July/August 2008 Issue

The Religious Language Newsletter
Volume 9, Issue 4 -- July/August 2008
==========================================================
The Religious Language Newsletter (available by e-mail, and archived since January 2000 at http://www.forlovingkindness.org) is written and published every other month by Suzette Haden Elgin, Ph.D. (Linguistics), from the Ozark Center for Language Studies (OCLS), at PO Box 1137, Huntsville, AR 72740-1137. For additional information, or to unsubscribe, please e-mail ocls@madisoncounty.net.
==========================================================
In This Issue: Editor's Note; Network Input; Quotes & Comments; Cyberspace

#Editor's Note

One of the major reasons that an e-mail newsletter gets captured instead of delivered is the presence of too many URLs -- too many Internet addresses -- in its text. It seems to me, therefore, that it would be wise for me to stop providing URLs that you don't really need. That is, whenever all you would have to do to get the link for an article is go to Google and type in its title and author, you don't really need for me to provide that URL. You just need a note from me that the piece is available online -- which will let you know that I've checked to make sure that those two steps are all that has to be done to reach it -- and you can take it from there. If this policy will be a problem for anyone among you, please let me know; otherwise, I'll assume that it's acceptable to all.

#Network Input

1. I had written that courtesy of the Andrew Tobias blog for 3/12/08, I was aware of a large set of "Jewish Haikus," but had had no luck finding out who wrote them. And Jim White wrote:

"Looks like the source is David Bader's book, _Haikus for Jews: For You, a Little Wisdom_ (Harmony, 1999)."

**Thank you, Jim.

2. From Karen Stroup....

"As a 'lady preacher' story: When I went to serve as a fill-in preacher at a tiny congregation in rural Kentucky, the man they'd assigned to take care of me admitted he'd never seen a 'lady preacher' before. I told him that wasn't unusual; I was the first for lots of people. He answered, 'Well, if you preach half as good as you look, it ought to be all right.' "
And then, with regard to the role of women in religion, Karen writes that there appears to be a growing general acceptance that "women seem to have had an equal place with men in Jesus' ministry. The big scriptural evidence for this is hiding in the part of Paul's letters no one ever reads -- the sign-off greetings that, at the time, were the accepted closing of a letter. In Romans 16:1-2 Paul commends 'to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church at Cenchreae, so that you may welcome her in the Lord as is fitting for the saints, and help her in whatever she may require from you, for she has been a benefactor of many and of my self as well.' Every Biblical translation I read until the New Revised Standard had 'deaconess' for the office Phoebe held, while the men are referred to as 'deacons.' ... But... [i]n the Greek, there is absolutely NO difference in the word used to describe Phoebe's office and that of the men. There's no deacon/deaconess split... the leaders are all deacons. And so is Phoebe."

**And thank you, Karen. I admit to being a member of the set of individuals who have never heard a sermon preached by a woman preacher, although I have read many a fine sermon _written_ by women preachers. I am especially fond of the sermons of Barbara Brown Taylor. There's a discussion of the "deacon/deaconess" topic in "Definitions of Deacon," at http://www.deacons.net/Articles/ Meaning_of_Deacon.htm .

And then there's "Female Pastors Are a New Fashion," by Lauren Winner, in the 6/27/07 issue of _Religion BookLine_, which asks if the Christian book market is "ready for fictional clerical heroines" and discusses several recently-published examples, including Beth Patillo's _Heavens to Betsy_, from WaterBrook Press. Winner writes:

"Novelists writing about women clergy may address the issue of women's ordination head-on: to be true to life, said [Shannon] Hill, novels need to acknowledge that even congregations that hire women clergy are sometimes divided about it. Indeed, the 'stained glass ceiling' is central to the plot of _Heavens to Betsy_."

