Bill's 'Faith Matters' Weblog

Churches as crime victims: 7-11/12-09

The other evening one of the staff members of my church told me that some weeks ago someone had stolen his laptop computer from his office.

This man's office is somewhat isolated on an upper floor in our church building. And the walls around it don't go all the way to the ceiling. So even though his office was locked, someone climbed on a filing cabinet to scale the wall and then stepped down onto his desk.

Worse, much of the man's important records and photographs from the last several years were on there, and only minimally backed up. It's a substantial and painful loss.

Stealing from a church? What a terrible thing, I thought. And it is a terrible thing. To steal from anyone is a terrible thing, of course. It's just that it takes a certain sort of gutsy perversion to steal things from a church or, say, a police station.

But it turns out that theft from churches is pretty common. A day or so after I learned of our staffer's loss, I read this distressing press release from the Christian Security Network (CSN).

It says that in the first six months of this year churches have lost a reported $6.3 million worth of goods in crimes and in that same period there have been 17 violent crimes at American churches, resulting in six homicides. And the CSN says many churches don't even report non-violent crimes, so the figures likely are considerably higher than that.

We celebrated John Calvin's 500th birthday on Friday, and there's enough Calvin in me not to be shocked by this kind of evidence of human failure and sinfulness.

Still, these crimes sicken me. All houses of worship should be considered sacred space and treated with respect. The fact that many are violated in various ways simply shows again how much work faith communities have left to do.

(The photo here today shows part of a church in England that experienced the theft of a stained-glass window. For details, click here.)

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THAT OBAMA-POPE MEETING

As expected, the meeting Friday between Pope Benedict XVI and President Barack Obama was pretty interesting, with Obama saying he'd do what he could to reduce abortions in the U.S. and the pope giving Obama a booklet outlining the Vatican's concerns about bioethics. Come back here Tuesday for a posting about bioethics -- especially the meeting of religion and medicine from a Catholic perspective. (At the Obama-pope meeting on Friday, the president also gave the pontiff a letter from Ted Kennedy.)

The pope's prophetic words: 7-10-09

When Pope Benedict XVI (pictured here) issued his third encyclical this week, "Charity in Truth," (or "Love in Truth") it was a fine example of exactly something the church -- and religion more broadly -- should be doing.

He offered a long (144 pages, by one count) essay on the ways in which the world's economic systems are flawed and, thereby, damage human beings. I don't have to (and don't) agree with everything the pontiff wrote to applaud him for writing it. (And yet I do agree with much of it.)

Indeed, it was exactly the kind of thing I was advocating in this recent column in The Presbyterian Outlook. And it's exactly what we'll be talking about next week in the seminar I'm leading ("Your Prophetic Voice: Writing to Repair the World") at Ghost Ranch, the national Presbyterian conference center in norther New Mexico. That is, we shold be using our prophetic voices to challenge the culture and the conventional wisdom that oppresses people.

And you can bet that when the pope meets today with President Obama, they'll be talking about some of the points the encyclical raised.

One of the pope's major tasks is to look at the world through his theological lenses and to call attention to those structures and situations that violate universal human values. Yes, some people argue that some practices of the Catholic church can legitimately be called into question in regards to those values, and that all makes for a fascinating and lively debate. But if the pope -- and not just the pope but all people of faith -- isn't observing the world and critiquing its failures, he's not doing his job.

In this encyclical, he's doing precisely his job. And, if you ask me, doing it quite well.

I hope there's a vigorous discussion and debate about the merits of the pope's call for "greater social responsibility" by business and his many other points.

But one thing that may well prevent such a widespread conversation is that the pope still is using an old form to convey his message -- a long, footnoted document that would be quite at home in the 18th Century. Is there not also a way for him to take that old form and morph it into forms that are more digestible and understandable in an age of blogging and Facebook and Twitter?

I don't want him to reduce 144 pages to a 140-character Tweet. That would be to dumb down the world's already dumbed down culture even more. But the encyclical won't gain much traction if it's not being Tweeted and blogged and YouTubed.

