including an Army of God manual, an underground publication for anti-abortion militants that describes ways to shut down clinics, including bombing.

Also to be auctioned was a prison cookbook compiled by Shelley Shannon, the Oregon woman who shot and wounded Tiller in 1993 and was later convicted in a series of abortion clinic arsons and bombings.

"Based on the details we know about the anticipated listings, we believe these would violate our policy regarding offensive material," eBay said in a statement.

If the items were posted, eBay said it would remove them from the online marketplace site because the company "does not allow listings that promote or glorify violence, hate, racial or religious intolerance.

Read the rest of the Associated Press story.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Randall Terry, the Operation Rescue founder who has alienated even some fellow abortion opponents with his confrontational tactics, is calling on people to burn effigies of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid this Halloween as part of a "Burn in Hell" video contest to protest the health care legislation in Congress, the Associated Press is reporting.

Terry said Tuesday that the contest serves as a political and spiritual statement that "gives people a chance to peacefully vent their rage."

"If Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid force us to pay for child killing and they die unrepentant, they will burn in hell for this," Terry told the AP.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer called the contest "unfortunate."

"I don't think appealing to people's anger and in effect inciting them to acts which either display or in any way project violent acts is consistent with rational discussion of very critical issues," the Southern Maryland Democrat told reporters at his weekly pen-and-pad session on Tuesday.

As the AP explains, federal law currently bars the use of federal funds to pay for abortion except in cases of rape and incest or if the mother's life would be endangered. But the Democrats' health overhaul bill would create a new stream of federal funds not covered by the restrictions.

House Democrats are trying to address anti-abortion lawmakers' concerns by specifying that people receiving government subsidies to buy health insurance couldn't use that money for abortions.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 5:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

Over at Read Street, the Baltimore Sun books blog, they're giving away a copy of The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb.

The jacket copy describes the anatomically comprehensive work by the underground comic artist as "THE FIRST BOOK OF THE BIBLE GRAPHICALLY DEPICTED! NOTHING LEFT OUT!" And there's a warning on the cover: "ADULT SUPERVISION RECOMMENDED FOR MINORS."

Sun colleague Nancy Johnston says: "It's gorgeous, graphic and much more seriously handled than you might expect from the irreverent Crumb." Details on how to win are at Read Street.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Christianity, Culture, Interfaith, Islam, Judaism, People
        

Over at Alternet, Joanna Brooks is crediting the rise and persona of Fox News personality Glenn Beck to the Mormonism to which the former Catholic converted in 1999. She begins the critical piece with Beck’s own description of the experience:

"I was friendless, working in the smallest radio market I had ever worked in... a hopeless alcoholic, abusing drugs every day," Beck said in an interview taped last fall. "I was trying to find a job and nobody would hire me … couldn’t get an agent to represent me. …"

"I was baptized on a Sunday, and on Monday" -- Beck’s throat tightens again; he wipes tears from his eyes with his index fingers -- "an agent called me out of the blue." Three days later, Beck was offered his own political talk radio show at WFLA-AM in Tampa, Florida, the job that put him on the road from "morning zoo" radio prankster to conservative media heavyweight.

Brooks says Beck’s reverence for the founders, his devotion to the writings of Freeman Society founder Cleon Skousen, even what she calls his “oft-ridiculed penchant for punctuating his tirades with tears” all derive from his Mormonism:

As sociologist David Knowlton has written, "Mormonism praises the man who is able to shed tears as a manifestation of spirituality." Crying and choking up are understood by Mormons as manifestations of the Holy Spirit. For men at every rank of Mormon culture and visibility, appropriately-timed displays of tender emotion are displays of power.

Not typical of Mormon masculinity, Brooks writes, are “Beck’s high-decibel swings between bombast and self-deprecation.”

Such demonstrative excesses are socialized out of most Mormon men during a regimented process of masculine formation that begins with entry into the lowest ranks of Mormonism’s lay priesthood at age 12, intensifies during compulsory missionary service from age 19 through 21, and continues throughout a lifetime of service within hierarchical priesthood quorums. A textbook example of the traditional Mormon “man of steel and velvet” whose inability to connect with the Republican base may have as much to do with his lack of familiar jocularity and chest-thumping outrage as it does with the perceived weirdness of his Mormon beliefs. As a convert, Beck missed out on crucial early years of Mormon male socialization. Consequently, his renegade persona may endear him even more to his Mormon male fans who might like to comport themselves as he does, but feel they cannot.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 9:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

A multi-year study hosted by the University of Maryland and including several area groups concludes that faith-based organizations can better weather an economic downturn by building stronger ties with the ministries the congregations that support them.

From a release issued on Thursday:

Particularly during an economic downturn, faith-based organizations tied only to one or two congregations, especially if those were not thriving congregations, had the most trouble raising resources and some shut down. While single-congregation support of a program might be considered more authentic, faith-based organizations supported by a wider umbrella or an interfaith base fared better.

“We compared everything from small food pantries directly connected to a congregation to national hospital systems and their local affiliated hospitals,” said Maryland Associate Professor Jo Anne Schneider, who led the project. “Congregation-focused models work well for mainline Protestants, Quakers and African American churches, but only if several congregations provide support or the sponsoring congregation is sufficiently active with enough resources to support the nonprofit. Jewish and Catholic systems rely on their communities as a whole with the Jewish Federation, Archdiocese, or Order providing centralized support. Some thriving evangelical organizations rely on networks with no formal connections to congregations.”

Other key findings of the report, entitled “Faith and Organization Project: Maintaining Vital Between Faith Communities and their Organizations:”

* A new breed of evangelical organizations has emerged with a different understanding about how to develop an organization to do a specific mission that is firmly based in a particular set of beliefs but that focuses on personal relationships to provide services rather than sharing their faith as a means to improve the lives of those served.

Continue reading "UMD study stresses ties for faith-based ministries" »

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Plans by the Church of Scientology to build a new state headquarters in Georgia continue to brew controversy.

The city council of the Atlanta suburb of Sandy Springs delayed a vote this week on a rezoning request following what the Atlanta Journal Constitution describes as “a packed house of several dozen opponents wearing ‘STOP’ stickers on their lapels and several dozen supporters on hand with a court reporter, taking down all comments.”

Neighbors have insisted their opposition has nothing to do with the controversies that dog Scientology, but the impacts the development would have on the community. According to the Journal Constitution, the church has hinted that it will file a federal lawsuit against Sandy Springs if the rezoning request is denied.

“We are trying to do everything we can to address every issue raised by the community,” said W. Woodson Galloway, who is representing the church. “We feel we’ve addressed every legitimate issue. … No other church in Sandy Springs has made these kind of concessions, or been asked to.”

Galloway said the court reporter – typically an indicator that an attorney is preparing a court case – was his normal procedure for a final hearing in case the council did take a vote, according to the Journal Constitution.

Read the rest of the story at ajc.com.

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Bill Donohue says he’s okay with “gentle fun” being poked at his faith. But the Catholic watchdog says The Simpsons went too far on Sunday when they cracked wise about the Eucharist.

At issue is this year’s installment of the annual Halloween episode. One of the three stories – and we’re taking Donohue’s word for it, because we didn’t catch the show – involved people in Springfield becoming zombies after eating hamburgers infected with tainted meat.

Bart tries one of the infected hamburgers, but proves immune to the virus, and so becomes the “Chosen One.” When the Simpsons reach a safe zone with other uninfected people, a guard says, “Welcome, son. To survive, all we must do is eat your flesh.” Which leads Marge to ask: “What kind of civilized people eat the body and blood of their savior?”

“What kind of uncivilized people work at Fox?” asked Donohue, the president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights and the author of “Secular Sabatoge: How Liberals Are Destroying Religion and Culture in America.”

“Last year, when they poked some gentle fun at the Apostle’s Creed on the Halloween episode, we said nothing,” Donohue said. ”That’s because it didn’t cross the line. This year is different: mocking the heart of any religion always crosses the line, and mocking the Eucharist does it for Catholics. They know this at Fox, which is precisely why they did it.”

His statement includes the name and e-mail address of Fox Broadcasting's chairman of entertainment.

