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Posts Tagged ‘religion’

A Window to Truth

Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009

 

A portion of Yale's "Education" window

A portion of Yale's "Education" window

Mark I. Pinski, one of the better-known names in the realm of religious journalism, offers a pretty salient look in yesterday’s USA Today at the sometimes fractious relationship between faith and science, looking both to the past and the present.

Pinski suggests (rightly, I think) that President Barack Obama’s appointment of renowned scientist Francis Collins (a committed evangelical Christian and author of one of my favorite books, “The Language of God“) to head the National Institutes of Health, is an effort to heal some of the riffs between science and faith. He also finds inspiration in Yale’s famed Tiffany window called “Education,” which has graced the university for around 120 years. 

The window, commissioned by businessman Simeon Baldwin Chittenden back in 1889 puts science and faith on center stage, flanking an angelic-like woman with her eyes cast upward. Pinski notes that a thumbnail picture of the window can be found on the Web site for the BioLogos Foundation (an organization founded by Collins). 

Collins earned his Ph.D. in chemistry at Yale in the early 1970s, and I find no mention of the Chittenden window in his writings, or whether the NIH head has contemplated its significance to his own life. But in a commentary for the Christian Broadcasting Network, he displays sentiments consonant with the window’s message.

“The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome,” Collins said. “God can be found in the cathedral or in the laboratory. By investigating God’s majestic and awesome creation, science can actually be a means of worship.”

It’s a beautiful window, reflecting I think beautiful, and truthful, sentiments. Collins is one of my heroes, and I hope he does fantastic work in his new position.

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.

Faith Outside The Box

Thursday, September 3rd, 2009

 

Picture by Hay Kranen

Picture by Hay Kranen

The Washington Post’s William Wan wrote a fascinating story about Facebook and faith — specifically, how people fill out the “religious views” box on their profile pages:

Such public proclamations of beliefs used to require a baptism in water, or a circumcision, or learning the five pillars of Islam. Now Facebook users announce their spiritual identity with the stroke of a few keys. And what they are typing into the open-ended box offers a revealing peek into modern faith and what happens to that faith as it migrates online.

Wan says the box gives us insight how the religious landscape has changed in the Internet age. “Christian” — or a Christian denomination or sect — is still by far the most popular way to fill in the box, followed by “Islam” and “atheist.” But, as Wan points out, people describe themselves  in a myriad of ways: “Jedi” is actually the 10th most popular “denomination” on Facebook. More than 2,000 people list “Heavy Metal” in the box. Many typed in “beer.” 

And then there are the cryptic or witty one-liners, including my favorite: “Agnostic, but accepting offers.” 

All of this makes these Facebook theologians sound rather light and trite. But for many, wrestling with how to fill in the box was a very serious matter. Some, according to Wan, wrestled with the question for days or weeks. For a few, considering “the box” led them to a line of thought they’d long ignored. Some eventually type in favorite Bible verses or an obscure line of poetry. Others gave up and simply wrote, “it’s complicated.” Religious descriptors on Facebook are almost as numerous and varied as the faithful themselves.

Is this another example of how we’ve turned religion into a “mix-and-match” experience? Are we so uncomfortable with organized religion that we shed labels altogether and piece together our own individual faiths?

Well, partly. But I think it gets at something more basic: Faith, for most of us, is big. Faith is complicated. And the essence of faith requires more than a box to describe it.

My Facebook page tells the world I’m a “Christian.” I’m comfortable calling myself, even, an evangelical Christian. It is, after all, what I am.

But it doesn’t tell people how I cringed at that very label for much of my life, or how proud I am, in many ways, of that label now. Or how I found my faith, lost it, and found it again. Or how I was baptized at age 7 so, in part, I could see what the inside of the baptismal looked like. Or how — well, you get the point. 

A friend of mine asked me one time to talk about my “testimony,” and found myself saying, “which one?” Faith for me — and I expect, for many people — isn’t very neat and tidy. It’s a messy, often chaotic journey, and I don’t think I’m anywhere near the end of mine. 

My Facebook “religious views” box, really, should come with an asterisk beside the word “Christian”: Not an asterisk as a modifier — not a “Christian, but …” but rather an extended footnote: “Christian, and let me tell you about it.” Because let’s face it: Christianity is meant to be lived outside the box.

God Talk: Obama Tops Bush

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

Americans like our leaders to have faith. According to a recent Gallup poll, more than half of us would refuse to vote for an atheist for president, even if he (or she) was otherwise qualified.

The verse George W. Bush selected for his 2005 inauguration was from Isaiah 40: “But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”

The verse George W. Bush selected for his 2005 inauguration was from Isaiah 40: “But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”

So why is it news when a president talks about God?

George W. Bush’s presidency was, in many ways, defined — particularly by his detractors — by his Christian faith. He was scoffed at when he said that Jesus Christ was the philosopher he admired most. Oliver Stone lampooned Bush’s beliefs in his satire “W.” Run a Google search that pairs “Bush” with “Christ,” and you’ll run into sites like this that derisively rattle off dozens of pro-Christian quotes from our 42nd president.

But when it comes to talking about religion, Bush has nothing so far on his presidential successor, Barack Obama.

According to a fascinating Politico story (through a connection to The Pew Forum), Obama’s discussed his faith and mentioned Jesus far more often than Bush did in the early days of his presidency, ranging from a reference to the Sermon on the Mount at Georgetown University to a brief personal testimony at the University of Notre Dame.

“Obama’s invocation of the Christian Messiah is more overt than Americans heard in the public rhetoric of Bush in his time in the White House — even though Bush’s victories were powered in part by evangelical voters,” Politico’s Eamon Javers writes. He also quotes Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council (and no fan of Obama) saying, “I don’t recall a single example of Bush as president ever saying, ‘Jesus’ or ‘Christ.’”

Some of this, perhaps, can be attributed to circumstance: At Notre Dame, Obama was addressing the issue of abortion: Reminding his audience that he was a Christian and pro-choice might be simply chalked up to good strategy. On his recent swing through the Middle East, Obama tackled tensions between Muslims, Jews and Christians, so he had strong reason to offer pertinent, conciliatory “God talk” there, too. 

Still, it is interesting. While most evangelicals didn’t vote for him last time around and probably won’t in 2012 (barring some hefty reversals in his positions on some important issues), he’s making some subtle inroads into the evangelical community, I think. We’ll see where it all goes.