Religion, Faith and Belief – well covered in the Media, but with different slants

By Gary Berg-Cross

Lots of media (newspapers, magazines, radio and online types like blog sites etc.) have a Religion section or its equivalent.  WaPo has it online under the National section where you can read about the “Latest Religion News.

This includes local Religion events from around the Washington area including music

(Dixieland jazz), Martha’s Table, food drives, Super Bowl Fellowship, Bible study, yoga, wellness, organ recitals.

Under the WAPO  RELIGION heading you read how the ubiquitous  (and Controversial)

Koch brothers give big (again) to Catholic University. But you can also find related  coverage under the Metro or Style section which has On Faith.

The NYT has a Religion and Belief section with occasional posting like:

Mark Oppenheimer Beliefs column. A January post observed that many faiths struggle with concept of animal ensoulment; cites proliferation of pet cemeteries throughout the United States.

An earlier one in January was about former NY Gov Mario Cuomo willingness to speak publicly about his religious beliefs.

On Xmas day atheist Mark Bittman Op-Ed article cross-posted there that reflects that 2014 was the 100th anniversary of Christmas truce during World War I, when soldiers from both sides took break from fighting to be festive together.

Also on Xmas dayT M Luhrmann had a cross posted Op-Ed article about people attending God-neutral, growing in popularity movements like Sunday Assembly around Xmas Yes even for atheists group ritual is important to make sense of the world.

Even the Guardian has a Religion section and moving to online phenomena the news aggregating blog site called  the Huffington Post has a Religion news section. It’s under its Voices category. As a liberal site I find its coverage includes a bit more critical tone than most of the others. You can read about “Why Julianne Moore Stopped Believing In God” They break faith down into several categories and also have a  Religion and Science section that features "blog posts and news reports that address the ongoing conversation and tension between religion and science. The page has a pro-science and pro-faith point of view and highlights smart, sophisticated perspectives from all religious traditions on how to best improve relationships between these two fields of inquiry."

These feature research and fact-oriented coverage and not just opinion. Recent examples include, “Children Exposed To Religion Have Difficulty Distinguishing Fact From Fiction, Study Finds”  and “Religious Objections To Vaccines Are A Threat To Public Health.”

Still I find most of these sites could be considered religiously or faith oriented. They are labeled so.

A bit different is the Belief section of the very liberal blog aggregator Alternet.  Here we are beyond a religious and religious faith slant to one of the more general topic of belief including secular belief. Atheism is pretty prominently featured and discussed and discomfort to faith-based belief folks is likely.  They cover issues in a more confrontational way - sort of like a New Atheist style, but they include articles that might take on that topic too.

Recent posting included:

Eminent Biologist: Religion Should Be Eliminated for the 'Sake of Human Progress'

E. O. Wilson: You don't have to be an atheist to know that religion is harming the Earth.

Of course some of the coverage discusses the religio-political connections such as:

People With No Religion Underrepresented By a Factor of 100 in Congress ...

AlterNet-Jan 28, 2015

20 percent of Americans have no affiliation with organized religion. Only 0.2 percent of Congress says the same. By Zaid Jilani.

Another one with political connections was “This Week in Religion: Huckabee Claims God Blessed Him, and Mormons Back LGBT Rights.” 

Dan Arel, author of Parenting Without God and blogs at Danthropology, authors the This Week in Religion section. Just in January he has covered some critical topics:

This Week in Religion: Pope Francis Tells His Flock to Stop Breeding Like Rabbits Jan 23, 2015,

This Week in Religion: Christians Continue Their Assault on LGBT Community Jan 17, 2015,

The Past Week in Religion: God Pronounced Owner of an Alabama City Jan 11, 2015, and 

This Week in Religion: Bristol Palin Decries Separation of Church and State: Jan 2, 2015,

Other recent posts on Alternet.org include some overviewing non-belief in a bit of the way other media feature an established religion.

The 6 Types of Atheists and Non-Believers in America

AlterNet-Nov 17, 2014

The answers tell us a lot about religion and non-belief in America. ... Not all of them identify as atheist or agnostic or a non-believer, but plenty do, and while there are many people offering to defend this particular community, few are willing to speak for them. ...

