“Lord, Save Us from Your Followers” takes a look into the contentious world of the Christian faith.
(NewsUSA) - Although nine out of ten Americans claim a belief in God, public expression of faith is more conflicting than ever.
Even as discussion of religion floods the media like never before, the rhetoric is divisive and hyper as the 2008 elections loom on the horizon. Fed up with the angry, strident language filling the airwaves that has come to represent the Christian faith; author, director, and follower Dan Merchant set out to explore the collision of faith and culture in America.
“To me, the division of America, this separateness, isn’t getting any of us anywhere,” writes Merchant. “And both sides are making the same mistake - they think the so-called ‘culture war’ is a winnable war. Some think, eventually, one side will win out over the other. I don’t see it that way. I’m concerned that calling it a Culture War presumes a few things, like if it’s a war, there is an enemy. This kind of adversarial posture serves to further entrench us in our own positions. The sad fact is our country is polarized because we like it. It’s much simpler to pretend the world is black and white. An ‘us vs. them’ attitude is simpler than critical self-reflection and allows us to blame the other.”
Merchant’s journey, which actually begins in famine-ravaged Ethiopia, opens a panoramic view of how God’s people are viewed by everyday Americans and the world-at-large. From the man-on-the-street blitz of “Bumpersticker Man” to the controversial and moving “Confession Booth” at Gay Pride Day, Lord, Save Us from Your Followers delves into all the hot-button issues with candor, humor and balance. With exclusive interviews with comedian/senatorial candidate Al Franken, former Sen. Rick Santorum, noted evangelical Tony Campolo, conservative radio host Michael Reagan and others, no stone is left unturned in this engaging, unpredictable and challenging look at the conflict over religion in America.
Dan Merchant is an award-winning television writer/producer, novelist and frequent church attendee. Merchant has been happily married for 20 years and is the father of two teenage boys.
For more information, visit www.lordsaveusthemovie.com.
The Rev. Sally Bingham is the godmother of the environmental movement in the religious community.Back in the 1990s, when religiously based environmentalists were still viewed as nature worshippers, she founded Episcopal Power & Light. Now called Interfaith Power & Light, the nonprofit organization has 27 chapters across the United States, including North Carolina. The mission of the organization is to mobilize a religious response to global warming through the promotion of renewable energy and conservation.
Bingham, the president of Interfaith Power & Light and the environmental minister at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, met with 20 religious leaders at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Raleigh last week. She said religious communities have made remarkable strides in addressing the intersection of faith and global climate change, and she encouraged them not to give up.
“You clergy need to talk about it,” she said. “I think it should be in every single sermon.”
We caught up with her on the occasion of Earth Day on Tuesday to ask her about the progress religious people have made on the issue.
Q: How are churches becoming more active in environmental issues?
A: Environmental issues were once political issues. They didn’t belong in the church. Now it’s integral to mainstream religions in ways unimaginable five years ago. … We’re seeing changes in the liturgy to reflect care for creation. That’s huge because in the Episcopal Church there’s a deep tradition that resists change.
I am seeing clergy take this responsibility seriously enough to actually say that care for creation belongs with love, justice and peace. You hear the term “JPIC,” or justice, peace and integrity of creation. It’s putting care for creation on parallel with love, justice and peace … We have a green mosque in Washington, D.C. We have hundreds of Protestant churches with solar panels on the roof. We have two large cathedrals with geothermal systems — in Boston and in Cleveland, Ohio. The Catholic Cathedral in Los Angeles in solar.
Q: How has Interfaith Power & Light changed?
A: We now have an office in San Francisco and a staff of seven. We coordinate this national campaign. That means we help the state programs get started … One of the important things we do is make sure the Interfaith Power & Light campaign doesn’t get sidetracked. We don’t want to be viewed as the Sierra Club at prayer. We’re not political. We’re not Republicans or Democrats. Our message is rooted in theology. It’s different from an environmental organization. We want to be seen as conservative people coming from a theological perspective. We don’t love trees more than people.
Q: What is the spiritual message you offer?
