Fire Hydrant of Freedom
Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities => Science, Culture, & Humanities => Topic started by: Crafty_Dog on December 12, 2008, 09:16:09 AM
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Woof All:
I have always thought there was a correlation between celibacy/the lack of marriage (heterosexual sex) for priests and the Church's massive problems with pedophilia. The following article in today's WSJ challenges that assumption:
Marc
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By ERICA SCHACTER SCHWARTZ
It began on the radio this summer. New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind ran a segment on his Saturday night talk show titled "We Are Only as Sick as Our Secrets: Sexual Abuse, Healing the Shame," featuring graphic accounts of sexual abuse of children in the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn.
There had been a few high-profile cases before, but this "was when the floodgates opened," explained Mr. Hikind, an Orthodox Jew himself. Following the show, additional victims and their family members came forward to share with Mr. Hikind their own stories. "Cases of sexual abuse are not worse among the Orthodox," clarifies Mr. Hikind. "But when there's a problem and you don't deal with it, it gets worse." Over the past few months he has collected hundreds of testimonies spanning several decades, naming at least 50 alleged pedophiles across the tri-state Orthodox Jewish community, including well-respected rabbis and teachers.
But now these testimonies have become a source of contention. They have been subpoenaed for a civil suit by a lawyer representing six former students of Rabbi Yehuda Kolko, a longtime teacher at one of Borough Park's leading all-male yeshivas, who has been charged repeatedly since the 1980s with sexually molesting his students. (Last year Rabbi Kolko pleaded guilty to child endangerment.) The problem is that Mr. Hikind had sworn to keep the testimonies confidential.
Mr. Hikind claims he will "do the right thing" about the subpoena without betraying the names of any of the victims. While he will not hand over his complete list of alleged perpetrators, he says that "we are starting to share names" with Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes.
Many people give Mr. Hikind credit for bringing much needed attention to an issue in the Orthodox community that has frequently been swept under the rug. (One exception to the silent treatment was the Orthodox Union's creation of a special commission in 2000 to investigate the sexual abuse charges against Rabbi Baruch Lanner, leader of the National Conference of Synagogue Youth, who was later convicted.) He also deserves credit for getting victims to talk at all. Mr. Hikind says that he encourages each victim who comes to him to go directly to the police, but no one is willing to. They are too afraid of the repercussions for themselves and their families in terms of reputation and marriageability.
The trouble is that subpoena or no subpoena, he has valuable information that is not being effectively utilized to investigate the alleged offenders and get them off the streets. "Dov Hikind has decided that secrecy is a more worthwhile value than child protection," explains Marci A. Hamilton, a professor at the Cardozo School of Law and an expert in clergy law. By witholding the names of the perpetrators, "he is sharing in the responsibility of every child who is harmed by them."
What Mr. Hikind wants to do instead is tackle the issue from within the community. He has assembled a task force of rabbis, therapists, principals and pediatricians to help the community respond to cases of sexually abused children -- raising awareness, forming a registry of teachers (so that a teacher who is removed from one school does not simply go to another) and devising a system of investigating allegations. Investigation is extremely important, he adds, because "you have to make sure an innocent person is not being thrown to the wolves."
While Mr. Hikind's effort is well-intentioned, Prof. Hamilton calls it "a doomed project." Resolving cases of sexual abuse without the legal establishment in this country "has never worked in any other religious community," she points out, citing the Catholic Church as an example. And the truth is, many rabbis agree with her. According to Rabbi Mark Dratch, the chief executive officer of JSAFE (The Jewish Institute Supporting an Abuse-Free Environment), "Rabbinic authorities do not have the expertise or ability to handle these things. Making reports [to the legal authorities] is the only way to go."
Mr. Hikind insists that his plan does not look to circumvent law enforcement, but to collaborate with it. The question, though, is if the ultra-Orthodox constituency that Mr. Hikind is working with will be a real partner in this endeavor. In the past, they have unfortunately been resistant, worrying more about the consequences of disparaging renowned Torah scholars than about protecting a child's life. Some rabbis in the community have even impeded the efforts of other rabbis who are willing to speak out and take action. Orthodox rabbi and psychologist Benzion Twerski resigned from Mr. Hikind's task force for fear of tarnishing his reputation and his family's reputation within the community. In Williamsburg, Rabbi Nuchum Rosenberg received threats for speaking out against abuse in his community.
So is Mr. Hikind's plan "doomed"? It depends. If the community is willing to take more cases to the police rather than watching alleged perpetrators float from one community to another, where they will no doubt prey again, then great. But if they are not, if they succumb to the same social pressures that have paralyzed them for decades, then every day that goes by another community of children is at risk.
No matter what happens, though, Mr. Hikind promises not to reveal any victims' names. "I will not, God forbid, destroy a person's life all over again," he says. That's good. But let's hope another child's life is not destroyed either.
Ms. Schwartz writes a monthly column for the Jewish Week.
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Pope Reinstates Four Excommunicated Bishops
NYTimes
RACHEL DONADIO
Published: January 24, 2009
VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI, reaching out to the far-right of the Roman Catholic Church, revoked the excommunications of four schismatic bishops on Saturday, including one whose comments denying the Holocaust have provoked outrage.
The decision provided fresh fuel for critics who charge that Benedict’s four-year-old papacy has increasingly moved in line with traditionalists who are hostile to the sweeping reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s that sought to create a more modern and open church.
A theologian who has grappled with the church’s diminished status in a secular world, Benedict has sought to foster a more ardent, if smaller, church over one with looser faith.
But while the revocation may heal one internal rift, it may also open a broader wound, alienating the church’s more liberal adherents and jeoparding 50 years of Vatican efforts to ease tensions with Jewish groups.
Among the men reinstated Saturday was Richard Williamson, a British-born cleric who in an interview last week said he did not believe that six million Jews died in the Nazi gas chambers. He has also given interviews saying that the United States government staged the Sept. 11 attacks as a pretext to invade Afghanistan.
The four reinstated men are members of the Society of St. Pius X, which was founded by a French archbishop, Marcel Lefebvre, in 1970 as a protest against the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council, also called Vatican II. Archbishop Lefebvre made the men bishops in unsanctioned consecrations in Switzerland in 1988, prompting the immediate excommunication of all five by Pope John Paul II.
Later that year, Benedict, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, sought to regularize the church’s relationship with the society. And as pope, he has made reinstating the Lefebvrists an important personal cause.
Indeed, even though the Society has given no public signs that it would reverse its rejection of Vatican II, one Vatican official, speaking on condition of anonymity on Saturday because talks were continuing, said that the Vatican was willing to discuss making the group a personal prelature. Pope John Paul II did the same with another conservative group, Opus Dei.
In a public statement Saturday, the Vatican said that the pope would reconsider whether to formally affirm the four men as full bishops, but it referred to the men by that title. It said talks would seek to resolve the “open questions” in the church’s relationship with the society.
In recent years, Benedict has made other concessions to the followers of Archbishop Lefebvre, who died in 1991. The overtures including allowing the broader recitation of the Latin Mass, which was made optional in the 1960s and includes a Good Friday prayer calling for the conversion of Jews.
Chester Gillis, who holds the Amaturo chair in Catholic studies at Georgetown University, said that both Benedict and John Paul II before him had tried for years to bring these traditionalists back into the church, partly out of concern that their movement might grow and create an entrenched parallel church.
“I don’t think the Vatican doesn’t care about Jewish-Christian relations, but at least it appears that internal church matters trump external relations,” he said. “They’re thinking, let’s heal our own house, whatever the consequences are externally.”
The recent comments by Bishop Williamson, who led a seminary in Ridgefield, Conn., in the 1980s and later moved to a seminary in Argentina, inevitably overshadowed the debate about traditional and liberal strains in the Roman Catholic Church.
In a November interview broadcast on Swedish television last week and widely available on the Internet, the bishop said that he believed that “the historical evidence” was strongly against the conclusion that millions of Jews had been “deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler.”
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said Saturday that Bishop Williamson’s comments had nothing to do with the pope’s decision to welcome the schismatic bishops back into the fold. He added, “These are declarations that we don’t share in any way.”
Father Lombardi called the revocation of the excommunications a fundamental step toward the unity of the church, after two decades of rift. “We have to consider it very positive news,” he said. He said that Benedict had “greatly suffered” at the group’s excommunication and had long been “a protagonist in relations with Lefebvre.”
Jewish groups criticized the decision to reinstate the men on Saturday, and the decision is sure to complicate talks between the Vatican and Israeli officials about a proposed papal trip to the Holy Land this year.
In a statement, the Anti-Defamation League said that lifting Bishop Williamson’s excommunication “undermines the strong relationship between Catholics and Jews that flourished under Pope John Paul II and which Pope Benedict XVI said he would continue when he came into his papacy.”
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Abraham Foxman, the A.D.L.’s national director, added that the decree “sends a terrible message to Catholics around the world that there is room in the church for those who would undermine the church’s teachings and who would foster disdain and contempt for other religions, particularly Judaism. Given the centuries-long history of anti-Semitism in the church, this is a most troubling setback.”
In a statement released Friday, Rabbi David Rosen, the director of the International Jewish Committee for Interreligious Consultations, said, “We urgently call on the Vatican to reiterate its unqualified repudiation and condemnation of all and any Holocaust denial.”
In revoking the excommunications, the Vatican said it was responding to a letter sent in December by the director of the Society of Pius X, in which the bishops said they were “firmly determined to remain Catholic and to put all our efforts to the service of the church.”
The letter appeared to stop short of saying that the society would embrace, or even accept, the reforms of Vatican II.
“This is certainly a major concession to the traditionalists, part of a long effort by Rome to heal the only formal schism after Vatican II,” said John L. Allen Jr., a columnist for the National Catholic Reporter. “Politically, this certainly emboldens the conservative reading of the council and emphasizes what Benedict XVI has repeatedly called the ‘continuity’ of Vatican II with earlier periods of church history.”
In a letter sent to followers on Saturday, Bishop Bernard Fellay, the director of the Society of St. Pius X and one of the four reinstated, said: “Thanks to this gesture, Catholics attached to tradition throughout the world will no longer be unjustly stigmatized and condemned for having kept the faith of their fathers.”
He added that the society welcomed an opportunity to talk with the Vatican “to explain the fundamental doctrinal reasons which it believes to be at the origin of the present difficulties of the church.”
George Weigel, a biographer of John Paul II, said he was troubled by Bishop Fellay’s implication in his letter that the schismatic group represented the tradition, while “the rest of us are, somehow, the true schismatics.”
He added: “It is not easy to see how the unity of the Church will be enhanced unless the Lefebvrists accept Vatican II’s teaching on the nature of the Church, on religious freedom, and on the evil of anti-Semitism, explicitly and without qualification; otherwise, you get cafeteria Catholicism on the far right, as we already have on the left.”
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Israel's Chief Rabbinate Severs Ties with Vatican - Ian Deitch (AP/Washington Post)
Israel's chief rabbinate severed ties with the Vatican on Wednesday to protest a papal decision to reinstate Bishop Richard Williamson who publicly denied six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust.
The Jewish state's highest religious authority sent a letter to the Holy See saying: "It will be very difficult for the chief rabbinate of Israel to continue its dialogue with the Vatican as before."
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For the first time since researchers began tracking the religious identity of Americans, fewer than half said they were Protestants, a steep decline from 40 years ago when Protestant churches claimed the loyalty of more than two-thirds of the population.
A new study released on Tuesday by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that it was not just liberal mainline Protestants, like Methodists or Episcopalians, who abandoned their faith, but also more conservative evangelical and “born again” Protestants. The losses were among white Protestants, but not among black or minority Protestants, the study found, based on surveys conducted during the summer.
When they leave, instead of switching churches, they join the growing ranks who do not identify with any religion. Nearly one in five Americans say they are atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.”
This is a significant jump from only five years ago, when adults who claimed “no religion” made up about 15 percent of the population. It is a seismic shift from 40 years ago, when about 7 percent of American adults said they had no religious affiliation.
Now, more than one-third of those ages 18 to 22 are religiously unaffiliated. These “younger millennials” are replacing older generations who remained far more involved with religion throughout their lives.
“We really haven’t seen anything like this before,” said Gregory A. Smith, a senior researcher with the Pew Forum. “Even when the baby boomers came of age in the early ’70s, they were half as likely to be unaffiliated as compared with young people today.”
The “Nones,” as they are called, now make up the nation’s second-largest religious grouping. The largest single faith group is Catholics, who make up about 22 percent of the population. Their numbers have held steady, mostly because an influx of immigrants has replaced the many Catholics who were raised in the church and left in the last five years, Mr. Smith said.
The rise in people who claim no religion is likely to have political consequences, said Phil Zuckerman, a professor of sociology and secular studies at Pitzer College in Southern California.
“The significant majority of the religiously unaffiliated tend to be left-leaning, tend to support the Democratic Party, support gay marriage and environmental causes,” he said.
The Pew report offers several theories to explain the rise of the religiously unaffiliated. One theory is that the young adults grew disillusioned with organized religion when evangelical Protestant and Catholic churches became so active in conservative political causes, like opposition to homosexuality and abortion.
Another theory is that the shift merely reflects a broader trend away from social and community involvement, the phenomenon dubbed “bowling alone” by Robert D. Putnam, a public policy professor at Harvard University.
Another explanation is that the United States is simply following the trend toward secularization already seen in many economically developed countries, like Australia and Canada and some in Europe.
The United States has always been the great exception to this secularizing trend, and it is not clear that Americans are necessarily moving toward the European model.
The Pew report found that even among Americans who claimed no religion, few qualified as purely secular. Two-thirds say they still believe in God, and one-fifth say they pray every day. Only 12 percent of the religiously unaffiliated group said they were atheists and 17 percent agnostic.
The Rev. Eileen W. Lindner, who has chronicled religious statistics for years as the editor of the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches, has observed this complexity.
She said, “There will be lots of people who read this study and go: ‘Oh no, this is terrible! What’s it doing to our culture?’ I would, as a social scientist and a pastor, urge caution.
“A lot of the younger people are very spotty in their attendance at worship, but if we have a mission project, they’re here,” said Ms. Lindner, the pastor of a Presbyterian church in New Jersey. “They run the soup kitchens, they build the houses in Habitat for Humanity.”
They may not come on Sundays, she said, but they have not abandoned their faith.
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Haven´t looked at this yet, just storing the URL here for future reference:
http://mormonthink.com/
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Yet another example of morally unacceptable behavior from the Catholic Church
Cardinal Dolan and the Sexual Abuse Scandal
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Published: July 3, 2013
Tragic as the sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church has been, it is shocking to discover that Cardinal Timothy Dolan, while archbishop of Milwaukee, moved $57 million off the archdiocesan books into a cemetery trust fund six years ago in order to protect the money from damage suits by victims of abuse by priests.
