Lent: It’s Not Just for Catholics
ARE you a conformist or an individualist? Most Americans believe they are the latter — to be exact, 64 percent of us in 2011, according to the World Values Survey. Perhaps you’re a cage-busting entrepreneur, or a transgressive artist. Or maybe you’re just a freethinking outlier at your Thanksgiving table. My own nonconformity in early adulthood took the form of religious conversion from Protestant to Catholic, bailing out of college to play avant-garde music, and — most schismatic of all to family and friends — voting Republican.
In 1998, I came across a 16-question survey of individualism in the academic journal Cross-Cultural Research. I took the survey, and learned that my score reflected “high individualism” and “low collectivism.” As my late, long-suffering mother would have said, “Duh.”
But all the boundaries listed above are merely social and external, involving the discomfort of others. True nonconformists explore the internal boundaries against their own suffering.
These internal boundaries are immense, as most people spend their lives trying to avoid physical and psychological suffering. That is how we are wired. Indeed, the psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky famously showed in their research that people much prefer to avoid a loss than to acquire a gain of equal value. Further, fear — arguably, the most unpleasant emotion — is learned as a way to avoid all types of pain. Charles Darwin even noted that animals “learn caution by seeing their brethren caught or poisoned.”
We don’t want to suffer — we hate it, in fact. Yet it is suffering that often brings personal improvement. Not all pain is beneficial, obviously. But researchers have consistently found that most survivors of illness and loss experience “post-traumatic growth.” Not only do many people find a greater emotional maturity after suffering; they are even better prepared to help others deal with their pain. That is why after a loss we turn for comfort to those who have endured a similar loss.
Sages throughout history have relished the enigma that pleasure is undefined without suffering. In the words of Carl Jung: “There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year’s course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word ‘happy’ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.” The Tao Te Ching extends the metaphor: “Difficult and easy accomplish each other, long and short form each other, high and low distinguish each other.”
At the extreme, it is the fearsome specter of death that helps us understand life. A dear friend of mine was told he would not survive more than a year after a late-stage cancer diagnosis. This was a fairly morose guy by nature, and this prognosis might logically have sunk him further into his natural melancholia. Instead, he vowed to remember that every day might be his last, and live whatever life he had left to the fullest. By some miracle, he survived a year, then another, and then 18 more. His doctor still says the cancer will ultimately be back at some point — the wolf is always at the door — but he is happy and grateful for waking up when he did, and living for decades as if he was enjoying his last few months.
My friend achieved greater consciousness by staring down his death. He did so by necessity, however, and not by choice. Indeed, most people who find the benefits of fear and pain do so against their will. In contrast, a true individualist — a nonconformist to his or her own natural impulses — consciously accepts suffering for the benefit it brings. How?
I have met Buddhist monks in Thailand who purposely confront the fear of their inevitable deaths through daily contemplation of photos of corpses in various stages of decay. Some young Mormon men and women voluntarily suffer through separation from their beloved families for up to two years during their missions to test their own mettle and cement their commitment to God. And in this season of Lent, hundreds of millions of Catholics are pondering their own inadequacies and inviting discomfort through abstinence and fasting. In a postmodern era, where death is taboo, pain is pointless, and sin is a cultural anachronism, what could be more rebellious?
But the spirit of these practices is open to everyone, religious or not. Think of it as a personal declaration of independence. The objective is not to cause yourself damage, but to accept the pain and fear that are a natural part of life, and to embrace them as a valuable source of lessons to learn and tests to pass.
So to all the nonconformists in business, politics and art: more power to you. But that’s child’s play. To say, “I am dust, and to dust I shall return”: Now that’s rebellion for grown-ups.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/12/opini ... pe=article
Christianity
Reflections about Christianity in America
The Next Culture War
Christianity is in decline in the United States. The share of Americans who describe themselves as Christians and attend church is dropping. Evangelical voters make up a smaller share of the electorate. Members of the millennial generation are detaching themselves from religious institutions in droves.
Christianity’s gravest setbacks are in the realm of values. American culture is shifting away from orthodox Christian positions on homosexuality, premarital sex, contraception, out-of-wedlock childbearing, divorce and a range of other social issues. More and more Christians feel estranged from mainstream culture. They fear they will soon be treated as social pariahs, the moral equivalent of segregationists because of their adherence to scriptural teaching on gay marriage. They fear their colleges will be decertified, their religious institutions will lose their tax-exempt status, their religious liberty will come under greater assault.
The Supreme Court’s gay marriage decision landed like some sort of culminating body blow onto this beleaguered climate. Rod Dreher, author of the truly outstanding book “How Dante Can Save Your Life,” wrote an essay in Time in which he argued that it was time for Christians to strategically retreat into their own communities, where they could keep “the light of faith burning through the surrounding cultural darkness.”
He continued: “We have to accept that we really are living in a culturally post-Christian nation. The fundamental norms Christians have long been able to depend on no longer exist.”
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/30/opini ... 05309&_r=1
The Next Culture War
Christianity is in decline in the United States. The share of Americans who describe themselves as Christians and attend church is dropping. Evangelical voters make up a smaller share of the electorate. Members of the millennial generation are detaching themselves from religious institutions in droves.
Christianity’s gravest setbacks are in the realm of values. American culture is shifting away from orthodox Christian positions on homosexuality, premarital sex, contraception, out-of-wedlock childbearing, divorce and a range of other social issues. More and more Christians feel estranged from mainstream culture. They fear they will soon be treated as social pariahs, the moral equivalent of segregationists because of their adherence to scriptural teaching on gay marriage. They fear their colleges will be decertified, their religious institutions will lose their tax-exempt status, their religious liberty will come under greater assault.
The Supreme Court’s gay marriage decision landed like some sort of culminating body blow onto this beleaguered climate. Rod Dreher, author of the truly outstanding book “How Dante Can Save Your Life,” wrote an essay in Time in which he argued that it was time for Christians to strategically retreat into their own communities, where they could keep “the light of faith burning through the surrounding cultural darkness.”
He continued: “We have to accept that we really are living in a culturally post-Christian nation. The fundamental norms Christians have long been able to depend on no longer exist.”
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/30/opini ... 05309&_r=1
8 Ways Pope Francis Is Changing the Direction of the Catholic Church
By THE NEW YORK TIMES JULY 6, 2015
The first Jesuit pope and the first non-European pope in more than 1,200 years, Francis has differed significantly from his predecessors with his outspoken style and his approach to leading the church. His comments on poverty, church reform, climate change and divorce have made headlines around the world. Here is a look at some of them.
The first Jesuit pope and the first non-European pope in more than 1,200 years, Francis has differed significantly from his predecessors with his outspoken style and his approach to leading the church. His comments on poverty, church reform, climate change and divorce have made headlines around the world. Here is a look at some of them.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015 ... pe=article
By THE NEW YORK TIMES JULY 6, 2015
The first Jesuit pope and the first non-European pope in more than 1,200 years, Francis has differed significantly from his predecessors with his outspoken style and his approach to leading the church. His comments on poverty, church reform, climate change and divorce have made headlines around the world. Here is a look at some of them.
The first Jesuit pope and the first non-European pope in more than 1,200 years, Francis has differed significantly from his predecessors with his outspoken style and his approach to leading the church. His comments on poverty, church reform, climate change and divorce have made headlines around the world. Here is a look at some of them.
More....
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015 ... pe=article
Pope Francis and the Not-Quite-Secular West
About five years ago, after Pope Benedict XVI paid a surprisingly successful visit to not-famously-Catholic England, I wrote a column on the phenomenon of papal visits and why, even in a secularized and dissenting Western atmosphere, they tend to turn out well:
… the crowds came out, as they always do for papal visits — 85,000 for a prayer vigil in London, 125,000 lining Edinburgh’s streets, 50,000 in Birmingham to see Benedict beatify John Henry Newman, the famous Victorian convert from Anglicanism. Even at a time of Catholic scandal, even amid a pontificate that’s stumbled from one public-relations debacle to another, Benedict still managed to draw a warm and enthusiastic audience.
No doubt most of Britain’s five million Catholics do not believe exactly what Benedict believes and teaches. No doubt most of them are appalled at the Catholic hierarchy’s record on priestly child abuse, and disappointed that many of the scandal’s enablers still hold high office in the church. But in turning out for their beleaguered pope, Britain’s Catholics acknowledged something essential about their faith that many of the Vatican’s critics, secular and religious alike, persistently fail to understand. They weren’t there to voice agreement with Benedict, necessarily. They were there to show their respect — for the pontiff, for his office, and for the role it has played in sustaining Catholicism for 2,000 years.
I won’t need to write similar words about Pope Francis, and indeed they wouldn’t make any sense, because the success of his ongoing visit to the United States – the crowds, the enthusiasm, the saturation media coverage – was essentially foreordained; nobody is surprised by what’s happening, nobody is looking for an explanation for the cheering throngs or the favorable press. But there is a common thread that binds Benedict’s success despite low expectations and often-savage coverage and Francis’s success amid high enthusiasm and generally-fawning coverage: Secularism is weaker than many people think.
We have read a lot about the advance of secularization lately, and for good reason. Institutional religion has fallen on hard times in the United States, younger Americans are far more likely than any previous generation to lack any religious affiliation, and American society has made a fairly sudden swing toward social liberalism that’s exacerbating tensions between the current cultural consensus and the historic teachings of Western monotheism. Twenty years ago the U.S. looked like a clear religious exception to a modernity-equals-secularization trend, but since then we’ve been converging, at least to a modest extent, with the nations of Western Europe; that reality, at least, is hard to deny.
But how powerful, how thick really, is this secularizing trend? Is it thick enough, for instance, to speak of American society as post-Christian or effectively pagan, as some religious conservatives sometimes do? Does it have enough momentum that we can expect it to continue apace well into the future, until Christianity in the U.S. looks as weak as Christianity in America’s mother country does today?
I’m skeptical on both counts, and I think the Pope Francis phenomenon is particularly suggestive of the limits of secularism’s hold. The former Jorge Bergoglio has captured the imagination of the Western media in two major ways: First, through a series of public gestures (embracing the disfigured, washing the feet of prisoners, mourning migrants lost at sea, etc.) that offer a kind of living Christian iconography, an imitatio Christi in the flesh, and second, through a rhetoric of mercy and welcome that has made some Americans, at least, feel that Catholicism is more open to their experiences and concerns.
Set aside for a moment the difficult question of where that rhetoric, and the accompanying doctrinal debates, are taking Catholicism in the long run. Just consider these questions: In a truly post-Christian society, would so many people find an imitatio Christi thrilling and fascinating and inspiring? Would so many people be moved, on a deep level, by an image like this one? (Wouldn’t a truly post-Christian society, of the sort that certain 20th century totalitarians aspired to build, be repulsed instead by images of weakness and deformity?) And then further, in a fully secularized society, would so many people who have drifted from the practice of religion – I have many of my fellow journalists particularly in mind – care so much whether an antique religious organization and its aged, celibate leader are in touch with their experiences? Would you really have the palpable excitement at his mere presence that has coursed through most of the coverage the last two days?
A cynical religious conservative might respond that the secular media only cares, only feels the pulse of excitement, because this pontificate has given them the sense that the Catholic church might be changing to fit their pre-existing prejudices, that the Whig vision of history that substitutes for its Christian antecedent might be being vindicated in the Vatican of all places. And this is surely part of it, which is one reason among many why Christian leaders should be wary of mistaking an enthusiastic reaction for a sign of evangelistic success or incipient conversion; sometimes the enthusiasm is just a sign that the world thinks that it’s about to succeed in converting you.
But mixed in with this Whiggish, raze-the-last-bastions spirit is something else: Probably not the sudden, “Francis Effect” openness to #fullChristianity that some of the pope’s admirers see him winning, but at the very least a much stronger desire to feel in harmony with the leader of the West’s historic faith than you might expect from a society allegedly leaving that faith far behind.
I think that desire is real because I see it in secular (or are they?) people that I know; I think it’s real because, as I said at the outset, you could in at work on Benedict’s pilgrimages as well, in more difficult times and more secularized contexts and without the “great reformer” patina that Francis brings with him on his journeys.
Whether there’s a bridge from that desire to a revitalized Catholicism or Christianity I don’t know, and I have all sorts of doubts about whether Francis’s model of outreach is that bridge. But it still says something important about the complex nature of our religious moment that parts of our society that can seem so secular and scoffing can also seem terribly eager, when the opportunity presents itself, for a blessing from the heir to the apostles.
http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/0 ... ef=opinion
About five years ago, after Pope Benedict XVI paid a surprisingly successful visit to not-famously-Catholic England, I wrote a column on the phenomenon of papal visits and why, even in a secularized and dissenting Western atmosphere, they tend to turn out well:
… the crowds came out, as they always do for papal visits — 85,000 for a prayer vigil in London, 125,000 lining Edinburgh’s streets, 50,000 in Birmingham to see Benedict beatify John Henry Newman, the famous Victorian convert from Anglicanism. Even at a time of Catholic scandal, even amid a pontificate that’s stumbled from one public-relations debacle to another, Benedict still managed to draw a warm and enthusiastic audience.
No doubt most of Britain’s five million Catholics do not believe exactly what Benedict believes and teaches. No doubt most of them are appalled at the Catholic hierarchy’s record on priestly child abuse, and disappointed that many of the scandal’s enablers still hold high office in the church. But in turning out for their beleaguered pope, Britain’s Catholics acknowledged something essential about their faith that many of the Vatican’s critics, secular and religious alike, persistently fail to understand. They weren’t there to voice agreement with Benedict, necessarily. They were there to show their respect — for the pontiff, for his office, and for the role it has played in sustaining Catholicism for 2,000 years.
I won’t need to write similar words about Pope Francis, and indeed they wouldn’t make any sense, because the success of his ongoing visit to the United States – the crowds, the enthusiasm, the saturation media coverage – was essentially foreordained; nobody is surprised by what’s happening, nobody is looking for an explanation for the cheering throngs or the favorable press. But there is a common thread that binds Benedict’s success despite low expectations and often-savage coverage and Francis’s success amid high enthusiasm and generally-fawning coverage: Secularism is weaker than many people think.
We have read a lot about the advance of secularization lately, and for good reason. Institutional religion has fallen on hard times in the United States, younger Americans are far more likely than any previous generation to lack any religious affiliation, and American society has made a fairly sudden swing toward social liberalism that’s exacerbating tensions between the current cultural consensus and the historic teachings of Western monotheism. Twenty years ago the U.S. looked like a clear religious exception to a modernity-equals-secularization trend, but since then we’ve been converging, at least to a modest extent, with the nations of Western Europe; that reality, at least, is hard to deny.
But how powerful, how thick really, is this secularizing trend? Is it thick enough, for instance, to speak of American society as post-Christian or effectively pagan, as some religious conservatives sometimes do? Does it have enough momentum that we can expect it to continue apace well into the future, until Christianity in the U.S. looks as weak as Christianity in America’s mother country does today?
I’m skeptical on both counts, and I think the Pope Francis phenomenon is particularly suggestive of the limits of secularism’s hold. The former Jorge Bergoglio has captured the imagination of the Western media in two major ways: First, through a series of public gestures (embracing the disfigured, washing the feet of prisoners, mourning migrants lost at sea, etc.) that offer a kind of living Christian iconography, an imitatio Christi in the flesh, and second, through a rhetoric of mercy and welcome that has made some Americans, at least, feel that Catholicism is more open to their experiences and concerns.
Set aside for a moment the difficult question of where that rhetoric, and the accompanying doctrinal debates, are taking Catholicism in the long run. Just consider these questions: In a truly post-Christian society, would so many people find an imitatio Christi thrilling and fascinating and inspiring? Would so many people be moved, on a deep level, by an image like this one? (Wouldn’t a truly post-Christian society, of the sort that certain 20th century totalitarians aspired to build, be repulsed instead by images of weakness and deformity?) And then further, in a fully secularized society, would so many people who have drifted from the practice of religion – I have many of my fellow journalists particularly in mind – care so much whether an antique religious organization and its aged, celibate leader are in touch with their experiences? Would you really have the palpable excitement at his mere presence that has coursed through most of the coverage the last two days?
A cynical religious conservative might respond that the secular media only cares, only feels the pulse of excitement, because this pontificate has given them the sense that the Catholic church might be changing to fit their pre-existing prejudices, that the Whig vision of history that substitutes for its Christian antecedent might be being vindicated in the Vatican of all places. And this is surely part of it, which is one reason among many why Christian leaders should be wary of mistaking an enthusiastic reaction for a sign of evangelistic success or incipient conversion; sometimes the enthusiasm is just a sign that the world thinks that it’s about to succeed in converting you.
