Are you still Christian or any other faith?

With the spate of aggressive campaigns deriding people of faith and the number of scandals relating to the church, an important question to consider is: If you are a person of faith, why do you still give credence to that faith. Diana Butler Bass, in an interview about her book, A People's History of Christianity, approached that question. This can be found in its entirety at the Religious Dispatches site, http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/mediaculture/1466/.

The interview opened with this question and answer:
What inspired you to write A People's History of Christianity? What sparked your interest?
A conversation with a friend prompted the writing of A People’s History. About a dozen years ago, she quizzed me as to why I was still a Christian. Although I actually tried to avoid answering her, I eventually realized that I had remained a Christian largely because I am held in faith by history—the past provides me with spiritual memory and a community that exists through time. Many people, of course, reject Christianity on the basis of its history. Of course, Christians have committed much historical mischief and done outright evil things. But that’s not the whole story. There’s much in the tradition to be both admirable and imitated. So, I decided to write “the other side of the story,” the sort of history that enables me to stay Christian.

So, if you are a person of faith, why are you still one? If you are not a person of faith, why have you maintained that resistance to faith?

Religious News Part II

The second item Joshua sent me reported on criticisms of President Obama for bumping the Charlie Brown Christmas Special from network TV with a side of innuendo about the President supposedly being a Muslim.

According to an article in the Memphis Commercial Appeal [ http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2009/12/president_obama_is_a_muslim_te.html with a link there to the original article written by Mark Memmott, Russell Wiseman], the mayor of Arlington, Tennessee posted the following on his Facebook page -
"Ok, so, this is total crap, we sit the kids down to watch 'The Charlie Brown Christmas Special' and our muslim president is there, what a load.....try to convince me that wasn't done on purpose. Ask the man if he believes that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and he will give you a 10 minute disertation (sic) about it....w...hen the answer should simply be 'yes'...."

The Commercial Appeal reporter notes that Glenn Beck also chimes in on the crtiticisms of the President for pre-empting Charlie Brown. Though, as I looked at the original article, Beck uses a decidedly different and more cutting approach.

Isn't it wonderful that people who do not support President Obama can continue to use baseless charges - President Obama is a Muslim; President Obama is not a US citizen; etc. - as legitimate ways to voice their criticism of the administration? I wonder how bumping the Charlie Brown Christmas Special can be equated with anti-Christian sentiment? True, Linus does quote from Luke 2, but the central theme of the show revolves around a forlorn Christmas tree, rescued by Charlie Brown, not anything about the gospel message.