Atlas Shrugged and Its Reviewers -- Sightings

On this Monday after Easter, I was thinking of writing a piece to be entitled "Rand Wins."  I was going to use this essay to reflect on the release of a survey taken in the city of Troy, MI, where I live and pastor.  What this survey demonstrated was that the people of Troy have little concern about the welfare of their community -- it's all about me.  That's essentially the philosophy of Ayn Rand -- the virtue of selfishness.  She didn't believe in Caesar, but she also didn't believe in Jesus.  Rand's teachings, interestingly enough, have had a renaissance of late among Tea Partiers, including evangelical Christians.  Well, Martin Marty has beat me to it, and so I'll let him raise the issues of the day for our discussion.  By the way, in answer to Cain's question, "Am I my Brother's Keeper?" I believe that God assumed he was!

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Sightings 4/25/2011

Atlas Shrugged and Its Reviewers

-- Martin E. Marty

Atlas Shrugged, viewed by reviewers of most stripes as being appallingly appalling, draws crowds of devotees, and has champions on the right, including the Religious Right. Reviewing movie reviews is not standard fare in this column, but the support for this film based on the Ayn Rand perennial best-seller, deserves notice for what its plot and author tell about our nation and some religious sectors in it. And what it tells suggests profound contradictions, the reality of blind spots among ideologues, and the question of what America’s real religion, or this denomination of it, is.

Gary Moore, founder of The Financial Seminary, is the most dogged observer of Ayn Rand’s doings, reputation, and effect. He is mystified, as his online column title suggests: “Et tu, Cal? A response to Cal Thomas’s endorsement of the Atlas Shrugged movie and its attack on Caesar.” Caesar? How about “attack on Christ,” which is another specialty of Rand? Cal Thomas? Since that columnist “has famously disagreed with the worst excesses of the religious right,” his touting of Atlas, says Moore, “cuts like a knife.” Do not he and his colleagues notice contradictions in their stand? These should be obvious enough, as Moore—no leftist—and Charles Colson, etc. have pointed out.

Now, a novelist, faux-philosopher, or economist does not have to be religiously orthodox or religious at all to be reckoned with and selectively appropriated by the religious. The bearded God-killers, Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud come to mind as thinkers whose non-God and anti-God philosophies have to be dealt with by scholars, writers, theologians, and activists who use insights from them. But Moore says that the complexities in the camps need notice. Preachments are absorbed into the religious canon, and the result is “syncretism,” mixing of religions. And the public consequence of Randianism deserves notice as it befuddles Moore, Colson, and others.

Why expressive conservative Christians waste energies responding to the comparatively trivial “new atheists” while giving Rand a free ride or while taking their own ride on her renewed bandwagon is further a part of the mystery. The culture’s “new atheists” can be economic conservatives or socialists, Republicans or Democrats, humanists or anti-humanists and the world goes on. With Rand it is different, wedded as she has been to advocates and advocacies in both parties and many conservative camps.

That Rand has said that she wants to kill off all religions may bring her celebrity. She is consistently anti-government and stridently pro-selfishness. She sneers at people who care for the needs of others. As a result, Randists in the Bible-believing cohort of the population ask: is there anything in her philosophy that is not in direct opposition to the whole of the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament? Grounded in her contention that selfishness is a virtue and selflessness is a vice, she evokes a furrowed brow from columnist Maureen Dowd: “Rand is blazing back as an icon of the Tea Party, which overlooks her atheism, amorality in romance and vigorous support for abortion.” Obviously.

Give Rand in her writings credit: she did not set out to entrap or fool people. She made clear that if anyone would come after her, they had to deny all their impulses toward selflessness, take up their blinders and billfolds, and follow her. It’s been a long road already, and it threatens to enlarge as economic confusion continues to reign and religious witness is muzzled by the religiously confused.

 

References

Maureen Dowd, "Atlas Without Angelina," New York Times, April 16, 2011.

Michael Phillips, "'Message' pictures and the myth of objectivity," Chicago Tribune, April 21, 2011.

Gary Moore, "Ayn Rand: Goddess of the Great Recession," Christianity Today, August 27, 2010.

---. "Et tu, Cal? A response to Cal Thomas’s endorsement of the Atlas Shrugged movie and its attack on Caesar," This Lamp, April 19, 2011.

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com.

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In his famous work, The Golden Bough, James Frazer (1854-1941) noted, "The custom of physically marrying men and women to trees is still practiced in India and other parts of the East. Why should it not have obtained in ancient Latium?" Drawing in part upon her own experiences as a field researcher in Nepal, Anne Mocko (University of Chicago) discusses the interpretive problems of Frazer's approach to the rituals of others in this month’s Religion and Culture Web Forum; she also analyzes several rituals involving the fact that Frazer got correct: that, "in India and Nepal, men and women do physically marry themselves to trees--or to plants, fruits, statues, and animals." With invited responses by Wendy Doniger (University of Chicago), Reid Locklin (University of Toronto), and Benjamin Schonthal (University of Chicago).