John Gehring of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, meanwhile, is decrying the media reliance on Donohue as a spokesman for the faith on the Washington Post’s On Faith blog.

Continue reading "Simpsons take another shot at the Catholics" »

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

I am honored that Professor David Neipert, one of the faculty members who initiated the EEOC complaint against Belmont Abbey College, saw fit to respond to my earlier article on this topic. Given his personal involvement in this case, it is obvious that he begins with a far greater knowledge of its particulars, and I appreciate his sharing his perspective of the facts.

Here are the key points that he has made, to the best of my understanding:

1. The status of Belmont Abbey College as a religious institution is questionable. This is buttressed by the fact that the college "advertised itself as an equal opportunity employer and freely accepted funding that was not available to religious institutions." Additionally, the majority of its faculty, staff, students, and alumni are not Catholic.

2. The college offered coverage for these services for 26 years, "indicating that this was a change of a deliberate policy." It was then done immediately, unilaterally, and without discussion, and the college refused to negotiate.

3. It is not the eight faculty members, but the school, that is attacking religious freedom. "Forcing us to abide by a Catholic approved health plan makes no more sense than prohibiting a Catholic plumber from eating a Pork sandwich for lunch if he works at a Jewish hospital." Professor Neipert was assured that he would "not be expected to adopt Catholic practices and that not being Catholic would not affect my career in any way."

Let us address each of these in turn.

Continue reading "Guest post: Belmont Abbey, continued" »

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Which religious denomination has the best slogan? According to a vote of nonprofit professionals, it's the United Methodist Church.

The United Methodists took home the 2009 Getting Attention Nonprofit Tagline Award in the category of Religion & Spiritual Development with an eight-year-old slogan: "Open hearts. Open minds. Open doors."

From the award citation:

The work of religious organizations often operates on several planes at once — a challenge for any organization and its messaging. Here, The United Methodist Church delivers a tagline trinity that supports its applied faith mission and is warm, enthusiastic and embracing.

“Our tagline embodies who we are as United Methodists,” the Rev. Larry Hollon, chief executive of the communications agency responsible for overseeing the advertising ministry for the 11.5 million-member denomination, said in a statement. “The characteristics it celebrates are perceived positively by the people we are trying to reach.”

Among the other winners were "A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste®," the 38-year-old slogan of the United Negro College Fund, and "Nothing Stops A Bullet Like A Job," the tagline for Los Angeles-based Homeboy Industries.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

The atheists are on the move in New York.

Beginning next week, The New York Times reports, a coalition of local groups will run a monthlong advertising campaign in a dozen Manhattan subway stations with the slogan “A Million New Yorkers Are Good Without God. Are You?”

The campaign, funded with $25,000 from an anonymous donor, follows a similar but unrelated monthlong campaign on buses by New York City Atheists in July, The Times reports. Jane Everhart, a spokeswoman for the New York City Atheists, told The Times that that campaign brought in many new members, and the group is trying to raise money to do it again.

Read more at nytimes.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 8:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (65)
        

We were going to post the video in which Sarah Silverman proposes that the pope solve world hunger by selling the Vatican. Then we watched it.

There's a question of taste.

Still, the video is interesting in part for the thoughtful reaction it has provoked from the Rev. James Martin over at America magazine. We can excerpt from an Associated Press story that summarizes both the video and the response:

In a new profanity-laced monologue making the rounds on YouTube in time for U.N. World Food Day on Friday, Silverman suggests that it's time for the pope to "move out of your house that is a city" and use the proceeds to feed the world's poor.

"On an ego level alone you will be the biggest hero in the history of ever!" she exclaimed. "Sell the Vatican. Feed the world."

The Vatican clearly has no plans to follow suit. On Thursday, a spokesman declined to comment. But the Catholic League, the U.S. Catholic civil rights organization, denounced Silverman and cable broadcaster HBO for her "obscene" and "filthy diatribe."

Continue reading "Silverman to church: Sell Vatican, feed the world" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

I've been away the last couple of days, and will be back to posting full-time on Thursday. In the meantime, we did have a couple of stories in the newspaper on Sunday that you might have missed.

In the first, a Muslim scholar told a Baltimore conference on Saturday that the use of Islam to justify killing is "an innovation" in the religion, and added: "Most innovations lead to hellfire."

"The Satan always has people that he will be able to deceive," Dr. Waleed Basyouni told hundreds at Ilm Fest 2009, an Islamic education conference making its first appearance in Baltimore. "The good news," he said during a presentation he called "Reclaiming Islam from the Jihadists," is that "the nature of the Muslim community is to fight terrorism. The nature of the Muslim community is to reject extremism."

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

In the second, we reviewed preparations for H1N1 among different faith congregations. We were interested in the comments of the Rev. John Kingsbury, pastor of St. Mary's in Annapolis. He had taken precautions against the spread of the virus during Mass, but worried that the spiritual impact of the pandemic "has yet to be faced,"

"There will be less, probably, Communions to hospitals," he said. "I'm guessing the hospitals will begin to become stricter with people visiting if things become more serious.

"People dealing with mass suffering -- by which I mean, a lot of people sick -- are going to want spiritual comfort at the very time that it's going to be the most difficult to give it."

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The United Nations' refugee agency is planning to include the Holocaust in a new human-rights curriculum for pupils in its Gaza secondary schools despite strident opposition to the idea from within Hamas, The Independent reports.

The director of operations in Gaza for The U.N. Relief and Works Agency told the British newspaper that he was "confident and determined" that the Holocaust would feature for the first time in a wide-ranging curriculum now being drafted.

"No human-rights curriculum is complete without the inclusion of the facts of the Holocaust, and its lessons," said John Ging, described as a "passionate advocate" for Palestinian civilians. More from the story:

The draft, to be completed within weeks and then put out for consultation with parents and the public, is built on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was agreed by the UN General Assembly in 1948 in the shadow of what it called the "barbarous acts" committed by the Nazis during the Second World War.

The one-time Irish Army officer has long been an outspoken critic of Israeli policy towards Gaza, including the conduct of last winter's lethal military offensive and what he described more than once in his interview as the "illegal siege".

Mr Ging said the curriculum would explain the genesis, and "inculcate the values" of the Universal Declaration which stipulates that "everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person". He pointed out that the UN General Assembly in 2005 unanimously urged "all countries to teach the lessons of the Holocaust to children so that we learn from history, so that we don't repeat history".

The Independent quotes religious leader Yunis al Astal, a Hamas member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, as saying that including the Holocaust in the curriculum would be "marketing a lie" and a "war crime."

Read the rest of the story at independent.co.uk.

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Hundreds of Muslims are expected Saturday and Sunday at the Baltimore Convention Center for Ilm Fest, an educational conference organized by the AlMaghrib Institute.

"Ilm" is Arabic for knowledge, and "Al Maghrib" is Arabic for the West. Organizers say the event has been set up to help young American Muslims live their faith in the United States.

We have a story in Saturday's Baltimore Sun.

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With the death of Michael Jackson, estranged former confidant Rabbi Shmuley Boteach has revived a long-dormant book project based on 30 hours of interviews with the reclusive pop star, the Associated Press is reporting.

This strikes us as awkward.

The author of such self-help books as “Kosher Sex” and “Shalom in the Home,” the Orthodox Jewish Boteach was introduced to Jackson in 1999 and remained close with him until Jackson’s 2003 arrest on charges of molesting a child.

The interviews date from 2000 and 2001, according to the AP, when Jackson and Boteach agreed a book would help to improve Jackson’s public image. The AP says Boteach soured on the project after Jackson failed to adhere to the recovery programs they had worked out, including waking up at a decent hour and not being alone with children other than Jackson's own three children.

The AP reports that the tapes, on which Jackson talks about being beaten by his father, self-consciousness about his appearance and a desire to disappear rather than grow old, sound at times like therapy sessions.

Their posthumous release by a clergyman doubling as confidant and collaborator seems problematic, or at least potentially so. Jackson apparently submitted to – may have initiated – the interviews in the expectation that they would lead to a book.

But it sounds as if the men dropped the project years before Jackson’s death. Given their fallout, one wonders if Jackson would have wanted the opportunity to invoke clergy-communicant confidentiality before it was picked up again.

