08Nov

Survey Says!

Today is a day that will be dominated by news from the polls. I have chosen to comment instead on news from different polls.

A survey recently conducted by Lifeway suggests that some deep confusion about Christian doctrine may be found in the American populace. The data, published in full here, came from interviews of 3000 U.S. adults, and could be summarized as a series of “good news-bad news” statements.

Good news: Most Americans believe in God. In fact, in this survey, 70% claim belief in the specifically Christian Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Bad news: Unfortunately, on digging deeper, it appears that peoples’ views aren’t actually very Christian. About half say that Jesus is a created being, and two thirds believe that God accepts the worship of other religions. 77% believe that human efforts contribute to one’s own salvation.

Good news: People think God wrote the Bible (58%) and that it alone is the word of God (52%); Furthermore, a whopping 64% believe in the accounts of Jesus’ bodily resurrection from the dead.

Bad news: A majority (51%) believe that the Bible was written for each person to interpret as he or she chooses, and less than half believe that the Bible is 100% accurate. About half recognize the Bible as an authority, “to tell us what we must do”.

Good news: Americans admit that we are all sinners (65%)…

Bad news: However, sin isn’t seen as a big deal. 65% say that humans are basically good, and 64% seem to agree that everyone goes to heaven. Only 40% believe in hell as a place of torment for sinners. Only 19% agree that a small sin is grounds for eternal punishment.

All of this matches up with other surveys. The most recent Gallup polls indicate that a solid majority of Americans still believe in God, but that this belief is eroding. 80 percent feel sure there is some kind of God, down from 96% in 1944. Those who clearly disbelieve in God have risen from 2% to 10% in the past ten years.

(Gallop data, as described above)

The Pew Reseach Center similarly sees a shift in “unaffiliated” from 15 to 23% of the population in the past ten years. Among millenials, that number rises to about 35%. The youngest generations, representing our future, are the most likely to be atheist or agnostic.

The pollster George Barna finds that 73% of Americans identify as Christian, and 20% as “no faith”; a tiny fraction are other religions. Regarding God, the majority (57%) choose the view that God is the all-powerful, all-knowing, perfect creator of the universe who rules the world today.

While the number of believers is encouraging, on digging deeper, only 31% attend a religious service at least once a month and say their faith is very important in their lives. Furthermore, as in the Lifeway survey, most Americans, despite their beliefs, are heterodox with respect to Christian doctrine: Most (55%) agree that if a person is generally good, or does good enough things for others during their life, they will earn a place in heaven.

An older (2009) survey by Barna has indicated that only 9% of Americans hold a biblical worldview. That number is significantly lower than average among young people, liberals/democrats, Catholics, and residents of New England. A biblical worldview is defined in the following way:

For the purposes of the survey, a “biblical worldview” was defined as believing that absolute moral truth exists; the Bible is totally accurate in all of the principles it teaches; Satan is considered to be a real being or force, not merely symbolic; a person cannot earn their way into Heaven by trying to be good or do good works; Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth; and God is the all-knowing, all-powerful creator of the world who still rules the universe today.

To a certain extent, the lack of clarity on biblical doctrine is unsurprising. Why shouldn’t there be some confusion about doctrine and erosion of faith given that there exists similar confusion among clergy? The survey of US pastors conducted by Barna in 2004 found that only 51% endorsed a biblical worldview, as defined above. The Barna organization has also surveyed the “nones”, and found that 2/3 of atheists and agnostics used to attend church when they were young, and that distrust of church is a big factor in their current lack of belief:

According to our research, however, it seems the three primary components that lead to disbelief in God’s existence are 1) rejection of the Bible, 2) a lack of trust in the local church and 3) cultural reinforcement of a secular worldview.

All these polls are more interesting and shocking to me than the other polling which is taking place today. On the one hand, belief or at least receptivity to the idea of God, though weakening, remains high in our country. Our youngest people appear to be the most lost right now, and may be foretelling our eventual lurch toward a post-Christian society, resembling the widespread atheism of northern Europe. We should pray for revival, while taking heart that no matter how awful things seem to get, we are promised that the gates of Hell shall never prevail against the church.

The polls also suggest what many feel–that many men (and women) of the cloth are as lost as their flocks. Many are burned out, misled by their seminary training, or merely struggling (as we all do) with doubts–they need our prayers. In some cases there may indeed be wolves in sheep’s clothing, evil pastors who are in it for malevolent reasons. They should be avoided.

