by Arri Eisen
from Religion Dispatches

What role does science play in what we believe and in how we understand belief? I teach a college course called “Science & the Nature of Evidence,” in which that question is considered at length. Few of my students (few of any of us, perhaps) have thought about it, and they love the chance to take it on.

It matters what we believe and why we believe it. Not just in terms of religious identification, not just for deciding what and how we do things in our day-to-day lives, but also in relation to politics. Take such monumental policy decisions as those regarding health care, or the military. Do we go with what we feel is right and wrong, or—as is the more commonly understood basis for such policy decisions—do we do what will be best for the most people? How about suicide bombers? Why are they willing to lose their lives for their beliefs? Now, we can begin to better understand the mechanisms of such decisions by combining expertise in religion, philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, economics, and even genetics.

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from CNN

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by Paul Brandeis Raushenbush
from Huffington Post

In the final days of 2011 we pause to reflect on the year that has past — the good, the bad and the ugly. Here are the HuffPost Religion Top Stories of 2011.

The Muslim Spring
It started with a simple vegetable seller in Tunisia who, humiliated by the police and autocracy, set himself on fire at the end of 2010. One year later, the seemingly eternal regimes of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya have fallen to popular uprisings and several others, including Syria, appear to be teetering. Once called the Arab Spring, Islam is increasingly being recognized as the fuel that fed the fire of these revolutions — a fire that that may both warm and burn in 2012.

The Dalai Lama Steps Down
The Dalai Lama made history when he relieved himself from his responsibility as political head of the Tibetan people to concentrate solely on his role as spiritual leader; ending one of the most enduring, if benevolent, theocracies in the world. Lobsang Sangay, the Harvard-trained legal scholar, is the the new Tibetan Prime Minister in a time when frustrations with Chinese policy is leading to a fiery form of radical protests by nuns and monks.

Mormons in Politics
The potential success of the Romney presidential campaign has fed a frenzy of discussion of what it means that a Mormon is in politics. The fact that Romney is not the only Mormon candidate (Huntsman) and that the Senate Majority Leader (Reid) is also Mormon doesn’t seem to stop the endless punditry and speculation. Will religious suspicion on the part of evangelicals in the primary and secularists in the general election doom this Mormon moment?

The Muslims Are Coming, The Muslims Are Coming
Fear of the “Muslim menace,” fueled by cynical politicians and well funded think tanks, has led to anti-sharia laws proposed and passed in states around the country. The fact that these states hadno pending pro-sharia laws is apparently beside the point. Creating bulwarks instead of bridges, the anti-sharia (read Muslim) movements seem to ebb and flow according to the political tides (think Park 51 in 2010). Get ready for a flood in 2012.

The End of the World
In order to give people time to repent, people with May 21 Judgment Day signs started popping up well before the announced date of the end of the world. The “prophet” of this apocalypse was Harold Camping, an elderly man with a drawling voice heard most prominently on his Family Radio empire. People left jobs, families prepared to be raptured and as the clock ticked down, the entire world held its collective unbelieving breath. And then time went on, and oddly a little disappointed, so did we.

Presbyterians Acknowledge Gays and Lesbians Can Be Ministers
Ho hum, gays can be ministers, too. Yet, for the Presbyterian Church, one of America’s most famously and proudly plodding religious traditions, to change its laws to allow openly gay men and women in same-sex relationships to be ordained as clergy was a major step forward for LGBT rights and for the Church as a whole.

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By Sai Kolluru
From State of Formation

“Know thyself.” -Aristotle

“Meditating on the lotus of your heart, in the center is the untainted; the exquisitely pure, clear, and sorrowless; the inconceivable; the unmanifest, of infinite form; blissful, tranquil, immortal; the womb of Brahma.” -Kaivalyopanishad

“Who am I? What is this body I am in? Where do my thoughts come from? What is the mind? Why do I feel something in my heart? What attracts me to things and creates emotions of like and dislike? What is the very essence of my existence?” -The Human Mind

A curious start. The search for the Self.