A: I see it as part of the commandment to love God and love your neighbor. If you love your neighbor, you don’t pollute your neighbor’s air. We are called to serve one another. If you see that your behavior is harming your neighbor and your neighborhood, other species, flora and fauna, or the next generation, it’s a direct disobedience to the commandment. Jesus said what you do to the least of these you do to me. If vulnerable and poor communities are harmed by our behavior, we’re insulting God.
Read More:News & Observer
A mathematician applies reasoning to arguments for a higher being’s existence
Who isn’t an atheist (or agnostic) these days? The Celebrity Atheist Web site (celebatheists.com) lists hundreds of movie stars (Angelina Jolie and Woody Allen, for example), business tycoons (Bill Gates and Warren Buffett) and scientists (Steven Pinker and Steven Weinberg) who don’t believe in God. Books by nonbelievers abound. The biologist Richard Dawkins came out with “The God Delusion” a little over a year ago, and Christopher Hitchens jumped on the bandwagon recently with “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.” These writers not only don’t believe in God, they are downright hostile toward God.
The latest book debunking God has a lighter tone. John Allen Paulos aims to prove — with logic, dry wit and a mild manner — that God does not exist. Despite his less rancorous approach, Paulos is dead set against the idea of God. “Why postulate a completely nonexplanatory, extra perplexity to help explain the already sufficiently perplexing and beautiful world?” he asks.
Paulos, a mathematician at Temple University, is a very good writer, who spices his clear prose with touches of humor. In this book, he lines up 12 arguments for God. Then, using well-honed mathematical reasoning, he shoots them down. A few of the arguments for God’s existence are arcane, making the arguments to disprove them difficult to follow.
One ontological argument, for instance, comes from Descartes’ idea that God is a perfect being. Since he (Descartes) is not perfect, then the idea of perfection must come from something outside him — an external perfect being: God. Paulos points out that the only way such a proposition can be proved is for its negation to lead to a contradiction. But no contradiction of Descartes’ statement follows from God’s not existing. Maybe not, but both argument and counter argument seem slippery and unconvincing.
A stronger argument for God is called “the argument from presupposition.” Paulos outlines it as follows:
“(1) In presenting its divine narrative, a holy book presupposes God exists. (2) People read and come to accept the narrative. (3) The narrative must be true. (4) Therefore God exists.”
This argument is so straightforward that it has been summarized on bumper stickers: “God said it, I believe it, and that settle’s it.” The sentence includes, Paulos notes, a “telling apostrophe.” Paulos easily exposes the flaw in this argument. “Claiming that a holy book’s claims are undeniable because the book itself claims them to be is convincing only to the convinced.”
And there are plenty of the convinced around — from pious politicians to celebrated scientists. Francis Collins, the former head of the Human Genome Project, is one prominent scientist who has publicly proclaimed his belief in God. In “The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief,” Collins revealed the source of his deeply religious views. They stem, he wrote, from the concept of a “Moral Law,” a major component of which is altruistic behavior. Collins believes that the Moral Law is contrary to all natural instincts and must come from God.
Paulos calls these views “the universality argument.” What’s considered moral or immoral, he writes, is strikingly similar across cultures. Unprovoked murder, for example, is condemned by all societies. Many believers, like Collins, conclude that these similarities in behavioral codes must come from a single source — God. Therefore, God exists. This is a serious effort to establish the existence of God. It was put forth first by C.S. Lewis, the respected British writer and scholar, in his book “Mere Christianity.”
Read More:News & Observer
ARA) – While the history of the Holocaust, Nazi brutality and World War II are taught in classrooms around the world, some people might feel the lessons lack relevancy for modern, technological times. Yet modern communications technology and today’s tyrants make it more important than ever for people to know how to recognize the kind of lethal propaganda employed in those dark, distant days, says Lou Bolchazy.
President of Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, a producer of history books and other literary works, as a child Bolchazy survived the Nazi occupation of his native Slovakia.