3. I had quoted from page 29 of an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali by Rogier van Bakel on pp.27-34 of the 11/07 issue of _Reason_, where Hirst Ali says:

"I accept that there are multitudes seeking God, seeking meaning, and so on, but if they reject atheism, I would rather they became modern-day Catholics or Jews than that they became Muslims. Because my Catholic and Jewish colleagues are _fine_. The concept of God in Jewish orthodoxy is one where you're having constant quarrels with God. Where _I_ come from, in Islam, the only concept of God is you submit to Him and you obey His commands, no quarreling allowed. ... Jews should be proselytizing about a God that you can quarrel with. Catholics should be proselytizing about a God who is love, who represents a hereafter where there's no hell, who wants you to lead a life where you can confess your sins and feel much better afterwards. Those are lovely concepts of God."

My response with regard to the quotation was: "The stance that Hirst Ali takes is radical, and would be in direct violation of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. I can only hope that she is wrong." And Michael Mates wrote:

"Pardon? Where is Ali attempting to establish a religion? Isn't she exercising her right of free speech? What is the error in her description of Roman Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim beliefs and practices?"

**My statement that Hirst Ali's stance is radical was made in reference to the content of the entire article -- which of course you had not had the opportunity to read -- not just to the content of the quotation. My comment with regard to the First Amendment was made with reference to the word "proselytizing." I apologize for having caused confusion and given offense, and will do my best to be more careful in future.

#Quotes & Comments

1. My thanks to Douglas Dee for sending me an excellent, well-argued article by Van A. Harvey titled "Religious Belief and the Logic of Historical Inquiry," on pp. 24-29 of the 12/07 issue of _Free Inquiry_. On page 26:

"When we understand that religious interpreters' beliefs are quite specific, we can also understand why a certain type of religious believer is not only hostile toward biblical criticism but makes critical historical reasoning impossible. This is quite clear in the case of the fundamentalist but also... in the case of the more sophisticated believer who takes certain narratives to be true on faith. Christian fundamentalists make critical historical inquiry impossible, because they claim to know in advance what any such historical inquiry will yield. They foreclose all the questions for which critical historians seek an answer: What are the various strands of authorship in the books traditionally associated with Moses? How many of the Epistles attributed to Paul were actually written by him? Was there an oral tradition underlying the Gospels attributed to Matthew, Mark, and Luke? Did Jesus claim to be the Messiah? Did the earliest belief in the resurrection of Jesus make any reference to an empty tomb? Of course most Christians are not fundamentalists, but there is, nevertheless, a very large percentage of them whose faith is bound up with the confidence that most of the narratives about Jesus are true... "

I am aware that Harvey's reference to "the more sophisticated believer" has the ring of elitism, and I am sorry he did not choose some other adjective. However, the article is not at all elitist. Its focus is on providing a clear explanation of the difference between the methods and principles of the theoretical historian when writing on the topic of the Bible as history, and the methods of the writer who may be highly skilled and able to write compellingly but who is _not_ trained in that discipline. It's both civil and respectful from beginning to end.

2. Here -- and all over the Internet -- are "The Native American Ten Commandments":

1. Treat the Earth and all that dwell thereon with respect.
2. Remain close to the Great Spirit.
3. Show great respect for your fellow beings.
4. Work together for the benefit of all mankind.
5. Give assistance and kindness wherever needed.
6. Do what you know to be right.
7. Look after the well-being of mind and body.
8. Dedicate a share of your efforts for greater good.
9. Be truthful and honest at all times.
10. Take full responsibility for your actions.

This was sent to me marked "Author Unknown." I went googling for a source and found only "(Joe Vlesti Associates 1993)"; and Google had nothing at all for that search string. With regard specifically to the religious language itself, I'll admit that I'd be happier if #4 read "all humankind" instead of "all mankind," and that it seems to me that #1 includes #3. That said, this seems to me to be an admirable set of commandments to try to live by.

3. "[Jeremiah] Wright's hope is a different thing. His 1991 'Audacity to Hope' sermon was based on 1 Samuel 1-18, which tells the story of a woman, Hannah, childless and bereft, who prays for a son. Wright isn't interested in the happy ending... Instead, he dwells on her torment, comparing her to Martin Luther King, Jr., in his last years, when the civil-rights coalition seemed to be crumbling and his old allies were criticizing his increasingly comprehensive political program. 'There was nothing on the horizon to say that he should keep on hoping, but he kept on hoping anyhow,' Wright said. ... If he thinks that things haven't changed much in the past hundred years, it's because he thinks that things haven't changed much in the past two thousand years. You don't hope because the odds look good. You hope because they don't."

