Religion

Wednesday was Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent, a period of penitence, reflection, and preparation for Easter observed by some flavors of Christianity.

In those denominations, it’s traditional to for that penitence and reflection to be demonstrated, in part, by “giving up” something for Lent.

A common theme on some of the Episcopal-themed blogs I follow this year is the idea of a “carbon fast” for Lent….an idea that strikes me as a pretty good one.

In case you’re wondering, behind the page break, I’ve taken the liberty of sharing a suggested schedule of a carbon fast as presented by James Jones at the Episcopal Cafe:

Read the rest of this page →

One of the more sobering experiences of my professional career was Katrina. 

At the time of Katrina, I was working with an excess property business.  And, because of my role as Chief Data Monkey, combined with my extracurricular interests of storm-watching, mapping, and general geekery, I ended up in the position of doing our very first assessments of how expensive Katrina was going to be to us, since our adjusters couldn’t easily access the affected areas, and since I’m comfortable doing “before and after” comparisons with aerial photography.

So that’s how it came to be that for a couple of weeks after Katrina, I sat in front of a couple of computers, with a list of locations and their addresses (and statements of values, attachment points, and limits), one web browser opened to Google Maps, and another browser accessing the aerial photos the National Hurricane Center was making available.

One of the “easiest”, yet grimmest, accounts to do this for involved a number of religious properties in southern Mississippi.   All I had to do was look up a few churches on/near US 90, see that they were no longer there, to reach the conclusion that our attachment and limits had been blown through.

So, it is with some interest that I encountered this article at the Sun Herald, discussing how church reconstruction efforts are faring:

Up, down and around the Mississippi Coast rebuilding lags, no more certainly than along U.S. 90, aka Beach Boulevard, the scenic drive.

Notably absent are many of the churches that once dotted this thoroughfare. Evidence of them either has been hauled away or is overgrown. Some areas, mostly west of Gulfport but a couple of pockets in Biloxi, too, are so changed as to make locating even the site of a razed church - or business or historic home - impossible. On a recent drive the breadth of 90 in Harrison County, we couldn’t find where St. Patrick Episcopal Church had stood in Long Beach.[...]

What of the others?

Three days and dozens of phone calls later, we know a little bit, enough perhaps to inspire secular rebuilders. The clergymen with whom we spoke are enthusiastic but stoic - about moving slowly, being thorough, being deliberate. As one of them said, using the carpenter’s mantra: Measure twice, cut once.

Although things will never be exactly the same, and progress is painfully slow…at least there is some progress being made.

Seen in Monday’s Wall Street Journal: (subscriber link)

A small protestant church in Adrian, Mich., has weathered controversies surrounding abolition, the Civil War, desegregation and Vietnam since it was established in 1836. Now, because its denomination supports gay rights, the church has been deemed too risky for property insurance.

Brotherhood Mutual Insurance Co. of Fort Wayne, Ind., turned down the West Adrian United Church of Christ, citing its national governing body’s approval of gay marriage and the ordination of homosexuals.

“Based on national media reports, controversial stances such as those indicated in your application responses have resulted in property damage and the potential for increased litigation among churches that have chosen to publicly endorse these positions,” Marci J. Fretz, a regional underwriter for Brotherhood Mutual — one of the nation’s largest insurers of religious institutions — wrote in a letter to the church last summer.

While I can imagine a slightly increased threat of physical damage (but then again, churches are surprisingly vulnerable to physical damage; remind me to tell you of the church I was in which was struck by lightning…twice)…increased liability risk?

In commercial lines property/casualty insurance business, insurers generally have additional flexibility in accepting or declining risk than they do in personal lines…so it does seem within the insurer’s rights to do this.  However, it seems wrong.

With a former high inquisitor sitting on the Papal throne, it’s probably not surprising to see a return to some of the old ways of Rome. First we had the reintroduction of Latin Mass, and now this (from the Sydney morning Herald):

The Catholic Church has vowed to “fight the Devil head-on” by training hundreds of priests as exorcists.

Father Gabriele Amorth, 82, the Exorcist in Chief, announced the initiative amid church concerns about growing worldwide interest in Satanism and the occult.

Under plans being considered, each bishop would have a group of priests in his diocese who were specially trained in exorcism and on hand to take action against “extreme Godlessness”.[...]

“Now bishops are to be obliged to have a number of established exorcists for their diocese. Too many bishops are not taking this seriously and are not delegating their priests in the fight against the Devil. You have to hunt high and low for a proper, trained exorcist.

Seen on the newswires:

Robed Greek Orthodox and Armenian priests went at each other with brooms and stones inside the Church of the Nativity [the site traditionally believed to be the birthplace of Jesus] on Thursday as long-standing rivalries erupted in violence during holiday cleaning.[...]

On Thursday, dozens of priests and cleaners came to the fortress-like church to scrub and sweep the floors, walls and rafters ahead of the Armenian and Orthodox Christmas, celebrated in the first week of January. Thousands of tourists visited the church this week for Christmas celebrations.

