So, a pastor, a rabbi, and an imam walk into a bar and…

and they meet Harvey the Rabbit…
who tells them that believing in some mythical being who lives somewhere in space is kind of silly.

The imam said (if I can believe my ears) it is in the Koran that Allah COULD have made mankind as one, but made us different “so that we could get to know one another”? Something like that I heard. Whereabouts is that? How do Muslims enact that? How do Sufis?

Second question: do the traveling trio find that differences in race (tensions, I mean) transcend differences between religion? Or vice versa?

I think my question is this: of course theologians from different faiths can find common ground in their humanity. Especially if they are from liberal and progressive wings of their faiths. The point, obviously, is the way that religion is mobilized by political leaders seeking to use it instrumentally to further political goals. How, then, do the three guests expect to translate their dialogue into political efficacy?

Thank you!

My impression (based on this and that) is that Hinduism/Buddhism has institutions that are “non-white,” not as hierarchical, not as patriarchal. Not as exclusive, level for level, or us for them.
How a church/synagogue/Muslim group can be what UCC calls “open and affirming” in the context of otherness without losing its selfness — that is how you began the show.
I’m trying to get a grip on what is a “white institution,” in order to get more latte.
The fundamentalist discussion with this liberal group will be interesting to hear. I get total turnoffs. “Let me know your religious bent. Have you ever allowed any of your friends to have abortions? Not excluded them if you find out so? Well, I won’t do business with you.” End of discussion, end of business opportunity.

Where can I buy the book that they wrote? I would really like to read it and I think it sounds very interesting.

Soory guys, but religions do make claims of absolute truth that are exclusive from one another. No matter how much these guys parse the parts of their different scriptures they like and try to argue away the parts they don’t, it’s clear to an outsider that the problem is that people are still trying to live their lives based on these strange historical documents.

Dear Jennifer,
Thank you for your interest in “Getting to the Heart of Interfaith: The Eye-Opening, Hope-Filled Friendship of a Pastor, a Rabbi and a Sheikh”
You can purchase the book on our website http://www.skylightpaths.commm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=SP&Product_Code=978-1-59473-263-8&Category_Code=

or you can call us at 802-457-4000

Happy Holidays!

Unfortunately, the link to the website that I posted does not seem to be working. You can visit our website at http://www.skylightpaths.com and find the book in the Interfaith Resources category on the Left Hand side of the screen.

The 500 year history of colonialism weighs heavily on the political and social interactions of today. Racism and ethnocentricity were employed to justify the rape of the worlds people. Racism and ethnocentricity remain powerful influences in how people of the west view the world. I applaud the efforts of these three men but their voices are too few and too small against the the walls of hate.

I really appreciate these men’s commitment to non-violence but was frustrated at how, while they cling to the rhetoric of inclusivity, in the end their claims are highly exclusive. Everything these men say is predicated upon a central doctrine: That all religions serve the same God and that there are many ways to this God. But the majority of the world and the majority of people in history cannot hold to this doctrine. In fact, as a Christian, the only way to hold to this would be to explain away large portions of scripture and essentially say they are made up by latter generations and not in fact the words of Jesus or the apostles, which in reality I find very little evidence for.

They seem very allergic to defending institutions but liberalism is also an institution and they are whole-heartedly working to insure its survival so in the end we are again just left with incommensurable truth-claims (liberalism vs. orthodoxy). The way forward seems not to be to eradicate absolute truth claims (which is impossible) but to work toward non-violence. Is it possible that a Christian and a Muslim might actually believe in hell and the “otherness” of each other and then respect each other and not harm one another? I think it is. But these men’s means to that is not it and in fact is a very fundamentalist liberalism posing as open-minded acceptance of all. I appreciate their intentions but they are far too culturally myopic (just like the rest of us).

I caught the second half of this piece, and am looking forward to listening to the full show once the audio is posted. Thanks for airing this conversation with these three remarkable figures! One of the reasons I’m a rabbinic student within ALEPH, the transdenominational movement for Jewish Renewal, is that I’m drawn to what the founder of my seminary calls “deep ecumenism” — which is very much what I think these three men are doing. Kol hakavod to them, and thanks to Tom Ashbrook for helping their voices to be heard.

As a member of the Baha’i Faith, I applaud the Interfaith Amigos. A few people working with one accord CAN make a difference. From our sacred verses: “So powerful is the light of unity that it can illuminate the whole earth.” I would recommend that if they have not already done so, the Amigos might peruse the open letter to the world’s religious leaders written by the international governing body of the Baha’is which can be found here: http://info.bahai.org/pdf/letter_april2002_english.html.

Baha’u'llah, the Founder of the Baha’i religion, teaches that there is one God, one human family and the world’s religions are essentially one: “This is the changeless faith of God, eternal in the past, eternal in the future.” Those unfamiliar with the Baha’i Faith may visit http://www.bahai.us.

I’m looking forward to hearing the full program on archive, but meanwhile, the problem is that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are called Abrahamic religions because they are all born out of the same origin story: A father is perfectly willing to kill his son because he thinks that’s what God wants him to do, and he only stops when he hears a voice in his head telling him to stop and go kill something else.

Three major world religions are all premised on the idea that whether or not we should kill somebody is up to a voice in our head. No amount of ecumenical whitewashing can clean away the bloodshed that has resulted (and continues to result) from that basic premise.

I’m a rabbinic student within ALEPH, the transdenominational movement for Jewish Renewal, is that I’m drawn to what the founder of my seminary calls “deep ecumenism” — which is very much what I think these three men are doing.

The problem with “deep ecumenism”, which is also popular among Unitarians and liberal protestantism of that ilk, and is not dissimilar to many concepts in Baha’i is this:

All the texts of the major Abrahamic religions have very clear statements about their beliefs and teachings. You cannot square that with ecumenism with watering-down the beliefs of those religions. That is, you can’t do it without reinterpreting those texts as something more malleable and pliable than the way they’re worded.

For example, there are 613 mitzvot. You can take the position that these are just metaphors or guidelines, or just archeological artifacts, but it’s not obvious that this doesn’t result in you becoming a rabbi of some new religion, say Judaism-Lite. Similarly, a moderm ecumenically-minded Christian can say that the virgin-birth story, or the resurrection story is just metaphor; it didn’t really happen literally, and that Jesus himself was just radical Jewish preacher who became too troublesome for the Romans. But that view also conflicts with almost 2 millenia of Christian teaching, so is it really Christianity?

How far can you go with this theological “grandfather’s axe”? When you’re replaced both the head and the handle is it the same axe?

This is the big problem with ecumenism – as someone else here pointed out – religion trades in absolutes. Unlike science, it has no concept of falsifiability. (Ask your professors why this is – see if they even know what “falsifiability” means) So it has no way to resolve disputes. This means the only way to live with those differences so their believers don’t end up in dispute, is to blunt them or water them down, in which case it’s not obvious that what’s left is a real religion and not just an academic philosophy.

I checked out ALEPH and Rachel’s blog too. I’m thinking in this kind of education there are many ways to lock horns intellectually and spiritually in “going into” a ministry in any of the Abrahamic traditions nowadays. Many unavoidable ways, I should say.
Back in these comments someone had said that there will never be an end to the setting forth of absolutes — nonscientific absolutes was the suggestion. And Peter says it too, “religion trades in absolutes.”