This is Kelefa Sanneh, on page 35 of an excellent and informative article titled "Annals of Religion: Project Trinity: The perilous mission of Obama's church." Highly recommended. The article is on pp. 30-36 of the 4/7/08 _New Yorker_, and available online. My thanks to Wib Smith for the copy.

4. The Fall 2007 issue of _The Morning Star_ newsletter had a book review on pp. 4-5, written by Art Pitts, of Irene Mahoney's book _Lady Blackrobes: Missionaries in the Heart of Indian Country_. Pitts writes:

"As Mahoney says: 'In order that the Native Americans be brought into the family of Jesus Christ, their culture, with its rituals, myths, and language had to be destroyed... It is precisely this absolutism that today we question and deplore... The goal of missionaries today is a far different affair -- not destroying but enabling people to live fuller lives within their own culture.' This quotation sets the tone for Mahoney's work; she is writing history, not hagiography (biographies of saints), allowing for changes in views and values..."

It pleases me greatly to see that revision in the goal of today's missionaries.

5. My thanks to Sally Lloyd for sending "Shermer's Last Law," by Michael Shermer, which appeared on page 33 of the January 2002 issue of _Scientific American_ but has only now surfaced in my stack of materials. Shermer begins by quoting Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law ("Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic") and claims that it's the inspiration for a law of his own, that would go like this: "Any sufficiently advanced extraterrestrial intelligence is indistinguishable from God." His argument?

"God is typically described by Western religions as omniscient and omnipotent. Because we are far from possessing these traits, how can we possibly distinguish a God who has them absolutely from an ETI who merely has them copiously relative to us? We can't. But if God were only relatively more knowing and powerful than we are, then by definition the entity _would_ be an ETI!"

This is clever. However, I am of the opinion, personally, that humankind would be able to tell the difference between an ETI and a genuine deity; I don't think Shermer gives us enough credit.

Shermer is the author of a number of books, including _Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design_.

6. My thanks to Patricia Mathews for sending a story that I have cited previously, but haven't commented on before: "What Would Jesus Buy?", by Walter Brueggemann, on pp. 8-15 of the 11/07 issue of _Sojourners_. The article is a profile of Bill Talen -- "Reverend Billy" -- a street-corner preacher whose message is the foundation of "the Church of Stop Shopping.... a performance activism nonprofit staffed almost entirely by volunteers..." What I'd like to do here is pass along to you something Brueggemann mentions on pp. 13-14 -- four "marks of a prophet" taken from a 1970 article by Sibley Towner titled "On Calling People 'Prophets'." They are:
"First, prophetic practice has a _style_ that gives dramatic form to what is said and done. That is, prophets are 'performers.' That style, chracteristically, is one of enormous, passionate conviction."

"Second, prophetic practice has a _rhetoric_. ... We are able to see ancient prophets practicing daring, scandalous rhetoric (and conduct) in an attempt to make sense outside the dominant ideology of their time."

"Third, prophetic practice is _located institutionally_ in society and appeals to a particular _constituency._"

"Fourth, what counts in prophetic practice is the _message_ of a truth rooted in God and enacted in concrete society."

I had no luck finding the Sibley Towner article anywhere online, but my search for it did take me to a very interesting bibliography -- "Prophetic Books of the Old Testament" -- at http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/prophets.php .

7. Thanks to Patricia Mathews for an amazing article by Stephen Prothero titled "Is religion losing the millennial generation?" that appeared in the 2/4/08 _USA Today_ and is available online. Prothero begins by telling us two very interesting things: that Americans found new religions "at a rate of about 40 to 50 per year," and that for the past two years he has been requiring students in his introductory religion course to "get together in groups and invent their own religions." [Prothero appears to be a superb teacher. When the students do presentations on their invented religions, the way their peers "vote" on them is by putting fake money in a fake offering plate for the ones they like best.] He writes:

"What strikes me most about my students' religions... is how similar they are. Almost invariably, they mix fun with faith. (Facebookismianity, anyone?) But they do not mix faith with dogma. My students are careful -- exceedingly careful -- not to tell one another what to believe, or even what to do. Above all, they want to be tolerant and nonjudgmental."