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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Modernity and Religion -- Sightings

In this week's issue of Sightings, the venerable historian of religion and Christianity and observer of things religious and not so religious -- Martin Marty -- reflects on the embrace of modernity by those who once rejected it -- conservatives/fundamentalists.    I'm going to just invite you to read and respond!!

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Sightings 4/11/2011

Modernity and Religion

-- Martin E. Marty

Beyond religion-in-the-news stories about Japan, Libya, Washington, and other crisis points, “religion in public life” continues to be a topic which deserves notice. This week in a conversation two sociologists who are turning attention to religious phenomena asked a provocative question: “What would you make the focus of your research and writing if you were we, knowing our interests as you do.”

My answer was vague and sprawling, but clear in my own mind, as I’d long been pondering this question along with other puzzlers. I offer it free of charge also to others who engage in sighting the roles of religions in public life: Why do religious communities which for a long time strenuously resisted the new, the modern, the contemporary, now most successfully adapt their expressions and employ or even exploit the manifestations of “the modern” which they once opposed?

The immediate prompt for my question was a paragraph in a review by the awesomely learned historian Diarmaid MacCulloch, who was reviewing five books dealing with the 400-year history of the “King James Bible” in the London Review of Books. “Ironically, among many conservative evangelicals in the US, the KJB has lost its hegemony over the last half-century, as a welter of new translations has appeared reflecting the diverging agendas of an American evangelical Protestantism which was once given a certain unity by the cadences of 1611.” He quotes author Paul Gutjahr, “who tours us round Bibles rewritten for ‘busy moms’, ‘extreme teens’, or any special interest groups looking for spiritual guidance to suit itself, without the fatigue of having to listen to any of the Bible’s multitude of alternative voices.” MacCulloch relishes “the prospect of some day opening a Celebrate Recovery Bible. . .”

Many instances parallel to the KJV about-face come to mind. What is a better symbol of the modern than mass media of communications? In every religion, from non-Christian to Protestant, the fundamentalists outpace moderates or liberals in their embrace of media: radio, then television, and now the internet are virtually theirs. Two generations ago, the beat of rock was music of the devil to these anti-modernists, though earlier a few riffs of jazz in the sanctuaries of liberals got them dismissed as blasphemers. Today those liberals cherish pipe organs and cantatas, while Christian rock—with the same old once-sinful beat—beats out many secular rock expressions. “The love of money is the root of all evil!” was the biblical quote thundered in conservative churches. Today it is the putatively “conservative” wing of Christianity that forgets old restraints and promotes “enterprise,” the “market,” and all the rest as part of God’s plan.

Is it “wrong” or “bad” for Christian anti-modernists now to turn into accommodating “moderns?” They can cite the apostle Paul, who would be “all things to all people.” They do carry on their mission more efficiently and prosperously than do the “moderates” who are cautious about many such accommodations. Some think through the meaning of their radical adaptations; others simply coast. That and how and why they so blithely and even enthusiastically made 180-degree turns should keep more than two sociologists of religion busy. And those who changed might be a bit cautious, recalling philosopher Ernest Gellner’s word that there is nothing more dated than the modernism of the previous generation. At least let’s grant the point that we are better off than when the King James Version fans burned mildly revised versions as “Stalin’s Bibles.”

References

Paul C. Gutjahr, “From monarchy to democracy: the dethroning of the King James Bible in the United States,” The King James Bible after Four Hundred Years: Literary, Linguistic, and Cultural Influences. Edited by Hannibal Hamlin and Norman Jones (Cambridge University Press, 2010).

Diarmaid MacCulloch, “How Good is it?” London Review of Books, February 3, 2011.

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at http://www.illuminos.com/.

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In his famous work, The Golden Bough, James Frazer (1854-1941) noted, "The custom of physically marrying men and women to trees is still practiced in India and other parts of the East. Why should it not have obtained in ancient Latium?" Drawing in part upon her own experiences as a field researcher in Nepal, Anne Mocko (University of Chicago) discusses the interpretive problems of Frazer's approach to the rituals of others in this month’s Religion and Culture Web Forum; she also analyzes several rituals involving the fact that Frazer got correct: that, "in India and Nepal, men and women do physically marry themselves to trees--or to plants, fruits, statues, and animals." With invited responses by Wendy Doniger (University of Chicago), Reid Locklin (University of Toronto), and Benjamin Schonthal (University of Chicago).