But mixed in with this Whiggish, raze-the-last-bastions spirit is something else: Probably not the sudden, “Francis Effect” openness to #fullChristianity that some of the pope’s admirers see him winning, but at the very least a much stronger desire to feel in harmony with the leader of the West’s historic faith than you might expect from a society allegedly leaving that faith far behind.
I think that desire is real because I see it in secular (or are they?) people that I know; I think it’s real because, as I said at the outset, you could in at work on Benedict’s pilgrimages as well, in more difficult times and more secularized contexts and without the “great reformer” patina that Francis brings with him on his journeys.
Whether there’s a bridge from that desire to a revitalized Catholicism or Christianity I don’t know, and I have all sorts of doubts about whether Francis’s model of outreach is that bridge. But it still says something important about the complex nature of our religious moment that parts of our society that can seem so secular and scoffing can also seem terribly eager, when the opportunity presents itself, for a blessing from the heir to the apostles.
http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/0 ... ef=opinion
A More Conservative Catholic Church Awaits Pope Francis in Africa
NAIROBI, Kenya — Headlines here call him the “Pope of Hope.” Because of him, Kenyans say they are more enthusiastic about going to church, praying regularly and treating others kindly. They want him to preach about corruption, living in peace and governing fairly.
But as Pope Francis begins his first trip to Africa on Wednesday, he will also face a powerful and assertive Roman Catholic Church in Africa that is wary of calls to make the institution more welcoming to people who are divorced, gay or cohabiting without being married.
“Yes, we are more conservative,” said Bishop Renatus Leonard Nkwande, of the Tanzanian diocese of Bunda. The African bloc’s role, he said, is “to defend the teaching of the church, the teaching of the book.”
Both Africa and Francis himself, the first pope from Latin America, symbolize the importance of the southern hemisphere to the future of the Catholic Church worldwide.
The church in Africa is booming in numbers, strength and influence, and the Roman Catholic Church globally is sitting up and taking notice. Africans now account for 14 percent of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, but by 2050 they will be 25 to 30 percent, according to Philip Jenkins, a professor at Baylor University who studies global Christianity.
Yet Francis faces some stiff resistance on the continent to his calls for a more tolerant church. When bishops met last month at the Vatican for a pivotal international meeting, or synod, on the family, the African bishops gained attention for the assertive role they played in pushing the church to stand firm against any acceptance of divorce and homosexuality.
The African prelates see eye-to-eye with Francis on several of his signature themes — poverty, the environment and social injustice — that he is likely to evoke during his trip to Kenya, Uganda and the war-torn Central African Republic this week.
But African bishops are also seen as an increasingly powerful counterweight to bishops in Western Europe and the Americas backing Francis’s call to make the church more open to unconventional families.
The Rev. Boniface Mwangi, a director for Caritas in central Kenya, an association of Catholic charities, said he expected the Pope to steer away from the contentious topics gripping some Catholics in the West, like whether to allow divorced and remarried Catholics to receive communion, or what to do about gay parishioners. As many as 36 African countries have laws against homosexuality, including the three Francis is set to visit.
“I expect him to focus on social issues of the common people, like why we have some pockets with people who have huge resources and so many other people live in slums,” Father Mwangi said.
Catholics in Africa are eager to welcome the pontiff and share the spotlight he will bring to their faith and their struggles.
In Kenya and Uganda, those challenges include vicious attacks from radical Islamist extremists who have killed hundreds of civilians at an upscale shopping mall, a public university and in villages along the coast, often separating Christians from Muslims and slaughtering the Christians.
The Central African Republic, an impoverished country in the middle of the continent, has been roiled for years by a war between Muslims and Christians that has killed thousands and chased nearly a million from their homes. Pope Francis said in a video released last weekend that he planned to deliver in Africa a message of “reconciliation, forgiveness and peace.”
Security for the trip is an urgent concern. Catholic observers say the visit to the Central African Republic ranks among the most dangerous trips a pope has ever undertaken.
“The pope wants to go to the Central African Republic,” a Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said in a media briefing last week. “And, like any wise person would do, we are monitoring the situation.”
Kenyans are yearning to hear Pope Francis address “peaceful coexistence” and denounce corruption by their political leaders, according to a new poll there. Corruption is the top public issue in Kenya right now, with new scandals erupting almost daily — from allegations of Kenyan generals making millions of dollars smuggling sugar to accusations that officials in one government ministry bought ballpoint pens for $85 apiece.
What could make it awkward for Pope Francis is that the corruption plaguing Kenya has been carried out, according to numerous claims, by members of the same government that is placing the red carpet under his feet.
The pope’s first scheduled activity will be a “welcoming ceremony” with Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta. Father Mwangi said the pope should wrap his anticorruption message in what the Bible says about integrity.
“It doesn’t have to be political,” he said. “Good governance is about integrity.”
Despite, or perhaps because of, these social conditions, the church in Africa is thriving.
“They’re moving the church in a conservative direction on moral and social issues, but a liberal direction on economic issues and social justice,” Professor Jenkins said.
This change is reflected not just in the Roman Catholic Church, but also in the Anglican Communion, the world’s third-largest body of churches. Powerful Anglican bishops in Africa joined forces with theological conservatives in the United States and England to oppose decisions by Anglican provinces in the United States, Canada and elsewhere to ordain openly gay bishops and bless same-sex marriages.
Recognizing that the communion is on the verge of fracture, the archbishop of Canterbury has called a meeting for January to discuss its future.
The United Methodist Church, a predominantly American church with a growing branch in Africa, is also deeply divided on gay issues. At the church’s conferences, the voting bloc of African delegates, which grows larger with each successive conference, has united with American conservatives to defeat the proposals by liberal Methodists to ordain gay ministers and bless same-sex marriages.
Homosexuality has proved to be an “explosive issue” for churches in Africa, said Professor Jenkins, in part because “Christianity faces such competition from Islam in Africa.”
“If Christianity ever became more liberal on gay issues, Catholic leaders say they would just seem to be selling out to the West, betraying African values and just giving the whole thing to Islam,” he added.
In the Catholic, Anglican and Methodist churches, African leaders have argued that initiatives to force them to accept gay relationships are a form of neocolonialism imposed by Europeans and Americans. They argue that the reason their churches are growing, compared to the declines they see in their churches in Europe and the United States, is that the African churches have upheld traditional doctrines on sexuality.
At the synod last month, Cardinal Robert Sarah of Guinea grabbed headlines with a speech that equated gay rights with terrorism. He said both were “apocalyptic beasts” with a “demonic origin.”
“What Nazi-fascism and communism were in the 20th century, Western homosexual and abortion ideologies and Islamic fanaticism are today,” said Cardinal Sarah, who has served in the Vatican for years and was named to the top liturgical post there by Francis in 2014.
Another African cardinal, Wilfrid Fox Napier, of South Africa, was among what were reported to be about a dozen bishops who signed a private letter to Francis objecting to the committee the pope had appointed to draft the synod’s final document. The signers suggested that the committee was stacked with prelates who would favor reforming the church’s practice of refusing communion to those who have divorced and remarried without an annulment.
In one indication of their continuing influence, both Cardinals Sarah and Napier were among the 12 elected by the bishops at the end of the synod to serve on the committee to plan the next global synod, expected in 2018.
Catholics are now awaiting Francis’s formal response to the synod, which he is expected to issue next year. He has not spoken directly on the hot-button issues the synod left unsettled, but Francis has repeatedly called for a more open and merciful church, doing so again last week during his weekly audience in St. Peter’s Square.
“The house of God is a refuge, not a prison!” he said in an impassioned, off-the-cuff address. “And if the door is closed, we say: ‘Lord, open the door!’ ”
He has made “mercy” the leitmotif of his papacy, declaring a yearlong “Jubilee of Mercy” that he plans to start off in Bangui, the Central African Republic capital, by ceremonially opening the holy door of the cathedral there.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/25/world ... rld/africa
NAIROBI, Kenya — Headlines here call him the “Pope of Hope.” Because of him, Kenyans say they are more enthusiastic about going to church, praying regularly and treating others kindly. They want him to preach about corruption, living in peace and governing fairly.
But as Pope Francis begins his first trip to Africa on Wednesday, he will also face a powerful and assertive Roman Catholic Church in Africa that is wary of calls to make the institution more welcoming to people who are divorced, gay or cohabiting without being married.
“Yes, we are more conservative,” said Bishop Renatus Leonard Nkwande, of the Tanzanian diocese of Bunda. The African bloc’s role, he said, is “to defend the teaching of the church, the teaching of the book.”
Both Africa and Francis himself, the first pope from Latin America, symbolize the importance of the southern hemisphere to the future of the Catholic Church worldwide.
The church in Africa is booming in numbers, strength and influence, and the Roman Catholic Church globally is sitting up and taking notice. Africans now account for 14 percent of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, but by 2050 they will be 25 to 30 percent, according to Philip Jenkins, a professor at Baylor University who studies global Christianity.
Yet Francis faces some stiff resistance on the continent to his calls for a more tolerant church. When bishops met last month at the Vatican for a pivotal international meeting, or synod, on the family, the African bishops gained attention for the assertive role they played in pushing the church to stand firm against any acceptance of divorce and homosexuality.
The African prelates see eye-to-eye with Francis on several of his signature themes — poverty, the environment and social injustice — that he is likely to evoke during his trip to Kenya, Uganda and the war-torn Central African Republic this week.
But African bishops are also seen as an increasingly powerful counterweight to bishops in Western Europe and the Americas backing Francis’s call to make the church more open to unconventional families.
The Rev. Boniface Mwangi, a director for Caritas in central Kenya, an association of Catholic charities, said he expected the Pope to steer away from the contentious topics gripping some Catholics in the West, like whether to allow divorced and remarried Catholics to receive communion, or what to do about gay parishioners. As many as 36 African countries have laws against homosexuality, including the three Francis is set to visit.
“I expect him to focus on social issues of the common people, like why we have some pockets with people who have huge resources and so many other people live in slums,” Father Mwangi said.
Catholics in Africa are eager to welcome the pontiff and share the spotlight he will bring to their faith and their struggles.
In Kenya and Uganda, those challenges include vicious attacks from radical Islamist extremists who have killed hundreds of civilians at an upscale shopping mall, a public university and in villages along the coast, often separating Christians from Muslims and slaughtering the Christians.
The Central African Republic, an impoverished country in the middle of the continent, has been roiled for years by a war between Muslims and Christians that has killed thousands and chased nearly a million from their homes. Pope Francis said in a video released last weekend that he planned to deliver in Africa a message of “reconciliation, forgiveness and peace.”
Security for the trip is an urgent concern. Catholic observers say the visit to the Central African Republic ranks among the most dangerous trips a pope has ever undertaken.
“The pope wants to go to the Central African Republic,” a Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said in a media briefing last week. “And, like any wise person would do, we are monitoring the situation.”
Kenyans are yearning to hear Pope Francis address “peaceful coexistence” and denounce corruption by their political leaders, according to a new poll there. Corruption is the top public issue in Kenya right now, with new scandals erupting almost daily — from allegations of Kenyan generals making millions of dollars smuggling sugar to accusations that officials in one government ministry bought ballpoint pens for $85 apiece.
What could make it awkward for Pope Francis is that the corruption plaguing Kenya has been carried out, according to numerous claims, by members of the same government that is placing the red carpet under his feet.
The pope’s first scheduled activity will be a “welcoming ceremony” with Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta. Father Mwangi said the pope should wrap his anticorruption message in what the Bible says about integrity.
“It doesn’t have to be political,” he said. “Good governance is about integrity.”
Despite, or perhaps because of, these social conditions, the church in Africa is thriving.
“They’re moving the church in a conservative direction on moral and social issues, but a liberal direction on economic issues and social justice,” Professor Jenkins said.
This change is reflected not just in the Roman Catholic Church, but also in the Anglican Communion, the world’s third-largest body of churches. Powerful Anglican bishops in Africa joined forces with theological conservatives in the United States and England to oppose decisions by Anglican provinces in the United States, Canada and elsewhere to ordain openly gay bishops and bless same-sex marriages.
Recognizing that the communion is on the verge of fracture, the archbishop of Canterbury has called a meeting for January to discuss its future.
The United Methodist Church, a predominantly American church with a growing branch in Africa, is also deeply divided on gay issues. At the church’s conferences, the voting bloc of African delegates, which grows larger with each successive conference, has united with American conservatives to defeat the proposals by liberal Methodists to ordain gay ministers and bless same-sex marriages.
Homosexuality has proved to be an “explosive issue” for churches in Africa, said Professor Jenkins, in part because “Christianity faces such competition from Islam in Africa.”
“If Christianity ever became more liberal on gay issues, Catholic leaders say they would just seem to be selling out to the West, betraying African values and just giving the whole thing to Islam,” he added.
In the Catholic, Anglican and Methodist churches, African leaders have argued that initiatives to force them to accept gay relationships are a form of neocolonialism imposed by Europeans and Americans. They argue that the reason their churches are growing, compared to the declines they see in their churches in Europe and the United States, is that the African churches have upheld traditional doctrines on sexuality.
At the synod last month, Cardinal Robert Sarah of Guinea grabbed headlines with a speech that equated gay rights with terrorism. He said both were “apocalyptic beasts” with a “demonic origin.”
“What Nazi-fascism and communism were in the 20th century, Western homosexual and abortion ideologies and Islamic fanaticism are today,” said Cardinal Sarah, who has served in the Vatican for years and was named to the top liturgical post there by Francis in 2014.
Another African cardinal, Wilfrid Fox Napier, of South Africa, was among what were reported to be about a dozen bishops who signed a private letter to Francis objecting to the committee the pope had appointed to draft the synod’s final document. The signers suggested that the committee was stacked with prelates who would favor reforming the church’s practice of refusing communion to those who have divorced and remarried without an annulment.
In one indication of their continuing influence, both Cardinals Sarah and Napier were among the 12 elected by the bishops at the end of the synod to serve on the committee to plan the next global synod, expected in 2018.
Catholics are now awaiting Francis’s formal response to the synod, which he is expected to issue next year. He has not spoken directly on the hot-button issues the synod left unsettled, but Francis has repeatedly called for a more open and merciful church, doing so again last week during his weekly audience in St. Peter’s Square.
“The house of God is a refuge, not a prison!” he said in an impassioned, off-the-cuff address. “And if the door is closed, we say: ‘Lord, open the door!’ ”
He has made “mercy” the leitmotif of his papacy, declaring a yearlong “Jubilee of Mercy” that he plans to start off in Bangui, the Central African Republic capital, by ceremonially opening the holy door of the cathedral there.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/25/world ... rld/africa
I found the following article about the principles of Christianity very close to what our tariqah of Islam represents - strength in pluralism.
The Christmas Revolution
BECAUSE the Christmas story has been told so often for so long, it’s easy even for Christians to forget how revolutionary Jesus’ birth was. The idea that God would become human and dwell among us, in circumstances both humble and humiliating, shattered previous assumptions. It was through this story of divine enfleshment that much of our humanistic tradition was born.
For most Christians, the incarnation — the belief that God, in the person of Jesus, walked in our midst — is history’s hinge point. The incarnation’s most common theological take-away relates to the doctrine of redemption: the belief that salvation is made possible by the sinless life and atoning death of Jesus. But there are other, less familiar aspects of Jesus’ earthly pilgrimage that are profoundly important.
One of them was rejecting the Platonic belief that the material world was evil. In Plato’s dualism, there was a dramatic disjuncture between ideal forms and actual bodies, between the physical and the spiritual worlds. According to Plato, what we perceive with our senses is illusory, a distorted shadow of reality. Hence philosophy’s most famous imagery — Plato’s shadow on the cave — where those in the cave mistook the shadows for real people and named them.
This Platonic view had considerable influence in the early church, but that influence faded because it was in tension with Christianity’s deepest teachings. In the Hebrew Bible, for example, God declares creation to be good — and Jesus, having entered the world, ratified that judgment. The incarnation attests to the existence of the physical, material world. Our life experiences are real, not shadows. The incarnation affirms the delight we take in earthly beauty and our obligation to care for God’s creation. This was a dramatic overturning of ancient thought.
The incarnation also reveals that the divine principle governing the universe is a radical commitment to the dignity and worth of every person, since we are created in the divine image.
But just as basic is the notion that we have value because God values us. Steve Hayner, a theologian who died earlier this year, illustrated this point to me when he observed that gold is valuable not because there is something about gold that is intrinsically of great worth but because someone values it. Similarly, human beings have worth because we are valued by God, who took on flesh, entered our world, and shared our experiences — love, joy, compassion and intimate friendships; anger, sorrow, suffering and tears. For Christians, God is not distant or detached; he is a God of wounds. All of this elevated the human experience and laid the groundwork for the ideas of individual dignity and inalienable rights.
