Bill's Faith Matters blog

July 19, 2006

THE SOUND OF GOD'S VOICE?

Do you know what God sounds like? People who buy a new audio Bible product will discover that God sounds just like actor Samuel L. Jackson. Is that the voice you imagine when thinking about God? Or is "voice" too much of a human construct to assign to God?

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REMEMBERING THE NAZI OLYMPICS

As plans for Hitler's "Final Solution" to wipe out European Jewry were in the incubation stage, Nazi Germany hosted the 1936 Oympic Games.

It was a remarkable event, which Hitler and his stooges used to try to convince the world of the power and longevity of the Third Reich and of the value of his racist theories about Aryans.

But 70 years after those Berlin games, it's easy to forget how it all came down and how so many countries missed a chance to form a united front against Nazism's diabolical schemes and ideas.

But the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education will be sponsoring an exhibition about the 1936 Olympics from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. The "Opening Ceremonies" will take place July 31 as a fund-raiser. Then the exihibit will be open to the public Aug. 1 through Nov. 26 at the Changing Gallery of the American Jazz Museum, 1616 E. 18th St., in Kansas City. To prepare yourself a little to see the exhibit, click here for the U.S. Holocaust Museum's Web presentation about it.

If you live in the Kansas City area or plan to be near here while the exhibit is on, I recommend it. I've never been disappointed in any exhibit the U.S. Holocaust Museum has sponsored. I was last at that museum in April, and if you've never been there, please put it high on your priority list.

Hitler's insane plan was to destroy the Jews. It nearly worked. We simply cannot forget how it happened and, thus, what we must do to make sure it never happens again.

To read my latest Kansas City Star work, click here.

AND a P.S.:

I'll be teaching a weekend writing class Oct. 6-8 at the Kirkridge Retreat and Study Center in Bangor, Pa. Think about joining us. For a description of the class, click here. It's called "From Pain to Hope through Writing." In it, we'll spend some time thinking about what Christianity means by hope and then we'll go to those places of personal or collective pain in our lives and write about them, remembering what it means to have hope. We'll also share some of that writing with each other. Writing about pain can be a healing process as we write toward the light. The weekend begins with a Friday evening dinner and session and ends with lunch on Sunday. An Autumn weekend in the Poconos spent with words. What could be better? Hope to see you there.

July 18, 2006

SUPPOSE HE HAD SAID, 'THANK YOU, ZEUS'

Sometimes it seems as if public officials don't think very clearly before reacting to religious stimuli, thus giving people who believe the government is out to squash religion another example to use. Click here for the story of a man tossed in the clink for saying "Thank you, Jesus" in a courtroom.

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ARE THESE THE MOST INFLUENTIAL CHURCHES?

I'm not a big fan of made-up lists. You know, 100 greatest books, 50 best zoos, Top Ten public restrooms. That sort of thing.

They seem designed to make some point the lister wants to make rather than convey any really useful information. So it's with some reluctance that I note today a new listing of the 50 most influential churches in the U.S., including one here in the Kansas City area, United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in suburban Overland Park, Kan.

Resurrection came in at No. 11. Its senior pastor, Adam Hamilton, is someone I know, though not terribly well. But he runs the kind of megachurch I'd run if I were running a megachurch -- one that challenges its members in various ways and isn't there simply to meet the perceived needs of church consumers.

Deciding whether a church is influential is an almost ridiculously subjective task. Suppose a rural church of 44 members influences one young woman not to commit suicide but to become a surgeon. I'd call that mightily influential, but who would know of that besides a small group? And you can be pretty sure members of that group probably would never would get asked to vote in this kind of survey.

I suppose the most these surveys can accomplish is to get people to think about what faith communities should be doing and whether their own is doing that.

So take a look at the new listing of 50 churches and tell me what conclusion, if any, you might draw from it. But you don't need to bother to tell me if my posting today ranks in my 50 most influential blog postings. I'm thinking not.

To read my latest Kansas City Star work, click here.

July 17, 2006

ALL THINGS HEZBOLLAH

If you've been wondering about Hezbollah (the name means Party of God) as things have heated up this past week in the Middle East, I've got some resources for you that may help get a clearer picture of this organization. For a good Toronto Star analysis, click here. For a brief story about what Hezbollah's leader said yesterday, click here. For a description of what "Hezbollah land" looks like around Beirut in the war zone, click here. For a BBC description of what Hezbollah is all about, click here. And for the Council on Foreign Relations' site describing Hezbollah in detail, click here. There is a www.hizbollah.org site, but I have gotten a "page not available" message when I've tried to go there.