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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Fasting for the Poor -- Sightings

In the name of "deficit reduction" aim has been taken at a number of programs, from Planned Parenthood to NPR, but while these two programs have gotten a lot of press coverage, there are many other areas of the social safety net that are being sliced and diced, even as the defense department and tax cuts for the wealthy are being protected.  Martin Marty takes a look at a couple of protests through fasting against these plans (HR-1).  Take a read and offer your responses.

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Sightings 4/4/2011

Fasting for the Poor

-- Martin E. Marty

“Why We’re Fasting” is the title of columnist Mark Bittman’s essay in Wednesday's New York Times, the “we” being himself and David Beckmann, here described as a “reverend,” and “this year’s World Food Prize laureate.” The pastor heads “Bread for the World.” Yes, why fast? Readers can do their own sighting and hearing of all the media-reported clashes over the national budget, now in final crunch time. That scan will reveal the obvious: that lost in the necessary political and economic debates blighted by the side-tracking but focal partisan and sub-partisan disputes on the issue is one set of people. Biblical scholars in this “Judeo-” and “Christian” nation call them “God’s people.” They are the poor, disabled, disadvantaged, undersheltered and, yes, hungry, about whom some of the budget debates were supposed to have been waged.

Bittman and Beckmann discuss Isaiah 58, essential reading for believers and bystanders alike at such a time and place as this. G. K. Chesterton famously observed that one can look at something 999 times and then, on the thousandth sighting, see something revelatory, as if for the first time. We are asked to do such looking now. To bid each other to do so will sound embarrassingly pious, and yet. . . .

As Bittman tells it, he is fasting, or was, last Monday, when thousands of others also fasted to draw notice to those Congressional budget proposals (H.R. 1) which would “quite literally cause more people to starve to death, go to bed hungry or live more miserably than they are doing now.” Adds Bittman: “And: The bill would increase defense spending.”

Bittman confessed to some skepticism about whether things work out the way Isaiah 58, reporting on God’s revelatory word, suggests. That chapter also reflected God’s being bored by all of Israel’s fussing about how strenuous the people were about holy fasting. The prophet—in my own loose translation—says, for God: “You think you are going to impress me by fasting, but all you do is get hungry and thus get angry and then beat up on each other. Is that the fast you think I want?”

Also in elaborated but consistent paraphrase for the Bible-believers among us: “You can stamp ‘In God We Trust’ on all your money, fight for particular prayers in public gatherings and schools, sing ‘God Bless America’ and all,” but if the people would not feed the hungry, free the imprisoned, and take care of those in need, their fasting, they learned, was beside the point, if not futile and wrong. The ancient prophet said this more elegantly and with an authority that columnists cannot command, but his words should outrank other texts which are cherished by biblical literalists and their secular cousins during legislative and electoral conflicts. Beckmann: “. . . deficit reduction isn’t as important as keeping people from starving: ‘We shouldn’t be reducing our meager efforts for poor people in order to reduce the deficit. They didn’t get us into this, and starving them isn’t going to get us out of it.”

Bittman does not expect God to intervene, but he still hears the moral punch of the biblical language. Disagree with Bittman and Beckmann if they offend, one can suggest, but for the biblically-minded folk, proving that the two are wrong is hard to do. I hope both fasters savor their post-fasting food but stay on the cause. Those obsessed with budget-cutting will certainly stay on theirs. Note: Isaiah 58 speaks wonderfully, not grimly, about the promise of what could follow moral action in the face of human need.

References

Mark Bittman, “Why We’re Fasting,” New York Times, March 29, 2011.


David Beckmann, “God, Hear Our Prayer,” Bread for the World, March 28, 2011.

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at http://www.illuminos.com/.

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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

A Governor, a Cardinal and the Death Penalty -- Sightings

The Death Penalty remains a controversial subject in American life.  A large majority of Americans support it either on the basis of its alleged deterrant effects or on the basis of justice.  This view is held in spite of the fact that it runs counter to Roman Catholic teachings and that of many Protestants as well.  Although capital punishment remains popular there are signs of change -- in part because people in leadership are paying attention to their own faith traditions.  In today's Sighting's posting, Martin Marty interacts with the recent signing of a bill to end capital punishment in Illinois by the Governor, who cites the influence of words written by the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin.  I invite you to consider these thoughts and add your own.  For my own perspective (I'm a strong opponent of the death penalty), click here.   

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Sightings 3/28/2011

A Governor, a Cardinal and the Death Penalty

-- Martin Marty

“On that decisive morning of March 9, [Governor Pat Quinn of Illinois] laid aside the secular factors and opened his Bible to a passage in II Corinthians about human imperfection,” Samuel G. Freedman wrote in the New York Times. “He prayed. And when he signed the bill striking down the death penalty, he cited one influence by name,” the late Cardinal of Chicago. It was a shock to be reminded that Joseph Bernardin passed away almost fifteen years ago, since he remains such a presence to so many of us and such an irritant to others, including many Catholics who never took to his example and writings on life, peace, and reconciliation.