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The gay-hating Westboro Baptist Church did not violate the privacy of the family of fallen Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder when members picketed his 2006 funeral in Westminster, a federal court ruled on Thursday.

Church members held signs reading “God hates fags” and “Thank God for dead soldiers” outside the funeral of Snyder, who was killed in Iraq. The Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., ruled that the messages were protected speech and reversed a lower court’s $5 million award, Baltimore Sun colleague Nicole Fuller reports.

It’s always tricky reporting on the Westboro Baptist Church, a proudly hateful group that has thrived on the attention it has gained by rejoicing at the funerals of fallen service members. The church, which is made up largely of the members of a single extended family, says the deaths of U.S. service members are God’s way of showing he disapproves of America’s alleged tolerance of homosexuality.

That’s not so different from comments made by some fundamentalists after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But placing the Westboro Baptist Church at the Robertson-Falwell end of the Christian spectrum doesn’t quite get at the nature of the Topeka, Kan.-based outfit, which has taken the antipathy some express for homosexuality to a new level in the very gleefulness with which it pursues its mission.

For years, for example, the church maintained an animation on its Web site, godhatesfags.com, showing Matthew Shepard in flames and counting the days since, according to the church, he entered Hell. The same site has videos entitled “USA=Fag Nation,” “Fag Church” and “Your Pastor Is a Whore;” whoever designed it, meanwhile, is clearly enamored of a diagram showing two stick figures engaging in sex.

We declined to report in June when church members stood outside the Jewish Community Center in Park Heights with signs reading “God hates Jews” and an Israeli flag splattered in fake blood. We won’t be covering the protest they have announced outside a local production of the Laramie Project, which deals with the 1998 death of Shepard, a gay University of Wyoming student who was tortured and murdered.

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The leader of the nation’s largest Lutheran denomination warned members that withholding financial support to protest a recent vote to accept gay clergy would be “devastating” to the church, the Associated Press is reporting.

e 4.7 million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America voted last month to allow gay men and women in committed relationships to serve as clergy. The vote at a churchwide assembly has provoked a backlash among some ELCA members, with the conservative group Lutheran CORE urging supporters to direct funding away from the national church.

In a letter to church leaders this week, the AP is reporting, Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson warned that withholding would damage the mission of the Chicago-based denomination.

"Although these actions are promoted as a way to signal opposition to churchwide assembly actions or even to punish the voting members who made them, the result will be wounds that we inflict on ourselves, our shared life, and our mission in Christ," he wrote.

The Rev. Mark Chavez, director of Lutheran CORE, told the AP that the gay clergy vote was the devastating event — "a departure from God's clear word." He called Hanson's letter "an attempt to shift the responsibility of this devastation and crisis within the ELCA away from the people who presided over it and are responsible for it."

Lutheran CORE says 1,200 people have registered for a conference this weekend, which organizers say will start the process of forming an "alternative church fellowship" for traditionalists within the ELCA.

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The Dalai Lama says his visit to the site where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated was sad but also inspirational, the Associated Press is reporting.

In Memphis on Wednesday to receive the International Freedom Award from the National Civil Rights Museum, the Tibet spiritual leader toured the site with the Rev. Samuel Kyles, who was with King when he was gunned down, and Museum Board Chairman Benjamin L. Hooks.

The Dalai Lama draped a white shawl over a wreath that hangs over the balcony that marks the spot where King was standing when he was shot in 1968.

 Associated Press photos

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With researchers gathered in Baltimore for the World Stem Cell Summit, Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien offers a word of warning: “Science divorced from ethics undermines genuine progress.”

“Embryonic stem cell research requires the destruction of human embryos,” the spiritual leader of the archdiocese’s half million Catholics writes in a commentary in The Baltimore Sun on Wednesday.

“It is understandably tempting to pursue this avenue given the stated goal of such research to produce treatments that could relieve the pain of, and perhaps even provide cures for, diseases plaguing countless people. Those burdened by disease or injuries deserve our unequivocal support, and scientific research should undoubtedly be commissioned on their behalf.

“That same science, however, also irrefutably demonstrates that a human embryo is a distinct human being. Its appearance and abilities differ from ours, but its nature is the same.

“To end one human life for the sake of another, even when the former is microscopically small and the latter is someone we know and love, is to play a dangerous game of utilitarianism. We shouldn't end lives to save lives. This practice violates one of the most basic ethical principles: The ends do not justify the means.”

Read the rest of O’Brien’s commentary at baltimoresun.com.

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News of the impending shake-up of the Legion of Christ gives me another reason to wish that the great and gentlemanly journalist Jerry Renner were still with us.

Jerry, a friend and mentor from our time together at The Hartford Courant, had a keen interest in exposing faith leaders who abused the trust of their followers. He was among the first reporters – and certainly the most persistent – to uncover and write about the abuses of the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, the founder of the Legion.

Maciel is alleged to have molested generations of seminarians, some of them children. Since his death in 2008, the Legionaries have acknowledged that he fathered at least one child.

Earlier this year, the general director of the Legion expressed sadness and sorrow for Maciel’s actions, and asked forgiveness from God and those affected. Legion officials in the United States have added their regret that their “inability to detect, and thus accept and remedy, Father Maciel’s failings has caused even more suffering.”

Among Maciel’s critics is Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien of Baltimore, who said earlier this year that he could not recommend that anyone join the Legion or Regnum Christi, its lay movement.

“It seems to me and many others that this was a man with an entrepreneurial genius who, by systematic deception and duplicity, used our faith to manipulate others for his own selfish ends,” O’Brien told The Catholic Review in February. “Father Maciel deserves our prayers, as every Christian who dies does, that he’ll be forgiven and we leave the final judgment to God as to what his life and death amounted to.”

Jerry reported the allegations against Maciel more than a decade ago, first in stories in The Courant – the Legionaries have their U.S. headquarters in Connecticut – and later in “Vows of Silence: The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II,” the book he co-wrote with collaborator Jason Berry.

Continue reading "Thinking of Jerry" »

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We’ve been following with interest the different reactions to the decision of the Yale University Press, now preparing a scholarly work on the Danish cartoon depictions of Muhammad that inspired riots in 2005 and 2006, not to include the pictures themselves in the book. Yale reportedly consulted two dozen experts on the likelihood that their publication would lead to further violence before opting against it.

The decision has aroused concerns – which we share – about the power that it awards to the violent few to deny the free flow of information among the many. But one of the more interesting takes we’ve seen on it approaches the issue from a different angle: What it says about attitudes towards Muslims.

Entitled "Satanic or Silly: Does Yale Press Censorship of Cartoons Insult Muslims?" the piece by Daniel Martin Varisco over at Religion Dispatches reads in part:

The cautious reaction by Yale University Press is understandable, but I find the rationale troubling, as it assumes that Muslims extremists await any new pretext to spur violence and that “moderate” Muslims are at their mercy. Given the ongoing United States military presence in both Iraq and Afghanistan, drone bombings in Pakistan and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, there are far more relevant pretexts available than an Ivy League book that may not even warrant review in major newspapers. The peddlers of Islamophobia in the media, popular trade books, and blogs would have us believe that radical extremists are lurking everywhere just waiting for an excuse to promote violence. To suggest that deadly protest over these images can be rekindled by a book that attempts to explain the whole affair in academic prose is an insult to the vast majority of Muslims, especially those in the United States.

Continue reading "Is it the cartoons, or the censorship?" »

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The current issue of the Baltimore Jewish Times has a nicely observed cover story about the murky future facing the Congregation of Israel, a small shul in the Eastern Shore hamlet of Pocomoke City that decided not to hold High Holiday services this year for the first time in its 130-year history. Managing editor Alan H. Feiler writes:

This evening, as the first faint traces of darkness fall on Pocomoke City — a picturesque but economically depressed town about 40 minutes southeast of Salisbury — Congregation of Israel’s humble, 60-year-old building will remain silent, solemn and empty at the start of Rosh Hashanah. Once a community of 20 to 25 Jewish families and considered the epicenter of Eastern Shore Jewry, Pocomoke City today has, at best, only an estimated handful of Jews.