“With modern communications technology, especially the Internet, it’s easier than ever to disseminate propaganda,” Bolchazy says. “Today’s young people will play a bigger part in the global community than their parents could ever have dreamed. It’s vitally important that they know how to recognize potentially harmful propaganda when they see it.”
Bolchazy has taken his message to classrooms, speaking with young people about his experiences in occupied Slovakia. Although his family was not Jewish, they suffered under Nazi rule, with his father incarcerated for two years in a Nazi slave labor camp. The family lost their home, belongings and livelihood during World War II, as Nazis, Russians and native partisans battled for control of the country.
His experiences compelled him to tackle something many others may have shied away from – bringing the definitive historical text on Hitler into modern times. “Hitler was like a virus that was responsible for 70 million deaths,” he says. “I wanted to put this virus under a microscope to see what made him tick, so that I could recognize the likes of him in our midst today.”
Bolchazy’s publishing company, Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers, commissioned the English translation of historian Max Domarus’ four-volume German edition of “Hitler’s Speeches and Proclamations 1932-1945: The Chronicle of a Dictatorship.” The work was translated into English and then made available in a digital version. “The Essential Hitler” is the abridged English translation of Domarus’ work, while “The Complete Hitler” includes both the English translation and original German version in a single, digital, searchable e-book. “The Complete Hitler” is available through Amazon.com or www.bolchazy.com. Barnes & Noble and Borders both carry “The Essential Hitler.” A premiere digital edition, available only at MyiLibrary, NetLibrary, and Questia, allows users to cut and paste information and add their own notes.
“One of Hitler’s greatest weapons was his ability to use propaganda to sway masses of otherwise reasonable people to his way of thinking,” Bolchazy points out. “We see the same power in some of our modern villains – from Osama bin Laden to Ceausescu. The difference between then and now is that now evil messages can literally travel around the world in a matter of minutes, if not seconds.”
Bolchazy encourages students to learn all they can about how propaganda works – and kills. “They should read everything they can on this topic, listen to the living histories of Holocaust survivors, visit the Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C. and commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27,” he says.
“German statesman Konrad Adenauer once said ‘History is the sum total of things that could have been avoided,’ ” Bolchazy says. “The point of any lesson on the Holocaust or the Nazis should be to teach young people the skills needed to avoid repeating the great horrors and errors of history.”
Courtesy of ARAcontent
EDITOR’S NOTE:
Media seeking review copies of “The Essential Hitler” or “The Complete Hitler” should contact Bolchazy-Carducci publishers at (847) 526-4344 or info@bolchazy.com. For current reviews of the Hitler Suite, visit www.bolchazy.com
FORT WORTH, texas - Nearly 40 years ago, Beth-El Congregation obtained a Torah — a parchment scroll containing the first five books of the Bible — that survived the Holocaust, although most of the Czech Jews who treasured it did not.Beth-El, in Fort Worth, Texas, recently installed an exhibit paying tribute to the scroll’s history.
The Torah, from a small farming community called Uhrineves in Czechoslovakia, is one of 1,564 such scrolls seized by Nazis as they deported Czech Jews to concentration camps and death camps.
Rabbi Ralph Mecklenburger of Beth-El Congregation read from Beth-El’s Holocaust Torah on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, Sept. 22.
“We use it from time to time — that’s the whole idea,” Mecklenburger said. “This Torah is not to be a museum piece, but to be used by living Jews.”
The Torah itself is kept safe in the holy ark, which also holds the synagogue’s four other Torahs. The exhibit includes a decorative and protective needlepoint mantle made by a congregant and placed on a representation of the scroll.
The exhibit also includes Jewish belongings smuggled out of Czechoslovakia or entrusted to neighbors and retrieved after World War II.
Central to the exhibit is a framed history of the fate of the Uhrineves Jews.
Unexpected questions
Putting together the tribute was the idea of Hollace Weiner, archivist at Beth-El Congregation, who visited Uhrineves with her husband, Bruce Weiner, five years ago. In May, Hollace Weiner visited the Czech Memorial Scrolls Centre in London.