Freedman, who wrote of this praying and signing, listed as “the several secular factors” some arguments from prosecutors who spoke of the death penalty’s deterrent effect, which is a secular factor, and also of “the grieving relatives of murder victims who saw in it fierce justice,” which Quinn took seriously, aware of their grief and himself a former proponent of capital punishment as “fierce justice.” He knew that three-fourths of polled Americans still favor the death penalty. They lost one favorer, however, after Quinn’s prayer and his reading of Bernardin. Some of us would like to think that his signing is part of a slow but epochal shift away from executing horribly guilty and sometimes utterly innocent Americans.

Empathizing with and supporting Democrat Quinn is not a signal of a partisan commitment. His predecessor twice removed, former Governor George H. Ryan, a Republican now in prison, also made strenuous moves against capital punishment. In an autobiographical address to the Pew Forum at the University of Chicago Divinity School in 2002, Ryan told how as a legislator he had voted for the death penalty but as governor, who quite literally had the power to have over 150 convicts killed, he changed. Religion played a large role in his decision. Be it noted that religion also plays a part in the decision of some civil leaders who continue to support capital punishment.

Where does this leave us? Those of us who observe and comment on our sightings of explicit religion in public life, including in its focused political forms, have to know that there is no neat line to draw as to what is acceptable in a republic which distinguishes between religion and civil authority and what is not. A teachable moment, one of millions since, occurred when President Reagan, televised before the presidential seal, named 1983 “The Year of the Bible” for Americans. Some days later I was one of four guests on a now-forgotten television show hosted by now-forgotten Phil Donahue. We disoriented Mr. Donahue and perhaps some viewers. He had invited an ACLU critic of the President, expecting him to represent hard-line secularist opposition to such blurring of lines—only to find that the guest was a Southern Baptist minister.

I think I was expected to speak against the President, but chose, on James Madisonian grounds, to defend the President’s right, arguing that one does not and cannot and should not leave behind the religious bases of one’s ethics. Next, I got to say, had the Congress voted, as some saw it poised to do, to make that designation legal, hosts of us would have stepped up to oppose it. So now with Governors Ryan and Quinn, influenced by scriptures, church teachings, and in this case by Cardinal Bernardin, they acted out of informed conscience—risking their action in politics. Still and always: handle with care!

References

Samuel G. Freedman, “Faith Was on the Governor’s Shoulder,” New York Times, March 26, 2011.


“Governor George Ryan: An Address on the Death Penalty,” The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, June 3, 2002.

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at http://www.illuminos.com/.

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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

In God We Trust -- a Lenten Devotion

Matthew 5:38-48;

Micah 7:5-7

In God We Trust

I was invited to write a reflection on something that’s on my heart and that I want to share with the congregation. I thought about writing on how Jesus’ call to love our enemies should help define how we understand the nature of God. I’ve chosen a text to include in the day's reading that reflects that concern, but the issue that grabs my attention here is the matter of Trust

It is increasingly clear that there is a crisis of trust that is affecting families, churches, and communities large and small. Although there is a need for healthy skepticism and even suspicion – don’t believe everything you hear or read, especially if it comes by way of an email, but without a certain degree of trust society can’t sustain itself.

The prophet Micah, who declares so beautifully what God desires from us (Mic. 6:8), also writes: “Put no trust in a friend, have no confidence in a loved one; guard the doors of your mouth from her who lies in your embrace; . . .” (Mic. 7:5). Yes, the prophet says – your enemies are in your household, which means the only one you can trust is God (7:6-7).

I recently had the opportunity to be with Martin Marty at the Academy of Parish Clergy, and Marty spoke to the issue that he deals with in his powerful new book Building Cultures of Trust. In reflecting on the biblical perspective concerning trust, he writes: “We cannot build cultures of trust on the basis of faith in the natural trustworthiness of humans” (p. 61). That said, Marty believes, and I agree, that the church, the people of God, are called to build cultures of trust in the midst of so much distrust.

We start with the recognition that in recent years scandal and disappointment have damaged our trust in the political, the corporate, and even the religious realms. There is much reason for being distrustful, but if we distrust our neighbor, then our tendency is to withdraw inwardly and cease to engage in relationships with others. We become fearful of the other, and can become self-centered and unconcerned about the needs of others. We take down the welcome sign and build barriers that we believe will protect us from the other. With that the concern for the common good begins to die.

As we take this Lenten journey together, I’m hopeful that we might hear the call to put our trust in God, and with this trust our own distrust can be transformed into a movement of reconciliation and healing. Micah says to us – trust in God. In Romans 4, Paul points us to Abraham and Sarah, who trusted God and God reckoned this trust as righteousness (Rom. 4:20-22). Their trust led to the creation of a family and a nation – that was called upon to be a blessing to all nations (Genesis 12:1-3).