07Nov

An Act of Kindness to a Grieving Officer Caught on Camera

A video that has recently gone viral shows a black woman in Des Moines, IA approaching a white police officer and giving him some food and water, and a hug. The background of this incident is the Nov 2 ambush and murder of two police officers, Sgt. Tony Beminio and Officer Justin Martin, while they were sitting in their patrol cars. Their funerals are scheduled to be held today and tomorrow in their respective Iowa communities.

The woman in the video, Courtney Bach, was not aware that she was being filmed. The tragedy had hit home for her in two ways: she lived near slain officer Martin, and also she is the daughter of a police captain.

“God says to do good and love your neighbor – that means everybody,” Bach said.She said she’s tried to stay off social media because the response has been so overwhelming.”

I feel like the act doesn’t deserve attention because it should be expected from everyone,” Bach said. “It shouldn’t be a surprise.”

You may read more, and watch the video, at KCCI.com.

03Nov

A Stranger Version of Sacrifice and Redemption

Over the course of Halloween, we treated ourselves to a binge viewing of the Netflix miniseries “Stranger Things”. If you haven’t seen it, I’ll offer that it was entertaining–an endearing homage to the nineteen-eighties, Steven King stories, and Sci-FI movies like “ET” and “Close Encounters”. And–full disclosure here–this is largely being lauded as a “period piece”, and the “period” in question is my own, particularly the time of my own childhood. Stepping back into a warm cocoon of memory is part of the enjoyment. Wall mounted rotary phones, old “Coke is it” commercials, Atari, 80s cars, shag carpeting, and brown upholstered furniture are evident everywhere.

I enjoyed also the assembly of 80’s science fiction and horror motifs: You have a group of nerdy middle school friends from broken or dysfunctional families bicycling all around town with little adult supervision or intervention. You have disappearances and other creepy events occurring to people in a small Midwestern town surrounded by a terrifying forest. You have a secret government lab performing mysterious experiments. You have strong (though flawed) characters trying to rise heroically despite their circumstances (the mildly psychopathic yet truth-seeking Sheriff Hopper is a prime example).

In sum, you could find worse ways to spend 7 hours.

Also, stop reading now, because I want to discuss the ending.

But do come back at some point.

Ok, this is the last warning before I plow into details you might not want to know yet…

One of the standout performances for me is the grimly determined orphan “Eleven”, played by 12 year old actress Millie Bobby Brown. Her young eyes radiate despair and terror and hope so hauntingly that it reminded me a bit of Haley Joel Osment in “The Sixth Sense”. She surfaces mysteriously into the lives of three friends, who soon learn that she has extraordinary gifts. They also soon find themselves on the run from shadowy government agents, while also hoping to figure out a way to find their missing friend Will.

Since this is a religion-focused blog, I would be remiss to avoid discussing how Eleven (“El” to her friends) is almost a Christ figure. She is of mysterious birth. She possesses an almost unimaginable power–she can levitate objects, kill with a thought, and create portals between parallel worlds. Her life is one of near constant suffering. She reaches out in friendship to the youngsters and loves them. In the end, she sacrifices herself to save the others. Her story is a picture of sacrifice and salvation–one innocent sufferer giving her all so that the others may live. As Jesus stated ages ago, “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”

The story involving the missing boy Will Byers, can also be seen as a parable of redemption. Early in the series, he disappears into the grim, toxic, and deadly “Upside Down”–a kind of hell existing in parallel to our universe. His mother, portrayed by Winona Ryder as a petite nervous wreck who never gives up hope, is a spot of emotional warmth. She believes she can communicate with her son and will go to any and all crazy lengths in order to do so; for example, when the now invisible young Will somehow makes some lights blink, she responds and by the end of that day she has every inch of her little house plastered with Christmas lights. When she figures out that he is trapped in a parallel universe, she finds a way to the portal in the basement of the heavily guarded government lab, braving the risk of arrest or murder at the hands of the government men. She enters the “upside down”, braving the toxins and monsters, in a quest to retrieve her lost son. Against all odds, she finds him and takes him out of there. He is redeemed, taken back from the shadow of death, retrieved from the grip of Hell and its monster.

The “Upside Down” is also thought provoking in a theological way. In this story, the “upside down” is a parallel universe, one of many possible alternate realities, like ours but inverted. It has the same geography and even the same buildings–houses, schools, and tree forts–but everything is dark, gloomy, and cold. The air is toxic. A terrifying monster inhabits this land. It is hellish.

