Eleanor J. Bader - Why Young People Are Fleeing Conservative Evangelicalism

The results of a five-year study of the Millennial Generation—people born between 1982 and 1993—are in. Thanks to the Barna Group, a 28-year-old, California-based, Christian research firm, we now know that conservative evangelical churches are losing formerly–affiliated “young creatives:” Actors, artists, biologists, designers, mathematicians, medical students, musicians, and writers.

Some leave because they oppose the church’s doctrinal stance. Others are turned off by its hostility to science, and still others reject the limitations placed on permissible sexual activity. The report cites the tension felt by young adults who find it difficult—if not impossible—to remain “sexually pure,” especially since most heterosexuals don’t marry until their mid-to-late twenties. “Young Christians are as sexually active as their non-Christian peers,” Barna concludes. What’s more, the report admits that Millennials see the evangelical church as an exclusive club, open only to those who adhere to every rule. This runs counter to values that rank high on the Millennial playlist—among them, open-mindedness, tolerance, and support for diversity.

Read More:

http://www.alternet.org/story/154051/why_young_people_are_fleeing_conservative_evangelicalism

Greg Palast - Queen of Angels’ Condoms

I arrived into this world at the Queen of Angels hospital in Los Angeles into the hands of Dr. Sidney Kolodny. Queen of Angels, judging by the number of nun-nurses running about, is a Catholic hospital.

Dr. Kolodny was Jewish.

Last night, I heard Senator Rick Santorum tell us that President Obama has attacked Catholics and freedom of religion by barring church-controlled businesses from excluding contraception care in their employees' health plans. Joining the shriek-fest against the president's decision, the sanctimonious little ex-senator prattled on about big bad government crushing religious freedom.

That's just arse-backwards.

Read More:

http://www.gregpalast.com/queen-of-angels-condoms/#more-5702

Gary G. Kohls - What Kind of Christianity Is This?

From time to time, I read about condemnations of religion coming from non-religious groups, especially concerning the all-too-common violence perpetrated in the name of religious gods. Indeed there is plenty to condemn.

Altogether too many religions sects of both major and minor religions, despite verbally professing a desire for peace and justice in the world, are actually pro-war, pro-homicide and pro-violence in practice (or they may be silent on the subject, which is, according to moral theology, the same as being pro-violence).

Obvious examples include those portions of the three major war-justifying religions of the world: fundamentalist Islam, fundamentalist Judaism and fundamentalist Christianity.

Read More:

http://consortiumnews.com/2012/01/25/what-kind-of-christianity-is-this/

Robert Jensen - Prophetic Politics: Charting a Healthy Role for Religion in Public Life

Does God take sides in the elections? Is there a voters’ guide hiding in our holy books? Should we pray for electoral inspiration?

Secular people tend to answer an emphatic “NO” to those questions, as do most progressive religious folk. Because religious fundamentalists so often present an easy-to-caricature version of faith-based politics -- even to the point of implying that God would want us to vote for certain candidates -- it’s tempting to want to banish all talk of the divine from political life.

But a blanket claim that “religion and politics don’t mix” misunderstands the inevitable connection between the two. Whether secular or religious, our political judgments are always rooted in first principles -- claims about what it means to be human that can’t be reduced to evidence and logic. Should people act purely out of self-interest, or is solidarity with others just as important? Do we owe loyalty to a nation-state? Under what conditions, if any, is the taking of a human life justified? What is the appropriate relationship of human beings to the larger living world?

These basic moral/spiritual questions underlie everyone’s politics, and our answers are shaped by the philosophical and/or theological systems in which we find inspiration and insight. Since everyone’s political positions reflect their foundational commitments, it doesn’t seem fair to say that those grounded in a secular philosophy can draw on their traditions, but people whose political outlooks are rooted in religion have to mute themselves.