Related
Cardinal Dolan, now the archbishop of New York, has denied shielding the funds as an “old and discredited” allegation and “malarkey.” But newly released court documents make it clear that he sought and received fast approval from the Vatican to transfer the money just as the Wisconsin Supreme Court was about to open the door to damage suits by victims raped and abused as children by Roman Catholic clergy.
“I foresee an improved protection of these funds from any legal claim and liability,” Cardinal Dolan wrote rather cynically in his 2007 letter to the Vatican. The letter was released by the Milwaukee Archdiocese as part of a bankruptcy court fight with lawyers in 575 cases of damage claims. The archdiocese filed for bankruptcy protection in 2011. The law bars a debtor from transferring funds in a way that protects one class of creditors over another.
The release of about 6,000 pages of documents provided a grim backstage look at the scandal, graphically detailing the patterns of serial abuse by dozens of priests who were systematically rotated to new assignments as church officials kept criminal behavior secret from civil authority.
It is disturbing that the current Milwaukee leader, Archbishop Jerome Listecki, said last week that the church underwent an “arc of understanding” across time to come to grips with the scandal — as if the statutory rapes of children were not always a glaring crime in the eyes of society as well as the church itself.
Cardinal Dolan was not a Milwaukee prelate during most of the abuse cases, but he faced a costly aftermath of troubles and warned the Vatican in 2003: “As victims organize and become more public, the potential for true scandal is very real.” The documents showed how the Vatican slowly took years to allow dioceses to defrock embarrassing priests. Yet the same bureaucracy approved Cardinal Dolan’s $57 million transfer just days after the Wisconsin court allowed victims’ damage suits.
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A perfect example of why I am an ex-catholic. A just church would excommunicate any official who suggested such a thing.
Yet another example of morally unacceptable behavior from the Catholic Church
Cardinal Dolan and the Sexual Abuse Scandal
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Published: July 3, 2013
Tragic as the sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church has been, it is shocking to discover that Cardinal Timothy Dolan, while archbishop of Milwaukee, moved $57 million off the archdiocesan books into a cemetery trust fund six years ago in order to protect the money from damage suits by victims of abuse by priests.
Related
Cardinal Dolan, now the archbishop of New York, has denied shielding the funds as an “old and discredited” allegation and “malarkey.” But newly released court documents make it clear that he sought and received fast approval from the Vatican to transfer the money just as the Wisconsin Supreme Court was about to open the door to damage suits by victims raped and abused as children by Roman Catholic clergy.
“I foresee an improved protection of these funds from any legal claim and liability,” Cardinal Dolan wrote rather cynically in his 2007 letter to the Vatican. The letter was released by the Milwaukee Archdiocese as part of a bankruptcy court fight with lawyers in 575 cases of damage claims. The archdiocese filed for bankruptcy protection in 2011. The law bars a debtor from transferring funds in a way that protects one class of creditors over another.
The release of about 6,000 pages of documents provided a grim backstage look at the scandal, graphically detailing the patterns of serial abuse by dozens of priests who were systematically rotated to new assignments as church officials kept criminal behavior secret from civil authority.
It is disturbing that the current Milwaukee leader, Archbishop Jerome Listecki, said last week that the church underwent an “arc of understanding” across time to come to grips with the scandal — as if the statutory rapes of children were not always a glaring crime in the eyes of society as well as the church itself.
Cardinal Dolan was not a Milwaukee prelate during most of the abuse cases, but he faced a costly aftermath of troubles and warned the Vatican in 2003: “As victims organize and become more public, the potential for true scandal is very real.” The documents showed how the Vatican slowly took years to allow dioceses to defrock embarrassing priests. Yet the same bureaucracy approved Cardinal Dolan’s $57 million transfer just days after the Wisconsin court allowed victims’ damage suits.
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It is not my intent to offend with what follows, but in the spirit of the Search for Truth it must be said, to which this forum is dedicated, sexual abuse, including pedophilia, seems to riddle the Catholic Church (fortunately I do not have to worry about any fatwas from the Pope or anyone else.).
IMHO this raises fundamental questions concerning the Church's doctrine of celibacy; indeed, although reasonable people may disagree, it does not seem to me to be too much to say that it disproves the validity of the celibacy doctrine.
The pervasiveness of cover ups by the Church for me is a fatal blow to respecting the Church as an institution. Again, and again, and again, and again we see this sort of thing to the point where it appears to be the rule and not the exception.
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The bad behaviors, bad systems, and bad management are all violations of the Church's teachings, not any indictment of the validity of the teachings.
I agree this failure has a link to the celibacy policy for priests. Eagerness to forgive sin isn't helpful here either. Some sins are unforgivable.
OTOH, nothing in Catholic or Christian teaching says it is acceptable to harm children. The violators and those who cover up for them are imposters, not Christians or Catholics, IMHO. Further, they are atheists if they believe God is not watching them behind closed doors.
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"The bad behaviors, bad systems, and bad management are all violations of the Church's teachings, not any indictment of the validity of the teachings."
Agreed, hence:
"The pervasiveness of cover ups by the Church for me is a fatal blow to respecting the Church AS AN INSTITUTION." (emphasis added).
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Luke 17:2
It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.
- King James Bible "Authorized Version", Cambridge Edition
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"I agree this failure has a link to the celibacy policy for priests."
I think if you research those they prey on children, you'll find that it has nothing to do with celibacy, and everything to do with predators looking to infiltrate social structures that allow them to commit their crimes.
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Sounds plausible, but a question:
Are this sort of thing AND ITS COVER-UP as common in other religious institutions that do not require celibacy?
My understanding is that the Church is having serious recruitment issues. Might throwing out all the pedophiles diminish its ranks further?
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Sounds plausible, but a question:
Are this sort of thing AND ITS COVER-UP as common in other religious institutions that do not require celibacy?
As common? Hard to say. You'll find every religion has those that seek status within as cover for their criminal acts. Sexual predators will often have access to consentual adult partners and still seek out victims.
My understanding is that the Church is having serious recruitment issues. Might throwing out all the pedophiles diminish its ranks further?
I don't think the catholic church is that desperate, but rather like many institutions seeks to protect it's assets and public image rather than adhere to any conventional sense of right and wrong.
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From Australia:
From the Editor
Hi there,
A few weeks ago my monthly trip to Hobart coincided with a nice little money-spinner for the local tourism industry, the Dark MOFO. This is a winter solstice (I live in the southern hemisphere, remember) festival celebrating sex and death.
It wasn't all bad. There was a cheerful buzz in the city after dark and some spectacular installation art, including a shaft of light soaring 15 kilometres into the night sky.
The common thread, however, was reviving paganism. The festival's concert was called Satanalia (sic). Devotees of the old-time religion used to bathe starkers at the solstice so there was a mass nude swim at sunrise led by the Lord Mayor.
The pièce de répugnance dominated the city: a gigantic hot-air balloon the size of two semi-trailers. This was the kind of overwhelmingly gross fertility totem which Bart Simpson would have carved had he been a priest of Moloch. Even politicians were gobsmacked by its vulgarity.
But it's what the locals expect from the organiser, David Walsh, a multi-millionaire gambler. He has built and furnished MONA, an avante-garde Hobart museum which delights in giving a raspberry to conventional moral and aesthetic standards. I do like Hobart, but Walsh's Dark MOFO was depressing. Even more depressing was the enthusiasm of the local government, media and crowds.
What next?
For me it was the ordination of three young men from Sydney as Catholic priests on Saturday. The crisp winter light flowed through the stained glass of the packed cathedral. Old and young, people of all backgrounds and races, watched the ancient ceremonies. Ethereal selections from Palestrina and Monteverdi soared to the vaulted ceiling. Everything was bathed in a quiet, confident, serene joy.
Cardinal George Pell, an important figure in Australian public life, clearly pleased to be forging a link from the Christianity of the past to the Christianity of the future, told the vast crowd, "we've got solid reasons for optimism here."
The ceremony didn't make the evening news. The people drifted home, leaving the Cathedral to curious rugby tourists sporting beer bellies and kilts. Like most good news, the ordination flew under the media radar. The grotesque sniggering of Dark MOFO got the headlines. But I'm quite sure that the future belongs to a crowd which celebrates light and life, not darkness and death. (The future of rugby, on the other hand, belongs to the British Lions. They smashed Australia's Wallabies that evening 41-16.)
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http://www.dennyburk.com/journalist-kirsten-powers-tells-about-her-conversion-to-christ/
She is a regular member of the roundtable convesation on the Bret Baier Special Report.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6axdZAxyt2g
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Second post:
Cross Fit champion credits Jesus
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/21/hold-sun-scott-will-tweak-christ-is-the-reason-for-everything-crossfit-champ-rich-froning-details-his-path-to-becoming-the-fittest-man-on-earth/
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http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/07/24/Military-Censors-Christian-Chaplain-Atheists-Call-for-Punishment
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/07/25/fema-denies-aid-to-religious-groups-hard-hit-by-sandy-/2588519/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&dlvrit=206567
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The progressives are replacing religion with big government.
There is not God. Don't look to God. Look to government.
Government, not religion, determines right and wrong.
More mind control.
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Moving CCP's post to here. In a closely related vein, currently I am reading Robert Wright's "The Evolution of God" (this is the third book by him which I have read) It is both intellectually and spiritually exciting.
The life of Jesus
No angel
Perhaps Jesus was no pacifist
Jul 27th 2013 |From the print edition
Rebel with a cause
Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. By Reza Aslan. Random House; 296 pages; $27. Buy from Amazon.com
IN HIS earlier book about Islam, Reza Aslan, an Iranian-born American writer, presented a subtle view of the different layers of truth that can be found in sacred writings. For example, he explained that stories about Muhammad’s childhood are not meant to relate to historical events, but rather “to elucidate the mystery of the prophetic experience”. In any case, he added teasingly, myth is always true somehow; if it did not express a powerful truth, it would not last.
The sensibility that Mr Aslan brings to his latest book, about the founder of another monotheism, is by comparison rather one-dimensional, although his considerable gifts as a storyteller and populariser of complex religious ideas remain intact. The purpose of “Zealot” is not to contemplate Jesus of Nazareth as a source of ultimate meaning, but to investigate and describe the story of his life. The book’s underlying assumption is that if Jesus has any significance at all, it is to be found in the facts of his earthly existence. And these facts, Mr Aslan maintains, are often diametrically opposed to the story set out in the New Testament—which is one the author himself once embraced as a 15-year-old convert to evangelical Christianity.
The trouble is that neither narrative—the familiar one or his alternative—can be established as incontrovertible, so Mr Aslan’s tendency to make pronouncements with blithe certainty can grate. Only periodically does he throw in an appropriate expression of doubt.
Far from being a pacifist, Jesus for Mr Aslan was the leader of a nationalist revolt against Rome who was punished for sedition, not blasphemy. In other words, Jesus meant it when he said “I have not come to bring peace, but the sword,” whereas sayings like “My kingdom is not of this world” may well have been made up. As for the commandment to “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s”, that is a statement of theocratic resistance to Roman rule. It is amazing, in Mr Aslan’s condescending view, that so many people have failed to see this.
He argues that the universalist pacifism ascribed to Jesus was superimposed on him several decades after his death, in the climate created by the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70AD. Once Jewish resistance to Rome was more or less quashed, followers of Jesus consciously or unconsciously refashioned their faith into one that meekly accepted imperial authority and could spread easily through a multinational empire.
Many religious scholars believe that texts should be studied and decoded in the context of the eras in which they were written. But Mr Aslan places enormous, and perhaps excessive, emphasis on the explanatory power of context. Because history reveals at least something of the role of itinerant preachers who challenged Roman rule in the quarrelsome Jewish world, he assumes it is possible to locate Jesus in that world.
Context is necessary for anyone trying to pin down the historical Jesus, but such arguments can go too far. At their most ambitious, they purport to decode with perfect accuracy any piece of religious text, laying bare both the facts that lie behind it and the reasons why those facts were refracted in a certain way.
That approach refuses to even acknowledge the possibility of prophecy, which means the ability of individuals to discern important truths about the world in ways that rise above the circumstances of their lives. How people respond to prophets and their claims is an existential choice, but a belief that prophets exist—that not all concepts can be reduced to historical context—is central to any religious faith. This means that appreciating the possibility of prophecy (whatever one chooses to make of it) is vital to the work of a religious historian. Mr Aslan has shown elsewhere that he understands this, but there is not much sign of this insight in his latest book.
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An interview with Aslan leaving the interviewer looking like a complete ass.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY92TV4_Wc0
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WSJ
Pope Signals Openness to Gay Priests
Pontiff's Comments Suggest Greater Acceptance of Homosexuality Among Clerics
By STACY MEICHTRY
Pope Francis held a press conference on the flight back to Italy after departure from Rio de Janeiro Sunday.
ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE— Pope Francis opened the door Sunday to greater acceptance of gay priests inside the ranks of Roman Catholicism as he returned to the Vatican from his maiden trip overseas.
Fielding questions from reporters during the first news conference of his young papacy, the pontiff broached the delicate question of how he would respond to learning that a cleric in his ranks was gay, though not sexually active. For decades, the Vatican has regarded homosexuality as a "disorder," and Pope Francis' predecessor Pope Benedict XVI formally barred men with what the Vatican deemed "deep-seated" homosexuality from entering the priesthood.
"Who am I to judge a gay person of goodwill who seeks the Lord?" the pontiff said, speaking in Italian. "You can't marginalize these people."
Never before had a pope spoken out in defense of gay priests in the Catholic ministry, said Vatican analysts. Past popes have traditionally treated homosexuality as an obstacle to priestly celibacy, and the Vatican has sent extensive instructions to Catholic seminaries on how to restrict gay candidates from the priesthood.
Pope Francis "is showing a deep respect for the human condition as it is instead of approaching things in a doctrinal way," said Alberto Melloni, a church historian.
Pope Francis in Brazil
View Slideshow
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Luca Zennaro/Reuters
Pope Francis celebrated the final Mass of his Brazil trip at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro Sunday.
The news conference was wide-ranging and hastily arranged aboard an overnight flight that returned the pontiff to Rome Monday from a weeklong trip to Brazil where millions of people flocked to see him, including three million at a Mass Sunday on the beach in Rio de Janeiro. The rock-star reception, analysts say, is likely to strengthen the pope's hand as he confronts myriad challenges awaiting him at the Vatican, from corruption at the Vatican bank to the long-running sexual-abuse crisis.