In a conference call yesterday with some American Catholic leaders, I asked how the Vatican could get this old-style document into the Facebook world. Father Tom Reese, senior fellow at Georgetown University's Woodstock Theological Center and former editor of America magazine, told me he agrees that "in terms of style, this is a very dense document. I wouldn't dare give this to high school students, and I'm not sure college students could read it very well. But the content if very much 21st Century." And I agree with him on that and that the encyclical offers a "very progressive vision."

Stephen Schenck, director of the Life Cycle Institute at Catholic University, made the good point that this encyclical "really does reground Catholic social thinking" for our time. And he noted that immediately after its release, it received criticism from both the Catholic left and the Catholic right, suggesting that maybe Benedict has found some important middle ground.

Obama himself has received criticism from both ends of the political spectrum, too, causing Lew Daly, senior fellow at a public policy institute called Demos, to say that the Obama-Benedict gathering today "will be as striking a meeting of the minds as I can think of."

So go read the encyclical and tell me what you think. And, by the way, the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty in Grand Rapids, Mich., has created a special Web site for analysis and comment on the encyclical.

(And for John Allen's take on the encyclical and reaction to it, click here. John is the best observer of Vatican doings I know.)

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POINTS OF LIGHT IN SAUDI ARABIA

Occasionally I like to point out small bits of evidence that some reform and more modern thinking is slowly coming to Saudi Arabia. The latest is this story about the country's grand mufti, whom I met there in 2002, saying Muslims need to be open to different points of view and "discuss and debate for the benefit of people." It's no major development but does show some promise.

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P.S.: Happy 500th birthday today to Protestant reformer John Calvin, about whom I wrote in this entry.

A primer on the Uighurs: 7-9-09

Learn along with me here today.

We've all been hearing or reading recently about the Uighurs (there are various spellings of the word) in an area of northwest China and the ethnic rioting and other trouble that's been taking place there. (Click here for a first-person account by a reporter working for CNN.) (The map here today is from the BBC.)

So who are the Uighurs? (I've heard it pronounced WEE-gurs by people who should know.) They embraced Islam in the 10th century, this site says, and developed quite an advanced culture and civilization.

This CNN story from earlier this year says that in 1949, Uighurs made up "about 90 percent of Xinjiang's (their province, or autonomous region) population. With the influx of non-native Han Chinese, that proportion has plummeted to 45 percent and is falling still further."

This report, which appears to be an academic paper from the late 1990s, says China is trying to obliterate the Uighurs. It also has a somewhat dated section on religious beliefs of the Uighurs.

In this report by a British newspaper, there's a pretty good rundown of the political concerns in the region where the Uighurs live, though not much about their religion or culture. And from that same British paper, the Guardian, there's this Q&A on the Uighurs. (And this BBC report suggests protests in China aren't all that unusual.)

It does not surprise me that as long ago as 2003, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom was raising concerns about oppression of the Uighurs. The USCIRF's recently issued annual report also talks about the Uighurs. It says, for instance: "In China there has been no improvement in the religious freedom situation and, in fact, there has been marked deterioration in the past year, particularly in Tibetan Buddhist and Uighur Muslim areas. The Chinese government continues to engage in systematic and egregious violations of the freedom of religion or belief, with religious activities tightly controlled and some religious adherents detained, imprisoned, fined, beaten and harrassed." (Scroll down to page 75 in this annual report for a fuller description of China's repression of the Uighurs.)

By the way, two international Muslim organizations have expressed distress over treatment of the Uighurs.

And just FYI, in Understanding Islam: An Introduction, C.T.R. Hewer writes some about Muslims in China but not in much detail. More detail can be found in The Heart of Islam by Seyyed Hossein Nasr.

The difficulties in China represent the sort of religious conflict that we in the United States must learn to avoid by having a religiously educated society willing to stand up for the foundational human value of religious freedom. That means knowing about -- and respecting, even if we disagree -- religions other than our own. (Respecting, as long as they don't advocate violent extremism.)

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THE POPE CLEANS HOUSE

Remember some months ago when Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunications of a Holocaust denier and three other so-called "traditionalist" bishops? Well, now the pope has restructured the department in charge of relating to such traditionalists and, in effect, has fired the two people most responsible for the decision to lift their excommunication, John L. Allen Jr. of the National Catholic Reporter writes. Better late than never.