The three amigos do fine explaining that religions like egos have to survive and so they define boundaries and try to assert their superiority. It is a fact that we might wear when we choose (deeply offending whoever the God in question is), and then take off when we choose, among the faithful, who use other lenses.

Some would say — I’m thinking of I think it was Obama who pointed this out in the last few months, for some reason — that people have a hard time letting go of tribalism. Probably that was in the Nobel speech. To be a group/tribe was/is to share a religion, to some extent — or was in the olden days when religion and government were one and the same, when gods governed.
I think the absolutes have to come off like a shawl, the way a child’s belief in Santa Claus comes off, leaving an appreciation for the role that figure played in his life and vestiges of it in the spirit of giving and so forth. The absolutes are like the cloth, but there is an transorganic entity underneath, for which we have no real name, and which to my mind doesn’t really need human obeisance, believe it or not.
But within any church, no matter how “liberal,” the exact nature of the embrace of the tradition will vary person to person, according to upbringing and social environment. So a church — or probably a synagogue or mosque — can hardly have as useful a dialogue as the three amigos would like. To do so would be to make shreds of certain assumptions of solidarity.

In a church that doesn’t avoid this but addresses the limits of absolutism, in a world of conflicting “absolutes,” those who can’t avoid the dialogue are pretty good candidates for monotheism. And I wouldn’t want to be a pastor in a church that was trying to be on the cutting edge of this.

Or rather, it could be that I am, and my position is that I don’t need to get into the fray. A football scrimmage comes to mind. Or ice hockey pile-up. Or a train wreck. And in the end, everybody is still the human being they were to begin with, though apparently the validity of their “humanity” was the issue all along.

These three men seemed very nice and sincere. The discussion was a bit insipid, and it passed over areas of controversy very quickly. The nature of the premise of their alliance to bring people together is still exclusionary and still puts spirituality in such a place that it can only be in focus when viewed through the lens of Abrahamic religions. The premise presumes that concepts of God can only be viewed one way. It also presumes that only people of a few organized religions will want a place at the table, so to speak.

These guys would work great for a Christian, Jew, or Muslim who thinks his/her religion is the one true, separate and distinct religion with no connection to the others; but, as the amigos pointed out, those are the folks who aren’t really interested in their message.

Anyway, Happy Holidays to all here who work very hard in producing On Point, day in and day out, and to all who regularly visit and write stimulating comments that spur conversations, here, even if at times they prompt arguments and snipes! Oh, and a very Merry Christmas to Louise, not matter how much Mrs. Cratchit may protest!

Historically speaking there have been two relatively successful methods of allowing people of disparate religions to peacefully coexist.

In medieval times it was common for cities, especially around the Mediterranean, to be divided into distinct sections for different groups – hence a “Jewish Quarter” an “Arab Quarter” a “Greek Quarter” and so forth. Within these communities people could follow their own customs and practices, had their own shops and schools, and friction with other groups was minimized because there was little daily need to interact with people of other backgrouds. Often these communities had a degree of autonomy sometimes even with their own courts to address disputes within the community.

Stories we’ve heard about Muslims and Jews coexisting peacefully back then were usually based on this arrangement. The system worked very well as long as it was respected by whomever had the most power, but not otherwise, nor if there was an invasion by someone who didn’t respect the system. Hence Maimomedes’ expulsion from Cordoba after it was conquered by Berber Muslims from North Africa in 1138, even though Muslims and Jews in Cordoba had gotten along fine.

The other pretty successful model is the one we use in the US and western Europe where religious views are interpreted very broadly and liberally. For example, Christians and Jews keep different sabbaths but this seldom leads to conflict because practically nobody is very strict about sabbath anyway. Likewise intermarriage is not a big deal. My wife’s family is Jewish and mine is Lutheran and and nobody gave it a second glance. Few people seem to follow dietary laws so little friction develops there, etc.

This approach of not following religious customs too literally or strictly works fine until someone comes along who doesn’t agree with watering down the rules. Hence here in the USA we have Christian fundamentalists trying to impose strict rules about everything from gay marriage to evolution to the right of women to take their tops off at the beach. Likewise in Europe disputes have developed in France because Muslims in some cities have tried to force authorities to divide public swimming pools into separate men’s and women’s sections.

“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge.”
Stephen Hawking

Religions traffic in the illusion of absolute knowledge each of whom make mutually exclusive and contradictory truth claims. The interfaith amigos are rearranging ecumenical deck chairs on their good ship religion which, has been fatally struck by an iceberg named science, philosophy and common sense. May it sink soon and relieve the world of its obscurantism.

I don’t think Hawking confused knowledge with belief. I believe that the universe is expanding, but Hawking might “know” the answer to that. Meanwhile, I’m afraid what I believe is what I believe. I believe I won’t be catching flu this season. And I hope we all make it through the cold winter, especially since people have a tendency to appear and disappear in these comments as inexplicably as a pack of cats. I believe it will be all right.
Belief is not likely to go away. We depend on it as long as the human brain cannot know and control all things. And “belief” by definition is less than absolute. Belief does not refer to knowledge. Religion should catch up with that little detail. Belief might have a greater attachment to truth, however (than knowledge has), by its enlistment of the imagination, the intuition. Scientists probably know that too.

For Ellen Dibble: Here is the Qur’anic scripture you ask about:
“We have created you from a male and female and made you into nations and tribes that you might get to know one another.”
—Qur’an 49:13

To Ellen Dibble:
(15) O mankind! We have created you from a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that you may know one another. Verily, the most honourable of you with Allah is that (believer) who has At-Taqwa [i.e. he is one of the Muttaqun (the pious. See V.2:2)]. Verily, Allah is All-Knowing, All-Aware.
( سورة الحجرات , Al-Hujraat, Chapter #49, Verse #13)

-all muslim have to go by the Quran and its commandment or they would’t be a muslim

-this is not the issue, the issue is american presence in muslim countries…most muslim see Americans as invaders.

The interfaith amigos are rearranging ecumenical deck chairs on their good ship religion which, has been fatally struck by an iceberg named science, philosophy and common sense.

Every human culture has had religion and a whole collection of mystical beliefs to go with it. I see no sign of this changing even in advanced western societies.

To the contrary, knowledge of science seems to be declining. I’m in my mid-50’s and I find it almost impossible to have a conversation involving even basic cell biology or astronomy with many recent college graduates. I’m a member of AAAS and every week when my copy of Science arrives I have to work very hard to follow recent developments in, say, gene expression or signalling, or the physics of graphene, to take some areas with recent exciting developments because these developments are so specialized and esoteric.

So instead of providing an alternative to religion, science is becoming so arcane, technical and advanced, and US science education is declining so much, that it won’t be an alternative at all – it will seem just as mystical and incomprehensible as religion to the average American.

As Arthur C Clarke said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”.

One of the three leaders in his final thought did mention of “ONENESS” being the central theme of all
faiths. The ancient scripture indeed says- “TRUTH IS ONE, SAGES CALL IT BY VARIOUS NAMES”. Water always quenches thirst of people who call it by various names: water-aquoa-paani-jal etc. Despite this simple truth of ‘oneness’ written in scriptures of various faiths the world is not free from bigotry, hatred & intolerance. Words like HEATHEN, KAFER are ascribed to others by those who are suffering from EGOTISM. EGO clouds the mind making it unable to realize the TRUTH.