With our trust placed in God, who calls on us to love our enemies and do good to those who persecute us, perhaps we can make a difference in the world. With God’s wisdom and guidance, we can join together in building this culture of trust. And trust will allow us to continue our journey into the future with hope and not fear as our companion, committed to what Marty calls “trustworthy systems” (pp. 183-184).

Reposted from the Central Woodward Christian Church 2011 Lenten Devotional -- edited by John McCauslin.

 

Jerusalem, Jerusalem -- Sightings

Jerusalem has, like Babylon and Rome and other cities of the ancient world, has long been a metaphor as well as a place in time and space.  Martin Marty shares his response to a new book by James Carroll, author of Constantine's Sword, that wrestles with Jerusalem the city and Jerusalem the metaphor, bringing into the conversation Rene Girard's scape-goating theory, in which it is suggested that violence is sometimes tamed by violence -- a perspective that has been used to understand the cross by some theologians.  I invite you to consider Marty's reflections, even as we watch news of military attempts to tame the violence of a petty dictator.  

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Sightings 3/21/2011

Jerusalem, Jerusalem

-- Martin E. Marty

Jerusalem, Jerusalem is not about Jerusalem the city. Guidebooks abound and histories are plentiful. What author James Carroll was moved to write is a reflection that deals with Jerusalem both as real and as metaphor. He does not exactly do justice to or make much of his subtitle: How the Ancient City Ignited Our Modern World, but his reflections will ignite at least sparks in the minds of readers who want to ponder with him the question: what is it about religion, with all the solace-bringing good its various forms can bring, that also prompts and promotes violence of most barbaric sorts?

I was one of a half dozen respondents to the book at a program at Brandeis University in Boston last Monday. Our panel featured the requisite Jewish, Muslim, and Christian participants—two of each—who could have finished off the guidebook/history approach quite easily. Dealing with Carroll’s chosen plot, however, was demanding. Those of us who count the author a friend, interact with him on occasion—as I do at programs of the Kaufman Interfaith Institute in Grand Rapids—or argued with him over details of his earlier and provocative Constantine’s Sword expect more of him than one more guidebook or history. While his early reviews tend to be positive, some have criticized him for his choice of approach. Thus Damon Linker in the New York Times chides him for using Jersualem in ways which Linker calls “messy.”

Carroll does not pretend to be objective or dispassionate, though he does not side with Christians or Jews or Muslims in the many forms with which they have dispensed violence or told stories about it. So depressing are many of the expressions of Jerusalemitis, that puzzling, disorienting, and often apocalyptic fever which afflicts or is emitted by so many Jerusalemites through the ages, that some of us panelists pondered: what hope is there in dealings with militant people who successively or, worse, concurrently inhabit the sacred and bloody hills. Carroll, metaphorically taking off from Jerusalem’s mountains (as Jesus and Muhammad “really” did, in some cherished texts), was apocalyptic as he envisioned where sacred violence might lead, but let a glimmer of hope shine on the city. People work at peacemaking, he implied, because despite all the warring and bloodshed, “people” overall would prefer peace and more quiet lives.

That kind of warning and dreaming will get you quite far. Carroll is inspired by René Girard’s influential “scapegoat” theory. It suggests, as Linker summarizes, “that human society and culture are shot through with bloodshed that can be tamed only by further acts of bloodshed. The pre-eminent example of violence taming violence, he says, is religion, which arose out of the practice of human sacrifice—a ritual that enabled a community to channel and purge its primitive impulses in a single cathartic act of collective bloodletting.” One need not buy into all details of the Girard speculations to follow Carroll’s theories, which at times sound like cautions against religion and at others as advertisements for some of its forms.

Unfortunately for his own peace and quiet, Carroll writes a weekly column in the Boston Globe. He said something critical of Israel’s recent treatment of Palestinian families on disputed property in eastern Jerusalem. The response from several Israeli voices was instant, vehement, and verbally violent. Whatever else such columns do, they show that violence is still at hand and poised. Monsieur Girard: after the escalations of violence, is there a scapegoat?

References

Damon Linker, “Grappling with Religion and Violence,” New York Times, March 20, 2011.

“Speaking of Faith: Inter-Religious Dialogue in the 21st Century,” Kaufman Interfaith Institute, Grand Valley State University.

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at http://www.illuminos.com/.

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This month’s Religion and Culture Web Forum is written by D. Max Moerman and entitled “The Death of the Dharma: Buddhist Sutra Burials in Early Medieval Japan.” In eleventh-century Japan, Buddhists fearing the arrival of the "Final Dharma"--an age of religious decline--began to bury sutras in sometimes-elaborate reliquaries. Why entomb a text, making it impossible for anyone to see or read it? And what do such practices teach us about the meaning and purpose of texts in Buddhism and other religions? Max Moerman of Barnard College takes up these questions with responses from Jeff Wilson (Renison University College), James W. Watts (Syracuse University) and Vincent Wimbush (Claremont Graduate University).