Remembering Peter the Hermit: 7-8-09

As I like to do now and then, especially in the summer, I'm going to take you back in history today -- to July 8, 1115.

For it was on that date that Peter the Hermit died. Peter the Who? (The image here of Peter is from istockphoto.com.)

Well, look at the year and remember when Pope Urban II called for the First Crusade -- 1095. So, yes, Peter the Hermit had something to do with the Crusades. Think of him as one of the preachers who stirred up people to join that crusade.

There is conflicting testimony about his influence on Pope Urban. An Almanac of the Christian Church by William D. Blake reports that when Peter returned from a pilgrimage to Jersusalem in 1093, "he reported to Pope Urban II the atrocities the Seljuk Turks were inflicting on Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land." Presumably that influenced the pope to call for the First Crusade. But the online Catholic Encyclopedia (in the second Peter the Hermit link I've given you above) says Peter "has been wrongly credited with initiating the movement which resulted in the First Crusade."

And in the first volume of his three-volume A History of the Crusades, Steven Runciman, who has a sterling reputation as a historian, says nothing about Peter talking to the pontiff after that pilgrimage. Rather, Runciman merely reports that Peter "had probably tried to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem a few years previously, but had been maltreated by the Turks and forced to turn back." Later, Runciman says that "Peter probably had not assisted at the Council of Clermont (which resulted in a call for the First Crusade); but before the year 1095 was out he was already preaching the Crusade."

Runciman captures a sense of the economic instability of the time as well as the religious zealotry:

"It was an age of visions; and Peter was thought to be a visionary. Medieval man was convinced that the Second Coming was at hand. He must repent while there was time and must go out to do good. The Church taught that sin could be expiated by pilgrimage, and prophecies declared that the Holy Land most be recovered for the faith before Christ could come again. (Tammeus note: Does this remind you of what's often called Christian Zionism today?) Further, to ignorant minds the distinction between Jerusalem and the New Jerusalem was not very clearly defined. Many of Peter's hearers believed that he was promising to lead them out of their present miseries to the land flowing with milk and honey of which the scriptures spoke. The journey would be hard; there were the legions of Antichrist to be overcome. But the goal of Jerusalem was golden."

And so the Crusades began, with crusaders egged on by the likes of Peter the Hermit. And though Christian armies captured Jerusalem in 1099, ultimately the series of crusades was a disaster for Christianity and for relations between Christians and Jews and Christians and Muslims. In some ways we're still paying the price for that.

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EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN

Speaking of old stuff, the so-called world's oldest Bible now has been digitized and is available for scholars and others on the Internet, it's reported. The link I've given you is to an AP story that contains a link to the Internet site for the Codex Sinaiticus.

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P.S.: I mentioned the other day that Pope Benedict XVI was about to issue an encyclical on economic matters. It came out yesterday. I'll deal with it in more depth on Friday here.

A new Jewish rescue story: 7-7-09

As regular readers of this blog know, I have a new book coming out soon, co-authored with Rabbi Jacques Cukierkorn.

It's They Were Just People: Stories of Rescue in Poland During the Holocaust. (It will be officially published in September by the University of Missouri Press, but already can be pre-ordered on Amazon.com and should be in print in a few weeks.)

So I'm always interested in books that somehow relate to that subject. I have just read a review copy of such a new Doubleday book that I can highly recommend to you. It's called Gertruda's Oath: A Child, A Promise, and a Heroic Escape During World War II, by Ram Oren. It will be published Aug. 4 but also can be pre-ordered at Amazon.com at the link I've given you in this paragraph.

Whereas our own new book tells about 20 stories of survivors and the families who helped to save them, Gertruda's Oath is the story of one Catholic woman who saves one Jewish child.

What I love about the story -- told with care and with the touch of a mystery writer -- is the uplifting portraits that emerge of Gertruda Babilinska, the nanny who stuck by Michael Stolowitzky all the way through her life, and of Michael himself, an astonishingly bright and adaptive Polish child who understands love in a profound way.

Gertruda had grown up in a small Polish village where she learned to distrust Jews and to think of them as "the other." Michael was the son of a wealthy Jewish industrialist and his wife who never imagined -- until it was too late -- that Hitler's Nazi regime really wanted them and all other Jews in Europe dead. Gertruda learns the lesson of our own book, which is that these hunted Jews were "just people" who deserved a chance to survive the evil of Nazism and its policies of genocide.

