Salt

Church site

Greetings everyone,

I'm now occasionally posting at my church blog. 

cheers!

Gawain

Catholic Neocons Undermine Historic Protestantism

The Rev. Andrew Weaver writes about the Conservative Catholic Influence in the Institue for Religion and Democracy, and its growing influence.  They constitute about a third of the board (about the same proportion of Catholics in the country, I think), but have undermined the general ecumenical work between Catholics and protestants.   What is interesting is how anti-Catholic, also, their theology truly is, especially when it comes to capitalism. 

He writes:  While Father Neuhaus and his Catholic cohorts have built and sustained an organization that has consistently labored to generate suspicion and hostility about mainstream Protestant leaders, not a penny has been spent nor staff member assigned to attempt to change anything about the Catholic Church. This conduct constitutes the single greatest breach in ecumenical good will between Roman Catholics and Protestants since Vatican II.

Weaver quotes a former editor of First Things: The America toward which Richard John Neuhaus wishes to lead us -- [is] an America...in which moral and theological absolutists demonize the country's political institutions and make nonnegotiable public demands under the threat of sacralized revolutionary violence, in which citizens flee from the inner obligations of freedom and long to subordinate themselves to ecclesiastical authority, and in which traditionalist Christianity thoroughly dominates the nation's public life (Linker, 2006).

Is Neuhaus aware that American Idol and Project Runway are more important than church these days, and that young people are simply ignoring adults about sex? 

Weaver concludes:  Imagine the outcry from Catholic leaders, a fully justified response, if a highly influential group of Protestants obtained a million dollars a year from left-wing sources to generate a propaganda campaign against the leadership of the Catholic Church over the issues of the ordination of women and divorce. Moreover, this Protestant-directed group constantly sought to undermine Catholic leaders and missions through twisted and demeaning distortions of what they said, while seeking no reforms in their own communions. This is exactly the situation we have at IRD.

Although I generally think Protestant Christianity has rendered "god-talk" to be redundant, and has not called young leaders of great talent, I do believe that there is a deliberate attempt to destroy the  liberal, magnanimous, social justice tradition that is a crucial part of American culture - via Henry Ward Beecher, Walter Rauschenbushc, Henry Fosdick, William Sloane Coffin among others.  Perhaps protestants were right:  Catholics would undermine the American traditions of sympathy, mutual aid and civil rights. 

Interview with Joan Roughgarden

Charles Darwin and Stanford biologist Joan Roughgarden have three things in common: a fascination with barnacles, a passionate desire to understand evolution, and a knack for controversy. While writing Evolution's Rainbow a few years ago, Roughgarden concluded that the astonishing diversity of sexual types and interactions meant that Darwin's theory of sexual selection (based on competitive males and choosy females) was not just wrong, but unfixable. She wants to replace it with social selection, in which a wide variety of social interactions, say, same-sex bonding and group membership, determine an animal's reproductive success and therefore shape bodies and behaviours. Her cooperation-based theory would, she argues, explain not just the peacock's tail, but the female spotted hyena's clitoral penis, the bonobo's use of sex for bartering and bonding, and the side-blotched lizard's five sexual types. Not surprisingly, most biologists are unwilling to jettison sexual selection. Some see her critique as a political statement reflecting her experience of metamorphosing from John to Joan in her early 50s. But many others take her ideas seriously, even if they strongly disagree. Roughgarden, a practising Christian, has now ventured into the face-off between evolution and religion. Robert Adler talked to her at her San Francisco flat.

Lawrence Krauss: Don't Pit Science Against Religion

THE popular debate about intelligent design has, I am happy to say, discredited fundamentalists who want to censor science for religious reasons. It has also exposed pseudo-scientific organisations such as the Discovery Institute for what they are. Nevertheless, in pitching misguided evangelicals against the scientific community, it has had one negative effect: it has encouraged scientists to counter-attack by criticising religious faith in general.

Such attacks are nothing new. One of the more outspoken scientific opponents of religion, physicist Steven Weinberg of the University of Texas at Austin, has said: "There are good people, and bad people. Good people do good things, and bad people do bad things. When good people do bad things, it is religion." It was a brilliant sound bite, but one of Weinberg's less vituperative statements is more instructive: "Science does not make it impossible to believe in God. It just makes it possible to not believe in God." His point is that before the advent of modern science, all natural phenomena were viewed as miraculous, for want of any better explanation.

Chickens and Ducks, getting it on

Another story to drive conservatives [aka reasserters] batty.  [Via]

One reason reasserters [those Christians who insist that genital sex is peculiarly holy] have to rely on scripture rather than nature, is that nature just isn't cooperating.

Dutch Nuns are always funny.  Dutch nuns on bikes chasing criminals - hilarious.

Evangelicals enjoying the mideast disaster, ready for the end of the world. [via]

Adele Stan on Religious Liberalism

Adele Stan writes,

Liberal values represent the essence of the world’s great religions. At the root of all of the great faiths are fundamental beliefs in compassion, justice, love, and charity. We have the right — dare I say the duty? — to express ourselves as moral agents without the imprimatur of ecclesiastical authority.