Pope Francis' remarks on homosexuality came as he mused at length on one scandal that erupted on his predecessor's watch: A secret Vatican report leaked to the Italian media purporting that a clique of homosexual Vatican clerics had formed a "gay lobby" that was secretly pulling the strings inside the Holy See.
The Argentine pontiff said he had discussed the findings of the internal Vatican report with Pope Benedict XVI who resigned in early February. The German pope emeritus, Francis said, had given him a box full of documentation and testimony from the internal report prepared by three octogenarian cardinals before he stepped down.
In a nuanced yet candid reflection, the pope carefully drew a distinction between the possibility of pressure groups existing inside the Vatican—which he defined as a "problem"--and the potential presence of gay priests within Vatican ranks.
"You have to distinguish between the fact of a person being gay, and the fact of a lobby," the pope said. "The problem isn't having this orientation. The problem is making a lobby."
The comments cut to the core of one of the most challenging issues facing the Catholic priesthood. Bishops who run local dioceses have long been divided over whether to accept gay priests who are chaste. While some bishops are tolerant of homosexuality, the Vatican's ban on gay priests has forced many clerics to keep their sexuality hidden from superiors who are likely to crack down.
For bishops, the issue boils down to if "you got a priest you know is gay but is not active is that a problem for you or not?" said John L. Allen, a Vatican analyst with the National Catholic Reporter. "For this pope the answer is 'no.'"
The pontiff waded into the issue after a reporter asked him to comment on a report in an Italian magazine purporting that a Vatican monsignor named Battista Ricca promoted by Pope Francis engaged in gay sexual relationships years ago when he was posted overseas at a Vatican embassy in Latin America. The monsignor hasn't commented publicly on the media scrutiny, and he remains in good standing with the pope, according to a senior Vatican official.
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Msgr. Ricca declined to comment Monday.
The media scrutiny of the monsignor's personal life is a delicate matter for Pope Francis. In one of his first moves as pope, he appointed Msgr. Ricca as interim overseer of the Vatican's bank while a special commission weighs the bank's future.
For years, the bank has faced allegations from Italian prosecutors and regulators that its internal controls weren't strong enough to guard against money laundering. On Sunday, Pope Francis suggested he was keeping all options on the table, from transforming the bank into a charitable fund to shutting it down entirely.
"I don't know how this story is going to end," the pope said.
The monsignor under media scrutiny is tasked with acting as Pope Francis' eyes and ears while the commission forges ahead. Francis said he ordered a preliminary investigation of the monsignor after rumors began to swirl about the cleric's purported sex life. The inquiry "found nothing," the pope said without elaborating on the investigation or its findings.
"Many times in the church one goes in search of the sins of youth, and this gets published," the pope said. While criminal conduct—such as the sexual abuse of minors—should be punished, sins should be forgiven once a person confesses, the pope said.
"When the Lord forgives, He forgets," Pope Francis said.
The pope, who had declined to take questions on his way to Brazil, met with reporters for an hour and 20 minutes on the way back. He dispensed reading advice and discussed his plans to visit Jerusalem on his next overseas trip.
Women, he said, couldn't be ordained as priests, because the issue had been "definitively" settled by Pope John Paul II. However, the pope wanted to develop a "theology of the woman," in order to expand and deepen their involvement in the life of the church.
Through it all, he maintained a Zen-like state of calm, even as the plane hit turbulence and the seat-belt lights flashed.
Corrections & Amplifications
The photo caption on an earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the pope left Rio de Janiero Monday. The flight left Sunday.
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An interview with Aslan leaving the interviewer looking like a complete ass.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY92TV4_Wc0
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/07/the-problem-with-reza-aslans-book-is-not-that-he-is-a-muslim-the-problem-with-it-is-that-he-is-disho.html
The problem with Reza Aslan's book about Jesus is not that he is a Muslim. The problem with it is that he is dishonest.
The Leftist media is in an uproar over Reza Aslan's recent interview on Fox News -- see the Huffington Post's account here. Many people have sent me tweets and emails skewering Fox's supposed inconsistency for giving Aslan trouble for writing about Jesus as a Muslim but welcoming me writing about Muhammad as a Christian.
This is not actually the case, but I am getting so many emails about this that I thought I'd make it clear: I have no problem whatsoever with Reza Aslan writing about Jesus as a Muslim. I do not believe that one has to be a Muslim to write about Islam, or a Christian to write about Christianity, or a Hindu to write about Hinduism.
I did put up one Jihad Watch post that touched on the fact that his Muslim religion was not being mentioned in the media, but my emphasis was on his dishonesty, as well as his links to the bloody mullahs of the Islamic Republic of Iran. On July 25, I posted this: "Liberal media love new Jesus book Zealot, fail to mention author is Muslim -- and member of lobbying group for Iranian mullahs," commenting on a Fox News commentary by John S. Dickerson. In his article, Dickerson noted: "Media reports have introduced Aslan as a 'religion scholar' but have failed to mention that he is a devout Muslim." This is true. In this NPR interview a section entitled "On his religious affiliation" has Aslan responding, "I wouldn't call myself a Christian..." and going on and on from there, but he never gets around to mentioning that he is a Muslim.
That's not exactly an honest answer when the question was put to him directly, and so I thought Dickerson's piece had merit. The emphasis of my post, however, was on Aslan's affiliation with a lobbying group for the Iranian mullahs and other unsavory connections to jihadists and Islamic supremacists, and the general fact that the mainstream media overlooks Aslan's superficiality, numerous errors of fact, and obnoxious demeanor because he reflects their ideological perspective.
What's more, on the notorious Fox interview, Aslan lied about his scholarly credentials. Matthew J. Franck explains in First Things that it was Aslan, not Fox's Lauren Green, who steered the interview into a discussion of himself rather than of the book:
In fact, it is Aslan who immediately turns the interview into a cage match by reacting very defensively to Green’s first question. And here is where the misrepresentations begin. For roughly the first half of the interview Aslan dominates the exchange with assertions about himself that seem intended to delay the substance of the discussion:
I am a scholar of religions with four degrees including one in the New Testament . . . I am an expert with a Ph.D. in the history of religions . . . I am a professor of religions, including the New Testament–that’s what I do for a living, actually . . . To be clear, I want to emphasize one more time, I am a historian, I am a Ph.D. in the history of religions.
Later he complains that they are “debating the right of the scholar to write” the book rather than discussing the book. But the conversation took that turn thanks to Aslan, not Green! By the final minute he is saying of himself (and who really talks this way!?) that “I’m actually quite a prominent Muslim thinker in the United States.”
Aslan does have four degrees, as Joe Carter has noted: a 1995 B.A. in religion from Santa Clara University, where he was Phi Beta Kappa and wrote his senior thesis on “The Messianic Secret in the Gospel of Mark”; a 1999 Master of Theological Studies from Harvard; a 2002 Master of Fine Arts in Fiction from the University of Iowa; and a 2009 Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
None of these degrees is in history, so Aslan’s repeated claims that he has “a Ph.D. in the history of religions” and that he is “a historian” are false. Nor is “professor of religions” what he does “for a living.” He is an associate professor in the Creative Writing program at the University of California, Riverside, where his terminal MFA in fiction from Iowa is his relevant academic credential. It appears he has taught some courses on Islam in the past, and he may do so now, moonlighting from his creative writing duties at Riverside. Aslan has been a busy popular writer, and he is certainly a tireless self-promoter, but he is nowhere known in the academic world as a scholar of the history of religion. And a scholarly historian of early Christianity? Nope.
What about that Ph.D.? As already noted, it was in sociology. I have his dissertation in front of me. It is a 140-page work titled “Global Jihadism as a Transnational Social Movement: A Theoretical Framework.” If Aslan’s Ph.D. is the basis of a claim to scholarly credentials, he could plausibly claim to be an expert on social movements in twentieth-century Islam. He cannot plausibly claim, as he did to Lauren Green, that he is a “historian,” or is a “professor of religions” “for a living.”
Here again, the problem is Aslan's dishonesty. I don't care about his scholarly credentials. Even if everything he had said about his degrees had been true, it would confer on his book no presumption of accuracy or truth. I am constantly assailed for lacking scholarly credentials, but as it happens, when it comes to writing about religion I have exactly the same credentials as Aslan, a B.A., Phi Beta Kappa, and an M.A. in Religious Studies. His other two degrees are in other fields.
But anyway, it doesn't matter: there are plenty of fools with degrees, and plenty of geniuses without them. My work, and Aslan's, stands or falls on its merits, not on the number of degrees we have. Aslan's pulling rank on Lauren Green and starting to reel off (inaccurately) his degrees was a sign of insecurity: it implied that he didn't think his book could stand on its merits, and had to be accepted because he had a lot of degrees. And in fact, his book doesn't stand on its merits. Marvin Olasky notes in World Magazine:
Aslan states as fact, not theory, that “the gospels are not, nor were they ever meant to be, a historical documentation of Jesus’ life. These are not eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ words and deeds. They are testimonies of faith composed by communities of faith written many years after the events they describe.”
That’s what theologically liberal commenters propose, but Aslan either skipped or banished from his consideration the theologically conservative half, which states that Matthew, Mark, and Luke reported eyewitness accounts and emerged during the lifetimes of other eyewitnesses.
And indeed, there is no scholarly consensus that the Gospels were not meant to be historical or eyewitness accounts. Whether or not they really are historically accurate is a question that has been debated for centuries and will be debated until the end of time, but Aslan's claim that they were not "ever meant to be a historical documentation of Jesus' life" is false on its face. Luke's Gospel begins: "Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed." (Luke 1:1-4)
That sounds like a document that wants to be taken precisely as "a historical documentation of Jesus' life." So does John's Gospel when it says, "He who saw it has borne witness -- his testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth -- that you also may believe" (John 19:35) and "This is the disciple who is bearing witness to these things, and who has written these things; and we know that his testimony is true" (John 21:24). Again, whether these claims are true or not is another question, but the fact that the claims were made at all completely refutes Aslan's claim. As a scholar of the New Testament he thus stands as incompetent or -- here again -- dishonest.
Likewise his statement in the NPR interview: "I do not believe that Jesus is God, nor do I believe that he ever thought that he was God, or that he ever said that he was God." In the Gospels, Jesus takes upon himself the name "I am," the Holy Name of God according to Exodus 3:14, at least four times: see Mark 6:45, Matthew 14:27, John 6:20, and John 8:58. Aslan may, as a practicing Muslim, believe that the Gospels have been corrupted and that Jesus never actually made these statements, but not even to note that they (and others) exist is, yet again, dishonest.
And that's the problem with Aslan's book: not that he is a Muslim, but that he is not an honest man or a reliable scholar, no matter how many degrees he has. But after all, as his prophet said, "War is deceit."
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Too bad the interviewer didn't do her homework and didn't come ready to make those very points. Too bad instead she came across like an ignoramus, perhaps a bigoted one at that and by so doing ratified every negative stereotype out there about FOX.
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The criticism of Aslan in unfounded for several reasons.
1. The "if" statement that begins the First Things debunking isn't true. Scholars can grow, and often shift fields of studies. I have a former professor whose dissertation was on judicial behavior and has written extensively on social mores in South Africa and legislative behavior in post-CW Russia. Another former professor with a PhD in political science taught in the business school for a long time, where he earned an endowed chair.
2. The fact that the author overlooks the terminal masters degree from the Harvard Divinity School. Probably no religious history in that course load. What a way to dismiss a Harvard degree. Wow.
3. It is true that most academics are now bound to publish or perish, and that Aslan hasn't much in the way of peer reviewed work. Interesting critique, but there are those outside the academy that abhor the lost "public academic." See this as an example: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~ckennedy/nra.htm.
4. Some are questioning the 140 page dissertation as being too short. They don't know much about the academy.
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The criticism of Aslan in unfounded for several reasons.
1. The "if" statement that begins the First Things debunking isn't true. Scholars can grow, and often shift fields of studies. I have a former professor whose dissertation was on judicial behavior and has written extensively on social mores in South Africa and legislative behavior in post-CW Russia. Another former professor with a PhD in political science taught in the business school for a long time, where he earned an endowed chair.
So if someone states "I am a Ph.D. in the history of religions" that's the same as saying "Ph.D. in sociology" or are they possibly being misleading in making that statement?
2. The fact that the author overlooks the terminal masters degree from the Harvard Divinity School. Probably no religious history in that course load. What a way to dismiss a Harvard degree. Wow.
Did anyone say he didn't take any classes in religious history?
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Guess
http://www.legal-project.org/blog/2012/09/iranian-regime-loses-to-legal-project-in-federal
Iranian Regime Loses to Legal Project in Federal District Court
by Sam Nunberg • Sep 18, 2012 at 8:51 am
PHILADELPHIA, September 14, 2012 – Federal District Court Judge John B. Bates for the District of Columbia yesterday granted summary judgment for Seid Hassan Daioleslam, editor of the English Iranian Lobby website "In Search of Truth: Reports on Mullahs's lobby in US," the defendant in a defamation suit brought by Trita Parsi and the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). Judge Bates also ordered sanctions against Parsi for failure to comply with the discovery phase of the litigation. The Legal Project coordinated and financed the defense of Mr. Dai; Sidley Austin LLP represented him pro bono.
Trita Parsi sued Seid Hassan Daioleslam for defamation in April, 2008 after Mr. Dai's investigative reporting exposed Parsi's and NIAC's deep and incontrovertible ties to high-level agents of the Iranian regime. The suit went through 53 months of litigation that included 24 months of discovery and over 30 court motions. These ultimately confirmed the accuracy of Mr. Dai's investigative reports.
The case reached national prominence when Parsi's e-mails (produced during discovery) not only confirmed his ties to the mullahs but also that he has delivered lectures to the CIA, briefed Secretary Hilary Clinton and visited the Obama White House starting in 2009. As recently as this past July, he was hosted by Senior Adviser to the President Valerie Jarrett.
"Judge Bates decision in favor of Seid Hassan Daioleslam is a victory for both the First Amendment and our national security," said Sam Nunberg, director of the Legal Project. "Mr. Dai has been the victim of a predatory lawsuit simply because he exposed the direct connection between the Iranian Regime and NIAC. In light of the sanctions ordered against Parsi, this decision should also serve as a warning to all Islamists who seek to use our courts as a shield in order to intimidate researchers who work to expose them. I also would like to commend Sidley Austin LLP and specifically Mr. Timothy E. Kapshandy for his tireless effort in defending Mr. Daioleslam's rights under the First Amendment."