Read More:

http://www.nationofchange.org/prophetic-politics-charting-healthy-role-religion-public-life-1328365026

Abby Zimet - Angels We Have Heard On High: Activist Priest, 83, In Solitary Confinement

Jesuit priest and peace activist Father Bill "Bix" Bichsel, 83, is in his second week of a hunger strike to protest solitary confinement at Washington's SeaTac Federal Detention Center, where he'd been held for an earlier action against a proposed nuclear weapons plant in Tennessee. A member of Disarm Now Plowshares, Bichsel has been arrested several times for nonviolent civil disobedience at military bases, nuclear weapons manufacturers, and the School of the Americas. He is currently being punished - including having to wear shackles at his hearing - for an "unauthorized" visit by two Buddhist monks who drummed and prayed outside for him. Despite cold and health problems, Father Bichsel says he sings to himself in his cell. His resolve remains strong to fight against nuclear weapons and other US policies "that are without conscience." He has alot of work ahead of him.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/further/2012/01/27-1

Rob Boston - Why Is There So Much God in Our Politics? The Religious Right's Theocratic Plan for the 2012 Election

He’s been married three times and is an admitted adulterer, features that would seem to make Newt Gingrich an unlikely standard-bearer for the hyper-moralistic brigades of the Religious Right. But with a little mental gymnastics, all things are possible.

“Maybe the guy in the race that would make the best president is on his third marriage,” Steve Deace, a prominent Religious Right leader in Iowa, recently mused to writer Michelle Goldberg of “The Daily Beast” website. “How do we reconcile that?”

One way is to do what Deace did and compare Gingrich with King David, the Old Testament figure who committed adultery with another man’s wife but later repented.

“I see a lot of parallels between King David and Newt Gingrich, two extraordinary men gifted by God, whose lives include very high highs and very low lows,” Deace added.

Read More:

http://www.alternet.org/story/153685/why_is_there_so_much_god_in_our_politics_the_religious_right%27s_theocratic_plan_for_the_2012_election

Marieke Verhoeven - Sonic boon, Search for sound’s healing power

ODE MAGAZINE,  September 15, 2011,

I’m lying in a bed that’s as hard as nails with a series of strings along the sides and two gongs above my head. It’s known as a gong bath, and Gwen de Jong, a practitioner of sound healing at Spirit Connection in Amsterdam, assures me it can help clear my mind. “Just give in to it, and don’t try to analyze it,” she says before we begin. 

Then she asks, “What do you hope to achieve?” When I say I want to relax, De Jong puts a mask on my eyes and begins to play. While I enjoy the sounds at first, they soon become unpleasant. The increasingly intense vibrations feel like screeches; my head fills with dark thoughts. I’m this close to ending the session, but I struggle to give in to it. When the vibrations soften, I feel better. A few times, I even reach a mindless state—if only for a fraction of a second.

Afterward—my session lasted 20 minutes; they usually last an hour—Spirit Connection’s founder, Harry van Dalen, comes in and explains that the unpleasant sensation I felt is the internal battle between thoughts and the “I.” “Your ego is resisting. Some people can give themselves over right away; others take longer.” Internal battle or no, I feel remarkably relaxed afterward. Though I usually turn on my iPod after an interview, I decide this time to travel home in silence.

Most people are probably unaware that the body consists of vibrations. External sounds resonate with the sounds in our bodies; think of the sensation you feel near a speaker at a concert. It’s not so crazy, then, to imagine that external sounds might also have a therapeutic, healing effect. Anyone who listens to birds singing knows sound can relax us. But it can also heal, accomplishing everything from reducing stress to helping autistic children.