And he ends this way: "Yes, the religions that students conjure up in my courses tend toward vagueness and relativism. ... But because they are invented rather than inherited, these religious creations provide a glimpse into the concerns and convictions, hopes and fears of young Americans, who are slouching not toward Bethlehem or even atheism, but toward new ways of being religious -- innovative ways that ancient religions ignore at their peril."

8. From "Faith shouldn't be red, white and blue," by Tom Krattenmaker, in the 7/2/07 issue of _USA Today_, and available online:

"God and country -- the two live side-by-side in the hearts of many tradition-minded Americans. Yet faith and patriotism are different ideals... May patriots honor the flag on the Fourth of July. And may religious people revel in the beauty of their faiths. But let's remember that being Christian is not a requirement of patriotism. And that patriotism is most assuredly not a requirement of being religious. Let's honor the flag and faith -- by keeping a reverent measure of distance between the two."

And...

"No doubt, faith has long played a role in the American military, but it has been an inclusive faith, one respecting a diversity of denominations and religions, with chaplains of different stripes available to assist soldiers on their own religious terms. Contrast that with what's been happening in the military in recent years, where sometimes-coercive Christian evangelizing has triggered lawsuits and lent a crusader overtone to the fight against terrorism. Contrast that inclusive tradition with rhetoric that potrays Jesus as America's 'commander in chief'... "

9. From "Franchises and Faith," by Richard Corliss, on pp. 65-66 of the 5/26/08 issue of _Time_:

"Can God make one movie franchise a hit and another a flop? That was the question hovering over the first film adaptations of two best-selling fantasy series for children, C.S. Lewis' _The Chronicles of Narnia_ and Philip Pullman's _His Dark Materials_. ... Pullman's trilogy, written in the 1990s, described a battle between a dictatorial deity and the rebel angels determined to defeat him. As the author told the Sydney _Morning Herald_ in 2008, 'My books are about killing God.' Not quite yet, the Almighty seemed to say, when the initial movies based on these franchises were released."

Both of the first movies cost $180 million to make. But the first Narnia movie earned $291.7 million in the U.S. and $453.1 million abroad; the first Pullman movie earned only $70 million in the U.S., and its $301 million earned abroad wasn't enough to offset that. Two sequels are scheduled for the Narnia series; none are scheduled for the Pullman series. Plus, the film company that made it has been "folded into" Warner Brothers.

I am not seriously suggesting that the Almighty pushed the SMITE button to teach Philip Pullman a lesson. I _am_ seriously suggesting that Philip Pullman can't write as well for children as C.S. Lewis, and that perhaps -- considering what he said to the _Morning Herald_ -- he was never, as a child, taught to control his tongue.

[Update on June 2, 2008: I've just read a note saying that the second Narnia film isn't doing very well at the box office. The rain falleth on the just and on the unjust.]

See also a brief review by Rick Norwood of that second Narnia film, at http://www.sfsite.com/06b/pc274.htm , where we learn that "In the middle is an entire battle sequence that isn't in the book and doesn't advance the plot..." C.S. Lewis would not have been pleased.

10. My thanks to Diana Cook for sending a copy of James W. Jones' _Blood That Cries Out From The Earth: The Psychology Of Religious Terrorism_ (Oxford University Press 2008). I was particularly interested in Chapter 4, titled "The Divine Terrorist: Religion and Violence in American Apocalyptic Christianity," most of which is devoted to a careful psychological analysis -- in this context -- of the _Left Behind_ series. Jones begins with a brief historical introduction, pointing out on page 89 that American apocalyptic Christianity takes seriously "Saint Paul's brief phrase in his New Testatment letter to the Thessalonians that when Christ returns believers 'who remain alive will be caught up in the clouds to meet Christ in the air' (1 Thessalonians 4:17)..." and attributes the origin of the concept of "the rapture," and of Revelation as "a literal blueprint for historical events at the end of the world," to the writings of one John Nelson Darby.

