Stephen Baldwin

Actor Stephen Baldwin is at the Republican Convention to support the candidate "with the most faith." He became a born-again Christian about three years ago. His political views are at odds with brother Alec Baldwin, but he says the family remains close. I'm not convinced that Bush has "more" faith than Kerry, nor that the quality of his faith is better. In fact, it seems to me that the President has an overweening confidence in himself, a lack of humility, that could precede a fall.

Religion At RNC

Beliefnet's Steve Waldman is blogging about religion at the Republican Convention.

Red God, Blue God At Republican Convention

I attended the Red God, Blue God session at the Democratic Convention, but I rely on National Journal for a report on the corresponding section at the RNC

At today's "Red God, Blue God" forum, the Ethics and Public Policy Center's Michael Cromartie said voters who do not identify with any religion comprise 16 percent of the electorate. Wesley Theological Seminary's Shaun Casey added that Nones, along with Hispanics, are the largest growing demographic. And President Bush isn't likely to attract many of these votes -- assuming, of course, that he'd want to. "Persons who intensely dislike religious believers have found a home in the Democratic Party," Cromartie said. "And it's a BIG voting bloc in the Democratic Party." In fact, he argued, the Nones (sometimes called anti-fundamentalists) are just as large a Democratic constituency as labor.

Tribal Religion

This does not make indigenous Nigerian folk religion sounds appealing.

Christianity Growing In China

A review in The New Republic of Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity Is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power by David Aikman, notes that Christianity is growing strongly in Communist China, quite likely outpacing the revival of traditional religions like Buddhism.

Faye Pearson, a foreign teacher of Christianity in China, told Time that seven out of ten converts to Christianity in the country "come to faith through illness": they believe that Christianity has healed them. Even Lambert admits that "Chinese Christians adhere to a robust biblical supernaturalism which believes in a sovereign God who can answer the prayers of his people in remarkable ways." In fact, many Chinese Christians follow what is essentially folk religion with only minor Christian elements.

I suspect a lot of this growth is due to outside support and funding, taking advantage of the vacuum left by the Maoist suppression of traditional Chinese religions.

Uses and Abuses of Religion

The August issue of the New Internationalist is not yet online, but is available on newsstands. It has a cover, and a special section, on the uses and abuses of religion. NI is a British left-wing magazine, and is sympathetic to the secular. However, its various writers admit that religion is not going away, and in fact, seems to be making a comeback. And so they ponder how to tame the religious beast, and harness the compassionate aspects of religion. Food for thought.

Spiritual Blogs on Beliefnet

Beliefnet has a list of the best spiritual blogs.

Fear And Faith

The TV journalist and physician Dr. Timothy Johnson also turns out to be an ordained minister. He's written a book, Finding God in the Questions. I haven't seen the book, but I read an interview with him in The Senior Times (not available online). It sounds like his brand of religion is fairly conservative, but he expresses doubts and tolerance of non-believers. There is an interesting exchange between the questioner and Johnson.

Q. They say that faith and fear can't live in the same body. With so much faith, how come you don't fly? A. I have an irrational phobia which has nothing to do with faith.

I am a nervous flyer myself. I don't think fear and faith are disconnected. Anxious people may be more in need of faith, while the person who is constitutionally fearless may feel less need for an invisible protector.

Evolutionary Theory of Religion

The European Society for the Study of Science and Theology, has awarded a research prize for The God Instinct : Elements of an evolutionary theory of religion, a dissertation by Caspar Soeling. While written in German, the abstract is available in English. In June 2004 issue of ESSSAT-News, there is a more accessible description of the work,excerpted below

THE INSTINCT FOR GOD. Elements of an Evolutionary Theory of Religion The emergence of human religiosity is not known precisely yet it is linked with the cultural explosion during the Upper Palaeolithic period. The first burial relics giving indications of rituals and murals in primaeval caves point to religious behaviour by our ancestors. However, the question of how this unique feature in natural history was able to evolve is still unclear. Why are people religious? How can a natural organism question the supernatural? Why do living organisms invest so much time and energy in modes of behaviour which do not directly serve maintenance or reproduction? What selective advantage does religiosity offer? These are the questions my dissertation considered. The questions were examined using the heuristics of evolutionary psychology. According to this theory the brain is not an unknown entity, a ‘blank slate’ (Steven Pinker) but possesses a wide variety of learning-specific mechanisms. Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, psychologist and anthropologist respectively, who were instrumental in the development of evolutionary psychology, compare the brain to a form of Swiss pocket knife, comprised of a multiplicity of individual functions, which they call ‘domainspecific algorithms’. Each one of these algorithms was shaped by natural selection and is genetically determined. Thus, these are species-specific adaptations, developed and optimised during evolution. This leads to my second premise: Cosmides and Tooby consider that the Palaeolithic Age was the determining period in the history of humankind. It is like a bottle-neck through which all human adaptation had to pass. The adaptations advantageous then, will inevitably be found in all other succeeding generations. My deliberations considered the question of which individual blades of the Swiss pocket knife, i.e. to which Darwinian algorithms, religiosity can be traced back. I had to look into the present to search for adaptations from the past. Type-specific, evolutionary algorithms normally have three distinguishing features: 1) They are spread over one particular species universally. 2) They have a function which had a pre-historic adaptive advantage. 3) They may retain this function to the present day. This Cosmides and Tooby approach formed the basis of my analysis of the phenomenon of religiosity. I quickly came to a startling discovery. Religions are not only spread universally but they share a similar structure wherever they are encountered. Every religion is characterised by four constituent elements: mysticism, myths, ethics and rituals. It therefore seemed logical to analytically sub-divide the issue of evolutionary history and the function of religiosity into these four aspects and to begin by examining each component separately. There is only space for me to elucidate this using one example. I shall take that of mysticism and consider it from the methodological viewpoint outlined above. Thinking about supernatural beings usually includes a mixture of knowledge about different types of entities in the real world. This mixture is often observed in representations of gods in human form. Hybrids of humans and animals and androgynous divine figures abound, and often include the capacity for metamorphosis. The oldest known symbolic representation is such a hybrid: the 33,000 year old Hohenstein-Stadel lion/man. Even in the present, multiple 'organs' are found: two or three heads, three bodies, multiple arms or a hundred eyes or, in a contemporary Hindu example, an elephant/man. How can these representations and the experiences on which they are based be explained?