In recent years, academic studies have investigated the healing power of sound. In 2009, researchers at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland discovered sound waves can improve mobility in older people with bone problems. The application of sound waves reduced cholesterol levels and bone deterioration. That year, research at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada, produced equally positive results. Forty patients with ­Parkinson’s ­disease sat in physioacoustic chairs, seats with speakers that emit low-frequency vibrations. Afterward, the patients’ symptoms had decreased. Motor skills improved; stiffness and shaking declined

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Emi Koyama - Christian Fundamentalists and Private Military Contractors? The Strange Bedfellows of the Sex Slavery Anti-Trafficking Movement

By Emi Koyama, Bitch Magazine

Posted on December 15, 2011, Printed on December 20, 2011
http://bitchmagazine.org/

In the 2008 film Taken, Liam Neeson plays Bryan Mills, a retired CIA operative whose undercover past is called into action when his daughter is kidnapped while traveling abroad and sold into sexual slavery. Using his counterterrorism skills to torture and murder those who stand between him and his daughter’s captors, he eventually rescues his daughter and comes home a hero, with no consequences exacted for the violence he’s inflicted in the name of his daughter’s safety.

The film was a commercial, if not critical, hit (a sequel is forthcoming in 2012), perhaps because, like many a made-for-TV movie or Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode, it served a voyeuristic interest in the world of forced prostitution and sex trafficking involving attractive young, white, middle-class female victims and ethnically Other (Eastern European in this particular case) male perpetrators. Its success also mirrored the real-world events of a presidential administration that justified the use of torture—euphemistically referred to as “enhanced interrogation techniques”—as a valid means of preventing catastrophic terror attacks, and which dismissed reported cases of extreme prisoner abuses like those at Abu Ghraib as exceptions: safety at any cost, by any means necessary.

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Gwynne Dyer - The False Equation of Religion Equals Morality

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/12/19-2 

Published on Monday, December 19, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

by Gwynne Dyer

In the United States, where it is almost impossible to get elected unless you profess a strong religious faith, it would have passed completely unnoticed. Not one of the hundred US senators ticks the "No Religion/Atheist/Agnostic" box, for example, although 16 percent of the American population do. But it was quite remarkable in Britain.

Last Friday, UK Prime Minister David Cameron urged the Church of England to lead a revival of traditional Christian values to counter the country’s “moral collapse”.Last Friday, in Oxford, Prime Minister David Cameron declared that the United Kingdom is a Christian country “and we should not be afraid to say so.” He was speaking on the 400th anniversary of the King James translation of the Bible, so he had to say something positive about religion – but he went far beyond that.

“The Bible has helped to give Britain a set of values and morals which make Britain what it is today,” he said. “Values and morals we should actively stand up and defend.”

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Ronald Siegel - West Meets East – Creating a New Wisdom Tradition

Ronald Siegel

Psychotherapy Networker Magazine, December 2011

Twenty-five years ago, when our small group of Boston therapists began meeting to discuss how we might apply ancient Buddhist meditation practices in our work, we didn’t often mention it to our colleagues. Most of us had trained or were working in Harvard Medical School facilities, and the atmosphere there was heavily psychoanalytic. None of us wanted our supervisors or clinical teammates to think of us as having unresolved infantile longings to return to a state of oceanic oneness—Sigmund Freud’s view of the meditation enterprise.

At that time, Buddhist meditation was becoming more popular in America, and intensive meditative retreat centers were multiplying. The new centers often were staffed by Western teachers, many of whom had first encountered meditation in the Peace Corps and later trained in monastic settings in the East. Some of our group had studied in Asia; others had been trained by these newly minted Western teachers. Regardless of our backgrounds, what we shared was that we’d all experienced how radically meditation practices could transform the mind.

Therapists of the day typically viewed meditation as either a fading hippie pursuit or a useful means of relaxation, but of little additional value. Meditation teachers had their own biases toward psychotherapy, typically regarding it as a “lesser practice,” which might prepare someone for meditation but couldn’t really liberate the mind. So those of us who were involved in both domains, and viewed them as complementary, largely kept to ourselves.

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Chris Hedges - Where Were You When They Crucified My Movement?

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/where_were_you_when_they_crucified_my_movement_20111205/

Posted on Dec 5, 2011

By Chris Hedges

Chris Hedges gave an abbreviated version of this talk Saturday morning in Liberty Square in New York City as part of an appeal to Trinity Church to turn over to the Occupy Wall Street movement an empty lot, known as Duarte Square, that the church owns at Canal Street and 6th Avenue. Occupy Wall Street protesters, following the call, began a hunger strike at the gates of the church-owned property. Three of the demonstrators were arrested Sunday on charges of trespassing, and three others took their places.