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WHAT CLERGY DO WHEN IT MATTERS

On this, the 25th anniversary of the collapse of the Hyatt Hotel skywalks in Kansas City -- a disaster that killed more than 100 people and injured more than 200 -- I'm thinking about the role clergy play in tough times. (I'm also thinking about having driven through the I-90 Big Dig tunnel in Boston last Monday, just hours before a section of concrete ceiling collapsed there and killed a woman. Whew.)

I've heard some of the stories of how clergy raced to the scene of the skywalks collapse and gave help and comfort to people trapped in the piles of cement and metal that filled the hotel lobby.

That's one kind of aid clergy are called to do. But that's not all.

Recently I was reading Barbara Brown Taylor's new book, Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith, and I want to share a brief section with you. Taylor writes from her experience as an Episcopal priest:

"The gap between my public persona and my pastoral role was always one of the more disorienting aspects of my job. In public, people treated me like the Virgin Mary's younger sister. . .But sooner or later many of them needed a pastor, and when that time came neither of us could afford the pretense of my innocence any longer. Like most clergy, I know how to post bond, lead an intervention, commit someone to a mental health care facility, hide a woman from her violent husband, visit an inmate on death row and close the eyes on a dead body. One summer when a frightened murder witness showed up at the church door I even learned how to arrange an appointment with the district attorney for testimony before a grand jury."

Is that how you think of the members of the clergy you know? Maybe not. But, trust me, most of them can do all of that and more.

To read my latest Kansas City Star work, click here.

July 15-16, 2006, weekend

PROTECTING ISLAMIC WOMEN

An international charter of Muslim women's rights is being prepared, reports say. Most good Islamic scholars say oppression of Muslim women -- and it certainly happens in many places -- usually has cultural origins, not religious ones. The religion as defined by the Prophet Muhammad, in fact, was in many ways liberating to women. This new charter perhaps can be seen as a way to reclaim some of that.

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RENAMING AUSCHWITZ

Poland has been trying to overcome its reputation as a deeply anti-Semitic nation at a time when the Jewish community there (once more than 3 million, but virtually wiped out in the Holocaust) has begun to re-establish itself. The U.N. took one small step the other day to help Poland's image in this regard by renaming the Auschwitz concentration camp to make it clear it was a German Nazi -- not a Polish -- operation. Well, a very small step.

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LEARNING SPIRITUAL LESSONS FROM THE BIRDS

LYNDONVILLE, Vt. -- I was watching the birds gathering at the feeders our friends had behind their home here and, for reasons not entirely clear to me, thinking about something Jesus said: Birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.

One of the things that statement has always meant to me is that we should think about being as resourceful as the birds. They use what's at hand. They gather bits of dry grass, twigs, clumps of leaves -- anything they can find to build their homes.

That's also how they find places simply to be. They use telephone wires, trees, fences, clotheslines, fence posts, plants.

All of which was running through my mind when I saw this lovely little yellow finch land on this dead wood. He landed there and looked around. It didn't matter that the wood wasn't still live, vibrant. It was good enough. It gave the bird a clear view of the world, including any enemies that might have wanted him (her?) for dinner.

Why, I wonder, aren't we always as resourceful as the birds and animals in the woods? Why do we seem to complicate things? Don't we see that living simply is living in tune with the spirit of the one who created this world to be used in this way?

To read my latest Kansas City Star work, click here. (My Saturday column is about religious rebels.)

Today's religious holiday: St. Vladimir the Great Day (Orthodox Christian)

AND A REPEAT P.S. FROM FRIDAY:

I'll be teaching a weekend writing class Oct. 6-8 at the Kirkridge Retreat and Study Center in Bangor, Pa. Think about joining us. For a description of the class, click here. It's called "From Pain to Hope through Writing." In it, we'll spend some time thinking about what Christianity means by hope and then we'll go to those places of personal or collective pain in our lives and write about them, remembering what it means to have hope. We'll also share some of that writing with each other. Writing about pain can be a healing process as we write toward the light. The weekend begins with a Friday evening dinner and session and ends with lunch on Sunday. An Autumn weekend in the Poconos spent with words. What could be better? Hope to see you there.