Finally, through such books as Gertruda's Oath and They Were Just People, the stories of non-Jewish Poles who helped to save Jews are gaining more attention and filling out more of the story of the Holocaust.

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P.S.: We've now set a Sept. 10 date for the launch event for my new book, They Were Just People: Stories of Rescue in Poland During the Holocaust. For details, click here.

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THE JACKSON RELIGION DILEMMA

Members of Michael Jackson's family, this report says, were so divided about which religion should provide the framework for today's big memorial service in L.A. that they wound up deciding not to privilege any religion. A confused life, a confused death.

Making sense of Holocaust deniers: 7-6-09

A few weeks ago I told you about a new online Jewish magazine called Tablet, suggesting that you might want to sample its wares.

It was better advice than even I imagined.

(This photo of a crematorium, by the way, I took at the Majdanek death camp near Lublin, Poland.)

Tablet has just finished running a fascinating four-part series of articles about Holocaust denial and two of the most prominent American voices of that denial, Mark Weber and Bradley Smith. The series is by Mark Oppenheimer, a Tablet contributing editor and the author of Wisenheimer, a soon-to-be-published memoir about public speaking.

I'm going to give you links to the four parts separately because I found that in one case it's difficult to get from the bottom of one part to the top of the next.

Part one of "The Denial Twist."

Part two of "The Denial Twist."

Part three of "The Denial Twist."

Part four of "The Denial Twist."

What I found so intriguing about Oppenheimer's reporting and his analysis is that he did the necessary leg work to sit down with these deniers, look them in the eye and try to grasp what motivates them and how they can possibly misunderstand the world so profoundly. He humanizes them -- or at least allows their humanity to show through. You may think that's an impossible task when it comes to deniers, and that it might even lead some people to take these men seriously. But, in the end, it serves to make them seem even sadder and more out of touch with reality.

(Two small examples: Oppenheimer verifies that Smith had a Jewish lover for several years and that Weber has a sister who converted to Judaism and still is Jewish today. Imagine that.)

Oppenheimer concludes that "Weber is a lowly fraud," and says Weber and Smith are trapped in a system that encourages them and others to "turn their brainpower toward half-baked biblical exegesis that makes sense according to its own hermetic logic."

In the end, Oppenheimer says, "Holocaust denial is, like more benign species of fundamentalism, a well-furnished playground for immature and sometimes deranged intellects. It isn’t necessarily about Jews, or even about the Holocaust; it’s about finding something to do with one’s mind. These people aren’t stupid or cynical: Smith does seem to have a noble libertarian streak, and Weber is smart and industrious. And if they could scale the walls that they’ve built for themselves, and look around at the world outside the playground, they might even do some good."

So I commend to you the whole series.

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A NEW ENCYCLICAL FROM B-16

Pope Benedict XVI has signed a new encyclical that is expected to be published soon. It's about economics and the need to remember how the poor are affected by financial systems and decisions. This pope's previous two encyclicals have been quite well done, and I look forward to having the English text of the new one available soon. I may have more to say about it then. If nothing else, papal encyclicals have the potential to set the theological agenda not just for Roman Catholicism but for all of Christianity.

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P.S.: We've now set a Sept. 10 date for the launch event for my new book, They Were Just People: Stories of Rescue in Poland During the Holocaust. For details, click here.

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ANOTHER P.S.: You can follow me now on Twitter at http://twitter.com/BillTammeus

Recalling Reagan's theology: 7-4/5-09

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. -- For the Fourth of July this year I spent some time on Air Force One.

Well, I did it last week when I was here at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, where you will find "27000," a Boeing 707 (pictured here) that served as Air Force One for Reagan and six other presidents.

Although I found the museum well done and intriguing (even if Reagan wasn't my favorite presiident), I found my mind drifting back to a piece I wrote for The Kansas City Star when the Gipper was president. It was about how Reagan had turned into our most prominent public theologian.

I can't connect you to this old opinion piece because it was published even before the newspaper had an electronic library, much less a Web site. But I can tell you that it raised questions that still are relevant today.

