Scientology Debate Down Under

Senator Nick Xenophon demanded an investigation of the Church of Scientology. He asserted: "I also believe the activities of this organisation should be scrutinised by parliament because Australian taxpayers are, in effect, supporting Scientology through its tax-exempt status. I say to all Australians: as you fill in your tax return next July or August, ask yourself how you feel knowing that you are paying tax and yet this criminal organisation is not.
"Do you want Australian tax exemptions to be supporting an organisation that coerces its followers into having abortions? Do you want to be supporting an organisation that defrauds, that blackmails, that falsely imprisons? Because, on the balance of evidence provided by victims of Scientology, you probably are."

There are two articles that summarize the issues available at: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/police-take-up-scientology-complaints/story-e6frg6nf-1225799494770
and
http://wl.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26378104-5014047,00.html.

I am not a supporter of Scientology, but the debate raises important questions in the modern world. Can, or should, the government define what is a legitimate religious organization? If so, what criteria do they use? If not, can any organization lay claim to the specific rights of a religious group? Should religious groups be granted tax-exempt status? If so, can any religious group be denied such status? Can, or should, the government forbid particular practices of a religion? If so, what standards should be used? If not, would this open the door to an "anything goes" on the religious front?

Why Go To Church?

In a column at EthicsDaily.com, Barry Howard shares what Teddy Roosevelt said on the subject in a 1917 article in Ladies Home Journal. According to Howard, here are President Rooselvelt's reasons:

1. In the actual world a churchless community, a community where men have abandoned and scoffed at or ignored their religious needs, is a community on the rapid downgrade.

2. Church work and church attendance mean the cultivation of the habit of feeling some responsibility for others and the sense of braced moral strength, which prevents a relaxation of one's own moral fiber.

3. There are enough holidays for most of us that can quite properly be devoted to pure holiday making. Sundays differ from other holidays, among other ways, in the fact that there are 52 of them every year. On Sunday, go to church.

4. Yes, I know all the excuses. I know that one can worship the Creator and dedicate oneself to good living in a grove of trees, or by a running brook, or in one's own house, just as well as in church. But I also know as a matter of cold fact the average man does not thus worship or thus dedicate himself. If he strays away from church, he does not spend his time in good works or lofty meditation. He looks over the colored supplement of the newspaper.

5. He may not hear a good sermon at church. But unless he is very unfortunate, he will hear a sermon by a good man who, with his good wife, is engaged all the week long in a series of wearing, humdrum and important tasks for making hard lives a little easier.

6. He will listen to and take part in reading some beautiful passages from the Bible. And if he is not familiar with the Bible, he has suffered a loss.

7. He will probably take part in singing some good hymns.

8. He will meet and nod to, or speak to, good quiet neighbors. He will come away feeling a little more charitably toward all the world, even toward those excessively foolish young men who regard churchgoing as rather a soft performance.

9. I advocate a man's joining in church works for the sake of showing his faith by his works.

10. The man who does not in some way, active or not, connect himself with some active, working church misses many opportunities for helping his neighbors, and therefore, incidentally, for helping himself.

This is not as snappy as one of Letterman's lists, but do you think any of the reasons are still valid?

The Devil Made Me Properous

In the BostonGlobe is an article [found at http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/11/15/the_curious_economic_effects_of_religion/?page=full] linking religious belief and, most particularly, a belief in hell to developing economies. Quoting from the article by Michael Fitzgerald,
Among the most provocative findings have come from Robert Barro, a renowned economist at Harvard, and his wife, Rachel McCleary, a researcher at Harvard’s Taubman Center. McCleary, the daughter of a Methodist missionary, felt that she had seen religion change people’s economic behavior, and wondered why economists didn’t look at it as a potential factor in economic development. Barro found the idea intriguing.

The two collected data from 59 countries where a majority of the population followed one of the four major religions, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, or Buddhism. They ran this data - which covered slices of years from 1981 to 2000, measuring things like levels of belief in God, afterlife beliefs, and worship attendance - through statistical models. Their results show a strong correlation between economic growth and certain shifts in beliefs, though only in developing countries. Most strikingly, if belief in hell jumps up sharply while actual church attendance stays flat, it correlates with economic growth. Belief in heaven also has a similar effect, though less pronounced. Mere belief in God has no effect one way or the other. Meanwhile, if church attendance actually rises, it slows growth in developing economies.

There is, of course, a classic book by Max Weber entitled The Prostestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in which he relates the work ethic of Calvinistic influenced Protestant Christianity on the work ethic of the people. Simplistically speaking, it was the "work harder to win favor argument."

So, do you think that being a follower of Calvin, or a believer in God, or a fearer of hellfire and damnation makes any difference in economic success?

Bullying the LDS Church?

SLC made the news this week as the City Council endorsed an act guaranteeing civil rights protections for homosexual and transgender persons. The bigger news was the endorsement of the legislation by the leadership of the LDS Church.

Now, a fax is being distributed in SLC, and perhaps elsewhere, claiming that the LDS Church had no option but to give their support for the act. According to the fax, "The LDS Church had to Stand [sic] as an "Entity" and protect itself. (publically [sic] they cannot come out and say this)". Further, the fax proclaims, "SHAME on UTAH GAYS for persecuting, harassing, using intimidation tactics, and staging scenarios to corner The LDS Church into endorsing their movement and to use the LDS Church as a backbone to sway the LDS voters and legislators to vote for thyeir laws!"