In his book “A Brief History of Thought,” the secular humanist and French philosopher Luc Ferry writes that in contrast with the Greek understanding of humanity, “Christianity was to introduce the notion that humanity was fundamentally identical, that men were equal in dignity — an unprecedented idea at the time, and one to which our world owes its entire democratic inheritance.”
Indeed, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (blessed are the poor in spirit and the pure in heart, the meek and the merciful), his touching of lepers, and his association with outcasts and sinners were fundamentally at odds with the way the Greek and Roman worlds viewed life, where social status was everything.
“Christianity placed charity at the center of its spiritual life as no pagan cult ever had,” according to the theologian David Bentley Hart, “and raised the care of widows, orphans, the sick, the imprisoned, and the poor to the level of the highest of religious obligations.” Christianity played a key role in ending slavery and segregation. Today Christians are taking the lead against human trafficking and on behalf of unborn life. They maintain countless hospitals, hospices and orphanages around the world.
We moderns assume that compassion for the poor and marginalized is natural and universal. But actually we think in this humanistic manner in large measure because of Christianity. What Christianity did, my friend the Rev. Karel Coppock once told me, is to “transform our way of thinking about the poor and sick and create an entirely different cultural given.”
One other effect of the incarnation: It helps those of us of the Christian faith to avoid turning God into an abstract set of principles. Accounts of how Jesus interacted in this messy, complicated, broken world, through actions that stunned the people of his time, allow us to learn compassion in ways that being handed a moral rule book never could.
For one thing, rule books can’t shed tears or express love; human beings do. Seeing how Jesus dealt with the religious authorities of his day (often harshly) and the sinners and outcasts of his day (often tenderly and respectfully) adds texture and subtlety to human relationships that we could never gain otherwise.
Christians have often fallen short of what followers of Jesus are called to be. We have seen this in the Crusades, religious wars and bigotry; in opposition to science, in the way critical thought is discouraged and in harsh judgmentalism. To this day, many professing Christians embody the antithesis of grace.
We Christians would do well to remind ourselves of the true meaning of the incarnation. We are part of a great drama that God has chosen to be a participant in, not in the role of a conquering king but as a suffering servant, not with the intention to condemn the world but to redeem it. He saw the inestimable worth of human life, regardless of social status, wealth and worldly achievements, intelligence or national origin. So should we.
Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, served in the last three Republican administrations and is a contributing opinion writer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/25/opini ... d=71987722
The Christmas Revolution
BECAUSE the Christmas story has been told so often for so long, it’s easy even for Christians to forget how revolutionary Jesus’ birth was. The idea that God would become human and dwell among us, in circumstances both humble and humiliating, shattered previous assumptions. It was through this story of divine enfleshment that much of our humanistic tradition was born.
For most Christians, the incarnation — the belief that God, in the person of Jesus, walked in our midst — is history’s hinge point. The incarnation’s most common theological take-away relates to the doctrine of redemption: the belief that salvation is made possible by the sinless life and atoning death of Jesus. But there are other, less familiar aspects of Jesus’ earthly pilgrimage that are profoundly important.
One of them was rejecting the Platonic belief that the material world was evil. In Plato’s dualism, there was a dramatic disjuncture between ideal forms and actual bodies, between the physical and the spiritual worlds. According to Plato, what we perceive with our senses is illusory, a distorted shadow of reality. Hence philosophy’s most famous imagery — Plato’s shadow on the cave — where those in the cave mistook the shadows for real people and named them.
This Platonic view had considerable influence in the early church, but that influence faded because it was in tension with Christianity’s deepest teachings. In the Hebrew Bible, for example, God declares creation to be good — and Jesus, having entered the world, ratified that judgment. The incarnation attests to the existence of the physical, material world. Our life experiences are real, not shadows. The incarnation affirms the delight we take in earthly beauty and our obligation to care for God’s creation. This was a dramatic overturning of ancient thought.
The incarnation also reveals that the divine principle governing the universe is a radical commitment to the dignity and worth of every person, since we are created in the divine image.
But just as basic is the notion that we have value because God values us. Steve Hayner, a theologian who died earlier this year, illustrated this point to me when he observed that gold is valuable not because there is something about gold that is intrinsically of great worth but because someone values it. Similarly, human beings have worth because we are valued by God, who took on flesh, entered our world, and shared our experiences — love, joy, compassion and intimate friendships; anger, sorrow, suffering and tears. For Christians, God is not distant or detached; he is a God of wounds. All of this elevated the human experience and laid the groundwork for the ideas of individual dignity and inalienable rights.
In his book “A Brief History of Thought,” the secular humanist and French philosopher Luc Ferry writes that in contrast with the Greek understanding of humanity, “Christianity was to introduce the notion that humanity was fundamentally identical, that men were equal in dignity — an unprecedented idea at the time, and one to which our world owes its entire democratic inheritance.”
Indeed, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (blessed are the poor in spirit and the pure in heart, the meek and the merciful), his touching of lepers, and his association with outcasts and sinners were fundamentally at odds with the way the Greek and Roman worlds viewed life, where social status was everything.
“Christianity placed charity at the center of its spiritual life as no pagan cult ever had,” according to the theologian David Bentley Hart, “and raised the care of widows, orphans, the sick, the imprisoned, and the poor to the level of the highest of religious obligations.” Christianity played a key role in ending slavery and segregation. Today Christians are taking the lead against human trafficking and on behalf of unborn life. They maintain countless hospitals, hospices and orphanages around the world.
We moderns assume that compassion for the poor and marginalized is natural and universal. But actually we think in this humanistic manner in large measure because of Christianity. What Christianity did, my friend the Rev. Karel Coppock once told me, is to “transform our way of thinking about the poor and sick and create an entirely different cultural given.”
One other effect of the incarnation: It helps those of us of the Christian faith to avoid turning God into an abstract set of principles. Accounts of how Jesus interacted in this messy, complicated, broken world, through actions that stunned the people of his time, allow us to learn compassion in ways that being handed a moral rule book never could.
For one thing, rule books can’t shed tears or express love; human beings do. Seeing how Jesus dealt with the religious authorities of his day (often harshly) and the sinners and outcasts of his day (often tenderly and respectfully) adds texture and subtlety to human relationships that we could never gain otherwise.
Christians have often fallen short of what followers of Jesus are called to be. We have seen this in the Crusades, religious wars and bigotry; in opposition to science, in the way critical thought is discouraged and in harsh judgmentalism. To this day, many professing Christians embody the antithesis of grace.
We Christians would do well to remind ourselves of the true meaning of the incarnation. We are part of a great drama that God has chosen to be a participant in, not in the role of a conquering king but as a suffering servant, not with the intention to condemn the world but to redeem it. He saw the inestimable worth of human life, regardless of social status, wealth and worldly achievements, intelligence or national origin. So should we.
Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, served in the last three Republican administrations and is a contributing opinion writer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/25/opini ... d=71987722
The following message of the Pope looks like a translation of a Ginan minus the signature of the Pir. Prince Aly Khan made the following statement:
"Given a right understanding of the foundations of Islam and Christianity, and the spiritual values which they have proclaimed, it should not prove very difficult to build a bridge of mutual respect and co-operation between the two great religions. Unfortunately, it is a fact that the close similarity between the two remains largely unknown to the West."
http://ismaili.net/timeline/1958/19580527ic.html
When Pope Francis met before Christmas with Vatican employees, mostly lay people with families, he asked them to do 10 things.
The list sounded remarkably like suggestions for New Year’s resolutions:
— “Take care of your spiritual life, your relationship with God, because this is the backbone of everything we do and everything we are.”
— “Take care of your family life, giving your children and loved ones not just money, but most of all your time, attention and love.”
— “Take care of your relationships with others, transforming your faith into life and your words into good works, especially on behalf of the needy.”
— “Be careful how you speak, purify your tongue of offensive words, vulgarity and worldly decadence.”
— “Heal wounds of the heart with the oil of forgiveness, forgiving those who have hurt us and medicating the wounds we have caused others.”
— “Look after your work, doing it with enthusiasm, humility, competence, passion and with a spirit that knows how to thank the Lord.”
— “Be careful of envy, lust, hatred and negative feelings that devour our interior peace and transform us into destroyed and destructive people.”
— “Watch out for anger that can lead to vengeance; for laziness that leads to existential euthanasia; for pointing the finger at others, which leads to pride; and for complaining continually, which leads to desperation.”
— “Take care of brothers and sisters who are weaker … the elderly, the sick, the hungry, the homeless and strangers, because we will be judged on this.”
"Given a right understanding of the foundations of Islam and Christianity, and the spiritual values which they have proclaimed, it should not prove very difficult to build a bridge of mutual respect and co-operation between the two great religions. Unfortunately, it is a fact that the close similarity between the two remains largely unknown to the West."
http://ismaili.net/timeline/1958/19580527ic.html
When Pope Francis met before Christmas with Vatican employees, mostly lay people with families, he asked them to do 10 things.
The list sounded remarkably like suggestions for New Year’s resolutions:
— “Take care of your spiritual life, your relationship with God, because this is the backbone of everything we do and everything we are.”
— “Take care of your family life, giving your children and loved ones not just money, but most of all your time, attention and love.”
— “Take care of your relationships with others, transforming your faith into life and your words into good works, especially on behalf of the needy.”
— “Be careful how you speak, purify your tongue of offensive words, vulgarity and worldly decadence.”
— “Heal wounds of the heart with the oil of forgiveness, forgiving those who have hurt us and medicating the wounds we have caused others.”
— “Look after your work, doing it with enthusiasm, humility, competence, passion and with a spirit that knows how to thank the Lord.”
— “Be careful of envy, lust, hatred and negative feelings that devour our interior peace and transform us into destroyed and destructive people.”
— “Watch out for anger that can lead to vengeance; for laziness that leads to existential euthanasia; for pointing the finger at others, which leads to pride; and for complaining continually, which leads to desperation.”
— “Take care of brothers and sisters who are weaker … the elderly, the sick, the hungry, the homeless and strangers, because we will be judged on this.”
Specially the last sentence seems like a copy paste of a recent Farman... The Gnan per excellence!
There is no doubt the ideas put forth by our Imam always permeates those of the Intelligentsia of this world. I reminds me of Trudeau speaking about diversity, multiculturalism, pluralism and... cosmopolitan Ethics! Yes, "Cosmopolitan Ethics"... just days after Hazar Imam's Speech at Harvard last year on the same subject.
There is no doubt the ideas put forth by our Imam always permeates those of the Intelligentsia of this world. I reminds me of Trudeau speaking about diversity, multiculturalism, pluralism and... cosmopolitan Ethics! Yes, "Cosmopolitan Ethics"... just days after Hazar Imam's Speech at Harvard last year on the same subject.
Above, quote from the Pope.kmaherali wrote: — “Take care of brothers and sisters who are weaker … the elderly, the sick, the hungry, the homeless and strangers, because we will be judged on this.”
Below, quoted from Hazar Imam
"keep to the ethic of our faith, of our unity, of our humility, of our desire to serve, of our care for the poor, care for the weak, care for the old, care for the sick."
Hazar Imam, Bandra, Mumbay, India 23 November 1992
Ya Ali Madad:
Very nice posting indeed.When I read the Pope's message in news paper I wanted to post itcwas like most important summary of MHI farman in last 20 years.
Well ALI is also the spiritual father to more than 2 billion christians.
It is a same Noor which spoke out a noble, humble and pious person an entity that is the Pope.
Close ones eye and listen to the message,it sounds like an absolute not akin to farmans translated in Italian language.
I feel that Christians are the most blessed by ALI after Ismailis as they adhere to the saying of their prophet,they are born in heavenly areas blessed by nature.Shariati just comes after
7 other religions as they disregard the true sayings of their entity.
I feel Christian are more likely to accept the name of ALI/Eli as Spiritual Father as Ismailis
open up with Sufi tariqa.
It may take some time for Shia's to accept the formula 1+0=1, as it fully affirms with the cardinal farman if Hz Ali and Imam Jaffer Sadiq and qasida of Rumi n likes.
They will inshallah embrace it and broadcast it day in day out to shiver out the Shariatis
Who will be down hill mode in future not very far.
This Pope seems to be spiritually blessed.
Has MHI and present Pope met anywhere?
It would be worthwhile to see that meeting photographs.
NOORE NOOR JA MILYA,NOORE THA NOOR SAMAYA.
If we Ismailis know the value of our as said in ratio said by Imam SMS,
we can RULE THE WORLD with true faith n cosmopolitan ethics and unity.
Very nice posting indeed.When I read the Pope's message in news paper I wanted to post itcwas like most important summary of MHI farman in last 20 years.
Well ALI is also the spiritual father to more than 2 billion christians.
It is a same Noor which spoke out a noble, humble and pious person an entity that is the Pope.
Close ones eye and listen to the message,it sounds like an absolute not akin to farmans translated in Italian language.
I feel that Christians are the most blessed by ALI after Ismailis as they adhere to the saying of their prophet,they are born in heavenly areas blessed by nature.Shariati just comes after
7 other religions as they disregard the true sayings of their entity.
I feel Christian are more likely to accept the name of ALI/Eli as Spiritual Father as Ismailis
open up with Sufi tariqa.
It may take some time for Shia's to accept the formula 1+0=1, as it fully affirms with the cardinal farman if Hz Ali and Imam Jaffer Sadiq and qasida of Rumi n likes.
They will inshallah embrace it and broadcast it day in day out to shiver out the Shariatis
Who will be down hill mode in future not very far.
This Pope seems to be spiritually blessed.
Has MHI and present Pope met anywhere?
It would be worthwhile to see that meeting photographs.
NOORE NOOR JA MILYA,NOORE THA NOOR SAMAYA.
If we Ismailis know the value of our as said in ratio said by Imam SMS,
we can RULE THE WORLD with true faith n cosmopolitan ethics and unity.
Pope and Russian Orthodox Leader Meet in Historic Step
HAVANA — Pope Francis on Friday became the first pontiff to ever meet a patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, as the two Christian leaders set aside centuries of division in a historic encounter that was held in an unlikely setting: a room at the Havana airport.
Having announced the meeting only a week ago, Francis landed in Havana about 2 p.m. for a stopover that lasted a few hours, before he continued to Mexico City for his six-day visit to Mexico. Awaiting him in Havana was Patriarch Kirill, who was making an official visit to Cuba at the invitation of President Raúl Castro.
As he approached the Russian patriarch amid the clicking of news cameras, Francis was overheard to say, “Brother.” A moment later, he added, “Finally.”
The two men embraced, kissing each other twice on the cheeks and clasping hands before taking seats. “Now things are easier,” Kirill said. Francis responded, “It is clear now that this is the will of God.”
The meeting was richly symbolic: Francis, 79, leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, stood with Kirill, 69, leader of the largest church in the Eastern Orthodox world, with an estimated 150 million followers. But it was also about geopolitics, rivalries among Orthodox leaders and, analysts say, the maneuverings of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia — who is closely aligned with the conservative Russian church.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/13/world ... d=45305309
HAVANA — Pope Francis on Friday became the first pontiff to ever meet a patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, as the two Christian leaders set aside centuries of division in a historic encounter that was held in an unlikely setting: a room at the Havana airport.
Having announced the meeting only a week ago, Francis landed in Havana about 2 p.m. for a stopover that lasted a few hours, before he continued to Mexico City for his six-day visit to Mexico. Awaiting him in Havana was Patriarch Kirill, who was making an official visit to Cuba at the invitation of President Raúl Castro.
As he approached the Russian patriarch amid the clicking of news cameras, Francis was overheard to say, “Brother.” A moment later, he added, “Finally.”
The two men embraced, kissing each other twice on the cheeks and clasping hands before taking seats. “Now things are easier,” Kirill said. Francis responded, “It is clear now that this is the will of God.”
The meeting was richly symbolic: Francis, 79, leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics, stood with Kirill, 69, leader of the largest church in the Eastern Orthodox world, with an estimated 150 million followers. But it was also about geopolitics, rivalries among Orthodox leaders and, analysts say, the maneuverings of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia — who is closely aligned with the conservative Russian church.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/13/world ... d=45305309
Francis Admonishes Bishops in Mexico to ‘Begin Anew’
MEXICO CITY — In a stinging rebuke to Mexico‘s church hierarchy, Pope Francis on Saturday told bishops that they had lost their way in “gossip” and “intrigue,” and challenged them to “begin anew” and tend to the church’s worshipers.
Speaking before rows of solemn bishops in this city’s majestic Metropolitan Cathedral, Francis spared no words as he painted an almost biblical picture of a church seduced by power and money.
