Whom Would God Say To Torture?

Another layer of religious consideration has been added to the debate on torture. The folks at Pew released the results of a poll taken during mid-April looking at people's opinions on the appropriateness of torture and linking those opinions with religious affiliation and church attendance. You notice, I am sure, that those who go to church more frequently and those who identify themselves as evangelicals are more likely to say torture can be justified.

I am not an expert on interrogation. Many of the experts I have read, though, say that torture is not an effective way to gain credible information - despite how it is shown on TV and in movies. The one being tortured talks; it is just that the tortured tend to say anything to make it stop, not necessarily the truth.

When I saw this Pew report, I wondered about the reasons used by these folks to back up their opinion. Why did 49% of the general population and 62% of the white evangelical Protestants and 54% of those who attend church at least weekly say torture can be justified? Why did 55% of those who are unaffiliated and 53% of those who rarely attend services say torture most likely cannot be justified?

What do you think - either about the use of torture or about the response of the religious folks to it?

The Market Value of a Minister

Riverside Church in New York has been embroiled in controversy and been the object of additional interest over the last few weeks after the details of the compensation package for their new minister were made public. The new minister will receive approximately $600,000 in total compensation from the church.

Some within that church, and many outside of it, say that no minister should make such a large sum. Pointing to the poverty of Jesus and the early disciples and the call of the gospel to minister to those in need rather than storing up treasures for yourself on earth, these critics suggest that the church is wrong to pay this.

As a minister, I would not begrudge a good salary to anyone serving a church. That said, I have never been offered nor received anything close to this amount. In fact, the monthly housing allowance he will receive is about what my annual compensation was in the first church I served as minister.

This controversy does provide a way of reflecting on this: What is a "fair market value" for a minister? How does a church determine this? In other fields, the value of a CEO or an athlete is based on how much value that person provides for the company or the team. How could that be ascertained for a minister?

In conversations with churches in different parts of the country through the years, I have heard various rationales for determining the compensation level for the minister - who might have been me should the conversations continued. Some churches have been intentional that the minister would make less than the median income of the church - to make sure the pastor is appropriately humble. Others have based the minister's pay on other criteria, such as: the average teacher's salary or the school superintendent's salary or the amount paid to the circuit judges.

What do you think the worth of a minister is? How should that be compensated?

Making Ethical Decisions

A snippet from Religious Dispatches caught my eye:
K'vod Habriot is Hebrew for "human dignity." It is a Talmudic principle that is applied in the Jewish legal context, and in service of social justice. Fundamentally, it is the idea that respect for an other's individual dignity as a created being must figure into any ethical decision.

What factors do you use to make ethical decisions? What does it mean to factor in another's individual dignity as a created being in making decisions? How would such an approach change the way you make decisions on a daily basis?

Proving faith?

Last night, as I was cruising through the TV channels, I happened upon a religious program with a host whom I had never seen. As I listened to the show for a few minutes, I thought he [Peter Spencer] made some rather overblown claims showing the evil of evolutionary theory and its power in helping create and support both the Nazis in Germany, and Hitler especially, and the Communists in Russia, especially Stalin, and their murderous campaigns to exterminate whole people groups.

I noted the website and looked at it this morning. From the website comes this direct quotation about these claims:
"Peter has been invited to Central and Sout America this year as well to set up ministries for the Kingdom of God, Training missions for pastors, and crusades for the lost. In addition, he will be speaking to a exploding church of over 2 million souls, teaching on the True vs. Cosmetic Church. In these condensed, easy to understand studies, we prove that Jesus Christ literally raised from the dead. That the Bible can be scientifically, historically and mathematically proven to be inspired. And that through our teaching of the Word in clear, nugget form, anyone can defend the faith against the aggressive, and often murderous cults rising up worldwide. May God’s Vision prevail. Worldwide!"

I do not know what methods or techniques Spencer uses, but it seems to me that he confuses faith and proof. Even if one could prove "scientifically, historically and mathematically" - whatever he means by that - that the Bible is inspired - whatever that means - what does that do to the whole faith enterprise? I can prove mathematically that the Pythagorean Theorem is true, or I can replicate Boyle's experiments about the action of gases and confirm them. Thus, I do not have to accept either by faith.

It seems that the Biblical witness about faith versus proof is simple, "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Personally, I think this is the better way, even if I would probably be relegated to the "cosmetic church" by Mr. Spencer.

A Return To Faith

In April 2009, New Statesman magazine published an issue on the state of religion - with a focus on England, of course. In the issue, A. N. Wilson, novelist, recounts how he moved from faith to atheism and back to faith. Wilson wrote,
When I think about atheist friends, including my father, they seem to me like people who have no ear for music, or who have never been in love. It is not that (as they believe) they have rumbled the tremendous fraud of religion – prophets do that in every generation. Rather, these unbelievers are simply missing out on something that is not difficult to grasp. Perhaps it is too obvious to understand; obvious, as lovers feel it was obvious that they should have come together, or obvious as the final resolution of a fugue.

How do you respond to that? If you are a person of faith, do you agree with Wilson's description of atheists as those with no ear for music? If you are a person with no faith, do you agree?

To be or not to be ... religious

For several years, studies have been produced that show the advantages of religious belief. According to some of the studies, people of faith live longer or are happier or have healthier lives or something along those lines. It was almost enough to convince people to have religious faith whether they believed in God or not.

In a story posted online today by the Boston Globe, Nathan Schneider has written about a new trend in sociological and psychological studies - the study of those without religious faith. Interestingly, some early research suggests that the same benefits which have been attributed to religious belief are also enjoyed by the non-religious.

Schneider concludes his article with these words,
But soon, more scholars of religion may be forced to pay attention [to the non-religious]. Wulff has been developing survey tools that will help psychologists look beyond binary oppositions like religiosity and secularity, or belief and unbelief. Phil Zuckerman's study in Scandinavia, in fact, suggests that these distinctions aren't as clear as one might expect. His interviews show the extent to which, even in the absence of traditional supernatural beliefs, the subjects' religious heritage provides them with moral guideposts and cultural habits. Not believing in God doesn't stop most Danes and Swedes from considering themselves Christians.

Religions, we are beginning to learn, can be better understood by paying attention to what irreligion looks like. Probe irreligion, and you encounter not only new insights about how it works in people's lives, but also echoes of the very religions it defines itself against.

If you are non-religious, do you know people of faith and do you talk to them? If you are religious, do you know people who have no faith and do you talk to them? Do you see those folks who are so different from you in this regard similar to you in most other ways?