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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

What is your Calling?

What is your calling?  How did you receive your calling?  If you look in the Hebrew Bible, more often than not, when God called, the people at first said -- send someone else.  Moses said -- I can't speak well, so God said -- take along Aaron, he can talk for you.  Jonah receives the call and runs the other way.  Jeremiah said -- I'm but a boy.  In every case God seems to have an answer to the attempt to put off the call.

But how does a call come?  I didn't hear an audible voice, but I think I knew from early on a direction (though I framed it differently than time would reveal).  I can say with some surety that when I decided to pursue the M.Div. and ordination I didn't have parish ministry in mind.  I was going to be a theological educator.  That was my calling!  And yet, here I am, in my 26th year of ordination and in my 13th year as pastor of a congregation. 

All of this leads to my sharing of a video of Martin Marty sharing his sense of what it means to receive a call to ministry in the Christian community.  He notes that traditionally it has been assumed that God calls through the community (the church), but in his conversations with people entering ministry, it would be better to say that God calls "through billions of particulars."  I think he may be right.  I invite you to watch, consider, and add your own sense of what it means to be called.  The video comes from the What's Your Calling? -- a movement/organization inspired by a PBS miniseries -- The Calling. 

Hell's Bell -- Sightings

For the past week or so we've been talking a lot about hell and Rob Bell's still unrevealed views on the subject.  There are many assumptions and presumptions, but until the book arrives in our hands, we'll not know for sure!  What we can comment on is the conversation that has been engendered by the publicity releases for the book.  In yesterday's Sightings post, which I'm posting today, so I could post Bruce Epperly's piece yesterday, Martin Marty takes a look at the gap that is emerging within evangelicalism between those who feel it incumbent upon them to preach hell while a growing number of others simply don't find it compelling any longer.  I'll invite your reading and further comments.

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Sightings 3/7/2011

Hell’s Bell

-- Martin E. Marty

Americans may have thought that cracks in the façade and framework of evangelicalism would show up most visibly when serious evangelicals argued whether Sarah Palin or Mike Huckabee would be the better presidential candidate. But now we have a chance to see that other divisive issues among evangelicals beg for attention. When one of these, a theological argument, no less, makes its way to the New York Times and other papers plus many blogs, it’s time to pay attention. Bystanders who think they have nothing at stake in the non-political arguments, and who have never heard of Pastor Rob Bell of Grand Rapids, Michigan, or his critic, neo-Calvinist John Piper, may stand by in fascination, but they are likely to be reached this time. The topic? Hell, and a punishing God’s use thereof.

Bell, featured in the Times story, is a star of the emergent middle among evangelicals. He is seen by his enemies as baiting those to his right by writing too kindly about God and the many mortals destined for hell, and they insist that softness has to stop. Pastor Bell is soon to publish Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. His publisher and others have tantalized the public with clips from the book, but the critics did not need to have read it and do not need to know more than that Bell is not so sure that a God of love will condemn those billions who never heard of Jesus Christ, or those millions who have heard but did not recognize him as their Savior, in order for them to fire up their own condemnations of Bell.

The Michigan pastor-author is not alone; Bell’s hell is paralleled in treatments of a whole wing of evangelicals. Some of this group "out” themselves, while others are in a kind of purgatory of inference that they are not quite orthodox on the subject. What this second wing keeps pondering and sometimes proclaiming is that there are ways to witness to the fact that God is holy and just, other than saying that he takes delight in punishing those ignorant of the stakes or those who are players of other salvation games. It is one thing to agree with sophisticated evangelical theologians and their artful articulators who semi-dodge the issue by saying that no one is ever sent to hell and suggesting that she or he chooses to go there.

Publics, including those serious about the Bible, doctrine, and church tradition, have not found ways to accept the teaching which they cannot square with witness to the God of love, so Bell and company would witness positively to them. Formal theologians in the evangelical camp are bemused by the consistent polls in which only a small percent of the clergy are ready to affirm and preach doctrines and threats of hell and the large percent of their followers who are not. They know of the gap, and feel they must close it. Otherwise orthodoxy will disappear and relativism or universalism will win. The evangelical parents whose teenage “good kid” son who has not made a formal profession of faith in Christ and thus will be condemned to hell if he dies, need better reasoning than the dogmatic professors of hell give them.

Otherwise this latest fissure in evangelicalism will grow, and arguments will distract preachers of hell from their tasks and opportunities to win people from its brink, thus swelling its population in the interest of saying the right thing about this form of a holy and just God’s mode of everlasting punishment. Why are they writing editorials and condemnations and attending conferences on hell when they could be out on the street corners, passing tracts and witnessing to hell—and divine love? Bell asks for answers.