The Legal Project is an activity of the Middle East Forum. It works to protect the universal right in the West to freely discuss Islam, radical Islam, terrorism, and terrorist funding. The client list includes scholars, journalists, bloggers, activists and politicians.
For more information, contact Sam Nunberg at Nunberg@meforum.org
Seid Hassan Daioleslam's press release may be found here:
http://iraniansforum.com/index.php/washington-insight/434-niac-lost-defamation-case-and-sanctioned-for-discovery-abuses
UPDATE: More information on NIAC's ties to Iran:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/02/08/is-niac-the-iran-lobby/
http://dailycaller.com/2013/02/20/documents-hagel-staffers-met-with-front-group-for-iranian-regime/
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
**Guess who is a board member of NIAC??
http://www.niacouncil.org/site/PageServer?pagename=About_aslan
Reza Aslan - Advisory Board
Reza Aslan, an internationally acclaimed writer and scholar of religions, is a fellow at the University of Southern California's Center on Public Diplomacy and Middle East Analyst for CBS News. He is also a contributing editor to the Daily Beast and a featured blogger for Anderson Cooper 360. Reza Aslan has degrees in Religions from Santa Clara University, Harvard University, and the University of California, Santa Barbara, as well as a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa, where he was named the Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction.
He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, and the Pacific Council on International Policy. He serves on the board of directors for both the Ploughshares Fund, which gives grants for peace and security issues, Abraham's Vision, an interfaith peace organization, and PEN USA. Aslan's first book is the New York Times Bestselling No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, which has been translated into thirteen languages, short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award in the UK, and nominated for a PEN USA award for research Non-Fiction. His second book, How to Win a Cosmic War was published by Random House in 2009, and was followed by an edited anthology, Words Without Borders: Contemporary Literature from the Muslim World, published by Norton. His latest book is Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in the Age of Globalization.
Aslan is President and CEO of Aslan Media Inc., co-founder and creative director of BoomGen Studios, a hub for creative content from and about the Middle East, as well as the Editorial Executive of Mecca.com, an on-line community for Muslim youth. Born in Iran, he now lives in Los Angeles where he is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at University of California, Riverside.
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So if someone states "I am a Ph.D. in the history of religions" that's the same as saying "Ph.D. in sociology" or are they possibly being misleading in making that statement?
Did anyone say he didn't take any classes in religious history?
According to his dissertation advisor:
"Since i was Reza’s thesis adviser at the Univ of California-Santa Barbara, I can testify that he is a religious studies scholar. (I am a sociologist of religion with a position in sociology and an affiliation with religious studies). Though Reza’s PhD is in sociology most of his graduate course work at UCSB was in the history of religion in the dept of religious studies. Though none of his 4 degrees are in history as such, he is a “historian of religion” in the way that that term is used at the Univ of Chicago to cover the field of comparative religion; and his theology degree at Harvard covered Bible and Church history, and required him to master New Testament Greek. So in short, he is who he says he is."
Just a few classes, I guess.
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Hey good news, the religious scholar is teaching a class on "Creative non-fiction".
That must mean it's about religious history or something....
http://student08.ucr.edu/em/classes/ScheduleNew/Index.aspx?browse=Browse
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So if someone states "I am a Ph.D. in the history of religions" that's the same as saying "Ph.D. in sociology" or are they possibly being misleading in making that statement?
Did anyone say he didn't take any classes in religious history?
According to his dissertation advisor:
"Since i was Reza’s thesis adviser at the Univ of California-Santa Barbara, I can testify that he is a religious studies scholar. (I am a sociologist of religion with a position in sociology and an affiliation with religious studies). Though Reza’s PhD is in sociology most of his graduate course work at UCSB was in the history of religion in the dept of religious studies. Though none of his 4 degrees are in history as such, he is a “historian of religion” in the way that that term is used at the Univ of Chicago to cover the field of comparative religion; and his theology degree at Harvard covered Bible and Church history, and required him to master New Testament Greek. So in short, he is who he says he is."
Just a few classes, I guess.
Who's his dissertation advisor?
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"Though Reza’s PhD is in sociology most of his graduate course work at UCSB was in the history of religion in the dept of religious studies."
Why would one get a PhD in Sociology when you were really focused on the history of religion?
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Regardless where the back and forth between BD and GM winds up, I'm still thinking the FOX interviewer revealed herself to be an ignorant anus.
I'm more interested in Reza being part of an outfit that seeks to silence investigative journalism via the costs of litigation. By my values, that says quite a bit. The journalist had to go through 53 months of litigation in order to get a summary judgment! :-o
I'm reminded of the doctor who, after a battery of tests tells his patient
"I have good news and bad news. Which would you like first?"
Anxiously the patient says "Give me the good news first."
"My son got into Harvard Medical School."
"Uh , , , OK , , , what is the bad news?"
"You're going to be paying for it."
Four and a half years of lawyer bills!?!? Surely the man is utterly fuct financially to defend a suit so meritless it got dismissed by Summary Judgment!!!
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It would be nice to see the various media entities do their due dilligence when the Iranian agent is using them to push his jihadist propaganda.
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So if someone states "I am a Ph.D. in the history of religions" that's the same as saying "Ph.D. in sociology" or are they possibly being misleading in making that statement?
Did anyone say he didn't take any classes in religious history?
According to his dissertation advisor:
"Since i was Reza’s thesis adviser at the Univ of California-Santa Barbara, I can testify that he is a religious studies scholar. (I am a sociologist of religion with a position in sociology and an affiliation with religious studies). Though Reza’s PhD is in sociology most of his graduate course work at UCSB was in the history of religion in the dept of religious studies. Though none of his 4 degrees are in history as such, he is a “historian of religion” in the way that that term is used at the Univ of Chicago to cover the field of comparative religion; and his theology degree at Harvard covered Bible and Church history, and required him to master New Testament Greek. So in short, he is who he says he is."
Just a few classes, I guess.
Who's his dissertation advisor?
http://www.scribd.com/doc/156747924/Reza-Aslan-Dissertation
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"Though Reza’s PhD is in sociology most of his graduate course work at UCSB was in the history of religion in the dept of religious studies."
Why would one get a PhD in Sociology when you were really focused on the history of religion?
Did you notice the title, abstract and subject of his dissertation?
I have a friend who has a political science PhD and took about 50% of his class work in the math department and business school. So he could do math really, really well while studying political phenomena.
Is it really hard to understand that thousands of years of religious history impacts societies, cultures, politics and mores?
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Which is why he's an assistant professor of creative writing?
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Hey good news, the religious scholar is teaching a class on "Creative non-fiction".
That must mean it's about religious history or something....
http://student08.ucr.edu/em/classes/ScheduleNew/Index.aspx?browse=Browse
And he has taught on religion at Iowa.
And he is a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
And he was in the USC Center on Public Diplomacy.
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Board member of an Iranian front group, advocate for terrorist groups. Yes, it's quite the impressive cv.
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As best as I can tell there may have been some shiftiness about his being a Muslim and perhaps some inflation of his CV, but on the whole it seems to me that his CV is more than adequate to write the book that he did-- though whether it is any good I have no idea.
What irks me more though is the interviewer's apparent logic that because he is Muslim he should not write about Jesus. What nonsense! Attack or praise the book on its merits-- but then that might require reading it.
What seems the most serious to me is the suggestion of deep dishonesty in the presenting himself as a moderate modern man when really he is part of an organization that seeks to silence free speech via abuse of our legal system.
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It's not at all unusual for jihadist groups to wage lawfare against those who dare point out their agenda.
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"Lawfare"-- that is the word I was searching for!
Anyway, exactly so, so what is Reza doing as part of this group?
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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/08/01/a-nun-does-what-fox-news-couldnt-do-an-interview-with-reza-aslan/
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A Galilean Holy Man
There was no neat progression from Jesus' sayings, life and legend to Christian theology.
By SARAH RUDEN
A certain notoriety surrounds Reza Aslan's "Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth," but only because a Fox interviewer recently questioned whether, as a Muslim and scholar of Islam, Mr. Aslan was qualified to write about "the founder of Christianity." His basic approach to his subject, however—his decision to treat a major religious figure historically, with a life-and-times analysis—is considered hardly worthy of comment.
Christian Beginnings: From Nazareth to Nicaea
By Geza Vermes
Yale, 271 pages, $30
Such wasn't always the case. In the 19th century, only Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" caused more scholarly controversy than the two volumes of David Friedrich Strauss's "The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined" (1835 and 1836). Among those swept up by this new historical view of Scripture was George Eliot, who translated "The Life of Jesus" into English. In her novel "Middlemarch," that crown of the Victorian enlightenment, she shows her heroine finally seeing her husband's pious pedantry for what it is when the young radical she will eventually marry asserts that only German research matters these days. He means, of course, the examination of Jesus as a human being within the context of his times—a man who can be evaluated freely and rationally: Should he be a guide to life and, if so, what kind of guide?
But that was then. In the 21st century, the examination of Jesus as a historical figure has been domesticated far and wide in Christendom, even in seminaries and divinity schools. The full development of fields such as linguistics and archaeology—and their application to ancient texts—may, in a supreme irony, provide material for Bible study within churches more than offer temptation to leave the fold.
Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth
By Reza Aslan
Random House, 296 pages, $27
In "Christian Beginnings," Geza Vermes, whose death in May, at age 88, ended perhaps the most celebrated career in Middle Eastern studies of the past half-century (among other distinctions, he published the first English translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls), lays out and enhances some of the most important arguments that he helped to make familiar. He asks us to see Jesus as a Jew, a man whose outlook and belief were grounded in Judaism and who did not in any way imagine himself to be reinventing his religion or founding a new one.
In many ways, according to Vermes, the Galilean holy man resembled, among others, the prophets of ancient Israel—men like Elijah and Isaiah. Their uniting quality was "charisma," or manifestations of the power of God, mainly through preaching, healing and other ministries. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke—probably all written between A.D. 50 and 80—give a credible picture of such a mission and are divided and equivocal regarding Jesus' identity as the messiah. They are even less forthcoming about him as "the son of God"—a Jewish honorific but, when meant literally, blasphemy to traditional Jews of any period.
The Book of John—most likely written around the end of the first century—was a major break. Christ as the Logos or Word in John 1—a being existing along with God from the beginning of time as the essential force of creation—is a concept traceable back to Plato. It is easy to see a Greek philosophical influence on the "Johannine" corpus, which includes the Epistles of John and Revelation, as well as the Gospel text. One source may be Philo of Alexandria, whose philosophy epitomizes the Hellenized Judaism of the first century. But is hard to imagine such thinking as part of the peasant, artisan and Temple milieu of a historical Jesus.
There was, however, no neat progression in time from Jesus' sayings, life and legend to Christian theology. True, the theology was inexorably refined into the Nicene Creed (A.D. 325), which decreed that Christ was "consubstantial with the Father," part of unitary godhead and not even subordinate to it. But the startling strangeness in Christian formulations about the unseen—the sharp break with anything that came before and the necessary launch in a completely new direction—was evident long, long before.
The earliest extant writer to address the Jesus movement was Paul of Tarsus, who knew some of the disciples, observed (and helped persecute) the sect in its very early form in Jerusalem, and some time after his conversion became the sect's main missionary to the gentiles. But Paul shows almost no interest in the life or sayings of Jesus. Instead, Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection were the touchstones for his theology, which is still almost universal among Christians: God's sacrifice of his son to save sinful humankind from death. Paul's example strongly suggests that, whatever Jesus' background, personality and day-to-day mission, it was the crucifixion and resurrection that riveted his closest associates and nearest contemporaries. To argue that Christianity is artificial, a distortion of what Jesus was and what he did—as Vermes did in a lifetime of well-regarded scholarship and as others do less carefully—shortchanges history.
Reza Aslan, in "Zealot," assembles evidence that, like a number of Jewish dissenters under Greek and Roman rule, Jesus was a hot-headed champion of the poor and oppressed against the Jewish hierarchy, whom he saw as puppets of the Romans. He was also, Mr. Aslan argues, a defender of religious purity who did not eschew violence against even Jewish institutions. He was thus in spirit like the revolutionary Zealots of a generation later. Mr. Aslan cites Gospel accounts hard to explain otherwise, such as Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem and his attack on merchants and money-changers at the Temple. He stresses how anomalous a prophet of peace would have been in such violent times.
It is certainly plausible that various Christian authors themselves tried to censor Jesus' politics. It was in the interests of Christians both before and especially after the Jewish rebellion against Rome—which led, in A.D. 70, to the destruction of the Temple and unprecedented slaughter—to dissociate themselves from Jewish resistance of any kind and to protest that they were docile servants of the Roman Empire.
But Mr. Aslan's claims, as well as those of Vermes, evade the key historical problems. The complete story of Jesus, as his closest followers knew it, made no sense and needed extraordinary explication—hence the quick and extensive development of theology, from Paul all the way to the Nicene Creed. Crucifixion was a vile death, on its own soundly repudiating Jesus' reputation as a charismatic holy man, since divine providence was central to Jewish thought. For a would-be rabble-rouser, on the other hand, crucifixion was a routine, quickly forgotten fate. Yet Jesus was said to have achieved what had not been granted even to the Patriarchs: He had risen from the dead, in the flesh.
Concerning the resurrection, even the earliest scriptural accounts are more like classical historiography or even forensic oratory than like any other Scripture—the story was supposed to represent empirical fact as well as religious truth. And there was no disagreement about the resurrection between Paul's gentile-friendly party, which triumphed in time, and the community of James, the brother of Jesus, with its doomed insistence on full adherence to Jewish law. Vermes, Mr. Aslan and many other fashionable historical critics hold the conflicts between these two groups to have been critical for the branching off of Christianity as a deracinated, Greco-Roman religion. But both groups were "Christian," which literally means that they believed that Jesus was the messiah, their explanation being his defiance of death; nor did intense persecution or even the threat of death change any of the leaders' minds.
Perhaps the most solid statement that anyone can make about history is that nothing is completely explainable. But the sheer amount of data that scholars like Vermes and Mr. Aslan command—and their ingenuity in deploying it—seems to encourage overreach. I sense an attitude that they themselves justly criticize in the theology-happy Church Fathers: a refusal to let any topic alone until every detail is pulled in one direction under a mighty wave of discourse. This attitude can of course yield violations of common sense.
Vermes employs the Greek lexicon quite selectively to argue that traditional Jews recognized Christians, for a time, as a legitimate sect of their own, like the Pharisees. But that's demonstrably untrue: Jesus—the cult figure if not the person—was never Jewish to that degree. What happened to him in the end of his life abruptly and necessarily split him off from the Jewish tradition and establishment.