But the cleanup turned ugly after some of the Orthodox faithful stepped inside the Armenian church’s section, touching off a scuffle between about 50 Greek Orthodox and 30 Armenians.

In the immortal words of Rodney King, “cain’t we all just get along?”

In honor of the season, the Wall Street Journal on Friday ran a commentary by John Steele Gordon (subscriber link) discussing how Christmas came to be the confusing amalgam of religious and secular celebration that provides such fodder for religious debate at this time of year.

In addition to the oft-repeated reminder that the Gospels describe Jesus’ birth as occurring in spring, and the official date as being chosen to capitalize on Roman/European tradition of having truly debauched celebrations around the time of the winter solstice, Gordon offers a bit of history on medieval and modern Christmas celebrations:

By the high Middle Ages, Christmas was a rowdy, bawdy time, often inside the church as well as outside it. In France, many parishes celebrated the Feast of the Ass, supposedly honoring the donkey that had brought Mary to Bethlehem. Donkeys were brought into the church and the mass ended with priests and parishioners alike making donkey noises. In the so-called Feast of Fools, the lower clergy would elect a “bishop of fools” to temporarily run the diocese and make fun of church ceremonial and discipline. With this sort of thing going on inside the church to celebrate the Nativity, one can easily imagine the drunken and sexual revelries going on outside it to celebrate what was in all but name the Saturnalia.

With the Reformation, Protestants tried to rid the church of practices unknown in its earliest days and get back to Christian roots. Most Protestant sects abolished priestly celibacy (and often the priesthood itself), the cult of the Virgin Mary, relics, confession and . . . Christmas.[...]

It was New York and its early 19th century literary establishment that created the modern American form of the old Saturnalia. It was a much more family—and especially child—centered holiday than the community-wide celebrations of earlier times.

St. Nicolas is the patron saint of New York (the first church built in the city was named for him), and Washington Irving wrote in his “Diedrich Knickerbocker’s History of New York” how Sinterklaes, soon anglicized to Santa Claus, rode through the sky in a horse and wagon and went down chimneys to deliver presents to children.[...]

In the 1860s, the great American cartoonist Thomas Nast set the modern image of Santa Claus as a jolly, bearded fat man in a fur-trimmed cap. (The color red became standard only in the 20th century, thanks to Coca-Cola ads showing Santa Claus that way.)

Merchants began to emphasize Christmas, decorating stores and pushing the idea of Christmas presents for reasons having nothing whatever to do with religion, except, perhaps, the worship of mammon.

With the increased mobility provided by railroads and increasing immigration from Europe, people who celebrated Christmas began settling near those who did not. It was not long before the children of the latter began putting pressure on their parents to celebrate Christmas as well. “The O’Reilly kids down the street are getting presents, why aren’t we?!” is not an argument parents have much defense against.

By the middle of the 19th century, most Protestant churches were, once again, celebrating Christmas as a religious holiday. The reason, again, had more to do with marketing than theology: They were afraid of losing congregants to other Christmas-celebrating denominations.

In 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant signed into law a bill making the secular Christmas a civil holiday because its celebration had become universal in this country. It is now celebrated in countries all over the world, including many where Christians are few, such as Japan.

And, I’ll take this opportunity to wish you a Happy/Merry/Blessed [insert name of your preferred midwinter holiday here].

After my posts of the past few days touching upon Governor Perdue’s prayer service in Georgia, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that the one of the AP’s top stories today touches upon a different divine figure — the Flying Spaghetti Monster:

It was the emergence of this community that attracted the attention of three young scholars at the University of Florida who study religion in popular culture. They got to talking, and eventually managed to get a panel on FSM-ism on the agenda at one of the field’s most prestigious gatherings.

The title: “Evolutionary Controversy and a Side of Pasta: The Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Subversive Function of Religious Parody.”

“For a lot of people they’re just sort of fun responses to religion, or fun responses to organized religion. But I think it raises real questions about how people approach religion in their lives,” said Samuel Snyder, one of the three Florida graduate students who will give talks at the meeting next Monday along with Alyssa Beall of Syracuse University.[...]

The authors recognize the topic is a little light by the standards of the American Academy of Religion.

“You have to keep a sense of humor when you’re studying religion, especially in graduate school,” Van Horn said in a recent telephone interview. “Otherwise you’ll sink into depression pretty quickly.”

The FSM phenomenon arose out of the fuss over the Kansas School Board’s proposal to incorporate intelligent design into the state’s science curriculum.   The original FSM “follower” demanded, with tongue firmly-in-cheek, that his views be given equal time since, after all, the existence of the FSM couldn’t be disproven, because the FSM is omni-present, changing scientific measurements that might contradict FSM’s existence with “His Noodley Appendage”.

One wonders how long it will take before the FSM’s followers outnumber “Bob”’s.

Some of you may be aware of Senator Grassley’s inquiries into the alleged excesses of a half-dozen megachurches. Quoting an AP article:

“I’m following up on complaints from the public and news coverage regarding certain practices at six ministries,” Grassley said in a statement. “The allegations involve governing boards that aren’t independent and allow generous salaries and housing allowances and amenities such as private jets and Rolls Royces.

