Do all Catholics oppose abortion? And do all people who would call themselves evangelical Christians oppose equal rights for gays and lesbians?
Well, a yes to those questions would constitute the conventional wisdom but, as is often the case, the conventional wisdom should not be trusted -- especially when it uses "all" to describe the position of any group.
A new report fleshes out some of the differences within such Christian groups as Catholics, Mainline Protestants, African-Americans and white evangelicals. And the study helps us remember that labels hide a lot more than they reveal.
The report, from Public Religion Research Institute and Third Way, is called "Beyond the God Gap," and was released yesterday. To read it in pdf form, click on this link: Download Beyond-the-God-Gap.
As the report says, "Nowhere do stereotypes predominate more than in the realm of how religion informs politics. . . Too often, false assumptions, caricatures and tired paradigms rule the day."
With that in mind, the report goes on to examine the internal divides within "White Evangelical Protestants," "White Mainline Protestants," "African American Protestants" and "Roman Catholics."
As a member of that second grouping, I found it interesting that the report called "White Mainline Protestants" this: "arguably the most ignored and least understood of the major religious groups in the American religious landscape."
Again, the lesson here is not to think labels tell all about everyone to whom those labels are attached, especially when it comes to people of faith the the political positions they hold.
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READY FOR iBIBLES?
Want to engage in Bible study? Then get out your smart phone. As this piece points out, tech companies are producing lots of religious apps for hand-held devices. Think, in fact, of what a mess this economy would be in without the religion sector.
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THE BOOK CORNER
God Goes to Work: New Thought Paths to Prosperity and Profits, by Tom Zender. These days when you combine the word God with "prosperity," alarm bells should go off because it usually means we're about to hear the "Gospel of Prosperity and Health and Healing on Demand" preached. Well, that is not what the author, president emeritus of Unity, has in mind here. Rather, he is simply noticing the many ways in which businesses have changed their approach and is suggesting that they are on to something. That is, many businesses today are much more open to sharing knowledge and even former secrets with people so that all may benefit. An example he gives is Goldcorp and its willingness to let outsiders look at where it should mine for gold deposits it was having trouble finding. This book draws some of the usual distinctions between religion and spirituality and proposes that a spiritual approach to business is good for all, no matter one's religion. There is something about this I find a little distasteful. And I think it's the idea of exploiting spirituality, however one defines it, for the purpose of profit. That's probably a bit unfair to Zender, and indeed there are plenty of good ideas in this book, so I leave it to you to make that call for yourself. But he leaves himself open to that critique when he writes such sentences as these: "Contemporary business culture has entirely overlooked the important spiritual assets it has within its grasp, causing the entire economy to suffer, especially considering that this critical asset lies just beneath the surface of the people who work within the halls of its building. But these spiritual assets have not been tapped. . ."
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