The Nation Cover Story

The Nation has a cover story on liberal religion and politics. The author spoke to a number of the same people I met at the Democratic Convention. The article is worth reading, but I don't believe that the anti-poverty agenda that is closest to the heart of the religious left really has much traction with swing voters. There also needs to be talk about personal responsibility, and how faith can be empowering. Society needs to lend a hand, but the individual then needs to grab hold of it and pull for themselves.

Noetic Blog

The Institute of Noetic Sciences, of which I'm a member, now has a blog. Noetic is an interesting organization, because they support research into spirituality using scientific methodology, though many skeptics still disparage it.

Is The UU Future Theist?

I found this Beliefnet thread on Unitarian Universalism interesting enough to get a Beliefnet username and make a comment

The UU churches I've been to seem mostly humanist to me, so I'm surprised by the suggestion that the future might be theist, but pleased too. What I see most fundamental to the UU approach is the method of free inquiry, rather than the place one arrives at from there, which might either be humanist or theist. So there ought to be space for both tendencies. What I'm really looking for is a liberal fellowship that is theist but not Christian. This is surprisingly hard to find. As someone who was raised Jewish, the language of even liberal Christian churches excludes me both for reasons of personal conscience and familial ties. On the other hand, I find Reform Judaism to be insufficiently universal to interest me. So I like the idea of a church that has gone far enough away from its Christian roots to inch back toward theism, but in a more universal manner which does not privilege Christianity or Judaism.

Red And Blue Churches

Melinda Henneberger has a piece in Newsweek on Red And Blue Churches.

In the voting booth, certainly, Americans are no longer divided by denomination, as they were when John Kennedy was running for president. These days, liberal Catholics vote like liberal Protestants, who vote like liberal Jews, and so on, while conservatives of every faith and no faith do likewise.

This suggests to me that denominational lines and traditions are themselves of decreasing relevance to a person's faith, and perhaps there will be a realignment in the future. Of course, religious change occurs at a glacial pace, so we may not live to see this. (thanks to Jeannette at Village Gate for pointing out this article)

International Society For Science And Religion II

I caught the last day of the conference of the International Society For Science And Religion that was held here in Boston. After flying home from Vancouver the night before, I set an alarm and made it to the 9AM opening prayer, followed by a talk on God and Probability by David Bartholomew, author of Uncertain Belief: Is It Rational to Be a Christian?. Unfortunately, as a non-public session, the discussion was off-the-record, so I can't report it here. Instead, I'll mention something about the group. They seem to be a bunch of senior academics in math and the natural sciences who are interested in religion, or have personal religious faith, which they would like to reconcile with their professional commitment to science. They were skeptical of attempts to twist science to support religious doctrine, however. The average age of the group seemed to be over 50. There are three possible explanations for this which come to mind: 1. Younger academics are predominantly secular rather than religious 2. As one gets older, one naturally thinks about one's mortality, and religious questions. 3. Older academics have tenure, and can study what they want. Younger academics avoid controversial topics like God.

On Vacation

Hiking and canoeing. Probably won't have access to a computer.

International Society For Science And Religion

The ISSR is having a conference in Boston later in August. A distinguished list of scholars are involved with the ISSR. I don't know who will be coming to Boston. There will be a free public lecture on August 19. Unfortunately, I'll be away on vacation, and won't be able to attend.

PBS Religion Series At DNC

PBS's Religion & Ethics series was at the Democratic Convention, and filmed with People of Faith luncheon. Here is a link to their coverage of Religion at the DNC.