“It’s really sad,” said Pocomoke City Mayor Michael A. McDermott. “A lot of the families had stores here and in other communities around here, and they organized this synagogue. But a lot of the families relocated or their children moved on, so it dried up. Having the synagogue in the city, even if it was lightly used, was unique. It was slowly ebbing away, but there’s a real sense of loss. We’ve lost a part of our heritage.”

Tammy Green and her family first stumbled upon Congregation of Israel while vacationing in Delaware during the High Holidays in 1972, Feiler reports. They have been back every year since.

“We wanted something intimate and different than our synagogue in Bethesda, and it’s become an important part of our lives,” she says. “Back then, there were three families to make sure that everyone had a home to go to for dinner, like an extended family. But the people started to die off. I don’t know what we’ll do this year for the holidays. [Congregation of Israel] is very close to my heart.”

Read the rest of the story at jewishtimes.com.

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 In 1966, Time religion editor John T. Elson posed the question that gave the magazine its bestselling issue since World War II, and still reverberates through popular debate more than 40 years later:

Is God Dead?

The Canadian journalist, whom former Time managing editor Jim Kelly described to The New York Times as “catholic with a capital C and a small c in his interests,” has himself died. He was 78.

Elson’s story, in the words of Times obituary writer William Grimes, “remains a signpost of the 1960s, testimony to the wrenching social changes transforming the United States.”

Entitled “Toward a Hidden God,” the story – which was the result, Grimes writes, of a yearlong effort involving 30 correspondents and 300 interviews – begins with the question.

Is God dead? It is a question that tantalizes both believers, who perhaps secretly fear that he is, and atheists, who possibly suspect that the answer is no.

Is God dead? The three words represent a summons to reflect on the meaning of existence. No longer is the question the taunting jest of skeptics for whom unbelief is the test of wisdom and for whom Nietzsche is the prophet who gave the right answer a century ago. Even within Christianity, now confidently renewing itself in spirit as well as form, a small band of radical theologians has seriously argued that the churches must accept the fact of God's death, and get along without him. How does the issue differ from the age-old assertion that God does not and never did exist? Nietzsche's thesis was that striving, self-centered man had killed God, and that settled that. The current death-of-God group* believes that God is indeed absolutely dead, but proposes to carry on and write a theology without theos, without God. Less radical Christian thinkers hold that at the very least God in the image of man, God sitting in heaven, is dead, and—in the central task of religion today—they seek to imagine and define a God who can touch men's emotions and engage men's minds.

Continue reading "Is God Dead? writer dead" »

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

For all the agonizing people do over theoretical ethical quandaries, few of us are likely often to find ourselves in genuine ethical dilemmas. Sure, we find ourselves in dilemmas, but our choice is usually between doing the right (but difficult, painful and/or costly) thing and taking a seemingly easier way out. Many of the dilemmas we encounter are self-inflicted: a husband looks at pornography and then must decide between confessing it to his wife (thus making her feel violated) or not (thus hiding something from her). We’re in a bad spot, but we put ourselves there, and we have ourselves to blame for having to lie in the bed we made.

The truly wrenching dilemmas, though, are the ones that are brought upon us by others. You see the neighbor kid smoking dope: Do you tell her parents? A coworker speaks abusively to you in a meeting: Do you object? A preacher delivers a sermon you know was cribbed from somebody else’s: Do you blow the whistle? In every case there are uncomfortable practical implications to either choice, and you’re aware that whatever path you choose will have negative consequences for you personally, but you have to choose. Even if you want very much to do the right thing, even if you work hard to keep your own interests from coloring your decision, it’s not easy. Beyond the harm inflicted by the bad behavior itself is the moral burden placed on those in a position to respond to it.

And sometimes you don’t have much time to make a choice. The adrenaline is flowing, the atmosphere is charged, the play is to you and you’ve got to make the call. This seems to have been the case for John Pontolillo, the Johns Hopkins student who encountered Donald Rice in his yard in the wee hours of Tuesday morning.

That Mr. Rice was guilty at the very least of trespassing is beyond question; that he was preparing to commit more serious crimes is beyond doubt. “Even burglars,” the Sun editorialized today, “don’t deserve to be killed with a razor-sharp sword.” No, of course not; burglary is not a crime that merits the death penalty in civilized societies. (And in the uncivilized ones I’d still prefer a sharp sword to a dull one, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Continue reading "Guest post: Facing a dilemma, sword in hand" »

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So concludes Newsweek’s Lisa Miller, after reviewing recent polling data. She’s not referring to immigration or conversion, but ways about thinking of religion:

The Rig Veda, the most ancient Hindu scripture, says this: "Truth is One, but the sages speak of it by many names." A Hindu believes there are many paths to God. Jesus is one way, the Qur'an is another, yoga practice is a third. None is better than any other; all are equal. The most traditional, conservative Christians have not been taught to think like this. They learn in Sunday school that their religion is true, and others are false. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me."

Americans are no longer buying it. According to a 2008 Pew Forum survey, 65 percent of us believe that "many religions can lead to eternal life"—including 37 percent of white evangelicals, the group most likely to believe that salvation is theirs alone. Also, the number of people who seek spiritual truth outside church is growing. Thirty percent of Americans call themselves "spiritual, not religious," according to a 2009 NEWSWEEK Poll, up from 24 percent in 2005. Stephen Prothero, religion professor at Boston University, has long framed the American propensity for "the divine-deli-cafeteria religion" as "very much in the spirit of Hinduism. You're not picking and choosing from different religions, because they're all the same," he says. "It isn't about orthodoxy. It's about whatever works. If going to yoga works, great—and if going to Catholic mass works, great. And if going to Catholic mass plus the yoga plus the Buddhist retreat works, that's great, too."

Read more at newsweek.com.

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Categories: Christianity, Culture, Hinduism, Interfaith
        

More than 3 percent of women who attend religious services at least once a month have been the victims of clergy sexual misconduct since turning 18, according to a study produced by Baylor University.

Baylor’s School of Social Work announced the findings from its forthcoming nationwide study of the prevalence of clergy sexual misconduct, which it said had been accepted for publication later this year in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.

The numbers suggest that in the average U.S. congregation of 400 adult members, seven women, on average, have been victimized at some point in their adult lives. That number is greater than has been widely known.

"Because many people are familiar with some of the high-profile cases of sexual misconduct, most people assume that it is just a matter of a few charismatic leaders preying on vulnerable followers," Diana Garland, dean of the School of Social Work and lead researcher in the study, said in a statement. "What this research tells us, however, is that Clergy Sexual Misconduct with adults is a widespread problem in congregations of all sizes and occurs across denominations. Now that we have a better understanding of the problem, we can start looking at prevention strategies."

Garland expressed hope that the findings would “prompt congregations to consider adopting policies and procedures designed to protect their members from leaders who abuse their power. Many people -- including the victims themselves -- often label incidences of Clergy Sexual Misconduct with adults as 'affairs'. In reality, they are an abuse of spiritual power by the religious leader."

Continue reading "Study: 1 in 33 churchgoing women victimized" »

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It isn’t Beatle Day here at In Good Faith – It only seems that way, now that we’ve received word that the great pop group owe their success to a deal that a 20-year-old John Lennon made with the devil.

The truth is revealed in the forthcoming “The Lennon Prophecy,” in which author Joseph Niezgoda describes a pact similar to those made by bluesman Robert Johnson, Pope Sylvester and Dr. Johann Faust.

(We will admit here that we had been under the impression that Faust was a fictional character. But we've checked Wikipedia, and there he is.)

Niezgoda says the release of the Bealtes catalog on remastered compact disc and The Beatles: Rock Band on 09/09/09 is no mere marketing gimmick, but only the latest clue in a 40-year chain of evidence proving the sinister explanation for the group's achievements. Because if you turn your computer monitor upside down, you'll see that the date becomes 666, sort of, which any horror movie or heavy metal fan knows is the mark of the beast.

Rather than paraphrase further, we’re going to pass along the entire press release, after the jump, pausing only to observe that it doesn’t seem to have been much of a deal for Lennon, given that he was murdered by an addled fan shortly after he turned 40. Of course, it wouldn’t have been the first time that a struggling artist agreed to terms that would be viewed in retrospect as unfavorable.