The Occupy movement is the force that will revitalize traditional Christianity in the United States or signal its moral, social and political irrelevance. The mainstream church, battered by declining numbers and a failure to defiantly condemn the crimes and cruelty of the corporate state, as well as a refusal to vigorously attack the charlatans of the Christian right, whose misuse of the Gospel to champion unfettered capitalism, bigotry and imperialism is heretical, has become a marginal force in the life of most Americans, especially the young. Outside the doors of churches, many of which have trouble filling a quarter of the pews on Sundays, struggles a movement, driven largely by young men and women, which has as its unofficial credo the Beatitudes:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the earth.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons and daughters of God.
Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

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Rev. Madison Shockley - Jesus and the 99 Percent

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/jesus_and_the_99_percent_20111202/

Posted on Dec 2, 2011

By The Rev. Madison Shockley

Many have asked whether the Occupy Wall Street Movement has a coherent message. It really seems pretty clear to anyone who is listening at all. Because of the greed of the 1 percent, the other 99 percent of the population has been reduced to working for lower wages (or not working), to trying to survive (unemployment insurance, welfare and family handouts), to renting or homelessness, to suffering environmental degradation with sickness but without health insurance, and to paying higher prices for food and education while getting lower returns on savings and investments. The unchecked greed of these capitalist elite (symbolized by the banks) impoverishes the majority of people and undermines our democracy. This much was obvious in just the first five minutes of OWS.

We in the Christian community are also asking how the movement’s message coheres with our theological precepts. Should the church be for or against OWS? Should the church offer spiritual support? Should the church lend physical and material support to movement members? As I write from here at Union Theological Seminaryin New York City (my alma mater where I’m currently on sabbatical), I have observed and participated with OWS at Zuccotti Park and its Oct. 15 action in Times Square. Union Theological is the seminary of choice for progressive Christian clergy in the United States, so it is no surprise that it has spawned what are known as “Protest Chaplains”: seminary students who participate in OWS as spiritual support and presence. I have attended meetings and worship services conducted by local clergy Occupy Faith NYCwho felt drawn to be involved, even before all the questions listed above have been answered.

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HealthDay News - Being 'Born-Again' Linked to More Brain Atrophy: Study

WEDNESDAY, May 25 (HealthDay News) -- Older adults who say they've had a life-changing religious experience are more likely to have a greater decrease in size of the hippocampus, the part of the brain critical to learning and memory, new research finds.

According to the study, people who said they were a "born-again" Protestant or Catholic, or conversely, those who had no religious affiliation, had more hippocampal shrinkage (or "atrophy") compared to people who identified themselves as Protestants, but not born-again.

The study is published online in PLoS ONE.

As people age, a certain amount of brain atrophy is expected. Shrinkage of the hippocampus is also associated with depression, dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

In the study, researchers asked 268 people aged 58 to 84 about their religious affiliation, spiritual practices and life-changing religious experiences. Over the course of two to eight years, changes to the hippocampus were monitored using MRI scans.

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Rev. Howard Bess - Would Jesus Join the Occupy Protests?

Published on Saturday, November 26, 2011 by Consortiumnews.com

http://consortiumnews.com/2011/11/26/would-jesus-join-the-occupy-protests/

by Rev. Howard Bess

When the Martin Luther King Jr. monument was dedicated recently in Washington DC, I was reminded that the civil rights movement in America was led not by a politician fulfilling campaign promises, nor by a popular evangelist bent on saving souls, but by a highly trained theologian who put his religious teachings into practice with a demand for justice for those who had suffered at the hands of the rich and the powerful.

The Rev. King was a Baptist preacher who took his religion into the arena of racism, economics and social disparity. However, hatred caught up with him, and he was killed.