“I don’t want to conclude that there’s a problem, but I have an obligation to donors and the taxpayers to find out more,” Grassley said.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, in an article reporting on one televangelist’s “voluntary” disclosure of the desired financial information includes a bit of discussion on the prosperity ministry that attracts the attention:

The six religious broadcast empires under the gun all preach and teach forms of a gospel that justifies the accumulation of money and material goods as one sign of God’s blessing. It includes benefits like health, a good family life and benevolence toward others.

It is an American-born faith that mixes Christianity with capitalism, individualism and materialism, said Shayne Lee, a Tulane University sociologist who studies megachurches and religion.[...]

“Without a doubt, my life is not average,” [Rev. Creflo Dollar of the World Changers Church International] said. “But I’d like to say, just because it is excessive doesn’t necessarily mean it’s wrong.”

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that everything is at least nominally on the up-and-up as regards federal tax laws. And it’s certainly not my place to accuse anyone or any entity of heresy.

However, I am reminded of a disturbing sensation I had when in high school. I spent some time playing in the orchestra at Bellevue Baptist Church, recruited by my junior high band director who was helping secure musicians to fill out the ranks of an orchestra of biblical proportions for the groundbreaking of Bellevue’s new campus on the east side of Memphis.

Millions of dollars were being pledged and spent to build a mighty island of fundamentalist Christianity…and to assist the congregation in escaping a particularly destitute neighborhood in Memphis’ inner city.

It just reeked of hypocrisy.

I don’t want to begrudge anyone their success, and there is something to be said for matters of faith being an uplifting experience. There are definitely times where community-building and support can have an inward-focused nature.

However, isn’t much of the justification for giving religious institutions tax-exempt status driven by the concept that they, like other tax-free, non-profit entities, tend to have an expectation that they will benefit society at large, and therefore merit tax-advantaged status, as individuals’ contributions to such organizations could be interpreted as “directed support” rather than just relying on the state to allocate tax dollars in support of society appropriately?

In that regard, perhaps inquiring about certain alleged excesses at some megachurches might be appropriate.

Um, don’t some folks have better uses for their time? The New York Times has an article over an ongoing controversy regarding the installation of footbaths in some college dorms:

When pools of water began accumulating on the floor in some restrooms at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, and the sinks pulling away from the walls, the problem was easy to pinpoint. On this campus, more than 10 percent of the students are Muslims, and as part of ritual ablutions required before their five-times-a-day prayers, some were washing their feet in the sinks.

The solution seemed straightforward. After discussions with the Muslim Students’ Association, the university announced that it would install $25,000 foot-washing stations in several restrooms.

But as a legal and political matter, that solution has not been quite so simple. When word of the plan got out this spring, it created instant controversy, with bloggers going on about the Islamification of the university, students divided on the use of their building-maintenance fees, and tricky legal questions about whether the plan is a legitimate accommodation of students’ right to practice their religion — or unconstitutional government support for that religion. [...]

But after a Muslim student at Minneapolis Community and Technical College slipped and hurt herself last fall while washing her feet in a sink, word got out there that the college was considering installing a footbath, and a local columnist accused the college of a double standard — stopping a campus coffee cart from playing Christmas music but taking a different attitude toward Islam.

“After the column, a Christian conservative group issued an action alert to its members, which prompted 3,000 e-mail and 600 voice messages to me and/or legislators,” said Phil Davis, president of the college.

Sadly, I suspect that some folks are missing the difference between stopping a campus-sponsored entity from promoting a particular religion (although I do have to admit that banning Christmas music might be overkill), and taking measures to protect against a slip-and-fall lawsuit.

You’d think that 9/11 turned us into a country of Islamaphobes.

Seen in the Courant:

On May 26, 1647, a Windsor woman named Alse Young was hanged for witchcraft where Hartford’s Old State House now stands.

On Saturday, a group of descendants, historians and interested onlookers gathered down the road at Barnard Park - the South Green - to remember Young and 10 other Connecticut residents executed for witchcraft in Colonial Connecticut. As each of the names of the nine women and two men was read, a bell was rung, and a white rose laid at the base of a tree, over which a hangman’s noose dangled. A 12th rose was laid to remember the children of the executed.[...]

Young’s execution is the first one recorded for witchcraft in New England, and her name is known only because the Windsor town clerk at the time recorded it in his diary. No official record of her trial exists. From some counts, she was the wife of a John, a carpenter, and he left town soon after her death. A woman thought to have been her daughter was later accused of witchcraft in Springfield, though the daughter was not executed and her case may not have even come to trial; historians say second-generation accusations were common.

Windsor takes great pride in being the first English town in Connecticut. However, I’m guessing this is a “first” that the town’s fathers might not be so quick to advertise.

The article mentions that the folks who organized the commemoration are also expressing interest in seeing a formal memorial established, and that Connecticut hasn’t followed Massachusetts’ and Virginia’s lead of posthumously exonerating those executed.