July 14, 2006

AN OPENING P.S. ABOUT A WRITING SEMINAR:

I'll be teaching a weekend writing class Oct. 6-8 at the Kirkridge Retreat and Study Center in Bangor, Pa. Think about joining us. For a description of the class, click here. It's called "From Pain to Hope through Writing." In it, we'll spend some time thinking about what Christianity means by hope and then we'll go to those places of personal or collective pain in our lives and write about them, remembering what it means to have hope. We'll also share some of that writing with each other. Writing about pain can be a healing process as we write toward the light. The weekend begins with a Friday evening dinner and session and ends with lunch on Sunday. An Autumn weekend in the Poconos spent with words. What could be better? Hope to see you there.

* * *

NOT 9-1-1 BUT G-O-D

Is this the way to fight crime? Can you evangelize your way out of a robbery? Well, it worked for this elderly Florida woman. Anyone have anything like this story in your own past?

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DO CLOSED BOOKS STILL TELL TALES?

If you wandered around in my house looking at books on the various shelves, you no doubt could tell a fair amount about me and my own faith commitments -- to say nothing of my interest in Harry Truman, Kurt Vonnegut and others.

But when I was in Vermont recently, staying with friends, I looked through one of their bookshelves one evening to see if its contents could reveal anything about what I already knew about their own religious background.

So today here you get to join this little game by telling me what, if anything, you can discern about the religious interests (or, heck, anything else) of the two people who have these books on one random shelf (I'm listing them as I found them, left to right):

* The Magic Power of Self Image Psychology

* A Course in Miracles

* Dictionary of the Bible

* Life After LIfe and Reflections on LIfe After LIfe

* Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux

* Care of the Soul

* The Bride of the Wilderness

* Self Hypnotism

* 1993 Centennial Catalog: Paramahansa Yogananda, 1893-1993 Centennial

* The Myth of Freedom

* Gandhi the Man

* Days to Remember

* Listening to your Innter Voice

* Struggle for Intimacy

* Spoken in Darkness

* Sedona: Sacred Earth

* Anna's Book

* Dead Men Do Tell Tales

* Spirit Healing: Native American Magic & Medicine

* How to Read Palms

* The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching

* Divine Revelation

* The Official Preppy Handbook

* Real Women Don't Pump Gas

* The Secret Life of Plants

* Reincarnation and Your Past Life Memories

* Beyond Ego

* Centering

* Miracles

* Mrs. Seton: Founder of the American Sisters of Charity

* Daily Thoughts of Mother Seton

* Elizabeth Seton's Two Bibles

* Sylvia Brown's Book of Dreams

* The Road Less Traveled

* Those Intriguing, Indomitable Vermont Women

* Servant of the Bones

* The Tinitus Handbook: A Self-Help Guide

* You Are What You Drink

* Children of Alcoholism

* Alcohol and Your Health

* How to Select a Life Partner

* Over the Stone Wall

* On Relationship

* A Child of Eternity

* The Unredeemed Captive

* God's Littlel Acre

* Sacred Buffalo: The Lakota Way for a New Beginning

* The Da Vinci Code.

There you have it, folks. Just one shelf of many. Can you draw any conclusions? Is it fair even to try? Do our books give away our spiritual inclinations?

Tell me what you think -- and what people might be able to tell about your faith, just based on books in your house.

To read my latest Kansas City Star work, click here.

EXPLANATORY NOTE: Apologies to you readers who have come to this site in the wee hours (or weak hours, as I think of them) of the morning in recent days. Typepad.com has had some publishing problems and my posts have been late showing up. If you visit here early tomorrow or the next few days and the previous day's post still is showing, please come back later. Eventually, I hope Typepad will get this problem fixed. The Typepad folks usually haven't taken too long to fix things. Thanks. Bill.

July 13, 2006

A BUDGET SURPLUS FOR THE CATHOLICS

The Vatican finished its last fiscal year $12.3 million to the good, it's reported. To paraphrase what Abe Lincoln once said of General Grant, find out what kind of prayers the cardinals there are praying and order Washington to start saying them, too.

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WANDERING A CITY LOOKING FOR FAITH

BOSTON -- It's pretty amazing what you see when you try to look at a major American city through the eyes of faith.

That is, what can you find that's connected to religion as you wander around the downtown of a city like Boston? Or any big city?

I was here recently for the annual conference of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and had a chance to spend part of a day just looking for signs of religion in the core of Boston. My bride and I took these photos of what we ran across.