On page 92: "Throughout the _Left Behind_ series, the protagonists continually justify their actions by reference to individual Bible verses, or sometimes even just bits of verses or phrases. Almost always these textual bits are cited without any reference to their context. The assumption here appears to be that the Bible is a repository of concepts and images that are independent and autonomous and can be taken out of their larger textual or narrative context and treated as isolated slogans or bits of wisdom."

On page 93: "The very words 'left behind' have deep psychological resonances. They clearly evoke some of our most primal fears. Fears of abandonment and insecure attachments, which are some of our most basic fers, are captured by the title. Nobody wants to be left behind, whether it is when parents go out for the evening, when teams are chosen in the schoolyard, or when the thread of time is finally rolled up."

And on page 96: "Remember that all this disaster, death, loss and grief are presented as the action of God. ... And, presumably, the truly pious are watching all of this from their front-row seats in heaven. In the last volume, _Glorious Appearing_, when all the holy people are reunited, it is, in fact, suggested that the raptured saints watched while their loved ones died in plane crashes, were incapacitated in train wrecks, were crushed by colliding cars and collapsing buildings. How is that psychologically possible? What were they thinking as they watched from the safety of paradise this divine carnage heaped on those they cared about?"

I agree completely about the emotional resonance that goes with the phrase "left behind."

11. I'm grateful to Wib Smith for sending "Return to Paradise," by Jonathan Rosen, on pp. 72-76 of the 6/2/08 _New Yorker_, and available online. Rosen (on page 75) discusses the well-known fact that in _Paradise Lost_ "Milton's Satan is charismatic -- and his God, as even ardent Miltonists tend to accept, dull in the extreme" and provides a fascinating account of the writing of the epic. Also on page 75:

"Those who trumpet Satan's glory often neglect the nobility of his adversaries, most memorably a low-ranking angel who finds Satan disguised in Eden and touches him with a spear. Instantly, Satan springs up in his actual form, since angelic touch reveals his true nature. Satan is horrified to discover that his own fall has transfigured him so that he is no longer recognizable as Lucifer; he stands 'abashed' and, contemplating this junior angel, 'felt how awful goodness is.' That sense of the awfulness of goodness (the word, in its seventeenth-century usage, means 'awe-inspiring') was as powerful an engine of Milton's work as the glamour of evil."

And on page 76: "Milton did many things with 'Paradise Lost': he revived and then killed off the classical epic, he made his personal theology into literary scripture, he fused the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, making the Son present at the creation. 'Paradise Lost' is simultaneously personal, national, and universal, a poem that claims divine inspiration but is clearly made up, a poem with ancient origins and contemporary interpolations that confuses the very notion of old and new. A number of recent scholars who have focussed on Milton's knowledge of Hebrew see echoes in his literary strategy of rabbinic Midrash, human stories that helped embody divine meaning and in the process became divine themselves."

12. The Spring 2008 issue of _Image_ [4 issues a year, subscription information at http://www.imagejournal.org ], offered a wealth of good religious language material. I'm going to provide a brief sampler here...

a. From "A Conversation with Ron Hansen," conducted by Brennan O'Donnell, pp. 53-66; on page 66:

"RH: I go back to the old idea that a sacrament is a visible sign of an invisible grace. I liken writing to sacrament in that way. Writing witnesses to something that's happened to you, or to some power that's moving through you. In writing, you're trying to communicate what's been going on in you spiritually and make it somehow tangible to others. You're trying to give it life. And that's what the sacraments are intended to do. They're symbols of something that God is actually doing to us."
b. From "Language as Sacrament in the New Testament," by Franz Wright, pp. 87-95:

On page 87: "The language of the New Testament has been with me since childhood. The words of Jesus, specifically, are so familiar that I am constantly in danger of becoming insensitive to their power. As an antidote to that I have been trying once again to think about Jesus's words... I have been trying to read them again, and to think about them again from both a literary and a theological persepctive, and then simply to experience them... "

On page 89: "... I think this is as good a time as any to tackle that troublesome term _miracle_. ... I understand the miracles to be Jesus's exceptional and usually extremely reluctant acts of personal friendship or sheer pity. Underlying, behind, and surrounding them there is always implicit a fierce warning against reliance on the supernatural, and an insistence on the primacy, for his followers, of the hardest and most improbable miracle of all -- a consistent and perpetual attitude of compassion and love for _all_ others."