“Be vigilant so that your vision will not be darkened by the gloomy mist of worldliness; do not allow yourselves to be corrupted by trivial materialism or by the seductive illusion of underhanded agreements; do not place your faith in the ‘chariots and horses’ of today’s pharaohs,” he said.
Francis’s sharp criticism came on a morning filled with symbols of temporal and ecclesiastical power, marking a discordant note on the first full day of a trip to Mexico designed to demonstrate his devotion to the powerless.
The morning began at the National Palace on the colonial Zócalo, the central square where President Enrique Peña Nieto and other dignitaries greeted Francis with full honors. But the pomp, laid on by politicians jostling for some reflected glory of the pope’s popularity, seemed at odds with a trip that Francis had described as a pilgrimage.
Indeed, the pope made his own pilgrimage on Saturday afternoon to the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico’s patron saint, to celebrate Mass before tens of thousands of worshipers. Then, as dusk fell over the giant city, Francis entered the shrine’s inner sanctuary and sat contemplating the Virgin’s olive-skinned image, a symbol of the fusion of Latin America’s disparate peoples under a nurturing maternal image of the divine.
For Mexicans, it was the sort of gesture that would long resonate.
“Is he revolutionary?” asked Maria Otilia Flores Cerón, 50, watching the Mass on a giant screen outside the basilica. “Yes. He is unifying everybody.”
Although many Mexicans had expected Francis to address the country’s corruption and bloodshed when he spoke to political leaders, it was religious authorities who received the full force of his anger.
“Do not lose time or energy in secondary things, in gossip or intrigue, in conceited schemes of careerism, in empty plans for superiority, in unproductive groups that seek benefits or common interests,” he said. “Do not allow yourselves to be dragged into gossip and slander.”
He even departed from his prepared text for the sharp-tongued scolding: “If you want to fight, do it, but as men do. Say it to each other’s faces and after that, like men of God, pray together.” He added, “If you went too far, ask for forgiveness.”
The strength of the pope’s denunciation came as a surprise even to those who had followed his earlier warnings to church leaders.
“I have never seen a scolding so severe, so drastic, so brutal to any bishops’ group,” said Roberto Blancarte, a scholar of the Mexican church at the Colegio de México. “The bishops will have to examine their consciences.”
The pope’s words will invigorate groups in the Mexican church who have long been critical of the distance that bishops keep from the faithful, living in luxury and socializing with politicians and wealthy businessmen, Mr. Blancarte said. In a speech that laid out many of the themes the pope is expected to address as he travels the length of Mexico, Francis, a Jesuit, warned that the church had become complacent in facing the dangers of drug trafficking and urged the Mexican church to “embrace the fringes of human existence in the ravaged areas of our cities” to help “people escape the raging waters that drown so many.”
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/world ... d=71987722
MEXICO CITY — In a stinging rebuke to Mexico‘s church hierarchy, Pope Francis on Saturday told bishops that they had lost their way in “gossip” and “intrigue,” and challenged them to “begin anew” and tend to the church’s worshipers.
Speaking before rows of solemn bishops in this city’s majestic Metropolitan Cathedral, Francis spared no words as he painted an almost biblical picture of a church seduced by power and money.
“Be vigilant so that your vision will not be darkened by the gloomy mist of worldliness; do not allow yourselves to be corrupted by trivial materialism or by the seductive illusion of underhanded agreements; do not place your faith in the ‘chariots and horses’ of today’s pharaohs,” he said.
Francis’s sharp criticism came on a morning filled with symbols of temporal and ecclesiastical power, marking a discordant note on the first full day of a trip to Mexico designed to demonstrate his devotion to the powerless.
The morning began at the National Palace on the colonial Zócalo, the central square where President Enrique Peña Nieto and other dignitaries greeted Francis with full honors. But the pomp, laid on by politicians jostling for some reflected glory of the pope’s popularity, seemed at odds with a trip that Francis had described as a pilgrimage.
Indeed, the pope made his own pilgrimage on Saturday afternoon to the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico’s patron saint, to celebrate Mass before tens of thousands of worshipers. Then, as dusk fell over the giant city, Francis entered the shrine’s inner sanctuary and sat contemplating the Virgin’s olive-skinned image, a symbol of the fusion of Latin America’s disparate peoples under a nurturing maternal image of the divine.
For Mexicans, it was the sort of gesture that would long resonate.
“Is he revolutionary?” asked Maria Otilia Flores Cerón, 50, watching the Mass on a giant screen outside the basilica. “Yes. He is unifying everybody.”
Although many Mexicans had expected Francis to address the country’s corruption and bloodshed when he spoke to political leaders, it was religious authorities who received the full force of his anger.
“Do not lose time or energy in secondary things, in gossip or intrigue, in conceited schemes of careerism, in empty plans for superiority, in unproductive groups that seek benefits or common interests,” he said. “Do not allow yourselves to be dragged into gossip and slander.”
He even departed from his prepared text for the sharp-tongued scolding: “If you want to fight, do it, but as men do. Say it to each other’s faces and after that, like men of God, pray together.” He added, “If you went too far, ask for forgiveness.”
The strength of the pope’s denunciation came as a surprise even to those who had followed his earlier warnings to church leaders.
“I have never seen a scolding so severe, so drastic, so brutal to any bishops’ group,” said Roberto Blancarte, a scholar of the Mexican church at the Colegio de México. “The bishops will have to examine their consciences.”
The pope’s words will invigorate groups in the Mexican church who have long been critical of the distance that bishops keep from the faithful, living in luxury and socializing with politicians and wealthy businessmen, Mr. Blancarte said. In a speech that laid out many of the themes the pope is expected to address as he travels the length of Mexico, Francis, a Jesuit, warned that the church had become complacent in facing the dangers of drug trafficking and urged the Mexican church to “embrace the fringes of human existence in the ravaged areas of our cities” to help “people escape the raging waters that drown so many.”
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/world ... d=71987722
Francis’ Message Calls on Church to Be Inclusive
ROME — In a broad proclamation on family life, Pope Francis on Friday called for the Roman Catholic Church to be more welcoming and less judgmental, and he seemingly signaled a pastoral path for divorced and remarried Catholics to receive holy communion.
The 256-page document — known as an apostolic exhortation and titled “Amoris Laetitia,” Latin for “The Joy of Love” — calls for priests to welcome single parents, gay people and unmarried straight couples who are living together.
“A pastor cannot feel that it is enough to simply apply moral laws to those living in ‘irregular’ situations, as if they were stones to throw at people’s lives,” he wrote.
But Francis once again closed the door on same-sex marriage, saying it cannot be seen as the equivalent of heterosexual unions.
The document offers no new rules or marching orders, and from the outset Francis makes plain that no top-down edicts are coming.
Alluding to the diversity and complexity of a global church, Francis effectively pushes decision making downward to bishops and priests, stating that a different country or region “can seek solutions better suited to its culture and sensitive to its traditions and local needs.”
But Francis also makes clear the vision he wants local bishops and priests to follow: as a church that greets families with empathy and comfort rather than with unbending rules and rigid codes of conduct.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/09/world ... 05309&_r=0
ROME — In a broad proclamation on family life, Pope Francis on Friday called for the Roman Catholic Church to be more welcoming and less judgmental, and he seemingly signaled a pastoral path for divorced and remarried Catholics to receive holy communion.
The 256-page document — known as an apostolic exhortation and titled “Amoris Laetitia,” Latin for “The Joy of Love” — calls for priests to welcome single parents, gay people and unmarried straight couples who are living together.
“A pastor cannot feel that it is enough to simply apply moral laws to those living in ‘irregular’ situations, as if they were stones to throw at people’s lives,” he wrote.
But Francis once again closed the door on same-sex marriage, saying it cannot be seen as the equivalent of heterosexual unions.
The document offers no new rules or marching orders, and from the outset Francis makes plain that no top-down edicts are coming.
Alluding to the diversity and complexity of a global church, Francis effectively pushes decision making downward to bishops and priests, stating that a different country or region “can seek solutions better suited to its culture and sensitive to its traditions and local needs.”
But Francis also makes clear the vision he wants local bishops and priests to follow: as a church that greets families with empathy and comfort rather than with unbending rules and rigid codes of conduct.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/09/world ... 05309&_r=0
There is a beautiful song sung by Jim Reeves - I'D RATHER HAVE JESUS with LYRICS
at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgwGiF0-mlE
If one were to change the word 'Jesus' to Mowla/Imam/ShahPir, then it would sound like a Ginan.
There is much in common between Christianity and Ismailism!
at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgwGiF0-mlE
If one were to change the word 'Jesus' to Mowla/Imam/ShahPir, then it would sound like a Ginan.
There is much in common between Christianity and Ismailism!
-
shivaathervedi
- Posts: 1107
- Joined: Mon Feb 01, 2016 10:39 pm
An excerpt from an article from Washington Post, dated June 22,2016 under captioned ' work begins to try to save Christianity's holiest shrine; Jesus Christ'.
Today, the site thrums with piety, but history knows it is soaked in blood. There have been at least four Christian chapels erected over the site. The first was by Emperor Constantine in the 4th century, who swept aside a pagan temple Hadrian built to the goddess Aphrodite — perhaps a move by Rome to deny early Christians a place of pilgrimage. The Holy Sepulchre was saved by the Muslim conqueror Omar in 638; destroyed by the Egyptian 'Caliph al-Hakim, in 1009; rebuilt by the Crusaders who themselves slaughtered half the city; protected again by the Muslim conqueror Saladin and laid waste again by the fearsome Khwarezmian Turks, whose horsemen rode into the church and lopped off the heads of praying monks.
Today, the site thrums with piety, but history knows it is soaked in blood. There have been at least four Christian chapels erected over the site. The first was by Emperor Constantine in the 4th century, who swept aside a pagan temple Hadrian built to the goddess Aphrodite — perhaps a move by Rome to deny early Christians a place of pilgrimage. The Holy Sepulchre was saved by the Muslim conqueror Omar in 638; destroyed by the Egyptian 'Caliph al-Hakim, in 1009; rebuilt by the Crusaders who themselves slaughtered half the city; protected again by the Muslim conqueror Saladin and laid waste again by the fearsome Khwarezmian Turks, whose horsemen rode into the church and lopped off the heads of praying monks.
Mere Christianity By C.S. Lewis
Online book:
https://www.dacc.edu/assets/pdfs/PCM/me ... ylewis.pdf
Contents:
Book Cover (Front) (Back)
Scan / Edit Notes
Preface
Book I. Right And Wrong As A Clue To The Meaning Of The Universe
1. The Law of Human Nature
2. Some Objections
3. The Reality of the Law
4. What Lies Behind the Law
5. We Have Cause to Be Uneasy
Book II What Christians Believe
1. The Rival Conceptions of God
2. The Invasion
3. The Shocking Alternative
4. The Perfect Penitent
5. The Practical Conclusion
Book III. Christian Behaviour
1. The Three Parts of Morality
2. The "Cardinal Virtues"
3. Social Morality
4. Morality and Psychoanalysis
5. Sexual Morality
6. Christian Marriage
7. Forgiveness
8. The Great Sin
9. Charity
10. Hope
11. Faith
12. Faith
Book IV. Beyond Personality: Or First Steps In The Doctrine Of The Trinity
1. Making and Begetting
2. The Three-Personal God
3. Time and Beyond Time
4. Good Infection
5. The Obstinate Toy Soldiers
6. Two Notes
7. Let's Pretend
8. Is Christianity Hard or Easy?
9. Counting the Cost
10. Nice People or New Men
11. The New Men
Online book:
https://www.dacc.edu/assets/pdfs/PCM/me ... ylewis.pdf
Contents:
Book Cover (Front) (Back)
Scan / Edit Notes
Preface
Book I. Right And Wrong As A Clue To The Meaning Of The Universe
1. The Law of Human Nature
2. Some Objections
3. The Reality of the Law
4. What Lies Behind the Law
5. We Have Cause to Be Uneasy
Book II What Christians Believe
1. The Rival Conceptions of God
2. The Invasion
3. The Shocking Alternative
4. The Perfect Penitent
5. The Practical Conclusion
Book III. Christian Behaviour
1. The Three Parts of Morality
2. The "Cardinal Virtues"
3. Social Morality
4. Morality and Psychoanalysis
5. Sexual Morality
6. Christian Marriage
7. Forgiveness
8. The Great Sin
9. Charity
10. Hope
11. Faith
12. Faith
Book IV. Beyond Personality: Or First Steps In The Doctrine Of The Trinity
1. Making and Begetting
2. The Three-Personal God
3. Time and Beyond Time
4. Good Infection
5. The Obstinate Toy Soldiers
6. Two Notes
7. Let's Pretend
8. Is Christianity Hard or Easy?
9. Counting the Cost
10. Nice People or New Men
11. The New Men
The article below is about the relationship between the 'Church' and the 'State' in the context of Christianity...
The Political Magic of C.S. Lewis
Extract:
I was politically conservative at the time, and believed that my religious faith, carefully understood, should inform my politics. Yet I was also troubled by what I believed was the subordination of Christianity to partisan ideology — the ease with which people took something sacred and turned it into a blunt political weapon. It was only years later that I learned that one of the seminal intellectual figures in my journey toward faith, C. S. Lewis, shared a similar approach and concern.
In 1951, Lewis — the author of “The Chronicles of Narnia,” Oxford don, medievalist, lecturer on philosophy and the leading Christian apologist in the 20th century — declined an offer from Winston Churchill to recommend him for an honorary Commander of the British Empire. “There are always knaves who say, and fools who believe, that my religious writings are all covert anti-Leftist propaganda, and my appearance on the Honours List wd. of course strengthen their hands,” Lewis replied. He would not allow vanity and misplaced political ambitions to discredit his public witness.
As this dispiriting election year has shown, there are many politically prominent Christians today who should think and act more like Lewis.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/opini ... inion&_r=0
The Political Magic of C.S. Lewis
Extract:
I was politically conservative at the time, and believed that my religious faith, carefully understood, should inform my politics. Yet I was also troubled by what I believed was the subordination of Christianity to partisan ideology — the ease with which people took something sacred and turned it into a blunt political weapon. It was only years later that I learned that one of the seminal intellectual figures in my journey toward faith, C. S. Lewis, shared a similar approach and concern.
In 1951, Lewis — the author of “The Chronicles of Narnia,” Oxford don, medievalist, lecturer on philosophy and the leading Christian apologist in the 20th century — declined an offer from Winston Churchill to recommend him for an honorary Commander of the British Empire. “There are always knaves who say, and fools who believe, that my religious writings are all covert anti-Leftist propaganda, and my appearance on the Honours List wd. of course strengthen their hands,” Lewis replied. He would not allow vanity and misplaced political ambitions to discredit his public witness.
As this dispiriting election year has shown, there are many politically prominent Christians today who should think and act more like Lewis.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/opini ... inion&_r=0
Jesus Has Left the Building: Celebrating the Next Reformation
When an anniversary like this rolls around, it’s not too soon to start celebrating. The 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation is just a year away, and will mark the introduction of Protestantism into a Christendom that used to be only Catholic, whether Roman or Greek. Roads parted.
The Reformation democratized church experience; the movement demoted the priest and promoted the people—you were urged to read the scriptures instead of having someone read them for you. The Reformation also reimagined a rowdy and robust sense of grace. You didn’t buy your salvation—you received it by grace, through faith. You had a slogan: sola gratia.
From God, you don’t get what you might deserve—you get what you don’t deserve and can’t possibly purchase.
The Church, argued the reformers, had turned Christianity into a bunch of rules and regulations, rights and wrongs. And it had institutionalized the Holier Spirits. Like the Jesus of sacramental bread and wine, the reformers turned the tables on institutional religion. You can just hear them saying, “I’m spiritual but not religious.” Or, “I don’t like the institutional church or organized religion.” “I am a cultural Christian.” “I am a post-denominational Christian.” Their reformation was revolutionary. They wanted their own ways in their own days—and they got them.
In this next Reformation, grace undermines both the idea of the punitive divine and the anarchy of the individual. Individuals are propelled to great community and great works that come out of grace, not fear.
Today we have the same fossilization of institutional religion, only this time it is us Protestants.
Everywhere you look a church is closing its doors, or becoming a restaurant or a condo or a theater. The denominations that developed to support the new democracies are all but moribund, singing a narrative of decline complete with “reorganizations” and hand-wringing about the good old days when everyone knew what a Lutheran or Presbyterian was. Now most people who still believe with a gracing Spirit don’t really care what they are in the first place.