So I guess Karl Marx was right, people really do get doped up on religion.

Water always quenches thirst of people who call it by various names: water-aquoa-paani-jal etc

Water quenches the thirst of lions and zebras, alike. But that doesn’t mean that lions don’t eat zebras. Water quenches the thirst of Bernie Madoff, Sarah Palin, and plenty of ordinary Americans who are just struggling to get by in this economy. But that doesn’t mean that Madoff is not a criminal and Palin is not a blithering idiot with lipstick. Every cell in your body starts off from “one” and all from the same DNA. But a transcription error here or there, or the wrong retrovirus in the wrong part of the sequence and suddenly a few cells decide to “go rogue” and moonlight as tumors.

It’s not self-evident how a philosophy of “one” informs any of those circumstances.

Rather than mystical visions of “one” we will make a lot more progress understanding and coming to grips with ourselves by studying our genetics, neurophysiology, hormones, social and sexual behavior, and evolution. Male chimps (our closest living primate relatives) get together in groups to pillage, kill, and rape just like homo sapien males do. And despite some idealistic visions of pre-agrarian human harmony, many hunter-gatherers had homicide rates that would make our most violent modern societies look tranquil by comparison.

There’s an excellent book by Malcom Potts, a population biologist at UC Berkely, called Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World that just received an excellent review in the October 9 issue of Science. Anyone seeking enlightenment will probably find more there than sitting in an ashram chanting “om’.

One of my news aggregators greeted me this Christmas morning with a story that Jesus was rich – that he and his parents traveled about the Holy Land in the 0th century equivalent of a Cadillac and he had his own, personal treasurer.

And according to the news story, this is not some wacko-fringe part of the Christian movement but, in fact a very mainstream American Christian theology known as “prosperity gospel”. According to story, prosperity gospel lies at the heart of many of the big “megachurches” dotting the red states these days.

If so this would explain why conservatives oppose using tax money to help pay for health insurance for the poor, or why all their proposals rely on tax-deductibility because they think that everybody is either in a high tax bracket, or if not it’s because they aren’t praying to the right god.

This goes to show once again how malleable, flexible, and oh-so-convenient religious scripture is – you can interpret it in any way that suits your agenda.

Sorry, left out the link . . .

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/wayoflife/12/25/RichJesus/index.html

The original source is CNN so you should take the story with a HUGE grain of salt, but it’s an interesting read.

Thank you, Faren, for the quote. I see it’s featured on the Three Amigos’ website. And thanks Talukder for the elucidation.
Peter, maybe OnPoint can get Malcolm Potts or someone like that to discuss evolution and warfare. The magazine Science, if I am not mistaken, is so costly that our local library has to get issues on Interlibrary Loan. Maybe the web has it.
I think the homicide rates among ancient peoples would be similar to that of homicide rates among gangs, groups that are outside the law and have to do their own policing. There being no time for even a kangaroo court, and no one present to mediate, one takes the law into “one’s own hands.”
But I fear that in the face of disintegrating environments and disappearing resources, humans will become less human. The scrappiest, the bullies, will have a reproductive edge. Those with the physique to withstand a lot of toxicity, depending on which continent you inhabit. So?
I have heard on PBS something about Jesus having been rich, and I have thought he was to some extent protected by being in the Roman empire, where there was governance and enforcement, as well as trade, even surfeit. That was my impression. I’ll check the link. I think PBS said that the craft of carpentry was the lowest of the low, so either that was foisted on the gospel as time went by, or… If he had rich sponsors (my impression), he was a kind of trust-fund kid, and once people glom on, they want to know their investment of money or attachment is well done. So that would skew what gets told.
I’m listening to Toni Morrison telling that Knowledge was the original sin in Eden, where God lost control of Creation when it reached out from the Cloud of Ignorance and struck out. Knowledge and Sexual Knowledge, sin one and sin two. Not that we live in Eden, or even pretend to.
But if religion deals in the Great Unknown, it should be a bit more humble about its absolutes. I thought it was, at least in my experience of it. But I wouldn’t want to be a preacher, for sure.

As for One-ness and religion, what do you Muslims think American invasion is anyway, except forced atonement — at-one-ment? Oh, I’m not supposed to be sarcastic on the web. Man to woman: You must obey me. Whack, whop. There. Now we are one.
America to Afghanistan: You must be our partner: Whack, whop. There. Now we are one.
Wahabi Islam to America: You are not at-one with us. Take that. Take that.
It is a little confusing. A lot confusing.

The “rich Jesus” link has the Roman world in Palestine with 90 percent poor, the 10 percent very rich. (Remind you of anything?) The donkey being the Cadillac of its day. You were lucky not to have eaten your donkey.
The PBS series on the history of Christianity (which I took in half asleep, some of it, last week) shows Christianity getting a kick in the seat of the pants at the time when the Jews had revolted and were expelled or killed. The fall of Masada, I think, with myths as to whether all the Jews on the high plateau committed suicide, and why did the Romans not starve them to death, versus building the most labor-intensive route to attack them, a piece of showmanship.
At the time, about 30 or 40 years after the crucifixion, Christianity had to separate itself from Judaism, and the gospels were written against this historical reality. We can’t survive as part of Judaism. How do we define ourselves? Let’s tell the story like this.
As a Christian, does this shake me up? (A) I could have heard it wrong. (B) there are countless parts of the Bible that I have always understood with several levels of truthiness, from the chariot of fire, the ladder to heaven, the turning into a pillar of salt. As a child, these stories shaped my understanding of the world, history and reality. As an adult, I don’t let them shape a misunderstanding of the world.
Toni Morrison was talking about imagination in religion, and the role it plays. The importance of stained glass — I’d call that a window into a world of another color, the sense of transformation, of uplift, that religion allows. The importance of music (Bach’s B minor mass, Verdi’s requiem, Beethoven’s mass, Mozart’s mass…).
I would really like a program on Islamic music. I know nothing, nada, except the call to prayer.

There was a very good article in the Atlantic monthly a while back on the American Christian theology known as “prosperity gospel” which is an evangelical ideology.

The theme of it was how this kind of “prosperity gospel” has contributed to the housing downturn in a big way.
A large percentage of people in areas that have been hardest hit with the housing bubble were evangelical’s who believed in this nonsense. That Jesus and God wanted them to have a large house, even though they only made 40 to 50k a year.

My own problem with all of this steams from the the little problem of Jesus not being into money at all.
I seem to remember a little incident at the entry of the temple in Jerusalem in which a very irate Jesus gets pretty physical with the money changers.

There was a very good article in the Atlantic monthly a while back on the American Christian theology known as “prosperity gospel” which is an evangelical ideology.

The theme of it was how this kind of “prosperity gospel” has contributed to the housing downturn in a big way.
A large percentage of people in areas that have been hardest hit with the housing bubble were evangelical’s who believed in this nonsense. That Jesus and God wanted them to have a large house, even though they only made 40 to 50k a year.

My own problem with all of this steams from the the little problem of Jesus not being into money at all.
I seem to remember a little incident at the entry of the temple in Jerusalem in which a very irate Jesus gets pretty physical with the money changers.