Which is to say that it called into question the ways in which Reagan tended to marinate his speech in biblical language and in a certain kind of feel-good theology.

I recall mentioning that Reagan was fond of quoting from the book of Isaiah in the Hebrew Scriptures, but only verses starting with chapter 40. The first 39 chapters of Isaiah have a doom-and-gloom and judgment character about them, whereas all of that switches gears starting with 40.

And Reagan, who attended a Presbyterian church but who was more or less a generic Christian without a deep grasp of theological nuance, wasn't in to doom and gloom at all but into feel-goodism. Remember "Morning in America"? (But a friend who is president of the Disciples of Christ Historical Society reminds me that Reagan was raised a Disciple.)

Anyway, the point of the piece I wrote was that we as voters would do well to pay attention to ways in which presidential candidates use religion for political purposes. Boy howdy. Jimmy Carter did that before Reagan, of course, and other presidents did it after him, with perhaps George W. Bush being the most egregious.

So thanks to the Reagan museum for reminding me of how long I've been worried about this. And happy birthday, America.

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FOR GOD AND COUNTRY

Because I just spent some time in Ventura, I thought it appropriate for the Fourth of July to share this opinion piece that appeared Friday in the Ventura County Star, one of the sponsors of our recent gathering of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists.

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P.S.: We've just set a Sept. 10 date for the launch event for my new book, They Were Just People: Stories of Rescue in Poland During the Holocaust. For details, click here.

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ANOTHER P.S.: You can follow me now on Twitter at http://twitter.com/BillTammeus

A lovely mission church: 7-3-09

VENTURA, Calif. -- When I travel to cities new to me, I love to wander about and see their sacred structures -- churches, synagogues, mosques, temples.

Here in Ventura, right downtown, is a treasure for the eyes -- Mission San Buenaventura (pictured here).

This mission church -- though not this building -- dates back to 1782, when a Spanish Franciscan priest, Fray Junipero Serra, dedicated a mission to San Buenaventura (Saint Bonaventure) on the beach of the Santa Barbara Chapel.

But that structure and another one either were destroyed or abandoned, and construction on the present site was under way by 1792. It took until 1809 to complete.

Well, after that there were earthquakes and illegal sales and all kinds of strange events, but eventually a school was added in 1921 and a major restoration undertaken in 1957.

The sanctuary is full of engaging art, including this crucifix.

When I was here last weekend, a group was protesting near the mission church. A flier protesters handed out charged the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, with "the maintaining of 3,850 desecrated Chumas and America pioneer graves at the Mission San Buenaventura Cenetery. . .just west of the Mission Chapel."

Ah, church controversy. It's everywhere. I didn't have time to look into this dispute, but my guess is the Ventura County Star will cover it from time to time as events warrant, in case you're interested.

By the way, Visitation Catholic Parish in Kansas City, for which I've written an about-to-be-released centennial book (see the link under my photo above), was inspired in its design by the mission church in Santa Barbara.

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DIVINING MICHAEL JACKSON'S RELIGION

Like Michael Paulson of the Boston Globe, I, too, have avoided saying much of anything here about the death of Michael Jackson (except here the other day). Mostly because I frankly don't care much about entertainment figures. Paulson finally broke down and wrote about Jackson and religion in his blog. So if you want to know more about all of this, have a look at what Paulson has put together.

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P.S.: We've just set a Sept. 10 date for the launch event for my new book, They Were Just People: Stories of Rescue in Poland During the Holocaust. For details, click here.

East and West afterlifes: 7-2-09

VENTURA, Calif. -- Sometimes I'm asked about the difference in the way Western and Eastern religions think about the afterlife. (I distrust Wikipedia, but click here for its entry on the subject of Eastern religions.)

The Ventura Pier (pictured here from my 9th floor window in the Crowne Plaza Hotel) offers a good illustration of Eastern thinking, though keep in mind that I'm speaking in broad terms.

Imagine the pier is the path of your life. (No doubt your life began after this pier's life did. The pier was built in 1872 and measured then 1,958 feet. It was renovated in 1993 and the original length -- shortened by various storms and whatnot over the years -- was restored. But on Dec. 13, 1995, a huge storm damaged 400 feet of the pier. It then was repaired, but not to its original length.)