Spoken the right way, arguments for the embodiment of these values in our civic life can ring with the divine provenance granted to them by believers. And indeed, religious activists — especially our ministers, priests, rabbis, and imams — are vital to our movement. But to expect them alone to create a moral counterforce to the destructive fear mongering of the right is not only unrealistic, it’s an expectation rooted in abdication of our own role as moral agents.

Thousands of years ago, the great Chinese philosopher Lao Tse is said to have told his followers: “Religious robes are no more holy than work clothes.” Now, let’s get to work.

I think she is formally correct.  Of course my religious robes are "work" clothes.  My holy clothes are my jeans and my T-Shirt that says "what wouldn't Jesus do?"

Liberal principles to may not be explicitly religious, but they may have [and must have] some implicit foundations.   Religious leaders may help reveal our implicit values in the public sphere; and they also have the calling to organize and gather.  She might be right that the religious left isn't necessary for its own sake - we might not be.  But it would be to her own detriment if she decided that we didn't have skills that would be useful for transforming this country into a compassionate, and responsible place.  I think progressives do themselves a disservice by not working closely with religious leaders.

Where are the young progressive preachers in positions of leadership?   

Henry Ward Beecher

A biography that +Rowan should read, if he wants to understand American Liberal Religion, both its promise and risk.  The Most Famous Man in America, by Debby Applegate.

Kazin quotes Debby Applegate "what Beecher brought to American culture in an era of bewildering change and fratricidal war was unconditional love so deep and so wide that the entire country could feel his warmth, like it or not."  ...  For Beecher, sinfulness was a temporary malady, which the love of God could burn away as a fierce noonday sun dries up a noxious mold. "Man was made for enjoyment," he assured parishioners. If he sought his own pleasure in the arms of one or more members of his flock, it should not have been too surprising.

When a modern conservative says that liberalism is "destroying" America, he's talking about another America, the good, joyful, exuberant America.  Of course, there was a time when liberals were also joyful and exuberant. 

Now its just capitalists and military contractors.

Rabbinical Council bans Smoking

A better idea than shellfish.

Although I would probably sneak a Cuban once in a while.

No Way I'm Saving That Guy

All right. I realize I am supposed to be all-merciful, universally loving, the Light and the Way and everything, but even a divine avatar of the Supreme Being's loving grace has His limits. I know I've said many times that there is always room for one more—even the lowliest—at the table of the Lord, but even so, there is just no freaking way I'm redeeming this S.O.B.

I don't want to name names, but his initials are Gus Feigert, owner-operator of Fei   gert Automotive down on Seybold Road, by the gas station. There, I said it. And you know what? I don't care. I'm glad I said his name. If he's going to suffer damnation for all eternity—which, I assure you, he most certainly is—then I don't see how much more damage revealing his identity during his brief time on Earth is going to cause the bastard in the long run.

The guy is a jerk.

read Jesus' commentary from the Onion

Church of England reports on Youth Spirituality

It is just as I suspected.  I was never, myself, convinced by Christianity through appeals to the afterlife, divine punishment or "sin."   Christianity may be a language that we teach people to speak - and it just isn't being spoken by those immersed in contemporary culture.

Ruth Gledhill writes: 

THE Church of England has debunked the widely held view that young people are spiritual seekers on a journey to find transcendent truths to fill the “God-shaped hole” within them.  

 

A report published by the Church today indicates that young people are quite happy with a life without God and prefer car boot sales to church.  

If they think about church at all, the images young people come up with are “cardigans”, “sandals and socks”, “corrupt”, “traditionalist” and “stagnant”.

Alright.  We clearly need better fashion.

The authors began their work believing that even if the young had little knowledge of Christianity they would still have religious or spiritual yearnings. They were shocked to find that they did not.

Personally, the premise is pretty faulty.  I remember thinking more about girls than God.  And it was a lovely young violinist at Evensong that converted me to the mysteries of the church.   The music!  What kids are interested in is power. 

Nevertheless, young people do not feel disenchanted, lost or alienated in a meaningless world. “Instead, the data indicated that they found meaning and significance in the reality of everyday life, which the popular arts helped them to understand and imbibe.” Their creed could be defined as: “This world, and all life in it, is meaningful as it is,” translated as: “There is no need to posit ultimate significance elsewhere beyond the immediate experience of everyday life.” The goal in life of young people was happiness achieved primarily through the family.  

The researchers were also shocked to discover little sense of sin or fear of death. Nor did they find any Freudian guilt as a result of private sensual desires. The young people were, however, afraid of growing old.  

In their advice to the Church, the report’s authors say that the first thing to do is “avoid panic”. It recommends means of reconnecting with young people such as through alternative worship forms, traditional buildings, church schools and civic occasions where Anglican clergy often officiate.  

However, the authors also note the obvious contrast between the view of Generation Y that life is generally benign with the figures showing rises in eating disorders, substance abuse, teenage suicide, bullying and sexual abuse.  

The authors conclude: “We live in an instant culture, which c

ann

ot be reached by instant missionary tactics.” And the desire for happiness is valid and should not be criticised by clergy. “It can only be outclassed by a Christ-like way of life, for in him alone is true happiness to be found.

So what is at stake here?  What is God telling us through this study?  I think it is pretty clear that the traditional forms of evangelizing just won't cut it.  We'll have to spend a lot more time thinking about who we are in relationship to youth culture.

Of course, it is possible that youthfulness should not be idolized.  It is just one way of being fully alive.