Strange, the forum seems to be having some problems I got an error and then it posted twice

Maybe the second stringers are manning the computers at WBUR.
Evangelicals per the Atlantic being into housing as part of the prosperity doctrine? “You deserve to live well”? Hmm. I thought it was the tax code, the big bankers and the lawyers and the realtors, who were into A House For Each Family. The mortgage deduction is the American Dream even in the face of money lenders whose tables await the wrath of Jesus.
As to why the gospels went whole hog against the excesses of the money lenders. Numero uno, weren’t the Jews the money lenders of the Holy Roman Empire, during maybe a thousand years? Because Christians didn’t allow it? So just as we hate bankers now for their bonuses, so did they hate the Jews for strictly monetary reasons. And no one was going to scratch the story about the money changers.
In my opinion, the richer Jesus was, the more important it was that he do that bit with the tables of the money changers. We sort of want Geithner and Summers to do a similar stunt now to show their solidarity with some of us.
Think too of Osama bin Laden, he of the prodigiously wealthy family of contractors from Saudi Arabia. He too is toppling the tables, being poor in the showiest manner possible, living in caves and so on. He holds a staff to walk with, and the tone of voice might well be that of the sermon on the mount. There is strength in weakness.
There is enormous persuasive power in switching sides from wealth to poverty. I believe the Buddha did exactly that, long before Christ. Gandhi too. Someone wrote about his loincloth. Well, but he was a lawyer, trained in England, right? It makes his appeal all the more persuasive. Either one makes points by power and wealth, or one makes points by moral authority. Making the moral points by waving around wads of cash and Kalashnikovs is hardly persuasive. Oh, bin Laden is not forswearing the guns, at all. Jesus went the other way, sort of the suicide route: Take this cup from me. But to make his point, he went the route of today’s bombers, and like them, went straight to heaven, sitting at the right-hand side of God.
It makes me wince to see the parallels.

Peter, maybe OnPoint can get Malcolm Potts or someone like that to discuss evolution and warfare. The magazine Science, if I am not mistaken, is so costly that our local library has to get issues on Interlibrary Loan. Maybe the web has it.

The complete online version is for AAAS members. Many libraries don’t carry Science, not only for cost but because it’s mostly a peer-reviewed research journal aimed at professional scientists, although it does have excellent science news blurbs and stories at the beginning that anyone with a good college science education can ‘get’. One cool thing they often do is publish a story in the front of the magazine aimed at a “Scientific American magazine” -reader level, about one of the peer reviewed articles later on.

But I fear that in the face of disintegrating environments and disappearing resources, humans will become less human. The scrappiest, the bullies, will have a reproductive edge.

It’s a matter of opinion whether that constitutes being “less” human or “more” human. According to Potts’ book, one reason we’re so violent is that what you say, above, describes our evolutionary past.

I seem to remember a little incident at the entry of the temple in Jerusalem in which a very irate Jesus gets pretty physical with the money changers.

That doesn’t have anything to do with Jesus’ thoughts about money, per se – it reflects the fact that in Jewish tradition you’re not supposed to show or use money in the temple. In a modern synagogue you don’t do anything involving money in the sanctuary. “Passing the collection plate”, as they do in a Christian church, would be regarded as improper in most Jewish congregations.

“Prosperity gospel” has roots in Calvinism, which also saw one’s material success in life as reflecting your status in God’s eyes.

Mendelssohn’s Elijah (he was a Jew); Brahms’ German Requiem… Bach’s Christmas Oratorio: Jauchzet — rejoice.
The music I’ve received that links to religious feeling, worship, is much more elemental to my faith than the particular words. Perhaps the composers were shedding the crippling parts of religion, very subversive if you ask me, in making their faith plain in ways that skip right out of the dogma.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggm0SZCWKZo&feature=related
John Eliot Gardiner and the Monteverdi choir, singing Jauchzet Frohlocket. Also Schlafe, Mein Liebster, etc. Christians getting really carried away. Weihnachst Oratorium, googled, many video clips. This is a good one.

Jesus was not about obtaining wealth. He was poor by even the standards of the day. He was homeless for most of his life, by choice it seems.

You mention Calvinism, which does not have much to do with the American evangelical ideology does it? I always thought most of the American evangelical churches came out of the Baptist and Pentecostal movements. Calvinism was not about acquiring wealth, working hard yes, working to become rich no. Sure, they are all coming out the Protestant Reformation, but so are the Lutherans and they are pretty far from Evangelical ideologies as is the Episcopal church.

Have you ever been to a real traditional Calvinist church? There’s nothing in them, no stain glass windows, no adornments. Look up the Free Church of Scotland.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_Ay-ANAe8o
Mendelssohn’s Elijah (Elias), best in German, though Robert Shaw recordings are fine. Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen is a very lyrical bit of it, (“how lovely are Your Dwelling Places”) but much of it is struggles of all sorts, with redemption and relief being exceedingly scarce. Danke … du durstet — thanks be to God, you give drink to the parched land.
Tailor-made oratorio for global warming.

I’m not saying I find these things in churches in any way descended from the Scottish Calvinist tradition. But I sang these things in high school, Episcopal schools. Music teachers were of who knows what tradition.

Evangelical and pentecostal churches — Baptist, often, southern, often — are as far from the Calvinist as could be. The Scottish rigidity that is expressed in all three of the Bronte women whose novels we know, whose father was a preacher, that was an extremism of another sort than the sort that certain Republicans spring from. Jimmy Carter was a Baptist.
Putney, the Christian tradition as embraced by the American black tradition, which became deeply interwoven with the experience of slavery, I think can’t be exactly evangelical. I think it’s roots make that difficult to replicate. I think the gospel tradition dates back to about 1920s, but true spirituals are from slave culture. I mean, we all sing them anyway.

Ellen, I’m a little baffled by your comments regarding African American churches as I was not talking about them at all. What’s your point regarding them?

The evangelical movement came from England and started up around the mid 18th century. The Second Great Awakening (which actually began in 1790) was primarily an American revivalist movement and resulted in substantial growth of the Methodist and Baptist churches.

Thank you Wikipedia…

Jimmy Carter is a Baptist, but he’s not in any evangelical church as far as I know.

Man the server for On Point is having “issues”.

Putney, well, you talked about Scottish and Calvinist, and I was doing scatter-shot as to where you were “coming from,” whether that is considered “conservative” or in any way related to what you might call “hard-core” Protestantism. It seems I sort of hit the pinyata in the process; there may be Puritan simplicity at the heart of American religion, not too far from Calvinism. No, that is/was not so rich in music, art, etc. They didn’t have the monetary wherewithal of the Vatican (or any established church) to allow for that.
Wikipedia brought you to a whole other set of info. White revivalism coming from England about 1790 is a new one to me. I thought that was the Age of Reason, here and abroad. 1790 was right about the time of our Constitution.
But then, after all that Classical order and reason, in Europe there was the Romantic movement — Beethoven, Regency England in all its excesses, Victorian England in all its florid sentimentality.
If Wikipedia thinks there was a rivival of religion — I’ll have to see what that’s about. In Massachusetts there was a first revival, the Jonathan Edwards revival, hell-fire and brimstone, about a century before that, out of Northampton. By the time of Emily Dickinson, 7 miles away and a generation post-Revolution, there wasn’t such a raving religious culture anymore. More Calvinist, to my knowledge, by which I mean, in desperate need of revival (new life), being pretty much dry bones: how to be a conformist.
Revivalism that hit this part of the country would be a century post 1790. Examples of revival hymns: When the Roll is Called up Yonder, I’ll be there.
There’s a Church in the Valley by the Wildwood, no lovelier place in the dale.
Golden Slippers (to wear in heaven)
Bringing in the Sheaves.
Take me out to the Ball Game — no, no. I’m teasing.
See Chautauqua Institution, New York state. Must be the third revival my grandparents got hit with.