At any rate, if the pier is your life, what happens is that you live it to the end and then you drop off and disappear into the ocean, which is to say you merge with the oneness and universality of God, you lose yourself in some kind of mysterious universal consciousness. That would be one way of putting the Eastern approach, though it doesn't quite account for belief in reincarnation, which some Eastern religions teach.

As this description says of Hinduism, the afterlife "usually means the dissolving of all personality into the unimaginable abyss of Brahman."

By constrast, in Western religion (Christianity, Judaism, Islam), when you get to the end of the pier and drop off, you aren't just one drop of water dissolving into a sea. Rather, you are rescued, saved, redeemed, and you retain your individuality -- whether in mercy or judgment. In some sense, you wind up standing alone before God, though as part of a faith community.

In many ways, that's what the Christian doctrine of the "Resurrection of the Body" is all about. It's a way of saying that whatever your core essence is, that can be resurrected by God's grace. That doctrine does not -- unlike Greek philosophy -- presume we have immortal souls. Only God is immortal. If we are to achieve immortality it is only by God's grace. But we are granted immortality as individuals, and we don't lose ourselves in the ocean.

When I walked the length of the pier the other evening with my wife and a couple of friends, I found it reassuring that I didn't have to drop off the end and test either Western or Eastern theology. Rather, I could turn around and go back to the hotel. Which I did, cheating death once more.

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IS OBAMA STILL UNCHURCHED?

Has President Obama chosen a church to attend yet? The politics blog of Christianity Today says not yet, but that he may make the chapel at Camp David his church. Please notice the wide variety of comments on the CT piece. Yikes. (You recall that Obama quit his Chicago church after all the controversy over its former pastor, Jeremiah Wright.)

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P.S.: You can follow me now on Twitter at http://twitter.com/BillTammeus

Wine for kosher needs: 7-1-09

OXNARD, Calif. -- As an adjunct to the recent annual conference of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, we went on a tour of some wineries near Ventura this past Sunday.

And somehow it all ties in to what I do. We visited the Herzog Wine Cellars here. It makes what is described as excellent wine (I don't drink wine because of allergies) that also happens to be kosher. So I was naturally interested in the fact that kosher wine requires the services of Orthodox Jews as winemakers.

But there was more: It turns out that in World War II, some members of the Herzog family were saved from the Holocaust by Christians -- which is exactly what my new book is about, though it focuses on Poland, not Czechoslovakia, where the Herzogs survived. You can read some about the Herzog history by clicking here. While you're there, notice the photo of Baron Herzog, a name now attached to one of the Herzog wines.

Well, I had to tell Rabbi Jacques Cukierkorn, the co-author of my new book, They Were Just People: Stories of Rescue in Poland During the Holocaust, which will be out in a month or so. So I called him from the Herzog cellars on my cell phone. And get this: The night before he was going to a dinner at someone's house and thought it would be nice to take a bottle of wine. Well, as Jacques says, he doesn't know anything about wine, either, but while looking for something to buy, he noticed a bottle that seemed Jewish in character. It was, of all things, a bottle of Baron Herzog wine. Which he bought.

David Bookbinder, our Herzog guide, said that he and most of the Jews who work at Herzog live in Los Angeles and commute the 45 minutes or so each way to the winery here in Oxnard. Non-Jews also work at Herzog, but not in the winemaking process itself. That must be done by Orthodox Jews for it to be kosher.

The Herzog family first made wine eight generations ago in Europe. The family-owned company moved to this new facility about four years ago and is keeping up the family tradition, though on a much larger scale now. The Herzog winery now produces about 250,000 cases of wine each year.

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P.S.: For a John L. Allen Jr.'s fascinating analysis of where Jewish-Christian (especially Catholic) relations are now, click here.

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A RELIGIOUS GENERATION GAP?

A new survey shows there's a widening generation gap on quite a few issues, including what people think about religion. I'm almost never surprised by such surveys, especially when they confirm things most people have been noticing for years. Is there division in your own family over religion?

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ANOTHER P.S.: You can follow me now on Twitter at http://twitter.com/BillTammeus