Continue reading "The secret of their success" »

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Wednesday is a big day for the Beatles and their fans. The greatest and most influential artists of the rock era are rereleasing their entire catalog in newly remastered mono and stereo compact discs. They’re also making a foray into an entirely new medium with The Beatles: Rock Band, which The New York Times said a few days ago “may be the most important video game yet made.”

It is neither of these marketing events, however, but a trip to see a Beatles tribute band that inspires Eric Miller to reflect in Christianity Today on the interplay between modern Western religious practice (spirituality) and the allure of the pagan celebration of the body (materiality).

Miller dismisses the Beatles themselves as “the creepy guys with stringy hair and granny glasses,” and this admirer was irritated at what he takes to be a willful misreading of the John Lennon lyric “Imagine there’s no heaven.” But Miller seems to have enjoyed himself well enough at the tribute show, and concludes that paganism has an important role to play, as a kind of balance to spirituality.

“The calling of Christians is to live at the point of tension between these poles,” he writes, “at the difficult but satisfying place that reveals the pathway to human flourishing and leads others to it.”

Read the rest of the piece at christianitytoday.com.

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So we went up to Emmittsburg last week to visit with the Rev. Leo Patalinghug at Mount St. Mary’s University. For several years now, Father Leo has been pushing Grace Before Meals, the ministry he created to encourage family and friends to eat and talk with each other.

We found focusing on food as a vehicle for gathering people together to be an interesting avocation for a priest, given that the Catholic Mass is built around the Eucharist, the reenactment of the Last Supper at which believers are nourished by the body and blood of Christ.

Patalinghug thought he was being filmed for a Food Network feature on his ministry last June when celebrity chef Bobby Flay challenged him to a throwdown – a cook-off featuring, in this case, fajitas.

The episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay airs Wednesday night. Patalinghug, who wouldn’t tell us who won, is hosting a viewing party in the parking lot of Da Mimmo's Italian Restaurant at 217 S. High St. in Little Italy.

We’ve produced a story for Wednesday’s newspaper, but it’s online now at baltimoresun.com.

Jed Kirschbaum/Baltimore Sun

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On an extended stay in Guatemala some while back -- I spent several months studying Spanish in preparation for an assignment in Latin America -- I remember being amused by a billboard campaign with messages supposedly from God. One that has stuck in my head translated as: "Those are commandments, not suggestions."

Cities throughout the world have been targeted by similar efforts. Now comes word of a church in Michigan that has found another spokesbeing to push its message. From the Associated Press:

A Michigan church is enlisting Satan in a bid to drum up attendance at services. Metro South Church in the Detroit suburb of Trenton is posting signs saying the non-denominational Christian congregation "sucks" and "makes me sick." The ads are signed by Satan.

The campaign even has a Web site explaining why Satan hates the church.

Youth Pastor Adam Dorband told WJBK-TV the church is trying to reach out to people and cut through the "noise."

Dorband said Jesus "wants us to be creative and he wants us to ... use whatever it takes to reach people."

South Metro Church explains itself at satanhatesmetro.com.

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Former Miss California USA Carrie Prejean sued pageant officials Monday for libel, slander and religious discrimination, accusing them of telling her to stop mentioning God even before her controversial remarks against gay marriage, the Associated Press is reporting.

Prejean, 22, was fired in June by pageant officials who said she missed several appearances. Her attorney says she was ousted because of remarks in April during the Miss USA pageant that marriage should be between a man and a woman.

Those comments, made in response to a question by celebrity blogger Perez Hilton, made Prejean a darling of Christian conservatives. But the ardor of some cooled after seminude photographs began circulating on the Internet and reports surfaced that she had had breast implants.

Read the rest of the AP story at baltimoresun.com.

Denis Poroy/Associated Press

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Categories: Christianity, Culture, People
        

After attacks on Muslims in New York and California, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations is targeting what he says is “growing anti-Muslim rhetoric” on the Internet and talk radio.

CAIR is seeking federal hate crime charges in the attacks on a mother and daughter in Smithtown, N.Y., and a taxi driver in Pleasanton, Calif.

In the New York incident, which occurred on Aug. 20, a Long Island man has been charged with second-degree aggravated harassment after threatening to kill and attempting to rundown the mother and daughter, each of whom was wearing an abaya, a black robe that covers the head and body.

According to a report in Newsday by former Sun colleague Sumathi Reddy, the mother told police that she had been at a gas station when a man approached from behind and yelled, "Take that stuff off. What do you think it is, Halloween?"

The woman said the man "kept striking a match on a matchbook like if I was to start pumping the gas he would throw the match at me.”

The man said he had done nothing wrong, according to the Newsday report.

"They shouldn't be allowed to wear that around here," he said in a statement to police. "This is not Iraq. They should not be dressing like that here. Send them back to Iraq."

Continue reading "Muslim organization blames talk radio in attacks" »

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A few months back, Catholic officials joined with other faith leaders to announce plans for a “Summer of Peace” in Baltimore, with prayer, collections and volunteers directed toward reducing violence in the city.

Crime has continued unabated, with 18 people shot in a single incident in July and two shot in the Inner Harbor on a Saturday night in August. In an interview with the Catholic Review, Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien was asked how frustrated he was.

“It’s safer in Iraq and Afghanistan, I think, sometimes,” said O’Brien, who was archbishop to the military services before he came to Baltimore. “Still, there are good people out there patrolling the streets and taking an interest in the neighborhoods and sacrificing themselves for the youth in the communities. If not for them, it could be much worse.”

Asked the causes of violence, he listed several factors that he says are interrelated.

“It’s family life, it’s education and lack of employment,” he said. “The industry of the city is drugs, it seems. It’s a vicious circle and we have to see how other communities have found a way to break that vicious circle because it’s destructive. I don’t think we’ve been very successful so far.”

Continue reading "O'Brien: Iraq, Afghanistan safer than Baltimore" »

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This was a good idea for a story, and Nicole Neroulias has done a good job with it. Following the release of “Inglourious Basterds,” Quentin Tarantino’s blood-soaked World War II revenge fantasy, the Religion News Service writer has asked several rabbis whether Judaism would condone the savagery inflicted by the film's Jewish heroes on their Nazi oppressors.

Rabbis and academics point out that Judaism distinguishes between acts of self-defense and vengeance and Jewish law frowns upon torturing an enemy – even Adolf Hitler himself, said Rabbi Joel Roth, a professor at Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.

‘On the other hand, I also understand the human emotion,’ he said. ‘Dispassionately, do you want to see them scalped? No, but you have to consider the context. And, if it's a greater deterrent that would save other people's lives, maybe one could defend it.’

Rabbi Irwin Kula, president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, a New York-based Jewish think tank, heralds the film as a long-overdue ‘fun action Jewish-revenge fantasy.’

Roth, meanwhile, wonders about a backlash from depicting Jews as ‘more Goliath than David,’ giving more fodder to those who see Israel as an aggressor and oppressor rather than a haven for survivors of centuries of persecution.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, places “Basterds” in what Neroulias calls “an emerging genre of celebrated Jewish resistance, including last year's ‘Defiance,’ about a community of Jews who found refuge in a Belarus forest during the Holocaust, and 2005's ‘Munich,’ about efforts to assassinate Arab terrorists who killed Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics.”

Continue reading "Are Tarantino's 'Basterds' kosher?" »

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Last month in Kentucky, an Assemblies of God congregation drew international attention with its "open carry celebration," in which the pastor invited members of to come to bring their guns to church, that they might "celebrate our rights as Americans."

“God and guns were part of the foundation of this country,” the Rev. Ken Pagano told The New York Times.

Next month in Baltimore, a Catholic church will ask parishioners to bring weapons to church -- for a very different purpose. Responding to increased gun violence in the city, organizers say, St. Gregory the Great is sponsoring its seventh "Gun Turn-In Day" on Sept. 12.

Since the parish began its effort to get guns off the streets, organizers say, more than 100 have been turned in.