Hi folks:

I applaud the courage and wisdom of these interfaith amigos. World civilization is full of stories of cruelty and violence done (as Bob Dylan coined) “With God on our side.” If even just one person is moved to re-consider using violence with religious justification, their work is significant to me.

Some readers in this discussion spoke of a concern about these three spokespersons watering down absolutes which make a religion too vague or un-recognizable. I can understand this concern if I grew up in a tradition where I held every belief as being the unalterable voice of God. What I find myself more drawn to is the idea that deeply devoted, well-intentioned, early church spokespeople who were in positions of authority wanted to pass on these ideas to future generations. In this process, they interpreted ambiguous parables and sayings. In many cases, they selected out portions of what they heard after generations of original witnesses had passed. Sometimes these interpretations faced added obstacles of translation accross several languages/cultures (ie, Aramaic > Greek> Latin> Old English or German, etc.) with all of the possibilities of mis-understanding amplified in this complicated translation process. I also think that these early pioneers understood essential spiritual messages within their limited human filters of their particular era and context. For me, this doesn’t suggest that they were not being responsible caretakers of the message, but that like any sincere devotee, they had to interpret what they heard to their best ability within their unique human contexts. But I recognize that some believe that God’s messages were always and are always absolute because the messengers were inerrant– “without error.” But this is a step I have a lot of difficulty accepting.

From what I know with the early church founders, very committed, scholarly church elders had serious disagreements about what should be accepted as “absolute” truth. Based on their conversations, some verses were decided to be part of the authoritative canon and others were discarded. What they included is often then accepted by much later generations as “absolute truth.” Perhaps if later generations understood that many learned churchgoers disagreed with these decisions, they would think about this differently.

What I appreciate and agree with in the interfaith trio is to attempt to distinguish aspects of the religious expression which seem to reflect the more substantial aspects from those which might be serving to preserve the institutional body of the church. In honesty, I would say that these attempts are something that are done more from a place of personal study, faith, and reflection rather than from some universal, objective, absolute stance. I recognize that for some, this is too incongruent with their idea that religion can only stand on the premise of universal absolutes. But I have found that any “absolutes” that I live by are rooted in deeply personal experience that is based on my lived and corroborated experience.

respectfully, C Smith

I heard Imam said that most muslim countries and muslims celebrate x-mas.He is wrong muslims donot celebrate this pagan holiday.We need to be polite with other faiths but that does not mean we lose our faith.He should avoid telling lie to please others.

Ellen,
I like what you are saying about imagination in religion. Although I practice my sense of spirituality outside the context of Christianity, and even practice what most would consider rituals separate from organized, collectively-recognized religion itself, I also see the importance of imagination in religion. You include music in your comments as potentially being part of what many would say are religious experiences (quite a paraphrase, sorry). I would also broaden that to all forms of art; I believe this is one of the reasons why art is so important to the human condition. You, at one point, used the word “subversive” in regard to Classical composers; I think subversiveness is a huge part of art and what it tries to achieve (that the best art serves to break up our sensibilities just enough to let us see things in a different way). Art also has an advantage in that it can often approach its subversiveness with some measure of abstraction, making new and different concepts more palatable to many.

With regard to religion, I believe much of what is misinterpreted, and used as a basis for misunderstanding and criticism, is the use of myth, metaphor, and imagery. I see these as what I believe their value to be: they are devices we humans use to give expression to imaginative ideas; they assist us in our creativity, in our efforts to give voice/expression and definition to that which is beyond intellectual definition. The better people are at interpreting the use of those “devices” for a more nuanced understanding (i.e., one doesn’t see myth necessarily as a lie or a belief in a superstitious view of the universe), the more likely there can be peaceful coexistence among people of different religions and spirituality.

I also think the arguments that pit science against religion have less relevancy now then they once did, and they are less in competition then they once were. Many want to still examine the natural world and the spiritual world in terms of these concepts being juxtaposed for the purposes of one negating or refuting the other. This may be due to the fact that long ago religion was used to examine intellectually how the natural world worked and the fact that science’s development has served to gradually replace those needs over the centuries. Although the connection between both science and religion is still within the realm of attempting to explain nature and metaphysics, science and religion/sprituality have distinct differences in the function of each (in the context of the modern world). In their essence, they are of a different ilk. Science is in the intellect; spirituality is more visceral, with perhaps a permeation into the intellect coming later through retrospection (perhaps, some of the problems with science vs. religion come about when each tries too much to take on the qualities of the other). Both science and religion utilize imagination and creativity; it’s just that science is not as completely dependent on those tools as spirituality I see imagination and creativity very much as important tools for assisting people in their spiritual quests.

I was little put off by how the concept of “oneness” was used in the broadcast’s discussion and in some comments. The idea being one god, etc. I personally define oneness as connectedness. We are connected to each other; we are connected to the universe, etc. I feel the view of “oneness” as one god is a trap that will further prevent true diversity of thought, culture, and so on. We are setting ourselves up to say we can only get along spiritually if we all follow certain collectively agreed upon precepts. That sets the stage for dogma, and is exclusionary at its core.

Many New Age religions fall into this trap of “oneness” being one essential truth; one god, etc. It is really monotheistic and, well, preachy, yet is all dressed up and portrayed as being above such pratfalls from organized religion. We also see, perhaps more tangibly, how this current concept of oneness effects the world’s changing view culturally and geo-politically. Our various world cultures are looking less and less disparate, and at least one country (who shall remain nameless) reaches out to the world only to want to make the rest of the world over in its own image.

As one who is surrounded by southern Baptists, Evangelicals, and Pentecostals (I have lived in the south most of my life), I can say that black southern Baptists are far different than what white southern Baptists are, albeit some of the fire and brimstone rhetoric is replete in both. I live across the street from a black southern Baptist church, and for one thing there is none of the aroma of intolerance and superiority present that is very palpable around local white southern Baptist churches. Besides, the food and music in the black southern Baptist churches blows the doors off of the white churches! Also, the Evangelicals and Pentecostals are virtually indistinguishable from white southern Baptists these days, no matter how they started out or where they came from. All do utilize and have borrowed some of the grand showmanship, to engage people, that is present in black southern Baptist churches. They (the black church) got that sense of theater somewhat from African traditions, somewhat from being slaves (they were not allowed to congregate to practice religion but were allowed to get together to sing and dance) and somewhat from the fire and brimstone stuff handed down from New England Puritans to some of the southern Protestants. I believe much of that gained theatrical elements as it went along and farther south. Revivalism in the south is patterned on both white and black southern religions, where the modern Baptists, Evangelicals and Pentecostals all claim their roots (admittedly or not), and members of those religions seem to also have infiltrated politics in a big way. It started with the “moral majority” back when Reagan was ushering in a new social era I believe as a backlash to the movements of the ’60’s and the social laxness/permissiveness of the ’70’s.