Still other posts are critical of religious leaders such as:

Billy Graham's Son Is One of America's Most Dangerous Islamophobes. This one by Bill Berkowitz  was aggregated from another liberal blog site TruthOut.

Alternet is one of those challenging sites.  No one is going to agree with everything they feature, but you get some interesting topics, usually documents and well reasoned if a bit argumentative – sort of like the New Atheists. An example is the “12 Worst Ideas Religion Has Unleashed on the World” By Valerie Tarico who argues that these 12 dubious concepts advocate conflict, cruelty and suffering. Among them are things hard to disagree with:

The idea of  Heretics, kafir, or infidels (to use the medieval Catholic term) are not just outsiders, they are morally suspect and often seen as less than fully human. In the Torah, slaves taken from among outsiders don’t merit the same protections as Hebrew slaves.”  Or Holy War – If war can be holy, anything goes.”  Blasphemy the notion that some ideas are inviolable, off limits to criticism, satire, debate, or even question. is of course on the list, but the #1 listed was:

Chosen People –The term “Chosen People” typically refers to the Hebrew Bible and the ugly idea that God has given certain tribes a Promised Land (even though it is already occupied by other people). But in reality many sects endorse some version of this concept. The New Testament identifies Christians as the chosen ones. Calvinists talk about “God’s elect,” believing that they themselves are the special few who were chosen before the beginning of time. Jehovah’s witnesses believe that 144,000 souls will get a special place in the afterlife. In many cultures certain privileged and powerful bloodlines were thought to be descended directly from gods (in contrast to everyone else).

Religious sects are inherently tribal and divisive because they compete by making mutually exclusive truth claims and by promising blessings or afterlife rewards that no competing sect can offer. “Gang symbols” like special haircuts, attire, hand signals and jargon differentiate insiders from outsiders and subtly (or not so subtly) convey to both that insiders are inherently superior.

No feel good Super Bowl Fellowship coverage likely at Alternet.org, but lots of thought poking topics.  It not only makes you think, it makes you want to think. 

Blasphemy and Issues around Free Speech

by Gary Berg-Cross

The recent Charlie Hebdo shootings have stirred a range of discussion, some reasoned and some emotion driven about persistent topical ingredients such as;

·         How do we and should we define the border between freedom of expression and hate speech?

·         Does religion or associated ethnic groups with their values have special status to consider?

·         What is the role of history, including facts and law in deciding these things?

·         How does this debate relate to extremists and to establishment power structures?

People, cultures and groups will differ as to what “facts” and assumptions are to be used in the debate, some of which we see embedded in the above questions. Some very liberal people’s preference is to defend freedom of all kinds of expression, including mockery and

incitement without any limitations. That's really free and there are no real borders to worry about.  There is no hate speech. It’s a mature & proper view and perhaps take maturity, tolerance and polite reflection all around to work.  Maybe it is the goal, but we have various types of hate speech or its equivalent enshrined in law. So we have to deal with gray areas that may vary from country and culture. there is also the idea of civilized discourse. I'm in favor or that too and the idea of this can also vary from place to place.  There may be practical issues to get to the idea of free speech and civilized discourse on the way to enlightenment without conflict or giving in to bullies and crazies. Every culture has some small percentage of unstables and events often afford them opportunities to make an impact and get into the spotlight.

Then there is the emotional vs. rational aspect of our behavior. We are not always reflective or tolerant and some things get the emotions fired up, even among rational, secular folks. Take something as simple as the proposition to respect a person’s right to believe whatever they want – so long as that belief does no harm to others. Of course harm is a judgemental thing -hurting a believer's mothers feelings may not be harmful to me, but it may be the way a belief culture wants things to be and mutual politeness may allow this if all other things are equal.  Alas, they are rarely so.  It is this unevenness that makes finding a useful position difficult.  Indeed certain groups are protected by laws and others by convention which builds in some unevenness. 

