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Stating the Case for Religion

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009

The Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life recently released a study on the United States’ most religious states and, in a stunning non-shocker, the most religious areas of the country lie below the Mason-Dixon line.

When asked how important religion was in their daily lives, residents of Mississippi were the most religious in the country, with 82 percent saying religion was very important to them, followed by respondents from Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana and Tennessee. In fact, nine of the top 10 most religious states hail from what we’d normally call “the South,” and No. 7 Oklahoma isn’t exactly too far north, either.

New England, meanwhile, is the nation’s hotbed for secularism, with six of the bottom seven states hailing from the northeast. Only 36 percent of folks in either New Hampshire or Vermont say that religion’s very important to them. Alaska, oddly enough, was just in front of those two, and a couple of other western states — Oregon and my home state of Colorado — were quite secular, too.

All of this is pretty interesting, but what does it really tell us?

Political wonks might suggest the study says something about our political red state/blue state divide … except that Alaska, home to Sarah Palin and a reliable Republican stronghold for the last 50 years or so, is quite secular.

New England secularists will point out that New Englanders are far more educated than folks down south. And it’s true that 33.6 percent of Vermont’s population has bachelor’s degrees, compared to just 18.9 percent in Mississippi. But Wyoming — far more secular than, say, Georgia or North Carolina, has far fewer college graduates per capita than either.

Oddly enough, just a few days before Pew released its study, a separate report measured states on their comparative happiness — and the results were pretty interesting.

Louisiana topped the list, followed by Hawaii, Florida, Tennessee, Arizona and Mississippi. Check these states’ religiosity, and only Arizona registers as being below average in religiosity — and even there, 51 percent of Arizonans still say religion is very important to them. The bottom-dwellers on the happiness index were Indiana, Michigan, New Jersey, Connecticut and (bringing up the rear) New York — all states that, according to Pew’s figures, were less religious than the national norm.

Now, far be it from me to suggest that religion can make one happier, but …

Tags: atheism, blue state, church, conservative, happiness, liberal, red state, religion
Posted in North America, Uncategorized | Permalink

Closet Christians

Monday, December 28th, 2009

We’ve still awash in eggnog over at my house, with important guests a-plenty for Christmas and New Year’s. But in the midst of Christmas caroling and the opening of presents and whatnot, I came across a pretty interesting essay at Salon.com by Ada Calhoun — a Christian who kept her faith a secret from her intellectual friends right up until this very essay.

Why am I so paranoid? I’m not cheating on my husband, committing crimes or doing drugs. But those are battles my cosmopolitan, progressive friends would understand. Many of them had to come out — as gay, as alcoholics, as artists in places where art was not valued. To them, my situation is far more sinister: I am the bane of their youth, the boogeyman of their politics, the very thing they left their small towns to escape. I am a Christian.

If you check out the post (and I recommend you do), you might notice that her own readers have very little sympathy. Salon.com is one of the Web’s more secular outlets, and many atheistic readers think it’s preposterous to think of Christians — who make up 80 percent or more of the country — as some sort of persecuted minority.

I get their reasoning. But at the same time, I know that I am, sadly, increasingly cautious when I talk about matters of faith with some of my more secular acquaintances. I make no bones about who I am or what I believe, but I do think there is, in some circles, a stigma to coming across as “too religious.” Perhaps this is nothing new … but it is new for me.

Are Christians persecuted? No, I don’t think so. Not really. But I certainly don’t feel particularly ascendent, either. We still are part of the national dialogue. But are we its loudest voice? It doesn’t feel like it.

Tags: atheism, culture war, evangelical, faith, persecuted Christians
Posted in church news | Permalink

That Annoying Altruism

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

Christians, if we’re honest with ourselves, realize that our theology presents some painful problems at times — the biggest, perhaps, is why there’s so much pain and unfairness in the world. Most of us have come to grips with this issue in one way or another, but it can still be hard for some of us to grasp, particularly when it smacks us in the face.