That applies unless you are the type of conservative Christian who has a theology of blame and shame or what I call “punishmentalism.” Then you still want to “get it right.” The mainlines are the old lines, and the evangelicals’ dogmatism will soon be there as well. Gratia always escapes religious tendrils and chains. It goes underground like “the holy grail,” blooding and chugging along.
The next Reformation in this 499th year of the last one is already in full swing. It is “big God” optional and spirit-friendly. It has a narrative of a great rising from democratic roots. It uses technology to further democratize so-called religion. It is global in its reach—imagining that nobody has the right name for God yet. Not Islam. Not Christianity. Not Judaism. Not Buddhism. Not Lutheranism or the Episcopal Church.
Its best quarrels are whether to use the word “interfaith” or “multifaith” or “multipath.” The next reformation reaches for the God of the cosmos, not just the globe. It is blessedly anti-punishmentalist and only punishes those who punish. It has a wild streak and an even more individualistic or renegade streak. It doesn’t want God in a box. It is fiercely anti-institutional.
In this next Reformation, grace undermines both the idea of the punitive divine and the anarchy of the individual. Individuals are propelled to great community and great works that come out of grace, not fear.
We Protestants have oddly become most well known in a world that no longer understands us by the “Protestant work ethic.” We got so far in bed with capitalism that we had to sneak out. Jesus left the building long ago.
Religion is once again resisting fossilization into warfare or dusty denominations or fundamentalisms or all of the above, causing many people to say they are none of the above.
As we drive into the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017, most churches will celebrate it in October of 2017. Here at Judson, the church I pastor in New York City, we are celebrating the end of the Reformation in its 499th year. (If you want to quarrel about the actual date, read Brand Luther by Andrew Pettigrew. He argues that Luther actually did post the 95 theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517.)
We think the old Protestant impulse is a threat and see a new Reformation already underway. Thus we are celebrating the first year of the next Reformation and letting the old go by.
Christians are no longer what we started out as: a band of questioning Jews and Greeks who met a man named Jesus. Nor are we the holy Roman Catholic Church with global offices in many countries. We are people who protested those ways on behalf of new ones. We read our own Bible, think our own thoughts, and enjoy the priesthood of all believers.
Religion is once again resisting fossilization into warfare or dusty denominations or fundamentalisms or all of the above—causing many people to say they are none of the above.
What is consistent is religious reformation. From our beginnings, we questioned religious fossilization. Then we questioned it again. And now many of us deeply sense that we are not really in the 500th year of the Protestant Reformation, we are in the first years of a new global reformation of religion. Call it spiritual but not religious. Call it fed up with the old ways and the old days. Or call it the multifaith movement, where we know there is more than one name for God and are desperate for the peace that passes tribal understanding.
http://religiondispatches.org/jesus-has ... 8-84570085
When an anniversary like this rolls around, it’s not too soon to start celebrating. The 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation is just a year away, and will mark the introduction of Protestantism into a Christendom that used to be only Catholic, whether Roman or Greek. Roads parted.
The Reformation democratized church experience; the movement demoted the priest and promoted the people—you were urged to read the scriptures instead of having someone read them for you. The Reformation also reimagined a rowdy and robust sense of grace. You didn’t buy your salvation—you received it by grace, through faith. You had a slogan: sola gratia.
From God, you don’t get what you might deserve—you get what you don’t deserve and can’t possibly purchase.
The Church, argued the reformers, had turned Christianity into a bunch of rules and regulations, rights and wrongs. And it had institutionalized the Holier Spirits. Like the Jesus of sacramental bread and wine, the reformers turned the tables on institutional religion. You can just hear them saying, “I’m spiritual but not religious.” Or, “I don’t like the institutional church or organized religion.” “I am a cultural Christian.” “I am a post-denominational Christian.” Their reformation was revolutionary. They wanted their own ways in their own days—and they got them.
In this next Reformation, grace undermines both the idea of the punitive divine and the anarchy of the individual. Individuals are propelled to great community and great works that come out of grace, not fear.
Today we have the same fossilization of institutional religion, only this time it is us Protestants.
Everywhere you look a church is closing its doors, or becoming a restaurant or a condo or a theater. The denominations that developed to support the new democracies are all but moribund, singing a narrative of decline complete with “reorganizations” and hand-wringing about the good old days when everyone knew what a Lutheran or Presbyterian was. Now most people who still believe with a gracing Spirit don’t really care what they are in the first place.
That applies unless you are the type of conservative Christian who has a theology of blame and shame or what I call “punishmentalism.” Then you still want to “get it right.” The mainlines are the old lines, and the evangelicals’ dogmatism will soon be there as well. Gratia always escapes religious tendrils and chains. It goes underground like “the holy grail,” blooding and chugging along.
The next Reformation in this 499th year of the last one is already in full swing. It is “big God” optional and spirit-friendly. It has a narrative of a great rising from democratic roots. It uses technology to further democratize so-called religion. It is global in its reach—imagining that nobody has the right name for God yet. Not Islam. Not Christianity. Not Judaism. Not Buddhism. Not Lutheranism or the Episcopal Church.
Its best quarrels are whether to use the word “interfaith” or “multifaith” or “multipath.” The next reformation reaches for the God of the cosmos, not just the globe. It is blessedly anti-punishmentalist and only punishes those who punish. It has a wild streak and an even more individualistic or renegade streak. It doesn’t want God in a box. It is fiercely anti-institutional.
In this next Reformation, grace undermines both the idea of the punitive divine and the anarchy of the individual. Individuals are propelled to great community and great works that come out of grace, not fear.
We Protestants have oddly become most well known in a world that no longer understands us by the “Protestant work ethic.” We got so far in bed with capitalism that we had to sneak out. Jesus left the building long ago.
Religion is once again resisting fossilization into warfare or dusty denominations or fundamentalisms or all of the above, causing many people to say they are none of the above.
As we drive into the 500th anniversary of the Reformation in 2017, most churches will celebrate it in October of 2017. Here at Judson, the church I pastor in New York City, we are celebrating the end of the Reformation in its 499th year. (If you want to quarrel about the actual date, read Brand Luther by Andrew Pettigrew. He argues that Luther actually did post the 95 theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517.)
We think the old Protestant impulse is a threat and see a new Reformation already underway. Thus we are celebrating the first year of the next Reformation and letting the old go by.
Christians are no longer what we started out as: a band of questioning Jews and Greeks who met a man named Jesus. Nor are we the holy Roman Catholic Church with global offices in many countries. We are people who protested those ways on behalf of new ones. We read our own Bible, think our own thoughts, and enjoy the priesthood of all believers.
Religion is once again resisting fossilization into warfare or dusty denominations or fundamentalisms or all of the above—causing many people to say they are none of the above.
What is consistent is religious reformation. From our beginnings, we questioned religious fossilization. Then we questioned it again. And now many of us deeply sense that we are not really in the 500th year of the Protestant Reformation, we are in the first years of a new global reformation of religion. Call it spiritual but not religious. Call it fed up with the old ways and the old days. Or call it the multifaith movement, where we know there is more than one name for God and are desperate for the peace that passes tribal understanding.
http://religiondispatches.org/jesus-has ... 8-84570085
Crypt Believed to Be Jesus’ Tomb Opened for First Time in Centuries
JERUSALEM — The only mystical power visible was the burning light from seven tapered candles. And yet for ages, the tomb that sits at the center of history has captured the imaginations of millions around the world.
For centuries, no one looked inside — until last week, when a crew of specialists opened the simple tomb in Jerusalem’s Old City and found the limestone burial bed where tradition says the body of Jesus Christ lay after his crucifixion and before his resurrection.
“We saw where Jesus Christ was laid down,” Father Isidoros Fakitsas, the superior of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, told me. “Before, nobody has.” Or at least nobody alive today. “We have the history, the tradition. Now we saw with our own eyes the actual burial place of Jesus Christ.”
For 60 hours, they collected samples, took photographs and reinforced the tomb before resealing it, perhaps for centuries to come. By the time I visited one dark night this week, the tomb had already been closed again. In the end, just about 50 or so priests, monks, scientists and workers had peered inside, and they seem likely to be the only ones on the planet who will do so in our lifetimes.
The tomb believed to be Christ’s was opened as part of a complex renovation of the shrine that was built around it long after his death in what is today known as the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, perhaps Christianity’s holiest site. Scholars hope to study what they found to determine more about the event that spawned one of the world’s great religions.
Pilgrims have been flocking to the church for generations, sometimes as many as 5,000 a day. To get to the tomb, many walk along the Via Dolorosa, the winding path through Jerusalem’s Old City where Jesus is said to have been forced to bear his cross. Vendors like those lining the way today would not have been there then, but otherwise not much has changed.
The church was first built where the tomb was discovered in the fourth century during the reign of Constantine, the first Roman emperor to officially convert to Christianity. It was sacked after Jerusalem fell to the Persians in the seventh century, then rebuilt and later destroyed by Muslim caliphs in the 11th century. After the Crusaders captured Jerusalem, the church was restored in the 12th century but burned to the ground in the 19th century and then rebuilt yet again.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/04/world ... d=71987722
JERUSALEM — The only mystical power visible was the burning light from seven tapered candles. And yet for ages, the tomb that sits at the center of history has captured the imaginations of millions around the world.
For centuries, no one looked inside — until last week, when a crew of specialists opened the simple tomb in Jerusalem’s Old City and found the limestone burial bed where tradition says the body of Jesus Christ lay after his crucifixion and before his resurrection.
“We saw where Jesus Christ was laid down,” Father Isidoros Fakitsas, the superior of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, told me. “Before, nobody has.” Or at least nobody alive today. “We have the history, the tradition. Now we saw with our own eyes the actual burial place of Jesus Christ.”
For 60 hours, they collected samples, took photographs and reinforced the tomb before resealing it, perhaps for centuries to come. By the time I visited one dark night this week, the tomb had already been closed again. In the end, just about 50 or so priests, monks, scientists and workers had peered inside, and they seem likely to be the only ones on the planet who will do so in our lifetimes.
The tomb believed to be Christ’s was opened as part of a complex renovation of the shrine that was built around it long after his death in what is today known as the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, perhaps Christianity’s holiest site. Scholars hope to study what they found to determine more about the event that spawned one of the world’s great religions.
Pilgrims have been flocking to the church for generations, sometimes as many as 5,000 a day. To get to the tomb, many walk along the Via Dolorosa, the winding path through Jerusalem’s Old City where Jesus is said to have been forced to bear his cross. Vendors like those lining the way today would not have been there then, but otherwise not much has changed.
The church was first built where the tomb was discovered in the fourth century during the reign of Constantine, the first Roman emperor to officially convert to Christianity. It was sacked after Jerusalem fell to the Persians in the seventh century, then rebuilt and later destroyed by Muslim caliphs in the 11th century. After the Crusaders captured Jerusalem, the church was restored in the 12th century but burned to the ground in the 19th century and then rebuilt yet again.
More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/04/world ... d=71987722
Am I a Christian, Pastor Timothy Keller?
What does it mean to be a Christian in the 21st century? Can one be a Christian and yet doubt the virgin birth or the Resurrection? I put these questions to the Rev. Timothy Keller, an evangelical Christian pastor and best-selling author who is among the most prominent evangelical thinkers today. Our conversation has been edited for space and clarity.
KRISTOF Tim, I deeply admire Jesus and his message, but am also skeptical of themes that have been integral to Christianity — the virgin birth, the Resurrection, the miracles and so on. Since this is the Christmas season, let’s start with the virgin birth. Is that an essential belief, or can I mix and match?
KELLER If something is truly integral to a body of thought, you can’t remove it without destabilizing the whole thing. A religion can’t be whatever we desire it to be. If I’m a member of the board of Greenpeace and I come out and say climate change is a hoax, they will ask me to resign. I could call them narrow-minded, but they would rightly say that there have to be some boundaries for dissent or you couldn’t have a cohesive, integrated organization. And they’d be right. It’s the same with any religious faith.
But the earliest accounts of Jesus’ life, like the Gospel of Mark and Paul’s letter to the Galatians, don’t even mention the virgin birth. And the reference in Luke to the virgin birth was written in a different kind of Greek and was probably added later. So isn’t there room for skepticism?
If it were simply a legend that could be dismissed, it would damage the fabric of the Christian message. Luc Ferry, looking at the Gospel of John’s account of Jesus’ birth into the world, said this taught that the power behind the whole universe was not just an impersonal cosmic principle but a real person who could be known and loved. That scandalized Greek and Roman philosophers but was revolutionary in the history of human thought. It led to a new emphasis on the importance of the individual person and on love as the supreme virtue, because Jesus was not just a great human being, but the pre-existing Creator God, miraculously come to earth as a human being.
And the Resurrection? Must it really be taken literally?
Jesus’ teaching was not the main point of his mission. He came to save people through his death for sin and his resurrection. So his important ethical teaching only makes sense when you don’t separate it from these historic doctrines. If the Resurrection is a genuine reality, it explains why Jesus can say that the poor and the meek will “inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5). St. Paul said without a real resurrection, Christianity is useless (1 Corinthians 15:19).
But let me push back. As you know better than I, the Scriptures themselves indicate that the Resurrection wasn’t so clear cut. Mary Magdalene didn’t initially recognize the risen Jesus, nor did some disciples, and the gospels are fuzzy about Jesus’ literal presence — especially Mark, the first gospel to be written. So if you take these passages as meaning that Jesus literally rose from the dead, why the fuzziness?
I wouldn’t characterize the New Testament descriptions of the risen Jesus as fuzzy. They are very concrete in their details. Yes, Mary doesn’t recognize Jesus at first, but then she does. The two disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24) also don’t recognize Jesus at first. Their experience was analogous to meeting someone you last saw as a child 20 years ago. Many historians have argued that this has the ring of eyewitness authenticity. If you were making up a story about the Resurrection, would you have imagined that Jesus was altered enough to not be identified immediately but not so much that he couldn’t be recognized after a few moments? As for Mark’s gospel, yes, it ends very abruptly without getting to the Resurrection, but most scholars believe that the last part of the book or scroll was lost to us.
Skeptics should consider another surprising aspect of these accounts. Mary Magdalene is named as the first eyewitness of the risen Christ, and other women are mentioned as the earliest eyewitnesses in the other gospels, too. This was a time in which the testimony of women was not admissible evidence in courts because of their low social status. The early pagan critics of Christianity latched on to this and dismissed the Resurrection as the word of “hysterical females.” If the gospel writers were inventing these narratives, they would never have put women in them. So they didn’t invent them.
The Christian Church is pretty much inexplicable if we don’t believe in a physical resurrection. N.T. Wright has argued in “The Resurrection of the Son of God” that it is difficult to come up with any historically plausible alternate explanation for the birth of the Christian movement. It is hard to account for thousands of Jews virtually overnight worshiping a human being as divine when everything about their religion and culture conditioned them to believe that was not only impossible, but deeply heretical. The best explanation for the change was that many hundreds of them had actually seen Jesus with their own eyes.
So where does that leave people like me? Am I a Christian? A Jesus follower? A secular Christian? Can I be a Christian while doubting the Resurrection?
I wouldn’t draw any conclusion about an individual without talking to him or her at length. But, in general, if you don’t accept the Resurrection or other foundational beliefs as defined by the Apostles’ Creed, I’d say you are on the outside of the boundary.
Tim, people sometimes say that the answer is faith. But, as a journalist, I’ve found skepticism useful. If I hear something that sounds superstitious, I want eyewitnesses and evidence. That’s the attitude we take toward Islam and Hinduism and Taoism, so why suspend skepticism in our own faith tradition?
I agree. We should require evidence and good reasoning, and we should not write off other religions as ‘superstitious’ and then fail to question our more familiar Jewish or Christian faith tradition.
But I don’t want to contrast faith with skepticism so sharply that they are seen to be opposites. They aren’t. I think we all base our lives on both reason and faith. For example, my faith is to some degree based on reasoning that the existence of God makes the most sense of what we see in nature, history and experience. Thomas Nagel recently wrote that the thoroughly materialistic view of nature can’t account for human consciousness, cognition and moral values. That’s part of the reasoning behind my faith. So my faith is based on logic and argument.
In the end, however, no one can demonstrably prove the primary things human beings base their lives on, whether we are talking about the existence of God or the importance of human rights and equality. Nietzsche argued that the humanistic values of most secular people, such as the importance of the individual, human rights and responsibility for the poor, have no place in a completely materialistic universe. He even accused people holding humanistic values as being “covert Christians” because it required a leap of faith to hold to them. We must all live by faith.
I’ll grudgingly concede your point: My belief in human rights and morality may be more about faith than logic. But is it really analogous to believe in things that seem consistent with science and modernity, like human rights, and those that seem inconsistent, like a virgin birth or resurrection?