These are all the questions I have asked myself since I took my first plane ride from India to the United States at the age of eight. I was so astonished by the Boeing jet. My face was plastered to the windows as I saw constellation Orion from 30,000 feet. I was amazed by the tranquility of our Earth. Every night I looked through my telescope, my mind was in awe constantly asking, “How can this universe be so vast? So beautiful? So perfect in order? I mean, this Earth itself is unfathomably incredible in creation but the universe?”

Emotions would run through me and I would get goosebumps at the thought of the creation of the Universe. Reminiscing over the past twenty one years of my life: I grew up in a traditional, orthodox Brahmin Hindu family. When my family bought our first home, my mother made sure to refer to the “Vaastu Shastra”-an ancient Hindu doctrine that has an archaic view on how the laws of nature affect human dwellings. She would set down the compass as we entered our future home and say “Ha ha, it’s facing North-Northeast, this is a good front entrance for the house.” This showed me how holistic my mother’s approach to living was.

As for myself, I just looked at how big the house was and made sure that I had my own big room. As I grew up, my mother would teach me many rituals and ceremonies followed in the Hindu tradition. “After all, you are a Brahmin [a person of spiritual knowledge in a community],” she would insist.

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Charles Howard
from Huffington Post

Professor Kirk Byron Jones messed me up. In a good way. His Jazz of Preaching class that I so joyfully attended during my second year of seminary at Andover Newton, was a symphony of holy mischief with each class session simultaneously graying and clarifying where the believer may encounter the Presence of God. Back then there was much talk in seminaries and divinity schools about “border crossing” and that is exactly where this course was taught – at the closely watched and fiercely guarded border between the sacred and the secular. And that’s a dangerous place to be. The few who dare step over the clearly delineated lines are either labeled as groundbreaking ambassadors or lost, wandering ex-pat heretics.

Jones invited students to not only visit the border between what is also called the holy and the profane, he invited us to dance on the border and encourage trade between the two warring nations.

We listened to Duke Ellington and Mahalia Jackson’sCome Sunday, which I can’t hear without tearing up. We raised our hands in praise when we played Coltrane’s divine utterance A Love Supreme in which he says with perfect articulation through his saxophone, “It all has to do with it…” We praised, we wept, we paused, we danced and we shouted with artist after artist.

As a preaching class, the lessons on improvisation while preaching, blues preaching, harmony, call and response and the myriad of applicable metaphors are still notions that I draw from when I am given the honor of entering the pulpit. Jones wrote them up in his wonderful book by the same title The Jazz of Preaching. But there was a deeper lesson that I walked away with: The border between the sacred and the secular is not as firm as it may seem.

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by Yaira Robinson from State of Formation

Going to the park, to work, to the grocery store or pretty much anywhere today is venturing out into a religiously pluralistic setting. In all of those places, there are bound to be people who profess different religious beliefs than you do, or who profess no beliefs at all. In many of these settings, we keep quiet about our religious views so as not to offend or distance ourselves from others. I wonder, though, if this leaves us saying nothing real at all, and sometimes increases the distance between us rather than bringing us together in actual relationship.

Engaging in interfaith work takes this everyday religious pluralism to a whole new level. For this work, there are no roadmaps, no graduate certification programs, no experts; there are just individual people trying the best they can to forge new paths of partnership and mutual understanding. Because of the interfaith environmental justice work in which I’ve participated for the last three years, I’ve thought a lot about how to be an individual person of particular faith in an intensely and intentionally religiously pluralistic setting. Below are some things I’ve learned; perhaps they are also applicable for your local park or workplace, or for late-night interfaith conversations with your neighborhood grocery clerk (and if you try that, I’d love to hear how the conversation goes).

1. Share your religious story (in a respectful, non-proselytizing kind of way). When you share your story with others, it helps them feel comfortable sharing their stories with you.

2. Know your religious story. In order to share your religious story, you first have to have one. Whatever your religious (or non-religious) tradition is, know it and live it. For me, this means being an active member of my synagogue and engaging in regular study, practice and prayer.

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From The Religion Dispatches

For H.A. Hellyer’s full coverage for RD from Cairo, click here.