Mr. Aslan goes as far as to claim that the verb in Jesus' well-attested command to "render unto Caesar" means to reject the whole system of imperial taxation. "Throw it back in Caesar's face," would be the meaning. But Paul, in Romans 13, uses the same verb, apodidomi, in its usual sense of "pay what you owe"—all taxes without exception, and in a cooperative spirit. It is linguistically impossible that, through this well-attested Gospel command to "render" taxes (it appears in Matthew, Mark and Luke), Jesus showed himself as an anti-establishment rebel, let alone one sympathetic to violence.
But the popularization of historical criticism provides its own correctives. The facts are laid out and open to investigation, and seldom are the facts more generously and engagingly laid out than in these books.
— Ms. Ruden is the author of "Paul Among the People: The Apostle Reinterpreted and Reimagined in His Own Time."
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Does Faith Make You Healthier?
Social scientists tout the benefits of belief. But religious faith is about more than 'happiness.'
By
ARI N. SCHULMAN
A ream of recent scientific research has given the faithful reason to rejoice: Belief is good for you.
Consider a study of nearly two million Twitter messages sent by prominent Christians and atheists, published in June in the journal Social Psychological & Personality Science. It found that Christians were more content, if not happier. The authors came to this conclusion by analyzing the language tweeters used: Christian tweeters used positive words more often than atheists, and negative words less often.
In 2012, researchers led by a group at Yeshiva University analyzed the health outcomes of more than 90,000 women over an eight-year period and found that those who frequently attended religious services were 56% more likely than non-attending women to report high rates of optimism, and 27% less likely to report depression. Other studies of the same group found a 20% lower mortality rate.
Researchers at University College London found similar results in analyzing dozens of studies that examined the impact of religiosity among men and women. Numerous other studies by researchers at Harvard, Duke and other universities have found that religious identification and church attendance are associated with less social isolation, lower risk of substance abuse, lower rates of suicide, greater happiness and life satisfaction.
Yet believers should be wary of celebrating these findings too much. The faithful may be winning at the game of life, but they're playing by rules that social scientists have written in essentially post-religious terms. While churches define the highest aims of life as salvation or enlightenment, social science research replaces these with health and wealth, well-being and satisfaction.
Some social scientists say they have no stake in the truth of religion, but are simply interested in studying how to bring about universally valued outcomes. But others, like sociobiologist E.O. Wilson, see this work as part of a larger project to make religion obsolete, by shifting the study of human flourishing from "idioms of theology and philosophy" to "science-based material analysis."
There is some measure of irony, then, when social science finds so much evidence that religion is good for us.
Of course, many nonreligious researchers don't see a problem with these results. They may not be believers themselves, but they have no problem embracing belief as a useful therapeutic tool.
Sociologists Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, in their 1996 book "A Theory of Religion," wrote, "While we remain personally incapable of religious faith, our theory tells us to prefer to live in a society where most people do believe." They went on to argue that religion could be used as a means of "social control," reducing criminality, suicide and a variety of other social ills.
From this viewpoint, social science provides a sort of modern update to Pascal's Wager, the argument that it is more rational to live as if God exists so as to guarantee entry into heaven just in case he does. But in the social-scientific version, it's not the afterlife that faith is good for, but well-being in this life.
This attitude parallels a trend that is rising among believers themselves. As Ross Douthat describes in his 2012 book "Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics," prominent spiritual figures from televangelist Joel Osteen to holistic guru Deepak Chopra have advanced a version of faith that promises to deliver wealth, health and inner peace. And many religious academics and scholars, at think tanks like the Family Research Council and the Marriage and Religion Research Institute, have tried to boost religion's public and political standing by trumpeting those positive scientific findings.
Social science is a valuable technique for studying human nature. But religious leaders might pause before embracing it so fully. C.S. Lewis once mocked the notion of a "God on whom I have a claim for my distinguished services," and wrote that "Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of Heaven as a short cut to the nearest chemist's shop."
More troubling than the hollowness of treating faith as an instrument for personal and social benefit, Lewis seemed to suggest, is that when we eventually learn how to craft a better tool, we will no longer have any reason for the old one.
Mr. Schulman is executive editor of The New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology & Society.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/20/world/europe/pope-bluntly-faults-churchs-focus-on-gays-and-abortion.html?emc=edit_na_20130919&_r=0
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Poll Shows Major Shift in Identity of U.S. Jews
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
Published: October 1, 2013
The first major survey of American Jews in more than 10 years finds a significant rise in those who are not religious, marry outside the faith and are not raising their children Jewish — resulting in rapid assimilation that is sweeping through every branch of Judaism except the Orthodox.
The intermarriage rate, a bellwether statistic, has reached a high of 58 percent for all Jews, and 71 percent for non-Orthodox Jews — a huge change from before 1970 when only 17 percent of Jews married outside the faith. Two-thirds of Jews do not belong to a synagogue, one-fourth do not believe in God and one-third had a Christmas tree in their home last year.
“It’s a very grim portrait of the health of the American Jewish population in terms of their Jewish identification,” said Jack Wertheimer, a professor of American Jewish history at the Jewish Theological Seminary, in New York.
The survey, by the Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project, found that despite the declines in religious identity and participation, American Jews say they are proud to be Jewish and have a “strong sense of belonging to the Jewish people.”
While 69 percent say they feel an emotional attachment to Israel, and 40 percent believe that the land that is now Israel was “given to the Jewish people by God,” only 17 percent think that the continued building of settlements in the West Bank is helpful to Israel’s security.
Jews make up 2.2 percent of the American population, a percentage that has held steady for the past two decades. The survey estimates there are 5.3 million Jewish adults as well as 1.3 million children being raised at least partly Jewish.
The survey uses a wide definition of who is a Jew, a much-debated topic. The researchers included the 22 percent of Jews who describe themselves as having “no religion,” but who identify as Jewish because they have a Jewish parent or were raised Jewish, and feel Jewish by culture or ethnicity.
However, the percentage of “Jews of no religion” has grown with each successive generation, peaking with the millennials (those born after 1980), of whom 32 percent say they have no religion.
“It’s very stark,” Alan Cooperman, deputy director of the Pew religion project, said in an interview. “Older Jews are Jews by religion. Younger Jews are Jews of no religion.”
The trend toward secularism is also happening in the American population in general, with increasing proportions of each generation claiming no religious affiliation.
But Jews without religion tend not to raise their children Jewish, so this secular trend has serious consequences for what Jewish leaders call “Jewish continuity.” Of the “Jews of no religion” who have children at home, two-thirds are not raising their children Jewish in any way. This is in contrast to the “Jews with religion,” of whom 93 percent said they are raising their children to have a Jewish identity.
Reform Judaism remains the largest American Jewish movement, at 35 percent. Conservative Jews are 18 percent, Orthodox 10 percent, and groups such as Reconstructionist and Jewish Renewal make up 6 percent combined. Thirty percent of Jews do not identify with any denomination.
In a surprising finding, 34 percent said you could still be Jewish if you believe that Jesus was the Messiah.
When Jews leave the movements they grew up in, they tend to shift in the direction of less tradition, with Orthodox Jews becoming Conservative or Reform, and Conservative Jews becoming Reform. Most Reform Jews who leave become nonreligious. (Two percent of Jews are converts, the survey found.)
Jews from the former Soviet Union and their offspring make up about 10 percent of the American Jewish population.
While earlier generations of Orthodox Jews defected in large numbers, those in the younger generation are being retained. Several scholars attributed this to the Orthodox marrying young, having large families and sending their children to Jewish schools.
Steven M. Cohen, a sociologist of American Jewry at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, in New York, and a paid consultant on the poll, said the report foretold “a sharply declining non-Orthodox population in the second half of the 21st century, and a rising fraction of Jews who are Orthodox.”
The survey also portends “growing polarization” between religious and nonreligious Jews, said Laurence Kotler-Berkowitz, senior director of research and analysis at the Jewish Federations of North America.
The Jewish Federations has conducted major surveys of American Jews over many decades, but the last one in 2000 was mired in controversy over methodology. When the federations decided not to undertake another survey in 2010, Jane Eisner, editor in chief of The Jewish Daily Forward, urged the Pew researchers to jump in.
It was a multimillion-dollar effort to cull 3,475 respondents from a pool of 70,000. They were interviewed in English and Russian, on landlines and cellphones from Feb. 20 to June 13, 2013. The margin of error for the full sample is plus or minus three percentage points.
Ms. Eisner found the results “devastating” because, she said in an interview, “I thought there would be more American Jews who cared about religion.”
“This should serve as a wake-up call for all of us as Jews,” she said, “to think about what kind of community we’re going to be able to sustain if we have so much assimilation.”
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https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10200675628999130
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http://www.faithit.com/atheist-heroin-addict-gets-schooled-on-power-of-prayer/
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/20/nyregion/a-church-so-poor-it-has-to-close-schools-yet-so-rich-it-can-build-a-palace.html?_r=0
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http://www.examiner.com/article/joel-osteen-s-church-theft-opens-can-of-worms-jaws-drop-as-folks-do-the-math
BTW, when I am travelling in the South, sometimes I run into this guy's sermons on Sunday mornings. Not bad. Does seem he believes in doing well by doing good , , , ,
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http://jezebel.com/gospel-of-jesuss-wife-is-the-real-deal-according-to-1561737702
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To all my good friends of that break-away faction of Judaism known as Christianity my warmest good wishes and prayers on this Good Friday-Easter weekend.
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http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304178104579535540828090438?mod=hp_opinion&mg=reno64-wsj
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http://www.liberalamerica.org/2014/05/10/jehovah-witness-video/
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4WDl4ozam8
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Of Hobbits, Narnia and Postwar Belief
Tolkien and Lewis served in World War I—and emerged with faith intact.
By Joseph Loconte
Aug. 7, 2014 7:20 p.m. ET
This month marks the 100-year anniversary of the start of World War I, the conflict that introduced industrial-scale slaughter to the world. Never before had science and technology—the mortars, machine guns, tanks, barbed wire and poison gas—conspired so effectively to destroy man and nature. The Great War savaged popular beliefs about progress, morality and religion.
Yet for two extraordinary authors and friends, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, the war deepened their moral and spiritual convictions. Both fought in the trenches on the Western Front and used their experiences to shape their Christian imagination.
The pair met in 1926 as young scholars at Oxford University and went on to produce epic stories of heroism. Tolkien wrote "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy. Lewis earned fame for "The Chronicles of Narnia," a series of children's books now considered classics. Their tales are fundamentally about a cosmic struggle between good and evil—a theme radically out of step with the spirit of their age.
Many of the 400 postwar memoirs and novels from the 1920s and 1930s are profoundly pessimistic, focusing on the cruelty and senselessness of World War I. Erich Remarque, in his novel "All Quiet on the Western Front," spoke for many: "Now if we go back we will be weary, broken, burnt out, rootless and without hope."
Tolkien and Lewis, however, believed war could be fought for noble purposes. In "The Lord of the Rings," a band of hobbits, a king born as Aragorn and the Wizard Gandalf embark on a quest to destroy the evil Ring of Power. In "The Chronicles of Narnia," the Pevensie children are magically transported from London to Narnia and given a great task by Aslan the Lion: to rescue Narnia from despotism and restore the throne to its rightful line of kings.
Enlarge Image
English novelist and scholar C.S. Lewis in 1950 Getty Images
The authors' use of fantasy is often dismissed as an attempt to forget the wretched realities of postwar Europe. But a careful reading reveals a steely realism that captures the human predicament. Even the most heroic figures feel like modern characters: uncertain, filled with fear and prone to the lust for power.
Near the narrative heart of Tolkien's trilogy is this sobering fact: Not even the central hero, Frodo Baggins, can resist the lure and power of the Ring. When Frodo finally has the chance to destroy the Ring at Mount Doom, he struggles. "I will not do this deed. The Ring is mine," he exclaims. Just so: Every combatant nation in World War I abandoned moral qualms and used any weapon at hand to obliterate the enemy.
The war also dealt a blow to the notion of free will. The utter helplessness of the soldier on the Western Front—mutilated, bombed and bayoneted without mercy—was a recurring postwar theme. Yet the fate of Middle-earth and Narnia depends upon the choices of individuals. In Narnia, Aslan commands the young Jill to seek the lost prince until she has found him "or else died in the attempt." Likewise, Lady Galadriel, the fairest of the elves of Middle-earth, warns the hobbits: "Your Quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all."
Perhaps most controversially, Tolkien and Lewis did not regard war as an unmitigated evil. The experience of the fellowship of combat taught them the great gift of friendship—especially when it was forged for a high and humane purpose.
Where did Tolkien get his idea for the hobbits? Like Lewis, he acquired a profound respect for the ordinary British soldier, having witnessed his remarkable determination under fire. In a letter written after his trilogy was published, Tolkien acknowledged that Sam Gamgee, one of the story's central figures, "is indeed a reflection of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognized as so far superior to myself." These creators of myths remind us that real life—torn by sorrow and suffering—has a mythic and heroic quality.
What Tolkien and Lewis saw on the battlefield made it easy for them to imagine worlds ravaged by evil. Nevertheless, fortified by their Christian faith—Tolkien a Catholic, Lewis an Anglican—they believed that God and goodness were the deepest truths about the human story. In Middle-earth and Narnia, the ruin or redemption of every person depends on what side he or she has chosen in the conflict.
Is this so unlike our own world? Think of the Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram; the civilians caught in the genocidal storm of the Syrian regime; the courageous Malala Yousafzai, shot by the Taliban for wanting Pakistani girls to go to school.
The heroic figure is the one who resists evil, who is willing to lay down his life for his friends. Perhaps the character of Faramir in "The Lord of the Rings" expresses it best: "I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend." That may be the vision of humanity that our present world needs most.
Mr. Loconte is an associate professor of history at The King's College in New York City and author of the forthcoming "A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War: How J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-18" (HarperCollins, 2015).
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http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/people-cultures-in-the-bible/jesus-historical-jesus/did-jesus-exist/
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http://qpolitical.com/she-started-praising-jesus-on-jimmy-fallon-how-the-crowd-reacted-wow/
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http://washingtonpost.com.co/pope-francis-to-followers-koran-and-holy-bible-are-the-same/
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http://washingtonpost.com.co/pope-francis-to-followers-koran-and-holy-bible-are-the-same/
Dead link. Probably literally.