To this, I would make the following points:
-- It is preposterous for anyone to claim that the Utah homosexual community has enough power and numbers to bully the LDS Church into doing anything! That would be like some small group in Rome being charged with bullying the Catholic Church into doing something the church did not approve.
-- At the time the legislation was being considered, the LDS Church issued its statement of support by affirming it always supported equal civil rights for people. The fax is essentially saying that the Church lied about its support as a politically motivated and expedient move.
-- The fax claims that "All anti-discrimination laws containing sexual orientation in them, [sic] are made with the sole intent to promote the acceptance of homosexuality and other sexual behaviors as a lifestyle to the children." It seems that these laws are to protect people from being fired or being thrown out of housing solely because of their sexual orientation. Further, this claim suggests that some child can be forced to become a homosexual.

Crypto-Christians

No, this is not part of the plot line of the next Dan Brown novel. It refers to a world-wide phenomenon of people who embrace the Christian faith, but, because of the threat of persecution, remain hidden among the general population.

Historically, adherents of various faiths, including Christians, have had to resort to extreme tactics to guarantee their safety. One needs only to think of the Jewish population in Spain in the 14th century or Christians in Japan in the 17th century to recognize that it has not always been safe to be a member of a particular religious group.

In a July 14, 2009 article in the Christian Century, Philip Jenkins writes:
The phenomenon of crypto-Christianity is likely to become much more common in the coming decades. Defensive tactics are scarcely needed when the vast majority of Christians live in self-defined Christian nations, but they become acutely relevant when millions of believers live in deeply hostile environments, in societies that are (for instance) predominately Muslim or Hindu.

The numbers of such clandestine Christians are not precisely defined, as you would imagine. Estimates put the size of this bloc of Christian belivers at 120 million. If this is true, writes Jenkins, crypto-Christians would constitute one of the world's largest religious groups.

It is extremely interesting to me that these groups of hidden Christians exist in an age when active, practicing Christians are almost extinct in Europe and are on the decline in America, the last bastion of religious adherence in the West. What does their existence say about the religious tendencies of human beings? What does their persistence in the face of persecution say about the nature and character of the religious enterprise in the West? Do they speak for the need of greater religious acceptance in all countries? Would they be as faithful if they were allowed to worship openly?

It's just the wrong thing to do.

I saw that a church in Dayton Tennessee has on its church sign the following message: Eric Berry for Heisman. For those who do not know, Eric Berry is the starting strong safety for the University of Tennessee Volunteers football team. He was named an All-American last year and will probably be an All-American this year. He is also among the semi-finalists for two other prestigious college football awards. By all accounts, he is as good a person as he is a good football player.

BUT, I do not think that using a church sign to support his chances to win the Heisman Award is the right thing to do.

Disclaimers are in order: I am a graduate of the University of Tennessee; I am a college football fan; I am a fan of UT football in particular; I do realize the truth that, for many Southerners, college football is the one true religion. That said, I still do not think a church sign is the proper medium to show support for a particular player or a particular team. Shouldn't the church use that space to promote something else of greater importance - like justice or equality or caring for people?

Finale for Armstrong's "Think Again about God"

The final two points that Karen Armstrong deals with science and politics. The statements she considered are simple: "God is the Enemy of Science" and "God is Incompatible with Democracy". The answers are equally simple: "He doesn't have to be." and "No".

Armstrong's comments on each topic are interesting. Looking at science, she wrote, The conflict with science is symptomatic of a reductive idea of God in the modern West. Ironically, it was the empirical emphasis of modern science that encouraged many to regard God and religious language as fact rather than symbol, thus forcing religion into an overly rational, dogmatic, and alien literalism.

And, in considering the relationship between religion and democracies, she centered on what many see as an inherent conflict between Islam and western style democrcy. She asserted: The 2007 Gallup poll shows that support for democratic freedoms and women's rights is widespread in the Muslim world, and many governments are responding -- albeit haltingly -- to pressures for more political participation. There is, however, resistance to a wholesale adoption of the Western secular model. Many want to see God reflected more clearly in public life, just as a 2006 Gallup poll revealed that 46 percent of Americans believe that God should be the source of legislation.

As a professional in the field of religion, I admit to a level of bias, but I think her concluding paragraphs are spot on:
Religion may not be the cause of the world’s political problems, but we still need to understand it if we are to solve them. "Whoever took religion seriously!” exclaimed an exasperated U.S. government official after the Iranian Revolution. Had policymakers bothered to research contemporary Shiism, the United States could have avoided serious blunders during that crisis. Religion should be studied with the same academic impartiality and accuracy as the economy, politics, and social customs of a region, so that we learn how religion interacts with political tension, what is counterproductive, and how to avoid giving unnecessary offense.

And study it we'd better, for God is back. And if "he" is perceived in an idolatrous, literal-minded way, we can only expect more dogmatism, rigidity, and religiously articulated violence in the decades ahead.

Thus, I agree that no one should buy into the argument that the things of God are passe in our society. This speaks to my belief that all people ought to become more informed of religious beliefs.