Now, nearly a half century later, there is another broad-based protest that is gaining momentum. The Occupy Wall Street protests echo some of King’s complaints about economic inequality and social injustice – and the message can no longer be ignored.

The significance of this latest public protest movement, erupting all over the country, may eventually rival the impact of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, yet when comparing the two movements, there is one glaring difference: priests, pastors and clergy of every stripe are rarely in the forefront of Occupy protests.

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UPI - Dalai Lama questions self-immolation

by Staff Writers
New Delhi (UPI) Nov 21, 2011

The Dalai Lama said he doesn't encourage self-immolation by monks and nuns protesting China's control over Tibet and questions the usefulness of the acts as a protest tool.

In an exclusive interview with the BBC, the 76-year-old Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader denied accusations by Chinese authorities that he is actively encouraging Tibetans to set themselves on fire in public places.

He said "the question is how much effect" the self-immolations have on the Chinese authorities and their more than 50 years of rule in Tibet.

"There is courage -- very strong courage" by the people who set themselves on fire. "But how much effect? Courage alone is no substitute. You must utilize your wisdom."

He said many Tibetans of all walks of life have died for a more free Tibet and the Chinese authorities response is to clamp down harder on the population.

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Michael Beckel - Religious Lobby on the Rise

Published on Monday, November 21, 2011 by OpenSecrets Blog

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/11/21-4

by Michael Beckel

The religious lobby is on the rise, according to a new study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

The number of religious organizations playing the influence game in Washington has swelled since 1970, according to the Pew study. In 1970, less than 40 groups were involved with lobbying or advocacy efforts. Now, that number has risen to more than 200.

The Pew report notes that lobbying for the faithful is often a multi-million-dollar prerogative.

Pew estimated that more than 200 groups currently spend a combined nearly $400 million a year on lobbying and advocacy work.

As OpenSecrets Blog has previously noted, only some of this is directly disclosed to Congress in the form of regular lobbying reports.

When Congress passed the Lobbying Disclosure Act in 1995, it provided for a few exceptions to disclosure rules, including lobbying communications made by a “church, its integrated auxiliary or a convention or association of churches that is exempt from filing a federal income tax return," as well as a "religious order."

The only instances in which a church must disclose its lobbying is if it spends a “substantial” amount of money on lobbying, if more than 20 percent of its lobbyist’s income is from direct lobbying on behalf of the church or if it hires an outside lobbying firm.

Then, the hired firm is required to disclose that it has lobbied on behalf of a religious institution.

The “substantial” test is a murky one, with little enforcement of it, and as is the 20 percent rule, unless attention is drawn to the organization.

Nevertheless, research by the Center for Responsive Politics shows that lobbying by religious organizations frequently exceeds $1 million a year.

In 2007, the highest year on record, 34 religious groups spent a combined $3.7 million on lobbying and hired 108 lobbyists, according to the Center's research.

During the first three quarters of this year, 23 religious groups spent a combined $1.7 million on lobbying and hired 68 lobbyists, according to the Center's research.

Adam DeRose - An Interfaith Occupation

The Occupy movement is bringing deep moral questions that many religions confront to the forefront of national conversation. How faith groups are joining in. 

by Adam DeRose

posted Nov 11, 2011

http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/an-interfaith-occupation 

The Rev. Faith Ballenger wears her collar at Zuccotti Park in New York City. Amidst the banging of drums, chants for change, and urban noise, she talks with protesters about their politics, their economics, and especially about their spirits.

Ballenger is the interim pastor at Transfiguration Lutheran Church in Harlem. She knew right away she’d be spending time at Occupy Wall Street, which is, she says, a tense place to be—there is a heavy police presence and the occupiers are often very tired.

“Clergy should be down there,” Ballenger says. “When people don’t go to church, you go to where the people are.”

Ballenger encourages religious communities to join the movement and spend time on Wall Street or in the financial districts in cities across the world. “Faith is an action word,” she says. “This is what faith in action looks like.”

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