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A Christmas inspired column by Walter Russel Mead well worth your time to read, IMHO, embodying the largest issues humankind faces today. (read it all)
One for All
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD
The Christmas story suggests that we can somehow try both to be loyal members of our nations, our families, our tribes—and also to reach out to the broader human community of which we are also a part.
http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/01/01/one-for-all-4/
... People seem pulled in two directions. On the one hand, we form strong group identities and these identities are the basis of our political loyalties; on the other, we recognize universal values and acknowledge a duty, at least in the abstract, to help people everywhere regardless of their race, language, color, or creed.
It’s a puzzle. Human beings need roots in a particular culture and family and those roots shape them; at the same time, human beings have values (like freedom and democracy) and ideas (like the Pythagorean theorem and the laws of thermodynamics) that demand to be recognized as universal. ...
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http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/196588/the-gentiles-who-act-like-jews?utm_source=tabletmagazinelist&utm_campaign=a3a37d04e4-Tuesday_January_26_20161_26_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c308bf8edb-a3a37d04e4-207090153
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Moving CCP's post to here:
I was reading Life's magazine on King Tut and was surprised to learn that his father tried to change the multi deity worship of Egypt to a single sun God. I always thought the Jews were the first to do this.
His father lived and ruled around 1332 to 1322 BC - before Abraham. Ater his death Egypt went right back to a pagan society. On Wikipedia, reading on monotheism it mentions this but concludes it is not clear if the sun God worship was more a worship of the sun God or meant to mean worshiping of the pharaoh by way of this.
It also mentions that Sigmund Freud tried to link this to the Jews of Egypt having been there and that may have been a factor in the monotheism of the Jews. This is doubtful because # 1 this would be at least 100 even before Abraham, and certainly long before any Jews might have been in Egypt (which is unclear if and what they were doing there - various theories holding that they were slaves, they were not slaves but workers, perhaps indentured, or were never there in the first place.). Also the evidence seems to suggest that Egyptians were very unhappy with this renegade pharaoh doing this and quickly reverted back to the old ways after his short reign. So it doesn't seem logical to think there was any influence on Abraham:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mystery-surrounding-king-tuts-dad-solved/
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICd62etMvq4&ebc=ANyPxKo4HmzJy4Lm1trzAouWcMej5J769lccORa9CFmQOM-Wo73njVeEbPfVoNdmYkUUY9xTctOmx8RHD-kwxbsSCC07KqP6xA
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http://www.newsweek.com/male-escort-exposes-36-gay-priests-file-sent-vatican-containing-explicit-829968
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http://www.breitbart.com/london/2018/05/28/trans-people-urged-to-become-priests-in-church-of-england-drive-to-honour-lgbt-people/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=daily&utm_content=links&utm_campaign=20180528
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I saw on the news that a major decades long study in PA came out showing that literally THOUSANDS of children (and this number excludes the diocese of Philadelphia), mostly boys, were raped and molested by some 300 Catholic priests and very higher ups in the Church and that there was massive cover up by the various levels of the Church, including up to and including Cardinals.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/14/us/catholic-priests-pennsylvania-church-jury.html
This is far from the first time we have read of such things both in the US and elsewhere in the world, but the depth and thoroughness of the study, MADE WITH THE CHURCH'S OWN RECORDS, raises deep questions about the moral and spiritual validity of the Catholic Church.
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I saw on the news that a major decades long study in PA came out showing that literally THOUSANDS of children (and this number excludes the diocese of Philadelphia), mostly boys, were raped and molested by some 300 Catholic priests and very higher ups in the Church and that there was massive cover up by the various levels of the Church, including up to and including Cardinals.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/14/us/catholic-priests-pennsylvania-church-jury.html
This is far from the first time we have read of such things both in the US and elsewhere in the world, but the depth and thoroughness of the study, MADE WITH THE CHURCH'S OWN RECORDS, raises deep questions about the moral and spiritual validity of the Catholic Church.
Yes it does.
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This scandal has been front page since 2002. People have known about it far longer than that. What they didn't fix when it was first known locally in hundreds and thousands of places, and what they didn't fix when the whole world found out will now bring down the church. What a lousy, rotten shame.
Sex with the child is a crime. Being a priest or in any position of power doesn't make it right, it makes it worse. The institutional side of it makes it organized crime. Now it comes out that this Pope allegedly new and covered it up. Covering up a crime is a crime. Covering up hundreds or thousands of crimes against children allows it to continue which means you are complicit in crimes that destroy lives. In this religion, that is a rot in hell level offense, not just call for a resignation.
I hate to cheapen the severity of this by mentioning the Pope's economic views, but we have established over and over and over again on this board that it hearing to leftist views requires a level of either ignorance, dishonesty, or cognitive dissonance. It should be no surprise that this Pope has his brain and his morals conflicted.
http://m.ncregister.com/daily-news/ex-nuncio-accuses-pope-francis-of-failing-to-act-on-mccarricks-abuse#.W4PzXSVOk0M
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I am saddened by the spectacle of the extent of and likely the extant of this .
I have learned that evil is not obvious with horns sticking out of heads.
Even many priests.......... :cry:
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I could be wrong, but this has the feeling of a tipping point for the Catholic Church for me.
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/bishop-we-all-knew-of-mccarricks-abuse/
None dare speak its name
https://www.weeklystandard.com/mary-eberstadt/the-elephant-in-the-sacristy
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I could be wrong, but this has the feeling of a tipping point for the Catholic Church for me.
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/bishop-we-all-knew-of-mccarricks-abuse/
None dare speak its name
https://www.weeklystandard.com/mary-eberstadt/the-elephant-in-the-sacristy
Luke 17:2
It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.
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http://www.thejournal.ie/pope-benedict-abuse-1270319-Jan2014/
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http://www.thejournal.ie/pope-benedict-abuse-1270319-Jan2014/
As the first commenter asks, did any of these Priests get prosecuted, go to prison?
Child abuse is a matter for law enforcement, not the church. Unfortunately, very difficult to get accurate testimony and prosecute.
I don't understand how they let the opportunity continue. Why is a priest ever alone with a child anyway but especially after/during this long public record of horrible crime and exploitation.
I realize a lot of this happened elsewhere but under US law Rico racketeering law applies where there is organized crime conspiracy, and cover up is most certainly part of the crime.
Current Pope is certainly not larger-than-life than life after he entered the political fray with his economic opinions that reveal naivety and ignorance. Either weak or complicit in trying to clean up a crime ring and has done and will do little or nothing to help the people. Out he goes or down goes the whole organization, and maybe both. What a horrible human tragedy.
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I could be wrong, but all this seems like the beginning/acceleration of a death spiral for the Catholic Church.
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The Vatican’s China Syndrome
Rome gives Beijing the power to select its slate of bishops.
52 Comments
By The Editorial Board
Sept. 14, 2018 7:12 p.m. ET
A Catholic church in Youtong village, Hebei province, Chi
Imagine if Donald Trump insisted that the Catholic church give him the right to choose the list of men from which Rome would select American bishops. Ridiculous. So why does it make more sense for the Vatican to concede that right to Communist leaders in China?
That’s the key Catholic concession in a far-reaching deal between Rome and the Vatican announced Friday. The Vatican has agreed to recognize as legitimate seven Chinese priests who had been excommunicated by Rome for accepting their bishop hats without Vatican approval. Two bishops who had remained faithful to Rome will retire to make room for bishops more to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s liking. In exchange, Beijing will officially recognize the pope as head of the Catholic church in China, something it has resisted for decades.
Give China credit for shrewdness. It understands that bishops are at the heart of the Catholic hierarchy as heirs to the early apostles. Over its history the church has sometimes been coerced into deals giving governments a veto over the appointment of a particular bishop, but letting a hostile regime come up with the entire candidate pool puts Rome in the junior role. If Rome vetoes one of China’s choices, the seat goes empty. Why would China care?
This deal has been long in the making and comes as Mr. Xi is in the midst of a crackdown on Christianity and other organized religions and is closing or tearing down churches and mosques. Perhaps the Vatican calculated that with oppression getting worse, even a bad agreement might carve out some breathing room for its faithful on the Chinese mainland.
The deal at least doesn’t include the restoration of diplomatic relations, and thus it doesn’t require the Vatican to break its ties to Taiwan. But this may be only a matter of time. To have any credibility with rank-and-file Catholics, the church would have to settle its religious disputes with Beijing before it granted the favor of diplomatic recognition.
Many Westerners over the centuries have gone to Beijing and come home claiming they had negotiated a great deal—only to find later they’d been had. On the evidence so far, the Vatican is joining this unfortunate list.
WSJ
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I know someone who was part of this but split away:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=Gwx9nqknu-c
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https://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2014/10/archbishops-computer-contained-over-100000-child-porn-files/?fbclid=IwAR09VdOHiMLnMOSwIzWMRFCH7vrzl-AQLGlsnCyX6WB0FhiQAoYmpGu4tS4
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https://www.mercatornet.com/mobile/view/how-the-west-was-won-by-christianity?fbclid=IwAR15G-OFKvDQMcpOuYH1IPmj8tADq1UxqLaAR9rQav5-lp_Tgre1QRtSTJs
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https://townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2019/12/10/what-is-judaism-n2557727?fbclid=IwAR3pLChg2wfFehnk_-a-ganyFn3RlLJzOPVyQ1LXUOFpgY8ri1g21x7oEak
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Pasting CCP's post in the Race, Religion, etc thread here as well
https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/swedish-church-removes-lgbt-altarpiece-after-fears-it-is-anti-trans/
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https://thebridgehead.ca/2020/05/19/atheists-are-warning-that-christianity-may-be-necessary-for-the-survival-of-western-civilization/
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gFjB9FTN58
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I found this essay quite interesting, even though I can't tell whether I agree or disagree entirely.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/12/his-fathers-business/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202020-12-25&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart
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https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/article/traditional-religion-declines-superstition-not-atheism-big-winner/?fbclid=IwAR35IF7EiXxzdkW141BXEHZjx72SmAClv229a5dt4wtqAaWMp5_sXyPwvP0
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I ran across this in passing:
https://stimpy77.medium.com/does-the-bible-endorse-slavery-e9c9fcbacada
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https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/31/world/middleeast/israel-mount-sinai-burning-bush.html
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New Bible translation raises questions about ancient Greek word
Change accused of ‘gaywashing’
BY MARK A. KELLNER THE WASHINGTON TIMES
An update to the Bible translation used by many mainline Protestant churches has stirred accusations of “gaywashing” over how an ancient Greek word is translated.
At issue: Does arsenokoitai, the ancient Greek word used only twice in the New Testament, mean all same-sex relations or only illicit ones?
The question of how the Bible treats homosexuality, in terms of sexual orientation and conduct, has become a hot-button topic. Gay rights activists say socalled clobber verses condemning same-sex relations refer to temple prostitution and forced sex, not committed partnerships. Evangelicals and others with more orthodox views reject that position. They say the Bible clearly prohibits homosexual acts of any kind.
The New Revised Standard Bible Updated Edition, called “NRSVue” for short, appeared in digital form last month. Printed versions are expected from a range of Protestant and Roman Catholic publishers in May. The updated NRSV is the product of the National Council of Churches, which last revised the text in 1989.
The 2021 update translates arsenokoitai in 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10 as “men who engage in illicit sex” — a change from the 30-year-old NRSV edition’s translation of “sodomites.”
Jennifer Knust, the general editor for the 2021 edition’s New
Testament and professor of religious studies at Duke University, told The Washington Times that “sodomite” was an “anachronism” and was “seriously misleading.”
“The terms’ sodomite’ and ‘sodomy’ were first used in English in the 11th century and have nothing to do with the term arsenokoitai, an obscure Greek term coined from other terms meaning ‘man’ and ‘bed,’” she said via email. “1 Corinthians 6:9 in no way refers to Sodom (the biblical city).”
Michael L. Brown, who hosts the Christian radio talk show “The Line of Fire” and holds a doctorate in Near Eastern languages and literatures from New York University, said Ms. Knust is partially correct. He said the final translation of arsenokoitai in the NRSVue is deficient.
“While the translation of ‘sodomites,’ is anachronistic,” Mr. Brown said in an emailed statement, “translating arsenokoitai as ‘men who have sex with men’ is accurate while rendering it [as] ‘men who engage in illicit sex’ is meaningless. … This new translation, virtually unknown before now in the history of Bible translations, is as misleading as it is misguided, and it must be recognized as a capitulation to culture and a rejection of the authority of Scripture.”
Laura Nasrallah, Yale Divinity School’s Buckingham professor of New Testament criticism and interpretation, was the update’s translator for 1 Corinthians, a message to believers in the ancient city of Corinth written by the Apostle Paul. Speaking with The Times via telephone, she said someone else suggested the “illicit sex” translation.
“I did not suggest that translation. They evidently rejected my translation,” Ms. Nasrallah said.
She said she didn’t know about the change until a reporter emailed questions.
“That’s all fair game,” Ms. Nasrallah said. “There’s a larger editorial board that’s trying to make translations consistent and reconcilable across multiple texts. And I don’t know the inner workings of that editorial board other than to express my deep respect for those editors,” she said.
Ms. Knust said, “I do not remember precisely who proposed this change.”
Friendship Press, the publishing arm of the National Council of Churches, says on its website that it “commissioned the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), a diverse and learned group of biblical scholars, to direct the revision.”
John F. Kutsko, the society’s executive director and an affiliate professor of biblical studies at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, said he and Ms. Knust were part of a team that reviewed the work of book editors such as Ms. Nasrallah. Without singling out any individual, he said the panel made the change to the text.
Mr. Kutsko said the team’s consultations were “really pretty robust” and there was no agenda to “produce a political-social” revision of Scripture.
Whoever made the change has done readers a disservice, said Robert A.J. Gagnon, a professor at Houston Baptist University.
The word “sodomites,” Mr. Gagnon said, was “not the most felicitous translation, but at least it had the benefit of making clear to readers exactly what Paul was making clear to his readers: that the behavior has to do with male homosexual practice.”
He said the new interpretation makes Paul’s meaning “so obscured in their new so-called updated translation that nobody has any inkling that it has any reference at all to homosexual practice. That’s intellectually dishonest or intellectually ignorant.” Mr. Gagnon, who has offered to debate Ms. Knust online or in person, wrote “The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics,” a 2001 analysis of biblical texts relating to homosexuality. Asked whether he had an agenda in opposing the “illicit sex” translation, he replied, “The agenda I have is to arrive at what the biblical text originally means.”
“I’m not interested in lying for the Bible in order to suit my ideology. Unfortunately, they appear to be willing to do just that,” Mr. Gagnon said. “If the evidence for the biblical text doesn’t support the conclusion that arsenokoitai homes in on male-male sexual activity, then I don’t want to buttress an erroneous argument. I’m not going to make an argument just to support some prior ideological position that I want to reach.”