But sometimes we forget that secularists and atheists have issues equally as thorny and provocative. Chuck Colson reminds us of one of them in Christianity Today — the problem of goodness. Consider:

Recent advances in neurobiology show that the impulse toward altruism may even be hardwired. For instance, practically from birth a baby who hears the cry of another baby will cry also. However, when scientists play a recording of the sound of that child’s own cry, rarely will the baby respond. By about 14 months, not only will that infant cry when he hears another infant crying, he will also try to soothe the other child in some way.

Yeah, a purely Darwinian explanation here just doesn’t quite seem to fit the bill, does it? Interesting, I think, that without faith, pain is easier to understand, but generosity, altruism and sacrifice are almost incomprehensible.

Tags: altruism, atheism, charity, Christmas, faith, goodness, sacrifice
Posted in culture | Permalink

Changing the Tone?

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

Christopher Hitchens. Photo by ensceptico

Christopher Hitchens, author of “God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” has been debating religious leaders for a good long while now, traveling from campus to campus, auditorium to auditorium, arguing the (I think ludicrous) point that faith is an unqualified, unrepentant force for evil.

But perhaps, in spending so much time with real flesh-and-blood people, Hitchens may be ever-so-slightly softening. Look at this line from a column he recently wrote for Slate:

I haven’t yet run into an argument that has made me want to change my mind. After all, a believing religious person, however brilliant or however good in debate, is compelled to stick fairly closely to a “script” that is known in advance, and known to me, too. However, I have discovered that the so-called Christian right is much less monolithic, and very much more polite and hospitable, than I would once have thought, or than most liberals believe. I haven’t been asked to Bob Jones University yet, but I have been invited to Jerry Falwell’s old Liberty University campus in Virginia, even though we haven’t yet agreed on the terms.

I doubt Hitchens will ever decide he’s been wrong all these years and convert to Christianity (or another religion). He now has, in fact, all sorts of public and financial incentives for remaining the staunch atheist he is. But I’m encouraged that, while he may not agree with what we believe, he perhaps sees a glimpse of the people who we are: Christians are no longer people of the “they,” but people who he’s met with, talked with, perhaps even eaten with.

I think it’s much harder to hate a group of people once we meet them. Hitchens, to his credit, has met us where we live. And perhaps, in so doing, there resides a faint flicker of hope that Hitchens and his fellow “angry atheists” may not stay quite so angry.

Tags: apologetics, atheism, conservative, evangelical, faith
Posted in culture war | Permalink

The Truth of Faith

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

I’ve never quite understood these so-called “new atheists,” folks like Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and the like. I mean, it’s one thing to say you don’t believe in God, or a god. I don’t agree with that point of view, naturally, but I can grasp how people get there.

But new atheists, or “angry atheists,” as they’re sometimes called, seem to not disbelieve as much as the hate the very concept. They consider faith not just a fallacy, but a dangerous delusion: It, not the love of money, such atheists argue, is the root of all evil. The title of Hitchens’ bestselling book denouncing religion says it all: “God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.”

But anyone who looks at history with just a smidgen of fairness can see that religion doesn’t poison everything: It flavors it. Even those who deny God as the source of all creation can’t, in good reason, deny that the belief in God has influenced and, arguably, improved, everything that it’s touched: Art, architecture, literature, law, music … we all owe a tremendous debt to people who celebrated their Creator through their own creativity.

And while some atheists shout their denial at such evidence, others seem willing to acknowledge their debt to faith.

“More than any other institution, religion deserves our appreciation and respect because it has persistently encouraged people to care deeply — for the self, for neighbors, for humanity, and for the natural world — and to strive for the highest ideals humans are able to envision,” writes Bruce Sheiman in his new book, “An Atheist Defends Religion: Why Humanity is Better Off With Religion than Without It.”

The Religion News Service (via USA Today) offered a fascinating take of a movement it calls “Atheism 3.0″ — a pretty sudden movement, considering Hitchens’ and Dawkins’ 2.0-version of atheism really just got off the ground less than a decade ago. These new, new atheists, as RNS author Daniel Burke calls them, want to make peace with their religious brethren, not war. They want to, if not embrace religion themselves, at least acknowledge that it holds a place in the public square and that it can be a catalyst for good behavior.

That’s great, of course, on a couple of different levels.