The “prosperity gospel” stuff mentioned here today reminds me of the men who form the group known as “the family” that operates out of a house on C Street in Washington, D.C. They are prosperous businessmen and political figures, all conservative, all devoutly Christian, of the Evangelical/Baptist variety, mostly, who incorporated themselves as a church (through a lot of recent media attention, though, they have lost their tax-exempt status).

These men in “the family” (and there are only men, no women) have what I would call delusions of preordainment in that they feel they have been chosen by God to be wealthy and powerful, all in an effort to fulfill God’s plan. They feel they are successful because of God’s will/plan and that wealth and power are the highest ideals and closest to God. The men are smart enough to make every attempt to keep their activities secret; they also have made attempts to influence our own government, as well as governments abroad (a combination that is potentially dangerous IMHO), and this is done by using their positions of power.

They pretend that they are simply congregating for the fellowship…to pray, discuss charitable acts of righteousness and piety, etc., but any of us who even remotely follow politics would know many of them as members of Congress. For example, Bart Stupak, the Conservative Democrat, and Joseph Pitts, the Conservative Republican, both belong to “the family.” They are responsible for the Amendment they are named after in the health- care bill that is against funding for abortion, reproductive services and limits access to information on those services as options.

Some of those fine, God-fearing, preordained/chosen men in “the family” we all know as political leaders have been involved in sex scandals in the last year, e.g., Governor Mark Sanford (R), of SC; Senator John Ensign (R), of Nevada, to mention only a couple (there are more). Other conservative leaders in Congress who are members of “the family” even counseled the men, before the men were caught, on how to deal with the possible fallout from said scandals going public. Sanford was given advice on how to keep his affair quiet in terms of careful billing for travel, hotels, etc. Ensign was actually “counseled” to pay off people who knew of his affair. Interestingly, in both cases, neither man was given counsel to end their affairs. Also, both men were told in various discussions/prayers/fellowship meetings on the matters that, even if they were caught, they should remember that God/Jesus is on their side because of the aforementioned preordainment. Another tidbit of interest is that some of these men from “the family” who are in public office may have used public funds in making trips to other countries to influence foreign leaders. They say they went to other countries as private citizens but their travel records say they used public funds to travel; also, when they spoke to these foreign leaders they represented themselves as Congressmen, etc., and used their credentials to gain access to foreign leaders.

SO, in other words, those who are chosen to be wealthy and powerful (and presumably white and Christian…oh, and MEN–let us not forget that!) by God can transgress here and there because they are on this earth for a greater good. Likewise, for other white, conservative Christian men who want to be wealthy and powerful, they may very well transgress at times in the pursuit of money and power, but that’s okay as long as they participate somehow in God’s plan.

God must’ve forsaken me, as I am neither wealthy nor powerful. I guess this is God’s wrath for all of my bad mouthing of organized religion! And here I thought it was my hedonism! Just maybe God isn’t on my side simply BECAUSE I have not made enough of an attempt to be wealthy! I suppose I could go get “born again” by being baptized as a Baptist or something and get right with accepting Jesus as my personal savour (that sounds kind of quaint, really, and prestigious, like I’ll have a butler), and maybe I could get involved in some unsavory business deals to acquire more wealth. That might save me! I’d try converting to Judaism instead of all that other, unpleasant effort (they are supposed to be called home to Israel during the Rapture), but I don’t think converts count for the Rapture plans, so I could be screwing things up for real Jews. God is kinda fickle, even some might say downright irascible, when it comes to Jews, so I’d better not rock the boat…Seriously, much of why Baptists, Evangelicals, etc., are so pro-Israel is because they think they need that country freed up to make room for all of the Jews to go back there during the Rapture; it’s part of God’s plan!

I saw a statue of Mother Mary and the Baby Jesus at a shrine last year in Italy. The depiction had both of them dressed up wearing a lot of bling! I don’t know about you guys but if my son was the Messiah I’d be dressing him up with some bling, too! It’s a good thing that angels and God’s magical powers protected Jesus, Mary and Joseph against Herrod’s killing spree toward the children of Israel just after Jesus was born, because the Nazareth family were strutting around being quite conspicuous it sounds like!!

The Puritans were not evangelicals and I think we can all agree that most of the groups that sprung up after the Reformation were not as well. If you research the period after the Reformation you will find a lot religious groups all over Northern Europe, some are pretty strange.

Evangelicalism is a Protestant Christian theological stream which began in Great Britain in the 1730s.
Most adherents consider its key characteristics to be:

* A belief in the need for personal conversion (or being “born again”)
* Some expression of the gospel in “effort”
* A high regard for biblical authority
* An emphasis on the death and resurrection of Jesus.

This is an interesting read,

The Second Great Awakening (1790–1840s) was a period of great religious revival that extended into the antebellum period of the United States, with widespread Christian evangelism and conversions. It was named for the Great Awakening, a similar period which had transpired about half a century beforehand. It generated excitement in church congregations throughout New England, the mid-Atlantic, Northwest and the South. Individual preachers such as Charles Grandison Finney, Lyman Beecher, Barton Stone, Peter Cartwright, and Asahel Nettleton became very well known as a result. Evangelical participation in social causes was fostered that changed American life in areas such as prison reform, abolitionism, and temperance.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Great_Awakening

Mendelssohn’s Elijah (he was a Jew)

Mendelssohn was technically a Lutheran. He was born into a Jewish family but his father Abraham renounced religion and had Felix baptised as a Lutheran at age 7. Felix’s grandfather was the prominent Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn.

The fact that some racist Germans were always suspicious of him because of his ancestry doesn’t make him a Jew. And whether his father’s conversion and adoption of a new name (Batholdy) were based on genuine conviction or for reasons of convenience in a largely antisemitic world has been the subject of scholarly debate ever since, especially given that assimilationism was a common problem for German Jewry at that time.

What does it mean to be a Jew? It is either s religious identity, or it’s an ethnic one. Many modern American Jews are atheists or agnostics but regard themselves as “ethnic Jews” or “secular Jews” because they keep other aspects of Jewish culture alive, such as Yiddish or Klezmer music or various other customs and traditions. Either one of these seems like a reasonable definition, but there’s no evidence that Felix Mendelssohn did much of either.

So that leaves genes. Both the Nazi’s and the Jim Crow architects loved that sort of analysis. The Nazi’s were mesmerized with the idea of deciding on that basis what “race” you were, and in the American South you were black if 1/8th of your ancestry was black – this gave rise to Langston Hughs’ famous observations of “that powerful 1/8th drop”.

You mention Calvinism, which does not have much to do with the American evangelical ideology does it?

Really? His Institutes of the Christian Religion and their “five doctrines” were central to the teachings of John Winthrop and William Bradford! And later it was among the princples of John Fox. Calvin’s teachings on “unconditional election” became such a controversy within the Puritan community that they had to promote covenant theology to substitute it.

Calvinism was also the basis of the Dutch Reform church which had a huge influence in American theoloogy in the early 19th century. And “Manifest Destiny” was heavily based on Calvin’s concepts of predestination. Many scholars think that Calvin had more theological influence that Martin Luther himself on early American theology.