The Rev. Jim Winkler, National Council of Churches executive director, said he was aware that changes “were discussed at the committee [level],” but “who discussed what, I don’t know.” He said all updates in the new release grew “out of a group process.”
The National Council of Churches, which has headquarters in Washington, calls itself “an ecumenical partnership” of 38 Christian communities in the United States, including Protestant, Anglican, Orthodox, Evangelical, African-American and “Peace” churches. The council’s current leadership is drawn from the United Methodists, the United Church of Christ, the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, the Community of Christ and the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
The New Testament has been revised with new translations that have caused a stir among biblical scholars. One member of the panel reviewing the work said consultations were “really pretty robust” but had no political or social agenda. ASSOCIATED PRES
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https://www.christianheadlines.com/contributors/michael-foust/3000-year-old-tablet-with-gods-name-affirms-biblical-timeline-archaeologist-says.html?utm_medium=fbpage&utm_source=Facebook&utm_campaign=gvupdate&fbclid=IwAR0dYr573gylvPV9Fp3PdzWofMtPL_hQdcHN0OxtCHV_mXaVfaXoVN2Oe3Q
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https://medium.com/belover/the-gay-scholar-who-took-on-christianity-1eb842f482e2
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Pope Francis Says Criminalizing Homosexuality Is Wrong
The pontiff said the church should work for the repeal of laws punishing homosexuality
Pope Francis discussed homosexuality during an interview with the Associated Press at the Vatican.
PHOTO: ANDREW MEDICHINI/ASSOCIATED PRESS
By Francis X. RoccaFollow
Jan. 25, 2023 12:29 pm ET
ROME—Pope Francis said that laws punishing homosexuality are unfair and that the Catholic Church should work for their repeal.
The statement, in an interview with the Associated Press published on Wednesday, is the latest in a series of conciliatory gestures by Pope Francis toward gay people.
He said that more than 50 countries have laws against homosexuality and that some of them prescribe the death penalty. “I think it’s unfair,” he said. “Being gay is not a crime. It is a human condition,” the pope said.
“We are all children of God and God loves us as we are,” the pope said, echoing earlier comments, including his famous 2013 statement about gay priests: “Who am I to judge?”
Pope Francis, who has expressed support for same-sex civil unions, made it clear in the interview that he wasn’t changing church teaching on the morality of homosexual acts.
“Being homosexual is not a crime. It is not a crime. Yes, but it’s a sin. Well, first let’s distinguish sin from crime,” the pope said.
A number of countries in the Muslim world and in Africa have laws against homosexuality, sometimes supported by local Catholic bishops. The Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference in 2021 expressed its “unflinching support” for a proposed law that would impose prison sentences to punish gay sex.
The Vatican has said previously that homosexuality shouldn’t carry criminal penalties, though Catholic teaching forbids homosexual acts. Pope Francis’ latest comments are the first time that a pontiff has spoken out against antigay laws.
The pope said that bishops who support such laws, “although they are good bishops, are part of the culture and some still have their minds in that culture.” Such bishops must go through a “conversion process,” the pope said.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, an authoritative compendium of doctrine, says that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered” and “under no circumstances can they be approved.” But it also says that people with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies…must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.”
In 2008, the Vatican opposed a United Nations resolution calling for the decriminalization of homosexuality, arguing that the resolution was too sweeping and could be used to pressure countries to legalize same-sex marriage. But a Vatican spokesman said at the time that “no one wants the death penalty or jail or fines for homosexuals.”
In 2021, the pope approved publication of a decree forbidding the blessing of same-sex relationships, on the grounds that God “cannot bless sin.”
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To criticize homosexuality is to attack the modern catholic church.
Pope Francis Says Criminalizing Homosexuality Is Wrong
The pontiff said the church should work for the repeal of laws punishing homosexuality
Pope Francis discussed homosexuality during an interview with the Associated Press at the Vatican.
PHOTO: ANDREW MEDICHINI/ASSOCIATED PRESS
By Francis X. RoccaFollow
Jan. 25, 2023 12:29 pm ET
ROME—Pope Francis said that laws punishing homosexuality are unfair and that the Catholic Church should work for their repeal.
The statement, in an interview with the Associated Press published on Wednesday, is the latest in a series of conciliatory gestures by Pope Francis toward gay people.
He said that more than 50 countries have laws against homosexuality and that some of them prescribe the death penalty. “I think it’s unfair,” he said. “Being gay is not a crime. It is a human condition,” the pope said.
“We are all children of God and God loves us as we are,” the pope said, echoing earlier comments, including his famous 2013 statement about gay priests: “Who am I to judge?”
Pope Francis, who has expressed support for same-sex civil unions, made it clear in the interview that he wasn’t changing church teaching on the morality of homosexual acts.
“Being homosexual is not a crime. It is not a crime. Yes, but it’s a sin. Well, first let’s distinguish sin from crime,” the pope said.
A number of countries in the Muslim world and in Africa have laws against homosexuality, sometimes supported by local Catholic bishops. The Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference in 2021 expressed its “unflinching support” for a proposed law that would impose prison sentences to punish gay sex.
The Vatican has said previously that homosexuality shouldn’t carry criminal penalties, though Catholic teaching forbids homosexual acts. Pope Francis’ latest comments are the first time that a pontiff has spoken out against antigay laws.
The pope said that bishops who support such laws, “although they are good bishops, are part of the culture and some still have their minds in that culture.” Such bishops must go through a “conversion process,” the pope said.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, an authoritative compendium of doctrine, says that homosexual acts are “intrinsically disordered” and “under no circumstances can they be approved.” But it also says that people with “deep-seated homosexual tendencies…must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.”
In 2008, the Vatican opposed a United Nations resolution calling for the decriminalization of homosexuality, arguing that the resolution was too sweeping and could be used to pressure countries to legalize same-sex marriage. But a Vatican spokesman said at the time that “no one wants the death penalty or jail or fines for homosexuals.”
In 2021, the pope approved publication of a decree forbidding the blessing of same-sex relationships, on the grounds that God “cannot bless sin.”
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Some would say not just the modern church , , ,
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https://www.theepochtimes.com/falun-gong-founder-li-hongzhi-publishes-why-do-human-beings-exist_5000952.html?utm_campaign=gv-2023-01-28&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Goodevening
By Li Hongzhi
January 21, 2023Updated: January 27, 2023
Mr. Li Hongzhi is the founder of the spiritual discipline Falun Gong. The practice combines meditation and gentle exercises with a moral philosophy centered on the tenets of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.
After Mr. Li introduced the practice to the public in China in the early 1990s, an estimated 100 million people started practicing. Since then, the practice has spread to more than 100 countries around the world.
Despite this, in China, the practice has been subjected to extreme persecution by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This includes a campaign of hate propaganda and censorship by the CCP, both in China and in the West. The Epoch Times, on the occasion of the Chinese New Year, is honored to provide a platform to Mr. Li.
Mr. Li is a four-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee and was nominated by the European Parliament for the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. He is also the recipient of Freedom House’s International Religious Freedom Award.
The following is the article “How Humankind Came to Be” by Mr. Li, translated from Chinese.
***
How Humankind Came To Be
I would like to first pass along my greetings to everyone on the advent of the Chinese New Year.
New Year’s would normally be a time for sharing a few pleasant remarks about the occasion. But I am seeing imminent danger approaching humanity, and have been called upon by divine beings to pass along, for this reason, several things to everyone in this world. Each of what I am about to disclose is a higher, closely guarded secret, and these are being shared to provide a true picture of affairs, and to give people another chance at salvation.
First is the question of how humankind came about. From the dawn of its creation to its final days, the universe has gone through an exceptionally long passage of time consisting of four stages: Formation, Stasis, Degeneration, and Destruction. When the final point of the Destruction stage is reached, the complete obliteration of everything in the greater cosmic body—which includes the universe in which we exist—takes place instantaneously, and all living things perish!
When a person dies, it is just a matter of his physical body declining and breaking down, while his true soul (which is who he really is, and which does not die with the passing of his physical body) will continue on in a next life, being reborn. So just as the universe goes through formation, stasis, degeneration, and destruction, so too do human beings go through birth, aging, illness, and death. These are laws of the universe, to which even higher beings are subject, only the time span is longer, with the process being more drawn out in proportion to how great the beings are. Life and death are not painful for them, and they remain cognizant throughout these processes—to them, it is as if but changing outfits. Put differently, normally, lives do not really die. But when the universe and the cosmos disintegrate at the final stage of the Formation-Stasis-Degeneration-Destruction process, however, lives will not be reborn, and there will be no more existence of life or matter, with all turning to dust and there being only emptiness. Currently, the human world is experiencing the last period in the Destruction phase of the Formation-Stasis-Degeneration-Destruction progression. Everything has changed for the worse in these end times, as fated, and destruction is thus imminent. And it is for this reason that the world is so troubled. Good thoughts are rare, people’s minds have become twisted, debauchery and drug abuse are rampant, and people subscribe to atheism. These are inevitable in the last stage of the cosmos, and bespeak of the time at which we have arrived!
The Creator cherishes all of the heavenly beings that exist as well as all of the lives that are good and kind, and all of the glorious creations in the cosmos. So at the beginning of the Degeneration stage, He led a number of divine beings to the outermost plane of the cosmic body (known generally as “that which is outside the Divine Realm”), a place where there are no divine beings, and created Earth. But Earth hadn’t the capacity to exist independently; it needed for there to be a corresponding cosmic structure with which it could form a circulatory system involving life and matter. For this reason, the Creator made a larger expanse outside of the Earth, which higher beings refer to as the “Three Realms.” Before the final time of salvation arrived, no higher beings, however great, would be allowed to enter this expanse without the Creator’s permission. The expanse of the Three Realms comprises three major realms: the Realm of Desire (yu), which is made up of the lives on this earth, including humankind; a second realm, the Realm of Likings (se), which is above it; and a third realm, further above, known as the Realm Without Likings (wu se). Each successive realm is higher and more glorious than that below it, though none can compare to the Divine Realm or the many heavenly kingdoms still higher. The “heaven” that people normally refer to is in fact within either the Realm of Likings or the Realm Without Likings, within the Three Realms. Each of the Three Realms has 10 planes within it, making for a total of 33 planes in all, if you include the Three Realms themselves. Human beings reside in the Realm of Desire, and this is the lowest of all planes, with the worst environment. Life is painful and short here, but more dreadful still is the fact that in the human world, few of the things people take to be truths are actually valid. What human beings hold to be true is on the whole considered the opposite in the larger universe (but an exception is the higher truths that holy beings have taught to man). For example, the divine does not consider it right for whomever is victorious in battle to become ruler, for territory to be seized by military force, or for the powerful to be seen as heroes, since killing and forcefully taking from others are involved. That is not the way of the universe, nor how higher beings go about things. Yet in the human world, these are inevitable and accepted. Those are the ways of the human world, but they are contrary to the ways of the universe. Thus, if a person wishes to return to heaven, he must follow true, higher laws and work on himself. Some people are content when they are doing a bit better in life than others. But such people are only comparing themselves with other human beings within this human realm, when everyone here is in fact living in what is considered to be the trash bin of the universe. The Three Realms were established at the outermost perimeter of the cosmic body, and everything here is made up of the lowest, crudest, and filthiest of particles—molecules, atoms, and the like. In the eyes of higher beings, this is where the trash of the universe is cast away. They thus regard this plane of molecules as dust or “clay” and see it as the lowliest of places. This is the origin of the belief held in some religions that man was made by the divine out of clay. Man was indeed formed out of matter at the molecular plane.
When divine beings made man, they did so at the Creator’s behest, and He instructed them to each make human beings in their own unique image. For this reason, there are the white, yellow, black, and other races. While their outward appearances differ, the souls within them were given by the Creator. And that is why they have common values. The purpose that the Creator had in directing divine beings to make man was to make use of man in the final times when He would offer all lives of the greater universe—including holy beings—salvation.
But why would the Creator have divine beings create humans in such a lowly and inferior place? It was because, with this being the universe’s lowest plane, it is the most grueling of places, and only when things are trying and painful may a person elevate himself through spiritual practice and shed his or her karma. When a person, amidst painful experiences, still manages to keep kind thoughts, have gratitude, and be a good person, he or she is growing through it. Salvation is a process of ascending from low to high, and so one has to start from the bottom. Life is trying for anyone living here. There are the tensions between people when they are trying to make out better, there is the terrible state of the natural environment, and there is the fact that just getting by in life takes a great deal of thought and effort, to name just a few examples. All of these circumstances provide people with opportunities to develop themselves and lessen their karma. It is certain that going through hardships can help people to atone for their sins and karma. And anyone who manages to stay good-natured amidst painful situations and interpersonal troubles is going to build up merit and virtue and, as a result, will achieve the elevation of his or her soul.
With the arrival of modern times, the Creator had intended to utilize mainly the human body to save the many lives of the universe. And so the souls originally in the majority of human bodies here were replaced by those of higher beings, who incarnated in them. With a human body, they could reduce their karma and sins by enduring hardship. And in this place that is devoid of truth, they could, by holding fast to the higher truths taught by God and persevering in goodness and kindness, achieve the elevation of their souls. The end times are now upon us, and the Heavenly Gate that leads out of the Three Realms has been opened. The Creator has been selecting for deliverance those who have done as I describe.
Everything in the universe had become impure during the Formation, Stasis, and Degeneration phases, and inferior to when creation was begun. And this is why things are heading for Destruction. In other words, everything in the greater universe has gone bad, the lives of creation are no longer as good as they were in the very beginning, are no longer pure, and all of them have accrued karma and sins. And this accounts for Destruction coming about. This kind of sin is what has been referred to in religious contexts as original sin. So that the universe could be saved, the Creator directed a multitude of higher beings and divine sovereigns to descend to the earth and assume human form in this setting, where they would suffer, elevate, atone for their sins, and forge themselves anew—re-ascending to heaven as a result. (The Creator has been re-making the universe at the same time as saving humankind.) The new universe is perfectly pure and simply glorious. If, in a trying setting like this, a person can still keep his thoughts virtuous; if he can hold his ground against the onslaught of modern values and views, and stick to traditional ones; and if he still believes in the divine in the face of assaults from the atheist and evolutionary camps, then that person will fulfill his purpose: to gain salvation and return to heaven. All of the madness now unfolding in the world was planned as such, for the final phase, by divine beings. Their goal was to test the lives here and see whether they were worthy of salvation, and give them a chance to, in the process, work off their sins and karma while going through difficult things. And all of this was done so that people could be saved and gain deliverance back to heaven.