“The police have verified that in the past, some of these weapons that have been turned in have been very lethal,” Monsignor Damien G. Nalepa said in a statement. “We appeal to all the citizens of our city to help stop the violence and turn in guns.”

Co-sponsored by the Catholic Review, the event is scheduled for 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the church at 1542 N. Gilmor St. Organizers are offering $100 for each workable automatic or semi-automatic handgun or assault rifle, and $50 for any other workable gun turned in.

Continue reading "St. Gregory the Great wants weapons" »

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We had been wanting look at the relationship between Baltimore's Jewish community and Ashkelon, the southern Israeli seaport that it adopted five years ago as a twin city, and we saw our opportunity with the visit of Tal Bouhnik and Liron Menashe, who are now finishing their year representing the Jewish state here in the United States.

The Shinshinim program that brought the two 19-year-olds here is one of several links between Baltimore and Ashkelon. Thousands of Baltimoreans have traveled to Ashkelon in the last five years for cultural exchanges, service projects, business or tourism; hundreds of Ashkelonians have visited Baltimore. The local community has contributed nearly $8 million to the Israeli city, including rapid assistance during the conflict with Gaza in the form of emergency vehicles, workshops for adults under stress and toys for children in shelters.

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

Barbara Haddock Taylor/The Baltimore Sun

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

This just in: Reality show villainess Omarosa Manigault Stallworth, late of The Apprentice, Celebrity Apprentice and The Surreal Life, has entered the seminary in Dayton, Ohio. She plans to study for a doctorate in ministry.

On her first day this week, the Dayton Daily News reports, United Theological Seminary President Wendy Deichmann offered her the gift of a mustard seed – an allusion to the Biblical passage in which Jesus likens the tiny seed to the Kingdom of God.

"Very few people have faith in my transformation, so this is a wonderful gift," the newspaper quoted her as saying. The News reports that she is taking classes in the Old and New testaments and the History of Christianity, and will be required to minister to the sick and dying at hospitals.

A classmate, meanwhile, told the News that he supports Manigault Stallworth’s effort. "People need to know that she is as sincere and as authentic as anyone I've known who's taken this journey," said classmate F. Willis Johnson Jr.

 Photo: AP/Dayton Daily News

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Photo courtesy of apologetix.com

We weren't familiar with the work of ApologetiX, but the press release that hit our inbox this week struck us as fairly amusing.

“ApologetiX is best described as ’Weird Al’ Yankovic meets Billy Graham," says lead singer J.Jackson, who writes parody lyrics to hits from the 1950s through today. "We appeal to both the Christian and secular audiences. I think we’re the only band that’s been featured on the radio shows of both Billy Graham and Howard Stern, not to mention ‘The 700 Club’ and ‘The Dr. Demento Show.’”

The hard-touring Christian parody band is scheduled to appear Sept. 4 at the Tent in Bel Air. According to the release, the six-piece group will play 40 states this year. From the release:

ApologetiX’s repertoire covers the gamut of rock and roll from Elvis to today’s artists, with an occasional rap or country song thrown in for good measure.  Metallica’s 'Enter Sandman' becomes 'Enter Samson.' John Cougar Mellencamp’s 'Jack and Diane' becomes 'Iraq & Iran.' Green Day’s 'The Boulevard of Broken Dreams' becomes 'The Boulevard of Both Extremes.' The Eagles’ 'Life in the Fast Lane' becomes 'Life in the Last Days.' "

A look through the group's discography suggests no one is safe: The 2006 album Wordplay include parodies of "Somebody Told Me" by the Killers, which is fronted by Mormon singer Brandon Flowers, and "Vertigo," by the occasionally overtly Christian band U2.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Updated, with comment from Lenny's Owner Alan Smith

The Jewish Museum of Maryland and the Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore have finalized their purchase of the Lenny’s Delicatessen property on Corned Beef Row, but the landmark restaurant will continue on the site for at least a while yet.

Lenny's Owner Alan Smith has told Sun colleague Elizabeth Large that he has signed a five-year lease to continue at the East Lombard Street property, and when the time comes to leave, he plans to stay "on or around Corned Beef Row." (Note: In a press release on Thursday, the Jewish Museum of Maryland said it was a three-year lease.)

Ultimately, the Jewish Museum of Maryland hopes to have raised the money necessary to build a new wing on the parcel, museum spokeswoman Simone Ellin said.

Lenny’s opened in Owings Mills in 1985 and added the East Lombard Street location in 1991, according to a history posted on its Web site.

The $1.5 million purchase was funded by a grant from the Herbert Bearman Foundation. The Jewish Museum of Maryland is dedicated to the interpretation of the Jewish experience in America with special attention to the collection, preservation, and study of Jewish life in Maryland.

“The Associated is excited about our purchase of the property adjacent to the Jewish Museum,” Associated President Marc B. Terrill said. “This is an opportunity to increase The Associated and the Museum’s presence in downtown Baltimore and to expand programs and services to our constituents living in the area.”

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 4:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Has Michael Vick found God?

Over at beliefnet, Kris Rasmussen sees reason to hope in the recently released NFL star’s interview Sunday with 60 minutes.

“It seems part of Vick's character rehab plan as designated by the NFL and the [Philadelphia] Eagles is for Vick to have a long term-mentor and as an outspoken Christian [former Indianapolis Colts Coach Tony] Dungy has agreed to take on that role,” Rasmussen writes. “Dungy had met with Vick when he was still in prison and In a recent interview, Dungy has said that Vick has told him that he realizes he needs ‘to get closer to the Lord’ and that is why the former coach has committed to continue to work with Vick.”

The former Atlanta Falcon was sentenced in November 2007 to 23 months in prison for his role in an interstate dogfighting ring. He was released to home confinement in May and conditionally reinstated by the NFL in July. He signed with the Eagles last week.

“Lots of folks suddenly find God while in prison," Rasmussen writes. "Many a celebrity has found Jesus as part of a smart p.r. move. So it is absolutely fair for the general public to be skeptical and to take a ‘wait and see’ attitude with Vick. At the same time, after watching that ‘60 Minutes’ interview, I found myself thankful for Dungy's example of compassion and wisdom by stepping into a volatile situation and attempting to lead someone to redemption -- without hesitation or skepticism.”

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Christianity, Culture, People
        

Archbishop Edwin O'Brien continues to draw comment following his address to the U.S. Strategic Command last month calling for steps toward a world free of nuclear weapons. The latest example is a glowing profile in the National Catholic Reporter.

"Bishops can be classified lots of ways, from the canonical (coadjutor, auxiliary, etc.) to the political (liberal, moderate or conservative)," the piece by John L. Allen Jr. begins. "For those inclined to creativity, however, here’s a novel bit of taxonomy: The “Only Nixon could go to China” bishop, meaning a prelate able to say or do paradigm-changing things because nobody can question his credentials as a loyal man of the church."

The story, entitled "Baltimore's O'Brien draws respect across party lines," continues:

Increasingly, America’s premier example is Archbishop Edwin O’Brien of Baltimore, a no-nonsense champion of Catholic doctrine and discipline, and someone who, in the words of Baltimore native and Catholic writer George Weigel, “would happily take a bullet for the church.” Consider how O’Brien has spent that capital:

Veteran leader in seminary formation and a rock-solid theological conservative, O’Brien has demanded greater transparency and accountability from the Legionaries of Christ despite the order’s image as a favorite of the late Pope John Paul II.

A former West Point chaplain and military archbishop with a hawkish reputation, O’Brien recently strode into the heart of the military establishment at the United States Strategic Command in Omaha, insisting upon the elimination of nuclear weapons.

A one-time proponent of the death penalty, O’Brien now champions abolition -- talking about his conversion in a way that has prompted “soul-searching” among even the most conservative legislators, according to Mary Ellen Russell of the Maryland Catholic Conference. He’s also spoken passionately in defense of immigrants.

Delivered by someone else, these messages might be dismissed as liberal rants. Coming from O’Brien, they pack more punch -- in part because, as Fr. Tom Hurst, rector of the Sulpician-run St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore and a longtime friend, says, “the words ‘O’Brien’ and ‘liberal’ don’t go in the same sentence.”