There, staffers asked her whether Beth-El had framed the certificate that came with the Holocaust Torah that the center entrusted to the congregation in 1971. They asked whether the congregation knew the history of the Jews of Uhrineves.
Weiner had to say no.
“They gently prodded me to figuratively take the Torah out of the closet — or the ark — and make its history and its people come back to life,” she said.
The Nazis closed the Uhrineves synagogue in 1939. On the first day of Rosh Hashanah in 1942, Sept. 12, most of the 392 Jews living in and near Uhrineves were deported to the Terezin concentration camp, according to an account from the Czech Memorial Scrolls Trust.
During the following months, most were sent to gas chambers at Auschwitz, Treblinka and other death camps. Only 14 Jews from Uhrineves survived.
Hitler planned to create a “museum of an extinct race,” according to historical accounts. The Torahs were stored at an abandoned synagogue near Prague and cataloged by employees at the Jewish Museum in Prague who, ironically, all died in the gas chambers, Weiner said.
After the war, the Torahs were mostly forgotten. For more than 20 years, they were exposed to mold, insects and humidity. Some had been partly burned when synagogues were torched.
But in 1963, a British art dealer visiting Prague learned about the scrolls. He found a benefactor who paid $30,000 and brought the scrolls to London.
Today, 1,424 of the Torahs are on permanent loan to synagogues, museums, universities and Jewish retirement centers. The remaining 140 scrolls are in such poor condition that they cannot be restored, Weiner said
Read On:News & Observer
Ruth Messinger, the former Manhattan borough president and a one-time challenger to Rudolph Giuliani for New York City mayor, now leads the American Jewish World Service. The nonprofit organization is the premier Jewish relief and development fund, active in providing health care, literacy, clean water and nutrition programs in 36 developing countries.Messinger will speak Saturday at Durham’s Judea Reform Congregation on “Jews as Global Citizens.” On the eve of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, which falls on Wednesday, Messinger is challenging Jews to increase their commitment to solving world crises. We caught up with Messinger before her trip.
Q. Explain what you mean by Jews as global citizens.
A. Jews are commanded to respond to the needs of the widow, the stranger, the orphan. Jews are told that the greatest sin in the world is poverty. Jews are told we have an obligation to pursue justice. I assume all members are paying attention to the needs of their own Jewish community, Jews around the world, to various problems in Israel and the Middle East. But we believe there is also room, space, interest for young Jews to be part of a service project that goes to dig a well or build a library in rural communities in Africa.
We believe the Jewish community can be mobilized to try to stop a genocide now in its fifth year. We believe the more Jews know about the ways they can be active in alleviating poverty, oppression, hunger, disease around the world, the more Jewish activism there will be in those areas. It’s global awareness and global participation.
Q. Many faith-based international relief organizations are driven by a desire to see people converted to their faith. But that’s not the goal of the American Jewish World Service, right?
A. We derive our mandate from our understanding of the Jewish obligation to heal the world. We’re certainly not about proselytizing. We do discover in our work there are all kinds of opportunities to let people know that Jews are committed to social justice.
Q. You’ve been very outspoken about calling for an end to the genocide in Darfur. You just came back from Chad and Rwanda. What did you see there?
A. In Chad, I spent four days meeting with Darfur refugees who are living in refugee camps in Chad, and with Chadian displaced persons who are also victims of the [Sudanese] janjaweed militia and are living in camps for displaced persons.
Anyone in one of these camps is living in desperately difficult circumstances, trying very hard to meet the needs of their families, but coping with serious post-traumatic stress, depression, loss of family members, women who have experienced not only rape, but gang rape.
They are living in conditions that for them are drastically different from what they had before — dependent on food distribution instead of being able to farm for themselves.
These are massive life dislocations, and people’s single greatest plea is “Help me get back home.”
Q. That’s unlikely, isn’t it?
A. No. That’s exactly the agenda we’re working on. If the United Nations peacekeeping force is properly outfitted, resourced and trained, and is allowed by Sudan to have free access to Darfur, then the world powers believe we can put an end to the violence and begin the very long process of where and how people can return to their homes.