I was quite struck with all that we found -- from famous churches to Bible stores, from not-so-famous churches to an outdoor exhibit about the Shoah. What you see here is the steeple of Park Street Church, the church where the funeral of my nephew was held after he died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks; the Tremont Temple Baptist Church, just up the street from our hotel; King's Chapel, just across the street from our hotel; the Shoah exhibit, with a small photo of the concentration camp numbers prisoners were marked with; a sign on St. Stephen's Catholic Church indicating it was the site of Rose Kennedy's funeral, and Sacred Heart Italian Church.

All of this was walking distance from our hotel, the Omni Parker House.

If you walked around the core of your city, what evidence of religion would you find?

 

To read my latest Kansas City Star work, click here.

Today's religious holiday: Obon (Buddhist/Shinto)

July 12, 2006

MORE ON TERRORISM IN INDIA

For ongoing news and commentary about this week's deadly terrorist bombings in Bombay, or Mumbai, as it's now called, click here. When you're on that site, visit the Mumbai Grapevine. For another Mumbai site that might be helpful, though it's more touristy and business oriented, click here. As many of your know, I spent a couple of years of my boyhood living in India, so news of terrorist attacks there always grabs my attention quickly.

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VISITING A NATIONAL RELIGIOUS MONUMENT

BOSTON -- When I was here recently for the annual conference of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, my wife and I wandered over to the nearby Old North Church.

It's the one associated with the hanging of lanterns to warn of the British coming at the start of the American Revolutionary War -- you know, "one if by land, two if by sea, three if by commercial jet." Or something like that.

You can read the real history at the link I've given you. When you go to the site, just click on "history" and you will see how Paul Revere and Robert Newman fit into the picture.

Speaking of pictures, that's what I want to give you today -- several photos we took of this historic old church. No commentary. No opinions. No message, except that we need always to remember how faith fits into our nation's history.

So enjoy. And come back tomorrow for a related look at Boston faith-related photos.

To read my latest Kansas City Star work, click here.

July 11, 2006

GOD IS AGAINST NUKES, THEY SAY

A group of Anglican bishops has told Prime Minister Tony Blair that having and/or using the Trident nuclear missile system is "anti-God." How should a political leader respond to such statements? Hire his own theologians who will defend him?

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A CERTAIN CERTAINTY ABOUT ANGELS

What, if anything, do you believe about angels?

The subject came up as my wife and I were driving to the airport the other day to catch a flight to Boston. When we ride in a car, we divide the tasks: I usually drive, she usually reads aloud to us.

The book she was near the end of was Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth and Everyday Magic, by Martha Beck. It's the story of how a mother coped with the news that she was to deliver a son with Down syndrome.

The mother in this case, meaning the author, had grown up a Mormon but eventually left that faith and began a journey of spiritual discovery.

When Adam was 7 years old, the author's cousin and the cousin's sister talked her into visiting a psychic -- "I'd never done it before, and don't really intend to do it again."

The psychic turned out to be quite impressive, cutting through the author's skepticism by telling her things about herself that no one else could have known, she writes.

Then she asked the psychic about her daughter and was told accurate information. When she asked about Adam, the psychic was quiet, finally saying this:

"I have to explain this to you. You see, Adam is an angel."

Then: "Anyone you meet could be an angel. Usually you just see them passing -- they show up to do something and then discarnate again. But sometimes they come the regular way, as babies, and live like other humans for a lifetime. Like your son. I'd imagine a few of them have Down syndrome, but I don't know. It's an interesting question."

Beck then writes: "Of course, just because I believe that the. . .psychic had a gift of some sort doesn't mean I buy into her theology wholesale. Been there, done that. I saw a bumper sticker once that said, 'My karma ran over my dogma,' which pretty much sums up my feelings about most religious cosmologies. (Ironically, it was after Adam was born, when I began to believe in God, that I explicitly left the religion of my childhood.)

"Given the eclectic and constantly shifting nature of my metaphysical inclinations, I will probably never feel certain exactly what an angel is. The. . .psychic could have been 100 percent right, all the way down the line. Or maybe the ancient Chinese were on to something, and we're all haunted by numberless ancestors. Or maybe Catholic saints. Or leprechauns. Hey, I'll go there.

"One thing I don't believe, though, is that there are no spiritual beings around us. They popped into my awareness often enough while I was expecting Adam to disprove that hypothesis to my satisfaction. I don't know what to call them, I don't know how they work. But I know they're there."