And on page 91: "...[A]ccording to the great German Protestant theologian Joachim Jeremias, when Jesus's sayings are translated back into Aramaic, it's clear that he favored a certain four-beat rhythm, and that he was especially fond of alliteration and assonance as well as rhyme!"

[I'm not at all sure if the quote from page 91 is accurate, especially with regard to rhyme; your input would be welcome.]

#Cyberspace

1. To read the entire document titled "An Evangelical Manifesto: A Declaration of Evangelical Identity and Public Commitment," go to http://www.anevangelicalmanifesto.com, where you'll find a PDF link to both the document and a study guide.

The manifesto lists "three major mandates" for Evangelicals, seven "foundational" beliefs, and six "implications" that "follow from this way of defining Evangelicalism." As a sample, here is a paragraph about the first of the mandates, on page 4:

"Our first task is to reaffirm who we are. _Evangelicals are Christians who define themselves, their faith, and their lives according to the Good News of Jesus of Nazareth._ (_Evangelical_ comes from the Greek word for _good news_, or _gospel_.) Believing that the Gospel of Jesus is God's good news for the whole world, we affirm with the Apostle Paul that we are 'not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation.' Contrary to widespread misunderstanding today, we Evangelicals should be defined theologically, and not politically, socially, or culturally."

In this context, my thanks to Patricia Mathews for sending a copy of "A values voter's trap: Do liberals really need to talk like evangelicals in order to tackle the social ills of the day?", by Austin Dacey, in the 4/28/08 issue of _USA Today_. [The piece is available online.] Dacey writes:

"We Americans have our own civic scriptures. The American testament has its Creation narrative: Thomas Paine's _Common Sense_, The Declaration of Independence. It has an Exodus: the Gettysburg Address, the Emancipation Proclamation and the New Deal. Its Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians is Thomas Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists; its Psalms, Walt Whitman's _Leaves of Grass_. The original moral values are enunciated in the Preamble to that American Talmud, the Constitution: justice, domestic tranquility, comon defense, general welfare and liberty."

I admit to being surprised by Dacey's choice of _Leaves of Grass_ as the Psalms of our "civic scriptures." I'd be more inclined to choose the collected poems of Wendell Berry, myself.

My thanks also to Stephen Marsh for sending an article by Marci Hamilton titled "An Evangelical Manifesto: How One Subgroup of Evangelical Christians Is Attempting To Redefine the Very Term 'Evangelical'," at http://writ.news.findlaw.com/hamilton/20080515.html . Hamilton expresses admiration for the tone of the manifesto and its attitude of tolerance, but concludes with this paragraph:

"How can one subgroup of evangelicals, who candidly admit more than once that they are not all evangelicals and cannot speak for all evangelicals, dictate the definition of 'evangelical' in the public square? Why would they want to? They even drop a footnote purporting to dictate that "evangelical" must be capitalized, just like Christianity and Judaism. It is ironic in the extreme for this group to call for a more open-ended, shared public debate characterized by mutual respect, and then to open the discussion by purporting to dictate linguistic parameters. This assertion of control unfortunately undercuts the higher goal of bringing everyone to the table to work on the common good."