Blue God Democrat Seeks Blue Dog Voters

In 1960, Senator and presidential candidate John F. Kennedy set to rest the issue of his Roman Catholicism in a speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association. In 2004, the religious issue faced by Senator John F. Kerry has not been his Catholicism, but perceptions that he is not religious enough. While Kerry may continue to be dogged by the differences between himself and the leadership of his denomination over the issue of abortion, he made have overcome concerns about his apparent secularism in his acceptance speech Thursday night. Kerry said:

I don't wear my religion on my sleeve, but faith has given me values and hope to live by, from Vietnam to this day, from Sunday to Sunday. I don't want to claim that God is on our side. As Abraham Lincoln told us, I want to pray humbly that we are on God's side.

Before this speech, Kerry's most prominent use of religious talk occurred in a speech before a convention of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Indianapolis on July 6, where he pledged to support faith-based initiatives. Would he use such language before a general audience, and possibly alienate voters uncomfortable with religious talk? One person who was urging him to do so was Mike McCurry, former press secretary to President Clinton, and a Sunday school superintendent of a United Methodist Church. McCurry was in attendance at a People Of Faith Caucus luncheon on Wednesday, July 28 and spoke at a panel the day before entitled Red God, Blue God: The God Gap in Presidential Politics - Is it Real? I spoke to McCurry at the conclusion of the People of Faith luncheon. "Democrats need to get over reluctance to talk about faith," McCurry said, "but have to find a non-offensive way to speak spiritually." McCurry spoke of religious institutions as a place of sanctuary, where dialogue is carried out with greater civility than in the "hardball" culture of politics. Following up on discussion which had occurred at the previous day's Red God, Blue God panel, McCurry agreed with the suggestion that, in contrast to the abortion issue, which has been a mainstay of political conflict for 30 years, the gay marriage issue might not have legs beyond the current election cycle. "The former is an issue of life and death to those who believe life begins at conception," McCurry said. "The latter is not at the same level."
Democrats at Prayer
The People of Faith luncheon began with the chant of "Alleluia Amen" to bring to order the more than one hundred individuals in attendance. This was followed by a call to prayer by a Muslim leader, Iman Asad Zaman, remarks by Rabbi Joshua Plaut, and introduction of the Kerry campaign's four person religious outreach staff. Leah Daughtry, who is chief of staff of the Democratic National Committee as well as being a minister, indicated that the People of Faith caucus meeting was unprecedented. She added, "We can be Democrats and people of faith. Our faith informs our values." The keynote address by Rev. Jim Wallis of Sojourners Magazine and Call to Renewal. "Our faith has been stolen from us," Wallis said to loud applause. "It's time to take it back." Wallis compared the relations between the right-leaning National Association of Evangelicals and the left-leaning National Council of Churches to the rivalry between Crips and the Bloods. He joked that if you have to have them together, it would be best to "put a Mennonite in between them" to keep them from coming to blows. Recalling a politician who said, "I have faith, but don't worry--it doesn't affect what I do," Wallis asked, "What if Martin King had said that?" Wallis said that he was uncomfortable with the label "religious left." He said that the Republicans has misstepped by co-opting religious leaders, and indicated that he had no desire to be co-opted by the Democratic Party. "Don't be reliably partisan," he said. "Challenge both the left and the right." Nevertheless, the sentiment at the People Of Faith luncheon was clearly left of center. The chief focus of the speakers was on compassion and alleviating poverty. It would take political alchemy to turn that into the kind of rhetoric that would appeal to socially conservative swing voters, such as those represented by Blue Dog Democrats in Congress. Given a choice between the "Blue God" focus on social responsibility and the "Red God" emphasis on personal responsibility, many such voters would prefer the latter. Kerry wisely appealed to both sides of this divide in his acceptance speech, saying:

We believe that what matters most is not narrow appeals masquerading as values, but the shared values that show the true face of America; not narrow values that divide us, but the shared values that unite us: family, faith, hard work, opportunity and responsibility for all, so that every child, every adult, every parent, every worker in America has an equal shot at living up to their God-given potential.

Convention Liturgy

A World Of Speculation has thoughts on the rituals of political conventions.

Center For American Progress

The Center For American Progress is sponsoring a Faith and Progressive Policy initiative. The big name associated with it is John Podesta, former Chief of Staff to President Clinton.

Nate Knows Somethin'

Nate has written up the People Of Faith caucus luncheon that we both attented last week during the Democratic National Convention. I have my own notes which I will be putting together this week. I very much enjoyed the event and the people I met there.

2020 Democrats Faith In Politics Initiative

Unfortunately, I had a conflict, and was not able to attend the 2020 Democrats Faith In Politics Rountable last week. However, at their web site, there is a wealth of information about here. This seems to be the root page of the Faith in Politics discussion Here is a post on Restoring Religious Vision by Stephen M. Ruckman One arguing that faith and politics are best kept separate A roundtable discussion Another one discussing why the evangelical left is not liberal. I haven't had a chance to read these entries yet. So far, I would only say that while it is important to keep church and state separate, there is no way to separate ones politics from one's core beliefs (as distinguished from religion denomination).

Tisha b’Av In Beantown

Dan Ain, a writer for Jewish Week who penned this story about New York delegates observing the fast day of Tisha B'Av during the convention, sat next to me during the People of Faith caucus luncheon.