All of this is to say that the purpose of people’s lives on this earth isn’t to accomplish something in the world. All of the intense efforts and attempts people make in life, and their drive to get what they want, which can even involve resorting to unscrupulous means, only make people immoral in the end. The reason people came to this world and became human was to atone for their sins and karma, and to make significant spiritual progress. People came to this world to gain salvation. They came and assumed human form to await the Creator and his salvation back to their heavenly kingdom. And while they waited, they built up merit over their many past lives, and that was the purpose of people’s rebirths. The troubled nature of this world is meant to make something great of these lives. Of course, there are some people who, when seeking divine help in times of duress, haven’t been satisfied with the outcome and started to loathe God—even turning against Him as a result. Some have even turned to the demonic, dark side, and committed still further sins and made yet more karma. Those whom this applies to had best quickly come around and beg God for forgiveness, if they are still to have a chance of reaching safety. Everything that happens in one’s life—whether it seems warranted or not—is, in reality, the karmic consequence of what one did in one’s past lives, for better or for worse. The amount of blessings and virtue that one built up in one’s past lives determine what fortune is in store in this lifetime, or perhaps the next. If one lives a blessed and virtuous life now, perhaps it will translate in one’s next lifetime into a high position and salary, or it might translate into different kinds of wealth and fortune. And this would also include whether one has a happy family, or even how one’s children turn out, and so on. This is the fundamental reason why some people are wealthy and others poor, why some hold positions of high rank while others are destitute and homeless. It’s nothing like the diabolical nonsense that sinister communism spouts about equality between rich and poor. The universe is fair. Those who do good are blessed for it, while those who do bad things will face payback—if not in this life, then in the next. For this is an immutable law of the universe! Heaven, Earth, the Divine, and the Creator alike are compassionate toward all lives. Heaven and Earth, just as was man, were made by the Creator, and it is never the case that He plays favorites with some lives and shortchanges others. The reason some people lead happy lives and others do not all comes down to rewards and retribution for past deeds.
When you see people winning or losing in life, it appears to come about in a normal way from things in this world. But it is ultimately the karmic consequences of those people’s past doings. Whether people have something or not, or are winning or losing in life, is going to play out in ways that accord with this world. So no matter whether you are rich or poor in life, you should be sure to do good, refrain from doing bad things, stay good and kind, be spiritual and devout, and be happy to help others. And by doing so, you will build up blessings and virtue, and reap their rewards in the next life. In the past, the older generation in China would often talk about things like not lamenting your lot in life when things are hard and about earning a better next life by gaining virtue through good deeds. And the point was that it’s useless praying to God for help if you didn’t do good things in your former life and earn blessings. The universe has its laws, and even higher beings must obey them. Even they will be punished if they do things they shouldn’t. So things are not as simple as people take them to be. Should people expect higher beings to give them whatever they pray for? The prerequisite is that one has to have built up the blessings and virtue for it over past lifetimes. And so the things that come to you are on account of the blessings and virtue you have! This is what the laws of the universe dictate. But speaking on a fundamental level, getting what you want is not the ultimate goal of accumulating blessings and virtue. The real purpose of building those up is to pave the way for you back to heaven. And that is what’s most crucial, not the brief round of happiness that they can bring you in this lifetime!
Teacher Li Hongzhi
Jan. 20, 2023
***
Editor’s Note
Falun Gong is practiced by more than 100 million people worldwide. Yet despite the scale of this cultural phenomenon, it has largely been underreported. The Epoch Times, as a media organization that cherishes religious freedom, is honored to be the first media to publish this article by Falun Gong’s founder. We welcome feedback; however, we expect comments to be civilized and respectful. We were forced to disable the comment section on this article because some debate fell short of this expectation. We also need to protect our content from attacks by the Chinese Communist Party. As always, we would still love to hear your thoughts; to contact us, please click here and fill out the contact form.
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https://washingtonstand.com/commentary/queeridentifying-woman-challenges-churchs-biblical-sexuality-statement-at-open-mic-night-after-media-criticism
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The world retains its ability to surprise:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2242N5NJPUw
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https://washingtonstand.com/commentary/queeridentifying-woman-challenges-churchs-biblical-sexuality-statement-at-open-mic-night-after-media-criticism
That is dead on accurate. You must serve someone. Either you really believe and try to actually live by the rules 7 days a week or you are a CINO. It's Christianity, not Churchianity.
We are all flawed sinners, but embracing your sin and making it your identity is turning your back on God. That is a decision with eternal consequences.
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That is a fine article, I just posted it on my FB page.
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https://pushingrubberdownhill.com/2023/06/12/nefarious/
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https://patriotpost.us/alexander/98273?mailing_id=7573&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.7573&utm_campaign=alexander&utm_content=body
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https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/chinese-communist-party-rewriting-bible
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https://www.nationalreview.com/news/san-francisco-catholic-archdiocese-files-for-bankruptcy-amid-hundreds-of-outstanding-sexual-assault-lawsuits/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=32474531
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moving from western civ thread to here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_views_on_religious_pluralism
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moving from western civ thread to here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_views_on_religious_pluralism
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/YYTv45XRWJA
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vio53jUpJz0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh-Shp-Hcds
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lq28ZFNzaWM
I'm just not getting a strong "our greatest ally/hub of western civilization" vibe here.
Yes, not ALL Israelis/Jews agree with the above, but not a small number seem to.
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https://babylonbee.com/news/men-pretending-to-be-women-go-to-lunch-with-man-pretending-to-be-catholic?utm_source=The%20Babylon%20Bee%20Newsletter&utm_medium=email
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https://patriotpost.us/opinion/103110-understanding-the-vaticans-statement-on-same-sex-couples-and-blessings-2023-12-21
In listening to Bill O'Reilly (a Roman Catholic) recent podcase he explains that the Pope is not saying to bless gay marriage but it is ok for priests to bless gay relationships per say.
He thought this is because the Pope is not preaching morality at this time and he concludes it is from the immorality of child abuse within the American Church over the yrs makes it hard for him to turn around and preach morality to others.
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Looks like he is an Argentinian Peronist:
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/256522/pope-francis-calls-for-greater-dialogue-and-cooperation-between-christains-marxists?fbclid=IwAR1taTX4i9Yu8K4kvnBy69ZYNS20SctCX6WJs4KwNCZnuT6uHh4FAEIHGYo
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https://www.faruzo.com/blog/different-types-of-crosses-and-their-meanings/?fbclid=IwAR1Tx0EdUj3CNM9-aw9i4AgSKsDrQR96CdTcWIBkkMNSUTa7W9I-vwmNKgI#:~:text=The%20Orthodox%20cross%20is%20the,beside%20Jesus%20during%20his%20crucifixion
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My religious beliefs are likely most easily described as agnostic, albeit perhaps to the point I'm difficult to distinquish from a full bore atheist, and indeed I've been told by more than one evangelical bent on convincing me that my reasoned unwillingness to be guided by the dictates some claim an invisible guy in the sky that appears to be asleep at the switch as defined by a class that all too often is found to be lining their pockets or populating their bedchamber via ecclesiastical machinations means eternal perditon is coming my way. So be it.
With that preamble handled, however, these days religious bigotry is a hell of a lot easier to find than any other sort "Progressives" hyperventilate about. Indeed, after establishing I'm going to burn in iniquity, most filled with more fundemental flavors of religious fervor generally leave me the heck alone. Puritans of the "Progressive" variety--meaning most of 'em--not so much. As such this piece is spot on as it deconstructs the amorphous boogie man, er, person "Progressives" try to mold all Christians, Judeo-Christians, and indeed darn near well all that embrace Western as opposed to Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, et al antecedents into.
BTW, the piece's title alludes to a Frank Zappa tune "My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Momma." Were only that he was around to make fun of the New Puritans as he did 20th century ones:
Christian Right Gonna Get Yo Momma
Michael Walsh • 26 Feb, 2024 • 5 Min Read
Christian Nationalists inventing America.
In its never-ending rebellion against Greco-Roman/Western civilization and the philosophy of the late 18th century, the international Left has come up with a new bete noire: "Christian Nationalism." As part of its ongoing series, called Exploring Hate, PBS has produced a documentary on the subject, "The Rise of Christian Nationalism." Rob Reiner, aka Meathead from All In the Family from centuries ago, has just flopped with an anti-Christian film, God and Country, with a miserable four-day opening box-office haul of just $38, 415. Meanwhile, David French, the former conservative who appears as a talking head in Reiner's movie, has just written an explainer, "What is Christian Nationalism, Exactly?" at the mother ship of Woke Stalinist orthodoxy, the devoutly anti-Christian New York Times:
The problem with Christian nationalism isn’t with Christian participation in politics but rather the belief that there should be Christian primacy in politics and law. It can manifest itself through ideology, identity and emotion. And if it were to take hold, it would both upend our Constitution and fracture our society.
George begs to differ.
But Christian nationalism isn’t just rooted in ideology; it’s also deeply rooted in identity, the belief that Christians should rule. This is the heart of the Seven Mountain Mandate, a dominionist movement emerging from American Pentecostalism that is, put bluntly, Christian identity politics on steroids. Paula White, Donald Trump’s closest spiritual adviser, is an adherent, and so is the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Tom Parker, who wrote a concurring opinion in the court’s recent I.V.F. decision. The movement holds that Christians are called to rule seven key societal institutions: the family, the church, education, the media, the arts, business and the government.
Most atheist Leftists have no understanding of the many and manifest differences between and among Christian sects, foremost among them split between Roman Catholics and the various Protestant sects -- Episcopalians, Lutherans, Baptists, Presbyterians, Seventh-Day Adventists, et al. -- once fundamental to early America but now waning in numbers and influence. Consider the wording of Saul Alinsky's noxious but effective Rule No. 4: "Make opponents live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity."
That there is no "Christian church" doesn't matter to someone like Alinsky one bit; he only sees one Principal Enemy (as the Soviets used to call the U.S.). But it is against this wing of Christendom -- as it happens, the wing of most of the Founders who understood they were creating a new nation based upon Christian principles and the wisdom of the British Enlightenment -- that the hostility against "Christian Nationalism" is directed.
When the Founders established the protective notion of freedom of religion and the proscription against a religious test for office, the context was the rivalry and animosity between the Protestant sects and Catholicism, and with the understanding that the small Jewish community could be free to worship as it chose as well. It's worth remembering that the Constitution's prohibition against an "establishment of religion" referred to the establishment nationwide of a single Protestant sect (or, God forbid, Catholicism) -- and yet the states were perfectly free to have established churches: Connecticut and Massachusetts, for example, which were constitutionally Congregationalist into the 19th century.
The idea that freedom of religion would eventually be exploited against the United States of America by the West's deadliest enemies, the Muslims who had been battling the Christian Byzantines and the European Crusaders for a millennium and who were still raiding and slaving in European countries along the Mediterranean right up through the 18th century, never occurred to them. And yet, the Left has no issues with Islamic supremacists such as Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib in the federal government; it's the waning, defensive Protestants against whom the animosity regarding "Christian Nationalism" is largely aimed.
Remember Constantinople.
Catholics, adherents of a top-down religion with an ancient bureaucratic structure inherited from the Roman Empire, rarely if ever read the Bible. (It's read aloud, in very small bits, at Mass each week.) Nor do they routinely quote from it. They don't believe the world is about to end, they don't have a "personal relationship" with Jesus, and they largely disregard the Old Testament -- it didn't even make it in to the first Christian Bible, assembled by Marcion -- and they can't quote a lick of it. They certainly do not believe it makes predictions about human events -- especially given the fact that the imminent prophecies of the ancient Hebrews (and by Jesus himself, for that matter) have unfailingly failed to materialize except by the most tortuous interpretations. In short, Catholics believe Christ will come again, someday, and so we should live our lives accordingly.
This is a faith alien to snake-handling Protestants, End Times aficionados, Bible-thumpers, glossolalians, crackpot evangelicals, and those who honor Charles of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha as the head of their church -- in other words, those who either make up or who are alleged to make up, the "Christian Nationalist" movement. That it's no threat to the body politic should be obvious to anyone but irreligious bigots and political malcontents who continue to seethe at George Washington (Anglican), Thomas Jefferson (a Deist), Benjamin Franklin (Deist), Alexander Hamilton (nominal Episcopalian) for daring to talk about God so openly in the public square, and in particular for having the effrontery to write in the Declaration of Independence:
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..
What frightens today's anti-Christians most is that our human rights come not from D.C. or the HR department but from a creator God, and that such an observation is "self-evident." The party of slavery (which was overturned by a cabal of Christians), segregation (ditto), secularism, and sedition -- in other words, the Democrats -- cannot tolerate this, of course. From the day Burr killed Hamilton they've been waging a war against the country as founded, importing the alien ideology of Marxism along with Emma Lazarus' huddled masses, yearning to breathe free and sow discord and discontent. Today, in an imperfect, recedingly Christian capitalist society the rebellion has taken root, having learned to play by the system's economic rules and create large fortunes (most of the obscene wealth in the U.S. these days is on the hard Left) for itself, but still nursing its ancient ideological grudges and cursing the very freedoms that make their lives here possible. They won't rest.
Michael Walsh is a journalist, author, and screenwriter. He was for 16 years the music critic and a foreign correspondent for Time Magazine. His works include the novels As Time Goes By, And All the Saints, and the bestselling “Devlin” series of NSA thrillers; as well as the nonfiction bestseller, The Devil’s Pleasure Palace and its sequel, The Fiery Angel. Last Stands, a study of military history from the Greeks to the present, was published by St. Martin's Press in December 2019. He is also the editor of Against the Great Reset: 18 Theses Contra the New World Order, published on Oct. 18, 2022. Follow him on Twitter: @theAmanuensis
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I just put this to good use with a liberal Jewish friend who reason today to have his panties in a bunch about Christian Nationalists and Seven Mountain folks etc.
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I just put this to good use with a liberal Jewish friend who reason today to have his panties in a bunch about Christian Nationalists and Seven Mountain folks etc.
Glad to hear it, though I did kinda expect you to jump in with a Zappa anecdote or two.
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Well, I did see him with the Mothers of Invention at the Fillmore East. Frankly even though I respected his musicianship, the only album of his I ever cared for was Hot Rats-- wherein he actually took the musically seriously and just PLAYED.
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Well, I did see him with the Mothers of Invention at the Fillmore East. Frankly even though I respected his musicianship, the only album of his I ever cared for was Hot Rats-- wherein he actually took the musically seriously and just PLAYED.
While I confess Joe’s Garage and Sheik Your Bootie had to be quoted and sung in various kitchens I worked lest you be considered a cultural cretin.