I don’t see why faith should be seen as inconsistent with science. There is nothing illogical about miracles if a Creator God exists. If a God exists who is big enough to create the universe in all its complexity and vastness, why should a mere miracle be such a mental stretch? To prove that miracles could not happen, you would have to know beyond a doubt that God does not exist. But that is not something anyone can prove.
Science must always assume that an effect has a repeatable, natural cause. That is its methodology. Imagine, then, for the sake of argument that a miracle actually occurred. Science would have no way to confirm a nonrepeatable, supernatural cause. Alvin Plantinga argued that to say that there must be a scientific cause for any apparently miraculous phenomenon is like insisting that your lost keys must be under the streetlight because that’s the only place you can see.
Can I ask: Do you ever have doubts? Do most people of faith struggle at times over these kinds of questions?
Yes and yes. In the Bible, the Book of Jude (Chapter 1, verse 22) tells Christians to “be merciful to those who doubt.” We should not encourage people to simply stifle all doubts. Doubts force us to think things out and re-examine our reasons, and that can, in the end, lead to stronger faith.
I’d also encourage doubters of religious teachings to doubt the faith assumptions that often drive their skepticism. While Christians should be open to questioning their faith assumptions, I would hope that secular skeptics would also question their own. Neither statement — “There is no supernatural reality beyond this world” and “There is a transcendent reality beyond this material world” — can be proven empirically, nor is either self-evident to most people. So they both entail faith. Secular people should be as open to questions and doubts about their positions as religious people.
What I admire most about Christianity is the amazing good work it inspires people to do around the world. But I’m troubled by the evangelical notion that people go to heaven only if they have a direct relationship with Jesus. Doesn’t that imply that billions of people — Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, Hindus — are consigned to hell because they grew up in non-Christian families around the world? That Gandhi is in hell?
The Bible makes categorical statements that you can’t be saved except through faith in Jesus (John 14:6; Acts 4:11-12). I’m very sympathetic to your concerns, however, because this seems so exclusive and unfair. There are many views of this issue, so my thoughts on this cannot be considered the Christian response. But here they are:
You imply that really good people (e.g., Gandhi) should also be saved, not just Christians. The problem is that Christians do not believe anyone can be saved by being good. If you don’t come to God through faith in what Christ has done, you would be approaching on the basis of your own goodness. This would, ironically, actually be more exclusive and unfair, since so often those that we tend to think of as “bad” — the abusers, the haters, the feckless and selfish — have themselves often had abusive and brutal backgrounds.
Christians believe that it is those who admit their weakness and need for a savior who get salvation. If access to God is through the grace of Jesus, then anyone can receive eternal life instantly. This is why “born again” Christianity will always give hope and spread among the “wretched of the earth.”
I can imagine someone saying, “Well, why can’t God just accept everyone — universal salvation?” Then you create a different problem with fairness. It means God wouldn’t really care about injustice and evil.
There is still the question of fairness regarding people who have grown up away from any real exposure to Christianity. The Bible is clear about two things — that salvation must be through grace and faith in Christ, and that God is always fair and just in all his dealings. What it doesn’t directly tell us is exactly how both of those things can be true together. I don’t think it is insurmountable. Just because I can’t see a way doesn’t prove there cannot be any such way. If we have a God big enough to deserve being called God, then we have a God big enough to reconcile both justice and love.
Tim, thanks for a great conversation. And, whatever my doubts, this I believe in: Merry Christmas!
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/opini ... d=71987722
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Reaction to the article above
The Diversity of Christian Belief
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/03/opini ... ef=opinion
What does it mean to be a Christian in the 21st century? Can one be a Christian and yet doubt the virgin birth or the Resurrection? I put these questions to the Rev. Timothy Keller, an evangelical Christian pastor and best-selling author who is among the most prominent evangelical thinkers today. Our conversation has been edited for space and clarity.
KRISTOF Tim, I deeply admire Jesus and his message, but am also skeptical of themes that have been integral to Christianity — the virgin birth, the Resurrection, the miracles and so on. Since this is the Christmas season, let’s start with the virgin birth. Is that an essential belief, or can I mix and match?
KELLER If something is truly integral to a body of thought, you can’t remove it without destabilizing the whole thing. A religion can’t be whatever we desire it to be. If I’m a member of the board of Greenpeace and I come out and say climate change is a hoax, they will ask me to resign. I could call them narrow-minded, but they would rightly say that there have to be some boundaries for dissent or you couldn’t have a cohesive, integrated organization. And they’d be right. It’s the same with any religious faith.
But the earliest accounts of Jesus’ life, like the Gospel of Mark and Paul’s letter to the Galatians, don’t even mention the virgin birth. And the reference in Luke to the virgin birth was written in a different kind of Greek and was probably added later. So isn’t there room for skepticism?
If it were simply a legend that could be dismissed, it would damage the fabric of the Christian message. Luc Ferry, looking at the Gospel of John’s account of Jesus’ birth into the world, said this taught that the power behind the whole universe was not just an impersonal cosmic principle but a real person who could be known and loved. That scandalized Greek and Roman philosophers but was revolutionary in the history of human thought. It led to a new emphasis on the importance of the individual person and on love as the supreme virtue, because Jesus was not just a great human being, but the pre-existing Creator God, miraculously come to earth as a human being.
And the Resurrection? Must it really be taken literally?
Jesus’ teaching was not the main point of his mission. He came to save people through his death for sin and his resurrection. So his important ethical teaching only makes sense when you don’t separate it from these historic doctrines. If the Resurrection is a genuine reality, it explains why Jesus can say that the poor and the meek will “inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5). St. Paul said without a real resurrection, Christianity is useless (1 Corinthians 15:19).
But let me push back. As you know better than I, the Scriptures themselves indicate that the Resurrection wasn’t so clear cut. Mary Magdalene didn’t initially recognize the risen Jesus, nor did some disciples, and the gospels are fuzzy about Jesus’ literal presence — especially Mark, the first gospel to be written. So if you take these passages as meaning that Jesus literally rose from the dead, why the fuzziness?
I wouldn’t characterize the New Testament descriptions of the risen Jesus as fuzzy. They are very concrete in their details. Yes, Mary doesn’t recognize Jesus at first, but then she does. The two disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24) also don’t recognize Jesus at first. Their experience was analogous to meeting someone you last saw as a child 20 years ago. Many historians have argued that this has the ring of eyewitness authenticity. If you were making up a story about the Resurrection, would you have imagined that Jesus was altered enough to not be identified immediately but not so much that he couldn’t be recognized after a few moments? As for Mark’s gospel, yes, it ends very abruptly without getting to the Resurrection, but most scholars believe that the last part of the book or scroll was lost to us.
Skeptics should consider another surprising aspect of these accounts. Mary Magdalene is named as the first eyewitness of the risen Christ, and other women are mentioned as the earliest eyewitnesses in the other gospels, too. This was a time in which the testimony of women was not admissible evidence in courts because of their low social status. The early pagan critics of Christianity latched on to this and dismissed the Resurrection as the word of “hysterical females.” If the gospel writers were inventing these narratives, they would never have put women in them. So they didn’t invent them.
The Christian Church is pretty much inexplicable if we don’t believe in a physical resurrection. N.T. Wright has argued in “The Resurrection of the Son of God” that it is difficult to come up with any historically plausible alternate explanation for the birth of the Christian movement. It is hard to account for thousands of Jews virtually overnight worshiping a human being as divine when everything about their religion and culture conditioned them to believe that was not only impossible, but deeply heretical. The best explanation for the change was that many hundreds of them had actually seen Jesus with their own eyes.
So where does that leave people like me? Am I a Christian? A Jesus follower? A secular Christian? Can I be a Christian while doubting the Resurrection?
I wouldn’t draw any conclusion about an individual without talking to him or her at length. But, in general, if you don’t accept the Resurrection or other foundational beliefs as defined by the Apostles’ Creed, I’d say you are on the outside of the boundary.
Tim, people sometimes say that the answer is faith. But, as a journalist, I’ve found skepticism useful. If I hear something that sounds superstitious, I want eyewitnesses and evidence. That’s the attitude we take toward Islam and Hinduism and Taoism, so why suspend skepticism in our own faith tradition?
I agree. We should require evidence and good reasoning, and we should not write off other religions as ‘superstitious’ and then fail to question our more familiar Jewish or Christian faith tradition.
But I don’t want to contrast faith with skepticism so sharply that they are seen to be opposites. They aren’t. I think we all base our lives on both reason and faith. For example, my faith is to some degree based on reasoning that the existence of God makes the most sense of what we see in nature, history and experience. Thomas Nagel recently wrote that the thoroughly materialistic view of nature can’t account for human consciousness, cognition and moral values. That’s part of the reasoning behind my faith. So my faith is based on logic and argument.
In the end, however, no one can demonstrably prove the primary things human beings base their lives on, whether we are talking about the existence of God or the importance of human rights and equality. Nietzsche argued that the humanistic values of most secular people, such as the importance of the individual, human rights and responsibility for the poor, have no place in a completely materialistic universe. He even accused people holding humanistic values as being “covert Christians” because it required a leap of faith to hold to them. We must all live by faith.
I’ll grudgingly concede your point: My belief in human rights and morality may be more about faith than logic. But is it really analogous to believe in things that seem consistent with science and modernity, like human rights, and those that seem inconsistent, like a virgin birth or resurrection?
I don’t see why faith should be seen as inconsistent with science. There is nothing illogical about miracles if a Creator God exists. If a God exists who is big enough to create the universe in all its complexity and vastness, why should a mere miracle be such a mental stretch? To prove that miracles could not happen, you would have to know beyond a doubt that God does not exist. But that is not something anyone can prove.
Science must always assume that an effect has a repeatable, natural cause. That is its methodology. Imagine, then, for the sake of argument that a miracle actually occurred. Science would have no way to confirm a nonrepeatable, supernatural cause. Alvin Plantinga argued that to say that there must be a scientific cause for any apparently miraculous phenomenon is like insisting that your lost keys must be under the streetlight because that’s the only place you can see.
Can I ask: Do you ever have doubts? Do most people of faith struggle at times over these kinds of questions?
Yes and yes. In the Bible, the Book of Jude (Chapter 1, verse 22) tells Christians to “be merciful to those who doubt.” We should not encourage people to simply stifle all doubts. Doubts force us to think things out and re-examine our reasons, and that can, in the end, lead to stronger faith.
I’d also encourage doubters of religious teachings to doubt the faith assumptions that often drive their skepticism. While Christians should be open to questioning their faith assumptions, I would hope that secular skeptics would also question their own. Neither statement — “There is no supernatural reality beyond this world” and “There is a transcendent reality beyond this material world” — can be proven empirically, nor is either self-evident to most people. So they both entail faith. Secular people should be as open to questions and doubts about their positions as religious people.
What I admire most about Christianity is the amazing good work it inspires people to do around the world. But I’m troubled by the evangelical notion that people go to heaven only if they have a direct relationship with Jesus. Doesn’t that imply that billions of people — Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, Hindus — are consigned to hell because they grew up in non-Christian families around the world? That Gandhi is in hell?
The Bible makes categorical statements that you can’t be saved except through faith in Jesus (John 14:6; Acts 4:11-12). I’m very sympathetic to your concerns, however, because this seems so exclusive and unfair. There are many views of this issue, so my thoughts on this cannot be considered the Christian response. But here they are:
You imply that really good people (e.g., Gandhi) should also be saved, not just Christians. The problem is that Christians do not believe anyone can be saved by being good. If you don’t come to God through faith in what Christ has done, you would be approaching on the basis of your own goodness. This would, ironically, actually be more exclusive and unfair, since so often those that we tend to think of as “bad” — the abusers, the haters, the feckless and selfish — have themselves often had abusive and brutal backgrounds.
Christians believe that it is those who admit their weakness and need for a savior who get salvation. If access to God is through the grace of Jesus, then anyone can receive eternal life instantly. This is why “born again” Christianity will always give hope and spread among the “wretched of the earth.”
I can imagine someone saying, “Well, why can’t God just accept everyone — universal salvation?” Then you create a different problem with fairness. It means God wouldn’t really care about injustice and evil.
There is still the question of fairness regarding people who have grown up away from any real exposure to Christianity. The Bible is clear about two things — that salvation must be through grace and faith in Christ, and that God is always fair and just in all his dealings. What it doesn’t directly tell us is exactly how both of those things can be true together. I don’t think it is insurmountable. Just because I can’t see a way doesn’t prove there cannot be any such way. If we have a God big enough to deserve being called God, then we have a God big enough to reconcile both justice and love.
Tim, thanks for a great conversation. And, whatever my doubts, this I believe in: Merry Christmas!
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/23/opini ... d=71987722
******
Reaction to the article above
The Diversity of Christian Belief
http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/03/opini ... ef=opinion
Fewer and lonelier
Why the celibate priesthood is in crisis
The Catholic priesthood and marriage
Erasmus
Jan 22nd 2017, 13:27
by ERASMUS
IN RECENT days, a group of 11 distinguished veterans of the Catholic priesthood in the German city of Cologne, a stronghold of the church, issued an open letter to mark the 50th anniversary of their ordination. Did they use the occasion to ponder aloud the mysteries of their creed, or the wisdom gained in decades of service to the faithful? No. They simply issued a heart-felt cry of pain over their own solitude, a condition they would not wish on future cohorts of clerics. Imploring the pope to allow priests to marry, they wrote:
“
What moves us is the experience of loneliness. As elderly people who are unmarried because our office required this from us, we feel it vividly on some days after 50 years in the job. We agreed to this [form of] clerical life because of our job, we did not choose it.”
The isolation experienced by elderly clerics, especially in wealthy, liberal societies, is one symptom of a crisis in the Catholic priesthood. They were ordained at a time when their status as men dedicated to the church was understood and revered, sometimes to an unhealthy degree. In that era, priests could look forward an old age in which the respect and support of the faithful might compensate to some degree for the absence of any life-partner. With the standing (and finances) of the clergy damaged, in many countries, by child-abuse scandals and shabby attempts to cover them up, the twilight years are a harder prospect than ever for priests on their own, even those who have led exemplary lives. Small wonder that fewer and fewer young men want to walk the same stony path.
As measured by the number of faithful, global Catholicism is faring decently. The flock is still growing in the developing world and migration from poor countries is reinvigorating tired congregations in the West. But the priesthood, with its hard calling of celibacy, is in freefall in many places. In America, the number of Catholics connected to a parish has risen over the past half-century from 46m to 67m, while the number of priests has fallen from 59,000 to 38,000. In France, about 800 priests die every year while 100 are ordained. Priest numbers there have fallen from 29,000 in 1995 to about 15,000. On present trends they may stabilise at less than 6,000.
The result is that many jobs once done by priests, like taking funerals or ministering to the sick, are now done by lay-people or by deacons who may be married. But certain functions, including the consecration of bread and wine which is Christianity’s most important rite, can only be performed by a priest.
And in Latin America, the paucity of clerics is one factor driving the devout to switch from Catholicism to Pentecostalism and other non-conformist creeds, where there are plenty of pastors to serve their needs. Leonardo Boff, the left-wing Brazilian theologian who left the priesthood in 1992 and then married, has described as “catastrophic” a situation where 18,000 priests in his country serve 140m Catholics. He predicts that Pope Francis will soon be obliged to allow married priests, on an experimental basis, in Brazil alone.
Austen Ivereigh, a biographer of the pope, has noted that next year a synod of bishops will consider the crisis in priestly vocations. But Pope Francis is already coping with high-level resistance to the outcome of the previous synod, simply because it cautiously held out the prospect people who divorce and remarry might be readmitted to holy communion. In some ways, the question of allowing priests to wed should be easier. As is often pointed out, the Catholic church does already have a small minority of married priests, including Eastern-rite Catholics and former Anglican clerics. But the decision-makers are invested in the status quo; the current bishop of Cologne is among those who think the celibacy rule should remain.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/ ... n/NA/email
Why the celibate priesthood is in crisis
The Catholic priesthood and marriage
Erasmus
Jan 22nd 2017, 13:27
by ERASMUS
IN RECENT days, a group of 11 distinguished veterans of the Catholic priesthood in the German city of Cologne, a stronghold of the church, issued an open letter to mark the 50th anniversary of their ordination. Did they use the occasion to ponder aloud the mysteries of their creed, or the wisdom gained in decades of service to the faithful? No. They simply issued a heart-felt cry of pain over their own solitude, a condition they would not wish on future cohorts of clerics. Imploring the pope to allow priests to marry, they wrote:
“
What moves us is the experience of loneliness. As elderly people who are unmarried because our office required this from us, we feel it vividly on some days after 50 years in the job. We agreed to this [form of] clerical life because of our job, we did not choose it.”