American protestantism was shot through and through with Calvinist teaching for two centuries and it wasn’t until the “enlightened” theologians (John Wesly, et al) came to gain influence that Calvinist ideas were undermined)

There are lots of books on this:
Schnucker, Calviniana: Ideas and Influence of John Calvin
Walker A History of the Christian Church

Evangelical and pentecostal churches — Baptist, often, southern, often — are as far from the Calvinist as could be.

Have you read Calvin’s actual teachings? Look at his beliefs on how you know whether you are on of the Elect and the worldy signs and indications of this and compare them to the teachings of conservative theologians today. Both you and “putney swope” are only looking at the surface – you’re comparing the church buildings, but you’re not reading the theology

Read Calvin’s Five Doctrines and then read, say, Billy Graham’s Peace with God, or The Plan or date with Destiny by Pat Robertson.

Putney, I wasn’t saying that the Evangelicals were Puritans (as Puritanism pertains to the Reformation in America). That Reformation Movement started in England with the Reformation of the Church of England. The movement that continued in America was a reaction to the movement in England, actually, as the Colonists felt the Reformation movement in England under Elizabeth was incomplete and only served to regulate forms of worship, and they wanted to practice their own form of religion without being held to standards of the C of E. They also wanted the freedom to exclude other forms of religion other than the one they wanted in their new land (hence, the persecution of Catholics, and even Quakers, for example, in early-American history). I was saying that the modern Evangelicals have borrowed from many different Protestant religions, including some of what the Puritans were doing. The Baptists, Pentecostals and Evangelicals I am referring to don’t even define themselves as being part of the movement that was formed by reacting to the Church of England, the Evangelicalism you speak of.

The slaves also adopted some of what their owners had in their religious histories and added to those rituals, was another point.

“‘Evangelical participation in social causes was fostered that changed American life in areas such as prison reform, abolitionism, and temperance.’”

Modern Evangelicals have little to do with the movement you’re quoting here from Wikipedia (except the temperance movement in the early-20th Century). They have adopted many of the censorious beliefs from Puritanism, though… Interestingly, and aside, the asterisk points you mention about Evangelicalism are what modern Baptists, Evangelicals and Pentecostals would say about themselves. And, if you’ve ever attended a modern service in either the Baptist, Evangelical or Pentecostal church, you’d see a direct link to the black southern Baptists.

I live in an historic town in the south. Most of the churches here have been around for over three hundred years, and they have survived very direct activities from the Revolutionary War, as well as the the Civil War, and have even managed to survive the Civil Rights Movement (our town had one of the first drugstore lunch counter sit-ins in the south). Many of my neighbors are direct descendants of slaves and slave owners

…Anyway, all of the churches that are that old here are either Episcopalian (started from the C of E), Methodist (evolved from the form of Evangelicalism you mention) or Baptist (those churches aren’t as old, more from the 19th Century). The Methodists, generally, would not wish to be associated with modern Evangelicals at all. NONE of those old churches would even consider housing modern Evangelical Christian services.

The modern Methodists would want to be associated more with the Dutch Reformation and Calvinism. The modern Evangelical church is very loosely (very loosely!) from the Midwest in origin. This form started in the mid-1800’s (from German origins) and merged with the Reformed Church of the US in 1934, and then merged with the Congregational Christian Churches in the 1950’s. If there is any relationship to Evangelicalism at all, it is with this, but I doubt there is any more than the most remote association to even that form of Evangelicalism.

The variety of Evangelicals I’m talking about (and they have influenced and been influenced by the Baptists and Pentecostals), are the evangelist Evangelicals; the Jerry Falwells (I think he was Baptist?), the Oral Roberts (Pentecostal), the Billy Grahams (a Baptist), etc. These men were from the Baptist traditions of the South.

Peter,
You make some good connect the dots points with all of the historical influences to modern Protestant religions.

The Puritans were not evangelicals

By what definition of “evangelical?” The Puritans certainly practiced conversion, which is a core characteristic that distinguished evangelical religions (e.g., Christianity) from non-evangelical ones, e.g., Judaism. For other definitions see . . .,

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/evangelical

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/evangelical

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelism

Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing. H.L. Mencken

From which follows the corollary: Theology is the effort to explain the not worth knowing in terms of the unknowable .

Ecumenical humor:

I’m spending this weekend with a group of musicians who sometimes play church gigs for religious events like First Communions, etc. They like to try to crack each other up during the solemn parts with tasteless religious jokes. Here’s one that’s sure to get deleted by the admin but maybe someone will see it before they do . . .

Moses and Jesus come back to the Holy Land in 2009 to see if they still have their stuff . . .

They go down to the seashore where Jesus says, “OK let’s see you part the waters, Moses.” So Moses raises his arms and huffs and puffs and tries his best but nothing happens.

Jesus laughs and says, “Well, I guess you’re over the hill old man!”

Then Moses says, “Alright, Jesus, let’s see you walk on water!”

So Jesus hikes up his robes, takes a few steps and promptly sinks.

And Moses says, “I guess you should have plugged up the holes in your feet first!”

The American evangelical movement, and particularly the what we see today is not Calvinist, or even related to what the Puritans thought of as religion. Just because they all come from the Reformation does not mean they are even practicing the same religion. Your going to find commonalities however I don’t see any connections between them other than the basic theological ideologies of what is a common Protestant belief system.

I’ve studied the history of the period, and I lived in Scotland for years and am very aware of the divisions in the Scottish Church and the Anglican Church. The Free Church of Scotland, otherwise known as the “Wee Frees” have nothing to do with the Church of Scotland and would be pretty upset if you attempted to link them the way you do in your comments above. Given that’s the case, how is it that you can’t see that there is more to the religions than the dots you seem to pride yourself on connecting.

I’m Jewish and I have nothing in common with Orthodox Jews whatsoever. Hasidim are so far from what I was brought up with as a Jewish kid it might as well be a different religion. Alas you would say we are of the same religion and find ways to argue your points no matter how absurd and misguided they may be.
Technically I’m Jewish as they are to the outside world, but I’m no more a Jew to a Hasidim than Calvin was.

Do you think Billy Graham, Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland have anything in common with Calvin or John Knox in how they practice their faiths and interpret the Bible?

I am a little disappointed in the Rabbi. If we read Isaiah 19 we find

18 In that day five cities in Egypt will speak the language of Canaan and swear allegiance to the LORD Almighty. One of them will be called the City of Destruction. [b]

19 In that day there will be an altar to the LORD in the heart of Egypt, and a monument to the LORD at its border. 20 It will be a sign and witness to the LORD Almighty in the land of Egypt. When they cry out to the LORD because of their oppressors, he will send them a savior and defender, and he will rescue them. 21 So the LORD will make himself known to the Egyptians, and in that day they will acknowledge the LORD. They will worship with sacrifices and grain offerings; they will make vows to the LORD and keep them. 22 The LORD will strike Egypt with a plague; he will strike them and heal them. They will turn to the LORD, and he will respond to their pleas and heal them.

23 In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria. The Assyrians will go to Egypt and the Egyptians to Assyria. The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. 24 In that day Israel will be the third, along with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing on the earth. 25 The LORD Almighty will bless them, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance.”