Do you know they're there? Can you describe you angel experiences for us?

To read my latest Kansas City Star work, click here.

Today's religious holidays: St. Benedict Day (Catholic); Guru Purnima (Hindu); Asalha Puja Day (Buddhist)

July 10, 2006

HEALTHY, WEALTHY AND SAVED?

One of the debates within African-American Christianity is whether churches should be preaching what's sometimes called the "Gospel of Prosperity." That's the teaching that Christians should be prospering financially because God, essentially, wants them to be wealthy. For some evidence of where this approach is leading, click here for a Boston Globe story. And then let me know what your own experience is with prosperity gospel preaching.

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A CORRIE TEN BOOM SITE TO VISIT

In the current issue of the magazine Christian History & Biography (if you're Christian and not reading this, you're really missing good stuff), there's a short item about Corrie Ten Boom, the Dutch woman in whose house Jews were hidden in the Shoah. (She's pictured here.)

I'm familiar with the Ten Boom story, as you may be, but what the magazine pointed me to is a Web site I didn't know about, sponsored by the Corrie Ten Boom House Foundation, which has turned that famous house in Haarlem, Holland, into a museum. To explore that site -- read, especially, the history section and visit the exhibition section -- click here.

As some of you know, I'm at work with a rabbi on a book project that has to do with Jews who were hidden in the Shoah by Polish Gentiles. But every story of such survival, no matter where it took place, is fascinating. Though the work of such people as Corrie Ten Boom and her family is to be celebrated, in the end it cannot redeem the Holocaust or infuse it with redemptive meaning. The losses and the evil of all of that simply overwhelm such good deeds.

To read my latest Kansas City Star work, click here.

July 8-9, 2006, weekend

A P.S. FIRST:

The main post below is about same-sex marriage or unions. Pope Benedict XVI had some things to say about that this weekend. Click here to see what. And here's a good roundup of where American faith communities stand in the midst of all this debate.

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STEM CELL DIFFERENCES CONTINUE

The debate over research using early, or embryonic, stem cells shows no signs of abating. Now British scientists are expressing anger at positions articulated by the Vatican, it's reported. Have you changed your mind about this research based on anything said in this long debate? If so, what caused it to change?

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A CIVIL SAME-SEX UNIONS DEBATE

People who know me -- and readers who have paid attention to my columns over the decades -- know that I believe our culture often has treated people of homosexual orientation with contempt and injustice.

That has been my view and it remains my view. And I believe Christianity is historically complicit in this. It has often provided theological, even biblical, warrant (however badly arrived at) for such views.

And yet I think there still is worthwhile discussion -- even disagreements -- to be engaged in on the subject of same-sex marriage.

The matter is complicated. It is not as simple as its most ardent proponents seek to make it nor as simple as its most vigorous opponents pretend. That's why I find it worthwhile to read intelligent commentary from people who hold positions different from mine.

So today I direct you to an article by author and teacher Roger Scruton (biographical information is available at the end of the piece to which I've linked you), available from the Web site of the Catholic Education Resource Center. The text runs 15 single-space pages plus footnotes. So to do the piece justice, you might do well to print it out and read it carefully in a quiet place.

Scruton clearly opposes "gay marriage," whatever that is (descriptions of what it might be have varied). I am much more open to the idea than he is, though if it were up to me I would somehow draw a distinction between the legal union the state can grant to couples through a marriage license and what I think of as a sacred union of two committed people (traditionally a man and a woman) blessed by their religious community. Although in most marriage ceremonies in churches, both kinds of unions take place, I think it helps to remember that religious communities are -- and should always be -- free to bless whatever unions they want to and not to bless unions they think are outside of proper boundaries. The state, however, should grant equal rights to all.

Scruton makes the sad point that "public debate about the most important things is now more or less impossible." I think he's generally right about that. We don't engage in debate in ways that leave us open to learning from others, as a rule. Rather, we engage in linguistic warfare, seeking to convert or silence others. That's not debate. That's intellectual tyranny.

So although I don't agree with everything Scruton says in this piece -- indeed, I would enjoy the chance to question and debate him on a number of matters -- I have learned from him. And I hope you can, too, no matter what position you currently hold on same-sex marriage.

To read my latest Kansas City Star work, click here. (My Saturday column this week is about what I think of as America's Religious Independence Day.)

Today's religious holiday: Martyrdom of the Bab (Baha'i; July 9)