The isolation experienced by elderly clerics, especially in wealthy, liberal societies, is one symptom of a crisis in the Catholic priesthood. They were ordained at a time when their status as men dedicated to the church was understood and revered, sometimes to an unhealthy degree. In that era, priests could look forward an old age in which the respect and support of the faithful might compensate to some degree for the absence of any life-partner. With the standing (and finances) of the clergy damaged, in many countries, by child-abuse scandals and shabby attempts to cover them up, the twilight years are a harder prospect than ever for priests on their own, even those who have led exemplary lives. Small wonder that fewer and fewer young men want to walk the same stony path.
As measured by the number of faithful, global Catholicism is faring decently. The flock is still growing in the developing world and migration from poor countries is reinvigorating tired congregations in the West. But the priesthood, with its hard calling of celibacy, is in freefall in many places. In America, the number of Catholics connected to a parish has risen over the past half-century from 46m to 67m, while the number of priests has fallen from 59,000 to 38,000. In France, about 800 priests die every year while 100 are ordained. Priest numbers there have fallen from 29,000 in 1995 to about 15,000. On present trends they may stabilise at less than 6,000.
The result is that many jobs once done by priests, like taking funerals or ministering to the sick, are now done by lay-people or by deacons who may be married. But certain functions, including the consecration of bread and wine which is Christianity’s most important rite, can only be performed by a priest.
And in Latin America, the paucity of clerics is one factor driving the devout to switch from Catholicism to Pentecostalism and other non-conformist creeds, where there are plenty of pastors to serve their needs. Leonardo Boff, the left-wing Brazilian theologian who left the priesthood in 1992 and then married, has described as “catastrophic” a situation where 18,000 priests in his country serve 140m Catholics. He predicts that Pope Francis will soon be obliged to allow married priests, on an experimental basis, in Brazil alone.
Austen Ivereigh, a biographer of the pope, has noted that next year a synod of bishops will consider the crisis in priestly vocations. But Pope Francis is already coping with high-level resistance to the outcome of the previous synod, simply because it cautiously held out the prospect people who divorce and remarry might be readmitted to holy communion. In some ways, the question of allowing priests to wed should be easier. As is often pointed out, the Catholic church does already have a small minority of married priests, including Eastern-rite Catholics and former Anglican clerics. But the decision-makers are invested in the status quo; the current bishop of Cologne is among those who think the celibacy rule should remain.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/erasmus/ ... n/NA/email
Can Art Save Us From Fundamentalism?
In his new book, religious studies scholar Philip S. Francis uses personal stories from young evangelicals to explore how one’s experiences with art can dramatically reorient Christian beliefs and practices.
What inspired you to write When Art Disrupts Religion?
My obsession with one big question: can art save us from fundamentalism? I was reading all kinds of aesthetic theory about art’s “disruptive capacities,” its unique ability to unsettle our preconceived notions of the world and ourselves. I decided to test the theory against the lived experience of people who had grown up with deeply engrained religious beliefs and convictions—with a focus on conservative American evangelicals. Could art disrupt even that? I tracked down hundreds of former evangelicals who had left the fold through the intervention of the arts, and I got deep into the weeds of their experience. Their stories shed brilliant light on the complex ways that art can function in the process of upending and reimagining one’s beliefs. In a more general sense, they can teach us a lot about the role of art in education and social life.
People often ask me, “How did you track these people down?” And I always say, “I can pick the post-evangelicals out of a random crowd from a distance of 20 yards.” But the truth is I found my participants at two very unique field sites.
More...
http://religiondispatches.org/can-art-s ... c-84570085[/i]
In his new book, religious studies scholar Philip S. Francis uses personal stories from young evangelicals to explore how one’s experiences with art can dramatically reorient Christian beliefs and practices.
What inspired you to write When Art Disrupts Religion?
My obsession with one big question: can art save us from fundamentalism? I was reading all kinds of aesthetic theory about art’s “disruptive capacities,” its unique ability to unsettle our preconceived notions of the world and ourselves. I decided to test the theory against the lived experience of people who had grown up with deeply engrained religious beliefs and convictions—with a focus on conservative American evangelicals. Could art disrupt even that? I tracked down hundreds of former evangelicals who had left the fold through the intervention of the arts, and I got deep into the weeds of their experience. Their stories shed brilliant light on the complex ways that art can function in the process of upending and reimagining one’s beliefs. In a more general sense, they can teach us a lot about the role of art in education and social life.
People often ask me, “How did you track these people down?” And I always say, “I can pick the post-evangelicals out of a random crowd from a distance of 20 yards.” But the truth is I found my participants at two very unique field sites.
More...
http://religiondispatches.org/can-art-s ... c-84570085[/i]
Why Catholic priests practise celibacy
The rules date from the Middle Ages
IN AN interview with a German magazine earlier this month, Pope Francis suggested that he would be open to the idea of allowing married men to become priests. Such a change, though momentous, would be a return to, rather than a break from, early Christian tradition: nowhere does the New Testament explicitly require priests to be celibate. For the first thousand years of Christianity it was not uncommon for priests to have families. The first pope, St Peter, was a married man; many early popes had children. How did celibacy become part of the Catholic tradition?
Celibacy is one of the biggest acts of self-sacrifice a Catholic priest is called upon to make, forgoing spouse, progeny and sexual fulfilment for his relationship with parishioners and God. According to the Catholic Church’s Code of Canon Law celibacy is a “special gift of God” which allows practitioners to follow more closely the example of Christ, who was chaste. Another reason is that when a priest enters into service to God, the church becomes his highest calling. If he were to have a family there would be the potential for conflict between his spiritual and familial duties. The Vatican regards it as being easier for unattached men to commit to the church, as they have more time for devotion and fewer distractions.
The earliest written reference to celibacy comes from 305AD at the Spanish Council of Elvira, a local assembly of clergymen who met to discuss matters pertaining to the church. Canon 33 forbids clerics in the church—bishops, priests and deacons—from having sexual relations with their wives and from having children, though not from entering into marriage. It was not until ecumenical meetings of the Catholic Church at the First and Second Lateran councils in 1123 and 1139 that priests were explicitly forbidden from marrying. Eliminating the prospect of marriage had the added benefit of ensuring that children or wives of priests did not make claims on property acquired throughout a priest’s life, which thus could be retained by the church. It took centuries for the practice of celibacy to become widespread, but it eventually became the norm in the Western Catholic church.
Despite the decrees from the Middle Ages, celibacy is still a “discipline” of the church, which can be changed, rather than a “dogma”, or a divinely revealed truth from God which cannot be altered. As the world has changed, the Church has had a harder time recruiting priests. Numbers have been dropping: between 1970 and 2014 the world’s Catholic population grew from 654m to 1.23bn, while the number of priests declined from 420,000 to 414,000. Some prospective priests don’t want to choose between having a life with God and having a family. It is not inconceivable that the time will come again when they can have both.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/economis ... n/NA/email
The rules date from the Middle Ages
IN AN interview with a German magazine earlier this month, Pope Francis suggested that he would be open to the idea of allowing married men to become priests. Such a change, though momentous, would be a return to, rather than a break from, early Christian tradition: nowhere does the New Testament explicitly require priests to be celibate. For the first thousand years of Christianity it was not uncommon for priests to have families. The first pope, St Peter, was a married man; many early popes had children. How did celibacy become part of the Catholic tradition?
Celibacy is one of the biggest acts of self-sacrifice a Catholic priest is called upon to make, forgoing spouse, progeny and sexual fulfilment for his relationship with parishioners and God. According to the Catholic Church’s Code of Canon Law celibacy is a “special gift of God” which allows practitioners to follow more closely the example of Christ, who was chaste. Another reason is that when a priest enters into service to God, the church becomes his highest calling. If he were to have a family there would be the potential for conflict between his spiritual and familial duties. The Vatican regards it as being easier for unattached men to commit to the church, as they have more time for devotion and fewer distractions.
The earliest written reference to celibacy comes from 305AD at the Spanish Council of Elvira, a local assembly of clergymen who met to discuss matters pertaining to the church. Canon 33 forbids clerics in the church—bishops, priests and deacons—from having sexual relations with their wives and from having children, though not from entering into marriage. It was not until ecumenical meetings of the Catholic Church at the First and Second Lateran councils in 1123 and 1139 that priests were explicitly forbidden from marrying. Eliminating the prospect of marriage had the added benefit of ensuring that children or wives of priests did not make claims on property acquired throughout a priest’s life, which thus could be retained by the church. It took centuries for the practice of celibacy to become widespread, but it eventually became the norm in the Western Catholic church.
Despite the decrees from the Middle Ages, celibacy is still a “discipline” of the church, which can be changed, rather than a “dogma”, or a divinely revealed truth from God which cannot be altered. As the world has changed, the Church has had a harder time recruiting priests. Numbers have been dropping: between 1970 and 2014 the world’s Catholic population grew from 654m to 1.23bn, while the number of priests declined from 420,000 to 414,000. Some prospective priests don’t want to choose between having a life with God and having a family. It is not inconceivable that the time will come again when they can have both.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/economis ... n/NA/email
President Carter, Am I a Christian?
Christians celebrate Easter on Sunday. But wait — do we really think Jesus literally rose from the dead?
I asked questions like that in a Christmas Day column, interviewing the Rev. Tim Keller, a prominent evangelical pastor. In this, the second of an occasional series, I decided to quiz former President Jimmy Carter. He’s a longtime Sunday school teacher and born-again evangelical but of a more liberal bent than Keller. Here’s our email conversation, edited for clarity.
ME How literally do you take the Bible, including miracles like the Resurrection?
PRESIDENT CARTER Having a scientific background, I do not believe in a six-day creation of the world that occurred in 4004 B.C., stars falling on the earth, that kind of thing. I accept the overall message of the Bible as true, and also accept miracles described in the New Testament, including the virgin birth and the Resurrection.
With Easter approaching, let me push you on the Resurrection. If you heard a report today from the Middle East of a man brought back to life after an execution, I doubt you’d believe it even if there were eyewitnesses. So why believe ancient accounts written years after the events?
I would be skeptical of a report like you describe. My belief in the resurrection of Jesus comes from my Christian faith, and not from any need for scientific proof. I derive a great personal benefit from the totality of this belief, which comes naturally to me.
What about someone like me whose faith is in the Sermon on the Mount, who aspires to follow Jesus’ teachings, but is skeptical that he was born of a virgin, walked on water, multiplied loaves and fishes or had a physical resurrection? Am I a Christian, President Carter?
I do not judge whether someone else is a Christian. Jesus said, “Judge not, …” I try to apply the teachings of Jesus in my own life, often without success.
How can I reconcile my admiration for the message of Jesus, all about inclusion, with a church history that is often about exclusion?
As St. Paul said to the Galatians in 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” In His day, Jesus broke down walls of separation and superiority among people. Those (mostly men) who practice superiority and exclusion contradict my interpretations of the life and teachings of Jesus, which exemplified peace, love, compassion, humility, forgiveness and sacrificial love.
Do you sometimes struggle with doubts about faith?
Yes, but eventually I decide what I believe, as an integral part of my existence and a guide for my life. This is based on what I consider to be the perfect life and example of Jesus.
I think of you as an evangelical, but evangelicalism implies belief in inerrancy of Scripture. Do you share that, and if so, how do you account for contradictions within the Gospels?
I look on the contradictions among the Gospel writers as a sign of authenticity, based on their different life experiences, contacts with Jesus and each other. If the earlier authors of the Bible had been creating an artificial document, they would have eliminated disparities. I try to absorb the essence and meaning of the teachings of Jesus Christ, primarily as explained in the letters written by Paul to the early churches. When there are apparent discrepancies, I make a decision on what to believe, respecting the equal status and rights of all people.
One of my problems with evangelicalism is that it normally argues that one can be saved only through a personal relationship with Jesus, which seems to consign Gandhi to hell. Do you believe that?
I do not feel qualified to make a judgment. I am inclined to give him (or others) the benefit of any doubt.
Do you pray daily, and if so, do you believe in the efficacy of prayer in a miracle kind of way, or in a psychologically-this-helps-me-deal-with-the-world kind of way?
I pray often during each day, and believe in the efficacy of prayer in both ways. In my weekly Bible lessons, I teach that our Creator God is available at any moment to any of us, for guidance, solace, forgiveness or to meet our other needs. My general attitude is of thanksgiving and joy.
Skeptics have noted that when prayers are “answered,” there is usually an alternative explanation. But an amputee can pray for a new leg, and a new leg never grows back. Isn’t that a reason to believe that prayer helps internally, but doesn’t access miracles?
It is usually impossible to convince skeptics. For me, prayer helps internally, as a private conversation with my creator, who knows everything and can do anything. If I were an amputee, my prayer would be to help me make the best of my condition, to be a good follower of the perfect example set by Jesus Christ and to be thankful for life, freedom and opportunities to be a blessing to others. We are monitoring the status of cancer in my liver and brain, and my prayers are similar to this.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/15/opin ... d=71987722
Christians celebrate Easter on Sunday. But wait — do we really think Jesus literally rose from the dead?
I asked questions like that in a Christmas Day column, interviewing the Rev. Tim Keller, a prominent evangelical pastor. In this, the second of an occasional series, I decided to quiz former President Jimmy Carter. He’s a longtime Sunday school teacher and born-again evangelical but of a more liberal bent than Keller. Here’s our email conversation, edited for clarity.
ME How literally do you take the Bible, including miracles like the Resurrection?
PRESIDENT CARTER Having a scientific background, I do not believe in a six-day creation of the world that occurred in 4004 B.C., stars falling on the earth, that kind of thing. I accept the overall message of the Bible as true, and also accept miracles described in the New Testament, including the virgin birth and the Resurrection.
With Easter approaching, let me push you on the Resurrection. If you heard a report today from the Middle East of a man brought back to life after an execution, I doubt you’d believe it even if there were eyewitnesses. So why believe ancient accounts written years after the events?
I would be skeptical of a report like you describe. My belief in the resurrection of Jesus comes from my Christian faith, and not from any need for scientific proof. I derive a great personal benefit from the totality of this belief, which comes naturally to me.
What about someone like me whose faith is in the Sermon on the Mount, who aspires to follow Jesus’ teachings, but is skeptical that he was born of a virgin, walked on water, multiplied loaves and fishes or had a physical resurrection? Am I a Christian, President Carter?
I do not judge whether someone else is a Christian. Jesus said, “Judge not, …” I try to apply the teachings of Jesus in my own life, often without success.
How can I reconcile my admiration for the message of Jesus, all about inclusion, with a church history that is often about exclusion?
As St. Paul said to the Galatians in 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” In His day, Jesus broke down walls of separation and superiority among people. Those (mostly men) who practice superiority and exclusion contradict my interpretations of the life and teachings of Jesus, which exemplified peace, love, compassion, humility, forgiveness and sacrificial love.
Do you sometimes struggle with doubts about faith?
Yes, but eventually I decide what I believe, as an integral part of my existence and a guide for my life. This is based on what I consider to be the perfect life and example of Jesus.
I think of you as an evangelical, but evangelicalism implies belief in inerrancy of Scripture. Do you share that, and if so, how do you account for contradictions within the Gospels?
I look on the contradictions among the Gospel writers as a sign of authenticity, based on their different life experiences, contacts with Jesus and each other. If the earlier authors of the Bible had been creating an artificial document, they would have eliminated disparities. I try to absorb the essence and meaning of the teachings of Jesus Christ, primarily as explained in the letters written by Paul to the early churches. When there are apparent discrepancies, I make a decision on what to believe, respecting the equal status and rights of all people.
One of my problems with evangelicalism is that it normally argues that one can be saved only through a personal relationship with Jesus, which seems to consign Gandhi to hell. Do you believe that?
I do not feel qualified to make a judgment. I am inclined to give him (or others) the benefit of any doubt.
Do you pray daily, and if so, do you believe in the efficacy of prayer in a miracle kind of way, or in a psychologically-this-helps-me-deal-with-the-world kind of way?
I pray often during each day, and believe in the efficacy of prayer in both ways. In my weekly Bible lessons, I teach that our Creator God is available at any moment to any of us, for guidance, solace, forgiveness or to meet our other needs. My general attitude is of thanksgiving and joy.
Skeptics have noted that when prayers are “answered,” there is usually an alternative explanation. But an amputee can pray for a new leg, and a new leg never grows back. Isn’t that a reason to believe that prayer helps internally, but doesn’t access miracles?