Non-believers might think a "no harm respect-all" standard is an improvement over what we have now– believers should respect nonbelievers as people and not disrespect them as people.  We are human too and recent events might offer a teachable moment for respecting people.  Whether we should respect the belief itself is quite another matter that eventually leads to argument. When can we speak up about the silliness of other's belief?  

In a simple respect position non-believers would leave faith-based believers to their own thoughts.  And indeed this seems to me what many of us on the nonbelief side do - new atheists and anti-theists aside. This might be a nice peaceful world, if that was all there was to it. But there is history and custom to consider  and these conflict respect for people with having to respect certain beliefs - the religious ones for example.

For a long time, well maybe for as long as we know, believers don’t leave non-believers alone.  Believers have their hooks into the power structure and get laws, such as Blasphemy statutes, passed, which do beyond disagreeing with the belief and take action on non-believing people, such as not allowing them to hold office. 

For evidence let’s look at the International Humanist and Ethical Union. They have released their annual global report Freedom of Thought Report 2014, on discrimination against humanists, atheists, and the non-religious, and their human rights and legal status. As input to the report, a group  called Atheist Ireland contributed information about religious discrimination in Ireland as part of the overall process of developing the Report.

Here are some of the General systemic issues noted on how nonbelievers are affected in Ireland: 

§  There is systematic religious privilege
§  Preferential treatment is given to a religion or religion in general
§  Religious groups control some public or social services
§  State-funding of religious institutions or salaries, or discriminatory tax exemptions
Freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief; Establishment of religion
§  Official symbolic deference to religion

Much of this is due to article 44.1 of the Constitution of Ireland in which

 “the State acknowledges that the homage of public worship is due to Almighty God. It shall hold His Name in reverence, and shall respect and honour religion”.

This clause, smells of the concept of blasphemy - the act of insulting or showing a lack of reverence for God, religious or holy persons or things, or toward something considered sacred or inviolable.

This Irish thing is surprisingly close to a foundational tenet of Islam, namely, submission to Allah (the Arabic word for a universal “God”). There may be thankfully fewer acts of violence seen in Ireland than the Middle East for a variety of reasons. These things happen when people are stressed and conflicts are ongoing. There are sometimes sparks from a real war with people being killed and tortured that lead to violent response.

Coming back to what we saw for Ireland, a contextual question might be “Is it legal to draw and publish caricatures like these in Europe?”

Well we think clearly yes, but it turns out with reservations, legal ones at times.

There are still laws in Europe criminalizing blasphemy, although there has been a trend to decriminalize it over the last 40 years. In the Netherlands, it was only abolished completely in 2014

In the US prosecution for blasphemy is in theory "unconstitutional” after the 1952 Supreme Court case of Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson. But there are still laws on the books.  So although we aren't whipping people anymore we aren't pure on this issue of free expression that we hug to our breast.  We can do better.

The extremist claiming the attack in Paris declared that it was revenge for the publication of caricatures in the Charlie Hebdo symbolically depicting the Prophet Muhammad, as a terrorist, but also as revenge for torture they cited in Iraq.  The equating of a proclaimed prophet as a terrorist is certainly provoking.  As some have noted characterizing killers of abortion clinics as Christians, perhaps with a picture of Jesus doing the bombing would not be a fair, mocking characterization.  We don't blame world wide Jewry of depict Moses as a bomber of Palestinians in Gaza. A few fringe zealots and defenders of belief turf may take react violently, but we don't blame or satirize an entire religion.  They are often few, such as our US Koran burners or government building bombers, but allow broadly the scapegoating of the other side and may use religious cover for this. But then the caricature of the Prophet is also broad in seemly condemning an entire religion using its prophet symbolically.  It would seem that civilized cartooning as part of debate could be smart enough not to smear an entire religion in anger.  But maybe that is the point and one that can be debated in a civilized fashion.