And if we read Psalm 111 we find

1 Praise the LORD.
I will extol the LORD with all my heart
in the council of the upright and in the assembly.

2 Great are the works of the LORD;
they are pondered by all who delight in them.

3 Glorious and majestic are his deeds,
and his righteousness endures forever.

4 He has caused his wonders to be remembered;
the LORD is gracious and compassionate.

5 He provides food for those who fear him;
he remembers his covenant forever.

6 He has shown his people the power of his works,
giving them the lands of other nations.

7 The works of his hands are faithful and just;
all his precepts are trustworthy.

8 They are steadfast for ever and ever,
done in faithfulness and uprightness.

9 He provided redemption for his people;
he ordained his covenant forever—
holy and awesome is his name.

10 The reverance of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom;
all who follow his precepts have good understanding.
To him belongs eternal praise.

The Jewish religion is based on the premise of blessing all people and this blessing comes from the Israelites. In fact Jesus (a Jew) says

19″Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

22″The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. 23But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

24″No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.
Do Not Worry
25″Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

28″And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

It is clear that the Jewish religion wants to establish the Kingdom of God for all people. The Koran teaches over and over again that most people will be tormented for ever in hell. The Christian religion has distorted the Koran, Tanakh and Jesus’ teachings for their own desires. I am disappointed that the Rabbi does not stress this. I am not a Jew.

Jim you obviously have never met an Orthodox Rabbi.

This is an approach that revolves around scripture, I think a more progressive approach is to look beyond scripture. We all benefit from the freedom of choice that is afforded by life in a pluralistic democracy. That freedom to live and worship as we please is more important than the search for items in scripture that support our view. As soon as we descend into debates about scripture then we open ourselves up to those who would use scripture to justify their wish to deny others of freedom on the basis of their own interpretations. All should appreciate that a society that finds its justification for existence in scripture is susceptible to becoming a religious state. That would leave most faiths out of the mix and many people subject to persecution. This debate should always stress the benefits of secularism AND the rights of all to practice freely.

[...] Interfaith Amigos Radio Program [...]

Tom, you referred to the Fort Hood mass murderer as “the poor officer.” I respect your empathy because I feel it to be heartfelt but tagging this killer as such truly makes me sick to my stomach.

Let’s not be afraid to call evil evil…Please…

I really enjoyed this program. These guys have such great perspective. Unfortunately, the people who need to hear it the MOST are the ones LEAST likely to do so: radicals. Still, I hope these Amigos keep up their teachings. I learned so much just on this program from them. … We here in southeastern Virginia have a group of three guys like this who appear on 89.5’s “HearSay” program with Cathy Lewis.

If the Great Awakening, Putney, was that which originated in Northampton with much ado about hellfire and brimstone, another great awakening has been had, if you want to search the net for what happened in one ward of that city between 2:00 and 3:15 AM on the 27th, with 14 different fire departments having to be summoned. Play the 911 calls at NorthamptonMedia. See the Boston Globe. The governor came. Houses went up, people died. Note: close simultaneity. Humans can’t rampage with such sweep. I rest my case. — Not.

What an education can be gleaned from these comments. One: Evangelical, as per dictionary and tomes, still is a brain twister of a concept. I believe the Feast of the Epiphany was the alleged event that began it. After resurrection, Jesus appears and tells his faithful followers to “go forth” and tell the Good News or gospel to all the world.
It’s news to me that the Puritans were evangelicals, at least in the sense I understand it. Okay, I see Calvinism in Puritanism. Mea culpa. And by the way, I think at one point I was citing the Brahms German Requiem when I said it was Mendelssohn. Wie lieblich (How lovely) — the words being from the Bible, many composers have set it to music.
The awakening of antebellum America, with the social causes Wikipedia mentions (abolitionism — I’m thinking of care for the poor, the insane), was that part in reaction to the obscene wealth of the railroad and steel barons?), an awakening and organization of social conscience? Because the abolitionism was part of a Civil War, which may have begun over economic issues but became a moral and civil rights war, I see a lot of those “awakenings” as belonging to the American people at large.
When Brett writes, “Revivalism in the south is patterned on both white and black southern religions, where the modern Baptists, Evangelicals and Pentecostals all claim their roots (admittedly or not), and MEMBERS OF THOSE RELIGIONS SEEM TO ALSO HAVE INFILTRATED POLITICS IN A BIG WAY. IT STARTED WITH THE “MORAL MAJORITY” BACK WHEN REAGAN WAS USHERING IN A NEW SOCIAL ERA I believe as a backlash to the movements of the ’60’s and the social laxness/permissiveness of the ’70’s” (my capitals), I would like to add that we learn from Lyndon Johnson’s historians such as Doris Kearns Goodwin that this Texas (Democrat) politician, after struggling with unparalleled political savvy to pass the Civil Rights Act, said “There goes the South,” or something to that effect.
He meant there goes the Democratic South. Indeed they say the South became Republican thereafter and has been since, and, I’d note, Republican with an in-built resentment of government powers and an in-built intolerance which no law touches.
If that in-built intolerance has a religious justification, all the better, but hellfire and brimstone may be the price of my mentioning it. Superstitious that I am.
From my particular city of about 30,000 I take the prize for being politically incorrect, I’m told.
Democracy Now! has had a fine program on the “Family” Brett was describing, in re Governor Sanford et al.

“‘…hellfire and brimstone may be the price of my mentioning it.’”

Ellen,
Careful, now; not everyone is going to get to ride up to heaven during the Rapture to await Jesus’ victory over the anti-Christ! [He says, as he wags his finger] After all, the end days are upon us, and only the people who behave themselves will get to go…Are you as prosperous as you could be? Hmm? Wait…my mistake, that’s only for men, anyway; so, you’re safe…probably safe. I mean, you haven’t been smote, so far, anyway…I’m probably overreacting… never mind…

Several years ago, an Ecumenical Interfaith Dialogue was held at Regis College in Boston led by Dom Thomas Keating, OCSO, a close associate to the Dalai Lama, a Jewish woman Rabbi and a leading Imam, all widely respected teachers of contemplative prayer. Approximately five hundred from all faiths came to hear these leaders and all went away with an unforgettable realization that interiority and prayer are means to union of diferent religions, instead of focusing on our religious differences.
Thomas Aquinas began his Summa Theologica with the goal of “Claritas, Brevitas and Luciditas”. There’s some who question how well he succeeded, but to me, Putney, Ellen and Peter, no doubt sincere and thoughtful, have got to work at “brevitas and claritas” and cease striving for “lucidity”.

“Some would say — I’m thinking of I think it was Obama who pointed this out in the last few months, for some reason — that people have a hard time letting go of tribalism. Probably that was in the Nobel speech. To be a group/tribe was/is to share a religion, to some extent — or was in the olden days when religion and government were one and the same, when gods governed.”

Modern-day tribes express themselves through their ideologies and self-identified labels (left, right, liberal, progressive, conservative, libertarian and so on), and who one votes for. Seems to me that self-identification (whether ideology or religion or some other marker) is a universal phenomenon as is identifying whether others belong to “my” tribe or not.

And Putney, ideology is the opiate of the masses, if I look at the behavior today.

“There’s an excellent book by Malcom Potts, a population biologist at UC Berkely, called Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World that just received an excellent review in the October 9 issue of Science. Anyone seeking enlightenment will probably find more there than sitting in an ashram chanting “om’.“

Speaking strictly for yourself, Peter? Or are you now speaking for others too?

I would put religion in the category of ideology.