Posts tagged Religion
The officer repeatedly punched the left side of my face for long enough that I had time to pray that the crunching sounds I heard were not damaging my brain.
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From an interview this afternoon with my friend Dave Woessner, one of the founders of the Occupy movement’s Protest Chaplains:
“What do you think it looked like when Jesus was roaming the Judean countryside with a couple hundred people—a ragtag bunch? Who refused to identify himself, “Who do you say I am?” People are like, “What’s this occupy movement about?” This is exactly the same conversation they were having about Jesus of Nazareth. I don’t know why it’s so difficult for people to see, but I suppose it is.”
Who is worship for?
A couple of weeks ago I went for high tea at the National Cathedral here in Washington. My girlfriend made me do it, and while I’d like to say I hated every minute of it, those tiny sandwiches were actually quite good.
After our tour of the world’s sixth largest cathedral (and the first place I ever felt closer to God after a worship service), we stopped into the gift shop and I picked up this great little book called The Episcopal Handbook. In the chapter titled, “Why some Episcopalians bow and cross themselves (and why some don’t),” it says:
Some [Episcopalians] believe [crossing yourself] is ostentatious and superfluous. Acts of worship are not primarily for ourselves, they’re for God, so goes the argument, and the participation in outward signs of piety such as this should be avoided. [emphasis added]
Now it’s entirely possible that my wonderful Calvinist girlfriend has just completely brainwashed me here, but I don’t think that acts of worship are primarily—or even secondarily—for God. God doesn’t need anything from us. The guy’s God, after all. Our acts of worship are for ourselves, and not in some “they get me stuff when I die” sort of way. Rather, worship reminds us of our place in relation to the divine, and the relationship we share with the divine.
God does not demand that I cross myself, but I have come to appreciate the practice. Other people may have very good reasons for not doing it. In either case, the devotion we express to God, whatever form that takes, benefits us, changes us, and acts on us—not on God.
Religious leaders protesting budget cuts arrested in Capitol
That’s a photo of Christian and Jewish religious leaders—including my boss Jennifer Butler, Executive Director of Faith in Public Life—getting arrested today for praying in the Capitol Rotunda in protest of budget cuts that will harm the poor.
From the Associated Press:
WASHINGTON — Eleven religious leaders protesting budget cuts affecting the poor were arrested in the Capitol Thursday as the House began debate on a bill to cut spending and raise the debt ceiling.
Before making the arrests, police cleared the Capitol Rotunda where the protesters, organized by the group Common Cause, were kneeling, praying and singing.
Democratic Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine said on the House floor that they were praying for those who will be “hurt the hardest” by the bill being considered.
While I’m not the world’s biggest fan of protests, I’m overjoyed to see religious leaders continuing to stand up for the “least of these.”
Now this I can get behind. While I don’t think we can know how Jesus would restructure Social Security and Medicare, I’m pretty sure he’d choose the poor.
What Sharia Is…And Isn’t
The Center for American Progress hosted a panel yesterday on Sharia law, featuring three people the far right would call Sharia apologists (or worse). But as panelist Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance, pointed out, “I’m not a sharia apologist, I’m a religious freedom apologist.” Also on the panel were Professor Asifa Quraishi, Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin Law School, and Faiz Shakir, Editor of Think Progress and Vice President of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
The panel focused on debunking the myth of some sort of Sharia usurping of the U.S. Constitution. Briefly put, that sort of takeover would require a Constitutional amendment, which itself requires the support of two-thirds of each chamber of Congress (or a constitutional convention called for by two-thirds of the State legislatures), and then ratification by three-fourths of the states. So unless hundreds of Congressmen are secretly in favor of thrashing the first amendment, this scenario just ain’t that likely.
The civil tone of the event, and the presence of panelists who actually know real-life Muslims—or who are Muslim themselves—stood in stark contrast to a panel I went to at the Faith and Freedom Conference back in early June. At that event a woman asked if Obama could raise the Muslim flag over the White House. Despite the fact that there’s no such thing as a “Muslim flag,” making the whole thing technically impossible, one of the panelists answered, “Yes he can and that’s their plan!”
Concluding the CAP event, Shakir encouraged people who are genuinely interested in this issue to continue learning about it and not settle for the opinions of self-styled ‘experts’ with dangerous political aims. Events like yesterday’s that contribute informative, nuanced information to counter the junk analysis currently populating our political discourse are an important step.
(Cross-posted on Faith in Public Life’s blog, Bold Faith Type)
Study: The Bible Makes You Liberal
Want to get your conservative Christian friends to think more liberally about social justice, science, and conservation? Try getting them to read the Bible more often.
A study by Baylor University researcher Aaron Franzen found that increased frequency of reading the Bible correlated with greater support for a broad range of progressive issues—with the exception of gay marriage and abortion.
According to the Huffington Post’s breakdown of the study:
• The likelihood of Christians saying it is important to actively seek social and economic justice to be a good person increased 39 percent with each jump up the ladder of the frequency of reading Scripture, from reading the Bible less than once a year to no more than once a month to about weekly to several times a week or more.
• Reading the Bible more often also was linked to improved attitudes toward science. Respondents were 22 percent less likely to view religion and science as incompatible at each step toward more frequent Bible reading.
As interesting as these findings may be, the study only shows correlation and does not provide insight into whether or not frequently reading the Bible caused these views. (In Latin, cum hoc ergo propter hoc.)
It is also important to note that this study only looked at “Christian respondents” from within a broader survey on religion done in 2007. I suspect that adding responses from atheist/agnostic Americans who never read the Bible might skew these results.
But as a once-a-week to once-a-month kind of guy myself, I can certainly understand how more frequently reflecting on the central message of the Gospels could cause someone to become more progressive. The Bible exhorts care for the poor far more often than tax cuts for millionaires.
(Cross-posted—but with edits to take out the funny—on Faith in Public Life’s blog, Bold Faith Type)
There is no regret. We should look forward. How many days do each of us have in our whole lives? We can live for 80 years on average. That’s 30,000 days, 2.5 billion seconds. Which one makes you think life is short? The process is more important than the result, because we all have the same result—death. It’s the same destiny.
—Wang Xing, founder of the Chinese social network Renren, in Fast Company, The Facebook of China, January 2011.
I’m currently writing a paper on Pascal’s Pensées, exegeting a passage on the “brief span of my life absorbed into the eternity which comes before and after” (#68 in the Penguin translation by A.J. Krailsheimer). This last week, during the discussion section of my Christian Ethics class, we had a brief debate about the universality of Pascal’s approach in the book. The above quote from a young man in China gives me even more cause to believe that this sense of the fleeting nature of the human condition is at least a common feeling—one that I myself share, and have written about before.
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I'm a master's student at Harvard Divinity School, a former Democratic campaign consultant, and here to share my insights on religion and politics. I am not The Dude—though I am a huge fan.
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