References

Erik Eckholm, "Pastor Stirs Wrath With His Views on Old Question," New York Times, March 4, 2011.

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at http://www.illuminos.com/.

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This month’s Religion and Culture Web Forum is written by D. Max Moerman and entitled “The Death of the Dharma: Buddhist Sutra Burials in Early Medieval Japan.” In eleventh-century Japan, Buddhists fearing the arrival of the "Final Dharma"--an age of religious decline--began to bury sutras in sometimes-elaborate reliquaries. Why entomb a text, making it impossible for anyone to see or read it? And what do such practices teach us about the meaning and purpose of texts in Buddhism and other religions? Max Moerman of Barnard College takes up these questions with responses from Jeff Wilson (Renison University College), James W. Watts (Syracuse University) and Vincent Wimbush (Claremont Graduate University). Visit the RCWF at: http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/

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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Liberal Judaism in Decline -- Sightings (Martin Marty)

Today's report from Martin Marty on things religious concerns something we in the Christian Mainline know something about -- decline! In this case the community under consideration is liberal Judaism (Conservative and Reform branches), which are experiencing significant decline and wondering about their purpose as communities of faith. With anti-Semitism much less of an issue today (Putnam and Campbell in American Grace say that we like Jews better than any other faith community), so the question is -- what binds liberal Jews together? If you're not Jewish you may wonder why this matters. Marty suggests it matters to non-Jews because Reform and Conservative Jews are the most likely representatives of this community to engage in dialogue. Take a look and offer your thoughts.

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Sightings 2/28/2011

Liberal Judaism in Decline

-- Martin Marty

“Liberal Denominations Face Crisis as Rabbis Rebel, Numbers Shrink: Struggling for Relevance and Funding” headlined the prime story by Josh Nathan-Kazis, in the newspaper Forward. A prime column follows it a week later, as Dana Evan Kaplan writes on “The Theological Roots of Reform Judaism’s Woes.” Translation of Nathan-Kazis’s headline, for non-Jews: synagogue memberships in Conservative Judaism, a major liberal denomination, “are in free fall.” Since 2001 the decline was 14 percent, while in the Northeast, family memberships dropped by 30 percent. Meanwhile, we read, in the other large liberal group, Reform Judaism, highly-placed rabbis are working to shake things up, to reform Reform, which is also in crisis.

Sociologist Mark Chaves offers perspective but not policy help by reminding Jews that most Christian denominations are also in decline or even in travail, when local congregations progressively, or regressively, drag their feet, close their pocketbooks, and go their own way, often into decline. I could write of counter-signs of vitality in Jewish and Christian directions, but that would be a different topic for a different day. Not being a policy-maker but a reporter on varieties of perspectives, I am doing what I can to discern and describe the trends, observe the statistics and strategies—and hope. Why invest hope on the part of those of us who have no great stake in liberal Judaism?

Many of the reasons are obvious, among co-religionists who wish for the best for fellow citizens and the collegially-religious. Non-Jews who take note of religion-in-public have reasons to care because it is often liberal Jews, not the Orthodox or the non-affiliated or non-practicing, who are their natural partners in dialogue. Robert Putnam in American Grace found strong evidence that non-Jews feel “warmest” to Judaism, among the religious families in America today. (That finding itself may be a sign of the weakening bonds of liberal Judaism after the time when overt and consistent anti-Semitism helped foster cohesion and inspire energies among beleaguered Jews.)

If response to anti-Semitism is less of a binding and energizing force among Jews, many argue that the defense of Israel has its enormous part to play. But observe the polls or listen to reports of especially younger Jews, and you will hear concerns that this will not be enough to keep Judaism strong. Now for that column by Rabbi Dana Evan Kaplan, author of Contemporary American Judaism. He notices that “triumphalism,” bragging rights and expressions by Reform as “the biggest” no longer is in place. He argues that the current “organizational malaise” obscures the fact that “the problem facing liberal Judaism is theological.” The pluralism, virtually the “anything goes” approach to liberal belief has replaced classical Reform’s emphasis on “the clear theological formulations of ethical monotheism and the mission of Israel.”

Today as Reform stresses “religious autonomy and the importance of choosing what each person finds spiritually meaningful,” in the words of Kaplan, there are few grounds for forming community and finding commitment. “Benign neglect” of theology and of witness to “the authority of God” have weakened liberal Judaism. After writing this but before you read it, I will have strolled down the block to Chicago’s Sinai Temple to hear a Sunday Sinai Symposium on, you guessed it, “Does Reform Judaism Have a Future?” Five notable and concerned rabbis will provide their answers in the afternoon session. Their audience, including this columnist, will have good reasons to pay attention.