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Catholicism, Culture, People, Politics
        

On the death of Robert Novak, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency has produced an interesting obituary focusing on his fraught relationship with the faith into which he was born.

“Robert Novak, the conservative columnist whose scoops broke many a career, made his reputation as a journalist by being unafraid to attack his ideological brethren,” the piece by Ron Kampeas begins. “The same dynamic underlay the contentious and at times ugly relationship he had with fellow Jews.”

Kampeas writes that Novak had a ‘distaste for robust Judaism” and says “his attacks on the pro-Israel community repeatedly veered into the conspiratorial. And there’s an interesting passage on his faith journey:

Novak was born to Jewish parents, but said he never felt particularly connected to the faith. "The family was not very observant," he told CNN in 2005, describing his upbringing in Joliet, Ill.

"My father had never been bar mitzvahed and his father was not a very good Jew, but I was bar mitzvahed," Novak said.

He cooperated in 2003 with the Washingtonian magazine in a feature about his conversion to Roman Catholicism five years earlier, and said that although he joined a Jewish fraternity in college, he was turned off by Judaism.

"I found the same thing in Judaism as a young boy as I did later in the Unitarian Church and then at the Episcopal Church," he said. "They seemed very ungodly. The clergymen seemed very secular."

Following his conversion, U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) reportedly quipped, “Well, we’ve now made Bob a Catholic. The question is, can we make him a Christian?”

Continue reading "Robert Novak's faith experience" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 4:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Catholicism, Culture, Judaism, People, Politics
        

In his first months in office, President Barack Obama has continued key elements of the faith-based initiative, established by President George W. Bush to broaden the role of religious and other organizations in the delivery of social services. But a new study of newspaper coverage finds that Obama’s continuation of the once-controversial effort has generated little of the contentious coverage that greeted Bush’s effort.

The report by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, which examined coverage in eight national and regional newspapers in 2001 and 2009, finds also that the program is not as closely associated with the current president as it was with his predecessor.

Among the key findings, according to the report:

 Coverage of the faith-based initiative was almost 50% more likely to be on the front page of newspapers in 2001 than in 2009. In the first half of 2001, 15% of the stories - 43 stories in total - appeared on the front page. In the first half of 2009, that number dropped to 10%, or only five stories.

 Issues related to the separation of church and state were the top concern in the press in 2001. Fully 40% of the newspaper coverage focused on whether the initiative violated this constitutional line. In 2009, the top controversy in the coverage analyzed was the unresolved faith-based hiring issue. More than a third of the stories (36%) dealt with this debate.

 In each year studied, Christianity was referenced nearly as often as Judaism and Islam combined. In total, the Christian faith was directly referenced in 32% of the stories. This was followed by references to Judaism and Islam, at 21% and 15%, respectively.

 In both years, newspaper coverage of the faith-based initiative was often a Washington-focused story. Of all the articles analyzed, 56% carried Washington, D.C., datelines, while no other single city came close.

Read the report at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life Web site.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (34)
        

Eric Fingerhut at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency does a nice job chronicling the back-and-forth over efforts by Rush Limbaugh and others to bring Nazi imagery into the debate over healthcare reform.

The conservative radio host has drawn condemnation from the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Congress and the Simon Weisenthal Center for a lengthy bit in which he compared “the Democrat Party of today and the Nazi Party in German.”

“Well, the Nazis were against big business,” Limbaugh said. “They hated big business and, of course, we all know that they were opposed to Jewish capitalism. They were insanely, irrationally against pollution. They were for two years of mandatory voluntary service to Germany. They had a whole bunch of make-work projects to keep people working, one of which was the Autobahn.”

Jewish Democrats have pressured House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, a Jewish Republican from Virginia who has said the GOP needs Limbaugh, to repudiate his comments. But some Jewish Republicans say a Democratic congressman should also be held accountable for bringing “brown shirts” into the debate over healthcare reform.

Rep. Brian Baird, a Washington state Democrat, had said he would not be holding public meetings with constituents during the August recess out of concern for the possibility of being ambushed by critics of healthcare reform, who have disrupted other such events.

“What we’re seeing right now is close to Brown Shirt tactics,” Baird told the Columbian of Vancouver, Wash. “I mean that very seriously.”

According to Fingerhut, the controversy “underscores the degree to which Jewish organizations continue to lose ground in their fight to keep partisans on all sides from demonizing their political opponents as Nazis.”

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

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

For what it's worth, I have never met any of those ensnared in the money-laundering scandal in Deal, NJ and Brooklyn, NY. Nonetheless, it's always embarrassing when you have a scandal involving several rabbis. Clergy are supposed to do better, right?

Of course, you have the defenders coming forward and pointing out that they were trying to help their institutions rather than personal gain, or even doing a favor for a guy who'd fallen on hard times -- only to learn the hard way that he was an FBI informant. All of that will come out in court, and it's pretty unlikely that some of them will see any significant time behind bars.

But all that doesn't matter. Clergy are supposed to do better.

Less than two years ago, there was a similar scandal involving a group of schools and institutions run by a Chassidic Rebbe in California. And he, having pled guilty to significant crimes, will likely begin serving his sentence shortly.

At a hastily-arranged seminar in business ethics early this week, this Rebbe made a surprise appearance. He offered no defenses, no justification for what happened. On the contrary, he admitted that what he did was wrong, what his organizations and people did was wrong, and must never happen again.

And he also took another step forward. He disclosed that together with a team of lawyers and accountants, his institutions had created a compliance plan to ensure that it would never happen again -- that everything done would be completely above board. And he publicly offered to share that plan with others.

Continue reading "Guest post: The financial watchman at the gate" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

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."

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)
        

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

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

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.

Continue reading "Guest post: The last taboo -- intermarried rabbis" »

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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.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
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.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

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)

Continue reading "Vatican gives Potter film four stars" »

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

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)

Continue reading "The Sabbath was Michael's oasis" »

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Categories: Culture
        

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?"

Continue reading "Guest Post: My day in court" »

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

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

Continue reading "It's all Greek to me, but ..." »

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.

Continue reading "Rating the Scientology advertising campaign" »

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

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.

Continue reading "Guest post: Fear of G-d's name" »

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Ginger Kolbaba has a message for Jon and Kate Gosselin: “Please don’t do what you’re doing.”

“For too long I’ve watched Christian couples live self-centered lives, pursuing their own desires, talking about following Christ and the principles of our faith, but not actually living them out,” writes Kolbaba, who edits Today’s Christian Woman and Marriage Partnership.

“When life gets difficult — as it does for every couple — they throw in the towel, acting helpless, showing to the world that when the apostle Paul said, ‘We are more than conquerors through Christ,’ he didn’t actually mean it.

“For too long I’ve watched Christians show to those outside our faith that Christianity, in fact, doesn’t strengthen us or make us any different from people who don’t follow Jesus. Instead I hear couples say, ‘The kids will be better off to have calm. It’s not good for them to see us arguing. Everything will be just fine. We’re doing this for the kids. It’s all for the good of the kids.’

“It’s rubbish. Kate (and Jon), who’s in control of the peace and calm of the kids? You are. You have the responsibility to bring calm into your family. But the good news is that God brings the grace and power to help you do that, through his Word, through prayer, through the community of believers, and through good old-fashioned determination.”

The Gosselins, the Christian family at the center of the TLC show Jon and Kate Plus Eight, announced plans this week to divorce after 10 years of marriage. Kolbaba is one of several Evangelicals taking a personal interest in their marriage.

Continue reading "Evangelical concern for Jon and Kate" »

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In recent years, Catholic bishops have won headlines by condemning – and in some cases saying they would deny communion to – Catholic politicians who support abortion rights. Several have said the position held by former Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, among others, is incompatible with Catholic practice.

Now a New York bishop has added same-sex marriage to the list of deal-breakers.

“While homosexual orientation is a neutral reality on a moral level, homosexual acts are not morally neutral. They are wrong, and they are sinful,” Bishop William Murphy writes in the Long Island Catholic. “Abortion is wrong, and it is sinful. We bishops, the authentic teachers with the pope of the Catholic faithful, have made this abundantly clear. Our teaching is unambiguous, faithful to the Lord and binding on all Catholics. No Catholic is free to ignore or disregard this teaching. “

Murphy, who heads the Diocese of Rockville Centre on Long Island, was responding to Nassau County Executive and former New York gubernatorial candidate Tom Suozzi. In a recent op-ed piece published in The New York Times, Suozzi identified himself as a “practicing Catholic,” and then reversed his previous opposition to come out in favor of same-sex marriage.