What if the Christian “Heaven” and “Hell” are in fact alternate dimensions, peopled by versions of ourselves that are better or worse. Hell might be the “upside down”, and Heaven is an alternate reality that is better.

Along these lines, what if our world is actually the “upside down”, a sick and perverted alternate universe to some other better one. That would fit our appalling history of mass murder and other atrocities, both horrific and banal, that are etched upon history. What if we are the demonic versions of our better selves? By no means am I going to claim this as the real truth, or ignore that it wouldn’t quite fit the biblical narratives, but it can be fun to speculate.

02Nov

Researchers Peer at the Tomb of Jesus

For the first time in centuries, the Edicule housing the cave believed to have been the tomb of Jesus, located inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, is being excavated. In the midst of a larger project to shore up the structure, a conservation team from the National Technical University of Athens was given 60 hours to get into the interior of the tomb. They found the original limestone walls of the burial cave. They also got a look at the burial slab itself.

…as researchers continued their nonstop work over the course of 60 hours, another marble slab with a cross carved into its surface was exposed. By the night of October 28, just hours before the tomb was to be resealed, the original limestone burial bed was revealed intact.

For more, including photos, check out the article at National Geographic

01Nov

Tragic Destruction in Central Italy

Central Italy was struck by a 6.6 magnitude earthquake on Oct 30. This is one of several devastating quakes experienced in this region recently, including the August earthquake that killed some 300 people and reduced much of the town of Amatrice to rubble. Apparently 15,000 people have been made homeless in the current disaster.

The world of art is mourning the loss of some treasures. The still standing tower of the town of Amatrice, and the facade of the Sant’ Agostini church, were finished off. In Norcia, the fourteenth century basilica of San Benedetto, pictured above, was destroyed. Fortunately in the latest quake, no lives were lost, but the destruction of historic art and architecture has been lamented.

As the Guardian opines:
From Pompeii to Florence to Norcia, the people of Italy have lived with disaster for millennia. Out of that instability they created beauty. Any loss of that great human fabric is a loss for us all.

We agree. Our prayers go out for the people of these towns.

23Oct

Ten Years Ago the Amish Reminded Us How to Forgive

Ten years ago, on an October day in Nickel Mines, PA, a man named Charles Roberts who was “angry at life and angry with God” according to accounts at the time, crept into a one room schoolhouse. He took ten girls hostage, and then shot them, before killing himself. Five of them died, and the rest were seriously injured.

Almost immediately, the devastated Amish community sought to forgive the deceased perpetrator, and to reach out with compassion to the family of Mr. Roberts. As reported by NPR: “Several families, Amish families who had buried their own daughters just the day before were in attendance and they hugged the widow, and hugged other members of the killer’s family.” The Amish later donated money to his widow and children.

In a further twist–like the old idea of “paying it forward”–that love and embrace has spread. Terri Roberts, the mother of Mr. Roberts, has in turn helped those whom her son victimized. She has become a part time caretaker of an Amish girl named Rosanna, who was neurologically devastated by a gunshot wound to the head. (As reported in New York Daily News).

This “Amish grace” shocked the nation almost as much as the horrific crime out of which it manifested. Though many still struggle at times, the Amish families were able to endure thanks to their strong community and the deep faith that permeates their day-to-day lives. In this, they are exemplars to all of us.

21Oct

More on the “7 Big Questions”

In fact, before I became aware of the “Explore God” project, I had written the following rough draft for the section of the “Underground Church” website called “Christianity: An Introduction for the Curious and Perplexed”:

Christianity: An Introduction for the Curious and the Perplexed

You may be scratching your head as to why–in the technologically advanced age in which we live–do people still bother about invisible deities controlling things behind the scenes. You may wonder what’s all the fuss over a guy who was executed in a Roman outpost, Jerusalem, in the year 33. If so, read on.

Many of life’s most perplexing questions cannot be answered by science. I speak here of the “Big Questions”–such as “why are we here?”, “are we alone?” or “what is the meaning of life?” or “why should I choose this action over that one?” These are thorny questions, and try as we might we can’t really think our way through to all the answers. There are facets of our lives that Science is mute to address. That has led some to denigrate the questions, and denigrate those who ask them. “Manliest men don’t need those answers. They are weak minds who seek such things.” It may well be that these questions cannot be answered. Christians believe that they can be approached, but not by techniques and methods designed to measure the physical world.