It’s quite fascinating to see the role of religion and religious figures over the past week in Egypt. Certainly, the state in Egypt has mentioned the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan al-Muslimeen) many times over the years, voicing the fear that in the event that the ruling National Democratic Party fell, Egypt would turn into an Arab version of Iran — a fear that was repeated many times over the last few days by the right-wing press all over the world.

There have been other things said relating to religious figures or organizations that are to be taken with a heavy dose of salt. Some in the Egyptian pro-Mubarak camp argued that Hizbollah from Lebanon were the ones responsible for opening the prisons in Egypt over the past week, and others played up that the Iranian president congratulated the protesters and hoped they would establish an “Islamic state” in Egypt.

One wonders, though, if the commentators actually realize what Egyptian society is really like.

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From The Washington Post

The dramatic images streaming out of Egypt over the past week suggest that the 30-year dictatorship of America’s close ally, Hosni Mubarak, might be coming to an end.

The world is watching closely to see what kind of country may emerge from the latest popular revolt to rock the Arab world. Yet in the United States, the conversation– as usual when it comes to the Middle East–seems fixated on the singular issue of Islam, and more specifically, on the role that the Muslim Brotherhood may play in Egypt’s future. GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum is already drawing parallels between the young protesters calling for an end to the brutal and repressive Mubarak regime, and the popular protests that, three decades ago, brought down another despicable dictator and former American ally, the Shah of Iran. “We abandoned [the Shah] and what we got in exchange was… a radical Islamist regime,” Santorum said. Mike Huckabee, another GOP presidential hopeful, joined in the hysteria, warning Americans that, “if in fact the Muslim Brotherhood is underneath much of the unrest [in Egypt] every person who breathes ought to be concerned.”

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From The Huffington Post

Wearied by the decline and fall of trust relations in most sectors of society, many have had to seek energy from beyond the headlines. Politics, economics, religion, commerce and family life are zones where trust is so broken that for many the temptation to feel defeatist or to grow cynical is almost overwhelming. From “beyond the headlines,” then, can one find some alternatives to denial, indifference or despair?

Religion and religions ought to have something to say, both about the sad situation and possible ways to transcend it as steps toward recovering trust. Religions advertise these as a specialty. Thus in most versions of the Christian faith “trust” is central, right next to its kin, “faith,” along with hope and love, yet that centrality often gets obscured. I was brought up on a catechism which explained the First Commandment simply: “We are to fear, love, and trust God above all things.” That’s fine for catechism class, Sunday or Sabbath school, or parochial settings. But it’s hard to sell that within a pluralist, multi-religion, multi-Commandment culture. So, “forget it!?” Millions did.

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From The Huffington Post

In a recent interview with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, we discussed his attendance at the 2010 Clinton Global Initiative held earlier this year, the work of his Faith Foundation, and the importance of understanding religion in a rapidly globalizing world.

…

Rahim Kanani: While your Faith Foundation’s primary goal is to promote and foster understanding amongst the world’s major religions, and the Face to Faith initiative you’ve described focuses on secondary school students engaging in interfaith and intercultural understanding, what is the role of colleges and universities in tackling interfaith education? Should such instruction be required learning in such a setting?

Tony Blair: My Foundation believes that young people have a pivotal role to play in building a harmonious modern world. After all, they are tomorrow’s leaders. It is therefore vital for students to have a firm grasp on the relationship between faith and globalization. So as well as a schools program my Foundation also has a universities program – the Faith and Globalization Initiative.

Seven universities around the world are currently part of the network: Yale University in the USA, The National University of Singapore, The University of Western Australia, Technologico de Monterrey University in Mexico, McGill University in Canada, Peking University in China and Durham University in the UK. The Faith and Globalization students who are drawn from a huge range of disciplines including international relations, law, theology, economics and business studies are examining the impact of religious faith on politics, business, society, and development in an increasingly globalized society. The focus here is on making the research findings from the university network accessible, meaningful and relevant to policymakers through publications, conferences and policy papers.

Each university customises the course to suit their local contexts and explores aspects of globalization which are particularly relevant to them, for example the key themes in Religions in the Contemporary World at the National University of Singapore are Religion and Technology, Urban Religiosity and Merchandising Religion which reflects the importance of technology in Singapore’s rapidly expanding economy.

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