For one, it’s so much easier to talk with those who disagree with you when they’re not shouting all the time. And we’ve got a lot to talk about. As Greg Epstein, Harvard University’s humanist chaplain, tells the RNS, it really behooves believers and non-believers alike to not fight with each other, what with the world facing so many problems. “When our goal is erasing religion, rather than embracing human beings, we all lose,” Epstein says.

But that dialogue may open up new, more spiritual avenues, as well. Because when one looks at the benefits of faith rationally, one can’t help but wonder whether there’s something to it, after all — more than just a benign fairy tale. Statistically, people of faith live longer, happier lives than those without faith — and the more religious you are, generally the happier you think yourself. Religion has been a tremendous source of beauty, of justice, and societal advancement. It’s survived and thrived in times of war and peace, famine and plenty, superstition and skepticism. And, with science and nature so ruthlessly efficient, is there really a better explanation for the enduring power of faith other than … it reflects the truth?

” … you have to have a purpose in life bigger than yourself, and that not everything is all about you,” Epstein says. But that purpose, if atheists give the matter enough thought, almost assuredly points to the possibility of Divine purpose. It almost has to. Faith is, in many ways, both gloriously implausible and relentlessly logical. We must never forget that what we believe is not just beautiful — it is true. We can’t definitively prove it to be true, of course — I think God likes the mystery — but every indicator points us in the right direction, if we give it enough thought.

And I think it’s possible that, when folks are given a glimpse of that truth, it might lead them back home.

Tags: atheism, beauty, faith, religion, truth
Posted in Body Parts | Permalink

Would You Share Your Pew With a Zombie?

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

Don’t look now, but the world is being overrun by zombies. Again.

We’ve seen this sort of thing before. Ever since “Night of the Living Dead” was released in 1968, we’ve experienced periodic zombie infestations — though nothing resembling an actual zombie apocalypse as of yet — and we’re in the midst of one of the most serious. They’ve invaded modern publishing, classic literature, many of our streets and, with the release of “Zombieland” tomorrow, they’ll take over our theaters. Again.

It certainly stands to reason that zombies would’ve attracted a certain level of scholarly interest, as well. Italian physicist Davide Cassidy tells us that, if pursued by a zombie horde, your best bet is to seek sanctuary in a mall, rather than, say, a deserted farmhouse. Canadian researchers have learned that, if zombies were spawned by the typically depicted brain-eating infection, humanity as we know it would almost certainly cease to exist, no matter how slowly the zombies walk. There’s even a Federal Vampire and Zombie Agency – something I missed when checking out C-SPAN during the budget hearings. But the agency has a Web site, which means it must be legit, right?

But obviously, an onset of a zombie apocalypse would have some serious theological implications as well, and I wish some wise theologian would ponder them. But since no wise theologian would likely discuss such a scenario, I’ll ask you. Let me ask you a few quick questions: Remember, I’m just interested — there are no wrong answers … though some could potentially leave you more open to being perhaps a zombie appetizer.

1. If you saw a few zombies shambling down the street, would you …

a) Marvel at the wonder and diversity of God’s creation?

b) See the zombie as a sinner, as we all are, in need of love, support and perhaps aggressive counseling?

c) Assume that zombies are inherently evil and thwack them with a baseball bat?

2. Would the existence of zombies suggest that …

a) We’re officially in the end times, when we’re told the dead will rise again?

b) The afterlife is far more complex than we imagined?

c) We best stock up on shotgun shells and gas for the chainsaw?

3. The moment you see your first zombie, what would be your first thought?

a) “I can’t wait to hear Richard Dawkins try to explain that.”

b) “Oh, I hope it’s not somebody I know …”

c) “Man, I forgot to pick up the dry cleaning.”

4. If a zombie asked to attend church with you, would you …

a) Gladly agree, encouraged by the zombie’s interest in faith?

b) Agree — but perhaps call ahead so that one of the cry rooms might be reserved for the zombie, thus avoiding any embarrasing urges the zombie might have to snack during the sermon?

c) Suggest he just stay home and watch cable?

Post your messages down below.

Tags: atheism, Bible, church, culture war, movie
Posted in Entertainment | Permalink