2. The _Religion & Ethics Newsweekly_ for 5/2/08 had an interesting transcript [between PBS anchor Bob Abernethy and Howard University theologian Harold Dean Trulear] titled "Perspectives: Jeremiah Wright and the Black Church," in which this instructive exchange caught my attention:

Abernethy: "Is Jeremiah Wright a typical representative of the prophetic tradition?"
Trulear: "I would say he's an exemplar because there are people who model their ministries after his."
Abernethy: "Even though he can be profane and even though he can say things that a lot of people think are wildly wrong, mistaken?"
Trulear: "Well, many people thought the biblical prophets were wildly wrong and mistaken. Many people thought that Jesus was wildly wrong and mistaken. So that alone would not be sufficient to dissuade people from emulating him as a prophet."

You can read the entire conversation online at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week1135/perspectives.html .

3. From "The Candidate And The Pastor," by Bill Press, available online:

"Appearing on NPR's 'Fresh Air' on Sept. 18, 2006, [John] Hagee said: 'The newspaper carried the story in our local area that was not carried nationally that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that Katrina came. ...' An incredulous host Terri Gross asked if he was really saying that God had flattened the entire city of New Orleans because a gay pride parade was scheduled in the French Quarter. Yes, said Hagee, that's exactly what I meant. 'All hurricanes are acts of God because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that."

It seems to me that _God_ is the one that preacher Hagee owes an apology to.

4. Thanks to Cindy Brown for alerting me to an article [at http://tinyurl.com/613zdb ] reporting that the Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes -- a Jesuit, and the director of the Vatican Observatory -- has said in an interview with _LOsservatore Romano_ that ruling out the existence of extraterrestrial life would be "putting limits" on the creative freedom of God. The interview itself was headlined "The extraterrestrial is my brother."

I went immediately to Google to try to find a transcript of the interview, and had no luck with that, but did find another article, by Francis X. Rocca, titled "Vatican astronomer suggests aliens do not need salvation," at http://pewforum.org/ news/display.php?NewsID=15613 .

Rocca writes: "According to Funes, such creatures may never have fallen into sin, and so have no need of salvation through Christianity. 'It is not a given that they have need of redemption,' he said. 'They may have remained in full friendship with their Creator.' Asked about the possibility of redemption for sinful extraterrestrials, Funes said he was 'sure that even they, in some way, would have the possibility of enjoying the mercy of God.' "

Wow. One thoroughly astonished writer of science fiction here.

And I do understand that "The extraterrestrial is my sibling" would not have had the same ring to it, nor would it conform to the recent Vatican pronouncements against "inclusive" language.

5. The _Alban Weekly_ newsletter for 5/19/08, in "Technologies for Learning: Find Out What's In It for You!," by Wayne Whitson Floyd, had a sentence that caught my attention:

"Many of us come to a point where we decide to examine seriously our strengths, personality, values, and passions; a point where we carefully examine our uniqueness and how God has wired us."

"How God has wired us?" I've never seen that wording before in religious language. My thanks to Hillevi M. Wyman for the copy.

6. In advance of Jeffrey Sharlet's book about "The Family," coming out this month, HarperCollins has published an interview as part of the booklaunch; you can read it at http://www.talk2action.org/story/2008/5/10/12839/361 . Here's a sample from one of Sharlet's answers:

"When I left, I discovered that The Family had dumped nearly 600 boxes of documents and tapes in an evangelical archive in Illinois. I moved to Illinois and spent months there, living in a bare bones apartment and marching off to the archive every day to sift through mountains of documents. I was amazed and horrified by what I found -- the secret history of Christian fundamentalism's most enduring and powerful organization, told through tens of thousands of letters, manifestos, memos, prayers, and political documents."

7. From a piece about the Red Letter Christians network titled "Group asks: What did Jesus say?", by Frank James, at http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/ news_theswamp/2006/09/new_group_asks_.html :

"I went to a press conference yesterday and a church service broke out. ... So through a series of what amounted to small sermons, the Christian clergy, activists, scholars and writers who attended yesterday's event announced that they wanted to elbow their way into the national pulpit, as it were, to give issues of social justice, global warming, peacemaking etc., an emphasis in policymaking they say is now lacking... "

8. The 5/26/08 issue of _Alban Weekly_ flags an article titled "Cleaning Up Bad Communication Habits," by Kibbie Simmons Ruth and Karen A. McClintock, online at http://www.alban.org/conversation.aspx?id=6138 . It begins with:

"Of the several negative communication patterns congregations practice, three habits are particularly problematic: triangulation, pass-through communication, and anonymous feedback. While these three may be strategies for getting needs met, they all block rather than help healthy communication. Even if well intentioned, they are deadly habits that in the long run allow people to dodge accountability, gain power, and alienate others."