There is another practical side to this too.  Some defend a more limited conception of freedom of expression to avoid the downsides.  The idea here is that some speech may incite violence and cause hate speech. Certainly we recognize this is some aspects of social media.  Ever been banned from a web site for heated argument?  What about police who crack down on targets that talk back.  Their speech seems quite limited, but perhaps if they used satire it would go better.  Well maybe not.  We read how French police are rounding people up because of the stuff they "said", including a drunk driver who was arrested for apparently feeling his freedom expression too much, and talked tough.  As troubling as well, is a know French comedian who made a joke in poor taste on Facebook. He was arrested.  There seem to be practical limits, especially if you are talking to the power structure in your society as opposed to one that your power structure is in conflict with. And that is another point people have made about Charlie Hebdo. Their criticism has been characterized as more of punching down to a minority group and its religion in the country but at odds with the power Charlie H rarely punched up against that power structure it is claimed. As one letter to WaPo put it:

It is easy to claim to promote and stand for freedom of expression and to wrap oneself in the mantle of righteousness at the expense of those who are already beleaguered, downtrodden, marginalized and oppressed. But it is a gross abuse of a worthy principle, and there is nothing admirable or praiseworthy about it.

 Freedom to speak is not nearly absolute especially when it makes groups in power uncomfortable. Secularists have understood and experienced this for a long time. You might have a right to say what you feel to the law yet you might get arrested or charged with disrespecting a law officer. Some have been killed.

As advice here, consider this practical, civilized point of  view from the David Ignatius posting , “Sorry, but this war-on-terror mobilization is the wrong response to the Charlie Hebdo tragedy.” It would repeat mistakes the United States made in its reaction to Sept. 11, 2001.

“The role of religion in all of this is dangerously exaggerated,” says a former State Department official who now organizes private-sector efforts to counter extremism. “When we get stuck in a religious debate we are never going to win, we miss the point, which is that extremists are offering young people a sense of belonging, an outlet for adventure, and some kind of enhanced status. To combat this, we have to appeal to them as young people more than we have to appeal to them as Muslims...

Cracking a joke or publishing satire has its place in this discourse, but so does delicacy and civility. If we want to rise above barbarity, sometimes our humor needs to rise above as well. It doesn't mean we need remain silent in the face of fraud, atrocity or illiberality or discard our fundamental right to free expression. It just means instead of a sledgehammer, sometimes the knife of subtlety is a much better tool..”

Messianic Conversion Battles

by Gary Berg-Cross

The Messianic community is in a bit of an uproar.  The spark was George W Bush’s talk at a fundraiser today for Messianic Jews sponsored by Messianic Jewish Bible Institute (MJBI) – headquarters of the apocalyptic cult “Jews for Jesus”. The MJBI faith-driven, evangelical goal is “to bring Jewish people into a personal relationship of faith” with Jesus.  There’s the rub. The Jewish community does not believe that Jesus represents the true word of God. They have received that word and Yahweh’s speeches were done a while ago.  To the born-again Christian community this is an error correctable by simply getting Jews to recognize that Jesus really is the promised Messiah. Now of course Muslims believe that even Jesus was not the last word on this subject and well Mormons have introduced yet a more recent rendezvous with God and an updated Book.

Disparaging, assimilating and replacing other & older religions is often a core principle of religious faith. It is implied in commandments to put down other gods and shun practices.  It seems reasonable to believe that UR-born Abraham lived in an environment filled with

remnants of Sumerian mythology and religious practices. The moon God Sin and his daughter Inanna were the patron deities of Ur and the names given to Abram’s family members seem to reflect homage to this Akkadian/Sumerian pantheon.  Some speculate that this is the reason God changes the names of Abram and Sarai after they enter into covenant with Him (YHWH). Sumerian myths had been integrated & blended into nearby Akkadian culture& the original Akkadian belief systems (which have been unfortunately mostly been lost to history).  It’s an understandable story of older (Sumerian) deities developing Akkadian counterparts.  Abraham claimed new contact with HIM/God and began a prophet’s job of converting people to his belief.  The ancient Hebrews continued in this line of faith selling and converting into modern times if you believe the argument made by Shlomo Sand in THE INVENTION OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE :

As summarized in Wikipedia, Professor Sand:

“began his work by looking for research studies about forcible exile of Jews from the area now bordered by modern Israel, and its surrounding regions. He was astonished that he could find no such literature, he says, given that the expulsion of Jews from the region is viewed as a constitutive event in Jewish history. The conclusion he came to from his subsequent investigation is that the expulsion simply didn't happen, that no one exiled the Jewish people from the region, and that the Diaspora is essentially a modern invention. He accounts for the appearance of millions of Jews around the Mediterranean and elsewhere as something that came about primarily through the religious conversion of local people, saying that Judaism, contrary to popular opinion, was very much a "converting religion" in former times. He holds that mass conversions were first brought about by the Hasmoneans under the influence of Hellenism, and continued until Christianity rose to dominance in the fourth century CE” 

...Judaism used to be a proselytizing religion like Christianity or Islam, and that

consequently many of today’s Jewish Israelis are descendants of converts, without an ancestral link to Eretz-Israel. Inversely, many of the Palestinians may just be the descendants of the large Jewish community who remained to toil the land, even after the destruction of the Temple and the suppression of the Bar Kochba revolt in the first and second centuries, respectively — and who gradually converted to Islam in the centuries after the Arab conquest. (NYT Interview with Sand)

In more recent times there has been somewhat of a gentleman’s agreement, a respect of both views (but not others) between Jews and Christians not to poach too hard on tempting  conversion territory.  Well converting other religions is OK and well Mormons may not abide by this silent truce since they have gotten the true word more recently.  Who to poach on can make for some awkward confrontations. Indeed Humanists and Secularists are perhaps the enemy since they can see all religious groups as fair game for poaching.  Of course tactics for free thinkers may be as simple as starting a rational conversation and not beating the evangelical drum.

But for Born Againers it isn’t so simple.  Religious beliefs have consequences. Those who do not accept Jesus as Savior are going to lose their soul and wind up in hell! (yes the Sumerians had a place like that as well as an Eden). We have to save them like we saved the Native Americans. These unfortunate souls include a long list - non-Messianic Jews (which is the vast majority of Jews), Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, deists, atheists,

Nones, Secular Humanists etc.  It’s fair game to go after all who reject the idea that Jesus was the son of god and died to save humans from sin. Jews seem an easy target to some since they are only 1 prophet removed from the Truth to the groups like MJBI and to G. W. Bush.  Converting Jews is completely in line with his end of days religious beliefs - think about the Rapture and the apocalypse in order to hasten the second coming of Jesus Christ. It’s a matter of faith among the born-again Christian community. 

However with the truce broken more than isolated religion seems at stake here to non-Messianic Jews.  Converting the people of a strong faith, well chosen is offensive disrespectful.  The conversion of the Jews, and their restoration to Jerusalem, was apparently vigorously pursued by English evangelicals in Victorian times to fulfill Biblical prophecies.  Unpleasant biblical eschatology is a driving force behind the rabidly pro-Israel stance of the American Christian Right. The irony for Jews is that they love Israel from a biblical perspective, but sees Jews as going to hell unless saved. For a scholar like Shlomo Sands there is a tricky conversion story already in the Jew-Israel topic. He sees the claim that the large majority of current Jews are the ethnic offspring of the biblical Jews as a convenient Zionist myth.  
 

Even without motivating prophecy stories and mythic basis for religion and ethnic identity it is perhaps true that all efforts at conversion are also about what we identify with and whether it evolves and survives.  Rob Eshman expressed the Jewish survival concern this way in the Jewish Journal:

 "Bush … is helping to raise money for a group whose reason for being is to stop there being Jews. It sounds alarmist, but there it is. Success for the group Bush supports would mean no more Jews."

Yes, no more Sumerian religion or identity.  It's the same imperial mentality that's ravaged the holy land for ages driven by faith rather than an evolution of provable ideas or the tolerant but relativistic idea that everybody’s philosophical religious beliefs are their own, and by definition in modern times nobody’s philosophical religious beliefs are better than anyone else’s. Sure, we may be able to improve on naive relativism and imperial absolutism. That a longer conversation, but tolerance is good for everything but intolerance. Unfortunately we have lots on intolerance in these messianic battles.