How can we know anything?

Why are we here? Where do we come from?

Why is there evil and injustice all around me?

Are we alone? Does anyone care about humanity?

Who was Jesus?

Is this life all there is? What happens when I die?

Does my life today have a higher purpose, or meaning?

I initially had the idea of introducing potential inquirers to Christianity using this questions-based approach. Sort of “welcome to Christianity–we believe we have answers to some of life’s toughest questions”. (In fact, this is close to my earliest discarded wording).

Ultimately I set the material aside for the current essay which begins with the central mystery of Christianity, namely the Resurrection accounts. I made the change for several reasons. One is that we already have a “Q and A” section, and so this kind of approach seemed a bit redundant. Also, it became obvious that despite my efforts at brevity, an essay that incorporated all of this material, and did these questions any kind of justice, would by necessity have become quite long and unwieldy. Also, I felt that people would be more likely to want to read such an essay from a personal, subjective approach–I thought about reworking this into a different essay called “my own path to faith”. That may still come at some point. Stay tuned.

19Oct

Seven Big Questions Explored

Many of the churches in a large metro area are advertising and participating in a program called “Explore God”. As billboards and promotional information indicates, sermons and discussions will center on “7 Big Questions”. This looks like a project that has been traveling from city to city, starting with Austin, TX, a few years ago, so it is likely that you will encounter it at some point:

Does Life Have a Purpose?

Is There a God?

Why Does God Allow Pain and Suffering?

Is Christianity Too Narrow?

Is Jesus Really God?

Is the Bible Reliable?

Can I Know God Personally?

These sound like excellent questions, and we may explore some of these as well in the future. In fact, Christianity in toto, with all its intricacies, texts, rituals, and teachings accumulated over 2000 years of existence, is an answer to these questions. My hat is off to anyone that can handle any of these questions in a single sermon or lecture.

In the meantime, here is a website for this program:
http://www.exploregod.com/resources-for-groups/series-the-7-big-questions.

By the way, as a caveat, I will say that I don’t know who exactly is “behind” this campaign. It appears to come from a nondenominational but predominantly protestant evangelical approach. Regardless of your background, these are questions that deserve thought, and I would hope that the “Christian” answers would be shared by believers of all stripes.

09Oct

“Christa” Returns to Cathedral

Wacky Episcopalian progressives are at it again. In a move that basically represents a middle finger to traditional Christianity, a controversial statue is again being installed at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. “Christa” is a 250 pound bronze figure of a nude woman, with arms outstretched to look like Jesus on the cross.

This is not the first attempt to install this statue at the Cathedral. In 1984, the bishop of New York stepped in and overruled the local clergy. As was reported in a previous edition of the New York Times:
Bishop Walter Dennis accused the Cathedral Dean, the Very Rev. James Park Morton, of ”desecrating our symbols.”
Biishop Dennis, who is in charge of the diocese while Bishop Paul Moore Jr. is on a leave of absence, said the display was ”theologically and historically indefensible.”

What has changed? The times apparently.

“We have people who worship here who expressed concerns,” Ms. Schubert said on Monday, as the statue was being put into place. Still, “the leadership of the cathedral said this is 2016, not 1984,” she added. “Surely we can have a woman on the cross.”

As Haiti Reels from the Effects Of Hurricane, Christian Aid Workers are Already Pitching In

I am reporting today a small silver lining in an otherwise very dark time for Haiti. We are told that the death toll stands north of 800 people as 145 mph winds destroyed buildings and uprooted trees in this tiny island nation. Within a day of the terror inflicted by Hurricane Matthew on one of the poorest of nations, Christian agencies are already on the ground trying to help.

Christian groups are at the fore of early relief efforts as Hurricane Matthew, the most powerful hurricane to hit the United States in a decade, brings storm surges and lashings of rain to Florida after killing at least 339 people in Haiti. (Christian Today)

The article mentions Christian Aid and the Southern Baptist Disaster Relief as two organizations already mobilized and working alongside the Red Cross/Red Crescent. Other news articles have mentioned “Samaritan Purse” and “LiveBeyond” as agencies already involved. I am aware of other churches entering into the relief efforts.

Our thoughts and prayers for protection go out to the people of Haiti, Cuba, Bahamas, as well as our own brethren in Florida, and the eastern seaboard of the US. If you are interested in contributing, contact your local church or one of the aid organizations mentioned above, for suggestions on how to help these relief efforts.