9. Derek Webb, in "Jesus-Following vs. Social Activism" [available online], starts by saying that "claiming to follow Jesus" is basically ridiculous, because of all that talk about loving the poor and our neighbors and our enemies and "those who hate and oppose us." It's hard enough he says, just to love people who love _us_. But he goes on to say that the work of following Jesus is nevertheless "to love and care especially for those for whom it is difficult." And he writes:

"How do we tell the whole story of the coming reign of God, a new way of being human and relating to God and God's creation? We put our hands to it. We proclaim a day when there will be no more thirst by giving water to the thirsty. We proclaim a day coming where there will be no more disease and death by caring for the lives of those whose bodies are broken. We proclaim a day coming where there will be no more war by preemptively sowing the seeds of peace."

10. There is some interesting quoted religious language in a transcript [perhaps a partial transcript] of a PBS episode hostel by Bob Abernethy, at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week1123/cover.html . Abernethy notes that there is an ongoing shortage of Catholics in religious orders around the world and in the United States, but notes that there are some exceptions, and says that "Betty Rollin found a teaching order in Nashville fairly bursting with dedicated nuns." Here are some samples of what those nuns had to say:

Sister Christiana Mickwee:
"For me, it wasn't so much a voice per se but through prayer -- just in the silence, just letting hm be there and finding out, really asking him, 'What do you want from me, God?' I mean, I really had everything I could have wanted in the world, and there wasn't anything that I was trying to get away from."

Sister Catherine Marie Hopkins:
"Very rarely do people come and say, 'I've always wanted to be a sister.' You know, I always found that very suspect. You know, usually it was, 'I was going through life very happily and suddenly this strange idea came and I tried really hard to eliminate it.' In my own life, that was the case."

And Sister Amelia Hueller:
"The younger sisters we're seeing tend to be very firmly in support of the Pope in terms of Catholic teaching, including on the non-ordination of women. So this is kind of an interesting reversal here, and often it is referred to by some of the older Catholics as, you know, the 'young fogies' because they're in many ways more traditional than their elders."

11. From a 5/30/08 _Telegraph_ press release sent by Cindy Brown, bylined only "By Our Foreign Staff," titled "Pope says Vatican will excommunicate women priest," and available online:

"The Vatican has issued its most explicit decree so far against the ordination of women priests, vowing to punish them and the bishops who ordain them with automatic excommunication. The decree, published in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, makes the Church's existing ban on women priests more explicit by clarifying that excommunication would follow all such ordinations. ... The Church says it cannot change the rules banning women from the priesthood because Christ chose only men as his apostles. Catholic law states that only a baptised male can be made a priest. But advocates of women's ordination say Christ was only acting according to the social norms of his time."

12. From "Making Their Mark: Interview with Mariama White-Hammond of Project HIP-HOP, online at http://go.sojo.net/ct/811Te0Y18Srw :

"Sojourners: What's the biggest challenge you see facing young Christians/the church now? In the years to come?"

"I think we basically always face the same problems: 1. Can we shut up long enough to hear God? 2. When God speaks, can we be obedient? 3. Can we be loving enough to non-believers that they will ever believe that our God is love? I believe that the world knows that things are bad and they are searching for a prophetic voice, but even more they are searching for people who believe so much that they are willing to put their own comfort on the line. If we could do that, we could take the world by storm."

13. Cyberplaces to visit: "Jesus plus nothing: Undercover among America's secret theocrats," by Jeffrey Sharlet, an article about "The Family," at http://www.harpers.org/archive/2003/03/0079525 ; "Weapons of Mass Devotion," by Ben Shepard, at http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/weapons-mass-devotion .

Contact: ocls@madisoncounty.net

Return To Content Page