“I have listened to many well-reasoned and well-intentioned arguments both for and against same-sex marriage,” he wrote. “And as I talked to gays and lesbians and heard their stories of pain, discrimination and love, my platitudes about civil unions began to ring hollow. I have struggled to find the solution that best serves the common good.

Continue reading "N.Y. bishop warns politician on same-sex marriage" »

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Christians must show love to all people, even if they don't support their values, evangelical megachurch pastor Rick Warren said Tuesday to breakaway Episcopalians and other Anglicans splitting from their national church over gay clergy and other issues.

"We are to love the people of the world no matter what they believe; we are to not love the value system of the world. And the problem today is lot of Christians are getting that reversed. They love the value system and hate the people," Warren told the crowd of 800 under a large tent on the lawn of St. Vincent's Episcopal Cathedral Church in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Bedford, according to the Associated Press. "God has never met a person he didn't love."

This week's meeting is the first national assembly for the Anglican Church in North America, formed by theological conservatives as a rival to the U.S. Episcopal Church. On Monday, delegates approved a constitution and church law for the new group.

Warren, who opposes gay marriage, sparked a protest by gay-rights supporters after President Barack Obama selected him to deliver a prayer at his January inauguration.

Warren did not mention gay relationships or other issues that caused the conservatives to break away, but he said he "jumped" at the chance to speak to the assembly and called it historic. He encouraged the new group and offered advice on how churches could reach out with ministries.

Read the rest of the story by the Associated Press.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 4:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The Public Broadcasting Service is banning member stations from adding local church services and religious lectures to their broadcast schedules, but will allow existing programs to remain on the air, the Washington Post reports.

The vote Tuesday by the PBS board represented a compromise from an outright ban against airing religious programs, according to Post reporter Paul Farhi. PBS stations have long been required to present programming that is noncommercial, nonpartisan and nonsectarian, but definitions have been interpreted loosely, and the rule had never been strictly enforced.

PBS began reviewing policy in light of the transition from broadcast to digital television and the practice by many stations of streaming programs over their websites, Farhi writes.

The decision does not appear to affect Maryland Public Television; as we read the MPT schedule, we don’t see programming of the sort to be impacted. But as Farhi writes, the discussion spurred the Archdiocese of Washington to move its longtime “Mass for Shut-Ins” from PBS member WHUT Channel 32 in the District to WDCW Channel 50, a CW affiliate owned by the Baltimore Sun parent Tribune Co.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)
        

We went to the website of the Anti-Defamation League to look for comment on this afternoon's shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. What we found was criticism of a recent Doonesbury comic strip.

In a letter to strip creator Garry Trudeau, the ADL says the installment of May 31 "misquotes the Bible, maligns Judaism, and promotes a Christian heresy, all within eight panels."

At issue in the Sunday strip is an exchange between longtime characters Boopsie, her daughter, Samantha, and the Rev. Scot Sloan, about "the money lenders," whom Samantha describes as the only group against whom Jesus "really snaps."

"What is it about money lenders?" Boopsie asks.

"They do seem to set people off, don't they?" responds a smiling Sloan.

To the ADL, the reference to "money lenders" recalls the stereotype of Shylock, the enduringly controversial character from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. As the ADL notes, it was the money-changers, not money lenders, against whom Jesus rails in the Gospel accounts.

"Doonesbury's Reverend Sloan is guilty of promoting anti-Jewish stereotypes and biblical illiteracy," the ADL says. "He owes both Jews and Christians an apology."

Continue reading "ADL: Doonesbury strip "crosses a line"" »

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Hindus, Mormons and Catholics, are the least likely Americans to marry outside their faiths, while Buddhists and the spiritually unaffiliated are the likeliest to form religiously mixed marriages, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

The forum is celebrating wedding season by pulling data about marriage and religion out of its 2007 U.S. Religion Landscape Survey. The chart below should be self-explanatory.

Of

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 4:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Culture
        

Largely drowned out by the tabloid coverage of the Gosselin family, an interesting and thoughtful discussion is going on among Christians about the spiritual challenges facing the stars of the TLC reality show Jon and Kate Plus Eight. For those who haven’t followed the series, it focuses on the lives of a Pennsylvania family raising a set of twins and a set of sextuplets – lives that have grown more complex in recent months amid rumors of marital infidelity by both of the parents.

Members of an Assemblies of God church, the Gosselins have been embraced by Evangelicals, who have celebrated, for example, their decision to carry all of their sextuplets to term.

Lynn Roush, a blogger at Christianity Today, and Diana Butler Bass, a contributor to beliefnet, assessed the apparent state of the Gosselins’ marriage as depicted in the fifth-season premiere of the show last week and came to different conclusions.

Roush, a counselor at Evangelical Presbyterian church in Columbia, Mo., sees the answer in “the intervening grace of God’s Word and his redemptive work in our lives,” which she describes as usually found only “in relationships with other believers who have access to our hearts to help us see where God’s truth interacts with our daily lives.”

“I’m only guessing here, but it seems that Jon and Kate’s marriage is a reflection of where each is spiritually,” Roush writes. “Perhaps they have dropped church out of their busy schedules, and with that, a group of other Christians who knows them, is aware of their struggles, and helps to keep them accountable?”

But Butler Bass, an author and teacher writing for beliefnet’s Progressive Revival blog, sees the church as part of the problem.

“Evangelical gender expectations seem to be the root of their troubles: they reversed the parental roles,” she writes. “After a couple of seasons, Jon decided to stay at home and Kate went on the road to promote the show and their books. The choice made Jon increasingly sullen and Kate happier and began to wear at their relationship."

Continue reading "Jon and Kate plus the Evangelicals" »

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The Rev. Jason Poling is the pastor of New Hope Community Church in Pikesville. He's writing today on marriage and the reality show Jon and Kate Plus 8.

In my line of work, I see marriages erode the way bridge inspectors see trusses rust. I have presided over dozens of marriages and, in a different way, a small handful of divorces.

Yet even I was taken aback by Monday night’s episode of Jon and Kate Plus 8. My free-spending habits have led my wife to take over the grocery shopping, but the occasional run for bread and milk has exposed me to the tabloid headlines about the Gosselins’ marital difficulties. Sure enough, the season premiere of the show about their family put this conflict front and center.

I felt physically uncomfortable watching the Gosselins’ marital problems unfold in much the same way I felt watching Steve Carell’s character on The Office take control of a diversity training session necessitated by his misconduct … except that The Office is faux-reality TV, and Jon and Kate Plus 8 is about real people whose real actions will have real consequences for themselves and for their eight children.

Continue reading "Guest post: Jon and Kate plus 9 million" »

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Categories: Culture, Guest Posts
        

Did the Evangelical vote put Kris Allen over the top in the American Idol finale? That’s one of the theories that has emerged in the hours after the surprise ending Wednesday to the pop music competition.

The discussion is premised on the widely held expectation that Adam Lambert, adventurous in both performance and appearance, would win the final vote.

Certainly the falsetto-prone glam rocker left a deeper impression than the humble church singer from Arkansas. Even Allen, a worship leader at New Life Church in Conway, Ark., appeared taken aback by the result; when host Ryan Seacrest called his name, his first words were “Adam deserves this.”

But a legion of Christian voters is saying the right man won. Chief among them: Allen’s pastor at New Life, who has been boasting of a faith-based campaign for Allen.

“Churches go crazy with support!” the Rev. Rick Bezet told Fox News. “Thousands of churches twittering and facebooking! It’s been a blast.”

Fox News and other speculate that Allen got a boost from supporters of Danny Gokey, who was eliminated in the week before the final. Another evangelical Christian, Gokey was worship leader at Faith Builders International Ministries in Milwaukee and Beloit, Wisc., prior to qualifying for American Idol.

Continue reading "Faith-based support for the American Idol?" »

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