It is usually impossible to convince skeptics. For me, prayer helps internally, as a private conversation with my creator, who knows everything and can do anything. If I were an amputee, my prayer would be to help me make the best of my condition, to be a good follower of the perfect example set by Jesus Christ and to be thankful for life, freedom and opportunities to be a blessing to others. We are monitoring the status of cancer in my liver and brain, and my prayers are similar to this.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/15/opin ... d=71987722
This Is How You Lose Them: Why “Generation Z” Won’t Be Flocking To Churches Anytime Soon
Like the dad who’s trying just a little too hard on Snapchat, American churches just want the young, cool people to like them. In a recent interview with Religion News Service, Rev. James Emery White spoke on his latest book, Meet Generation Z: Understanding and Reaching the New Post-Christian World.
In the interview, White said the group that Christians—evangelicals especially—need to win over isn’t Millennials (it’s too late for us), but post-Millennials, aka Generation Z, those born between the mid-1990s and early 2000s.
In this brave new “post-Christian” world, the youngest and largest generation represents a unique opportunity for evangelicals to affect culture, with White referring to them as “the most influential religious force in the West and the heart of the missional challenge facing the church.”
SPECIAL REPORT: Divest or Dive In? Evangelicals of Color Face a Reckoning
In the sense that “‘the dominance of Christian ideas and influence” is behind us, we’re about as “post-Christian” as we are “post-racial.” You’d think the November election would have challenged this perception, but many white evangelicals continue to cling to the idea that Christianity’s cultural supremacy is under siege.
According to White:
"On the most superficial of levels, most churches are divorced from the technological world Generation Z inhabits. But on the deeper level, they are divorced from the culture itself in such a way as to be unable to build strategic bridges…"
More...
http://religiondispatches.org/this-is-h ... 1-84570085
Like the dad who’s trying just a little too hard on Snapchat, American churches just want the young, cool people to like them. In a recent interview with Religion News Service, Rev. James Emery White spoke on his latest book, Meet Generation Z: Understanding and Reaching the New Post-Christian World.
In the interview, White said the group that Christians—evangelicals especially—need to win over isn’t Millennials (it’s too late for us), but post-Millennials, aka Generation Z, those born between the mid-1990s and early 2000s.
In this brave new “post-Christian” world, the youngest and largest generation represents a unique opportunity for evangelicals to affect culture, with White referring to them as “the most influential religious force in the West and the heart of the missional challenge facing the church.”
SPECIAL REPORT: Divest or Dive In? Evangelicals of Color Face a Reckoning
In the sense that “‘the dominance of Christian ideas and influence” is behind us, we’re about as “post-Christian” as we are “post-racial.” You’d think the November election would have challenged this perception, but many white evangelicals continue to cling to the idea that Christianity’s cultural supremacy is under siege.
According to White:
"On the most superficial of levels, most churches are divorced from the technological world Generation Z inhabits. But on the deeper level, they are divorced from the culture itself in such a way as to be unable to build strategic bridges…"
More...
http://religiondispatches.org/this-is-h ... 1-84570085
Inside Washington’s strange new $500-million Bible museum
Twin scents of sawdust and compromise swirl through the gleaming new museum of the Bible—small m, big B—that will open next month in a former furniture showroom and municipal meat locker a few blocks from the halls of Congress, bringing 430,000 square feet of exhibition space, interactive displays, children’s activities, “4-D” thrill rides, academic seminars, Holy Land snacks and ecclesiastical controversy to the most cynical city in the world.
Endowed by their creators with US$500 million dollars in cash but only a comparative handful of world-class artifacts, the galleries will overtly promulgate little or none of their benefactors’ Oklahoma Protestant fundamentalism. Intended initially to be a shrine to the literalist creationism endorsed by the billionaire Green family that owns the Hobby Lobby chain of Sabbath-observant craft stores, the museum’s focus has shifted from trumpeting the verity of the Gospels to providing jaded Washingtonians with infotainment and a first-century lunch.
In one display—a Nazarene village built of rough-hewn stones, fibreglass sheep and plastic produce—Jesus Christ is depicted not as the redeeming Son of God but as “a popular teacher.” (All that is missing is an Animatronic herdsman singing “A shepherd’s life for me.”) Homosexuality, abortion, school prayer, taking a knee during the national anthem—all have been left aside, at least in the exhibits that a Maclean’s reporter was permitted to tour this week. The eight-storey warehouse of Holy Writ, it seems, will be as much about hummus on pita as it is about the Pietà.
More...
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/in ... ar-AAu34iQ
Twin scents of sawdust and compromise swirl through the gleaming new museum of the Bible—small m, big B—that will open next month in a former furniture showroom and municipal meat locker a few blocks from the halls of Congress, bringing 430,000 square feet of exhibition space, interactive displays, children’s activities, “4-D” thrill rides, academic seminars, Holy Land snacks and ecclesiastical controversy to the most cynical city in the world.
Endowed by their creators with US$500 million dollars in cash but only a comparative handful of world-class artifacts, the galleries will overtly promulgate little or none of their benefactors’ Oklahoma Protestant fundamentalism. Intended initially to be a shrine to the literalist creationism endorsed by the billionaire Green family that owns the Hobby Lobby chain of Sabbath-observant craft stores, the museum’s focus has shifted from trumpeting the verity of the Gospels to providing jaded Washingtonians with infotainment and a first-century lunch.
In one display—a Nazarene village built of rough-hewn stones, fibreglass sheep and plastic produce—Jesus Christ is depicted not as the redeeming Son of God but as “a popular teacher.” (All that is missing is an Animatronic herdsman singing “A shepherd’s life for me.”) Homosexuality, abortion, school prayer, taking a knee during the national anthem—all have been left aside, at least in the exhibits that a Maclean’s reporter was permitted to tour this week. The eight-storey warehouse of Holy Writ, it seems, will be as much about hummus on pita as it is about the Pietà.
More...
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/in ... ar-AAu34iQ
Luther’s reformation
The stand
Excerpt:
Protestantism continues to change lives today; indeed, over the recent decades the number of its adherents has grown substantially. Since the 1970s, about three-quarters of Almolonga’s 14,000 residents have converted; more than 40% of Guatemala’s population is now Protestant. Its story is a microcosm of a broader “Protestant awakening” across Latin America and the developing world. According to the Pew Research Centre Protestants currently make up slightly less than 40% of the world’s 2.3bn Christians; almost all the rest are Roman Catholics. The United States is home to some 150m Protestants, the largest number in any country.
In Luther’s native Germany roughly half the Christians follow his denomination. But today Europe accounts for only 13% of the world’s Protestants. The faith’s home is the developing world. Nigeria has more than twice as many Protestants as Germany. More than 80m Chinese have embraced the faith in the past 40 years.
There are many ways to be a Protestant, from the quietist to the ecstatic. The fastest-growing varieties tend to be the evangelical ones, which emphasise the need for spiritual rebirth and Biblical authority. Among developing-world evangelicals, Pentecostals are dominant; their version of the faith is charismatic, in that it emphasises the “gifts” of the Holy Spirit, held to be a universally accessible and sustaining aspect of God. These gifts include healing, prophecy and glossolalia. According to the World Christian Database at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts, Pentecostals and other evangelicals and charismatics account for 35% of Europe’s Protestants, 74% of America’s and 88% of those in developing countries. They make up more than half of the developing world’s Christians, and 10% of all people on Earth.
Changed lives change places. Almolonga’s Pentecostal believers have brought new energy to their town. Where once the prison was full and drunks slumped in the streets, there is now a buzz of activity. A secondary school opened in 2003; it sends some of its graduates, all members of the indigenous K’iché people, to national universities. “We want one of our students to work at NASA,” says Mr Riscajche’s son, Oscar, who chairs the school board.
Scholars have been surprised by the developing world’s Protestant boom. K.M. Panikkar, an Indian journalist, spoke for many when he predicted in the 1950s that Christianity would struggle in a post-colonial world. What might survive, he suggested, in both Protestant and Catholic forms, would be a more modern, liberal form of the faith. The Pentecostal expansion proved him quite wrong. Peter Berger of Boston University, a leading sociologist of religion (who died this summer), saw it as a key part of a wider “desecularisation” of the world.
More...
https://www.economist.com/news/essay/21 ... na/77921/n
The stand
Excerpt:
Protestantism continues to change lives today; indeed, over the recent decades the number of its adherents has grown substantially. Since the 1970s, about three-quarters of Almolonga’s 14,000 residents have converted; more than 40% of Guatemala’s population is now Protestant. Its story is a microcosm of a broader “Protestant awakening” across Latin America and the developing world. According to the Pew Research Centre Protestants currently make up slightly less than 40% of the world’s 2.3bn Christians; almost all the rest are Roman Catholics. The United States is home to some 150m Protestants, the largest number in any country.
In Luther’s native Germany roughly half the Christians follow his denomination. But today Europe accounts for only 13% of the world’s Protestants. The faith’s home is the developing world. Nigeria has more than twice as many Protestants as Germany. More than 80m Chinese have embraced the faith in the past 40 years.
There are many ways to be a Protestant, from the quietist to the ecstatic. The fastest-growing varieties tend to be the evangelical ones, which emphasise the need for spiritual rebirth and Biblical authority. Among developing-world evangelicals, Pentecostals are dominant; their version of the faith is charismatic, in that it emphasises the “gifts” of the Holy Spirit, held to be a universally accessible and sustaining aspect of God. These gifts include healing, prophecy and glossolalia. According to the World Christian Database at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts, Pentecostals and other evangelicals and charismatics account for 35% of Europe’s Protestants, 74% of America’s and 88% of those in developing countries. They make up more than half of the developing world’s Christians, and 10% of all people on Earth.
Changed lives change places. Almolonga’s Pentecostal believers have brought new energy to their town. Where once the prison was full and drunks slumped in the streets, there is now a buzz of activity. A secondary school opened in 2003; it sends some of its graduates, all members of the indigenous K’iché people, to national universities. “We want one of our students to work at NASA,” says Mr Riscajche’s son, Oscar, who chairs the school board.
Scholars have been surprised by the developing world’s Protestant boom. K.M. Panikkar, an Indian journalist, spoke for many when he predicted in the 1950s that Christianity would struggle in a post-colonial world. What might survive, he suggested, in both Protestant and Catholic forms, would be a more modern, liberal form of the faith. The Pentecostal expansion proved him quite wrong. Peter Berger of Boston University, a leading sociologist of religion (who died this summer), saw it as a key part of a wider “desecularisation” of the world.
More...
https://www.economist.com/news/essay/21 ... na/77921/n
WHY ROY MOORE’S EVANGELICAL SUPPORTERS WON’T ABANDON HIM
Amidst shocking allegations that Roy Moore pursued relationships with girls ranging in age from 14-18 years old when he was in his 30s, a new poll shows that 37% of evangelicals are “more likely” to vote for Moore, while another 34% say that these allegations make “no difference.” Some of his supporters have upped the ante by saying that even if the allegations are proven true, they won’t think Moore did anything wrong because they didn’t actually have sex and “he was single” at the time.
Moore is the Alabama Republican Senate candidate and former State Supreme Court Chief Justice, familiar to RD readers from the too-many-to-cite articles documenting his ties to white supremacists and Christian Reconstructionists.
Incredulous observers won’t be able to make sense of Moore’s supporters while seeing the allegations only in terms of inappropriate behavior, or even alleged statutory rape. They will miss the point that the problem is actually far more insidious; a feature, not a bug of this subculture.
The allegations are being read by Moore supporters through a lens shaped by the courtship-purity movement promoted by the Biblical Patriarchy and Quiverfull movements widely influential in Christian homeschooling circles. And about which I write in my book Building God’s Kingdom.
As Kathryn Brightbill tweeted: “It’s not a southern problem, it’s a fundamentalist problem. Girls who are 14 are seen as potential relationship material.”
(And she’s written in more depth about that here.)
Many who embrace Biblical Patriarchy and Quiverfull came to the conclusion that contemporary dating practices are harmful to young people and sought to replace them with a system of “courtship” that occurs under the direction of a girl’s father. Courtship is intended to be specifically focused on finding a marriage partner—almost a pre-betrothal, if you will. Courtship happens in the context of a homeschooling family and community where boys are raised to be adventurous and economically self-sufficient with skills that might prove useful in a societal collapse, while girls are raised to be “pure,” meek, dependent and submissive with the goal of becoming appropriate “help-meets” in their future husbands’ exercise of dominion. Independence, autonomy, and self-sufficiency on the part of girls is seen as a (sinful) violation of feminine nature.
While most courtship seems to happen between young people of similar age, it’s easy to see how this particular set of gendered norms leads to significant age differences in marriageability. Men need to be self-sufficient, women should not be. In fact, once a girl can bear children she is old enough to be married and the longer she remains single the more likely she is to lose both her “purity” and her God-given femininity, and instead develop a sinful sense of herself as an independent person. The result is that 14-year-old girls are seen as appropriately “courted” by older men.
In fact, a series of scandals rocked the Christian homeschool world in recent years in which older men admitted to inappropriate contact in pursuing young (sometimes very young) girls. See the story of Doug Phillips and Vision Forum here and the stories of Bill Gothard and his Institute in Biblical Life Principles/Advanced Training Institute and Josh Duggar, here. Josh Duggar was accused of molesting young girls (including his sisters) when he himself was rather young but his targets were even younger. In each scandal a core group of supporters defended the accused.
In other words, older men perusing girls as young as 14 is a natural outcome of the gender values inextricably related to notions of male headship & female submission, promoted in this, the most extreme corner of conservative Protestantism that Moore inhabits. This is a corner of the conservative Christian subculture whose influence far exceeds its numbers and that’s why this scandal won’t lead evangelicals to abandon him as a candidate.
http://religiondispatches.org/why-roy-m ... a-84570085
Amidst shocking allegations that Roy Moore pursued relationships with girls ranging in age from 14-18 years old when he was in his 30s, a new poll shows that 37% of evangelicals are “more likely” to vote for Moore, while another 34% say that these allegations make “no difference.” Some of his supporters have upped the ante by saying that even if the allegations are proven true, they won’t think Moore did anything wrong because they didn’t actually have sex and “he was single” at the time.
Moore is the Alabama Republican Senate candidate and former State Supreme Court Chief Justice, familiar to RD readers from the too-many-to-cite articles documenting his ties to white supremacists and Christian Reconstructionists.
Incredulous observers won’t be able to make sense of Moore’s supporters while seeing the allegations only in terms of inappropriate behavior, or even alleged statutory rape. They will miss the point that the problem is actually far more insidious; a feature, not a bug of this subculture.
The allegations are being read by Moore supporters through a lens shaped by the courtship-purity movement promoted by the Biblical Patriarchy and Quiverfull movements widely influential in Christian homeschooling circles. And about which I write in my book Building God’s Kingdom.
As Kathryn Brightbill tweeted: “It’s not a southern problem, it’s a fundamentalist problem. Girls who are 14 are seen as potential relationship material.”
(And she’s written in more depth about that here.)
Many who embrace Biblical Patriarchy and Quiverfull came to the conclusion that contemporary dating practices are harmful to young people and sought to replace them with a system of “courtship” that occurs under the direction of a girl’s father. Courtship is intended to be specifically focused on finding a marriage partner—almost a pre-betrothal, if you will. Courtship happens in the context of a homeschooling family and community where boys are raised to be adventurous and economically self-sufficient with skills that might prove useful in a societal collapse, while girls are raised to be “pure,” meek, dependent and submissive with the goal of becoming appropriate “help-meets” in their future husbands’ exercise of dominion. Independence, autonomy, and self-sufficiency on the part of girls is seen as a (sinful) violation of feminine nature.
While most courtship seems to happen between young people of similar age, it’s easy to see how this particular set of gendered norms leads to significant age differences in marriageability. Men need to be self-sufficient, women should not be. In fact, once a girl can bear children she is old enough to be married and the longer she remains single the more likely she is to lose both her “purity” and her God-given femininity, and instead develop a sinful sense of herself as an independent person. The result is that 14-year-old girls are seen as appropriately “courted” by older men.
In fact, a series of scandals rocked the Christian homeschool world in recent years in which older men admitted to inappropriate contact in pursuing young (sometimes very young) girls. See the story of Doug Phillips and Vision Forum here and the stories of Bill Gothard and his Institute in Biblical Life Principles/Advanced Training Institute and Josh Duggar, here. Josh Duggar was accused of molesting young girls (including his sisters) when he himself was rather young but his targets were even younger. In each scandal a core group of supporters defended the accused.
In other words, older men perusing girls as young as 14 is a natural outcome of the gender values inextricably related to notions of male headship & female submission, promoted in this, the most extreme corner of conservative Protestantism that Moore inhabits. This is a corner of the conservative Christian subculture whose influence far exceeds its numbers and that’s why this scandal won’t lead evangelicals to abandon him as a candidate.
http://religiondispatches.org/why-roy-m ... a-84570085