Q. What can American Jews in Durham do about this?
A. There are opportunities for individuals and institutions to divest funds from oil companies fueling passage of Chinese money to Sudan, opportunities to shine a spotlight of shame On China as not deserving to host the Olympics if she continues to be the enabler of this genocide.
Read More: News & Observer
In a go-go world, a young Jewish family finds joy in setting aside a day for rest and worship
RALEIGH - Friday afternoons before sundown, the McGhees zipper their laptops into their cases. They click off the TV and program their phones for voice mail. As they take their seats around the festive dining room table, Hunter and Stacey and their two daughters, Sydney and Jenna, take a big breath. And exhale.
It’s Shabbat, or the Sabbath, a daylong respite that is one of the highest commandments of the Jewish faith. The McGhees are on a spiritual journey to plumb its depths, and they are learning to reap its blessings.
Hunter and Stacey are among 10 people at Raleigh’s Congregation Shaarei Israel taking a class intended to pump up their Sabbath observance. So far, they’ve learned how to bake challah bread, cook traditional foods and arrange their workweek so they won’t be interrupted on their day of rest.
Like many couples with two jobs and two children, the McGhees have found that the Hebrew Bible’s oldest mandate — to rest — is also one of the most relevant to today’s stressed-out, sleep-deprived families.
“Our weekends were always so dramatically short,” said Hunter McGhee, 31, a Raleigh software consultant. “Ever since we’ve been doing this, the weekends feel longer and I feel refreshed.”
After Friday night’s leisurely meal, the McGhees get up Saturday morning and attend services at synagogue. Back at home, they eat lunch, take a nap and spend the rest of the afternoon at home, playing with their girls, ages 1 and 3.
They don’t run errands. They don’t go shopping. They don’t ferry the girls to dance classes.
It sounds easy, but it takes a lot of preparation, especially since the McGhees are taking their cues from the Orthodox Jewish tradition. Jews observe the Sabbath to varying degrees, but the Orthodox are the strictest. Hewing to Jewish law, Orthodox Jews don’t cook or drive or even switch on lights on the Sabbath. To make it work, discipline is key.
“We discussed in class that Shabbat preparations start on Sunday,” said Sarah Rosner, one of the teachers at Congregation Shaarei Israel. Rosner, an Orthodox Jew, often begins the week by making a list of groceries she’ll need. Tuesday, she might bake the bread and freeze it. Friday morning she’ll cook the meats and vegetables.
Working toward a goal
For the McGhees, Shabbat is a work in progress. Since their marriage in 2000, the couple have been inching their way toward a deeper observance of Judaism. Stacey, who was born Jewish, met Hunter, a Methodist, while both were students at UNC-Chapel Hill. Though she envisioned she would marry a Jew, Stacey said, “You can’t choose who you fall in love with.”
Even before they married, the couple decided they didn’t want two religions in their home. They chose Judaism. For four years, the McGhees attended Temple Beth Or in Raleigh, a Reform congregation that allows members to choose their degree of observance. But because Stacey’s parents belong to Beth Meyer, Raleigh’s Conservative Jewish congregation made more sense.
As Hunter began learning more about Judaism, the couple went deeper into Jewish tradition. Then the children came along. The girls love clinking their glasses of grape juice at the dining room table Friday night and getting dressed in their best clothes for synagogue on Saturday morning. They also appreciate the undivided attention they get from their parents Saturday afternoon.
Last month, Hunter formally converted. At the same time, he and Stacey made the first step toward keeping a kosher home. They use two sets of dishes now, one for meals with meat and one for meals with milk.
“It seems to me that the more I learn the more I enjoy the structure,” he said. “It’s a way of being mindful of God, and that’s very fulfilling for me.”
The advice they’ve gotten from rabbis and teachers is to go slow.
“Don’t try to do it all at once,” said Judy Stackhouse, one of the Shaarei Israel teachers. “There’s always more to learn.”
Read More: News & Observer