References

Josh Nathan-Kazis, “Liberal Denominations Face Crisis as Rabbis Rebel, Numbers Shrink, Struggling for Relevance and Funding,” Forward, February 18, 2011.

Dana Evan Kaplan, “The Theological Roots of Reform Judaism’s Woes,” Forward, February 16, 2011.

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com.

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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

A Bishop's Defense of Government -- Sightings

Is government the enemy?  In some places, like Libya it probably is, but can we honestly say that government is the enemy in the United States?  It may be inefficient and ineffective at times, but is government really the problem?  And as we answer that question it probably is good to remember that even in a representative democracy, ultimately "we the people" are the government. 

This is the question that Martin Marty raises in today's edition of Sightings.   He makes reference to a Lutheran Bishop in Minnesota who decided to stand up and defend the importance of government, including taxation, as an expression of our existence as a people in compact with each other.  I may not always agree with the government, but I'm not sure that anarchy is better.  I may not like every regulation or tax, but the FDA and EPA provide important services that enhance our lives.  But, I'd like to hear what you have to say in response to Marty's essay.

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Sightings 2/21/2011

A Bishop’s Defense of Government

-- Martin E. Marty

Belgian sociologist of religion Henri Desroche once observed three functions of religion in society. Religion normally attests a society when it is in the business of “affirming.” There and then it serves an integrating function. That’s normal: think “God bless America.” Next, in a society that is examining its own premises and reorganizing its constituencies, the function of religion is to be contending “within the limit of contesting the status quo.” Think Martin Luther King, Jr. “In a society that is denying, challenging and refusing its own right to exist, religion appears as a function of protesting, revolting and subverting,” writes Desroche. Think recent Egypt.

Beyond these three functions of attesting, contending and protesting are chaotic movements like anarchism, or, closer to home in today’s America, simple “anti-government” actions, expressions, and tantrums. Think of Ayn Rand’s shrugs and the many current declarations in praise of the selfish individual. Now and then religious leaders, themselves aware of the attesting, protesting, and even, though too rarely, the contending functions of faiths, will examine and take on selfish declarations. One whose words reached publics in the Minneapolis StarTribune and subsequently, of course, on the internet, is Peter Rogness, a bishop within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and president of the Minnesota Council of Churches. He had the sense to speak of the obvious to multitudes and the courage to take on the anti-government folk, in a column entitled “Government is not the enemy.”

His question is clear: “Is government us or them?” a question which he follows up with the observation: “With no public announcement, we have changed from a people sharing a common life to several hundred million individuals who happen to live near one another, and we risk losing our soul in that change.” His “we” is “the people” who appear(ed) in so many of “our” founding and later public documents. He adds: “As people withdraw into greater concern for their private welfare, government as public enterprise fades; the ‘we’ becomes ‘they,’ common purpose becomes interference and the poor and vulnerable are left on the margins.”

Government, in our history and for Rogness, is not an “it” or a “them.” “Taxes aren’t theft; they’re the means by which we pool our resources, fairly and with order, to underwrite this common life.” Ready to take on an icon, he looks back to 1981 when an unnamed U.S. President announced, “Government is not a solution to our problem; government is the problem.” The bishop anticipates legitimate debate over his words “fairly and with order.” No party, no policy, has a monopoly on “fairness” and good “order.” Contesting policies and programs is a right and duty of “we the people.”

Rogness asks, “So why is a Lutheran bishop writing a social and historical critique?” He is not unique. Numbers of other bishops do so, among them Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. They do it because at stake are “values rooted in the faith traditions of the people who make up this state and nation.” And: “A budget is a moral document.” Let debating over budgets continue, something that can’t happen in an “anti-government” moment, which one hopes will not become an era of potential destruction. It would be caused by the “I’s” who, Rogness writes, take care of themselves and do not notice or who do disdain the “others.” These others, the vulnerable and marginal, are prime in the faith traditions of which the bishop speaks.

References

Henri Desroche, Jacob and the Angel: An Essay in Sociologies of Religion (University of Massachusetts, 1973).

Peter Rogness, “Government is not the Enemy,” StarTribune.com, February 6, 2011.

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com.

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In this month's Religion and Culture Web Forum, Jessica DeCou offers a comic interpretation of the theology of Karl Barth, bringing his work into a surprising and fruitful dialogue with the comedy of Craig Ferguson. Both men, she contends, “employ similar forms of humor in their efforts to unmask the absurdity and irrationality of our submission to arbitrary human powers.” The humor of Barth and Ferguson alike stresses human limitation against illusory deification. DeCou argues for understanding both the humor and the famous combativeness of Barth's theology as part of this single project, carried out against modern Neo-Protestant theology. The Religion and Culture Web Forum is at: http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/

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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.